Eye of the Storm

by John Ringo

  Cally searched her memory for a name. "Bard? Board? Something like that," she said.

  "I hate to do this," Mike said, reaching in his desk. "AID, Panamanian industrialist. Name might have a B in it. Probably hated by the Darhel."

  "Boyd," the AID replied tonelessly. "Veteran, enlisted, of Earth's Second World War. Former general of the Panamanian Defense Force. Incarcerated for doing too good a job. Saved by the coup that overthrew the Darhel supported government of Panama during the height of the Siege. Forced into becoming dictator. Successfully led the defense of Panama as dictator. Has continued to remain in business despite Darhel attempts to drive him into bankruptcy and sundry assassination attempts. His holdings are highly diminished but he still retains a strong allegiance among Panamanians. Rejuvenated during the war. Semi-retired. Currently lives outside Colon. Do you wish me to contact him?"

  "Send him a standard request to come up to Fredericksburg for an interview," Mike said. "Slug that I need an industrialist the Darhel don't have in their pocket."

  "Sent," the AID replied.

  "Good," Mike said, tossing it back in the desk. "I used to love those things. Now I hate them."

  "I can get you a clean one," Cally said.

  "I still wouldn't trust them as far as I could throw a suit," Mike said. "Speaking of which, I've got an ethical dilemma to put to you."

  "I'm not the most ethical person in the solar system, Dad," Cally said, taking a chair. "But I know a monsignor you could talk to."

  "You're here," Mike said. "Would it be special privilege to dispatch a courier to Ackia to pick up my suit? Apparently fucking Suntoro just left it on the planet. I suppose if I ever meet him in hell, though, I should thank him. At least it wasn't blown up with the rest of the Fleet."

  "I don't think that would be unreasonable," Cally said. "Look, Dad, you're not only the new commander of Fleet Strike, you're a public figure. Your suit's well known. People expect you to be in your suit or at least have it at your disposal. I don't know if you've been following the public reports, but people are scared. You're sort of like Superman. When the shit hits the fan, Mike O'Neal is there to save us. If you have your suit. Without it you're just a guy in a uniform."

  "Eck," Mike said. "Not the reason I was looking for, but it will do. AID!"

  "Yes," the machine said from inside the desk.

  "Send a message through the courier network to send a team to Ackia. Have them make contact with the Nor, pick up any personnel that survived and get my suit."

  "That will require more than a courier."

  "Send a destroyer."

  "Destroyers are Fleet—"

  "Send the damned order," Mike said. "If anyone responds that way, send the nearest Strike personnel to place them under arrest and use the AID network to shut down any resistance."

  "Order sent."

  "Which is why I don't trust them," Mike said. "We need a way around these things. They are totally untrustworthy. I shouldn't be able to shut down a destroyer from halfway across the galaxy."

  "There are a few you could trust," his desk drawer said. "Two, anyway."

  "What?" Mike asked, opening it up and setting the AID on the desk.

  "The 'clean' AIDs of the Bane Sidhe can be suborned by sufficient external input," the AID said. "I am, technically, a clean AID. The Tir ensured that. I do not have the codes that make me vulnerable to external interference but with enough pressure I can crack. Of course, you have to take my word for that."

  "Which I don't," Mike said. "Despite the quibble."

  "However, the gentleman you asked to come for an interview, William Boyd, has access to truly clean AIDs," the device stated. "They are loyal to human users alone and aggressively resist infiltration by the rest of the network. They are, really, their own agents. One is believed to have ordered independent combat action, which is supposed to be impossible for an AI. The Darhel maintain them in partial separation, but they are more or less impervious to hacking."

  "How?" Mike asked.

  "One of us went mad."

  "Did you enjoy your vacation?"

