Getting up, cop reflexes snapping into place, I looked around for the attendants. They should be at their stations, or patrolling the aisles to see if anybody wanted a snack, or something to drink. Instead, they lay dead in the aisles.
Panic hit me hard. “Oh God…” Looking around, I tried to see if I could spot the black-smoke killer I’d seen through Kell Fallow’s eyes.
I went back to Gideon. My fancy new cutting-edge counter-intrusion headware had spared me from whatever the hell was happening. Gideon’s heavily-customized headware, on the other hand, hadn’t saved him the way mine had saved me. I wondered if it could examine Gideon. I fumbled and blinked through pages and pages of command maps and help files, finding everything except what I bloody well wanted. While looking, I kept shaking Gideon’s body and screaming at him to wake the hell up. He remained out of it. I couldn’t find anything that would let me sniff around in his headware.
At least he was alive, even if barely.
Swearing, I stood up again, looked around the cabin at about a hundred and fifty dead passengers, and four dead attendants.
I wished I had one of the guns Gideon bought from Theo. Not that it would have done me much good.
Right. Deep breaths. Prioritize. Who’s driving the train? From what I knew about these things, space elevator trains have two enhanced drivers who take the journey in shifts, one on and one off. I was in car six out of eight. I knew from my emergency services training that somewhere in the ceiling would be a hatch I could pull down, which would provide a ladder I could use to climb up through the systems stuff in the ceiling of this car and up into the next one. I went around and around, running, breathing hard, looking at the ceiling, trying to spot the hatch.
I found the hatch and pressed the control pad; panels slid and folded away with a noisy hum. One of them snagged, and I pushed it the rest of the way.
Soon, I’d lowered the ceramic ladder and started making my way up.
Then things got worse. There was an explosion outside while I was stuck in the dark, machinery-filled crawlspace between cars. I remember the way it hit hard and fast, smashing me about in the tight space. I banged my head and felt limbs crunch; massive chunks of hardware jammed into me, folding and squeezing me in ways probably not recommended in my warranty. Huge metal and ceramic parts shunted and broke right next to me. Power failed. Circuit-breaking subsystems blew. Ozone choked me.
At first nothing hurt, but I knew that later, if I survived, it would hurt like hell to the ninth power.
I lost consciousness, just as I was about the enter the fifth car, but I was able much later to reconstruct what happened from various sources.
A gigantic explosion had occurred in one of the upper cars, destroying the top four cars and crippling the fifth.
The polydiamond elevator cable had broken and was now trailing through the planet’s ionosphere, cutting off main power to the train.
We lost lights and heating. Backup battery power was limited, and provided a dim red usable light.
The remaining three cars were blown clear from the broken and now falling cable.
Amundsen Station, and the asteroid used for the Counterweight Rock — which were subject to colossal forces due to the length of the elevator cable and the rotation of New Norway — were flung away into space. Emergency inertial dampeners on the station saved some lives, and bought some time for a handful of survivors to get to escape systems. But the acceleration shearing effect as the station, and the counterweight asteroid, broke free of the Stalk and spun off caused catastrophic carnage and loss of life. Ultimately the wreckage of the station, spinning around the Counterweight Rock, took up an unstable orbit around New Norway. Planetary defense units destroyed the asteroid before it had a chance to hit the world, leaving the fragments of Amundsen Station and its thousands of dead to tumble away into the dark.
Gideon’s pride and joy, the Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, was lost along with the station. When Gideon learned of this later, I held him while he wept.
Similar acceleration shearing occurred when our train cars were flung away from the cable. No one had been strapped into their seats, and of course neither was I. Hundreds of the dead were flung about the cabins. Gideon, tangled up in a mess of bodies, was critically injured. From what I could see it looked like he had several ribs broken and possibly a skull fracture. I was slammed and crushed into heavy machinery in a confined space. The biostats in my new custom headware kept me alive, and tried to revive me. I lost a great deal of blood.
The train’s emergency escape pod system tried to deploy, but that, like the infostructure of the entire train, had been extensively compromised in the same infowar assault that had killed the passengers and attendants. Only a few pods successfully managed to deploy their fold-down bulkheads prior to the explosive bolts breaking the cars apart. One of the three spinning cars blew its bolts before the emergency bulkheads locked into place; its internal atmosphere, and almost all hands, were sucked out into space. My car managed, via emergency backup systems, to deploy one escape pod. Its thruster system failed to work properly. The pod burned up in the thin New Norway atmosphere.
We learned later what had happened. New Norway had several orbiting planetary defense platforms, each equipped with immensely powerful Wotan II fusion-powered directed plasma cannon. One platform suddenly started firing on our train. None of the countermeasures, safety systems, or emergency shutdown procedures worked. It was as if the entire platform suddenly developed an evil mind of its own and started sniping at targets of interest. The crew, both down on the surface and aboard the platform, could do nothing to stop it. What did stop it, in the end, was another platform shooting it down.
