by M. D. Cooper
Terrance chuckled at that as he grabbed his briefcase and slid out of the car.
Terrance sent a mental nod as he trudged up the winding, tree-lined walk that led to the address Esther had sent them earlier that day. He laughed out loud as a random thought occurred to him.
Eric hmmed noncommittally.
Terrance sent Eric a mental assent as they rounded the corner and saw the very nondescript entrance that framed their new headquarters.
The doors slid open at their approach, and he and Eric exchanged the warmth of the afternoon sun for the coolness of the building’s interior. As he did so, he noticed his Link reconnect. Where before, his connection had indicated full-strength access to the ring’s public net, now there was an icon indicating he had joined an encrypted network. A different icon, displaying the universal ’you are here’, flashed, and then a virtual dotted line coalesced, leading to where the rest of the team awaited them.
“Looks like Enfield Holdings will fit in well here,” Terrance mused as he dropped a pin, highlighting a regional hospital with round-the-clock traffic that occupied a good third of the office park. “Smart move; that’ll keep any odd-hour departures we might have from being noticed. We should be able to blend in nicely.”
He nodded as he paused outside a doorway that led to a conference room. Inside, Terrance spied Shannon and Gladys seated at the table across from Vice-Marshal Esther. As they crossed the threshold into the room, a tall, distinguished-looking man with military bearing appeared beside him.
Eric’s sudden appearance meant they had just transitioned into an expanse. Today’s expanse was courtesy of Esther.
Terrance clapped Eric on the shoulder just because he could, enjoying the physical connection he didn’t often get to experience. The AI slid him a look out of the side of his eyes.
I wonder if it bothers him when I do that, Terrance mused, and resolved to ask Eric later.
He waved to Gladys and favored Shannon with a smile, sending brief nods to the two visitors whom Esther had also invited to this meeting.
Niki and Frida were the first two AIs Phantom Blade had freed from slavery, he recalled. Where Niki had a haunted air about her, Frida looked tough and a little bit angry. She was dressed in a studded black leather vest, her hands were clad in leather half-gloves, and her hair was short, spiky, and pitch black. Dark eyeliner ringed equally dark eyes, completing the hard-edged look.
As he took a seat, he nodded to Frida and Niki, sitting on either side of the silver-and-teal hacker.
“Hello, Niki. How are you doing, Frida?” he asked kindly. Niki bobbed her head spasmodically, while Frida sent him a sullen half-shrug.
“I’ve been better,” Frida replied sourly, then reluctantly nodded. “But…thanks for asking. And thank you again, for coming to our rescue.”
Esther stood as they all sat, and then nodded to the AIs they had rescued. “I asked Frida and Niki to join us because they both have expressed a desire to assist with the recovery of the nine remaining kidnap victims. And, to be frank, we are going to need their help.”
The vice-marshal activated a holo tank in the center of the table, and nine avatars rose to hover, each tagged with a name. With a wave of her hand, seven of the AIs slid under an icon that represented El Dorado’s sister system, Proxima Centauri.
Two remained untagged.
“We received another ping this morning, a follow-up report on the missing persons bulletins Proxima sent us a few days ago.”
Esther tapped the icon, and it grew and expanded, forming into a 3D representation of the Proxima Centauri system. She highlighted the main habitat, known simply as the C-47. A line indicated the habitat was in a polar orbit, circling the fixed day-night terminator of the red dwarf’s single, tidally-locked planet, Chinquapin.
Esther spread the fingers of one hand, and the holo zoomed in on the habitat. “As you know, we have intel from two separate sources on a cargo ship that berthed at the C-47 about three weeks ago. According to one of the sources, it had recently returned from El Dorado, and some of the ship’s complement were overheard bragging about the unusual cargo they had lucked into.”
The AI waved the holo off, leaning forward over the table.
“Cargo they said their captain paid far too much for, but was worth it because ‘Who got to own AIs anymore?’.”
Terrance saw Frida’s face morph into a fierce scowl at Esther’s words. Shannon’s silver eyes narrowed in reaction, and silvery hair that had been wafting in a nonexistent breeze now flattened around her skull, its sudden cessation testament to the AI’s anger.
“This morning’s message included additional details on the destinations of cargo offloaded from this ship.”
As she spoke, the vice-marshal turned the holo back on, and they were staring once again at the 3D representation of the Proxima system. Esther tapped again, and the holo zoomed in to a spot halfway between the habitat and the system’s cool dust belt, about a third of an AU rimward of the C-47.
