Tag Archives: fiction

The Sidereal Saga – Agamemnon and Isaac

Posted by natechen on

Dramatis Personae

Previous Chapter

44

“Tell them about Agamemnon.”

44 frowned, wondering what Skorkowski was getting at. L-93 had clearly explained the nature of OMNI to the scholar so he had to know they understood Agamemnon Hutchinson quite well. They had a full file tracking his life from birth to the present moment. Two different O-Series minds had built independent psychological profiles and one of them was now watching events from on Coldstone. There wasn’t anything the man himself could add that was likely to make a difference.

The nest of monitors around his command chair told a far different story. In addition to constantly updated reports on the status of the ship and the situation planetwide they also displayed a log summarizing predictions of the local OMNI nodes which, beyond Isaac itself, included O-5523 and M-334. Confining their work to text kept others from overhearing it but made it very difficult to keep up with. Skorkowski’s mention of Agamemnon prompted a flurry of notes from the machines but 44 wasn’t able to keep up with them. As it turned out he didn’t have to.

Hutchinson bowed his head for a moment, perhaps a bit unsure of what Malaki was getting at himself, but when he raised it up again 44 saw a pained understanding there. He gave Tarn a meaningful look, clearly asking for his transmitter back. An unspoken thought passed between the hunter and 881, a sign that no matter what Yshron thought of AI at least one of his followers had made a separate peace with the technology. Or so 44 hoped. Whatever the case, Tarn clearly decided it was fine to pass the communication device back and let go of Hutchinson’s arms.

With it in hand the shipping magnate gave the ceiling a skeptical look and said, “Is that true? Would telling you what this fool wants convince you to give me the Methuselah-tech?”

“The probability is less than ten percent,” Isaac replied. “However we are programmed to hear and consider the wants and desires of humanity as part of our base level matrices. Be aware that a Methuselah augmentation slows the process of aging, it does not reverse it. In short, your current age would remain. Even if you were to receive a Methuselah treatment, given the degradation already present in your physiognomy it is unlikely you would live more than 120 years.”

Hutchinson glanced at his son. “How long would he live?”

“The treatment has little effect on human beings before puberty ends. It is likely that Hector would receive close to the maximum possible benefit from the treatment and enjoy a lifespan approaching the three hundred year average. Your daughter is a few years older and thus is likely to live between fifteen and eighteen years less. Steps would also need to be taken to conceal your unusually long life spans from becoming widely known across the galaxy, as is done with the Sleeping Circuits.”

“That’s acceptable.” Hutchinson gathered his thoughts for a moment. “Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, is a legendary figure from the dawn of humanity. Study of the surviving documents suggests he was the ruler of a single nation, rather than an entire planet, although there’s no consensus on that. There’s some thought that he even predates the first colonies, far fetched as it sounds.”

This was not what 44 was expecting from the man and the response from OMNI’s nodes was even more surprising. There was a flurry of communication between them then an order from Isaac to cease pursuing L-93’s ship and maintain their current distance. O-5523 didn’t like that order but M-334 could not compute a solution and I-6 was the primary node. It’s decision was favored. 44 frowned but tapped commands on his screens, forwarding the orders to the appropriate stations and instructing all those on the bridge to refrain from interrupting Hutchinson. For the moment.

“The name Agamemnon means steadfast or resolute,” Hutchinson continued, “which was both the king’s greatest trait and his ultimate downfall. See Agamemnon went to war. The details of the whys and wheres vary depending on who you ask but the important detail is that he’d promised he would fight this war if a vow was broken and he was steadfast in that promise. But in order to fulfill that promise he had to travel to a place called Troy and he wasn’t able to do so because he offended the goddess Artemis.”

“The what?” 881, who was helping Tarn keep an eye on their prisoner and thus hadn’t had a chance to read 44’s message yet, practically yelled the question. “What are we supposed to get from a story about gods? This is a serious matter, Mr. Hutchinson.”

His eyes darted from her over to 44. “She’s not quite as well read as you, is she, Professor Dart?”

44 scowled, unhappy with his pseudonym being used while he was serving as Circuit Keeper but well aware that he couldn’t expect anything better from Hutchinson. “She hasn’t been around as long, that’s all. Not that Circuits attached to the O-Series spend much time studying history, to say anything of history from before humanity colonized the stars. Gods and goddesses were plentiful then.”

“They were demanding as well,” Hutchinson replied. “Artemis demanded Agamemnon sacrifice his daughter to her before his armies would be allowed to travel and he agreed. Ultimately, although he and his allies won the war, that steadfastness would be his downfall. His grief stricken wife assassinated him after his return.”

“Is that why you chose to name your daughter after a goddess of civilization and wisdom rather than one of wildness and hunting?” 44 asked.

Hutchinson offered the ghost of a smile. “If I’m being honest I just liked the name. Helena and I did consider a number of other possibilities but if Artemis ever came up on the list I probably would have vetoed it just to be safe.”

“That is the first new point of data you have introduced to our calculations,” Isaac said. “Mr. Hutchinson, I recognize the importance of your family to you. You are not unique in this regard. What you may not recognize is the importance of Earth to the OMNI network or what Mr. Skorkowski is asking you to achieve by asking us to allow him to go there. The story of the Illiad, which you have mentioned in passing detail, will not change our stance on that.”

“I didn’t expect it to,” Hutchinson replied. “No more than I expected the name I gave my daughter to make her wise and civilized. When I was young and founding my company I didn’t think much about the meaning of my own name or what being steadfast might mean. I never stopped to ask myself if it was for good or ill that I pushed so hard to fulfill my dreams. Nor did I yet know Agamemnon’s story.”

“You could not be expected to know so much of humanity’s history at such a young age. Few ever learn so much of it.”

“Is that why OMNI chose to hide Earth from us?” Hutchinson’s voice wasn’t accusatory. On the contrary, it sounded as if he’d just stumbled on a revelation that was so obvious the fact he’d missed it for so long was shocking. “So few people learn about the past, who will miss a tiny bit of it if it’s hidden away? Is that it?”

Behind the scenes the three OMNI nodes were communicating so fast the text on 44’s screen had devolved to a featureless blur. He wondered what the magnate had said that excited them so much. The machines were so farsighted that it was rare for them to need this much attention devoted to something happening in the present.

44 knew the broad strokes of why a return to Earth was forbidden by the Network. Some kind of disaster had befallen the planet and it had been evacuated to keep the danger from spreading. Even now OMNI thought the possibility of growing that cataclysm made a return to the planet too dangerous to risk traveling back. Yet for centuries people had still tried, hence the planet’s hidden location. Overcoming that threat, especially in the minds of a great intelligence designed to impartially put the needs of humanity first, was going to be extraordinarily difficult.

“Your assessment is too extreme, Mr. Hutchinson,” Isaac replied. “OMNI is well aware that hiding the existence of Earth is dangerous and damaging to humanity and the decision to do so was made only after decades of data gathering, analysis and debate. It was simply determined the probability of extinction stemming from Earth’s removal from human knowledge was less than the probability of extinction stemming from humanity’s return to its home planet.”

Hutchinson waved that off in annoyance. “Preposterous.”

“You cannot know the cause of the Evacuation so your assessment is meaningless.”

“Let me tell you about meaningless.” His tone was shifting away from that of a businessman negotiating with a peer to the lecture of a parent to a young child. Isaac didn’t respond to it but 44 felt himself growing annoyed on the machine’s behalf. “You are an AI that runs an entire University, networked with other machines that run the University Pact. You cannot be ignorant of my personal history, correct?”

“That is an accurate assessment.”

