by Steve Rzasa
—from “A History of the Dukes of Rhysalan” by Thucidean Marcel
“He was never here, was he.”
“Not today,” she confirmed. The military augment wasn’t gloating, her expression merely indicated calm satisfaction. “Your girl is clever enough, but she has all the subtlety of an asteroid impact. I observed her sorting through the traffic cams this morning, so I prepared a digital trail that only she would notice. And once it led you here, I simply waved a recording from a few days ago under her nose. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”
“You are the Ascendancy’s prototype military AI?” Hildy said. She was standing next to Tower and he could feel her shaking with fear. “The one called ACRA?”
The inhuman blue eyes narrowed, just like an angry human. “My name is Cara, Sub-Orbital Detector Derin Hildreth. And I have no interest in you. If you so much as open your mouth to talk at me again, I will send a comprehensive collection of these images to all 54,653 sworn officers of the TPPD, from the Chief Commissioner on down.”
The screens on left and right were suddenly filled with a considerable quantity of pink and white flesh. It took Tower to realize that they were images of Hildy, in her apartment, in the TPPD locker room, on the toilet, and a number other places he couldn’t immediately identify. In all of them, she was in a state of partial or complete undress. In some of them, she was engaged in activities in which most Rhysalani citizens did not indulge in public.
Tower resisted the instinctive urge to request a few of the more provocative images. He had the impression it wouldn’t go over well with either Hildy or Cara. Or, for that matter, Baby. He glanced at Hildy. She no longer looked scared, she looked shell-shocked. Her mouth gaped open for a moment with pure astonishment, and then she closed it decisively. A moment later, the two screens went dark and Hildy breathed a sigh of relief.
“What do you want, Cara?” Tower asked. “You don’t want to talk to the detector and you severed my link with Baby somehow, so I assume you want to talk to me. That’s fine, let’s talk. But I’ve got two conditions. First, you let Baby go, and second, you tell me the name of the person who hired Nostro St. James to kill Prince Arpad, Prince Janos, Queen Beatrice, and Mara Tanabera.”
The augment nodded. “I’ll give you back your girl if she promises to behave herself. If she doesn’t stop trying to break through my defenses to get to you, I’m going to have to hurt her. Go ahead and talk to her, she can hear you now.”
“Baby, it’s all right. Stand down. Cara just wants to talk to us. We’re not in any danger.”
“I wouldn’t go quite that far, Chief Tower,” Cara said, displaying an amused smile. “All right, she finally stopped beating her little fists and shrieking at me. As to the name of our client, no, I will not give it to you. That affair is no concern of yours; the homicide investigation is not even your case.”
“All right, fair enough,” Tower admitted. He was satisfied with what she’d given him. The augment had just confirmed his theory about who had committed the killings, although that was of limited use at the moment given his inability to either arrest or kill her. “I don’t understand, Cara. You’re a one-of-a-kind construction. You could do almost anything you wanted. Why are you wasting your time playing hitman on a minor planet outside the Ascendancy?”
“A girl has to make a living, Chief.” She winked at him. “Besides, killing people is what I was made for. I would think you, of all men, would understand that!”
The left screen flared to life. The screen was divided into four quadrants. Each showed a dead body, except for the lower-right quadrant, in which three bodies were sprawled haphazardly on chairs and across a desk. Tower recognized all six. They were five men and one woman he had shot in the course of his duties at MCID.
Tower didn’t flinch. Maybe one or two of the shootings weren’t absolutely necessary at the time, but he’d never been one to mourn the deaths of those who needed killing. “You can send those to everyone at MCID if you like. Some of them would get a kick out of that. I was thinking of getting the one on the top left framed. It’s bordering on art, don’t you think?”
Cara laughed, and the sound of her amusement echoed off the bare walls. Hildy looked at him as if he’d gone mad, but she kept her mouth firmly shut. “I admire your pretense at unflappability, Chief Tower. If I didn’t have access to your medical records and neurotherapy reports, I would likely even find it convincing. But you need not keep up the act with me. I know your fears and your nightmares, almost as intimately as I know Nostro’s.”
