Equinox

by Christian Cantrell

  “The ships,” Cam said. “What are they for?”

  “For ensuring our survival,” the girl replied.

  “Are they for mining?”

  “Yes,” the girl said. “But we don’t just intend to mine the solar system. We also intend to explore and populate it.”

  “Why?” Cam asked her. “Why dedicate all your resources to building ships instead of just expanding Equinox?”

  “Because we know that it is only a matter of time before your species once again attempts to eliminate ours. Genocide is a persistent theme throughout all of human history, and to assume the future will significantly differ from the past would be naive. It is imperative that we keep ourselves out of Earth’s reach. As your presence here clearly indicates, four hundred kilometers above the surface is not nearly far enough.”

  Cam did not respond right away. He’d already given a great deal of consideration to how realistic it was for him to escape captivity—already looked around for objects that, should he decide to put his suit back on and step out through the airlock, might provide him with thrust (the fire suppression canisters, the pneumatic cylinders inside the exercise equipment, some kind of improvised water jet). But even if attempting to complete his original mission didn’t feel entirely futile at this point, he realized now that ever since he and Cadie had agreed on a contingency plan, his actual mission had changed.

  “That’s not why I’m here,” Cam said. “I’m not here to destroy anything, or to kill anyone.”

  The girl watched Cam for a moment, blinking. “Your neurological imagery indicates that you believe you are telling the truth,” she said. “Why are you here?”

  “I’m here to help you,” Cam said.

  “How?”

  “By telling you how to stop the gliders.”

  The girl tilted her head and looked at Cam with genuine curiosity. “In exchange for what?”

  “Not what,” Cam said. “Who.”

  “Your wife,” the girl postulated. “The girl called Zaire.”

  “That’s right. I know you have influence over whoever has her. I want passage to wherever she is, and I want her returned to me. And there’s someone else.”

  “Haná,” the girl said.

  Cam hesitated while he prepared himself for the answer to the question he now had to ask. “Is she alive?”

  “Yes,” the girl told him. “However, she has proven to be a tremendous asset to us, and we are unwilling to release her. Even if we did, it is no longer possible for her to return to Earth. Haná is one of us now. She is a Coronian.”

  “I’m not asking for her back,” Cam said. “How long before your ships are ready to leave orbit?”

  “At the rate we are currently receiving material from Earth, we estimate that all four carriers will be ready to leave orbit in approximately sixty thousand cycles.”

  “Cycles,” Cam repeated. “I don’t understand.”

  “A cycle is the amount of time it takes for the outer ring of Equinox to complete a single rotation. Sixty thousand cycles is approximately ten-point-five years.”

  Cam nodded. “OK,” he said. “Then all I ask is that a conversation be allowed to take place between Haná and her mother before you leave.”

  The girl was not ready with a response. While her expression never conveyed confusion or perplexity, her silence suggested that she—or more likely they—were busy conferring, consulting, and, Cam imagined, calculating.

  “We don’t understand,” the girl finally said.

  “There’s nothing to understand,” Cam told her. “I want Cadie to have the opportunity to say good-bye to her daughter. That’s it.”

  “Even if we were to accept your terms, what makes you believe we will ultimately honor our agreement?”

  “Because Zaire means nothing to you,” Cam said. “And because what Cadie has to say to Haná, I promise you every Coronian will want to hear.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  AFTER-HOURS JUSTICE

  TWO BULLS’ VISOR WAS SNATCHED violently off his face as though it was something the commander had been waiting a very long time to do. Luka watched the isolation mask go over his coconspirator’s head, and correctly anticipated his own imminent sensory deprivation.

  He knew what the device was because of a prototype that had been passed around the foundry about a year ago. Nobody had ever seen one before, and they experimented with it until it finally broke, at which point they tagged it as defective, shoved it down a refuse chute, and promptly assembled a new one.

