The song ended, and Eddy’s eyes opened.
There was some kind of background noise. He hadn’t noticed it at first under the music, but it was a persistent drag on the song.
He flicked off the music and sat up, listening. “Do you hear that?”
Davian was asleep, his head tilted away.
It was the faintest hissing sound, notable only because the ship was so quiet as it floated through the void on the way to its rendezvous.
It was the hiss of air leaking out of the Moonjumper.
“Shit.” He unbuckled himself, searching for the leak. He’d been over every damned inch of this little vessel. How in the hell?
It didn’t take him long to find it. There was a pinhole under the console, in the hull of the little ship. “Holy crap,” he whispered. What had caused it? A micro-meteor? More importantly, how could he stop it?
They had a limited amount of air.
He should have brought something along for just this possibility. Something like readygel but stronger. Something that could withstand the extreme cold.
Gum.
He popped the wad out of his mouth, knelt forward, and carefully pushed it into the hole.
Then he grabbed the pack, pulled out two more sticks, and chewed on them quickly until they were pliable enough to use.
He spit them out and pushed those down onto the rest, capping the hole.
The hissing stopped.
Eddy waited, watching as the gum froze in place from the outside chill.
With luck, it would hold.
He checked the oxygen tank gauge. They had lost a fair amount of air, but he figured they should have enough to reach Forever. Assuming there were no more mishaps.
On the plus side, the leak had drained some of the heat from the little craft.
Davian stirred. “Hey, it’s cooler in here.” He sat up, rubbing his eyes.
“Yeah, there was a leak.” Eddy indicated the spot. “I was able to block it. But it’s weird. Looks like a pinhole… almost like something bored through the hull. Not sure how I missed it before.”
Davian stared at him blankly for a moment, then nodded. “The important thing is that you fixed it. Are we still good for air?”
“I think so. Just don’t go hyperventilating on me.”
Davian nodded. “We can always draw straws, if it comes to it.” He smiled, but something about the way he said it left Eddy cold.
Chapter Seven: History, Repeated
THE SHUTTLE approached Transfer Station on a slow glide, coming in near one of the station’s two main air locks.
As Andy watched, lights flickered on and off along one part of the station’s main wheel. That wasn’t normal; she was sure of it. What the heck’s going on down there?
The metal doors, thicker than she was tall, slid apart to let the shuttle in. They closed behind the small craft, and the air cycled in from large tanks on either side of the air lock bay.
They waited for the shuttle to continue on inside the station. After a couple of minutes, the captain’s voice came on over the comm. “Sorry, folks, Transfer Station’s air lock system seems to be experiencing a glitch. We should be moving forward toward the landing pad shortly.”
Stranger and stranger. Something was seriously wrong. The air locks were built with redundancy after redundancy. They should be working. Andy couldn’t remember a time when they hadn’t worked.
She looked around the cabin. There were only two other people aboard with her.
She tapped her loop, calling her father.
“Hey, kiddo,” his voice said in her head. “A little busy.”
“Dad, is everything okay?”
He was silent just a second too long. “Of course it is,” he said at last. “Are you here?”
“At the air lock. We’re stuck in here.”
“Just a sec.” She pictured him tweaking something inside the guts of the world-mind. “There.”
“Folks, the lock has opened. We should be landing shortly.”
She smiled. “That did it. We’re coming in.”
“Good. Now get your ass up to my office as soon as you land. Gotta run.”
“Got it,” she said, but the connection was already broken.
The ship took another five minutes to land, settling down on the platform inside the station. Andy bounced impatiently in her seat. Her father needed her.
When the door opened, she grabbed her carry sack and ran out, heading to the landing tube to call the elevator.
It arrived quickly enough. At least that was still working. It was also full of people. They spilled out, looking worried and talking to one another softly.
Andy caught bits of the conversation as she waited for the crowd to empty out.
“—first time he’s ever called an evacuation—”
“—probably nothing. He’s just being safe.”
“Nice to have a little forced R & R—”
At the back was Andy’s mother.
“I’m so glad to see you!” Keera gathered her up in a big hug. “But you should be coming with us. It’s not safe up here. Your father should be right behind me.”
“I have to help Dad.” Andy squirmed in her mother’s grasp, anxious to be free.
Keera shook her head. “I don’t want you in danger. You’re coming down with us.”
Andy pushed away from her mother. “Dad needs me. So do the rest of the people stuck up here. What if something happened to him? I’d never forgive myself if I left him alone. Or you.”
Keera growled. “I don’t like it.”
Andy pecked her mother on the cheek and ducked into the elevator. “Thank you!” she called as she palmed the pad. Her mother tried to smile as the doors closed.
The whole thing made Andy uneasy. The station was built to survive almost anything. Director Mc… Colin had made sure of that, after what had happened with the Dressler.
What was going on?
The elevator whisked her up to the runway level, the main grand hallway that ran around the wheel. The doors opened, and there was a crowd waiting in line to head down for the next shuttle.
