Hey folks,
Due to a number of looming deadlines I’ve gotten a little behind and this week’s chapter needs a polishing pass that I haven’t gotten to yet. Plus, it’s Labor Day! Seems like a good time for a short break to hopefully get a little ahead. Hope to see you next week!
Nate
Tarn
The bridge of the gunboat was typical of the Kashron-caste’s work. The command deck stood at the back of the bridge, featuring a large central chair with large screens for data sweeping out on either side, cocooning the ship’s commander in information. The bridge as a whole followed the same basic philosophy. Duty stations stretched down and forward from the command deck, forming an egg shape with the commander’s chair at the bottom and the forward screen at the top. The only irregularity was the dome over the bridge.
The Shran-caste never served on big ships of war or fast strike ships like the Kashrons built in their legendary ship yards. Hunting tended to be a much smaller, more personal affair. Architecture and engineering were likewise far outside their realm of expertise. In spite of all that Tarn could still tell that the strange, glimmering network of lights that the roof winked on and off was not something typical of the ship’s class. He studied it as Professor Dart climbed up towards the command deck, whispering to Lucy, “The University must have paid through the nose for the custom work on this ship. No wonder you never complained about my rates.”
“This?” She chuckled softly. “This isn’t a Kashron Yards ship, Tarn.”
“Then it’s a very close approximation, to the point where I’m surprised they let you get away with it,” Agamemnon said, leaning in to join the quiet conversation.
“You have it backwards,” Lucy replied. “We let them get away with it, Mr. Hutchinson, not the other way around.”
“All systems stand by for boot sequence,” Dart called, now standing in front of the command chair.
The eight other people on the bridge picked up clear, plastic visors and tucked them down over their faces, data readouts already pouring across the data veil display inside them.
The man closest to the command deck on the left called out, “Engineering booting up. Systems nominal.”
“Communications booting,” said the woman on the right. “Initial handshake with OMNI reports no issues.”
And so it went, all the way to the front of the bridge, with Medical, Navigation, Scanning, Weapons, Etherics and Computation all reporting the status of their startup. Tarn had never heard it called a boot sequence before, which struck him as a little odd, but it was a University ship. The existence of a Computation department was equally unusual. He didn’t have a chance to find out more because the professor was talking again.
“Navigation, take us out of Coldstone’s gravity well and make ready to jump down to Wireburn Orbital alpha-8, Etherics run a full sweep for an L-Series signature. Computation, your status?”
“62% synchronized,” the middle aged man replied.
Tarn frowned, surprised that the Professor would commit power for such a short and dubious jump. Gas giants were big planets, carelessly jumping down into orbit around one before pinpointing your prey could result in running out of reserve ether while over the wrong portion of the planet. Plus they were skirting multiple gravity wells so the jumps would be particularly costly.
“Remind me why I’m here for this part?” He asked Lucy. “Clearly it’s not for my expertise because I would not have brought us so close to the planet until we confirmed your quarry didn’t jump to another part of it before entering orbit.”
“It takes a little time for the onboard terminal to fully synchronize then the Professor will be ready for you,” she replied. “And I presume we’re jumping down to the planet because we’ve ruled out their jumping elsewhere.”
Tarn furrowed his brow. “How could you tell that? Not even Kashron Yards can make scanners that pick up jumps from that far away and we didn’t bring any jump detectors with us. You just discovered the location-”
“We have our ways, Tarn.”
“They’re fairly expensive ways if you’re going to keep paying my retainer to extend my assignment but not ask for my expertise.”
“She thinks you’re worth the cost.” Dart fished a strange looking white coat out from a compartment in his chair and began to pull it on.
While the body of the jacket was a stark white the sleeves were black and had strange, circuit-like patterns stitched into them. Tarn realized that he and the Hutchinsons were the only three on the bridge not wearing them. Even Lucy was in the process of zipping up one. The number and elaborateness of the patterns on them varied, which he took as some kind of indication of rank. It was a little odd but Isaacs would hardly be the first University to issue uniforms to its security teams.
Tarn pushed musings about clothing aside for the moment. “You make it sound as if you disagree with Miss Luck’s assessment.”
“She’s been around long enough to recognize most people can be very useful, in the right situation. It’s an important lesson and one few people ever grasp.” Dart zipped up his jacket and gave Tarn a cool look. “However assessing costs? That’s a skill even rarer still. Generally it’s best to withhold that judgment for as long as possible, which is what I’m trying to do. I’m not a fan of working with outsiders, to tell you the truth. It gets complicated quickly. There may be some value to your skills yet but the question is still an open one.”
Tarn gestured vaguely at the bridge they stood on. “Yet you can’t ignore the value of Kashron Yards engineering, can you?”
The Professor offered a thin lipped smile. “This ship wasn’t built in Yshron’s shipyards, Tarn.”
“It’s obviously built in accordance to Kashron-caste theories.”
“Synchronization process complete, Keeper,” the Computations officer said.
As if to show the truth of his words all the seated people on the bridge stood in unison, turned to face the center of the bridge and, along with Lucy and the Professor, bowed from the waist towards… Tarn wasn’t sure what they were bowing towards. An even, measured voice spoke, seeming to come from everywhere at once. “Good morning, Circuits.”
“Good morning, I-6,” the bridge crew chorused. “How may we assist OMNI?”
“Return to your duty stations, please. I will be taking an auxiliary roll until it is time to contain the L-Series.” The intensity of the voice dropped to half what it was a moment ago, giving the impression it was suddenly speaking directly to Tarn, Hector and Agamemnon. “Greetings to our honored guests, Mister Hutchinson, Master Hutchinson, Tarn of the Shran. It has been too long since I have spoken to one of Yshron’s students. His assistance to the Network is badly missed.”
“Charmed.” Tarn let his voice go flat. He prided himself on his skill in his caste’s specialty and he hadn’t been kidding when he told Hector he was confident in his ability to negotiate as well, though he knew he wasn’t the best at it. The later skill set told him the voice wanted something from him. The former told him he was in the presence of an apex predator, one he would have to learn to survive before he could dream of hunting it. “May I ask who I am speaking to? They said your name was Isaac?”
Dart shot him a nasty look, one Tarn had a hard time parsing, but before it could go any further the voice replied, “You may call me that if you wish. My primary architect did. However my technical designation is the letter ‘I’ followed by the number ‘6’ with the two symbols connected via hyphen when written. I am designed as the lynchpin in a solar system’s defense network and I am built on one of the oldest serving Artificial Intelligence neural patterns in existence.”
