The Trials (The Red Trilogy Book 2) (44 page)

•   •   •   •

Monteiro is dressed in civilian attire, a formal jacket and skirt, but otherwise she looks much the same as she did in the courtroom, her no-nonsense expression reassuring in troubled times.

Ahead of the public presentation, she speaks to Jaynie and me. We sit in upholstered chairs within the shelter of a shielded alcove while two Secret Service agents stand watch a few steps away.

“Ms. Vasquez, Mr. Shelley.” Monteiro eyes us each in turn. “You’re here today at my personal request. The president has alluded to some of your recent activities during the discussion of my nomination. I’m assured such activities are necessary in the current circumstances and that you have continued to serve your country—but please do not misconstrue your presence here as an unlimited approval. The United States of America was founded on lawful jurisdiction, and I intend to see we return to that.”

“I hope so, ma’am.” And I mean it.

But this is Washington, DC. No gift is given or privilege granted without the expectation of return. Monteiro could not have secured her appointment without agreeing to certain favors.

She props an elbow on the arm of her chair, rests her chin on her hand, and treats us to a self-mocking smile. “The road back is crooked,” she concedes. “As you know, we sometimes trade integrity for the stability of the country. Justice is never perfect.”

“But the investigation isn’t finished,” Jaynie says.

“It
is
ongoing,” Monteiro agrees.

And eventually it will reach the president. Maybe it already has.

I have to give him credit for the way he’s preparing a legal, orderly, and responsible succession. He’s used the threat of pending charges to clear the office of the vice president, and now he’ll replace the disgraced VP with a nominee known and admired across the country. If the process plays out to the end, Monteiro will become only the second unelected president in the history of the country—and once in office, she’ll be free to pardon those who put her there.

“There won’t be any more trials, will there?” I ask her.

“The country’s been through enough, Mr. Shelley. It’s time to heal. To make the country stronger than it was before. Coma Day showed our vulnerability and we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past, so we’re implementing changes in our essential systems. Have you heard of the EXALT communications network?”

The mention of EXALT startles me, but Jaynie leans in, providing cover: “Yes, ma’am. EXALT is a distributed system. Supposed to be more rugged than the communications grid it replaces, without the vulnerable choke points. Harder to take down. Immune to EMP.”

Monteiro nods her approval. “Exactly. This is a defense issue—and it exemplifies the creativity we need to ensure there will not be another Coma Day.”

Shiloh believed EXALT existed to house the Red. I wonder if Monteiro has been briefed on that. I ask her: “What about the Red, ma’am?”

She sighs and leans back, looking disappointed with my question. “I’m familiar with soldiers in the field. I know it’s common to develop your own mythologies. But you can feel assured our cybersecurity is constantly evolving.”

So government policy is unchanged since Major Perkins
debriefed us after the pardon, assuring us that the Red was just a popular mythology. I don’t try to dissuade Monteiro. In a sense it doesn’t matter what she or anyone else believes, because the Red’s existence is not dependent on belief. It’s there, whether we choose to see it or not.

She stands up. Jaynie and I rise with her, and we shake hands.

“Best of luck to you both.”

“And to you, ma’am,” Jaynie says. “This is one of the president’s decisions that I can agree with.”

Monteiro laughs. “You might as well. You two made me famous. You’re the reason I’m here.”

•   •   •   •

Interviews follow the ceremony, and I do what I can to assist the nomination, assuring any mediot who asks that I have full confidence in Susan Monteiro, but I don’t answer questions on anything else. “This is her day.”

As soon as we can get away with it, we slip out and change back into our own clothes. A car takes us to the train station, where Delphi meets us.

We’ve got what we need to go after Semak. This will be our last mission, I know it for sure this time, because Vice President Monteiro is going to put a stop to operations like ours—and that’s a good thing. That’s what we want, the rule of real law, by the people, for the people—but we’re not there yet.

•   •   •   •

The days pass too quickly as we roll into early summer on the overheated high plains of Wyoming. The heat in Washington is worse. For the first time in a decade, Congress acts decisively, swiftly approving Susan Monteiro’s nomination, and she is sworn in as vice president. Across the
country, people wait for the president to resign, shielded by a full pardon to be issued by his appointed successor—but these are earthly considerations and no part of my world anymore.

