The Veil

by Bowden, William

  There was no time to waste. The team had been brought together just two weeks ago, a cover story being instigated so as to lock the site down and effectively hijack the Pegasus, and the linear accelerator, for their own purposes.

  The details of the venture had been astounding, the evidence backing it up terrifyingly compelling and their authority in this matter undeniable. None had refused them. And Chief Justice Garr and Cardinal Ansoni were adamant—as soon as they had Robert they would have to go.

  * * *

  Bebbington and a technician lower Lucy’s MBI unit into an open-framed cradle bolted to the floor. As the two men fumble with her obsidian slab, she plays with a geometric puzzle projected before her, struggling to find a solution. The slab lurches.

  “Gently does it!” Bebbington gasps under the strain, “or we’ll never hear the last of it. Sorry about that, Luce.”

  “That’s quite alright, Dr. Bebbington. I have every confidence in you and Technician, First-Class, Baker.”

  Bebbington flashes a grin at the unnerved technician.

  A little further down the cabin are the few remaining seats, the rest having been stripped out to accommodate Lucy and other equipment. There, Landelle is seated next to a pale and drawn Robert. Toor appears at Landelle’s side.

  “It’s time,” Toor says to her.

  Landelle shoots Robert a desperate look. He manages a bleak smile for her. She squeezes his hand and, without another word, exits the cabin, hiding from all the flood of emotions that are engulfing her.

  Toor inspects Robert’s seat restraints, her face passing close to his. She pulls sharply on a shoulder strap, eliciting a wince from Robert.

  “Sure that’s tight enough, Commander?” Robert says.

  Toor has only a look of vicious contempt for him.

  “Sharanjit—”

  “Don’t.”

  * * *

  With the technicians gone and the hatch sealed, the Pegasus’s crew and passengers number five. Toor occupies the copilot’s seat on the flight deck next to the pilot, Dr. Panchen, both prepping to take the space plane into orbit. Bebbington and Robert are strapped into their seats, either side of the aisle, Lucy’s cradle just behind them. It’s the first proper moment the two friends have had to themselves.

  “For a man in your current predicament, you are remarkably calm, Bob,” Bebbington observes.

  “I’m laughing on the inside, Bebsie.”

  Bebbington looks over, and Robert back at him, “Laughing in the face of adversity.”

  Both men find this remarkably funny, laughing out loud.

  “You know, I do believe this qualifies as actual adversity—” Bebbington quips.

  “There’s a lot of it about—”

  “Yeah, but this is, like, the real deal—”

  Upfront, Panchen and Toor can hear the two men, each exchanging a weary glance with the other. Before them five kilometers of superconducting track are charged, ready to sling shot the Pegasus into orbit.

  “Control, this is Pegasus,” Panchen says, “We are good to go.”

  * * *

  Lagrange Two is approximately one and half million kilometers from Earth, four times the distance to the Moon, and to get there requires a workhorse. The Centaur is a heavily modified OTV— Orbital Transfer Vehicle—capable of making the trip in less than two weeks. It’s a short, white-knuckle ride into orbit, before docking with the ISS and transferring everything over from the Pegasus. As far as the ISS is concerned this is just a routine maintenance trip to the Afrika, a leviathan white elephant no one really cares about any more.

  * * *

  Robert stares out of an observation port as the Centaur drifts away from the ISS to light its engines. Before them is the blue orb of Earth.

  Toor floats up behind him, “Take a good look. You may never see it again.”

  Robert turns to face her, but he isn’t going to take the bait. Bebbington, for his part, cannot let it pass.

  “Jesus. You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

  The response is as unremorsefully cold as it is terse, “Given the transfer time to Lagrange Two I suggest you and Dr. Bebbington occupy yourselves by reviewing the Afrika’s status with the Emby. We’ll need a full set of procedures ready to go the moment we arrive.”

