The Sol System Renegades Quadrilogy: Books 1-4 of the Space Opera Thriller Series

by Felix R. Savage

  “Whaaaa?” Mendoza said.

  “That’s German,” Elfrida said.

  “Yes, we had figured that out,” Meredith-Pike said. The text kept scrolling at a comfortable reading pace. “Let it alone and it will run through the entire collected works of Heidegger.”

  Elfrida flinched as if she had been struck. The name of Martin Heidegger, German philosopher of the 20th century, leader of the Teutonic school of existentialism, had become, fairly or unfairly, the worst word you could say in any human language.

  “How did this happen?” Mendoza said.

  “They haven’t seen fit to share that information with me.” Meredith-Pike shrugged. “Anyway, we’ll crack it.” Sitting down, he explained, “This text is a code, like the wrapping paper of a birthday present. There’s a galaxy of information packed in there, folded up in a given number of hidden dimensions. Despite what Jules says, it’s just a cryptanalysis problem, and as such, vulnerable to brute force. You might be able to help,” he added, looking up at them, as if the thought had just struck him.

  “How?” Mendoza said.

  “You’ve got BCIs, don’t you?”

  “I haven’t,” Elfrida said.

  “Well then, you. Just log onto Bob and get stuck in.”

  “I’m not authorized … I don’t even have wifi access,” Mendoza said.

  “Oh, I’ll fix you up. Hang on.” Meredith-Pike floated to his feet and walked away.

  Mendoza whispered to Elfrida, “This is great. The minute I get that authorization, I’m calling my boss on Luna.”

  “What can UNVRP do about it? They can’t send Star Force any faster than they already are.”

  “They have to be told what’s going on here.”

  “What if we get in trouble?”

  “We’ll just have to risk that.” Mendoza’s face looked hard and remote, like the time he’d told her about his sister who got whacked by the PLAN.

  Elfrida felt ashamed of herself for failing to match his courage. “There must be something I can do,” she muttered. “Maybe they’ll give me network access, too. I could call Petruzzelli. She might be close enough to help.”

  An argument erupted on the other side of the room. Julian Satterthwaite stalked towards them, followed by Meredith-Pike.

  “Guess that’s not happening,” Mendoza said.

  Satterthwaite grabbed Elfrida by the arm, perhaps because she was closer, perhaps because she was smaller and easier to drag. He hustled her out of the room with Mendoza trailing after them. “We weren’t going to show you this. But fucking Błaszczykowski-Lee is gone, anyway. You might as well know what we’re dealing with.” Satterthwaite’s long face was ivory with rage. He hauled her along a ramp that spiraled away from the atrium and turned into a residential corridor. A frightened-looking woman stood outside a door blocked by a barricade of ergoforms, which had been jacked—manually locked—into braces that stretched across the corridor. Satterthwaite said, “Anything new to report?”

  “No. He just keeps banging around in there.”

  The door had a cartoon tacked to it that said: When I was a kid my dad told me I’d be an astronaut when I grew up, because all I did in school was take up space.

  “’Scuse me.” Satterthwaite moved the ergoforms.

  The door opened. The cabin was dark.

  “Smith!” Satterthwaite yelled. “Smith, are you in there?”

  Thump, thump, scuffle.

  Satterthwaite plucked an engineer’s flashlight out of his breast pocket. It illuminated piles of clothes and blankets on the floor. The cabin looked like it had been hit by a bomb. An ergoform had been sliced—or torn—into ragged chunks. Red smeared the ergoform’s innards. It was blood.

  A hissing sound came from the furthest corner. Satterthwaite’s flashlight found a bare foot, and then the rest of the man called Smith. He sat wedged into the corner, digging into his left temple with something metal-tipped. He had made a wound there. It was bleeding steadily. He sat in a puddle of blood. He did not appear to be aware of this. He raised his face to the light. It was a youngish, pudgy face with a ring in its left nostril. The hissing sound came from between its teeth. The second Elfrida saw its blank, dazzled eyes, she knew that this was not the face of a man called Smith, not anymore. It was not even human.

  She screamed, tore loose from Satterthwaite’s grasp, and scrabbled backwards, tripping over the ergoforms that had been used to barricade the door.

