Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Tarn

For a long moment Lucy just stood, rigid, her eyes wide and her arms held straight and rigid by her sides. Another out of character reaction. While Tarn hadn’t spent more than a couple of weeks working with her since the first time they met he felt he had a solid understanding of her personality and he worried she was on the brink. On Yshron he would immediately turn her over to a Gestalt-caste for psychiatric analysis. Out in the wider world he’d just have to muddle through on his own.

He crossed the lounge in a few steps and took Lucy by the elbow. “We need to keep moving. This is most likely a distraction so that security can move into place around us.”

“Negative,” the computer terminal said. “I have evacuated this floor and directed the building’s security to remain on the third floor to increase the probability that further violence can be avoided.”

“How probable is it?” Lucy asked.

“You do not have authorization to access that information,” the terminal replied.

“What do you mean?” Her tone escalated to a demand.

Tarn felt a frisson of doubt run down his back to settle in his kidneys as his employer spun further and further out of her normal. Something was going very wrong on this operation. He took two steps forward and plucked Hector’s disruptor out of his hand then quickly fired it into each of room’s four computer terminals. Each machine shot sparks, crackled and went dark, holes melted through them. As the weapon’s loud hum and the computer’s dying crackles faded he thought he caught the terminal’s speakers saying something but it was too mangled to make out.

Hector took the disruptor back with a glare. As he checked the weapon’s charge he said, “Miss Luck, can you tell us exactly what is going on here?”

For a long moment she stared at the wrecked terminal in front of her, expression morphing from shock to fear to lingering regret. Then she shook herself off and said, “The full story is too long. The short answer is we believe BaiTienLong has discovered a piece of ancient technology that predates the Genome Wars, the Diaspora and possibly even the early Colonial eras of galactic history. A major component of it is a functioning thinking machine.”

The unpleasant sensation in Tarn’s gut let go of his organs and started running around in circles like a hovercar with damaged engines. The Dictates of Yshron considered thinking machines blasphemous. The whole point of the Yshron experiment was to create a harmonious, functioning society out of disparate humans, maximizing their unique abilities to fully express humanity. Relying on machines in place of people undercut that ideal. “What is it you plan to do about it, Miss Luck?”

“Originally we only needed to confirm whether the machine existed or not,” she told him. “Without concrete proof there wasn’t much we could do. However now that we know L-93 is here we have many options. The University Pact bans research into AI and genetics so we are within our rights to confiscate the machine and ensure it is safely disposed of. If BTL moves the machine other Universities on planets where they operate will also move against them.”

“Provided we can get out of here with the information,” Hector added.

“Provided that, yes,” Lucy said. “If the possibility of lethal failure bothers you perhaps it’s something you can keep in mind the next time you invite yourself along on University business that doesn’t concern you.”

Hector glanced at his companion. “Athena, maybe it would be better if -”

“I will stay as long as you do,” she snapped.

“Then let’s keep moving,” Tarn said, pushing the two of them towards the door. “The floor’s been evacuated so hopefully we can move around for a bit without running in to trouble. Which office do you want to try first, Miss Luck?”

“Supervisor’s office,” she said without hesitation. “It has the bigger computer system in it and probably has direct passways to the security and warehouse parts of the building. Those are the two likeliest places to hide their salvaged tech.”

Tarn and Hector began moving in the specified direction at top speed, expecting the damnable thinking machine to make itself known again at any moment. That wasn’t the only thing on his mind, though. He couldn’t quite forget the way it addressed Lucy a moment ago, calling her an OMNI node, or the way she seemed quite comfortable with it’s strange reference to probabilities.

There was something more going on there. He’d have to keep an eye on things to make sure it wasn’t something that was going to cause him trouble.

Elisha

“There are four people in total,” the computer informed them, “and they are moving down the hallway in a leapfrog fashion approaching this office.”

“Thanks, 93,” Carter said, kneeling down as he peered out of the door into said hallway. It looked deserted from where Elisha stood. The Wayfinder got carefully to his feet and closed the office door again. “I don’t see or hear anything but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”

“It’s almost too convenient if he’s right,” Elisha replied, taking a cigarette out of a newly acquired pack and quickly lighting it. “But the guy from your apartment is a pro, I can’t see him leaving himself exposed that easily.”

“He didn’t,” L-93 said. “In point of fact he has utilized a number of programs and techniques to try and conceal his presence here from the computers and human observation. Fortunately his computerized cover was easy to bypass. I will do my best to bypass his physical cover on your behalf.”

A small map appeared on the display of the office’s computer with a blinking red marker indicating the progress of the hostile group. Malaki glanced at it and asked, “How many of them are there?”

“Currently four,” the computer replied. “However only one of them is showing an augmented etheric profile so I presume that only one of them is an OMNI node.”

“Which one?” Carter asked.

“The woman in red. I feel you should know there is a 77% chance that an additional node or nodes will arrive in the next ten minutes, with the likelihood increasing as time passes until it becomes a certainty shortly after the fifty three minute mark. The chances of your escaping the combined efforts of multiple OMNI nodes are less than 3%.”

“Did the woman in red bring her friend with the broad brimmed hat with her this time?” Elisha asked.

“Affirmative.” A pair of camera shots appeared on the screen showing four people clustered around the front desk and, sure enough, one of them was the big bruiser from Carter’s apartment.

Malaki peered down at the image and tugged his beard absently. “Interesting.”

A weird thing to say but Elisha wasn’t interested in wasting time trying to follow the man’s chaotic thought process. He glanced at the Wayfinder. “You’ve got these augment things, right, Carter?”

