Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

  “Spit it out, son, I don’t have all day here.”

  “Right. Sir, I feel I should draw your attention to a discrepancy in the inventories for our VI short-range missiles. There’s a report on it in the files. The discrepancy occurred in the middle of the transition to the new inventory system, so it’s probably just a glitch, but….”

  Liam snorted in clear disgust. “Goddamn warenuts. Every time they push out something ‘better’ it only makes things worse.”

  “I…yes, sir. I can have Support run some diagnostics, see if they can find the problem—”

  Liam shook his head in a manner which brooked no dissent. “Won’t be necessary. I will take great pleasure in informing Logistics Command they need to fix their crocked ware.”

  “Of course, sir. If there’s nothing else?”

  He had begun pulling up other reports; his head jerked in the direction of the door. “Dismissed.”

  Once Bradlen departed, he dropped the illusion of activity. He sat silently as an epoch passed…then reopened the Inventory Discrepancy Report. Seconds ticked by while he simply stared at it, as though the authority of his glare might melt it away.

  He didn’t know why he was hesitating. The decision had already been made; the deed already done. In many ways the decision had been made twenty-four years ago when he stood over his mother’s grave and made a vow, even if it had taken until two months ago for the opportunity for him to fulfill his vow to finally knock on his door.

  He had expected the discrepancy to be discovered. In this hyper-cyberized, always-connected world they lived in, it would have been impossible to hide it—so he hadn’t tried. Instead he’d made sure the materials vanished during the hectic, confused inventory system transition, thereby providing a ready explanation for their ‘absence.’

  Deucali Military HQ housed tens of thousands of armaments. Anyone who noticed a couple of dozen missiles unaccounted for would merely nod in agreement at how annoying the ‘damn ware bugs’ were and move on with their lives.

  He swallowed hard, annoyed at the sudden dryness in his throat. No reason to become all emotional about it now. He had already sold his soul for a chance at vengeance, and there was no getting it back.

  He deleted the report from the system.

  7 Seneca

  Cavare

  Caleb idly toed the pilot’s chair side to side while he stepped through the preflight checklist a final time, mentally verifying every component which was checked off deserved to be. He had one remaining item to acquire, but it wouldn’t be on any official checklist.

  Satisfied the systems were a go, the food stores stocked, the engines prepped and the weapons in working order, he killed the power and headed down the ramp. At the bottom he turned to give her one last glance-over.

  He had to give Division credit; they didn’t skimp on ships and hardware. One step removed from a fighter, the scout ship wasn’t luxurious or roomy but she was lean and fast. The weapons tubes tucked into the lower hull so as not to increase drag. The custom EM sensors had been mounted beneath the nose the day before.

  Yeah, she would do.

  He slung his pack over his shoulder and headed out to the government spaceport’s surface parking. Yet when he reached his bike, he hesitated.

  Traffic whizzed along airlanes overhead in the evening sky and beside him on the streets. Rush hour appeared well underway, which meant he was going to have a bitch of a time getting across the city to Mom’s house—which in turn meant he’d be late for his meeting.

  The devil on his shoulder whispered in alluring, dulcet tones that he should skip the visit home and head straight for the bar. She was fine. And it wasn’t like he’d be standing her up. Unless he showed up at the front door, she’d never know he’d passed through Cavare.

  But she was alone. With Isabela on Krysk for the year doing a visiting professorship, she wasn’t able to check on their mother nearly as often as usual. Mom might have had an accident, or forgotten to shop for groceries, or….

  But Isabela went by a few days ago.

  And won’t be back again for a month.

  He groaned aloud as a guilty conscience shoved the devil aside and reasserted its dominance. “Shit.”

  More than a little disgusted with himself, he swung a leg over the bike, revved the engine and floored it out of the parking lot. He swerved into a service alley. The least he could do was take a damn shortcut.

  “Oh, Caleb darling, it’s so nice of you to visit.”

