The Trials (The Red Trilogy Book 2)

by Linda Nagata

  • • • •

  “Ready?” Kurnakova asks after she’s completed the delicate docking process, locking the hatch of Lotus to that of the Semak Hermitage. Semak has not responded to radio hails, but Kurnakova shrugs it off. “He has been here over a year, since long before Coma Day. This is his fourth maintenance visit. He can’t live without us, but he does not want us here.”

  Smart man.

  I’m wearing a patch to suppress inner-ear issues, so both my stomach and my brain are responding well to free fall. It’s an uncanny sensation to be unmoored from gravity. At first I clutch at the seats and at handholds, but very quickly I give in and let myself believe in the magic act of weightless motion. I practice moving around in the space available within Lotus. After a few minutes it starts to feel natural, as if I’ve dreamed this a hundred times or lived this way in another life.

  “I’m ready,” I tell Kurnakova and Delphi both. I make my way to the hatch, check the status, and then open it as I’ve been taught.

  • • • •

  It’s dark and cold on the other side. Feels near sixty degrees to me, but the chill hasn’t wiped out a faint scent of human presence. It’s not a bad smell—the filtration system is too evolved for that—it’s just a slight, musky vapor marking this place as home to someone, though to my surprise I don’t see Eduard Semak.

  Just past the hatch is a staging area, lit by a dim glow spilling from Lotus. Beyond that is the cupola, a ring of hemispherical windows, each half a meter across and deep enough that if I drifted up into one, I could see the habitat’s outer shell and all that lies beyond. From where I am, still within the hatch, I can already see the Earth in all its glittering nightside glory.

  It’s night within the habitat too. The only lights are pale green dots, six meters away at the other end of the main chamber, placed around a closed interior hatch. Behind that door is a one-time-use emergency evacuation capsule. According to Kurnakova, Semak uses the capsule as a bedroom. I assume he is in there now. There’s nowhere else he could be. But why is he hiding? He wasn’t supposed to know we’re the enemy.

  The satellite-relay system I set up brings me Delphi’s voice: “Clear to advance.”

  I move out into the chamber.

  The setup here looks different from the mock-up I trained in. It feels smaller, more cramped, an effect I blame on a lining of thick, fuzzy fabric, light brown in color, that covers the traditional white plastic walls. The equipment, access doors, ready lights, and storage containers I expect to see are hidden behind it. Neatly hand drawn all over the fabric, as if with a black marker pen, are chessboards, with cloth chess pieces in play. Alongside each game is a plastic label, handwritten in Cyrillic. My encyclopedia provides a hovering translation as I scan the first few.

  “They’re names,” Delphi says in surprise.

  Names from all over the world—does that mean each game represents a different opponent? I don’t ask my question aloud though, because I’m supposed to be a technician, intent on my job.

  “It’s weird that he doesn’t play electronic chess,” Delphi muses.

  Everywhere on the chessboards and between them are bits of trash—crumbs, strands of white hair, scraps of plastic—stuck to the fabric lining. I touch it and it feels sticky.

  Not everything is covered by the fabric. Though the light panels are dark, cutouts allow them to show through. There are also four glittering points set around the chamber. Draw a line through them and it would mark out a spiral. As I glide past the first of these, it turns a glassy eye in my direction, causing shards of reflected light to slide across its surface: a camera button on a motorized mount.

  Delphi says, “He’s watching you.”

  I’m wondering if the Red is looking too—but it doesn’t matter. The Red is here anyway, looking through me.

  Still, the knowledge that I’m being watched makes my first task feel more critical: I am to disable the habitat’s link to the Cloud, on the pretext that I am replacing a critical communications component. For now, I ignore Semak’s presence behind the closed hatch as Delphi helps me hunt for the bin holding the hardware. In the mock-up, the bin’s location was obvious, but here it’s hidden behind the brown fabric. I guesstimate the location—a few feet beyond the ring of windows—and examine the liner.

  “Those look like flaps in the liner,” Delphi says. “Try pulling one.” I do it, disturbing a chess game attributed to Midori. The flap opens with the ripping sound of Velcro, revealing lockers underneath. “Okay, I know where you are now. Move up, in the direction of your head. Farther. There. Try that one.”

  I pull the flap she’s indicated, bending back a chess game labeled “Nasir.” The bin I’m looking for is revealed underneath.

  “Have you got it?” Kurnakova asks anxiously. I look over my shoulder to see her adrift in the hatch, backlit by the spaceplane’s instrument board, a halo of fractured light filtered through her swaying dark red hair.

  “Yeah, I’ve got it.” I open the bin.

  “Looks good,” Delphi says.

  I share the relief in her voice: The sealed components inside look exactly like those I saw in the mock-up. A glance back at the hatch shows me that Kurnakova is following our script. She has retreated from view, returning to Lotus’s console. I reach into the bin as I did so many times in the simulated habitat, grasp the handle of the component labeled “CA-147”—

  “Damn it!” Kurnakova swears.

  I freeze, startled. She is back in the hatch.

  “Why did you unplug the module ahead of schedule? We are not ready! New components still to unpack, and communications already down!” These are the correct words, the words we rehearsed, words that confirm I’ve successfully switched off the habitat’s link to the Cloud—except I haven’t.