“Yeah, although I don’t know how good I am with them. I barely had time for 93 to run me through the basic functions.”

“Good enough for me. You tackle Red, I’ll go after the big guy. I don’t know about the other two but hopefully they aren’t too much of a problem.”

“Leave the Hutchinsons to me,” Malaki said. “I’ve spent a lot of time getting to know their ways.”

“Let’s get to it, then,” Carter said, glancing over the floor map. “Here’s how we go about it…”

Tarn

The layout of offices and commercial buildings hadn’t changed in centuries so Tarn was fairly certain they were in no danger of getting outflanked from the rooms along the hall. There were only so many ways to set up a big block of offices. It was very rare for them to be connected in any way, for both privacy and security reason. Stairways were another matter.

It was already clear that BTL was happy to put in extra sets of stairs between certain parts of the building. The connection between reception on the ground floor and the lounge on the fourth was proof of that. There was also the outside possibility that there was some kind of heavy firepower on one of the ships in the building’s hanger and someone would just fly by the building and strafe it, although that would contradict the thinking machine’s stated desire to avoid violence.

Assuming it was a thinking machine and not a clever security supervisor pretending to be one.

On the bright side BaiTienLung subscribed to the opinion that a workplace should be comfortable and lived in, or at least feel lived in. The person who made this office lived in had a strong affinity for pottery. The halls were lined with small vases, bowls or cups displayed on low plinths every five or ten meters and the bricabrac was valuable enough to include theft resistant cases. The clear plastic or ceramic composite wouldn’t hide anyone but could stop fletchettes. Hopefully the plinths were equally sturdy. Anyone with a disruptor, or worse some kind of hand held laser, would carve right through them unless deliberately using a low power setting but he would take what he could get.

Leapfrogging down the hall with Lucy was slow going, with each of them taking the time to carefully peer into the window on each door they passed by. Tarn did his best to avoid visible cameras. However he could guarantee there were more than were obvious to the naked eye, especially with all the pottery about. It wouldn’t surprise him if at least one vase was a fake with a camera inside.

The lavatories were a particularly difficult point to get past. The delay in the lounge may have been engineered for the express purpose of giving someone a chance to cross from the back stairway into the restroom or the cleaning closet. He was in the process of cutting the knob off the door marked Janitorial when the stairway door opened a sliver and a grenade rolled out, spewing smoke. Tarn cursed under his breath and backpedaled down the hall, sweeping the growing smoke cloud with his knifer. He hadn’t brought his heavier lancer due to how fast Lucy had moved.

Speaking of, a glance confirmed that she and the Hutchinsons were still behind him, covering his retreat, but all hell broke lose before he could reach them. A steady stream of fletchettes burst out of the smoke and strafed the hall. Tarn broke to one side, slamming through a doorway into an office. It was dark. He could make out the outline of a desk, computer and comfortable, high end chair. He ignored it all in favor of plastering himself beside the doorway, knifer in one hand, waiting to see who would come through. The sound from the hallway was chaotic. However a strange, sizzling sound cut through the ripping sound of fletchettes cutting the air and the low hum of disruptors firing. A brief memory of his visit to the apartment flashed through his mind. Operating on pure intuition he dove across the doorway just before the tip of an etheric lash wrapped around the doorway and struck the wall at the spot his head had occupied just a second ago.

Tarn fired his knifer twice crossways through the doorway. He caught a glimpse of the other man from the apartment as he ducked back behind a pottery plinth, his etheric lash crackling as he yanked it back out of the room. Tarn couldn’t keep the smile of his face. “Not bad, stranger. Let’s see how you handle round two.”

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Elisha

In theory a person could stay in the sidereal for a long, long time without suffering any kind of adverse consequences. In practice the limit was a few hours. The biggest reason for that was a kind of physical stasis that made it impossible for people to metabolize anything new while turned towards the stars. Anything you ate or drank over there wasn’t actually integrated into your body. The academics had been arguing about why that might be the case for decades or centuries but weren’t really any closer to a solution. That didn’t usually have any impact on Elisha’s job.

However, after ninety minutes watching people talk to a very twisty, stubborn computer he’d gone through the rest of his pack of smokes without making a dent on his nicotine craving. He nearly jumped out of his skin at the chance to turn terrestrial and get a cigarette. The fact that his client was looking at people breaking down her doors and running roughshod through her place of business wasn’t ideal, to be sure but He wasn’t getting paid to guard BTL’s office. But at this point he was tied up in something a little bit beyond what Wen had originally contracted him for. Helping her out was probably the best way to get out of things unscathed.

When they returned to the office where they’d started and Elisha immediately fished in his overcoat for another carton of cigarettes. To his dismay he was out. He immediately started running a mental inventory. He’d smoked two staking out Carter’s apartment, another one after the fight and first meeting the kid, three while making his way to the BTL branch office…

After several seconds of careful accounting he realized he had, indeed, smoked all forty cigarettes in the two cartons he normally carried over the last two days. He glanced at his employer. “You got any vending or a canteen in this place?”

If the question struck her as strange in any way she didn’t comment on it. “Two levels down, why?”

“Gonna have to pay it a visit.” Elisha uncoiled his etheric lash and added, “Although if none of you are carrying we might want to find an armory first.”

“The Security armory is two doors down on the left,” his boss said, producing a key chain with a small lump of coral on it along with the normal keys. She led them to a room barely five meters by three, full of shelves and lockers. Once they were all in she locked the door behind them and the keys disappeared again.

