But she said, “You’re going to get people killed.” She gave the machine-gun back to Vlajkovic and fumbled to undo the tripod from her waist.
“Sigh. All we want to do is live and let live. The sad fucking thing is that sometimes you need to frighten the snot out of a few bureaucrats to achieve that simple objective.”
Elfrida accidentally deployed the tripod’s legs. She took a step, and tripped. She landed on her hands and knees. Looked up at Vlajkovic. “So, what now?”
“What do you mean, what now?”
“What do you want from me?”
“Keep the execs off our backs. Pretend like you’re working on a resettlement plan. Stall. We just need to delay until the election is over.”
“What difference is that going to make?”
“Doug is backing Mandy Patel, from 13882 Calcott. If she gets in, we’re golden.”
“Could she really reverse the evacuation decision?”
“Sure. Power of the gavel. The director of UNVRP is also the Inferior Space circuit judge, remember? So we sue, she hears the case, and she decides for us. Then there’ll be no need for this stuff.”
Vlajkovic helped Elfrida up. She leaned on the wall next to the switched-off vinge-class phavatar. The weight of the gun was still with her. Its lethality seemed to have left an electric residue on her palms. She wiped them down her jeans.
“I just need you to realize that we’re serious,” Vlajkovic said.
She realized, all right. She realized that she hadn’t understood Vlajkovic at all. Her first impression had been correct: he was a dangerous man. “Did President Doug give you these guns?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t see what’s in it for him. He must be seriously ideological.”
The vinge-class’s dead eyes seemed to say: You’ll never understand.
“I can’t be involved with this,” she said. “It’s just too crazy.”
She moved towards the door.
Several miners got in her way.
“Let me go.”
Vlajkovic came up behind her and cupped her chin in one hand. Bending over her, as if he were going to kiss her, he murmured, “I trusted you, Elfrida. Was I wrong?”
“N-no. You can trust me. I won’t say anything.”
She’d have promised him anything in that moment, just to be allowed to walk out of there.
“Don’t. Not a word. Especially not to that girlfriend of yours.”
He let her go. The miners stepped aside. She stumbled into the hallway.
“Maybe this was a bit sudden,” Vlajkovic said behind her. “Go home and think about it.”
Elfrida burst out into the kitchen. In her haste to escape, she kicked a crate of nutriblocks, and a rat darted from behind it, running for its life.
23 Years Earlier. Callisto
Angelica adjusted rapidly to life on Callisto.
If you’d told her a few months ago that she would be slurping her oatmeal of a morning without a glance at the viewport screen, she’d have said you were nuts. But Jupiter never did anything. Callisto was tidally locked to the gas giant, so it never rose, never set. Just sat there.
The same every day.
Like their routine.
That Marine had been right. On Callisto, nothing ever fucking happened.
At least the civilians had their work to keep them busy. Valhalla Base was a scientific research station run by the UN in partnership with a private-sector consortium comprised of Liquid Space, Inc., Adastra, and LGM Industries.. Liquid Space (formerly ShellGazpromExxon) operated the drilling rig, which was trying to drill all the way down through the ice to the liquid water presumed to be under there. Adastra ran the experimental hydroponics module. LGM Industries had a bunch of physicists on base, minding the unmanned probes that were floating around inside the atmosphere of Jupiter.
The only actual UN people on base were the custodians, a girl from the Space Corps, and a few UNSA geeks who spent their days in cubicles, operating phavatars that were exploring the far side of Callisto.
The private-sector scientists were all free-riding on the UN security guarantee that Angelica and the rest of B Platoon represented.
Not, Angelica thought, that there’s anything’s out here for us to protect them from.
“Just out of curiosity,” she said to C-Mutt, one day when they were out on patrol. “When’s the last time the PLAN was spotted in this volume?”
She wouldn’t have asked that question inside the base. You didn’t talk about the PLAN. Even though the PLAN was the whole reason for Space Force’s existence.
“Never,” C-Mutt said.
“That’s kind of what I thought.”
“They don’t come outside of the Belt. Why would they? There’s practically no people out here.”
“So why are we here?”