  Satterthwaite slammed the door. “Oh, Christ,” he said. “Christ have mercy.” He dragged the ergoforms back in front of the door. The sentry helped.

  “He’s going to bleed to death,” Mendoza said. “He needs help.”

  “So go back in there and help him. Be my guest.” Satterthwaite kicked the last ergoform into place. “He’s dismantled everything in that cabin that had electronics in it. The bed, the desk, his screen. He was a vid buff, he had a personal theater setup. Even the freaking light fixture. He’s doing something with the components … trying to augment himself. With any luck, he’ll bleed to death before he gets done. Then again, we haven’t had the best of luck recently.”

  Satterthwaite faced Mendoza.

  “That is what would have happened to you if you’d logged onto Bob using your BCI.”

  “Not necessarily,” objected Hugh Meredith-Pike, who had followed them downstairs. He seemed unembarrassed. “You’ve only got one data point, Jules. You need to run another couple of experiments before we can hypothesize with any confidence that the program is lethal.”

  “It was Błaszczykowski-Lee’s idea to try downloading it into people’s BCI memory crystals,” Satterthwaite said. “At least, thank fuck, we made poor old Smith disconnect from the wifi first. I also deleted his log-in so he can’t regain access. Hopefully, he can’t regain access. Perhaps I ought to take the wifi down altogether. We’ve lost the comms satellite, anyway.” He rubbed his eyes. “Infinite Fun Space! Christ!”

  “He may be having fun in there,” Meredith-Pike said. “It’s a subjective thing, fun. I should know. Anyway, the point is that we don’t know whether it’s the Heidegger program doing this, or it’s just him. We need more data.”

  “This is exactly how he was at Oxford,” Satterthwaite said to Elfrida and Mendoza. “Waltz in and take charge, regardless of not knowing thing one about what’s actually happening.”

  “Let this guy try,” Meredith-Pike urged. “He seems the sensible sort. If he can’t handle it …”

  Elfrida wrapped her arms around Mendoza and shouted, “You can’t have him! If you need more data, you can—no, you can’t do that to anyone else! That would be murder! Just forget about it!”

  “We could use one of your phavatar operators, I suppose,” Meredith-Pike suggested to Satterthwaite, ignoring her. “They’re cupcakes, anyway.”

  “Murderers!” Elfrida shouted.

  “Whatever we do, we have to do it soon,” Satterthwaite said, running his hands through his hair. “One circuit of the ringrail takes roughly an hour. Before long we’re going to be back where we started, and one assumes that bad things may start happening again.”

  “Fifty-three minutes,” Mendoza said. “Takes fifty-three minutes.” Elfrida felt his voice vibrate through her own body. She was still holding onto him. He had folded his own hands over hers, which were linked in front of his chest. She freed herself, breathing raggedly.

  “Come to think of it,” Satterthwaite said, “is anyone driving this thing?”

  “Probably not,” Mendoza said. “I’ll go take a look in the cab.” He shot Satterthwaite a look of searing dislike and trudged off.

  “Criminals,” Elfrida whimpered. “Murderers.” Mendoza had been right. They had to tell someone what was going on. She squared up to Satterthwaite. “Give me wifi access. Please.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to check my email.”

  “Who did you say you were again?”

  “Elfrida Goto. I work for UNVRP. Let me onto the internet. I mig
ht be able to get someone to help us.”

  “Define ‘us,’” Satterthwaite said. “You UN people are all the same. Naked acquisitiveness veiled in bogus humanitarian rhetoric. I shouldn’t even have let you on board.” He gave her a searching look, as if debating whether to put her off the train, without an EVA suit, right now.

  “OK, fine!” Elfrida yelped. “Sorry I asked!” She fled.

  It took her a while to find her way along the ramps to the driver’s cab. Mendoza was alone, poring over an intimidating array of screens.

  “He wouldn’t give me access, Mendoza. He said the UN is a veil of bogus humanitarian rhetoric.”

  “Huh,” Mendoza said, distractedly.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Just a minute.”

  Elfrida folded her arms. After a few minutes, she turned out the pockets of the loose jumper she’d been wearing inside her EVA suit. She remembered the abundantly-stocked pockets of childhood: silly putty, holographic pets, Unicorn Tears®, half a tube of M&Ms …

  Her pockets now yielded half a tube of M&Ms. And a little pink sphere with a hole through it.

