“I’m not hungry,” ze lied.
“I salute your boldness, but if you think you’re going to negotiate your way out of this tunnel–”
“I’m not interested in negotiating anything with you,” Benexx interrupted.
“Then what are you interested in?”
Benexx savored the terror on Sula’s face, ze even managed a smirk.
“This.” Ze pulled the trigger, and the world went white with light and noise.
Twenty-Nine
Icons filled the map room like a swarm of colorful, two-dimensional insects. Jian’s head had been spinning for the last hour, trying to make sense of layer after layer of the raw data. For the first full day he’d spent on this rogue mission, his greatest concern was not being able to glean enough information from the facility’s sensor nets.
But then he’d made the language breakthrough. The facility’s AI systems were devilishly clever and picked up on Jian’s linguistic inputs incredibly fast. Now, the data came so fast and furiously, it was like trying to stay seated, on a barstool, on top of a geyser.
The scope, breadth, and resolution of the available data was simply mindboggling. Jian scarcely knew where to begin looking. At least twenty different filters stacked one on top of the other, bristling with information. Jian could look up the barometric pressure, wind speed direction, temperature, humidity, and particulate density at any given altitude above Shambhala. A cargo jet making the trip between Shambhala and G’tel cropped up as an anomalous atmospheric disturbance. Jian tagged it, marked the anomaly as an “airplane,” and moved on.
Moving to the water, he could sound off on ocean currents, acidity, salinity, oxygen levels, plankton blooms, even crop fish migration patterns. But there was a big difference between tracking schools of hundreds of millions of fish, and identifying and pinpointing a single individual Atlantian. Staring at the flood of information in front of him, Jian was certain the facility possessed the resolution and sensitivity necessary to find Benexx. And he was just as certain he had no idea how to begin to ask it to.
Instead, Jian had spent the last couple of hours clearing the board of things he figured weren’t of use. The layer monitoring ozone thickness and opacity to solar radiation probably wasn’t going to be of any help finding Benexx, so down it came. The layer tracking planetwide precipitation and lightning activity was similarly fascinating but useless, so he swept it away. Not that meteorologists and agricultural planners down in Shambhala wouldn’t absolutely salivate at the chance to tap into the feed, but for Jian right then, it was a distraction.
Next layer. Trails of dots of various sizes and crimson fading to light yellow reached across the map of Gaia like rivers, but they weren’t rivers. Many of them extended straight through the oceans. Volcanic activity? No, more than that. Something from primary school planetology popped out of Jian’s longterm memory. These were tectonic plate outlines. There were too many dots to be active volcanoes, of which Gaia’s five-plus-billion year-old crust held few.
“Earthquakes,” Jian said to the room at large. Yes, it made sense. This layer represented seismic activity. A small knot of dots near Shambhala caught Jian’s attention, all tiny and yellow. Jian wasn’t sure, but he guessed the size of the dot was proportional to the intensity of the seismic event. The color coding, though… duration? Time elapsed since the event?
He zoomed in on the map until Shambhala and its surrounding area of influence took up most of the wall. There were seven clusters of hits surrounding Shambhala out to about thirty-five kilometers, if Jian was judging the scale properly, as well as a single mystery dot in the heart of Shambhala itself. But there were no volcanoes so close to the city, and the clusters were a long way from the nearest faultline. Jian pulled up a map of the area from his plant memory for reference and immediately resolved the mystery. The clusters overlapped precisely with the various mining operations humans had set up on the continent.
The facility’s sensors, whatever and wherever the hell they were, were sensitive enough to pick up the seismic signature of excavation explosions. Which also answered the question of the dot pinned in the center of Shambhala. The facility had recorded the terrorist attack on the First Contact Day parade that had set off the series of events that brought Jian here.
The mystery solved, Jian moved a hand to dismiss the layer as he had a half dozen others, but something nagged at him. Uncertain of where the feeling was coming from or why, but also unwilling to ignore it, Jian left the seismic layer in place and moved on to the next. It was… a soil erosion rate map? Yeah, no. Jian canned it as super-useful for someone, worthless to him. Next layer. Freshwater evaporation and atmospheric uptake rates? Seriously? Gods, these people were thorough. Canned, next layer. Er, something about the northern ice cap. Closed.
