Warrior- Integration

by David Hallquist

  The blue crescent of Earth is close to the golden sun near the horizon. Gleaming towers and crystal domes flash and shine all along the vast crater rim. Below, in the absolute black of the crater floor, is a galaxy of man-made stars, the city of Shackleton. A few towers rise from the dark crater floor to shine in the sun. I focus on one, Singularity Tower.

  The train slows. A transparent, armored tube runs past the windows as we slide into the station. The doors seal behind us, and there is a brief foggy wind as the train tube is pressurized. The transparent tube slides up as it rotates away, opening access to the crowded train station.

  I get up and shuffle forward with the rest of the crowd. My stated reason for being here is to see the Gardens, so I’ll make my way there. It will be nice to see something green again.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 53

  The primeval forest looks out on the barren deserts of Luna.

  Trees, ferns, and bushes crowd in a riot of growth. Small birds and insects fly through the air, but slowly and strangely in the low gravity. I had almost forgotten the sounds and scents of a forest. The air here is alive. Right outside the hexagonal panes is hard vacuum and radiation-seared regolith.

  Here, in these kilometer-wide domes, these oases of growth bring life to the surface of the moon. These aren’t oases from water springs in the desert, but acts of will and determination, bringing life to a lifeless place. This was one of the first domes, and it has changed over time from hydroponic vegetables to this garden. Several others dot the rim of Shackleton, as well as the surface next to other settlements on Luna. There are now plans to make even larger ones underground, with piped in, artificial light.

  These domes kind of remind me of Earth, but with lower gravity and without random thugs trying to kill me.

  Scratch that, the Terran thugs are here. A pair of Terrans in civilian clothing are scanning the crowds as they enter and leave the train station. Maybe the data probes convinced Terra to have human security near their comm array, or maybe this is the normal procedure for this place. Either way, I have to assume they are going to be alert and cautious.

  We might have brought the jungle to the moon, but we also brought the predators. I’m confident I can take one of them if I need to, but there is no way to keep the other from getting off a clean shot. The last thing I need is to blow my new identity so soon, again. I’ll just have to see what happens when I pass them.

  No probes hit my array, and no one looks my way as I pass them. Either my disguise and ID are working, or I’ve already been identified, and I’m stepping deeper into a trap.

  There is a rotating restaurant halfway up the array, so I make my way to the elevator for that. Still no scans or anything while I wait in line. I don’t trust this, it’s too easy.

  As I get into the packed elevator, the doors close on the crowd. There is one other Terran in the crowd going up, but hired muscle can be from anywhere in the Solar System. I let myself get crowded into the back of the elevator, where my back will be guarded if I need to fight.

  The transparent elevator rises out of the shaft and gives us a full-around view of the Lunar plain and crater below. I make sure to stare out the window along with everyone else, and it’s quite a sight. Still, I’m focusing on the reflection in the glass, looking for anyone looking at me, and not the vista below.

  At five kilometers up, we reach the Beacon.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 54

  A real, live human being takes me to my table. Subdued lighting, thick carpets, actual wooden walls, and faint music create the mood. Then there is the view, the glittering Lunar capital spread out five kilometers below. Sure, you can get a hologram that’s realistic anytime, but reality is always more valuable.

  I sit and order my food and drink to cover my reason for being here. Just another wealthy and influential Terran on vacation, spending government money on Lunar’s luxuries. It’s amazing. Real meat, vegetables, and wine. Everyone here, in the Beacon, must think we Terrans eat like this all the time. Usually, no; it’s synthesized when it isn’t rats and small game.

  “Sharron,” I sub-vocalize, “interface with the Beacon’s systems. I need to find a back way out of here and up onto that array. Load that path and a secondary path up the array to my visor.”

  “You don’t need to be so formal. Brandt. After all, you have taken me to this nice restaurant.”

  Great, the ghost is running some kind of humor routine. Just what I need. Still, it sounds eerily like Sharron.

  “Sharron…the longer this takes, the more chance it’ll fail.”

  “There are three dorsal airlocks. The dorsal and ventral emergency exits are in full sight of the dining room, so they’re out. There is a service hatch behind the kitchen for repairs and the hatch to the axial comm hub.”

  “What’s the security on the axial hub?”

  “Unknown. Beyond that door is a compartmented system.”

  “OK, service hatch it is.”

  I get up to go to the men’s room. As I check mirrored surfaces, no one seems to be following me. I go down the hall near the kitchen, into the room and a privacy stall. So far, so good, halfway there.

  The shades go on, and I activate my visor array. “Sharron, generate an overlay of the floorplan in blue and indicate my objective in gold. Outline staff in orange, guests in green, and any Terrans in red.” A glowing blue wire outline of the Beacon overlays my vision, with the dorsal hatch in gold. Human outlines of various figures are walking around.

  “You could say ‘please,’ or ‘would you,’ or…”

  God, who programmed this ghost? “Sharron…please override the security cameras, erasing any image of my movements in the Beacon. Also, grant me access to any hatch I go through, without any signal it has been opened.”

  “OK. You’re clear to go anytime.”

