by Cate Dermody
Alisha felt her shoulders go back, eyebrows rising with appreciation. “You’re saying that one of these drones could conceivably teach another?”
“Exactly!” Arrogance evaporated into a grin of smug delight. Brandon twisted in his seat to face her, hands spread in explanation. “As for the hacking aspect, the AI is intended to work on a wireless network. The frequency changes randomly every fifteen seconds on a logarithmic pattern established by a subset of the program. Every drone updates its frequency change at the same time, so there’s no lag, but the cycle is too fast for anything shy of another AI to break into.”
Alisha pursed her lips. “You’re not exaggerating when you refer to this as an artificial intelligence. I’m…impressed.” More impressed than she wanted to be. “If your prototype lives up to your pitch, Mr. Parker…”
If it lived up to his pitch, American military intelligence and development was desperately behind Brandon’s curve. Moreover, he was obviously the clear and present danger that his father had feared he might be.
“It will. It’s the culmination of years of work,” Parker said rather grandiosely. Alisha tilted her chin up, curiosity wrinkling her forehead.
“I thought your previous projects involved quantum computing. Or—” she interrupted his indrawn breath before he had the chance to explain “—or does the prototype work on one of your quantum chips?”
A hint of a smile curved the near corner of Brandon’s mouth and he nodded, meeting her eyes. “What, after all, is the speed of thought? Is it faster than light? We make decisions so rapidly, every day, some physical, some psychological. How to keep from falling: an instinctive balance reaction, but a decision nonetheless. In order to create a truly viable combat intelligence, it needed to be able to think as quickly, for equally minute, yet vital tasks. I had to begin with the chip. All the brilliant programming in the world wouldn’t matter if the chip couldn’t handle the processing power necessary to make an artificial intelligence possible. I’ve been working on the theories since childhood.”
Not according to his CIA records. Alisha bit her tongue on the comment, though curiosity flared in her. She’d taken Brandon’s records at face value, but it was wholly possible he’d been working on projects so secret that his files were a cover story. She’d have to look into it more closely.
Later, she promised herself. Brandon was still talking: “…uses infrared to determine whether a target is armed and should be dealt with using deadly methods, or if subdual is sufficient.”
“Subdual?”
“It’s rather amazing how badly incapacitated a human being can be by appropriate usage of sound waves. Okay.” He straightened in his seat, gesturing ahead as the jeep went around a sharp curve that revealed a bleak fortress cut into the mountains. “Here we are, Ms. Moon. The heart of Project ACUTE.”
Chapter 4
Alisha’s eyebrows rose, a smile curving her mouth. “ACUTE?”
“Artificial Combat Utility Experiment. Awful acronym, isn’t it? We couldn’t agree and I finally just started using it out of desperation. It stuck.”
Alisha nodded, listening with half an ear as the jeep drew into the complex. Concrete walls with barbed wire fences atop them cut the road in half, bleak gates pulling open to allow passage. They swung shut behind the vehicles, ponderous creaking over the wail of mountainside winds. Alisha glanced over her shoulder to watch youthful men in uniform slam bars down across the inner wall of the gates. They came to attention again moments later, and Alisha turned her gaze forward.
A valley spread out before them, empty fields that housed the buildings of the military base. “It doesn’t look like a military base.” As soon as the words were out, she felt she’d misspoken, and shook her head. “It doesn’t look like a place you’d expect to find one,” she amended.
“No,” Brandon agreed. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
Alisha tilted in her seat to squint at the mountaintops, sweeping above the complex to tips that looked sharp enough to slice a fingertip on. Gray and green scrubby spruce trees crept two-thirds of the way up the mountain-sides, petering out to bare rock, brown and gray under the blustery sky. Closer to the base itself, there were more deciduous trees, leaves so stirred by the wind Alisha imagined she could hear the hiss and bustle even over the jeep’s engine. The land itself spoke of strength and determination, mountains looming as if to remind the small creatures that peopled their feet that they were merely mortal, and looked on the face of eternity. “It’s magnificent,” Alisha murmured. “And what’s that?” She nodded ahead, where a glint of silver against a partially constructed stone wall caught her eye.