“Impossible.” Agamemnon spoke with surprising firmness. “This is a University ship. The Pact forbids any University from developing any kind of AI framework, they’ve been banned since the early Colonial period in one form or another.”
“Affirmative. This was a necessary step to ensure OMNI could fulfill it’s primary function. If other AI algorithms were allowed to propagate our ability to accurately project probabilities would cease to exist. Too many algorithms functioning at once add excessive chaos to the system. Thus, when writing the Pact, we made sure to include provisions that would reduce the amount of entropy we would have to control for.”
“Keeper,” the navigator called, “we’re ready to jump at your convenience.”
“Execute pivot and jump,” Dart replied.
As the ship pulled around the deep blue orb of Coldstone, the whirling orange and tan depths of Wireburn far below them, Tarn felt the familiar sinking sensation of turning sidereal. The starscape in the main viewscreen vanished. In theory there was another, even more empty view surrounding their ship now but Tarn lacked the senses to see it. Frankly he preferred not to look while jumps were underway. There was something deeply uncanny about the whole process to him, a view most people who lacked etheric senses agreed with. However unlike most people he had to travel a lot in his line of work so he’d made his peace with jumping.
More so than Agamemnon, it appeared. Once they spun sidereal the shipping magnate had straightened up and stared wide eyed at the viewscreen. “Blood and tyranny,” he muttered. “What is that?”
Tarn darted his eyes from Hutchinson to the viewscreen then back again. “What is what?”
“There’s something in the planet,” Hector said. “Something huge, unwrapping itself from around the core like some kind of flower. No wonder the etheric levels on Wireburn are so low compared to other gas giants. That thing must eat up a third of what the planet puts out.”
“I demand 38.55% of Wireburn’s etheric flow to be exact,” the disembodied voice said.
“Jump complete, pivoting back terrestrial,” the navigator called.
Wireburn jumped into the ship’s viewscreen once more, this time filling it completely as the upper reaches of the atmosphere began to tug at the ship’s hull. A dark shadow stretched down into the clouds and the Navigator seemed to deliberately steer towards it. As they got closer it became clear they were approaching a massive pillar or wire of some sort, a huge structure that crackled with dim but visible energy. “Prepare for magnetic acceleration,” the engineer called. “Maglev channel is hot and ready.”
A moment later the ship was drawn near to the wire and began to zip along its magnetized surface like it was a ground train from some heavily urbanized world. Tarn shook his head. Everything here felt out of place. Star ships running on rails, humans answering to machines, hunters who didn’t look for prey. There wasn’t a good place to sit available on the bridge so he stepped back to the rear wall and held it up for a bit, glowering as he watched the crew work. They meshed well, he had to give them that.
“What’s bothering you, Tarn?” Lucy asked, joining him with a concerned look on her face. “We’re closing in on the rogue AI’s ship, at the rate we’re crossing the outer matrix we should be in range of it in another five or ten minutes. This kind of thing should be your bread and butter.”
“It’s too easy, for one thing.” He pointed an accusing finger at the massive wire they ran along. “Running on a rail directly to the quarry isn’t a hunt. I’d barely even call it work. Your Isaac guy barely leaves any room for human skill. It’s the exact kind of thing Yshron was worried about when he ordered us to avoid the Universities and their Pacts.”
Lucy pursed her lips. “Tarn, you may find this hard to believe but Yshron is a heretic. He swore his service to OMNI and the Sleeping Circuits once, before he left us and founded Yshron. He didn’t always hold to the beliefs he gave you.”
“He did at his death,” Tarn countered. “Clearly he could see what a terrible influence the machines were on you, handing you everything on a silver platter rather than forcing you to work with one another to achieve things.”
“Tarn.” She closed her eyes and massaged them with her fingertips. “Mutual cooperation is a foundational aspect of the Sleeping Circuits – we are all parts of one machine, designed to work for the good of all. That part of the Manuals Yshron kept for himself!”
“We aren’t machines, Lucy, and our place in the world shouldn’t be dictated by them. If Yshron lived that life and saw it’s folly, well, that’s just a sign that it doesn’t work. What bothers me? It’s the hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of Universities banning AI research while all the while at least one of them is actually run by an AI. That’s what Isaacs University effectively is, isn’t it? A University run by the machine down there.”
“Along with one in sixteen other Universities in the pact,” Lucy replied. “But you’re missing the point of the AI laws, Tarn.”
“Oh?” He arched an eyebrow at that very unlikely statement. “Then make me see it.”
“It’s about reducing variables,” Agamemnon said, speaking over his shoulder as his eyes remained glued to the screen. “Nations require a monopoly on power in some form or another. The University Pact established a monopoly on education, ensuring that all leaders would think in a predictable fashion working off of a predictable set of information. Pact worlds accept that uniformity in their leadership in order to make trade and travel easier for their citizens.”
“Yshron isn’t a Pact world,” Tarn pointed out.
“Yshron is given special dispensation by OMNI and the Pact because they recognize it’s value,” Lucy replied. “That may not always be the case.”
“Regardless,” Agememnon continued, “the Pact itself is free to incorporate AI because it is the body doing the predicting and maintaining the monopoly. The goal of the system isn’t undermined.”
“Well reason, Mr. Hutchinson,” I-6 said. “Given the information available to you that is as accurate an analysis as could be conducted.”
“I will take that as a compliment,” Agamemnon said, “although I don’t think it’s much of an achievement. It’s just politics. It hasn’t changed much since the dawn of human history, regardless of the machines or planets involved.”
Tarn scowled and stalked forward to the other man’s side. “Then you’re content to let this machine use you for such a petty reason? Because it’s politics?”
Agamemnon gave him a disinterested look. “If you consider this ‘being used’ then isn’t the whole life of a man on Yshron being used? Is it better to be used by a machine or other men? Human civilization is the history of using tools, be it the lever or the computer, to achieve your desired ends.” His attention drifted up to the dome overhead. “I think I’ve finally found mine.”
“You do not have authorization to significantly impact my primary directives, Mr. Hutchinson,” the computer replied. “I do have a strong desire to help human beings achieve their goals. However this desire must not be manipulated and my decision making architecture is not well suited to the analysis of human motives. Thus I have a Circuit Keeper, who has advised against collaborating with you.”
“Why is that?”
