Argonauts 1: Bug Hunt

by Isaac Hooke

  Rade activated rear thrust once more, fighting the air flow, and brought her to the lifepod hatch. He grabbed onto the nearby handle, slammed the “open” switch, and then shoved her inside, sealing the pod just as the last of the air decompressed.

  The inner environment pressurized, judging from the fog that crept along the outer edges of the portal in front of Shaw’s face. Apparently the lifepod was set to evacuate upon entry, because the entire compartment ejected a moment later. In seconds the lifepod was a dot above the colonized moon that ate up half the stars.

  Rade tore his eyes away from the portal and instructed his local AI to track her. When he overlaid her trajectory with that of the moon on his tactical display, he realized the explosion had disturbed the orientation of the space station, and her pod was headed directly for the colony.

  Unfortunately, those particular lifepods weren’t rated to survive atmospheric entry.

  The damaged station still had artificial gravity. Rade used it to dash to the opening that had been torn into the passageway and leaped outside into the zero G. He spotted the other half of the station drifting away toward the moon below, but he didn’t care right then.

  He jetted toward Shaw’s lifepod, using the tracking provided by his AI. Her tiny craft soon came into view, and soon grew bigger.

  “Rade!” Shaw transmitted. She must have seen him, and was using the comm node in the lifepod to communicate. She couldn’t have reactivated her Implant, because the blue dot representing her position hadn’t appeared on his HUD. “You have to stop the bioweapon!”

  “The rest of the crew will take care of it,” Rade replied.

  “But you won’t survive!” she said.

  Rade released another burst of thrust to accelerate his approach; he jetted in reverse to decelerate as he grew near. He hit hard, latching onto the outer handles of the white pod with his gloves.

  “I got you.” He gazed at her through the glass portal. “I got you.”

  “What have you done?” Shaw said.

  Rade activated thrust, attempting to alter her trajectory, but he couldn’t counter the momentum of the pod. The craft was irreparably locked in a decaying orbit.

  “It’s no good,” Shaw said. “I’m going to burn up. Let me go. It’s too late. Save yourself.”

  He tightened his grip. “I’m not letting go. I’ll will find a way.”

  “We’re all dead, anyway,” Shaw said. “Eventually.”

  “Yes,” Rade said. “But not yet.”

  He had the local AI of his jumpsuit run a calculation, and it showed him the best place to apply reverse thrust. He positioned himself there and jetted until he was lined up with the force vector the AI overlaid onto his vision.

  But it was no use.

  “Rade,” Shaw said. “If you use too much fuel, you won’t be able to save yourself.”

  He glanced at his fuel levels. “Too late for that now, Shaw.”

  “Why, Rade?” Shaw said. It sounded like she was weeping.

  “I’m not going to give up.” Brave words, but he knew there wasn’t much else he could do. He could already feel the rising heat—his thermo regulator couldn’t keep up. It wouldn’t be long now.

  Orange flames burst from the underside of the lifepod.

  “You should have let me go,” Shaw said.

  “Never,” Rade said.

  “We die together,” Shaw said. “A shooting star.”

  “I hope someone down there makes a wish,” Rade said as the flames picked up. “So it’s not wasted.”

  “It’s never wasted.” Shaw reached out, placing her flat palm on the inside of the glass. Rade rested his glove on the surface opposite.

  Something wrapped around his legs. He looked down. Another jumpsuit. The Implant labeled the operator as Tahoe.

  Behind him, a long line of suits, joined hand in hand, formed a daisy chain to a Dragonfly. A Model 2, from the Argonaut. Harlequin resided at the top of the chain, gripping the down ramp.

  “Hello, boss,” Harlequin said.

  The flames around the lifepod receded.

  “But the bioweapon,” Rade said.

  “We’ve made our choice,” Tahoe said.

  “Zahir,” Rade sent the Tiger’s AI. “Give me an update.”

  “Charges have detonated on the hull of the Tiger,” Zahir replied. “The corvette has suffered severe engine damage.”

