Symbiosis

by R S Penney

  What in the Holy Name of Jada could this man want with battle drones? They were killing machines: robots that had been built for the sole purpose of destroying the enemy without hesitation. In fact, they often worked too well.

  Drones could not think for themselves; they exterminated their targets by the most efficient means possible, blind to the ethical dilemmas of war. There was no algorithm in existence that would allow a machine to grasp the nuances of human judgment. Half the time, when their enemies offered a legitimate surrender, drones assessed the situation and labelled it a “false white flag,” proceeding to slaughter their opponents long after they had laid down arms.

  For that reason, use of drones in combat had been outlawed by the Leyrian Accord. Selling them on the black market was one of the few offenses punishable by death. “What are you offering in return?” If she was going to risk capital punishment, the pay-off had to be worth it.

  Pennfield grinned, and this time, it was a sign of genuine pleasure. “I thought you might be persuaded.”

  Elora flinched, turning her head so that he'd see her in profile. She felt sweat prickle on her brow. “I deal in small merchandise, Pennfield,” she said. “Not military hardware. But I may have a solution.”

  The man pursed his lips as he studied her, nodding to himself. “And what precisely would that be?” he asked, approaching the bar. “Do you suppose one of your compatriots is willing to deal?”

  Setting her elbow on the counter, Elora rested her chin in her palm. She closed her eyes, thinking it over. “Raolan had some heavy weapons,” she explained. “I saw them on the transport here. But the man is in Norway.”

  “What's he doing there?”

  “He likes it cold.”

  Elora felt her mouth tighten at that. In her estimation, no civilized people ever built settlements in regions where the temperature dropped below freezing. “I'd be willing to make contact in exchange for a finder's fee.”

  “How much?”

  “Three million,” she said. “Cash.”

  Pennfield snarled at her, his lips peeling back from clenched teeth. “Do you think I'm stupid, woman?” he snapped. “You expect me to pay you three million dollars just to make one call?”

  “I expect you to treat me with respect.”

  “I would only pay so much for the hardware itself,” Pennfield went on. “No broker should charge so much just to set up the meeting. I think we will renegotiate your fee to a more reasonable sum.”

  “The fee is nonnegotiable,” Elora said, reaching beneath the counter. She found a small cylindrical device about the size of a lipstick. “Three million in hard cash or you can forget about this deal.”

  Pennfield looked her up and down, his brows drawn together in a scowl. “I remember a time when you weren't so sure of yourself,” he whispered. “When you would have done anything to escape the Justice Keepers, when you begged me for asylum. Do you recall those days?”

  She thrust the device in his face, thumbing the switch. A high-pitched whine filled the air, and Pennfield doubled over, slapping palms over his ears. He dropped to his knees a moment later, crying out.

  Gritting her teeth, Elora squinted at him. “They call it a Sonic Reducer,” she explained. “A device that agitates the fluid in your inner ear, causing vertigo.”

  He shut his eyes tight, tears running over his cheeks. He tossed his head from side to side with enough force to send the glasses flying from his face. “And yet you remain unaffected by it.”

  Elora flashed a playful smile, bowing her head to him. “It isn't so remarkable,” she said with a shrug. “A small implant just inside the ear canal is all you'll need to overcome a hypersonic pulse.”

  She retrieved a pistol from beneath the bar and held it up for inspection. Its sleek, black surface was cool to the touch. “Crowd Control!” Elora shouted, and the LEDS on its barrel turned green.

  She pointed the gun at Pennfield and fired, launching a bullet into the man's chest with just enough force to send him toppling backward. When he was flat on his back, she pulled the trigger again.

  A bullet struck him in the abdomen and bounced off. The man would have a nasty welt beneath his belly button, and possibly a scar, but nothing more than that. This setting was designed to inflict pain.

  She deactivated the sonic pulse.

