“We’re looking for the time,” Cassandra said.
“So is everyone who comes in here,” the man grumbled, turning his attention back to the sick clock and the tools laid out on the counter in front of him.
“Perhaps, but we are looking for a very particular time, sir.” Cassandra said in precise tones. “I don’t want to be late for a special appointment I have with an old friend,” she said exactly, and the clockmaker nodded. He carefully put both clock and tools down on the counter and pressed a button on the desk. El heard the front door locking behind them.
“This is some spy nonsense, isn’t it?” he hissed into Cassandra’s ear, and then “Ow!” as she stomped on his foot.
“Please follow me, ma’am, sir.” The clockmaker turned and disappeared through the curtain behind the counter, and without a hesitation, Cassandra followed.
Oh, bugger it. El rolled his eyes, keeping one hand on his blaster pistol as he followed them.
“What the hell did you do!” the clockmaker turned and demanded as soon as they were behind the curtain, and the metal door that sat on the other side of that.
El saw the little man transform from what had appeared to be a pleasantly distracted, somewhat bumbling technician into an angry, authoritative spy. He removed his clockwork hat, revealing a crown of black hair, and set it on one of the steel counters that surrounded this small vestibule-like space. Large screens hung from the walls, one half displaying three-dimensional renders of the interior of clock parts, and the other half displaying complicated lines of code.
“I take it you’re House Archival, then,” El muttered. He hated house politics. I ran away from my own one to get away from it.
“We had to release Alpha,” Cassandra said fervently. “It was either that or allow it to get taken by Armcore.”
“A rogue artificial intelligence in data-space! Who knows what it will do! Or what it can do!” The little man huffed and started flicking his fingers at the screens, directing their fingerprint-keyed controls. “My name is Agent Simmons, by the way. You might as well know because when the Armcore guards arrest us all, they’ll only get it out of me anyway.”
“Simmons, this is Captain Eliard,” the blonde woman introduced them.
“Ah yes, Captain El of the Mercury Blade,” Simmons drawled. “You couldn’t have selected a less conspicuous bunch of rogues to fall in with, Agent?” He glowered at the woman.
“Hey!” El said. I resent that, kind of. But he was pleasantly surprised when Cassandra took up for the disreputable crew of the Blade.
“You know that their ship is the fastest on this side of the galaxy, Simmons.” Cassandra waved of his concerns. El got the impression that arguments and fights like this was a very natural part of the day job at House Archival.
Simmons huffed, but said no more about Cassandra’s choice of companions. “Here is what we know so far…” He flicked at the screens again, revealing a stellar map with various coordinates pulsing red. “We managed to trace some of its code and discovered that the artificial intelligence has commandeered the trash moons of Sebopol, Tullian, and Verek.” Three entirely different pulsing lights appeared at different ends of one of the spiral arms.
“Commandeered? Won’t the Coalition notice? Won’t Armcore notice?” Cassandra said.
“Not the way that Alpha has done it, taking over the local servers and orders, re-directing the excess trash to nearby moons, but allowing certain shipments through. House Archival only managed to notice because well, as you know, we have the best analysts in the galaxy.” El thought that Simmons appeared more than a little proud of that fact.
“But Armcore has the best bank accounts in the galaxy,” El considered.
“You’re right. They’ll be able to find an analyst who can work out the cover eventually, but for now, it’s only House Archival who knows what the intelligence is doing,” Simmons stated.
“And what is the intelligence doing?” El asked. It didn’t appear obvious to him at all. Wallowing in trash? Was it a depressed super-intelligence?
“Ah, well, yes. We were as confused at first, but then we started examining which shipments of waste it was allowing, and which ones it was sending away.” Simmons’s hands flickered again, pulling up the cargo manifests of several freighters.
“Machine parts. Industrial waste. Dismantled ship systems,” Cassandra read.