I say good-bye to Delphi at
0430
outside the hangar at Cryptic Arrow’s private airfield. I don’t make any promises. Neither does she. Her eyes are dry as she kisses me one more time, and then she says, “Try to come back.”

I nod. I’ll do what I can.

•   •   •   •

I’ve studied every stage of the mission, I’ve watched videos of the spaceplane launch and the docking sequence, I’ve spent time with VR simulations—but I’m still ambushed by awe at the sight of my ride, poised on the launchpad.

I get my first look at it as we approach the spaceport thirty miles outside of San Antonio, where Sidereal Transit Systems keeps its launch complex. Ulyana Kurnakova is driving. Good thing, because once I spy the rocket standing coupled to its gantry, I can’t take my gaze from it. The closer we get, the bigger it grows.

“Twenty million dollars to low Earth orbit,” Kurnakova says in a matter-of-fact voice. “That’s a fraction of what it cost just a few years ago.”

The gate guard gives me a cursory look-over before waving us through.

Over the past year, flights to low Earth orbit have become routine, financed by dragons who have already conquered the world and are moving on to other things.

As the road swings close to the launchpad, Kurnakova pulls over. We both get out, to stand for a minute beside the fence, gazing at the fantastical machine. The rocket itself has two stages, and it towers nearly two hundred feet. At its top, in place of the classic cone-shaped capsule, is Stellar
Systems’ little spaceplane,
Lotus
, perched tail-down, its flattened fuselage only a little wider than the rocket’s diameter and adding only thirty-five feet to its height. With its jaunty upswept wings, snub nose, white surface, and heat-resistant black belly,
Lotus
looks like a child’s toy fixed to the end of a monster New Year’s firework.

I turn to Kurnakova. “You ever had any paying customers back out when they reach this point?”

She looks at me through farsights tinted black. “Not yet. You going to be the first?”

“Am I a paying customer?”

“Of course you are. Shiloh bought your seat.”

A bribe, to ensure I appear in the logs as a legitimate technician. No one will need to ask questions if I have the proper credentials. At least, that’s the theory.

“I will tell you a dirty little secret,” Kurnakova says. “Rules do not mean much to people who can pay twenty million dollars for a grocery delivery. The fastest way to lose your job at STS is to say no when one of our customers asks for a little favor.”

“This isn’t a little favor.”

“The cost of your ticket was no little thing either. Don’t worry. We will be okay.”

•   •   •   •

The staff at STS may be used to operating outside the boundaries of standard procedure, but as we move through check-in, I get the impression Kurnakova is pushing the envelope with the little favor involved in this launch.

We interact with only two personnel. Both are nervous. Neither will meet my gaze, looking to Kurnakova for direction. I follow their lead and say nothing, just do as I’m told. If we all pretend this isn’t happening, nothing bad will come of it, right?

Before long, Kurnakova and I are riding the elevator to the top of the gantry, both of us wearing blue coveralls and flexible, fire-retardant booties on our feet. Underneath my coverall, I’ve got an armored vest with the optical trigger stashed in an inside pocket. I’ve also got a sealed packet containing a sedative mask. We tested the mask on Nolan and it dropped him in nine seconds.

Lotus
is mounted for a vertical takeoff, so we enter through a hatch behind and just below the two forward seats, where the pilot and technician sit. Canisters of cargo are locked down in the back, each sized to fit through the meter-wide hatch. Two jump seats for emergency evacuations have been folded up and locked against the walls.

Kurnakova waves me in first. I pause in the hatch, long enough to slip off the booties. It’s a violation of flight rules not to wear them, but those rules weren’t written for a cyborg with robot feet. The booties offer fire protection in case of accident, but I don’t need that, and wearing any kind of foot covering limits my options. All I can do with shoes on is stand or walk—and I’ll be doing neither where we’re going—while the feet are capable of so much more.

With my feet free, I climb to the shotgun seat, lie back, and strap in—just like I did weeks ago when I was training in the mock-up Shiloh had created for me. It feels awkward, looking up through the segmented windows at a bright blue sky. Kurnakova pops up beside me, checks my straps, and nods her approval. Then she settles into the pilot’s seat.

