His queue chimed gently; Nestor had sent a message rather than calling back. Before he opened it, he noticed it had a delay trigger. It had been wandering ComNet since Matt went for lunch in the bazaar. He frowned. Usually this was the resort of somebody who needed the message payload off their own local storage. They’d send it to wander about as a vagrant, trying to find temporary residence here and there, avoiding housecleaning programs and security scans.
Matt called Nestor and got the autoresponder again. Regardless of Matt’s opinion of Nestor’s appeal to the opposite sex, Nestor did entertain women in his flat every so often. He’d be cranky if Matt disturbed him during such an interlude.
Nestor’s message had no video or audio, and had only one line of text: "The demon on your back is better known than the demons hiding along your path.” The message also carried a large encrypted payload, adding weight to the possibility that Nestor was trying to reduce local storage—but Matt happened to know that Nestor wasn’t running out of room.
Matt tried his standard decryption and nothing happened. What game was Nestor playing? Matt recognized the quote from his time at the orphanage on Konstantinople Prime. It referred to a verse that they had been required to memorize.
"The Chronicles of St. Darius, Chapter One, Verse Ten.”
He guessed correctly that Nestor had keyed the decryption to his voiceprint plus a specific phrase. The packet opened, revealing three packages. The package labeled CUSTOMS immediately worried him. The second package was ominously labeled KEDROS. The third was unlabeled.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have had Nestor hound the customs inspectors. Likewise, he wasn’t sure he wanted to see the "Kedros” package—would it tell him what hold Edones had over Ariane? Instead, he picked the easy path and opened the third package. Uh-oh.
"Stop download!” he yelled.
Aether’s Touch, or rather her information system, paused the download.
"This is a onetime transfer of unique images. Cancelation may damage images,” said the system. The same message flashed on the view port on the wall.
Matt hesitated. By opening the package, he’d initiated several downloads from temporary storage scattered about ComNet. This package was huge! Some of the contents, currently suspended across two physical locations, were rulesets. He tried an urgent call to Nestor, which went unanswered again.
"Have I got the AI for you!” Nestor had said. At the time, Matt had only been vaguely suspicious because he’d said "AI” and not "agent,” but Nestor frequently overrated his agents. He even named them, although only AI models with their unique model numbers had identities. There was a big difference between agents and AI models, or "AIs.” AIs could vote, for Gaia’s sake, provided they passed their identity and self-reflection tests. Once they passed their tests, they owned their rulesets and guarded them jealously. In a way, their ruleset was like a genome.
Developing AI required a license. They were hard to get; CAW only granted licenses to individuals, not organizations, and net-think claimed only ten people across the six prime worlds were licensed to work with AI. Nestor wasn’t one of them.
If this was an AI, transferring it would require an expensive chunk of ComNet resources. Here they were at the beginning of the twenty-second century and extra bandwidth was still pricy. No matter how ComNet expanded, via satellite, zeppelin, optical line, wireless, meshed node network, the demand always grew to fit the bandwidth.
Matt shook his head. More importantly, he’d have to resort to using crystal. He’d just replaced the crystal on Aether’s Touch by getting a loan—thank you, Carmen—against his future lease revenue. If he continued the download, the AI might take up partial residence in crystal. What a waste of money; but the only other option was to deny the download and, depending upon whether Nestor was wiping his track, damage the payload.
Cringing at the cost and hoping fervently that this AI didn’t use illicit rulesets, Matt reinitiated the download. As he feared, this took enough bandwidth to cause his system displays on the ship to hang, pausing, waiting . . .
You’d better not be fucking with me, Nestor. With nothing better to do, Matt savagely grabbed his shopping bag and dumped out the disabled remotes he’d collected at the bazaar.
Five remotes hadn’t made it out of the privacy shield in time. One looked entirely different from the others, which he hadn’t noticed when he’d scooped them all into his bag. He’d built remotes himself from kits, and this one didn’t have the standard little antigrav motor that could be unhooked from the other parts, the parts that people usually personalized with paint and fins.
