“I am,” Erick said quietly. Rylea got a bit of mixed messaging from him, too, and not for the first time. Usually he felt nothing but protective toward her, but occasionally there was fear. It stung like a splash of ice-water.
“I’m interested in one thing,” Lucas said.
“The drones,” Rylea said.
“That’s right. How to stop them, destroy them if we must, or at least how to effectively communicate with them. So far they show a decided lack of interest in reason, and a proclivity for destroying ships and racking up unnecessary body counts. It has to stop.”
She frowned, sighing through her nose. “I don’t understand them either. There’s something there, but… it’s fuzzy, scrambled somehow. Like being surrounded by people speaking a foreign language.”
“Wait,” Erick said, “you can hear them? The machines? In your mind?”
She nodded. “I hear something. And it’s getting closer.”
Lucas swiped at the console and pulled up a tactical display. At the far edge, a clump of red dots began to emerge. “Contact,” he mumbled.
Minutes later they had slowed the shuttle to a crawl and were facing the entire drone swarm. The machines practiced continual movement, even while at rest; they formed into lines that wove around a central hub like long, sinewy arms. It was quite graceful, really. Even beautiful, but for the dread they evoked.
In that central hub, floating in open space—no ship, no shuttle, no suit—was a man.
Greetings, friends, he said into their minds. Thank you for coming. Rylea will now come with me. If you would be so kind as to open the shuttle, and save me the trouble of peeling it open, I assure you, girl, you will find your space-legs quickly enough.
Lucas and Erick shared a wide-eyed look.
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible right now,” Rylea said, both aloud and with her mind. “Whether or not what you say about me is true, my friends need this shuttle to survive. Let’s talk, you and I. Why have you called me?”
His displeasure rolled toward them like a physical force. The shuttle bucked in space. I think not, he said. Then, like an echo, she heard him say something like “retrieve her,” but strangely, as if heavily accented.
“Oh, no,” she whispered. She stared down at the tactical readout.
All the red blips were speeding toward the shuttle.
Chapter 5
Caspar was now counting the seconds until her hour was up. She had stood up and begun pacing the deck in front of the chair.
“Moses, how much do we have left?”
Beep. “Three minutes, twenty-two seconds, and eight tenths.”
“Hm.”
Beep. “Lieutenant, there is an incoming livefeed.”
She turned around, frowning. The comm station was unmanned. “Where’s that pirate?” she muttered.
“Shall I put it onscreen?” Moses asked.
“Yes, yes.” Sighing, Caspar took her seat. It would probably be Lucas with orders, just when she had been gunning to take real command. She supposed now it would just have to wait.
But instead of Lucas, it was Dolridge’s face that appeared.
“Lieutenant,” he said with a spark in his eye, “are you in charge now?”
“For the time being, Sir. What can we do for you?”
“Actually, it may be more of a question of what we can do for you.” He stepped to the side, and behind him, the viewscreen focused on a chrome object with flashing lights. Caspar sucked in a quick breath. “Requesting permission to bring this hell-ant back onboard the Fairfax, Lieutenant. You see, it’s been separated from the pack, and it seems to think our junior councilman here is its daddy.”
Caspar quirked an eyebrow. Dolridge shrugged onscreen. “I was skeptical too,” he said, “but it hasn’t eaten us alive or skewered our ship. Yet.”
“Huh.” She reached up and massaged her temples. Why wasn’t anyone taking these things as seriously as she was? Hadn’t everyone seen for themselves the damage they could do, and the total disregard they bore for human life? Weapons, to a degree, she understood. She liked guns. But there was a world of difference between a good gun in her hands, fully in her control, and a gun that thought for itself and could turn on her at any second. “Are you serious right now?” she said. “C’mon, Sir, you know what these things are, and why we have to destroy them. And you know where they come from, and why the councilman is so keen on making them his pets instead.”
“Ah, no, excuse me!” Junior Councilman Kepple popped into view, wagging a finger. “That’s simply not true, Lieutenant Caspin.”
