Frozen Sky 2: Betrayed

by Jeff Carlson

  The result had been hundreds killed among the tribes and two more human deaths. Vonnie knew it could happen again. The promises made between the ESA and Top Clan Eight-Six were as fragile as the ice itself.

  4.

  The red emergency lights in 07 switched on as Vonnie touched an abort sequence on her display. Above her, the escape hatch opened with a clang. The sound felt like defeat. The sunfish were always listening. Their scouts would tell the matriarchs she’d left the module, so she tried again. “Koebsch, I should stay.”

  “No,” he said. “Tom retreated. Why can’t you?”

  “We’ve positioned ourselves as the dominant group. We want to dictate terms to them, not run when we’re nervous.”

  “You aren’t thinking. If they take offense because you left, we can handle another setback. But if we lose you, that will end our treaty.”

  Vonnie paused, marveling at his ability to outwit her with his prudent by-the-book logic. What he’d said was accurate. If the tribes killed anyone else, Earth might permanently dismiss the idea of collaborating with them.

  “All right, I’m climbing up,” she said.

  “Good. Tom will come back if they’re not planning an attack. They need us.”

  Do they? she wondered.

  She scaled the ladder on the module wall. It led into the access tube, and she moved delicately, aware of every whisper and bang of her hands and feet.

  Ben had tested the tribe’s vigilance by using mecha to create infrasound and tapping patterns on the surface. Then he’d rewarded Tom and other scouts with food for reproducing his signals. Their hearing was exceptional, which explained their uncanny grasp of spatial relations.

  On Earth, the ground reflected sound waves like an invisible topography map, enabling birds to exist in an acoustic landscape unknown to people.

  On Europa, the noise was all-encompassing. The sunfish had adapted. Their many ears, encircling their bodies, allowed them to measure specific wave-lengths as well as the location of each source. More astounding was their reaction time. From neurological scans and autopsies, Ben thought sunfish could anticipate the path of human footsteps from one step to the next. If the ice was calm, they could do so from a distance of a full kilometer while differentiating among several targets at once. As a biologist, Ben had his own particular affection for the sunfish, but he also called them spooky little mothers.

  He spoke on her data/comm relay as she sealed 07 beneath her, closing the hatch on its roof. “Hurry up,” he said.

  “I’m coming.”

  “Do it faster,” he said. “We’re hearing some new activity. You don’t want to be in the tube if the feces strike the oscillating rotor.”

  “What?”

  “The shit might hit the fan. Get out.”

  Vonnie felt her eyes widen. She scrambled up, clanging on the steel rungs. She no longer cared about being quiet. Meds and counseling had helped her with her memories of her run beneath the ice, but she remained prone to claustrophobia.

  The dim tube felt like a dead-end, a trap. She couldn’t move fast enough.

  Ben opened the top hatch with a boom, bathing her in the stark light of Hab Module 06. Wincing at the light, she missed the next rung. Her bad arm tangled with the ladder rungs.

  “Von!” he called.

  She caught herself and climbed. Her hands cast wild shadows on her face.

  They’d darkened 07 in another effort to comfort Tom. Despite not having eyes, sunfish preferred blackness. Ben thought there were crude photoreceptors among their pedicellaria. The sunfish had dealt with magma flows since the beginning of time. He’d also suggested the ice might contain as-yet-undiscovered lifeforms who used bioluminescence. If the sunfish were preyed upon by such animals, natural selection would have favored the ability to evade their glow.

  The sunfish hated light. Vonnie adored it. As she scrambled into 06, the light felt like home.

  The access tube from 07 led into an armored chamber with one exit—a heavy air lock like a blast door. Ben closed the hatch behind her. They embraced and she closed her eyes, enjoying the pleasant salt smell of him.

  She probably stank of adrenaline and blood. Ben didn’t seem to mind. He kissed her and said, “Let’s go.”

  She followed him out of the armored chamber. She started toward data/comm until he stopped to secure the air lock. He touched its seal and alarm commands as if he expected sunfish to swarm up through the tube.

