The Luna Deception Page 13

  “Who, no, what are you?”

  “Burn completed,” Kiyoshi interrupted. “Reducing torque. Synchronizing rotation speed.”

  “Looks OK,” Jun said.

  “Docking in eighteen … seventeen …”

  The thrust gravity faded. They were weightless again. On the optical feed, a forest of lobate radiator fins loomed. A steely bulge rotated into view.

  “That’s one big chunk of spaceship,” Mendoza said.

  “That’s the Chimera,” Kiyoshi said. “I hope you’re not allergic to mold.”

  xii.

  Kiyoshi docked the Superlifter in the auxiliary craft bay of the Chimera, formerly the Unicorn, formerly the St. Francis. He guided his unwanted passengers to the operations module. Father Tom and John Mendoza were both novice spacewalkers, so he made sure they held on all the way. He pointed them in the direction of the crew quarters—which were rarely used, but still had air—and floated up to the bridge, carrying a stack of greasy cardboard boxes.

  The boxes contained choux à la crème from Moon Cakes, the famous Shackleton City patisserie. They were subject to a 110% export tariff (which Kiyoshi had not paid) on account of containing real sugar.

  The refrigerator stood in the corner next to the toilet. It had a sheet of heavy paper taped over its screen. Kiyoshi started to pack the boxes of pastries in.

  The bridge was a cavernous, semi-circular room with a door at either end. Doors, not valves or pressure seals. That’s how old this ship was.

  The smaller door, from the data center, opened, and Jun floated in, upside-down to Kiyoshi. The door had opened at the hub’s command; Jun was a projection displayed on Kiyoshi’s retinal implants. The repo on the Superlifter had worn jeans, bu Jun now sported his preferred garb—a black monk’s habit. Deft use of the tannoy speakers made his voice sound like it was coming from the projection. “It was me,” he said.

  “What was?”

  “While you were running the pre-launch checks, Father Tom asked me to check on his friend. I searched the spaceport, and found a room where all the surveillance cameras had been disabled. It was the chapel. That seemed unusual, so …”

  “The fountain,” Kiyoshi recalled. “Mendoza said something about a fountain going haywire.”

  “I was only trying to draw attention to the malfunctioning cameras.” Jun landed on the far wall and rebounded, right way up. Not that there was any right way up in zero-gee, but the bridge had a floor and a ceiling, both panelled in real wood. This ship had been built long before innovations such as gyrospheres and rotating command modules. It smelt of dust and mold. “God made it count, I guess.”

  Kiyoshi sighed. “We really don’t need another passenger. Well, I guess we can drop him off on 6 Hebe.”

  “We can’t take him home, that’s for sure,” Jun agreed. “The boss-man wouldn’t like it.”

  This was something of a dare. Kiyoshi ignored it, returned to his task. The refrigerator said in its cold, artificial voice, “You’re going to have to take something out.”

  “No, I’m not,” Kiyoshi snarled.

  Jun floated down to the astrogator’s couch and noodled on the navigation console. It looked like he was typing and gesturing at the screens, like a normal human being. In reality, he needed no interface to communicate with the ship. He was the ship.

  Kiyoshi had made Jun out of archived data and off-the-shelf MI components, years ago, after the real Jun died. He’d planned to buy him a physical avatar, a custom job, something really high-end, but he’d never managed to scrape the money together, and now it was too late. Jun had grown like a baby from the marriage of egg and seed. He ran on the ship’s hub, plus a roomful of bolt-on processor stacks in the data center. Kiyoshi could feel the heat of the computers coming through the walls.

  “Try taking out the instant ramen,” the refrigerator advised. ”You don’t need to keep that in the fridge.”

  “You did too much shopping,” Jun remarked, mildly.

  “Next stop, 6 Hebe; that’s a month’s voyage, even if we burn all the way. And some of us need to eat.”

  Kiyoshi was actually a bit worried about the food situation. He’d done a lot of shopping, but not enough for three. They would be splitting their last packets of instant ramen by the time they reached 6 Hebe, an entrepot asteroid in the outer Belt, 450 million kilometers from Earth. That wouldn’t be the end of their long journey, but it would be a chance to stock up on comestibles.

  The main door of the bridge opened, and John Mendoza floated in.

