Marmaduke Shagg hefted the anti-spacecraft cannon they had ripped from its mounting at the spaceport.
Then he froze. All the phavatars froze, sagging in awkward postures.
The sky curved blackly over them. There were no satellites up there any longer to distract from the awesome beauty of the stars.
(Not that phavatars had a sense of beauty, anyway.)
In front of them, the airlock’s external gates spanned the gap between the rock and the mushroom-cap overhang of the Bellicia ecohood’s roof. Wrought from asteroid iron, the gates depicted woodland animals and children frolicking around the Virgin Atomic logo. This artistic flourish mirrored the aspirations of the ecohood’s founders, recorded in a form impermeable to the cynicism of subsequent generations. The gates still reminded everyone who passed beneath of their dependence on a FUKish aerospace company whose good intentions were matched only by its self-promotional zeal.
(If the phavatars had been capable of any emotions at all, they might have felt a flicker of gratitude at being freed from that dependence.)
The sun peeked above the horizon, slapping their shadows through the gates.
Marmaduke Shagg lowered the cannon. They all walked forward.
The gates swung open.
The airlock admitted them.
★
Back on the Vesta Express, Elfrida was trying to warm up by doing jumping jacks when Rurumi interrupted her.
“I’m in. But my hair is ruined!”
“Huh?”
“The repair bots are fixing the airlock. I had to wiggle past them. I’ve got splart in my hair!”
“When this is over, I’ll introduce you to my hairdresser. You’d look great with a pixie cut, in my opinion.” A moe-class was a moe-class, and so Elfrida took a few seconds to reassure Rurumi, although she was twitching with urgency, as well as shivering with cold. “Go to the driver’s cab. Mendoza hasn’t been responding to my pings. I want to make sure he’s OK.”
She maximized the optic feed as Rurumi scuttled from the vestibule to the atrium. She nervously watched the phavatar’s peripheral vision for any sign of life. But nothing stirred, except bits of trapped litter. The draught had stopped. With the airlock repaired, the train was no longer losing atmosphere. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much left to lose.
★
Kiyoshi had locked himself into the bridge of the Unicorn to keep his passengers from bothering him. But he couldn’t lock Jun out.
“Call her,” the ghost said, buried from the waist down in Kiyoshi’s workstation, so that Kiyoshi’s hands went through him.
“Get out of my way.”
“Call Elfrida. Tell her we’re here.”
This was not strictly true, but it would be in another few seconds. The backthrust phase of its trajectory complete, the Unicorn was decelerating into orbit around 4 Vesta.
Kiyoshi was interested in what else he could see around the protoplanet. Or rather, what he couldn’t see. A massive asteroid like this, with a large settled population as well as active mining operations, should’ve been orbited by dozens if not hundreds of satellites. His scanners had only found two.
“I thought you were talking to the other guy,” he said to Jun. “Mendoza? He’s the one driving the train, isn’t he?”
“He was. He’s not responding anymore.”
Kiyoshi looked up from his screens. “That’s not good.”
“No. It’s not.”
At that moment an unknown ship pinged them. “XX Longvoyager-class general-purpose transport Unicorn, registered to Loyola Holdings, Inc. What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Over.”
★
Elfrida screamed and clapped her hands over her eyes.
“You d-d-do scream a lot,” Satterthwaite said. “‘S a waste of energy, you know. No one’s c-c-coming.”
With her eyes shut, she couldn’t see the ghastly information from Rurumi’s optic feed. But it was burnt into her brain. The door of the driver’s cab stood open. Mendoza lay face down outside it in a pool of vomit.
“There’s nothing in my action parameters for this!” Rurumi texted pitifully. “Help! Please, Elfrida!”
Elfrida’s forced herself to look again. Mendoza’s face was cyanotic. She told Rurumi to carry him into the driver’s cab. Not that that would bring him back to life, but she couldn’t just leave him there on the floor. Why on earth had he left the cab? Oh, Mendoza!
