by J. S. Morin
“Yes,” Abby replied. “Have you got mine?”
There was a momentary pause. “Your demands? I don’t think you get how this works.”
“Of course, I do,” Abby said in a huff. “You want things. I want things. We haggle until neither of us thinks they can do any better, and a deal gets done.”
“If you’ve got the list, then I suggest you start checking things off.”
“My demands are these,” Abby pressed. She strolled away from a gaggle of eavesdropping busybodies who could damn well wait for a transcript once she was done. “I want a doctor to examine the hostages.”
“Denied.”
“I want you to release anyone in need of medical attention that cannot be satisfactorily provided within the confines of a theater,” Abby continued.
“Denied. And you’re getting on my nerves.”
“Lastly, I want to conduct future negotiations face-to-face. I think we’d both benefit from a better understanding of whom we are dealing with. You’re a populist, Mr. Lund. A man of the people must know that hurting anyone undermines your very purpose for being.”
“OK. No more Mr. Nice Guy. I’d been saving this for Eve Fourteen, but since it sounds like she’s too much a coward to come to Mars herself, I’ll flush it down your garbage chute. You know that missing transorbital crew?”
Abby’s mouth went dry. “I was aware there was a vessel docked at Curiosity.”
“I’ve got them. Five total. Completely helpless—just the heads hooked up to a backup power supply. You’ve got one hour to start showing progress, or I start wiping brains… nice, sterile, non-human brains.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Charlie7 watched stoically as the humans fell to pieces around him. Abby stared blankly at the screen after the video ended. They’d all seen the five decapitated robotic heads, eyes all aglow, dangling wires that ran outside the camera’s field of view. The Martian officials babbled orders into their portables and argued over courses of action.
The clock had kept running on the fate of the robots as inquiries to Earth, visual comparisons to known chassis imperfections, and sending a team to search the transorbital ate away seconds and minutes.
“I’d had hoped he was all bluster,” Abby said when the shock wore off enough for her to speak. “How can you champion human independence and sacrifice human lives to get it? But this…? This I can see coming all too clearly.”
“Seventeen minutes left,” Charlie7 said. “We can rig up an incapacitating audio pulse, maybe anesthetize via the ventilation system. We can go in with a stealth team and use tranquilizer darts. That’s three scenarios where no one gets more than a minor injury. Pick one.”
Dana shook her head. “I can’t have that on my conscience. If anything goes wrong, that’s twenty human lives and five robotic existences that—”
“Lives,” Charlie7 interrupted testily. “The robots are alive too.”
“Of course, but—”
“No buts,” Charlie7 said. “This is Abby’s call to make.”
Abby shook her head. “We need more time. I need to get inside there. Maybe if we meet one of his demands, he’ll at least spare the robots.”
“Optimistic,” Dana said. “What if it doesn’t?”
“He’s asking for the keys to the planet,” Abby snapped. “We can’t exactly do that, and he knows it. It’s a bargaining position. We need a show of good faith. What’s on that list?”
Charlie7 remembered a time when Abby’s mind was like a data crystal. However, he understood the grinding effect that age had on the mind even if it was only by decades of observation. Dutifully, he read them off. “The return of the Truman-Effect reactor originally designated for Curiosity Terraforming Site-2, an extensive list of processed ores, the repatriation of all Martian-born children attending Oxford, five seats on the Human Welfare Committee to be voted on and filled by Martian natives, and Martian control of two asteroid mining vessels.”
Abby pursed her lips. Charlie7 tried to imagine the machinations going on inside that head. Eve was the pragmatist, the strategist; she understood the human soul like an abacus. Abby was a dreamer, a writer, a teller of stories. While Charlie7 could envision the options Eve might concoct, he had to admit a blind spot for Abby’s way of thinking.
“Let’s give him the mining vessels,” Abby said firmly.
Charlie7 rebooted his audio receptors. “Try that again? I think I misheard.”
“There are plenty of them,” Abby said. “Plus, it doesn’t do lasting damage. We can always claim them back. Deals made under duress are never enforceable.”
