This Virtual Night

by C. S. Friedman

  Again that nantana gaze: intense, disconcerting. “The assignment interests you?”

  “I haven’t said no yet.”

  He reached into his tunic, pulled out a small black billfold, and handed it to her. Inside were an ID card, a data chip, a cash chit, and a license. She pulled the last one out and looked at it. “Bounty hunter,” she muttered. “Hell, that actually could work . . .”

  “The license identifies you as an independent agent, answering to no one. The cover story gives you an excuse to go anywhere, following rumors that your quarry took refuge there. It gives you a good reason to look around the station . . . and it gives them no reason to think you are connected to any other party.”

  “Like the Guild.”

  “Like the Guild.”

  She turned the ID card over in her fingers, studying it. “So let me get this straight. You want me to adopt a false identity, lie my way into an independent station, and search for evidence of Terran involvement in a terrorist act, all while I’m not protected by Common Law, or by the Guild.” She looked up sharply. “I’m guessing this is off the books as far as the Guild is concerned.”

  “No one but me knows about this. And it needs to stay that way.”

  “So no backup. No rescue if things go south. Just me.” She exhaled in a hiss. “And you think I would agree to do this . . . why? For the money?”

  “What would you rather do instead? Hang out in a bar while you wait for your ship to be repaired? Kill time in mundane pursuits? I hear Paradise has an impressive shopping mall. Or you could just relax, maybe read a good book. A few dozen good books. Maybe a hundred, if your repairs take long enough. You’ve got nothing else to do while you wait.” He leaned forward in his chair, his gaze intense. “How long before boredom drives you to do something foolish, just because you need to do something? I’m offering you novelty, risk, and reward. Don’t tell me it isn’t tempting.”

  She whistled softly. “Someone’s been reading my psych file.”

  “Someone didn’t have to read your psych file. Someone has known you long enough to understand your nature, and to know that you’re perfect for this job. And that it’s perfect for you.”

  She knew that he was playing her, and that made her hackles rise. But there was no denying that the bait was tempting. “Tell me about the money. With the understanding that I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”

  “Ten thousand creds from me. There’s also a reward of a hundred thousand that the Guild has offered, for any information leading to the identification and arrest of those responsible for the Harmony incident. Bring back anything useful, and I’ll make sure you qualify.”

  She laughed. “Yeah. No. That’s not how it works. You’d need to pay me fifty thousand for this job, half of it up front, plus five thousand per diem.” She waved off any possible objection. “Think about what you’re asking me to do—and the risk involved—before you make me a counteroffer that kills my enthusiasm.”

  Silence. Then: “All right.”

  “Now tell me about their security.”

  “Anti-scav, mostly. If you go in with a valid ID and follow normal docking protocols there should be no problem.”

  “Should be.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “You don’t know.”

  “Our most recent data on Shenshido is two years old. That’s one of the reasons we need you to go out there.”

  She exhaled heavily. “I’ll need my ship.”

  “I can supply one. Along with any supplies required.”

  “My lander is operational. Only the mothership was damaged. I’ll just have to get the skimmer released from cold dock . . . I assume you can help with that.”

  “I can get you something bigger. Faster.”

  “I’m taking my skimmer.”

  “It would—”

  “This is isn’t open to negotiation, Jericho.” Her voice was firm.

  “May I ask why?”

  For a moment she hesitated. Then: What the hell. He probably knows already. “Because it’s armed, and your ship won’t be.”

  The look of surprise in his eyes made it clear that he hadn’t known. “I’ve seen the schematics for your skimmer. There are no armaments on it.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “That is correct. There are no armaments on the schematics of my skimmer.” She paused. “Is that a problem for you?”

  His mouth tightened, but he shook his head.

  “We get the job done. That’s what the Guild cares about, right?”

  “So what about this job? Are you in?”

  She leaned back in her chair. “Transfer twenty-five thousand credits to my account. I’ll leave for Harmony when it’s confirmed.”

  Emotion flickered briefly in his eyes. Relief? He wasn’t sure he could win me over, she realized. And he didn’t have a good plan B. Damn! I could have charged him more. “I’ll see to it as soon as I leave here,” he said.

  “Which leaves only one question . . .”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “You said it’s important for the Guild not to know about this. Why?”

  For a long moment he hesitated. How much was he willing to tell her about the Guild’s internal workings? That question was almost as interesting as the assignment itself. “We sent two investigators a while back,” he said at last. “Dedicated men. When they came back they were . . . less dedicated.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Someone got to them. Convinced them this project didn’t need to be a priority. At least that’s what it looks like. Granted, the change in attitude was subtle, but it was . . . disturbing.”

  She said it quietly: “You don’t trust your own people.”

  “Let’s just say I’d like to keep this project between us, for now.” He put his drink down. “I’ll go see to that transfer.”

  He started to get up to leave, but she waved for him to wait. “Who owns the station, Jericho?”

  “I told you. There’s a board of representatives—”

  “That’s who manages it. I’m asking who owns it. If it’s an independent station, that means one political entity had to take responsibility for it. Guera wouldn’t have approved the status otherwise.”

