“Actually, it might be better if we do take your weapons,” the security woman said, eyeing the large amount of blaster pistols, rifles, and assorted sidearms that both Val and Irie had.
She didn’t just say that, did she? Irie looked in horror between the gunner and the guards. Are they placing us under arrest?
“Hanson!” A voice broke through the tableau, belonging to a human in his middling years, with white hair and a goatee, wearing a tan engineer’s jacket. He had blotchy cheeks, and one entire leg had been replaced with an awkward metal construction of pistons and struts.
Who are you? Irie looked at him in confusion, but the galvanic effect that he had on the guards was clear. They stepped back and even straightened up a little.
“You’re Irie Hanson, aren’t you? I swore I recognized you!” He laughed, raising his broad, work-scarred hands in a calming gesture to the guards. “It’s quite alright, Officers. These two are old friends. I’ll show them around.”
The security woman looked at the man with the cybernetic leg and back to her would-be prisoners, before the internal battle was decided. She nodded briskly. “As you wish, Primateur.” She signaled to the other officers to move out. Irie saw that she raised her hand to talk into the hand communicator that sat there.
“Primateur?” Irie looked at him. “Do I know you?”
“Ah yes, silly title really. Honorary member of Mela Council, but it helps with a few difficulties,” the man said, before doing his best to perform a hasty bow to them both. “Primateur Jonas Hyle, at your service.”
Jonas Hyle, I do know that name… Irie paused. “You were a mecha-fighter, back in the Trans-System Tournaments, weren’t you? What was your ‘bot called? The Bloody Mary, was it?”
“That’s right, you remember!” Hyle pounded her on the back more forcefully than it seemed his frame should allow. “And I remember your father’s Babe Ruth! My Mary almost had him on the deck a few times, I can tell you!”
“Never,” Irie said proudly, before the memories of what had happened to her father and how she had become a surrogate traveler out on the edges of Coalition space flooded back. “Well, that was a long time ago now, of course…”
“Irie?” Val growled, still looking as though he was ready to fight someone. “We know this man? You said that you fought him? He was your enemy?”
“Tournament-fought,” Irie explained, earning a considering nod from Val. The Duergar respected ritualized fighting, everyone knew. “Hyle and his Bloody Mary were long-term contenders in the mecha-fights that my father used to train for,” she said.
“Ah yes, your father.” Hyle frowned deeply. “Such a sad waste. A loss to the entire field.”
“Yeah…” Irie nodded. There really wasn’t much more to say than that.
“The Coalition should have shown leniency,” Hyle tried to say tactfully. “The entire league of mecha-fighters thought so…”
“‘We fight on their dime!’” Irie repeated the traditional mecha saying and curse. Mecha-fighting was a legal activity, but only just. It was outlawed in more than half of the Coalition worlds, and those tournaments, designers, and mecha-garages, like her father’s, had to accept a lot of regulation and Armcore involvement. It was common knowledge that Armcore kept their eye on the mechas that were being built, just so that they could buy, or outright steal, prototype designs of any innovative machines.
“Your father could have agreed to work with Armcore,” Hyle said.
Like you did? Irie’s smile froze. Just how closely did Hyle work with Armcore these days?
“No, he couldn’t. Artistic freedoms and what have you,” Irie said. Her father had been banned from working the tournaments, and, a few years later, he had died in a mysterious accident. Irie had fled her home world and the world of mecha-fighting, taking every scrap of her father’s research that she could, including Babe Ruth.
Which, as it happened, proved to be the topic of interest for Primateur Hyle. “Do you, uh, do you still have your father’s mecha? Babe Ruth?”
Irie knew suddenly, with cold certainty, that she didn’t want to tell this man that, despite the fact that he had just saved their skins. “No,” she said abruptly. “I had to sell it years ago.” She shrugged. “It’s a hard life out on the edges.”
“You sold it!?” Hyle looked alarmed, pained even. “Do you remember where? Which world? Station?”