Jian kept up the pace, unceremoniously retaining or dropping layer after layer as quickly as he could ascertain whatever dataset they represented and determine its utility to his current dilemma. An alert chimed, signaling a sudden change in the map, at least as judged by whatever programing oversaw the facility’s projection. It wasn’t the first alert that had popped up since he’d been down here. The last one had been for a nascent hurricane developing deep at sea that might give Atlantis some trouble in ten days or so if the prevailing winds held their current bearings. Not pertinent to Jian’s search.
Still…
Jian toggled the alert icon and the map zoomed to the area of interest just a little too fast, overwhelming Jian’s sense of scale and speed, leaving him, a pilot with hundreds of hours both in simulators and in real cockpits, feeling just a touch of vertigo. The map display was just that good.
Jian averted his eyes until the map settled and instead looked down at Polly, who had been unobtrusively watching him the entire time. Jian reached out a hand and scratched the strange little insect under his, um, chin. The affection was met with an appreciative trill.
Jian’s eyes returned to the plot in front of him, and were surprised to see Shambhala in the frame, albeit to the south. The alert had originated to the north, a handful of klicks outside of what his internal map said should be the furthest reach of human settlements or activity. There were scouting camps that far out, of course, surveying for the next wave of development. But they usually stuck closer to the river. The alert came from the seismic layer. A new small, yet bright red dot had appeared. A quick comparison confirmed that it was in the same size range as the events in the various mines, except the closest mine was kilometers away. There was no reason for an excavation charge to be going off in the middle of the wilderness.
Jian considered the plot for a long moment. Long enough to notice the color of the dot shift subtly away from pure red into a reddish orange. So, the color scale was a measure of time after all. This event had just happened, and he’d been alerted to it in real time. But what the hell was it? And why was it in a remote part of undeveloped forest?
The answer struck Jian like the bombblast the dot represented. The dot in the center of Shambhala and this dot were the same thing: a terrorist’s bomb going off. Except the detonation in Shambhala had been a deliberate attack.
This wasn’t. Something had gone wrong and a device had gone off prematurely, or while it was being assembled. Whatever, the reason didn’t matter. What mattered was Jian had just discovered the location of the terrorists’ camp, or their bomb factory at the very least. It wasn’t as good as finding Benexx, but it was damned good. Jian thrust a triumphant finger at the alert icon and danced in his chair.
“Got you, motherfuckers! I’ve fucking got you!”
Jian’s jubilation lasted right up until he realized that for his discovery to mean anything, he had to share it with someone.
“Right!” He jumped out of the chair at the center of the map room and scrambled towards the pile of his expeditionary suit. Polly, ever the eager accomplice, trotted along behind him and stood watch while Jian wriggled into the suit as quickly as he could. Even running on caffeine an
d adrenaline, it took Jian almost twenty minutes to don the Godforsaken thing, and another ten to run all the suit integrity tests for what was going to be not even a ten-minute walk back to the Buran before the suit’s software safety protocols would even let the O2 start flowing.
For not the first time, Jian cursed the overly-cautious eggheads who’d been in charge of designing these suits, more concerned with covering their own asses than building a system that could be put into use in the shortest time possible. If your shuttle was coming apart around you, the last thing you were worried about was triple-checking the solid waste recapture system.
After an interminable period of time, the assholes who’d programed Jian’s suit finally gave their disembodied approval as his board went green and the oxygen started to flow. Jian closed the face of his visor as he leaned back into the black nanite muck of the facility’s airlock like a scuba-diver plunging backwards into a Lovecraftian ocean.
Moments later, he and Polly emerged back in the caved-in chamber that had first revealed the facility’s entrance to Jian’s expedition not even a full week ago. Those five days felt like a lifetime. So much had changed. So much lost. And in Jian’s case, willingly sacrificed. For his friends, both dead and living. At least he hoped ze was still living.
