by M. D. Cooper
Observing the question on his face, Jirl said, “There is no official astro-marker for the location, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Yarnes shrugged. “It looked familiar for a second. They all start to look the same after a while.”
Jirl nodded, not wanting to make him look ignorant. While most objects of sufficient mass had been mapped at some point, many had been ignored and lost over time when the economics of mining didn’t pan out. With many millions of asteroids in the Sol System, only an inflated sense of self-importance would make it possible to recognize any particular object.
“So,” Jirl said. “You’ve spotted one platform. There are actually twenty in the target area.” Nineteen more sparks lit up in the air above their heads, forming a loose cloud stretching away from the asteroid.
“What’s the point of having twenty of them out there?” Yarnes said. “You already showed you can destroy a five-kilometer object. Hell, you could destroy Ceres or Eris at this point if you wanted to.”
“That’s not exactly hard to do,” Jirl said. “Gravity wells don’t dodge very well.”
Yarnes waved a hand. “But you’ve got the firepower. You’ve demonstrated the autonomous system. I thought we were going to talk about price.”
Jirl glanced at Arla and saw a slight smile on her boss’s lips. They’d never been going to talk about price because the TSF would never be done paying.
“This goes beyond a simple autonomous system,” Arla said.
Yarnes closed his mouth.
Jirl highlighted the twenty AI drones and faint orange lines appeared between them, forming a net of loosely woven jewels. Another net appeared around the asteroid, this one marked in red.
“The latest upgrade allows distributed decision-making with direction from a single Weapon Born,” Jirl said. “Control can shift between any independent unit based on situational awareness, or remain centralized.”
The glowing dots shifted and moved into a sort of dance around the asteroid. The orange sparks responded to the red, pulling away from the asteroid, adjusting their attacks into a series of complicated flanking maneuvers. The red dots fought back for a few seconds but couldn’t hold against the coordinated onslaught. In a few more seconds, each of the red sparks had been extinguished and the orange network fell into a regularly spaced guard position over the asteroid.
Yarnes shrugged. “So what? The simulation can fight itself?”
Jirl shifted the display to become a list of registry numbers and last known coordinates, which were all within the vicinity of one another.
“What you just watched was the destruction of a pirate armada that has been plaguing far shipping lanes outside Ganymede.”
“Heartbridge is in the business of policing OuterSol now?” Yarnes asked.
“We’re in the business of verifying our systems,” Arla said.
“This upgrade to the old system allows for greater command and control in dispersed engagements,” Jirl said. “The Weapon Born can still make decisions a magnitude faster than humans or other embedded systems and now they can do it as a hive mind.”
Yarnes took another slurp of his coffee. “I take it you didn’t have this upgrade at Cruithne.”
Jirl didn’t look at Arla. She knew Yarnes would be watching for her reaction. He reminded her more and more of a teenager, like one of her son’s irritating friends. She made herself think something good about the colonel so it would be easier to keep a relaxed expression. He had nice hair, she decided.
“The Weapon Born weren’t deployed at Cruithne,” Jirl said. “We’ll be rolling it out to units in the field over the next ten days.”
The colonel nodded and leaned back in his seat, setting his coffee cup on his thigh and holding it there with two hands. His gaze grew distant as he appeared to take in the whole map floating between them, Terra and Mars glowing prominently blue-green in contrast to yellow-white Sol.
“I was in a meeting with Katherine Carthage last week,” he said. “You know she still thinks her son Kylan is alive.”
“Kylan Carthage’s death was regrettable,” Jirl said quickly, practiced words coming easily.
Yarnes held up a hand. “I know. Rogue researchers. Untested methods. Third party contractors. What was different this time was that she claims to have received messages from her son.” Yarnes looked at his coffee cup. “I wouldn’t assess Katherine Carthage as mentally unstable. I’m not a psychologist but she’s still got Carthage Logistics in a tight grip. She showed several of these messages to the group and pointed out the bits of information that only Kylan would know. She also mentioned someone named Cal Kraft. Does that name mean anything to you?”
Yarnes looked directly at Jirl, his brown eyes now hard.
Jirl maintained her pleasant expression, wishing she had dropped the holodisplay immediately after she’d finished with the demonstration. It was distracting now.
“I can’t answer with any certainty,” Jirl said. “I would have to check the personnel records.”
“Of course,” Yarnes said. “The problem with Carthage is that she has the clout to demand these inquiries and the TSF isn’t the only org that’s been listening to her. She mentioned she also had meetings with the Marsian Protectorate’s Office of Accountability and the regime on Callisto. I guess you could say that she’s not a fan.”
“She received a settlement,” Arla said. “What else would she like exactly?”