“We’re going really fast,” Rurumi texted, staring fearfully at the monitors. The sides of the canyon were a gray blur.
“Yes, Rurumi, we’re going fast.” Elfrida looked at the array of manual controls. She turned to Satterthwaite. “Listen, you. I know your head hurts and everything, but it’s time for you to pull yourself together and freaking help. The TEOTWAWKI option?”
“Błaszczykowski-Lee’s idea. I never liked it. Smacks of suicide.” Satterthwaite shivered. “I don’t want to die.”
“We aren’t going to die. A friend of mine is coming to get us.” Or, to get the Heidegger program. But Elfrida kept that to herself. She didn’t have a whole lot of options now, apart from ignoring her suspicions about Kiyoshi Yonezawa and hoping for the best. “He’ll take us off, and then … well, we can worry about that later. First we have to launch this whole doggone module into space. I’m in the cab, but I don’t know what buttons to push, anything. Help me.”
“Oh God,” Satterthwaite said, chafing his hands. “Can you see the propulsion systems monitor?”
xxxv.
When the unknown ship hailed them, the Yonezawa brothers swung into a well-rehearsed routine. Jun minimized the propellant flow so their engine would look even weaker than it was. He also instructed their repair bots to head for the cargo bays, ready to jettison the construction materials and D/S bots they were carrying if necessary. Meanwhile, Kiyoshi responded. “XX unidentified ship, we are slingshotting around 4 Vesta on a trajectory with the following heliocentric parameters.” He made some up. “It’s called fuel economy. What’s your excuse?”
The ship responded after twenty-three seconds, which either meant that it was six million kilometers away, allowing three-ish seconds for reaction time, or else that it was trying to make him think it was. “Hey, bud, no offense meant. Long as you’re not planning to land on 4 Vesta. Be advised, you do not want to do that at the present time.”
“It’s the ISA,” Kiyoshi said to Jun. “They’re either six million kilometers from here, or trying to make us think they are.”
“My scans aren’t picking up anything closer than four million klicks, and that’s just a cycler. There’s something farther out, approaching on a direct trajectory from the inner system. Could be them.”
“Another word of warning. If you pick up any communications from 4 Vesta while you’re in the volume, ignore them. There’re some bad actors down there, and they may be targeting innocent bystanders, so don’t be that bystander, Unicorn. ‘Kay?”
The ISA agent had not announced his identity, but he was making no effort to hide it. Only the ISA would emerge from nowhere to deliver cryptic warnings on the assumption that they would be obeyed. It was kind of like running into the PLAN. You knew they were out there, and you hoped you’d never meet them. But when you did, you knew immediately what you were dealing with.
“How long before they get here?” Kiyoshi said to Jun.
“About two hours, if I’m looking at the right ship. They’re coming like a bat out of hell.”
“Still, I’m gonna assume it will be a while before we’re in range of whatever weaponry they’ve got.”
“I’d feel safe making that assumption, yes. What have you got in mind?”
Kiyoshi did not answer. He was high on another of his custom drug cocktails, a blend of meth, caffeine, and L-carnitine, which he thought of as an awareness enhancer. He said to the ISA agent, “Guess you got caught napping, huh?”
“What’s that, Unicorn?” the response came twenty-two seconds later.
“Tha
t’s what your wife says,” Kiyoshi sent back, and jammed his shoulders into the depths of his couch, laughing.
“That was stupid,” Jun said, arms folded.
“I was just jerking his chain. You’ve got no sense of humor. That was your problem when you were alive, and it still is.” Kiyoshi sobered down. “Look, they’ll try to slag us as soon as we’re in range. All that nicey-nice bullshit is just to put you off your guard. They won’t want to take the chance that the Heidegger program may have infected us.”
“I wouldn’t disagree with that analysis.”
“I’m going to call the boss-man. I didn’t want to tell him what we’re doing here, but maybe he can talk to them.”
Jun’s face was unreadable. No one could do poker-face like the ghostly self-projection of an MI.
“You talk to Elfrida. If she can’t pull off the emergency launch, all this is for nothing.”
