Europa Deep, page 1
EUROPA DEEP
GARY GIBSON
First Published by Brain in a Jar Books 2023
Copyright © 2023 by Gary Gibson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Gary Gibson asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
First Edition.
ISBN 978-986-06770-4-1 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-986-06770-5-8 (Hardback)
Illustration © Tom Edwards
TomEdwardsDesign.com
This book primarily uses English (UK) spelling.
Created with Vellum
CHAPTER 1
SUBSTITUTES
Once she felt Earth’s gravity loosen its grip on her bones and muscles, the thunderous roar of lift-off dropping to a steady bass rumble, Sally Braemar glanced out of the suborbital’s tiny window to see a broad arc of greens and blues spread out beneath a dome of perfect black.
They were still only a few minutes out from Seoul, and already she could make out the coast of Japan through the cloud cover, nearly a hundred kilometres beneath her feet.
Rare moments like this—when Earth’s grip on her body dropped away to almost nothing—were always to be savoured. All Sally wanted to do was stretch her legs and stare out the window at the curve of the planet below her, knowing it would feel like no time had passed before they began their descent into hot and humid Florida half a world away.
Jeff Holland, unfortunately, had other ideas. The moment the seat-belt sign changed, he unbuckled and reached for his flimsy.
“This might be our last chance to talk in private for a while,” he said, unrolling the flexible plastic and giving it a brief shake so that it snapped into rigidity. Lines of text and images appeared on its screen as he laid it across his lap. “The latest intel shows significant developments in just the last couple of hours.”
“Look at that view,” said Sally, her gaze still fixed on the world turning beneath them. She always took a window seat on suborbital flights. “Isn’t it a marvel?”
Holland responded with only a slight twist of his lips. He always seemed happiest with an aisle seat. Apart from the flight crew, they were the only passengers.
“Sure,” he said, “but this is important too.” Tables of information scrolled across the screen when he tapped an icon.
“What is that?” Reaching over, Sally turned the device towards her, so she could get a better view. “And all of this is up-to-date information?”
Holland nodded. “News of another launch came in just before we took off. That’s six unmanned cargo resupply drones taken off from Hainan in the last few days, all headed for the New Chinese Republic’s Von Karman base.” He paused for effect. “No mention of why they need extra supply runs.”
“Okay,” she said. “So, do we have any idea what the shipments might really be for?”
He raised one shoulder in a shrug. “Donaldson’s our embassy contact. Do you know if he’s heard anything out of the Summer Palace?”
Sally glanced up front to where a flight attendant, wearing a dark blue uniform, had emerged from the pilot’s cabin. The woman overshot the galley, only managing to stop her wayward flight by quickly reaching out and grabbing hold of a bulkhead.
This naturally drew Sally’s attention. By now, she’d flown suborbital enough times that she’d come to know a few of the attendants by name. Most were seconded to the agency from the military and, in some cases, could take over from the pilot in an emergency. Few had less than a hundred hours of experience in LEO. But if she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought this attendant was entirely new to suborbital flight.
Or perhaps they were having a bad day or suffering a hangover following a layover. Hardly professional, thought Sally. But not unprecedented.
A childhood memory came to her just then, of her mother gripping the armrests aboard a commercial jet en route from Fort Worth to San Francisco to visit Uncle Dan. Right from the moment the plane lifted off the tarmac, to the moment it taxied to a halt at SF International, Frances Braemar had maintained a death grip on the armrests of her seat, as if by doing so she could keep the jet and everyone on board from falling out the sky.
After their visit was over, and even though it meant she wouldn’t get a refund on their return flight, her mother had loaded Sally and her brother into a rented car before driving back home cross-country, seemingly not caring that the trip took so long she missed a deadline in her freelance video editing work.
And yet, Sally had loved that first experience of flying. For the longest time, suborbital flights had been the closest she got to orbit, and she’d loved every one of them.
What would Holland have thought of her, she wondered, if he’d known that on the rare occasions Sally flew alone, she’d release her seat belt to float down the length of the cabin?
Maybe he’d approve, given their upcoming assignment. So far, she’d logged thirty hours aboard the agency’s LEO training facility, and a three-month security shift at the tiny US research outpost at Mare Imbrium—
“Sally?”
Sally blinked and shifted her attention back to Holland, who was still waiting for an answer.
“Sorry,” she said, a touch sheepishly. “Nothing but rumours out of the Summer Palace. No sign of any official announcements coming down the pipeline either.” She shrugged. “That could be a sign in itself. Whenever the Summer Palace locks down tight like this, it’s usually right before something big.”
Holland nodded, finally letting his gaze slide past her to focus on the black expanse of space outside the window. “So all we can do is wait and see what they do next.”
“Except,” Sally pointed out, “everything we do know indicates that the Summer Palace is strongly focused on Jupiter. And where else would the Tianjin be going, if not there?”
