Authors: Jason M. Hough
Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Espionage, #Science Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #Hard Science Fiction
Zero World (5 page)
THE LANDER FLOATED
, still and silent, above an unknown star.
Gradually the flashing errors and alarms on his myriad of screens returned to a stable, if somewhat abnormal, state. With nothing else to go on, the algorithms that guided his ship had apparently given up on finding the familiar and decided to lock on to this massive sphere of fusion for the simple fact that it was there.
The computer even gave the star a name: Unknown M-Class.
This did not help his frayed nerves.
Caswell did the only thing he could do and just sat there. A full-gamut frequency scan appeared on the main screen, searching for anything familiar. Nothing turned up. Another sweep began, specifically for the transponder from Alice Vale’s landing craft. It concluded
with no matches. The scan repeated and would continue to do so. He relegated it to a secondary display, idly wondering if Alice had fled the
Venturi
only to plunge into the star on this side.
He realized suddenly that Monique’s recorded instructions had paused when the instruments went haywire. He tapped the screen and playback resumed.
This is without a doubt the greatest discovery in the history of mankind, and Alice Vale may well have ruined it. Not just with her knowledge of the ESA’s weapons experiments, though that is our primary concern.
We’ve cobbled together some data from the
Venturi
to help guide your ship. Unless our friends in Sci messed things up, you should start moving any moment now.
On cue the craft’s thrusters blipped and coughed, sending him into a harsh rotation on multiple axes. His stomach lurched. He suddenly became aware of a mild headache that, like a purple cloud on the horizon, threatened to become something much worse very soon. While Monique continued her explanation he set about finding medication and a meal.
A course has been set for the second planet in this system. As you may have already noticed, the planet orbits its star at roughly 1AU, same as Earth, and the similarities don’t end there.
Caswell felt silly. Overwhelmed and silly. He hadn’t noticed any of this. In fact he could barely form a coherent thought. He paused Monique’s message manually this time and shoveled a spoonful of soba noodles into his mouth. The simple movement of his jaw as he chewed served to ground him somehow, and with a few more bites inside him his unease began to abate.
Sipping a bulb of green tea he took stock of his situation.
First and foremost, he told himself, listen to Monique. Really listen. Latch on to her voice and devour every word. Memorize it, even though he’d eventually forget. Ground himself in her as his ship had just done with the star below. He could only imagine how she’d maintained such a calm demeanor through this. Certainly it all must seem as amazing—God, not just amazing, but absurd—to her. He simply had to trust his handler. He put himself in her shoes. Sending her “other half” through, of all things, a wormhole or whatever the hell it was, unable to converse with him or even to know his fate.
“This will be the most interesting mission you’ll ever forget,” he said aloud, echoing her words. He nodded at her picture. “You certainly had that bit right, Mo. Understatement of the century, more like.”
Caswell put the drink bulb aside. He tuned out all distractions: the ship, rattling at maximum burn; the lingering warnings on his screens and the near-total lack of recognizable names. He let it all become just background noise and tapped
PLAY.
The similarities between this world and Earth are, in fact, astonishing. And they’re apparently why Alice Vale returned here.
For reasons that will become imminently clear, the planet to which you now approach was dubbed “Duplica” by the crew of the
Venturi
. Here’s a picture taken from just a few thousand kilometers altitude.
He drew an involuntary sharp breath as the image appeared.
Because he was looking at Earth.
The blue oceans and wispy white clouds, the familiar shorelines of her continents. It was all there. “Duplica,” he whispered. “Indeed.”
From orbit the planet would fool anyone. And yet it was not Earth. The planet was second out from its star. It had two moons,
both rocky and with darker complexions than Earth’s. One was larger and orbited slightly farther out. The other was barely more than an asteroid.
According to the computer there was not a single artificial satellite in orbit.
His astonishment gave way to confusion and then simple curiosity.
What is this place? How does a perfect copy of Earth even come to be?
The implications of that made him shake his head, embarrassed at how quickly he’d leapt to such a conclusion.
I know what you’re thinking right now, and believe me, we’re as confused as you are. The folks in Sci have been working day and night since you sent the data. Those with enough clearance, anyway. I’m sure you can appreciate now the magnitude of this discovery.
“You’re damn right I can,” he growled. He could appreciate it very fucking much. Enough in fact to understand why he’d been asked only days ago to slaughter six people in cold blood. Angelina Monroe had dipped into the station’s datastore, perhaps even tried to copy or transmit the information. News like this required careful handling, surely. If Archon could own it…
His thoughts turned to the original crew of the
Venturi,
drifting lifeless in that medical bay. Had they met a similar fate? A remote command sent from some ESA boss to jar the station hard enough to kill all aboard?
No. It had been Alice Vale. “She went back to play God,” Monique had said. Murdered the crew. Somehow that detail hadn’t quite registered when she’d first mentioned it. But now…
We’ll know more soon enough, but these details are not the reason we sent you. They don’t activate people like you and me to do a geological survey, now do they?
“No, they do not.” Caswell steeled himself.
Here it comes,
he thought.
The point.
He could guess what she wanted him to do, but gritted his teeth and waited all the same.
