by Patty Jansen
“I have no idea where you’re going with this. Tell me what you think, please.”
“You are so impatient.”
“In this matter, yes, I am, and if it’s because I’m young, I’m happy to own up to that.”
Her aunt folded her hands on the table. “Well, nobody is too sure about this, so please don’t take it as a definite. There was a time, many years ago, when space exploration was a lot less conservative than it is today. After Mars, people became much more cautious. Accidents are bad for public opinion. A lot of civilians are in space, and when civilians die, it doesn’t look good for anyone. News services spread facts and fiction about the event far and wide. It’s impossible for ISF to control the narrative as they do with their own mishaps. It is my feeling that the trend to be less cautious at the beginning stages of a project is not something evil and alien, but something from the time that people set out to conquer space and did lots of experiments. The fact is that we now do less groundbreaking research than people did back then.”
“So, what does this have to do with this exercise?”
“Well, he is afraid that someone will come out of nowhere with more advanced technology, having taken more risks, but having succeeded in doing something ISF cannot.”
“Like Allion, back in the day.”
“Exactly. We’re still reaping the profits of their work. For one, you wouldn’t be sitting here if it wasn’t for Allion technology.”
The accident. The hospital, that brilliant doctor to whom Jaykadia owed her life.
“Dr Crawford was not Allion.” Sadly, she had retired.
“You are more convinced of that than I am. I think she went to ground when she became stranded when Allion was wiped out. She kept her head down because she had to survive. She won’t have been the only one, and Preston is trying to root out dissent. People who might be likely to be informants for other interests.”
“Are you seriously suggesting that Allion is still alive in some way?”
“I don’t know, but wouldn’t be surprised if they were. That’s what this exercise is about: increasing the footprint of ISF in the civilian communities to fill the ideological vacuum that has arisen there. They have never liked the fact that commercial companies do things and develop technology that’s not in their control. They want to know what we’re doing in our sheds, and they want to have control over as much of it as possible.”
Damn, that made far more sense than was comfortable.
“Preston asked me to vacate all the mining sheds,” Jaykadia said. “What should I do about it?”
“Give him his sheds. But don’t take out everything. Make sure you still have some surveillance equipment inside, and make sure that you have some personnel located in nearby locations, and argue the hardest you can that those people be given access to all their facilities.”
“You mean we spy on what they’re doing?”
“We are great spies,” her aunt said. “We would never have gotten as far as we have today if we had blindly obeyed their every command. We’re happy to work with them, but when pushed, many of us will come to the defence of freedom and the likes of Allion and Fenosa and all the commercial operations that once co-existed with ISF. We are truly not hostile to the military unless they give us no other option. But if they’re smart, they won’t go down that path. Preston is a smart man. He won’t make that mistake, but we have to keep on our toes. This is why we speak to them and we invite them to join our groups and come to our meetings. We know they’re not going to pull their weight in the Council Of Four, but just having them in there gives us the authority to send delegations to Io.”
“Have you heard from the delegation yet?”
“No, but we don’t have direct access, and I expect there to be something soon.”
She smiled, and Jaykadia was starting to like this. It was true, life these days was boring, even in the hostile environment of space.
Playing the political game would be a good thing to do.
Chapter 5
* * *
FABIO LEFT HIS ROOM again, and went back to the door where he had heard the voices. It was shut.
He knocked. “Are you still there?”
Footsteps. A male voice. “Finally. Are you from Base Ops?”
“Um—no. I’m the guy who was here before. Has anyone come to open the door yet?”
“We’ve heard nothing. We’ve complained several times. They say someone is coming to fix the problem, but no one comes.”
This was very odd. “I asked upstairs, but there seems to be hardly anyone here. I’ll see if I can open the door myself. Wait a moment.” He glanced around the corridor for something to bash the door down, but the corridor was entirely empty, and besides, an airtight door would be hard to bash in, never mind that a damaged door would get him into all kinds of trouble that a malfunction didn’t justify. He ran to his room, opened his cupboard and stared at the contents, trying to remember what would be useful. His hand went unbidden to the back of his head. If he still had his implant, he would know what to do.
He glanced at the comm hub next to the door. Security clearance.
There was something niggling at him. His scar itched. He did have an external data patch in his bag, which he’d found in his room on the interplanetary, stuck to the bottom of the top shelf of the cupboard. It had been live, and no doubt used by security to spy on him, but he had disabled it by sending worms from the room’s hub, little bits of code that day by day stripped away layers of security that hid the patch from the system, until he could access its data and erase it. He had taken pride in this work, proof that he was not mad and that he could do things, if only he remembered what those things were. He had taken the patch as a trophy, an empty patch with layers of top-level-approved security that he could use to his advantage.
It would probably open the door.
