by Jeff Carlson
Down inside the ice, the FNEE mecha crossed into ESA territory. Probe 115 moved with them, then branched away into the catacombs as the surviving ESA spies and Probes 110 and 111 sifted through the ice. They hoped to flush Lam from hiding or to discover his trail.
Near the sunfish colony, the spies registered two flurries of activity — one brief, the other sustained for twelve minutes — but neither was Lam. Both movements were accompanied by sonar calls, and the second included a staccato drumming in the rock. The sunfish were reacting to the mecha invasion.
Other members of the ESA crew appeared on their group feed, indignant and confused.
“Koebsch? Koebsch? Why are there FNEE mecha mixed with our probes!?” Pärnits shouted as O’Neal said, “This goes against everything we’ve accomplished.”
Koebsch shut off access to his station, glancing once at Vonnie. “You explain,” he said. “If they want to haggle, that’s your job. Tell everyone they can monitor our progress if they want, but no one interferes. Frerotte is in control of our spies. I’m in charge of our probes. That’s final.”
Vonnie managed to nod. “Yes, sir.”
I’ve never heard him like this, she thought. He’s flattering with Ribeiro and rude with us. He almost seems like he’s punishing himself, too. Koebsch might agree with Dawson about changing our approach to the sunfish, but he’s loyal to our crew. He hates letting the Brazilians into our grid.
I need to talk to Ash and find out what’s really going on.
The wait was excruciating. Koebsch kept both women at their stations long after Vonnie resolved the progression errors between ESA and FNEE mecha. He made Ash stand by for more file transfers even when Ribeiro said his team was done.
As the FNEE mecha and Probe 115 skittered through the ice, Vonnie worried that a Brazilian gun platform would light up the darkness at any instant, riddling Lam with its 30mm chain guns.
Each of the FNEE war machines looked like a table with eight crab legs and two short-barreled turrets. Ammunition belts sprang from its top in coils sheathed against the cold. The sensor array was small and crude and tucked between the guns. Its legs were sized like those of a sunfish, yet less articulate, with four hinges. Worse, the legs were naked steel and arranged incorrectly in two rows instead of around its circumference. All of these factors would hamper any attempt at communication if the sunfish were unwitting enough to talk to these bulky, jerking mecha, which also carried STAT missile launchers.
A month ago, after erecting their camp, the Brazilians’ statement that they’d deployed the gun platforms for self-defense had been absurd. Gazing through the machines’ sensors made Vonnie want to punch someone — not Koebsch — preferably the bastards on Earth who’d set the ESA/FNEE union in motion.
The gun platforms’ radar was crosshatched by target finding programs that continuously adjusted for range. These were not self-defense mecha. They were weapons.
Vonnie could only try to make sure the gun platforms didn’t mistake 115 for an enemy or key on the movements of the sunfish colony. She advised Tavares again and again as their datastreams jumped. “That’s not the missing probe.”
“Affirmative,” Tavares said.
“These blips here are more sunfish. This is Probe 110. This noise is probably tidal cracking around Gas Vent D-7, but let’s keep tabs on it.”
“Affirmative.”
Three hours later, Koebsch dismissed Vonnie and Ash. He transferred their duties to Gravino, the other member of the crew who wasn’t a biologist or a gene smith. “Thank you for skipping lunch,” Koebsch said. “You must be exhausted. I’ll give you an hour off, but then I want you back again for another three. We need to keep the pressure on until we find Lam.”
“I’d like to stay, sir,” Vonnie said.
“Take a break,” Koebsch said. “Freshen up.”
“The FNEE need help interpreting our signals. They think everything is a target.”
“You did a great job defining our contacts,” Koebsch said. “They know where our mecha are situated and the boundaries of the sunfish colony.”
“But if they—”
“Go.” Koebsch had control of her station. He closed it. “Get out of here. I’ll ping you if something comes up, but this could take all day. Longer. Get some rest. I’ll need you to spell me soon.”
