The Belt: The Complete Trilogy Read online

  The Belt

  The Complete Trilogy

  Gerald M Kilby

  Contents

  Reader’s Group

  Entanglement

  1. Antiope Nine Zero

  2. Hermes

  3. Aria

  4. Salvage

  5. Rendezvous

  6. Solomon

  7. Cat And Mouse

  8. Hidden Depths

  9. Neo City Asteroid

  10. Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen

  11. Xiang Zu

  12. Flight To The Docks

  13. Purge

  14. Weapons Check

  15. The Gathering Armada

  16. Twenty-One Days To Europa

  17. Protocol Violation

  18. Phone A Friend

  19. Europa

  20. Superluminal

  21. Conclave

  22. Change of Plan

  23. Dyrell

  24. Debris Field

  25. Return to the Stars

  26. Solomon's Dream

  Entropy

  1. Enceladus

  2. Recall

  3. Fracture

  4. Mission

  5. Outbound

  6. Rendezvous

  7. Ceres

  8. Research Station

  9. Time to Die

  10. Dr. Rayman

  11. Scratchers

  12. The Perception

  13. Solomon

  14. Rongo Crater

  15. Into the Belt

  16. SN376

  17. Deception

  18. Dain Tiber

  19. Expendable

  20. Medbay

  21. Battle for the Dock

  22. Crash Landing

  23. Jezero City

  Evolution

  1. Storm Rider

  2. The Algorithm

  3. The Wasteland

  4. Drones

  5. VanHeilding

  6. The Mine

  7. Shin-Au-Av

  8. Interrogation

  9. The Council

  10. Datatocracy

  11. The Seven

  12. So It Begins

  13. Beyond the Citadel

  14. Fissure

  15. Research Facility

  16. The Android

  17. Uplink

  18. Tugo

  19. Dominion

  20. Hermosillo

  21. The Nuclear Option

  22. Perception

  Author’s Note

  Also by Gerald M Kilby

  About the Author

  Reader’s Group

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  Entanglement

  1

  Antiope Nine Zero

  "Wake up, Commander. We have a situation."

  Somewhere in the inner recesses of Commander Scott McNabb's slumbering subconscious, a series of synapses fired to alert his higher mind to incoming data. A voice... calling to him... one he knew... then it clicked. It was the ship's AI, Aria.

  "Go away," was the most Scott was willing to utter by way of a reply.

  "I'm sorry to wake you, Commander, but we have a situation that requires your attention."

  Scott gave a low groan. "Is the ship compromised?"

  "No, nothing that serious. The ship is fine. But..."

  "Are we in any danger?"

  "No, Commander. No danger. However..."

  "Well then, just go away and let me get back to sleep." Scott buried his head further into the pillow.

  "Commander, if I may..."

  "Oh, for God's sake, Aria. You're the brains around here, you run the ship, what do you need me for?" There was a momentary pause, and Scott thought he heard the AI give an exasperated sigh, which was ridiculous; he must be dreaming it.

  "I appreciate your confidence in my abilities. But a situation has arisen where protocol requires me to alert the ship's commander—that would be you."

  It was Scott's turn to sigh. Aria would not leave him be until it said whatever had it all up in a heap. He excavated a hand from under the bedclothes and rubbed his face. "Okay, what is it?"

  "My sensors have detected another ship close to the binary asteroid Antiope Nine Zero."

  Scott scratched his head. "Another ship... this far out in the Belt?"

  "Yes, Commander."

  "Granted, that's unusual, Aria. But what? Is it alien or something?"

  "Don't be ridiculous, Commander. The probability of an alien civilization existing that is capable of..."

  "Okay, Aria... whatever." Scott waved a dismissive hand in the air. "So, what's the big deal?"

  "It is a derelict spaceship, sir."

  Scott raised his head from the pillow. "Derelict?"

  "Yes, Commander. Derelict."

  "As in dead?"

  "Technically, a spaceship is not alive to begin with. But yes, there's no power signature and no signs of life. I have also tried to hail it several times. My initial analysis indicates it has been dead, as you put it, for several Earth years."

  By now, Scott had rolled himself over face up on the bed. "I see."

  "Protocol dictates that I must alert the commander in such a situation. We are required by the Outer Space Treaty to offer assistance to any vessel in difficulty. However, if we are to rendezvous with it, we must start deceleration as soon as possible. But you will need to give that order, Commander."

  Scott sat up and scratched his chin, thinking. "So, if the ship is derelict, there would be salvage rights on it?"

  "Assuming that everyone on the ship is dead, then yes."

  Scott was beginning to realize that this just might be his lucky day. If they could claim salvage on this derelict ship, then the money would go a long way to solving a lot of Scott's problems—if not all of them. He stretched his arms and rubbed his face. "How long before rendezvous?"

