The Commander

by CJ Williams

  “You already know that, Annie. We’ve talked about this before.”

  “Sadie, do you see that cliff wall on the other side of the crater?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then I order you to fly into that cliff at maximum speed. Now!”

  Luke’s favorite shuttle zipped out of the hangar in a straight line across the moon’s surface. There was a brief, incandescent flash against the far wall of the crater.

  “Annie! What the hell are you doing?” Luke cried out.

  “Getting a little of my own back,” she said grimly. “I wanted to take something from this monster that is controlling your life; that wants you dead.”

  “Annie, it’s not like that, for God’s sake!”

  “Duffy!” Annie screamed.

  “Yes, Miss Daniels?” the shuttle answered nervously.

  “Take me to Baggs, Nevada.”

  Annie got in while Luke stood frozen, still in shock from the depth and quickness of Annie’s rage. The shuttle lifted off and disappeared into the darkness of space.

  # # #

  “Leave her be,” Roth said, putting his hand on Luke’s shoulder.

  Luke jerked, startled by the sudden appearance of his friend. He noticed a crowd of people had gathered at the back of the hangar.

  “How long have I been here?” Luke asked. He realized that he had lost track of time, standing in the middle of the hangar, trying to process what had happened.

  “About thirty minutes. You didn’t come back so I thought I should check to see if you were still alive. Come on; you’re scaring people.”

  “She killed Sadie,” Luke admitted.

  “Sadie’s right there,” Roth said. “George already made a copy. He said she’s special. She was your first AI, I guess.”

  Roth led his stunned friend back to the apartment while offering various reassurances:

  “Just give her some space.”

  “She’ll come around.”

  “She needs a little time to work through it.”

  In his apartment, Luke sat on a bar stool at the kitchen counter. Roth poured him three fingers of whiskey.

  “By tomorrow she’ll come crawling back,” Roth finished. His expression said he didn’t believe any of the platitudes he’d been giving.

  “I hope so.” Luke took a thoughtful sip of the whiskey. “I can’t do this without her.” He paused to collect his thoughts. “That first day after Sam left, when I went to Rosanne’s Diner for breakfast, I was totally freaked out. I mean, sitting there, I just knew I could not do this. I had no idea where to begin. And then there was Annie at the end of the counter. She looked like a teenager in her running togs.”

  “I know,” Roth said patiently. He had heard the story many times.

  “She was so sarcastic when I spoke to her and offered her a job. But after she came to the moon and understood the situation, she was all in. Something about her made me want to succeed. She inspired me. It was the first time I felt like a man since…you know.”

  “I do know. You’re a one-woman man, Luke. You need a wife. And Marcie was always your rock. When she died, I didn’t hold out much hope for you. Not when you cratered so fast. I was relieved when you left the military. I thought your move to Baggs was a good idea. You needed time to fill that empty spot. Annie did that.”

  “She did,” Luke agreed. “When we got together during that vacation I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t think it was right; I’m way too old for her, but I couldn’t help myself.”

  “Not surprised,” Roth said carefully.

  “We discovered each other on that island. I found peace again and it made me feel good. Ever since then, I’ve felt like my old self.”

  “You are your old self,” Roth confirmed. “You were a powerful leader in the old days and you have become one again. This thing with the implant is just a hiccup; don’t let it get to you. Give it a few days. I’ll send Amanda and Kathy down to talk to her. And quit worrying about it; no one is at fault here. Not you, not even George. She’ll see that. I promise.”

  “You think so?”

  “In two weeks you two will be back together like nothing ever happened.”

  Same Day—Annie

  Annie did not want to believe it. The man she loved had just admitted he was to blame for the bomb implanted deep in her skull. Annie knew she was being unreasonable. Is it the implant? she wondered. Is it driving me crazy?

  If anyone else had told her, she never would have considered it. But hearing him say it tied all the loose ends together. It made sense now. Her lover, Luke Blackburn, was part of a conspiracy. One that had started with the Nobility at the center of the galaxy.

