by P. R. Adams
Dreams. Numbers and lessons. The way enemies could draw you in through deception and lies, the way trickery could confuse even the sharpest of minds.
Who had been her true parents? The GSA. A cylinder full of fluid. Mother—the teacher that was comprised of processors and circuits that fed her volumes of information at a time where most children were reading faces and joining sounds to basic meaning.
Trust. Trust only your parents—the GSA, Mother.
Purpose. Serve the Kedraalian Republic. Protect it from all threats, foreign and domestic.
Sacrifice. Your life is less valuable than the lives and ideals of those you serve. You were born for this role. Your flesh, your mind—they are tools to be used to further the good of the Republic.
These were concepts she had accepted. It wasn’t simply because they had been ingrained in her as a child. They had, but that hadn’t been enough. She’d evaluated them using the distance and objectivity that had been engineered into her.
The purpose behind these concepts seemed objectively noble.
History supported the idea that Kedraal had been established by good people with good intent. Earth’s collapse had taken some of the worst of humanity with it. But what had become of humans in the decades since the establishment of this new home—the splintering, the resource wasting, the warfare…
What had been in the training, the words of her creator? You are greater than the human shell holding you. You are free of the poisons that destroy the human mind.
And maybe she was. Free of bias and fervor, free of greed and waste, framed by logic and objectivity.
Yet she was still human beneath it all.
Remember that. Frail and vulnerable when compared to machinery and weapons.
She was protector and tool, but she was also one with those she protected.
A familiar hatch rose from the darkness before her, and the dream receded. She was back in the moment, aboard the Clarion, outside her cabin.
The hatch opened; she barely got through before it closed.
Peeling the shadowsuit off took a pain-filled lifetime. Stiles filled the plastic bag with water in the hopes that it might preserve Patel’s eye a little longer. The solution the eye held was almost certainly a mechanical enhancement rather than a biological manipulation of the eyes themselves. Maybe the eye was completely mechanical, the way Penn’s had been.
She shivered beneath a cold spray, testing the wounds to be sure they were still closed. Toweling off was a slow process, as she took care not to disturb the wounds. There were sealant spray, disinfectant, and medicines to accelerate the production of blood—things she’d taken from the Pandora infirmary. Her body was meant to recover quickly, but it still had its limits. Human limits. The pills left a bitter taste in her mouth and a burning sensation in her stomach. She drank another liter of water, this with a vitamin and nutrient powder pack with a hint of orange flavoring.
Then she pulled on socks, thermals, and a bathrobe, and climbed into her bunk. There was a war going on outside her cabin, but she was in no condition to affect it.
So she turned her still hyper-alert mind to the devices taken from Patel.
Breaking the security was the first step, and she finally had time and resources to commit to that. She pulled a clear brick from her desk drawer, and a sapphire light glowed at the center. A control interface flared to life on the surface.
With only Penn’s device, hacking through SAID security had been impossible, at least for her. Taking Srisha’s device had improved the odds. Now with Agent Patel’s two devices, her system could start searching for patterns and using known vulnerabilities to see which system broke first. Once inside any of the four devices, the odds of gaining access to any of the others would improve significantly.
The GSA lieutenant attached the devices to her own using thin cables, then launched the hacking suite that was her only real weapon. She told her device to wake her when it had something.
Then Stiles lay on the bunk, shut her mind off, and dreamed.
Of lessons and numbers, numbers and lessons.
How to defend herself. How to leave herself defenseless.
How to exploit others’ weaknesses. How to make herself seem exploitable.
How to read others. How to make it seem as if she were being read.
Lessons began early. Identity. Brianna Stiles. One of a handful of servants of the state, engineered to provide a service beyond what a human could. A Genesys 3. There had been three of the prior generation, all engineered to burn bright as the most brilliant star. They had probably saved the Kedraalian Republic from collapse without anyone even knowing it.
But they had aged quickly by design and had died even more quickly.
Her people? The third generation? The iteration that took the human body to its reasonable extreme?
As far as she knew, there were still four of them.
They were in her dreams, too. Lessons. The only people who could safely train with her when the more lethal aspects of combat were focused upon.
And they were the only ones she felt for. Not just physical, although there was that, too. Five of them had survived the birthing process and been declared safe. And in their pubescent state, the built-in pheromones and natural attractiveness had led to irresistible bonding. They had experimented, coupled, grouped, fought, split off to be alone, then come back together for intense makeup sex.
It was all part of the programming. The only way one of them would ever betray the other would be for the good of their Kedraalian Republic.
That bonding was a dull pain for Stiles, a memory of a happier time.
Felix. He had been the one she had developed the greatest attachment to.
Love, maybe? Could she feel love? Certainly lust. He was beautiful and powerful and tender. They had been the first and second to slip from their wombs, and the connection they’d made had been instant and natural.
