Time Salvager (11 page)
He was in luck in the sense that he didn’t die on the way to the jump spot. A little over three hours later,
Collie
hovered unsteadily over the resting place of the sunken Nutris Platform. He opened the door and looked down at the maelstrom raging below him. The brown raindrops striking his shielding were almost horizontal.
Below him, hundred-meter waves swirled and crashed against each other. With gusts howling at nearly two hundred kilometers an hour, it was so loud, he had a hard time hearing Smitt talking in his head. And to top things off, the radiation was at a dangerous level.
“At the drop zone. Disembarking,” James thought. “Get
Collie
out of here.”
“Confirmed. Pulling her up into orbit,” Smitt said. “Remember your jump window. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
James looked down at the five-hundred-meter plunge into the black and brown ocean below. Even though it was water, it was risky. A drop from this height could kill him if he hit something solid. Not to mention that at drop speed, the impact from a crashing wave could be as dangerous as an avalanche of boulders. However, he couldn’t risk steering the collie any lower; one large wave could end up swallowing it whole.
He took a deep breath, stepped out into open air, and plummeted down like a rock. He looked up and saw the collie rapidly shrinking in size. Then a large wave struck him and carried him sideways. Immediately, his vision blurred and the clouds above him vanished from view. Another wave hit him from a different angle, and the sky reappeared as he bounced back into the air. He activated the jump band just as a third wave went over his head and crashed down on him, pushing him deep underwater.
James relaxed and let the current drag him wherever it wanted. He just had to let it go and conserve his strength until the force of the current dissipated. Visibility down here was nearly zero and the gunk caking onto the shield barely let him see his outstretched hands.
There was a bright yellow flash, and then the brown gunk began to break apart and clear up. Seconds later, James was left floating in crystal-blue waters. Disoriented, he looked up and saw a shimmering light break through the surface of the ocean, bathing the clear water in a white hue that danced in a gentle swaying motion.
Below him, thousands of fish, almost all extinct in the present, swam together as if one giant creature. They moved in unison, lockstepping back and forth, each a tiny star glittering in the light. In the distance, an impossibly large beast, possibly a whale or some other prehistoric monstrosity, passed by leisurely. James had seen these sea creatures only in pictures, which didn’t capture the reality of their size. He watched, mouth agape, as it gracefully slipped by him. After having been in nearly every part of the solar system, this was the most amazing sight James had ever seen.
“You made it through all right?” Smitt asked, voice sounding like it came across a distant funnel. “James?”
His friend’s voice in his head snapped James back from the spectacle. “Still in one piece, Smitt. You should see the view. It’s amazing.”
“You are officially in 2097. Enjoy the scenery, because it all goes to the abyss pretty soon.”
James looked up and swam toward the surface. A minute later, his head broke through the water and he looked up at the brilliant yellow light of the twenty-first-century sun. It felt soothing. Peaceful.
James looked east to the horizon and saw the Nutris Platform. He gaped. Any preconceptions he had had about the installation had been completely off. This wasn’t so much a secret military research facility as it was a giant floating city. And in a few days, it was going to burn down and sink beneath the waves.
Overhead, a large shadow flashed by, then another. James looked behind him and saw two dozen large craft flying toward the platform. The city’s new inhabitants were arriving. Little did they know that they were flying to their graves. James dove underwater and swam after them.
Sneaking into the secret military research base was much easier than James had anticipated. Greenland, the nearest landmass, was thousands of kilometers away, so Nutris security did not seem to bother guarding the perimeter. It took him less than ten minutes after reaching the floating city to find one of the underwater maintenance shafts. After he climbed up to the main level, it was only a few steps to the nearest nexus routing room.
He spent the next few minutes painting on his disguise. He kept his own face, albeit darkening his skin a few shades. Most people in this century seemed to enjoy baking in the sun, an impossible practice in the present. He preferred to keep as much of his natural appearance as possible. It used up less energy and also made it easier for him to talk his way out of being caught without paint.
