by M. D. Cooper
As she surged through their networks, she realized that Heartbridge had provided her with these access codes. What had they been planning?
To demonstrate she had control of the massive Mars Protectorate ships, she broadcast their engine status data across her link to Fred.
Lyssa considered the question.
It felt good to say ‘my ship’ and to think of the people on board as hers. It wasn’t ownership so much as giving herself permission to care. Like the leap to bigger systems, the sensation opened oceans in her she hadn’t felt before. She even felt concern for Tim’s puppy, Em.
he said petulantly.
Through Fran’s console, she registered the new status. They were clear to depart M1R space. A hundred other reports flitted through the system calling her drone attack a system malfunction.
Lyssa shifted to the shuttle, where Petral was now sitting on one of the benches lining the shuttle’s cargo area, wearing shackles at her ankles and wrists. The sight of the restraints filled Lyssa with dread but Petral looked resigned. She sat with her shoulders level, back straight, and a slight smile on her face, as if events were playing out exactly as she had planned.
Petral refused the connection, her mind closed behind security tokens Lyssa didn’t have time to examine.
Lyssa allowed herself a small feeling of relief, before shifting her thoughts to everything that lay ahead, Andy’s condition, and Petral, and did her best not to start shaking like Tim having a meltdown.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
STELLAR DATE: 09.19.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Visitor Terminal, Insi Ring
REGION: Ceres, Anderson Collective, InnerSol
Brit turned to leave the hamster shop with Fugia just as Rina entered the store. The moment Rina spotted Fugia Wong, her movements grew stiff before she visibly calmed herself and framed a pleasant expression on her face.
“Rina,” Brit said. “You’re just in time. We found a local who wants to take us to a local restaurant.”
“A local restaurant?” Rina said. “That sounds interesting.”
Chafri frowned, not understanding the change in tone. “Why are you talking so weird?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Rina said. “Who’s our new friend, Brit?”
“I’m Fugia Wong,” the short woman said, stepping forward to extend a hand.
Rina nodded.
Brit watched them closely. It was obvious to her that Rina knew Fugia; meeting this woman was obviously why Rina had wanted to come to Ceres. The situation stripped Rina Smith of her usual disdain. She was deeply anxious. Seeing her this way made Brit like her a bit more, as various questions she’d harbored about Rina’s behavior fell into place. She had been hiding something from the start. Now the question was what she was hiding.
Brit also considered that Rina had asked her to come along, knowing Brit would meet her contact. Curious.
“You really should get one of these,” Wong said, holding up one of the robot hamsters in front of Chafri. You wear it on your shoulder as a signal. You’re here for a good time.”
The blonde man pulled his head back. “What kind of good time?”
“Whatever young men are looking for these days, I suppose. When I was your age it was gambling and drugs. What do young people like these days?” Her grin was feral and Chafri fell for it with naive aplomb.
“I like normal things,” he said.
Fugia walked to the counter and nodded to the clerk, who perked up as she arrived. She handed the woman a coin and carried the hamster she’d selected to Chafri, setting it on his shoulder like pinning on a flower. The hamster gripped Chafri’s shipsuit and automatically nuzzled his neck. Chafri laughed.
“Follow me, please,” Wong said. She led them out of the shop and back into the main terminal concourse. Glancing around, Brit spotted even fewer foreigners than when they had arrived. A single soldier yawned near a column, his rifle hung loosely across his back.
They walked away from the maglevs into a section of open food courts full of empty tables. Concierges waited with folded towels over their hands, showing the same vacant expressions as the shop-clerks.
“Why does everyone look so…blank?” Brit asked.
“It’s a state program called ‘Constant Joy’,” Wong explained. “It’s a kind of meditation. You stand with the smile on your face and move through a series of mental exercises taking you back to your most pleasant memory and then forward to the present moment. Then you think of all the sad people in the rest of Sol and count your many blessings to be a member of the Collective.” She chuckled. “And if you don’t learn to meditate, you learn to terraform on the surface, which isn’t nearly as pleasant.”
