Juno Rising (ISF-Allion)

by Patty Jansen

  She was thinking Mars, but she was smart enough not to say it. She also knew that Katarina would think Mars because, likely, the mention of you’ve been through a rough time also insinuated that Jaykadia suspected why Katarina had been sent to Io.

  But this letter reflected her own feelings perfectly. It was almost eerie in similarities. Despite the different career paths, she and Jaykadia were still very much alike.

  Yes, elements in ISF were probably planning something under the guise of a military exercise, just like they had planned the complete destruction of Allion under the guise of a conference.

  She needed to get out of here. She needed to warn Sanchez. She needed to warn Jaykadia, and everyone else she cared about.

  She picked up the handwritten letter off the desk. How to get it to the delegation?

  Chapter 12

  * * *

  AT SOME POINT IN THE PAST, in one of his many previous identities, Fabio had earned the nickname Escape Artist. Because he got out of places and into places where no one thought he would go.

  The ceiling duct in the toilet at the second floor residential corridor in the main base was definitely such a place.

  Over the next few hours, several groups of people came in, but because Fabio managed to let himself down, clean up the drop of blood and the smear on the wall, no one paid any attention to the ceiling vent.

  A few people came to use the showers and once a guy used the toilet cubicle underneath him, reading something on his pad while sitting with his pants around his ankles.

  Sadly, also, the space up there—while being big enough to hide—didn’t lead anywhere else. There was a square access panel that might open to let in a maintenance person, but it had to be locked from the outside, because no matter how Fabio tried, he couldn’t get the panel to open.

  He was hungry and thirsty, and his arm hurt. Having swallowed the implant also forced him to comb through his poop up there, and that was trickier than he thought. He could pee through the grate and have it sort of hit the right spot, but he needed to do the other business in a corner of the maintenance recess. Being dehydrated turned his poop into little hard black pellets that took ages to come out. They were slippery and needed to be held with one hand while crushing them with the other. Urgh, the smell. All for nothing. He was paranoid about accidentally shoving the implant into the toilet below so he went through all of it twice. Nothing. How long did this take?

  He really had to find somewhere else to hide. Somewhere he had access to water—because he couldn’t use his water allocation since it would tell them where he was—and where he could do this disgusting thing in more comfort.

  Preferably somewhere off-base.

  Problem was, on Io, he needed a truck. Or environment gear, but even those things were pretty useless unless he had a place to go to, and he didn’t, because Prometheus was a thousand kilometres away and was also a military base. And this was over a crapload of dangerous terrain, with jagged spikes, huge heaps of soft sand that were deep enough for a truck to fall in and never be seen again. And lava lakes, lava crusts—which did the same thing as the sand bogs, but then with molten lava.

  And all that while that huge fucking red and white beach ball in the sky was pumping out enough radiation to kill a person before he even died of asphyxiation.

  Bugger the truck, he needed access to a shuttle. Or he needed to hide or bribe or force himself on board a shuttle.

  And this required planning. Careful, meticulous planning. It required people with the right connections. And he had none of this. More than that, he had limited time.

  He needed to steal stuff and would need a weapon.

  And because he had no time and no means of doing anything, he’d have to do something so bold that no one expected it. Like walk into the mess and grab a tray and a can of water and walk out again—in a disguise—like a surgical gown and mask. That would make it so he had to walk into the officer’s mess. Crap, talk about bold. But no one would expect him anywhere near the hospital, the place where they would detain and scan him.

  First things first. Food and water. Without them, he couldn’t do anything, not even, it seemed, poop.

  So when the corridors grew quiet, he let himself down.

  There would be security cameras all over the base, so he needed a way to turn them off, but since that was not feasible, to disguise himself.

  In a corner of the bathroom, he found a cupboard that contained a humidi-vac floor cleaning machine and a number of brooms. He set the brooms upside down in the basket on the machine, so that he could hide his face between the broom heads. He would have liked a cleaner uniform, but there was none, so this would have to do.

  He left the bathroom pushing the machine, bending over while pretending to read something on the pad he didn’t have, so that the cameras wouldn’t see his face.

  The hospital was on the ground floor, so he went into the lift, said hello to the men who joined him and pretended not to be nervous.

  He had one advantage: almost no one on this base knew him so they’d think he was just a new arrival having drawn the short end to do chores.

  While the corridors were quiet, the hospital was busy.

  It looked like there had been an accident, because the chairs in the waiting room were full. One man held a towel to his bleeding forehead, another clutched an awkwardly bent arm, pale-faced and sweating, while somewhere in the emergency room, a man screamed and swore while a forest of medical workers stood around him.

  Fabio pretended not to notice or listen to the screams—that guy was really in a lot of pain—as he pushed his cleaning machine past rooms with glass walls, where patients lay in beds surrounded by machines.