“And bear in mind, these trash worlds take everything, organic and inorganic material, so the fact that it is only after mechanical items seems to suggest, to me at least…” Simmons’s voice fell. “That Alpha is making something.”
El looked at several log entries that read ‘ship systems.’ “Tell me, Agent Simmons, what exactly does that mean? Are we talking curtains or warp engines?”
“By the looks of it…” Simmons face was lit up by the glare of the screens. “Alpha has been requesting everything that it needs to build itself a ship. Or even a fleet of ships.”
2
Primatuer Hyle
Irie whistled as she walked through the pristine avenues of the underwater Mela platform. It’s nice to be somewhere clean and pleasant again, she thought, even if she didn’t really trust the folks around her. The people here were Coalition types through and through, with long robes and refined music piped from the corners of the rooms, the delicate chimes of fountains beside carefully manicured plants. A nice place, and one that was a little like her own home world, a pleasant central Coalition-held world called Farran. The engineer was just about to get lost in the reveries of her childhood—running down to the tournament garages to work on the mecha-bots that her father trained—when she was distracted by the Gunner’s angry snarl.
“What do you mean, I can’t bring my guns in here?” Val was looming over a comparatively smaller woman in the white suit-dress of one of Mela’s platform security.
Oh no, Irie thought.
“This is an unarmed section of the platform, sir,” the woman said, managing to maintain eye contact and a steely voice despite the immense size of the Duergar in front of her. Irie noticed that her hand had already strayed to the stunstick at her side.
“Un-armed?” Val looked confused at the merest suggestion.
“You’ll have to hand over your weapons if you want to continue.” The guard indicated the yellow strip-light that glowed across the marble floors. “Don’t worry, sir, we’ll log and secure it, and you’ll get your weapons back just as soon as you disembark…”
“No one lays a hand on my weapons other than me.” Val cracked his shoulders, the sound as loud as the snap of projectile bullets. Irie started to pale, seeing a trio of other white-suited officers appearing out of the corners of her eye.
The Duergar growled, a raspy, animal sound that made the nearest citizens edge away from them.
“Let’s not make a scene, Val,” the engineer whispered nervously. “I’m sure that this will be alright. We don’t have to go into the yellow zone anyway, right?” She patted her large friend on the shoulder and tried to ease him away from the guards, back the way they had come.
“Actually, it might be better if we do take your weapons,” the security woman said, eyeing the large amount of blaster pistols, rifles, and assorted sidearms that both Val and Irie had.
She didn’t just say that, did she? Irie looked in horror between the gunner and the guards. Are they placing us under arrest?
“Hanson!” A voice broke through the tableau, belonging to a human in his middling years, with white hair and a goatee, wearing a tan engineer’s jacket. He had blotchy cheeks, and one entire leg had been replaced with an awkward metal construction of pistons and struts.
Who are you? Irie looked at him in confusion, but the galvanic effect that he had on the guards was clear. They stepped back and even straightened up a little.
“You’re Irie Hanson, aren’t you? I swore I recognized you!” He laughed, raising his broad, work-scarred hands in a calming gesture to the guards. “It’s quite alright, Officers.
These two are old friends. I’ll show them around.”
The security woman looked at the man with the cybernetic leg and back to her would-be prisoners, before the internal battle was decided. She nodded briskly. “As you wish, Primateur.” She signaled to the other officers to move out. Irie saw that she raised her hand to talk into the hand communicator that sat there.
“Primateur?” Irie looked at him. “Do I know you?”
“Ah yes, silly title really. Honorary member of Mela Council, but it helps with a few difficulties,” the man said, before doing his best to perform a hasty bow to them both. “Primateur Jonas Hyle, at your service.”
Jonas Hyle, I do know that name… Irie paused. “You were a mecha-fighter, back in the Trans-System Tournaments, weren’t you? What was your ‘bot called? The Bloody Mary, was it?”
“That’s right, you remember!” Hyle pounded her on the back more forcefully than it seemed his frame should allow. “And I remember your father’s Babe Ruth! My Mary almost had him on the deck a few times, I can tell you!”
