Heaven’s Elevator
By Psion
All Rights Reserved
The terminal at the base of the Cape Canaveral space elevator was a bustling hive of activity, even as the sun hung low in the evening position. The intercom dutifully blared arrival and departure times as flex-screen monitors and augmented reality displays broadcasted one of several news stations. Travelers waited for the next arriving elevator car while watching the outcome of the first Lunar Cup soccer match or the latest developments on anti-corporate unrest in South America and the Central Asian wastelands. Brightly colored banners were hung up in the rafters of the cavernous waiting area, advertising the presence of all the incorporated parties responsible for the Cape Carnival elevator complex, from the agri-business concerns of Epicurean Harvests to the patriotic Arcadia Enterprises. Some presences were fairly muted, like Epicurean or their Grecian rivals Ambrosia, barely visible except for the flags hanging from the ceiling. Yet there was no escaping the star-studded tricolor shield of Arcadia Enterprises, from the flags hanging from the ceiling and the seal over the main ticket booth to the armbands worn by the dour, humorless security guards staffing various checkpoints, there was no escaping Arcadia…
An athletically-built young Caucasian man dressed in simple clothes, suitcase in his hand, slowly surveyed the crowd of fellow travelers with a tired emerald gaze hidden behind a pair of rose-colored sunglasses. Clutching his ticket in his pocket and depositing his suitcase onto the conveyor for inspection by the security scanner, he took a seat next to a traveling family of three and waited for the next outbound elevator car with an exasperated sigh. The brown haired man sat patiently in the hard polymer chair, slowly running his fingers through his short-cut hair just as someone changed the news station on the nearest flex-screen…
“This is Linda Stone of Arcadia Corporate News, bringing you all the news that’s fit for you. Today we begin with our top story unfolding in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Arcadia corporate security are investigating leads into the brutal murders of Judge O’Connor, a controversial Pennsylvanian judge recently accused of bribery, and the regional director of Arcadia subsidiary Blackstone Correctional Solutions, Executive Marcus Johnson. Both men were found dead in the canals of lower Wilkes-Barre yesterday evening. Security forces have so far declined to comment on this ongoing investigation but trusted sources reveal the suspect is likely tied to the BCS scandal that is also under active investigation.”
Sitting in the terminal lobby, the athletic brown-haired man with the rose-colored glasses let the slimmest of smiles cross his face before immediately forcing it away. Next to him, the mother of the family shook her head. “That’s horrible. Why would anyone do that?”
“Perhaps it’s a good thing they want me to transfer to the lunar mining colonies then.” Her husband replied. “You don’t hear about things like this happening on the moon. Mars and the Belt sure, the Arcadian Department of Public Information says even the New York slums are safer then the frontier, but the moon should be fine.”
At this point the couple’s child, a little boy that could be no older then six by the man with the rose glasses’ guess, asked his parents why they had to go to the moon. As his father replied and tried to explain the concept of loans and indentured servitude to a six-year-old kid, the man sitting next to them merely shook his head and focused back on the news broadcast, waiting for the next call for passengers to the Neil Armstrong Memorial Station, the space station suspended in geosyncronious orbit over the Cape Canaveral Elevator and hooked together by thousands of feet of carbon nanotubing and a steady stream of elevator cars as big as coach buses.
Indentured servitude and privatized prison systems where anything goes, thank the Arcadian Enterprises for that kid. At least Epicurean managed to wrestle away the breadbasket states from AE when the megacorps started carving up the ruins of the United States. Two ecological calamities, a second global depression in the 2050’s, and God only knew how many bush wars before the old order had burnt itself into nothing and gave way to the rise of over two dozen megacorporations that ruled pretty much everything on Earth. Welcome to life on the cusp of the 22nd century…
“All outbound passengers to the Neil Armstrong Memorial Station, shuttle Car 1313 is ready to accept passengers. I repeat, car 1313 is ready to accept outbound passengers to the Neil Armstrong Memorial Station. Please have your tickets and passports ready for inspection.” The intercom shouted professionally as surly-looking security guards suddenly became more active. Time to see if he could leave Earth behind…
“Name?” A muscular Arcadia Transportation Security Specialist asked as the line of passengers slowly crept along.
“Mason Smith.” The man with the rose-colored sunglasses answered as he took his glasses off and slid them into his shirt pocket, taking care to make eye contact with the guard.
The guard showed no emotion as he continued his line of questioning. “State your destination and reason for departure.”
“The Moon, for pleasure. I won the Epicurean Mighty Wheats sweepstakes for a vacation to Elysian Domes out by the Sea of Tranquility. I’m going to see where Neil and Buzz landed in 1969!” He replied with a big smile, hoping he could fight off the nagging urge to twitch and play the part of an excited tourist for just a little bit longer.
