Lex turned to see Ma slide to a stop on the catwalk, tongue lolled out of her mouth and one leg twitching. Darla was just getting to her feet, the stunner in her hand still recharging. Before he knew what he was doing, Lex had rushed to her, wrenched the weapon from her grip, and hoisted her effortlessly into the air with one hand.
"I..." he said, his voice shaking with anger, "I swore I would never hit a woman, but if you hurt her..."
"It is just a damn dog!" she squealed, struggling in his grip, "Somebody kill this heavy!"
The three remaining gang members had gotten a knife and stun gun each, and were stalking toward him. Lex turned his options over in his mind. If something didn't happen soon, he was going to have to do something that he really didn't want to do. As if on cue, a familiar, British-accented voice filled the hall.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please!" called Garotte, approaching down the poorly lit hallway, "You are all acting like children! Shame on you, deGrasseans. We are visitors on your world. You may not feel inclined to offer hospitality, but you can at least offer civility! And Lex, my boy, where precisely is the sport in pummeling a gaggle of scarecrows?"
"They tried to rob me! And kill me! And they zapped Ma!" Lex objected.
"What's that? Attempted theft, attempted murder, and animal cruelty? I dare say that the balance of moral impropriety has shifted against our hosts," Garotte said with a shake of his head.
"What are you going to do about it?" jabbed one of the none-too-bright gang members.
As an answer, Garotte revealed the energy pistol taken from the guard.
Darla's eyes opened wide. "You can't shoot that in here! You'll blow a hole in the wall!"
"Only if I miss, my dear. It is thus in all of our best interests that you hold very still," he said, closing one eye and taking aim.
The remnants of the ambush wisely chose to withdraw. Lex released Darla, who wasted no time in joining them. He dropped the stun gun and knelt down next to Ma. The twitching had stopped and she was beginning to move her head in a bewildered manner, tongue still dangling from her mouth.
"Ma, you okay?" he asked, snapping his fingers.
"It was a stun gun, Lex, not a shotgun," Garotte reminded.
"Yeah, but it was a people-sized dose of electricity, and she's not people-sized," he said, nervously looking back to her, "Say something, Ma. Come on."
Garotte glanced up and down the hall, wary of a retaliatory strike. "I'm beginning to think you may be more of a liability than an asset, my boy."
"Oh, right, the hands-free. Hang on!" Lex realized, dashing into the bathroom as quickly as physics would allow. He returned with his clothes under one arm and his other hand forcing the hands-free device into his ear.
"I would suggest you join me in the room before our territorial friends return, and in greater numbers. Amusing though it would be to pick on a slew of ruffians half our size, the potential for catastrophic mishap is a just a bit too high," said Garotte.
Lex picked up Ma and followed Garotte to the room. Once the door was locked behind him, he propped the slowly recovering AI up on a box and continued to try to rouse her from her daze. She was managing to remain relatively upright, but her eyes were still half lidded and an involuntary tremor in her right leg periodically threatened to knock her down.
"Do you know anything about how to treat electrocution?" Lex asked, nervously.
"As I understand it, the two concerns are severe burns and fibrillation, neither of which appears to be the case."
"How many fingers am I holding up, Ma?" Lex asked, waving a hand in front of her face.
"That is for concussions, Lex," Garotte remarked.
"Okay, you're not helping."
"My boy, if a computer malfunctions or an animal is injured, those events are inconvenient and unfortunate, respectively. This is thus at best an unfortunate inconvenience, which makes your level of concern vastly beyond what is called for."
Lex turned to Garotte, cupping his hand to his forehead and squeezing his eyes shut.
"Garotte, listen. I know you think she's just a fancy calculator that opens doors and gets information, but if you actually bothered to take the time to get to know her, and to treat her with some respect, you'd find out that she is a person. Maybe not in the technical sense, but in every way that counts. This whole mission is her idea. She's doing it because she doesn't want Karter to get hurt, and because she doesn't want him to help hurt other people. She is the only reason I'm here, and the only reason you aren't rotting in a jail cell right now. How about some goddamn gratitude? And, even if she was nothing more than a sequence of zeroes and ones, I would still trust her infinitely more than I trust you at the moment. She's the one who knows what's going on! If she's not okay, I'm going to feel an awful lot less comfortable about this whole situation."
"... I did just prevent you from electrocuting an atrophied gang leader while surrounded by armed members of her crew, you realize."
"Darla was the leader?"
"Indeed. One would hope that would have built some measure of trust."
"Well Ma prevented the atrophied gang leader from electrocuting me before you even showed up! So you'll understand if I feel somewhat responsible for what happened to her!"
Lex turned back to the funk, to find the little creature staring at him evenly, evidently recovered.
"Ma, thank god. Say something, would you?"
She continued to stare.
"Ma?"
The creature furrowed her brow, confusion in her expression.
"Something wrong, Ma?"
