"Is it gone?" Jason asked, looking at the idle computer banks sitting in his cargo hold.
"I can't be certain," Cas said. "The Machine didn't copy the Archive, per se. It was more like it went in with a machete while hopped up on buzzballs and ripped anything out that looked like it might be interesting. I've only done a cursory examination, but it looks like Voq is non-viable for the moment."
"So, the Machine got what it wanted? It's still alive?"
"We were never trying to kill it," Cas reminded him. "To be completely honest with you, I don't know what happened. I know the Machine ripped out large chunks of core programming that were never meant to be integrated with its own and swallowed them whole."
"Swallowed?"
"I'm grasping at straws trying to find metaphors you'd understand," Cas said. "We might be able to piece back together enough to see what it was the Machine took, but it may all be moot. The dumbass might have poisoned itself by trying to take the important parts before you realized what it was doing and severed the link."
"This is not an optimal conclusion to this mission," Jason said. "We know less now about the status of the Machine than when we started, and we've lost our most powerful weapon against it."
"Maybe, maybe not," Cas said. "Give me some time to go through this mess and we'll see what we have. A program can't die. Damage can be repaired, modules reloaded, and maybe we can regenerate the Archive without losing the memories it had of the events leading to now."
"Everything happened so fast when it grabbed me," Jason pulled a data card from his pocket and tossed it on the workbench. "I never even uploaded the package. If Voq's stolen code didn't kill it—which I highly doubt—I don't think we're going to get close enough to it again for a second try."
"Go get some rest, Jason. This mess isn't going to be solved by you passing out in a cargo hold."
"You don't know that." Jason yawned, resisting the urge to stretch his back and aggravate his injuries. "But you're probably right. I don't want you messing with this unless someone is down here as a safety spotter. Who knows what's lurking in there when we reboot the system, and I don't want to lose you now that I've just gotten used to you being outside my head.”
"If I didn't know you any better, that almost sounded like you care what happens to me, Jason," Cas said.
"It's a good thing you do know me better then," Jason said. "Goodnight."
32
"It's been like that since you reported in and said you were on your way back."
Dezeiri stood in the Machine's audience chamber. The Machine itself, or at least its avatar, remained motionless in the room, staring straight ahead. Acuri walked up and waved his hand in front of the hologram's face even though he knew it didn't actually see with real eyes.
"Is it some problem with the holographic generators? Or the sub-processor?"
"None that I could find," Dezeiri said.
"Do the others know?" Acuri asked.
"When it happened, I sealed the chamber and told the others the Machine did not wish to be disturbed except by you upon your return."
"That was good thinking," Acuri approved. He may have had a strong negative opinion of Dezeiri, but the older synth had shown remarkably good judgment keeping the Machine's current state a secret. "I know we have had our differences in philosophy, but I think we need to work together on this. Just you and I."
"To what end?" Dezeiri asked. "I do not yearn to harm the pru as you do, nor do I hold biotics in such contempt as you."
"The Machine's coup was swift, bloodless, and mostly secret," Acuri said. "The majority of ConFed citizens still think the Council and Grand Adjudicators rule on Miressa, unaware they are little more than puppets. What would happen if they found out that not only had their representative government been disposed by a foreign agent, but now that agent was rendered useless as well and now nobody was in charge?"
"I believe I see your point," Dezeiri said. "Do you think we can do it?"
"I don't see why not," Acuri said. "The Machine never interacted directly. I often couriered its orders by hand to those in the capital complex, and they know I speak for it…even if they're really not sure what it is. For the time being, we can simply carry on as if nothing has happened. Can you program the holographic emitters in this room to give a reasonable impersonation for the few outsiders who come here? Councilman Scleesz, for example?"
"Without question. We can have the system set to make you look like the Machine's avatar. That would allow for a more dynamic, realistic experience, and you're the most able to mimic it." Dezeiri turned and circled the frozen avatar, still standing in place. He noticed the eyes tracked him, however, and knew it wasn't just a malfunction with the chamber projectors. Something else was going on. He thought about alerting Acuri to that fact but decided to keep it to himself for now.
"That might work best," Acuri said, oblivious to Dezeiri's inspection of the hologram as he paced. "You've checked the backups and the root system itself, I presume?"
"It was the first thing I did." Dezeiri answered without any outward signs of taking offense at the question of his competence. "There was a substantial amount of data pulled through the slip-com link from the fake routing platform it had towed into that system, but I cannot access it without risking damage to the Machine's core programming. I'm inclined to leave it alone for now."
"Perhaps there's a way to purge that downloaded data?" Acuri asked. "I suspect that whatever it drew down from that mercenary, it's causing the problem."
This time Dezeiri definitely saw a reaction. He'd stared at the Machine's impassive face, and at the mention of purging the download buffer, the mouth tightened, and the eyes turned down as if in anger. It was just a flicker, but it was there. The Machine was in there still but unable to communicate. It might be a temporary issue, so Dezeiri chose to be careful with his words in its presence.
"I suggest leaving it alone for now," Dezeiri said. "There are many possibilities as to why we're seeing the malfunction. If it downloaded a sizable amount of data, I can only assume it must have felt it was important."
