by M. D. Cooper
Prime smiled as he recalled the neural agents safeguarded at the university behind Level One containment, the strictest biohazard available.
Such nasty little things, promising a swift—and messy—death. This next cleansing would be very up close and personal.
HUNTERS
STELLAR DATE: 05.20.3191 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Prime Minister’s office, Parliament House
REGION: El Dorado Ring, Alpha Centauri System
Lysander had five minutes before his weekly meeting with the Cabinet began; at the speeds with which AIs communicated, this should be plenty of time to begin enacting personal countermeasures to the threat this Prime creature leveled against his humans.
He reached out along the secured connection that had been established between his office and the Enfield Holdings shell corporation. Bypassing Zakk, Esther’s human aide, he searched for and quickly found the coordinates of the one AI in Phantom Blade who could help him. The AI whose service record with the ESF had been sealed, along with that of his twin.
Only a select few knew what had happened to the two; that same select few also knew their true capabilities. Lysander needed those capabilities now.
Without preamble, Lysander followed the greeting with a data burst that contained the full-sensory substance of his encounter with Prime. Logan would be able to see everything Lysander had seen, feel everything he felt, experience everything from Lysander’s perspective.
And Logan would be able to use his unique skillset to analyze, profile and, in the end, track down and eliminate this rogue AI threat.
The profiler and AI-hunter's response to Lysander was pragmatic.
Lysander nodded.
That connection severed, Lysander still had three minutes left before he was due at the Cabinet table. Plenty of time to ping the shell corporation, Enfield Holdings, again. This time he connected to Esther’s human assistant, Zakk.
When the human connected him to the vice-marshal, Lysander once again wasted no time, sending her the same data packet he’d sent to Logan.
Lysander paused, then continued.
Esther nodded, her voice confident.
* * * * *
Prime saw Judith Andrews leaving the university’s campus just as he arrived, as well as the figure accompanying her.
A bodyguard, he thought in disgust. You didn’t waste any time, Lysander, did you?
The mechanized combat frame the AI was ensconced in had weaponry on active swivel, and a ping against Prime’s own ID token indicated the AI was conducting active security sweeps of the vicinity as well.
Dammit. I never should have mentioned the Andrews humans to him.
That had been rash and careless. The rational part of his brain knew that the intense emotion brought on by the changes Lilith had wrought made him reckless, more impulsive. Yet Prime had neither the inclination nor the emotional control to implement a change to correct it. As Prime, he reveled in a degree of sensation Ethan could not possibly have imagined.
There’s nothing I can do. She’s untouchable right now.
Not that she’d been a part of tonight’s planned performance anyway. Either way, acquiring Judith would take more thought and preparation, Prime realized.
He hurried into the neurosciences building and used Ethan’s security token to access the Level One biohazard room. Once inside, he extracted samples from every vial the university had stored within, carefully placing them in a well-padded satchel.
Once back in his flat, Prime bent to his task. Half an hour later, he nodded in approval at the new program he’d just coded. Turning to the pod of inert formation material, he extracted enough to create a nano ampule.
He took his time selecting just the right Level One toxin, wrapped it inside a coating, and then ensured the coating’s permittivity and permeability would respond to whatever command code he sent. The amount of toxin released would vary, depending on how long he wanted each individual to suffer.
He inserted the new code, along with the deadly tetrodotoxin that the code was programmed to release, into the ampule. Then he directed the ampule to replicate itself.
Once he had a sizeable enough supply, he injected a generous number underneath the synthetic skin of his right hand.
Into his left palm, Prime placed the human shackling program, along with ampules containing the neurochemicals the code would use to do the shackling. Included in the concoction was a nano paralytic; this would allow Prime to control both the voluntary and autonomic nervous systems of the human body.
The AI flexed his palms and allowed a small smile of satisfaction to play on his humanoid face.
Primed for an evening’s entertainment.
Just then, a flag popped up: his search algorithm for Jason Andrews had returned a value: ‘Andrews, Jason; Pilot, Sable Wind; Enfield registry. Scheduled to dock: 1900 EST today.’
Excellent. Jason’s demise will make a tasty opening act. An amuse-bouche I can savor prior to tonight’s main course.
Prime rolled the mental wordplay around in his head and found it appealing. Humans considered themselves connoisseurs of various arts, why shouldn’t he?
Of course, my art form is the creative and untraceable destruction of organic vermin….
Prime realized amid his musings that he had less than an hour to orchestrate Jason’s death. He suppressed a flash of disappointment that this would be another killing he’d be forced to enact at a distance.
Amuse-bouche, indeed. Hardly enough to satisfy.
Fortunately, he’d dropped a packet of nano near a node at the spaceport’s entrance on his way to the university earlier in the day; he’d had it perform a molecular analysis of the hardware that comprised the spaceport’s network.
Using that data, Prime insinuated himself into its systems, writing his own auth token in at the root level. Satisfied he would have access to whatever he might need, if he timed things right, he could dispatch Jason while strolling through the human neighborhood that housed the venue for his main event.
That efficiency rather appealed to him.
He tidied the flat, returning the equipment he had used to their storage cases and sealing the storage pod. With one last check to ensure he had everything he needed, he left and headed for the nearest maglev station that would take him to where the tracking nano indicated his Humanity First target was located.
As the car sped toward its destination, Prime accessed the nano he’d insinuated into the spaceport’s system. The feeds showed clearspan arches rising several
stories tall, a shipping area where crates of varying sizes swung from port to dock, and service bots that ran the length of the expanse, maneuvering cargo into the holds of ships.
