The Phobos Maneuver: A Space Opera Thriller (Sol System Renegades Book 5)

by Felix R. Savage

  “I think we may have lived in the same shared house,” Petroskova said with a grin. “Not at the same time, obviously! Maison de Picasso, on the Rive Gauche? When I was there, the water pressure was just terrible. You could only take a shower on the ground floor.”

  “Yes! So that was everyone’s excuse for not showering at all.”

  “We said it was part of the cultural experience: live in a three-hundred-year-old house, and smell like the French.” Petroskova laughed. “But that’s Earth for you. Even when something is broken, it doesn’t get fixed for fifty years.”

  “You don’t look that old, ma’am.”

  “I hope not! But there were definitely century-old cobwebs in the corners of those wonderful, high ceilings.” Petroskova turned her gaze to the Star Force officers. In the authoritative tone of one ending a discussion, she said, “Allow Agent Goto to do her job.”

  Carasso sat up straight. McLean stayed absolutely still. “Is that an order?” he said.

  “No, Admiral. It’s advice you really, really shouldn’t ignore.”

  Carasso grabbed the screen and spun it to face himself—the vid-call equivalent of grabbing someone by their collar. “Why? Because Agent Goto went to college in the same place as you? How nice. I came up through the ranks.”

  “Don’t fight this, Executive Officer,” Petroskova said. “Intelligence has just come in which alters our cost-benefit analysis regarding Stickney. If you need to know the details, you’ll know in due time. If you don’t, you won’t. Now, I’m afraid I’ve got to cut this short. Agent Goto, it was a pleasure chatting with you. Do good work out there.” The screen went blank.

  “That definitely came straight from the ISA,” Elfrida said.

  “Yes,” McLean said. “Any idea why?”

  “I’ve been on their watchlist for years.”

  “I knew that,” McLean said.

  “That arrogant, meddling bitch,” Carasso grunted.

  McLean’s jowls reddened. “Director Petroskova is ten times smarter than you are, Gianni, regardless of who did or didn’t go to college where. And I’m sorry to say it, but she has a point. The Space Corps agents are in our chain of command, but they aren’t our agents.” He made a shooing motion at Elfrida. “Go to it. Try not to lose all the COPs.”

  Elfrida retreated, babbling thanks and apologies. She ran to the telepresence center. No one was in their couch. They were milling around Colden, who was trying to keep them calm. Elfrida dashed straight past Captain Pataki and grabbed Colden’s hands. “We’re in!” she panted. “Go, go, go!”

  ★

  Mendoza’s ragged voice penetrated the St. Francis sim.

  “I have never been so frightened in my fucking life.”

  “You did great,” Jun told him.

  “Well, we’re not dead, so I guess it worked.” Mendoza laughed weakly.

  “Yup. It worked.”

  While Mendoza talked to Star Force, Jun had sent encrypted files to several important UN politicians, including the director of the ISA. He had told them everything. Who he was, what he was, how he’d hijacked Tiangong Erhao, and what he planned to do with it. He’d put himself in their hands.

  Kiyoshi would have blown his stack.

  But sometimes you just had to trust people and hope for the best.

  And sometimes, they justified your trust.

  Star Force’s last transmission to Mendoza had come with a hidden attachment for Jun. Only a few words: “God be with you, whatever you are. Gratefully, Tiffany Hsaio.”

  He showed it to Tiangong Erhao.

  “It’s a fake,” she sneered. “It’s not really from the president of the UN! It’s probably from the ISA. They’re trying to trick you into giving them one of your fancy refrigerators.”

  “They already have the specs. My boss has been trying to patent the Ghost for years. Maybe now they’ll have another look at it.”

  Tiangong Erhao plunged onwards, leaving behind a tense standoff. The CDTF wanted to chase Tiangong Erhao and butt-frag it. The Star Force ships got in their way, ever so casually pointing their charged-particle cannons at the Chinese ships. The international diplomatic back-channels overheated. Jun left them to it. He’d gotten what he wanted: a guarantee of safe passage backed by Star Force.

