Erebus (11 page)

Other than a very abortive, short-lived attempt by some entrepreneurial souls to take up space piracy as a living, there had never been an armed conflict in space. National and corporate space military assets tended to be heavy lifters to get people into and then back out of orbit and to deliver space-to-surface laser and kinetic strikes. And of course, there were the fighter jocks like Sihota, whose job it used to be to fly up and take out those assets.
Now there’s a glamorous career choice
, I thought wistfully.

The Voice gave a general outline of what the relief and recovery effort would entail: repairing stations and infrastructure, shipping thousands of people around the Jupiter system to places where they would have air, food, and water, and sharing the load so that no one station would be risking its own life support. This had a second benefit; it kept witnesses and any suspects we might find separated. While Calisto, Europa, or even Concorde could potentially take the lion’s share of the refugees, we wanted them apart.

“The second strand is the investigation into this incident. We have representatives from intelligence and police services systemwide who will be tasked with finding out who did this and how. They will have our utmost support in tracking down those responsible for this crime. The final strand will be dictated by the first two: how to prevent this from happening ever again.”

I walked across the grassy campus grounds to the low building that would serve as the investigation team’s operating base. It was strange to see the horizon constantly curving upward. The artificial sun strip hanging above gave everything a radiant glow, obscuring the stars behind it.

I remembered from somewhere that Concorde was the largest single enclosed chamber in space. Sure, the moon, Mars, and even Ganymede had bigger domes, but this was by far the largest enclosed area floating around in space.

The path meandered past a small lake. In the middle of the lake sat a strange, spikey stone building almost organic in appearance. It didn’t look out of place. It was tastefully incorporated into the scene, but it was definitely an old building that had been lifted up here. Curious, I activated my HUD. The building was the Ferdinand Cheval Palace, the Ideal Palace, constructed in the nineteenth century. Lord only knew how much it had cost and what hoops they’d needed to jump through to get hold of it. Shaking my head at the sheer extravagance, I walked on.

I reached the low, glass university building we had taken over as our ops center. The glass doors swept open, and I entered the atrium. It was full of modern art and sculptures representing the research being done here. I resisted the urge to look at the HUD tags on them. I suspected I would spend far more time browsing than I already had.

A pleasant-looking Linked chap gestured over at another door from behind his desk, and I walked into the room.

The people I’d come up with were already there, looking at the blank white walls, gesturing and talking to each other.

“Hi, Layton,” Vance called over.

“Guys, are you okay?”

“Sure. I’m reviewing what we have so far. Just to let you know, the deep space arrays are examining along
Magellan’s
last known track,” Vance replied.

“Oh? And?” I asked.

“Nothing yet, I’m afraid. But it’s a very long line to look at.”

“Yeah, I get that.” Actually, I hadn’t, not at first. The numbers that Frampton had spouted had been just that, numbers. Ninety-one billion kilometers was thirteen times the radius of Pluto at its furthest point—in other words, a hell of a long way. Getting my head around that was going to have to be a work in progress. I changed the subject. “Alright, what do we have here?”

“At the moment, we have nearly a thousand people who have been lifted off Io and over five hundred from
Magellan,
not to mention a multitude of people back in Earth space and here who could potentially have accessed the liner’s systems,” Vance answered. “In other words, we have a lot of people to get through, all of whom we need to ask some rather pointed questions.”

I glanced over at the walls and synched my HUD into the room net. The walls came alive with readouts and long lists of names. It was all pretty daunting-looking, but I was used to long witness trawls in investigations.

“How far has the JAS got in the investigation at this end?”

Vance gave a snort. “They’ve had a look throughout the Jupiter Alliance, viewed the recordings, and asked a few questions. They’ve pretty much already pigeonholed anyone who’s Linked as not involved. The JAS trust them implicitly.”

“Right…and can they guarantee that they are actually trustworthy?”

“Apparently so. They can hide stuff from each other—they call it
vaulting
—but other Linked will know they are doing it. If one asks another, ‘Did you blow up a moon?’ and it flags they are doing this vaulting thing, then we’d know to have a chat with them. Evidently, no one has.”

