“Since they hired you, I assume you know how to work this.”
Luis said, “Of course.” Mostly. He was familiar with helio control panels for flight operations and dirtside engineering, but didn’t have a lot of practical experience otherwise. So he’d stretched the truth a little on his application. “System does all of the work anyway, right? Monitoring communications, directing the bots, checking the environmental network and the allocation of transsteel for the build...”
“Yes, but you need to watch System.” Her tone held a gravitas that didn’t jive with the statement.
“I get it.” He was the redundancy.
His nameless guide handed over a transparent wristband. “This will allow you to communicate with System no matter where you are.”
Even in the toilet, he figured.
“As soon as it’s on your wrist, it will sync with your bio implants.”
“Got it.” He would be alone on this station but not alone from System.
“Good luck,” the woman said, and left him in the booth. In five strides she was out the door, presumably heading to the hangar where she’d take one of the shuttles and... just go.
And that was the last he saw of her. He sat at the helio grid and looked at the flurry of information. To his naked eye, everything seemed normal. Outside the station, round bots with insectoid arms traversed the unfinished surface, bolting this and laserwelding that. Like ants on an anthill or bees at a hive. Hundreds of them, diligently and with precision, working away in a cold vacuum so humans didn’t have to. The black towers on the other side of the glass were the station’s power supply and grav nodes.
He put the wristband on and felt the slight buzz behind his eyes that meant he was syncing. A cascade of blue code dribbled down his vision then cleared.
System said in his ear, “Chief Engineer Persephone Johns has disembarked Beacon Station MX19. Chief Engineer Luis Estrada is now in command. Welcome, Luis. The time is twenty-two-thirty-five hours. Would you like me to run a station diagnostic?”
“Sure, go ahead.” Meanwhile, he thought: Persephone?
HE WAS DUTIFUL for the first couple weeks. He woke up on time, had his breakfast in the cafeteria (alone) where he scrolled the Send for entertainment and sports news; sometimes SIFU joined him if he commed, just for a second personality on which he could riff, but mostly his routine was solitary and predictable. He answered any alerts even in the middle of his sleep shift (nothing was ever too urgent) and caught up on reports that System promptly dumped on him the second he was conscious. It went like this for forty-two shifts, a humdrum march of waking up, eating, sitting in the monitoring booth of the control room and occasionally addressing issues that required a more direct approach. Like an errant bot or a need to replace a vent panel or even a tour of the plants in the corridors to make sure they were all being watered properly. Rinse, repeat.
He found himself daydreaming a lot. He started to think of the monitoring booth as ‘the bullpen,’ a callback to that old sport that they still played on Earth in some countries. One of his Dominican ancestors had even played professionally, which proved that genetics only went so far – he didn’t have an athletic bone in his body.
In his third week he went walking.
“You are mobile,” System said, like the good spy it was. “Would you like SIFU to accompany you?”
“Nah, it’s all right.”
He beelined to the cafeteria first to get an ice cream bar, then began to wander. He hadn’t been interested before, as most of the station was just a warren of steel and construction (well, he had things to do, he was just tired of sitting while he did them) so he figured he could take a tour.
Predictably, there wasn’t a panoply of anything to see. This wasn’t a commercial station or even a residential one, so once he left the deck that was allocated for human occupancy, everything began to look decidedly mechanical and sterile, not to mention cold. About a third of the light station was even off limits to people, since both gravity and atmosphere were restricted to the places fully constructed. Beyond that, he’d need an EVA suit. Those out of bound decks he nicknamed ‘bot domain.’
But even the decks he had access to were somewhat exposed. The shiny, pretty skin was peeled back to reveal the inglorious guts of an entity large enough to take hours to traverse on foot. It wasn’t meant for promenades, but for the hundreds of bots that rolled past him on their way to projects he was supposed to be monitoring. There were upright vehicles that would’ve taken him around much quicker, but that required a detour to the garage and he probably needed the exercise.
“Why, honestly, do they need all of this?” He was talking to himself but naturally System answered.
“Beacon Station MX19 will someday be a primary depot for the fleet.”
“Yeah, I know, but... I mean.” His hand grazed along the cold panels of the bulkhead. His boots on the deck made a hollow clang in his going. “This is a lot. It’s expensive. It’s almost as big as Pax Terra but we’re out in the middle of nowhere.”
System remained silent.
“Hey?” Luis said.
“Yes, Luis.”
“Are there things you aren’t telling me?”
“What do you want to know?”
He stopped and looked up at the spine of lights on the ceiling, leading all the way down the bare pipes of the corridor. “Is being a depot the only thing the military wants Beacon Station for?”
“I do not have that information for you, Luis,” System said.
Maybe it was all in his mind, but he could’ve sworn the AI hesitated before it answered.
“Why is my monitoring booth bullet proof?”
“That is standard for such a post, Luis.”
“Why? No one else is here.”
“It is standard for such a post, Luis.”
When System began to repeat itself, he knew no more answers were forthcoming. Which shouldn’t have left him ill at ease, but it did.