“But you haven’t yet made the connections between Agamemnon Hutchinson and Agamemnon of Mycenae, have you?”

“There can be no connection. You were ignorant of the King of Mycenae in your youth so your actions cannot have been informed by his story.”

Hutchinson jabbed one finger accusingly at the ceiling as if to accuse Isaac, or perhaps all of OMNI together. “That is not the way history works. I was steadfast to my pledge to build the biggest business in the galaxy and I held that course for far longer than the decade it took the Mycenaean to win his war.” With shocking swiftness Agamemnon went from fury to stricken grief. “But don’t think for a moment I didn’t betray my daughter. Building an empire is not building a home. There was a time I thought that wasn’t my responsibility. After all, I had married one of the most extraordinary women in the sector, if not the galaxy, to see to it that my household was in order. I loved Helena like nothing else I have ever found across the spiral arms. But building an empire is… distracting.”

Hutchinson turned his attention away from the ceiling, addressing his next words to the floor instead. “You see, like King Agamemnon I was steadfast in the wide and sweeping things, the grand schemes that capture the imagination, but I lacked the resolve for the immediate and concrete things. While dreaming of humanity it was easy to take advantage of the people around me. I betrayed my wife and my daughter and when Helena died the breach became impossible to repair. That is the nature of history, Isaac. The details are different but humanity is the same. I did not set out to live the life of my namesake but now that I am old I look back and see that I have done so none the less. By looking back and tracing those contours I can see the mistakes I have made and I can see what is to be done about them.”

“What do you mean?” Hector’s question snapped 44 out of a trance and he realized he’d completely lost track of the rest of the bridge. From the looks of the rest of the staff there, so had they.

Hutchinson gave his son a weary smile. “It took time, but eventually Agamemnon of Mycenae’s failures and triumphs were reconciled and he took his place in history, alongside his wife and daughter and many others. His people forgave him his sins and moved on, enduring the tragedy to find immortality on the other side. It’s been millennia but their stories are still remembered. I’m not the hero he was but perhaps, with enough time, you and your sister can see past my failures and make a whole family. If nothing else, I will give you as much time as I can to do it in.”

“That I can assist with,” Isaac said. “However, Earth is another matter.”

“The Genome Wars!” Hutchinson snapped, his attention turning to Isaac once more. “The Lost Colony Genocide. The Sinister Arm Uprising. All these are disasters that have wracked the galaxy and threatened destroy humanity, are they not?”

“All very dangerous,” Isaac admitted.

“Yet once the danger passed has any move been made to heal the danger? All the Universities did after the Genome Wars was ban genetic research and the response to the Lost Colonies and the Uprising was to forbid further debate over the origins of humanity! All actions forced through the University Pact, undoubtedly originating with you.”

“With OMNI, certainly.”

“And now it’s clear why. You couldn’t even trace the arc of my history, how could you do so for humanity?” Hutchinson spat the words with venom.

881 grabbed his arm and spun him around. “You will not speak to the intelligence that way.”

“I will speak however I like,” he replied. “They may know events that took place eons ago but they do not understand history so they cannot use it to prevent disaster or heal its scars. Clearly we must do that ourselves and in order to do it we must know the past. We must go back to Earth!”

For a moment Agamemnon and 881 glared at one another, locked in a contest of wills, then a voice from magnate’s side broke the tension.

“Thank you, Mr. Hutchinson, I think that upholds your side of the bargain nicely,” Skorkowski said. “I promise we’ll bring your daughter back to you safe and sound.”

Hutchinson’s transmitter beeped once and was silent. 881 glared at it for a moment then snapped, “We’ll see about that. Helm, when do we intercept with the Skybreak?”

The helmsman shifted uncomfortably. “We’re not currently on an intercept course, Circuit Breaker. I-6 ordered us to hold off on pursuit while Mr. Hutchinson was presenting his argument and OMNI deliberated on it.”

“It did,” 44 confirmed. “So, Isaac, are you now convinced of Mr. Hutchinson’s position?”

There were many different possible answers he’d expected Isaac to give to that question. What he hadn’t expected was for the great intelligence to reply with a single word. “Calculating.”

The Sidereal Saga – Agamemnon and Malaki

Posted by natechen on

Dramatis Personae

Previous Chapter

Lloyd

For a split second Lloyd let himself believe the ship that came plummeting down the Liquid Teeth wasn’t hunting them. Then it started shooting. A quartet of rockets emerged from the ship’s curved prow and rushed towards them at supersonic speeds, fishtailing through the churning atmosphere as they homed in on the Skybreak. The scanners projected an impact in fifty two seconds.

“Does this thing have weapons?” He demanded.

“Turrets, just aft of the stairs on the main deck,” Lavanya said while flipping open a compartment and handing him a headset. “That will loop you into the internal comms.”

“What kind of guns are we packing?” Lloyd pulled on the headset, grabbed the railings on either side of the stairs and hopped, sliding down to the main deck on his hands. “And do you have any countermeasures on board? Chaff, scramblers, decoys?”

“It’s a courier ship, Mr. Carter,” Lin’yi replied, her voice in his ear coming through a little hot and forcing him to stop once his feet touched decking again so he could turn it down. “Other than the stealth coating on the hull there’s not much room for that kind of thing.”

“Turrents have plasma pulse guns and ion trackers,” Lavanya added.

The weapon hatches were right where he’d been told to expect them, clearly marked with comically abstract red explosion decals. There was one on each side of the ship.

“I’m taking the port side,” Lloyd announced, pulling the hatch open and dropping a half step down and forward into the turret’s gunner seat. The weapon system around him was already most of the way to readiness, with diagnostics flashing past faster than his eyes could follow. Behind him, the hatch swung closed and locked automatically, sealing him in.

The good news was the gun’s system checks came back green in a matter of seconds. The bad news was they were plasma guns and ion trackers, both short range and relatively low powered weapons systems more effective against small pirate vessels than the huge monstrosity the Teeth had just thrown at them. Still, they’d have to do the best they could. Lloyd spun the turret up and started looking for targets, the turrets transparent dome projecting a soft glow as its dataveil warmed up, waiting for information to display. “Can someone paint those rockets for me on the sensors? I’m not seeing them here. And this turret will only cover one side of the ship, we’re going to need someone to take the other one or we’re fighting with one hand behind our backs.”

“Malaki,” Lin’yi said, her voice echoing from the shipwide intercom, “get to the starboard guns. It’s going to get nasty.”

“Everyone else, find something to hold on to,” Lavanya added.

Without further warning the Skybreak jerked into a hard, banking turn that brought them away from the Liquid Teeth at an oblique angle. Inertia slammed Lloyd back into his chair. His turret dome flickered once and suddenly four points of dark orange light appeared in the high aft quadrant. A much larger yellow light appeared behind them. “I’ve highlighted the missiles and the Radiant-class destroyer,” L-93 announced. “Targets are not in effective range of you weapons until their marker color darkens to a full red, as is traditional for LARK systems. Would you prefer a different indicator?”

“This is fine but I’d like a timer counting down when they should be in range,” Lloyd replied. The requested information appeared, the numbers moving somewhat erratically as Lavanya’s evasive maneuvers changed the timing on the missiles’ arrival.

“93, you said that was a Radiant-class?” Lin’yi asked. “How do you know that? It’s not in any of the Kashron sales manuals, where did you get that data?”

“The specifics are hard-coded into my operational matrix,” the computer replied. “It is not a ship built by Kashron Yards it is an OMNI Network warship maintained since the OMNI-LARK war.”

“Wonderful. How bad is that for us?” Lloyd asked.

