Чарли Андерс - Nebula Awards Showcase 2018

“The Jīnshān Corporation doesn’t just have an economic monopoly on all off-Earth mining and manufacturing, they have a stranglehold on humanity itself,” Veronica said. “They used fake pictures and video to push through laws to criminalize zero-gee pregnancies, not because they care about children, but to protect their future earnings. Think about it. All off-planet human reproduction has to be approved by them. Do you think they want independent miner families competing with them for mineral contracts? They don’t care about children, they don’t care about humanity, and they don’t care about small, family-owned mining businesses. They care only about Jīnshān . And that’s why they’ve sent one of their people to kill me, before I can show my baby to the world.”

She was on the verge of winning and knew it, but everything hinged on the child. If it were obviously abnormal, then everyone would say, “I told you so.” If the child appeared normal, then things would get interesting. Some would claim it was an elaborate video hoax and others that the child was still broken on the inside, which would become obvious when it grew to adulthood. But some—probably most of those living in space—would pause and wonder if they had been duped these many years. They might also wonder if they, too, could have children outside the Mountain’s artificial gravity. My employer’s desperation made sense in that light.

“Huizhu? Have you extended the antenna booms to clear the drive plume?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Any messages from Veronica?”

“No, but we do have a new transmission from headquarters,” Huizhu said.

“Play it.”

Ignore our news releases. Stay current course. Await instructions.

I was suddenly uncomfortable. “How did they know we based our actions on the news reports?”

“They contacted me as soon as our antennas came online and I told them.”

I swore under my breath. Even if Huizhu was trying to help, she could not lie or disobey direct orders from headquarters. I had to remember that.

INTERCEPT: 22 DAYS, 3 HOURS, 6 MINUTES

“We’ve received another tight-beam message from Veronica Perez,” Huizhu said, waking me from a nap. “Would you like to see it?”

“Yes,” I said and tried to clear the cobwebs of sleep from my head.

“I know you’re there,” she said, then paused as if expecting a reply. “I don’t believe in monsters, so I’m choosing to believe that you don’t really want to kill me and my baby just to prop up your employer’s profit margin.”

Unlike in the public message she’d transmitted, this time she looked tired and frustrated. I wondered how pregnancy in zero gravity differed from a regular one. The fluids would probably collect oddly, and the baby’s position inside her body might be different. Or was it something else? Alone in the quiet of her little ship, did she doubt her own assertions? Was she as much in the dark about the outcome as everyone else?

“It’s lonely out here. Wouldn’t you like someone to talk to? Or does talking to your targets make them feel more human, which will give you a twinge of guilt when you kill them?”

Her face twisted slightly as she fought some emotion, then she took a deep breath and locked her eyes on the camera. “I don’t know what drives you, but I believe in what I’m doing. Someone has to break Jīnshān ’s stranglehold. But I also admit that I’m scared. I want my baby to live and to be happy. I want him to have a chance. If I’m wrong and he is born a tortured, deformed person, that will cause me more suffering than any penalty imposed upon me by Jīnshān . But whoever you are, I’m not asking for your support or approval. Just let my son have that chance.”

I lay in the quiet for a long time after the video ended, floating in my warm slime, connected to life and humanity by tubes and wires, not unlike the child in Veronica’s womb. Unease penetrated every pore. Did my employers have a way to override the missile or EMP weapon programming that even Huizhu didn’t know about?

One thing I did know: the Mountain would never give up.

INTERCEPT: 18 DAYS, 21 HOURS, 58 MINUTES

I watched the numbers counting down as two slightly curved tracks came together on my screen. The missile carried a miniature nuke to divert smaller asteroids, but that would also deliver an EMP pulse, just nothing as big as the FL239 device. Both ships should be far enough away from the blast to be safe.

The data on my screen was four minutes old due to time lag, but I still watched as the count dropped to zero and the trajectories converged. Both dots disappeared from my screen.

I took a deep breath and relaxed. At least that had worked. I dove into the broadcast traffic from Earth and waited to see what reaction the blast would generate. Twenty-three minutes later, the main drive died.

I looked at the status screen. No damage indicators blinked on the screen. The command log showed they had been shut down deliberately.

“Huizhu? Why did you shut down the engines?”

“I was directed to do so by headquarters.”

What the hell? I pulled up the trajectory diagrams and saw that Huizhu had also made the necessary adjustments to keep us on an intercept course with the other ship. Since I was no longer decelerating, we were converging much faster, and the two ships would now meet in six days rather than eighteen.

“Did they give a reason for shutting down our deceleration burn and changing the intercept?”

“No.”

“Restart the engines and recalculate the intercept,” I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.

“I’m sorry, but you cannot override instructions sent directly from headquarters.”

“Can we at least adjust our course so that we don’t actually hit Veronica’s ship?”

“No. I’m sorry, but no commands you can give me will override my instructions from headquarters.”

My heart raced and my hands shook—but with anger, not fear. Once again there was a hidden implication in Huizhu’s statement. I just had to work out what it was.

INTERCEPT: 5 DAYS, 13 HOURS, 9 MINUTES

“Where are you?” Huizhu said.

I was floating in the auxiliary equipment hold, running diagnostic checks on two of the rock-pushers. I would have preferred to simply bypass the propulsion controls, but I couldn’t look at any of the schematics without it being obvious to Huizhu. I wouldn’t be able to slow down for a rendezvous, but by mounting the pushers on the outer hull, I could at least push us off the collision course.

“In the auxiliary hold,” I said.

“Why did you disable the cameras?”

I was on the verge of telling her to figure it out for herself or call and ask headquarters, but she had been trying to help me within her limitations.

“Are you relaying our conversations to headquarters?” I said.

“Only when requested. They have not asked for that information since shutting down the engines.”

That raised a couple of interesting questions. Did they so readily discount my ability to foil their efforts? Or were they worried those signals might be intercepted on their way to Earth and reveal their lies?

I was still going to be cautious. “I disabled the cameras because I needed a little more privacy.”

“You missed two networked cameras—one in the control room and one in the crèche.”

I found it weird that they had installed a hidden camera in the crèche, but I believed her. “But none in either hold?”

“No,” she said. “Of the communications system components accessible from inside the ship, the encryption modules are the most critical. The designers of this vessel installed triple-redundant systems, which includes the communications system. Two of those modules are accessible from the auxiliary hold where you’re located.”