by M. D. Cooper
Niki said privately.
“OK,” Rika said, nodding as she drew out the word. “Would you like, instead, to aid us in killing Constantine? We came here before moving insystem because our intel indicated that Faneuil would be an excellent place to mass our forces and gather intel. I must admit, I did actually hope to find resistance members out here, and here you are. Your assistance will be invaluable.”
“Colonel Rika,” Admiral Lareese said. “I think you misunderstand how things work here. You’ll undertake no unilateral operations in Genevia. We’ve worked long toward our goals, I—”
Rika held up her hand, and was surprised when the woman stopped so readily. “I applaud how long you’ve worked toward your goals, and the fact that you’ve managed to maintain a covert presence in this system,” Rika told her. “But let’s be frank. Your goals are to scratch the Niets, to inflict tiny wounds in a vain hope to slow them down. I’m here to cut the head off their empire.”
“What do you think that will achieve?” Oda asked in a measured, too-calm voice. “Someone else will rise to take Constantine’s place, and the Niets will exact retribution, likely wiping out everyone in this system.”
Rika shook her head in disbelief. “Do you really have no endgame in mind? Are you so focused on taking a pawn, you’ve missed that the enemy’s queen is free for the taking?”
“And if our king is exposed?” Oda asked.
“What king?” Rika asked. “If there is a king, it’s the Genevian people’s spirit. Something that will be greatly bolstered by killing Constantine. And then, while the Niets are still reeling from the destruction of their fleets here at Genevia, I’m going to take what we can salvage and fly it to Pruzia, where we’ll raze Valhalla. In five years, the Nietzschean Empire will be nothing but a bad memory.”
Oda shook his head in disbelief, while Lareese scoffed.
“Bold words,” the admiral said.
Rika frowned at the two resistance leaders. “Did neither of you review the data we sent down? Did you watch the battle in the Albany System? Did you see how we defeated the remains of the armada at Sepe, took Blue Ridge, destroyed the shipyards at Epsilon? Liberated Iberia? I don’t know if you remember the war we had with the Niets a few years back, but we didn’t have a string of victories like that the entire time I was in the GAF.
“You’ve been sitting here in your dark hole, waiting for an opportunity to strike at the enemy…or I assume you have. I…I….” Rika sputtered, at a loss for words, flabbergasted that she was having to convince the resistance to resist. “Seriously, what’s your problem here?”
Lareese looked Rika up and down and shrugged. “You’re a mech. Everyone knows that mechs are criminal scum, only controlled by their compliance chips…which the Niets foolishly removed. Now they’re reaping the rewards of that mistake.”
Rika’s mouth hung open, and it took conscious effort to close it once more.
“Stars,” she muttered, rising from the table and walking to the counter set along one of the walls. She placed a hand on the smooth surface, trying to think of what to say to the fools behind her that could convince them to help.
“See,” she heard Lareese say. “I told you, Leader Oda. Mechs are unstable.”
Oda’s eyes had widened at the tirade that spilled from Niki, though Lareese’s lips pressed together as her brow furrowed.
“You have an AI,” Oda said, clearly surprised.
“It’s not a proper pairing,” Lareese scoffed. “Just tucked in her gut somewhere. Her model has that capability.”
“No,” Rika tapped a finger against her head. “She’s up here. And she’s right. You’re contemptible.”
“Let’s go,” Lareese said, rising from her chair. “I’ve heard enough of this lunatic’s nonsense.”
“I’m not sure a madwoman is capable of recognizing lunacy,” a voice said from the entrance.
Rika felt a wave of relief roll over her to see Tremon walk into the room, Yakub and Gloria following after.
the former president said.
Oda and Lareese had both risen from their chairs, while Lieutenant Gary sat slack-jawed in his seat.
“President Kalvin,” Oda spoke first. “Rika didn’t tell us she was working for you.”
Rika saw Tremon flinch at the use of his old name, the name of the man he was ashamed to have been.
“You have it backwards,” he replied. “I work for Rika as an advisor. And please, call me Tremon. It doesn’t do much good for the name ‘Kalvin’ to be bandied about.”
“Tremon?” Lareese asked. “Are you ashamed of who you once were?”
He reddened, but didn’t flinch from the verbal assault. “Are you not, Admiral Lareese? How many children like Rika did your programs send into the factories? How many of them suffered just as much at the hands of our people as the Nietzscheans?”
“I did nothing wrong,” Lareese replied. “I was trying to save Genevia.”
“No,” Tremon shook his head. “We cut out our nation’s heart and then were surprised when it died. People like you and I are not Genevia’s future. That future lies with people like Rika.”
“Really,” Rika said, holding up her hands. “I’m not here to be a ‘future’. I’m just here to kick Nietzschean ass. Something that everyone on Faneuil seems reluctant to do.”
