Kit nodded. ‘Vali said that the data came with a message indicating that Fox would be interested. It also mentioned one other thing, “Eden.” We found evidence in Tulsa that the people who killed themselves had not been selected to “go up to Eden.” I believe that these twenty-one, and presumably others, are using this site to get off-world.’
‘A reasonable conclusion,’ Jackson said, ‘but to go where? Eden? Some form of habitat, one would assume, but where?’
‘I have not been able to determine that,’ Kit replied, ‘but now there is a further place to go looking.’
Shackleton Crater, The Moon.
‘I accessed the schematics for a Xiao-class vessel,’ Kit said as Fox watched their descent out the window of the shielded transport they were using. Shielded was always a good thing in space, but this one was designed to fly during solar flares if it needed to. If it needed to, the crew were not going to be happy about it, but they probably would be alive at the end. ‘The vessel used– You are aware of the operation of a nuclear thermal rocket?’
‘High-temperature reactor, frequently a fission one though there is a fusion version now, is used to drive a reaction mass, frequently hydrogen, out the back of the ship.’ Fox glanced at her virtual companion. ‘I know some basics.’
‘I know. In this case, a molten-salt reactor was used to provide both the heat for the reaction engine and power for the ship. The reactor was required, primarily, to power the forward laser, which was there for cutting up larger chunks of space junk, but could obviously be used for other purposes. Whatever, the reactor fuel is thorium two three two dissolved in thorium tetrafluoride, which is the “molten salt” of the name. It makes for a hot, stable, compact reactor, but the waste products, which are now scattered over the floor of Shackleton Crater, are longer-lived than those from a traditional, uranium-based reactor.’
‘Swell,’ Fox said.
Through the window, she could see the wall of the crater illuminated by the rescue ship’s lights. It was the same grey rock as everywhere else, sloping at about thirty degrees as it dropped over four kilometres from the raised lip of the crater to the floor. In the lights, you could see the debris of the crash, fragments of metal and plastic embedded in the regolith, an occasional part which had more structure to it. The nose of the craft was still embedded in the crater wall, driven in by the impact, but much of the hundred-ton vessel had detached from the forward hull and rolled down. The heaviest parts, including the badly cracked reactor, had hit the floor of the crater and the mining habitat where, what felt like a lifetime ago, Fox had helped the ERU nail a squad of mercenaries.
‘What a mess,’ Fox said.
‘Not arguing,’ Pierce said. She had accompanied Fox on her little trip to look over the debris. Their pilot was an AI.
‘You know, I could’ve done this alone. No need for you to risk radiation sickness. I don’t actually get sick any more.’
Pierce shrugged. ‘Someone else should be here and I’m loaded up on antirad drugs anyway.’ She glanced at a display on the back of her forearm. ‘Besides, we’re above normal, but I’d probably be risking as much in a dome out at Tranquillity Spa. That said, do you want to go much deeper?’
‘No.’ Fox directed her voice toward the front of the cabin, even though there was no one sitting at the controls. ‘Let’s start back up, please and thank you.’
‘Of course, ma’am,’ the pilot replied through the cabin speakers.
A sudden burst of infomorph solidarity hit Fox and she added, ‘I didn’t get your name, sorry.’
There was a roar of thrusters and the ship began to lift out of the crater once more. ‘Bernard, ma’am.’
‘Thank you, Bernard. I’m Fox.’
‘I know that, ma’am.’ There was a tinge of humour in his voice. ‘We all know who you are.’
Fox was not quite sure what to make of that, but Pierce filled in the gap with a question. ‘So, what are you going to do next?’
‘We seem to have a lot of scavenger ships falling to this… anomalous behaviour,’ Fox replied. ‘I think I need to talk to some scavengers. Kit, get me on a flight out to Prokhorov Station, quick as you can.’
‘Of course, Fox. There is a flight out at midday which we should be able to catch. We would arrive around two p.m. Should I notify Jason?’ The kitsune avatar was wearing a rather smug grin.
