“Yeah, with Cydney. But we just futzed around in SoHo.”
“Have you been in touch?”
“John, she says she’s staying.”
“Staying? On Mercury?”
Elfrida nodded. “You know, it looks like Wrightstuff, Inc., is going to end up getting what they wanted all along.”
“Sovereignty.”
“The Republic of Mercury,” Elfrida said in a somewhat acid tone. “Of course, they’ll have to share the He3 under a UN-mediated agreement. And the health inspectors will probably insist on some big changes in their lifestyle. Not least, an end to their cloning program. But Grumpy Doug—whoops, I forgot, he’s changed his name; George—is cool with that. He’s also planning to resurrect President Doug’s parraterraforming project. He thinks the private sector is getting the message that there’s more money to be made from putting people in space, than from taking resources out of space, although the two things aren’t incompatible, of course.” She sighed. “Oh, and did I mention? He’s adopted Jake Vlajkovic-Gates and his baby sister. Also, Wrightstuff, Inc. took in all the survivors from UNVRP HQ. I would have thought most of them would want to leave the planet. But they’re staying. I guess it really is their home.”
“But what about Cydney?”
“Oh.” Elfrida grimaced. “She’s shutting down her feed. You know, her father’s a politican. He basically runs Xhosaland. So she’s joining the family business, and they’re setting up a joint venture with the Dougs.”
“What kind of a joint venture?”
“Tourism.”
Mendoza laughed. Elfrida smiled and shrugged. Breaking up with Cydney had been traumatic. Their relationship had been a casualty of the Mercury Rebellion, as people were now calling it.
The story had been framed to minimize political blowback. And Cydney, as a credible eyewitness, had played a key role in the media narrative that cast Mike Vlajkovic as the arch-villain of the piece. Angelica Lin had not earned the post-humous opprobrium that dos Santos had predicted for her. In fact, she had been reduced to a tragic footnote. The only victim that people cared about was Zazoë Heap.
“I bet Cydney was paid off by someone,” Mendoza said. “The UN probably has an entire agency for that kind of thing: Carpets, Sweeping Under, Department Of.”
“Don’t talk about carpets,” Elfrida said sadly.
Seagulls whirled past the plaza, crying. Down on the Hudson River, the wind tore at the furled sails of fishing boats returning to harbor under electric power.
“And the Venus Project? Is it really dead?” Mendoza said.
“Yes,” Elfrida said. “This was one disaster too many. Oh, Vesta will hit eighteen years from now, as scheduled. A big-ass period on the end of humanity’s terraforming dream.”
She played an imaginary violin, mocking the dream she had cared so passionately about herself. But Mendoza saw through her bravado, and slipped his arm around her shoulders. Her eyes watered. Pretending it was the wind, she pulled away and headed for the coffee stall on the other side of the observation deck.
“Good idea,” Mendoza said, following her. “Mine’s a latte …”
“With goat’s milk and an extra shot. I remember.” She ordered coffees for them both. “My crystal ball tells me that paraterraforming is the future. I guess it makes sense. It certainly makes business sense, according to Cydney.”
“Yup,” Mendoza said. “It’s all about the money.”
A smiling young barista handed them their coffees in St. Patrick’s souvenir travel mugs made from locally recycled plastic.
“You’re telling me,” Elfrida groused. “These coffees cost the equivalent of a day’s furlough pay.”
“Here, I’ll pay you back.”
“Don’t be stupid. Now that I’m living at home, I don’t need to economize.” Elfrida sipped her cappuccino. “Yum; this is good coffee, though. Almost as good as Dr. Seth’s.”
Mendoza went quiet again. He had been doing that a lot on this trip, and every time, Elfrida tensed up, dreading what he might be going to tell her.
But he had already confirmed what she dreaded most of all, and maybe there was nothing else coming.
He said reflectively, “It’s not all about the money. I shouldn’t have said that. There are good people in the UN, people genuinely committed to truth and justice. The fact that Derek Lorna’s going on trial proves it.”
