by M. D. Cooper
Shannon’s private ping interrupted her thoughts.
she greeted the engineer mentally.
the AI said, her avatar’s silver hair waving gently in a nonexistent breeze.
Calista realized abruptly that it had been months since Shannon had appeared this relaxed. They’d all been under more stress than they cared to admit, living with the specter of Prime, even though they had thought they were hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.
She shuddered inwardly as she realized that death had walked the corridors of this ship for almost a year, unnoticed.
Shannon drew her attention back to the present with her words.
Stars, poor Jonesy. She felt responsible, since she’d specifically petitioned Terrance to have the man join the team on the trip to Proxima.
Shannon’s avatar shook her head.
Calista mused thoughtfully. She knew her tone turned vindictive as she added,
Calista paused and shot Shannon’s avatar a questioning look. she began.
Shannon quirked a brow at her, and she continued.
The engineer nodded. Her avatar’s hair flattened briefly as she added, Shannon sighed, shook her head and then deliberately changed the subject.
Calista shook her head. She shrugged.
Shannon’s tone turned wistful.
the AI relied tartly.
Calista laughed.
The AI’s expression turned to one of puzzlement.
The pilot shrugged. And then added,
* * * * *
“So you’ll take the job? You’ll be our Proxima representative for Enfield Holdings?”
Doctor Jane Andrews ran her fingers along the surface of the stasis unit and looked up at Terrance with a wistful smile.
“How can I say no to the device that brought my daughter back to me?” She shook her head wonderingly, looking down again at the unit she stood in front of. “True stasis. How in the stars did Enfield Dynamics manage to develop it?”
Terrance laughed. “Stars if I know.” He sobered. “I’m just happy we were able to use it to save Judith.”
The neuroscientist looked up sharply at that. “I would have preferred a less dramatic demonstration of its features, Mister Enfield.”
Terrance dipped his head in acknowledgement. “As would I.” He followed her out of her offices and down the lift that led to the hospital proper. “How is she doing?” he asked.
She glanced up at him. “You don’t know? I would have thought Jason or Tobias would have filled you in.”
Terrance scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “I, ah, Jason and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms right now. And I’ve been tied up a bit with…” He gestured awkwardly toward the back of his skull, indicating the place Eric used to reside.
Jane nodded knowingly. “AIs are a bit harsher in their judgments than our human courts.” She sighed. “I could tell you stories….”
Terrance shook his head. “I’m still not entirely sure who actually pulled the trigger—me, or him.” He glanced over at Jane. “I know he said he did it, but a part of me insists he’s just trying to make things easier between me and the rest of the team. Making himself the fall guy.”
Jane cocked her head, considering. “From what you’ve told me of Eric, I could see where that might be the case. He strikes me as one of those duty-first military types.” She gave a little shrug. “They’ll be able to get to the bottom of it; they have a particular knack for that kind of thing, you know.”
“Well, all I know is that I would have appreciated being in the loop a bit more when everything went down,” he said dryly. “I knew Logan suspected something the moment he jumped on the maglev up on the dock. I’m just glad he and Tobias had the foresight to get a stasis pod out to the lake in time.”
Jane shook her head and turned to face him as she signaled for the lift. “I believe their plan was to put her in it without a slug through her brain.”
Terrance shook his head. “I’m not sure they could have accomplished it. That was the challenge with Prime from the beginning. If you got close to him, he either killed you or subsumed you. Jason could have reached her, you know; if he had, he’d be dead now.”
There was an awkward pause that lingered between the two. Then Jane sighed.
“You’re right; I know you’re right. I’ve seen his work. In a sick sort of way, Prime was brilliant.” She shook her head. “He could have done it. The foundation underpinning a planetary net shares a striking similarity to our own neural circuitry. He had his nano in place and had already begun rerouting the connections in the nodes throughout the habitat. His physical dexterity was masterful. He would have converted himself into a multi-nodal AI…a very, very powerful one.”
Her hand rose as if she were in an operating theatre, manipulating a virtual surgical blade. “It had a bit of a brute force element to it, but in other places, you could see the finesse of a surgeon’s hands, working at a molecular level to forge those connections.”
