The Cyborg Chronicles (The Future Chronicles)

by Peralta, Samuel

  And that thought didn't cause Daniel quite as much panic as before. There was a data-logger on the control panel. Data-loggers always held useful information.

  He disentangled himself from the charging wires and plugged into the truck's intelligence systems. His probes met a security wall, but it had a simple lock that wasn't hard to breach. The flash of information was immediate.

  It showed diagrams of a ring of satellites in orbit around Jupiter, about ten in all, each with a long tail of wire. These were the things ISF wanted to launch from the new base, and they were the things that would be constructed from the material contained in the plastic-wrapped boxes in the truck's cabin. Why the wire? If the diagrams were to scale, there had to be hundreds of kilometers of it.

  There was too much information for him to process, so he stored it all away, knowing that this would make him a spy.

  Worse, the information was useless; he still didn't know why the truck had stopped.

  There were clangs outside, and then something banged on the outside of the cabin.

  From the med couch, Oscar mumbled, “Uh-oh.”

  Daniel took up position by the door. “Suppose you can say that again.”

  Eilin studied the landscape on the viewscreen while Vivie steered the shuttle, reading out changes in terrain. They had checked the abandoned building site, but had found only the stricken truck, but no sign of Daniel and Oscar. They concluded if Daniel and Oscar had survived, they must have been taken back by the convoy. The tire tracks had led the way.

  The radio crackled.

  “Calico Base to unidentified shuttle: please state your ID and destination.”

  Well, that was to be expected. ISF had been remarkably silent so far.

  Vivie glanced at Eilin. “If there is an ISF exclusion zone, we've probably just run into it. What do you want me to do?”

  “Just confirm ID, but keep on track.”

  A curt nod.

  Vivie spoke to Calico Base in flight jargon.

  Jadie and Moira sat on either side of Eilin, determined expressions on their young faces. They wore body armor and carried vacuum-enabled laser guns. Their faces were those of soldiers going to war.

  Most of the Allion Aerospace staff thought Eilin should have driven home the confrontation a long time ago, instead of catering to ISF demands. They wanted to fight, but Eilin knew that Allion could never win an armed conflict. The technology to take Allion out of ISF's way, out of the solar system was still several years off implementation. That's why they needed the floating platforms, as interim, before the big leap. But all that was classified information. Eilin didn't want a fight; Allion couldn't afford to spend energy on a fight.

  Air hissed; the cabin door opened, letting in a shaft of artificial light and beyond that, a grey wall. The shadow of a man, not wearing a suit.

  Daniel shuffled back. He could easily overwhelm a single man, even when armed, but if they had entered the base, as indicated by the pressurized environment, it was unlikely that the man was alone.

  And indeed he wasn't. Two more shadows appeared on the floor, both holding weapons.

  “If you can hear us, come out,” a voice shouted into the door. Strong, but with an uncertain undertone. ISF didn't use aggregates; they said making human-machine combinations wasn't moral, and ISF really liked their morals.

  Daniel stood against the wall, unarmed. Subroutine messages flashed before his eyes: [don't move], [hide], [contact base for orders]. All of which weren't exactly practical, and he willed the annoying interfering to go away. He was human now, and could make his own decisions. He would defend himself.

  The cabin's ladder creaked.

  Daniel yanked open the emergency cabinet, pulled out the flare gun and fired it across the entrance. The flash set off the auto-polarize function in his eyes. In darkness that resulted, he threw the gun aside and scrambled into the next room. He needed a better weapon.

  There were many tracks in the dust now, all of them leading to the metallic dome that sat in the landscape like an upturned alien breakfast bowl.

  “It looks like they reached the base,” Vivie said. “Do you want me to try to get in?”

  “Yes,” Eilin said.

  “What--damn, we've got company.”

  There were a couple of shuttles on each side, sleek military designs, older than the Allion ship, but more lethal.

  A voice came through the comm. “Ms Gunnarsson, you are trespassing in ISF space.”

  “Let us take our personnel, and we'll leave,” Eilin said.

  “You're trespassing in ISF space,” the voice repeated. “You'll be escorted to Calico Base for your safety.”

  Their safety--the hell. “Where is our team?”

  “You'll be informed of the situation inside the base.”

  Ahead, the dome became bigger in the landscape. The hangar doors were already sliding open.

  Vivie glanced at Eilin. “We go in?”

  Eilin nodded. “We don't have much choice.” She noticed Jadie unclipping her weapon. “No shooting if we can avoid it. But take it from me: we're not leaving without the men.”

  Grim nods all around.

  Vivie guided the shuttle into the air lock and they cycled through in silence.

  Grey military efficiency met them on the other side, a large hall with a few military vehicles, and a group of dust-coated trucks. One of them carried the components of the launch installation, and another huge coils of wire.

  A couple of heavily-armed soldiers were moving towards the last truck.

  Boxes and boxes of supplies. Daniel ripped open plastic. There had to be something he could use as a weapon. At least twenty of the boxes were big and flat and heavy. He tossed one on the floor and ripped it open. The box contained solar panel cells, all in one piece. Nothing he could pick up and swing.

