“Surely they can see that something is not right?”
“Maybe. Maybe they are in on it, or maybe they just can’t tell amongst everything.”
“Damn protocols,” Joel exclaimed in frustration. “And damn commanders who can’t think for themselves!”
Molly shot him a glance. “Words I never thought I’d hear Joel say…”
Joel smiled at her briefly, despite the situation they faced.
“Lower bulkhead sealed off,” Brock reported. “That should be okay as long as the shields hold. As soon as we get a pressure differential down there though…” His voice trailed off.
“Well done,” Molly told him. “Shields status?”
“Seventy percent,” Brock called back over the noise of the blasts against their shields.
“Has the shield adaptation been activated?” Joel asked quietly.
She nodded. “Nothing is getting through to the Zhyn fleet. At least not while we’re here.”
“Damn right,” said Brock proudly, interrupting the conversation he was eavesdropping on, despite his massive focus on the controls in front of him. “This baby is going to take every last missile or laser fire in a two-kilometer radius.”
Molly glanced at Joel, noticing his reaction. “Well let’s hope this barrage stops in time. Before we get annihilated, that is,” Joel added.
Molly pressed her lips together. “I agree. But just in case, Brock,” she called, “alert the Zhyn to the situation. Let them know not to fire unless they need to protect themselves.”
“You mean unless we explode?”
“Exactly.”
“Communicating now.”
“So,” Molly said, moving half a step closer to Joel and leaning in. “Do you regret ever meeting me for that drink when I was kicked out for my 4077?”
Joel smiled at her, remembering that first reintroduction to the world of Molly Bates…
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I remember.
Oz, you remember everything.
Yes, but… it was the first real conversation we had as well… Hey, just because I’m non-organic, doesn’t mean I’m not sentimental too…
(Five years previously…) Chenz’ Bar, Downtown Uptarlung. Irk’n Quarter
Remind me why we’re here again.
Remind you? I never told you.
I’m using your syntax to smooth our integration.
Oh, really?
I detect sarcasm.
Yeah, and I never had to utter a word out loud.
Neural connections, baby. I feel you.
Don’t be a wanker.
The AI was silent.
That reminds me…you don’t have a name.
You mean a designation? Sure I do. I am Project Ozimandaus 0922.
That’s not a name.
Yes it is. That’s what your colleagues, Sue and Dickwad-Charles, called me.
Yeah, but that’s not a name. Not like “Sue” or “Charles,” or “Molly.” They were referring to the project. Not you. Plus, it’s a fucking mouthful to say, and no way I’m going to remember that.
I’m not a Sarkian of any variety, and therefore I don’t require a Sarkian designation.
But you are sentient, and you deserve a name.
Even though I hijacked your holo?
AND neural cortex.
Yes. Even though I hijacked your holo and neural cortex?
Yes, even though. Have you got any ideas about what you’d like me to call you?
Baby? Sexy? Hot stuff? Bad boy???
What the fuck?
Molly scrambled in the recesses of her mind trying to recall why he might know those words. They sounded familiar. Shit, they were how she would refer to her crushes. How would he have access to that kind of data?
All right, you arseburger, what gives? What makes you say those things?
I’m just kidding around. To be honest, I haven’t thought about it. What would be an appropriate designation for something like myself? Is there a nomenclature that is relevant here? Or a social convention?
Hmm… not really. I guess my preference would be to give you something easy for me to say, and to communicate with others when the time comes to introduce you to people. Also, I like the idea of using your project designation in a name.
Molly’s eye scanned the crowded bar, looking for inspiration. Nothing at all jumped out at her.
What about “Oz”?
Oz?
It’s short for Ozimandaus—which is actually a cool name too. Maybe that can be your Sunday name.
Sunday name?
Yeah, like your full name for formal occasions.
Molly mulled it over, imagining what Oz the AI might even look like. For a moment, she pictured the ridiculous Holly on that ancient show she used to watch as a kid…what was it called? Red Dwarf? Yes. Red Dwarf—with the folks who had the hilariously melodic accents. Thank goodness Grandpa had downloaded all those cultural pods before he and Nana had left on the QBBS Meredith Reynolds all those years ago.
Okay. I like it. “Oz” it is, then.
Great. So, Oz, the reason we are here is because we need to make money. And fast.
What about that trust you have set up? That could keep us going for a century or more.
How do you know about that?
I did a search on you. Once we were off base and I was hooked up to the XtraNET, I just scanned for anything that had your DNA or retinal print attached to it. Turns out it’s the optimum way to find all the recorded information on someone, no matter what their species.
You’ve been looking me up? And not just me by the sounds of it!
I think it’s logical for me to know all parameters of operation—including who I’m associating with.
“Associating with”? You jumped into my fucking holo!
Your sentiment is noted.
Anyway. That trust is private and all sorts of alarms go off if I go near it. I don’t want to touch it. Not yet. We need to find another way to make money independently.
Acknowledged. The trust is off limits.