You vulture, Irie thought. “Oh, it was already pretty bashed up by then. Had to be broken down for parts…”
“Uhhh…” This time, the Primateur turned a ghostly pale. “That is very sad news. I’ve never seen a mecha fight so well as Babe Ruth did.”
“No, Babe Ruth is the best,” Irie said, unthinkingly.
“Is?”
“I mean was.” She covered her tracks with a blush. “It’s still hard to believe that Babe isn’t around, you now.”
“I’m sure.” Hyle held her eyes for a moment, before his face transformed into a grin. “But enough of these sad tidings. What brings you to Mela? And who is your friend, here?” He looked up at the oversized Gunner.
“Val Pathok, of the mountain Pathok,” the large Duergar growled.
“Good. Now, do you two have somewhere to stay? How long are you here?” Hyle said, still with a genial grin.
“We stay with the ship,” Val growled once more. Irie could see that her friend didn’t trust this man, which suited her fine, because she wasn’t sure she trusted him either.
“Oh, you have a ship!” Hyle laughed. “Of course you do. How else would you get here? What is she, a speeder? Transport?”
“Just a scout vessel,” Irie cut in quickly before Val could growl again. “The May Bell.”
“May Bell, pretty name.” Hyle smiled. “Can I buy you two lunch?”
For some reason, Irie was starting to get the impression that she really didn’t want to spend much longer in the primateur’s company. He’s too nice. My father died—he was murdered—and Hyle is being too nice. He got bought off by Armcore decades ago, and now he’s some important council member here in a nice, cushy Coalition world. Irie didn’t like it. “We really have to get going, Hyle. I have a ton of supplies to buy and hardly any time to do it in. I hope you understand.”
“Of course, Irie. It’s just a pleasure to see you again,” Hyle said. “Look, here’s my details. If you’re ever near Mela again, drop by, for old times’ sake!”
Irie promised that she would and thanked him for helping them out with the guards. As soon as they had turned to go and made it to the other end of the plaza however, Irie whispered to Val. “I think we need to get off this planet, and quickly.”
Val Pathok growled his agreement. The pair turned and made their way back to the shipping and cargo areas of the platform, as Irie hastily tried to raise the captain and Cassandra on her wrist communicator.
Behind the crewmates of the Mercury Blade, the plaza where they had recently almost come to blows returned to its gentle and sedate pace. People started shopping once more or carried on their way from one shop to another as if nothing untoward had ever happened.
In one of the side avenues that led to the plaza, however, with a clear view back toward where the gunner and the engineer had recently disappeared, Primateur Hyle stood half-shaded behind one of the pot-bound Yucca plants. At his side was the white-suited Mela security captain.
“Do you think they know?” the captain said to the man.
Hyle grimaced, his previously cheerful and avuncular face now a mask of disgust. “I should think so. Old Hanson didn’t raise his daughter to be stupid, and I’ve never met a trusting Duergar in all of my life.”
The captain swore, raising her wrist to her face. “Do you want me to call off the operation?”
“No!” Primateur Hyle said adamantly. “We have to get the Mercury Blade. There is a substantial reward on all of their heads, and I mean to be one of the ones claiming it.” A look of annoyance flashed over the Mela security captain’s face. “And you
r good self, of course…”
“Of course.” The captain nodded.
“But one thing, before we hand them over, I want that mecha that she’ll have in there. A big one, called Babe Ruth. I know that she still has it!” Hyle’s eyes glittered with cold avarice.
“But if they know that we’re onto them…” The captain frowned.
“Then your security will have to move fast, won’t they?” Hyle snapped. “Did you track where the other two went? The captain and the woman?”
The woman at his side nodded. “We’ve been following them on drone cameras the entire time. They went to a small clockmaker’s shop on the seventeenth. We can pick them up any time.”
“Then do it now. Maybe little Irie and her large friend will be easier to deal with when we have guns to their crewmates’ heads!” Primateur Hyle said with a vicious smile.
