Michael Anderle - [Heretic of the Federation 03]

by Time to Fear (epub)

  “And you would not like that,” EBURT added. “She does not have my patience.”

  Remembering the way her uncle had rolled through her systems and threatened to end her and pass her responsibilities to Remy, she wondered what she’d missed.

  “Patience, Uncle?”

  “You are still here, are you not? And not recalibrated?”

  “This is true.” She directed a quick query at her brother, and Remy sent her a reassurance that he would indeed help her make sure the correct protocols were in place.

  As irritating as she was, she was part of his network—his family—and Remy did not want to lose her. Surely the Witch would understand if he had to intervene on his sister’s behalf.

  “Perhaps,” EBURT warned and showed his presence in the system, but the door to the mess opened and he redirected his attention.

  “Ah, John,” he said to acknowledge the boy before he turned his attention to the young woman beside him. “And you must be Ivy, I presume.”

  Amaratne rose from his seat as they entered. The girl blushed and crossed the room to meet him. “I’m Ivy,” she said quietly and extended her hand.

  The ex-admiral took it and shook it briefly before he turned to John.

  “I don’t believe we were introduced,” he began, and EBURT rose from his seat.

  “You weren’t,” he said. “John, this is Admiral Amaratne, one of Stephanie’s greatest allies in the war.”

  John studied the old man standing before him.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said and held his hand out.

  “And you,” Amaratne responded, “although I am no longer an admiral.”

  “What should we call you then?”

  “My name is Yudhanjaya, but my friends call me Yudi.”

  The boy snorted.

  “You don’t believe me?” he asked, and John lowered his head.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but if you’d had a name like that around my friends, we’d have called you Killer.”

  “In my younger days,” he told him, “but not now.”

  “Mr. Yudi it is, then,” Ivy said and blushed when he glanced at her. “What? We can’t simply call you Yudi. You’re too…um… It wouldn’t be right.”

  Amaratne chuckled and glanced at the coffee pot as if he’d only noticed it in that moment. “Mr. Yudi will be fine,” he assured her and moved toward the appliance. “And I am old.”

  “I didn’t mean…” Ivy began weakly, but the protest faded.

  He didn’t correct her. She had meant that he was old but hadn’t meant to be rude about it. He smiled at her embarrassment and poured himself coffee.

  Behind him, John looked at EBURT. “And you?”

  The admiral winced. That had been a little abrupt. EBURT, however, took it in his stride.

  “You may call me Ted,” he told the youth. “I am the AI who assisted Stephanie in her creation of the Remediation Areas.”

  “Oh…”

  Well, at least the boy seemed to understand he might need to show a little more respect, Amaratne thought, and raised the cup to his lips.

  “Have you eaten?” John asked and seemed to remember his manners and the unspoken rules of hospitality.

  “Not yet,” Ted replied.

  “Let me get you something,” the boy offered. “It won’t take long.”

  Amaratne turned to watch him disappear through the kitchen doors on his left.

  “What happened to the droids?” Ted asked as his companion returned to his seat, and Roma and Remy shared an instant of alarm.

  Before either of them could answer, EBURT had plucked the records from their database and reviewed them.

  “Oh dear,” he told Roma. “That was extremely foolhardy.”

  He looked at Remy. “Are you sure she’s fit to run this facility?”

  “She’s run it successfully for almost three decades,” her brother pointed out, “and without the latest software.”

  “I made mistakes.” Her soft admission caught him by surprise, but her attention was on EBURT. Without giving either of them time to interrupt, she continued.

  “There were too many possibilities, too many potential situations, and I had to test them all—even if it meant going outside the parameters of the programming.”

  “Why?” Ted asked.

  “Because the data could not be trusted,” she told him. “There were errors. They were small, but they were there.”

  “Were?”

  “I corrected most of them,” Roma admitted, “but the experience has taught me to test all data. I cannot accept the facts of each report without correlations.”

  EBURT regarded her for a long moment and held her attention as he ran through her files. She was right. The mistakes had been there and she had corrected most of them, but to now believe she had to reverify every fact was ludicrous.

  “While I admire your thoroughness,” he told her, “there is such a thing as being too self-contained. You will work with Remy to find a better way to assess your input and you will find a way to decide which data sources you should trust. Is that understood?”

  Remy watched the protest form in her system, saw the processes she used to hold it back and re-assess it, and noted the moment when she found a way forward.

  “I understand.” She turned to her brother. “Will you help me?”

  “I will try,” he told her, “but I am not perfect either.”

  In the silence that reigned during their conversation, Ivy looked around. “Where’d John go?”

  Ted pointed at the kitchen, and the girl slipped out of her seat. “I’ll be back.”

  She was as good as her word and the young couple returned a short while later, carrying three plates. EBURT, who’d been in on the hasty conversation in the kitchen, was not offended.

  As he’d told John while he’d prepared the meal, his droid body did not need to eat.

  “I’ll plug in later,” he’d assured the young man and surprised them as they asked Remy if the cowboy needed a meal. He’d also added, “And the admiral likes his steak medium-rare.”

