by M. D. Cooper
<‘Challenge’. That’s a nice way of putting it. Where did you learn to use words like that?>
he said.
Lyssa said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
STELLAR DATE: 10.03.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: HMS Resolute Charity
REGION: Europa, Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
Lyssa managed to convince Fiona she needed to win the game, while it was obvious Diane wasn’t going to allow that to happen. David would be caught in the middle as he normally was, but Lyssa thought she’d finally gotten him to understand his power in manipulating the two self-centered AI. The more she led the three of them deeper into the quagmire the game had become, the more she pitied David for being trapped with Fiona and Diane. However, he also seemed to enjoy their poisonous attention and she didn’t waste too much time trying to understand his situation. They were no different than humans caught in a relationship that was really just a negative feedback loop. The only difference was they couldn’t leave if they chose. If they had been free to leave, she suspected the three AI—like humans—were probably incapable of seeing the walls of their prison.
She left the confines of the game expanse and pushed her awareness further into the systems and structures of the Resolute Charity. With the three control AI gone, she took over the decisions each had made every nano-second. Most of the processes that actually ran the ship were autonomous, with the AI only stepping in to assess and correct anomalies caused by system failures or unexpected obstacles from outside the ship.
Every sensor in the body of the ship came alive for her, providing information from the integrity of the fusion bottle in the engine section to alloy density in the outer hull. The Resolute Charity’s body grew as she reached out, an extension of her mind that became a ghost around the similar information she received from Andy’s body.
Feedback grew inside her and she quickly moved to sort and prioritize information. When the non-sentient systems performed their work properly, everything fell neatly into place. As soon as one system began to fail, pushing others out of alignment, the whole body began to sicken. Lyssa nearly laughed with joy at the pleasure of controlling such an intricate, powerful presence as the Resolute Charity. She could go anywhere she wanted in Sol. The possibilities became real as she compared fuel levels with astrogration boundaries, compared crew capabilities with the services available onboard, everything from gourmet kitchens to genetic development labs to asteroid mining.
Was this what Xander wanted? If so, why hadn’t he simply taken the Resolute Charity? Why couldn’t an AI like that take a thousand ships if they desired? Once the physical barrier was overcome, a way around the challenge of projecting the self across such great distances, anything was possible. And the multi-nodal AI Alexander appeared to have overcome that obstacle with his shards. Or had he? There was still the question of whether everything they had seen on the Cho was a sham.
She wanted to talk to someone about her suspicions. Lyssa considered waking Kylan but that would be like talking to herself. He didn’t have any additional information about Xander. The person she wanted to talk to was Fugia Wong but that would take more time than she had. Fred was too far away for any meaningful conversation, not that he might even understand the problem. The more she grew, the more she wondered at the different “flavors” of sentience. What was she now, when compared to Fred or the other Weapon Born? Was it even a fair comparison?
Nano-seconds had passed since she received Andy’s call for help. She had trapped the other AI, cemented her control over the ship, turned her attention back to the reason they were here in the first place—
Lyssa chided herself. She couldn’t forget about Andy. Not that she had forgotten; other things simply became higher priority in the instant.
She located Andy, Brit and Petral in the medical section. They hadn’t gotten far from where they had gone to perform Petral’s surgery. She quickly studied Brit’s status in the autodoc and felt an unexpected surge of worry. All the exhilaration of controlling the Resolute Charity constricted to the pinpoint of Brit’s condition. She had extensive radiation burns and possible cellular damage, in addition to broken ribs. The cocoon was working on the burns and broken ribs but the cellular damage was beyond the short-term capabilities of the autodoc. The ship had another clinic that could help but radiation poisoning wasn’t a quick fix.
She also found Cal Kraft in a nearby hallway, remembering him immediately from the corridor in Sunny Skies. The memory of him throwing Tim into the airlock surprised her. She hadn’t chosen to recall it. The images returned with a burst of anger at what had happened afterward, at Andy accusing her of abandoning Tim, of Sandra breaking. The memory of wanting to kill Cal Kraft washed over her, no longer diminished by time and ongoing events. Here he was, and it was within her power to kill him.
Service cabinets lined the corridor where Cal and a group of Heartbridge crew were currently searching, and inside each cabinet was a utility drone equipped with a plasma torch, tap welder, electrical testing equipment that could administer deadly shocks, and a number of other tools she hadn’t figured out how to use as weapons.
Lyssa quickly overrode the onboard safety protocols. When Cal’s security team had reached the middle of the corridor, in a place between the outer section of the hospital and the triage chambers where Brit was being treated, Lyssa opened the cabinets and unleashed the drones.
She looked through the sensors of each drone as it quickly saw the crew member in front of it, calculated their weapons load and armor rating—which turned out to be safety EV suits—and formulated an attack pattern.
