Stolen Earth, page 6
“But you still hate being on stations like this.”
“Yeah,” Lynch sighed. “I spent a whole career following orders like a good sailor and keeping my thoughts to myself. When I walked away, I knew it was time to pursue my own goals, my own life. I try to be realistic about it; there’s not a whole hell of a lot I can do to help any of these poor bastards.” He shook his head and sighed again. “It’s easy to forget, out on the Arcus, what the Fringe is like for most. Hell, what SolComm is like for most. It’s easy to get lost in the details of our own survival; who has the mental capacity to worry about the other guy these days? But being here…” He shrugged.
“Being here, you can’t forget,” Laurel said. She looked at the people around her and wondered whether or not she—upon her reintegration into SolComm—would be unable to forget as well.
The captain’s only answer was agreeable silence.
* * *
The directions from R292-A led them to a residential section of the station and they found themselves at the hatch for a compartment, a nondescript dwelling in a ring of the station comprised of hundreds of others exactly like it. The otherwise unadorned, lusterless metal of the door bore a simple designation: 8-O1-TTK.
“This is the place,” Lynch said.
“So, do we knock, or what?”
Before the captain could answer, they both heard the pop as the door’s pressure seal released. The hatch receded into the bulkhead and the interior lights of the compartment blossomed to life.
“That’s not suspicious at all,” Lynch muttered.
Laurel dropped her hand to the butt of her sidearm and asked, “How do you want to do this?”
“They’ve got to be monitoring us,” Lynch replied. “I can’t see why anyone would go to this much trouble just to try to take us out. So, we assume it’s part of the job or interview process or whatever. We go in.” He stepped over the hatch frame and into the compartment beyond. He also, Laurel noted, moved his own hand closer to the grips of the pistol at his side. She stepped in behind him, eyes scanning.
The interior could have been standard living quarters on any station, and most planet- or moon-based colonies, throughout the Commonwealth. It comprised a single room, maybe three meters by three. A small combination stove, refrigeration unit, and sink stood against one wall and another hatch no doubt led to the sanitary facilities. There were a pair of double bunks along another wall with built-in lockers, leaving just enough room for a couch to be squeezed in in front of the final wall, the entirety of which was dedicated to a vid screen. There were no signs of inhabitants—everything had a strangely preserved look, being both clean but also with the feeling that it hadn’t been used for some time. Which was more than a little odd on a station as crowded as Newtopia.
“Typical,” Lynch muttered. “Whoever might be offering this job, they’ve got the credits to buy space and not use it.”
As he spoke, Laurel moved toward the only hatch in the room, nodding approvingly at Lynch as he did the same. They ended up positioned on either side of the hatch. She still hadn’t drawn her weapon, nor had the captain, but damned if it didn’t feel like they were about to do an entry together.
“Ready?” Lynch asked. The button to open the hatch was located on his side of the frame. She nodded. He depressed the button and the door swept open. Laurel dropped to one knee, taking her head out of the most likely line of fire, and leaned into the room, giving it a quick scan before pulling her head back to safety. Then she sighed in disgust and pushed herself to her feet.
“It’s the head. Empty.”
“If you’re satisfied, then we can get started.”
Laurel spun, aware of Lynch doing the same. She managed to not draw her sidearm—if someone had them dead to rights, that would only get her shot—but it was a near thing. The compartment was still empty. The wall screen, however, had come to life.
A man watched them with a slightly amused expression. “Please, have a seat. I assume you’re the contractors sent by R292-A?”
Laurel deferred to Lynch, as he was the captain of the Arcus and, insofar as they had one, the boss. Besides, she’d be able to get more information if she were free to observe rather than sparring with their would-be employer.
“I suppose you could call us that,” Lynch said with a smile. He strode to the couch and settled into it, even going so far as to cross his legs at the ankles in a pose of casual relaxation. Laurel moved into a position behind and to the right of him, where she still had a peripheral view of the main compartment hatch. No sense in being sloppy.
“And I suppose you’re the employer?” Lynch asked.
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Lynch,” the man replied. “I am, however, her solicitor.”
His accent was SolComm elite, refined, educated. She’d heard Hayer slip into the same from time to time. His wardrobe fit the picture, wearing a suit that wouldn’t have been out of place on Old Earth before the End, with no acknowledgments in the tailoring to plebian concerns like unexpected depressurization or the need to anchor yourself in the event that the gravity generators went offline.
Laurel’s lips curled into something akin to a snarl. Lawyers. If there was one bunch of people Laurel wished had been left back on Old Earth, it was the lawyers. Particularly the high-priced, high-powered, predatory kind like the one staring at them from the viewscreen. It also meant that this meeting was going to be damn near useless for her; if their potential client could afford the kind of attorney that the man on the screen appeared to be, she would be so wrapped around in legal protections—not to mention certainly one of the elite herself—as to make this conversation useless for Laurel’s purposes.
“Understood,” Lynch replied. “I assume you’re empowered to enter into contracts on her behalf.”
“More like oral agreements,” the attorney replied with a well-practiced smile. “There will be no electronic or physical records of any agreements we may or may not come to.”
“I’m a plain man, Mr.…?”