  Thanks to the pacifist rulers of a galactic civilization, he was fighting a one-man war against an alien invasion. How ironic they’d selected him. To the Nobility, Luke was part of Earth’s violent offshoot of the galaxy’s human race. In fact, he was one of those true rarities, a kind and gentle man. He abhorred the idea of violence.

  She could not imagine a more unlikely hero. He second-guessed his decisions. He stood in the background and gave credit to others. He was not the man to build a military force that could wage war across the heavens. And yet he was succeeding.

  People loved him. He recruited the best and inspired them to be greater. They called him their commander. Being around him was inspiring. He didn’t care how impossible the challenge was, he just kept working toward his goals and his team grew larger every day.

  By the vagaries of fate, Annie was his initial recruit. On that very first day, he’d handed her a simple-looking earpiece. Now he admitted it was a bomb; except George called it a “fail-safe”. If she didn’t help Luke fight the war, it would go off. George had planned it, and Sadie, the cute little AI that flew the shuttle, had played a role too.

  Annie was stunned; not so much by the betrayal, but how much the betrayal hurt. She had loved George. Not as much as Luke, but close. He was a confidant like no other.

  When she had doubts about how Luke felt, George reassured her. He’d promised that Luke loved her fiercely but didn’t know how to tell her. After they got together, George listened to her talk for hours about how she and Luke would spend their lives together. It was easy to think of George as her best friend. Now she wondered how much was real.

  George emphasized he was just an artificial intelligence, not sentient, not alive. He was a very sophisticated computer to be sure. He had an incredible memory, would laugh at jokes, and make her feel better when she was down…but a program nonetheless. Annie now realized a computer had no feelings. It could be programmed to kill.

  When she inserted the device into her ear it disappeared, absorbed into her body. It allowed her to communicate with George. He also said the device gave her absolute authority over all the AIs on the moon.

  Still in shock from learning about the explosive nature of the device, Annie decided to test the limits of an AI’s obedience. She hadn’t thought Sadie would actually commit suicide on demand. Except it wasn’t suicide. Annie had given the order. She’d murdered Sadie.

  It didn’t matter. George would create a new Sadie for Luke. But Annie would never know. She was done with the moon and especially with George. If she ever spoke to that machine again it would only be to tell him to self-destruct.

  Day 419—Isaac Newton Gateway

  Luke sat next to Amanda in the same uncomfortable chair on the raised platform. It was a miserable day. It had been a miserable two weeks. Annie should be sitting next to him during the formalities of another colony ship being launched, but she obstinately remained on the planet below. It made it difficult for him to concentrate on anything, least of all another speech.

  Roth thanked the nation representatives for supplying the crew of the second colony. The massive spacecraft, looking very much like the previous Christopher Columbus, stood silently, waiting to launch.

  “Are we going to have to do this for every launch?’ Luke complained to no one in particul
ar.

  Amanda leaned over to whisper. “Relax. I’ll wager that after one or two more launches people will lose interest. It didn’t take long before people ignored NASA’s Space Shuttle missions, if you recall.”

  Luke didn’t recall. He couldn’t remember much of anything. For the past fourteen days Luke had just gone through the motions; he smiled when he was told to, but his heart wasn’t in it anymore.

  Finally, the ceremony was over and Luke made his way back to Moonbase One. He immediately sought out Kathy Lyons in the HR department.

  “What did she say?” he asked without preamble, entering her office.

  Kathy gave him a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry Luke. She still won’t talk to me. I saw her at the diner. She’s working for Roseanne, but when I come in, she just ignores me. I wish I could tell you something different.”

  “Where’s she staying? Is she in her apartment?”

  “I don’t know, Luke. She wouldn’t talk to me. She could be, or maybe even at your old house. Wasn’t she living with you for a while?”