  “Christ,” she said. “Are they inside 07?”

  “It’s just a precaution. We probably have some time, but we’re securing all doors.”

  “Tell me where they are.”

  “They’re going down, not up. They’re digging. I can show you.” He took her hand.

  They walked into data/comm, a narrow room lined with two stations on each side. Three of the stations were empty. Standing in the fourth display was an old man. Tall and thin, he moved like a heron, pecking at his data packets with his index finger. He looked harmless.

  At her first sight of him, Vonnie tugged free from Ben and raised her fists exactly as she’d done with Tom. “Dawson,” she snarled. “What are you doing here?”

  The old man didn’t bother to meet her eyes. “Shush,” he said. “Don’t be juvenile.”

  “You drove across camp while I was in 07 with Tom right after a quake? Your jeep coming toward us might have been what frightened him!”

  “Our rovers are always on the move.”

  “I told you to stay in 02.”

  “We have every right to travel among the modules as we choose. You’re not—”

  Ben intervened. He led her past Dawson and said, “Take this station. Von? Take this station. I’ll patch you into my feed.”

  Vonnie bit back another remark and obeyed. She took off the light gloves she’d donned to climb out of 07. Then she held out her palm. Her handprint activated the station and filled it with her mem files and preferences, which followed her through every module, vehicle and suit in camp.

  She couldn’t stop herself from glancing again at Dawson. He could also access any device in camp. He had no reason to enter 06 except to physically intimidate her, did he?

  The men couldn’t have been more different. Ben Metzler was a short, blocky Austrian with a face like a bulldog and the rude mouth to match. Gossip personalities on the net had chided Vonnie for perpetuating the cliché of the beauty and the beast since she was lean and blond, but Ben wasn’t a softy and he didn’t have a heart of gold. He hated Dawson, too.

  William George Dawson acted like a British lord. He was debonair. He’d also coldly ignored the signs of intelligence among the sunfish. He was a genesmith, and, to him, their DNA represented fortune and fame. Beneath his urbane facade, he was just another greedy asshole.

  He’s a snake.

  Vonnie flexed in her display, opening a dozen new sims from Ben. According to their spies and surface mecha, the sunfish had fled en masse with Tom. The tribe’s sounds were fading into the ice. It felt like part of her was leaving, too.

  We can’t reach them now, not unless we amplify our signals. We could shout into the ice… but if something scared them, screaming won’t do any good.

  She switched to camp telemetry and scrolled backward, identifying the movements of Dawson’s jeep. He had driven slowly and in a straight line. He’d entered 06 almost three minutes before Tom left her. That’s a long time to a sunfish, she thought, hanging her head in doubt.

  “Do you think it was something I did?” she asked Ben under her breath.

  “Von, they’re so weird,” he began. He was prepared to make excuses for her. He wanted to commiserate with her, but Dawson had heard.

  “Still punishing yourself, I see,” Dawson said.

  Vonnie snarled and examined Ben’s real-time sims, ignoring Dawson, furious that she’d lowered her guard. The old man used words like dabs of cyanide. He poisoned his foes with his little mind games.

  His comment reminded her of what Koebsch had
said. Don’t be so hard on yourself.

  Was there truth in it? Yes and no.

  Among those who called her a traitor were others who’d labeled her a masochist. They said she defended the sunfish to benefit her broken ego. Some people claimed she’d helped the sunfish over her own race, which was a lie. The interests of a few money-grubbing men weren’t the interests of humankind. She couldn’t stop them from belittling her to make themselves look better, but she resented their slander. It was more than petty. It was criminal. Why couldn’t they accept the exotic mysteries of this world?

  She needed Top Clan Eight-Six to return. If not, her opponents would cite their disappearance as proof that engaging the sunfish was a worthless expense. And if they attacked…

  “Look at this,” she told Ben. “Our mecha beneath the FNEE module are picking up increased noise and radar activity. The tribe is circling north.”

  “They’re moving toward us!” Dawson said.

