by M. D. Cooper
“I apologize for the drone,” he said. “How was I supposed to know you’d set off the security system? I wrote that script months ago.”
Fugia pushed herself away from the workbench and crossed her arms, accepting that she wasn’t going to figure out how she’d been tracked in the next ten minutes. Besides, she had questions she wanted to ask Jickson.
She nodded toward the crates. “So, those are really SAIs? Actual sentients?”
“They’re seeds,” he corrected. “They have the capacity to become sentient. One, though, has already surpassed all my expectations. I’m still trying to determine what makes her different. I have to admit, I haven’t been as rigorous as I should have. My notes are scattered.” His gaze had dropped to the floor as he spoke, but now he looked up brightly at Fugia. “I gave her a name,” he said, like a kid with a secret.
Fugia thought he was probably some sort of benevolent sociopath. He didn’t seem to realize he was having a conversation with her; he talked like a person recording a message.
“ ‘Her’?” she asked. “What did you name her?”
“Lyssa,” he replied. “For strength and purpose.”
“Lyssa,” she repeated. “I like it. Is that its meaning?”
Jickson grinned. “She was a Greek goddess of rage and death.”
“Oh. How interesting.”
She had expected a creepy romantic vibe from Jickson as he said Lyssa’s name, but he sounded positively paternal. He radiated pride. Parental empathy went counter to her sociopath theory, but she figured now might be a good time to get more information out of him. She wasn’t sure if she would have another opportunity.
“You know,” she said. “We were told you were working for something called Psion Group.”
“I was. I left a year ago to work for Heartbridge.”
“So you are working for Heartbridge? Not some shell company?”
He waved a hand. “I don’t know, honestly, but they pay well. I know where the research is really going, and they send me the AI seeds I need to conduct my research. They did add a ‘no alcohol’ rider in my contract, but I found a way around that.”
“The brandy,” Fugia said.
Jickson smacked his lips at the word. Then caught her judgmental expression, and hunched his shoulders. “I work better when everything has a filter on it. It’s not so rough. The world is too diamond-sharp.”
“Doesn’t intoxication affect your work?” she asked.
“No. I think I have cirrhosis again, so I’m going to need time for an implant recovery, but I can put that off.”
Fugia raised her eyebrows and just shook her head. “I’ll be honest, Dr. Jickson. You don’t strike me as the sort of person capable of running a program that could actually create Sentient AIs.”
“I’m a genius,” he said matter-of-factly. “That’s why I drink.”
Fugia kept herself from rolling her eyes. She glanced at the cargo crates, starting to wonder if they held precious cargo after all. Aside from the crates, they also had five larger containers down in the main cargo bay that Jickson had described as ‘super-autosurgeons’, capable of implanting the AI seeds in a human host.
“If you chose to work for Heartbridge,” she mused, “why did you send the Hoarders a request for assistance?”
“I didn’t send it to the Hoarders. I sent it everywhere. You’re just the first people to respond.” He gave her a sideways glance. “How’d you figure it out?”
“I didn’t,” she admitted. “A parrot on Cruithne did.”
Jickson nodded without surprise. “That makes sense. It was a Psion key.”
“You’re aware of the parrots on Cruithne?”
“Yes. I worked on that program for three years. It broke my heart; it’s one of the reasons I had to leave Psion. But this hasn’t been any better…. I know how they’re generating the seeds. I used to tell myself it was a reasonable trade because the process generated such amazing results. But now that Lyssa is here, I can’t let it go on any longer. I have to get her out. I have to get her to Proteus so she can be safe with the other SAIs.” Jickson fell silent, his gaze moving from the workbench to the rest of her room.
Fugia followed his gaze with hers, noting that the only personal item in the room was her backpack, which laid open on the bed. She glanced at the bag, her eyes falling on Ngoba’s little black dress, stuffed into an interior pocket. The dress had compressed easily, as if Ngoba had known how she would carry the gift, if she was going to take it with her.
She paused. Is there a tracking device in the dress?
She grabbed a handheld spectrum scanner off the workbench and pulled the dress out of the bag’s pocket. She ran the scanner down its length, getting a null result. Frustrated, she threw the garment back on top of the backpack.
When she stepped near the bed, the scanner beeped.
She looked at the device, then at the bed.
“What are you doing?” Jickson asked.
“Be quiet,” Fugia told him.
Holding the scanner over her backpack earned her a loud series of beeps, which grew louder as she emptied the main compartment and checked the interior seams. By the time she was finished, she had torn out a wire antenna, complete with transponder.
Going to her desk, she laid out the wire and quickly put her visor back together. In another few minutes, she had scanned the transponder, pulling its transmitter frequencies and operating system. Once she had admin access and had checked its logs, she sat down heavily on her chair.
“What?” Jickson asked, who had been watching her the whole time.
