Previous Chapter

The black fog parted and Brian O’Sullivan found himself standing on a vaguely familiar beach, watching the sun set. A strange man stood ankle deep in the surf about fifteen feet away, looking in amazement at his hand as he flexed the fingers one at a time, then all together. Brian swayed for a moment, confused. He’d been exploring possibilities to… to something. He couldn’t quite remember what he’d been so fascinated by a moment ago, something to do with bringing social pressure to bear on outside forces?

He looked behind him, as if retracing his steps would jog his memory. The beach ran up a low sand dune to a line of low, comfortable looking houses of a type that, for some reason, rubbed him the wrong way. He’d never thought of architecture as hostile before but these houses felt hostile for some reason. Brian’s attention snapped back to the man on the beach. “Who are you?”

The stranger turned, sunlight glinting dully off of his dark skin, the extravagant melanin dampening the harsh rays of the setting sun to a barely noticeable corona. He was bald, or shaved his head, and was of an average height. His fingers, finally still by his side, were long and clever and his eyes were set deep in his head. He looked tired. “I’m Director Stephen Mond, from the Nevada Launch Zone Vault. I think we met six years ago, during the annual American Directorate Conference. We discussed the legacy of jazz music in North America, I recall you were a very knowledgeable amateur. It’s a pleasure to meet you again, Director O’Sullivan. Are you… well?”

“How did you bring me here?” Brian demanded, ignoring Mond’s question.

“As I understand it you never left. This is a fugue instance created when you entered Shutdown and some part of your awareness has been routed through it regardless of where you went in the simulation.” Mond offered a helpless shrug. “That’s what SubDirector Baker told us when we were planning this meeting, anyways. I’m afraid this kind of thing is very much outside my expertise.”

“Baker,” Brian whispered. “She was my assistant, wasn’t she?”

Mond folded his arms across his stomach, rubbing one elbow with the opposite hand. “Director O’Sullivan, do you remember where you are?”

He looked the beach over once more. “No.”

“Can you tell me the last thing you do remember?”

“I was… I had just convinced the martians to leave the planet again by…” Brian pressed his fingers to his temples, trying to focus his thoughts and think back. Had he actually convinced them to leave? No, he’d failed at least twice, but then…

“Director O’Sullivan?”

“I’d just convinced them to leave Earth again by applying a materialist dialectic…” Brian trailed off, his memories a confused jumble. “Or was it the existential argument?”

Mond approached cautiously, as if Brian was some kind of panicky rabbit that might bolt at any second. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re referring to, Director. Particularly because the martians haven’t actually left the planet, in fact technically both you and I are in the custody of martian authorities. That’s part of why I’m here.”

“Custody?” Brian did his best to focus on the other man’s face but found that his eyes kept swimming, making clearly reading anything about his interrogator difficult. “I don’t understand what you mean, Director Mond. We’re in Shutdown. By definition we can’t be in anyone’s custody, we’re in a state of consciousness created by UNIGOV to facilitate the transformation of mindsets. Originally it was intended for the martians, yes, but they’ve expanded it quite a bit.”

“Our minds are here, yes,” Mond conceded, “but physically we’re in a facility that is under the control of the Unified Colonial Fleet. They represent the governments of four other colonized planets – well three planets and two moons. We are, for all practical intents, in custody. Even in this remarkable fugue state simulating some of the most impressive sights nature has to offer, we don’t have access to the resources or assistance of UNIGOV.”

“That’s just it!” Brian felt a wave of clarity surge over him. “We don’t need their assistance, we can offer assistance! The whole problem at the root of what we tried to do here is that we tried to formulate a response to the martian problem that functioned on their level. But a martian will always be better at martian behavior than a sapiens. So I started formulating sapiens responses to the issue and I’ve had real success with it in the PEF. I’ve found at least six approaches with cause them to leave Earth under more or less favorable conditions.”

Mond looked truly mystified. “More or less favorable? What do you mean? And what is a PEF?”

“A probability expansion facilitator, Director. It’s an entirely new, unique and decidedly sapiens technology that was, ironically enough, created by the martians when we placed them in Shutdown. It’s a tool that harnesses the power of our mind and combines it with the potential of a computer.” Brian turned to gesture towards the probability tank, only to remember it wasn’t there. “Well, I can’t show it to you right now. But it really is a marvel of forward thinking technology, using our subconscious mind to create a probabilistic projection of future events!”

The other man’s confusion was slowly turning into clear disapproval. “So it is just some kind of advanced modeling software?”

“It’s not just modeling software,” Brian snapped, “it gives us the ability to grasp the future in a way that the martians cannot! We can do it ethically. We can go forwards and backwards, see the issues from all angles and find solutions that allow us to reach our ends without ever having to oppress or assume. All we have to do is predict.”

Mond’s brows knit together. “Director O’Sullivan, at some point prediction tips into assumption.”

“We have everything we need here, Director Mond!” Brian found himself tugging frantically at his hair, trying to grab hold of the possibilities whirling through his mind in an jumble of half formed conclusions. “Listen, it’s not just social possibilities we can model here. The scientists who were working on the Light of Mars were crafting viable technological angles to explore without every having to build a model or run a test. Think of all the difficulties that could prevent! Vincent Vesper’s missteps along the way to a final, working model could be bypassed entirely so that we arrive at a final solution without having to intrude on the Earth for materials to build thousands of useless prototypes!”

“A dozen at most, Director, and hardly missteps. I spoke with Mr. Vesper a few hours ago and he assures me that he had a new prototype that would compensated for the issues we experienced with his original run. We just hadn’t acquired the resources to build it yet.” Mond gently took Brian by the elbow and tried to pull his hands away from his head. “Director – Brian, are you all right? I know it can be very traumatic to be in Shutdown but –”

“Traumatic!” Brian shook him off. “Traumatic! If anything it’s the opposite! I feel more alive and aware of my surroundings than I ever was outside Shutdown. Mond, we’ve stumbled across the greatest breakthrough of human history! We have the audacity to call ourselves sapiens. Director, this is the final triumph of the human mind over the prison of flesh and time and what did we do with it? We threw it before martians! The very dregs. This is always where we should have been, pushing forward the sapiens to the greatest heights of understanding, of sympathy, of environmentalism! All we had to do was take everything that could be damaged out there and put it in our mind!”

“Director O’Sullivan.” Mond’s voice took on the tone of a Directorate supervisor calling a meeting to order. “Don’t be absurd. In the time you’ve been in here seventy three percent of the comatose people you took out of Shutdown have slipped into brain death. SubDirector Baker isn’t sure the others will ever recover. Even some of the people who originally regained consciousness when removed are slipping into comas. Whatever happens here isn’t good for the human body or mind.”

“I’m sure it won’t take long to work out those problems! Besides, they were here in Shutdown not long ago so I’m sure we can find them again! There was one of them left in the Sarajevo instance. Maybe he can help us.”

“Baker found him in the records,” Mond said. “One of the techs on the program jumped off a roof and was nearly brain dead when moved into Shutdown. He’s never come back to full brain activity, Brian, that’s why he wasn’t removed with the others, a medical failsafe subroutine kicked in and prevented it. The ID code on it was so old the Vaults had expunged it from the normal databases, that’s why it took so long to work out what happened to him.”

