Perilous Waif (Alice Long Book 1)

by E. William Brown

  I looked up at Kavin, and realized he’d gotten a com call while I was talking.

  “Duty calls,” he said.

  “Looks like it,” I agreed. “Guess we’d better see what the old people want.”

  For some reason I’d assumed the captain was meeting with Sleeping Dragon alone, and Naoko was just playing servant. But no, she had a seat at the table right next to him. Chief West was with them too, and a tall blonde woman I’d only seen pictures of. Beatrice Campbell, the Square Deal’s first mate.

  “Thank you for joining us, Alice,” Captain Sokol said. “I try not to infringe on the crew’s leave time, but this is urgent. Did you happen to capture images of those inugami you encountered on Felicity?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course I did, it would be pretty embarrassing to forget someone’s face. Naoko didn’t get them?”

  Naoko sighed. “I don’t have video capture capabilities, Alice. Collecting evidence regarding the misdeeds of others would be rather contrary to intentions of my designers.”

  “Really? You know, you’ve never actually told me what kind of model you started out as.”

  There were embarrassed looks all around the table, and Naoko hung her head.

  Oh, please. I rolled my eyes.

  “Guys, I do know about personal companions. Geez, just because I’m not quite old enough to want one yet doesn’t make me stupid. I just don’t get what that has to do with secrecy restrictions.”

  “The yakuza develop androids for vices that are too skeezy for the regular manufacturers to touch, kid,” Major Vall said. “Mindbreak and rape, torture and vore, all kinds of weirdness. They sell androids that crave abuse and hate it at the same time, and that’s just scratching the surface. Do you really want to know more than that?”

  Good goddess, I wish I hadn’t been crawling the datanet for clarification while he was talking. I felt sick.

  “No, sir.”

  “Then quit asking embarrassing questions, and play the damn vid,” Beatrice growled.

  “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, Naoko. I, um, this is the kidnapping attempt.”

  I’d kept a low-resolution recording of the fight just in case, and my low-res was still better than the holodisplay in the conference table could duplicate. I ran through the brief scuffle, being careful to fuzz out the part where they said Naoko’s control phrase. Then I froze the image, and pulled out close-ups of the inugami’s faces.

  The catgirl on the other side of the table leaned in for a closer look, and deftly plucked copies of all the data out of the holodisplay’s memory.

  “Definitely a Masu-kai model, but I don’t think they’re from Ishida’s group,” she announced. “Alice, I don’t suppose you’ve got an internal scan on any of them?”

  “My radar hadn’t grown in at that point,” I admitted. “And I didn’t have enough computing power online to run all my senses at full efficiency. I’ve got a passive sonar sweep, but the resolution is pretty terrible.”

  I passed it over anyway, and she gave me a reassuring smile. “This is fine, honey. I just wanted gross anatomy to do some database searches. What happened to your sensor suite?”

  “Those idiots on Felicity were starving her,” Beatrice said, sounding personally offended. “Limited calories and no food supplements.”

  “I, um, wasn’t actually telling them about all the malnutrition warnings I was getting,” I pointed out hesitantly.

  “Because you were afraid they’d lobotomized you if they knew how extreme your enhancements are,” Naoko sniffed. “A fear which was entirely justified, according to the research I’ve been doing. It is not at all unusual for excessively capable orphans to simply vanish from their public records.”

  It wasn’t? I’d been afraid of something like that, but hearing her confirm it made me realize just how lucky I’d been to meet Naoko. If they’d found me in the port…

  Kavin squeezed my hand. I hadn’t even realized he was still holding it.

  “That does sound like Felicity,” Rei agreed. “Alright, I’ve got confirmation. The dentition on these inugami is wrong for Ishida’s group. He likes his girls with authentic canine teeth, and this bunch has a canine-human hybrid pattern that makes it easier for them to eat human foods. I’ve got a hit on Jin in my thug database too, which matches. It looks like they’re from Yamashida’s group.”

  Everyone frowned thoughtfully at that. Which left me confused, but I wasn’t about to ask after the results of my last question. Fortunately Kavin noticed my confusion, and filled me in.

