Déjà Doomed

by Edward M. Lerner

  An app, parsing the comm delays in the data handshake setting up the call, displayed Lunar caller. He relaxed, just a bit. This was not an FSB superior reaching out. It was barely past six am. in Moscow, and any contact from Moscow this early would be bad news. Then again, what other news did the Federal Security Service—by its Russian acronym, the FSB—offer at any hour of the day?

  He pressed a thumb against the ID sensor to take the call.

  “Gene, hi.” Yevgeny’s caller had a shaved head, big and round like a bowling ball. And a faded scar running from his right ear almost to the point of his jaw. Also, huge, square teeth. In the right light, Paul Sokolov would make a fine orc. Somehow he didn’t make women run away screaming. The unadorned mooncrete wall behind Sokolov offered no hints of location. “This is—”

  “I know who you are.” And you were told that, secure line or not, we don’t use names. Just as you were told never to call this number except for something important.

  “Um, yeah. Right. Sorry.”

  Sokolov was a second-generation American, his grandparents having emigrated from Novosibirsk. His legal name was Pavel, but he had no use for his heritage. Only for money.

  “Anyway, Yev … sorry, I came across something very odd. Something big.”

  When hadn’t Sokolov had “something big” to report? But unlike his habitual attempts to inflate his worth and hint about a bonus, he had never before used this priority link. Long-haul trucking gave the man entry to almost every facility on the Moon—including the He-3 mine staffed out of Base Putin—and Sokolov had always reported in person. Perhaps, this once, he did have something valuable to relate.

  “Where are you?”

  “Guest quarters at Site Tango.” Their code for the American observatory on Farside. “Things here aren’t normal. Not at all. I can’t figure out what’s going on.”

  “Walk me through it.”

  “Sure. It all started with ….”

  Taken item by item, nothing Sokolov had seen appeared significant. An unscheduled flight into Daedalus, bringing a package for the man in charge. Judson behaving, or so Sokolov would have it, out of character. Judson holing up in his quarters with the couriered package, then starting to spend an inordinate amount of time with the base paramedic and a maintenance engineer. A water emergency declared to justify confiscating inventory Sokolov was under contract to deliver on his next two stops. That water going into tanker trailers rather than either of the observatory’s supposedly depleted underground tanks. A bit of prospecting, and duty-roster shuffling to accommodate it.

  But put all that together? Things aren’t normal was an understatement, even before factoring in a detail Sokolov could not have known. Almost certainly, Marcus Judson was a deep-cover CIA asset.

  Even within the FSB, few people knew about Judson, just as few knew the American eco-extremist space-tourists-turned-terrorists had been deep-cover Russian agents. To this day, FSB did not know how America had retaken their powersat. But the service did know that, four years earlier, NASA had dispatched Judson to inspect the satellite mere days before the short-lived “terrorist” takeover. That the engineer, who had supposedly evacuated to Earth with the rest of the on-orbit civilians, had not landed with the rest. And that no evidence of Judson could be found for days following his supposed reentry—not until after the powersat’s recapture.

  “You must have a theory,” Yevgeny said. “What is it?”

  “They’re after something more interesting than carbon,” Sokolov ventured.

  “Agreed. Any idea what?”

  Sokolov shook his head. “I’ll hang around Daedalus for a couple of days, see what more I can learn. But to do that I’ll need a little extra this month. For expenses and lost pay.”

  Predictable, Yevgeny thought. Also, not worth worrying about. “Understood. How will you explain staying on?”

  “I don’t feel so good. My muscles ache, and I’m tired all the time. There’s no way I’m up for a long drive.” Sokolov slumped melodramatically. “Besides, those issues will give me the opportunity to chat up Donna, the paramedic. Who knows? Maybe she’ll let something slip.”

  Nonspecific symptoms, so no one would be surprised when tests failed to find anything. Sokolov’s complaints would be attributed to stress or overwork or malingering, and no one would question his eventual spontaneous recovery. Yevgeny nodded his approval. “That was good work. Report back daily.”

