Blue said, "Altitude 10 klicks."
"Corrupted? Corrupted by who? The PK ship -"
"Corrupted by the Zhukovskiy fork of myself. I've explained partition spasms to you before. I am sorry but I must insist. I am taking control of your suit processors now." A pause. "Duncan's suit is not responding."
"Gamma, I can't believe that you're doing this. I do not give you permission."
"Why is Duncan's suit not responding?"
"Rex was killed by a PK. His suit is powered off. Now -"
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Forget that - you do not have permission to mess with our suits."
Blue called out in panic, "John! The AG drive interface has disappeared!"
John twisted to face Blue. "What?"
"It's gone! I can't find it in my overlay!"
John call up his own interface. The control screen they'd built for the boat appeared, but it was only six items long. It should have been nine or more. He frantically selected menus, and as he paged through them they disappeared one by one. Finally he was left with the top-level overlay desktop - and that too went blank and John was staring out at unfiltered, unaugmented reality.
He looked at the ground rushing by below, growing closer by the second. "Gamma, what the hell are you doing?"
They needed to rotate the lifeboat immediately and apply braking -
As if on command, the lifeboat shuddered beneath him and began rotating.
"Blue! Did you get the controls back? I-"
It was Gamma who answered him. "No, John. I've taken control of your craft."
John looked at Blue. The Dog was gesturing - pointing to his helmet and waving his hands. No overlay. No coms.
"God damn it, Gamma!"
"Don't be afraid, John. I'll land you safely. I apologize that this was necessary, but -"
"This was not necessary!"
"You may not understand, but I assure you that it is."
The lifeboat shuddered again and the rotation stopped.
John looked down at the surface. They were low now - really low. Perhaps just a kilometer over Aristillus - and they weren't heading for Lai Docks. As if on cue Gamma said, "I do not have communications with Lai Docks and Air Traffic Control, and even if I did, they probably would not want a ship contaminated with nuclear fallout to land there. There is a very large open area near airlock #912. I will set you down there."
John's anger was cold and unwavering. "Gamma, I need to talk to Mike Martin immediately."
"I apologize John, but this is non-negotiable - and, at this point - not even possible. I've wiped out the software on your suits and reinstalled a minimal life support library in each of your systems and one small communications driver in your personal suit. I've also set auto-reformat countdown timers in each of them. Your suits will become entirely inoperative in five minutes."
"What? Why?"
"There are field programmable gate arrays buried deep in the hardware that runs the cooling underwear water pump subsystem in your suits. I cannot read the contents of these subsystems and my attempts to rewrite them to a clean state are unsuccessful."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that I cannot trust anything about your suits, your mules, or any other computing device that you brought from Zhukovskiy. I have therefore inserted code that will brick your suits so that none of the communications channels into the cooling underwear water pump subsystem will work. You have just enough time to cycle into the airlock before they shut down forever. I would appreciate it if you disposed of the suits afterward. As the melting point of silicon is unfeasibly high, mechanical destruction of all circuit boards will be sufficient.”
"Gamma, what the hell are you talking about?"
"John, your ship will landing in thirty seven seconds. Please get inside as soon as possible."
Chapter 120
2064: storage room near lock #912, Aristillus, Lunar Nearside
Dewitt stood in the small maintenance room and swung one arm across his chest, then the other, and then leaned forward and touched his toes. The mobility in the suit was good. Of course it was: he'd paid for the gold package and spent two hours getting fitted, but checking his equipment time and time again was the one way he had of burning off - well, not nervous energy per se, but the buzz of anticipation that he always felt.
At his feet the two techs snored; the second sedative patch on each should keep them safe and out of the way until this was over.
The countdown timer showed just ten more minutes till the ships landed. Or, rather, ten more minutes until the ships were supposed to land. If they were half an hour late he'd hardly be surprised. Jesus, the incompetence he'd seen in his time: artillery salvos that were supposed to land half an hour before the infantry arrived but actually hit half an hour after; food and ammo drops that landed right on top of terrorist strongholds instead of behind their own lines -
Jesus. Just thinking about the average PK troop was making him a bit nervous, and nervousness was mostly foreign to him. He hated depending on the competence of regular troops, especially when their fuckups could mean civilian deaths.
He checked the timer again, but only seconds had passed. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It was all coming to a head. And it would be over soon, too, which -
An alert beeped on his slate - the perimeter bug he'd left in tunnel. Shit. He did not need bystanders.
He used his slate to pan the perimeter camera around. There was no one coming from down the tunnel, but - wait. The airlock was opening. What the hell? The ships shouldn't be here for another - he checked - seven minutes. OK, so the ships were early, but -
As the airlock door slid further open he saw that the chamber behind it was empty. What the hell?
Wait, it wasn't entirely empty. There was just one man inside, taking off his helmet. Who -?
He recognized the face.
No. There was no way that could be him.
Dewitt picked up his rifle, opened the door, and stepped into the tunnel. The airlock door was still grinding open but he could clearly see the space-suited figure inside.
