“Reynard, you have the data on the chips Lon gave you. Adapt his predictive algorithms. Create your own. Check if I am right.”
“I will.”
Reynard had retreated then to consider Thelma’s argument, his loyalties, and what she’d gone on to ask of him in the name of friendship and justice. When he’d returned to her room two days later, he’d agreed to help.
Since then, they’d gone over their plan repeatedly, revising and refining the details. Now, all they could do was wait in an increasing state of nervous tension for a comms—please, let it be good news, Thelma prayed—from the Lonesome.
Max had anticipated an emotional first comms with Thelma. He knew reassurance had to come first, then the details. “We’re safe. Sargus has captured the assassin, a Bernard Chen.” He summarized events, emphasizing that he hadn’t had to kill anyone. Covert Ops were organizing Chen’s return to the Cadre, minus an ear.
Nonetheless, it made for a horror story.
“Diabolical,” Thelma said of the threat against the people, including families with children, at the Deadstar Diner. “Thank goodness for Harry. Max, later I’ll cry out of sheer relief that you’re safe, but for now…I’m pretty sure I know who ordered the hit. Or, if her hands are technically clean, put herself in position to use your death.”
“Who?”
“Chief Agnes Kanu.”
Even as Thelma summarized her thinking, Reynard sent through his analysis attached to their shared report. Lon and Harry read it.
With shocked fury, those on the Lonesome accepted the treacherous role of Chief Kanu. Max’s boss was meant to have his back, not be setting him up for assassination, both literally and of his reputation.
Carl was informed, and convinced. “Nothing in her background raised a red flag. But the tiny connections, how it all draws together…Reynard, would you be willing to share the algorithms that underpin your analysis?” Once Covert Ops, always Covert Ops. Carl couldn’t help his curiosity.
And Reynard was flattered.
The AI was also busy.
Reynard utilized one of his comet helices to startling effect. Well, startling according to other people’s understanding of it. With Thelma tucked into a med-pod for extra protection, Reynard employed a pattern of three spar hits to fling his spaceship far beyond the Navy’s idea of a safe perimeter for the Space Rodeo arena.
He then released her from the med-pod and smugly updated her on their current location. They were three days’ travel from the Lonesome’s current location, and with the Lonesome also traveling at full speed, they’d meet halfway in a day and a half.
On both spaceships they used the time to the utmost. An incredible amount of explaining, negotiating, nagging, double-checking and dealing with Reynard’s stage fright devoured their hours. Then the two ships locked together, and it was show time.
Thelma had kissed Max, delayed yet again collapsing in relief at his survival, and stood with him to face the music.
Actually, she stood a little to the side and behind him; out of sight of the camera on him and Reynard. Harry stood with her.
Carl had been shut out of the main deck on the grounds that Reynard was shy.
One and a half days ago, for the first time ever, Reynard had departed the Space Rodeo arena with his spaceship unstealthed. That meant the Navy had tracked his flight and the distance of it. Scientists were agog. How had any ship been flung that far and survived?
The media were less impressed. They’d had weeks to become bored with the Space Rodeo. But not with an artfully dangled snippet of information: the mystery ship was piloted by the Federation’s youngest and most reclusive AI.
The Navy knew another and more disturbing fact. Namely, that Reynard had created the comet helices. Since he’d promised to share with them the science of the helices’ design and the physics behind their construction, the Navy was willing to do him a favor in return—a favor beyond not convicting him and impounding his spaceship for illegally entering the Space Rodeo arena.
That favor was to wrangle the media into a conference room on a Navy carrier and connect them at real-time speed with the Lonesome. A Navy vessel halfway between the two ships functioned as a temporary relay station for the transmission signal.
Max wore the western hat that he’d adopted as a symbol of his office as sheriff, but he tilted it back so his blue eyes were visible and his clean-cut face unobscured for the camera. He didn’t fidget or clear his throat, just began. “I am Max Smith, Interstellar Sheriff for the Badstars border territory of the Saloon Sector. I am a former Star Marine, and President John Smith’s son.”
An endless moment stretched out as the media onscreen digested that bombshell. Then the scrum exploded into shouts and a surge forward, although they couldn’t reach Max through a screen.
The Navy officers in the background wore wry or disapproving expressions, depending on their tolerance for civilian shenanigans. They’d learned during the Xlokk mission of Max’s identity.
He didn’t falter. “This interview is not about me. I keep the peace in this territory with the help of Lon. You can currently see him in the background, but won’t have noticed him. Lon is an AI embedded in this spaceship, the Lonesome.”
