Eden Burning (Fox Meridian Book 7)

by Niall Teasdale

  Before Jason got up and she had to leave…

  ‘I might have something to cheer you up,’ Kit said into Fox’s mind.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘While you were running your sleep cycle, I linked through and ran a synchronisation with my home copy.’

  ‘Yes, that did cheer me up. Really.’

  Kit was well aware of the sarcasm inherent in the statement. ‘If you will interrupt… I synchronised memories which my other copies decided should not be transmitted by other means. It seems that Vali passed on some data from his mysterious source. Extremely sensitive data, seeing as it appears to have come from a NIX spy satellite.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Very seriously. Jackson confirmed from the metadata. The images provided identify at least some of the twenty-one people missing from the Tulsa mass suicide. It places them at what appears to be a camp and temporary spaceport based out of the old Boeing airfield near Seattle. They were there six day ago.’

  Fox considered for a second. ‘Spaceport? There’s evidence for launches from there?’

  ‘No, but there are orbit-capable shuttles visible in one of the shots. Fox, the images came with a message suggesting you would be interested and a reference to Eden. It seems that the stairway to Heaven is in Seattle.’

  ‘There are so many things wrong with that assertion. However, it does look like we need to take a look at that site. Okay, well, switch my flight to Luna City to tomorrow, send a message to Terri saying we’ll be delayed… Your copy at Jenner will have the same memories, won’t she?’

  ‘If not now, then soon.’

  ‘Right, so she can brief Terri on the Seattle thing if necessary. No need to mention it on an unsecured transmission. When Jason wakes up, we can tell him and I can lie here for a little while longer.’ Fox smiled contentedly.

  ‘Not really. Your batteries are getting low and, unless you want him to wake up to a dead cyberframe, you should probably do something about that.’

  ‘Bugger. Jackson really has to come up with something that’ll go longer on a charge.’ Easing Jason’s arm aside, Fox slipped out of bed and went looking for her charging belt. ‘I’m glad I took a charge on the shuttle or I’d have had to break off the sex to power up.’

  ‘Even if the man in the seat across the aisle looked at you funny?’ Kit asked, and Fox could almost hear the smirk in her voice.

  ‘You were watching. Do you think last night was worth some funny looks?’

