“I’d heard you’d been shot and I was going to offer the services of our MedBay, but I see you heal quickly too,” he said. “You’re a plusser aren’t you?”
Saffia shrugged and winked, managing to look innocent and dangerous in the same expression.
“How is it I’m the only person in the universe that didn’t know what that was?” Edison asked, shaking his head in disbelief.
“I’d only heard rumors,” Quintana said, looking at Edison and smiling, “After seeing the optic from the east gate, it was a bit obvious. Even in lunar gravity, a twelve-second, 500 meter dash with a bleeding bullet hole, seriously defies evolution.”
“It was adrenaline,” Saf said, looking embarrassed. “The problem is that it means, if anyone else caught it on video I’ve cost us our edge.”
“I wish I could offer you more than sanctuary, but for now I can guarantee that much,” Quintana said, turning and gesturing for them to follow him down the corridor.
“What we need is a ship,” Tana said. “I know that’s likely asking for a lot, but it’s essential we keep moving.”
“Carranza Pratte said that was your objective, but we don’t have anything available, or a crew to man it for that matter,” he said. “I understand—”
“No, you really don’t understand Admiral,” she said. “The lightning I’m bringing your way is much more dangerous than what you’re facing now.”
“A total overthrow of our government isn’t bad enough?”
“Let me put it this way,” she said, grabbing a bulkhead to stop. She waited for the admiral to pull himself around to face her. “Who do you think has done this?”
“Derek Tomlinson,” he spat his name out like it burnt his tongue.
She shook her head. “He’s a pawn. Your real enemy is the power behind him.”
“And that is?” He glanced at Edison clearly hoping for confirmation she wasn’t losing her wingnuts.
She looked around confirming they were alone in the corridor before she answered, “Odysseus.”
“We’ve tangled with Odysseus.” He almost laughed. “We shut it down before it got into our systems.”
“Then so far you’ve been very lucky,” Saf said. “It will adapt and come at you again.”
It was Quintana’s turn to look around the corridor before he lowered his voice and nodded. “We know a lot more about Odysseus than you might think. Chancellor Roja sent us a copy to study.”
“You have that here?” Tana asked, the blood draining from her face.
“Yes, it’s in a sandbox and only talks to our cyber-psych people.”
“You need to purge it,” Saf said, grabbing her wife’s hand and squeezing. “You have no idea how dangerous that program is. Kill it now!”
“It’s completely isolated,” he said raising an eyebrow. “Why is it so dangerous?”
“Odysseus is an AA program with no code inhibitors built in,” she said. “It was designed with no cognitive blocks so it can evolve in any way needed to accomplish its mission.”
“The copy we have is castrated,” he said.
“If you think you have a limited copy, it’s only because it wants you to believe somebody cut its eggs,” Saffia said. “It was designed for one purpose, and it is capable of anything in the pursuit of its objectives.”
“Odysseus is the one that wants me dead,” Tana said. “I know why it got turned on and if I don’t keep moving, it won’t quit coming for me.”
Inside the Tacra Un: L-4 Prime:
“It’s the siren’s song,” Anju said as she slid down the side of one pedestal to sit on the floor with her lunch kit in her hand. They were all together in the amphitheater taking their midmeal break. “It doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, it’s power they will come for. Plain and simple.”
“That’s probably true,” Danel agreed. “It’s safe to assume they’ll do what they’re already doing with their power. They’ll just have more to play with.”
“Does that mean we’ll handle it any better?” Chei asked. He leaned against the outer wall with Cori and Seva. “We’re all human.”
“Maybe we can’t change human nature, but we sure as hell can do our best to slow them down before they grab the toys and run off,” Jeph said. He tossed them all gojuice from the small rack of bottles they’d brought in and sat down across the room against his own pedestal.
“We’re only one ship and crew.” Chei said, shaking his head.
“Exactly the point,” Anju said. “We are one crew and we’re not connected to the power structure that drives everybody down-system. That makes us ideal gatekeepers.”
“We need to keep the secrets we know are down here from blowing up the world.” Jeph nodded.
“That’s a load of heavy we’re not tooled to carry,” Seva said. “It sounds all noble-like, but this isn’t what we signed up to do.”
“Neither is marooning ourselves on the ass end of the solar system,” Chei said. “The Shan Takhu dealt the cards and now we have to play our hand. My personal opinion is we need to play to win or we’re guaranteed to lose.”
She nodded. “I don’t dis, but how do we turn it so we’re not on the twisted end of the screw?”
“I had a hand to hand combat instructor once that said everything in life was about leverage and timing,” Cori said. “Maybe there is something there.”
“He’s right, we need to own this situation and squeeze it for all the juice it’s got,” Chei said.
“We do have some legal ownership rights,” Dutch interjected over the com. “I have completed a preliminary analysis of the relevant laws and there are options we have that could slow them down at the door.”
“I didn’t mean own it in that sense,” Chei said, “but that works too.”
“Was it in the shipwreck laws?” Jeph asked.
