Vanguard Rising: A Space Opera Adventure Read online

  When Harlan stood back up, the old lady had gone, swept away by the crowd, apparently eager to go about her business. But as he moved toward the exit, he still couldn’t see her in the brightly lit security lounge. What the hell had happened, and where’d she go? And how did she know he was tracking someone? Whatever. He had a lead and figured it wouldn’t hurt to follow it up. Regardless, Vallan was still out there somewhere.

  An hour later, his search bearing no fruit, Harlan was sitting at the colony bar, empty-handed—apart from a shot of the local booze, aptly named Moon Shine. He slammed it back and swore aloud as it burned all the way to his feet. While his body decided how to cope with that, he thought about the old woman again. When he hacked into the ferry’s manifest, he could find no one matching her description.

  To make matters worse, her information—whether real or imagined—hadn’t helped him in his search for Vallan. Although he had no idea what the murderer looked like, he had a digital profile to check against. None of the humans in this bar, or the surrounding infrastructure, remotely fit that analysis.

  He had a trace program running on the colony’s transport database, looking for any matches to Vallan’s many IDs. It was a long shot, but it was all he had for now. He switched on his peripheral to check its status.

  — Evening, Harlan, it said, the voice sounding directly in his brain as though it were some random thought reaching out to him through the ether.

  “Any progress on the trace program?”

  — Nothing. Vallan must have spoofed a different ID chip. We’re going to need a new profile.

  “Damn it.” Harlan slammed his palm on the bar top. “It took weeks building that. How could he have changed it so soon after leaving Atlas Station?”

  — Your guess is as good as mine.

  Typically, Harlan wouldn’t speak out loud like this in public to his peripheral, but he was tired, a little drunk, and no one around him within the small lunar colony bar could give a shit. They were too busy living on the edge, indulging in the only thing they wanted: hedonistic pleasure as they drank, drugged, and danced in with complete abandon, burning through their life vitality like it was the latest consumer drug.

  Harlan shifted his weight on the bar stool and took another shot of Moon Shine. Apparently, the drink was supposed to be the finest liquor on Luna, but to him it tasted of disappointment with hints of bullshit—and yet he continued to drink.

  The abbot working behind the bar received the network notification from Harlan’s glass that the drink was running low. The V2 robot whirred toward him, bottle held between fingers that weren’t at all convincing as it waited for Harlan’s permission to pour another shot.

  That was the problem with V2s: they looked like robots, despite the sophisticated neural intelligence going on under the hood.

  Sure, wheels for legs and multiple manipulators for arms didn’t exactly try to convince anyone they were human, unlike the V3s, but still, there was something odd about them, as if their makers, the self-replicating V1 units, had a penchant for retro aesthetics.

  It was possible, Harlan thought, given how the entirety of the Earth’s computing and transmission data was backed up on the Quantum Computer Array a hundred or so years ago. With every abbot plugged into that massive cache of data and culture, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that the V1s picked up on humans’ 1950s and ‘60s robot design cues.

  “No more, thanks,” Harlan said, letting the abbot sweep up the empty glass and wheel away to serve some sweaty, pupil-dilated kid so young he probably didn’t even remember what abbot stood for.

  Harlan always remembered, however.

  Abbot: Artificial Biomechanical roBot.

  To kids these days, the V3s weren’t even robots.

  — You’re getting maudlin, Milo warned. Time to get back to work.

  “And what exactly do you suggest?” It bothered Harlan that the AI peripheral could detect his emotional state. It helped in many situations, but sometimes a man’s mind ought to be an inviolate sea where no vessel could trespass.

  — Walk that shit off and then think. We know Vallan’s here; we just need to go about this logically. This ain’t your first rodeo.

  “You’re right. I can’t sit around here anymore.”

  The magnets in his boots clicked on and off as he walked across the dingy bar to the exit. His hips and spine ached. Just an hour of Luna’s microgravity had already brought changes to his body. He pictured his bones losing density, becoming hollow tubes of chalk.

  How people stayed here for the long term, he could never guess. At least on Atlas or one of the other stations, you had near-Earth-like gravity, not to mention protection from the sun’s radiation. Being stuck here inside the colony was like being a caged animal: at some point everyone wanted out, to be on the surface. But even with the best equipment, he knew there were still too many dangers for that to be viable for any length of time. If it wasn’t Luna’s untrustworthy landscape trying to kill you, radiation, temperature, and failing equipment were waiting to finish you off.

  Harlan shook his head and stepped across the threshold, leaving the bar and its awful music behind. He turned right into a corridor that would lead back to the hotel complex. The walls were terra-cotta orange; the yellow lights hidden behind slits across the ceiling gave it a sense of warmth that was otherwise absent from Luna’s surface.

  He took three steps, and then something crunched underfoot, preventing the magnets from locking on. He held his leg aloft in the microgravity and looked down. Splayed out on the light-gray surface of the magnetized floor were eight spindly legs, each about a centimeter long and connected to a small, bulbous black body.

  The surface of the spider shimmered.

  — What have you found, old chap?

  “Not sure yet…”

  Harlan stepped back and knelt down to investigate. The leather of his biker’s jacket creaked as he reached inside for a pen with which to poke the spider.