It had happened only once before, during a salvage on Mercury. The radiation levels had overloaded his paint band, causing it to malfunction. He had been lucky on that jump. The Minos colony usually executed foreigners by putting them in a low-grade rad suit, tying them to a post on the surface of the planet, and leaving them to a slow and painful death.
Satisfied with his appearance, James hacked the nexus and planted his cover. He was surprised. For a military installation, they made it very easy to hack into the central AI. In this time period, just about everything was patched into a distributed artificial intelligence. While his disguise would fool the naked eye, all the systems on the platform would be able to expose him. The AIs at the turn of this century were just coming into their own, and their advancement would grow by leaps and bounds until the AI wars seventy-three years later.
The strength of the distributed AI was that it was very difficult to take offline. The weakness of it, though, was that it was easy to access with an advanced enough intrusion system. All James needed to do was pipe into the stream, which for his advanced AI band was a simple task. Less than two minutes later, James became known to the Nutris Platform AI as Salman Meyer of Prince Rupert, British Columbia. He assigned himself to the central living habitat and proceeded to give himself as much clearance as possible without raising any red flags.
He also uploaded the schematics of the platform to Smitt. They would need to devise a plan if they were going to pull off a triple heist in such a large facility. It would take a few hours for Smitt to receive uploaded data through the chronostream. Until then, James had to find his own way around this maze.
James hated going into assignments blind. One of the reasons he was a long-tenured chronman, as in why he was still alive, was his attention to detail. He did not like surprises. The unknown was death in his line of work. James made a beeline toward the landing hub, where all the other visitors were being offloaded and processed. He became hopelessly turned around when he reached the portion of the platform with taller buildings and lost sight of where the transports were landing.
The alleys were narrow and looked homogeneous, twisting and turning in what seemed like random directions. Twenty minutes later, he found himself at a dead end. His patience wearing thin, James was about to activate his exo and jump on top of one of the buildings when a voice saved him from giving away his cover.
“What are you doing here?”
James saw the shadow of a giant monster on the ground in front of him and jumped, instinctively powering his exo to a low level as he turned to face the perceived threat. He gaped at the massive mechanoid, industrial by the looks of it, of a type that was commonly used around this time period.
Built with four arachnid-like legs and a squat humanoid upper torso complete with four arms and a head, it towered over him. James remembered battling militarized variations of these things during salvages to the AI wars.
He didn’t know how this damned thing had snuck up on him. It must have just gotten out of the ocean, since it was still dripping wet. Then the mechanoid laughed, a hollow, echoey giggle that sounded distinctly human. The large metal head with the smooth gray spherical face opened outward, splitting down the middle, revealing a woman inside.
A wide grin spread across her face. “I’m sorry. I find a sick joy in sneaking up on people in Charlotte here. Blame it on having four older brothers with vile senses of humor. Are you lost? New residents aren’t supposed to be back here until they’ve been through orientation.”
James caught himself staring at the woman. There was something distracting about her face. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. “I got tired of waiting to get processed,” he said when he finally found his voice. “Thought I’d check out my new home.”
The predetermined answer seemed to work with her. She flashed him a bright smile. “Well, if you’re on the two-year contract, you’ll have plenty of time to learn all the nooks and crannies, all two square kilometers of it.” Her mechanoid hissed as several panels along the humanoid torso also split open down the center.
The woman, petite, wearing a tight black control suit that covered her entire body except for a small opening for her face, stepped out and jumped agilely off one of the mechanoid’s legs. James wasn’t tall by present-day spaceborn standards, but the top of her head barely reached his chin.
She walked up to him and stuck out her hand. “Elise Kim, Sector Two, research chief.”
James shook her hand. “Salman Meyer, nautical security, Sector Two…” He realized his mistake too late.
Elise frowned. “You’re on my security staff? I thought I had vetted all the guys personally.”