Her hand dropped, and she shook her head once, sharply. “It translated from traditional practice on an individual level to a macro scale—world nets—beautifully. Too beautifully. It will cause us to rethink the safeguards we set in place for such networks in the future.”
The lift arrived and they entered. She directed the car down to the hospital and the floor where Judith’s room was. As if that action had drawn her thoughts back to her daughter, she took a deep breath, staring fixedly at the lift doors.
“Six minutes.” Her words held a hard edge. “Six minutes until complete loss of brain function. That’s how narrow that window of time was between when you took that shot—“ Terrance visibly flinched at those words, “and when we would have irreversibly lost her.”
She looked up at him, her expression hard. “You and Eric played too fa
st and loose with her life. As it is, I’ve had to rebuild too many sections of her brain; it will take months, even with our modern medicine, for her to relearn speech and to control the new, artificial signals sending the impulses that control her fine motor skills.”
She rounded on him, jabbing her pointed finger at him. “And do not get me started on the fact that her left eye is no longer organic.” Abruptly, she turned back to face the lift doors, and he heard her sniff once. Her next words were almost inaudible.
“I loved those blue eyes of hers. I’ve been in love with them since I held her in my arms as a baby.”
Terrance swallowed. He opened his mouth to say—what, he didn’t quite know, but Jane put up a hand to forestall him, without turning to face him.
After a moment, she spoke quietly into the silence that hung between them. “I know. It was her life or the lives of everyone on the C-47.”
Terrance nodded silently, still unable to come up with a response that was anything other than ‘I’m sorry’.
“I get it.” She glanced over at him now and pointed to her head. “Here.” Her hand moved to her heart. “But here is another matter entirely.”
They didn’t speak for the remainder of the ride. The lift doors opened as it reached Judith’s floor, and Jane stepped out. “A word of advice, Terrance? Give Jason time. He’ll come around.” She gestured from her forehead to her heart. “You’re just a half-meter apart.”
* * * * *
Jason looked up from where he sat next to Judith’s bed as Tobi padded through the door. The big cat circled around the end of the bed and came to sit in front of him.
“Hey, Tobi,” he said quietly, and the big cat reached over to lick his good hand, which dangled loose along the arm of the chair.
He gave the big cat a scratch around the base of one ear, and she rose, placing her paws on his lap and butting her head against his face. She chirruped once, then dropped to the floor and padded over to Judith’s bed. In once graceful leap, the cat jumped up and settled beside her sleeping form. Tobias asked, and Jason shrugged.
His injured limb was encased in a portable regen unit filled with biogel. The nano contained inside was working overtime, using the highly protein-rich gel as formation material to rebuild the bone and straighten the carbon nanotube mesh that encased it.
he grumbled.
The Weapon Born made a sound like a chuckle inside Jason’s head.
Jason shifted restlessly.
Tobias’s voice was uncharacteristically grim.
Jason knew the AIs took a breach of the Phobos Accords seriously, and seizing control of one’s human host as Eric had done to Terrance most certainly qualified. The record of judgments they had passed on cases such as this since the end of the Sentience Wars did not bode well for the commodore—despite the extenuating circumstances.
He didn’t want the AI to pay the ultimate price; maybe he’d feel differently about it if Judith hadn’t survived, but she had.
Although it was going to take some time before he completely forgave the AI. And Terrance.
The image of Judith’s head exploding just ten meters away from him as he strained against Logan’s mech frame to get to her was seared into his brain.
As if conjured by his thoughts, a shadow fell across the entrance to Judith’s room, and Jason looked up to see the Enfield exec standing awkwardly with one hand against the door’s frame.
Ah, hell.
The man looked miserable.
Jason found himself grudgingly nodding at Terrance. He stood, spared a glance at Judith and the Tobys, and then motioned to the hallway as he walked toward the man.
“So, is she…?” the man asked guardedly as he fell into step with Jason.
He shrugged, and then grimaced as the movement caused the sling holding the regen unit in place to slip uncomfortably.