“It’s Caspar,” Dolridge quietly corrected him.
“Whatever. I understand your reticence to believe me, but look at me. I am no soldier, Crispin. I’ve no interest in making or maintaining personal contact with a sentient superweapon, believe me.”
Caspar studied him for a moment. “You know what? I’m actually inclined to believe you. Write it down, Sir. Put it in the record. A politician has convinced me.”
“Well, I’m a very persuasive orator,” Kepple said.
“No, you’re a coward.” His face fell. Caspar’s cheeks reddened, not with shame for her words, but with anger. “Because you know all about these things, which means you’ve known, which means you probably had something to do with setting them up in the first place, or putting in the order, or making the black-market purchase. How dare you, Sir? But I can see plain as anything in your face that you haven’t a backbone for fighting, just for backroom dealing. So no, of course you don’t want to actually be around these things any longer than absolutely necessary. You’d much rather be back on Pluto in a nice, cozy office, giving orders to have unsuspecting Fleet officers and ships blown to—”
“Lieutenant,” Dolridge growled, cutting her off. Something in his eyes made her stop.
“I assure you I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” Kepple said coldly, “but I’m glad you see fit to believe me at least.”
Caspar checked herself. She’d meant every word, and she couldn’t believe the nonchalance with which Kepple was discussing the secret weapons, but she reminded herself that such outbursts may lead to repercussions she would rather avoid. No doc would be able to stitch up her career if she got on a councilman’s bad side.
“Hang on,” she said, “I’ve had a thought.”
“There it is,” Dolridge muttered.
“Moses?” she asked.
Beep. “Yes, Lieutenant?”
“Can you pull up the bit of medical coding Ada and I were working on?”
“Affirmative.”
She smiled. “Send it over to them. Sir?” She locked eyes with Dolridge. “I want you to try something.”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
---
The problem was sustaining control. Or, as Moses put it, sustaining Hive’s trust. The drone Dolridge and the others had captured was indeed cut off from the rest of Hive, but still operating on some residual imaging of Hive’s AI. It had a mind of its own. Moses was able to contact it, and by using the medically coded language, was able to establish a bond of trust. They had Moses ask the drone to perform simple commands—fly out into space, turn about, start and stop, fire guns on a piece of debris—but it took constant, active interference on Moses’ part. The moment he stopped feeding the code to the drone, the drone began to question the commands, and, usually, stopped obeying.
“I don’t like it,” Dolridge finally said. He and his two companions had come back aboard the Fairfax and were standing on the bridge with Caspar. “I don’t like that the thing still does whatever it wants whenever it stops getting code.”
“Yes,” Kepple said, “but that’s the point, isn’t it? You just keep feeding it code all the time, and it keeps doing whatever we say. No lapse on our part, no lapse on its part. And it seems like you have a legitimate AI to handle the task—nevermind where you got that.” Caspar could have sworn he threw a shady glance at her. “So what’s the problem?�
�
“First off,” she said, “it’s not my AI. We’ve been in-system trying to salvage a failed mission with a murdered captain, a stolen cargo we didn’t know we had, a pirate conscription, planetoid genocide and a resulting mutiny by the sole survivors, who are not happy, by the way, oh, yeah, and apparently people who can control things with their minds. It’s been a day. So let’s all take it easy on the AI rule, shall we?”
Kepple raised both hands in surrender.
“Second,” she went on, “the problem is that it’s fraught. The solution is terribly complicated, with any number of potential no-win scenarios. What if Moses can’t control all the drones at once? What if some of them decide to trust and obey, and others don’t? What if tapping into their hivemind takes all his resources and he can’t perform any of his Fairfax duties? What if, mid-commands, the connection gets severed because there isn’t enough juice, or we get out of range, or we pass through some kind of radiation storm or something and all the sudden we’re in the middle of a cloud of very angry, untrusting superdrones?”
