by R L Dean
The camera was moving down a narrow crevice, the construction probe it was attached to played beams of light off of dirty gray and black streaked walls of ice. Red digits on the side of the screen read TEMP -207° / D 70.0147m. As the probe continued its trek downward, CT scans were building on the bottom of the screen. Rooms, corridors, undefined spaces, and dead zones where ice had gotten into the structure. The same scans her father's own probe made decades ago.
"Now," Edgar said. "Here it is, watch this ... watch this ..." He was pointing at the screen now.
The probe reached eighty meters and its light washed over something red. Whatever it was there was a coat of ice over it, like everything, and the glare from the light made it difficult to see. The probe closed in on the anomalous color and stopped, the remote operator angled the lights and the red markings on the wall became clearer. It was some sort of writing ... a circle with a horizontal line through it. There were more letters but they were blurry and faded under the ice.
Edgar stopped the video.
"That's titanium, that whole section, with traces of molybdenum," he said. "We think the whole thing is like that ..."
"Thank you, Edgar," she said. "Now. Delete the video and scrub the whole comm system. And if you have shown this to anyone make them review their NDA. Today."
He turned to her, his eyebrows arched.
"And message Hurst, and have him do the same thing."
"What are you talking about?" He shouted. "Morton's not stupid, this was off the UN network, it's encrypted, direct through our satellites."
Alexandria stood, her hands splayed on the conference table. "The UN, Edgar! Modi and his band of thieves. You think they don't watch our communications? Morton Hurst is an idiot. Scrub everything that video has come in contact with between here and Ganymede and tell Morton to keep his mouth shut and no more messages about Khensu crater."
The old man blinked. "I didn't tell you this was Khensu crater. I just said a crater." Like Greg, Edgar suddenly realized she knew about the ... artifact. Whatever it was.
"Mister Stockerman's chief of security sent a message about it a little while ago. Without video or pictures or ANYTHING a UN hacker would find interesting."
"Mister Stockerman," he snorted. "Well, whatever. We've got to do something about this. Get a team there and start digging. We still have a lot of construction equipment there, right. You're going to have to go there. I'll get a ship ..."
"What? Me go to Ganymede?"
"One of us has to go, to supervise things. And I'm too old, I'd never survive the trip," he told her. Then he smiled. "Besides, you like being in charge. Just think, a whole moon you can order people around on. It'll be like you're a princess."
Alexandria gritted her teeth. She wanted to break something. If she didn't have her father's survey records she would say that Edgar had made up some elaborate plot to get her off the planet and out of his thinning hair.
On her way home, from the back seat of the car, she called Greg.
"Yes?" He asked, from the handcomm's small screen. He was walking, people in Vanguard security vests were passing by the camera's view.
"I have to go to Ganymede," she told him.
"When?"
"As soon as I can pack. Edgar's pulling a ship from Autolycus, it'll be in orbit in three hours."
Greg frowned, then said, "Alright, I need an hour here, then I'll meet you at the shuttle port ..."
"No," she interrupted him. "I need you to stay here."
His expression turned incredulous. "What? Alexandria, that's a long trip. I'll go with you."
Alexandria smiled faintly, looking at him fondly. "Greg, you are my chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. I need you here to mind the castle. There's no one else I can trust." Then, showing her teeth, she said, "And, while I'm gone, this will be a good time to take care of that thing we discussed."
PART 2
23 - Ludwick
"You did this. Wherever this ends, it is your fault," Lieutenant Tojo's voice told him, seeming to come from somewhere in the cabin.
No. This is not my fault, he told himself, staring at the still unfamiliar face and wrong colored eyes in the mirror. Four months ago Ludwick Chaserman became Alfred Bester. A nobody that died on the streets of a backwater town somewhere on Earth, a hundred years go. The one redeeming thing about Bester was that he had existed outside of the UN network. He had been ... as Ludwick thought of him ... a nobody. An impossible feat in this day and age. Bester had probably been a religious fanatic, refusing to have anything to do with the growing one world culture and politics of the time. Ludwick hadn't asked the surgeon or the hacker too many questions.
