by Ian Whates
The thought that he and Malcolm must appear to her in much the same fashion that his own partial, Phil, had appeared to him in the past - a 3D image hovering somewhere towards the centre of the room - didn't help either. Most of the time he'd never even bothered ensuring Phil's feet touched the carpet. A trivial detail, one which hadn't seemed important then. It did now, but he dismissed the thought and concentrated on the purpose of the visit: Tanya.
"Why would you think I'd need a bodyguard, Catherine? What aren't you telling me?"
KI's longest serving director pursed her lips and studied him, no doubt weighing up how much to reveal. "Nothing sinister, I promise you. I would happily have shared all this before but thought you probably had enough to cope with simply coming to terms with your new status. I couldn't see anything to be gained by troubling you with additional concerns."
"What additional concerns?"
Again she took her time before replying, "It's probably nothing, but... Julia Cirese, the woman who killed you..."
Philip knew full well who she was. "What about her?"
"I don't suppose you ever bothered checking into her background?"
"No, why would I?" A contract had been issued against him; Julia had seen it posted in the Death Wish and had taken up the invitation. Eventually, on the space station called New Paris, she had succeeded in killing him. What else did he need to know? If the murderous bitch had suffered an unhappy childhood or been forced into a career as a hired killer by cruel misfortune, what did he care? She'd killed him!
"That's what I thought. Well I did - check up on her, I mean. Call me a pedantic old cynic, but I couldn't understand why she'd bothered to pursue you halfway across the galaxy like that, especially after the death wish had been lifted, or how she found you so quickly for that matter. So I did a little digging. Turns out she was a journalist just as she claimed, although clearly she was a good deal more than that as well. However, it seems Ms Cirese was posted to Home only a week before your Gügenhall lecture. We've cracked Universal News's systems and accessed her data records. What we found there was interesting. Julia Cirese began gathering information on you - your habits, preferences, and movements - from the moment she first arrived on Home."
"In other words she started researching me a week before the contract at the Death Wish was posted."
"Exactly."
"This doesn't prove anything. Julia was writing a piece on me and preparing for an interview; naturally she'd do some research."
"Except that the piece in question never really existed."
"So if the research was all part of her cover, why did she start all before the death wish was even issued?" Philip added. The implications were unnerving. By the sound of things, Julia Cirese had been preparing to kill him before he'd ever made himself a target.
"It looks to me as if she was sent here specifically to assassinate you, Philip."
He nodded. "The death wish merely provided her with a convenient smokescreen. Which begs two complimentary questions: Who was she working for? And why did whoever it was want me dead?"
"Excellent questions both, neither of which I have an answer to as yet, which is why I assigned Tanya to watch your back. She's a martial arts expert in the real world, an experienced gamer and she's familiar with Virtuality. In addition to that, we've packed her avatar with a host of countermeasures."
"And her avatar was doubtless designed to appeal to my taste."
"We may have tweaked her appearance a little," Catherine conceded, "but the important thing here is that she's fit for purpose." Philip certainly wasn't about to argue with the 'fit' part. "Somebody powerful ordered your death, Philip. There's every chance they might decide to finish the job, even if that means following you into Virtuality. Tanya's there to ensure they don't succeed."
Despite his attempt at outward calm, Philip was shaken to the core. It had never occurred to him that his physical death was anything other than the work of an opportunist seeking to claim the price on his head. Who else could have been behind it? Someone who didn't want the project, the integration of human and AI minds, to succeed? That made no sense. The project was to the benefit of all humankind... unless those responsible didn't want humankind to benefit or to progress. He thought again about the Byrzaen infiltration of Virtuality, but instantly baulked at the thought that the aliens might be behind this. The concept seemed ridiculous to the point of paranoia.
His thoughts flipped back to Tanya. All right, so she was sent to protect him; her popping up in the right place at the right time not once but twice still represented a huge coincidence. Almost as if she knew exactly where to find him, as if Catherine had an accomplice in this little scheme.
He turned to Malcolm. "You were in on this, weren't you?"
Malcolm at least had the decency to look a little embarrassed. "Catherine did share her concerns, yes."
"No wonder Tanya was loitering by the door at Bubbles when we came in and then again at the street meet. You set it all up beforehand!"
Malcolm shrugged. "It was for your own good."
Philip was seething. They'd treated him like a child, both of them. "This stops now. Don't you ever, ever, hold out on me like that again, or how am I supposed to trust you?"
"Fair comment. I'm sorry."
Having said his piece, Philip's thoughts turned to recent events, seeing them in a new light. "Is there anything to suggest that what happened at the street meet was specifically targeted at me?"
"No," Catherine replied. "As far as we can tell, that was a genuine accident. A case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time."
"But you can't be certain?"
"Not entirely. Don't worry, we're still looking into it."
"There's no point in wasting Kaufman Industry resources on this..."
Catherine held up a hand, forestalling anything else he might have added. "First off, KI have the resources to spare now that the project's completed and the first needle ship squadron has been handed over to ULAW, and second, this isn't a waste. Stop with the false modesty. You're a valuable resource, Philip, an asset that's well worth our while protecting."
