“Destroyed!”
“When you drop a piece of spaceship onto a hollow disc rotating at seven RPMs, balanced on a ramshackle collection of props, the result is predictable.”
“Well, I suppose that’s that,” Jack mumbled. He thought about Skyler’s Ku-band radio. So much for that, too. Skyler would never get to talk to his brother again.
“You will have to move into the bunker.”
“Is that what you want? You want me gathered into your herd of—of subjects? Preferably with a chip in my ear, so I’ll never get a moment’s peace again?”
“For God’s sake, I could have forced you to abandon the hab at any time. I could have prevented you from retrieving it in the first place! I wanted you to do what you liked.”
Jack remembered Nene’s words: He’s given you so much … This must be what she’d meant. Keelraiser had given Jack plenty of rope. And he’d used it to hang Harry, Colin, and Pete.
“I have nine hundred human beings competing to do my will,” Keelraiser added, with touchy pride. “I don’t need one more.”
“That’s just as well, as I’m likely to be shoved in jail the minute I leave here.” Jack remembered the sword hanging over his head. Whatever Coetzee’s idea of punishment for rape and assault was, it wouldn’t be penance enough for what Jack had done to Harry and his lads, but it would be a start.
“Jail?” Keelraiser said. “There’s no jail here. Coetzee’s intention was to exile you. He’d have stuffed you in your hab to see how long you would last without anyone bringing you oxygen and water.”
That made the hair on the back of Jack’s neck stand up. Not because it was a death sentence, but because it was a slow death sentence—the ultimate nightmare of any astronaut who’s ever watched an oxygen gauge going down, down, down. “That’s not justice, it’s murder.” But he remembered the four water thieves he himself had executed on the SoD. They haunted him to this day. Their crimes hadn’t been proven, either.
“Coetzee’s trying very hard to prove himself worthy of the Krijistal. But now that your hab is spread across a square kilometer, that’s no longer an option.” Keelraiser gave a rriksti shrug, head and shoulders jerking sideways. “I’m sure he’ll think of something else.” He started to pace. “It doesn’t matter much. We’re facing critical shortages.”
“I know,” Jack said. “Severe lack of hookers and coke. I’ve been meaning to complain.”
“It’s not really a joking matter. The biggest shortages are nitrogen and carbon. The building blocks of life. There isn’t as much ammonia in Shackleton Crater as we had hoped. I’ve got people out searching for a carbonaceous chrondrite meteor. That’s really our only chance. Failing that, we have about another six months before the ecosystem collapses, on both sides of the wall.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“No, no one else does.”
“Are you sure?”
Keelraiser gestured at his desk. “I’ve spent several months modelling the failure modes. Looking for gaps in the nitrogen cycle we might be able to squeeze through. There aren’t any.”
“You survived for ten years on Europa.”
“Humans aren’t like rriksti. You’re metabolically inefficient. You need a ridiculously broad spectrum of nutrients. Your technology is a joke. Your habits are wasteful. Coetzee’s management system is about as good as it’s realistically going to get, and still …”
“He’s just running this place like he ran his company.” Jack pushed himself to his feet. “Can I see your numbers?”
Without waiting for permission, he went around behind Keelraiser’s desk. He was starting to feel very guilty. On the SoD, he’d spent two years obsessing over every little detail of the water and nitrogen cycles. Then after they got here, it had stopped being his responsibility, so he’d stopped thinking about it. If he considered life-support issues at all, he’d made the dumb assumption that what worked would go on working. Not in space, thicko. In space, things only work until the Shit We Need runs out. You were the one who called CELL a leaky ark. An ark needn’t be sunk by a micro-meteorite or an ICBM; nitrogen loss will do it.
Most of Keelraiser’s computer monitors were the rriksti type, too murky for human eyes to read. But one was a Dell 16-inch flat screen. It displayed a wall of text, arranged in a familiar layout of chapters and verses.
21:25 And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that should be written.
“The Gospel according to John?”
Keelraiser came around the other side of the desk and shoved him in the chest, pushing him away from the monitor. “I didn’t say you could look.”
