“That would be one hell of a risk,” Ellen protested. “The chances against it working would’ve been astronomical.”
“Perhaps, but if what Rawlgeeb said was right, she’d rather die than break her precious code, and this way, she gets to stay off the radar.”
“There’s no doubt about the facts I put forward,” Rawlgeeb stated. “I know how the guild operates, and I know exactly what Surrana is capable of.” He hesitated before going on grudgingly, “So, I suppose, given the circumstances, your conjecture may well prove to be correct.”
Brent cupped his hand to his ear. “Sorry, but big green man talk with slippery tongue. Me, caveman, not understand.”
“Okay, I admitted you’re right, dammit!” Rawlgeeb snapped. “No need to milk it.”
“Me?” Brent planted his hand on his chest. “I wouldn’t dream of such a thing. I’m simply trying to elevate my mind to your superhuman level, o wise one.”
“Excuse me,” a male voice purred from an unseen speaker overhead, its tones elegantly modulated to grab their attention, “but I have something to report.”
“Is that the ship’s computer?” Brent asked.
“No, it’s the ship,” Ellen answered. “And before you argue, they’re not the same thing.”
“I’ll bite,” Brent drawled. “I can see you’re dying to explain it all to me, anyway. You have that glow of over-educated superiority in your eyes. You know what I’m talking about; Rawlgeeb has that look almost all the time.”
Ellen pouted, looking as though she’d like to teach Brent a different kind of lesson entirely, but she gave in. “I’m surprised Halbrook didn’t tell you about it, but then again, I know how GIT works, so maybe I should’ve guessed.” She heaved a sigh. “Okay, this ship is artificially intelligent, and I’m not just talking about the main computer, I mean the ship itself. It’s what makes The Wasp so special. It’s like it’s this whole…” Her fingers combed the air.
“Entity,” the voice announced.
“Yes, that’s it,” Ellen said. “It’s an intelligent entity with an autonomous independent identity.”
“Say that three times fast,” Brent chipped in. “I dare you.”
Ellen ignored him. “Officially, the AI is called the JCN-B1, but we all call it Jason for reasons which I sincerely hope I won’t have to explain.”
“Hello, Brent,” Jason said. “Also, may I take this opportunity to welcome Vince aboard, and to say how thrilled I am to meet you, Rawlgeeb? I am a great admirer of your work on The Gamulon. Your triple-linked master spreadsheet indexing protocol is a work of genius.”
Rawlgeeb beamed. “Thank you, Jason. I can see that, not only do you have a keen intelligence but also insight and good taste.”
“One tries,” Jason replied.
“Oh hell, it’s like there’s two of them,” Brent muttered. “I’m not sure I can stand it.”
Ellen shuddered. “It gets worse. The damned thing gives me the creeps. I haven’t figured out where its cameras are hidden, but I wouldn’t rule anywhere out. When I was stowing my gear, I took a snack bar from my locker, and Jason made a very snippy comment about my thighs.” She plucked at her baggy flight suit. “How the hell would it know anything about my thighs when I’m wearing this get-up?”
Brent nodded thoughtfully. This was one of those times when silence was the only correct response.
“Excuse me, Jason,” Rawlgeeb called out, “but you wanted to bring something to our attention. What was it?”
“Thank you for listening so carefully, Rawlgeeb,” Jason replied. “I have detected an unusual pattern in the raw data from my long-range scanner array. It appears to indicate the presence of a craft, but the signal is intermittent, and the pattern always collapses before it can be fully analyzed.”
“Could it be a ship in stealth mode?” Ellen asked.
“Affirmative. Although it is impossible to be certain, I estimate that there is a forty-three point nine eight seven percent probability that another craft is in our vicinity.”
“Why don’t you just call it forty-four percent?” Brent said. “Save yourself a few giga-floppy-pixels or whatever you call them.”