  Yes, that’s exactly what he was. Nice. He hugged her, trying not to stifle within the desperate embrace. “Hi, Mom. I don’t have long, but I wanted to stop by and make sure you were okay.”

  “Yes, I’m just….” She ambled into the kitchen, wisps of dull brown hair falling out of a messy bun and to her shoulders. She pushed half-finished sketches off the table to the floor and gestured for him to sit. He complied, then watched her as she searched in the cabinets for tea to brew.

  He remembered when she had been a vibrant, smart, funny woman. For the entirety of his childhood that woman had been his mother. Now she was merely…pathetic. He knew this—he’d known this for a long time—but coming face-to-face with the stark reality still sent him for a loop. Old memories never die.

  “It’s okay, Mom. I’m good. Come sit with me for a few minutes.”

  She paused in the middle of the room, her unfocused gaze wandering across the kitchen. It was as if she had completely forgotten where she was. Seconds ticked by. Finally she jerked, a fleeting, erratic jolt of movement before her bearing returned to its former listless, empty state. She gingerly sat down opposite him. “How’s work, dear? Is the plant doing well?”

  “Absolutely. We’re rolling out a new line of six-person skycars, geared toward families. In fact, I’m headed off to Elathan tomorrow to oversee the ramp-up of the production line.” After years of practice, the lies rolled off his tongue more easily than truth.

  “How nice.” She nodded. It was an uneven, haphazard motion. Her eyes didn’t quite manage to meet his, which was just as well. “I’ve been talking to Federation Athletics about a design for their new regional office, so…we’ll see, maybe….”

  “That’s wonderful to hear.” It took all his considerable skill to inject a note of enthusiasm into his voice. Even so, he managed only the mildest cheer. She hadn’t completed an architectural design in at least fifteen years. This one would be no different—and there would be no value in him pointing it out. “So, you’re set then? You have everything you need?”

  “Oh, yes.” She gave him a vacant smile. “Glados and Meriva from the neighborhood association stop by once a week, we go out shopping and such.” The smile faltered. “I thought I saw your father the other day while we were at the syn-org market…” three seconds passed until she blinked “…anyway, everything’s fine. You go see to your shuttles and don’t worry about your mother.” She patted his hand to emphasize the point.

  Harsh, frustrated words rushed forth; he choked them back in his throat. “Okay, Mom. I have to go, I have a meeting—about the plant. I’ll try to stop by again when I can.”

  He prepped his most affectionate facsimile smile—but she had already drifted off, dreamily caressing the incomplete sketch of a low-orbital bio-friendly campus which had clung to the edge of the table.

  He nodded to himself and stood, leaving the house without looking at the wall of visuals in the hallway displaying a couple in love and a happy family at play. He definitely didn’t look at the largest visual, the one dominating the entryway. It portrayed a distinguished-looking man with close-cut black hair wearing a perfectly pressed suit, taken two months before his father had packed a bag, walked out the door and not come back.

  As he cruised into the lot behind the Crux Happy Nights Cantina, Caleb decided he was exceedingly ready for a drink—so much so he didn’t even cringe at the dreadful title. Granted, he didn’t laugh either.

  But the beer turned out to be quite cold and surprising
ly crisp. He welcomed the assistance it provided in forcing away the darkness which never failed to haunt him after a visit home. Escaping the gloom was an acquired skill, and he had largely regained his form by the time Noah Terrage slid onto the stool next to him.

  He flung long bangs out of his face and dropped his forearms on the chrome bar. “Caleb, friend, how’s it hanging?”

  The first rule of undercover work, spying and black ops in general—okay, probably the third or fourth or perhaps even fifth rule, but it certainly made the list—was anyone who made a point to call you ‘friend,’ wasn’t.

  Still, Noah was a good guy, and he felt inclined to give him a pass. Despite the rebellious attitude which came as an almost inevitable consequence of the man’s upbringing, Caleb suspected an honorable soul resided somewhere beneath the bravado and shady deals and wild stunts. For one, it spoke in his favor that he had managed to overcome the fairly significant disability of being a ‘vanity baby.’

