The Ghost Line

by Andrew Neil Gray

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  For R and L

  Acknowledgments

  We’d like to thank Susan Juby and Alan Gray for reading early versions of the manuscript. We’d also like to thank Carl Engle-Laird for having faith in it and for his sharp editorial eye. And finally, thanks to our children for putting up with many, many discussions of plot points and characters during car trips, dinners, walks in the woods, etc.

  From fifty kilometers out they could finally see the ship they were going to break into. The Martian Queen gleamed in the sunlight, a brilliant white fleck in the darkness between Earth and Mars.

  “This better be worth it,” Michel said.

  “It will be.” Saga called up a magnified view on the big screen on the Sigurd’s bridge. Even if her husband wasn’t excited, she felt the familiar buzz of anticipation. It wasn’t just the thrill of a new target. The liner before them was intact and untouched. Not holed, half-melted, or long since abandoned and stripped bare. This job felt like a luxury. Which was fitting, given the ship’s history.

  Everything about the Martian Queen was ostentatious, from her hull paint to the rows of windows that stitched her sides. If her designers could have found an excuse for funnels, propellers, and an anchor, no doubt they would have welded them on.

  “Form should follow function,” she said. “No wonder they went bankrupt.”

  “Ha!” Gregor, the Sigurd’s pilot, had lived in the asteroid belt for twenty-five years, but his Russian accent was as thick as the day he left Novosibirsk. He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “You think it was just a way to get from one planet to other? Main function of this liner was to separate people from money.”

  “Point taken.”

  An old brochure glowed in Gregor’s hands. “Two casinos. Two! Plus steam room and spa. Stage shows. Recreation ring. Even had Michelin-star chef.”

  Saga saw a line of dancing girls kicking up their heels. The narrator’s voice issued from the brochure, followed by tinny orchestral music. She reached over and folded the bright rectangle, turning it off.

  “Hey,” Michel said. “I was enjoying that.”

  Saga snorted. “They’re probably not even real. Who can kick that high?”

  Gregor winked at Michel. “That is good thing. If dancers were synths then maybe they are still in storage. We could have party.”

  “No parties.” Wei floated into the room. The woman who’d hired them wasn’t much for entertainment, let alone slacking off. Wei was in her forties, her black hair cut in a belter bob, the short haircut favored by people who spent a lot of time in pressure suits. She wore simple grey coveralls and the strained expression of someone who had reached the limits of her patience. “You have to get inside to have a party.”

  “Problem?” Gregor said.

  “Yeah, this is a worthless piece of shit.” Wei threw a small object at Gregor. Surprised, he watched as it pinged off his shoulder.

  Michel plucked it out of the air. He looked at the data stick that contained Wei’s intrusion package. “We knew this was a possibility, right?”

  “And we did warn you,” Saga added. When they’d first met her, Wei revealed she had the chance to buy a software back door into an unnamed mothballed ship, untouched for twenty years. They’d told her not to waste her money. Saga had sung her and Michel’s praises, their ability to insinuate their way into the toughest systems.

  But Wei had gone ahead and purchased the package anyway. She shot them a sour look, then pushed off and was gone, back to her room.

  Saga looked at her husband. She grinned. “Care to do some hacking?”

  “Thought you’d never ask.”

  * * *

  The Sigurd slid under the belly of the Martian Queen. Up close, the sheer size of it was apparent. Their sleek cutter was like a lifeboat in comparison.

  “Less than one hour,” Gregor said. “How did you do it?”

  “Just fly the damn ship,” Wei snapped.

  “Ship knows how to dock herself.” Gregor turned to Michel. “I would like to know how you got in. I have all ears.”

  “We buy old data,” Michel said.

  “From auctions,” Saga continued. “Bankrupt companies sell off assets to pay back creditors, right? Everybody wants marketing information and mineral surveys. Nobody cares about the maintenance logs and system manuals. We get them for almost nothing.”

  “Ah,” Gregor said. “So you have your own back doors.”

  The Sigurd slowed as it reached the stern of the Martian Queen, aiming for the service docking port near the wedge of reactor shielding.

  “We almost never find actual programmer back doors,” Michel said. “Mostly it’s just regular holes. We know every system, every subsystem. How often they were updated. The software hasn’t been patched for years, so we had our choice of exploits.”

  “The one we used was a buffer overflow in the LIDAR sensors,” Saga said. She looked at the display in her contact lenses, the interface to the liner floating in front of her face. Cracking the ship’s software had been foreplay, a thrill that promised greater rewards to come. When she’d been back on Earth, it had been fooling alarm systems and picking locks. Either way, the goal was the same: breaking in. Turning an abandoned place into a playground.

  The Sigurd slid closer, cautiously. A meter from contact the service port extended its clamps in welcome. A moment later, with a clunk heard through the ship’s hull, they were docked.

  “No need to explain more,” Gregor said. “I would not understand anyway.” He turned to Wei. “You have your ship now.”

