by M. D. Cooper
Interesting. What would Deering have to do with them?
At present, Nibiru—the ninth major planet of the Sol System, a large terrestrial orb nearly ten times as massive as Earth—was nearly two hundred AU from Sol. That was a half-year trip on a fast ship. She couldn’t imagine what would bring them all the way to InnerSol, and Vesta of all places.
Certainly not a bunch of ancient engine components.
Tanis checked on the transport Connie was taking, and saw that it was still within a few light seconds of Vesta.
After the brief delay, the engineer’s response came back loud and clear.
Connie burst out laughing, and Tanis’s fears were confirmed.
Tanis nodded to herself.
Tanis only sent a groan over the Link before turning her attention back to her surroundings.
The maglev was sliding into the hospital station, and she rose slowly, waiting for the train to come to a complete halt—and final jerk—before walking to the doors.
A ping to the hospital’s NSAI informed her that the appointment was two levels up in a lab wing of the facility. Tanis wondered what they would need to do in a lab that they couldn’t extract from the sensors in her mods and mind.
Darla suggested as Tanis walked to the nearest lift, feeling as self-conscious as she expected with her exposed midriff amongst the uniformed hospital personnel.
Once on the correct floor, Tanis walked through a half-kilometer of corridors before she finally arrived at the area marked as ‘Enhanced BioEngineering Labs 3J’. A tastefully decorated—for the TSF—waiting area was set up outside a pair of double doors. Four chairs were arranged around a low table, and a cooler filled with beverages sat in a corner.
A pillar of light hovered before the doors, and Tanis addressed it as she approached.
“Commander Tanis Richards, here for my 0900 appointment with Colonel Green.”
The pillar of light pulsed once in acknowledgement before the audible response came from the AI. “It’s only 0835, Commander.”
Tanis shrugged, a small smile on her lips. “You never know with maglevs on Vesta—plus, I’ve never been to this part of the hospital before. Wouldn’t want to get lost.”
“You have the most advanced overlays in the military, I doubt you could get lost,” the AI said, its tone a hair away from being caustic. “Have a seat, I’ll inform you when Colonel Green is ready for you.”
Tanis gave a crisp nod and took the seat with the best view of the waiting area’s entrance and exit.
Tanis chuckled softly.
“These seats free?” a curly-haired man asked as he approached.
Tanis glanced around at the three empty seats. “Well, the AIs in them may get offended, but I suppose they can double up.”
The man snorted a laugh and took the seat furthest from Tanis, which faced her almost directly. “I think they’ll manage. Though I wouldn’t have expected you to have three AIs in your mind. I thought the limit was just one.”
“Just my standard mental instability,” Tanis gave the man a tired smile. “I’m not paired at all.”
“No?” the man’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing here, then? Doesn’t this lab deal with AI augmentations?”
“I’m an L2,” Tanis tapped the side of her head. “No room in here for an AI. But I had some mods done recently, and this is where they told me to go for my checkup, so here I am.”
“Dr. Green did them?” the man asked, his question cementing Tanis’s assessment that he was a civilian.
“The colonel was in charge, yes,” Tanis replied. “As to who did the work, no clue, I was out cold for it.”
Something about his questioning struck a nerve with Tanis, and she looked him up. Her facial recognition systems pegged him as a man named Harm Ellis; there was little information available on him in Vesta’s public databases, other than an affiliation with Enfield Technologies, who she recalled Darla mentioning as being behind the tech for their pairing.
“I imagine it was Colonel Green who did the work on you,” Harm said, a smile quirking the corners of his mouth. “Not every day an L2 gets an AI.”
Tanis straightened in her chair, giving the man a hard stare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’d appreciate it if you found somewhere else to sit.”
Harm shrugged as he eyed her up and down. “Relax, Commander Richards. I have clearance.”
“Not with me, you don’t,” Tanis replied, all too aware that she was likely being tested. “I’ve reported this encounter to my CO and division AIs.”
“As you should have,” Colonel Green said as she pushed open the double doors leading into Lab 3J. “I’m glad to see that you’re taking the secret nature of your and Darla’s pairing seriously—though I can’t say the same for your safety.”
As Colonel Green spoke, she gestured for Tanis to follow her into the lab.
“I think I did an admirable job keeping myself safe, Colonel. Only got a small nick—the other guy lost half his
hand.”
“In that ‘random’ attack,” Harm added as he followed after Tanis.
She glanced over her shoulder at the Enfield man. “Glad to see someone else thinks there was more to it.”
“Oh, we think something was up, we just can’t tell what,” Harm said. “You’d not been out of the hospital a day when someone tried to kill you. That makes us a bit worried about our investment.”
“You know.” Tanis fell back to walk beside Harm. “Your ‘investment’ is the lives of two sentient beings. You should choose your words more carefully.”
Harm’s eyes widened at the threat in Tanis’s voice. “I’ll do that.”
Darla asked.
“In here.” Colonel Green gestured to an open doorway on the left, and Tanis entered first, followed by Harm and then the colonel.
The room was spare, just a pair of consoles on either side of a scanning arch.
“Disrobe, Commander Richards,” the colonel ordered without even looking at Tanis.
With a glance toward Harm—who was walking toward one of the consoles—Tanis blew out a breath and strode to a chair sitting in a corner where she pulled off her clothing, folding each article as she set it down.
