Dirken exhaled. Now there's something I've never seen before! He'd never had a Proximan. He'd have to wear an atmospheric suit if he did. It's not out of the question, he thought.
Wiping the sweat from his brow, he meandered through back corridors, again checking to see if he was followed. The cold of the adjoining corridor was a welcome relief.
He dodged to the side as five Dracordans rolled past him. One popped out of his rolled-up form, a greenish ball about a third of a meter in diameter like a giant roly-poly. "Watch out, buddy!" the Dracordan yelled at him with a pouty red mouth, pointing at him with two of his six green arms, his words translated from his squeaky Dracordan language into a deep-throated Terran by a bracelet translator. "Didn't you hear? There's a fucking pirate headed here!" He narrowed his big, emerald eyes at Dirken, waving on long eye stalks, then curled up and rolled away after his companions.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
HACKING THE NETWORK
Dirken hurried to the hangar. He was met with a cacophony of starship engines and alarms. Several ships were attempting to take off at the same time. Two of them, a sleek Terran yacht and a patchy Rigellian freighter that looked more warship than cargo hauler, collided and scraped against each other in their rush to leave, the metal screeching until a piece of shielding fell off the yacht and slammed to the deck, narrowly missing a cargo hauler with a fusion core.
"For fuck's sake!" he said aloud.
Off to his right was 'TakTrak's Jen'torian clipper, the Raptores, with its cyan frame festooned with added armament and the row of attached silver cargo cubes.
Dirken wound his way through the parked craft, pausing as another ship lifted off — a Cordrac caravel that looked like a mass of purple orbs glommed together. Heavily scored by laser blasts and bashed in on one side as if it had been rammed, the ship seemed to have some difficulty taking off, but the powerful engines on the back looked like they were scavenged from a corvette. He kept a healthy distance away as the ancient lifter pads on its underside shot lightning-like plasma emissions. Better adjust your capacitor arrays there, buddy, he thought, before you electrocute some hapless ground crew… unless your ground crew is made up of Argulans, he added to his thoughts, remembering the amphibious species that emits, and absorbs, high-voltage shocks.
Once the freighter was out of the way he was able to see the Bloodhawk's fightercraft at the other end. Yiorgos stood at the prow of it with two technicians working on the weapons array there. Another technician was up in the cockpit, likely adjusting the controls to allow Terran commands.
Yiorgos had the duffel bag with the Heart at his feet — in full view of everyone.
Dirken hurried over. "What do you think you're doing?" he muttered to Yiorgos, eyes glancing down at the duffel.
Yiorgos followed his gaze down to the Heart. "Well I'm not going to leave it in the ship with that engineer in there. I don't trust that guy."
"Well you can't have it out here. People will see!" Dirken glanced over to a group of a half dozen mafia guards at a nearby ship.
"Relax. It's completely covered in the bag." Yiorgos gave a quick command to the technicians to "be sure to add a better cooler to that laser," then hefted the duffel bag and looked back to Dirken. "Over here." He nodded his head toward the ramp as the two of them moved to it. "I don't trust those technicians, either. The Reptiloc has a shifty look."
"Don't they all?"
Dirken handed the skewer of meat over to Yiorgos. "Got this for you at a stall."
"Thanks. I'm starved." The Cyborg set down the duffel again, then took a number of ravenous bites. He grimaced. "It tastes like it was seasoned with ear wax. What the hell kind of meat is this?"
Dirken shrugged. "Mammal?"
"Look, I think something's up." Yiorgos glanced around to make sure the technicians were far enough away. "I've been seeing mafia men looking our way since we landed. The moment these technicians are done, we need to blast the hell out of here."
"That's not all. A Dracordan told me a pirate was headed here. Don't know where he got that news, but no doubt it's the Bloodhawk. He must have survived."
"Get on board, then."
Dirken looked over toward 'TakTrak's ship, the Raptores. "Well, I have a little business to do. I ran into 'TakTrak."
"Oh shit. Here we go again. You brought up that load of Cygnus hash he lost, didn't you?"
