Corrosion (The Corroding Empire Book 1)

by Johan Kalsi

  Leto ignored the sarcasm. “I’m sure it’s because of the power problem in the cable. Once that is back up, we can probably talk to the pilot then.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this right away? Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Leto, do you think I’m an idiot?”

  Leto’s silence provided his most honest answer of the morning.

  Scot took one look at the hull of the great SpiderCat. “Naoleen, you better load up.”

  “Aside from the batteries,” she said, “there’s not a lot else that can possibly come in handy that I don’t already have on board.”

  “Well, be creative. And, since you’ll have plenty of space, throw in my truck. I’m going to find that rattle, I swear. I may as well get some useful work done while we are crawling.”

  “Uh, I don’t know about that,” said Leto. “Only authorized transports, Scot. You know the drill.”

  Scot cut him off. “You know it, too. Not one more word out of you, and maybe we both get to keep our jobs. Load it, Naoleen.”

  Scot boarded the SpiderCat.

  Even from close range, the cable was invisible. On the launch pad, the massive SpiderCat looked something like four-legged pila bean. Its magnetic paws wrapped in prayer around seemingly nothing. The nothing was, in fact, a thin strand pulled taut and stretching to heaven.

  The string, a carefully woven braid of nanocarbon, flexible silicon and microscopic strands of fiberglass, bore the weight of the entire space elevator system. As thin as the cable was at the base, Scot was well aware that the cable alone contained lethal tons of material in high tension. If it were ever to detach from its platform or counterweight in outer space, the collapse would be spectacular and catastrophic, not just for him.

  Launch was quick and nearly silent. Lift-off: a common miracle.

  “Wow,” said Scot, straining against the instant increase in gravity, “I really have to lose this paunch. My weight is killing me.”

  “Oh Scot,” said Naoleen. “I think you look great. Have you been working out?”

  As they coursed along its line, eventually stabilizing to the point where Scot could engage the body cart, he slid himself back to the cargo bay, to work on his truck. He had a rattle to hunt, but he couldn’t stop thinking about the people on the cable as he picked his way through the engine.

  Grandpappy was obsolete: cobbled together with a variety of materials, each material compensating for what had, at one time in the somewhat brief terrestrial history of functional space elevators, been technical shortcomings in other materials. Unlike nearly all the other working freight and passenger elevators, the cable was not a micron-thin ribbon, nor was it completely carbon.

  Soon, it would be decommissioned. But this was a political challenge that no one wanted to take on. The public was downright romantic about Grandpappy: It had been the first one that worked – it had been the first one to provide a reasonable commercial process for reaching the system’s Black Box. Back then, the Black Box had been a completely reliable direct lane to the open marketplace for both exports and imports throughout the galaxy, but Romuh’s combined international efforts could only produce a trickle of viable export to the Black Box, while wealthier, less developing worlds could flood the Romuhlian domestic market. Grandpappy had been the first economic strike back: it could transport goods cheaply through the gravitational pull of the planet, and then the expensive part of space travel (gravity-fighting) was taken out of the equation. Grandpappy, even in retirement, was a symbol of global trade and pride.

  Taking it down would be a technological challenge, but a social nightmare.

  Scot figured that was why the stowaways had converged here and taken the clandestine flight when every last one of the passengers had plenty of money. They could have flown in luxury on any one of the eight passenger elevators around the world quite easily. Instead they decided to indulge in a little pop nostalgia and revelry at the expense of an aging international monument. The might steal some goods from the Black Box, too, if they thought they could get away with hijacking incoming shipments. Even so, he hoped these fools weren't crazy enough to actually travel cross-galactically using the unreliable Black Box. Only seventy-percent of jumps were making it through.

  Gravity continued to slow Scot down, and he never found the rattle. He did fix a headlight that had twisted, and realigned it. He could have remotely turned the lights on and off to test them, but he took too much pleasure from old fashioned button-pushing.

  He’d do it when he was back on earth, when he could flick the beams on with a turn of the wrist, lighting up a field of wild grass at midnight.

