Critical Mass, page 15
“The superpowers will destroy you.”
“What we’re doing will ultimately benefit even them—though they can’t yet see that. I want you to accept shares in our off-world commodity exchange for helping to secure its networks and communications against Earthly interference—which will be massive when we begin operations.”
“Why would I ever trust you?”
“You won’t have to. I know that crypto assets are the preferred medium of exchange in Lagos. So you are already familiar with the concept of ‘trustless’ exchange. Our Cislunar Commodity Exchange will be governed by smart contracts and trustless exchange. You will earn DAO tokens that give you participation in its governance.”
“But what is the business? You have resources in orbit; how will you translate that into value—and influence—here on Earth?”
“By increasing the resources and energy of all humanity by several orders of magnitude in the next few decades—creating so much wealth that even the Earthly powers will benefit and not long be our enemies. We hope to create an international wave of development in space, in which all of humanity will be invested. You will be able to bring terawatts of clean energy to Africans, and provide enough economic might for them to throw off the shackles of neocolonialism once and for all. You may even become a historic African leader, equal to any who has come before.”
Oyekan stared hard at Rochat once more. “You think I am so weak-minded that I would believe this children’s tale?”
“You know the truth of what my colleagues have accomplished. Their courage and daring—Adedayo’s courage right alongside them. They brought thousands of tons of strategic resources into lunar orbit. Resources that the superpowers of Earth are desperate to control. Eight people in space did that, Taiwo. Imagine what a few hundred more could do. Especially if someone helps them keep their systems secure from Earth interference while they work.”
Rochat watched Oyekan figuring the odds—the seeming impossibility of something ending well, given his life experience. Finally he said, “If I were to consider it, I would never submit to work for you.”
“There’s no need. We would be partners, independently supporting the same DAO. What I bring to the organization is expertise in space law. The laws of Earth can be very useful when they are employed properly. But by pivoting to claim a stake in this new frontier in space, you can simply buy back Africa’s sovereignty on the open market—not request it as a supplicant or demand it as something stolen from your ancestors. Outwitting your oppressors will command the respect of the world. Beat them at their own game—by creating a bigger one. A better one.”
Oyekan stared in silence for several moments, then finally made a decision. “Yes, you are indeed Nathan Joyce’s protégé . . .”
CHAPTER 11
Through the Looking Glass
SEPTEMBER 15, 2038
Jin Han and James Tighe trudged down the corridor of a drab Las Vegas suites hotel near the airport. They hadn’t spoken much in the car, and Tighe was acting increasingly strange.
Jin studied him as they walked. The Chinese agent was right. There was something off.
Tighe stopped in front of his room, swiped his key card, then barely glanced over his shoulder. “When’s the flight?”
Jin stopped at his room across the hall. “Tomorrow evening was the earliest available.”
“Good. I could use a break.”
“Read up on the specifications of the—”
“Yeah, I got it.” With that Tighe entered his room, and the door slammed behind him.
Jin stared after Tighe for several moments—then entered his own room. It was the typical American corporate efficiency suite, with a small kitchen and sitting area. Chilled to near-freezing. As he headed toward the bedroom he noticed a pair of sturdy eyeglasses sitting in the center of the desk. A power-charging cord ran from the glasses to an outlet at the base of a nearby lamp. A small card stock note was tented next to it.
Jin dropped his bag on a kitchen barstool and approached the glasses. Something forgotten by the room’s prior occupant?
To his alarm, the note was in Hanzi characters and said in neat black handwriting: Open your eyes. He glanced around warily then picked up the glasses, causing the too-short charging cord to pop out. He examined them more closely.
A blue LED light on one of the bows indicated they were powered on. He tentatively peered through the lenses, then slipped them on.
A voice behind him spoke in Mandarin, “I am over here, Han.”
Startled, Jin spun around.
His father, Jin Longwei—or at least an augmented-reality apparition of him—sat on an illusory chair halfway to the kitchen. Looking older than his seventy years, he held up his hand. “Please. Do not disconnect. It has been very difficult to contact you unnoticed, and I have been waiting here hours.”
Incredulous, Jin answered in Mandarin. “So I am expected to believe you are my father?”
The apparition looked pained. “I tried to see you in person. You refused me.”
“And I will not see you now, whether you are real or not . . .” Jin reached to remove the glasses.
“Wait! Please. I am here to warn you. Do not believe Beijing’s entreaties.”
“You could be a deepfake controlled by the Americans. This conversation is pointless.”
“Then ask me a question only I could answer.”
“I barely know you. And you barely know me.”
“There must be something we’ve shared. Over the years.”
Jin considered the question, then said, “If you are my father, what did you say the day you sent me away—after BISS? Answer quickly.”
His father concentrated, but then looked down. “I don’t recall. What is BISS?”
Jin nodded to himself. “Oh, you are definitely my father.” Jin stared. “BISS was my preparatory school. You said I was a bad investment. I was eleven, and I did not see you again for six years.”
