Argonauts 1: Bug Hunt

by Isaac Hooke

  If I die saving her, then so be it.

  Outside PT, he spent the rest of the day training in the combat room of the corvette, practicing hand-to-hand combat, sniping, and small arms fire with opponents provided by the AI. He had trained with other team members at first, but he couldn’t hold himself back, especially during the hand to hand portions, and the unfortunate individuals had to be taken to sickbay with broken wrists and ankles. Thankfully, the Weaver could heal those immediately. Still, it wasn’t pleasant for the affected Argonauts.

  Eventually, Rade found himself wanting to practice on the real thing once again, so he dismissed the augmented and virtual reality opponents, donned a strength-enhanced exoskeleton, and instead of summoning a human opponent, called upon Harlequin to spar with him.

  But even with the exoskeleton dialed up to the full speed and strength settings, no matter how hard he tried, Rade could never beat the Artificial. He had instructed Harlequin not to hold back, and Rade received his fair share of broken wrists and ankles. One time, Harlequin nearly tore out one of the hardpoints Rade’s exoskeleton was mounted to. That was excruciating. Fortunately, Rade had permanently stationed a Weaver in the combat room by that point, so he was never out of the fight for longer than twenty minutes, even after the hardpoint incident. When the Weaver was done, he had the robot shoot him up with painkillers, then he willed himself back onto the mat once more.

  “Why do you do this to yourself, boss?” Harlequin said at one point, in the middle of a particularly bad fight. “Is it because you want to punish yourself for what happened?”

  Rade had never considered that. He punched at the opening Harlequin presented, and the Artificial snatched his arm, twisting it behind Rade’s back and holding it to near breaking, forcing Rade to his knees. The hardpoints were supposed to improve the speed with which his brain signals reached the extremities of the exoskeleton, but he was still half as fast as Harlequin. Rade tapped out.

  As they reset to their original places on the mat, Rade said. “I train because I need to be ready. Not because I want to punish myself.”

  “Ready?” Harlequin said. “To fight Zoltan, you mean? I, Ms. Bounty, or one of the other combat robots can handle that.”

  Rade didn’t say anything.

  “I know you want to be the one who saves her,” Harlequin said. “But it’s going to be a team effort, you do realize that, don’t you?”

  Rade attacked. Once more, in seconds he was on the mat, with Harlequin pinning him with his arm behind his back. Harlequin released him; Rade gave the Artificial a scowl and reset.

  “I know it will be a team effort,” Rade said. “But I have to feel like I’m doing something to help her. Rather than just sitting around here all day. She’s probably being tortured at this moment. Unspeakable things are being done to her. I can’t allow myself to while away my time. I have to know that I’m doing everything in my power to save her.”

  “I understand,” Harlequin said. “You want to be tortured, too. I merely suggest that there might be more... effective... ways of using your time.”

  “I disagree,” Rade said. “Someday I’m going to have to fight this Artificial, I guarantee you. And I need to be ready.”

  Rade attacked, and once more was beaten down. But he didn’t give up. He refused. It wasn’t in his nature. He kept at it over the next few hours and days.

  Something happened on the third day of sparring with Harlequin. He began to notice the fighting patterns the Artificial employed. When Rade punched, always Harlequin’s arms would move to intercept in a certain way. When he dodged an incoming blow, the Artificial would rebalance and come at him again, always from the lower right.

  And when he saw those patterns, Rade began to find real openings. And he won, occasionally. He worked it up to twenty-five percent of the time.

  “Do all Artificials follow the same combat program?” Rade asked at the end of one session. He was panting. He had been fighting for three hours, and hadn’t won in the past two, despite the pick-me-ups the Weaver had injected him with.

  “Mine is based on version 2.3g of the mixed martial arts protocol all combat robots employ,” Harlequin said. “There is no guarantee that this Zoltan runs the same program.”

  “What are the chances he runs 2.3g?” Rade said.

