Aeolus Investigations Set 2: Too Cool To Lose: The Continuing Evolution of Lexi Stevens

by Robert E Colfax

  “I take it there were problems?” Charlie asked.

  Lexi nodded. “It was too abrupt. Command-comp absorbed the knowledge of everyone on board in an instant. It burned out the minds of almost all of them. Most died instantly. Many of the rest never woke up again. Out of nearly three thousand people, fewer than a hundred survived. It also overwhelmed the command-comp sentience, leaving him completely insane. To cut to the chase, we found him drifting in hyperspace nine hundred years later. I fought for our lives with him mind-to-mind. He wound up dead. I wound up absorbing all of the knowledge of the Wraix.”

  Charlie looked at his daughter, a justifiable degree of concern in his eyes. “It didn’t drive you insane?”

  Lexi smiled grimly. “Maybe slightly. I can’t be sure. I wasn’t facing three thousand minds, just his one. Still, I was in a coma for a week, processing through it. I’m still processing through it. There was some really bad shit in there. Jis thinks I’m mostly OK. I trust her opinion. She’s an amazing person, Dad.”

  “Urania is a sentient AI too?” he asked.

  “Yes, a similar process is responsible for Urania’s sentience. For her, it was a gradual journey. She experienced exposure to many diverse minds over decades. She developed her own unique, fully human personality. She’s saner than I am.” Lexi sighed. “I can’t have it known that we know how to make sentient computers. It’s not fair to the computer sentiences. They’re subject to abuse because the Accord doesn’t recognize them as people. They have no rights. Hopefully, I can change that. For now, though, you have to keep that to yourself.”

  Charlie was a smart man. He understood why she said that last piece. “Are there others?”

  “There could be. I don’t know.” She drained her wine. “Prior to running into the Wraix ship we stumbled across a second ancient artifact, one that is at least twice the age of the Rose. It’s called the Barossa Channel. It was given to a semi-aquatic offshoot of humanity to enable them to develop telepathic abilities. Both Ron and I are partially telepathic as a result now.” She paused. “Not tonight, Dad, but we really need to know everything you can tell us about Mama.”

  “I haven’t talked about her in a long time.” He sighed. “I still miss her.”

  “I know, Dad. I still miss her too.”

  Chapter 50

  Killer Queen

  They sat in contemplative silence for a few minutes. “I’ve become a killer, Dad,” Lexi said, her voice low. “My first kill was the Helgan mercenary you found. That time it was kill or be killed.” She paused. “Well, to be honest, it wasn’t really. Ron told me that they were the best swordsmen in the Accord. That was technically true. They’re the only swordsmen in the Accord so they don’t have to be very good to be known as the best, do they? I didn’t realize that until after he was dead and I was fighting against the second one. Once the adrenaline wore off, that one affected me.”

  She found their waitress and indicated her desire to have another wine.

  “Don’t try to keep up with me, drink for drink, Dad. I usually only have a glass or two in the evening. But I can’t get drunk anymore due to another DNA modification that makes me unbelievably strong.” She shrugged. “I’ve never actually been drunk but that’s off-topic. It didn’t sound fun. Maybe I’m too responsible. There. Something normal to discuss with my father.” She smiled. “I’ve been busy. The team gets into some tight spots. I’ve been enhancing our ability to survive them. Ron was caught in a mine explosion on one of our jobs. That’s what started me thinking along those lines.”

  “He’s good now?”

  “Yes, fully recovered. On my second job with the team, we rescued Jadkim’s family. I guess that was when we started getting into the secret agent thing. They had been kidnapped. We located them. In the process of getting off the planet with them, I executed two of the pirates just because one of them was hurting Geena. We left all thirty-two of them dead when we left the planet. There have been others, Dad. Dozens of others. Sometimes I seem to be fighting my own personal war against pirates. The other ship in Earth orbit was crewed by pirates. I had them executed. Once we we scrub the logs, I’ll probably turn it over to WASP.”