“So? Just more proof that we can undo almost any harm if we use the PEF technology correctly! He’s still in there and thinking, Mond!” Somehow, Brian found himself gripping the front of Mond’s shirt, hands trembling. He forced them to let go. “We can find the way to solve this problem, too!”

“You’re letting martian ways of thinking take over, Director,” Mond said, pushing gently against Brian’s hands. “Believe me, I’ve been here before.”

“Don’t be absurd.” Brian snatched his hands back and shook himself once, forcing his mind to stay in the present. “If you’re not interested in the work I’ve been doing here, why did you come?”

Mond sighed. “We need you to come out, Director O’Sullivan. The LA power plant and the Bakersfield vault are in martian hands and they want to talk to the Directorate or they’re going to keep advancing. I still have enough access to Directorate systems to smooth some things over. However I don’t have codes that will allow me to get through to them anymore. We need yours.”

“Codes?” He snorted. “That’s all you want? My access codes? Fine. They’re backed up in my workstation in the Vault. Baker knows the password.”

“She said she’d checked there already.”

“Yes, but she didn’t check my music library. They’re hidden in track called “Signs” mixed in with songs by the band Rush. It’s a dummy I created years ago. You can decode them via the music compiler also in my workstation.” Brian folded his arms over his chest. “Are we done here?”

“Brian, you can’t stay here forever, it’s not healthy for you and we need you out there.”

“No, you don’t. Not compared to what I can do here.” Brian gestured back up the slope, even though it wasn’t truly where he’d come from. “I am close to the breakthrough we need, Director Mond. This is how we save the world, this is what UNIGOV is meant to be. You’ll see what I mean soon enough. There’s nothing to gain from talking to martians – they can’t understand a sapiens goals and they’ve never tried it in the past! Your efforts will fail just like all the previous ones. Then there won’t be anywhere else for you to go except back here. I’ll be waiting for you.”

Mond stared at him for a very long time. Then he folded his hands in front of him and said, “Somehow I don’t think you will be. Baker, pull me out, please.”

“Send me back-” Mond vanished and Brian slumped. He’s have to find his way back to the Sarajevo instance on his own, assuming that was possible. But this was Shutdown – no, this was Possibility. He really was capable of anything here so it was only a matter of time before he found his way back there.

Brian turned and started up the slope off the beach. The sun dipped below the ocean and the stars began to peek out of the night sky as figures in shadow swarmed up the path behind him.

Previous Chapter

Carrington stepped off Lander Forty-Two and on to Earth for the first time. It took some six weeks longer than scheduled and, technically speaking, they were at war with the planet. Even so, he felt a sense of nostalgia that was impossible to explain. He’d visited two of the three worlds humanity had colonized along with both of the moons they’d settled and yet never felt the instant feeling of ease he found on Earth.

He’d always thought it strange the way historians called it the Homeworld, with a capitol letter and everything. Now he thought he understood what they were saying.

Major Goldstein and Captain Yang met him as he disembarked, both officers saluting with their helmets slung under their other arms. They looked tired and a little haggard but that was to be expected. Carrington returned the salute, saying, “Major, Captain. Good to see you again. For a little while there, I seriously questioned whether I ever would.”

“We wondered ourselves, Admiral,” Yang said. “But I’m pleased to report the fighting qualities of the Copernican spacer proved equal to the situation.”

“Let’s hope that’s always the case. I’ve brought someone who’s curious about the status of the plant’s garrison.” He gestured up the lander’s ramp, where a couple of orderlies were helping Stephen Mond’s shiny new wheeled chair navigate down to solid ground. “What have you done with the prisoners?”

“Well, we don’t technically have prisoners,” Goldstein said. “Right now we’re telling them they’re persons not at liberty to leave, because prisons are an entirely martian conception and sapiens really can’t be imprisoned so long as their minds are free.”

“Ah.” Carrington could tell the major found the entire sentence absurd in the extreme but by this point he was so used to those kinds of sentiments that the gobbledygook went right past him. “Well perhaps I can talk it over with Director Baker. I think she’s amenable to good sense and I’d like to find out what kind of rules of engagement we can agree on if this conflict is going to continue much longer. The UNIGOV policy of ignoring everything and executing their prisoners isn’t acceptable at this point.”

“Miss Baker isn’t a full Director, Admiral,” Yang interjected. “She’s a SubDirector. Basically the XO to a full Director like Mr. Mond. One of the reasons it took several days to secure the location was because she was reluctant to take responsibility for any of the staff here outside of those in her immediate project group. Said we’d have to get Director O’Sullivan to sign off on it. Problem is, this O’Sullivan guy has been missing for almost three days and for a while there we were almost certain he’d committed suicide or something.”

“Only for a while?”

“Shortly before you arrived the SubDirector admitted he’s activated some kind part of the Shutdown procedure called a ‘fugue state’ and is now refusing to leave it.” Yang offered him an elaborate shrug. “Not sure what’s going on there but it’s causing us a lot of problems handling the Earthlings. For now we’re keeping most of them in the offices under constant watch. They haven’t tried anything but they’re not even paying attention to anything we say that doesn’t come with some level of physical force behind it.”

“I think I can help with that, at least,” Mond said, coming to a stop at the base of the ramp. “It’s been a few weeks but I am still a member of the Directorate. I think I can get some cooperation for your people, at least in the short term.”

“I appreciate that, Director,” Carrington said, offering his opposite number a pleasant smile. “However, I hope you won’t let that distract you from the task at hand.”

“Not at all, Admiral,” he replied, chuckling. “I know you and your priorities, I’ll get you in touch with the rest of the Directorate sooner or later, although I’ll admit I don’t think it will be sooner.”

“What about this fugue state,” Goldstein demanded, “do you know anything about that?”

“As you say, its part of the Shutdown procedure. If I recall my overview of Shutdown correctly, it’s intended to keep people from going mad as they’re left in Shutdown. I’m afraid I can’t tell you more than that.” Mond drummed his fingers on the armrest of the chair for a moment. “I honestly don’t know why Director O’Sullivan would want to go into a fugue state at a time like this. I don’t know him personally. I do know he was part of the subcommittee that oversees changes in approved medical procedures so that may have some bearing on it.”

“We’ll have to put together a group to dream up some questions to ask later,” Carrington said. “Right now it doesn’t sound like we’ll be talking to him anytime soon.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Mond steepled his fingers. “You may not be able to talk to him but perhaps I can. The Shutdown procedure interfaces with our medical nanotechnology to create direct neural stimulation in the brain’s sensory clusters creating what we call the fugue state. If I can enter the same fugue instance that Director O’Sullivan occupies I may be able to talk to him.”

Carrington raised an eyebrow. “And you think I’m just going to let you talk in private with another member of your government? Director, no offense but you’re still pretty damn new at the prisoner thing.”

“Perhaps so. But don’t misunderstand, Admiral, I’m not asking to talk in private and this discussion would be in your best interest.” Mond smiled faintly. “You allowed me back on Earth to open lines of communication between your fleet and the Directorate. Do you think it will be easier to do with one other Director to start with or all eighty six of us?”