“You talk to her,” Jun said.
“I know you don’t want to do it,” Kiyoshi roared. “Suck it up! You’re a freaking machine intelligence. You don’t need me holding your hand!”
Jun vanished.
Kiyoshi set his teeth. He radioed the boss. While he waited out the signal delay, he watched for signs of Jun’s activity, but saw none. His screens merely displayed automated status reports as the Unicorn orbited Vesta in search of the train.
Well, either Jun would call Elfrida, or he’d hide in the sim and sulk. Either way, he couldn’t stop Kiyoshi from prepping the guns.
★
Rurumi perched on the driver’s couch, entering the commands that Elfrida relayed to her from Satterthwaite.
“Find the electromagnetic suspension control panel. It’s in Electrical Subsystems. Look, over there, I see it. The ES controls should already be on manual. Yes? Good. You’re doing great, Rurumi. Definitely more than just a pretty face …” Elfrida broke off her soothing flow of text. “What’s wrong?”
Rurumi’s optic feed showed that she had scrambled off the couch. She peeked around the door of the driver’s cab. “Someone’s coming!”
Down the corridor walked a person in a high-fashion coverall with a loose, translucent outer layer, accessorized with boots, gloves, and a bubble helmet. Behind the lightly tinted faceplate Elfrida made out the face of Shoshanna Doyle.
Shoshanna smiled and held out her hands.
“She’s talking to me,” Rurumi texted. “She says everything’s going to be OK!”
Another couple of seconds and Shoshanna would be in grabbing range. Elfrida wavered for barely a millisecond. Shoshanna had taken Cydney hostage. However she’d gotten aboard the Vesta Express, Elfrida was pretty sure she hadn’t come to rescue them. She typed faster than she ever had in her life.
Rurumi jerked back into the cab, slammed the door, and locked it from the inside.
The door vibrated, as if Shoshanna was kicking it.
“Do not let her in,” Elfrida typed. “Is she still talking to you?”
“Yes! She’s telling me to let her in. Now she’s asking me who’s operating me. I have to tell her, Elfrida! It’s the law.”
“Oh God! Can’t you lie?”
“I can’t disobey my operating guidelines!”
“All right, I’ll talk to her. Transmission follows: Hey, Shoshanna. This is Elfrida. Cydney’s girlfriend, remember? We’ve met a few times at the Virgin Café. I’m trying to save the solar system right now, so go and annoy someone else. Smile.” Elfrida bared her teeth as she typed.
Rurumi transmitted Shoshanna’s response. “You dumb bitch. I have to use the comms.”
“It’s not safe,” Elfrida transmitted. “I’m not turning anything on that the Heidegger program might get hold of.”
“Horse, barn door. It’s already escaped.”
“No way,” Elfrida said aloud. She read Shoshanna’s text to Satterthwaite as it continued to appear. “It hijacked the—”
“The phavatars,” Satterthwaite said, simultaneously. “Howl of despair.” His teeth chattered. “She’s the ISA agent we’ve been hearing so much about, isn’t she? Better do what she says. If we had cooperated to begin with, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
Elfrida set her jaw. She transmitted to Shoshanna, via Rurumi, “You’ve got a track record of deceit and excessive violence. You used Cydney and David and Win Khin and Big Bjorn and all of them to further your own agenda. You took the entire community hostage. You basically murdered that poor guy from the VA finance department. And I’m supposed to trust you? Sorry.” She added to Rurumi, “Get ready to push that button.” She hadn’t heard back from Kiyoshi Yonezawa. He’d said they would contact her when they were in position. What was she thinking, to trust a Japanese smuggler over a bona fide ISA agent?
It didn’t matter. She had to get the Heidegger program off of this asteroid. Mendoza had died trying to save 4 Vesta. She couldn’t let him down.
“See the status graph for the electromagnets?” she typed.
“Where are you, Elfrida?” Shoshanna texted, via Rurumi. “You’re on this train, aren’t you?”
“I’m not talking to you anymore.”
