by M. D. Cooper
Stopping a few meters away, Marta crossed her arms and favored the cat with a stern look. “Aren’t you getting a bit big to do that?” she asked Beck repressively, but Terrance could see her lip twitch slightly as she said it.
The goofy upside-down face he presented had the man reaching out to tousle the cat’s ears.
“You’re no lightweight, Beck,” he admitted. “I don’t mind you doing it at times like this, but if we were to go ringside—or planetside—that’s an entirely different matter. You understand why?”
<’Cuz we won’t be in a ‘vironment we can control, and Kodi may need your undivided attention,> the cat parroted back, and Terrance suppressed a grin.
“Very good,” he told the cat, holding Beck’s attention as he added sternly. “Don’t forget that, now, you hear?”
The cat blinked once at him, then lifted his head back upright.
He poked the cat a few times gently along his flank to get the cat’s attention. “You hear me, Beck?” he repeated.
He was rewarded with a slightly sulky, <’kay, I hear.>
He and Marta exchanged amused glances, and then Terrance bent forward, urging the cat to jump down. “Enough of that, kid. I just got out of stasis; I’m not sure I can handle much of that until I build my strength back up.” He winked at Marta, and she rolled her eyes at the obvious lie.
The cat chuffed and eyed him disdainfully.
“Oh, she did, did she?” He shot the doctor a mock glare. “Exactly whose side are you on, anyway, doc? C’mon, help a guy out here, won’t you?”
“Not on your life, Terrance Enfield. I’ve paid my dues and served my cat duty for this leg of the journey. He’s all yours now.” She shook her head after Beck as she watched the cat scamper off.
“I’d forgotten how…energetic…younglings are,” she added as she fell into step with him, and they began to stroll through the park. “I began to envy the lot of you, sleeping away in your pods while I spent the first few years awake, working the early medical shifts.” She grinned up at him. “I admit I was a bit relieved when it came time to send Beck into stasis.”
They walked companionably along for a few moments before she looked appraisingly over at him again. “So, how’s the connection between you two? Any differences between this embedding and the one you experienced with Eric?”
Terrance paused to consider her question, then shot her a considering look. “Am I supposed to feel something different, Marta?”
“Everything checks out just fine medically,” the doctor hastened to assure them. “You’re just my first human to have two different AIs embed within him, so I wanted to make sure you weren’t experiencing anything out of the ordinary.”
“Right as rain, from my point of view,” Terrance reported. “Actually, it…feels a bit like reattaching a missing limb.” He frowned over at her, and then lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Not sure that translates very well, but it’s the best description I can come up with.”
“Good,” she nodded in satisfaction. “Then that’s one thing I can check off my list.”
Terrance frowned as he considered the list of things that remained. Top of mind—largely because they were heading to a briefing on the subject—was the status of the drone carrying the two stolen AIs to Tau Ceti.
Terrance groaned mentally as he spied Jason and Tobias enter the café a few meters ahead of them.
* * * * *
Jason ducked inside the café and nodded to a few of the ESF soldiers enjoying their mid-morning coffee and pastry, when Tobi—who was strolling with panther-like grace between him and Tobias’s frame—rumbled a low warning growl.
Instinctively, Jason dipped into his L2 state and glanced around, cataloguing items within the café that he might turn into weapons. Everything around him slowed, patrons seeming to take on a graceful flow as his frame of reference sped up.
And then he spotted Terrance, Marta…and, of course, Beck.
Abruptly, time started flowing at normal speed again.
He shook his head as he reached inside his pocket for the special ear inserts he habitually wore, which provided him with the enhanced Link pairing to Tobias. He’d removed them before entering stasis and had yet to reinsert them.
Rolling the clear polymer pieces between his fingers, he saw the nanofilament lacing their insides glitter as they caught the light. He paused to fit them inside his ears, yawning a few times and ignoring the slight disorientation as they conformed to the curls and flutes of the organs, altering his auditory input.
