The Luna Deception Read online

  It didn’t take an AI to work out what must have happened. The crew of the Knock Knock Who’s There must have seen the same news stories Kiyoshi had. They’d realized that the Hope Center for Nanobiotics had been vacated, and had hared out here to grab whatever goodies had been abandoned in the confusion. Maybe the space station had had defenses—the Knock Knock’s crew had taken them out … but then something, or someone, had taken them out.

  Leaving their ship under the control of its hub, in a stationkeeping orbit around the L2 point.

  “Hang on. Did you say the ship was not under thrust?”

  “No plasma emissions,” Studd confirmed.

  Then, not a stationkeeping orbit, anymore.

  Kiyoshi stared at the dead face of the guy with the Crab Nebula tattoo, whom he took to be the Knock Knock’s captain. You dumbass. You were remote-controlling your ship, weren’t you? Didn’t give the hub any autonomy at all—didn’t trust it not to go behind your back, take over your job, steal your manly prerogatives … I know how you felt, my friend.

  So now you’re dead, and your ship’s kidney-beaning it around the L2 point like a big dumb lump of debris.

  “Get ready to launch,” he told Studd. “We’re coming out.”

  “But the guys from Hope …”

  “Screw the guys from Hope. Start the launch sequence.” He hauled Father Tom to his feet.

  “The guys from Hope?” the Jesuit questioned him.

  “Yeah. That’s who was in the Hyperpony. They came to get their stuff.” But if that was why they had come, why send a Hyperpony, which could hardly carry any of this pricey lab equipment?

  Father Tom reached out helplessly towards the drifting bodies. There was no way to lay them out properly. He and Kiyoshi both bowed their heads and crossed themselves.

  “By the way, did you find any probes?” Kiyoshi asked as they crossed the production floor. Thinking: They could be all around us. They could be inside your suit, in your ears, in your afro.

  “No. On the far side of that partition is a clean room, and the equipment in there is definitely intended for nanoscale biological work. You’ve got your bioreactors, your gel baths, DNA sequencers. This is the upstream side, where they’d have cultured proteins to feed the probes. Everything’s here, except the probes themselves.”

  “Maybe the Knock Knock’s crew took them,” Kiyoshi suggested, not believing it. The pirates hadn’t even got around to taking the computers.

  They floated back up to the reception area. “Studd! Keep me updated, would you? Don’t make me bug you for information. What are the Hope guys doing?”

  “They’re trying to launch the shuttles,” said the astrogator. Nervous excitement thrummed in his voice. “They want me to stand off.”

  “You’ve been talking to them?”

  “Um, they kind of think I’m the captain ...”

  This sub-personality needed a refresher course on his job description. It did not include pretending to be the captain. “Don’t do that.”

  “All right,” Studd muttered.

  I can’t believe Jun is sitting this out, Kiyoshi thought. “Do they know we took one of the shuttles?”

  “Um, yes. They want it back.”

  Kiyoshi switched to the public channel. “Hey, D.I.E., do you copy me?”

  “Finally, a goddamn human being. Oh, excuse me. Pirates aren’t human beings. Whether you’re made of flesh or bytes, you’re urine-drinking outer-system scum. Give us our fucking shuttle.”

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that insults are a bad way of getting what you want? Money is a much better way. I’ll be happy to return your shuttle for a very reasonable processing fee.”

  Screw taking it home for the boss-man, Kiyoshi decided on the spur of the moment. His Erich-Maria Holdings account was empty. He’d maxed out his credit on propellant, not to mention paying for the boss’s shopping. Here was a heaven-sent opportunity to replenish his coffers.

  The guy from D.I.E. swore colorfully. Kiyoshi bounded across the reception area, followed by Father Tom.

  “Ten million spiders,” he said when the guy from D.I.E. paused for breath. “I prefer physical iridium, if it’s no trouble.”

  More swearing.

  Father Tom was lagging. Kiyoshi hauled him into the airlock. The pressure counter ticked down with maddening slowness.

  “Um, that ship,” Studd said.

  “The Knock Knock?”

  “It’s getting pretty close. I think we probably ought to launch as soon as possible.”

  “Coming out now.” Kiyoshi switched back to the public channel. “By the way, you were talking about pirates?”