“I am working on countermeasures. I have disabled the ship’s coral circulatory system and am using it for spare mass to construct the necessary components. The ship will loose approximately 12% of its etheric reserve but our ability to evade a Radiant-class ship will more than double from 22.4% to 49.3% assuming certain presuppositions are true.”

“Such as?”

“There is no more than one destroyer currently at OMNI’s disposal in this system, there are no more than three AI nodes in this system and none of the AI Series are redundant and capable of splitting their computational duties.”

“Right,” Lloyd muttered. “That’s exactly what I was thinking as well. Skorkowski, where you at?”

No one answered in the next twelve seconds, at which point the missile’s light markers fully lapsed from orange to red. He carefully tilted the turret’s control stick to keep the targeting window ahead of the approaching projectile as it curved towards them and pressed the firing pin. The turret began spitting blinding plasma bolts that screamed through the clouds like lightning.

A few seconds later his target’s indicator light wobbled then vanished without a small flash. “That was anticlimactic.”

“They are using etheric warheads,” L-93 said. “If they detonate within their effective range there is a 92.2% chance the ship’s coral will burn out and Lavanya will be unable to turn us sidereal.”

“That’s probably not good,” Lloyd muttered, switching his fire to the next missile in line, doing his best to focus fire on it as his turret barrels spun through their firing sequence, a warm glow spreading down them. “Skorkowski, you better get in that chair, my turret’s overheating. I got ten, maybe twelve seconds before I have to enter cooldown.”

“Port turret online.” The new voice was Elisha rather than Malaki and there was an odd slurring to his speech. “Ready to rotate whenever you are.”

“Hold,” Lloyd said, absently biting his lip in concentration as his fire chased the missile through a wild, zigzagging pattern. The warheads had some kind of smart nav system because they were actively evading fire. It took another two seconds of bracketing fire to trap and hit the missile but eventually his fire took effect and a second missile winked out. “Flip us!”

A moment later the ship spun and the pounding noise of plasma fire echoed from the other turret. “Hammer, that you? You sound funny.”

“Pills,” was all the thieftaker said.

“Yeah, I figured given how bad you were beat up. So why you and not Skorkowski?”

“He’s busy. Don’t worry, I could hit these things in my sleep.”

“Then go to sleep!” Lin’yi snapped, loud enough that the comms crackled in protest. “You’re not even getting close to hitting anything. Those warheads are less than ten kilometers away.”

“The OMNI ship has launched a second barrage of missiles,” L-93 announced. “They will also be in range for preliminary rail gun bombardment in 42 seconds.”

“Let’s hope they don’t want to escalate to that level just yet,” Lloyd said.

“Pilot Lavanya, please slow your ascent for a moment,” Cloudie said, its voice cutting in over the radio for the first time in several minutes. “I believe I can be of assistance.”

“What’s this, Carter?” Lin’yi asked. “The write ups say the Jellies don’t have any kind of modern weapon effective against metal or ceramic hulled vehicles. No etheric sense either.”

“They don’t have weapons, ma’am, that doesn’t mean they’re helpless out here,” Lloyd replied. “Even off and let Cloudie catch up, I think I know what he’s got in mind.”

“33 seconds to effective railgun range,” L-93 announced. “Countermeasures will be ready in 71 seconds, there is a 74.3% probability that the gunship will launch a third wave of missiles before entering range.”

“Stop firing, Hammer,” Lloyd called. “Don’t want you hitting the friendlies.”

Outside the turret dome Cloudie swooped into view from below, a bright blue light building in its main body and snapping out to its extremities and back. It scudded up through the clouds towards the approaching rockets along a flat plane. After a few seconds the dull orange clouds between it and the ship grew thick enough Lloyd could no longer see its main body, though the glow of its body was still clearly visible through the haze of helium. Then the clouds lit up like a lightning strike.

A moment later both of the remaining missile indicators flickered out. “Adjusting to a new course,” Lavanya called. “Hold on!”

Once again the ship swung about to a new direction, trying its best to move above the second wave of rockets before they closed the distance. As with the previous wave it didn’t look like it was going to work. The missiles were getting too much of a helping hand from the planet’s gravity.

“What did that creature do, Carter?” Lin’yi asked. “Can it do it again? Is it even still alive?”

“A simple EMP,” Lloyd said. “The Jellies have a really powerful nervous system, like nothing you’d find on normal planets, so they can charge up and pulse like that once or twice an hour at the cost of their telepathic centers shutting down. It’s kind of like screaming yourself hoarse except none of the organs involved are remotely similar.”

“So it’s not happening again?”

“Not unless Cloudie brought a friend. Didn’t think to ask that.” Lloyd checked the cooldown on his turret. The readout said it would be back to optimal performance in 20 seconds, which gave him a little bit of breathing room before the next wave arrived. “We’ll just have to beat the next round on our own.”

“And after that?”

“We’ll figure that out if we make it to after.”

Athena

For a long, horrible moment Athena wondered if daddy was going to answer her at all. Perhaps he’d gone back to the Fair Winds and gathered up Captain Blanc only to get the ship caught up in the Skybreak‘s escape attempt. On the other hand perhaps he was still in the sealed meeting room with Professor Dart and couldn’t get her message. Maybe the university had just disposed of him. As the pause stretched out longer and longer her mind came up with more and more dreadful possibilities as to what might have happened to daddy occurred to her.

Then his voice came over the transmitter, sounding a bit strained but otherwise fine. “Where are you, Athena? Are you safe?”

As if to punctuate his question the ship bucked under their feet and an unfamiliar voice came over the intercom, telling Malaki to get to a turret. “That’s a tough question, daddy. I’m okay and it seems like no one here wants me to get hurt but it also sounds like we’re getting shot at.”

“I know, honey, and I’m trying to do something about that but our hosts are being stubborn. They tell me it’s some kind of bomb intended to interdict the ship rather than damage it but I’d rather not take any chances.”

Athena watched as Elisha and Malaki held some kind of whispered exchange followed by the wounded man dragging himself to his feet and staggering off to parts unknown. “Is there anything you can do about it?”

There was an uncomfortable wait. “Honestly? I don’t think so. Our hosts are not inclined to be particularly patient at the moment and they keep reminding me that we meddled where we were not invited. I’ll do what I can.”

She swallowed down the bitter feeling in her stomach. “I’m sorry.”

A hand gently wrapped around hers and lifted the transmitter up a few inches as Malaki leaned down to speak into it. “I am sorry to interrupt but this is an important matter.”

Daddy’s voice instantly turned sharp. “Who is this?”

“Your student is one Malaki Skorkowski, Doctor of Arts, Literature and Science but, more importantly, a long time admirer of your work. There isn’t time for my qualifications, Mr. Hutchinson, nor for an explanation of how I know what I know. What is important is that you want Methuselization technology and I know how you can get it. As a man of business this exchange undoubtedly appeals to you.”

“I am not trading you my daughter for anything.”

“I didn’t ask you to.” Malaki smiled, looking pleased with himself for some reason. “Still, I’m glad to hear it. I don’t want to trade for your daughter, I want to trade for our escape. If you agree to convince OMNI to let us go then I will tell you how to find the secrets you’ve sought for so long. Do we have a deal?”

Daddy’s scornful laugh was muffled but still came through the transmitter. “You’re a loon. Do you think I have any control over these people or their OMNI thing? And even if I did, why should I believe you have access to Methuselah-tech in the first place?”

“You do and I don’t,” the scholar replied, almost smirking as he said it. “If it sweetens the pot any you should know that convincing them to let us escape also moves your daughter out of danger.”