The burly guard continued to appear unimpressed, waving him through with only a precursory look at his suitcase and credentials before turning back to the growing line behind Mason. Mason Smith continued to smile as he collected his luggage and followed after the family he sat next to in the lobby, handing his ticket to the attendant before getting aboard shuttle Car 1313 and finding his way to his sleeping tube. Locking himself into the padded coffin and throwing his suitcase into a storage locker above his head, Mason Smith finally breathed a sigh of relief. By the time the idiots in charge of Project Praetorian realize he’s not on Earth anymore, he’ll be halfway to Mars or the Belt colonies. Perhaps it was possible to escape from Arcadia after all….
It would take Car 1313 the better part of a day to reach the NAMS at the apex of the elevator, during which Mason moved about the multi-story vehicle to continue to blend in and better pass the time. There were seven floors to the elevator car, the machinery and equipment floors at the top and the bottom levels were closed to passengers, two through four were sleeping quarters filled with coffin-shaped sleeping tubes and lavatory facilities, five was the common room, and six was the bridge and crew compartment also generally closed to the passengers. Not like there were many passengers to keep out, there appeared to be only ten travelers making the ride to the Armstrong Memorial on this trip including him. That suited Mason fine, this was the first time he had anything resembling privacy in months…
In the lounge, sitting in an overstuffed recliner with a bay window of pure synthetic diamond giving him a perfect view of the stars behind him, Mason kept himself busy by watching the news and staying on top of things on the planet he was trying to leave behind. The double murders in his hometown, a place that hadn’t felt like home in a long time, had been forgotten for the next new story. Epicurean predicted a record harvest this year and business analysts were going back and forth on what that meant for the corporation and their plans to expand into the Asian territories. Arcadia finally got around to letting their brain-dead citizens know about the jailbreak at the New Alcatraz Supermax off the coast of Maryland, arguing that there was nothing to be concerned and no, all rumors that the company was conducting experiments on prisoners there were completely unfounded. Anything said to the contrary by the radical anti-corporate group Anarchy Now or any of its allies was pure slander. The anxious traveler merely shook his head and leaned back into his padded chair as he sat and watched in the hour before the other passengers got up, this corporate dross was one thing he definitely wasn’t going to miss out on the frontier. One could only wonder what the people already out there thought of this mindless propaganda…
Meanwhile…
“Why do we have to go to Watchtower Luna for two weeks? The only thing to watch is all that corporate garbage from Earth!”
Even expecting it, Artifice found her new partner’s whining still made her contemplate throwing herself out the ship’s airlock. Of all the Judicators to draw the short straw, it had to be her. She had to be the one to be partnered with the legendary diva Vulpine Fury. Massaging her temple as she sat in the shuttlecraft’s cockpit and brought their ship in for a landing, the Latino woman took a deep breath and tried to compose herself. It was only going to be for a few months, only until her regular partner Valkyrie was discharged from the infirmary at Watchtower Deimos, not even the street fighter from New Pittsburgh could possibly be so bad that she couldn’t put up with her for three or four months.
“Oh it’s not all bad, Mother Terra still has some good superhero cartoons, the failed Extinctioners cartoon not withstanding.” The human Judicator countered to try and talk about anything other then being together on the Judicator base on the moon for two weeks. No one liked being posted to Watchtower Luna, the entire Judicators League had built itself an entire economy of favors and debts simply to avoid being stationed there for any length of time. No one liked being that close to hypercorporate “Mommy Terra”; the moon colonies were all mining colonies except for the Elysian Domes. Even then, the only thing of interest that wasn’t slathered in corporate advertising was the 1969 Apollo landing site preserved by the Lunar Heritage Society. Yet the Judicators lunar base had to be staffed. Not only did there need to be someone there in case the colonists get in trouble but there needed to someone watching in case Earth launched an attack on the dissident colonies on Mars and the Asteroid Belt.
Behind her, the aptly named transhuman snorted. “Shawntae Howard’s grandson should have never signed the rights away to Sun Leaf Media. Their work practically propagandizes itself, no Mommy Terra corporate doctoring required. I mean who made the rubbish decision to make Artica and Scarlet secret lesbian lovers?” The fox humanoid snarled before deciding to change the subject to the only thing her new partner hated more. “Uggh, so how did you get into the Judicators anyway? You don’t look modded and you definitely don’t smell like a transhuman.” Vulpine added with an accusing sniff of her pointed canine nose.