“What’s that got to do with nitrogen and carbon shortages?”
“Everything, perhaps,” Keelraiser said, opening his mouth in the rriksti grimace of sorrowful amusement.
“Can I see the actual numbers?”
“They’re all in base 14. I could convert them for you. But I don’t want rumors getting around. Some of my people have already started to suspect that all is not well.”
“All is not well. I’ll say.”
“Siftik, for one; you work with him. The crop geneticist.”
“Good old Siftik. He’s always such a ray of sunshine.”
“Dreams rot when they die. They poison the mind as surely as methane poisons the air.”
That was a bit too poetic for Jack, although he knew exactly what Keelraiser meant. “Do you know what Linda was planning to do?”
“Yes, of course. I blame myself for letting her live.”
“That’s on me,” Jack said mechanically.
“I suppose I was hoping you’d kill her for me,” Keelraiser said.
“Is that why we both wound up at the sewage plant?” Jack had to laugh. “You thought I might seize the opportunity to do away with her … and instead, I slept with her.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“There’s no such thing as bad sex. All the same, I wish I’d never gone near her.”
“I had sex a few months ago.” Keelraiser said, making it sound like an epochal event. “It was rather awful.”
Jack had absolutely no wish to know who Keelraiser had slept with. He mooched back around the desk and drank some more water. “You know what she’s accused me of?”
“I’ve been informed, although I confess it doesn’t make much sense to us. We don’t call that kind of thing a crime. We just call it the weekend.” Keelraiser laughed softly.
They leaned on the desk, side by side. The wall facing them had a whiteboard on it, scribbled all over with drawings for arcologies. The drawings were old, blurred and smudged.
“I made a complete arse of myself,” Jack said. “Not for the first time, admittedly.”
“Oh, you’re not alone. Do you see those drawings? That’s what I was going to build. Arcologies. That’s how we survived on the Darkside. The environment is scarcely less hostile than this. It’s minus one hundred outside. The glaciers moan like Hell’s gates opening. Freezing gales blow and ice storms sweep over the domes. But inside, everything is cozy and warm … and the twilight zone is only a few hours away by road. I forgot about that. Or rather, I thought I could compensate for it by ramping up the mining operations. People used to gather in here at all hours, brainstorming, sketching, planning. Now the excitement’s died. They’ve stopped coming.” Keelraiser shrugged. “As you say. I’ve made a complete arse of myself.”
Jack looked down at the rriksti hand gripping the edge of the desk next to his own. Seven fingers, white knuckles. He twitched with the desire to touch it. Pick it up. Kiss the webs between the fingers. He could practically taste the salty musk of Keelraiser’s skin. Even after all these months, the pull was so strong that he nearly despaired of himself. “Why did you want to see me?” he said roughly.
Keelraiser turned his head to look at him. “I just wanted to talk to you,” he said.
That wasn’t what Jack wanted. “I’ll tell you what I want,” he said, staring straight ahead. “I want to get away from you.”
“Then go,” Keelraiser said immediately.
“Nowhere on this moon is far enough away. The Andromeda galaxy wouldn’t be far enough.”
“It may come to that in the end,” Keelraiser said darkly. “They say that the dust we’re made of drifts through the stars for all eternity.”
“I don’t care about eternity. I care about winning.” Recriminations boiled out again. “We had a chance to win this thing, and instead you decided to sit here and conquer a useless ball of rock.”
“A place for my species to survive—a place your species doesn’t want or need, anyway!”
“We could have saved Earth!”
“Is it my fault that eight billion human beings were too incompetent to save their own damn planet?”
“Oh Jesus, fair enough on that,” Jack said, rubbing his forehead.
“I did everything I could to save Earth! I can’t do anything more.”
“Right. It’s my job. It’s always been my job.”
“On the way here, I started a revolution. I thought I could change the way we live. Put an end to the cycles of punishment and conquest. Well, you know how that ended. Five thousand dead and a few survivors trapped on Europa. But I never learn. When we got here, I was hopeful. Nine hundred humans—they’d show us the right way to live! So I gave Coetzee the technology he needed to optimize his management system.”
