Grounded!

by Claremont, Chris

  “Is this really necessary?”

  “I assume Simone told you what we found.”

  “Precious little. I thought that was why I was sent up here, for you to tell me the rest. Basically, I seem to be a primary target.”

  “Quite correct. And I think you should take a step back to consider the full implications.”

  “I know, this is some kind of personal vendetta.”

  “That’s the least of it. These attacks, Lieutenant, came through the computer systems that are the heart and soul of our very existence up here. They appear to be confined to the Moon but they also appear to be the work of a software designer of the first order. An algorithmic Mozart, if you will. I’ve had two of my best people—lone-wolf solos on Out-System patrol and, believe me, you can’t get more wild-and-wooly, idiosyncratically brilliant than that—trying to crack the infiltration codes and they’re not even close. It may well be, even if they succeed, that we’ll never be able to guarantee the integrity of any data system you’re involved with. Which poses an unacceptable risk, not simply to you but anyone dependent on the same system.”

  “So even if I were somehow to regain flight status... ”

  “I don’t think, under these circumstances, we dare let you out of the atmosphere.”

  “You tell that to Elias?”

  “And General Canfield, yes. They both concur.”

  “So this is what, my last trip?”

  “May well be.”

  Nicole gave herself a small push, and floated over to the window wall, switching scenes to a starfield display, standing right up against it as though by sheer force of will she could pass through and become one with the Universe beyond. And found herself once more remembering the first time she’d gone strolling out in The Deep, where even the Sun wasn’t much bigger than the background stars. Simplest of maneuvers, one she’d done a hundred times in training and reality, step off the spacecraft’s hatch and out into the dark. No problem, she thought, piece of cake. After all, the EVA—Extra-Vehicular Activity—was one of the base realities of a working astronaut’s life.

  Unfortunately, that step took Nicole into absolute emptiness, a vast ness stretching distances beyond comprehension in every direction. Her forebrain—the analytical intellect—told her, over and over and over again, shrieking it as loud as possible towards the end, this was fine and natural, she was in no danger. Zero gravity, weightlessness—just like now, aboard Sutherland—she’d only move by her own action. But the mindless primitive lurking in the basement, all it recognized was that she was floating and that was a prelude to falling, and from what it could see, once she began she’d never stop. She’d pissed herself, she was so scared, and allowed herself a small smile at the memory.

  Still, she got better. She learned to cope. Some didn’t, she knew. In every class, there were those who hacked the exams and the Earthbound training, only to discover once they left the atmosphere that they couldn’t adapt to the reality. That’s why the medical strictures were so exacting; if NASA erred, the decision had long ago been made, it would always be on the side of caution. Calculated risks were one thing, stupidity was tantamount to suicide.

  She flinched a tad, the reflex floating her slowly away from the wall as the starfield image shifted to a new scene.

  “We’ve been evaluating the data you brought back with you aboard Range Guide,” Maguire said while Nicole touched the back of a chair to brake her drift and come to a full stop.

  “This,” she continued, and a moderately small dot relatively center screen was tagged with a brightly colored circle, “is the Wolfpack asteroid. One of the things that bothered us from the start was how something so big and well equipped could operate illegitimately for so long with nobody noticing.”

  “Let me guess, we blew a totally legit operation.”

  “Not quite. The problem we Marshals face, same as you blue suits when it comes to keeping the peace, is that there’s simply too much raw space. Even with the technology to cover every cubic centimeter of volume—what the hell, just in the Sol System alone—we don’t have the human capacity to evaluate the data. So we key the system to respond to anomalies. In that sector, over the past few years, we haven’t had any. Totally nominal activity curve. Now we think we know why.”

  “That computer genius bollixing your mainframe?”

  “Fair guess, but in actuality far more simple. And brutal.” Course tracks appeared on the display, fanning out from the asteroid like the anchor lines of a spiderweb, arcing across the Belt to other appropriately labeled dots, other asteroids. “We ran the location through our master plot, to backtrack the traffic, see where it was coming from. In each and every case we had on file, we discovered a claim that had been abandoned as unprofitable, or sold, or made void by the accidental death of the occupant miners. Perfectly legitimate and aboveboard transfers of title. So we went a step further, trying to contact any of the surviving original claimants.”

  “There weren’t any?”

  “Not a living soul. We have transit records showing their return In-System, complete electronic evidence of their existence right down through Terrestrial Immigration. But no physical substantiation. Been cross-checking through Interpol and the FBI for any evidence of them dirtside. No joy. Either they went and disappeared completely after reaching the ground—”

  “Or they never were to begin with,” Nicole finished.

  “Precisely. We diverted three patrol missions for physical eyeballs of as many of those rocks as we could cover. All gutted. Moreover, in each case, residual evidence revealed that the claims were significantly more impressive than the assay reports on file indicate.”

  “So what you’re theorizing is that the raiders jumped these claims, killed everyone on the rock, and proceeded to mine it for themselves, while presenting a totally legitimate front to the rest of the System?”

  “That about sums it up.”

  “How many?”

