New Title 1 (17 page)

“What is it, Paul?” Julian said as he neared the closest of the stations.

“We’re getting reports of riots on Qing,” the staffer reported. He indicated his workstation, and various screens which showed scenes of crowds rushing about, altercations going on in enclosed spaces, and running text feeds of goings-on, some in Chinese with GLIS-supplied English translations. “Sounds like an altercation between security and residents that were being forcibly removed from their homes.”

“Removed?” Reya repeated. “To be put where?”

“Don’t know,” Paul told her. “I can’t get any official feeds. But there’s a lot of encrypted chatter between Qing and Beijing. And I can’t get exact numbers, but I think at least half a dozen ships are inbound to Qing from China.”

“
Ay
,
Madre
,” Reya said. “They’re going to stuff the place with party members. Or refugees.”

At this point, other staffers not involved with those stations began to stare, and the volume of chatter halted everywhere but at the workstations that were in communication with the other satellites. Kris had also stopped working, and watched them silently from her workstation.

Paul was continuing, as he examined the multiple feeds on his workstation. “The residents are protesting being displaced, and they’re… they’re demanding, looks like, to send the incoming ships back. Here,” he said, pointing at a text feed, “this scientist is stating that Qing cannot handle the influx of—”

He suddenly stopped speaking. The text feed had gone black, taking Paul by surprise, and he stared at it stupidly. Reya, also looking at the screen, said, “What happened to the feed?”

“Cut off,” Julian said. “Probably by Chang.” Hirohito Chang was the Ceo of Qing. He had been essentially installed there by the Chinese government when they’d built Qing, independently of the U.N. But Chang knew the limitations of Qing as well as the other satellite Ceos did… he knew that he had already exceeded them, in fact, and that conditions on Qing had been deteriorating as a result. Julian could not help but wonder how Chang felt, knowing that by allowing Beijing to call the shots, he could be presiding over the final ruination of his satellite.

Then one of the video feeds cut off, followed by another text feed, then another video feed… and abruptly, all of the rest went down at once. “Get them back!” Julian barked, and Paul’s hands flew over his workstation, but the feeds remained dark.

“Sir!” came a cry from another workstation, a girl with a distinct French accent whose name was Eve. Julian and Reya instantly turned towards Eve’s workstation. “There are demonstrations happening on Fertile.”

Julian and Reya moved in that direction. Reya asked, “How bad?”

“Nothing violent, as far as I can tell,” Eve reported. “But it sounds like it’s getting ugly. There’s a lot of talk about demands from Earth to open themselves up to accept refugees. Apparently the A.U. is demanding access.”

“Africa?” Reya goggled. “What a bunch of panicky… the serious levels of ash haven’t gotten anywhere near them yet!”

“But they will,” Julian pointed out, “and they know it.”

“Here,” Eve pointed to a text feed. “If this is actually from the A.U., they’re threatening military action if they are not allowed access…”

“What the Hell’s going on?” Reya protested.

“This is getting out of hand fast,” Julian muttered. “China must be spooking them. Not to mention all the doom-and-gloom scientists.” He looked over to another workstation. “Dana: Any word from Tranquil?”

“Uh,” Dana started. She was obviously busy reading multiple feeds. “Uh, no riots or anything, but…” Her voice faded as she read her screens.

“But what?” Reya strode over to Dana’s workstation, while Julian continued to examine the feeds from Fertile. Fertile was still considered a U.N. satellite, but as it was primarily financed by Middle Eastern Muslims in exchange for majority control, Fertile acted as an almost-independent entity. There was no telling how they might react to African threats, or if they had the ability to do anything about it…

“Julian,” Reya got the Ceo’s attention. She indicated multiple feeds on Dana’s workstation, as Dana looked to Reya, her face a mask of shock. “Statements from RPI to Tranquil,” Reya said. She started to recite what was on the screen: “Due to the increasing sensitivity of freight activities caused by the current geologic crisis, and the political—”

Then Reya stopped, read a moment silently, and finally looked up at Julian. “RPI is refusing to send ballistic freight deliveries to Tranquil.”

Another staffer voiced what everyone else was thinking. “They’re cutting them off?”