  “Three million, and that’s my final offer!”

  “Done, and I’ll throw in a helpful bit of information. There were pirates here: the crew of a so-called passenger ferry from Eros. It goes by the name of the Knock Knock Who’s There, although I’m sure that’s a dummy registration. Well, the crew are in your lab module, dead. But their ship is still orbiting the L2 point.”

  “So that’s what that is,” said the guy from D.I.E.

  Kiyoshi laughed. He couldn’t believe it. “You guys really are human, aren’t you?”

  “Of course we fucking are!”

  “It’s not always easy to tell the difference. I assumed you were phavatars or software-based MIs, actually. You were decelerating at ten gees.”

  The airlock’s external valve opened. Kiyoshi leapt into empty space. The lab module swung away. He soared towards the Monster.

  Through the bunched struts of the space station, he could see the Hyperpony. A single EVA-suited figure clung to a grab handle on the outside of the little ship’s crew cube. Kiyoshi figured that’s who he was talking to. “How’d you stand the burn?”

  “Military-grade skeletal reinforcements. Maybe you can buy yourself some with your S3,000,000. It sucks being spaceborn, right? So get your bones done and enjoy life, until the law catches up with you.”

  “Maybe I will. At the moment, though, I’m hoping your reinforcements can withstand a collision with a passenger ferry.”

  “What?”

  “Due in approximately two minutes, according to my hub. I think the Knock Knock Who’s There started off orbiting just behind the space station. But we’ve been around the loop a few times since then. And you know, the L2 point. It’s unstable. Things drift.”

  “Oh crap,” said the guy from D.I.E.

  “You would have known that already if you were MIs,” Kiyoshi said. “If you could do more than one thing at a time.”

  He dived towards the Monster’s operations module. Halfway there he realized that Father Tom was not following him.

  Talk about not paying attention.

  “Studd! Can you see Father Tom?”

  “No—yes!” the sub-personality exclaimed. “He’s down there! I thought he was one of them!”

  A bright red circle appeared on Kiyoshi’s faceplate, locating Father Tom. Draped over the wing of one of the shuttles, he wasn’t moving.

  “Shit.”

  Kiyoshi arrowed towards the Jesuit, instinctively adjusting his trajectory to compensate for the station’s yaw.

  “There you are,” the guy from D.I.E. exclaimed.

  A flash of ionized plasma seared past Kiyoshi. It hit a refueling line, severing it. The whole line ripped off its clamps and stuck out rod-straight as hydrogen gasified into the vacuum. Though the gas was invisible, the path of the laser rifle bolt showed up as a hot contrail through it.

  Kiyoshi landed beside Father Tom, his boots gecko-sealing to the space shuttle’s wing. He gathered the Jesuit up by the legs.

  The cockpit of the shuttle whose wing he was standing on hinged back. Another person in a yellow spacesuit leaned out and shot at them. Kiyoshi felt the bolt punch into his shin. His HUD went wild.

  A second bolt ignited the high concentration of hydrogen now boiling around the station. The flammable gas blazed up, corpse-blue.

  “D.I.E., is that some k
ind of a self-fulfilling prophecy?” Kiyoshi screamed. Not daring to use his mobility pack in this blaze, he jumped.

  Nanofiber mesh wrapped around him and Father Tom. Ron Studd had sent the Wetblanket to their rescue. It wafted them towards the cargo airlock, where it had been pre-programmed to go.

  Out of the pallid inferno shot one shuttle. And then another one. Their drives burned purple spots into Kiyoshi’s vision.

  The cargo airlock’s jaws opened. The shuttle they had stolen was still in there. Jun must have jammed the airlock’s cycle to prevent the shuttle from falling into his cloister. Goddamn him, why isn’t he HELPING?

  Kiyoshi crawled in underneath the shuttle, dragging Father Tom. They were all tangled up in the Wetblanket. His left leg hurt.

  Studd yelped, “The Knock Knock Who’s There is almost here! But it’s going to miss us by a few meters!”

  “Just get us out of here!”

  Another shuttle burst out of the flaming hydrogen. That made three.

  The Monster’s tethers retracted, flailing like fiery snakes. The ancient Longvoyager toppled away from the space station.

