Relativity: Aurora Resonant Book One (Aurora Rhapsody 7)

by G. S. Jennsen

  She landed beside the supervisor on the half-finished floor with a thud and latched her tether onto the frame. “Show me what’s happening.”

  One of the installation bots had accompanied the transport to the auxiliary bay, and the supervisor instructed it to restart its process.

  It dutifully buzzed over to the optimizer sitting on the floor and started to connect the main fiber conduit into the engine’s output line. It stopped, started again, then signaled an error, dropped the conduit and retreated.

  “The components do fit together, don’t they?” It wouldn’t be the first time a slightly different version of a component had been shipped by a supplier.

  “Yes, ma’am. It was the first thing we confirmed.”

  “And this behavior has been replicated on other ships of this model using other bots?”

  “This model began assembly yesterday, and the problem cropped up immediately, so not…no. We did switch out the bot and saw no change.”

  “Okay. If you’ll excuse me.” She pushed past him to position herself against the open panel of the optimizer, called up the schem flow on an aural and began studying the implementation in front of her. After a few seconds, she retrieved a modified interface from a pocket on the environment suit and plugged it into the small input port on the corner of the module.

  Vii, these ships’ Artificials are partially installed at this stage. Talk to this one and see if you can find out why it doesn’t approve of the power allocation optimizer.

  ‘Partially’ installed? Oh, dear. I will see what I can do.

  She laughed as she placed a probe at the end of the optimizer’s circuitry and fed it a small amount of power. The optimizer’s purpose was to modulate and efficiently distribute power to a variety of core functional systems, and nothing indicated it wasn’t capable of doing its job correctly. It had passed all the normal stress testing by the manufacturer and was rated to manage 21% more power and 32% more I/Os than they were asking of it.

  AFT-5k says the manner in which the optimizer prioritizes electrical systems over atmospherics will cause a fault in life support functions in 1.2% of extreme stress scenarios.

  But atmospherics should adjust on its own for…unless….

  She slammed per palm to her faceplate, prompting a worried movement toward her by the supervisor; she waved him off. And AFT-5k is correct. Different manufacturers, different protocols. So…we can patch the optimizer’s firmware, but without proper testing we risk creating other errors, and we no longer have time for proper testing.

  She drummed her gloved fingertips on the module. Run a spec comparison to the largest capacity military-rated model from Magellan. Will it fulfill the spec requirements and not conflict with the atmospherics and life support systems?

  The Magellan version was 11% more expensive, and up until twenty seconds ago, she would have said it was for no good reason. At least the price was 34% cheaper than it had been three months ago; six months ago the component hadn’t existed.

  Analyzing. Yes. Its use will mean a 0.8% decrease in allocation efficiency, but AFT-5k declares this an acceptable loss.

  How generous of AFT-5k. I’m going to wrap up here. Thanks for the help, Vii.

  My pleasure.

  She removed the interface and put it away before reaching over and unfastening her tether.

  “Ma’am?”

  “We can head back inside. I have to call in a minimum of three favors and convince Commandant Solovy to authorize a Ͻ420,000 increase in the manufacturing budget, but if I accomplish all those feats, you should have replacement power allocation optimizers in eighteen to twenty-four hours.”

  “Ah, yes, Ms. Rossi. Whatever gets the line running, no?”

  “You said it.” She pulled herself up and out of the frame, but paused to run her gaze across the factory floor a final time.

  A surprising, calm contentment came over her as a she realized sometime in the last ten minutes, while her brain had been occupied engineering, she’d made a decision. It turned out she really had simply needed to clear her head.

  She’d go talk to Miriam, and when that went well—which it must—she’d call in those favors while on a transport to Earth. Once there, she’d have lunch with her mother then go see the family attorney.

  ROMANE

  IDCC COLONY

  Ricardo’s Cantina was about as sleazy as bars got in Romane’s capital, which made it roughly equivalent to the nicest bar in The Boulevard on Pandora. Noah wasn’t committed enough to this quest of de-redemption to fly to Pandora, so Ricardo’s would have to do for tonight.

