A Surreptitious Rescue of Friends and Foes (Aeon 14: Perseus Gate Season 2 Book 3)

by M. D. Cooper

  Thompson led them down the stairs to the floor of the arena and then around the central kitchen area to another corridor that led beneath the stands. The walk was short, and before long they found themselves standing in a messy workshop with two mod chairs sitting in the center.

  Leaning over a workbench to the left was a man wearing black leather pants and no shirt, though his shaggy white hair nearly obscured his torso.

  “Skeez,” Thompson called out. “I have those two that can’t use the Link because it’s been tapped.”

  The man looked, eyes hidden behind a red band that wrapped around his face. Upon closer inspection, she saw that the band was embedded in his face, possibly replacing any organic eyes beneath.

  “Get in the chair, buddy,” he said to Trip, nodding at the closest mod chair before turning to Jinx. “You, bring that tin can you call a body over here. You should be simple.”

  Both Trip and Jinx complied, and Skeez examined Jinx as she approached. “Damn, did they deliberately look for the shittiest mobile frame to put you in?”

  “We weren’t exactly spoiled for choice,” Trip mumbled. “It was that or Jinx got captured by the Heegs.”

  “Coulda put her in your pocket and she’d’ve been better off,” Skeez muttered as he grabbed a hex key and took off her interface panel.

  “I don’t have Link hardware on my core,” Jinx explained. “Without the frame I couldn’t communicate, and I needed Link access to help with navigation.”

  Skeeze’s head snapped up. “No Link in your core? What’s your chassis type?”

  “Ummm,” Jinx murmured, embarrassed that she had no idea. She hadn’t even realized it was something she should know about.

  “It’s a THQ-900 of some sort,” Trip said from his mod chair. “I don’t know a lot about AI cores, but it looked similar to a 900 and slotted into that frame—which takes that series.”

  “Nah,” Skeez muttered as he hooked a probe up to the frame’s diagnostic port. “All THQ’s have integrated Link hardware. I bet this is some proprietary model the Heegs use for ships’ AI that they want to keep from accessing outside systems.”

  Jinx wondered about that. It aligned with her solitary existence on the Regulan Storm.

  “Can you upgrade my core?” she asked Skeez.

  At her question, the man’s head jerked up, white hair flying around him. “Eh? I was under the impression that you’d be against that. Most AIs are not keen on strangers touching their core.”

  “Oh,” Jinx replied, as she considered that in all honesty she’d only ever had strangers handling her core. Sure, Trip was a friend now, but when he put her in the frame she’d only just met him. “Well, we’re putting all our trust in you anyway. I don’t see how this is any different.”

  A smile formed on Skeez’s lips. “Huh, logic from an AI. Who woulda thunk it?”

  He glanced back down at the probe. “OK, so far I don’t see anything malicious in your frame’s hardware, but I’m running it through a series of tests. I want to see if there’s anything hidden that tries to call your former friend.”

  “Isn’t that risky?” Jinx asked.

  “Room’s shielded,” Thompson said from the entrance. “Well, it will be when I leave, which I’m about to since this is boring as fuck. Don’t worry though. They used to EMP arena fighters in here and no one even caught a whiff of EM. Safe as houses.”

  With that, Thompson closed the door and they were left alone with Skeez.

  “Safe as houses?” Jinx asked. “What does that mean?”

  “Beats me,” Skeez said with a shrug. “I’ve never been in a house in my life. Thompson, though, he’s been around. Seen a lot of shit.”

  “He from around here?” Trip asked.

  “No.” Skeez pulled off the core shielding on Jinx’s frame. “Somewhere out around Scipio. He called it the ‘Fringe’. Hard to place, though. Lotta ‘fringes’ out there.”

  “I guess wherever it was, they had houses,” Jinx commented, suddenly wondering what it would be like to stand on a planet.

  “Huh,” Skeez said as he peered into the core housing on Jinx’s fame. “You’re not far off, Trip mah boy. If I didn’t have an intimate knowledge of AST military hardware, I’d’ve pegged this as a THQ-900 as well—since that’s its base config. But this is what they call an A901.”