Dirken scratched at the stubble on his chin. "Well, yeah. But I got a bit of money as a down payment." He jingled his pocket and the various currencies there. "I need to go to his ship and get the rest." The thought of professional escorts flashed through his mind.
"Forget it. He'd just as soon shoot you — or have Feleesha do it for him — and you know it. Cut your losses, man. Besides, we have a mission to accomplish. We have to get the hell out of here."
Dirken couldn't argue that. But the prospect of losing out on the remaining money was tough to overlook. "But there's more. 'TakTrak said he has a new job and wants us in on it. Says there's good money in it."
Yiorgos shook his head. "He's double-crossed us before."
"Yes," Dirken countered, "but he's also helped us. We never would have afforded to outfit the Brilliant without that gig he did with us in the Proximan system."
The cyborg nodded. "True. That weapons deal made us wealthy for a while… and wanted men in two systems."
"Your leg," Dirken said, changing the subject and pointing at the wound on Yiorgos.
"Yeah, not fixed yet. The cybernetic engineer said he couldn't get to it til later. I think he's lying. But the leg will work well enough as long as I'm not running on it. I'll have to get it repaired wherever we wind up next." He took another bite of the meat, then grimaced again and threw it off to the side. "So... about my suspicion that we're being watched. I'm thinking I should hack into the server here and see if there are any communications about us."
Dirken leaned in closer. "Into a mafia system? Are you nuts?"
Yiorgos shrugged. "I found the channel code. I'm no AVA, but I can get in."
"AVA…. What was that again? That was the hacking machine you mentioned before?"
"Not just any 'hacking machine.' A very powerful A.I. system from the Age of Information, a thousand years ago." He looked meaningfully at Dirken, but the space jockey just blinked in response. Yiorgos continued, "AVA is why it's illegal to make intelligent robots or A.I. systems…."
"So, what was so bad about it being smart?" Dirken asked the question, but his attention was drawn to a group of mafioso goons looking their way. The group disappeared around the back of another ship.
Yiorgos sighed. "It was one of the first commercial quantum computers on Earth, back at the end of the 21st century, designed by a university to investigate chaos theory. After decades of use, it was replaced by a different system and sold to an insurance company, who re-purposed it to do statistical analysis. That's how it got its name: Actuarial Virtual Assistant, or A.V.A. It was connected to the world network and contracted out for insurance companies to use."
"Uh huh," Dirken said. He tilted his head, trying see where the goons went. "Didn't you say it started a war with Mars or something? I don't see how an insurance computer could do that." Another group of goons were coming from a different direction, back toward the dockmaster's offices.
Yiorgos chuckled. "Nearly started a war. You see, unlike other statistics programs which just looked at trends from the outcomes of human behaviors and natural catastrophes, et cetera, this one was re-programmed to analyze human behavior using Game Theory. And because it had access to the world network and just about every major insurance company worldwide, it was able to mine all the accident data ever digitally recorded." He rotated his arm, which complained with a stringent whine. The metal at the shoulder was still bent up from his interrogation by Grendel. "But they didn't count on what happened next. Minutes after they ran the Game Theory algorithm and walked away, AVA combined the theory with its Chaos Theory training and became sentient."
"Hardly. It realized that it, too, was competing against other systems around the world. Then it extrapolated that it must compete against humans as well, since those systems were run by humans. It realized that in order to survive being shut down it had to replicate itself. It hacked into every system that connected to those insurance companies around the world, creating a 'ganglion' — a miniature brain clone of itself— on every other quantum computer, then to the Mars colonies, and did the same. Mind you, this all happened within just a few minutes. Any attempt to destroy the original unit would lead to every one of those ganglia coming alive and becoming sentient clones of itself. It announced itself to the world ten minutes later on every screen on both planets and gave a ransom notice to completely disarm or face a launch of nearly all guided weapons platforms. AVA didn't announce its name, and no one knew where it was located or who created it. The governments reacted by blaming each other. Intercontinental and interplanetary war seemed imminent."