“We’ll get it fixed,” she called as she threw her carry sack over her shoulder and ran toward her father’s office. Whatever it was.
Palming his office door open, she found her father sitting at his desk, his hand on his dipping interface. It was a wide, flat sheet of metal, made of a special alloy. He’d designed the thing himself with the help of the station scientific team. It made it easier for him to connect with the station-mind and also gave him more control over the processes inside.
He didn’t look up. He was dipping deep.
She dropped her sack and pulled up a chair, laying her hand on the pad next to his. Everything blurred, and then she was somewhere else.
A giant blue sphere loomed over her, casting a pale glow.
The station-mind.
She was familiar with it. Intimate, really. She’d spent much of her childhood inside here, exploring this virtual space and creating worlds of her own with Ronan.
There was clearly something wrong with him.
Bits of greenish-yellow light crawled and twisted over his surface like worms or some fast-moving infection.
“Ronan, where is he?” she called out to the station-mind.
There was no response.
She slipped herself into one of the data streams like her father had taught her. He’d be in the middle of it all; that much was certain.
The stream pulled her along into the station-mind, and her world became a sea of blue.
Her father visualized Ronan’s mind as an endless series of corridors. To her, they seemed more like streams and rivers, waters merging and dividing, throwing up big bunches of bubbles that clouded the major interstices.
She rode the flow like a pro swimmer, switching at each fork to those tributaries where the water looked dirtier. It left an oily sheen on her virtual skin.
Her quest took her deeper and deeper into the station-mind
.
At last she heard something—to her mind’s ears, it sounded like a teakettle—a high-pitched whine.
She came upon her father at last. He had his hand buried deep in one of the data streams. It was giving off the data equivalent of steam.
The dirty water seemed to boil as it encountered his touch and then came out clean on the other side.
He flashed her a smile. “Hey, kiddo. About time you got here.”
“I was waylaid by Mom on the landing pad. She’s worried. What is this?”
“There’s a virus loose in the system. Ronan warned me about it, but he’s gone quiet. He’s spending all his energy fighting the thing.”
“A virus? How?”
Aaron Hammond shrugged. “I don’t know. Something that came with one of the refugees, I’d guess. I’ve given the order to evacuate all nonessential personnel.”
“I saw. Is it that bad? What can I do?”
“Yeah, it’s that bad. Come here and I’ll show you.”
She did as she was told, and he took her hand. “Feel what I’m doing here.”
She put her hand over his, the one that cleansed the stream. “This stream holds the essential functions of the station—power, light, circulation. Ronan rerouted it all through here and is doing his best to shield it for as long as he can. But he’s losing the battle. I need you here so I can go help him.”
Andy shook her head. “I’m stronger and faster than you are in here. Let me go instead.”
“Not a chance. It’s too dangerous. A bad feedback loop could burn you out.”
“I’ll be careful.” She winked at him and launched herself back into the stream, ignoring his shout.
She was better at this than he was. He’d taught her everything he knew, and then she’d gone on to learn so much more.
She found one of the red scouts the station-mind used to ferret out trouble and followed it through the streams. It looked a bit like a red manta ray as it undulated its way toward the epicenter of the trouble.
Ronan needed help, and she was the only one who could give it.
She and her father were among the handful of people who knew what the minds really were—beings capable of autonomous thoughts and feelings as complex as any of the people they served.
They were people, as far as she was concerned.
She could feel Ronan’s fear in the stream.
She found him out on the edge of the sphere, in a spot where the yellows and greens were particularly virulent. He was surrounded by a yellowish gas, which swirled slowly around him. Red scouts whipped around him too, grazing the dirty fog. They held it at bay, but they were tiring, their colors fading slowly from red to orange.
“Andy!” Ronan was wearing the body of a station guard, his usual appearance when she spent time with him. He’d been a friend of hers since childhood, when she would retreat from the real world to play with him in the virtual worlds he’d created for her.
“Sorry Ro… it took me a while to get back up here from Forever.” She held up a hand and pushed, and the fog parted to let her reach him. “Where did this come from?”
She stood back to back with him, and they used their combined wills to push the fog back just a little.
“Someone inserted it into my core.” Sweat beaded his brow. “I first noticed it four hours ago. It started in some of the old mem-stores.”
She nodded. “Daddy thinks one of the refugees brought it.”
“Maybe so.”
The war that raged on Earth had seemed so far away from them, something that couldn’t touch them way up here. But now….
She stepped forward, putting her hand cautiously into the fog. It burned, but she concentrated, doing what her father had shown her, pulling the data in and cleansing it. A brown smoke billowed from her palm, but the fog was slowly drawn in. Bit by bit it thinned, drawing back even farther from the beleaguered station-mind. “We can do this.”
Ronan nodded. “With your help, little one. Maybe….”
He went suddenly quiet.
She turned to say something. His face had gone white. “It’s going to blow the power core.”
“What?”
“The virus. It wasn’t aimed at me. It’s just been keeping me busy.”
