Unstable Prototypes

by Lallo, Joseph

"No. Military designation. NX is naval experimental. That narrows it down a bit. Not a lot of outfits that could afford to commission a custom from one of the big manufacturers like Delta."

  Ma worked at the slidepad some more, conjuring up "EC, OUCP, TKUR."

  "Earth Coalition, Orion United Consortium of Planets, and the Trans-Kuiper Union of Republics. Yes, that about covers it," Garotte said with a nod.

  As Earth started to spread out across the galaxy, the human race entered something of a second colonial era. About a third of the nations on the planet had active space programs, and at least two major corporations did as well. Even before terraforming was mature enough to make the nearby planets anything more than glorified space stations, everyone with an FTL drive and a budget was staking claims. Settlements were established, cities formed, trade routes mapped out. Those days, Faster Than Light travel barely deserved the name, so even the closest of the settlements were weeks or months away. These remote colonies followed the standard colonial life-cycle, developing into their own unique, isolated cultures and eventually growing resentful of the motherland. Over the hundreds of years since then, the vast majority of them either withered and died, were absorbed by stronger efforts, or joined forces. The result was the current political landscape, which had a hundred or so independent planets or star systems, a few dozen minor alliances, and five or six major ones. The three biggest were EC, OUCP, and TKUR. Useful though it would be to consider them the galactic equivalent of nations and or perhaps leagues of nations, it wasn't a very accurate analogy. Most of them were so scattered and thin that there was never any reasonable hope to rule them under a centralized government. A better analogy would be a massive, sprawling trade union; useful for collective bargaining and defending interests, but with plenty of infighting, rivalry, and animosity possible between individual members. Wars between members of the same coalition weren't uncommon, and things became particularly complex when individual planets contained nations loyal to different coalitions. This was more common than one might think, as getting an entire planet's worth of people to agree on something was just as difficult these days as it was back when Earth was the only game in town.

  The Earth Coalition, as the name would suggest, contained the planet Earth, and was by far the oldest, most populous, and most centralized. The next rung down on the power ladder was OUCP. It technically predated FTL travel entirely, having been started by the first expeditions of a lunar counterpart to NASA midway through the 21st century. They managed to get exemption from that pesky treaty that forbid nuclear testing, and thus started flinging ships to the far reaches of space with nuclear propulsion. They didn't get very far, not even to the nearest star, before FTL took over and their ships were obsolete, but the head start had gotten them to a few mineral-rich asteroids and back enough times to be a force to be reckoned with regardless. Their foothold in space led to bigger, better shipyards for their own FTL fleets, and eventually independence from mother Earth. TKUR was a distant third, a cluster of corporate entities that started as a means to purchase and exploit the harvest rights for the chunks of ice floating around in the Kuiper belt. These days they had nothing at all to do with that oddly named hunk of the solar system, but it tends to be a hassle to change all of your state seals and documentation, so the name stuck. Of the three, though, they could at least boast the most clever name for their citizens. Rather than the boring Earthling or Orionian labels applied to the others, they called themselves Teekers.

  The specific history wasn't nearly as important as the realization that the people they were dealing with either had the backing of one of these massive organizations or had the skill and resources to steal from one. Neither possibility was particularly encouraging.

  "So, wait. If these are ex-soldiers, how did they get their hands on a fancy ship? Surplus auction or something?"

  "Not with an NX on it. The only places you'll ever see an experimental, assuming things are being run correctly, are on the drawing board, in testing, and in a museum after they are obsolete by a few decades."

  Ma began to work at the slidepad again. Eventually, a message was formed.

  "No production run. Designed as a platform for modular cloak. Abandoned during testing. Only 18 produced. Reliability problems."

  "If that information is accurate, then they would have had to steal them. That would make sense, since they have seen fit to steal an entire scientist as well."

  "So where does that leave us?"

  "Roughly where we started, I'm afraid. Let us look at this from another angle, then. Let us assume that they are after Karter to, at the very least, build that solar flare missile. One would assume that would require specialized components, equipment, materials, etc. Do we know what those might be?"

  "Will make list," Ma typed.