  I wait until the bathroom is empty and then make my way into the hall. I quickly dodge into a side room as two staff go by. I come to a halt by the kitchen door. It’s too crowded in there; I’ll never get past unseen.

  “Sharron, could you set up a distraction? Wait! Cancel that.” There’s no telling what it would be. I get a nightmare vision of people pouring out of the restaurant in panic. Two staff are coming back to the kitchen; they’ll be around the hall any second. “Cause a failure of the main cooking line on the other side of the kitchen, nothing dangerous.”

  I hear a buzzing sound and then shouting through the hatch. Soon, everyone is crowding over by the main cooking line.

  I go through the hatch into the chaos of the kitchen. The head cook is screaming orders to the cluster of cooks, and smoke rises to the ceiling. Whatever she did worked; no one is looking at me.

  I follow the 3D map down a service hall to the dorsal hatch in the ceiling. It opens at my touch and swings down. Inside is a cramped, spartan airlock, all tubes, panels, and cold, dry air. I climb up and pull the hatch shut behind me.

  I get out my gear and weapons, assemble them, and re-initialize them to my array. Then I put on the spacesuit. I set the color pattern for sharp outlines of white, gray, and black to help camouflage me. The climbing web of smart cloth stretches over my suit and attaches to my monofilament spools and molecular binding pitons.

  Ready as I’ll ever be. Air hisses and fades away as I decompress the airlock. I spin the wheel and open the ventral hatch.

  The array tower above me seems to rise up forever.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 55

  I only need to climb five kilometers through vacuum and radiation, undetected.

  Spacesuit beacon: off. Set IR radiation emission to ambient, subject to override. Molecular-binding adhesive pads slip right over my gloves and boots. Like the adhesives on my rig, power can be sent into the pad to create powerful bonds with matter or switched off to release the grip. I check my climbing rig; everything seems to work.

  I’d considered taking the identity of a service worker for the arrays, but to access the
Singularity array with an ID that would pass, I would have had to break into the Singularity systems. Since the whole point of this climb was to get into the Singularity data streams, that was a no-go. If I’d disguised myself as another array worker, I’d have had no business being on a Singularity array, and my mandatory tracking beacon would have given me away instantly if it was on or created an alarm if it stopped.

  I glide carefully over the slight curve of the Beacon’s roof to the array. The base of the central array spire is about ten meters in diameter, and it vanishes to invisibility in the shadows of great solar panels and radiator fins. Yeah, that’s a long climb.

  There is a simple, open cage or wire around the ladder reaching up to the heavens. I start climbing. It’s all too easy in one-sixth gee. I’ll have to watch that. If I rush or get careless, I can easily tire myself out before getting to the top. I take care to pace myself. The bars are spaced a little far apart for my comfort, but they’re probably just right for the long-limbed Lunars.

  Ten meters. Only 4,990 to go. I attach a molecular binding, adhesive piton and let the monofilament wire play out as I climb. Twenty meters. I attach a new piton, give the order to detach the old one, and spool it back up to my rig. Repeat as necessary, 498 times.

  Looking down, I can see around the Beacon, which is now a disk below me. Luna spreads out in her desolate glory, waiting to claim me if I misstep. Not gonna happen, Luna. Sorry.

  As I climb, the vast sails of the solar panels spread out on either side. Forests of comm arrays give out a storm of electromagnetic radiation. None of these are the Singularity arrays; those are higher up. Radiator fins glow a faint red. This is why I can climb undetected. So much interference is put out by these systems, the only way anyone can find me is visually or if I broadcast.

  From up here, the Beacon is a small disc, something I would drift past on the long, long fall down. If I do fall, it would be worse than a fall on Earth, even with the lower gravity. No atmosphere to slow me down, no terminal velocity, and nothing to stop the acceleration of my fall, going from fast to splat-city.

  Sweat pours off me as I climb. My suit tries to deal with the endless exertion, brutal unfiltered sunlight, and heat from nearby radiator fins. I pause to rest and drink from my suit. The sun is still in the same place, of course. On Earth, Africa has rolled out of sight, and now I’m looking at Australia.

  I attach a piton and make my way around the side of the pole and in between two sets of solar panels. Ahhhh…shade. My suit’s thermo-regulators start acting normally again. There is another ladder on this side, and I start climbing again.

  I lose track of how long the climb is and focus on the climb, itself. One rung after another, one piton after another, one kilometer after another.

  Soon, I’m there.

  The top is a forest of arrays stretching out in every direction, along with big, heavy communications lasers and masers for Earth. Below is the curving horizon of Luna. All of Shackleton is easily in view, and I can see other towns in the distance, near the curve of the horizon. Here, at the South Pole, half of Luna is in light, and the rest is in absolute blackness that sharply cuts off the stars.

  Time to get to work. “Sharron, can you interface with the Singularity system? I need you to search for any information on the experiments, hiring mercenaries and killers, or anything else we need to take to the Lunar authorities.”

  “Of course,” she replies, as her image stands balanced on an antenna.

  Now, I just need to stand watch while she searches. Unless something goes wrong. Of course, something always goes wrong.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 56

  “Anything yet?” I’ve been hanging onto this antenna for a while.