Matt picked up the quiescent remote with the mottled gray-green skin. Its surface seemed oily, not mechanical. He sniffed. A faint organic odor rose from the remote. He’d never encountered a dead animal, but he could imagine that one would feel this way: limp, broken, and still warm. It felt the way Minoan technology looked.
With a shudder, he dropped it and looked around wildly, checking status displays. If this remote used Minoan technology, the ComNet disablement codes might not have deactivated it. The remote might be faking inactivity, yet still funneling data to its owner through some other mechanism.
"If I’ve been transferred to anyone else but Matthew Journey, then I’ve been stolen. This may indicate that Nestor Agamemnon Expedition, originally from the Expedition VII, is in distress.” The downloaded AI’s speech was patterned after Nestor’s voice, but bland and emotionless.
That’s more obvious than the Great Bull’s balls. Matt bit back his response, since he didn’t know how mature this AI might be. This was clearly a self-aware AI and it might still be in training, which meant that Matt’s sarcasm could be detrimental. He noted on the view port the AI had the model name and number of "Nestor’s Muse 3,” which might indicate an obscenely complicated ruleset with Gaia-only-knew what sort of imperatives. Or the name might only be the result of Nestor’s conceit.
"This is Matt Journey and you’re aboard the Aether’s Touch. Stay in quiescent mode until I give you a command.”
The AI shut down without comment. Matt set his security so that only he could activate the AI, and only from within the ship. After putting the remotes carefully back into his bag, he locked down the systems on the Aether’s Touch.
He left the ship, followed again by a swarm of remotes. After leaving the dock levels, he turned into a circular commercial storage area. Since it was commercial, not public, its proceeds paid for a facility privacy shield. No remotes allowed. His pesky followers had to circle impotently, hoping to catch him emerging from one of the numerous portals.
Matt glanced about the interior. He walked to an empty spot on the circumference, finding an available locker. Like everyone else inside the storage area, he avoided showing curiosity about other people’s business. He opted for the best security and slid his hand under the privacy plate, feeling for the fingerholds. He provided charge account numbers from his personal storage implant through the small electromagnetic field about his body, adding a retinal identifier and an additional access code for the locker.
With the seemingly inactive remotes safely locked up and more than half the following remotes lost circling the storage lockers, Matt felt a little better. Now for Nestor.
Nobody answered at Nestor’s flat. Sighing, Matt paid to extend his privacy shield farther and asked for entrance, providing a sentence for voiceprint and a retinal scan. The flat allowed him to enter.
Suitable seduction music was playing softly and the flat was set to low light, causing shadows to criss-cross the floor.
"Raise lights,” Matt said.
Nothing happened. Did he see a shadow shift? Matt whirled. He didn’t see any more movement, but now he noticed the wall screens. If Nestor were entertaining, he’d have erotic art displayed on the walls. If he were meditating, he’d have a calming blue on the walls. Instead, Matt saw open and busy view ports. Nestor’s system was shredding rewritable memory and executing emergency cleansing.
Matt crossed quietly to the bedroom and peered through the opening. His legs buckled.
Oh, Nestor. By Gaia and all her prophets.
Nestor hung from the ceiling in front of Matt. His wrists were tied behind his back, hoisted tightly up to his feet, causing his body to arch abnormally. A strange metallic scent came at Matt in waves from the darker-than-midnight-blue spots on the carpet. There were dripping sounds in the darkened room and enough light from the walls to see that Nestor’s throat was cut. The wound gaped and bulged, dripping along his abdomen.
Matt crouched and vomited. His hands were on the carpet, his fingers splayed, and his right fingertips touched something warm and wet. He jerked his hand away and rolled back to sit on his heels. Tears squeezed from the corners of his eyes and rolled down to his neck.
"Emergency code,” he croaked.
A beep from the flat’s system indicated the embedded ComNet nodes were waiting for the one code that would always be recorded and transmitted, regardless of privacy shields. "Nine-one-one, emergency code nine-one-one.”