  “Fifty-seven. In excess of seven hundred people.” Maguire shook her head. “As for the monetary value of the jobs themselves, incalculable. But presumably sufficient to justify the investment in resources and capital that went into that main base. It was an ideal scam. Blitz an isolated rock, dupe its commo signature so that there’s no significant disruption in housekeeping traffic, then either stage an accident, or falsify a perfectly plausible reason for the folks involved to vacate the premises. In the process, transfer title to your own holding corporation and proceed to work the claim yourself. Bring the valuables in as perfectly legit imports.”

  “Uh-uh. Marshal, I can’t buy it. There are supposed to be code phrases, key word encryptions, backups upon backups to prevent that sort of thing. Ceres Security prides itself on guaranteeing the sanctity of any claim filed with it.”

  “The company is in for a seriously rude shock. I think you were partly right before, I think our software wizard probably has compromised more than a few data nets both down home and in the Belt.”

  “That would have to be, wouldn’t it? When the Wolfpack’s chief raider, Morgan, came after Wanderer, his own ship had the complete IFF/ID signature for the cruiser Von Braun. We didn’t have a clue they were hostile until they started shooting.”

  “So tell me, Nicole, know anybody who’s God’s Gift to software?”

  Nicole took a long, slow look towards the Marshal. “You’re talking like I should know the answer.”

  “You’re certainly a target. There has to be a reason.”

  “After a year?”

  “We wonder about that, too.”

  Terrific, Nicole raged to herself, how ’bout coming up with some damn answers, you’re the professionals, this is supposed to be your job! And said, “Forgive me, Marshal, but Ben Ciari was always preaching the innate superiority of Out-System talent, including criminal. Shouldn’t you be asking yourself about the most likely candidates among that crowd?”

  “I did. I have. Came up dry. Nobody wants to talk. Which struck me as unusua
l because, this type of operation, everybody pitches in to shut it down, for their own survival. Strange as it seems, we have a code of conduct even among the criminal element. There are lines you simply do not cross. Because essentially, it comes under the heading of shitting where you live.”

  “I know. It’s one of the things I admire most about space. What about the people behind the Wolfpack?”

  “Whole other question entirely. Think about it, Nicole. Consider the raw resources required to mount that kind of operation. We tagged upward of a dozen ships moored around that rock.”

  “And close to a thousand people within, I know, I scanned the data, too.”

  Now it was Maguire’s turn to look, a level appraisal. “Still bothers you?” she asked.

  “It isn’t”—and Nicole clenched her fist, choking a cry of fury deep in her throat as the sudden movement stirred her from her place and she had to flip-flounder gracelessly to keep from tumbling—“an easy thing to get over,” she finished, meeting Maguire’s eyes defiantly.

  It wasn’t Morgan who woke her in the middle of the night, shaking and sweating, eyes staring for a target while her hand grabbed for a pistol that thankfully wasn’t there. Daniel Morgan, decorated hero turned renegade, leader of the raider Wolfpack that blew Wanderer out of space. The gauntlet had gone down between them the moment they met, and when they finally faced off—in the shadowed corridors of the raiders’ base asteroid, she armed with a crossbow, he with a rifle blaster—she was the one who walked away. But that had been a fair fight—Hell, she thought fiercely, if anything the odds were stacked in his favor—and the only scars left from it had been physical.

  But there’d been another man, earlier in the day, aboard the Halyan’t’a starship. Nicole and Hana Murai and a team of Hal warriors ambushed a cadre of raider technos and their escort. She’d nailed one of the combat troopers in the back, wasn’t even a pretense of fairness here, the escort had to be taken out immediately, without the slightest opportunity to alert their command. His features hadn’t registered at the time, but over the following months they’d drifted more and more clearly into view. A young man, barely her own age, splashed with pain around the eyes and mouth, but mostly with surprise. Bang—he was dead, end of story. Not that bad-looking, either. Maybe not so awful a person as well.

  She had no idea who he was, where he came from, what had pushed him into space and then into the embrace of the raiders. The same yearnings that drove her, she wondered, to see what was beyond the horizon? Or just a job? Was he looking for a quick buck, a few tours of slash-and-burn before retiring to the good life? Did he leave anyone behind? She knew everything about Morgan and somehow that made what happened all right; with this lone trooper, it was her imagination twisting the knife.

  “Nicole,” Maguire said, “had you known about the raider families, would that have made a difference? Would you have traded your lives, the Halyan’t’a’s and their ship, for them?”

  “No.” Her voice was so soft even she barely heard it. And Maguire’s, as she continued, hardly much louder.

  “Well, then.”

  “Ben Ciari said I have a capacity to kill. The special ruthlessness of command.”

  “And that isn’t what you bargained for.”

  This time, Nicole’s “no” was so quiet it was barely more than thought.

  “If I go out again,” she went on, “sooner or later, it’ll happen again. I’ll have to choose again. I don’t know if I can. No, that’s not it. I don’t want to discover that I can.” A bitter twist to her mouth. “I suppose I should be grateful our mysterious software savant has taken that possibility out of my hands.”

