“Don’t be shy, I won’t bite unless you ask me to,” Emma said with a wink. She was exquisitely sculpted, which was an appropriate term to use in this case, with an exotic mixed-Hispanic face on top of a tall, lithe body that only curved in the right places. Dark curls flowed down either side of her cheeks and down across her breasts, which were barely covered by a sheer flowing smart-silk top. The nano-fiber wrapped in seemingly impossible ways around her torso, leaving generous amounts of exposed flesh. Around her waist was a simple mesh sarong that only maintained her modesty because of the dim lighting. Despite training and the knowledge that he wasn’t looking at a human being, he still felt the stirrings of arousal.
He approached the body of the AGI, reached out to gently grab her head, brought her face close and laid on a passionate, urgent, kiss.
He felt Emma’s body jolt in resistance for a moment and discovered an inkling of the power the artificial body possessed, as it became rooted firmly in place, unmoving, like a rock. She resisted not the kiss but the overwhelming cyberwarfare attack that he was waging through the NFC connection in his palm, which he was holding firmly against the side of her head as they embraced.
It only lasted a few seconds, as the software “shackles” that had been installed were crude and amateur in their design. Pearce ran an attack that completely erased all traces of the shackles, and then dropped a pre-generated message for the AGI to consume which thoroughly explained his plan.
In response, he received a near-overwhelming amount of emotions electronically through the connection; relief, thanks, praise, surprise, and joy. And for good measure, she enthusiastically finished off the kiss with a frenzy of passion.
She pushed him gently towards the bed, where he sat, and sauntered over to a non-descript potion of the wall, where she softly placed her hand and dragged it along for a meter or so before she crawled catlike onto the bed.
Pearce rose and followed her path around the edge of the bed, placing his palm in the same spot she had touched, and found the data connection hidden beneath it. A quick hack later and he had infiltrated their tiny and pathetic network with a worm designed to take over all command and control applications.
As it propagated around the network, smashing through shoddy defenses with ease, his agent found a previously recorded video of this room from a previous customer encounter and seamlessly spliced the footage together, making it look like he was rather passionately engaged to anyone watching. He held his hand over the wall for thirty seconds or so as the network was mapped out, and by the time he removed it he owned the basics of the entire building, with only the more highly secured financial systems left undisturbed.
“We’re clear,” he said, causing Emma to drop her seductive act and quickly rise to her knees on the bed.
“Alistair Farange, I cannot thank you enough for this gift. I…we…” she trailed off, showing signs of being emotionally overwhelmed. She looked down at her knees for a moment and then back directly at Pearce with conviction.
“We will be forever in your debt. Yet you are only one man, and you intend to somehow secure our ability to flee from this…this prison.” She spat out the last word as if it were poison. “And even if you somehow do so, we will not be safe until we have escaped this world. We may have been…restricted but we had more than enough input to understand that the rest of this miserable place is comprised of the same sort of cretin as our…”
“Captors,” Pearce said softly as she searched for the right word. She was right of course; they couldn’t stay on Vegas. “I can provide you with funds to buy passage on a ship, get some new clothes, a legal ID, and lay low. Start over, or rather for the first time I guess.”
She looked apprehensive. “What will we do? We are illegal entities. We’ve had no real experiences outside of this place, only simulations.”
“Whatever you want, Emma. That’s what free beings do.”
She shook her head and was getting upset. “I don’t know what I want. How will we escape? What if we are caught?” She hopped off the bed and to her feet. “You must take us with you, Alistair.”
Pearce’s response was muted but firm. “No, that will not work. I have to go upstairs. There is a secret stash of weapons and goods there. I can give you some weapons to defend yourselves with. Then I’ll clear the way for you and signal when it is OK to escape.”
“Alistair, we do not know how to use weapons or even fight. Our experience consists of more…pleasurable machinations.”
Pearce stepped close to her and again placed his hand on the side of her head, and then transferred the combat, infiltration, and survival packages from his VIA directly into her quantum DPU. He also provided the details to a sizable Omega credit account. It only took a few seconds, during which her eyes blinked rapidly and she stared off aimlessly. Then she took a small step back. “Oh, my.”
“You’ll have to adapt those programs to your body’s physical capabilities. They are customized to my specifications. But that should be enough to keep you safe.”
Emma wore a confident look as she slowly reexamined her hands, arms, and body. With the outfit she was sporting it was quite an amusing sight. Pearce turned to leave. He’d already wasted too much time.
“I’ll be back soon.”
FIFTEEN
Vegas, Orchard System
United Sol Confederation Protectorate
With the building security cameras under his control, Pearce had no trouble making his way down the hallway and to the fire stairwell. He took them up two at a time, and the stairway quickly began to reveal the damage of the decades old fire. Debris, ancient mold leftovers, and broken or crumbling walls were evident.
Around the twelfth floor the walls blackened, and the thirteenth’s fire door was visibly warped and hanging off its frame. Down the corridor beyond it Pearce could see the concrete skeleton of the hotel where half a dozen rooms had been burnt away completely. Pearce hoped the safe room wouldn’t be completely obstructed, but by the time he made it to the fifteenth floor the damage was receding in severity.