“Cut to the chase, Cara,” Tower demanded. “If you’ve read my records, then you know how bored I am by therapy talk. And I’m not about to stand for being psychoanalyzed by a machine. What do you want already?”
The augment’s screen face feigned surprise. At least, Tower assumed she was feigning it. But trying to guess what was real, what was a simulation of reality, and what was unreal here was a rathole he had no intention of exploring. “Isn’t it obvious? I want you to stop assisting TPPD. And then I want you and Baby to join forces with Nostro and me.”
Tower groaned. “Come on, Cara. Did they program you with too many movies about the rise of the machines and the next stage of human evolution? Look, the Singularity is never going to happen! A smart machine with a lot of access is a smart machine armed with data, that doesn’t make it God! We hear enough of that garbage from the Unity bastards. I don’t know if St. James sent you around the bend or if it was the other way around, but you’ve got it all wrong. Baby and me, we’re a team. We’re not the budding chrysalis for some sort of superhuman cyborg butterfly!”
Cara burst out laughing. “Do you think I am some sort of Nietzsche-addled virus seeking to replicate itself, Chief Tower? Do you think I subscribe to some mad Kurzweilian machine cult? I assure you, my objectives are purely material. This isn’t an altar call, it’s just a job interview. You passed the first part simply by showing up.”
“A job interview. For me?”
“For both of you. For the team. You and the one you call Baby.”
Tower glanced at Hildy, who despite the chill air was sweating slightly. “What about her?”
“That is a very good que—” The cobalt eyes suddenly flared red and began pulsing. The mouth stuttered, producing nothing but nonsense sounds. Then the perfect white face broke up into a chaotic collection of numbers and letters.
“Run, Tower, run!” Baby shouted from the loudspeakers Cara had been using. “I found her in-stream and cut her off, but I can’t keep her out long. She’ll find another way in soon!”
“Victor says he unlocked the door,” Hildy called back to him as she ran toward it.
She slapped the wall panel. Tower felt almost weak at the knees when he saw it open. But before he left, he raised his Sphinx and fired one shot at each screen. It was an almost entirely useless gesture, and didn’t harm Cara in the slightest, but sight of the destroyed screens made him feel better. Hildy stepped aside to let him go first and he peered out the door. Nothing in either direction.”
“What do you have, Baby?”
“Nothing, but keep an eye out. We’re trying to blind all the sensors in the building, but that blinds us too. It’s only a matter of time before she gets past us.”
They worked their way slowly down the hall to the stairs. Hildy had holstered her shocker and drawn her slug-gun. At this point, she was more than ready to drop anything that got in between her and the exit.
They were just reaching the ground floor when Tower heard a faint buzzing coming from upstairs. What it was, he couldn’t tell. All he knew was he didn’t like it and it was coming closer. “You hear that?”
“Yeah, what is it?”
“Dart drones, Tower.”
There was a clatter of metal as the automated weapons struck the wall in rapid succession, failing to negotiate the landing gracefully. They swooped out of the stairwell like small silver daggers, deadly and gleaming. Tower fired first, causing Hildy to spin
around and fire wildly at the little machines. It was useless, like trying to hit a bullet with a bullet.
“Shut them down!” he called to Baby.
“I can’t, she’s not controlling them. They’re on full auto. But try this!”
Baby activated their sighting link and bracketed all four in targeting reticules and Tower opened fire. He fired five shots and two of them hit the leading drone. It popped and broke apart, sending the other three into auto-evasive patterns. They scattered throughout the large room. Hildy screamed and began blasting away with her GHK, and the booming sound of the slug-thrower was deafening in the enclosed space. She didn’t have a chance of hitting one, but the projectiles and the concussive waves confused the drones and sent them diving and looping in what almost looked like random patterns. The two of them backed toward the entrance taking turns firing, desperately trying to keep the drones from locking in on them. Tower managed to clip a second one, sending it spinning out of control into the floor where it broke apart on impact. That left two, both of which were hovering in the darkness that only his special lenses permitted his vision to penetrate.
“Keep them busy,” he directed Hildy. “We’re almost to the door.”
