Nothing to do but wait. I want to rush in, but that’s stupid. I need information first. Sharron, my programs, and my bugs will all get back to me.
* * * * *
Chapter 48
As I lie back in bed, the metal slats lower over the windows, reducing the light to a set of small dim bands. The room hovers near darkness, which, for me, may as well be daylight. That’s not the reason I can’t sleep. I’m staring across the darkened room, the only sounds coming from the faint whisper of the air systems, too subtle for normal ears to hear. But that isn’t the reason I can’t sleep either. It’s plenty quiet; too quiet.
Always on the run, always hiding and waiting for the faintest sound of an attacker or ambush, and now this. Silence and peace. My instincts don’t know what to do with it. It’s weird, but this calm, quiet, clean room is strange to me.
I’m used to constantly assessing threats. Where are the points of entry? Who is the one most likely to attack me in the room? Where is there cover or concealment? Where are the cameras? What can be used as a weapon? These thoughts never stop.
The hardest part about moving around in Lunar society isn’t learning about Lunars, it’s leaving Terra behind. It’s been years, and I still haven’t; the constant conflict is in my bones. I still don’t fit in on Luna.
Personally, I like Lunars. They’re tough, smart, adaptable people who have taken a desolate and worthless place and turned it into a technological and trade hub in the Solar System. Luna is like an island nation; it has a very insular culture, but is also very dependent on trade. So, there’s a lot of contact with people from all over space, but it’s all on the surface. Most people see that surface and assume that’s all there is. They couldn’t be more wrong. There’s a lot of depth in the culture and complexity that I barely understand. They’re a lot like their cities; you see all the buildings on the surface, but most of it is underground and never seen by an outsider. You basically have to be born here to get it.
Beneath the calm, professional exteriors they always present, Lunars have a core of steel. Lunars have to deal with asteroid strikes and environmental equipment breaking down on a world where death is just outside the walls, waiting to get in. Because of that, they expect to work together in an emergency and have no time for waste or failure of any kind. They can be incredibly kind to someone in need, but anyone who is a real problem gets to suck vacuum. This is a hard moon.
Even the criminal element in Hades has to live and work by certain rules. If someone is going to murder someone over a gambling debt, that’s just settling up. But if someone messes with the air systems, everyone will drop what they are doing, and that fellow ends up recycled. It’s all very civilized, pragmatic, and cold.
The reason I like them is because they are tougher than they look. They will band together against real threats, without even being asked. The average calm, peaceful Lunar can become as ruthless as an assault drone once their habitat or family is threatened. Maybe that’s why little Luna, all by itself, has been able to hold off Terra for so long.
There is a reason Luna is willing to risk an antimatter war with Terra rather than submit. All the conditions they fled and fought against have gotten worse back on Earth. If the State of Terra gets ahold of them, they’ll wish for death.
Luna was the first real stop on the way to the other planets. People from all over the world came here; some stayed, and some moved on. It wasn’t the spirit of adventure that caused the move, nor was it the treasures in the space rocks. They came to get away from Terra and Terrans.
I left Terra wanting to leave it all behind, and it’s followed me up here. Well, it’s up to me to fix it.
So, time to sleep. Maybe the first restful sleep in a long, long time. I arrange some of the shelving for cover by the bed, make a fake body in the main bed, and set the intrusion programs I’ve infiltrated into the hotel to warm me of any intruders. With my guns under the pillow, I’m ready for a good night’s rest.
Tomorrow, I’ll make my way into Singularity headquarters.
* * * * *
Chapter 49
I wake up, not knowing why. Instinct and training have me reaching for the pistol under my pillow while I scan the darkened room. No movement, but something is clearly wrong. Listening to feelings like this is why I’m still alive.
What does my computer have to say? Hotel security systems have been infiltrated and isolated. All emergency services are down—police, fire, medical, and cyber. The hotel cameras are also down, so I have to go to the hidden surveillance packages I set up throughout the hotel.
The hotel lobby is a smoking ruin. Burned corpses lie behind the desk and in the kitchen, and everything is scorched and blackened, with a pall of smoke on the ceiling. Four men in long coats bear sweeper lasers in two-handed grips, close to the body. They look like IR-44s with duckbilled scanner/spreader attachments on them. Those will let the computer-controlled targeting paint the room, burning everything in under a second and focusing fire on movement. Bad news.
Time to move. How did they find me? Who are they? Are there more coming? Maybe they traced me from one of the fake accounts, or maybe they found a trace of genetic material. They could be from Singularity, the murder-lab, the State of Terra, or some of Sharron’s old pals. My guess, from the casual and massive destruction, is they are most likely some kind of Terrans; Lunars are usually more precise. There will be more coming after, so I need to get out fast.
The lobby is the only way out, so I’ll have to fight.
I get into my spacesuit. Everything checks out, and it fits like a second skin. The micro-meteorite protection will stop needlers and some firearms, but those big lasers will be able to burn right through. The power cell is good for 48 hours and can recycle oxygen and CO2 until the power runs out. I set the suit’s color to dark gray with random hazy patterns for camouflage. I mirror the visor and cut off as much light as possible, using only video screens to see. It may not help much against combat lasers, but it may mean the difference between burns and death, glare or blindness.
