The baseline inspection was grueling, being eight hours of mind-numbing activity. Isrid was tired of meticulously comparing serial numbers of warheads with the AFCAW inventory. He found no discrepancies and there’d been no chance to collect any interesting intelligence, not with the damned Minoan emissary looking over his shoulder. Isrid and Dr. Istaga had been paired with Major Ariane Kedros and her assistant. For some reason, the emissary decided to tag along with their group.
Isrid gratefully watched the emissary attach itself to Ariane Kedros as she combined all inspection results, while he and Dr. Istaga bid farewell. He was escorted to his quarters, where he found Maria. He’d seen her signals earlier. She had intelligence to discuss, something she thought was valuable.
Dully, he wondered what could possibly compensate for his decision to shut down all intelligence operatives in this system, one of the primary solar systems controlled by CAW. Overlord Three wasn’t going to be happy with him. At best, his career might continue in a desultory, unspectacular manner, but at worst, he might be charged with anything ranging from incompetence to treason.
"You have to see this for yourself, SP.” Maria’s golden brown eyes glittered strangely and she moved with suppressed energy. Revenge can be ours, shouted her flicking fingers.
"Do we need another privacy shield?” Isrid asked. He rubbed his eyes, tired.
"Already requested one.” She motioned to a side table, where their jammer was operating. After seeing his resigned expression, she added, "AFCAW can’t know how I got this.”
"How did you get it?”
"I left recording pips in the conference room we used, on the off chance I might get something interesting. They were scheduled to deactivate in a couple hours so the SF wouldn’t find them during their daily sweep—which is pathetic, by the way, since they only scan for active devices.”
Now he was interested. "They went active when the Minoan emissary went in?”
"They certainly did.” Maria was triumphant. "For privacy, the Minoan used the same sort of shield that we do, meaning there’s no force field or other comic-book tool. They merely issue node override commands, just as we do. But being so structured and proper, the Minoan didn’t suspect secondary sensors on an AFCAW station, playing over undocumented frequencies.”
Maria waved her arm and the video started on the wall. Isrid stood behind her and watched. It was passive; it didn’t have active focusing and depth of field changes that everyone expected from network nodes. This meant Major Kedros moved in and out of both focus and frame as she leaned on the table or moved closer to the emissary, but the audio was surprisingly clear.
"Stop! Replay,” Isrid said after the emissary addressed Kedros as "Destroyer of Worlds.”
"She knows that name,” Maria said. "She could be one of the original crew members.”
The Minoans had only used the title "Destroyer of Worlds” at one event that was unclassified and accessible by any Terran or Autonomist citizen. At the opening negotiations brought about by Pax Minoica, the Minoans had addressed the vice president of the Consortium of Autonomist Worlds as Destroyer of Worlds. This was because the vice president had been responsible for the weapon execution, even though the president and senate had authorized it.
"She seems a bit young to be one of the original crew.” Isrid tried to cautiously suppress his excitement. Was it possible that he’d found one of the original executioners, a war criminal, and right here at Karthage Point?
"Age is relative nowadays,” Maria said.
Isrid watched the rest of the meeting on video, savoring his surge of anger, fanning the embers after he’d suppressed them for so long. Now he could avenge what happened to his brother. He tried to shut down the little internal voice that suggested the celestial objects in the Ura-Guinn system might have survived.
By the time the video showed Major Kedros sending off her message, Isrid was a surprising turmoil of conflicting emotions. Kedros had saved his life. He didn’t know how crèche-get or autonomists viewed this, but in Terran terms, he owed her gratitude and more. This was a troubling and mitigating factor, and possibly the reason for Maria’s sidelong glances.
Then there were the Minoans, and their interest in Kedros’s civilian life. If they wanted their appendages on these leases, then the Terran overlords would expect him to investigate, perhaps get a Terran share of the work.
If this was the test that Overlord Three had anticipated, then it was agonizing to set aside his own need for vengeance.
"How much time do we have?” Isrid asked.
