Frozen Sky 2: Betrayed Read online

  “This is crazy,” Ash hissed.

  “No.” Vonnie met her gaze on the group feed. “It’s the most sane thing we can do.”

  Ashley Sierzenga was their youngest crew member. Twenty-four years old, she looked nineteen with her freckles and her slender, flat-chested body.

  A month ago, for several days, she and Vonnie had been buddies. Ash wanted to be older. She was eager for the world to take her seriously. They’d developed a big sister little sister relationship, working side by side on maint or ROM projects, sharing late-night drinks, flirting together with Henri and Ben—but like Henri, Ash had an agenda.

  The young woman worked for MI6. She was in Vonnie’s debt because Vonnie had saved her life, but she was also a hard case who refused to disobey her handlers. If they’d said it was in Britain’s interests to preserve the ESA’s assets at any cost, Ash would fulfill her objectives.

  Vonnie and Ash had had their falling out because of Ash’s rigidity in acting as she was told. Ash was a spy first, an astronaut second, a free individual last of all. The pleasure she took in following orders was especially maddening because Vonnie shared her regard for duty and honor. They just didn’t agree on what was honorable.

  “Ash, look at our sims,” Vonnie said. “Make up your own mind. Use your head.”

  The young woman growled at her. She didn’t speak. She growled. But she dropped the power on Lander 04. Then she cut her audio and whispered something to O’Neal beside her, a few bitter words. She was going to be trouble.

  Koebsch, we need a decision.

  He was taking too long. From what Vonnie had heard, some of the proxies wanted peace. How many were actually on her side?

  Yoshinao, Manihuari, Cornet, she thought. She left her station and stepped close to Ben, wrapping one arm around his waist. “Please,” she said. “Can I access your display?”

  “Here.” Ben was remodeling their radar scans of the ice, but he took an instant to create a new window.

  Vonnie used it to scroll through the proxies’ org charts. She hardly knew them all. Berlin, like Washington and Tokyo, had agreed to copy its allies’ proxies if they reciprocated. Hundreds of personalities were stored in Module 01 including representatives from smaller nations, science groups, conservationist groups and religious parties, most of them lesser AIs whose roles were to observe. They collated data. They made independent reports to Earth. It was the few Level I intelligences who guided Koebsch’s day-to-day management, but a three-quarters majority might stall or overrule the top proxies.

  She added fuel to the fire.

  “This is Alexis Vonderach,” she said on Ben’s display. “I can prove who’s culpable in the unlawful deployment of nuclear weapons. Do you think people want to see Europa destroyed like London or Nanjing? If you don’t stop the bombing, I’ll expose your involvement.”

  Ben clutched her wrist. “Von!” he said wildly. “What if they kill us to stop you?”

  “They wouldn’t. They can’t.”

  “The top proxies must have the det codes. If they set off the bombs, they’ll vaporize everyone in camp.”

  “The cost to replace us…”

  “Once we were gone, they could do whatever they want. They could say the sunfish triggered the bombs somehow, blame the tribes and say they’re the good guys.”

  Vonnie was already moving data through his station. As soon as she finished, she called the proxies again. “My files have been transmitted to the Clermont,” she said. “In thirty seconds, if I don’t provide another command, it will send those files to Earth. You’ll go to jail.”

  “Everybody listen up,” Koebsch said on the group feed. “I think everyone should see this.”

  He patched them into a real-time account of the proxies’ standings. Hundreds were undecided or caught in debates, but dozens of votes had been cast—and with inhuman efficiency, the proxies committed. Some abstained. Some demanded evacuation and self-defense. Yet the trend was clear.

  More votes than not called for restraint.

  “This is absurd,” Dawson muttered as Ash said, “Sir, what about the sunfish? We can’t just sit here.”

  “We’ll keep our warheads in the catacombs as a fail-safe and move everyone into the landers,” Koebsch said. “Then we’ll make reparations to the tribe if we can.”

  “That sim recording the telemetry from my jeep is a fraud,” Dawson said. “Our spies adjusted their positions after the sunfish detected our grid and began to disable the spies’ sensors with organic EMPs.”

  “He’s lying,” Vonnie said.

