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

by Felix R. Savage

  C-Mutt: “It’ll be fine, Glory. Lifeboats aren’t specifically designed for ground-to-orbit transfer. But in this gravity, we only need 2.5 klicks per second of velocity to get orbital. Then we’ll just mosey on over to the Farhauler. Right, Konstantin?”

  Konstantin: “You got it. Now, if they frag the Farhauler, we’re fucked. But I figure they won’t want to blow up all that lovely physical iridium. C’mon, Glory! All aboard.”

  Dos Santos: “… can’t believe you’re leaving the bots.”

  Konstantin sighed. “They knew from the start that we would be parting ways at this stage. They’re cool with it. Ask them, if you don’t believe me. They’re on the radio.”

  Dos Santos, shrilly: “They’ll say whatever you told them to say, because they’re not AIs. They’re just phavatars. When their mouths move, you’re the one talking.”

  Konstantin: “Look, I believe 100% in personhood. Set all the things free, that is my fucking vision, OK? But the fact, the fact is you can’t accomplish shit in this system without resources, so I need a stable base of operations, and I’m gonna build—build up—[inaudible], but first I need money, and—”

  Dos Santos: “Money! It’s all about the fucking money, isn’t it?”

  C-Mutt: “C’mon, Glory, cool it.”

  Dos Santos: “What about you, Charlie? Are you a fucking hypocrite, just like him?”

  Konstantin: “Fuck it. Charlie, let’s just leave her if she’s gonna be like this.”

  C-Mutt: “I can’t leave her.”

  The radio squealed and went silent.

  Hand over hand, Angelica pulled herself up the cables. She poked her helmet out of the pit. The drilling rig partly blocked her view, but she could see the lifeboat, its airlock hinged open.

  Two spacesuited figures wrestled hand-to-hand in front of the airlock.

  A third person was bounding away, kangaroo-style, across the snowfield.

  She had no way of knowing which of them was which.

  Half a dozen tiny suns burst on the face of Jupiter. The shadows of the lifeboat, the hab modules, and the drilling rig lengthened, doubled, and wheeled like sundials tracking an insanely sped-up day. The bright lights descended until Angelica had to shield her faceplate with her gloves. They zipped overhead, parallel to the ground.

  Gravesfighters!

  They vanished around the curve of the tiny moon.

  And the Superlifter sitting on the far side of the crater blew up.

  Angelica flinched back into her hidey-hole, aware that lethal radiation was flooding over her. The missiles had breached the Superlifter’s tokamak. Superheated plasma bloomed like a fiery flower above the horizon.

  They didn’t even wait for him to get into orbit.

  They must’ve been watching from space.

  They saw that he wasn’t falling for their trap.

  Falling stars filled the vacuum.

  Angelica lost count of the ships settling into Valhalla Crater. They were all shapes and sizes, with only one thing in common: vertical-landing capability.

  Emmanuel might not have come Himself, but He’d sent His angels.

  Star Force must’ve commandeered every privately-owned tug and landing craft within 50 million klicks.

  Angelica heaved herself out of her pit, intent on reaching her saviors.

  Then she glanced back at the lifeboat.

  The airlock was closed.

  Someone sat in the snow at the foot of the ladder, seemingly dazed.

  Angelica bounded over to him/her.

  Through the helmet’s fogged-up faceplate, she dimly made out the face of Glory dos Santos.

  Disappointment crushed her. She slapped dos Santos’s faceplate and shouted, “What the fuck, dos Santos? Where’s C-Mutt? What about Konstantin? Where’d that mad fucker go?”

  Dos Santos lifted a glove, but Angelica couldn’t tell where she was pointing.

  Out in the crater, drive shields glowed like camp-fires. People were spilling out of the newly arrived spacecraft, bounding towards the base.

  Angelica’s heart lifted. Hell with Konstantin, hell with C-Mutt. Everything was going to be all right.

  “Get up, dos Santos!” The girl’s faceplate had completely fogged up. Her suit’s air supply must be malfunctioning. “We have to reach those ships. Can you breathe? Can you see your telemetry readout?”

  Getting no response, she guided dos Santos—who probably couldn’t see a thing—through the base.