“To justify the money spent on our training.” C-Mutt bounced up a ridge and landed with both feet on the ice flower at its crest. It exploded in a slow rain of sparkles. C-Mutt did a touchline dance, a Texan gorilla in an EVA suit.
“That was probably there for about a thousand million years, before you came along,” Angelica said severely.
“So?”
They walked on, following the footprints of yesterday’s patrol. They were circling the perimeter of the base, which had been arbitrarily determined to lie at the snowline. Down here, it didn’t feel as if they were in a crater at all: Valhalla Crater was just too big. The terrain was broken. They leaped across gullies floored with snow, and detoured around boulders. On the flat, they sank ankle-deep into drifts of pulverized rock mingled with powdered ice, the mixture that gave Callisto its chocolate-brown coloration.
Ten klicks away, the base was a splash of UN blue on the snowfield. The snow looked lemon-colored in the light of Jupiter. A couple of weeks ago, Angelica had lain down and made a snow angel. She’d got dust in her neck seal, and Sergeant McWhorter had chewed her out, confined her to base for days.
Now, using her suit’s bino function, she saw a few civilians in neon-green Liquid Space EVA suits strolling between the hab cluster and the drilling rig.
“We might get attacked by pirates,” she said.
“Yeah, and aliens might land. Just chill, Lin. Use the free time to, I dunno, read a book or something.”
Fuck off, C-Mutt. I was a straight-A student. She didn’t say it. You didn’t talk about yourself, much less your past life.
“Whoa!” C-Mutt exclaimed suddenly.
“What?!?”
Zero.5 in her shoulder. Down in a bowlegged crouch, scanning her arc. Telemetry display going wild—pulse spiking, oxygen flow rate rocketing. She realized that for all her restlessness, she did not want to face an attack by pirates, or anything. Her suit painted crosshairs on the face of Jupiter.
C-Mutt laughed at her. “Cheese, Lin. Chill.”
“Dick! I could have shot you.”
“Sorry.”
“Well, what? Did you see something?”
The radio was silent for a long moment. “It was just something I read,” C-Mutt said.
“What? I didn’t copy anything.”
“Not a heads-up. I was reading a book, OK? Something surprised me, so I said, ‘Whoa.’”
Angelica grinned behind her faceplate. Her fellow Marine had just put himself in her power. If she revealed to the others that he’d been reading a book, he would never hear the last of it.
But …
Curiosity prodded. She hadn’t taken C-Mutt for the reading type, even though he was acknowledged to be brainy. “What’s it about?”
“History,” he said reluctantly. “Legal history. I’m kinda interested in the law. Since I got on the wrong side of it once or twice in the past. So now I’m studying it.”
“Wonders never cease. And?”
“And, well, it says here that Texas used to be part of a bigger country, called the United States of America. The most powerful country in the world, apparently. So I was like, whoa! They didn�
��t teach us that in school.”
Angelica felt an emotion that she had not experienced since her family died. Pity. “I’d like to read that book when you’re finished with it,” she said.
“Sure.”
“But, C-Mutt? If you were reading, you weren’t looking where you were going. You weren’t watching your arc.”
“Split screen.”
“Still, that would seriously degrade your alertness. A threat might get past you.”
“What threat?”
“OK, OK. I’m just, you know. McWhorter would blow her tokamak.”
“You gonna squeal on me?”
“No.”
“You’re a true-blue Marine, Angelica Lin,” said Charles K. Pope, universally known by his nickname of C-Mutt.
xi.
Elfrida went upstairs to VIP country. On the L1 mezzanine, Mork Rapp was noodling on the piano. The fat wife of Pyls O. Mani capered, playing with a virtual pet no one else could see. Elfrida leaned across the reception desk. “Which room is Dr. Hasselblatter in? I need to see him. It’s urgent.”
“Certainly, ma’am.” The receptionist subvocalized into his implanted throat mic. Listened. Nodded. “Dr. Hasselblatter is teleconferencing with Earth, Ms. Goto. You’ll have to come back later. I’m very sorry.”
“But it’s urgent. Can you get through to his campaign manager?”
