“I was just asking him what he’s going to do with his stuff.”
She does know, she doesn’t know, she does, she must. Otherwise, whence this inexplicable interest in my “stuff”?
I was going to put my dragon egg into an Alsatian. That was my brilliant idea.
I know, I’ve known for years, that I have to get rid of the egg before it talks me into doing something terrible. But I also know it won’t be easy to get rid of an object—a living object—that has survived 160 years underground and 16 years in my possession. One time I was in a car crash on my way home from university. I searched the roadside with blood running down my face, cutting my hands on the smithereens of the other cars in the pile-up, until I found the egg in a thornbush, not a scratch on the freaking thing. I think it’s pretty near indestructible. So smashing it is out … not that I could bring myself to do that, anyway.
Discarding it on Earth, also out. Someone else would just end up finding it again, and I couldn’t bear that. If I can’t have it, I don’t want anyone else to have it, either.
Discarding it on Leda, same problem squared.
The only sure, safe way to get rid of it is to discard it in space.
When Francie and Patrick asked me to work on the Alsatian code, I thought I saw how to do it. Their regiment, the 6th Sappers, has lots of Alsatians. They wouldn’t miss one. And it just so happens that the Alsatian has a spare battery compartment the right size for the egg. Tuck it in there, close the compartment, bork the lid so it can’t be opened—five minutes’ work with a screwdriver and a soldering iron; then program the Alsatian to go feral on its next trip into deep space. Cold shutdown, transponder off, destination Pluto, which now orbits 80 AUs from the dark cinder of the sun. No one would ever see it again.
Well, the Offense might find it. Their ships stalk the darkness beyond Jupiter, as far out as Saturn (now 17 AUs from the ex-sun). And they’re certainly good at finding our patrols. It’s not unthinkable that they would pick up a drifting mecha. But they don’t like Void Dragons any more than we do. They’d destroy the egg. (I’m sure they would know how.) Then I wouldn’t have to.
That was my great plan.
But pretty much as soon as I arrived at the test facility, I realized it wasn’t going to work. They never leave me alone with the hardware. I naïvely thought I’d be working on the mecha, like I worked on my robot dragonflies in university: just me, my computer, and parts all over the lab bench. Bliss. But that isn’t how they roll in the military. You have your hardware guys and you have your software guys and never the twain shall meet, even if people are dying on account of flawed system integrations. It’s like I said to Bolt: silos.
So here I am, in the same underground complex as a hundred Alsatians, and I’m not cleared to go near them, let alone attack them with a screwdriver.
I stare into my beer as the squaddies argue about football.
I’m failing at my job, I’m no closer to getting rid of the egg, and Francie hates me.
Reflected fairy lights wobble.
Patrick’s huge hand falls on my arm. “Hey, Scatter.”
This is my new nickname, courtesy of the squad. They leave the “good” off. Wiser than they know.
“How much stuff you got with you?”
Again with the bizarre interest in my stuff. Now Patrick’s at it. What the heck?
“I mean in kilos,” he clarifies.
“Uh. Not that much?”
“Kilos, K, G, man.”
I make a wild guess. “Fifty?”
Patrick makes a sad face. “That’s way, way too much. The max allowance is twenty. And they’re gonna make you throw away whatever you can’t take. So you better decide what you really need.”
“Wait. Wait. Take where? Where am I going?”
To jail for possessing a dragon egg, says my paranoia, and it must show on my face, because Patrick roars with laughter. “Into space, numbnuts.” He manages to make this sound like an endearment. “Didn’t Francie tell you? Change of plan. We’re going to run the next tests in live situations. They think maybe the problem is our dummy mines, they aren’t close enough copies, something like that. So we’re gonna try out your upgrades in the field.”
“That’s not the problem,” I say, while I’m marvelling at the military euphemisms he uses unselfconsciously. Live situations. The field. What a way to talk about going nose to nose with the Offense in deep space. I feel a liquid clenching sensation in my bowels.
“Well, anyway, they want to try it.” Patrick shrugs. “So weigh your stuff and get the seals from the quartermaster’s office. We’re deploying in two days.”