Yes. Off. The. Record. Like I said, it’s private. I don’t want anyone else knowing about it. Okay?
Okay.
So, I have a serious question. How come you’ve not come up with a plan to tap into the Central Systems’ trade market, and just syphon funds from there? I mean, you’re an AI with frickin’ uber amounts of intelligence. It wouldn’t be hard to bypass some security and take a little from a lot of trades—no one would even miss it.
Ah, but Molly Bates…that would be unethical. And you’ve forbidden me from doing anything unethical. EVER.
What? What are you talking about? I never said that.
Sure you did. When I was going to cyber-blackmail that colonel back at the base, you went off on a moral trip making me swear to never do anything like that.
That was for them. Not for me. I never meant you were supposed to be all moral and shit when it came to what we needed to do.
I don’t understand the differentiation. Please clarify.
Molly recognized the man who had just walked in the door and who was now looking around the tables. She stuck her hand in the air, waved vigorously and slid out of the booth to stand up.
Joel is here, asswipe. This conversation isn’t over.
***
Former Captain Joel Dunham wandered over to the table. He was buff and large. In fact, much larger than Molly remembered.
>>> “Yeah, I was kinda surprised by that,” Molly confessed over the sound of the explosions hitting the shields.
>>> “Well, you hid it well. I had no idea that was what you might have been thinking. Mind, I was probably distracted by some thoughts of my own,” he confessed.
Joel smiled at her, looking her up and down.
“Long time, stranger!” She grinned.
“Hello, Geek-brain!” he said, wrapping his bear-like arms around her. He squeezed her tight.
Molly tapped his back, signaling her surrender.<
br />
“Sorry!” he said, realizing that his enthusiasm had gotten the better of him. “I forget how delicate you girlies are.”
Molly suspected there was something loaded in that statement, along the lines of him not having much contact with women these days. She didn’t have the inclination to ask, though.
“There’s something different about you though…” He held her out by the shoulders, looking her up and down again.
“I’ve lost weight?” She looked hopefully up at him.
He shook his head. “Something else.” He paused and looked at her face. “Didn’t you used to be a brunette?”
Molly’s cheeks slowly revealed her embarrassment. “Yeah. One of my genetic experiments is taking longer to wear off than I had anticipated.”
Joel howled with laughter while pointing at her hair. “How much longer?” he asked, catching his breath.
“Two years, three months and nineteen days. It was meant to self-correct in three months, but, well...”
“You miscalculated?”
“No, tequila,” she admitted.
“You were drinking?”
“No, I used tequila as the carrier fluid.” She eyed her friend in annoyance. “I was impatient and it was handy.”
Joel was still snickering, and shook his head at her. “Same ol’ Molly, I see.” She rolled her eyes…both at herself and the familiarity Joel had with her sagas.
She pushed a chair out for him, and sat herself down.
“Anyway, good to see you, fuckwit. I ordered you a beer.” The waitress arrived with their drinks, and Molly was quick to get her lips around hers. “You still drink this stuff, right?”
“Of course, and thank you. So, to what do I owe this pleasure?” he asked.
She played with her bottle before looking at him. “I’ve left the military, and I need a job.”
She didn’t say more, and allowed Joel to absorb it. He lowered his eyes to his bottle.
“A job, you say? Genius-girl Molly Bates has come to me for a job?” He looked back up at her, clearly amused at the irony. “You know, all the time you were assigned to our detail, there never once was a problem that you couldn’t solve. The boys would swear you were a witch, or a freak, or something. I just told them you were an evil genius. They called you ‘devil-woman’ behind your back, did you know that?”
“I knew.” She smiled, completely uninterested in what some meatheads thought of her.
Joel continued, “And yet you’d keep going back to the research core.” He asked her a question that he had wondered about from time to time, “Why did you never join an ops team?”
She shrugged. “Dunno. Guess I just felt more comfortable not having to make life and death decisions all the time.” She looked around before returning to her beer. “I’ve made a few mistakes in my life already. I found out that sometimes I act before I think, and sometimes even when I think, I don’t always think like normal people.”
Because I’m broken.
Joel waited a moment before asking, “And that’s why you want a job now? So you don’t have to put all that talent to good use?” Joel took a sip of his beer.
Her grin spread across her face, looking a little mischievous. “Oh, no, I’m happy to put my immense reservoirs of talent to good use. I just want you to help direct it for me at the moment!”
Joel’s squaddies often found her arrogant, but Joel knew better. He understood her weird humor, even though he didn’t get it half the time. He put it down to the whacked-out ancient shows she would watch. Fokk knows where she got those datastreams from, though. One of the engineers had once told him they were from a time long forgotten in the Sark System.
“So, a job, for your talents…that pays beer money.” He pointed to the drink that she’d already almost drained. He rubbed his chin, pretending to think deeply.
What he couldn’t do with her talents!
“And it has to be, uh, legal,” she added, remembering that at some point she also needed to find a way of reprogramming Oz to make sure she wouldn’t be too restricted by his newfound morality.
