Exin Ex Machina

by G. S. Jennsen

  Nika stepped up to the entry checkpoint and gazed impassively at the security dyne as she pressed the fingertips of her left hand to the pane.

  Σ → Identity:

  < Kallis Vramel, 3rd generation

  Signature:

  < βαθΨθΞΨ∀ΨαΩ

  “Destination?”

  “Namino Two East Hub.”

  “You are cleared to proceed.” She wasted no time in doing so.

  A healthy gray market trade permeated every corner of the Asterion Dominion, and polite society called this the ‘black market.’ But masks were only traded on the blackest of true black markets, a network of commerce known only to off-gridders and those who sold to them.

  While the underlying algorithms that interfaced with the wearer of a mask were home-grown, the technology relied on several components developed by the Taiyoks. Secretive, humorless aliens descended from arthropods, the Taiyoks had adapted their own biological cloaking traits into a system able to be manufactured, bought and sold. They were also astute traders, and they used the necessity of their components in building the device to keep a stranglehold on the mask trade.

  The aliens could occasionally be seen on any Asterion world, but they had established a real, lasting presence only on Namino. So if one wanted to purchase a mask and be assured it wasn’t a defective knockoff, one went to Namino.

  If Mirai was the shining, cosmopolitan heart of the Dominion, Namino was its messy, raucous, somewhat dingy counterpart. It acted as a mercantile center, trade depot and, more often than not, factory storage dumping ground. If a thing existed, it could be bought, sold and stockpiled on Namino.

  Though comfortably habitable, the planet lacked both abundant natural resources and attractive terrain. It was no trouble to live there, but if given the choice, why would you? The air was arid and cool on the main continent, making it favorable for storage of manufactured goods and perishables alike. A flat, docile landscape made construction cheap and city planning simple. The trade industry that sprouted up in response to these characteristics gave an answer to the question for those so inclined.

  The dry air made Nika’s nose itch as she exited the Namino Two East Hub and crossed a promenade buzzing with activity. She checked the local time. Her appointment with her Taiyok contact wasn’t for another three hours…

  …it was almost as if she’d planned it this way. She turned left and caught a maglev for one of the perimeter industrial districts.

  8

  * * *

  Mesahle Flight built custom habitat and spaceship hardware components, from instrument housing to water recycling systems and kitchen units to the hulls themselves. Occasionally, it built the whole damn spaceship—usually small personal craft for wealthy individuals or scientific research ships for some scientist’s pet project, as that covered most of the reasons anyone would bother to do something so quaint as fly a spaceship instead of just taking a d-gate to wherever they wanted to go.

  Because it was a custom shop, the ‘factory floor’ consisted of six blocks of modular fab kits and three elevated assembly frames. The arrangement of the fab kits changed nearly every time she visited, as did the items suspended in the assembly frames.

  Grant Mesahle dangled fifteen meters in the air, suspended from the top of one of the frames by a minimal harness while he worked at an open casing on the side of a half-built ship. His long, dirty blond hair was secured in a knot at the nape of his neck. A multitool drone floated to his left, ready to provide assistance on command.

  Nika rested against the fence that bordered the shop, crossed her ankles and arms, and watched him work. Precision flares of heat winked in and out of sight from the depths of the casing. After a few seconds Grant’s left hand stretched out toward the drone, and it transferred a small tool to him. He adjusted his angle slightly, and his arm again disappeared inside the casing.

  “Enjoying the show?” His voice was modulated by the tension of concentration, yet it still managed to convey a hint of flirtation.

  She chuckled under her breath. “Quite a lot. Did you install hidden visual receptors in the back of your head?”

  “Merely full-coverage cams for the workspace, transmitting away into my nex node.” He handed the tool back to the drone and spun around to balance against the hull and face her. “Nika Tescarav, come to visit. Are you here to buy a ship?”

  One corner of her lips rose. He always asked her the same question, and her answer was always the same. “No, I am not.”