Data lights up in the helmet, and I can see the killers making their way down the hall. It’s good to see no one wandered out into the hall to get killed by the thugs. My code breakers make short work of the hotel systems and the killer’s infiltration programs. I access the hotel computers and lock all the guest room and lobby doors behind them. That will save lives and limit the mobility of the enemy. These are big, heavy doors, designed to maintain the air pressure in the event of a meteorite strike or other disaster.
That done, I make my way to the kitchen alcove, out of sight from the door, but with a good view of the room. Camera remotes in the room will let me see them come in. Up against the kind of firepower I’m facing, I won’t be able to mess around, so I go with the heaviest piece I have, the plasma blaster.
They are at my door, trying to break the encryption on the lock. That’s not going to happen; Sharron has better codes available than these space-scum. I take cover behind the counter and wait for them to break in.
I don’t have to wait long.
* * * * *
Chapter 50
The edges of the door glow red, then yellow. Streams of sparks fly from all four corners of the heavy door and then it tips inward, its edges glowing and smoking. It didn’t take long for them to burn through.
The four rush in, sweeping the room with scanned laser fire. My cameras go dark with a flash as they are burned down. A red-hot glare lights up the entire room, and cloth and walls blacken and smoke, with small fires breaking out. Through the pall of smoke, I can see the beams; they look like intersecting planes of red and orange light, rapidly flickering up and down as they paint the entire surface of the hotel. Nothing can evade that kind of fire.
When they are done, the room is a blackened ruin. Smoke rises in streams and forms a gray cloud across the ceiling. All the lights have burned out; a gray bar of light from the hallway shines into the room. Small fires, glowing red metal, and sparks f
rom blackened machines make it look like a hotel in Hell.
A burning can rolls off a charred table. Four beams of computer-controlled fire instantly hit it, and it detonates in a flash of white light. The beams split, tracking the fragments, until every piece is turned into smoke and ash.
Nope. Not going out there.
The scanning lasers only hit my suit for an instant, so I’d survive for a few seconds, but those focused computer-controlled beams would burn right through.
I don’t need cameras to track them as they enter the room. I can hear them come in, one pair splitting to cover the corners while the second pair covers them. With the first pair covering the entrances to the kitchen and sleeping alcoves, I’d get burned the instant I moved into the room. The other two are moving in, getting ready to rush the alcoves. I’m fast, but I can’t beat a computer; even if I hit them, I’m getting burned down.
They are almost on me; it’s time to attack.
With my plasma blaster on full auto I unleash a spray of blue-white stars. The small torpedoes slam into the shuttered windows and release their stored plasma as their magnetic envelopes collapse. The thunderous, blinding explosions roar through the room, knocking me back into the kitchen cabinets.
Not even the armored windows of modern Luna can withstand this. The windows shatter and blast outward into the vacuum. With a deep roar, the air turns into a fog and pulls everything in the room out with it. I’m blasted outside, along with the four killers.
If the battlefield is unfavorable, change the battlefield.
Ash, snow, dust, furniture, and men fall to the barren surface. I roll to my feet, looking around.
All four of the killers are gasping uselessly for air. One has managed to hold onto his laser and is wildly sweeping the beam around in a panic. I fire a blast into him, and his chest erupts in an explosion of glowing ash. Another is crawling across the regolith, trying to reach his weapon. He gets a quick bolt to the head. The other two are on their backs, trying to see through the blood erupting from their eyes, and breathe while coughing up boiling blood.
They should have brought spacesuits; this is Luna, after all. I consider letting the other two expire painfully from vacuum, as their blood boils and freezes while ice forms daggers digging into their eyes and lungs. It’s an ugly way to die. I’ve seen it too often. Instead, I end them with single shots to the head, putting them out of their misery.
The weapon is almost empty. I set it to overload and toss it into a crater, where it detonates with a silent flash.
Time to go. Even with the emergency systems and communications isolated, the Lunars are not going to ignore an exploding room.
* * * * *
Chapter 51
I take long jumps across the desolate crater, moving fast. Once I get in an airlock to a different section, I can disappear.
All around me are the glass castles of Luna, shining into the eternal night. A whole city built by pure will and mind where, before, there was no life at all. It’s glorious.
On Earth, air doesn’t come in cans, water falls from the sky, and plants grow in the ground. Radiation isn’t raining down from the sky, and you don’t have to worry about whether a random micro-meteorite is going to take your head off or rip open your habitat. Paradise, right?
It makes some people wonder why we ever left Earth.
We didn’t leave for the resources. Mining on the ocean floor and in the mantle is cheaper, and most of the smaller planets have poorer mineral contents. Plus, it’s not worth it to ship most raw materials across a gravity well.
