Head Space

by Andrew Vaillencourt

  “We’ll explain later.” Roland dismissed the question. Then he activated his comm. “Honey Pot, you alive?”

  “Twenty yards out, Breach,” Mindy replied. “Our exfil is clear of tangos. Paulie has been rendered harmless as well.”

  “We’ll meet you at the shuttle, then,” Lucia ordered. “Let’s double-time it, folks!”

  As promised, there were no hostiles between the fixers and their ride home. The Rejects had done an admirable job of sweeping the decks and Winner’s mines lay in patient repose for those foolish enough to give chase. In less than two minutes, the shuttle was uncoupling from the side of the Sailor’s Lament and gently turning toward the chaos of the Vinland Station traffic pattern. Lucia promptly went over to check on Bubba, and found him giddy with painkillers and powerful narcotics. Satisfied that he would live, she returned to the company of her crew and sat down on one of the shuttle’s narrow benches. They all rode out the trip back to Pike’s Transport in silence, each lost in their own thoughts and Manny trying to devour all the information on his comm.

  Once they arrived at the troop ship, Pike had them all breaking down equipment in the cargo bay. It was a bustle of milling crewmen, wounded and exhausted mercenaries, and more than a few technicians and support personnel scurrying around the area of the small ship.

  Manny, Mindy, Roland, and Lucia picked a corner to bivouac. Roland was sitting on the floor, his back against the bulkhead. He did not have much to stow or pack, so he was killing the time listening to Manny try to explain what had happened to Mindy. It was not going well.

  “So Arthur Inskip was just an AI? Like a runaway banking program?”

  “Yes,” Manny explained. “It was supposed to be this big market analysis engine, but it achieved sentience at some point.”

  “Original programmer used his own brain patterns to add complexity,” Roland supplied. “Guy was a jerk, according to Inskip.”

  “He told you that?” Manny asked.

  “He was a chatty bastard when he thought he had me trapped.”

  Manny continued, “I only have what I could store on my handheld, but he was responsible for a lot of things over the years.”

  “He wanted my body,” Roland added. “And the doc’s nanobots to make a brain capable of storing his consciousness. He wanted to actually walk around and stuff.”

  Mindy frowned. “What about Bob? Was he really one of Roland’s old teammates?”

  “No!” Roland fairly growled at the woman. Then he calmed himself. “Bob was an experiment to see if a techno-organic brain could even work. Inskip grew fond of him and put him in the armature so he could experience fatherhood.”

  Manny shook his head. “No, I don’t think that was it at all, Roland.”

  “Really? It’s what he told Bob, anyway.”

  Manny replied, “The Bob you just fought was the ninth in a series of personality matrix experiments. They’d had a working brain for a while, though it was never going to have the capacity for something like Inskip. They fired up and shut down eight other sentient personality matrices before this one, all trying to get an emotional framework that would not collapse under stress. They all went insane. Bob was just the latest version, and the most stable.”

  “So he lied to his own creation,” Roland said ruefully. “Sick.”

  Manny nodded his affirmative. “Inskip had to feed Bob things that would reinforce his emotions, not stress them. He probably had lots of false memories and stuff like that. Inskip knew that Bob would not last forever. He just wanted to see how long he could keep the matrix intact. He as much as told me that once he was building Golems that could handle a full AI like his, that Bob would have been shut down.”

  “What a bastard,” Mindy said.

  “He was a megalomaniacal sentient artificial intelligence,” Roland explained. “He existed as electrical signals inside a bank of computers for years. Nothing but time and head space to play with and help him grow. Being a jerk is pretty much a comic book cliché for that sort of thing.”

  “And The Brokerage?” Mindy asked. “Are they gonna come after us again?”

  “There is no Brokerage,” Manny told her. “Inskip was The Brokerage. It was a hell of a scam, really. He convinced the galaxy that there was this giant network of criminal geniuses manipulating the markets, when all along it was just one really clever computer program. Brokerage leadership has been impossible to find because they did not exist. It was all Inskip, executing plans via local lawyers and accountants.”