  “The thing’s definitely dead, although there’s no blood or secretions of any kind. The body’s made from a chitin-like material with the texture of fine honeycomb.”

  — It’s artificial.

  He poked a little harder, cracking open the carapace. He instructed his contact lenses to zoom into the small creature, magnifying its insides. A series of tiny chips and PCBs confirmed its artificiality.

  “It’s top-quality work.” Harlan admired the technical proficiency to have created such a thing.

  — Probably came from one of the spy guilds on Galilei Station.

  “Aye, looks like it.” Galilei was the name designation for Station Six: a notorious hive of scum and villainy. A place that Harlan, through no choice of his own, had become intimately familiar with over the years due to the development of his relationship with Gabriel Salazar, the head honcho for one of the many syndicates and a fan of old-school detective novels. It was that connection that had drawn the two unlikely men together, the latter proving to be the most useful of informants.

  Harlan activated his brain-computer interface, reached out to network with the device. Offline. It seemed as if he had inadvertently crushed it to digital death. Didn’t mean he couldn’t get something from it though; just meant it’d take a little while longer. He gathered the spider and placed it in a small vacuum-seal bag—one of the many forensic items within the multitude of pockets of his now-old-fashioned overalls.

  — You know who else frequented Galilei in the last month?

  “Vallan. Commonality isn’t necessarily causality.”

  — No, but it’s a big damn coincidence, is it not?

  The peripheral had a point. Harlan brought up his augmented-reality overlay and programmed an algorithm based on the natural surface texture of the floor. A light-blue blanket appeared at his feet, stretching out across his full field of vision. He zoomed the scene, switched the AR to show him anything that didn’t fit the texture.

  Bingo! There, before him, starting from where
he had first crushed the spider, tiny red dots led down the corridor and back into the bar.

  The damn thing had been following him.

  Finally, a new lead.

  A man’s guttural scream punctured Harlan’s elation. The sound came from deep within the industrial complex. Harlan set his jaw and headed toward the sound, knowing that if Vallan was down there, he’d have no way out—which applied equally to them both.

  One way or another, this case would definitely be settled.

  3

  Earth Restoration Project Facility

  Northeast Greenland

  Irena Selles pressed her hands to the glass window on the top floor of the facility. It was cold to the touch. Frost lingered at the edges of the panes. Outside, the science complex looked entirely alien in its surroundings with its white domes and tunnels amongst the dirt tracks and forest. Spring had well and truly sprung, despite the odds. Greenland appeared to be living up to its name beneath the striking cyan sky, with barely a cloud to smudge this day’s canvas.

  Although she’d been here against her father’s will for nearly three standard weeks, she still got a thrill from its beauty—even if her arrival couldn’t have been more harrowing. The image of those bodies on the ground at the base of the entrance, their arms outstretched…

  At first sight, they didn’t look human; their limbs were distorted and their skin was like bark.

  They were a stark reminder of what had happened to those who were left behind after the Great Migration. Left to slowly branch off from Homo sapiens. The offspring of humankind’s attempt to reconfigure its genetic foundations in order to be more resistant to all the Earth’s ills: irradiated lands, poisoned food supplies, extreme temperatures, and the worst of the lot: Arctic flu.

  Homo adversus, the genetic engineers had called them.

  The pinnacle of human potential.

  In just a few generations, adversus—or earthers as most people referred to them given they had literally inherited Earth—had not just evolved to the planet’s worsening conditions, but had devolved into little more than animalistic creatures whose primary focus was survival at all costs.

  Irena sighed, then drew a deep breath. She turned from the window, straightened her white coat, and walked across the light, airy room to her desk. The holographic screen sensed her approach, cleared her security, and displayed an image of Earth from space. She had set this as her screensaver as a reminder of why she was here: to find a way to fix the weather, diminish the effects the nuclear fallout damage, and perhaps help develop a cure for the flu that ravaged the planet.

  Although she could do little directly regarding radiation or influenza issues, her weather-modeling skills had won her a scholarship as a young teenager. A decade later, at the age of twenty-three, she had secured a place here, at the Earth Restoration Project facility.

  The lead scientist, Dr. Osho, believed her models and scientific thinking would be applicable to the other areas of the facility, citing how Irena’s theories on weather systems could be applied to the spread of viruses. Irena was unconvinced, but was happy to help wherever possible. The facility had many bright minds on the project. Perhaps they would see applications for her theories more easily than she.

  “Are you daydreaming again?” a familiar voice said from the elevator on the far side of the room, the glass doors lit from within by a pale blue light.

  She hadn’t even heard the doors open, but was pleased to see her guest.

  “Darnesh, I’m always daydreaming. It’s how I got here. The question is when are you going to start dreaming?”

  The older, bearded man smiled and zipped his hooded sweater up to his chin as he walked over to her desk. “It’s cold up here,” he said. “You do know you’re allowed to turn the heating systems on. The solar array is fully operational.”

  “Feels warm enough to me,” Irena said. “Not always that warm on Atlas, so you develop a thick skin. You’re just getting too comfortable.”