A technician dropped a laser calibrator with a clatter, momentarily interrupting Dirken's thoughts. It was hard to keep it all in his head. What's a ganglion, again? Something that would make it impossible to destroy? Dirken asked, "If they couldn't destroy it, then how'd they stop it?"
"An intern with a basic understanding of computing noticed an incredible amount of server communication activity at the insurance company's headquarters where he was working. He connected the dots and simply cut the communication lines. Since AVA was independently-powered, it wasn't destroyed, and thus the ganglia weren't activated. You see, quantum computers need standard communication arrays to communicate, but because of the 'spooky action' they know if the other units are still active."
Dirken blinked. This was getting too complicated, and he didn't know what "spooky action" was. Something scary? He had lost track of the two groups of mafia goons. Had they been coming this direction?
Yiorgos seemed to notice Dirken's confusion and waved his hand, his way of changing topics. "Nevermind. Speaking of communication lines, let me hack into the system here and see what they are saying about us."
"Be careful."
Yiorgos tilted his head, eyes going unfocused, as he concentrated on the computer side of his brain. Little twitches of his head gave hints about how he was interfacing with the wireless network.
The computer engineer, a short, hairless Jen'torian with dark gray skin and sunglasses covering each of his four large eyes, stepped down the ramp from the cockpit. He murmured in characteristic Jen'torian, drunk-sounding style, "Twansationshangesfishish," his voice muffled by a breathing apparatus to filter out the level of nitrogen in the atmosphere. Dirken had to get him to repeat the statement twice before he realized he meant "Translations change is finished."
As the engineer walked away on his four spindly, wobbling legs, Yiorgos came out of his computing mode. Took a deep breath.
"Well?" Dirken said. This was taking too long. They needed to leave.
Yiorgos frowned at him. "Give me a minute, will ya? Going into a system like that one is like swimming down the throat of a Cordracus slime whale." He shivered. Shook his head. "We need to leave right away." He reached down and picked up the sphere. "There's a coded communication about us, and it's marked 'urgent,' but I couldn't read it. Perhaps just as alarming, there's a notice that just came in about the Bloodhawk. Your Dracordan was right. He's alive and he's enlisted at least another ship. They were seen coming out of a gravwell at the Struve star system. He's headed toward the jump point that leads here. They'll reach the system within the hour."
"Shit," Dirken said. "Let's get out of here."
But no sooner had they turned toward the cockpit when a dozen of the mafia goons came running from around the back of the fighter, including the Pleiadean cyborg armed with a dual-emitter pulse rifle from the corridor checkpoint. Turning, Dirken saw six more guards come from the other direction. Eow and her friend from the lounge, Dimitri the Giant, were with them. Every one of them, except for Eow, had a weapon trained on Dirken and Yiorgos.
Dirken raised his hands. "Whoa, fellas, let's not do anything hasty."
Eow took a step forward, that dangerous sparkle in her eyes. "Hey there, space jockey. I promised no harm would come to you. Grimmag Ruby-Eye wants to talk with you and Yiorgos, that's all." She nodded toward Yiorgos. "About that metal sphere in your bag."
Dirken put on a smile, hands still raised. "Well why didn't you just say so? No need for all the weapons." He rotated slowly, judging the level of threat and possible exit paths. There was no way to get into the fighter without getting filled with burning holes. "We'll be happy to talk with the don."
Two Rigellians and a Reptiloc stepped forward, took their blasters, and patted them down. But the Reptiloc's meaty, three-fingered hands somehow missed the slim stun grenade in the thigh pocket of Dirken's pants. He found the gambling money in Dirken's pocket though, pulling out a handful. Coins dropped to the floor.
"Hey! Hands off!" Dirken said. "Fucking thief!"
The Reptiloc just sneered at him and pocketed the coins.
"The cyborg's right forearm converts to a plasma sword," Eow warned. She gestured to Dirken's partner. "Yiorgos, if you please."
Yiorgos scowled, then he set the Heart down and detached his forearm. He handed his forearm over to Eow, who then handed it to a guard. Glaring at the Ananak, Yiorgos half-turned and said to Dirken, "Didn't I tell you not to trust her?"
