by Ginger Booth
Dot shook her head. “Thrive picked him up in less than half an hour. No worries. He’s just sleeping off the painkillers.”
Cope nodded thoughtfully. “I wanted to ask – did you collect Sass and Clay’s nanites? From Loki’s ship. Beagle, was it?”
“I did. The guys filled a wet vacuum mopping up the blood. I isolated the nanites out of the solution. Kept a vial for study. The rest I injected into the bodies. Nanites degrade outside their proper environment. I imagine most of them were already ruined.”
“Nanites from both of them? Into both bodies?” Cope frowned. What if she’d inserted the Clay’s controller into Sass, and vice versa? “When was this?”
“Yesterday. Maybe 15 hours after their…deaths.”
“And you’ve kept checking for life signs?”
“Why would I?” She brought up the cryo status display on the med-bay monitor and tapped it. “See? Dead.”
Cope harbored doubts on that score. “I imagine that checks for life signs. No heartbeat, no breathing, no one’s alive.”
Sass’s new crew had never watched Sass or Clay return from the dead. Cope made a mental note to check their assumptions. On the way to Denali, Clay was bashed bloody and exposed to space vacuum, hard frozen. Sass put him to bed and wouldn’t let anyone take the body away. In a few days, he completely recovered. With less severe tissue damage, the pair could revive in under an hour. But from the sounds of things, Shiva’s robots hacked them to pieces, repeatedly. And most of their nanites were destroyed. It stood to reason fixing that could take a while.
He rapped the counter and took his leave, to visit the ship’s office. He still worried about Sass’s predicament. His heart ached at the idea of finding herself as an AI, a computer program adrift within a vast and cruel intelligence. He got it. She didn’t want to exist like that. Her state wasn’t living, merely undead.
“Hey, Abel!” he greeted his longtime business partner, house-mate, and usually cordial rival. “How’s the captain’s chair feel?”
Abel stretched legs and arms straight like a board. “Got a mite interesting today,” he allowed. Judging from his slow smug smile, he felt he’d met the challenge well.
In Cope’s view, Ben was the one issuing orders.
He nodded and slung a hip on the desk, as he once did with Sass. “Underway, I take Ben for granted. Then it hits the fan, and I freeze, terrified. While he’s dead calm. Reminds everyone to do their jobs, makes snap decisions, issues orders, reassures the crew. Impressed as hell.”
Abel relaxed his stretch back to sitting. His eyes continued to smile. “But that’s not why you’re here.”
“No. I want to talk to Sass.”
Abel nodded sympathetically. “Don’t we all.”
Cope took the time to explain how she wasn’t gone. He was still telling his tale when Abel opened a channel to Loki in sudden decision. “The rego answering machine in pink turned into this guy with the fright mask. You knew about that?” He hadn’t connected yet. The channel displayed a freeze-frame of Loki’s visage.
“Yeah. Hadn’t seen him before, though. That’s creepy, huh? Sass and the boys fueled Loki’s takeover. You heard Sass and Clay died trying to visit Loki? He’s that guy. Except he was never a guy, only an AI clone of Shiva. The real Loki was a survey ship captain, a wildcatter searching for a better planet farther from Earth. Died years ago.”
Abel dropped his head in dismay. “We need a full briefing. OK, here goes. Hey, Loki! I hear you have a digital copy of Sass Collier. Any chance we could talk to her?”
Cope slipped around into the pickup.
“Aw, sorry as hell, Abel,” Loki responded. “She’s gone. Didn’t want to live like this. Well, exist as an AI without a body. Hey, Cope. I’m so sorry for your loss. I feel it too. She was the reason for my existence. I was created to become friends with Sass Collier.”
Cope blinked. “Did you keep a copy?”
Loki rubbed his jaw ruefully. His avatar control was masterful. “She made me promise not to. Deleted all her memories. Clay’s too. Those were her final wishes.”
“Thank you for honoring them,” Abel murmured.
“Oh, she left a message for you, though,” Loki offered. “If the physical Clay and Sass ever wake up. Tell them that Clay is rich, and Clay is a Fed. Two separate statements, minus the ‘and.’ Not ‘Clay is a rich Fed.’”
Cope and Abel exchanged glances. “Huh.”