  She stopped speaking for a moment to accept her glass of wine. “Then we met the derelict. He pulled peoples’ consciousnesses into avatars like Urania, put them in a simulated world, hunted them down, and killed them for no other reason than he enjoyed killing. He killed his entire surviving crew as well as the crews of two other small ships unfortunate enough to stumble across him. In the end, I killed him too. I hated doing it. He was unique. A sentient computer derived from the minds of an extinct race. I don’t think I had a choice that time, still…” She paused to sip her wine. “You’re my father. I wanted you to know what I’ve become. Especially with the Kreesh threat looming, you deserve to know what I’ve become.”

  He nodded. “I understand, Lexi. Judge, jury, and executioner.” After a pause, he nodded, “You seem eminently qualified for the job. We know pirates are stealing people from Earth. We’re helpless to stop them. According to Andy, the Accord makes a half-hearted attempt to protect us, but pirates pretty much have free rein because of the hands-off policies of the Accord. If you’re winnowing them down, I can’t find fault with that. Tell me more about the encounter with Glaurang.”

  Lexi relaxed a little. He didn’t think she was a monster. She didn’t either. So far, so good. “Some other time, Dad. It’s a long story; especially if I tell you about my week-long coma-dream. But the important part, for now, is that he was an artificial intelligence, a sentient computer. While I was in his mind, I raided his data cores and absorbed the entire knowledge base of a race in some areas significantly more technologically advanced than any in the Accord. I learned about the Kreesh from his data. Jis and her father were already sensing them. And the Rose of Light, which had been largely dormant in my mind for close to three years, fully activated.”

  “OK,” he said agreeably, “what about Jameson? I ran a low-key investigation on people in your classes. It was more than just my concern about you.” He chuckled. “We were hunting aliens. Jameson going off the deep end at that particular point in time always struck me as suspicious.”

  She shrugged. “Professor Jameson bought the Rose of Light at a bazaar in Istanbul. Somehow, he discovered it could be perverted to influence people and make them forget they had been influenced. He used the Rose to make women complacent. Then he raped them. He tried using it on me. It didn’t take. At the time, I didn’t realize what he was trying to do. There was absolutely no way to prove it. Taking the Rose would have been enough to stop him, but there was no way the law could punish him when none of his victims, even the ones who became pregnant and bore his children, remembered anything happened. I took care of him before we left by altering his DNA. I know what I did was criminal. A mental hospital is a good place for him. He’s probably in agony most of the time. He’ll never be functional again.”

  She paused again. He still didn’t look shocked. “Dad, this next part isn’t personal, but I want you to be careful about disseminating it. Accord technology is stagnant. It has been for thousands of years. They do have researchers figuring new things out, but they don’t apply those discoveries. It’s just a theoretical exxercise. I don’t understand the mindset. There have been no significant advances in starship technology for the last five thousand years. They still occasionally publish papers on their discoveries, but it never seems to make it to anybody who can implement it. Other sciences are not much better. Does Earth have any captured alien technology? Especially starships?”

  He smiled, “Now you’re asking me to betray state secrets. So, off the record, Hollywood isn’t too far off the mark.”

  She nodded. “At the rate technology here advances, Earth science will reverse engineer what you’ve found and you would have been building your own ships within the next decade. Two at the outside. When that happens, and I’m serious about this, whether I’m still Marshal or not,
I will need to protect the Accord from you. There is a good chance Earth technology growth will outpace the rest of the Accord by a huge factor. Intentionally or not, your disruptive influence will break the Accord. I can’t allow that to happen.”

  They both sipped their drinks in companionable silence. “I’m not sure how much of a concern that is anymore. I’m giving my tech to everyone. There could still be attitude issues to deal with. There’s a lot more to tell you about what I’ve been up to, but I don’t want to keep you up all night. ”

  Charlie nodded. “OK. Tell me more about the Rose.”

