Zero-G

by William Shatner

  “Undoubtedly,” Carter agreed, “but the long-term implications are far more daunting. If the Chinese are permitted to lodge the tools of war among the stars, they will irrevocably change the nature of space colonization. It would become a place of open conflict, a nexus for proxy wars. No, this device must be shut down, firmly and irrevocably and quickly.”

  “Putting that aside, how does firing the AIMS impact us, Agent Abernathy?” Adsila wondered.

  “Physically?” Abernathy said. “We probably wouldn’t feel it at all, at least not directly. Our orbit is too high. But it would generate an electromagnetic pulse over Asia that will knock out vast areas of electronic activity. A very high percentage of low-orbit satellites over that hemisphere will also be crippled, many permanently.”

  “And there will be a new, near-Earth radiation belt that will become a no-fly zone for three to six years,” Dr. Carter added.

  “All of which would impact China immediately and most directly,” Abernathy said.

  Adsila shook her head. “Beijing has given our government a reason to commit technological homicide. That may be a justifiable consequence too good for them to pass up.”

  “That has to be why Commander Stanton is part of this conference,” Grainger said thoughtfully. “The Chinese will seek to retaliate.”

  “Against us?” Abernathy said.

  “Eye for an eye,” Grainger pointed out.

  “How does that make any sense?” Abernathy asked. “Besides, even the Chinese are at risk from their own weapon.”

  “They have a billion and a half people,” Carter pointed out. “They can afford to ride this out.”

  “Conquest by attrition,” Adsila said. She thought of the westward movement of Europeans against her own people, waves of them against decreasing pockets of Cherokee. The result was inevitable.

  A gloomy silence filled the room, which was broken by Dr. Carter.

  “Space—for peaceful exploration and colonization by all of humankind,” he said with more than a hint of reproach. “Thus spake the UNDED.”

  The doctor was referring to the United Nations Department of Extraterrestrial Development, the global space-advisory panel whose influence was limited—and untested. Their charter had been pitched together using language crafted from maritime law and the General Assembly’s First International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism in the 1990s, and it covered everything from satellite salvage to first contact with alien intelligence. But UNDED had never faced a diplomatic crisis or a potential shooting war outside the atmosphere; just naming an investigatory panel would take weeks.

  A reflective, businesslike air returned to the comm as the situation facing the United States and its allies became sharper by the moment. This reminded Adsila of the questions Sam Lord had posed five minutes after they met. Having passed the preliminary interview with Al-Kazaz, Adsila still had to be approved by the man who would actually be heading the team. That was anything but a rubber stamp. Adsila and Lord physically met in a Washington conference room and chatted a bit, after which Lord gave her what he later revealed was his Threshold Test.

  “In a firefight, would you sacrifice an adversary to save a teammate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you destroy a hijacked civilian ship to save your ship?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you annihilate a civilization to save your own civilization?”

  “Yes.”

  Adsila’s answers had been quick and certain. After she had given them, Lord extended his hand.

  “Prepare to go starside, EAD Waters.”

  What Lord had not revealed until then was that any hesitation would have sent him on to the next candidate. And what Adsila had not revealed to Lord, to this day, was how easy the answers had been: she had only to think of what she would have done two centuries ago to save the Cherokee nation from near destruction.

  While Grainger continued trying to raise Stanton and the team waited for any news about Armstrong, Adsila turned to the open comm from Ziv Levy. He was just minutes from making contact with McClure’s spinning sled. Adsila restored contacts to the nanites.

  Through his IC, Ziv was allowing Adsila to see everything he saw. The telemetry feed indicated that Ziv’s pilot had brought the shuttle to within two hundred feet of the sled. It was visible in Ziv’s viewport, spinning slowly; the pitch and yaw jets burned faintly with a fair blue flame, their fuel nearly depleted as they course-corrected en route to the Empyrean.

  “Hold here,” Ziv ordered the pilot.

