Dramatis Personae

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Lloyd

“I don’t like it,” Lloyd muttered. The hostile ship had maintained a fixed distance of one and a half thousand kilometers from them for the last ten minutes and now it was beginning to drift aimlessly, as if the navigator had suddenly fallen asleep.

“It’s not a trap,” Elisha said. “Wouldn’t do them any good to go adrift when they’re so far away from us. Even if we were foolish enough to let our guard down we’re not likely to get much closer to them than we are now. If it was a trap they’d have included some way to lure us into it.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Lloyd chewed on his lip as he studied the other ship’s icon on his dataveil. The Skybreak didn’t have the best sensors in the sector but they still clearly picked up the growing heat signature in the forward section of the ship’s superstructure. It could almost be mistaken for a weapon charging up. However, much like the possibility of a trap, that theory was at odds with the way the shop was drifting. “You don’t think they’re just adrift do you? We didn’t even do anything to them.”

“They may have done it to themselves. Stranger things have happened in street gangs and smuggler rings, kid,” the thieftaker replied. “Especially when several groups try to work together. That’s not going to change just because the groups are Universities and Yshron’s mercenaries.”

“I guess.” Lloyd watched as their distance from the Radiant- class ship began to increase for the first time since it had come in to view. “Seems a little optimistic to chalk it up to that all things considered.”

“We’ve earned a little optimism at this point don’t you think?”

“I was unaware that optimism was something that had to be earned,” L-93 chimed in. “However I agree that there is cause for it in this case. Based on the pattern of sightings coming in from across the planet and the amount of etheric power draining from the planetary core I believe I-6 is reentering a dormant state. OMNI may be breaking off pursuit in favor of concealing itself. At the very least the Radiant-class will experience greater difficulty in pursuing us.”

Lloyd grunted in dissatisfaction. “Well we’re out of the woods by the sound of things, Ms. Wen. Do you want us to keep the guns hot just in case?”

After a brief delay she replied, “No. Better to keep our reserves as full as we can for the foreseeable future. Lavvy thinks we’ll be jumped and gone by the time they can pull their ship far enough out of the gravity well to follow us.”

“On our way,” Elisha said.

For a long moment Lloyd hesitated with his hands hovering over the power switch, watching the pursuit ship through the turret’s dataveil. Then he heaved a sigh, shut down the plasma pumps and clambered out of the gun seat.

Athena

“Awful presumptuous of you to promise to take me back to daddy, don’t you think?” Athena turned her etheric transmitter over in her hands. “You think I want your company? Or to go back to him?”

Malaki sat with his hands folded under his chin, his attention focused on the far bulkhead. Although he made no motion to suggest he was paying attention he still answered the question without hesitation. “Let’s not kid ourselves. You may not care for my company, few do, but I’ve known enough daddy’s girls over the years to know one when I see one. You can’t pout him into submission if he’s not around.” He shook himself back to the present and started packing up the remains of the medkit. “Besides, I feel bad about dragging you here. To some extent anyone who likes their nose into University business is asking for some kind of mishap to befall them but you couldn’t have been ready for AI networks and the secrets of humanity’s ancient past.”

“We were interested in the past ourselves in case you missed it,” she replied.

“You were interested in technology from the past the Universities have banned. That’s a very different thing.”

“Daddy knows history quite well, you clearly realize that already.”

“He did, but it isn’t the kind of thing you go blabbing about to the people you care about,” he said, contemplating the soap carving he’d made earlier. “Doubly so if you don’t expect them to understand why you’re doing it. Adding to the lifespans of you and your brother on the of chance that you’ll live long enough to reconcile is a pretty hard thing to explain, don’t you think?”

“You seemed to figure it out without much trouble,” Athena snarled, a surge of anger driving her to spring up and hurl her transmitter down the ship’s corridor as hard as she could.

She instantly regretted the decision when it hit Elisha in the shoulder as he climbed up the stairs to their deck. He started slightly from the impact then grabbed his side and groaned. The cylindrical object bounced up off his shoulder, then the bulkhead, then it tumbled down into the stairway where she expected it to clatter down into the lower deck. Instead Lloyd came up after Elisha, holding the transmitter in one hand, looking quite surprised. “What’s going on up here? I thought we weren’t under attack any more.”

