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

by Felix R. Savage

  Kiyoshi turned away, because the alternative was punching the Jesuit in the faceplate. He flew to the life-support monitoring station at the end of the bridge and checked the atmosphere. It looked like the Space Gardener’s Friend was all scrubbed out. He took off his helmet. “Mmm. I love the smell of fungicide in the morning.” He sighed. “Well, hopefully that took care of the nanobugs. With any luck it’ll have solved our mold problem, too. These wooden walls are fungus factories.”

  Father Tom took off his own helmet and sniffed. “Phew. It’s a shame, in a way, we couldn’t have trapped some of them alive. It’s not every day you get a chance to study Gray Goo in the lab!”

  Then Kiyoshi knew. He rounded on the Jesuit. “It wasn’t the boss-man you called. It was Domenika!”

  “Yes,” Father Tom said. “So what?”

  “So what? So what, I mean …” Kiyoshi felt that he shouldn’t have to explain his outrage. It was outrageous on the face of it.

  Domenika Wacek was a part-time healthcare worker on Ceres who had been receiving visions of Jesus, so she claimed, since 2286. The Vatican had not pronounced either way on the validity of her visions. Most of her prophecies were just paraphrases of Revelations, but they were controversial in Catholic circles because Domenika had a thing about Gray Goo. She went back and forth between prophesying that Gray Goo was going to eat the universe, and that it was only going to eat part of it.

  “Domenika says Gray Goo will destroy Luna,” Father Tom said calmly.

  “Or if it’s Wednesday, she says Gray Goo will destroy everything.”

  “Still, better safe than sorry, would you not agree with that?”

  “Sure. I wanted the damn bugs off my ship. But Gray Goo, Father, you can’t believe … The whole thing is overblown.”

  Gray Goo was the popular term for self-replicating nanobots. These had been illegal, under a suite of laws and regulations known as the Gray Goo Laws, since 2182, when a batch of nanites genetically engineered to feed on sewage had self-reproduced out of all control, forcing the authorities to blow up half of the London sewer system.

  “Those laws exist for a reason,” Father Tom said. “And it’s quite likely that the little guy I found in your pocket violates them.”

  “Yes, the Gray Goo Laws do exist for a reason,” Kiyoshi said cynically. “To give the UN extra leverage over the sheeple, by scaring them with the idea of nanobots eating the universe. Anyway, these bugs weren’t nanobots. They were bacteria, correct?”

  “There’s no fundamental difference between—”

  “But Domenika doesn’t know that. She doesn’t have a clue about nanotechnology. She’s just an old woman who thinks Gray Goo is a bigger threat than cosmic rays, or spaceborn syndrome, or oh, I don’t know, the PLAN!”

  “The Society of Jesus has been very interested in Domenika’s prophecies for a while now.”

  Kiyoshi shook his head. “You aren’t really working for the boss-man at all, are you?”

  “Sure I’m working with him.”

  Kiyoshi’s English was good enough to catch that. “Very Jesuitical, Father. With, not for. You work for your Order.”

  “I should think it’s fairly obvious that as a member of the Society of Jesus, I obey my superiors.”

  “And they ordered you to go to Luna, to track down the Gray Goo.”

  “The boss-man co-sponsored my mission. We agreed that we’d share whatever information I found.”

  Suddenly Kiyoshi felt tired of the argument. “Oh, let’s just agree to disagree. I don’t have the energy for this.” He opened the refrigerator in search of something to drink. The interior was as cold and bright as the sunny side of an asteroid. He knelt, sticking his head into the cool air.

  “I’d be happy to go over Domenika’s prophecies with you,” Father Tom said. “You’d be astonished to see how many times she’s been right.”

  “No thanks,” Kiyoshi said, his head resting on a shelf. “I’m going to have my hands full, teaching Jun’s most socially impaired sub-personality how to fly the ship.”

  xxii.

  That night, Kiyoshi floated at the quartermaster’s workstation in a cold puddle of screen light, searching the internet for deals on splart. Not looking at nitrogen pellets or seeds. If Jun wanted that stuff, let him come out of hiding and buy it himself.

  The news alert he’d set popped.

  Director of Leadership in Robotics Institute Arrested on Fraud Charges.

