Jupiter Rising

by Zachary Brown

  “Yes,” I murmured. “I’m fine.”

  I tried to find the source of the hum but was only able to narrow it to the entirety of the urban center of New Jacksonville. I felt a click of recognition.

  “Guys,” I said. “What if the military aren’t the only ones interested in all that empty bandwidth?”

  Ken frowned and came closer. “I’m listening.”

  “Listen to this.” I removed my earphones and turned up the volume so they could both hear what I was hearing.

  Devlin nodded. “Doesn’t sound random.”

  “How long have you been hearing it?” Ken asked me.

  “I found it about thirty minutes ago, and I haven’t heard it stop yet—” I froze, mouth open, eyes twitching.

  “Amira!” Devlin shouted.

  “Be quiet! I’m comparing something. I have to be sure. . . . No. . . . This isn’t possible.”

  “What is it, Amira?” Ken asked, speaking calmly.

  “Ghost sign,” I said miserably. “There’s ghost sign transmitting out of New Jacksonville.”

  “Where?” Ken and Devlin spoke at the same time.

  “Everywhere,” I said. “All over.”

  Devlin started to pack up. “You think they’ve infiltrated the 507?”

  “Don’t know. I’m sure Hideo doesn’t know. I’ve got to tell him.”

  Ken put a hand on my shoulder and made me look him in the eye. “How are you going to tell him without also telling him what we’ve been doing?”

  I blinked and shook my head. “I’ll figure it out. We need to know for sure what’s going on in New Jacksonville. Devlin, how fast can you get us back without killing us?”

  “Plenty fast,” he said. “Buckle up.”

  + + + +

  I spent the entire ride back listening to the radio. The hum grew stronger as we approached the city center, but I couldn’t pinpoint a location. The volume and pitch began to fluctuate as we passed some buildings, but when Devlin brushed against a loose awning, the radio shrieked like a banshee.

  “Stop the jeep,” I shouted. I swung out of the back before he braked fully, and went to touch the awning. People stared at me; I nodded at them with my best eccentric-but-not-dangerous smile and they kept going. Except one.

  “Excuse me, miss,” I asked the young girl who continued to gawk at me. “Can I borrow your scarf for a moment?”

  She frowned at me. “Naw. It’s real expensive tech. Took me ages to save up for it.”

  “No problem. I don’t have to touch it. Could you just . . . trail a corner of it over this jeep?”

  She gave me a slightly scared, very wary look, but Devlin smiled winningly at her. Still wary, as if expecting a trick, she let the tip drag against the driver’s-side door. We all jumped back at the radio’s static scream. Ken hurried to turn the volume down.

  “Whoa,” she said, and did it again. “That’s wild.”

  “Thanks,” I said and jumped back into my seat. “Come on, guys. Let’s get back inside.”

  They knew enough not to ask me anything until we were behind the closed doors and safe shielding of our house arrest. “Well?” Ken said.

  “Every piece of woven tech, every stitch of fabric in this city is transmitting ghost sign.”

  “That’s . . . a lot,” Devlin said with stunned understatement.

  “I think it’s reading whatever’s being processed in the threads. The fabric acts as a transducer and vibrates to send out data at a frequency that can be picked up by a radio receiver at a distance.”

  “Can they do that to nano-ink tattoos?” Devlin said quickly.

  “No!” I replied instantly. It was a horrible thought, and I knew I was reacting emotionally. I made myself calm down and consider it for a little longer. “No. I’m not feeling any buzzing in my skin and I didn’t set the radio screamer off, so probably no.”

  Ken lowered his head, frowning in deep thought. “Devlin, I need your help. We’ve got to find out everything we can about this new ghost sign and package it in a message for the CPF. That means we have to figure out how to send something more complicated than SOS.”

  “And I’m going to pay Hideo a visit,” I said. They both looked at me, the same question in their eyes. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell him about the ghost sign but not the radio. Not until we can get our own message to base.”

  “Leave the jeep here,” Devlin said, and then he winked. “But return with another one if you can.”

