The Hundred Gram Mission (33 page)

"So this comes down to what you want. Let's talk turkey, I'm a congressman, this is what we do all day."

"No," Snyder got up, "I need to warn my employer that the Chinese are coming. One by land, two by space."

"And what," Herrera smirked, "Exactly do you think he’s going to do about that?"

"They’re sending soldiers? I hope he fucking kills them all."

"Alright. Got to rescue someone doing an emergency landing, before German mercenaries catch me, on some crazy billionaire’s asteroid base. How hard could that be?"

Stockwell looked at his reflection in the hopper’s polished canopy. He made a serious face.

"Mr. Bond are you ready?" he said in Grumpy English Butler voice. "Course I am! I’m James fucking Bond!"

He sighed and leaned back. Worry lines claimed his forehead. The hopper’s radar showed the incoming Chinese shuttle. Another screen showed a map of 2043 QR 3’s surface, structures marked in friendly green. He selected the landing pad Henrikson told him about, and made it the autopilot’s problem. The hopper undocked and powerful magnets switched off. The hopper kicked away on compressed air.

He looked up through the glass canopy - the Chinese shuttle passed overhead and disappeared over the horizon.  

"Jame’s fucking Bond," he said to himself quietly. He pulled out his magazine and counted his bullets.

"Okay, okay, so far so good."

Flood lights pinned the shuttle neatly in the middle of the pad. The docking clamps were useless, but the magnets held the craft in place. Two rows of green lights marked the path to the freight airlock. All around was a loose geology of rocks, rises, and regolith. Like most worlds, it was too small to have ever had a molten core. Without heating, super dense treasures were mixed in with simple grit and ice.

"You can do this Evan. You got this. You totally got this."

The hopper’s arc became almost vertical. Gas torrented from its thrusters as it slowed for the landing. The lightest tap and it could bounce away again, aloft for hours. A hard tap, and it could escape altogether.

"Aborting landing."

"Wait, what?"

"Landing pad occupied or obstructed," said the computer. "Aborting landing."

"No, no, no, no! Just land
next
to it! On the regolith! Use your little fucking torpedo hook things!"

"I’m sorry. I don’t know what ‘fucking,’ is. Did you mean ‘ducking’?"

The hopper started to drift away from the pad, and tilted to use it’s main engine.

"The - the spikes! With the ropes? The spike ropes you fire into the regolith!"

"Did you mean, the ‘landing anchors’?"

"Yes I mean the damn landing anchors!"

"Attempting regolith landing."

The hopper swung back vertical, and descended again. It shook as its anchors fired, kicking up glittering ice and sand like a diver hitting water. Rotors buzzed and the craft reeled itself down slowly. It slowed the last few inches, and then finally a cloud of dust marked the landing.

"Thanks a ducking lot."

Stockwell depressurized the cabin, popped the canopy, and stepped out.

"So this is what one of you look like, up close."

As tiny, usually stealth, military shuttles went, the Shenlong 3 was huge. It’s single bay could be outfitted  for eight, pressure-suited, operators with their equipment. For satellite recovery (or stealing), they threw out the passenger module for a robotic arm and a glorified fisherman’s net. For strike missions, it carried rocket drones.  It would pop them out as far as High Earth Orbit, then quietly run home to Inner Mongolia.

"Don’t shoot any lasers at me," he aimed the magnetic grappler carefully, and fired. It flew perfectly straight in the microgravity, slamming into the hull like a toilet plunger. It held steady, but broke loose as soon as Stockwell tugged it.

"Fucking why is everything made of carbon these days?" he reeled the grappler back, and tried again. It took him two more tries to find enough steel for it to hold.

He secured the other end of the line to the hopper. Then, fast as he could, he hand-holded his way to the shuttle.  

"You could have just gone home, or to a Chinese space station," he said to it. "Why did you come out here?"

He reached the shuttle. He pulled a secondary line from the grappler’s head, and clipped it to his suit. Then flailed about till he reached the hatch.

"Hello?" his helmet was under his arm. His orange suit yelled in the neat, white, cabin. "Hello in Chinese? Somebody need some help? I got your Knight in Pressurized Armor over here."

Suyin Lee got out of her seat, and turned to face the visitor.

"Oh for fucks sake!"

"Agent - Agent Stockwell!"

"What the hell are you doing over here?"

The one-handed woman found the energy to scowl. "What the hell are
you
doing here?"

"You had to follow me from Earth to try ruining my life again?"  

"I need blood analogue. Probably a liter."

"Well why don’t you call a super secret submarine to come bring you some? I’ll just wait outside and get
arrested
for risking my neck for you! Again!"

"I’m sorry about what happened in Sri Lanka."

"No, don’t go there. If you were sorry you would have called. You’re just sorry cause I’m standing right here. You’re sorry cause I got two hands,
and you don’t!
" He waved his in big circles. He raised an eyebrow. "What happened to your hand?"

"I had to remove it. Or I’d be dead right now."

"What, you didn’t like how it looked? Were they giving you trouble for it, back at Bitch School?"

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself," she opened a locker and started pulling out a space suit. "If I had the power to save you, I would have. If you don’t believe me, there’s nothing I can do to change your mind. But, frankly, I don’t care. I have bigger problems. And so do you."

"Like what, Hands Free? Has there been a run on the excuses market?"

She looked at him.

"Do people not know yet?"

"About what?"