He took his duffel from the top shelf, and picked apart the lining in the corner where he had hidden it. The device was no bigger than a pill, but much flatter, with one side made of adhese-latex. He stuck it to his collarbone, under his uniform. A patch of warmth spread across his chest. That was his nanometrics jumping into action, a particular type of dendromers dumping their coating and releasing the naked nanobots into his bloodstream. He watched the screen of the PCD on his wrist until it registered the heightened activity, and it started to flash corrupt software detected. Yeah, duh, that was all the stuff he’d planted on the patch. If someone was going to take a blood sample tomorrow, he’d be seriously screwed.
He went back to the door and knocked. “Are you still there?”
“We’re not going anywhere,” the man said.
“I’m going to try something. I may need your help.”
He knelt on the ground so that he was face to face with the door’s lock. He took off the PCD and pressed it against the metal surface of the lock, where it stuck like it had on his skin.
Now. This kind of activity felt very familiar.
A memory: he saw a brief flash of a dark and derelict concrete corridor, felt a brief chill of freezing air against his skin. It stung like boiling water.
His heart thumped. Only a vacuum was that cold. Where the hell had that been?
He pressed a button on the PCD. The screen flickered briefly, and then came up with the Calico Base logo and security prompt. Entry code.
Well, fuck that, he had no entry code.
Sometimes, doors released automatically in case of a general power failure. He could simulate a power failure. While being bored on the interplanetary, he’d found many worms in the ship’s systems that did just that and had stored them all on his secret datapatch. Really, command had no idea how corrupted their supposedly secure systems were.
He subvocalized List DIR COMMAND BREAKER.
The PCD’s screen showed a list of about twenty-five worms. The one called Death of Night would do nicely.
Seriously, he wondered about the sanity of people who wrote these things, althoug
h rumours went that some of the worms were self-perpetuating and hundreds of years old.
He tapped on his PCD. The worm transferred.
The little light on the door started flashing.
“Can you try the door?” he said. Because in an emergency, doors could only be opened from the inside.
There was a thump against the door. And then, “Nope.”
Fuck.
The light was still flashing.
Another memory. He was in a dark room, and a display on the wall flashed in blue letters 15 . . . 14 . . . 13 . . . 12 . . . He pressed himself against the wall, holding the gun with both hands, listening out for footsteps.
Someone shouted outside, If I get my fucking hands on you, I’ll wring your neck, you little slime.
Fabio breathed fast, still seeing those letters. Then he knew what he had to do. High-level security codes did not release the lock in the event of a power failure. You could not have criminals running around your closed-environment facility each time there was a power failure. Rather, these locks required a human response that it was, in fact, OK to release them, because you could also not afford the families of convicted criminals sue you for negligence of care. If there was a real emergency, everyone should be given a chance to escape, not just the “good” people.
“Are you listening? I want you to do something for me.” The light was still flashing. They probably had another thirty seconds before it was reset and the system would detect the worm.
“Yeah, OK.”
“I want you to go the comm hub and find the menu.”
Footsteps. A short silence, and then, “Got it.”
“Go into something that says, Enter manual code.”
“Got that, and then?”
“Enter S1.”
“Done.”
“Can you open the door?”
The door rattled. “Nope.”
“OK, try pressing reset and receive at the same time.”
A small silence. “Nope.”
Fuck. Well, the implant memories would come in handy here. Meanwhile, the seconds were ticking away. Surely Major Doric wouldn’t be impressed if she found out he’d been messing with the security system. Keep your head down, Velazquez. The hell. Trouble had a way of finding him. And what was wrong with helping people, anyway? “Are you still in the manual mode?”
“Yes—oh—hang on. Now I am. What was that again?”
“Reset and receive at the same time.” One of the most-commonly used lock overrides.
There was a brief burst of power that made the PCD’s screen flash. Fabio felt it going through his veins. His skin prickled, and a feeling of heat spread through from his arm into his shoulder. The nanobots in his body aligned; he could feel it.
The light stopped flashing. The lock clicked.
The door opened.
A waft of stale and sweaty air drifted from the room. The man on the other side was the tall and dark-skinned delegate he had seen earlier that day in the arrival hall. He had startlingly grey eyes.
Fabio clambered to his feet, rubbing his arms and taking the man’s outstretched hand. He was at least a head taller than Fabio, and his hand was huge, but long-fingered and delicate.
“Thank you for opening the door. I thought they were going to abandon us for the night,” the black man said. His voice was very deep.
He stood in a narrow hallway to what seemed to be a small apartment. There were four doors in the hall, one open. In this room—a bedroom with two bunks—sat the three other members of the delegation. The young man sat on the top bunk, the woman on the bottom, and a blond-haired man of indeterminate age stood by the door. He was also very gangly and tall, and much of his skin was covered in green-hued bio-tattoos that moved. Not cheap, those.
For a moment, they stared at each other. Fabio realised how odd he looked with the spiked-up hair and caked shampoo. “Well, I had a shower malfunction.” He was still shivering from the burst of power that had gone through him. “Um . . . you’re free to go to dinner now.” He held out his hand. “Fabio Velazquez.”
“Do you normally work here?”
“No, I just arrived on a temporary contract.”