  “Will do.” And Sokolov broke the connection.

  From day one, the AI integrated throughout the Daedalus complex had been compromised. Yevgeny had not been told how, because he did not need to know; he inferred a well-placed agent Dirtside had sneaked a compromised microprocessor chip or two into Icarus’s server. The exploit, however it had been accomplished, intercepted and copied everything that crossed the local network, including spoken conversations the AI overheard.

  Not even the cleverest hack, alas, could circumvent the satellite-based enforcement of Farside’s radio quiet zone. The surveillance he so urgently needed to examine had yet to emerge from the observatory’s lasercom station. Surreptitious uploads had to wait until that station was idle, an FSB-controlled or -compromised satellite happened to be in view, and no person or bot at work on the surface could notice the ground terminal slewing to track the unauthorized target. He hadn’t gotten an upload since two days before the mysterious courier flight had landed in Daedalus Crater.

  Meanwhile, in just a few hours, he had a flight to make. With any luck the critical Daedalus intercepts would be on hand by the time he returned, and Vlad, his AI, would already have analyzed them.

  Did Judson act on his own, or for the CIA? Yevgeny lacked the information with which even to speculate. Either way, something interesting was afoot at Daedalus. He would bet his pension that the something had little to do with radio astronomy.

  * * *

  Once again behind the closed and locked door of his spartan Base Putin quarters, Yevgeny thought, it’s time for someone to reprogram Vlad. Without a doubt, it was artificial. But intelligence? That the software was lacking.

  With quick swipes of a finger, he highlighted three passages in three separate vid-call transcripts. To the AI’s literal manner of thinking, if that were even the appropriate term, these calls from Daedalus to Earth were mundane.

  Indeed, the conversations were social. No trigger words appeared in any of the transcripts to have merited bringing any of these calls to Yevgeny’s attention. Everyone who had been contacted was on a subject’s frequently called list. Not even the call lengths stood out.

  Stupid AI.

  From Marcus Judson: So, a few of us are going to follow up on some promising satellite observations.

  From Donna Rousseau: Three of us are going to follow up on some promising satellite observations.

  From Brad Morton: Hon, a few of us are following up on some promising satellite observations.

  Later on in the transcriptions, three almost identical justifications for the odd staffing of the expedition. In Judson’s case, by putting more into an answer than his wife’s question required. In the other cases, awkwardly volunteered.

  Three people prepping on short notice for an unusual trip, all reporting home. All reading from—to a natural intelligence, this fact was obvious!—a common script. All wrapping up their calls by telling loved ones that they would be hard to reach for a while.

  Prospecting for metal? Or perhaps carbon? Both? Regardless, they were all sharing a cover story. But covering for what?

  The surveillance upload from Daedalus Base, once Yevgeny had finally gotten it, had offered another tantalizing clue, odd enough that even Vlad had flagged it. Scant hours after the suspicious courier flight, the American, within his suddenly uncompromised private quarters, had connected with Earth. Not only had Vlad failed to decrypt anything from that comm session, but the best FSB software (the b
est, in any event, that the service had been willing to entrust to Yevgeny) had likewise failed. Even the network address of the originating end of that link was disguised, anonymized, and rerouted beyond his ability to backtrack.

  After that secretive terrestrial communication, Judson had begun meeting in his quarters with his script-quoting colleagues. Five times, in fewer days, they had huddled, each get-together running for at least an hour—and throughout, Icarus had no record that a single one of them ever spoke a word. A ménage à trois, Vlad interpreted.

  Stupid AI.

  The Americans had to be up to something. More, they must be going after something. Seizing tankers-full of water, and hence also of oh-two, implied their objective lie far from the observatory, or that they planned to be away from the observatory for months. Maybe both. The several “emergency” fuel cells Sokolov had seen them prepping suggested the same. And—the first-rate encryption and countersurveillance gear sent to Daedalus made this clear—Judson undertook his venture with the full knowledge and assistance of the CIA.