  His eyes unfocused for a moment as he turned his attention inward. Probably netting a query to Guild Headquarters.

  “Tridac Enterprises,” he said.

  She leaned back in her chair and watched as he left the club, turning the bounty hunter license over in her hand, wondering what kind of mess she had just gotten herself into.

  Of course, not knowing was half the fun.

  We can replicate the trappings of fear. We can set the stage for it, provide props for it, craft terrifying stories to inspire it. But we cannot replicate fear itself.

  That must come from within.

  MICAH BELLO

  Crafting Nightmares (presented at Virtcon LVIII)

  HARMONY NODE

  SHENSHIDO STATION

  THE DARKNESS around Micah was thick and suffocating. Intellectually, he knew that was just an illusion—fear distorting his senses—but the knowledge couldn’t banish his queasiness. Nor could the many tiny points of light in the distance, coming from stars and nearby stations, not strong enough to illuminate anything. One of them was Shenshido. One of them was Tridac. One of them, barely visible from here, would be Harmony. He switched on his helm light, but its outward beam was swallowed up instantly by the darkness. In this dust-free environment such light was intangible, invisible, uncomforting. The evac suit squeezed his body tightly, its embrace claustrophobic; its coolant pulsed against his skin as it channeled excess body heat away.

  He wasn’t normally the kind of person who cried under stress, but if one was going to do that, this was as good a setting as one could get for it.

  He turned his wellseeker back on and it offered him a dose o
f sedative, but after a moment’s uncertainty he said no. There was only so much of any one drug stored inside his body, and he might be heading into a situation where he would need a lot more of that one. Then the wellseeker starting scrolling information on his current physical and emotional state in front of his eyes, and he shut it off so that he could see the stars and stations clearly.

  So peaceful. So cold.

  Concentrate, Micah. You’ve only got six hours of air left. Get your shit together.

  He brought the suit’s navigation program online and programmed a course for Shenshido. The suit took a few seconds to digest the order, then fired the small navigation jets in perfect sequence to turn him around, precisely 180 degrees. Jesus. He’d been facing in the wrong direction. For some reason that struck him as perversely funny, a final absurd blow struck by an unfeeling universe. He even laughed briefly, though the sound was hollow.

  Then the jets fired again and there was a brief feeling of acceleration, after which . . . nothing. He could not feel any movement, and the darkness immediately surrounding him was featureless. How did he even know he was moving? He focused on his anger at Tridac, his raw indignation that after years of loyal service he should be treated like this. For a few precious minutes it drowned out the fear, allowing him to think clearly.

  If he made it to Shenshido, he would have to deal with the bots again. What was it, exactly, that they were programmed to respond to? Obviously the approach of an unknown ship, but what else? If he could avoid triggering their defense programming, maybe he could slip past them. How would one program such bots? He approached the problem like a gaming puzzle, to make it seem less overwhelming. Say that their job was to repel or destroy unwelcome visitors. Such visitors would have to come in a ship, right? But how would a security program distinguish enemy ships from local maintenance bots? Not everything that flies near a station is a threat. Shutting his eyes, he tried to concentrate. When that accomplished nothing, he called up the spaceship stats from one of his games and started scrolling through them, looking for some key element that would distinguish enemy vessels from maintenance bots. The energy signature of a ship would be higher, he realized. A maintenance bot only needs enough power to cruise around a station and do minor tasks. It could run on a simple battery. A ship has to have engines large enough and powerful enough to maneuver at high speeds during long voyages. The energy signature would be completely different, as would the nature of its exhaust.

  That made sense to him. It would certainly work in a game. But would the tiny jets attached to the evac suit allow him to pass as a bot? He wouldn’t know until he tested the idea.

  As he approached the station, he ordered his suit to reduce his speed to almost nothing. Maybe if he drifted into range of the bots slowly enough, without firing his jets at all, he wouldn’t trigger any response. The downside of that plan was that he wasn’t going to be able to slow down again before hitting the station, so whatever speed he chose now, that would be his speed upon impact. Minimal. Absolutely minimal. With agonizing slowness he drifted toward the docking ring, studying its shadows intently, searching for any sign of the bots. Not until he was nearly upon it was he able to spot one. There: perched on the edge of a broken airlock, its tentacle-like arms curling under the edge. Now that he had found one, he was able to spot others. All quiescent, thus far. God willing, his theory about how they functioned was correct.

  Then one of them started to move, and his heart nearly stopped. It rose slowly, then turned in his direction, until he was staring directly into its sensor array. One vast malevolent eye, studying him. Suddenly he was acutely aware of all the noise he was making: motor whirring inside his suit, respirator hissing, blood roaring in his ears like an ocean. Intellectually he knew that the bot couldn’t hear any of that, but his fear was not a thing born of intellect, and he found himself holding his breath, as if air rasping in his lungs would be one sound too many.

  But whatever the eye saw in him was deemed acceptable, and the bot settled back into its waiting position. He exhaled in relief. Maybe he would make it to the station after all.

