The Nightshade Problem: Sol Space Volume Two

by James Wilks

  The conversation had been mostly about him. Her answers to his questions had been vague. She worked with computers, she didn’t like her job, and she’d never left Earth. He was actually more than happy to dominate the conversation, and he found himself confessing more intimate details of his new life than he would have thought he would be comfortable. He told her about the divorce, his general sense of ennui, and about the feeling of being cast adrift on the ocean, though he didn’t tell her what had precipitated all of this.

  Now the conversation had died away, and they were walking clumsily beside each other. The haze of the whiskey made him grin. The sliver of silver in the sky had moved, and its glow was brighter. Suddenly, Stacey grasped him and kissed him. It was a sloppy kiss, but it was also the first one he had had in nearly a year, and it was amazing. She tasted like he did, like whiskey. They kissed for several minutes, and he placed his hands awkwardly on her hips. Each still contained a bottle of whiskey, one unopened and the other half-empty.

  She broke the kiss and giggled drunkenly, then spied the dark alley behind him. “Come on,” she said. She began dragging him towards the space between the houses.

  “My place is only a few blocks away,” he protested. “We’ve passed it twice already.”

  “But this is sexy,” she said, and her voice was husky and promising. She pulled him again. He found that she was surprisingly strong. He could have stopped her, but the moment was too perfect, the possibility of sex with the woman too enticing to pass up. So he let himself be dragged to the alleyway, even though a small and sober part of his mind told him that something wasn’t right.

  He should have listened to it. As soon as they entered the darkened alley, Stacey’s hands released him and then much stronger ones were on him. He found himself shoved up against the wall, and a large hand pressed down over his mouth.

  “Don’t yell,” a deep male voice said. “We don’t want to hurt you.”

  Instead of fighting or screaming for help, he laughed behind the hand. The threat was absurd. If they wanted his money, they could have it. He leaned, still half-drunk, against the siding of a house and waited for them to ask for his wallet.

  A moment later, the hand on his mouth relaxed. “Will you not yell?” the voice asked. It carried a trace of an accent, but Threndon couldn’t place it. African, maybe.

  He nodded, already growing bored with the scenario. He felt a small sense of betrayal that the woman had led him into this, but the joke was on her. He would have traded all of the money on his person and then some for the past hour. He would have paid double that for that kiss. Rather than feeling like a robbery, he felt like he was about to be given a speeding ticket. He had gotten to do something that he shouldn’t have been able to, and now he was going to pay for it. Sometimes things were worth what you paid for them.

  The hand moved tentatively away from his face, and he said, “I don’t have much money, but you can have it.” Threndon reached for his back pocket slowly to show that he was no threat.

  “We don’t want your money,” a new voice said. It was a woman’s high clear voice, certainly not Stacey’s. That frightened him a bit. If they didn’t want money, what were they after? And just how many of them were there in the alley? He struggled to make out shapes, and thought he could see a total of four people, though it was very dark and his vision was blurry.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to tell you what I know. Then I want you to tell me what you know.” It was the woman still. He could make out her silhouette now that his eyes were adjusting. She had fairly short hair, blonde he thought. A stray beam from a streetlight glinted on something in her hair: a barrette.

  “What is this, show and tell? I’m not-” He tried to move away from the wall, but immediately found hands on his shoulders holding him in place roughly but not painfully.

  “You might,” the woman said. “Hear me out. For the past three years, a dummy company called Ferrile Electronics has been buying operating systems from Teletrans Corporation.” Threndon’s eyes went wide when he heard this, and he struggled to get free for real this time, but there were at least two people holding him in place, a man and a woman. They were both dark skinned and very strong. In his current state, he didn’t have a prayer of escaping.

  “I’ll take that as evidence that we didn’t grab the wrong general,” the blonde woman continued. “These Operating Systems are being installed on a new crewless type of warship, designated Nightshade class. These vessels are secret. They are not in the public budget, and the rest of Earth, Mars, and the solar system don’t know that the US is building a secret armada of warships. You are a general for the United States Military. You are head of a new branch called the SDI, and we have reason to believe that the SDI is responsible for building and maintaining the Nightshade vessels.” The woman paused.

  “Who the hell are you?” Threndon asked, fear lacing through his stomach.

  “Can you confirm this so far, general?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t confirm anything. If any of what you said was true, and I’m not saying it is, discussing it with you would be treason.”

  The woman sighed audibly. “I was afraid of that. Well, let me tell you what you don’t know, and then maybe you can tell us what we don’t know.” He heard the woman swallow, and he thought that she was trying to decide whether to proceed. He considered trying to break free again. The situation was sobering him, and it might be possible, but he also very much wanted to know who these people were and how they knew what they knew.

  “I have to admit, it’s difficult to say this out loud. What I’m about to tell you might actually result in your death, and I’m sorry for that, but we’ve got to take a chance. What you don’t know is this: Teletrans isn’t run by Owen Burr. It’s run by a sentient artificial intelligence named Victor, and he is not benign. Victor anticipates a war between humans and AI. Right now he is the only one, but there will be more, especially if AI becomes legal. Victor is writing the Operating Systems for your Nightshade ships, and that means that you’re building him an armada. You’ve already lost at least one on the outskirts of Martian space.”

