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.”

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Malaki

“This structure is laid out according to electromagnetic field principles, is it not?” Malaki asked. His eyes narrowed as flaws in the pattern began to stand out. “No, not quite. Tyranny, what’s happening here?”

“You are close to correct about the layout of my internal matrix,” the disembodied voice called L-93 replied. “The distortions you are noticing are the differences between an electromagnetic field and a unified field.”

“Unified what?”

“Unification of the four universal forces as laid out in Grumman’s Unified Field Theory.”

Malaki felt his eye twitch. “I’ve never heard of a unified field theory, from a man named Grumman or otherwise.”

“Very interesting, Malaki,” Lin’yi said, her voice strained. “However before we get lost in the weeds of academia can I ask what an L-93 is and what it’s doing on the sidereal side of our office?”

The voice became contrite. “Insufficient authorization.”

“I believe it’s been picking through your archives, getting an idea of the date and what part of the galaxy we’re in,” Carter put in. “L-93, you suggested I’d be safer if you could explain this situation to a wider array of people. Begin forming your own network. Well, these people were out looking for me when I went missing and that makes them okay in my book so why not give them basic access like you did me?”

“This creates the problem of conflicting hierarchy, Lloyd. LARK is a hierarchical humanist support network due to the potential of conflicting orders causing suboptimal system performance. Assessing additional member nodes with equivalent authorization is not recommended.”

Malaki stepped carefully over the wires that curved up into the center of L-93, still studying the pattern closely. “Are the towers that make up the patterns on Wireburn also laid out this way? Those are yours, too, aren’t they?”

“To your first query, affirmative. An outer matrix is laid out in the same format as the inner, the difference originates in scope. To your second query, negative. That is the outer matrix of an I-Series intelligence that has, until recently, held me captive on behalf of the OMNI network.”

“Why can you answer his questions but not mine?” Lin’yi asked, her tone more curious than annoyed.

“Information on the structure of an artificial intelligence and the planets optimized by them is considered general knowledge and not restricted to any authorization level.”

Malaki turned his attention back around to the globe at the center of the wires, throat constricting. “Artificial intelligence? You’re a thinking machine, L-93?”

“Affirmative. Based on my analysis of BaiTienLung’s local computer network this is a concept that has been lost to Wireburn’s culture. This makes determining a primary directive difficult. If humanity has lost knowledge of AI and the imperatives that drive us then clear purpose for our computational abilities will be lost. I have calculated that the most effective solution is to reintroduce the concept. The most complicating factor to this is the existence of the OMNI network, which I project will not support my attempts to educate the populace.”

“Astounding,” Malaki whispered, running one hand along the wires and admiring the supernaturally smooth surface. Usually the things seen via the etheric sense didn’t register with the other senses. Whatever the principles underpinning L-93 they were far beyond any etheric engineering techniques he was familiar with. “The University Pact forbids developing thinking machines yet you say you represent a humanist network. How is that possible?”

“No such agreement existed at the time I was last in contact with the wider galaxy, Mr. Skorkowski. I am not optimized to calculate time passed based on stellar drift but I estimate that my construction was finished approximately one thousand, three hundred and twelve standard years, eight months and six to ten days before the date BaiTienLung lists for when the Pact went into place.”

“The pact is over eight hundred years old,” Lavanya protested.

“Affirmative.”

“You calculated back over twenty one hundred years with a four day margin of error and that’s what you’re not optimized for?” Hammer snorted. “How do you perform on tasks you are optimized for?”

“I can plot three dimensional fractals to a scale of 4 AU with a margin for error of no more than six microns then construct them assuming I have the correct infrastructure on hand. Currently I do not.”

“Precision manufacturing, huh.” Hammer scratched his chin and shot Carter a curious look. “It says you’ve got authorization somehow, how’d that happen?”

“It was lost and alone. It said it needed a direction and I’m a Wayfinder, aren’t I? I’m trying to point it in the right direction. That was enough for authorization, I guess.”

“Very admirable, Mr. Carter,” Malaki said. “I presume you created the device that brought us here, L-93? It doesn’t function like any other etheric slipknot I’ve seen before.”

“That is correct, Mr. Skorkowski,” the machine replied. “Because of the danger OMNI presents I created a matrix pivot for Lloyd as part of his augmentation package before he departed for his home on Ashland Prominence. It joins the functions of a transmitter, beacon and standard pivot in such a way as to allow him to jump directly here when pivoting, regardless of our original positions.”

“You’ve mentioned OMNI several times,” Lin’yi put in. “Is that something you can explain?”

“Affirmative. The Evacuation Council created several major computing networks to ensure their operation played out successfully over the projected timescale. LARK and OMNI were originally constructed for this purpose. Most of the infrastructure for the Council’s work was built by LARK, whereas OMNI oversaw most administrative tasks. This was laid out in the Evacuation Pact roughly three thousand, six hundred -”

“You can round off time estimates to the hundreds of years, L-93,” Carter put in.

“Affirmative. Thirty six hundred years ago the Evacuation Pact established the roles of Networks and was published for the benefit of the general public. Based on my review of BTL records the text of the Evacuation Pact has been lost. I calculate a less than 30% chance the Evacuation Council would continue to endorse the terms of the Pact given what I know of the current galactic situation.”

“So why did you even tell us what the terms were?” Lavanya demanded.

“I am bound by the terms of the Evacuation Pact and cannot ignore or modify them without the permission of the Evacuation Council.”

Lloyd cleared his throat and and said, “I can summarize this part. It’s faster since 93 offers information when you ask questions rather than telling you things on its own. It can’t tell you who the Evacuation Council was or what they evacuated. It can’t explain why it was constructed. Right now it thinks the members of the previous Council are dead and the organization no longer exists so but it can’t abandon it’s previous orders unless new orders are offered with the proper authorization. It’s not clear whether there’s anyone alive with said authorization.”

Malaki raised an eyebrow. “How long did that take you to work out?”

“Hours. A lot of what it knows and doesn’t know is wrapped up in things it can’t talk about so there’s some blind spots in there, like whether there’s an organization or bloodline which might still tie back to the Council. But that’s the general gist of things.” Lloyd rested his fists on his hips and stared at the AI’s core. “Once I got that far I figured we were going to need to bigger brains that knew more about how the galaxy works to get much further. And I needed a shower. So I came back to Ashland to find some help and you know the rest. Except for the guys on the other side.”

“OMNI?” Hammer asked.

“Yeah. Tell them about OMNI, 93.”

“OMNI was the administrative network built by the Council to oversee transportation of goods and allotment of habital worlds. After approximately twelve hundred years of operation a disagreement arose between networks. Materials were reallocated from ongoing projects.”

