Half a second after that, the asteroid exploded into hundreds of large and small fragments which accelerated throughout the surrounding volume, masking the cathedral’s trajectory in rocky chaff.
★
Elfrida looked out of the church. She saw the sun. She turned back to Yumiko. “Well,” she said. “Guess this is it.”
“I feel so alone,” the phavatar said, her eyes big and glittery. They were strange, those eyes. Flat. Elfrida could now see why the Galapajin had not been taken in by her.
“You feel alone …” she said.
Yonezawa was there, too, trapped under a pew that had gotten stuck in the corner. Elfrida was pretty sure he was dead.
“I’ve turned on my Mayday beacon,” she said, “but I don’t think it’s working. Doggone radiation. I must be glowing in the dark by now.”
“It’s not working,” Yumiko confirmed.
Sunlight blinked on and off as the asteroid fragment spun haphazardly. Stars filled the space that had been the church’s roof. Elfrida spotted Venus. Tears filled her eyes as she gazed at it.
“I’m not giving up,” she muttered. “I’m not. Dad, Mom, Baba, Jiji …” Real and false memories blended into a surge of pure willpower. She puttered towards Yumiko and grappled her. Her suit’s servo-powered chops matched the phavatar’s inhuman strength. “You have to help me.”
“Fuck off and die,” Yumiko said, wriggling. “You don’t belong out here. You’re just a maladapted zoo monkey, and besides, you have fat tits and no waist to speak of.”
Elfrida drew the katana Yonezawa had given her. This was your great-grandfather’s sword. She jammed her feet against the phavatar’s torso, while seizing its long, luxuriant black hair with her left glove. Swinging the katana, she snarled, “Don’t—call—me—fat.”
xxvii.
Four sols later, the Cheap Trick fell into Venus orbit like an exhausted runner falling to the ground. With its fuel reserves depleted, the Heavypicket had only burned for a few hundred seconds of the return journey, and coasted the rest of the way. The other reason it had not attempted significant acceleration was because it was towing the cathedral.
The Nagasaki’s main drive had quit within five minutes of launch. Actually, Father Hirayanagi had shut it down just in time to prevent it from overheating and blowing up the ship. Making contact with the Cheap Trick, he had coaxed the cathedral to a rendezvous using its attitude adjusters.
The Heavypicket had grappled the cathedral and hauled it all the way back to Venus orbit. During their journey, spacewalkers and bots had shuttled perilously back and forth between the two ships, carrying oxygen and water one way and casualties the other. Those initial seconds of thrust had temporarily put the cathedral under one full gee. Given that twenty-nine thousand people had been floating, unsecured, in the hab module at the time, it was amazing—a miracle, the Galapajin proclaimed—that only eleven had died. Broken bones and contusions, however, numbered in the thousands. The sanitation problem was also out of control. Bots from the Cheap Trick—designed for hazardous waste management—tirelessly swept the air in the cathedral, but barely made a dent. Their efficiency, it was fair to say, was degraded by the Galapajin children’s determination to play with them.
★
Glory spent most of the journey under sedation, getting her bones nanocemented together. The Cheap Trick’s extreme burn in pursuit of the last PLAN ship had flattened her and Lieutenant Kliko against the bulkheads under five gees. “I told you to strap in,” Petruzzelli had said tearfully afterwards. “But you didn’t! I couldn’t wait.”
“You made a decision to potentially sacrifice two people to save thirty thousand.” Glory had smiled through her agony. “It was the right call, but not everyone would have made it. You’ve got a stellar career in Star Force ahead of you, if you still want it.”
“I’m not sure I do.” Petruzzelli had wincingly cupped her hands over her cheeks to catch her tears. Although she had been strapped in and breathing gel during the extreme burn, she had two black eyes that made her look like an exotic raccoon. “This is so stupid. You’re the one with a zillion fractures and two collapsed lungs, and I’m the one crying.”
“Maybe you’re not crying for yourself.”
“No, I guess I’m not,” Petruzzelli had said, turning away.