  Wesley Pennfield sat up with his teeth bared, streams of moisture glistening on his cheeks. “You really have grown arrogant,” he said, shaking his head. “Do you honestly think those trinkets are a threat to me?”

  Pressing her lips together, Elora studied him for a very long moment. She nodded to herself. “I am not the arrogant party here,” she said. “You have the audacity to step into my bar and dictate terms?”

  The man was frowning down at himself, heaving out gasping breath after gasping breath. “Perhaps we can come to an understanding,” he murmured. “Three million is not so much for battle drones.”

  “I thought you might see it my way.” She still wondered what he wanted with such monstrous devices, but a wise woman knew better than to ask such questions. What men like him did with their munitions was none of her concern; she was here to make a quick profit and then leave before things got ugly. “Now,” Elora went on, “let's get down to the specifics, shall we?”

  Chapter 20

  The window in Aamani Patel's office looked out on a green field that stretched on for about a hundred feet before ending in a line of pine trees near the edge of the property. Beyond that, the buildings of Ottawa were barely visible.

  Sunlight streamed in through the pane, falling on a desk with a black surface where not even a single speck of dust glittered. Aside from a small picture of a man in a ball cap, there was no sign that any human being called this office home.

  Anna stood before the window with arms crossed, frowning through the glass. “So, here we are,” she said with a shrug. “Meeting with the representatives of the government's intelligence agency.”

  She turned, glancing over her shoulder, a lock of hair falling over one eye. “You're sure this is the right choice?” she said, eyebrows rising. “The few intelligence operatives I've met back home always gave me the creeps.”

  Jack smiled, a blush colouring his cheeks. He closed his eyes, then nodded once. “I think we should hear her out,” he replied. “Normally, I'm not one to trust 'the Man,' but we have enough enemies already.”

  Anna turned her face up to the ceiling, blinking a few times as she thought it over. “I'm not so sure,” she muttered. “Better an enemy who stabs you in the chest than a friend who stabs you in the back.”

  It had been three days since she had been discharged from the hospital, but mention of a chest wound still made her ache. Phantom pain, perhaps? She would be lying if she said that a brush with death hadn't fazed her.

  “Ah, here we are.”

  Dressed to kill, Aamani Patel strode through the door with grim determination on her face. “I'm glad to see you've made it,” she said, nodding to Jack. “Take a seat and we can get down to business.”

  “What do you want with us?” Anna inquired. “If you think that we can be persuaded to use our abilities for your personal gain…”

  Jack slapped a palm over his face, groaning his displeasure. “Ladies and gentlemen, my friend Anna,” he said. “Can you believe she doesn't have her own talk radio show yet?”

  Patel smiled at him with a fond expression. She turned her gaze on Anna with just as much affection. “I can see you two will be among my more colourful agents,” she said. “I have no intention of misusing your abilities, Miss Lenai.”

  “C-Span would love her,” Jack replied. “Just sayin'.”

  Anna tried to fight down her chagrin, but when her efforts failed, she decided she had earned a little embarrassment. Patel had done nothing to earn her distrust, but she had an innate distaste for politics. The days that she had spent recovering from her wound had been filled with visits to special CSIS-approved doctors who were all amazed
at the speed of her convalescence.

  Hospital staff had been taken off her case to prevent them from uncovering any of the many tell-tale signs that Anna Lenai was not an average human being. Nassai cells in her blood would be a major tip-off.

  CSIS, it seemed, had chosen a policy of non-disclosure, opting to keep knowledge of her existence and of events beyond the confines of this solar system a secret from the general population. To say that Anna disagreed with this course of action was a massive understatement. Any government that was unwilling to trust its constituents with the truth was unworthy of their trust in turn. People were far more capable of coping with the truth than their leaders gave them credit for.

  Aamani Patel glided around the desk, trailing her fingers over its black surface. She paused for a moment to stare out the window. “Please, sit,” she said, gesturing to the three gray chairs in front of her desk.