  The pilot applied a retroburn and stopped 182 feet from the target. Ziv quickly left the cockpit, shut the door, and issued an IC command that opened a panel just beside the shuttle door. He removed what looked like a clear, hooded wet suit. Adsila heard it squeak as it automatically molded, pressurized, and sealed him in from crown to heel. The back wall of the closet folded down and an upright pallet emerged. Ziv turned and Adsila heard something snap into place. Oxygen, she surmised. Even CHAIs needed to breathe, and their blood substitutes needed protection from the vacuum of space. Finally, from the same small closet he collected the highly compressed net he had boasted about. It looked like a hockey puck, with a fine, fine strand dangling from the bottom.

  “How long is that?” Adsila asked.

  “Ah, you’re still there,” Ziv said.

  “Of course.”

  “I thought you might be sleeping. You were so—quiet.”

  “I was thoughtful,” she corrected.

  “Yes, it is a time for reflection, what with tensions high and the moon having taken what I can only describe as quite a zetz.”

  “What have you heard about that?” she asked.

  “It’s five hundred feet,” he replied.

  “What?”

  “The length of the tether that attaches the net to the shuttle,” he said.

  Once again, Adsila was annoyed with herself. Ziv had set the bait and she bit. The entire purpose of the exercise had been to play her, to get her to ask him for something, to prove he could manipulate her. Again.

  She watched in stern silence as the CHAI jumped to the shuttle hatch above, opened it, and hovered half in, half out while he attached the loose end of the net to what looked like a small fishing reel outside the craft. When he was finished, Ziv propelled himself through the hatch and out into space, holding the other end of the net, one thin end unspooling as the rest remained tucked neatly inside a compression pack.

  Adsila heard a faint sizzle, saw a glow around the edges of the IC view, and watched the shuttle recede rapidly from Ziv’s peripheral vision. He was wearing an ORP, a combination oxygen tank and rocket pack.

  Within seconds, Ziv landed with the sudden hard stop of what could only be magnetic boots landing on top of the sled. She saw, as Ziv did, the hazy features of Agent McClure as he started and peered through the window: he would have heard a clank.

  Adsila felt a rush when she saw that McClure was alive. Ordinarily, the sled would have been broadcasting a full array of data, but the agent had shut it down to conserve power.

  Ziv worked quickly. He leaned over the nose of the sled, pressed the “puck” to the surface and, tucking his knees to his waist to escape the magnetic pull, soared away. Over his shoulder, Ziv watched—and Adsila saw—as the net spread swiftly and tightly around the craft like a webwork of cracks in a windshield. Then Ziv turned his eyes back to the shuttle. He was inside the hatch within moments. Pressing a button in his IC, he caused the reel to activate and pull the sled in. It took just seconds for the helpless vehicle to come within a few feet of the shuttle, where it was secured by a pair of magnetic “harpoons” fired from hidden compartments on either side of the reel.

  “Take us in, Ben-Canaan,” Ziv ordered the pilot as he ducked back into the hatch, closed it, and began repressurizing the cabin.

  “Thank
you, Ziv,” Adsila said.

  “I’m glad I was able to help,” he replied. “Whatever you may think of me, I was raised to believe that all life is precious.”

  The Israeli sounded sincere—for the first time, Adsila thought—and she wanted to believe him. For now, she’d take him at his word.

  At that moment, Adsila’s attention was diverted by Agent ­Abernathy.

  “Two more ICs received,” he said excitedly. “Working to plug them in—”

  “Nicely done, Mike—we have Director Lord on visual,” Grainger said with cool excitement.

  The EAD made a quick decision to leave the nanite connection on. Ziv still had one of her people. Life might be dear, but returning McClure to the Empyrean might not be so important. If she cut his eavesdropping now, he would know she was filtering.

  As Lord’s IC view opened before her, Adsila saw a relatively spacious, curve-topped, subterranean bivouac. Within it, she saw the back of a powerfully built woman in a lunar jumpsuit, whom the drop-down identified as Blake Tengan.