  “You know anything about farming?” Kiyoshi asked him. “I’ve got a farm-in-a-bottle. Enough cubic meterage to feed fifty, but I let it dry out. I don’t need it when it’s just me. But we could bring some of the hydroponic tanks over from the cargo module, rehydrate the growing medium. I’m sure I’ve got some seed potatoes somewhere.”

  “Where are we?” Mendoza said.

  Jun answered, “Orbiting the L4 Earth-Moon Lagrange point. It’s a fuel depot and transfer point for outer-system voyages. You can hang out here for a long time without getting noticed.”

  “What he means,” Kiyoshi said, “is that the long arm of the law isn’t really very long. Enforcement drops off exponentially as soon as you get out of the Earth-Luna corridor. We’re getting ready to burn now. We’ll shadow an ITR hauler for the first leg, to mask our emissions. Soon as we’re underway, we’ll be completely safe.”

  Mendoza floated across the bridge. “Wow,” he said, spotting the logo on Kiyoshi’s boxes of pastries. “Moon Cakes? High-end.”

  “I used to do drugs,” Kiyoshi said. “Now I do pastries.”

  “Ha, ha.”

  Kiyoshi fitted the last box into the fridge. “Victory! Now tell me how I’ll have to take something out, you satanic machine.”

  “He bought a sushi machine on Luna,” Jun said to Mendoza. “I can’t wait until that starts defying him, too. There’s nothing as entertaining as a grown man arguing with kitchen appliances.”

  “I haven’t even set the sushi machine up yet,” Kiyoshi said. “I’m afraid the fridge might tempt it to the dark side.”

  They were bantering for Mendoza’s benefit, testing his curiosity, seeing what he’d respond to.

  He said, “Where are we going?”

  OK.

  “6 Hebe,” Kiyoshi said. “Heard of it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s an asteroid. When we get there, you’ll be able to pick up transport back to Earth.”

  “No,” Mendoza said. “I’m not going to 6 Hebe, or wherever you people come from. I’m going to Mercury.”

  Kiyoshi folded his arms. “Yeah? How? Because, just so we’re clear, the Chimera is not your space taxi.”

  In the corner of his eye he saw Jun drifting out of his couch, gliding closer, preparing to defuse the confrontation.

  Mendoza did not react to Jun. That was useful information. Jun had him spooked. “Someone I care about is stuck on Mercury,” he said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “She’s in danger.”

  “Three years ago,” Kiyoshi said, “everyone I cared about was in danger. The PLAN was targeting our home asteroid, and Star Force wasn’t interested. We were asteroid squatters. Purebloods. Who cares about people like that? No one. I was in the Belt at the time. Too far away to get back.” The pathos of his own tale thickened his voice. “So, they died. I lost the only home I’d ever had. But that’s life. You take the pain and make something of it.”

  “11073 Galapagos, right?” Mendoza said, “I heard that nearly everyone was rescued.”

  “Um, well, pretty much,” Kiyoshi admitted.

  “And you know who rescued them? Who stole a Star Force fighter to come to your aid? It was Elfrida Goto. Now she’s stuck on Mercury. She needs your help. Are you going to let her down?”

  Kiyoshi scowled, hiding his surprise. He remembered Elfrida Goto—not altogether fondly. She was one of those Space Corps do-gooders who caused trouble wherever they
went. You could certainly make a case that Kiyoshi and Jun owed her for her actions three years ago. She’d been on 4 Vesta, too. But that didn’t mean Kiyoshi was going to blindly accept what Mendoza said. “What’s happening on Mercury, anyway?”

  “I’ve just run a news search,” Jun said. “There’s all this stuff about a riot, but it sounds like Star Force has it under control now.”

  Mendoza’s gaze flicked for a scared instant to Jun, and then back to Kiyoshi. “I’m not sure, but I think a bunch of rich guys are plotting to take over the planet.”

  “That’s interesting,” Jun said. His tone was neutral. He added, for Kiyoshi’s ears alone, via Kiyoshi’s BCI and cochlear transducers: “This might be related to what we’ve been looking into.”

  Kiyoshi subvocalized his reply. ~How likely is that? What does a riot on Mercury have to do with nanoprobes mapping the PLAN’s installations on Mars?

  “They’re both secret.”

  ~Everything’s secret in this solar system. People hoard information. Individuals, corporations, scientific research institutes, they’re all at it. Including us.