Instantly, his connection with the Weapon Born took on a more nuanced flavor, and he sensed the AI’s presence more fully than he ever did across the Link. It was the closest he would ever get to experiencing the kind of connection brought by a true human/AI pairing, since the neural composition of L2 humans made embedding impossible.
he complained to Tobias on their private channel, his tone laced with mild irritation.
Tobias sent a snort of laughter.
They were gathering under an awning, where small tables looked out upon one of the park’s small lakes. As Calista looked over from where she stood next to one of the bistro tables, he sent her a slow, lazy grin and was rewarded with a sultry look and a slight upturn of her lips before she turned away to speak to the man seated at the table near her.
Jason grinned.
As he neared, he saw Calista glance down at Jonesy, seated at her side. The engineer had leant back in his chair, arms crossed behind his head, a cocky grin on h
is face.
“Wow, Jonesy, that’s huge,” she exclaimed. “Impressive!”
Jason’s brows drew down, as it looked like her eyes were focused on Jonesy’s crotch. He found himself leaving Tobi behind as his pace quickened. He heard Tobias chuckle mentally as they approached the group.
Craning his neck, he stepped clear of the last person between them and the table, and came to an abrupt halt. Tobias snickered inside his head as Jason was confronted with an unimpeded view of Jonesy’s…pineapple.
Everyone around the table was exclaiming over Jonesy’s large…pineapple…and Jason had to chuckle at his own insecurities. As he joined the group, he grabbed an empty bar stool and pulled it up to the table to admire the basket Jonesy had just plonked down before them.
“Dude,” he said with a grin, “is that what you’ve been doing while we’ve been sleeping the decades away? Creating your own tropical paradise on the ship?” He grinned over at Jonesy, and saw Calista’s assistant give a slight shrug.
Engineer, not assistant, Jason corrected himself mentally. Jonesy’s an engineer now—been one for at least thirty years, at this point.
“Ah, well, I got a little bored during this last stasis round and thought, ‘why the hell not?’.” He flashed a smile, brilliantly white teeth framed by a dark complexion, and Jason noticed a new maturity in the man’s carriage.
Although Jonesy looked the same physically, thanks to rejuv, Jason could see decades of living shining through the man’s eyes. The awkwardness that had once characterized Calista’s young and slightly anxious assistant had transformed into a confidence that Jason could see in the way the man carried himself.
“Well, I for one sure am glad to see an honest-to-stars fresh pineapple, sitting on the table in front of us,” Jason grinned, winking over at Calista. “It’s been years since I’ve eaten one of these things.”
He hefted the fruit in his hands, marveling at its prickly, golden surface and long, green crown. As he set it back down, he cocked his head to one side and glanced at the engineer. “So, going to tell us everything that happened during the last ten years we were sleeping?”
Jonesy’s smile dimmed at bit. “Well, as to that….”
He let his words fade as he glanced from Logan, seated at the bistro table next to him, to where Shannon had projected her avatar.
“There’s news, I take it?” Jason cocked a brow at Jonesy, following his gaze over to Logan. “From Tau Ceti, or from the drone?”
Terrance gestured around and added, “Pull up a chair, everyone, and we’ll tell you what we know.”
Calista shifted to make room for Marta, and Jason suppressed a smirk as Beck leapt nimbly into Terrance’s lap once the man was seated. Terrance shot him a black look, and the L2 raised his hands in a gesture of innocence.
With one more pointed glare Jason’s way, Terrance turned to Logan, and the AI took that as his cue to drop a bit of unwelcome news in their midst.
“Our attempt to intercept the drone has proven unsuccessful.”
His candid statement was met with a soft sound of dismay from Calista. Jason exchanged looks with the Vale’s captain and saw reflected in her eyes the same thing that was running through his mind: things just got a bit more difficult.