His most immediate concern, however, was getting the hell out of this hole. One of the ropes they’d tied off to the broken harvester and used to extricate themselves the last time sat coiled and forgotten in a corner of the cavern. The hole back up to the surface still looked too far to jump, even in the weak gravity, but Jian didn’t figure he had anything to lose in the attempt.
To give himself the best chance, Jian scrambled up to the tallest point of the rubble pile left over from the cave-in; a hulking monolith of rock that looked like it had been strategically placed there by Kubrick’s production team. The same one that had almost killed him on the way down here the second time. Jian wasn’t sure if that was a metaphor for anything. He hadn’t been the best student of literature.
Jian looked up at the hole in the roof and visualized landing just past the lip. Ninety percent of achieving anything was simply believing it was possible. At least that had been the bullshit he’d been fed growing up. In the zero gee he’d grown up with onboard the Ark, the leap would have been assured success. At the bottom of Gaia’s gravity well, he wouldn’t be able to clear a full meter of vertical. But here in the three percent gee of Varr’s gravity, he had no idea what to expect.
A leap of faith, then. Not like it would be his first. Jian swallowed hard and crouched down for the attempt, pumping his leg muscles like he would in the gym before a particularly heavy lift. Then he leapt for all he was worth. In such low gravity, it felt more like pushing off from a wall in the Ark. The sensation of his momentum slowing was so slight as to almost be imperceptible to his inner ears. But his eyes could spot the loss even as he ascended through the cavern to superhuman heights. As the lip approached, he slowed to a crawl, until he came to a relative stop three short meters shy of the top. He seemingly hovered there for a long moment, like a famous coyote just after stepping away from the cliff, before he started to fall back to the floor. Jian reached out and tried to get a handhold, but the ice was too smooth and offered nothing to grip.
Jian had quite a bit of time to dwell on falling short as he slowly fell back to the floor. After coming so close, he was sorely tempted to make another attempt. Maybe if he stacked a couple of extra meters of rocks to launch from. No, there wasn’t enough gravity to keep them stable.
Jian’s gaze settled lazily on the coil of rope they’d carelessly dropped at the conclusion of the last mission. It was useless, of course. With no one to throw it up to, and nothing to anchor it to… unless he tied it off to something heavy that could, no, that was stupid. Anything he tied it to would need to be at least as massive as Jian himself for him to have any chance to pull himself up, and if he couldn’t leap his body weight out of this hole, he sure as shit wasn’t throwing his bodyweight out.
If only he had a grappling hook, or some bit of equipment or debris that could be modified to fit the task. Polly seemed to sense his frustration and appeared on top of the rock next to Jian’s face. He turned his little three-eyed head quizzically, like a kitten. A jet black, six-legged kitten with ice picks for feet. Jian understood why everyone else had taken an immediate dislike and distrust to the drone. Its bodyplan tripped way too many instinctual prejudices against insects, spiders, and swarms of glossy black things in general. The fact was Polly looked like what a kid might draw if you asked them to draw a scary spider monster, and he…
Jian craned his own head. “You look like a grappling hook.”
Polly looked on curiously, unable to hear Jian’s words through the vacuum, but attentive nonetheless. Jian thought through the idea. Polly was tiny, but in this gravity, Jian’s effective weight, even with the suit, was low, probably no more than six kilos or so. Another kilo for the weight of the rope… yes, it was feasible. Now he just needed to get Polly to understand what he wanted.
Jian bounced over to the coiled rope and dug through it until he found an end, then waved at Polly to join him. The drone scurried across the floor in a hurry until he sat perched on Jian’s knee.
“OK, little bugger. Let’s see how clever you really are.” Jian began the demonstration of the plan with exaggerated hand gestures, pointing at Polly, then imitating his limbs with fingers bent into hooks. Then he placed the rope in his palm and pretended to crawl up the wall with it before leveling off at the top and clamping down. Then Jian pointed at himself and made a rope-climbing motion with his hands. The demonstration concluded, Jian leaned back against the ice wall and waited.
