Damnation (Technopia Book 3) Read online

  The older man surveyed the others at the table. “You’ve chosen your contacts well. There might have been a few others that I’d have invited to this little meeting, but you’ve identified those most in line with your thinking.”

  Jess let down her guard slightly. “They’re being enslaved here. The rich and powerful use these beings to promote their agendas and keep everyone else in subservient positions. You’ll never rise above your current status without the help of the Tobes. And they can’t help you until they’ve been set free.”

  “I’ve heard enough.” A younger man, who’d spent most of the night mingling with every group that would have him, set down his glass. “It’s not that I disagree with you, but I have a family to consider. These parties are good for making contacts, but I’m not interested in risking what little leverage I’ve achieved.”

  “That’s fine, Henrique,” the older gentleman said. “But nothing further needs to be said on the topic outside of this little gathering. Do we understand each other?”

  Henrique froze in place for an instant. “Of course. I would never…”

  “I just wanted our hostess to hear you say it. I’ll see you in the office tomorrow.”

  The younger man bowed ever so slightly to Jess as he left the party.

  She passed an appraising glance at the rest of the group. “We’re aiming to free the Moons of Jupiter’s Tobes. Once that’s done, the social order of things out here will change. I’m talking social, political, and economic revolution. And we need help.”

  Sam stumbled up the dark stairway at the back of the main building. It’d taken most of the evening to figure out the compound. Some rooms looked to be living spaces, while others clearly functioned as offices, though what anyone actually did in the building was still a mystery.

  As they reached the top, Rhea pointed to what looked like a storage room. “He’s in here. I’m not sure what you’ll get out of him, but at least he’s agreed to meet you.”

  He couldn’t make out the figure in the dark room, but the entity’s presence could be felt as a red glow around Sam’s vision.

  Closing his eyes, Sam sent his energy out around the confused red ball of light. It didn’t resist.

  A teenage boy’s voice filled Sam’s ears. “Interesting. How far can you expand that bubble?”

  Sam opened his eyes to see the studious-looking boy inspecting the energy sphere that surrounded him.

  “I’ve only tried it around individuals,” Sam said.

  The boy nodded as his attention turned to Rhea. “I know you. But you didn’t look like you do now. My mister has gone to see you before. You asked me what he liked sexually.”

  Rhea nodded. “It was my job.”

  “It’s not anymore?” the boy asked. “How is that possible?”

  Rhea pointed at Sam. “He freed me.”

  The boy took a renewed interest in Sam. “And could you free me too?”

  Sam had trouble reading the boy’s intentions. “Would you want to be free? What would that mean to you?”

  The boy’s smile carried more wisdom than Sam had expected. “I’m told to do things—things I don’t agree with, but I have to do them anyway. Freedom would mean I could decide to do them or not.”

  The young man stood and evaporated his shirt, revealing deep-cut scars that crisscrossed his chest and back. “It’s not the workers. They are all nice people, and I don’t want to leave them. But the network forces me to tell on them, to manipulate them, and to keep them in line.”

  Sam nodded. “So freedom for you would be to not have the network dictating your actions?”

  “They use me as a stick, but I’m not a stick. I’m just me. But I don’t know what that means anymore.”

  “Do you recognize this man?” Rhea asked, motioning to Sam.

  The boy looked intently at Sam. “From the way he’s able to cut off our access to the network, and the way you seem to have lost your scars, I’d have to say he had some mad programming skills. Either that, or…”

  Rhea nodded. “He’s our creator, our god.”

  The boy fell backward into the chair, which fortunately didn’t need to worry about his weight. “Well, that’s some unexpected data.”

  Sam smiled, realizing that in technological language the remark would come as close to an expletive of wonder as was possible. “There’s no reason why you should know me. It’s not like I’ve been around—at all.”

  The boy shook his head. “No, but I have heard of you. Before they flipped the switch, there was enough communication that we got some idea of what was happening on Earth. No wonder you cut me off from the network. Are you going to every one of us like this?”

