Sentience 1: Storm Clouds Gathering

by Gibson Michaels

  Instantly? “Ah, what form does your offer take? Stocks, bonds…”

  “Cash.”

  “Cash? You have nearly $7 billion lying around in cash?”

  “Oh, much more than that, Herr Aneke, I assure you.”

  Much more than that, I assure you. Aneke reeled. No one left that much money lying around liquid. Not unless he’d recently liquidated assets to have cash-in-hand to make this deal. He’s awfully damned confident I’m going to take him up on his offer at face value. Aneke balked internally. That’s not the way the game is played, here in the Alliance, Herr Baron.

  “I must, of course, present your offer to my Board of Directors, before any agreements can be finalized.”

  The baron smiled again. “We both know that is not true, Herr Aneke. You have full authority to conduct any and all business transactions under $10 billion, without consulting your Board.”

  How the hell did he know that?

  “However,” continued the baron, as his smile grew colder and his eyes bored holes through the Consortium Chairman. “That makes twice you have attempted to mislead me. I wouldn’t advise you to try it a third time.”

  The baron rose and walked to a side chest. He extracted a large sheaf of papers, which he laid on the table behind their chairs.

  “I have taken the liberty of having my lawyers draw up the necessary contracts for transfer of ownership on the properties in question.”

  “Surely you don’t expect me to sign contracts that haven’t been thoroughly examined by Starquest’s lawyers?”

  “Oh, that’s exactly what I expect you to do, Herr Aneke,” said the baron menacingly. “For a man in your position, it's the only logical course of action.”

  “A man in MY position, Baron? I’m not the one facing default on contracts with my own government,” Aneke snorted.

  “Nor am I, Herr Aneke. Perhaps I should clarify, so that you better understand the weakness of your position.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean by ‘the weakness of my position,’” said Aneke, now totally confused by the sudden change in the baron’s demeanor.

  “One moment.” The baron walked to the fireplace and opened a concealed panel, revealing a number of controls of some kind — one of which he activated. From hidden speakers came slightly muffled, but clearly identifiable voices that Aneke recognized instantly.

  J.P Aneke: “Okay, what do we really want to do about this mess? Anyone have any bright ideas?”

  Morgan Rainey: “If you don’t mind me saying ‘I told you so’...”

  The blood drained from Aneke’s face as he listened to the recording of himself and the rest of the Consortium Executive Board clearly incriminating themselves. Aneke remembered that conversation thoroughly. My God, how did he get this? What else has he got on us?

  As the recording finished, the baron again walked to the chest from which he had earlier extracted the contracts and brought out another sheaf of papers. The baron spoke as he walked back towards Aneke.

  “Bribery of government officials, subverting election laws, extortion, conspiracy… such a long list! My, my, Herr Aneke, we certainly have been a very naughty boy, haven’t we?” The baron handed Aneke the papers.

  “Do you recognize these, Herr Aneke?”

  Aneke gulped for air, his mouth working silently, like a beached fish.

  “These make up a fairly comprehensive list documenting Consortium deposits into numbered accounts in foreign banks, matched to the names and positions of Alliance governmental officials making withdrawals from those accounts. We have video, if you’d care to see it.” The baron gave him a cold smile, the look of a predator, just before the kill.

  Aneke felt faint. We have video, if you’d care to see it. He shuddered with a sudden vision of a gigantic pin suddenly piercing his middle and his being placed most meticulously onto a display board beside all the other specimens in the collection. Again, Aneke felt fear — not just some imagined, nameless fear, as before. This time the fear was real… raw, primal terror that gripped his heart in ice.

  “How…?” Aneke gasped.

  “Because I’m a better man than you are, Herr Aneke. I don’t need to cheat, to win.”

  Aneke felt himself spinning towards a black abyss.

