Virago One: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (Ace of Space Book 2)

by John Triptych

  His wife nervously stood beside him. “Is something the matter?”

  Jared frowned as he looked out past the windshield. “Whatever’s jamming us blocked the boat’s GPS system too. I had to use triangulation with the onboard map to tell it where to go.”

  Sophia was still in denial. “But, that’s crazy. Who would do this?”

  Jared walked back out to the stern deck and looked up. Sure enough the drone had altered course and continued to follow them. He gave it the finger. “Whoever is controlling that piece of crap up there, that’s who.”

  “I-I don’t get this, Jared,” Sophia said. “What would they want with us?”

  “I wish I knew, okay?”

  “What does it all mean?”

  He grimaced. “Look, I told you I don’t know!”

  The boat began to decelerate. Jared cursed as he walked over to the helm console and took a look. The readouts on the computer screen seemed fine the last few minutes, showing a digital map of their approximate location, as well as providing speed and estimated time of arrival. Only this time, the monitor had gone blank, with occasional graphical glitches that flashed on the screen. For the third time in as many minutes, Jared cursed again.

  Sophia was on the verge of crying as she stood behind him. “What happened?”

  “Something hacked our autopilot,” Jared said as he switched the console to manual. Pulling levers on the throttle and placing his hands on the steering wheel seemed to hearken back to a more primitive time, but he thanked the makers of the boat it still had these systems. In a matter of seconds, the engine began to rev up once again as the boat got to full speed.

  Sophia was making short, rapid breaths. “Someone hacked us? Could that be possible?”

  Jared shook his head while trying to contain his frustration. She sure was slow. “Of course they could. The electronic systems of this boat are all linked to the network. All they had to do was to breach the firewall and stick a virus into the main computer and wham, they got us.”

  “But … that’s illegal right?”

  “Yes. Whoever’s done this must either have a good lawyer or simply doesn’t care.”

  She turned and looked away. “Well, you better be sure to hire a good lawyer too when we sue them. Brenda knows a good damage claims attorney—I’ll talk to her about this.”

  “You do that,” Jared said tersely. “When we get back to shore.”

  Something caught his eye and he instinctively leaned forward while looking out past the windshield. It seemed like there was another unmanned aerial drone just ahead of them, only this time it was a completely different model. This new drone was painted dull grey, with a barrel shaped fuselage and two powerful rotors mounted on short stubby wings by its side. Directly below its hull was a rotating turret with what looked to be a machinegun mounted underneath. Jared’s mouth hung open in shock. This can’t be happening.

  Sophia stood beside him while staring out at the second drone. “What is it, what’s going on now?”

  “We’re dead,” Jared said softly. His life quickly flashed before his eyes. All his effort had come to screeching halt. Despite his years of training in the military, nothing had prepared him for this. He couldn’t think of a plan to get away from it.

  The gun drone opened fire a few seconds later. Jared turned the boat’s steering wheel, attempting evasive action, but there wasn’t much he could do except to try to swing the boat around as the ship’s port side was hit countless times. He quickly pulled his wife down to the floor as the cabin was shot full of holes, bits of fiberglass and plastic raining around them as the hull was splintered. The gun drone continued to hover around the boat while firing. Several armor piercing slugs tore into the ship’s main battery system, and within minutes, the boat slowed to a halt, helpless in between the frothing waves, the power to its engine fatally cut.

  Jared opened his eyes. He was lying face down on the floor, and he felt a burning sensation on his lower left leg. Bits and pieces of what constituted the boat’s hull were all around him. He twisted his head to look at his wife who was lying near him. “Sophia?”

  She stared back at him with open, glassy eyes, drops of blood began seeping from her mouth. It was clear his wife was dead. As he slowly got up while bracing himself on the counter, he could see she had taken a round at the back of her spine. The high-velocity impact must have torn right through her backbone and fragmented.

  Limping back out into the smoking deck, he could see that the gun drone was still hovering less than twenty meters away. It had apparently paused to cool down its weapon. Wisps of smoke emanated from the tip of the machinegun barrel as it tracked his shuffling movement out in the open.

