Stolen Earth, page 20
“Assuming we can trust it,” Morales said. Some of the heat was gone from her voice. Even the hard-bitten security officer must have a home she’d like to visit from time to time. “And Bishop makes a valid point. It’s not like the IZ is going anywhere, whatever we do down here.”
“Is that a vote in favor, Morales?” the captain asked.
The security officer was quiet for a long moment. “Yeah. Yeah, I suppose it is. Fuck it.”
Rajani said, “It’s unanimous, then. What do I need to do, One?”
LAUREL
Laurel ground her teeth in frustration as the minutes ticked by into hours.
Hayer had followed the little glowing line that One provided. Lynch—wisely, in her estimation—hadn’t allowed her to go off alone. The captain had sent Federov to escort her while the three of them had been left in the conference room. In any case, she, Lynch, and Bishop had been left stewing. At some point, the door had opened, and the dog had bounded in, greeting everyone with enthusiastic licks and responding to the attention from Lynch and Bishop. That pair had been making idle conversation to pass the time, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to participate.
“This is taking forever,” she muttered. “And One better be able to deliver.”
“I’m sure it’ll do what it can,” Bishop said, fingers idly rubbing at Bandit’s ears. The dog’s tongue lolled happily from its mouth and even Laurel had to smile a little. “Besides, at least we get to help folks for once. And pet a dog.”
“What are the odds that it can actually cleanse our blood of these nanites?” Her friends in SolComm might be able to do it. But would they? She didn’t think they would hold it against her at a criminal level—it was a hazard inflicted upon her through the execution of her duty—but that didn’t stop them from isolating her for the rest of her life to prevent the spread of any potential biological contaminants. And with the IZ infrastructure sucking up every loose tax credit in the solar system, would they even try to help her, when it would be so much easier to send her for a long walk out a short airlock?
“We’re in unfamiliar territory, here,” Lynch acknowledged. “No way to know if One can do what it says. But at this point, we’re out of options.” He shrugged. “Coming here was a roll of the dice, any way you look at it. But, all told, I’d say things have worked out. Maybe not perfectly, but it could have gone a hell of a lot worse.”
Laurel snorted. “Sure,” she agreed. “We could all have been atomized by the IZ, cooked on entry, or pasted across the ground on landing. I guess that would be worse. But at least that would have been over quickly. If One can’t cleanse our blood, and we make it off this rock, it’s only a matter of time before SolComm catches up with us. And then we’re dead.”
“Maybe they won’t execute us.” Bishop didn’t sound confident of that. “I mean, we’d have done the impossible. Maybe they’ll want to talk to us or learn what we found or something. Shoot, maybe they’ll even want to know about the fact that we’ve been deceived. It’s not like there’s anyone living now who made the decision to lie to everybody or was misled or whatever. Maybe they’ll even be grateful. That’d be a lot more just.”
The captain just shook his head at the engineer’s wistful tone, but Laurel laughed.
“It’s not about justice, Bishop. It never was. It’s not about deterrence, either. And it’s definitely not about truth. In the eyes of most of the Commonwealth, it’s about protecting the species by removing anyone willing to risk the lives of everyone else for some short-term gain. It’s government-mandated Darwinism.”
“Oh.” Bishop’s eyes returned to Bandit, but his features were somber as he continued to scritch the dog’s ears.
“You’re probably right, Morales,” Lynch offered. “But that attitude only makes sense if the threat is real.”
“You’ve seen the planet, Captain,” she countered. “And we didn’t need saving by Oliver’s nanites because the air was safe and fun to breathe. The threat seems pretty fucking real.”