“She’s awakened a few times, seems to understand what we say. Her speech is pretty garbled, and they had to remove her Link, so communication is pretty basic right now. But mom says the neuroplasticity of her brain, combined with some other science-y stuff I don’t understand, will have her back to normal within a few months. She will most likely not remember her recent past, which, given the situation, is probably a good thing.”
They reached a comfortable seating area meant for patients and family members; large plas windows offered a view down the habitat cylinder. It was deserted.
By silent agreement, the two men moved toward the view. Standing at the window, looking down the long axis of the cylinder facing away from the dock, Jason could see wispy clouds drifting across the water table, tens of kilometers distant. Above them was the strip of land that ran along the top of the cylinder, a hundred and eighty degrees opposed to where they stood.
Terrance drew in a deep breath, and Jason braced himself for what he knew would come. The man had apologized twice before; Jason suspected he was about to do it again.
“Jason, I…”
The pilot quirked a half-smile at his friend, running his good hand through his hair and giving it a good scrubbing. He let his hand drop and it slapped against his thigh, the sound loud in the silent waiting room.
“Dude. You shot my sister.”
Terrance’s expression grew pained and then resigned. Jason was sure the man believed he had irreparably lost a friend.
He quirked a half-grin at him. “You are never going to live that down. I’m going to use that against you for decades. Centuries.”
Terrance let out a breath; the relief on his face was palpable.
“Jason, I am so sorry—”
He raised his hand. “I know, man. I hate that it had to be that way, but Tobias and I talked. We worked the situation every way we could conceive. There was no other way. No other option. It kills me to say it, but you had to take that shot.” He paused. “Or Eric did.”
Terrance began shaking his head. “It all happened so fast, I couldn’t tell you who pulled that trigger. I was right there, and I don’t even know.”
Jason looked questioningly at him. “So now that Eric’s not up there anymore…. How did it feel, sharing your headspace with another sentient?”
“Amazing. Incredible.” Terrance gave a short, humorless laugh. “Crowded at times. But I miss him.”
“Tobias thinks the Council might decide to ban the commodore from embedding with a human again, but he can’t be certain.” He shook his head. “And given that they actually do still practice corporal punishment, things could be worse. A lot worse.”
Terrance jabbed a thumb back toward Judith’s room, smirking slightly. “You sure that’s not wishful thinking on the part of a certain Weapon Born who knows he’d have to take command of the mission to Tau Ceti if Eric were….” His voice trailed off.
Tobias sent to them both as the big cat rounded the corner, and the AI riding in her harness approached them.
Terrance’s head shot up at that. “Then he’s cleared?”
The Weapon Born’s avatar nodded in their heads.
Jason looked from the big cat to Terrance. He hated to admit it, because he loved his sister, but sitting around waiting for a person to heal just wasn’t his thing. He was already feeling restless; his parents knew it and had assured him they understood.
Judith would heal, both physically and mentally. Her POW status ensured that treatment for post-traumatic shock
was an integrated part of her care.
They had sent a message to Ben the day of the shooting. It would take another few weeks for him to receive it back on El Dorado, but Jason had no doubt that the man would be on the first ship he could find to bring him to Proxima.
By the time he arrived, Judith would be almost fully recovered, and the two could decide together where their lives would take them from there.
Phantom Blade had done what they’d been sent to Proxima to accomplish: free seven AIs, shackled for the better part of three years and sent against their wills to Proxima.
Five had been enslaved in a refinery and forced to create one of the most dangerous recreational drugs known to humankind. Two had been conscripted to run systems on a station they had never wanted to visit in a system they’d never intended to see. All were now free.
But there were two more AIs out there, still waiting for someone to come to their rescue. And Jason knew exactly who those someones would be.
He nodded at the two—both AI and human—as they turned toward the lifts that would lead them back to the dock, their ships, and the rest of the El Dorado team.
THE END
* * * * *
Jason and Terrance are now well on their way to intercept the Intrepid and Tanis. But that mighty ship’s journey is still many hundreds of years in the future.
In the meantime, there are AIs to save, and the Enfield empire to build.
Follow Jason Andrews and his mission to find the remaining AIs in the next Enfield Genesis novel, Tau Ceti.
* * * * *
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