METAtropolis:The Wings We Dare Aspire

by Jay Lake

  “You’re missing some physical plant.” He picked a random location in Bellevue, across Lake Washington from Seattle proper. They wouldn’t have time to do spot checks on the ground. Bashar hoped. “Even J. Appleseed has motor pools, maintenance shops, that kind of thing.” Another random location in the Queen Anne district. He stared at the map a long moment as his thoughts continued to race ahead.

  “Mr. Biòu?” prompted Moselle.

  “Apologies.” Bashar pulled himself abruptly back to the discussion. He could die here, at any time, for a moment’s inattention, or just the wrong word. He wondered what the first name of his cover alias was supposed to be. Damn it, he hadn’t been in this deep with this little preparation since, well, ever. “I was just thinking about the blast shadow of Capitol Hill. You drop your rock in Elliott Bay, you won’t hit Bellevue with enough force to wipe it. You’ve only got eleven thousand tons, and you’re coming in shallow. That’s admittedly a damned big kinetic payload, but we’re not talking the Chicxulub dinosaur killer here. I can’t think your crater will be more than a few hundred yards wide.”

  “About a kilometer, actually.” Lu said, “We’re not trying to nail the whole West Coast with this one. We did consider a strike on Capitol Hill, but that doesn’t bring enough impact into downtown Seattle where our critical targets are concentrated.”

  The AIs would be getting out, Bashar thought. There must be physical evidence their concerned about, one-and-done stuff stored as single-copy security in the buried server rooms of J. Appleseed.

  “The seawall,” muttered Bibendum.

  “What he means,” Moselle added, “is that we want to strike Elliott Bay immediately west of the seawall. The resultant flooding will significantly confuse the issue.”

  “What if you come in shallow and skip?” asked Bashar. “Like what happened to Sault Sainte Marie. Nail the bay, then drop the payload on top of or behind Capitol Hill?”

  Bibendum fluttered his eyes. “Math on the skip isn’t reliable.”

  Moselle nodded. “The degree of confidence on a direct strike is high. Anything else is too complex.”

  “And,” Bibendum added, “we won’t be putting enough kinetic energy into the bay with a skip. It’ll make an unholy mess, but not big enough.”

  Bashar could appreciate the problem, even from the other side of it. “Then you’ll need to content yourself with obliterating the downtown targets and hope no one cares too much about the outlying locations.” He glanced at the map again. “All the old computing cores are downtown.”

  The conversation devolved into an hour’s discussion of precise locations of particular facilities, and their known purposes as well as likely occupants. Such as his daughter. At least Charity was tucked away far enough from Seattle to avoid the direct consequences of such a strike.

  Most of what he said was even true, within the context of a certain desperation.

  Could he somehow make a secure, anonymous data connection out of this spaceship that his hosts wouldn’t know about? He knew how to tap comsats from the surface, but the channels he relied on weren’t listening for orbit-to-orbit signals.

  Bashar realized desperately that he didn’t understand nearly enough about the orbital infrastructure to make a sensible move. He had to be away from these people.

  “When we arrive at Orbital Zero, I will inspect the mining package,” he finally announced.

  “Why?” Moselle’s voice was flat and hostile.

  Bashar stared her down. “So my report will be as complete as possible.”

  Bibendum stirred again. “Let him. You know how the damned Bull Dancers are. And we’ll be living with them for a long, long time.”

  Which confirmed what he’d already suspected—these people weren’t Lightbull. How many of the hard Greens were? Bashar let his grin grow feral once more. All three of his putative colleagues shrank back.

  “I’ll … I’ll need clearance,” Moselle said weakly.

  “Lady,” Bashar told her, “we’re the people who issue clearances.”