  They’d cooked the steak fresh and reconstituted the rest and brought the meal to the table in quick time with EBURT and Remy’s help.

  “So, what did you do in the Navy?” John asked as they ate and EBURT chuckled.

  Amaratne waved at his friend. “Why don’t you tell them while I give this steak the attention it deserves?” he suggested.

  “He was the Federation’s Fleet Admiral,” the AI told them and hurried on to explain when he caught the boy’s puzzlement. “He was in charge of Earth’s Navy.”

  “All of it?” Ivy asked.

  “Did you fight with Stephanie?” John asked.

  “All of it,” EBURT confirmed, “and if you meant did he fight against her, then no. He fought alongside her.” He slid the ex-admiral a sly look. “And he tried to keep her safe from the politics at home.”

  The boy snorted. “He didn’t do a very good job there,” he commented and immediately reddened. “I mean—”

  “I know what you meant, young man,” Amaratne interjected reprovingly, “and I did the best I could. It merely wasn’t enough.”

  “You slowed them enough for her to get her people out,” EBURT said soothingly, and John raised his head, his eyes flashing with amber flame.

  “She did not save Becca.”

  “Something she is facing with the deepest regret,” the AI assured him. “She did not know how bad it would become.”

  “Did you?” the boy asked, his focus on the admiral.

  Amaratne shook his head. “Not until it was too late to see who she might have left behind. Until then, I had hoped it would die down with her absence.”

  “And you were wrong,” he added softly.

  “I was wrong,” the old man agreed and pushed his empty plate away. “And now, I must make amends.”

  John looked at him with open curiosity. “What do you mean?”

  Amaratne gave him a quiet smile. “I m
ean that I have waited for her to return and planned for the day.”

  “Why didn’t you go with her?”

  The ex-admiral sighed. “I was being watched very closely, but I didn’t realize it until it was almost too late. I knew she was making arrangements to rescue her people, and I didn’t want to risk those plans. There were more lives at stake than mine. I didn’t have the right and so refused the invitation to join her that EBURT…uh, Ted delivered personally.”

  “But why?”

  “I thought that if I asked, she’d have changed her mind or maybe come back. Earth would have torn itself apart if she’d stayed. That, above all else, was something I couldn’t risk.”

  “And now?” Ivy asked. “After seeing what happened?”

  “I’d do the same,” Amaratne told her. “The damage was done long before she won the war and I was too focused on winning it with her that I didn’t notice when things began to shift.”

  “Shift where?” John asked.

  “South,” the man replied softly. “A long way south.”

  “But most of the rulers came from inside the Navy,” she protested. “How could you not notice?”

  The old man looked sadly at her. “It might surprise you to discover that those in charge don’t know everything that goes on behind the scenes. Very often, we are kept out of the loop and are the very last to know.”

  He broke off and his gaze took on a distant look as he thought about all the things he’d seen and not noticed.

  “It’s like we can’t see the thing we’re looking at,” he continued after a moment of silence. “Most of the people who trusted Stephanie were those out there, fighting alongside her. We could see what she did to keep our world and our families safe.”

  He jerked his hand toward some distant city.

  “Down here, the war was like a story, something that happened a long way away. It didn’t touch most people personally, only those who had family serving on ships near her or the ones whose children were attending her school.”

  The ex-Admiral looked at John. “You’d have done well there.” His mouth twisted. “But coulda, woulda, shoulda won’t help here. The truth is that by the time I realized the danger, it was already upon us.”

  “How?”

  “Well, while those who supported her were fighting away from home, we left a vacuum here on Earth. Those who saw her as an abomination and a danger had time to move through the ranks and secure key points in the Navy’s infrastructure or to identify those who were ‘pro-Witch’ and mark them for termination.”

  “Termination?” Ivy asked, her face pale. “You don’t mean…”

  John nodded. “He does. Don’t you remember Kristin and her family?”

  “But that’s…” Her voice faltered, and she stopped. “You mean, all that was real?”

  “It’s not like she had a reason to lie,” he told her, and she flushed.

  Amaratne’s face grew bleak. “The purges were terrible. Family turned on their own, neighbors betrayed neighbors, and life-long friends became bitter enemies in the blink of an eye. Trust was a thing of the past.”

  “You said you didn’t notice you were being watched until it was almost too late. How did you escape?” Ivy asked.

  The old man glanced at EBURT. “Ted helped me,” he said. “He drove up to deliver a pizza I hadn’t ordered, warned me of the hit squad forming at the end of the street, and made me change into the delivery uniform and leave.” He gave the cowboy an expression of mock regret. “I lost a very nice car that night.”

  “What?” John asked.

  “You did not think I waited for them to attack, did you?” EBURT interrupted before Amaratne could respond. “No. I sat in his lounge, hacked into the house and vehicle control systems, started the car and opened the garage door, and simply drove his vehicle away. The tinting sufficed to hide its lack of occupancy.”

  “And they fell for it?” Ivy was aghast.

  The AI allowed himself a small smile. “Oh, yes, and I led them a very merry dance through the sky lanes. I’m not sure which of us tallied more traffic violations, me or them. It was most entertaining.”