The media fell silent, suddenly desperate not to miss a word. This was revelation after revelation—and that was Thelma’s plan.
Chief Agnes Kanu’s scheme involving Max relied on her being the one in charge of telling his story. This interview was a taunt directed at her. This was Max telling his story, although Thelma had drafted the speech and Lon had revised it.
“Our goal is simple,” Max said. “We want the Saloon Sector to be a safe area for everyone.”
He put a hand on one of Reynard’s tentacles, equivalent to where a human’s shoulder would be. “Reynard is another AI. He is clever, obsessive in his research, and shy. It took me a while to earn his trust. I had to convince him that while we would have all preferred some warning before he triggered comet helices in the sector, he was in the right place.”
The media shouted as they worked out what Max had said. The comet helices, those powerful, mysterious forces, were AI creations.
Imperturbably, Max continued with his message. “Out on the frontier, people can be whom they want to be. Need to be. And we look after our own.” He turned to Reynard with a scripted prompt. “Would you like to say something before I open the floor to questions?”
“Thank you, Sheriff Smith. I would like to apologize for initiating the two comet helices in the Saloon Sector. In future, I will not conduct large-phase physics experiments in Federation space without consultation with the relevant authorities. I have learned—and I thank the people of the Lonesome, you and Lon, for the lesson and your patience in reaching out to me and reconnecting me with my social responsibilities—that it is not just physics where every action has consequences. The same is true of society. The web of respect that connects all citizens of the Federation, is the Federation. I am grateful that I belong to it. I will protect it, and I will contribute to it.”
Afterwards, with everyone having survived the storm of media questions—the Navy media wrangling team looked exhilarated but haggard—Thelma hugged Reynard in congratulation, then glued herself to Max. “I’m done with being brave for others,” she confessed to him quietly, head against his shoulder. “I want you all to myself.”
He made it happen.
They waited for what Chief Kanu would do. It took a special kind of person not to crack when your scheme broke and was turned against you. Agnes Kanu was accustomed to being the puppet master, not having her puppets bite her hands and claim freedom. As Thelma had told Reynard, they were giving the woman enough rope to hang herself.
And then, there was the question of what would happen when the gift that Sargus had sent the Cadre—Bernard Chen, minus his left ear—arrived. Would the Cadre honor their reputation and provide the name of who’d ordered the failed hit on Max?
Fortunately, distractions
abounded.
Reynard refused to give any media interviews, but Lon consented to a couple with serious current affairs journalists. Reynard wasn’t off the hook, though. Scientists bombarded him with questions and challenges. The Navy boffins got priority, but he answered all of them. Although he’d have scoffed at the notion, Reynard was enjoying himself. Scientists were his kind of people, especially the obnoxious, obsessive ones.
Max’s family, meantime, were shocked but pleased that he’d outed himself. An Interstellar Sheriff for a son boosted President Smith’s popularity. His family were planning to visit Max and Thelma.
Only Hugo had regrets. He sighed. “I guess you’re staying out there, then.”
“Yup.” Max was determined to make it work, even if he’d lost his anonymity.
A grin slipped onto his older brother’s face. “Thelma, I trust you’ll keep him in line.”
She grinned back at Hugo. “Or follow him into trouble.”
Max couldn’t help his proud smirk.
Carl, meantime, shouldered an increasing proportion of Max’s sheriff duties.
Lon trusted him and worked with him on the data map and on corralling troublemakers.
After discussing future plans with Thelma, Lon and Harry, Max headed down to the public deck and interrupted Carl’s report writing. If Carl was getting any pressure from Covert Ops to change up his role on the Lonesome, or even, to move on, it didn’t show. Still, Max wanted the man who was currently serving as his deputy to have options.
“I don’t need a bodyguard. But if you’d like the deputy position for real, it’s yours. We can see about getting you your own ship—not through my family or me buying it for you.” He respected Carl’s principles and independence. “But Lon is good at finding gems among the junkyards of the Reclamation Sector.”
“A ship of my own?”
What Max’s heard in Carl’s voice was the wistfulness of “A home of my own?” He and Lon wouldn’t fake a discounted price for the ship Carl bought, if he took up Max’s offer, but they would ensure that the cost of repairs was ridiculously low. That was the sort of thing that a kind-hearted AI like Lon, embedded in a spaceship with its own fabricator, could achieve.
“I’ll think about it,” Carl said.