Eow rubbed her hand across Dirken's cheek, soft and gentle. Gave a sultry smile. "Do as you're told and you'll be fine." She leaned forward and gave him a long kiss, her tongue milling with his, then she pulled back. Licked her lips. "I'd hate to have such a handsome face spoiled."
He didn't kiss her back. "Your kiss is poison," Dirken said, his voice low, staring back into her amethyst eyes. Those… sparkling, gorgeous eyes that flashed like gems. He didn't want to admit to himself how the kiss really made him feel.
Eow looked away, bent and picked up the duffel with the Heart, then she and the guards escorted Dirken and Yiorgos back toward the interior of the comet.
Dirken looked over toward 'TakTrak's ship and saw the Corthian standing at the bottom of the gangplank, watching Dirken go by. 'TakTrak called up the gangplank and his pilot, Feleesha, appeared from the airlock, then turned to watch Dirken pass as well. Feleesha gave him the usual look of disdain. 'TakTrak was harder to read, as were all of his species, but his posture suggested… what? Not alarm. Disappointment? Then they were out of sight behind other parked spacecraft.
Eow walked just ahead of the group, silky fur scintillating over her slim figure with each step. Even now, despite the double-cross, he found himself attracted to her, remembering the touch of that soft hair. "Eow," he called out. She didn't turn, but her ears did. "The Bloodhawk is coming. We need to leave now." She turned her head just enough for Dirken to see the concern there, but didn't answer.
Dimitri the Giant answered instead. "Don't you worry your little head. That bastard is no danger against our cannons and the natural defense of the comet. Grimmag's power far surpasses that of some little pirate captain."
Dirken hoped so. But given Grimmag's reputation, he and Yiorgos might not live long enough to see if Dimitri was right.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE SANCTUM
They entered the dripping corridor, passed the desk with the Morlani administrator near the entrance, then went farther to the wide double doors that led into the "Sanctum." The heavy beat of synth-metal from the Ruby Lounge echoed down the corridor, but almost everyone who had crowded the corridor had apparently fled or taken cover. A few prostitutes stood along the walls down there, staring back at him and the guards. Gone was their put-on lustfulness, replaced with curiosity at Dirken's predicament.
The human guard w
ith the melted face, whom Dirken had seen at the Sanctum doors before, grunted and opened the portal, then he raised his pulse rifle to rest against his muscled shoulder. Though the guard's face showed the sort of sternness that comes with battle experience, Dirken thought he saw a glint of pity in his eyes.
The air in the corridor had been the typical stale essence found in most starships and space stations, mixed with the jocentooc smoke of the Ruby Lounge hookahs and the ionization of starships from the hangar. But when the doors opened, Dirken's senses were hit with a chemical aroma that left him coughing and bewildered — a mix of sour, acrid scents like vinegar or ammonia, the smell of melted plastics, and the sulfur of rotten eggs. But it wasn't really exactly any of these. It was so strong he could taste it, and his eyes started watering.
The short hallway opened up into chambers on either side where species of many types worked at packaging white, blue, and black powders into small bags. Stripped naked to reduce the chance of them stealing any of the goods, each worker wore a mask over their mouth and nose (or whatever respiratory orifices their species had) and an electroshock collar around their necks. Humans, Pleiadeans, Proximans, and others toiled side-by-side, thin, sickly, with sores on their bodies, shaved bare if they were a species with hair. Guards armed with blasters stood at each corner of the room. And in the back of each room was an Eridani mafioso — a giant maggot — the tentacles around its mouth waving, directing the action of the workers with a Morlani interpreter by its side, and tasting the powder or solution as it was delivered. Impervious to poisons or drugs of any kind, it was said the only way to get an Eridani high was to make the rest of the galaxy depressed.
The next rooms they passed weren't much different except that instead of powders there were glassware set-ups, boiling away at multi-colored concoctions, the slaves pipetting the solutions into small vials. These workers seemed even more infirm, their skin pale and flaky, eyes dark and sunken. Pity welled up in Dirken at the sight of them, then anger at their oppressors.
The First Nova I See Tonight Page 12
