Shiplord: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 3)

by Felix R. Savage

  But he couldn’t say that out loud, or Jack would think he was trying to be some kind of badass. He glanced at Alexei, hoping the Russian would say it for him. No such luck. Alexei held his tongue, clearly unwilling to pass a death sentence on his old friends.

  “Well, I’d better get to work on this,” Skyler muttered, turning his attention to the file of instructions.

  “And we’ve got to get to work on the sunshade,” Jack said to Alexei.

  “Sunshade?” Skyler said.

  “For our parabolic swing around the sun!” Alexei said, grinning.

  “Parabolic swing around the sun?” Skyler said. “What happened to Venus?”

  “Right,” Jack said. “I must have forgotten to mention it. I, ah, thought of a way to shave two months off our travel time. So, yeah. We’ll be rigging a sunshade!”

  “Um. How?”

  “Vapor deposition.” Jack’s eyes sparkled.

  “Use the plastic bags that had the water in them for a mold,” Alexei said. “Cut it in half and double it.”

  “Too bad we can’t put anything in between the layers,” Jack said. “It would be nice for ions that hit the first layer to have time to decay before hitting the second layer.”

  “Foamed lead would do it.”

  “What lead? All the mass we have is either structural, edible, or electrical.”

  Nothing got these two pumped up like the prospect of death-defying maneuvers. Skyler listened to them argue for a few minutes. Then he broke in. “Guys. We have to decide what do about the Victory crew.”

  Jack sighed, clearly wishing the problem would just go away. “They’re in the main hab. Got a couple of the Krijistal guarding them. I suppose that’ll do for the time being.”

  “So they get to kick back and guzzle our food and water for the next five months—”

  “Three months.”

  “That’ll really teach them a lesson,” Skyler said sarcastically.

  “Yeah.” Jack grimaced. “Uh, we could make them clean the toilets?”

  *

  Driving out from Miami-Dade, Flaherty’s convoy got held up at three separate roadblocks. Brothers with nines tucked into their warm-ups searched every vehicle and patted everyone down, even Flaherty. A hundred bucks in crumpled greenbacks for every twenty miles of road. The Secret Service paid up. They were trying to keep a low profile.

  In the new Republic of Florida, an armored SUV and a pair of Humvees did not attract as much attention as you might expect. Burnt-out cars littered the shoulder. If you travelled by highway in Florida these days, you travelled with a shotgun on the passenger seat, and preferably a couple of guys manning the sub-machine gun in the bed of your pick-up. The President of the United States on a diplomatic visit barely registered.

  But once they got past the final checkpoint, outside the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, everything changed. The Air Force had left Cape Canaveral after independence. The Camp Eternal Light Limited (CELL) consortium had taken over. New space-themed murals adorned the buildings, and hybrid cars filled the parking lots. The last Whole Foods in Florida, probably, occupied the former PX. The base had become a residential campus for CELL employees, as if Google had picked up and moved to Cape Canaveral, which wasn’t that surprising as many of these people used to work in the cocooned world of high-tech. Flaherty wondered how long their private security would keep out the rising tide of lawlessness. Even odds, he thought, whether the dam broke, or the Lightbringer got here first.

  They drove over the speed bumps and into a traffic jam behind a rocket in its upright position, mounted on a crawler. The rocket inched along ICBM Road at five miles an hour until it turned off towards one of the launch pads along the water. Traffic spilled out of the bottleneck and dispersed to the other launch pads. More rockets reared up from behind the trees like futuristic church steeples, pricking the cloudless winter sky.

  You had to hand it to CELL. If these guys had been in charge of the American space program, we would’ve had cities on the moon by now, men on Mars. Liberated from federal safety regulations and reporting requirements, CELL had pushed their launch tempo to an average of five launches per day.

  Not all of those launches went up from Cape Canaveral, of course. CELL also controlled the former ESA facility of Kourou, the former military launch sites on the West Coast, and the pay-to-play pads at Baikonur. They’d get the New Hope sea launch facility, too, now that Texas had declared independence.