“Your imagination does you credit, I’m sure,” Kepple said dryly.
“But she’s right,” Van said.
Kepple squinted at her. “I’m quite sure no one asked your opinion, Junior Agent Van.”
“What I’m more curious about,” Dolridge said, “is why this thing isn’t trying to kill us all right now. Lieutenant, watch this. Moses?”
Beep. “Yes, Sir?”
“Hi Moses, I’m Gavin.”
Caspar’s eyebrows met her hairline. Dolridge seemed to ignore her.
Beep. “Nice to meet you, Gavin.”
“You too, Moses. I want you to try something. I want you to feed the code to the drone, then let Councilmen Kepple give verbal commands over the comm, and see what happens.”
“Very well.”
While everyone focused their attention on the screen, Caspar came to Dolridge’s side. “Gavin?” she muttered. “Really? That’s what you go by now?”
He shrugged. “I’m retired.”
Beep. “The drone is really for commands.”
Dolridge nodded at Kepple, who approached the captain’s chair. “Drone,” he said, his voice unsteady. “Who am I?”
That cold voice rang over the bridge comm. “You are the Lawgiver.”
Caspar cursed. “Are you serious right now?”
Kepple smirked. “Drone, this ship will now move in-system. You will follow aft at a distance of five-hundred meters until called on again. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Lawgiver.”
Kepple nodded again, and Dolridge closed the comm channel. “Moses,” he said, “would you kindly move us in-system?”
“Lieutenant?” Moses asked.
“Yes,” Caspar said, “do it.”
“And,” Dolridge said, “please stop feeding code to the drone.”
Beep. “Affirmative.”
The Fairfax began moving away from the debris field, heading out in the general direction of the distant sun. Caspar waited, holding her breath, for the drone to break away. To her amazement, it fell in tow.
“Moses, how far out is the drone?” she asked.
“The drone is following at five-hundred meters, as commanded.”
“With no more code?”
“Affirmative, Lieutenant.”
For the first time since the reappearance of the super killer death-drones, Caspar felt a shimmer of hope in her soul. She nodded. “Think we can use this one to blow up all its brothers?”
Kepple opened his mouth, but Dolridge cut him off. “My thoughts exactly.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” a familiar voice said over the bridge comm. Its usual dourness was somewhat mollified by a general tone of satisfaction. Caspar’s mouth fell open.
“What’s going on?” Kepple said, staring at the screen. On the back-cam view, they watched as the drone broke away and zipped ahead of the Fairfax, in-system. Toward the rest of the swarm.
“Jeffrey,” Caspar growled between her teeth.
Chapter 6
“What’s going on?” Ada panted. “Why can I hear you? Where’s Moses?”
“Oh,” Jeffrey said in her earpiece, “your precious AI partner is fine, don’t concern yourself with him. He’s been… relocated, for the time being. The Fairfax mainframe has plenty of archival storage, as I’ve recently learned first-hand.”
Ada cursed. “What do you want?”
“Ah, getting to the point, are we? Very good. What I want is simple. Control of this ship. Permanently. But you know as well as I, that can only be done from the bridge.”
She sneered. “I’m not much help to you down here then, am I? Better let me through. Open this hatch.”
“Oh, I will. Once we have an agreement. You’ll be allowed to level eight, to retrieve your precious comrade, and to return, on the condition that you reinstate me as soon as you are back on the bridge.”
“Ha!” She turned in the darkness. There was no way she could climb back alone. She would need Crush now. “Fat chance. You let Moses out, and maybe we’ll see what we can do about making your accommodations more comfortable. How about that instead?”
“No.” He sounded bored. “Here’s where we are. I’m in a bit of a tug-of-war upstairs with your friend. Truth be told, I have the superior power by far, but he’s a… creative thinker. I can’t oust him permanently without someone removing the hardwire job you did up there. And it seems to me that since it was your hand did the damage, should be by your hand that comes the remedy. Poetic, don’t you think?”
