comms screen. “Hey! About time. We’re doing fine. See this pig?” He moved aside so the camera could pick up the lazing animal. “She’s about to drop a litter. The children are fighting over who gets to name the piglets! Top suggestion so far: Startrotter.”
He was doing good, he thought. Keeping it casual. Not mentioning the issues they were having with the hydroponics.
“What else? Lemme see, I’ve talked to Father Tom a few times. They’re busy, busy over there. Deliveries keep arriving. Can’t tell of what. Maybe components for atmospheric scoopers to mine hydrogen out of the atmosphere of Planet X. How can he actually believe they’ll make it there alive? Well, maybe he doesn’t believe it. Maybe he’s got a death wish, wants to take a few thousand people with him.”
The boss had confided the Salvation’s true destination to Kiyoshi a few months back. He must have thought it would impress him. Instead, it had confirmed Kiyoshi’s adamant opposition to the whole project. Maybe the boss had forgotten that Kiyoshi had access to an artificial super-intelligence. Jun had modelled the Salvation’s journey, and even using the most generous parameters, even assuming the antimatter drive worked as advertised, there was no way the giant ship would reach Planet X with anyone on board alive. Not even 0.001% of a chance.
“Maybe it’s a double bluff,” Kiyoshi speculated out loud. “Maybe he’s actually going to Pluto. That would be a lot more doable. Or, another possibility: he really is going to Planet X, because he’s that scared of the ISA. I wonder what he actually did? Sure, he’s got a rap sheet as long as your arm—ship theft, fraud, throw murder in there—but is there something worse, something we don’t know about? What would be bad enough that he’s got to run seventeen thousand AUs? Christ, I hope they do catch up with him.” Kiyoshi envisioned ISA ships bellying up to the Salvation, arresting the boss-man before his epic escape could even start. The thought gave him his first chuckle in a week. Unfortunately, it wasn’t likely to happen. Amidst humanity’s life-or-death struggle with the PLAN, the ISA had more important things to do. “Well, it’s amusing to speculate, but at the end of the day, who gives a shit? We’re here. Where are you?”
He hit send. He expected to have to wait 38 minutes. The time it took for a signal to make the round-trip journey to Earth … plus a bit.
The screen lit up again only 11 minutes later. For a delirious second he thought Jun must have changed his mind, was coming home. But no. They were just out of synch. Jun had started talking before he received Kiyoshi’s burst.
“Sorry. I’ve been busy,” Jun said. “We’re there. Have a look!”
The screen showed darkness. A spotlight illuminated bots fussing with a fiberoptic cable at the foot of a cliff of machinery. Kiyoshi knew what he was looking at because he’d seen it before, in real life.
One of the docking bays of Tiangong Erhao.
“You made it,” Kiyoshi whispered. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and took a drag of nicotine.
Tiangong Erhao was the pride of the Imperial Chinese Republic, a fifty-kilometer space station orbiting at the L5 Earth-Moon Lagrange point. Jun planned to steal it and load it up with malware, a poisoned present for the PLAN. Kiyoshi didn’t underestimate his brother’s skills, but this part of the plan had always worried him.
“Those bots are putting in my hardwired comms link,” Jun said in voiceover. “I’ll need that when we enter Ghost mode. But basically, it’s all over bar the shouting. Keep an eye on the news in the next couple of days. I don’t know how they’ll spin it. ‘Tiangong Erhao vanishes’? Anyway, you can bet they won’t admit Tiangong Erhao was hijacked by a person or persons unknown.” The picture changed to Jun himself. He was sitting—or rather, he portrayed his projection sitting—at the astrogator’s
He was doing good, he thought. Keeping it casual. Not mentioning the issues they were having with the hydroponics.
“What else? Lemme see, I’ve talked to Father Tom a few times. They’re busy, busy over there. Deliveries keep arriving. Can’t tell of what. Maybe components for atmospheric scoopers to mine hydrogen out of the atmosphere of Planet X. How can he actually believe they’ll make it there alive? Well, maybe he doesn’t believe it. Maybe he’s got a death wish, wants to take a few thousand people with him.”
The boss had confided the Salvation’s true destination to Kiyoshi a few months back. He must have thought it would impress him. Instead, it had confirmed Kiyoshi’s adamant opposition to the whole project. Maybe the boss had forgotten that Kiyoshi had access to an artificial super-intelligence. Jun had modelled the Salvation’s journey, and even using the most generous parameters, even assuming the antimatter drive worked as advertised, there was no way the giant ship would reach Planet X with anyone on board alive. Not even 0.001% of a chance.
“Maybe it’s a double bluff,” Kiyoshi speculated out loud. “Maybe he’s actually going to Pluto. That would be a lot more doable. Or, another possibility: he really is going to Planet X, because he’s that scared of the ISA. I wonder what he actually did? Sure, he’s got a rap sheet as long as your arm—ship theft, fraud, throw murder in there—but is there something worse, something we don’t know about? What would be bad enough that he’s got to run seventeen thousand AUs? Christ, I hope they do catch up with him.” Kiyoshi envisioned ISA ships bellying up to the Salvation, arresting the boss-man before his epic escape could even start. The thought gave him his first chuckle in a week. Unfortunately, it wasn’t likely to happen. Amidst humanity’s life-or-death struggle with the PLAN, the ISA had more important things to do. “Well, it’s amusing to speculate, but at the end of the day, who gives a shit? We’re here. Where are you?”
He hit send. He expected to have to wait 38 minutes. The time it took for a signal to make the round-trip journey to Earth … plus a bit.
The screen lit up again only 11 minutes later. For a delirious second he thought Jun must have changed his mind, was coming home. But no. They were just out of synch. Jun had started talking before he received Kiyoshi’s burst.
“Sorry. I’ve been busy,” Jun said. “We’re there. Have a look!”
The screen showed darkness. A spotlight illuminated bots fussing with a fiberoptic cable at the foot of a cliff of machinery. Kiyoshi knew what he was looking at because he’d seen it before, in real life.
One of the docking bays of Tiangong Erhao.
“You made it,” Kiyoshi whispered. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and took a drag of nicotine.
Tiangong Erhao was the pride of the Imperial Chinese Republic, a fifty-kilometer space station orbiting at the L5 Earth-Moon Lagrange point. Jun planned to steal it and load it up with malware, a poisoned present for the PLAN. Kiyoshi didn’t underestimate his brother’s skills, but this part of the plan had always worried him.
“Those bots are putting in my hardwired comms link,” Jun said in voiceover. “I’ll need that when we enter Ghost mode. But basically, it’s all over bar the shouting. Keep an eye on the news in the next couple of days. I don’t know how they’ll spin it. ‘Tiangong Erhao vanishes’? Anyway, you can bet they won’t admit Tiangong Erhao was hijacked by a person or persons unknown.” The picture changed to Jun himself. He was sitting—or rather, he portrayed his projection sitting—at the astrogator’s
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