by M. D. Cooper
REGION: High Terra, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Folsom’s gaze passed over the faces of the other senators, including Senators Ariana and Percy, to watch the committee chair, Senator Alma, struggling to hide the dismay on his face as she spoke.
“I’m sorry, Senator Folsom, I simply don’t believe that the Anderson Collective poses any significant threat on Luna. With Cruithne and Eros at their closest approach in years, we need to stay focused on border security. Too much illegal trade passes between those rocks when they’re at perigee during a planetary alignment, hidden in the upsurge freighters taking advantage of the short haul.”
Folsom nodded. “I agree, and we know that the Marsians have been sending more than just ‘humanitarian aid’ to the Andersonians on Luna.”
“Really?” Senator Harrin cleared his throat loudly. “You know? Has some intelligence made its way to your office that bypassed ours?”
Lips drawn into a thin line, Folsom fixed Randall Harrin with a measuring gaze. Everyone on the Solar Military Oversight Committee had their own backchannel intelligence-gathering operations, but no one was keen to divulge their sources. Being the junior senator on the committee, Folsom was even less inclined to give any hints regarding how he knew what he knew.
Schooling his expression, he gave a noncommittal shrug. “Anyone who thinks the Marsians are just sitting on their heels is naïve.”
Senator Lance chuckled from where he sat two chairs to Folsom’s right. “I’m not sure if I should take that as a compliment or an offense.”
Folsom glanced at the senator from Mars. “I mean no disrespect, but a weakened Terra helps Mars, we all know this.”
“We’d be more than happy to send a Marsian fleet to Luna to help out.” Lance winked, then glanced at Senator Alma, who represented Earth’s western hemisphere. “Do you think the Terran government would like a hand?”
Alma ignored Lance’s gibe and fixed Folsom with a steely glare. “We cannot compel the militaries of SolGov member nations to do anything without evidence. Unless you’d like to provide something further, this matter will be put to rest.”
For a moment, Folsom considered providing the evidence requested. He knew enough of the Andersonian activity on Luna to keep the discussion going, but the nagging worry that one of the senators in the room was working with the refugees and their Humanity First offshoot kept him silent.
He shook his head, and Alma responded with a mirthless smile.
“Very well, let’s move on to the next item. Marsian policing of trade routes through the trojan asteroids….”
Folsom only half-listened to the conversation that followed. It was a topic that the committee had gone over several times, and he had memorized every point and counterpoint.
Hailing from the Hera Collective—a group of Hildas asteroids whose orbit kept them on the far side of the Sun from Jupiter—Folsom rarely involved himself in issues pertaining to the Jovian Combine. The JC and Mars were always at odds with each other, even more than Mars and Terra.
Their struggles with the other two major powers in the Sol System kept the Marsians from interfering with Hera, and he preferred to keep it that way as much as possible.
At least for now.
If things kept on the path they were going down, war would come, and Mars would need more resources than they currently controlled in the Asteroid Belt and the Jovian co-orbitals. Folsom’s own Hera Collective might look like an easy addition to the Marsian Empire, should things come to a head when the planet next reached perigee with Jupiter’s L2.
A weak Mars benefited Hera, but removed a buffer between the Psion AIs at Ceres and Terra. Without Terra, Folsom was certain the AIs would win.
Such a balancing act.
The single word entered his mind via an encrypted diplomatic channel, and Folsom quickly assessed the tokens and data parity before responding to the agent.
Folsom took care to ensure that his expression remained neutral as he listened to the agent’s words. The Sykes girl wasn’t strictly necessary for his plans, but she could have uses and, after the effort expended, it would be a waste to squander her—at least before she’d made a larger impact.
Granted, other parties he worked with were rather partial to Cara, and he needed their assistance more than hers.
Folsom couldn’t help a discreet cough, which the other senators ignored.
The connection cut out, and Folsom considered putting a message out on the Mesh, but then thought better of it.
Fugia Wong will already know anything I do in this regard. No need to play messenger.
He forced his focus to return to the room he sat in and nearly groaned when he realized that Alma was launching into one of her speeches about how disruption of trade in the Jovian trojans had a direct impact on goods moving up and down the Puerto Rico space elevator, and how that harmed not only her constituents, but all the people of Earth.
Even the servitor in the corner can see through that one, Folsom thought. I wonder if I can get that thing to bring me some ice cream? I’m going to need it to make it through the rest of the afternoon.
PART 2 – GRAVITY WELL
WATCHER FROM AFAR
STELLAR DATE: 3.14.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Lucky Dust Mining Facility (Abandoned), Luna
REGION: Luna, Terran Hegemony InnerSol
Everything about Luna was infuriating. Sinclair Rondo had been living in an ancient mine’s control center for nearly six months, and he still hadn’t gotten used to the hopping-skip that local Lunans used to get around. He hated the huge swaths of dead infrastructure where downtrodden Andersonian refugees lived and worked. He hated the entertainment districts of New Austin, crowded with sloppy tourists, noisy casinos, and overcrowded, non-stop parties. He hated the dust. Most of all, he hated living underground.