Ludwick wiped the face— his face— with a damp towel and pushed away from the stainless steel sink, floating in the ship's microgravity, and still staring in the mirror.
There was some thread of kinship between himself and the dead man, he supposed. Oh, unlike the original Bester's face and retina the one he wore and the eyes he now looked out of were, in fact, in the UN network. Bester's constructed background was close enough to his own that he wouldn't have to put much effort into remembering anything that he might have to tell a security goon at a checkpoint, but what happened at the Apex plant and Harmony dome had made him a nobody— forced him to become a nobody. So, it was only fitting that he wore the face of a nobody.
Looking directly into those stranger's eyes he said out loud, "It's not your fault. You wanted to help people. They used you." And he might have believed it, before he started taking Apex's money. They used him, yes, but even after he realized who was giving him the money he continued to do what they asked ... knowing that they were crooked, criminals that hid behind laws that benefited no one but themselves, and not knowing where it was all going to end.
For the love of money, Ludwick. You can't hide behind someone else's face.
Ludwick snorted at the image in the mirror. If he kept this up his personality would split. With one hand he pushed lightly off the bulkhead, floating back, toward his rack two meters away. Bernice's Luck was a hauler. Its main function was to haul massive ore containers between the drop-off stations of out-system or all the way back to the Moon. Ludwick had seen enough of them at Harmony dome, and during his time at the Apex plant. With that in mind, living space was minimum, almost an afterthought shoved in between the massive thruster assembly and the Flight deck. His whole cabin was four meters by three meters. The rack folded up on the bulkhead and doubled as a crash couch.
As he fought for a moment with his shirt, floating in the center of the cabin, the hatch's control pad buzzed. It was probably the half-wit with more questions. The Bernice's Luck didn't have a real mechanic until he came aboard ... albeit, it was a sudden and frenzied boarding, followed by Harmony dome exploding into a million pieces. He hadn't intended to stay on as crew, then UNSEC posted pictures of Ludwick Chaserman's face all over the network and announced he was a criminal, and forced him to become a nobody. So, he had nowhere to go.
The hatch buzzed again.
"Alright!" He yelled. "Keep your pants on!"
He palmed the control pad and the hatch slid back. Expecting to see the bulky, muscular form of Thomas, instead he found the half-wit's pregnant girlfriend or fiancé, or whatever she was calling herself.
"Hi, Mister Chaserman," the small Japanese girl smiled at him. Her name was Cori, or Kari.
"Bester," he said.
Her eyes widened and she put a hand to her mouth. "Bester, yes sir."
How was this girl going to keep his secret? Bernice vouched for her and Thomas both, but neither of them had a wit in their pea sized brains. It wouldn’t take malice to expose him as the terrorist Ludwick Chaserman and get him arrested, just dumb mistakes.
"What?" He asked.
"Oh," she started. "Cap'n wants to see you annnd you weren't answering your handcomm."
Ludwick frowned, then asked the obvious question, "Yeah. Why?"
The girl shrugged. "I don't know. Stuf
f about engineering, before we line up for A-forty, I guess."
"Well, tell her to talk to Thomas. I'm busy."
"She won't," the girl said, quickly. "She's still mad at him."
Ludwick gritted his teeth. Last week Bernice had a discussion with him about trying their hand at mining. The ship wasn't outfitted for that kind of work, it was a hauler— straight and simple— but she wanted to make some surveys and 'guesstimate' what Apex would be willing to pay for whatever they found and could bring in. Ludwick really didn't care, hauling or mining, it made no difference to him. His home ... the whole domed city ... was gone, and the newsfeeds said he did it. In any case, she already had a couple spots picked out to look at and the entire conversation had been rhetorical. That's when they found the wreck in a crater, south of Ganymede Base. And after a couple of days poking around, they found a way inside. Then they took some things that Bernice said she could sell to someone she knew at station A40. Some big shot with Free Mars Now, so she claimed.