  Jack sat down with hands resting on the chair arms, his expression as smooth as the finest silk. “So, you want us to work with you,” he began. “Does that mean you're ready to go after Pennfield?”

  Patel kept her back turned, standing with her arms folded as she peered through the windowpane. “I've come to suspect that your claims are accurate,” she said. “If Pennfield has access to alien technology, we must recover it.”

  “And do what with it?”

  At the sound of Anna's voice, Patel shot a glance over her shoulder, her dark eyes smoldering. “Study it, of course,” she replied. “Understanding such technology will allow us to address any number of social ills.”

  Anna sat down prim and proper with her head bowed. “You want to study it,” she said, hunching up her shoulders. “I don't suppose you've considered returning those items to their rightful owners.”

  “How precisely would we do that?”

  “Pennfield has the means to contact my people.”

  With a soft hiss, Patel winced and shook her head. “I don't think so,” she muttered, approaching the desk. “With respect, Miss Lenai, we know so little about your people, it's hard to trust.”

  Lifting her chin, Anna held the other woman's gaze. She narrowed her eyes to thin slits. “Perhaps now you understand my predicament,” she said. “One that is made worse by the fact that I am alone here.”

  Before she could say anything further, the door flew open and Harry Carlson strode in. “Sorry I'm late,” he said, shaking his head in dismay. “Bit of a mix-up with the kids…well, you don't need to hear about that.”

  “It's fine, Detective.”

  Patel studied him with an expression that said it was anything but fine, but that she wasn't going to make an issue of it. “Take a seat,” she said, gesturing to the chair on the other side of Jack.

  The man did so, giving Anna a moment to collect her thoughts. So, it seemed they were at an impasse. She wasn't willing to trust these people, and they weren't willing to trust her. At times like these, she wondered if it was truly possible to overcome human nature. Thousands of years of civilization and they were still afraid whenever they came across someone from another tribe.

  Someone had to make the first concession, and on recognizing that, Anna saw no reason why it shouldn't be her. Her father would be proud. You learn a thing or two as a diplomat's daughter. Maybe nurture isn't out of the ring yet.

  Anna rolled up her sleeve, revealing a gauntlet on her wrist with a touch-screen interface about half the size of the one on Jack's cell phone. Her multi-tool was attached, blinking away to indicate a full charge.

  Anna swiped her finger across the screen and brought up the desktop. She tapped a few icons, bringing up files on medical research. “I'm sending you data that should allow your doctors to develop new and better cancer treatments.”

  Jack squinted at her. He shook his head. “I've never seen that thing before,” he said. “Where were you hiding it? I did your laundry for God's sake.”

  “You never saw it because I didn't want you to see it,” Anna replied. “A multi-tool is much easier to use with the proper interface. I trusted you not to harm me, but I knew that it would be hard for you to resist sharing this information if you got your hands on it. The data that brought about those cancer treatments can also be used to make biological weapons. I had to be careful.”

  Patel frowned at her, distrust evident on the woman's face. With a heavy sigh, she nodded acquiescence. “And yet you offer this data freely,” she murmured. “So you aren't opposed to sharing knowledge.”

  “On the contrary,” Anna replied. “I believe that we are morally obligated to share knowledge that will alleviate suffering. But such knowledge can be misused. You have to know who you're dealing with.”

  Patel smiled.

  It seemed that Anna had gained some small measure of the woman's respect. Maybe there was hope for an understanding after all. “Pennfield will misuse the technology that he has acquired,” she went on. “He's already made that abundantly clear.”

  All the while, Harry Carlson had been watching her, nodding slowly with each and every point. “So, exactly what kind of technology does this man have at his disposal?” he asked. “It would help to know what we're up against.”

  Anna grunted, nodding to him. “You aren't going to like it,” she said, lifting up her forearm once again. She tapped away at the little screen. “Wesley Pennfield has a piece of technology that will broadcast your system's location into deep space.”