  “I didn’t pull the unit yet.”

  “Wait . . . you found it not working?”

  I tug gently on the component. It slips loose without resistance. “Yes, it was already disconnected.”

  We both glance toward the interior door with its encircling lei of faint green dots.

  With artificial confidence Kurnakova says, “That explains why Mr. Semak could not answer my hail!”

  Delphi whispers in my ears, “Something’s up, Shelley. Proceed with extreme caution.”

  “Could it have been disconnected by accident?” I wonder aloud.

  Maybe Semak wanted more isolation than he’d already purchased. Maybe he was getting too many robo-calls. Maybe his kids were waking him up at all hours to check if he’d passed away yet, freeing them to inherit his fortune.

  “I don’t think so,” Delphi says. “Something else is going on.”

  Kurnakova is even more anxious. “Now, Shelley,” she whispers. “You must move now.”

  Yes. With communications down, the next step is to secure Eduard Semak.

  I play my role, for what little it’s worth. “I think we need to talk to Mr. Semak.”

  I tap the wall liner with my robot foot, not too hard, sending myself gliding through the chamber. All around me are chess games. A hundred of them. Two hundred? Maybe Eduard pulled the communications module because he needed time to consider his next move.

  Each camera eye shifts its gaze to watch me pass.

  I reach the hatch to the evacuation capsule. It’s closed, but not locked. No way to know what’s on the other side until I open it. I imagine a fléchette gun, like the kind Carl Vanda used. Why didn’t I think to bring one of Joby’s bugs? I could send it into the room ahead of me to reconnoiter.

  “Mr. Semak,” I say, just in case we’re reading this situation all wrong. “We need to talk to you.” There is no response. I have no way to know if he’s listening.

  “I’m going to open it,” I tell Delphi. What choice do I have?

  “It’s going to be a double hatch,” she reminds me. “He p
robably has the second door closed as well.”

  She’s right. When I open the hatch door, another is revealed behind it. “Mr. Semak! If you can hear me, please come to the door.”

  If I had my HITR this would not be a problem. I could use the muzzle camera to look beyond the door. This gives me an idea.

  “Kurnakova!”

  “Da?”

  I am playing the role of a technician with all the props. “There’s a diagnostic camera in the tool kit. Can you grab it?”

  “Yes, yes. Turn around. I will glide it to you.” I turn to see a rod tumbling in my direction, no thicker than my little finger, with a flared cup at one end, much like the optical trigger. At the other end is the flashing lens of a camera button.

  I catch it, give it a quick look-over. The rod bends easily, so I put a right angle in it. Then I unlatch the second door and open it half an inch. Right away I hear Semak talking, talking, talking, a stream of Russian spoken in a panicked old-man’s voice which my overlay helpfully translates, whispering its interpretation in my ears: “They are here for me. They have come! They have come for me!”

  I switch on the camera, slip it through the gap, peer at the image projected in the eyecup, and swear. “Shit!”

  Pitching the camera away, I shove the door wide.

  Semak has no weapon. He’s just a pale, undernourished, frightened old man with stringy white hair and a stringy white beard, his age-ravaged face swollen from his long time in zero gravity. He’s dressed in shapeless navy-blue flannel pants and a pullover shirt with side flaps velcroed to the pants to keep it from drifting in zero gee. And as Shiloh predicted, his hypochondria is on display: He’s wearing a face mask of dull-green, engineered biotissue that covers his nose and mouth. The mask is linked by a flexible tube to a small oxygen canister tucked into the front pocket of his pullover so he doesn’t have to breathe my exhalations, which is fine. Not an issue. The mask doesn’t even inhibit his speech.

  The problem for me is that he’s talking on a radio. Not an instrument that’s part of the habitat’s communications system. This is something else, something older, with dials not digital touch screens, and a handheld mic. The radio is sitting inside an open bin just above the headrests of two reentry couches that crowd the capsule’s limited space. It looks wholly out of place there, an object from the wrong century. Despite its age, it works. I know this because a woman is answering him. Her voice is low and I think she must be well into middle age. She speaks with a contemptuous sarcasm plain to hear even in the translated voice: “They haven’t come for you, Papa.”

  I launch myself at Semak. He drops the mic and twists away, but there’s nowhere to go. I grab him, wrap my arms around him as I collide with the wall. We bounce together back across the tiny capsule. I hit my head. I need to arrest my momentum, but I don’t have a free hand. So I use my feet. The robot joints of my right foot curl around a grip, while I use my left foot to grab the armrest of a reentry couch. For a few seconds I sway and bob. Then I’m under control.

  Against my arms and chest I feel the creaking fragility of Semak’s ancient joints, padded by only a thin cushion of flesh. Worried I’ll break his ribs, I ease my grip. He gasps for air behind his face mask while the woman keeps talking, her translated voice speaking in my ears: “It is maintenance, Papa. You knew. You complained of it all week!”

  Semak squirms, but he’s been a year in zero gravity and he has no real strength left. I decide I can hold him in one arm, freeing a hand to strip off his face mask.

