The Vesta Conspiracy

by Felix R. Savage

  His body flopped in her hands like an unprogrammed ergoform. He felt warm in contrast to the air in the freezer, but that was just an illusion. He was dead. As dead as Jun Yonezawa had been when she ate him.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  While she wrestled with Jimmy’s clothes, she also weighed whether to try to call for help. This was not the no-brainer it should have been. One of the drawbacks of contacts—one of the many reasons that consumers opted for BCIs instead—was that without ambient light, you couldn’t see a doggone thing. So she was connected, but blind. She remembered how the Heidegger program’s icon had floated in her field of vision. What if I click on it by mistake?

  Without a BCI, it wouldn’t be able to get inside her head. But what if it got into her contacts and messed them up? Then she’d be not only blind but completely isolated, without even the hope of calling for help.

  She struggled into Jimmy’s sweater, knew she’d never fit in his pants, and fumbled her way over to Wang Gulong. His clothes were board-stiff with frozen blood.

  By the time she got the extra layers on, she was cold enough that she decided to risk it. Her comms program was usually there. Praying, she—

  —remembered that Satterthwaite had had a flashlight.

  She scrabbled in his breast pocket with fingers that were rapidly going numb. Yes! She dropped the flashlight, cursed, found it again, and switched it on, blinding herself. The beam wavered over 5kg sacks of hash browns and kedgeree.

  She wasted no time blinking up her comms program. Rather than attempting anything fancy, she just aimed her gaze at reply to last.

  “Goto!?!” the answer appeared in text floating on her vision.

  “Mendoza, it’s me.” She was crying again for sheer relief, which made it difficult to gaze-type. She switched to her air keyboard, projecting it on the top of a box that held frozen mixed vegetables. She knelt in front of the box and peeled her sleeves back from her fingers.

  “I’ve been pinging you ever since the big boom,” Mendoza texted. “Where are you?”

  “I couldn’t see anything. Sorry. I’m in the freezer. It’s airtight, as far as I can tell. But it’s not very big. I think I’ve got a little while.”

  “Shit, Goto.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Driver’s cab. I’ve got about five and a half hours of air. Apart from that, nothing much to report.”

  There was a pause. Elfrida fought tears. They were on the same train, but separated by a vacuum. They might as well have been on different planets.

  “You’ve got the advantage of me,” she typed at last. “At least you’re not freezing to death.”

  “But you’ve got food.”

  “Ever tried eating frozen broccoli?”

  “Goto, I could eat my own doggone elbow right now. There was supposed to be an emergency stash of rations up here, but the assholes took it.”

  “Only you could think about food at a time like this.”

  “Just trying to keep it light,” Mendoza typed. Elfrida was silent; she’d known that. After a moment, he typed, “Shit, I wish there was something I could do. I hate to think of you stuck down there.”

  In the split second before the next words appeared, Elfrida hoped that Mendoza wasn’t about to say something sentimental. The thought surprised her. That she’d even had it told her that she was more aware of Mendoza as a person than she had known.

  “I’m accelerating the train to launch speed. Figure your friend’s plan is our only chance now.”

  “Oh God, Mendoza. I didn’t get a chance to tell you. There’s something not right about him. I don’t know if this is a good idea, after all.” She hesitated, trying to organize her thoughts. Maybe the best thing was just to forward Petruzzelli’s email to Mendoza, but would he know what to make of it?

  “This. Was. Your. Idea.”

  “I know, I know, but it turns out that Yonezawa may not be on the level. He may not really be coming to help us. I think maybe he wants the Heidegger program.”

  Mendoza’s reply appeared before she even finished typing. “He seems OK to me. Anyway, what are our other options?”

  “You’ve been talking to him?”

  “Sure. Or maybe it was the other one. They look alike to me, sorry. He knows his shit. Brain like a supercomputer, as they say. Hang on, I’ve got another call.”

  Mendoza ended the conversation. Elfrida stared in disbelief at the last words. Why did she feel so betrayed?

  Something clawed at her leg. She squealed in terror and dropped the flashlight again.

  ★

  Mendoza’s other call was from Hugh Meredith-Pike, of all people.

