Jeff Carlson - The Frozen Sky

Everything’s coming to a head , she thought . Ribeiro. Dawson. Ash. Lam.

Is it still possible for me to protect the sunfish ?

The jeep slowed near Lander 04, and Vonnie looked at the sky. As an astronaut, she was accustomed to feeling satisfaction for the spacecraft overhead and grudging acceptance for the spy satellites. One came with the other. The need to guard against opposing nations was a fact of life.

Now we’re importing all of our problems to this world , she thought. And yet without those problems, humankind wouldn’t have traveled so far into the solar system.

They weren’t angels. They were apes. It was mutual suspicion and the hunger for power that drove their species to new technologies. Every advancement in spaceflight had been steeped in an arms race. Germany’s rockets in World War II begat the Soviet sputniks, which begat the American moon landings, which begat the ICBM standoff between NATO and the USSR, which led to a renaissance in global communications.

Briefly, there was peace. But the eyes in the sky continued to improve, aiding the technological nations in a hundred brush wars against men who used caves for fortresses and waged terror attacks on non-military targets to remain relevant.

The eyes combed the globe for patterns and clues. The ears listened. Smart bombs, drones, and robots entered the world’s battlefields as humankind’s first artificial intelligences.

The chess board of today’s political backdrop had started with another Cold War between East and West. Even before their third revolution, the People’s Republic of China had been on a path to usurp America as Earth’s foremost superpower.

In 2028, a military coup reversed China’s gains in freedom and democracy, channeling its economic might inward, then upward. In 2031, the People’s Supreme Society sent a mission to Mars as a stunt, beating Europe and America to the red planet. More significant, they’d constructed a permanent station in low Earth orbit as a launch facility for their Mars craft.

Within five years, there were two stations. Within ten, there were six. They also built a Lunar outpost.

Beijing paid top salaries for Asia’s scientists, bringing its sharpest minds into their heartland. They bought cheap labor in Thailand and Kampucheah. They won their border conflicts with Vietnam, then rotated their best generals, techs, and shock troops into orbit.

Old treaties mandated that space must stay free of nuclear weapons, but warheads were unnecessary to disturb the balance on Earth. From orbit, a dumb, simple chunk of iron could act as a missile. It needed to be meticulously aimed, but it could deliver the same yield as a nuke without radioactive fallout.

The debt-ridden Western nations couldn’t leave China alone in space. They screamed for more laws. They passed new sanctions and denouncements. In time, they ejected China from the United Nations — yet they had no choice except to follow the People’s Supreme Society up from Earth’s surface.

The race to claim Earth’s high ground included new developments in quantum computing and artificial intelligence, which led in turn to long-awaited breakthroughs in cold fusion. Green economies created surpluses in the West.

Meanwhile the world’s computer systems continued to grow and transform. Feinting at each other, stealing codes, infecting their enemies and being infected, they made each other smarter.

In space, Europe and America were pulling even with the People’s Supreme Society when Chinese SCPs stuttered through their defenses, turning off the lights and freezing their missiles in their silos. It was meant to be a death stroke: a one-minute war. Instead, American memes returned the favor, masking Chinese data/comm with false signals.

Both sides opened fire.

Too many missiles went for soft targets.

On Earth, seven hundred and fifty thousand people were vaporized because the AIs thwarted each other, muddling the coordinates for military installations with electronic umbrellas. They routed their weapons toward less-protected sites to chew away at each other’s capabilities.

On the outskirts of the cities, another two million people were blinded and maimed by the fireballs. Neither side won World War III. The armistice led to the creation of the new Allied Nations and the promise to keep war from Earth forever, but it was the West that had absorbed the most devastating losses. The People’s Supreme Society remained the leading force in the solar system, reining in allies like Iran and Brazil.

Vonnie supposed the current political climate was another reason Bauman had won her role as commander of their expedition. The Americans, like Europe, were desperate for any gain in status, whereas the Chinese probably felt that chasing bugs was beneath them. Until they’d discovered the carvings, China had graciously permitted lesser nations to lead the science team in exchange for a bit of international goodwill.

Ash would have been a baby during the missile strikes. She couldn’t possibly have personal memories of her lost family members, although from what she’d said, she’d grown up in their absence with a grieving mother.

In her soul, maybe she was looking for something she’d never known. Likely her formative emotions as a child had been survivor’s guilt and anger. That explained how Ash could be obsessed with politics instead of seeing what was right in front of her, and yet Vonnie refused to give up on their relationship.

The jeep parked. Vonnie clunked their helmets together. “We’re working for the same thing,” she said.

Ash was confrontational. “I don’t think so.”

“We both want to protect people.”

“Being buddies with the sunfish isn’t important. Not compared to national security.”

“They’re part of our future.”

Ash scoffed in Vonnie’s face. “You want to make them citizens? You really are crazy.”

“Don’t be stupid. The sunfish couldn’t handle Earth gravity. We’re not bringing them home. But you can’t ignore them. The sunfish won’t disappear because you’ve got your truce with Brazil, and you don’t want China to build allegiances with the tribes first — not if that puts China ahead of us in bioresearch.”

Ash paused. She frowned and said, “I’m listening.”

“We’re behind the curve on finding Europan lifeforms, not just sunfish, but everything else that should be in the ecosystem. China didn’t blow the hell out of their zone like Brazil did. That noise affected our territory, too. Now Brazil’s mecha are closing in. Our sunfish are on the move. If they don’t run, they’ll attack.”

“That means we’ll have our tissue samples.”

“But it’s a one-time gain. What if there are other, more useful species farther down in the ice? The sunfish could be our guides. They could defend our probes. Christ, if they were willing participants, they could teach us everything we want to know about their life cycle.”

“We…” Ash glanced at her lap, then looked up with new resolve. “You should see Dawson’s mem files. There are three aspects of sunfish physiology that are particularly viable.”

“I believe you. That doesn’t mean we should give up on communicating with them.”

“It’s too late to call off the FNEE mecha.”

“What if I find Lam?”

“Can you? I changed him, Von. If you wrote any back doors into his programming, those codes probably won’t function anymore.”

Shit , Vonnie thought. She’d intended to alter her kill codes to act as slavecasts, compelling Lam to quit hiding. They could track his signals, pick him up and extract him before he — or the Brazilians — went deeper into the ice.