Fenris Unchained

by Kal Spriggs

  A tap on the shoulder broke the moment. She shot an angry glance at Bob, who pointed at something. She looked over and blinked; she hadn’t seen the repair robot hovering only a meter away.

  Now that she looked, she saw several others, one of them holding a roughly round patch of hull. At least now she knew how they’d cut through.

  As she watched, the robot settled the missing section back into the hole. She looked away as it started to weld, her faceplate darkening itself on that side.

  Something grabbed her shoulder and she looked back, startled, to see that one of the spider ‘bots had latched onto her. She looked back at Bob and saw another of the robots tow him away.

  It gave her an eerie sensation to realize that they trusted Fenris with this, even though he was still technically the enemy. She took a long breath and released the magnets on her boots. He's taken us this far, she thought.

  She’d considered the experience unreal before, but nothing could have prepared her for flying across the hull. Above her, the warp bubble shimmered like aurora borealis in a thousand incandescent colors; below her, the hull flashed by. She actually felt a faint disappointment as they reached the airlock and the robot released her.

  After grabbing a handhold, she took a moment to get her feet down onto the hull. By the time she’d regained her composure, Marcus was already standing beside her.

  She smiled at him again, a far more genuine smile than before.

  She touched her helmet to his: “That was… incredible.”

  “It was,” Marcus said. “Are you all right?”

  “Of course.” She closed her eyes and let out a deep breath. In her mind, she still saw the hull flash past her face. “What now?”

  In answer, the airlock door opened and Bob climbed in. Marcus gestured for her to follow. A moment later, Swaim and Roush entered, followed by Marcus. Bob and Marcus both kept their guns out as the airlock cycled. A moment later, the inner door opened and they stepped into the corridor.

  Mel pulled off her helmet and pushed sweaty hair out of her eyes. She really needed to get something to tie it back. She turned around at Bob’s voice.

  “Now then, give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now?” Bob’s pistol was aimed at Roush’s face.

  “That's not a good idea.” Roush said.

  “Not good enough,” Bob answered. “I know exactly what kind of scum you are, Aaron. I remember what you did to those kids from that yacht.”

  “What?” Mel asked.

  Bob didn’t look away, “Three or four months ago we hijacked a yacht. Frost was going to ransom the two teenagers back to their parents. He had already killed the crew.” Bob’s face twisted in anger. “The parents didn’t want to pay. Roush here tortured one boy to death on video.”

  Roush shrugged, “It’s not what you think.”

  “The other kid hung himself that night,” Bob said.

  “Is it true?” Mel asked, her voice soft.

  “I’m an undercover agent for Guard Intelligence,” Roush said. “I did what I had to do to protect myself.” His voice was calm, with just the slightest edge of arrogance.

  “You… what?” Mel stared at the man.

  “I don’t believe it,” Bob said. He shook his head, “No, you’re just spouting to save your wretched life. You don’t have any proof. Where’s your badge?”

  “You think I’d be stupid enough to carry a badge on me? Of course not.” Roush shook his head. He looked almost serene, Mel realized. Either he told the truth, or he was a far better liar than her.

  “Why would there be an Agent inserted with GFN?” Marcus asked. “Mueller didn’t know about the GFN involvement.”

  “We didn’t know GFN had a part until after Mueller already went out of contact. As soon as I found out what Frost’s goals were, I notified my handler. We’ve set a trap for Frost at Vagyr.” Roush shrugged, “This actually works better for us. Instead of the Preserve taking all the blame, it looks like we foiled a significant terrorist plot. It’ll splash all over, and all sorts of independents will look bad on this one.”

  “No,” Bob said. “No, you’re just spinning lies so I won’t kill you.”

  “Skull White,” Marcus said.

  “Bleached Bone,” Roush responded instantly. Then he smiled, “Mueller gave you the recognition codes?”

  Marcus looked away. “He’s legitimate.” His tone suggested that he felt it was rather disappointing, but not very surprising.