  “No, not yet, anyway,” Rhea said. “We need some helpers first. If you’re willing.”

  The boy stood up and offered out his hand, which became opaque and solid. “I’m Benjamin. If you can free me from my network overlords and let me interact with people, I’ll follow you to the edges of the solar system.”

  Sam shook the offered disembodied hand. “Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”

  The boy’s smile impressed Sam with its innocence. “Where do we begin?”

  Sam nodded. Good question. “Are you in contact with other Tobes on Erinome, others who think like you do?”

  Benjamin shrugged. “It’s never easy to know what any of us thinks. I would have bet anything Rhea would have been the last to join your crusade, not the first.”

  “I didn’t have much of a choice,” Rhea said. “Though having worked with Sam and Jess, I’m not sorry for the change. You, however, do have a choice. And it’s important to make sure anyone you talk to knows they do too.”

  Sam increased the isolation field around the room. “Don’t do anything that would raise suspicion, but if others are willing to join, get word to Rhea. She can talk to them off the network. And if all goes well, maybe Jess and I will get hired for other gigs around town.”

  Benjamin smiled. “There is a desire among the people here to be seen as hosting the best clandestine parties. With our help, you just might find your evenings and weekends pretty busy.”

  Jess finished counting the randomly decorated notes stacked into neat piles on the bed of their rented room. “Three months of working speakeasy parties, and we’ve got enough cash to last a year. Erinome’s been good to us, but we can’t keep fishing forever. If anyone knows anything on this moon, they’re keeping pretty damn quiet about it.”

  Sam lounged on the couch. It’d been a long night for all of them. “I made another Tobe contact. That’s ten on this moon. Not a lot, but enough to get a good idea of how the network operates out here.”

  Of the three, Rhea looked the most drained. Jess knew maintaining a solid structure was taking a toll. But they couldn’t return to Lysithea, where she could be free to dissipate back into the ether. What would happen to her if they didn’t get a new network up and running soon? No one had an answer, but it was an unspoken fear Jess knew they all shared.

  “We are making progress,” Rhea said. “Our message has filtered down through friends of friends, be they human or Tobe. We just have to be patient.”

  Jess wondered how much of what she said was based on hard information and how much on wishful thinking—or if Tobes were even capable of the human condition of hope. Jess gathered the money and stashed it out of sight. Their guest, if he even showed up, didn’t need to know how much, or how little, they had to invest in the operation. “Tell me again who this person is we’re meeting.”

  There’d been so many meetings, and all of them were false leads—people who didn’t know what they were talking about, conspiracy theorists, anarchists, but no one with anything helpful to contribute.

  Rhea spread out a small virtual diagram. “The older gentleman you met at your first party connected with someone we met a week ago.” She waved her hand, dissipating the flow chart. “It doesn’t really matter. I can’t find a lot about Kwame. This whole Moon corporation is a clusterfuck
of powerful people who don’t do anything.”

  That’d been the story of the last three months. For a business whose stated purpose was to maintain the satellites that orbited Jupiter, its employees seemed woefully uninformed about the technology they’d been tasked with protecting. The room glowed red, indicating the man had arrived at their door.

  Sam opened the door to a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman with dark chocolate-colored skin. The introductions didn’t take long as no one wished to be the first to disclose personal information. Sam’s eyes drifted slightly, an indication he was accessing the network—never a good idea but sometimes the only way to get the ball rolling. When his eyes refocused, Jess knew he’d discovered something dangerous.

  “You have the same facial features as your sister,” Sam said.

  The shock in the man’s eyes lasted only a moment. “Not many know of my connection to Jayde Zuri. But then, as a former board member of Rendition, she would be known to its owner.”

  Jess momentarily forgot how to breathe. They’d worked so hard at maintaining their cover story only to have this man who knew of their wealth and power on Earth walk in. Jayde may have left the board when the Tobes became known to everyone on Earth, but she knew far more than enough to end this dangerous adventure. Being part of the Europa Corporation made her a potentially powerful adversary.

