by M. D. Cooper
Arrayed just below him was a tray full of rotten eggs—except for one that sat near its middle. Encased in a mesh of filament, Silver’s egg was covered in a webwork of fine cracks. She had not yet hatched, but she could have.
Crash shifted his awareness to the laboratory database, sorting information about how the incubating trays worked. Some form of stasis technology controlled the growth progress of each individual egg. During decades of experimentation, some had grown too rapidly and been allowed to die. Others sat in an endlessly fertilized state, waiting to propagate.
Searching lab notes, he discovered how the researchers explored different methods to insert the Link into the chick during its development. They had taken what they learned from Doomie and Testa and integrated the new capabilities into later generations. He saw how he had benefited from his friends’ sacrifices, and felt a wave of bitterness.
Crash held onto the anger for a second, then let it go. He loved Testa and Doomie and he missed them. He thanked them for what they had given him, and wished they hadn’t died in fear and pain. He could only live to honor them. He would teach all the parrots after him to honor them.
Ngoba had walked up beside Crash at the railing, his boot clicking on the deck. He surveyed the rotten eggs, curling his nose.
Ngoba nodded.
Ngoba looked at him in surprise.
Ngoba sent him a mental grin, indicating he wasn’t bothered by the possibilities at all.
Crash bobbed his head.
Ngoba asked.
Crash hopped from the railing back to Ngoba’s shoulder. It reassured him slightly to grip the suit’s thick fabric and be closer to the ear that he enjoyed nuzzling.
Ngoba chuckled as he turned and walked back down the gangplank. There was more to check within the ship, but they would need to save that for later. For now, they had solved the primary mystery that had brought them to the Hesperia Nevada. The other systems would have to wait.
Besides, none of it mattered if they didn’t survive getting off Vesta.
As they reached the next laboratory, Kirre shouted over the internal communication channel,
INSTANT OF OPPORTUNITY
STELLAR DATE: 03.28.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Emerson Sharp Communications Station
REGION: Vesta, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Sitting in the dark, Ty waited for his eyes to adjust. There had to be a backup power system somewhere emitting the smallest amount of light, but it hadn’t appeared yet. He waited.
That meant no luck.
A few meters away, still lying on the floor, Amstrad groaned. “What did you do to me?” he asked.
“Nothing that will have any lasting impact,” Ty said.
He was sitting with his back against the bookshelf, and the books felt strangely warm in the dark. Manny lay within reach.
“What’s happening?” Amstrad asked.
“I figured you would tell me.”
“Why can’t I see anything? Am I blindfolded somehow? Did you do something to blind me?”
“I didn’t do anything to you,” Ty said. “The lights are out. The power seems to be out everywhere in your little bunker. Whatever you did to piss Lyssa off, has taken down your entire system.”
Amstrad made another groaning sound. What followed was most likely the struggle of the man trying to roll over, not succeeding, then collapsing on the plascrete floor.
Ty had tied the man’s wrists to his ankles, bending his knees, so, at best, Amstrad might be able to rise to his knees in the low gravity and attempt an awkward head-butt.
Ty hoped the man might try something. He wanted an excuse to hurt him.
“Now you’re awake,” Ty said. “You can tell me where you’ve got an autodoc.”
“Down the main corridor, on the left. There should be phosphorescent lights that operate even in the dark. I don’t have them in this room because it was originally a cargo bay. But once you get to the main door you’ll find it.”
“Are you lying to me?” Ty asked.
“I don’t have any reason to lie to you. Obviously, this isn’t working on my end. I’m stuck here with you.”
He sounded sincere, but it was impossible to know for sure.
“How do you power this place anyway?” Ty asked.
“Batteries under the station,” Amstrad said. “The solar collectors are inside the satellite dish. That’s why you can’t see them from the surface. The batteries should last a thousand years. That is, as long as somebody doesn’t cut us off.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Little more than thirty years,” Amstrad said. “This was the perfect place to hide out before Psion decided to take up residence on Ceres. Everybody had forgotten about Vesta. Now it keeps popping up on the newsfeeds. The rhetoric keeps getting hotter and hotter. I was looking for a way to leave; I figured my Weapon Born there would be able to pilot the ship for me.”
“Doesn’t that go against the idea of sentient AIs?” Ty asked.
Amstrad coughed a laugh. “There’s new tech out there, stuff that makes it possible to control an AI.”
Ty raised an eyebrow, wishing he could see Amstrad’s face. “You’re talking about enslaving SAIs?”