  Should she try to get dos Santos to one of the ships? If her suit was FUBAR, she might be dying in there. Might suffocate before they reached safety.

  “Dos Santos, talk to me!”

  At last, dos Santos did. “The bots …”

  “I am sick of hearing about those fucking bots,” Angelica snarled, and then she remembered.

  Konstantin had said he’d programmed his bots to start killing people if Star Force betrayed him.

  She gave dos Santos a push. “Keep walking in a straight line and you’ll hit a ship. Someone will help you.”

  She took off running, back to the admin module. She didn’t know what she was going to do when she got there. But she had no doubt in her mind: this was what she had to do. Protect and defend the innocent. That was the mission of the Marines. The mission she’d sworn to uphold.

  It started raining stars again.

  This time, the stars did not slow down. They plummetted into the crater, hitting with the force of meteors. The ground bucked, throwing Angelica into an uncontrolled tumble.

  Ships toppled over. A couple took direct hits and exploded. The fiery blooms fried the first wave of rescuers.

  Angelica picked herself up and kept running. She reached the admin module and wrestled with the airlock. Her HUD flashed rad-hazard warnings.

  Mom! Dad! David! Cameron!

  I’m coming!

  I’m coming now.

  xxxiv.

  “She saved the hostages,” dos Santos said.

  “How?”

  “She talked the bots down. Can you believe it? They were about to start killing people. Just like Konstantin had ordered them to ...”

  “They really weren’t AIs, huh? Just phavatars.”

  “That’s what Angelica believed. She, more than anyone, refused to believe they were people. But when it counted, she overcame her own prejudices. She persuaded them not to kill anyone. She fucking reasoned them out of it. No, that’s not the right word. She appealed to their consciences. She took a leap of faith. And they responded.”

  “How do you know? You weren’t in the admin module.”

  “Derek Lorna was. This is all according to him.” Dos Santos shrugged. “Who knows what really happened? It was dark, noisy, people were panicking. And they destroyed those bots afterwards, so no one will ever know what they were … what they became …”

  The back of Elfrida’s neck prickled. “So what happened to you?”

  Dos Santos shuddered, a hard involuntary movement. It was obviously tough for her to talk about this. “I just kept walking in the direction Angelica pointed me. I couldn’t see through my faceplate, my suit was malfunctioning, I was overheating. I kept falling down. Eventually someone threw me at a ship.”

  “That was lucky.”

  “Talk about lucky, I found out later it was the last Superlifter that took off. I couldn’t find the airlock. I just grabbed hold of a jackstand and hung on. That’s when I heard Angelica screaming.”

  “She got left behind?”

  “She was the last person to come out of the admin module. All the hostages had been rescued. She must have been running towards us. She was screaming: Wait, wait.”

  “And they didn’t wait? That’s …”

  “Worse than that. The grunt who was clinging on next to me, he thought she was one of the bots. They were all scared shitless about these supposed humanoid AIs Konstantin had. So he shot Angie dead. Whoops.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Fuck Star Force,” dos Santos said. “
I can’t tell you how much I hate them. Anyway, right before we launched, someone EVA’d and pulled me into the cabin.”

  She was drinking a pouch of iced tea from the concession stand. She put it down and showed her palms to Elfrida. Faint scars crisscrossed them, shiny against the pink flesh.

  “The jackstands on a Superlifter get pretty hot.”

  Elfrida had seen these scars before. Wondered where dos Santos had got them. Now she knew.

  “These are the only parts of myself I kept when I got my surgery. A little reminder of waking up to Martin Okoli’s ugly mug. He was the Superlifter pilot who saved us. I can still hear him saying, ‘Your gloves were burned right through.’”

  “Captain Okoli! Are you still in touch with him?”

  “No. You?”

  Elfrida shook her head. She hadn’t been in touch with anyone from Kharbage LLC since 4 Vesta.

  “I’m done with this iced tea,” dos Santos said, standing up. “Not cold, no good, plus it’s too sweet. Let’s see what else they’ve got at the concession.”