While the Cheap Trick was rendezvousing with the cathedral, it had picked up Elfrida Goto’s Mayday signal. Glory had been unconscious at the time, and Petruzzelli had said she hadn’t noticed the signal. Glory suspected maybe she had, but had again made the—technically correct—decision to sacrifice one individual to save thousands. She wondered if she herself could have made the same choice. She was glad she hadn’t had to.
By the time they’d secured the cathedral, the Mayday beacon had gone dark, and a drone dispatched to its last recorded location had found nothing.
★
Venus orbit was now quite crowded. In addition to the Kharbage Can and the newly-returned Cheap Trick, a squadron of Graves fighters circled the planet. These had been dispatched by Star Force in response to the attack on Botticelli Station. They had to be seen doing something, even if that consisted of sending resources to where the PLAN had been a week ago.
Glory and Dr. Hasselblatter, in their original calculation, had deemed that the fighter squadron would show the flag and then buzz off before the Cheap Trick returned to Venus orbit. That way, no one else would ever have to know about the Heavypicket’s unauthorized side trip. As it turned out, the fighters hadn’t left yet. But that didn’t matter: The recovery of the cathedral had already changed their calculus.
During the Cheap Trick’s return journey, in a series of contentious and occasionally vituperative screen calls, Glory had hashed out a new bargain with Dr. Hasselblatter. The cover-up was abandoned. Instead, the Space Corps would trumpet the rescue of the Galapajin as a humanitarian triumph. Star Force would also get credit for executing the operation.
The only person to pay a price, in fact, would be Glory herself.
Commander Andrew Kim, putative pilot on the operation, found himself transformed in the blink of an eye from middle-aged no-hoper to media darling. His characteristic response of “Ah—ah” to every interview question was taken for the condign modesty of a hero. Though apparently dazed by the spotlight, neither this, nor his own knowledge that he had not in fact done any of what he was being credited for, deterred him from trousering a promotion to commodore.
Dr. Hasselblatter maximized the media opportunity, easily parrying the few skeptical questions that came his way, and positioning the Space Corps for a substantial budget increase in the next fiscal year.
Amidst all this self-congratulation, the death of Elfrida Goto struck a harmonious note of sadness. She was acknowledged to have gone along on the Cheap Trick. That acknowledgment had to be made, since she hadn’t come back. Dr. Hasselblatter shed a few crocodile tears on Tonight In Space and described her as one of the Space Corps’ rising stars. “Her loss diminishes all of us.”
But Glory refused to accept it.
Within hours of reaching Venus orbit, she had herself stretchered over to the Pearl Jam, the lead fighter of the Star Force squadron. The captain was disgusted at having missed all the fun and resentful at being used for PR purposes. To top it all off, he had gotten involved in a running battle with Captain Okoli about the rescue of Botticelli Station.
He invited Glory into his cabin and offered her a duty-free miniature—correctly labelled—of Bushmills. As she had foreseen, her full-body cast intrigued him. It proved that the brass were lying about something.
“I’ll tell you what really happened,” she said, “if you do me a favor.”
★
Glory’s BCI awakened her with a ping. The aquiline visage of Captain Nikolopoulos of the Pearl Jam floated before her retinas. Through a haze of sedation, she could see he was smirking. “We’re back,” he said.
“And?” Glory said groggily.
“You want
to do this in the flesh?”
“Yeah.” Glory looked down at her full-body cast, the various tubes penetrating it and the wires hooked up to it. “Gimme ten.”
“Your chariot awaits.”
The captain clicked out. Glory started the excruciating process of getting dressed.
Half an hour later, she squeezed into the toilet-sized, brass-knobbed vestibule of the Pearl Jam. She could take baby steps in her cast, although a helper bot still had to shuffle behind her to keep her vertical. Her neck was the only part of her that she could move independently. She had gotten dressed by commanding the bot to perform all the actions she’d normally have performed for herself: legs into trousers, hands into sleeves, feet into boots … The only garment she’d found that fit over the cast was a coverall with the Kharbage, LLC logo on the back. At least it hid her catheter bag. Vanity, oh vanity.
The cockpit door irised.
Out floated Elfrida Goto, carrying Yumiko Shimada’s head by the hair.