“You call it whatever you want to. AIs are here to serve us, and there are tools to make that easier than ever. All you need is the stomach to use them.”
“And you’ve got the stomach,” Ty asked.
“I do what’s necessary.”
“What about all your back-up files here? You’d just leave all of it?”
“I told you before. I’m a Data Hoarder. This is all on Mesh, and on a private node within the Mesh. I wouldn’t lose anything. The Weapon Born’s image was getting backed up before the power went out. Once he’s on the Mesh, it’s forever.”
“His name is Kylan Carthage.”
“That’s not Kylan Carthage. It’s a copy. That is why they’re things and not people.”
Ty shook his head in disgust. Whatever he had thought about saving this man’s life, he no longer felt compelled to follow through on his basic compassion.
“Is he lost then?” Ty asked.
&n
bsp; “I don’t know. He should be in the system’s active memory. It stores to disk when the powers cut. I can’t verify anything until power comes back up. And since it’s gone, we’re just going to slowly freeze to death, which is what’s going to happen before oxygen runs out.”
He was right, Ty realized. He hadn’t sensed much change in the temperature because he was still wearing his EV suit. He would have longer than Amstrad might, but that didn’t change the fact that eventually they would all freeze to death.
“I guess we’ve got two problems then,” Ty said. “We need to get the power back up, and then we need to convince the Weapon Born not to kill us both.”
Amstrad cackled. “He can’t do anything in his matrix.”
“I would believe you,” Ty said, “but you just royally fucked whatever plan you had to control Lyssa. If I were her, right now I would be sending shipkillers to claw their way inside your little bunker here. She could be upstairs right now. Maybe she’ll come busting through the door in some kind of drilling mech and drive an auger through your chest.”
“Whatever,” Amstrad said. “If she does that, the copy of her friend will be lost. If she values any sort of sentient life, she’ll play it careful. But who knows? Maybe she’ll just drop a nuke on us. I wouldn’t put it past her. She’s an AI, after all. Made to kill.”
Ty checked Manny’s pulse again. There hadn’t been much change that he could feel.
He could try and take Manny with him to find the autodoc. Or he could leave Manny here with Amstrad and go verify that the autodoc was where the hoarder had said it was. Ty didn’t like the first choice, but the second seemed safer since he was completely blind, and Amstrad was securely tied. There was also the problem of prying open the doors to the main corridor.
Pushing himself to his feet, he felt his way toward the main door the drones had carried them through earlier. He didn’t find it, but he bumped into a desk along the wall.
He followed the desk’s edge to the adjacent wall and then found the side of the door. In another few minutes, he located the mechanical override. He pulled open the panel and started cranking a wheel that seemed to open the door a centimeter for every minute he turned. The two sections of the door squeaked like mice as they slid apart.
Amstrad berated him in the dark, telling them they were all going to die, Ty was an idiot, and Marsians in general were of low intelligence. “I guess you don’t care if they die,” Amstrad said. “Your Marsian Special Ops, after all. I know all about your kind. You don’t have a past. You barely have a mind. You might as well be a Weapon Born yourself. You’re the human version anyway. What happens if you fail your mission here? You think they’ll take you back with open arms? You’re the bleeding edge of a covert operation to start a war between humanity and Psion. You failed. Your usefulness is ended. They’ll cut you as easy as blowing up a mech. You don’t have an identity. It doesn’t matter what happens to you.”
Ty focused on the work. His forehead was covered in sweat and his arms burned from the constant cranking. He checked twice and found the opening barely wide enough for his arm. In another ten minutes, he might be able to slip through, but not while carrying Manny.
“Why did you join the Special Ops anyway?” Amstrad asked. “Running from something? You trying to get away from a past you can’t face anymore? Or did nobody love you?”
“Maybe I wanted a life of fun and adventure,” Ty said. “Maybe I just don’t think about it as much as you seem to.”
“You say that,” Amstrad said. “But doesn’t everybody join the military for a reason? Everyone is trying to get away from something. Everybody wants to escape some past they can’t face. You’re no different. I bet if you gave me five minutes on the Mesh, I’d find out who you were. All it would take is a facial scan. Maybe adjust for age, maybe scan your ear even. No different than a fingerprint. I might look those up too. I bet you’re out there Mr. Special Ops. You want that? I’ll do that for you. You get the power turned on, and I’ll have your life for you with just a few search terms on my terminal. That’s my power. I’ve got access to all human knowledge. No one hides from me.”