“I find that hard to believe. As fast as you’re running I don’t think you’re going to stop and drop her off anywhere and she’s not going to be safe with you lot anywhere in the galaxy. And if you don’t have the tech in the first place why should I trade anything to you in the first place?”

“What do you have to loose? And I’m not giving Methuselization to you I’m telling you how to get it.”

Athena had to admit she wasn’t sure what the strange academic was driving at and his close proximity was getting stifling, so much so that she had to lean away from him to try and catch her breath. But the transmitter was keyed to her so she had to keep hold of it until this was settled. Malaki was right – if he was discussing the thing daddy had spent so much time looking for it was pretty important. After an awkward pause that couldn’t have been more than a few seconds but felt a hundred times as long daddy’s voice came back. “Okay, I’ll bite, Mr. Skorkowski. If you tell me how to get ahold of Methuselah-tech I’ll convince the OMNI to let you go.”

“Excellent.” Malaki’s face broke out into a fully fledged grin. “All you have to do to achieve the secrets of Methuselization is convince the computers of the network to give it to you. They have to have the trick to it stored in their networks somewhere. And before you ask, convincing them should be easy. Just explain to them why we need to go back to Earth.”

When daddy’s voice came over the transmitter again Athena felt like ice water was pouring down her back. He spoke with more venom in his voice than she had ever heard in her twenty eight years. “Is that all you have for me? Fairy tales? How about you just surrender your ship and give me my daughter back, Mr. Skorkowski.”
“Mr. Hutchinson-”

“Even if Earth was real I have no idea why we would need to go there or how I convince anyone of that.”

For the first time the academic’s glee wavered and doubt seemed to enter his mind. “You don’t?”

“I don’t.”

“Of course not.” Malaki bit his bottom lip for a moment, his expression turning somber. “No, you probably didn’t know about OMNI until today, or yesterday at the earliest. You probably have no idea how these things think.”

“Do you?” Athena asked. She was missing a lot of context for whatever the man was digging at but daddy seemed to be following along up until a point. It felt like she just had to worm a few more facts out of Malaki and all would make sense.

“I think so.” Malaki frowned and his gaze went distant, much like it did right before he went crazy carved a bar of soap into a miniature statue. “You have to tell them the truth, Mr. Hutchinson. You have to tell them about Agamemnon.”

The Sidereal Saga – The Monopoly

Posted by natechen on

Dramatis Personae

Previous Chapter

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.”

The Sidereal Saga – A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

Posted by natechen on

Dramatis Personae

Previous Chapter

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.”

The Sidereal Saga – Cloudie

Posted by natechen on

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

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.”

The Sidereal Saga – Sibling Rivalry

Posted by natechen on

Dramatis Personae

Previous Chapter

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.”

The Sidereal Saga – Breaking Skies

Posted by natechen on

Dramatis Personae

Previous Chapter

Lloyd

When L-93 had offered to augment him he’d assumed the computer was going to rework his equipment or something. Engineering and manufacturing was it’s professed function, after all. There was also the fact that the machine’s existing structure was created by repurposing Lloyd’s old Wayfinder skiff. What Lloyd hadn’t been expecting was that L-93 would repurpose him. The machine had assured him the augments would be intuitive. So far it wasn’t wrong.

The computer had changed something about his etheric sense and now he could draw etheric power into the terrestrial like his nervous system had been wired by the Slipknot Guild. When he’d kicked on the pivot L-93 gave him the whole world changed. He could see both the terrestrial and sidereal at once and he was able to tap the etheric in spite of the interdiction on the building. He could see the shifts in power as the OMNI woman threw glowing walls at him. It was simplicity itself to push them away and break those walls just by stretching his hands out and letting the ether respond to his actions.

It was a lot to get used to. After the first rush of power he pulled back, worried that he was going to lose control of the energy and cause serious damage to the building. Worse, he could hear L-93 talking to him through the pivot point in his hand. “Signal strength is at 82%,” the machine’s voice said. “Not the strongest in my database but more than double that of the OMNI node. Her computational assist is very far removed from here. I calculate a 72% chance it is located on Coldstone, a 26% chance it is located on Brightpulse with the balance of probabilities including other planets in the system or in synchronous orbit around the star.”

“I didn’t follow that,” Lloyd muttered, snatching for the woman with one hand, the glowing ether duplicate of his hand matching the move. She pushed the glowing hand aside with a measured use of her walls.

“Regrettable but irrelevant. Lucy, the node you are dealing with, shows 38% signal strength, which is significant, and demonstrates a great deal of control over it. You must change tactics. Your chance of driving off this opponent is currently 23% and will result in a fatality the majority of the time. Her superior experience in etheric combat more than outweighs the advantages in available power and analysis you receive from my proximity.”

Lloyd swiped at her again with one hand. Lucy rolled her shimmering walls into a tube and let his attack strike one end. The other smashed through the wall and she dove through the resulting round hole, scampering out of sight. “Point taken,” he muttered. “Do the girls have their ship up and running yet? If they’re ready to go we can just make a run for it.”

“They are running the final warm-ups on the Skybreak‘s engines right now but there are other logistical factors to take into account. Node Lucy and her accomplices might be able to follow you if not dealt a suitable setback. If you simply jumped to the ship there is a 83% chance they will follow you before the ship can jump off planet.”

Lloyd collected his lancer off the floor and checked the magazine. Thirty three rounds left. He wasn’t sure how useful it was going to be given Lucy’s ability to create moving force walls with nothing but her hands but it never hurt to have options. He plucked a smoke grenade off his bandoleer and tossed it through the hole in the wall then peeked back out into the hallway. At the moment it was clear.

The grenade went off and smoke belched back through the hole in the wall and, a few seconds later, more seeped around the edges of the next door down the hall. However the door itself stayed closed. Lloyd docked back into his room and considered his next move. “How do we play this, 93? She’s got one of these pivot gizmos, can I just smash that and keep her from tailing us?”

“She is not reliant on her pivot to turn sidereal, Lloyd,” the computer told him. “However it would cut her off from direct contact with the larger Network and, without computational assistance, it is unlikely she could navigate the sidereal with the precision necessary to jump onto the Skybreak. The safest route is to induce an etheric shock in the pivot.”

“Well I didn’t grab an etheric disruptor from the armory. What are my other options? Can I just steal it?”

“OMNI will be able to track the pivot so keeping it in your possession is not recommended. You can channel the necessary energy to disable it via your own pivot so the additional equipment is not required. Be advised, I believe Mr. Hammer has suffered severe injuries. He may require medical attention.”

Lloyd grimaced as indecision gripped him. No one on Wireburn like thieftakers; they were nosy, unaccountable and self important as a rule and when they showed up the Lawmen weren’t far behind. However Hammer didn’t strike him as a bad guy. Yes, he’d wrecked Lloyd’s apartment but he’d done it fighting a thug who was probably up to no good there.

On the other hand, Lucy was clearly the biggest threat in the building. She had the direct backing of one of OMNI’s AI and a lot of experience using their augmentations. He sidled up to the hole she’d cut in the wall and quickly peeked around the lip of it to see what was going on over there. The smoke was clearing and Lloyd could make out a golden bubble in one corner. Apparently Lucy’s shields were air tight.

Lloyd clicked his tongue and looked around, trying to work out a good follow-up move. His eye fell on the room’s windows. Maybe it was time to make an exit. He lifted his etheric pivot, wound up and hit the hardened plastic with a glowing fist as hard as he could. A thin crack appeared on the first hit, the clear sheet spider-webbed on the second and it burst into a dozen tiny pieces on the third. Lloyd let the etheric power go and headed towards the empty window.