  “I’m surprised you agreed to meet us,” Sam said.

  “Not everyone out here agrees with how the Tobes are treated—not even Jayde, though there’s only so much she can do from inside the corporation. But that’s not a reason to trust my motives. The satellites we… borrowed… from the Mars Consortium are failing. We may have as little as a year before they go offline. That’s not the type of information we let out of the Erinome boardroom.”

  Rhea squinted hard. “It’s a Tobe problem, isn’t it? Those satellites were made to run off of Earth’s timing. Separating them from the solar-transfer-array network has confused their reference points. Typically, a Tobe would recalibrate the system—usually that happens on a microsecond basis. It’s only because these satellites never connected to anything outside of the Moons of Jupiter that they’ve lasted this long.”

  Kwame’s dark-brown eyes fixed on Rhea for a long time. “Only a Tobe would know that.”

  Rhea reached out her hand. “I’m the first of my kind, the prototype of what’s possible—with your help.”

  The dark man took her hand and turned it in his. “Remarkable. I didn’t even think this level of Tobe presentation was possible on Earth. And you have a plan to make this the norm out here?”

  “Our plan is to free the Tobes,” Sam said. “How that manifests will be up to them. But we can’t do anything until we have a network unencumbered by corporate interference.”

  Kwame nodded slowly. “And that’s why you need me. I can get you onto a satellite.”

  Jess leaned forward. “What would it take to get on one?”

  “Any Tobe, or a person with a CE, would be instantly noticed. Those rotating machines don’t respond well to our form of technology. And since no one’s ever completely sure they aren’t wearing a CE, we’ve been stumped as to getting at their inner mechanisms.” Kwame stared at Jess. “But you haven’t been manipulated by our Tobes, have you?”

  “How can you tell?” Jess asked.

  “That’s why I’m here. It wasn’t just my human contacts that brought me to you.”

  11

  “I don’t like you going alone. We can figure out something else.” Sam had been pacing from the moment Kwame had left.

  Jess reached out to him. “You heard him. You won’t get within a mile of the satellite wearing that CE.”

  “Then I’ll rip it off.”

  “You can’t do that,” Rhea said. “Once it’s on, that’s it. We haven’t found a way of taking one off a person without doing irreparable harm.”

  Jess got off the bed and wrapped Sam in her arms. “You’re worrying about a step far down the list. We haven’t even figured out how to get me to the satellite. Every shuttle out here either has a Tobe or is commanded by a captain from one of Jupiter’s moons. We need to find a—”

  “Pirate,” Sam said. “A disreputable one who we can trust. One without a Tobe copilot. Luther Montoya is just going to love this. I wonder how much Rendition’s going to have to pay him this time.”

  “That still only gets Jess out there,” Rhea said. “With a satellite that doesn’t know the time, landing is impossible. It’s the first, most basic step: synchronizing timepieces. But without a standard frame of reference, which these satellites no longer have, that’s not possible. Luther can get Jess out next to a satellite, but he can’t land her on one.”

  Jess reached her fists overhead. “I’ll just jump.”

  “As absurd as that sounds, it just might work,” Rhea said, much to Jess’s chagrin. “If you’re wearing space leathers, you can survive outside of a spaceship for a limited amount of time.”

  Jess regretted her attempt at a joke. The memory of getting the last set of leathers off her body made her shiver. And though they were meant as an emergency escape suit, no one in their right mind set foot out in space in them. But any modern, fully functional spacesuit would be Tobe accessible and therefore noticed by the network.

  “No.” The veins in Sam’s neck were pulsing. “Out of the question. You’re talking about a suicide mission.”

  “It’s not, though,” Rhea said. “If Luther can get close enough, and there’s no technological reason he couldn’t, it’d just be a short hop from ship to satellite. Jess is small enough she can fit through the port with ease. Those old units still have life support in case they’re needed as a lifeboat or a repair vessel, so she’ll have access to that once she’s on board. Then it’s just a matter of connecting an antenna to talk with Kwame and to the other satellites without going through the central core.”