  “We’ll let Earth analyze our data,” Koebsch said as he removed the Class 1 alert from the group feed.

  “My reputation—!” Dawson began.

  “Not now,” Koebsch said.

  “Administrator, you cannot underestimate the value of my good name.”

  “We’ll wait for further analysis,” Koebsch said firmly. “Stand down. Stand down.”

  Vonnie wanted to kiss Ben. She settled for thumping her helmet against his helmet and beaming at him. “Yes!” she celebrated.

  “Look who sided with us,” Ben said.

  She nodded. Counting their supporters among the proxies was a study in global politics, and she recorded their names and nationalities. With the right help, could she consolidate them into a permanent voting bloc?

  Venezuela. Malaysia. Israel. Ukraine. The influence they’d been permitted was tiny, which might have encouraged them to act as a collective thorn in the side of Earth’s most powerful nations. Countries without spaceflight, like Peru, could afford to demand peace. Japan owned five orbital factories and often partnered with the Americans in space, but after losing more cities during another World War, their people held their integrity in higher regard than profits.

  Admiral Joost Cornet was a surprise ally. Skimming his file, Vonnie saw why he’d taken her side. Originally from the Netherlands, the real Cornet lived in Berlin, where he served with EUSD, European Union Space Defense, a federal arm of their military. He had nationalist leanings, however. His politics were “orange.” That meant he supported the rights of his country to maintain local control and traditions while loyally serving the union.

  He must think the tribes deserve local control, too, she thought. Good for him.

  Other supporters might have seemed less likely. Weeks ago, seeking common ground, Vonnie had tried to align herself with a consortium she’d first regarded as an enemy: the gene corps.

  Earth’s bio industries wanted DNA. The sunfish had more intriguing traits than their odd hemoglobin. The sunfish were also resistant to cold and radiation, two abilities of supreme importance in space. Perhaps more impressive, genesmiths like Dawson believed they could improve human longevity treatments based on sunfish metabolic tricks.

  Diverse samples and testing meant sustained contact. Vonnie had urged the gene corps to befriend the sunfish because forging treaties would cost less than defending themselves against never-ending guerrilla warfare.

  Many of the gene corps had sided with her. One exception was LifeNova. Dawson was in LifeNova’s pocket. He had accepted payments from them, and their board did not share Vonnie’s opinion that sustained contact with the tribes was desirable.

  From the beginning, mecha from all four Earth agencies had stolen blood and tissue samples from the sunfish. Intact corpses had been excavated from the ice. Men like Dawson hoped for live specimens, too, but he seemed to have traded that prize for the chance to develop his samples without interference from do-gooders like Vonnie. LifeNova already had what they wanted, and their uncompromising view had made the rounds on several chat shows on the net: If the tribes were gone—if they’d been annihilated—who could argue against monetizing their remains?

  Dawson acts like a gentleman to cover the fact he’s a borderline sociopath, she thought. He never learned he’s not the center of the universe. That’s why he’s so awkward with us. No one else is alive to him. We’re just in the way.

  The s
park of pity she felt was overcome by condemnation. She shut off her work on Ben’s display. Then she stepped away from Ben and marched to the next station, where Dawson was bickering with Koebsch.

  “Unacceptable!” Dawson said. “If we relocate to the landers, you must transfer my lab materials.”

  “I have other priorities,” Koebsch said.

  Dawson jabbed an index finger at him like a petulant old king. “Nothing is more critical than—”

  “Stop it,” Vonnie said. “I have you by the balls, so back off. Let us get things organized without more bullshit out of you.”

  Dawson sneered. “Administrator Koebsch, please. Her vulgarities are unprofessional and lewd.”

  “I mean it,” Vonnie said. “Back the fuck off. You took part in stealing weapons of mass destruction. A lot of people will look at that as a terrorist act. They’ll send you home and lock you up.”

  Dawson chuckled at her. “Always the Joan Of Arc. Your evaluation of the matter is skewed to say the least.”

  “You bastard.”

  “You’re the one with her mouth in the gutter and a head full of conspiracy theories. I believe our resident secret agents are responsible for offloading those the warheads from the Clermont, which was fortuitous, since our capacity to protect ourselves is feeble indeed. If anyone is convicted of misbehavior, it will be Henri and Ash.”