  Stepping out of his SUV, Flaherty smelled a heady blend of sea air and rocket fuel. As time got shorter, CELL seemed to be pushing even harder, racing the calendar. The frantic atmosphere of haste contrasted with the methodical, by-the-numbers pace he remembered from NASA launches. Ground techs swarmed over the scaffold cradling a 300-foot rocket in the middle of the pad. Fuel tankers idled in line to unload into the underground tanks. Geeks strode around barking into headsets. Amidst this organized chaos, bewigged Partiers queued for the Portapotties and milled around food trucks selling tacos and pho. It was clearly not possible to keep the freaks out entirely, given that CELL had grown out of the Earth Party and relied to this day on its goodwill. If the base ain’t happy … well, a drone could take out a CELL rocket just as easily as a NASA one. Flaherty smirked to himself, relishing the pickle his enemies were in.

  “Passenger terminal’s over there,” said Kuldeep, consulting his phone. “That’s gotta be it.”

  Before they got there, James Coetzee intercepted them, flanked by aides in chinos and headsets. They did the good to see you thing. “Nice launch facility you got here,” Flaherty said. Translation: we still got the airpower to bomb this place to shit if we feel like it. Coetzee smiled cynically. In fact, the very fact he’d emerged from his bat-cave to greet Flaherty confirmed that CELL was still nervous about American airpower. Coetzee was CELL’s biggest shareholder. The rocket towering overhead bore the logo of his aerospace company.

  The wind blew the smell of kerosene over them. Flaherty scratched his ribs. Coetzee said, “This flight is scheduled to take off at twenty-three hundred. Two stages to LEO, rendezvous with Sky Station scheduled for tomorrow.”

  Sky Station was the space station assembled in orbit by CELL to support its moon supply flights. It made the old ISS look like a tin can, just as the CELL consortium made the old SoD consortium look like a prototype.

  “The passengers will relax and acclimatize,” Coetzee continued, “and then board the moon shuttle. They’ll be settling into their new homes at Camp Eternal Light one week from today.” He paused, and then spiked the ball. “You’re more than welcome to accompany them, Mr. President.”

  Flaherty grinned. “Surprised to see you’re still here yourself, James. How much longer you planning to stick around?”

  “I’m a big believer in hands-on management,” Coetzee smoothly evaded the question.

  “Until the squid-heads realize you’re fucking them over?”

  “I’m more worried about the crypto-fascist gangsters running Miami,” Coetzee said.

  “You should be more worried about your own base. Some day soon they’re gonna wake up and realize the 0.001% is bailing on the movement.”

  The nearer the Lightbringer came to Earth, the more obvious it became—to Flaherty, anyway—that the shotgun marriage between Big Tech and the Earth Party was headed for the rocks. The tech guys, the aerospace moguls, and the celebrities had no intention of hanging out with the masses in Times Square to await the coming of the squids. They were running away.

  Flaherty threw out a question that had been on his mind for a long time. “Did you ever really believe the squids were coming to save us? Or was it just the excuse you needed to ramp up your private space program?”

  “It isn’t a question of belief, Mr. President. I deal in facts. And that offer stands, if you would like to avail yourself of it.”

  Flaherty shook his head, losing interest in the conversation as they neared the passenger terminal. His mind filled with the deeply unpleasant d
uty he had come here to carry out. On the other side of the world, his Russian counterpart was doing the same thing at Baikonur.

  The passenger terminal was in fact a bus, where the passengers who would travel in the capsule atop this rocket would receive their final safety briefings and suit up for the trip. Kuldeep said, “Can I just go in?”

  Coetzee sent a couple of his aides with Kuldeep, no doubt assuming that the American officials had come to see ‘their’ passengers off in person. Goddamn, when the asshole found out the truth, he was going to gloat like a banker who just foreclosed on his worst enemy’s house. But there was no way to stop him from finding out. Anyway, their working relationship demanded disclosure. Like it or not, the United States and CELL needed each other, like estranged family who still shared a home.

  “How’s your supply chain doing?” Flaherty said, instinctively looking for something he could beat Coetzee with.