  "Excellent. Once we have that, I'll have to see how much of my information network remains intact. We shall need to identify sources of said components. Perhaps someone may have found out a thing or two about where these gentlemen acquired their ship as well. Either will give us a starting point."

  "After that, what's the plan?"

  "We endeavor to locate a unique source of one or more of the required components and intercept their team in the act of acquiring it. Once intercepted, we analyze their mission materials and interview their operatives. If we fail to find anything useful in this way, or are unable to intercept them, we trust that alternate sources will allow us to locate a small outpost, base, or headquarters. From there, we assess what equipment and personnel will be necessary to infiltrate, and we acquire those resources. We then pay the target location a visit and, ideally, gain access to their computer systems. Alternately, we would capture and interrogate an operative. Utilizing the information gathered, we would be able to determine the command hierarchy, which in turn would facilitate further strikes at higher level targets until the location of Karter is determined, as well as the nature of the security surrounding him. At that point, further resources would be prepared and a rescue attempt would be made," he explained, sounding a bit like a professor lecturing a classroom.

  "That sounds like it will take a while," Lex said.

  "An operation like this, from planning to completion, typically takes six to eight months."

  Lex's eyes widened.

  "That's a hell of a lot longer than I expected," he said slowly, "And I don't think Ma can last that long. She said something about the funk brain only being good for about two months."

  "That isn't really a concern. I had rather hoped to move on to a computer system that doesn't need to be fed and walked, and I don't think our mission requires a mascot."

  Ma had been swiping at the slidepad since the initial estimate was made, finally completing the message, "Must act sooner. Karter needs little time to do much damage."

  "Doubtlessly so, but one can only move so quickly, and one cannot move at all until one knows where to go. How long ago was he captured?"

  "439.2h" Ma tapped onto the screen.

  "What's that supposed to be?" Lex said, head crooked.

  "~18 days (earth)," she specified.

  "I'm not sure that even Karter could come up with something truly dangerous in less than three weeks."

  "I saw him take out a VectorCorp Asteroid Wrecker with something he threw together in seven minutes," Lex said.

  "... Yes, well, that is a valid point, to be sure. Presumably this was with full access to his laboratory facilities though, yes?"

  "Yeah."

  "I rather doubt that his current accommodations are so fully equipped. And let us remember that he will only build something for them if he agrees to cooperate, and Karter Dee may well be the most disagreeable and uncooperative person in the universe."

  #

  "Okay, power her up!" proclaimed Karter, hooking a power-wrench to his belt and drifting over to the control cabin, both arms attached but mechanical leg conspicuously missing.

  With an understandable amount of hesitation, the soldier
standing at the power controls flipped the main switch. One by one, bits of machinery hummed to life and status indicators lit up. The last few days had been busy ones in Commander Purcell's space station. Karter had explained that, if he was to be expected to help, he was going to need more tools and more room to work. More to the point, he'd agreed to give them the means to manufacture their own CME Activators, and that meant he would need to put together a facility that could handle that. After much deliberation they had given him highly supervised access to the secondary maintenance bay. In a building on the surface of a planet, it would have been considered a small space, barely the size of a two car garage. In a space station, it represented one of the largest areas available. There was an airlock on one wall, leading to a well marked exterior door just beside the main docking bay, and it had already been equipped with basic automated maintenance arms. It was also one of the sections of the station not equipped with artificial gravity. As a precaution, all bidirectional communication links were severed, completely isolating the room from the rest of the space station. Given his already well demonstrated skills at circumventing their security, it was considered prudent to turn his work area into an effective quarantine.

  Once his replacement lab had been thus secured, Karter had been given tools, his mechanical arm, and a group of four heavily armed guards. Since then he had been working nonstop. The automated arms were augmented with fine manipulation capabilities, electron beam lithography heads, ultra-fine positioning systems, enhanced scanning and computer vision, extruders, and a host of other features to complement their welding and drilling abilities. Dispensers for a dozen raw materials were added to the large-scale replacement part conveyors. Temporary tables were added for subsystem fabrication and assembly. In short, a system that had been able to replace control modules and repair damaged armor plating had become a mad science playroom in barely a weekend.