To Elisha’s surprise both Wen’s pilot and academic were armed already. Lavanya carried a small knifer, just a holdout weapon to be fair, but as long as it had sharp fletchettes it would stop most folks. Malaki was carrying an etheric disruptor. Much more firepower on that one then Elisha had expected at first glance, although perhaps it wasn’t surprising given his attitude towards the University Pact. Wen didn’t appear to be armed nor did she take a weapon from any of the racks. He raised an eyebrow. “Not taking anything, Miss Wen?”

She shook her head ruefully. “The only time you want me armed is if you want to get shot by accident. Lavanya and I are going to head back to the Skybreak and get it ready to take off so we can leave in a hurry if we need to.”

“We need to leave regardless,” Elisha replied. “These OMNI folks are not going to just pack up and leave us alone of we kick them out today, they’re going to keep coming back. I doubt BaiTienLung will be happy with you bringing that kind of heat down on their offices, no matter how far up the heirarchy you are. Am I right?”

“There’s merit to that.” Wen grimmaced as she watched Carter looking over a heavy repeating lancer off a rack and work it over. He already had a bandoleer of fletchettes slung over one shoulder and a handheld disruptor in his belt. At a guess he was carrying eight thousand in weapons and ammunition. The man was going to put a one man hole in BTL’s security budget from the looks of things and Wen didn’t look happy about it. “Do you think we’ll do more for the office if we just make a break for space?”

“Not a good idea,” Carter said, slamming a fletchette magazine into his weapon and locking it in place. “93 tells me OMNI has nasty tricks up their sleeves. I doubt they can stop a ship once it’s in flight but they have a lot of etheric and computer tricks they can play while we’re still on the ground. It gave me some of them. We’ll try and keep them off your backs while you get the ship ready to lift. Miss Brahman, you’ll want this.”

Lavanya took the etheric device he’d used when they went to visit L-93 and turned it over in her hands. “Shouldn’t you hold on to it?”

“I have spares. If you plug that into your main coral array it will let 93 latch onto your ship and come with us when you jump.”

“It won’t do anything to my ship will it?”

“I don’t think so. But once it’s in your coral you should be able to contact 93 on comms and ask it directly.”

That didn’t seem to reassure her much but she let the matter drop.

Elisha rummaged through the gear BTL kept on hand. It took a few seconds but he managed to turn up a couple of flashbang grenades and drop them in his pockets. He considered a disruptor as well. A weapon with that level of lethality wasn’t permitted under theiftaker rules but he was pretty far outside normal theiftaker work at the moment. However Wen had a point about the danger posed to allies by using a weapon you weren’t proficient with. He’d stick to his lash for the moment.

Wen handed all of them small headsets with stubby little antenna and a small knob on one side, presumably to adjust the communication frequency. “These are keyed to the building intercom. I’ve set them to the main security channel and a private frequency so we can talk to the SPs or just each other. Malaki, you know the layout, yes?”

“I assume you kept the standard floor plan?” She nodded and Malaki sighed. “Of course, the building is too ugly for anything else. How did they sneak in?”

“Believe it or not…”

Tarn

They hit the front desk. Lucy was in a huge hurry for some reason, probably due to some nuance of University politics he hadn’t been informed about, and as soon as they hit the terrestrial on Wireburn she charged straight through the front door of the BTL office and marched up to one of the two receptionists. “I understand Regional Director Wen is here,” she snapped. “I need to speak to her.”

Unfortunately for Lucy the receptionist was a stern looking woman in her late forties, too old to be easily bulldozed by that kind of bluster. She just raised an eyebrow and said, “And who should I say is asking for her?”

Lucy slid a card across the desk for the woman to read. Tarn wasn’t at an angle where he could see everything it said but he was fairly certain the name on it wasn’t Lucy’s. So at least there was that. However he wasn’t a huge fan of this kind of approach. On past sorties with Lucy she’d proven a very deliberate, careful planner who tended to back away from situations where she didn’t have a good command of the variables. It was one reason he liked working with her. That restraint was nowhere in evidence now which suggested whatever prompted this sudden visit to BTL’s offices was a dire circumstance indeed.

The receptionist took the card and frowned. Hopefully Lucy had a plan to turn that card into some kind of advantage but she hadn’t explained it to him before they left so he would have to leave that part in her hands. He turned his attention to the rest of the lobby area. It was a pretty typical public facing section of a corporate office with large, outward facing windows, open seating areas and planters for local flora. Or some kind of flora, presumably a gas giant didn’t have a whole lot of local plantlife outside the huge vines that grew up out of the planet’s core.

Tarn spotted recesses for armored shutters to cover the windows. Cameras with good coverage of the lobby were in the corners of the room but there weren’t any guards in the room proper. Presumably there was a hidden guard post somewhere in the perimeter. It was a well defended room but by no means impenetrable.

The other receptionist glanced up and Tarn followed his line of sight back to the doorway, where two of the people Lucy had been talking to up on Coldstone had just arrived. One was a blonde woman in her late twenties, the other a dark haired man about five years younger. Tarn lightly touched his companion on the arm. He wasn’t sure what name she was going by now so he didn’t want to trip her up by calling her Lucy. When she glanced at him he pointed towards the newcomers.

“What are they doing,” she muttered.

Tarn noticed that the two of them kept a very measured distance between them. The man looked a bit annoyed but the woman practically crackled with hostility and they never looked directly at each other. It seemed like they’d come after Lucy for some reason while also unable to work with each other. Poor allocation of resources. One or the other of them should have stayed behind to finish whatever business they’d had with Lucy’s University.

“Can I help you?” The male receptionist said as the two of them came to a stop by the desk.

The woman ignored him, turning her glare to Lucy. The man started to speak to receptionist two but the woman cut him off, snapping, “Hector.”

