Tag - A Technothriller (11 page)

“Hi,” she said with a big smile. “I thought you were going to fly right past us there for a minute. Welcome to Orbital Dreams, sir.” Pulling the tether in, she reached down and turned my grav boots back on. When I was firmly anchored to the floor outside the entrance she asked me, “How are you looking to relax today, sir?”

“I’ve been travelling since this morning – I wouldn’t mind a shower if you have one,” I replied, giving her my best smile.

“We do have shower cubes, however can I recommend the assisted sponge bath and happy ending,” she said, and continued in the same singsong twangy voice that marked her as having come from the Geographic of the west coast of America. “Showers are a bit amazing in space, and if you haven’t had one before you tend to choke on the water. And ejaculations in space are just fabulous,” she gushed, with an attempt at a coy smile and a flutter of her eyelashes.

I hadn’t been with a woman sexually since the night of Milo’s leaving party, and the thought of this beauty or someone like her giving me a sponge bath was very appealing, but a quick glance at my Devstick told me I only had thirty-five minutes to my flight.

“Um, actually I think I’ll skip the shower and just have an alky, OK?”

“Sure,” she said, and led me into the interior. She handed me a tether and reached down to turn off my grav boots. “The tether will take you to the lounge and my colleague will take care of you there.” With that the tether started reeling me towards another circular structure seemingly suspended from what passed for a ceiling – or was it a floor – by a single thick band of polymer tubing. Reaching the entrance I was pulled inside and another woman clicked on the button on my grav boots again. I was beginning to see how all this moving around in space was done.

Leading me down a corridor, the woman held my arm in a light grip, and by the end of the corridor I was walking as normally as I would be on Earth. I took a seat around a plush circular table. In the middle of the table was a woman with a small globe of the Earth floating from a chain attached to her belly button.

“My name’s Christine; what can I do you for?” she said and leaning forward her rather saggy breasts floated unevenly at eye level. She was quite a bit older than the beauty at the door and space wasn’t being kind to her wrinkles. I felt glad that I hadn’t gone for the sponge bath.

“Have you got an Endorpho 80?” I asked.

“Sorry, we don’t have that, but we do have a Marsmellow. It’s a mild psychoactive that lets you view the world through a rose-tinted hue that lasts for about an hour and a half.” She had really long nipples and they were pointing in opposite directions.

“Hmm, I’m not really looking for something hallucinogenic – space is trippy enough. How about something that just takes the edge off but leaves me in full cognitive control?” I said with a smile at her, regretting my unkind thought about her wrinkly body. That we are all beautiful, and each of us is a unique miracle, is something that every morals class teaches from when we are the age of three. But somehow physical attraction is still a main qualifier when it comes to sexual partners. “How about the Valkyrie?” she said. The smile in her eyes that told me she’d picked up on my glance at her elongated tits waving around in front of her. “It’ll give you a real lift, and if you’re on a long haul, you’ll have a great sleep after an hour of great flying.” Her lips stretched into a warm smile, and returning it I gave her a nod and leaned back in the Siteazy.

I took out my Devstick and glanced at my data stream. Nothing had changed. There was the usual chatter from my contribution, spam, and weather updates for New Singapore and surrounding cities. My current location was shown, but because I had my profile on silent self-time, all my contacts knew that I might be receiving but I wouldn’t be updating.

Christine handed me the alky and went back to the poker game she was playing on the Dev beside her. The alky tasted sweet, too much so for my taste, but I was thirsty so I took a long drink of it. Only twenty minutes to go and I still had to navigate myself down to the Moon port for the six hour journey to the Moon. The timer on my Devstick calculated my time to the port and told me I could relax for another five minutes and then I should go. I flashed my cred over the Dev in the arm of the Siteazy and paid for the alky.

The alky hit. I swallowed the rest of it, which tasted crap but felt great, and stood up. I braced myself and, looking down, checked that I had grav turned on. I was flying already and I wanted my feet firmly on the ground. My Devstick picked out the directional lights for me to follow and with a light stride I made my way back out to the main concourse of the Orbiter.