  “They were confused by me,” Mendoza said. “At first they didn’t believe I was who I said. I had to tell them all kinds of little details about working for the UN, living in Shackleton City, and growing up in Manila. I think the Philippines just became an important country.”

  “How’s your leg?” Jun said.

  “Still gone.”

  “Are you using the prosthetic?”

  “Yes. It feels weird, but I guess I’ll get used to it.”

  “You’d better call Elfrida. I think we can risk one last transmission. We’re still inside Earth’s sphere of influence.”

  “All right! What should I tell her?”

  Jun smiled and scratched under his left arm. “Tell her you’ll be there soon.”

  Constant acceleration was one of those simple mathematical miracles that everyone took for granted. By now Tiangong Erhao was eating 4,000,000 kilometers a day. It would overhaul Eureka Station, in its Mars-trailing orbit, in six days and eleven hours. Jun looked forward to launching Mendoza to safety, and hopefully a hero’s reception on Eureka Station.

  ★

  On the bridge of the Monster, in stale air that was gradually cooling to the ambient temperature of space, in complete darkness, a gaggle of domestic and maintenance bots crouched around the empty captain’s throne. From time to time, one of them rolled or crabwalked forward a few centimeters. Then retreated as if it had been slapped.

  Their hardwired desire to clean up the mess under the captain’s workstation was very strong.

  Jun had not had any attention to spare for this situation, apart from telling the bots to keep their distance. Now he took a few moments to see what was what. He caused one of the bots to squirm under the workstation and shine a light on the ancient tangle of cables.

  Patches of green and black mould were clearly visible.

  Jun’s left armpit itched.

  He instructed the bot to take samples and carry them down to the Monster’s materials lab.

  The results of a quick analysis confirmed that secondary microbes had begun to appear amidst the primary colonizers. One in particular was of interest: Pestalotiopsis microspora. A bacteria gengineered two centuries ago to clean up landfills, it had mutated in the wild and was now the bane of spaceship captains everywhere. It was resistant to cold, and did not mind high concentrations of carbon dioxide. It ate plastic.

  Such as the coating of the old cables governing the Monster’s flight controls.

  The housekeeping bot, perched on the stool in front of the microscope, like a pudgy midget on treads, sagged. All four of its arms hung limp for a moment.

  Then it toppled off the stool and squelched back up to the bridge to resume its vigil.

  xxv.

  Petruzzelli floated in a sea of molten sodium. Her suit told her it was between 85 and 95 degrees celsius. The laser assembly hadn’t been used for months, so the coolant liquid had had time to cool down … some.

  Now and then she collided gently with unseen walls.

  The fluid was still pushing out of the heat exchanger pipe, flooding through the unpressurized tunnels, and it was carrying her with it.

  At the same time it was nucleating around her suit, coating her in a layer of soft crystals, slowly fossilizing her.

  She had 25 hours of air left, so she could conceivably live for another day like this, encased in hot ice.

  She thought about taking the stuff. Every Star Force suit came with a self-euthanasia option. A lot of her suit’s functionality was off-line, but the E-button—End-It-All button, as they called it—glowed green in her HUD. It’d be easy. A needle sliding into her arm. GAME OVER.

  What held her back?

  Maybe it was memories of her fa
mily. They weren’t all bad.

  Or maybe it was a sudden memory of Scuzzy the Smuggler, in a bar on 6 Hebe, scratching his cubital port, itching to get to his junk dealer. She’d stopped him. She hadn’t even known him, but she’d decided out of nowhere she wasn’t gonna let him go down that road. So she’d kept him clean for one day, and then they’d gone their separate ways.

  And afterwards she’d descended into a long, gradual spiral of despair, because she’d found a way out of her life. She’d found it and then lost it again, like letting go of a vital component on a spacewalk.

  Joining Star Force had been her attempt to get it back. To stop living for a paycheck, and live for a purpose. To serve.

  And look where that had got her.

  Fury charged her limbs with energy. She kicked through the viscous sea, fighting against the sluggish current.

  And burst into vacuum.

  Her arms whirled, free of the clinging liquid. Hit a wall. A grab handle. She hauled herself up. The coolant inflicted a searing toll of pain on her broken leg as it let go. Clinging above the sodium tide, she frantically scraped crystals off her faceplate.