When they were together, his fingers were magical, electric against her flesh. And his eyes—the same emerald of their creator, the long, dark brown hair that she loved to run her fingers through and to bunch in her fist when she—
An alarm woke Stiles.
She rolled from the bunk, wincing as the stiffening muscles protested. Her legs were unsteady and weak, and her head pounded.
When she was finally able to squint her eyes enough, the computing brick showed that twenty minutes and thirty-six seconds had transpired. It was forever in computer time, and the brick had accomplished quite a bit. Mostly, it had eliminated the likelihood of thousands of potential hacks for any of the four devices.
But more importantly, it had found a vulnerability.
The device taken from Srisha’s hip pouch was out of date. It had been used for unintended purposes, connecting into the network at the listening post. And it had a few defense mechanisms disabled as a result.
Now Stiles’s computing brick was inside the device, disabling more defenses, re-enabling services that should never have even been installed. These services were hers now, granting her greater and greater privileges, until Srisha’s device was completely open to the GSA officer.
With the pounding headache and shivering, the information was too much to take in.
Stiles took deep breaths and forced herself to focus. Fight it!
She connected to her brick through her communicator. “Transfer all files…”
Where? What am I doing?
“Transfer…all files…from new device to old.”
There was something more—something she was forgetting.
Encryption! “Disable all encryption.”
Her computing brick flashed acknowledgment.
The soreness became less important as the data transferred over, but the headache and dizziness were overwhelming.
Fight it!
What had Srisha known? What had she discovered on Jotun? There was so much potential knowledge to be had now.
The computing brick flashed bright blue: an a
lert. There was an active communication channel between Srisha’s device and her brother’s computing device. It wasn’t a backdoor into the zipper device or the image taken from Penn’s eyeball, but it was a start.
Stiles poked through some of the unencrypted data files while her system continued its hacking.
In less than a minute, her system was inside Agent Patel’s computing device. The same series of defense mechanism shutdowns, services spawning, and privilege escalations was well underway.
Ten minutes passed, then Stiles’s brick found an unauthorized connection protocol between Agent Patel’s computing device and his zipper mechanism.
Data decryption began, and a few minutes later, a similar vulnerability was found in Agent Penn’s eye.
Nausea wracked Stiles. She breathed through it.
Hack the system. Get the data. You can sleep later!
The vulnerabilities… What was it about the vulnerabilities?
They were minor. The odds of them ever being discovered were infinitesimal, the odds of exploitation so close to zero as to be not worth considering.
But she had the rare advantage of knowing about the devices and having the proper hacking suite to pull off an exploit.
More data transferred to her computing brick.
It was a treasure trove. And it was far too much for her to dig through alone. She needed to get it to her GSA handlers. Maybe she could discover what was really going on within the SAID ranks. What was behind Patel and his operations? What did McLeod know?
These were the questions that had to be answered soon. Questions that—
Her legs buckled, but she caught herself. Spots flashed in her vision.
Rest. Fluids. Time. She needed all of them, but the mission came first.
She launched a search among the data transferred over, sorting it by keywords and chronology: Azoren, shadow, Penn, Patel, GSA, SAID, operations, Jotun, Kedraal, Republic, Federation, Gulmar, Union.
While the search ranked its findings, Stiles returned to her bunk and checked the Clarion’s open data for an update. When she saw that they were engaged with ships that apparently had the same sort of stealth capabilities as the cruiser that had attacked them over Jotun, she was only slightly surprised.
Azoren. It was obvious, even with her clouded thoughts.
An ambush. Just like when they declared war decades ago.
Of course the Azoren would use such a stealth technology for a sneak attack. Hadn’t that been what the GSA had been coordinating with the SAID in the DMZ? Hadn’t that been Penn’s supposed mission? Her supposed mission? Hadn’t people died for what was only proof of concept, not even the real objective? But that was always the first step toward action.
She closed her eyes. How had she confused the GSA and SAID for Azoren? Had she?
The search started ranking its results.
One of the top results caught her eye: Operation Revitalization.
She opened the file and skimmed.
And gasped.
Her heart pounded, and her eyes widened. What she was seeing was…impossible.
Was her lightheadedness causing her to read things incorrectly?
No. It made sense. Knowing Patel and the SAID, it made sense.
But what could she do with the data? She was on a ship, not back on Kedraal. She needed to get the information to the parliament, to people in the governmental heart of the capital city of Varudin. How? Who could she trust to do that?
Stiles activated her communicator and sent a connection request to Commander Benson.
Seconds passed, and the young lieutenant laid back, ready for another nap.
A text reply got her attention: In the middle of a situation.
Of course, yes. The battle. But did Benson understand what was at stake?
Stiles copied the relevant data from her brick. It took a few tries, and she had to clean it up, but she finally texted back: Commander, I understand the urgency. This is just as important. I’ve hacked SAID devices. This is the reason you’re fighting Azoren ships, and I’m sure they are Azoren.
