Juno Rising (ISF-Allion) Page 6

  He nodded, hoping that something would come back to him. Maybe if he just started to look at the data. He hoped.

  “Come, I’ll take you to your room so you can freshen up. Work starts tomorrow.”

  She led him into a lift where they descended deep into the mountain, into another part of the base with grey corridors and scuffed linoleum. Every passage looked the same as the next: Black-painted doors with a peephole and a slot for a nametag, lights set at regular intervals. It was claustrophobic. Another memory stirred: the old base at Mars, underground to protect against radiation. There was a room full of pressure suits to his right, where people were getting dressed.

  He remembered saying, But what if we can’t find them? And someone—a pale man—said, We cannot find those who don’t want to be found. It is our task to warn those who want to listen.

  What had he been doing there with this philosophical dude?

  Snow. He remembered driving through snow, with the truck’s engines labouring through drifts of the stuff. Pink snow.

  “Your cabin.” Major Doric stopped so suddenly that Fabio nearly crashed into her.

  They were still in the same type of featureless corridor and she had stopped at one of the black doors. In white paint, it said 417, like a prison cell.

  She took a keycard out of her pocket and slid it through the slot next to the door, which responded by rumbling aside.

  A pale fluorescent light flickered on in the room beyond. A bunk bed to the right, with mattresses stripped bare, a cupboard against the back wall, a desk to the left. There was probably just enough room for one person to stand and turn around without hitting his elbows had it not been for Fabio’s luggage which sat, tagged checked, on the floor. Hello bags, hello medicine. Everything in there had obviously passed scrutiny, and that left him with a fuzzy warm feeling, a little island of familiarity.

  “Is . . . anyone else in this room?” Fabio asked, but the musty scent that rolled from the room told him probably not. Or at least there hadn’t been for a long time.

  “No. We’re understaffed. Plenty of room for everyone. Here.” Major Doric took the card back out of the slot and gave it to Fabio. “You’ll also need this to get into the bathroom and for the mess when you get the medical OK to mingle. Carry it with you at all times.”

  Fabio took it.

  “Also, take some time to study the emergency procedures on the inside of the door in case of volcanic activity. The short run-down: one blast—warning, two blasts—assemble, three blasts—get the hell out. You get five minutes to make your way up to the access lock, where we came in. If you’re not there, you’ll be left behind.”

  “Running is useless. In twenty minutes, the earthquake has passed.”

  “This is not Earth. These earthquakes tend to occur in waves, building up in strength. The Research Base lies outside the earthquake protection zones.”

  Fabio had seen the rings surrounding the base.

  “Even those are only good up to about ten on the Richter scale, which covers about ninety-five percent of earthquakes on Io.”

  “What about the other five percent?”

  “That’s what the evacuation procedures are about.”

  Fabio took a few steps into the room and looked over his shoulder to the inside of the door. There it was in massive letters: Emergency Procedures in case of volcanic activity and underneath Claiming unfamiliarity with these procedures is a punishable offence under ISF law.

  There was a long list of dot points with detailed instructions, most of which started with imperative verb forms.

  Shit. She wasn’t joking.

  He met her eyes briefly, and she must have seen the realisation hover in Fabio’s eyes, because she nodded. “It’s a good old hell hole all right.”

  Fabio hefted his bag out of the way onto the top bunk. Turned around and looked back at the door, picturing it closed and how much this little room would feel like a prison, with that oppressive set of instructions on the door.

  If you can’t stand being locked up, don’t go into space, one of his instructors had said. Ironic, right—space: endless swathes of nothing, cramped accommodation everywhere you travelled, a contradiction in terms.

  Major Doric hesitated at the door. “Will you be fine, then?”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “The showers are down that way.” She pointed over her shoulder. “At the T-junction. You’ll see the sign on the door. At the moment, there are not many other people in this corridor, so you’ll have them mostly to yourself.”

  “Yeah, OK. Thanks.”

  “Make it quick, though. The personal water allowance is not good.”

  “Thanks.”

  She finally left and Fabio found himself alone, for the first time since setting out, and the silence enfolded him on all sides. There was a faint hiss of air out of the ceiling vents, but not nearly as much as on the sling barge from Callisto. Also, there was no vibration in the floor, all new sensations.

  Fabio locked the door, kicked his shoes off and stretched out on the bottom one.

  He didn’t realise how tired he’d been, and now that his body relaxed his mind was racing. He had lost years of his life, mostly from adolescence and immediately after. He presumed that was when he had signed up for ISF, somewhere in Argentina.

  In isolated areas, in space or on land, you couldn’t disappear; you just became more visible as someone who didn’t belong there. A sitting duck, visible from all over the pond. That was him right now.

  And all the while he heard Admiral Sanchez’s words in his mind. You get one more chance, Velazquez. I’ve gone out of my way to protect your backside, because I trust and value you, but if you fuck this one up, too, I’m going to have to pull the plug. . . .