  Lexi shrugged. “Clearly it was crafted. It’s incredibly high tech, not a naturally occurring object. Legend has it that it was handed to a group of Ackalonian scholars fifty thousand or so years ago. The legend goes they were told it was a gift from a friend. Someone took a chunk of shocked quartz smaller than your fist and enclosed it in a delicate wrapper of exotic metal filaments. It generates a sort of force field that some human minds resonate with. As such, it is an object used for meditation. Its use trains what we would consider paranormal abilities which many of the Ackalonians possess. Jis is the only one who knows that I match her skills with the Rose. I’m still learning about limiting the impressions that come to me all of the time now. Her comment that it might have been designed for me is disturbing. In my experience, she’s right far more often than not when she says something like that. I mean, it’s well documented that it’s been in the hands of the Ackalonians for the last fifty thousand years.

  “That unknown Level-Three world I mentioned,” she paused and laughed. “Ron actually turned out to be their legal king with the abdication of the ruling queen. That took all of us by surprise. Crane Samue, Ron’s father, didn’t know it, but his biological mother was the queen of that world. Ron is her grandson. He’ll probably abdicate to the man he has running the place someday, once things settle down. We needed him to be able to make policy decisions for the time being. Anyway, they’re telepathic due to the influences of a device they call the Barossa Channel. So am I, although with me, it comes and goes.”

  In an abrupt change of topic, she asked, telepathically, Dad, what do you think of Andy?

  “Oh, like that is it?” he asked with a smile. “I thought Ron was your boyfriend. I’d rather you not talk in my mind.”

  Her voice more serious than he could ever remember hearing, to the point that it was almost frightening, she said, “Ron is more than my boyfriend. He is the other half of me.” Then in a more normal tone, she added with a smile, “Give or take. No, not for me. Jis. Do you know that most of her people never travel off-planet to other inhabited worlds? They can’t. They get confused and upset when they do. They’re all too sensitive. That’s why I have only thirty-eight Ackalonian crew on Glaurang. I considered myself lucky to recruit that many. The Rose of Light is the real deal, Dad. And Jis is its master. She has more and stronger of their abilities than anyone else on her world. Andy has significant latent talent too, even though he has never trained with the Rose. Which makes him all that more special because he volunteered to come here.”

  “He’s a good man. I like him,” her father admitted. “And I do trust him. He showed up on what you call a fast-courier claiming to be a liaison between my command and the Accord. We’ve learned more about the Accord from him than the sum of our previous knowledge. I suspect that sometimes he stretches the boundaries of what he’s allowed to tell us. If you have their ability to read people, why do you ask?”

  She chuckled ruefully, “It’s a recent enough ability that I don’t yet fully trust what I get that way. And I wanted your opinion. I spoke with Jis about him earlier. He was a rapidly rising administrator in their diplomatic corps when Jis decided to help you guys out. He volunteered to exile himself here for several years. I find that admirable.”

  She smiled for the first time since she brought up Andy. “Apparently Jis does as well. Jis has become marginally telepathic too, apparently due to sharing a connection through the Rose with me. So, I’m sitting here at dinner, trying to enjoy my cheeseburger while trying to ignore the feedback loop building between the two of them. It was a really good burger, too. I’m glad you suggested this place. Still, it was a relief when they transported up so she could give him a tour of the ship. Ackalonian’s sense it when they meet a match. I doubt he will be in the guest cabin we assigned him tonight.”

  Her smile broadened as she added, “By the way, I’ve already asked Geena to give you a tour. You guys were looping over dinner too. Why don’t we close out our check and head up ourselves?”

  Chapter 51

  Charlie Stevens

  Aeolus met with Charlie the next morning in one of the smaller conference rooms at WASP headquarters. Charlie sat at the head of the conference table. As the others seated themselves, he began, “As a US citizen, practically everything you want me to talk about I can’t talk about due to the Espionage Act of 1917. I’m not making that up either. I know that’s more than a hundred years ago. It’s still law.”