“The drone did initially accept the override code we obtained from Norden’s files, but when we ordered it to belay its delivery orders, it requested a secondary authentication code we did not have,” Landon interjected from his seat next to his brother, picking up the narrative. After a quick glance over at Logan, he added dryly, “Seems like someone conveniently forgot to tell us about that part.”
Logan shook his head. “Or it was added by the Matsu-kai after they took delivery.” He shifted slightly. “It fits their profile.”
“At any rate,” Terrance concluded, “the drone’s no longer a part of the equation. It delivered its payload a few days ago.”
“So now what? We have to search the entire system for them?” Calista’s voice was bleak.
“Maybe, maybe not,” Terrance cautioned. “Kodi?”
An icon hovered in Jason’s mind’s eye. As he opened it and began scrolling through the list of names, he felt Terrance’s eyes on him. Glancing up, he caught a look on the exec’s face.
“Is there something in here you think—”
Jason stopped abruptly as he came across a name he recognized.
“That’s the name of the scientist your dad wanted to exchange research notes with, isn’t it?” Terrance asked.
Jason nodded. “Sure is.” He sighed. “It would appear that we have more than one reason to look this guy up.”
Turning to the team, he highlighted the name Terrance had spotted on Galene’s list of known Matsu-kai: Noa Sakai.
PART THREE: DELIVERY
THE CALL OF DUTY
STELLAR DATE: 02.01.3235 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: Nanotechnology Regulatory Commission
REGION: Ring Galene, Tau Ceti
Thirty-three years after Noa received word that the AIs were coming….
The missive came in an innocuous wrapper.
Engrossed by the content displayed on the holo behind the clear plas walls of his office at the NRC, Noa dismissed the ping announcing a new message had appeared in his queue without even looking at the header. He was too absorbed in his most recent run of simulations. If he could just figure out how to—
The ping sounded again, increasing in its volume, signaling by its tone that it was a Family matter.
That caught Noa’s attention. He placed the sim on hold and accessed his queue, freezing in shock when he saw the sender’s ident embedded in the message’s header: Sakai Kumichō , Matsu-kai, El Dorado. He swallowed, glancing furtively around at his colleagues, hidden behind plas windows in their own offices.
It wasn't that he'd forgotten about the drone’s impending arrival; the truth more closely resembled an attempt to bury his awareness of a matter he had known about for more than fifty years. In the back of his brain, he’d never forgotten that he was complicit not only in denying two sentients their freedom, but in stealing more than five decades of these sentients’ lives.
Glancing casually around, he noted that his behavior had not drawn any undue attention. This was good. He pulled away from his desk and, in case anyone happened to glance up, made it a point to stretch before commenting, “I think I'll go grab a coffee.”
The two physicists in the lab on the other side of his office’s plas window looked up distractedly. One of them waved his hand idly and then returned to his research. Noa strolled out as casually as he could, glancing down the corridor to ensure no one was coming his way.
He came to an empty lounge and veered into it. Giving the missive his Sakai token, he accessed its contents. The message was simple:
[Package delivery in two weeks]
Noa sighed. How am I going to
handle this?
He glanced at the header of the memo, and saw that Hiro had been copied—as was proper, since Hiro had recently succeeded his father as leader of the Family branch in Tau Ceti.
There was no help for it; he would have to contact Hiro and bluff his way through. If the AIs had any hope of being freed, he would have to take control.
Before he could initiate the connection, Hiro’s token floated before him. Accepting the secured connection, he had his avatar bow its head, as the blood-red icon, undulating in the shape of a viper, uncoiled to reveal the new Tau Ceti so-honbucho. The dark gaze of the leader of the Matsu-kai organization on Ring Galene peered at him impassively.
Hiro said without preamble.
Noa could hear the dismissal in Hiro’s tone and knew that if he intended to act, he must do so now.
Hiro was unused to anyone countermanding a pronouncement of the so-honbucho, no matter how casually it had been phrased.
Noa paused, drew a deep breath.