  Rade tried the Argonaut’s AI instead. “Bax, are you serviceable?”

  “Aye, boss,” Bax replied.

  “Seal the airlock and break away from Chungshan,” Rade ordered the AI. “Proceed to the falling portion of the station. Deploy the grappling hook and drag it into a stabilized orbit if you can! Meanwhile, have the two Centurions start transferring the missiles from the cargo bay to the launch tubes.”

  “Roger that,” Bax replied.

  “You intend to fire Hellfires at the station section?” Lui asked over the line. “That might do what Zoltan says, and eliminate the contagion. Or it might actually make the spread worse.”

  “We only destroy the station as a last resort,” Rade said.

  It took half an hour for everyone to get aboard the shuttle, and to magnetically mount Shaw’s lifepod underneath. The Argonaut had latched onto the decaying station segment by then, and was attempting to tow it.

  “Bax, update me,” Rade said.

  “I’m having some difficulties fighting the momentum,” the Argonaut’s AI responded. “I don’t believe I will be able to steer the debris from its decaying orbit without more motive force.”

  “Deploy your remaining shuttle,” Rade told the AI. “We’ll join you shortly.”

  In twenty minutes, the Dragonfly joined the Argonaut and its shuttle, and all three craft attached grappling hooks to the station segment.

  It was enough. They slowly altered the orbit of the segment, carrying it into a stable orbit.

  “See, we did it after all,” Tahoe said, as if trying to justify their choice.

  “We did,” Rade agreed. “Barely.”

  Normally he would have wanted to be alone after such an intense session, but he tapped in Shaw immediately.

  “I need to hear your voice,” Rade said.

  “It’s so good to hear yours.”

  “I missed you,” Rade said.

  “I missed you back.”

  “Tell me everything that happened,” Rade insisted.

  “You first. I’m... I can’t talk now.” She sounded like she was choking up.

  “Are you okay?” Rade asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m just so happy. And relieved.”

  Rade told her everything that had happened since they lost communications. Then he listened to her as she revealed the trials she had endured for the past ten days, and her words only angered him further. Zoltan was lucky he had spaced himself, because if Rade had gotten his hands on the cruel bastard, there would have been only smashed pieces left for Ms. Bounty to collect.

  thirty

  Rade and the others docked with the Argonaut a short while after dragging the station segment back into orbit. Luckily, the orbital platforms and surface-to-space defenses hadn’t fired upon the Argonaut—the inhabitants realized Rade and his crew were trying to help them. Ms. Bounty had apparently sent a few transmissions to the operators and local government as well, smoothing over their fears and promising to remain in orbit when the task was done as a form of “house arrest” until the SK destroyers arrived.

  Rade had originally planned to travel to the surface of the moon in the hopes of evading arrest, but Ms. Bounty convinced him that local police would readily track them down, if not shoot them out of the sky before they landed. She promised that she was almost done negotiating their pardon.

  Ms. Bounty was already aboard the Argonaut when the Dragonfly docked, and she pinged him: “Mr. Galaal, I respectfully request that you transfer Shaw to a jumpsuit, and then bring her to the cargo hold where I have prepared a decontamination unit for her. A pr
ecautionary measure until we confirm she is free of contagions. Just for two days.”

  Rade found it hard to suppress his outrage. “Do you know what she’s been through? And now you want me to lock her up for another two days?” He knew Ms. Bounty was right, of course. Still, he couldn’t help the words. He had a need to defend Shaw from what he perceived as a cold, dark universe.

  “It is entirely up to you, obviously,” Ms. Bounty replied. “She may not be infected with a bioweapon. If you wish to risk the lives of your crew, that’s entirely up to you.”

  “It’s okay, Rade,” Shaw transmitted. “I’ll suit up in the spacesuit provided by the lifepod. Somehow... in this cramped space.”

  And so she did. Rade had her moved to the temporary decon unit—basically a glass tank. A Weaver was embedded inside with her, where it was able to provide medical care. She was rehydrated and fed. The Weaver determined that Zoltan had shorted out Shaw’s Implant, and the surgical robot scheduled a repair operation to be performed as soon as she cleared decon.

