“As I said,” Khang emphasized, “people may live where they choose.”
“That’s not what you said,” Luka countered. “You said people could live wherever they could afford. Have you decided yet where assembly technicians will fit into this new hierarchy?”
“Regular assembly technicians?” Khang asked him. “Or you?”
Luka narrowed his eyes at the councilwoman. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come on, Luka,” Khang said conspiratorially. “Why do you think I’m telling you all this?”
“I assume to distract me from what I came here to talk about.”
The councilwoman shook her head. “Not to distract you,” she said. “To provide you with some perspective. Why would the Coronians promise us atomic assemblers if they wanted to get rid of us?”
“Let’s turn that question around,” Luka said. “If the Coronians have atomic assemblers, why do they need us at all?”
“Because they still need medium. Even atomic assemblers are useless without mass.”
“Seems to me there’s plenty of mass out there in space,” Luka said.
“Maybe,” Khang said, “but there’s also plenty of nothing. It’s much cheaper and easier for them to buy it from us than to get it themselves.”
“For now. But what happens when they become self-sufficient? It’s no secret that neither of us trusts the other.”
“Then we do what we’ve always done,” Khang said. “We adapt. But in the meantime, we will continue to move forward.” She swiveled in her chair and looked at Luka with renewed intensity. “Luka, I’m well aware of what Valencia did for you. I know that you are in a position where you don’t have to work anymore. This is your chance to have a better life. This is your chance to have the life that she wanted you to have. You can have all the time, resources, and all the space you need to do whatever you want.”
Luka watched the councilwoman for a moment, then began nodding. “I think I see where this is going,” he said. “You’re offering me a new flat in The Infinity, aren’t you?”
“Not a flat,” Khang said. She leaned forward, placing her forearms on the table and interlacing her fingers. “I’m offering you an entire floor of The Infinity. You and Charlene.”
“And what exactly do I have to do, I wonder, in order to earn this distinguished privilege?”
“That’s the beauty of it,” Khang said offering Luka the same sweet smile with which she began their meeting. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Really?” Luka asked. “That’s very generous of you.”
“Not at all,” Khang said. “In fact, I insist.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
PROXIMITY ALERT
NEITHER AYLA NOR OMICRON had any idea what the repercussions were of defaulting on a Coronian debt, but there were two things about their situation they both knew for sure: that they would rather die than be knowingly and willingly complicit in the sacrifice of an entire pod system; and that they would do everything they could to avoid the first.
In case the Coronians were monitoring their position (the Accipiter Hawk was left unattended for several hours at MIS during which time some sort of tracking device could have easily been planted), they decided to continue circumnavigating the globe just north of the Antarctic Circle rather than simply sit in one place and kill time. And just in case Nsonowa had some way of knowing whether or not they were actually making an earnest attempt to contact pod system dissidents, they continued transmitting a focused (albeit weak) signal from their position off the coast of Antarctica directly inland toward the South Pole. And finally, in the event that Nsonowa’s men insisted on forensic evidence corroborating their mission, Ayla and Omicron would take the Hawk’s amphibious auxiliary craft ashore at least three times to ensure that their decontamination logs were not only legitimate, but fully consistent with heavy metals and isotopes associated with the southern Antarctic radiation band. After the roughly eighteen days it would likely take them at an average of twenty knots to finally return to their starting position somewhere between 70 and 75 degrees of longitude, their plan was to turn north once again, sail back to the Maldive Islands Spaceport, step board the HMS Beagle, and make the case to Jumanne Nsonowa himself that despite their best efforts, they were unable to locate any traces of unregistered populations. If that meant Omicron returning to Nsonowa’s service, so be it. Even if it somehow resulted in both Ayla’s and Omicron’s detention or death, they were prepared for that, as well. No matter what the consequences, Ayla—and by extension, her first officer and bodyguard—would not do to someone else’s home what she now believed had been done to hers.
It took Ayla and Omicron hours of discussion and planning to feel like they were prepared for whatever lay ahead, and just a few seconds for them to discover that they were not. The one contingency they hadn’t considered was actually receiving a response.
Omicron turned to Ayla from his station on the bridge and awaited her orders. Ayla’s initial inclination was to ignore the boy’s hails, and indeed to stop listening on the designated frequency altogether. Keeping the channel open in the first place had purely been for the sake of their alibi since a close enough inspection of the Hawk’s system logs would reveal the precise state of their radio equipment throughout their expedition. But there was something about the boy’s voice—not at any one moment in particular, but rather in how his tone progressed from hopeful and expectant, to panicked, and finally to pleading and desperate as he continued to send hail after hail—that finally made Ayla give the order to respond.