  “Director,” Adsila said, “it’s good to hear from you. What’s your status?”

  “Excellent question, EAD,” Lord replied, standing beside Commander Tengan in the buggy bay. “I got knocked on my seat but I only weigh thirty pounds here. I’m intact, I think. Let’s find out about the base. Commander Tengan?”

  He turned his head so Waters could see Tengan’s profile. Lord’s suit had protected him when the quake knocked both of them down. Not so Tengan. Her face was scuffed and forehead bruised from having hit the deck hard. Nonetheless, the base commander seemed as clear-eyed as ever.

  “Armstrong is an elite ground-pounder,” the commander said. “We were built tough. My geologist says the blast was far enough from our location that our biggest concern is chain reaction quakes collapsing or partially collapsing our lava tunnels. I’ve got a team preparing to go out and check.”

  “What’s that pounding topside?” Lord asked.

  “Ejecta from the blast falling to the surface,” Tengan replied. “From the sound of it, there’s nothing large enough to worry about.”

  “That strike in the Rocky Mountains reduced everything to melted rock—kharitonchik,” Lord informed her. “Probably the same thing happened here, but not locally.”

  “Part of the moon was liquefied,” Tengan said. “It’s pretty sobering what passes for good news these days.”

  “Director Lord,” Adsila said, “Ziv has retrieved Special Agent McClure and is bringing the sled in. He was alive on recovery. We’re in full audiovisual contact with Ziv’s shuttle.”

  “Very good,” Lord replied.

  He noted that Adsila had made a point of adding the extraneous word audiovisual and he understood the subtext. She was letting him know that the nanites were active and that Ziv was listening.

  “Just going to make some recordings,” Lord told Adsila truthfully. “Give me a minute.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  That communiqué would explain the radio silence as Lord switched from voice to text function. Even with the nanites active, Ziv would not be able to see what Adsila saw . . . or what they wrote.

  Lord turned around slowly. Though the encounter with Christie had been recorded and stored, he wanted the aftermath of the crime scene for their records. The bastard had been an accessory to tens of thousands of deaths, and he would pay for that.

  Is that your doing or the quake? Adsila texted when he reached the smashed buggy.

  The driver was drunk with power, Lord replied, his fingers hunting and pecking the air. How were you able to reach me?

  Abernathy.

  It was both an answer and a cue.

  Sir, I plugd thru shutl Yng whn it switchd to batt power, Abernathy replied hastily.

  Status of that craft? Lord inquired.

  AOK, Abernathy answered after taking a moment to check.

  Well done. Lord agreed with Grainger’s assessment.

  TY!

  Sir, Adsila cut in, we believe AIMS response imminent.

  Not surprising, Lord replied. He switched back to vocal. “All right, EAD, we’re still doing damage assessment here—I’ll be in touch when I have a plan,” he said, even as he was nearly finished formulating a plan. “Keep me apprised about McClure’s status.”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied.

  “And thank Ziv,” he said.

  “I’m sure he knows how you feel,” Adsila replied as she signed off.

  Lord looked back to the base commander. “The John Young,” he said, referring to the vehicle named for the venerated astronaut who commanded the first flight of the shuttle Enterprise.

  “It’s in the shuttle bay,” Tengan replied.

  “Can I borrow the keys?” Lord asked.

  Tengan stopped her scan to look at the Zero-G director. “If it’s spaceworthy.”

  “It is,” Lord informed her.

  Tengan grinned wryly. “Remind me never to go up against you,” she said.

  “How would that even be in the cards?” Lord replied.

  “I guess that depends on the game,” Tengan replied.

  Lord could have sworn he detected an almost melancholy tone in the woman’s voice. The commander had sounded like a combat pilot who just announced she was bailing over enemy territory.

  “You can have the Young, and someone to fly it,” Tengan went on.