  “Yo! Driver! We there yet?”

  Mendoza did not like wireheads, especially this one, but the sheer elation of knowing at least one other person had survived the depressurization event overcame his mistrust of Meredith-Pike. He typed back, matching Meredith-Pike’s bantering tone, “What, you want to stop for a bathroom break? Ain’t no service areas on the Vesta Express, buddy.”

  “Dang, and I was looking forward to a Big Mac and Coke.”

  “You and me both. Back on Earth, when this is over.”

  “It’s over now,” Meredith-Pike typed. “Well, pretty much. We’ve got the atmosphere back! The repair bots fixed the breach. You can come out of there. Then we’ll see about stopping this runaway train and getting the hell off.”

  Mendoza did not notice that Meredith-Pike’s diction was not quite the same as it had been. Nor did he think to check the life-support systems monitor. At the words we’ve got the atmosphere back!, one thought filled his mind to the exclusion of all others: Elfrida. He could pull her out of the freezer before she froze to death.

  He jumped off his couch and hit the DOOR OPEN button.

  Had Bob still been operating the train, the next moments would have unfolded differently. But with the supercomputer off-line, the Vesta Express’s mechanical subsystems had no smarts to deploy as a counterweight to human impulsiveness. With idiotic obedience, the door opened a crack. There was a boom, and it leapt open the rest of the way. The atmosphere in the driver’s cab swirled out, sucking Mendoza with it. He stumbled a few paces, gasping and wheezing, and then fell face down.

  On the network monitor screen, the latest systems status report faded, to be replaced by a representation of the face that had formerly been Meredith-Pike’s. His eyes swivelled, as if he could see the empty driver’s cab. “Ha, ha, ha,” he said thickly. “Fooled you. This is fun.”

  ★

  Elfrida wrenched her leg away from the icy hand that had grabbed it.

  “Aaagh!” she screamed, and then, weakly: “Mr. Satterthwaite! I thought you were dead.”

  Satterthwaite clutched his head and groaned. His gaze skittered over the half-naked bodies of Jimmy and Wang. “Cold.”

  “Yeah,” Elfrida agreed. To her shame, her first reaction to Satterthwaite’s survival was: So I’ve only got half as much air as I thought I had.

  Her contacts distracted her. “Hang on,” she said. “I’m just going to take this.”

  “Elfrida? Daijoubu?” [Are you OK?]

  Elfrida’s jaw dropped in astonishment. “Rurumi?”

  She had completely forgotten about the moe-class phavatar. If she had thought about it at all, she’d assumed Rurumi had been left behind with the roadheader, and good riddance.

  “Hai, daijoubu,” she typed in wonderment.

  “Yokatta! [Oh, good!] This is really scary, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Rurumi, it’s scary. Did you just call me to chat?”

  “I know you didn’t want me to come. But I just wanted to see that cute little doggie one more time.”

  Elfrida realized that she had forgotten about Jimmy’s terrier, too. The poor thing was probably dead now.

  “Anyway, do you want me?” Rurumi asked.

  “What?”

  “Do you want me? I emailed you, but you didn’t answer.”

  “Rurumi, are you real
ly calling me in the middle of a depressurization event to ask if I want to have sex?”

  “No! No no no! Gregor told me, if things get really scary, you’re authorized to operate me. So, do you want to or not?”

  Elfrida inhaled sharply. She sent a quick thought of gratitude in the direction of Gregor Lovatsky, who—unlike everyone else—had been pessimistic enough to consider the possibility that things might go completely FUBAR. Then she typed, “Sounds like a plan. But I’m not in a telepresence cubicle. So we’ll have to do this together.” And Elfrida would have to overcome her dislike of working with an assistant. With their lives at stake, she thought, she could manage that.

  Rurumi informed her that she was now logged in. “SUIT COMMAND,” Elfrida typed, testing her authorization. “Enable optic feed.”

  The V-shaped horizon of the graben blocked out the stacks of frozen food. Rurumi was on top of the Vesta Express, hitchhiking. The scene tilted, the train swaying gently as it raced around the equator.