  “Dad called this meeting to let Captain Sokol know that the yakuza have been asking a lot of questions about him lately. Trying to figure out the Square Deal’s schedule, who the current crew are, that kind of thing. But the activity our contacts have been reporting was all from Kaneda’s group.”

  I frowned. “Kaneda’s group? What does that mean?”

  “Oh, you haven’t researched the yakuza yet? The Masu-kai have operations all over the sector, but they’re pretty decentralized. Each branch of the organization is run by a local boss, and they don’t usually cooperate much with each other. They’re all rivals when it comes to promotion time, you see. Mr. Ishida runs their custom android operation, so everyone probably assumed the inugami that tried to kidnap her were from him.”

  “I had some doubts, actually,” Captain Sokol said. “It may sound strange if you don’t know him, but betting his personal companion in a poker game is perfectly in character for Mr. Ishida. He tends to get carried away with his gambling, and he doesn’t place much value on people.”

  “You won Naoko in a poker game?” I said incredulously. Then I remembered who I was talking to. “Ah, sir. Sorry, sir, it’s none of my business.”

  “No, it’s alright,” the captain said easily. “It’s not a secret, and you need to learn about these things. Ishida’s group controls most of the smuggling in the Felicity Cluster, so it’s important for us to stay on his good side. A poker game every now and then is a small price to pay for being left alone.”

  “We’re smugglers?” I asked.

  “We have a highly diversified business,” he replied. “Sometimes you can make a killing with a timely shipment of tobacco and soda to the right Mormon colony.”

  “Or lifting warbots and ammo out of a newly-declared DMZ,” Major Vall said. “If you’re smart that kind of op can make you friends, too. Friends who might pass on useful info later on.”

  “We still have a mystery, though,” Rei interjected. “Kaneda mostly deals with the Dark Space protection racket, so what’s his interest in the Square Deal? Naoko, I’m not asking you to betray any confidences, but could you have overheard something important when you were working as Ishida’s personal companion? A password, maybe, or some plot that a rival might want details on?”

  Naoko frowned thoughtfully, but after a moment she shook her head. “I don’t believe so. It embarrasses me to admit this, but Mr. Ishida did not allow me much involvement in his business affairs. He was primarily interested in testing my programming, to ensure that I… ah… performed to specifications.”

  “I won’t ask,” Rei said sympathetically. “Only, has Dan managed to get everything fixed? I know how tricky that can be. We’ve got some e-war talent we could put on the job if you need help.”

  “It’s all hardware locked,” Captain Sokol said. “I’ve got a solution lined up, though. It’s just going to take some time.”

  Rei looked pretty impressed at that. “You’ve got a contact who can break hardware locks? Damn. Okay, I guess you’ve got it covered. You’re a lucky girl, Naoko.”

  “I am well aware of this,” Naoko replied.

  “Unfortunately that leaves us in the dark,” Major Vall said. “You haven’t pissed off the oyabun recently, have you Dan?”

  “Hardly. If anything we have a cordial relationship. His family owes me quite a few favors, and you know how they are about honor debts.”

  Rei snorted. “Yeah. They’ll do anything for honor right up unt
il the price gets too high, and then they welsh on the debt and murder you to make sure you don’t tell anyone.”

  “Hence why I never tried to cash in on the relationship,” the captain said. “Well, thank you for the warning, Verkin. I’ll have to do some digging to get to the bottom of this, but at least we won’t be blindsided.”

  Everyone took that as their cue to say their goodbyes, and the meeting broke up. I watched Kavin leave with his parents, feeling a little glum about it. So much for dancing the night away.

  The moment the door was shut a flight of security drones rose from the corners, and swept the room. No one said anything until they were done, and Chief West finally spoke.

  “We’re clear,” he said. “Not that I really expected Verkin to try anything, but Rei can be unpredictable. What do you think, sir?”

  “I think that if the yakuza were asking questions about a particular crewmember we could assume someone’s past was coming back to haunt them. But this sounds like a different sort of issue. I can only think of one thing big enough to get the attention of multiple bosses like this.”