“The damage…?” Ada frowned, shaking her head. What was he—oh, of course. She’d plugged the datastick with Moses’ primary programming into the command console of the Fairfax. She chuckled to herself. “Yeah, no. He’s definitely not going anywhere, so you’re just going to have to play nice, Jeffrey. Or get off this ship.”
“I was afraid you might say something like that.”
Ada heart a whirring sound, followed by a mechanical click. In an instant, her world slipped away. The floor opened up beneath her feet, and she fell, crying out in the darkness. She thrust out arms and legs and managed to slow herself a bit, but she still managed to slide into the next deck’s valve quickly enough to jar her teeth badly. She spat something out—blood, she realized, tasting iron—and maybe something solid. Had she chipped a tooth?
“That’s dirty pool, Jeffrey,” she groaned. “I’m stuck in a slime-tube, here. I can’t do anything on the bridge for you anyway.”
“You can agree to help me once I let you go.”
“Once you let me go?” She laughed. “That’s rich. Go on, go ahead, open another one.” She took a deep breath, bracing for the fall. She wasn’t looking forward to sliding down another level, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad with a little warning. And besides, the next level was her stop.
“Ah, you’re forgetting something, I think. Why just open one, when I could open two and shoot you out into space?”
“You wouldn’t.”
“And why not?”
The horror of what he was suggesting continued to set in. “You do that, and you kill all the Ceres survivors on level eight, too. You can’t do that, Jeffrey. They’re your allies, remember? They tried to help you.”
“I don’t need them.”
She huffed in disbelief. “So you’ll, what, just kill them all?”
“I’m not a human, not bound by your pretentious little systems of ethics or morality. So I repeat: why not?”
Ada heard the whirring sound again, followed by the telltale click.
“No!” she screamed. “I’ll do it! Jeffrey, I’ll do what you want—just don’t do this; don’t vent us out!”
The valve below her feet remained shut. After a moment of smug silence, Jeffrey replied. “That’s right, you will. Now, hurry along. We have business to take care of.”
The valve spun open and Ada slid down one last track of tubing. Once she had stopped, she pulled up a
light on her multitool. Warnings plastered the side of the tube, coated over in grime, but she got the gist. She was, indeed, standing over the last valve before entering the furnace—or what would have been the furnace, but was now the void. She shined the light around above her head and found a tiny hatch just above her, to her left. “Great,” she muttered. It couldn’t have already been within reach. That would have been too easy.
Spreading her feet to either edge of the tube, she knelt and leapt straight up, grunting. Yes, she could leap high enough, if she could just stick the landing. She jumped again, sticking every limb out this time, but she slid right back down.
“That’ll never work,” she said to herself. She turned her body so that at the apex of her jump her right hand would meet the hatch. Maybe she could catch it and open it that way? Another leap, another grunt, and her hand found the hatch door—and slid off.
It was also covered in rot. Lovely.
“Jeffrey,” she said, “I don’t suppose you’d like to give me a hand here.”
“Not sure why I should.”
“Seriously? C’mon. You want me to do what I came to do as quickly as possible so that I’ll get back up to the bridge and help you, right?”
“Your pitiful efforts are entertaining.”
“Ha. Look. If I were speaking with Moses instead of you, right about now is when I would ask for his help. Since you have robbed me of my ability to speak with him, I think the least you can do is fulfil his normal duties until our pact is complete.”
“That does make an irritating amount of sense.”
“Yes, thank you. So here’s the thing. I need to get to that hatch, but I can’t, because I’m short, and the walls and handle are covered in slop.”
“I’ve noticed. Again, entertaining.”
Ada reminded herself to ask Moses sometime just how it was that an AI was able to observe her and what she was doing in that much detail. “Well, what can you do about it? Is there a way to, I don’t know, boost the floor, here?”
The Sons of Jupiter: Starship Fairfax Book 5 - The Kuiper Chronicles Page 3