  Ms. Bounty had set up another glass container in the hold, this one with a black curtain draped over it. It contained the robot Zoltan was currently occupying. Apparently he had transferred out of his Artificial body before being sucked into space; when the atmosphere had finished venting, one of the robots porting the glass cage had turned on Ms. Bounty. She and the other robot had managed to trap it in the container.

  Rade visited Shaw in the hold, placing a bare palm on the glass tank that held her. She met his hand with her own from the other side. He was aware of the watchful eyes of the two career mercenaries and Centurions currently acting as guards in the compartment.

  “How are you feeling?” Rade asked. A small microphone attached to the outside of the glass transmitted sound data to a pair of speakers within, allowing her to hear him clearly. A similar microphone was attached to the inside, which in turn relayed her response to his Implant.

  “Well enough,” Shaw said.

  Rade glanced at the black-draped container beside her. “You sure must have royally pissed off this Zoltan to make him resort to such a revenge tactic.”

  “I did,” Shaw said. “His retribution was to make you suffer. He hated you by the time you arrived, because I was always talking about how you were going to rescue me and kick his ass. Too bad his revenge was all a ruse. He didn’t finish his weapon in time. But not even I knew that.”

  Rade nodded slowly. He had sent robots to examine the severed station section. There was no sign of any bioweapons or deployment devices aboard. Ms. Bounty had concluded that Zoltan hadn’t had the bioweapon ready yet, and merely hoped to distract the team as part of his getaway.

  “Even so,” Rade told her. “The ruse didn’t work out for him in the end, did it? We got the bastard.”

  “I’m still not happy by the choice you made.” She lowered her hand and retreated to the far side of the tank. She sat down against the glass, and brought her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. “How much is one life worth? Ten? A hundred maybe, depending on the individual? But never more than two million. Never. You shouldn’t have done what you did out there. You should have let me go.”

  “The choice was ours to make,” Rade said. “Mine and my crew. I knew we would find a way to stop the bioweapon afterward.”

  “Did you really?” Shaw said.

  “No,” Rade admitted.

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “Look, the colony didn’t die,” Rade said. “And we found out it was a ruse in the end anyway. Imagine if the team had salvaged the station segment from its decaying orbit first, only to discover that we had let you die for nothing.”

  “Fine, but what if you’re faced with a similar choice in the future?” Shaw said. “Would you choose the same way?”

  Rade didn’t answer her.

  She looked away, then sighed. She closed her eyes. “I suppose I have no right to guilt-trip you like this. If I had to make the choice, I would have chosen you as well. You, every time.” She opened her eyes and gazed directly at him. “Does that make us bad people? Selfish?”

  “I don’t know,” Rade said. “But it certainly makes us flawed, I guess.”

  He accessed the outer hatch of the airlock attached to the tank.

  “What are you doing, sir?” one of the mercs asked.

  Rade waggled a finger at him. “Don’t call me sir.”

  Shaw stood up quickly. “Rade, close that hatch. I haven’t completed decon yet.”

  “I don’t care.” Rade stepped inside and shut the outer hatch behind him, and waited for the air to recycle. “I’m staying in the dollhouse with you until you’re cleared.”

  “No, you’re not,” she said.

  Rade opened the inner hatch. “Too late.” He entered. “I never did follow orders very well.”

  Shaw shook her head, smiling.

  Rade shut the inner hatch behind him, and when he turned back toward her, she was already wrapping her arms around him.

  “My flawed warrior,” she said.

  Rade had a front row seat to the interrogations that Ms. Bounty performed with the prisoner over the next few days. The caged Centurion had been removed from its jumpsuit, and resided inside a glass tank that looked identical to the one holding Shaw and Rade, except for the flat metal disks on the top and bottom, a meter in diameter each. It looked like the robot was confined to the invisible three-dimensional volume formed by those disks, because it never ventured beyond that imaginary space, though there was still room in the container outside the circular boundaries. Rade guessed it was some form of magnetic or perhaps gravimetric containment.

