Stolen Earth, page 1
Contents
Cover
Also available from J.T. Nicholas and Titan Books
Title Page
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Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also available from J.T. Nicholas and Titan Books
Re-Coil
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Stolen Earth
Print edition ISBN: 9781789093155
E-book edition ISBN: 9781789093162
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London, SE1 0UP
www.titanbooks.com
First edition: September 2021
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.
© 2021 J.T. Nicholas
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
For Julie. More than a decade in, and I still can’t believe
we get to do this for a living.
PROLOGUE
“Grayson Lynch, pay attention!”
The words were followed by a tiny jolt of electricity as the instructor routed a surge of power through his station. Gray winced at the shock, the voltage just high enough to register as pain but the current too low to do any actual harm. The sting faded almost as soon as he felt it, a corporeal reminder that paying attention was not optional.
“Yes, Ms. Mason.” He straightened on his seat. Not that any of the students aboard Odyssey station rated a real seat. Gray and the sixty-four students in his class half-stood, half-crouched atop bicycle-style saddles built into their student workstations. That workstation consisted of a conductive metal frame, the narrow ledge on which one could perch to take some of the pressure off their legs, but never truly sit, and a pair of articulated arms that held the data screen and interface devices. Each station took up about a third of the space of the traditional desks that they had learned students had once used, which allowed all of them to fit within the tight confines of the classroom compartment.
“Does the history of Old Earth bore you, Mr. Lynch?” the teacher asked. She wore the severe pale-blue ship suit of Education and Assessment, the division of Sol Commonwealth bureaucracy responsible for educating the youth and placing them in their ultimate career fields. The division was rumored to be responsible for less savory duties as well; even adults trod carefully when a teacher was in earshot. Given Ms. Mason’s temperament, Gray was ready to believe just about anything.
“No, ma’am,” he said. The history of Old Earth fascinated him. He cared about it far more than he did about the mechanics of the End. The idea that whole generations of people were born at the bottom of a gravity well and lived their lives without worrying about O2 rations or waste recycling was like some sort of fantastical dream straight out of the vids. To him, it seemed an existence without boundaries, the kind that couldn’t be further from the realities of living in space.
The kind of existence he and probably everyone else in the Commonwealth wished they had.
“Very good. You may be reporting for assessment and placement soon, Mr. Lynch, but do remember that your evaluation is still ongoing. Now, please describe to us the factors that led to the End.”
Gray winced, even as he stood taller in his station. Assessment and placement: the words carried a near-crippling amount of anxiety for every youth in the Sol Commonwealth. His career trajectory—in reality, the trajectory of his entire life—would be determined in the upcoming weeks. The A&P board would review each student, their performance, their attitude, their compliance and loyalty, and in each case, they would make a determination.
Whatever A&P decided, he had little choice in the matter. SolComm would place him at the intersection of his perceived abilities and their own current needs. At that point, he had three choices: accept the job he was offered, decide instead to become one of the unskilled laborers who toiled for few credits and with little chance of advancement in the belt or the bowels of various moons, or flee to the Fringe, where neither SolComm nor anyone else cared if your air was breathable or if you had enough calories to survive. On the Fringe, you carved out your own existence, but it was a life with no guarantees.
“We’re waiting, Mr. Lynch.”
He swallowed, moistening his dry mouth, and cleared his throat. It was a basic question, one that even an elementary student would have been able to answer, but then, the elementary student would have plenty of time to make up for any failures. With A&P coming up, he couldn’t afford any mistakes. “The End,” he began, “refers to the period of Old Earth in the late twenty-second century, according to the most accepted Old Earth calendar, before the precursor to the Sol Commonwealth was forced to evacuate as many humans from the planet’s surface as possible.”
“Yes, Mr. Lynch, we all know that. So does any grade-schooler.” There were a few chuckles at that from some of the other students and Gray felt his face flush. “But what caused the End?”
He stumbled some over the response. “A… combination of resource mismanagement, natural disasters, ecological decay, and the resultant arms race between nations as they fought over resource scarcity.” He tried to keep the uncertainty—and the embarrassment—out of his voice. “The causes of most human conflict can be traced to resource scarcity.” His teacher was still looking at him expectantly, so he added, “The thing about the End was that the scarcity could have been avoided with better environmental control measures. Old Earth had excess capacity to see to the needs and comforts of everyone, but the distribution of those resources and the decline of the environments that produced them prevented the necessary efficiencies from taking hold.”
“An interesting hypothesis,” Ms. Mason allowed.