  At the end of the hallway, he found what he was looking for: the uniform room. He wheeled his machine inside, quickly grabbed a gown, a cap and facemask and stashed them into the recess at the back of the cleaning machine. He also grabbed a bottle of cleaning gel off the shelf.

  On his way out the door, he grabbed a couple of garbage bin liners. While he made his way back to the waiting room, he lifted the full bags out of the bins and replaced them with fresh liners, stacking the full bags into the basket on top of his machine.

  Fortunately, the patient in the emergency room had either been given pain relief or had passed out, and Fabio now had to side-step nurses who were assessing the other waiting patients.

  From the shards of conversation he picked up, some sort of heavy container had tipped over in the loading dock.

  As soon as he left the hospital, he went in search of a quiet place and found an area used for storage. He pushed the machine inside a large, low-ceilinged room, where it was pitch dark and no lights came on when he entered.

  Here, he pulled on the surgical gown and cap and put the mask over his face.

  If he remembered correctly, the officer’s mess was just around the corridor. He also knew that if the ceiling was low, it meant there was a mezzanine level in between this and the second floor. He found the emergency box next to the door, switched on the little light it contained.

  This was indeed a storage area, where boxed goods stood on pallets. He found the stairs to the next level in the far corner. They led to a loft where more boxes were stored.

  This would do as a hiding place. No cameras that he could see, and there was enough air to dissipate any smell resulting from his stool-searching activities, which he might need to resume fairly soon. At least he had bags to hide the evidence and gel to clean his hands afterwards.

  Food.

  He pushed the machine to the bottom of the stairs, and went back into the corridor.

  The officer’s mess was indeed around the corner. It was midnight, so the chairs stood on top of the tables for cleaning, and the light in the serving area was off.

  However, these rooms always contained a small kitchenette with hot water and some snacks.

  Fabio filled two containers with tea, grabbed a water can and put it in his pocket, and took several
packets of biscuits, all while wearing the surgical gown and mask.

  That was easy.

  He didn’t realise how thirsty he’d been until he got back to the loft and gulped both containers of tea and wolfed down all the biscuits.

  Then he probed his stomach for the signs of needing to poop, but decided in the negative, so it was time for the next stage of his ridiculous plan. He needed to go to the entrance hall to the base to figure out how to get out of here.

  Since a medical gown would not be suitable attire to go into that part of the base, he needed something else. He scoured the storage room and found a pallet that contained a stack of sheets of foam-core board—whatever they were used for. He used his nails to pry them loose from the plastic wrapping and carried one sheet into the hall, again hiding his face from the cameras, while pretending to be on his way to a construction site with that sheet.

  The pressurised trucks would ultimately be his aim, but he needed someone with the authority to open the airlock. He also needed someone who could get him into Prometheus. Yeah, like that was ever going to happen.

  This whole ridiculous plan just got a bunch more ridiculous.

  But it really brought home to him that he couldn’t do this himself.

  Who was going to help him?

  The people in the human rights delegation. Doric, perhaps.

  Unfortunately, they were both in the Research base—and fortunately, there was a goods train.

  Well, crap, he was in the wrong place, although he should probably check out a pressure suit because the train might not be pressurised.

  The suiting room was on the other side of the hall, so Fabio walked between the trucks, carrying his sheet of board.

  A group of three men in the suiting room said a quick hello, but otherwise paid him no heed.

  Fabio grabbed a suit off the hooks, pulled it on, making sure to put the hood over his head, and left the room again, carrying his board.

  But when he returned to the hall, an officer with a pad came up to him. He said, “I haven’t seen you before. Have you submitted your departure and travel plan yet?”

  “Um, I’m getting to that.”

  Fabio choose a random truck, leaned his board against the side, and then, because the officer was watching him, went up to the control room to supposedly submit his plans. He had no idea what to do, but he figured once he got nearer to the control room, he could find another way out of the hall that didn’t catch the officer’s attention.

  Watched by the man, he went upstairs, and found the control room, where a number of officers sat in a circle around a table as if they were in a meeting. It was not very busy in the hall at all, so this was probably the time that they held their staff meetings.

  None of them had noticed Fabio at the door.

  They were all looking at a display pad in the middle of the table, which projected a hologram of a curved line crossing through a field of objects. Fabio recognised the signs astronomers used for Jupiter and each of its moons.

  “It will be at least six months before it’s here,” one of the officers said, pointing at an entry point into the Jupiter system. “That is the last estimate. It’s the earliest we can deploy surface-based weapons.”

  “I wish they would stop changing their mind about this,” another officer said. “The troops are understandably nervous. We’ve told them that this is an exercise, but no one likes to be told that we don’t know how long it’s going to last.”

  “I agree that is becoming a problem,” another man said. “I’ve heard that some of the people in the settlements have started to question this, too. If it’s really an exercise, then why don’t we know when it ends?”