“But we still don’t have solid evidence of the Palace’s intentions,” Holland reminded her. “And this administration doesn’t like uncertainties. Uncertainties lead to budgetary questions, and budgetary questions lead to oversight committees demanding information the agency can’t supply without risking operational security. Such as, why it’s inserting government agents into a commercial deep space operation.”
“Just the kind of thing to get those old-time Republicans really riled up, huh?” Cassie offered.
Holland smiled, a little more genuinely this time. “I reminded them we’re just a backup plan,” said Holland. “Someone to keep an eye on the Tianjin in case we’re right about the NCR’s intentions.”
“I still think the crew should have been told about us,” she said. Glancing out the window, she saw stripes of white cloud high above the Pacific. “Imagine waking up a couple of billion kilometres from home and finding two strangers had come along for the ride.” She glanced sideways at Holland. “We’ll need them to trust us.”
“We’ll work on that when we get there,” Holland said gruffly. He glanced back down at his flimsy. “Says here the Tianjin’s fitted with a next generation nuclear thermal propulsion system. If that’s true, they might get to Jupiter before us.”
Sally, however, wasn’t giving him her full attention. The flight attendant had reappeared from inside the galley and was now manoeuvring her way down the length of the cabin towards them. Only at the last second, as the woman came abreast of Holland, did Sally see she was holding something in one palm.
Before she could react, the attendant had pressed the object against Holland’s chest, her knuckles whitening as she squeezed.
Sally heard a muffled thump, like a hammer wrapped in cloth hitting an anvil.
Holland, who had just looked around at the attendant that moment, jerked spasmodically. He looked surprised, as if he’d only then remembered something important, his mouth opening and closing and his hands grasping at his armrests like he meant to push himself out of his seat.
Then his eyes rolled up, his arms swinging loose in the zero gravity.
The attendant had meanwhile failed to compensate for the kick from her weapon: the shot that killed Sally’s boss sent the other woman careening backwards across the cabin. The attendant flailed wildly, then got hold of the back of a seat to reorient herself.
By then, Sally was already in motion. The suborbital had dipped back down towards the atmosphere, and she knew she had perhaps seconds before gravity reasserted itself.
In the meantime, she had something the other woman clearly didn’t have—hours of combat training in zero gravity.
Pushing up with her heels, Sally flew up and out of her seat, stopping herself against the cabin roof with both hands. Then, bracing her feet against the back of her seat, she prepared to launch herself towards the attendant.
She’d studied a dozen different ways she could kill an armed combatant in zero-gravity.
Before she could do that, however, a thousand tiny knives pierced her chest and lungs.
The cabin spun around Sally, and she glimpsed a second figure, close to the open door of the cockpit: the pilot. He held a second gun in a two-handed grip, his back pressed against the compartment wall to keep from being thrown b ack by the recoil.
For one fleeting moment, Sally was back in her weapons instructor’s class, listening as he detailed the carnage that could be wreaked by smart bullets armed with lead azide cores. Illegal as hell, given their ability to seek out and shred a target’s internal organs, but a guaranteed kill at any range.
And she’d just been shot with one.
Sally opened her mouth to say something, but could draw no air from her lacerated lungs. The sun flashed through a window across the cabin, and as her body turned in a slow somersault, her vision filled with a black deeper than any she had seen through a suborbital window.
“You waited too long,” the pilot groused as he helped pull the dead woman’s body down onto the floor of the cabin. “You should have killed them as soon as we lifted off, not mid-fucking-flight.”
The pilot was about the same height and build as the man his partner had killed. An operation had altered the pigmentation of his hair follicles to more closely match that of Jeff Holland.
“Stop complaining,” the attendant snapped. “And check what’s in his briefcase. You remember your name?”
“Jeff Holland,” he said, looking almost hurt. “I’m insulted at the implication I’d forget.”
Working with practiced speed, they zipped the dead woman’s body inside one of a pair of lightweight waterproof sacks the pilot had brought out of the cockpit, then did the same for her boss.
Finally, they strapped the bagged bodies back into their seats. The man who would take Holland’s identity returned to the cockpit and requested an emergency landing at Anchorage due to suspected engine failure.
The attendant, meanwhile, strapped herself into a cabin seat and quickly ran through a mental checklist of everything she knew about Sally Braemar. The suborbital’s nose dipped further, slicing through the troposphere on a silent, battery-powered descent.
As soon as they taxied to a halt on a private airstrip near Anchorage, the waiting cleanup crew boarded the jet and got to work, cramming the bodies inside a single, oversized flight case.
Unfortunately, the two bodies didn’t quite fit, and so they were forced to waste extra time removing the bodies from their bags so that their arms and legs could be broken.
This done, both bodies finally fit inside the flight case.
Even taking that snafu into account, thought the attendant, things had gone smoothly; the original attendant had been given emergency leave to attend to a sick and dying relative in Maine, while her accomplice—who, from now on, would be known to her only as Jeff Holland—had his own cover story.
