Jeff Carlson - The Frozen Sky

Then it stopped.

On the fourth day, Koebsch moved his seat of operations from Lander 05 back into Module 01, which housed their central AIs and data/comm. He’d been able to access those systems from Lander 05, but his job was better done from the command module.

He rescinded most of his crew’s data/comm privileges, beginning with Vonnie. She was the sole crew member at her station. Except for O’Neal, who slept in 04’s living quarters, her friends were outside in pressure suits and armor, conducting tests on their new listening posts. It was a superb time for Koebsch to restrict access. He called Vonnie first and almost caught her listening to the channel they’d dedicated to Lam.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been told to route all media responses through headquarters. We can’t afford this kind of distraction.”

“Distraction!?” she said. “You mean the truth.”

“It’s not our job to set policy.”

“Koebsch, what’s happened to you? You’re not like Dawson. I haven’t forgotten what you told me. We volunteered to come here because we’ve dreamed about finding aliens since we were kids.”

“I wish things were different. What else do you want me to say?”

“Help me! It’s not too late to stop the FNEE from sending down another war party.”

“That’s not our decision.”

“Who should I talk to? The director?”

“No one wants to talk. They want to move forward. They want to honor Pärnits and Collinsworth.”

“Pärnits would never say we needed revenge!”

“Von, public support for developing our presence on Europa and increasing gene corp access is polling near sixty percent in most of our member nations.”

“’Increasing gene corps access.’ What a bucket of shit. How do you think it would poll if they asked people if we should shoot more sunfish?”

“The prime minister is personally involved. So are leaders of the senate and every boss you have in the ESA. This is larger than you think. It’s not only Berlin. There’s support in Washington and Tokyo. Sydney. Jerusalem. Rome.”

“The pope should want to save their souls.”

Koebsch managed to shrug, parroting a line she’d heard repeated among the most devout of the religious feeds. “Animals don’t have souls,” he said.

He didn’t mean it, but Vonnie sneered again. “Three hundred years ago, that’s what a lot of churches said about Africans and Native Americans. They said it because it was good business, taking slaves and taking land. They said it because it made them feel holier than any subhuman mongrel. Is that the kind of small-minded dogma we want to bring with us to the stars?”

“Christianity and Islam have a lot of clout on Earth.”

“Koebsch, I know there are religious leaders calling for peace. I’ve talked to them.”

He reached to shut off their connection. “I don’t have time to fight with you. There are two hundred requests on my station that won’t wait—”

“What about your soul?” she asked. “Are you going to be able to live with yourself?”

When he met her gaze, his eyes were livid. “Why do you think you’ve had such a free hand with the media until now?” he said. “I stepped over the line for you. I sent the best media contacts to your station, and I made sure they received every sim you’ve put together. I’ve held off Berlin as long as I could. I probably would have lost my job by now except there isn’t anyone else here. They can’t fire me.”

“I…” She spread her hands. “I’m sorry.”

“You have to realize, Beijing hasn’t suspended their operations. Our government is concerned China’s ahead of us in developing the genetic applications Dawson’s talked about. Unless the sunfish change their behavior, until they can prove they’re not just wild predators, we’ll go ahead as planned.”

Vonnie kept her mouth shut, studying Koebsch’s face and his blazing eyes. He was being recorded, of course. As their administrator, he’d never been allowed to speak from his heart, not personally, not professionally.

“Thank you,” she said, curious if he’d reveal more.

He nodded. “Let’s get back to work. We both have a lot to do.” Then he signed off.

Was he encouraging her to stop the FNEE? If so, one of her crewmates must have told him about Lam… or he’d detected their signals and kept quiet.

’ We’ve dreamed about finding aliens since we were kids ,’ she thought, trying to forgive him.

They needed conclusive evidence that the sunfish were sentient. With it, Koebsch could make a stand. The political, business, and religious leaders on Earth might start to rearrange their positions, however slightly.

The balance of power was close. If a few senators changed their views, if more of the top pundits spoke differently, the prime minister might instruct the ESA crew to stand down. They could withhold their mecha. That should be enough to delay the FNEE, who expected ESA support. Emergency negotiations could begin between the new partners on Earth, followed by discussions in the Allied Nations… but what would be unshakeable proof? Recent carvings? A city?

Vonnie didn’t believe they would ever find a tidy metropolis with roads, stores, and a ruling class. Maybe the sunfish were too alien. Many people seemed incapable of viewing them as anything except monsters.

Some of the most strident voices on the net were demagogues who warned that the sunfish might overrun the human camps, raping and disemboweling everyone. The worst of these delusional attention-seekers shouted that the sunfish would invade Earth. They were either unwilling or unable to conceive of the distance between their worlds or Earth’s crushing gravity.

Nice guys finish last because bad people cheat and steal , Vonnie thought. What does that make me ?

Lam, the real Lam, had no problem breaking the rules to protect Europa. I’ve been doing the same, but now it comes down to his ghost.

I need his help. I need it soon.

Her display held ten in-progress reports for the mecha they were building. Sweeping aside these datastreams, Vonnie examined the limitations Koebsch had established on her ability to receive and transmit.

Traffic with Earth was prohibited. Internal signals were restricted, too, but Lam’s frequency remained active among her mecha links.

“Okay,” she said to herself.

For the next few minutes, she ignored her assigned duties to craft a new, less understated, more basic slavecast.

Like Johal had said, they couldn’t be sure where Lam had gone. Vonnie intended to amplify her slavecast through their mecha in the pit. Koebsch would notice the activity, but she thought he’d look the other way.

Did I misread him ? she worried. If I’m wrong, he’ll kick me off the team. I’ll serve meals and fix suits for a year while they hunt sunfish…

She broadcast her signals into the ice.

The machines beneath the surface were a helix of active sensors and data/comm. Their formation had changed little in four days. The mecha above the ice regularly altered their positions, burrowing into the pit — but below, the few machines with any range of motion tended to be imprisoned in small holes or crevices. One mecha had rescued a listening post and a rover, bringing them into the shaft it was patiently digging upward. Two beacons had also united in another gap.

Vonnie watched intently as all of them responded to her commands. There was a single outsider among their grid.

Trapped near the bottom of the pit was Relay 021, one of the two transmitters she’d surrendered to Lam. Since then, 021 had remained inactive. It was visible on radar and X-ray, but as far as they could tell, it had been passively monitoring their datastreams. Lam must have reprogrammed it to wait for his authorization, which never came.