  He didn’t want it anymore. Nothing was worth this. For the first time since their honeymoon, he realized just how much he loved her. Now all he had was nothing. Jared held his arms up. “You win- whoever you are,” he said softly.

  The gun drone opened up again. By the time it was over, the boat had begun to flounder along the waves, the numerous holes in its hull had finally let in enough water to swamp the deck. A few hours later, what was left of the ship began its slow descent down a liquid abyss, joining the countless sunken wrecks at the bottom of the gulf.

  Chapter 2

  The small, tri-rotor drone began banking to its right at one hundred eighty meters above the tree line. This unmanned aerial vehicle was a mere two meters in length, its com-link antennas receiving command signals directly from satellites at Earth’s geosynchronous orbit. Its handlers knew that the drone was flying over restricted airspace since nearly half of all the land in the state of Wyoming was in private hands, but it had a delicate mission to perform. Painted along the side of the drone’s fuselage were the letters PETR, signifying that it was a private vehicle belonging to a group known as People for the Ethical Treatment of Robots. The noontime sun glinted off the solar paneling atop the drone’s fuselage as it began monitoring a remote research station near the base of Sellers Mountain.

  While continuing its leisurely turn over the target, the drone’s simple artificial intelligence detected another, much larger aircraft approaching from the north. After calculating the other vehicle’s course, speed, and location, it determined that there was no imminent danger of collision, so it continued its slow, circular maneuver while focusing its attention at the remote building on the ground. Within the span of a few minutes, the drone’s sensors once again detected something- an object smaller than itself, traveling at near supersonic speed. Before the vehicle AI was able to send a warning message to its handlers back in New York City, the armor piercing smart bullet impacted along the side of its fuselage.

  The slug penetrated through the thin plastic skin of the drone’s body, tearing into the delicate electronic systems before fracturing the main solar battery. One of the tri-rotors instantly malfunctioned due to a loss of power, sending the stricken drone into a deep dive before another rocket-powered bullet adjusted its course and impacted right on top of the drone’s master AI control unit. With its remote piloting unit gone and its main power source now offline, the damaged vehicle was shot out of the sky. In less than a minute, its wreckage was strewn along the high plains of the Cowboy State.

  “Yeehaw! I got the little bugger,” Stilicho Jones said as he drew his head and shoulders back into the helicopter’s cockpit. The oversized battle rifle in his arms was attached to a sling, and its long barrel continued to poke out of the open side door of the aircraft.

  A shapely, blonde-haired woman wearing sunglasses and a leather jacket clapped her hands while sitting beside him. “You took it out?”

  Stilicho turned his head and gave her a kiss. “I sure did, babe.”

  She grinned. “So now what?”

  “We go down and take a look,” Stilicho said to her before looking over at the automated controller module in front of the cockpit. “Land us beside the wreckage, and don’t take your sweet time doing it, you dumb toaster.”

  The robo
tic voice was unlike the advanced AI he was used to, but it suited the design parameters of what was needed. “Yes, Mr. Jones.”

  The AI-piloted helicopter descended slowly until it hovered over the remains of the small drone. Stilicho was impatient, a part of him wanted to hack into the helicopter’s control suite and replace it with his own advanced AI, but he was already in trouble when he made unauthorized use of ACE Corp property. He didn’t want to push the envelope even further until he knew he could get away with it. After a few minutes, the helicopter finally landed on the ground and began to power down its rotors.

  Stilicho quickly unbuckled himself and leapt out through the open side door. Activating the safety on the gyrojet rifle, he placed it on the floor of the helicopter’s interior cabin before helping his companion out. The woman took his outstretched hand and he helped her onto the grassy plain that lined the edge of the forest.

  He met her two nights ago at the hotel bar in Laramie. She introduced herself as Olivia Burton, and they hit it off right away. She was beautiful, athletic, and not too bright it seemed, and that was exactly the kind of woman he wanted.

