“Ya wanna yak at Doc,” she said as he examined the card. It was real paper. “Tell him Lystine sent you and he’ll set you up with a blind chitcard so you can snag some do-pretty fabric from a kiosk clean as shit.”
“Where’s his shop?”
“He’s not far.” She grinned. “Just put the card in your flap and he’ll find you. He’s got a woodsniffer.”
“A woodsniffer?” He was almost afraid to ask.
“You just fell off the bozo car, yah?” she snorted. “How you get your snazzjob bein’ a brickhead?”
“Lucky I guess,” he said, shrugging and trying not to laugh. “Where does Doc find me?”
“Out the door and foot it east and down a level,” she said. “Keep the eyes wide and movin’ and don’t stink like money. Is a meatgrinding neighborhood down there.”
“Got it,” he said.
“Da, sure ya do.” She shook her head like she was listening to a kid thinking he was ready to be an adult. “Just don’t flash cred before he shows the goods, and for frag sake, make sure he doesn’t eat more than a sixty chop off the top, scan?”
Jakob Waltz: On the Surface of L-4 Prime:
It had taken exactly forty hours for the Tacra Un to fabricate the interconnect tunnels from its airlock to the lower airlocks on the Jakob Waltz, so by the time they’d been able to get back to the ship they were all starving and a little dehydrated. They were weak and exhausted, but that was infinitely better than the alternative they’d faced.
It felt strange walking up to the outer hull and keying the hatch open. But what was more disconcerting was that, as they stepped through the door, they were back in the almost nonexistent gravity of the natural environment. Cori was the first one through the door and his leg, coiled for the earth normal gravity in the tunnel sent him sailing into the top of the hatch bulkhead hard enough it sounded like it cracked his skull.
“Dafuq?” he swore as he reeled backward and collapsed against Seva.
Bringing up the rear of their team, Ian burst out laughing. “Gravity, da-ahn outside, cata un. Is che yes?”
“Nojo the gravity isn’t the same,” Cori said, rubbing his forehead where a serious lump was already coming up. “You could have warned me.” He glared at the scientist like he was considering bodily harm.
“We’re ahn now.” Ian said, rubbing his nose where Cori had broken it when they first met.
“Yah we’re even.” Cori grinned. “But I swear, we should have eaten you in there.”
“I’m just glad that happened to you,” Danel said. “If Jeph had stepped through first, that could have been a disaster.”
“So how do we do that safely?” the captain asked.
“Exosuit un smart. Fast ahn, gravity,” he said. “Makes oolawath safe.”
He squeezed past Seva and Chei and walked up to the threshold. Setting both feet on the floor he hopped across the hatchway and floated across the small airlock settling to the floor on the opposite side. “Or, just jump. Is bad to put feet ako floor wath ahn oola.”
“Of course,” Chei said, bouncing over the barrier. “Inertia is based on mass and velocity, not on gravitational acceleration.”
“Somebody override the airlock safeties,” the captain said. “We’ve got good air on both sides and unless you want us to barbeque Ian, we need to eat.”
“Copy. Welcome back,” Rocky said. “Am currently in engineering making repairs. Shona has prepared meal. You will find electrolyte beverages waiting inside door.”
“How bad is it?” Jeph asked as he waited for the inner door to release.
“Damage is minimal. Have repaired narrowband transmitter, however deepcom antenna is offline,” she said. “I waited for your return to do EVA to make outside repairs.”
The door opened with a click and they were finally home. Stepping into the Waltz felt like a homecoming, even under the unbelievably strange conditions.
They all dove on the drinks like a ravening hoard. “Slow and easy,” Anju said. “Nobody is dangerously dehydrated, so take your time.” She was right, they all had maintained some fluid intake because of their EVA suit recyclers. Nobody liked the sour taste of the processed urine and sweat, so they had only consumed the barest minimums to survive. The big reprocessors of the ship had spoiled them.
