by M. D. Cooper
“That was quick.”
Captain Gala Fitzgerald had short brown hair, a nose like a hawk’s beak, and a prosthetic right arm—full of hard angles with exposed internals—that she liked to keep exposed. None of her uniforms had right sleeves. She gave him a sardonic smile. “Apparently they were diverted from Europa. Whatever report you sent back to headquarters, it’s got the these three captains fired up.”
“Nothing from Terra yet?” Cal asked.
She shook her head. “I’ve never seen you looking so anxious, Cal. This is a very strange side of you.”
“I’m not anxious,” he growled. Standing, he picked up on the of the seed cylinders and tossed it between hands. Fitzgerald’s expression turned sour, as if he were tossing intestines around.
“Do you have to play with those things?” she asked. “I don’t like having them on the command deck, honestly.”
“Why? Don’t like to be reminded about why we’re here?”
“There’s been a lot of rumors floating around about how those things are made. The crew don’t like it. If there was anything that was going to cause bad luck, one of those would bring it.”
“I need to take them down for programming anyway,” Cal said. “Then they’ll be going into attack drones. Everybody likes attack drones.”
“Unless they’re on the wrong end of one,” Fitzgerald said.
“Stars forbid we tell the crew to let go of their superstitions.”
“I forgot, you’re a miner. You don’t believe in karma.”
“I believe if something is going to kill you, it will. Half the time it’s our own stupidity that gets us killed, anyway.”
“I’m captain of a ship,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s my job to mold stupidity into something useful.”
“I like that,” Cal said. He picked up the ammo pouch he’d used to transport the seeds and fit them back inside.
Fitzgerald watched him. “Why bother even making them portable like that,” she asked. “I’ve never understood that part of the program.”
“According to Dr. Farrel, late head research of Clinic 46, it was so the system could be used to control multiple types of weapons platforms, or whatever they wanted, really.”
“Why call them seeds? It’s not like they’re going to grow anything.”
“That was Hari Jickson’s name and it stuck.”
“It creeps me out. I think that’s part of what everyone hates. The idea that the things are alive somehow.”
Cal gave the captain a smirk. “I don’t waste time with philosophy,” he said.
“Right, you’re a miner.”
“Sure.”
“That means you treat everything like a rock that needs blowing up.”
Cal couldn’t decide if Fitzgerald was flirting with him or trying to make herself look important in front of the crew. He couldn’t help thinking of Mama Trish back on the rig, telling him every damn rock in space was money, just somebody had to go mine it.
“I’ll be down in my quarters,” he told her.
“We moved that autosurgeon of yours into your rooms,” she said. “That thing creeped me out, too.”
Cal hefted the last seed and held it toward her. “You could have your own AI,” he said. “Just say the word.”
Fitzgerald’s face went blank and she curled her lip. “We’ll send word if Headquarters responds.”
“Do that,” Cal said. He tucked the cylinder inside the ammo pouch and pulled the strap over his shoulder.
“They should call you Johnny Apple Seed,” Fitzgerald said to his back. “Spreading your seed all over the countryside.”
“You make it sound obscene.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Cal returned to his quarters where he monitored the updates from the three incoming personnel carriers over the Link. He found the crate with Jickson’s autosurgeon sitting in the middle of his small kitchen and shoved it against one wall. He set the ammo pouch on top of the crate. The four seeds inside would need further programing before they could do anything useful, and the necessary equipment wasn’t onboard the Mercy’s Intent.
Checking through the cabinets, he found an old bottle of bourbon and a plas cup, and poured himself a drink. Sitting at the small kitchen table, he turned the glass and sloshed the amber liquid around, replaying the scene with Andy and Brit Sykes. Farrel hadn’t expected them to breach that section of the station so quickly, thinking instead they would go straight for the command deck. Cal should have known that didn’t make any sense when dealing with parents rescuing their child. They also hadn’t counted on there being three attackers in power armor. For some reason the sensors on the Forward Kindness hadn’t picked up the man Cal had never seen before—a man who was obviously Andersonian. His fighting style and accent made his origin obvious.
It was strange enough that Britney Sykes had managed to find the Worry’s End. Now they had someone from Ceres on board as well. Cal wished he could talk to Jirl Gallagher in real time. She might understand the various threads that seemed to be pulling together. Someone was helping Andy Sykes and it suggested external forces, from the gangsters on Cruithne who had pulled him into their mess, to Mars and then Ceres. If there was some grand conspiracy involving the theft of AIs from Heartbridge, Jirl would know about it. The worry tickling the back of Cal’s mind was that this was all bigger than just Heartbridge, that he was caught up in something with edges he couldn’t see.
Cal sipped the whiskey. It wasn’t bad.