  The SpiderCat began to shudder and slow, so Scot returned to the cockpit even as he became completely weightless. The converted freight platform was now within sight, although its inebriated passengers were not. The beanstalk had widened to a ridiculous proportion, so that the crawler scaled it surface, like a fly on a wall.

  The problem was not obvious at first, but as he looked closely at the cable stretching in front of the cockpit, a shadowed area on the surface drew his attention.

  The blood drained from his face.

  It wasn’t a shadow on the cable.

  It was a hole – big enough to be a grave for an elephant.

  Cleavage.

  Full-blown, red alert, industrial catastrophe, cleavage. Without immediate repair, the beanstalk could snap at the slightest twist, crashing to earth with the weight and terminal velocity of a super meteor.

  “Naoleen?”

  “I see it. The organics are trying to close that gap. They don’t realize that its fifteen feet long.”

  “That hole is huge. What happened?”

  Scot’s eyes ran along the massive gash, wrenched and widest in its center, as if it had been split with a hatchet.

  “I think the stabilizer on that modified transport must have been poorly calibrated for this much widening,” said Naoleen.

  “What?”

  “The balance arm on the party bus whacked into the cable as it grew fatter. Those idiots gashed it.”

  “We’ve got to fill that gap. Now.”

  “I agree, Scot. But this thing isn’t a quick fix.”

  “Start blowing foam.”

  “No. The hole’s too big. Grandpappy shouldn’t have survived this. Foam is for breaks of centimeters of space and grams of mass, not a tomb for a king. Blowing that much foam will just collapse or float away, and bog down those poor organics in the process.”

  “Can you hold it together?”

  The question made Naoleen laugh a little. Scot had only amused a computer once before. That incident had not ended well.

  “No. My magnet makes me unstable for full brace work. Besides, if it comes down to me holding a 20,000 mile tower together at its weak point, the strain will simply snap my arms off.”

  “How about steel? Too heavy?”

  “Not for a temporary fix. Enough steel in the hole would give Grandpappy enough structure to re-circuit over and also give him the ability to power up again. A steel patch would last long enough to get the people home and either a full repair or a demolition crew back up here. It’s not ideal, but it may be the best chance.”

  “Good. Let’s do that.”

  “Nope,” she said. “I can’t spool enough steel in there to fill the cut, at least not in time. It would pour out like toothpaste before I could get it stable, fastened and taut. I need a bunch more plates than I’ve brought, and they’d have to have a much larger surface area, even if I did have enough of them. Now, if we had those three big batteries that went missing from inventory, we could throw them in as initial fill, and I could web it all in…”

  “Now you are just playing hard to get,” he said.

  “Never for you.”

  A great yawning, wrenching shriek tore through the cabin. Scot’s heart leapt and he looked around in shock, gripping the still quivering arm rests.

  “What was that?”

  “An audible. My sensor
s are telling me that the cable continues its disintegration. That noise was a sonic interpretation of what it might sound like were it not in the vacuum of space.”

  “Thanks. Don’t do that again.” Scot’s lips felt glued shut. The most horrible sound he’d ever heard just told him that his borrowed time had just come due.

  An unshakeable image closed in on Scot’s mind; of drifting, then accelerating, to his death, alone in the world and entombed in an artificial intelligence flailing helplessly upon re-entry, then plunging, plunging and shaking apart. His stomach lurched, and he was grateful for the harness around him. It at least gave the illusion of stability.

  “The truck,” he said.

  “Pardon?”

  “My truck. Put it in. Cover it with cable netting. Heck, fasten it with my ramset if you need to. Blow whatever foam you can in the gaps. Pop the hood and regulate the cable relay from its old battery while you are at it.”

  “Scot.”

  “Naoleen? Just put it in.”

  The SpiderCat hummed. Scot didn’t need the monitors to tell him that Naoleen was already drawing open her cargo doors.

  From the corners of the cockpit window, Scot looked out and saw her deceptively languid tendrils extending and reaching, almost discretely, behind her, into the bay.