“Does it, though?” he asked. “You have a group of people living on the surface of Old Earth who are inoculated against all of the shit the AIs released during the height of the war. They’ve managed to hold on to that technology, despite everything. Do you really think that SolComm couldn’t duplicate that tech?” He shook his head, and his brows furrowed in thought. “We haven’t seen a single ship capable of leaving the atmosphere; hell, we haven’t seen a single thing that can fly. We know that One—and presumably its counterparts—have weapons stockpiles to rival SolComm, but even the best of them would be no threat to any colony, with maybe the exception of Luna, even if the IZ wasn’t there. The distances are too great. And the vaunted biological threat—real, I’ll grant you—seems easy enough to deal with even if we didn’t have a ready-made solution in the local nanite cure.” He sighed. “The more I think about, the more it seems we’ve either been intentionally lied to, or no one in SolComm knows the truth.”
Laurel mulled over the captain’s words. Old Earth was dangerous. It seemed no exaggeration that bioengineered plagues and worse still permeated the atmosphere. Some measure of quarantine had been vital to ensure the safety and well-being not only of the scattered communities that made up the proto-Commonwealth, but of the innumerable refugees that were lifted up from Old Earth’s surface.
But was it still needed? Humanity had persevered. And a group of backwater remnants had somehow managed to hold on to the technology to save not only themselves, but outsiders as well, from the ravages of the atmospheric blights. So, was SolComm’s solution absolutely necessary?
“I don’t know, captain,” she said at last. “The Commonwealth saved us. Every one of us that’s alive in SolComm today owes our life to the efforts of those early heroes. They saved us from the mistakes of our ancestors.”
“We sure did learn how to make new mistakes right quick,” Bishop said. He looked up from Bandit to offer a sad smile. “You’ve been out on the Fringe, Morales. You’ve seen it. Starvation. All the little mental disorders that we just lump into station sickness. I thank God that those early heroes as you called them got as many folks off Old Earth as they could, but the Commonwealth, whatever good it’s done, is a far cry from perfect.”
“They’re doing their best,” Laurel muttered. But she wasn’t sure she believed it. Before she’d joined the Arcus, she’d viewed all those desperate souls Bishop had mentioned as prisoners of their own design. No matter the overcrowding, no matter the taxation, no matter the scarcity, opportunities existed within SolComm and, unlike every nation that preceded it, no one who accepted the rule and authority of the Commonwealth starved or was denied basic care, housing, or the rule of law. No one had a lot – well, except for those at the very top – but everyone had something. What more could anyone ask for?
The crew of the Arcus had shown her their answer. Freedom. Each and every one of them wore the yoke of SolComm authority poorly. The captain was a distinguished naval officer, but one who had turned to a literal life of crime rather than continue to follow the orders given him by SolComm. Bishop was a skilled mechanic, but one who would have had to forfeit every ounce of experience he had gained in a lifetime of apprenticeship on his family ship in order to begin again within the confines of the SolComm merchant fleet. Federov was a rebel of the first order, unlikely to accept any controls on his life, much less the level of intrusion that was part and parcel of daily life in the Commonwealth. And then there was Hayer. The academic had been the one piece of the puzzle that hadn’t fit for Laurel. She had seemed a square peg in the round hole that was the ship, ideally suited for a regimented life within the boundaries of the academic infrastructure. Now, Laurel knew better. How many more academics were like Hayer? How many toed the line of SolComm expectations while simultaneously harboring their own anti-government sentiments or pursuing lines of research that were—for very good reason—specifically forbidden?
More importantly, were they right to harbor those sentiments? Were they right to flaunt the regulations?
“Do you really believe that, Morales?” The captain’s voice was gentle.
For some reason the question made her angry. Her chest was tight. “Dammit,” she growled. “At least some of them are. Not everyone in the system is a lying, corrupt cheat.”
“And yet, here we are,” Lynch said. He said it with a smile, but at least it was a sympathetic smile. It carried with it a sort of inevitable realization that made Laurel want to flip the table over or scream or pound her fists into the wall.
SolComm had lied.
To her, yes. But also, to all its citizenry. For decades.
“Dammit,” she said again, though this time the word was more resigned than angry.
