The Belt: The Complete Trilogy Read online

  Too late.

  A burst of incandescent pain hit him square in the chest. His body convulsed violently as every nerve ending he possessed experienced overwhelming electrical overload. Somewhere in the midst of this trauma, he thought he heard a second blast, and a third. He slumped to the floor and passed out.

  11

  Xiang Zu

  The one-and-a-half kilos of biological matter that constituted Commander Scott McNabb's brain had a hard time dealing with the sudden electrical overload that the plasma blast had inflicted on his body. So, it had simply given up trying and shut itself down—for a while. Now though, it was beginning to test and probe its neural network to establish if any of its multitudinous functions could be brought back online, so to speak. To its relief, it found the initial surge had dissipated entirely so at least now it had something to work with. Slowly but surely, it started to turn up the dials on Scott McNabb's physical systems, bringing its host back up to full consciousness.

  Scott opened his eyes to a brilliant white light blazing all around his field of vision. He reflexively squinted and moved an arm over his face to protect his eyes. His body felt heavy, like he was experiencing intense gravity, and his chest hurt like hell. Then he remembered. That crazy bitch, Miranda. What was she thinking, taking on those guys like that? Man, what a mess, he thought.

  "Scott... Scott... can you hear me?"

  He opened his eyes again, slower this time. A blurry face blocked most of the direct light and was haloed with an equally blurry mop of curly hair.

  "Steph?"

  "You okay?"

  Scott found he was lying flat on his back on a hard, cold floor. "Yeah, I think so." He raised himself up on one elbow. Steph helped him shuffle into a position where he could rest his back against a wall. The light still hurt his eyes, so he kept them shut and his head down. He breathed deep a few times, gathering his strength; the place smelled of chemicals masking a background of foul, stale air. His chest burned with pain as he breathed, but other than that he seemed pretty much intact. After a few more breaths, he risked opening his eyes again.

  The room was viciously bright, and he held a hand up to shade his face. His focus was still blurry, but he managed to make out the form of Steph close beside him, also resting against the wall. "What happened?" Scott found his voice was labored, the pain in his chest making it difficult to talk.

  "They locked us up," she replied.

  "Took my goddamn eyes too," came another voice from across the room.

  Scott swiveled his head to see Cyrus sitting cross-legged on the floor a few meters away. His head was bowed, but as Scott's eyes began to adjust to the light, he saw that the engineer wasn't wearing the visor that had been a permanent feature of his face. In fact, he couldn't remember a time when Cyrus didn't have it on—Scott had always assumed that it was surgically grafted onto his face.

  Cyrus raised his head and motioned in Scott's direction. Instead of eyes, he had flaps of skin completely covering his sockets. On either side of his skull, Scott saw the interface ports streaked with congealed blood.

  "My god, Cyrus, what did they do?"

  "I'm blind, totally blind. They took my eyes. Bastards." Cyrus was inconsolable. Scott shook his head in despair and turned back to Steph. "Where's Miranda?"

  She gestured sideways, away from Scott. He bent forward to look around her and saw the unconscious form of the flight officer lying on her back. He slumped back against the wall. "It's a goddamn mess."

  "They hit her twice," said Steph. "Once wasn't enough to take her down. She's one tough bird."

  "She's crazy," said Scott.

  With that, Miranda began to moan and Steph shuffled over to her. "She's coming around."

  Scott didn't care. She was a lunatic as far as he was concerned. Now they were all in worse shit because of her.

  "Where... are we?" Miranda's voice was weak. Scott ventured another glance over at her. Steph was down on the floor beside her, helping Miranda sit up against the wall.

  "Locked up," said Steph, as she gripped her under the arms and helped her sit up.

  "See what you did. They took my eyes, took all our gear. You're a nut job. Now we're totally screwed, all because of you." Cyrus was letting rip with all his anger and frustration.

  Miranda coughed and took a few deep breaths. "I'm... sorry," she finally said in a low voice, her head down.

  "You're sorry?" Scott felt his anger welling up inside. "Well, that's okay. No problem then." He paused. Miranda said nothing. "What the hell were you trying to achieve?"

  Miranda looked back at him. "We would have taken them if you hadn't been so slow to back me up."

  "And then what? We simply walk right out and all live happily ever after?"

  Miranda looked down again. "I... don't know."

  "How in God's name does inflicting grievous bodily harm on a couple of security guards help us? All that crap about Ceres wanting us arrested was simply... bullshit. They were just trying it on, Miranda, trying to get us rattled. Now you've given them everything they need."

  "Scott's right," said Steph. "They were just bluffing. HQ back on Ceres will kick up a hell of a stink when they find out."

  "You're insane," Cyrus piped in. "Now see where we are."

  Miranda raised her head and gave them a cold, hard stare. "How can you all be so naïve? There's no mistake here. They want us out of the way. We have a salvage claim, but if they can concoct some crime on our part, then we lose it."

  "Well, you certainly made sure of that," Cyrus replied. "Now I'm completely blind, thanks to you."

  Scott felt for the engineer. Here was someone for whom the world was rendered in hyperspectral detail, an enhanced reality far beyond the normal range of vision. Now it had been literally ripped from him. The trauma must be intense.