The Judicator known as Artifice resisted the urge to twitch ever so slightly at Vulpine Fury’s pointed question. Indeed, the blue-eyed Latino woman was not augmented like the transhuman paladins that made up the majority of the loosely organized group of roaming heroes and troubleshooters. Indeed the only modification to her body she indulged in was a dye job to highlight the flecks of blond in her dirty blond hair. Standing upright at roughly five feet and six inches and weighing at a sheepish 225 lbs, she hardly cut the “classic” figure of the comicbook heroine. Particularly as the tanned-skinned woman had, as Vulpine Fury had quipped earlier back on Deimos, “more junk in the trunk then a Brazilian pop princess.” Hardly the body of a Greek goddess, especially next to her new partner, good thing her bulky suit hid some of it…
Vulpine Fury on the other hand… when one had already augmented their body with brown fox DNA to give a human-animal hybrid appearance and heightened physical abilities, installed subdermal armor plating over the vital organs, then further augmented their body with muscle tissue implants; making sure the end result was sculpted into something resembling the female protagonist of an early twenty-first century superhero comic book was practically a given. The strength and agility of several Olympian athletes crammed into one person, the toned body of a mixed-martial arts prize fighter, luxuriously long black hair, piercing green eyes, short brown fur, D-cup breasts that moved beautifully when she breathed, and a personality that left no doubt in Artifice’s mind as to why no one could stand her for more then a few months at a time; a personality that would become even more unbearable to Artifice if she did not answer her new partner’s question quickly.
“I got in because you have a shortage of first responders in the Judicators, especially ones with an engineering background from the Prometheus Institute.” Artifice began to reply as the shuttle’s proximity alarm began to politely suggest that its two occupants watch out for a nearby debris cloud with the soothing subtly of flashing red warning lights and a loud beeping that could wake up even the most conked out pilot.
Bringing up their current course, the engineer-savvy woman found that they would pass the cloud of junk left from a hundred years of orbital space flight by a safe margin. Yet what was worrisome was how close the cloud of free-floating scrap was to the Cape Canaveral space elevator…
“Attention Car 1313, this is Judicator shuttle Freedom’s Star to CCSE Car 1313! Come in Car 1313!” The short wave radio in the operator’s cabin blared as the elevator controller put down his magazine with a frustrated sigh and picked up the receiver.
“Reading you loud and clear Freedom’s Star, this is Car 1313. What can Arcadia Enterprises do for a bunch of space cowboys pretending to be superheroes?” Operator Simons replied sarcastically, management warned him about these anti-corporate weirdos on first-day orientation.
Apparently used to be mocked; the woman on the other end continued on. “1313, Sensors report a cloud of space junk heading dangerously close to your position.”
“The company thanks your agency for your concern but unlike your vessel, all company space vehicles are protected by electromagnetic shielding that repels all the junk that’s been left up here since Sputnik. It works by-” Simmons replied dutifully as he pulled out a pamphlet on his desk and began to read off the tech specs for the space elevator cars.
“By running a polarizing current through the outer hull of the elevator car to simulate an electromagnet.” The voice on the other end interrupted, beginning to get audibly annoyed. “Yes I know how electromagnetic shielding system is supposed to work you company tool! Judicator shuttles are equipped with the same system. What I don’t understand is why my sensors say your car is as magnetically active as a moon rock!” The Judicator shouted. Damn, management should have mentioned those frontier hotshots were really high-strung.
Simmons looked down at his control console. Now that she mentioned it, all readings indicated the outer hull was inert. No matter, all he had to do was press the reset button and… nothing. The meters continued to report that the metal shell that kept him breathing oxygen remained inert and dangerously vulnerable to micrometeorites and space trash.
“Judicator shuttle Freedom Star, please hold…” Simmons replied with much more humility as he switched to the car’s internal intercom. “Uhhh, Han? Sir, something broke.”
His supervisor answered from down in engineering near the bottom of the car. “How many times have I told you Simmons that sir is for management? So what broke? One of the toilets in the passenger quarters or the coffee maker in the crew quarters? Luke has a bet going with me.” Han replied with a chuckle
“The electromagnetic shielding.” The operator replied meekly.
There was a brief silence on the other end of the line except for the clicking of buttons being pressed then the sound of a fist being slammed into the metal wall. “I told them we were overdue for an overhaul on that thing, I TOLD them. But no, one more run up to the Memorial Station. Always one more damn run. Damn it… I’d ask you if there was anything on the radar but that started acting up three runs ago. So not only are we blind but we’re naked as well, God I picked a bad time to quit drinking. All right… notify ground control and put out a general SOS. If we’re lucky, corporate will have a repair team waiting for us at Armstrong. If we’re not, maybe there are some Judicators within hailing distance and we’ll get to see how tough those space cowboys really are.”