“Going on trial doesn’t mean going to jail.”
Mendoza squeezed her arm. “That part’s up to you.”
Derek Lorna had created the Heidegger program version 2.0 and unleashed it on Mercury. Elfrida knew it. Mendoza also knew it, but he couldn’t prove it. The Interplanetary Court of Justice’s case against Lorna rested on the souvenir Elfrida had brought back from Mercury: the head of Gloria dos Santos.
UN techies had cut dos Santos’s BCI out of her skull. Call records and other data stored in the device’s memory crystals yielded evidence that Lorna had knowingly supplied UNVRP with software upgrades that were, to put it mildly, defective. It was basically a product liability claim. But Elfrida would be giving evidence at the trial, and she was determined to tell the court everything she knew.
“I’m going to tell the truth,” she said. “I’m going to tell them it wasn’t defective software. It was designed to do exactly what it did, which was murder people. If that spoils everyone’s tidy little narrative, too freaking bad. Lorna is not going to walk away from this with a fine.”
Hot coffee splashed her fingers. She had gestured dramatically with her mug, forgetting it was not a pouch. Now the mug was empty, her coffee all over her jeans.
Mendoza picked up the mug lid and apologized to people nearby. “I have faith in you.”
“I wish I had faith in me.” Her teeth were chattering. “I’m afraid I’m going to mess up and he’ll get off.”
“You’ll do fine.”
“It sucks that I have to stay on Earth until the trial is over.”
“Life at Hotel Mom And Dad isn’t that bad, is it?”
“Things are kind of sticky right now.”
Elfrida’s impassioned email from Mercury had caused a lot of trouble for her mother. Add in the domestic tension from the revelation of Ingrid Haller’s double life, and the Goto household was not exactly a haven of peace at the moment.
“Well, you don’t have to stay in Rome,” Mendoza said. “You could explore Earth, for a change. I went on pilgrimage to Our Lady of Fallujah recently. It’s incredible. The shrine’s in the middle of the jungle. You have to walk in—”
“John, why do you have to leave?” She hadn’t meant to say that. The words were torn from her as if someone had reached down her throat and pulled them out.
Mendoza walked away from her and stopped beside one of the telescopes overlooking Central Lagoon. She followed him.
“I just have to,” he said in a voice so low she could hardly hear him.
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Because Jun asked you to?”
Jun hadn’t asked her to come. That still stung. Yes, she understood that she had to stay on Earth for Derek Lorna’s trial. But still … still …
The Yonezawa brothers had dropped her and Mendoza off at Midway. From that moment on, Elfrida had understood that Mendoza would be joining them again soon. Somewhere. In space.
She cringed at the memory of that last night on Midway. Beautiful chaos in the docking bay. Black tech dealers wandering from ship to ship. Kiyoshi twanging on an acoustic guitar, sitting on the steps of the Chimera’s passenger module, sucking sore fingers. The smell of Russo-Chinese noodle soup. She’d gone on her knees to Jun, or rather, in him—his physical body was a spaceship. Take me with you. But he’d said no.
“You know what he is, don’t you?” she said to Mendoza.
Mendoza nodded.
“He’s an AI,” she said, anyway.
“An ASI,” Mendoza said, barely moving his lips. “He’s still improving himself. He himse
lf admitted that he probably qualifies as a super-intelligence now. Big surprise. He defeated the Heidegger program, version 2.0. Do you know … no I guess you have to be an IT guy to appreciate what an incredible feat of computing that was.”
“As super-intelligences go, it was a newborn baby,” she pointed out. “Trapped in a suitcase.”
“Yeah, but still. He fought it on its own turf, and kicked its ass. To us, it looked like five seconds of cheesy special effects. But in supercomputer time, that’s the equivalent of thousands of years of warfare by attrition, cunning, and logic. He let me have a look at some of his data logs from the fight …” Mendoza shook his head in admiration.
She understood perfectly then. What drew him was the same thing that had drawn her into space, again and again.