"E2."

"What about E2?"

She shook her head.

"Jemaat Ansar killed everyone aboard. I’m the only survivor."

"What?"

"They used a Von Neumann weapon. It looks the same as one they used in Yemen but, much more virulent. It was airborne. Fast acting."

"Are you sure?"

Her eyes became slits, and she shoved her stump at him. "Sure enough, asshole. Now help me suit up. What are
you
doing here?"

"I quit the Bureau and became a space doorman."

"What?"

"Things have turned bad here. Daryl Spektorov declared this place an independent country. So he can research Von Neumann machines."

"He’s - that’s crazy. He’s
crazy
."

"Crazy-prepared. He’s brought all the supplies and experts he needs to make this place self sufficient. He brought muscle too - private military contractors."

"He’s actually trying to build Weapons of Mass Destruction?"

"He doesn’t see it that way."

"Fuck how he sees it. How has the world reacted?"

"How do you think? I was er, I was hoping I could use your radio. To call home and get new orders."

"You can call," she started pulling the suit on. "But what’s to check?"

"Everything?"

"Nothing. Spektorov is now a foreign citizen, right? He’s not an American anymore?"

"I think that’s the drift, yeah. Why?"

"Good. That bin there," she stump-pointed, "could you hand me the explosives and the rifle?"

"What the hell? Hands Free, think
about this."

"I’ve done enough thinking on this shuttle, for all my lifetimes. He’s not an American anymore, so just stay out of my way."  

Sun Tzu, I

"I am very pleased they have found a loophole. It is far away from Earth and they have a strong driving force behind this. They will succeed, the World will have Von Neumann technology."

The Asian man in blue robes climbed up the spiral stairs of the observatory. At the top, Benjamin Franklin peered through the eyepiece of a brass telescope.

"There is only one heavenly body worth looking at now," said Sun Tzu.

Benjamin Franklin nodded but kept peering. "I see the Chinese are sending soldiers. One is already there."  

"Yes, but that is a small matter. I can get my government to stand down, for the promise of an equal share. Let us make the arrangements."

Franklin beheld him, cogs turning behind his pupils. "You want a share?"

"Well yes. Don’t you want that for us?"

"No. I don’t."

He stepped away from the eyepiece, and closed the observatory shutter. In space, satellites tumbled off course.

"I don’t understand. Are we not brothers?"

"They are brothers too," a globe of the world appeared between them. "But that does not preclude their disagreement and division."

Sun Tzu scowled. "This is foolish. Why would you deny China the secret of replicating machines?"

"Look," he motioned to the globe. "This century has been a struggle between our two nations, for the hearts and minds of all the others."

"It is a shared struggle against ignorance and hunger."

"China stands for order, above all else. You prop up states that have abused their people for generations. You shore them up, and teach them how to continue on, for what will be centuries. You’re not trying to save people. You’re subjugating them so completely, that they will prefer their suffering to hope."

"Such scorn unsought from one I have only called kindred. Would you prefer chaos? The Dark Ages preferred over the ancient empires? Perhaps turn your telescope to Earth. Instead of stars, why not count the children in camps? I assure you they are more interesting and show greater promise."

"You would inflict China, even Kim Korea, upon the whole world. Every citizen, a serf to their immortal, undefeatable, state. That is how you would have us survive climate change, and every other challenge hereafter. Your message has had many listening ears, especially among those who would be its victims."

"You seek to lecture the country that invented philosophy?"

"Our message is one of freedom, of hope, of people on their feet and not their knees. Governments elected and accountable. The body politic celebrated, and strength unstoppable flowing from brave hearts uncounted."

Sun Tzu laughed. His words hit the floor and grew into a great wall between the two men.

"Such flowery words - they rot as they leave your lips. Your country abandoned those values on 9/11. You have sabotaged them at home and abroad - you make your every emissary, an uncomfortable hypocrite. You punish your whistle blowers instead of ennobling them. Your leaders pander to power rather than speak truth to it. And your people will still elect them, even given the alternative of true hearted men and women. Your rich, old, and powerful make their children fight their wars, but won’t give them health care. You speak of freedom and democracy, yet you insist that your people alone control the replicating machines. For the good of the rest of us. You truly are an
American
computer."

Ben Franklin put down his glasses on the globe. They hatched into an eagle, who grew to full size and perched on the North Pole. It peered over the wall and flexed wings lined with dead men's speeches.

"Even as we fail our ideals," began Franklin, "They are
our ideals
. We aspire to them, and reversals do not mean defeat.  I have faith that in time we will be able to adhere better to the principles of our Founders. I have faith in
people
, to change. You and your government have no faith in them, whatsoever. That is our fundamental difference."

"So you
do
seek to lecture us in philosophy!"

"Your way of life will not prevail upon the world. We will not give you this technology. The world that comes out of this century will be a free one."

"Free? Peoples making their own choices and following their own paths?"

"Do not be facetious."

"But, do your principals know that you are negotiating for them? That we have our discussions like these, deciding their fates? You cannot speak of freedom and democracy, while conducting yourself like a secret autocrat."

The Founding Father said nothing.

"Where does your authority to do so, come from?" Sun Tzu reached over and gave the eagle some tea. Is it because, as a Self Transcending System, you are their superior in every way?"

The eagle snapped, and Franklin’s eyes turned red. "Therein is monstrous thinking. Our role is to serve, not to rule."