“When—when did you find out about this?”
“Today after we got back.” He grimaces. “Told you if you hung out with us tonight, you might get a fresh perspective.”
Francie leans over. She’s had a lot of beer and her eyes are glassy. “You’re not scared, are you, Scatter? You look kind of scared. Actually, you look like you’re shitting yourself.”
“Oh, stop ragging on him,” Patrick roars.
The table goes quiet then, as they remember that this is an incredibly scary thing they do, that one or all of them might not make it back alive, that the only difference between them and me is their fragile, courageous pose of not giving a damn. I have spoiled their game of let’s-pretend. I’m the wolf lolloping in at the door. The Ghost of Abject Terror.
I take a deep breath, force a smile. “So, do they have sick bags on these minesweepers …?”
4
They do not.
I throw up four times in the first 24 hours. I knew this was going to happen, because I puked on the voyage out to Leda, too. They say it’s something to do with adapting to different gravitational forces—1 G on Earth, 0.5 Gs of artificial gravity on your typical spaceship, the transition messes you up—but I was fine on the surface of Leda, when we were trekking back and forth between 0.7 Gs in the test facility and micro-gravity outside.
I think it’s just that I don’t get along with spaceships.
This one, the minesweeper Tancred, doesn’t even have artificial gravity except on the bridge and in the berths. I lurk in my berth, which I share with Milosz, for our first week out, because it’s easier to clean up puke from the floor than when it’s floating in the air. Milosz is really nice about it, and brings me microwaved foilpacks of bouillon.
When I finally venture forward, we’re three million klicks from Leda, burning through the Jovian Belt.
Jupiter hasn’t always had an asteroid belt of its own. It had seventy-ish small moons in addition to the Big Four, but now it has millions of satellites, ranging from the size of a teacup to 624 Hektor, which is 400 kilometers long. When the Void Dragon ate the sun, it consumed 68 percent of its mass. Everything spiraled further out as the sun’s gravitational field weakened. Imagine our solar system expanding like a balloon being inflated. The relative locations of solar system bodies would have stayed the same. But in the midst of this, we dragged Earth out to Jupiter, and because Earth is a massive body in its own right, and it was preceded by an artificial gravity point, it dragged some of the asteroid belt along with it.
On top of that, the artificial gravity point we cast into Jupiter’s core increased the size of its Hill sphere—the region where its gravity rules supreme—from 0.36 AUs to 0.71 AUs. As a result, it captured a bunch of its former trojans, plus more asteroids whose orbits had been perturbed by Earth’s transit.
What this means for the minesweeper Tancred, and me, is that there are thousands of places out here for the Offense to hide.
I visit the bridge and watch asteroids with numbers but no names float across the big screen in front of the pilot.
“It’s not to scale,” the pilot says. “These rocks are millions of klicks away.”
I appreciate the reassurance, although I’m not sure that’s how he means it. “Can we see Beachy Head yet?”
Beachy Head: the name given by the squad to Jovian Satellite
38759, our destination, a 2-klick radius rock where the Navy wants to set up a surveillance outpost. The squaddies take it in turns to name “their” rocks. This was Paul’s pick. Apparently, Beachy Head is where he comes from on Earth.
The pilot laughs at me, not unkindly. “Another week.”
It’s very quiet on the bridge. The pilot must get bored. The Tancred has only two crewpersons: the pilot and co-pilot, who alternate 12-hour shifts. Sheer monotony, and yet we’re travelling through unsecured space, among asteroids that may be crawling with Offense for all we know. It’s possible—likely—that no humans have travelled this way since the war began.
A red line like a windscreen wiper swishes back and forth across the screen, representing our tight-beam radar, which can supposedly find objects as small as an orange. It pauses. Wobbles. A beep sounds.
The pilot stretches out a languid forefinger and presses a button.
A green flash irradiates the screen. The radar goes back to traversing our path.
“What was that?”
The pilot gives me a funny look. “A mine.”
“What did you just do?”
“Vaporized it with the CO2 laser.”