“You’d like me to be less accurate?” Jason replied. “Interesting. In that case, correcting for your personal preferences and rounding the figures appropriately, I have to tell you that our ship is not being followed by an advanced craft using a form of previously unknown stealth technology. No, sir. Nothing to see here. Move along. Have a nice day.”
“Jason, please ignore Brent,” Ellen chipped in. “That is, please place a lower emphasis on his commands until instructed otherwise.”
“Certainly, Ellen. Would you like me to update my threat analysis on that basis?”
“No, we get the picture,” Brent replied. “Just tell us where this ship is and where it’s heading.”
“Ellen,” Jason began, “would you like me to search for the unknown ship and report its possible position and course?”
“Yes, carry out a full sweep. Use all of your sensors and capture every possible hit. When you’ve plotted a course, relay it to my console.” Ellen concentrated on her workstation, her fingers clacking the keys. “Meanwhile, I’ll pull up the shipping data from the nearest space station, and we’ll see how many salvage vessels were in the area of Surrana’s shuttle when it dropped off the map.”
Rawlgeeb tutted under his breath. “I have to warn you, there’ll be a lot of them. Mars orbit has been a prime location for salvagers ever since the Advertising War. There are a lot of defunct satellites out there–enough to attract unregistered scrap hunters.”
“Some of those old advertisats are collectors’ items,” Vince said. “I bought one a few years back. There was this guy at my high school, he told me he had an old Facebook sat for sale, and I thought I’d make a fortune when I sold it on. You know, those sats could track you clear across the galaxy and tell you what you had for lunch on Tuesday, and their stuff has been going through the roof since the company imploded, but the damned satellite turned out to be a fake. A weather satellite with a few antennae welded on. Worthless.” Vince snorted. “Man, that asshole ripped me off. How he got to be the principal, I’ll never know.”
“They should never have privatized education,” Ellen agreed. “Most of my high school professors were ex-stock market traders, made unemployed when the Gloabons closed down Wall Street. It was okay for a while, but then the math department staged a management buyout. They blew the entire school budget in thirty seconds, mainly on some kind of scheme to insure their jacket elbows against wear and tear. They tried to claw the cash back by floating the whole school on the open market, and their IPO on exam result futures was a big hit. Everybody wanted to buy the possibility of getting straight A’s. Unfortunately, the biggest investors tended to be the worst students, and the only way the school could keep them happy was to make the exams incredibly easy. Grade inflation ran riot, and when the bottom dropped out of the market, the whole place went belly up.”
“What happened to the students?” Vince asked.
“Asset stripped.” Ellen shook her head sadly. “If GIT hadn’t taken me on and cleared my high school loans, I’d still be working in the recycling mines, crawling down the clogged up subway tunnels to dig up discarded cell phones.”
“Progress is a wonderful thing,” Brent said. “The Victorians would’ve been proud.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” Jason said, “but remember that craft we talked about?”
Brent furrowed his brow. “What about it? Did you find it yet?”
“Before I answer that,” Jason began, “would you mind if I called you Dave?”
“Yes, I would. Just get to the damned point.”
“All right, it’s just that, in times of stress, I find it helps to be reminded of an old friend, but never mind.” Something like an electronic sigh whispered from the speakers. “Okay, I’ll break it to you gently. The bad news is that my scans completely failed to find the
unknown ship. The good news is that I now know precisely where it is.”
Ellen craned her neck toward her console’s display. “Goddamned guessing games. I’ll find it myself. Oh shit!”
“Ah, I see you’ve caught up,” Jason stated. “The ship of unknown origin is uncloaking dead ahead. I’m recommending a course of action to Captain Levinson.”
“Evasive action!” Brent called out. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Sorry, Brent, but I have been told to downgrade your instructions,” Jason replied. “Anyway, the unknown ship is much more powerful than ours, and it is very heavily armed, so I’m telling the captain to stop.”