“I told you to be quiet,” she snapped.
“That was the first time.”
She gave him a withering glance. “What makes you think the status is going to change?”
“Obviously you learned something. Who planted the tracker in your backpack?”
“The Hoarders,” she said. “The same people who sent me looking for you.”
“So they don’t trust you?”
“Maybe. Or maybe they aren’t all on the same team like I thought.”
Fugia sat back in her chair and considered the situation. They had a corporate attack cruiser bearing down on them, apparently ready to board and steal back their SAIs. She had a lush scientist with cutting edge tech and the ability to make more. She had Ngoba and Karcher and a pirate light cargo ship that wouldn’t outrun anything. She also had evidence she couldn’t trust the Hoarders.
SENTIENCE WAR
STELLAR DATE: 04.16.2979 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: HMS Hopscotch Devil
REGION: Hellas Asteroids, Jovian Combine, InnerSol
“What the stars?” Fugia demanded, staring at the model that had appeared in the holodisplay. “That’s a node ship. Why isn’t it broadcasting?”
The skeletal spacecraft was an antenna with engines, positioned behind an asteroid to conceal its location. Ngoba had found it by verifying mass records on all the nearby space objects. Based on the current orbital paths of the object, Heartbridge’s Benevolent Hand, and the Hopscotch Devil, they woul
d all align within the next hour. If the Benevolent Hand attempted a breaching attack, the Hoarder ship would be in a position to help or add to the assault.
Fugia hadn’t thrown out the option that the Hoarders would destroy Jickson and his research before letting either fall back into Heartbridge hands.
“Hey, boss,” the pilot said, pointing at his scope. “Looks like the Heartbridge ship is deploying a drone fleet. They’re spreading out on either flank.”
Ngoba and Fugia both peered at the console. The pilot was right. There was no way they could stand against the at least fifty new attackers that had appeared in the holodisplay.
“This seems bad,” Jickson said. He sniffed and clasped his hands in front of his stomach to keep them from shaking.
“Weren’t you down in the medbay?” Ngoba asked. “I’m concerned about your health, friend. It’s stressful up here.”
“I have an idea,” the doctor replied.
“We don’t have time for his egotistical nonsense,” Fugia said dismissively.
Ngoba raised a hand to stop her. “I’m out of ideas. I’m open to hearing one from a so-called genius.”
“Not ‘so-called’,” Jickson countered. “I am a genius.”
Fugia clenched her fists. “Every time you say you’re a genius, it proves you’re not. Stop saying it.”
Jickson opened his mouth to respond, but Ngoba cut him off. “Enough bickering,” he said. “Give me your idea.”
“Fine,” the doctor relented. “That Hoarder ship has the biggest transmitter I’ve ever seen. Fugia hacks into their ship, and we take control of their communications array and engines. I will assign my Lyssa to the control systems, and we’ll burn that other ship out of space.”
No one spoke for a few seconds as they all considered the idea, then Karcher said, “I like it.”
“Who asked you?” Fugia demanded.
“Me,” Ngoba said. “I always ask Karcher’s opinion, just as I would ask for yours and anyone’s on this ship with the balls to have one.”
She was taken aback. Ngoba was acting like the leader he claimed to be, and she had to admit it was hot.
She stared at him, then set her mouth. “Fine,” she said. “Yes. I can get into their control systems. At least, I should be able to. The fact that they aren’t broadcasting is a problem, because there won’t be a carrier signal to hide inside, but I’ll find another way in.”
Ngoba nodded. He looked at Jickson. “And you? What do you need?”
Jickson looked at Fugia. He seemed surprised that Ngoba had taken him seriously.
“Well, I’ll need to work with Fugia here to wire the seed into whatever external control scheme she sets up. I’ve got the cradles; all I need beyond that is some filament and a power source.”
Fugia ran through the plan as Ngoba looked from person to person in the small space. Any number of things could go wrong. She might not gain access to the Hoarder systems. The ship might be disabled. Heartbridge might reach them first. The Hopscotch Devil’s engines might malfunction and explode. The last seemed unlikely, but she had to think of every contingency.
She was headed back to her workspace to grab the equipment Jickson would need, when she received a secure access request from the Hoarder ship. She paused in the corridor, and Jickson nearly ran into her from behind.
“Watch where you’re going,” Fugia complained. The request blinked in her mind, naming the ship TMS Recursive Delete, with the sender someone called Brant Jones.
She didn’t recognize the name.
Fugia waited until they reached her quarters, then told Jickson to wait outside.
“Where am I supposed to go?” he demanded.
“Give me five minutes,” she said as her door slid closed.
She took a deep breath and answered the request.
she confirmed, which she supposed included Jickson’s research database.
This was strange. It wasn’t a Hoarder SOP to do anything with physical objects; they collected and stored data. They might solicit a study of a physical object in order to commit that data to the Mesh, but they would never ask for the specific object.