“But it could be months before another comes back,” Dana pointed out.
Charlie7 seriously considered evicting the mayor from her own planning tent. “I believe that would be the whole point. We can give him the main remote access codes. The crew will disembark and seek alternate transport back to Earth. Ned Lund can crew the damn things himself.”
Abby nodded. “Good. Get me those codes on my portable, and I’ll relay them.”
The mayor sighed. “Very well. I’ll contact—”
“There you go,” Charlie7 said.
Abby glanced down at her portable. “Good. Thanks.”
Dana scowled up at Charlie7. “And where, might I ask, did you get access to those codes?”
Once in a while, it didn’t hurt to remind them all who they were dealing with. “I built them. Designed them from scratch when Kanto wasn’t a tenth the size it is now. I came up with the engines that would allow a vessel that size to enter atmosphere. I programmed them to seek particular ores—it was the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter in those days—and bring it back to me. So, I baked in codes that’ll let me override manual control. So, what? It’s not like I’m even handing over the good codes. I can still take back remote access to—”
“Do you mind?” Abby broke in, covering the microphone pickup on her portable. “I’m about to call in. Shoo. Outside. I only want one voice in this negotiation on each side.”
Charlie7 complied, holding the tent flap for Dana as a gesture of conciliation. But as soon as they were outdoors, Charlie7 cranked up the gain on his audio receptors.
He filtered out nearby chatter from the weary public safety officials keeping the area clear. An inverse wave dispersed the ambient noise. Dana kept up a string of small talk and nervous chatter that Charlie7 delegated to a subroutine for responses.
All that was left was eavesdropping on Abby’s call with Ned Lund.
“Ned here,” he answered gruffly.
“You win,” Abby said.
“Well… that’s… great. Just great. When are my people getting onto the Human Welfare Committee, then?”
“Let’s not be hasty,” Abby replied fluidly. She really did have a finely honed sense of timing, no doubt thanks to her improvisational performances. “You’ve won a battle. War’s got to go on a bit longer. Opening salvo nets you two transorbital of your very own. Ship IDs and override codes are yours as soon as I speak with Kaylee to know she’s all right.”
“Nice try. Dummy codes for a conversation with your granddaughter? Not a chance. I need real results. You’ve got eight minutes left.”
“Fine. Codes first,” Abby said. “But when they check out, I want to talk to Kaylee. You don’t get a single thing more out of us until we have word from her that she and the hostages are OK.”
“Couldn’t have given me access to the one already docked here?”
“Your deadline forced us to cut corners,” Abby admitted. “Those were the first two codes we could scrounge up.”
Charlie7 hid his smirk. That wasn’t technically true. He could have given over any transorbital in the fleet. Nothing got transported across the solar system without his implicit consent. Any vessel made in Kanto came with encoding buried so deep that no one could get it out—not without reinventing half of modern technology from the ground up. He’d be damned if he gave that Lund character control of a vessel with mo
re engine power than the entire Martian colonial effort combined. Let him wait months for the ships to return before he gets any use out of them.
“It’ll be hours until these codes transmit. Hours before I get confirmation back.”
“Well, it was a pretty stupid demand on your part, given your time constraints,” Abby said. “But since I don’t expect this standoff to end in the next twelve hours, how about you let me talk to my granddaughter on good faith?”
Charlie7 nodded along, feigning agreement with whatever his subroutine was discussing with the Curiosity mayor. Good. Establish an act of faith. That might get Ned Lund to let his guard down.
“All right. Fine. If this turns out to be a stalling tactic, someone’s going to regret it.”
“Yes, yes, just put Kaylee on,” Abby said. “I didn’t come all this way to talk to you.”
An urge welled up in Charlie7. He knew he could send off a signal to those two transorbitals, blocking the override and faking the compliance Ned would demand of them. The vessels might sit out there in the cold, sparse void, their crews never even noticing the tug of war over their ships’ loyalties.