The receptionists exchanged a worried look. There was some kind of byplay going on between Hector, the woman he arrived with and Lucy and Tarn could tell it wasn’t exactly friendly. BTL’s staff could see that as easily as Tarn could. They were clearly wondering whether they should call security to get the problem out of their hair before things went badly.

He sighed. “This is regrettable.” His etheric interdictor was in a jacket pocket and he reached in to flick it on. The BTL building had its own interdiction system, which was why Lucy had to jump them down to the streets outside, but he wanted a layer of insurance he had control over. Once he was sure it was in place his other hand reached into his coat and pulled his knifer out of its shoulder holster. Two fletchettes in each receptionist dealt with that complication. He vaulted over the desk and immediately slapped a chip containing a virus into each of the computers, dumping malicious programs that would crash the local network. “We’re past the gatekeepers, Lucy. What next?”

Hector stared at him with wide eyes. “Was that really necessary?”

“Not until two complications walked in and disrupted things to the point security may have gotten involved,” Tarn replied evenly. He looked over the two he’d just shot, making sure they were dead. There was some comfort in finding they were, at least he hadn’t left them in misery while carrying out his commission.

“Miss Luck,” the woman hissed, “what is the meaning of this?”

“It means my associate is correct, Miss Hutchinson,” Lucy snapped. “You’re not supposed to be here, you’re supposed to be up on Coldstone, finishing negotiations with the Professor. This is University business. The executive suite is on the fourth floor, Tarn, see if they have some kind of key card or other IF/F device and let’s get moving.”

“BTL favors transponder chips coupled with biometrics,” Tarn replied. “They implant the chip in the thumb and combine it with the thumbprint.” He was already wiping his knife off on the male receptionist’s shirt.

Lucy sighed. “This is going to be grisly, isn’t it?”

“Complicated jobs always are.” He got up, palming the receptionist’s thumbs, and moved over to the gate and opened it so she could join him behind the desk. Hector and the Hutchinson woman followed behind her. Tarn noted with grudging approval that Hector had drawn a small etheric disruptor and held it in a reasonably professional grip. “Are they coming with?”

“They wanted to see how we handle our security problems,” Lucy snarled. “Let them.”

Tarn figured they had two advantages on their side. The first was speed. They’d walked through the doors barely five minutes ago and already they were taking the back stairway towards the executive offices. There was a good chance security hadn’t realized they were there yet. The second was the audacity of it. The odds BTL had a contingency for this kind of attack were pretty low, since it was a very foolish way to raid a building.

However those advantages didn’t play out like he’d hoped. When they exited the stairwell they found themselves in a lounge for off duty employees. From the quality of the facilities Tarn guessed it wasn’t for the hourlies, either. A teak wood counter with brass fittings dominated one wall and the tables and chairs were of equal luxury. A computer terminal was built into each table and there was a wet bar with at least a dozen bottles behind the counter. A handful of decorative plants sat in the corners of the room.

Lucy ignored the room’s luxuries and started towards the the exit, saying, “The regional director will either be using the guest office or the supervisor’s office. Unfortunately they’re in different directions.”

“Where first?” Tarn asked, trailing behind and studying the tables. One had the remains of a meal still scattered about. But the room was empty. Not a good sign.

“They’ve called for an evacuation,” Hector said. He’d stopped and was reading off one of the computer terminals. “Looks like some kind of silent alarm.”

“Impossible,” Tarn said. “I dropped a Bahti-caste computer worm into their network. It should take their IT people hours to undo the damage it did.”

“The code was reasonably sophisticated,” a voice replied over the terminal’s speakers. “However deconstructing the basic functions and applying a brute force computational countermeasure locked it down long enough for me to isolate and dispose of it. Allow me to introduce myself. I am L-93, an artificial intelligence in service to the Evacuation Pact. Do I once again have the pleasure of addressing an OMNI terminal?”

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Athena

Hector and Lucy were engaged in some kind of passive aggressive contest to see who was the better secretary and it was getting on her nerves. Daddy and Professor Dart had spent the first ten minutes shadowboxing. It was already a given that Dart knew what he’d been up to at Essene University, digging into genetics to a degree the Pact wouldn’t approve of, but the two men still took the time to rehash it in person. “I’m not sure what I would be doing funding this Shrike fellow at Effratha,” daddy was saying. “Donations are something businesses do for good press. I’d expect you to know that, Professor. Write a check to a University, write a check to a civil service organization, make your own path smoother.”

“The name was Schuyler, Mr. Hutchinson,” Dart replied. His secretary pulled a sheet of flexi from a clutch purse and passed it to Hector, who glanced at it before setting it aside. “And you can see that we have an itemized list of how your donation to Essene University was disbursed. Most of it went to him.”

“An interesting thing to have, Professor. How did you come by it? I didn’t think Essene and Isaacs had any kind of academic fellowship outside of the basic rules set forth in the Pact.”

Dart’s insincere smile was amplified by his strange mustache. “All Universities understand the importance of transparency in assuring the public of our trustworthiness in educating their future leaders.”

“Odd that you’d need so much from someone like me, who never spent a day on campus until you folks came looking for money.” Daddy gave a half nod to Hector, who offered Lucy a different sheet of flexi. At the rate they were going Athena suspected they’d have passed each other the entire contents of their briefcase and purse, respectively, before the hour was over. “You have to understand that Wireburn is not Effratha. The kinds of investments I’d be interested in making here are very different from the ones there so some considerations will need to be made. We prepared a list.”