We didn’t go to get more space, either. Sure, Earth’s crowded. So is every habitat in space. There are no open vistas with breathable air; everyone in the habitats live crammed together like sardines. For the rest of their lives. You’d have an easier time building more habitats floating on the sea, on the ocean floor, in deserts, and in the polar regions. A lot of those habitats are kind of like the space habitats and helped the space settlers learn how to do it.
People didn’t leave for any of the doomsday scenarios that were popular around the time, either—overpopulation, resource depletion, environmental collapse or nuclear war. Nope.
They left because of control. Protests and violent attacks, not for freedom of speech and action, but to end to it. They demanded the right to control what others said, what they heard, and eventually, what they thought. Eventually, we did it; after all, we had the technology.
A thought-control society was finally within our grasp, and we were in its. Worldwide surveillance, mental monitoring and command implants, the whole bit. Dissent was impossible. It seemed like there was no way out, that it would never end. Boot on face forever.
The thing was, that kind of control needed lots of scientists and engineers to run it—the very people who fled to Luna. They ran all the systems for their masters, so they subverted those systems to escape. It was a surprise, but the masters of Terra weren’t too worried, at first. Where were they going to go? The moon?
That’s exactly what they did, of course. Lots of people died on those rickety first spaceships, taking them and their families skyward. Terra wanted to retaliate, but without the very people they needed to keep everything running, things fell apart pretty quickly. Riots, starvation, terror, disease, and war. All the stuff we thought we’d left behind. The Dark Years lasted a long time, and now, every Terran hates Luna for it. Every school teaches it. Revenge will come…some day.
By the time Terra had rebuilt enough to go to space again, Luna was a thriving civilization, and there were colonies on other worlds. The Lunar War didn’t go so well; Terra was over a generation behind in technology.
So, we ended up with the current stalemate with antimatter missiles pointed at each other. Earth wanting revenge for a self-inflicted wound, and Luna wanting to be left alone. Since then, trade has opened up again, and people are even traveling back and forth. Most Lunars think it’s over. They’re wrong; it’ll never be over. The State of Terra wants them all dead, and all they did was open the door for the killers.
I finally arrive at an airlock. As I cycle the lock, I send out codes to contact Sharron.
Time to move up the timetable. With killers bouncing around the halls of Shackleton, I’ll have to move before they get a lucky hit. Each time they try to hit me, others pay the price. No more.
I’ll reprogram the suit, get a new identity and disguise, and get hard data on Singularity. It’s time.
* * * * *
Part Eight: The Mountains of Light
Chapter 52
Darkness and light. Total opposites next to each other.
The crater floor of Shackleton never sees the sun. The Mountains of Eternal Light never know darkness. The mountain peaks rising above the deep crater basins are bathed in sunlight all year long, as the sun slowly moves around the sky over the month-long Lunar day. The top peaks never know shadow.
That kind of exposure is useful. A number of small, expensive homes are dug into the sides of the mountains, giving them great views of the lights of the city in the shadow of the crater below, the stark planes of Luna to the sides, and Earth and the sun near the horizon. Along the very peak is Selene Gardens. Originally life-saving greenhouses, now they only produce a few luxury fruits and vegetables and rare woods. Mostly, they function as parks, some of the few green spaces on the moon.
Soaring above all are the great, towering arrays, reaching kilometers into the starry sky. Giant solar panels flash and gleam; up close, it looks like Luna has sprouted sails of black silicon. Above those are the spires of the communications arrays. Those are my target.
Communications from Shackleton are relayed to nearby polar cities, to satellites, and even to Terra. If Singularity is communicating with Terra, the signals likely travel through these arrays. All of Sharron’s and my attempts to break into the Singularity stream for anything useful have failed. The real information is compartmented. So, I’ll have to physically break into a system to get at the in
formation. Breaking into the Singularity Tower is suicide, so I need another way into their comm stream. The State of Terra has exclusive use of one of these communications arrays, and that’s where I’ll break in.
The gleaming arrays grow larger on the front screen, while the Lunar landscape races by in the train’s side windows. My new identity got me into the tube train, and it’s only a few minutes to the Mountains of Light. The Gardens are a popular destination, so the train is packed.
My gear is broken down again, even the needler and the blades. I got scanned getting on the train and will be scanned on the way out. My spacesuit is folded up in the carry bag, but that’s not unusual on Luna. About half the people have, at least, an emergency suit with them. I’m wearing my other suit, something in the recent fashions of Luna, or so I was told, but it gives me enough freedom of movement in case I have to fight. Basically, it’s part of my disguise as a well off, corrupt Terran on vacation. Under it all is my webbing and gear for the long climb up the array.
Sharron’s with me too, back from her data hunt through Shackleton’s systems. Her image seems to be sitting on a bench, reading. The monster is with me too, as always. Thank God, it’s being quiet for the moment.
The train angles up, climbing the slopes from the darkness toward the light. Sunlight—real, honest sunlight—breaks the horizon and shines into the cabin. It’s been so long. The warm, golden light on my face reminds me of Earth. How did those early settlers deal with it? Living without the sun for their entire lives. Back then, before modern shielding, the light of the sun was death.
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