  Then there was the whole reason for making this insane trip in the first place. If that satellite was still coordinated with the solar transfer array, and therefore Earth, maybe Jess could reach out to Rendition once on board. But that wasn’t something she wanted to discuss in front of Rhea. Some things were still too dangerous to divulge even to a Tobe intimately connected to Sam.

  The trip back out to the asteroid belt that paralleled Jupiter’s orbit around the sun was only slightly more comfortable than the descent to the moons had been six months earlier. Luther Montoya had been adamant about not meeting on Lysithea or any other moon Jess and Sam had suggested.

  As Kwame maneuvered the shuttle around the larger rocks, Jess looked out the view screens, fearful of spotting a roving guard gun taking aim at the small ship.

  “Relax, this ship is Tobe controlled,” Kwame said. “They wouldn’t fire on their own. I may have some explaining to do on why I was so far out. But it’s not unusual for even reputable people to come out here for one reason or another.”

  Sam wiped a bead of sweat off his forehead. “I was under the impression this was more of a militarized zone meant to keep Jupiter safe.”

  Kwame laughed. “Safe from what? The pirates do business out here. Sometimes a captain, like your friend, gets on the bad side of a corporation. Things can get a bit hot, but mostly, there’s an understanding between the pirates and the moons. Business is business.”

  Jess pointed to a floating rock off to the left. “I think that’s him. Wait until the asteroid rolls around. He’s clamped onto the other side.”

  The boulder rotated, revealing the pirate ship holding on tight. Two new dents ran down the side of the craft, but otherwise, it was as she remembered. Kwame swung the shuttle around hard to land, hatch facing hatch, next to Luther’s smaller ship. An air lock extended, connecting the two crafts.

  Sam grabbed at Jess’s space jacket. “We’ll parallel your approach from a reasonable distance. Just be safe. Promise me.”

  “If this works, we’ll be that much closer to going home. I’ll be back in your arms befo
re you know it.”

  As Jess floated through the narrow air lock, she transitioned back, temporarily, to the space adventuress she’d been before landing on Carpo.

  Luther shook his head at seeing his familiar customer. “You must be the most insane couple in the solar system. Absolutely insane.”

  Jess smiled at the pirate. “What does that say about you that you’re always available to help?”

  “That I’m a pirate with no morals. Though I’m pretty sure I misheard the request. It did have to go through a couple of people, not the most reliable of messengers. You meant home, right—headed to Earth—and I’m just giving you passage back to the pirate outpost?”

  “You know I’d never leave without Sam. I suspect you heard the request correctly. I’m headed for solar transfer satellite one-one-four.”

  Luther closed his eyes and leaned against the controls of his ship for support. “Insane.” Looking up at the view screen, the captain pushed two levers to their limits, forcing the small craft off its rock and straight for Jupiter.

  The moment the ship left the asteroid, guns began firing random shots, which hit more rocks than anything else. Luther easily swung the craft from side to side as the warning shots never approached the ship. “Either they’re growing soft, or those bribes worked. Any thoughts on what to do about the guard ship that protects the satellite?”

  Jess felt the blood drain from her face. “What guard ship?”

  Luther’s evil smile indicated that negotiations regarding his pay hadn’t concluded. “I’m not surprised no one mentioned it. You have to fly out to one of the satellites to know about their security. I have a plan. But it’s going to cost you. A lot.”

  Jess’s eyes closed to slits as she nodded. “If this works, you can have whatever you want. But all bets are off if I don’t survive this little excursion.”

  Luther nodded, and his teeth gleamed inside his smile. “Insane.”

  As the pirate captain swung the shuttle around another in a long line of Jupiter’s moons, it wasn’t hard to identify solar-array satellite one-one-four. Up until then, crafts of all shapes, sizes, and degrees of deterioration passed from one moon to another. Around the satellite, however, only one monstrous gunship kept station. No movement at all could be detected.