  “The command you gave our spies is what spooked the sunfish! Why do you hate them so much?”

  “Hate is a sophomoric word. I find them repugnant, but the same could be said for a black widow or a Sloane’s viperfish. I’m not emotionally invested. Why are you? Did your parents withhold affection when you were a child?”

  Boiling, she said, “That’s funny. I’ve been thinking the same thing about you.”

  “Both of you, stop,” Koebsch said. “We don’t—”

  “Heads up!” Ben yelled. “I have new radar signals in the ice. The sunfish are coming back.”

  Dawson’s face lost its color. Vonnie’s mood soared, although she couldn’t deny that she felt some apprehension herself. “Where?” she asked.

  “They’re above the layer where they disappeared. Range three point eight kilometers,” Ben said.

  Ash rejoined the group feed and posted sims from their other sensors—sonar, seismography, neutrino pulse. “Something’s wrong with their formation,” she said. Her eyes were grim. “Are you sure this is the same tribe?”

  “Voice recognition shows Tom and Charlotte in the lead. There’s Hans, Peter and Brigit,” Ben said, identifying several members of the pack.

  “Can you tell where they’re going?” Vonnie asked. “Are they headed home?”

  “They’re coming straight at us,” Ash said.

  7.

  “Koebsch, I need my station,” Vonnie said.

  “Yes. Go,” he said.

  Vonnie ran from Dawson to her display, where Koebsch restored full access. The others were absorbed with tracking the sunfish. Vonnie paged through their datastreams to find Harmeet, then located her in Module 01.

  Good. She’s not alone. I don’t think the sunfish will attack, but if they do…

  Dawson had recovered his superior air. He raised his nose at Vonnie and said, “Will you be sauntering down to your private little rendezvous to meet them?”

  Vonnie flashed him a wolfish grin, hoping he couldn’t see her pulse in her throat. “That’s a great idea,” she said.

  “Nobody leaves their station,” Koebsch said.

  Ash conspicuously began another preflight check on Lander 04. “What are your orders, sir?” she asked.

  Koebsch glanced at her. “Our orders are unchanged. Stand down.”

  “Sir, this isn’t the same tribe,” Ash said.

  “She’s right.” Ben opened a new analysis on the group feed. “I count more sunfish than before. Forty. Fifty. Seventy.”

  “They found another group,” Vonnie said.

  “They found reinforcements,” Dawson corrected her.

  “We encouraged them to introduce us to new tribes. What if they’re doing what we asked?” Vonnie said, but her pulse continued to rise with the increasing tension among her friends.

  “They’re in two clusters of different sizes, a lead element of sixteen and a main group of fifty-eight,” Ash said. “Range three point one kilometers. The lead element is moving fast. I track ‘em at thirty kilometers an hour. At that pace, even with the twists and turns in the catacombs, they’ll reach the FNEE diggers in five minutes. They’re sprinting.”

  “They’re using their burst speed,” Dawson said. “It’s an indication of attack. They want to catch us off-guard. Koebsch, we must fire our warheads!”

  “Look where the diggers are!” Vonnie said as Ben explained, “The bombs are too close, Dawson. Open your eyes. If we detonate, we’ll get caught in the blast.”

  “I concur,” Ribeiro said. “Administrator Koebsch, a single warhead is the solution. Number four. It’s the deepest and the farthest north. It will blunt the sunfish attack and divert them away from our position.”

  “What about us?” Koebsch asked.

  “Moderate quakes,” Ribeiro said. “My calculations set our survivability at ninety-eight percent.”

  “That’s optimistic,” Ben said.

  “The most severe damage will be localized beyond our north perimeter,” Ribeiro said. “The FNEE modules are most endangered. My officers accept the risk.”

  “Koebsch, his numbers are wrong,” Ben said. “The catacombs are limited in the area he’s talking about. There aren’t a lot of open spaces to buffer the shock wave. The path of least resistance is up. It’ll rip open the surface before it causes a huge collapse. If the shrapnel doesn’t kill us, the cave-ins will.”