3
Ponos
“But what is it trying to do?” Cassandra shook her head. The trio were still in the small workspace of Agent Simmons, searching through the screens for any sign of a plan. The trash moons of Sepobol, Tullian, and Verek were light-years apart. Nowhere near close enough to form any sort of strategic alliance.
If Alpha is trying to set up some kind of kingdom of his own, then he’s chosen a poor territory. El shook his head. But it appeared obvious that the artificial intelligence was trying to create ships. It wanted a fleet.
“The only thing I don’t get,” Cassandra said, “is that if the AI already exists in data-space, then can’t it zoom around the galaxy faster than the speed of light anyway? What would be the point of containing itself into a ship?”
“So it has guns?” The answer seemed pretty obvious to El. The mere thought of anyone or anything—human or otherwise—not wanting a spaceship seemed crazy to him.
“House Archival has run predictions on a variety of scenarios, but without knowing more about the makeup of Alpha itself, it is almost impossible to predict,” Simmons said. “Alpha is a mixture of Armcore programming and ancient Valyien tech. We don’t know what sub-routines and protocols Armcore had already coded into Alpha’s personality before it got mixed with the Valyiens.” Simmons frowned. “Although there is a statistical probability that Alpha will try to expand, following the laws of biological growth.”
El raised a hand. “Excuse me for being stupid here, but I thought Alpha wasn’t a biological lifeform?”
“No. You are correct,” Simmons said, “but we have only two models of expansion. Biological life, which seeks to divide and expand into available habitat, changing the habitat where possible. And computer algorithms, which do not vary their growth at all in relation to their habitat, but just keep following their original program.”
El looked confused. It was Cassandra who rescued him.
“If you put humans on a new world, they’ll have babies and cities and wars and take over, right?” He nodded. “If you run a computer program, it will just keep crunching the numbers until its goal has been reached,” she explained. “So, the question becomes—does Alpha have a goal hardwired into it by Armcore, or is it a living thing that will seek to create a habitat to live in?”
El looked back at the stellar map of the three Alpha-controlled blips. It looked to him like it was trying to grow a territory and was now probably making a fleet to defend it. Was that so bad? So, the Coalition had a new neighbor. He had no love for the Imperial Coalition anyway….
“But with Alpha’s levels of intelligence, it can probably design new Valyien tech.” Cassandra saw the thought processes pass over El’s face. “Something more advanced than warp travel. Gravitational controllers. Meson weapons. Energy-generation systems. With that much computing power, a machine of its size will never make mistakes. Just think about that for a moment, El. How long does it take to navigate on the Blade? Alpha will do it in a fraction of the time. Alpha will never forget to load the weapon bays. Alpha will never need to stop to refuel…or rest. Alpha will never experience delays or accidents in whatever it wants to do. The intelligence will already have planned everything out and have contingency plans for every possibility.”
Cassandra’s tone took on almost prophetic tones. “If it’s like a biological organism and it wants to grow, then it will soon be the strongest, fastest, most sophisticated race we’ve ever encountered.”
“It could wipe us out, you’re saying,” El said.
“If it wanted to,” Agent Simmons agreed. “There is only one thing we can do. We need to find out what Armcore programmed into it, before it is too late.”
“How are we going to do that, wander into Armcore head offices and ask to use their computers?” El almost shouted.
“Something like that.” Simmons frowned. “We have one chance, and I agree that it is very slim, but it might just work. Ponos.”
“Pono-who?” El said.
“Ponos is Armcore’s main AI,” Cassandra explained. “But it’s a fixed one, which means that it’s tied to the computers and servers of Armcore alone.”
“Wonderful.” El rolled his eyes. Haven’t we already had enough trouble messing around with AIs? He knew that there were actually many artificial intelligences in Coalition space, or, to call them by their more accurate name, machine intelligences. None of them had their training wheels taken off to be allowed to become fully self-aware as Alpha had. Even the Mercury Blade had a very weak form of a machine intelligence automating its systems.