  An isolation mask was an extremely lightweight carbon shell not unlike a high-speed hydrofoil helmet, but constructed as two separate components. The first fit snuggly over the head and was held in place with a strap beneath the chin, and the second module pivoted down over the face, compressing the entire form factor in the process and locking it tightly closed around the head. When activated by the switch in the back, arrays of sensors on the outside monitored the external environment while inside, destructive interference patterns were constantly being generated, effectively phase-canceling all light, sound, and electromagnetic waves before they could be perceived either organically by the senses, or mechanically by implants or wearables. Active isolation masks tapped into the same omnipresent ambient radio waves that powered an increasing number of devices aboard the San Francisco, and had a soft layer of silicone on the outside that Luka suspected was intended to limit the potential damage of a head-butt, and to prevent a prisoner from attempting suicide by blunt trauma during transfer.

  Although the isolation mask effectively deprived Luka’s senses of all light and sound, it could not counteract the forces of gravity on the fluid of his inner ears, so he knew that they had descended twice: once to the lobby of Millennium Tower, and once again only a few seconds later, almost certainly down to deck three where he and Two Bulls could be escorted without causing a spectacle. From there, it was impossible to tell exactly where they were headed, but from the number of steps they took, Luka knew that they were traversing the length of the entire rig, which meant they were probably either going to City Hall to satisfy a few statutes or regulations with a quick mock-trial, or—dispensing with formalities altogether—directly to the hangar. It wasn’t until Luka was gruffly stopped, and then moments later shoved forward again, that a third possibility occurred to him: the waterlock. He sniffed, trying to detect moisture in the air, but could sense nothing beyond the ammonia crystals in the isolation mask’s vents, designed to undermine olfaction by irritating the nasal passages. He was relieved when he once again felt hands grasp his biceps and sensed the smooth ascent of an electromagnetic lift.

  By the time the face shield of his isolation mask was raised, Luka was pretty sure he’d already figured out where they were. As he expected, they were inside the San Francisco’s one and only tribunal chamber—the same room in which we was sentenced to time on Hexagon Row. However, this time, there was the unmistakable feel of after-hours justice. Both the galleries behind them and the jury box to his left were empty, and from the way he and Two Bulls were positioned—standing in front of the bench, surrounded by the same officers who had stormed Luka’s transpartment—it seemed pretty evident that the trial phase had already occurred in their absence, and they’d arrived just in time for sentencing.

  In Luka’s opinion, the room was inappropriately elegant. Most of the lighting was provided by giant artificial luminescent crystals jutting dramatically down through the ceiling. The walls were overlapping tapered panels channeling all attention forward toward the three-tiered, marble-assembly bench. At the peak of the pyramid, where Two Bulls once sat, was Khang Jung-soon. The rest of the Judicial Committee sat below her (minus one), and below them, the remaining four members of the City Council. Behind them was a backdrop of irregularly cut glass block supporting a relatively understated version of the city’s polygonal phoenix crest, each surface a subtly varied shade of white.

  Luka knew everyone on the bench by sight, and even remembere
d a few names: Sutro, Alvord, Lapham. They were dressed according to a mode Luka would describe as high-fashion judicial with complexly woven pastel tie knots peaking through the tops of shimmering robes, and luxuriously draped capes secured about the shoulders with wreaths of platinum herringbone chains. Khang’s robe—checkered in two different shades, or perhaps textures, of black—was by far the most conservative. Although the garish attire was probably an attempt to project individualism and self-determination, Luka felt that the City Council’s embellishments served only to reinforce what each member truly was: a barely sentient tentacle that existed only to extend the reach and influence of the chairwoman who presided above them.

  Khang greeted the defendants with her disarmingly warm smile.

  “I think we can probably make this quick,” she said in a tone that would have been far too casual for formal proceedings, but seemed appropriate for whatever this actually was. “You have both been found guilty of plotting to overthrow the democratically elected council of a sovereign Metropolis-class vessel. Such charges constitute treason, the punishment for which, as you both know, is mandatory exile. Does either of you have anything you want to say?”