“I know I was hard on you, but the demands of our businesses were vast.”
Suddenly Jin’s phone warbled to indicate an incoming call. He glanced at it. Rochat.
“I see your own business makes demands of you, too.”
Jin silenced his phone and slipped it into his pocket. “What is it you wanted to tell me . . . Father?” He spat the last word like a profanity.
The apparition looked dismayed by the emphasis. “I wanted to warn you to not let Beijing use me as a bargaining chip.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t. Is that all?”
“You are angry at me still.”
“You interceded on behalf of people who tried to kill me and my crewmates.”
His father held up his hands. “You must believe that I did not know. They told me you had joined a mutiny on their spacecraft and asked me to talk sense into you. I never dreamed they would try to harm you if I failed.”
Jin continued. “But what we achieved out in deep space was nothing to you. What I achieved was nothing to you.”
“And you treated my hopes for you—my only son—as though they were nothing.”
They stared at each other for several moments.
His father finally sighed and said, “Your grandfather—my father—he was hard on me, too.”
“Did grandfather try to kill you?”
“I did not try to kill you, Han. I was lied to. They told me you had illegally gone to space and were defrauding business interests vital to China’s future.”
“And you believed them, instead of me—your own son. And you ignored the history my crewmates and I were making out there.”
“I was concerned you were being led around like a dog by foreigners.”
Jin sighed in disgust. “We are finished.”
“Wait!” His father held out his hand. “I realize now how much like your grandfather you are. I think he would have understood you. Because he never understood me.”
“Grandfather commanded an army division. I chafe against every rule. I am the opposite of Geming.”
“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong.” His father seemed to see some distant memory. “Back in the ’80s, China was poor. Your grandfather pushed Deng Xiaoping’s reforms to their limit. He risked being purged dozens of times to pursue what were then illegal business ventures. He didn’t follow rules. He made new ones. He took insane risks. And he succeeded, pulling China up in the process.”
Jin’s father came out of his reverie. “But it fell to me to grow the business. To make it respectable. To cooperate with authorities—not antagonize them. To do what was necessary for China to take its rightful place in the world.”
“You want me to congratulate you, Father? You already have people for that.”
“Why must you be so cold to me? Understand: they will take everything our family has built if you don’t do what they want.”
“And you expect me to obey.”
His father shook his head. “No. I realize that now.”
Jin regarded his father with suspicion.
“I admit your lack of interest in the family business always angered me. I wanted you to have many children and bring our enterprises to new heights, but you saw things differently. Like my father did.”
“I have to go.”
“Wait.” Jin’s father tapped at his wrist. “Let me show you something . . .”
Another virtual screen appeared, hovering in midair. It looked to be a surveillance monitor, focused on a large wrought iron gate that Jin recognized. It was the main gate of his father’s estate—the Jin residence in Beijing. The camera zoomed in slightly to focus on a young, clean-cut man waiting at the curb across the road. Several more young men stood nearby.
“At first I thought they were MSS agents monitoring me, but day by day there were more . . .”
The image fast-forwarded, past nights and days, then slowed to real-time again, showing now half a dozen well-dressed young men waiting patiently, eagerly at the gate, craning their necks whenever a vehicle approached or the gates opened.
“We ran facial recognition on them. Background checks. These are scientists. Test pilots. Entrepreneurs. Some of the best young minds in China. Waiting outside our gate each day.” His father turned toward Jin. “They come in hope of seeing you, Han.”
Jin looked curiously at the screen. The image fast-forwarded again, and now there were a dozen young men and a few young women as well.
“They know what you’ve done. I don’t know how, but they know. You inspire them. They want to go where you are leading.”
Jin studied the image—the expectant faces. He turned to his father.
Despite the pixelated projection, the intense anguish in his father’s eyes was still visible. “I was wrong, Han. Don’t try to save me. But please . . . forgive me.”
* * *
—
Tighe’s phone sounded somewhere in the semidarkness of his room. Unnaturally exhausted by his disease and the chemo meds, he struggled to awaken. “Aaah, what?” He fumbled for his phone on the nightstand. A glance at the screen. Rochat.
Tighe answered it. “I’ve been trying to reach you for days, Lukas.”
Rochat’s voice was high-pitched and tense. “Is Han with you?”
“What? No. He’s in his own room. If you want to talk to Han, call Han.”
“I did. Three times.”
“What do you want?”
“Our robot tugs in lunar orbit—they have disappeared.”
Tighe sat up straight and adjusted the phone to his ear. “Hold it. What?”
“I said that the asteroid resources you returned from Ryugu have disappeared from lunar orbit. The Nicole Clarke and the David Morra . . . are gone.”
“How the hell could they be gone? Aren’t you monitoring them?”
“Yes. The tugs orbited behind the Moon . . . but did not reappear. Their orbits were somehow altered. Beyond our sight.”
“Where did they go?”
