by Lee Bond
He’d tried ignoring the dreams by pretending they didn’t exist. All that did was make things severely worse. Which was why he’d come to Tenerek; to visit Gary Poorfowl, the only man he knew who sold ships and who owed him a massive favor.
“So what … what did you invent?” Marius asked. Tales of Debt Accrual to any of the Big Three were few and far between. Such stories usually ended with the grandchildren of the original Debtor making the final payment. If they were lucky. The cop didn’t think he’d ever heard of someone even getting close in his or her own lifetime, much less actually accomplishing the task.
Garth tapped the side of his nose. “Classified. If I told you, I’d have to blow up the planet.” He turned his attention back to the Q-Comm when Politoyov returned. As expected, the old Commander’s tune had changed. Irritation did not sit well in the man’s bristling yellow eyes. “Well?”
“It … it appears as though you are correct.” Politoyov admitted hesitantly. “Release papers from Tynedale/Fujihara and approved by Trinity were sent to my offices ten minutes ago. You … you are … free.” The words rolled off the Commander’s tongue rife with distaste and a sort of droll disgust.
Garth nodded, all self-satisfaction and smugness personified. “Told you so. Now tell these guys to let me go.”
“Not just yet, Captain.” A brief smile flickered across Politoyov’s lips. It was rare to have the indomitable Garth Nickels thusly captured. Granted, the man sat where he was out of curiosity and nothing else, but still. Until or unless he got bored and broke out, it was evident Garth was willing to stay put.
“What is it, Commander?” Garth wanted to apologize to Mary, but there was no way to do it discreetly; the Police Chief was most assuredly going to hear classified Intel. The poor guy wasn’t looking at a few hours of interrogation and debriefing. He was looking at weeks, if not months being harangued by SpecSer operatives.
“You and I both know that you are not … normal, Garth.” Politoyov grinned toothily at Garth’s bark of laughter. “The … changes you’ve undergone since being deposited unwillingly under my command are … unheard of.”
Garth nodded at that; he remembered the man he used to be with something akin to fondness. That was long ago, though. A decade of service to Special Services had wrought incremental changes so profound that he was barely even human any more.
The Commander for Special Services continued. “You are … unique. Trinity no doubt regrets allowing you to fulfill your contractual obligations to Tynedale/Fujihara through our offices, especially in light of the … of your abilities, but hindsight is and always will be 20-20. As a free citizen within Trinityspace, you are, of course, free to go where you would and do as you wish. So long as you stay within the confines of legitimacy, no one and no thing can say otherwise. You and I both know Trinity won’t do anything to prevent you from living your own life, son. But as who you are, though … I cannot see living a ‘normal’ life being … possible.”
“Oh?” Garth tried to keep his voice light and failed. Politoyov’s point was already clear. The things he’d done –more or less against his will but willingly just the same- in Trinity’s name were … awful. Wars and death and destruction wrought upon the unallied and potentially dangerous augmented and weird Human systems on the other side of The Cordon, all so Trinity’s humans would have new homes to go to… it changed you. Had changed him.
For a while there, he’d been Darkness Incarnate. That was what Politoyov was dancing around; as a Heavy Elite, he and his preposterously augmented cyborg teammates had hammered whole solar systems into the ground, carving deep swathes of destruction against the lurid backdrop of the Universe. They’d targeted systems and peoples –human and Offworld- too powerful, too indomitable, too strange to fit easily into Trinity’s cookie cutter definition of Humanity and slaughtered them.
They’d been good at their jobs. Too good. That kind of power … it’d changed him. It was why he’d switched out, begged to be given light duties literally the moment he’d been rescued from being marooned.
