Johal kept their secret, although she’d written off Lam as another loss. “We can’t wait for your AI anymore,” she said on the second day as she and Vonnie installed new airco screens in Lander 04.
“I think we have to,” Vonnie said.
“Why haven’t you heard from him? He malfunctioned and wandered off somewhere. He’s gone.”
O’Neal was more pessimistic. “Lam is a threat,” he muttered to Vonnie and Ash during a jeep ride between their lander and Module 01. “You watch. He co-opted those relays. That’s why we can’t find them. We need to advise Koebsch before Lam tries to piggyback into our grid.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Ash said.
She’d reverted to the obstinate girl she’d been in her first days on Europa, showing little emotion and less patience. Everything she did now was with robotic precision, as if that could prevent more bloodshed.
“Lam doesn’t have the warfare pods or the spare mem to infiltrate our systems,” Ash said.
“We need to tell Koebsch.”
“Just wait.”
Theirs was a slow-motion conspiracy. Metzler said O’Neal had spoken to him, too. Privately, Vonnie and Ash reworked the corrective sequences they intended to send to Lam, reducing the file sizes and transmission times required.
Her romance with Metzler also felt like it was frozen in time. Except for a few quick, stolen kisses, they’d had no opportunity to enjoy their newfound romance. She remained interested. He was hardworking and loyal, sweet with her, furious with Koebsch and Dawson, and a loud, vocal influence on O’Neal, Gravino, and Johal. But they were too busy to do more than touch hands or nod or whisper.
Rarely, they ate and rested. Most of their hours were swamped with dire needs like hull repairs on 01; sensor replacements on 02 and 04; salvaging food, AI cards, and gear from 03; running checks on Vonnie’s transplants; starting the excavation to find their mecha buried in the pit; assembling new mecha; setting beacons and listening posts; and integrating their hardware with the FNEE grid.
The Brazilians labored on their own projects. Sergeant Tavares touched base with Vonnie and Ash constantly, loading codes into a shared database.
Both sides were constructing fresh squads of mecha. On the second night, the wreckage of Module 03 was reduced to scrap to meet their needs for copper, alumalloy, and plastics. Too easily, Pärnits and Collinsworth’s home became a memory.
On orders from Earth, Vonnie and Ash were forging GP mecha and more sunfish-shaped probes.
The FNEE were building gun platforms.
A new incursion into the ice was imminent… and yet the unified ESA/FNEE crews weren’t unified at all. That the ESA team had parked their flightcraft and modules among the Brazilian structures added more difficulties to their search for Lam. At close range, hiding an open channel was impossible. Instead, they buried their link among the standard torrent of electronic countermeasures and false data, which Koebsch told them to limit to avoid offending their hosts.
“I’ve had a complaint from Colonel Ribeiro about our signals disrupting his grid,” Koebsch announced on the third day. “I want everyone to remember we’re guests here. We’re partners. I know a lot of our AIs are designed to add chatter to everything they do, but nonessential data/comm should be shut off.”
“That’s hilarious,” Ash said later without a trace of a smile. “Koebsch is generating most of our chatter himself. He must have had fifty private talks with Berlin.”
Meanwhile, Vonnie argued with anyone who would listen, Koebsch, Dawson, their administrators on Earth, and the media. She tried to reach Ribeiro, too, but he denied her calls, and she wasn’t allowed to drive across camp and search for him among the FNEE modules.
Her message was simple: “The sunfish are intelligent. They used four-stage logic, real tactics, and engineering to defend themselves.”
On the second day, hundreds of news feeds played her sims and interviews. A famous chat show host featured the sunfish as his lead subject. Science programs strived to boost their own ratings by analyzing the violence.
The battle was too easy for people to interpret however they wanted. Were the sunfish smart? Stupid? Many shows also manipulated Vonnie’s position by editing her sims. Business analysts centered on her remark, “It’s been a waste,” which she meant as wasting the progress they’d made in communicating with Tom and Sue, not a waste of people, fuel, and mecha. Political commentators turned her words into anti- or pro-government bluster depending on their own views, either condemning or supporting any investment in the missions to Europa.
Amateur media was the loudest. Millions of people choked the nets with accusations, opinions, and more. Groups of every flavor established petitions and polls; medical; scientific; religious; animal rights. Even the education and entertainment lobbies weighed in.
They were only spinning their wheels. The number of citizens who suggested aiding the sunfish or leaving them alone was equal to the amount who wanted the ESA and FNEE crews to mount reprisals. Their motives varied. The infirm and the retired wanted miracles from new gene smithing. The politicians needed to cement the agreements between Brazil and the E.U., while their militaries and the civilian agencies refused to back off of any gains in space, fleet commitments, or valuable claims on extraterrestrial real estate.
Dawson basked in his role as a poster boy for the groups advocating their return to the ice. He wore gauze bandages on his head and a sling for his arm. The wounds made it easy for him to project steely determination. “This was a terrible set-back,” he said in his most popular sim, “but men have always risen above our tragedies.”
Vonnie could have socked him. Maybe it was fortunate he’d stayed in Lander 05. She hadn’t seen him in person since the blow-out, and she didn’t learn about his declaration until the recording was hours old.
Even his enemies played it repeatedly, using the sim to debate with him on Earth. A few people mocked his melodramatic style. More condemned his arrogance, but his air time increased with each rebuttal, and he looked like everyone’s grandfather — a fit, attractive, educated grandfather who’d faced death and regained his feet without shying from his beliefs.
Vonnie forced herself to speak of him respectfully. She disagreed with him at every chance, yet she always gave Dawson his due when urged to respond to his statements.
She’d become a hero again herself, albeit one who played to a different demographic than Dawson’s supporters. For the first time, she felt like Europa wasn’t so far from home. The systemwide debate brought Earth to her. Even with assistance from Koebsch and Ash, she struggled to prioritize tens of thousands of personal calls and requests.
Then it stopped.
On the fourth day, Koebsch moved his seat of operations from Lander 05 back into Module 01, which housed their central AIs and data/comm. He’d been able to access those systems from Lander 05, but his job was better done from the command module.
He rescinded most of his crew’s data/comm privileges, beginning with Vonnie. She was the sole crew member at her station. Except for O’Neal, who slept in 04’s living quarters, her friends were outside in pressure suits and armor, conducting tests on their new listening posts. It was a superb time for Koebsch to restrict access. He called Vonnie first and almost caught her listening to the channel they’d dedicated to Lam.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been told to route all media responses through headquarters. We can’t afford this kind of distraction.”
“Distraction!?” she said. “You mean the truth.”
“It’s not our job to set policy.”