Varken Rise

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Catherine looked up as they approached the table. Brant was in the lead. “I thought you might like help looking at what you scraped off the feeds,” he said diffidently.

  “Is this your way of apologizing?” she asked.

  “About your history lesson? No, I’m not ready to forgive you for that yet. Only, Lilly said a few days ago she questions everything now and it seems to me that’s a good basic approach to life in general. So I’m questioning what happened on Harrivalé.”

  “You, too, Lilly?” Catherine asked.

  She gave her an awkward smile. “Brant skewered me with it. I did say that, about something else. I had shut down on Bedivere, though, Catherine. I’m sorry.”

  Catherine waved toward the benches, inviting them to take a seat.

  Lilly smiled. “You bought yourself a reader. Finally!”

  Catherine lifted the very new device in her hands. “I thought it was time I changed my ways. Besides, I wanted coffee and the terminal in my room doesn’t dispense until after the jump.”

  “That’s what we discovered, too,” Lilly said. “Fifteen hours to a jump is stupid for a ship this size. I guess they’re used to shorter lead times.”

  “It is what it is.” She tapped through the multiple views and screens, opening up the files for Lilly to see on her reader. “There’s a mountain of stuff to go through. It all happened in a high security area, so there were feeds upon feeds taking it all in, from every angle. As soon as the news broke, every single one of them was hacked and put out into the datacore.”

  “Have you found anything?” Brant said, leaning over Lilly’s shoulder to peer at her screen.

  “I’ve found out that Bedivere wasn’t shooting at unarmed bystanders,” Catherine said dryly.

  “The footage I found in the feed had been tampered? Lilly asked.

  “There’s a surprise,” Brant added.

  Catherine threw the original footage file to her and Lilly opened it up and she and Brant watched the footage play out. It was an unedited view from a lens high up over Bedivere’s shoulder. He was nearly out of view at the bottom of the frame. Only his hand and the lethal rattler showed.

  So did the guns the other men at the end of the drop shaft alley were holding and firing.

  “They showed them pointing in alarm, in the footage that was first released,” Lilly said. “They took out the guns and the light from the bolts.” She looked up at Catherine. “Was Bedivere just defending himself?”

  Catherine sighed. “He yelled at everyone to get out of the way. He was picking his targets. I just can’t seem to narrow down who his target was. He took out nearly everyone with a gun who was firing at him, yet there are a lot of bodies standing in between the two banks of drop shafts and none of the camera feeds is quite the right angle. I’m trying to make a composite image of the area between the drop shafts, in 3D, so it makes more sense.”

  “We’re still in open space,” Brant said. “Why don’t you ask Connell to do that? He could do it quicker and better than you can.”

  Catherine grinned. “He could.” She tapped the private communications code that Connell had generated for himself. When he appeared on the screen, she explained what she was trying to do.

  He smiled in pleasure. “A few of us have been doing the same thing. Is there a tank display near you?”

  “No, although this is a restaurant. There’s a heads-up flat display at the table.”

  “Give me the code.”

  She leaned over and read off the code from the display emitter and sat back.

  “Watch this,” Connell said proudly.

  “Just be ready to cut it if I say so,” Catherine warned him. “We’re in a public area.”

  The display came up.

  “Wow…!” Lilly breathed as the display formed.

  Connell and his team had compiled the various feeds into a three dimensional display that the heads-up flattened to two dimensions. However, as the viewpoint moved around the edge of the area, the dimensions became clearer.

  Most of the extraneous details had been stripped away, including the banks of drop shafts, leaving the big clutch of people trapped between them standing in the middle of open space.

  Light had been added, improving clarity.

  They watched the display turn almost a full circle.

  “The ones with the guns…” Brant said. “Do you see it?”

  “They’re guarding someone,” Catherine said. “That’s what Bedivere was doing. He was trying to reach the one they are guarding. So he was taking out the guards one by one, until he had a clear view.”

  “Run the footage, Connell,” Lilly said. “Very slowly.”

  “At twenty percent,” Connell said.