Strange to hear himself spoken about in such terms, but he supposed Catherine had a point.
Kethi felt numbed by the news brought by The Retribution. Not merely because of her own personal loss, nor even at the thought of so many deaths. The habitat itself was the greatest loss, the only home she and most people aboard had ever known. With the utterance of a single sentence she had been transformed into a refugee; they all had.
Her response was to throw herself into her work in an effort to keep her mind busy. The Retribution had delivered several new data packages, collected from the network of beacon drops established by habitat sympathisers within ULAW's ranks. There was a wealth of new information here, which Kethi worked furiously to integrate with what she already had. Perhaps it was this new influx of data, or perhaps the renewed intensity she brought to the job, but she began to get a glimmer of something. There was a pattern here. Kethi could sense its presence even though the components of its design were scattered and buried deep beneath layers of apparently still unconnected data - a web of links so tenuous they barely existed; strands of the finest spider silk all but lost in the cracks between myriad blocks of solid fact and detail.
She continued to race through the accumulated reports, tagging incidents and then compiling a list of names, refining its composition all the while - adding this person but removing that one as more information came to light which perhaps eliminated one prospect by suggesting another. The framework of links Kethi could sense continued to grow. By the time the list numbered sixteen she felt able to take stock, and sensed immediately that there was something wrong. A few of the names didn't quite fit, though she felt certain they belonged to the pattern somewhere.
Tentatively, she drew one name out of the list and then another, moving them to one side, until she had two columns: five in the new list, leaving eleven in the origi
nal. Of course, it was obvious now. Two very similar interlinked groups which could easily be mistaken for one. She pushed the smaller list to the right-hand periphery of vision and the larger to the left, before continuing to work her way through the data, occasionally drawing out new names to add to one group or the other.
Finally she was satisfied. There was still some data to analyse, but this gave her more than enough to isolate and identify the nebulous pattern. What Kethi saw horrified her. She blinked, wiping the lenses and returning her awareness outward. Nyles and Leyton were still there, though neither was looking her way just then.
"Nyles," she said.
His head whipped around. "Anything?"
"Yes, and you're going to want to see this, both of you."
Kethi had wondered whether the shock would show on her face. Judging by the looks on theirs, it did.
She might have cleared her lenses, but Kethi possessed eidetic memory and was able to recall the two lists instantly, projecting them onto one of the virtual screens that surrounded the bridge. The longer list now held twenty names, the shorter eight. "Jim, do you recognise any of these?"
Leyton instantly fastened onto one name on the longer list. "Yes, I was with Philip Kaufman when he died, on New Paris... and these three in the smaller group," he highlighted the relevant names in red, "are all members of the eyegee squad."
"Were," Kethi corrected. "The larger group consists of politicians and corporate magnates. I'm pretty certain those in the smaller group are all ULAW operatives - though it's not always so easy to identify those for obvious reasons. Every one of these people has died by presumed accident in most cases, assassination in a couple, all within the last few weeks."
Nyles let out a hiss of breath. "Surely someone else has spotted this."
Kethi shook her head. "Group the names together this way and it looks significant, ominous even, but spread these across all of ULAW space and the result is well within statistical parameters, especially given that most of these are the victims of apparent accidents. No AI's going to pick up on it." She said the last with a degree of pride.
"Well done, Kethi, well done," Nyles said.
"Eyegees don't die easily or often," Leyton added.
"No," Kethi said, "I don't suppose they do."
"What's your reading of this, Kethi?" Nyles asked.
"That's simple. We're seeing here proof of what Mya warned us about. ULAW is in the process of tearing itself apart."
Nyles nodded. "All this at the same time the Byrzaens put in an appearance. It can't be simple coincidence."
"Agreed, and there's more."
"Go on."
"As I sift through the data and reports, one name has cropped up on several occasions, too often to dismiss as coincidence: Pavel Benson."
"The same Pavel Benson who runs the eyegee unit, the one Mya reported to?"
"Yes. He's involved in whatever's going on here, I'm sure of it."
"I know Benson," Leyton said. "I can't believe he'd be disloyal to the Union."
"Perhaps he isn't," Nyles replied carefully, as if testing the sound of the words even as he spoke them. "Perhaps it's simply a question of which version of the Union he's loyal to."
"That makes sense," Kethi agreed. "It might not be a matter of trying to bring down ULAW at all but rather a disagreement over which direction the Union should go in."
Leyton indicated the two lists of the dead, which still hovered in the air before them. "That's one hell of a policy dispute."
"People have been killed over a lot less, and I agree the theory has its appeal. It's certainly worth investigating." Nyles appeared to reach a decision. "Kethi, you take command of The Rebellion and continue to the next beacon. The more intel we can gather the better. I'll take The Retribution to New Paris. We need to confront Benson."
"He's no longer at New Paris," Kethi said. "He's returned to the honeycomb." It was the notorious headquarters of ULAW's intelligence operations.
"Getting in to see him there will be easier said than done," Leyton said, "but I'll go with you to handle that side of things."
"No," said a new voice. "I'll deal with this." Mya entered the bridge. "It's about time I contributed something. Besides which, Benson owes me an explanation or two."
