Moonsteed

by Manda Benson

  The pitch of the hum grew until it reached a steady level and a green light above the cryomagnet switch came on.

  “Plasma thrust online, quickly!” Anthony told her.

  Verity found the plasma thrust switch and hit it. The craft rose slowly as the plasma thrusters forced charged particles into the magnetic field beneath its keel. The lander felt wobbly and unsteady on its frictionless cushion of ions. She put the main fusion engine online, and heard a whoosh of something depressurizing followed by a roar of fusion. The force flung her back against her seat and the scabrous landscape rushed past below. Verity gripped the steering bar to counter the instability the acceleration through the atmosphere generated, gradually pushing it down to raise the craft’s nose and gain altitude. The horses scattered. As the ground fell away, the craggy features of the ice became smooth and indistinct, and the curve of the horizon became apparent.

  As the G-force eased from her back and neck, Callisto appeared as a scratched indigo ovoid outlined by the glowing azure arc of its atmosphere.

  An image appeared on the lander’s screen: a map of Callisto and Jupiter with various orbital lines around it, and a dashed line delineating a course. Verity sensed the pull of an adjusting force. “Hey, it’s playing silly buggers.”

  “It’s just the autopilot moving into course to intercept the yacht.”

  “Yacht?”

  “My yacht, the one the lander belongs to.”

  “You’ve got a yacht orbiting here? How come no one noticed?”

  “No one looked.” Anthony’s voice carried a current of amusement.

  As Verity watched the schematic, a bright star appeared in the front window.

  “There it is. Prepare to dock.”

  Chapter 8

  As the star in the lander’s front window grew brighter, it began to take form. Verity recognized the bulk of a fusion engine at the stern, and forward of that a centrifuge collar, lit by its sharp albedo. Around the forward part, just back of the prow, articulated metal limbs were retracted in close, like the spokes of a furled umbrella.

  The straps pressed into Verity’s shoulders as the ship’s autopilot commenced braking thrust.

  “Prepare to dock,” said Anthony in the back of her mind.

  The yacht loomed in the forward window. A stream of white gas gushed across the edge of the window as the carbon dioxide ballast activated. The front of the lander began to rotate away from the yacht, bringing it in line with a lander-shaped slot on the underside of the larger vessel. All thrust had ceased, and the craft moved slowly into dock. Gases hissed through the lander’s walls. The edge of the yacht’s recess gradually descended over the lander’s window, covering the view of the stars and Callisto below.

  A click and a loud ping conducted through the hull. A green symbol lit up on the hatch above her head.

  Verity unfastened her seatbelt and pushed up from her chair. She had to brace her feet against the wall in order to turn the wheel and open the hatch, revealing a white corridor. She pulled herself back down by the headrest of the pilot’s seat, hooking the bag with Anthony in it out of the foot well and picking up her helmet.

  She bent her knees, setting her feet to the chair and aiming her head into the corridor above. Pushing up caused her to drift into the yacht, and grabbing one of the wall rungs prevented her from crashing into the locker at the far end of the corridor. Verity jammed her helmet in it and took off the rest of her armor, which was already impeding her in this weightless environment.

  Shoving the Anthony bag ahead of her, she made her way fore and into the yacht’s cabin. She found a fairly spartan room with just two chairs and a bank of controls on a sloping console facing the broad front window. The rear wall bore four hinged seats with seatbelts, two on either side of the door. The cockpit had been personalized with a number of holographs and drawings affixed to the walls at the window’s edges. One of them showed a man she matched to the image on Anthony’s Torrmede card, grinning and with his arm draped over the shoulder of another man with dark hair, also grinning.

  Verity studied the smile, the wavy caramel-colored hair, trying to overwrite the memory of the mutilated head with a model of the man he had been in life.

  “Who’s he?”

  “His name’s Jay Tourmaline.”