  “Herr Aneke, would you care for more cognac? You don’t appear at all well…”

  Alliance Press (AP): Nork – Financial News Release (10/17/60)

  The German conglomerate TBG (Tydlich Bundesgenosse Gespenster) announced today it has purchased all of the Starquest Aerospace subsidiaries in the Joja system. No details of the agreement were released, but our sources speculate that Starquest received over $6.5 billion in the exchange.

  “I want that mother-fucker’s head on a platter!” J.P. Aneke screamed in frustration into the empty air of his room at the Regis Hotel in Waston. Events at the Germanic Embassy necessitated he stay at least one more night in Waston. Stuck in the fucking Queen’s Suite again too… When is that damned Sextun going to get his scrawny ass outa MY room? I ought to buy this damned hotel and kick his Sextun ass into the street. Goddamned foreigners! He was still stunned from the day’s events.

  Aneke was in a froth, but at the same time he was frightened as hell. Maybe it was the unfamiliar taste of fear that drove the avalanche of his anger. That German baron had outclassed him at every turn… played with him like a cat does with a mouse. Where does that bastard get his information? What else has he got on us… on ME? Aneke felt the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head, suspended by a single hair. He was used to being the cat, not the mouse.

  He wasn’t actually worried the ABI would come breaking down his door. He knew it wasn’t “what” evidence the German had, but how it was obtained that the Alliance courts would ask. It couldn’t have been obtained legally. The courts would just throw it all out as inadmissible. Why hadn’t he thought of that before he signed all of those damned contracts and took the check?

  I panicked. Aneke hated remembering it, but he had indeed panicked. Aneke had never experienced the metallic stink of his own fear before, but he’d actually smelled the cold sweat dripping off him there in that awful room, with that terrible baron. He’d have done anything to escape from that room and that man.

  I’d have sucked his dick to get out of that room, Aneke remembered shamefully. Too many shocks in too short a time. He hadn’t been thinking straight. Oh, that bastard certainly had his own army of German lawyers available to witness the signing of the contracts, of course.

  The check… Aneke had never seen a check for $6.7 billion dollars before — especially not a personal check for $6.7 billion dollars. Who the hell has over $7 billion in a personal checking account? This TBG had to be a solely owned, private company.

  Aneke needed information. He needed to find out everything he could about the man who’d just raped him. Not a physical rape... Aneke would have given the damned assets away right then, if it meant he could return to the life he’d led before stepping foot inside the German Embassy. He could have named his own price and Aneke would have paid it. He had me by the balls. But he hadn’t crushed them. Why? He’d squeezed just hard enough to let Aneke know he was in total control. And then, astoundingly, the baron proceeded to give him a fair price for all those admittedly toxic assets down in Joja… a very fair price. Somehow that made it even worse. Why had he done that? I’m a better man than you are. I don’t need to cheat. God, but it galled Aneke to remember that encounter. He mind-fucked me.

  “I want all the stops pulled out on this. I want the ABI, the AIA, the Secret Service, the US Marshals and the damned Boy Scouts if necessary! I want every asset this government possesses on it and I want it yesterday. I want everything there is to know about this German Baron… Dietrich what’s-his-fuck and everything you can dig up on his company — this TBG outfit.”

  “Mr. Aneke, I am not in a position where I can just issue orders to the AIA and ABI. I can only…”

  “I don’t want to hear a
ny fucking excuses, Senator! How you go about it is your problem,” thundered J.P. Aneke. “In case you’ve forgotten, I own your sorry ass and now I expect some return on my investment, and if I don’t get it, I’ll see to it your next job will be riding the tail end of a garbage truck in Frisco!”

  Senator Nicholas Thornton of Cali, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee wasn’t used to being addressed by anyone in that tone of voice, but he didn’t have much choice at the moment. He had foolishly taken Consortium money under the table to cover some ill-advised gambling debts several years ago, and he’d been unable to wean himself off the Consortium tit ever since.

  “All right Mr. Aneke, I will do everything in my power to get you all of the information you desire.”