“Han, there is a Judicator shuttle already in hailing distance. They also warned us there’s a cloud of space junk heading really close to us.”
“Damn it… patch me through then go tell the passengers to return to the sleeping quarters. Tell them there we’re having technical difficulties and for their safety we need them to get down there on the other side of the bulkhead. Do not tell them we’ve got a cloud incoming, we have a better chance of this not going down like the Challenger disaster if no one panics.” Han ordered.
Simmons nodded even though there was no one to see the gesture, quickly picking up the receiver and punching a few buttons on the car’s shortwave radio. Soon he could hear Han and the Judicator woman over his earpiece as he left the control room to climb down the ladder into to the passenger lounge.
“This is Han Smith, Supervising Operator of CCSE 1313. Who am I addressing?”
“This is Judicators Artifice and Vulpine Fury, we just passing by on our way to the lunar colonies when we noticed a large metallic cloud drifting close to your position and your shielding was not engaged.”
“Our shielding is dead. 1313’s been overdue for routine maintenance for three weeks now. NAMS has been notified of the problem and has not sent back an ETA on a repair crew. How much time do we have before we’re in the cloud?”
“You should be hitting the outer edge of the cloud now. I’m adjusting my course to intercept.” Artifice replied. Simmons quickly tuned out the conversation and clapped his hands to get the passengers attention. Time to move like someone set his trousers on fire.
“Excuse me, can I have everyone’s attention? There’s been a minor technical problem. For your safety, we need you to all return to your bunks down in the sleeping quarters.” The slender Simmons called to the ten people watching the television over cups of coffee in the lounge. Chills ran down his spine as he looked behind the crowd at the window looking out at the stars outside.
Synthetic diamond was a very resilient material, perfect for windows looking out into the depths of space. But it wasn’t strong enough for a view port as large as the bay windows looking out onto the Earth from low orbit, especially when space trash was pelting said window. First was the barely perceptible tinkle of metal hitting crystal, only audible at all because of the atmosphere the elevator brought up with them from the planet below. Then hairline cracks began to grow ever so slightly along the windowpane…
The first to notice that something was wrong with the window was a man that didn’t say much to Simmons, some sweepstakes-winning tourist with rose-colored glasses that was currently sitting the closest to the window. Thankfully the man did not panic as he stood up and started to help up the nearest passengers, acting with a calm that appeared almost trained as he joined the operator in herding the passengers away from the structurally weakest point on the elevator car. Noticing almost immediately after was a space suit salesman bound for the lunar mining colonies, someone Simmons recognized as a regular traveler on the CCSE. And then came the family that was being forcibly relocated to the lunar colonies…
“Oh my god, the window’s cracking!” The wife screamed… looks like today was going to be the day Simmons’ parents got to see how good his life insurance policy was.
With the need to maintain a pretense of calm gone, Simmons saw the tourist and the sales rep immediately start grabbing, shoving, coaxing, and manhandling their fellow passengers through the bulkhead down to the relative safety of the sleeping quarters and a second later he decided to hang the bit about professional courtesy and helped them get everyone else through as quickly as possible. The three of them had just seen the last bystander safely through the bulkhead when it came into view.
In that instant, Simmons felt his mind freeze, hovering on the conversation he just had where he blew off the lady from the Judicators. Electromagnetic shielding repelling all the junk left up here since Sputnik… somewhere in the cosmos there was a malicious god that thought the refrigerator-size piece of space junk hurtling right in front of him was positively hilarious.
An ancient piece of Russian hardware, not Sputnik but definitely the right age and design to pass as one of its cousins, flew towards the elevator car like a spiked volleyball coming in for the winning play. There was no way, even completely intact, the view port could take a hit from that thing. This was it, this thing was going to hit the window, break it, and all three of them were going to get sucked out into the cold vacuum of space…
Mason saw the incoming collision and didn’t think twice before he grabbed the operator by the arm and shoved him through the bulkhead. Now all he and the fancy pants guy with the slick pompadour needed to do was quickly get in themselves and… like that the dead shielding that was supposed to keep the elevator car safe from debris came to life one last time with a defiant hum. From small nuts and bolts all the way to the museum relic giving him a heart attack, the free-floating debris was all pushed back like an invisible hand shoved it away. Not tempting fate any further, the two men climbed down after the others. Mason was the last, pulling the bulkhead door shut and sealing it manually before climbing down to the lower levels. Beyond the sealed bulkhead above him, there was a sickening final crack, a whoosh of air escaping, and then the absolute silence of the lounge being flooded by the hard vacuum of space.