  Chapter 7

  Neck stiff as a board, shoulder muscles taut as bowstrings, hands and arms cramping from a death grip on the steering wheel, peering through the Plexiglas sheet that convention insisted be called a windshield—no matter the utter impossibility of wind here—Marcus caught himself, once again, grinding his teeth. Ahead lay only undulating ground, long, inky shadows, and, coming into view perhaps fifteen degrees to the right of his present heading, the age-crumbled rim of yet another crater.

  This latest obstacle, if he was where he believed himself to be, did not appear on his map display. Maybe, viewed from near-Moon orbit, the crater was unremarkable. Or maybe, he was lost. Tooling around at ground level, one damned crater looked pretty much like the last, and like the one before that, and the … hundreds earlier still. Back even to the Apollo missions, keeping one’s bearings in these trackless wastes had been a challenge. At the observatory, the towering, if still incomplete, telescope pedestal had always been his point of reference while working outside.

  Since Daedalus, Marcus had had classic rock wailing in the tractor cabin. As often as not, he would caterwaul along. That day, in a retro frame of mind, it had been the Doors. Until “Light My Fire” became too much for a tension headache ….

  Making any (or no) speed at all, the continuous tracks of his tractor and the tires of the trailer it towed kicked up impressive quantities of lunar regolith. Without air to keep that dust aloft, the weak lunar gravity served as a passable substitute. Sunlight shining through, and scattering from, that endlessly replenished, slow-to-settle haze kept unending dazzle in his rearview display, shifting and sparkling just enough to defeat active glare cancellation. Through that shimmer, about twenty meters behind his trailer, he kept an eye on Donna’s tractor, towing one of their water tankers. Those tracks and tires churned up their own backlit clouds, through which, perhaps another hundred meters back, Marcus could just glimpse the final vehicle of their little caravan.

  Taking a hand off the wheel, he grabbed his mic. “Brad, close up.”

  A blast of static was the only response. The dust clouds also played havoc with the laser links on which, still deep within the radio quiet zone, they depended for their comm. “Brad! Shake a leg.”

  Nothing.

  “I relayed that for you, Marcus,” Donna sent seconds later, just as he was easing up on his throttle. C&W played in her cabin. As she spoke, the laggard vehicle put on a burst of speed. “You sound fried, by the way. How about I take over?”

  “Thanks,” he answered. “For repeating the call, I mean. You’re a step ahead of me, as always.”

  As well as correct about him. If he cared to be honest, fried did not begin to cover it. But his console showed fifteen minutes till the hour, at which point their schedule had him pulling over and letting the others pass. Much as he would have liked taking up Donna on her offer—Tail End Charlie was, by far, the least stressful position in the convoy—slacking off was no way to lead. “Just a bit tired. I’ll finish my shift.”

  A bit tired. Talk about your epic understatement. But maybe this sleep deprivation would be good practice for being a father—at age forty-five!—of a newborn.

  He added guilt to his mental list of nagging concerns. How could he have not thought about, much less texted, Valerie, or Simon, for days?

  Maybe a minute later, as his tractor crested a nameless small rise, lidar beeped. Faster than Marcus could react, the vehicle slammed on its brakes. Traction control kicked in almost before he felt the first hint of fishtailing. Almost. With a shudder, tractor and trailer skidded and slued to a halt. Seconds later, his hands shaking, his heart pounding, the reality of yet another near-disaster sank in.

  The lurid glow of his brake lights, backscattered by the dust, joined sunlight glare in his rearview display. Through it all, he saw Donna slowing. The laser link between their vehicles would have given her ample warning.

  What he had almost run into? Keeping pace with the Sun, ever near local sunrise, traveling almost due west as they did, meant—when not circumventing one obstacle after another—driving straight into the shadow cast by his tractor and its trailer piled high with their supplies. His headlights were on, for all the good headlights ever did in daylight.

  About a meter beyond his front fender gaped a fissure. It was not wide enough to appear on satellite-produced maps, and from where he had skidded to a stop lidar could not gauge the crevasse’s depth—but the crack seemed more than adequate to bust a track or snap an axle.