  Cold shivers that voice gave him, because that old shit Sanchez had a mental hold of him, and if he got Sanchez any angrier than he already was, then . . . then he was dead. If he wasn’t dead already.

  Head down, Velazquez, don’t make any more enemies. Do a quiet, decent job for once.

  Decent, that was the word. Food on the table, rent paid on time, money in the bank kind of decent.

  If he could just remember what the job was that Sanchez wanted him to do.

  He lay there, staring at the bottom of the bunk above him. His arms folded under his head. Aches and pains made his muscles feel tired. His knees were always troublesome, especially his left knee, which had the joint replaced twice and still when he walked too much, he could feel the squishiness in the ball joint. The whole area had been cleared of nerves, but the medical profession just couldn’t fix it anymore—

  He noticed the control unit near the door, and more memories came flooding back. He realised they’d kept him in a blank room aboard the interplanetary so his memories wouldn’t be triggered. There were no such restrictions here.

  He rose from the bed and studied the panel. Normal communication equipment. It had a data port. He wondered if he could hook up equipment.

  He took his duffel from his bed and rummaged amongst the clothes. A couple of ampoules of clear fluid with a box that contained a syringe. A cable. There was something familiar about the feel in his hands, as if his body remembered what to do, even if he did not.

  He inserted one end of the cable into the data port at the hub next to the door. The other end . . .

  He ran his hand over the back of his head, fingertips through his hair. And that was where he had the scar. The flesh was still tender under his probing fingers.

  They removed the implant.

  That was where his memories had gone.

  He had always despised the thing. Normal people did not have wires in their brains.

  But now he couldn’t connect to the data port and he couldn’t upload data, and all of a sudden, he wanted to. There would be information in the base’s system, no matter how commonly known, on all those things that were currently gaps in his memory. He wanted to see pictures of Argentina and pampas, and Sarajevo and even Admira
l Sanchez’s face, just to check if he remembered him well enough, or if the much-decorated man on the other side of the desk actually was Sanchez. And maybe the information had something to say about Fabio Velazquez as well, although he wasn’t sure if he would be ready for the results. He didn’t think he’d been a very nice person.

  He rummaged further in the bag. He was quite certain that at some point there had been an infopad in his possession: a sleek, wafer-thin design that weighed no more than a data stick. He could feel the coolness of it in his hands.

  Where was it?

  He took all his clothes out of his bag and flung them over the bed and the floor. What the hell did he need thermal underwear for? When had he last worn a charger vest that used the body’s heat and movement to generate electricity? There was a plug on that one, too, although the battery unit was missing.

  No pad.

  Apparently the checked label on the bag meant all technology removed, confiscated in order to be erased.

  What would they have found on it and how could he get the pad back? He opened the door and looked into the corridor. No one, just scuffed white walls and black doors. He held his breath to listen for signs of human habitation, but heard none.

  He was sweating all over. He wanted the pad, badly. Now. He wanted it because it would tell him things he’d forgotten. He wanted it because he didn’t want to wait until things happened that jogged his mind to remember important facts.

  The removal of the implant had turned him into an empty vessel. He wanted to be full again. He wanted to talk to people, even if it was only on the other end of a keyboard. He didn’t want to be alone. Bad things happened when people let him wait in a solitary room. He wanted a roommate, and a pad, and news and all the things normal people had.

  The Watcher

  * * *

  VEGA ANTARES SAT UP in shock, wiping sweat from her face.

  Bright light filtered through the window to her right, over the plans, lines of code and mathematical calculations projected around her on the floor.

  She must have fallen asleep. The last two days had been so exhausting. She had been working almost constantly.

  She unwound her legs and stumbled to her feet, numb from sitting in the same position. Others would laugh that she liked this empty room with projections on the floor. They liked the trappings of furniture, chairs and desks. Vega joked that it made them so much like the bureaucracies they despised. The governments on Earth, the large international organisations, the ISF, the Council Of Four, all instruments of bureaucracy designed to further the aims of the ruling majority from the traditionally rich countries.

  She filled her cup from the dispenser next to the cabinet, and drank the cool water.

  The large, aquarium-like window looked out over soft clouds, always whirling, as far as she could see. The sky was dark blue, and if she squinted, she could just make out a faint white line that came from the zenith and disappeared in the cloud mass. That was no scratch on the window and no falling star. Those were Jupiter’s rings, seen from side on. To the left of those floated a white speck, visibly moving.

  Io.

  Impenetrable fortress of ISF bases.

  In theory she would be able to see Calico Base, located at the subjovian point.

  Her intelligence told her that the prisoner had been moved there. It was a definite improvement over his previous locality on Earth, in Sarajevo, the hub of ISF. Over the past few solars, whenever she read her nanometrics memory, he would show up as a distant point coming closer. The computing hub downstairs had constantly worked on trajectories, until it had become clear that he was going to Io. Of course. He’d been reprimanded. Io was where prisoners went.

  Not only did the man have secret information that rightfully belonged to Allion, he knew many secrets from within ISF as well.