“Rika,” Tremon said, his tone serious. “You should arrest Lareese. She’s not fit to serve the Genevian people.”
“Me?” Lareese bellowed. “You should be on trial, you coward.”
Tremon nodded. “I expect I will be at some point. But for now, the mechs of Rika’s Marauders have told me they forgive me for my part in what happened to them. But you have your own atrocities to answer for. You know what I’m referring to. Do you want me to bring it up now?”
“I would like to hear it,” Oda said. “Many of us did things we are not proud of during the war. I imagine that the admiral did something that can be forgiven as you were, President Kalvin. Then we can move past it to more productive conversations.”
“Please,” the former president held up a hand. “I’m just Tremon now.”
Oda nodded, then turned to face Lareese, who had taken a step back, her expression even more guarded.
“If you don’t tell them, I will,” Tremon warned.
“It had to be done!” Lareese hissed. “If it had fallen into the hands of the Niets—”
“We would have dealt with it. But you thought that it was worth the risk.” Tremon turned toward Rika. “There were so many displaced children during the late years of the war, that Lareese—unbeknownst to me at the time—began rounding them up. She was working on a program to recreate th
e ancient Weapon Born program from Terra. Of course, she didn’t meet with any success. It was all at a secret base in the Marcia System. When the Niets breached the heliopause—” His voice cracked, and he paused, drawing a shuddering breath. “When the Niets came, she fired on her own research facility to keep them from finding her research…research that didn’t even work. At least a million children died. She didn’t even try to save a single one.”
The room fell silent at Tremon’s words, all but for the sound of Lareese’s ragged breathing as all eyes turned to her.
“It’s a lie,” she hissed. “A lie so he can take control! Oda, don’t you see that?”
The resistance’s Leader turned away from Admiral Lareese, staring unblinkingly at the table. “Someone get her away before….”
“Sergeant Bean,” Rika said through clenched teeth. “Take Admiral Lareese into custody for…unspeakable war crimes against her own people. Have her brought to the Fury Lance. We’ll deal with her later.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the mech said as she materialized in the corner of the room where Rika had previously told the resistance guard not to stand.
A knowing grimace crossed Gary’s lips, and Oda shook his head in amazement at the effectiveness of the mech’s stealth. Even so, he didn’t speak until Lareese was gone.
“Any more of your mechs in here with us?” the Leader asked.
“Yes,” Rika replied, her tone indicating that they would stay and that they would remain stealthed.
“Stars,” Oda said. “And to think that snake has had my ear this past year.”
“She wasn’t always here?” Rika asked.
“No.” Gary shook his head. “Lareese was a relatively recent addition.”
Oda gave Tremon a sidelong look, as the former president sat in Lareese’s vacated seat. “I seem to have drastically misjudged you, Rika. I’m going to take a leap of faith, and choose to believe everything you say.”
Rika smiled at the man, surprised at how different he behaved without Lareese at his side.
“So,” Lieutenant Gary said, locking eyes with Oda. “Can we be straight with Rika now?”
“Straight?” Rika asked. “Have we not been straight?”
“Well,” Oda said, a note of apology in his voice. “We’ve been doing more than ‘looking’ for a way to sabotage the ships the Niets are building. We’ve been actively working on a plan. If you’re really going to go toe to toe with that fleet they’re building at Capeton, then I think what we’ve done is going to help a lot.”
AN IDEA
STELLAR DATE: 04.27.8950 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Capeton Orbital Habitat, Capeton
REGION: Genevia System, Old Genevia, Nietzschean Empire
Jeremy rolled out of bed the instant his alarm blasted him out of his dreams, glad that he didn’t remember whatever visions he’d been subjected to the night before. He took a moment to wonder if his apparent lack of dreams—or at least, their memory—was due to the alarm or the extra work he’d been undertaking with Annie.
During the day, they continued to work their jobs like normal, installing drive control systems and putting engines through their paces. However, at night, they worked to ensure those drive control systems would fail when the right time came.
It had taken them some time to get to this point. Annie had brought the idea up in two more sub-rosa conversations before he’d come to believe that she really did wish to sabotage the Nietzschean ships.
During that time, the shipyards had begun construction of another Pinnacle-class ship, and he realized the Niets were just going to keep making these things as long as there were enemies to crush and willing hands to assemble them.
Of course, planning to sabotage hundreds of Nietzschean warships and actually doing it, were two very different things, and they were still working on the best method to achieve their goals.
Annie had been interested in introducing failures that would trigger at random at some point in the future, but Jeremy had argued against that notion.
If they configured the drive systems to ignore an issue that would eventually lead to catastrophic failure, it would only work once, maybe twice before the Niets identified the cause and it was fixed across all ships.