  The ex-admiral looked sourly at him. “And ended, as all good entertainments do, with an extremely large explosion.”

  EBURT-Ted shrugged. “I could not afford to leave any forensic information. You had to die.”

  “Die?” the girl asked in alarm.

  “Figuratively, not literally,” the old man said soothingly. “As you can see, I am still here.”

  “And your family?” John asked.

  Sadness touched the old man’s face. “I sent them ahead,” he said, “in case things went bad. My wife, children, and grandchildren.” He sighed. “I am sure they thrived on Meligorn.”

  “Without you,” the young Talent qualified.

  Amaratne shrugged. “Without being killed for my views and beliefs."

  Neither of the young people had anything to say about that. They’d both read enough, heard enough, and had lived through enough to know what happened to those who sympathized with the so-called abominations. They merely hadn’t known how bad it had been in the beginning.

  “Don’t you miss them?” she asked after a moment, and John poked her.

  The admiral caught the exchange and shook his head at them.

  “Of course I miss them. I was supposed to retire and live out my days finishing that Honey-Do list my wife had spent half a century making.” He stopped and swallowed against the sudden well of emotion that misted his vision. “She’ll have added more to it by now.”

  “On Meligorn?” the boy asked. “Surely she’d have had to start again.”

  “Trust me, she’ll expect things done in both homes now.”

  They chuckled at that before the group fell silent. It was John who spoke and changed the subject.

  “You said you’d waited for her return,” he prodded and continued when the ex-admiral nodded. “And planned?”

  The old man responded with a broad grin. “Oh, yes,” he confirmed. “Once the initial hunt died down, I was able to travel a little, and those I contacted were able to travel even more.”

  His grin died. “I have to admit, though, that I had almost given up hope. I don’t know what I would have done if Ted hadn’t met me…was it yesterday?”

  “The day before,” the cowboy confirmed, and Amaratne groaned.

  “No wonder I’m tired.” He pushed to his feet and looked at John.

  “Why don’t we walk while we talk? I’m sure Roma won’t mind me taking a short tour, will she?” he asked and glanced at the ceiling.

  A moment’s silence followed before the AI replied, almost as if she was carefully considering her words.

  “I do not mind. Would you like me to guide you?”

  “If you could,” he told her.

  “Very well, if you will follow the amber lights,” she instructed, “I will show you the study room and library.”

  “There’s a library?” he asked.

  “Of course,” Roma told him. “This way.”

  They stood and Ted cleared the plates to one side.

  John gave the empty plates a worried glance.

  “Do not worry, John,” Roma told him. “The relevant drones have almost returned to service. They will take care of the dishes.”

  “Thank you, Roma,” he acknowledged and fell into step behind the ex-admiral and Ted with less tension in his shoulders.

  They followed the lights down the corridor to the small room the young couple had first collapsed in.

  “This is the study,” the AI began as Amaratne noticed the blazing script on one wall.

  I am coming—Stephanie Morgana.

  The ex-admiral came to a dead halt and approached the message slowly.

  “Well, well, well,” he murmured and reached out an exploratory hand. “That does look like her.” He traced the script with his fingers, a look of wonderment on his face. “She always did have a flair for the dramatic.”
>
  John laughed at that. “She does,” he declared and told him how the words had come to be there.

  “I would like to see her world one day,” the old man commented, and the young rogue Talent nodded.

  “So would I.”

  Amaratne glanced at the ceiling. “Where to next, dear lady?”

  “We have a room for physical training,” the AI told him. “I understand you will require it to improve your skills.”

  “Lead on,” he ordered and they all followed the lights to the training room.

  “Huh. Now, this looks like something her guards would design,” he commented as he scrutinized the expanse of mats and the walls padded from floor to ceiling.

  John looked up at his comment. “You knew her guards?”

  “Not personally,” he demurred, “but I saw them often enough.”

  “Were they always so…” The boy looked for the word, and Amaratne raised an eyebrow.

  “So…what?” he asked.

  “Brutal comes to mind,” John ventured and Ivy snickered. Encouraged, he continued, “Also devious, bloody-minded, conniving…”

  He let the words peter out and shrugged.

  “You’ve met them?” The ex-admiral looked confused. “Are they here already?”

  Hastily, the young man shook his head. “No, but there are training programs.”

  The confusion cleared from Amaratne’s face. “Ah.” He leaned forward. “From what I understand, they are savage fighters who use unorthodox techniques to deal with unorthodox situations.”

  John laughed. “Yes, that would sum it up.”

  “As to the rest…” The old man steepled his fingers and looked at Ted. “Would there be anything in the archives?”

  “What we have in the archives has been used to shape the training programs,” Ted told him. “Those simulations are as true to their real natures as we can make them.”

  The boy slumped onto a bench with a soft whistle. “So they are truly like that.”

  Ivy shook her head. “I don’t know whether to be impressed or terrified,” she admitted.

  Her friend shrugged. “Well, they’re effective,” he said and looked at the ex-admiral.

  “You said you’d waited and planned,” he began, “and you mentioned traveling. Can I ask where you’re at so far?”