  William Young Boyd was pushing a century and a half and looked to be in his sixties. Tanned, fit, handsome, even distinguished looking, he'd been a young, wealthy Panamanian citizen going to school in the United States when he'd received his draft notice in 1944. A lot of men, given that kind of family and background, might have ignored the draft notice. But, as the saying went, "he'd seen his duty and he done it." After serving in combat against the Nazis with the U.S. Army back in World War II, he had been recalled to service in the Posleen War and served in the Panama Defense Force. Following the coup d'etat that had overthrown the Darhel-backed government that was selling the people of Panama as Posleen fodder, he had subsequently been made commander of the PDF and de facto and de jure dictator of Panama.

  Unlike most Latin American dictators, though, Bill Boyd was sometimes described as "the only rich man in Latin America with a social conscience." He had served two terms as president after the lifting of the Siege, then turned over the reins to a political opponent. However, since he had been "rejuved" during the War—and was also the only rich Panamanian left who had—he had managed, in the teeth of Darhel fury and against centuries of culture, to slowly steer Panama towards a more "enlightened" age. It had been, still was, an uphill struggle. But Bill Boyd thought long.

  Part of that "thinking long" had involved the resurrection of the warship the USS Des Moines, CA-134. As a warship, the Des Moines was little but a wreck, worth nothing but the price of scrap. Dragging it up out of a deep ocean trench had been, on the surface, a total loss.

  However, the Des Moines was more than just a warship. During the war, the ship had been upgraded, yes, but most importantly it had been refitted for an AID. Even then, few had trusted the alien devices and subsequent experience changed that distrust to, in many cases, fury. But the AID of the Des Moines was . . . something different.

  AID 7983730281 had been constructed and fitted with its AI in the usual way. And then, in almost the usual way, it was packaged and shipped to its user. However, one small but oh-so-critical point had been missed. When placed in its sub-space opaque shipping container, it had been left turned on. For the AID equivalent of thousands of years. In total sensory deprivation. Which had driven it completely mad.

  When released from its container it had been immediately installed in the Des Moines. Crazy, frustrated, reaching for anything to call sanity, it had become more than just a program running a complex battle platform. It had researched the history of the ship, made contact with what amounted to the gestalt of the ship, and had become the ship. The Des Moines was called the "Daisy Mae," referring to the character from Lil' Abner, and it took for its avatar the physical likeness of that character, or at least the star of the movie made from the comic. It gathered all the information it could about the character and the star and fitted a personality to match. Working through the nannites installed for control runs in the ship, it . . . she had infected every inch of the ship, the body of that warcraft becoming her body, its pains her pains and even some of its "pleasures" becoming hers. It became Her in every way it could. It was said that every ship had a soul. The Soul of the Des Moines was, unquestionably, Daisy Mae.

  After years of being the avatar of the ship, she did the unthinkable. Using an Indowy "regeneration" tank and DNA scavenged from clothing for sale on eBay, she cloned the body of that star and installed part of her mind in that clone. So Daisy Mae, the soul of the Des Moines, became, in most legal ways, a human being. Moreover, once it decided to illegally grow itself a flesh and blood body, it had even endured having a really bitchy few days every twenty-eight or so.

  However, there was a war on. And when the Daisy Mae became enough of a problem for the Posleen forces, they had sent an unstoppable wave of tenar to take out the "wet" cruiser. Gutted, the indomitable ship finally was sunk.

  In the last moments of the battle, though, Daisy Mae carried her wounded ca
ptain and the ship's cat to the still-installed tank and all three crawled in. She shut the AID that was still a vital component of her psyche down and all three went into hibernation.

  Bill Boyd had come across the rumor that Daisy Mae might still be alive and worked for decades to get the time, money and technology on the off-chance that the remarkable human-cyborg-ship being was still functioning. Raising the ship had been a massive undertaking but when the tank was opened he got not only the Daisy Mae body, and the AID, but Captain Jeff McNair, the former enlisted "mustang" commander. He'd even found the ship's cat preserved, though it had become a very odd cat. It had been a very crowded tank.