Text below taken from SAID devices…
“…elimination of prime minister essential to revitalization of wartime footing…”
“…Azoren surprise attack a call to action…”
“…death of prime minister a tragic necessity with the benefit of allowing placement of an ally…”
“…prime minister task force returning at time of engagement…”
“…wartime footing means greater funding, forced alliance with Gulmar Union…”
“…Iwo Jima flagship can be destroyed with surprise attack, same as the defense fleet…”
Stiles waited a few seconds, squeezing her eyes against a throbbing headache, then dictated the closing sentences: The Iwo Jima must be inbound from travel. The Azoren are planning to attack it and kill the prime minister, Commander.
And she’s going to be jumping right into this ambush.
The reply didn’t come, and Stiles wondered if maybe the Clarion had taken a crippling hit. Maybe everyone else was dead, and she was slowly drifting off into space. She would need to hold her breath to survive something like that.
She exhaled…and drifted off…to sleep.
12
Azoren. Benson had been sure the ships were Azoren, but now there was no questioning it. And not just Azoren, but a fleet drawn in by intelligence leaked to their government by the SAID.
The revelation shook the Kedraalian commander nearly as deeply as seeing the last of the fleeing defense ships turned into superheated particles.
How? How could someone think they were serving the Kedraalian good by killing duly elected leaders? Prime Minister Igarashi wasn’t the greatest leader in the short history of the Republic, but she was capable. She was guiding the nation through a stagnant economy and a changing society. She was a coalition builder who was actually seeking peace with former belligerents, even if it was a pointless exercise.
Agent Patel had questions to answer. He probably had a lifetime of prison ahead of him.
If any of them lived.
Benson pressed the heel of her hand against her damp forehead. Things were unraveling. She was struggling to breathe, as if she were caught in a heated, crushing clamp. On the giant display, ships closed from all around her tiny, outclassed task force. G-forces pulled her this way and that as the Clarion maneuvered, but the giant display still flashed a simulation of energy weapons strikes that tested the ship’s shields. No volume was low enough to keep the klaxons out of her head.
There were simply too many enemy ships firing too many weapons to effectively maneuver against them. So far out from Kedraal, space was wide open, but there were limits to how much the ships could move without risking the enemy abandoning pursuit. And her little task force was doing all it could to strike back against the pursuers.
For now. Until a shield failed or an antiquated system failed.
That would be the end of the ploy, and maybe it would be the end of them.
The plan had been simple: draw the smaller group of Azoren vessels off and let the Home Defense Fleet get some ships operational. Weapons, maneuverability—it didn’t take much to give them hope.
But the entire Azoren fleet had turned its attention on the Clarion now.
And Benson realized why: The prime minister’s task force was inbound. It would be one group too many for the enemy captain to deal with.
So the Clarion and its ancient ships needed to be eliminated.
The Azoren were taking the smart approach: reducing the amount of space there was to operate within. They were lacing the void with weapons fire, going less for lock-on and certain hits and more for squeezing her into a smaller and smaller box.
If her ships were going to be destroyed, she needed to get word of what was happening to the parliament. SAID had run a rogue operation, and it had gone too far.
“Lieutenant Bales, get me back in touch with Commander Devry, please.”
/> The communications officer held up a finger. “Connection to your communicator…now, ma’am.”
And like that, Devry’s voice was in Benson’s ear. “Faith?”
“I don’t mean to bug you, but we’re in a tight situation here.”
“We still don’t have sensors fully operational, but things are moving faster. The other ships stopped firing.”
“At you. They’re giving my task force more than it can handle.”
“Task force? You had a handful of ships.”
“It’s all I’ve got. Gillian, listen, this is even worse than we thought.”
“I can’t see how something could—”
“This attack—it’s not just about destroying the fleet. The prime minister’s returning, isn’t she?”
Seconds passed. “How did you know that?”
“Because the Azoren know that.”
“The Azoren? You know these are Azoren ships?”
The giant display flickered, and the klaxon went silent.
Chao’s jaw clenched tight enough that muscles bulged. “Significant damage to the third deck, starboard side. Primary reactor damaged. Damage control teams are on their way.”
Benson squeezed the support rails to hide her shaking hands. “Thank you, Ensign Chao.”
Flickering intensified on the display, then it powered off.
Benson checked the damage control list. Teams were transferring everything to an alternate power system: another reactor, batteries.
They couldn’t do that for the casualties that flowed across her display.
Redundancies were all that was keeping the Clarion in the fight, but human life didn’t have a backup. At some point they were going to find the limit to the parallel systems; they were already nearing human limits.
“Faith?” Devry sounded distant; perhaps more than the reactor had been damaged.
“A pretty nasty hit. They’re getting closer.”