The Powers of the Earth (Aristillus Book 1)

by Travis J I Corcoran

  The light went green and he twisted the throttle. The rear tire threatened to break loose but held, and the bike surged under him.

  Chapter 47

  2064: MaisonNeuve Construction office, Aristillus, Lunar Nearside

  Mike stood in Leroy's office, armored riding jacket partially unzipped, helmet under one arm.

  It was a dick move, he knew, but he took his time acknowledging Leroy, letting his gaze slide over the office for a few seconds first. Unlike his own headquarters of modular cube wall panels, a few mismatched chairs, and a "temporary" conference room table made from a steel deck plate and two stone blocks, Leroy's office was polished: recessed lighting, thick carpet, vases on a credenza behind the gleaming walnut desk.

  Mike let his gaze move to Leroy.

  The guy didn't have his hand out. Just as well. Fuck him.

  "Have a seat, Mike."

  Mike glanced at the proffered chair and was unsurprised to see that Leroy was trying the old trick of offering a guest a chair with shorter legs than his own. Was he going to fall for that, let himself slip right into that power differential? Fuck no. He stayed standing. "Cut to the chase - what do you want, Leroy?"

  "That always has been your problem, Mike - you don't appreciate the subtle rhythms of interacting with folks, social graces, nuances -"

  Mike scowled and began to turn, but Leroy put up one hand, interrupting his own monologue. "OK, fine. You might want to watch this." Leroy gestured and the wallscreen lit up, displaying a flat, two-dimensional image.

  Mike saw the background first - a glowing sign with an Asian-style purple black dragon splashing in a river. It was familiar... And then he had it. The video had been shot in that Asian restaurant where he'd met Kevin a while back.

  What was this video? He turned to Leroy but the other man waved a finger and pointed at the screen. Mike looked, and realized that he'd been ignoring the foreground where two men, him and Kevin, sat at a table.

  "What the hell is this?"

  "Watch, Mike."

  Despite himself he watched.

  "I want you to backdate my claim to before his. And I'll pay you. What now?"

  "So you're asking me to lie? To corrupt the registry logs?"

  "Yeah."

  Kevin shrugged. "The way the registry is formatted - yeah, there's no reason I can't do that. So I log in, change the date on the cubic for Veleka waterworks, and we're done."

  "As easy as that?"

  "As easy as that."

  Leroy stopped the playback.

  "What the fuck is that, Leroy? What are you -

  "Mike, we've got a problem here." He paused. "Or, rather, you've got a problem here. Your reputation in Aristillus is pretty good. Early settler, businessman, paragon of the community - but this? This could hurt you. Who wants to sign a contract with someone who's willing to fake data, pay bribes?"

  "I didn't - that's out of context, and you know it! You engineered this whole thing!"

  Leroy ignored him. "Mike, you need some help with your marketing." He rubbed his chin theatrically, pretending to think as he looked down at his desk. "I think I'm in a position to help you."

  Leroy looked up, meeting Mike's eyes. "What are we going to do about this, Mike?"

  Mike made no expression, but his mind raced. Leroy had video. Did he have detectives - spies? Or did he have bugs in lots of places?

  Mike looked around the plush office. If Leroy had bugged the restaurant, or had had him followed, he'd almost certainly bugged his own office. Anything he said now would certainly be recorded, in glorious, high-resolution, color-correct 3D.

  Mike turned back to Leroy. He felt cold even as prickles of sweat blossomed in his armpits and his vision narrowed so that only Leroy's slightly smirking face was in focus.

  Fuck! What had he gotten himself in to? What would happen if that video was released? His reputation was going to be ruined.

  Leroy was saying something but Mike couldn't hear it. His attention was focused on the beads of sweat that slid uncomfortably from his armpits and ran down his upper arms. Mike shifted his weight, and clenched his fists.

  "Mike?"

  Mike focused on Leroy's eyes. There was a ringing somewhere nearby - in his ears?

  "Mike, what are your thoughts on the marketing we can do together to fix this?"

  He felt the weight of the helmet in his right hand and gripped the chin bar more tightly. Swinging the helmet as hard as he could into Leroy's smirking face would solve all of his problems. One motherfucking solid blow and that little fucking puke would collapse, his skull shattered and -

  Mike shook his head, trying to get a clear perspective.