  “Shit never got this weird when I was a regular assassin, you know,” Mindy complained. “At least I got to finish off good ol’ Paulie.”

  “Throwing Galapagos into yet another cycle of brutal internal strife,” Manny added. “Strong work.”

  Mindy wrinkled her nose at him. “Galapagos is always in the throes of civil war, kid. They actually prefer it that way. Anyway, I gotta get out of this thing. Paulie’s blood is starting to crust over.” The little blond stood and yanked the zipper of her blood-stained jumpsuit down. As her ample charms began to emerge from the front, several of the men moving around found their attention drawn to the sound of her zipper. Roland shifted so his width would block the view of the oblivious exhibitionist.

  Lucia quickly doffed her jacket and tossed it to the topless assassin. “Goddammit, Mindy!”

  “What?” Mindy caught the garment and threw it over her shoulders.

  Manny tapped Roland on the arm while the ladies argued over the correct level of decorum for a coed military transport.

  “What is it, kid?” Roland asked.

  “Nosebleed dug up a lot of stuff on the Golem project. It goes back really far. I think uh...” Manny did not know what to say next.

  “Inskip started it all, right?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “I figured. He’d wanted this for a long time. He had the ability to put the right players where he needed them. Scientists, corporations, governments. He knew what he was doing from the start. Getting something like Project Golem off the ground makes sense.”

  “It’s just so messed up.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Manny looked up at the big man, trying to get a read on the blank scowl Roland wore. Roland turned to meet the gaze, his eyes tired. “Don’t give me that look, kid. The Golem project was a shit show filled with Machiavellian assholes from day one. Now that I know that there was another Machiavellian asshole involved, I’m finding it doesn’t change much. A lot of good people died, a bunch of assholes did too.” He turned back to look at Lucia, now arguing with Mindy over what to do about the “pants situation.” Something that may have been a smile broke across his face. “Without the Golem project, I’d be dead. Or at best a bag of organs in a life-support pod, driving an assault mech for the UEDF or a converted civilian rig for a merc crew. For all his bullshit, that crazy AI got me this body. It got me close to her,” his chin jerked in Lucia’s direction. “Which means I don’t care to be all that pissy about it. Furthermore, I’d have never rescued the doc, met Lucia, or picked you up if one messed-up AI hadn’t wanted a body of his own.”

  “Or hired Mindy,” Manny pointed out.

  “Yeah well, you take the bad with the good I guess.”

  “The Red Hats would still be terrorizing Venus,” Manny added to the list. “And the Pirate King would still be working the spaceways.”

  “Combine’s gone,” Roland said, getting into the spirit of the conversation. “That has been a huge improvement for everyone.”

  “I guess old Arthur ended up doing more good than harm, in the end.” Manny shook his head in disbelief. “Hard to see it that way, though.”

  Roland checked the ladies again, just to see who was winning. Lucia had wandered off to confer with some of Pike’s crew on logistics, and Mindy was seated on one of the benches wearing Lucia’s jacket and a loose pair of fatigues that must have been commandeered from a privateer. Her sour expression indicated that Lucia had prevailed in resolv
ing the “pants situation.” She saw Roland look over and stuck her tongue out.

  “Get an eyeful, Ironsides?”

  “Sure did. Just not of you. You ain’t that interesting.” Roland’s gaze was on Lucia. Returning from her conversation with an unnamed mercenary, she was walking back their way. Her armor was gone leaving her gray undershirt plastered to her body with sweat. Her hair was slick and disheveled from her helmet, and her pants bore all the signs of heavy combat. She looked worn and weathered, though her stride was long and her posture straight. Her eyes glinted like freshly honed steel and her body moved as if made of coiled springs. Roland still remembered the woman with crippling anxiety who had fainted upon seeing him fight some androids the night they met. There was no sign of the terrified Uptown executive in Lucia Ribiero anymore. Now she was organizing fighters after commanding a successful rescue mission in enemy territory. Mercenaries with dozens of confirmed kills called her ‘ma’am’ and followed her orders without question. Dangerous people the galaxy over gave her respect and deference and it showed. She was beautiful and powerful and dangerous, and Roland really wished they were somewhere more private.

