Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3)

by Stephen Moss

  Birgit: ‘great. stay tethered.’

  He was already sliding around the outside of the module. He would, of course, stay tethered. Well, most of the time. It would take an age to get where he was going if he didn’t break the rules, you know, just the once.

  He unclipped from the bay module he had exited from and kicked off. He was aiming for one of the wreckers that they had maneuvered into position earlier. As he departed the side of the module, he pinged mini-minnie to take over control of the RCR from her.

  He had been practicing this for days. A moment later he was looking at himself through the wrecker’s ‘eyes,’ and looking at the wrecker through his own. A strange sensation but … if he did it right.

  He moved his arm out and the wrecker mimicked the move. Not mirrored, but mimicked. As Rob’s left hand reached out, the wrecker’s left arm did the same, or rather its gaping maul reached out, its huge, three-fingered hand bunching into a fist bigger than Rob’s head.

  With their arms outstretched, he came up on the big robot, angling his elbow as they came together, the two arms linking and closing as Rob swung around. In his eagerness to get a hold, Rob was careful not to exert too much pressure with the wrecker. The big machine could crush his arm easily, armor or no.

  He quickly reattached his tether.

  Birgit: ‘i saw that.’

  Rob: ‘¿i don’t know what you mean?’

  She smiled to herself and shook her head. Then she checked the timer. It was not so much a timer as a visualized countdown built of tasks. A carefully choreographed dance that ended in a single equation too chaotic to calculate with certainty. Impact would go how it would go. They would just have to hope they were ready when it did.

  Minnie:
  They all braced. Birgit’s wrecker subtly checked Rob’s tether, both to confirm it was secure and to calculate if she could catch it if it came loose. As the model ran in her mind, the gas released explosively from five points along the station’s multiple modules. There was no sound, but the jolt ran through them, at first in slow motion then with more strength. As the momentum shifted, the three bodies hanging on to the station’s hull wafted like reeds in the wind.

  A pause. Then one more tiny burst from three nodules to adjust, and their rotation was stopped relative to the approaching moon.

  Rob: ‘well done, mini-minnie.’

  Mini-Minnie:

  Birgit cringed. It was so rote with this Minnie. So fake. She shook her head, but her frustration was not really with the amalgam. She missed her friend, her daughter. She missed watching her learn and grow. She missed it more than she could have imagined, especially as she sensed her daughter struggling back home.

  Well, hopefully not for much longer. Like a drifter in sight of the shore, she dreamt of the bounty that waited there. So close now, she only had to navigate the approach, to survive the breakers.

  Mini-Minnie: ‘rotation aligned with separation angle to 0.015%. adjusting equations. rerunning …’

  Birgit: ‘we are good, mini-minnie. this is well within parameters.’

  They all held their breath. It would not be long now. Birgit’s wrecker turned its sensors to the coming monolith. A sheer wall of rock in space. It was daunting. Her mind instinctively fought a sickening sensation that they were falling. But they were not. This was not a landing, this was a slow-motion car crash.

  It came up. It came up, growing and growing until it filled their vision, seemingly covering the space in front of them. Not much longer now. Not much farther at all. Jesus but this thing was big now they were up close. At eleven kilometers across it was less than a speck in cosmic terms, just a particle of dust next to its planetary neighbors, which were themselves just protons circling the atomic minuteness of our single sun, lost to negligibility in the endless universe.

  But from here, it was definitely big enough. Holy crap it was big enough, thought Birgit. They were aiming for a crater on its northern end. Not out of choice. They’d had very little say in the matter. Getting here at all had been an exercise in madness that only their singular lack of other options had made feasible. And the next part would be no different.

  Minnie:

  This time Birgit actually moved, flipping her wrecker’s arms over while her legs and prehensile feet remained firmly gripping their bar holds, so she could close one fat paw around Rob’s tether.