  Verity’s eyes wandered to a pencil drawing. It depicted a naked man from behind, a sinuous, lean back, narrow buttocks and long legs. From the style of his hair, it looked like he was the man in the photograph. “He your boyfriend?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You draw these?” Verity glanced at the pictures, many of them showing the same man, and others depicting different men or women, all of them in artistic naked poses. A short, chubby woman with an alluring grin, short-cropped hair and big, bright eyes, the hollows of her collarbone and the dimples around the edges of her wide areolas picked out with careful shading. A tattooed, pigeon-chested man with facial piercings. An enormously fat man smiling and reclining on his back with his legs wide open, his phallus and testicles looking comically small against the expansive flesh folds of his body.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you have sex with all these people? They look like a freak show.”

  “Like I said, I like people. Not ideals. Not men or women.” Anthony’s tone of thought was as though addressing a child. “I’m going to need you to send a message to Torrmede.”

  Verity stared at the control panels. “Saying what?”

  “Never mind that. Torrmede’s almost at direct opposition to Jupiter right now. It’s going to take fifty-six minutes for the transmission to reach them. Let’s get the request sent and I’ll go over it with you what it is you need to tell them while we wait two hours for the response to come back.”

  “Two hours! Isn’t there a quicker way?”

  “Unless you know of some way of circumventing Einstein’s laws, no there isn’t.”

  Verity pulled herself down into a chair. “Okay. What do I do?”

  “You’ll need to open the sail in order to power up the transmitter.”

  “Sail?”

  “Of course it’s got a sail. It’s a yacht, isn’t it? Only it’s a sun-yacht, so it’s got a photosail.”

  Of course. Verity remembered the retracted machinery she’d seen around the forward part of the hull, a reflective sail for generating motion from the radiation pressure of the sun. She studied the controls. In the center of the console was a transparent bubble with what looked like a compass inside it, only this compass was octahedral and mounted on gimbals, with six points labeled NESWUD. The panel for the sail was to the right: a lever and a few dials and unlit symbols. She pushed the lever, and one of the symbols illuminated. Whirrs and clicks started, transmitted through the metal of the hull.

  “Don’t touch anything until the green light comes on,” Anthony admonished. “It’s a delicate piece of machinery and the wires will become detuned if you try to operate the mirrors or the photovoltaics before it’s fully open.”

  “I’m not a moron, you know,” Verity answered.

  “Possibly not. But I’m not going to take the risk with my sun-yacht.”

  “What do you care about your sun-yacht anyway? You’re dead and it’s not like you’ll be sailing into the sunset in it when all this is over.”

  “Perhaps not, but I didn’t intend for it to be manhandled by some thug from the Sky Forces. I’ve left very specific instructions in my will regarding this sun-yacht, and when you’ve finished borrowing it for the purposes of the mission I want it returned to its rightful owner undamaged!”

  Verity pushed herself back against the chair, feet against the edge of the console, and exhaled. Outside the window, the limbs of the photo-sail were beginning to extend, telescoping outward and unfolding. Lines of hypertensile cables threaded with mirrors strung between the struts gave the sail the appearance of a spider’s web.

  The noise of the motors ceased and the green light came up on the control panel. Verit
y removed her feet and leaned over to the controls. “Now what?”

  “You need to set the auto tracker for the photovoltaics. The radio transmitter will take a few minutes to build up enough charge.”

  Verity studied the controls and worked out what she needed to change fairly quickly. The cables connecting the reflective plates to the struts began to move, rotating the mirrors to the sun to harvest its light. They scattered some of the light upon the bridge windows, filling the room with a mellow glow.

  “So...” Verity settled herself back into the chair as best she could in the absence of gravity. “What is it Farron’s doing, and what’s this data you stole?”

  “Farron is using his skills as an inquisitor to brainwash and hypnotize the personnel of the Callisto base.”

  Verity squinted, trying to make sense of this. “To what end?”

  “That’s what the Magnolia Order sent me to find out. He’s trying to execute a coup. He’s making a bid for autonomous rule on Callisto.”

