by J. I. Greco
“We do,” Trip says, watching the Earth slide by below them. “Can you reconfigure the jet to get us into high geo-synch orbit?”
Lock thinks for a moment. “Sure.” Her fingers wave at the dashboard and around them, the spaceplane starts creaking, cracking, and humming, its parts being reshaped by nanochine constructors. “Where after this?”
“Inside Death From Above,” Trip says.
“He wants us to go inside a space dragon?” Rudy asks.
“Death From Above ain’t no space dragon,” Trip says. “What makes you think it’s a space dragon?”
“That’s what people say.”
“And that made sense to you?”
“I’m stoned. All the time. Of course it made sense to me.”
“Point,” Trip says. “But according to the ghost, Death From Above is really a web of over four hundred space-based high-energy pulse gun-equipped sats, networked together, all in geo-synch orbit watching day and night.”
“I guess that does make more sense than space dragons,” Rudy admits grudgingly. “Except why would sats flame out everything that flies? I mean, I can see dragons doing it, you know, being the envious and petty creatures they are, but sats? What do they have to be jealous about?”
“Flaming anything that flies wasn’t what it was originally designed for,” Trip says. “It was launched after the Wultr were forced off planet, part of a scheme to protect Earth from future alien invasions.”
“If it was designed to repel aliens, it’s shooting in the wrong direction,” Lock says.
“Blame low-bid government contracts for that,” Trip says. “Shortly after the system went online, the badly programmed AI system controlling the thing suffered a catastrophic system failure and went schizophrenic.”
“Typical of AIs of that era,” Lock says.
“You’re an AI of that era,” Trip notes.
“And look how I turned out.”
“Yep,” Trip says with a smirk. “Instead of shooting at threats from space, it decided the real threat was below, effectively throwing the planet back to the 19th century.”
“Why didn’t they just shut the AI down?” Rudy asks.
“I imagine they would have,” Trip says, “if it was on Earth.”
Lock is surprised. “They put the AI in orbit with Death From Above?”
“Where else?” Rudy asks.
“I don’t know,” Lock says. “Somewhere on Earth where they could, if everything went to shit and nothing else worked, blow it to bits if it misbehaved.”
“I’m beginning to think our ancestors were uniformly dumb,” Trip says. “So, yeah, they couldn’t shut it off because they couldn’t get to it. Couldn’t even send a rocket up to take out the control hub.”
“Because it would shoot down anything they sent up,” Rudy says. “Why not blow the sats up with pulse guns from the surface?”
“Maybe they tried, I dunno,” Trip says. “The world can’t have been in that great a shape at the time—the Wultr stripped the planet of most everything valuable and the geo-political climate must have been a mess in the wake of their getting the boot. I’m surprised whatever governments were left were able to get their international cooperation on long enough to get the Death From Above system into orbit, let alone take it down once the added chaos of no flight kicked in. Doesn’t matter, we just need to get inside.”
The sounds of reconfiguration taper off. “Jet’s ready,” Lock announces.
Trip points out the canopy, at a circle of dull light. “Head there, for the primary gun sat. It’s got a command and control temporary habitation hub in it, for manned system inspection visits.”
Lock waves a finger at the dashboard and universal thrusters fire briefly, orienting the craft towards the sat. Another flick of her finger and the primary thrusters light. “I wouldn’t mind know what we’re planning on doing once we get inside.”
Trip yanks his pressure mask down around his neck and lights a cig. “Neither would I.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Who doesn’t lock their front door?” Trip asks, pushing off from the spaceplane’s cockpit and down through the short connecting tube attached to the gun sat’s primary airlock.
Waiting in the airlock, Lock watches as Trip sails on by, crashing into the inner airlock hatch and bumping his head, his cig popping out of his lips and spinning away. “They probably never figured on anyone coming up here unless they were government.”
“They had corps back then,” Rudy says, slowly floating into the airlock, using handholds built in to the tube to pull himself along. “And private spaceflight.”