Joel’s eyes opened wide. “Legal? What do you think I am? I’m an upstanding Sarkian, I’ll have you know!” His mock indignation made them both giggle.
Molly knew he was mostly straight-laced when it came to the jobs he would take. But there was no denying that the circumstances under which he had left the service had left a few people wondering.
Joel pursed his lips. “I have some ideas. A friend came to me the other day about something he noticed that was going down in his company: price-fixing on a type of painkiller that thousands of Oggs and Estarians need. Said there were whispers of hiking the prices to three times their market value, just because they can. He wanted a way to stop it without involving official channels or losing his job.”
He continued, waving off the waitress asking him if he wanted another beer. “I didn’t know how to fix it; I don’t have the tech skills to tackle something like that. And taking on a big corporation? Who’s going to listen to me? Not the police, that’s for sure. But now,” he glanced at her, “now you’re here. And I wonder if we can’t take this job and do some good things for these folks?”
Molly used her sultry voice, and her eyes glinted with glee. “Sounds like my cup of tea. Tell me, will there be hacking?”
Joel had worked with her long enough to know that hacking turned her on. Shit, she is one weird chick… “Oh, there will be hacking, baby. There will be lots and lots of hacking.”
As he smiled, his awareness seemed to drift off. When he refocused, he dropped his eyes to his beer. “You know, I never did apologize for the thing with Candy.”
Molly did a double take, trying to work out what he was talking about.
He lifted up his bottle to point at her. “You remember. The girl you said had several guys in the squad in tow.” He took a sip. Molly nodded, recalling the bust-up. “I just wanted to say, I appreciated you looking out for me. I mean, I know it was a big thing then and we didn’t exactly part as close as we had been. But, I’m sorry I was a jackass about it.”
Had Molly been drinking at that exact moment she may have choked. “Well, er, that’s great. I mean, yes, I was. I just didn’t want her to make a fool out of you.” She hesitated. “While we’re on the subject. I have something to apologize for too.” She noticed that Joel had looked up.
“You remember that club we went to not long after that?”
“Yeah, the gay bar where you got called away for some lab crisis?” Joel recollected the night.
Molly looked at him, hoping that she wouldn’t have to say it.
“There was no crisis, was there?” Joel figured out. “And you knew it was a gay bar?”
Molly kept her face straight. “And I paid Jose, my friend on the door, to encourage the guys to, erm, keep you company.”
Joel’s face dropped.
“You mean…”
“Yeah. They didn’t find you that magnetic. They were having you on.”
He closed his eyes in a grimace. “You are a cold-hearted bitch!” he groaned.
“Now, now, you just tried to make good about Crystal.”
“Candy.”
“Whatever.”
“I genuinely tried to get out of there without letting anyone feel rejected. I fretted about that for days! I even wondered if…” He stopped himself, realizing there was some information he didn’t want to share with Molly.
They looked at each other and couldn’t help but chuckle.
Joel finally admitted. “One of them told me I should go into modeling.”
“Yeah, model airplanes maybe!” Molly retorted.
The two laughed. Just like they had done back in the day, before Candy had gotten between them.
He drained his glass, dropped some credits onto the table for the drinks, and stood up.
“Lemme talk to my contact and see what we can set up in terms of this job. I’d say ‘stay sober,’ but stay by your phone, a
t least. I’ll get back to you soon.”
And with that he headed out of the bar.
>>> Oh my ancestors! I’d forgotten about the Crystal saga!
>>> Candy! And anyway, what I never told you was that I was only trying to use her to get your attention. If I’m honest… and since this is it, I feel like this is the time to be honest.
***
The two stood in the cockpit, with everything crashing all around them, occasionally being jolted against each other, and sometimes apart. Each time, they came back together, spontaneously as if they were on some kind of self-correcting buoyancy system.
“Do you ever regret anything?” Joel asked.
Molly felt herself struggling to find the words to say everything that came to her mind.
“More specifically,” he added, helping her out, “about us?”
She could barely dare hope he meant what she thought he meant. “I do,” she confessed.
A smile crept across his face as he grabbed her hand and squeezed it tight. “That’s enough for me,” he whispered in her ear.
Aboard The Empress, Outer Sark System
“Shields at thirty percent,” Brock announced to the cockpit that was now crowded with the entire team watching the events unfold on the main screen together.
The rest of the ship had gone dark when auxiliary power kicked in, in order to maintain main power to the shields.
Red lights flashed, illuminating the cockpit in the danger signal.
Karina reached for Sean’s hand as she braced against impact as another missile hit the shields.
“We’re not going to be able to take many more of those,” Sean commented above the noise and chaos. He watched Molly for a reaction, but she continued to watch the screen intently, mouthing numbers to herself as if making calculations that might potentially help them.
He felt Karina lean closer to him as she got her balance. “Did you ever think it would end like this?” she asked.
He started to shake his head, but then held her closer and put on his dry comic face. “Actually, I thought there would be more sex in the end…”
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