  “Amazingly solid,” Coetzee claimed, with a rare grimace. Flaherty filed that away. As a future bargaining chip, he could offer CELL production time at the few factories in American-held territory capable of manufacturing rocket boosters. Then he caught himself. Future? The future was only 70 days long. CELL wasn’t even manufacturing first stages anymore. Just throw them up, land them, refurbish them, repeat until they break.

  He glanced up at the pale winter sky, in the nervous gesture that had become universal among all humans, rich and poor.

  “How’s it going with that secondary build at Shackleton?” he said, for something to say.

  Why ask? Coetzee reeled off a canned press release. Everything was great, it was amazing, he was so proud of the CELL team. While he was in the middle of that, Kuldeep came back down the steps of the bus, herding a group of individuals with backpacks.

  Flaherty quickly walked over to them. “Hello, folks. I guess you didn’t expect to see us again so soon.”

  They gazed at him, nervous as hell. He took a moment to go over their details in his mind.

  Stephen Sheridan, NASA researcher, and Rufus Moskowitz-Sheridan, age seven. Stephen held the kid’s shoulders in a reassuring grip, but it looked like the son was supporting the father, not the other way round.

  Naoyuki and Yurika Masuoka—Flaherty mentally congratulated himself on remembering those, and remembering furthermore that Naoyuki, Koichi Masuoka’s elder brother, was a materials scientist. The old lady, Fumiyo, was Koichi’s mother. At 81, she would have been the oldest person to travel to Camp Eternal Light. Two teenagers stood silently beside Naoyuki and Yurika. He couldn’t remember their names, dammit.

  “Folks, I have very sad news for you today, and there’s no easy way to say this.” As he spoke the next words, he was more aware of Coetzee hovering than of the civilians whose lives he was about to destroy. “The Victory mission has failed.”

  Stephen Sheridan blustered denials: no, it’s not possible, Linda never fails at anything she sets out to do …

  The Japanese family just seemed to cave in on themselves, like the petals of a flower folding.

  Coetzee and his people took over, as Flaherty had maybe subconsciously hoped they’d do, so he wouldn’t have to confront the devastated family members alone. They wanted confirmation of the Victory mission’s failure. Technical details. Data data data.

  Kuldeep said, “The ships are hundreds of millions of miles away. We don’t know what happened. What we have is a long transmission from Skyler Taft in which he threatened to kill our astronauts. If the mission had succeeded, he would’ve been dead. Draw your own conclusions.”

  “You said it was a sure thing,” Naoyuki Masuoka said in precise, accusatory English.

  “What else were we gonna say?”

  Linda Moskowitz’s son squeezed between the grownups towards Flaherty. His hair stood up in slept-on cowlicks. He had a chocolate-milk mustache. “Mr. President? Is my mom dead?”

  Flaherty had sent the instructions for disabling the malware to the SoD. He therefore believed Linda was still alive, because he believed Skyler, moral compass or no moral compass, was too well-brought-up to break his word. But it was all belief. He had criticized Richard Burke in the past for treating his hunches as facts. Now he was the one falling back on hunches and hope, while Coetzee smugly bragged about living in a world of facts. The shoe was on the other foot.

  He managed to smile at the child. “Your mom’s doing fine, Rufus. She’ll be coming home real soon.”

  The kid didn’t know any better than to be reassured. The sweetest grin transformed his face. Flaherty rocked, hands in pockets, thinking, Strike me down now, Lord.

  Kuldeep said, “Unfortunately, this means we’re required to cancel your trip to the moon at this time.”

  CELL personnel were already collecting the launch pad lanyards from around the family members’ necks. No SoD? No alien shuttle? No smart materials, advanced 3D printing technology, or fusion reactor? Deal’s off. Take a powder.

  “You folks got lucky, in my own opinion,” Flaherty said to the families. “These bottle rockets ain’t the least bit safe.”

  Hefting backpacks, the Secret Service got the family members moving towards the presidential convoy.

  “You’re coming with us to someplace that’s really safe,” Flaherty assured them. “So safe I can’t even tell you where it is yet.”

  James Coetzee walked along with them. He murmured in Flaherty’s ear, “The offer still stands.”

  Flaherty turned on him. “You got seven empty seats on that rocket.” He flung out an arm, indicating the gaggle of squid-heads eating pho on the grass beyond the Portapotties. “I recommend you offer ‘em to those guys.”