The boy did not elaborate on the details of the pod system from which he was broadcasting, but instead focused on his present situation, and specifically, his petition for asylum. His name was Arik Ockley, and he and three others needed to leave a place he referred to interchangeably as Ishtar Terra Station one and V1. He asked that they all be taken someplace safe—if possible, somewhere with modern medical facilities and laboratories. Arik’s wife was pregnant, he explained, and it was critical that both her life and the baby’s be protected at all costs. Encoded inside the baby’s DNA was information he wished to smuggle out of the pod system—information he believed to be invaluable. Omicron pressed him for clarification, but all the boy would reveal was that the data could potentially transform the entire planet. He was running out of time, and needed to convey the logistics of their rendezvous. Ayla nodded and Omicron told the boy to proceed. The boy gave them a date, time, and a set of coordinates. There would be a wall, he explained, and in the wall, a metal door. The door would be locked, but at the specified time, the lock would be removed, and Arik, Arik’s wife, and his two best friends would be waiting on the other side. They only had one shot at this, the boy emphasized. If the four of them were allowed to be taken back to V1, they would never have another opportunity to escape, and the information inside his daughter’s genetic code would almost certainly be lost forever.
Based on Omicron’s counsel, Ayla decided that their plan would not materially change. The date the boy gave them was two full weeks in the future, which meant that by pushing the Hawk by just a few knots and skipping one of their planned excursions, they could still complete their circuit around Antarctica. The chances that the boy would even reach the rendezvous point seemed to them extremely remote, and although Omicron calculated the odds to be acceptably low, it was also possible that the broadcast was part of an elaborate hoax or trap. With the exception of making a quick sweep of the coordinates specified by the boy, Ayla and Omicron agreed that they would stay on-mission. If it turned out that the refugees were real—and that they were in fact able to reach the rendezvous location—Ayla and Omicron would, at that point, do what any reasonable strategist would: improvise.
Omicron accrued a great deal of experience piloting the Anura during their excursions up the Banzare and Princess Astrid Coasts. The vessel was a high-speed amphibious combat craft capable of around forty knots on the water, and after pivoting and lowering its six nonpn
eumatic, all-terrain polymer tires into place, eighty-five miles per hour on land. There was a 7.62-millimeter remotely operated turret on the roof that Ayla had never seen fired, and wasn’t even sure still functioned.
When they came across a rusted and toppled quadrupedal module from an old British research survey, Omicron made sure there was nothing living inside, then confirmed that the cannon was indeed still an effective asset by nearly cutting the facility in half. He also confirmed that the weapon was badly in need of cleaning and calibration, which he did back inside the Accipiter Hawk’s decontamination bay.
Their third and final excursion two weeks after receiving the boy’s hail was up the Queen Mary Coast. The Anura lowered its tires amid a thick tar-like substance, then began crawling up the beach. It maneuvered around a massive outcropping that Ayla assumed was a rock, though something about it seemed to intrigue Omicron. He stopped and began imaging the object in various portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. When the three-dimensional reconstruction appeared on the screen, they could see that it was far too symmetrical to be any type of mineral deposit. Rather, it looked more like a tremendous beak. Omicron’s expression transitioned from intense curiosity, to awe, and finally to a degree of enthusiasm Ayla had yet to witness in him. What they were looking at, her first officer announced, was the remains of what had once been the largest known animal to have ever existed—larger by far than even the most massive marine or terrestrial dinosaurs. Omicron was certain that what they were looking at was the skull of a blue whale.
The Neo was preparing to get out and retrieve a sample when they began picking up thermal signatures consistent with humans farther inland. As Ayla awoke the turret’s targeting computer from standby, Omicron hypothesized that they had come across a local population of scavengers. The formation and movement of the dots suggested that the natives were as wary as they were intrigued by the appearance of an unfamiliar vehicle. As long as Ayla and Omicron remained inside the Anura, they felt they were probably safe. It was the prospect of eventually having to leave behind a reinforced hull, a mounted auto-tracking machine gun, and the ability to move rapidly over just about any terrain that concerned them.
By the time they reached a more compact surface, the scavengers were no longer detectable by the Anura’s sensors, but radiation levels had gotten so high that Omicron did not entirely trust the electronics anymore. Visibility continued to decrease, though not by so much that they couldn’t see the emergence of structures around them. The first one they saw had the unmistakable hyperbolic shape of a nuclear reactor cooling tower, though they could also see that it was partially destroyed, its black carbon scoring telling of a quick but violent death.
They passed several more dilapidated structures that gradually faded into geometric wisps in the thick, mustard-yellow haze. The Anura’s tires were supported by rigid hexagonal honeycomb structures that began deforming and reshaping as they crawled over increasingly rough terrain. The vehicle’s radar indicated a solid vertical structure up ahead of them approximately twenty-five meters high, and switching to a higher resolution band revealed a discontinuity that they both instantly knew was a door.
Omicron wanted to check to see if the wheel beside the door would turn, but Ayla suggested that they wait. They were early, and the vehicle’s acoustic sensors were sensitive enough to detect the vibrations of the lock, so there was no reason to leave the safety of the Anura before they had to. For the last two weeks, Ayla had been uncertain about the rendezvous—skeptical that Arik and his party could successfully coordinate and execute an escape. But detecting packs of scavengers, and traveling through decaying nuclear facilities, and finally arriving at the door in the wall—just as Arik had described it—changed Ayla’s mind-set. For the last two weeks, she had not allowed herself to dwell on the young man’s claims that he possessed information that could transform the planet since she doubted they would ever get the opportunity to recover it, though now, she could not stop thinking about what he’d been referring to. She imagined new technology for food production, or the theory that her old crew used to debate that it was possible to collect power from the process of microbes digesting waste, or a new breed of photovoltaics efficient enough to function in Earth’s Venus-like atmosphere. Or maybe some kind of new weapon that would shift the balance of power between themselves and Equinox. She wondered what the Coronians would do if they knew about Arik’s claims. She wanted to ask Omicron what he thought, but she didn’t want him to think her foolish or naive, or to tell her—even in his own gentle and obsequious way—what she already knew: that the chances of anyone showing up were small, and the chances of them having or knowing anything of value, smaller still.