  Olivia wrapped her slender arms around his shoulders and gave him a deep kiss. “Oh my god, I never knew we could even do this!”

  Stilicho grinned as he caressed her thighs. “Errol Flux is my personal friend. He lets me do whatever I want, babe.”

  She gave him an incredulous look. “Errol Flux? You mean the rich guy who’s in the news all the time?”

  He nodded. It was clear she needed more convincing. “Yes, that guy. I know him very well, I even have his personal number on my contact list, and I can call him twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”

  “Noo, really?”

  He took the smartglasses from his eyes and gestured at her to wear them. “Really. Take a look at the voice mails he sends to me.”

  She placed his smartglasses over her own eyes and listened to some of the recorded phone messages on it before handing the device back to him. “Was that really his voice?”

  After putting the multi-purpose sunglasses back on, Stilicho stepped back and turned as he walked over to the drone wreckage. “Yes, really. I even went to Mars just to do something for him.”

  “You went to Mars? No, you’re just putting me on again,” she said while walking beside him.

  “I’m serious, babe. I went to Mars and I took on a whole army of killer robots, and he gave me a huge payday for it.”

  Olivia tilted her head back and laughed, her golden hair buffeted by the windy plains. “You’re just lying, aren’t you?”

  “No I’m not,” Stilicho said, pointing up into the bright sky. “It’s my job to go all over the place, even in outer space. But all that happened about three years ago. Now I’m semi-retired.”

  Olivia stopped and looked into his eyes. “You’re way too young to be semi-retired.”

  “I’m telling you I am. I got paid oodles and oodles of money and other than an occasional odd job, I’m now a man of leisure. I’ve been on a nonstop vacation for a few years already.”

  She pointed at the wrecked drone in front of her. “This is all fun for you? Shooting down drones?”

  Stilicho crouched down and surveyed his handiwork. The impact crushed the fuselage beyond recognition. “Well, I got a special hatred for these PETR morons, so this was not just work, but a lot of fun too.”

  Olivia looked closely at the partially obscured logo of the crashed drone. “PETR? I think I might have heard of that before. Weren’t they the ones who don’t want animals to be abused by human beings?”

  Stilicho chuckled. This woman was such a total bimbo. If it wasn’t for her looks and gorgeous body, I wouldn’t have given her the time of day, he thought. “That’s PETA. PETR are another bunch of morons who think that robots ought not to be mistreated and such. Same concept but different target market, I guess.”

  “Well, that’s a good cause, isn’t it?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Come on, robots are just machines. If you want to kick a piece of metal, it’s not hurting anybody.”

  Olivia seemed deep in thought for a few seconds as she looked up and scratched her chin before replying to him. “But … kicking or beating on anything seems so … cruel.”

  “Puh-lease. Beating up a robot is like beating up on a rock. They’re machines! They don’t have any feelings.”

  “I saw an animal doctor treating a pet cat that got hurt on TV the other day,” Olivia said. “Seeing the look on that poor kitty made me cry.”

  “A cat isn’t a robot!”

  “But if they made a cat robot that purrs, it would feel the same too,” she said.

  “Oh come on,” Stilicho said. “They already make robotic pets, and I’ve seen a whole bunch of them being smashed to bits by kids with aluminum baseball bats on the soc-net sites. A robot cat is a machine, not a real cat, so you can do what you want with it.”

  “I don’t think I could do that.”

  Stilicho frowned. “Don’t tell me you’re a member of PETR?”

  She giggled and gave him a playful slap on his arm. “No, of course not.”

  He pointed at the wrecked drone. “Good, for a moment there I thought you were going to get on your knees and start praying to this pile of trash.”

  Olivia stood right beside him and placed her head on his shoulders. “No, why should I do any of that?”

  “Thank god for that then.”

  She leaned forward and took a closer look at the junk pile. “Isn’t what you did illegal?”

  “Not really,” he said. “This drone was flying over restricted airspace. According to the trespassing laws in this state, I am within bounds to shoot it down.”