  Secrets that certain parts of Space Corps didn’t want Flight Force to know, or information that was only relevant to ISF people from the inner system, and they didn’t want the Outer System, and Vice Admiral Preston, to get their hands on it. Oh, the politics were thick with this one. If ISF was still one complete organisation after the dust from this blew over, she’d be surprised.

  But Vega did not share the nanometrics with the prisoner. Priya did, but Priya had died on Mars. Vega could not communicate with him, but she desperately needed the information that Priya had given him.

  This was why all these diagrams and calculations were around her on the floor. Which approach route they could get the wellship Thor IV to fly, and where they could release the moth fighters so that they evaded detection by the dumb ISF radar. Which sectors of Io were safe to send trucks for a pickup by a moth. Which weapons they could carry on top of the weight of the crew and fuel, and allowing for a good margin of error if the pilot passed out because of too many gs.

  It was all calculated to the microsecond.

  Because when Juno Station had a problem that was what they did: used their minds and knowledge to solve it. Think big, think bold, take risks. It was the Allion way.

  A soft hissing noise indicated the door sliding aside.

  Vega’s second in charge, Taura Shelton, came in.

  “Any luck?” she asked.

  “They took him to Calico.”

  “That’s a bummer. He’ll be hard to reach there, let alone available for rescue. I don’t fancy we’ll send someone in.”

  “Oh, we will send someone, but not until everything is ready.”

  “Into the base? That sounds like a bad idea.”

  “Probably not the base. I don’t like separating our people from their escape vehicles. We’ll track him and wait until he’s in a place where we can reach him without creating too much fuss. Sian is on standby.” As a pilot in the system, she always had access to a suitable craft.

  “She may be all the way on the other side of the system. The military will definitely notice when a civilian passenger craft enters their space.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. The technicians have it all under control.”

  Taura sniffed. “I’m glad you are so confident. There is no margin for error for this one. We have only six solars.”

  Vega gestured her second in command closer.

  “I know you’re a flight technician and nanometrics is not your thing, but just have a look at this.”

  She flicked her fingers and the projection nozzles in the ceiling filled the floor with a giant image of a pitted and scarred world in shades of yellow, green and red. Jupiter’s moon Io.

  The image zoomed in, as if they were flying closer at great speed.

  Taura went to stand on the edge of the room, leaning against the wall.

  Vega laughed. Taura was much more comfortable with traditional technology, workstations, screens and desks.

  Vega preferred immersion and as little distraction as possible.

  The image on the floor displayed a view of a couple of copper-coloured domes with interlinking tubes. Calico Base. A little rectangular dot moved across the sickly yellow plain. This was a live view from one of the observation butterflies: tiny satellites made mostly of superconducting wire that flew around the system propelled by Jupiter’s magnetic field. They needed no energy source—the constant radiation of which could be detected by outsiders—and they transmitted data in short sharp bursts that were too short for tracking equipment to get a fix on the exact location. They didn’t maintain location anyway.

  Superimposed over the view of the base were three dots of light, and all three were in the same section of the base: the small building on top of the mountain that overlooked that base. Most of that part of the base was underground.

  Vega zoomed in again. Corridors and stairwells rushed past, like a veritable warren of passages. “This base used to be much bigger, but not a lot of this room is being used at present. Here.” She nodded at the floor.

  The projection showed a long corridor. One dot was in a room at the beginning, near the stairs, another was in another room on t
he other side of a door, and a third was in an adjacent corridor, where the rooms were much bigger.

  She nodded at the projection. “That’s our prisoner and two of the mindshards.”

  “If he’s not your mindshard, but the other two are, can’t we just talk to the other two and tell them to grab him and bust their backsides out of there?”

  Vega laughed. That was so like Taura. She was a hardware engineer. Practical, straight-shooting. She shook her head. “The mindshards are a passive technology. We’d need some sort of transmitting capability in order to reach them, and even then it’s not sure that we could. It doesn’t work that way. The technique was designed to be observant and undetectable. We can plant knowledge and memories in people’s minds, but not without their knowledge. We’d need to create hooks and use precise transmissions. As soon as we start transmitting to them, we blow our cover.”

  “Then we have one chance to blow our cover, so we better use it well.”

  “I would prefer not to use it on getting the prisoner out. We are not going to blow our cover.”

  “Then what?”

  “The seeds for this escape were sown many years ago.”

  Taura cast her a disbelieving look. They’d had many discussions about mindshard technology, and if you couldn’t send a command to it and it wouldn’t fill a screen with data, Taura didn’t want to know about it. But Vega knew it was the next generation of technology, way beyond anything ISF was able to replicate or detect.

  Chapter 4

  * * *

  BREATHING HARD, FABIO staggered around his room, forcing his galloping mind to slow down.

  Calm down, calm down.

  He took deep breaths, staring at himself in the mirror, a technique a nurse had taught him at the transport. He might not feel like himself, but he looked like himself, a normal person, a man, of slight build, with short black hair.