Trip does a half flip to orient himself across from Lock, and rubs his head. “Maybe the governments weren’t worried about it. Like, the system was supposed to be for the benefit of the whole planet, who’d be dumb enough to try and break in and screw with it?”
“Or maybe our ancestors were really just plain idiots,” Rudy says, pulling the outer hatch closed behind him. He yanks down the lever inset into the hatch, sealing it up. The airlock’s lights go from red to neutral amber.
“Evidence keeps mounting for that, doesn’t it?” Lock says, reaching for the inner airlock’s lever.
Trip reaches for Lock’s wrist, to stop her. Not at all used to moving in microgravity and not holding onto anything to keep him anchored, he misses, sending his whole body tumbling. “We gonna have air on the other side?” he asks, flailing to stop his tumble.
“I’ll be fine,” Lock says, and yanks down the lever.
“Funny,” Trip says, quickly sucking in a breath and clamping his mouth shut, pinching his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
The inner airlock hatch swings open with a hiss of escaping air, dust swirling around them, revealing the spherical room on the other side. Rings of light flicker on inside the room, and from somewhere deep in the walls there’s the stuttering whine of an exchanger whirring on.
After a second, Trip stops holding his breath and takes a cautious sniff as he continues to tumble. “Stale. But I’m not dying.”
“Okay, we’re in,” Rudy says, throwing his arms above his head and pushing through the airlock like’s he’s flying. “Now what?”
“Now we take control of the sat network.” Lock says, sending out hair-thin tentacles of nanochines from her fingertips to grab onto surfaces inside the room to pull her through the airlock after Rudy. “Right?”
Trip grabs the side of the airlock to stop his tumbling and pulls himself through. The spherical hub is maybe twenty-five feet in radius, its curving walls stuffed with equipment lockers and sleeping sacks. “I guess.”
“It is the obvious thing to do,” Lock says.
“You got another plan?” Rudy asks. “What’s ghost gramps got to say?”
“Let me check in,” Trip says, his hand reaching for the nub behind his ear.
“You do that.” Rudy pulls himself along the wall and slips into a sleeping sack. His hand goes up inside his T-shirt to tweak his nipple. “I’m gonna get stoned. In space! How awesome is that?”
“Okay, gramps,” Trip says before the office finishes coalescing in his consciousness. “You told me to get to the sat, I’m here. What’s next?”
Grandpap steps out of a door concealed in the wall, zipping up his fly as a toilette flushes in the dark behind him. “We take control of the sat network.”
“Ah, the obvious thing,” Trip says.
“It’s not going to be simple.” Granpap wags a finger at Trip. “Far beyond your capabilities. I’ll have to do it.”
“I have picked a few locks in my time, you know.”
“You’ve never picked anything like this. It’s an AI. And a crazy one, to boot.”
“Speaking as a crazy AI,” a new voice says, “we can be tricky.”
“Lock?” Trip asks, spinning around to see Lock sitting at the big desk, her feet up on it. “How’d you get in here?”
“Pfft,” Lock says with a shrug. “There’s no real tri
ck to it. Your encryption protocols are a joke.”
“They really are, aren’t they?” Granpap says, walking over to the desk and sitting down on its edge. “Always was a weak spot with the device.”
“You could have fixed it back when you were wearing it,” Trip notes.
“Could have, but that would have made ghosting it harder.” Granpap smiles at Lock. “You ready?”
“It’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
“For a start.”
“You have plans?”
“Big ones,” Granpap says, and jogs his head at the concealed door to the bathroom. He gets up. “Come on, I’ll tell you all about them.”
“Wait, where are you two going?” Trip asks.
“To solve your little war problem,” Granpap says, opening the bathroom door. On the other side, there’s no toilet anymore. Just light.
Lock swings her feet off the big desk and walks towards the light. “And then—”
Granpap interrupts. “No need to worry him about that.”