  Toor pushes herself away, heading forward to join Panchen on the flight deck, Robert’s gaze trailing her departure before finding a new subject of interest. For the first time he switches his attention to Lucy, pulling himself particularly close.

  “Hello there. My name is Robert. What’s your name?”

  She takes a moment to answer, having had to move the puzzle projection out of the way of his invasion of her personal space.

  “Lucy,” she answers, in a quite matter-of-fact manner.

  Bebbington joins them.

  “See the puzzle? When she projects one it means that she likes you.”

  The puzzle vanishes abruptly.

  “How’s that flight plan, Luce?”

  “Finished.”

  “Good girl. What about your puzzle? You’ve been at it for ages. My niece could do it faster.”

  “It’s tricky.”

  Robert ponders the MBI with some bemusement, before turning his attention to Bebbington.

  “You a babysitter, now?”

  “Jack of all trades, that’s me.”

  “Let us hope that you are the master of some, Dr. Bebbington,” Lucy says.

  * * *

  They had to put it somewhere and Lagrange Two had been the parking spot of choice since the project’s inception. Although the Afrika had been largely constructed in Earth orbit, it was never intended to keep it there. Not once its fission reactor was fully commissioned. There had also been the matter of its engine tests. These were not permitted close to Earth, but at one point five million kilometers Lagrange Two was too far out—the ten-second round trip for radio signals was too long for mission control, so for tests the Afrika had been brought into lunar orbit, with first ignition taking place on the far side.

  Space stations had been constructed at both locations—simple habitats to facilitate crew and technician transfers, though primary mission control remained on Earth. The lunar station was the most basic, while the station at Lagrange Two was a more substantial affair attached to the Afrika’s space dock—a skeletal cradle within which construction had been completed, its lattice of struts providing a means for first generation Emby robots to access any part of the ship’s exterior.

  The cost had been phenomenal.

  And then everything had unraveled. Senator Blake’s relentless pursuit of Robert Cantor to bring him to account over the scale of Afrika Project, and the justification for it, had exposed the secret Trinity facility and the horrors within, collapsing the Cantor Satori corporation. Though the Afrika Project had limped on public opinion eventually halted it, effectively mothballing the most expensive endeavor in human history.

  But the money hadn’t really gone anywhere. Apart from the physical materials now at Lagrange Two and lunar orbit, the rest of the expenditure had gone back into the economy by way of wages, profits and taxes. And so the Afrika was simply written off.

  By this stage she was broadly functional. The first round of engine tests had been completed and it was fully fueled for a second round, with the flight systems and sufficient crew quarters in place to facilitate a long run into local space. Perhaps more significantly the Afrika was at mass; close to fully laden so as to put the engines under maximum load. To do this they had topped off the propellant tanks to the brim, stocked the life support system with enough to last a crew of seven for three years and loaded as much equipment onboard as they could. There was an ulterior motive to all this of course—they needed somewhere to store all that stuff anyway.

  The biggest elements of the Afrika’s cargo were its two universal landers, the Nairobi and the Mombasa, each a winged beauty as elegant as the Pegasus, each capable of taking a team of four to the surface o
f all the celestial bodies the Afrika was scheduled to survey, from asteroids to moons. But the most prized target of all these was Titan—and that’s what the wings were for. Using Titan’s atmosphere for flight meant free lift and that meant more equipment could be taken down, while for other destinations, such as Europa, they would have had to rely on vertical thrust alone.

  All of this had been assembled remotely, save for the landers, which were launched from Earth by means of the linear accelerator. But there had been no construction workers in orbit or at Lagrange Two—well, no human workers. The Afrika had been put together by first generation Embies—machine-based intelligences, built into spider-like robotic bodies, capable of carrying out instructions autonomously, but nothing more. They were simple-minded mechanical creatures, not possessed of the ability to reason and unaware of their own being.