“We don’t know. They could have been moved anywhere in cislunar space.”
“By who?”
“Either the US, China, or Russia.”
Tighe realized that the lives of his friends—sacrificed to secure those resources—might have been lost for nothing. He jumped up and punched a hole in the drywall, sending a shooting pain through his arm—followed immediately by exhaustion.
He mustered the energy to shout into the phone. “They lied to us! They were planning on taking the resources all along!”
“J.T., where is Han?”
“What?”
“The US government is accusing us of cutting a deal with China. They’ve frozen our company accounts. The Defense Department is livid. We might face sanctions.”
Tighe scowled. “But we’re the ones who got robbed.”
“It doesn’t matter. Without those resources, J.T., we are not only broke—with no leverage to regain orbit and mount a rescue mission—but our investors will sue us as well. This destroys us.”
Tighe felt his rage building. “You told us the Chinese and the Russians wouldn’t be able to locate those tugs in DRO.”
“You forget: Sevastian and Han both know the orbital elements of those tugs.”
“Fuck off. I don’t believe Yak or Han would—”
“J.T., where is Han? Why is he not answering his phone?”
* * *
—
Jin stared at the spectral AR image of his father—and for the first time felt a connection that went beyond obligation, beyond what was expected of him as an only son. For the first time he saw respect in his father’s eyes. “If what you say is true, and you have not taken the government’s side against me . . .” He took a deep breath. “Then I could forgive you.”
His father’s face showed relief and then he nodded—but then suddenly he flicked out of existence.
The disappearance of the AR illusion momentarily disoriented Jin, just as several Chinese men pushed through his hotel room door in real life.
The first of these, a swarthy man with a fierce expression, aimed an index finger at Jin and shouted in Mandarin, “You are coming with us, Captain Jin. Stand up. Now!”
Jin removed the AR glasses, tossing them aside as he stood. “You have no right to be in here. Get out!”
More men surged into the room while their leader approached, keeping his finger aimed at Jin’s face. “It is you who has no right. You violated your oath. You have betrayed—”
“I have betrayed nothing. Get out!”
“Where are those resources in lunar orbit, Captain?”
Jin pushed the man away. “That is my business, not yours.”
The man grabbed Jin roughly. “It is the Party’s business!” He stared hard. “Where have the tugs been moved?”
Jin was momentarily confused. “Moved? Who says they were moved?”
“Your American friends think we are blind, but we have eyes in space.” He grabbed for Jin’s hand, attempting a basic Qing Di Quan move that Jin recognized—and evaded. It was simple “Capture the Enemy Boxing,” standard training in the PLA. Frustrated, the man shouted louder. “Tell us where they were moved!”
“Why do you keep saying they were moved?”
“You are corrupt—like your father. Did you sell out to Burkette? Macy? The Pentagon? The Americans lie to you. They aim to prevent China’s rise, and they will never allow any of you into orbit again. Unless you honor your oath, we will not either.”
Jin felt confusion and then outrage building. Memories of his tightly controlled childhood filled him with a rage that surprised even himself. He evaded the man’s grip. “You think I am a stooge of the Americans? Yet you act as though the CCP owns me.”
“We all owe our lives to the Party.”
“Chinese history dates back three thousand years. The Party is not China. The Chinese people are China, and they will exist long after the CCP is gone.”
“That is treason!”
Jin surveyed the room. The other men had edged around behind him—one of them preparing flex-cuffs. He turned back to face the lead man, who was grabbing Jin’s shirt.
“Take him!”
Jin made his move, not evading the leader but pulling him close in—ramming a shoulder into the man’s jaw and using the momentum to pull past and propel forward, driving a knee into the groin of the man beyond. Sweeping aside a punch coming from his left—knocking the wind out of the man with a body slam to his exposed ribs.
As the son of a multibillionaire, it had been drilled into Jin’s head since childhood that kidnapping was an ever-present threat. However, traditional martial arts conditioning was impractical given Jin’s educational commitments—which was why he had been instructed from an early age in Baji Quan—the art of eight extremities. With it, one did not strike primarily with fists or kicks, but with one’s entire body as the weapon—shoulder and elbow strikes that focused explosive power in close-up fighting to incapacitate and move past an opponent. It was not a subtle form, but one whose core tenet was advance, advance, advance. In Jin’s case, to escape from would-be kidnappers. His instructors had schooled him a thousand times in evading abduction.
Jin knew his only chance was to escape while his attackers were momentarily stunned.
But just then the hotel room door kicked in.
The whole room turned in surprise to see James Tighe standing in the doorway. He shouted in English, “What the hell is going on in here, Han?”
One of the men turned to him. “Yáng lā jī!”
The entire room erupted in shouts and rushing bodies. Jin glimpsed two men attack Tighe—punching and kicking him with devastating blows that sent Tighe staggering back through the open doorway and into the hotel corridor.
Someone in the hallway screamed, and another voice called in English, “Get the police!”