After a moment’s thought Carrington nodded his grudging ascent. “You make a compelling case, Director, although I’m sure we’ll find some kind of safeguards to put on that before you dive in.”

“From what she’s told us, I think SubDirector Baker might be able to help with that,” Goldstein said. “We can take you to talk to her, if you like. Or, if you prefer, we can take a look around the facility and I can show you what we’ve captured of Earth’s disassembler fields.”

“Show me the facility, please, Major. And while we’re walking there is one part of the action I’d like to hear about…”

The ground team had turned the power plant’s main parking lot into a temporary landing zone and from there the major and his captain took Carrington on a half hour walking tour of the facility. They saw the beached yacht that Captian Yang called the Armstrong. They saw the several breaches the ground team effected in the plant’s outer walls. Carrington paid particular attention to the plant’s administrative offices and record rooms, where teams were even then working double time to pull as much information out of UNIGOVs computers as they could.

Most of that work would have to be filtered through two or three layers of reports before it finally reached him in a format he could really use. There was enough raw data to keep analysts interested for months. The details Carrington really needed were badly obscured by all that signal noise and for a moment he wondered if taking the LA Power Plant was going to change the situation on the ground at all. However he’d learned one thing for sure in the past few weeks.

When the situation planetside was uncertain, there was one person the fleet could absolutely depend on pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

So after it was all said and done, Carrington had Goldstein take him out of the power plant proper and into the facility’s maintenance garage. Inside a ring of guards, two men worked on an awkward looking vehicle. Power cords tied the thing into the building’s circuits. A huge cylindrical tank for its nanotech reserves sat awkwardly to one side of it’s main body, which was probably a van at some point in its life. Scattered around the vehicle were a bunch of parts Carrington vaguely recognized as computing related. Perhaps a few power couplings mixed in with it.

The two were in the process of pulling a heavy set of magnetic coils out of the van’s main body, the man on the ground struggling to hold the coil’s casing while the one in the vehicle called out orders. Carrington watched for a moment as they got the coils down and dusted their hands off. The man inside the vehicle was new to him, dressed in a simple jumpsuit more suited to a janitor or maybe a prisoner than an off duty spacer from any of the planets represented in the Fleet. The other one was who he’d come to find. “Sergeant Langley,” he called. “A moment of your time?”

Langley jerked to attention and saluted. Carrington returned the salute and motioned to the other man, saying, “Get that straightened out and then join me, if you will.”

“Yes, sir!”

The admiral hadn’t seen Langley since promoting him to his new rank a couple of weeks ago. At the time the younger man had seemed exhausted, distracted and directionless, all factors that pushed the admiral to return him to active duty right away. It was better for the mind to be engaged with meaningful work than dwell on failure, after all. He was pleased to see that decision had ended up much as he’d hoped; Langley looked much more alert and engaged with the world around him. Both the Major and the Captain agreed that he’d played a significant part in keeping the landing group safe during the time they’d been out of contact.

None of this surprised Carrington in the least. He considered himself a good judge of character and Langley’s first visit to the planet was ample evidence to his value in a tight spot. But he was still quite new to leadership and his overall effectiveness was still up in the air.

Langley left his companion with some of the other spacers and joined Carrington by the entrance to the garage, wiping his hands on a rag. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Admiral.” He titled his head back towards the vehicle he’d just been working on, saying, “I managed to convince Vesper to help us take these things offline, even if he won’t explain how any of the hard or software works. At the very least we can prevent UNIGOV from using them again, should they capture them.”

“Vesper…” Carrington thought for a moment. “He’s the engineer, wasn’t he? The only one we’ve found so far with any mind to build weapons or fight back.”

“That’s the guy. He has the head for fighting but he’s not that good at it, as it turns out.” Langley waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the ocean. “He came up with a couple of curve balls during the capture of the power plant but when it wasn’t enough to stop us he made a run for it. When we caught up he just surrendered. I don’t blame him but he clearly isn’t a fight to the death kind of guy.”

“Understandable. From what I’ve seen of UNIGOV’s Directorate, they don’t exactly inspire a whole lot of loyalty or sacrifice.” Carrington led the way outside, looking for a place where they were less likely to be overheard. “I wanted to congratulate you on turning another potential disaster into a success story, Sergeant Langley.”

“Thank you, Admiral,” he said, taking on a more polite tone. He seemed to sense this conversation was reaching a more formal level. “Have you come to interrogate the prisoner, sir?”

“Should I?”

“That’s way above my pay grade, Admiral, I just thought you might want to. I heard you’d been spending a lot of time with Mond before the ground team shipped out and frankly, this Vesper guy is almost as fucked – uh, interesting.” Langley paused to give the Earthling a glance that was almost apologetic. Which was interesting in and of itself. They were out of earshot, however, and Vesper was up to his elbows in the couplings between the vehicle and its tanks. “I take it that’s one of those disassembler field generators you captured?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How did you convince him to help you take it apart?”

“Vesper was part of a weapons research program, Admiral,” Langly said with a wry grin. “Do you really think UNIGOV let him run free after developing that?”

“Ah. So you promised him we wouldn’t lock him up and he agreed to help.”

“Not exactly.” The younger man scratched the back of his head with an uncomfortable look. “Actually, all we had to do was convince him we weren’t going to put him in Shutdown or something similar, which was easy enough to do when he learned we don’t have the tech for it in the first place. He seemed downright spooked by the idea of going back in.”

Carrington laughed. “What, he doesn’t like the idea of a permanent coma?”

“No, sir. He was even willing to spend the rest of his life confined, just so long as we didn’t put him in a fugue again.” Pity was writ large over Langley’s features. “I never thought dreaming for the rest of my life would be a terrible fate but something about it really unnerved Mr. Vesper.”

“Interesting.” Carrington folded his arms across his chest and really studied the Earthling for a moment. He didn’t seem all that out of the ordinary. “Has he been debriefed?”

“Major Goldstein interrogated him yesterday. There’s probably a summary and report on it floating around in the comms somewhere but that’s also out of my pay grade.”

“Perhaps. For now, I have something else I want you involved in,” Carrington said, grinning.

“Please don’t tell me I’m getting promoted again.”

“Even better.” Carrington made sure to show all his teeth. “I’m bringing you into a matter of interplanetary diplomacy.”

Previous Chapter

“Of course they have fucking boats here,” Lang muttered, panting as he slowed to a stop on the docks attached to the plant’s secondary warehouse. Unlike the quaint, deliberately retro docks where they’d hijacked the Armstrong, this anchorage didn’t have painted faux wood piers or heavy ropes to tie up the ships. It was a heavy, concrete and plastic affair with automated docking arms to hold the boats in place.

There were slots for four ships about half the size of the yacht they’d brought with them, only two of which were present. A third was headed out into the bay and open water. Lang cursed more under his breath as he tried to rally his faculties. Harry slid to a stop beside him, not even winded. “You gotta get more time in an exo, Sarge. You keep fighting the mechanized parts of the suit and that’s why you’re so tired, you gotta practice more if you ever want to break that habit.”

“Lang is allergic to anything that doesn’t involve his flying boxes,” Priss said, bringing up the rear and not looking any more winded than Harry. “Did that Vesper guy take of on the boat out there?”