Jirl glanced at her boss. Arla wasn’t a parent, so she could ask a question like that. Jirl could only imagine Kathryn Carthage’s pain. It was terrible enough to lose children but the thought of a broken version of your son out there, trying to communicate, never allowing closure, was unthinkable.
She pushed the thoughts away. Her job was to maintain composure and continue to develop cooperation with the TSF in support of the Weapon Born program, not imagine how Kate Carthage felt.
“She wants justice,” Yarnes said. “What else? I guess you can ask her how she defines the concept. But as long as something keeps trying to communicate with her, she won’t go away. I don’t know what kind of control you have over Kylan Carthage, if any, but I’d suggest you do something about it.” Yarnes pointed at the display. “All this stuff is great, don’t get me wrong, but there are political ramifications to think about as well. Not everyone in Command is as excited about the prospect of expanding the use of autonomous AI. There are plenty of big thinkers who view it as a threat.”
“Any weapon is a tool,” Jirl said.
“I know,” Yarnes said, cutting her off. “That doesn’t mean we continue to fund the research. The best leverage I have right now is that the MP is developing their own AI resources. That doesn’t mean all of this won’t end up in a vault somewhere following an inquiry of the Assembly.”
“Does that concern you?” Arla asked.
“An inquiry?” Yarnes said. “Not at all. I haven’t done anything wrong.” He flashed a crooked smile that looked like his attempt at menace. On his boyish face, it only made him look foolish.
Jirl wondered how soon they could move on from Yarnes being their sole TSF contact.
Apparently Arla was thinking the same thing. “We want to move forward with a real-time demonstration,” she said. “We have a suitable location in InnerSol.”
The colonel raised his eyebrows. “With Command?”
“Of course,” Arla said.
“You don’t think we should let the Katherine Carthage situation breathe a little bit before we do that? You call them all together now and that’s going to be the first thing they’ll want to talk about. It doesn’t matter how great the tech is. They’ll want the history of the program.”
Arla folded her hands in her lap. “There is no concrete evidence connecting Heartbridge with the facility where Kylan Carthage died. And he is dead. If someone is playing a cruel joke on a bereft mother, we can’t control that either. What we can do is continue to develop programs that provide for the safety and security of humanity.”
<
br /> Jirl couldn’t help but notice that no matter who they talked to, Arla always touted that they were helping humanity—even if that meant building up an arms race between factions.
Yarnes set his cup back on the table and spread his hands. “That doesn’t sound quite corporate enough. What we need is some kind of scale where you can weigh your bullshit against Katherine Carthage’s face on the newsfeed and see which one comes out on top.”
Arla frowned. Jirl watched her closely, worried she was going to explode.
“You know what might solve the situation?” Yarnes asked. “Let’s say there is some version of Kylan Carthage out there and the thing is, in fact, trying to contact its mother. Maybe you could put a stop to that. Then Katherine Carthage would stop demanding an inquiry from the Terran Assembly.”
Arla’s face remained composed.
Arla smiled. “We can’t control every conspiracy theory and prankster in Sol,” she said. “We need to move forward with the demonstration. Maybe some other entity can help Kate Carthage gain closure.”
Jirl deactivated the holodisplay and the glowing map blinked out. The room seemed small again.
As they stood to leave, Yarnes asked, “Those pirates. How many ships were there?”
“Twenty-two retrofitted freighters,” Jirl said. “The mix you would expect, but we assessed their capability at parity with a Marsian attack squadron.”
Yarnes blinked. “Why didn’t you say that earlier?”
“We got sidetracked on something you seem to think is more important,” Arla said.
“You need to send me those numbers,” he said. “Command is going to want to see this.”
Jirl smiled. “Sending now,” she said.
As Jirl and Arla turned to leave the small room, Jirl received a secure connection request over her Link. It was Yarnes.
Jirl followed Arla into the corridor where the lieutenant who had met them at the maglev was still waiting. He nodded. Luckily, Arla seemed lost in her own thoughts and didn’t expect Jirl to walk and talk.
Jirl wasn’t a neuroscientist but she understood enough about artificial intelligence to understand that Heartbridge researchers had sought to side-step nodal artificial intelligence by mapping existing neurons—hence the term ‘Seeds’. Other researchers had been working on “pure” AI for centuries and mostly failing, except for the massive projects that had resulted in the AI that managed facilities like High Terra and Mars 1.
Whether AI tied to specific roles were truly sentient had been debated for decades, just as the sentience of the Weapon Born had been questioned by scientists on Heartbridge’s many teams. Jirl was no expert, but she likened these debates to human IQ tests— ultimately just dick measuring that didn’t account for reality.
