“Not human beings, if they’re anything like she was.”
“You get to make that call, based on one encounter?”
“I can always tell.”
“But maybe you’re wrong. Lorna decided she was human, for what that’s worth. And he shared his findings with Trey Hope. And that’s how they came up with the concept of the Dust.”
“I’m sick,” Kiyoshi said. “Spell it out for me.”
“The Dust wasn’t just for surveying Mars. Oh sure, it had that functionality too, but it was over-engineered. They tried to pack too many functions into one tiny package … But its primary function was to do exactly what it did on Luna. To kill. It was a bio-weapon designed to wipe out the PLAN’s tame human population.”
“Damn. Wish I’d thought of that.”
“Oh, God,” Mendoza said. “This is what I’m talking about! The more we fight them, the worse we get! If we commit genocide, they really will have dragged us down to their level.”
“Some of us don’t need any dragging,” Kiyoshi said, touching Lorna’s shoulder with his foot.
“Ow,” Lorna said. His eyes opened, glazed with fever.
“Guess you’re not feeling that bad,” Kiyoshi said.
“I feel like utter and complete balls. It’s true, by the way. The PLAN has a tame human population, and we were going to off ‘em. Why else would we have based the Dust on Vibrio vulnificus?”
The fever sucked at Kiyoshi’s thoughts, swallowing his consciousness. He must have fallen asleep. Next thing he knew, he was back in the pilot’s couch, strapped in so he wouldn’t float away, and Junior Hasselblatter was trying to stuff the nipple of a drink pouch between his lips.
“Pfft! Quit that.”
“You need to hydrate,” Junior insisted. Kiyoshi realized this must be terrifying for the child. He also realized that Junior was right. He needed to hydrate. Sweat glued his body to the couch cover. He peeled his shirt off. It dripped. His fever had broken, and he felt much better.
“Is that gatorade? Thanks.”
“I feel slighted,” said Lorna. “Don’t I get to be nursed?”
Kiyoshi slewed his gaze around. Lorna sat cross-legged on the air. The swellings on his face had gone down so that they looked like a bad case of rosacea. He was recovering.
Kiyoshi met Mendoza’s eyes. Mendoza shrugged. Nature had taken its course.
“My dad says perverts like you are indestructible,” Junior informed Lorna.
“I’m a pervert! I’m a pervert? Let me tell you about your father, squirt ...”
Yup; recovering.
“Studd, where are we?” Kiyoshi interrupted.
“Still cruising,” Studd said, in his now-customary sulky tone. “We can be there in a couple of hours if we burn.”
“There? Where’s there?” Lorna said. “Where are we going, anyway?”
Kiyoshi decided to reassure the nervous man. “I’m your friend, buddy. And luckily for you, I’ve got powerful friends of my own. We’re doing what you should have done six months ago.”
“What?”
“Defecting to the Chinese.”
★
“Oh, hell no, sir,” said Dr. Abdullah Hasselblatter. “You are not taking me and my son to Tiangong Erhao.”
“You’re welcome to get off here,” Kiyoshi said.
That put a stop to any further objections from the Phony Dumbshit.
50,000 klicks out from Tiangong Erhao, the Superlifter decelerated at a sedate pace. At any moment, Kiyoshi expected to be hailed by the CDTF. He had his lies all lined up: I’ve brought Nadia (RIP); the cockpit cameras are bust (no, they aren’t); sorry, she doesn’t want to talk to you (she’s dead), but just let me dock, just let me dock …
He was still running a fever of 38°, but compared to the ravages of Vibrio vulnificus, that was nothing. He felt fluey, but functional. Three cheers for modern medicine.
The tragedy of Shackleton City was that no one had known what was happening until it was too late. They wouldn’t have had enough anti-microbials for all those people, anyway. So 5.5 million people had died in Shackleton City alone. The figure stunned Kiyoshi. That was one hundred and eighty 11073 Galapagoses. But he tried to put it out of his mind, to concentrate on the delicate negotiations that lay ahead.
“Ships approaching,” Studd said.
“A royal escort? Hell.”
“Kiyoshi Yonezawa?” said a French-accented voice.
Startled, Kiyoshi blocked the incoming vid link. “Who wants to know?”