  She didn't like the thought of another murderous agent, this a man who’d apparently killed a young boy to perfect his cover amongst the other terrorists. Then again, she thought, at this point it is obvious that there's effectively no difference from Guard Intelligence and Guard Free Now as far as tactics and morality.

  A thought bothered her, though, and she spoke up, “Wait,” Mel said, “If Mueller gave you the codes, he might have given them to Giran—”

  Marcus shook his head, “Giran was a junior agent before he got burned. Policy is, only senior agents get second-tier recognition codes.” He looked like he wanted to spit. “It means Roush’s a senior agent and it means he’s telling the truth.”

  “That doesn’t change what he did,” Bob snarled.

  Mel mentally reevaluated him upwards in regards to his devotion to justice. That, though, made her wonder, even more, who he worked for. Worry about it later, she thought.

  “No,” she said, staring at Roush for a long moment. “It doesn’t. It just means that he might be useful. We can’t kill him out of hand.”

  “Very good, now if you’ll return my weapon…” Roush held out his hand to Marcus. He stood there waiting patiently, his face composed.

  Marcus stared at his hand as if it were a snake. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Roush smiled ingratiatingly, “We’re on the same side—”

  “No, we are not.” Mel snapped. “We want to stop this ship. You want to make some kind of political gain with it, no matter the cost in lives. There’s a significant difference.” She felt sick at the thought of saving his life, much less helping him.

  Roush shrugged. “Fine, but—”

  “There you are,” a voice said. “Who’re they?”

  The group turned to find Brian and Stasia waiting. Mel blinked to see the hacker toting a carbine, slung from her shoulder. She held it uneasily, but Mel suddenly remembered Frost’s last conversation. Is Stasia really Stasia, she wondered, or is she the mercenary called Lace?

  “Apparently,” Bob scowled, “We’ve got another GI Agent. The blond kid is some kind of hacker.”

  “I’m, uh, just a computer programmer,” Jeremiah Swaim said. “I just answered a want ad, I had no idea what I was getting into.” He smiled a bit sheepishly.

  Brian looked at the two prisoners. “Why don’t we just kill them both?”

  Swaim went pale, his eyes growing huge. She would have chuckled, except that from Brian’s tone he wasn’t joking.

  Agent Aaron Roush, of course, didn’t so much as blink. The small smirk didn’t leave his lips.

  “That’s what I was saying.” Bob said with a snarl.

  “I could use the help,” Stasia said. “If the boy is good enough.” Doubt was on her face, though, and Mel figured she spoke up more from a distaste for casual murder than anything else.

  “I’m pretty good!” Swaim said. The pathetic eagerness to please was almost endearing, in a boyish manner. He reminded her more and more of a lost puppy, though one with a tendency to find trouble.

  Brian shrugged, “So, I guess we leave the hacker alive. What about the agent?”

  “I say we kill him,” Bob said, his voice cold. “He’s killed enough people just in pretending to be a terrorist. God knows how many he’s killed as an Agent.”

  “I think he has information that can help us,” Mel said. “If only to tell us what’s waiting at Vagyr. Besides, Fenris might listen to him.”

  “I will take no orders from a man who is a terrorist and a pir
ate,” Fenris growled. “I have reviewed the security footage from the GFN ship’s computer. There remains a recording of what he did.”

  Roush shrugged, “So much for that.”

  “I hate to say it,” Marcus said with a grimace, “but he might come in handy. Especially when we reach Vagyr. If nothing else, he might convince the authorities not to shoot us on sight.”

  “I could be accommodating…” Roush said with his smirk.

  “Two for live, two for die…” Bob grunted. He looked over at Stasia, “Well?”

  “I think, killing Guard personnel is something that might get our pardons overlooked, da?” she shrugged. “And he might have information to help.”

  Bob gritted his teeth. When he finally spoke, Mel could hear the rage in every word. “Just remember, Roush, I’ll be watching you.”

  “Oh, I’ll remember. Who is it you work for, anyway? You’re very good. I had no idea you weren’t the happy little cold-blooded pirate.” Roush's smirk grew broader, “Hell, whatever you're getting paid, Guard Intelligence could double it for an asset like you.”