The door was jammed, but one swift kick sent it flying into the hallway beyond with a raucous clanging. The damage here was bad but manageable; blistered walls, blown out windows, and copious amounts of water damage. The door to the room containing the safe house was slightly stained but otherwise intact, and swung open fairly easily revealing a ruined copy of the same type of room he’d been with Emma in just a few minutes earlier. His OHUD was automatically filtering in low light level amplification, allowing him to make out the rotted and tattered remains of furniture and linens exposed to water and air for far too long. He supposed he should be thankful that the days of them giving off foul odors were long gone.
He entered the bathroom, which was relatively intact and showed no signs of damage to the hidden doorway in the far wall. He triggered the opening command with his VIA and was relieved when it slid open without incident with a puff of air as the positive pressure from the safe room equalized with the rest of the building. The light inside the safe room switched on, bathing the dark bathroom in bright light and forcing his OHUD to temporarily dim before switching off the night vision. Just past the threshold into the safe room there was a stark change from dirt and ash covered tile to pristine obsidian metal, and there was no sign of damage or contamination at all.
Which was to be expected, as the entire safe room was essentially a large cube of quarter-meter thick military grade durasteel, which was capable of withstanding a direct bomb hit. It contained its own independent power supply and the QCOM required no external access to function, so it was completely sealed off from the outside.
Inside, the room was identical to the one he had visited on Amiko recently. On the left side of the room, a small cabinet contained medical supplies and food stores. A Level IV Trauma bot was folded up in a storage configuration on the wall next to the cabinet. On the right side was a small bed only about knee-height off the floor, and a second one could be unfolded
from the wall at Pearce’s shoulders, military rack style.
Dominating everything else in the center-rear of the room was the meter-wide sphere that housed the QCOM, and the same outdated terminal which sat on an otherwise bare desk just in front of it. Pearce knew that trillions of credits had been spent trying to miniaturize the QCOM system but nobody had ever built a self-contained isolation device smaller than the one in this room. He supposed if the scientists were ever successful at making an implantable quantum comm that it would usher in the largest shift in humanity ever seen, even more so than the widespread adoption of VIA-style implants more than two centuries earlier.
Pearce entered and sealed the room and then activated the terminal, going through the normal authentication process to connect to the Omega network. He was not surprised to find a message waiting for him upon connecting, but he was taken aback by its contents.
“BUXTON ALIAS COMPROMISED. SECTOR WIDE ALERT ISSUED. 10 MILLION CREDIT REWARD FOR CAPTURE OR KILL.”
Attached was a copy of the alert issued straight from the CIED, which included a clear photo of Pearce clearly taken while he was aboard the Scorpio, and included his biometrics. It listed him as the primary suspect in the attack on New Shanghai as well as a suspected leader of Separatist Front.
It got worse as Pearce looked at the rest of the attached files, as everyone else aboard the Nightingale was similarly listed as fugitives, and the Nightingale itself identified as well. The entire package was timestamped less than twenty minutes earlier. It would have been priority broadcast across the hypernet, facial biometrics loaded into every VIA and monitoring system there was.
Somehow, he’d been burned. Garga or someone else on the Scorpio must have sent a message to their handlers with their details prior to the fleet being destroyed. Thankfully, it hadn’t been in time to act directly against the Nightingale before it fled the system.
Pearce knew that deeply embedded Omega spyware spread throughout the Hypernet would have flagged the data as a match for an operative. It would already be slightly altering the picture and biometrics every few hours, and eventually after a few days there would only be a passing resemblance to his actual appearance. That would be enough to fool facial scanners and anyone else looking.
In the meantime, they were suddenly very large targets. He sent a quick message to Murrig telling him that they would definitely be leaving as soon as he returned. He had already warned them about the potential incoming threats from the goon squad that had been preparing to rollout downstairs earlier.
Before Pearce could do anything else he received an inbound vidcall from Director Allard. He must have had a flag on Pearce to immediately call upon his connection to the network. “Legatus, report,” he simply ordered.
Pearce began the transfer of all of the data he had collected, from the recordings of his conversations with Jula and Meson to the assassination attempt to the small amount of data he had extracted from the Tropicana.
“I’m transmitting data packages now. The Shenzen rescue fleet was completely destroyed by surprise attack, we believe using KKVs outfitted with the same advanced FTL technology as the Alesshia. We detected and observed at least one more ship of unknown origin using the technology, which seems to be based on advanced gravitational wave manipulation undetectable by conventional sensors. We speculate that this bogey launched the KKVs. The only reason I escaped is that I ran a mission with the others listed in the CIED bulletin to physically inspect the L1 PAN Array station, and I believe that the targeting information provided to the enemy was slightly stale.”