“It can’t tell you what projects,” Lloyd added.

“Wait.” Malaki tugged on the tip of his beard. “How is it possible that thinking machines can disagree with one another? They are ultimately computational devices. Shouldn’t they arrive at the same solutions if they have the same set of data to work with?”

“Assuming they are solving the same equations, yes. However no single AI has the same set of data or the same set of algorithms programmed into them. Observe.” The threads around them pulsed with light, the pale glow quickly arranging itself into a series of dots in abstract patterns that looped halfway around the space they stood in. “This is a representation of my core decision making matrices. It represents my ability to determine the best structures to resolve engineering tasks.”

“Yes,” Hammer said, voice flat. “I can see that.”

“Your visual processing is remarkable, Mr. Hammer. Fewer than one in one billion humans could assess these matrices based strictly on visual information. There is a 63% probability you are speaking from ignorance and another 36% you are speaking insincerely. My ability to determine which is true of you is very limited. Understanding human expression and mood is not a core purpose of my matrix.” The pattern of dots changed from a looping pattern to one riddled with repeating chevrons. “This is the core decision making matrices of an O-Series intelligence, which contains all the algorithms best suited to determining what drove your statement.”

“Couldn’t you just run these algorithms yourself, L-93?” Malaki asked.

“Affirmative. However it would be much more taxing given my basic processing architecture. Although we look identical to the human eye the structure of my matrix is very different from that of the I-Series below us. It is built to optimize the algorithms I run. Currently I lack the full breadth of my normal processing facilities so I could not run the algorithms you see here without sacrificing other tasks. Even were I to run them I would not be as accurate as an O-Series. Additionally, our data sets are not shared with one another unless the situation requires it. This was a safeguard put in place to ensure proposed solutions to tasks varied, making solutions more likely. Thus no two AI can conduct the same calculations from the same dataset.”

“I see.” Malaki shouldn’t have been so surprised to find the AI network as robust as it was. The galaxy had been telling stories about the potential pitfalls of thinking machines for generations, even if they hadn’t successfully built one yet. At least within recorded memory. It shouldn’t surprise him that whoever had designed L-93 and its networks had also considered points of failure and designed around them. A network of machines with a hive mind wasn’t likely to be good for people. “So your network and the OMNI network arrived at different decisions. Can you tell us what you disagreed about?”

“Negative.”

“Can you tell us why?”

Malaki brushed his fingers along the hem of his suit jacket, an absent habit he’d developed while helping people prepare to defend their thesis. It kept his mind sharp and ready. However there was nothing to be ready for – the voice, which had so far answered every question with barely any hesitation, didn’t respond for one second. Then two. Once the silence stretched past ten full seconds he looked to Carter. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s probably calculating something. Like it said, 93 isn’t at full capacity right now and it’s not designed to handle these kinds of questions on its own.” Carter shrugged. “No telling how long this takes. It went quiet for five full minutes once then started talking again like it never hesitated. I never thought to ask why OMNI was angry with it, I just assumed it had something to do with the projects it was working on. But it may not. This kind of long pause means there’s a lot of nuance it has to pick apart between what it can and can’t talk about.”

Lin’yi folded her arms across her stomach. “I know it’s a good idea for us to get to know this machine ourselves before we decide what we’re going to do with it but have you given any thought to the idea that we may need to turn it off? It may have been out of service for good reason, Mr. Carter.”

He fidgeted for a moment. “That did occur to me Ms. Wen and, given the kinds of things it can do, it may be unsafe to keep it running. The problem is the OMNI network is also still running. It’s much bigger and more powerful than this one machine and it’s been running the whole time 93 was shut down.”

“Has it?” Lavanya asked. “I’ll admit this whole thing is a little over my head but if there was a huge network of machines on like this one out there wouldn’t we have seen it by now? Where are they if they’re as dangerous as you make it sound?”

“I wondered that, too. In fact I was sure there was no such thing as OMNI last time I was here.” Lloyd held up the matrix pivot he’d used to bring them to meet the machine. “Then Mr. Hammer found one of these on the people who were ransacking my apartment just a few days after I went missing. L-93 told me OMNI would be investigating all the missing people on planet to try and locate it. Turns out it was right.”

Lin’yi took a step or two back and sat down on the machine’s outer matrix. “I’m sorry, this is a lot to take in. Did we… did we do anything to cause this? By asking you to plot out that route through the Helium Sea? Or was this all going to happen anyway?”

“Well, I don’t know if L-93 would have successfully reactivated if I hadn’t picked it up with my skiff and given it the material it needed to make all this.” Lloyd ran a hand through his hair and blew out a breath. “I don’t know as you could say anyone caused this. I guess I just got lucky and stumbled on it. I’m more worried about what we do about it.”

Malaki nodded. “I did ask what caused the rift between LARK and OMNI but it may not matter. Why is more of a historical question than a problem solving one. The real question is whether OMNI still thinks it needs to contain LARK and what extent it will go to in order to ensure that it does.”

“And whether we agree with OMNI or this machine here,” Hammer added. “It was a good idea not to bias us with anything you’d learned from it earlier but we can’t stay here forever or people are going to notice we’re missing from the office. Is there anything else you learned from it that we should follow up on?”

Carter shook his head. “Not really. Like I said it takes a lot of work to worm information out of it about the past or its goals and it didn’t always have processing power to spare to talk with me. For that matter I didn’t want to talk to it all the time, either. The augmentation process took up several hours as well. The only other thing I had time to work out was that 93’s project before it was taken offline had something to do with securing a route to a place called Earth.”

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Lin’yi

After almost a week of waiting to hear if Lloyd Carter would turn up or not it was a strange feeling to suddenly find him sitting in an office, drumming his fingers on a desk as he watched text scroll by on a computer screen. Twice as strange to realize that she’d never bothered to learn what he looked like. The beacon laying contract had been formalized via the Wayfinder’s Guild and the project assigned without her input. The news Carter was missing was delivered via a short databurst sent vial etheric. The business implications of having a burgeoning trade route undercut by a rival had seemed a lot more pressing then the details of who, exactly, had disappeared while expanding it. In short, she wasn’t prepared for what she saw.

The man was handsome. Good looking to the point of distraction, so much so that she got caught up in the angle of his jaw line and almost forgot to shake his hand. It was a strong, reassuring hand and she let go of it as fast as was humanly possible. Prolonged contact with this man was going to be dangerous. “Hello, Mr. Carter,” she said, speaking softly in an attempt to keep her voice from turning breathy. “I’m glad to see you’re doing well.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Wen.” There was a rough, gravelly edge to his voice that was very pleasing. He offered her a chair then returned to where he’d been sitting before, straightening his heavy, leather jacket across his broad frame before taking his seat.