  Cloning remained legal on most worlds with the express consent of the cloned—new births only though; all attempts to grow a fully developed adult body from existing DNA had thus far proved horrifically disastrous. Clone clauses in wills were, while not common, growing in popularity for what might be understandable reasons. Vanity babies, however, were frowned upon in most circles and rarely worked out well for either party. Nonetheless, there always seemed to be another billionaire narcissist convinced he or she deserved one.

  A clone of his father, a wealthy business magnate on Aquila, like most vanity babies Noah had been brought into existence above all to feed the source’s ego. From early childhood he had been expected to behave precisely as his father saw himself, sit and learn at his father’s knee and grow up to become his father’s devoted protégé in the business.

  So naturally, Noah had run away from home at fifteen. Caught a transport to Pandora and never looked back.

  He was a criminal, of course. A ‘trader’ in polite company and a smuggler everywhere else. And while the guy came off like the buddy you watched the game and drank too many beers with on the weekend, he possessed a skill bordering on magic: he could find anything. If it existed in settled space, he could make it appear in your pack inside a week—as with all things, for sufficient credits.

  In this instance he had far less than a week, but the item wasn’t a particularly rare one and the compensation generous.

  Caleb leaned over to shake his hand. “You know, just the usual—wine, women and song.”

  Noah laughed and took a swig from the mug Caleb had ensured would be waiting on him. “I do know it, man.” His voice dropped as he leaned in and casually passed over the small, unremarkable-looking yet very advanced communications scrambler. Caleb dropped it in his pack and just as casually returned to his beer.

  It wasn’t that he planned to engage in anything overtly criminal, much less traitorous to the Federation. In fact, he believed Volosk and likely the Division Director knew about and expected such things. Black ops were ‘black’ for a reason, yet they also fell under government supervision and oversight. A difficult quandary.

  Most things he did, most of the time, qualified as legal actions under Division’s mandate, if not always under civilian law. But every so often a mission called for actions which…weren’t. In such circumstances, his superiors winked and nodded and ignored the troublesome details, provided they had been sufficiently obscured. Hence the state-of-the-art communications scrambler—a necessary tool for those moments when even Special Operations didn’t want a recording of what was said or to whom.

  Noah’s voice stayed low and conversational, barely audible amid the din of spirited patrons and generic pub background music. “I guess you misplaced the last one, huh?”

  Caleb shrugged and sipped his beer. It really was rather good. “Eh, it blew up.”

  “What? Dammit, I’ll have a conversation with my—”

  “Not the scrambler—the ship it was in.”

  Noah’s head cocked to the side. “Oh. Yeah, that does happen.”

  He had met Noah nine years ago. An influx of chimerals had begun flooding the streets on several of the smaller Federation worlds; he tracked the source to a drug ring on Pandora. Noah was little more than a freelance street merchant back then, hocking black market surveillance equipment, hacking tools and modified energy blades. Illegal, but nothing hardcore. The modded gear had come in handy, as had the inside information provided as a bonus.

  After a few years, Noah earned enough credits to move his operation off the streets and began serving a more discerning clientele and their more unique needs. Caleb had called on him on occasion over the years, and now…well, they weren’t friends. But in another life, they might have been.

  “So how’s Pandora these days? The last time I visited, holo-babes in the spaceport terminal were selling head trips which would make you believe you sported three cocks and twice the women to fill with them lounged in your bed. Oh, and the bed floated upon a golden nebula in the stars. God knows what they were selling in the markets.”

  Noah laughed in wry dismay as he motioned the bartender for a refill. “Trust me, Caleb, you do not want to know what they’re selling in the markets. I don’t mess with such insanity, nothing but trouble.”

  “As opposed to the trouble you already get in?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah? Still, it’s all good. Business is good. Life is good. Nobody’s tried to kill me in at least a month.”