  I grinned. “Will do, Captain.”

  12

  * * *

  JP met me at the entrance with Slate and two others—a woman and a man who were both taller and broader than me. They all formed up and politely escorted me into 507. “Consider the size of this welcoming party a measure of our respect and an acknowledgment that we have a way to go to earn each other’s trust,” JP said.

  “Noted,” I replied. “I have no hard feelings towards you, JP.”

  “And Hideo?” she asked.

  “Some things are more important than trust or hard feelings. I have something to tell Hideo, and I want you to hear it.” I turned to Slate. “You’re the top Comms and IT man, right? I’m going to need you there, too.”

  Slate’s eyes widened—curiosity, excitement, and something else. I wondered for a moment if he knew what I was going to say, but by then we were already at Hideo’s glass office. The two security personnel stationed themselves on either side of the door and the rest of us passed through.

  Hideo was already seated at the conference table. He gave me a rueful look as I seated myself opposite him. “I thought you still wanted to kill me.”

  “It can wait,” I said. “Something came up.”

  First I told them about the Ghosts. Everyone knew by now about the different types of Conglomerate alien, so I didn’t waste time. I only reminded them that Ghosts were the de facto rulers of the Conglomerate, and that they were masters of camouflage, never seen.

  They nodded. No surprises yet.

  Then I told them what I had learned firsthand during my time in the CPF, information that the Accordance was still suppressing. I told them that I had seen Ghosts, and they were indistinguishable from humans.

  Interest all around, but not shock. Hideo leaned forward with a slight smile on his face. His hands clasped together on the table, almost, but not quite, rubbing together in satisfaction. “We heard a few things after Titan . . . mutiny, strange behavior, imposters. Yes, do go on, Sergeant Singh.”

  Carefully removing any mention of radio, I explained to them about ghost sign. Slate grimaced almost impatiently as I covered what seemed to be old ground for him. I raced to my conclusion. “The Accordance has detectors to scan for ghost sign. I don’t need any detectors. I can sense it.”

  JP sat back and stared at me in dismay. In contrast, Hideo lit up with joy. “You understand! You confess it! I thought I would have to convince you, but this is more than I hoped for—”

  “What?” I interrupted quietly, dumbfounded at his reaction. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know why the aliens are dangerous, why we have to keep ourselves free of their technology and influence. You’ve experienced it firsthand.”

  “No . . . still confused here,” I admitted reluctantly. I glanced quickly at Slate—like JP, he had drawn back as if carefully removing himself from the discussion to come.

  Hideo took a deep breath, pressed the tips of his steepled fingers to his mouth for a brief moment, then focused intently on me. “How do you sense ghost sign, Sergeant Singh?”

  I tried to put it into words, but the best I could manage was a comparison. “It feels like when I’m near someone with military-grade nano-ink. There’s a little spillover, a little feedback, but with ghost sign, the patterns are . . . different. Foreign.”

  Hideo looked at his hands and began to speak in a low, steady tone. “As you may or may not already know, the Accordance military-grade nano-ink, with its higher resistance to radiation and biological a
ttack, is a bioink engineered from Arvani ink and synthesized Ghost neuromelanin.”

  He took a moment to look up and view my reaction—a slow blink. “Oh. You did not know that. Well. To continue. The few black market nano-inks which rival military-grade ink have been manufactured from squid ink and a blend of human and Ghost neuromelanin—actual Ghost neuromelanin, not synthesized. You are able to sense Ghosts because you are able to detect their neuromelanin, the original of a variant that you yourself possess.”

  I tried to keep my face blank. The idea that human techs and tat-artists had reverse-engineered military-grade nano-ink did not surprise me, but the substitution of real Ghost neuromelanin for the synthesized version was . . . disturbing, to say the least.

  Hideo continued to gaze at me, his face all concern. “Do you understand what I am saying, Amira? Do you understand why we keep our processing power in our threads and not in our skin?”

  Slate cleared his throat. I turned to him. He raised his arm and slid his sleeve back to show me his forearm and its thin, raised scars.