  “Good, I would say,” Harlequin replied. “2.3g is the latest and most common download among combat robots. I would estimate its distribution at approximately sixty percent. Twenty-five percent run an older variant of 2.3, ten percent run a version of 2.2, while the final five percent run something else entirely. Still, even if Zoltan has the same program, consider for a moment: you are only able to defeat me one time out of four.”

  “But at least I can defeat you,” Rade said. “And that’s something, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose.”

  “If we keep practicing,” Rade said. “Maybe we can increase that ratio to one in every two times.”

  But Rade never got the ratio up beyond one in four.

  Even so, Rade trained. And trained. And trained. A part of him knew that the training was to distract himself from what had happened. Perhaps even to punish himself, as Harlequin had suggested. Because when the time came, he might never even get close enough to touch the Artificial. But he always dismissed those thoughts, and focused on his physical training in the mornings, and his sparring in the afternoons.

  And though he trained to exhaustion to shut out what had happened, sometimes as he lay alone on his bunk during the designated night hours, waiting for the exhaustion to pull him under, his mind wandered.

  Occasionally a strange sense of hope took hold of him, and he told himself that maybe Shaw wasn’t in any danger after all. Maybe she had already rescued herself. She was a strong, resourceful woman after all. Perhaps she had escaped during the customs inspection after passing through the Gate. Though as much as he tried to convince himself of that, he couldn’t believe it.

  Then there was the other extreme his mind sometimes descended to. Shaw was dead, spaced by the Artificial. Or tortured to death. Or transformed into a bioweapon, a creature with tentacles and claws. Rade always roused himself from the depths of despair by convincing himself that Zoltan would want leverage to use against him. Zoltan wouldn’t harm the only prisoner he had who gave him that leverage.

  And yet despite telling himself that she was fine, he could never shake off the sense of guilt. The fact that he had never even told her he loved her ate away at him.

  Sleep would always come, temporarily freeing him from his mental torture. And when morning came, he dove into his physical training with renewed vigor.

  Rade had already lost a lot of weight during the past six weeks, but by the time they reached the Gate, most of the remaining fat he had gained since departing the navy was gone. He was as lean as he had ever been, if not leaner. And definitely at his biggest, in terms of muscle mass.

  He felt as ready as he could possibly be to face what the universe threw at him. Whatever awaited on the other side of that Gate, he would find a way to reunite with Shaw.

  There were no customs vessels on this side of the Gate, but there would be in the neighboring Sino-Korean system.

  “General quarters,” Rade said as they neared the Gate. “I want our Vipers fully charged when we pass through.”

  “Won’t customs detect the charge on our lasers?” Fret asked.

  “Lui assures me the heavy armor of these corvettes will hide the fact,” Rade said. “Right, Lui?”

  “Right,” Lui replied. He didn’t sound as confident as he had earlier.

  The Vipers aboard the corvette were classified as heavy lasers, and had twice the range over the light lasers the Argonaut possessed.

  Rade had told himself he wouldn’t fire on the Argonaut, that it was too dangerous, but the more he considered it, the more he realized there were areas Manic could target that definitely wouldn’t harm the Marauder’s crew. The Vipers concentrated their energy on spot sizes va
rying in radius from five millimeters to five centimeters, depending on range. If aimed properly, a shot on an engine or laser turret would damage only the affected component without breaching the hull. And Rade planned to employ such shots if he needed to. Against the Argonaut, or even the customs vessels themselves. He just hoped Manic and the AI didn’t miss, if it came to it.

  “Vipers are fully charged,” Manic said.

  “Harlequin, take us through the Gate,” Rade said.

  twenty-five

  Rade switched to the view from the external nose camera; when the Tiger passed through the Gate, the visible stars and constellations shifted as the vessel emerged thirty-seven lightyears away in the neighboring Hēiguāng system, thanks to that network of wormholes the race known as the Elder—now believed to be extinct—had threaded throughout that entire region of the galaxy around five hundred thousand years ago.