“Sorry! Lost my temper for a moment.” Athena huried over to retrieve the device then turned her attention to the thieftaker. “Are you alright?”

“I’ll live,” he said, gingerly straightening up, a grimace still on his face. “Are we sure everything up here is fine?”

“As it can be,” Malaki said. “Perhaps we should head to the bridge and see what things are like outside?” He held out a hand to Athena with one eyebrow raised.

For a moment she wavered, wondering if she was about to start down a path she couldn’t turn back from. Then she sighed and took his hand and let him lead her up to the bridge.

Elisha

They reached the bridge as the Skybreak made it’s first jump. For a moment there was the vertigo inducing sensation of the ship turning sidereal. Then normal space was gone from the windows and the sparse, empty vista of the etheric realm replaced it. The bright, pulsing core of Wireburn hung below them, much as it always had.

Save for the forest of gleaming wires that branched up and out of the planet like a bizarre lotus flower gently cradling the glowing core. For the first time Elisha felt like he really understood the scope of the problem he’d gotten tangled up in. He’d been a thieftaker for eight years. Education and employment had taken him across almost a quarter of the planet. His own etheric sense allowed him to travel more than most and meet all kinds of people and he had seen Wireburn from this perspective countless times before. Yet he hardly recognized the planet now.

In the short time the Skybreak was sidereal they saw the fronds of the lotus curling down back into the planet but Elisha could see the damage was already done. Wireburn was no longer the dependable foundation he’d always thought of it as. The appearance of normalcy was returning but it meant nothing. A jolt of adrenaline hit him as it suddenly occurred to him that the computer’s outer matrix was far too large and complicated to have unfolded out of the planet’s core without damaging the many ferrovines that supported Ashland or the other settlements that dotted the planet. Life on Wireburn might have just been wiped out just so I-6 could catch them.

There was a flicker of eternity outside the windows as the Skybreak jumped. Wireburn was gone. Elisha say down heavily, barely making it to the closest chair. Lavanya glanced at him with dark, sympathetic eyes. “First time leaving your home planet?”

“Yes.” He answered Lavanya in wooden fashion.

They hung in sidereal space for a moment more while she worked out something on the ship’s navigational computer. “Don’t worry too much. Planets aren’t in the habit of getting up and walking away. It will still be there when we get back.”

Elisha scoffed. “Lady, I’m not sure Wireburn as I knew it is there right now.”

Lin’yi frowned in thought. “We might be able to drop you off on another planet after a few jumps. You could catch a jumpship back.”

“No, it’s too late for that.” He sat back in his chair massaging his forehead. “Even if we weren’t dealing with something pulling the strings of the Universities – the Universities! – going back to a place where an enforcer found you once is just asking to get found again. There’s no way they won’t be picking me up and putting the squeeze on me to find you. I guess I’m stuck with you until you sort something out with that lot.”

The ship finished a second jump and turned terrestrial again. They found themselves on the outskirts of a sprawling asteroid belt with a dim sun gleaming in the far distance, scarcely brighter than the rest of the stars in the sky. Lavanya pushed away from her controls and spin her chair to face the rest of them. “Well, we’re here. There’s enough left in the coral for one jump at maximum range, two or three of they’re short. Given how far we are from the system’s sun it will take almost four days to refill the reserve but it’s never a bad idea to have the spare power on hand.”

“That leaves us enough time to give some thought about where we want to go next,” Lloyd said. “93? Any thoughts?”

“While I am gratified you are trying to assist me in carrying out my previous directives, I’m afraid there are limits to my ability to help you chart your course. I am primarily an engineering and architect AI. My database contains a great deal of information you are not privy to but I am not well equipped to assist you in making tactical or strategic decisions based on it at the best of times. With my greatly reduced processing power the likelihood that I will be able to provide meaningful assistance is less than seven percent.”

“Then we’ll have to work it out ourselves,” Malaki said. “Our end goal is to fulfill LARK’s final directive and restore humanity’s connection to our part and Earth, correct?”