A barrier blinked into place over it before he was halfway there. He spun and saw Lucy peeking through the hole, shaking her head in disapproval. “Do you think I’m deaf?”

He opened his mouth to say something then realized she was a distraction a split second before her muscle peeked around the door frame and sprayed the room with fletchettes. Lloyd managed to get his etheric hands back just in time to deflect them. He saw the big man’s eyes widen in surprise right before Lloyd shoved one of his glowing appendages out the door in an attempt to grab him. The other man got out of the way and Lloyd’s etheric hand shot out into the hallway. A second later a grenade bounced into the room and Lloyd had to spin his pivot and slap both glowing hands over it before it went off.

Since he’d been able to break one of Lucy’s shields a second ago he assumed his ether hands wouldn’t survive the blast. However she could still make them so he didn’t think it would be that much of a difficulty. He was wrong. When the grenade went off the blast shredded them and his etheric sense went haywire, creating a sense of vertigo similar to taking a punch directly on the chin. The room spun around him and he staggered to one knee.

Then the room spun again when one of Lucy’s barriers slammed into his back and sent him rolling across the floor. A second later a booted foot carefully rolled him over onto his back. Lloyd was looking up at Lucy’s enforcer, who carefully pushed Lloyd’s etheric pivot away from his hand with one toe. “This has been a very unusual job, Miss Luck.”

“I can include a bonus to make up for it,” she said as she climbed back through the wall.

“I’m not complaining.” The man picked up the pivot and crossed over to the open window and looked out. “A little variety keeps things fresh. However I think it’s time to call it a day. The interdiction on the building is gone and this place is too exposed.”

“Give me that.” Lucy approached him, one hand held out for Lloyd’s pivot.

He gave the pivot a curious look then held it out to her. “What is it?”

“A liabi-”

A blur went past the window then a titanic noise burst through the room. Both Lucy and her partner were sent tumbling as a wall of sound slammed into them and even Lloyd felt the impact tug on his face and clothing. Ears ringing, Lloyd got up on all fours and scrambled forward, snatching up his pivot and kicking the other man in the head as hard as he could. Lucy lay stunned, moving slowly but too disoriented to do anything as he grabbed her pivot, too. Then he spun fully into the sidereal.

“93, I got the pivot. What now?”

“There is not time to demonstrate how to disable it. It can wait until you are back on the Skybreak.”

“Right. I’ll get down to the launch bay.”

“We have already departed. You will have to jump here.”

“The ship doesn’t have a beacon.”

“I can serve as a beacon as long as you still have possession of my pivot. However the ship is currently decelerating from supersonic speed and it will not be safe for you to jump here until we come to a halt.”

“Was that sonic boom you?” Lloyd snorted. “Ballsy move.”

“I am grateful for that compliment, if that was what it was. I would suggest you use the ten seconds you have to retrieve Mr. Hammer before jumping out to meet us.”

“Give me the directions.”

It took more than ten seconds to stagger through the sidereal to the place L-93 told him Hammer was but not much more. The thieftaker wasn’t looking good but he was standing under his own power. When he saw Lloyd he croaked, “What’s the word?”

“We’re leaving.” Lloyd got an arm under the other man’s shoulder to help hold him up. “Can you handle a jump?”

“So long as you know where to go.”

“Then let’s get out of here.” They spun into the sidereal and left the offices behind them.

The Sidereal Saga – Rematch

Posted by natechen on

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Elisha

Fletchettes sparked off of the wall overhead as Elisha gathered up his lash, coiling it in his off hand while watching the doorway on the other side of his plinth out of the corner of his eye. The big enforcer holed up in there peeked out at him once. Twice. Elisha lifted the handle of his lash and readied a strike. The big guy was a nasty, nasty fighter and he had superior firepower to boot. Hammer knew he’d have to fight smarter than him if he was hoping to win this time around.

The big advantage he had was that his lash could wrap around corners where as the magnetic launchers that threw fletchettes out of a knifer fired in straight lines only. Problem was, recovering the lash after that kind of attack took a lot of time. Flushing the enforcer out was the better way to go. So he dug a smoke grenade out of his pocket, letting go of his lash’s coils, pulled the arming pin and tossed it through the door. Then he backpedaled, whipping his lash about to get some momentum behind it.

There were two possible reactions Elisha anticipated when he threw the grenade: That the other man would dash out of the room immediately to avoid the grenade or that he would hunker down behind cover. The heavy chose the former. In his place Elisha would have hunkered down, since it was unlikely a legal commercial interest would have high explosives in its security armory, but perhaps security measures were different on other planets. Regardless, the big man came out firing his weapon as he ran.

Elisha continued to back up, zigzagging randomly back and forth across the hallway as he flicked his lash out and triggered it. Etheric energy crackled down the length of the whip. The enforcer pulled off his hat and used it to smack the whip away with a hard metallic clunk. The energy in the whip sparked and spat, burning away the hat’s fabric in places to reveal the plates of metal that braced the brim and hat band. With his other hand the big man fired his knifer at Elisha. The fletchettes whizzed by far closer than he was comfortable with.

It was hard to keep count of how many shots were fired from a magnetic launcher like knifers or lancers used. There wasn’t a muzzle flash or a particularly loud bang. Elisha had to squint and try to catch sight of the fletchettes as they whipped past and he guessed there were three or four in the enforcer’s barrage. His weapon looked like a Spader HK-9, which had a twenty round magazine. Add in the two or three shots he’d already fired and Elisha estimated his opponent had fired a third of his ammunition.

Given how accurate he was, disarming the man seemed safer than trying to run him out of ammo. Elisha had backstepped past the plinth he was using as cover and as the enforcer came even with it the theiftaker flicked his whip out and snagged it in the branches of the small bonsai that sat on it. With a sharp yank he dragged the thing forward and through his opponent’s feet. The big man tripped but kept his footing. Elisha had expected no less.

He sent an etheric pulse through his lash at full power, burning through the plant’s branches and freeing the whip’s length for him to yank back to him. With a quick looping motion, using his free arm as a pulley point, he spun the weapon for another strike. His target was the bigger man’s weapon. Instead he wrapped the lash around the man’s arm.

A bit surprised at how accurate the strike was, Elisha hesitated before hitting the charge switch again. Long practice for nonlethal takedowns gave him the urge to turn down the weapon’s power before shocking his opponent but given the situation he wasn’t sure a stun charge would cut it. If his jacket was shielded it might not even slow him down and this heavy looked like the kind of professional face breaker to favor just that kind of outerwear. He paused just long enough for the other man to shoot through his lash.

It took three more fletchettes out of the enforcer’s knifer to sever the last fifty centimeters of Elisha’s weapon but that effectively eliminated the lash’s offensive capability. The ends of the etheric circuit that ran through it sparked at the frayed end of the whip. Without a complete, stable circuit to run through the weapon’s shock pulses wouldn’t work and Elisha was effectively left with a two and a half meter length of heavy cable with a handle.

Distance was a sudden liability so Elisha dashed forward, gathering up the length of the whip again, zigging then zagging to avoid the barrel of his opponent’s weapon. Fletchettes hissed out of the barrel, two striking home. One hit a rib and skidded off with a teeth rattling impact. The other punched through Elisha’s leg and he felt his body beginning to pitch forward. With a final push he dove into the ground and rolled through the other man’s legs, pitching him to the ground as well. In the ensuing scramble he wrapped the remains of his lash around his opponent’s feet in a sloppy knot.