“Names are unnecessary at this juncture,” the man replied.
Lynch shook his head. “Great. I assume you can tell me something about the job, at least?”
“I can,” the solicitor agreed. “It is a simple retrieval. My client will provide a list of goods that she wishes to be located as well as sets of coordinates where they are likely to be found. You will secure them. You will be paid an up-front amount to undertake the mission suitable to refit your vessel—the Arcus, I believe—and provision yourselves accordingly. You will be paid a piece rate for each item delivered. That exchange will take place at a private facility owned by what I hope will be our mutual employer, so that she can personally vet each item in question and establish its provenance.”
That caught Laurel’s ear. No matter how many layers of bureaucracy and lawyers you surrounded yourself with, if you got caught with your hand in the cookie jar—or in this case, accepting goods that were taken from Old Earth itself—then there was no getting out of the consequences. Their potential employer was taking a risk, and one that she might be able to use, presupposing, that was, that they could pull off the impossible.
“There are certain complications,” Lynch noted.
“Yes. To that matter, you will be provided with information designed to ease those concerns. Those materials will be couriered to your vessel in hard copy via a third party. Included will be a single-use communications account to indicate your acceptance. The documents themselves lay out an approach that, provided you are as skilled as has been indicated to us, you should find survivable.”
“Unlike others who have attempted it,” Lynch stated.
“Others had an inflated opinion of their own abilities. Do you, Mr. Lynch?”
The captain didn’t seem bothered by that. “So, as of this moment, unspecified items. Unspecified approaches. Unspecified timelines. Unspecified payment. Is there anything you can tell us to make us want to take this job?”
The attorney quoted a number.
A very, very, large number.
In the reflection from the screen, Laurel could see that Lynch’s face didn’t change. She couldn’t say the same for her own. It was the kind of number that had Laurel calculating how many years she had to retirement and how many years beyond that she’d have to keep working to get to that number.
“Send your courier,” Lynch said. “If we think it’s doable, you’ll hear from us.”
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Lynch.”
With that, the screen went dead.
* * *
“Are we really going to do this?” Hayer asked the captain.
They had gathered in the common room once more. The courier had arrived less than an hour after Lynch and Laurel had returned to the Arcus and the crew had been poring over the plan, such as it was, ever since. Laurel wasn’t a pilot or a physicist, but the whole thing seemed just one or two points shy of outright insanity.
“If our employer is correct on the maintenance cycle and the capabilities of the IZ satellites during those cycles, I think it’s possible. It will mean some tight flying, and a lot of work for you and computers up-front to make sure we get our insertion vectors, but… I think the insertion is viable.”
“Shit,” Federov muttered. “For nearly century, we think IZ keep us safe. Now you say maintenance cycles and math are all we need to get through?”
The captain smiled. “Really good math. And some fancy flying. And a well-tuned engine with a kick-ass engineer.”
All eyes turned to Bishop. “Aw, shucks,” he said with false sincerity. “The engines aren’t there, Cap. Not right now. But with the kind of money we’re talking? I can get ’em humming like Jupiter’s mag field. Not to mention we could finally fix that fluctuation in the grav generator. And it might let me chase down the interrupt fault we’re getting in some of the electrical systems. Shoot, the advance alone would get this ship operating like new.” He met the captain’s eyes. “The credits would be nice, Cap, I ain’t gonna lie. But I’m not sure I’m up for a suicide mission.”
“There is a large difference between theoretically possible and feasible in the real world,” Hayer added. “And that’s presupposing nothing on the planet tries to kill us on the way down. There is the little problem of the weapons systems and warfare that drove humanity off the planet in the first place.”
“SolComm intel, at least ten years ago, indicated that those defenses were inactive,” Lynch said.
“But we have no new information. We don’t know what the planet is like now, today. Getting through the IZ would only be the beginning. And if there are active weapons platforms that you just didn’t encounter last time, we can’t prepare for that.”
“You’re right, Hayer,” the captain said. “There is a hell of a lot more that we don’t know than we do know. But we risk our lives on just about every mission we undertake. The KSV vessel we pirated could have been a SolCommNav Q-ship. R292-A could have killed us and taken our cargo. This isn’t the university; everything we do here, we do for keeps. There are two questions we need to ask ourselves: first, is it possible to set down on Old Earth and get back out again? We don’t have all the information to make that decision, but we never will. For my part, and based on that earlier mission, I think it’s possible. With the information our employer has provided, I think we can penetrate the IZ with a good chance of setting down on terra firma. So, before we go any further, let’s address that singularity in the room. Bishop?”
The mechanic shifted uncomfortably in his seat for a moment. Then he drew a breath and as if coming to a decision sat a little straighter. “If you say we can, Cap, then I think we can. I can take care of the engines. I’ve never seen you fail in the pilot’s chair. And Hayer does math I don’t even understand just for the fun of it.” He grinned. “Shoot. With a team like that, how could we fail?”
Lynch ignored the quip. “Federov?”
“I don’t know, Captain. Is maybe suicide. And there is not much I can do to help until we are on ground. If you say it can be done…” He gave a slight shrug. Laurel, not for the first time, marveled at how completely Lynch seemed to have won the loyalty of his crew. Bishop and Federov were both willing to risk their lives as much for the captain’s judgment as his ability to pilot.