MORE WALKING, EVEN if there was a gymnasium to use. But the mild insomnia that set in on the fourth week made him hoof the decks he hadn’t been to before, in a systematic exploration of all the places not restricted from access. He listened to the distant echoes of bots at work around the clock, building, just as systematic as his self-guided tours. The station was never dormant even if its one human occupant tried to sleep six to eight hours a shift – and failed. When he did manage to sleep, he woke up still feeling drowsy and couldn’t clear his vision from the fog for hours.
So for a second, here on the hangar deck, he thought at first the thing that turned the corner ahead of him was a bot.
But it was too tall to be one of the construction bots or even an interior maintenance bot. And it wasn’t white, so it couldn’t be SIFU. He saw only dark colors disappearing.
He’d definitely seen it, hadn’t he?
“Hello?” The reaction someone had even if it made no sense to call out to empty space. Or an empty room. An empty place that wasn’t supposed to be occupied.
Naturally nothing answered back. He jogged to the end of the corridor and looked around to where he’d seen the retreating form. It had been gray, or maybe dark blue, and about the height of a man.
“Yes, Luis?” System said.
“No, not you. Did you...” Stupid to ask, since if there was any other inhabitant on the station, System would’ve told him.
Right?
“Yes, Luis?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he advanced down the corridor, turned right. This path swung him around the hangar bay. He stopped and listened, peering at the pale walls and vague shadows, but other than the ambient sounds of construction dimly in the distance and through layers of steel, he heard nothing.
“Where are you going, Luis?”
He chewed the inside of his cheek. “Nowhere.”
IT WAS UNMISTAKABLE, the noise outside his quarters. A crash and then the scuffle of steps that no bot would make, not even SIFU. These were too muffled t
o be a running or rolling metallic thing. He shot out of bed and out the door to stand barefoot in the corridor, looking one way and then the opposite. The lights were already on, triggered by something before he even stepped out.
Voices echoed away from him, words he couldn’t discern.
“System! Who else is on this station?” He loped toward the bend in the corridor, not about to take it at full speed.
“There are five-hundred-and-thirty-six construction –”
“That’s not what I mean. What other –”
“You are the only human on Beacon Station MX19.”
“Bullshit.”
He stopped at the corner and peeked around. Empty.
“Luis, you are the only authorized –”
“What about the unauthorized humans?”
“There are no unauthor –”
“That’s bullshit, System! I heard people running. I heard voices.” His own voice stayed at the loud whisper level. His hand flitted to his hip, where he wished he had a weapon, but in his dash out the door he hadn’t thought to take it from the table.
“Maybe you were dreaming, Luis,” the AI said.
He looked up at the lights. “Send SIFU to my quarters. Now.”
HE WENT BACK for his gun. The previous shift he’d taken it out of his nightstand and put it in the main room. The weapon was supposed to be his defense in the rare off-chance of an invader, though who would have access to even get on the station without the station’s weapons going live was anybody’s guess. The point was nobody else had access and those who dared approach without authorization would be fired upon.
Yet a bullet-proof monitoring booth and voices in the corridor...
SIFU showed up in three minutes. Luis said, “Level with me. I know you’re supposed to be the same as System but I’m telling you there are other people on this station. So give me the truth. Have you seen anyone from walking around on foot?” He held his gun at his side.
“I can’t tell you anything different from System, Luis.”
He brushed by it, back to the corridor, now booted and armed, and retraced his steps from earlier.
“Luis,” SIFU said behind him, the bot’s gait following at a steady pace. At least it wasn’t trying to put him in a choke hold or impel him toward an airlock. No violence, no rabid AI made suddenly murderous.
Luis ignored it.
He took the next corner a little faster, saw first the edge of the pink couch and a split second later saw the man sitting upon it, eating one of the cafeteria’s ice cream sandwiches.
Luis’ gun hand snapped up, his heart only a moment behind, fluttering somewhere at the back of his throat.
“Put that down,” the man said. “And let’s talk.”
THERE WASN’T MUCH debate, after all. The man had friends who showed up behind Luis, two women and another guy, all with the same serious intent. The man on the pink couch had darker skin than Luis and an accent he couldn’t identify with precision. It could’ve been from any one of Earth’s hundreds of cultures and the man himself looked like a mix of at least two.
Luis found himself sitting on the opposite end of the pink couch with his gun in the man’s hand. He had to give it up. Only a fool tried to act tough when he was outnumbered and not a martial artist.
“I take it you people don’t work for Jupiter Construction,” Luis said.
“Not really, but they know we’re here,” the man said. “My name is Amis.”
That was different. Not even Persephone had offered that.
“Did the Chief before me know about you?”
“She did indeed.”
Luis looked at Amis, at the others, then back to Amis. Nobody said anything for the duration of his glances. “So... one of you gonna explain what the hell is going on? Or is this one of those ‘I tell you but I’ll have to kill you’ deals? Because if that’s the case, then cool, don’t tell me. I’ll just go on my way. Unless of course you’ll kill me anyway because I’ve seen you – though you have to admit, one of you messed up. If you’d been quieter I wouldn’t have seen or heard shit. And how is it that System didn’t expose you? Wait, don’t tell me. If that’ll get me killed too then I don’t wanna know.”