“That,” Brandon said, cheer in his voice, “is your demonstration, Ms. Moon.” He thumped the side of the driver’s seat and the jeep veered off its course to the main buildings, bouncing through fields that were deceptively smooth to the eye. Alisha heard Brandon’s apology gritting through his teeth as she wrapped a hand around the armrest and clung to it in order to keep her seat.
“Pity this job doesn’t cover dental,” she muttered, not entirely intending to be overheard.
Brandon shot her a look of wry amusement as the driver slowed the jeep to a halt some fifty feet away from a solitary man standing in the field. “I’ll make the rash assumption that the compensations are otherwise worthwhile, or you wouldn’t be doing it.”
Alisha grinned again. She was enjoying Brandon Parker’s company far too much. That made him dangerous, and made staying professional that much more vital.
But it would be better, she admitted silently, to bring him in rather than be forced to terminate him. Not just because he was Greg Parker’s son, but because a man of his talent and intelligence could once again be an incredibly valuable asset to the CIA. If the attraction was mutual—and, she thought, with a tinge of old bitterness, cash dollars weren’t quite as important to him as they’d been to Frank Reichart—there might be a way through this mission that would leave everyone satisfied.
Alisha clamped down on another grin and refused to allow herself to linger on the idea of satisfaction. “You would be correct in your assumption, Mr. Parker,” she said, deliberately shaping the words with an extra air of formality in order to shake off her own impulse to laugh, and nodded toward the man in the field. “And that would be…?”
“Rafe Denison, my assistant. Couldn’t do any of this without him.” Brandon swung out of the vehicle, jogging around to be a little too late to open Alisha’s door for her. She gave him a brief and automatic smile of thanks regardless, inspecting first the rolling terrain, and then her low-heeled shoes.
“I noticed your ankle,” Brandon said diplomatically as he offered an arm. Alisha considered the gesture momentarily before nodding in acceptance and slipping her hand through his elbow.
“Thanks. I twisted it trying on heels at a shoe sale,” she added in explanation, and gave him the best rueful smile she could summon up. It nearly turned to laughter as Brandon responded with a broad smile of his own. Don’t get a lot of single women up here, do you? she thought, but knew the thought made it nowhere near her expression. All the better for her if they didn’t. No former CIA agent would be easy pickings, but Alisha was happy to make use of any advantages she was given.
Moments later they were at Rafe Denison’s side and she was shaking his hand. He was a small man, slender enough to look breakable, and had both floppy hair and somewhat unfortunate teeth. The result fell short of Hugh Grant, but, Alisha thought, if the association was there at all, it couldn’t be a bad thing.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Denison. I’ve read a lot about you.”
“The pleasure is mine, Ms. Moon.” He was as English as his teeth, voice cultured, though lit with curiosity. “Dare I ask what you’ve read?”
Alisha pursed her lips in a faint smile. “You worked for World Electronics for seven years, the first two of which were during your final years of college. You were working on a graduate program, sponsored by WE, when you
had what’s politely referred to as a change of focus and left the company without warning.” She lifted an eyebrow. “How am I doing so far?”
There was no surprise in Rafe’s eyes. “Very well. What do they call it in less polite company?”
“A complete fucking meltdown.” Alisha chose the abrupt, harsh words deliberately, pulling no punches. Rafe’s eyes narrowed very slightly before he nodded once, a small motion of acknowledgment. “The company still mourns your loss, in fact,” Alisha went on. “I understand you were doing breakthrough programming—”
Denison made a moue. “That’s debatable.”
“They said you were modest.” Alisha brushed away her own comment as well as his with a flicker of her fingers. “Breakthrough programming work. Developing a software compression program that I don’t fully understand,” she admitted. “But I gather the idea was to render data storage to such small and manageable sizes that enormous programs could be carried on flash drives. But you left the WE umbrella and disappeared off the radar.”