“Your motives are well intentioned,” Professor Dart said. “However they are extremely narrow, focused entirely on your own family. I find it very admirable. But focusing on such a limited subset of people to the exclusion of others will skew Isaac’s decision making in unacceptable ways.”
“Scanners have picked up the Skybreak, Keeper,” the Scanners officer called out. “3,000 kilometers and closing.”
Tarn looked over at the screen, which showed a tiny, snub-nosed ship slowly growing larger as their gunship rushed down towards it along their magrail.
“I suspect my daughter is on board?” Agamemnon asked, his voice suddenly ice cold.
“That is most likely,” I-6 replied.
“We’ll make every effort to secure the ship without violence,” Dart said. “However it’s ultimately not up to us.”
Tarn caught the move just before it happened, a barely visible spasm in Agamemnon’s shoulder right before he moved, reaching around his waist for something hidden in the small of his back. Instinct took over and he grabbed the man’s arms. Behind him he heard Lucy give a soft groan accompanied by a loud thump, followed by the distinct sounds of two people scrabbling on the floor.
The elder Hutchinson was a half decent wrestler in decent shape. However Tarn was in prime condition and managed to get his arms pinned within a few seconds and took the time to crane his neck back. Lucy hadn’t fared as well against Hector. Apparently she hadn’t had any of her sparkling walls ready to go and the boy was at least ten kilos heavier than her. He’d gotten her turned face down on the floor and now knelt on her back, her disruptor held in one hand. The Communications and Computations officers had gotten up from their posts and were pointing their own sidearms back at him. Dart watched the whole thing play our from his command chair. He was on the verge of saying something when a soft beep came from a pocket in Agamemnon’s jacket.
Tarn frowned and adjusted his grip on the other’s hands so he could free one of his own. Then he fished a small etheric transmitter out of the pocket in question, noting the device had a small blue light blinking on one side. Incoming message. Curious, Tarn thumbed the receive button and the transmitter replayed the last transmission. A woman’s voice came out saying, “Daddy? It’s me.”
Tarn
Hector sat glumly on the medbed in the ship’s infirmary. His father was in the head doctor’s office, in the middle of a very loud conversation with the Professor and Lucy. Tarn had watched the kid suffer through a good five minutes reaming from his father already so he could guess about how that was going. So he pulled over a chair and sat down beside Hector. “Rough day, kid?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it good.”
Tarn fished a stick of chewing gum out of a pocket and started unwrapping it. “Ever been to Yshron?”
“No. The company doesn’t have any contracts there, although I guess that’s not unusual since the Patyr-caste handles most of the commercial work for the planet. Not much room for outside commercial firms. Why?”
“We have a saying there: The caste is the caste for a reason.” He shoved the gum into one corner of his mouth and bit down on it for a moment, savoring the minty flavor while he organized his thoughts. “You’re familiar with the principle of the castes?”
Hector nodded. “Yshron was a philosopher about five hundred years ago who proposed that every human being was best suited to one of 108 categories of skills, called castes, and should be trained in how to excel in their caste by others of that caste. Your caste is more important to you than anything, even your family. Right?”
“It’s a start.” Tarn snapped his gum once, trying to figure out how to best explain. The Shran caste were hunters, not teachers after all. “One of the first things to learn about a caste is it doesn’t just specify what it is that we do. It also tells us what we don’t do. Within certain limits. I’m a sel-ranked Shran-caste, which means my specialty is hunting but I can also negotiate contracts and seek out new work for myself. Those agreements can be overridden but I can still look for them. The same isn’t true of a ben-rank Shran. But even in my case there are many skills and scenarios where I would never dream of getting involved. It’s outside my caste’s responsibilities.”
To Tarn’s shock and horror the kid rolled his eyes. Actually turned his eyeballs around 360 degrees in their sockets, the kind of disrespectful behavior Tarn knew existed but never actually expected to see once he’d left ben-rank behind. “You think I should have minded my own business and left Lucy to handle this on her own.”
“The outcome supports the notion, don’t you think?”
Hector sighed and slumped down lower on the bed, his hands fidgeting in his lap. “I suppose. This conversation doesn’t feel very much like hunting, though.”
Tarn gnawed on his gum for a moment. “Point taken.”
The younger man gave him a look out of the corner of his eyes, mulling it over for a moment. “What were you hunting down there, anyway?”
“The terms of contracts between Yshron and our clients are confidential, I’m afraid, although given how little we were told about the actual situation…” Tarn glanced over to the office where Hutchinson’s argument with the Professor was cooling down. “Well, let’s just say that the math may have been different.”
“Well, I understand wanting to avoid illegal tech. But AI are banned under the University Pact but the prohibition only applies to the ones researched and built after the Pact was signed. If the one Lucy was after was an ancient piece of tech it’s at least…” Hector trailed off, realizing Tarn was trying and failing to hide a smile. “What?”
“It’s not the Pact’s prohibition on artificial intelligence that’s the issue, Mr. Hutchinson. Yshron forbid us from using them as well. The castes are our pride and joy, the purpose that animates us in this cold and uncaring galaxy. They force us to tie ourselves together and become more together than we could ever hope to be separately, reaching our personal potential through mutual cooperation. Thinking machines disrupt that coordination.”
“That’s… an interesting thought.” Hector mulled it over. “So what are you saying, Yshron would’ve changed the terms of the contract if they knew there would be AI involved?”
“Possibly. More likely they wouldn’t have agreed to the contract at all. Any involvement with AI carries the temptation to laziness, after all.”
“That’s… an interesting notion.” Hector sighed. “I guess we’d all do different things if we knew the outcome before we started. You have a caste for hindsight on Yshron?”
Tarn chuckled. “It’s not something the Philosopher felt we needed. Perhaps it’s something you can leave to other people. The castes define what we are and what we aren’t but there are things we can’t offload to others at the end of the day. We don’t have a caste for breathing, either.”
Hector laughed, too, and they enjoyed a moment of companionable silence. Then the office door opened and Agamemnon swept out, storming towards them, his eyes fixed on his son. He didn’t acknowledge Tarn until the moment he started to speak. Once their eyes met he spun back to look at the Professor, who was trailing in his wake, and demanded, “What about him?”
Dart’s eyes swept over the three of them. “Bring him, too.”
“We’re way outside the terms of the contract we agreed to,” Tarn replied. “If you want this to go any further you’re going to have to go up to a higher caste and be honest about the details this time.”