“Is it true the Collective doesn’t use AI?”
Brit was surprised to see Rina shooting her an anxious glance, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling as if they needed to be concerned about surveillance.
“The Collective believes deeply in the dignity of human labor,” Wong replied without emotion.
As they left the terminal area, the floors continued to be spotless but lost their high-sheen as marble gave way to dull grey plas. The corridor seemed to stretch endlessly into the distance as if it encircled the entire Ring, taking on the character of a bureaucratic waiting area. Brit started to wonder if it was some trick of design.
Rather than continue following the empty corridor, Wong turned to a set of utility doors and passed a security token in front of a nondescript section of the door where a scanner must have been hidden. The door opened enough for her to grab its edge and pull it wide. She waved them inside.
After a short hallway, they arrived at a cargo lift. Wong led them into the car but didn�
�t close the doors.
“So you know,” she said, “I’m going to use a local jamming field on your Links. Not that you could connect to anything, anyway, but if you try to Link, you’ll be tracked.”
“You can jam a Link?” Chafri asked.
“Of course you can,” Wong snapped. “It’s a signal. Signals can be stopped. What do you do for a living again?”
“I’m an engine tech.”
“I’m concerned about your ship.”
“Oh.”
When Chafri’s face fell, Wong patted him on the arm. “Don’t be so sad,” she said. “I’m mean to everyone.”
She turned to tap a code into the control panel. The doors slid closed and the car dropped for what felt like five minutes.
“Visitors only see the outermost section of the Ring, of course,” Wong said. “We’re not going that deep but it’s a place where only those with visa’s get to visit. In the wild event that we become separated—which I’m not going to allow to happen—don’t try to sneak around. Go straight to someone official looking, beg their help, tell them you’re lost and trying to get back to the visitor section. You’ll be detained and interrogated but that’s better than getting caught. They won’t even give you the benefit of the doubt then. Are any of you carrying weapons? You shouldn’t be.”
Chafri and Rina shook their heads emphatically. When Wong looked at Brit, she inclined her head. “I have some knives,” she said.
“Obviously they didn’t show up on the scanners. Don’t tell anyone about them unless you’re forced to use them.”
“Where are you taking us?” Brit asked. “I thought we were getting something to eat.”
“You’ll have time to eat later. We’re going to a safe house.”
The lift doors opened on a dimly lit corridor. Brit spotted dust along the edges of the deck and spider webs in the corners outside the lift—it was a relief to see something resembling a normal station.
Wong poked her head into the corridor and looked each direction for several seconds, listening. She hushed Chafri when he asked what she was doing.
“All right,” she said. “Follow me.”
She led them down another series of corridors, then through a residential area that might have been a rural village back on Terra. Chickens sat in wire-mesh cages next to doorways, clucking at them as they walked by. Laundry lines hung across the corridor, forcing them to duck under rows of the same well-worn shirts and pants. An ancient woman sat on a small bench in front of a closed door, nodding at them as they walked past. Brit reached up to brush her fingers across the shiny green leaves of a vine running among the utility lines on the ceiling.
“These are my favorite places,” Wong said. “Reminds me of Cruithne.”
“You grew up there?” Brit asked.
“Yes, I did. And I couldn’t wait to get away until I discovered a lot of Sol is worse.”
Two kids chased each other around a corner, skidding to a halt and staring with wide eyes when they caught sight of the group.
“Go on,” Wong said, waving a hand at them. “Keep on causing trouble.”
In the middle of the housing block, Wong unlocked a utility room and led them into a dank area full of plumbing and electrical infrastructure, lit only by a few small LED lights along the ceiling.
“Are those eyes glowing out there?” Chafri asked, pointing down a crevice between two walls.
“Probably,” Wong said. “Where do you think the robot hamsters came from? Everything on the surface of the Collective is an artificial reflection of something real. This place is crawling with rats.”