Jack groaned.
“I can see my mistake now,” Keelraiser muttered. “I assumed all humans were basically like Alexei, Giles, Skyler, and you.”
“You need your head examined,” Jack said, aching with affection.
“I need a miracle,” Keelraiser said. “I wanted to build arcologies. All I’ve built is Europa all over again. And I can’t even get another kilo per day of nitrogen out of that fucking crater.”
Jack took a deep breath. “And we’ve not got the Moon Express anymore. And there’s an ICBM aimed our way. Right. Let me take the Cloudeater. They won’t fire on that.”
“No,” Keelraiser said, recoiling.
“At a minimum I’ll be able to pinch the supplies they’ve laid in at Sky Station. Best case scenario, I’ll refuel, land somewhere out-of-the-way, and … and …” With an effort of will, Jack dismissed his visions of nukes. “And bring back all the Shit We Need.”
“No,” Keelraiser said again. He took a step backwards, lips stiffly sealed. “You can’t fly the Cloudeater.”
“Oh, I’m sure I can manage. I’ve seen you do it often enough. Is it the bunker’s power requirements you’re concerned about? I know the Cloudeater’s reactor is powering a lot of stuff in here. But that’s what we’ve got the thorium reactor for. You had Skyler start that up because you planned to take the Cloudeater away some day.”
“Yes. But I’m the only one who can do it.”
“Why?”
“All our ships are built in the same way. The Cloudeater is a smaller version of the Lightbringer. Just as the Lightbringer has a Shiplord, so does the Cloudeater.” Keelraiser touched the back of his neck. “Me.”
“You’ve got a chip in there?”
“Yes!”
“It’s … an authorization key? Like the one they gave Hannah for the Lightbringer?”
“The one they forced her to host in her brain, yes.”
“Does it have remote functionality?”
Keelraiser went back behind his desk and sat down. “Not outside bio-radio range,” he said, typing. “That’s why Eskitul was unable to interface with the Lightbringer from the surface of Europa.”
“The whole system seems a bit … I don’t know. What happens when pilots are reassigned?”
“Their implants are also reassigned. But that can only be done from the Temple on Imf.”
“Well, can’t you just lend me the Cloudeater? Authorize whatever needs to be authorized, and I’ll take it from there.”
“It wouldn’t work.”
“Why not?”
“It just wouldn’t! You can’t fly a rriksti ship without a rriksti implant.”
Jack realized he was probably committing some kind of offense by asking Keelraiser to lend him his ship. How would he have felt if Keelraiser had asked for a loan of the SoD? At the same time, he felt that Keelraiser was being unreasonable. The time for caution was past. “Well, can’t the chip be removed?”
Keelraiser stared at him. “Certainly it can be removed. You could cut my head off and extract it that way. That’s what Ripstiggr did to Eskitul.”
“Ah.”
“Here!” Keelraiser reached under his desk. His hand came back into view with a knife in it. He threw it, lightning-fast. Jack didn’t even have time to flinch before the knife hit the mirip plant and stuck in its plastic pot. It was one of the old knives from the CELL kitchen. Grains of metal-rich soil drifted down. “Use that! It’ll be easier than you think. One hard pull and it’s over. The chip is embedded at the top of the spinal column, but that’s only to make it difficult to remove. You could implant it in your forehead, on your scalp, wherever you like.”
Jack wrenched the knife out of the plant-pot, bringing the plant down. Soil scattered all over the floor. He shied the knife into the far corner. “What do you think I am?”
“A killer,” Keelraiser said. “Like me.”
“I’m nothing like you,” Jack said, turning away. He remembered that he’d once marvelled that he and Keelraiser, born in different star systems, were so much alike they could finish each other’s sentences. He recognized the dark, violent impulse that had made Keelraiser throw that knife, and needed to get away from it.
Behind him, Keelraiser said, “I’ve told Coetzee he’s not to punish you.”
