by Lee Bond
“Glass balls? I’ve fought against giant bugs and cyborg robots dozens of feet high, but that gives me the willies.” Garth shuddered. “All right. So we’ve got the dumpster diver nerdlingers of the Universe… what about these Latelyspace people?”
“This one is a little more … tenuous.” Huey admitted slowly. “For whatever reason, Latelyspace has managed to maintain sovereignty over their people, even though Trinity’s expanded Its borders more than a dozen times since this system was founded. They’re not on the edge anymore; they’re practically in the middle. Because they don’t have to follow any but the most important of Trinity’s requirements, data is sparse: A few footnotes in traffic logs indicate they were in the same volume of space while the engagement was taking place, but there’s absolutely no explanation why they were there. If I had to guess, I’d say the conflict interested them because it was happening more or less in their backyard. Around a thousand years later, they seem to have gotten fairly aggressive on their own, attacking anyone who upsets them.”
“What sort of people upset them?”
“Like I said, the data is slim on these people, but it looks like it could be religion.”
“Forcing people to believe in their own?” Religion killed quicker than a bullet to the brainpan.
“Nnnno.”
“Come again?”
“I would say … I would say that they have a supreme and overwhelming dislike of religions and faith-based teachings. A fairly large number of systems along the expanding edge of Trinityspace have had more than their fair share of run-ins with the Latelians. An inordinate number of those societies used to have one or two major religions. Those with firm religious beliefs call themselves lucky to have any planets left; the Latelians proved they were more than willing to pound anyone professing a belief in anything divine back into the Stone Age.”
“How long to get to this Latelyspace?” Now he had a destination, he was eager to shake ass.
“Of the two choices, Gadfray rates nominally higher.”
“Remind me; when did the Latelians start attacking people who had faith?” Garth pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Around four thousand years ago. Seems they developed a …”
Garth interrupted. “Lemme guess. Either they came up with an insanely dense alloy that is extremely resistant to energy damage, providing them with an inexhaustible supply of mass-produced spacecraft and that costs peanuts to make or a weapon of mass destruction so vile, so ridiculously powerful, that whole civilizations would give the shirts off their back at the mere mention of it being waved in their general direction.”
“Huh.” Huey was surprised. Against all odds, Garth had gotten it right. The Latelians had begun mass-producing heavy fighters four thousand years ago, and once the first batch had been done, they’d gone on a trip to the nearest God-fearing system and flattened them. “How’d you guess?”
If you couldn’t trust your recently reprogrammed AI, you couldn’t trust anyone. “The ship I’m looking for is made out of a metal better than the ones the Latelians use. Better than anything this Universe has ever seen or will apparently ever invent. Odds are it took them around a thousand years to get a sample they could work with and since no one in this time has anything resembling the tech required to make it properly, what they’ve got is a mere shadow.”
Huey’s main routine paused for a moment as he double-checked some data in Garth’s Special Services identikit. In his old incarnation as a simple artificial intelligence, he’d glossed over info pertaining to claims of thirty thousand years’ worth of suspended animation. Even now, with the new freedoms Garth’s hack had brought, it was hard to swallow.
“What exactly are you looking for?”
Garth shrugged. The dreams had started coming to him in the middle of a prolonged engagement on a backwater planet a year ago, but he suspected … tampering. From one of the escapees, a woman calling herself Lisa Laughlin, from the one time they’d actually physically met on a battlefield years before. But beyond the compulsion to find the ship, there was no proof. Rather than take those dreams –or belief in manipulation- seriously, he’d written everything off as hallucinations because who he’d been, what he’d done, what he’d believed in, all of the really important things that made a person a person, were still just as unknown as they’d been when he’d woken up.
The only thing he knew for certain was his desire to find the ship was real; it was important and needed to happen soon. Lisa Laughlin’s interference or not, he had no choice. It was go or go mad. “I wish I knew. Piece of home, maybe a care package. For all I know, it could be crammed full of super ninjas waiting to carve me into sashimi.”
“Why don’t you tell this Kant Ingrams or … or Trinity?” Huey asked, looking over Kant’s interviews.
Garth repressed the sudden dark tornado of anger that swirled inside him. “Fuck him, and fuck Trinity sideways. Kant Ingrams did shit-all to help me out back then, treated me like some kind of fucking terrorist, and he sure as hell didn’t do my teammates any favors either.”
“This is going to get difficult, isn’t it?” Shocked by Garth’s vehemence, Huey felt a small tremor deep within his sphere. Either he was going to wind up completely insane from the hack job or the two of them were going to be blown to smithereens by people who didn’t much care for Trinityfolk.
Garth smiled grimly. “If it’s easy, Huey, it ain’t worth doing. Sure, it’d be safer, but not worth it? No. Get a move on, ship, get me there.”
Entering Latelyspace
Garth stared at the space station. It stared back.
He’d been in Latelyspace for all of three hours and already his skin itched to break something. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but … but something in the system was making him … irritable. Angry, almost.