  Luke’s disappointment was palpable. “She’s so pissed; I don’t think she would be at my place. Could be, I guess. How’d she look? Is she doing okay?”

  “Not really. The media picked up on your separation so the paparazzi are always stalking her. Security does a reasonable job of keeping them away, but I know that’s just one more thing that she hates.”

  Luke nodded thoughtfully. “Well. Maybe if it gets bad enough she’ll come back here. I don’t like her being hassled, but if it will make her come to her senses, I’m all for it.”

  Kathy held up crossed fingers as solace.

  A dejected Luke returned to his office. Morrow was waiting for him to discuss drone production. The reports from the first drones they had sent into the area near the alien advance worried Luke. If the invasion had reached those planets, how close might they be? He needed more information. That meant he needed more reconnaissance drones, a lot more.

  Morrow gave him the current status. “Once you told us the Bakkui are closing in we increased production five times what it was,” Morrow began. “We’re sending out a thousand probes every week.”

  “We should be doing that many a day,” Luke said. “We should be sending out five times that in a day. How long does the replicator take for a production run?”

  “We need about twelve hours to do two hundred. They’re small, but their innards are incredibly complex.”

  “Can’t you do more than that?”

  “Luke, I can do as many as you want, but it takes time away from the mid-scale replicator. It takes that thing more than twenty-four hours to produce a single warship, and that’s our top priority. You keep telling people we’re knocking out a dozen a day but it’s not true. So we squeeze in the drones between warship builds.”

  Luke leaned back and massaged his forehead in frustration. “I know, Lou. I’m not being critical. Your guys are working miracles every single day and I really am grateful. Tell me what you need.”

  “We need another mid-scale replicator; a couple of them, in fact. Originally, we were going to build four of those gizmos but we stopped after the first one so you could build the large-scale replicator. That one works full time on the colony ships. Those take two solid weeks. These days it’s a bit more because we keep adding changes.”

  “I remember you saying that last week,” Luke admitted.

  Morrow continued. “The mid-scale should be dedicated only for warships, but we use it for all kinds of things. You want drones? Give me a replicator dedicated to just that. And, just so you know, one thing that really eats up man-hours is the quality control testing. So far we’ve built almost nine thousand recon probes and not had a single discrepancy show up in our QC tests. If you want to throw out the testing, our production rate would be faster.”

  “George?” Luke asked. “What about that?”

  “Commander, it is true that the risk of defect is low. However, the possibility exists that the manufacturing process could result in erratic AI. My archives contain records of such events. Even though the drones in question have a deliberately low level of intelligence, the fact remains they will be operating deep in enemy territory. I would not recommend that you abandon your quality control process. Otherwise, a malfunction would risk revealing your star’s location.”

  “That makes sense. We need to hurry, Lou, but no sense in being suicidal. Let’s stick with the QC.”

  “Yeah, when you put it like that, it brings it home.”

  “But still, we can address your other points,” Luke said. “We’ve got a lot of new people coming in these days. I’ll get with Kathy to make sure you’re getting what you need. Work up a list of the skill sets you want. In the meantime, I’ll meet with Ambrose today. Those two new replicators just moved to the top of this list.”

  Day 430—Rosanne’s Diner

  “Order up,” Danilo called out and rang the order bell. “Let’s move it!”

  “Coming,” Annie shouted from the floor.

  It was a hectic day. Rosanne’s Diner had never seen such traffic. Ever since the new hotel and convention center opened, the once lonely eatery had become a hotbed of activity. Not surprising, as it was the only restaurant in town.

  That would soon change. Construction on the new McDonald's was almost finished. KFC would open soon. Three more fast food chains were talking to the planning department of the newly incorporated city of Baggs.

  Rosanne was wisely getting all she could while the getting was good. Surprisingly philosophical about the situation, Rosanne had seen booms and busts in Baggs before. At the start of each one, the populace let their expectations run wild and at the end commiserated with each other about what might have been.