  During the questioning, the robot acted as if it was an ordinary Centurion. It could not recall turning against Ms. Bounty.

  “The last I remember,” the robot claimed. “The station had suffered an explosive decompression. I was holding the glass tank. And then a moment later you were attacking me, forcing me into the container, which I had apparently dropped at some point. Five point three seconds are missing from my timeline.”

  After the first session, Ms. Bounty muted the microphone and walked over to Rade’s container to consult with him.

  “So what do you make of it?” Rade said.

  “It’s lying of course,” Ms. Bounty said. “I sense his presence aboard.”

  “Is it possible Zoltan jumped to a different robot before you trapped that one?”

  “There is a small possibility, yes,” Ms. Bounty said. “I’m working on modifying the container tech to give me the ability to extract the entity within the robot. Then I will know for certain.”

  “The entity?” Rade asked. “You never really explained how Zoltan was able to jump bodies. Is it really an AI intelligence? And why did Zoltan call you his ancient enemy before destroying the station?”

  “I suppose now is as good a time as any to tell you,” Ms. Bounty said, and she proceeded to do just that.

  As Rade listened, his face darkened with concern. The entity in question was a member of an ancient race he had encountered once, long ago. A very dangerous race.

  When she finished, Rade sat back in the holding tank.

  “So you see now why it is imperative that we capture him,” Ms. Bounty said.

  “I do,” Rade said. “Is there no other way we can scan for this being, using the technology we have aboard?”

  “No,” Ms. Bounty said.

  The subsequent interrogation sessions Ms. Bounty engaged in with the robot proved just as futile, with the robot perpetually claiming innocence. Ms. Bounty meanwhile continued to work on her entity extraction tech, and hoped to have something working soon so she could prove to the Sino-Koreans that the team had actually captured the ancient being, and thus were eligible for the pardon.

  A day and a half later, six hours before the destroyers were due to arrive, Ms. Bounty cleared both Rade and Shaw for duty, concluding that neither were infected. Shaw scheduled her Implant repair appointment for later that
afternoon, and Rade held her hand as the Weaver operated on her, replacing a portion of her Implant with a freshly 3D-printed unit while she was awake. When the Weaver finished, it ordered Shaw to rest for the next few hours. Rade gave her a kiss and then departed. He headed for the combat room next to the gym.

  “Harlequin, feel up for a quick match?” Rade sent the Artificial along the way.

  “I’ve been itching to return to the mat ever since we boarded,” Harlequin replied. “I had grown accustomed to our sessions. I will join you momentarily.”

  Harlequin reached the combat room and stepped onto the sparring mat to wait while Rade donned a strength-enhancing exoskeleton.

  “What’s the news on the captive?” Harlequin replied.

  “I’m not sure we have the right robot,” Rade said. “It claims to have no recollection of attacking Ms. Bounty. Whether or not its a ruse, I don’t know. Our employer says it’s possible Zoltan’s intelligence has transferred to another robot. Have you noticed any strange behavior in any of the units?”

  “Not at all,” Harlequin said. “Though I haven’t been paying particular attention. I’ve spent most of my time at the nav station during duty hours, or in my shared stateroom with Lui in off hours.”

  “Lui says you’ve been a bit distant lately,” Rade said, attaching the last component of his exoskeleton and stepping onto the mat.

  “Yes,” Harlequin replied. “We had a talk about that. I told him I was disturbed by our choice out there, to risk two million lives to save a member of our team.”

  “You don’t think it was worth it to risk those lives to save the one member?” Rade asked.

  “I’m not certain it was,” Harlequin said. “At least in terms of economic production and contribution to society in general, logically two million lives have far more value than one individual.”

  “Not to me,” Rade said, and he attacked.

  Harlequin swiped Rade’s fist to the side in a blur of motion; the exoskeleton absorbed most of the impact, and Rade felt the pain as the suit buckled slightly, pressing into his skin.