I’m recording everything, of course.

Kurnakova talks to her handler—a blandly friendly male voice representing ground control. Together they run through the prelaunch checks, while I set up my own communications using the same satellite-relay system we had aboard the
Non-Negotiable
. Opening a link through my overlay, I say, “Hey Delphi, you there?”

“Gotcha, Shelley,” she answers in her cool handler’s voice. And then, after assessing the data from my skullnet, “You’re a little wound up.”

“I just want this to happen.” I’m riding an electric excitement that I didn’t think I could feel anymore. It’s like I’m a kid again, thrilled just to be here, poised to do what has always seemed impossible, head into space, low Earth orbit, where fewer than two thousand people have been in all the history of the world. Eduard Semak is so far away I can’t worry about him yet, and the postmission fallout is too remote to contemplate. My only fear right now is that a supervisor or some government official will step up and call off the flight—but that doesn’t happen. The countdown continues to zero without interference. The main stage of the rocket ignites—and Delphi breaks her handler’s reserve to whisper parting words in my ears: “I love you.”

No one can stop us now.

We are enfolded in a trembling roar as gravity gives way and we rise slowly into the blue.

•   •   •   •

Blue deepens and turns to black. Stars come out.

The second-stage rocket fires and we are in orbit, but we are still hours away from rendezvous with Eduard Semak’s hermitage in the sky. Kurnakova talks with ground control, but there is nothing for me to do as we circle the world except to admire the overwhelming beauty of this place that we have threatened and corrupted with our wars and our poisons.
Lotus
passes from daylight into a night lit by electric lights that outline the continents and surround the oceans, and in time it is day again, and we are bathed in the bright-blue reflected glow of the Pacific, and I can’t stop looking at it all, taking it all in. Astronomers speak of finding Earthlike worlds around other stars, but they are
speaking in hyperbole, in meaningless generalities. There is only one Earthlike world. There will only ever be one and it is fragile, and if it takes the cold manipulations of a fathomless AI to bring balance and to protect this precious place from the madness of those who would set it on fire, so be it. I, for one, am proud to serve as a soldier in that war.

•   •   •   •

“Ready?” Kurnakova asks after she’s completed the delicate docking process, locking the hatch of
Lotus
to that of the Semak Hermitage. Semak has not responded to radio hails, but Kurnakova shrugs it off. “He has been here over a year, since long before Coma Day. This is his fourth maintenance visit. He can’t live without us, but he does not want us here.”

Smart man.

I’m wearing a patch to suppress inner-ear issues, so both my stomach and my brain are responding well to free fall. It’s an uncanny sensation to be unmoored from gravity. At first I clutch at the seats and at handholds, but very quickly I give in and let myself believe in the magic act of weightless motion. I practice moving around in the space available within
Lotus
. After a few minutes it starts to feel natural, as if I’ve dreamed this a hundred times or lived this way in another life.

“I’m ready,” I tell Kurnakova and Delphi both. I make my way to the hatch, check the status, and then open it as I’ve been taught.

•   •   •   •

It’s dark and cold on the other side. Feels near sixty degrees to me, but the chill hasn’t wiped out a faint scent of human presence. It’s not a bad smell—the filtration system is too
evolved for that—it’s just a slight, musky vapor marking this place as home to someone, though to my surprise I don’t see Eduard Semak.

Just past the hatch is a staging area, lit by a dim glow spilling from
Lotus
. Beyond that is the cupola, a ring of hemispherical windows, each half a meter across and deep enough that if I drifted up into one, I could see the habitat’s outer shell and all that lies beyond. From where I am, still within the hatch, I can already see the Earth in all its glittering nightside glory.

It’s night within the habitat too. The only lights are pale green dots, six meters away at the other end of the main chamber, placed around a closed interior hatch. Behind that door is a one-time-use emergency evacuation capsule. According to Kurnakova, Semak uses the capsule as a bedroom. I assume he is in there now. There’s nowhere else he could be. But why is he hiding? He wasn’t supposed to know we’re the enemy.