Inside the Superlifter, Dr. Hasselblatter and his son were suiting up, preparing to go over to the Monster.
“It’s a madhouse over there,” Kiyoshi told them. “I hope you speak Chinese.”
“No,” said Dr. Hasselblatter. “But my son has been through quite enough. We’re not staying here with that thing.”
Left alone in the cockpit, Kiyoshi saw what Dr. Hasselblatter meant. Ron Studd’s projection occupied the astrogator’s couch, a skeletal horror crawling with maggots. Their final Ghost run had done for the sub-personality. Like every repo before him, he was dead.
Kiyoshi looked up at the heads-up screen. “Upload him.”
Jun’s face appeared on the screen, shadowed by the cowl of his habit. “No.”
“Why not? He deserves it. He fought well.”
“There isn’t room in here.”
“Yes, there is room. You’re always talking about how you can do more with less. You managed to fit yourself into the fridge. With the Ghost.”
“The only reason I survived that,” Jun said, “was because I didn’t have any flaws for the Ghost to exploit! I wasn’t tempted to fight it, or God forbid, argue with it! I turned the other cheek, and when it took my coat, I offered it my shirt, also! In an AI, moral perfection is the only perfect firewall. And uploading Studd would make a big hole in my sanctity.”
“I think you’ve just admitted something,” Kiyoshi said with a dry chuckle.
“What?”
“You’re a saint, aren’t you, little brother?”
“Of course not. But I try.”
“Exactly. You tried to become a saint by offloading your flaws into your sub-personalities. You tried to make yourself better by making them worse. And poor old Studd got the really choice traits. The obstinacy, the sneakiness, the violent tendencies, the contempt for anyone who disagrees with you. All the flaws you’ve struggled with ever since you were a kid. I’ve known you all your life, Jun. I know you. And I recognized you in him.”
Jun shrank away into the depths of the screen. He sat with his arms around his knees at the end of a long tunnel.
“Come out of that screen. Come out where I can see you properly! It would be great to be a saint, but not if it makes you hide. Real saints don’t hide. They don’t shut out the people who love them. And nor do they mutilate themselves.” Kiyoshi reached towards the screen as if he could reach into it. “I remember when you were a kid, Jun. Maybe eight. You shaved your head in a tonsure, to show the adults what a real monk looks like.”
“I remember that,” Jun whispered.
“Then when you were discerning your vocation, I guess you were about thirteen, you decided to fast for forty days like Jesus, without telling anyone. You passed out at school.”
“I remember that.”
“And then—” Kiyoshi laughed— “this really took the cake. I was gone by then, but I heard about it from Mom. You snuck into the textile factory and printed out a hair shirt, to wear under your stabilizer braces.”
“I remember that,” Jun said. “I remember all of it. Because you remember it. You gave me your memories, and Mom’s. All my memories are filtered through your eyes. They’re colored with love.”
“Yup.”
Studd’s projection twitched. He sat up, smiling in happy disbelief—and changed into Jun. There really wasn’t that much of a difference. A shorter, squarer body; no buckteeth.
“Uploading now … Whoa. I really was a little shit, wasn’t I?”
“You always were,” Kiyoshi said affectionately. “It’s good to have you back.”
★
Two weeks later, the attention of the whole solar system turned to Tiangong Erhao. A chorus of condemnation swelled.
Five and a half million people just died on Luna!
The House of Saud has declared Luna independent!
The He3 supply chain is a wreck!!
And you lot are throwing a PARTY?
Why, yes, the spokesbots of Tiangong Erhao responded blandly. A birthday party, to be exact.
Prince Jian Er was turning thirty, and he did not give a good goddamn what people thought of him. Moreover, the death of Nadia, his ex-fiancée, had spurred him to new heights of sybaritic indugence.
So, recognizing that tragedies come and tragedies go, but guanxi is money in the bank, hundreds of microfamous and nanofamous celebrities flocked to Tiangong Erhao. The Imperial Bay had once again been wired for sound. Dozens of pavilions floated through the vast space like soap bubbles. The guests giggled at the burlesque acts and sex shows laid on for their amusement. They goggled at the humanzees, products of the top-secret breeding program, who had been let out for the occasion to serve as waiters. (They were not told that these were the rare successes of the program; most of the experimental gengineered humans could not be trusted with so much as a glass of water.) They gloated over the baubles in their goodie bags.