“Fair enough, I guess. So they either all are in on it or none?”

“Yes. But let’s take them at their word for the moment. If we get any evidence to the contrary, we can review that decision later. Until then, let’s operate under that assumption,” Vance said.

“I presume we’re getting a liaison from the JAS?” I asked.

“You presume right. When they arrive, I suggest the first order of the day is that we sit down and hash out a plan.”

“Sounds good to me.”

***

The next few hours of discussion, arguing, and debating were a textbook example of throwing too many chefs into a kitchen with not enough cooks—other than Frampton. He was most definitely Vance’s bagman and happy to be told what to do. Eventually, we nailed down a starting point. We were going to go through the roughly fifteen hundred people from both Io and the
Magellan
and assign each a priority for questioning.

That was a monumental task, but fortunately, we had some excellent AI routines we could run. We figured out criteria of what to look for in each of those people. Intelligence trawls would show whether they were linked to any questionable organizations, military and espionage connections, educational achievements with special focus on space or pilotage subjects, and that kind of thing. Within moments of feeding the AI the criteria, it had sorted everyone into three categories: a short list of reds, people who had a number of contentious markers against them; yellows, who had a few; and greens, who looked clean.

“We seem to be staggering our way to a starting point here,” Cheng said, leaning back with a sigh in his chair. The conference table we were seated around was like everything in the room: clean, modern, and tasteful, all chrome lines, glass, and graceful curves. “With ninety-two reds to look at, things are getting a bit more manageable.”

I nodded. That number was far less daunting than fifteen hundred. I looked over the list. The only downside was that they were scattered far and wide throughout the Jupiter system. Not a major problem, but it would slow things down.

“Well, folks—” I started to say as I heard the door swish open behind me. I spun my chair around. When I saw the pair who came in, my voice trailed off. The guy barely registered on my radar, thirty-something, clean-shaven, dark-haired, but fairly mediocre. The girl on the other hand—she’s what caused me to lose my train of thought. She was beautiful. Not hot, not cute, but beautiful in a classical kind of way: black shoulder-length hair, slim figure in a dark, figure-hugging suit, in her early twenties. But it was her eyes that got me; intense was the word, like laser beams.

I managed to get a grip of myself as the man spoke. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I am Lieutenant Adin Agir. I’m on Complex Investigations with the JAS, and my colleague is Cerise Lense.”

A stuttering chorus of
hellos
came from around the room. Clearly, everyone was as captivated as I was with this Cerise. Aware that I was staring, I made a determined effort to drag my eyes away from her; it was a bit unseemly for me to be ogling someone I needed to work with, especially on such an important and high-profile case.

The two of them made their way to empty seats and sat down. Vance looked around at the guys, a Cheshire-cat grin on her face. It was painfully clear she found the whole thing highly amusing. Sonia, the representative from Red Star, on the other hand, did not look pleased in the slightest.

“Welcome to Concorde University campus,” Cerise said with a radiant smile. “My role is to facilitate communication between the Linked and the investigative teams. I promise I won’t get in the way.”

Now that was the best news I’d had all day. It made the whole space-adaption-sickness thing totally worth it.

We quickly filled them in on our plan—or at least our starting points.

Sihota piped up. “We will require some kind of transport, since we have a number of witnesses scattered in near space, and we want to keep them apart rather than bring them here.”

“We understand. We will see what we can do,” Cerise responded in her calm voice.

“If I may, I’m rated and current on a number of craft. I saw a few Icarus-class shuttles in your dock,” Sihota said.

Cerise simply nodded and cocked her head slightly as if she were listening to something. A few seconds later, she spoke again. “I have requisitioned one for your use.”

“Oh...thank you.” Sihota looked slightly taken aback at the speed with which she had secured a spacecraft for our personal use. So was I, to be honest. This was the model of efficiency. I dreaded to think what the process would be for doing that in the Earth-moon system.

“It’s my pleasure.” Her smile was, again, radiant.