He decided to mop up the mess later. Less chance of any deception being sniffed out if there wasn’t any to begin with. It wouldn’t stop a determinedly paranoid individual, but Ned Lund struck Charlie7 as more disgruntled than disconnected from reality.
“Gram? Is that you?” Kaylee Fourteen asked. There were fine slices of audio interpretive code for telling the difference between all the various Eve clones. Simple inference from context ought to have been enough, but his algorithm was reliable. Abby was savvy enough an impersonator to fool him intentionally, but without conscious effort, he could tell one from the next.
“Kaylee, sweetie, are you all right?” Abby asked. “Have they mistreated you?”
“I’ll live,” Kaylee replied curtly. Charlie7 had never heard her quite so ragged and raw, but this was her first time as a hostage, he supposed.
“Good girl. Just don’t push them too far. Anyone in there badly hurt? In need of a doctor? Is the food getting to you?”
“I’m worst off, and I’ll manage. The theater had some first aid supplies. That’s been enough. Food’s better than the cafeteria at work. Boredom is the killer. And the uncertainty. I don’t even know how long they’ve kept us in here.”
“That’s it. I’m getting you out of there. Cognitive dissociation is unhealthy, and you’ve got a good brain in that skull of yours. I love you, sweetie, but put the thug back on the line.”
Charlie7 wondered what she was up to. Kaylee didn’t sound like she was suffering even the earliest symptoms of psychological trauma, at least nothing that the initial shock of captivity wouldn’t have already triggered.
“I heard that. I’m not deaf, and I’m not stupid. No way I was letting that call be private. I’m not handing over Kaylee Fourteen until—”
“Take me,” Abby said quickly.
Charlie7 shut down his small-talk subroutine mid-sentence.
That was it. That was the gambit. He burst into motion, heading straight for the tent. “Don’t you dare!” he warned Abby. There were times for heroic gestures. For instance, they were wonderful when carried out by someone you weren’t trying to keep alive, preferably an enemy.
“Who’s that with you?” Ned asked. “Don’t tell me you dragged Charlie Double-Oh-Seven up here with you. And if he doesn’t want you to trade places with Kaylee, then it’s a deal. Maybe I just had leverage on the wrong negotiator.”
“Oh, I’ll still be negotiating,” Abby assured him. “I’m just going to be doing it face-to-face.” She shut off the portable before Ned could get the last word.
“What did you just do?” Charlie7 demanded. “Kaylee was a high-value hostage already due to her relationship to Eve. The only one Ned Lund would rather have a hold of in there would be your mother herself.”
Abby smiled and headed off in the direction of the theater cordon. “He thinks that now…”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Kaylee fretted more in the minutes following that call from her grandmother than she had the prior several days. Even without overhearing Gram’s side of the conversation, Ned’s reaction had said it all.
Of all her illustrious relatives—genetic twins or otherwise—possibly only the legendary Plato Fourteen had been more prone to spectacular failures than her grandmother Abbigail. As a creative genius, the ability to have a piece of art bomb spectacularly and keep on going was an invaluable asset.
Kaylee just hoped that she’d fare better with actual bombs involved.
It wasn’t that Kaylee was ungrateful. But as she paced the confines of her aisle wringing her hands, she wished that her great-grandmother had come in person. No one was better qualified to handle a tough negotiation than Eve Fourteen.
“All right, Earth girl,” Ned said, coming down from the stage. “Let’s get moving.”
“Moving?” Kaylee asked. “Where?”
“Out,” Ned replied. “Free. Pick up the pace before I change my mind.”
She looked to her husband. “And Alan?”
“Just go,” Alan told her. “I’ll be fine.”
“Depends how much this one can do from outside,” Ned said, hooking a thumb at Kaylee.
Ned marched her out of the audience seating and up the step at the side of the stage, towing her by the upper arm. Kaylee complied readily if not eagerly, pausing before being hauled backstage to share a last glimpse of Alan. He gave her a brave nod.
In the clutches of the Chain Breakers, all by herself, Kaylee wondered whether the promise of freedom was merely a ruse to separate her from the other hostages with minimal fuss. They could do anything to her back here, and there was no one to stop them.