  “Fine then,” the woman says as I get the sedative mask out of my pocket. “Don’t answer me.” I tear open the packet with my teeth, then press the mask against Semak’s nose and mouth. Instead of supplying him with oxygen, it will add a sedative to every breath he draws through it. “I don’t have time to talk to you anyway. I have to go out.”

  Semak is a fighter and doesn’t yield right away. I think he’s holding his breath, but it’s just a matter of time. He wriggles, makes a short gasp, and as Kurnakova looks in, he goes limp in my arms. I fit the strap of the mask behind his head to ensure he will stay under, and then I let him go.

  Kurnakova scowls at the radio. “What the fuck is that?”

  • • • •

  Eduard Semak’s isolation is not just physical. The old-fashioned radio, the disconnected communications system, the manually administered chessboards: All point to a fear of electronic invasion. Did he imagine himself to be the next dragon targeted by the Red? He probably didn’t think that the offensive, when it came, would be in the form of a physical assault.

  I leave the radio on. With no one to use it, it should be harmless—and I’m concerned an alert might go out if I start shutting down equipment. Our priority is to proceed to the next stage of the mission.

  I get out the optical trigger, preloaded with the access code that will open Eduard Semak’s overlay. If it doesn’t work, our mission fails and a cache of rogue nukes will continue to be a threat to the world.

  It will work. It has to.

  For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. With no help from gravity, Semak’s inert body floats away when I try to press the optical trigger to his eye.

  “Strap him into the seat!” Kurnakova says impatiently, moving in to help.

  “No, it’s faster if I just hold him.”

  Again, I use my feet to brace myself, pulling Semak’s head against my chest. I hold him there with one hand, using two of my fingers to open his eye. With my other hand, I press the trigger in place. There’s a flash of light. A few seconds later Delphi confirms, “It’s working. Download in progress.”

  So far, so good.

  Kurnakova looks tense behind her tinted farsights. Her face is flushed. “How long to completion?”

  “Unknown,” Delphi says.

  The trigger doesn’t give us any options. It takes a snapshot of everything stored in the overlay, the trash as well as the gold.

  “Let it be done quickly,” Kurnakova whispers as if it’s a prayer. Then she draws a sharp breath, recapturing a stern expression. “I will unload the cargo. We cannot appear innocent if we return with a full hold.”

  As the download continues, I watch her work. With brisk efficiency, she hauls full canisters out of Lotus, swapping them for empty ones stored in racks behind the fabric wall.

  Delphi speaks on gen-com. “It’s done. We’ve got it all.”

  I switch off the trigger and put it away, releasing Semak’s unconscious body to float in the limited free space of the capsule.

  The mission plan calls for Delphi to copy the download to the Jones intelligence team, but she delays that transfer while she expands the files and sets an AI searching through them. If she can find the financials, she’ll cut those files out and send the amended package to Jones.

  “It’s all unencrypted data,” she says in wonder. “He must have had security so tight he didn’t think anyone could get inside.”

  “He probably never linked directly to the Cloud.” Hiding instead in his own electronic fortress.

  “Things are going well,” she says softly.

  So she’s found the financial data. Whether she and Jaynie can do anything with it is another question. Right now, what I really want to know about is the nukes. “What about the weapons cache? Is the location data there?”

  “There’s a tangle of files. I can’t tell what’s—” She interrupts herself. “Hold on. Something went wrong. I need to try resending to Jones.”

  So she’s pulled what she needs.

  “The nukes, Delphi. I want to confirm we have the evidence we need to bring Semak in.”

  “Yes. Yes, the data’s here. Goes back years. Looks like more than one cache. That’s not good. The weapons are scattered. No telling if this is up to date, but it’s enough to—

  “Oh my God.”

  The shock i
n her voice sets my heart racing. “What? Delphi, what is it?”

  “One of the listed weapons caches is the Semak Hermitage. Is that possible?”

  Kurnakova looms in the doorway. Her knuckles are white where she grips the frame of the hatch. “It is possible,” she says. “And it’s true. I flew the device here myself and I will fly it back today if Eduard doesn’t kill us and half the world first.” She pushes away from the hatch, entering the capsule, and then she pushes Semak’s drifting body aside, clearing the way to a closet door, one that faces the reentry couches.

  She slides the door open.

  There is nothing terrifying inside: just a small aluminum briefcase and a metal cylinder, dull silver in color, roughly a foot in diameter and two and a half feet long. The cylinder is locked in place by two riveted steel straps. Wires connect it to the briefcase.

  When we met in San Antonio, I wanted to understand her motivation for this mission. The words she spoke then come back to me:

  He is a man deserving of hate. A man who amuses himself by corrupting all those around him.

  Bitterly, she says, “I was a fool.”

  • • • •

  Her explanation is rushed, almost breathless: “He got me this job. He owned me. When he asked me to transport his possessions, I did it, no questions. The crate was huge and heavy. He let me believe it was gold. Solid gold.” She shakes her head at the absurdity of it. “Who would want gold in orbit? Who? Only a senile, insecure old man. I believed his act. I did.” She shakes her head, her short hair a dark, drifting frame for her pale face.