“What if she’s right, Goto? Have you thought about that? That she could be right?”
Elfrida opened her mouth to insist, reflexively, that she was keeping an open mind. Then she hesitated. Was she, really? Yumiko had accused her of pre-judging the Galapajin. Wasn’t she also pre-judging Yumiko? Assuming that the assistant had nefarious motives, whereas the simplest explanation was that she was merely trying to do her job: objectively and empirically assess the human population of 11073 Galapagos?
It was something to think about. In the meantime, she repeated stubbornly, “She still shouldn’t have disobeyed me. I gave the DISABLE command. Several times. It didn’t work. That’s a problem.”
“Not if she thought you were the problem,” dos Santos said. “Look, Goto, I’m not trying to imply you haven’t been doing your job, but the fact is, as we employ more sophisticated analyses of these asteroid populations, we’re finding in more and more cases that the traditional cost-benefit equation just doesn’t work. It fails to take into account the unique cultural values of these communities. They’re like closed ecosystems that have evolved in near-isolation for fifty, a hundred years. The resettlement of a group like the Galapajin would likely lead to the extinction of everything that makes them what they are.
“Now, my personal view, as you know, is that colonists are pests.” Dos Santos smiled. “But these things are subjective. In any case, you have to ask: is it really that important for UNVRP to have this one asteroid?” She paused to let that sink in. “You’ll have noticed our ratio of purchase recommends is falling. There’s a reason for that. In confidence, even New York is slowly realizing we’ve picked the low-hanging fruit, and the remaining A+ candidates present more complex problems.”
“But ma’am, that’s just why I think the Galapajin should be resettled. Because of the problems they’ve got.”
“Yeah, the medical issues, overcrowding, fundamentalist groupthink, you mentioned. But. They brought these problems on themselves, Goto. Shouldn’t we let them try to solve them themselves?”
“But …” Elfrida was flummoxed by dos Santos’s unexpected advocacy. “But even if we don’t acquire the asteroid, ma’am, Kharbage will just raise their rent until they can’t pay anymore, and then dump them on Ceres for someone else to deal with.”
“Yeah. Sigh. That’s the trouble. That is indeed the trouble. These recyclers, Goto, are jackals. If the resource majors are the tigers of the twenty-third century, lording it over the whole solar system, then the recyclers are the scavengers who follow in their tracks, stripping the last scraps of flesh off their prey.”
Elfrida recoiled at the vivid metaphor. Dos Santos laughed grimly.
“Some of them are even owned by the majors. Word is that Centiless has a hefty investment in Kharbage.”
Mute, Elfrida stared at dos Santos’s skinsuit-encased knees. She recognized that the older woman had deftly redirected the conversation from Yumiko’s disobedience to the 11073 Galapagos question. Now she was trying to complete the maneuver by rechanneling Elfrida’s ire against their frenemies in the recycling sector.
But why? Why didn’t dos Santos want to talk about Yumiko?
As Elfrida pondered this, a noise interrupted her reverie. It was one she hadn’t heard in five years, and hoped never to hear again.
WHAAAH! WHAAAH!
“All personnel, remain where you are. Repeat, remain where you are. Botticelli Station is now on amber alert. Probability of assault by external hostile entities: 62%. Further information will be relayed as it is acquired. Tout le personnel, restent où vous êtes…”
“Oh shit,” Elfrida blurted. Waves of hot and cold shuddered over her skin. The middle of her stomach seemed to have been sucked out by a gigantic vacuum cleaner. “Oh shit. Oh God.”
“Do not panic,” dos Santos said. “Do not panic! Do you hear me?” Yet her own face looked stretched-tight, her eyes big. “We’re going to be fine. We’ve got missile interceptors, defensive maneuvering capability, and a hardened rad shield. They could set off a nuke out there and we wouldn’t feel a thing.”
“Todo el personal, se mantienen en el que está …”
“Besides,” dos Santos raised her voice, “the Cheap Trick’s about five minutes away.”
The Cheap Trick was the Star Force picket assigned to guard the various UN assets in Venus orbit.
“No, it’s not!” Elfrida squealed. “It went to escort the supply barge to Da Vinci! Don’t you remember?”