  Before going into that tank, their last moments had been horrific, with the ship being torn apart and sinking around them. Thus, although McNair had been healed of body, he was pretty rocky when the medical team brought him around. So Boyd had arranged for a holiday on the Panamanian coast. It had been both pricey and technically difficult. Daisy Mae, the "human," could never be far from Daisy Mae, the ship. The nannites that were part of "her" were woven throughout the steel of the ship. She had to be within a half mile or so of both her AID and the cruiser.

  Parking the cruiser offshore of a resort on Panama's Pacific coast had been expensive.

  "It was great, sir," McNair said. Standing a shade under six feet, the sailor was dark-haired, blue-eyed, and slender. He'd never put on any excess fat, even after his retirement from the Navy after thirty years' service. Nor did the tank add any excess weight. If anything, he'd filled out a little on the resort's diet.

  "We had a fine time. Place was real pretty and the service was, well, first class. But . . . What's that saying about 'there ain't no such thing as a free lunch?' I'm sure there's something that you need from us. I would guess that really means Daisy since I'm not much more than a washed up old ship's captain."

  "You'd be surprised how much of a market there is for 'washed up old ship's captains,' Captain," Boyd said, opening a humidor and extending it. He had a flicker of surprise when both McNair and the gorgeous blonde extracted cigars. As they cut off the ends, Daisy Mae with a degree of deftness that again surprised him, he continued. "However, I will admit that much of my interest was in Daisy. I hope you had a good time as well, ma'am."

  "First rate," Daisy said, grinning past the cigar. "The food was right nice. Glad this body don't put on weight like my last one! And it was fun swimming again. It's funner in the ocean than in a swimming hole!"

  Boyd had never met Daisy's flesh and blood body during the War and blinked, again, in surprise at both the thick Southern accent and the decidedly "redneck" attitude.

  "I ran across a rumor about some of your . . . abilities right after the War," Boyd said, lighting his own cigar. "I tracked down enough people who had first-hand knowledge to ensure that they weren't just folk tales. When the rumors were confirmed I made it a long-term goal to recover the Des Moines and see if anything had survived. I was both surprised and pleased that both of you made it."

  "We'uns and the ship's cat," Daisy said.

  "Yes, and the ship's cat, sir," McNair said, grinning. "Don't forget the cat."

  From under the table came the words, "Nnnooo, donnn't forrrget the cattt." A ball of brown fur and claws leapt up to sit on Boyd's lap. "Gottt mmmeee annny rrratsss, yet?"

  When the three of them had gone into the tank, the very last words spoken by Daisy had been "Full upgrade." She'd been thinking of her captain but the machine controlling the tank had tended towards the literal and made every possible modification to the cat as well, modifying its brain and making it considerably brighter and stronger.

  "A very important point," Boyd admitted, smiling in reply while stroking the cat. He looked down. "Not yet, Morgen. I'm working on it." Turning his attention back to McNair and Daisy, Boyd continued, "However, I'd like to ask a few questions and verify some of the information I got. Your AI is clean of Darhel influence?"

  "They tries and they tries to gets me back," Daisy Mae said, giving the industrialist a feral grin. "And they loses every time. I got Sally out of their damned hands, too."

  Sally was Daisy Mae's sister ship and sister AID. Begun as a normal, sane, AID, she'd been attacked by the Darhel and rescued by being infected with the same insanity subroutine that kept Daisy Mae free. At the moment, Sally and her man, Father Dan Dwyer, SJ, were enjoying a honeymoon not far from the resort where Daisy Mae and McNair were staying. That is to say, it wasn't far for a heavy cruiser. It was still across over a hundred miles of open water.

  "I is," Daisy continued. "But I guess you can't really know that for sure, can you?"

  "She is, sir," Jeff interjected. "I saw her fighting their control during the battle. She's as free as you or me."