Max stayed just as casual. “Till you say otherwise, you’re my deputy and these quarters are yours.” He left the man there to consider his future, and whether he could make a place to belong out here on the frontier.
“Gak.” Max choked as the hatch closed and Thelma threw herself at him in a fierce hug.
“You are such a softie.”
Both of them valued loyalty to allies. In addition, Thelma probably thought he’d acquired a friend. Maybe he had. But what Max saw when he looked at Carl those times when the man forgot to veil his emotions, was the loneliness that could have been Max’s fate. Being strong and protecting others could come at the cost of your own happy-ever-after.
Max wrapped his happy-ever-after up in a hug that made her squeak. “You think I’m soft?”
Wickedness sparked in her eyes, and happiness. “Show me otherwise.”
Everything was so busy yet good, that when the news came, it had additional shock value.
The message appeared on Max’s personal comms unit as a direct and encrypted transmission from Wesley Sargus.
Max read it and went to find Thelma.
She was in her office, mid-call with someone; deep in her work as an information broker. Whatever she saw in Max’s face, she ended the call abruptly and went to him.
“I’m fine. Everyone’s fine.” He put a hand on her lower back, steadying them both. “That’s not true. Chief Kanu is dead. Her body was found in her apartment beside that of Bernard Chen’s. The assassin died by his own hand.”
“He killed Agnes Kanu first?”
Max nodded. “Sargus says it’s the Cadre’s admission. Agnes Kanu ordered the hit, and Chen failed to carry it out.”
“But to kill her?”
Lon included himself in the conversation. “The Cadre must have judged her of duplicity in her dealings with them.”
“And her allies didn’t think her worth protecting.” Thelma sounded shaken more than vindicated.
Agnes Kanu had been guilty and she’d paid for her schemes, and the failure of them, with her life.
Max took a deep breath and swiped closed his personal comms unit. “Covert Ops will handle it.” He was drawing a line in the stars. For those on the Lonesome, this situation was done.
Lon agreed. “They’ll enjoy it. And we have our own lives. Did you see that Reynard has a fan club now? They have multi-tentacled purple badges.”
“Proof that life can always get weirder,” Max said.
Thelma laughed, softly, uncertainly, but eager to move forward.
“According to Reynard, the comet helices will collapse in a week and a half.” Thelma handed Carl a bowl of popcorn, and kept a bigger bowl to share with Max. She sat down on the sofa beside him. They were all set to watch a cooking show with Lon. “Life will go back to normal.”
“Whatever that is,” Carl muttered through a mouthful of buttered popcorn. He’d decided to stay on as Max’s deputy. Covert Ops had released him, on the understanding that they had the right to call him to active duty as required. Lon was searching for a suitable spaceship for him.
“Sssh.” Thelma resisted the temptation to throw a piece of popcorn at him. She’d adopted the habit of treating Carl like an annoying older brother. She had experience in chastising that sort of wayward creature. “This is about making paella.” Despite hushing Carl, she talked on. After all, Lon could multi-task. “Lon has saffron bulbs growing. Lon, how long before the stamens are harvested?”
Silence.
“Lon?”
Harry raced into the lounge. The AI mech who never hurried anywhere was running.
Carl leapt out of the recliner and assumed a fighting stance. Harry’s presence on the Lonesome as an AI embodied in a dangerous humanoid mech was one secret they hadn’t shared with him.
“Oops,” Thelma said under her breath.
Max’s comment was more helpful. “Carl, it’s okay.”
The two AIs ignored Carl’s alarm.
“Nefertiti’s back,” Lon exclaimed, happy at the return of his would-be girlfriend from a foreign galaxy.
Harry was more concerned with the knowledge the Covert Ops AI had returned with. He crouched in front of Thelma and Max, staring at them intently. He had galaxy-changing news. “The specters aren’t gone.” His eyes glowed blue. “The Kampia have evidence that the specters live.”
Want More?
Watch for Space Specter in early 2020. Before then, the fourth book in my fantasy dystopian series, The Faerene Apocalypse, will be out on October 28. First Magic is available for pre-order.
If you’d like more space adventures, check out my Shamans and Shifters Space Opera series:
Her Robot Wolf
Cosmic Catalyst
Shattered Earth
Jingle Stars
The Ceph Sector
To stay up to date on new books from me, please follow my author page on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Jenny-Schwartz/e/B0042MAD86
Jenny
P.S. You can catch up with me at my website, on Facebook or on Twitter.
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