Da Vinci Station, suspended at the Sun–Venus Lagrange point, was a little sister of Botticelli Station, housing a handful of physicists who were validating the soletta prototypes for Phase Three. Every two or three months, a supply barge swung around Venus and sailed out to the smaller station. And the Cheap Trick went with it.
“Oh, yeah,” dos Santos said. “That’s right. I was forgetting.”
“весь персонал, оставаться там, где вы находитесь … ”
“It’s probably a false alarm, anyway. Just a chunk of rock. The station’s threat detection system is pretty stupid.”
Elfrida was doubled over in the ergoform, hands locked between her knees, every muscle rigid. “That’s not very reassuring,” she said through her teeth.
The tannoy was now repeating its announcement in Portuguese, the fifth of the UN’s official languages. As if there were any Portuguese-speakers on the station who a) couldn’t speak English and b) hadn’t dived under the nearest piece of furniture within two seconds of the klaxon’s sounding. Sometimes the UN’s scrupulous bureaucratic fairness took on a ludicrous tinge. Elfrida locked her teeth together, telling herself, Remain where you are. Remain calm. It will be fine. It will be fine.
“Threat level’s still amber,” dos Santos muttered.
“Do you speak Portuguese?”
“Yup. I’m a quarter Brazilian, was brought up by my vovó. The other three-quarters, if you’re interested: Colombian, Anglo, and Punjabi by way of Uganda.”
Even in the midst of her terror, Elfrida was deeply flattered by this gift of personal information. “Wow. I always wondered what your heritage was, ma’am.”
“You’re not supposed to wonder,” dos Santos lightly chastised her. “You’re supposed to believe we’re all the same, and simultaneously believe that diversity is our strength.”
The tannoy had just looped back to English when the klaxon cut into the automated announcement. This time it trilled stridently: HEEYAH! HEEYAH! HEEYAH!
“Alert level revised to red. Alert level is RED. Probability of assault by external hostile entities: 94%. All personnel, remain where you are …”
“Fuck that,” dos Santos said. “Ninety-four percent. Fuck that.” A spatter of sepia freckles stood out on her suddenly pale cheeks. “I’m not fucking sitting here to be blown up because the fucking Project can’t find the nickels and dimes to pay for security worth a damn. I have the lifeboat access codes. Come on.”
They sprinted down the empty corridor, past the NO RUNNING signs. Everyone else was apparently obeying the directive to remain where they were. The crew cabins were rows of taupe puckers in the wall. Elfrida was struck by fate’s randomness. If she lived through this, it would be because she’d had the good luck to be sitting at the moment the klaxon went off with a senior manager who knew the lifeboat access codes. Dos Santos was going to save her life.
The corridor sank away under her feet. She staggered, almost fell, caught herself on her hands. “What’s happening?”
“Defensive maneuvers,” dos Santos panted. “Hope our acceleration doesn’t screw with the lifeboat ejection system.”
The station had three lifeboats, one for each segment. They were accessible from hatches in the thoroughfare corridor, clearly labeled in all five languages and Braille. Dos Santos knelt and fumbled with a manhole cover. Elfrida had walked over this cover a thousand times without ever dreaming it might one day make the difference between life and death for her. It hinged back to
reveal the promised airlock, and a keypad. Dos Santos stabbed in numbers.
“A keypad. I haven’t seen one of those since I was a kid,” Elfrida said, jittery.
“Supposed to be less vulnerable to hacking than voice-based systems. Of course, the iris scanner is the thing to beat.” There was a tiny camera above the keypad. Dos Santos lowered her face towards it. The klaxon and the PA continued to fill the air with a clamor of noise. The hatch dilated. Dos Santos dropped through it into darkness. Elfrida followed, and landed on top of her.
“Sorry!”
“It’s OK. Come on, come on …” This to the hatch. With excruciating slowness, the circle of light above them closed. “It’s supposed to be automatic …”
The chamber jolted, and Elfrida felt lighter. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, came the sound of wheels on rails. The chamber they were in was a tiny tram car on rails that spiraled around the inner surface of the station’s external shield. It had decoupled from the rotating torus and was now rolling to a stop. With a disturbingly mechanical clank, it docked with one of the airlocks built into the outer shield.
Driving home the reality of their escape, the two women were now weightless. Elfrida swallowed and stuck her fingers in her ears. She always hated this feeling, as if her head had blown up like a balloon.