I leave the bridge with mixed emotions. I have just seen my first Offense mine. I wish it could always be that easy. I want to go home.
But since I’m here, I cannot pass up the opportunity to implement my grand plan.
We have five Alsatians on board. It should be easy for me to get a few minutes alone with them.
Should be; isn’t!
The squad are solicitous of me, as if I’ve been at death’s door, not just space-sick. They go out of their way to include me in their cook-offs (mixing and matching packets out of MREs), workout challenges, and Go Fish tournaments. I can’t even make the excuse that I’ve got to work, because, as predicted, I wasn’t allowed to bring my computer. I was told I could use the ship’s computer if I needed to. But the terminal is in the common area, and the others are always queueing up to watch movies on it—which is all that the antique piece of crap is good for.
And as the days pass, I go from feeling cranky and unmoored to taking each day as it comes. I waste hours shooting the shit with Patrick, Paul, and Dilip. I watch movies. I even help to invent a new variant of zero-gee basketball, played with a ball of socks and a helmet for the hoop. Is this how the others experience life? Slipping easily in and out of immersion in whatever activity offers itself, killing time without guilt? If so, I’m beginning to understand how they cope with the war. And I’m envious of them.
I wake up on Day 16 of our deployment to realize that I’ve been slacking off. We’re there, we will reach Beachy Head in a few hours, and I haven’t done anything to implement my grand plan at all.
In the corridor, I pass Noob Two creeping to the head. All the others are in the common area, checking their gear. I don’t have to check my gear, because I will not be leaving the Tancred when we reach our destination. I continue on, past the galley and down to the cargo hold.
The Tancred is so small that the cargo hold doubles as the gym. Resistance training machines and a treadmill at one end. The Alsatians at the other end. They lie on their sides, neatly lashed down, in the workshop area where Patrick painstakingly took me through the steps of breaking down and reassembling a rifle. That was torture, and not just because I’m no good with guns. The Alsatians were right there but I didn’t dare touch them.
Now, for the first time, I am alone in the hold. I can hear the voices of the others overhead. Sound carries through the ventilation ducts. It sounds like they’re fully occupied with their duties, but at any moment one of them may come down to retrieve some piece of kit.
I’d better work fast.
I free the top Alsatian and strap it to the workbench. Its legs sprawl limply in freefall. I use the power screwdriver to open both battery compartments, the main and the backup. I remove the cover over the primary printed circuit board, too. If I get caught I will say I’m double-checking the wiring.
I brought my egg with me. Feet securely wedged into the tethers in front of the workbench, I wiggle it out of my waistband. I had it in my underpants. I’m wearing an extra-long t-shirt to hide what must have looked like a joke codpiece. Yeah, life with a dragon egg is a laugh a minute. I test the fit in the backup battery compartment.
It looks dead in there, like a lump of green stone, its lustre dulled by the cruel lighting.
There’s too much room around the sides. It might rattle. Packing material, packing material …
When Patrick was walking me through Rifle Maintenance 101, he used a soft cloth to wipe the cleaning rod. I find the cloth in a junk drawer. I tuck my egg up in it, as gently as if I’m putting a baby to bed. But this bed is dirty and smells of solvent, and will soon be cast into hard vacuum.
I can’t do this.
My eyes well up.
Don’t be a goddamn pussy, Scattergood.
I stroke the egg tenderly with one finger. Then I replace the battery compartment cover, jamming the screwdriver viciously against the screws, purposely jarring my sore knuckles. I can hardly see what I’m doing for the tears in my eyes, and I don’t see Francie floating across the hold until she’s right in front of me.
“Eeeyowp,” I yell, or something like that.
“What’re you doing, Scatter?” Her tone is unfriendly.
The Alsatian’s circuit board is still exposed. I’ve got a bunch of tools out, stuck to the magnetic holder on the bench. To my own eyes, it looks suspicious as hell. I mutter, “I was checking the wiring.”
“Yeah? Well, put it back together. You need to check your suit and sign out a weapon and ammo.”