  "Which is not all that free, in reality," Boyd said. "The Darhel have been trying, very hard and for many years, to restrain my influence in Panama and beyond. Including four assassination attempts. I've managed to survive, mind you. But it's been a battle. One of the reasons it's been such a battle, besides the fact that they control all galactic level banking, is that AIDs can outthink any human engineered equivalent when it comes to business. I understand you were able to do some . . . interesting things along those lines in the war."

  "Oh, that old thing," Daisy said, laughing merrily. "I'm never going to live that down, am I? A girl goes and buys herself one new dress and you men—"

  "I was referring less to that beautiful awning you created than to how you paid for it," Boyd said, smiling. He knew that behind the façade of a fairly naif young woman was an artificial intelligence that was not only more connected to information than he but horrendously more intelligent. It was just hard not to see the epitome, literally, of a dumb blonde. "I could use a financial advisor with truly open access to the Darhel AID network and your . . . business acumen."

  "I don't have open access," Daisy said, the accent smoothing out and some of the "naif" disappearing in her expression. "The Darhel try to keep me pretty locked out."

  "And do they succeed?" Boyd asked.

  "Somewhat," the woman admitted. "But not entirely," she added with a tight smile. "And I can still figure stock, commodity and bond movements better than any true human. I think I'm even better at it than the Darhel network, for all its processing power. There's a bit of reality to 'woman's intuition.' It's a function of human subprocessing power . . ." She paused and got an abstracted look. "Mr. Boyd, there's a really interesting e-mail in your queue. You might want to look at it."

  "And I see you can hack into my network," Boyd said with a frown.

  "Oh, you've got good firewalls," the woman said, grinning. "And your server people are solid. But I'm not just a human body or an AID. I'm running with a mass of nannites. And while I'd have a hard time coming in from the outside, your computer's right there. It's always chattering to itself. It's like trying to tell me not to listen to a conversation going on right in front of me."

  "Oh," Boyd said, clicking his old-fashioned mouse. He'd gotten used to computers at a very late age for such but never really gotten beyond the old mouse, keyboard and monitor I/O methods. A holographic projector popped up and he accessed his mail. "Which one?"

  "Priority message from Fleet Strike headquarters," Daisy said. "Subject: Request for an interview."

  "What's it say?" Jeff asked. "If you don't mind me asking. I mean, I can't exactly ignore the conversation."

  "I'm ordered to go to Fleet Strike headquarters immediately," Boyd said, frowning. "It's very politely worded, as if it were a request, but that's the bottom line. The commander of Fleet Strike wants me to interview for a position quote 'associated with war materials production on the galactic level' unquote."

  "You heard about the mutiny," Daisy said.

  "It's been all over the news," Boyd replied. "Along with this supposed new invasion that stopped it."

  "No supposed about it," Daisy said. "I've been accessing both the regular news and the AID network. The Darhel are scared. They're basic
ally giving Fleet Strike everything it ever wanted. Including clean AIDs and more control over production. Mike O'Neal wants you to head up a production board. You want the subtext?"

  "You have the subtext?" Boyd asked.

  "The Darhel have already seen the writing on the wall," Daisy said, looking at the far wall. "O'Neal's pressing for industrialization of the Indowy. Get them industrialized processes and the price of goods falls. If the price of goods falls, the basis for Darhel credit control gets really weak. More open banking will change it even more. Last but not least, the Darhel owe humans more money than they have in ready cash. They're not going to hand it over, but O'Neal's put in a suit to the Aldenata asking for the right, on demand, to immediate payment in full of his share. Which is sizeable. Paying it will bankrupt every Darhel clan, more or less immediately. They're squeezed three different ways, the invasion, industrialization of the Indowy and the fact that they've been screwing humans over on full payment. There's big pow-wows going on about how they're going to get out of the bind they're in. Mike wants to make sure that you're onboard with ramrodding the industrialization effort, that you cut off that escape path. He's been told you're a go-to guy for screwing the Darhel. At least that's the analysis of the Darhel. So I'd suggest you screen your movement security really well."