After some more squeaking and clanking, one of the chamber’s walls concertinaed back. Stale air breathed down a short steel culvert. Beyond, glowstrips flickered in dimness.
“Whew,” dos Santos said. “I was worried this shitty system might have taken us to the wrong airlock, and there wouldn’t be anything on the other side.” Elfrida had not even thought about that.
Dos Santos kicked off from the chamber’s far wall and dived down the culvert into the lifeboat. Elfrida followed, ineptly. She didn’t have her dry-grip boots on. Nor did dos Santos, but she appeared comfortable in freefall.
Ruby and turmeric-yellow arrows flickered on the storage compartments of the lifeboat, pointing to the cockpit. The small craft, capable of holding fifty people in extremely cramped conditions, was designed to be piloted in an emergency by dummies. A screen lit up when dos Santos belted herself into the pilot’s couch. “Welcome aboard!” said an androgynous, multiracial face. “I’ll walk you through the pre-launch and ejection procedures today. Why don’t we get started by introducing ourselves? I’m Botticelli Station Lifeboat Two, as you may have guessed!”
“Dumb fucking machine,” dos Santos snarled. She bent over the console. Beams of white light stabbed from her eyes and converged on the instruments. She moved her head until her eyelamps illuminated a barely visible rectangular cover. She pried this up with her fingernails to reveal a smaller screen. Her lips moved, subvocalizing commands.
“Excuse me,” the lifeboat said. “Are you attempting to access my manual operation mode? I really can’t recommend that. Without proof that you’re a qualified pilot—”
The heads-up screen went dark, and the androgynous face vanished. Dos Santos said in satisfaction, “That code cost me a bundle in favors. Good to know it was worth it.”
“Aren’t you … ma’am, aren’t you authorized to …”
“Nope. But I do know how to fly this thing. I think.” Dos Santos mouthed silent commands. Her fingers dashed across the master screen. She was working the subvocal and touch interfaces at the same time like a maestro. Elfrida leaned over from the co-pilot’s seat and saw systems checks flashing past.
Without warning, the little craft shuddered so hard that Elfrida’s couch tightened protectively on her body. She imagined charged projectiles striking Botticelli Station, fragging the shield, rupturing the inner torus. That could happen. It did happen. It happened quite often in the Belt, and it was a matter of pure luck it had never happened where she was before. Her imagination screened a lurid sequence of friends and colleagues whisked into the vacuum, lungs rupturing, bellies distending.
Voice shaking only a little bit, she said, “Those eyelamps are pretty cool, ma’am.”
“Self-defense. They also come in handy when you haven’t got a flashlight.”
The lifeboat’s airlock clanked shut. Elfrida let out her breath. That was one more layer of security between her and … and …
Talking was better than thinking. “Ma’am, didn’t the scanner recognize you? So why didn’t the lifeboat know who you were?”
“I hacked the scanner, Goto. It would have admitted me regardless. But I didn’t want it to know who I was. Just in case, you know.”
Just in case, Elfrida thought, we get caught stealing a lifeboat.
“Ma’am, what if—”
“Quiet! Sorry. Please don’t distract me. I’m trying to …” Dos Santos hunched over the screen.
Strip lighting came on all the way down the cabin. Then it went off again. A chemical toilet started flushing: clack-FLAP, clack-FLAP.
“That’s not what I was trying to do! Damn interface.”
Elfrida wished they could hear the tannoy in here. Lousy as the hub’s information was, she yearned to know what was happening. Her contacts weren’t working, either—the rock shield messed with the station’s wifi, and the lifeboat had stopped offering a signal when dos Santos switched into manual mode.
The toilet ceased flushing. “That’s better.” Oxygen masks tumbled from the ceiling. “Oh, puta merda!”
“Ma’am? Ma’am? Dos Santos! Could we see outside?”
Dos Santos glanced at her, hair falling over one eye. “That I can do. Nothing simpler. Here you go.”
The heads-up screen lit up again.
Elfrida immediately wished it hadn’t.
Displaying the same sensor feed as the viewport in the crew lounge, it showed Venus, and nothing but Venus. Only a sliver of black in one corner gave a sense of the curvature of the planet towards which they were falling.