  “My calculations are correct,” Ribeiro said.

  Koebsch was shouting at the proxies behind a privacy screen. In the abrupt silence, Harmeet signed onto the group feed from Module 01, her dark bangs curled with sweat inside her helmet. But her eyes were clear. If she’d panicked while she rushed across camp from 02, that lonely terror was gone now.

  She addressed the crew in her cool, understated manner. “It’s irresponsible to kill the sunfish before we know what they want,” she said. “In any case, they can’t hurt us directly. Breaching the surface would expose them to vacuum.”

  “They can climb from 07 into 06,” Dawson said. “They’ll pour in here like—”

  “The hatches are sealed,” Ben said scornfully.

  “They could break through the access tube.”

  “It’s ten millimeter thick steel with another hatch on top, plus a blast door in the entry room.”

  Dawson wasn’t listening. He fidgeted, turning to stare at the corridor as if he’d imagined noises behind them. “Koebsch, do something!” he said.

  “The choice to wait and see is doing something,” Harmeet said. She was serene, even motherly.

  “The lead element of sunfish will pass the FNEE diggers and our warheads in two minutes,” Ash said. Her voice was strained like Dawson’s.

  “Koebsch, we have other options,” Vonnie said.

  “We should evacuate!”

  “I mean Lam,” Vonnie said.

  “Why would—?”

  “Call Lam. Call him now.”

  “We haven’t heard from Lam in weeks,” Ash said as Koebsch dropped his privacy screen. “Colonel Ribeiro, your team has the most sensors on our northern perimeter,” he said. “Please boost our signals to Probe 114. Ash, I want the 114 CEW codes you designed immediately.”

  “Sir, one hundred seconds to intercept,” Ash said.

  “Roger that. Transmit your CEW codes.”

  “Transmitting now.”

  “Colonel Ribeiro, report.”

  Ribeiro showed some feeling at last. He let indignation creep into his tone. “Of course we are relaying your codes at maximum gain.”

  “Eighty seconds,” Ash said.

  Time slowed to crawl as Vonnie held her brea
th, staring at her display. She wanted to see a new mecha appear on their grid—an old mecha to be more precise.

  Probe 114 had gone missing eleven hours after the ESA formalized their treaty with Top Clan Eight-Six. Before it vanished, however, 114 had been instrumental in developing the agreements between the two species. 114 had recorded the sunfish while they believed they were unobserved. It had mapped the tribe’s home, their hunting grounds, and the neutral regions between their colony and the territories of other tribes.

  Probe 114 was also sentient. It carried the mem files of a Chinese astronaut named Choh Lam, although his mind had been fragmented, repaired, fragmented, then repaired again with insufficient memory in the darkness of the frozen sky.

  Originally a Level II intelligence, many of Lam’s cognitive scores had tested at Level I after Vonnie fed him corrective sequences. Like a sunfish, Lam was capable of fluid mental leaps—and yet in other regards such as mission fidelity, he’d tested as low as Level IV.

  He was deranged.

  Human thinking had evolved for the human body and vision and light. All of that had been taken from him. He no longer had two arms, two legs, a head or eyes or even a mouth in the normal description of the word.

  The mecha he inhabited, Probe 114, was shaped like a sunfish. Vonnie and the other engineers had designed several of these doppelgängers to approach the tribes. Each probe had an alumalloy frame sheathed in synthetic skin with pedicellaria beneath their arms, a functioning beak, the appearance of gills, a genital slit and tiny reserves of saliva and blood.

  Within his new body, Lam also had mechanical lungs. He could inhale and exhale convincingly. He was stronger than any sunfish and weighed ten kilos more than an equivalent-sized male due to his metal innards, which included a power plant, sonar, X-ray and data/comm. His hidden senses and his overt strength made him a supreme hunter. Such traits were esteemed by the sunfish, but he could not generate pheromones or sperm, so the matriarchs had initially regarded him a deviant.

  He hadn’t contacted the ESA for three weeks. They thought he’d wandered off or he’d been destroyed because their other probes had been smashed when he disappeared. Then during her conversations with Tom, Vonnie had learned that Lam was still with the tribe.