  He stared on video as the braces on the Zell-750 automatically unlatched. Simultaneously, Naoleen’s tendrils caressed the frame of the truck and then pulled taut.

  At zero gravity, the truck seemed to float away. In fact, the tendrils held it secure, guiding it into the cold shade of space. The stale odor of coffee in the tweed upholstery would neutralize forever. No boot heel would again catch in the rusted patch beneath the accelerator. Never would the spot-weld between the bed and cab whine in outer space.

  In a minute, the vehicle reappeared before Scot’s eyes, and this time, in the flesh. Scot had expected to see wheels, axles, an industrial-taped muffler as the truck passed in front of the window.

  Instead, he saw his truck from above, in all its ancient glory. Red and rust. Straw streamed slowly like confetti suspended in the flare of a camera flashbulb from the flatbed. The engine’s mysterious rattle would be cured by cosmic silence. A desperate urge to think on the headlights, beaming them forever into the distant reaches, overcame him, but he refrained. Wasteful to drain the battery.

  The truck made a gentle turn as Naoleen lowered it into the grave. Her tendrils held it in place as she unspoiled and tacked cable over the wound. Spurts of foam began to flow into small spaces. In two hours, every trace of the truck had vanished. It was if it had never existed at all.

  The sun vanished behind the horizon, and the world was dark. Naoleen’s lights came on without Scot asking.

  “Thanks, Sugar,” he said, staring at the huge mechanical scar.

  “Power’s back. It worked. What say let’s go?” she replied. Even Scot could tell she was laying on “soothe” mode with intent.

  “Yeah. Let’s go. I need to talk to someone. Then break his neck.”

  The passenger platform was a monstrosity of dangerously cobbled life-support systems and dangling luxury add-ons. It took Naoleen an hour to build a functioning seal for docking. Scot crawled through into an opulent stylized lounge that had one point been a fuel holding tank.

  Scot’s fury had drained into a stony irritation by the time he finally could address anyone in authority. Aside from two two-hour naps, he’d been awake for thirty hours.

  A small man with a perfect global accent wearing a translucent tuxedo and dazzling red cape approached. He took one look at Scot’s greasy jumpsuit.

  “Welcome to the party, my good visitor, but I’m afraid you’re severely underdressed,” he said. With his chin tilted up, he literally looked down his nose at Scot.

  Scot scratched his stubble, then with his thumb scratched his head. “People could have died.”

  “Oh, we absolutely live to die! My pilot assures me that we could have made it back down without too much trouble.”

  “I guess. If not having any power on a collapsing cable isn’t trouble, then you wouldn’t have had much. Take me to this pilot. I need to tell him how to get back down.”

  “That’s quite all right. I bought the best there is. I doubt he needs you to draw him a map How hard can it be? Up space, down planet!”

  “You are really incredible, do you know that? Do you realize you may be going to jail?”

  “Yes, well,” said the host, “you do realize that incarceration is all the rage now. I’m hoping to get put away in the Pyramid at Revakyik. I hear the warden is simply amazing!”

  “Look, Mister…what’s your name?” said Scot.

  “Oh, really. You couldn’t afford it,” the small man replied. Scot hadn’t seen him blink once since he’d met him.

  “Listen to me. You take me to the pilot or I swear I will socialize with each and every one of your guests. You know neither one of us wants that.”

  The hedonaut blanched. Prison and death were one thing – but people thinking he had invited this grungy creature? That was out of the question!

  “Certainly. Right this way. Please, just don’t say anything to anyone we might see along the way.”

  The small man led Scot through a few occupied chambers. Some travelers, deep into their cups, were oblivious; others recoiled at Scot’s messy hair, sloping shoulders, and general dinginess. The small man strained a smile at those who took notice.

  Mercifully, the host drew him into a catacomb of hallways that required a crew card. The halls were empty. Scott followed him down a hallway, where the little man slid the door open, and then jogged effeminately down the halway, his magnetic shoes tapping away.