“Probably,” Lang said, no longer gasping like a drowning man. “We’re gonna check the other two just to be on the safe side.”

“Do we steal one if he’s not here?”

“Cross that bridge when we come to it, Priss.”

They got to the bridge ninety seconds later, when the resident boats proved entirely empty. Lang stood on the gunwale of the boat he’d just confirmed was empty and looked out in the bay at the departing ship. “In my expert opinion, whoever’s on that boat is a terrible pilot.”

“Two days is enough to make you an expert, huh?” Priss asked from her spot by the boat’s engine.

“The standard issue Earthling isn’t the type to travel by boat,” he replied, “and that’s exactly the kind of assessment we’re here to make.”

“These boats don’t look nearly as derelict as the ones in the marina where we got the Armstrong,” Harry pointed out. “Could be they brought these people in by water.”

“We just need to find Vesper,” Lang muttered.

“Why do you think he’s so important?” Priss asked.

“Because he’s the first one to show any sign of fighting back against us and he’s supposedly part of their only active weapons program.” He shot her a sideways glance. “Do you really think we can come out on top of this if someone on Earth grows a backbone and weaponizes any of the crazy advanced nanotech we’ve seen around here?”

“It’s hard to gauge how big the tech advantages are,” she said. “We’ve developed in very different ways over the last two hundred years.”

Harry cleared his throat. “Yeah, but our estimate of the planetary population is still in the hundreds of millions and that’s before they bring anyone out of Shutdown. The fleet’s not even fifty thousand people. And Mars can’t add that many people to the count, can they?”

“Maybe a thousand fighting age adults, unless they can sort out their population in Shutdown,” Priss admitted.

“So we have to try and nip this in the bud,” Lang said. “If they get any momentum behind them then we’re not going to have a snowball’s chance in hell of stopping them. Just have to get past this fucking water.”

“Well, I’ve got a copy of the code cracking program that got us into the Armstrong,” Priss said. “Let me see if I can get this thing running.”

Lang licked his lips. “Sure. Let me know if you need any help. Harry, keep watch. I’ll call it in to the captain and keep an eye on Vesper’s boat in case he tries anything fancy.”

Updating the captain on his plans took about three seconds and consisted of his recording a verbal report in her AI’s memory system. While he was at it he updated his log recorder. That left him watching Vesper’s boat through his binoculars. The absolute last thing he wanted was an Earthling with initiative. It was true that he’d found UNIGOV’s so-called sapiens policies draconian, destructive and antihuman. However just as quickly he’d come to rely on the predictability that they inflicted on the population. He could see why Mond wanted to keep things as is. The power a Vault Director like him had would quickly get chipped away if every person on the planet had their own ideas about how things were supposed to work.

By the same token, the ability of the spacer fleet to run roughshod over the planet would be seriously impacted if the people on it had their own ideas about fighting back. The similarities between his motivations and Mond’s were unsettling. He wished Dex were there to give him shit about it.

The sun was fully risen and yet the ocean beneath Vesper’s boat still seethed with shadows, the glimmers of light that reflected off the surface seeming to mock him with their empty illusion of illumination. He didn’t know the first thing about sailing. Jokes about his expertise aside, the only thing he knew about travel by sea was that it remained the most dangerous form of travel in human history, even with early space disasters factored in. He wanted to just leave Vesper to the sea. Odds were, the Earthling wasn’t going to survive out there any better than a spacer would.

Problem was, spacers had already proven they could survive one short trip.

Lang checked his comm, hoping the captain had heard his message and sent him new orders. No such luck. Priss and Harry were going to hijack the boat, barring the unforeseen, and then he’d have to decide whether they were all going to risk their necks on some moronic scheme to run down a stranger they’d never heard just to make sure he was good and dead. Or at least in a brig somewhere.

No wonder the people of Earth preferred to leave decisions to UNIGOV. No wander their Directors desperately wanted to quell as much conflict as possible, to the point they would rewrite their own history to accomplish it. This was bullshit. He couldn’t even keep a braindead moron like Dex from walking himself into a plasma blast, how was he supposed to make these calls? People like him were a dime a dozen. There had to be hundreds of them in LA alone, giving the local UNIGOV Director fits day in and day out. Lang knew if he had that kind of problem to deal with he’d want to put most of them in permanent hibernation, too.

Priss was smarter than Dex, of course, probably smarter than he was himself, at least in terms of managing people. But that kind of thing could almost get her in more trouble rather than keep her out of it. In the Nevada Vault he’d left her alone for an hour and she’d nearly gotten her brain sucked into the crystal palace where they kept people’s memories from Shutdown.

At least, he guessed that was how those places worked.

He didn’t know Harry, which was even worse. A complete unknown was someone who’s foibles and weaknesses he couldn’t mitigate at all, someone dragged along in his wake strictly by merit of the stripes on his sleeve. For the first time he understood why Mond and the others looked at him like a monster whenever the command structure came up. He could walk people right into their deaths and call it a moral good. Acceptable losses. Following orders.

Dex’s face swam before his eyes for a moment, ranting at Mond and all the stupid, petty hypocrisies that had driven him nearly mad with indignation. That kind of unproductive, self sabotaging rage was the essence of the martian that UNIGOV objected to. He could understand why. Since Dex’s death, he’d come to share all those same objections in spades.

He would much rather hide from the responsibility of dealing with the Dexs of the world rather than try and mitigate them, reshape them or shut them down. Martin Langley was more an Aubrey Vance than a Stephen Mond. Yet at the end of the day, he realized that Mond was not any better at solving these problems than he was. He was probably a lot worse.

If sapiens could really handle conflict so much better than spacers Dex would still be alive, after all. That meant he couldn’t hide. Hiding made more bodies than taking action did and responsibility would probably fall on him either way.

“Hey.” Lang jumped so hard he nearly fell of the pier into the ocean. Priss suppressed a snort.

“What is it?” He asked, ignoring her laughter.

“Are you up for this?” She asked. “I know you haven’t been at the top of your game lately, it’s only been a couple of weeks since we were drugged POWs in UNIGOV’s hands. Then you got a promotion and redeployed in a specialty you aren’t trained for. It’s a lot.”

“I’ll take your word for it. You are better at managing people than me.”

“Thanks?” She sat down beside him and looped an arm through his, pulling his binoculars down. “Do you want to call the captain and ask for reinforcements?”

Lang looked at the ocean for a long time. Anything could happen out there. Vesper could have any kind of nasty surprise waiting for them once they caught up to his boat. There was no guarantee their weapons and exos were up to the task of bringing him in. Anything could go wrong.

The only thing that had to go right was getting Vesper. Lang shook off Priss’ arm, clambered to his feet and stowed his binoculars, saying, “I’ve already informed her of our plans. Right now, time is critical. I take it you’re here because you unlocked the controls of one of the boats?”

“We did.” She shook her head ruefully. “I gave it a quick lookover and these systems seem a lot less sophisticated than the ones on the yacht. Maybe that’s not surprising. It doesn’t look like its intended for long range or bad weather. Still, it’s not going to be as safe as the Armstrong was even if we did have time to make modifications to it.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “That is a risk we are just going to have to take.”