“Hayer?”
“If all of this—” she waved a hand at the data pads displaying the couriered information “—is accurate, then, yes, I think it’s possible. But only just. If we make one mistake, it’s over.”
“I’ll take that as a firm maybe,” Lynch said. “Morales?”
Like Federov, this wasn’t her area of expertise. She had no knowledge or training in the math, engineering, or piloting to pull off the insertion. What she did have was a lot of experience analyzing evidence and evaluating people. And damned if, whatever she’d been told by SolComm, this thing didn’t look possible.
“I can’t put odds on our actual chances,” she admitted, “beyond saying there is one.” She offered a wan smile of her own. “I’d go as far to say that it’s not outright suicide.”
Lynch nodded. “We’d be taking a big risk. Which brings us to the second question: is it worth it?”
“Reward is huge, too,” Federov noted. “Enough to change lives. Enough to live like the people who send us on mission, maybe.”
“Enough to pay for lots of upgrades to the Arcus,” Bishop added.
“Enough to give us an operating cushion so that we take a little more time in finding future jobs. It might be enough for us to go completely legit, pay for all the licenses and certifications to compete with the corporations. At least the small ones,” Lynch finished.
Hayer sighed. “Valid points. But we’re talking Old Earth here. I’ve done my homework, okay? Even if we make it through the IZ, it’s going to be incredibly dangerous.”
“Is why they pay so much,” Federov noted.
“You’re sure you can put us on the ground in one piece, Captain?” Hayer asked.
“Not until we run all the numbers,” Lynch admitted. “But if you can work out the trajectories and Bishop can figure out the engine restart problem, then yeah, I can put this bird on the ground.”
The talk continued, but Laurel knew the decision had already been made. She hoped to God that Lynch—and the rest of the crew—was as good as he thought, because she strongly suspected that all their lives were going to depend on it in the very near future.
GRAY
Old Earth hung like a blue jewel against the backdrop of endless night. The sight of it tugged at Gray: it spoke of promise and history and hope and a thousand other things that made even the hardest spacer think about a life of tilling the soil and breathing fresh air. It made him long for the warmth of the sun on his face, unprotected by layers of radiation shielding, and the smell of grass and trees instead of plastic and ozone.
It was a fucking lie.
No human had set foot on Old Earth for the better part of a century. Or so the official line went: he snorted, the sound too loud in the depths of his suit helmet. Not that he had believed it, even then, but at least all the paperwork had been in order. And so had the pass codes needed to get through the Interdiction Zone. Codes without which trying to infiltrate Old Earth was highly likely to result in untimely death.
They didn’t have those codes. The courier had dropped off his package and the crew had reviewed it. The approach was crazy and without Hayer, Gray wouldn’t have dared risk it. The ship’s computer could handle the raw computations, but it still needed to be told what to compute. He could come up with two variables—angle of entry and velocity. Bishop could add a couple more, mostly around engine start-up times and power curves. Hayer? Hayer had come up with—and formulaically accounted for—no fewer than sixteen.
“Coming up on the first satellite.” The words crackled over his comm—not the ship’s comm but the short-range, comparatively low-powered one built into the helmet of his ship suit—in a barely audible whisper. Against the eerie stillness of the unpowered ship, the whisper sounded like a shout and Gray couldn’t help flinching. He recognized the worry in Hayer’s voice. The fully justifiable worry. After all, if their employer was wrong about the maintenance cycle or the capabilities of the nearest few satellites, the unpowered Arcus might as well be a giant potato for all the capability they’d have to escape.
“Understood,” he replied. He peered at the pilot’s viewscreen, trying to ignore the imperceptibly growing ball of blue and green. There was nothing more to see, of course. Getting “close” to the satellite still meant they were nearly sixty kilometers out from it. The blackness outside was a fair match for the darkness within the ship and a shiver coursed down Gray’s spine. He had been raised on a deep space station; it wasn’t the view that bothered him. But stations and ships were never quiet, never dark, never still. The thrum and hum of life-giving machinery was a constant counterpoint, the very essence of life. When it stopped, it meant that things had gone very, very wrong.
He didn’t need to remind his crew to minimize every electronic footprint possible. They’d spent days doing exactly that, turning off everything but the life support, engines, and the few vital computer functions. Even those had been terminated as they approached the IZ, and they’d donned their ship suits and vented the atmosphere to make sure that there would be minimal thermal emissions as well.
The Arcus was running as dead and silent as any spacecraft could, and the only sounds Gray could hear were those of his own biology: the beat of his heart pulsing in his ears and the susurration of breathing, seeming too loud in the confines of his helmet and reminding him that he was operating off the limited supply of oxygen in his ship suit. And if their employer hadn’t opened up the promised hole, it wouldn’t matter in the slightest. If the satellites were operating at full efficiency, even the lifeless hunk of metal wrapped around the five members of the crew would be detected and summarily destroyed by the Interdiction Zone. But, if their employer was right, the grid wouldn’t be operating at full efficiency.
