Are you just being helpful, or is there something you think I should see?
Maybe there was just a nice ornamental garden out there with a fine display of spring bulbs. Chris stayed close to the wall, more for support if he stumbled than to avoid being noticed. There didn’t seem many ways to move around unobserved here. When he reached the corner of the wall, he found himself at the edge of an expanse of tarmac with hangars on the far side. So this was where they kept the Lammergeiers. Then he looked to his right and realised that there was a runway stretching out to the north-east, flanked by a block of two-storey buildings on one side and more hangars on the other. It was like a mini-airport.
They weren’t just operating Lammergeiers, though. A shuttle launch rail down the centre of the runway disappeared into the distance. Chris hadn’t seen a shuttle take off, but Doug said there were several around, so he walked a little further to see if he could spot one.
And there it was, its nose poking out of its hangar. From its height, it looked about the size of a large airliner, which meant anywhere between five hundred and twelve hundred passengers, depending on configuration. Or maybe it was for freight, although Chris couldn’t imagine what they’d be shipping around in a thing that size.
He’d ask Solomon. He made his way back into the building and turned down the passage to rejoin the main corridor.
“Solomon, you there?” Of course he was. Chris sat down in a deserted waiting area, relieved to take the weight off his leg for a while. “I’ve got a question.”
“Of course, Chris.”
“How many people do you have here?”
“Fifteen hundred and thirteen.”
“Is that all?”
“How many did you think there were?”
“Four or five times that. And should you be telling me this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Solomon, you know everything. By definition.”
“Why did you think there were more?”
“The volume of food you trade with Kill Line.”
“Ah.” It wasn’t the ah of someone being put on the spot. It was the ah of a teacher whose pupil had finally understood a critical lesson. “Go on.”
Chris wondered whether to quit while he was ahead. Maybe his guard was lowered because he’d been softened up by injury, medication, and generosity. The normal Chris would have kept his counsel and said nothing, but now he was stuck in the middle of a creaking bridge, unsure which end to make a run for. He’d said too much to pretend he knew nothing and he hadn’t found any answers.
He decided to press on. “What do you do with all that food?”
“We store the surplus.”
Oh, really? “The farmers don’t know you’re doing that.”
“I gather Ainatio asked them if they could supply a certain amount, and they didn’t ask why.”
“Maybe the utilities and the medical care are a fair exchange, but it still sounds shitty to me.”
“Why?”
That was a good question. Chris considered his reflex reaction. “Not levelling with them, for a start. They could store their own surpluses. But it’s all under the company’s control.”
“True.”
Chris changed tack. “I know you grow some specialist crops in here, because I’ve had chocolate and coffee. Is that what’s on the lower levels? Hydroponics?”
“Some of the floors, yes.”
“Is this a guessing game?”
“I can assure you I’m not playing games, Chris. I’m just helping you think.”
Nobody who’d lived through the last famine would have argued against the insurance of a store larder. It just didn’t sit well with Chris that Ainatio would handle the rationing. Either they didn’t trust the farmers, or they knew something bad was coming down the pike, or — what, exactly?
“I was going to ask why you’re the ones stockpiling food,” he said. “But I can think of at least two reasons, and I don’t like either of them. And I don’t want to have an argument.”
He rearranged his crutches, heaved himself upright, and limped away down the corridor, surprised at the speed he could reach if he just stopped trying to use his bad leg.
“Chris, this matters more than you think.”
There was no running away from Solomon. He was like a conscience. “Do you want me to go on, or shall I shut up?” Chris asked. What the hell. Just go for it. “Why keep the town at arm’s length when you’re all stranded here? I can understand the management not wanting to cosy up to randoms like us, but the Kill Line guys feed you. Was it because you didn’t want them to know how few staff are in here? Why are you still doing all this cutting-edge medical research when you’re supposed to be finding a way to stop die-back? And what’s the deal with Pascoe’s Star? Those were the numbers Kim gave me, right? They were co-ordinates.”
Chris didn’t think it was possible to leave an AI speechless, but Solomon didn’t answer for a full five seconds. That was a long pause even for a human.
“I made the right choice,” Solomon said. Chris had no idea what he meant. “Now I have to make another. Will you bear with me while I talk to Major Trinder?”
Chris almost did an arms-spread gesture of surrender, but the crutches limited him to a vague movement with one arm. “Sure. It’s not like I can run away.”
They’re going to shoot me. And we were getting on so well.
He leaned against the wall for as long as he could, then realised it didn’t matter where he was as far as Solomon was concerned. He went back to his room and settled in the chair to do a few leg exercises the way the physio had shown him.
Damn it, he quite liked Solomon. He still wasn’t sure what to make of him, but any entity willing to jump into a bot, kick down doors, and start shooting was okay. Chris had even grown to like Trinder. There was an earnest decency about both of them.
Eventually someone rapped on the door. Solomon could have told him who was there and let them in, but he didn’t, and Chris had to get up. It was Trinder, armed with what was left of his bottle of Scotch and a couple of glasses.