  Slate shafts of afternoon light from Namino’s blue-white sun penetrated the wide window above the bed to partition the room into wedges of light and shadow. Nika stretched out a leg until her toes found light; she wiggled them to draw what warmth she could from it, which wasn’t much.

  Far better and more plentiful warmth could be found, however, from Grant’s bare chest, so she curled around it to rest her chin on his sternum and peer up at him. “How’s business?”

  “This week, not great. I had a contract with a construction firm on SR56-Ichi evaporate. Or the firm evaporated, I’m not really sure which. Either way, there’s no one to take delivery of a big stack of environment regulation modules and no one to pay for them whether delivered or not. So now I’m having to offload the modules for barely above cost one at a time.”

  She frowned, if somewhat lazily, reluctant to let the afterglow fade so soon. “That’s odd. You can’t get in touch with anyone from the company?”

  He shrugged with equal laziness. “It’s as though they never existed. I’d visit the outpost to see what’s up, but the time away from the shop would cost me yet more money. So I’m cutting my losses and moving on.” He offered her a smile and brushed flyaway hair out of her face. “It’s all good. What brings you to Namino today?”

  “I can’t just want to see you?”

  “Ha. If only.”

  “I did want to see you. But, yes, I also have to pay Xyche a visit about some new masks.”

  “What a way to spoil an otherwise lovely afternoon. Good luck.” His lips quirked, and he hesitated briefly before continuing. “So…I caught a glimpse of your handiwork at the Dominion Transit HQ on the news feeds. Isn’t it a little risky, being so flamboyant? It’s like you’re taunting Justice, daring them to come after you.”

  Grant wasn’t a member of NOIR, as such. He lived on the grid and ran a legitimate enterprise. But he was an active sympathizer to their cause, and he regularly helped them out when their needs and his skills coincided. This ‘help’ happened to include satiating her carnal itches on a fairly regular basis, but she didn’t think he minded. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement in more ways than one—she got what she needed outside of NOIR and all the complications that would bring, and he, too, got what he needed, no strings attached.

  She played with the fine hairs running down the center of his chest. “A little bit, but Justice is already coming after us, regardless of how flamboyant we are. It’s not done casually—it’s part of our larger strategy. We may be living on the ragged precipice, constantly scrounging for food and gear and funds, but the Guides and Justice don’t need to know that. The more they come to believe we are a legitimate threat, powerful and unafraid, the more we become so.”

  His hands grasped her hips firmly, and he slid her up his chest to place an enticing kiss on her mouth. Then his grip loosened to allow his fingertips to dance across the small of her back as his lips teased her neck. “If you ask me, you already are powerful and unafraid. One of you, anyway.”

  She hummed in the back of her throat, her skin tingling along the dual paths of his fingertips and lips. “Stop that. I need to go. I’m supposed to be at the Curio Market soon, and Xyche will be cranky if I’m late.”

  He ignored her plea, instead dipping his hand lower to trace the curve of her hip and drawing his tongue along her collarbone. “Taiyoks are perpetually cranky—might as well give him a reason to be. And you have a few minutes still, yes?”

  “Hmm….” She
gave in and closed her eyes, savoring the delightful physical sensations his caresses evoked as her pulse raced her blood toward critical junctures. “Yes, but I’ll have to bolt right after.”

  His lips crushed hers as he shifted his weight, and with it her, until he hovered a breath above her. “Sure. You always do.”

  9

  * * *

  Asterions had initially encountered the Taiyoks some 16,000 years earlier. The first thousand years of their relationship had consisted of the Taiyok government calling the periodic Asterion envoys ‘machines’ and turning them away once a century or so. It had taken another three thousand years of contentious and frequently abandoned negotiations before the first Asterion was allowed to set foot on the Taiyok homeworld, and an additional five thousand before regular trade routes were established.

  Much about their culture remained shrouded in mystery still today, but the aliens had demonstrated themselves to be skilled craftsmen and shrewd negotiators in all things. Not a lot of fun at parties, however.