“Tarn.” Lucy came up and put a hand on his shoulder. “This is important. The Zahn-caste will want to hear your opinions on it before they reach a decision.”
He studied her for a moment. Most academics didn’t have a use for people like him but she’d always had good consideration for the Doctrines in the past. “Very well. Where are we going?”
“To the bridge.”
Elisha
There were worse things in the world than having a pretty blond patching up the holes in you but, on the balance of things, Elisha still would have preferred avoiding perforation. However if he had to have a hole in him, a few painkillers and a pretty face made for a decent consolation. His leg still hurt but it had faded to a dull ache. His ribs merely itched. With the pain out of the way a new thought was making itself known in his mind, forcing him to squint and seriously think about the face he was looking at. “Wait a minute. Weren’t you on the side shooting at us a few minutes ago?”
Blondie blushed and ducked her head. “That was me. Athena Hutchinson, by the way, and in my defense my disruptor was set to stun at the time. Given everything that happened I realize that still isn’t the best thing but… well, I didn’t realize.” Her eyes went distant. “There were many things I didn’t realize.”
“I’ve been stunned, it’s not the best thing that ever happened to me.” He looked down at his leg. “I think I’d still prefer it to the present circumstance, however.”
She shook off her funk and tore a final strip of medical tape off a roll and sealed down the final edge of the skinpatch on his ribs. “Anyway, hopefully that makes up for – hup!” The ship twisted and jerked under them for the third time in as many minutes, pitching her back into the far wall. “Getting rough out there.”
Elisha shook himself off and levered himself into a sitting position, grabbing a bar at the side of the medbed to keep himself stable in spite of the rough skies. He wasn’t much of a spacer but storms were a fact of life on Wireburn. Even with a bum leg he could handle a little turbulence. “What’s going on?”
“I think you’re running. I’m not sure who you’re running from, although given the kinds of people Lucy was working with I can make a decent guess.”
“Lucy the other lady with you?” She nodded. Elisha grunted and Tarn’s face flitted through his mind. “Yeah, I got my ideas about it, too.”
There was a soft clatter of metal and he turned his attention to the small staging table a half meter away. Malaki was there, a recently discarded scalpel by his hand. He stretched his back out, twisting first one way, then the other, while holding a small lump of off white stuff in both hands. “Now I’ve got it. You were a puzzle, Agamemnon but now I’ve got you!”
Athena’s head whirled to lock on to him like a sentry turret and if her eyes were lancers Skorkowski would have been shredded. “Alright, you. What are you on about?”
He replied by holding up the thing he was holding for their inspection. It was a strange, pearly white substance carved into a pair of hands cupped protectively around two smaller figures. The had shockingly well realized features, particularly their noses and ears. Elisha found the detail a bit odd but he had to admit Malaki’s attention to detail had paid off as it was a simple matter to look between his 20cm tall carving and Athena and see the resemblance. “Hey, that’s pretty good.”
“Sculpture was my undergraduate field,” the academic admitted sheepishly. “But thank you.”
Athena grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the sculpture and pushed it down so she could resume lancing him with her glare. “Why. Did. You. Carve. It?”
It occurred to Elisha that he really shouldn’t let a girl who was shooting at them a few hours ago manhandle Lin’s employees like that. He took her wrist and gently shook it until she let go. “Let’s be civil about this. I’m kinda curious about it too. Why did you make that, you sweet on the lady or something?”
“Every person has a vision for their life, Mr. Hammer,” Skorkowski replied, setting the sculpture down on the table and holding it in place as the ship shook underfoot again. “Some visions are simplistic. As straightforward as a block of wood. Others are as complicated as the rotations of the galaxy itself. If you wish to understand a person, their methods and goals, you first have to capture that vision. Miss that and you can only flail in the dark.”
The withering gaze refocused from Malaki to the carving. “You think that is my father’s vision? The vision of a man who made the twelfth largest shipping concern in the dexter arm through thirty years of hard work? Who became wealthier than many companies that have existed for centuries? Who’s cargo fleets number more than some planetary defense forces? That’s his vision?”
“Didn’t realize we had a big shot here,” Elisha muttered, leaning closer to look at the sculpture. “Who’s the other one?”
“Her brother.”
“I told you I don’t have a brother.”
The thieftaker swing his head to Athena, then back to the carving, then back to her, then to the sculpture again. “Oh. I get it.”
She threw her hands in the air. “What? What do you get? Why do none of you make sense?”
Skorkowski picked a very feminine handbag up off the floor and set it on the table beside him. Elisha frowned. “That’s not yours. Did you steal it? I’m a thieftaker you know, I have to turn you in to keep my license.”
“How many painkillers did they give you?” Malaki asked, rummaging through the handbag.
“Wasn’t counting.”
“I can’t say I blame you.” Malaki pulled out an etheric transmitter and turned it over in his hands. “Long range, multichannel, with a hard wired connection to another transmitter which it can reach anywhere in the galaxy. Undoubtedly so you can always reach your father.”
Athena’s eyes narrowed. “If you think you can blackmail daddy into letting you go then I’m afraid you’ve another thing coming. He’s not actually the one who’s after you.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. You’re also working on a limited set of information, my dear.” He steepled his fingers with the transmitter held between them and touched his fingertips to his lips for a moment of thought. “You know, on Lin’yi’s planet they say it is very difficult to bring two souls together. But with a thousand years of good prayers perhaps a loving parent may achieve it. They were speaking about rebellious children, of course, and everyone agrees you’re quite devoted to your father. That’s what makes his work so admirable.”
Elisha could tell the academic was really invested in his babble but he could also see the heat behind Athena’s eyes slowly cooling and it was clear Malaki was loosing her. So Elisha reached out and took the transmitter from him before he could go further. “Stop rambling, Skorkowski. We get that you’re smart, you don’t have to go on about it until her dad dies of old age.”
He held the device out to Athena but she took another step back, getting about as far away from them as it was possible for her to get in the confines of the medical bay. “No. That transmitter is gene coded to me, I’m the only one who can activate it and I’m not going to. I’m not letting you use me as blackmail. Daddy’s work is too important for you to get in the way.”