“You are larger than life, Captain. You always have been.” Politoyov sighed. “The excesses you’ve become used to, even with regular SpecSer soldiers and operatives, are greater than normal people are capable of surviving. Do you honestly believe you’ll be able to land on a planet and buy a house or a stretch of land and pretend you didn’t do all the things you did? Do you for one moment think anything approaching a normal life is something a man like you can have? Your strength, your speed, your …”
“Violent tendencies.” Garth supplied the words bleakly. Everything Politoyov was saying was true. He wasn’t as bad as he used to be, though. He’d vented a lot of rage and frustration on the hardy animal livestock on that unnamed planet. A lot. He was pretty sure if any species on that world made it to true cognitive sentience, he’d figure prominently in their oral History of the Time of Darkness.
That solitude and that … blowing off of pressure had helped. Being alone while he hunted the Universe for a ship that might not even exist would help even more. Garth wanted to tell the Commander what he was doing, but couldn’t; Old Man Politoyov was an honorable man and he’d file a report with Trinity reps about what he learned.
Garth couldn’t allow Trinity to become involved in his quest. The less he had to do with the pan-systemic ruler of all Humankind from now on, the better. A quick look at Police Chief Drove revealed that the chubby Tenerekian had just come to the conclusion that his next few months were going to be completely devoid of entertainment.
Politoyov nodded. “As you like. Regular systems and planets will buckle under your presence, Captain. Sooner or later, it will happen. You may even manage to squeeze out a few years as the quirky but lovable new citizen on some random planet, but eventually, the itch for carnage will start. You’ll find some reason, any reason, to pick up arms. Maybe some pirates will start preying on the merchant vessels, or some maniac will start carving up women. Or maybe you’ll grow bored and become a pirate. Or the maniac. Your psychological profile indicates you could go either way. Or, Trinity forbid, you start inventing things. I cannot imagine Trinity letting that go unmonitored for any length of time.”
Politoyov smiled, slightly curved incisors dimpling his upper lip. “I’d hate to have to send men you once worked with after you.”
Garth thought the idea sounded like a hoot, but he didn’t dare tell Politoyov; the Old Man had no sense of humor and would overreact. The last thing he wanted was to have half of SpecSer chasing him around the Universe. Being hunted would make his long-term goals of not going crazy difficult in the extreme. “Wish I could, Commander, but there’s something I gotta do.”
Politoyov wondered what a man who’d spent the bulk of his new life in the service of Special Services could possibly have to do, especially when the world into which he’d been brought was wilder, stranger, and infinitely vaster than the one he’d left behind. It was clear nothing was going to change Garth’s mind. Realistically, there was nothing he could do at all. Garth Nickels was a free citizen of the Trinityspace, awe-inspiring talents for destruction, mayhem and war notwithstanding.
The Trinity AI would –in Garth’s own words- lose It’s shit if he even tried to prevent the man from enjoying his freedoms.
Politoyov just hoped Garth didn’t destroy too much of whatever system he set up shop in, else even SpecSer wouldn’t be able to hide the man. Trinity would send in the Enforcers, and that would be that. “I understand, Garth.”
“Thanks, sir. I was hoping so.”
Marius released a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.
“Where are you headed?” Politoyov wondered idly.
Garth wrinkled his nose at that; the only thing he had was a series of coordinates thirty thousand years out of date, coordinates that might be nothing more than a dream. Completely useless data by itself, which was why he’d spent hundreds of thousands of Trinity dollars on a craft outfitted with a level 8 AI. He had high h
opes for the costly intelligence’s ability to alter that useless info into something workable. “I don’t know, sir, I really don’t. And I don’t think I’d tell you if I did. No offense.”
Politoyov grunted unhappily before ending the Q-Comm.
Garth held his shackles up and waited until Marius was paying attention. With a quick snap of the wrists, the cuffs broke and fell to the ground in a clatter of broken links. “So. No new jacket, hey?"
Marius shook his head wearily. “No, Garth, no new jacket.” The Police Chief wanted to weep. “Why did you pick Tenerek, Captain?”