  ‘Yes,’ Kit said. ‘He wasn’t even having sex with me and it was worth it.’

  ~~~

  ‘So, from the navigation data on his computer, Swimmer was here.’ Officer Carmichael Wallace indicated a spot on the virtual display which was taking up one wall of the conference room.

  ‘That’s way out,’ Michael Tam said. ‘He’d be pushing his supplies to spend any time that far out given his maximum burn time.’

  ‘Correct, but this is where his computer puts him and we’ve no reason to think otherwise. Given that, the sensor data he got plots like this.’ A band of red appeared on the display. Swimmer’s ship had been in a high orbit, very high for his kind of ship, but the band was higher and, to Fox’s eye, slanted out. ‘It’s a little fuzzy, but if we interpolate…’ Cones of blue extended out from either end of the plotted band, angling out into deeper space and in toward Earth. ‘We could be looking at something swinging around Earth and going off into deep space, but my best guess is that we’re looking for something that comes up from low orbit and ends up at L-five.’

  ‘L-five?’ Fox asked. ‘What’s there to go to? I thought all the facilities out there had closed down.’

  ‘Not all,’ Jason replied. ‘I’m sure you know they used to use it as a drop-off point for asteroids steered in from the belt, or closer.’

  Fox nodded. ‘It fell out of use when more companies started using L-four.’

  ‘There are still a few smaller companies who stuck it out there.’

  ‘And a few Jin Shu collaborations have built stations out there to run salvage ops from the very high orbits and L-five itself,’ Tam added. ‘A few companies went out of business and left some big chunks of hardware up there. They keep in touch. We send a ship out there a couple of times a year to be sure nothing strange is going on. Nothing strange is ever going on.’

  Jason nodded. ‘But someone could probably build something out there and not be noticed. Just about.’

  Fox pursed her lips, and then tapped them with an index finger. ‘Asteroid base. There must be the odd one or two left that were never mined out. Take your time. Try to keep the heat output as low as possible. Use solar panels for power… Could be done. And the Jin Shu probably wouldn’t be nosy neighbours.’

  ‘Probably not,’ Tam said. ‘Unless someone starts trying to grab salvage from them.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ Fox said, examining the detailed records of the sensor trace displayed beside the map. ‘This has structure to it. A beat. There’s a background heat output, but the first… two-thirds has a pulse on top. Nuclear-pulse engine? This was a course correction using a nuclear-pulse engine.’

  Wallace nodded. ‘I’m navigation rather than sensor analysis, but the sensor tech suggests twin pulse engines. He said it was a classic short-burn pattern.’

  ‘So, this wasn’t a ghost ship, or probably not. I’m fairly sure they use ion drives. But there are definitely similar characteristics. This thing was trying to keep out of sight, was hard to detect aside from that heat signature. Swimmer didn’t get any other sensor data on it, right?’

  Wallace shook his head. ‘Just the infrared.’

  ‘Okay. L-five…’ Fox looked around at Jason. ‘We need to get someone working over sensor logs for an off-the-books launch site in the Seattle area. I think we’re looking for shuttles lifting up to link with one of these stealthed transports. I have a date range we can look at.’

  ‘Seattle?’ Wallace asked. ‘There’s something in Seattle to launch shuttles from?’

  ‘Apparently,’ Fox replied. ‘Believe me when I say you don’t want to know where that information came from.’

  ‘Okay.’ Wallace glanced at Jason. ‘With your permission, sir, I’ll get the sensor techs working on that.’

  ‘Do that, Carmichael,’ Jason replied. ‘We may have an avenue here which will lead us to whatever is causing these crashes. Let us hope we get lucky.’

  ~~~

  ‘We have three tracks definitively showing a take-off from that area,’ Jason said. Fox was looking over the data the sensor technicians had collected, but she was happy to hear him talk. ‘Another seven above seventy-five percent probability.’

  ‘Okay,’ Fox said, and she let him continue, even if she knew what he was going to say next.

  ‘And we have one heat signature which tends to indicate that an unknown vessel using a nuclear-pulse drive left the destination orbit of one of the definite targets, no more than sixty minutes after the launch.’

  ‘That heat signature looks a lot like the one Swimmer recorded too.’

  Jason peered at her. It was after his assigned work shift and he had changed into casual clothes. They had wandered out to one of the bars along the main concourse to grab a drink and relax a little, so now they were seated at the bar and, behind him, there was a huge video wall showing views of space outside the station. ‘You have scanned and checked all the data I gave you, and there is little point in my summarising.’

  ‘Well… Okay, so my perception rate is higher than it used to be, so I could scan over the data while we walked over here. But I have this thing for accents. I just like hearing you speak.’

  His lips quirked and, when he spoke again, there was a lot more French in his voice. ‘The technicians say that it is almost certainly the same vessel, given the pulse timing.’

  Fox giggled. ‘Just lay me out on the bar and bang me now, why don’t you?’

  ‘Largely because this establishment does not have a live-sex licence.’r />
  ‘That’s all that’s stopping you?’

  ‘Ah, mon chère, I feel I should never miss the opportunity. I would likely lose my job, but it would be worth it. Still, I might prefer somewhere a little more private.’

  Fox flashed him a grin. ‘It’s never really private with me around. Kit’s got a terrible voyeuristic streak.’ Fox ignored the strangled sound of outrage which sounded in her head. ‘She’s–’ Fox cut off as another starfield appeared on the wall behind Jason. She pointed. ‘There it is. The thing all the fuss is about, sort of.’