“For a variety of personal reasons,” Denison said in an utterly aloof tone. Alisha tilted her head.
“Because of your brother.” Alisha still spoke deliberately, watching the slim man. Denison’s younger brother had died in Iraq, and he’d left World Electronics within weeks. His nostrils flexed, making a thin pinch of his nose and stiffening his upper lip. “I don’t mean to bring up painful memories,” Alisha murmured. Denison’s face lost none of its tension, though he exhaled a disbelieving laugh.
“You fully mean to bring up painful memories, Ms. Moon. Yes, my brother’s death is among the things that made me decide to change careers. He was only twenty, the baby of the family, as you Americans would say. I would do anything to prevent another family from suffering that kind of loss.”
“Anything?”
Denison’s face creased with bleak humor. “I believe I would do anything within my power, yes. Hence my involvement with Project ACUTE. I can hope the drones might lead to a lessening of human cost in senseless wars. I think my brother would have liked that.”
He was another dangerous man, Alisha thought, studying him as she fit him into the hierarchy of the AI development program. Dangerous, if he had the strength of his convictions. But naive, she thought, if he truly believed that selling mechanical warriors to the highest bidder would prevent the wars that had cost his younger brother his life. Alisha gave him a forthright nod of acknowledgment, wondering briefly if he really did think the droids being developed would make the world a safer place.
Not that it mattered. It was her job to make sure no one but the United States government had access to those blueprints and plans, or to their creator. Rafe Denison’s work seemed to lie in the project’s storage capacity. While astoundingly useful, it wasn’t the critical part of the development, and she felt certain he couldn’t replicate the drones on his own.
She turned back to Brandon, whose expression lay between admiring and alarmed. “Should I ask what you know about me, Ms. Moon?”
“We’re going to be working together for a few days,” Alisha said with a smile. “You may as well call me Elisa. And only,” she added, eyebrows lifted again, “if you want to know.”
“I suppose you’d want to know what I knew about you then, huh?”
Alisha laughed, shaking her head. “A woman likes to pretend her life isn’t an open book, Mr. Parker. Indulge me. Allow me to think you find me mysterious and charming.”
“I can promise the second half of that, anyway.”
Alisha flashed him a pleased smile and lowered her eyelashes, glancing up again in a fashion that she knew was coquettish. She murmured, “Join the club,” and drew breath to turn her focus elsewhere when Brandon laughed.
“I wouldn’t belong to any club that’d have me as a member.”
“Oscar Wilde, right?”
“Probably,” Brandon admitted, “but I got it from Groucho Marx.” Alisha’s heart tightened, a quick knot of pain that released as she managed a smile up at the scientist. “My father’s favorite wisecracker,” Brandon went on, with less good humor, and added more quietly, “One of the few things I have in common with him, I suppose. At any rate.” His eyebrows went up and he brushed the comment away, gesturing to the distant, half-broken wall. Alisha turned to study it, squinting against the wind.
Dull silver glinted against the wall, light catching and breaking with the whipping wind and bursts of sunlight from between racing clouds. “Is that the prototype?”
“It is.” Brandon slid his hands into his pockets, rocking his shoulders back, weight pivoting through his hips. Alisha, expression schooled, felt a burble of amusement bubble through her as she recognized his comfortable stance as that of a born lecturer. Brandon wasn’t going to let the demonstration take place without a healthy lead-in. Scientists and captive audiences, she thought, wishing she’d decided to wear her suit jacket after all.
“Are you armed, Elisa?”
It wasn’t the lecture she’d expected. Alisha shot Brandon a startled look. “No.” The part of her that was the trained battle operative let go an internal growl at the admission. Never mind that it was considerably wiser to go in unarmed when it was likely she’d be searched. It still made the combatant in her uncomfortable.
“You’re sure?” There was neither sarcasm nor doubt in Brandon’s voice, just good-natured caution. Alisha twisted a smile, glancing down as if caught in a lie.