  “What?” Verity’s frown deepened. “He can’t do that. It won’t work. For a province to be given autonomous rule, the electorate there would have to vote it in, and that’s never happened before. How does he expect he can stand against the Meritocracy?”

  “It’s precisely right that the local electorate have to nominate and vote in autonomy.” The voice in the back of Verity’s mind was grave. “The population of the base on Callisto is small, only a few hundred staff and researchers. If he can get roughly half the populace, including some of the higher-ranking meritocrats, on side to nominate autonomy, and then vote for it on referendum day, he’s got himself autonomous rule. That’s what I discovered. That’s why a warrant was issued on me.”

  Verity stared at the control bank and the bright dappled pattern the photosail formed around the windows. “But if he pulls off a coup, and the Meritocracy realizes how he’s done it, all that will happen is that the Spokesmen will veto it, or the Electorate will nominate something to do with it and vote it through next referendum day, and then the Meritocracy will launch an invasion on Callisto and reclaim the base. It would be stupid to attempt a coup.”

  “There’s something more. Something I wasn’t able to uncover before I was exposed. A number of high-profile genetic engineers have gone missing over the last year. All the evidence points at Farron. He’s doing something in genetic research, and it’s almost certainly illegal. My guess is he’s raised some sort of genetically augmented army to fight for him. The Magnolia Order thought it was on Callisto. I’ve been there and I’m sure it’s not. It must be somewhere else.

  “Vladimir,” Verity realized. “The Jupiter orbital station. Farron goes there every half local day, when its orbit comes into conjunction with Callisto. The research base has to be there.”

  “The radio transmitter is ready. Let’s send the message now, and discuss this later.”

  “Okay.” Verity found the panel for the radio. An orbital schematic came up when she activated it, allowing her to program it to automatically target and track Torrmede with the antenna. “What do I need to send?”

  “Just put what I told you into a standard distress call. You’re the one with the military background. I’ll tell you if there’s anything you miss.”

  Verity leaned over so her mouth was close to the mic. “Mayday, mayday. This is Sergeant Verity of the Sky Forces Research Branch calling MANTIcore of Torrmede. This message is a Class One distress call and is for the attention of the Spokesmen of the Meritocracy...and...” Anthony just then requested she add something. “Takahashi Tōru of the Magnolia Order. I report a crisis on Callisto and require backup and instructions to deal with a potential coup orchestrated by Inquisitor Lloyd Farron. I require a Freedom of Information exemption override and information on the whereabouts of Vladimir Bolokhovski who works at the genetic research department of the University on the grounds of suspicion of his life being at risk. Over.”

  “That’s it recorded. Now transmit it.”

  Verity pressed the button to send the message. A light blinked twice, indicating it had been successful. She closed her eyes and pushed back against the chair, becoming aware of the ache in her muscles and the smell of sweat and horse on her clothing. The null gravity was beginning to give her a headache and make her nose stuffy. She hadn’t eaten since that morning, and the ache of hunger clawed at her stomach.

  “Why don’t we get some food and go to the centrifuge?” Anthony suggested. “There’s some space adaptation remedy medicine in the kitchen too.”

  Verity pulled herself over the back of the chair and pushed toward the door. “Where is it?”

  “Just through there. The door on the right’s a lavatory and a shower.”

  The kitchen turned out to be a smallish room with appliances and cupboards built into all five walls surrounding the central space. Verity stabilized herself against a grip rung and pulled open the fridge door. Packets of stuff filled drawers and elastic pockets strapped to the inside of the door. “You’ve got real cheese? And meat!”

  “I’ve got wine too.”

  “I don’t drink alcohol. It impairs reactions and judgment.”

  “Your loss.”

  Verity found the medicine and took some of it, washing it down with a bottle of water filled from a tap sticking out of the wall by the door. “I want to have a shower first.”

  “Okay, so long as you don’t leave hair in the soap or towels floating around.”

  “What are you going to do if I do?”

  “Spank you. And enjoy it.”

  “Pervert.”