  Oh yeah, that thing the maidbot had found. She’d forgotten to ask Cydney about it. “Mendoza, do you know what this is?”

  He stretched a hand back without looking. After one glance at the object, he said, “Holy crap, Goto, this is a portable wireless relay. Where’d you get it?”

  “Cydney.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s our connectivity problem solved. We’ll just switch it on—like so—and you should see it in your contacts. Got it? Now you can use your comms program. When I have a second, I’ll try to establish a Net-band uplink to the UNVRP satellite.” Mendoza seemed queerly distracted.

  “Aaargh!”

  “What?”

  “It’s there. That icon. Infinite Fun Space. It’s right there in my freaking HUD!”

  “It’s in mine, too. Just don’t click on it, I guess.”

  “Mendoza, is something wrong?”

  “Apart from the fact that we’re stuck on a train with a bunch of mad scientists and a supercomputer that’s quoting Heidegger?” For the first time since she’d come in, Mendoza turned to look at her. “Why, yes, actually.”

  “What?”

  “Check it out.” The largest screen displayed an external optic feed. The walls of the canyon rushed past. Elfrida saw a gully, and then realized the point was that she could see it. At 700 kilometers per hour, she shouldn’t have been able to spot any features at all. “We’re slowing down,” Mendoza confirmed.

  “Are you doing it?”

  “Nope. The automatic braking system engages in the event of track obstruction.”

  “Oh God,” Elfrida groaned, “who’s parked a construction vehicle on the track this time?”

  “I would hope no one else on this asteroid is as stupid as we are. No, it looks like something must’ve happened at the refinery. An explosion … or something. That’s where the obstruction is, anyway. So, hopefully we’re going to stop before we crash into it.” He fingered a dial. “I might try braking a bit harder.”

  “You do that. I’m going to send a Mayday to everyone I can think of.”

  “I just did. No one’s gotten back to me yet.”

  Elfrida connected to the internet and blinked over to full-field display. Amid the icons that seemed to float in the air before her, one blinked enticingly, bigger than the others: C’mon In! Infinite Fun Space This Way!!! Shuddering, she ignored it and reached for her comms program.

  Ping!

  Ping ping pingpingpingping!

  Someone was trying to contact her at this very moment. The caller’s ID identified him as Captain James T. Kirk. She seemed to have heard that name before somewhere.

  “Yes, what?”

  “Elfrida Goto?”

  “Yes, who is this?” There was a latency period of a few seconds, indicating that the caller was pretty close, but not on Vesta itself.

  “Thank God,” the caller said. “I’ve been trying to get through to you for ages, Ms. Goto. We’ve actually met before. Ignore the moniker; I’m using someone else’s ID.”

  A visual of the caller flashed up on Elfrida’s contacts.

  She screamed her throat raw.

  xxviii.

  “I was afraid of this,” Jun said. “She’s freaking out.” He sat on the edge of the observation deck of the St. Francis, legs dangling over the drop to the elegant lobby. He looked like one of the gargoyles their ancestors had carved on the cathedral of 11073 Galapagos. “You do it.”

  “She doesn’t know me.”

  “She isn’t going to talk to me. She thinks I’m dead.”

  There was a brief, uncomfortable silence.

  “OK. I’ll talk to her,” Kiyoshi flashed a leer. “Ladies love Scuzzy the Smuggler.”

  “Ha, ha.”

  Kiyoshi smoothed his hair and stationed himself in front of the observation deck’s window. He adjusted the high collar of his cloak to a rakish angle. He could see Jun’s small, hunched back from here. The shine of the unreal stars caught Jun’s black hair. “Elfrida? Hey.”

  “Aaaagh! Aaaaagh! Oh my God! No, no, Mendoza, leave me alone, I’m all right, I’m all right, I just … had a vision, or something—maybe the Heidegger program is messing with my brain. Maybe they’re wrong, and it can get into your head even if you don’t have a BCI. I’m going to die. I’m going to die.” Elfrida Goto was crying in noisy gulps that distorted her words.