Polly looked at him, then at the end of rope, then at the wall. His survey complete, he looked back at Jian and winked a green eye, then reached out and grabbed the end of the rope and sort of… absorbed it. The rope sank into Polly’s abdomen like it was being swallowed by tar. As soon as the process was complete, Polly jumped off Jian’s leg and sprinted up the icy wall like a scalded cat, the rope undulating behind him like a tail.
Jian shook his head in disbelief. “Really clever, is the answer.”
Ten minutes later, they were both safely back inside the Buran. But Jian faced a new problem. The com equipment he needed to spread word of his discovery doubled as a backdoor Flight on the Ark could use to steal c c control of the shuttle and drag him back to his father and his judgment.
His only chance was the coms whisker laser which couldn’t be hacked or intercepted by anyone but the intended target, in this case, a receiving station in Shambhala. From there, he could log into the local web and connect with anyone through the plant network.
There was one problem; the whisker laser on the Buran was designed for use at distances of geo-synch and below. Varr’s position relative to the surface of Gaia was currently an order of magnitude greater than that.
Jian checked the clock. Gaia’s rotation had brought the Shambhala receiver into range three hours ago. That meant he had another two and a half hours to find enough power to increase the laser’s output tenfold, without blowing it up, before the relative angle between his emitter and the city became too obtuse to maintain a connection.
No pressure.
Jian lambasted himself for not thinking this phase of the mission through earlier. He’d had a day and a half during the trip over here to make and test the necessary modifications. Why the hell hadn’t he?
Because you didn’t actually believe you’d get this far, an angry, judgmental part of his psyche answered. You came out here to run away, not to save anyone. That was just your excuse.
“Fuck off,” Jian said to, well, himself. He’d never felt so alone, so isolated. It was starting to play tricks on his consciousness. He floated over to the com station and pulled up the whisker laser interface on the physical panel. He could do it all through his plant, of course, but he wanted tactile contact. Jian enjoyed punching the buttons himse
lf.
The com laser emitter was stowed away in the shuttle’s cargo bay. The sensitive optics needed protection from the intense heat and pressures of atmospheric reentry. With the omnidirectional UHF radio being the shuttle’s main communication’s system, the whisker laser was a redundancy, and afterthought. Using it meant depressurizing the cargo compartment, opening the first leaf of outer doors, and extending the emitter on the shuttle’s multi-axis boom.
The cycle took seven painful minutes to complete. Time Jian spent shutting down non-critical systems to free up power for the connection attempt.
[WHISKER COM SYSTEM ONLINE.]
“Oh thank Cuut,” Jian announced to the heavens. Before he got really crazy, Jian decided to run the laser at normal power, on the outside chance the engineers who’d built it had wildly understated its true capabilities. Wouldn’t be the first time they’d held a little somethin’ somethin’ in reserve for a rainy day.
[CONNECTION FAILURE. INSUFFICIENT SIGNAL STRENGTH.]
Well, that answered that.
Jian moved over to one of the fuse and bus panels and consulted a series of wiring diagrams to make sure he wasn’t about to turn off his air supply. He rerouted power from the navigation system – which wasn’t doing anything of use at the moment – the collision avoidance radar, the cargo bay heaters, and the UHF radio system he’d already sabotaged and dumped it all into the whisker laser, quadrupling its output. An act that in and of itself required Jian to spend another twenty minutes overriding half a dozen safety protocols.
[CONNECTION FAILURE. INSUFFICIENT SIGNAL STRENGTH.]
“Shit…” Jian took a deep breath. There was more power to cut, of course, but then the question was how many more attempts the laser could take before it threw in the towel?
One way to find out. Jian went back to the fuse box and shut down the cryo tank fans, the thruster banks, Navigation lights, put the main computer itself into standby, then killed main cabin life support. It would take the flight deck a couple of hours to cool off to the point he’d have to worry about hypothermia, and with only him breathing the air, he’d freeze long before he ran out of O2 anyway. Worse came to worst, he could always crawl back into his long-endurance suit.
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