  “I do,” Luka said. He rolled his shoulders, hoping to get some blood to flow down into his cuffed hands. “Why don’t you just tell us what you want so we can skip all the theatrics?”

  Khang seemed perplexed by Luka’s suggestion. “What makes you think I want anything from you?”

  “The fact that we’re here,” Luka said. “We’re obviously not getting a fair trial, so why else would you bring us here if not to try to strike a deal?”

  Khang smiled down at Luka. “I’ve always appreciated your outspokenness, Luka,” she said. She leaned forward and interlaced her fingers. “Allow me to be equally forthright. Each of you has one chance, and one chance only, to change our minds. We know about the strikes you were planning, and the unions you hoped to organize, and the list of demands you intended to present to us under the threat of mutiny. And we know about the Tycho user account that the two of you have been using to communicate.” She paused, squinting at the two prisoners, possibly looking for signs of acknowledgment. “But what we haven’t figured out yet is what else you two have been up to. Luka, we know that you’ve received hundreds of fraudulent assembly orders, and Matthew, we know that you were the one who arranged them. But what we don’t know yet is what was assembled, or why. Now I want you two to consider your positions very carefully before you answer. I want you to tell me exactly what you assembled, why you assembled it, and who else is involved in your conspiracy. If you choose to cooperate, your sentences will be commuted, and after some time on Hexagon Row, you will each report to your new positions as grade-one deep-sea miners. If you choose not to cooperate, we go directly from here to the hangar, and both of your sentences will be carried out today. Now . . .” She paused while contemplating the accused. “Which one of you would like to go first?”

  Two Bulls did his best to straighten himself before the bench. He was still trying to blink away the brightness he was unaccustomed to, and probably still sore in the gut. Luka could see that his eyes were narrow but heavy, and that he looked significantly older without his visor.

  “How do we know you’ll keep your word?” he asked Khang.

  “You don’t,” Khang replied. “But from where I’m sitting, it doesn’t look to me like either of you has much to lose.”

  “Then we have nothing to say,” Two Bulls stated. “Not without a guarantee.”

  “Matthew,” Khang began. “Believe it or not, I have a great deal of respect for everything you’ve done, not only for the council and for the city, but for me personally. Please don’t throw everything away like this. Please. Let me help you.”

  Two Bulls glanced at Luka, then looked back up at Khang. “Let’s try this,” he said.

  “I’m listening.”

  “There’s a ship called the Accipiter Hawk that maintains a perimeter of about a hundred kilometers from the San Francisco.”

  Luka turned to Two Bulls. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Trying to save your life,” Two Bulls said. He then looked back up at the bench. “Forty-eight hours after I know Luka is safely aboard that ship, I’ll tell you everything you want to know. I’ll even tell you things you didn’t know you wanted to know.”

  Khang leaned back and looked up at the crystals in the ceiling while she contemplated Two Bulls’ offer. She tapped her fingertips together in front of her face, then looked back down.

  “No,” she said simply. “I reject your offer.”

  This was obviously not the response Two Bulls was expecting. “Why?” he asked. “That’s more than fair, and you know it. Everyone gets what they want.”

  “Quite frankly,” Khang said, “because I don’t have to. Whatever you two are plotting will almost certainly perish along with you, so I have no intention of setting either of you free. Either both of you stay here where I can keep an eye on you, or we take both of you ashore and leave it up to the subterraneans. As much as I respect your attempted sacrifice, Matthew, there are no other deals to be made here today.”

  “You’re making a huge mistake,” Two Bulls said. “Killing us won’t stop what we started, and I won’t tell you anything until Luka’s safe.”

  “You never were very good at negotiating,” Khang observed. “You want to know why? Because you don’t understand the concept of leverage. You have something I want—information—but I have something you want far more: your lives. That means I dictate the terms, not you. Now I’ll ask one last time: Does either of you have anything to tell me, or should we all go on a picnic?”

  Luka bent to the side and did his best to raise his cuffed hands from behind his back. Khang smiled sweetly.

  “Yes, Luka.”