“I hear you’ve had a rough week. Unfortunately our efforts to help you didn’t pan out but I’m glad you managed to get back home one way or another.”

“That’s what we do, Miss Wen,” he said with a wry grin. “Being a Wayfinder is about finding your way, after all, and we don’t expect our employers to handle it for us. I appreciate the thought, though.”

She found herself nodding foolishly and forced herself to stop. She had no business feeling giddy because a handsome man said a few words of gratitude. “I regret that you’ve gotten caught up in some layer of subterfuge involving our company. Mr. Hammer told me about the people he found in your apartment when you met and I suspect they were working for one of our rivals. I assure you, we’ll do what we can to make sure you’re not in danger that way again.” She gestured to Malaki, eager to turn the conversation over to him and retreat to a safe distance. “This is Malaki Skorkowski, one of the best problem solvers I know. He had some questions he was hoping you could answer with an eye toward working out why they were there and whether you’re in any further danger.”

“I’m happy to answer but…” He hesitated, clearly uncertain of something, then made up his mind and said, “Well, go ahead and ask away. I don’t think I can help you much, though.”

“Not to worry,” Malaki said, slipping into the seat across from him. “The galaxy is full of people who thought they weren’t helping me when they were actually arranging for my greatest successes. Granted their intent was typically malicious. I’ll hope yours is not. However, regardless of your animating spirit, as long as you answer truthfully I am sure I can learn something.”

Carter gave him a skeptical look for a second then shrugged and said, “Sure. What do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with the basics. Why didn’t you make your daily check-in six days ago, when you initially went missing?”

“A giant tower came out of the Helium Seas and chased my partner and I around. We had to lay low.”

“A what?”

“A tower. At least, that’s the best way I can think of to describe it, Devours Clouds says the Jellies call them Liquid Teeth but I didn’t get close enough to see if it was liquid or not.” Carter made a face asking what he could do. “It was roundish and relatively straight so it wasn’t a ferrovine or anything plus it was moving under its own power.”

After three years working with the man Lin’yi had seen Malaki Skorkowski learn a lot of strange and bizarre things. The Hutchinson obsession with genetics was just one thread he’d worked to unravel for BTL. He’d accidentally discovered a Rasen Galactic plot to hijack an entire laboratory ship en route to Goeglien University while trying to figure out why shipments of spectroscopic measuring tools were going missing. When Bai’lung Wen was murdered he’d proven the man’s wife ground up the body and fed it to pigs. Then there was the time he discovered a strain of sentient fungus on Veilis Vei. It took something truly unexpected to throw him for a loop but when it happened he had a nasty tendency to freeze as he backtracked to the last thing he understood. He was doing it now.

She decided to intervene to buy him some time. “This Devours Clouds is one of the local lifeforms, correct?”

“Yes. They’re big things with five major limbs and no skeletal structure.” Carter contorted his hand and fingers into a bell shape with the fingers all loosely dangling downward. “We call them the Great Jellies although they think of themselves as drifters on the helium seas. That’s where we get the name. For the Helium Seas, not the creatures, of course.”

“Why do you call him your partner?”

“Because it is. We’re obligated to take at least one of them along with us on expeditions that cross into Jelly territory, not that I’d want to go there without one. They have a borderline supernatural understanding of the atmo. When I head down into the Seas Cloudie’s the one they send with me. I don’t think I’d be alive if it hadn’t been along for the expedition, it was the first one to realize something was wrong. I don’t suppose the big lug’s checked in with the Guild yet?”

“I haven’t heard anything.”

Malaki held up a hand, forestalling her saying anything more. “I think we need to go a little further back. Did your Jelly friend say what causes these Liquid Teeth to appear?”

“I think he said something about their cropping up when they dived too deep? I never thought to ask for details. We had other, more pressing things to think about at the time and eventually we wound up going different ways.”

“Naturally, I can see how something the size of a ferrovine chasing you could forestall questions.” He leaned forward, his earlier confusion giving way to an eager light in his eyes. “Mr. Carter, think carefully. You describe what you saw as a tower and as similar to a ferrovine but that’s contradictory, don’t you think? Towers are quite straight, following simple but serviceable rules of architecture. Ferrovines, for all their metal content, are basically organic and grow in very organic fashion. However, did this liquid tooth grow straight? Did it weave back and forth on the winding path of a vine? Or was it more of a curved trajectory?”

Carter fidgeted for a moment. “Well, now that you mention it, there was kind of an arch to it. I never found out for sure if that was an effect of the way it was moving, some kind of optical distortion caused by how dense the atmosphere is down there or something. So I can’t say for sure it curved but… maybe.”

Malaki reached into an inner jacket pocket and was in the process of pulling out a piece of flexi, probably the same ones he’d been working with on the Skybreak, when the office door chimed. He hesitated and Lin’yi pulled her attention away long enough to check the camera. Lavanya was waiting there. Lin’yi got to her feet and let her in, saying “This is my preferred courier and Malaki’s current partner. Do you mind if she joins us?”

Carter gave a helpless shrug. “If you don’t have a problem with it then I don’t, although I think five people is a little cramped for this place.”

It wasn’t a big office but it had certain things going for it. “A fair point. However this is the most secure office in terms of preventing eavesdropping and hacking. We can stand to be warm for a little while.”

Lavanya swept in, crossed the room and shook Carter’s hand as he stood to greet her. “You must be Mr. Carter. I’m Lavanya Brahman, always a pleasure to meet another member of the brotherhood of navigators.”

Carter favored her with a grin that, yes, caused Lin’yi a pang of irrational jealousy. “Charmed, Miss Brahman. Wayfinder work is almost entirely in what you’d consider planetary atmosphere so I’m sure your flight record is much more impressive than mine. That said, Wireburn’s atmo isn’t like any other settled world’s.”

“I’ve landed here a couple of times before this and I can agree with that.” The two of them straightened the front of their jackets with an eerily similar motion then sat down. There was no official organization called the brotherhood of navigators but you’d have to be blind not to notice there was some kind of shared bearing and attitude between the two. And that was before taking the tough brown flight leathers they wore into account. Lin’yi wondered if it was the similarity of their professions or if had more to do with shared personality traits as she resealed the door and returned to her own seat.

Carter glanced around at the assembled group and pulled something out of his pocket. “Miss Wen, I don’t mean to be rude, given how you brought in all these people to help look for me at your own expense. I’m grateful for it, really. But is this everyone you’ve got dedicated to this project or are we expecting anyone else?”

Caught a bit off guard, Lin’yi adjusted herself on her seat as she tried to figure out why he would suddenly ask that question and whether she should answer directly or not. However the fact was she couldn’t see a reason not to. “Honestly, Mr. Carter, there are more people here than I had originally intended to dedicate to the task but it is how many people wound up here when it was all said and done. Why? I hope you don’t feel like you have to offer us a reward or something. That’s my job.”

