by M. D. Cooper
It would just create a massive administrative mess, the likes of which would either give Tanis’s adversaries time to clean up their mess, or it would force them to do something drastic.
“OK, Darla, options. How are we going to get into that bay to get eyes on the Jones?”
“I’m done sitting around. Time to kick some ass.”
“It’ll be more than enough when we nail whoever is behind this to the wall,” Tanis determined as she settled onto one of the sofas and activated the holodisplay in the middle of the seating area.
“Well, to put it simply, the MPs are only watching the inner doors. They’re counting on Vesta’s external security to enforce the lockdown on the bay’s outer doors.”
“Which the STC won’t, of course.” Tanis nodded as she enlarged an external view of Sector 33. “So there it is, the outside doors for Bay 8129. Do you see it?”
Darla asked.
“I do, indeed,” Tanis replied. “That’s our way in.”
Tanis swung the view of Vesta around, moving from the ring to the rocky bulk of the oblong asteroid. “We’re going to visit the memorial.”
The site she had highlighted was a memorial established for the Tuam Massacre. Over a thousand years ago, before the Sol Space Federation had been born from the ashes of the Sentience Wars, hundreds of children had been experimented on at Vesta by a group of scientists who were attempting to recreate the successes of the ancient Weapon Born program, which had birthed some of the first sentient AIs.
The Terran Space Force had been sent in to put an end to the experiments, and in the end, the Marines found themselves fighting AIs made from the minds of the very children they had been sent to save.
Many of the Marines were killed by the AI-controlled drones and mechs that defended the installation on Vesta’s western face. The Marines fought back ferociously, but what they hadn’t known at the time was that the enemies they fought had not been remotely controlled.
Every kill they made in an attempt to save the children, had instead killed an AI that was—for all intents and purposes—the brainwashed mind of a child.
When they’d finally breached the facility, the Marines found that all the organic children were already dead—and they had killed nearly every AI born from them.
Over half the company that assaulted Vesta died in the attack, and more suicided in the years that followed.
The memorial had been established in honor of both the Marines and the children. A reminder of the toll that war levied; one that every TSF enlistee who passed through Vesta was required to visit.
Tanis had already been to it twice over the years, but no one would look askance at her making another pilgrimage.
“Got a better—”
The door to the suite opened, and Tanis cut off her retort and spun, pistol aimed at Harm as he strolled in.
“Easy now,” he said with his hands raised. “Thought you’d see me on the feeds.”
Darla replied.
“Would have been nice if you’d told me,” Tanis scolded Darla, lowering the pistol. “What you got there?” she asked Harm, nodding to the crate following him in.
“More gear,” the MICI agent said with a grin. “Armor, guns, a new lightwand.”
As he said the last, he tossed a wand to Tanis, and she couldn’t help but grin as she snatched it out of the air.
“Stars, feels good to have one of these back—though I wish it were my own.”
“They’re all the same.” Harm shrugged as he began unpacking the crate, setting a variety of items on the table.
“Not when they’re given to you by your DI for being part of a platoon that beat a defense set up by the 242nd Marines.”
Harm cocked an eyebrow. “OK, I suppose I can see how you’d treasure that. Either way, when this gets wrapped up, we’ll get your wand back.”
“Did you learn anything while you were out?” Tanis asked. “Where were you, anyway?”
The dark-haired man winked at Tanis. “Maintaining my cover, mostly. Remember, even Colonel Green doesn’t know I’m MICI, which is a bit tricky to begin with, since she is as well.”
Tanis could appreciate the complexity that his undercover situation must present, but it didn’t change the fact that people were trying to kill her. “Did you learn anything about what’s going on?”
“A bit. Mostly, I learned what’s not going on. Officially, no one has your ship on lockdown, despite the fact that Vesta’s MPs have the bay closed off. Also, the SWSF delegation that Admiral Deering is meeting with is here on official business to discuss some joint training operations. What is interesting, though, is that Captain Tora—your ‘Unger’ from the Norse Wind—arrived later than his compatriots. Just a few hours after the Kirby Jones, as a matter of fact.”
“Now that is interesting,” Tanis replied as she watched Harm place four rifles, ballistic handguns, armor, and several cases that were labeled ‘Infil Kit’ on the table. “Anything about the Arizona?”
“Nothing,” Harm shook his head. “Though my inquiries have had to be discreet. I’m trying to help you, and avoid trashing a cover that took over a decade to establish.”
Harm shrugged as he closed up the crate. “I’d be crazy not to. Considering what’s going on, you two are handling things very well. Granted, we didn’t pick slouches for this L2-AI trial; you’re both top of your game.”
Tanis flipped over the armor Harm had laid out. There was a vacuum-capable underlayer, and a black, rather strangely styled second layer of kinetic and ablative armor.
“Where did you get this stuff?” she asked. “It looks almost like leather.”
“It was confiscated from a merc outfit that broke a few too many rules and lost their contracts with the TSF,” he replied. “It’s a bit stylized, but it should do the trick for you.”
“For me?” Tanis asked.
Harm gave her another of his winks before turning and walking into the kitchen, gesturing at the holodisplay that still showed Tanis’s planned route across Vesta’s surface. “For your little spacewalk. I saw what you have planned.”
“So you think it’s a good idea?” she asked. “I have to admit, I feel like I’m between a rock and a hard place here. I want to do what it takes to figure this out, but it’s my own people I’m up against. Just one word from Deering, and I’m in a world of trouble—which in and of itself makes no sense.”