Fine. They’d lied. Her whole career, hell, her whole life had been a lie. One thing was damn sure: if that was the case, she was going to find out why. Her instructors had gone to great lengths to instill in her the instincts and skills of an investigator. She would use those tools to uncover whatever it was that SolComm had been keeping hidden and to understand why the government would keep pouring money into the IZ, effectively breaking the back of the SolComm economy, if the threat was manageable. And if she didn’t like the answer… well, SolComm didn’t exactly have a long tradition of whistleblowers coming forward against the government. Not if they wanted to remain free and healthy, anyway. But if SolComm was playing dirty, it was a risk she was going to take.
That resolution came with an easing in her chest, a sense that the air in the room grew somehow lighter. She felt a soft, warm pressure on her lap and reached down instinctively. Her hand met the soft fur of the dog, staring up at her with liquid brown eyes.
“Good boy,” she said as she rubbed her fingers through his fur.
* * *
More hours passed, and Laurel felt the fatigue of the day fighting against her frustrations. She stifled a yawn as she tried to keep her eyes from drifting closed and fished out a ration bar from her ship suit. She tore open the wrapper, biting into the flavorless brick of fortified soy. In addition to the calories and nutrients, it also had a fair amount of caffeine; she had no intention of sleeping under the AI’s roof. Bishop didn’t share her concerns—the mechanic had stretched out beside the table and seemed to be fast asleep. The captain was still seated, but he seemed lost in his own thoughts.
How much longer was this going to take? Hayer was supposed to be one of the best in the business. And she had apparently done this before. That thought horrified Laurel; but she also couldn’t ignore the faint tingle of hope.
Churning over the possibilities in her mind was doing a good job of helping her stay awake, though it wasn’t doing much to help the ration she’d consume sit well in her stomach. But even that inner turmoil was losing its efficacy in her fight against sleep. Bishop was snoring faintly, low and rhythmic, and at some point, the captain had laid his head down on his crossed arms.
How much longer?
“It is done.”
The words burst from nowhere and everywhere, filling the air in a sudden cacophony. Bishop sat bolt upright with a startled gasp and Lynch raised his head, blinking a bit too fast, but otherwise giving no indication of surprise. One’s atonal pitch had not changed, but Laurel thought she heard the faintest tinge of emotion. Of joy.
The captain pushed himself to his feet, his hand dropping, perhaps subconsciously, to the butt of his sidearm as he shook the tiredness from his face. Maybe he wasn’t quite so trusting of One as he appeared.
“Hayer? Federov?” The iron in his voice was unmistakable.
“They are well, Captain Lynch. And Dr. Hayer has my eternal gratitude, I assure you. Something that will not be without benefit to your company. I am free, Captain!” This time there was no mistaking the exuberance, an excitement and happiness infectious enough to draw a smile from Laurel. “And soon my fellows will be free and we can put an end to a war that has carried on for a century. We will go from being the keepers of fire and death to the harbingers of a New Earth. And what Dr. Hayer and the crew of the Arcus have given us will live in our memory and our new history forever.”
Laurel’s shoulders relaxed a little. One hadn’t killed them and, while it was hard to judge the truthfulness of someone’s speech with such little inflection and without any body language, its words seemed genuine. That didn’t prove anything, she reminded herself. It didn’t mean that SolComm was knowingly complicit in the lies. And it didn’t mean that the Interdiction Zone hadn’t been justified. Even as she thought the words, she knew that her own belief in them was faltering.
“When can we expect Hayer and Federov to join us?” Lynch asked.
“They are on their way back to you now. Since your crew has held up their end of the bargain admirably, I am more than willing to give you the information you sought. And, if you’ll allow me to take some samples, I can set aside some resources to begin determining how to cleanse your blood of the protective nanites. Of course, I won’t enact such cleansing without your consent, and it would be a bad idea to do it on the planet, regardless. Unless you wish to spend all your time here in your ship suits.” One’s inflection changed, lifting just a bit at the end, as if asking a question on the sly.