Kiro swung down from the deck above, grabbing a handhold on the overhead rail and pulling himself to a stop. He let loose and drifted to the floor. “Sorry I broke your ship boss,” he said. “We came in about six meters long and smacked hard. Dutch is blaming himself for not guessing that the ice over the borehole might have sagged, but I was probably late on the button.”
“How are Shona and Alyx?” Anju asked.
“Shook their eggs a bit, but they’re moving normal-ish,” he said. A flash of emotion twisted his expression, but he swallowed it quickly. “You might want to look after Alyx though. She’s grinding her teeth when she moves, even in her suit.”
The engineer pulled herself up over the railing. “Was good ride. All but end part, and ship can be repaired.”
“Nojo,” Jeph said. “We can patch the hardware back together. You made the right decision.”
“Is anything critical or can we clean up and stow our suits?” Jeph asked, tossing his helmet to Kiro.
“Comrade Roja may be upset if you do not reply soon,” Rocky said. “We received narrowband com from her. Apparently she still plans to rescue us.”
“I think she can wait a bit longer,” Jeph said. “Food and showers first.”
Government Private Medical Facility: Galileo Station:
Director Tomlinson had only fragments of memory from his shuttle flight back to Galileo, and almost nothing remained of the preceding day and a half in New Hope City. He struggled to remember his meeting with Tana Drake, but even that felt vague and unreal. Like the memory of a day old dream, it danced elusively just beyond his reach.
As soon as his ship docked, he hunted down his personal physician to get his opinion on the procedure. Odysseus anticipated his planned action and had forwarded the medical files to his doctor before he arrived.
It’s disconcerting to be so easily predictable, he thought as he reclined onto the diagnostic bed.
“I don’t see any real reason for concern,” his doctor said, looking over the file and positioning a bioscanner above the Derek’s forehead. He studied the display for several seconds before he pulled the unit back up out of the way. “The schematic your AA sent me shows it’s an unusually complex piece of hardware, but the implant itself doesn’t seem to be causing any issues. Blood flow seems to be fine and the neuro-adhesion looks to be excellent. I’d say it’s a very clean installation, even if I can’t say for sure what all it will do.”
“It’s supposed to be a comlink,” he said.
The doctor looked back over at the schematic and nodded. “That explains the placement of these transducer interfaces in your speech and auditory centers, but there seems to be a lot more to it than just that.”
Derek sat up and blinked several times to clear his vision. “What else is there to hook up for two-way com?”
“Probably not much else, but you’ve got leads to your Visual Cortex as well as your corpus callosum, and midbrain.” He shrugged.
“Would these extra connections have anything to do with the fact that I can’t remember anything from yesterday and almost nothing from the day before?” he asked.
“I think that’s more likely the result of post surgical amnesia,” the physician said. “We can do more tests if you want, but it’s not uncommon and usually fades a few days after the procedure.”
“It’s disconcerting as hell,” he said. “I know I did some important things over the last two days and I need to remember precisely what happened.”
“Other than having a brain implant?” the doctor said, rolling his eyes.
“Yes, other than that,” Derek said, swinging his legs off the diagnostic bed.
The doctor tapped his screen sending t
he image of the Director’s brain to the wall display. “Looking at this, I’m a little concerned that these leads might be designed to supply visual stimulation. That’s usually only indicated for patients with neurological vision impairment. If this interface was set up to supply visual information to your cortex directly, that’s highly unusual since your brain isn’t disconnected from your optic nerves. As a result you might experience a condition we call second-sight hallucinations.”
“Frakking lovely,” he snarled.
“You haven’t had any of those have you?”
“Just a little double vision, but nothing else,” he said. “At least not yet.”
“Can I ask you a question?” the doctor asked. “Why did you opt to get an implant without knowing exactly what it does? That seems somewhat ill-advised.”
“I agree,” Derek said, reaching up and touching the incision on the back of his neck. “It wasn’t my idea.”