"We have forty-three more minutes under the privacy shield, one hour and twelve minutes until boarding call, and one hour after that, we disconnect from Karthage.” Maria was complete and precise, as always.
"I need to know what Kedros’s partner, and this Aether Exploration, have been doing—”
"I’ve got that,” Maria said. "You asked me to look into Kedros’s background, just in case, and this is what I got from public sources on ComNet.” Maria brought up another display. "The initial data from Aether Exploration indicates ruins of a space-faring civilization, which may not be Minoan. The time-space slice that was part of the Aether Exploration claim is now open for working bids, whether it be for mining, surface exploration, archeology, whatever—but Aether Exploration has control over leasing the claim work to whatever contractors they want.”
Isrid raised his eyebrows. They’d all been distracted in the past day or two and now he wished that everyone, including him, had paid better attention to Major Kedros’s civilian history.
"SP?” Maria had turned around and moved closer, her face looking up to his. "Are you going to make her pay for what she did?”
"Certainly. Not, perhaps, in the way I expected. Or wanted.”
Maria’s pupils had expanded, as they always did when she was excited and stimulated. He felt her fingertips trace down his hips on either side and he caught both her hands in his.
"We don’t have much time,” he said. "Bring me Major Kedros. If you’re detected, I must be blameless.”
Maria smiled.
CHAPTER 15
Radiation is the biggest threat in space. Thank Gaia we developed aerogel, directional polymers, and metallo-ceramics, combining them into effective metamaterial shielding before we left Helios (Sol). Today we use implants that monitor dose rates as well as cumulative exposure in real time, but that doesn’t mean you can forget about radiation poisoning or damaging doses. Remember to have a medical professional review your implant’s history at least four times a year, even if you haven’t received any alarms. If you lose shielding or have unplanned or nonroutine EVA, get to a medic immediately and have your radiation exposure evaluated.
—Spacecrew Bulletin, 2102.021.18.01 UT, indexed by Democritus 12 under Cause and Effect Imperative
"It’s about time, Major.”
Senior Technician Stall used that calm tone that all medics learned, managing to sound gently chiding, motherly, and authoritative all at once. He was the only tech in the dimly lit sick bay during this shift, and he had no one to treat.
"What do I do?” Ariane sagged as exhaustion crashed down on her. There should be no more decisions to make, at least for a while. She’d do as told, then go to bed and sleep through a whole shift. Maybe a couple of shifts.
"Since you’re a reservist, I’ll need thumbprint plus voiceprint release of your records. I’ll have to update your profile and put in warning limits for future exposure.” Stall shook his head. "You and that Terran prince, or whatever he is, sure got off lucky. With the shielding blown off, you might have received whopper radiation doses and been grounded for the rest of your life. As it was, the orientation of the moon and the station, plus the debris cloud, reduced your exposure considerably. Of course, our crews managed to get temporary shielding into place quickly, but even so . . .”
She nodded wearily, no longer listening, and blindly thumbed the slate he extended. Stall continued to chat while he set up his
equipment.
When he pointed to the whole-body scanner, she numbly bent down and unsealed her boots. She climbed onto the gurney and he adjusted its height, still talking.
"Sorry to take so much of your time, Major, but considering what you’ve gone through and the date of your last scan, it makes sense to do it now. Don’t worry, this type of scan won’t add to your rad dosage. . . .”
He slid her into the cylindrical scanner. His words faded a bit, but after he positioned her, she could still hear him talking.
". . . take an hour or two. I’ll be puttering about here and there, so . . .”
Deep, dark sleep took her.
Furtive movement woke her. Someone was pulling her gurney slowly, carefully out of the scanner and the silence was damning. She would have expected Stall to be chattering on about the results.
Nathaniel Wolf Kim made several mistakes. The first was pulling her out feet first. The second was vastly underestimating her. The third was being the only one near the side of her gurney. Before Ariane saw who was holding the hypo, she’d twisted her hips, brought up her leg, and aimed a quick kick where a face should be.