  “I suppose you’re right, sir. But should we be talking about this here?”

  “Hmm. Alice, do you want to know a dangerous secret? Or would you rather stay away from shady conspiracies, and go enjoy your evening?”

  “If I get to choose, sir, then I’m all in,” I said earnestly.

  “Kids,” Beatrice sniffed. “Always chasing excitement.”

  “Perhaps,” the captain responded. “Please explain your reasoning, Alice.”

  Well, that was unexpected. “Um, yes sir. Being ignorant won’t protect me if the whole ship is the target, sir. I need to know what’s going on if I’m going to help keep Naoko and the techs safe.”

  “Are you certain that’s what you want, Alice? This is a busy port. You could leave us here, and find yourself a safer berth. With your record and a recommendation I’m sure you could talk your way into an apprenticeship somewhere.”

  “No way! I have friends here, sir,” I insisted. “I’m not going to leave them in the lurch. The only way I’m leaving is if you kick me out, sir.”

  Beatrice was studying me with an annoying smirk. “Oh, I get it. Pack bond, huh?”

  “I think our Alice is a bit more nuanced than that,” the captain replied. “But it seems we can rely on her discretion. Naoko, you’ll want to hear this as well.”

  “Me? But, my captain, I might still have latent compulsions we haven’t discovered. What if I turn out to be a spy?”

  “That is less of an issue than you might think. Tell me, have either of you heard the story of the Mirai treasure fleet?”

  We both shook our heads.

  “Well, this will take a bit of explaining, then. The story goes that during the final months of the Kami War the Mirai high command began to realize that they were going to lose. They had the best troops, the best crews and by far the best commanders, but it wasn’t enough. The Dominion expeditionary force had better ships, and the Swarmlords were drowning them in mass-produced robot war machines.”

  “Serves them right,” I muttered. “Stupid genocidal maniacs.”

  The captain paused, and gave me a disapproving look.

  “I know the Mirai have become this generation’s Nazis, Alice, but you would do well to remember that history is written by the victor. War is filled with atrocities, and the more competitive pressure the great powers feel the more savage their behavior. With hundreds of thousands of nations vying for power in the modern era it was inevitable that the laws of war would regress to the mores of the city-state era. By that standard the Kami War was only a little worse than usual.”

  “But sir, the Mirai killed twenty billion people at Karwin’s Rift,” I protested.

  “The Dominion’s Grand Unification campaign kills that many people every year, Alice,” he pointed out. “The Polytechnic Swarm makes a point of exterminating an enemy every decade or so, and the death toll on those ‘cleansings’ is often a hundred billion or more. If anything, the Mirai were more restrained than their enemies. They only exterminated people who attacked them.”

  That was news to me. I guess I couldn’t really trust the history I’d learned on Felicity, but still.

  “Then why do they make such a point of teaching little kids how evil the Mirai were, sir?”

  He sighed. “Alice, at the start of the Kami War the Mirai were a second-tier power surrounded by richer nations with much larger navies. Yet in a scant twelve years half of the warring powers of the Inner Sphere came together in an alliance against them, while the rest suspended their hostilities and turned their attention to observing the conflict. It took all the ships the Grand Alliance could muster to put down the Mirai, and when the war was won the allies abandoned their usual policies towards conquered colonies. Instead of assimilating them, what did they do to the Mirai?”

  “They destroyed every ship and station, and bombarded their home world until the crust melted all the way down to the mantle,” I repeated my history lessons. “There were moons in the system that had so many deeply buried forts it would have been impossible to clear them, so instead they were nudged into collision courses with the system’s inhabited planets. Then the Swarmlords set a battle fleet on permanent watch over the system, to make sure nothing survived.”

  He nodded. “You see? People don’t go to such extremes out of moral revulsion, Alice. That was fear. The same fear that leads every major colony to forbid research on class six AIs, and require decades of testing on any enhancement that increases the user’s intelligence.