The receptionist’s tone was polite, his eyes as hard as hailstones. “Don’t do this, Ms. Goto.”
Elfrida felt cold and weak. The receptionist was one of Vlajkovic’s friends.
And she’d just messed up royally.
Vlajkovic would now guess that she’d been about to run to Dr. Hasselblatter and tell him about the guns stashed in the Hobbit Hole. Which, of course, she had been.
“Sorry,” she said, backing away. “Sorry.”
She trotted down the spiral ramp.
I can’t go back to my sandcastle. That’s the first place they’ll look.
What if Cydney’s there? She might be in danger!
Elfrida pinged Cydney. No response.
Crap, crap, crap!
(Mendoza, she thought suddenly. Oh dog, I wish Mendoza was here. Which was stupid, because John Mendoza was the last person you’d want around if there was going to be violence.)
She walked through the farm on the floor of the atrium. Children stood on stepladders, picking bugs off the kale by hand. Their eyes followed her. Their eyes, of course, were Vlajkovic’s eyes.
Trying to look as if she knew where she was going, she trotted into Life Support. Here, too, people stared at her. But that was only because she was an outsider, and Life Support was cliquish.
She sat down in the Life Support cafeteria, feeling shaky, but safer already. Around her, people chatted about everyday topics. A big screen served up an amniotic supply of celebrity gossip.
“Hi babe!” It was a text from Cydney. “Sorry I didn’t catch your ping! I’m super-busy, doing interviews with the candidates. See you back at the mud hut! Big sloppy kisses, C.”
So Cydney was fine. Elfrida began to feel that she had overreacted.
I’m being paranoid. Vlajkovic’s not crazy. He won’t murder me in my bed. And he certainly won’t hurt Cydney.
No, he’ll just have me watched. He’ll try to stop me from getting to Dr. Hasselblatter.
I should’ve pretended I was on board with his stupid plot. Then he wouldn’t suspect me.
Too late now.
I’ll have to act like they’ve scared me off.
She debated simply emailing Dr. Hasselblatter, but decided against it. She had to tell him in person to convince him that she hadn’t gone nuts.
A bunch of UNVRP peacekeepers were sitting on the far side of the cafeteria. They were playing a game that involved trying to splart one another’s hands to the table. Uproarious laughter washed through the cafeteria. Elfrida eyed the blue berets wistfully. Then she murmured, “No. Just, uh uh.”
She left the cafeteria, locked herself in the nearest toilet, and called her mother.
★
“Well, this is very worrying, Ellie,” said Ingrid Haller, 90 million kilometers away. “If these people are serious about mounting an armed rebellion, you ought to tell someone immediately. If you feel, as you said, that you can’t tell anyone there, for fear of retaliation against yourself and Cydney, or because you don’t know who to trust, I’d be more than happy to get in touch with the authorities for you. I could make sure that the information gets to the right person.”
Ingrid Haller worked at the UN prosecutor’s office in Rome. She knew people, and things, that others didn’t.
“However, Ellie, isn’t it possible that they are just … I don’t want to say having fun, but … Do you think it’s possible that they wanted to impress you? To show you how serious they are, such big men? I think we have to be sure there’s a real risk of violence before we set in motion the machinery of justice.”
Elfrida stared in outrage at the tiny screen of her phone. “Don’t you believe me, Mom?”
Not yet having heard that, Elfrida’s mother went on in her German-inflected English: “I’m also thinking about your future. Not your career, your … You’ve already had contact with the ISA. You’re on their watch list. I’ve seen it. I was searching that database for another reason, and I saw my little girl’s face. Honestly, I wanted to punch someone in that moment. So if there is an investigation of these Dummkopfs, and they find you are in the middle of it, I’m afraid …”
She sighed.
“But of course, Ellie, the most important thing to me of all is your safety. Please don’t let me talk you out of doing the prudent thing.
“I wish I could be more help.”
“So do I, Mom,” Elfrida sighed. She had just remembered why she did not often confide in her mother. Talking to Ingrid Haller was the mental equivalent of driving through a muddy puddle. Goodbye to any glimmers of clarity you might have had.