  “Optic feed working,” Elfrida typed. “There’s a breach in the exterior containment of the de Grey Institute. You can get in that way. When you’re inside, ping me for further instructions.” She hesitated. “By the way, Rurumi? I’m sorry I was mean to you.”

  “That’s OK!” the phavatar replied. “I’m used to being hated because I’m beautiful.”

  “That’s not why—well, maybe it was. Kind of. Anyway.”

  Elfrida minimized the optic feed and glanced at Satterthwaite. He was not doing anything helpful, just shivering and groaning. She pinged Mendoza. She hadn’t yet told him what had happened in the kitchen. She had been unwilling, if not unable, to put words to the horrible vibes she’d got from Hugh Meredith-Pike and the Little Sister thing. But she had to tell him what little she did know, for his own safety.

  “He’s not answering,” she muttered. “He’s probably talking to the Yonezawas. Figuring out how to launch the train into space. Shit.”

  Satterthwaite spoke up, his teeth chattering. “Are you talking about the TEOTWAWKI option?”

  xxxiv.

  Shoshanna decided not to waste time searching the de Grey Institute any further. Dr. James believed that, given the size of the PLAN ship fragment, it must be in the storage module, so that’s where they would look first.

  To get there, they’d have to pass through the support module.

  “It’s still pressurized,” Dr. James said, pointing at the readout beside the door.

  “Yeah, and infrared is telling me there are people in there.”

  “The refinery crew.”

  “They’re still alive, based on their heat signatures. Let’s try and keep them that way.”

  Shoshanna hit the DOOR OPEN button. She kicked the top flange as it irised back, bending it far enough for her and Dr. James to wriggle through in the teeth of the wind that instantly rushed out. She backflipped and punched DOOR CLOSE. The flanges shuddered, straining to meet. “Don’t take your helmet off,” Shoshanna advised. “I’m getting an air pressure reading of 0.8 atmospheres. That’s lower than it should be.” Then she turned and got her first good look at the room they were in. “On the other hand … maybe it doesn’t matter.”

  They stood on a raised walkway that ran around the edge of a cubicle farm, like at a call center or something. And all the telepresence couches were occupied.

  By dead bodies.

  Freshly dead. Even if it weren’t for the infrared readings that had deceived her, Shoshanna would have known that much at a glance. Throats had been slashed, faces hacked into bloody ruins.

  Dr. James made indistinct noises.

  “Do not throw up in your helmet. People have died that way. Turn your back if it bothers you.”

  Dr. James moved up beside her. She heard his breath rasping over the radio. “My career is finished, anyway,” he said.

  “Ain’t that the truth.”

  Shoshanna knew that her own career, and maybe more, depended on her making the right call, right here, right now. Her backup was still hours away. With all the satellites down, and the ground-based transmitter at the spaceport out of range, she couldn’t even call for advice. “Priorities,” she whispered to herself. “Neutralize threat, secure area, protect civilians.”

  That was the ISA field agent’s official rule of thumb, and there was a reason why protecting civilians came last. The ISA was the Information Security Agency. Anyway, these civilians were beyond protecting.

  Or … were they?

  Not all the operators had been hacked up with a blade, she now saw. Only one in four or five.

  Which just so happened to be the incidence of purebloods in the general population.

  The other operators had been flung out of their couches, their telepresence masks and gloves ripped off. They were lying on the floor, and given the size of them, it was no wonder they couldn’t get up, even if they were alive.

  Shoshanna saw one of them weakly struggling. She vaulted over the intervening partitions and shook the person—a woman, probably. The woman mouthed at her. Shoshanna ripped her helmet off to hear. She felt the cold on her face, heard the whooshing of the air circulation system struggling to restore normal pressure, smelled the metallic odor of fresh blood.

  “Help,” the woman said. “Help! Help!”

  “Who?” Shoshanna yelled. “What? When? Where’d it go?”

  “I’ve lost Marmaduke. I need to get back in my couch. Help me.”

  Disgusted, Shoshanna threw the woman against the nearest cubicle partition. “Cupcake,” she said.