  “Too much time on Earth will do that to you,” he said. “Well, as long as you stay inside, of course. We had three more of the savages feed on the dead this morning.”

  Darnesh stroked his unruly gray beard. His light blue eyes shone out from beneath wiry eyebrows. His hair was unusually thick for his age and rested shaggily on his shoulders.

  “You know they can’t help it,” Irena said. “I think it’s unfair to call them savages—they can’t help what the virus did to them.”

  The older man sighed and sat on the edge of her desk, crossing his arms. “Aye, I guess you’re right, but when you see them up close, feeding on their own kind… it’s difficult to empathize, even if it is my job to find a cure.”

  “You don’t think they’re too far gone?” Irena asked, taking a seat.

  The older man shrugged. “The computer models suggest not, and we’re still no closer to a vaccine than when we started three years ago. But at least we know what we’re dealing with now. Perhaps we’ll get a breakthrough when we least expect it—like your weather model.”

  Irena blushed and turned away.

  She’d always had an issue dealing with praise.

  What came easily to her seemed to be so difficult for others, which made her seem somehow superior, yet she felt inferior to everyone. Her abilities came to her through great effort. It was just that others often didn’t see all the hard work she’d gone through to get to the point where she could strategize, analyze, and conclude quickly. She’d had to sacrifice a decade or more of her life to develop those skills.

  All the other scientists here worked hard every day to get where they were.

  “I’m sorry,” Darnesh said. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I came up to see how you’re doing with your latest project. Dr. Osho has me on report duty today—she wants to collate statuses while the abbots are working over at the relay station.”

  “I saw them go out yesterday,” Irena said. “Good thing they’re abbots; I doubt we’d have many volunteers to go out there. My father sends me daily emails warning me to stay inside, stay safe. I’m sure he thinks I’m an idiot and somehow unaware of the dangers.”

  “I understand, though. My daughter is working on the Mars colony research center. Not a day goes by I don’t worry something’s going to happen.”

  Irena let it hang for a moment, not wanting to go further into that particular topic. She’d been under her father’s influence all her life, and even escaping to a dead planet hadn’t stopped him from influencing her feelings.

  “Okay,” she said. “Report time.” She gestured her hands across the control surface and brought up the statistics from her most recent weather model, which she swiped toward Darnesh. He received the transfer onto his thumb chip.

  “Thanks.” He stood up to leave but stopped and turned back to her. “There was one other thing.”

  “Oh?”

  “You heard about Romanov, right?”

  “I heard he went outside into the woods.”

  “Yeah, and didn’t come back. He was found this morning. In various pieces. Seems as though he went mad and let the earthers feed on him voluntarily.”

  Irena put her hand to her mouth and resisted the gut response. “That’s awful.”

  “It’s an unfortunate business; he should have been sent back to his home station two months ago. He’d been down here too long. Despite the state of this planet, it still has a hold over us… Don’t let yourself get trapped like that.”

  “I… won’t,” she said, unsure of what else to say. She had briefly studied the plight of what were now called the earthers before she had arrived at the ERP. They were mythologized across the stations and colonies, and depending on the goal of the conversation, demonized. These poor, doomed creatures, the perfect metaphor for unintended consequences, were nothing more than reactive animals trying their best to survive a harsh, hostile planet. That Romanov had purposefully allowed himself to be… consumed could be looked at as incredibly stupid, the act of an insane
mind, or, in some philosophical quarters, the ultimate expression of compassion.

  A brief, uncomfortable silence stretched taut for a moment before Darnesh remembered himself. “I’ll see you later. Don’t work too hard.”

  With that, he returned to the elevator and disappeared from view.

  Barely an hour had passed when Irena’s wrist terminal bleeped with a notification.

  Dr. Osho wanted to see Irena immediately in the facility’s rover depot regarding an emergency situation.

  Irena wasted no time. She dashed across the room, entered the elevator, and gestured to the control panel to take her down to ground level. As she descended, she willed the butterflies in her stomach to stop. Surely there was a good reason for this. Osho didn’t do things for the sake of it, did she?

  When Irena entered the rover depot, she realized she was the last. A group of others were waiting for her, and all stared at her as she entered.

  Darnesh was there, along with Siegfried. In addition were Kestro and Ortsek—the two V3 abbots who looked like a pair of ravens with their beady eyes and dark, straight hair. In front of all of them stood Dr. Osho. Although a small woman of Chinese descent, she commanded the group through sheer charisma and an aura of authority.

  “Irena, you’re here. Good, come in; we’ve got work to do.”

  Irena joined the group. No one said anything. Even Darnesh wasn’t giving anything away with his expressive eyebrows.

  “Okay, listen up, everyone. Whatever your plans were for today, they’ve changed,” Osho said. “We received a distress signal from the abbots up at Station Nord Relay. Their rover is too damaged to repair, and they’ve lost all connection to the network and regular communications.”

  Irena’s stomached flipped. “We’re… going outside?”

  “That’s what I said. We’re going in the secondary rover. We’ve got a weather window of about eighteen hours. That’s more than enough for us to recover the abbots. Everyone, put on your hab suits and load up the rover.”