“Never,” Irie said proudly, before the memories of what had happened to her father and how she had become a surrogate traveler out on the edges of Coalition space flooded back. “Well, that was a long time ago now, of course…”
“Irie?” Val growled, still looking as though he was ready to fight someone. “We know this man? You said that you fought him? He was your enemy?”
“Tournament-fought,” Irie explained, earning a considering nod from Val. The Duergar respected ritualized fighting, everyone knew. “Hyle and his Bloody Mary were long-term contenders in the mecha-fights that my father used to train for,” she said.
“Ah yes, your father.” Hyle frowned deeply. “Such a sad waste. A loss to the entire field.”
“Yeah…” Irie nodded. There really wasn’t much more to say than that.
“The Coalition should have shown leniency,” Hyle tried to say tactfully. “The entire league of mecha-fighters thought so…”
“‘We fight on their dime!’” Irie repeated the traditional mecha saying and curse. Mecha-fighting was a legal activity, but only just. It was outlawed in more than half of the Coalition worlds, and those tournaments, designers, and mecha-garages, like her father’s, had to accept a lot of regulation and Armcore involvement. It was common knowledge that Armcore kept their eye on the mechas that were being built, just so that they could buy, or outright steal, prototype designs of any innovative machines.
“Your father could have agreed to work with Armcore,” Hyle said.
Like you did? Irie’s smile froze. Just how closely did Hyle work with Armcore these days?
“No, he couldn’t. Artistic freedoms and what have you,” Irie said. Her father had been banned from working the tournaments, and, a few years later, he had died in a mysterious accident. Irie had fled her home world and the world of mecha-fighting, taking every scrap of her father’s research that she could, including Babe Ruth.
Which, as it happened, proved to be the topic of interest for Primateur Hyle. “Do you, uh, do you still have your father’s mecha? Babe Ruth?”
Irie knew suddenly, with cold certainty, that she didn’t want to tell this man that, despite the fact that he had just saved their skins. “No,” she said abruptly. “I had to sell it years ago.” She shrugged. “It’s a hard life out on the edges.”
“You sold it!?” Hyle looked alarmed, pained even. “Do you remember where? Which world? Station?”
You vulture, Irie thought. “Oh, it was already pretty bashed up by then. Had to be broken down for parts…”
“Uhhh…” This time, the Primateur turned a ghostly pale. “That is very sad news. I’ve never seen a mecha fight so well as Babe Ruth did.”
“No, Babe Ruth is the best,” Irie said, unthinkingly.
“Is?”
“I mean was.” She covered her tracks with a blush. “It’s still hard to believe that Babe isn’t around, you now.”
“I’m sure.” Hyle held her eyes for a moment, before his face transformed into a grin. “But enough of these sad tidings. What brings you to Mela? And who is your friend, here?” He looked up at the oversized Gunner.
“Val Pathok, of the mountain Pathok,” the large Duergar growled.
“Good. Now, do you two have somewhere to stay? How long are you here?” Hyle said, still with a genial grin.
“We stay with the ship,” Val growled once more. Irie could see that her friend didn’t trust this man, which suited her fine, because she wasn’t sure she trusted him either.
“Oh, you have a ship!” Hyle laughed. “Of course you do. How else would you get here? What is she, a speeder? Transport?”
“Just a scout vessel,” Irie cut in quickly before Val could growl again. “The May Bell.”
“May Bell, pretty name.” Hyle smiled. “Can I buy you two lunch?”
For some reason, Irie was starting to get the impression that she really didn’t want to spend much longer in the primateur’s company. He’s too nice. My father died—he was murdered—and Hyle is being too nice. He got bought off by Armcore decades ago, and now he’s some important council member here in a nice, cushy Coalition world. Irie didn’t like it. “We really have to get going, Hyle. I have a ton of supplies to buy and hardly any time to do it in. I hope you understand.”