“We know Tolgoy Mining has received shipments from the cargo ship in question. It’s been tagged as a high-probability destination for one, possibly two of the seven AIs.” She pinched the holo, and the image shrank back to encompass everything within Proxima’s heliopause. “We’re still working to identify where the other five might have been sent, and we plan to update you while you’re en route.”
Esther swept a glance over everyone assembled. “And we continue to receive data that supports our assumption that our final two are bound for Tau Ceti.”
The vice-marshal leaned back, crossed her arms and frowned. “I will tell you now that questions have been raised on the house floor about spending Kentaurus resources on a destination that far away.”
“What? As if they can put a price tag on a life?” Frida’s voice, cold and hard, cut into the silence.
Esther speared Eric and Terrance with a glance and then narrowed her gaze on the black-haired AI.
“No one is saying anything of the sort,” the vice-marshal replied firmly. “And the prime minister assured them that the expenditure would be jointly funded from a mix of government and private funds—funds, he was quick to point out, that would be underwritten in part by properties seized by the criminal organization that kidnapped you in the first place.”
Frida’s eyes glowed with fierce satisfaction at that last bit of information. “So, when do we leave?” she asked.
Esther glanced once more at Eric and, with a nod, ceded the floor to him.
“Well, it so happens that we’ve recently come into possession of a starship—” the commodore began.
“The loan of a starship,” Esther corrected mildly.
“—and we were given permission to
use it to retrieve our lost AIs,” Eric finished, ignoring Esther’s interjection. “That’s why Shannon sat out the Krait op; she’s been working to outfit the ship with the latest tech from Enfield.”
“And what would that be?” Gladys asked, leaning forward at the mention of new tech toys. The movement caused her hair to fall forward, and she flipped it back, releasing a cloud of glitter that Shannon irritably waved away with both hands.
“Well, for you, nothing,” Shannon said severely, scrunching her face up as she spat glitter from her mouth. “And quit shedding.”
Gladys narrowed an eye at her and Shannon shook a finger as she glared back. “Don’t give me that look,” the engineer continued. “I’m not letting you gum up any of my systems. I’ve seen what you do to things, you know.”
“Those systems needed gumming up,” Gladys sniffed. “I don’t damage anything of ours.”
Niki looked on a bit bemusedly at this exchange, her head tracking between the two AIs as she observed their interaction.
“Well, for one,” Terrance jumped in, his voice perhaps a bit louder than he’d intended in an effort to keep Shannon from shooting off a rejoinder, “we’ve begun cladding the ship in Elastene. We’re also working to install some of our new MFRs with the LMP cores, although they’re just out of acceptance testing over at Enfield Dynamics, so that might be a bit of a stretch.”
Terrance grinned at Gladys’s captivated expression. The AI looked fit to burst with curiosity about what his cryptic words might possibly mean.
She turned to Ben now, and with a wink, said, “Hey, super spy, wanna translate that for us?”
As the lone member of Phantom Blade ostensibly employed by El Dorado’s Intelligence Service, Ben did indeed qualify as an alphabet agency alum. Of course, private industry loved its acronyms too, as Terrance himself had just proven with his recitation of MFRs and LMPs.
Ben just shook his head. “I’m just a lowly analyst, Gladys. Besides, you know that science stuff’s above my pay grade.”
Shannon just huffed and launched into an explanation.
“An MFR is a new modular design for a fusion reactor core that allows us to fit any number of fusion applications. We’re installing four of these to replace the Speedwell’s existing two engines. They’ll tie directly into the hydrogen feed supplied by the ship’s seventy-five-klick electrostatic ramscoop.”
At Ben’s glazed expression, Shannon snorted, leaned toward the analyst, and said very slowly and pointedly in a sardonic tone, “It’ll make us go faster.”
Terrance bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing out loud at the black look the analyst shot his engineer.
Gladys still looked confused. “Yes, but what does MFR stand for?”
Shannon rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. It’s some sort of weird, human nickname that a few of the designers on the team gave it, and unfortunately—” she glared at Terrance as if somehow it was all his fault, “the name stuck.”
He snorted a laugh. “MFR stands for ‘Matchbox Fusion Reactor’.” When the confused expression on Gladys’s face didn’t change, he explained.
“It has something to do with an ancient practice of taking tiny wooden sticks with red tips and striking them against a surface with friction.” He shrugged. “One of the designers had seen one in a museum once, and the slide-out panel they had designed into the MFR so that they could access the LMP reminded him of the little drawer one of those matchbox things had, so…like Shannon said, the name stuck.”
Shannon sat forward again, tilting her head toward Terrance. “The LMP part he just mentioned is a localized micro plasma. It’s what makes up the MFR’s core.”