James’s mind raced as a graphic console opened in front of her face and she pulled up a personnel report. His information would be there but if she challenged him on any of its validity, he might have to kill her. He couldn’t afford the attention. His entry into the distributed AI wouldn’t stand up to heavy scrutiny.
Fortunately, she found his name and shrugged. “Ah, no wonder. You were only added three days ago. Here, I’ll walk you back to processing. Did you get your habitat yet? Wait, let me park Charlotte.”
Elise looked at the mechanoid behind her and pushed a button on the console. The mechanoid churned to life and walked away, presumably to a garage or whatever its holding area was. Satisfied, Elise gestured for James to follow her up a flight of stairs to a floating walkway connecting several of the buildings. The two strolled above the city, bathed by the cool sun and a gentle breeze blowing in from the west. The air felt so fresh it actually burned his lungs.
James quickly learned that this Sector Two research chief was a talkative one. As they walked, she became his personal tour guide. She swelled with pride as she chattered on about Nutris as if she had built it with her own two hands. Several times, she stopped to point down at some of the structures, detailing many of the facilities, including central operations, the science lab, the filtration plant, the cafeteria, and most important, the bar.
She also asked him a lot of questions, which made James profoundly uncomfortable. The woman was far too helpful and way too friendly. His alibi and alias would crumble if she spent more than a few minutes poking at them. The more he talked about himself, the more likely it would be for him to make a misstep. So he did his best to divert their discussion back to her, which Elise was happy to do.
Elise delved into detail about her training at some education center called Berkeley and how she joined the Nutris Initiative after the Third Central Oil Environmental Debacle, which eventually led to her running this sector’s biological research division. It took only a few minutes for her to lose him with her jargon.
James caught himself studying Elise, fascinated. There was something very different about her. For one thing, she was so animated and alive, a far cry from the miners, prostitutes, and sad husks barely living in the present. The other thing he realized that drew him to her was her optimism. She practically glowed at every topic they talked about.
This sort of optimism had long been squelched in the twenty-sixth century. He had to remind himself that the tragedies of humanity had not quite affected this time period yet, though it would happen soon. This year was the Cliffside of Humanity, after all.
He took the time to further examine his perplexing guide. Her tan face was weathered from time under the sun, not from age, and there was a twinkle in her eyes that James rarely saw back home. And now that the conversation had veered away from him, James didn’t mind her chattiness. There was something about the sound of her voice. It didn’t sound tired. He also decided that he liked her bright smile. It was a good one as far as those went.
James held his disappointment in check when they reached the transport hub where everyone else was being processed. He had hardly spoken five words to her and hoped to find a reason to delay parting ways.
“So, this is it,” he said. “Thanks for leading me back out to civilization. I might have starved out there in the iron jungle.”
She grinned. “Plenty of fish if you needed.” There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. “Well, I need to get back to work. See you around the sector?”
“Maybe grab a drink at the bar later?” he blurted before he realized what he was saying.
Elise winked at him. “Maybe another day. I’ve got five more hours in Charlotte before I can call it a night. No biggie. We have two more years to get to know each other.”
He waved at her as she disappeared around the corner. Then his hands fell to his sides and tightened into fists. “Two days, you mean,” he muttered.
When those two days were up, she and everyone else here would be dead. With a grimace, James walked to the end of one of the lines and waited to be processed.
“Hey, James, is everything all right?” Smitt asked.
“Everything is fine,” James said. “Why do you ask?”
“Because your heart rate is a hundred forty beats a minute.”
Elise had just finished a fourteen-hour shift on the ocean floor and was now slowly heading back up to Nutris Platform for her weekly senior staff meeting. It was a long time sitting in one place but she didn’t mind. She had taken a nap inside Charlotte while the mechanoid was processing floor samples around midnight. Charlotte was like her second bedroom. Elise looked out at the clear waters and marveled as Charlotte’s high beams pierced the darkness, exposing the beauty of the sea.