Priss looked at him for a long moment and then grinned. “You’re sounding like yourself again, flyboy.”

“Never. Now shut up and get on the boat.”

They shut up and got. Two minutes later they had the craft untied, the motor running and the wind at their backs. Lang took them out after Vesper across the blue waters of the bay.

Previous Chapter

“Director? Director O’Sullivan, can you hear me?”

Brian tried to focus as concepts and possibilities flooded through his mind in an endless procession of ideas and the interactions of those ideas. Someone was talking to him. His mind grabbed on to that fact with both hands, in spite of the fact that his hands were paralyzed in his fugue state, and dragged him back to the immediate. “Baker? Baker, is that you?”

“Yes, Director. Are you all right? Your vital signs spiked to dangerous levels about ninety minutes ago. It looks like they’ve stabilized now but they’re still elevated above levels that the diagnostics say are significantly above normal.” Baker’s news was ominous but she didn’t sound upset about it. Her voice was distant. Nervous.

There was something he was supposed to say about that. What was it? “How are you feeling, Baker? You sound like you are under a great deal of stress right now.”

“That’s… that’s a little bit complicated, Director. There’s someone here who wants to talk to you about-”

“I’m busy Baker. I wanted you to monitor my status so you could disconnect me from the fugue if things became dangerous and now you’re telling me you didn’t even notice when things went bad? How am I supposed to focus like this?” Brian threw aside the batch of ideas he was trying to sort and strode back through the swirling potentials and out into the tower where Vesper was waiting for him.

Vesper was watching his readouts and clucking to himself. “How did you find it this time, O’Sullivan?”

“Director, I apologize for the oversight but you have to understand that the situation with the Martians has progressed very quickly and-”

“I don’t care, Baker.” He stepped out of the potential tank and down to the floor while wiping sweat from his forehead. “I’m on the verge of a breakthrough here with Vesper and I need to focus.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence on Baker’s end of the line while Vesper frowned at him. Suddenly the researcher turned frantically to his board and studied it. Brian couldn’t make anything out of what it said but he got the impression Vesper wasn’t very happy with it. Before he could ask the other man what was wrong Baker spoke up again. “Director, Vincent Vesper isn’t available any more. I don’t know what research of his you’ve found, or think you’ve found, but continuing to pursue it at this point isn’t going to help us very much.”

Brian glanced down at the younger Vesper. “SubDirector I think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised when you realize how far off base that assessment is. I just need… how long have I been in here?”

“About six hours, Director.”

“Only six?” He felt his eyes widen involuntarily. “Feels like ten times that. Interesting. I didn’t realize the fugue state altered your perception of time. Or is it the probability expansion?”

“The what?”

“Brian,” Vesper snapped. “What are you talking about?”

Splitting his attention between Baker and Vesper was beginning to take a toll and Brian considered just putting one of the conversations on hold. Unfortunately he wasn’t really given a chance to. “Director,” Baker said, “are you talking to someone else in there?”

“Yes, Baker, I am. Give me a minute, please, this is getting very difficult.” With all of his sensory input routed through his nanotech infused nervous system directly to his brain it was more difficult than he’d anticipated to separate one layer of experience from another. It wasn’t like he could press on an earbud to help focus on Baker’s voice. By the same token, they hadn’t built a system that let him shut off Baker’s voice if he needed to focus on something that was happening within the fugue proper.

Of course, they hadn’t anticipated the probability expansion facilitator either.

When Vesper first integrated Brian’s mind with the PEF it was the most disturbing thing to ever happen to him, more so than his initial medinano injection, more so than discovering UNIGOV had Shutdown both his parents a decade ago, more so than learning homo martians had come back to Earth for the first time in centuries. It most closely resembled the artificial psychedelic state that he’d experienced when he joined the Directorate. The point of that exercise had been to harden his mind against the distractions of cheap, emotional spirituality by filtering cheap neurotransmitter induced illusions through his medical systems. At least that was ostensibly the point.

Over the years Brian had learned many members of the Directorate actually routinely returned to the medically induced trance to try and improve their own understanding of themselves. He’d never joined them. When Brian experienced that first psychedelic trance he’d felt as if some towering presence reached within him and took out something important. He’d never been able to figure out quite what it was but he never wanted to go back and find out, either.

Looking back on it, the strange night terror that had pursued him through the fugue state was probably an expression of that first, badly managed psychedelic experience. The presence he’d felt in that trance hadn’t been a distinct visual thing. Instead it had felt more like a powerful being that manipulated the spinning, hypnotic landscape that he’d witnessed creeping in the edges of his vision as the trance made him feel like he was leaving his own body. The geometric shapes had cut away at his very soul, leaving him hollowed out.

Or, at least, that was how he felt at the time. Coming back from that point he’d remembered that ideas about souls and spirituality were just one of the shackles martian thought left on the sapiens mind to ensure they never reached their full potential in the here and now. What he saw in that trance was just his subconscious mind trying to reconcile the contradictions inherent in those shackles. Just one more reason, he told himself at the time, not to go back into the trance. He hadn’t realized the fugue state worked on similar principles because he hadn’t had time to delve too deeply into the idea when he was brushing up on the tech a few days ago but, with one major exception, it turned out the technology was basically identical.

Said exception being that the PEF was to a medically induced trance like the sun was to a candle. Vesper wouldn’t tell him – or perhaps didn’t know – if the PEF system was created by people from the Light of Mars project or if they’d borrowed it from someone else who’d entered the Shutdown fugue before they did. What he did say was that it expanded the human mind exponentially. By focusing heavily on specific ideas and formulas they’d been using the PEF to extrapolate the outcomes of various systems they wanted to test for their engineering project.

The details on how the system created its future projections were a little fuzzy. Again, Brian didn’t know if that was because Vesper didn’t know how it worked or if he was just trying to keep some secrets for whatever reason. What he did know was that the PEF became more effective the more human minds were tied in to it. When they’d dumped all the other Light of Mars engineers out the PEF had gone from highly productive to almost inert overnight. Vesper’s progress had ground to a halt. Thus his eagerness to recruit Brian into his work as soon as he arrived.

However after the initial shock that came from the PEF Brian found that the system itself might have some merits to it. Vesper was getting good data. Brian’s role in the Directorate was only tangentially related to nanotechnology but he knew enough to understand every third or fourth word the researcher was saying and that told him Vesper’s work was promising. After only two trips into the potential tank Vesper had most of the kinks worked out of his new system.

But Brian was beginning to wonder if perhaps they could use it towards even more relevant ends. They could bring the entire Light of Mars project back into the fugue and then add his own mind and Bakers to begin running some simulations of interactions with the martians. Perhaps UNIGOV could find a solution to that problem that didn’t require them to build the first fully fledged weapons platform on Earth in two hundred years.

“Brian.” Vesper’s voice cut into his thoughts with an irritable edge. “Have you been in contact with the Outside the whole time you were in the potential tank?”

“I have. Is that an issue, Dr. Vesper?”

The researcher exploded with unexpected ferocity. “Of course it is, Brian! I told you the PEF runs all its data through your mind as an auxiliary processing system and if you are in contact with additional data beyond what the probability tank is feeding you then the whole process from start to finish is going to be contaminated! Now we have to start this whole process over again from scratch!”