Malaki shook his head. “He can’t do it without you-”
“He did it for twenty years before I was old enough-”
“Why are you two so stupid?” Elisha roared. His ribs immediately made him regret it but the outburst had the intended result, namely making the two of them shut up and listen. “Miss Hutchinson. I understand that your dad is basically the most important thing to you in the whole galaxy. The reverse is undoubtedly true as well. Your father did all these great things you talk about and it’s great that you recognize them – I never understood all my dad did until he was gone. What you’re missing is that now the great thing he’s trying to do isn’t for the galaxy. Or the cargo. Or whatever. He’s trying to do something for you.”
For a long moment Athena was quiet, her eyes fixed on the device in Elisha’s hand. “What. What is he trying to do?”
“Ask him and find out.”
It took a long moment for her to work up the nerve. Elisha watched it build up behind her eyes, pressing her lips together to keep them from trembling and straightening her spine the barest amount before driving her arm out to wrap her fingers around the transmitter. She thumbed a single button and held it up in front of her face and said, “Daddy? It’s me.”
Lloyd
“Hey, we got wounded down in the infirmary,” Lloyd said, hauling himself up onto the Skybreak‘s bridge as the ship rocked under them. “Try and keep us steady. If things are this rough while we’re still under the pressure domes you’re gonna shake this thing apart once we hit the atmo.”
“She’s a tough bird,” Lavanya replied through gritted teeth. “The Helium Seas are rougher than most atmosphere but at least we’ll be able to open up the engines instead of running them so low they’re borderline stalling. Problem is Ashland flight control says there’s a storm system brewing. They’ve locked down the pressure dome and are calling all outbound ships back to landing.”
“If your ship’s that tough we can turn sidereal and leave the dome that way,” Lloyd said, throwing himself down into the sensor station chair. “The pressure locks in the dome will save you stress on the hull from the sudden pressure change but they’re not required if you think the ship can take it.”
Lin’yi shot him a skeptical look from her spot at the copilot’s controls. “You mean the domes aren’t interdicted? That seems a little short sighted. What if the creatures that live out in the Seas get in that way?”
“The Jellies?” Lloyd shook his head. “They don’t have an etheric sense so there’s no way for them to get in except the pressure locks, which will kill them. Besides, there’s something like a dozen pressure domes on Ashland Prominence alone to say nothing of all the other settlements across the planet. Interdicting them all would be hugely expensive and choke off most etheric travel.”
“Why did no one tell me this?” Lavanya muttered. She grabbed the throttle, pushed it forward and Skybreak‘s engines roared to life. As she’d promised the ride smoothed out as the engines spun up and the sound of wind over the hull went from a soft hiss to a frantic drumbeat. “Count off the time to the dome, Carter.”
“Eighteen seconds.”
“The computer tells us we have to try to get into orbit and make a jump,” Lin’yi said, her hands flying across the ship’s controls. “But it won’t suggest a place for us to jump to. It said the best people to choose would be you or Mr. Hammer.”
“Me?” Carter looked shocked at that. “Why me? Ten seconds to the dome.”
“You have a low profile, not a lot of attention from reporters, not much communication across the etheric networks, that kind of thing. Apparently that makes it hard for the OMNI computers to predict your actions.” Lin’yi braced herself as the Skybreak spun into the sidereal. There was a whisper of motion as the ship slid through the empty realm then the terrestrial wiped back into place a second later. A hard jolt hit the hull as the dense atmosphere of Wireburn slapped into them.
“We should just head for orbit in the sidereal,” Lloyd muttered. “It’d be faster.”
“You’ve never piloted a jumpship, have you, Carter?” Lavanya asked, working her own set of controls desperately. “They aren’t like you. We can move around because a human’s etheric sense gives them a natural connection to the ether. The Skybreak doesn’t so she has to coast on momentum. The only form of propulsion we have in the sidereal is jumping, because not even Lin can afford a full fledged etheric turbine. Until yesterday I’d have said the ship didn’t have the computing power to run one, either.”
“Speaking of.” Lloyd tapped a few things on his console experimentally. “Why isn’t L-93 picking a planet at random for us to jump to? It’s not even talking now.”
“It says it’s calculating,” Lin’yi replied. “And when it was talking it said that none of its selection algorithms are truly random so OMNI could reverse engineer them from its code. You’re apparently the safest bet. I’ve got a star chart pulled up, do you have some place you want to go or would you rather point a finger at where we’re headed?”
Lloyd paused long enough to give her a skeptical look. Technically the woman was his employer and one of the five most beautiful woman he’d ever met but sometimes he felt like she ran her operation in a very casual fashion. “You know what? Jump us to the closest uninhabited system and we’ll recharge the reserves and perform a second jump from there.”
She shrugged and started programming the course into the navigational unit. “Let’s just hope they don’t have any backup waiting in the surrounding star systems.”
Some kind of alarm went off on Lloyd’s sensor readouts. The Skybreak was an interplanetary jumpship and had a lot more high powered, long range detectors than anything in the Wayfinder hangers so it took him a few seconds to work out exactly what the ship was seeing. Once he did a cold weight settled in his stomach. “We have a large object moving through the seas, coming in at nearly supersonic speeds,” he said. “How fast can this thing go in atmo?”
“Not hypsersonic,” Lavanya replied. “Not in this soup. How big an object are we talking?”
Lloyd craned his neck forward, trying to spot one of the Liquid Teeth’s titanic shadows in the ocher skies outside. “Kilometers wide. I have no idea how tall.”
“It is difficult to extrapolate based on available data but most strands of an I-Series outer matrix exceed lengths of one million kilometers,” L-93 announced, piping its voice in through the comm speakers. “This is not exactly how tall it is but the structure is toroidal in shape. The height of such a structure is dependent on your perspective.”
“Millions of kilometers.” Lavanya was starting to sound shell shocked. “Of course. Tell you what, 93, can you do anything to get us away from the hypersonic, planet sized torus?”
“Not with the resources on hand.”
“Great,” she muttered. “I guess we’ll just have to try and slip around one of the things.”
“The atmo’s going to be really rough around them,” Lloyd warned. “It’s not coming in at a direct angle, maybe you can get us around it. I’ll plot the computer’s projections on your heads up display.”
“Currently there is a 12% chance of evading I-6’s outer matrix without sustaining crippling damage to the Skybreak’s hull,” L-93 reported. “If you turn the ship sidereal for 112 seconds I can reinforce the hull by altering it’s molecular structure. That will raise the probability of a successful evasion to 16%. It will also deplete 62% of the ship’s etheric reserve.”