  “Investigators claim that Derek Lorna supplied defective software upgrades to the United Nations Venus Remediation Program,” a news curator announced. “It’s not clear whether these allegations are related to the recent tragedy on Mercury, said to have been caused by a new iteration of the Heidegger program.”

  Kiyoshi hooted gleefully. That was their way of saying the connection had been made. Elfrida’s evidence had got to the right people, and now they were acting on it. Doing their job. It almost restored his faith in the United Nations.

  “Lorna, 46, a citizen of the Former United Kingdom, denies that LiRI’s software was defective. However, he fled his home on Luna shortly before the allegations were made public. He was tracked down by Interplanetary Court of Justice investigators at the Hope Center for Nanobiotics, a space station orbiting at the L2 Earth-Moon LaGrange point.”

  Kiyoshi leaned back in his couch. “Hey, Father!” he yelled. “Wake up and look at this!”

  He found some jittery helmet-cam footage of the Hope Center for Nanobiotics. Rack-and-stack towers of equipment crowded a large laboratory. Trash floated, proving that the facility was in zero-gee.

  Father Tom floated onto the bridge, yawning. Kiyoshi froze the shot of the lab. “Look at this.”

  “It’s good news, but it could have been better,” the Jesuit said with his customary sunny optimism. “Fraud charges! He’ll be out on bail in five minutes if he’s got a good lawyer.”

  “Yeah, well, forget about Lorna for a minute. What do you think this is?”

  “A laboratory of some kind.”

  “It’s the Hope Center for Nanobiotics. This is where Lorna was captured. It’s not on Luna at all. It’s a space station orbiting at the L2 Earth-Moon LaGrange point!”

  Father Tom struck himself on the forehead. “That’s why I couldn’t find it. Of course! They were breeding the nanoprobes in deep space and launching them directly from the fab. They know how dangerous they are. They’d have wanted to minimize the risk of them getting loose on Luna.”

  Kiyoshi still didn’t believe the nanoprobes were dangerous, much less that they were Gray Goo. But now he had something else in mind.

  “What do you say, Father? Let’s go have a look.”

  He kicked his feet out of the stirrups and floated towards the captain’s couch.

  “Hey, Studd! Could use some help in here!”

  Father Tom wallowed after him. “Are you high?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’re not seriously thinking about raiding the Hope Center for Nanobiotics?”

  “Not as risky as it sounds. There won’t be anyone there at the moment.”

  “That’s not my point. It would be a criminal act.”

  “Oh, Father,” Kiyoshi sighed.

  “Don’t you bloody Oh Father me. You’re making us as bad as they are. I’ll not be a party to it.”

  The sub-personality Ron Studd materialized on the bridge, glancing nervously from one man to the other.

  “Compute a course to the L2 Earth-Moon LaGrange point,” Kiyoshi instructed Studd. He turned back to Father Tom. “Anyway, if there’s anyone there, they won’t see us coming. Because we’ve got the Ghost.”

  At least, they would have, if Jun came out of hiding to operate it.

  And he will, Kiyoshi thought confidently. He won’t let us get fragged.

  ★

  The Monster glided through space, giving Earth and her flocks of satellites and orbitals a wide berth. In comparison to the voids of the outer system, the distances involved were t
iny. After half a day, the Monster’s radar locked in on the Hope Center for Nanobiotics.

  The space station did not respond to Kiyoshi’s exploratory pings. He felt fairly sure that the Interplanetary Court of Justice investigators had forced everyone to leave. The question was whether anyone had come back since, to protect what was obviously a big chunk of investment capital.

  The Monster’s radar and LiDAR built up a 3D model of the station. Seven giant propellant tanks, connected like the spokes of a wheel, turned above Kiyoshi’s face, projected by his retinal implants into the middle of the bridge. An eighth cylinder had life-support machinery hanging off it.

  Kiyoshi shared the model with Father Tom. “See? No guns.”

  “What’s that on the hub? It looks like a giant laser.”

  “It’s a laser broom. For sweeping debris out of the station’s orbit. Even if they aimed it at us, we wouldn’t feel it.”

  “And those—are they ships?”

  Four tiny, stubby-winged spacecraft nuzzled the hub, proving the scale of the space station.