  “Safer to remove old ink,” he said. “Best to avoid ink at all, really. We’re still not sure about the long-term effects on human DNA.”

  “This . . . isn’t the conversation I was planning to have,” I said carefully. “But let me ask one thing. Is your aversion to alien ink moral, or aesthetic, or are you adding Earth First purity concerns to your—”

  “Amira,” Hideo cut me off, sounding a little sad.  “Remember how I forced you to recall what I wanted to know? Imagine the Ghosts being able to do that. Why should we use a technology that they know far better than us? How can we possibly shield ourselves from mental invasion, or worse?”

  Slate cleared his throat again. “Have you ever had hallucinations so real, it felt like you’d gone back in time?”

  I frowned at him. “That’s just ordinary overload from too much input and too little sleep.”

  He pulled his sleeve down. “Yes, with ordinary overload you get a glimpse, perhaps a full flashback. But when you wake up and you can’t remember how many days have passed . . .” He fell silent, stared into space, and rubbed his face tiredly with both hands.

  JP continued for him. “And when you wake up, you’re not thinking straight.”

  I could feel my calm mask start to slip. I’d always wondered how that one Ghost I’d killed had been able to convince so many humans to mutiny against the Accordance. “Okay, pause a moment. I came here to tell you that I’m sensing strong ghost sign in New Jacksonville. You’re saying you already know?”

  “Ghost sign? Here?” JP shook her head. “Impossible.”

  I was taken aback. “Why impossible? Slate said—”

  “That was a long time ago, in another place,” Slate clarified. “JP’s right. It’s impossible. We scan for Ghost neuromelanin. Nano-ink isn’t very popular here, and the few who have tats stick to the standard inks with no trace of alien additives.”

  Hideo was watching us talk, his hands still, his gaze shifting from face to face.

  “There’s another way for bootleg military-grade ink to be made safe but still functional,” JP told me. “Remove the tattoo intact, get a skin graft, set up the tat in a biotech frame. That’s allowed.”

  I remembered Russo, but more than that, I remembered the tattoo artist and the framed patch of skin he’d been tending. I now wondered whether the gang had been called to remove my tattoos for me before I became a liability.

  Hideo spoke up at last. “In fact, Amira, you are our greatest risk right now, but here you sit, in the heart of our stronghold. We know ghost sign well enough to protect ourselves. You are safe here.”

  “No,” I insisted. “You said it yourself: their technology is beyond us. I know I’m picking up that pattern. A Ghost doesn’t have to be physically present to spy on you.”

  Slate gave a smile of pride. “The New Jacksonville networks are almost spyproof. Have you had any luck breaking in, Sergeant Singh?”

  “I have not,” I replied soberly. “The units of the network are small, the connections are fleeting, and the encoding is as personal as the fingerprints of a million people. I would need to find a way to get each unit to transmit its data directly to me, use a huge amount of processing power to decode and analyze each transmission, and reassemble the mosaic from the fragments. It is completely beyond me.”

  I stood up, leaned over, and delivered my best, most dramatic last word. “I do not think it is beyond the Conglomeration.”

  I walked to the door.

  “Wait, Amira,” JP said softly.

  I hesitated.

  “Hideo, whether Amira is right or wrong, we need to pay attention . . . especially now.”

  Silence. I looked back over my shoulder. Hideo was looking at his hands again, pressing and rubbing his fingertips.

  “You know I’ve run the scenarios,” he said to JP almost petulantly.

  “You’ve run scenarios with the known data. You’ve always said to watch out for the unknown.”

  “JP, your goal is to ensure the safety of 507. I understand that, but you know my priorities go beyond any single Ship. I think it’s time. I am handing over command to you forthwith so we can concentrate on our key responsibilities. I only ask that you keep our three heroes under guard for a little longer.”

  JP gave me a quick, slightly troubled glance, but she replied immediately and with firm resolve. “I can do that.”