  Even so, the world now feared the existence of such machines. The actions of NDSA-3/003, the third generation MBI known as Lucy, had seen to that. Consequently, MBIs were not allowed outside of highly controlled environments, and no one was going to sanction an MBI of any generation in the vicinity of an operational nuclear reactor.

  Thus it was that maintenance trips to the Afrika were crewed by humans only, with there being nothing unusual about this particular mission, it comprising the Afrika’s chief engineer, the scientist behind its fusion drive, and supporting technical staff. The ISS crew had been most obliging during the transfer to the Centaur and at times Dr. Bebbington had struggled to contain himself. If only they had known what was in that crate, and the true identity of the technician who had maneuvered it through the airlock.

  * * *

  The approach is from the stern, sharp shadow lines playing across the triad of its propulsion system, three giant fusion engines in a triangular arrangement, clustered around the Afrika’s thrust axis. There is little light here, rendering the scene somewhat two-tone, the shadows completely dark—the Earth cuts out more than ninety percent of the Sun’s light at Lagrange Two. Panchen lights up the space dock, the lattice structure now an array of spotlights, the Centaur sliding along its length.

  Robert and Bebbington pull themselves into the cramped flight deck to get the best view.

  “So that’s what a trillion dollars buys,” Robert muses. “I never got to see her up close. Feels like something from another lifetime. Like something from a dream.”

  Their view slides past the fusion drive and onto the main reactor. Beyond that most of the ship’s length is taken up by a ribbon of tanks holding the propellant—the fusion fuel and reaction mass—with the living quarters and science facilities up front. Sandwiched in between is the garage, with its bay doors in the Afrika’s belly.

  In all, some two hundred meters long from bow to stern.

  “She’s just as you specified her, Bob,” Bebbington says. “All we have to do now is steal it.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t difficult to awaken the Afrika because she wasn’t really asleep. The main nuclear reactor ran continuously to keep the ship’s systems under power so that it could be monitored remotely—those data feeds now hacked by Bebbington to show situation-normal to anyone who might actually give a damn.

  For the most part all that was needed was an inspection. That and installing Lucy. Bebbington had a private spot picked out for her—what would have been the Afrika’s computer vault. Lucy was not at all happy about that. But despite her protests it had all the required connections, Bebbington insisting that she be hardwired to the Afrika for resilience, even if it was only by means of pads stuck to her surface induction layer. Once they had her slab mounted into its cradle and the connections made to the Afrika’s systems, Lucy had settled quickly, delighted with her new toy.

  Everything else was in good order, including the two landers in the garage, Bebbington and Robert rigging the Nairobi as a flight simulator so that Robert could train during the outbound journey.

  It takes just three days of preparation to get the Afrika ready for its departure. Not to its ultimate destination—it still needed more work for that—but to the Moon.

  STARLIGHT

  The Council have gathered once more, for a final briefing by Cardinal Joseph Ansoni. With all the elements in play this is the point of final commitment, beyond which it will not be possible to manage the situation if they are discovered.

  “Senator Blake has vowed his cooperation,” Joseph says, “Which gives us the cover we need. We now have one month until the optimal launch window. Just enough to get the Afrika ready and complete Lucy’s training.”

  He brings up a schematic on a wall display. The Earth–Moon system and its Lagrangian points.

  “Our biggest problem is that we can’t engage the Star Light drive at Lagrange Two. Its EMP signature would likely be detected by scientific probes in the vicinity. The only place we can launch unseen is on the far side of the Moon.”

  “How long will it take to get the Afrika to the Moon without the main drive?”

  “Thirty days. It’s already on the move and will arrive during the launch window. The space dock remaining at Lagrange Two will hide the fact it’s missing. For while, at least.”

  Joseph updates the display to show the Afrika arriving at lunar perihelion only to immediately eject into a solar system transit.

  “That’s not a lot of time for the main burn, Joseph. Is this to be a Hohmann transfer?”