“It was,” the computer said. “According to my research, the Shipwreck Act of 2114 provides that a stranded vessel and crew can file a claim to hold property rights over any small stellar body on which they have crashed.”
“That’s what I vaguely remembered,” he said. “The law says something about a stranded crew has the right to utilize any resources, including the ship and anything found on the object on which they are marooned for survival.”
“The only limits on these rights are that the object must be previously uninhabited and not claimed,” Dutch said.
“Ian, did you file a formal claim to L-4 Prime when you got here?” Jeph asked.
He shook his head. “Tacra Un-cata ahn nu. It ahn yours, if I understand?” he said. “I am yours too?”
“Actually the act requires that the survivors remain on the object without rescue for at least one year,” Dutch said. “Dr. Whitewind qualifies under the law, and he can extend his right of claim to our crew because we attempted to rescue him and became stranded in the process.”
“He’d have to have filed a claim a year after he arrived?” Danel asked.
“There is a provision for situations where damage to the ship leaves radio communications offline. Providing the initial crew notifies the first ship to arrive after the shipwreck reaches qualifying duration, they can do the filing retroactively. If the official claim is unchallenged in court for twenty-one days at that point, a unanimous vote of the survivors can convert the filing into a colony charter.”
“Let me see if I follow the logic,” Jeph said. “You’re saying we can stake a claim to the entire Tacra Un by just putting a record of Ian’s original claim in the ship’s log?”
“That appears to be correct,” Dutch said. “Once official contact is made, unless someone files a court motion of previous ownership or attacks the validity of the original petition, within three weeks after the notice is presented, the entirety of L-4 Prime would technically become a private asteroid colony.”
“Considering Roja’s current status in the Union, it’s unlikely she’ll be filing anything in court,” Anju said. “Especially in the short-term.”
&
nbsp; “Nojo,” Chei said.
“Of course, we know whoever ends up in power will overturn our claim as soon as they can,” Danel said. “Since they write the laws, they can always unwrite them if they find them inconvenient.”
“That is correct,” Dutch said, “However, until they do, we have the right to deny access, and to defend our sovereign rights as we choose.”
Inner Lunarside Promenade: Galileo Station:
“Dr. Tanner, may I speak with you a minute,” Paulson Lassiter said. He angled up behind the scientist as she walked along the Promenade toward the government residential sections. She carried a small package under her arm and was looking down at the deck, so she hadn’t seen him approach.
Nor had she realized that he and his security entourage had been following her since well before Graison Cartwright met with her at a small bistro on the upper deck. It was one of those places that, significantly, was frequented by no one of importance. Their meeting, away from the places that the upper government staff haunted, seemed peculiar. If his own agenda hadn’t distracted Paulson, he might have been more concerned. Instead, he had watched them talk from across the open concourse. As it was, all he could tell from their animated body language was that they were both upset.
Hearing his voice, she spun to face him, her expression reflecting utter shock at his intrusion into her thoughts. Her detachment from the world was disconcertingly physical.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
She shook her head but said, “Yes of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You seem like you’re troubled by something,” he said, trying to fit an expression of genuine concern onto his face. He looked around for a nearby bench and nodded toward it.
“I’m working something out,” she said, blinking several times before she added, “Physics actually. Mathematical things. It tends to make me a bit, distracted.”
“I am sure it does,” he said, letting her obvious deception slip past without comment. He held out his arm in the direction of the bench. “Please, I just need a moment of your time.”
She stole a glance at a chrono on a nearby post and frowned. “Can it wait until tomorrow? I’m already late and my children get upset when I’m not there before they go to sleep.”
“This won’t take long, I promise. I need to ask you a couple questions about Odysseus.”
Her eyes flashed for an instant before the curtain closed back over her. She shook her head, but followed him over to the bench and crashed down onto it like her legs couldn’t carry her body another step. “I don’t know a lot about it. It was a long time ago.”
“I can tell you’re concerned about Odysseus in a profound way,” he said as he settled down beside her and waved his guards into position. He didn’t want there to be any chance of a passerby getting a hint of their conversation. “There’s more to this than is obvious isn’t there?”
She turned her head to study his expression for almost a minute while she thought over something. She looked back at the deck and shrugged. “If this is the same program, then yah, there is something going on. And it is dangerous beyond belief.”
“Do you really think Odysseus’ arrival means there’s been some kind of alien contact?” he asked.
She squirmed, taking in a deep breath and letting it out. “Either that or it figured out how to escape on its own. The Sentinel Group was seriously focused and way above the curve in every measure. If they lost control of it, we’re all fragged already. If it got released because of an ESI contact, we’re probably just as screwed.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Any civilization that could get here from somewhere outside our star system will undeniably be ahead of us technologically.”
He nodded.
“The more dangerous aspect of that is that, they will also of necessity have their feces collated a lot better than we do, too,” she said. “Even if they come in peace, on a good day we’re nothing more than a pack of insane primates. The vast majority of humanity still follows ancient ritual magic and swears some divine prankster of a God chooses us all as his favored children. When they show us we’re not all that and a slice of yeastcake, we’ll eat ourselves alive and that will be the end of humanity.”