  Miranda was standing up now. "Don't any of you get it? They know we know where it is, and they want it. Ceres has no power here, they can very easily kill us and there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it."

  Scott struggled to his feet. "Look, for what it's worth, Miranda, I'm not completely disagreeing with your analysis. At least part of what you say is probably right—they want what we know. But what pisses me off is your tendency toward violence as a first course of action."

  "Oh really? Well, Commander, what would you have us do?" She put particular emphasis on the word commander, like it was an insult.

  "Talk, negotiate, get some intel, work the problem, sell them the information, figure a way forward—without beating people to death in the process."

  Miranda gave a sigh and sat down again. The room they were incarcerated in was too small for walking around. "We would be in exactly the same situation if I had done nothing. Still locked up in here, hobbled. I was trying to give us some options, maybe make a run for it or hide out somewhere." She looked around at them. "It would have been better than this." She waved a hand.

  Scott was beginning to calm down. He put his hand on his aching ribs and gave a long sigh. "Listen, I appreciate you putting your ass on the line for us."

  "I sure as hell don't," said Cyrus.

  Scott glanced over at the engineer, then back at Miranda. "But the next time, can you give us a heads-up before you start kicking the crap out of people?"

  Miranda gave him a resigned shrug. "I'll... try."

  Scott sat down again. No one spoke.

  The situation was a complete mess, no question. He had been incredibly dumb in thinking they could all just stop off at Neo City for a few beers. Word of the discovery was out, everybody wanted it, and of course that would include the Xiang Zu Corporation that ran Neo. What the hell was he thinking? Too late now. They would have been better off going direct to Ceres. By now, Hermes would be impounded, so there was no way off this rock. In fact, there was no way out of this situation that Scott could see. Not only had he seen his dreams of a better life disappear when the pirate ship took the salvaged cargo, but his pay and bonus for three years of the most excr
uciatingly dull work he had ever done was also in jeopardy. He needed something to cling to even if it seemed hopeless. So, he bent his mind to the problem.

  The more Scott thought about it, the more it came back to the EPR device, as Hao and Su called it. A faster than light communication system. It blew his mind as the ramifications of this technology percolated in his head. With people and machines expanding ever further out toward the edges of the solar system, communication became more problematic as the distances grew. At the furthest extremes of human civilization within the system, a single message would take hours.

  So, this device would cause a paradigm shift in the functioning of human civilization, making whoever owned it incredibly powerful. Not least the fact that they would generate enormous revenues simply by allowing access to others who feared being left behind. It would also be a powerful bargaining chip as fear of losing access could emasculate whole societies. Whoever controlled it would tilt the balance of power in the solar system.

  This power currently lay with Earth. But its sphere of influence was already waning as decades of devastating wars coupled with environmental mismanagement had taken its toll. To sustain itself, Earth sucked in resources from the Belt to feed its industries, and without these raw materials, it would deteriorate even further.

  The other great power was Mars. It now had a significant population, coupled with an almost utopian society, and it too needed the Belt's resources as it grew and expanded. Its power and influence came from control of the interplanetary trade routes, something neither the Belt nor Earth were very happy about.

  As for the Belt itself, it had what everybody else wanted. But it lacked the power structures and social cohesion to make it more than just a great big mine. But that was changing, and fast.

  The only part of this system-wide sociopolitical equation that Scott couldn't quite pin down was the academic institutions on Europa. Ever since life was discovered there, it had become essentially untouchable. It was the Switzerland of the solar system, a neutral entity, a seat of learning and research, a place that had elevated itself far above the grubby politics of the rest of the solar system. They aligned themselves with no one and seemed to look down on the rest of the system as if they were all a bunch of ignorant and unruly children. Scott never had much time for their high-minded, condescending view of things.

  But was faster-than-light communication really possible? Cyrus seemed pretty adamant that it was impossible. It defied the laws of physics, he had said. Scott's own limited knowledge on the subject also informed his own skepticism. He looked over at the engineer. Cyrus sat on the floor with his back to the wall. There were no seats or furniture in the room of any kind, so sitting or lying on the floor was the only option. Steph was beside him, her arm around his shoulder. She was talking to him very quietly. Scott couldn't make out the conversation. Cyrus had his head bowed and sounded like he was sobbing. How that worked with no eyes, Scott wasn't sure, but what he was sure about was the engineer had taken his situation very badly. He was a complete mess.

  Scott wished there was something he could do to help him. Maybe he should try to take his mind off it. "Cyrus?" he called over. "Why did you say the EPR device can't work?"

  The engineer said nothing for a moment, then shook his head slightly. "I don't want to talk about it."

  "But you did say it was impossible."

  "That's right."

  "But why?"

  "Scott, you studied physics, you know just as well as I do."

  "That was a long time ago. I've forgotten 90% of what I learned."

  "The thing is, it might sound plausible, but it's just not."

  "I just want to understand why you think that?"

  Cyrus shifted a little and lifted his head; he seemed to buck up a bit. "Just because you know the spin of a particle millions of kilometers away doesn't mean that the person there knows it. You have to tell them, so you're back to normal comms. If you try to change the state of either of the particles to send a message, then you break the entanglement."