  Caleb chuckled in spite of himself. “I guess that’s all you can ask for, right?”

  Noah sighed wistfully. “No…you can ask for a beautiful, witty, intelligent yet minxy woman in your arms every night, a mansion on a hill—or better yet in the sky—and the best bodyguards to protect you when someone does inevitably try to kill you. For starters.”

  Caleb raised his mug to clank against Noah’s. “I’ll drink to that.”

  8 Earth

  Vancouver, EASC Headquarters

  Miriam sat at her desk and tried to focus on reviewing next week’s schedule. For a moment, she failed.

  She prided herself on superior compartmentalization skills…yet hours after the Board meeting, she couldn’t seem to shake a lingering unease. Disappointment. Annoyance.

  Being overruled gave her no pleasure, particularly when the facts were on her side. Egos coupled with narcissistic insecurity had won out over logic and reason once again. Hopefully they wouldn’t come to regret this decision, or the dozens before it.

  With a private groan she sat up straighter and returned to her calendar. Schedule.

  The christening ceremony for the new cruiser EAS Thatcher was on Monday, followed by a status meeting for Project ANNIE. She had various staff meetings on Tuesday, then Phase II testing review of new biosynthetics for special forces in the evening. Wednesday she left for the TacRecon Conference in St. Petersburg.

  Her mouth twitched involuntarily. She had tried to get Richard to go in her place—it was more his area of expertise anyway—but he was elbow-deep in the damn Trade Summit.

  She didn’t want to go to St. Petersburg, where memories of David lurked around every corner and across every street. Even the places they had never visited held shadows of the stories he had told of his childhood.

  She would need to visit her father-in-law while there. David had made certain his father received the latest in stem cell rejuvenation treatments, though the elder Solovy had accepted little else in the way of financial assistance. As a result, at one hundred sixteen years old he was built like a boxer and working low-altitude field construction ten hours a day.

  It would be uncomfortable and melancholy. He would ask after Alexis, say, ‘I’ve always loved that little girl,’ leaving unsaid the insinuation ‘as opposed to how I feel about you.’ Her position of prominence meant nothing to him. In his own twisted way he would forever blame her for David’s death, ignoring the fact that David had joined the military six years prior to meeting her. He would inquire as to whatever man she mus
t have moved on to by now, oblivious to the reality that in twenty-three years she hadn’t moved on; that she had no intention of ever moving on.

  After two miserable hours she would excuse herself and return to her five-star hotel room, order her 250-credit room service, allow herself one glass of sherry and occupy her mind with vitally important matters of galactic security until she was too tired not to sleep.

  She didn’t want to go. But she’d do it anyway, because it was her job, and because she didn’t trust anyone else other than Richard with the responsibility. At least next year the conference location rotated out to somewhere—anywhere—other than Russia.

  She blinked to push aside the dangerously sentimental thoughts, opened the ANNIE briefing and proceeded to dive into breakdowns of recurrence quantification analysis, time series prediction, stochastic controls and most importantly, dynamic security feedback loops.

  Nearly two hundred fifty years after the Hong Kong ‘incident,’ synthetic intelligences of all types were still locked down and circumscribed on every world, but nowhere more so than in the military. The Alliance didn’t curtail the advancement of non-cybernetic synthetic technology; they merely kept it corralled inside safety fences, as it were.

  ANNIE (Artificial Neural Net Integration and Expansion) represented the most advanced Alliance-sanctioned synthetic neural net to date. It also promised to be the safest, most secure Artificial ever constructed, for they had had centuries to perfect every control and safeguard.

  Yet believing such to be true was exactly what had resulted in the Hong Kong incident in the first place. So she intended to double- and if necessary triple-check the dynamic security feedback loop protocols.

  She had made it through an entire third of the file when her secretary pinged her eVi to inform her the Minister for Extra-Solar Development was in the lobby asking to see her.