  The synth blaring one level too loud out of the speakers carried a rough edge to it, and the lighting spaced unevenly in the walls gave off a dim but warm glow, not all silver-harsh as was the fad these days. Business was steady but the bar wasn’t crowded, and the atmosphere was relaxed.

  An all-but-forgotten frame of mind poked at the edges of his mood. Maybe it would more than do. He slid onto a barstool and ordered a beer, and was impressed when it arrived pronto.

  “Noah Terrage?”

  He took a quick sip of the beer and looked around until he spotted Dylan Shackleford approaching. When his friend from Pandora arrived, he stood and accepted a brief shoulder-hug as he gestured to the stool beside him. “Sit and have a drink. How’ve you been?”

  “Surviving. We all thought you were dead, man. You disappeared the night Ella was killed, then…nothing. For over a year.”

  Had it only been a year and change since that night? It felt like a decade. “Sorry about that. Zelones took out a mark on me, and I had to make myself scarce.”

  Dylan flagged down the bartender. “Lot of shit’s gone down since then—you get caught up in any of it?”

  Noah sipped on his beer while Dylan ordered. He could recount getting trapped on Messium during the Metigen invasion, trekking across the ravaged colony with Kennedy and escaping through a pitched battle in a shuttle she’d jury-rigged—or how he’d helped crash a scout ship into the belly of an Alliance cruiser and executed a madman while the cruiser fell out of the sky.

  He could talk about co-founding an innovative ship design company on a wing and a prayer, then nearly dying on a manufacturing station as Zelones mercs tried to steal it. Or how he’d made peace with his father before the man was arrested for treason, and made more than peace with him in the aftermath.

  He could share a tale of falling in love with a woman who was astonishing and brilliant, maddening and confounding, and how it had changed everything about his life.

  But the truth was, bragging about any of it, much less all of it, to a former drinking buddy while sulking in a sleazy bar just seemed…lame. And he couldn’t shake the feeling the events would be lesser for the retelling.

  So instead he shook his head mildly. “There were a few scrapes here and there, but nothing too dramatic. How about you?”

  “Ah, man, let me tell you. During the Prevo unrest, I got caught in the middle of this riot in The Approach. Almost took a Molotov to the face. It was nuts.”

  “Sounds like. What are you doing on Romane?”

  “Classing up the place.” At Noah’s raised eyebrow, Dylan grimaced. “Got a delivery to make. The tech trade is out of control these days. As soon as some Prevo thinks up a new gadget, some hacker thinks of a way to abuse it.”

  “So business is good?”

  “You’d think, wouldn’t you? But not so much. Parts are too cheap and getting cheaper fast. Everything’s faster, smaller and cheaper—which is great if you’re a buyer. Not so much if you’re a seller.”

  Noah nodded in false commiseration. Plummeting component prices had been a godsend for both Connova and AEGIS. “How’s the old gang? Sarah? Brian?”

  Dylan’s expression darkened. “Sarah’s in a coma after frying her brain on a spiked chimeral. Brian was killed in the cartel turf war that broke out when Zelones imploded. Mario, too.”

  “Shit. What about Lincoln?”

  “Got ou
t. He took a job with Avion Transit a few months ago. He’s doing really well, I hear.”

  “Good for him.” Noah downed the rest of his beer and ordered another. He was here to kick back and try to recapture some tattered scrap of his former life, dammit, and that wasn’t going to happen without a great deal more alcohol.

  Dylan tilted his head and pointed to the amber glyphs winding along Noah’s skin from the back of his neck to vanish beneath his shirt at his left shoulder. “You mélanged now?”

  The glyphs came courtesy of a ware upgrade to his prosthetic arm, but he supposed his optional yet always available link to Vii counted as mélange-like, too. “Isn’t everyone?”