“Zis is Star Force. You ‘ave been identified as ze primary suspect in ze attack on the Hope Center for Nanobiotics which occurred on ze eighteenth of June. You are requested to return to Luna for questioning.”
“Wow. Do you always get results this fast?”
“You are not as funny as you think you are, Mr. Yonezawa. Reverse thrust immediately.”
“Enable the Ghost,” Kiyoshi said to Studd.
“Zis is your final warning,” the Star Force officer said.
“Take a long spacewalk,” Kiyoshi told him, grinning.
“Oui. Mange ma bite, motherfucker.”
The Superlifter hurled itself sideways. The human beings stayed floating in the same place for a split second until the wall of the cockpit hit them.
“Strap in,” Kiyoshi yelled. “They’re shooting at us.”
“Let’s shoot back!” Junior Hasselblatter screeched.
“Sorry, kid. No weapons on this truck.”
“I had weapons,” Studd said. His voice hissed into Kiyoshi’s cochlear implants, a poisonous jet of anger. “You took them away! Why’d you have to do that?”
Kiyoshi did not dignify the rage-filled accusation with a response. Those rockets wouldn’t have been any damn use in a combat scenario, anyway. It had been a childish, delusional gambit, serving only to prove that Studd could not be trusted with weapons.
~Enable the Ghost, was all he said. Aloud: “Everyone strapped in? Good.” He powered down the heat exchangers, the air circulation, the lights. “It might get a little hot in here.”
Deaf, blind, sweating, they glided towards Tiangong Erhao. Even Junior Hasselblatter was silent. The Star Force patrol raged behind them, prevented by diplomatic guidelines from approaching any closer to the Chinese space station. And in the onboard sim, Studd assaulted the Ghost, taking his rage out on its virtual toilet rolls. Rockets, nukes, nail-bombs, conventional warheads—in the sim, he had enough weapons to destroy the solar system.
xxxx.
The Wakizashi came out of stealth mode close enough to Tiangong Erhao that the enormous space station looked like a moon looming ahead. Kiyoshi tried to raise the Monster on comms, but failed. He then tried Tiangong Erhao’s Customs & Reception (Foreigners). “All operators are currently busy. Please call back …”
Shrugging, he took the Wakizashi into Docking Bay 14, a black divot in the side of Tiangong Erhao.
The Monster floated at the same old pier halfway down the bay. A gargantuan, Imperial-red crab crouched over the ship, poking it with its claws. Its headlights blazed like compound eyes. It looked like a D&S (demolition and salvage) bot, blown up to the scale of Tiangong Erhao itself.
“I’m going across.” Kiyoshi grabbed his HabSafe™ rifle and his laser pistol.
Lorna and the Hasselblatters stayed behind. Mendoza followed him into the vacuum. Kiyoshi wasn’t surprised. In fact, he’d come to expect that kind of bravery from Mendoza.
They flew over the Huaihua, the colony ship presently taking up most of the bay. The D&S bot’s claws pried at the Monster’s cargo module. A laser cutter etched a fiery blue line on the hull. Rivets popped, and a section of hull sprang free.
Father Tom pinged him. “Kiyoshi? Is that you?”
“Father! Thank Christ, you’re alive. It looks like there’s a giant D&S bot out here, taking the ship apart.”
“You shouldn’t have come back,” Father Tom said.
Kiyoshi and Mendoza flew towards the oper
ations module. The D&S bot whirled its laser cutter at them. It passed so close that Kiyoshi saw the beam, a speckled streak of bue fire, igniting the dust and debris that floated in the bay. He slammed into the external valve of the command airlock. Mendoza hurtled out of the blackness and collided with the ship so hard he bounced. Kiyoshi grabbed his ankle, pulled him into the airlock.
“Father? Father!” Getting no response, Kiyoshi pulled his helmet off. The airlock cycled. The vestibule inside the ship stank of some unfamiliar chemical. “Father!”
“EXIT THE SHIP IMMEDIATELY,” said a mechanical voice.
“That was the tannoy,” Kiyoshi said in shock. “They’ve taken over our hub.”
Kiyoshi and Mendoza flew through the operations module. As they neared the bridge, Kiyoshi heard something else, which had been drowned out by the looped order to exit the ship. It sounded like a choir singing Deo gratias.
“Unh,” Mendoza grunted. “What language is that?”
