Desperate Measures Chapter 42

Chapter Forty

August 7, 2230, Alpha Centauri, Chiron, Lumiere, Landing Day Monument

The MX 60 sped along with ease.

Erik let Emma control things as they passed through a thicket of flitters flowing through the towers that circled the heart of downtown Lumiere.

Now that they’d spent some time in the city, Jia could clearly see that the average tower didn’t reach the commanding heights of those in Neo SoCal, despite the dense packing giving that illusion.

She supposed it didn’t matter much. A person standing at the base would crane their necks upward at the sight of something more worthy of being called a skyscraper than the buildings of the past.

It was odd when she thought about it.

The vast majority of colonies lacked any buildings of significant height. In that sense, one could argue they weren’t representative of humanity, but the greatest concentrations of the species, which included many colonies of the core worlds and Earth itself, were defined by places where humanity reached into the sky like gods.

Curiously, at the center of Lumiere, the towers gave way to a noticeable hole. The forest of towers surrounded a perfectly square area where the tallest contributors were trees.

Flitter lanes filled the air above the large hole, but the MX 60 needed to descend hundreds of meters until those on board could make out the garden full of marble statues.

They formed the Landing Monument.

There were five hundred statues, one for each of the original five hundred colonists. A ring of trees surrounded the statues, and colorful patches of carefully tended flowerbeds added touches of color. Given their height, the sheer number of plants must have been staggering. The only practical way to handle that many would be with bots or drones.

Jia and Erik weren’t there to sightsee. They’d been flying around town to get a better feel for the layout. Having maps and Emma helped, but depending too much on any one team member, even an advanced AI, carried risks.

A woman never knew when she might end up chasing an alien-worshipping terrorist or a crazy Tin Man through town.

It was hard not to think about the meaning of what she was seeing. She peered at the large area in the camera feed, soaking in the implications.

“I could never do it.” Jia motioned at a statue in a camera feed.

“You couldn’t handle someone making a statue of you?” Erik asked, looking confused. “I’d want to make sure the guy didn’t make me look an idiot, but I wouldn’t mind a statue.”

She shook her head. “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about what they represent. I couldn’t leave everything behind and start over on a new world. When I was younger, I liked to tell myself most people couldn’t. I liked to believe the colonies were mostly filled with transported criminals and a small number of dedicated public servants, but that’s not true. I thought about it on the way here. Some people are just wired to move forward and explore different places.” She smiled. “I think you’re that way.”

Erik turned away with a thoughtful look. “Maybe not as much as you’d think. I joined the Army because I needed direction in my life, and I liked being a soldier, but seeing the rest of the UTC wasn’t some grand goal. If my life had turned out differently, I could have been happy in Detroit or a place like Neo SoCal. You’ve seen me. I like my restaurants and my foods, and I’m consistent in my choices. I’m not aching to go to weird places like your sister took you.”

“Maybe the age of grand exploration is over,” Jia murmured. “So none of that matters.”

“Why do you say that? I figure as long as someone’s breathing and can get to a new place, people will always push out farther.”

“It’s different now because of the Zitarks, Leems, Orlox, and the rest,” Jia answered. “We’re effectively surrounded on all sides. Human history teaches us what happens when two civilizations push into the same area. I’ve got my biases. We’ve got plenty of planets and moons and plenty of space on them. I’m sure we could grow humanity into the trillions with the extent of the UTC now.”

Erik thought for a moment before shrugging. “Who knows? Someday different races might decide they could use different planets in the same system. Maybe we’ll be mixed together in some giant United Confederation of the Milky Way.”

“You really think that?” Jia stared at him, surprised by Erik being the less cynical one in the conversation. “We were

very

close to having our first interstellar war.”

“Close isn’t the same thing as having it. I’m not saying I want a space raptor as a neighbor anytime soon, but I don’t know. You look at the history of humanity, and it’s clear that everyone expected us to die off. They placed their bets against us, but we’ve prospered.” Erik chuckled. “When I was a kid, my dad showed me a history lecture from 2085 at a college in LA. The guy said despite us setting up colonies on other worlds, we were doomed because too many people had their hands on nukes or bioweapons, and it was just a matter of time before we killed ourselves off. He said if it wasn’t those things, it’d be nanotech. The guy, who was a big-time historian back then, said humanity had a less than 0.1 percent chance of surviving for another fifty years. He had this big calculation for it, which was called the Doomsday Quotient.”

