Keltan's Gambit: Chronicles of the Orion Spur Book 2

by Michael Formichelli

  His queue had only one message in it. It was from Sophi, and it was a command to meet her at the Elthroa Staffing Agency an hour before midday.

  He sighed and mentally clicked the glowing stylus icon prompting his cerebral computer to log the appointment in his planner. When it appeared in the lower left field of his vision the words “Urgent Reminder” flashed over the date grid. He didn't remember putting that in his planner. He hadn't slept well since the first part of the cruise so he supposed it was possible he forgot about doing it. He concentrated on the words and the file opened. It contained only the name, “Captain Solus,” and though he had no idea who that was, a sense of dread rose up from his stomach so powerful that he nearly vomited on the table.

  He deleted the file with a panicked thought, and the menu slid back into his vision. Not wanting to think about the disturbing name, he pulled up today’s news feed. The ghostly image of a clean shaven man in a light blue suit with a high collar appeared standing beside the table and began to list off the day’s top stories. The name below the image read, “Brett Cannon.”

  “Cosmos Corp stock is up sharply, showing an over ten percentage point gain after Baron Revenant announced a new form of instantaneous star travel—”

  “Skip,” he said.

  “In related news, Cosmos Corps' top rivals, the Mitsugawa-owned Shiragawa Zaibatsu and the Cronus-owned Intelligent Systems Incorporated, both showed drops in their stock value. Analysts are predicting Cosmos Corp will edge them out of the star drive market in both the military and civilian fields. Dominance of interstellar travel is expected to solidify Baron Revenant's already strong political position in the Barony. It remains to be seen, however, if the baron can stabilize the economy and prevent the impending bankruptcy of the treasury.”

  Cylus rolled his eyes.

  “In interstellar news, Star Corps Command released information indicating that the Elmorus System has fallen to the Broghite invaders. Although the news seems grave, Premier Dorsky wishes to remind the public that Elmorus was a minor colony system, and that no major system has, or will fall to the Broghite aggressors. He further urges citizens to take heart as Cosmos Corp's new drive system is sure to give the Confederation the advantage in our conflict with the bloodthirsty Broghite Commonwealth.”

  Cylus discontinued the feed and activated his communications link.

  Ben, I'm hungry.

  “I'll bring breakfast right up, master,” his artificial assistant responded.

  Chapter Two

  Lokhari Forest, Elmorus

  41:2:11 CST (J2400:3134)

  The damp air hit Nero as soon as he stepped out into the gray forest light. Walking through the camp he passed Mitsugawa soldiers in black armor, and mercenaries in gray and red. Armstrong’s Reivers was their company, and they were hired as support and protection during their operations on Elmorus before he and his partner, Sorina Khepria, arrived. Not a single one of them showed anything but irritation on their faces as far as he could tell. He wondered if that was a reaction to being around his person, or if there was some other cause. Normally he wouldn’t trouble himself with such thoughts, but since losing Prospero in the battle with Qismat, Baron Revenant’s pet murder machine, he hadn’t felt like himself.

  The long mess tent was near the southern edge of the camp. Its double-flapped entrance was held open by a single white rope looped through grommets. Beside it a soldier wearing the mercs’ uniform squatted in the damp soil holding his knees while rocking back and forth. Nero stared at him for a moment, then gritted his teeth and moved inside.

  “What’s the deal with the soldier out front?” he asked the man serving as supply sergeant. His name tag read, “Takahashi.”

  Sergeant Takahashi frowned. “He was inside the lab facility before she went in. That’s how he came out. A few others came out like that, too, but not her.”

  “She who? You’ll have to forgive me, I just got here.” Nero pressed his lips together. He hadn’t chatted with the soldiers much, or the mercenaries for that matter, and was a bit behind on camp chatter.

  “You know, the girl with the eyes.” Takahashi waved his fingers in front of his face.