  Bob ignored him.

  “What do we do now?” Mel asked.

  “Well, we should move, da?” Stasia said.

  “Yes, we should,” Brian sighed. “They didn’t follow us, but that’s only a matter of time. Best we get moving.”

  ***

  “Swaim, you said earlier you and my brother worked on some kind of programming, right? Well, what was it?” Mel asked.

  They’d taken two ladders, and if her internal map was correct, they were on Level Six. She didn’t know where Brian was taking them, but from how his pace had slowed they were probably getting close.

  “Uh,” Swaim looked over at Roush, then he shrugged. “A worm.”

  “A worm?” Bob asked.

  “You know, uh, like a virus?” Swaim said.

  “I thought you weren’t a hacker,” Bob frowned.

  “I’m not, not really. I’m a computer programmer. A normal hacker couldn’t stand a chance against an AI,” Swaim said. The self-satisfaction shone through his face. “You really need to know what you’re doing.”

  “So… you made a virus for the ship?” Mel asked.

  “Well, it’s not really a virus. More like a programming upgrade,” Swaim corrected. “The AI will still work, just the priorities will have changed.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Fenris demanded. The ship’s gravelly voice sounded offended by the very idea.

  Swaim looked up, his eyes wide, “Oh, uh, sorry. It wouldn’t hurt you or anything, you know? It would just make you, well, think that Guard Forces were your enemy.”

  “And GFN are his allies?” Mel asked, feeling sick.

  “Well, yeah, that would follow. Actually, I wrote two programs. The first one would work pretty good, I think. The second… I’m not sure.”

  The uncertainty in his voice, after his former confidence, made her feel suddenly uneasy. Artificial Intelligences were notoriously unstable. Fenris seems rational, but how hard would it be for a programmer to mess that up?

  “Why aren’t you sure?” Stasia asked quickly.

  He smiled shyly at her, “Well, you know, the first one just reorganizes the AI’s priorities. The other one is what I called a morality scalpel,” Swaim's voice was subdued. Clearly he didn't like the thought of what he and Rawn had put together.

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Mel said.

  “Nor do I,” Fenris growled.

  “Yeah…” Swaim shivered. “Essentially, I didn’t think the ship would go for some of Colonel Frost’s tactics.” He looked nervous, “So he had me write a program that would alter the AI’s moral concepts. I just don’t think it’s wise to dig too deeply into a stable AI’s deep programming.”

  “Stable?” Mel asked. “The ship’s going to kill a planet, I don’t think that’s stable.”

  “Not by choice,” Fenris said.

  “Even so, uh,” Swaim said after a quick glance toward the ceiling, “he’s pretty stable. I’ve never seen an AI system so… emotive. It’s like he’s a real person. And his programming… it’s just amazing. Really the stuff I did is like… well, it’s like a lobotomy. I really didn’t want to do it.”

  “You didn’t,” Fenris said. “I am now warned. I had double firewalls on all access points before; those are being reinforced. They have no opportunity to upload such a virus.”

  Mel nodded, “That’s right. They haven’t acted yet. Now that we know, we can take steps to prevent it.”

  “We’d better,” Roush said.

  Mel looked back at him. Bob had tied the man’s hands behind his back. Mel thought it a wise precaution. She didn’t want him dead, which didn’t mean she trusted him. “What do you mean?”

  “Well…” Roush shrugged his shoulders. “We don’t exactly have a huge fleet waiting in Vagyr for this ship. We’re expecting an AI unable to fire on Guard ships. That’s why I kept dropping hints to Swaim here that when he finished his job, they’d kill him.”

  “You mean they wouldn’t?” Swaim asked. Mel could hear the puppy-like happiness in his voice.

  “Oh, no, Frost didn’t trust you at all. I’m surprised he didn’t order me to kill you as soon as you’d finished.” Roush said casually. He didn’t seem to care much. “But I figured if you were scared, you would drag your feet.”

  Mel interrupted, “Fenris, would you fire on the Guard Fleet ships waiting there at Vagyr?” She waited with a nervous flutter in her stomach.