  “Waiting to D.I.E.?” Kiyoshi mocked the Hyperpony pilot. Somehow, he knew that the guy he’d been talking to was the one who’d stayed behind, because he did not have a shuttle. Kiyoshi had it.

  “Cowards run. Men stand,” the guy said calmly. “Anyway, it’s going to miss us by a kilometer.”

  Not quite.

  The Knock Knock Who’s There surged out of the darkness like a gargantuan sycamore seed. It was a twin-module Startractor. Its two hab modules rotated around a propellor arm set at right angles to its spine. As it glided past the space station, one of these struck the lab. Both ship and space station were moving in the same direction, at not-very-different speeds, so their collision did not instantly shatter them into a million little pieces. Instead, the impact tore the Knock Knock’s passenger module off, and dented the shell of the lab.

  The lab module’s protective shielding ruptured. Several kilotons of water—which had served the double purpose of cooling the station’s equipment and shielding the staff from radiation—seethed into the vacuum. The station’s air followed. Lab equipment volleyed into the vacuum on an explosive wave of escaping atmosphere.

  With its distribution of mass now out of kilter, the Hope Center for Nanobiotics’s own rotation began to tear it apart. It spun away into the void, shedding propellant tanks, nanotechnology production tools, and office furniture.

  And, Kiyoshi thought, five cold corpses. Spaced, again. This time by their own ship.

  He crossed himself, hampered by the mesh entangling his limbs.

  As the space station broke up, the Hyperpony curved free of the wreckage.

  Kiyoshi cursed.

  “So, not quite a clean miss,” the guy from D.I.E. acknowledged.

  “I still want my five million spiders.” Kiyoshi took out his cutter laser and hacked at the folds of Wetblanket entangling him and Father Tom. Behind him, Luna twinkled, framed in the mouth of the cargo airlock.

  “It usually takes a PLAN attack to do this much damage,” the guy said.

  “Hey, there’s a thought,” Kiyoshi said. “Blame it on the PLAN. That way you can collect on your insurance.”

  The guy laughed, a gasping bark that made Kiyoshi think he’d gotten hurt. “Do you think I’m dishonest or something?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t even know who I am.”

  “No.”

  “Frank Hope IV. Pleased to meet you.”

  “When I get my five million spiders,” Kiyoshi said, “you can have your shuttle back.” His words were bold, but he was thinking: Frank Hope IV. If he’s telling the truth; holy crap. I’ve just been insulting the son of the second-most-powerful man on Luna. “What about the other guys?”

  “What about them? My friends. Three of the bravest pilots you could ever meet.”

  “Human pilots? Three human pilots just set out in those shuttles?”

  “Yes.”

  “Destination: Mars?”

  “Yes. And I was meant to go with them. Fuck you, asshole.”

  “Hey, you ought to be thanking me for saving you from an untimely death.”

  “You Belter lowlifes,” Frank Hope IV said. “It never, ever occurs to you that death might be a lesser evil. That saving the human race might be a higher priority.”

  Kiyoshi was shocked. He said with unguarded candor, “Hey, are you a Christian or something?”

  “Fuck, no. Here’s your three million spiders.”

  “Five.”

  “We agreed on three. I’ve got a broken back, not a damaged brain.”

  An instant notification from Kiyoshi’s bank confirmed that three million spiders had been deposited in his Assisi Ventures LLC account.

  He peered out of the cargo airlock. The Hyperpony was no longer visible to the naked eye, even as a moving speck.

  Kiyoshi had not given Frank Hope IV his real name, or any information about his ship that could be used to trace him.

  He laid a glove on the shuttle’s snazzy yellow-and-black fuselage, tempted to hang onto it.

  Shook his head. Gotta keep my word.

  Gasping in pain every time his left foot touched something, he pushed the shuttle out of the airlock.

  It fell into the void.

  Let Frankie-boy come and find it.

  “If you’re finished,” said Jun’s voice in his ear, “I’m going to cycle the airlock. Father Tom is dying.”

  xxiii.

  “I thought he was just in shock,” Kiyoshi said. He was sobbing, the weight of guilt too much to bear.