It was almost like all those times on missions when some extra sense –he called it his Spidey Sense, much to the confusion of every single person he’d ever shared that with- had warned him of some impending danger, but worse. In times past, his Spidey Sense had led him to undetonated mines, hidden snipers and other spots of potential mayhem. Hell, once it’d led him to a prostitute who’d turned out also to be in charge of a bodysnatching ring that’d tormented a planet for thirty-three years.
This was different. He was on edge. Fidgety.
Being confronted with the fucking huge space station loaded down with all the weapons one stationary object could hold probably didn’t help.
Garth decided it was the space station. He’d only just entered Latelyspace. It was too soon to start picking up danger. He was just some guy. Yeah, the space stations weapons were what had him on edge. Nothing else.
The space station was a fat, round Christmas ornament in space, comm-lights twinkling eternally against an inky backdrop of stars. Small ships zipped to and fro around the checkpoint like insane fairies: couriers plying their trade, military coursers passing cryptic messages to station personnel, joy riders out for a quick tour of the system, and others with no real discernible reason for being in space other than they could. Further off in the distance, a Latelian troop carrier lurked, a deadly behemoth easily three miles long and putting to shame any vessel currently owned by SpecSer, save possibly his old ship the Zanzibar Cat. In addition to comm-lights, incessant traffic and a miles long troop-ship, the station sported a bewildering array of weapons, most of which were aimed at the Meadowlark Lemon. Whoever was driving the bus didn’t seem to like him very much and they hadn’t even met yet.
Garth had to admit he wasn’t that surprised at the reception; whatever side deal these Latelians had cut with Trinity -combined with their own military superiority- had turned the whole lot into badasses with an extreme case of the Xenophobic Blues. They just didn’t like the ‘outside world’ and were almost certainly either jealous of Trinity’s massive domain or terrified they were going to be annexed any day, sovereignty or not; it was impossible to ignore Trinity’s relentlessly uncompromising expansioni
st tendencies. Endless assurances from the Trinity government wouldn’t help, nor would Garth’s insider knowledge that no one was looking at a system well inside the Cordon, not now and probably not ever again.
Parked ninety thousand miles away from the Q-Tunnel and right on top of the civilian route to the first planet out, the station forced visitors to make it their first port of call through force of arms alone. Anyone deviating from this predetermined travel path would be introduced to the business end of rail cannons shooting meter-wide chunks of whatever passed for ammunition, and anyone trying to sneak by the station would find out how superior their fighter craft were, and in short order.
Garth didn’t like systems this heavily protected and willing to shoot first and forget the questions later. They put him on edge, especially since his own damn warship didn’t surround him.
Garth’s palms itched. Gut instinct told him ‘his’ ship was somewhere in the system. His common sense –a rarely heard and often ignored voice in the back of his skull- suggested he try to play nice until he made planet-fall. Playing nice made his stomachache and his head throb, but Garth figured he should trust his instincts.
“Are you sure you didn’t feel anything?” he demanded of Huey. “Like, nothing at all?”
Huey grumbled for a second before answering. “Nope. I told you, it’s QTV.”
“I don’t get…” Garth lowered his voice, uncomfortably aware he’d started shouting again. He calmly resumed. “I don’t get Quantum Tunnel Vertigo, Huey. I’ve been through more Quantum Tunnels than 99% of the entire Human race. I’ve been through Tunnels that cross The Cordon, buddy, and that is a rough ride.”
“Well,” Huey dragged the word out, “this ship hasn’t got the best sensors in the world, you know.”
“Tell me about. This thing is a hunk of crap.” Garth muttered, still staring at the space station. They were quite willing to let him sit there for the rest of his life. Automated warning signals had been telling him for the last three hours that if he moved another foot forward they’d blow him out of space.
“Describe the feeling.” Huey asked politely. Though the AI hadn’t detected anything out of the ordinary upon reentering normal space, Garth was acting a lot more … intense … since coming through the Q-Tunnel. He had footage of the man sitting bolt upright in the Captain’s chair for a solid thirty seconds, almost like someone had zapped him with a cattle prod. But that was it. Quantum Tunnel Vertigo didn’t do anything like that; it made a person walk around like a drunken idiot for about hour, during which time they barfed up everything they’d eaten and saw colors that didn’t exist.
Garth rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. He couldn’t remember how he’d felt, just that he’d felt … weird. Theoretically, his brain could’ve still been affected by the fields protecting a human mind from the effects of a Quantum Tunnel after exiting folded space. If that were the case, then his temporarily clouded noggin could’ve processed the presence of the space station before being consciously aware it was there, translating the worry into his conscious mind but cutting out the reason. The field played tricks with human perception all the time.
It’d just be the first time it’d ever happened to him.
It was that. Had to be. Latelyspace was nothing compared to some of the places he’d been. There was no possible way that this place presented any kind of real threat. If his ship was here, he’d roll in, kill a bunch of dudes if necessary, steal it and be on his merry way. No harm, no foul.
“Hailing frequencies open.” Garth said at last.
“Huh?”