  Lucia smiled back. “When the hell did you learn to be charming?” She walked over and hugged him. “How are you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m all right. That DECO program Manny used found some real ugly truth is all. It seems the Golem project was Inskip’s doing, too.”

  “That ought to surprise me more, but honestly, I can’t say it does.”

  “Kind of my reaction, too.”

  Lucia chuckled at this, then returned to the matter at hand. “But are you okay carrying Bob back home?”

  “It’s not Bob anymore. It wasn’t Rook, either.”

  Lucia graced him with a benevolent eye roll. “Yes, pedantic Polly, I get that. But I saw him without the suit and in the helmet. If it creeped me out, then it must have shook you a little, too.”

  “Nah,” Roland said. “I was pretty pissed off by the time he got there. With the safeties off I have a hard time getting rattled. I just wanted to kill him and stop The Brokerage. Seeing him in Rook’s colors actually helped me stay in the right frame of mind.”

  “That’s the ‘break-their-limbs-one-by-one’ frame of mind?”

  Roland did not sound offended. “Told you I was mad.”

  “You got that right. And another thing too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Rook’s armature, your armature, all the things my dad helped make for the UEDF? They are weapons meant for soldiers and heroes. That makes them responsibilities or burdens, not gifts. I’m not happy about all the awful things that happened to you, or were done to you, or that they made you do. But I am very glad that you were one of the people picked to bear this weapon, Roland. The whole galaxy is a better place because even when you hated yourself, you used the power for good. Seeing Bob in action really reminded me of how great it is that the Golems did not end up in different hands.”

  Mindy spoke up. “I hear he dropped Bernadette.” Her head shook slowly. “You Golems are terrifying. You should listen to the boss, Ironsides. She’s smarter than you. Even I’m glad that you are such a sap for old movies and comic books, and I’m amoral as all hell.”

  “Let’s not sugar-coat it, folks. I was an enforcer for twenty-five years...”

  “Oh, I’ve heard all the stories about big bad Tank!” Lucia snorted. “Please. You hurt assholes and criminals because let’s face it: you enjoy that. You also stopped more than a dozen gang wars. You protected the poor and the weak from entire criminal empires for decades. Every time I meet some new person in that town, they all have stories about all the ways you helped them.” She gave his arm a playful swat. “I’m just here to increase your profile so you can do more good in more places.”

  “Oh, goody.”

  The sound of boots and grumbled expletives warned them that Pike was heading their direction. They turned to see the stocky commandant shoving through the milling clumps of mercenaries to interrupt their conversation. Roland went to stand but Pike waved him down. “As you were, Breach. Just bringing the debrief. You’ll be happy to know that we are clear of Vinland with no sign of pursuit. Best guess is that everybody’s fighting over who gets to keep that big frigate.”

  “Gotta love Galapagos,” Roland sighed.

  Pike continued the report. “In not so good news, at 0630 ship’s time there will be memorial services for the thirteen men and women who aren’t going to collect their retirement pay.”

  “Thirteen?” Roland moaned. “That many?”

  “And seven more wounded badly. Those big white androids were a surprise, and Bob? Well, now we know why five of you guys was enough to scare the UEDF.”

  “How is Bernie?” Lucia asked.

  Pike shook his head. “Bob thumped her good. She was out of her league and that is never a good feeling. The good news is Bernadette will recover from her injuries. She’ll be on the bench for a while, that’s for sure. Of course, with her bonus from this run she can afford a vacation. The repairs to her armature will be costly, though. Expect an addendum to my invoice. Since DECO will pay it, I’m sure you do not care. Next item.” Pike cleared his throat. “Congratulations, Mindy. Bounties on Paulsen exceed six-million credits. After my cut, broker expenses, tips, and fees, you get to walk with about three. Unless you want to contest my fees.” The look on his face clearly conveyed that he would be delighted to contest with Mindy. The little killer uncharacteristically chose not to rise to the bait.

  “I’m sure it’s all nice and fair, Commandant.”