After a couple of days hauling stuff from that creepy, frozen tomb up out of the crater floor and onto the ship, Bernice started getting nervous. She started thinking that if Apex or their security creeps found out about the wreck and what they were doing ... well ... things could get bad. Overnight, her paranoia spread to Ludwick, an up close meet-and-greet with Orion or Vanguard security was not something he wanted.
Anyway, they left. Then two days out from Ganymede Thomas— that buffoon— sends pictures of what they found to the Apex Security Office at the base. When Bernice found out she came close to an epileptic fit. When she asked Thomas why he would do something so stupid, he said it was the right thing to do. And, that was why she refused to speak to Thomas, and the reason why the little Japanese girl was standing at his hatch.
Ludwick cursed under his breath, turned to look for his magboots and was hit in the face by a plastic beer bottle. He swatted it away, turned back to the hatch and shut it in the girl's face.
* * *
Bernice Badger was a pear-shaped woman a little north of fifty, and with a temper. She had been a hauler for as long as Ludwick had known her. He met her while working at the Apex plant and eventually they started seeing each other. But the same job that had brought them together also pulled them apart. Bernice was gone for months at a time, making the drop-off station circuit, picking up and dropping off ore containers. Ludwick looked forward to seeing her when she came in, but ... well ... they just stopped for some reason.
Popping the Flight deck's hatch he pulled himself through the tube and set his feet on the deck, the soles of his magboots clicking. Bernice was at the command station, and the Japanese girl was floating beside her. They were both looking at the station's screen. Bernice turned and frowned.
"About time," she said.
"Well," he said, a bit too loud. "I'm here now." He really shouldn't be this way with her. It was Bernice that found him coming out of a maintenance hatch in Harmony's tram station, when the place was about to blow. She had literally grabbed him by his collar and pulled him through the growing crowd of people trying to get to the docks. Bernice had saved him.
"I want you to check that number four plate, before we pick up speed," Bernice told him.
Softer, he replied, "We checked it yesterday. The weld is good."
The Japanese girl frowned, rubbing her shoulder.
"It's alright, honey," Bernice said, her voice taking on a soothing quality. "We'll take it slow, like always. No hard flips. The baby will be fine." Then she smiled fondly. "We'll get you and that idiot nephew of mine to A-forty, so you can get hitched." She stroked the girl's black hair for a moment.
The girl and Thomas were supposed to be married at Harmony dome ... before it blew. Bernice had gotten them all on board the ship and burning for orbit, then decided she didn't want to stick around so they just kept on going. Bernice wasn't exactly a criminal, but sometimes she sold things at drop-off stations that were acquired by questionable means by the people she got them from. And hadn't taken a genius to figure out that UNSEC would move in and lockdown the Moon.
The tube hatch suddenly opened and Thomas' bulbous head appeared out of the tube. He stopped, looked at Bernice, who scowled back, but then apparently decided that whatever reason he was there for was worth risking her scathing tongue. He put a bulky, square tablet— scuffed with age and use— in his mouth, then pulled himself up through the tube.
"What're you doing here?" Bernice asked. "I told you to stay in engineering."
"I need Ori-chan," Thomas said, taking the tablet out of his mouth and shoved past Ludwick.
"Watch it, you hammer head!" Ludwick yelled.
Thomas turned to look at him and made a face. "It's Thomas Lynn Colby. That's my name. Ludnut!"
"Tom, what'cha need?" The girl asked, turning her whole body to face him. Beside her, Bernice muttered something and looked down for a moment.
Thomas looked back at the girl, his big face and blue eyes lighting up. He handed her the tablet. "I never worked on this before, and it doesn't have pictures. Will you read it to me?"
It must be another technical manual. Thomas couldn't read. He could weld, take apart an engine pump, a system terminal, or anything and put it back together exactly like it was before— no matter how many parts it had— but he couldn't read one word and couldn't count past the number of fingers on his hands.