Amis blinked. “Are you finished?”
Luis thought about it. “Maybe. Okay, yeah.”
The other man polished off the ice cream bar and neatly folded the wrapper and stuck it in the front pocket of his utility jacket. Not even willing to litter but willing to be on a military outpost illegally. Luis wasn’t sure if he was comforted or disconcerted. At least his running mouth hadn’t gotten him shot.
“Why did you take this job, Luis Estrada?”
He wasn’t surprised Amis somehow knew his name. For all he knew Jupiter had handed it over with the keys to this joint.
“The pay looked good. Why else?”
“So you’re a mercenary.”
Luis looked at the three standing guard. They were dressed in variations of working class fatigues, but the looks on their faces were similar. Hard. Luis turned back to Amis. “Kind of getting the feeling that nobody here’s got the right to judge. Besides, I consider it more of a practical stance. Society has made it so I have to get paid in order to do basic things like eat and be indoors and not be naked. Once that happened, morality’s bound to get slippery.”
“I’m not judging, Luis. In fact, this has been gratifying to hear. We might get along after all.”
“I’m very easy to get along with.” As long as nobody asked his exes for their opinions. He wanted to get his gun back and go to his quarters. Or the bullet proof booth. That seemed like a smart destination right now. “If that’s all you wanted...”
“Almost.”
He should’ve known.
“Obviously you aren’t going to be sending any comms to the Navy regarding our presence here.”
“I got that.”
“But you understand that we can’t just trust you.”
Here it went. They were going to take a finger or an eye to insure his loyalty. Because decimating body parts always did that for these kinds of people. On the other hand, they had let Persephone go... presumably. He hadn’t actually seen her disembark the station. Only heard System’s report. And System was apparently along for this ride, hacked or jacked or something. Had Persephone actually been trying to warn him in the brief contact they’d had? Knowing they were being monitored from the jump?
“You trusted the previous Chief Engineer. And I guarantee I know how to keep a secret. There are things I’ve done that I should probably be in prison for...” Never thought rolling out his criminal CV would carry cachet, but when in Rome.
“Still,” Amis said, and looked toward one of his people.
It was too late by the time Luis realized they were going to inject him. The two women held his arms, pinned him to the pink couch, and the man pressed the point of the wand to the base of his skull.
It felt like a death sentence.
THEY TOLD HIM it was a tracker. And that they had let Persephone Johns go, of course (because it would be too complicated to explain her absence, probably, and the absences of every other engineer that had rolled through Beacon Station since the first girder was built, assuming this gang had been here early on). But she was collared by the implant and indentured to them in that way – they would always know where she was, and if she deviated from the agreement there would be restitution. Which Luis translated to mean a kill order.
He didn’t know what they were. He realized he didn’t care. Life was full of unanswered questions and he was a grown up and accepted that. What he didn’t accept was people doing shit to him without his consent. No amount of money was worth that. Even if he got off this station alive and sought out some nanodoc to remove the implant, who was to say it wouldn’t detonate before he could disintegrate it? It wasn’t like they were going to give him schematics.
In his quarters he stewed. He couldn’t talk this out with System or SIFU, clearly, and h
e was cut off from the military for all intents and purposes. Amis expected him to just do his job and shut up, and once his six month stint was up, to just go on his merry way and try to forget about everything – with a nano locator attached to his cranium.
To hell with that.
The upside was he felt more alive now than he had in months, perhaps years. Nothing like rage and the possibility of an imminent loss of life to get the blood pumping. Once he slept and awakened for his regular shift, he had a plan.
In the monitoring booth, he waited a couple hours. Nothing out of the ordinary in his behavior – bags of crisps littered beside his chair and he replenished his bottle of spiced apple juice every half hour. After a trip to the head, he stared at the helio data for another five minutes then leaned forward, squinting at one in particular, smattered by dots.
“System? There’re a couple bots on the L45 array that’re acting a little drunk. I’m gonna call them in and take a closer look, okay? They might’ve been peppered by debris or something.”
“Go ahead, Luis. Should I send SIFU to meet you at the lock?”
“Nah, I can handle it. If I need help I’ll let you know. Just gonna stop by maintenance and get my tools.”
“Very well, Luis.”
He was nothing if not good at acting casual. Years of evading shop owners, lurking bosses, cops and overprotective parents had trained him well. He picked up his toolkit without deviation, forcing himself not to glance around like a perp. System had access to the internal cams, of course, so he had to assume all of his movements were being monitored – possibly by Amis and his crew as well. He had to assume Amis was jacked into System somehow, riding its processes.
At the control station outside the airlock, he signaled the two bots to recall them. He’d noticed them acting janky for days but had been too lazy to check on them, since their irregular movements hadn’t been obstructing construction. Now it served a better purpose.
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