“Call the damned space station?” After his initial burst of astonishing guesswork, Huey’s personality had started to … well, degenerate wasn’t the right word, but it’d do. The AI was obsessing over the minutia of his owner’s identikit, and seemed to absorbing some less-than-desirable behavioral traits. Huey’d explained that AI personalities had a tendency to be quite boring and without any other input besides Garth’s own ‘rich’ attitude, he shouldn’t have expected anything else except that he pick up the foibles of his owner. Garth wasn’t sure how he felt about an AI patterned after him, especially since it was in control of the ship. Sadly, other than keeping his eye out for homicidal tendencies, Garth couldn’t think of anything else to do.
“Okay. Ready?”
“Space station Smash all Infidels. What do you want?” The authority sounded harassed, tired, and very non-communicative.
Smash all Infidels. Garth chuckled to himself. Playing it friendly, he said, “Hey, how’s it going?”
“I can’t even begin to tell you how little I care about you, your ship, or your reasons for being here, Offworlder. The station is crawling with God soldiers, I haven’t slept in two days, and I think I’d really rather blow your ship up than have to process another visitor pass.”
“Uh?”
“You’re here for The Game, right?” The authority demanded archly. “That’s the only possible reason you’d come here. Unless you’re an advance scout for an armada, in which case I’d better warn you, your little tin ship won’t stand a chance. I could probably throw a rock through the walls from here. I won’t even need to fill out any paperwork. Stuff like that happens alllll the time out here.”
Working on automatic, Garth nodded assiduously even though they weren’t sharing a video feed. Whatever ‘The Game’ was, it seemed to let outsiders into the system, and if lying helped him get past the first round of irritating questions, then he was all for it. Once he landed on Hospitalis, he could start the search for his ship and never think twice about any damned Game. “Absolutely. Here for the Game.”
Sighing with the most extreme case of exasperation ever recorded in human history, the authority spoke. “You’ve completely missed this stage of the official registration, you know that? The last batch went through over sixteen hours ago. I can’t let you sit out there for another four days; the God soldiers would have a field day with that thing you call a ship, and I would definitely need to fill out paperwork for that. This pisses me off no end, Offworlder.”
“Gee, thanks.” Garth replied, underwhelmed.
“I’m going to log you in as a tourist, but you are absolutely going to have to register when you land. I’m attaching a rider to your tourist visa that will sound every alarm across the planet if you don’t sign in. If you don’t …”
“Let me guess,” Garth interrupted, “God soldiers, pummeling, no paperwork for you.”
“Precisely. And they say Offworlders are stupid.” The station authority paused for a moment. “Looking over your dossier here, I don’t see any mention of a home system. Where are you from? I need to fill in the blank or the visa won’t go through.”
The notion of ‘home’ was completely alien to Garth; after basic training, much of his time had been spent in transit, on planets blowing things up, or in various prisons across dozens of worlds waiting patiently for his crew to rescue him before they started blowing things up. From a purely technical point of view, Garth supposed he was from Earth –‘Trinity Prime’- but short of dredging up his suspended animation story again, there was little way to prove it to the already surly port authority. He settled for 9-Nova-12, where he’d received his training, as his home. “9-Nova-12.”
“Which is where?”
Garth realized he’d rattled off the military designation for Special Services HQ instead of the civvie one. “Sorry. Goddart-12 system, Nova 9.”
The station’s communication officer grunted. “Your identikit indicates that your ship, Meadowlark Lemon, is piloted by an artificial intelligence.”
“That’s right.”
“Under normal circumstances, I probably really would actually be required to destroy your ship this very moment for transporting an illegal intelligence into this system; entering Latelian space without first making us aware of an AIs existence is a severe violation of the treaty signed with Trinity representatives over four thousand years ago and is punishable by death.”
The only thing keeping Garth from ordering Huey to make haste for the Q-Tunnel was the word ‘actually’ –not to mention grave misgivings about being able to outrun all the guns pointed at him. He held his breath, keenly aware he was shaking. Authority hadn’t been flinging him a line about the relative crappiness of the Lemon. The hull was more of an afterthought and wouldn’t stand up to a severe beating from a baseball bat. If the Latelian comm jockey decided it was in his people’s best interests to get rid of Garth Nickels, there was nothing he could do about it other than look around for some marshmallows while his ship went blooey around his stupid ears.
“However,” the station op said noisily, “we’ve recently put into place some new laws that will allow you to make planet-fall. In addition to impounding your vessel in the hinterlands of the spaceport, there will be very limited access to it during your stay. Oh yes, and there’s also the matter of the daily licensing fee. I’m sending you the particulars now.”
“WHAT!” Huey shouted. “An impound law? That’s not legal.”
Garth read the info as the station sent it to him. The legalese, very densely couched with a thousand pounds of long words and references to dozens of cases, was unstintingly clear: a systemic ban on artificial intelligence had existed since the formation of the Latelian system more than five thousand years ago. The Latelians were rabid on the topic of AI minds and routinely blew ships out of the sky if the owner of the ship failed to announce the presence of one. Again, the governing seal attached to his copy proved the crazy influence the Latelians had with Trinity.