  Their language consisted of harsh-to-the-ear clicks and rumbles originating from deep in the throat, and most of the sounds were impossible for an Asterion to enunciate naturally. In casual interactions, an external module sufficed for translations, but those who worked regularly with Taiyoks often installed a more robust internal augment into their larynx to enable them to vocalize the language.

  Nika’s body had possessed such a larynx augment when she woke up face-first on a street awash in rain and darkness. She did not know why. Oh, she could speculate as to why if she wanted to torture herself, but it would be to no end. She could have been a smuggler or an elite businesswoman; an interstellar freighter captain or a storefront hocker.

  It didn’t matter. The augment was useful to her in the here and now, as Taiyoks tended to be more trustful of Asterions who had gone to the trouble of altering themselves for the aliens’ benefit.

  Xyche’ghael ran a gear store deep in the Taiyok sector of Namino Two, inside the derisively but widely dubbed Curio Market. His store sold many things above the table, and more under it. He’d been bilking Joaquim for supplies when she’d taken over interfacing with him, and after a couple of months of delicate negotiations she’d cut thirty percent off his prices. She still hoped for an additional ten percent decrease, but these things took time.

  Xyche could not genuinely be considered a friend. It took decades at a minimum for one to reach a relationship status that might be labeled ‘friendship’ with any Taiyok, even a comparatively agreeable one, and Nika didn’t yet have a single decade’s worth of relationship with anyone. He was certainly a business associate and perhaps, if events ever called for it, an ally. If he knew of the existence of NOIR, he probably knew she was a part of it, but as a rule Taiyoks did not concern themselves with internal Dominion political intrigue.

  She entered the Taiyok sector displaying a confident but closed-off deportment. Chin high but eyes straight ahead. Stride long but arms held at her sides. A black-and-plum shifter cloak over a charcoal jumpsuit as attire, because Taiyoks didn’t care for bright colors.

  She’d never visited their homeworld of Toki’taku—that she remembered—but it was reputed to bear a mottled brown, amber and shale landscape, and they’d done their best to recreate the colorless palette here.

  Amid the increasing chill of late-afternoon shadows, she wound through the curving streets of the Taiyok sector toward the Curio Market. Dozens of eyes followed her course, but she acknowledged none of them, as it would be an insult to the residents to do so.

  She knew this because along with her mysterious larynx augment had come sophisticated algorithms detailing the intricacies of Taiyok social customs. How to properly interact with the aliens had literally been embedded in her second-layer core programming.

  She approached the Taiyok clerk behind the counter of Xyche’s storefront, which she believed was also his home, keeping her hands flush at her side and her gaze steady.

  Taiyoks didn’t use bots for much of anything, but definitely not for commerce. As a result, the visual-alteration features of a simmed ID morph were useless here; Taiyok eyes were purely organic and could not be fooled. Luckily, she didn’t need to be someone else in the Curio Market.

  “Nika Tescarav to see Xyche’ghael. I have an appointment.”

  The clerk made a rumbling noise in his throat that wasn’t a word even in Taiyoken and ruffled a winged arm as he turned away from the counter. The algorithms had taught Nika that this was an indication for her to follow the clerk into the back.

  Xyche stood in front of a concave table on the left side of a long, narrow room. A Taiyok variation on photal fibers hung from the tall ceiling down to whatever he worked on. Nika checked behind her to find the clerk gone. For all their physical bulk, Taiyoks moved silent as the night.

  Tough, leathery wings draped down in gray-and-grayer behind Xyche, with only the most subtle hints of muted powder blue feathery streaks visible in the dim lighting of the room. Taiyoks also had far more acute natural low-light vision than Asterions, though she could adjust her visual receptors for it when needed.

  “A moment, Nika.”

  “As you need.” She waited patiently in the center of the room. Cool air drifted beneath her cloak to chill her skin. She felt comfortable enough here to cast some idle glances around the space, but she didn’t indulge in any dramatic movements. The boundaries of their business association did not extend to her fiddling with his personal possessions or crashing on his sofa.