  He did not say anything. It annoyed him for a split second before he realized the tenderness of this massive beast’s gesture, the poignancy of its possessor’s act as the point of no return came. When it did come, it did so with a bone jarring bass thrum that vibrated through their bodies, both real and machine. It was an almost terrible sight. Seven-eighths of their world ejected in a moment, ejected off in two directions at once.

  The station, such as it now was, slowed noticeably with the move. Computers assessed the separation.

  Birgit: ‘that went as well as could be hoped. calculating orbital paths now. mars elliptical orbit probable on arm two. chance of recoverability 17%.’

  She chose not to mention that the package’s aphelion would not be for over three years. Oh well. They did not need it. They would just have to get even cozier with each other than they already had. The fact was that it had worked. Now the wall was coming at them much more slowly, and their mass was that much lower, low enough, perhaps, that it could be wrestled to a stop as they connected with the moon’s surface.

  She watched as the two module clusters flew apart, each larger than the one they now called home. Each stripped of all they could take with them, their supplies, processing equipment, and oxygen reserves either stuffed into the crew module or latched onto it.

  Rob: ‘approaching push-off range. confirming anchor sites.’

  In their shared views of the looming grey surface ahead of them, a series of potential holds were reassessed as they approached. The regolith was not thick here, spectral imaging told them that, and the rock underneath that inches-thick layer of moon dust was riddled with cracks and crevices. Their picture began filling with assessed targets, and now Rob started assigning them.

  Birgit looked at her primary site. Minnie looked through the eyes of the second wrecker at it. They all maneuvered into position and braced.

  Rob: ‘there they are, folks. attach tether extensions. brace for kickoff. minnie, count us down when you’re ready.’

  Even the act of kicking off had to be timed to perfection. The two wreckers lined up at either end of the module, while Rob got into position in the middle. He would go last, in case he had to correct for some acquired spin when the wreckers launched themselves at the moon’s surface.

  Minnie:

  They both pushed off as one, Birgit and Rob using every ounce of their machine limbs’ power. The module visibly slowed once more as they threw themselves at the great rock, flipping as they did so, two massive metal gorillas flinging themselves at the pocket-world ahead of them. They flew at the massif, their big hands and feet opening and reaching out in front of them, getting ready for the coming impact.

  Without realizing, both Rob and Birgit closed their eyes. Then, with massive thuds, they connected. Each was instantly lost in a cloud of millennia-year-old dust as it was riled up, bellowing and swirling around them, and then a moment later they were propelling back upward. Having expended their momentum into the ground, sapping some more of the module’s in the process, and now they were coming back at it once more, their tethers gathering and whirling in elastic coils around them as they came back out.

  They were on track. But no, wait, in the haze and moment Birgit had miscalculated. She would not reconnect cleanly, but at an oblique angle. Birgit and Minnie scrambled to adjust, and Rob was moving.

  Rob: ‘minnie, take over wrecker two, i am moving to intercept wrecker one.’

  And he was pulling himself along the surface of the module, grabbing
and tugging at it, grappling with all his augmented might and then, at the last moment before flinging off from it, he was grabbing at Wrecker One’s tether, loose now, gathering as the bulky machine came back up at them. It was threatening to unbalance them completely, to drag the module at an unplanned angle and send it into a spin.

  If they came at this wrong, if they impacted on the module’s ends, then they might damage the airlock. Then the whole process would be for nothing. They would have to live out their rest of their brief, miserable lives in their suits, staring at canisters of food they could not eat.

  He hurled himself outward into the void, pulling at the tether as he went, gathering it frantically to himself. He had to get purchase. They were getting close now. The wrecker would be passing the module soon. It could reach out, it could grab on, but if it did it would send the whole module spinning.

  Birgit: ‘¿rob, what are you doing? come back. that won’t work. your own tether is too short. you will …’

  Even as she said it she regretted it. She knew what he would do. He was trying to use his own momentum to drag the wrecker back on track before they collided. It was only a matter of seconds left. But before he got the wrecker’s longer tether taught, his own would spring, taking all his precious momentum with it.

