ganymede rising
by Jonathan Shepherd
EPISODE 1
Icy fire. That’s what reentry always felt like to
Edward. Pressing his hands into the cold plastic cushions on either side
of the holding pod, closing his eyes and breathing deeply into the
respiratory assurance mask, he allowed his digestive system to calm
down. Only darkness surrounded a passenger for about five minutes during
the jump process, then the pods would open, the tops separating and
lifting upward while the bottoms reclined, allowing those inside to once
again see through the view ports that surrounded the travel cell of the
space-liner. The room was like a giant carton of metallic eggs, all
cracking open slowly, revealing yawning, stretching chicks eager to
return home.
The ride to Earth from the gate was about two hours, but Edward had
some code he could start working on, and the view of the Lunar complex
during this ride would never cease to take his breath away.
{Would you care for a cocktail Mr. Johns?} A lilting female
voice inquired from the attendant panel in his seat as his respiratory
mask ascended into the upper panel of his pod.
“No thank you.” Edward rasped. He was one of few words to
automated service systems to begin with, particularly when getting his
voice back after gating.
{Have a pleasant descent home. Thank you for traveling with
JupiTrans.}
Edward returned to the data pad he had opened on his lap and
began to type. He needed to contact Tanya when he got home. The network
communications from a jump liner were too insecure for him to risk
letting her know right away what he had found so he would just have to
be patient. The programming code he was working on was
complicated enough to keep him busy, but much too dry to keep his mind
from wondering about what he had discovered while on Ganymede 2.
Before he made too many assumptions about the second security network he
had stumbled upon, he would want to get Tanya’s take on it…. Nothing
better than a conversation with a sensitive when you had suspicions that
could not be substantiated through conventional methods.
Meanwhile he would just have to sit back and let his fingers
type on the sensipad and try to lose himself in the code. He managed to
grab a glance out the view port and was just in time to see the Moon
fading in the distance. Shuttles floated around the giant station that
circled the Moon like a great ring and glittered in the sunlight.
Always seems so much more peaceful up there than on Earth, he
thought. So much more peaceful.
•••
Senator Sinclair sipped her cup of ginseng tea, allowing the
steam to warm her nose. The Station was a bit cold today… they had been
doing some repairs on the environmental support systems. Tapping the
screen in front of her, she reviewed the documents that the Consulate
had forwarded for her approval today. Her thumbprint authorized
pollution reduction repairs and ozone replenishment projects all over
Earth.
She allowed her gaze to wander out the plexisteel port next
to her. The Moon glowed brightly beneath the station, and over the
horizon the Blue and Green marble that was Earth hung in a sea of
glittering points of light. So beautiful and quiet. Even after all the
damage that had eaten away at the ecosphere, Earth was the living jewel
of the Solar System.
Sinclair let out a breath and folded down her data screen.
She sat back in her chair and took another sip of warm ginseng. Two more
weeks here and she would be on vacation. It was amazing the things she
had taken for granted before she had become a Senator for the United
Terran Consulate eight years ago. Real gravity, naturally occurring
sunrises, birds singing… even inclement weather. Life on the Lunar
station had definitely made her appreciate her home all the more, which
was appropriate since her job was to regulate everything that affected
its environment.
There was a soft bong and she snapped back to the present.
“Come in,” she said.
The door to her office slid almost soundlessly aside and her
administrative assistant stepped into the office. She had a strange
blank look on her face. Her eyes seemed somehow vacant, looking through
a wisp of blond hair that had come untied from her always conservative
twist.
“Is everything all right Ms. Grant?” Senator Sinclair stared
at the woman in silence for a moment. “Ms. Grant?…”
That was when the Senator noticed that her assistant had no
data pad with her. No tea. Only a strange metal cylindrical object was
in her right hand, which she brought up and pointed across the room.
Sinclair had only a moment to realize that it was some kind of weapon
before there was a buzz and then a metallic thump. There were seven
holes in the large barrel of the weapon, and from it, seven tiny objects
had entered into the senator’s body. The pain was sharp at first, and
then burning. The small missiles began to spin inside her body, tiny
blades protracting and cutting slowly through her internal organs.
Somehow they managed to miss all of the vital areas that would kill her
too quickly, prolonging the pain. Agony. She screamed, flailing from her
chair and slamming into the window. Her body quaked and the faint
buzzing sound inside her was drowned out by her rasping cries for mercy.