  When you subvocalized, your lips twitched. It was noticeable, and Mendoza noticed it. He said, “You know, it’s rude to have private conversations in front of people.”

  “Why don’t you go back to your cabin and get some rest?” Kiyoshi said. “You’ve been through a lot. We can talk later.”

  That was as nice as he could be to this guy who’d begged refuge on his ship, nearly got them all killed, put him in a position where he had no choice but to deploy the Ghost, and had now made him feel guilty about Elfrida Goto, on top of everything.

  He floated over to the pilot’s seat. It was not a couch, but a grubby nest of freeze-blankets—the poor man’s substitute for air-conditioners. He kicked the blankets away. He had the heat exchangers working flat out to keep the passengers comfortable, so the temperature was a balmy 24°. He wedged his knees under his workstation, hooked his toes into the stirrups, and prepared to fire up the Chimera’s main drive. “Hey, Jun. Haven’t you finished calculating our delta-V requirements yet?”

  “Sorry,” Jun said. “Got distracted.”

  And that was bullshit, because Jun couldn’t get distracted. He had almost four exaflops of processing power. He could do more than one thing at once.

  “Well, hurry up. That ITR hauler’s leaving in a few minutes. We want to time our burn to match theirs, just in case anyone’s watching.”

  Kiyoshi found his cigarette amid the dispersing corona of blankets. He turned it on and inhaled a calming mixture of nicotine and THC vapor. He waited for Mendoza to go away.

  “Run those calculations again,” Mendoza said, and there was an edge of rage in his voice.

  The floating blankets obscured Kiyoshi’s view. He pushed the mess aside.

  Mendoza floated overhead, gripping a laser pistol. A dirt-cheap weapon, molten salt battery. Wouldn’t hold more than a few ergs of charge.

  But still.

  A laser pistol.

  On the bridge of Kiyoshi’s ship.

  “We’re not going to 6 Hebe, or wherever you shady Belter types hang out. We’re going to Mercury!”

  Mendoza was aiming his pistol, not at Kiyoshi, but at Jun.

  Kiyoshi would have laughed out loud, if it hadn’t been so sad.

  “Program that course. Now!”

  Jun’s projection swivelled in his couch to face Mendoza. “This matters a lot to you, huh?”

  “Elfrida saved my life. Maybe that doesn’t matter to you, but it sure does to me. I’m not leaving her to die!”

  The pistol trembled visibly, and Mendoza wobbled, too, as he tried to hold his position in mid-air without going into a spin. Kiyoshi slid his toes out of the stirrups. “Where’d you get that gun?” he asked.

  “It’s mine,” said Father Tom, from the door.

  “That’s right,” Mendoza said. “He taught me kendo, and he also taught me that no matter how good you are with a sword, you’ll lose every time to the guy with a gun.”

  “It also helps to know how to move in zero-gee,” Kiyoshi said. He pushed off, arrowed up at Mendoza, and seized the back of his shirt in one hand. His other hand closed over the top of the pistol.

  A flash burst from its business end.

  Mendoza tumbled in one direction, and Jun tumbled in the other, with a burning hole in his chest. Blood and flames gouted from the wound. Incandescent gobs of flesh stuck to the ceiling. More blood spattered the side of the fridge, where Jun came to rest in a crumpled ball, with flames licking over his body.

  Kiyoshi hit the aft wall, the pistol now safely clutched in his hand. He hooked one bare foot through a grab handle, staring open-mouthed. This was quite the show.

  “Look what you did!” he shouted, belatedly.

  Father Tom reached Mendoza, yelled at him. Mendoza shook his head. “Lasers don’t do that,” he mumbled. “Not possible. Not real.”

  Jun sat up. He picked gobbets of flaming blood off his face and dropped them on the floor, where they went out.

  “You’re right, of course,” Jun said. “People don’t fly backwards when they get hit by energy weapons, except in the movies. And you’d need to lay at least a hundred joules on someone before they burst into flame. That crappy little pistol doesn’t pump out more than fifty joules per pulse, max. The air is dirty in here, which also degrades the effectiveness of the beam. But I wanted to show you …” He knuckled his eyes. The last of the mess vanished. “Maybe it was overly dramatic.”