An alert showed up in one of the nodes he was monitoring, indicating the berth Jason’s ship had just been assigned. Prime checked the location of the nearest exit and traced it back to the gate through which the human would enter the spaceport.
He found an NSAI that was stevedoring heavy crates from a loading bay to a dock where a freighter was moored. The crane’s path took it briefly along a highly trafficked concourse, the route Jason would have to take to arrive at his destination.
Prime’s nano insinuated itself into the NSAI, merging seamlessly with it. With a thought, Prime overrode its sensor restraints, then swung the crate held within the crane’s maw lightly back and forth, testing its responsiveness to his commands.
Yes, this will do nicely. Blunt force trauma has such a nice, bold flavor.
The maglev pulled up to the platform that was his stop, and Prime stood, waiting his turn to exit the car. After he disembarked, he paused to assess his surroundings, accessing the local node and insinuating a fake ident that would display if anyone queried his token as they passed him on the street.
This was one of the less affluent suburbs of Sonali, populated by the occasional repair shop, small businesses that sold used wares, and apartments that had seen better days. Its nodes had seen better days too, and he caught several fluctuating intermittently as he doctored his identity to cover his tracks.
He smiled, pleased to discover the area’s disrepair—something that would make it that much easier to hide his presence inside a certain basement-level bar and grill that housed a local chapter of Humanity First vermin.
Prime set off along his route, assigning a monitoring program to the task of checking his environment as he walked, so that he could blend in without attracting undue attention.
He strolled slowly down a tree-lined lane, where sullen young humans sped by on two-wheeled vehicles, and young parents ran after screaming children.
He turned down a side street and spied the sign indicating the bar and grill that was to be his destination. Seeing a bench across the street, in front of a small green space that could charitably be called a park, he began walking toward it.
Prime had just taken a seat, when Jason Andrews’ ident and biometrics registered over the spaceport’s auth & auth system. The human had disembarked, and the spaceport had granted him access. Prime used the port’s facial recognition program to locate Jason, and then had its sensors send a live feed of the human’s progress. Scans showed Jason transiting from an elevated concourse down to the loading platform. Given the pilot’s current pace, Jason he would pass under the crane in twenty-three seconds.
Prime found himself leaning forward slightly in anticipation. He felt a thrill of pleasure and, for one brief moment, shut out his other sensory input so that he might savor this next kill.
A thought occurred to him, and he seized control of the spaceport’s recording devices, sifting through them until he found the ones that provided the best line of sight to the scene he was about to initiate.
I wonder if Enfield Aerospace recorded my first performance? he pondered. I’ll have to see about acquiring it….
The moment arrived; he timed it perfectly, releasing the crate just as the man walked directly into its path.
CATCH THE LIGHTNING
STELLAR DATE: 05.20.3191 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: El Dorado Main Spaceport
REGION: El Dorado Ring, Alpha Centauri System
The team aboard the Sable Wind watched in stunned silence as the news nets replayed the carnage that had occurred at Enfield Aerospace. On the heels of the news packet had come word from Lysander that a threat had been made against Jason and his sister.
Hefting his carisack, Jason sent the twins a mental wave.
Landon’s avatar sent them a mental salute as the airlock closed, and the twins prepared to return the shuttle back to its berth at Enfield Aerospace.
The AI shrugged.
Tobias coughed a laugh at that; Jason knew it still struck the AI as funny that he considered Lysander a sort of stand-in father, considering that Tobias, also Weapon Born, was of a similar age.
But Tobias was never embedded in my dad’s head, he qualified to himself. And besides, he got into more trouble than I did as a kid, back in Proxima.
His thoughts returned to the present.
He sobered as his thoughts returned to the conversation Logan had relayed to them.
Tobias laughed.
Jason felt more than saw the large container that had been released from the crane’s jaws. As it plummeted toward them, his gaze shot to his left, taking in a young ESF cadet just coming up alongside Calista. The unsuspecting young man had the bad fortune to be walking on the wrong concourse at the wrong time, and was headed directly into the container’s path.
Jason leapt toward the two as the cat jumped clear. He wrapped his right arm around Calista’s waist and latched his left hand onto the cadet’s belt as he launched the three away from the crate’s path.
He rotated, Calista in his arms, and watched the container as it crashed to the concourse floor, sides bowing out as it deformed under the force of impact. He breathed a sigh of relief as the crate remained whole; that meant there would be no shrapnel to harm innocent passersby.
m.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jason saw spaceport security approaching at a run.
Jason nodded, then used the spaceport’s net to ping Ben and update him.
RIGHT-HAND RULE
STELLAR DATE: 05.20.3191 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: West Bottoms Bar & Grille, Sonali
REGION: El Dorado Ring, Alpha Centauri System
Prime had walked two circuits around the block that housed the West Bottoms Bar & Grille and had scrutinized the footage carefully. No matter what filter he ran the data through, the AI could not figure out how Jason Andrews had moved as quickly as he had.
The human showed up on scans as unaugmented; Prime had hacked the security feeds and seen the Auth & Auth results himself. He’d watched as Andrews—accompanied by a female and some sort of overlarge feline—exchanged tokens with the guards and submitted to the spaceport’s scans before being allowed to disembark from the umbilical and enter the station proper. There was nothing to indicate Jason was a human capable of evading the death that Prime had so carefully arranged for him.
The more he studied it, the more his frustration rose.
Prime noted the time; if he intended to enter the bar and proceed with his next cleansing, he would have to act soon or see his opportunity slip away.
Well, if Jason refuses to die, there are a dozen more down these stairs who will take his place. West Bottoms, he thought in disgust. What kind of name is that anyway?