Fugia sent a query on Brant Jones’ personal identifier and received hits from across the JC. She shook her head. Jones might be masquerading as an Archivist, and somehow taken control of a node ship, but he was a Cyberpuke—the Hoarder term for an info-pirate. He hadn’t even bothered to hide his history, and he had left fingerprints on at least a hundred raggedy hack jobs.
If he thinks he’s getting his dirty dickbeaters on my database… Fugia considered her options, then found herself smiling.
Opening her door, she stuck her head into the corridor and whistled at Jickson, who was a few meters away with his back against the wall.
“Hey,” she called to him. “Come on. I’ve got my way into their ship.”
“What are you doing?” Jickson asked.
“Don’t worry about that. You get your SAI ready to run this attack. I should have access to their communications array in less than five minutes.”
His face went pale. “That’s not enough time!”
“It’s what we’ve got. Those drones are still inbound, if you didn’t forget.”
“Fine,” he said, already breathing hard.
He turned to the crates stacked against the wall and carefully separated them, then entered an access code into one and popped its lid up.
Once the lid was free, Fugia caught sight of the rows of SAI cylinders inside, wrapped in protective material.
She finished her conversation with Brant, telling him she’d send the research database first. It would take more time to convince the crew to allow docking operations with the Heartbridge ship that was on its way.
The issue of the Heartbridge cruiser seemed lost on Jones. He only nodded and told her to send the data.
Fugia received Jones’ handshake request on an encrypted channel. She passed dummy administrative access, was granted low level control by Jones to copy files to his system, then started sending a null file that was jammed full of bits of code she had collected over the years, designed to replicate a database the size Jones expected. Security software would scan the database, find reasonably coherent data, and allow it through.
As the database began replicating between ships, Fugia used her base level access on the Hoarders’ ship, along with her knowledge of their security practices, to hop from limited access on the command network to administrative control in the ship’s diagnostics layer. Working her way through the mud of years of software installations, she found her way back to the communications side with full control.
“Jickson,” she said. “You ready?”
“Almost!” he said breathlessly. “This isn’t a stroll in the park.”
“I’m going to chase your ass through the park. I can figure out how to aim their antenna on my own.”
“You’ll get one shot if you do that,” Jickson said. “I’m almost done.”
Fugia sent Ngoba the update. He let her know the Heartbridge ship was within range of their point defense cannons.
There was a note of pain in his voice that she knew was more than stress. Now wasn’t the time for grand emotional statements; she had a ship to blow up.
“There,” Jickson said. “I’m booting up the test parameters now. Do you have their control interface?”
Fugia watched over Jickson’s shoulder as he navigated menus o
n a small terminal. The silver seed sat in a hacked cradle on the workbench, wires and filament wrapped around its base like a wreath around a silver candle.
“Why can’t you just talk to her?” she asked.
“It’s not like that. She isn’t even aware our world exists at this point. She understands the parameters of the attack protocols she’s been taught. She’s given a testbed and targets, and she responds from there.”
“That sounds like any old NSAI targeting system,” Fugia said, crossing her arms.
“You’ll see,” Jickson said, wetting his lips. “There. Are you ready?”
“Wait,” she said, switching to the shipnet. “Ngoba, are you ready?”
“Any more ready, and we’ll have drones up our asses,” he said.
“Do it,” Fugia told Jickson.
In a second display, she had the node ship’s flight path scrolling past in coordinates, velocity, pitch, yaw, etc. As she watched the data, the ship abruptly slowed down relative to Hopscotch Devil. It had spun around for a braking burn.
A contact request from Brant Jones consisted only of a man screaming in pain. Fugia supposed that everyone in the Hoarder ship was now flattened on some surface, due to the abrupt change in velocity.
“She’s taking stock of her targets now,” Jickson reported. He leaned forward slightly, eyes rapt on his screen. “She’s maximizing targets.” He released a high-pitched giggle. “There are fifty drones, fifty-one targets all together. That’s more than I’ve ever sent at her. She’s going to be so excited.”
Fugia split her attention between the two displays. In her Link, she accessed the pilot’s holodisplay so she could watch the Heartbridge ships in real-time. Between the three data sources, she saw the node ship spinning around as it powered up its main antenna. Simultaneously, the Benevolent Hand had matched velocity with the Hopscotch Devil, while its drones continued to fan out between the two ships.
The Heartbridge ship dwarfed their little freighter. They were screwed.
“Now,” Jickson breathed.
The beam-transmission emitters on the node ship blinked alive. A human managing the targeting would have sent a massive blast of energy raging like a comet through the oncoming swarm, probably missing most. But the SAI sent thousands of scalpels at the attacking force, focused beams of EM energy to slam millions of electron volts into each attack craft.