They reached another lift—this one barely an alloy cage—which took them further down. Brit felt the gravity shift in her stomach. They had to be getting close to the outside surface side of the Ring. Everything around them looked ancient now, stained by time and pressure. The cage stopped at a wire bridge which ran across a wide series of power conduits. The air was heavy with static electricity. In front of Brit, Rina’s hair rose at the tips.
Wong didn’t hesitate. They cross the accessway and went deeper into a series of narrow corridors that turned at right angles. After climbing short ladders or dropping into lower tunnels, Brit swore they were passing over places they had just been. The world creaked and complained above and below them, gusts of oily air blowing across their faces in from time to time.
Finally, they arrived at a dusty door marked with a high-voltage warning sign. Fugia Wong didn’t hesitate as she reached for the heavy latch and pulled the door open. It didn’t appear to have been locked.
Rina and Chafri walked into the small room on the other side but Brit hesitated.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“We get all the way here and then you ask?” Wong said, smirking at her. “I’ll explain once we’re inside.” She made a shooing motion. “Inside, please. We’ll be shielded in there.”
Brit ducked through the opening and turned to watch as Wong followed her, pulling the door closed and locking it with a similar latch on the inside.
The room was full of ancient-looking control panels. Many were dark, while others metered what appeared to be electricity and radiant energy flows through the system. A locker on one side of the space hung open to show an old coverall and a coffee cup on a shelf. The place had the feeling of having been locked away and forgotten for a thousand years—or at least several hundred.
Wong pulled a terminal from her pocket and tapped furiously on its surface. When it appeared to give her the response she wanted, she looked up with a smile.
she said.
Brit nodded along with the others.
Brit didn’t usually think of the absence of a Link connection as silence. Even without the Link her mind was a constant flow of thoughts and background noise. But as soon as Fugia Wong said the name ‘Sylvia’, a vast space seemed to open around her mind, making her feel like a tiny speck in an ocean. She hung suspended among millions of other motes, dangling over depths that would crush her if she sank any lower, with a brightness overhead that would burn her away if she rose. She felt vulnerable in a way she never had before, as if her mind were unprotected.
A voice came from both above and below, embracing her even as it reminded her of its vastness; a leviathan.
If Fugia hadn’t introduced the AI with a woman’s name, Brit didn’t know that she would have immediately heard the voice as female, but as the greeting vibrated away, she did seem to recognize something maternal in it, a sense that it cared.
Brit blinked under the power of the voice, tears at the edges of her eyes. Rina’s face was filled with rapture, like she was having some kind of religious experience. Chafri had taken the hamster off his shoulder to hold it cupped in front of him like he needed to protect it.
Fugia Wong said. She looked at the blond man.
Chafri froze with the hamster in his hands. he said.
Brit said.
“What do they need to do?> Brit asked.
It was Rina who answered. she said.
Brit frowned.
Brit wasn’t sure she liked this fanatical version of Rina any better than the old dour version.
Wong gave her a sly smile.
Brit said.
Brit crossed her arms and cocked her head to the side.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
STELLAR DATE: 09.14.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Mars 1 Ring, Mars Protectorate, InnerSol
Lyssa monitored the outputs from the autodoc as it analyzed Andy’s body and injected him with a chemical cocktail that would stabilize his brain function and, hopefully, bring him out of his unconscious state.
Through the autodoc’s optical sensors, she was able to observe Cara, Fran and Tim as they waited in the small room. Tim struggled to keep the puppy entertained.
“I think he has to pee again,” Tim said.
Fran glanced at him but didn’t answer. Cara wiped her eyes and sniffled.
“Cara,” Tim complained. “Dad would want one of us to take care of Em.”
“That ‘one of us’ is you,” Cara said. “Take him somewhere where he can pee, then.”
“I don’t have the special box.”
“What are you talking about?” Cara asked.
“At the store, the man said there was a special box where Em could pee and poop and it would recycle all of it.”