  To her eyes this seemed a dreadfully dull, somber existence…but she realized Taiyok eyes must see it differently.

  Finally Xyche turned from the table to face her, wight-ice eyes meeting her gaze with a minute dip of his pointed chin. “You come to trade credits for forbidden goods.”

  “As I always do. Though if I thought you would tolerate my presence for any other purpose, I might give it a try.”

  The alien blinked at her. “You recognize that I would not take pleasure in your leisure activities, nor you in mine.”

  What were Taiyok leisure activities? Did she want to know? …Had she once known? “I do recognize this, which is why I have never attempted to force such an event upon you. Let us instead take pleasure from business. I need to procure clean Tier III masks. Eight of them.”

  The softer feathers of his neck fluttered as if disturbed by a passing breeze. “Eight? I hope your credits are weighing you to the ground.”

  She smiled at his odd, alien offer of humor. “A burden I’m sure you will deign to relieve me of. Yes, I’ve brought sufficient credits, unless a sudden spike of inflation has swept through the Curio Market.”

  “Not this week, though one never can say what the next wind may bring. It will take me twenty-five minutes to prepare eight for transfer.” He paused. “You may observe the work if you are interested.”

  She bowed her head, chin leading. “I’d be honored to do so.”

  Who knew—maybe one day they would be friends.

  10

  * * *

  Walking out of the d-gate into the Synra Two South Hub lobby was like walking into a steam bath. The one-two punch of sweltering heat and sopping humidity smacking Joaquim in the face made for a rather rude welcome, and his internal temperature regulation processes kicked into high gear to keep him marginally comfortable.

  Ηq (autonomicRegulation) | priorityEscalation (0.8) | parameterChanges (extTemp (+9), extHum(+36%))

  The environmental assault only worsened when he left the climate-controlled transit hub and stepped outside. Mirai One’s pleasant climate had spoiled him, granted, but why had he ever lived here?

  A long time ago, their ancestors had settled Synra out of nothing more than necessity. After sailing across galaxies for almost two centuries without respite, their ships were running out of resources, something Synra offered in abundance. Endless rainforests brimming with diverse flora and savannahs of grasses nourished by rich soil. Rolling meadows of fruit-bearin
g flowers surrounding pristine lakes of fresh water. There were even healthy deposits of common minerals in the polar regions.

  So the ships had landed and the resources had been harvested. Then improved upon, genetically enhanced and replicated. Prosperity ensued. And they had stayed.

  Joaquim paused outside the doors and took a minute to acclimate to the scene spread out before him. Synra Two wasn’t as urbane as Mirai One or as trashy as Namino Two, not as serene as Kiyora One or as…wet as Ebisu One, Two, Three or Four. But for many years and multiple generations, it had simply been home.

  The Justice Center was far enough away from the transit hub to merit its own maglev stop, but he was early, so he decided to walk instead.

  Walking was a mistake.

  Every ten meters held another memory lying in wait to jump out and ambush his psyche.

  The stir-fry restaurant where he and his friends met for lunch once a week for years.

  The music club that let him, Nathan and Gabe pretend they were musicians and play for the afternoon crowd on weekends.

  The residential furnishings fab shop where he worked maintaining their equipment.

  The arboretum where he met Cassidy.

  By the time he arrived at the Justice Center, he felt like he’d gone twelve rounds with an industrial mecha. If he’d wanted to torture himself into a bloody pulp, he could have stayed on Mirai and loaded up some old memory files; the temperature would have been more bearable, if nothing else.

  But he hadn’t come to Synra to torture himself. He’d come to answer a question, and possibly to close a door that had nudged itself open.

  Joaquim slipped into the rear of the courtroom and took a seat on the next-to-last bench. A few people sat scattered among the rows, but the hearing was sparsely attended. Just a random court proceeding for a random low-level crime alleged to have been perpetrated by a random individual. Nothing to see here, move along.