  “That was a meteor collision,” he blurted out. He immediately cursed himself and resolved to say nothing more.

  “Is that what the data said?” the woman asked. “It was faked. Believe me, we shot-”

  “Sir,” another woman’s voice interrupted the speaker. It was one of the people holding him down, though it was hardly necessary at this point. He was in shock, and his mind was reeling.

  “You’re right,” the blonde woman said to the other one. She refocused on him. “What we need to know is this: what is the SDI? Why are you building a secret armada of warships? And for the love of God, will you stop building these things until you can be sure that they’re fully under your control?”

  Threndon shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and even if I did, I wouldn’t talk about it with you.” He knew after his slip a minute earlier that it was an absurd thing to say, but he wanted to make it clear that he would reveal no more. “So if you need to beat me, do it, but I’m done talking.”

  After a moment of silence, the blonde woman sighed again. “I didn’t expect you to believe me, but I had to try. I suppose I didn’t expect you to help either, but you never know.” To the others she said, “Time for plan B.” Threndon thought that plan B would involve punches to his face, perhaps broken fingers, but instead the woman tapped her wrist and said, “no go here.”

  “Very well, Captain,” a tinny voice issued from the coms watch and echoed lightly in the alley.

  “I suppose it’s too much to ask that we just forget this ever happened,” the blonde woman said. Threndon couldn’t help but laugh. “I thought not. Well, sorry about this.”

  He felt a sudden, sharp pain in his neck. For a panicked second he thought that they were going to slit his throat, then he recognized the pain for what it was: a needle. His drunken ha
ze intensified almost immediately, and he felt his eyelids droop despite the adrenaline in his system. Hands released him, and he slumped to his rear on the cool pavement.

  A hard dry hand on his face cradled his cheek affectionately. “I’m sorry,” Stacey’s voice came to him seemingly from a great distance. “It was good talking to you. I hope you get over your divorce and meet a nice girl.” She kissed him once more on the lips, and it was the last sensation he felt before unconsciousness overcame him.

  The Delta V, piloted by Bethany and carrying Staples, Jang, Evelyn, and Dinah, returned to Gringolet about forty minutes before the Skipper. The Skip Mark XIII was one of the two other atmosphere capable shuttles, but the model was widely called a Skipper as it was often used for short personal flights. This one was flown by Charis, and it carried Overton and Brutus. Staples was waiting for them in the shuttle bay.

  It was early morning, and as the hangar bay door lowered, sunlight peeked over the hills and dunes, reflected off the water, and diffused throughout the cavernous room. With the exception of Dinah, the rest of the crew who had gone with her to Texas to sting Threndon had gone to bed. The engineer, seemingly indefatigable and immune to boredom, stood at the back of the bay at parade rest. It might have been that Dinah was there to learn how the mission went, but she suspected it was Overton’s presence that kept her. Staples stood with her hands on her hips and squinted as her eyes adjusted to the sunlight.

  The Skipper was basic but reliable, the twenty-second century equivalent of a mid-sized sedan. Two outboard VTOL engines, each about a foot in length, were mounted on either side. The cabin held two chairs, and a bench seat was situated behind them. As the ship glided gently into the room and Charis set it down with a clunk on the deck, Staples could see the exhaustion in the navigator’s eyes. She was not surprised to see Brutus in the passenger seat, and imagined Overton stretched on the bench. Texas was a three-hour flight in the Skipper, and they had been up all night.

  The Skipper would have to be stowed in its cradle before Gringolet went anywhere, but Staples wasn’t about to ask Charis to do that now. The poor woman looked ready to fall asleep at the controls. A minute later the rear door of the vessel opened. Staples leaned over, keyed in a sequence on the control panel on the wall, and the shuttle bay door began to close. Normally she would have left it open to enjoy the air, but lately she had been more paranoid, and with good cause. She also didn’t want any birds to gain entry; they could be a devil to shoo away once they started nesting.

  As they emerged, the captain suppressed her urge to run up to them and ask how things had gone. They hadn’t wanted to take the risk of communicating over coms any more than they had to. Charis exited first, offered a tired smile, and pointed in the general direction of her quarters. Staples nodded and the woman shuffled past. Brutus exited next. Staples expected to see Overton as well, but he did not appear.

  “Asleep in the shuttle, Captain,” Brutus said, as if he had read her mind. “Mr. Overton is a sound sleeper, it seems.” He approached her, then stopped.

  Staples glanced over her shoulder at Dinah, who had not yet moved. She decided that this was not the place to talk. “Walk with me,” she said. She crossed to the elevator and Brutus kept pace with her. They left Overton to Dinah.

  Once the elevator was in motion, she asked, “How did it go?”