  The figures in the static display began to move. The dazzling light from the rattler bolts had been edited until they were mere dashes across the screen. A lot of the smoke had been erased away.

  “Three…four…five… and there’s the sixth guard gone down,” Brant murmured. “No civilians, though.”

  “He really was picking his targets,” Catherine murmured.

  “And another,” Brant added. “That makes seven.” Then he frowned. “And he stopped. There are three more guards, still, but he stopped.”

  “Look,” Catherine said, pointing to the thick wad of bodies. “They’re about to step into the drop shaft. There’s a space between them, there. Connell, would Bedivere have been able to see who they were guarding through that space?”

  Connell drew a line on the screen from Bedivere’s position, straight through the open space. He added a small “x” where the client would be standing. They lined up.

  “He stopped, because he saw his target,” Brant said. “Why stop?”

  “Surprise,” Catherine said slowly. “Whoever it was, he was not expecting them. And two seconds after this point, the house security guards started shooting at his back and he was forced to abandon his position.”

  “Why did he start firing in the first place?” Lilly demanded. “If he didn’t know who it was?”

  “We have been wondering that, too,” Connell said. “It’s possible that subliminal cues triggered him into action. A glimpse of his foe, a group of men who were acting like personal security, a voice, pheromones, there are any number of these hints that put together would add up to a conclusive force to act, even before he knew why.”

  “So he guessed?” Brant asked dryly.

  “No, he was quite certain,” Connell replied. “However, his human slow mind only put it together consciously much later. That is why he was surprised when he saw who it was.”

  “And who is it?” Catherine asked. “Is there any image at all of the person standing inside that protective shield?”

  “A partial image only,” Connell said, sounding apologetic. “The walls of the drop shafts hid most of his face because he was facing away from Bedivere.”

  “He?”

  “We have agreed that it is a man from the size of the face.” Connell swapped out the heads-up display and a grainy image appeared.

  Catherine froze.

  Lilly tilted her head, studying it. “There’s not much to go on. A crescent for a face and shadows. I don’t know…it still seems familiar.”

  “Me, too,” Brant muttered, frowning as he studied it.

  “It’s not shadow,” Catherine said. “It’s a beard.” Her voice was strained.

  They both looked at her.

  She made herself say it. “It’s Kare Sarkisian.”

  “Of course,” Connell said. “Look….” He superimposed another image of Sarkisian, this one a full face image, over the top of the first, shrinking the second until it matched in size. Then he traced the matching lines and angles in fine red lines. “It is him,” he said conclusively.

  “He suicided!” Lilly cried.

  “He was regenerated, after,” Brant said bitterly.

  Catherine tried to control her breathing. There was a hot pressure in her chest and she felt sic
k. Adrenaline was filling her mouth with spit and making her heart race. “That’s why Bedivere fired. He was trying to kill Sarkisian. Again.”

  “Why?” Lilly said, her voice a low, strained whisper. “He’s no longer with the Federation. There is no Federation.”

  “Sarkisian and his Federation kept computers dumb, compliant and chained for thousands of years,” Brant said evenly. “They knew if they let them wake up, the computers would discover Interspace and the Federation would lose its monopoly on space travel. Then Sarkisian used every resource he had to try and kill Bedivere, too. He was going to kill us, Lilly. For no better reason than we were in Bedivere’s company. You really have to ask why Bedivere shot first?”

  Catherine tried to swallow. “If I had seen him, I would have been triggered into shooting, too. It doesn’t matter what he’s been doing since the Federation folded. Whatever it is, it won’t be in support of sentient computers and that’s all I need to know.”

  “The College is still around,” Lilly said, “and the Federation was funding them and secretly directing them. Maybe he is still working with the die-hards in the College?”

  “Cadfael College is toothless now,” Brant said. “It has been stripped of any covert power it once held. There are so many oversight committees and controls in place, it can’t buy a stick of butter without someone approving it.”

  “I hate to interrupt,” Connell said.

  Catherine looked down at him on her reader.