  * * *

  From greenwiki:

  Earth-to-orbit and orbit-to-Earth transport. Since the end of the sponsored heavy lift era at the conclusion of the GSO project, the vast majority of Earth-to-orbit launches are via lighter-than-air vehicles carrying booster sleds to 30,000 meters or higher, then dropping them for independent burn-to-orbit. A few very large corporations and still functional governments have preserved limited classic heavy lift functionality for essentially strategic purposes, but as most non-crewed space assets are now in the form of cube sats or pebble swarms, demand for such heavy lift is infrequent. Space-based industrial capacity has expanded to the point that with the available resources from the Project Precious asteroids, it is generally cheaper to manufacture or construct additional required infrastructure in situ. This is increasingly true at higher mass tiers. The exception to this trend is the limited number of orbital weapons platforms still maintained by the remnants of the 20th and 21st century great powers.

  Re-entry is of course another proposition entirely. With the notable exception of the mining packages themselves, there tends to be very little justification for dropping mass back down Earth’s gravity well. The orbital population practices an intense reuse/recycle ethic that meets or exceeds even that of the most dedicated terrestrial Green communities. Human beings are the primary orbit-to-Earth payload, and most of them are returned either via glider or fall bag. Fall bags are a far more expeditious re-entry path than orbital gliders, but plummeting a hundred kilometers to the ground in a sealed environment the size of a small camping tent is a psychological challenge for a surprisingly large percentage of travelers.

  * * *

  viii: Minoan women and Roman mystery cults and the corrida and the American stock market

  A number of questions cascaded through Charity’s head. She cursed her perpetual mild fuddlement—a gift of aging, and the medications that helped keep her alive now.

  She picked one that seemed safer than pursuing Cairo’s request for her assistance. “How would you know that the messenger you killed was from Lightbull? Bashar’s been looking for Lightbull for decades and has never yet found a lead that solid.”

  “Your husband should have listened more closely to William Silas Crown when he was alive.” Cairo tugged the rollaway stool the nurses used close to her bed and sat down. “Crown nearly had it right.”

  “Lightbull doesn’t get found unless it wants to be found.” She paused, her thoughts drifting in a dangerous direction. “Or are you one of the Bull Dancers?” Everything seemed ready to collapse in on itself, all the old paranoias and conspiracy theories.

  Cairo laughed, his amusement seeming genuine. “I am with Lightbull, yes. But never a Bull Dancer. I have neither the right genetics nor the right sponsors to become one of them, Mrs. Charity Oxham. You have to be born and raised into that lineage. The rest of us are just … agents of destiny.”

  Charity set that thought aside for very careful review at some future point.

  He continued: “Consider this—every organization has many hands. They do not all communicate. Or agree. The Greens come in hard and soft varieties, yes?”

  “Of course.” She and Bashar had been aligned with the soft Greens all along. That agenda had worked through J. Appleseed since Crown’s death had swollen the foundation’s funding with the bequest of his rather considerable fortune. Not to mention his trio of emancipated AIs.

  “You might imagine that while all the Bull Dancers leap the horns of fate, if not of an actual bull, they do not all follow the same beat.”

  “Bashar always thought Tygre Tygre had come from you,” Charity told him.

  “Which ‘you’ do you mean?” asked Cairo. “Our name is legion, for we are many.”

  “Many but few. Conspiracies don’t last when they’re run by committee.”

  Cairo’s voice dropped. “Minoan Crete was a very, very long time ago.”

  “And why are you tellin
g me all of this?” Charity demanded. “Or any of it, for that matter?”

  “So you will believe me when I say that thirty-eight centuries of effort comes to a head tomorrow. Not everyone who dances believes this is how the measure should be brought to a close.” He leaned toward her again. “And you can help those of us who oppose this effort.”

  It was her turn to laugh. “You expect me to believe that some Bronze Age cult planned to nuke Seattle four thousand years in their future?”

  “No.” Patience loomed in Cairo’s voice. “That would be stupid. I hope you will believe that a Bronze Age cult survived, pursuing one end then another, to evolve into something that has an effect on the modern world. The Catholic Church has been around for over two thousand years. How much more improbable is this?”

  Charity stared at him. “And after almost four thousand years of secrecy, you decide to come out to me now?”