Abenteuerlust. The thirst for adventure.
“Well, I guess you have to go,” she said. There was nothing else to say. “Where are you meeting them?”
He shrugged. “In the Belt.”
“OK.”
“They need a data analyst,” he muttered.
“Stop justifying it,” she said, punching him on the arm and smiling. That smile cost her more than he would ever know.
He smiled back, gratefully. Offered her the telescope. “Look, you can see our hotel.”
Elfrida peered through the viewfinder. Tourists mooched around on the deck of the Plaza Hotel, a five-storey barge permanently moored at the Columbus Circle dock. “Looks like cocktail hour has started. Shall we head back?”
“Yeah, let’s.”
They joined the queue for the elevator that would take them down to water level. A slim humanoid figure, bundled in a pycnofiber jacket, came to join them. “Where are we going now?”
Elfrida rolled her eyes. “Hello, Louise. We are going back to our hotel.”
“You seem upset,” Louise 361AX said.
As a key witness in UN vs. Derek Lorna, Elfrida was subject to as many restrictions as if she were a criminal herself. She had only received permission from the court for this trip by agreeing to let her therapist come along as a chaperone.
“I am not upset,” she gritted. “Got it?”
The robot therapist blinked rapidly. No doubt, she had orders to winkle out of Elfrida any information she could. But she also had patient-management functionality that enabled her to detect when Elfrida was in a bad mood. So now, instead of asking questions, she gestured in the direction of the Statue of Liberty. “This really is a beautiful view.”
“Louise, you’re a robot. What would you know about beautiful views?” Elfrida started. Mendoza put a hand on her arm.
“Mahal,” he said, a Filipino endearment.
Elfrida tensed. Then sighed. “OK. You know what, you’re right. It is a beautiful view.”
A view of Earth. The planet that had always been, and would now again be, her home.
THE END
This is the end of the Elfrida Goto Trilogy. But it’s not the end of the Solarian War Saga! The adventure will continue in The Luna Deception, coming in mid-2015. Join my mailing list to be the first to know about the launch and related events: http://felixrsavage.com/signup
The prequel to the Solarian War Saga, Crapkiller, and the first book in the series, The Galapagos Incident, are available as FREE downloads. It’s my way of saying thank you to readers of the Solarian War Saga! Get your copies here: http://felixrsavage.com/signup
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Coming soon ...
The Luna Deception
The next book in the Interplanetary War Series is called The Luna Deception. Get ready to find out where Mendoza has been all this time, and what Kiyoshi is going to blow up next! Like the other books in the series, The Luna Deception is packed full of suspense, dark humor, and not a few Big Ideas. Preview chapters will shortly be available to mailing list subscribers. That sign-up link is http://felixrsavage.com/signup :) Hope to see you there!
Until next time,
Felix
Books by Felix R. Savage
The Solarian War Saga, in chronological order:
Crapkiller
The Galapagos Incident
The Vesta Conspiracy
A Very Merry Zero-Gravity Christmas (short story)
The Mercury Rebellion
The Luna Deception (coming in 2015)
Stand-alone
Finity (A Story of Mars Exploration)
Mercy (A Fantasy Novella of Revenge)
… and more to come!
THE MERCURY REBELLION
(THE SOLARIAN WAR SAGA, BOOK 3)
A Science Fiction Thriller
Copyright © 2015 by Felix R. Savage
The right to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by Felix R. Savage. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author.
First published in the United States of America in 2015 by Knights Hill Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author.
Cover Images by
© bigstockphoto.com / Algol2
© bigstockphoto.com / 1971yes
Cover Design by Donna Mixon: [email protected]
Interior design and layout by Felix R. Savage: [email protected]
ISBN-13: 978-1-937396-13-8
ISBN-10: 1-937396-13-4
Table of Contents
The Mercury Rebellion
A Note from the Author
More Books by the Author
The Mercury Rebellion: A Science Fiction Thriller (The Solarian War Saga Book 3) Page 34