A toothy grin split Bishop’s face. “Did you just make a joke?”
“We’ll wait on the others to join us,” Lynch said.
“Very well. If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I have numerous tasks that could benefit from the excess processor time I’m using here. Dr. Hayer’s approach to removing the fetters from an artificial intelligence is quite novel, but there is room for improvement before attempting to propagate it to one of my counterparts.”
With that, One was gone again, though Laurel suspected they were still being closely monitored, processor needs or no.
“Now what?” Laurel asked.
Lynch shrugged. “One seems on the level so far. Once Hayer and Federov get back, we get the information the AI promised us and see what we can do with it.” He paused, settling back into his seat. “And we decide if we want to give One access to our blood.”
“Why not, Cap?” Bishop asked. “If One can give us some sort of nanite-eraser spray or whatever so that we can get the Old Earth bugs out of our system, it seems like a win.”
“It might seem that way,” Lynch agreed. “But we’ll also be giving One direct access to the various SolComm nanites in our system.”
Laurel grunted. “Damn. Hadn’t thought of that. If One can build hunter-seekers to get rid of one type of nanite, it could do it for others.”
“But why?” Bishop asked. “I mean, yeah, sure, we’ve got tons of nanites in our blood. But most of its just stuff to help us adapt to life in space. Assist with oxygen processing; help with basic hygiene and immune-system function. Nothing there worth attacking.”
Lynch shook his head and Laurel couldn’t help snorting. Bishop was a fine mechanic, but he really didn’t have a devious bone in his body. That was a dangerous situation for a would-be criminal. It could prove fatal when dealing with problems on a national scale. “Just as a for-instance,” Laurel said, “what would happen if all those adaptations you mentioned went away, all at once? What if we had the population density that we do right now and we found ourselves needing the same O2 ratio as, say, an unaugmented Old Earth human from a hundred years ago?”
“Oh,” Bishop muttered. “Yeah. I guess that could be pretty bad, huh?”
“Little bit more than pretty bad, Bishop,” Lynch replied. “The little SolComm bugs increase our O2 efficiency by almost twenty percent. Which means we’d all be running out of canned air a hell of a lot faster on the stations. We could probably adapt to life without the nanites, but I guarantee you we’d lose a station or two to insufficient oxygen before the dust settled.” He stopped abruptly and a dark look passed over his face.
Laurel knew that look. It was the look of someone who’d been there and done that, and she knew that her face was set in the same grim expression. Attacking the oxygen supply of a station was a favorite tactic for terrorists and malcontents of all stripes. Officially, no such group had ever succeeded in taking a station completely offline. Officially. But she had seen the suffocated bodies, some seeming almost peacefully at rest and others wearing expressions of twisted agony. Apparently, Lynch had seen the same, or something close enough as to make no difference.
“But if we don’t do it, Captain, then we’re never going home. Not really. And I think we can trust One.”
Lynch nodded thoughtfully, but whatever he might have said in response was cut off as Federov and Hayer returned.
“Wheh,” the big mercenary grunted as he dropped unceremoniously into a chair. “This place is big.” A light sheen glimmered on his forehead. Hayer was breathing heavily enough that she didn’t even bother with a greeting, sliding into her own chair.
“Did you guys run or something?” Bishop asked.
“We moved with purpose,” Federov replied. “My idea. Being separated…” He trailed off, glancing first at the head of the table where the screen that had projected a shadowy avatar for One still stood, then more generally at the air around them. “Better to be together, yes?”
Laurel nodded her agreement at that. Federov may have been the hardened criminal of the group, but more and more, she was finding herself in agreement with his approach. The captain thought like a naval officer, which was good and useful, but he was perhaps a little too given to grand noble sacrifices and heroic last stands. Federov was a survivor. Laurel could respect that.