  “I just want you to know that it doesn’t matter where you take us,” he began. He watched Khang for a moment, then regarded each council and committee member in turn. “It doesn’t matter how far away you take us, or how deep of a hole you throw us into, or how tightly you tie us up. I’ll never forget what you did to Charlie, and I promise each and every one of you one thing.”

  “What’s that, Luka?” Khang prompted.

  “That you will see me again.”

  Khang looked down at Luka with a patronizingly disappointed smile, and then she stood and smoothed her checkered robe. “And I think you should know,” she said, “that as much as I admire your tenacity, I find that extremely unlikely.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  ERROR CORRECTION

  THE BRAND-NEW, CUSTOM-ASSEMBLED pressure suit that had been drone-delivered and left tethered in Cam’s airlock was of an entirely different design from the one he’d worn on his trip up to Equinox. The suit Luka had illicitly assembled on Cam’s behalf from somewhat antiquated but proven schematics was essentially a personal, human-shaped spacecraft. Its primary jobs were to maintain a pure oxygen environment, create enough localized atmospheric pressure to keep the fluids in Cam’s body in a liquid state, insulate him from temperature extremes, protect him from the odd micrometeoroid, and remove carbon dioxide using lithium hydroxide canisters housed in a bulky life-support pack.

  Cam’s new suit obviously needed to accomplish all of the same things (except micrometeoroid protection—it appeared that the Coronians kept their local vacuum spotless), but it did so in a seemingly far more sophisticated and elegant fashion. Rather than encasing Cam in a ponderous and pressurized anthropomorphic bubble, the surprisingly supple skintight material simulated one atmospheric unit through dynamic mechanical force. As Cam moved, the material redistributed tension so rapidly and intelligently that he hardly felt burdened at all. If he needed a way of quantifying how much thinner this new suit was, his chronograph strap had been sized to the old wrist coupling, leaving only a few centimeters of overlap for the self-aligning fasteners to mate, but when he strapped the miniaturized atomic clock above his new left glove, there didn’t seem
to be all that much less excess than there was when he wore it against his bare skin. In principle, the helmet was not substantially different from the one he’d worn previously, however this one was shaped like an elongated sphere and was entirely transparent, which meant that his peripheral vision (where all of his suit’s readings were somehow unobtrusively projected) was not at all obstructed. As far as Cam could tell, the neck coupling housed the suit’s computers, comms, and redundant power sources.

  Life support was distributed throughout a series of linked rubberized packs that hung down Cam’s back and around his waist, concentrating and distributing most of the mass around what would have been his center of gravity had he not been in a state of constant free fall. The design made Cam wonder if the suit had originally been intended for use on the inner ring of Equinox, where, through some of the most daring engineering in human history, gravity was said to be experienced very much as it was on the surface of the planet below.

  On behalf of all Coronians, Angelia had accepted Cam’s terms, but she explained to him that there was one more thing they wanted. To understand what it was, he would need to travel to a different section of Equinox. On the way, Cam was to explain how the Coronians should go about stopping the gliders, and if they felt as though trust had been sufficiently established (with the aid of some form of noninvasive cognitive verification, no doubt), he would be shown something that no one on Earth had ever seen before, and that no member of the Homo sapiens species would ever be allowed to see again. The details of what would happen should Cam fail to establish a sufficient level of trust were not offered, and Cam decided not to ask.

  When the outer airlock door opened, Cam was expecting another clawed, robotic escort, but what he found instead was something best described as a kind of swooping, glossy, ultramodern chariot—something that made his habitation module look clumsy and archaic. The body of it bore a clear resemblance to the drones he was already familiar with—its outer shell being a similar curved white carapace, but without any of the scoring or blemishes he remembered from the machine that pulled him from the crate. In fact, it looked to Cam like the vehicle was brand-new, and might very well have been assembled specifically for this task. A sparse framework extended below the body and connected to a small oval platform with integrated boot clamps. Extending to either side of the chassis were handles that appeared to house no controls whatsoever.