“Don’t go to any trouble on my account.” Jack slapped the wall. It ripped. He went out.
CHAPTER 29
Coetzee did not punish Jack.
He just reassigned him.
“Someone has to take McFarlane and Hall’s places,” he said.
So Jack found himself employed at the waterworks. Not in the solar distillery on the crater rim, but on the sharp end. At least once per shift he had to descend into Shackleton Crater to help the robots do their jobs. On his second day, he saw another crater rat step in a puddle of liquid oxygen. The guy’s foot snapped off like glass. It reminded Jack of Lance Garner, his head flash-frozen inside his helmet, an icicle protruding from his mouth like last words he’d never gotten a chance to speak.
*
President Flaherty said, “We will never stop fighting. We will never trade our freedom for alien chains.”
Applause overloaded the speakers of Kuldeep’s laptop. Kuldeep zoomed in on the president, behind his lectern in the NORAD complex.
The worse things got, the more presidential Flaherty got. Heavy creases scored his face, and his hair had gone almost entirely gray. Kuldeep felt a protective twinge, despite—or because of—the fact that he was 1,900 miles away from Colorado.
Zoom out. Standing ovation in the conference room under Cheyenne Mountain. This was not the typical audience for a presidential address. Beards, camouflage, tattoos, and piercings predominated. These were freedom fighters from all over the Midwest, some from as far away as the East Coast. Now, we call them freedom fighters; a couple of years ago we’d have called them bikers, ex-cons, preppers, social justice activists. Social justice now had an entirely different meaning than it had before the squids came. More freedom fighters were participating remotely from all over the world. The engagement counter in the corner of Kuldeep’s screen showed 112,038 people on line.
A tumultuous Q&A session started.
Richard Burke, watching over Kuldeep’s shoulder, said, “He’s not getting enough sleep.”
“Who is?”
“There’s someone who is,” Burke said, nodding at the daybed in the corner of the glassed-in balcony. Burke’s nineteen-year-
old daughter Savannah sprawled on it, snoring. Ever since she got pregnant, she had been taking long afternoon naps. Kuldeep’s protective instincts blazed up with the force of a forest fire. The baby in her belly was his. He would slaughter any squid that dared to lay a finger on her.
He still felt a little bit embarrassed about hooking up with Burke’s daughter. But Burke and his wife, Candy, approved of their relationship, at least outwardly. They’d made Kuldeep feel like part of the family. He reciprocated by giving 200% to his job, which was to protect the former NASA director and his team from any security threats that might arise.
Not that any ever did, in the mountains of Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
Kuldeep went out through the sliding glass doors and sniffed the almondy smell of the mamey apple trees, the heaviness of coming rain. Keying his radio, he checked in with the security operators stationed around the chalet. Nothing to report, boss. Nothing to report.
Clouds hung low over the forested peaks below the chalet. Turning left, Kuldeep saw the receiver of the Arecibo Observatory hanging like a huge metal spider above the dish hidden behind the trees. They were here to try to work out what was happening on the moon. The squids had occupied CELL. They exchanged encrypted radio bursts almost daily with the Lightbringer. Quantum encryption. Let the remnants of the NSA tear their hair out over that. Of much more interest to Kuldeep—and everyone at Arecibo—had been the faint Ku-band signals from Skyler Taft.
Ten years ago, Skyler had replaced Kuldeep as Lance Garner’s partner in crime. Of course Kuldeep was curious about him. They’d never met, so all he had to go on was Skyler’s NXC dossier. It contained the fatal words SELF-ALIENATED. Burke—always ready to give ‘his’ astronauts the benefit of the doubt—had never stopped insisting that Skyler was one of the good guys. But the classification remained: SELF-ALIENATED. So they weren’t allowed to communicate with him. Even now, NXC security protocols were unbreakable. They just listened in while he wasted precious radio minutes trying to persuade his brother to go to the hospital. It had got to the point where the Arecibo team, caught up in the saga of Trekker Taft’s health, began to research cystic fibrosis treatments.
Killshot: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 4) Page 20