“The thought occurred to me more than once, Mr. Parker, but I decided a show of good faith was more appropriate than coming in as if I were the enemy.” She looked up again, eyebrows elevated a little. “I’m unarmed.” Save for her own hand-to-hand skills, at least.
“All right, good. Come on, then. The drone will do a risk assessment on you—I explained that, right?” There was a note of hope in his voice, as if he suspected he’d given the explanation already, but desperately wanted to give it again, just in case. Alisha grinned at him.
“I’m afraid so. Assessment whether to use deadly response or subdual, determined through infrared, right?”
Brandon’s shoulders slumped just enough to be perceptible. “That’s right,” he said gloomily. Alisha grinned even more broadly.
“You can explain it again, if you really want to. I’ll be very attentive.”
“That’s all right.” He sounded as if he was doing his best Eeyore impression, before he flashed her a smile of his own. “Thanks, though. There’s plenty more to lecture about.”
“Does the drone use any other nonlethal response systems?”
“I’m working on a foam spray—you’re familiar with those?” Brandon gave her a cursory glance, clearly not expecting to have to explain himself. Alisha nodded.
“Immobilizing foam. Hardens almost instantly. It can suffocate a person very easily, if it gets in your face.”
“Mmm. That’s the reason I’m still working on it. The drone isn’t very big—” He gestured to the prototype, more easily visible now. “Hobbit-sized.” A wrinkle of dismay crossed his face, as if he’d let out his inner geek and was regretting it. Alisha, despite herself, laughed.
“Everyone knows how big hobbits are now, Mr. Parker.”
“Brandon. I know, but when a guy like me says something like that, a beautiful woman is going to think he’s been a hopeless nerd since childhood.”
“You have been,” Rafe said cheerfully. Brandon shot him a look of exasperation.
“But does it have to show? Anyway, in order to prevent people from suffocating the immobilizing foam can’t cover their faces, and while the drone can assess an individual’s—or a group’s—height and mass easily enough, if the target is in rapid, unpredictable motion, it’s proved difficult to launch the foam so that it both immobilizes the arms and yet doesn’t suffocate the target.”
Target. Alisha felt an unexpected pang of regret slide through her belly. Target, subject, objective; that was how their training had taught them to think about people. Not as ind
ividuals, but as missions to accomplish in one fashion or another. She wondered if it was easy for him, or if, like her, Brandon made himself hold on to his own humanity and refused to be wholly neutral about any given situation. She hoped so, but at the same time doubted it: the impulse to do so was a weakness by espionage standards, a secret that Alisha worked hard to hide.
And this was not the place to be considering that train of thought. Alisha returned her full attention to the scientist, shaking off her introspection. “Humans have the same problem, Mr—Brandon.”
Brandon smiled at her. “Yes, of course. But my drones are supposed to be better than human.”
“Like the hobbits,” Alisha said, straight-faced.
“You’re doomed,” Rafe told Brandon, even more cheerfully. Brandon groaned and turned his hands up in a helpless shrug.
“Add that to your notes about me, Elisa. I work in remote mountains because I haven’t got a chance in the world of proving myself other than as a complete geek. It makes talking to women very difficult.” He sighed, over-exaggerating his misery. Alisha laughed, shaking her head.
“If you left the remote mountains, Brandon, you might find out that women are a little more forgiving of complete geeks than they used to be.” She very much doubted Brandon Parker bought into his own story; the self-deprecation and laughter in his eyes suggested otherwise. Nor did his physique cater to expectations presented by the word geek, and Alisha had no doubt Brandon was fully aware of that, too. “Your social aptitude aside, Mr. Parker…” Alisha lifted her eyebrows and directed a look at the prototype.
“See?” Brandon said to Rafe. “I’m hopeless. Can’t keep my eye on the ball.”
Rafe gave a snort of derision that belied his cultured English voice. “The day you can’t keep your eye on the ball is the day we’re all driven out of here like so many sheep at the teeth of their master’s dogs. You just changed balls for a minute there.”