  “Oh?” Trip asked, leaning over to peer at the partially exposed core. “What’s the difference?”

  “That it supports modular configs, really,” Skeez replied. “Namely that they can pull off components they don’t want it to have—such as Link hardware.” He glanced up at Jinx’s optical receptors. “Lucky you, Jinx. I just so happen to have a Link interface and short-range antenna assembly that will fit. It also solves the issue of your friend tracking you, because it will give you a whole new Link presence.”

  “And me?” Trip asked. “What are you going to have to do to hide my Link presence from her?”

  Skeeze patted Jinx on her arm. “Hold on a sec, I’m going to get your friend started.” He turned to Trip and gestured for the man to lay back. “I need to re-sequence your ident system. That’s the best way to go about it.”

  “Whoooooaaaaa.” Trip held out a hand as he pulled himself forward in the chair. “No how, no way. I’ll go without Link for now, then.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Skeez asked. “I do it for people all the time.”

  “Then there are a lot of crazy people out there. I need to give you my root keys for you to do that.”

  “Sure,” Skeez said, his voice conveying utter lack of concern for the risks involved. “But you can change them right afterward.”

  “Which means I have to re-key everything,” Trip protested. “For all intents and purposes, I become a new person.”

  Skeez glanced back at Jinx. “I think your friend here is new to this whole rebellion thing.”

  “Uhh…OK?” Jinx replied, not sure what Skeez was getting at.

  “Look,” Skeez gestured at Trip’s head. “You’re burned. The AST wants you. They’re not gonna stop wanting you anytime soon. You’re balls-deep in Hegemony space. I’m offering you a free changeover to be a new person—one with a clean sheet. Most people would suck the dielectric grease out from under my fingernails to get a deal like that.”

  “Guh,” Trip shuddered. “I’ll pass on the sucking. But I guess you make a good point. What about all my existing access to bank accounts and personal property? If I have a new Link presence, it’s all gone.”

  “You have bank accounts?” Skeez asked with a grin. “Well, then, why am I doing this for free?”

  “Uhh…because they’re forty light years from here?”

  “Oh, yeah, I guess.” The white-haired man sighed. “Well, I can hook you up with a shadow volume for your root keys. You can switch back and forth. But the wireless Link will only be on the new ident.”

  Trip twisted his lips. “I guess that’ll do. Wait, I need to pick a new name, don’t I?”

  Skeez groaned. “Dude, seriously. Yes. Now lean back and let me jack you in. Where’s your hard-Link port?”

  Trip touched the side of his neck and a small port appeared behind his right ear. “What do you think, Jinx? What name should I pick for my new ident?”

  “Maybe something that doesn’t sound like you’re prone to falling down,” Skeez said with a snort as he connected a cable to Trip’s hard-Link port.

  By the look on Trip’s face, Jinx judged that it would not be wise to agree with Skeez. “Umm…you could go with Troy, Trey, Tex.”

  “Or, if we want to keep with the meaning of your prior name, ‘Fall’,” Skeez snickered.

  “Skeez,” Jinx admonished. “That’s not very nice.”

  The man only waved a hand at her as he turned to a console and began sifting through the holodisplays it was projecting.

  “I kinda like ‘Tex’,” Trip said with a grin.

  “Oh hell no, you’re no ‘Tex’,” Skeez said without turning from his cons
ole. “How about ‘Roy’. You seem like a Roy.”

  “Huh.” Trip pursed his lips. “I kinda like that. What’s it from?”

  “Beats me,” Skeez replied. “Want me to punch it in?”

  “Jinx?” Trip asked.

  She nodded after trying out the name in her mind. “Yeah, it’s like ‘Royal’. It’s a good name.”

  “Oh, hot damn!” Trip said in excitement. “I like Royal. Let’s go with that.”

  “Not a snowball’s chance on the surface of Cerka station,” Skeez replied. “ ‘Royal’ is the name that some two-bit gang leader would call himself.”

  “Says a guy named Skeez.”

  “Hey, it fits. You, my friend, are not ‘Royal’. Not unless you’re willing to accept ‘Royal Pain in my Ass’.”