  * * *

  nine

  “For five years, Nicole,” Maguire said with a bitter anger that was made all the more intense by her tight control, “those people operated throughout the Belt and we didn’t have a clue there was even a problem out there! If it weren’t for Morgan’s obsession with General Canfield, we probably wouldn’t know to this day!”

  She’d presented Nicole with a copy of her master case file, the same as she would one of her own deputies, and they’d gone through it together, entry by painstaking entry, until they were so bleary-eyed the very words stopped making sense. It was Maguire who suggested a workout before bed, clearing time for them in the gym.

  They stood at the main entrance, with the room stretching before them, a featureless cube some twenty meters to a side that had originally been intended as a maintenance bay. Projecting out from the walls, at a variety of lengths and angles, were a maze of metal bars, forming a surrealist jungle gym. You pulled yourself from one to the next, along a programmed path that would ultimately bring you back to where you started, sort of like combining a slalom with show jumping. There were levels of difficulty, of course, with established times for each. Never a tournament or a prize. Everyone’s level and time was logged and accessible; essentially, you measured yourself against your peers and that was that. Last time she was here, Nicole thought she’d done pretty well, but a glance at the terminal by the hatch told her she’d fallen something of a ways since.

  Being at the heart of the station meant total weightlessness, which normally mandated all footwear to have Velcro gripsoles to anchor them to strips that ran at intervals along the bulkheads. The elimination of gravity took with it all but the most arbitrary concepts of “up” and “down,” which meant as well that there was no such thing as a true “floor” or “ceiling.” Any flat surface qualified, depending on what a person’s orientation was at any given time. And could change with a move. So designers had to allow—at least in this section of the station—for all those planes being used. Here, though, the idea wasn’t to stick, but to bounce. As hard and fast as possible. Which meant standard sneaks—in Nicole’s case, borrowed, as was everything else she was wearing—plus shorts and a rugby shirt. Knee and elbow pads, fingerless gloves that were still more than a trifle too stiff for her taste, with a helmet she’d left floating by her head.

  Maguire set up an expert run, and Nicole watched the appropriate bars light up. The whole path flared first, to give a sense of the route. Once the player started though, they’d only flash three bars ahead—to show where she was, where she was going next, and the one after that. The Maze was a test of skill and agility, that also forced you to think on the run and required a total awareness of your body’s relationship to the space around it. Some of the clearances were uncomfortably tight, and more than a few people ended their runs through here wrapped painfully about a bar that had suddenly materialized—they swore, out of nowhere—right in front of them. Or they simply forgot the relationship of cause and effect, action and reaction, a sideswipe that on Earth would mean nothing throwing them just enough off-line that they missed the next junction and either totaled on another bar or bounced off the wall. Hence, the pads and helmet. Some serious velocity could be developed here, with equally serious consequences. That was the challenge and the fun. To push to the limit and emerge unscathed.

  “Do you have the slightest fucking idea, Lieutenant, what that means?” Nicole caught so by surprise that she couldn’t help staring at Maguire’s language. The woman wasn’t a prude, by any means, but she also prided herself on how she spoke, a reaction Nicole had heard to a childhood in the Brooklyn Public School System, where every other word was generally a curse. “Goddamn right, nobody’ll talk. Under the circumstances, why the hell should they?

  “All we have going for us out there—and by ‘we,’ I mean the Marshal Service, you blue suits, anybody who represents civil authority—is our rep. Yes, sometimes we go a little overboard on the melodrama, and kick ass a little harder than is absolutely necessary, because we operate on a frontier where backup is measured in days and weeks away, if it’s even available at all! One ship, Lieutenant, a team crew if it’s lucky, more often than not a solo. Whose responsibility is to keep the peace. All by themselves!”

  Nobody screws with the Marshals, that was an article of fai
th that Ciari had taught her. Because they made sure from the start that the cost would be prohibitive. They took care of their own, pure, simple, and absolute. Consequently, when they laid down the law—capital crime, domestic dispute, any and everything in between—people listened. The Marshals were trusted because they were the ones who came when there was trouble.

  “But this... ” And there was a long silence. “This strikes at the heart of all we’re trying to build up here.” Another pause. And Nicole could see how hard Maguire was trying to rein in her rage. That was the other thing you learned the moment you left the atmosphere: control. No careless movement, never ever go off half-cocked, regardless of the provocation. Yet for all the rational awareness of the realities in space, the principals involved were still human beings, and a billion years or more of evolution left the race with hard habits to break.

  They’d spent a half hour stretching and warming up, but Nicole still felt too tight. She hoped it was nerves and that, once she started, things would calm down.

  Flexing her fingers one last time, she crouched onto her heels and then launched herself for the first bar, a good ten meters distant. Second one was below and to the left, so she grabbed hold as she flew over it, letting momentum pull her into a forward somersault. Brought her legs into the bar as she came ’round, shoved off along the new vector, twisting her body in midair to allow for a better grip as she swung off the second for the third. Knew even as she did that speed and timing were off—just a hair, the merest fraction, but this was an environment where fractions made the difference. She didn’t even bother setting up for the bar, but rolled her body into a ball to take the impact as best she could before shoving her way out of the Maze and back towards the doorway.