My seat was on an O’RionSpace craft which, at a bargain price of one thousand and one hundred cred, had offered me a full body length Siteazy and gravity simulation suit sleeper for the six hour travel time to the Moon. On leaving the lounge I grabbed a tether leading to the nearest gravwalk and left my boots turned on. The Valkyrie had a bit more kick to it than I had thought it would. This was going to be fun.

Chapter 12

The Man in the Moon

Peary Moonbase, The Moon

Thursday 12 December 2109, 6:25pm

I woke up with a headache and a runny nose. The rapidly deploying seat restraint had woken me. Looking out of the port hole I could see the battered surface of the Moon writ large as we were coming in to land at the Moon Base on Peary Crater.

We were about one thousand meters off the surface of the Moon and descending at a fast glide. The lights of the runway track were bright in the shadow of the southern end of the crater where my Devstick had told me I’d be landing. The seat restraint settled firmly over my shoulders, and after a distinct braking motion as we powered down, we hit the runway with a jolt, followed by the rapid deceleration as we rolled down towards the arrivals bay. The sun was glinting off the solar panels bathed in eternal light on the far ridge of the crater over seventy kiloms away. I could see them clearly, but then they were massive energy farms providing virtually all of the electricity for the Lunar Colony.

As I left the compartment, the craft staffer offered me a smile and a cheery request to fly with O’RionSpace again soon. I smiled in return, and feeling healthy and strong, checked my Devstick as I entered Peary Moon Base. I passed through the security zone, waving my Devstick over the scanner. No alarms went off and nor did any gas nozzles appear in the walls of the corridor. I guess my luck was holding as it had been just under eight hours since I’d left my Cozy that morning.

Exiting from the Moon port, I came into a large open area with a see-through ceiling – the night sky and earth shining brightly in blue-green. Consulting my Devstick for directions, I set off a new stream of color in the lights inlaid into the walkway. I turned on my grav boots and headed for the Lev port that would take me to Shackleton Moonbase on the Far Side of the Moon. There, buried fifty meters below ground, and with access to the surface of the Moon, was the Nineveh Hot Springs Resort.

Taking a seat in the Lev, I relaxed as I called up the map on my Devstick. It showed the little Lev oval tracking its way through a maze of tubes within the Moon’s core. The route to Shackleton Moonbase took us to within twenty kiloms of the Moon’s molten core and was the fastest route available at a total distance of about three thousand five hundred kiloms. Traveling at just over one thousand three hundred and fifty kilos per hour, I would arrive at Shackleton in another two hours and forty minutes or so.

I watched the new global events datafeed in the Lev for a while but kept the volume off. I was bone tired. I felt a little surge of guilt and excitement as UNPOL reported that they still hadn’t caught Jibril and again warned the public that he was dangerous. Then the whole screen turned bright yellow, and white letters on a black strip scrolled across the screen: Breaking News. An earnest woman with a bad haircut stood outside the remains of what looked like it had been a cafe. Bright aluminum chairs and glass were scattered amid pools of blood, mingled in with the food that people had been eating. The text running along the bottom told of a bomb being set off in Paris in the Geographic of France – fifteen dead and forty-five wounded. No one had claimed responsibility but coming so soon after the UNPOL report, it was obvious they were tying the bomb to Jibril. Possible reasons given for the blast were religious extremism, political or business motives and terror tactics. No evidence was given as to who was supposed to be terrified and why. Right after this the Mayor of Paris came on and subtitles told me that this act of terror on innocent Christmas shoppers had to be punished – and that if the Tag Law had been implemented this wouldn’t have happened. I thought that was a giant and mistaken leap in logic but nevertheless I could feel his anguish as his hand waved wildly in the direction of the destruction behind him. The next image was that of Sir Thomas, as Director of UNPOL. I turned the sound up.

“...The perpetrators of this crime against humanity shall be hunted down like the beasts they are and caged as such. We have not seen this kind of action in European cities for many years, and unfortunately it shows that we have become complacent in our security. There are those in society who would seek to impose their will or their doctrine on free-thinking citizens and it is our sworn duty to defend against that imposition. Our condolences and thoughts are with the families and friends of the deceased, and we wish the wounded a speedy and whole recovery in regen. However, our grief will not dissuade nor delay us in our task of hunting down these violent, base criminals. Thank you; that is all I have to say. I have work to do.”