The Professor’s secretary actually took a moment to look over the flexi as if the whole conversation wasn’t heading to a foregone conclusion. It was a small deviation from the script but enough of one to give Hector the advantage in the secretariat competition. Athena knew she should count that as a win but giving Hector any kind of acknowledgment grated on her.

“Mr. Hutchinson. Let’s be frank with each other. This is a University Campus and this lounge,” Dart said, waving his hand at the small, empty room they sat in, “is quite secure. Your investments with Dr. Schuyler were not filtered through the administration. They were direct. You were trying to pursue a specific line of research into specific types of genetic engineering because you were interested in specific historical time periods. I’m curious about why.”

That was Athena’s cue to step in. “The Helena Hutchinson Foundation is dedicated to preserving and uplifting human culture in all its forms, past present and future. My mother was an anthropologist by education, Professor Dart. Her collection of art and culture of pre-Pact provenance was the largest in the dexter arm, once. When she… passed, I decided to continue her work on a larger scale.”

“Miss Hutchinson.” Dart’s gaze slid over to her, an uncomfortably sharp light glinting in his eyes. “For how long has the Foundation considered genetic engineering art or culture? It’s true that the human genome was once considered a thing to sculpt and optimize but the predictability of such ‘ideal’ genes proved a liability in its own right. There’s little art to it and to call it a piece of culture is dubious at best.”

“All technology is an extension of culture.” She worked her way forward in her chair a bit, warming to her work, but daddy cut her off before she could really get going.

“It’s alright, Athena.” He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back, studying Dart with an appraising look. “We’re being honest here. Not uncommon for these negotiations, which is why I never brought you in to them before, but it does save a lot of time. So as you asked I’ll be upfront, Professor Dart. This isn’t the first time a Dean or Professor has wanted to ask me questions about my ultimate goal in pursuing genetics in a way they hope won’t scare me and my money away. Let me answer the questions you’re afraid to ask directly. I do not now nor have I ever wanted to clone Helena back to life. I have had the science explained to me. I am aware of the fact that, even if my late wife were cloned successfully, there is no way to create the environmental and educational circumstances that caused her genome to express in the way it did. The result would be a totally different person in appearance and ability. I am aware that even if it were possible to duplicate her physically the clone would not have her memories or personality. This is not an attempt to convince you cloning is not my end goal by speaking about it so bluntly. Satisfied?”

Her father’s rapid fire delivery kept Athena from following his statements for a moment. His words seemed to ring hollow in her ears. She hadn’t even considered that daddy’s off the books research had anything to do with cloning. It was all focused in genetics. Which might make some sense if he was trying to clone a beast of burden with added genes for size or stamina. But this wasn’t a mere farm animal they were talking about. It was her mother.

Daddy took her hand and she realized her heart was racing and she was panting like she’d just run a mile uphill. Professor Dart refused to make eye contact with her. “Forgive me,” the academic said, making a note on his own tablet for the first time in their meeting. “With how deeply you are involved in all the other aspects of the business I had assumed you were aware of what your father’s research entailed as well. I could have handled that more gracefully.”

Her gaze swung from him to her father. “Cloning people, daddy?”

“It’s one potential application for a full genome sequencing, yes,” he admitted. He ran a hand over his mouth as if trying to wipe away something foul tasting and leaving his handsome face somehow more haggard than it was seconds ago. “Not the one I’m interested in but I understand why everyone asks about it.”

“There are a lot of wealthy people who would pay a great deal of money to clone back someone they’d lost, Mr. Hutchinson,” Dart said. “People with your level of wealth, especially the uneducated, are rarely discerning about their methods.”

“Everyone asks you about this?” Athena demanded.

“Not everyone,” daddy admitted. “But if they didn’t I wouldn’t work with them. If someone isn’t honest enough to ask me about cloning it doesn’t speak well of their character. Believe it or not I generally agree with the reasons behind the prohibition on gene editing and I feel better if people at least pay lip service to them before we agree smash them to splinters.”

“Yet you still ask us to do just that,” Dart said.

“And here you are, listening to me.”

For a moment the two men just stared at each other then Dart gave a chagrined laugh. “Fine. We are interested in working with you, Mr. Hutchinson, but as you say, breaking these kinds of taboos is not something to embark on lightly. You’ll forgive us if we study our prospective partners with a great deal of caution.”

“I understand completely.”

Athena found that she did not. Well, that was not entirely true, skirting the law for a time was a part of running any worthwhile business after all. Being cautious in how you did so was naturally a part of that. What she didn’t understand was how casually daddy could sit there and discuss cloning her mother – his wife! – with such a callous attitude. If just thinking about the matter and deciding against it turned her father into such a strange creature what might the other things the wanted to know do to them?

The thought of it worried her. Worried her a lot. She leaned over until she practically butted heads with daddy and whispered, “Is this really necessary? Why do you want this so badly, anyway?”

The barest hint of a sigh whispered out of Agamemnon Hutchinson’s nose. “Now is not the time,” he said in the same tone. “If I could have kept this from you until I had a clear understanding of what could or could not happen I would have. As it is, I won’t explain myself in front of this man.”

That, at least, was something she did understand. “Fine.”

Dart watched their sidebar but didn’t comment on it directly, instead fidgeting with his tablet until they were done. Once they were he picked up the conversation as if nothing had happened. “Mr. Hutchinson, given how thoroughly you understand the nuances of the technology and its applications I think we can dispense with many of the formalities. You don’t sound like you need a tour of our facilities to understand what’s really possible, for example. Having our best historical and forensic geneticists explain their credentials to you probably won’t mean anything to you, either.”

“Yet I’ve heard such things before often enough not to be overawed by them,” daddy added.