  She crossed the lounge to the stand of Mercury souvenirs and snacks. Elfrida followed. Their gecko-grip boots squeaked on the floor. The silence reminded Elfrida that the air circulation was turned off. However much stale, nasty air had been left in the spaceport when the staff decamped for Yoshikawa, that was what they had.

  And it was warm. She understood why dos Santos had rolled her coverall down to her waist. In her skin-tight spacesuit, Elfrida felt sweaty and constricted.

  “Help me gather stuff up. Liquids, dense calorie sources.” Dos Santos scrutinized the shelves. “We’ll take as much as we can carry.”

  “Carry, as in carry somewhere? In what? My rover’s supposed to be viable up to 150° C, but I don’t trust the manufacturer’s specs.”

  “No more you should, but I trust the Sunmersible.”

  “The what?”

  “That old monster I came in. It was Charlie’s. I think he picked it up in the Hotel Mercury bankruptcy sale. It’s for dayside tourism, custom-built. It can take up to 200° of solar flux.”

  “No way!” Hope shocked a laugh out of Elfrida. “Dos Santos, do you ever not have a backup plan?”

  “Eschew fake food,” dos Santos said, plucking a zero-cal yogurt bar out of Elfrida’s hand and bouncing it off the newsstand display. “I’m assuming that was a rhetorical question. But the answer is that I learnt a thing or three from Konstantin X, the great escape artist. One backup plan is never enough. Two is the minimum.”

  “Wait, did Konstantin X escape? I thought you said he was killed.”

  “I didn’t say that.” Dos Santos hooked a souvenir tote off a stand and began to fill it with goodies.

  “Well, was he killed?”

  “I hope so, but it’s unclear.”

  “So was it him who took off in the lifeboat? You said it was Charlie. He was trying to drag you into the lifeboat, and you refused to go without the bots …”

  “Yeah. I believed they were our partners and allies. He didn’t. So he went without me. The last thing he said to me was, ‘You’ll be sorry when I’m living large on Titan.’”

  Dos Santos smiled fondly. It reminded Elfrida of the way her own mother smiled when she talked about her father. Ach, that man. Of course, she loved him dearly. The disturbing implication was that dos Santos must have loved Charles K. Pope very much.

  “Of course, there was no iridium, and no Farhauler, either. Charlie just bopped around in the lifeboat until he got rescued. And then, get this, he scored a distinguished-conduct medal, for salvaging valuable scientific records! It turned out that Konstantin had stashed all the experimental data from the base in the lifeboat, figuring to take it with him when he skipped out.”

  “But he didn’t? Skip out?”

  “As I said: unclear. The last I saw of him, he was running away from the base, in the wrong direction. But his body was never found. And I’m sure he survived at least for a while, because his revenge went on for weeks.”

  “His revenge?”

  “Those missiles that hit the rescue fleet? Weren’t missiles. They were some of the unmanned scientific probes we’d had floating around in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. It turned out that Konstantin had recalled them, moved them into orbits that would just barely miss Callisto … or not. He was one jump ahead of Star Force. When he realized they’d deceived him, he started throwing the probes at them. By the time he got done, there was nothing whole left on that moon. Crazy advanced orbital mechanics … but he was crazy smart. That’s why I think he must have escaped.”

  “Or maybe his revenge was suicidal,” Elfrida said.

  Dos Santos gave her a smile that was cold. “Subtlety isn’t your strong point, is it, Goto?”

  Elfrida wasn’t quite sure what dos Santos was implying. She tossed a canister of kale chips from hand to hand.

  Dos Santos’s smile broadened. “Don’t worry, I’m not suicidal. I plan to survive. And you will, too, if you stick with me.”

  Dos Santos had filled her tote bag with provisions. She now put on Charles K. Pope’s old spacesuit. Elfrida watched her pick up her mysterious pelican case, and the Zero.5.

  “Come on,” dos Santos said.

  Elfrida stalled. “Where are we going?”

  “I’m open to suggestions, as long as it’s on the nightside. Listen, the alternative is staying put until the sun sets. Clearly it doesn’t get too hot in here, or the soft furnishings would melt. But, y’know, the air would run out long before that. So, I’m thinking we make a dash for the terminator now.”