  * * *

  It was almost a day until they left the Sigurd. After all her hurry to get there, Wei seemed reluctant to take the next step. She ordered Saga and Michel to remotely explore the security systems inside the Queen, to make sure there were no hidden alarms. Then she spent several hours in her cabin, uncommunicative. When she finally emerged, Saga and Michel pushed, but she wouldn’t budge. “You two have been exploring for years,” she said. “You should know better.”

  “But you haven’t even cleared our survey bots,” Saga said. “The Queen’s systems all say it has full pressure. We’ve told it to raise ambient to room temperature.”

  “We’re ready when I say we’re ready,” Wei growled.

  So they sat in the galley. Gregor came by once for a bulb of tea, which he slurped noisily, but otherwise they were alone.

  “You could get started from here,” Michel said. “With the Queen’s internal cameras. You could put together a rough model in half an hour.”

  Saga shook her head. Long blond tendrils floated in front of her eyes with the movement. She’d taken a shower and washed her hair while they waited. “The resolution would be too low. And you know I need to see a place with my own eyes first. We spent two months getting here, we can wait a little longer.”

  Michel slapped the table in frustration. “Goddamn it; waiting is all we ever do.” The motion pushed his slim body up and he floated toward the ceiling. He waved his arms, reaching for a handhold as Saga laughed. He shot her a look and
pushed himself out of the galley.

  She gathered her damp hair, fixing it into a bun at the nape of her neck with an elastic from her wrist. He’d be back eventually, apologetic. Of the two of them, he’d always had the shorter fuse, but his anger burned itself out quickly.

  In the meantime, she would check her mail, which should have loaded by now. Since this was a dark mission, she’d had to route her request through several anonymous relays scattered around the asteroid belt. What should have been a twenty-minute operation had stretched to three hours.

  There was the usual clutter: Comments and suggestions from people who subscribed to her interactives, which she let her concierge software answer. Some sponsorship updates. A few trip proposals from the daredevils and interactive artists who, like Michel and herself, explored the derelict stations, ships, and asteroid habitats that littered the solar system. A request for a private guided tour of a famous wreck from someone who was almost certainly bored and wealthy, looking for an unusual amusement.

  And, finally, a note from her aunt.

  That one she avoided for a while. She made more tea. The galley could print butter biscuits she particularly liked, and she ate two as she contemplated the liquid in her squeeze cup.

  She sighed and opened the message. Aunt Yrsa always began with inconsequentials: they’d had a month of gluggaveður—window-weather—in Reykjavík. As if being stuck inside mattered to someone like her; she hadn’t lived in a place with a climate for nearly ten years. That was followed by news of the extended family, their various adventures and domestic dramas. Finally, Yrsa got to Saga’s mother, Hanna, and the new therapy Saga was paying for. The treatments had already regrown connections and brain tissue, untangled some of the muddle that was her mind. But they’d completed only the first stage, and modern medicine still had its limits.

  “She was asking for you,” her aunt said. “She thought you were in the next room. Hanna didn’t understand she was in a care facility. She kept saying someone had stolen her curtains.”

  Saga winced and rubbed her temples. She closed the message window, blinked away the interface. There were many things she would prefer to do than think about her mother, a hundred and fifty million kilometers away, believing her only daughter had just stepped out for a moment.

  * * *

  At first, Wei had sounded like just another rich tourist. She’d proposed a visit to an unnamed abandoned ship. Michel had replied to her message, telling her sorry, but they were taking a break.

  But Wei had been insistent, offering a generous fee. When that didn’t work, she’d visited them in person, showing up at the site they were exploring—a failed attempt to hollow out an asteroid habitat. When her ship appeared on their navigation displays, they’d been stunned: nobody met face-to-face in the belt if they had other options. But here Wei was, in the flesh. After a brief exchange, she’d invited them on board the Four of a Kind, the ship she was going to use for the expedition.

  Michel gave a low whistle when they entered. The ship was an order of magnitude better than anything they’d used before. Faster, larger, much more comfortable.

  “This is seriously yours?” he asked.

  “My employers provided it,” Wei said. They were sitting in the ship’s galley, drinking very passable espresso. “They have considerable resources. They’ll even pay for a professional pilot. So I need to know: Will you accept the job?”

  Saga shook her head. “We already told you we’re taking a break.”

  “This ship’s fast. We can be in and out in under four months. Then you can have your vacation.” Wei mentioned a higher fee, a bonus structure.

  “Starting a family is not a vacation,” Michel said.

  “Hold on.” Saga took her husband aside. “The money’s good. Better than good.”

  “So? We’re doing okay.”

  “I’m not just thinking about us. What about my mother? This could really help her.” She hesitated for a moment. “We could even afford to thaw two. Maybe spend some time raising them on Earth with their grandmother.”

  They had stored a dozen frozen embryos in a radiation-protected vault deep inside Ceres—a belter wedding tradition. Once they’d done it she’d put them out of her mind. Insurance against a future she wasn’t ready to think about. But Michel came from a large family of French-Guianese Catholics. Every time they went back to Vesta he mooned over his nieces and nephews, dropped unsubtle hints. He had finally convinced her.