  Kiyoshi wanted to go to Jun, pick him up, and set him on his feet like he was four years old. He still got these urges. They hurt like hell. You could not dry the tears of a projection, nor, if you were rational, treat it like your little brother.

  But Kiyoshi wasn’t entirely rational about Jun. He felt just as angry with Mendoza as if the guy had shot his living, flesh-and-blood brother. He wanted to throttle him. He said roughly, “Point made, I hope? You don’t go around waving laser pistols at people. Especially not on the bridge of a spaceship. And you especially don’t threaten the guy who saved your life a few hours ago!”

  He caught sight of the real damage the pulse had done. One of the astrogation screens was dead. The console below it burped smoke.

  “Shit!”

  “It’s OK,” Jun muttered. “I can fix it.” He appeared to haul himself into an upright position, supporting his weight on the fridge. He was acting like there was gravity. That was his projection’s default setting. This meant he really was upset. Or … really distracted.

  “That ITR hauler’s gone,” Kiyoshi said grumpily. “We’ll have to wait for another one, or strike out on our own.”

  Father Tom cleared his throat. “Jun; Kiyoshi … I have to apologize. I gave him the pistol.”

  “You didn’t give it to me,” Mendoza said. “I took it.”

  “But I had an inkling what you might do with it. Sure, I didn’t think it would go beyond posturing.”

  “Not you, too, Father!” Kiyoshi said.

  He’d known Father Tom for years. The Jesuit had worked with the boss-man longer than Kiyoshi had. Kiyoshi had been vaguely aware of Father Tom’s transfer to Luna a couple of years back, but he didn’t know anything about Father Tom’s mission. He hadn’t even been supposed to make contact with the priest on this trip.

  It was obviously too late now to worry about that. But what came to Kiyoshi, as he saw the priest taking Mendoza’s side, was that he didn’t really know him at all.

  “You need to understand how serious this is,” Father Tom said.

  “I understand that I rescued you and him,” Kiyoshi said, “and nearly lost my ship for it. Not to mention my life. Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty serious.”

  “Mendoza has told me what he learnt from Derek Lorna. Your man was waxing on like Churchill, isn’t that right, Mendoza? Apparently they’ve got some scheme to fight the PLAN.”

  “Yeah,” Mendoza said. “Which, I mean, yeah, sign me up .
..”

  Kiyoshi laughed at that, he couldn’t help it. Guy barely knew which end of the gun to hold.

  Mendoza gave him a dirty look. “Except, Derek Lorna’s a psychopath. So that’s one problem. And a hundred and seventeen people have already died on Mercury, so that’s another. And he said it’s not over yet. He’s hijacked a bunch of industrial phavatars. They’re going to kill everyone except his friends. And Elfrida’s there!”

  “Industrial phavatars?” Jun said. “How? Telepresence is unhackable.”

  “It wasn’t on 4 Vesta,” Mendoza said. “The Heidegger program hjacked a bunch of phavatars there.”

  “But that was the Heidegger program,” Jun said. “Derek Lorna is just a human being. That sounds wrong, but you get the point.”

  Mendoza spread his hands. Clearly, he didn’t really know anything.

  Father Tom broke in, “Jun, Kiyoshi, I expect you’re aware of what I was doing on Luna …”

  “Not in a whole lot of detail,” Jun said.

  “I was gathering intelligence on Hope Energy’s R&D operations. Ah, we may as well call it spying.” Mendoza yelped, “Father!” The Jesuit shrugged ruefully, which sent him into a slow spin until he grabbed the door to halt himself. “I wasn’t much of a spy. There are some believers working for Hope Energy who were willing to talk to me. But as a priest, you’re automatically a priority target for surveillance. And I couldn’t put my informants in danger.”

  “But your ministry, Father?” Mendoza said.

  “Of course that was my top priority. The Lord comes first, the boss second.” Father Tom gave Kiyoshi a nod, assuming him to have similarly split loyalties. “So I was a spy in my spare time. But as I say, I never got far, until a lucky break fell into my lap.”

  “Me,” Mendoza said.

  “You and your secret forums,” the Jesuit agreed.

  “Wait, what?” Kiyoshi said.

  “This lad’s quite the hacker,” Father Tom said. “He got hold of some survey data from these new Mars probes the Hopes have been developing, amazing little devices, nanoscale … and he posted it on the internet.”