  Olivia looked around. “But doesn’t that law only apply if it’s within your home? We’re in the middle of nowhere aren’t we?”

  Stilicho was puzzled. One minute she seemed totally clueless, yet all of a sudden she had some insight that belied she might actually be smarter than she looked. In the end, he figured that everyone had to know a little something, at least. “We’re on ACE Corp private land. Errol bought much of the surrounding area years ago. He wanted to preserve the landscape and build a few things over here too.”

  She pointed to a walled, multi-story structure near the base of the mountain. “You mean that place? What is it?”

  “Oh, it’s an ACE Corp research station, one of many.”

  “What kind of research does it do?”

  He winked at her. “Sorry, babe. I can’t tell you, it’s private. I mean I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  Olivia stuck her upper lip out. “Oh, it must be something important then. I mean, why else would this PETR drone be flying over it, right?”

  “Yeah, it could be,” Stilicho said. “The moment I saw those PETR types at the airport, I knew they were up to no good.”

  “You must be some sort of detective then. How did you figure out that they were going to spy on this place?”

  Stilicho smiled. “I have a secret weapon.”

  “What? That gun of yours?”

  “No, that’s a gyrojet rifle that I first saw in action during my Mars trip,” Stilicho said. “I wanted one ever since.”

  “What then?”

  Stilicho gave her a dismissive look. “Nah, you wouldn’t believe me anyway. You already don’t believe that I work directly for Errol Flux, so it’s pointless to tell you about this one.”

  Olivia laughed and kissed him on the lips. “Okay, okay. I believe that you work for this Errol Flux guy already. I mean, you have the most expensive suite in the hotel, and you seem to be able to get private trips on all these ACE Corp vehicles whenever you feel like it too. You must get paid well for the kind of stuff you do for him.”

  “I get paid alright,” Stilicho said. “But he gave me a really big bonus for what I did for him on Mars. Now I could pretty much just coast for the rest of my life. I’ve been traveling the world for almost two years now. I stay in th
e best hotels, eat at top restaurants, and I get bored easily.”

  “So you shot this drone for fun?”

  Stilicho beamed confidently. “I did it because I can.”

  “Wow, I wish I had your life.”

  “Don’t wish too hard for it,” Stilicho said wistfully. “I nearly got killed doing that last job for him.”

  The sparkle in her eyes meant that she was duly impressed. “So you’re like a secret agent?”

  “Something like that,” Stilicho said. “My official designation is that of an international consultant, but as a title it’s meaningless, babe. When ACE Corp has a problem, they come to me.”

  “Okay then, Mr. ACE Corp secret agent,” she said. “How did you get clued into this dastardly plan by the evil forces of PETR to spy on your boss’s secret hideout?”

  Stilicho had impressed her by showing off, and now he wanted to prove to this woman that he was head and shoulders above everyone else. “Oh that was easy. All I did was hack into their phone apps and browsed through their web searches remotely. They never knew what hit them. I figured out what they were doing in a matter of minutes.”

  She gave him a surprised look. “How were you able to do that?”

  He tapped the frame of his smartglasses. “I happen to have the world’s most advanced AI suite in my personal server.”

  Olivia’s eyes grew even wider. “No way!”

  “I’m telling you I do,” Stilicho said. “It’s called a MAIA: Mobile Artificial Intelligence Assistant. It does most of my legwork for me.”

  Olivia turned away, deep in thought once more. “Wait a minute, I think I saw that on the news a few years back. Didn’t the United Nations ban them?”

  Stilicho scowled. “Yeah, they did. I can’t believe the bastards in our own government helped them to craft that law and implement it. Even Errol supported the ban. Unbelievable.”

  “But, didn’t they say that an AI with that kind of sophistication was a threat to humans like us? That’s the reason why the rest of the world ratified the treaty, right?”

  Stilicho made a dismissive gesture using the back of his hand. “Those government types don’t know anything. Yeah sure, I mean- if it fell in the wrong hands then it would be bad, but I believe we can harness the power of these things to do some good.”