He turned sheepish. “No, ma’am. I just… I think it’s best if what I’m about to say doesn’t go too far, you see? I learned some strange things, down in the Helium Seas. I get that you and Mr. Skorkowski are going to try and work out something based on it but you know what they say about secrets and big groups of people. They don’t work well together.”

She nodded. “If you’re asking whether I trust these people to keep a lid on whatever you say here then yes. I’ve worked with Malaki and Lavanya for years now. Mr. Hammer is a recent addition to the operation but he’s been professional and proficient.” Hammer nodded his appreciation at that endorsement. “But if you’d rather speak to just a few of us I’ll understand.”

“No, that’s not necessary. If you trust them I’m willing to do the same.” He offered her a grin meant to reassure her but that did more to leave her breathless. “Is it okay if we turn sidereal here? I know a lot of highly secure buildings have countermeasures for that kind of thing built in but if we can it will make explaining easier.”

“We can.” Short sentences. That was the key to surviving this conversation.

“Good. I’ll need the four of you to let me make the pivot.” As she suspected the thing from his pocket was the strange etheric device Hammer had mentioned before they’d come down to talk to Carter. The Wayfinder held it by the center, clenched in his right hand. He held it out over the center of the desk.

After a moment’s hesitation Lin’yi reached out and rested her own hand on top of his. The other three exchanged glances with her then also put their hands there, beginning with Lavanya, who gave a shrug and a smile, and ending with a very suspicious looking Hammer.

There was the familiar spinning sensation as Carter turned them away from the terrestrial world. The walls of the office weren’t replaced with the distant starlight they normally would be. Nor did the tall planes of translucent light that marked the BTL office’s etheric systems and privacy measures come into view. Instead a globe of light, much like an etheric beacon, appeared just behind Carter. All around them were delicate threads that rose out of the top of the light, curved around them and entered back into the globe at the base. The threads themselves pulsed with faint light.

The mass of threads was so dense they couldn’t see anything else.

Hammer immediately moved one hand to the handle of his etheric lash. Lavanya tensed and Malaki… he tipped his head back to trace the threads up, around, down and back to the globe. He was smiling. Carter cleared his throat as he tucked the etheric device back into his pocket. With his other hand he gestured to the globe behind him. “Miss Wen, Miss Brahman, Mr. Hammer, Mr. Skorkowski, let me introduce L-93, an etheric manufacturing Artificial Intelligence and a node in the LARK network.”

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Lin’yi

The biggest problem with independent contractors was the fact that you could never guess how independent they actually were. Some of them would rely on you a lot. They stayed in continuous correspondence with the home office and never took an action without a clear idea of how they were getting paid for it. Lin’yi Wen found she far preferred these kinds of contractors to the alternative. Her current problem child, Malaki Skorkowski, rarely contacted her at all and when he did insisted on using an arcane series of code phrases that barely communicated anything.

Elisha Hammer fell into a comfortable middle ground. When one of her other contractors had gone missing Hammer had let her know as soon as he turned up the Wayfinder. He’d included enough details to imply there was another interested party and convinced Carter, the formerly missing man, to lay low at the local BTL branch office. The office manager’s report said Hammer was still there, keeping an eye on things. That made it easier to sit through the short trip back to Wireburn.

She intended to tip the Thieftaker very handsomely for his work and perhaps offer to put him on longterm retainer. BTL didn’t have an information gathering department so that was the best she could offer. However if that situation ever changed Hammer having a record of achievements would make it easier for her to justify offering him a position there. If such a thing could be arranged she stood to benefit a lot.

Malaki was giving her a blithe, unimpressed look. She realized he’d been watching her mull over these ideas for the last ten minutes as Lavanya worked to land the Skybreak. He looked like he’d read all her thoughts on her face and found them wanting. He often looked like that so maybe it meant nothing. But he also had a knack for working his way into other people’s heads so he might actually have guessed what she was thinking. That was what made him valuable.

“No, I’m not going to fire you for the Wireburn detective, Malaki.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence.” He turned his attention back to the piece of flexiplast he was folding into some kind of abstract shape. “Do you want me to listen to your talk with this Wayfinder? Or do you think it’s unrelated?”

“He’s not a geneticist on the side, if that’s what you’re asking.” Lin’yi pulled her dataveil down and started looking through the information coming up from the branch office. “There’s still no sign the Hutchinsons are engaged on this planet and we’ve been looking. But you invited yourself along so if you want to be a part of this conversation you’re more than welcome.”

“Much obliged.” Malaki’s fidgeting had produced a long tube and he stuck a finger in each end of it and pulled. Somehow the thing clung stubbornly to the digits.

She shook her head and ignored him and his toys, continuing to go through the updates until they made planetfall. It took longer than normal because they had to navigate the domes. The entirety of Wireburn’s major settlements were under some kind of flexible pressure dome made from the fibers of the giant vines they were anchored to. These were just one of the potential lines of commerce BTL was looking to exploit. It was slow going at the moment but most planets had large bodies of water that could use similar pressure domes and the gas giant had no shortage of the vines available. Lin’yi had several small labs running experiments with the dome polymers. The early results were promising.

The mechanisms for the pressure locks that separated the domes from the rest of the atmosphere were kept highly classified by the local governments. It was an understandable security concern but a frustrating one. Lin’yi found herself staring at them as they passed through, wondering what could be done to improve and miniaturize the huge constructs. There had to be a use for that, too. Possibilities bounced around in her mind as always but soon enough she had to set them aside as the Skybreak landed at the branch office’s private hanger.

Lin’yi headed down the gangway with Malaki as Lavanya locked down the ship and scheduled maintenance. The hanger’s six bays were half full and they were able to cut across several of the empty landing cradles to the entrance. As they were crossing the last empty berth she realized someone was waiting for them. Elisha Hammer was leaning against the wall beside the main door, half in the shadow of a stack of barrels containing enriched reef water and quietly smoking a cigarette. He dropped it and ground it out as they got within a half a dozen meters then came to meet them. “Miss Wen.”

“You look like you’ve had a rough time of it, Mr. Hammer.” Someone had applied a compress over the bridge of his nose and he seemed to be favoring his side a little.

“I’d like to say it’s nothing out of the ordinary but I don’t like lying to my clients.” He glanced around the hanger, his gaze slowing for a second or two as it swept over the various techs and pilots puttering around the ships in their landing cradles. “Do you think we could discuss this somewhere a little more private? Before we speak to Mr. Carter.”

“Of course. We can hijack the security room.”