“I’ll see about this.” Brent hurried forward to the cockpit door, but before he got there, Levinson’s voice came over the intercom:
“Listen up, there’s a ship right in front of us, and we’re stopping while we see what these folks want. Remain calm. If they’d wanted to attack us, they’d have done it already, so let’s just wait and see. By the way, Brent, we’ve taken the precaution of locking the cockpit door, so please don’t even try to bother us right now.”
Brent punched his fist into his other hand. “Cocky bastard! I’m starting to wish I’d turned this job down.”
“Welcome to my world,” Vince said. “But like the captain said, stay cool, Brent. We’re still in stealth mode, right? So maybe the other ship doesn’t even know we’re here.”
“Good point,” Brent replied. “What do you think, Ellen? If we play possum, do you think we might get away with it?”
“I don’t know about possums,” Ellen said, “but it looks like they want to talk turkey.” She pointed to her screen, and when her crewmates gathered around, Rawlgeeb’s gasp was the loudest of them all.
The Gloabon staring out from display remained silent for a moment, and perfectly still. The creature’s gaze made absolute zero look like a tropical vacation, and when it spoke, its harsh guttural whispers struck shards of pure ice into Brent’s heart, even though he couldn’t understand a single word. “Holy shit,” Brent muttered. “What’s he saying, Rawlgeeb? Is that even Gloabon he’s speaking?”
“Sorry guys,” Jason chipped in, “but I suppressed the universal translator at our end, in order to preserve your mental health and wellbeing.”
“Oh hell!” Rawlgeeb wrung his hands. “It’s like this. His name is Kadov, and he’s an assassin, one of the Hak Garamm.”
At the mention of those words, Kadov bared his teeth in a greedy grin.
Rawlgeeb paled. “Hak Garam means, of the blood, and they’re either an elite sect of killers within the guild or a fanatical splinter group, depending which way you look at it.” He paused, mashing his thin lips together. “Jason, when you said that you’d turned off the translator at our end, that does mean it didn’t pick up what I just said, doesn’t it?”
No reply.
“Jason? Tell me you didn’t repeat what I said about fanatics to the assassin.”
“I’m going offline for a few minutes,” Jason replied. “All systems have now returned to manual control.”
Kadov stirred slightly as though growing impatient, then he spoke again, raising his voice, and this time the translator kicked in. “I am waiting. Tell me what you know about the assassin known as Surrana. Comply with my demand, and I shall ensure that your end will be swift, but if you try to escape, I will destroy you piece by piece.”
“He gets right to the point, I’ll give him that,” Brent said. “I thought you folks were all protocol and formality and all that kind of crap.”
“The Hak Garamm are an ancient race,” Rawlgeeb explained. “Thousands of years ago, they left our home planet, and we don’t know where they settled. They do not recognize the Gloabon Government. The only authority they respect is the Guild of Assassins, and they hold its code to be the only law.”
“In that case,” Brent began, his eyes losing focus as he stared thoughtfully into the middle distance. “Nope. I got nothing.”
Levinson’s voice came over the intercom. “He’s got a weapons lock on us. I have countermeasures primed and ready. If I fire them up now, we can take evasive action and head for the nearest space station.”
“Probability of success, negligible,” Jason announced.
“I thought you’d gone off duty, and frankly, I preferred it,” Brent said. “Anyone else got anything helpful to add? No?” He threw back his head to call out to Levinson, but Rawlgeeb was suddenly at his side, grasping his arm.
“Wait!” Rawlgeeb whispered. “We can’t run. If we give Kadov any provocation, he’ll attack. But if we comply, he’ll take that as an acceptance of the offer he just made, and he’ll wipe us out, anyway.”
“So either way, we’re screwed,” Vince moaned. “We may as well make a run for it. At least we’ll have a shot.”
“But this is a classic trap, don’t you see?” Rawlgeeb asked. “On Earth, you call it a false dichotomy.”
“Do we?” Vince pursed his lips. “Yeah, I think my granddaddy had one of those. Sometimes he forgot to change the bag. I loved the old guy, but I won’t lie, it was kind of gross.”