  “Damn right it is. Moving on. Next item. Ms. Ribiero, the Rejects have formally requested that you receive a commission. It will remain honorary only unless you register with the Registered Order of Privateers, but based on your performance and command aptitude, I have agreed to extend you a commission as First Lieutenant. Congratulations Lieutenant Ribiero, you officially outrank that half-ton piece of shit you slum around with.”

  This drew a burst of laughter from Mindy. Pike ignored it. “This means that if you ever get tired of babysitting gangs on Earth, you can run with us and learn how the real pros do God’s work.” Pike paused, then added, “All fun aside, you made a real impression on those half-wits. We don’t call them ‘The Rejects’ ‘cause it’s cute. They are borderline animals. That was real work you did out there. If the big clown hasn’t mentioned that yet, he should’ve.”

  “I was getting to it...” Roland mumbled.

  “Sure you were, you obtuse pile of rivets. Anywho, we are three days to Gethsemane where we are going to pick up your DECO puke. Why he is on Gethsemane I do not fucking know, but I am certain I do not care.”

  Mindy’s face went dark, and Pike waved a hand in her direction. “We will not be going ashore, Mindy, and I can’t figure out why I’d ever let them know you were on board my ship. We’ll be out of there before you know it.”

  “Good” the little blond said with crystalline conviction.

  “I want to talk to this DECO guy,” said Manny. “I have a lot of questions about this ‘Nosebleed’ script. It was definitely not a code breaking program.”

  “What’re you thinking, kid?” Pike asked.

  “I think DECO knew about Inskip all along. The stupid thing actually gave Inskip’s avatar a visual nosebleed. That’s slicer humor, for sure. I think Nosebleed was supposed to find and copy whatever made Inskip sentient.”

  “Did it?” Lucia asked.

  “I don’t think so. My comm only has so much memory, and I nuked Inskip with an EMP before it finished.” Everyone looked at the young man with heavy eyes. Manny held up his hands and added, “What? I don’t trust DECO. They lied to us the whole time. Why should they get the secret of Inskip’s sentience?”

  “Kid, you’re smarter than I gave you credit for,” Pike grumbled. “On that note, and since I know that Breach hasn’t mentioned it yet, out-fucking-standing job in there. I recommend you join the ROP. It wi
ll clear your past and give you a new start. Dues are a bitch, but all we ask when you join is what you want to be called. Everything else gets forgotten.”

  “I will take that into consideration, sir,” Manny said, positively glowing at the praise.

  Pike got back to business. “We’ll get the chance to squeeze the DECO puke soon enough. Then it's back to Enterprise. Fair warning, the garrison there says that UEDF has increased their presence and we all think it’s about you two chuckleheads,” he pointed to Roland and Lucia. “Y’all ain’t just local heroes anymore. Whether you like it or not, you’re at the big dance, now.” He looked Mindy in the eye. “Elevate your game, missy. I know exactly what kind of fuck-up you are, and I won’t have you embarrassing my newest butter-bar. Copy?”

  Mindy touched a hand to her forehead in what looked like a salute if one squinted very hard after drinking too much. “Whatever. You’re not my boss.”

  “As for you, Breach...” Pike began and Roland cut him off.

  “For the love of god, Pike, stop calling me that. We aren’t on-mission and it’s pissing me off.”

  “Can’t have you getting pissed off, now can we?” Pike said dismissively. “Once we drop you on Enterprise, our business is officially concluded. DECO has taken all the invoices, so you and I are clear and even at that point. It is my pleasure to officially say it has been an honor to operate with you again. Pike’s Privateers will update your ROP customer profile with a five-star rating at the conclusion of this contract. We ask that you do the same for us.”

  “Of course. It’s always fun to run with pros.”

  “Agreed. Which brings me to my next thing. If you ever get the itch...” Pike started to say.

  “No way in hell,” Roland swiftly interrupted. He was surprised at how easily the next words came to his lips, and he believed every one of them with a conviction that ventured into vehemence.

  “I’m not a soldier anymore. I’m The Fixer.”