“I appreciate the offer,” Ty said, grunting as he fought the wheel. “But I’m sure I left all that behind for a reason. It would be a waste of time to go look it up.”
“That’s what you say. Maybe it would amuse me. I hate mysteries.”
Ty checked the opening, grateful to find it was finally wide enough. He knelt beside Manny and maneuvered the big man into a fireman’s carry over his shoulder. The tanks on the back of his EV suit clanked against Ty’s helmet as he oriented on the open door. Slowly, he reached the opening and walked through.
“You better come back for me,” Amstrad shouted. “Don’t leave me alone like this. Don’t let me die here. It’s already colder with that door open. I can feel the cold.”
“Let me help you with that,” Ty said. With his free hand, he dug the shock wand out of his cargo pocket, thumbed it up to a hundred percent power, and zapped Amstrad.
The hacker gurgled and flopped, but finally shut up.
Ty tested his hold on Manny, then walked slowly down the corridor.
PINBALL
STELLAR DATE: 03.28.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: TSS Furious Leap
REGION: Low Orbit, Vesta, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Kirre’s face was death warmed over as she stared at the pilot’s console, slipping between manual and NSAI control. The Hesperia Nevada was not moving fast enough to avoid any of the obstacles in a combat zone.
The only factor that had saved them so far seemed to be the fact that every missile heading their way had other targets in mind, including the shuttle, which somehow hadn’t been destroyed. The Hesperia Nevada couldn’t have outmaneuvered anything.
On the hacked JC channel, combat controllers debated why the hell a medical ship had been moved to the front line.
Out of the corner of her mouth, Kirre said, “Believe it or not, that’s some good news right there—they already think we’re a hospital ship.”
Ngoba had been studying everything he could find about Heartbridge Medical. He seemed convinced they could actually offer medical services if they were pressed to do it. Or he could push the ploy long enough to get them away from the front lines, at least. At that point, he would pivot on his chaos theory and devise a new plan.
Kirre kept her focus on her pilot’s duties and only muttered, “Just don’t do anything stupid enough to get us killed.”
Crash thought Ngoba was relying a bit too much on chaos, but as his friend had already proven, chaos seemed to show the way.
But Crash didn’t want to accept the idea as dependable, because obviously chaos was not dependable, and no chain of coincidences would convince him otherwise. He was still a parrot who preferred to play it safe.
As Kirre struggled with the ship, Crash turned his attention to the shard, which he’d determined was physically located here on the command deck. The locking systems surrounding Shara followed a series of dependable and off-the-shelf opening steps. He recalled several different techniques for attacking such security systems that Fugia had taught him.
Crash considered calling her, wondering what she would think about the situation. Even if Ngoba was here, and didn’t like talking about, or to, Fugia, Crash realized there was nothing stopping him from talking to her. He didn’t have to tell Ngoba. He also didn’t have to ask permission to access the Hesperia Nevada’s communications array; he had admin access to everything onboard.
Crash slipped into the communications console over his Link and sent the request to Fugia. He continued to study the shackle as the request updated in the back of his mind. Like an ancient phone ringing on empty space, the connection continued…unanswered.
The first lock on the shackle responded to his queries with a standard warning about destruction of property followed by a host of legal threats under Marsian authority. Crash listened curiously, unable to ignore
the circuitous gibberish of Marsian legalese.
Across the command deck, Ngoba slapped his console. “Why the hell aren’t they recognizing us as a hospital ship?” he demanded.
“It was Psion,” Kirre said. “Psion can see our point of origin. I think they also don’t care much if we’re a hospital ship.”
“Psion should love Heartbridge. Heartbridge is shady. Always has been. They produced a ton of tech that ended up in Psion.”
Kirre pressed her lips together. “I show three missiles heading our way. We definitely can’t run.”
Rather than panicking, Ngoba asked in a calm voice, “Profile? Nukes or conventional?
“Scanners on this thing are not exactly top-notch. Based on the mass, I’d say they might not be nukes. They could also be some fancy new tech Psion’s developed. It really doesn’t matter: nukes or kinetic, we won’t survive.”
As Crash considered the shackle’s second locking mechanism, Fugia answered his connection.
She had answered too quickly to be on High Terra as he’d thought. The Link connection seemed to be coming from the TSF fleet.
Fugia absorbed the information. Crash waited for a response and wasn’t surprised when he received a low laugh.