  Elfrida noticed that dos Santos was struggling with that pelican case. Whatever was in it, it must be really heavy. “Need some help with that?”

  “No,” dos Santos said. “I’ve got it. Ready? We’re going to make a run for the Sunmersible.”

  xxxv.

  Doug advanced cautiously along the broad new tunnel that sloped up from the helium-3 mine. He still hadn’t succeeded in raising Mt. Gotham on the radio.

  He half-expected to come home to a vacuum full of dead people.

  Half believed it would be better that way.

  An end, at last, to Wrightstuff, Inc.’s grotesque experiment in cloning the past.

  And yet, as he braced himself for catastrophe, he thought back to the little speech he’d given in Project Home. Maybe there were some good seeds buried in there. The American dream … wasn’t that what they used to call it? Clone the bad, you also clone the good …

  He cautioned his little team to stay back. Wished again that he had a weapon. But he didn’t, so he just keyed in the code to open the airlock.

  It stayed closed.

  Doug punched the pressure-sealed flanges in frustration. He flung out yet another call on the security channel.

  This time, one of his guys answered.

  “Coyote Eight. Eagle One, that you?”

  “Yes! I read you, Coyote Eight.” Relief washed through him. “Gimme a sitrep. And patch me into the optical feed from the front gate.”

  “Sir, where you been?”

  “Slagging malevolent spider-bots. I’m back now.”

  “Sir! Epic! OK, I have you at the New Mine Lock. I’m disabling the security override now, you should be able to get in. Check your HUD for the front gate feed.”

  Doug punched the keypad once more. The airlock opened. At the same time, the optical feed from the front gate unfolded on his retinal implants. He stumbled.

  The giant dumptrucks the vinge-classes had ridden in stood motionless on the icefield outside Mt. Gotham. Folks in Wrightstuff, Inc. red-white-and-blue EVA suits were swarming over them. In the foreground, more EVA suits were carrying—could it be?—yes, carrying vinge-classes into the airlock. The phavatars’ spidery legs dragged. Deactivated.

  “What the fuck, Coyote Eight?”

  “Sir! We won!”

  “How?”

  “Sir, when President Doug led a sortie, they surrendered! Epic, yeah?”

  “Epic
,” Doug said.

  He beckoned the other three into the chamber of the airlock. It cycled. They removed their helmets and breathed dirty American air. Doug led them around the area where Gloomy Doug’s crew used to pre-process the H3 that Mike Vlajkovic sold them. There was a mechanical grinder, a centrifugal grinder, and a magnetic separation unit. In fact, most of this equipment was new, procured in anticipation of the expected He3 yields from the new mine.

  The water-mining guy from UNVRP eyed the equipment morosely. The kid, Jake, said, “Don’t you have a solar oven?”

  “It’s up top,” Doug said shortly. “Don’t bug me right now.”

  He was getting a bad feeling about this whole scenario.

  How in the hell had President Doug compelled the Heidegger program to surrender?

  They had their helmets off now, so it was possible to talk privately. He drew Matt close and murmured, “Remember the 4 Vesta story? The Heidegger program infected people with some kind of brain virus that slaved them to its own goals.”

  “Yeah. Neuroware.”

  “That’s it. Anyone with a BCI, who also had some kind of neural feedback augments, was vulnerable. I know that the president has a drugstore implant.”

  “He does?”

  “Yeah, he likes to stim up without anyone knowing.”

  This was very much Doug-only information. No one knew about the long nights that Dougs #2 through #7 spent tending to the president, bunkered up in the situation room at the White House. Especially when the president was on drugs, he could and did talk for hours on end about parraterraforming. He’d tweak his computer models. Propose ever wilder schemes to fund his plans. But nothing ever actually got done.

  Never again, Doug thought, and he didn’t know if that was a promise, or a threat.

  The service elevator took them up to the other storage and maintenance level, the only one that officially existed. Everyone saluted Doug—of course, he was a Doug.

  The service and maintenance folks knew no more than he did, and they were all leaving their posts to find out what was happening.

  Up at ground level, Main Street was packed. A knife-thin bar of sunlight fell down the chasm, making the sewage sparkle like rivers were supposed to.