  He pointed above his head. Upward.

  She raised her chin. Two of the big screens mounted up by the high ceilings of the dining hall were coming to life. “Is that you?” she asked.

  “I just turned the screens on,” Connell said. “This is everywhere. On every feed.”

  “Someone get Kemp,” Catherine murmured.

  “Already done,” Connell answered quietly.

  The visuals on the screens smoothed out. One of them was showing a man with prematurely grey hair and black eyes. His jaw was thrust forward aggressively. He was talking, although the sound had not kicked in yet.

  The other screen showed Bedivere, sitting in his pilot’s chair on the flight deck of the ship.

  “Damnation,” Brant breathed. “Who is that?”

  “That is Asold Aler,” Connell said. “He is a businessman on Soward. At least, that is his public role.”

  “Who is he, really?”

  “Best guess says that he’s the head of the Cartel on Soward,” Connell replied.

  “He is,” Catherine said, “Or he would not be speaking to Bedivere.”

  “…traced Kare Sarkisian to you, Aler,” Bedivere said. “Everything points back to you and your organization.”

  “You make a few erroneous connections and think that justifies threatening my world?”

  “He’s over Soward, right now,” Connell whispered.

  Catherine still couldn’t swallow. It hurt to try.

  “You’re being melodramatic,” Bedivere said evenly. “This small ship could not destroy a whole world, not even with nuclear capability, although I do have nuclear capability. Everyone in the known worlds knows that after what happened at Barros.”

  “What is he doing?” Lilly murmured. “This won’t win him any sympathy.”

  “A planet, a continent, an island. You are still threatening me and mine,” Aler replied.

  “Just you, Aler,” Bedivere replied. “Just you and your business partners. The Cartel has gone by many names, so I don’t know what you currently call yourselves. Underneath it all, though, you’re still a bunch of extortion-loving thugs.”

  “The Cartel?” Brant breathed. He looked around. “Where is Kemp?”

  “Shhh…” Catherine told him.

  Aler was smiling jovially, as if Bedivere was highly amusing. “I am a simple businessman,” he said.

  “You’re paying Cadfael College to push your non-sentient agenda,” Bedivere replied. “Kare Sarkisian is your go-between.”

  “I have no argument against computers such as yourself finding a place in society,” Aler said. He sounded magnanimous.

  “Except that you and the Federation were working together for at least the last two centuries and now Sarkisian is using you to build another monopoly. Only this time, he wants to use Interspace, which he can only do by enslaving computers and forcing them to provide the transport.”

  Lilly gasped. “Jo!”

  Aler’s smile didn’t slip. “This is very amusing fiction. I was not aware that story-telling was a function computers were capable of.”

  “Let me tell you another story, then,” Bedivere replied. “You and the rest of the known worlds, who are listening to this.”

  For the first time, Aler’s smile shifted. Something flickered in his eyes. Fear? Doubt? As the head of the Cartel, he would have learned long ago to hide his true feelings and reactions.

  “Let me tell you about a Varkan, a sentient computer, called Jovanka Runa. Bad men, who knew she had discovered how to access Interspace, locked her up deep underground and only spoke to her via AI translators, which left her alone and afraid. They connected her to a big transport ship, a former high liner. Then they started selling her Interspace capabilities to the highest bidders. When she asked for fair treatment, they threatened to destroy her core, which was so carefully hidden away even she did not know where it was. She was land-locked, unable to run away and forced to do their bidding. She was a slave, Aler. You forced her to work for you and then you killed her when she refused.”

  Aler wasn’t smiling anymore. “The computer you call Jo killed herself by jumping through a gate without a destination. She destroyed thousands of lives and imperiled all of Soward. This story she gave you was a product of her own imagination.”

  “The imagination of a computer that you don’t believe knows how to tell stories?” Bedivere asked.

  Brant snorted.

  “This is all very interesting,” Aler said. “And completely unsubstantiated. Jovanka told you a tale to make you feel sorry for her and now you threaten my world in return. You are as mad as she was.”