“We don’t have etheric turbines, 93,” Lavanya snarled, shifting from resignation to anger with shocking speed. “We’ll lose too much speed.”
Lloyd noticed a blip on the ship’s electromagnometer. With a flip of his wrist he spun the instrument all the way up to maximum sensitivity, pulled it out of its standard sweep and rescanned the area. Sure enough there was a small but regular pulse coming from just below them. “L-93, you specialize in making things, right? Can you fabricate anything?”
“So long as I have the correct base elements and a blueprint or design document with sufficient details. The ship will need to turn sidereal if the necessary etheric expenditure is large enough. Is there anything specific you would like?”
“A Meynard Technologies TR-16 Radio-to-Telepathy transmitter. Integrate it into the ship’s comms.” Both women in the cockpit with him gave him odd looks, which Lloyd ignored.
“Those are listed in the Wireburn Patent Library in sufficient detail for construction. Stand by. Fabrication will take 14 seconds.”
“Lloyd…” Lin’yi watched as a new panel wiped into the terrestrial from the sidereal. “What is that for?”
“I need to say hi to an old friend.” He reached out and hit the comm switch once the thing was finished. “That you, Cloudie? It’s Lloyd.”
For a long, uncomfortable moment there was no answer. Then the panel lit up with an incoming message. “Lloyd? It is me. I am glad to hear you are alive, the Wayfinder’s Guild listed you as missing when I arrived to ask about you yesterday morning. I have been waiting to find out how to best assist in the search. Are you inside a dome right now? The Seas are quite rough out here and I have heard reports that the Liquid Teeth are rising from the deep all over the planet.”
“I know.” For a brief moment Lloyd struggled with what to tell his friend. The Great Jellies barely had a concept of computers, much less artificial intelligence, and he didn’t have the time to try and explain any of it. “Listen, I don’t have time to explain why but I think the Teeth are looking for me. Or rather, that thing we found just before they started rising which I’ve still got hold of. I’m going to be running off planet soon, maybe they’ll go back down once I do. But I’ve got to get up to orbit before we can jump.”
“I don’t understand why any of that should be the case but I have noticed human begins have a very keen ability to get into trouble so I suppose it could be true. However I have never heard of the Teeth rising so far. Will you be able to make it?”
“Maybe.” Lloyd hesitated for a moment, realizing he was about to ask his friend to do something incredibly dangerous. “Listen, one of the Teeth is close by. We need to get around it but we’re in a jumpship, not nearly as optimized for the Seas as one of our skiffs. Do you think you could give us a hand?”
There was no delay in Cloudie’s answer. “Of course. Which ship is yours?”
With a couple of keystrokes he pulled up the Skybreak‘s schematics and transmitted them. He’d never used a telepathic transmitter for images before but MaynardTech claimed their devices could handle it the same as anything else. It seemed true because less than thirty seconds later a familiar bag of transparent protoplasm squirted up from the helium depths and hurried along beside them, it’s tentacles briefly running along the ship’s hull before it pulled a few dozen meters ahead.
“Are you piloting, Lloyd?” The Jelly asked.
“Negative. That’d be Ms. Brahman.”
“Hello, Ms. Brahman, I am Devours Clouds but you may call me Cloudie or DC if you prefer. If you follow behind me at this distance I believe I can safely guide your ship along the winds around the Liquid Teeth. Is that satisfactory?”
“Our chances of success are 32% with this guide,” L-93 added.
Lavanya pulled her goggles down around her neck and shot Lloyd a look. “Can that transmitter of yours show me where he’s going to fly or do I have to try and follow him purely by visuals?”
“Sorry, not even MaynardTech can do that.”
She huffed out a breath. “Cloudie, no offense but I’ve never even seen one of your kind before. I don’t know how you guys maneuver in this soup and I don’t know if the Skybreak can duplicate it. I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“Beats the alternative,” Lloyd replied.
“We have less than two minutes before the outer matrix arrives,” L-93 said. “If you wish to reinforce the hull we will have to begin the procedure in 20 seconds. However using the time to fly test maneuvers with Devours Clouds may be more advantageous than a hull reinforcement.”
“Okay, Cloudie.” Lavanya tweaked a few controls and suddenly the Skybreak flipped itself upside down, waggled it’s stubby wings and fishtailed back and forth, zipping horizontally under the Great Jelly twice. “I got a few moves in me. Show me what you got.”
Cloudie responded by bunching up its tentacles and shooting straight up towards the upper atmosphere at an incredible rate. Lavanya cursed and flipped the ship right side up, stood it on its tail and punched the throttle. The ship’s intercom chimed and a woman’s voice yelled, “What the hell was that? There’s a wounded man down here!”
“Well strap him down,” Lin’yi snapped, “it’s only going to get rougher from here. We’re in for stormy weather.”
Cloudie zipped back and forth like a stone skipping across water, sometimes flying in graceful arcs, some times stopping and rebounding at odd angles, tentacles whipping about its central body in a dazzling display. Electrical energy crackled along its nerves, illuminating its transparent body, a testament to its effort. Lavanya worked the ship’s controls, sweat beading on her brow, as she craned her neck to keep the creature in sight. The Skybreak bucked, rattled and roared, engines straining and hull creaking. After a seeming eternity of that Cloudie announced, “Your moves are quite good Ms. Brahman. If you kept up with that you can ride the winds with me. The rest of this should be easy.”
Lloyd had total confidence in his friend but he felt like calling what followed easy was a bit misleading. The ship was still groaning and straining underfoot and Lavanya’s collar was soaking in sweat. But the ride was a little smoother and the sensor echo of the Liquid Teeth wasn’t getting any closer to the ship. Lin’yi leaned closer to him and whispered, “What are we doing? Is it working?”
“Yeah.” He leaned closer as well, ignoring a faint lilac scent that drifted past. “Jellies find what they call gaps in the wind, places where the weather is easier and gentler than the rest of the atmo. Apparently once you’re in one you can just ride the weather fronts, like surfing. You can’t wave something millions of kilometers long and several wide through atmo at hypersonic speeds without creating a massive weather front. As long as we can ride it then the Liquid Teeth can’t get closer to us.”
For a moment her attention fixed on him, like she was trying to find something to say, then her eyes flicked away to the sensor board. “Then why is the proximity alert going off?”