Then the Unicorn finally pinged her. But it wasn’t Kiyoshi whose image appeared in her call waiting area. It was Jun.
Panicking, Elfrida split the display in half.
Shoshanna: Guess you haven’t seen what’s happening in the Bellicia ecohood right now.
Jun: We’re here.
Elfrida: What?
Elfrida: Thank God. I’m ready to launch.
Shoshanna: Take a look.
Via Rurumi, Shoshanna transmitted a feed from someone’s retina cam. The anonymous vidder was bounding along a street in Bellicia, soaring over knots of citizens who were brawling with knives and clubs. People sprawled on the street like bundles of bloody rags. Instead of soyclouds, dirty puffs of smoke hung in the sky. The amber rays of SecondLight barely penetrated the haze. Things were burning.
Shoshanna: The fucking Heidegger program got in the same back door I was using and took over. Now the whole solar system is watching it butcher those people. Talk about propaganda.
Elfrida: Those are just regular people. I know that man. He’s hitting that woman. He’s killing her!
Shoshanna: The program has infected everyone who had a BCI and a connection to the hub. About ten percent of the solar system’s population has BCIs, but here, that fraction is a lot higher. Students love gadgetry. So do the spaceborn. Now, it turns out that for the Heidegger program to convert you into a meat puppet, you need to have a BCI and some kind of non-organic neural stimulation mechanism. Again, students love that shit. Getting a dope store in your arm is practically a rite of passage for those little slebs in the Humanities department. Then there are all the phavatarists like Win Khin, whose phavatars have now been taken over. So basically, this rich, privileged, cutting-edge community is as vulnerable as they come. Most people are hiding in their panic rooms. Figure in the fact that there are only five peacekeepers here, and the purebloods haven’t got a chance. That’s what you’re seeing.
Jun: God have mercy on their souls.
Elfrida: What can we do?
Shoshanna: Let me into the driver’s cab and/or, I don’t care which, stop the train. I’ve still got a few tricks up my sleeve.
Elfrida: Let me rephrase. What can we do that doesn’t involve blowing people up?
Elfrida: Screw God!
Shoshanna: For crap’s sake, this is an emergency.
Elfrida: If He exists, why is He letting these innocent people die?
Jun: Why did He let 11073 Galapagos be destroyed?
Shoshanna: Open the fucking door!
Elfrida: Cydney’s still there, isn’t she? Do you know if she’s OK?
Shoshanna: I don’t know if she’s OK or not. All I’ve got is the same feeds that these amateur vloggers are spraying across the internet.
Elfrida: She’s not a pureblood.
Shoshanna: That’s not going to help her much when they start linin
g everyone up for tabletop neurosurgery.
Elfrida: Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap.
Shoshanna: Bottom line, if you want her to have a chance, stop the train and let’s kick some AI ass. I left a Flyingsaucer back there; we can use that for transport. Got a couple of spare suits on board, if you need one.
Elfrida: You don’t have any answers, do you?
Elfrida: The train’s not pressurized. I can’t get out of here.
Shoshanna: Well, I don’t know where you are, but the breach has been repaired. The bots threw a bunch of splart at it. More importantly, the life-support systems are still working. By the time we get to the Flyingsaucer, we’ll have the atmosphere back. We’re going at Mach freaking 3. Deceleration is gonna take time.
Jun: You’re asking the wrong question. The mystery isn’t ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’ but ‘Why do good things happen to bad people?’
Elfrida: Are you saying I’m a bad person?
Jun: We’re all sinners. But you were baptized. I remember that. I’ve got vid from the church. I was the altar server. You rejected Satan and all his works and dedicated your soul to Jesus Christ. You cried a lot.
Elfrida: That wasn’t me, it was my phavatar.
Jun: And this isn’t me, it’s an MI.
Elfrida: So there’s no hope.
Jun: I didn’t say that.
Elfrida: I think I’m freezing to death. I can’t feel my fingers anymore. Thank God for auto-complete.
The Vesta Conspiracy Page 30