“Yes, sir,” Ash said, tugging at Vonnie’s arm.
The two of them left data/comm for the air lock, where they suited up and went outside.
Ash had a data pad in her leg pocket. She showed it to Vonnie, then cut her fingers at her neck to indicate radio silence.
After they climbed into the jeep, Vonnie tipped her helmet against Ash’s helmet. “What did you find?” she said.
“You were right about Dawson, and I also pilfered some of Koebsch’s orders about the Brazilians,” Ash said. “He doesn’t want to partner with them. He’s under duress.”
“I knew it.”
The jeep drove through camp. Ash craned her neck to gaze through her visor at Vonnie. “Our agreement here with Brazil allows for new talks between us on Earth,” she said. “You have to admit, if we could stop yelling at each other in the A.N., that would be good.”
“It would be good for Earth.”
“Good for everywhere. We don’t need another war. And if there is more fighting, we want Brazil on our side this time — or neutral. Anything to offset the Chinese.”
Vonnie stared at her, unable to hold back any longer. “You set this up from the start,” she said. “We’re going to let them kill Lam just so we can have a job to do together. So we can pretend to be friends.”
“I am your friend,” Ash said.
“Who are you working for? Really?”
“I’m one of the good guys, Von.”
“You used me and Lam. Now the FNEE mecha are getting close to the sunfish. You know the colony will attack. It’s like throwing them into the guns. Dawson will get what he wants.”
“That wasn’t the plan, I swear,” Ash said. “Think about it. If I wanted to capture sunfish, I wouldn’t need Ribeiro’s crew. We brought our own weaponry. There are eight torpedoes and a maser cannon on our ship, and hand weapons in the armory. We’re also packing a quarter ton of excavation charges. If my objective was to take the sunfish by force, I could have made it happen without the Brazilians.”
“Then why, Ash?”
The young woman was characteristically blunt. “We lived in London before the war,” she said. “My parents owned an apartment up the street from my uncle’s house. I had a sister. Three cousins. Only my mom is still alive, and I don’t ever want to see anything like that again.”
The contempt Vonnie felt began to wane. In a more roundabout way, Frerotte had used the same rationale for his support of the ESA/FNEE partnership. Horror, grief, and the desire to keep other people from suffering were noble motivations to serve.
“My job was to make the Chinese look responsible for Lam, then we’d help Brazil,” Ash said. “We thought we’d run a few joint patrols. The main thing is our governments would start talking again.”
“But you underestimated Lam, and you didn’t anticipate Dawson’s influence back home.”
“That’s right.” Ash’s gaze was haunted by the admission. “It’s not about Lam anymore. It’s about the sunfish. Brazil wants access to our site because we found a colony. We want them to do the dirty work so our hands are clean. A rogue AI is the perfect excuse. The point is to make any fighting with the sunfish look like an accident.”
“Collateral damage,” Vonnie said. “That’s what they called London and Paris.”
“I…”
“You screwed up. The sunfish are innocent exactly like those civilian populations.” She was being harder on Ash than she’d been with Frerotte, but she thought Ash would rise to the challenge.
She was mistaken.
“I fulfilled my orders,” Ash said. “It’s better this way. Brazil’s gene smithing programs are crap like their cybern
etics. They need us. We need them. If we can establish a science program to develop the sunfish DNA together, we’ll have a long-term investment in each other. We can bring them to our side.”
“What about the families you’ll kill?”
“They’re aliens, Von. People come first. Why can’t you see that? I want to save people first. I’ll always save people first.”
Ash leaned back, pulling her helmet from Vonnie’s. It was an effective way to have the last word, but Vonnie rocked forward in her seat. Trying to catch Ash’s gaze, she realized that during their conversation, Ash had drawn her data pad from her leg pocket. Had she intended to share Dawson’s files? If so, she seemed to have changed her mind. Ash gripped the data pad in both hands, turning her body to protect it, and Vonnie worried that she’d lost Ash as a friend.