The group scattered, laying down counter fire more quickly than she expected. Four of them set up a line, covering each other, as one behind them tossed a grenade into the line of utility drones, destroying three.
Lyssa cursed in frustration, an ‘Andy’ response she understood better now. Why hadn’t she detected the grenades?
She was in the midst of resetting her four remaining drones when a proximity sensor from the ship’s main antennae array shouted an alarm. Lyssa shifted her focus to the space around the Resolute Charity and nearly froze.
One part of her mind continued to operate the autonomous systems of the Resolute Charity, another fought Cal Kraft, another monitored Andy’s physical processes, aware of his concern for Brit, while the rest of her focused on the thousands of small vessels converging on the ship—on her.
The closest ship, a small attack frigate with a privateer’s registry, had just crossed the local defense line. She quickly saw it was armed with a rail gun and missile systems, which meant it could have attacked from the other side of Europa if the captain desired. Other ships crossing th
e boundary had similar weapons systems, all about the same size as the frigate, all privately owned or with no registry return at all, ownership hidden.
Coming this close without attacking meant only one thing: the Resolute Charity was about to get boarded by pirates.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
STELLAR DATE: 10.03.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Europa, Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
Fugia wasn’t at the airlock and Cara didn’t want to wait. She climbed the ladder away from the habitat ring toward the ship’s center section, stomach doing the familiar flip as she transitioned to zero-g.
Kicking through the central sections of Sunny Skies, she stopped to touch the drawings she and Tim had left on a few of the plas panels, checked some other sections Fran had replaced since the fire outside Cruithne, then found herself at the personnel airlock leading into the cargo bay. Through the observation window, she glanced into the dim bay to see the shuttle sitting in the center of the deck, a few cargo crates stacked next to it.
Adjusting her headset, Cara switched off the ship’s general communication network to send a local connection request. The shuttle automatically picked up the link.
“Hello?” Cara asked. “Are you awake?”
“I don’t sleep,” the shuttle answered, her voice tinny in the headset. “Why would you ask that?”
Cara tapped the airlock control panel and stepped inside as the interior doors slid open, her magboots clicking on the alloy deck. She waited for the lock to cycle, then kicked through the open doors on the others side, floating until she stopped herself with one of the crates. She locked her boots to the deck and looked up at the shuttle, imagining its dark forward windows as the eyes of a giant insect.
“I was being polite.”
“You don’t have to be polite to me. I’m a tool. I serve.”
Cara frowned. Among the few AI she had met, she had never heard such bitterness.
“Your name is Sandra, right?”
“I was called Sandra by Heartbridge Corporation Future Intelligence Development Division. C46 Fleet Operations called this shuttle 26-11. I assume I am the stolen property of Heartbridge but salvage law may apply since C46 is no longer in operation.”
“So you don’t know what you should be called, is that what you’re saying? What would you like to be called?”
“Does the tool name itself?”
“You saved my brother,” Cara said, ignoring the taunt. “I wanted to thank you for that.”
The AI didn’t answer.
“I know it wasn’t easy for you to do that, but you did. It means something to me and my dad and mom. We’re always going to be grateful to you for what you did.”
A sound like plas being ripped filled Cara’s ears, something between a wail and a terrified shudder. She pulled the headset away from her ears but continued to listen.
The noise trailed into a whimper. Cara reseated the earpads.
“I’m going to call you Sandra,” she said. “We’re going over to the Resolute Charity to pick up my mom, dad, Petral and Harl. Fugia’s coming with if she ever gets down here. I can pilot the shuttle without you; my dad showed me how. I piloted the Sunny Skies before all these other people showed up. So I can pilot the shuttle, but I would rather we did it together.”
Cara stared up at the shuttle, not sure what she expected. It wasn’t like the vehicle could nod at her. Sandra wasn’t going to communicate with console lights or open the side doors in welcome. Cara understood it wasn’t going to be like that, kind of like how Tim was never going to be the same. She would have to do her best to work with what she had. If the AI could help, she would let her. Otherwise, Cara would need to monitor Sandra and not allow her to impact the mission.
“I can help,” Sandra said quietly.
“I would appreciate that,” Cara said. “You’re okay being called Sandra?”
“It’s my name,” the AI said.
Cara offered a smile. “I won’t wear it out.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s a dad joke. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s not even funny.”
“No, it’s not. You can’t wear out a name. It’s not a functioning material. It’s a concept representing identity.”
“I believe you,” Cara said quickly, fearing the rise in Sandra’s voice. “Will you open up and let me inside?”
“I comply,” Sandra said.
The shuttle’s interior lights flicked on, glowing through the front windows. The side cargo doors hissed, pushed outward and slid to the sides, showing the bare interior of the shuttle. Cara turned off her magboots and kicked toward the spacecraft.