  The pained whimpers of the survivors scratched at her ears. Her heart was racing, her palms damp. Her BCI recommended an adrenergic uptake inhibitor. She distractedly authorized it to release a modest dose from the pharmacology implant under the skin of her left arm.

  The Heidegger program had hijacked the phavatars that worked at the refinery.

  Why hadn’t she anticipated that? Well, you couldn’t anticipate everything. But that was no excuse.

  The Heidegger program was loose on the surface of 4 Vesta.

  She’d failed.

  She raised her helmet to her jaw. “We’re going back,” she said to Dr. James, who was sitting on the walkway. “Someone’s driving this train, and it can’t be the PLAN agent, or we’d be dead already. I assume there’s a manual control interface. So we’re going to go find whoever’s operating it, and make them stop.”

  “Why?” Dr. James’s despairing monosyllable crackled from her helmet.

  “Oy veh. So that we can get off, and get back to the Flyingsaucer. I need comms, doggone it, and that fucking PORMS took out all the satellites I was using, although that may have saved the rest of the solar system, so it’s a wash, I guess.”

  She needed to call her controllers and make a full report, so they’d have the information they needed to act upon when they got here. In the meantime, maybe she could alert the Big Dig, and get them to use the PORMS to slag the phavatars in the open. It might be too late for that, but you hadn’t failed until you stopped trying.

  “Question,” Dr. James said. “What kind of a computer program slaughters people with a knife?”

  “Huh? One that sends them nuts. You don’t even need a fragment of a PLAN ship to do that. Although most BCI crash victims end up in therapy, not going on murderous rampages.”

  “Yes, but where did it get the—” Dr. James interrupted himself. “Shoshanna! Watch out!”

  She turned, and the knife came at her from below, a glint in her peripheral vision, giving her barely enough time to jump back. The woman she’d thrown to the floor was moving like a killer whale, fast, hacking at her legs. And all over the room the other survivors were rolling and surging and slithering towards her, their obese bodies sailing through the air like porpoises, several metric tons of flying cupcake converging on her in three dimensions.

  Micro-gravity gave the wrong people all the advantages.

  Shoshanna had combat training. What she did not have was a dece
nt weapon. To be caught with a laser pistol would have wrecked her cover as a student activist. She had a home-printed revolver with three bullets in it. She leapt into the air to avoid the woman on the floor, and fired all three bullets in rapid succession into the nearest oncoming cupcakes. Then she threw the revolver at a fourth one. They didn’t even slow down. In the corner of her eye she glimpsed flashes. Dr. James was shooting at the cupcakes with his prosthetic gun.

  She made a cold calculation that the odds were insurmountable.

  “Run!” she yelled. “Tell them it’s loose!”

  She did not see whether Dr. James obeyed her or not. The cupcakes were on top of her. Slowly, as in a nightmare, struggling all the way, she was smashed to the floor.

  She lay half on a telepresence couch, her head hanging off its edge. Obese bodies pinned her limbs. A man sat on her chest. He had a transistor tattoo on his bald skull. “Are we having fun yet?” he grinned.

  Shoshanna commanded her BCI to euthanize her. The dose loaded in her subdermal store was kinder than over-the-counter peace pills. Supposedly.

  ~Are you sure? her BCI queried. It would not let her take this drastic step without double-checking.

  “Yes!” Shoshanna screamed. The cupcakes were fumbling around her head, trying to force a direct-connection telepresence wire into her temple port.

  “Oh, good,” said the man sitting on her chest. “We are, too! The more, the merrier.”

  ~Please confirm you are of sound mind and not under duress or emotional distress, said her BCI.

  Too late. The wire had slipped home. Shoshanna Doyle would never be of sound mind again.

  “Cancel euthanasia command,” she said, sitting up. “Just joking!”

  ★

  Far away from the Vesta Express, the phavatar modelled after the porn star Marmaduke Shagg stood outside the Bremen Lock. It was accompanied by a baker’s dozen of its fellows. They had run as fast as they could to get here, but they were not tired, needless to say. They were machines. They had stopped only once, at the Bellicia-Arruntia spaceport, to recharge themselves.

  That had been fun.

  (Phavatars, independent of their operators, had no sense of fun. But the entity now operating these phavatars did.)