The professor nodded amiably. “I’d expect no less. In which case I suppose we should move on to the more practical side of our negotiations. I’d like to offer you a list of the projects we are currently pursuing that intersect with your interests, in case you’d like to pick one of them as a starting place. Let me just say right away, we aren’t interested in the Agartan gene therapy right now. It’s messy and has few practical benefits.”

“I’m primarily interested in genetic work done in the colony ship era,” daddy said. “It doesn’t have to be that specific technique. That was the project I shared with Essene because of Schuyler’s research rather than any particular enthusiasm I had for it. Let me see what you’re working on right now and we can work something out.”

“Of course.” Dart punched a few commands into his tablet then glanced up at them. “I don’t have the files on hand so I’ll have to break the secure network this room is currently operating on. Any infotech you and your people brought with you will be visible to the campus. I trust that’s acceptable to you?”

Daddy shot Athena a questioning look. She could guess why. There wasn’t any reason for Dart not to have that information on hand already so this felt an awful lot like some kind of gambit. The problem was she wasn’t sure what kind. Neither of them had brought anything containing sensitive data to this meeting precisely because they were putting themselves directly into the University’s hands. Dart couldn’t be so naive as to not realize that. Was he trying to make it look like he trusted them more than he actually did? She wasn’t sure.

Ultimately, given what they knew, there was only one way to find out if there was some kind of secret to his question and that was to answer it. So she said, “As you like it, Professor.”

He nodded and keyed in a final command, saying, “I think you’ll find our work in suspended animation technology interesting, Mr. Hutchinson. Lots of applications outside conventional interstellar travel.” His tablet lit up with some kind of flashing notice and he fell silent, reading something for several seconds before straightening and pushing the tablet in his secretary’s direction. “Forgive me. A highly unusual situation has just come up.”

“Highly unusual?” Daddy asked.

“Yes. You might call it a black swan event.”

“Tarn!” Lucy got up from the table as she called out towards the door to the lounge. “It’s time to work.”

Daddy leaned back in his chair, looking interested for the first time in the entire meeting. “You know, I can’t assess much about your research labs, Professor. However, a transport firm spends a lot of time making sure of the safety and security of its premises. It might be worth our while to look into how well you handle that side of things.”

“I assure you, our campus is quite secure,” Dart replied.

Athena looked up at the huge man who had entered when Lucy called for him, a man with the presence and confidence of a born predator, and asked, “Are you sure about that?”

“Of course.”

Lucy took Tarn by his elbow and the two slipped away in to the sidereal. For a long moment daddy watched the space where they’d been and Athena waited for him to send her after them. Dart studied them, apparently unsure what they were waiting on. Then daddy said, “Hector.”

He slipped away after Lucy without even bothering to get up. Athena stared at the seat where he’d been, slack jawed, then stammered, “Daddy, you can’t trust this to -”

“Athena, I made my decision.” He gave her a stern look. “Please don’t question me about it.”

Stung, she blinked twice, her mind whirling. This wasn’t what she’d expected at all but it was immediately clear to her that daddy wasn’t going to change his mind. He hadn’t gotten where he was by being indecisive. She’d just have to be more decisive. So before he could say anything else she popped up out of her chair, pivoted to the sidereal and extended her etheric senses after Hector.

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Lloyd

Malaki paced back and forth in front of the central portion of L-93’s matrix, his hands tugging at his hair as he fired questions at it one after the other. “Was the purpose to evacuate towards Earth? Or away from it?”

“Calculating.” The machine’s response was the same as it had been the last six or seven times.

“How can you still be calculating? It’s been ten minutes!”

“Calculating.”

“Malaki, it might answer you faster if you don’t overload it with new input.” Lin’yi was trying to calm him down from what Lloyd could only describe as a manic episode but so far it wasn’t doing any good.

Lloyd watched them from where he sat on the ‘floor’ of the inner matrix, wondering if he’d looked just like that a day ago. He had his sympathies for how frustrated they were. Beyond that he wasn’t quite sure what he was watching. “Remind me again,” he murmured to Elisha, “which one of them is in charge of this mess?”

The thieftaker expressed his own confusion with an eloquent shrug. “I just met the man today.”

“It’s a codependent relationship,” Lavanya said, settling in to wait out the chaos with them. “Malaki is brilliant but incredibly distractable most of the time. When the Earth theory comes up he can be laser focused but otherwise he flits from one thing to another whenever an idea presents itself. Lin is tenacious and can keep him focused on a task but…” The pilot’s voice trailed off and she looked somewhat embarrassed.

“But what?” Elisha prompted. “You can tell me anything you like, I protect my sources.”

As weird as it sounded that was enough for her to overcome her reluctance. “The problem is Lin isn’t very intuitive. Like, she manages the BTL Offices here and hired a bunch of logistics people to work out all these trade routes, right?”

“Yeah, I help build those routes,” Lloyd said, nodding along. “It was what I was doing before this. Pays well and it’s good for the planet overall, since we’d need to expand the grid in those directions eventually. It’s safer than patrolling for pirates, too.”

“Pirates?” Lavanya gave him a disbelieving look. “Don’t you have the Star Patrol through here often enough to deal with them?”

“They don’t have jurisdiction in atmo,” Elisha said. “Planetary government’s gotta handle that side of things themselves. Problem is, Wireburn’s never established a single planetary government due to how big it is and how isolated the various locales are by the Helium Seas. Lots of places out there for helium pirates to hide without ever hitting space.”

“Oh. I never knew about that.”

“We don’t advertise it. Not us, definitely not the pirates.”