  She felt a pulse of guilt at the sudden brightening in his eyes.

  “Maybe,” Michel said after a moment. “But we can’t agree to this unless we know all the details first.”

  They went back to Wei. “Who pays what you’re paying just to wander around on an abandoned ship?” Michel asked.

  Wei glanced around the small room as if someone could be listening in. “I do,” she said. “There’s a nondisclosure agreement for you to sign, and then I’ll tell you all of it.”

  “One last request,” Saga said. “If we take the job, I want you to change the name of this ship. Four of a Kind is . . . Well, she deserves something more adventurous. We all do.”

  * * *

  When they left the Sigurd, they went in pressure suits, Wei in front, followed by Michel and Saga. Gregor, who’d been off duty since they docked, was still in his cabin; he hadn’t bothered to come out while they organized to leave. It was an open secret that when he wasn’t working, Gregor had a taste for the vodka he’d hacked the ship’s bioreactor to brew. He’d always flown sober, so nobody pushed him on it.

  They passed through the air lock and bumped into Wei, who’d stopped abruptly. She appeared to be scrutinizing the Queen’s service bay, a midsize room. It was empty, spotless. After a long moment, Wei pushed herself forward and pulled open one of the cases she was carrying. Saga recognized a high-end chemical sampler.

  “It’s all green in here, Wei,” Michel said. “Do you really need that?”

  Saga blinked her suit’s environmental interface into life. The readout showed a normal nitrogen-oxygen mix at Earth-standard pressure. A little chilly at fifteen degrees Celsius, but warming up.

  “There’s still the possibility of contamination,” Wei said, not looking up.

  “From what?” Michel said. “The Brie going off twenty years ago? The Queen was mothballed, right? I don’t see anything odd on the suit sensors.” He looked around. “No mold on the walls.”

  Wei didn’t respond. She’d been crystal clear in her briefing before they came through the lock: suits on at all times, no matter what. She strapped the sampler to her chest and folded the box away. She pushed against the wall and floated down the service corridor without looking back.

  Saga shared a glance with Michel as they followed her, each carrying an equipment case. Our boss is an odd duck, he sent in a private message.

  She caught his eye, winked, and got a grin in return.

  The service corridors were utilitarian, doorways marked in standard ship-script, the letters followed by machine-readable codes for the robots that would have loaded and unloaded supplies and equipment. Wei led them through the warren without hesitation. They had to scramble to keep up, pushing off from walls and handholds, using quick bursts from their suit jets when necessary.

  Finally, Wei paused at a set of doors, tapping at the control panel beside them.

  “First thing we do,” Michel said, breathing heavily, “is we get the gravity back on. Wei, can we at least take our helmets off?”

  Wei turned toward them. Her face wasn’t visible. She had blanked her helmet’s faceplate completely. It gave Saga a momentary shiver, a reminder of those old stories of empty suits prowling abandoned ships.

  “I told you, no,” Wei said. “The air checks out down here, but we still have the passenger areas to test. That’s where contamination is the most likely.”

  No it isn’t. Michel’s private message appeared in Saga’s field of view. We all know aft is where anything dangerous would have been k
ept.

  Just indulge her, okay? She’s paying the bills.

  They entered the passenger section of the liner, and everything changed.

  Unlike the service areas, which were designed for zero gravity, the passenger section was clearly meant to be used under spin. Carpeting on the floors, recessed lights in the ceilings. Wood panels with intricately patterned inlays on the walls. Saga couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Decaying structures and damaged ships had so much more character. On previous expeditions she’d imagined ghosts lurking around dark corners, connected with haunting memories of economic collapse or terrible accidents. But here? They could have been in a fancy hotel back on Earth. It didn’t even look abandoned. The lights were still on.

  She kept her thoughts to herself as they passed down three wide corridors, then found themselves at a plain-looking door marked Crew Only.

  “What’s this?”

  “Bridge access,” Wei said. “You didn’t think it would be up front, did you?”

  Saga caught Michel’s disgusted look. As if they would make such a rookie mistake. Assuming that a luxury liner was essentially a cruise ship with a rocket engine attached to its stern was something Earth tourists would do. As with all spacecraft, the bridge was buried in the middle of the ship, the safest location. She knew from their research that the bow had an observation bubble, but it was covered with shielding to protect against dust grains and micrometeorites.

  They floated upstairs to the ship’s inner level, through a set of security doors that Michel bypassed with a couple of minutes of work. Then they were inside the bridge: a plainly decorated room with two sets of consoles and a group of chairs fixed to tracks on the floor.

  “Okay,” Wei said. “Time to earn your keep.”

  “You’re not sticking around?” Michel asked.

  “I have things to do.” Without another word she turned and jetted away, her suit light flickering as she descended out of sight.

  Michel set up their gear. Here we are, he messaged. Alone at last . . .