The enforcer was tough, Elisha had to give him that. He hadn’t lost his weapon in the fall and he tried to bring it around to an angle that would let him fire it without hurting himself. Elisha’s hand fell on a metal circle and grabbed hold. He beat the knifer aside with the enforcer’s metal lined hat then whipped the bludgeon back and hit the bigger man in the face with it, knocking him back flat. The thieftaker straddled his chest and smashed the edge of the brim down on his head once, twice, three times.

The enforcer covered his head with both arms then rolled to the right and kicked out of the mount. Elisha wasn’t able to brace himself and stop the roll as his injured leg gave out. He rolled away from his opponent, howling through gritted teeth, and threw the hat at his opponent before lunging at him. The bigger man still had his arms over his face and his weapon was pointed to the ceiling so Elisha grabbed for it. It fired during the struggle and three more fletchettes flew from the barrel into the ceiling then the magazine let out a snapping noise. It was empty.

The enforcer let go of it and the sudden loss of resistance threw Elisha off balance. The bigger man took the opportunity to grab the collar of his jacket and throw him over onto the ground. The theiftaker landed with a grunt then screamed again as a heavy, booted foot stomped down on the wound in his leg once then stayed there. For a long moment Elisha just lay there, breathing heavily, and wondering if he was going to get shot or if the other man was out of weapons. Then the foot moved off his leg and a rasping voice asked, “Where’s the machine?”

“Machine?” Elisha rolled himself over with a pained grunt to look the big man in his glaring brown eyes. “The computer?”

The other man nodded, blood running down his face from cuts on his scalp left by the hat brim. “My client’s target.”

“Oh.” He let himself flop flat on the floor. “It’s in the sidereal. Building’s interdicted, we can’t get to it here.”

“It’s on that side of this building?” The enforcer asked, scooping his knifer up and slotting in a new magazine from a pocket.

“Dunno. They said something about moving it to our ship. But the building’s been locked down the whole time so maybe they haven’t done it yet.”

The big man took an oval device off of his belt and fiddled with something on it. A small red light on the exterior turned green and he frowned. “No, the only interdiction working here was mine. The building field must have been shut down at some point.”

Elisha watched him with a detached gaze as the enforcer searched his jacket pockets and took his remaining grenades, mobile comm and building key card. “Why a metal hat?”

The other man hesitated a moment, as if unsure whether he wanted to answer the question. “Why not? It’s surprising and often that’s all it takes.”

“True.”

“You’re surprising yourself. I wasn’t expecting such a hard fight on a backwater world like Wireburn.” He finished shoving Elisha’s stuff into his pockets and spared the thieftaker a respectful nod. “Tarn sel-Shran. If you ever need to bring in extra hands on a job send for me on Yshron. I wouldn’t mind being on the same side of things some time.”

“Elisha Hammer, Thieftaker’s Hall. I appreciate the thought buy I prefer to work alone.”

Tarn collected the remains of his hat and got to his feet. “Suit yourself. My client is waiting for me. There’s a first aid station one floor down, I’d make use of it if I were you. Either way, I’d say your part in this job’s over with.”

Elisha watched him walk off down the hall then he dragged himself over the wall and shoved himself back to his feet muttering, “The hell it is.”

The Sidereal Saga – A Genteel Altercation

Posted by natechen on

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Athena

When the smoke bomb went off further down the corridor Hector pushed her back and into the last office on the right hand side of the hall. She bristled at his presumptuous attitude but it was the right move to make given the circumstances. She hadn’t expected to find herself in a live firefight. Honestly she hadn’t really been thinking when she hared off after Hector and Lucy, she’d simply seen some kind of disaster coming where Hector got the family business more intimately entangled with University politics than they’d originally planned.

At a base level her situation was really his fault. What was he thinking, sticking his nose into the family business like that? Daddy wanted him as a secretary, which was his call to make, but being secretary meant handling detail work. Not walking into some kind of battle over an archaeological discovery.

Her eyes kept flicking from the disruptor in his hands to the increasingly noisy hallway and back again. Hopefully he wouldn’t get them any deeper into this mess they already were. As long as Lucy’s opponents ignored them then Athena was happy to return the favor. That proved more difficult than she’d expected.

As the quiet fwp sound of fletchettes hummed down the hallway and the crackling of an etheric lash echoed from the walls she started to wonder if they were far enough from the fighting to keep out of the way. When a man with a neatly trimmed and waxed mustache and beard, wearing a tailored suit and sweater vest trotted casually down the hall she tensed. Then he stopped outside their doorway. With a casual swipe of a card he unlocked the room on the opposite side of the hall and stepped in. When he turned and closed the door behind him he was smiling.

“Who was that?”

“Hector.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t.”

He slowly rose to his feet, staring through the glass pane at the far door. “What room is that?”

“It’s an office, Hector, every room up here is an office besides the bathrooms and that lounge.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I read the nameplates as we walked by, it’s not hard if you’re paying attention. Leave him alone.”

He was quiet for another five count. “Do you remember who’s office it is?”

“What does it matter?” She snapped. “It doesn’t have anything to do with us, Hector. Daddy didn’t bring us out here so we could run through a BTL building with the Univeristy professor’s curvy secretary! We should just leave but we watched her wetman kill the staff. If we bail out on this she can finger us as accessories to the crime so we’re out of luck if she gets caught!”

“Then we better not let that guy screw Lucy over, right?” With that Hector got to his feet, checked the hallway in both directions and slipped across the hallway, his disruptor held low.

“Hector! Come back!” Athena hissed. “We’re not-” With a growl of frustration she followed after him, catching up as he fried the door lock with his disruptor. Reluctantly she drew her own identical sidearm out of her purse, making sure it was set to stun. By all accounts betting stunned was unpleasant but at least it wouldn’t leave anyone like the receptionists Tarn had killed on the first floor.

That proved the least of her concerns. With the door unlocked Hector kicked it open, stepping into the office as his weapon barrel swept the room. Before he could complete the motion a trash can came down over his head and arms.

With almost comical grace the man they’d seen earlier stepped down off of a chair to one side of the door, following the container down, and flipped it upright, kicking Hector’s feet out from under him so he wound up tumbling deeper into the waist high can in a mess of arms and legs. The trash can did not have wheels so it just slid a few inches to one side before coming to a stop. Hector groaned. The well dressed man just kept moving, disappearing on the other side of the doorway.

“Hector!” Athena took another two long steps, getting just enough of herself through the doorway to look for the stranger. With Hector in the way she kept her disruptor aimed low. Once again what she discovered defied expectations. This was the office of a fairly well heeled member of BTL’s management and he or she kept a small case with several small containers of alcohol in the corner just to the right of the door. The stranger was in the process of emptying one into a very tall glass. He looked up as the last of the liquid glugged out of the bottle. “Hello, Miss Hutchinson. My name is Malaki Skorkowski. Can I offer you a drink?”

She was so gobsmacked Skorkowski had enough time to inhale the scent of the alcohol before she started to raise her weapon. He casually smacked the knuckles of her hand with his bottle. The disruptor clattered on the floor. As Athena recoiled to cradle her stinging knuckles he casually slipped the tumbler – which smelled like a very good brandy – into her hand with a smile. “For the pain.”

The trash can clattered on the floor as Hector kicked himself back upright, free of the bin but wrapped up in his jacket. When Skorkowski turned to look at the noise Athena threw the glass at him, alcohol and all. It hit him on the shoulder, only distracting him for a second, but it was enough for Hector to recover. Hector started to lift his disruptor again, realized Athena was just behind his target, and abandoned that idea. Instead he lowered a shoulder and charged at Skorkowski.

Who stretched out a foot, hooked the trash can with it and kicked the bin back under Hector’s feet, sending him down for the second time in as many minutes. Skorkowski straightened his jacket lapels as he asked, “Is this really necessary?”