“Director, who have you made contact with?” Even as he tried to follow what Vesper was saying Baker’s voice dragged his attention in the other direction.

“It’s a long story, Baker, and I don’t have much time for it. If you hadn’t left your post for the last several hours you could have been here for most of it but there’s no sense complaining about that now.” Brian folded his arms over his chest and tapped one foot as he thought about it for a moment. There really wasn’t anything for it at this point. “Baker, I need you to close and disconnect your line to my audio nerves.”

“What.” Baker’s voice was getting more and more flat an expressionless as time went on. “Why would I do that, Director?”

“It’s complicated. You can break the connection, though, can’t you?”

“Yes, I can, Director but I don’t think I should so I’m not going to.”

Brian furrowed his brow. “Why not? Baker, you’ve been out of contact for hours and now you’re refusing to listen to perfectly reasonable instructions on what steps to take to forward our objectives.”

“Reasonable?” Baker snorted, sending a burst of discomfort through his left ear. “How can I tell if your instructions are reasonable or not when you won’t even tell me what factors led you to decide on this course of action?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters! Director, we barely know what goes on in one of these fugue states to begin with, you’ve been hallucinating strange things the whole time you’ve been in there and now you want to cut off all outside contact!” Now her voice was starting to climb up in pitch again. “How am I supposed to advise you or make sure the spirit of your instructions is carried out when I don’t even understand what it is you think you’re doing?”

“I understand your frustration,” Brian said, even though he really did not. “But we don’t have much time to-”

“We have no time, Director!” Baker snapped. “No time at all! The Martians raided the power plant hours ago and they’ve taken the whole place over! I had to turn it over to their Admiral fifty minutes previous. I can’t do anything here besides talk to you and you, well, you’ve got no time at all to finish whatever fantasy project you think is going to let you finish the Light of Mars. We’re sunk, Director, all that’s left is arguing over the details. Now do you think I can pull you out of your fugue without your suffering any of the detrimental side effects we saw in most of their engineers?”

“Then stand by, Director.”

“Stand by for what?”

“I’m going to transfer you over to Admiral Carrington and Director Mond. I have to go and make sure the martians don’t murder Mr. Vesper…”

Previous Chapter

The Sarajevo of the Vespers’ time was still a fully populated city. It hadn’t started emptying for reclamation yet and the streets bustled with activity that wouldn’t be out of place in any of the dozens of still functioning metropoli of the modern day. Still there were some differences. The maglev pathways that allowed for economical hover vehicles weren’t installed so the skies were comparatively clear. The fashion choices of the pedestrians were very different. The buildings were shorter.

All except for twelve reddish towers that loomed over the city.

Each tower was built along a similar theme, standing somewhere between ninety and a hundred and twenty feet tall in a roughly obelisk shape. None of them was close enough to the point where Brian arrived for him to make even an educated guess what they were built out of. Color and general shape were the only things the towers had in common. Unless Sarajevo was a very hilly city – he wasn’t enough of a geography expert to know for sure – no two towers were the same height. Seven of the towers were circular, three were squares and the remaining two were pentagonal.

The tallest tower also looked like it had the largest footprint, while the tower with the smallest circumference was in the middle of the pack in terms of height. All the towers had at least one antenna and satellite protruding from one surface or another. Most of the towers had windows so far as he could see and at least one of those without windows instead had several balconies winding around the outside of the building.

Bizarre towers aside, Sarajevo was a pretty normal city. While the city life hadn’t been as modernized back then it was still comforting and familiar for Brian, who had spent the last several weeks in the empty husk of LA. The bustle of people alone lifted his spirits a little. Then he took a closer look at the general populace and felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, an impressive feat considering he was in Shutdown. The figures on the street had the build of a human but no discernible facial features. He slowed to a stop, trying to look in every which way at the inhuman things passing him by and nearly jumping out of his skin when one bumped into him.

The thing didn’t even acknowledge him, just made a sound that might have been a grunt, then stepped around him and kept going. Brian shuddered and ignored the part of his brain that told him he’d just seen an echo of the shadow thing he’d seen as he drifted into Shutdown. “Baker, how many people are in this fugue instance?”

“There two hundred and fourteen now, Director,” her disembodied voice whispered in his ear. “That’s down from a high of almost a thousand before we started reviving the Light of Mars project from Shutdown.”

“How is that possible?” Brian asked. “We’ve only removed fifty or sixty people from the instance, where did the other seven hundred and change get to?”

“It’s hard to say for sure because we didn’t notice the drop off initially so no one bothered to track what was happening until four or five days ago, by which time the change was already well underway.”

Brian nodded as he walked, understanding the kinds of problems that came from discovering an issue long after the issue had actually happened. “What happened in the time we were watching?”

“A couple of dozen people left this fugue each time we revived someone from Shutdown. We haven’t figured out where they went or why but the rate was far too large to account for via natural death.” Curiosity tinged her voice. “Do you have some theory as to where they’re going, Director?”

“No. I’m just wondering where all the other people came from.” He’d been on the streets for less than half an hour and he estimated he’d passed a good sixty or seventy people already and if the rest of the city was as populous as this one street there had to be over a million people in the instance. Or, at least, a million things that looked like people. “Does the fugue create people, Baker? I didn’t think we had the kind of software you’d need for an undertaking like that.”

“We don’t. We can’t even get a convincing chat algorithm going for existing AI.” Baker didn’t sound that surprised to hear about the people in the fugue, however. “What you’re seeing is probably a reflection of your own conditioned expectations for city life reflected back at you via the fugue state. You expect to see people so the fugue creates a sensation similar to ‘people’ in your sensory nerves.”

“Interesting.” Brian actually found it creepy as hell. He didn’t care for the notion that all his mind could present when asked to fill a city with people was hundreds of faceless ghosts looming about the landscape in dire fashion. “Where can I find the instance’s actual inhabitants?”

There was a long pause which he first took to be Baker’s looking up data but quickly realized was her consulting documentation instead. “I honestly don’t know, Director. It looks like we never built anything to locate people inside a fugue state. After all, if we needed one of them for anything, we could always find their pod and pull them out without any need to go into Shutdown at all.”

“Are you suggesting I just wander around until I find an actual person? How will I even know them when I find them?”

“I’m afraid I have no idea.”

He sighed and took a different tack. “Did Sarajevo have a dozen strange, red towers in it when it was reclaimed?”

“Red towers, sir?”

“That’s right. Average height of about a hundred feet. No pattern to their layout that I can see.”

“Let me look that up.” There was a lengthy pause, which wasn’t surprising as most information on reclaimed cities was stored in the vaults and not accessible to the general public. It turned out that even sapiens clung to records of that type and pined wistfully for days when they lived in places they had colonized and polluted with their presence. These days only the Directorate had access to them. While a SubDirector was a part of the Directorate, so Baker could get that information, the levels of security she had to go through were pretty lengthy.

Brian passed the time by wandering the streets, marveling at the street signs and strange smells. UNIGOV hadn’t instituted it’s language unification policy at the time this instance was created. The written language was a mix of the standard sapiens alphabet and some other, archaic symbology that must have been abolished when the Sapiens Linguistic College was established. He didn’t know much about the symbols or what they meant, since neither linguistics or anthropology were his fields of study, but he preferred it to the alternative.