  “Only those who aren’t Prevos, am I right? I want to get hooked in as soon as I can afford an ad-hoc Artificial. It should help with business. If I’m lucky, maybe it’ll lead to a way up and into a little respectability.”

  Noah frowned in surprise. “Is that what you want? Respectability? I seem to remember you repeatedly speechifying about freedom and living your own life your own way.”

  “I’m thinking I can still do those things and have a big, comfy bed to sleep in at night, too—possibly one with silk sheets and a view. You may not have noticed, being scarce and all, but it’s a new world out there.”

  Dylan set his glass down. “Sorry, man, I wish I could stay and relive the good old days, but I’ve a meet-up in thirty at a scraper downtown somewhere…the Dynamis Corporation building.”

  Noah chuckled under his breath; Dynamis was next to Connova’s building. “It’s at Stratford and Lione. Take the Q-East levtram to the Lione stop.”

  “Thanks, man—hey, that reminds me. I never asked what you’re doing on Romane.”

  “Oh, you know, the usual. Fucking up my life.”

  The self-pity kicked in along about the fourth beer.

  He’d checked on Mia before heading to Ricardo’s and found she was working day and night to try to save the Prevos who had been attacked, even as she remained a target herself.

  Caleb and Alex were busy risking their lives, again, sneaking into the lion’s den known as the Anaden universe in order to gather crucial intel for the war everyone believed was coming. According to Vii, Kennedy was currently crawling around the belly of a ship in zero-g at the Presidio to solve a manufacturing glitch holding up production of the new troop transports needed for the same coming war.

  He was sitting in a bar getting drunk.

  It occurred to him then that the last year might have just been a hyper-realistic illusoire fantasy, because this right here looked a lot more like his real life than anything that had happened since the night Zelones took a shot at him on Pandora and murdered an innocent, if batty, girl instead.

  Only thing was, he didn’t remember himself being such a whiny, self-loathing bitch.

  The fifth beer arrived at the same time a buxom redhead sidled up beside him. “Hey, handsome. You’ve been sitting here all alone since I got here, and it’s a travesty. Want some company?”

  He shrugged, which she took for yes and planted herself on the stool Dylan had vacated earlier. “I’m Samantha. And you are?”

  He stared at the glass in his hand, then over at her. She wielded bright blue eyes, a head full of ginger corkscrew curls, a freckled nose and nice curves like weapons she knew how to use.

  Once upon a time she would’ve led him eagerly into the latest in a string of one-night stands or, if they hit it off, become an occasional fuck-buddy, until the next one sauntered up in the next sleazy bar to keep the party going.

  He’d come here in search of a past that wasn’t what he’d remembered it to be. He and his buddies had enjoyed talking it up, but much of the time things had sucked—much like sitting in this bar making a pathetic wreck of himself did.

  And even when they hadn’t sucked, they hadn’t…mattered. He’d never imagined living a life of meaning could feel so damn good, or that living it with the right person at your side could transform the meaning of every single day.

  He set the full glass back on the bar and stood. “In the wrong place. You have a good night.”

  36

  SENECA

  CAVARE

  SENECAN FEDERATION PROVISIONAL MILITARY HEADQUARTERS

  * * *

  BROOKLYN MET TESSA HENNESSEY at a little pub three blocks from the temporary SF Military Headquarters on the outskirts of Cavare.

  Striding quickly down the sidewalk toward the location, she decided that while she was sorry the Headquarters had exploded and people had died, she was glad it had moved. The memories of her recent visit there with Morgan were already distracting her too much from the damn mission as it was without adding in visual mnemonics.

  She didn’t know Hennessey, but Mia had vouched for her, in a hand-wavy, ‘Prevos Unite’ way at least. On successfully identifying her contact by the long, distinctive orange-and-black braids and matching mandarin glyphs, she slid into the back corner booth across from the woman.

  Hennessey studied her openly over a beer. “You’re Brooklyn Harper?”