  Hideo also glanced at me then continued to speak to JP. “I hope that Amira may find it easier to consider returning to the Ships if I am gone. Captain Hart is less likely to join, but he may become a useful ally like your friend Jasen. Do as you see fit.”

  My honor guard assembled and walked me out. I wondered whether that performance of public transfer of power had been a trick to gain my sympathy and trust, or to distract me from the fact that my ghost sign warning would not be treated with any particular urgency.

  JP offered to drive me back. I suspected she wanted to talk to me privately, but instead of indulging my curiosity, I remembered Devlin and asked instead to borrow another jeep. Besides, I needed to think. I needed to talk to Ken and Devlin before deciding what to do, and I didn’t want JP to ask me about loyalties before then.

  I settled myself in the jeep. Slate walked away from his colleagues and came to my window. “Listen to me. We’re not purity fanatics. This isn’t just ideology. You need to get rid of your non-standard tats as soon as possible.”

  “Look, Slate—”

  “I’m serious. What I said, about DNA changes? I’m the walking proof. Scan me and I register as part Ghost.”

  I tried to shake my head at that, but he took hold of my shoulder and stared me down. “So do you, Sergeant Singh. I tested you myself when Hideo had you restrained.”

  I shrugged his hand away and drew back, angry at the reminder of what I’d been put through, and extremely discomfited at the idea that the enemy was living in me, part of me, like an old sci-fi horror.

  “Years ago, I was part of an astromining crew. Our rig was found drifting . . . and me in the only functioning lifepod. Thought it was my fault . . . couldn’t figure out how. Now I know.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened to you, Slate.” It was sympathy and warning together. I refused to discuss it further.

  He nodded in acceptance of both sentiments. “Call me Michael.” His small, shy smile turned abruptly to more of a bitter rictus. “We’re practically kin, after all.”

  + + + +

  I returned to find the house quiet. Not silent—I could hear both Ken’s voice and Devlin’s—but the volume was strangely subdued, and the sequence of speech respectfully paced, unlike their usual stepping on each other’s heels, overlapping and interrupting.

  When I got up the stairs, I understood why. The concierge was back for another visit. She was settled comfortably in an armchair with a steaming mug on the side table. Devlin sat opposite her on the couch with his elbows tucked in and his knees pressed
together as he held his own mug with an effort at good deportment. Ken leaned hands-free against the windowsill, his face and frame relaxed but wary as he watched his dangerous guest. We exchanged a quick look—What is this? I have no clue.

  “More mail for me?” I asked her sarcastically.

  She absorbed my animosity without reaction, looking up at me with that gentle, pale-blue gaze framed by light-gray, wispy hair. Nothing else about her was soft. Her face was thin-featured Anglo-Indian, and she was aging to bones and whipcord instead of matronly plumpness. I realized I disliked her as much as I disliked Hideo, and for the same reason. She was cool and arrogant and she had bested me because I’d underestimated her.

  “I was just having a chat with Devlin here. I knew his parents quite well, but I’m not surprised he doesn’t remember me. Peaceful protest did not suit me, so I left very soon. I should have waited a little longer. Now I hear they’re at one of the Earth First camps. I wonder if their pacifism survived.”

  “Were you ever in a Ship?” I asked directly.

  “No. I didn’t understand their methods—no protests, no counterattacks, just slow, careful organization.”

  “My guess is that you joined Earth First,” Ken said.

  She smiled brightly at him. “Before it was cool! Yes, I was one of the first terrorists. I wasn’t a James Bond type with guns and suits, but it’s amazing how far an old lady can get with a cardigan and a cup of tea.”

  I emitted a sharp, bitter “ha!” She dipped her head modestly to half-hide an expression of pride.

  “Why are you here, ma’am? Talking to us, I mean,” Ken asked politely.

  She sighed and grew serious. “I think Hideo made a mistake bringing you two here, no matter how much he wanted to get his hands on power armor. I want to be sure we don’t end up at cross-purposes. You may have discovered that there’s an important shipment heading to New York tomorrow night. I want you to leave it alone.”