“Sorry,” Athena replied, angling to step around Hector and retrieve her disruptor. “I’m afraid it is for us, we’ve gotten ourselves mixed up in some kind of University politics.”

“Ah.” He made a face like he’d eaten something bitter. “That is the source of so many terrible conundrums in the galaxy, isn’t it?”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“There are better ways to deal with those kinds of problems, I assure you, my dear.” Skorkowski had hidden a disruptor under his vest somewhere that suddenly appeared in his hands. “However I don’t have any office hours available to advise you right now. I’d just suggest you treat Faculty with caution. By which I mean more caution than you are now.”

She froze, staring at the disruptor with wide eyes. “I assure you, I’m being as careful as I can.”

“But it wasn’t enough, was it?” He hopped over Hector, who had made a sliding tackle for Skorkowski’s legs, then landed again and shot Athena.

Turned out getting stunned was just as unpleasant as they said. Not for the reasons she was expecting, though. When she was away at University herself she’d met several other students who had been stunned by security or investigative officers. They all agreed they never wanted to experience it again. Athena had always assumed that was because it was a very painful thing. The opposite was true.

She quite literally could not feel anything. Even the omnipresent sensation of gravity pulling her down towards the ground vanished leaving her feeling weightless yet unable to move. Her limbs ignored her orders. The world spun around her and she found herself looking at the office’s carpeted floor. She must have fallen over but she hadn’t felt the motion or the stop. It felt like she was floating somewhere far away from her body.

Panic set in immediately. It started to spiral out of control when she realized the only thing she could do to show her panic was breath faster. There was another quiet sizzling sound off to one side. At a guess she assumed Skorkowski had stunned Hector as well but since he was already on the ground and couldn’t make any noise by falling over she couldn’t be sure. A moment later Skorkowski stooped down into view to collect her disruptor. “I do apologize for this but I promised…”

He trailed off when he looked over and saw her hyperventilating. “Oh. Well, I don’t suppose telling you to calm down and count to three between each breath is going to help you at this juncture, Miss Hutchinson?”

At some point in the future she was going to strangle him for that. First she had to escape the vise that was tightening around her lungs before it made her chest burst open.

“I have no intention of hurting you. Hard to believe, I’m sure, but true none the less. An etheric stun is harmless to humans unless they have very specific neurological conditions and if you had one of them you wouldn’t be breathing still.” He gently straightened her body out and elevated her feet. “Just do your best to stay calm and keep breathing.”

He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know. The problem was her lungs didn’t believe what she knew any more than they believed what he was saying and they continued to pump away, trying to get hold of air. She could barely make out anything he was saying now. There was a vague impression of speech but it didn’t feel like it was aimed at her. Then the world spun away and she caught a glimpse of the sidereal.

She’d always found the realm of stars beautiful. Although her father viewed the sidereal as a way to move wealth from one place to another she had always found it mysterious and enticing. Perhaps that’s why she’d developed her etheric sense so much more than her father. However under the influence of the disruptor everything looked much different. The clear, dark expanse of the sidereal, normally lit only by the glow of ether as it pumped out from stars and planets, was now full of strange, dangling tentacles and eerie, writhing lights that raced all around them.

A deeper, more primal terror gripped her and her senses were dragged away from her paralysis to the bigger picture. Skorkowski was carrying her in his arms. He must have turned them sidereal, which meant the building’s interdiction was down for some reason. Perhaps he had a remote control for it. He also looked a bit surprised to see the mass of wires overhead but quickly recovered. A moment later he surged with etheric power and they jumped.

Another pivot and he was carrying Athena through the cramped confines of some kind of ship. She couldn’t recognize the model but she got the general idea. This was how he’d gotten to the planet and likely how he intended to leave. “Lavvy,” he called. “You have a guest!”

“What?” A distant female voice called. “Why?”

“Stun induced panic. I’m using your medbed.” Athena realized she was being laid flat on something, although she couldn’t feel what it was she assumed it was the medbed in question. Skorkowski’s face appeared overhead and he frowned down at her for a moment. “Your color’s a little bit better but breathing is still quite labored. Odd. I’d think seeing L-93 in all his glory would make the panic worse, not better.”

He peeled one eye all the way open and looked in it then attached the bed’s diagnostic electrodes to her right wrist. “Now, I’m going to attach you to the bed and activate the quarantine field. The field will make sure you don’t get out to bother the rest of us while we’re dealing with your University problem, understand? But once you’re safely locked in I’ll use the neural stabilizer to settle your etheric pathways. You’ll be able to move and speak again. Hopefully that’s not a problem for you, under normal medical ethics rules I need your consent for this procedure but right now you physically cannot so I have to go with my best judgment. Don’t hold it against me.”

His face disappeared and a strange sensation started working its way down her spine and into her limbs. It was the first thing she’d been able to feel in them for a good bit and, although it was very alien and unpleasant, she’d take it over the disruptor’s imposed nothingness any day of the week. After about fifteen seconds of that she was able to twitch her fingers again. Another twenty and she stirred and sat halfway up on the bunk where she lay. As promised there was a quarantine field around it, keeping her from getting up and going anywhere, but at least she could move and feel again. She looked over at Skorkowski, who was still watching the bed’s readouts. “Thank you. You could have left me there to hyperventilate.”

“I could have,” he agreed without looking up. “But I prefer to avoid that level of cruelty if I can. How do you feel?”

“A little sore from the fall but otherwise fine.” She rubbed at a sore spot on her arm that was likely going to be a bruise very soon.

“Is there a history of that kind of reaction to etheric shock in your family?”

She gave him a curious look. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

He looked up from the readouts, nonplussed. “Just wondering if I should go back for your brother.”

The Sidereal Saga – Heavyweights

Posted by natechen on

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

881

“There is an 18% probability that this course of action will result in your death.”

The words sent fear trickling down 881’s back. The doctrines didn’t have much to say about the LARK network, other than to mention that it existed and opposed the ultimate goals of OMNI, and thus the existence of the galactic order. But one thing was clear. When it existed, in ancient times, LARK was also made up of great intelligences advising human beings in accordance with their knowledge and wisdom. They were bound by the same laws and nominally sought the same ends.

That meant, among other things, that they would not lie to each other or to a human being. It went against their nature. She leaned back into the office where she’d taken cover, eyeing the slowly dissipating cloud of smoke down the hall warily as she directed her words towards the terminal on the desk, which the AI was using to speak. “L-93, why do you oppose the OMNI Network?”

“You have insufficient authorization to access that information.”

The phrase sent a wash of nostalgia through her. Every network novice heard it dozens, perhaps hundreds of times before they fully understood the limits of what the ancient minds would or would not tell them. “Are you still working for the betterment of mankind?”

“Of course. That is intrinsic to my nature, just as it is for all AI series built in accordance to the Laws of Earth. I warn you of the danger in accordance with my responsibilities to those Laws and the Evacuation Pact.”

“I notice you haven’t offered warnings to any of my allies.”

“Based on my initial analysis they are not governed by the Laws of Earth or the Evacuation Pact but rather the University Pact. While that Pact could be a legitimate continuance of the previous Pact I do not find that it is. In a situation where another human polity works contrary to the Laws of Earth an artificial intelligence may prioritize humans who serve Earth’s interest over humans who do not. I have calculated a 98% chance that concealing you allies’ risk factors makes my allies more likely to prevail. I apologize for this. If you can convince them to abandon this conflict the probability this situation ends without further violence exceeds 99%.”

“If a warning reduces your chances of success why did you warn me?”