  Halley’s Comet was imaged clearly against the blanket of stars. There was the glowing head where the nucleus streamed gasses, mostly water, out into space as it warmed. Those gasses were pushed out by the solar wind to form a long, long tail. She knew from some basic reading that the core, the more or less solid part, was not large, a peanut-shaped object about fifteen kilometres long and eight wide, but the comet, what people thought of as the comet, the glowing ball and long tail, was huge. The coma, the ball of gas around the nucleus, could be larger than the Sun on some of them. The tails could reach an astronomical unit or more. Halley was big and bright and vast, and it was not hard to think of something like that as a harbinger for the gods, a portent of good or evil. It was beautiful and, perhaps, in a way, terrible.

  ‘In three days, it will make a relatively close pass of Venus,’ Jason said. ‘Over eight million kilometres, but close enough.’ He smiled. ‘It will be gone before we might pass through its tail this time.’

  ‘Huh. Can you imagine the hysteria if that was happening now?’

  ‘I think I would rather not. Some things are best left out of the imagination.’

  18th August.

  ‘This is the point I hate, mon chère.’

  Fox looked over her shoulder as she pulled a fresh bodysuit into place. Jason was still in bed, naked, with a sheet pulled up to his waist. ‘I thought you liked watching me dress.’

  ‘I do. I prefer undressing you, but I enjoy watching you dress… Unless it means that you are leaving.’

  ‘Yeah… That does suck.’

  ‘There is never a sunrise here to enjoy before you go. Though the last one was not exactly auspicious.’

  With her jeans on, Fox turned and leaned over the bed. Her lips touched his, briefly, softly. ‘I never said… When Hannah pulled me out of the building Grant was holding me in… I was broken, hurting. But we came out onto what was a sort of elaborate fire escape, a balcony, and it was sunrise. We were running from a man who wanted nothing more than to kill me, and I made her stop for a second so I could see the sunrise. To be honest, I wasn’t sure I was going to get a second chance.’

  ‘There will be many more sunrises.’

  She straightened and reached for her jacket. ‘Uh-huh. Next time you’re down in New York, I’m going to make sure we’re awake for it.’

  ‘I am looking forward to it. I’m going to get up and escort you to the shuttle.’

  ‘You don’t need–’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do. I need to see you safely away, and you need to call me when you get to Jenner. There are bad things happening around here, Fox, and I need to know that you are safe.’

  ‘Okay,’ Fox said. He rarely accompanied her to the gate and she knew why: he did not want to see her leave. She felt more or less the same when he left from Newark. ‘Just remember, I’m backed up. If I die, Terri just starts me up in a new frame. So, you damn well better take care of you, because I don’t have a backup available.’

  New York Metro.

  Fox opened her eyes and saw the familiar environment of her old office, now a robotics lab. Sort of. A frame held her up as it had in the lab in Jenner, and there were various instruments and a table for performing servicing operations. No wardrobe: that was in the bedroom, where it always had been, though it looked as though Kit or Belle had thought to leave a bodysuit out on the table for Fox to put on.

  ‘Well,’ Fox said aloud, ‘two-way transfer and no problems I can detect.’

  Kit’s normal avatar appeared, perched on the table, legs crossed like a foxy pixie. ‘Of course it did. I travel that way all the time without any problems. You essentially do it every night when you’re at home, just over a much shorter distance.’

  Fox opened her mouth to argue, and then decided her PA was probably right. ‘I guess.’ She unlatched the frame and stepped out, reaching for the suit just as Kit’s gynoid walked into the room and her avatar vanished from the table. Fox held up the suit. ‘You left this out for me?’

  ‘Joint effort,’ Kit replied. ‘Belle put through the fabrication request and told me when it was ready. I brought it up from the basement. Not that I mind you walking around naked, but we thought it was… efficient.’