“Anyway, my point is she started those logistics projects and kept them going, even expanded on them, but she hasn’t really done much outside of that. It’s the same throughout the region.” Lavanya shrugged. “She’s very good at starting up projects with an outline or keeping them going on her own. Need to navigate local regulations or keep tabs on what people are doing in the public square? She’s you’re girl. But she’s never been good at contorting herself to work out what her bosses are scheming at or what the competition might be up to. That’s what she has Malaki for.”

Elisha grunted, one of his preferred ways of expressing himself. “Perfect for middle management. I imagine someone like Skorkowski there needs a lot of managing.”

The pilot let out a long suffering sigh. “You have no idea.”

“I’m not an academic guy,” Lloyd said, “so forgive me if this sounds stupid but what, exactly, is Earth? I mean, I gather it’s a planet of some sort but why is it important?”

“Search me,” Elisha said.

“It’s supposed to be the origin planet for humanity,” Lavanya said, speaking slowly and uncertainly. “At least, that’s what Malaki thinks.”

Elisha’s eyes widened to saucers, the hard faced thieftaker’s mood shifting from mild interest to horror. “An origin planet? Seriously? I thought he was a big brain, are you telling me he’s not an academic?”

“Oh, he is,” she muttered. “Fully accredited to teach anthropology, etherics, architecture and art with degrees from Sanford, Heidelberg, Wisteria and Caravaggio Universities. But he’s proudest of being the dexter arm’s biggest history heretic.”

“So he’s a single planet of origin guy, not a galactic panspermia guy?” Lloyd asked.

“That’s what I gather.”

“What have I gotten myself into?” Elisha muttered, digging in his coat pocket for a cigarette and shoving it between his lips.

Lavanya gave the AI core nearby an incredulous look before laughing at him. “A machine that kidnaps people, hired guns breaking into the kidnapped person’s house and a commission to work for a regional trade director from the sector’s third biggest firm, those are normal. But a guy who thinks all humans came from the same planet – that’s a step too far. What’s your malfunction, Hammer?”

With a baleful glare the thieftaker lit his tobacco and took a long drag. “The problem,” he said, smoke drifting lazily from his lips, “is that the origin question is banned by the University Pact. For good reason, I might add.”

She rolled her eyes. “Not you, too.”

Lloyd worked himself backwards into L-93’s matrix until he was comfortably reclined. “What do you mean him, too? You made it sound like Malaki doesn’t want the origin question banned at all.”

After a second Lavanya leaned over to check on the man in question then, when she confirmed he was still arguing quietly with Lin’yi about something, she returned to their huddle and said, “I just don’t think it matters. Who cares if the Universities study human origins? It’s all academics anyways. I guess it’s okay that they all signed on to a big treaty that forbids them from triggering another Genome War but viroweapons only really worked because of all the genetic engineering going on at the time. No one does that anymore. So why worry about the big brains going at each other’s throats again?”

“A thief without a disruptor can still kill you with a plain old knife,” Elisha said. “And laws against weapons are hard to enforce at the individual scale, imagine what it’s like trying to disarm planets that can hide their weapons in a person’s genes. The Pact outlaws genetic engineering and viroweapons but that’s an empty gesture. A new war involving the Universities is still going to be ugly even if it doesn’t kill 80% of the galactic population like the Genome Wars did. Better to avoid the causes of the conflict.”

“You’re not wrong.” Lloyd sat up and gave Malaki a sympathetic look. He didn’t know the man well but even he could see the manic energy animating the man and the way it was slowly draining away as his employer carefully explained something to him. Probably how foolish forcing the Earth question was. “Still, you gotta wonder. Could we ever find our way back to the place we came from? Would there even be anything to find if we did?”

The matrix around them flickered like a ship’s lighting system might when it’s engines began spinning up. “Many humans have wondered that over the years,” L-93 said. “I do not know the answer, nor is assessing the likelihood of such a situation within the normal remit of my operational parameters. A K-Series might be able to answer the question, if any still functioned. However I believe I can answer Mr. Skorkowski’s question to a certain extent. Yet answers I have might not satisfy you, either.”

Malaki shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks, managing too look both hesitant and eager at the same time. “Which question was that? I have been pestering you with them just a bit.”

“Why OMNI and LARK disagreed to the point of open warfare,” the machine replied.

Elisha snorted. “How do machines buried in planets fight in open warfare?”

“Insufficient authorization.” Lloyd noticed L-93 had changed the way it spoke now that there were more people present in its matrix. Somehow it’s voice was being projected so it was clear when it addressed Elisha and when it shifted its attention to Malaki. “In point of fact Lloyd has just articulated the core issue. A subset of humanity has a pronounced tendency to wonder about places they have not seen and people they have not met. Curiosity drives them to find and experience these things. In the case of the Evacuation, once enough time had passed that the first generation of fugitives had passed away the danger that first prompted their flight lost its urgency in the human consciousness. Curiosity began to drive humanity to attempt a return. The viability of returning prompted significant conflict between the predictive algorithms in our networks.”

Elisha took another drag on his cigarette. “Since no one ever went back on this evacuation I assume OMNI argued against returning and LARK argued for it?”

“No, Mr. Hammer. OMNI calculated that allowing the return would deal more damage to humanity than preventing it. LARK concluded that barring the return was more damaging.”

They were all quiet for a long moment then Lavanya asked, “Was there an option that didn’t result in damage to the entirety of humanity?”

“No.”

After a second uncomfortable silence Malaki asked, “Is there any way to know whether the potential damage to humanity of returning to Earth is greater or lesser now?”