  "Approximately four hours."

  "And deceleration?"

  "We will need a seventy-two-minute burn."

  "The crew are not going to like that, Aria."

  "Indeed. However, the decision is yours and yours alone, Commander."

  "Okay, Aria. Alert the rest of the crew. Tell them to strap in and prepare for deceleration. We'll meet up on the bridge after the burn. In the meantime, find out as much as you can about that vessel, particularly, eh... how much it might be worth in salvage."

  "Will do, Commander. But I have found scant information on it so far."

  Scott was now strapping himself into a seat in his cabin designed to mitigate the effects of the heavy gee experienced by deceleration. "That seems a bit strange. There must be some record of a vessel going missing out here."

  "There is, but it's classified."

  Scott's eyes widened. "Classified?"

  "Yes, Commander."

  Two thoughts now ran through Scott's mind in tandem. One, classified usually implied a whole pile of trouble, at best. At worst, it could be downright dangerous. There might be a damn good reason why this ship was lost, and that meant the crew of the Hermes could be exposing themselves to a potentially hazardous situation. The second thought he had, however, was more interesting: if this derelict craft was indeed part of a classified mission, the bonus for salvage just shot through the roof. Scott snapped on the last of the harness. "Have the others been alerted, Aria?"

  "Yes, Commander. They're all strapped in now."

  "Okay. Punch it." Scott felt the ship's powerful engines kick in and he was slammed back into the seat. They would all be taking heavy gee for the next 72 minutes. Not pleasant, but it did give his mind a lot of time to consider how he was going to spend the salvage money—very pleasant indeed.

&nb
sp; 2

  Hermes

  By the time Scott arrived on the bridge of the Hermes, flight officer Miranda Lee was already there, standing beside the holo-table examining a gently rotating 3D display of the derelict vessel. She noticed him as he entered and looked up. "Well, if it isn't the commander of our great and glorious ship. Nice to see you on the bridge—for once."

  Scott, having spent the best part of three years cooped up with this crew, had learned to ignore such jibes. But Miranda persisted, raising an arm to her chin in a mock pose of concentration. "Let me see, oh... it must be at least six months, maybe even nine?"

  Again, he let it go. There was nothing to be gained by taking her on, as she could be quite intimidating when she wanted. Starting a row with her now would serve no useful purpose; it would only upset the delicate harmony that had been carved out by five people living in close proximity, far from civilization—and there were another two years to go. Instead, he smiled. "That's what happens when an AI runs the show: we all get made redundant."

  "To be precise, Commander, I am a quantum intelligence—a QI, not an AI," Aria's voice resonated around the bridge.

  "Yeah, whatever," said Scott, waving a hand in the air. He then nodded at the 3D rendering of the spacecraft hovering above the holo-table. "So, what do you make of it?"

  Miranda leaned in on the table's edge. "Standard Excelsior class interplanetary transport. No torus, so no artificial gravity." She pointed to the back of the spaceship. "Looks like it had an engine upgrade to give it more thrust. It's also sustained a lot of damage just forward of the engine bay. See here." She paused the rotation of the 3D image and motioned at a spot toward the center of the vessel. But before Scott could take a closer look, both Cyrus Sanato, the ship's engineer, and Dr. Steph Rayman, the mission's medical doctor, came onto the bridge. Scott nodded a collective greeting and waved them over to the table. "Come—check this out."

  "Jeez, what are the odds of finding something like this out here?" said Cyrus, moving in closer to the holo-table.

  "Approximately, one point three billion to one,” replied the disembodied voice of Aria.

  Strictly speaking, Cyrus wasn't looking at the image of the spacecraft in the general sense of the word. That's because the ship's engineer had lost his sight in an accident when he was just a child. But that wasn't to say he couldn't see—far from it—as he was surgically fitted with enhanced biotech that enabled Cyrus to see the world in exquisite detail. Not only that, he could visualize in spectra far beyond the capabilities of the average human eye, those of infrared and ultraviolet, and in resolutions from the micro to the macroscopic. However, this hyper-vision required him to wear a wraparound visor permanently attached to his skull, the lenses of which were a dark reflective orange polished up to a high mirror finish. This, coupled with his bald head and squat physique, gave him the appearance of a bug and could be a little disconcerting on first encounter. Nevertheless, he had a permanent happy smile, bordering on a chuckle, and a disarming charm that made people warm to him instantly, regardless of his odd demeanor.

  "Is this the best detail we've got on the craft, Aria?" Cyrus seemed to be adjusting something on the side of his head as he talked.

  "We are still over two hours before rendezvous. The image will resolve better as we get closer."

  "It makes a change from looking at rocks all the time," said Steph, who stood close to Cyrus at the holo-table.