  “We’re receiving a hail from customs,” Fret said. “We’re to slow down for the security scan.”

  “Do it.” Rade continued his external observations via the nose camera. There were no waiting ships queued to enter the Gate. The customs officials would be bored, having little to do, and eager to hassle them if only to pass the time.

  “Meanwhile,” Rade continued. “I want you to start scanning the profiles of all ships in the system. Find the Argonaut.”

  “What if Zoltan has changed the registry information?” Lui said.

  “Then scan for the heat signature of Marauder class vessels,” Rade said. “There won’t be many of them in this region of space.”

  Rade watched the black triangular shapes of the corvettes approach. He had already discussed various strategies for successfully passing customs with his crew. There was no point trying to change the registry information of the vessel, especially not out there on the frontier of known space. The Gate officials would have kept track of all corvettes entering and leaving the system, and would have known that there were only two such ship classes in the neighboring Hóuzi Hǎi system. His best bet was to pretend to be a member of the Persian crew that had flown the craft originally. Earlier, Rade had Farhad transmit the old crew manifest, along with video and biometric data of the captain, since the Tiger’s own database had been wiped. With that information, TJ and the Tiger’s AI had been able to construct a three-dimensional avatar of the original captain.

  The SK vessels pulled alongside and matched speed.

  “They’re tapping in,” Fret said. “Requesting holographic mode.”

  “Connect,” Rade said, dismissing the external camera viewpoint.

  The stern-faced SK official appeared in the center of the stations forming the Sphinx. He wore a powder blue dress shirt with gold buttons, and black and gold chevrons on the shoulders. On his head was a black cap fronted by the red star-golden laurel wreath symbol of the SK government.

  The avatar of the Persian captain prepared by TJ and Zahir would in turn be projected to the customs officer; with Zahir’s help, it would reflect Rade’s movements in realtime. Zahir would also translate his words into Persian before transmitting them to the customs warships, and change the mouth movements to match; that way the AIs would detect the language as Persian, as expected, before translating it into Sino-Korean.

  “Back so soon, Captain Ahmed?” the customs official said, sounding suspicious.

  “Good evening,” Rade said. “We’re on our way to Gilgamesh system to collect more colonists.”

  According to the manifest, that was where the crew had originally come from.

  “Transmit your crew manifest,” the official said.

  Rade glanced at Fret. “Do it.”

  Fret would be sending the old crew manifest, of course.

  The customs official’s eyes defocused as if reading the list. Then his face turned sour. “You are to halt immediately and prepare to be boarded.”

  Rade frowned. He muted the connection for a moment. “What the hell happened? Zahir, did you mess up the manifest?”

  “No,” Zahir said.

  “What about the three-dimensional avatar? The Persian translation of my words?”

  “The translation was exact, and the avatar synced perfectly,” Zahir said.

  “Then what the hell happened?”

  “Zoltan must have done something,” Tahoe said. “Either he paid off customs to search us no matter what, or somehow deceived them.”

  Rade unmuted the connection and decided to attempt a trick he had once witnessed another captain use at a Gate crossing, back in his old MOTH days.

  “So, uh, look at this,” Rade transmitted. “There seems to be an extra one million won just sitting around in our bank account. I wonder, do you know of anybody who could put it to use? Maybe we could contribute it to the customs officials who protect the borders of the Great Empire. What do you think?”

  The official stared at Rade stonily for several seconds. Then: “Transmitting account information.”

  Rade exhaled softly, muted the connection, and glanced at Fret. “Did you get it?”

  “I did.”

  “Send the information to Tahoe,” Rade said.

  “Are you sure we can afford this?” Tahoe said.

  “Ms. Bounty has promised to reimburse us for any expenses,” Rade said.

  “But I doubt even her purse is bottomless,” Tahoe said. “A million won is the price of a good used mech.”

  “I know, Tahoe,” Rade told him. “Just do it.”

  Tahoe sighed. “As you wish.” He paused. “Done.”