  “No.” Sharron replies. I swear the program sounds irritated.

  Time passes. Earth slowly turns. “Found anything good now?”

  “I’ll let you know, Brandt.” Her image sighs. “There are lots of shady bits here and there. Things which would be useful if we were blackmailing them or writing a news story or trying to get Luna to fine them. But nothing that would lead to them shutting down Singularity Tower or the hospital. It looks like that kind of data never gets broadcasted. My guess is that the information is shipped to Earth on packet couriers.”

  So, I’ll wait. A long, slow watch with nothing happening…

  “Brandt!” Sharron yells.

  I duck, and the solar panel next to my head flashes and melts. I drop, falling free as the ladder behind me blasts silently into a shower of white sparks. The laser, wherever it is, is on a low cycle speed, about one and a half seconds, and far enough away that it’s possible for it to miss. I catch myself on a solar panel and duck behind it, only holding on by my fingers. A hole melts through the panel next to me. I swing over to the main array mast, as another hole melts through where I was a moment before. I turn on my adhesive gloves as I approach; if I bounce off, it’s a long way down. My gloves make contact and hold as I slam into the mast. I spider-climb over to the next ladder down.

  There is no target I can see. It’s probably a drone; only a crazy man would be up here.

  “Sharron, what’s going on?” Swinging onto the ladder, I attach my cable rig to the ladder channel and start the hundred-meter slide until I run out of cable. The cable winch will slow my fall near the end.

  “It’s a drone, Brandt.” I get an overlay of the array, with a blinking dot showing the location of the drone, and detailed information about it. All of this must be coming from the array Sharron hacked. The drone is an M-70 security remote—ion-lift engines and pulsed chemical maneuvering. Armament—one single slow-pulse light laser and a needler. Fairly dangerous for a civilian rig. It is orbiting at ten kilometers, outside the exclusion zone for the array. It’s accelerating, coming in to get around the array and get a clean shot at me.

  I switch cables, spooling in the first one while I slide the next hundred meters on the second one. “Sharron, see if you can use the array’s systems to interfere with the guidance and control of the remote.”

  The array starts pouring a storm of static. I hope she’s careful with that; there is enough power in that array to microwave me to a crisp.

  I switch to another cable and begin sliding down. The Beacon restaurant is still a small disc far below. After a period of inactivity, the drone moves closer to attack. It must have switched to autonomous mode.

  After a long slide down, I swing over to a ladder on the other side of the array and attach a cable and slide. The drone continues to spiral around the array to get a shot at me. “Sharron, can you jam its targeting and control with the array while it’s on the other side?”

  “OK.” The amount of static increases. On the other side of the array, it must be like getting hit with a low-powered maser. The drone wobbles and moves erratically, but doesn’t fall. The array was never designed to focus its energy as a weapon, but it was worth a try.

  Another cable…slide. I’m making good time; a hundred meters with each slide. But there is no way I’ll get to the Beacon before the drone gets a clear line of fire. I climb around the edge of the array, putting a massive radiator panel between me and the drone. My suit’s coolers ramp up as the heat from the huge, red panel pours onto me. IR and radar should both be useless now. It’ll have to use line-of sight targeting only.

  Time to make a stand. I get out my laser pistol, set it for focused beam, maximum power, single shot. I won’t get a second shot. I hook one arm through the ladder, and use an antenna spar to stabilize my arm for the shot. The telescopic sights of the weapon come up in my visual array. I can see the location of the drone highlighted on my visor. It’s on the other side of the radiator panel, coming laterally fast, prow aimed in my direction.

  I set the laser to discharge as soon as the drone clears the panel. I hold my breath and focus on aiming, holding still. A kilometer distant shot on a fast moving target with a pistol. Don’t think; focus. Everything goes away except the moving dot. It’s the
world, the universe, and I’m one with my weapon.

  I fire before I know it. I can see the flash of light from the drone. It’s now a tumbling piece of machinery, with engines firing erratically in uncontrolled flashes. The drone begins the long fall down. Looks like it’s going to miss the dome below, at least.

  I start sliding down again. “Sharron, how did they find me?”

  “Likely one or more security systems were violated during my search. The array, itself, must have pinpointed your position.”

  That’s going to stop, right now. “I want you to trash the Singularity array, Sharron. I want it to be useless, ruined. Turn it into expensive scrap metal.” A terrible thought occurs to me. “Just don’t make anything explode or go flying off, OK?”

  “Oh…OK.” I swear she sounds disappointed at limiting the mayhem.

  The Beacon is getting larger. I saw a lot of Terran muscle on the way up, and it looks like I’ll have to deal with it on the way down.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 57

  It’s instinct alone that saves my life.

  I jerk aside as the ladder flares and a shower of white sparks goes flying from the new, glowing hole in the metal. I let go and drop, and another shower of sparks explodes above my head. A large box of relays races up past me, and I grab on with my adhesive pads. A flash of light goes off where I would have been if I’d kept falling.

  My array indicates the laser fire came from the Beacon’s roof. They had lots of time to get an ambush ready. I’m almost at the Beacon, and there is at least one gunman on the roof, likely two.