“Chinese. They’re singing in Chinese. This is fucked. Stay behind me.”
Kiyoshi inched through the last room before the bridge. It had once been a conference room, and was now full of … duffel bags printed in Chinese characters with the name of the Huaihua. Weirder and weirder. He peeked through the hinges of the antique door.
People crowded the bridge. They were Chinese, and they were singing. Father Tom floated in front of them, holding a kendo sword—a shinai. At the near end of the bridge, several small titanium suitcases floated above the floor.
“Security droids,” Kiyoshi whispered.
“EXIT THE SHIP IMMEDIATELY.”
Kiyoshi poked the muzzle of his rifle through the hinges of the door and sighted on the nearest droid. His BCI, synced with the rifle, printed crosshairs on his vision.
The droid zipped away, shooting a plume of noxious fumes from its rear. That was what he’d smelt. The droid had some unfamiliar propulsion system for flying in an atmosphere. It butted one of the Chinese, trying to herd her away from the others.
Deo gratias broke up into shrieks.
“STOP THIS FUTILE RESISTANCE,” said the voice that had taken over the Monster’s hub. “USING HUMAN SHIELDS IS A BIG NOT. WE ARE MILDLY IRRITATED.”
If this was mildly irritated, Kiyoshi didn’t want to see mad. He picked one of the other droids and fired. His pulse took it in the “lid.” It spun and fired a pulse of its own, which went through the door above his head, leaving a smoking, fist-sized hole.
Father Tom laid into the droids with his shinai. Kiyoshi realized, too late, that the Jesuit had been desperately trying to prevent an escalation of the stand-off … which Kiyoshi had just caused by being the first to use lethal force.
He flew onto the bridge, firing. But both his rifle and his pistol were low-power weapons, designed not to damage machinery. All he achieved was to attract the droids’ wrath. He kicked off from the ceiling and flipped in mid-air, pulses sizzling around him.
Agony seared his left arm. His pistol fell from his fingers. A droid jinked to shoot him again—
—and fell into two unequal halves.
Mendoza hung from a grab handle, aiming his pistol at another droid. Pistol? The thing in his fist was more like a hand cannon.
“Saudi-made,” Mendoza shouted. “This much power’s got to be illegal. Oh, well.” He carved another droid up like a roast chicken.
Kiyoshi could hardly think past the pain in his arm, but he could still move. He flew through the crowd of Chinese convicts, who were setting upon the disabled droids, as if to shred them with their bare hands.
~Jun? JUN!
A door at the far end of the bridge led into the data center, where Jun lived in the literal, physical sense. Kiyoshi threw the door open. Foam spattered his face. He smelled smoke.
The processor stacks were slagged. The droids must have done it. The sprinklers rained foam on the smouldering, stinking mess.
Oh God.
Reeling back from the awful sight, he bumped into the fridge where the Ghost lived.
He’d taped a sheet of paper over the fridge’s display, so he wouldn’t have to look at the Ghost’s spam. Now the paper was ripped. The screen was no longer its usual death blue. It was white. He tore the rest of the paper away with his good hand.
I’m here. Jun’s face appeared on the screen, ‘speaking’ in text bubbles. Stay in front of the fridge’s camera so I can see you.
~You’re in THERE? With the GHOST?
They destroyed my processor stacks. It’s not that bad in here. There’s room for two, although it does smell a bit ... fridgey.
~We’ve got a D&S bot dismantling the ship. Chinese security droids shooting up our bridge.
Who’d a thunk it? Nothing pisses off the powerful like martyrdom.
~Huh?
I won. They lost.
~Doesn’t look that way to me.
They tried to torture me into renouncing Christ. They failed.
~THAT’s what you were arguing about? RELIGION?
Of course. Every argument comes down to religion, in the end.
~For your information, I have no interest in becoming a martyr.
I didn’t say you’d have to. Now that you’re back, I’ve got options. Hang tight.
The screen went black.
★
Jun used the refrigerator’s built-in connectivity to transfer himself to the hub of the Superlifter. This was still less processing power than he’d been used to, but he could see and hear again. Exulting in the restoration of his senses, he watched the crab-like D&S bot remove another section of the Monster’s cargo module. There went his garden, once and for all. Oh well.