They arrived at the maglev platform just as the car was hissing to a stop in front of them. The lieutenant stepped to the side and nodded as Arla and Jirl passed him.
“Good day,” he said.
“Good day,” Jirl answered, trying not to allow her frustration with Yarnes to show on her face.
Jirl said quickly.
Jirl sat opposite Arla as the maglev’s door slid closed, sealing them inside.
“What’s bothering you?” Arla asked as the car slipped into motion.
Jirl stretched her neck, consciously removing the irritation from her expression. “Working with Yarnes is like trusting a teenager with a plasma pistol. You know something’s going to end up with a big hole in it.”
Arla gave her a smile. “Yes, but at least you know what he’s thinking most of the time. I appreciate that, at least.”
Jirl nodded as the car sped back into daylight, high rise buildings with shining windows flashing on either side of the rail. “That’s true,” she agreed, but thought: Until they do something that surprises you, and things start to explode.
CHAPTER TWO
STELLAR DATE: 09.23.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Jovian L1 Hildas Asteroids, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
Andy hit the inside wall of Sunny Skies’ airlock hard with his shoulder. He rolled to face out as the exterior doors slid closed, cutting off the vacuum outside. Atmospheric controls hissed around him and his stomach flipped as he adjusted to the gravity of the ship’s habitat ring.
Heartbridge had Tim.
the AI answered.
Andy pulled off his helmet and threw it against the wall. He clenched his fists, not wanting to turn around and face Cara and Brit on the other side of the interior doors.
Andy focused on what he knew: Tim was alive. He was on the Heartbridge shuttle moving back to Clinic 46. Andy couldn’t change that. But he could go get his son.
He was going to need firepower.
Andy hit the airlock controls and the interior doors slid open. Before he could say more to Fran, Brit confronted him from the opening.
“Where is he?” she demanded.
Andy pushed past her, but she caught his arm.
“Andy,” she said. “What happened? Where’s Tim?”
“He’s on Heartbridge’s shuttle. I saw them pick him up. He’s alive.”
Her fingers dug into the light armor on his upper arm. “Why did you come back? Why didn’t you go after them?”
Andy faced her, a rush of anger overcoming him. “With what, Brit? Armor not designed for vacuum and a pulse pistol? We’ve still got three drones attacking the ship. Did you forget about that?”
“Why did Fran shut down the point defense cannons?”
“She didn’t,” Andy said. “Lyssa did.”
Cara stood beside her mother, face streaked with tears. “Lyssa?” she demanded. “Why did Lyssa do that?”
“She thought she had to in order to save Tim.”
Andy stared at Brit, Lyssa’s interjection scattering his thoughts. He shook his head. “Tim’s out there,” he said. “He’s alive. We need to go get him.”
“Who’s Lyssa?” Brit asked, looking back and forth between Cara and Andy.
Andy didn’t ask how she had managed to subdue the other weapon born. He couldn’t stop thinking about Tim floating away from him.
Andy took a step toward Cara and pulled her into a hug, smoothing her hair down. She buried her face in his side, pressing her cheek against the armor. He found himself looking at Em, the Corgi puppy, who was sitting just down the corridor, one ear cocked. The puppy might have been smiling but seemed to sense something was wrong with the humans.
“It’s going to be all right,” Andy said, kissing the top of her head. “We’re going to get him.”
“How?” Brit demanded. “We’ve got their AI but they’re still sitting on a fleet, and you haven’t told me who Lyssa is. Is she up there with Fran?”
“Sorta.” Andy frowned. “A fleet? What are you talking about?”
“All the ships they’ve got in orbit around their rock. Didn’t you pick them up when you came in? They’re all out there in storage.”
“I haven’t had time to look,” Andy said. “Have they got personnel on their station to pilot them?”
Brit shrugged. “Not that I saw.”
“So they’re not manned.”
“There’s at least one attack cruiser,” Brit said. “I saw the signature. They might try to call it a hospital ship, but that cruiser had more mass than most asteroids.”
Andy gave Cara a final squeeze and let her go. “I’m going to the command deck. If those ships are out there, I want a better look. We’re going to need weapons to get Tim back.”
“You’re attacking their clinic?” Brit said.
“I’ll do what I have to,” Andy said. “Come on, Cara.”
He turned away from Brit and walked down the corridor, ignoring the bodies of mercenaries on the floor and the burned plas walls.
“I’m coming, Dad,” Cara called.
He glanced back to see her jogging after him with Em in her arms. Brit was still standing at the airlock, staring at him. Every minute he spent on the ship was more time for Kraft to harm Tim. Andy put that fact to the side and considered everything around it. Kraft had picked Tim up, saving him. Why had he done that? How?