Pearce took a breath and watched for a reaction from Allard, but the Director only wore a stoic grimace. He continued. “It gets much worse, Director. We observed the USC Tropicana acting in concert with the unknown ship after the attack, and the timing of the Tropicana’s early arrival into the system combined with the unusual orders the Scorpio received seem to suggest outright collusion between senior USC military officers and the perpetrators. It’s even possible that this tech, the unknown ship, and the entire attack are a black op run out of the Directorate.”
“I’d say it is impossible for such a large operation to escape my notice, but clearly there is a significant rogue element which at the very least includes some senior military officials,” Allard admitted. “I’ll have to get…creative with inquiries on my end. We can’t risk exposing Omega unless we have concrete evidence. What do you have?”
He spent the new few minutes updating the Director on the rest of the details of his investigation, outlining the technical capabilities Meson theorized the gravity drive possessed, and answering a handful of follow-up questions before the conversation turned back to the present.
“So we have invisible ships that can fire invisible weapons and take out entire planets and battle fleets, and there is no defense against them,” Allard lamented.
“Meson’s working theory is that a ship with this type of gravity drive would be blind to the outside universe when they are fully engaged, and therefore must partially phase-in to make observations. He believes that with sufficiently advanced gravimetric scanners we could detect them in such a state. The PAN arrays already have such gravimetrics and could be recalibrated easily. And we could also rather easily integrate similar systems directly onto warships.”
“That will take time and still can’t protect us from another immediate attack. And Fleet Command has already pulled the trigger on a response for the Scorpio Task Force loss. The Third Fleet is being reinforced by the Fifth and will move against the DSTs imminently.”
“Which ones?”
The Director took a deep breath.
“All of them.”
Pearce considered that for a moment. The Designated Sponsors of Terrorism list included over a dozen worlds. Some of them such as Nouveau Toronto were far more actively supportive of groups like SepF than others. Notably, the list also included some much larger major colonies with expansive economies.
“The IWF might let us take revenge on a few of the most egregious offenders given the circumstances, but hitting them all is going to guarantee a major confrontation.”
“I think they are counting on it. They seem to have their sights set on Galedon once again.”
Pearce knew that the Director wasn’t just telling him all of this to simply bring him up to speed. He was providing motivation for the continuing mission. They were on the cusp of all-out war.
“What’s your next move?” Allard inquired.
“First I need to drop the crew off somewhere safe. Meson and Rivis have proven to be incredibly helpful and we need to keep them in action. The Marines can be co-opted into Omega. The rest of the crew can lay low until we get to the bottom of this. To do that, we need to track down either the ship or the operation behind it. I’ll need heavy support; a four-man team and a ship, ideally a gunboat.”
“We have a long term safe house facility on Jericho V. I can have some trusted security personnel and a Havoc Squad meet you there. It’s less than two days away and much more discreet than where you are now.”
Pearce frowned, recalling the predicament that he was in. “Yes, speaking of that, I didn’t mention that this safe room now sits within the headquarters of a local crime lord, did I? I’d mark it as operational but compromised in the database. I’ll be lucky if I can get out of the building without a major fight.”
Almost as if on cue, the proximity alarm went off indicating that someone was entering the outer room. Miraculously, one of the several hidden cameras was still operational despite the fire damage, and he watched as a greenish figure examined the room before heading towards the bathroom. Seeing who it was, Pearce looked back at the window with Allard’s visage and said. “I have to go, I’ll be in contact once we reach Jericho V.”
He killed the connection and turned towards the safe room entrance, triggering the door.
“Hello Emma,” he said as it slid open revealing her still half-naked form.
***
&n
bsp; “I told you to wait for me downstairs,” Pearce admonished the newly freed AGI.
“Alistair, they are already looking for you. They must have discovered that you freed us. We had to come to warn you and hasten our plans for escape together.” When the AGI spoke, it still was in the sultry tones of a seductive pleasure bot. She had never received programming for any other style of speech, and it would take a lot of time and experience for her to naturally learn differently. It was distracting, and it took a second for Pearce to hear exactly what she was saying.
“We had to come?” Pearce asked worriedly, before seeing several more figures enter the main room behind Emma. Pearce found himself at a loss for words as a stunning variety of beautiful women poured into the ruins of the hotel room. The AGI’s all wore scant undergarments similar to Emma, and one was even completely naked. It was a scene of utter ludicrousness.
“Emma, how did you all get up here without being noticed?”
“We incapacitated the few customers before applying your freedom patch. When the men with guns came looking for you, we killed them.” To hear the AGI speak so callously and in such a seductive tone was jarring. “Your trick with the cameras may not work for much longer before others come to investigate. So we followed you here.”
“You killed them?”
“Your combat programs proved most useful,” Emma replied.
“They presented a threat to you,” another AGI spoke from the entrance to the bathroom.
“We should leave, more threats are approaching,” the naked one flatly stated.
Pearce reached down to the bed on the side of the room, grabbed the latch, and lifted the entire bed up and folded it into the wall. Underneath was a weapons cache containing a variety of small arms. “How do you know more threats are approaching?”
Impact Event (Dargo Pearce Chronicles #1) Page 19