  "So, it's not possible?"

  "That's my understanding."

  "Is there any way it might work?"

  Cyrus scratched at the scabs that had formed along the interface of his left eye-socket. He let his hand drop. "I've been trying to think about that." Scott's interrogation was having the desired effect: Cyrus was beginning to come back to life. "But every time I try, I come up blank. The problem is, how do you change state without breaking the entanglement?"

  "What about multiple pairs in different states, and the message is done by using a different subset each time?"

  "Yes, but how do you tell the recipient which subset you're using? You're back to normal comms again."

  Scott scratched his chin. "Yeah, I see the problem."

  "But those two guys seemed pretty certain it worked," Miranda now chimed in. Scott wondered how this would go down with Cyrus, who saw her as the primary source of his problems. "They said they had seen the data?"

  Cyrus hesitated for a moment, then replied. "Yeah, that's what's puzzling me. They were so sure. But I can't see how. Maybe I simply don't understand enough to figure it out. Or I'm simply not thinking outside the box."

  Scott breathed a slight sigh of relief that at least Cyrus wasn't going to be totally antagonistic—not that Scott could blame him.

  "Speaking of entanglement," said Steph, "what I'd like to know is how are we going to untangle ourselves from this situation?" As always, Steph had a way of asking the right question at the right time. Yet, like the conundrum of faster-than-light communications, their situation seemed impossible.

  The door to the room burst open and two guards entered, shoving a bruised and battered-looking Rick Marantz in amongst them. The guards left, locking the door behind them.

  "Rick, what happened? Are you okay?" Scott rushed over to him as he sat up on the floor, wiping some blood from his forehead.

  "I'm okay." He glanced around at the rest of the crew. "Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?"

  There ensued a few minutes of excited crosstalk as the old miner was brought up to speed on their situation. He didn't say much—he never did. He just alternated between nodding and looking stunned as the events and revelations of the past few hours were relayed to him.

  "So, what happened on the ship?" Scott finally asked.

  "It was boarded. I couldn't stop them—they had the authority, so what could I do? Anyway, there were six or seven of them, started doing a search. One was a tech, had a load of gear with her. She was trying to hack into our central system, but...," Rick looked back at them all for a moment, "Aria was putting up a fight. I swear to god, I think that QI is sentient. It started shutting down systems, bringing things offline. I've never seen anything like it. It spooked some of the others too, so much so that they decided to leave the ship. They brought me with them back here, started asking a lot of questions: where's the device, we know you know, and all that crap. When I didn't answer, they started getting heavy." Rick gave Scott a stern look. "But I told them shit." He shrugged. "Eventually they brought me here."

  Scott sat back against the wall again as the others continued to pick through the finer details of Rick's story. But the commander had heard all he needed to. Two things were becoming clear to him. The first was that they were all being taken out of the equation, as Miranda had reckoned. But he already suspected that. The second was that, apart from his crew and the pirates that attacked them, no one else knew where the EPR device was. And just maybe he could use this to their advantage. The question was how?

  12

  Flight To The Docks

  "We need to get out of here, and soon." The others stopped talking and looked over at Scott. The commander shifted his position and leaned in a little. "From what Rick is saying, Xiang Zu are trying to hack our ship's systems to get information on the pirate attack and where the device might be. If they get in, then they could do the same calculation we did and figure
out that the device is probably here in Neo City. If they do work this out, then what good are we to them?"

  "Are you saying they would let us go?" said Steph.

  "No," said Miranda. She looked over at Scott. "What he's saying, I think, is that we become dispensable. Nothing to stop them shoving us out the nearest airlock with nothing but a single breath in our lungs."

  "No way," said Steph, "they wouldn't do that."

  "You think?" said Scott. "Neo is a city founded on turning a blind eye to whatever needs to be done. So okay, maybe they wouldn't go that far. But the thing that worries me is, what's to stop them?"

  "You have a point there, Scott," said Rick. "I know these guys, I worked for them for a while, and believe me: they stop at nothing to get what they want."

  "The other thing is, as far as I can tell, it's just us and the crew of the pirate ship that know the location of the EPR device. But that may change very soon, so we have a limited window of time."

  "You're not seriously thinking of going after it?" said Steph.

  "If the opportunity presents itself, why not? But I think we would all settle for simply getting off this rock, with or without the EPR device."

  Cyrus sighed and shook his head. "I have a major problem with that, in that I can't see shit."

  "All your gear is outside." Rick pointed toward the door. "I saw it when they brought me in."

  "What's out there? Both myself and Miranda were unconscious when they brought us in, so we've no idea." Scott's voice became quieter, almost a whisper. The group shuffled in closer. They were growing conspiratorial; they were making a plan.

  "This leads out into a big room, like a workshop, machines and stuff everywhere. Your gear is on a table in the center."

  "A workshop—not a barracks?" Scott started to look more closely at the room they were in. It wasn't a cell—it was not designed as a holding pen. He hadn't noticed before, but now that he looked, he could see it was just a plain old room that might have been used for storage at some time.