Maybe it would be a good thing if he was fired. He looked at the crate and the ammo pouch, both worth enough to bankroll a hundred lives. Maybe even buy a berth on a colony ship, and get the heck out of this shit-show. He was close enough to the Cho that he could easily disappear into the JC, bounce between Europa and Io for a while before going farther out. Cal didn’t want to admit to himself that he had come to believe in what he was doing, protecting something special. The four seeds in the ammo pouch might be just drops of water in the ocean wave that was sentient AIs, but they were alive. Every seed that had passed through Heartbridge was another mind that could change the world.
Cal snorted a laugh. A life that could change the world just like another worthless human, yeah?
He was on his second glass of bourbon when the call came from the command deck that they’d received an update from High Terra.
“All right,” he answered. “Give me a second.” He stood, listing to one side a little, and walked to the bathroom to relieve himself. Then he went out into the living room and sat on the couch, pleased with how drunk he was. He leaned back in the stiff cushions and accepted the message.
“I remember you,” Cal muttered.
Cal raised an eyebrow. If they wanted information from him, they didn’t seem to be ready to terminate his employment. The message had already gone on too long if he was getting fired.
Cal replayed the last ten seconds of the message and tried to get a better sense of what Sillick was feeling as he spoke. There was a tremor in the man’s voice that might have been a corruption in the recording, or Sillick might actually be worried about something. He didn’t know Sillick, didn’t know how well he might dissemble. Jirl would come out and tell him if she couldn’t share the truth.
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The hospital ships.
One bit of information that Farrel had shared during their last hours on Clinic 46 was that the program had moved far beyond using the frameworks created by human minds. Also like early DNA programs, specific frameworks had proved especially fertile, and those were being used for most of the ongoing seed production. That hadn’t stopped the research into why some series were better than others, but it did mean the company had a salable product.
Cal nodded as if Sillick, were actually speaking to him.
“Aye-aye, Captain,” he slurred. He took another gulp of whiskey. So he wasn’t getting fired. All those imaginary futures were just pipe dreams.
The recording ended, and Cal sent the acknowledgement token that he had received it.
He smiled to himself, thinking of Petral Dulan saying, “I will erase you.” That woman had the look of a jungle panther until Kylan Carthage assumed her features, turning her into a slack Halloween mask. Cal had to admit he preferred Petral as herself.
Cal finished the glass of whiskey and studied the empty room, deciding what he was going to do first. He would let Fitzgerald know their orders. Knowing that they had other crews on site, there was no need for him to stay specifically. He certainly wasn’t going to stick around for the grunt work of emptying the clinic.
Whatever the Sykes were doing on the Cho, if Cal moved with the ships to Europa he’d be in a better position to intercept. The Worry’s End now had three pieces of Heartbridge property on board. Whether he wanted to listen to Sillick or not, it seemed clear enough to Cal that one of his tasks was to erase the evidence of the last two months.
He could make that happen.
CHAPTER TWENTY
STELLAR DATE: 10.01.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Chorin Tree, Callisto Orbital Habitat (Cho)
REGION: Callisto, Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
As the blinding light faded, Andy found himself standing in a large room that gradually resolved into a library. Two stories of bookshelves ran the walls, with worn wooden ladders leaning against them at intervals. A wooden desk with heavy chairs sat in the middle of the room, bathed in light from a stained-glass window at the far end of the library.
Fugia Wong sat at the table alongside May Walton. Harl stood a meter behind the senator with his arms crossed. Several people sat across from May and Fugia. A young man stood at the head, holding out a hand in welcome. He was thin, with olive skin and high cheekbones, dressed in a purple suit.
“Our final guests have arrived,” he called. “This is Captain Sykes, his daughter Cara, and Lyssa.”
Andy looked around in surprise. Cara stood next to him, blinking from the light. On his other side stood a young woman in her mid-twenties with shoulder-length brown hair and gray eyes. Her face reminded him of someone he had met before but couldn’t recall. There was an air of defiance in her stance, but also warmth. She was wearing the same style of shipsuit from Sunny Skies as Andy and Cara.
“Lyssa,” Andy said, not hiding the shock in his voice.
“Hello, Andy,” she said. “Surprised to see me?”
“Yes. I am.” He glanced at Cara. “Is that how you imagined her to look?”
Cara shrugged, looking at Lyssa and then at the rest of the library, as if all of it were too much to take in.
“Welcome to my expanse,” the man at the far end of the table said. “My name is Xander. You’re probably thinking this is a sim space accessed via your Link. It’s a little like that but it belongs wholly to me. You are my guests. Would you be seated so we can finish introductions?”
Andy nodded and walked around the table to sit next to Senator Walton. Cara and Lyssa sat next to him.
“How did you bring Cara here?” Andy asked.