  Rade glanced at the official. “We have transferred the funds. May you bask in the glory of the Paramount Leader forever.”

  “And you as well.” The official smirked. “Now halt, and prepare to be boarded for inspection.”

  “Damn it,” Rade said. “You betrayed us.”

  “If you do not halt,” the official said. “We will open fire.”

  “At least tell us why? What have we done wrong?”

  “Three of your crew profiles were already present in the manifest of a trade vessel that emerged from Hóuzi Hǎi four days ago,” the official said.

  Ah. So that was his enemy’s stratagem.

  Damn it. I should have considered that.

  “The previous vessel lied on their manifest,” Rade said.

  “If that is the case,” the official said. “A warrant will be issued for their capture and arrest. They will be detained at the next station or Gate they visit. In the meantime, we will board your vessel to confirm your actual crew and cargo match what is listed on the manifest. And if it is found that your crew does not match, and you are not the legal owners of this vessel, your ship will be impounded and you will be detained for piracy. The penalty for piracy in Sino-Korean space is death.”

  Rade terminated the connection and the hologram vanished. He tapped in Ms. Bounty, who was in her quarters. “You’re aware that customs wants to board us?”

  “I am,” she replied. “I’ve been monitoring the situation closely.”

  “Tell me you can use the vast resources and contacts of your company to get us out of this,” Rade said.

  “I’m already working on it,” she replied. “Unfortunately, due to the relatively slow speed of the InterGalNet, and the bureaucracy that is the Sino-Korean government, I won’t have us cleared for two or three days.”

  “That’s two or three days for our enemy to get away,” Rade said. With Shaw.

  “I know,” Ms. Bounty replied. “If you have any other ideas, I’m open to them.”

  Rade stared at the black vessels on the external feed. He was no longer aboard the Argonaut. The Tiger was a real warship. Not the strongest, certainly, but essentially the same class as the two customs ships. He could do things he would have never even considered when he only had the Argonaut.

  “I have a few ideas, yes,” Rade said. He shared what he had planned.

  “Mm,” Ms. Bounty said. “I’m not sure that’s the best idea.”

  “It’ll save u
s the trouble of detention,” Rade said. “Can you clear our name afterward, or not?”

  “Only if we are successful in capturing the prisoner,” Ms. Bounty said.

  “We’ll capture him.” Rade closed the connection.

  “Found her,” Lui said.

  Rade glance at Lui. “The Argonaut?”

  Lui nodded. “She’s three hours away from Chungshan station, a scientific research facility with a crew of fifteen. Looks like she’s going to dock.”

  Rade glanced at his tactical map.

  Chungshan Station was located in orbit around the terraformed moon of a nearby ice giant, Guangdong. The population of the moon, called Guangdong IV, was two million. The ice giant was stationed near the outskirts of the system. There were another three giants further into the system, along with three terrestrial planets orbiting the barycenter of two binary stars. A third star orbited some distance beyond Guangdong, with a highly elliptical orbit that precluded any of its own planets, according to the tactical display.

  “Are there any other bases, stations or depots along the way that the Argonaut could have stopped at already?” Rade asked.

  “No,” Lui said.

  “And we’re not detecting any of its Dragonfly shuttles out there in the system?” Rade said.

  “We’re not,” Lui said.

  Rade leaned forward, studying the tactical display. “So it’s likely they’re both still aboard.”

  “The official wants to know when we’re going to halt for the boarding process,” Fret said.

  “Tell him momentarily,” Rade said. “Lui, if we set a course to that moon, how long would it take to arrive?”

  “Three and a half days at the maximum speed of the Tiger,” Lui said.

  Rade nodded. “What sort of defenses does that moon have?”

  “Surprisingly few,” Lui said. “There’s a military base on the surface, but currently no warships in orbit. It looks like the system navy has dispatched most vessels closer to the binary suns for some sort of training exercise.”

  “Lucky for us,” Manic said. “If you’re planning what I think you’re planning.”