by Patty Jansen
Hansen said, “Why are you not wearing safety gear?”
They faced each other wordlessly for a few moments. Doric’s nostrils flared. Hansen tossed her a facemask, which she dangled on her index finger.
“Base regulations,” Hansen reminded her.
Doric strapped the mask over her head in a look-I’m-wearing-your-fucking-mask kind of way. While she was doing all this, she didn’t once look at Fabio, and he wondered what earned him the privilege of her protection and, to be honest, self-destruction.
“He’s my employee, and I need him,” Doric went on. “You want your chunk of ice delivered to your doorstep? I need him to do the work with me.”
“He’s a spy,” Banparra said.
“He’s working to keep all of us alive.” Doric’s eyes glared over the top of the mask. “Before you try to have me arrested, know this: he comes with personal protection of Admiral Sanchez.”
Did he? Personal protection? Fabio thought he’d only annoyed Sanchez. He didn’t even think he’d seen Sanchez more often than just for that fabulous dressing-down he’d received. Keep your head down. To hell.
“Sanchez’s man, with a fancy Sarajevo shirt and fancy Sarajevo implants. That’s exactly what I thought. He’s a fucking spy from fucking Sarajevo. I’m going to undress him completely, until he’s a crying heap of sorry arse on the floor. I do not want spies from Sarajevo on my base.”
“This is exactly why people like him are here: because you treat dissenters like animals. What happened to the military code of honour?”
“Fuck all of you. I’m trying to keep everyone alive. There is no room for human rights pansies. I was even taken in by them. Doing the right thing by one’s neighbours and all that, but they’re all spies, the lot of them.”
“So now are you officially declaring secession?”
“No. It’s Preston’s call anyway. He will not make it unless Sarajevo meddles any more in my running of this base than they currently do. And, frankly, it’s getting to that point.”
“As long as you don’t forget who pays you.”
Banparra laughed a big roaring belly laugh. “That’s how screwed up your thinking is with the Sarajevo mob. What use do we have here for money? What use do we have for orders that are made for us months’ worth of travel away from us? What point do we have in being a political football?”
“That’s disobedience of the Admiral’s orders. I will have to report that. Just like I will report on the gross negligence of the rights of your troops across the system, like this man here, like Ceres, like Mars.”
“Don’t talk about Mars! What do you know about it, anyway?”
“More than you can imagine. I know what ISF did on Mars, and it will come out. I have a report ready to be sent, with evidence. Don’t go looking for it, because you won’t find it anywhere in the base systems. I will send it when I’m ready.”
“You won’t or you’ll be sorry.”
“You know what the penalty is for threatening a fellow officer?”
“You know who has the higher rank?”
“I don’t care, because I’m not part of your command structure.”
“That’s it, I’m writing a formal complaint to Sanchez.”
“About what? You don’t even care about Sanchez. That’s the whole point of what you’re doing: secession.”
They glared at each other.
Fabio’s heart was hammering. Where did he fit in this? A spy.
Then Banparra snorted. The rank thing was a problem for him, Fabio guessed. Yes, she could be reprimanded for speaking up, but Research was in a completely different division so the chain of command was muddled at its best. Banparra knew that he couldn’t take this any further unless he went to Doric’s superior and that was always a risky thing to do. Doric might be of lesser rank—besides being in Research and not in his line of command—but he would be stupid not to realise that anything he said to her would go straight back to head office. He snorted again. Probably figured he’d already said too much.
“That does not change that this man is a spy.”
“Why are you so certain about that?”
“Because he failed all his medical tests, tests that you were trying to prevent him from being subjected to. He failed his blood test and he failed his mind scan. He is full of nanometrics.”
“That’s rubbish. You’re just making that up.”
“Show her, Hansen.”
Medical officer Hanson brought the image to the screen that he had just produced before Doric came in. It showed an image of a human head with all the blood vessels clearly marked white. Both Banparra and Doric glared at it.
“Jesus,” Banparra said, shaking his head.
“Explain to me what this actually means,” Doric said.
“It proves that he is full of nanometrics,” Hansen said. “Because when you run a current through the patient, the nanometrics take on a charge. That’s what you’re seeing here.
“And what is the proof that anything untoward has been done in his case? Nanometrics can be used for other things, or can just be latent in the system. You have prodded him, you tried to read him, you’ve wiped him and you have found no evidence that he is in anyway compromised or that his mind or body contains any information that is harmful or secret. It is not about nanometrics, it is about how they are used.”
“Yes,” Banparra said, and he laughed. “I remember there being a debate about whether or not guns kill people or people kill people. In the end people came to the conclusion that it was a whole heap of a lot easier for people to kill people with guns than without them. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. He has nanometrics and therefore I don’t trust him.”
“I still need him for my work, unless you can provide another astronomer.”
“This man stays here. I do not trust him anywhere on the base in any place that has any sensitive information, which is most of the base and especially the research division, and if you need some help you will have to find another officer. Certainly plugging numbers into a computer is not that hard.”
