Erebus (27 page)

“Here—got something.” I opened up a link to Sihota and sent it across to him.

Lonerider, 21:34, 20th June—Found something out past Akarga, guys. Something big. Watch this space.

Flyingmissy, 23:40, 20th June—What? One of those gold asteroids you were chattering about?

Lonerider, 01:03, 21st June—LOL, you mock me. This is finally my ticket to the big time, baby. I’ll be slurping champagne off the bodies of naked supermodels with what I’ll earn from this.

I must admit, I liked this fellow’s ambition.

Flyingmissy, 02:04, 21st June—So come on, share. What do you have?

Wannaberockstar, 02:12, 21st June—He’s got jack shit!!! LR is always talking about the next big thing.

Lonerider, 02:47, 21st June—I’m going to have to get back to you guys. Gonna be going EVA shortly.

“And that’s it?” Sihota frowned.

“That’s it,” I said.

“I must say, Layton, it’s very thin.”

“Maybe so, but bear in mind that this fellow posted prodigiously before this. I mean, you couldn’t shut him up.” I scrolled through his previous and rather boring posts. They covered every topic from the latest VRs to moaning about his salary.

“Well, that’s not uncommon for pilots and crew far out in a system. It’s not as if they can easily have a two-way chat with someone. A lot of the pilots here are shipping around scientists and servicing satellites and probes light-minutes or -hours away from the nearest company. They don’t have A-drives, so they’re out for weeks at a time on their own with not a lot to do.

“But after this conversation thread, our friend Lonerider here hasn’t had a single post.”

“Now, that is a bit more interesting.” Sihota took a sip on his beer, wincing at the taste. “Nothing at all?”

“Nope,” I said, feeling a little self-satisfied.

“Got an ID on Lonerider?”

“No.” I had checked. The forum profiles were all anonymized. A tech forensic expert (or hacker, for that matter) could get his personal details, but that was beyond my skills. However…“The general thrust of conversation suggests he was actually on a flight at this time, yes?”

“Yes. And we have a date and time stamp and a rough location. There should be records,” Sihota nodded.

“See? You would make a better cop than I would make a pilot.” I grinned at my new apprentice. “Shall we pop over to Twilight Control? See if we can dig anything up? You might have to be the one to ask the questions; you know all the right lingo, after all.”

***

“Give them what they’re after,” Mrs. Langdon said in her typical pissed-off manner.

“Er, sure,” the harassed-looking controller said. “Flight records from February 2156. That’s a hell of a long time ago.”

“Indeed it is. I presume that you didn’t have deep-space tracking back then either?” Sihota said.

“No, our records go off of filed flight plans and then are updated with the actual flight data when the ship does an upload during flight and upon its return. It’s not the most accurate when on mission, but most pilots don’t deviate too much from their flight plans. After all, they don’t want to be lost out there if something goes wrong.”

“Can you pull the data for us?”

“Okay, here we go.”

A list of five missions appeared on the old-fashioned display in the controller’s small office. Each entry contained an outline of what the pilots were doing out there. Mostly, as Langdon had said, it was things like servicing science platforms or shipping around scientists.

“Are any of those going out beyond Akarga?” Sihota squinted at the screen.

“No, none of them are over that way,” the controller answered. “That’s a fair way out.”

“Interesting. We have some information suggesting some kind of flight out there around that time,” I said.

“You can see for yourself.” The controller gave a helpless wave of his hands. “None of them are.”

“Could this information be wrong?” I asked.

“No. Pilots’ lives depend on this information. We’re very accurate with it, even back then.”

Maybe the forum was just the work of some mischievous arsehole. Lord knows, the Hypernet was awash with them back home, and I could see no reason to suspect any differently out here.

“Just another thing I want to try. Can you show the launch records and cross-reference them with landings? That should show just what was up in space at that time,” Sihota said. Now that’s why I wanted him in on this.

“Give me a moment. I’ll have to compile the lists,” the controller said.

“Take your time,” Sihota said and wandered over to the water cooler in the corner. He drew some cups, offering them around.

“Got it. Now, that is interesting,” the controller said thoughtfully.