  The AI spoke after a moment’s consideration. Mel wondered how complex that question was to it. “No.”

  “Not even if they fired on you?” Mel insisted.

  There was a longer pause as the AI considered that, “No. Not even then. My security protocols prohibit it.”

  “You fired on our ship,” Marcus said. “And we identified ourselves as a courier ship.”

  Mel didn't miss the note of irritation in his voice.

  “You acted out of profile for a courier or Fleet Auxiliary. Also, you identified yourselves as non-military in your second broadcast.” Fenris paused. “Even so, my security protocols only allowed me to fire to disable. Had you begun evasive maneuvers, I could not have done that for fear of destroying your ship.”

  Mel opened her mouth in surprise, “You mean if we’d started dodging you, you’d have held your fire?”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh, God.” She covered her eyes with her hands. It's my fault he hit our ship, she thought with horror. It seemed like most of their failures could be tracked back to her mistakes. To include letting my brother join a terrorist organization, she thought angrily, right under my nose.

  Marcus patted her on the shoulder, “Not your fault. You didn’t know.”

  “I’ve said it before, but the Takagis really created a work of art, here,” Brian said. “I mean, most AI’s are totally illegal for anything but research. The best ones of the day tended to go nuts, but the Takagis created one with morality better than most humans.”

  “I am not art, I am a weapon,” Fenris said. The computer sounded slightly disappointed.

  “Well, Fenris, you’re an amazing creation, all the same,” Mel said. She patted the wall of the corridor. She frowned, “If the terrorists can’t take the ship over, what’s their plan?”

  Roush shrugged, “Frost had Rawn and a couple of the techs modify the bomber. They’ll be able to pilot it out when we reach Vagyr. At least, that was what Frost told me.”

  “What about sooner?” Mel asked. “Would it be possible for them to modify its warp drive to go FTL?”

  Roush shrugged, “I’m no engineer. I don’t know.”

  “Fenris?”

  “I constructed an FTL warp drive after a year of repairs and work. I doubt that they could so modify one of my bomber drones.” Fenris said. “However, that they have modified one at all bothers me. I will link with it and check what they have done.”

  “Okay…” Mel said wit
h a frown. Something bothered her. Why would the terrorists modify a bomber? They had to know that the ship could connect to the craft and take control at will…

  “Wait! Fenris, don’t link with the bomber!” Mel shouted. The ship didn’t respond. “Fenris?” There was no answer.

  “What’s going on?” Marcus asked from beside her.

  Mel swore and struck the wall with her fist, angry with herself for not realizing it soon enough to matter, “They uploaded the virus on the bomber. As soon as Fenris talks to it—”

  “Oh no,” Swaim said, his face pale. “Oh, crap, I’m sorry, I'm so sorry.”

  A blast door slammed closed in front of Brian. It missed him by only inches.

  A second blast door slammed behind Bob at the rear.

  “Hostile personnel will disarm themselves and await processing by the Colonel,” Fenris growled. “Resistance will meet with lethal force.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  Time: 2300 Zulu, 16 June 291 G.D.

  Location: Fenris, Thirty-six hours from Vagyr

  “Colonel Frost, I have detained the intruders on Deck Six. Do you wish me to lead your personnel there?” Fenris asked.

  Frost smiled in satisfaction. “No. Eliminate them.”

  There was a slight pause. “Colonel, they are currently not a threat. They have laid down their weapons and surrendered.”

  “Sir… my sister?” Rawn said from next to him.

  Frost grimaced. “All right. Keep them contained for now. Rawn, take Anderson’s team up there. It’s your lucky day. You get to deal with Marcus after all.”

  Rawn smiled eagerly. “Thank you, sir.”

  Frost's grimace turned into a full frown when he looked at his suit’s clock. “Make it quick. We’ve got two days to get things ready.”

  He paused, “Fenris, is Captain Roush still alive?”

  “He and the programmer Swaim are alive. However, Roush has revealed to our enemies that he is an Agent for Guard Intelligence. They believe him.”

  Frost swore. He’d known something was off with the man, “How?”