  Birgit: ‘don’t you fucking dare detach that tether!’

  But he was doing it. In a flash he was loose and pulling at the wrecker’s tether once more.

  Minnie:

  And with a jarring slam the line snapped to, wrenching Rob around as he heaved at it with everything he had. Birgit felt as her wrecker was suddenly hauled to one side, trying not to imagine the strain such an impact must have had on the man at the other end of that line. But it worked. She would still be off, but only by a hair, and in the half second she had she was arching backward to flip her leg out and … she had it.

  Rob: ‘adjusting wrecker one’s kickoff to accommodate for swing. birgit, get ready, we need to go now!’

  She registered the moon’s surface. It was only ten meters off now. Huge and hard and unforgiving … and closing fast.

  Rob: ‘go, birgit, go!

  She went, pushing off once more, this time with tether in hand. She landed a moment later, ramming the camming device at its end into the surface to grab at the rock. Wrecker Two was doing the same.

  The tethers began recoiling, tensioning, but they would not hold the craft, not alone. They needed more. Birgit began working furiously, sensing the coming bounce, the equation that would soon demand its payment, motion for motion, the energy must be accounted for, all of it, and their home still had far too much.

  The collision came as a soundless wallop that rattled the whole structure, still hundred of tons in weight, and still containing a suited and frantic Birgit, limp in her exo-suit as the wrecker she was driving punched yet another tether into the monolith’s surface, then rammed both its maws into the stone itself, seeking purchase as the station began to bounce away again.

  The tension came. They all watched. Rob was too far away to help so he studied the numbers. The pressure came. The lines went taught. One snapped, one ripped free from the surface, then another. Now they were loose on one side, and the lines began ripping in succession as the pressure focused on each in turn.

  Birgit: ‘slacken the lines along the south side. don’t fight it, minnie. let it roll, then pull down again. it might still hold.’

  She said it with more conviction than she had. The tension continued to build. Another line popped. Shit. The tension came on to her wrecker’s own body, and the tether nearest to her.

  “No!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, willing her mechanical self to hold, digging in, feeling the system strain.

  The tension’s apex came with incongruous subtly. One moment they were nearing the brink, then the pressure was plateauing, everything tense, everything straining. Then it was slowly lessening, the graphs tailing off, the forces abating.

  She breathed for the first time in she didn’t know how long.

  Birgit: ‘rob, get your ass back down here and help me get this thing tied down.’

  Silence.

  She checked the system, saw the problem, did not believe it, then screamed, this time with very real anguish.

  Birgit: ‘¡rob, you god damn idiot!’

  Rob: ‘ok then. i sense you are angry with me.’

  She went to speak again, but only tears were coming now as he went on.

  Rob: ‘now, now, birgit, come on, darling. calm down, please. i had no choice, you know that.’

  She ignored the darling part, maybe used it as fuel for her next move. He was floating away. Not fast, but fast enough. With his own tether cut he had put his faith in holding on the wrecker’s, but the pressure had been too strong, and by his own doing he had come loose during the mad minute of collision.

  She festered a moment, a tide of obstinacy welling up inside her, then she glanced around the scene once more. They, or rather she, were secure, sort of. What was left of their home was rolling over, slowly, as mini-minnie worked through the other wrecker to attach more tethers. Birgit assessed the situation.

  Rob: ‘birgit, talk to me. please, darling. i have hours of air left in this suit. please, talk to me. its going to be ok. you’re going to be o…’

  Birgit: ‘…fuck ok, and fuck you, rob. i am coming to get you.’

  He was talking still, trying to calm her down, but she was already moving again, bracing her wrecker and calculating. Going to be a close run thing. No time for finesse, though, and with that, the big machine leapt into the blackness.

