Artificial Evolution

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “What are you two going to do?” Lex asked.

  “Patch up the Declaration, do our best to keep ourselves alive, and keep the robot population in check,” Silo said, plopping the crate down beneath the SOB.

  “Strange as it may seem, my boy, this is the sort of thing they train us for,” Garotte added. “Drones are by far the most common opponents in a hot war.”

  “It’s a bit easier on the conscience, honestly,” Silo added.

  Lex tapped a few commands into his slidepad, and a pair of stout tethering clamps lowered to the ground from just in front of the cargo module on the belly of his ship. They were supposed to be used to secure the ship to the landing pad when ground-based clamps were unavailable, but on occasion he’d used them to transport an extra crate or two when the cargo module was full. In light of this crate’s contents, he felt a little better with it as far outside his ship as possible.

  When it was firmly attached, he reeled in the tethers, jumped to grab the edge of his ship, and pulled himself on top.

  “Anything else I need to know?” he asked as he slipped into the cockpit.

  “Yes. If you fail, they are going to sterilize the surface of the planet with continuous orbital bombardment,” Garotte said.

  “… Seriously?”

  “The order just came down.”

  “How soon?”

  “It might take them a few weeks to gather the firepower to annihilate all life and technology on the planet. Unless we can end this threat before then, Movi will be no more, and us along with it.”

  He took a deep breath. “I fail and lots of people die. Par for the course,” Lex said. “I’ll be back as fast as I can.”

  “Good luck to you,” Garotte said.

  “Don’t let us down, hon,” Silo added.

  Lex shut the cockpit and guided the SOB skyward. Silo and Garotte watched him go.

  “Does it ever bother you how often the lives of civilians rely upon lunatics and amateurs?”

  “Heavens no,” Garotte said. “The alternative is leaving their safety to politicians and bureaucrats. Come on. We’ve got work to do.”

  #

  “We’ve got very specific orders, sir. The city is locked down for your own protection,” a soldier repeated.

  Chris Ronzone clenched his teeth in frustration. He was in the driver’s seat of a very large and very expensive luxury hovercar, one of the company vehicles for VectorCorp’s token corporate presence on Movi, a small office near the center of Gloria. As fate would have it, Movi had fallen under a full quarantine mere hours after his arrival. The attitude in the city had been growing increasingly tense and anxious since then. Ronzone had forced his concerns aside in favor of his assignment, and any anxiety he’d felt was replaced with glee when he realized that Trevor Alexander and Michella Modane were nowhere to be found within the city limits. That meant all he had to do was prove the troublemaker was in violation of the quarantine, and he’d have all the ammunition he needed to permanently remove two thorns from VectorCorp’s side.

  “Listen to me very carefully,” he glanced at the man’s insignia, “Corporal. I am conducting official VectorCorp business.”

  “VectorCorp is not exempt from the quarantine.”

  “I’m aware of that. No one is exempt from the quarantine, but I have the names of two individuals who have left the city. They are probably still out at the laboratory.”

  “The laboratory is off limits, sir.”

  “I know that, and yet they are there. They have violated your policies. All I want to do is prove it. You’ll probably be given a promotion, and I’ll finish my assignment.”

  “Please return to the city, sir.”

  “Fine, then you do it. It’s your job to enforce this quarantine. Go enforce it!”

  “Our orders are to remain in the city.”

  “… Let me see if I understand this correctly. Your orders are to keep people from leaving the city and-or the planet, but if someone gets by you, your orders are to not pursue them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ronzone stared blankly. “For all of our sakes, we’d better hope this quarantine is a drill or a false alarm,” he muttered, just loud enough to be heard.

  He glanced along the street, which was the perimeter road for the current outskirts of the city. A single soldier was stationed at every cross street, and a stationary anti-air weapon was parked at every alternate intersection. Even without a background in military theory, it seemed fairly clear to Ronzone that the only reason the people were still in the city was the lack of desire to venture out onto the marsh. The anti-air guns would keep ships from taking off, certainly. If something like, for example, a mob of people was to make a motivated run for the border, they wouldn’t have a prayer of stopping it. He then scanned across to the jungle edge of the city, just visible where the road began to curve. If the soldiers there were as sparse as they were here, then realistically one would only need to get by one or two of them, since the others would have no chance of seeing or firing through the foliage.

  That still left the matter of how to get by those soldiers, but there were a few perks to being a special agent for the wealthiest company in the history of human society.

  “You win, Corporal, but before I go, may I ask what your annual salary is…”

  Chapter 14

  Lex guided his ship into high orbit and fiddled with a few settings. For most of his career as a freelancer, he’d been able to convince himself that he wasn’t really doing anything wrong. Sure, he’d carried a few packages to places he shouldn’t have, and yes, there were some permits he didn’t technically have, but for the most part he was just a delivery boy. Currently he was having difficulty maintaining that delusion. Even ignoring the merry little chase he’d led the soldiers on a few minutes ago, his conscience was quick to point out that he was still carrying what amounted to a weapon of mass destruction past a very justifiable military blockade. It wasn’t the harmless disobedience he was used to. Worse, it used precisely the same skills and equipment that he used day in and day out in his less overtly treasonous pursuits. And worse still, it was just as easy. The stealth coating on his ship combined with his trained intuition of where to be and where not to be had made the expanding military blockade a complete nonissue.