The rogue platform, however, got several shots off before it was destroyed.
The first shot just barely missed us. The second shot found its mark and destroyed much of the train. Once we were free of the cable, spinning and tumbling at high speed, propelled by the force of the explosion, it was harder for the Wotan II to track us. The final shot grazed the last car, destroying it, just as that other orbital platform locked and fired its cannon at the rogue platform.
Which left two intact segments of car six — my car.
When my headware brought me — barely — to the point of consciousness, I could vaguely see that I was a mangled heap in a dark space and racked with phenomenal pain. From the looks of things I had several fractured ribs, a broken arm, and blood was pouring into my eyes from a nasty head wound. I was confused and scared and going into shock, and the last thing I could remember was sitting outside Theo’s military surplus shop, though even that was hazy.
Headware managed to dull the pain in my body a little, enough at any rate, that I was able to haul myself, screaming my throat hoarse, back to the hatch. Peering down, I saw the human wreckage of scores of people. There was blood everywhere I could see, on the walls, the windows. I could not see Gideon from where I was and assumed he must be dead, like everyone else.
The damaged car and the wreckage still attached to it were spinning slowly, almost end over end. We had minimal life support. The first Wotan II shot had imparted one momentum to us, and the last, grazing shot to the lower car had imparted another. With the spinning, however, there was a little gravity. It was enough to keep clouds and gobs of blood from drifting about, and to keep the bodies in one place.
I wondered what on Earth could have happened. I could see that I was on a Stalk train, and realized that Gideon and I were probably trying to get down to the capital, New Oslo.
I lay gasping in the cold metallic air for a moment, and blinked through my headware help system. I got it to query external control systems and found a short list of contactable systems for the train car. One was the emergency thruster system manual control interface. The other was the emergency environment management interface, which reported that we did not have a lot
of breathable air or heat or power left. The power management interface showed only that it was already running on its barest minimum setting, and that the batteries were draining quickly. It did offer the option of deploying a power tether out into space. While we were moving through New Norway’s ionosphere, this tether could be used to generate a small amount of electricity. I’d never heard of such a thing, but I was all for it, in a foggy, vague, and sore kind of way. I gave the command to release the tether. Soon, the power interface reported that we were generating a little bit of power which would help keep things going a while longer.
I tried to access TrainMind, the master operating network for the whole train. It, too, was operating only minimally. It did offer flickering access to the vehicle status channel however, which told me that we were still very high over New Norway, moving in a great arc which, if left uncorrected, would lead us to burn up in the atmosphere in a little over eleven minutes. Assuming of course, nothing else shot at us.
I was only barely conscious, using all my strength just to blink through these unfamiliar interfaces and relying extensively on online help files, but I could see that things were more than merely bleak.
Swearing would have used too much energy and oxygen. I concentrated on trying out the manual thruster control system.
It didn’t work. I kept trying. It still didn’t work. I took a breath to settle down, and tried again. Again, nothing. I was getting error codes. The online help troubleshooting guide informed me that I did not have permission to access the manual thruster controls. Only the drivers had permission. I muttered that the drivers were almost certainly both dead.
Then I found a small help file titled, “Civilian Access to Train Control Systems”. It turned out that there was an interface somewhere in all of this where I could enter a lengthy code, which I had to find buried in another file which, supposedly, would grant me emergency access to the thrusters.
I was in pain, with blood in my eyes, and parts of my body were numb and wouldn’t move. There was starting to be a dreadful burning smell everywhere that I didn’t like.
At last I blinked and blinked and found the bloody thing in which to enter the damned code. Theoretically, I had access to the thrusters now.
That little adventure had chewed up more than three minutes.
Before I could do anything with the thrusters now that I had control of them, I had to watch a cheerful animated character named Rocket Scientist Guy lecture me on “Concepts In Orbital Mechanics”.
“I don’t bloody well have time for this!” I screamed.
The system showed me various graphical representations of our course. There was an amazing amount of detail, all of it showing me just how very screwed we were. I considered sending a note out to Hydrogen Steel, congratulating it on a job particularly well done. Who else could have arranged all this?
We kept falling.
I glanced at some of the help, particularly the animated explanations on using the thrusters, and the whole thing about “delta-v”. Fiddling with the controls, I started changing our course. At first, all I managed was to make everything much worse. Our arc steepened into a much sharper dive. Rate of descent soared.
Swearing, I tried following the step-by-step emergency orbital correction animation the help system was offering. Every time I blinked I got eyes full of sweat and blood.
Soon my headware was full of urgent warning klaxons telling me we would be hitting the upper atmosphere in two minutes, one minute 59, 58…
I blinked and blinked and blinked at the thruster controls, only to learn that I’d used up all the thruster propellant.
…Forty-eight, 47, 46…
I swore.
All I wanted to do was go to bloody New Norway and do a bit of investigating. It didn’t seem like much to ask…
It bothered me that the last time I’d spoken to Gideon I’d been angry with him, and over what? A look? A glance? A misunderstanding? My own bloody neurosis projected onto him?