"Acceptable." Acuri didn't put up much of a fight, apparently more than happy to assume the mantle of power for now. Dezeiri was not fooled. Even if the Machine were to snap out of its paralysis tomorrow, Acuri would not simply hand back over the reins.
Dezeiri had gotten himself trapped within the internal workings of the coup by virtue of being on another highly illegal endeavor with Acuri: the Gen2 battlesynth program that was now completely busted. One of the bodies had been stolen and integrated with a middle-aged Gen1 battlesynth matrix, but from the rumors he'd heard, that had not gone well at all. When Acuri brought him in to meet the Machine and help them develop the system within the building to house the AI, he'd first refused and even threatened to expose them. It was only after being threatened with his participation in the Gen2 program that he'd reluctantly agreed. On Miressa Prime, there was only one punishment for synths that were convicted of a first-class criminal offense: dismantlement.
For a while, he'd even convinced himself he was doing the right thing and that the ConFed needed a strong hand to guide it rather than the selfish whims of elected officials. Now, he realized how wrong that had been. He'd been biding his time and waiting for an opportunity to expose the whole thing, and maybe this was it. The Machine was terrifying. It was focused, brilliant, and entirely without ego. Acuri was a bit more predictable and tractable since he was driven entirely by his ego and a misguided desire to punish the very people who had created him. He would be much easier to derail than the Machine.
"Get started on your end," Acuri said, walking towards the exit. "We'll bring in others as we feel we need to and know we can trust them, but only synths. No biotics this time."
"Sensible," Dezeiri said, walking over to a hidden wall panel and manually cutting the power to the holographic projection system so he could begin the reprogramming work. "I'd suggest you take care of anybody who was involved in
the operation you just returned from. You don't need witnesses from that debacle talking to others."
"Already done, but again, you impress me with your foresight," Acuri said. "Perhaps I have misjudged you, Dezeiri."
"It's confirmed, sir. Once they realized you'd fled the planet, the ConFed fleet opened fire on the civilian population. Our sources there are saying the reports are as high as eight and a half million dead from the orbital strike. The city of Veiforde was hit so hard that the bay has flooded in and it's as if the city was never there."
Saditava Mok stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out the windows of his ship's opulent observation lounge. He was as still as a granite statue as the reports of the atrocities inflicted on his people at the hands of the ConFed fleet kept coming in. The worst part? The people didn't blame him. They were actually reaching out to ensure his safety and hoped he'd made it off-world. Mok wasn't sure if that meant they didn't know he was the reason they'd been attacked, or if they really were such wide-eyed innocents that they still semi-worshipped the person who bought their planet to protect them.
"I wish to be alone, Similan."
"I obey."
As the hatch slid shut, leaving him alone with his thoughts, Mok's façade crumbled. He sank to his knees in the plush carpeting, his body racked with sobs as the scale of the tragedy he'd wrought on a planet of innocents crashed over him like a wave. Even as the kingpin of Blazing Sun, the most feared crime syndicate in the quadrant, he kept his activities from spilling out into the general populace. The hell of this was that the attack hadn't even happened for any of his criminal enterprises. Those millions of people died because he'd been foolish enough to think he could play revolutionary with Burke and Scleesz and not have any blowback from it.
He wasn't aware of how long he sat there, crumpled on the carpet. As his brain ran through all the things he could have done differently, the sorrow and guilt faded to the background as a deep, dark rage welled up within him. Jason Burke could handle the Machine. He may already have depending on how one interpreted the data from their mission. Ultimately, the Machine was responsible for what happened, but a ConFed starship captain gave the order to his taskforce to fire, and those individual commanders accepted that order and told their gunnery officers to fire, and those officers all took that order without question. Those were the people who would be made to pay.
"Similan, do we still have contacts within the ConFed fleet on our personal payroll," Mok asked. The ship's computer recognized he was asking a question and forwarded it on to the intercom panel wherever Similan was.
"Of course, sir."
"I want to know the overall commander of that fleet, every ship commander, every first officer, and every gunnery officer," Mok said. "I want to know where their families are, where they live…everything."
"Yes, sir," Similan said after a moment of hesitation.
Mok wouldn't do anything rash just yet, but should he decide the people responsible needed to pay, he would be ready.
33
"How do you feel, Captain?"
"Not bad," Jason said. It had been over a week since the synth named Acuri had tried to kick his spine out of his body. He'd healed up nicely and was even back to training lightly again. When one worked around battlesynths often enough, it was easy to forget that regular synths were also stronger than damn near every biological species in the quadrant. "How is it going down here?"
"Slow," Cas said. "But we're being methodical and making sure we didn't miss anything critical. No promises on when we might be ready to try and reconnect everything and boot it up."
The interconnected computers that held Voq's essence were in various states of disassembly as Cas, Kage, and Twingo worked steadily on checking individual memory cores and programming modules while isolated before they stitched it all back together. The loss of the Archive would be both profound and a relief to Jason. It was still easily the most dangerous thing in the galaxy, and he bore the weight of the guilt that came with letting that genie out of the bottle.