  “Kier—“ Nero stuttered, remembering at the last minute that the girl he knew from Savorcha was going by a different name now. “You mean Setha.”

  Takahashi nodded. “You’re that Abyssian who came here with the CSA agent, aren’t you?”

  Nero nodded.

  “What do you need?” Takahashi asked.

  “Something fruity, and something to eat.”

  “Fruity?” The sergeant turned around to the stack of supply containers behind him. When he turned back he dumped two ration packs on the fold-out table between them.

  “For my lady-friend,” Nero said with a look.

  “Of course.” Takahashi went back into the containers and produced a nutrient shake-ball. “This has strawberry-orange flavoring.”

  “It’ll do.” Nero nodded, accepting the items.

  “You know, she’s the only one who came out of there normal. The lord’s mistress, I mean. Since she went into that laboratory, nothing’s happened. Mitsugawa-sama has our teams inside, but it’s our duty to go in. I don’t think there’s enough money in the spur to get any of the Reivers near that lab again.”

  “That’s a shame.” Nero frowned and gestured at the food. The sergeant seemed eager to tell his story to new ears and he just remembered why he didn’t like camp chatter. Gossip wasn’t really his thing, though it was interesting to note that Setha might have some kind of defense to the Siren nanomachine. “How much?”

  “Nothing, we were instructed to provide for you and the CSA woman by Mitsugawa-sama.” Takahashi looked to the side. “I don’t know about you, but I’m eager to be away from all of this. It’s bad luck, and those eyes scare me. I know many people have cornea implants, but hers are different somehow.”

  “Sure thing. Thanks for the grub.” Nero shook his head and started back for his tent.

  On the way he noted two more soldiers in a similar state to the man beside the mess hall. He supposed they were lucky to not have suffered the same fate as Baron Mitsugawa’s father, if one could call being half-catatonic “lucky.” Throwing oneself out a kilometer-high window was a bad way to go, though. Nero promised himself he’d nail Baron Revenant for it, but first he had to get them off this damn planet and past the Broghite blockade.

  Khepria was sitting on the trunk by his cot when he ducked inside. Her ears twitched at the sight of him and she looked up with amber, feline eyes. He gave her a quick smile and tossed her the shake.

  “Thank you.” She snatched it out of the air with one hand and squeezed the bottom. The auto-straw popped out and she took a long draw from the silver pouch, swirling it around in her mouth before swallowing. “I have been thinking about the algorithms Daedalus used to program Prospero, and I might get a little deeper into your SCC than my attempt this morning, but I still do not know why Prospero will not reboot. We repaired the power pathways when we had you in Mitsugawa’s nanomed tube last night. It is like something is actively blocking my efforts. The reboot command keeps getting ignored.” She took a sip of her drink. “Mm, that is good.”

  Nero sat down on his cot and popped the straw on the first of his two ration packets. Micro-converters changed the kinetic energy of the squeeze into electricity, and the package heated up within seconds. He let it sit for several moments before taking his first sip. The slurry tasted sweet with a hint of spice and plastic. It wasn’t bad for field rations.

  “Did you—I mean—did Prospero detect any transmissions from Qismat before the crash?” She asked after several sips of her drink.

  “I don't know.”

  “Okay.” Her ears worked the air while she drew more of the shake into her mouth. “Nero, I do not think I can help you. Every time I dive in there I have to decrypt Daedalus' programming. I get a little farther each time, I learn a little more of the structure, but he encrypted eve
ry sub-program of Prospero’s code with a different cipher. Each cipher takes me an hour to break, and it is getting harder. I am thinking of asking Baron Mitsugawa’s assistant for help.”

  “No.”

  “Nero, I am not sure—”

  “No. You know I can’t allow anyone outside of the Confederate Space Authority to touch Daedalus’ technology.”

  “He is a cyber-evolved life form. Compared to him, I am just an amateur programmer.”