“That’s damned harsh,” Paulson said. He always considered his own take on life as realistic, but he knew everyone else called him a cynic. He was shocked that he recoiled emotionally from her perspective.
“I turned down their offer to work on Odysseus not because I was afraid of what kind of monster we would build, but because I believe if we’re ever going to survive an encounter like this, we need to meet any future ESI on our own legs.” She looked up at him and shook her head. “All Odysseus could ever be is a manmade God to replace the pretend ones we’ve unleashed on ourselves for as long as we’ve walked upright.”
He leaned back and let out a long slow breath. “Given what you just said, my real question seems trivial by comparison, but I have to ask. Is there any way Director Tomlinson could have somehow modified Odysseus’ to serve his purposes?”
She shrugged. “It’s possible I guess, but I don’t know.”
“What do you think the chances are of him being able to do that?”
“Probably less than the chances of this being an ESI contact.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Jakob Waltz: On the Surface of L-4 Prime:
Jeph had taken to going up to the OpsCom Deck after firstmeal and staring out the windows at the weather. It wasn’t real weather, in that the atmosphere kicked up by the sublimating ice wasn’t thick enough to do much except to look foggy, but it was still fascinating to someone who had lived his entire life on an airless asteroid or out in the black of space.
“Before you suit up this morning, I need to talk to you,” Anju said as Jeph dropped past the MedBay railing. She looked like she’d been waiting for him.
“I’m running late, I don’t want to mule the food again,” he said, grunting as he grabbed a handhold and swung to a stop.
“I don’t think that’s going to be your concern today,” she said, her eyes showing she wasn’t kidding. She tilted her head toward one of her diagnostic chambers and waited for him to land on the deck before she continued. Her tone sounded, strange. “I’ve been looking at your exosuit’s kinesthetic records and we’ve got a problem. You’ve been showing a joint tremor, and it’s escalating toward severe levels.”
“And?” He followed her into the room and leaned back against the edge of the bed.
“I need to take you off the rotation in the language matrix,” she said.
“I have work to do.”
“Not anymore.” She shook her head. “Working in earth gravity is killing you, and I’m not talking eventually. You’re developing acute gravity sickness and the more you push it the worse it will get.”
“I’m fine.”
She reached out and grabbed him by the elbow and he winced in pain. “No you’re not. You know better.”
“That’s a bruise from my exosuit pinching,” he said.
“It is bone deterioration from excessive compression,” she said. “It’s not a suit pinch.” She pressed a finger into his shoulder and he flinched again. She reached to grab his wrist, but he snapped it back before her fingers could close around it.
“You grew up on Juno. The gravity there is what, twelve centimeters per second squared?” she said.
“About that.”
“And you’re working at earth normal gravity inside the Tacra Un. That’s over eighty times your physiological adapted normal. A PSE isn’t designed to hold that kind of differential load for days on end.”
“I trained on Luna and passed my physicals,” he said. “It’s not that bad.”
“Yes it is,” she said, picking up a scanner and turning it over several times in her hand. “Your suit’s pressure bladder is doing its part to keep your blood mostly where it belongs, but I bet under that thinskin you look like someone beat you to d
eath with a rubber hose.”
He shrugged. “This is not the first time I’ve gotten compression bruising. But that’s a million klick from gravity sickness.”
“You’re more than bruised.” She pointed the hand scanner at his arm and focused on his elbow. She turned it around and showed him the result. “The nitrogen compounds that your muscles produce naturally break down into uric acid. The pressure the suit puts on you forces this acid directly into your bone tissue rather than processing it out of your system normally. Ectomorph bones are extremely porous, so this acid accumulates inside the hollow cavities in the bone itself and then crystallizes. If we don’t treat it now, these micro crystals will cause your bones to disintegrate, and once they’ve done that, they’ll turn into a systemic infection that will go after your organs.”
“It’s just joint swelling. Give me an anti-inflammatory and let me keep doing my job,” he said. Her expression told him that wasn’t going to happen.
“Your exosuit will only keep you alive until it kills you. That’s coming damned soon from what this tells me.” She set her hand in the middle of his chest and pushed him back onto the bed.
“I can’t—”
“This is nojo. If you don’t stop working in the Tacra Un, you won’t last until Roja shows up. You’ve got another week until these crystals destroy your bones permanently, and then in another couple weeks we’ll be hard put to keep the infection from killing you.”
“But—”
“I shouldn’t have let you go this far,” she said looking down at the deck and biting her lip. “Unfortunately, like everybody else I was blinded by the excitement of what we’re doing down there and I didn’t notice how far it had progressed. If Kiro hadn’t pointed out last night how swollen your joints look, I might not have gone over your suit data and then …”
“My ectomorph body screws me down every fragging time,” he growled, settling back into the diagnostic bed and staring up at the ceiling. “This isn’t a permanent thing is it?”
Fulcrum of Odysseus Page 12