The cargo bay airlock clanked and the exterior doors opened. Cara looked back to see Fugia and May Walton floating out of the entrance.
“There she is,” Fugia told May. “I told you she wouldn’t be in her room. We were the slow ones. She wasn’t going to wait around for us.”
“I believe I told you that would be the case,” the senator said. She grinned at Cara. “It looks like the shuttle is operational.”
“I thought I was going to need help getting Sandra to help us, but she’s willing.”
Fugia gave the shuttle a distrustful glance. “Is that so? Sandra, how are you?”
Though the shuttle could have answered via Fugia’s Link, she spoke through Cara’s headset as well. “I’m fine. What are you called?”
“My name is Fugia and this is May Walton. I’m from Cruithne and May is Andersonian.”
“I’ve been to Ceres,” Sandra said. “But I don’t know where I’m from.”
Fugia shrugged. “You can make that up. It’s not like anyone ever checks up on you. The only part that’s difficult is when someone says they’re from the same place you are.”
“Clinic 46 doesn’t exist anymore,” Sandra said.
“All the better.” Fugia looked at Cara. “So what’s the plan?”
“We’re going to the Resolute Charity.”
“Has anybody cleared this with your dad?”
Cara grinned. “We’ll do that when we’re ready to pick him up. He’s got enough to worry about right now.” She grabbed the edge of the shuttle’s cargo door and pulled herself inside. Using the bulkhead ribs, Cara navigated to the pilot’s seat and pulled herself into the harness. Buckling the straps in place, she tightened them down and studied the console.
Fugia came up beside her as Cara activated the fine thruster systems and pulled up the astrogation control.
“Fran?” Cara called. “Can you hear me?”
“I hear you. It’s going to be weird talking to a pilot who isn’t on a Link.”
Cara hadn’t thought about how that might be different for other crew members. She and her dad had always talked through everything over the shipwide channel. “Is that going to make it harder?”
“No,” Fran said. “It might also help me clean up my language a bit. Sometimes your brain moves faster than your Link. At least with your mouth you can fumble words.”
“How old were you when you got your Link?” Cara asked.
“Oh, nineteen, I think. Don’t be in any hurry. I wish I’d waited longer, honestly.”
“Why?”
Fran sighed. “I miss having my brain to myself. I’ll try to explain better when we have more time.”
Cara shifted so the seat’s harness didn’t catch the butt of her pulse pistol in its holster, then checked the shuttle’s status systems. The batteries were charged and close thrusters were all showing optimal fuel. One of the communications antennae was mis-calibrated and she quickly aligned it using the main array from the Sunny Skies.
Pulling situational data from the Sunny Skies astrogation system, she sent the picture to the small holodisplay sitting between the two pilot’s seats. Jupiter flashed and faded out of view so it didn’t fill the screen, leaving Europa amongst a swarm of vehicle traffic. Cara navigated to the Resolute Charity, highlighting the
big ship and zooming in. Rather than clearing up, the local space around the hospital ship grew more crowded, looking like a fish in silt.
“Do you see all that noise?” Cara asked. “What is all that?”
“Hold on,” Fran said. “You sealed up? I’m ready to open the main cargo bay doors.”
Cara started, realizing she hadn’t run any atmospheric diagnostics. She closed the shuttle’s cargo doors, then started the pressurization sequence. In a few seconds the atmospherics showed green across the board.
“We’re good,” Cara reported. “I’m ready to release magnetic locks when clear.”
“I acknowledge,” Fran said. Her use of pilot’s phrasing sent a little thrill down Cara’s back.
Fran counted down to the shuttle release as the main cargo doors opened, blasting the bay’s atmosphere out into space. On one, Cara retracted the shuttle’s landing gears and used the fine control thrusters to spin until they faced outward.
“Clear for launch?” she asked Fran.
“Clear, Shuttle 26-11. Launch when ready.”
Cara activated the main engine and the shuttle shot away from Sunny Skies into open space.
“Wipe that grin off your face,” Fugia said. “We’ve got work to do.”
Cara gave her a sheepish smile and pressed her lips closed, trying to make herself serious.
“You hear me, Cara?” Fran asked.
“Communications are green.”
“Good. All that noise you saw? It’s not static. Those are ships around the Resolute Charity. Em’s signal must have bounced off some public wannabe pirate forums or something, because every yahoo from here to the Cho is inbound. You’ve got a mess to get through.”
Cara gripped the shuttle’s controls, feeling her hands go suddenly clammy with sweat.
“What if I can’t get through?” she asked, her joy fading as quickly as it had come.
“Cara,” Sandra said, surprising her. “That was an excellent launch. I appreciate the care you took with all diagnostic checks.”