  “I’m starting to understand why you work in here where you’re not around other people,” Jinx said to the engineer.

  Skeez turned and gave Jinx an appraising look. “I like you, Jinx. You have promise.”

  “Thanks,” Jinx said brightly. “Will I have to pick a new name? I’ve not had Jinx for too long, but I’ve grown to like it.

  “No,” Skeez shook his head. “Well, yes and no. You’re name on the Link is ‘FR-12-1813 ADR-21.3’. The first half of that is part of your frame’s serial number, and then the second half is your core’s. I’m going to change both, and then give your core it’s Link hardware with a separate ident so you can switch if you need to.”

  “Oh! So I can be two people?”

  Skeez nodded. “Yeah, pretty standard fare for AIs—well not around here, it’s illegal for them here, but elsewhere they present as different people on the Link when they’re referencing their mobile frame, as opposed to what they represent as in expanses and the like.”

  “You sure know a lot about AIs,” Trip commented.

  ‘Roy’, I guess I have to think of him as ‘Roy’ now.

  “Think this hair grew white?”

  “Uh…that doesn’t make any sense,” Roy replied.

  “Exactly,” Skeez shot back as he stalked to the far side of the room and began rummaging through a cabinet, pulling out small drawers one after another. After over a minute of him grunting and muttering to himself, he held up a small case and proclaimed, “Victory is mine!”

  Jinx watched expectantly as Skeez brought the small case over to the workbench and set it down. He opened it up to reveal what looked like a small sliver and a disk.

  “That’s it?” Jinx asked.

  “Yup. OK. I have to pull your core to install it, though. You cool with that?”

  “Cool?”

  “Copasetic?” Skeez clarified.

  “OK, but I hate the white place.”

  Skeez squinted at Jinx’s optical receptors. “The whi—Oh! Of course. Your core has no external I/O systems, so when you’re pulled, you have nothing…. Damn, the AST are a bunch of heartless bastards to use cores like this.”

  “So you can fix that?” Jinx asked.

  A compassionate expression came over Skeez’s face. “The hardware I’m adding will make it so that having your core yanked in the future will not relegate you to the white place, but there’s no way around it this time—well, there is, but that involves removing your internal SC battery, and I don’t like doing that.”

  Jinx felt the mental equivalent of a shudder run through her. Having her SC battery removed sounded a lot like dying.

  “I’ll brave the white place.”

  “Good girl,” Skeez said as he removed the safety latches holding the ten centimeters of her core in place. “Ready?”

  Jinx glanced at Trip—Roy—and saw him give an encouraging nod.

  “Ready.”

  * * * * *

  The white place was somehow more tolerable now that Jinx understood what it was—and because she knew her time there would be limited.

  She watched the seconds tick by and saw that it took Skeez seven hundred and nine to activate her new core-based sensory systems.

  The first to come was a crude visual provided by a small camera mounted on the end of her core. It only captured baseline human-visible light, but it was nice to have something to see. Then she registered more new hardware and activated the audio pickups.

  “OK, you should be able to hear me now,” Skeez said, his hair hanging around his face as he leant over her. “Annnnnnd now you should have a speaker appear. It’s small, but loud enough to hear across a room.”

  “I hear you!” Jinx said loudly, and Skeez jumped back.

  “Shit…OK, I guess that thing pumps out more decibels than the specs say.”

  She heard Roy chlucking from somewhere beyond her view and whispered. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Skeez muttered. “OK, give me a second. Aaaand. Voila! You should have Link.”

  Jinx saw the new connection appear—a much lower bandwidth one than the frame’s, but sufficient to have conversations and access low-bandwidth information sources.

  She established a connection to the room’s sequestered network.

  Skeez replied.

 

  “Yeah,” Skeez said aloud as he shrugged. “But you’re an AI, so it’s not built into your ident like it is for a human. Once you’re out of this mess you can easily swap your core’s ident to be ‘Jinx’ with no resequencing necessary.”

  “Hmmmmm…” Jinx mused through her speaker. “I think I’ll go with Elsa.”

  “Elsa?” Roy asked. “Why that name?”