‘Yes, you should. I’m going to want to talk to him and his team too, and I think he’ll be able to help me talk to some Jin Shu about why their colleagues keep crashing their ships.’
Prokhorov Station, L1 Halo.
Once again, Fox was met in the reception hall after getting off her transport, but this time the person meeting her was smiling more, and they were in microgravity. The sight of Captain Jason Deveraux in a skintight, duty vacuum suit put a smile on Fox’s face.
‘I need to come up here when you’re on duty more often,’ Fox said as she glided over to him, dragging a travel bag. ‘You’ve definitely got the physique for that kind of outfit.’
‘Alas, since you got that new body, you never seem to wear one, mon chère.’ He took her hand and guided her toward the door of the chamber. There was not much point in a proper greeting here, when they could do it in more gravity later.
‘Well, being spaced would suck, but I can stand up to a vacuum without the suit. I might have some problems after a while from heat loss, maybe, or getting cooked, maybe. Air is not an issue.’
He grinned at her and they levered each other into an elevator car as though they had practised the manoeuvre. ‘Central habitat,’ Jason said, ‘Main concourse.’
The elevator said ‘Confirmed’ and the doors closed. There was the sensation of movement, and they drifted toward a surface which, for this purpose, was designated as the floor. ‘Floor’ was printed on it to ensure that people knew where the floor actually was. They had not quite got their feet on it when the car reached its operating speed and left them hanging in space again.
‘You wish to speak with some of the Jin Shu?’ Jason asked.
‘Seems like their ships are getting hit by these “ghost ship” attacks more than most,’ Fox replied. ‘It’s not exactly a statistically valid sample, and it’s not much of a trend…’
‘Those rumours started among the scavengers, and also seem to have restarted among them. We have done some gentle interrogation, but all we get are rumours.’
‘Yeah, but they’ve gone wider. You know ERU were sent in to that crash site at Luna City because they thought there might be aliens aboard.’
‘Aliens?’
Fox grinned. ‘You know, I said it just exactly like that. Immaterial aliens that sneak aboard the ships and take over. And since they’d crashed near Luna City, well, maybe it was an invasion. I mean, the government was taking this vaguely seriously.’
‘It takes, as they say, all sorts.’ He sighed. ‘And it would make almost as much sense as any other explanation at this point. Assuming these ships exist, and assuming they have military-grade stealth technology rather than alien cloaking shields, I would expect someone to have seen something by now.’
‘Ah, well, maybe they have, but they’re too scared to say anything.’ Gravity, or acceleration anyway, did some weird things as the car slowed, turned, and then accelerated again. Fox and Jason began to shift upward, stopped, and then began a slow glide down again as the station’s spin gravity began to take effect. ‘First, if you’re willing, I’d like to brief you on what we’ve got and find out what you guys know.’
‘I am both willing and authorised to exchange information with Palladium Security Solutions.’
‘Excellent. After that, we try some Jin Shu, and after that I’d like to engage in some relationship building between Palladium and the UNTPP.’
‘Relationship building?’
The doors opened and Fox stepped out onto the broad concourse which housed the main shopping and commercial sector of the station. ‘Yeah, you know, sex.’
Jas
on followed her out. ‘God, I have missed you, mon chère.’
‘Well, you can prove that later. Several times.’
~~~
Jason had arranged a conference room in the UNTPP facility and some extra guests. ‘You know Sergeant Huckabee, Fox,’ Jason said, indicating an attractive, blonde-haired woman who thoroughly filled out her suit.
Fox nodded. ‘I remember. Nice to see you again, Lucy. How’s the wife?’
‘Still gorgeous, Captain Meridian.’ Fox gave the sergeant a smirk: Fox had used Huckabee is an example of the temptations Jason was under, working on the station, but it had turned out that Huckabee was the last person Fox needed to worry about. When told of the little exchange between Fox and Jason, Huckabee had confirmed that Jason was not her type, but Fox was.
‘And this,’ Jason went on, indicating the second man in the room, ‘is Sergeant Michael Tam. Sergeant Tam heads up a squad dedicated to handling Jin Shu activities on the station. He’s not directly under my line of command, but we all go to him whenever anything Jin Shu-related comes to light.’