Thomas believed God sent the girl to read to him.
"Not now," Bernice said, raising her voice. "We have to get lined up." Then she grimaced, and put a hand on the girl's shoulder, and in a softer voice said, "See what you made me do? You made me yell in front of the baby. I swear, if it wasn't for Kaori ..." She stopped, taking a deep breath and shaking her head at him. "Never mind, go get her strapped in, then let me know. And be careful. Remember the baby."
Ludwick watched as Thomas reach down, like some gentle giant, and place a calloused hand on the girl's stomach. "I'm going to be a father soon."
The girl giggled and took his hand. "Still got a while. Come on."
Thomas helped her into the tube and then lowered himself down, closing the hatch.
Bernice snorted. "As mad as he makes me, I'm just glad he found someone that loves him. Someone that can look past his problems and see him as a human being."
"I wanted to talk to you about that," Ludwick said. Bernice held up a hand.
"I already told you. Neither of them believes that mess on the feeds. I told them you didn't do it. They know why you had to change your face."
When the newsfeeds reached them they were crossing the Belt, Bernice intent on going back to business as usual, hauling containers of ore around out-system. Ludwick's face was plastered on every screen throughout the ship on every news network. There had been a sinking feeling in his gut, then. He had known it was going to happen ... some sixth sense that Apex was going to find a way to pin it on him. He had thought about it, cooped up in the cabin Bernice gave him, staring at the dull bulkheads. He had taken their money and did their bidding, stirring up trouble for their own plant, making protests and having interviews about health insurance and calling for a strike. It had made no sense, and then they blamed him for the plant's destruction and the deaths of thousands in the dome. He was a patsy in some political game that he didn't understand, a little pawn Apex moved about with money.
But, he had prepared for what he felt was coming. A few hours after his rescue, shell-shocked, he told Bernice everything, then he transferred a large chunk of the money Apex gave him to his account, and then to a numbered account she had access to— that sixth sense telling him he was going to have to run.
There was a place in the Belt where Bernice fenced some of her goods. It was the kind of place that didn't have UNSEC soldiers or security checkpoints— a burrow in a nameless asteroid among the millions floating in the black and ice and dust. And there, she introduced him to people that could change his face, his eyes, and his UN network ID.
"That's not what I mean
," he told her. "They just ... they need to think before they open their mouths. I don't want to be around them at a checkpoint."
"Alright," she said, shaking her head again. "I'll talk to them." Then she went back to her terminal screen. "Why don't you take a seat at the monitoring station, instead of sulking in your cabin and staring at the walls ... drinking all the beer."
He sighed and pulled himself to the terminal and strapped in. He stabbed a finger at the screen and it lit up. Bernice was just as irritating as she had been when they were dating ... or whatever they had been doing.
"What now?" She asked, still reading her screen. "I said I would talk to them."
"Nothing. I was just thinking about Thai food. There's this Thai stand that I like ... was ... there was a Thai stand that I liked. In the food court near the tram station."
Bernice made a sound halfway between a grunt and a snort. "Break out that Apex account and you can own a Thai restaurant by the time we reach A-forty. You could even hire a crew and have'em wear those fancy dresses and sashes."
"I told you. I don't think I should use it. They might be able track me, somehow."
She shrugged. "Well, when we sell that stuff in the cargo hold we'll stock up on Thai food and whatever else you want. Half of the take is yours, like we agreed."
At the mention of the stuff they found in the wreck a question that had been in the back of his mind came to the front. "Listen, do you think those things look familiar?"
"Like, how do you mean?"
"They just seem familiar. Like regular things we would use. I mean, we knew they were guns when we saw them, even if they looked a little different. And we found that tray and the spork."
"Well, whoever they are they have to eat," Bernice replied, flipping through her screen, her eyes narrowing. "And shoot each other ... I guess."
That wasn't what he meant, but Bernice wasn't the imaginative sort, so he focused on his screen.
24 - Alexandria