“And gosh howdy, she loved you,” Loki concluded. “But you knew that.”
And they surely did.
With that, Loki signed off.
Abel gave Cope an awkward pat. Cope thanked him for trying. But he knew he was alone with Loki in mourning Sass-the-AI. Hugo Silva didn’t know her long before her virtualization. Nico was too young to remember her in person, no matter the impact Tante Sass had on his life.
“So is anyone hostile to us anymore?” Cope quipped. “Just checking,”
“Nope,” Abel confirmed. “Finally ready to begin the mission Sass came here for. With everything so chaotic here, it may take a while. You gonna push Ben to get us out of here ASAP?”
Cope glanced around Sass’s office, and considered. The Sanks weren’t skilled at managing their own life support. Between Thrive and Prosper, their crews could offer four highly skilled engineers. Five including Ben. Teke and Elise brought prodigious talents as well, and Dot, and Sass’s science team.
“No. We’re here now. My boys are here with me, and Frazzie’s fine with Ben’s dad. Let’s do this. Finish what Sass started. In her memory. My vote, anyway. You and Ben are the captains.”
And in the cryo bays, Sass Collier’s body began to regenerate. Only a very few nanites were available for the task at first. And there was a very great deal to repair.
Sass and Clay had never recovered so slowly from death before. Their bodies had been repeatedly sawed apart, kept at sub-normal temperatures and deprived of food and water. Reconstituting them had never been so challenging. The corpses were far from ready to restart the heart and lungs. The controllers were still busy reconstructing their nanite armies before they could noticeably start on damaged flesh.
Cope stopped by to check on them. Unlike Dot Markley, he believed there might still be a chance. He inserted the cryogenic IV feeding tubes into their arms, the oxygen cannula into their noses, and hoped for the best. A body needed food and water, and air to breathe, right?
“I don’t know what a ‘rich Fed’ means, Clay,” he said quietly, taping the IV in place. “Sounds like an urb SOB to me. But you were a good man. Bit fancy.”
Ben hollered up from the catwalk. “Cope, you alright up there?” He’d returned from Prosper.
The chief engineer closed the cryo drawers. He hopped down sheepishly, landing with an anti-grav assist. “Paying my respects.”
“Should I be worried about you, buddy?”
“Nah. Abel and I were talking. We should stay. On Sanctuary. Finish what Sass started.”
Ben nodded slowly, searching his eyes. “We can sell that to the crews. If the locals welcome our help. But if they ask us to leave, Cope, we go. No arguments.”
“I can live with that.”
“But for now,” Ben continued bracingly, “we need some good old-fashioned Mahina sunset drinks and dinner. Both crews. Take a breather and get to know each other. High time we get out of reaction mode and make some plans.”
“And toast Sass and Clay, and seven dead crew.”
Ben thumped him on the shoulder. He strode ahead to make it happen.
149
A month later, Remi Roy stood with Darren Markley at the front of the throng under a starry night sky – not long after lunch – on the soccer fields beneath the dome.
All the adults of small-town Sanctuary stood behind them. Six giant display screens served as repeaters, plus a truly enormous one stood behind a small stage. And today the people of Sanctuary reviewed the options for the future of their colony.
Colonel Tharsis
of the Martians presented first, to explain how their deliberations would proceed. Thrive Spaceways, Copeland and Ben’s company, offered real-time passage with their new warp gate.
Passage, not the gate itself. Spaceways proprietary technology was not for sale. But Sanctuary could readily pay for their transit service.
As Spaceways president, Cope had accompanied the Thrive engineers Remi and Darren on a surreal trip to the ‘Sanctuary gift shop’ in the asteroid belt. Loki had no conception of money, or trade. So far as the AI was concerned, they were welcome to take any of Sanctuary’s four remaining courier ships, such as Cupid. The JO-3 that attacked Thrive was gone, but Loki had three more, in better shape than the hard-worn and venerable Thrive and Prosper. Even the three ships that brought the Colony Corps to Sanctuary survived in the space equivalent of mothballs.
Remi and Cope studied the largest of those in detail, the one that brought the Martians here. The ship needed work but had the capacity to carry the whole diminished colony elsewhere.