“Of course, Irie. It’s just a pleasure to see you again,” Hyle said. “Look, here’s my details. If you’re ever near Mela again, drop by, for old times’ sake!”
Irie promised that she would and thanked him for helping them out with the guards. As soon as they had turned to go and made it to the other end of the plaza however, Irie whispered to Val. “I think we need to get off this planet, and quickly.”
Val Pathok growled his agreement. The pair turned and made their way back to the shipping and cargo areas of the platform, as Irie hastily tried to raise the captain and Cassandra on her wrist communicator.
Behind the crewmates of the Mercury Blade, the plaza where they had recently almost come to blows returned to its gentle and sedate pace. People started shopping once more or carried on their way from one shop to another as if nothing untoward had ever happened.
In one of the side avenues that led to the plaza, however, with a clear view back toward where the gunner and the engineer had recently disappeared, Primateur Hyle stood half-shaded behind one of the pot-bound Yucca plants. At his side was the white-suited Mela security captain.
“Do you think they know?” the captain said to the man.
Hyle grimaced, his previously cheerful and avuncular face now a mask of disgust. “I should think so. Old Hanson didn’t raise his daughter to be stupid, and I’ve never met a trusting Duergar in all of my life.”
The captain swore, raising her wrist to her face. “Do you want me to call off the operation?”
“No!” Primateur Hyle said adamantly. “We have to get the Mercury Blade. There is a substantial reward on all of their heads, and I mean to be one of the ones claiming it.” A look of annoyance flashed over the Mela security captain’s face. “And your good self, of course…”
“Of course.” The captain nodded.
“But one thing, before we hand them over, I want that mecha that she’ll have in there. A big one, called Babe Ruth. I know that she still has it!” Hyle’s eyes glittered with cold avarice.
“But if they know that we’re onto them…” The captain frowned.
“Then your security will have to move fast, won’t they?” Hyle snapped. “Did you track where the other two went? The captain and the woman?”
The woman at his side nodded. “We’ve been following them on drone cameras the entire time. They went to a small clockmaker’s shop on the seventeenth. We can pick them up any time.”
“Then do it now. Maybe little Irie and her large friend will be easier to deal with when we have guns to their crewmates’ heads!” Primateur Hyle said with a vicious smile.
3
Ponos
“But wha
t is it trying to do?” Cassandra shook her head. The trio were still in the small workspace of Agent Simmons, searching through the screens for any sign of a plan. The trash moons of Sepobol, Tullian, and Verek were light-years apart. Nowhere near close enough to form any sort of strategic alliance.
If Alpha is trying to set up some kind of kingdom of his own, then he’s chosen a poor territory. El shook his head. But it appeared obvious that the artificial intelligence was trying to create ships. It wanted a fleet.
“The only thing I don’t get,” Cassandra said, “is that if the AI already exists in data-space, then can’t it zoom around the galaxy faster than the speed of light anyway? What would be the point of containing itself into a ship?”
“So it has guns?” The answer seemed pretty obvious to El. The mere thought of anyone or anything—human or otherwise—not wanting a spaceship seemed crazy to him.
“House Archival has run predictions on a variety of scenarios, but without knowing more about the makeup of Alpha itself, it is almost impossible to predict,” Simmons said. “Alpha is a mixture of Armcore programming and ancient Valyien tech. We don’t know what sub-routines and protocols Armcore had already coded into Alpha’s personality before it got mixed with the Valyiens.” Simmons frowned. “Although there is a statistical probability that Alpha will try to expand, following the laws of biological growth.”
El raised a hand. “Excuse me for being stupid here, but I thought Alpha wasn’t a biological lifeform?”
“No. You are correct,” Simmons said, “but we have only two models of expansion. Biological life, which seeks to divide and expand into available habitat, changing the habitat where possible. And computer algorithms, which do not vary their growth at all in relation to their habitat, but just keep following their original program.”
Alpha Rises Page 2