Xander scooted his high-backed chair closer to the table. “Trade secret,” he said, winking. “She’s safe, don’t worry. You’re the one who posed a challenge. I’ve never met a hybrid before.”
Other faces down the table turned to study Andy and Lyssa.
“That’s right,” Xander said. “She’s AI. He’s not. What a mixed-up situation. In a place like this, though, can we tell who’s made of meat and who isn’t? No one’s blowing air through flesh flaps to communicate here. I think it’s much more civilized.”
“He sounds like Ngoba Starl,” Cara said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Xander said. “I haven’t met the man, but I’ve only heard intriguing things about him. So, introductions.”
Knowing that not everyone at the table was human led Andy to try and remember who he had seen in the room as they had stepped inside. A few people looked familiar.
“Since Captain Sykes came in last, we’ll introduce him last. On this side of me, I have Fugia, as well as Senator May of the Anderson Collective. I don’t think Fugia would call herself Andersonian but that’s been her base of operations for several years now, correct?”
Fugia answered with a shallow smile and a nod.
“Excellent,” Xander said. He didn’t seem to want anyone to respond as he listed off their names.
Next to Fugia was a man with bushy gray eyebrows above over-sized eye implants with faceted lenses, making him resemble a bony fly. Xander called him Jeremiah Sparks of Mars 1.
Xander waved at the other side of the table. Closest to him sat a young woman with severe features and spiky black hair named Kindel.
Next came a solid man in a Callistan uniform with a rank Andy thought was master sergeant. Xander introduced him as Paul.
“And this is Tyena,” Xander said, waving at a woman next to Paul. She was the tallest person at the table, with sparkling red hair and blue eyes, wearing a faded shipsuit. Tyena nodded to each of them.
“Last we have Andy, Lyssa, and Cara,” Xander said. “We should have a test to see if everyone can remember all the names. I’ve heard humans have a hard time with that. Something about poor short-term memory access.” He smiled at his own joke.
Andy frowned slightly, sitting back in the hard chair. Xander hadn’t given any last names, which made it difficult to determine who might be AI. He guessed at Kindel and Tyena, since it didn’t make any sense for an AI to manifest themselves in uniform or with body modifications. Then he asked himself: Why not? If this space belonged to Xander, did he choose how everyone looked?
Xander clapped his hands and the table was set for dessert, with small china plates, ornate cups and shining silverware. Tiered platters of pastries and finger sandwiches ran along the center. Carafes steamed near the platters.
“Please,” Xander said. “Eat. There’s more where this came from.” He picked up his plate and piled it with cucumber sandwiches from the nearest tray.
“You first,” Cara whispered, poking Andy in the arm. He shrugged and reached for a sugar cookie. He sniffed it, then took a bite. It was light and sweet.
“Very good,” Andy said.
“Thank you. I culled through thousands of recipes preparing for today’s meeting. I think everyone will find something they like. Except maybe Lyssa
, who doesn’t know what she likes.”
Andy glanced at Lyssa, still getting used to her physical form, and wasn’t surprised to find her frowning. She reached for a nearby platter and selected several sandwiches, bypassing the cookies.
The coffee was excellent. What Andy truly savored was the fresh cream, which tasted just as he remembered from Terra.
“While everyone nibbles,” Xander said “Jeremiah, will you provide an update?”
The man with fly eyes set his tea cup down and cleared his throat. “Everyone knows Hari Jickson is dead, yes?”
Paul and Kindel nodded.
“Well,” Xander said, and raised a glass in a toast. “Here’s to Hari Jickson.” He motioned for everyone else to join him. Cara raised her water glass.
“To Hari Jickson,” he said. “The only human with the balls to do the right thing in the last two hundred years.” Xander emptied his glass and wiped his mouth with a sweep of his arm, finishing with a lusty, “Ah!”
When everyone had taken a drink and set their glass down, Xander continued, “I was surprised to learn myself. He was a troubled man, but a great mind and I will miss him dearly. I believe he gave his life for this cause.”
Jeremiah wiped his nose with his napkin. “In any case, the arrival of Fugia has brought more information than we had before. Captain Sykes and Lyssa represent the final phase of Hari’s work, finished at Cruithne, which probably wasn’t his choice but any port in a storm, yes? So we have his template Weapon Born, a new form of sentience that has increased by a thousand-fold in the last three years alone.”
“Do you know why you’re called Weapon Born?” Xander asked abruptly.
Lyssa looked at him. “No.”
“It’s a Welsh myth, tales from the middle ages in Ireland. A pair of giants gave a king the gift of a great cauldron that could revive the dead. It meant whoever controlled the cauldron could never be defeated in battle because their warriors didn’t bother to stay dead. Imagine that. All sorts of battles went on and on until someone sacrificed themselves by climbing into the cauldron. A living person caused it to shatter.”