  Considering that their mission was to do a geotechnical analysis of the central asteroid belt, they spent a lot of time looking at rocks, as Steph put it. Yet that was the job. Yes, it could be monotonous, even downright boring, but that's what they all signed up for—except, perhaps, for Scott McNabb.

  For him, the offer to command this mission had been a no-brainer. The way he saw it, the job gave him the money to clear some of his family debts. He could also get as far away as possible from certain individuals who were prone to visiting in the middle of the night—along with a few friends. They were the sort that had no problem explaining Scott's fiscal obligations through the subtle employment of a few well-placed kicks to the head.

  As for the others, Scott didn't really know what their motivation was, nor did he care. You would think that after three years together they would know everything there was to know about each other, right down to their most intimate personal grooming habits. But, as a credit to the consortium that designed this mission, they were acutely aware that sticking five people together in a tin can for five years could be a recipe for disaster. It was entirely possible that one or more would go insane, or worse, become raging psychopaths. So, to protect their investment, they provided the mission crew with an exceptionally roomy—albeit very old—space station.

  In many respects, it was overkill. The station was originally built to accommodate around a hundred and fifty people and had an enormous rotating torus that facilitated a very comfortable one-gravity environment. So, the five crew of the Hermes Asteroid Survey Mission could spread themselves out and, if they so desired, never actually meet another member of the team for weeks—if not months—on end.

  The downside was that the ship was ancient. Some parts were estimated to be over ninety years old. It was virtually an antique. However, it had been retrofitted with new engines and a new reactor, although it still retained its original AI, Aria. This artificial intelligence had a quantum core, one of only a few in the solar system. As a result, it was far more capable than a standard AI and could run the entire ship—along with a good deal of the five-year mission—all by itself if it had to. In reality, Aria managed most of the actual survey by utilizing a wide range of spectral analysis systems. But every now and again, when an asteroid was deemed to be of significant interest, a more detailed survey would be required. This meant boots on the ground or, in other words, humans.

  In these instances, a few of the crew would take one of the two small transport craft they had on board and physically land on the asteroid where they would mine for samples. Scott always looked forward to these mini-missions. It was a way of breaking the sheer, mind-numbing monotony of his existence. It was also a rare moment when they all came together and acted as a cohesive unit.

  This felt like one of those times. So, with the crew now standing around a holo-table exchanging excited chatter, Scott was anxious to get the show on the road. "Aria, can you give us a summary of what we know so far?"

  But before the QI had a chance to reply, Miranda broke in. "Shouldn't we wait for Rick to get here first?"

  "Eh... yeah, of course. Aria, where is he?"

  "Here."

  Scott turned to see Rick Marantz striding onto the bridge, a mug of coffee in one hand and a taco in the other.

  "Rick, you know you can't bring food onto the bridge."

  "It's okay, buddy—I'll be careful," he said as a dollop of salsa snaked down his fingers.

  Scott sighed. What was the point of even trying to maintain some sense of authority? No one seemed to care. "Okay, sure."

  Rick was an old-school asteroid miner, and being sixty-three years old, was by far the oldest member of the crew. Some said he knew more about asteroids than even God did. He was easygoing, affable, and a man of few words. But swimming underneath the surface, Scott sensed deep emotional scars. Perhaps that's why they both had an affinity for each other. Two wounded souls just trying to survive.

  "Okay, Aria, you can give us that summary now?" Scott quickly turned to Miranda. "If that's okay with you?"

  The flight officer replied with a limp shrug.

  "Can you two cut it out? I for one am sick to the back teeth of your constant bickering. Just do us all a favor and grow up." Everyone stopped and looked over at Steph. It was the standard reaction when she spoke, mainly because she seldom spoke. So, when she did, it was for a good reason and everybody had better pay attention. Scott wondered what it was about her that gave her such... authority, because he sure as hell didn't seem to have any. As far as Scott was concerned, when he spoke, no
body listened. So, like a pair of chastened school kids, Scott and Miranda called a truce as the QI began its summary.

  "From what I can gather with the limited data available to me, the ship is an Excelsior class interplanetary transport vessel. Long-range scans indicate no power signature, no heat or radiation—in essence, no life whatsoever. The identity of the ship is still unknown. However, it closely matches the specifications of an Earth vessel that went missing somewhere in the asteroid belt while en route to the research colony on Europa, approximately three and a half Earth years ago."

  At the mention of the words "Earth ship," Scott realized that they could be in for one hell of a payday.

  The QI continued. "The ship has suffered severe impact damage just forward of the engines. Since this is the location of the main reactor, we can assume it was what proved to be fatal. I have also taken the liberty of informing central mission command on Ceres of the discovery and requested assistance in identifying the vessel."