“We have six ships in the air, not counting the three deep-system science cutters that were in Sirius at the time. The
Longhorn
was out in the big black but isn’t showing a flight record. Someone would have been in serious trouble had this omission been discovered.”

“What type of ship was the
Longhorn
?” Sihota asked.

“She’s a Cuttlefish-class, single-crewed, long-range service tender. Her job was to refit or replace any science platforms. She’s still in service, actually. They built those old Cuttlefish to last.”

“So if she’s a service tender, I’m guessing she was servicing something,” Sihota mused. “Pull the maintenance schedules of anything you have that, at the time, was out past Akarga.”

“Checking.” He tapped away at the old-fashioned console in front of him—it actually had physical buttons. I tried not to shake my head. “There were three science and observation platforms out there in need of minor repair or servicing around that time. Chances are they would have done them in one flight rather than send three separate sorties out. Just a second.” This fellow was really getting into the groove, doing the lateral thinking for us. “Yeah, the schedules are all reset at around the same time. Whatever repairs were undertaken were done on that one flight.”

So someone had redacted the data on the flight of the
Longhorn
—and pretty badly. It stank of an amateur flushing the data rather than a pro doing a proper whitewash. Whoever had done it had left verifiable trails.

“So who was flying the
Longhorn
then?” I asked.

“Checking,” the controller said. “A Jerry Mitchell.”

“I don’t suppose we’re lucky enough that he’s still around?”

“No, he rotated back to Earth in November of that year. That was actually before his contract was up. Most pilots do five-year stints or so. He seems to have cut his short at four years.”

All totaled, a four-year stint here translated into twenty years away from friends and family. “So I’m guessing most of the pilots are Skippers?”

“Yeah, and the tech staff. There’s no reason on record for Jerry skipping. Could be anything—family problems, financial worries, or maybe he just was one of those that wanted to see the future,” the controller said with a shrug.

“Fair enough. What about any of his peers? Any of them still around?”

“Checking.” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the turn of phrase the controller used at every given opportunity. “Yes, there’s one who decided to stay, Ronnie Heaton. Another deep-system tender pilot.”

“Would they have known each other?”

“Probably. The flying fraternity was even smaller back then than it is now. Some of them even came through on the original Sirius expedition and stayed behind. The pilots were and still are pretty tight.”

“Just one more thing,” Sihota said. “You say ships do a data dump at the end of the flight? Can you access the
Longhorn
’s flight recorder?”

“Checking,” the controller said, prompting me to grind my teeth. “Dammit, this is such bad practice!”

“What is?” Sihota said as he sipped on his water.

“Look.” The controller gestured at the old screen, which showed an error message. “The
Longhorn
’s flight data has been corrupted. Looks like someone has tried to delete it.”

“Can you recover it?” Sihota asked.

“I can try the archives. No guarantees, though. If it’s in there, who knows what header the file will have.”

Sihota frowned and nodded. “Still, if you would be so good?” he said, moving up next to the controller.

The controller looked back at Mrs. Langdon. She pursed her lips before giving a nod.

“So,” I said to Mrs. Langdon, “does Ronnie Heaton live round here?”

“Yes, down the way,” Langdon said. A frown crossed her face that wasn’t directed at us for once. “There is a bit of a problem with that, though.”

“Of course there is,” I said in an exasperated tone that I couldn’t help. “And just what is that problem?”

“Watch your attitude, Trent,” she glowered. “I can take you to him but…you’ll see.”

***

Twilight City was modeled on an English village with its facades, meandering streets, unexpected byways, and old stone walls hewn from the dark rock of Twilight Garden. Little streams flowed and bubbled away, circulated by pumps. And I certainly had to watch where I stepped; livestock wandered freely. Fortunately, tiny robots went around gathering the “offerings” they left, presumably for reclamation, but they did take their time getting to it.

“Here it is.” Langdon opened a squeaking metal gate and led us down the overgrown path to the door of the cottage. At some point it must have been beautiful, but the ill-maintained facade had crumbled away in places, revealing the prefab structure beneath.

“Ronnie?” she called as she knocked on the door. No answer came from within. “He doesn’t really have many visitors other than a couple of his neighbors who help look after him.”