“You’re going to need this,” he said, putting the bottle on the table. “Sol, make sure nobody comes in.”
Chris sat down again. “Oh. It’s like that, is it?”
“Don’t blame Sol. He’s in an awkward situation, like me.”
“Is this about the food stockpile, or what you really do here? Or is it Pascoe’s Star?”
Trinder’s shoulders sagged a little. “All three.”
“Right.”
Trinder poured two glasses. It now looked like some kind of ritual, as if he couldn’t say what he thought without the excuse of liquor in front of him, even if he wasn’t drunk. Or maybe he was just a regular guy in a highly irregular situation, not sure whether something was going to blow up in his face, and this was his way of declaring the room a DMZ where everyone was free to speak their mind. He took a couple of big breaths, nodded to himself like he was rehearsing giving someone’s next of kin the worst news, and sat on the bed.
“Ever heard of a deep-space mission called Cabot? Before either of us were born.”
Chris thought for a while. “Was that the one that went missing or something?”
“Yeah. Forty-five years ago. Except it didn’t.”
“Didn’t go at all, or didn’t go missing?”
“Didn’t go missing. We’ve just been told that it’s in one piece and close to Pascoe’s Star. That’s forty light years. Apart from a few managers, not even the staff knew until a couple of days ago. We’ve built a base on one of its planets.”
“No wonder everyone jumped when I read out Dr Kim’s mystery numbers.”
“How did you work out what they were?”
“One of the kids in the camp had to tell me. Apparently it’s obvious even if you’re just a
hobby astronomer. He’s got one of those stargazing apps.”
“Well, it was news to me.”
“You didn’t ask folks in here about the numbers?”
“No. Need-to-know is a big deal in a place like this. It doesn’t pay to look too curious. Besides, it’s a big leap from Dr Kim having star co-ordinates to finding we’ve already got a whole damn base in another star system.”
“Okay, so how important is it? I’m sorry to sound underwhelmed, but it doesn’t affect me. It’s history.”
“It’ll affect you more than you think. Chris, Cabot’s the whole reason for this place existing. It supports the mission. Sol’s the AI that runs it.”
“I thought you were working on some die-back fix.”
“Yeah, I thought we were too. Some people actually are. But you were asking why the doctors here were doing advanced medical research. It’s for the colony on Opis. That’s the planet.”
“Okay, you’ve lost me now. So Pascoe has planets. And there’s a colony. Like Mars.”
“Will be. The core’s already built.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because there’ll be follow-up missions starting this year, and we’ve asked the Director to let you guys come along. If you want to, that is.”
Chris sipped the Scotch. His brain wasn’t going to process all this in one bite, but maybe that was for the best.
“Well, damn,” he said. “That’s some offer. If it’s true.”
“I swear it is.”
Chris didn’t think Trinder was a liar. That was no guarantee that he hadn’t been briefed by someone who was, but Solomon seemed to be going along with it.
“Does Doug Brandt know?” Chris asked.
“Not yet. The Cabot crew haven’t been told what’s happened on Earth while they’ve been in cryo, either. They don’t even know everyone thinks they’re dead.”
“How are you going to tell them, seeing as it’ll take forty light years for a signal to reach them? Or did Ainatio leave a really depressing recorded message?”
The TV next to Chris’s bed switched itself on, stopping Chris in mid-flow. Trinder got up and leaned against the wall next to Chris’s chair.
“That’s another thing,” Solomon said. “It’s partly to do with Dr Kim, but first things first. I know this is a lot to take in. It’s easier to see it.”
The TV rotated to face Chris. The scene could have been from any space movie, a deserted landscape that didn’t look quite right for Earth, with a cluster of printed buildings like the Mars base he’d seen on the news. The soil wasn’t red, though. This wasn’t Mars.
“This is live,” Solomon said. “I know anything can be faked, but I promise you this is from a camera on Opis. It’s Nomad Base. We have a superluminal comms relay. Instantaneous. Faster than light. That’s one of the reasons the mission’s top secret.”
Chris watched, unconvinced. A few clouds scudded left to right across the sky, and a box-shaped bot drove through the foreground on belt tracks. He wanted to trust Solomon, but he also didn’t want to make a fool of himself by falling for a prank.
Then he looked at Trinder. He wasn’t the prank type. He actually looked worried, as a man would if he shouldn’t have been sharing this information. And Solomon — no, he was beyond practical jokes. Chris knew that much about both of them by now.
“Solomon, no offence, but I’m still having trouble with this,” he said.
“Let me bump up the magnification.”
The camera panned right and picked up a purple shape that resolved into multiple trunks and flat, paddle-like branches fringed by a single continuous leaf on each side. They looked like giant chard plants drawn by a toddler who was very fond of purple.
“Well... yeah,” Chris said. “Never seen one of those in the garden centre.”
“I’ve been exploring the surface using one of the camp’s quadrubots. Oxygen atmosphere, very diverse ecology.”
“You’re telling me you’ve been there.”
“Yes.”