  While he’d been pissing around out there, bantering with Frank Hope IV and trying to drive up his asking price, Father Tom had been asphyxiating.

  Now the Jesuit lay on a bed of gray mud where Cargo Deck A used to meet the exterior wall. Two medibots worked on him. They were some of the batch Kiyoshi had picked up on Luna to take home. An ECC artificial heart bent over the priest, pumping his blood out of a vein and returning it to an artery, bypassing his heart and lungs. It was keeping his blood oxygenated, and hopefully preventing any more of his brain cells from dying. Meanwhile, a second bot sliced into his chest.

  “These medibots are state of the art,” Jun said. His projection stood on the other side of Father Tom, muddy-cassocked. “They’ll save him. Don’t blame yourself.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “We’ll find out, I guess. All we know right now is that there’s an obstruction in his lungs.”

  The artificial heart rumbled rhythmically. Its working parts were concealed within a housing shaped like, actually, a fat pink heart. Lunar companies made the best medical devices, and right now Kiyoshi felt wretchedly grateful to them, for giving Father Tom even a slim chance of survival.

  Another medibot—the Monster’s old one—was applying a nuskin bandage to Kiyoshi’s own left shin. All that gas boiling around the space station had deflected most of the laser pulse’s energy. His suit had self-sealed the hole, and he just had a second-degree burn. But he’d had to take off his suit to let the medibot work, and it was freaking cold in here. Naked, he felt vulnerable.

  Jun had got a long way with his gardening project in just a couple of days. He’d fixed the air. He’d stuck those glowstrips all over the spine, so it acted like a sun-tube And he had surfaced the interior of the sphere with a gray soil substitute, which Kiyoshi guessed was made from some sacks of fish meal they’d had in storage, plus sawdust obtained by chopping up the decks themselves.

  But Jun was clearly having trouble getting the soil substitute to stick to the walls in zero-gee. Gray gobs floated throughout the sphere, so that it seemed to be raining. A sunshiny shower that smelt of fish.

  “You know,” Kiyoshi said, “the whole point of this adventure was to force you to face reality.”

  “It obviously worked,” Jun said.

  There wasn’t really anything else to say after th
at. Kiyoshi forced himself to look at Father Tom. The Jesuit’s face had turned a putrid shade of ocher. Ruby veins webbed his half-open eyes. The medibot had gone in under one arm. Bone gleamed in a welter of bloody tissue. A rib snapped with a sharp noise. Kiyoshi swallowed nausea.

  “We’ve got some of them out,” Jun said a while later.

  Sitting on the mud with his head between his knees, Kiyoshi looked up. The surgical bot was depositing a morsel of bloody tissue in its tray. Its other arms were still delving in Father Tom’s chest.

  “What is that stuff it’s taking out of him?”

  “Nanoprobes,” Jun said.

  “I told him to put his helmet on.”

  “It would have been a slow process. If you breathed in a few thousand of them at a time, you’d hardly notice it. Maybe a tickle in your throat. Eventually you’d start feeling short of breath. But by then, there would be millions of them inside you, and death would be just a matter of time.”

  “He said they were dangerous.” Kiyoshi was crying again. “He was right.”

  “Any technology is dangerous in the wrong hands. This doesn’t make them Gray Goo.”

  “What the hell are they, then?”

  “Well, maybe they’re just Mars probes. I certainly don’t think they’re designed to asphyxiate people. They’re not doing anything. They’re just … sitting in his lungs.”

  “Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins and lead us to everlasting life.”

  “Those pirates probably died the same way,” Jun added, proving that he had been eavesdropping on their radio conversation while they were in the lab module.

  Kiyoshi was too sick at heart to call him on it. “Yeah. I thought they’d been spaced. But obviously, asphyxiation looks the same, whether it’s caused by exposure to vacuum, or by a million nanoprobes down your throat.”

  “More like ten million.”

  “Oh God.”

  “This is going to take a while. You might as well get some rest.”

  Kiyoshi shook his head. He fixed his gaze on the clumps of bloody matter coming out of Father Tom’s side.

  ★

  His resolve to see it out did not last. Midnight, ship time, found him curled up in his nest on the bridge, consciousness extinguished by a whopping dose of barbiturates.