  Distantly he heard the ringing again - his phone.

  His mouth felt dry. Leroy hadn't come out with his demands yet, but it was going to be huge. Painful. Entangling. And it wouldn't end there. If he paid even once the noose would just get tighter.

  He weighed the helmet in his hand. For the past few years Leroy had been just been a business competitor - a pampered, trust-fund business competitor. But now, he was suddenly a spy and a blackmailer, too. And he was trying to ruin everything.

  Mike remembered a conversation he'd had with Darcy years back. One of their earliest ones, back in DC, where he'd shocked her with his own defense of blackmail. He recalled his own words. 'A blackmailer isn't initiating force.' What else had he said? 'Blackmail is just an offer to speak - or not speak - in return for money.' Something like that. Darcy had shook her head, punched him playfully on one shoulder, and called him a lunatic. That's when he'd first looked at her - really looked at her - and noticed her intelligent eyes and her smile.

  Mike felt his death grip on the chin bar of the helmet loosen. Jesus.

  His phone rang again. He ignored it.

  Even if he could put ethics aside - and could he? - pragmatically, walking away was the right thing to do. This video might be going out live right now. Who knew if ten people were watching it - or a thousand.

  He was on the moon to build a company. And more than that: he wanted to light a new beacon of liberty. It was a hackneyed phrase, and he'd never say it aloud if Javier was around to give him shit, but it was true.

  And what was Leroy to him? The man was a nuisance. A damned painful one, but just a distraction. Mike's fight - his real fight - was to build Aristillus, to protect the city, to create a place where people could live free for the first time in a century.

  So, yes, he'd like to beat the man to death right now - but would it help him with his real goals? And what would Darcy think of him? She'd stay with him, of course, but would she look at him the same way?

  He looked up at Leroy - and saw the smirk covering his ratty little face.

  His resolution faltered. Would giving the man the beating he deserved really be so wrong? Most of the folks in Aristillus - the Texans, the northern Chinese, the Kenyans, the small contingent of Alaskans - were used to a bit of frontier justice. Maybe taking a swing at Leroy wouldn't hurt his reputation but would actually help it. And Darcy would understand.

  His right hand tightened again on the helmet. The smaller man must have perceived a shift in Mike's features because suddenly his smirk disappeared, a worried look spread across his face, and he took a step backward.

  Mike's phone rang again, this time with the ultra-high-priority ring. He blinked. That meant an emergency: a real emergency, with lives at stake.

  Mike fished in his pocket with his left hand and looked at the screen.

  A text - from an anonymous caller? Only Darcy, Javier, and two trusted employees should be able to trigger the ultra-high-priority ring.

  Mike looked up at Fournier to make sure he hadn't moved, and then back at his phone, and brought up the text.

  The Wookiee - with Darcy on board - was coming in, fast and hot, on a nonstandard descent. And there was more.

  In the seconds it took for Mike to pull out the phone Leroy had recovered a bit of confidence. "Mike, don't answer your damn phone. We've
got this very disturbing video to talk about."

  He read the rest of the message. The ship had been hijacked? By PKs?

  Mike looked from his phone to Leroy, stared at him hard for a second, and then turned and walked out. He dropped the phone into his pocket and pulled his helmet on. The cheek plates and chin bar cinched tight as it settled into position.

  He had to get to the docks.

  Chapter 48

  2064: Lai Docks and Air Traffic Control, Aristillus, Lunar Nearside

  Mike straight-armed the door and burst into the control room. One of the Lai Docks technicians looked up and yelled at him. Mike ignored him and looked around. The floor was crowded - on-shift traffic controllers sat at their consoles and off-shift personnel clustered in groups and discussed the emergency.

  Where was Albert? Damn it, he -

  "Michael!"

  Mike turned. Albert Lai was walking toward him. "The Wookkiee is your ship?"

  Mike shook his head. "No. It was, but I sold it to Fifth Ring to buy more TBMs."

  "I hate to be abrupt, but if you don't own the Wookkiee, then I need you out of -"

  "Darcy is on that ship."

  Albert was silent for a moment. "I see. I'm sorry to hear that. Please, grab a seat."