“What, that she hasn’t gone straight at you?”
Tanis nodded. “Yeah—hey, those are my BLTs.”
Harm cast a disbelieving look over his shoulder as he stopped mid-reach for one of her beloved sandwiches. “There are six of them in here, and I just brought you a big crate of gifts.”
“OK, fine.” Tanis waved her hand, granting the man permission. “So what’s your take on Deering?”
“One possibility is that she’s not in on it at all,” Harm replied as he grabbed two BLTs and set them on a plate. “Could just be that she’s a convenient patsy, and someone in her command is in cahoots with whatever’s going on.
”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Tanis allowed, nodding slowly. “That would explain it well enough. Then if whoever is up to no good, such as Master Chief Moore, were to come right at me, it would push things into the open, and Deering would shut down their…whatever is going on.”
“Right,” Harm nodded. “And that’s the last thing we want.”
“He’s right.” Tanis sighed and snatched one of the BLTs off Harm’s plate, earning her a scowl from the man. “Something big is going down, but I still feel responsible—what, with us being the ones who boarded the Norse Wind in the first place.”
“You’ve got a MICI style of attitude there, Commander Richards.” Harm winked at her again.
Darla snorted.
Tanis chose not to answer the question from her AI, and instead addressed Harm. “Why do I get the feeling that this is all but an assignment from you at this point?”
Harm chuckled as he poured himself a glass of wine. “Well, now that I’m hip-deep in this, we have two options. Follow through, or run it up the chain. I can’t blow my cover, so follow through is on you. If I run it up the chain, chances are that the thing will blow up in a way neither of us will like. Your brass tends to get pretty pissy when Division 99 gets involved in their shit. Stars, if we hadn’t chewed up your shore leave to get you and Darla together, they would have fought us on who was going to pay for your convalescence.”
“Yay for being caught in the middle,” Tanis drawled, grabbing the armor’s underlayer and stalking off to her room.
“Oh, what?” Harm called after her. “I’ve seen you naked half a dozen times now.”
“You’ll just have to wait for the next time Green’s doing an exam on me to get your rise,” Tanis shot back.
Harm only snorted. “Or the next time you get a limb cut off, and I have to perform emergency surgery on you.”
She was all too aware that Harm had probably taken her desire for privacy as playing hard-to-get—if the number of saucy winks he’d already delivered was any indication.
STORMING THE KIRBY JONES
STELLAR DATE: 01.22.4084 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Asteroid Surface
REGION: Vesta, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Tanis stepped out of the airlock, glad for the armor she wore—even if it wasn’t TSF-issue—and stared out across the rocky, grey surface of Vesta.
The ‘western face’ of the oblong asteroid was now the upward side of the rock, which spun on its shorter axis. As a result, looking straight up caused the stars to wheel around at a near dizzying speed, while looking straight ahead made them appear to be racking past, right to left.
The Tuam Memorial site was near the southern end of Vesta; as such, roughly half a g pulled at Tanis, making the surface of the asteroid feel like a sharply descending slope. To deal with this, stairs were set into the rocky surface.
Tanis gingerly walked down them—once she had clipped her safety tether to the railing. Ahead, she could see the half-destroyed buildings of the Tuam research facilities. ES shields protected them from debris and some radiation, but a thousand years of standing out against the void had taken their toll. Any organic compounds were long gone, and most of what remained were half-shells of buildings.
In the center of the structures was a silver obelisk that marked the memorial site. Clustered around it were a thousand smaller pillars: one for each human and AI that had given their lives, either in the defense of or offense at Tuam.
The buildings and obelisk sat perpendicular to Vesta’s surface, which meant that, from Tanis’s perspective, they were leaning at a precarious angle, looking as though they were about to tumble down the rocky slope and into the void beyond.
Being that it was the middle of the first shift, few visitors were present—most either enjoying their shore leave, sleeping off the prior night’s revelry, or working at their job.
Tanis felt like she was doing the honorees a disservice by appearing in merc gear, and she was doubly intent on giving proper respect to the memorial—not that she would dream of passing by without paying them to begin with.
As she approached the buildings, she could see a platform jutting out where observers could look over the site and see holos of the Marines and children who had perished there.
Darla spoke for the first time since the airlock had cycled, as Tanis stepped onto the platform.
Tanis bit her lip, thinking about all the horrible things humans had done to AIs during the war—and all the things the AIs had done in return. It wasn’t a great time for either of the two species. The fact that they came out of it at all, with civilization relatively intact, was more than a miracle.
Tanis pursed her lips.
Tanis stopped at the edge of the platform and lowered her head to pay her respects, taking a minute of silence before lifting it once more and asking,
Darla laughed, a chittering giggle.
she countered.
While this section of the memorial wasn’t off-limits, it was a dead end, and few people ventured down to the bottom.
Ta
nis felt a stab of guilt as she eased down the stairs, as though she were violating the memory of the place with her nefarious intentions.
At the bottom of the stairs was another small platform near an obelisk that marked where a platoon of Marines had died, wiped out by a suicide attack that three AI-controlled drones had carried out.
The thirty-first millennia had left its share of scars on the Sol System, but most were covered up, long built over—like Ceres. The Andersonian rings had been destroyed, but two new ones had been built, and now it was one of the largest spaceports in the system.
But here, on the barren surface of Vesta, the stark reminders of those wars still stood.
Darla made a sound of dismay.
Tanis shrugged as she turned away from the memorial and walked to the edge of the platform, which was angled almost seventy degrees from the surface of Vesta.