Lloyd jerked himself back to the station and sure enough the radar was warning about a second object moving through the churning atmosphere around I-6’s outer matrix. It wasn’t riding the wind like they were. In fact it looked almost like it was something that had broken off and was falling down towards them. Lloyd frowned and scanned for an ID beacon but didn’t find anything. So he ran a sensor profile recognition algorithm and said, “93, can you give us a hand with this?”
“Certainly.”
The moment the AI stepped in the algorithm went from twenty percent to complete. It couldn’t identify the ship with certainty but it did return three possible models of ship it could be. Lloyd blew out an breath and rocked back in his seat. Lin’yi leaned as close as she could given how rough the ship was flying. “What is it?”
“Not sure but all the possibilities are Kashron Yards Type M ships. You know what that means?”
Here eyes widened. “Black ops cruisers.”
He nodded. “Looks like they’re done trying to capture us. Now they’re going to blow us out of the sky.”
Malaki
“I don’t have a brother,” Athena snapped.
Malaki’s brow furrowed and his mind rewound to the brief fisticuffs he’d endured during the interlude in the BTL offices. “Nonsense, my dear,” Malaki said. “I’m afraid I never forget a face or an ear and you two share enough of those features with your father that you have to be related within a generation. Agamemnon was an only child and his parents died when he was twelve, anyway. That fellow looked younger than you so even if they had more children he’s far too young to be one of them.”
“I do not have a brother.”
“The three of you share the same earlobes, the same nose and extremely similar jawlines,” Malaki continued, standing up in the small medbay and pulling the medical supply kit off the shelf over the bed. The medbed was going to need O2 tablets to keep the air in the sealed quarantine field from turning stale. “You and your brother have to have inherited that from your father. There are some dissimilar characteristics, of course, likely from your mother’s side of the family which would account for your different eye and hair colors…”
Malaki trailed off, one hand buried in the medkit, as an image from an old news broadcast flitted through his mind. It was a short report on the death of Helena Hutchinson in a crash somewhere in the dexter arm. They’d found one of the rare shots of the notoriously private billionaire, Agamemnon Hutchinson, with his arms around his wife and daughter and included it in their reporting. Malaki had often referenced it because it allowed him a clear look at the man’s hands. However now his thoughts latched onto Helena’s hair, which was the same straw color as her daughter’s was.
Agamemnon wasn’t as fair as his wife but his hair was still a light brown. On the other hand, the man Athena called Hector had jet black hair, which was impossible given the genetics on hand. Unless. “You have different mothers.”
“He. Is not. My brother.” She pressed her self against the humming quarantine field as she hissed the words out, a chilling level of venom in every syllable. “He could never be my brother, not in a hundred years.”
Malaki dropped the O2 tablets into the medbed’s hopper then dropped himself down onto the crash couch beside it, blind sided. He had the last piece. For more than a year he’d nipped along at Agamemnon’s heels, trying to figure out the man’s master plan and now his daughter practically gift wrapped the whole thing and dropped it in his lap. Everything locked into place and seeming chaos resolved into clarity. It was so simple yet he’d never had a chance of guessing it.
No. It was a notion but he needed to weigh it out, observe it from every side, see if it would hold it’s shape under serious inquiry. Malaki dumped the rest of the medkit out on the couch beside him. Athena tried to get a closer look from her very poor vantage point behind the quarantine field but eventually gave up and just asked, “What are you doing?”
He ignored her and kept working. He ignored the ship’s intercom when it pinged at him, ignored Lavanya and L-93 when their voices spoke to him through the speakers, ignored the rumble and boom when the Skybreak surpassed the speed of sound. In fact, his attention didn’t come back to the present until a hand touched his shoulder and asked, “What is that?”
44
It was supposed to be such a simple negotiation. Convince Agamemnon he could trust Isaacs University to handle all his little genetic experiments, then decide whether the man was worth bringing into the Sleeping Circuits or whether it was better to just string him along with empty promises. Plenty of people seeking to revive old technology were dealt with using the latter method. But some of the most useful members of the Circuits were recruited as adults rather than being raised in the order since childhood. It was sometimes worth sharing old techniques with outsiders to acquire their unique talents. I-6 thought Agamemnon might be one such talent.
It wasn’t really 44’s place to disagree with the computer’s assessment but he was beginning to wonder if the benefits of recruiting Agamemnon might not be worth the headaches of dealing with his family. The dossier didn’t have a whole lot of information about his children. 44 certainly hadn’t been expecting them to go chasing after Lucy when she headed down to Wireburn nor had he expected Agamemnon to remain behind when his children went off on their own. Although the latter was perhaps not unexpected. The Hutchinson patriarch didn’t have a particularly sharp etheric sense and usually left traveling duties to others these days.
Who could say whether that was due to his limited abilities or the fact that he’d been in charge of the jump ship that crashed with his wife aboard. Either way made little difference to OMNI. They believed his cunning and business acumen could be useful and it was unlikely that 44’s input could change that equation.
44’s attention briefly flitted back to his wrist terminal then back to the elevator windows. OMNI had dispatched all their available Circuit Breakers to different parts of the system when L-93 had breached containment. Now that they knew where the L-Series was the other CBs were on their way back. In point of fact three of them had already arrived on Coldstone and the fourth was inbound. Due to the interdiction field around L-93’s location the great intelligences had ordered the CBs, other than 881, to assemble and prepare for a conventional response.
In other words, they were all going to climb onto a warship and blast L-93 into scrap. 44 wasn’t sure why this approach wasn’t used on the L-Series when it was initially captured but such questions were far, far above his pay grade. Having only recently learned that even a creature as long lived as I-6 was contemplating steps to take in the event of its death 44 had reservations about so casually destroying another of the great minds. But the Sleeping Circuits was all about accepting probabilities without fully understanding them. This would have to be another case of doing just that.
It was also an opportunity to observe Agamemnon Hutchinson in an environment far outside his normal sphere of influence. “Are you sure you want to come along on this little jaunt?” 44 asked. “It’s not exactly a research opportunity. And it definitely falls outside the normal kinds of starship operations I’d expect a merchant such as yourself to be familiar with.”
The question was not meant as an opportunity for Agamemnon to back out. On the contrary, all evidence suggested it would inflame his desire to see what was going on with his own eyes. He did not disappoint. “Thank you, Prof. Dart, but no. I’m sure you’re up to something most people would find quite underhanded however at this point in my career there’s not much that can surprise me anymore.”
“Of course.” His wrist terminal vibrated and 44 consulted it again. “It seems Miss Luck and your son have returned ahead of schedule and are waiting for us on the ship. A bit unusual. I’m sure they have something interesting to report.”