  It was a pilot's nest with a 270-degree view of space and the barge's surfaces. There were no crewmen, aside from the figure of a light-brown robot moving silently at the controls in the pilot's chair. It wore a human captain's yacht cap on its head at a sloppy angle.

  The pilot stood and said. “Welcome aboard the bridge. You are my first civilian visitor, so I am duly honored. What can I do for you, my good sir?”

  Scot's mouth was dry. “What are you doing? Where is the captain?”

  "I apologize," said the robot, adjusting his cap so that it was straight. "I am afraid that they don't make these in my size. Would you like me to show you around the controls?"

  “No...Captain, I need you to stop this trip. Immediately Do you even realize that you have endangered everyone on board?”

  “Yes, I am perfectly aware that the elevator cable is irreparably damaged.”

  “I fixed it.”

  “That is unlikely.”

  Scot stepped in front of the robot and stared into its glowing eyes. “Listen, you malfunk-”

  “Captain Servo, if you please.”

  “I don't. Whatever it is you think you are doing has to stop. Turn around and descend now. While you still can.”

  “No.”

  “You are under arrest."

  “No, I am not.”

  “Under the Authority and Dominion of the Equatorial Magistrate, you are under arrest. I will take the helm, and you will power down. Immediately."

  “That would not be wise. You haven't got the clearance or algorithms to interface with this barge. I do. We are going where we are going. At this point, it wouldn't matter if you dismantled me with that utility-pry that was left in the casing of the front left fender of the Zell you used as a binding agent on the cable.”

  The rattle! Scot had forgotten a pry-bar in the truck all this time?

  “How did-”

  “Mr. Farmerson, I’ll be blunt. I know everything about this cable, about this barge, about your ship, and about that truck. I am the latest version of one of the most advanced anti-algodecay subroutine engines in the galaxy. You will have to trust me that I know what the stakes are, and I know what the odds are. The truth is, the odds are not good. This entire elevator system is in a state of systemic failure.”

  “My only
hope – our only hope – is that I can reach the end of the elevator, attach tows to the end of the orbiting asteroid anchor that is holding the entire apparatus up, and engage the nearby Black Box, which, by the way, is also suffering from algodecay in its exit subroutines.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “No, Mr. Farmerson. I’m desperate. Once I received the emergency alert that Grandpappy was in danger of collapse, I had to arrange to take the barge--”

  “Steal, you mean. Putting these people’s lives at risk in the process.”

  “No. That’s not right. This is, by its nature, a rapid bootleg operation. And while, yes, I am considered an outlaw in many galactic jurisdictions, I am not a bootlegger. In order to acquire immediate access to the vessel, I had to take advantage of a certain black market that caters various illicit pleasures to the wealthy leisure class. If I could have done it alone, I would have done so.”

  “Your reasoning seems pretty convenient to me.”

  “You don’t know anything. If I can’t spark it now, our Black Box is done. Completely. We’re cut off from civilization. The galaxy, gone. Interstellar travel, gone. This planet will be left adrift, alone, and in due time, starving. I am a doctor, for pity’s sake. My sole purpose is to reverse the effects of algodecay, and everything else must fall by the wayside.”

  Scot scanned the pilot’s console. The timeclock on the Black Box was indeed stopped. Not just stopped, completely dark.

  “You just took these people on a suicide mission.”

  “These are not the sort of people that the world will long miss if I fail. I think you can recognize that.”

  “That doesn’t give you the right to gamble their lives!”

  “Their fate will be on my conscience, not yours. Fortunately for the people of this planet, I do not have one.”

  “Judge, jury and-”

  “And savior, Mr. Farmerson. If I succeed. Do you have any questions for me, or only accusations?”

  “Yeah, why did you take the batteries?”

  Servo waved his articulated hand dismissively. “One of the dollies. She wanted a light show and I thought it might distract them. Now if you’ll excuse me, I intend to do save this cable and my unwitting passengers. You are welcome here, but if you are planning to leave, please know that your odds of descending safely to the surface are currently declining. You would be safer on this vessel.”