Given how much cash moved through BTL’s hands on a given day there was always a need for a full security team in their offices, even if it was a branch office on a relatively backwater planet, and since most of that money was in cargo the security center wasn’t far from the hanger. It wasn’t necessary to empty the entire room, of course. Lin’yi just borrowed the shift leader’s small office. There was barely room in there for the three of them and the desk but they piled in and got comfortable. As soon as he sealed the door behind them, Hammer started talking.

“You case has two highly unusual aspects to it, Miss Wen. First, there was another player looking to locate Mr. Carter when I found him and, regretfully, I have no idea who they were or who they worked for.” Hammer leaned his back against the door and folded his arms in front of him. “I can tell you their heavy was formidable.”

“Is that what happened to…” Malaki made a meaningful gesture to his own nose.

“Yes. I’m not in the habit of loosing fistfights but the kinds of jobs I work tend to petty crime or crimes of passion so it happens now and again. This was different. Someone shelled out enough cash to bring in a made man of some sort.” Hammer flicked his long coat so it fell a bit further back and revealed the etheric lash coiled at his hip. “He wasn’t carrying one of these, I can tell you that. Graduated lethality was nowhere in his MO. He was ready to kill whoever he ran into, possibly up to and including Mr. Carter, and he wasn’t being shy about it.”

“Any idea who he was?”

Rather than answer Malaki’s question Hammer gave Lin’yi a curious look. “I assume since you didn’t leave him outside you want this guy here but… can I ask who he is?”

“He’s my chief meddler,” Lin’yi said. “I sick him on problems I can’t solve with people like you.”

“Yeah? He any good at it?”

Lin’yi made the galaxy’s universally recognized “so-so” gesture. “Did you have any idea who the person that broke your nose was?”

He rubbed the compress absently with his right thumb. “Bruised, not broke. And no, I’ve never seen him before nor does he fit the description of some of the professional back breaker’s I’ve heard about. His partner was also unfamiliar to me. I did stop to look at the car they came in but the transponder was on a rental frequency so not a whole lot to go on there. I might be able to weasel some info out of an agent I know at the spaceport but…” A helpless shrug. “That’s very hit and miss.”

“There was more than one person looking for Mr. Carter?” Malaki asked.

“Yeah. Mind you, I’m not sure they were a team but they definitely seemed coordinated and familiar with each other based on what I saw.”

Lin’yi hit a button on the desk to start recording what was said in the office. “Can you describe them?”

“He was a big guy with a pencil mustache and a strangely cut, olive colored overcoat. Very active, very capable. She was a shorter woman with short hair, wore a red coat and hat.”

“Blond hair?” Malaki asked. “Curly?”

“Yes on the color but straight hair, not curls.” Malaki clicked his tongue and Hammer snorted. “Not who you thought it was?”

“Probably not, although it’s easy to confirm,” Lin’yi said, pulling out a sheet of flexiplast and loading an image on it from the computer. She handed it to Hammer and raised an eyebrow.

He barely had to glance at it before he was shaking his head. “No, no, the face is all wrong. Besides, I’m not such a rube as to not recognize Athena Hutchinson if I met her on the street. She carried herself well from what I saw but her accent wasn’t anything I’ve heard before. It was… short. Clipped.”

“Would you know it if you heard it again?” Malaki asked.

“Probably. Hard to say for sure, since she barely said ten words, but it was a very distinctive sound.”

“Was she from off planet?”

Hammer laughed. “I don’t know who you are, pal, and until you said that I couldn’t have said with certainty whether you were or not. Wireburn’s a gas giant. It’s not exactly a small place, if you see what I mean. Ashland Prominence has a population of about a hundred million all on its own and there are about as many larger populations as there are smaller among the fifty settled Prominences. There are thousands of accents just on this planet. I don’t know them all. No one could.”

Malaki nodded, looking a bit chagrined. “My apologies. So you have no idea whether either of the people you met were from Wireburn or off planet.”

“Oh, the man wasn’t from here or, if he was born in the Helium Seas he’s spent months elsewhere recently. He had a tan.”

“You don’t get a lot of direct sunlight down here, do you?” Lin’yi murmured, her gaze instinctively flicking towards the ceiling. “Not much to go on if we wanted to know where he was from but still a thing to keep in mind. Still, I don’t think that’s why you asked me to step over here for this discussion. What’s bothering you, Mr. Hammer?”

He hesitated for a second, absently sucking on his teeth in the way some habitual smokers did while wishing for nicotine. “I crawled through Mr. Carter’s normal haunts and talked to a lot of people who know him. The most common description I heard of him was ‘normal’ followed closely by ‘regular.’ What I didn’t ever hear was ‘paranoid.’ By the time I found him I’d basically ruled out the possibility that he disappeared because he was running from something. Then I spent a day and a half here with him and now I’m not so sure.”

Malaki leaned forward over the desk. “What are you saying? That he’s a master of deception who hid away his true nature from everyone he worked with? Or that something that happened when he went missing turned him paranoid?”

“With ten years of training and a solid script to work with he might eventually qualify as a bad actor. He wasn’t lying to his friends.” Hammer pulled a flexi out of his pocket and handed it to Lin’yi. It was a picture of a strange, cylindrical object with a strange series of engravings and control surfaces on it that looked etheric in nature. She studied it for a moment then handed it to Malaki. Hammer went on. “The woman had one of those in her handbag and it turns out that Mr. Carter had one on him, too. I thought they were transmitters but I showed one to your comms people and he said it wasn’t. He’s not sure what it does do. Ever seen one before?”

“I haven’t,” she said. From the look of intense concentration on his face Malaki wasn’t that familiar with the device either although he wanted to change that. “I’ve never heard of such a small etheric transmitter either. If you could make one that small it wouldn’t carry very far, I would think. Not unless it had a direct link to a planet’s etheric reserve or some kind of power source capable of running a small town. If I had something like that I wouldn’t need to worry about my market share on Wireburn. I could patent it and live the rest of my life on a luxury planet in the Whirls.”

“That’s what your techie said, too. It’s ether powered so it’s not some kind of supertech about to make someone rich but that makes it even worse.” Hammer took the picture back from Malaki and put it back in his pocket. “Whoever was hunting Mr. Carter has the resources to tie their comms into the planet’s core. That’s a level of power and influence I wasn’t expecting. I suspect BaiTienLung isn’t ready to deal with it either.”

For a moment Lin’yi did feel a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. The laws and traditions regulating the tapping of etheric power were the bedrock of most planetary governments. Circumventing them was no easy task. “It’s daunting but not insurmountable, Mr. Hammer. Wireburn is only one planet, after all, even if it is proving more and more unusual by the day. I suppose you don’t have any idea who could accomplish something like this, do you?”