  “Umm…I wanted something in honor of Skeez, so I thought ‘eeze’, then ‘Ella’, then ‘Elsa’.”

  “Huh,” Skeez grunted. “Pretty sure the female form of Skeez is Skaz.”

  “Oh dear, is it?” Jinx asked, worried she’d offended the man.

  “He’s messing with you,” Roy said with a laugh.

  “Oh…oh!” Jinx exclaimed as everything around her began to move. “Damn…that’s strange.”

  “Sorry,” Skeez said as he slid her core back into the frame. “I didn’t have the right electronic gyros for your chassis. But you should get one at some point. That will make motion a lot easier to deal with.”

  “Noted.”

  A moment later she was back in the frame, and its systems and sensors became available to her. Though she knew it was a ratty old home, she felt good to be back in it—and even better to have Link access once again.

  “I’m back!” she proclaimed, grinning at Skeez and Roy who both gave her amused looks.

  “Great,” Roy said. “Once my noggin is done, we get to sit around and wait a few days to see if Thompson’s mysterious friends really are going to show up.”

  “They will,” Jinx said with a soft laugh. “I can feel it in my new hardware.”

  CLEAN YOUR MESS

  STELLAR DATE: 05.02.8948 (Adjusted Years)

  LOCATION: Sabrina, Sandy Sea Asteroid Belt

  REGION: Border Territory, Virginis System

  “I mean…seriously,” Cheeky muttered from the pilot’s seat. “Virginis has been settled now for what…at least six thousand years. How is it that they still have this disaster of an inner asteroid belt?”

  “Maybe they like it?” Usef suggested.

  “Like it?” Cheeky shot a look at the colonel that carried copious disbelief. “I can tell you’ve never had to pilot a ship through one of these. It’s a disaster.” She turned to the forward display and shook a fist in the air. “Clean up your shit, Virginis!”

  “I suppose it’s never been a big issue for me. In Sol the asteroid and Kuiper belts were nearly gone, and there weren’t any rock or dust belts at Kapteyn’s Star. In New Canaan we have three major belts, but we just turn on the shields and plow through.”

  Amavia’s head whipped about and she fixed Usef with a stern look. “Usef. Seriously. Don’t spread crazy nonsense
like that. One half of me spent a century as Bob’s avatar—and I flew the ship on more than a few occasions. The other half of me was both a ship’s AI and a captain. I can assure you that at no time did we ever just ‘plow through’ an asteroid belt with the shields on.”

  Usef cocked an eyebrow. “Are you forgetting something?”

  “What?” Amavia retorted, then her eyes grew wide. “Ohhhhh…that’s right. You were stationed on the Hellespont that one time.”

  “Uh-huh,” Usef nodded.

  “It was one time.” Amavia wagged her finger.

  Usef turned his gaze to Jessica. “Stasis shields on, Yolanda plows the ship right through the debris cloud from two small asteroids that had recently collided. Shields lit up like someone had detonated a hundred RMs. You could see it half way across the star system.”

  Usef’s face carried a rather uncharacteristic grin. “You’re lucky that all the terrestrial planets were on the far side of Canaan Prime and very few people saw the light show.”

  Jessica turned to stare at Amavia. “Mav! I can’t believe you did such a thing.”

  Amavia shrugged. “It wasn’t me, it was Ylonda.”

  “You look a lot like Ylonda.” Usef’s grin remained firmly in place. “Pretty sure it was you.”

  Jessica’s mouth fell open, as did Cheeky’s—something Jessica could see because the pilot turned in her chair and peered over the back with wide eyes and jaw slack.

  Even Iris—who had been sitting next to Amavia and largely ignoring the conversation—turned and stared incredulously at Usef.

  On the face of it, the colonel’s statement was nonsensical. When the AI Ylonda took refuge in Amanda’s mind during Myriad’s attack, she ended up merging with the human woman.

  As a result, Amavia looked like Amanda, not Ylonda.

  Everyone assumed that Amavia regretted the deaths of her former selves which had occurred to create the new person who sat on the bridge with them—and because of that, everyone avoided referencing past events that required the use of Amavia’s prior names.