“That’s what you say. I’d like to see you try to do it.”
“You can argue all you want but my decision is final. This man will be locked up and he will stay here.”
Fabio looked from one to the other, listening to this discussion fought out completely over his head. He couldn’t move, even though he very much wanted to. He struggled against the bonds that kept him onto the table. He didn’t want any medical tests. It seemed that all that they’d ever know about him they already knew. He had no idea about nanometrics and where they came from. Maybe he was born with them, maybe it had something to do with Sanchez.
All he knew was that he needed to get out, because this room was too small for all these people here, and if people were going to decide about his fate, he might as well run out the airlock.
Doric said, “Let him sit up. He’s not a prisoner.”
“Who are you? You would think this whole human rights rubbish has rubbed off on you.”
“I saw things that were indescribable. If ever the people on earth hear about this they will never place any faith in ISF ever again.”
“Isn’t it a good thing then, that we don’t really care about people on Earth. We are in space and living in space is hard. You either obey or you leave. Put up or shut up. In case you hadn’t noticed, the environment out there is trying very hard to kill us. We have no time for soft politics.”
“You keep trying to distract me. Hansen, let the man sit up.”
Hansen looked from one to the other, confused.
“Come on, let him sit. You’ve already read enough of his data.”
Then, when nothing happened, Doric crossed the room from the door, and yanked loose the straps that held Fabio on the table. Then she wheeled the machine aside and took the sensors off his head.
Hansen protested. “Hey, keep your hands off my equipment.”
“Then let him go.”
Bu
t Banparra, whom Fabio had fully expected to butt in, was staring at the screen. His face turned red. “So that is how it sticks together.”
They all turned to where he was looking.
When Doric moved the machine, it had still been on. The scan on the screen showed part of a human head—Fabio’s—and also part of an arm—Doric’s. While the veins were clearly visible in the head, they also lit up bright white in the arm.
“You’re a traitor.”
Doric’s face had gone pale.
“What is this?” she asked.
“You tell me,” Hansen said.
“This is nonsense. You’re just making this up about nanometrics in the man’s body. That scan you showed earlier is a fake.”
“Either that or you’re spiked, too.”
“That’s ridiculous. How do you even dare to suggest that? I came up from the ranks of Dorics that always served in the force.”
“Well, obviously you had had a change of mind,” Banparra said.
“This is nonsense, and I will prove it to you. Start a new scan.”
They got Fabio off the table, shivering in his thin gown, and put Doric on. Hansen only started scanning equipment when she was convinced that it had been set up properly and the screen wiped. The first scan showed exactly the same thing as it had shown for Fabio: all the veins in her body brightly lit in white.
There was only one conclusion: if he had nanometrics in his blood, then she did, too.
“I think you’ll have some questions to answer,” Banparra said. “I always suspected that you were a plant from Sarajevo. This is my proof. Your game is up.”
The two thugs came in from outside and grabbed her by the arms. As Katarina was dragged out of the room, her bewildered eyes met Fabio’s. Please help.
Jaykadia
* * *
JAYKADIA STARED AT the middle-aged man who had just entered her office. Haigh Denman was one of her executives, an experienced man who did not often look as upset as he did now.
“They have—what?”
“Taken possession of the maintenance buildings. A whole bunch of soldiers barged in and told everyone to get out. They’ve started moving equipment outside. All the workers are going home, including the new shift that was just about to go out.”
“What about the people who are in the mines waiting for the new shift to turn up? Have they been warned and taken care of?”
“They have. I told them to shut down everything, take their keys and controls and come here.”
“Thank you.”
Jaykadia pushed herself to her feet.
“I’m going to have a look what’s going on. Come.”
She grabbed her overalls from the cupboard next to the door, pulled them on, and grabbed her mask and suit liner and went out.
Haigh followed her to the waiting buggy.
“I’m sorry about this,” he continued while the buggy took them through the settlement. “I insisted that they speak to you first, but they didn’t want to listen.”
“Really, thank you. I don’t know that you could have done anything to change the outcome.” Heck, she didn’t even think she could have made a difference herself.
In the big hall, a lot of the workers stood talking to each other. The sound of confusion hung in the air.
“Hey, boss!” someone called, and people turned around.
“What’s going on? I thought you said that they wouldn’t need the shed for a while?”
“I’m going to have a look at what’s going on,” Jaykadia said.
“Show ’em, boss!”
“Yeah, she’ll get ’em under control.”
A number of people cheered.
While it was not strictly necessary to suit up in order to get to the maintenance shed through the long access tube, Jaykadia did so anyway, because the suits that fitted her were all here—the maintenance hall only had ones several sizes too big—and because it would make her look more serious and ready to talk to any intruder, no matter who or where they were.
The suit did make walking more awkward but, on the upside, she acquired a nice swagger.