In the passenger cabins, the atmosphere was understandably tense as the CCSE operator was feebly trying to calm understandably upset passengers. Everyone that had been in the lounge was slightly bruised and shaken but still alive. One particularly officious looking passenger that had been sleeping off a hangover in his bunk, some snobbish young exec Mason had avoided for most of the trip, was doing a good job fraying already fragile nerves.
“Mr. Simmons, I demand to know what this racket is all about. I was in the middle of a very important conference call.” The corporate manager in a slick black suit demanded.
“The electromagnetic shield that kept debris from punching holes in this tin can failed, we’re in the middle of a swirling debris field, and we just lost the lounge to explosive decompression.” Mason interjected, glaring at the executive with a ‘you really don’t want to mess with me right now’ look in his eyes. “I say that about sums it up, wouldn’t you Simmons? But hey, at least everyone’s still alive and we’re still climbing closer to NAMS… we are still going up right?” He asked for reassurance. If they were still moving, it would be easier to convince the others that everything was still going to be okay.
Grateful someone gave him a distraction from the VIP, Simmons turned to a computer console in the hallway. Entering in his password, he brought up a diagnostic program and began quickly skimming through a series of diagrams. “And… yes we are. Both motors are running at full strength and we should be at the Memorial Station within a few hours, long before life support reaches critical levels.”
“Barring anything else breaking down you…” Mason began just as the lights began to flicker ominously. “You have got to be kidding me.” The discreet traveler grumbled as Simmons checked the engineering readouts again.
“Just a brief brownout, that last burst from the shielding took a lot out of the system; nothing to be worried about though, my supervisor rerouted a few nonessential systems to keep power flowing to the motors and life support. Mr. Johnson probably will not be able to make any more phone calls until we arrive at the Armstrong Memorial though.” The nondescript CCSE employee reassured with a pleasant laugh that Mason knew wasn’t faked.
This did not amuse the corporate suit at all but Mason Smith managed to return Simmons’ laugh. “Oh no, whatever will we do? But seriously though, your boss deserves a pay raise and I need a drink. Know any good bars on the moon?” He asked just as a sickening series of clangs of metal on metal echoed through the corridor.
The entire group went silent as everyone turned their heads in the direction of the noise. There, along the wall closest to the outer hull, the metal barrier continued to clang with the sound of being hit by random debris. Dents began to form in the wall as whatever was impacting with the elevator car hit with enough force to damage the double-hull construction. Everyone turned ghastly pale as, with a pop and a serpentine hiss, a diminutive piece of metal burst through the wall and came to a rolling stop in front of Mason’s shoe. A bolt, pitted but still as shiny as the day it left the factory, had punched through the hull before getting pulled down by the simulated gravity inside the elevator car. On the plus side, this meant that the artificial gravity still worked. Otherwise there would have been nothing stopping the bolt from going out the other side of the elevator car… and through anyone unfortunate enough to be in its way. On the downside, the continued hissing meant that they were now venting atmosphere to the cold vacuum outside…
Simmons was immediately talking to his boss and someone else on his ear piece and judging by the look on his face, Mason could tell the rest of the crew had its hands full. The operator’s expression when he turned to the passengers. “Excuse me… does anyone know how to operate a welding torch?”
Reluctantly the brown haired man raised his hand. “Arc or laser?” He asked. Yeah, Mason might not wait to the moon to get that drink…
Aboard the Freedom’s Star, Artifice’s expression was unreadable as she listened to the chatter between the crew and watched sensor readouts. Behind her, Vulpine Fury tapped her fingers against her armrest as she sat in her chair.
“Alright, I’m bringing us in.” She said finally, punching a few controls before gripping the helm.
“You are? Don’t they have rescue personnel on NAMS coming?” Vulpine Fury replied, the transhuman heroine was clearly more comfortable fighting criminals then saving people from engineering failures and natural disasters.
For the briefest of seconds, Artifice was tempted to say something catty but no, now was not the time. There was no time. “NAMS rescue personnel are grounded until the cloud passes. Meanwhile the car’s shielding is still down and multiple hull breaches are reported on the lower levels. By the time the cloud passes, that car will be shredded. I’m routing extra power to our own magnetic shielding; that will be enough to deflect most of the debris and maybe allow us to shield the car with our shuttle as we evacuate them and bring them up to the Armstrong Memorial.”
Vulpine Fury was silent, unable to find fault with her plan or too out of her depth to come up with something better. The shuttle flew down towards the damaged space elevator car, passing a reinforced porthole as it docked with the emergency hatch towards the bottom of the car…
Inside car 1313, helping Simmons weld metal patches to reinforce the hull, Mason looked from his welding just as a bright blue shuttle flew past. Was that the rescue shuttle from NAMS above them? Whoever it was, they had excellent timing… Nearly dying on the Cape Canaveral Space Elevator, not exactly how he pictured escaping Earth but all’s well that ends well as the saying went. Maybe once he finally got up to the station he’d see if whoever was currently riding to their rescue would like to join him for a drink later. With all the crap that could go wrong just riding an elevator, Mason was surprised there wasn’t a bar at both ends of the CCSE….