"Stay down and keep your hands away from your body,” said a cold voice behind him. The owner of the voice paused, perhaps waiting for data, and then authoritatively added, "Mr. Matthew Journey.”
"Wait, I’m a friend, a business partner.”
They stunned him anyway. As he went through the unpleasant jerking on his way to unconsciousness, Matt wondered why they’d bothered to let him into the flat.
CHAPTER 7
Why support Pax Minoica? Frankly, we need Minoan time buoys for N-space travel and we will defer to their wishes. I assume you’re familiar with the video of Qesan Douchet claiming responsibility for sabotaging a Minoan ship—where he spouts vitriol yet doesn’t notice the shadow pass overhead. Crystal has preserved the pristine surgical hits destroying his hardened bunkers, as well as the finality of genetically targeted bioweapons that we still don’t understand. Minoan "justice” wiped out Douchet’s tribal gene sets, forever. Today, anyone of Terran Franko-Arabian descent should have his or her DNA analyzed before visiting. . . .
—Interview with Hellas Prime’s Senator Raulini, 2091.138.15.00 UT, indexed by Heraclitus 11, Democritus 9 under Conflict, Cause and Effect Imperatives
Per her authority under Pax Minoica, Ariane stopped all Naga operations on Karthage Point. She released personnel assigned to Naga maintenance, training, and mission operations from duty, but restricted them to the barracks and public areas.
She required special support and services for the treaty inspectors, but that wasn’t the hard part. She also needed inspector escorts with suitably high clearances, which resulted in this pool of people she faced in the amphitheater. Unit commanders tended to stick junior officers with these duties, since they had appropriate clearance and access to intelligence material. She had no time to prepare training packages for these duties, and at her request, Karthage Point Command Post scheduled an all-hands briefing for everyone assigned special duties for the inspection.
Her heart sank as she looked over the rabble of young officers, with a few noncoms thrown in here and there. While the treaty was an interesting break in the daily grind at Karthage, no one in this amphitheater was happy to get saddled with extra duties.
"The intel golems are having a festival, with all these games and intrigue.” The conversation carried to Ariane. She looked coldly at the offending young officers. They were ops, slouching in their seats with confident indifference.
As the volume from private conversations grew, Ariane glanced at Lieutenant Santorini standing to the side of the stage. He only gave her a smirk in return. She wondered whether she’d have to grab everyone’s attention in some undignified and embarrassing manner.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the commander of Karthage Point.” The voice was crisp and cutting, the sound of an experienced aide.
Conversation stopped and there was a whooshing sound as everyone stood at attention, Ariane included. She watched as Colonel Icelos made his way down the aisle, receiving sidelong glances as he strode along. There was a certain feeling in the room that made her think that Icelos had earned the respect of Karthage personnel. She’d worked in units that had various outstanding, average, and even loathsome commanders; she knew what the glances looked like when the troops wouldn’t follow their commanders into the head, much less into a battle. Being liked by your troops was optional; having their respect and trust was necessary.
"Take your seats,” Colonel Icelos said when he reached the stage.
The sound of three hundred people sitting filled the amphitheater.
"I shouldn’t have to tell any of you how important Pax Minoica is to all the Autonomist worlds. So whether you come from a prime planet or not, you’ve been handpicked by your unit commanders to support this great peace initiative.”
Ariane kept her eyes on Icelos as he spoke. She didn’t believe the bit about being "handpicked,” but he had the right mixture of ease and toughness and honesty—Gaia, even she wanted to work for the man! She had a flashing glimpse, a memory of a quiet, earnest blond lieutenant who slipped in and out of the Thera Point command post. This was a man worthy of protection and she reminded herself of her real mission: Find the assassins before they find Icelos. Before they find me. Interesting. Her unconscious mind already assumed more than one person was involved. She wrenched her attention back to the amphitheater.