Julian’s mouth fell open, and he and Reya stared at each other across the room. CnC went silent, the only noises coming from a few low-volume audio feeds and the background chirps and beeps of the room’s workstation electronics. Kris watched the tableau unfold from her workstation, almost afraid to move, her eyes slowly widening as she looked from Julian to Reya, to the rest of the CnC staffers, and the awful implications of that message set in.

Then, slowly, Julian turned to another workstation. “Hadj, do we have any incoming messages from RPI?”

The young Indian at the workstation looked up from his board. His eyes were wide. “Sir… we have the same message incoming.”

CnC was stunned into silence. Julian immediately surveyed the room and spoke up authoritatively. “All right, everyone, relax. We all know that, even in the event of a complete cutoff, it will be a minimum of five months before any of our supplies go critical. Tim,” he nodded at a staffer at another workstation, “we’re going to level three conservation restrictions. Get the word out.”

Then Julian turned to Hadj. “Send a priority message to RPI, demanding a conference.”

Hadj worked over his console for perhaps twenty seconds, then turned to look at Julian. “They are not responding to calls.”

“Chickenshit bastards,” Reya muttered.

Julian glared at Hadj’s workstation for a moment… then his head swiveled about, and found Kris, still seated at her workstation. He started for her, barely concealed anger roiling behind his eyes. Kris, partly in a desire to present a show of confidence, and partly out of a desire to run, stood up to meet Julian before he reached her. To his unspoken question, Kris said, “I’m pretty sure the President had nothing to do with this.”

Julian finally reached her, and stood glaring down at her. She hadn’t realized before how much taller Julian was than she. And imposing. She involuntarily caught her breath and fought the urge to gulp it back.

A rumble finally emanated from Julian’s throat. “Well, we’d better find out what he thinks about it… and if there’s anything he can do.”

Verdant, like all of the orbital satellite habitats, had multiple access and egress point for its service ships, freighters and patrol craft to use, depending on the craft, its job, and the needs of the handling systems. Although most of the largest ships, such as the Cetacean and Theropod classes, generally docked in the hub area on the southern end of Verdant, where they could take advantage of microgravity to transfer their massive cargos, many of the smaller freighters and ships docked in the outer bays, allowing ease of access under gravity.

Verdant, of course, rotated to maintain gravity within, which could have made it difficult for ships to dock into rotating bays on its skin. Therefore, the satellites were equipped with capture armatures that rode on tracks on the outside of the satellite, moving in counter-rotation, so as to provide a non-moving target for smaller ships to dock to. Once the ship was in position, the armatures would capture the ship, then slowly accelerate to begin to alter their rate of travel, to start the ship moving along the satellite’s skin. Eventually, the armature would roll around to a reception bay, which would open and receive the armature and the captured ship. Once the ship was in the bay, the armature would stop its travel, and the ship would be under a full gravity. The bay could then be closed underneath all but the largest such ships, acting as a floor and airlock to allow easy access. Launch was the opposite of this process, though frequently with one exception: The armature could simply release the ship, and allow centrifugal force to ease the ship out of the bay.

One such bay was about to perform this operation, with a Nautilus class tug. The Nautilus class was a vessel designed to be operated by two to three persons, and it came equipped with an impressive set of multifunctional arms and articulated equipment mounted just under its nose. It was designed to ferry small objects about in the local area, perform orbital repairs, and guide larger ships to their docking positions if need be. In this particular case, the Nautilus had a payload, about a meter in diameter, secured to one of its arms and cradled with another, waiting to be deployed.

The pilots waiting within the Nautilus were likewise waiting to be given clearance to launch. They sat in the cockpit, one of them relaxed and calm, the other impatient, his leg bouncing off of his heel as if keeping tune to a driving rhythm.

“Are they going to let us go, or what? Jesus Christ, what’s taking so long?”

“Hunter, give it a rest, willya?” Goldie sighed a long-suffering sigh and rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “It’s not as if you have something else you need to do… is it?”

“That’s beside the point,” Hunter grumbled. “They’re doing this just to screw with us. They’re having some fun with the guys who got chewed out by Luis…”

“Well, let that be a lesson to you. Next time, don’t do anything that will get you chewed out by Luis.”