“Me … weapon … ammo?” My jaw drops.
“Noob Two is sick. She’s running a fever.”
“She was fine this morning—”
“You can give yourself a fever by injecting a large dose of steroids.” Francie slaps the Alsatian’s blast shield, as if she wishes it were Noob Two. “Anyway, we aren’t allowed to deploy under-strength. So you’ll just have to put on a suit and get out there. Don’t worry,” she adds, as she pushes off from the workbench and flies away, “you won’t have to actually do anything.”
Two hours later, I am tumbling headfirst out of the Tancred’s airlock, getting my rifle (actually, Noob Two’s rifle) tangled up with my legs.
Patrick, last to exit, catches me and stalls my spin. “Just hang out here,” he says. “You’ll be fine.”
Desperate not to screw up, I do exactly as he said. I hang beneath the belly of the Tancred, tethered to the ship by a cable that undulates with my movements in the void.
The others have already untethered. They fan out, propelled by the cold-gas jets on their mobility units.
The Tancred is holding position 500 meters above Beachy Head. It looks like Leda down there, but dimmer. Rounded hills, soft-edged craters, as if the asteroid had been tumbled in the sea. That’s solar weathering. The gentle topography of Beachy Head, and all its sister asteroids, stands as a memorial to Sol. Our sun shone peacefully for 4.6 billion years, not bothering anybody. Until a Void Dragon came along and ate it. For the first time, I feel a sharp stab of rage at the creature that stole our sun before I was born. How dare it?!?
I peer across the swells of rock, looking for the Alsatians.
I had just time, while the others were carrying out their last-minute checks, to get on the computer and reprogram my Alsatian, serial number S2X458. I’d already written the Destination Pluto code in my head. I felt sick while I was typing it in. Now I feel righteous, drunk with the joy of revenge. I pray I didn’t make any mistakes. I pray S2X458 gets far, far away before anyone notices she’s missing.
Oh, that’s right: my suit’s got a transponder tracking function.
I turn it on. Callout tags appear above each human and Alsatian. The mechas are down on the surface, running this way and that, scanning for explosives.
I spot S2X458 just before she vanishes ov
er the horizon.
Radio chatter crackles in my helmet. The squaddies are laid-back, all business, no urgency. There’s no reason to get excited yet. We may be here for days.
Reassured by their calm voices, I unclip my tether from my belt.
I’m still wearing my yellow VISITOR suit, because Noob Two’s suit would have been way too small. But I’ve got her mobility unit strapped onto my back. I fumble with the thruster controls, almost go into a spin, get the hang of it.
“Hey, Scatter!” It’s Dilip. He’s on EVA monitor duty, tracking everyone from the bridge. “Where you going?”
“I just want to see if my code works.” I fly off after the others. Dilip grudgingly OKs my excursion. He thinks I’m talking about the sensitivity upgrade. He doesn’t know that I want to see S2X458 off on her journey, and wave goodbye to the passenger in her battery compartment.
5
I catch up with the Alsatians 8.12 klicks from the ship, according to my suit. I can just see the Tancred hovering above the horizon. The Alsatians are behaving oddly. S2X458 and two of her sisters have teamed up to search a small area. They are moving one step at a time, prodding the rock with their manipulators before setting a paw down. This is what they do when they’ve detected suspicious chemical traces.
Patrick, Francie, and Paul float high above them, like kites waiting for a doomed elephant to die. Francie makes a hawking noise in her throat when she sees me. Patrick doesn’t seem bothered. “Hey, Scatter. Looks like they’ve found something.”
“Already?” I am freaking out. If the Alsatians have found a mine, they may get themselves blown up. If S2X458 gets blown up, she won’t be able to execute my Destination Pluto code. If she can’t execute the code, the egg will be recovered from her carcass. I’ve watched hours of video of live situations like this. The Alsatians rarely get blown to dust. You’ll find a leg, a blast shield, a manipulator. An egg.
Paul decides to make conversation. “Beachy Head is a notorious suicide spot.”
“I did not know that,” Francie says.
Guardians of Jupiter Page 4