  “No.” He hated being like this with her, but he could not let the secrets that protected the Confederation fall into the wrong hands—or anyone’s hands. He would rather be stuck as half of what he was than allow it, and he shouldn’t have to explain that to a Confederate agent.

  Khepria took a deep breath. “I do not want to give up. I do not want you to lose who you are because I was not good enough to help you. You cannot lose a part of your mind and be the same person.”

  “Prospero isn't a part of my mind. He's separate.” He put the ration pack down on the cot beside him.

  She shook her head. “Abyssian A.I.'s are fully integrated with their hosts. They are two halves of the same being. There is a division of labor about who handles what function, but one cannot exist without the other.”

  “But if I were a true Abyssian I would be dead without Prospero. Didn't you say that? I'm not dead.” He shook his head. “I've always felt his voice was something alien inside my head. I've never been comfortable with it, not even in the beginning. You'd think sixty-years would be long enough to get us used to each other, but it wasn't.” He took in a deep breath, knowing that he was leaving out how hollow he felt inside without his SCC. Perhaps he should have told her, but it would have undermined his point.

  “It is true. I have never heard of an Abyssian living without his AI. I studied a few cases where an SCC was damaged in battle, and even a case where an Abyssian’s SCC was erased by the beam from a pulsar. Every time this happens, the Abyssian's body shuts down, but yours did not. Maybe this means Prospero is still online but cutoff somehow.”

  “Or maybe, I'm not really an Abyssian.”

  Her ears convulsed, but he continued.

  “I met Setha on Savorcha during the war. She was a child then, but she remembered me when she found us in the forest. She told me something after we got to the camp while you were still in your hibernation-state. She said I was not now what I was when we met.”

  “That could mean a lot of things. She is also not what I would call normal for the Solan species. The eyes glowing, that could be some kind of implant, but she is—I do not know—strange somehow. As Solans say, my skin crawls around her.”

  “She's got an odd way about her, yes.” He frowned as another thought came to him. “Do you know anything about Daedalus? Does he spy on the Abyssians?”

  Her ears twitched. “I know that Daedalus can contact or be contacted by any Abyssian at anytime through the use of your entangled quantum communicator. I guess it is possible Daedalus can monitor certain aspects of your experiences in real time. The bandwidth available in an entangled communicator is not enough to transmit everything you experience at every moment, unless Daedalus spent a lot of energy and used millions of entangled particles in its creation. That would not make sense though. Unless the whole purpose was to maintain constant surveillance on his Abyssians it would be a waste of resources. Regular reports on a small-bandwidth entangled communicator would suffice for most situations. I doubt Daedalus is a Fleshrider.”

  Fleshriders were individuals who linked themselves to others' senses through the Cyberweb and effectively lived in another being’s skin for periods of time. There was a whole culture of them on certain worlds. Some preferred to ride, while others got some perverse pleasure from having someone else in their bodies. To Nero it was more than illegal under Confederate law, it was extremely creepy on a personal level. He sent a few such perpetrators to penal colonies during his years of service.

  “But, in theory, he could be one.” He shuddered at the thought.

  “In theory. Do you think Daedalus would do that?” she asked.

  “Setha implied it. She said the machine wasn't listening when Prospero was offline.” He shrugged. “I don't know. If I'm not an Abyssian, then I really don't know anything about myself.”

  Khepria stared at him. He could almost see the thoughts behind her amber eyes.

  “Who knows? Maybe I'll find out some day,” he added.

  “Maybe.” She turned her head and stared distantly at the canvas wall with twitching ears.

  He didn’t know what to say, so let silence fill the space between them. Then it was time to head out.