“That was remarkably…efficient,” Vance said.

“Yes, we don’t believe in needless bureaucracy here. If something can easily be achieved, it will be done.”

“And getting hold of a shuttle is that easy?” Sihota asked.

“Oh, I may be exaggerating a touch,” Cerise said. “I, of course, had to get it cleared and requisitioned. I merely sent the request through to the appropriate people, and they said yes. Then I had to clear it with the Consensus to ensure they were happy for Linked resources to be used in such a manner, which of course, they were, considering what has occurred.”

“And you did that just now?” Vance asked.

“As soon as you asked the question,” Cerise answered.

“But,” Vance frowned, “you got the answer back within a few seconds.”

“The Links are only limited by light-speed. As soon as I thought it, the harbormaster checked that it was okay, and the consensus poll was given
Io-Incident
priority for Consensus consideration. The Linked voted and approved the request.” She shrugged. “This is simply the way we do things up here.”

“Jesus,” muttered Frampton from behind Vance. “It took her longer to explain it than do it.” Vance nodded. I was beginning to see why she seemed a little wary of the Linked’s potential in the Sol system. I was also thinking how much I hated paperwork...

“It strikes me,” I said, “that if we had the same ability to hook into your—what did you call it? Consensus?—we could speed things up significantly.”

“It would,” Cerise said, “except for the fact that you are not used to it. The ability to join the Linked Consensus is not something you can simply download.”

“Could we have some kind of temporary access?” I asked.

Cerise and Lieutenant Agir exchanged a look before she said, “This isn’t about security; it’s about simple ability. You would not be used to it.”

“Try me.” I wasn’t sure who I was trying to impress, but if I’m honest with myself, it was probably the stunning Linked woman.

“Very well.”

A
Link-accept
icon appeared on my HUD, and giving a brief glance at the others, I accepted it. Suddenly, I heard thousands of voices and data streams flowing through my HUD and directly into my stack.

Welcome to the Consensus, Layton.
A voice—Cerise’s, I think—cut through the confusing mess. I saw in my stack…me, looking perplexed but from her view.

STATION ROTATION NOMINAL / IO / I LOVE YOU CASSANDRA / ICARUS REQUISITION COMPLETE / PARTY AT 231 CAPRICORN STREET ALL INVITED / ATMOSPHERIC ADJUSTMENT IS BEING ACTIVELY MONITORED / IO / CAN ANYONE HELP ME MAKE SOME CAKES FOR THE REFUGEES

Hello?
I said as if I was calling out for someone in a crowded room where no one was paying any particular attention to me.

Relax, Accept the links. Do not try to focus on anything in particular.

Easy for her to say. All around me, the voices were getting louder. Images crept in. Many of them seemed to be live feeds from linked HUDs. It was a complete montage, everything from people working in offices and control stations to people having sex.

I’M GOING FOR A RUN ANYONE JOIN ME / I LOVE IT WHEN HE DOES THAT THING / COMING IN TO DOCK SLIP 5 / IO

I blinked, trying to drive out the voices and images that were overwhelming me. It felt like my mind itself was overloaded with malware, causing pop-up after pop-up to appear.

Shut it off!

Everything ended. The room came back into sharp focus again. I looked over to Cerise, a bemused smile on her face. “Wow.”

“Do you still think it would be useful, given the fast-moving situation we find ourselves in?” she asked, not expecting an answer. “It takes months or even years of adaption.”

“Yeah…I think it’s probably best if we stay old-school on this one, Cerise.” I looked around the room to see faces that ranged from concerned through intrigued to downright amused.

“Maybe once this is over, you could come spend some time with us and get to know the Link properly at your own pace,” Cerise said.

“Yeah, I’ll…er…I’ll think about it.”

“Right, if you’re done trying to impress?” Vance said sarcastically.

I scowled but nodded.

“I would suggest that we retire for the evening. Tomorrow, first thing, I will do a round-robin and drop off the investigators at their assigned stations,” Sihota cut in before Vance—or more likely, I—could say anything that would compromise the working relationship with our new partners.