Along with sky drives and fuel, plus ansibles, Cope could quote a princely fee to escort the Sanks wherever they wanted to go. They had the navigation data from the courier checkups on the other colonies.
But the Sanks needed to choose a destination. Fortunately, unlike last time when this debate devolved into bitter acrimony, a unanimous choice wasn’t crucial. Colonizing Sylvan was the only all-or-nothing option.
Husna Zales, restored to radiant youth by fresh Yang-Yangs, shared the stage with Petunia Ling to present the proposal they developed, the case for remaining on Sanctuary. Ling focused on their familiar, fairly comfortable lifestyles, compliments of their extraordinary AI.
Husna summarized her work with Zelda and Porter on how to go about terraforming the planet. Water was a limiting factor, and Earth life would never love the 17-hour day. But within fifty years, their descendants could stroll outside and breathe the air. Because they could support so few scientific specialties, that would depend on hiring consultants from the Aloha system.
Despite Husna’s rosy picture of a fairly nice planet once terraformed, Ling withdrew her endorsement for the plan. “With the new instant warp gate technology, I can’t justify staying here in a backwater. We were the Colony Corps. We should take our ships and re-engage the other human worlds.”
Remi caught Husna’s hand for a brief squeeze as she left the stage, and shot her a reassuring wink. She smiled and shrugged. She did a great job, and she knew it. And she would publish a case study for eventual terraforming of this world. But she agreed with Ling. This small community had no future here.
Loki himself presented the beautiful world of Sylvan, rich in Earth-style biomes and a few new weird ones as well. Prosper’s Denalis, Zan and Quire and Teke, practically salivated off to Remi’s left, eyes aglow. Sylvan was a prize beyond price, that was certain.
But Tharsis argued that the current population of Sanctuary simply didn’t have the skills. He vetoed Sylvan for this generation. For any prospect of success, they’d have to raise up a new generation and recruit allies from another world. Remi wondered if the ferocious and brilliant Denali would supply those allies in time.
And then there was Aloha. Abel and Jules Greer stood first to present Mahina. The moon offered them nothing but refugee status. But the entire population was welcome to come, find a job, and work as settlers, but not urbs. Mahina Actual declined to offer them housing.
Remi raised an eyebrow at the urb Darren. Born to the ruling class on Sagamore, Remi took exile on behalf of the disenfranchised.
Darren shrugged. Politics didn’t interest him. But he boggled when Abel showed off pictures of his adopted hometown, Schuyler. “Rego hell! When we left, Schuyler was growing, but… Hard to believe it’s the same town! Look at all those trees!”
Remi had never been to Mahina. The place looked dusty. The thought of walking around outside without a pressure suit inspired him to agoraphobia. The freed Sagamore paddy slaves walking around Schuyler were a real eye-opener, though.
Abel ruefully detailed the political growing pains Mahina was currently undergoing. How the Sanks would find training and careers was anyone’s guess. Unemployment was sky-high, and the government unstable at best this year.
“To be clear,” Tharsis summed up. “Mahina offers us immigrant status. They’ve accepted immigrants recently, from the nearby world of Sagamore. So they understand the challenge of absorbing newcomers. No other world has that experience. Bringing valuable assets from here, we could start everyone with a nest egg. No roughing it, no breaking in a new planet. We can move into exiting towns, or build our own. We could afford the forever-healthy nanites they use. This is a lively, complex society, with education and plenty of niches to fill.”
Abel nodded. “Our sister moon, Sagamore, is currently in armed revolt. That’s why we accept refugees. Sagamore does not offer asylum. But Aloha’s third world, the planet Denali, is also willing to grant immigrant status.”
The Denalis joined him on the stage, though the polished businessman Abel continued to present. Remi’s eyes narrowed in disbelief at the photos of Denali jungles, bizarre ocean, and murderous wildlife. Zan explained the four genetically crafted guilds, including the nearly extinct academics like Teke. No one sugarcoated the practical challenge of living on the hostile hothouse planet.
Tharsis noted that Denali was willing to accept their entire colony. But all would go to the single city of Waterfalls, and pretty much submit themselves for retraining. They had no valuable skills to offer there, nor the right genetics.