Artifice already had her helmet on as Freedom’s Star finished automatically docking with 1313’s lower hatch. Huddled passengers looked up as the two Judicators walked onto the doomed elevator car with their eyes growing wide. Vulpine Fury in her police blue jumpsuit and fishbowl helmet and Artifice dressed head to toe in a heavily armored zero gravity engineering suit of her own design. The suited engineer could almost imagine what they must look like, she really needed to realign the lamps on the Freedom’s Star’s airlock so it stopped wreathing their heads in a halo of light. Though she had to admit, the dramatic effect certainly helped in times like now. “Alright everyone, we need to get you out of here now.” She shouted, her point accented by another loud bang of metal colliding with metal and denting the car’s hull ominously. Most of the trapped people on the car did not need to be told twice, racing past the two and through the airlock onto their shuttle.
Mason looked at the two Judicators boarding the ship, his training and other gifts helping him sort out all the information bombarding him at once, slowing down his perception of time as he swiftly processed details and quickly recalled what he had been told about his rescuers. The hull that was continuing to collapse around him, the passengers making the desperate gamble to trust these costumed strangers, and the Judicators themselves. He had heard of the Judicators, all of the candidates of Project Praetorian had heard of the Judicators; stalwart paladins of the modern age, turning the bleeding edge of the Transhuman Age into tools for justice. There were other things the project supervisors called them but that didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered right now was that he was saved by Vulpine Fury and… Artifice he believed her name was.
Saying Vulpine Fury was recognizable to him was like saying the sky on Earth was blue. A biomodded human from the New Pittsburgh asteroid habit spliced with brown fox DNA, black hair normally worn freely and currently tucked inside a “fishbowl”-style of nano-plastic helmet with a oxygen collar, piercing green eyes that glinted with casual arrogance, and D-cup breasts crowning the sculpted body of a gym goddess squeezed into a tight police blue bodysuit with matching white boots and gloves. A stunning physical appearance even if one wasn’t into the anthropomorphic insanities that went on in New Pittsburgh and if the profile Mason had been shown was accurate; her appearance was actually the least impressive of her physical traits.
Artifice on the other hand was a partial blank even for his ability to recall information. The lion’s share of the material he was forced to study focused on the fighters of the Judicators, those that ran combat operations. “Rescue Heroes,” to use a nickname given to Artifice’s branch during Mason’s training, were glossed over. The few details he could recall about her were vague at best. Latino woman, unmodified human, talented engineer recruited by the Judicators from the outlaw academics of the Prometheus Institute, and Vulpine Fury was not her usual partner, it was some armored medic lady called Valkryie or something. Damn, that armor though, that zero-gravity engineering suit had to be a custom build. A tan, well-insulated armored bodysuit worn under a light gunmetal gray exoskeleton, reinforced ZGE helmet with polarized visor and an internal oxygen supply good for an hour on her head, shoulder lamp on her right shoulder, and a magnetic tool pouch on her right hip carrying a few universally handy tools. Perhaps not the most heroic-looking outfit, especially next to Vulpine Fury’s dark blue tribute to pulp space opera, but damn if Artifice didn’t dress like a woman after Mason’s own heart.
All this was processed in the span of an instant as Mason moved with the others to get aboard the Judicator shuttle. Once the last passenger was safely away, the Freedom’s Star disembarked and flew towards the Armstrong Memorial Station. Hopefully this didn’t take them too out of their way, Artifice mused as she sat back down in her chair; getting refueled at corporate stations was always a hassle…
The mood was relaxed as Mason Smith stepped into a small, nameless bar that was barely big enough to support a countertop and a handful of stool bolted to the metal floor. It was so small, it didn’t even have a living bartender, just a small glorified vending machine with a small selection of alcoholic drinks preloaded. The décor and furniture was basic, even with the space elevator working the way it was supposed to half the time, shipping bulk freight was expensive so there wasn’t much in the way of frivolities. Still, it was enough. All Mason wanted at this point was to sit down and steady his nerves with a cold drink, the harrowing escape from the space elevator was only the climax of what had been a harrowing few weeks between escaping with his life and settling unfinished… business back in his hometown of Wilkes-Barre. Turning his thoughts back to the present, he looked over his choices. Canned beer, canned vodka, and canned brandy… well at least all of his choices were cold, he decided as he settled on a brandy.