  Mike shook his head. "What do you know about the situation?"

  "Very little. We got its transponder signal before it disappeared over Farside." Albert gestured at a large wallscreen that displayed the sphere of the moon and an eccentric red line for the Wookkiee's path - solid for part of the length, and then dashed where it fell behind the lunar horizon and disappeared over Farside. Mike wasn't a navigator, but he knew enough to know that the trajectory was all wrong. A polar orbit - and a weird noncircular one? What the hell? He'd been worried about the PK hijacking before, but now, seeing that path... he shook his head. This wasn't good.

  Albert saw Mike's face and nodded in grim agreement. "With Gamma's satellites out we don't have data on the Wookkiee's path over Farside. The ship might be maneuvering for all we know. This is the best we can extrapolate, given what we could get off the transponder." He paused. "We got some more information. About a hijacking -"

  "I got that too." He paused "So Gamma's talking to you now?"

  Albert shrugged. "One text. Anonymous. But I assume it's him." He looked at Mike. "How the hell does Gamma know there's a hijacking?"

  It was Mike's turn to shrug. "I have no idea. I don't understand Gamma. He reaches out to talk, then he goes silent for weeks. Then he sends a text - anonymously - with information that -".

  "I confess Gamma unsettles me. I'm far from sure that John made the right decision bringing it here. Its behavior..." Albert stopped and turned up his hands in befuddlement - a fairly emotional expression for a man so ruthlessly self-contained.

  Mike shook his head. "I find the Dogs weird enough, but at least I understand them. Gamma, though? Who the hell knows." He looked back at the wallscreen. "What's the data say? Orbit or landing?"

  Albert looked up at the screen. The dotted line had wrapped fully around the moon and a small segment of it had turned from dashed to solid. "It looks like the Wookkiee is coming in to Aristillus - they'll be down in eight minutes." As he said it the wallscreen updated and displayed a countdown timer. It started at 8:06 and immediately ticked down.

  "They land in eight?"

  Albert stared at him for a moment. "I didn't say 'land'".

  * * *

  Mike held his phone tight to his ear, trying to tune out the chatter of the traffic controllers around him. "A hijacking, Wam. I don't know. Which crew is working tunnel 1073? Who's the crew chief? Olusegun...OK, good. Tell his entire crew to down shovels, and bring all the equipment - no, not the TBMs or the extenders, but everything - yeah all of it - to the surface...to - ". He looked at the wallscreen. " - bring them up near the SunPower solar farm. After that get everyone from the rifle club and tell them to show up at the same place - yeah, on the surface - armed and ready. Right now. Promise them whatever you have to, but get everyone."

  Mike ended the call and noticed that the clamor in the control room was getting louder. He looked at the wallscreen and saw that the icon representing the Wookkiee had completed its interpolated orbit around far side and was back to near side.

  His phone rang again. A text from Wam: the men and equipment were moving into position.

  He felt something...odd. For the first time since his tunnel had broken into Leroy's illegal space, he felt...no, not good. With Darcy taken captive he couldn't feel remotely good.

  He felt like he was taking action.

  Things were happening, and he was on top of it. He wasn't a victim, always a half step behind in his responses to Fournier's provocations. No, now he was on top of the situation. He was inside the OODA loop. He was making shit happen.

  And on that note, he turned and walked toward the nearest airlock.

  Albert called after him, "What are you going to do?"

  "You'll see."

  Behind him the wallscreens showed earth movers, painted with the Morlock logo and the Excavation Team 26 mascot, as they crawled up out of the access ramp to the surface.

  Chapter 49

  2064: bridge of AFS The Wookkiee, lunar orbital injection

  Darcy watched the display. Two more seconds. One more.

  "Now!"

  Waseem stabbed the button. "OMS chem rockets - firing!"

  Video showed the igniters arcing as the chemical rockets hidden within false cargo containers on the deck triggered. Faintly, through the deck, came the rumble of the fuel pumps and the vibration of the rockets.

  An alarm sounded.

  "Darce! What's going on?"

  Darcy tabbed through her interface, looking for the issue. She'd coded large chunks of the UI, and had thought it was perfectly designed, but she cursed it now. It was entirely inadequate for seat-of-the-pants flying like this. If she made it out of this, she was going to hire a UI consultant to clean this mess up.