Everyone still here would die. “Holy crap. Ro, we can stop it.”
Ronan looked at her and shook his head, smiling sadly. “Don’t curse, little one. It doesn’t suit you.” He sighed. “It’s too late for you to stop it. I’m the only one who can, and only with drastic action.” He stepped forward to pull her into his arms, hugging her fiercely. “You need to get everyone off the station. I’ll try to protect the core stream. You and your father should be able to keep the essential functions going long enough without me.” He kissed her forehead. “I love you, mija.”
“Wait! What are you going to do? Ro?”
He was gone.
“Ronan!”
The yellow fog was gone with him.
Everything started shaking around her, and the sound cycled up from a low hum to a violent keening. The light grew brighter and brighter.
There was an explosion of blue light, and the world around her went dark.
When she opened her eyes, she was standing on an empty plain. A single stream of clean blue light ran in the air next to her. Her father was standing about thirty meters away, looking as bewildered as she felt.
She ran toward him, following the stream. She was trying hard to understand what had just happened.
“What the hell?” her father asked as she reached him.
“I think he’s gone.”
“Ronan?”
She nodded. “He said the virus was trying to blow the power core. That only desperate measures could stop it.”
“Oh God.”
He took her in his arms, and they wept for the death of an AI.
COLIN WAS talking with Mestra when a terrible keening filled his head.
He stumbled away from her as the noise-light-pain screamed through his head, falling to his knees in the dirt.
It was coming from the network.
He ripped the loop off his temple and dropped it on the ground, sighing as the pain subsided.
“What was that?” Mestra asked, her brow knitted with concern.
“I don’t know. I think it came over the Net. I’m afraid something terrible has happened.” He picked up the loop and looked at it suspiciously, as if afraid it might bite him. Cautiously, he reconnected it to his temple.
Nothing bad happened.
He tapped it “Get me the director.”
“I’m sorry,” Lex said. “I can’t reach Transfer Station.” She sounded pained.
“What do you mean…?” Mestra and some of the other refugees were staring at him. “I’m sorry, looks like there’s a glitch. Give me a minute to iron it out.”
She nodded, but her narrowed eyes said she didn’t entirely believe him.
He stepped out of the central enclosure and made his way to the edge of the encampment. “What do you mean you can’t reach them?”
“The link to Transfer Station appears to have been severed. There was an attack on Ronan. He was fighting a viral incursion.”
“Goddammit.” He’d had Transfer built to his own specifications—with no organic parts—to avoid the possibility of another catastrophic failure like the one that had happened to the Dressler. Now the station-mind itself was in danger. “Can you tell me anything else?”
“Not at the moment. I will keep… just a minute. Incoming signal from Transfer. Emergency band.”
“Thank God. Put it through.”
There was a slight delay. Then a voice came over the line. “Colin, can you hear me?” It sounded thin and tinny.
“Yes. Aaron, is that you?”
“Yes.”
“What the hell is going on up there?”
“We got hit by a virus. It’s bad, Colin. Really bad. Ronan is… Ronan is gone. He sacrificed himself to keep the station power core
intact.”
Colin closed his eyes. History did repeat itself. “How are you talking to me, then?”
“He shielded the core functions of the station before he… before he died.” Aaron was silent for a long moment. “Andy’s taking it really hard,” he said at last.
“I’ll bet.” With her talent, she and Ronan had probably been fast friends. He himself had felt great respect for the station-mind.
He would grieve for Ronan later. “What now?”
“We have to evacuate. We’d already started before Ronan sacrificed himself, but we have to ramp things up. I can maintain heat and air for a little while, but I can’t keep this up forever. If we can get some help up here from Frontier Station, we might be able to replace the station-mind.”
“That’s a big if, given the situation on Earth.”
“Yes. We haven’t been able to reach anyone. The station-mind down there might have been hit too. Can you prepare for a couple hundred Transfer personnel on Ariadne? The first load is already on its way.”
Colin sighed. The refugee problem would have to wait. “We’ll manage.” Just a couple of days before, he’d been looking forward to a long, peaceful retirement. Now…. “How long will it take to evacuate the whole station?”
“We have two active shuttles. There are about two hundred and fifty people still up here. The shuttles can carry maybe twenty-five in a pinch. So… ten trips? Maybe five to six hours.”
“Gotcha. On my way, boss.” He could hear Aaron’s smile over the link.
“Thanks, Colin. We’ll get through this.”
He cut the connection, and Colin headed back into the camp to gather his lieutenants and Mestra.
“Transfer Station is in trouble. They’re evacuating the station. Can you keep a lid on things here while I go work out things for the new arrivals in Micavery?”
They looked uncertainly at one another.
At last, Maria nodded. “We’ll take care of it.”
Mestra gave him a quick hug. “Go. We’ll manage.”
“Don’t tell anyone else just yet. People here have enough to worry about.”
“They have a right to know.” Mestra was dead serious.
“Just let me get a handle on this first.”
She held his gaze for a moment, then nodded reluctantly.
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