Elfrida was also upset to find out that she was on the Information Security Agency’s dreaded watch list, and mad at her mother for not telling her before.
A cherub buzzed into her field of vision, obscuring her view of her phone. You have a new message … Elfrida wrenched her head around to get her mother’s face out from behind the text, so she could read it properly. ... from Dr. Abdullah Hasselblatter!
Galvanized, she blurted, “I guess I’ll figure it out. I’ll let you know what I end up deciding. Don’t tell Dad,” she added. “He’d just worry.”
She cut the connection and blinked open the message from Dr. Hasselblatter. It said simply, My office. ASAP.
Somehow, he must have figured out that she had tried to get in to see him. Well, she wouldn’t be turned away this time.
Heart in her mouth, she hurried back up to L1. One of Dr. Hasselblatter’s strategists waited impatiently in the foyer. “Come on, he’s waiting for you.”
They sailed past the receptionist. If looks could kill, Elfrida would have been eligible for recycling.
3D wallpaper lined the radial corridor to the VIP hab block. They seemed to be walking past Alpine views, with doors disguised as chalets that loomed startlingly as they approached. The strategist walked jerkily, stabilizer braces constraining her gait. “Dog, I hate this gravity. Aren’t you worried about bone and muscle loss? I guess you’re exercising.” She made it sound like a bad thing. “Anyway. In here.”
A chalet door opened into Dr. Hasselblatter’s campaign headquarters. This was the first time Elfrida had seen inside a VIP suite, and she’d expected it to be luxurious, but it looked just like the HR office—with the original furniture, which was not an improvement. Satin flounces adorned fake antiques fabbed from plastic. Campaign staffers sprawled on the bed, absorbed in screens. Dr. Hasselblatter’s son was playing with Lego on the floor. Of Mrs. Hasselblatter there was no sign.
Dr. Hasselblatter advanced on her. “Come here. Tell me what you think of this.” But he did not immediately explain wh
at ‘this’ was. “How are you getting along, Goto? Have you completed your assessment?”
“Sir?”
Of course, he must think she was here to submit her community assessment.
“Am I speaking Chinese? Your assessment. Of the community. Which I asked you to complete within one week.”
“Well, actually, sir …”
“Have you even started on it? ”
“Sir, I’ve been, um, conducting interviews to ascertain the needs of the community.” As she spoke, she realized that she was doing just what Vlajkovic had told her to. Stalling for time. “I’m also analyzing potential resettlement options, and ….”
“Resettlement? Resettlement? Who said anything about that?” Dr. Hasselblatter’s eyebrows flared. Then he grinned wryly. “I know, I did. But it was Charlie Pope’s idea. And after much consideration, I’ve concluded that it is a meatbrained one.”
“Sir?” Elfrida was speechless.
“Goto, Goto. These people have been living on Mercury for three generations. This is their home. Is it fair to uproot them? Why should they be tossed into the recycling bin, simply to shave a couple of percentage points off UNVRP’s overhead? Let them stay!”
Elfrida felt dizzy. Dr. Hasselblatter was saying exactly what she had thought herself, before she found out that Vlajkovic’s people planned to take over the hab by force.
“Consider the logistics. Where would we resettle them? Most of them are spaceborn, so they can’t be resettled on Earth. And where else is there? Luna doesn’t admit any new immigrants who haven’t got a spaceship full of cash. Ceres, you’ll say. Or Eunomia, Hebe, Cybele, Davida ...” Dr. Hasselblatter pulled a face. “Unimaginably bad optics. I’m amazed Charlie didn’t see that. It’s one thing to dump asteroid squatters on Ceres, but our own people?”
“Sir, that’s exactly how I feel about it! I know it’s hypocritical, but …”
“No, no. It’s not hypocritical at all! UNVRP is committed to human expansion through terraforming. People on other planets. That was the Project’s official slogan, until someone noticed that it didn’t make a very good acronym. Taking our own people off a planet, and dumping them on an asteroid … that would be hypocritical.”
The Mercury Rebellion: A Science Fiction Thriller (The Solarian War Saga Book 3) Page 9