Tam reminded Fox a little of Helen Dillan. Both were, to Fox’s estimation, half-Chinese and there was the same basic structure to their faces: a little rounded, a little angular, and with an Asian cast to the eyes. Beyond that, the similarities died out as Tam had obviously taken more from his Chinese parent. His hair was black and cut short. His eyes were a deep brown. His body had the tightly muscled quality of someone who went in for martial arts in a big way, or maybe ballet, but there were no signs of muscle enhancement from what Fox could see.
Fox stepped forward, holding out her hand, and Tam rose to his feet to take it. There was a hint of… something in his eye as he shook her hand. Nervousness? He was being a little more gentle with her hand than Fox had expected. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Sergeant Tam,’ Fox said.
‘Uh, likewise. I’ve heard a lot about you.’
‘Yeah, there’s a lot to hear, sadly.’ Fox made an educated guess. ‘Your father was Jin Shu?’
An eyebrow shifted upward slightly. ‘Both my parents, until I was born. Scavenging was the family business, but neither of them wanted me to go that way. My father still goes out with my uncle and a couple of cousins. You believe the Jin Shu are somehow involved in these… accidents?’
‘Oh, God, no!’ Fox said. She pulled out a chair to sit down, making it casual rather than some sort of business meeting. ‘From what I remember of the Jin Shu, they’ll scrap for fun, but it’s always friendly.’
‘Except when it occasionally isn’t,’ Tam said.
‘Of course, and they’ll fight to get to a good piece of salvage, but that’s a race and once someone’s staked a claim, that’s it done with. And a scavenger’s ship is… sacrosanct. No one messes with another Jin Shu’s ship.’
Some of the nervousness had leaked away from Tam’s face now, but there was still something there. ‘You remember well.’
‘Right, so if one ship suddenly went crazy, I might look at another Jin Shu for it. Hell, if no Jin Shu vessels were involved, I might consider it. But this is several ships among a group where this ghost ship meme was strong, maybe even the population the meme started in.’
Tam gave a sigh. ‘Memetics isn’t really my area. I think Huckabee has whatever our memetics department has managed to find…’ He gave Huckabee a glance and she nodded. ‘Right. But, uh, the whole ghost ship thing has been going around for… decades. Probably since the first Jin Shu went looking for junk, and it’s cropped up in other populations.’
‘It’s not an uncommon meme,’ Huckabee said, ‘though it’s only ever been identified in seven distinct forms. It’s got some staying power, largely because there’s never evidence to counter it.’
‘Conspiracy-type memes are like that,’ Fox said, nodding.
‘Initially, the latest round suggested that UA were the ones with the undetectable ships, but that’s morphed into aliens trailing the comet, or maybe aliens who’ve been hanging around in some unwatched part of the system and have come in at the sign of the comet.’
‘It has been doing the rounds among the Jin Shu,’ Tam said. ‘They’ve been getting a little tight-lipped about it. Not mentioning it around strangers. It might be hard to get them to talk.’
‘Do you know anyone who actually claims to have seen one?’ Fox asked.
Tam shook his head. ‘No one would say that. One of the stronger rumours is that seeing one means you’re marked. You’re next. Everyone knows third-hand of someone who saw one. Either it links back to one of the ship crews in a crash, or they don’t have a name for the witness, or the name they have is too common to verify or isn’t a real name.’ He gave a shrug. ‘Rumours. It just comes over as rumours and spacer superstition. Like space whales.’
‘Huh. Don’t they tend to frequent the gas giants?’
‘Oh yeah, but they sometimes come in, kind of like ocean whales end up on beaches. That’s what I was told when I was a kid anyway.’