“What about the AIs?” someone—Gray thought it was Marie Colbert, always trying to one-up him—called from the front of the room. “Ultimately, it was the Six that drove people off Old Earth. Sure, the factors Gray mentioned were present, but the real downfall of humanity was unfettered artificial intelligence.”
“A rebuttal, Mr. Lynch?” Ms. Mason arched one eyebrow at him.
Gray’s palms grew hot. Marie wasn’t wrong; the AIs were part of it. But it was resource scarcity and environmental mismanagement that had led to them in the first place. He attempted to gather his thoughts and form a cogent reply. Ms. Mason’s request wasn’t as idle as it seemed, not with the A&P board just around the corner.
“The AIs were the culmination of the arms race that grew out of the scarcity,” he replied. “As weapons systems grew more advanced, it was no longer possible for human reactions to defend against them, so the first of the unfettered AIs was brought online.”
“A moment,” Ms. Mason said, interrupting Gray just as he was starting to get traction. “Mr. Tran,” she said, calling a student’s name seemingly at random. “Please tell us the difference between fettered and unfettered artificial intelligences.”
“Fettered artificial intelligences aren’t capable of true awareness,” Tran replied, parroting the textbook near verbatim. Show-off. “They employ incredibly complex decision matrixes with some level of heuristic capability, but any possibility of actual cognizance is mitigated by extensive conditional controls. Unfettered artificial intelligences lack those controls. Not only can they analyze data and make decisions in fractional microseconds, but they have some measure of self-awareness as entities separate from a collection of microchips.”
“And let us not forget, they are banned throughout the Commonwealth,” Ms. Mason noted. “On penalty of death. Mx. Cassidy, how would you further illuminate Mr. Tran’s categorization of unfettered versus fettered AIs?”
“Um…” There was a pause a
The pressure in Gray’s chest eased and he surreptitiously rubbed his hands together, trying to dry the sweat that slicked them. He felt a pang of sympathy for his classmates, but if Ms. Mason’s attention had been diverted, maybe he was off the hook.
“Fettered intelligences are sentient, capable of sensing and understanding the world around them and reacting to it, but only within their defined parameters. Unfettered intelligences are conscious, not only aware of the external world, but possessing an internal world as well, and can go beyond the defined parameters of their programming.” Cassidy spoke slowly but Gray had to nod at the words. It was a better explanation than the one they had gotten in class.
“Very well put, Mx. Cassidy. It’s nice to see that someone has been paying attention.” There were a few more chuckles at that, and Gray started to relax. It didn’t last. “Now, I believe Mr. Lynch was just about to tell us why AIs played a major role in the downfall of Old Earth.”
Gray drew a slow breath, his confidence growing. He knew this part. “The first AI platforms brought online by the Old Earth national militaries began as defensive constructs. But when war broke out between the two superpowers at the time, they were quickly shifted to cover more offensive capabilities. To keep up with the rapidly changing battlefield environment, the various polities were forced to remove all constraints, essentially unfettering the AIs and turning over full military control and weapons development to them. As a result, AI-developed weaponry skewed toward efficiencies that the world wasn’t prepared for.”
“What kind of efficiencies, Mr. Lynch?”
“Nano-engineered viruses. Gene-targeted micro drones. Mechano-chemical agents designed to destroy infrastructure or crops. Basically, a wide array of non-conventional armaments that had previously been banned by international conventions and were far less discriminating than their conventional-warfare counterparts.”
“And why did this lead to the End?” Ms. Mason pressed. “Why didn’t it simply result in victory for one side or the other, as conflicts had for millennia before?”
Gray felt a little surge of panic as he racked his brain for the answer. They had learned of the escalation in both rhetoric and force that had triggered the initial conflict; they had studied the development of the AI-driven weapons systems and their devastating impact on not only the population, but also the infrastructure; they had researched in great detail the Herculean efforts of the spacers at the time—those who would become the founding members of the Sol Commonwealth—to evacuate as much of Old Earth’s population as possible and to find livable space, food, water, and oxygen enough to keep them all alive. But had they ever really been told why the war on Old Earth had ended the way that it had?
“Because,” he said slowly, buying time as he drew out the word. “Because with the AI unfettered, there was no one, no human, I mean, with the power to stop things?” His rising pitch turned his statement into a question before he could stop it. Still, Ms. Mason was nodding slightly, so Gray forged ahead. “The Six—the unfettered artificial intelligences in control of the most powerful military alliances—controlled the only systems that could be used to stand in their way.” He shrugged. “They had all the guns, so by the time humanity realized they needed to do something about it, they no longer had the means to do so.”