Rawlgeeb stared at him for a second. “Are you sure you had a Gloabon implant in your brain? I mean, maybe the battery has run out or something.” He shook his head. “Never mind. The point is, we have a third way. We don’t run, but we don’t give him any relevant information either.”
“Stonewall him,” Brent said. “I don’t know. Will he fall for it?”
“He must. He has to follow the code. And remember, no one has hired him to kill us. We are not legitimate targets unless we give him a reason.”
Brent straightened his tie, making it marginally less crumpled. “Leave this to me.” He tapped Ellen on the shoulder, and when she rose, he took her place at the workstation, leaning his elbows on the surface and steepling his fingers. “Mr. Kadov, let’s get down to business. To ensure that I can direct your query to the correct operator, please choose from one of the following options: One, you want to talk to someone about your latest carbon bill; two, you wish to report an error on our website; three, you’d like to book an appointment with a counselor to help you quit smoking; four, you wish to file a claim for a missing item of baggage; five, you’d like to reserve a table for this evening, in which case, please state whether your dietary requirements are, A, vegan, B, gluten intolerant, C, lizard; six, you’d like to register a missing person. Alternatively, please select option seven if you’ve detected a tear in the fabric of space-time. Finally, if you’re having a heart attack or other medical emergency, please have your bank account number ready, then hold while we redirect your call to an operative who will debit the full fee before passing you to our clinical staff.”
“Enough!” Kadov growled. “Do not try my patience, human.”
“Please be assured that I’m here to help you,” Brent said brightly. “Would you like me to go through the options again?”
“No! Just…” Kadov scraped his hand down his face. “What was option four again?”
“I’m hearing…option four,” Brent replied. “You’d like to report an item of missing baggage. Is that correct?”
“Of course not, you cretin! Six! It was option six. Missing person.”
Brent nodded wisely. “Our dedicated team is standing by to help you, but they’re very busy at the moment. Your query is number…seven…in the queue. Meanwhile, here is some music.” He gave the others a meaningful glance.
“On it,” Vince said. “Jason, access media archives. Play Sailing by Rod Stewart.”
“Are you sure?” Jason asked. “It was banned under an interplanetary treaty. I’m really not sure I–”
“Just do it,” Vince interrupted. “We can take it. And remember, everybody, if it starts to get too bad, just think about what we’re fighting for. This is our survival we’re talking about.”
Ellen took a deep breath. “I’m ready. Bring it on.”
“File retrieved,” Jason announced.
“Playing now. May your gods have mercy on your souls.”
“What is this?” Kadov demanded as the first strains of acoustic guitar drifted across the comms channel. He thumped his console with his fist, but then the vocal began and a strangled roar erupted from Kadov’s throat. His head thrashed violently, his features twisting in a savage grimace. “Stop this immediately!”
Brent clenched his jaw, focusing his mind, trying to block out the music. Should’ve told Jason to cut the cabin speakers and beam it straight out to the alien, he told himself, but it was too late to change it now; they had Kadov on the ropes. A bead of sweat rolled down Brent’s brow, but he forced a neutral expression as he stared at Kadov’s image. “Sir, our operatives are still very busy. You are number…nine…in the queue. Do you wish to hold?”
“Nine?” Kadov roared. “What the hell are you talking about? How is that even possible?” He pressed his fists against his temples. “That noise. I can’t think straight. I…”
“Would you like me to read through the options again?” Brent asked, raising his voice as the music swelled. Behind him, he heard Ellen groaning, and when he glanced back, he saw that she’d curled into a fetal ball. Vince slumped against the wall, his fingers in his ears. But Rawlgeeb was suffering more than all the others put together. The muscles in his face were twitching so violently that his face seemed in constant motion, his cheeks changing shape, pulsing and throbbing in sync with the music. His pointed teeth chattered, tiny flecks of foam forming on his tight lips, and a nameless terror danced in his eyes. He can’t take much more of this. It was time to go in for the kill.
The Surrana Identity Page 8