Her blood-soaked hands clawed down the window and left streaks across
the picturesque space-scape that she had viewed for so many years.
As the Senator crumpled to the floor, twitching in the throws
of death, Ms. Grant pressed the gun into her own stomach and pulled the
trigger. All awareness returned to her face in that instant. Her mouth
formed an O of terror as she surveyed what she had done for a brief
moment before the reality of the pain set in and she screamed and
screamed.
•••
Tanya stared at Edward while he contemplated his next move.
He always seemed to lose himself in every game of chess they played, but
he could always keep up with their conversations too. She only humored
him by playing… his intuitive ability to watch the patterns in a game of
chess would always outmatch her ability to sense what kind of plans he
was laying out. Out of hundreds of games, she could probably still count
the number of times she had won on both hands.
“I’m telling you, that secondary net you found on Ganymede is
no accident. The minute you said
something about it, my head was loaded with images that reek of
destruction and chaos… I know that all sounds dramatic, but I can feel
something going on up there…”
Tanya took a sip of her cappuccino and sat back, staring
incredulously at Edward, “Are you listening to me?”
“You are always speaking of the dramatic… and keep it down
while we are in public… check.” Now Edward sat back as Tanya snapped her
gaze back to the board. He had procured a pawn with his bishop and had
managed to force her to move her king at the same time. Artful.
“Typical.” She murmured, brushing her fire red hair out of
her eyes.
“Do you get anything more specific than general mayhem? You
know that’s one of my problems with all that parapsychological stuff.
You sensetives always seem to be able to tell something is going on, but
you don’t ever know what. All I know is that there was a second security
net… it was inactive, but I got the impression from the code that it
wasn’t all that old. I really don’t think that it was CSI’s either.”
Edward was all but whispering above the lilting jazz music that
decorated the air of Jacob’s, the small café where he and Tanya met
whenever he was in town.
“Okay…” She saved her king, and looked up, waiting for her
familiar clairvoyant tingle of information. It always came as images and
feelings, but she could usually get enough out of her gift to at least
add some light to a darkened situation. She saw a huge ship. A
freighter. And it was careening through space. It crashed into a dark
and ridged landscape, showering ice and water all around and then
blossoming into a bright red fireball. “Whoa. Let me recover for a
minute…”
“Are you all right?” Edward had abandoned the game for a
moment when he saw Tanya’s eyes glaze over in that way they did during
her more lucid visions.
“Yeah. I think so.” She rubbed her eyes and took another sip
of cappuccino before she looked into Edward’s eyes. “Ganymede. I saw a
ship crashing into Ganymede. It was unmistakable, the ice and water and
the ridges on the surface. This is really important… I just wish I knew
why. You don’t have to go there again any time soon do you?”
“Actually, I am going to be back out there in a week or two
for Consulate Solutions again, and that is why I want to find out what I
can now, so that I might be able to stumble onto something a little more
pertinent.”
“Well, you wouldn’t be traveling on a freighter anyway. It
was definitely some kind of freighter. Damn it I wish I got more of the
why sometimes than the where and the what.”
That statement got a nervous laugh out of both of them.
“Well, do you get the feeling at all that this has anything
to do with the conspiracy theory that we have all been tossing around? I
mean, that is why I wondered. Because shit like unmarked security grids
on Ganymede doesn’t happen now…. People are way more careful up there
nowadays. Oh, and checkmate.”
Tanya sighed. “Well, you know how I feel about that. You
wouldn’t have gotten hold of this information, and I wouldn’t have had a
freak out vision if it wasn’t important in some way. We’ll just have to
see what more we can find out… and you had better be careful Edward.”
She surveyed the
board, “Lost again… all well.” Her smile warmed Edward and erased any
guilt that he could possibly feel about winning.
That was when someone across the café shrieked.
“Oh my god!” A young woman stood up from her web terminal and staggered
back a bit. “Senator Sinclair’s just been assassinated… good lord.”
The woman sat back down and started weeping. Someone turned
up the volume on a news web-channel and the report started to pipe in
over the music, confirming the statement. Edward and Tanya just stared
at each other.
“Holy shit.” Tanya mumbled, “She has done so much for us…
what is going to happen now?”
Edward just shook his head, and looked down at the
chessboard, unable to speak.