All along the walk down the tube—which seemed so much longer than it really was—Haigh was talking and Jaykadia played over various scenarios in her mind. If the ISF people had come with a maintenance crew, she’d turn off their power and demand to speak to their commanding officer. If they were soldiers moving out mining trucks, she’d tell them to stop or be accused of theft. Preston would have sent a few small units of people in order to prepare. She’d demand to speak to them and ask them what they thought they were doing, that this land was the property of the Ganymede Mining company, and— They arrived in the hall.
It was full of people in white jumpsuits and orange overalls. There were hundreds of them, and they had brought a large array of vehicles that stood parked around the walls of the hall. They were all ISF trucks. All the mining equipment had already gone. The troops in white were putting together pressure tents, presumably to be dragged to the unpressurised hall of the maintenance area.
“Holy crap,” she said in a low voice.
“I told you they had invaded the hall,” Haigh said.
Yes, but she had not quite expected an invasion of this scale.
A female voice came from behind, “Please, we can’t allow civilians in this hall.”
Jaykadia whirled around.
The woman who had spoken was quite a bit older than her, black-skinned with greying frizzy hair closely cropped. Her eyes were dark and the look in them sharp.
“Excuse me, but I am the owner of this company,” Jaykadia said. “I was not informed of this impending . . . invasion.”
“Did the vice admiral not talk to you?”
“He did, but. . . .”
Preston had said nothing about when or how the troops were going to arrive, or even that the deal was sealed. She had, perhaps foolishly, assumed that she’d be asked to remove the mining machines and be asked for permission to enter the hall.
“Is Vice Admiral Preston here?”
She gave Jaykadia a who do you think you are? look. “No, he is not.”
Obviously, the vice admiral had better things to do than talk to the biggest mining company on Ganymede, whose orbital sling he had used to get here, whose industry he was using in the form of the vehicles on the floor.
“I would like to speak with the officer in charge.”
“He is very busy.”
“I am busy, too. I don’t have that much time to deal with an invasion of my company’s space keeping my workers from returning to their jobs. I don’t have the time to deal with trying to extract stranded workers from the mines, shutting down machines that never shut down, and making sure the operators get back to the surface safely. I didn’t ask for any of this.”
“Come along, ma’am, but I ask you to please keep it brief.”
Jaykadia and Haigh followed the woman across the hall. Once they got past the line of trucks, the full scale of the operation became evident. Had she thought there were hundreds of people here? It looked more like over a thousand.
That changed her perspective on things.
There were no small teams of scouts that she could send away and shout at into halting their work while they contacted their supervisor. More people were here than worked in this entire section of the mine. There was no way they would listen to her.
In the far corner of the hall, an entire command centre had sprung up, with a number of people at workstations facing a couple of large screens. Everything—from the screens and control panels, to the desks and chairs—had been brought in.
This was not some simple maintenance centre. This was a huge operation.
One of the screens displayed a telescope image, showing a starfield with, in the middle, a bright white spot. Scrolling numbers down the side displayed various parameters which Jaykadia didn’t recognise, but it also showed the abbreviation ETA: estimated time of arrival.
What was that?
The screen’s operator, a woman in a spiffy white uniform and her hair in an immaculate bun, looked over her shoulder and then hit a button that replaced the starfield image with a screen full of data.
Jaykadia turned around to Haigh. He flicked up his eyebrows. What was that about?
They continued past the workstations to a small partitioned-off area, where the officer announced herself by knocking on the fold-up screen.
“Sir?”
A man inside answered.
“There are two people here to see you.”
She gestured Jaykadia and Haigh into the makeshift office.
The man who had spoken looked quite young, stout, with reddish hair and freckled skin.
“Operations Commander Donnell,” he said.
“I’m Jaykadia Law.”
“Wait, are you the company owner?” He sounded incredulous. It was a reaction Jaykadia often got, because of her young age.
“I would like to know what is going on.”
“Didn’t Vice Admiral Preston inform you of our operations?” He sounded guarded. Jaykadia had often noticed this with people from ISF when they had to speak to civilians.
“He visited me, but he told me that he would contact us when operations were about to start. I’ve heard nothing, especially not about any operations of this size.”
“I think you misunderstood our intention. Our use of this facility is not optional. There were rumours that the company was debating blocking access.”
Jaykadia’s face grew hot. She had spoken to the workers about blocking access until they could speak to the human rights delegation with the suspicion that the information would be leaked, but it was another thing to hear that it had actually happened.
“Rumours,” she said, making an attempt to sound as miffed as possible. She didn’t think she was doing a very good job. “Did I ever mention anything to Vice Admiral Preston?”
“You didn’t.”
An uneasy silence passed.
“My employees are not happy,” Jaykadia said.
“I’m sorry. Unfortunately, there is little I can do about it.”
“I would like to be kept better up-to-date with your plans. Preston never even mentioned how long you would need to stay here for.”