  “They’re ships, all right.” Kiyoshi chewed the end of his cigarette. “Normally, I would assume that ships mean people. But I guess they were forced to leave those behind, too.”

  Father Tom compared the radar data with the ship specs he’d put together from Doug Wright’s and Kip Rensselaer’s information. “There’s no question about it. These are the shuttles the Hopes commissioned from Wrightstuff and GESiemens. We’ve hit the jackpot!”

  Kiyoshi generously refrained from reminding the Jesuit that he hadn’t wanted to come. “Yup. And they look small enough to carry. I think I’ll grab one. The boss-man will be interested to have a look at that new-tech shielding.”

  Nothing else orbited the L2 point. It was unstable, compared to the L4 and L5 points in the Earth-Luna system, so anything left here without re-boost capability would eventually drift away. That probably meant there weren’t any passive mines in the volume.

  “We’ll just slide right in and …”

  “There’s another ship approaching,” Ron Studd interrupted, from his seat at the astrogator’s workstation. He looked like he might be half-Japanese … and half-gerbil. He also had an annoyingly high, squeaky voice. “I think it’s a fighter!”

  “Star Force?”

  “No—well—I’m not sure …”

  “Let me see what you’ve got.”

  Studd sent him the approaching ship’s velocity, position, and some best-guesses about its mass and configuration.

  “It’s moving fast. It might be Star Force. But how would they have known we were coming?” Kiyoshi could answer his own question: Quite easily. Since they weren’t using the Ghost, anyone with eyes on the space station could have observed the Monster’s approach.

  Goddamn Jun. As long as he stayed gone, Kiyoshi couldn’t use the Ghost. What more would it take to bring him out of hiding?

  “I’m going in.” Teeth gritted, Kiyoshi launched the rendezvous sequence.

  With Studd crunching the numbers in real time, the Monster’s auxiliary thruster nozzles belched micro-bursts of plasma. These finessed the ship’s velocity down to double digits per second and simultaneously vectored its thrust. The Monster began to tumble end over end, matching the space station’s pitch and yaw, so the big wheel appeared to stop turning and hang still in Kiyoshi’s optical feed. Only the stars behind it went round and round. Father Tom laced his fingers over his mouth in an attitude of prayer, or perhaps nausea.

  “Incoming!” Studd screamed suddenly.

  “What? Where!?”

  “The unknown ship is shooting at us! Captain, do I have permission to return fire?”

  “No,” Kiyoshi yelled. He shot over to the gunnery workstation and jammed himself into the couch.

  “Please! Please!” Studd’s skinny body writhed with eagerness. Christ, Kiyoshi thought, I can see how YOU aren’t ready for a life of prayer and contemplation.

  “No! Software doesn’t get to play with guns.” The computer told him that the incoming missile would streak harmlessly past, kilometers away. It had just been a warning shot. “In the Belt, that’s how they say ‘Hi there,” he assured Father Tom.

  “Do you think they’re Belters?”

  “No idea. Their trajectory says they’re coming from Luna.”

  Father Tom’s face said I told you so.

  “I’m sure they won’t actually shoot at us. We’re too close to the space station. They wouldn’t want to hit it.” Sweat prickled Kiyoshi’s scalp. “SHIP COMMAND: Complete rendezvous sequence. Deploy clamps.”

  Thunk. Thunk. The ship shivered from end to end as its clamps glommed onto whatever they could reach—a strut, a truss, the laser broom housing. Now the Monster was tethered to the space station’s hub, hovering above the four little shuttles clamped onto the fueling rail.

  Kiyoshi floated out of his nest, superficially calm. “SHIP COMMAND: Deploy the Wetblanket system.” Drones puttered out of the Monster’s auxiliary launch bay, carrying the Wetblanket, a kilometer-wide nanofiber net. “See, easy. We’ll just wrap one of the shuttles up in the Wetblanket and carry it away.”

  “That ship’s coming closer all the time,” Father Tom said.

  “It won’t get here for another twenty minutes. Anyway, screw them. They’re probably just pirates.” Kiyoshi snorted a laugh. He flew out of the bridge.

  “Where are you going?” Father Tom shouted. Kiyoshi did not answer. The Jesuit caught up with him at the command airlock. “I feel as if I’m beginning to sound like a looped recording,” he said grimly, “but you’re out of your mind.”