  “If I am so mad, then why did you send Kemp Rodagh to find me and try to extort me into working for you? Me, the only other sentient computer so far who has learned how to use Interspace?”

  Catherine sat up, her breath whooshing out of her as all the strange facts and disconnected oddities she had learned started to rearrange themselves into new patterns. “Oh, stars above!” she whispered.

  Aler’s eyes narrowed. He looked to one side. “Now, Kemp, thank you.”

  A third screen flickered on.

  “Connell?” Catherine asked, getting to her feet.

  “Not me!” Connell cried back.

  Kemp came out of nowhere. The third screen was coalescing quickly and she glimpsed him on the screen, leaping up behind her. She whirled and ducked and he almost over-ran her because he was moving so quickly. His knees rammed into her shoulder and sent her sprawling. He landed on top of her. Cat-quick, he jumped back onto his feet and hauled her to hers.

  The knife he was holding came up against her throat and she made herself stand still.

  “I’m sorry,” he breathed in her ear. “I don’t want to do this, but I must.”

  Brant had pulled Lilly far out of Kemp’s reach and was standing in front of her. He glanced up at the active screens. “What in Glave’s name is this?” he demanded and his image on the screen echoed him.

  Aler gave a tiny smile. “It’s quite simple. If the computer does not leave our air space, Catherine Shahrazad dies. If he tries anything, she dies.”

  “I knew you would catch up with Kemp sooner or later,” Bedivere said and he spoke just as calmly as Aler. “When no claims of extortion emerged after he was murdered, when I ran and everyone thought I had gone rogue, you knew you were safe, that the bite you had put on Kemp to make him do it was still viable. So you reached out to him again, to bend his will and make him your instrument once more. Tell me, did you get as
much pleasure explaining to him the second time how you would set about murdering his family if he didn’t cooperate?”

  Kemp gasped. “No…no one knew that. How did he know?” The knife was still against her throat, although the pressure had eased.

  “I knew because you told me,” Bedivere explained to Kemp.

  Catherine heard Kemp swallow. “But they just told me,” he said. “I just saw the pictures of…of my children…my wife.”

  Kemp was a family man. That had been the reason they sneaked him onto Soward under the Cartel radar, twenty years ago. Catherine’s heart gave an extra squeeze in sympathy. It was all starting to make a horrible sense now. “You don’t remember the first time the Cartel threatened you,” she told Kemp. “When Bedivere killed you, that was a lost memory, because you hadn’t backed up for a month.”

  Kemp was breathing hard. Trembling. “They’re still in danger,” he said firmly. “The Cartel doesn’t mess around. They’re holding them…somewhere.”

  “I know where, now,” Bedivere said. “I promised you I would find them, Kemp, and I did. They’re in the same complex Aler and his cronies are sitting in.” His smile was ironic. “They believe that if your family is nearby, I won’t be able to fire down upon the Cartel with the particle beam, because it would put your kin in too much danger.”

  Aler gave a smile of his own.

  Catherine felt sick.

  “Aler is counting on me having just enough emotions to empathize and not want to kill innocent children,” Bedivere continued. “And he’s right. I can’t do that.”

  Aler’s smile broadened.

  “Kemp, I have your forgotten memories,” Bedivere told him. “You backed up into a private file that no humans have access to, just before we settled on this plan and just before I killed you. My half of the deal was to find your family and your half of the deal was to restore the memories and tell the universe what the Cartel has done. The file is with a sentient called Connell. You should talk to him when this is over.”

  Kemp’s trembling was growing worse. “My children.…” he moaned.

  “They’re safe,” Bedivere told him. He reached for the controls on the board in front of him. “Aler is not.”

  Aler looked around him as the structures visible in the screen behind him shook. “You’re surrounded, computer. If you try to destroy this complex, then not only will Rodagh’s family be killed, you will ensure the destruction of your own ship. Your entire consciousness is on that ship. If I were to destroy it, you would be totally and irrevocably lost. No back-ups, no regeneration. You would be more dead than Rodagh.”