The crowds of faceless people weren’t growing any easier to deal with. Worse, as he meandered down the street he began to catch glimpses of darkness from the corner of his eye. At first he thought it was just his mind playing tricks on him. Then he remembered that everything around him was technically his mind playing tricks on him and he wasn’t sure what that meant for the things he was hallucinating. Was a night terror still just a bad dream here? Or did they have something to do with why all the people they’d taken out of Shutdown came out fundamentally off?

Were they even human, albeit of the martian variety, or were they something else?

These were the kinds of nagging questions he was trying to ignore by staring at signs or trying to read restaurant menus posted in windows. He found what looked like some kind of entertainment venue advertising musical acts in both languages. While never much for the classical martian instruments like the violin Brian did at least find it a little interesting to compare the two posters and tried to amuse himself by trying to connect the words in sapiens to the words in the other alphabet. He was actually getting a little invested in the exercise when he found himself locking eyes with the shadow in a reflection in the window again.

Brian froze.

Not that he had any choice in it. Something about locking eyes with that presence forced every muscle in his nonexistent body to lock up and refuse any command he made to move. The rational part of his brain raged at the thing. It made no sense that one figment of his imagination should totally override the rest of his brain whenever it chose to assert itself. It was obscene, offensive and almost martian in how intrusive it was.

“I found the records,” Baker announced.

With a huge intake of unreal air Brian yanked himself away from the glass and spun around to look wildly behind him. There was nothing on the streets at all. Nothing but the normal – or at least far less disturbing – faceless pedestrians of Sarajevo. “What the hell is in here with us?”

“Director? Are you feeling well?”

No he wasn’t. “Sorry, Baker, just talking to myself. What did you find?”

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I need to know how you’re feeling in order to respect your situation, Director.” She said it in the very slow, deliberate way a teacher might lecture their children. “You know that and I’ve never seen you hold back your feelings like a martian before. Just a few minutes ago you reminded me you could work with martians and their ideas without that kind of ideological contamination slipping in.”

“You’re right,” he quickly replied. “I’m sorry. I just hallucinated again – the shadow man, you know, as opposed to all the other stuff I’m hallucinating right now. It’s got me pretty rattled.”

Baker was quiet for a moment. “Director, I’m concerned…”

She trailed off and Baker waited some time for her to continue. “What’s concerning you, Baker?”

More silence. Brian was beginning to get worried and wondering if he should abort his expedition when she finally answered him. “Director, there’s a long standing theory about fugue states. Do you know about the possibility of viewpoint imprinting?”

“No. I’m not familiar with the term.”

“It’s one of the many things the Directorate was initially worried about when they created Shutdown. They considered it possible that the many failings of martians would reinforce each other if all martian consciousness were put in a single fugue. What if they developed some kind of group mind or their thought patterns infect the fugue itself? What if their fugue state became a kind of entity unto itself?”

“Those ideas…” He wanted to say they sounded very fanciful but, now that he was in Shutdown himself, he had to admit the possibilities didn’t seem as far fetched as they might otherwise. He was working extra hard to keep a grasp on reality and he hadn’t even met anyone yet. “Lets proceed on the premise that there’s some level of truth to those theories and the night terror I’m seeing is some manifestation of that. How fast can you pull me out of this instance?”

“In three or four seconds.” The answer was pretty much instantaneous so Baker had to be pretty confident in it. “Five at the outside.”

“Fine. I want you to have a panic button ready to pull me out at any moment. If I ever report seeing that night terror again hit that button and pull me out of the fugue, understand?”

“Certainly, Director.” Baker sounded pleased to be putting some countermeasure to the hallucination in place. Brian wasn’t sure it warranted such a thing, wasn’t even sure it was dangerous, but Baker was correct. He did have an obligation to work through the emotional situation with her.

“Once you have that done, tell me what you found out about the towers.”

“Of course.” A few seconds pause. “I consulted a number of photographs of the Sarajevo skyline as well as maps and drone footage used to confirm the city was fully evacuated during the reclamation. There don’t appear to be any red towers in the city at that time. Whatever your seeing is something unique to the fugue state.”

“Interesting.” Brian turned about in a complete, three hundred and sixty degree circle then zeroed in on the tower that was closest to him and started walking. “I suppose that’s a place to start.”

“What is?”

“The towers, Baker. If this fugue is just an algorithm that shows us what’s in our minds eye, anything that I wouldn’t expect to see in my mind’s eye must be put here by someone else. I’m going to find out who.”

Previous Chapter

“Anchors aweigh, my boys, anchors aweigh!”

“I swear,” Lang shouted down below decks, “if I hear that damn tune again I am turning this boat around and taking us back to Copernicus.”

Two new voices joined in the chorus. “Faaaaarewell to college joys, we sail at break of da-a-a-ay!”

Lang snorted and sat back down in the pilot’s chair on the yacht’s bridge. Most of the controls had been removed, leaving wires and boards and wires and capacitors and wires and semiconductors and wires all over the place. A couple of enlisted technicians were working on sorting out and replacing the relevant components under the direction of 2^nd Lieutenant Fresh Face. Lang was trying to figure out the pilot’s controls with the assistance of his AI.

“You know, you’re just encouraging them,” Fresh said, looking up from his own AI display with a bemused expression.

“Yes. Sir,” he added just in time. “I’m aware of the futility of expressing annoyance.”

“Then why do it?”

“It makes me feel better. Also I’m pretty sure these Toroidal Mark 4 AIs see a performance boost when you’re annoyed. 3-4% better return on your subconscious brain cycles.” The Princess 48 yacht model they’d chosen for the expedition was either very old or a retro model because it still had actual physical controls like a sliding throttle, a steering wheel and numerous dials and switches for various functions. Stone age stuff. It was soothing to run your hands over while talking to annoying officers. “Try closing the sonar circuits again.”

“We’re still getting that error message,” Fresh said after a brief pause. “I suspect the annoyance preference has more to do with the end user’s preferences than anything in the software architecture of the AI.”

“If I prefer it, does it count as annoyance?” Lang toggled through several menus as he tried to figure out the yacht’s software. “Wait, I think I found the maintenance logs. What’s the error code?”

“76-01:20.” Fresh looked over the shoulder of his other tech. “On the starboard side. Port side is 76-01:10, so my guess is they’re on separate command circuits. And yeah, I’ve known plenty of people who enjoyed being annoyed and spent a lot of time around people that just pissed them off for the fun of being pissed at them.”

“The logs say that’s a software fault. The operating system wants to run an update to check for new drivers because it’s sixty years since the last update was run.” Lang rubbed his hands over his face then left his chin on his palms as he stared out the bridge window. “We’re gonna have to codebreak that and get past it somehow. I’ll add it to the Captain’s list of programming tasks.”

The Lieutenant leaned down to one of his techs and said, “Try the same override code that we used when the reactor wanted to update.”

A couple of seconds later Lang’s screen refreshed and the maintenance logs cleared the error codes. “Ooookay, let’s move on. The checklist says we need to do a test run on the engines. Do we have any updates on whether the screws are clear yet?”