What they needed was something that was instantly catastrophic and would leave no evidence of what the failure had been. From there, the question then had come down to ‘when’.
Having the ships fail during test runs at Genevia would only ensure that he and Annie would get caught. The drive systems needed to fail after the ships were gone from Genevia. Ideally, the ships all in proximity to one another would have drive failures at the same time, and that time would preferably not be when they were near civilian installations.
Those were their must-have requirements: Not in Genevia, Catastrophic, Simultaneous, and Not fixable en masse if discovered.
The other issue was that he and his team only ever worked on a small fraction of the ships being built at Genevia. Even if they worked out something that met all their criteria, it would barely make an impact.
Jeremy meandered into the san and activated his shower, continuing to mull over the problem they faced. While working with Annie the night before, they’d ruled out yet another option, because the sabotage would be automatically fixed when routine updates were run after a ship’s first shakedown mission.
Despite his dream to destroy all the enemy vessels—or even a large percentage of them—he was starting to fear that they’d have no choice but to fall back after only sabotaging the ships he and Annie worked on.
Once out of the shower, he stared in the mirror for a few long minutes, considering what he really needed to do.
Nearly all of the Nietzschean ships used the same NSAI model for their drive control systems. There were a few variants in the specs, and the larger ships, such as the pinnacles, had several of the DCS AIs, but by and large, they all used the same core logic and systems.
The best option was to alter that NSAI’s parameters, or its source data, in an undetectable way that would achieve his goals.
He sat down at his table and took a bite of bacon, which tasted worse than usual, and chased it with a gulp of coffee. Barely seeing what was in front of him, Jeremy re-opened the NSAI source codebases and looked at various subsystems within.
There were dozens of ways he could alter the NSAI’s code, but he needed something that would pass tests and not be detected, and so far, he’d not found a single method that would work.
“Dammit,” he muttered, beginning to fear there really was no way to pull off the mass sabotage he and Annie dreamt of.
Which makes sense. These systems are built specifically to prevent this sort of thing.
“Ten minutes until your shuttle leaves,” his servitor’s robotic voice said, bringing Jeremy to his feet.
He looked down and realized that not only was he still naked, he’d not used the autodryer, and his hair was still wet.
Rushing into the san, he palmed the dryer control, and his head felt a chill as the warm air removed the moisture from his scalp while the rest of his already dry body was warmed by the same air.
For a second, he marveled at how small differences in the same system could completely change perception of the same event.
The air stopped, and he stared wide-eyed at his reflection in the mirror.
“Stars, I think I’ve got it!”
* * * * *
All through the workday, he was bursting at the seams to tell Annie his plan, but they’d agreed not to discuss their scheme while on the job—either audibly, or via the Link—lest something was overheard or intercepted.
He knew that she could tell that he had an idea, though, b
ecause she suggested he visit her later in the evening for an extra relaxation session.
Annie’s side-gig was a useful cover for them spending a lot of time together, but the service she offered also made things difficult, because she very frequently had legitimate clients that she couldn’t just brush off without arousing suspicion.
“Again with Annie?” Par commented after Annie had told Jeremy when to come over that evening. He chuckled and nudged Jeremy in the shoulder, smiling hungrily as he watched Annie walk away.
Jeremy shrugged nonchalantly, doing his best to ignore the guilt he felt about betraying Anatha, which happened whenever he pretended he was availing himself of Annie’s services.
“Well, someone’s gotta do it.”
Par stared at Annie’s ass for a moment, a wistful look on his face. “Stars, I wish I had enough extra credit to ‘do it’ once in a while. It looks like it needs a lot of doing.”
Jeremy didn’t know exactly what to say. He’d never so much as touched Annie, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to. Anatha’s memory just wouldn’t let him.
“Maybe if you didn’t drink and gamble away every credit you made, you’d have some spare change for some relaxation time,” Jeremy said, shifting the topic.
“Give up gambling?” Par placed a hand on his chest and gave Jeremy a shocked look. “Trust me, no woman’s ass is worth that. I mean…that’s what sims are for, anyway. I can have annnny woman I want in there. Trust me, I have half the women on our crew sim’d up.”
“Right, sure,” Jeremy said as they walked down a half-finished corridor in a carrier. “Because that’s healthy. You know it creates issues upstairs to conflate real and imaginary people.” He tapped a finger against the side of his head for emphasis. “You’re gonna get flagged at your next psych eval.”
“Pssshh,” Par waved a hand dismissively. “I’ve been doing this for years. Hasn’t ever caused me a problem.”
Jeremy only laughed and slapped Par on the shoulder, glad to have turned the conversation away from the time he spent with Annie, though he was surprised at how defensive he felt about her and how much Par’s remarks got under his skin.