"Very well," Nyles agreed. "We'll divide our forces. Leyton, you stay here with Kethi; Mya, you come with me on The Retribution."
Kethi watched Leyton carefully, curious to see his reaction to this enforced separation from the woman they'd all risked so much to rescue and whom he clearly still loved, but the former eyegee simply nodded, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. Privately she wanted to applaud Nyles. Decisive action was exactly what everyone needed. News of the habitat's fate had hit the crew hard. Anticipating the possible loss of their home was one thing, dealing with the fact as reality quite another. People would be looking for a continued purpose and Nyles was giving them just that. Nor was it an empty one - a goal set simply for the sake of having a goal. Kethi felt increasingly certain that Benson would prove the key to their discovering what was going on within ULAW, and that would put them one step closer to learning what part the Byrzaens played in all this.
Chapter Ten
Jenner neither knew nor cared where the intel had come from. He was just relieved to confirm its accuracy. Finding the buoy had proved a time-consuming process, even though they'd been told where to look. Nothing stayed still out here. Things drifted, orbited, wandered off, so being assured that the object would be orbiting a given planetoid still left a pretty vast haystack in which to find their needle. Particularly when the needle in question was so small and completely dormant, primed to broadcast its location only once invited to do so by the appropriate trigger pulse from an approaching craft.
However, a systematic and meticulous search by nine ships, each housing a human/AI pairing operating in gestalt, eventually tracked down the innocuous-seeming beacon, allowing Jenner to set his trap.
He had at his disposal the bulk of ULAW's first ever needle ship squadron - still the only one of its kind until the Kaufman Industries advisors helped the government train and prepare another batch of pilots. Two of their number had been lost battling The Noise Within, while another, Fina, was still recovering from injuries sustained during that encounter, and three more had been co-opted for a separate mission, but that left him with eight ships in addition to his own. Twice as many as he'd commanded when taking down the pirate ship. For back-up, stationed a little further in-system and hidden in the shadow of the nearest planet, he had a ULAW dreadnought to call on. Not that Jenner expected to need it; he was fully confident of success.
He arranged his squadron precisely, so that the ships bracketed the buoy from every angle and were in position to engage an enemy caught between them no matter which way that enemy might turn. Now all they could do was wait.
Not long ago he would have dreaded the thought of such protracted inactivity, but that was before he'd taken a needle ship out for the first time - not in simulation but the real thing. He could never be bored, not now, not when there was so much continually going on in his own ship/body and, more especially, beyond.
As Jenner prepared to relax, he thought of Lara, the fiancée he hadn't seen since training ended, when the needle ship squadron had left Home bound for New Paris. At first their separation had been torture, but he'd been surprised at how quickly he'd adjusted. Not that he didn't miss her, not that he didn't still love her, but those absent pieces of his life were no longer the yearning pain they had been, more of a dull ache, one which gestalt with the ship could soon assuage. Most of the time that struck him as a good thing, since it removed a distraction and enabled him to work all the more efficiently, but on occasion he found this development disturbing and feared the implications, worried that it might mean he was becoming a little less human.
He dismissed such speculation; this wasn't the time. Instead he concentrated on relaxing.
Even in this enligh
tened age of interstellar travel there were still people who thought of space as being empty, which it isn't, not by a long shot. The interstellar medium is a tenuous but dynamic soup of dust, gasses, magnetic fields, and charged particles, specks of matter created and destroyed in an instant, echoes of cataclysmic events carried by microscopic debris. Jenner allowed his consciousness to be fully immersed within the body of his ship. Time ceased its relevance as he basked in the myriad sensations of the quantum foam that played against his hull - sensations which he knew no human had ever experienced before him. He might have been content to stay there forever if a sudden pulse of concerted energy hadn't drawn his awareness back into sharper focus. The trigger signal.
The beacon came to life, broadcasting its position, and the habitat ship made its approach. Big, that was Jenner's initial reaction; far larger than The Noise Within. Her design was unorthodox - bulkier than ULAW vessels, if far more elegant than the Byrzaen-modified pirate ship had been. She reminded him of a gigantic stylised teardrop with an extended, tapering neck, as if a glassblower had fashioned her but then had forgotten to properly crop the end. The position of her weapons placements was also far from obvious, and Jenner didn't want to risk probing for them any deeper for fear of prematurely revealing his presence. He'd simply have to be content with targeting the ship's drive for now. No doubt her armaments would become apparent soon enough, once the shooting started.
The ship stood some way off from the beacon, albeit still within the dispersed cordon of needle ships Jenner had established - merely closer to one edge of it than was ideal. This put his own vessel further away from the target than he'd have liked, but that couldn't be helped. He risked a very low level burst from the manoeuvring thrusters, which were specifically designed for stealth, and started to drift nearer, knowing that others in the squadron would be doing the same. The net was tightening. Presumably, the habitat wouldn't want to linger here. He detected a squirt of energy, very tight beam, projected from the beacon to the waiting ship. That was it, what the habitat were here for. They'd be leaving any moment now... just a little closer; another few seconds and he'd launch the attack.