  “Thanks. Anyone who would not have had contact with Christie?” Lord asked.

  Tengan replied, “I don’t think either of them would have risked their future on anything like this. Landry is your man.”

  “Perfect,” Lord said. That information explained the look of concern Lord had seen Kodera give Landry in the cockpit. It was a sweet image in the midst of all the destruction. “There’s one more thing,” Lord added.

  “Shoot.”

  “I don’t have time to pack Christie on board, but I have to know where he’s been and who he’s seen—and when he might have killed surveillance to cover that. Would you send me his IC as soon as possible?”

  “All of it?”

  “Every neurobit,” Lord replied.

  “As soon as we have functioning power, it’s yours,” Tengan replied.

  “Thank you,” Lord said as he turned and headed for the main base with gazelle-like leaps. “Would you let the basement know I’m coming?”

  “I’ll inform Trine Jørgensen. She’s my number two,” Tengan said as Lord flashed an “OK” over his shoulder and disappeared from the bay.

  TWENTY-THREE

  IT WAS A surprise to Saranya when her weakly functioning IC announced that a “recent companion” had returned. The IC was conserving power and the memory function was not vital enough to provide more detail.

  And it was a surprise to them both when Saranya jumped forward and embraced Sam under the white battery-powered emergency lights, with a massive air filtration unit on one side and Dr. Diego on the other. Saranya quickly stepped back.

  “Sorry,” she said, “but when we felt the detonation—”

  “Much better coming from you than from, say, Ras,” he commented with a grin.

  She smiled back, feeling a little less awkward.

  “Were you able to send your research out?” Lord asked.

  “There wasn’t time,” she said. “I lined up colleagues at MIT, Stanford, Cambridge—they’re waiting. Ras and I have been working on it since our ICs showed a little life.”

  “That IC power’s coming from the battery of the surviving shuttle,” Lord said. “We’ve got to fire her up before that runs dry. Which way to the base command module?”

  Saranya pointed toward the largest of seven hemispherical bubbles against the near wall. The entire construct looked like a caterpillar. Lord took her by the elbow and they hurried over, Ras following closely. Lord held
her, in part, to steady himself: his CHAI limb was still pumping more solidly than his other leg, which felt wobbly and uncertain in the lesser gravity.

  As they approached, Lord sent a message to Adsila to look for any link between Don Christie and the Chinese. He passed lunar workers huddled around one large piece of equipment. Conduits running up suggested that it was Armstrong’s solar-powered generator. The unit was the size of a walk-in freezer and stubbornly silent. Now and then the workers would run to one of the bubbles, presumably to consult whichever data storage systems were still powered up.

  “We did make some progress,” Saranya said as she collected her thoughts. “At least, we know the direction we need to go. My design for SAMI is based on the idea that neutrinos can be focused by enormous magnetic fields and—well, pushed out. The Jade Star bootleg didn’t, or couldn’t, bear up under its own Lorentz force because our eavesdroppers weren’t privy to that part of the design. I hadn’t been able to test it—”

  “You mentioned progress?” Lord said.

  “Sorry, yes. We’ve been trying to figure out a way to limit the field strength remotely—with a Trojan signal—and there may be a way.”

  “It would involve concealing the nature of our transmission, lest the electronics filter it out, which is part of my field,” Ras said, inserting his face between them.

  “Hence, ‘Trojan,’ ” Lord said.

  “Right,” Saranya said. “My mechanism would not perceive it as hostile. But we have to hurry.”

  “Why?” Lord asked. “Apart from the obvious.”

  “SAMI’s physical structure is weakening all the time,” Saranya told him. “Without buffers that I haven’t designed yet, it is unavoidable.”

  “You mean it might destroy itself?”

  “Yes—and no,” she said. “The more it falls apart, the more, and greater, destruction it will cause.”

  “The on and off switches would both cease functioning, even randomly,” Diego said, “leaving just the functioning open generator until that fails—”