Most of a decade from now, when they returned home to Earth, she might resume her former identity. Or she might find another: she would have to see. Either way, she’d be compensated well enough to buy her own private island if she wanted.
And she’d never have to take on another assignment ever again.
The woman who now called herself Sally Braemar watched as they wheeled the flight case into a waiting truck. Two of the cleanup crew, a man and a woman, remained behind, changing into the attendant and pilot’s uniforms. Sally Braemar and Jeff Holland, as they were now known, changed into dark suits more or less identical to those worn by the two dead agents.
Less than an hour later, they touched down again, this time at Valkaria Airport on Florida’s east coast.
As they disembarked, the new Sally Braemar saw a car parked close by the runway. Its dark paint job and tinted windows made it a dead giveaway for an agency ride. Next to it stood a young-looking agent with a round face and dark, close-cut hair, and as they disembarked, he walked across the tarmac to greet them.
The attendant stiffened, thinking of the many, many things that could still go wrong. What if this man had known the real Sally Braemar and Jeff Holland?
A quick glance around revealed no witnesses—none she could see, at least. But if they were forced to kill the agent, there was a risk they might have no choice but to abort.
The young agent took off his sunglasses and squinted at each of them. “Agents Holland and Braemar?” He extended a friendly hand. “Art Ramirez. I’m your liaison here. I heard you had a problem. Nothing bad, I hope?”
The attendant took his hand first, shaking it. “False alarm,” she said. “But they still made us stop over all the way up in Alaska.”
“Alaska! Jesus.” He shook his head, nothing in his gaze suggesting he thought they were anything other than the people he had been sent to meet. “Of all the things. Anyway, I’m to give you your final briefing prior to launch,” he continued, “and I’m sorry it has to be at such short notice.” He looked between them. “Hey, I heard a rumour the reason the Chinese are interested in Jupiter has something to do with the old Europa Deep expedition. You know anything about that?”
A muscle twitched in one of Holland’s imposter’s cheeks. “We can’t divulge that,” he told Ramirez. “Sorry.”
Ramirez grinned and raised a hand in apology. “Didn’t mean to pry. Just curious.” He indicated his car behind him. “I’ve got orders to drive you directly to the launch site.”
“Commander Javier has the last word as far as the science side of things goes,” Ramirez explained as he drove. He kept one hand on the steering wheel, glancing occasionally at them in the rearview mirror. They had both sat in the back. “But when we briefed him, we made it clear you have authority if there’s a threat of conflict between his mission and any NCR ships in Jovian space.”
The man who was now Holland turned from where he had been looking out at the old NASA Shuttle facility close by the sea. “How did Javier take that?” he asked carefully. “Or the people backing the new expedition, for that matter?”
Ramirez waggled the fingers of one hand in a so-so gesture. “The consortium funding the expedition knows they can’t fuck with the US government. Not if they want to use launch facilities inside our borders. And Javier’s psych profile shows he always follows orders. Even ones he doesn’t like.”
Fake-Holland nodded and suppressed a smile. If only you knew. “You’re sure about that?” he asked.
“It’s been made clear to him,” said Ramirez, “that if the Chinese become aggressive, assuming they turn up at Jupiter, you’ll have the authority to assume full control of the Veles. He won’t like it, but he’ll do what he’s told. And that’s all that matters.”
“Define ‘aggressive’,” asked fake-Sally Braemar.
“We absolutely cannot allow NCR ships to land on Europa,” said Ramirez. “At least, not before the crew of the Veles establishes control of Station Verne on the surface. Otherwise, we risk entirely ceding control of Europa to them.”
“If they tried to do that,” said Holland, “they’d be contravening every space treaty going.”
Ramirez laughed. “Like that ever stopped us, or anyone else.” He glanced at them again in the rearview mirror. “You testing me? You know all of this already, right?”
“Of course,” said Braemar. She slid one hand over Holland’s before it could move towards the pistol holstered under his jacket. Ramirez remained oblivious, his attention having shifted back to the road.
Ramirez guided the car onto an offramp. Soon, they pulled up at a security gate outside a private spaceport owned by LRG, the conglomerate responsible for most of Europa Deep II’s funding. Large black letters on a freestanding concrete wall next to the gate spelled out the company’s acronym, but when she squinted, Sally—as she now was—could just make out the outline of the old SpaceX logo underneath, like the lingering memory of a bad hangover.
The breath caught in her throat as the security guard took their IDs, checking them against records displayed on the computer screen inside his booth.
“There you go,” said the guard, handing them their IDs back through the open window.
Sally breathed out: she hadn’t exhaled for what had felt like a solid minute. Whoever was working for them inside the agency had done their job well.
A gantry stood some distance away, hazy with late afternoon heat shimmer. It supported the lower stage of a multipurpose heavy launcher. Slightly further away stood a single, enormous hangar that dominated everything around it.