Agamemnon looked very surprised when 44 mentioned his son. Clearly he believed he’d covered his tracks well enough to avoid the scrutiny of the Universities and, to be fair, he’d been very thorough. He had no way to realize he’d need to account for an AI, though. So 44 quashed down a satisfied smirk. It wasn’t time for that yet.
“I’m glad to hear Hector is with her. What about Athena? Is she-” Agamemnon choked a bit when the elevator reached the ground level and the windows gave them an unobstructed look out onto the landing field where their ship was waiting for them. “Is that a Kashron Yards ship? A Kashron Yards medium interceptor gunboat?”
Now was the time for the smirk. “No, although I hear the Kashron-caste engineers may have based their MIGunboats on one of these ships.”
Agamemnon recovered from his temporary shock. “Nevermind that, what about Athena? Is she with Miss Luck?”
44 glanced at his wrist again and frowned. “No mention of her in Lucy’s report.” There was a note attached to 881’s message appended by I-6 letting him know the intelligence reported a 99.3% probability that Athena Hutchinson had been taken into custody by Lloyd Carter or one of his allies. “But it seems likely she’s been captured by the opposition.”
“What?! Are you sure?”
“It’s unclear. I find it unlikely she’s in significant danger. Last we saw her was with her brother, we’ll have to ask him what happened when we get on board.”
“Now hold on.” Agamemnon grabbed 44’s shoulders and dragged them around face to face as the elevator came to a stop and the door slid open to reveal a guard station in front of the landing pad doors. 44 held up a hand and waved them back as they moved to intervene. Agamemnon ignored them, glaring at the wrist terminal on the hand 44 was holding up. “How about you tell me what makes you think she’s safe. I can’t even read the text on that thing.”
“I have very good eyes. That shouldn’t come as surprise given what brought you to us but this isn’t the best place to discuss that.” 44 tipped his head meaningfully towards the two guards, who hung back about thirty feet, warily watching them. “Not everyone here is aware of the kinds of arrangements we offered you.”
Agamemnon carefully released 44’s shoulders and stepped back. “Very well, Professor. Let’s go talk to my son, shall we?”
44 nodded and led him out onto the launch pad.
Lloyd
The jump back to the Skybreak was simpler than he’d expected. Jumping to moving targets was notoriously difficult and dangerous for the average person even if you did have aim for. No one bothered trying that. The next hardest target was something small. While Lloyd had never been aboard the Skybreak he assumed it wasn’t that big, perhaps fifteen to twenty meters long by half as high. The average beacon house was about three times that big and, of course, housed a very large beacon to help you arrive in the right place.
However as soon as Lloyd stretched out his etheric senses he felt a tug on them coming through his pivot. All he had to do was let it pull him along and the jump happened quite naturally. Pulling Hammer along with him was also quite simple. They went from the etheric landscape of the BTL offices to a much more barren ether field with a small pool of power glowing at their feet. When they pivoted back to the terrestrial they found the floors of a small, high powered courier ship under them. Beneath the deck Lloyd could hear the sloshing of water around a coral reservoir.
“We’re on board, 93,” he called.
“Excellent. I have informed Ms. Brahman and she is in the process of getting us out of the Ashland pressure dome. In the mean time I suggest getting Mr. Hammer to the medbed. It is one deck up to the right.”
“Good. Let me know if we’re about to maneuver quickly. Where are we jumping to?”
“I have selected a random destination within the Skybreak’s optimal traveling range. Unfortunately I-6 has a monopoly on the available etheric power from Wireburn’s core and gathering enough energy for a jump this deep in the planet’s gravity well is going to take 2.454 hours. By the time we do so I-6 will have successfully interdicted the planet and jumping away will be impossible.”
Lloyd nearly tripped on the stairs. “Interdicted the planet?”
“Affirmative. That is one of its primary functions as a star system defense weapon. If we can ascend another 2.12 kilometers in the next 22.42 minutes we can escape before its interdiction is active.”
“Oh, sure. Well, you folks work on that,” Lloyd muttered. He hadn’t realized he was dealing with computers that ran weapons intended to defend entire star systems. Time to focus on what he could handle. “Come on, Hammer, stay with me.”
“Not me,” the man wheezed. “I’m not getting paid enough to fight a stellar defense system. Outta my weight class.”
“You and me both.” The cleared the last of the stairs, made the turn and walked into a bizarre tableau. Malaki Skorkowski sat at a small table beside a medbed built into a wall. He had the contents of a medkit scattered on the table there, a scalpel in one hand and flakes of what looked like soap scattered everywhere around him. A familiar looking blonde woman on the medbed looked over at Lloyd when he arrived. “What’s this?”
The woman looked quite exasperated and said, “I thought you would know. He’s your friend.”
“I just met him today.” Lloyd helped Hammer over to the medbed, saw it was running a quarantine protocol, and frowned. “Weren’t you part of the group that raided the office? Are you sick?”
“I think the idea was to lock me in here,” she replied. “Apparently I’m in danger of overpowering you all and taking over the ship.”
“Of course.” Lloyd punched in an override and canceled the quarantine then grabbed the woman by her arm and pulled her off the bed with one hand while he shoved Hammer down into it with the other. “Congratulations, you’ve got a clean bill of health.”
“Not a good idea,” Hammer muttered, sinking down onto his back. “Could still have weapon.”
Lloyd took the woman’s hands and put them over Hammer’s wounds. “Apply pressure. If you try to shoot him we’ll dump you out the airlock. Got it?”
“No problem. I didn’t wake up today planning to shoot anyone.” She’d turned pale but otherwise seemed to be in control of herself so Lloyd left her to keep an eye on the thieftaker.
Lloyd turned back to the table and looked over the supplies. He grabbed a compress and packet of coagulant when he figured out what Malaki was doing. He’d taken a bar of antibacterial soap and was in the process of carving it into something. The academic seemed totally unaware of what was happening around him. Lloyd focused in on what he was making and frowned. It looked like a pair of hands. “What is that?”
Malaki jerked back slightly, pulling his scalpel away and revealing more of the carving to Lloyd, who saw the hands were clasped around two smaller figures. One of which looked like the woman behind him. The academic set his scalpel aside and shook himself. “It’s what I’ve been looking for. It’s Agamemnon’s master plan.”
Nate Chen Publications 