Yes, falling.
Someone’s idea of defensive maneuvering was apparently to slip into a lower orbit.
But even that was not the scariest news from the screen. The rest of the picture was straight out of a nightmare.
ix.
Elfrida stared at the screen in terror. Above Venus’s streaky shroud, a scatter of black dots slowly converged on a point in the screen’s lower right quadrant.
The lifeboat jinked violently.
“I think that was us, not them,” dos Santos said.
“Oh my God, there are thousands of them!”
“About five, looks like. Of course, there could be more out of sight. Don’t they usually travel in packs of nine?”
Elfrida could only bite her lip. She didn’t know. Dos Santos didn’t know. Maybe Dr. Hasselblatter, or the President, and/or some ultra-classified spy organization knew all about these small, fast ships that were trying to turn Botticelli Station into orbital debris. But all ordinary people knew was that they were deadly and they were called the PLAN.
A tiny nova blossomed on the screen. Elfrida clapped her hands over her eyes. Then she grabbed the arms of her couch as the lifeboat shook again, a flea on the back of poor, harried Botticelli Station.
“They’re lobbing tactical nukes at us,” dos Santos said. “And we’re trying to dodge.”
“We’re going down, aren’t we?”
“Looks that way.” Dos Santos glanced at the console. “Yup. I wonder who’s driving.”
“Isn’t it the hub?”
“That dumb chunk of hardware? No, it’s got to be Touré or Sikorsky.” Dos Santos named the XO and captain of Botticelli Station, who were generally viewed with contempt as the hub’s fall guys. “I know Sikorsky’s ex-Star Force. I hope he remembers he’s piloting a space station, not a Gravesfighter.”
The PLAN were not invulnerable. They could be blown up, just like any other ships. But the lumbering space station had no offensive armaments at all.
Another enhanced-radiation warhead exploded nearby, filling half the screen with a nebula-like cloud of light and debris. Botticelli Station squeezed out some more angular ac
celeration. The bulkheads creaked and Elfrida struggled to breathe as the G-force pressed her into her couch.
“Much closer, and the neutron radiation is going to scramble our systems,” dos Santos said. “Which is, of course, exactly what they’re trying to do. Fuck it. We have got to get out of here.” She went back to interfacing with the console. Elfrida wished she had something to distract her. She understood that the ships’ respective trajectories had locked them into a high-speed chase. The PLAN ships were flying in lower, faster orbits. They were overhauling Botticelli Station, while the station dived towards Venus, and all the craft continued to whirl around the planet at several kilometers per second. Newtonian mechanics, not fly-boy pyrotechnics, would govern the outcome.
A new raindrop appeared on the heads-up display. Slightly larger than the PLAN ships, it was orbiting towards them on the perpendicular.
“All right,” dos Santos whooped. “Finally!” But she was not referring to the newcomer. “I’m commencing the ejection procedure. Hold on.”
The procedure seemed to be endless. Dos Santos cursed under her breath in Portuguese. The ships on the screen grew larger and acquired distinct silhouettes. At this point Elfrida realized she could zoom in on them by leaning forward and touching the screen. The PLAN ships were finned cylinders, girdled with guns. These were the shapes familiar from countless news vids and immersion games, made no less nightmarish by their slang appellations of ‘flying rats’ and ‘toilet rolls.’ The newcomer was still too far away to be identified.
“I feel like this isn’t real,” Elfrida said, her voice high. “I keep trying to log out. And then I remember, oh yeah, this is my body. It’s not a phavatar. I’m not somewhere else. I’m here. This is real. I can’t log out.”
Dos Santos nodded. “I know what you mean. I get that, too. This isn’t fun anymore? Time to log out—whoops. Can’t. It’s a hazard of the job. But—”
The lifeboat slammed sideways. The jolt hurled dos Santos out of her couch. Elfrida’s couch ballooned, wrapping itself around her entire body in a split second. Like a rigid marshmallow, it covered even her lower face. Gagged and immobilized, she watched dos Santos pick herself up, blood dribbling from her nose. “Shouldn’t have turned the damn couch off,” dos Santos grunted. “That’s it.”
The Sol System Renegades Quadrilogy: Books 1-4 of the Space Opera Thriller Series Page 7