The funk's eyes drifted vaguely downward, as through she was distracted by a particularly challenging thought. Suddenly her eyes opened wide and her ears drooped. She lowered her head, reaching back and pawing at the back of her neck. The slightly oversized paws tapped at the glass marble nestled in the fur there. As she did, Lex heard a few faint clicks and stutters of her voice over the earpiece, a faint red flicker flashing weakly in the glass.
"Oh man... They fried your transmitter," Lex said gravely.
Ma looked slowly up to him again. In the past, it had been implied that Ma didn't quite have real emotions. Instead, she got by on what Karter called "algorithmic approximations" of emotions. Judging by the wide-eyed expression she wore, complete with ears pulled completely back and a twitching lower eyelid, either those algorithms were damn good, or she'd picked up a few tricks on her own. The look of terrible realization was unmistakable, and the little creature's face was surprisingly well equipped to convey it. In short, Wile E. Coyote had just noticed that the cliff ended three steps ago.
Chapter 9
On planet Tessera, the end of a long day had come. The convention was a large one, fully occupying three full buildings of a convention center and playing host to most of the major names in journalism. One of the side effects of this was that there were bigger celebrities of her field in attendance. Right now, she was walking the show floor, a massive hangar of a conference hall crowded with flashy multimedia displays for the different news outfits. Even after having been open for eight hours, one could hardly take ten steps without catching sight of someone who had been at it for longer than her, or who had had a more recent story than her, and the tide would shift toward them. For Michella, this was a mixed blessing. On one hand, though she would never admit it, she had rather enjoyed the level of fame she'd achieved thanks to her work since the Bypass Gemini Incident. Suddenly finding that the small crowd clustered around her had the tendency to peel off and fawn over the larger fish in the pond was a bit of a let down. On the other hand, without the usual level of enthusiasm surrounding her, she was having an easier time excusing herself to take calls, make calls, and generally work her sources. It was her favorite part of the job, and she was having difficulty tearing herself away from it.
The informant she had spoken to a few days ago had confirmed some things that she had suspected, and building upon that confirmation, she had started to uncover more. The tin
y morsels of information didn't seem to be leading anywhere meaty, though, much to her frustration. As tended to be the case, the harder the ball of twine was to unravel, the more she fixated on tugging at the threads. As a result, the normally enjoyable interaction with aspiring news writers and bloggers (many of whom were a number of years older than her, she proudly observed) was difficult to focus on, and left her with no choice but to send Jon chasing down time-sensitive contacts. Now the exhibition hall hours were finally coming to an end, the crowds thinning. As a silver-haired editor drew away the last of her flock, she noticed Jon approaching from one of the entrances.
"I need to hear some good news, Mr. Nichols," she said, hurrying out into the cool night air.
"Some," he said, stepping close and lowering his voice to 'discussing potential scoop' levels.
The convention center was in the center of a vast, green, park-like setting. Sprawling stretches of manicured lawns and picturesque trees were scattered with footpaths lit by faux paper lanterns. They turned down the path that would lead them to their hotel. Here and there, convention attendees that had lingered longer than most milled about in the idyllic setting, but none seemed near enough to take an interest in the pair.
"Well? Out with it!" she whispered harshly.
"I finally got through contacting all of the local newsfeeds from the robberies-"
"Breaches," she corrected.
"Whatever. All of the incidents that you thought were related. You were right. This has been going on a lot longer than anyone realized. Some of those bases were hit more than once."
"And the fact that we didn't know that means that there is probably a cover-up going on. I knew this was going to be a good one. Is that all you got?"
"Nope. It turns out this is one of those groups that wants people to know what they're up to, or at least it used to be. One of the small news outfits was given a video taking credit for one of the earlier incidents, but the military put the kibosh on broadcasting it."
"Since when has someone trying to squelch info ever actually succeeded?" she said with a grin, "Putting a cease-and-desist on something is just code for 'This is guaranteed to go viral.' Everyone knows that."
"Either these guys didn't realize that or the army is better at intimidating people than studios and music labels. Regardless, I've got the file right here. Two years old, and in a wacky codec, but I got it to play."
"You're a pro, Jon. Keep this up and I'll be working for you someday," she said, glancing around casually to make sure no one was near enough to listen in.
"I look for more than a pretty face in my interns," Jon said.
"Alright, alright. Less 'sassy sidekick' and more 'research assistant.' Did it have anything good?"
"If these are the same people, I think we've got a name for the group responsible."
"Miss Modane!" called out someone at the door of the convention center.
She turned to see a young man and woman hurrying toward her. They had the unmistakable look of eagerness and enthusiasm that first year college students all seemed to share, and one of them was brandishing an expensive, full-sized camera.
"These two look like talkers," Michella muttered under her breath, "Head back to the hotel room and get the video ready. I'll be in as soon as I'm done with the cub reporters."
"You know, they can't be more than a few years younger than you. How is it that you've already managed to become world weary?" Jon asked.
Michella shot him a sizzling look.