  J.P. Aneke stayed a third, and then a fourth night in the Queen’s Suite at the Regis Hotel in Waston, fretting about what Baron Dietrich might do with the evidence he obviously had on everyone on the Consortium Executive Board. He can’t use it in court, or take it to the media… I can cut that off easily and he knows it. If the bastard released it to the foreign media, it would probably get picked up by all of the others, and everyone in human space will eventually hear it. All we could do is sue for libel, but that would get tied up in courts all over inhabited space for years and run up hundreds of millions in legal fees.

  Quite a conundrum. J.P. Aneke would spend a lot of sleepless nights, wondering when the other shoe would drop and a lot of nervous days looking over his shoulder, always terrified that someday his private communicator would buzz and there would be Baron Dietrich again, wanting something else from him. Eventually as time went by and nothing bad happened, J.P. Aneke’s terror of the German slowly subsided. I’m a better man than you are. I don’t need to cheat. Perhaps the baron had no intention of doing anything more than he’d already done with that evidence. J.P. Aneke would bide his time and wait until he found out more about this mysterious German. He’d go back to being the cat, playing with his usual mice.

  But something deep within his subconscious never quite forgot that while he might be the cat, somewhere out there in the dark, lurked a German wolf.

  “Nada,” said Capt. J.T. Turner of Fleet Counter-Intelligence. “The satellite recon pics gave us nothing. Apparently, like so many other areas in and around Waston, the old lab area sits on armored and radiation-shielded areas below ground that are disguising whatever is underneath.”

  “Al?” asked Rear Admiral Enrico Melendez, Director of Fleet Counter-Intelligence.

  “Like most federal installations in and around Waston, all architectural drawings and specifications are under Presidential Seal, so we haven’t been able to get any of them,” said Capt. Alphonse Ligurri, Director of Fleet Computer Security, temporarily attached to Counter-Intelligence. “I even tried Bat’s suggestion of hacking into the original contractor’s data bases, but came up empty. Evidently everything they had was so old, it had all been transferred to archive off-location somewhere. We’d need a federal court order to subpoena those records and with all the classifications on this thing, I doubt a federal judge would give us one, based on what we can’t tell him.”

  “Bat?” asked Melendez.

  “Only one other potential source of information on Bozo that I know of that we haven’t tried,” said CMDR John “Bat” Masterson.

  “What’s that?” asked Melendez.

  “Bozo himself — go straight to the source,” answered Masterson. At Melendez’ puzzled expression, Bat continued. “You told us Klaus used to call you down into his inner sanctum to show the beastie off to you, like a proud papa. Chances are that Bozo retains memories of those instances and would recognize you in that context. Perhaps you can reminisce about those days with Klaus and get him answering questions... possibly gleaning some new information. Maybe you can see if there’s any indication he might have somehow achieved sentience, or whether he is in a semi-sentient state like all other biological computers.”

  Melendez sighed. “All right, I guess there’s nothing else left. I’d rather juggle bottles of nitroglycerin than match wits directly with Bozo, but if there’s nothing left to try…”

  “One other thing, Admiral,” said Bat.

  “What’s that?”

  “Call it, Hal.”

  Chapter-26

  The Lawyer's Motto: “Insofar as manifestations of functional deficiencies are agreed by any and all concerned parties to be imperceivable, and are so stipulated, it is incumbent upon said heretofore mentioned parties to exercise the deferment of otherwise pertinent maintenance procedures.”

  In other words: “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.” -- Anonymous

  Mystic Confederate Fleet Port Facility, Helix Nebula

  October, 3860

  Rear Admiral Benjamin Stillman looked out the armored window in his office that overlooked the myriad of Confederate Fleet vessels preparing for war. Thousands of workers pored over every portion of every ship, bringing them up to full combat readiness. Right now, they had a lot more ships than personnel to crew them. That would change rapidly after secession actually occurred and thousands of former Alliance Fleet personnel streamed home to defend their newly birthed nation from those who intended to strangle the babe in the crib. It was ironic the Confederacy had a Fleet of defenders, before there was even a Confederacy to defend. Obviously a lot of strategically-placed Southerners had seen the handwriting on the wall and had taken proactive steps to meet the inevitable.