The woman with the bad hairdo came back on, standing in the Paris street outside the bombed cafe. “That was Sir Thomas Oliver, Director of UNPOL, telling us that they are working on this case, and that their thoughts….”

I turned down the volume, shocked by what I had read and heard. A bomb. I looked around the Lev, its normal interior suddenly threatening, and turned off the feed. I felt strangely proud of Sir Thomas and what he’d said. Not just that, but the way he had handled himself and how sincere he looked. Was Gabriel certain that this earnest, sincere man who I called uncle had killed my father? Trying to reconcile these thoughts within myself was too much for my brain in this tired state.

It was 9:05pm New Singapore time when I emerged from the Lev port at Shackleton Moonbase. Consulting the Devstick I pulled up the map that would route me through to the Nineveh. It was now fifteen hours since I’d woken up and I needed to have a clean and get some sleep. Checking my image on the Devstick brought up red eyes with bags underneath them, tussled, sleep-mashed light brown hair and a slight but discernible stubble across my chin and jaw. A shower, or better still an assisted sponge bath with or without a happy ending, beckoned.

The Shack, as it is called Far Side, is the least populated of the Moon’s six bases and there were only a few other people in the tube that I was walking down. A small entranceway, cut into the side of the tube with a white trellis set into it, was where the lights indicated I should go next. I walked into the entrance and took a look at my Devstick to confirm the route. I had looked at this route a hundred times in the last few hours but still it had not etched itself firmly enough in my memory for me to trust the recall. The datafeed from earth showed that service was temporarily unavailable now that I had left the craft and was actually on the surface of the Moon. Of course, the network of satellites usually kept us online, even on the Far Side of the Moon not visible to Earth, where radio waves are blocked by the Moon itself. Must be a sun flare, I thought, and checked the local map. My Devstick had defaulted to the Shack’s environment, providing me with the map I was following and local news. There wasn’t much of it.

Suddenly the map on my Devstick disappeared. I said, “Find Nineveh Hot Springs Resort,” but a glance confirmed that there were no hits for my current location. The tube was quite dark and a door opening about ten meters away cast a yellow glow through to where I was standing. A man came out and stood in the doorway. I looked at him, and taking a step towards him so that I could ask where the Nineveh was, I stopped.

“Hello Jonah,” said Gabriel, and holding his arms wide walked towards me haloed by a golden light. He reached me and smiled into my eyes, wrapping his arms around me in a tight hug that nearly squeezed the air out of me. Putting his arm around my shoulder and pulling me towards the open door, he said, “We have much to talk about, brother, but first you must eat and rest.”

At first glance the room inside the doorway was a storage unit for tube cleaners, and with a grin at the puzzled expression on my face, Gabriel walked to the far end of the small room and pulled a shelving rack out to reveal another smaller door set into the wall. We went through the door and inside was a hole in the floor about two meters in diameter with a spiral staircase going down. Gabriel led the way as we wound our way down the stairs.

“This was one of the early titanium mines,” he said over his shoulder, “but was abandoned and we took it over.” About five minutes later we reached the bottom and emerged into a larger chamber about fifty meters in diameter, lit by a single string of lights suspended from its ceiling and disappearing around what seemed like a downward curve. In the middle of the chamber was a golf cart. It looked incongruous in the setting but Gabriel climbed into the driver’s seat and I into the passenger seat. With a flip of the red switch between us, he pressed his foot on the accelerator and away we went down the tube.

Chapter 13

A Disturbed Sleep

The Marq V, Penthouse Env, Sir Thomas’s New Singapore Residence

Friday 13 December 2109, 1:21am +8 UTC

Three hundred and eighty-four thousand, four hundred and three kiloms away, Sir Thomas was awoken by the persistent but soft buzzing of the Dev’s speaker set into the headrest of his bed. Sir Thomas encouraged the perception that he never slept, and his image had already answered the call, recognized Agent Sharon Cochran, and deciphered enough keywords to initiate Sir Thomas’s wake up experience.