  "I can't find - wait, I've got it. Partial ignition failures."

  The ship shuddered around them.

  Waseem said, "Speed is twenty one hundred meters per second. We need to hit sixteen hundred for orbital injection."

  Darcy dug deeper into the problem. "Two of the twelve OMS bells are down."

  "Nineteen hundred meters per second."

  Darcy breathed deeply. "This is going to be OK. We'll get insertion and deorbit. It'll just take a bit longer."

  "Seventeen hundred meters per second. Sixteen hundred. Fifteen. We've got orbital injection. Fourteen hundred - we're deorbiting."

  "See, I told you -". Then Darcy saw the small model of the ship on her screen. Something was wrong. "Waseem, we're yawing."

  "What? Why?"

  A pit opened in the bottom of her stomach. Crap, crap, mother-loving crap. "The two rockets that are down, they're both on one side - our deorbiting thrust is off center." She scanned her screen. "It's the bells closest to the water dump valves. The ice must have fouled them.” Darn it; she she should have expected this. "Can you correct the yaw?"

  Wasseem's fingers flew. "OK, I see it. Bells 11 and 12 are out - I'm cutting the thrust on 1 and 2 by fifty percent and ramping 9 and 10 up to one o' five. That should straighten us out and give us most of the - Jesus Fuck Kali Fuck! Darcy, it's not working."

  Darcy grimaced at the profanity. "We're still slewing, Waseem!"

  "I know that! That's what I just said. I don't know what to do -"

  "Give me the controls."

  "You have OMS.”

  "I have OMS."

  Tudel interrupted. "What's going -"

  "Shut the fuck up and let her work!" yelled Waseem.

  Darcy stared at the screen. The slew was increasing - the adjustment wasn't enough. The bells had never been pushed this hard, and their response was nonlinear; a hundred five percent wasn't really a hundred five percent.

  Darcy tapped the RCS controls. Gently, gently. Bells 3 and 4 up to o
ne-ten, then one-twelve, then at redline. Bell five flat, bell six flat.

  Was it working? She checked. Yes! The slew stopped and started to reverse.

  Waseem called out, "Altitude down from 5.0 to 4.5.”

  Darcy looked up sharply. "Altitude? That's too -"

  "Orbital speed. I mean orbital speed."

  "Shit, Waseem!" She caught herself. Now she was swearing. "Let me -"

  "No, I've got it. You stay on the yaw."

  Darcy checked the ship's orientation. The yaw was almost fixed... and there, it was done. She tapped controls and stopped the counter-rotation. Then, even though Waseem said he didn't need help, she checked the orbital speed.

  Gah!

  The speed was too high, and - yes - the ground path was wrong. She'd corrected the yaw caused by iced up rockets 11 and 12 by tweaking the thrust on the other reaction control system bells, but she'd introduced roll and pitch at the same time. Which was only a small problem on its own, but the larger OMS rockets were burning hard to deorbit them, and the yaw meant that those rockets weren't lined up correctly. What should have been a pure deorbiting burn had instead been a mix: mostly deorbiting, but some sideways thrust as well.

  She bit back a swear. Not only was their ground path wrong, but their forward velocity was too high. They were going to miss Lai Docks in two different dimensions: lateral AND velocity. "Waseem, I'm taking OMS."

  "No, Darcy, I can -"

  She put steel in her voice. "Damn it, I have OMS!"

  He took his hands off of the controls. "You have OMS.”

  Darcy split the screen, OMS interface on one side, RCS on the other. This was insane. One person couldn't control both...But it was clear that the two of them coordinating wasn't going to work either.

  Navigation was supposed to be as exciting as a mortgage spreadsheet: everything planned out, checked, and double checked. But now she had to do this in real time. It was insanity. She felt the sweat pool in her armpits.

  She'd tried to explain orbital navigation to Mike a few times, with varying success. He was so used to rock and tunnels that stayed still that he couldn't help thinking of navigation as a matter of hitting a point in three-space. It wasn't nearly that simple. She wasn't aiming for a three-dimensional point, but a six-dimensional one where x, y, and z were joined with dx, dy, and dz.