  They got into the SUVs and drove away from the end of the world, back to America.

  CHAPTER 33

  The sun is hot.

  About five and a half thousand degrees on the surface.

  Even when it reaches Mercury, the sun’s light is still hot enough to melt lead. If you put the Statue of Liberty down on Mercury’s surface, by noon you’d have a swimming-pool.

  The SoD’s hull is made of steel, so’s the Victory’s; the Cloudeater is made of tougher stuff but it’s not highly heat-resistant. Why would it be? It wasn’t built to go anywhere near a star. Nor were we, for that matter.

  Steel loses half its rated strength at 700° C.

  So we’re using aluminum for the SoD’s sunshade. Higher thermal conductivity, you know—

  Actually, Jack was just using it because they’d got it.

  Those chopped-up seat frames kept on coming in handy.

  Broken down in the Cloudeater’s upcycler, reformed into slugs of pure aluminum, vaporized by tireless rriksti striking arcs between pairs of them, the seat frames designed by military decorators on Imf now formed a 60-meter aluminum bubble floating ahead of the SoD on tethers. On Earth, manufacturers built expensive vacuum chambers for vapor deposition. Out here? All the vacuum you could want, for free. Plastic bags pieced together made a fine mould. That said, the bubble was uneven and not exactly spherical. Good enough? It’d have to be.

  They cut the bubble in half. Maneuvered one half inside the other. Then someone had to crawl in between the two halves, putting in spacers. Jack volunteered. He wanted to check the thickness of the bubble for himself.

  In between the two curving sheets of metal, in total darkness, his feeling of being trapped came back, stronger than ever. Trapped in himself, trapped in this shoddy gizmo, trapped on a vector that would take them insanely close to the sun.

  He touched his rosary through his suit. Am I really going to do this? Am I doing the right thing, or just taking a stupid risk?

  No reassurances popped into his mind, divine or otherwise. Instead, he thought of Keelraiser. What will happen if I do this?

  Nothing. They’d agreed on that, hadn’t they? Nothing had happened and nothing was going to happen. For one thing they were both too busy trying to keep everyone alive.

  His face heated up. His skin tingled with pins-and-needles. His feet
seemed to be going numb.

  What am I going to do with Grigory, Koichi, and Linda? Skyler thinks I should kill them. He didn’t have to say it out loud. He’s probably right. But … but …

  A voice spoke in Jack’s head then. It sounded just like his dad. “Thou shalt not kill. Is that so hard to understand?”

  Jack cringed. Yes, I know, he argued silently. But … but … they’re a problem. I’ve got too many problems already. It would be easier to just make them go away. Skyler would give me cover. Giles would approve. Alexei would hate me for it, but … but …

  “NO,” his dad’s voice said.

  Jack shuddered. Fear washed over him. Eyes wide open in the darkness, gloves splayed against the aluminum roof, he floated immobile until it passed.

  *

  Giles’s laptop displayed ECNN—the Earth Central News Network. A fifty-mile tailback of RVs and pickups clogged a winding road somewhere in the Rockies. Volume was muted. The only sounds in the kitchen tent were plastic forks scraping on plates, and the occasional soft noise as one man or the other set his cup down.

  Alexei watched Jack in between bites. Jack did not look up from his food. The bright light in the kitchen picked out the gray in his hair. He looked more than usually haggard.

  At last Alexei spoke. “Sorry.”

  Jack looked up. “It’s OK,” he said, chewing. He swallowed and half-smiled. “We were getting too attached to the damn fish, anyway.”

  Two days previously, Grigory and Linda had made a second sabotage attempt. No malware required. They had been ordered to unclog the settling tanks of the sewage system—a revolting task that normally fell to Giles as part of his life-support duties. You had to stick your head inside a cabinet in the wall and stir the supercrap, as Giles called it, that had been around the back of the bioshield and gotten sterilized, but smelled no sweeter for it. It needed to be done often with 300 people on board, but Giles never complained. Jack had seen an opportunity to give him a break by making Grigory do it instead. Linda had volunteered to help. Alexei had volunteered to watch them.