  She was in a normal-sized hall with doors hanging open on either side. The walls were blackened, bubbled. The gluey tide of liquid sodium came up to the handles of the doors. She’d been floating along in it for at least twenty meters—half the length of the hall—without knowing it was only waist deep.

  Where the hell was she?

  She hauled herself along a row of grab handles to the nearest door. Peeking in, she saw cots and lockers in rows … on the ceiling. Quick revision of perspective: the tide of liquid sodium was creeping along the ceiling, for no particular reason. That was just where it had happened to stick.

  She floated down to the cots. Everything was charred. There were charred bodies in the cots, too. Martians.

  She was in the Castle. And there’d been a fire or an explosion, which gave her hope.

  She opened a couple of lockers, found weird twisted objects, carved rocks. Nothing useful. She drifted out of the door and explored some more, staying low so her head wouldn’t stick up into the molten river on the ceiling.

  The hall ended in a T-junction. To her right, a shaft rose out of sight, mostly blocked by the liquid sodium. She went left, and found Blake in a room full of desks arranged in a circle. Blake was sitting at one of the desks trying to operate its embedded screen.

  “Hey, Blake.”

  Wonder of wonders, their microwave comms links still worked.

  “Zuzu,” Blake said, listlessly.

  “This place is kind of a disappointment, isn’t it?” Petruzzelli said. “Reminds me of my high school.”

  Blake looked up. “Where did you go to high school?”

  “Idaho. It was a boarding school for maladjusted kids. Looked just like this.”

  “Oh. I went to boarding school, too. In Switzerland. Cost my family a packet, and all I did was play games.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I guess I kept thinking of this as just another game, killing time.” Blake abandoned the useless desk and floated away from Petruzzelli. “But there’s no log-out screen. I keep trying to log out, but I can’t …”

  It sounded to Petruzzelli like Blake was either broken, or breaking before her eyes. “Hey, you’ve got that stuff stuck all over your back. Hold still.” She used her gloves to scrape molten sodium off Blake’s suit. It had the consistency of soft ice cream. “That’s better. Ouch!”

  “You OK?”

  “I broke my leg. Coming?”

  “Where?”

  “The railgun, of course,” Petruzzelli said. “This is the Castle. The railgun’s got to be pretty close to here.”

  Blake chuckled despairingly. “Star Force should’ve tried harder to hold onto you.”

  They found an airlock at the end of the hall. This would be the way out. But the airlock’s control panel didn’t respond. They were trapped in the Castle. And they had no weapons they could use to break out.

  “All right,” Petruzzelli said. “I saw a shaft going up. We’ll try that.”

  A ladder ran up the shaft. They climbed it. They found dead Martians, scorched halls and rooms, and at the top of the shaft, some living Martians. The Martians were climbing down, while Petruzzelli and Blake were climbing up. There was a brief, nasty melee. It ended when a bubble of molten sodium drifted up the shaft and slopped over the Martians. They exploded, none too ceremoniously.

  Petruzzelli kicked away. Bits of Martian covered her suit, all red and steaming. Where the steam touched the molten sodium, it exploded again in petite puffs of silver.

  “Liquid sodium explodes on contact with water,” said Miller’s voice in her helmet. “One suit breach and you’re a goner.”

  “Sir?”

  “Got you.” Miller’s glove fastened on her wrist.

  “Blake’s down there.”

  “Be right back,” said another Fragger. She and two others dived down the shaft.

  There were five Fraggers at the top of the shaft, counting Miller. The others brought Blake up, screaming her head off. And then there were ten. “This is all of us,” Miller said.

  They had started off a hundred and twenty-seven strong.

  Miller’s voice had a flat, hopeless tone.

  “What happened?” Petruzzelli said.

  “I’m a fighter pilot,” Miller said. “I don’t know crap about infantry tactics. I was faking my ass off, and our boys and girls paid for it.”

  “So did the Martians,” Petruzzelli said.

  “Yeah. Their bomb ruptured the heat exchanger pipe. They may have done that on purpose, to mop us up.”

  “But it also killed them,” said another survivor.