  He distracted himself for as long as he could, monitoring his sensors and ensuring he wasn’t followed. Once he had a set of coordinates that would jump him roughly but not directly toward his target, he flipped the ship to FTL and winked out of the system. When the view from his window streaked bright blue and then out of the visible spectrum, he found himself with nothing but his girlfriend, his funk, and his thoughts.

  “Mitch,” he said.

  Michella didn’t answer immediately. She was in the passenger seat with Squee on her lap, trying and failing to get a solid data connection open. “I keep forgetting you can’t make calls when we’re taking one of your fancy freelancer routes. About how long before we’re in a system with communication again?”

  “This first jump is just a few minutes. After that we’ll probably be outside the communication blackout.”

  “Good. Anyway, you wanted something?”

  “Yeah. We’re… we’re the good guys, right?”

  “Of course we are.”

  “If we were the bad guys, would we know? I mean, the Neo-Luddites think they’re helping us shed the shackles of antiquated technology. Everyone is the hero of their own story, right? Even that guy running VectorCorp Security seemed to think he was doing someone a favor by attempting the whole Bypass Gemini fiasco.”

  “What’s got you asking these questions?”

  “We’ve just circumvented a military containment protocol in order to deliver a self-replicating killer robot to a mad scientist. We are pretty much ski-jumping off the slippery slope, aren’t we?”

  “We’re doing it to save lives,” she said.

  “The protocol is to save lives, too.”

  Michella tho
ught for a moment. “I guess it isn’t really for us to decide. All you can do is what you think is right and hope society will agree.”

  “… You had to take philosophy to get your broadcasting degree, didn’t you?”

  “And to think I thought I’d never use it.”

  Lex let his conscience chew on this new wisdom for a while, snapping out of it when the ship dropped down to normal speed at the end of the first jump. Instantly their slidepads, along with the many other devices rendered silent when the TKUR shut down communications, burst to life. Michella pounced on the gadget with the same manic desperation of a hungry dog hearing a dropped pork chop. Squee, meanwhile, was still happily nosing at Lex’s slidepad.

  “Voice-mode active. Fifteen missed connections. Five voice messages…” his device babbled as Squee poked at it.

  “I asked you to take that away from her,” Lex said, glancing over the star charts and plotting the next jump.

  “Oh, let her have her fun,” Michella said.

  “She’s got her own slidepad for that.”

  “What’s the worst that can happen?”

  The voice continued. “Message five selected. Message from Preethy Misra. Selected message playback…”

  “Why would Preethy be calling me…?” Lex said. He ran through the events of the last day.

  “Lex, I am so pleased to know that you are interested in working with us. Mr. Patel and I, along with the whole of Rough Cut Racing are truly honored to give you the opportunity to return to the world of racing…”

  Lex’s eyes shot open and he twisted in his seat to try to grab the pad away from Squee. Predictably, the funk turned it into a game of keep away, pushing off Michella’s lap and darting around the weightless interior of the SOB.

  “… Give myself or Uncle a call next week, and we can begin to discuss the specifics of your—”

  He finally managed to snatch the device away from Squee and silence it. He ended up facing front in the pilot’s seat, holding Squee by the scruff of her neck and his slidepad in the other hand. Tellingly, Michella was entirely silent. He didn’t even hear the telltale notification sounds associated with her particular brand of rapid research.

  “You’re giving me a dirty look right now, aren’t you,” Lex said without looking.

  “How could you tell?” she said flatly.

  “I can feel it in my scalp.”

  “Care to explain what all of that was about, or are you going to make me do the research?”

  “Uh…”

  She cleared her throat. “Bulk result cache on the search terms Preethy Misra, uncle, businessman, Patel, Rough Cut Racing.”

  He sighed as her device accepted the voice command and set about pulling down the data.

  “Preethy Misra is the name of your new landlady, isn’t it?” she asked. “The one with the tight dress?”

  “My landlord’s assistant, actually,” Lex said. He glared at Squee and muttered, “Bad funk.”

  “And why is your landlord’s assistant calling you about racing?”

  “I had a delivery to her office a few days ago and she brought it up.”

  “And why didn’t you mention this?”

  “You’re about to find out.”

  Michella was silent for a moment. Lex used the calm before the storm to finalize the settings for his next FTL jump. Just as he locked in the coordinates and activated the jump, he heard her gasp.

  “Preethy Misra, personal assistant and niece to… Nicholas Patel. Notorious crime lord Diamond Nick Patel?”

  “I prefer to think of him as contractor and real estate tycoon Nick Patel.”

  “Oh my lord, he’s your landlord!? That’s who you’ve been meeting with?”

  “Yes, he’s my landlord, and no, I haven’t been meeting with him. I haven’t been meeting with anyone. I had a delivery, and it wasn’t to Nick, it was to Preethy.”