  Cairo shrugged. “How secret is secret? Ever seen the statue of the Bowling Green Bull on Wall Street? We’ve always been here. Always been visible for those with the right eyes. But now … Let me get to the point. Your darwin file is correct but incomplete. Lightbull is behind that effort, working through J. Appleseed.”

  “You’ve done something to make Bashar disappear,” Charity said. “He’s gone to ground somewhere.”

  “Oh, quite the opposite of going to ground, I assure you. He’s in orbit right now. Trying to keep thousands of tons of rock from dropping on Seattle.”

  She was rarely at a loss for words, but that news was just bizarre. “… Bashar? In orbit?”

  “If you’d like, I can probably open a low bandwidth channel to him.”

  “Yes,” Charity said unthinking. Then: “No. I don’t want to compromise him. And I have to understand. How will him stopping that rock from hitting Seattle keep the island plague from being released worldwide?”

  “It won’t,” said Cairo simply. “It will just keep the people behind the island plague from effecting an undetectable disappearance. Then, maybe, they can be dealt with before it’s too late. Cures may be possible, but only with all the relevant records and research in hand as swiftly as possible. Like I said, we have … someone … inside. But they cannot work alone.”

  “You couldn’t have done this sooner?” Charity asked.

  “These were contingency plans until quite recently. Subject to much disputation. I wasn’t willing to betray my trust for possibilities. Now, well, it is all becoming real. And so treason is born.”

  She thought about that for a little while. “Do you have a ride into orbit yourself, Mr. Cairo? Or are you in the hard Green death camp with the rest of us?”

  His smile was thin that time. “Well, and that would be another problem with zero population rewilding, wouldn’t it? And so we come to here and now. Where I need your help.”

  “What’s in it for me?” Charity asked.

  He shrugged. “Saving the world? Some justice for Cascadiopolis.” Cairo pulled a small vial from his pocket, the frosted silver sheen of a nanomed carrier catching her eye. “And perhaps the fountain of youth.” That was accompanied by a wink bordering on the lascivious. “William Silas Crown was not the only one with good medical tech.”

  She cleared her throat, feeling her pulse pound to a heady mix of panic, hope and dread. “I think I would like to speak to my husband after all, if I can do so without compromising him.”

  * * *

  ix: They bombed you from orbit just to make their point?

  Bashar was discovering the hard way that it was impossible to fake expertise in handling himself in microgravity. Neither Lu nor Bibendum seemed to expect anything better from him, so presumably his cover identity didn’t include any history of orbital operations.

  They were hand-over-handing down a series of corridors aboard Orbital Zero itself. He’d assumed rock tunnels, but what he saw didn’t look much different from the corridors on the carrier ship that had snagged the Earth-to-orbit rocket copter he’d ridden up on. It even smelled the same. Bashar was desperate to ask questions, but didn’t dare.

  “Mining control is already in late countdown,” Lu said over his shoulder. “You won’t be able to make a long inspection.”

  Long inspection, short inspection, it didn’t matter. Bashar wanted to see the damned thing, figure out if there was anything he could do to stop or even redirect it. Not that a rock drop inland would be much of an improvement, but he could at least reduce the body count. As well as keeping these clowns from covering whatever tracks they planned to cover with the strike.

  And Samira. His Sooboo.

  He didn’t figure on being able to influence the rock drop directly, but maybe he could talk his way into mining control afterward, and … what? Take on an entire habitat’s worth of experienced microgravity dwellers in hand-to-hand combat?

  If he ever saw Baldie-with-no-name again, Bashar promised himself he’d beat the man blue, then extract a forced if retroactive briefing from that smiling little bastard.

  “Suits,” Lu announced, as they fetched up against a heavy metal door. “Bibendum will take you through the safety drill.”

  “You’re not coming?” Bashar was in fact relieved, as the pudgy and indifferent Bibendum was someone he could probably handle even in microgravity. Not Lu, whose physique and style of movement showed all the signs of being an extremely old school ass kicker. With the emphasis on old, but Bashar was perfectly well aware of what an old guy could do. It took one to know one.

  “I don’t go Outside much,” Lu admitted.