  “The primary catacombs bend in our direction,” she said. “That’s why we chose this site. The tribe must be coming closer as a temporary detour or a feint. They won’t go near our surface emplacements.”

  “They will if they’ve readied an assault,” Dawson said. “You can be sure they know how to bring us down like a house of cards. If they’re good at anything, it’s finding every weak point in the ice.”

  “Shut up, Dawson.”

  He shook his head theatrically. He knew she had a short fuse with father figures like Koebsch and so many of the politicians on Earth. His lectures were another calculated ploy to rile her.

  Don’t play his game, she thought, searching her display for evidence to prove him wrong. She still had one card up her sleeve. She wanted to shove it in his face.

  Or shove him outside without a suit.

  Like he’d said, the ESA crew were allowed anywhere in camp except two restricted labs. Even those could be entered with masks. They needed their freedom to keep from going stir-crazy. The floors of their hab modules were twenty meters by five, the landers fifteen by fifteen, and they’d had only five of these tiny homes to start, then four.

  Module 03 had been crushed during the blowout caused by the sunfish. In honor of Collinsworth and Pärnits, the number 03 had been retired. The newly built structures were labeled 06 and 07, and no one except Vonnie and Tom went into 07. That meant the three modules—01, 02 and 06—and the landers—04 and 05—were their total living space.

  Predictably, the nine people caught in the same few rooms had separated themselves into special friendships and cliques. Each had staked out a particular spot as their own. They often mingled in the common area of the dining room in 02, yet tried to respect the unspoken boundaries around Ben and Vonnie’s bed in 04 or the armory in 01 where Ash, Henri and O’Neal tinkered with their suits and other gadgets.

  Dawson’s lair was B Lab in 02. He was a loner. His closest acquaintance had been Collinsworth. Now only Koebsch would put up with him. Dawson had colleagues and fans on Earth, but the ESA psychologists hoped to rekindle a broader sense of team cohesion. They’d ordered Vonnie to attend AI-directed chats with Dawson to solve their conflicts.

  Not a chance.

  She’d hacked the AI before their first session. Instead of welcoming him at the appointed time, the AI had played her favorite clip from their worst fight—a clip of herself calling Dawson a liar and a mercenary.

  On the media channels, their feud was almost as popular as the recordings of the blowout. She and Dawson should have been insignificant. They were standing on a moon inhabited by aliens! But to many people, the science was boring. They wanted human heroes and villains. Plenty of commentators entertained their audiences by choosing sides, which was why Vonnie dashed on some make-up and changed into a clean uniform before every interview.

  Human beings had evolved to judge an impressive array of visual cues. That meant they could be shallow when they ignored their other senses. Some people supported her because she was pretty. Others disliked her for the same reason. She couldn’t win. She’d tried to present herself as a no-nonsense, hardworking engineer (which was how she saw herself) until the ESA publicists screamed that her approval ratings had faltered; she was damaging the mission’s visibility on the net; why had she scrubbed her face and who’d told her to wear coveralls instead of dress blues?

  Her race was so insincere. More and more, she valued the sunfish for their frankness. Even when she couldn’t grasp their motives, she knew they were acting in concert with each other.

  “The tribe is already two kilometers down?” she asked.

  “It might be three,” Ben said. “We think their scouts are farther ahead of the main group than normal.”

  “They can’t dig that fast.”

  “They had an escape route. It was covered with enough ice to blur it from our sensors. Then they opened it and ran. They were prepared for this.”

  “But we had a treaty,” she said. “We’ve been feeding them. We were talking.”

  “The sunfish will always quit,” Dawson said. “They can’t accept our superiority. Too many of them are stupid animals, and the matriarchs don’t want the others to overturn their social order with our technology.”

  “Fuck off, Billy.” She made sure she was broadcasting on her public channels to Earth before she spoke. If he wanted to play games, she could play games. Billy was his least favorite diminutive of William. She also didn’t want him to track her next moves.