  Suddenly something struck him in the side—a hard, flat object that slid along his body like a knife blade, catching on the ridges of his suit and threatening to rip the whole thing open. In panic he reached out in that direction and pushed himself away from it. For an instant he could see what it was: a strip of plasteel that had peeled loose from the station, jutting out into the darkness like a scythe. He’d underestimated its size from a distance, and been so fixated by the bots as he got closer that he hadn’t seen it coming at him. Then it was gone, as the force of his response sent him tumbling head over heels into the empty space between the rings. The station spun wildly around him, its core rising and falling in his field of vision like a moon gone mad. Each time it passed it seemed larger, closer. There was no way for him to stop himself from crashing into it unless he let the suit stabilize him, but that meant using the jets—

  You don’t have a choice. Just do it. Now!

  He triggered the emergency control and felt the jets kick in, countering his motion with short, sharp bursts, hard enough to jar his teeth. Gradually his motion was stabilized, then slowed to almost nothing. His head was still spinning and he felt sick, but at least his movement was under control. He looked back toward the docking ring, dreading the sight of an army of hostile squid bots heading toward him. But whatever their threshold for threat detection was, he apparently had not crossed it.

  The closest part of the station was a strut connecting the rings, so he dared one final spurt to move himself in that direction, praying that the bots would continue to ignore him. Twenty yards. Ten. There was a row of shallow rungs running the length of the strut, intended for human repair crews, and as he neared it he reached out as far as he could, determined to grab one. For a moment he thought he was too far away, but then the tips of his fingers brushed one of the rungs, and he made a last desperate stretch and closed his hand around it. A moment later he was jerked to a stop, and though the force of it nearly pulled his arm out of its socket, he held on. A deep trembling ran through his body, half physical relief and half emotional exhaustion. This was the first solid object he’d been in contact with since his ship was destroyed, and the moment was overwhelming.

  This part of the station wasn’t as badly damaged as the docking ring, but there were a few places where its outer shell had been compromised. Not too far away was a tear he might fit through, so he pulled himself hand over hand in that direction. Eventually he had to leave the rungs behind, but there were enough irregularities in the strut’s surface for him to grab onto, now that he wasn’t hurtling pell-mell through space. And his hands were much steadier now.

  The opening turned out to be smaller than expected. He might have been able to get through with the evac suit on, but with air tanks and navigational jets strapped to his back he’d never make it. Frustrated, he looked around to find a better way in, but there wasn’t one. If he wanted a bigger opening he’d have to return to the docking ring and face off against the bots.

  I won’t need the jets inside, he told himself. But it was still unnerving to detach the life-saving framework from his suit and wriggle his way out of it. Apparently that unnerved his suit, too; a bright red warning flashed across his visor as the frame finally came loose. ALERT! NAVIGATION CONTROL DISCONNECTED! He tried to maneuver the jet frame through the opening without him in it, but it was the wrong size and shape for that, so he finally hooked the whole assembly to one of the rungs. First rule of survival: never discard anything useful. How many times had he punished players for forgetting that?

  He still couldn’t squeeze through the opening due to his oxygen supply, but he was damned if he was going to disconnect that. At last he managed to loosen its harness just enough to give him some slack, and he was able to push his tank through the opening, then follow it. The rough edges of the plasteel scraped against his suit
as he squeezed through, but all he could do was pray that nothing would tear.

  Nothing did.

  Inside was a transit tube with no vehicles in sight. There were no interior lights, so he turned the helmet lamp back on, then re-tightened his oxygen harness as he took a look around. The dark circular tunnel was too long for his light to illuminate much, but something at the far end was reflecting it. Hopefully some kind of pressure seal. If so, there might still be a viable atmosphere beyond that point.

  Pulling himself hand over hand along a guide cord, he headed that way. The tube was narrow, dark, and claustrophobic, but compared to where he’d been for the last few hours it seemed a veritable paradise. When he got to the end he saw that yes, there was an emergency hatch, shut tight. The control panel had settings for atmosphere and G-field; hopefully everything was all still operative. When he tried to open it the door didn’t respond, but he’d designed enough space stations for game settings that it took little effort to find the emergency override. The door opened halfway and then stopped, but that was good enough. As he squeezed through the opening he could feel a slight tug coming from the direction of the core, no doubt the ring’s G-field leaking through. The airlock beyond had one other exit, in the far wall; he headed over to it, oriented himself according to the large red arrow on the wall—feet down, head up—and threw the large manual switch that was labeled exit.

  Please work please work pleasepleaseplease work . . .

  For a moment nothing happened. Then the hatch behind him jerked closed, and he imagined he could hear its seals snapping shut. Was there a hissing sound as air filled the chamber? He’d never had his helmet off inside an airlock so he didn’t know. A few seconds later the station’s G-field hit him, not in a gradual adjustment like a fully functional G-lock should provide, but suddenly. Every limb of his body weighed a ton, and his legs nearly collapsed beneath the crushing weight of his torso. Just for an instant. A moment later the shock of the transition faded, but his legs were still strained. His evac gear weighed more than he’d expected.