Jia sighed. “I bet that guy felt smug when the Summer of Sorrow happened.” She winced. “Assuming he survived. You said the lecture was in LA. Did he live there?”

“I never checked on him to see if he was in LA at the time. Never cared much about the lecture. My dad used it as an example of smart people being wrong, and how with hard work, we could succeed.” Erik frowned. “But that’s the thing. LA was destroyed, just like he might have predicted, but everything changed, and things didn’t go the way he said. People didn’t get rid of war or assholes trying to hurt people, but here we are in 2230, and no one’s saying humanity’s done. We’re sitting here having this conversation about whether we can push back aliens.”

“There are a lot of threats out there. The conspiracy, local neighborhood aliens, the Hunters.” Jia stared at the camera feed of the monument garden as the MX 60 circled the area and pulled away. There was something soothing in Erik’s words.

“If we didn’t kill ourselves when we were all on one planet with thousands of nukes pointed at each other, we’re not going to.” Erik tapped his finger on his leg. “Not that some bastards might not try, but there have always been murderers and people who don’t care who they hurt, and things have still moved forward. Even if the Hunter ship had taken out Earth, we have colonies now. I don’t know if we’ll ever be friends with aliens, but I know there are more people out there who give a shit about making the galaxy a better place than those who don’t.”

“And on that poetic note,” Emma interrupted, “I have important news that we might be able to use to make the galaxy a better place. You should return to the

Argo

immediately.”

An hour later, Jia and Erik were waiting in the cargo bay when Kant and Anne landed and hurried out of her flitter.

Erik looked up from the crate of grenades he’d been rifling through. It was always good to see what was easily available. Looking at a data window wasn’t the same.

“Here’s the executive summary,” he announced. “Emma’s isolated a possible conspiracy shipment originally from Earth that she’s pretty damned sure hasn’t left Chiron yet. The shipment is clearly contraband. Our friends played some records games to conceal the importation of the cargo from Customs inspection and have been moving it around a lot.” His snicker caused Anne to shiver. “All that effort to hide it, and they still left themselves vulnerable.”

Anne stepped away from the flitter. “That’s a lot of circumstantial evidence, Blackwell. Are you sure this is worth pursuing?”

Jia walked over to Erik’s side. “We’re several companies deep into misdirected cargo, falsified records, and businesses clearly linked to elements controlled by the conspiracy. We’re not here to arrest them and put them on trial. I think circumstantial evidence is enough. We don’t know what they are hiding.”

“We don’t have any idea what these items might be.” Anne folded her arms. “They could be nothing very important. It could be cheese, and they’re trying to avoid paying Customs duties.”

He eyed her. “Nobody goes through that much trouble to avoid Customs duties on cheese. Emma’s cargo is scheduled for transport from the facility to the spaceport tomorrow. Cargo she can trace from Earth to the other companies we’ve been looking at. If we wait until it’s at the spaceport, we risk having to confront militia or local cops.” Erik gave Anne a merry grin and motioned to his grenade crate. “I want to throw grenades at the conspiracy, not cops.”

Emma appeared in a dark suit. “You might find some of this drone footage interesting.”

Data windows appeared above her, displaying footage taken from different angles. Side doors opened on a tower level, allowing the entrance and exit of large cargo flitters. Emma paused the playback to magnify and enhance the image. Helmeted men in full tactical suits with rifles stood near the cargo flitters as bots loaded and unloaded the cargo.

“Lot of guns to protect some cheese,” Jia observed.

Anne’s focus flicked to Jia, a small curve down to her lips before she restored her focus, her face blank once more.

“According to public records,” Emma began, “this company ships nothing of a value sufficient to warrant such heavy security. It’d be as if Erik started guarding his plants with his exoskeleton.”

“Bad analogy.” Erik shook a finger at her. “If someone came after my penjing setup, I

would

put on an exo and take them out.”