“Then why did you do it?”
“It’s a requirement of the job,” he said. “I had no choice.”
Tsiolkovskiy Freeport East:
Normally the entirety of East Dome was a bustling hive of commerce run by free agent companies, and populated by non-aligned people of every persuasion. But when Edison strolled along one of the commercial concourses in his new and hopefully less conspicuous attire, he could feel a deeper sense of urgency that flowed through the bloodlines of streets and corridors.
Even if he hadn’t seen the breakneck pace of the work going on inside the FleetCom security gate, it was obvious to his outsider eyes that Tsiolkovskiy was arming for war. The crush of stress was a malevolent presence everywhere.
Looking for a suitable place to sit and keep an eye on the crowd, he ducked into a small sidewalk bistro called the Colorado Café. It wasn’t too busy, but also wasn’t deserted. He walked up to the bar and looked at the display menu. A real person stood behind the counter staring at him.
“Yah, don scan that. Is nogo. Only synthajunk, Pa,” she said. “You like real juice no?”
He looked up and cocked his head sideways, deciphering her slango. It was a lot deeper than Madam Strangelove’s so he’d lay wager she was from LEO-Six. Maybe? He grew up in the colonies so he knew the patter well enough that he could still hear the difference. “You got real coffee here?”
“Got cred to go? Only real-like no fragging chits,” she said. “I got real juice for paper.”
“Yah, I got paper,” he said, smiling at her. She would have been cute except for the gauged hole in her cheek with what looked like a fishing lure sticking out of it. “Whacha got?”
“East Colorado Dark, German Elite, and Boa Vista Black if you got tall stacks of real.”
“German,” he said, reaching into a pocket and waiting for her to give him a price. It should be the cheapest of the three varieties, but he didn’t know what that meant in papercred.
“Two-ten,” she said. “Quarter liter with fresh water.” She slapped the counter, telling him to put up the cash first.
“One-eighty and show me the water first,” he said, puckering his mouth to the side to hide his smile. It had been a while since he had been on the street beat and he realized he missed it.
“Pa, why you gotta bust my bag?” she said, shaking her head, reaching under the counter, and pulling up a sealed 250 ML bottle of Saturn Six Freshwater. “See I nojo you?”
“Make it for me,” he said, peeling two 100C notes out of his pocket and slipping them across the counter.
“That costs more cuz you’re old,” she said, winking and turning to open the lockbox by the water boiler. She watched him with one eye in the mirror behind the brew station as she poured a small measure of beans into the crusher and followed them down with the bottle of freshwater.
When she turned around, she held a fine porcelain cup and saucer in her hand filled to the rim with steaming black coffee. “Trying to impress me?” he asked, looking down at the beautiful piece of rare serving paraphernalia.
“You’re somebody important aren’t you?” she said, most of her dialect disappearing. “I recognize you.”
“No you don’t,” he said, pulling another 100C out of his pocket and handing it to her.
“Yah, you’re right. Just another old Pa trying to scan my tattys,” she said, slipping the note into her shirt and making sure he got an eyeful for fun. She leaned to the side and looked over his shoulder. “Make feet, loop’s coming in and floorspace in front of me will get squeezy quick.”
He turned and scanned the room, finding a table off in the corner where he could still see the outside world and the front door. He sat down just as a swarm of people appeared out of the loop station and filtered into the street. If it had been rush crush, he might have never noticed the extra bodies. Most took off in other directions, although the barista had been right and more than a few wandered into the Colorado Café. He watched them with idle curiosity as they spread out and vanished into the crowd.
Glancing back toward the station he realized that all but two had headed away, and they looked lost. They were both female. One was tall, wore a blue hooded vest, and carried a small bag. The other was about three-fourths her size with a shaved head and was wearing a black thinskin. For some reason they looked familiar even at this distance. He was about to give up on watching them and pull out his thinpad when they both picked the café as their destination and headed across the concourse in his general direction.