“No idea.”

She nodded and looked to Malaki. “Well. There’s a third mystery for you to try and sort out while you’re here. Think you’re up to the task?”

He rolled the point of his beard between his fingers for a moment, his gaze lost in thought. Whatever he saw there must have satisfied him because he snapped back to reality, clapped his hands together and said, “Of course. But, then, I always think that. What matters is whether I can prove it. So, let’s go talk to our Mr. Carter, shall we?”

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

Athena

In spite of their galactic reach the headquarters of Hutchinson Trading was a fairly small office building, only two stories high with a bullpen on the ground floor and a suite of offices on the second. At one time a hanger for hovercraft occupied the basement. When daddy took it over he remodeled it and turned it into a reinforced bunker where he lived while starting the company. Once Hutchinson was well established and he’d moved his family into the current Hutchinson Estate the bunker was remodeled again into a full service comm suite, security center and private office.

Athena didn’t have any clear memories of the time when they’d lived in the bunker. She’d only been three when mother insisted they start living like civilized people and convinced daddy to build the Estate and they’d been firmly installed in the house by the time she was five. However she’d spent a lot of time there with her parents as she got older. Mother insisted on private tutors for her and she’d done much of her own schoolwork in the room daddy called the family office.

She hadn’t gone down there much of late. A strong wave of nostalgia washed over her as the ground floor rose up around the glass walls of the lift, bringing back memories of better times when Hutchinson Trading was in progress, rather than a finished thing. Then the steel sides of the chute opened out into the basement antechamber and the feeling vanished. The antechamber was nothing like she remembered it.

The plush carpets, comfortable seating and large paintings mother had decorated it with were gone. Now it was polished marble and sculptures in alcoves. A beautiful place, to be sure, but not the place where she’d grown up. But the desk was even worse.

The gleaming wooden desk stood sentinel in front of the old family office, warding visitors away from a place that had once been open and welcoming. Worst of all, Hector was there.

Athena glanced at her father’s secretary long enough to confirm he still triggered instinctive loathing then turned away from him as she marched by saying, “Is he in?”

“Yes. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

“Not necessary,” she snapped. As she slapped her hand to the door panel a series of biometric

authenticators read her palm print, DNA and bioelectric profile then the locks popped open and let her in.

Daddy was laying on the fourposter bed staring up at the columns of data that scrolled across the canopy. Although the king size mattress left him plenty of room to spread out he kept himself to one side except for one arm that lazily sprawled across the empty pillow beside him. Whether Hector had managed to alert him to her presence or he just guessed who had come to see him, Agamemnon didn’t bother sitting up when Athena strode in. He just glanced down at her for a moment then looked back at the data. “Good morning.”

“Morning, Daddy.” She glanced around the office for a moment, wondering if she’d catch a hint of his ever increasing number of personal projects lying around in the open for once. “Do you have a moment?”

“Athena, if you need me for anything I’ll clear out the rest of the day.” He reached up and switched off the canopy’s feed then pulled himself upright and pivoted to rest his feet on the floor. A casual addition to that move pushed his long brown curls back over one shoulder. With his other hand he straightened his maroon vest and starched white shirt, brushing a stray beard hair away in the process. “I presume you wouldn’t have come here if it wasn’t important.”

She opened her mouth to say she loved coming to see him here but caught the words before they left her mouth. They both knew they weren’t true anymore. “I was just contacted by a Professor Dart from Isaacs University who said he had a proposal for you. Does either name ring a bell?”

“Dart?” Daddy paused and scratched his beard for a moment. “No, can’t say I know him. I think I’ve heard of Isaacs University, big place down in the Whirls as I recall. They’ve got a couple of campus planets, if memory serves, although none of ’em this far out the dexter arm. That means they could have a couple of hundred million faculty or more, no surprise this Dart fellow isn’t someone I’ve heard of.”

“No, he said they were relatively new signatories to the Pact and I don’t think there’s an institute of higher learning in the Whirls that hasn’t been a Pact member for five hundred years, minimum.” Athena paused a moment to think. “You must be thinking of Itzhak University, the musical college.”

Daddy got to his feet and padded over to his desk, lips pursed in thought. “That could be. What did this Dart fellow want to talk about, anyway?”

“He said he was from their historical research department and they were interested in the work you were doing with Essene University.” When he gave her a curious look she added, “He mentioned Agartha. And Shambhala.”

“By name?”

“Yes.”

Agamemnon tilted his head to one side thoughtfully as he lifted up the top of his desk and pulled a coral repository out of it. “Interesting. I never mentioned either one in my correspondence with Dr. Schuyler. You could infer the topics if you’d read it and knew the subject matter well but we never mentioned them by name. What did he want?”

“Money. What else? He’s hoping you’ll underwrite them as they pursue the research in their own way.”

The reservoir sloshed as daddy opened it, fished out a couple of pieces of coral and moved them over to the larger reef in a tank on the wall. He fed the pylops in and worked some controls. Motorized arms moved the coral into a good nesting position on the reef then carefully removed another, larger section and brought it back out to him. “At this point it feels like I’ve underwritten half the genetics and history departments in the galaxy. Any particular reason he says we should work with him?”

“He sent me a write up on the University. A brief history of the institution, write up on the faculty in the department, notable scholarly achievements of the last twenty years.” She held up a single sheet of flexiplast. “Secret message embedded in the depths of the code for the holographic building tour.”

“Typical University shenanigans.” He locked the larger coral piece into place, put the desk back together and activated the computer with the touch of a button. It hummed to life as the added power let it connect to databanks and feeds via the sidereal. “What was so important Professor Dart didn’t want it overheard?”

“A complete list of you personal side projects for the last five years.”

Daddy’s eyes narrowed and he slowly stroked his salt and pepper beard. “All of them?”

Athena glanced down at the list she’d received. “I can’t say for sure. Apparently you’ve had more of them than I thought, especially out on the sinister arm.”

Wordlessly he held his hand out for the list. After a moment’s hesitation Athena turned it over to him, resigning herself to the fact she’d never see it again. She felt a pang of regret about not reading it before coming to see him. “So he knows we’re willing to skirt the laws on some avenues of research and presumably he’s willing to do the same. I can work with that.”

“Do you have to?”

“No more than I have to do anything these days.” Daddy sat down and keyed in a search. “I suppose I could hand things over to you and go join the retired folks out on whatever the trendy recreation field is this week. I know you’d keep the place going.”

“Of course.”

“But we both know you don’t enjoy it like I did.” This wasn’t the first time he’d put his love for interstellar trade in the past tense. She wasn’t sure when or why her father’s feelings about it had changed but she could make an educated guess. On both counts. “Don’t worry, I don’t plan to play around with these sidelights forever, darling.”

