The Vesta Conspiracy
Page 37
Feet on the handlebars, she considered the two assignments she’d been offered.
Luna
Luna
Mercury
Mercury
Pro
Con
Pro
Con
Close to home. Could see more of Mom and Dad
Micro-gravity = head bloat, stabilizer braces
Never been there before. Exciting?
Never been there before. Boring?
“Coordinator” sounds impressive!
They would never let me back on the Venus Project again
Would be interesting to work at UNVRP HQ
I just know I would suck at HR
Concerts, theater, great dining experiences, etc.
Stupid dress code
Gravity of 0.38 gees = no head bloat, could skip the stabilizer braces
??
Could see more of Mendoza
Could see more of Mendoza
Could see more of Cydney
Could see more of Cydney
She reached Rome at half past eight. The traffic was as awful as it had been for the last 23 centuries. Since Rome was the capital of the ramshackle UN member state called the New Holy Roman Empire, highrises now disfigured the Quirinal and the Via Veneto. The outer districts had been subjected to rewilding and restoration schemes of varying degrees of lunacy. Hillvilles—high-rise residential complexes buried in artificial mounds, planted with the native greenery of southern Italy—squatted on either side of the restored Via Triumphalis. The traffic parted around the Arch of Constantine.
And stopped.
All the vehicles had received the same command from Mobility Control Rome: halt immediately.
This wasn’t unusual. It happened several times a day, when Mobility Control couldn’t keep the traffic moving by slowing a few cars here and speeding up others there. Traffic jams were a hazard of living in a city with lots of old narrow streets, and lots of Italians.
What was unusual was that the traffic still hadn’t started up again after fifteen minutes.
Elfrida texted her mother— “Looks like I’m going to be late; you and Dad might as well go ahead and eat.” She got off her Vespa and paced, not going too far, lest the traffic should start up again without warning. Other people emerged from their cars and trucks, stretched their legs, glanced up at the night sky. Shooting stars popped: spaceplanes aerobraking in the upper atmosphere. This was a familiar Earth sight, as ordinary as rain.
A public service announcement blared in unison from Elfrida’s Vespa and all the other cars and bikes in earshot. Despite having lived in Rome as a child and teenager, Elfrida couldn’t speak Italian. But she was hardly the only one. The PSA repeated in English: “Remain where you are. It is recommended that you not leave your vehicles. The polizia municipale are carrying out random security checks in your area. Please cooperate. Thank you!”
Elfrida gritted her teeth, forced herself to relax. Everyone settled in to wait.
A tap on her sternum made her jump. It was her new phone. She hadn’t got used to its haptics yet.
She clicked Accept in the interface linked to her contacts, and unbuttoned the neck of her motorcycle jacket. The phone’s lanyard flexed, tugging the pendant-shaped gadget out of her clothes. The lanyard stiffened and turned into a brace that supported the phone at eye level. It was designed for people so vain or confident that they wanted to make vid calls everywhere. The camera had been given to Elfrida by Cydney Blaisze, the media personality who happened to be Elfrida’s girlfriend.
It was Cydney’s face that now showed on the phone’s 2cm screen.
“Ellie! Why are you wearing your bike helmet?”
“I’m stuck in traffic. What’s going on?”
“Oh my God, have you seen what’s happened?”
“What’s happened?”
“There’s been a murder!”
“A murder? Whoa.”
In 23rd-century Europe, murder was rare. Reports of it were rare, anyway. People looked at Elfrida. She cringed, and dragged the phone closer to the visor opening of her helmet. “Who’s been, uh, murdered?” she whispered.
“It’s crazy. Charles K. Pope!”
“Oh my God,” Elfrida said. “Oh. My. God.”
The Via Triumphalis seemed to spin around her.
“Crazy, right?” Cydney said.
“Are you sure?”
“Sure? That he’s dead? Of course I’m sure. Everyone’s talking about it. I’m sorry, Ellie, you didn’t know him, did you?”
“Know know him? No.”
Charles K. Pope was—had been—the director of the United Nations Venus Remediation Project.
“I never even met him,” Elfrida said. “But still. Kind of close to home.” Her thoughts spun off in all directions. Would the Project suffer? This is the last thing we need, after 4 Vesta, and all the shitty publicity in the last few years. Who would take Pope’s place? Would this affect either or both of the assignments she’d been offered?
“Murdered?” she said.
“Well, they aren’t saying it’s murder, but he drowned in freaking Lake Como. That does not happen. There are more rescue drones stationed around that lake than on the Riviera, OK? Anyway, why else would they have locked down every city between Zurich and Athens?”
Elfrida looked at the static river of traffic that stretched out of sight beyond the Arch of Constantine. “I’m only half an hour from home. Maybe I should just leave my bike and walk.”
“Don’t do that,” Cydney said. “You haven’t yet adjusted to being back on Earth, have you?”
It was eerily silent on the Via Triumphalis, with everyone’s car stereos and televisions disabled by Mobility Control. Into that silence penetrated a thin warbling. Blue lights winked into sight around the skeletal curve of the Colosseum.
“Cyds, I gotta go,” Elfrida said. She cut the connection and sat astride her bike, nervously gripping the handlebars.