As they approached it dawned on him why he thought he recognized them. It was Tana Drake and her wife Saffia.
What the hell are they doing in Tsiolkovskiy?
He didn’t have long to wait, because no sooner than they came in the door, Tana turned in his direction like she’d expected to see him. She walked over to his table, set her bag in the chair across from him, and leaned forward to whisper, “IG Wentworth … Edison … I need your help.”
“Chancellor?” he said, not sure how to answer her. Finally he managed, “Help with what?”
“I need to arrange passage out of Zone One and I need to not get caught doing it.” She sat down at his table and pointed at a chair for her wife.
“Why do you need that?” he asked.
“I know something that is going to get me killed,” she said, barely loud enough for him to hear.
“Funny, that makes two of us,” he said. “But first, coffee?”
CHAPTER SIX
Advisory Committee Chamber: Galileo Station:
Tomlinson had no recollection of ordering the former Executive Council Chamber stripped to the walls and new furnishings brought in. When he entered the room, he was shocked to see that instead of the individual desks and podium, there was a single conference table with thirteen chairs. Screens covered the entirety of the two walls to the sides, leaving the atmosphere harsh and stark.
Nothing of the old government trappings remained, and although he didn’t know why he’d chosen to change the decor, he realized that it was probably intended to help them focus on the new beginning and not the ways of their past.
While he waited for everyone else to file in, he paced the end of the room, idly rubbing the incision behind his right ear. He could feel the small lump of the implant and the line of the scar made him wonder how much more there was to the comlink that Odysseus put into him. Something in his brain felt odd, like a continuous whispering of voices that leaked into his awareness. There were no words he could pull out of the sound, but it tickled at his thoughts.
Shaking his head to fling off the ghost conversation, he turned to face the table. Eleven of his twelve chosen committee members sat in silence staring at him. None had accepted their summons to the meeting with enthusiasm, but only Tana Drake had chosen to refuse.
Her seat was conspicuously empty. It was unfortunate because he’d come to realize that Odysseus was correct. She could have been an ally in convincing the others of the gravity of the situation.
“It’s time for us to put our differences behind us
and build a new and better government for humanity,” he said, sitting down at the table. “We’ve finally seen the results of the leadership crisis that was building in the Union for decades.”
“A leadership crisis?” Carmen Ambrose laughed.
“The nature of the cartel system fed self-interest,” he said, not quite glaring at her interruption. “It had reached the point where the action of one chancellor to consolidate power, lead to the death of two of our colleagues. This has been a dark time for the Union.”
“A dark time brought on by you,” she challenged. “You precipitated a crisis so you could manufacture a solution and ride in as the hero. It’s an old political trick.”
“No.” He held his hand up to forestall another outburst. “Katryna Roja—”
“Stood in your way,” she said. “She was the one person—”
“With the most power in the Union,” he said, almost growling and taking the discussion back from her. “She worked with utter contempt of the system and built an empire within our government. When others discovered her plan, she murdered those that could have stopped her. She killed to protect her power not once, but three times.”
“I do not believe that to be true,” Graison Cartwright said, shaking his head. “She was guilty of being outmaneuvered.”
“I assumed because of your former position in FleetCartel that you would defend her,” Tomlinson said. “But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not here to prosecute a case against Roja. What she did has no bearing on what we do next. We need to work together to create a better future for humanity.”
“Under your leadership?” Ambrose challenged. “You stole the future we had, and now you’re trying to sell pieces of it back to us.” She pushed back from the table and stood.
“Do not let her leave,” Odysseus’ voice said, appearing in his mind like his own thought. It was the first time the link had been active since he arrived in Galileo. He blinked in surprise and looked down at the thinpad in front of him to hide his reaction.
How do I stop her? he thought, wondering how to send a reply through his implant without speaking out loud.
Fulcrum of Odysseus Page 5