“Why as I live and breath, Mason Smith is that you?” A familiar voice called from somewhere behind him, the human traveler immediately tensed up and slowly turned his head to see who had called him out. It was too early, way too early for people to start calling out for a dead man…
The person who had called to him was an older black gentleman in his late sixties with his black hair showing a growing touch of gray, dressed relatively dapper in business casual, tan slacks and a neatly pressed white shirt. Mason recognized him immediately. Jonathan Pale, former owner and curator of the Pale Library in Wilkes-Barre, the last public library in Wilkes-Barre. Pale was responsible for keeping the flames of knowledge and imagination alive in a city that had never caught a break since a mining disaster in the 1960’s shut down coal mining in the area. The Cash for Kids scandal, years of violent crime, gang violence fueled by black and Latino groups from out of state… and that was all before 2016. Eighty years later, the only difference a man from the beginning of the 21st century would note of Wilkes-Barre of 2096 is that a large part of the city was now underwater and chrome had replaced some of the grime. Pale’s library was a place of relative safety in a city forsaken for almost two centuries, where kids like Mason got acquainted with the greats of fantasy, sci-fi, and classic American fiction. Pale was also ex-Arcadia, ex- HIGH Arcadia, rebuilding a public library with a corporate pension was something most people didn’t do…
“Well, well, once again the great Obi-Wan has shown me that the Force is strong with him.” Mason replied sarcastically with a raise of his canned brandy.
Without waiting for an invitation, Pale sat down next to him, his face fixed in an expression of bewildered confusion. “What? How? Last I heard you were sent to the Blackstone Corrections facility out by Philly for… things that I couldn’t believe you did. Then came something about you hanging yourself in your cell almost two years ago now.”
Smith snorted and took another swig of his brandy. “Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated… to avoid having to publicly report my transfer to New Alcatraz.”
The wheels began to visibly turn in Pale’s head; the younger man toyed with the idea of running right there. After the things that happened to him at New Alcatraz, he could take and probably kill Pale very easily. But could was not the same as want, Pale was still probably the only friend Mason had left at this point. “Judge O’Connor and Johnson were the people who sent you to Philly. You were one of the people arrested to boost their numbers to justify increasing the corporate tax. Were the charges fabricated?”
The younger man’s expression acquired a bitter overcast. “I don’t want to talk about that… ever.” He replied darkly, his voice carrying a sour sting of betrayal. The things some people did for a little extra in their paycheck….
Carrying a wisdom that was only earned by age, Pale knew that topic was better off unspoken. “Well I suppose there’s no point in asking if you’re the New Alcatraz escapee everyone is looking for. I’m surprised, I didn’t think an inmate from there could get my old coworkers as riled up as you did.”
“You going to try and turn me in?” Mason asked, placing a particular emphasis on “try.”
“That depends entirely on how you answer what I ask next. Normally I don’t put much value in what anti-corporate groups are saying, especially ones with colorful names like Anarchy Now but the rumors they’re spreading have me worried. Particularly as my other sources refuse to even discuss these rumors let alone deny them. Is Arcadia Enterprises experimenting on prisoners in New Alcatraz?”
Mason was silent for a moment, setting down his drink before rolling up his sleeve and revealing the blue tattoo that had been branded into his bicep. The small emblem of an eagle with its wings spread wide perched atop a pair of crossed lightning bolts, the Arcadian shield in the background. It was a common enough thing to do in the Arcadia corporate territories; paramilitary wannabes looking to impress the corporation got all sorts of patriotic work done on their arms all the time. What was significantly harder to counterfeit was the azure nanite paste used to do the inking, giving the tattoo a pale blue glow that was only available to mercenaries signed with Arcadia Enterprises’ own in-house military forces. Subsequently the symbol on Mason’s arm had a lot more meaning behind it, company tats were earned or issued, never bought or given.
“Special Projects?” Pale replied quizzically as he immediately recognized the insignia. “No… all the employees in that department are in their forties at least and that branch only uses nanite paste brandings to mark… oh God. What are they doing there?” The librarian asked as the realization hit him.
Mason took another long sip of his drink before he answered, taking care to look behind them to make sure they still had the automated bar to themselves. It was still just the two of them and the automated drink machine in the dinky little cantina. Thankfully the corporations hadn’t gotten the bright idea to stick wireless cameras on those machines yet. “Two-stage nanotech-based military cybernetics.” Smith said at last, repeating the technical designation as dryly as it was said to him. “Meaning basically they stuck me with a bunch of nanite serums that later built themselves into a bunch of implants that made me faster, stronger, smarter, the whole Six Million Dollar Man routine. And that’s just stage one, I let myself out before they got me to stage two.”