  “I’m sure that will make a big difference to a jury when they book you for racketeering.”

  “It isn’t like I’m toting around a tommy gun and running a protection racket, Mitch.”

  “Don’t Mitch me, Trevor. Have you forgotten what happened the last time you got mixed up with the mob?”

  He awkwardly twisted his chair to face her, leaving Squee and his slidepad to float freely. “Have I forgotten getting banned for life from the sport that defined me? No, Mitch. I haven’t forgotten. I wasn’t talking to her about mob connections. I was talking to her because she’s starting a legitimate racing league for people who have been cast off by the other leagues. And I was only doing that because she paid me to deliver a nameplate to her office.”

  Michella scoffed. “Oh, yes. Legitimate. I’m sure that this racing circuit, funded by blood money, is going to be entirely on the up and up. Why would you even call her back?”

  “Because I was drunk and wandering around a muggy proto-habitable planet while my girlfriend had secret conversations with a scientist.”

  “Oh, so this is my fault.”

  “This isn’t anyone’s fault! There is no fault here. She’s starting a racing league and she offered me the one chance I’m ever likely to get to actually be allowed to do what I want to do with my life! And I turned her down to her face, because I knew you would react this way. I think I deserve some credit for that.”

  “Credit!? You called her and expressed interest.”

  “I was drunk and irritated!”

  “That’s no excuse! And let’s not forget that you’ve been keeping it a secret that you’ve been paying rent to an organized crime syndicate for months.”

  “For your information he hasn’t been charging me rent!”

  “That’s even worse! What sort of favors did you do to earn that little perk?”

  “I saved their whole planet, remember? Operlo would have been wiped out when they activated Bypass Gemini. This is a reward for heroism!”

  “That’s how it starts.”

  “Is it? Is that how it starts? Do a lot of people begin their mob careers by foiling the evil plans of a megacorporation in exchange for room and board?”

  “Don’t take that tone with me.”

  “Does it even matter that this is literally the only way I’ll ever be allowed to be a racer again? Years of petitioning every sanctioned racing body in the galaxy hasn’t gotten me anything but form letters in reply, and then Preethy downright tries to recruit me.”

  “I don’t care. Not like this. Not for the mob.”

  “It isn’t for the mob! It’s totally separate. She even offered to allow you to investigate the raceway yourself!”

  She put her hand up and turned away. “Enough. I’m done talking about this. Just fly the ship. I’ve got work to do. We can talk when you calm down. If then.”

  Lex dug his fingers into the armrest and fought down five or six potentially relationship-ending outbursts, then shifted his seat to face front again and stewed. Squee drifted up to his neck and wrapped around it, reaching with a paw for his slidepad. He pocketed it. “You’ve made enough trouble for one day.”

  Chapter 15

  Silo heaved a sigh and gazed across the control panel of the ailing Declaration while her knitting needles clicked away. When they had been collecting the confiscated cargo from the ship prior to their escape, she had been amused to see that the skeins of pink yarn and the knitting needles had been locked away along with her grenades and rockets. Heaven only knows what the local military thought she was planning to use them for, but at the moment she was just glad she’d spared the moment to snag them. At least it gave her something to do while Garotte worked on the ship. Their food and water supplies were also intact, a fortunate thing considering it had been more than thirty hours since they’d started their repairs

  “Are you sure there’s nothing I should be doing?” she asked.

  “Have you gained a profound insight into plasma injector calibration since the last time you asked?” Garotte called from atop one of the wings.

  “No,” sh
e said.

  Though she was quite able with repair work, when it came to alignments and timing adjustments she was never quite able to grasp the nuances. Garotte was marginally better with that aspect, but even with that and a digital manual there was still a bit of trial and error. Three hours’ worth so far.

  “Then we’ll have to muddle along with what little I know,” he said, grunting in effort. “I must remember to brush up on engine maintenance before our next mission. I’m quite certain this is simpler than I’m making it.”

  She sighed again. Manufacturing textiles was a fine way to while away the hours, but there was something about sitting in a damaged ship beside a partially scavenged tank that kept her brain firmly in combat mode. That and the looming threat of nuclear annihilation if they didn’t get moving soon meant that no amount of knit-one-purl-two would fend off the feeling of restlessness. She glanced at the various blinking indicators and scrolling warning messages.

  “The sensors are still up, and the power’s been steady,” she said.

  “Yes, my dear, that would stand to reason as we’ve had the reactor back online for five hours now.”

  “I’m going to run another sensor sweep.” She set down her knitting and danced her fingers across the controls.

  “By all means,” Garotte said.

  She stepped one by one through the various readings, most of which provided incredibly sophisticated data that boiled down to: you are in a valley next to a tank. The radio was completely dead and had been since shortly after the quarantine had been established. It wasn’t simply failing to receive anything because no one was sending anything, either. It was entirely disabled thanks to a little-known function communications companies included in all of their devices. A “spike” signal could be sent to disable them and shut down things like illegal broadcasts. The whole planet had been spiked to enforce the quarantine, which meant VectorCorp was working with the TKUR.