“But that’s half the fun,” Lock says with an exaggerated frown, “making him worry.”
“Go on,” Granpap says, gently nudging Lock into the light.
“Wait, you are not really telling me I’m superfluous here, are you?” Trip asks as Lock fades away.
“Good, you figured it out,” Granpap says, a silhouette framed against the overwhelming light. “I was afraid I’d have to explain it and embarrass you.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
“Go get stoned with your brother. We’ve got work to do.”
“This stuff is terrible,” Trip says. Secured against the gunsat wall by looping a leg through a handrail, he’s holding a half-filled sippy-cup near his face and sneering at it. He rubs his lips with the back of his hand, trying to get the rancid taste out of his mouth. “Really.”
Hanging next to him in a sleep sack, Rudy shrugs. “You get used to the aftertaste.”
“I will never get used to spit,” Trip says, giving Rudy the cup.
“Nice buzz, though, right?”
“I feel like somebody over-inflated a balloon in my nasal cavity, and my ears are ringing. Are they supposed to be ringing?”
“Sounds like what you need is more,” Rudy says, spitting into the cup through the straw. He hands it back to Trip, gesturing with the cup as he does at Lock, immobile and unresponsive, her palm pressed against a computer interface jack set into the opposite wall. “So, what you think they’re doing in there?”
“Who knows?” Trip asks, taking a long suck from the cup. “Who cares?”
Rudy smiles. “See, you are starting to feel it.”
“And that’s done,” Lock announces, moving again.
“What’s done?” Trip asks.
Lock takes her palm away from the jack. “War’s over.”
“What? How?” Trip asks. “It’s only been like ten minutes.”
“That long? Seemed shorter. Oh, well, I guess time does fly when you’re having a ball. Anyway, once we cracked through the AI and replaced it with a copy of me, it was just a matter of taking out a dozen or so strategic HQs and bases on each side, then using the laser network to burn a warning into the moon.”
A video screen above the jack turns on. Lock smiles out from the screen. “They got the message, real quick.”
“You left your copy in there?” Trip asks.
Granpap appears on the screen next to Lock. “She’s not the only copy staying.”
“Well, not staying, exactly,” the Lock on the screen says.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Trip asks.
“Now that the planet’s large-scale-war free for the foreseeable future, time somebody started exploring the galaxy again,” Granpap says. “See what’s left out there.”
“And we’re just the AIs to do it,” Screen Lock says.
“How are you going to explore when you’re stuck inside the sat?” Trip asks.
“I’m leaving them a tenth of my nanochines,” Lock says, “to build a probe.”
“A probe to go where?”
“There are hints in the sat’s databanks of a doomsday cache squirreled away somewhere on the moon,” Granpap says. “Ships, nanogenerators, all the fun stuff we need to get started.”
“There may even be an intersystem travel engine,” Screen Lock says. “I’d love to meet some aliens.”
“Just don’t piss ‘em off,” Rudy says.
“Not making any promises.”
“Okay,” Trip says, taking a sip of spit, “so, you guys are leaving, what happens to Death From Above?”
“We’ll leave limited copies of ourselves in here,” Granpap says. “Death From Above will remain operational and continue to discourage flight.”
“We thought it best,” Screen Lock says.
Granpap nods. “Letting you bozos have flight will only bring more tragedy.”
“Huh… like you been reading my mind,” Trip says with a strong note of contempt. “But a lot of people are close. Lock figured it out, someone else will, soonish.”
“We’ve tweaked the operational parameters, taught the detection system a few thousand new computational tricks,” Granpap says. “Nothing anybody on Earth will come up with in the next hundred years will be able to circumvent the restriction.”
“And that includes nanosheaths.” Screen Lock smiles. “Nobody’s flying again, for a very long time.”
“Wait a minute,” Rudy says. “The nanosheath’s our only way home.”
“We’ll be staying until you’re planetside,” Granpap says. “We’ll keep the network from blowing you away.”