Three police striders bobbed around the Colosseum. They looked like prehistoric raptors with wraparound tinted eyes. They were designed to navigate nimbly through traffic, putting their feet down in the slivers of space between vehicles. People said that they were also designed to intimidate. The Italian bikers around Elfrida scowled, muttered “Cazzo la polizia,” and spat on the asphalt. The warbling sirens sounded like hunting cries. Drivers selected for random checks slid out of their vehicles and assumed the position in the shadow of the striders’ fuselages, while their bodies and cars were scanned. Of course, this was just theater. The police would be scanning everything in range.
Suddenly, one of the bikers near Elfrida gunned his machine. Engine howling, he roared off the street and zoomed along the sidewalk, away from the Colosseum, heading for the hillvilles. He shouldn’t have been able to do that. His bike was obviously jailbroken. Knowing that he’d be slapped with a massive fine when the police got to him, he’d decided to make a run for it. Everyone rubbernecked.
The bike’s taillight reached the nearest hillville, Città Collina San Gregorio, and started to climb the landscaped path to the top.
There was a sound like the pop of a wine cork. The bike veered off the path. It somersaulted downhill and landed against the swings in the playground. Its rider came to rest under the seesaw. He seemed to be bleeding pink from a glow-in-the-dark splotch on his back.
Elfrida knew what had happened. The polizia had sniped the biker with a paintball gun. Hopefully, he hadn’t also broken his neck.
She cowered as a strider leapt over her, planting one foot beside her rear wheel.
“Dumb pleb,” she mumbled. “Why would anyone think they could get away with that?”
Ten minutes later, the traffic started moving again. Elfrida’s inbox had filled up with emails from colleagues sharing the news of Charles K. Pope’s tragic death. She read and responded all the way home. No one mentioned the M-word—murder. ‘Tragic windsurfing accident’ was the consensus. Elfrida’s supervisor, Jake
Onwego, assured her that this would not affect her options. She still had a choice to make.
She parked off Piazza Benedetto Cairoli. As she was about to walk away, her Vespa sniggeringly informed her that she had had an unpaid parking ticket, and the polizia had hit her with an fine that was going to eat half her furlough pay.
Tense with annoyance, she moved the bike into a legal parking place, and then walked back to her parents’ building.
Windowboxes of flowers enlivened the quaint 20th-century street. A cat skittered across the wet pavement. The timelessness of the neighborhood comforted her—until a poll popped up in her path, randomly foisted on her by her network connection. “Hello! Jugglers, stiltwalkers, and other street performers should be taxed as a) artists, b) polluters, c) small business owners. Please pick one!”
Elfrida was tempted to reply, Frag off, but voting was compulsory. “C,” she snapped, and was informed that 53% of people so far had voted for b), polluters.
It would be just like this on Luna, except indoors.
She called Cydney on her way up the stairs.
“Hey, Cyds. I’ve decided: I’m going to take the Mercury job.”
“Yay!” Cydney shrieked. An animation of falling confetti surged across Elfrida’s contacts, obscuring her view of her father, who had opened the door at the top of the stairs. Her phone buzzed with applause.
Tomoki Goto caught her as she blundered into the door frame. “Did you just win something?”
“No, but I’m really hungry. Is there any of Mom’s sauerbraten left?”
Her father’s gaze tracked down. “What … is that?”
In her free hand, Elfrida was carrying the basket she’d been working on for the last three months. Louise 361AX had given it to her as a goodbye present.
“Oh,” Elfrida said, “just some junk my therapist had me do.” She sailed it into the living-room. Then she went after it and stuffed it into the recycling bin.
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THE MERCURY REBELLION
BOOK 3 OF THE SOL SYSTEM RENEGADES SERIES!
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THE SOL SYSTEM RENEGADES SERIES
Near-Future Hard Science Fiction
A genocidal AI is devouring our solar system. Can a few brave men and women save humanity?
In the year 2288, humanity stands at a crossroads between space colonization and extinction. Packed with excitement, heartbreak, and unforgettable characters, the Sol System Renegades series tells a sweeping tale of struggle and deliverance.
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3. The Mercury Rebellion
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6. The Mars Shock
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It took us two hundred years to establish fifteen colonies on the closest habitable planets to Earth. It took the Ghosts only 20 years to destroy them. Navy pilot Colm Mackenzie is no stranger to the Ghosts. He has witnessed first-hand the mayhem and tragedy they leave in their wake. No one knows where they came from, or how they travel, or what they want. They know only one thing for sure:
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Military Sci-Fi with Space Dragons
In 2160, a Void Dragon ate the sun.
In 2322, eight-year-old Jay Scattergood found a Void Dragon egg in his garden.
Humanity survived the death of the sun, but now we're under attack by the Offense. These intelligent, aggressive aliens also lost their sun to a Void Dragon. They lost their home planet, too. Earth, now orbiting Jupiter, is still habitable - though much colder than it once was. The Offense will do whatever it takes to destroy humanity and take Earth for themselves.
Our last hope against the alien aggressors is Jay Scattergood ... and his baby Void Dragon, Tancred.
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