“Why? Arcadia signed the Global Trade Treaty of 2075, cybernetic research outside of medicinal usage is outlawed.”
“And we also just demonstrated that we learned absolutely nothing from the mistakes made the last time America instituted a system of privatized prisons. Excuse me if I’m not surprised to find the company broke a couple of trade agreements as well. Besides, neither of these are the worst of it. Oh no, not hardly. They made the mistake of telling me what this was all for, what the big picture plan was. Want to hear what it is? Actually, you might want to have something to drink first before I tell you. It will deaden the blow.” Mason replied as he finished his first can of alcohol and purchased two more, handing one to Jonathan.
“Heh, the big picture. The grand plan… Oh boy, I’m the one telling you and even I still don’t believe it. You know how Arcadia’s stock price has been going down for a couple years now right? I noticed as I was coming up that this month in particular has seen a big dive in price per share.”
“Yes that’s been a major news topic for the past couple months. Outside of the skirmishes in Central Asia and South America, there just hasn’t been much demand for their PMC. Crime’s also been down in most of the corporate states they have security contracts with, Arcadia’s too if the BCS scandal is any indication. That’s two of their industries people are spending less money in.”
“Three, less war means less money in arms sales. And that’s pretty much everything Arcadia does right? Rent-a-cops, rent-a-soldiers, and the best damn guns in the Solar System if you believe their fliers.”
Jonathan Pale shook his head. “When I was with the company, the dream was that Arcadia would recreate the entire industrial base of the United States. We would build everything America did, from toys to cars. What happened since I retired?”
The fugitive cyborg shook his head and shrugged, focusing on his second drink. “Hell if I know, it sure isn’t the company I was told it was when they had me finishing up trade school.”
After a second of reluctance, the middle-aged man joined in with the man he had once mentored. Finally, Mason decided to just come out and say it, the thing that had been weighing on him for the past few months. “Arcadia’s planning on starting mankind’s first interplanetary war, that’s what this is all about.” He began as Pale nearly choked on his alcohol, continuing on once the other man cleared his throat. “The plan is to build and train an army of human cyborgs capable of going toe to toe with the Judicators’ melee heavyweights, outfit us with custom-made guns with ammo that won’t blow holes in a space station’s hull, then send us off to go shoot up the colonies on Mars and the Belt dressed in counterfeit uniforms for a dozen different megacorporations. Once the frontier is tricked into believing Earth declared war on them, they’ll retaliate. Then Earth will have to declare war for real and the contracts will just start coming down like rain, bonuses for everybody all around at the Arcadia conference table.”
Jonathan Pale started to resemble his surname as Mason Smith finished his story, blinking twice as if to make sure that yes, the previous five minutes did indeed happen and he had not dreamed up the entire thing from drinking brandy from an aluminum can. “That’s… that ludicrous. I cannot believe… who was in charge of this project?”
“Executive Abram Jones, director of the Special Projects division and operating with full approval of the rest of the board of directors. CEO Williams himself showed up a few times to see how the project was coming along.”
“Williams has approved of this madness?” Pale asked, putting his face in his hands briefly. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, I was always fighting to steer him towards putting principles before profits.” He muttered before regaining his composure. “But you have to tell someone, you have to take this to the Judicators or the leader of one of the larger colonies. You have to warn them, this attack can’t be too far behind you.”
Mason shook his head dismissively and finished his second drink. “They’re not going to believe me, I haven’t got a shred of proof.”
“But you have your cybernetics. Surely a basic medical examination would reveal that you were telling the truth.”
The younger man sighed and shook his head a second time. “And, if this were one of those old sci-fi novels you always let me borrow, would be where I explain why the plot of the book can’t be resolved in less then fifty pages. What I have Obi-Wan, is an incomplete suite of cyberware based off of designs originally created by the Prometheus Institute, thank you open-source dipshits for giving Arcadia a weapon blueprint that can be replicated by any half-assed workshop with a competent nanotechnician. By the time the nanites in my body finish constructing the proprietary bits that would allow me to pilot the armored exoskeleton I was supposed to be assigned, it will be too late. There were at least five guys that were ahead of me in the conversion process, they should all have been done about a week ago.”
“Well what do you plan on doing then?” Pale insisted.
Mason sighed and stood up, tossing his brandy cans in a nearby recycling bin before heading towards the exit. “Running, as far and as fast as I can. Arcadia already took my future away from me, they aren’t taking my life too.” He said over his shoulder while leaving the bar. By the time Pale stood up to chase after him, Mason had disappeared into the crowd of travelers; just another body in the faceless crowd
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