‘Or maybe they need the extra heat for mating,’ Huckabee said. ‘I heard quite an elaborate story about them having this cyclic migration pattern, with mating grounds around– And that’s not really on-topic. Anyway, Ghostship seven seems to have spun out of a short dispersal campaign in March. At its peak, the affected population was probably no more than fifteen hundred. The main bulk of rumours died out mid-May. We think the persistent population was a couple of hundred, but that’s not a small number in a culture like the Jin Shu, and when that ship hit the atmosphere and that email came out…’
‘Someone’s behind all this,’ Fox said, nodding. ‘I simply don’t believe it’s UA. I simply don’t believe they have the organisation needed to get ships like this built.’
‘Agreed,’ Jason said, ‘but that assumes there are ships, does it not? It could be an elaborate hoax.’
‘Not that elaborate, but yes, it could. But my gut– I really have to stop using that phrase. I don’t have guts. My instincts say there’s something out there. There’s something targeting ships and making them take suicide runs. The spread of sources and targets just doesn’t play if it’s some sort of sabotage. I’m not ruling it out entirely, but they’d have to have too many people in too many places. If they’ve got some way of hacking a spacecraft, remotely, from a mobile platform… More than one platform. Several ships. It’s too much for UA. I could go for a NIX operation, but they seem to be as confused as everyone else.’
‘Well, I trust your… instincts. I suggest we go through all we have between the two of us and then…’
‘And then I’ll put some more appropriate clothes on, and we’ll go talk to a few Jin Shu. If Sergeant Tam can think of any who might be willing.’
Tam nodded. ‘Well, my father’s on the station at the moment. He’ll talk to us, even if no one else will.’
~~~
‘You have a problem with Fox?’ Jason asked. He was standing outside his own office with Michael Tam while Fox changed her clothes inside. Jason was not entirely sure why Fox was changing out of what had seemed a perfectly serviceable, casual outfit, but he had not questioned it. On the other hand, he was concerned about the nervousness he saw in Tam whenever the sergeant looked at Fox.
‘No,’ Tam replied. ‘No, I don’t…’ He looked up at Jason, who had a good three inches in height on him, and sagged a little. ‘Permission to speak freely, sir?’
‘Granted.’
‘She’s not human, sir. I know she was. I know she is, legally, but she’s… She’s not human, and she looks human, and I don’t know how to react.’
Jason nodded. He had wondered, once in a while, what his own reaction to his love’s change of circumstances would have been if she was not, in fact, the woman he loved. The conversation he had had in his head had cemented in him the knowledge that he did love her, made him determined that they would make their odd relationship work. ‘I understand your reaction, Michael, but there is something you need to realise. The woman in there, changing her c
lothes for some reason, is as human as anyone I have ever met. Yes, she has metal bones and synthetic skin. Yes, she does not need oxygen, or food, or water. But there is a human in there. The same human I got to know in New York.’
Tam opened his mouth to speak, but the office door slid open and Fox stepped out. She was decked out in black: a thick leather jacket which hung open over a black mesh, high-hipped teddy which showed off her navel stud, a very short skirt, and high-heeled, latex boots which stopped barely short of her butt. ‘You forgot to mention my pearlescent hearing, Jason,’ she said, and turned her attention to Tam who was looking at her with wide eyes. ‘You’re right, Sergeant, I’m not human. I am, however, Tara Meridian, who was a human prior to having her brain dismantled, converted into data, and then compiled into something which perfectly emulates that brain. I am an infomorph that thinks it’s Tara Meridian. You are a squishy mass of proteins and other chemicals that thinks it’s Michael Tam. We think, therefore we are. Any questions?’
‘Uh…’ Tam said, which was not a great answer. Then he thought of something. ‘Uh, do you have a sister?’
Fox smirked. ‘Only child. My mother’s pretty hot and looks almost my age, but she’s pretty keen on my dad right now. Sorry.’
‘It was worth a try.’
‘Uh-huh. And, no offence taken. I think it’s pretty natural for people to find me… a bit weird. I’d hope, if you got to know me, you’d get over that, because you’d probably never pass the psych evaluations for the UNTPP otherwise, but also because I’m really nice.’
‘Unless you happen to be a criminal,’ Jason corrected. ‘Then she tends to be a stone-cold bitch.’
Fox grinned and set off toward the lobby. ‘Darn tootin’.’
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