Dewitt yelled over the grumbling of the airlock door. "John? John Hayes?"
John's head whipped around and their eyes met. It was John.
They stared at each other for a long moment, and then the helmet that John had been holding slipped from his fingers and fell to the airlock floor.
The door slid further and Dewitt saw three - were those Dogs?
Dewitt looked at the four of them. John's hair was shaggy and he had several day's growth of beard, but there was no doubt, it was him. John looked older now, and as serious as ever - maybe even more so.
And the Dogs with him? That made sense, in a way. He'd heard rumors - such strange rumors.
Apparently they were true.
He tore his eyes from John and looked at the Dogs. Like John, they were wearing space suits, and like John, they had their helmets off. And all three of them were looking at him.
There was something unsettling about the intensity of their gaze.
John shook his head. "I - Matt? Is that you?"
"John, what the hell are you doing here?"
"Me? What the hell are you doing here?"
Dewitt saw John's eyes flick to his chest, and then harden.
Shit, the PK badges.
Dewitt's mind spun. How could he explain? "I -" He stumbled.
One of the Dogs, the red one with a mangled ear, was staring intently at him, his lip curling and a faint growl building. That thing wasn't going to attack him, was it? He touched the selector switch on his rifle with his thumb but didn't move it from 'safe.’
"John, it's too complicated, and there's no time. Something huge is going down. You have to get out of here!"
"The invasion? Is it now?"
Dewitt blinked. "You know?"
"Matt - tell me you're not working with the PKs on this."
"John, I owe you one - hell, I owe you more
than that after Yibin. So, listen to me. Save your life, save the Dogs' lives, and get out of here now."
"The invasion is a week away -"
"No it's not. It's landing right now!"
John stared at Dewitt. "I don't know what's going on, but I swear to God, Matt, if you're helping these bastards -"
"Listen to me, John: get of here right this second or you're going to end up dead."
Dewitt's slate beeped. He looked down at it, scanned the text and looked up. "You've got three minutes." He pulled the keyfob from his pocket and tossed it to his old friend. "Now run."
Chapter 121
2064: DC Minute Studio, Washington DC, Earth
Senator Haig sat in her chair as the makeup artist did her work. A studio assistant leaned into the room. "Senator, we're ready to begin if you are.”
Linda Haig made eye contact with her makeup artist. The technician applied the brush to her forehead one last time, tilted her head appraisingly, nodded, and withdrew.
Linda removed the apron, stood, and walked to the stage. The teleprompters were displaying the first page of her speech. "I'm ready. Get me the stairs as a background.”
A PA gave her a thumbs up.
Linda looked over her shoulder and verified that the image wall - a super-high-definition version of a wall screen that photographed well - was showing an exterior shot of the capitol building.
A year ago DC Minute would've shot this video in front of a green screen and added the background in post, but she liked the new system.
Or, rather, she was proud of it. After buttering up the bureaucrats at BuSuR, she steered a series of grants through committee to help the firm develop and commercialize the technology. The end result was almost 500 new jobs in her state.
Creating jobs was good, but even more importantly, AppLogic knew which side their bread was buttered on: once the grants had started flowing the firm had been a loyal donor.
But enough reliving old victories. It was time for a new one.
Linda turned from the wall screen and faced the cameras. She composed herself, putting on her concerned-but-willing-to-lead look.
Linda turned to the producer. "This is going to air before the president's segment, yes?"
The producer nodded. "Jacob Mott himself called me. He was very clear. Before the president's segment."
"Good."
Linda looked into the A camera. The red light came on.
Go time.
"My fellow Americans. For years we've known about these trying economic times, about our budget difficulties, and how they are caused by CEOs conspiring against the public, domestic terrorists, and climate change induced natural disasters like the California Earthquake.
Over recent months you - and we - have learned something crucial." She punctuated the word with a pointing finger. "Our problems, both here in the United States and in the global economic community, are caused not just by the actions of terrorists in Alaska and Texas, not just by the bad faith of plutocrats here at home, and not just by environmental problems. No, we have learned something recently - that our problems are also caused by selfishness of a conspiring few.
"Shared problems call for shared solutions. And yet, at the very time when all decent citizens –“ she spread her hands, including everyone in the audience “– are working together, putting our shoulders to the common wheel to solve common problems, these few - these conspiring few - are not only refusing to help in our common endeavor, they are actively sabotaging our efforts.
"It would be bad enough if these plutocrats, these powerful moneyed interests, were merely stealing from us by refusing to pay their fair share. The reality, though, is even worse."
She paused here and let hang the implied question hang. Longer. A bit longer. Uncomfortably long. Then, when the tension was right, when she'd built up enough anxiety in her audience, she turned to the B camera.
"Today we face grave challenges. We need not just every pair of hands, but every mind - and every human heart - to rebuild California, rebuild our nation, and rebuild our planet. And at this time when the entire world is pulling together to solve our problems, the tenth of one percent have closed their hands. They have closed their minds. They have closed even their hearts. How? They - the tenth of one percent, the elitists, the plutocrats - were not content merely to steal from the public coffers by withholding their taxes and their labor. That could, perhaps, be explained by simple greed. Criminal, wrong, and illegal... but still just greed.