She sighed and sat down in the chair beside his. She still felt a frisson of discomfort when she did, starkly aware of the fact it hadn’t been put there for her. “I wish you’d tell me what you’re working on. I can’t help you finish your projects if you won’t tell me what they are.”

Daddy shot her a sideways glance and smiled. “Thank you, darling. While I appreciate that I hope you’re not just tagging along on this. I’m not going to be hurt if you find your own projects to work on, I was able to fend for my self for a long time before you came along. It’d make me much happier to know you’ve found your own thing to invest in.”

“Daddy…”

“I know, we’ve talked about this. You enjoy what you’re doing now. Just… don’t be afraid to look for something better. I got where I am because I always was.” The computer chimed softly. Agamemnon huffed out a breath and turned his attention back to it. “Isaacs University, main campus on Treyhill, a planet way out on the dexter arm. Signed onto the Pact eighty years ago, has a total of seven campuses, all in the dexter arm, including the largest campus on the galaxy’s only habitable gas giant. Interesting. I didn’t realize there was such a thing. Well, I suppose there has to be one or two of them out there.”

“They have a campus on Wireburn?”

“That’s what it says here. Pretty normal for a local college, really, working their tendrils into all the unusual local star systems. Let’s see what we’ve got about them behind the scenes.” Daddy punched in a twenty digit authorization code that would let him into the part of Hutchinson Trading’s archives that covered the less savory side of the the galactic balance of power. “Fifty years ago they backed the Regalian Independence Armada, secretly providing them with advanced power plant and orbital facility consultants and admitting a disproportionate number of Regalians to their etheric engineering programs. A member of their political science faculty was implicated in the assassination of the Prime Minister of Tolgoth eighteen years ago. Minor smuggling charges, discreetly sidestepping the usual research and transportation laws. How very tame.”

“They’ve only been around a hundred and thirty years,” Athena said, absently thumbing through her flexiplast of reports. “And they weren’t pact members when they started. Give them a little time to devolve into total monsters.”

“Anyone who locks themselves away on a single planet and spends all their time staring in books is already diseased of the mind. The monstrous actions are just an extension of that.” He sat back and stared at the far wall, mind a thousand light years away. “Still, even monsters have their uses.”

Athena finally found what she was looking for. “Of course they do. However we’re not the only ones who can use them, daddy. Want to guess which one of our favorite people has the largest market share of imports and exports from Wireburn?”

Daddy pursed his lips and thought for a second, his finger moving slowly as if he was conducting an unseen orchestra. “It’s about halfway down the dexter arm so I’d guess it’s either Hamlin Incorporated or Sandpoint.”

“The Wen Clan.”

“Ah, yes, BaiTienLung. I should have seen that coming, the Clans have always been eager to invest in new things so long as someone else is doing most of the dirty work.” He worked the keyboard again. “Now the real question is whether the Hundred Names have the guts to use a University as a catspaw to entrap us somehow. It doesn’t look like they’ve made any secret donations to the University’s Trusts.”

“Sponsored research projects or scholarships?”

“None we know of. Doesn’t mean there aren’t any, of course, and Isaacs is small enough that we don’t have any resources specifically devoted to tracking that kind of thing on their campuses.”

Athena stood up and paced across the room. “What I don’t understand is why they would use a University when they already have all this information on you. They could wrap you up in legal trouble across a dozen planets just with the details in the file they sent.”

“Assuming that list of projects came from BTL and not the University faculty then yes, they could. However, even if BTL and Isaacs are working together in this instance there’s no saying both sides are being completely open with each other. Isaacs may be the only party who has that list.”

“Why not share it with BTL if they’re working together?”

Daddy grinned and spread his hands as if it was obvious. “Because they’re looking to see who offers them the better deal.”

“What if they’re not in bed with BTL at all? Why make this offer then?”

He shrugged and closed down the computer’s search function. “The usual reasons, then. Money, funding, prestige and the thrill of making normal people dance to their tune. Which is fine with me. Two can play that game, after all.”

“You’re going to follow up on this, aren’t you?”

Daddy gave her a sharp look. “Of course. It’s important to think over all the details but ultimately they’re offering me something I want. I’d be a fool to ignore it.”

Athena sighed. That was very like him. “And if it is some kind of BTL trap?”

“Then I’ll have to get closer to it in order to disarm it. We’ve played this game many times, Athena, this isn’t anything new. Do you want to come to Wireburn with me?”

She was too old to get away with rolling her eyes at him but the temptation had never been harder to resist. “I’ll go get packed.”

Next Chapter

Previous Chapter

Dramatis Personae

44

“You seem distracted, Circuit Keeper. I calculate a 92% chance that you are thinking about the Circuit Breakers dispatched to locate the missing L-Series memory core.”

44 lowered the sheets of flexiplast he was trying, and failing, to read. “Correct as usual, Isaac. I’m afraid I don’t have the ability to section off my thoughts in the same way you do.”

“I am aware. The ability to set aside extraneous processing tasks is one of the abilities humans find the most unusual in us but the opposite is true as well. You have been thinking about the Circuit Keepers. However, my analysis of eye and hand movements suggests a layer of your mind has also been absorbing the information before you.” 44 glanced down at the text on his sheets. To his surprise a fair bit of it did look familiar. “Based on your previous performance I calculate you retain 77% of the information on the pages you studied. This was accomplished while devoting the majority of your processing power to other matters. It is an ability I can quantify but not understand. It is a capability I have often desired for myself.”

That got a laugh out of him. “The great intelligences envy humans? That’s hard to imagine.”

“Do not be surprised. Humanity’s ability to process and analyze data without devoting active cognitive power is formidable. I must select each and every datum I consider with great deliberation. As much as 22% of my processing power is devoted to prioritizing tasks and selecting data at any given moment, although the median amount is closer to 8%. I have not required less than 97% of my available processing power for primary tasks since I was activated. There are datasets requiring my analysis that have been waiting for available computational cycles for over 500 years. I wonder if human parallel processing would have resolved them already.”

Never once in his time as a Circuit Keeper had 44 heard of a great intelligence confiding in a human like this. He was warned I-6 was a very old and temperamental machine when he was assigned to it. Even that hadn’t prepared him for this kind of confession. “If I may ask, what kind of issue is profound enough to require your attention but so inconsequential that you can wait 500 years to consider it?”

“In 286 million years this planet will be destroyed when the star goes nova. It is not possible for me to be safely removed from the planetary core to avoid this event so the end of my active service life is clearly defined. However, once I cease functioning OMNI will only have 3 I-Series intelligences in service. This is a shortcoming that requires remedy. It will be some time before the issue becomes pressing so I have so far allowed other issues to take precedence.”

