Jeff Carlson - The Frozen Sky

“So is pushing us to treat the sunfish like a commodity. You’re demonizing them.”

“It’s ludicrous to expect a single lab to sequence and develop the material we’ve gathered thus far,” Dawson said. “There aren’t enough of us. We need to send tissue samples to Earth — dozens if not hundreds of samples. Live specimens would serve even better.”

“I can’t believe you’ve been hiding this bullshit from the rest of us.”

Koebsch said, “Look, Von, let’s calm down—”

“I am calm!”

“—and maybe get some lunch,” Koebsch said. “We can talk again later. Let’s meet again on the group feed in an hour. Frerotte, I want to talk to you on Channel Thirty.”

“I need to talk to you, too,” Vonnie said.

“Not now,” Koebsch said, cutting his connection with the group feed.

Vonnie stayed online, watching Dawson, who ignored her as he closed his sims. If he had more to say to the group, she wanted to hear it. But he signed off.

“Sorry, Von,” Frerotte said. He lifted a privacy screen on his station. From the outside, the screen left Frerotte visible yet fuzzy as his display components turned to gray blotches, including his link to Koebsch. The privacy screen also canceled their voices.

Vonnie paced in the confines of data/comm. Metzler tried to make room for her, clearing his station and hanging back. Ash wasn’t so tolerant. Ash took her hand and dragged her into the ready room, where Vonnie at least had space to wave her arms.

“Son of a bitch!”

“Walk it off,” Ash said. “Just walk a little.”

Metzler followed them into the L-shaped area between the lockers and the empty scout suits. “Don’t let Dawson get to you,” he said. “We’ve only had a few encounters with the sunfish, and most of those were with different tribes. It’s been like starting from square one every time.”

Vonnie shook her head. “Dawson’s an asshole, but he’s right that we can’t keep repeating the same cycle. We approach, they attack. We approach, they attack. There has to be some way to get through to them.”

She laid a hand on her suit — a new suit calibrated to her biometrics. Then she turned abruptly. Metzler and Ash both pretended they hadn’t been watching her.

They were nice to worry. Vonnie wanted to promise she was fine, but she was afraid they’d see right through her.

She felt estranged and shut out.

“Let’s get to work on the new probes,” she said. “If we can make them lighter, that might help. Maybe the sunfish won’t know they’re fakes.”

“The only way to reduce the probes’ weight is to pull their radar and X-ray,” Ash said. “Koebsch won’t like it.”

“Koebsch has different objectives than we do. He has to pay attention to the budget. You noticed how Dawson got fussy about how much the mecha cost? He was sucking up to Koebsch. But we don’t need more maps. We don’t need more body scans, either. We need to convince the sunfish to listen to us before glory hounds like Dawson decide they belong in a zoo.”

“Or on a menu,” Ash said with a glint in her hazel eyes.

Vonnie laughed, glad for any chance to break the tension. “I’ll put you on a menu,” she said.

Metzler draped his arms around both women. “You two go ahead,” he said. “I’ll make lunch. No sunfish. Then I want to go over Dawson’s sims. Maybe I can shoot some holes in his data.”

“Marry me,” Vonnie said, laughing again, but Metzler nodded sincerely.

“Be careful what you ask for,” he said.

They left the ready room. In data/comm, Frerotte continued to talk inside his privacy screen. Vonnie took the next station and unfolded the chair. Ash sat beside her, glancing after Metzler as he ducked into the next compartment. Now the young woman’s eyes were characteristically shrewd.

“He really likes you,” she said.

Vonnie didn’t answer. As a teacher, she had learned to be charming. It was part of the job. She was less comfortable with her newfound charisma. She’d become a polarizing figure in their group, a crusader and a leader.

People want to be inspired , she thought. Are they helping me because I’m famous ?

What if Dawson went out of his way to take an opposing view for the same reason? Because he resents seeing me in the limelight and wants it for himself ?

Vonnie hoped her friends appreciated her for her own qualities, not the image of the hero created by the media buzz, and yet she found herself playing into that role more and more. Most of the crew respected her conviction. Some of them, like Metzler, even welcomed her volatility.

As she opened their schematics of the new probe, she said, “Can you hack our own datastreams?”

“Yes,” Ash said. “Why would I do that?”

“Everyone has different encryption packets depending on who they’re communicating with on Earth. I’m curious who’s on Dawson’s lists.”

It would be easy to conceal illicit transmissions in their data bursts. All of them were linked with a myriad of government agencies, labs, universities, and media outlets — but if Dawson stood to profit from his decisions, if he was saying what a corporation wanted to hear in order to classify the sunfish as animals, Vonnie was well-positioned to stop him. She could use her celebrity to burn him in public opinion.

“What if Dawson’s in a gray area legally or flat-out breaking the rules?” she said. “He’s got his nose turned up so far, it makes me think he knows something we don’t. He might be taking bribes. Hell, he probably has a deal with someone. That’s why he’s taunting us.”

“I’ll peek,” Ash said. “The tough part will be getting a minute without Koebsch online to see what I’m doing. Maybe while he’s sleeping. Let me wait until I’m in the command module tonight or tomorrow.”

“Tonight.”

“I need an excuse to drive over, Von.”

“Here.” She opened the remote operation link to the armory, which, like Koebsch’s central data/comm post, was in the command module. “The forge doesn’t work right with our link. We can take the jeep after we finish our redesign. Koebsch will want to tell me everything I did wrong anyway, so I’ll keep him busy. Trust me.”

“I do trust you,” Ash said.

Vonnie met her gaze, then responded with total candor. “You’re my best friend in this place,” she said, which was true, but inside, she thought, I wish I knew who you were working for .

She needed Ash’s help to stop Dawson. But who would stop Ash if the girl was on the payroll of MI6 or another intelligence agency? Vonnie took it for granted that Ash’s directives were ultimately identical to Dawson’s: to own and control everything of value on Europa while disrupting the efforts of any other group to do the same.

Once upon a time, Vonnie might have laughed at the predicament they’d brewed for themselves. Instead, she cursed herself.

Face it , she thought. You’re outclassed.

The only people who’d been sent to Europa without covert training might be the poor, honest fools who’d volunteered when no one imagined there was anything more than bugs in the ice, namely Vonnie, Bauman, and Lam. Too much was at stake. As soon as Earth realized the larger ramifications, new players had been sent for a different game.

If the Allied Nations accepted the sunfish as a sentient race, that might affect who was permitted to mine the ice, where they were licensed to operate, and how much they paid the sunfish in trade goods.

If any country or gene corp got a head start on developing useful applications of Europan DNA, that could lead to the priceless first-to-market position for new meds or treatments.

Cryogenics and improved cancer resistance were top priorities for Earth’s military and civilian space forces. Astronauts who could sleep safely for months at a time would allow ships to travel farther than ever. Soldiers who could be stored, forgotten, and yet come up fighting would act both as deterrents and as first strike weapons. They could be stashed all over the solar system until needed.