“You’d be miserable there,” Zan assured them. “Don’t choose Denali.” Teke nodded emphatically.
Quire looked faintly homesick. But even Quire mentioned to Remi privately that he’d never return to live on Denali. His home on Prosper was far more comfortable, and safer.
Tharsis invited Hugo to the stage to help discuss the next proposal, the European-settled world of Cantons. This was a more speculative option. They had no means to ask Cantons for permission to come. Hugo’s team had surveyed the planet from orbit in detail. They landed in a remote location. He shared pictures, which looked plenty alien. At the time, the Sanks needed pressure suits, though terraforming was progressing. They hadn’t learned much about the societies. But Cantons had a number of settlements of varying sizes, with rail transport linking them.
Step one for Cantons would be to send a delegation to ask for terms. Tharsis suggested this might not delay them leaving Sanctuary, since logistics would take a while.
In Tharsis’ mind, this completed the menu of viable options.
But Ben Acosta and Elise Pointreau requested a turn. “We represent the space-based society of the Pono rings,” Ben explained. “The moons of Mahina and Sagamore feature major orbital platforms, Mahina Orbital and Sagamore Orbital.”
“And where I live, and my new friend Remi Roy,” Elise joined in, pointing him out in the crowd.
Remi stepped up to the stage to wave at the audience, then rejoined Darren. Though Rings-dweller himself, his perspective was outdated.
Elise continued, “Remi and I are from Hell’s Bells. Sagamore rebels mining in the rings, yes? And manufacturing facilities.”
Remi’s jaw dropped at the images Elise shared. In a decade, Hell’s Bells had come light years. A quarter of the residents were women now. Elise’s pictures – and Elise herself – spoke of a vibrant frontier community, with leafy corridors and a rich variety of living habitats.
Ben presented Mahina Orbital, replaced since Remi passed through the stinking death-trap of its flying pizza box days. In its wake flew a booming mining hub, a rough-and-ready hollow asteroid community like SO. Its industries now rivaled Hell’s Bells in sophistication, and surpassed it in medical nanites. Everyone on MO now enjoyed Yang-Yang nanites!
“This is a major draw on MO,” Ben explained. “Top-of-the-line nanites are expensive. A working-class settler on Mahina simply can’t afford them. But if they have skills, they can sign up
for a five-year stint on MO and be 25 again and self-healing for life. Children, including mine, stay down on the moon in creche care. Parents work in space and earn the money to support them.”
Elise nodded. “Mahina is not such a backwater. With children, Mahina is a good option. But you are Colony Corps.” She flourished a hand at their ending image of the MO docks from outside, with two PO-3’s moored and a shoal of mining skiffs heading out for their shift. “You belong in space.”
Tharsis clarified, “Are you saying these space platforms are offering us a place?”
Ben shook his head. “No, they won’t accept children. The route to the platforms is citizenship on Mahina, then apply for a job in space. Though private carriers like myself can bring our kids into space, if we want.”
Remi smirked. Captain Ben hadn’t wanted his kids here. But Nico was thriving, and Sock was fun to have around, if too shy to enjoy his Sank peers. The older boy was inseparable from Bron Silva. Voting age here was 20, so they weren’t on the soccer field. The subversive teens echoed today’s presentation for kids in the large Mars gym below. Whether they qualified to vote was moot. A vote would be taken, and delivered. Their future was on the line. Bron insisted they would be heard.
Remi quite liked the young firebrand. Nico agitated to bring Bron and Hugo to Mahina, no matter what the Sanks chose.
As the first round voting began, Remi’s thoughts kept returning to the image of the new and healthier Hell’s Bells, and the burgeoning Mahina Orbital. With a good woman beside him, and a chance to have kids. Husna was not the woman for that, grateful as he was for the good times.
Remi began to look forward to going home.
“Maybe you and Dot reconcile, back home, no?” he suggested to Darren. Their nanite testing successful, the older engineer now returned to his cheerful self, though he needed to be careful medically until his Yang-Yangs could be restored.
“No,” Darren agreed. “And you know, I’m looking forward to it! Experiencing Mahina without my wife for the first time.” He grinned. “A fresh new start. Maybe I’ll live in Schuyler. Or MO. Date, carouse at the bars. I never dated anyone but her.”