“Am I a mole person?” he asked his workshop.
None of the consoles or communication equipment responded.
“No, I am not a mole person.” He shifted between workstations in his rolling chair, checking the rivers of data pouring through his communications array. “I do not eat mole food, or nose around blindly, or eat worms. I certainly do not eat worms.”
Rondo was a large man, nearly seven feet tall, with shaggy brown hair and a beard. He was strong, but also enjoyed the finer things in life, so his muscle was concealed under a comfortable layer of belly. Having spent his life as the biggest person in any room, Rondo was used to people trying to pick fights with him—people were funny that way—but he didn’t like intimidating anyone. He had decided at a young age that he wanted to be known for his brain more than his brawn, and he concealed his many unique qualities in both areas beneath a slacker façade.
Being large meant that living underground was more than a hassle. The rooms and connecting corridors of the Silver Stars Mining Concern had been somewhat stingy with their digging, so nothing was a centimeter larger than
necessary. As a consequence, Rondo had spent his six months on Luna ducking, squeezing, and crawling through most of the areas in his temporary home.
The room didn’t answer his ongoing conversation, but that didn’t mean he felt alone. Rondo was surrounded by conversations through a plethora of communications channels on his various workstations. He moved from screen to screen—each a window into a different forum, stream, or frequency—carrying on at least twenty separate conversations. While the only sounds in the room were the squeak of his chair and the humming of warming and cooling systems, Rondo’s head was filled with voices.
On a small holotank to his left, Stars the Hard Way played with its soundtrack set to Link. He could listen when he chose, but mainly enjoyed watching the actors crouch and leap, or approximate hard acceleration on a command deck. The actress playing Cara Sykes was a woman with long legs and a tight shipsuit who often caught Rondo’s eye.
Everyone knew the show was Andersonian propaganda, but that did little to stem its popularity. The Collective’s earnest ideals were seen as quaint by most of Sol; many people saw the value in a simpler life, while also recognizing that the Anderson Collective was the last government ruled by a dictator, no matter what their Council tried to portray.
When a low alarm sounded on a portable console hardlined into the mine’s ancient data stacks, Rondo rolled across the room to assess the new information.
“Oh,” he said to himself, hunching over the relatively tiny console. “Now that’s interesting. That’s very interesting.”
Rondo had ‘traps’ scattered throughout Sol, monitoring the various backchannels, networks, and forums that people usually forgot about: maintenance systems, sensors, log files, sales data, the volumes of fuel tanks on far-flung outposts. Thousands of data points flowed back to his tracking system, alerting him to tiny actions that often became huge incidents.
Connecting information was Sinclair Rondo’s specialty. His skills were what had made him the de facto second-in-command of the Mesh. The other Data Hoarders called him the Trapper, and there were forums dedicated to hackers who thought they’d found one of his traps.
“I think I found you,” he told the room. “Or one of you, at least. And as we know, one of you will lead me to the rest of you, because you always need someone to gloat to, don’t you? Don’t you, Camaris?”
Following the battle of Vesta, all signs indicated that the SAI had gone to ground, but Rondo had been hunting her high and low.
The Mesh conjectured she was hiding from Alexander, the leader of Psion, but Rondo wasn’t so sure. There were plenty of indicators that Alexander had abdicated power and SolGov simply hadn’t figured it out yet. A regime change at Psion wouldn’t come so long as Alexander was verifiably alive; many of Rondo’s ongoing conversations debated what would happen then, and how Camaris might be working from hiding to bring about a coup.
One thing he knew about Camaris: she loved shards. She had split herself at least four times that Rondo had found, so any given sighting required him to also determine which version she might be using. Like a dictator using imposters, Camaris was often in three places at once.
The thing about SAIs, though, was that depending on lag, they might as well truly be in all three places at once.
Rondo verified his data with a second check. “This isn’t something a mole person would find,” he told the room. “No, no. This is bear territory here, my friends. We’re in bear country. We’re knocking down trees and digging up roots.”
When the check came back positive, Rondo smiled to himself. While he couldn’t track an SAI by something like a neural print, several indicators had been culled from vast observation sets. Camaris had put herself on display during the battle for Vesta, and Rondo had slurped up all that data for later use.
Using key data from the Vesta attack, which he was mostly certain had been led by true Camaris, Rondo verified he had indeed found her. On Luna.
Now that is very interesting.
He experienced a moment of fear, which surprised him.
What if she’s waiting just outside the door? What if she allowed me to find her, and is about to spring her own trap?
He tilted his head back and released a bear laugh at the empty room.
Interrupted by the sound, a small grey cat poked its head up from the back of a warm server and meowed at him.