The camera panned back again to the centre of the camp and off to the left. The bots were still trundling around, but there were now a couple of big blue-black shapes in the shade of one of the modular buildings. When the camera turned their way, the shapes unfolded like origami and Chris was left speechless.
They had heads. They had beaks. They had wings.
“Shit, are those pterodactyls or something?”
They were as alien as the crazy purple trees. They seemed to realise the camera was looking their way and scuttled along the ground for a few yards before gaining height and flapping away out of view. This wasn’t some film set or practical joke.
Trinder unscrewed the cap on the Scotch again. Chris heard the metal rasp but couldn’t look away from the screen.
“Isn’t that something?” Trinder said.
“Okay.” Chris accepted the topped-up glass pressed into his hand without looking. “You got me. It’s a big deal after all.”
* * *
Survey Vessel Cabot:
1100 Hours EST
“Solomon, are you sure you don’t have small children?”
Ingram watched from the hatch of what had been the junior rates’ mess before they gave up and turned it into a cinema. Thirty crew and contractors had now been revived and most of them were crammed into the compartment, nursing hot drinks and mesmerised by the feed from Opis displayed on the bulkhead screen.
“I think I’d have noticed, Captain.”
“Well, you have a natural talent for distraction. Sit them down in front of the cartoons and they’re as good as gold.”
“It’s a fascinating planet. Wait until they see the native avians.”
“I haven’t seen them either.”
“Imagine a crow as a pterosaur. I haven’t worked out whether they’re nocturnal or not, but these are the only ones I’ve seen. Probe surveys haven’t picked them up elsewhere.”
If previously undiscovered species were still popping on Earth, then there was no telling what lived on Opis. Ingram decided not to take any chances when she ventured outside the habitat.
“Perhaps they’re curious and they’ve come to have a look,” she said. “So, time to talk to Alex Gorko, eh?”
“I’ve set up the link in the wardroom. Ready when you are.”
Ingram walked back down the passage, checking her status screen as she went. Haine, Searle, and Bissey were already there. Kokinos, Filopovic, and Hiyashi were on their way, and Devlin, Sato, and Yeung were still recovering from cryo. That accounted for all her senior officers. Everyone else could catch up when she’d digested whatever the briefing contained.
“Do you want me to take part in this, Captain?” Solomon asked.
She was getting used to the AI’s voice popping up in her earpiece or emerging from the nearest speaker. It felt less like being stalked. “No, that’s okay. I’ll probably want to talk to you afterwards, though, depending on what’s so confidential that it’s worth a comms blackout.”
“I’ll be available.” That seemed to be his way of telling her that he was going into that there-and-not-there state of monitoring without actively listening. “I’ve increased the gravity again, by the way. Just a touch. You should all be used to it by the time you land. Let me know if anyone has problems.”
Ingram was the last into the wardroom. The other officers were bunched up at one end of the table, steaming mugs in front of them, staring at the bulkhead screen in silence.
“This is the worst sports bar ever,” Haine said.
Ingram unfolded a seat from the bulkhead and locked it down on the deck. “Don’t worry. When this joker’s had his say, we’ll get a recreational link set up. This new AI can do anything.”
Filopovic tapped the table for quiet like a committee chairman. “Here we go.”
Alex Gorko set the tone for the briefing as the conference screen went live. All the physics and engineering miracles that it had taken to get this signal to Cabot in real time were overshadowed by his anxious half-smile and a quick but telling brush of his fingers against his mouth as if he was trawling for crumbs in his beard.
“Hi, I’m Alex Gorko,” he said. “Call me Alex. This is awesome, huh? Instant comms. Well, welcome back to the waking world, and congratulations on being the first extrasolar mission to land. You don’t know me, but I know all your faces like my next-door neighbours’.”
Ingram braced for incoming. “Good morning, Alex. I gather we’ve missed a few developments over the years.”
He kicked straight into what looked like a painfully rehearsed speech. “Yeah, I apologise for all the secrecy and drama, Captain. I know it’s a pain in the ass to come out of cryo and find you can’t even catch up with the news. But I hope you’ll understand why I want to brief you first, because if you hop around the channels now it’s not going to make much sense to you.” He meshed his fingers on the table in front of him. “Earth’s changed a great deal in ways nobody on the Nomad project could have foreseen when you went into cryo.”
Here we go. “We guessed.”
“Okay, I’ve rehearsed this a hundred times, but it’s never sounded right, so forgive me for dropping the managerial euphemism. I won’t insult your intelligence or try to make light of this. There’s been a series of disasters that have pretty much redrawn the map of the world. There’s no US government, we’re down to ten percent of our population, and Ainatio’s functioning like a kind of corporate city-state. But we are functioning, and there will be follow-up missions starting at the end of this year.”
He paused as if he was expecting fighting to break out. Nobody said a word. Nobody even breathed. Ingram’s brain just went to action stations. She would deal with whatever came through the door in the way that she’d been trained.
“Go on, Alex. Give us the horror story and don’t make us ask questions.”
“Sorry. I really had no idea how you’d take this.”
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