She sat back, shooting him a look of disgust. “You do realize, don’t you, that one of those ancient Terran matchbox things was only this big—” she held up her hands about five centimeters apart, “—and an MFR can be up to five meters cubed?”
He just shrugged at her as Eric interjected before Shannon could expound any further.
“At any rate, the ESS Speedwell was moved into drydock early last week, and Shannon’s team had enough raw materials on hand to begin printing the Elastene hull plating. Those are all installed, and the team has been busy electrospinning more, so they can stay a step ahead of the printers. That puts the refit completion just a few days away. Provided the ESF can spare enough remote service bots, we should be able to launch within the week.”
Terrance caught the look of surprise that flitted across Gladys’s face. This was some serious fast-tracking, he knew. He was fiercely proud of each one of his Enfield employees for throwing their all into this refit to make this happen.
“We’ll also take a look at other systems while we’re at it,” Eric continued, “and see what we can do to improve the ship’s overall capabilities. You’ll be shipping out with the very best that El Dorado can provide.”
Ben nodded and then leaned forward to address Esther. “Is there anything else we can do to help move things alo—”
Terrance was distracted from the rest of what Ben had to say by an emergency communication from Daniel. As he accepted the connection, his eyes went wide in shock.
What the fuck—?
He shot out of his seat with a vicious curse, and with a swipe of his hand, tossed the feed from his Link to Esther so that she could incorporate it into her expanse.
“We’ve got trouble.”
* * * * *
Daniel watched the security feed of the Humanity First protest with growing disgust. With a thought, he sent instructions to increase patrols around the perimeter of the Enfield Aerospace facility, and to double them at its entrance.
The feed showed a dozen of Humanity First’s finest, circling three meters in front of EA’s front gates. This was a rough crowd. It looked like these were some of the more radical, fringe members of the movement.
The holosigns they held were graphic. One showed an animated meme of an AI being fed into a recycling shredder. Another depicted AI cylinders being tossed into the air as clay pigeons for projectile target practice. All of them were yelling obscenities as they marched past the guards standing impassively at the entrance.
The movement had grown with Lysander’s appointment to the Prime Ministry, attracting the worst of humankind.
Daniel zoomed his view, tagging the members of the crowd he felt were worth keeping an eye on.
Hell. He’d just tagged them all.
Daniel grunted in agreement. “You’ve got that right.”
Their conversation was interrupted by a ping from one of Enfield’s software engineers.
Daniel broke the connection, his gaze riveted in horror at the security feed, which displayed an impossible scene. Pulse fire was hitting the crowd in consecutive waves of directed energy, their amplitudes altered to create an additive effect.
Physicists would call it constructive interference, but what played out before Daniel and Aaron could only be described as destructive. This ‘constructive interference’ left a field of pulverized carcasses in its wake.
The concussive pulses were emanating from automated turrets installed in Enfield’s security perimeter—turrets Daniel knew held safety interlocks that limited the cannons’ amplitude and frequency to non-lethal crowd control.
Waves that were purposely designed never to superpose combined into sustained pulses powerful enough to bludgeon the crowd of demonstrators. They pummeled holosigns and brutalized the fragile, unprotected human bodies that lined the company’s main entrance.
“
Aaron! How the hell—”
Daniel stood frozen in disbelief as the protesters’ bodies danced in a macabre, jerking motion, rounds of pulse fire cudgeling them like invisible blunt instruments.
Gouts of blood spattered both the pavement and adjacent greenspace—and then the pulse waves ceased, the figures dropping to the earth like marionettes whose strings had been cut.
The security man let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d held as he queried his partner to ensure there would be no repeat of the carnage both had just witnessed. At Aaron’s mental nod, he opened a channel to Enfield’s security teams.
Halting the pulse cannons wasn’t going to help the picketers any. It was far too late for them—there were no survivors, that much was clear. And Daniel had no idea how it had happened. Or who had been behind it.
* * * * *
Prime noted with satisfaction the destruction that his first planned strike had wrought. The first step in his plan had executed flawlessly.
He’d been fortunate that the Humanity First vermin had announced their planned protest over the nets the evening before.
The study he’d made of Enfield Aerospace the night before, combined with the skills he’d acquired from the cartel’s semi-sentient information cache, had provided Prime with the abilities he had needed to hack into Enfield Aerospace and reprogram the perimeter’s directed energy cannons.
All he had to do was stroll past the company’s main entrance and allow his frame to casually touch the gated facade. He’d made a careful show of reading the company’s hours of operation for anyone who might be observing him over a live stream. He didn’t worry about recordings; they would be easily manipulated once he gained access.