  She nodded, and the woman slid a tiny comm dot and a small case over to her. “I’m not going to break into Military HQ, but I will help walk you through it.”

  Brooklyn placed the dot behind her ear, but regarded the case suspiciously. “And that is?”

  “For your eye, love. If you expect me to navigate, I need to see what you see.”

  She scowled at the suggestion, then reminded herself she’d do it without hesitation on an official mission and palmed the case. “I’ll put it in when I leave. Don’t want to attract attention in here.” She took a moment to study the woman.

  Hennessey appeared to be the antithesis of everything Brooklyn had ever strove for—a hacker, a warenut, an overly emotive counterculture slacker lashing out at the world with the vicious weapons of dress, style and demeanor.

  But the woman was a Prevo, which meant she was, at a minimum, smart. And she worked for Division, which meant she was, at a minimum, sneaky. So it was possible appearances were deceiving—given the spy factor, perhaps intentionally deceiving.

  “If you get caught, here or later, you’ll lose your job and possibly go to prison. Why are you doing this?”

  Hennessey shrugged. “Not so sure about the consequences. I’ve kind of got my boss wrapped, and I can get away with a lot. But even so…Prevos before profession? I want to help Morgan, and I can. So I will.”

  “Good enough. What now?”

  “I’m sending you the passcodes to get into the secured area of the building and the Artificial’s lab. If these got loose it would be bad—by which I mean put good people in danger—so do be kind enough to delete them once you’re done.

  “I’m also sending you a basic schematic of the building layout, though you’ll still need my help to actually find anything. Nobody thinks the move here is permanent, so shit’s piled in corners, offices are conference rooms and conference rooms are labs. Enter via the lower rear entrance on Castilina. It’ll put you closer to the lab and in a less-crowded section for the first third of the way.”

  A normal building wouldn’t be crowded in any section at 0200 local, but this was a military facility, and those never went to sleep. “Understood. Where will you be?”

  Hennessey leaned back and slouched lower in the booth. “Right here, munching on tapas and drinking beer.”

  Brooklyn wasn’t a secret agent. She preferred a straightforward, fists-readied approach for most things in life, and in her world stealth was a tool used to take an enemy by surprise and gain the advantage in a violent clash. But if extended subterfuge that didn’t end in a dead or disabled target was required, she would do extended subterfuge, just this once. For Morgan.

  She did have a lot of practice using a Veil by now, however. Malcolm claimed she was a ninja master with it, and after the incident at the hospital, he might even be right. In comparison, navigating a building not currently under attack should be easy.

  Finding a dark, sh
adowy corner in which to activate the Veil should have been easy as well, but all the streets were lit and Seneca’s gigantic moon transformed night to dusk. She finally settled for waiting until no people or cams were scanning her way and vanished.

  Next, she slipped through the entrance and shadowed a tall man past lobby security. Once inside, she moved with ease down the populated halls of the Military Headquarters complex, anticipating people’s movements and timing her own accordingly.

  Getting through the doors without raising red flags was always the hardest part, and she spent too much time waiting for the way to clear or for someone to come along, depending on the type of door and amount of traffic. She cooled her heels for six agonizing minutes until an opportunity to enter the passcode and open the door to the secure wing unnoticed arrived.

  Hennessey corrected her turns a few times, but the schematic was easy enough to follow, and other than the delays she skulked through the halls and levels to reach the Command Center without critical incident.

  The anteroom of the Command Center was a wide atrium featuring a security desk opposite the door. Multiple officers sat waiting to be granted entry by someone of higher rank than they.

  The room was never going to be empty or unguarded, so she clung to the wall and waited once more. This close to her goal, adrenaline fought her attempts to remain still and breathe evenly and quietly. Hennessey chattering gossip in her ear about the men and women who passed her did not help.

  Finally one of the officers was called inside. The wide door opened, and she dodged the frame, the entrant and his escort in a series of pirouettes worthy of the Bolshoi Ballet.

  The next second she was in the clear and veered off to the left.