And then they heard the lock.
Ayla and Omicron looked at one other, and then Ayla reached up and sealed her visor.
“Let’s go,” she said solemnly.
Omicron put his sprawling hand on her wrist. “Wait,” he said. He nodded at the vehicle’s display. There was movement behind them at the edge of the Anura’s long-range motion sensors. The readings were indecisive and over a kilometer away, but they weren’t there before, which meant they were probably indicative of something.
“We’ll hurry,” Ayla said. “Set a proximity alert and let’s go.”
Omicron navigated the Anura’s menus with his gloved hand. He drew a perimeter, adjusted its radius, selected the series of thermal dots, and set the alert. Ayla herd the confirmation tone in her helmet’s earpiece. Omicron lowered and sealed his visor, then reached beside him for his rifle. Ayla touched the forward panel, confirmed her request, and then the Anura’s hatches raised.
Ayla stood by the door in the wall while Omicron positioned himself in front of the wheel. She noticed that the metal was dented in the center, though before she had time to wonder what could have deformed such thick layers of steel, it began to move. Under the strength of just one of Omicron’s hands, the hatch pivoted with surprising fluidity. His other hand remained on the grip of his lowered but otherwise primed weapon.
Visibility was poor, and Ayla took a step forward, peering through the widening gap. She was trembling with anticipation—far more than she expected—and she nearly gasped when she saw that they were not alone. On the other side of the wall were at least three figures that appeared to be waiting for them.
Ayla could see that one of them was holding something, but before she could discern what it was, Omicron was in front of her, his rifle raised to his shoulder.
“He’s armed,” her bodyguard said. His tone was urgent but collected. “Do you want me to drop him?”
The defectors’ environment suits were bulky and dirty—designed more for hard labor than exploration. Ayla noticed a vehicle parked nearby—some kind of an open-cab rover.
“Give him a chance,” Ayla said. “They’re probably much more afraid of us than we are of them.”
The figure in front of them stood motionless for another moment, then tossed the object away. The other two raised their hands to show that they were not armed, and Omicron stepped to the side.
“It’s our turn,” Ayla said. “Let’s show them that we’re not a threat.”
Omicron swung his rifle back behind him and they both raised their hands in a reassuring gesture. The one who had been armed was tall and seemingly muscular, though still significantly smaller than Omicron, and he continued to wear a look of defiance on his boyish face. His two companions were both female. one had a dark, African complexion, and the other was a smaller girl of Asian background.
“There’s something wrong,” Ayla said. “Someone’s missing. Let’s get them mic’d up so we can figure out what’s going on.”
As Omicron advanced, he removed four small devices from a pocket on his thigh, then pointed to his own mic on the visor of his helmet to indicate their function. The devices were about the size and shape of miniature power cells. Ayla could see the three of them discussing the implied proposal. The boy looked over at the two girls, loo
ked back at Omicron, and finally nodded.
“Let’s do this as fast as we can,” Ayla said. “I don’t want to be out here any longer than we have to.”
Omicron stepped closer to the boy, then reached up and cinched the device to the stranger’s faceplate.
“Can you hear me?” Omicron asked.
The boy nodded. “I can hear you,” he said in a voice that was youthful but aggressive.
Omicron nodded at the boy, then proceeded to attach devices to his companions’ helmets. Ayla approached the boy.
“Are you Arik?” she asked him. She tried to sound as friendly as she could, but she was thinking about the dots on the Anura’s screen.
The boy shook his head. “Arik isn’t here,” he said.
“Yet,” the smaller girl interjected. “He isn’t here yet. He’ll be here any second.”
Ayla looked at the girl, then down at her belly. “Are you his wife?”
The girl nodded. The Anura sounded a proximity alert to let them know that the band of scavengers it was tracking had cut their initial distance in half.
“We don’t have much time,” Ayla said. “We’re not safe here.”
The taller of the two girls stepped forward. “Who are you?” she asked. There was a distinct lack of diplomacy in her tone. “What the hell’s going on?”
Ayla was aware of Omicron turning to watch their backs.
“I’ll explain as soon as I can,” Ayla told her. “Right now, we need to go.”
“No,” the pregnant girl said. “Not without Arik.”
The boy turned to look at her. “Cadie,” he said. In advance of what he was about to say to her, there was compassion in his eyes. When the girl looked at him, he gestured toward the device Omicron had assumed was a weapon, and in response, the girl became instantly emotional.
“It’s not true,” she said.
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