In addition to jewellery, designer cosmeceuticals, vacation packages, and luxury condoms, each guest had been presented with a Jiffy Hopper wingset. The Jiffy Hopper was a Chinese invention, a cross between a hang-glider and a small car. The celebrities bumbled through the bay on their wings, bumping into the pavilions.
“Drugged to the eyeballs, all of them,” Kiyoshi said.
“You’re just jealous,” Mendoza ribbed him.
“I wouldn’t touch a vial of cijiwu right now if you paid me.” A fanatical gleam shone in Kiyoshi’s eyes; a smirk hovered on his lips.
Maybe he really means it this time, Mendoza thought.
“Sure there’s no reason they shouldn’t have fun,” Fr. Lynch said in tones of censure. “We should all be having fun. We were invited. It’s a good sign.”
“More likely,” Mendoza sighed, “we’re on the menu. I think I saw some lion cages being unloaded.”
He sucked a mouthful of champagne from a pouch. It was flat. Carbonation did not work in space.
The group from the Monster stood on one of the piers that jutted into the Imperial Bay. Prince Jian Er’s court bobbled a hundred meters overhead. It was a spherical globe of water, held together by an envelope of smart material that resealed itself every time someone dived or out. The celebrities were wearing scuba masks and flippers in there. They were skinnydipping among specially imported tropical fish.
A stray marble of water drifted towards Mendoza. He touched it with a fingertip, shattering it into micro-droplets.
Was this what he’d given up everything for?
Elfrida, his family, any career opportunities that might’ve been left to him—had he given them all up on a gamble that failed? He’d wanted to do the right thing. Instead, it looked like he would end his days as a kakure Kirishitan on Tiangong Erhao.
Father Tom had converted dozens of Chinese convicts. He regularly urged Mendoza and Kiyoshi to join in his works of mercy, inspiring them with stories of the kakure Kirishitans of Japan, who’d survived under the shogunate for centuries without losing their faith. But talk of centuries made Mendoza even gloomier. And he could not help remembering that the history of Japan had ended with a giant explosion.
A giant explosion, he thought, would actually improve this place.
The highlight of the day’s festivities was a performance by Brainrape. They had stuck around on Tiangong Erhao, too. Prince Jian Er liked their music too much to let them go.
They bashed out their usual mix of guitar feedback and obscene howls. The prince and his favorites listened through their cochlear implants, head-banging underwater.
“This fucking noise,” Kiyoshi groaned. “We’re to be spared nothing, are we?”
“Give me Bach any day,” Derek Lorna agreed, glancing at Mendoza.
Mendoza turned away. He could hardly stand to look at Lorna. The man was in talks with the Chinese to trade access to his research for a new identity and a fast spaceship. He was going to escape, while they remained stuck here.
Brainrape’s performance ended. Prince Jian Er erupted from his watery t
hrone. “Superb! Awesome! Frug on!” he cried. The musicians were ferried across the bay to receive the prince’s congratulations in person. Mendoza turned a cynical gaze on the nearest big screen. The musicians bobbled around Prince Jian Er, knee deep, trying to keep their instruments out of the water.
“Anything that may be in my power to give!” The prince’s voice boomed throughout the Imperial Bay. “Ask and it shall be yours!”
“The Monster,” said the four-armed girl drummer.
“Eh?”
“The Monster,” repeated the guitarist. “That old cargo hauler in Docking Bay 14. That’s what we’d like. Oh, and the Superlifter that goes with it.”
“Of course! The ship that was stolen from you!”
“And its mothership,” the drummer clarified. “The Monster. If you—your Imperial Highness would be so kind.”
Prince Jian Er was silent for a moment. “Well, the military won’t like it. But to hell with them.”
The microfamous and nanofamous hooted their approval.
“After all, I am a prince, and they’re only AIs! To hell with philosophical arguments. Your petition is granted! FRUG OOONNNN!”
★
The Monster fell gracefully away from Tiangong Erhao. At a safe distance from the space station, it accelerated. The tiny star of the Monster’s drive was joined within the instant by half a dozen others. Prince Jian Er had ordered the CDTF to escort the Monster safely out to the edge of the asteroid belt, whether the military AIs liked it or not. They didn’t, but had no choice. The very existence of the Chinese empire hinged on their obedience to the imperial family. Should they disobey Prince Jian Er’s orders, the whole dog-and-pony show would fall to pieces. Even an apathetic AI could see that.