The Machine on its own was bad enough. Now, in a likely misguided effort to stop it, he'd unleashed two more AIs and introduced the quadrant to the matter disruptor warhead, something the people who witnessed it wouldn't soon forget. He may have compounded the mistake of letting the Machine gain access to this quadrant by not destroying the Archive as soon as he figured out what it was. Perhaps if Voq was irreparably damaged, it would at least put an end to one of those threats.
"So," Kage asked from where he was working behind one of the machines, "what's next?"
"While we get a handle on what the fallout of all this might be, I think I'll be taking a little personal time," Jason said. "Once I’m well enough, I need to decide if I track my kid down to save him from himself and get the Phoenix back, or if I head out and see if I can run Lucky down."
"You don't sound enthused about either option," Cas said.
"It's not that." Jason waved it off. "Although both things will suck in their own special way. No…I just can't get something the Machine said out of my mind. The thing about enemies being on their way, like it knew something specific."
"Crazy things are said when people, or things, are begging for their lives," Kage said. "Remember Deetz before Lucky melted him?"
"Remember that he was actually right, and a part of the original Cas was on the Phoenix?" Jason retorted. "Besides, the Machine was in no danger. The hologram it had this time was corporeal and held me in place so I couldn't have uploaded the software patch. Not to mention the entire station was a fake anyway. It played us from the beginning because it thought I had some nugget of Ancient tech it could use. When it realized the full Archive was here, you could actually feel how excited it was."
"So, you're saying… What are you saying?" Kage asked.
"I'm just thinking aloud. It's been something that's been bothering me since the Machine attacked the Eshquarian Empire. These things don't just happen because something is evil, there has to be some sort of underlying motivation. Nearly everyone, other than the clinically insane, have some rationale for why they're doing the things they are, even if only to justify actions they know are wrong.
"The Machine doesn't appear to be insane, and it's been focused like a laser on something while we've all spun our wheels reacting to its moves we never understand. What if this is it?"
"What if what's it?" Crusher asked, walking into the bay.
"I'm not explaining this all over again," Jason said. "Ask Cas to catch you up."
"No," Cas said.
"I didn't want to know anyway," Crusher huffed and sat down. "But seriously, what are we talking about?"
"The captain thinks the Machine isn't evil, just misunderstood," Kage said.
"I'm saying we need to understand why it's doing what it's doing or we're always going to be just reacting to it and unable to beat it," Jason said.
"I thought we were assuming it was dead or jammed up," Crusher said.
"I’m assuming nothing without confirmation," Jason argued. "Scleesz will be getting that for us shortly. Hopefully. Did you want something or are you just bored?"
"I'm always bored sitting on a ship and listening to you nerds drone on," Crusher said. "But, this time, I came down to tell you Marcus Webb sent a message to one of our drop boxes to have you get in touch. Apparently, he has a lead on your kid."
"I guess that settles that," Jason said, standing up. "Let's go get the Phoenix back, hopefully quickly and without a ton of family drama, and then we'll start trying to track down Lucky."
"Oh! There was news about that, too," Crusher said, his huge hands fumbling with his com unit. "Mok's consiglieri—that weird guy named Similan—messaged Doc and told him the shuttle Lucky had stolen was found abandoned on a planet called Cylerra-3. Tier Two world out near the frontier."
"That's it?" Jason asked.
"That's it," Crusher said. "No sign of Lucky, no clues as to where he might be going other than probably the bo
rder worlds since he's heading that direction."
"Shit," Jason muttered. "This complicates things. Jacob has my ship and is in trouble with his superiors, but he's a big boy who got himself into his own mess. Lucky is likely malfunctioning, confused, and potentially highly dangerous."
"We have days of slip-space flight before we meet up with Mok," Crusher said. "Why don't you take those days to think about it and give it the consideration it deserves?"
"Probably not a bad idea," Jason said. "There's a half bottle of whiskey and a soft rack calling my name."
On the way back to his quarters, Jason tried to find some firm moral ground to stand on when deciding what to do next. Lucky had been his friend and brother in arms for many years. He'd stuck by Jason through good times and bad, saved his life on countless occasions, and had asked for nothing in return except for Jason's friendship and acceptance. He was hurting, and he needed help.
On the other hand, Jacob was his son and was in danger. No matter how he tried to justify things in his mind, he couldn't shake off that instinctual drive to protect his child despite the fact he barely knew the young man.
"I’m sorry, Lucky," he said to himself as he walked into his expansive suite. "I hope you'll understand why I have to do it this way."
EPILOGUE
Jorg had heard there was a new hitter in town, but he hadn't met him yet. That wasn't so unusual in and of itself. The types of contracts Jorg dealt in attracted an anti-social crowd, people who didn't like to be seen or known. One thing Jorg prided himself on was being able tell the real killers from the bullies who had bought a ticket out to the frontier to escape some local trouble or the ones who had been in the military and had a vastly inflated sense of their talents.
That being said, Jorg had no fucking idea what had just walked into his bar.
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