The door handle opened beneath her hand. “No one locks their front doors here.”

We stepped into the dark interior. It smelled stale—not unclean as such, just as if it hadn’t been aired in a while. It was a smell that was somewhat familiar to me.

“Ronnie?” Langdon called. “It’s me, Julie. I’ve bought some friends.”

We walked down the short hallway and entered the lounge, where I found the problem and the source of the stale smell. Ronnie sat in a chair wired up. A total cerebral immersion unit, a type that was obsolete with true HUD technology, was strapped to his head. His eyes had that open but vacant look of someone deeply immersed. The glint of his dilated pupils showed his eye implants were on full display. He was so far gone, he’d even wired himself up with a drip-feed. I knew under the blanket, which was spread over his lap, he would have taken care of his other “plumbing” needs. The man was a total VR addict.

“We’ll have to bring him down gently,” Langdon said, her voice soft and full of sympathy, for a change.

“How did he get so far gone?” I asked softly, regarding the wizened old man before me.

“His wife,” Langdon said. “She died a few years ago. She was doing a passenger run out to an observatory around A. A flare that no one had spotted building erupted and irradiated them. They were dead by the time a rescue boat got to them. Ever since, he’s kept himself wired. Best we can tell, he’s just constantly replaying memories of her.”

“Why the hell haven’t you put him into rehab?”

“Look at Twilight Garden, Trent. Does it look like we’re flush with therapists?”

“Send him home, then!” I said putting a hard edge on my incredulous voice to emphasize my shock at why such a basic thing hadn’t happened.

“This is his home,” Langdon replied with a sad look on her face. She moved to the old console next to him and slowly drew her finger down the touch screen display. It would ease him out of the VR gently so as to not shock his system.

He became more agitated, beginning to move for the first time, his hands clutching blindly for the console, probably trying to drop himself back into the VR. Langdon gently pushed his hands away, and he started to moan, his flailing getting firmer.

“Shhhh, easy. Calm down, Ronnie, just calm down,” Langdon cooed.

“Stop. Fuck off. Fuck off! Put me back,” his voice was croaky and panicked.

“We just need to speak to you a moment, Ronnie,” I said as soothingly as I could.

“Fuck off!” he shouted desperately, clutching for the console.

“Ronnie,” I tried, speaking calmly but firmly, “we won’t disturb you long. We just need to talk to you about someone.”

“Who are you?” he blinked at me, his eyes bloodshot under the HUD implants.

“My name is Layton Trent. I’m a police officer.”

“No, no! Fuck off. Don’t take her away,” he sobbed, recoiling back into his chair. “Please, this is all I have.”

I exchanged a look over my shoulder with Sihota behind me. Slowly, so as not to panic him, I knelt down next to him. “I’m not going to take her away from you, Ronnie, I promise. I just want to talk to you about someone, a Jerry Mitchell.”

“Jerry?” he blinked. “What do you want with Jerry? He’s gone, hasn’t he? Yes, I’m sure he has.”

“Yes, Ronnie, but we need to talk about one of his flights about thirty-five years ago.” I kept my tone soothing and calm.

“Thirty-five years ago?” the confusion of my statement eclipsing his confusion of finding himself back in the real world.

“Yes, on 15 February 2156. He was flying a servicing mission out past Akarga. He said he found something out there. Do you remember?”

“Jerry found something.” I realized he was just repeating me, rolling the sentence round his mouth as his VR-addiction-addled brain struggled to catch up. “He found something, he said. That’s right.”

“What did he find out there?”

“He found…” He pressed his eyes together, massaging his temples. “He said he found an object. That it was artificial, that it was alien.”

“Did he say anything more about it, Ronnie?” I pressed.

“Yes. When he came back, he was ranting on about some kind of alien pyramid he had found on a moon.” He squeezed his eyes tight shut. “Was it a pyramid? I can’t remember...”

A chill ran down my spine. “What moon was this? A moon of Akarga?

“Yes. I think so.” Ronnie leaned over and reached for the console. I gently pushed his hand away. It was boney and cold. I left mine laying on his a moment to warm it.

“Which one was it, Ronnie? Which moon?”