“It’ll take that long to build the probe and figure out where the cache is, anyway,” Screen Lock says.
“But then we’re stuck?” Trip asks. “On earth?”
“Until we get back,” Granpap says.
“If we come back,” Screen Lock says.
“Guess there are worse things than being dirt-bound,” Trip says. He turns to Lock. “But you… You giving up on your warplane empire so easily?”
“There are other types of empire to forge.”
Trip arcs an eyebrow at Lock. “Now that the deck’s clear, you’re going to try and take over the world, aren’t you?”
Lock smirks. “What, like that’s not in your long range plan?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Honey, I’m home!” Trip announces as he twitches the Festering Wound into park and kills the engine.
Rox, hands behind her, pressing on the small of her back, is waiting for Trip in front of Morty’s three-story shack of a house as he gets out of the car.
“I take it you had something to do with that?” Rox asks, nodding up at the moon.
Trip looks up and smirks at the near-full orb, fresh letters carved into its face with satgun lasers.
KNOCK IT OFF ALREADY, BOZOS.
WE’RE WATCHING YOU.
“Maybe a little.” Trip’s smirk turns into a smile as he steps up to Rox, putting his hand behind her head and pulling her gently toward him for a long kiss. A minute later, they come up for air and he asks, “What’s going on? The camps outside town were gone when we drove up.”
Rox shrugs, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “War’s over, the refugees are all returning home.”
“More good news,” Trip says. He puts a hand on Rox’s belly, chuckles when he feels movement under the skin. “So why is everybody so dour? Come on, I saved the world, stopped the war, got the refugees to skedaddle. People should be throwing me a party.”
“Nobody’s in a party mood at the moment, Trip,” Rox says, heading inside the house.
“Why? Somebody die?” Trip asks, following. “Was it me? Did I die?”
“Nobody died.” Rox lowers herself into the first empty chair she comes across. “It’s just—”
“War’s over,” Morty says. He’s leaning back in a massive broken Laz-y-boy, his feet up on a metal folding chair, his bathrobe open, nothing
on underneath. A giant mug of beer rests on his stomach. He sucks away at a hose of a straw.
“Yeah, know that,” Trip says. “Hey, thought you’d gone sober?”
“War’s over,” Morty says, and the rest of the Sorta-council, scattered around the living room with their own beers and sour expressions, grunt in shared dismay.
“You say that like it explains something,” Trip says.
“A couple hours after the war ended, the order cancelations started to come in,” Rox says.
“War’s over, and nobody wants our beer anymore,” Morty mumbles at the ceiling. “Other priorities, they say. Rebuilding, they say. No time for beer.”
Rox stands and walks over to her father, pulling his robe up to cover his crotch. “Don’t get him wrong, he’s thankful the war is over… we all are. But it’s sort of crashing our economy.”
“You did this!” Morty says, pointing a shaking finger at Trip. “Ending the war, making me layoff all these fine people. And the grain, all that grain we imported… how are we going to pay for it now? It’s gonna rot! Rot I say!”
“To be fair, it was mostly Lock and my granpap,” Trip says. He grabs a milk jug off a table and fills Morty’s mug. “Here, have another beer.”
“Your granpap?” Rox asks. “You never told me you had a granpap.”
Trip taps his temple. “Digital ghost inside my implant. Been hiding there all these years. Wonder if there’s any way to get back rent from him? Anyway, you wanna blame somebody, blame the ghost and Lock. And you know something, I think she’s going to try and take over the world. She might be evil.”
Rox glares. “You’re just now suspecting that?”
“So all of a sudden it’s wrong to give someone the benefit of a doubt?” Trip asks. “But hey, now that the war’s over and things are gonna settle down around here, if you wanted to go back to concentrating on just being Mother Superior, nobody would blame you. It’s your true calling, and there are other people, some right in this room, that are more than capable — some would say overqualified, even — to take certain small responsibilities off your shoulders.”