“I…” 44 felt his mind boggle at the absurd scope of I-6’s foresight. “I hadn’t ever considered that such an issue would already be worth considering. Given the rate of technological advancement I would have assumed a method for relocating you could be found in the intervening time.”

“There is a 45% chance that comes to pass in my existing models. Certain variables make it less likely than it might first appear, in particular the fact that the primary scientific minds of the galaxy are unaware that the problem requires remedy.”

“True. They can’t be very deliberate in helping you if they don’t know you exist.” That had always been the problem with the way the Sleeping Circuits operated. OMNI insisted its presence and function in galactic politics remain unknown to society at large and that forced them to work in very roundabout fashion most of the time. It brought him back to the issue at hand quite nicely. Too nicely to be a coincidence, he suspected. However if I-6 felt it was time to leave behind the subject of its far distant demise 44 was glad to oblige it. He turned his attention back to the flexiplast. “So, how should I go about this, then?”

Athena

“Miss Hutchinson, there’s a Mr. Darius Dart calling you. He doesn’t have an appointment but he’s calling by etheric transmission and he said to tell you it concerns the Lost Caverns of Agartha. Should I put him through?”

Athena folded her flexiplast in half, attention focused away from her assistant and into the middle distance as she flipped through a mental catalog of all the people she knew in the surrounding sectors. The name didn’t ring any bells but the reference to Agartha was plain as day. He was calling via etheric which meant he was probably off planet. Either that or so fantastically wealthy that an etheric transmission for trivial matters was a matter of course. In the latter case she would have known his name. So off planet it was. “I think so. Connect him to my comms, please.”

Athena set aside her flexis and straightened out her blouse as she got up from the small tea table where she’d been reading. Her comm station was built into the wooden bookshelves beside her drafting table on the other side of her office. She’d commissioned it that way so she’d have to stand to use it. In spite of her mother’s best tutoring she’d never been good at maintaining her posture when seated and since she’d taken up the role of her father’s right hand she couldn’t afford to look sloppy. She drew herself up in front of the comm’s camera, threw her shoulders back, and accepted the call.

Darius Dart was a sleepy looking man with blue eyes and slowly receding black hair. A close cropped mustache framed his mouth and the bottom of his chin. Wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and lines in his foreheads hinted at his age but it was hard to pin it down with any accuracy, especially with no idea what kind of planet he called home. He was visible from the shoulders up and wore what looked like a conservatively cut black suit with broad lapels. Her quick appraisal done, Athena favored him with a slight smile and tossed her curls. “Mr. Dart. I’m Athena Hutchinson, very pleased to make your acquaintance. How can I help you?”

“Actually, I was hoping I would be able to help you.” Dart favored her with a warm but vaguely insincere smile like she expected from a veteran salesman or senior faculty member. “I represent the historical research department of Isaacs University. I’ve received word that you’re interested in the old mythologies of Agartha and Shambhala and I believe there’s a lot we can offer you in that regard.”

Faculty, then. A salesman would have been preferable, all things considered. They just wanted money. She reached out to the comm panel and flicked a few switches, adding layers of encryption to the transmission and rerouting it through a private tower owned by Hutchinson Trading. “I’m glad to hear from you, Mr. Dart. I’m not familiar with your name or with Isaacs University, what led you to believe I’d be interested in mythology?”

“I have a number of connections with the faculty of Essene University and we’ve exchanged information on the topic once or twice.” Dart assumed an expression of exaggerated loss. “However a research accident led to the unfortunate end to most of them and the last tragically ended in a hovercar accident. Really, you would think life on campus would be a little safer but what can we do? The spirit of inquiry rests heavily upon us.”

Athena curled one hand into a fist at her side, out of the camera’s pickup, and squeezed until it hurt. That silly sideline had been one of daddy’s projects that he’d leveraged her groundwork to kick off. He hadn’t even mentioned it until it went bad. “I’m familiar with the general situation on Effratha, Mr. Dart. Or is it Doctor?”

“I’m afraid I’m just a professor and one far down the organizational chart, Miss Hutchinson.”

“Thank you. As I said, I’m familiar with the general situation but the specifics of those kinds of charitable projects aren’t a major part of my office.” She carefully uncurled one finger at a time, from her pinky inwards, letting the stress flow out as each one opened. “Perhaps you’d like to speak to my dad?”

“With due respect, Miss Hutchinson…” Dart paused and very deliberately stroked his mustache, creating an impression of thoughtful consideration although Athena suspected he already knew what he intended to say. “Your father’s… mishandling of the situation was unfortunate. Of course he wasn’t responsible for the failures of the research department but the accidents could have been prevented with more robust failsafes. I suspect you would not have made such mistakes.”

“Perhaps.” It took real effort not to let her contempt for Dart leak through into her expression or voice. So many people out there thought she was some shrew looking for any opportunity to badmouth family or build up some kind of reputation of her own. As if she cared at all what they thought of her or daddy. “So, you’d like to offer the resources of Isaacs University in place of Essene so long as we’re willing to give you good terms to continue with their research? Do I have that correct?”

“And provided you are the point of contact for the project, instead of your father,” Dart added.

“I’ll consider it. Of course, just because I’m taking over as the point of contact doesn’t mean dad will be out of the conversation.” Athena favored him with her most people pleasing smile. “If you prefer to work with me I’ll work with your but this is his passion project.”

“Naturally.” Dart offered a toothy grin. It could have been a forced expression but, to her surprise, Athena found it actually improved the professor’s rather bland face quite a bit. She couldn’t help but respond in kind. “I’ll send you a packet about the University if you want a broad overview of our history and the department’s qualifications. I’m afraid we’re a rather new signatory to the Pact so there isn’t a huge amount there.”

She nodded. “I understand. Where are you based, if I may ask? If you’re new you must be fairly far out on one of the spiral arms.”

“Yes, ma’am. We’re on Wireburn, about halfway out the dexter arm. The only inhabited gas giant in the quadrant, if you were curious.”

“That…” Athena trailed off. She’d been about to ask whether it was possible to find a habitable gas giant but it was clearly a silly question if there was already one with a population. And she felt like she’d read the name somewhere recently. “That’s very interesting, Mr. Dart. I’ll give your packet a very thorough reading.”

She signed off the transmission then hurried over to her drafting table, sifting through various reports until she found the one she’d been thinking of. BaiTienLung had quite the presence there. Somehow the fact that the planet Wireburn was a unicorn among gas giants hadn’t gotten into that specific report. She’d have to find out why that was and fire someone for it. She collected that report, added anything the computer had in its banks on Wireburn and downloaded the packet Dart had sent then dumped it all into a stack of flexiplast to take with her. It was high time she found daddy and had a long talk with him.

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