  “No—it will be considerably quicker,” Joseph says, “but we have more than enough fuel and reaction mass both for a second transit burn and a rapid deceleration.”

  “And for the return journey?”

  Joseph is solemn in his response. “If there is to be a return…then it will be about eight months with the propellant remaining.”

  “What about mission control? The Afrika’s design assumed three flight crew onboard and ground based oversight.”

  “Mission control will be from the Cantor Satori test facility in Nevada. It’s already up and running. But now, of course, we have a third generation MBI—something not anticipated by the original Afrika Project. Lucy will fly the Afrika.”

  “What is Robert Cantor’s state of mind?” a delegate asks.

  All turn their gaze to a man sitting apart from the others. Dr. Rain has already adjusted his mind around the surreal situation he finds himself in, and is ready to fulfill the role required of him—the last two patients of Lucius Gray are now his.

  “He is not the man he once was, that’s for certain,” says Rain. “Messiah stripped him of his one defining feature—”

  “His bipolar disorder?”

  “Yes, or rather the manic depression that went with it. The mania that conceived of the Afrika is gone from its creator. But so has the despair. What is left is a capable man who cares not one jot about what fate might befall him. In that regard he is fit to fly.”

  “Is he aware of Lucy’s true nature?” another delegate asks of Joseph. “As you have divulged it to us?”

  “He is not, and that will remain the case,” answers Joseph.

  “Can we trust her?”

  “We can’t rely on ground control,” Joseph says. “Not at these distances. Only an MBI can pilot the Afrika solo. And Lucy was involved in the design of its systems.”

  “My question was whether we can trust her. Given the machine’s past, and its…inner form, our reliance on her is troubling to say the least. Dr. Rain?”

  Rain takes a moment to ponder the Freudian subtleties of the question posed—the machine’s past and their trust in her. They are not polarized in their thinking. That’s a relief—

  “It is important to remember that her nature is, in part, a façade,” Rain says to them, careful to make eye contact with each as he speaks. “Regardless of what that façade conjures up in your mind, Lucy’s integrity and sense of duty far exceed that which could be expected of a human. She is ideally suited to this task and as such we can trust her.”

  “And as a machine?”

  “She i
s, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.”

  * * *

  Chief Justice Garr and a somewhat pale and drawn Senator Blake watch proceedings from the mission control observation booth, looking down on a sea of empty controller desks, the big board of screens above it all showing the key elements—the Afrika’s lunar approach, its telemetry and the crew on board the Centaur some ten kilometers away.

  It’s not going well. A slew of technical glitches from the reawakened Afrika have delayed their launch preparations and now they are running out of time. They need to start the main engines during the transit across the far side of the Moon and burn them for at least ten minutes. The transit window is just fifteen minutes.

  A stressed Tobias Montroy darts from one control desk to another performing the status checks across the Afrika’s myriad of systems. There had been no time to consolidate mission control and so they had to resort to using the original control rooms set up for the test flights, abandoned a decade ago but never decommissioned. A status alarm goes off on the far side of the room—a lone colleague attends to it, allowing a visibly relieved Montroy to check the primary coolant pumps servicing the main reactor.

  “This is crazy,” Blake says to Garr. “Just two of them? They can’t keep up.”

  “Secrecy is everything now, Julian.” But Garr can’t hide her own concern.

  Montroy is done with the coolant pumps and is at another console. The reaction mass valves should be open by now and injector heaters on—

  “Chief Mission Controller Montroy?”

  “What is it, Lucy?”

  “There is an imbalance on pressure valve two-two-three-oh servicing the plasma containment field on motor one, Chief Mission Controller Montroy.”

  “Adjust it please.”

  “Yes, Chief Mission Controller Montroy.”

  Montroy misses a step in the reaction valve check list and it resets.

  “Crap!”

  “Adjustment complete, Chief Mission Controller Montroy.”

  “Dammit, Lucy! Cut the long-winded names, will ya. We ain’t the time.”