"This particular treaty is the linchpin of Pax Minoica,” Icelos was saying. "I expect everyone to give Major Kedros their full attention and support.”
Her cue.
"Thank you, sir,” Ariane said. He nodded and their eyes met for a moment. She tried to express her gratefulness in that glance. As he exited to stage left, she touched her slate and displayed an unclassified diagram of Karthage Point on the large surface behind her.
"The areas that can be inspected, per the treaty, are shown in red.” MilNet nodes amplified her voice. "In any of those areas, the Terran inspection teams must always be escorted by our two-person teams. All of you are assigned a shift and an inspection team, so check your schedules. Those of you who will be interfacing with the inspectors should read the treaty protocols. Remember that you must speak through interpreters, unless the inspectors indicate otherwise.”
There were murmurs and snickers. Someone called out, "Can’t they speak common Greek?”
"Only if they want to,” said Ariane. "Many of the interpreters are TEBI, from their bureau of intelligence. If your inspector doesn’t need to use an interpreter, you should be cautious, since that inspector doesn’t need state oversight.”
Her audience straightened visibly. They could no longer pass this off as a joke.
"Let’s go through the players who we know, starting with State Prince Isrid Sun Parmet.” Ariane had their full attention now. Video of the state prince played on the walls.
"During the war, Parmet rose to the position of state prince by running the League’s military intelligence. After Pax Minoica began, he diverted his best people over to their new civilian intelligence agency and helped it grow into what we know today as TEBI.”
Hands flew up and Ariane had to stop for questions. She generally answered the questions about Parmet’s legendary exploits with "that’s classified beyond our current need-to-know” (true) or "I wouldn’t know” (not true).
"What about the rumors that Parmet sanctioned torture for interrogation of prisoners of war?” asked a maintenance officer, his eyes wide.
Ariane paused as the chord of fear ran through her. She knew all about the League’s methods employed during the war, as well as the dispensation granted to commanders of both sides under the initial treaties of Pax Minoica. Both sides proclaimed victory in the long struggle and as long as one doesn’t lose a war, there are no war crime trials . . . thank Gaia and any gods of the Minoans.
"Actions committed under valid orders, on both sides, cannot be questioned. The records have been sealed,” Ariane said.
Her audience noted h
er pause and more questions followed in a surge of babble.
"Why demand reprisals for Ura-Guinn, when he’s committed war crimes himself?”
"He’s behind the reprisal squads, isn’t he? They bombed the—”
"The Terran overlords have always protected him—”
"—sign this treaty anyway? We should keep Naga as an intersystem offensive vehicle. Fucking morons—”
"—could fit Naga with conventional weapons and—”
"Quiet.” Her voice cut through the jabber. She froze the displays and collected the reins of control. The room calmed.
"We’ve all sworn an oath to uphold the Consortium of Autonomous Worlds,” she said sternly. "That means supporting this treaty to the best of our abilities, regardless of our personal feelings. On the other hand, we must continue to protect Consortium interests. You can bet the Terran inspection teams are out for any intelligence, military or industrial. We know that because we have dossiers on the team members and they’re rarely who they claim to be.”
Having grasped their attention again firmly, she displayed video of a man and woman.
"Two people listed ostensibly as translators are top TEBI agents. Nathaniel Wolf Kim and Maria Guillotte have served Parmet for years, and our intelligence considers them the most dangerous of the team. They often work with an agent code-named ’Andre Covanni, ’ whom we’ve never identified. We suspect he may also be on this team since Karthage Point is one of our most sensitive facilities.”
There was silence as she paused and displayed checklists.
"Before the inspectors arrive, everything of operational intelligence must be hidden, including rosters, schedules, requisition lists—everything. All station displays will be suppressed and only your slates can access your schedules. Use privacy mode on your slates during the entire inspection period. All slates are programmed for autowipe and if you lose one, report the loss immediately to Command Post. Remember, proper control is still required for TD weapons, so make sure you’re glued to those inspector teams when inside storage and maintenance zones.”
Peacekeeper Page 9