During their voyage, Jun enjoyed an unspoken truce with his Chinese escorts. Abjuring theological and philosophical arguments, they passed the time playing games. Poker turned out to be a mutual favorite. Jun won a new cargo module off the Luxiao Shan, with built-in hydroponic tanks.
The humans passed the time in other ways.
Father Tom spent many pleasant hours in Jesuitical discussions with the ISA, who had sent a ship to stalk the convoy, trying to find out what could have produced this strange alliance.
Charles, the Brainrape guitarist, taught Kiyoshi how to play chords properly.
Junior Hasselblatter became a favorite with the Chinese, who found his destructive ways adorable.
Mendoza helped Father Tom to celebrate daily Masses, and studied to become a deacon. When he was not doing that, he practised his kendo katas and exercised fanatically so as not to lose muscle mass.
Lying tired on the mat after a tough session, he often thought of Elfrida. When they reached their destination, he was going to get her to come out and join them. The only reason he hadn’t done it yet was because he didn’t know where they were going. Kiyoshi had apologetically explained that the guy he worked for was paranoid about security. When they got there, all would be revealed. Mendoza had faith that it would be good.
He also recalled, with mixed feelings, the moment of their departure from Tiangong Erhao.
Derek Lorna had come flying up at the last instant. “Phew!” he had said to Mendoza, who was sitting in the Monster’s operations airlock, waiting for him. “Thought I wasn’t going to make it. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Mendoza had blocked the airlock with his body. “You aren’t coming with us. The Chinese are going to give you your own spaceship. A new ID. A new face, new fingerprints, even a new DNA record. Right?”
“So they say, but it’s bullshit. They’re never going to let me go. They’ll promise me the moon and work me to death. I know how they operate. You have to let me come with you!”
“Sorry. You’re staying here.”
And Mendoza had shut the airlock in Lorna’s face.
Last he saw, the man had been pootling disconsolately down the bay to the nearest penal colony ship, to ask for sanctuary.
Mendoza felt profoundly glad he hadn’t killed Lorna when he had the chance. There might be hope for him yet. God forgives everything.
★
After the Monster parted from the CDTF, it cruised on through the asteroid belt. The ISA ship stopped following them. Its captain now knew where the Monster was going, so his job was done.
It took them another four months to get there. The asteroid belt was no tightly packed ring of rock. The distances out here were vast, and they were going most of the way to Jupiter.
At last, they got close enough to the asteroid 99984 Ravilious to hold nearly-real-time radio conversations.
And Kiyoshi asked the question that had been bugging him all the way from Luna.
“Hey, Hasselblatter.”
He had given up calling the ex-Space Corps director Dr. Phony Dumbshit, but that was still his private opinion of the man. Dr. Hasselblatter had spent most of the journey complaining, leaving his son to be looked after by the Chinese.
“Where do you know the boss-man from, anyway?”
“What kind of question is that?” Dr. Hasselblatter said.
“A reasonable one. We had to hang around for months, waiting for you. He wouldn’t abandon you, even if it meant endangering our lives. I’d just like to know why you’re so important to him.”
“Because I know about the UN’s secret pact with the aliens who run the galaxy,” Dr. Hasselblatter said.
“O … kay.”
“I’m just messing with you. There are no aliens. I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“About me and the boss-man, as you call him. He’s my little brother.”
THE END
The Phobos Maneuver, Book 5 in the Solarian War Saga, will be published in early 2016.
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Books by Felix R. Savage
The Solarian War Saga, in chronological order:
Crapkiller
The Elfrida Goto Trilogy
includes:
The Galapagos Incident
The Vesta Conspiracy
The Mercury Rebellion
A Very Merry Zero-Gravity Christmas (short story, comes between Vesta and Luna in the timeline)
The Luna Deception
The Phobos Maneuver (coming in early 2016)
First Contact, Inc.
Against The Rules
Payback
Stand-alone
Finity (A Story of Mars Exploration)
Mercy (A Fantasy Novella of Revenge)
… and more to come!
THE LUNA DECEPTION
THE SOLARIAN WAR SAGA, BOOK 4
Copyright © 2015 by Fe
lix R. Savage
The right to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by Felix R. Savage. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author.
First published in the United States of America in 2015 by Knights Hill Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author.
Cover art by Tom Edwards
Interior design and layout by Felix R. Savage
ISBN-13: 978-1-937396-15-2
ISBN-10: 1937396150
The Luna Deception Page 39