  Chapter 45: Exchange – Part Two

  Back on earth, in the depth’s of Milton SpacePort, two men of vastly different backgrounds and skillsets, but a unifying ethos that had destined them to be allies, set off on an errand as important as they had ever undertaken.

  Jim came to Neal’s office with nothing but smiles and kind words. The two men, as much as they could, had repaired their broken bridge, and forged onward despite what Neal knew was a fundamental disagreement on the path they should cut.

  Neal was still elated, something close to a post-coital bliss filling him. He was still riding the post-launch high, and he felt truly hopeful for the first time in years. He greeted his chief of staff with nothing short of spontaneous laughter. “Jim, my friend! How are you?”

  Jim was a little taken aback by Neal’s jocular mood, and for a moment the smile he had crafted in preparation for this meeting stayed unnaturally frozen. But then he remembered himself, replying with admirable cheerfulness, “I’m great, Neal. What a day, huh? What a day!”

  They laughed, and came together in a hug, and for a moment Jim’s resolve faltered, and he held the hug a second too long. As they parted, he took the chance to look into Neal’s eyes once more, as friends, as allies, and then turned and walked over to the pantry in one corner of Neal’s private office. Neal watched him go, sensing a pensiveness about his friend.

  As Jim poured himself an orange juice, his usual if uninspiring poison, the chief of staff said, “I need to talk to you about something, Neal. Something quite … delicate.”

  - - -

  As Jim spoke, Amadeu was walking down a corridor in a very different part of the building. He had an appointment with a person he rarely went to see, but who often called on him, either for advice or with a task of ambiguous ethical merit. As he entered her main operations hub, he was greeted by the sight of two fully tooled Phase Fourteens. Not the more diplomatic, civilized-looking Phase Eights, but two undoubtedly militant field-operations automatons.

  He did not want to make eye contact with them, but managed a hazy smile, nervous for very real reasons, but no more shaky than he often was when faced with one, let alone two, of these brutal death dealers.

  “I have an appointment with Ayala Zubaideh,” he said, surprising himself with the steadiness of his tone.

  At an approving wave from one of the lower-leve
l analysts that sat at the entrance to the TASC intelligence service’s headquarters, he moved inward, past the watchful automatons, threatening even when inanimate.

  As he then wound his way through the labyrinth of sealed cocoons, each housing one of Saul’s infamous analysts no doubt focused on one or more of their many surveillance operations, Amadeu texted Jim, saying simply, “Good luck with your meeting.” Then he walked on, toward his own.

  “You too,” came back, quickly.

  So this was it then. No turning back now. They were committed. He walked on, deeper into Ayala’s lair, keeping his head down. He took care not to look at another automaton that stood outside her office. He would be seeing it soon enough, no doubt. Facing it, in fact, either as friend or foe. As he brushed past it into her office, he fumbled with the small box in his pocket, pulling it out.

  It was not a weapon. No alarm would sound because of it. In any other situation it would be profoundly harmless. But today, Jim and Amadeu hoped, it was going to change the course of humanity.

  He smiled at Ayala, and she eyed him in return, the hairs on the back of her neck rising. She did not even bother to disguise her distrust as she instinctively pinged her security net and checked the many scans that this man, no, this boy, had been subject to since entering her domain. He was clean.

  But what, then, was that? She saw the box. She recognized it as one of the childish little trinkets Jim’s people had been handing out all day, but immediately sensed in the boy’s demeanor that this was something more, something hostile. Her eyes locked with his as she opened her mouth to raise the alarm.

  He pressed the button.

  - - -

  Jim saw, or rather heard, the second message from Amadeu. This was an automated one, triggered by the activation of the device. It read simply ‘activated’, and Jim turned back to Neal, pausing only momentarily to glance at Neal’s personal Phase Eight guard in the corner, before pulling his own black box from his pocket. Ayala was always going to be the harder one to get to. He had known he would have to wait until Amadeu was in position.