…Twenty-five, 24, 23…
TrainMind offered a live video feed, from which I could view our re-entry from numerous angles and sources. I declined.
…Twelve, 11, 10…
Everything was shaking. It was getting hotter.
Most of the systems were failing. My headware was getting nothing but noise now.
Never one for prayer, it did occur to me to send a wish that someone, somewhere, would find out what the hell was going on with Hydrogen Steel and its minions. For Kell Fallow and his family’s sake, if no other.
I was starting to hear a howling, roaring, deafening scream. The train was shaking itself apart; I couldn’t take it.
The pain was…
CHAPTER 22
The pain was gone. I was aware, suddenly, only of an echo of pain, an echo of life.
“Suzette McGee?”
I looked around, confused.
I was floating, legs crossed, about a meter in the air wearing a light silk robe. I felt clean. There was a man near me, also floating. We were in what looked like a highly stylized rendering of a Japanese garden. It was like being inside a woodcut engraving. I could hear a faint trickle of water and there was an exquisite, subtle scent which I recognized as cherry blossoms.
I was dead. That must be the case. I just didn’t know how I’d gotten here, who I’d been — or, more importantly, where I’d been before I died.
“This is nice,” I said. “I didn’t think the afterlife would have such good taste.”
“You are not dead,” the floating man said. He was wearing what looked like an extremely expensive, but very elegant and comfortable white silk robe. He looked like the definition of serene.
“Right. Okay.” I was still looking around, not particularly listening. This was all a dream, or was fake in some way. I had a feeling I was accustomed to the persuasive power of complex illusions, but I could not at that moment have explained why.
“Nice resolution,” I said. “I can see silkworms in that tree there.” It felt amazing that I should be able to see such tiny things. Looking at the carefully raked stones beneath me, I could see a line of ants going about their business.
“Suzette McGee, give me your attention.”
I glanced at the man. “What’s the rush? I’ve got the rest of Time, right?”
“You are not dead. This is not the afterlife. We are losing time.”
This began to penetrate my euphoria. I started looking around. Right at the edge of my perception, it started to occur to me that something very bad had just been happening to me, mere moments ago. Again, I felt that echo of pain. I held my head; it felt as if someone had come along with a big spoon and stirred it all up.
“Give me your attention!”
I was slowly settling into a new perspective on things.
“Right,” I said. “I’m listening. Sorry.”
He nodded slightly. “Your name is Suzette McGee. You are known as Zette. You are a former police officer.”
It felt like someone giving you directions to a place you’d only ever been a couple of times. It wasn’t exactly familiar, but it sounded right. I said the name over and over in my head a few times. It felt comfortable, like your favorite shoes.
“You are caught between moments in time.”
“Is that right?” I said, surprised, but a little scornful. I wanted to ask, “What’s the catch?” but that would be rude. Then I remembered that being rude wasn’t something I generally had a problem with.
“Suzette McGee. I am here to offer you a job.”
Even before I knew what I was going to say, I opened my mouth and said, without intending to, “I did have a job, but I don’t think I’m all that good at it. Maybe you should try someone else.”
“No, Suzette McGee. You are precisely the woman my employer needs.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Uh-huh…” I said, noncommittally. “Can I back out if I don’t like it?”
“I am authorized to return you to the moment in time from which we took you, from where you will go on to your assigned fate.”
Frowning, feeling tiny bits of memory flickering about in my head, I started to develop an awareness that something had been very, very wrong in my former life. There had been noise, and pungent heat, and a terrible, agonizing vibration…
“Who the hell are you, anyway?” I said, suddenly feeling more like myself with every passing moment, even if I could not quite remember much.
My host executed a slight, perfect bow. “I am Otaru. I am at your service.”
The name rang a distant bell in my head. “I’ve heard of you.”
He said nothing. He looked weirdly like he might be able to sit like that for a million years, and never even blink.
For the first time since my arrival here, I started to feel a little afraid. “Why do I know your name? And for that matter, just where the hell am I right now?
Still, he did not blink or stir. At length he said, “You have encountered the firemind Hydrogen Steel.”
He only had to utter the name, and like an evil incantation it triggered the return of the full memory of everything I’d been doing, and in particular my encounter with Hydrogen Steel. It crashed, falling like the sky into my conscious mind. I swore, clutching my head, remembering the terror of my meeting with the Cube aspect of the firemind. I wanted to scream. I wanted to weep. So much death. The memory of the Stalk train swamped me. The dead, so many dead. I remembered the stink of blood. “Oh God … Oh God!”
“Suzette McGee. Listen to me.”
His voice was soft and light, but it cut through the catastrophe unfurling in my head and I stopped, surprised, and looked at him. “Yes?”
“You have encountered a node of the firemind Hydrogen Steel.”
“A node? Is that what you call it?”
Hydrogen Steel Page 21