  “The Mirai were turning themselves into something inhuman, Alice. Bit by bit, year after year, they were working their way past the normal limits of the human mind. At the beginning of the war their best scientists were already making impressive breakthroughs, and their younger officers were all military geniuses. I’m sure you’ve heard about how things went from there. For the Alliance the war was a nightmare of impossible superweapons and unstoppable enemies, and by the end the best of the Mirai were as far beyond their enemies as we are a simple bot. The truth is, the great powers of the Inner Sphere united to exterminate the Mirai because if they hadn’t, the Mirai would have conquered the galaxy in a generation.”

  Part of me wanted to ask what was so scary about making yourself better. Shouldn’t every mother want her daughters to have all the advantages they could get? Mine certainly had. If it was possible to make people like me shouldn’t everyone be doing it, so we wouldn’t have to worry about some isolated kingdom of crazy people taking over? Whatever abilities those monsters had invented, I was sure I could match them.

  Saying that sounded like a really bad idea. So I just nodded. “Yes, sir. I understand.”

  “At any rate,” the captain went on. “The story that’s relevant to our situation is that Emperor Kato outfitted a secret expedition to establish a holdout colony in the Outer Sphere. The colony fleet was lavishly equipped, with a modified battleship serving as a colony transport and a squadron of cruisers and escorts accompanying it. To ensure they got their new industry off the ground as quickly as possible, the ship was loaded with millions of tons of rare elements. Radioactives. Rare earths. Platinum group elements. Oh, and two and a half million tons of gold.”

  I choked.

  “This has all the signs of an urban legend,” Naoko commented. “I assume this treasure ship vanished somehow?”

  “Intercepted by the 47th Battle Swarm as they tried to leave Mirai space,” he confirmed. “Thing is, it was a long running battle and half of it happened in the Delta Layer. Most of the Swarmlord forces were wiped out during the engagement, and while they claim to have a confirmed kill on the Emperor’s Hope they lost track of the wreck at some point. There have been several searches since then, but no one has ever found it. So all that gold is still out there somewhere, just waiting for some lucky stiff to stumble on it. It’s a pretty common spacer yarn.”

  The implication was obvious.r />
  “You found it?” I said. “Wait, no, you’d be filthy rich if you had. They think you found it?”

  The captain nodded to Beatrice, who took up the tale.

  “A few years ago I had to leave home in a hurry, and there were some people who didn’t want to see me leave. I ended up hiding out in hyperspace for quite a while, playing cat and mouse with them while I put a few light years between me and my troubles. At one point I stumbled on a wrecked cruiser, and hid out in what was left of one of its hangers. There were boarding bots everywhere, some of them dead but a lot of them just run down. I didn’t recognize the designs, of course. But I pulled a bunch of old nuke packs to sell, and made a note of the wreck’s vector in case I ever wanted to come back.”

  The captain took over again. “After Beatrice had been with the ship for a few months she mentioned the encounter. We figured out it was a Mirai ship, and decided to do some poking around. We were all rather excited when we found a much bigger wreck barely a million kloms from the cruiser.”

  “The Emperor’s Hope,” I guessed.

  “It’s hard to say. It was definitely a battleship, but it took a hell of a beating. Nukes, RKKV rounds, capital ship grasers, even some antimatter demolition charges. The whole bow has been blasted away, and the ship’s systems are dead. We boarded her through one of the hangers, climbing over bodies and dead warbots the whole way. Sadly, we never found any gold.”

  “The whole myth is kind of dumb in retrospect,” Chief West commented. “Why would the Mirai throw away a giant stockpile of resources when they were fighting for their lives? With the kind of industrial setup you could fit in a battleship’s hangers the colony could just mine their own materials. There never was any gold.”

  “I still think the crew got away with it,” Beatrice disagreed. “The small craft were all wrecked during the boarding action, but if some survivors got a power source running they could have fabricated something.”

  “With thirty million warbots bots constantly sweeping the ship and shooting anything that moves? I don’t think so, Bee. They may have held out for a few months, but the bots got them all in the end. We’re just lucky their nuke packs decayed before we came along, or they would have swarmed us too.”