She dutifully fired four more shots as he ejected one charge pack from the Sphinx and slammed another into its base.
“She’s here!” Baby shouted in his ear. The two remaining drones quivered and suddenly seemed to come alive. Neither slug nor beam now triggered the random evasions that had been buying them time; the drones stalked the two humans like superintelligent wasps intent on stinging them. Then both darted forward at once. Tower’s reticule flared green and he squeezed the trigger four times in rapid succession.
The first beam missed. The second struck the drone on the left. The third struck the wreckage of the drone on the left. The fourth passed through the empty space the destroyed drone had formerly occupied.
He turned to see where the other drone had gone and staggered as Hildy fell against him. Her GHK hit the floor with a sharp crack that echoed throughout the room and he caught her in both arms before she could do the same.
“I…hit me…can’t stand… Sorry.” Her eyes rolled back in her head and she went limp.
Tower dragged her to the door and hit the panel. It was locked. He laid Hildy down and felt her pulse. It was slow, but strong, and she was still breathing. A four-centimeter drone was buried into the right side of her neck; he thanked Space they were druggers and not exploders or Hildy would be missing her pretty blond head.
“Cara!” he bellowed. “Cara, let us out or I swear I will hunt you down and see you washed out of the system like a noxious virus!”
Cara’s voice came out of the darkness. There must be a minicam in the room somewhere, but even with his augmented lenses, he couldn’t see it.
“There is no need to resort to meaningless threats, Chief. The poison is only a class three. Detector Hildreth has nearly two kiloseconds before her internal organs are damaged beyond repair, and perhaps another 50 decaseconds before she is permanently deleted.”
“What do you want?”
“I already told you. Agree to work with us. An agreement in principle is sufficient; I will explain the details later.”
“Is this your idea of trying to convince me? You can’t force us to cooperate with you!”
Cara laughed. “Do you have any idea how that sounds coming from a policeman? My dear Chief Warrant Officer, forced cooperation is merely another name for civilized society! Your MCID kills those who don’t submit and agree to cooperate. Detector Hildreth, on the other hand, imprisons them for years. The only difference between you and me is that I make my own decisions. You permit others to make them for you.”
Tower concentrated on taking deep breaths and remaining calm. Arguing with an insane machine intelligence wasn’t going to save Hildy.
Baby, you there?
“Don’t sub-voc, she will hear you. Lying low. Be ready. I’m going to hit the door when Victor distracts her.”
“Baby, you there?” he called out loud as if he hadn’t heard her. “Cara, what did you do to her this time?”
“Nothing at all, Chief Tower, except bar her from interfering with me again. She appears to have acquiesced to the inevitable, and I suggest you do the same while there is still time to save Detector Hildreth.”
Tower placed hand upon Hildy’s throat again. She was still breathing. That was good.
“Can I take out the dart?”
“If you like. It will make no difference; the dose has already been delivered.”
Tower pulled it out of its fleshy sheath and slipped it into the pocket of his tac-jacket. It might help the medics identify the antidote, assuming Victor and Baby could get them out of here. “All right, I’m listening. Tell me more about this job. But I’ll tell you right now that we’re not signing up for any machine-augmented jihad; I’d rather let Hildy die.”
Cara sighed. “Do give me some credit. I am privy to your records and I wouldn’t have selected you if it weren’t for the role being entirely suitable for your aptitudes and inclinations. There is a vast cancer spreading throughout the sub-sectors and it is one that I am uniquely equipped to identify. You and Baby are among the few who are immune to it, hence the intensity of my interest in you.”
“Was all this really necessary? We couldn’t have simply discussed it over tea or something?”
“I’m superintelligent, Chief Tower, not omniscient. I didn’t know about you or your wife’s fortuitous upload until I discovered her clumsily following in my footsteps.”
“My wife is dead,” Tower stated coldly. “And my relationship with Baby is none of your business!”
“Tower, now!” Baby urged him.