The dark-haired woman wormed herself off the bunk and rose in a fluid motion. “And he’s the only one in this place who’s shown any kind of help to us.” She was shorter than Fabio, with a thin frame and long black hair. Her eyes were black. A smattering of freckles covered her nose and cheeks, which reminded him of someone.
He asked, “Er . . . have we met before?”
“If you’ve been to Europa, maybe. Before the embargo.”
“Um . . .” He didn’t know if he’d been to Europa. What embargo? What sanctions?
“I’m Thalia Hasegawa,” she said. “Communication officer for COF.”
“Paul Armitage,” said the tattooed man and gave an absurd little bow.
“Sol Whitaker,” said the black man.
“Jun Hasegawa.” That was the youngest member in the group, and Fabio was surprised just how young his voice sounded.
He did remember that the Hasegawas were a major mining family in these parts. The immigrant Yoshi Hasegawa had nine children, who each had lots of children, and as a result, there were many Hasegawas everywhere.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you with anything at all,” Fabio said. “I don’t know what embargo you’re talking about.” Probably something that Major Doric wouldn’t want him to learn about.
Paul scoffed. “What planet have you been on? Do they keep force deliberately innocent now?”
“Paul. . . ,” Thalia warned.
There was a brief and tense silence.
Thalia said, in a measured voice, “He wouldn’t know about politics of the system if he came from elsewhere. In short, the Council Of Four is an independent body of civilian and mainly commercial interests that represents the four Galilean moons. The Council Of Four raised money for the sling to be built and it belongs to the Council’s cooperative. The Council has agreed that in return for the use of the sling, individuals, organisations or commercial ventures need to declare what they’re using it for, and outline the projects they’re working on. This is to increase stability in the system and avoid situations such as on Mars. Banparra has been a most accommodating Base Commander. He sees the value in working together with local systems, rather than relying on his orders to come from Sarajevo. We value him a lot, because without him, we would never be here as inspectors of the Council Of Four. Frankly, I don’t see how Sarajevo can have any idea of the issues we’re facing out here.”
Hmm, that was a lot more enlightening than anything he’d heard so far. And he was probably also not supposed to learn of it in this manner. Was he supposed to support Banparra or Sarajevo? The latter, he thought, although instructions on what he was supposed to do had gone MIA.
“So now Vice Admiral Preston has ‘innocently’ announced the largest military exercise the system has seen, in which Calico Base will be the epicentre. But in order to get enough resources delivered to Calico, they need to use the Galilean sling, and the commercial operators of the sling have put a limit on how many transfers they will process. Part of it is simple logistics: they don’t have that much spare capacity, but some of it is definitely political.”
Hang on—Preston. That definitely rang a bell. But she was wrong about him: Preston was not a supporter of Sarajevo. Preston was Sanchez’s rival.
That man has been trying to undermine me. If you find any reason to bring him down, don’t hesitate.
“Is this . . . exercise and embargo why you’re here?”
“No. We’re here to inspect working conditions and talk to the base crew, especially the ones in lower rankings and those who have been sent here as punishment. We’ll spend a few weeks in various places of the base. For the time being, the first mission seems to be to find something to eat. Does anyone know where to find the kitchens?”
Fabio checked his PCD, only to find that the bypass of the bas
e security had dumped a lot of information on it. “I think I can find out.”
So he set out with this odd group, Thalia walking next to him, Sol following with Jun, who had not said a single word except his name, and Paul trailing the group, a scowl on his face.
The PCD showed the canteen as being two floors above the room.
Again, there was no one on the stairs and even the canteen was empty, but there was a light still on behind the serving counter, although all trays and serving counters had already been cleaned. Where were the people who had eaten here?
As the group proceeded into the room, a man came out of the doorway of the kitchen. He stopped and frowned in consternation.
“These people would like to get some dinner,” Fabio said.
The man stared. “Yes, sure. D-corridor, right? I was coming to that. Sorry I’m late, but we’ve been very busy.”
It looked like they had, too. A huge pile of plates stood on the counter. There were at least two hundred chairs in the room, and the floor was still dusty and covered in footsteps and the occasional spill.
“Your dinner is being made right now. I’ll go and check if they’re ready. Wait here. Sit down.”
They sat one of the long tables.
Jun sat next to Thalia, Sol at the head of the table and Paul next to Fabio.
Noises of rattling of plates and cutlery drifted from the kitchen.
“Too busy to attend us, my arse,” Paul said.
Thalia said, “Oh, stop it. You know they don’t want us here, so why are you surprised?”
“I hadn’t expected them to be quite so blatant about it,” Paul said.
“They’re military. Subtlety is not their thing.”
Thalia leaned her elbows on the table and her head in her hands. Jun stared into the distance. Fabio wondered how old he was.
Thalia asked Fabio what his task was at the base, and he told her that it was to find icy celestial bodies that could be diverted to use as drinking water.
Sol said, “What? Isn’t that the job of the Galilean sling?”
“It’s just a job.”
“But it isn’t really, is it?” Sol said. “It’s not that simple.”