Everything’s coming to a head, she thought. Ribeiro. Dawson. Ash. Lam.
Is it still possible for me to protect the sunfish?
39.
The jeep slowed near Lander 04, and Vonnie looked at the sky. As an astronaut, she was accustomed to feeling satisfaction for the spacecraft overhead and grudging acceptance for the spy satellites. One came with the other. The need to guard against opposing nations was a fact of life.
Now we’re importing all of our problems to this world, she thought. And yet without those problems, humankind wouldn’t have traveled so far into the solar system.
They weren’t angels. They were apes. It was mutual suspicion and the hunger for power that drove their species to new technologies. Every advancement in spaceflight had been steeped in an arms race. Germany’s rockets in World War II begat the Soviet sputniks, which begat the American moon landings, which begat the ICBM standoff between NATO and the USSR, which led to a renaissance in global communications.
Briefly, there was peace. But the eyes in the sky continued to improve, aiding the technological nations in a hundred brush wars against men who used caves for fortresses and waged terror attacks on non-military targets to remain relevant.
The eyes combed the globe for patterns and clues. The ears listened. Smart bombs, drones, and robots entered the world’s battlefields as humankind’s first artificial intelligences.
The chess board of today’s political backdrop had started with another Cold War between East and West. Even before their third revolution, the People’s Republic of China had been on a path to usurp America as Earth’s foremost superpower.
In 2028, a military coup reversed China’s gains in freedom and democracy, channeling its economic might inward, then upward. In 2031, the People’s Supreme Society sent a mission to Mars as a stunt, beating Europe and America to the red planet. More significant, they’d constructed a permanent station in low Earth orbit as a launch facility for their Mars craft.
Within five years, there were two stations. Within ten, there were six. They also built a Lunar outpost.
Beijing paid top salaries for Asia’s scientists, bringing its sharpest minds into their heartland. They bought cheap labor in Thailand and Kampucheah. They won their border conflicts with Vietnam, then rotated their best generals, techs, and shock troops into orbit.
Old treaties mandated that space must stay free of nuclear weapons, but warheads were unnecessary to disturb the balance on Earth. From orbit, a dumb, simple chunk of iron could act as a missile. It needed to be meticulously aimed, but it could deliver the same yield as a nuke without radioactive fallout.
The debt-ridden Western nations couldn’t leave China alone in space. They screamed for more laws. They passed new sanctions and denouncements. In time, they ejected China from the United Nations — yet they had no choice except to follow the People’s Supreme Society up from Earth’s surface.
The race to claim Earth’s high ground included new developments in quantum computing and artificial intelligence, which led in turn to long-awaited breakthroughs in cold fusion. Green economies created surpluses in the West.
Meanwhile the world’s computer systems continued to grow and transform. Feinting at each other, stealing codes, infecting their enemies and being infected, they made each other smarter.
In space, Europe and America were pulling even with the People’s Supreme Society when Chinese SCPs stuttered through their defenses, turning off the lights and freezing their missiles in their silos. It was meant to be a death stroke: a one-minute war. Instead, American memes returned the favor, masking Chinese data/comm with false signals.
Both sides opened fire.
Too many missiles went for soft targets.
On Earth, seven hundred and fifty thousand people were vaporized because the AIs thwarted each other, muddling the coordinates for military installations with electronic umbrellas. They routed their weapons toward less-protected sites to chew away at each other’s capabilities.
On the outskirts of the cities, another two million people were blinded and maimed by the fireballs. Neither side won World War III. The armistice led to the creation of the new Allied Nations and the promise to keep war from Earth forever, but it was the West that had absorbed the most devastating losses. The People’s Supreme Society remained the leading force in the solar system, reining in allies like Iran and Brazil.
Vonnie supposed the current political climate was another reason Bauman had won her role as commander of their expedition. The Americans, like Europe, were desperate for any gain in status, whereas the Chinese probably felt that chasing bugs was beneath them. Until they’d discovered the carvings, China had graciously permitted lesser nations to lead the science team in exchange for a bit of international goodwill.