“The last time I was here, I spared Gary Badchicken the chopping block because he sells spaceships.” Garth answered as he moved for the door. “One of the ships he had has a level 8 artificial intelligence. Even back then, I knew no one on this planet would spend the money for a second-hand ship that costs a half a million bucks. Anyone who could afford it would go new. And for what I’m planning, I need a ship that smart.” Garth paused at the door. “I’m really sorry this happened, Chief. It might not seem like it, but I am. Answer all their questions honestly and truthfully and you’ll be fine. Don’t antagonize them. Promise them that you’ll never mention anything you heard or think you heard while you were in here and I’m confident they’ll only visit once or twice a month for the first few years. Hey, if you’re lucky, they might only swing by once a year. That’s something to look forward to, right?”
“Is it going to be bad?” Marius asked, head on the table.
“SpecSer interrogators aren’t … bad. They’re … exuberant. Well, I gotta go. Have fun.” Garth opened the door and left.
A few minutes later door opened a second time. Marius looked up to tell the officer to leave him alone and one of the bastard fronds from his Hat of Office finally got him square in the eye.
A Few Days Later
Inducted immediately into Special Services shortly after being ‘released’ from Trinity’s custody, Garth had never heard of or even imagined something as intentionally vile as civilian travel routes. As Captain of the Zanzibar Cat -a medium-sized troop transport- the only thing he’d ever needed to do to get from point A to point B was tell his pilot ‘go there, and double quick’. Then they’d all fart around for a few days, kill a bunch of people or blow up some shit and it’d be about-face. Sometimes they’d pause to steal a bunch of crap before heading out, but that was neither here nor there.
As a civilian, though, he was legally required to file a flight path with Trinity. More accurately, he needed to send the flight path off to the nearest data buoy, which would then relay the information to the closest governmental office or outpost, where it would then be examined with the finest-toothed comb in All of Existence. If every ‘T’ was crossed and every ‘I’ dotted, everything was aces high, so long as he obeyed systemic speed limits.
A speed limit in space was a whole other category of horseshit. It wasn’t as if he was going to aim his ship at a planet shouting ‘ramming speed’ or anything.
The whole process was an insult to space travel and unnecessarily expensive because -as he’d quickly learned- filing a bad plan or wasting someone’s time brought penalties. Expensive ones.
“When I,” Garth said to himself as he added another layer of complexity to the data model he was building, “am in charge of the Universe, first thing I do is get rid of local speed limits. It’s space! Hard to hit stuff with all that emptiness being … empty.”
“Owner?” The AI asked, assuming incorrectly –again- that it was being spoken to.
Garth really didn’t care for the AI -or the ship, for that matter- and it showed in how he treated the outrageously priced flying death trap. Nothing more than a converted yacht, the newly rechristened Meadowlark Lemon had spent its previous life as a sex-ship for a horny sybarite. He’d died on Tenerek from a fatally incurable STD, but not until after he’d sold the ship for one last go-round with an equally terminal prostitute. “How many times have I told you that I talk to myself?”
“Four.”
“Well, make this the fifth and final time.” Garth took a sip from a beverage that had been touted to him as ‘the greatest drink on this or any other planet’. It didn’t fall into the ‘revolting’ category by smell alone, oh no; it smelled like ass and tasted like yak piss. “Have you looked over my service record yet?”
“Yes.”
After being directed out of the Tenerek prison and to his ship, a data file of immense size had greeted him. Politoyov -stretching newly found muscles- had located his recently lost Mercenary Captain’s new ship and had directly inserted his colorful service record into the AI’s memory banks.
The intrusion was to prevent him from getting into any undue trouble; according to other rules he’d known nothing about, a legal requirement for anyone no longer employed by any branch of the Trinity Military Complex was complete and full disclosure of that person’s service history. It included the good, the bad, the ugly and the patently maniacal.
In the case of Special Services -whose ops often shot right past the ‘grey’ area of civil service and right into the black- written forms were backed up with hundreds of hours of video footage recorded by helmets, vehicles, BattleSystems and, in more than one case, stolen tapes from nosey local newscasters. All of that was on in Meadowlark Lemon’s AI in full Technicolor glory, available to anyone with the right access codes.