  “Kenophobe,” Bibendum put in. He couldn’t keep the sneer out of his voice. “Fear of the void. A lot of people get seriously jittered Outside.”

  Lu said nothing, but Bashar wouldn’t have cared to be on the receiving end of the look he gave Bibendum. Should the kid meet with an accident Outside, here was one man who wouldn’t mourn long.

  Belatedly, it occurred to Bashar to wonder if he himself was kenophobic.

  * * *

  Suit drill took about fifteen minutes. It covered everything from breathing patterns to the external emergency purge-and-pop switch meant to be used for rapid extraction in dire situations. Bashar was acutely aware of time crawling, of knowing the launch was in final countdown, of being as badly out of place as he’d ever been in his adult life. Every word, every movement up here in orbit, was him faking it.

  Undercover wasn’t a problem. He’d spent literally decades undercover. Being under a cover he didn’t understand in a location he had no information about made him crazy.

  At least it was that idiot Bibendum who was droning through the safety precautions and handling instructions. Not Moselle or Lu, who were far more dangerous to him personally. Bashar paid attention—he wasn’t suicidally stupid—but still his mind raced.

  The next unstupid thing he needed to do was stop thinking of Bibendum as an idiot. The kid wouldn’t have been tasked to his reception team if he was. Slow and doughy didn’t mean foolish. Or even not dangerous. If nothing else, it was Bibendum who knew all those little things like the airlock passcodes and the pressure suit safety margins. This kid could kill Bashar simply by not speaking up.

  “I gave you an all-purpose suit,” Bibendum told him near the end of the safety lecture.

  “Why?” asked Bashar.

  “Cheaper than the mission-specific equipment. If you find some new way to hurt it or yourself, less of a problem for the rest of us.”

  Bashar was momentarily diverted by sheer intellectual curiosity. “What’s the difference between the suit types?”

  “There’s engineering suits, and mining suits, and long-duration suits. Those last ones are basically tiny little shuttles in their own right. Each type carries tools and equipment appropriate to the job. What you’ve got? Rated to seventy-two hours for use in re-entry applications.” Bibendum giggled. “Takes a long time to get down by glider. And they have basic atmospheric capabilities, for escape if a re-entry goes wrong. But minimally powered here in
orbit. Don’t go jetting around. You’ll run out of juice and have three days to be real sorry about it before you die of asphyxiation.”

  “Surely you have search-and-rescue capabilities.”

  “All depends on the priority. You’ve already validated the target maps, after all.”

  That was an unambiguous statement of his current importance in the local scheme of things. Not to mention a nicely veiled threat. Well, in truth, not even all that veiled.

  Then they went Outside.

  * * *

  After about two minutes of being towed by the little booster sled Bibendum was piloting, Bashar recovered his wits. The Earth was … huge. And blue. None of the photography and virteography he’d seen over the years did this view even the remotest justice. The Moon was somewhere else, not in his line of sight, but Orbital Zero stood close and big.

  And the stars. The cold, unblinking stars. It wasn’t hard to see where Lu got his terror from. This was like looking down a well the size of the Universe and wondering why you weren’t falling in. Still, Bashar didn’t think he shared Lu’s kenophobia.

  Just a respect for the depth of the tumble he’d take if he missed his step up here.

  “Nice view, huh?” Bibendum’s voice crackled over a dedicated suit-to-suit channel as he towed both of them through empty space with a little powered sled to which the suits were closely tethered.

  “You’re orbit-born, aren’t you?” Bashar asked, confirming an earlier thought. How had he gone all his life without ever seeing this view in person?

  The kid’s reply was disgusted. “You think they’d bother to lift someone like me out of the gravity well?”

  “Is everyone born up here like you?”

  “No.” Then, reluctantly: “I have Yonami syndrome. It’s a genetic disorder unrelated to conception or gestation in orbit. One or more of my grandparents got into some pretty toxic stuff. I also have friable bones, from growing up here without being healthy enough to use the high-gee workout rooms. That can be an orbit-born problem. I’ll never go down the gravity well. Not if I want to keep on living.” It sounded like a rehearsed speech.