"I know, I know. I'll get to it. Enjoy the adulation."
Jon hurried off toward the glitzy hotel that the news department had selected for them. As he did, Michella tried to forget that she had a hot lead waiting for her and remember that these two were exactly where she was not so long ago. It was hell getting good advice and your name on the right lists back then. The least she could do is give the next generation the attention she wished she'd gotten.
#
Meanwhile, on deGrasse, Lex had spent the last few minutes applying his knowledge of electronics repair to the glass bead on Ma's neck. For the most part, this had been limited to tapping it periodically and asking her to try it again.
"I beg your pardon, but what precisely is happening here?" asked Garotte.
"Ma has this thing built into her neck here. She uses it to interface with computers and stuff. She's basically crippled and mute without it."
"Fascinating," Garotte said flatly, "Did you arrange to spring me from my incarceration in order to fret over the fate of an absurd mash-up of genetics and electronics, or were we going to look into the malevolent organization that may be using a mad scientist of our acquaintance to plot nefarious deeds?"
Lex looked to Ma, who had once again turned her gaze to the ground, a look of borderline panic and furious contemplation on her face. She glanced up, then gestured with her head toward the screen with the intelligence Garotte had gathered.
"You sure?" Lex asked.
When she replied with a nod, he reluctantly shuffled along the cluttered floor to the screen. A sequence of still frames from videos had been arranged. Specific areas were enlarged, highlighted, and enhanced.
"Right. I've been looking over the video," he said, tapping one of the frames. It swelled to fill the screen and began to play.
The shot seemed to be from the point of view of a stationary camera and showed a bundled up Karter along with three oddly dressed men, similarly bundled and sporting goggles. The three strangers were standing with their backs to the camera while Karter gestured and waved at a strange rig in front of him. There was no audio.
"There's our boy. Looks just as worn out and cobbled together as the last time I saw him," Garotte remarked, pointing out Karter. "These fellows here, I would presume, are the prospective customers. Military, the three of them."
"How can you tell? Those aren't any uniforms that I've ever seen," Lex said, squinting at the low quality video.
"No, but look at how they are standing. Look where these gents stand in relation to this one. Practically walking in formation, these three. Very, very military. He's the leader, those are his subordinates. I'd wager they've all seen action, too."
"How can you tell that?"
Garotte tracked the video forward until he reached a point where the three men were all walking toward the camera. He paused it when they were near enough to make out some details.
"This looks like a plasma splash here in this one's face," he said, pointing to a cluster of red speckles on the exposed portion of one man's face, "We used to call them lucky freckles. You get them when a plasma charge hits something nearby, such as a fellow soldier, and you're kissed by the splash."
"How does that make them lucky?"
"Because the plasma hit something nearby rather than, say, you. Where was I? Ah, yes. That one's got a limp. This one's holding his arm wrong, like he's had some work done on it. Probably has an artificial joint. Yes, these boys have been on the wrong end of a weapon or two."
"So you're telling me that some military is trying to buy a CME whatever from Karter?"
"I don't think so. If this was official military business, these boys would be in full uniform. There would be indication of rank. Definitely not standard military business."
"Maybe it was undercover?"
"If it was black ops I wouldn't have had nearly as easy a time sussing out their military pedigree. If it was commandos, they wouldn't be talking to him. No, I'm thinking general infantry, marines, crewmen, something like that. Either retired, discharged, or defected. No current loyalties. Which brings us to the ship."
He switched to a high resolution still of the ship in flight.
"That looks like a Delta, without a doubt. The front end, anyway. The propulsion looks off," Lex said appreciatively. He was the sort of person who consumed spaceship magazines with the enthusiasm that others might devote to periodicals of an entirely more mature variety.
"Well spotted. I was thinking it might be a dollar, but t
he exhaust vent is wrong, and the body is a bit too long?"
"Dollar?" Lex said with a raised eyebrow.
"Delta Astro Long Range Recon. DA-LRR."
"Oh, right. No, that rear end doesn't belong on a DAL-double-R. Modification, maybe?"
"Doesn't look like it. Lines are too smooth. You don't do cosmetic stuff like that to a modified spacecraft. No reason."
"I know a few guys who get body work done on their customs," Lex countered.
"Do they spend any time doing illegal arms deals?"
"I doubt it."
"The rebellious set are disinclined to make cosmetic touches when they make modifications. Equipment used by terrorists and extremists tends to have the general appearance of something held together with rubber bands and paperclips. More likely this is some sort of a short run."
A tumbling noise drew their attention to the ground, where Ma had attempted to dismount her crate with limited success. Before Lex could lend a hand, she'd managed to get upright again and made her way to her slidepad on the floor. Her movements favored the leg that had taken the shock. When she reached it, she plopped down on her haunches and began tapping and swiping at the screen with her front paws. A text window came up, followed by a slow sequence of letters and numbers: NXLRR-0025c.
"I've never heard of NX. Are they a military contractor?" Lex said.
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