  Annie suspected Rosanne had money squirreled away but no one knew for sure. It couldn’t be that much or she would have left long ago. Like everyone else, she talked about big dreams. But the diner had stayed open even during the lean years.

  Annie examined both orders of chicken fried steak waiting on the stainless steel shelf between the diner and the steaming kitchen. “I said fries, not veggies,” she shouted at Danilo.

  He frowned and grumbled but snatched the plates back and corrected the order. Annie wondered sometimes if he knew how to read. She accepted the food with a sweet smile and hurried to the booth where a nicely dressed couple waited. Out-of-towners for sure. Thirty minutes ago they came into the diner carrying thick leather shoulder bags. Annie was afraid she knew what was coming next.

  “Here you go,” she said, laying the plates on the table. “Would you like anything else?”

  The woman pulled a microphone from under the table and the man brought up a video camera.

  “Yes, I was hoping I could get a word with you. I’m Cassy Fisher with ABC7. Aren’t you Annie Daniels, the commander’s woman?”

  Annie took the order pad out of her apron pocket and scratched through the total on the bottom of the first page. She picked a number at random and wrote in the new total. “Nope, I’m your waitress. That’ll be eighty-nine dollars.” She slapped the adjusted ticket on the table and stepped back to give Bruiser Cotton a nod.

  “We’ve heard that you and the commander have spli—Yeowch!”

  Bruiser relieved the unlucky Cassie of her microphone. The cameraman thought he could evade the hulking bodyguard by sliding under the table, but seconds later he too was nursing sprained fingers. Bruiser tossed the equipment toward the back of the row of booths and took one newsie in each hand.

  He dragged them to the front door and paused, holding their faces inches from a posted sign that warned confiscated recording equipment would not be returned, before pitching them out the door.

  “Thanks, Bruiser,” Annie said, patting him on the arm and accepting the reporter’s wallet.

  “Not at all, Miss Annie,” he replied.

  Annie charged the eighty-nine dollars on the enclosed credit card then stuffed the receipt and the card back into the
wallet. She gave it back to Bruiser, who left the diner to return it to the owner.

  Rosanne sighed wistfully. “I wish I’d hired him a long time ago.”

  “He’s a sweetheart,” Annie agreed.

  “That’s not how I’d describe him. More of a stud muffin.”

  “Rosanne!”

  “I’m not getting any younger, child. Neither are you.”

  The words stung. Rosanne didn’t mean anything by them, but it was one more reminder of Luke. Annie ached from the loss every day. She wanted to go back, but there was no way she could do it. She was being unreasonable but it didn’t matter. She had fled to Earth in a rage but was staying away out of fear. What if she did something outside the boundary of allowable behavior and triggered Luke’s bomb?

  Unfortunately, hiding away wasn’t working out either. “That’s the second time today, Rosanne. I can’t stay here.”

  “Forget about it. Bruiser can take care of those rascals.”

  Annie snorted. “They’re not rascals. They’re reporters with attorneys. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  Rosanne scoffed but Annie remained concerned.

  The reporter had been right. She was the ‘commander’s woman’. The first time she heard the comment she teased Luke about it, telling him to make her an honest woman. He agreed immediately and she had to put her foot down to stop him from arranging a marriage the next day. From then on, they had an understanding: first, save the human race; second, get married.

  That’ll never happen now, she thought.

  At six-thirty, she helped Rosanne close up for the day. Annie made a copy of the security video and sent it off to Hawley, Hepworth & Kidwell in Seattle. The law firm took care of the moon’s legal problems on Earth, which were significant. But the two reporters would discover the little diner was part of that impenetrable empire if they chose to pursue action against Rosanne.

  Annie left the diner and drove to her new apartment. The parking lot was filled with news vans so she drove by without stopping. The airport’s conference center kept three luxury suites available for visiting VIPs. One of them was available and Annie got a key. She saw Carrie Faulkner in the hallway and squealed with delight.