  He smiled. “I woke up the president this morning and explained the situation. I have been granted his blanket permission to read you in on everything I’ve ever done and anything else you might want to know. So I’m in the clear.” He smiled grimly. “He mentioned he prefers we not be wiped out by the Kreesh.”

  He paused. “There’s still some skepticism about that. Very few doubt Glaurang is really up there. We’ve known there were aliens with starships since the nineteen-fifties. We’ve known, in general, about the Accord since Andy got here. No one has come up with a rational reason to assume this is a hoax. I certainly don’t think it is.”

  “Wouldn’t you have talked to us anyway, Charlie?” Geena asked, smiling. Jis wasn’t the only one who hadn’t slept alone last night. It hadn’t even shocked Lexi when in the privacy of their cabin, he said, “I recognized Charlie. He is the man with Geena in that dream I had that you guys think was precognitive.”

  Charlie frowned. “Let’s not go there. The president knows as well as I do that there is nothing I can tell you about my personal history that will help with stopping the Kreesh. We know we need you guys. Relevant or not, anything you want to know, just ask.”

  “While we’re on the topic,” Urania said, “I suggest you discuss a ‘no secrets’ policy with him concerning your military. We’re going to be working closely with them. We know about your orbital missile platforms. If you have any other hardware that you wanted to keep secret, sorry, but we’re going to need to know about it and its capabilities. If your president can intermediate with your planet’s other nations to take a similar stance, it might be of benefit.”

  Nodding, Charlie said. “He’s already working on that. It occurred to us this morning.” He paused. “Your starship up there is a very convincing argument that you’re telling us the truth. Most heads of state accept that.” He shrugged. “Some still think this some sort of weird invasion.” He laughed. “And some think it’s faked, something dreamed up by Hollywood. The fact is, I believe you. With the evidence before me, I would even if it wasn’t my daughter leading the effort. After twenty years in this job, to a large extent the world’s leaders believe me. This makes practically everything else the president and other national governments are working on irrelevant. Not everyone is behind you yet, but the major players are.”

  He nodded. “OK, then, my story. I’m not going to pretend false modesty. Nor do I intend to go into every detail of my life. If I gloss over something you feel might be relevant, ask me. No recording is being made of anything we discuss in here.”

  He watched as they all nodded agreement. “I graduated with an engineering degree and an ROTC commission. That was followed by a short but distinguished military career. I have medals to back up that statement. I don’t think it is particularly relevant for what you want to know.”

  He paused while he refilled his coffee. “I was subsequently recruited by the CIA while I was recovering from a bullet in a Korea
n field hospital. They brought me back to the states for four months of some rather intense training at a sort of CIA boot camp.”

  He grimaced. “I don’t even know where it was located. Of course, these days, I could find it if I wanted to, but, really, why bother? After a little over a year, I was put in charge of a squad of men much like myself. We all spoke maybe a half-dozen languages. Our contacts, for the most part, believed we were mercenaries. I was never involved in any of those tasks you hear rumors about that involved toppling governments. Most of my squad’s missions involved preventing the flow of arms to terrorist groups and derailing drug traffickers.” He paused, rather grimly adding, “And human traffickers.”

  When he paused again, Lexi said, “I’d eventually like some more detail on that part of your life because, well, you’re my father. I don’t believe it’s relevant to our current purpose. You still hadn’t met Mama, had you?”

  “No. Not for a few years yet. I was in Nicaragua, still with the CIA, when the Contras brought down an alien starship. Andy tells me that if a ship’s shields are offline, it’s not any more difficult to puncture than one of our submarines or tanks would be. The Contras had stinger missiles. The survivors of the crash were causing trouble, taking over a local village and putting pressure on the drug lord my team was there to take down. I don’t think they were pirates, just some punks who thought they were bad-ass and better than dirt-grubbing Earthmen.”