"But the tenth of one percent go beyond mere greed; they are actively working to destroy society. How else to explain their theft of billions and billions of dollars of heavy equipment? Equipment that is urgently needed in our reconstruction. Bulldozers, earth movers, cranes, ships - the wealth of humanity, the very tools that we need to rebuild California - and to rebuild the world. They've plundered it and are using it for their own selfish purposes.
"But we all know that as important as tools are, the true wealth of a nation is its people - and here again, the expats are actively working to sabotage our shared society, our shared recovery and our shared progress. Tens of thousands of workers - men and women who should be helping push the world forward into the 22nd century - are instead being bribed to work in the private parks and exclusionary mansions of a secret cabal.
"These oligarchs - these billionaires - serve themselves instead of serving humanity. Instead of serving you." She gestured to the camera. "They think that just because they can run beyond the reach of Earth's gravity they can run beyond the reach of our laws. They think that just because they are beyond the atmosphere they are beyond the principles of fairness and community.
"You've probably seen videos, blogs, and other carefully crafted propaganda generated by these billionaires hiding on the moon. They wrap themselves in words. 'Freedom', they say, and 'progress.’ But don't be fooled. Ask yourselves 'Freedom from what?' Ask yourselves, 'Progress to where?’”
She turned back to the A camera.
"Freedom from what? These cheats and economic saboteurs care only for their own freedom. The freedom to take wealth and assets generated here, here with the benefit of our laws, with the benefit of our ecological regulations, with the benefit of our universities, and with the benefit of our subsidies to innovation. The freedom to take, take, take, and then - after they've taken all they can - to escape to a private fortress, an armed camp, where they selfishly spread the fruits of our shared labor for their own personal banquet.
"Progress to where? These billionaires don't care a whit about human progress, about American progress, or about your progress. They don't care about our society's progress to the future. Instead, they want to roll back the clock. They aren't building a 22nd century, they're trying pathetically to restore a 20th century - or even a 19th century. They don't love progress to the future. No, they want a return to the past. A past where a robber baron elite rule like feudal lords over the common people. You learned in school about the train barons of the nineteenth century, of the semiconductor multimillionaires of the twentieth century, and of the Internet schemers from the early part of this century. We, as a society, as a people - as Americans - have largely corrected the vast gaps in wealth between the haves and the have-nots. We've made it possible for all people, regardless of color, educational background, or accident of birth, to lead the good life.
"Do we want a return to the days before the government provided education? A return to the days when health care was only for the rich? A return to days when your 25th birthday brought you only more bills, and not a government Getting Started Grant?
"I have an answer. I have an answer to these questions."
Back to the B camera. This time she gave it a deep stare and let her eyes telegraph resilience, determination, seriousness.
"I do not whisper my answer.
"I do not give my answer in a soft voice.
"I do not say it with a single doubt.
"I answer 'No'. No, we do not want a return
to the errors, to the evils, of the past. I say it for all of us. All of us as Americans - and all of us as human beings.
"I say no, we will not stand for a return to inequality, to lack of regulation, to uneven opportunities. We will not stand by as our common wealth, our common heritage, is looted by the powerful and the rich for their own selfish wants and desires.
"This is why the president, I, and select other leaders from both parties have agreed to pass, before the end of the week, the Revised California Earthquake Recovery and Restoring Stolen Wealth Act.
"This law - despite its somewhat unpronounceable name –” She paused to raise her eyebrows and give a small self-deprecating grin to show that she was, after all, a common woman, as exasperated by some of the nonsense in Washington as anyone else. "This new law is an important step in getting our economy in California going again - and in getting our national and our global economies going again. We do this not just for Californians, but for all Americans - and for all citizens, everywhere.
"This law demands that the looters and tax avoiders on the moon pay their fair share, that they pay the taxes that they have avoided for the last three, five, ten years.
"We Americans are a peaceful people. We do not like violence. We do not go looking for violence. And for that reason, the act does not resort to violence. We ask for our wealth to be returned to us. We ask this as fellow humans. Despite our righteous anger - and anger we are justified in - we go not with a clenched fist, but with an open hand - an open hand of reconciliation.
"We do not go to fight. We will not be the first to use violence. We will not be the first to use force.
"We are one nation, one human race. At a temporary impasse, perhaps, but we are family. And family does not use force when it can avoid it. Even when a child is being willful, inconsiderate, and stubborn, we never hit a child, we never spank a child, we do not use physical discipline.
"We will not strike first.
"But the plutocrats, the expats, must know - do know - that our patience is being tried. We have recently had some videos smuggled out of the lunar enclave, by brave citizen-journalists who avoided the corporate censorship and lies. These videos make it clear not only that the monied interests are not prepared to reconcile with the legitimate and moral authority of the US government, but that they are actively planning war.
The Powers of the Earth (Aristillus Book 1) Page 52