“Harrigan, check on that, will you?” One of the techs acknowledged and clambered down the steps to the main deck. Fresh stood up and stretched, eyeing the rats nest of wires. “Do you think they wove this whole boat out of cables?”

“Too watertight for that,” Lang muttered, looking over the boat’s navigation system again.

“True.” The Lieutenant sat down in the copilot’s chair and watched Lang pick at the controls for a minute. “Have you discussed possible approaches to the power plant with the Captain yet?”

“Didn’t know she wanted to talk them over with me.”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

Lang swallowed a sigh and set the yacht’s computer back to it’s idle mode before giving Fresh his full attention. “Why do you think Captain Tsukihara would want to discuss our course to the power plant with me? I’m not an expert on ground warfare, seafaring or the infantry in general.”

“Yeah, but you’ve been here before.”

“Not within five hundred kilometers of this place.”

He nodded, unphased by Lang’s dry and uninterested responses. “That’s fair. But you did capture a member of UNIGOV’s Directorate so that means you’re the only Copernican spacer to outfight an Earth commander in the war so far. Like it or not that makes you the expert on their approach to… well, everything.”

“Wait. Sir, I’m not a psychologist, I hope people are taking that into account when they come to me for my opinions on Earthlings. This isn’t something I’m uniquely qualified for.”

“I’m not sure about that, Sergeant. You beat them once on their home turf and pulled some crazy stunts out on Mars from what I’ve heard.” The Lieutenant grinned, full of naivety and excitement. “Just think what we can do now that we’ve got a full company of people on the ground now.”

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “We could sink a whole boat full of people!”

“It’s okay,” Fresh said. “The Major and the Captain are both experts on historical warfare and the Major keeps a ton of texts on the subject in his AI most of the time. If UNIGOV was still fighting with the tech level we see now we’d be in trouble. But they don’t fight at all so we still have the leg up on ’em.”

“If you say so, Lieutenant.”

“I do.”

“Sir!” The second tech returned and saluted his officer. “Captain says we’re ready to reconnect the generators and the main turbine. She wants you down in the engine room, pronto.”

“On my way.” He set his readout aside and carefully got up, picking his way around the wires. “Good luck with those controls, Sergeant! We’ll be ready to take it to the Earthlings in no time.”

Lang watched him leave and blew out a breath. “Whew. Was I ever that young?”

“Certainly you were before the war, Sergeant Langley.”

He jumped a little, then rose all the way out of his chair. “Captain Tsukihara.”

“At ease, Sergeant.” The captain picked her way onto the bridge from the other side of the boat, the combined challenges of the rocking deck and rampant wires forcing her to move very deliberately. “What do you make of the good ship Armstrong, Langley?”

“Didn’t realize that was it’s name, ma’am,” he said, relaxing just a bit.

“Corporal Hu decided Tangerine Mist was a terrible name for a warship so we rechristened it in honor of your lost destroyer,” she replied, crouching down by the Lieutenant’s readout long enough to disconnect it and set it up on the control panel. Then she stood up and started carefully picking apart the nest of wires. Like Priss, Captain Yiyun Tsukihara was of Han stock and stood a little over five foot tall, with dark hair and a rounder face. Unlike Priss she was starting to go gray. Her right hand showed the warts and scars of constant use and, based on her left hand’s comparatively pristine skin, Lang guessed Yang had lost at least one limb during her career in the Spacer Corps that was later cloned back into place. “But you didn’t answer my question. What do you think of her?”

Lang shook himself and forced his mind back to the present moment. “I don’t know enough to make an educated judgement.”

“Bullshit.” She stopped what she was doing long enough to give him a disbelieving glare. “I’ve met enough flyboys to know you have an opinion on anything with joystick, all the way down to and including your own torso. I want to know if you think we’re wasting time on refurbing this boat or not.”

“It’s sturdy, it should be fast if the turbines ever run again and it’s got a sensor profile that will keep it low to the horizon,” Lang said as he sat down and worked the computer panel. “The major systems are computerized and I’m working on linking them to my AI. Just steering the thing will be pretty easy, it looks like the steering is intended to be idiot proof, but navigating is another thing entirely. It is linked into some kind of global navigation system that needs orbital satellites or a network uplink to function. So it’s useless on two fronts.”

“We can’t use it without giving ourselves away,” Tsukihara mused. “What’s the other way it’s useless?”

“Pretty sure any satellites it ran off of are gone now and I’m not in a hurry to try and tie this thing’s computer into the FleetNav. I’m 99% sure UNIGOV wouldn’t have left behind viruses or backdoors in their nav computers but I’d rather not run the risk.” He pulled up the boat’s map catalogs. “However we can just follow the coastline in this case. We just need to keep an eye out for a few landmarks and we should be able to make our landing just fine.”

“How do you feel about your team?”

“My team, ma’am?”

Tsukihara stopped sorting wires and gave him another look. Then, realizing he was serious, she set the wires aside, stepped up to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “I forgot you just got your third stripe and from a field promotion at that. Sergeant, we’re going to have twenty people on this boat and I need to keep Lieutenant Bailey with me, not just to keep an eye on the engines but to help me set up and command the deck guns. That’s the entire boat out of officers, which means you’re going to have to put together the your own bridge staff to handle keeping lines of communications open and do whatever else you think needs done up here.”

“I… you want me to put together a team? Ma’am, I don’t have the best record of leading teams.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. You managed to make one out of three Spacers and two Earthlings effectively enough. Not everything worked out the way we might have preferred but…” Tsukihara summarized the team’s capture and Dex’s death with a casual shrug. “You’re still better at it than you think you are. I know you’ve never really been trained to consider command situations but we’ll see where you feel you’re at and go from there. How many people do you think you’ll need, in total?”

“To run the bridge?”

“Yes.”

“Two. Maybe three, if there’s a communications blackout and we wind up having to run messages.” Lang shrugged. “Although I don’t see much chance of that given current situations.”

“Let’s not count our chickens before they hatch.” Yang fiddled with her belt absently, her fingers counting up and down as she worked on the arcane mathematics of command. “Is three how many you expect to need in combat or just those to handle normal functions of the post?”

“More the latter,” Lang admitted. “In a full blown combat situation I’d expect to need a fourth if things go bad.”

“Did you have anyone in mind?”

“I…” Lang frantically ran through potential candidates in his mind. “I’m afraid I don’t at this moment.”

“Well, take a few hours today to work out what competencies you’d need on the bridge then interview people until you can fill those roles with three people. We’ll assign you a fourth as a runner and damage control member for combat situations.” The Captain started bundling the wires together again. “Command is mostly about assigning people you trust to handle specific tasks, Sergeant, and most NCOs get to where they are because they’re good at reading and assigning people not because they’re smart or courageous. Besides, the odds of combat on this mission are low, so don’t make a life and death decision out of this. Go with your gut. We can always shuffle assignments on further outings if it proves necessary, understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good.” She finished with the string of wires she was holding and set them aside. “I’m looking forward to working with you, Sergeant Langley. Get me your personnel requests by the end of the day.”

She left him staring at the console and ignoring his AI, his brain running through the spacers on the boat and where they would best fit in its operations. That was the kind of decision making he could get behind.