  They had extra tracks and axles, even after earlier mishaps. They had spare of damn near everything—but time. Tyler was certain, though able to give no better reason than hunches and bitter experience, that time was of the essence. “Secrets,” Tyler had insisted over and over throughout the hasty, manic preparations, “have a way of getting out.”

  “Marcus,” Donna called. “You want to reconsider trading places a bit early?”

  With effort, he released his latest death grip on the steering wheel to pick up the mic. “I guess I should. You will have deduced I almost ran into something. A crevasse, to be precise. We’ll need to detour about a hundred meters”—he checked the gyrocompass on his console; lunar GPS satellites, of course, only broadcast where they could see Earth—“to south-southeast.”

  “Copy that, Marcus.”

  As Donna turned her tractor and Brad crept closer in his, Marcus pulled up a comm app. For the next few minutes he had nothing to do but wait. For about that long, it looked like he had a sight line to an optical comsat. He tapped out a quick note to Val: There’s nothing like a road trip, hon. Wish you were here.

  That was a lie, of course. He did wish she could be with him when they arrived.

  * * *

  Road trip, as a label for this journey, anyway, might be the biggest load of crap ever put into words. And it had, at the start, as he and Tyler Pope had been hatching this scheme, been the spook’s turn of phrase.

  “It’s just a damned road trip,” Pope had countered Marcus’s insistence that he and whatever small team he assembled needed a few days, for the Sun to rise and for planning, before setting out. “Eighteen hundred miles isn’t any big deal. Back in the day that’s what we called spring break. U. Penn to Fort Lauderdale and back again is farther than that. Me and a buddy made the trip three years in a row, in a thirdhand Camry that was all I could afford. The odometer had rolled over by the time I bought it, and dollars to doughnuts it had rolled over twice.

  “No self-driving cars back then, of course. No GPS. Driving through the night, and napping in the car if we both needed a break, we did a thousand-plus miles in one day each way—even with the speed traps in every other burg across South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida.” And added with a wink, “More time that way for the hot, horny, drunk women.”

  “South Carolina has air,” Marcus had said. “T
he last time I checked.”

  “And you’ll be driving something a lot more reliable and comfortable than my beater of a Camry. Vacuum’s your concern? I imagined you’d been trained for that. Anyway, the last time I checked, lunar long-haul truckers—driving in vacuum—make the run between Aitken Basin and Daedalus Base, about the distance you’ll be going, in three Earth days. To not outrun the Sun, you’ll have to do, what, about 225 miles a day? Easy peasy.”

  Not even close.

  As for 1800 miles, they only answered a geometry problem: what’s the shortest distance between two specific points on a Moon-sized sphere? Nearside, the Earth-facing hemisphere, boasted huge, smooth plains: the naked-eye-visible lunar “seas” that together limned “the Man in the Moon.” Never having set boot on the Moon, doubtless that’s how Tyler pictured the entire world—no matter that even Nearside had more than its share of mountains, craters, and crevices.

  And Farside, fully half of which the three-vehicle caravan needed to cross? It must once have been God’s own shooting gallery: a pockmarked, chaotic, crater-upon-crater-upon-crater sprawl. Marcus hadn’t had time to finalize a route, but to judge from what mapping software had proposed, they would be driving about twice as far as idealized geometry would suggest. Nor could they take one of the observatory’s robots to scout ahead, not without going the full distance at a walking pace. Bots had too much programmed-in sense of self-preservation to move any faster than that over rough, unexplored terrain. This journey would be more like the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Simon had studied their expedition the year before and, for all his griping, gotten Marcus hooked) than Tyler’s damned spring break.

  But while pesky facts had left Marcus tongue-tied, Tyler had been on a roll. “And anyway, you can’t drive straight through. You need to get out of your trucks, now and again. You need to set up shop and at least look like you’re prospecting. And remember between those stopovers to zig and zag a bit. You need to sell it.”