  The leathery, black-leafed trees thinned out as Nero approached the airfield. The closer he got to the cracked expanse of its decaying tarmac the more red moss and purple-black reeds covered the earth beneath his boots. He stopped where the last of the trees gave way to a thick, beard-like growth of dark-lilac grass and tiny, four-petal flowers in bright pink and yellow clusters. He assumed they were responsible for the powdery smell of sugar in the air and the rather disturbing sound of whispers that plagued his ears every time the breeze kicked up. Beyond them the dilapidated customs house and space-traffic control tower rotted in the fading orange light of dusk. Even without Prospero’s assistance he could see the three levels of cracked windows and crumbling brick was laced with bright-yellow vines. The tower, little more than a scaffold with large dishes on it, looked about to topple over at any moment. Beyond it he could just see the corner of the crumbling terminal structure. To the left of that a slight blue haze of an aegis field made his heart jump in his chest.

  Shit, he thought. It didn’t take much to figure out what the field was protecting. He unslung the gauss rifle he borrowed from Baron Mitsugawa’s arsenal and headed around the edge of the forest, careful to keep under cover of the trees. There were several patrols of Broghite Fang-class fighters that passed by on his way to the airfield. They looked to be maintaining a tight perimeter around Sanakrat, Elmorus’ only settlement of significance. Nero found a place with a better line of sight to his ship a quarter of the way around the field from his last position. Here he saw the long, bent-neck silhouette of the CSS Akanda still sitting on the tarmac where he left it. Its silhouette wavered as if underwater beneath the Broghite aegis field.

  Shit, he cursed again, and raised the rifle to his shoulder. Without Prospero to operate the weapon’s scope the magnification was fixed, but it brought the shimmering haze around his ship into view along with the troops around it.

  There were five of them, all outfitted in navy-blue armor with bulbous helmets and a transparent faceplate revealing pairs of huge eyes beneath. They looked short at this range, and had a hunched way of standing, with gray fur covering the tails protruding from the backs of their armor. Without Prospero online he didn’t know what species of sentient he was looking at, but he was certain the carbines they held in their small hands ensured that approach to his ship now would be suicide.

  Goddess dammit, Nero thought and fished around in his jacket pockets for the gray-polymer communicator Khepria gave him before he left. He felt awkward holding it up to his lips, and using the device made him feel like a child without an implant.

  “Blackhawk to lighthouse,” he said.

  “Go ahead,” her voice came back.

  “There’s a net over the bird. No idea where the hand is—” the ‘hand’ was the power source in the code they worked out, “—moving on to secondary objective.”

  “Acknowledged Blackhawk. Lighthouse will get to work on the problem. Out.” He could almost see Khepria’s pointed ears twitching in disappointment from the tone of her voice.

  Shaking his head, Nero put his back to the nearest tree and drained the air from his lungs in a rush. After six decades of having Prospero in his head to take care of technological problems—like the system keeping the shimmering aegis field around his ship—he felt completely powerless without him. It was not a sensatio
n he was used to, and it took some will to resist pounding the leathery bark at his back with a fist.

  Damn it, I miss the son of a bitch, he thought.

  The wind kicked up, blowing dust particles across the tarmac that stung him where the new skin was still getting established on the right side of his face. Only the thought of what it might do to the healing skin stopped him from scratching. He still couldn’t believe that Baron Revenant’s personal android showed up here. How did it know where they were going? Perhaps he sent it ahead after the interrogation? Nero couldn’t figure it out, but whatever the case, the thing’s presence confirmed for him that the information Baron Mitsugawa’s techs were pulling off of the burned-out servers in the lab must link Siren to Revenant in a damning way.

  He took a deep breath, tasting the gritty, musty atmosphere on his tongue and pulled himself off of the rubbery tree trunk. There would be no answers here, not for a while at least. With the work of gathering evidence left to Agent Khepria and Mitsugawa’s men, he was free to find the answer to how they would get back to Kosfanter with the Broghites occupying the system. He wouldn’t be able to do that standing here mourning his lack of abilities. With a sigh, he shook his head and headed back into the woods where he stashed the air-car. The soft ground made wet hisses under his feet as he made his way down the forested hill. The shadows between the pillar-like trees were deepening fast. The horizon on this world was closer than that of Kosfanter, making dusk and dawn more speedy.