Ash would have been a baby during the missile strikes. She couldn’t possibly have personal memories of her lost family members, although from what she’d said, she’d grown up in their absence with a grieving mother.
In her soul, maybe she was looking for something she’d never known. Likely her formative emotions as a child had been survivor’s guilt and anger. That explained how Ash could be obsessed with politics instead of seeing what was right in front of her, and yet Vonnie refused to give up on their relationship.
The jeep parked. Vonnie clunked their helmets together. “We’re working for the same thing,” she said.
Ash was confrontational. “I don’t think so.”
“We both want to protect people.”
“Being buddies with the sunfish isn’t important. Not compared to national security.”
“They’re part of our future.”
Ash scoffed in Vonnie’s face. “You want to make them citizens? You really are crazy.”
“Don’t be stupid. The sunfish couldn’t handle Earth gravity. We’re not bringing them home. But you can’t ignore them. The sunfish won’t disappear because you’ve got your truce with Brazil, and you don’t want China to build allegiances with the tribes first — not if that puts China ahead of us in bioresearch.”
Ash paused. She frowned and said, “I’m listening.”
“We’re behind the curve on finding Europan lifeforms, not just sunfish, but everything else that should be in the ecosystem. China didn’t blow the hell out of their zone like Brazil did. That noise affected our territory, too. Now Brazil’s mecha are closing in. Our sunfish are on the move. If they don’t run, they’ll attack.”
“That means we’ll have our tissue samples.”
“But it’s a one-time gain. What if there are other, more useful species farther down in the ice? The sunfish could be our guides. They could defend our probes. Christ, if they were willing participants, they could teach us everything we want to know about their life cycle.”
“We…” Ash glanced at her lap, then looked up with new resolve. “You should see Dawson’s mem files. There are three aspects of sunfish physiology that are particularly viable.”
“I believe you. That doesn’t mean we should give up on communicating with them.”
“It’s too late to call off the FNEE mecha.”
“What if I find Lam?”
“Ca
n you? I changed him, Von. If you wrote any back doors into his programming, those codes probably won’t function anymore.”
Shit, Vonnie thought. She’d intended to alter her kill codes to act as slavecasts, compelling Lam to quit hiding. They could track his signals, pick him up and extract him before he — or the Brazilians — went deeper into the ice.
“I want you on our side,” Ash said. “The FNEE incursion is going to happen, but maybe we can minimize the danger to the sunfish. They respect strength. You said so yourself. A few of them will get hurt, but the rest might stop and listen. You can help us.”
Us, Vonnie marveled. Ash, Koebsch, and Dawson were all on the same side now.
She couldn’t fight everyone. She thought Pärnits and Metzler were with her. They were the pure scientists, but the rest of the crew were likely more interested in developing their partnership with Brazil or in securing the genetic material of the sunfish. Those interests made for strange bedfellows.
If Vonnie didn’t want to find herself without any clout whatsoever, she needed to bargain with Ash, so she stiffened her voice with just the right blend of reluctance and disdain.
“I’ll help you if you help me,” she said. “I want to know what Dawson wants.”
“You can’t stop him.”
“I know.” Had she spoken too fast? To convince Ash, she added, “If there’s any chance of saving the sunfish, I need a better feel for what kind of tissue samples he wants, which sexes, how many different individuals, et cetera.”
“Okay.” Ash studied Vonnie’s eyes. Then she looked at her data pad and activated it, unlocking several files before her index finger traced backwards abruptly.
Did she delete one? Vonnie thought.
“I don’t have all of his files,” Ash said. “Some were too well encrypted even for me, but listen to what he says, Von. Really listen.”
“All right.”
“If you’re honest with yourself, I think you’ll realize Dawson’s heart is in the right place.”
“Dawson’s heart is a bank account.”
“He’ll be rich and famous, absolutely,” Ash said as she held up the data pad. “He’s also going to do a lot of good things for people. Our people.”