  The shower room turned out to be rather small, with a showerhead on a hose, ventilation grids on opposite walls, and a fan-assisted toilet in one corner vertex. Verity undressed in the corridor and left her dirty clothes there. When she started the shower, a fan began to operate, causing a wind to blow from one grid to the other, pulling the stream of water down with it.

  “Shut the door so the water doesn’t go into the corridor,” Anthony told her.

  Verity pulled the door closed and wriggled under the spray, holding on to a rail and turning about so the stream ran over her. She wet her hair and spat out the water that had gone in her mouth and nose. “Shut up,” she thought, sensing the feeling in the back of her mind that she was beginning to recognize as Anthony’s sexual curiosity.

  “I didn’t say anything!”

  Verity found a soap-on-a-rope leashed to a rail and drifting, and rubbed it in her hands to make a lather. “I’m gonna turn you off,” she warned Anthony. She pushed the showerhead out of the way and started washing herself.

  “You keep threatening to turn me off,” said Anthony, “but all you do is turn me on.”

  “If ghosts that throw stuff around are called poltergeists, what are ghosts that are voyeurs called?” Verity soaped her crotch and armpits.

  “Men?” Anthony suggested.

  “Pineapple and passion fruit shampoo and conditioner?” she chided, reading the label of the container hooked on the rail beside the soap.

  “It smells nice. And it’s good for my hair. Hey, don’t use loads! That’s expensive shit!”

  Verity washed her hair in the posh shampoo and switched off the shower. She couldn’t find any towels, but the extractor fan seemed to have pulled most of the water out of the air. Squeezing removed most of the water from her hair, and shaking it off dislodged more. The medicine started to kick in on her headache, and the warm damp air in the shower had begun to clear her nose. Her spare clothes--she’d left them in the bag with the computer containing Anthony’s ghost, back up on the bridge. Opening the door, she pushed back into the corridor and maneuvered hand-over-hand back there.

  The bridge had become tropically warm from the mirrors, bathed in a soft, flavescent light. Verity located the bag and steered over to it. When she tried to open it, it drifted about annoyingly. She pinned it to the wall with one foot, bracing her other against the side of the console. The atmosphere was quite unpleasantly s
ticky and, still damp from the shower, she sweated from the exertion as she pulled the bag open.

  Anthony was laughing at something. “Have you checked behind you?”

  Verity looked between her legs at the window. Outside lay a hall of mirrors, each showing a slightly different angle of her reflection, like the many-faceted eyes of an insect at high magnification. Her buttocks glistened with moisture in the glow the photo sail cast throughout the cabin. Below them protruded the plump, symmetrical hemispheres of her vulva, a drop of water sparkling at the middle of the cleft.

  “You’re a real dirty bugger, aren’t you?” Verity thought.

  “Hey, enjoy your body while you can. Some day you might not have one!”

  Verity turned her attention back to the bag and the dark, narrow case of the computer that nestled within it. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s all right. Perhaps there’s a heaven beyond death after all.” His thought-transmission had taken on a fanciful tone. “Just a pity I can’t touch it or taste it.”

  Verity found herself looking at the pictures pinned to the wall again.

  “I’d love to have drawn you,” Anthony said. “Especially in that pose!”

  “Not sure I could keep still for long enough.” She let go of the bag and turned to face the mirrors. Her wet hair stuck out around her head in gorgon-like locks and her small breasts appeared strangely round, buoyant in the absence of gravity. The mellow sunlight gave her skin a creamy tone. The air smelled of sun-warmed plastic and exotic fruit shampoo. “Seems a waste of time when you could use a holocamera and make a picture instantaneously.”

  “It’s a test of skill. A drawing can show things a camera can’t.”

  “I guess so.” Verity gazed at her reflections and the pictures. “I suppose it’s not really much of a compliment, seen as you seem to feel that way about every human with a pulse.”

  “I don’t find bodies that are stuffed full of plastic or steroids attractive,” thought Anthony haughtily.

  “Or Lloyd Farron.”

  “Don’t get me started on Farron. He’s foul of body and of mind.”