Without her boots, she didn’t have the effect she’d hoped for when her foot connected. But she did connect, and as she rolled off the other side of the gurney, she saw Kim’s nose was bleeding.
Kim might have assumed she’d let him drug her, but he wasn’t stupid enough to come by himself. Maria Guillotte was at the foot of the gurney, pulling it. Another "inspector,” whose name currently escaped her, stood to one side.
"Emergency code! Nine-one-one!” Ariane yelled. They were brave enough to attack her right here on Karthage—were the MilNet nodes disabled again? Perhaps she shouldn’t waste her breath.
She dodged Maria’s blow. Maria had hand-to-hand training but she used subduing moves, so Ariane had the advantage. She didn’t have a problem going all out and killing the Terran bitch, but Guillotte and Kim and whoever-he-was obviously wanted Ariane alive.
"Get behind her.”
They showed no fear of being recorded.
"I’m trying—” Grunt.
Kick. Twist. Door to sick bay was closed, no way out. Any weapons? Nothing to grab.
"Hold her—”
Break grappling attempt. Aim blow to ribs and push away.
Thanks to the rejuv and the enhanced metabolism, Ariane had strength beyond what she should for her body weight and size, but she wasn’t superhuman. Moreover, she was exhausted and outnumbered.
"Take her down—”
They finally got smart. The third TEBI agent took a sacrificial blow to the ribs as he sagged onto her back. She staggered under his limp weight and they had her. Embarrassingly, this only took a moment or two. She continued to struggle as they shot the drugs into her.
"Give her more! More, Nathan!”
"Good God, what does it take?”
The security was piss-poor on Karthage Point. Really gotta get on Rayiz . . .
Matt hesitated before opening the package titled "Kedros.” This was what he wanted, right? This probably violated Ari’s privacy, but curiosity finally drove him to open it.
The initial cross-referenced data, supposedly supplied by Nestor’s Muse 3, confirmed what Matt already knew about Ari. She was thirty-five years old, born in 2070, and had lived her formative years on Nuovo Adriatico. With her test scores, she attained early entry to AFCAW at twenty years of age. She transferred to the Reserve after her two obligatory assignments, first as weapons officer, then Naga maintenance. She spent the next seven years working assignments for the Directorate of Intelligence, in between her N-space piloting jobs. Nestor had linked information regarding the Reserve point system, and had asked the AI to hypothesize as to her missions.
That was where the data became too erratic for analysis. Ari popped up in the strangest places, but of course, recognition algorithms for processed video were notoriously unreliable. There were links between Ari and Edones. Matt took a little time to drill down on that data. Edones had his fingers in many different technologies and industries. For Gaia’s sake, he operated on the board of directors for three civilian companies! Matt wondered whether this was personal business or duty for the AFCAW Directorate of Intelligence.
However, Ari’s life looked ordinary as long as he ignored the interpolations and postulations made within the mission timelines. Near the end he ran into a protected note made by Nestor, which read "Correlation, LOC?” Accessing it required authentication. Matt hesitantly provided his own, and was allowed access.
The note merely highlighted certain correlation and level of confidence figures, hence Nestor’s "LOC” notation. The numbers were supposed to quantify the validity of the information by showing how each entry was indexed by differing AIs, differing models, and the level of confidence one could apply against that entry. The AFCAW mission entries had such a low level of confidence that one could dismiss them as nonsense—for instance, it didn’t seem possible that Ari had been sighted in an establishment later shut down by AFCAW as an illegal arms dealership.
The specific numbers that were highlighted were high, meaning that Nestor’s AI had found explicit index corroborations. Did Nestor think they were too high? Matt scanned along the timeline of Ari’s life. Before 2090, the LOC values were pegged at ninety-nine percent. At the year 2090, the levels of confidence began to hover in the low nineties. Just to compare, Matt looked at the entries on Edones. Even the highly correlated facts for Edones pinged randomly between eighty-nine and ninety-eight percent. Normal fluctuations could be expected in the course of collecting data from billions of nodes.