“That is an accurate summary of my directive,” the computer replied. “But whether or not it is an undertaking all those present are invested in is an open question.”

“I have been trying to prove the Earth hypothesis for almost my entire career,” Malaki replied.

“And I think I already made my position perfectly clear,” Elisha added.

Lloyd shrugged. “It may sound odd to say but to me this sounds like another trailblazing job. A big one, sure, but an exciting one, too. I’m already in and I don’t see any reason to get out.”

The three of them had answered very quickly but Elisha could tell the women were far less certain of where their thoughts were. Finally Athena sighed and folded her hands in her lap. “I suppose I should go as well. Daddy’s put a lot of time, money and effort into his genetic projects and for a long time I thought it was his next stage in building the company. Now that I know it’s more… personal I’m not sure I’m ready to be a part of it.”

“I’m not sure that’s the best reason to make an enemy out of OMNI and the galaxy’s Universities,” Malaki said gently. “Keep thinking about it. I think we’ll still be sorting out plans for the next day or two.”

Lin’yi nodded. “BTL isn’t the largest trading company in the dexter arm but we can probably hide you away for a little while if you want to avoid notice. We can find time to drop you somewhere if you want.” She turned her attention back to the computer. “Tell me, 93, if you’re specialized in engineering and architecture do you think you would be more efficient than our existing production methods?”

“Not necessarily,” the machine replied. “My processes are designed towards large scale projects. Ship building is the smallest scale endeavor I could perform optimally. The primary task the L-Series was created for was the construction of other AI around planetary cores, although units with a construction code of 42 or above are also capable of stellarchitecture. However I could create smaller scale manufactories that are 433% more efficient than those I found referenced in BTL’s archives. I would be willing to construct such facilities in exchange for your assistance.”

“Sounds like a high risk, high reward kind of investment.” She folded her arms under her breasts with a satisfied smile. “I’ve been told I should try and expand my portfolio with more of those.”

“Might be a little higher risk than your executives had in mind,” Elisha murmured.

Lavanya cleared her throat. “Sorry to be a wet blanket but I have to ask. 93, is it even possible for you to extract yourself from the Skybreak at this point?”

“It is. In fact, given the amount of raw material in this asteroid belt, I could create a new matrix here in a matter of years, rather than decades. However the probability that I could do so without being discovered and recaptured is less than one millionth of one percent. The probability that I could build another ship equal to the Skybreak without being discovered is also less than one percent. Regardless, if you wish me to remove myself from the ship I will.”

For a long moment the pilot was quiet, running her hand gently along the console beside her. Her eyes drifting to one side, distant, as if watching some kind of half forgotten memory that drifted just out of sight of the rest of them. Finally she said, “The Skybreak is a special ship, 93.”

“Shall I begin removing my core from the reservoir, then?”

“No.” She gathered herself and sat up a bit straighter. “Just promise me you wont change it too much, okay?”

“Very well.”

“Excellent.” Malaki clapped his hands together and rubbed them eagerly. “Then all that’s left is to choose our next destination. It’s obvious that at some point we are going to have to get to Andromeda Proxima, the construction there could only be created by a civilization capable of building an AI in the heart of a gas giant. Unless I miss my guess that is either Earth’s system or the key to reaching it. However, OMNI will know we have to get there at some point. So we have to work out a plan to reach Andromeda Proxima and land on the Array there without getting caught. Am I right so far, 93?”

“As usual, Mr. Skorkowski, you are remarkably insightful given the information available to you. The only inaccuracy I see in your statement is naming the system Andromeda Proxima. The correct name is Andromeda Terminus. Renaming the system and galaxy seems to be another attempt by OMNI to obscure the past.”

Malaki went perfectly still. “Renaming the galaxy?”

“Correct. Your star charts list this as the Milky Way Galaxy, which is incorrect. The Milky Way Galaxy is humanity’s galaxy of origin and the location of Earth. When Earth was evacuated the colonists and machines that would eventually form the OMNI and LARK networks built a jump sphere and used it to jump here. To the Andromeda Galaxy.”