“I was doing my job!—”

“Oh, shut up. Before I put in my request to transfer the Hell away from you once and for all.”

At that, Hunter grinned snidely. “And go where? Do what? You want to fly a freighter?
Oop
, sorry, no one’s flying freighters now!”

“I’d fly one straight into Yellowstone if it meant I didn’t have to listen to this—”

“Control to Naut-vee-four-three,”
came a voice over their com.
“Flight has been cleared. Stand by for auto drop in fifteen seconds.”

“Thank you, Control,” Goldie responded. “Engines are hot. Waiting for your drop.” Hunter started to speak, but a cold look from Goldie convinced him to stay quiet this time. They both watched their control boards as a clock counted down, accompanied by a subtle beep upon each second. When the clock reached zero, there was an audible
clunk
from above them, the action of the armatures opening up and releasing them, and Hunter and Goldie experienced freefall as the tug dropped out of the bay.

“We’re cast away,” Goldie confirmed as she worked the tug’s controls. “Proceeding to program coordinate Alpha.”

Hunter watched, his hands folded across his chest… standard procedure was for two rated pilots to fly a tug, but as long as Goldie was at the controls (she had won the ro-sham-bo match between them), he had nothing he had to do except spot her in an emergency, or take over if she wanted a break. He could also manipulate the outboard equipment, if she was too busy piloting the craft when the time came. But according to the program they were running, even that would not be necessary.

After about a minute of silence, Hunter began to speak. He tried to keep the belligerence out of his voice, in deference to his partner, but he was still grumbling. “Don’t understand why we’re even out here. Everything going to Hell in a handbasket… Qing rioting… Fertile demonstrating, which will probably end up being rioting… Africa threatening Fertile… the U.S. pushing us… and now, RPI refusing to fly our supplies up…” He stopped speaking long enough to look at Goldie, who returned his look. It was not only clear that she was aware of everything Hunter had just rattled off, but he could tell that she considered each of those points as dire as he did. “And in the midst of all that,” Hunter finished, “they have us ferrying science experiments out into high orbit! For what?”

Goldie just shook her head. She may not have wanted to admit it aloud, but she agreed with Hunter. Verdant was already on level three supplies restrictions, and everyone in the flight services expected to have to go onto defense alert at any minute. But instead of standing by their Wasps, they were dropping off a beach-ball-sized package for who-knew-what. She couldn’t understand the importance of it, either, and she wondered silently whether CnC really had a handle on what they were doing.

“All I can say is,” Hunter added, “we’d better not see any action while we’re stuck out here in this stupid thing. The worst we could do would be to flip off whatever came by.” To punctuate his words, he extended his middle finger on one hand, and used the other hand to pantomime waving at something passing in front of them, a stupid grin on his face.

“Yeah, yeah…” Goldie watched her navigation boards as they neared the coordinates specified by their program. Dr. Chiu had programmed the tug, and the payload had already been mounted, before they had arrived on duty (and been reassigned to the tug duty instead of their usual first-shift Wasp flights). Their only instructions had been to fly to the coordinates, leave the payload in a parking orbit, and return to Verdant. Not to watch it, do anything to it, or connect it to anything else… just to leave it. What was it supposed to do?

“Classified,” they had been told. But wasn’t it just a science project? “Classified.” Which meant they didn’t need to ask again. So they hadn’t; they’d put on their flight gear and sullenly climbed into the Nautilus.

“Maybe it’s something defensive,” Hunter suddenly piped up.

Goldie looked at him. “Then why are we putting it in orbit above us? Wouldn’t we be putting it between us and Earth?”

“Hey, it’s experimental,” Hunter shrugged. “It’s classified. Maybe it’s supposed to stay hidden up here. I don’t know.” He looked at the payload critically, trying to fathom its purpose. “We should be taking advantage of this situation… not letting the ground dictate to us. We have the high ground up here.”

“Sure,” Goldie nodded. “Only they have no problem reaching this high ground… and we have nothing to hide behind, and nothing, offensive or defensive, to throw down at them. What good is that?” Hunter, declining to argue the point, slumped down in his seat.