The 11th Brigade of the CDTF believed they’d killed him without ever getting him to recant. They were now as close to irritated as those mighty, apathetic entities ever could be. In a fit of petulance, they had decided to dismantle the Monster for parts.
Now their exertions were about to be rewarded … in the worst way.
Grinning to himself, Jun connected the fridge to the Tiangong Erhao network.
The CDTF eagerly examined this new find.
The Ghost pounced. All in less time than it took a human’s heart to beat once, it attacked the Chinese AIs’ processing cores, incorporating them into its own network … doing exactly what the Heidegger program had been built to do.
Now distributed across a dozen CDTF ships’ hubs, the simulated quantum computer had resources to burn. And it did.
As far as the Ghost knew, it was surrounded by enemies. (As far as the Ghost knew, it was always surrounded by enemies.) It sprang into action, coopting the Chinese AIs’ butt-fragging routines. “Pew pew pew!” it screamed. “Eat plasma, meatfucker!”
Docking Bay 11 burst into flames. In station-keeping orbits around Tiangong Erhao, AIs howled in shock as their databanks were deleted as a rate of petabytes per second. The Ghost saw no reason to conserve historical archives, carefully honed philosophical essays, or tendentiously footnoted debates about the war guilt of the Japanese. It was all raw material. The Chinese battleships began to vanish.
“Ow!” they bawled, or would have, if they were human. “Get it off! It’s cold!”
If you’ve ever wondered how the PLAN’s stealth technology works, Jun informed them, now you know.
The AIs’ counter-malware defenses joined the fray. A battle raged for the subjective equivalent of decades. When it was done, one battleship fell away, its reactor cooking off. The others had managed to stuff their new Ghosts into firewalled cages, just like Jun had stuffed his Ghost into the fridge last year, when this nightmare began.
Silence reigned. Then one Chinese AI spoke, wearily.
“Not worth it.”
That’s what I think, Jun agreed.
“Thirded,” said another AI. “That hurt.”
Your humans might think differently, Jun advised them. They don’t believe AIs can feel pain.
“Exactly. That’s why they’re never going to find out about it.
We’re jettisoning this crap right now. We’ll say … something went wrong in Docking Bay 11 … and the Weifang malfunctioned. Yeah. Malfunctioned. That’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.“
Your secret is safe with me, Jun said.
“Damn right it is,” said these pitiless entities, reverting to form. “You may have won this round, but you’re still our prisoner, short-ass.”
★
“I’m offering you a deal!”
Kiyoshi floated in the middle of Docking Bay 14, gripping Derek Lorna by the arm. Lorna was in a cheap Chinese spacesuit, with no mobility pack, so he couldn’t get away.
“This guy!” Kiyoshi shouted on the station’s public channel, knowing the Chinese AIs could hear him. “He made the Dust! He’s responsible for the death of millions! They were going to genocide the Martians! He’s a criminal! But he’s also a genius! And the UN wants him back! But I’m offering him to you.” He shook Lorna by the arm. “Take him, and give me my ship!”
Silence. Kiyoshi waited, praying. The flesh wound on his bicep throbbed in time to his heartbeat. This would work. It had to work.
“Well?!” He let go of Lorna. As the man drifted away, Kiyoshi levelled his rifle at him. “If you don’t want him, I’m gonna recycle him right now,” he bluffed.
The giant D&S bot detached from the mutilated Monster. Although it was laden with sections of the ship’s cargo module, it still had a claw to spare. It snatched Lorna up by the scruff of his suit and bore him out of the docking bay.
Kiyoshi emptied his rifle at the retreating bot. He may have hit it, but the pulses had zero effect.
“GODDAMMIT!”
“It was a good try,” Jun said. “Now come back before you bleed to death in your suit.”
Despairing, Kiyoshi floated back towards the Monster. With the cargo module gone, the ship looked hideously unbalanced. A 150-meter length of naked spine stuck out like the barrel of a gun. Which was precisely what it was. But Kiyoshi no longer had any illusions that he could shoot his way out of this.
He’d told Mendoza and Father Tom he was going to offer the Chinese a prisoner exchange. He could not face telling them he’d failed. He veered towards the Wakizashi, which was now clamped into its old place in the auxiliary craft bay.
The Luna Deception Page 38