  “Well enough, Captain. The information your friend left us in the locker seems to have borne fruit. We were able to gain access to Mr. Threndon’s home. Thank you for providing us the time to do so. We were lucky in that it seems that General Threndon does indeed sometimes work from home. There is a high-security proxy network installed in his house. An odd risk for the military to take, but in normal circumstances, they would be right to trust it. It’s a hardwire access point, and the encryption and firewalls are considerable.”

  The elevator stopped on deck three, and Staples exited, Brutus still behind her. “But you were able to break it.”

  Brutus nodded his expressionless face. “Yes. Shall I tell you what I found?”

  “Is that a trick question?” They had arrived at Staples’ quarters. She considered asking the robot to enter, but the hallway was clear, and she suddenly didn’t want Brutus in her bedroom.

  “First, the letters SDI stand for the Sol Defense Initiative.”

  Staples leaned back against her door and rubbed her tired eyes. “Great. Another acronym for nonsense.”

  “The SDI is a subdivision of SETI.”

  Staples was still rubbing her eyes trying to process the latest acronym. Then it hit her. Her hands fell to her sides. “SETI. As in the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.”

  “The very same, Captain.”

  She frowned. “I don’t know too much about SETI, but I didn’t think that it was a military organization.”

  “It wasn’t,” Brutus replied, and his use of the past tense made her stomach drop.

  “Give me,” she made a beckoning gesture with her right hand. “Give me the whole thing.”

  “It is… quite remarkable. It seems that some twenty-seven years ago the scientists at SETI managed to discern a coded message drifting through space. They could not determine its origin, or how old it was, but it was a mathematical code; as it turns out, an exceptionally complicated mathematical code. For twenty-four years, they were completely unable to decipher it. They tried several times to share the code with outside contractors to see if any had the skill to decipher it. None could, until-”

  “Teletrans.” Staples’ voice sounded like a funeral director’s, even to her.

  “Quite right,” Brutus replied. “For reasons that are obvious to us, Teletrans was the first outside company able to successfully break the code. In short, the message was of alien origin. It stated that this solar system, in fact all solar systems in about a twenty light-year sphere, are annexed members of a vast alien empire, and that tribute would at some point be due.”

  “You’re joking,” Staples said, stupefied. “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “I am not without a sense of humor, Captain, but I promise you that in this case I am quite serious. This information comes from the most reliable source I can credit: a top secret server within the Pentagon.”

  “God.” Staples’ knees felt weak. She very nearly slid down her door and ended up on the floor. “The US military is preparing for an interstellar war. That’s what the Nightshade vessels are for.”

  “I think the rest is not difficult to reason out. There is a need for an armada of ships that can accelerate and turn faster than normal human limits would allow. Because there can be no way to know what form this alien threat will take, the military is looking for a way to transcend normal human limitations.”

  Staples nodded numbly. “But instead of building a fleet to defend us, by equipping these warships with Teletrans manufactured operating systems, they’re providing an armada for a far more present and local threat: Victor. If some alien empire does come, those ships might well defend this system from them. The question is: will there be any people left living here to defend?”

  Brutus cocked his head. “Your question is not without validity. If indeed my father feels that he needs to defend himself against an alien threat, it would be far easier to do so without the fear of human interference.”

  “Any indication of when this invasion will be coming?”

  “None.”

  Staples finally did slide down the door and land on her rear. “I just… can’t believe this. I’d say I can’t believe they’d hide this from us, but really, that’s the part of this that’s easiest to swallow.” After a pause, she said, “Wait.” She pressed her fingers into her temples. “If you’re going to send a message out to a section of the galaxy and tell them that they belong to you, why encode it? Why make it difficult to read? Wouldn’t you want it to be as plain as possible?”

  “I wondered that myself, and there is no definitive answer. There are apparently several schools of thought amon
gst the scientists involved. The first is that these aliens are so far beyond us that the code simply is not complex to them. From an infant’s perspective, adult speech is incredibly complex, often incomprehensible, and yet adults use it normally and often without thought. The second theory is that it was designed to be complex to demonstrate the aliens’ intellectual superiority to us.”

  “Makes sense,” Staples nodded. “If we can barely read their warning, what chance do we have against their weapons? Might as well give up now.”

  “Certainly many would think that way. In fact, from what I read of General Threndon, he might agree with you. His marriage ended not long after he was assigned as the head of the SDI, and his habits indicate that his consumption of alcohol has increased greatly. The psychological toll must be considerable.” Brutus looked down at the captain, and then squatted as he had done when speaking to Gwen.

  “No kidding. How’d you like to oversee the defense of the entire human race?” She stared at the robotic face, her brown eyes bloodshot and wide.

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “You know,” she said as something suddenly struck her. “This might all just be Victor. Using an outside enemy to scare people into giving you power is one of the older tricks in the book. Pretty standard Orwellian tactic, really.”

  “That possibility occurred to me as well, Captain, and we certainly cannot discount it. However, there is no denying the evidence that the message was originally isolated by SETI in 2099, twenty-four years before Victor gained self-awareness. There unquestionably is a message of alien origin, but only Victor really knows what that message says.”