Up Against It - M. J. Locke [0]
There isn’t room for eccentricity in an asteroid community. When you are not working your freezing, grimy ass off out on a mining stroid—or in the refinery—or snatching a bite of vat-grown chow or a few hours’ sleep (or if you are lucky, some sweaty, low-gee booty), you are crawling around the habitat machinery, scraping knees and knuckles, replacing broken parts and plugging leaks. Because that is what keeps you alive.
Everyone thought things would change when they brought the bugs Up, a few decades back. But they are not the magic medicine everyone thought they would be.
Make no mistake; without them, the population beyond lunar orbit would be a tiny fraction of what it is today. Bugs build and maintain the primary structures, create food and clean air and water from the raw materials we provide.
But they can’t do everything, nor be everywhere. Fact is, they are sensitive to temperature and pressure changes, they eat a lot of fuel, and they are ass to program properly. Keeping them primed and ready to do what you need takes a small army.
The short version? You want to live, Upside; you work very hard, all the time, and you play by the rules. Don’t waste time, don’t waste resources, and especially don’t mess with the bugs.
—From Downsider Upside, Lesley Marcus Vaughn (New York, 2389)
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
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
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Acknowledgments
Copyright
1
So here they all were, Geoff and his three best buddies, way too early one Tuesday morning, in the spinning habitat city of Zekeston that lay buried a kilometer below asteroid 25 Phocaea’s rocky surface: about to mess with the bugs.
Geoff and Amaya stood in the shadows near the university plaza. Kamal crouched behind a low wall on the mezzanine overhead. Kam’s job was to call the op and film it. Ian sat blogging about rocketbikes at a nearby coffee kiosk on the edge of the plaza, eating a pastry and keeping an eye out for any city or university cops that might show up.
Geoff checked his heads-up. The timing had to be just right. A few seconds off in one direction and eight months’ effort would be wasted. A few seconds off in the other and they would all go to jail. His heart was pounding harder than it ever did when he was out in the Big Empty, racing his rocketbike.
His fear wasn’t of getting caught. No; what scared him was that in two minutes the whole solar system would know whether it would all pay off. All those hours of isolation; the sneaking around behind their parents’ and teachers’ backs; the endless succession of foul smells, burns, and stains that had ruined their clothing and scarred their hands—the risks he’d pressured his buddies to take, to help him do this—if this didn’t work, he’d look like a fool.
Nearby, a handful of drowsy, puffy-eyed university students slumped on plaza benches. Class scrolls lay inert, half-furled in their laps, blinking unnoted. Pastries and bulbs of coffee or tea cooled beside them on the benches. The air was chilly and still, as always. Birds and ground squirrels—refugees from Kukuyoshi, the habitat’s arboretum—snatched crumbs at their feet.
The fountain that dominated the plaza’s center was called El Dorado. It was a tumble of rhombic, trapezoidal, and rectangular gold and platinum blocks jutting up at various angles in a metallic bloom. As usual, the fountain was turned off, though the toroidal pool at its base contained brackish liquid with bits of debris floating in it. The sour smell of spent assembly fluid wafted across to Geoff and Amaya in their hiding place. It seemed really noticeable to him, but no one in the plaza seemed bothered by it.
Kam radioed them. “A minute-fifteen before the cameras go live. We need to move now.