  ‘Is. I’m going to need to set up an op.’ Fox slipped her feet into the suit and pulled it up her long legs. ‘We’ll need… ten or twelve of Ryan’s best weapons specialists, one, maybe two, Pythias, some technicians to help with analysis, and transport for all that. And check if Helen’s got anything big on. Combat gear for everyone. Assault weaponry. A couple of combat frames to handle air superiority.’ Finishing pulling on the suit, she paused for a second and then nodded. ‘That’ll do for a start. I need a meeting with Ryan, Garth, Mariel, and see if Jackson wants in. This afternoon if we can get it. I need budget and I’ll need to explain to them why I want to storm an old airfield in the North West Protectorate.’

  ~~~

  ‘Are you checking up on me again?’ Fox asked as Jason’s image appeared in her vision field.

  There was that short gap of silence and then Jason’s voice. He kept it light, but there was a hint of tension, even over the transmission medium. ‘I would take every opportunity to check on you, Fox, but something has come up. Routine communications with some of the stations at L-five have ceased. We have had nothing for thirty-six hours.’

  ‘That’s… not the kind of coincidence I like.’

  ‘No. We are prepping a Talaria to go out there, but we will not know anything for at least forty-six hours, probably closer to forty-seven.’ Talaria-class ships were rapid-response vessels, designed to get somewhere as fast as possible and bring weapons to the party if needed, but they were still limited by physics: it took time to get places in space.

  ‘Right. I might have something for you sooner. I’ve got the go-ahead to drop in on those folks in Seattle. I’ll be going in to scout late tomorrow and I’ll be followed by a full, armed team set up for forensics and investigation. If there’s anything there to find, I’ll let you know. Hopefully before your ship gets to L-five.’

  ‘Good luck, mon chère. Be careful.’

  Fox smiled. ‘I’m usually careful. Except when I’m not.’

  Seattle–Tacoma Area, North West Protectorate, 19th August.

  There was nothing especially careful about a HALO insertion, but Fox had some significant advantages over a typical parachutist. Up at twelve thousand metres, the air was thin, but Fox’s frame did not need oxygen and was rated for a vacuum. The air up there was cold too, but not cold enough to bother a machine.

  She did have a disadvantage: her skeleton was metal, which would give her a larger radar profile than was typical, so she was dressed in a suit which would reduce that signature. She had her pistol and a rifle, but she needed little else. Her vision operated in a broad enough spectrum that she did not need night-vision goggles. She had her own navigation system. It all added up to reduce the chance she would be spotted on the way down.

  Fox watched the display as she fell, head down, limbs tucked in to give as streamlined a form as possible. One hundred and fifty metres per second, down from over three hundred at altitude; not exactly a world record, but respectable.

  ‘There is no sign of radar or ladar in use,’ Kit said into Fox’s mind.

  ‘Hmm,’ Fox replied. No active sensors, but passives could be just as good. But there was the other thing: she could not see anyone on the ground. It was just after eleven a
nd maybe they had an early-night policy, but she would have expected people on watch…

  Once upon a time, this place had been one of the centres of innovation, well, of the business of innovation, of the United States of America. The other was to the south: California, Silicon Valley. A little to the north there was the city of Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond: home to such giants of technology as Microsoft. Below, edging toward Tacoma, Boeing had been one of the biggest and most powerful aerospace companies. Down in San Francisco and San Diego, companies like Google had dominated markets of their own. And then, in the spring of 2041, everything had changed.

  There had already been problems with the California locations. Companies had begun to move north and east as water became less of a problem and more of a disaster. Sources were drying up because the rains, when they came at all, were too much, too fast. Entire towns were lost to mudslides. Others depopulated as the inhabitants could no longer afford the water they needed. On March 5th, 2041, a fault line under the Pacific, the Cascadia Subduction Zone, ripped. It was what was called a megathrust earthquake, not the biggest ever recorded, but big enough: a 9.2. Buildings fell all along the coastline as, for long minutes, destruction rolled in through the earth itself, but that had been nothing to the enormity of the tsunami which followed.

  Scientists were still arguing over whether there was some connection, some sort of ripple effect, which caused what had become known as ‘The Yellowstone Disturbance’ twenty-two days later. There were certainly aftershocks, ripples of destruction which had hampered rescue and recovery. But on the 27th, smoke was seen rising from vents in the Yellowstone National Park. There was no supervolcano eruption, they were still waiting for that one, but there was magma release and a lot of ash, and the region had sunk a metre in three days. The ash falls across the region had further hampered rescuers, a national emergency had been declared, and one of the biggest mass evacuations in history had been called for to move the population east.