  The first man said again, “The truth will come out sooner or later. That is inevitable. You can’t just hide an alien object coming at us. We can make excuses for the amount of military activity in the system, but eventually people are going to be able to see the bright moving star in the sky for themselves. They’ll wonder what it is, and they’ll blame us for not doing anything to stop this alien entity that can, by the amount of light it puts out, only be using antimatter for propulsion. They’ll start questioning that soon enough.”

  “Let’s hope by that time Preston has figured out how to deal with the inevitable panic. Let’s hope that Sanchez appreciates what we’re doing here for humanity and that we have no time for human-rights pansies. The human right is the right to live. We’re fighting for that right.”

  Fabio’s heart was thudding. Alien object? Intruder? Antimatter engines? Enemy activity? Where was all this coming from? Nobody had said anything about this before.

  One of the men noticed Fabio. He nodded at the door and the men turned around to look. They were a mixture of Flight and Force personnel. A Flight Lieutenant-Commander, a Force Lieutenant whom Fabio suspected was in control of operations in the hall today.

  “Yes, can we help you?” he said.

  Fabio said, “Um, I was going to submit my travel plan, but I’ve just realised I forgot my pad. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He ran down the corridor, and down the stairs and into the hall. From there, he ran back into the corridor, still wearing his suit liner.

  Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap.

  Thalia

  * * *

  “SURELY THEY WILL enquire after us,” Sol said, from his position lying on his back on the top bunk. “Governor Law will be highly concerned about our safety and will demand to know where we are.”

  “I’m not sure about anything any more,” Paul said. “They seem to have abandoned us.”

  “I don’t even know what is supposed to be wrong,” Jun said. “I said they can check my medicine. I have the documentation now.”

  Thalia was pacing around the room. She hadn’t quite told all the other members of the delegation about the events in the examination room, about the nanometrics. They believed she was called back because she failed her medical test because of a misunderstanding.

  “Just stop it,” Paul said. “Your pacing is driving me nuts.”

  Thalia leaned against the wall, arms crossed over her chest. But standing still wasn’t easy. When she was angry or upset, she needed to walk around.

  She still couldn’t get over the humiliation they had caused her, back in that room at the main base. Having to hand in her ID and having every detail of her personal life read. Then being frogmarched back to the truck and taken back to the research station in the company of armed guards, as if she were going to run anywhere on her own. Fortunately, the others hadn’t seen that.

  She jammed her hands in her pockets.

  She said, “We are in a very isolated situation. I am not sure that it will be so easy for the Council Of Four to check out where we are.”

  “They know where we are.”

  “Yes, they do, but what are they going to do about us being detained, when the only way they can come to Calico is through the military and if they attempt anything else, the action will be considered hostile?”

  “I still don’t understand what they said to you Thalia,” Sol said. “They have no reason to retain us in this room and I haven’t heard one good excuse for them to do so.”

  “I don’t think it’s about us. Something is going on outside,” Jun said. “I could see it before they cut off access. There was so much activity on the other side of the base with long tubes, like they’re building a rocket launch installation. Maybe they don’t want the new people to find out we’re here. Or maybe they don’t want us to see whatever they’re doing over there.”

  “Then why did they plan our visit during the time of a major military exercise?” Thalia said.

  “Why do you keep changing the subject, when we ask you about what happened in that room?” Soul said.

  “Yes, that’s what I would like to know,” Paul said. “What happened? Because something did. You were all defensive and your story doesn’t add up.”

  They were both looking at her, and Thalia felt the heat ris
ing in her cheeks. Clearly there was no way to get out of this.

  “They took me aside, because they say I have nanometrics,” she said in a low voice.

  “What?” Jun said. “Do they have any proof?”

  “They say they do. They showed me a scan where all my blood veins light up in white. That’s proof, apparently. I really don’t know anything about it, nor how easy it would be to fake an image like that.”

  Jun said, “And that is a reason to refuse us entry? Don’t they know that loads of people have enhancements these days?” As the youngest in the group, he had some enhancements, like muscle stimulants, which required him to take his medicines. Paul’s living tattoos, too, were a form of enhancement.

  Thalia shrugged, feeling ever more confused and disturbed. “They think because I have this, I’m a spy sent by goodness knows who.”

  “That’s rubbish,” Sol said.

  “That’s what I said, too,” Thalia said. “I haven’t been sent by anyone.”

  He snorted. “What utter rubbish. Nanometrics is advanced, expensive technology. Who would use that on some random person who is not your target and has not been told that they have it? I really don’t get it.”

  But Thalia remembered seeing the image on the screen, where all her veins were outlined in bright white. She had seen this before, in articles about spying and human augmentation, complete with pictures that showed what all these various conditions looked like from a medical perspective. She had been reading about things ISF did to its workers. Unless that image was faked—which was always a possibility—she really did have nanometrics.

  And most disturbingly, Paul wasn’t saying anything. Paul, who had more intimate knowledge of her medical details than she liked, simply because he had always come to the hospital for Kat.