“Hi,” she said. “I’d like to go back to the Kharbage Can.”
She transferred the head to her other hand in order to salute Captain Nikolopoulos.
“Thanks for the ride, sir.”
“It was my pleasure.” Nikolopoulos gravely returned the salute. “Anyway, you made it well worth the journey, Ms. Goto. Star Force thanks you.”
On the way back to the Kharbage Can, the silence seemed to be entirely occupied by the head, as if Yumiko Shimada’s dead lips were sucking up all the air.
Glory broke the silence. “What did he mean, you made it worth the journey? How?”
“Oh, I just let him have a look at this.” Goto lifted the head to eye level and swung it back and forth. “He ran some scans, did some data recovery. I guess there was some interesting stuff in there.”
Oh, Glory thought. Shit.
xxviii.
Elfrida did not even have time to change out of her borrowed Star Force shipwear before she was summoned to a private teleconference with Dr. Hasselblatter himself.
Seated behind a crescent-shaped desk like the President’s, wearing a suit and tie, the executive director of the Space Corps looked deeply pissed. In no uncertain language, he chastised her for … what?
Stealing a spaceship?
Kidnapping August Kliko?
Having to be rescued by a Gravesfighter at immense cost to the taxpayer?
None of the above. He was pissed at her for disclosing confidential data to Star Force.
At least that confirmed her own take on the data Captain Nikolopoulos had gleaned from Yumiko Shimada’s memory crystals. It was a mystery inside a crime wrapped up in a public relations disaster waiting to happen.
Dr. Hasselblatter did not come out and mention the data, although he had obviously learnt the whole story through back channels. Instead, he just scolded her about information security protocols.
It seemed surreal that he was focusing on her misconduct, when Yumiko Shimada had caused the deaths of a thousand people. But then again, Yumiko Shimada was just an MI, and she was dead.
Dr. Hasselblatter closed by expressing “grave disappointment” and pointing out that Elfrida had violated the terms of her employment.
Near tears, Elfrida said, “I guess I’m guilty, sir. But I thought it was important for us to know what the phavatar was doing all this time, and I guess I didn’t understand that Star Force wasn’t supposed to know.” She felt her mind going blank, and smoothed her hair panickily. “Anyway, I guess I was in violation of my terms of employment as soon as I stole the Cheap Trick. And I really appreciate that we’re not being blamed for that, I mean I’m really proud that UNVRP and Star Force could coordinate our public response … oh God. I don’t know what to say, sir. I guess … I’m sorry.”
For the next twenty minutes she upbraided herself for being a wuss. She should have asked Dr. Hasselblatter about 99984 Ravilious. She should have asked him how the stross-class telepresence platform ever got past quality control.
But half an hour later, she was groveling again. She felt like a robot, programmed to express only inarticulate servility in the face of authority, regardless of what she knew was right.
★
The planet Kepler-186f circled a dim red dwarf star 500 light years from Earth. Its myriad giant lakes sparkled in orange sunlight, dotted with icebergs.
With an average temperature slightly above freezing, Earth-like gravity of 1.1 gees, and a breathable atmosphere, the planet was perfectly suited for human colonization. Or rather, it would have been, if not for the Zergi’i, who happened to live there.
This race of furry, sentient quadripeds had vaporized the first humans to enter their solar system, and were now constructing their own interstellar strike force, based on plundered human technology. They would mount a counter-invasion of the Sol system, unless Star Force could stop them.
Such, at any rate, was the setting of the popular immersion game Existential Threat IV.
“Do you really think this kind of thing is plausible?” Elfrida said.
Petruzzelli looked up from the antimatter field generator she was tinkering with. “I used to think so. I used to dream about actually being one of the first colonists on Kepler-186f. It’s a real planet, you know. This is all reality-based. Well, except for the Zergi’i. There’s no evidence that life evolved anywhere outside of Earth.”
“And the FTL ships aren’t reality-based, either.”
“That, too. I forget who said it, but: special relativity, causality, FTL—pick two. You can’t have all three. Of course, that might change. They’re always working on it.”