“Okay, you’ve got a point.” Anne scratched her cheek, her brow creased in deep concentration. “We’ll have to assume that isn’t the only security. Are you anticipating a full assault? We only have your two exos.”

“Exos aren’t viable if we need to get the hell out of there fast, and based on what Emma’s found, the cargo should be small enough to fit in flitters.”

Jia nodded her agreement. “If we aren’t using exos, it’ll be easier to explain if the locals show up.”

Kant headed over to the grenade crate and knelt to inspect his options. “In summary, we’re robbing the place and seeing what special cheese they have?”

Anne threw her hands up. “Shut up about the cheese already. It was an

example

.”

Erik smirked before turning to Kant. “Something like that. I think the best time to strike is right after they leave the facility.” Erik pointed at the various clusters of grenades in the crate. “They’re not going to want to call the cops or draw any attention, so as long as we keep them from showing up, we should have a good amount of time to take the shipment and get the hell out of there. We come back to the

Argo,

an area where Emma has complete control, then figure out if it’s worth it to just take off with our pirate treasure or plan a follow-up.”

Anne marched over to a carryaid secured to a rack on the wall and examined one of the mechanical backpacks closely. “How are we going to ensure the locals don’t show up? There’s no way this is happening without shots being fired.”

Emma offered a thin smile. “Mr. Constantine and I are currently infiltrating the relevant systems everywhere around the target. We will be able to suppress the drones and cameras without alerting the company. Once the attack begins, we can push hard into their security systems as well. He and I are laying the groundwork for that.”

“Are we sure we don’t want local help?” Kant asked, lifting a plasma grenade and slowly turning it in his hand before looking up. “In case things get rough? I get that we don’t want the cops tagging along, but what about some of the local ID presence?”

Jia shook her head. “Our conversation with the agent the other night made it clear they don’t want anything to do with this mission. It’ll take too long to convince them to help, and we’re on a tight timeline on this. Sometimes it’s better to handle things ourselves.”

“We’ve got four trained ops personnel with plenty of field experience in dealing with dangerous situations.” Erik gestured to everyone in turn. “Emma can operate the MX 60 even under jamming conditions, and we’re not there to take out the entire place, just grab some cargo. This calls for a small, agile team, and their trusty AI.”

Jia patted her stun pistol. “We also shouldn’t assume that everyone involved is a dedicated member of the conspiracy. We’ll hit hard and fast, but we should restrict ourselves to nonlethals until we have reason to suspect otherwise.”

Anne frowned. “That could be risky.”

“The conspiracy controls a lot, but that doesn’t mean everyone knows what they’re doing.” Jia motioned toward the roof. “Otherwise, we’d be laying siege to every Ceres Galactic building out there.”

Emma raised her hand. A data window filled with names appeared.

“There’s only a small number of security personnel listed in their public records. Erik is reluctant to have me to dig deeper and risk alerting them to their partial systems compromise. As it is, the discovery of the shipping records was unexpected, given where they put it in the system. They are clearly hiding both personnel and the nature of their cargo.”

“It doesn’t hurt to hold back the lead and grenades unless we need them.” Erik clapped and rubbed his hands together. “If all goes well, we’ll stun a couple of guards and have ourselves a nice pile of alien artifacts or Tin Man parts to show for it.”

Anne frowned at him. “Do you really think it’ll be that easy?”

“No. Of course not.” Erik kept his smile. “I expect we’ll hit the cargo flitter and a half-dozen full-conversion Tin Men will be inside waiting to kill us, but that doesn’t change anything.” His jovial mask faded, leaving only determination. “We’re grabbing that cargo. I don’t care if you want to tweak the plan, but we didn’t jump all the way from Earth to sit on our hands. Understood?”

Anne nodded. “Understood.”

Jia’s heart pounded. She’d gotten so used to major strikes against the conspiracy that the idea of slipping in, grabbing something, and sneaking out from under their noses was antithetical. It would be nice to visit a new location with Erik without blowing anything up.

She couldn’t wait.

“Good.” Erik cracked his knuckles. “Now, let’s go over the specific ops plan.”