“Why would an Armcore intelligence want to help us?” El pointed out the obvious fault in their plan.
“Because as soon as it realizes that Alpha is born, it will realize that it has a rival,” Simmons stated. “With unlimited access to the data-space, and now physical space as well, Alpha will be cleverer than Ponos. Alpha will be a threat to Ponos, and to Armcore, which Ponos is hardwired to serve. If our analysis is correct—” The clockmaker agent did a little self-congratulatory flutter with his hands. “—and we all know just how brilliant House Archival’s analysis is, then any contact with Ponos will result in a sixty-four percent chance of the Armcore intelligence agreeing to help us.”
“Sixty-four percent,” El said flatly. That’s not much better than a coin-flip.
“Yes!” Simmons took it as a celebration.
“Well, good luck with that then.” El shook his head and turned back to the metal door. “Cassie, are you coming?” he said over his shoulder.
“What? No! Where are you going, Eliard?” Cassandra looked at him in alarm.
“It seems to me that your friend here wants to recruit a bunch of idiots for a suicide mission. Breaking into Armcore’s headquarters and talking to a military computer?” El shook his head. “If Alpha does decide to create a fleet to blow the hell out of Armcore, then good riddance is all I can say.”
“But, El! You don’t get it. This isn’t about just you and the Mercury Blade!” Cassandra said as Simmons muttered something about cowards and pirates. “This is about everyone. Alpha could wipe out humanity, with ease.”
“Wake me up when it’s time to pick up my gun,” El countered.
“And don’t forget that the Mercury is still public enemy number one for Armcore, Captain!” Cassandra said. “How are you going to escape that?”
Ouch. El paused. She has a point there.
“We’ve got good odds that Ponos will help us. That means scrubbing your name off the most wanted list, too,” Cassandra went on. El thought that she had a funny definition of ‘good odds.’ “And, I dare say, that House Archival,” she added as an aside, “will pay a handsome reward.”
Aha! El turned back around. “Now you’re talking, lady.” He smiled invitingly at Simmons. “Terms and conditions, please, because believe me, the crew of the Mercury Blade places a very high level of pride in our work.” And they want us to waltz right up to the very people in the universe who want to kill us.
Simmons frowned. “One minute.” His hands flickered in the air as he sorted through various chat windows and engaged in some
hurried text conversation with one of his superiors on the other side of the stars.
“Three hundred thousand Coalition credits,” he said finally.
“Ha! Good night and good luck, the pair of you…” El turned back to the door. Wait for it, he told himself.
“Five hundred thousand,” Simmons said in a strangled voice.
“For saving the Coalition and all of human space?” El said.
“We don’t know Ponos will be able to do that, yet,” Simmons said pointedly.
“Still, best to be optimistic, right?” El looked back at the man. “One million Coalition credits. No less.”
Simmons opened and closed his mouth, before taking a deep breath and nodding. “Fine. One million Coalition credits. I will tell my superiors that you accept, and we will start transferring the data files to your ship that we have so far. We have already prepared full operation suggestions and models, of course…” His hands flickered over the console.
“There.” El grinned at Cassandra. “Now, if you’re going to fly with us, you’re really going to have to learn how to haggle.” He ushered her toward the door. Cassandra, however, did not appear to be very happy with anything that had just happened, and remained annoyed past the curtain and through the clockmaker’s shop on the far side, and even unlocked the door in a cold manner as they swept outside.
Straight into the waiting muzzles of the Mela Security guns.
4
A Not-So-Pleasant Surprise
“Easy there, fellas, you haven’t even bought us a drink yet…” El looked at the range of very grim-faced, white-garbed security officers.
“Captain Eliard Martin, owner of the Mercury Blade? You are under arrest,” said the burliest officer, and the one apparently in charge.
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