“I guess I can see the attraction of the dream,” Elfrida said. She thought about her own dream of being one of the first to walk on Venus. It paralleled Petruzzelli’s dream of interstellar exploration. And maybe her own dream was just as unachievable. If Botticelli Station could not be salvaged, it would spell doom for the Venus Project.
“I dunno,” Petruzzelli said. “I’m not having that much fun with it anymore.” She picked up the antimatter field generator and carried it over to the window of the fortified dome. This was a Star Force base near the south pole of Kepler-186f, where the players of the game had established a beachhead. Ice fields undulated to the horizon. The occasional satellite-guided lance of light, purple against the orange sky, picked off players in arctic camouflage creeping across the snow.
“We’re obviously going to win,” Petruzzelli said. “Everyone playing the game, put together, is better than the computer. That’s always how it goes when a game gets too popular and zillions of people jump on board. Normally, when players want a tougher challenge, they set up their own iteration and go it alone or with a few friends. So I’ve been thinking I might set up my own iteration and try to launch peace talks with the Zergi’i.” She held up the antimatter field generator. “I’m making a portable shield so I can get close enough to talk to them.”
“Or you could just quit,” Elfrida said.
“Or I could just quit,” Petruzzelli agreed.
In the game, Petruzzelli was drop-dead gorgeous, like a taller, thinner sister of the real Petruzzelli, with better skin and big green eyes, clad in a black catsuit and a stole of fluffy white Zergi’i fur. Elfrida was a troglodytic grunt. This was the zero-level avatar you got when you signed up, as Elfrida had had to do to get in to talk to her friend. According to the rest of the Kharbage Can’s crew, Petruzzelli had been hiding out in Existential Threat IV ever since she got back from 11073 Galapagos, even eating and going to the toilet with her headset on.
Feeling clumsy and numb in Petruzzelli’s off-the-rack immersion environment—which did not compare with a telepresence cubicle for sensory realism—Elfrida followed the glamorous avatar down to the courtyard of the dome. A scouting party was preparing to sortie. Petruzzelli pulled rank on them and requisitioned their monowheel.
A firing platform balanced atop a single pudgy wheel, the monowheel carried them out of the dome and across trampled, blood-
spattered snow. Petruzzelli, standing at the yoke, leaned left and right to steer. “This is where we find out if my shield works,” she said, patting the field generator she had hooked up to the monowheel’s power supply.
Elfrida looked down at a corpse they were passing, wondering why it was still there. How long did the game keep avatars around after they died? The freezing wind tore her breath away in white wisps.
“I wanted to ask you,” she said. “Do you know what happened to dos Santos?”
“Um, she broke every bone in her body?”
“No. I mean, yes, I know about that. She met me off the Pearl Jam in a full-body cast. It was pretty gruesome. But I got called away before we could get a chance to talk, and then she vanished. No one will tell me where she is. You don’t know, do you?”
“Sure I do. She’s holed up in the XO’s cabin. Windsor was pretty pissed about being kicked out, but he has the only other private cabin apart from Captain Okoli, so tough.”
“Oh … kay.” Elfrida had expected to learn that dos Santos had left the ship. The news that she was still here filled her with nervous dread. “I wonder if she just doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“She might want to, but she might not be allowed to.”
“Why not?”
Petruzzelli took one hand off the steering yoke and wiggled it, making the monowheel yaw. “It’s kind of ambiguous, but I think she’s under arrest.”
“Oh my God. Why?”
“Well, they need to hang someone for stealing the Cheap Trick. It can’t be me, and now it can’t be you, because you’re a heartwarming survival story. So it’s got to be dos Santos or Kliko, or both of them. And I don’t think they could make it stick to Kliko. Especially since he’s really fucked up. He might have to have a full-body transplant.”
Elfrida sat down on the monowheel’s platform with her back to the plasma-cannon mount. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone about this, but I trust you. Dos Santos is sacrificing herself for me. I heard it from the big boss, the executive director of the Space Corps. They were going to fire me, but dos Santos struck a bargain with them. I get to keep my job. In exchange, she’s going to take all the blame.”
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