Matt leaned back. This is absurd—now I’m going to be suspicious because the data are too perfect? Apparently, Nestor had distrusted these results and marked them for Matt.
The boundary was significant. The year 2090 was auspicious because—Matt sat up. In 2090, he was seventeen years old, still getting acclimated to "normal society” in the generational orphanage. The war had been going on for so long that sometimes the battles didn’t register exposure ratings on ComNet. Civilians seemed safe because of the Phaistos Protocol, but military deployments and the weapons development contest between CAW and TerraXL was grinding down economies on both sides. Then CAW finally used a temporal distortion warhead. . . .
And everything changed. In many ways, life changed for the better, but not immediately. Matt remembered the panic and localized rioting, fed by the fear that the Minoans would retaliate for the damage to the time buoy network. Ships and crews were lost if they were transitioning exactly when the Ura-Guinn sun and time buoys "glitched.” Data packets evaporated and businesses, economies, and governments faltered. Tedious manual inventories and censuses had to be performed. A whole solar system disappeared from N-space (no inventory needed for that). Net-think went insane, postulating the use of Minoan genetic weapons on CAW populations or supposing that TerraXL would retaliate by using their TD weapons. Prices of food and manufactured goods rose at phenomenal rates, kicking economies into uncontrolled inflation. Hoarding ensued. Transportation and shipping were disrupted as people tried to move their families to places they thought were safe.
"Mr. Journey, are you ready?”
Sergeant Joyce’s voice jerked Matt out of his reverie. Joyce’s face was in large display, split over the cupboard doors.
"Ready?” Matt responded coldly.
"The colonel would like a report from you, regarding the results of your analysis.” The display closed.
Matt hadn’t gotten anywhere on Nestor’s murder, but he was beginning to think that Nestor had uncovered more than he should regarding Ari and Edones. By the time Joyce arrived to let him out, Matt had convinced himself these military bastards were covering something up—if they were obscuring Ari’s background, they might be hiding information about Nestor. Edones seemed to know more about Nestor’s activities than he did, so his questions built inside him and stoked his anger as he followed Joyce. Perhaps Nestor poked his nos
e into classified information when he looked into Ari’s past.
When Matt entered the colonel’s opulent cabin, a bit of self-preservation kicked in and he didn’t say any of the confrontational phrases circling in his head. He reminded himself he was on a military ship, controlled by Edones.
"Was military intelligence watching Nestor?” Matt’s fingers curled, but he relaxed them before his hands formed into fists. He stood in front of Edones’s desk.
Edones’s eyebrows rose and he did something entirely unexpected: He began to laugh. His laughter was so surprisingly honest that Matt was derailed. When he turned to look behind him, he saw the corners of Joyce’s mouth were twitching. He felt a surge of embarrassment.
"What’s so funny?”
"Why would we spend our precious resources on watching your friend? Do you think we care one iota about a young information broker who spent most of his credit on porn and illicit AI?”
"Somebody was watching him and they didn’t like what he uncovered.” Matt narrowed his eyes and pressed his lips together sullenly.
Edones grinned and shook his head. "We’re all recorded, Mr. Journey. Through ComNet, every node in a public habitat provides video and audio, to be fixed forever in crystal. Nobody would have any problem watching Mr. Expedition.”
Until now, Matt never thought of the ComNet nodes as intrusive. If anything, he’d considered them as safety monitors. Many people installed nodes throughout their flats and paid for AI safety over-watch on their children and elderly relatives. Besides, one could always pay for a privacy shield, right?
"What we’re trying to figure out is whether anybody cared about your friend’s activities, in a way that led to his murder,” Edones said. "By the way, you were right in suspecting Minoan technology in that remote, but we have no idea who was running it.”
But I might, given the list of companies that Ari sent. There seemed to be no point in chasing after the owner of the remote, unless it proved important to solving Nestor’s murder. Matt walked silently over to the chair that Edones pointed at and sat down.
Peacekeeper Page 19