  Kiyoshi cleared his throat. Without knowing it, she had already given him some relevant information, and it was bad. The Heidegger program. That must be what VA was calling the thing. “Elfrida?”

  “Go away! Go away right now! You’re dead! Stay dead!”

  But she did not break the connection. Kiyoshi spoke rapidly. “Elfrida, I’m really sorry about that. It was a joke. It wasn’t even funny. Again: sorry.”

  “What?”

  He wished she had a visual feed. He had never met her and couldn’t picture what she looked like or where she was.

  “My name’s Kiyoshi Yonezawa. I’m Jun’s brother. I’m not dead. I’m—” He checked his watch, a sleek black armlet that went with the pilot’s uniform he had designed himself: diamond-studded black leathers and a sweeping black cloak. For the first time he was conscious of looking slightly ridiculous. “I’m about ten hours from you, as the rickety old spaceship flies. Elfrida, are you there? Can we talk? It’s important.”

  “You’re the Giraffe,” she said wonderingly.

  Kiyoshi winced. He heard a snort of laughter from Jun. “Yeah, that was my nickname. In a previous life. Anyway, I hang out in this volume nowadays. And I heard about some trouble on 4 Vesta.”

  This is the way to do it, he realized in relief. He wouldn’t even have to admit that he’d caused the trouble in the first place. No risk for the boss-man. As if sensing what he was thinking, Jun glared at him.

  “Trouble?” Elfrida Goto said. “Yeah. We’re in trouble. Can you help?”

  “I hope so. But you’ve got to tell me what’s going on first.”

  She spilled a tale of student activism, corporate misbehavior, and the ISA. Listening in, Jun came to stand beside him and looked out at the simulated stars.

  “This is maximally bad,” Kiyoshi observed, having made sure that he wasn’t transmitting.

  “Nope,” Jun said. “Maximally bad would be if the ISA confiscated the thing.”

  “They don’t want to confiscate it, sounds like. They want to destroy it. I never thought I’d say this about the ISA, but they’ve got the right idea.”

  “You really think they’ll destroy it without trying to find out what it is, how it works?“

  “And how Virgin Atomic got hold of it in the first place.” Kiyoshi theatrically banged his forehead against the cool glass of the window. “They’ll trace it to us, follow the breadcrumbs to the boss-man. This is bad. We have to get it back.”

  “Destroy it.”

  “Yeah, whate
ver, sure. Should have blown it away the minute I set eyes on it.”

  “It’s not too late. They’re on the brink of catastrophe, but they can still contain it if they’re smart.”

  “Right. Right. SHIP COMMAND: Engage main drive.” (At present, the Unicorn was coasting, as Kiyoshi had wanted to save fuel for a quick getaway.) “Recompute course to 4 Vesta based on brachistochrone trajectory.” The astrogation computer went to work. “Burn all the way,” Kiyoshi said, pacing, “and we can get there in …”

  “Seven hours, fourteen minutes and three seconds.”

  “We’ll fly by at high speed and frag the fucker from a thousand klicks out. The ISA might even give us a medal.”

  “No.”

  “Yonezawa-san? Yonezawa-san, are you there?”

  Kiyoshi gave Jun a hard stare and clicked TRANSMIT. “Right here. Just thinking about the best solution to your problem, running a few calculations.” The gunnery computer told him that it could hit an object the size of the Vesta Express from up to 2,000 kilometers away with 96.2% certainty of obliterating it. The gunnery computer was the most up-to-date part of the ship, saving only the hypervelocity coil gun and conventional missile battery that it governed. Both had been given to Kiyoshi by the boss-man to safeguard his cargoes. “We’re gonna be with you sooner than we thought: in about seven hours.”

  Jun stood in front of him, fists clenched. His eyes were the eyes of the monk he had been, uncompromising, fiery-dark.

  “You know what,” Kiyoshi told Elfrida Goto, “you might want to get off that train. Be sneaky about it, you copy?”

  “I can’t!” Elfrida wailed. “They took our freaking EVA suits! We can’t go anywhere!”

  “Oh,” Kiyoshi said. “Well. That’s OK. Just stay where you are, and we’ll be with you shortly.” At least, a hypervelocity cloud of molten metal will.