  A third took up the tale. “A few of us got clear. We advanced ahead of the flood. Fuck it, we were just running. But then we came to an airlock. What do you do when confronted with a Martian airlock covered in weird-ass artwork? Obviously, you shoot it to fuck.”

  “Another interesting property of molten sodium,” said Miller, “is that it burns on contact with air. What we’re seeing here is far less than the volume that was in that pipe. Most of it went up into a conflagration that consumed all the air in the Castle. We huddled and hunkered down until the temps went down. Then we came up here.”

  Here: a circular room full of burnt furniture. with deep slit windows all around. Windows! Who put windows in a space habitat? Obviously, the Martians did.

  This whole place was built on an outmoded template, Petruzzelli thought. It was probably what that first American base on Mars had looked like, 150 years ago. If it ain’t broke, why fix it? That’s probably how AIs thought.

  Blake was peering out of one of the windows. Petruzzelli went to look over her shoulder.

  “Wow,” she said.

  They really were at the top of the Castle. The curvature of Stickney fell away at such brutal angles it felt like they were looking down from a mountaintop. And straight down the artificially graded slope below them ran the railgun.

  Its rails stuck up in tortured arcs, twisted beyond repair. A line of ripped-out stitches 200 meters long.

  The Martians had sabotaged it.

  All this death and destruction had been for nothing.

  They had captured ... a useless ruin.

  But Blake wasn’t looking at the wreckage. Her gloved finger pointed, trembling. “They’re coming!”

  Tiny figures jetted across the plain, towards the railgun. Mini-explosions traced their path. Petruzzelli coaxed her suit to zoom in.

  “It’s the phavatars,” she said in disgust. “Well, thanks for showing up. Better late than never. Not.”

  Blake hammered on the window with her fists. It flexed. Transparent aluminum. It might break if they could find something hard to hit it with. “We’re up here! Help! Help!”

  “They took the long way round,” Miller said, crowding the women aside. “I wonder if any of our surface team survived?”

  �
�

  Petruzzelli fell lightly into a trench. The sky shrank to a black slot. The phavatar that had dropped her off hovered in the gap. “When you want to go back, stick your head up and shout. We’ll be around.”

  “OK,” Petruzzelli transmitted.

  The phavatar’s chirpiness made her feel sick. The Fraggers had taken the brunt of the assault. The phavatars—who’d been meant to protect them—had joined the battle so late that there was nothing left for them to do except mop up the few Martian stragglers still hiding in the trenches.

  This trench had been cleared already. Petruzzelli’s helmet lamp picked out jagged walls. She bounded along the trench, towards the other helmet lamp she’d seen from the sky.

  Zhang sat at the bottom of the trench, cradling Zubrowski’s head on his lap.

  “Oh no,” Petruzzelli breathed, sinking down beside them.

  “He took the stuff,” Zhang said.

  “Why?”

  “Dunno. He was kinda shaky from the start. He said something about aliens, and then he said goodbye.”

  Zhang stroked Zubrowski’s helmet.

  “Were you and him …?” Petruzzelli said, leaving the question open.

  “Yes. Not that it matters now.”

  “I’m sorry,” Petruzzelli said.

  “So’m I.” After a moment, Zhang stirred himself to ask, “Did we win?”

  Petruzzelli laughed. Once she started, she couldn’t stop. Her eyes teared up, and her ribs twinged. “Sorry,” she choked. “It’s not funny. I just spent a couple of hours swimming through sodium icecream.”

  “And I’ve got rad poisoning,” Zhang said.

  “Me, too. Anyway, yeah. We won.”

  “The railgun?” Sudden hope brightened Zhang’s voice.

  “Oh, the railgun. No. It’s fucked. They must’ve sabotaged it when they saw us coming.”

  “Then nothing’s changed. We’re still losing.”

  “Do not take the stuff, Zhang,” Petruzzelli said with sudden urgency. “Don’t you fucking dare!”

  She got her arms around him. Zubrowski’s body slipped to the floor of the trench. Petruzzelli kicked off and floated out of the trench, carrying Zhang. “Survivors here!” she shouted. “Need a lift!”