  There was a lot of noise outside, the clanging and hissing of the airlock door. Men shouted over the sound of an engine de-powering. And the clicks and pops of cooling metal. Someone had just arrived from elsewhere. Assistance for him, or assistance for the people outside?

  In either case, he was screwed. There were far too many soldiers outside for him to have any hope of escape, no matter how many people Allion might have sent.

  Then he heard a female voice he recognized. Damn, no. That was Eilin. What possessed her to come here?

  Eilin climbed out of the shuttle after Jadie. She gestured to Moira at the controls, who nodded and prepared a message on her screen.

  Two military men met them at the bottom of the stairs, guns out. More soldiers lined the perimeter of the hall, and a couple stood near one of the convoy's trucks. That's where the two young men were, inside that truck. Eilin had never seen so many guns. All of the soldiers, she noted proudly, wore radiation-resistant clothing made by Allion.

  “Come with us,” one of the two men said.

  “I prefer to stay with the shuttle. I only want to pick up our personnel.” She glanced around the hall, but couldn't see Base Commander Werner. Only trucks and behind them a number of huge rolls of wire and other equipment packed in the ubiquitous blue plastic that all space couriers used to pack their cargo. Ahead was the base command centre with a wall of viewscreens some of which, she was happy to note, displayed the outside sky.

  The man gestured with the gun, “Come. The boss will see you.”

  “I want a guarantee that our shuttle won't be confiscated if I leave it.”

  “No guarantees. The men you call 'personnel' are spies.”

  “They're technicians, here on your invitation.”

  “They're intelligent beings of some sort, sent by you as spies.”

  “I object to that. No one specified that the team couldn't include aggregates. You can check the contract if you want. I'm sure Base Commander Werner has already done so and knows that I'm right. I included the aggregates because they work much more efficiently than an all-bot team. I'm not going anywhere until the two men are brought here.”

 
Someone at the back of the hall shouted an order. Soldiers advanced into the hall.

  Eilin didn't know what was going on, but the situation was fast getting out of control. She yelled, “Moira, now.”

  One of the viewscreens in the command centre drew everyone's attention while the blue text flashed across Jupiter: SOS, Io 3.54oN, 2.12oW. Everyone in the hall saw it; every ship in the area would see it.

  Soldiers exchanged glances. Some pointed at the screen.

  In the command room, a man wearing a jacket with red shoulder epaulettes and a veritable galaxy of stars on his chest rose from his seat and came into the hall; Eilin recognized Base Commander Werner. “What's the meaning of this?”

  “The meaning is that all the press teams out there reporting on our 'stupid, money-wasting project' will now know where to get their next bit of news. Unless you want to attract a lot of bad publicity, you had better hand the two men over to us and let us leave unharmed.”

  There was a profound silence, during which Base Commander Werner glanced at the screen, at Eilin's shuttle, at Jadie holding her gun at the ready.

  Considering his options.

  Under her clothes, sweat trickled down Eilin's back. He could easily order all of them to be shot. Yes, there would be bad publicity, but it wouldn't be the first time ISF had been heavy-handed.

  But times were different. ISF was no longer backed by Earth's laws. ISF had a precious hold on public opinion this side of the asteroid belt, and their reputation was sliding. Especially Ganymede and Titan were no longer purely ISF bases; the civilian population in both was rising, and so was civilian influence.

  He would be sensible.

  Or so she hoped.

  He breathed out heavily, and addressed a soldier behind him. “Tell those cyborgs to drag their sorry asses out of that truck and make sure the lot of them get the hell out of here.”

  Eilin let go of a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.

  He turned on his heel and strode back towards the control room, without acknowledging Eilin.

  She said to his disappearing back, “So you won't need us to fix the earthquake barrier?”

  He whirled around, glowered at her, but said nothing. Distaste flickered over his face. He did need Allion to fix the barrier, such was their constant dance of interdependence.

  “I reserve the right for our company vessels to travel past Io to Jupiter,” Eilin added. “In return for our continued assistance, I request no exclusion zones be imposed on the Jovian air space.”

  He didn't react to that either. There would be long negotiations about this later; she had no doubts about that. She also had no doubt that ISF had planned an exclusion zone.

  This, though, was not the time for those talks.

  After some shouts, two figures came out of the nearest truck, held at gunpoint by a group of soldiers.

  Daniel helped Oscar down the ladder. They were filthy, covered in dust. Oscar looked in a bad way, but they were alive.

  Eilin abandoned all semblance of self-control. She ran cross the hall, tears stinging in her eyes.

  Daniel was still trying to process the puzzling facts. He felt his grasp of the situation slipping away, and gave control to his subroutines:

  [fact: 1. Eilin has come to rescue us, 2. she cares]

  [conclusion: 1. she doesn't hate me, 2. she's not blaming me for what happened]

  He was so confused.

  He helped Oscar up the steps into the shuttle's med bay and settled in one of the seats while the pilot started up the engine. Eilin was looking at him, and he didn't know how to react, so he said, “I am a spy, you know. He's right about that. I've downloaded some material from their truck. If you want, I can give it back--”

  “Don't worry,” she said, and she smiled and patted him on the hand, her eyes twinkling. “Patch it through to Jadie and Moira. They will look at it.”