“Hold still,” Ned ordered, forcing her into a chair that was little more than a stool with a short backrest.
Kaylee shut her eyes and steadied her breathing, trying to will her imagination into silence. It was just her, Ned, Gregor, and Wil in the room. The calculating, scientific portion of her brain tried to work out how long her ordeal might last if they took turns having their way with her. The lobe responsible for self-preservation told that dispassionate part to shut up and try to remain positive.
She felt hands on her shoulders. “Chin up,” Gregor ordered.
A moment later, the collar came free of her neck.
Kaylee opened her eyes. “That’s it?”
Ned shoved a bundle into her hands. “That’s it. Now get out.”
They didn’t manhandle her, but Ned and Wil escorted her to the main entrance, where Calvin had been posted as a guard just inside the door. When the door opened, the sting of sunlight glinting through the Curiosity dome stabbed her eyes. She raised a hand to ward away the glare.
A hand squeezed her shoulder. “It’ll be all right, dear. Don’t worry about me.”
Kaylee whirled to see Grammy Abby heading into Arthur Miller Theater in Ned’s custody. She reached back, but the door closed, shutting her away.
“Gram, no!” Kaylee shouted, realizing all too late the price of her release.
It was Charlie7’s turn to herd Kaylee along by the arm. “Come on. Too many ears by that door,” he said in an undertone.
“She can’t do that,” Kaylee protested quietly, suddenly aware of the eyes following her from just beyond the cordon. There must have been a hundred Martians gathered to view the spectacle of her release.
Dana greeted them as Charlie7 lifted the flimsy yellow plastic strip that marked the no-man’s land between Curiosity colony and its tiny breakaway republic of Arthur Miller Theater. She took Kaylee’s hands in both of hers. “I’m so glad you’re all right. What can you tell us about the situation in there?”
Kaylee did her best to be thorough. She gave them the layout of the hostages and Chain Breakers, the clothing they’d been given, how the meals had been delivered, and their treatment by Ned’s goons. If it wasn’t already apparent by her face, the lat
ter hadn’t been gentle.
“The worst part was the collars,” Kaylee said, running a hand along her neck where chafed skin felt the cool breeze of the colony air circulators even inside the tent. “Knowing they could kill us with the touch of a button was terrifying.” She didn’t want to admit that the very idea of it still was, or that she bore that terror on Alan’s behalf even from outside the theater.
“What can you tell us about the devices?” Charlie7 asked. “Anything at all about the control scheme, the type of explosive in them, how the remote works?”
“Ned has a handheld remote,” Kaylee said. She described the device but couldn’t give much detail beyond a visual description.
“Not much to go on,” Dana said. “We can’t mount a rescue based on that.”
“We need to rescue them,” Kaylee said. “Ned’s not going to cave. He’s pathologically averse to giving up. He’s a plow ox with a field ahead of him, and he’s going to plow it one way or another. I don’t think anyone but Eve could talk him out of this insanity. Why isn’t my great-grandmother here? It’s not like her to send someone.”
Charlie7 cast his orange glowing gaze downward. “It’s her health. There’s not a lot of time left for her and less breath. Her doctors are debating whether a set of artificial lungs would help or whether the shock to her system might be too much.”
Dana took Kaylee by the hand. “I’m very sorry.”
Snatching her hand away, Kaylee shot Charlie7 a scowl. “So, you brought Grammy Abby here to play stand-in? What were you thinking? Does Eve know about this?”
“Someone’s probably informed her by now,” Charlie7 admitted.
Kaylee threw up her hands. “I can’t believe this! And you let her trade herself for me? Now who’s supposed to negotiate with Ned?”
“She seemed intent on continuing in that role from the inside,” Charlie7 explained. “It’s non-standard, but for Abby, non-standard is standard.”
Taking a heavy breath, Kaylee squared her shoulders and looked Charlie7 in the eye. “I demand that you go in there and save everyone. Ned might hesitate to kill the humans, but those poor robots are doomed. Someone needs to put a stop to this, and that’s you.”