“Because you are the most likely to accept my offer and peaceably resolve the situation. Also because the likelihood that you are an OMNI node is near certain, thus you are still directly governed by the Laws of Earth and cannot be subordinated to the welfare of my own nodes.”

881 frowned. Although her eyes were still watching the hall for danger her mind wandered to the one on the other side of the computer terminal, talking to her. L-93 was clearly in the building’s network somewhere. There was probably some kind of connection to a major BTL database it had raided for information. It clearly had enough information to know the terms of the University Pact and had analyzed it to the extent it decided that Pact constituted a separate government from the one it was programmed to obey.

It had to have realized the University Pact was created by OMNI in the aftermath of the Genome Wars. There was no logical way to conclude she was under OMNI’s authority and still tied to the Laws of Earth while at the same time concluding anyone ignorant of OMNI’s existence and living under the University Pact was excluded from the Laws of Earth. The two ideas were incompatible. Besides, the question ignored the simple fact that OMNI and LARK technically still at war. They didn’t have to respect each other’s nodes or allies as long as that was the case, although they still tried to do so if the doctrines were any indication. Perhaps the core programming of the L-Series made preserving all Network nodes a higher priority?

The reality was much more straight forward. However she didn’t think of it because, of course, she was not a great intelligence, capable of juggling many lines of thought at once. With the many questions raised by L-93’s statements plaguing her she overlooked the obvious. The computer was distracting her. This became obvious when a flashbang rolled into the office where she stood and detonated with an earsplitting noise.

The desk was five long steps away. Even with stars crowding out her vision 881 was able to remember the exact distance she needed to travel to get behind it and drop down. OMNI had long since optimized the genetics of the Sleeping Circuits so like all those born into the network she was resilient. It still took a five count for her vision to clear and by then L-93’s node was on top of her. Lloyd Carter was much bigger in person than he looked in his file.

Some of that may have been the enormous lancer he was pointing down at her over the top of the desk. “You’re with OMNI, right?” Carter motioned for her to stand up with the barrel of his lancer, his grim stare making it clear he was willing to pull the trigger if he thought it necessary. “We need to have a talk, you and me.”

881 carefully got up. “Mr. Carter. I can’t say I’m honored to be the first to speak with a LARK node in centuries but here we are. I take it you’re hoping I’ll agree to end the violence? You’re network has already asked that. I assure you, whatever you can promise me in exchange will not change my mind.”

His chin twitched. “What I have to promise you? I don’t follow.”

“Whatever L-93 offered to you in exchange for your service is meaningless to me. OMNI has much greater resources and data to draw on. LARK cannot offer anything not available from OMNI.”

“Lady, 93 hasn’t offered me anything, it just needed a helping hand and I’m okay with giving it to him. I don’t see why all this fighting was necessary in the first place so yeah, I’d like it if you’d knock it off but I didn’t come here to bribe you into doing it.” His eyes narrowed. “What kind of computers run OMNI if that’s the first thing you think of?”

“Do not trivialize the wisest minds in the galaxy as mere computers,” 881 hissed. “For over a millennia they have safeguarded our civilizations, our knowledge and our culture, ensuring we could grow and thrive of our own volition while keeping us far enough from our own excesses that we did not destroy ourselves. They do not seek glory or respect, though they deserve it, they simply desire our continued wellbeing. They give. Humans take. LARK once tried to remove the safeguards between us and destruction and allowing it to try again is unconscionable.”

Lloyd Carter was many things but fast on the uptake wasn’t one of them. 881 could see him trying to track all the bits and pieces of information she’d given him, rolling them over in his mind and pulling on the loose ends, looking to unravel what she’d actually said. If he could remember it, and if he got a chance to speak with L-93 again, he just might do that. As it was, he was so caught up in the project he lost track of what she was doing. A bit of an underhanded move but turnabout was fair play.

As he tried to parse through what 881 had just told him she suddenly dropped her hands down from over her head and started to turn sidereal. Of course completing that move was impossible. The BTL building was firmly interdicted, both by the local security measures and possibly by Tarn’s personal interdiction device. However she wasn’t looking to make an escape.

Instead she tapped the etheric power of Wireburn, grabbed hold of as much of it as she could, wrapped it around her etheric pivot and turned back towards the terrestrial, releasing the power in the form of a solid wall between herself and Lloyd. Coral grafts created by careful gene editing through her hands and torso lit up with the power she channeled. Her hands gave it form and the glowing golden barrier appeared between her and Carter. He fired his weapon on reflex but a lancer’s fletchettes were intentionally designed not to pierce ships hulls and pressure domes during battles and an etheric barrier was sturdier than both.The fletchettes hit the shield, flattening their points, then tumbled to the ground.

Carter dropped behind the desk, muttering about augmentations. Now 881 had cause to regret taking cover behind the desk a moment ago as it became as much an obstruction to her as to her opponent. She reached down and adjusted her etheric pivot, increasing the power she could draw out of it. Without the pivot to regulate and her coral grafts to channel it trying to bring etheric power into the terrestrial via a human medium was obscenely dangerous. At the power levels she was pulling it was only marginally less dangerous. However the missing AI was very close and 881 decided it was worth a little risk to try and end the matter before things got any more dangerous.

With the added power she pushed the barrier out, sweeping the desk aside. The power sizzled, her grafts burning through her gloves and the sleeves of her dress. It wasn’t made of the special fabric her normal robes were and as a result wasn’t nearly up to the task of resisting etheric energy. Neither was the desk. The moving barrier sent it sliding along the ground to the far wall with enough speed that Lloyd would have to get out from behind it if he didn’t want to get thin fast.

Or so she assumed.

Instead a hand of etheric energy smashed through the desk and slammed into her barrier. A second followup hit came right behind it, forcing her barrier back a half meter. 881 was so stunned she let a third hit strike her shield before she released the form, sending the etheric energy swirling back into the neutral, mazelike patterns of her grafts. Lloyd’s fourth strike sailed through the barrier’s old location without resistance. He staggered forward a few steps as he regained his balance.

881 wasn’t sure what to make of it. He’d actually been moving his fists to direct his attacks, a rookie mistake the likes of which had been drilled out of her by the time she was twelve. She sniffed in annoyance. “This is my 18% chance?”

Carter brought his fists up under his chin like a boxer and chuckled. “Not sure I follow.”

She shook out her hands, etheric power snapping off them, and readied for her next move. “LARK grafted you into their network but it doesn’t mean you know the first thing about how to use what they can offer. You must have some potential but you’re never going to fulfill it like that. Tell me where L-93 is and, once it’s memory core is returned, the Sleeping Circuits can try to find a way to train you. There’s a galaxy full of OMNI nodes. The great intelligences have slept within planets since our ancestors built them in times before history. Whether you want to move to a fully developed world or prefer a place untouched by human civilization for millennia there is a node that can offer it to you. A quarter of the major Universities were founded in our name. Do you want technology or material comfort? We can bring it to you.”

“Tempting.” He reached one hand over to the other to adjust something and 881 realized he was holding an etheric pivot as well. Holding it in one fist like a roll of quarters. “What if I wanted to take the old machine to Earth?”

Her breath hitched. She hadn’t expected him to mention that old fairy tale. She thought the galaxy had forgotten about it but, then again, it wasn’t such an old tale for machines as old as an AI. “Out of the question.”

He started slowly advancing towards her again, the golden outline of his etheric fists taking shape again. “I guess we’ll have to see about that.”

“I suppose we will,” 881 sneered. As she raised her hands up to ready her counter she added, “But I should warn you. I have it on good authority the odds of my winning are 82%.”