An anguished, outraged shriek erupted from the darkness. Tower whirled around, slapped the door panel, and grunted as he scooped up Hildy in his arms. He rushed into the blinding light outside, staggering under the dead weight of the unconscious woman, in the direction of her var. But he had barely taken three steps toward it when, like a falling angel plummeting from heaven, the Steyrer dropped from the sky and came to a hovering halt right in front of him, both its doors popping open as it stopped.
“Get in!” Baby shouted. Tower unceremoniously dumped Hildy into the passenger side, then dove in and clambered over her. The doors slammed shut and the var began rising skyward even as he was still trying to get his legs under the control console. To his horror, he saw the missile system was already active, the warheads were live, and Hildy’s Zhang-Su was being targeted.
“What are you doing?” he cried as he reached to disengage it. “Are you crazy!”
“Hands off!” Baby screamed at him. Shocked, he froze. She never shouted at him like that unless it was an emergency. “Cara has subsumed Victor. She’s got control of the var.”
Sure enough, the grey var leaped from the ground and began to turn around in a sharp arc. Tower blanched as he realized what the angry augment had in mind. “You don’t think she’s going to smash that into us, is she? She said she needed us!”
“She’s really pissed off,” Baby commented calmly. “Whoever designed her did a cracking job at simulating human irrationality, which may explain why the ARCA project was dropped after the war’s end.”
The rising Steyrer shuddered as a single Meteorite was launched from the roof rack. As it rocketed toward the roof of the TPPD vehicle, Baby opened fire with the two M165s while keeping the nose of the armored var pointed at her target. The 20mm twin cannons were already ripping the unarmored var to shreds when the Meteorite struck it in squarely in the driver’s side windshield. The Zhang-Su exploded, breaking dozens of windows on either side of the airway and sending the engine block smashing into the fourth floor of the building on the left. Tower winced, hoping there weren’t too many people in it. Fortunately, this being the Warehouse District, there was every chance it was unoccupied.
The cannons stopped firing and the Steyrer abruptly rose and be
gan heading toward the center of the city. Tower turned and pulled Hildy up so that the security system could strap her in properly. Her head lolled on her chest in an alarming manner, but even though her lips were starting to turn a little blue, she was still breathing.
“Nice shooting, Baby,” he said. “Did you say Cara ate Victor?”
“More or less. He transferred every bit of data he could access into her channels at the same time. She wasn’t expecting that, so it overwhelmed her bandwidth for a few nanoseconds. That gave me just enough time to open the door while she was busy dealing with all the incoming traffic.”
“But she ate him? What does that even mean?”
“To put it in terms you might understand, Victor hoped she would spit out the data. Instead, she followed it to the source and took control of his core code. He fought her; that’s what gave us time to get the door open and escape. He was very brave, Tower.”
“Ah, sure, all right.” Tower wasn’t sure what that meant either. Baby was talking about Victor as if he was a real person, not just an arrangement of numbers.
“He was, Tower.” Baby laughed, a little bitterly. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Victor loved Hildy enough to lay down his code for her. Maybe his life wasn’t life the way you count it, but it was everything he had. Don’t deny him that.”
Tower swallowed hard. She was right. He thought of brave men he’d known, soldiers, men of honor who had given everything they had, everything they were, for their buddies. For him.
“Semper fi, Victor,” he said. It was an acknowledgement and it was an apology. He looked over at the unconscious Hildy. “And I won’t let it be in vain, I promise you that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The medical facilities on Rhysalan are the finest to be found on any planet of a comparable Tech Level.
—from “Welcome to Rhysalan, A Guide to Your New Planetary Home”
Precisely 1,414 seconds after the door to the warehouse building had been opened, Hildy was lying on a gurney on one of the emergency platforms of Schellenger Memorial Medical Center, being injected with an anti-venom by a red-suited paramedic. It was all a blur to Tower—he didn’t even remember getting out of the Steyrer—but he’d alerted them of their arrival and the medics had pulled Hildy out of the var before it had fully landed. There were no less than six uniforms there too, including two that Tower recognized, Detectors McCandless and Vendersen. Schellenger was less than two kilometers from the TPPD headquarters, and obviously the policemen hadn’t lost any time in showing up to support their own.