She’d not normally give so much care to the process, but something about Colonel Green’s demeanor led Tanis to believe that the woman would judge her if a single fold was askew.
Standing naked in front of the chair, Tanis asked. “My hair tie?”
Green glanced at her as though she were a troublesome annoyance, not the very reason for everyone’s presence in the room. “Leave it. Will make it easier to get a reading.”
Tanis nodded and approached the arch, not stepping under until instructed. “So what are you looking for that my nano can’t tell you?”
“Nano can’t see the big picture,” Green said, not looking up from her console. “And it only reports what it’s told to. Your body has dozens of mods and natural organs, all knitted together. You’re BIO9 module makes sure they’re all behaving, but no one has a mod-set quite like you.”
“It’s a ‘we don’t know what we don’t know’ situation,” Harm summated, catching a glower from Green.
“OK, step under the arch,” the colonel instructed.
Tanis complied and stood still, her arms away from her sides.
Tanis wondered if that would really end up being possible. She’d been so enamored with the idea of having an AI herself, she’d never considered that it may not work for all L2s.
“Colonel Green,” she ventured.
“What is it, Commander.”
“Darla and I were chatting, and something occurred to me…exactly how unique am I? Will this technique you’ve worked out for interleaving an AI’s neural net with an L2’s be generally applicable?”
The colonel glanced up at Tanis, her expression unreadable. “What makes you think that the military will ever make this tech open to the public?”
Tanis’s gaze slid to Harm Ellis. “Well, nothing stays with the military forever. And I assume that if I ever muster out, I’ll retain the ability.”
“Perhaps,” Green said, looking back at her console. “None of that is really for me to say.”
“What about how unique I am?” Tanis asked. “Will other L2 officers be able to have AIs?”
“A bit early to tell,” Harm replied from his console. “We have to see how things go with you, first.”
Darla snorted.
Tanis shook her head, catching a glare from Green.
“Stay still,” the doctor ordered.
Tanis resisted the urge to groan and roll her eyes.
Tanis suddenly wondered if the attack the night before had been in relation to her pairing with Darla, and not at all about the Norse Wind and Admiral Deering’s strange guests.
Of course, that didn’t explain why there was no record of the Norse Wind anywhere, or why a man with the exact same gait as Captain Unger had shown up to meet with Deering—all after she’d turned the Wind over to another ship on Admiral Deering’s orders.
“Was it a test?” Tanis asked aloud, determined to rule out possibilities as quickly as she could in an attempt to make sense of everything that was happening around her.
“Was what a test?” Green asked, her tone carrying no small amount of annoyance.
“That attack last night. Were you testing us? Is that why everyone played it down?”
Green snorted and shook her head. “Trust me, if I were to test you in the field, it would be with more than one assailant in a san. Though I’m surprised you didn’t capture him.”
“I had a few issues with my balance,” Tanis replied. “Nothing major, just adapting to the changes in sight and hearing.”
“You should have reported those,” Harm admonished.
Tanis shrugged, then caught a glare from Green for the movement. “They were normal adaptation vari
ances; this isn’t my first time getting mods upgraded. I adjusted and compensated. If I’d been dressed in anything other than…well, a dress, that guy would be in a cell.”
Green and Harm shared a look, and then returned to reviewing what was on their console.
“Much longer?” Tanis asked. “It’s a bit chilly in here to be standing around naked.”
“The more talking, the longer this’ll take,” Green said dispassionately. “You have the mods to warm up, feel free to use them.”
“I think it’s the aluminum-laced hair,” Tanis said as she triggered her body to warm her skin. “Sucks out a lot of heat.”
“Noticed that.” Harm nodded. “We thought your brain would run a lot hotter with Darla interwoven through it, but that hasn’t turned out to be the case—at least not over the past day.”
“Could probably remove it, if needed,” Green glanced at Tanis. “After the initial monitoring period is over, of course.”
“Of course,” she replied.
The doctor and the Enfield contractor spent another fifteen minutes examining her, and then allowed her to get dressed. While she was pulling her clothes on, both Green and Harm peppered her with rapid-fire questions, yelling some, whispering others.
Tanis could tell what they were up to, and answered the questions quickly and accurately. Then, while she was pulling on her jacket, Harm approached and punched Tanis in the arm while asking a question.
Two seconds later, he was on the ground, one arm behind his back, his face pressed into the ground by Tanis’s knee.
“That was a stupid move, and a dumb question. Everyone knows that Venus rotates retrograde, and its evening star is Earth, which rises in the west.”
Green barked a laugh, and Tanis glanced up to see a genuine smile on the colonel’s face.
“I told you not to do that, Ellis.”
“ ‘s protocol,” Harm mumbled as best he could. “Can you let me up now, Commander?”
Tanis rose and stepped back from the man as she adjusted her jacket. “Be straight with me. Am I the first L2 to be paired with an AI?”
Harm rose on shaky legs, rubbing his jaw as he eyed Colonel Green. She nodded and folded her arms, turning to address Tanis. “You’re not the first, no. But you’re the first person post-natally upgraded to an L2 to fully pair with an AI. The others didn’t take properly. There was too much bleed-through. But with what we’ve learned from you, we should be able to replicate the process.”