Trinity rightly felt that any ruling planetary body stupid enough to let someone who’d spent their life blowing stuff to Kingdom Come land after reading the exhaustive documentation deserved whatever trouble as came their way. The data was keyed to administrative levels, though, making access a thing of steps; his file would be kicked further and further up the administrative chain until it hit the computer of someone with enough clearance to read more than his name. Theoretically, that alleged person would be smart enough to realize the Antichrist wanted in to their system so he could eat a planet or two and deny him access.
“And?” he demanded when the ship gave no further sign of communication.
“And what, Owner?”
God! Garth had believed BattleSystems to be the least interesting thing in the AI world, but he’d been wrong. Terribly, almost inexcusably wrong.
Civilian artificially intelligent machines were frustrating beyond all reasonable expectations. He’d met sentient sponges on the other side of the Cordon with more intelligence. It was embarrassing. The whole future felt like 1986. It kept calling him ‘Owner’ because he hadn’t bothered to officially identify himself to the appropriate areas of the ‘AI’s’ brain.
“Never mind, you hunk of crap!”
Garth wanted to know where in the great and wonderful domain that was Trinityspace were the sass-talking, wise-cracking cool artificial intelligences. He imagined a paradise of supremely vast intelligences hiding out somewhere laughing their collectively cool asses off at fleshy people having to deal with machine minds so dull you could hear knives a thousand miles away losing their edge.
With an irritated flurry of typing, Garth finished off the data model he’d been working on and loaded it into the AI’s main processor.
“Okay.” He said into the empty cockpit.
One of the ‘happier’ discoveries since taking possession of the Meadowlark Lemon was the astronomical database. While nowhere near as comprehensive as those used by Special Services tacticians, Lemon’s archives had proven more than adequate to kick-start his fledgling vision quest. Working from antiquated and surely no longer accurate coordinates plaguing his sporadic sleep for the last year, Garth had managed to cobble together a number of different but equally viable trajectories for the carbon copy ship.
If there was one and the whole thing happening to his brain wasn’t some form of delayed suspension sickness from suspended. Or from … or from her, messing with his brain. But he’d not felt … her … presence in years, so he was safe.
The trick now was for the AI to do the rest by picking the right spot.
Which it should be able to do, being an 8. According to the brochures and research he’d done, 8’s were smart.
“Tell me where the ship is now, please.” He preened. He was proud of his work.
“Insufficient data.”
“You can’t be serious.” Since the invention of the gizmo two years prior, Garth had learned more than a little bit about AI. Beyond the glaring reality that they all sucked, they were incredibly powerful workhorses. The higher the official rating, the greater their computational capacity. Lemon’s AI was 8 on the scale, which should put it somewhere in the damned-near-omniscient range of machine intellects.
Unless, of course, the same differences separating a civilian’s ability to travel through space from a soldier’s carried through into civilian-owned AI minds.
“Fuck me sideways.” He should’ve known better, right from the start. He should’ve stolen Armageddon Troop One’s prized BattleSystem while everyone else had been looking at all the stuff they’d ‘liberated’ from the bad guys. They’d have figured it out, of course, but a simple ‘lost in the field’ report would’ve taken care of everything. Instead, he’d blown a crapload of money on a futuristic Winnebago and an AI no smarter than the slow kid in fourth grade.
The Universe was a shambles, a great, flaming shambles. How could the Trinity AI allow this kind of moronic non-advancement to continue? Why wasn’t It hurtling Mankind into the vast reaches of the future?
Unwilling to concede defeat, Garth centered his attention on the AI’s revolving happy-face icon. “You know everything there is to know about the ship I’m looking for. I’ve had a gander at the astronomical data you have and it’s as complete as I could possibly hope for. ‘Insufficient data’ my rosy red ass!”
“There is insufficient processing power in this unit to correlate all the data required to track your object over a period of thirty thousand years. Factors remaining unaccounted for range from stellar phenomena to conflicts in all systems relevant to the aforementioned vessel.” The ship paused for a brief moment. “None of this is covered in any great detail in my data banks and without exact specificity I can make no intelligent answer.”