  So he did that, while the air lock opened and the shuttle's engines increased their pitch, but all the while his memory re-played the sight of the tears in Eilin's eyes.

  [resolve query: 1. who am I? 2. who are you?]

  [resolve query--]

  [flashback] Eilin in her office, looking sternly at him--

  [flashback] Eilin sitting on the couch, reading a story about a boy--

  [options:-- #query aborted#]

  [emergency override]

  [resolve query--]

  Shut the fuck up!

  His fingers were digging holes into the armrests of his seat. His hands trembled.

  Eilin was talking to the two techs, the three of them looking at the information he'd taken from the truck.

  “The installation is an orbital launch pad for satellites,” the one called Moira said. “They're planning to shoot a string of satellites into orbit around Jupiter.”

  “To do what?” Jadie said. “We could do with extra communication, but that many… That doesn't make sense--”

  Eilin shook her head. “Those are not communication satellites. They're electrostatic traps. I've seen prototypes of those.”

  Moira frowned.

  “You think what we are doing with the balloons is outrageous? What they're planning to build is much greater. Those satellites and all the kilometers of wire we saw in that hall will be launched into orbit around Jupiter. The wire will be charged to a high voltage using the solar panels. The electrical field generated will deflect high-energy particles to escape the radiation belt around the planet. If they launch enough of these things, they will create a giant radiation-free ring around the planet, a ring that contains the inhabited moons. Then radiation shielding for settlements, vehicles and clothing would be unnecessary--”

  “But that means ISF would no longer need our services.”

  Daniel understood that. He and Oscar were testimony to what Allion could do with radiation shielding.

  “Precisely. That's why weren't not supposed to know about this project. We were helping them make ourselves obsolete. With that and the fact that they've not allowed us to build any settlements on any moon or planet under their control, I'd say they're trying to get rid of us.”

  “Can we stop any of this?”

  “Well,” Eilin said, and she looked every bit the boss how she sat there, with her arms crossed over her chest. “They haven't implemented this yet. And I dare say it won't be as easy as they think, not now every eye in the solar system is directed at Io. There is not going to be an exclusion zone. Nor can they chase us away when we get the platform habitat going; they haven't been able to float a stable platform on a gas planet's atmosphere, nor do they have engines that can take them there. And they haven't the faintest clue about the types of engines required to leave the solar system. Their best effort is nowhere near fast enough. I don't know what politics they're playing, but I think they expect us to cower, to be afraid to lose income, but they forget one thing: the only reason we have income is so we can buy things from them. Can you name anything we need to buy from ISF-controlled worlds that we can't produce ourselves?”

  Moira shrugged.

  “Exactly. We've been space-based for a long time and there's no need for us to hang around these pieces of rock. I'm thinking it's time we started looking for another piece of real estate.”

  It was silent in the cabin for a while. The pilot was at the controls, scheduling their hook-up with the Thor III. Eilin sat at the back next to Oscar. Daniel still had no answers. Worse, he realized that he would never get answers unless he asked.

  And he was afraid.

  She might be hurt that he'd been so stupid that he hadn't figured out their relationship.

  She might not want him to know.

  She might be disappointed in him, or angry.

  And fear was the ultimate human emotion. Machines had no fear.

  Nothing for it, then. He shifted to a seat close to Eilin and asked, his voice low, “Who are you, to us?”

  “You figured out I'm not just your boss, didn't you?” The side of her face he co
uld see wrinkled in a bittersweet smile. She didn't look at him, but continued to stroke Oscar's hand. “A number of years ago, when the aggregate program was just starting up, I took a close interest in it and . . . I probably shouldn't have done this, but I never realized that I'd care this much. I . . . allowed them to take my DNA and use it for the production of aggregates. They used it only twice, for both of you. In a strange way, you and Oscar are my sons.”

  Daniel stared at her.

  [emergency decision module: 1. she cares about me, 2. she really cares about me]

  And he didn't really know what to do with those feelings so he sat as frozen.

  Eilin continued, “I never told you, because it never seemed . . . appropriate, but not telling probably wasn't the right thing to do. You needed to know. I needed you to know. Can you forgive me?”

  Her sons. That was wrong; he wasn't even fully human, didn't know if he could ever be.

  “I'm . . . I'm not worthy,” he said, his voice low. “I've made a mess of this project.”

  “No, you haven't. I know I probably shouldn't have sent you, and I'm sorry. Io is a dangerous place, and you were genuinely the best team we could send. In hindsight, you may not have been ready. It's true that you have much still to learn, but the thing is: you will and you can learn to live without your routines. You are every bit as human as I am.”

  And Daniel did something he had never done in his life: he hugged a woman. He couldn't quite work out what to think about that, but her skin was warm, and it was altogether not unpleasant.

  Then she said, “It seems that we both have a lot to learn about what it means.”

  Daniel couldn't help but agree with her.

  A Word from Patty Jansen

  Thank you very much for reading “His Name in Lights”. If you want to continue reading in the world of ISF and Allion, be sure to pick up my novella Charlotte's Army or my novel Shifting Reality.