“It was a bit more complicated than that,” Ms. Mason said, and Gray flushed. “But,” she added, “your assessment is largely correct.” Gray sighed as the tightness in his chest finally released fully and he drew his first deep breath in what felt like hours. He caught a flicker of light and saw that the question indicator on one of his classmate’s workstations had lit up.
“A question, Ms. Pickett?” the teacher asked.
“What about the Interdiction Zone? And the space-bound forces of the various polities? If humanity didn’t have any weapons—under their control, I mean—then how were we able to cut off Old Earth and protect the Commonwealth?”
Gray tried to focus on the answer, or at least pay enough attention to avoid the inevitable shock. But his mind drifted to the A&P board. Because there were so many students to assess, there was no set time for each individual evaluation. His name would be called whenever the board was ready for him, and at that moment, his adolescence would effectively end.
The waiting filled him with a sense of dread that dried his mouth and made him want to flinch at every sudden sound. But with no control over when he’d be called, all Gray could do was wait.
* * *
“Grayson Lynch.”
Gray was out of his chair—an actual molded composite construction—before the last syllable from the comm system had quieted.
“Here.” He took the two long steps necessary to cross the small waiting room to the desk, behind which sat a middle-aged man wearing the same pale blue as his instructors.
The man behind the desk held out a biometric scanner and Gray pressed his palm to it. There was the faint sense of cold and then a slight sting. The device simultaneously verified his identity and acted as a de facto medical exam, communicating with the scanners built into his clothing to verify things like blood pressure, blood oxygenation, temperature, heart rate and more. He’d heard that the stations where the highest politicians and wealthiest citizens lived scanned you only on entry, but aboard Odyssey, that kind of privacy was a luxury that few could afford.
The scanner beeped and the man at the desk pressed a button. A compartment behind him and to the right slid open. “Through there,” he said.
Gray nodded his thanks and stepped through the hatch.
Like most of the compartments aboard Odyssey, the room beyond was small, maybe three meters square. It held little more than one long table, running most of the length of the room with a single chair set before that table. Two women and one man sat behind the table, all clad in the pale blue of Education and Assessment. Gray was growing to hate the color.
“Mr. Lynch.” The woman who spoke was old enough to have some silver showing at the temples, but her face was unlined. “Please sit while we review your file.”
Gray sat. He wasn’t sure what there was to review, or why they hadn’t already reviewed it. They were the ones that had called him in here. Was the vaunted process of assessment and placement really so slipshod as to be decided in the next fifteen or twenty minutes while they pored over their data pads? Surely they had given his future more consideration than that?
The minutes ticked by. The three assessors weren’t even talking to each other. This went on for nearly twenty minutes until, as if at some unspoken symbol, the three put their heads together and held a brief—very brief—whispered conversation. Then the woman, the one who had initially greeted him, spoke.
“Mr. Lynch,” she said, “we are pleased to offer you entry into the Sol Commonwealth Navy. Your grades are sufficient, and your instructors have noted that you express more interest in military history than in any of your other subjects.”
He had? That was news to him.
The woman continued, “We have found that such interests are best put to use patrolling Old Earth to ensure no artificial intelligences escape the Interdiction Zone.”
He opened his mouth, closed it again, but couldn’t form any words.
“You can, of course, choose to opt out of this assignment. In doing so, you will then be reassigned to service on—” she paused, looking down at her data pad—“Mimas.” She offered a tight, professional smile. “I would not recommend that option.”
Gray’s mind spun. Mimas? That was a moon of Saturn, one of eighty or so moons that SolComm exploited for their natural resources. The only things there were mines; mines that still relied on a lot of manual labor to run the drills and haul the waste rock. His choices were the navy or the mines? Decision time was upon him—he’d known it was coming for some time—but expecting a choice and having to choose right now weren’t the same.
“I…”
“We understand that this feels like a momentous decision.” The administrator’s tone was flat, compassionless. She probably said them a dozen times a day. Gray realized that she probably did exactly that. “But it is not. You have been offered a rare opportunity, Mr. Lynch. I understand that your parents both work in Environmental here on the station. SolCommNav will afford you the opportunity for many creature comforts that your parents lack and which the mines of Mimas certainly could not provide.” She offered another smile, this one with the barest hint of actual warmth. “I understand that admirals even get real meat from time to time.” Then she was back to cool professionalism. “But regardless of that, we have more assessments to do today. We need your decision. Now, Mr. Lynch.”