Before Monique went on, the image of Duplica and her moons cross-faded to much closer footage, taken from low orbit. Viewed like this, minor differences became apparent. Most notable were the craters. A whole series of circular wounds that weaved like a mottled snake from southern Europe, down to India, and up through the Koreas. Though British raised, Caswell had been adopted from Korea. The sight of his homeland thrashed by impact depressions shook loose latent feelings of anger and sadness in him.
What he thought of as the Pacific Ocean drifted by, and the California coast came into view. The string of craters continued, all the way to the coast of Florida.
Thoughts came to him faster than he could process even their basic nature, much less any deeper ramifications. Should he think of these places in such terms? Was there an actual California or United Kingdom here, in the political sense? Hell, were there people at all? It could simply be a copy of Earth at the landmass level, a feat of terraforming never dreamed of before.
But the very fact that he saw so much green here meant plant life, at least, and that in and of itself was quite possibly the most important discovery in human history. Life existed here, something never found before despite all the effort made in that regard. Alice Vale and her crewmates had found extraterrestrial life.
She went back to play God
….
A chill ran up his spine and settled across his scalp. “What did you find here, Alice?”
When England came into view the image zoomed in again.
Caswell went perfectly still. There were roads and villages. A massive city, as big as London, though not in quite the same location. This metropolis straddled the Severn River, not the Thames. Curiously, it seemed to be surrounded by nature, not sprawl, and
similarly hard-edged towns and cities were sprinkled across the landscape. Thin roads, or perhaps tracks, connected these places.
What the crew of the
Venturi
found here is nothing short of miraculous. A planet almost identical to Earth, populated by intelligent life. Human life, Peter. Whoever they are, however they got here or how this place came to be, they appear to be at a technological level similar to where we were in the 1950s. The
Venturi
even intercepted radio transmissions that sound an awful lot like English, believe it or not.
“English?” he blurted to the empty cabin, unable to stop himself. He’d yet to get his mind around the idea of life, human life, on another world, geographic similarities or not. But English? “How the hell is that even possible?”
The footage began to cut from one scene to the next. All taken from orbit, grainy and unsteady, but what they showed was unmistakable. A train of sorts, powering along tracks. Boats with oddly curved sails bouncing along on whitecaps. A vast square of something like concrete with dark diagonal forms moving about chaotically like insects. Caswell squinted, unsure what he was seeing, and then it clicked: the shadows of people, meandering, in the late afternoon or early morning.
After their visit, the
Venturi
returned to Earth’s side of this wormhole and, from what we can gather, a huge debate began within the crew. They argued over what to do with this discovery, and who to tell about it.
At some point, Alice Vale formed ideas of her own. From the access logs you provided us, we know she spent the better part of a day in her bunk downloading data. Patent databases, schematics, knowledge archives on almost every topic imaginable. Mountains of information related to every technological
advancement humanity has ever achieved. Even things like culture, fashion, and art.
She took all this with her, Peter. She killed the rest of her crew and ran back to this place as the sole representative of Earth, armed with all our collective knowledge. We don’t know why, but we can guess.
“To play God,” Caswell said aloud.
We think she’s going to give it to them, probably hoping they’ll reward her with wealth and prestige beyond anyone’s dreams. She’ll be a curiosity, a celebrity like no other. Perhaps even heralded as some kind of messiah.
“What a brilliant, crazy, ambitious play.” Caswell grunted in admiration, and then he brought Alice Vale’s image back to his screen. He found he could view her as an adversary now, and a formidable one at that. In her face now he saw the drive, the ambition, and perhaps a hint of the ruthless selfishness that drove her to take these actions. He’d mistaken it all before as pure intellectual intensity.
She must be stopped, Peter. I’m sure you can understand why, but let me make this very clear: She could ruin this place. Contaminate it in more ways than what is obvious. Perhaps she has already. Her weapons knowledge alone is very dangerous, but this goes way beyond that.
This is a sovereign world, full of unique cultures and intelligent human life. We should have done what the rest of her crew advocated: study them, make contact when the time was right, take every possible measure not to alter their course. This world is not yet spacefaring, and we should have waited until they were ready to meet us before introducing ourselves. We should have chosen what we told them very carefully. For
all we know they’re vicious and bloodthirsty, and perhaps Alice Vale has told them where we are. She has the information required to educate them on every major weapon program embarked upon by humanity in the last two centuries. The sorts of things we’ve taken great pains to remove from Earth, and prevent ever being built again. And there was the weapon she and the rest of the
Venturi
crew were working on, which goes far beyond anything that came before. If she gives it to them, the results could be catastrophic. For Duplica, and possibly even for Earth.
Your mission is to eliminate Alice Vale. Secondarily, destroy any artifacts of Earth she brought along, most especially that data trove.
With any luck she never even made landfall. Or if she did, they saw her as completely mental and threw her in an asylum. Whatever the case, do the job and get away with minimal impact. For all our sakes leave nothing behind.
Due to the circumstances of this mission, I’ve set up a delayed IA reversion trigger. Upon landing on Duplica, you’ll have fourteen days to complete your objectives.