  Kiyoshi was climbing into his EVA suit. “Since we’re here, I might as well have a look around.”

  “What for?”

  “You never know, they might have left some nanoprobes behind. Wouldn’t you like to have some more samples of Gray Goo to study, Father?”

  “They say the spaceborn are crazy. Too many cosmic rays to the brain. Now I know it’s true.”

  Kiyoshi hooked another EVA suit out of the locker and floated it at him. “They say the Irish are crazy, too.”

  “Holy Mother Mary, wrap us in the mantle of Thy grace,” the Jesuit muttered, jamming his feet into gecko boots.

  ★

  Their suits’ integrated mobility packs carried them across the 100-meter gap between the Monster and the space station. LED indicators on the refueling apparatus blinked, guiding them through the darkness. Then they came out of the Monster’s shadow, and Kiyoshi saw Luna, where he had so recently been mooching around the bars, picking up girls and impressing them with lies.

  As big as a grapefruit, Luna’s dark side was sprinkled with the lights of mining operations. A faint halo of Earthshine rimmed it. Luna hid Earth, and Earth hid the sun, leaving this lonely outpost in eternal darkness.

  “The other ship’s almost here,” Studd said in Kiyoshi’s helmet. “Can I please, please shoot it?”

  “No!” Not yet, Kiyoshi mentally amended. “Just keep an eye on it.” He switched channels. “Father, it looks like the drones have gotten hung up on something.” The Wetblanket now covered his chosen shuttle in a bluish haze, but the shuttle hadn’t come off its clamps. “I’m going to check it out. You?”

  “Need you ask?” the Jesuit’s voice came back. His silhouette receded in the direction of the lab module.

  Kiyoshi flew under the netted shuttle. Ablative tiles coated its undercarriage, proving that it was meant to descend into an atmosphere. The stubby wings sent the same message. In fact, it reminded him of the very first spaceplanes developed in the 20th century, with the obvious difference that it utilized electrical propulsion. The drive looked like a VASIMR, an engine type sometimes used for short-haul ships. There was no external sign of the new technologies that Hope Space Industries had developed. It would be interesting to take the little ship apart, anyway.

  He disconnected the fuel line going to the shuttle’s primary tank—that was what the drones had got hung u
p on. The hose jerked in his glove, and liquid hydrogen gasified into the vacuum before the flow automatically shut off. Then he sliced through the shuttle’s tethers with the cutter laser from his utility belt, leaving the clamps fast to the docking platform, the shuttle floating free.

  The Wetblanket instantly tightened around it, and the drones bore it off in the direction of the Monster. A mere 25 meters from nose to tail, the shuttle would fit nicely into the cargo airlock. Let’s see how Jun liked that. Kiyoshi was betting he wouldn’t be able to ignore a spaceplane posted into his cloistered garden.

  “Any updates on that ship?”

  “It’s RV’ing. You should be able to see it for yourself in a minute,” Studd replied glumly.

  A second later, Father Tom said, “I’m in the lab. There’s no one here. If we’ve got time, I’m going to take some pictures.”

  “Go for it. Find any probes?”

  “No; not that I’d be able to see them if I had. They must be in storage somewhere. I’ll find them, this module is not large.”

  “I’ll wait for you out here.”

  Kiyoshi hung out at the airlock of the lab module, watching the other ship maneuver around the far side of the space station. A quarter the size of the Monster, it was all drive. He could see why Studd had mistaken it for a fighter. The payload consisted of a crew cube perched atop a broom-shaped assembly of engine and drive shield. No room in there for cargo, just a handful of people … who didn’t mind travelling at ten gees.

  “It’s a Hyperpony,” Studd said. “Usually employed for fast courier jobs. Can carry a three-man crew, but is often remotely piloted. No armaments. That missile? Must have been a chunk of solid waste pushed along the ship’s own trajectory.” The sub-personality sounded the teensiest bit shamefaced.

  “Now aren’t you glad I didn’t let you shoot it?”

  The Hyperpony swung around its vertical axis. Hot gas boiled out from under its drive shield, prompting Kiyoshi to check his suit telemetry. Lotta rads shooting around. He needed to do a course of stem cell transfusions, anyway, he’d been putting it off.