  As a diversion, cursing at him worked. Dawson called Koebsch. “Administrator, really,” he said. “Miss Vonderach is again subjecting me to her primitive verbal abuse.”

  “Stop it, Von,” Koebsch said.

  “Yes, sir.” She smiled. Her primitive verbal abuse was a crowd pleaser with everyone who’d felt the sting of Dawson’s arrogance. Some of his allies would probably laugh behind his back, too. They weren’t his friends. They were corporate shills who needed his expertise or whack jobs of various political stripes.

  Then her smile faded. I should feel bad for him, she thought. He’s seventy-three and he’s spent his life wrapped up in his own intellect. Never married. No children. How smart is that? Too smart. I don’t want to end up like him, all job, no family. Why can’t I let Ben closer to me?

  Looking at her boyfriend, Vonnie realized how thoroughly she’d grown to expect his support. Believing in him was a fine emotion. She raised a privacy screen to conceal herself from Dawson and touched five coordinates on her map. “You know what I’m thinking, right?”

  “I do.” Ben nodded, but his tone was flirtatious. Marriage jokes were his favorite method of teasing her.

  “We can’t let Dawson find out,” she said.

  “Relax. I made sure he didn’t fox our data/comm when he came inside. Our channels are secure, and Tavares is online if you need her.”

  “I do.” Vonnie grinned mischievously when his mouth fell open in surprise.

  She turned back to her display. Most of the FNEE and ESA crews were present on the group feed. Vonnie wanted to speak with Tavares and O’Neal, but Sergeant Claudia Tavares was the low woman on the Brazilians’ totem pole. Vonnie required Colonel Ribeiro’s permission to talk to her, so she tapped O’Neal’s feed instead. He was in Command Module 01 with Koebsch and Ash.

  “Where do you think the tribe is going?” she asked.

  O’Neal shrugged. “Unknown. Too many possibilities. Koebsch is right that Tom’s body language and his biochemistry seemed to indicate ‘Goodbye.’”

  “Was he reacting to Dawson’s jeep?”

  “Unknown.” In his early fifties, O’Neal was a strapping Irishman with curly rust-brown hair. That was where the caricature ended. Unlike every stereotype of his countrymen, O’Neal had the temperament of a slug. His work thrilled him and he could chat about it for hours, but he was unflappable. His voice rarely lifted above a steady patter.

  Like most of them, he’d earned a pile of degrees. Everyone except Dawson handled multiple jobs since it cost too
much to send three people into space if one genius would do. O’Neal was a biologist/ecologist and assisted in engineering. After a series of crash courses, he’d also become their chief linguist to fill the void left by Pärnits and Collinsworth. That was why Vonnie had called him.

  Reading from a window on her display, she said, “I don’t understand your translation.”

  “Me either,” O’Neal agreed. “Tom used new signs to indicate distance and time apart. Larger distances. Longer times. It doesn’t look good, Von, not with the obvious challenge before he left.”

  “I can’t believe they’d abandon us.”

  “The tribe was ready for him to join them and go. They pulled in their sentries. They sent new scouts ahead. Then they evacuated their eggs and tools. The choreography is breathtaking if you want to study it.”

  Vonnie envied his self-possession. O’Neal said breathtaking like he’d asked her to pass the wine at dinner.

  “Can you tell me what they left behind?” she asked. “Is their home empty or did they leave caches of food? Did they set traps?”

  “Radar shows all four entrances were rigged with deadfalls, then blocked.”

  “That means they’re coming back.”

  “We can’t be certain. Their home is a warm place they could reclaim years from now. The matriarchs might have left it for other tribes to find like a vault. It’s too warm to preserve food or biologics, but trace elements could last for decades. The deadfalls are a test. Sunfish who aren’t smart enough to avoid getting crushed won’t get in.”

  Koebsch joined their conversation. “Look, this is interesting,” he said. “I hope you’re right, but nobody knows what the tribe is doing.”

  “They wouldn’t bother to seal their home if they expected this area to be destroyed,” Vonnie said.