Rondo turned from his console to look at his friend.
“That’s right, Adama. I scared myself there for a second. What do we do when we scare ourselves?”
Adama rose from his nest and arched his back, then hopped off the equipment to float down to the floor. A second hop landed him on Rondo’s shoulder, and he dug his claws in to find purchase.
Rondo hunched his shoulders at the tiny pricks, then nodded into Adama’s purring body. He ran his hand over the cat’s short-haired back and scratched his ears.
“That’s right. No one’s getting close to us. If all else fails, I’ve got you. You’re the best short-range sensor in all creation. Now, let’s send our update.”
Flexing his fingers, Rondo bent over his console to send a secure communications request out to a relay on the edge of the Hellas Asteroids. From there, it would bounce through more connections than he’d bothered to count on its way to a woman he guessed was somewhere in InnerSol, but was never quite sure.
Adama sprawled on the big man’s broad shoulder and started his grooming routine, pausing occasionally to scrub Rondo’s ear with his rough tongue.
In ten minutes, the request was answered, and Rondo received a connection verification with low lag. She was close.
“What do you want, Rondo?” a woman asked. Her tone was equal parts no-nonsense and friendly competition.
“Fugia,” he replied. “I found Camaris.”
There was a four-second delay, which narrowed her down to somewhere in near-Earth Terra. “Why didn’t you just say that in your message, dummy?”
“I’m not sending that in a connection request. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nobody reviews connection requests,” she said. “I hide all sorts of stuff in there. If you thought about the big picture, you’d think of hacks like that. You’re always picking the lock when I’ve pulled the pins out of the hinges. It’s because you’re arrogant. You want to outsmart people.”
Rondo snorted. “Fugia Wong is lecturing me on arrogance? I need to get a record of this on the Mesh, file it under history’s greatest hypocrites. Adama, are you listening to this?”
Fugia laughed. “That’s almost funny. Scratch that kitty for me.”
Rondo sent her his verification data, which told the story more succinctly than he could with words.
“Luna,” Fugia said. “You think this is lining up with everything else we’ve been tracking?”
“It would seem so. Randall Harrin just arrived at New Austin. He’s been busy with the SolGov consulate, but his official itinerary shows several meetings with Collective workgroups. And there’s a banquet with Chancellor Osla. They’re going to get plenty of facetime.”
“What other chatter have you picked up?”
“Plenty of Humanity First rhetoric in the forums. The general chatter on that increases in volume wherever Harrin travels. I think the Andersonians are making subtle headway in advancing their cause among the working classes in New Austin. The Austinites have gone from viewing them as job thieves to partners in the fight. The Ceres attack continues to be the best thing that ever happened to the Anderson Collective.”
“Human nature doesn’t change,” Fugia said. “Listen, I have another task for you.”
“What, finding Camaris isn’t enough for you?”
“Well, track her and don’t get caught, obviously. No, this is more interesting. I want you to get me entry into an ancient launch site on Earth.”
“Going treasure hunting?”
“There’s a rocket in there. An ancient Soyuz 17. I think it can fly, but I want you to make sure.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Rondo asked.
“With ancient technical manuals and an army of drones, just a few of your favorite things.”
Rondo laughed and Adama nuzzled his ear.
“You know me too well, Fugia. Sometimes I think it’s dangerous.”
ROOTS
STELLAR DATE: 3.15.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Summerville, Jerhattan
REGION: Earth, Terran Hegemony InnerSol
The skiff’s nose scraped slime-covered plascrete as Cara leaned back and drove it up the submerged steps with a couple hard pulls on her paddle. When the flat-bottomed boat refused to go higher, she stood carefully and moved forward until her weight shifted from the water to the stairs, then leapt out.
She knelt to find the anchor line, pulled out a couple arm-lengths, and then wrapped it around some exposed rebar.
The tail-slap of an alligator from somewhere by the collapsed wall where she’d entered made her pause, and she waited to see if it had been disturbed by pursuit. When there was no other movement, she increased the sensitivity on her secondhand IR goggles so the flooded interior of the high-rise blossomed in deep shades of green, blue, and red.
It was just after four AM, and the night hunters were still out. Paddling the skiff down the flooded streets of Summerville, she’d caught the glowing eyes of cougars, raccoons, and owls. In the flooded entryway of the high-rise, she heard only lapping water and creaking from up the stairwell.
The walls around her bulged with water damage, and sections had sloughed their inner layer to reveal bare plascrete covered in branching black mold. There was little sign of human habitation; as far as local information told, the last squatters had left fifty years ago, which wouldn’t have been long after her Grandma Sibine had died.
Cara reached into the skiff to pull out a small pack loaded with water and food for a couple days. The pack also contained the Emily Dickinson book, wrapped in EM shielding.
Cara hadn’t heard from the person she called Felix since entering the tunnel. She had expected some other attempt at contact, but the book had remained quiet.