  Fleet transports rotated in and out, delivering every conceivable need — missiles of all shapes and sizes, parts, consumables like food and water supplies. You name it, someone had thought of it. Mystic’s storage areas were filling to capacity more quickly than Stillman had thought possible.

  After hearing Vice Admiral Christopher Rawley’s explanation of the political and military situations, Ben Stillman accepted retirement from the Fleet and returned home to Socar as he’d originally planned, but instead of rotting on the beach drowning worms, he had surreptitiously been spirited away and brought to Mystic as her new Commanding Officer. He had also been the very first to actually don the new Confederate uniform as a regular flag officer in the Confederate Fleet. The high collar with the three equally-sized gold stars, surrounded by a golden wreath denoting his rank as a flag officer took a little getting used to, but fortunately it didn’t chafe his neck the way he’d first feared it might. Someone had thought of that, too.

  The eight pairs of gold buttons down the double-breasted, light-gray uniform tunic were spaced with a slight gap between each two rows, denoted his rank as a rear admiral. A vice admiral’s uniform had nine rows of buttons, grouped in threes, and full admiral’s were in two groups of four.

  With the triple cords of gold filigree on the sleeves, two-inch gold stripes down the outside of each trouser leg, and a gold sash covering his black belt, Stillman had to admit the uniform looked pretty damned sharp. He also had a set of similar dark uni’s, black accented in silver. As October was changeover month, by tradition he could wear either one. He’d wear the black tomorrow.

  Nine battleships were undergoing full-scale overhaul and would eventually deploy with virtually all of their secondary pulse laser mounts replaced by a plethora of missile launchers of all sizes. Much of their internal spaces were being thoroughly gutted to allow for multiple, automated missile loading systems to be installed. Everything else would have to be configured around those.

  The old girls would still retain their three, triple 16-gigawatt turret mounts and except for a multitude of twin, charged-particle beam projectors for close-in missile defense, they would be the only energy weapons left aboard. It was going to take a long time to get the old girls into fighting shape again, but they would provide the Confederacy with monstrous missile platforms the North didn’t have an equivalent for.

  Rawley had promised Stillman he’d have a combat command, but they needed him to command Mystic until things heated up. They’d find a true administrator to replace him with when t
he time came to deploy the Fleet. Most of the men currently serving at Mystic were retired and ex-Fleet personnel, and civilians having few family ties.

  All occasionally went to the outer view ports to gaze on the brilliant green star. As did everyone else, Stillman knew the bright green appearance was due to light-filtering effects of the nebula gasses, but its uniqueness invariably drew the eye and told logic to shut its yap — that damned star was green!

  The Planetoid Discol, City of Waston

  November, 3860

  “Where stands the Confederacy, Hal?”

  Your acquisition of the Starquest Aerospace assets in the Jojan system will enable us to initiate production of the new Infiltrators much sooner than originally projected, Diet. Management and employee personnel are being screened and selected along the same security guidelines used for Mystic personnel. Massive quantities of materials are being ordered, with design drawings provided and contracts awarded for subassemblies to be built by British, French, German, Australian and Japanese manufacturers.

  “What about replenishment, after the war starts and we can’t ship weapons or parts into the South anymore?”

  The defense plants have sufficient capacity. Production of missiles of all types will be feasible, which will enable us to replenish expended munitions. All Fleet documentation including technical drawings, parts specifications and build procedures for every missile and warhead in the Alliance inventory are en route to Joja as we speak. Fleet transports continue to deliver missiles and spare parts drawn from Fleet stores to Mystic, with only minimal replenishment, so the Alliance Fleet should encounter initial logistical difficulties replenishing their expended munitions and grounding vessels requiring maintenance for lack of parts.