  The multi-tool made a whirring noise, and a cone of light shot up from the tiny silver disk, a cone that resolved into the transparent image of a triangular device that rotated on a central axis. “This is called a SlipGate,” Anna explained. “Its primary function is to act as a short-range, point-to-point mass-transit system. Generally speaking, there would be hundreds of Gates spread out across the surface of a planet in a network.

  “SlipGates have a secondary function that enables faster-than-light communication by creating microscopic wormholes. We theorize that they track each other's location by means of a central hub located at the Galactic Core.”

  A wave of her hand caused the hologram to vanish.

  She paused for a moment to discover that Patel was staring at her with her mouth agape. “You…you've been to the Core?” she asked, blinking. “I-I'm sorry. This is all so new to me.”

  Anna pressed her lips together, staring into her lap. “No, my people can't get near the Core,” she replied. “SlipGates are Overseer technology. We've learned to duplicate them, but that's all.”

  “Overseer?”

  “The race of beings who scattered our people across the galaxy,” Jack put in. It pleased her to see him demonstrate such confidence. Many people in his position would be tempted to keep quiet and let the experts do the talking, but a Keeper had to acquire some level of assertiveness. “From what Anna's told me, they were incredibly powerful and incredibly mysterious.”

  “With a SlipGate,” Anna went on, “Pennfield will be able to make contact with any number of criminals. The man that I pursued – Denario Tarse – was brought here for the express purpose of delivering a Nassai symbiont. It stands to reason that there are other fugitives hiding on this planet.”

  Harry Carlson frowned. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “That is an unsettling thought,” he muttered. “So, what do you suggest we do? We can't just storm his building and take the Gate.”

  Patel's face was an expressionless mask, her eyes fixed on some point along the far wall. “Perhaps we should do just that,” she said, eyebrows rising. “If what you say is true, it would be a step in the right direction.”

  “And violate due process?” Jack shot back. The look of skepticism that he gave her spoke volumes about what he thought of that idea. “No offense, ma'am, but if we throw civil liberties out the window, what will people think when this all comes out?”

  “You didn't seem to mind when you and Miss Lenai were plotting your own form of corporate espionage,” Patel said. “Now is not the time to lose your nerve. Not wh
en lives are at stake.”

  “That was because the law offered no recourse.”

  Anna felt her mouth tighten, then lowered her eyes to stare into her lap. “Are there no other options?” she asked, her brow furrowing. “Surely you have more than enough evidence to request a search warrant.”

  “Indeed we do,” Carlson offered.

  Patel silenced him with a glare, the slight flush in her cheeks indicating that she was losing patience. “Evidence that we cannot submit,” she insisted. “Revealing the existence of extraterrestrial life would be disastrous.”

  “No,” Carlson said. “Anna's right.”

  Patel groaned.

  Crossing his arms over his chest, Carlson leaned back in his chair and matched her stare for stare. “The law isn't just about rules,” he went on. “It's about fairness. We have an opportunity to-”

  “This isn't up for debate.”

  Well, that settled that then. Anna had thought that working with CSIS would give her the backing of legitimate authority, but it was back to a life of sneaking and secrets for her. “That being the case,” she said, “the most logical course of action would be to sneak into the Penworth building and use the SlipGate to send a message to my people.”

  “Out of the question.”

  Anna winced, letting her head hang. She had hoped that her gesture of good faith would make Patel relent on this point. “My people have the means to retrieve the Gate with minimal violence.”

  “We can secure the Gate ourselves.”

  “No, ma'am, we really can't.” Anna struggled to keep her face smooth as she held the other woman's gaze. “A SlipGate is heavy, approximately several times the mass of your desk. There's no way a strike team could get it out of there.”

  Jack lifted his chin to study the woman, his blue eyes as hard as forged steel. “One way or another,” he began, “the Leyrians are coming. They're almost certainly searching for Anna's shuttle.”