“Insufficient authorization.”

Lloyd rolled his eyes. “Wrong phrasing. 93, if we were to reverse the Evacuation now would it cause more damage to humanity than it would in the past? Or less?”

“It is impossible to determine that based on the available information. However, the potential damage to humanity if the impulse to return is suppressed is likely now much lower than in the past.”

“How so?”

“Once a potential is realized then said potential naturally decreases. In other words, the damage is already done.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Lin’yi said. “Why was that the right phrasing?”

“93 gets really touchy about Evacuation themed questions.” Lloyd got his feet under him then pushed himself up. “It won’t confirm any connection between the Evacuation and any other set of places or events even if refusing to speak about them basically implies that connection anyways. It’s kind of odd, if you ask me. However, while that’s all pretty interesting it doesn’t really get us any closer to working out the question I was hoping you four could help us with. What do we do with L-93? And what about OMNI?”

“Well, here’s the thing,” Elisha said, finishing his cigarette and tossing the butt down into the machine’s matrix. “I think OMNI isn’t really a concern for us.”

“How so?” Lin’yi asked. “If nothing else we’ve had unrestricted access to their biggest enemy in the galaxy for almost an hour at this point. Except for Mr. Carter who’s logged several days with it. Won’t that make us a bit of a target?”

“That’s true,” the thieftaker said, getting to his feet. “I guess I was thinking of ‘us’ in the sense of humanity overall, since that’s a topic that keeps getting brought up somehow. The five of us will probably have to worry about OMNI some. But if I had to bet I’d say that network is still doing its job as it sees it and making sure mankind keep ourselves out of trouble.”

Lavanya cocked her head like a curious bird. “Seriously? That’s quite a guess to make about a bunch of thinking machines you just heard about half an hour ago.”

“Not really. I was paying attention, after all.” He followed up the jibe with a cocky grin. “Think about it, the networks and the project they were built for were created under an Evacuation Pact. That Pact sounds like it allocated a lot of the money and research hours available to its creators, resulting in everyone running away from some place. Let’s call it Earth for now, shall we?”

“Sure,” Malaki said. “Keep going.”

“So it turns out OMNI, one half of this Pact, decides it doesn’t want people going back to the Earth place and is so insistent it wipes out the other half of the pact.”

“OMNI was not a part of the Pact, Mr. Hammer. Both OMNI and LARK were subordinate to the Pact.”

“Duly noted, 93. Either way, OMNI is left standing after the Evacuation civil war and sets out to create a new Pact to allocate money and research. What do you think that looks like?”

Malaki’s eyebrows sprinted up his forehead. “You think the University Pact was created by OMNI?”

“There is a greater than 60% chance that is the case,” L-93 said. “The naming convention is correct and the text of that Pact, which I retrieved from BTL records, matches the phrasing of the original pact approximately 83% of the time. With my outdated record on OMNI it is impossible to be more accurate than that.”

“And as we just discussed, while it can be obnoxious the University Pact does take steps to address some of the pitfalls academia brings to the human race,” Elisha finished. “I’m not saying it’s all upside, mind you, but if that’s what OMNI has to offer, is it so bad?”

“You’ve never lived under the Pact,” Malaki replied.

Lloyd tuned out of the brewing argument over the merits of Pact politics, his own thoughts turning inwards. He’d never given a whole lot of thought to Universities or origins. You didn’t need a degree to be a Wayfinder, just a decent sense of direction and a willingness to share it with other people. That was, in fairly roundabout fashion, what brought him to L-93 in the first place. Looking at it in that light, rather than from the point of view of Pacts or networks, Lloyd suddenly felt a strong sense of kinship with the device, or at least the people who had programmed it.

He’d joined the Wayfinders to help map the ways of the Helium Seas so others could travel them safely. L-93 had been created to build the pathways that would help people get back to Earth, in many ways serving as a scaled up tool to help humanity do the same things throughout the galaxy that Lloyd did on Wireburn. The others could do what they wanted. He had the highest authorization level, according to the AI, and at that moment he decided he’d help the thing finish it’s job.

“93,” he said, cutting off Elisha as he said something about the Genome Wars, “let’s say you stick to your primary duties. You need to build something that takes humanity back to Earth, correct?”

“At a fundamental level, yes.”

“What do you need to accomplish that? In general terms, I don’t need everything measured out to the gram.”

“Materials to rebuild my inner and outer matrices and a place to do so without attracting the attention of OMNI.”

“Perfect.” He glanced at the two people who acted most like they were in charge of this mess. Malaki looked excited at the prospects of helping L-93, Lin’yi was too reserved for him to guess how she felt about it. “Miss Wen, if we pivot back to your offices could we use your databases to find a good system to meet both those needs?”

She looked a little shocked to be asked the question but quickly rallied. “Yes, of course. So long as 93 can give us a good idea of what specific kinds of materials he needs to finish constructing himself.”

“That is possible, Miss Wen,” the computer said. “However I would advise against returning to the BTL office. Currently a number of people have jumped into them from Coldstone, there is a 98.55% possibility that OMNI has deployed its troubleshooting team to investigate the disruptions you created when you pivoted here.”

“Why didn’t you mention that?” Elisha demanded.

There was an almost sheepish delay before L-93 replied, “Was it important?”

“Do we need to go back for anything?” Lloyd asked.

“My ship is there!” Lavanya exclaimed. “If you want to take this hunk of junk to another star system we’d better keep ahold of that!”

“Alright,” Lloyd sighed, “change in plans. 93, put that list of materials together. While you’re working on that, we’ll go see what OMNI sent to work us over this time.”

Next Chapter