  He drifted to the controls, prompting the guards to raise their weapons and remove the safeties. Technically, firing off a high powered plasma rifle in this particular room of the space station, which wasn't nearly as reinforced as most of the rest of the station, was even more dangerous than firing one in the deGrasse dormitory, but these were well trained soldiers at point blank range. They would not be missing. Even if such was not the case, it was generally agreed that between explosive decompression and Karter, Karter was the greater threat. In order to keep both hands free for handling weapons and prisoners, the soldiers were equipped with magnetized boots to keep them on the floor plates. Karter was left to drift free.

  "Time for the inaugural run, boys," Karter said, rubbing his hands together and pulling up menus on the upgraded control system.

  "You are to wait until our engineers have had a chance to-" began a soldier.

  "Screw that," Karter said, dismissively, slapping the large red activation button.

  Instantly the arms jerked into motion. In a tightly choreographed dance of machinery and a chorus of mechanical whines, the whole of the central work area came alive. Raw metal was pulled from bins and maneuvered into place, sheets of substrate were applied and shaped, and the blinding light of welding torches began to flash. In no time at all, the arms retracted and a manipulator dropped down to present the finished product; a crude, simplified replica of Karter's prosthetic leg. He drifted out from behind the fortified glass of the control room, grasped the leg, and clicked it into place.

  "There you have it, boys. You are the proud owners of a fabrication laboratory," he announced, testing the movement of his new ankle. "It isn't quite up to snuff for everything I might want to use it for, but it will pump out CMEA warheads like a bat out of hell. Conventional ones, too. And legs, if you aren't a stickler for anatomical accuracy."

  "Secondary Maintenance Bay to Command," barked a soldier into his communicator, "Dee has completed his modifications."

  "Okay. I need a few things now," Karter stated, "I'm going to need something with a lot of sugar in it. This arm wasted a lot of juice while it was locked up, and it is playing hell with my blood sugar levels trying to recharge. I'm also going to be taking a look at some of the designs of that transporter now, so get them ready."

  "We will discuss your requests after Commander Purcell has inspected your work," the soldier said.

  "Requirements," Karter corrected, "My blood sugar is low, hotshot. If you think I've been a handful so far, you don't want to see me when I get hypoglycemic. Are you familiar with the neuroglycopenic manifestations of hypoglycemia?"

  "When Commander Purcell-"

  "Impaired judgment, moodiness, irritability, combativeness, delirium, automatism, emotional lability, belligerence, negativism, rage. Do these sound like symptoms you are going to want to deal with?"

  "She won't-"

  "CANDY BAR, NOW!" Karter bellowed.

  In a flash of motion, the mad scientist's natural hand clamped onto a handrail on the control panel and his mechanical one snapped around the neck of the intransigent guard. A split second later, three plasma rifles were pointed at his head, each of the soldiers barking orders at Karter and each other. A moment later, the door hissed open and Commander Purcell paced in, metallic clanks punctuating each magnetically assisted step.

  "ENOUGH!" she ordered.

  Her men silenced, but Karter continued to squeeze the throat in his fist.

  "Karter, release this man, or I will be forced to take action!"

  "Simple request. All I want is candy. It is medicinal. I have a condition," he said. "And the juice he is making me waste squeezing his brain out the top of his head is making it worse."

  Purcell removed her knife from its sheath and, with a high pitched swipe through the air, separated the mechanical hand at the wrist with a perfectly clean cut. After one or two twitches and a spurt of blood, the fingers went limp and it drifted away from the relieved soldier's neck.

  "Well, that's just great," Karter griped, looking at the stump with annoyance.

  "What the hell did you think you were doing?" she demanded.

  "There wasn't a whole lot of thought involved, really. That was primarily impulse," he explained, "So, I guess you'll want a demonstration."

  "What I want is an explanation! Why were you assaulting one of my men!?"

  "Candy. I need it. He won't let me have it. It can wait, I'll show you this first," he said, turning around, tapping the control screen and slapping the activation button.

  As the arms roared to life again, Purcell had Karter restrained.

  "If I am not happy with what this machine does, I am going to slice your ear off."

  "Fine, but take the right one, it's synthetic. Easier to replace," he said.

  After a minute or so of machinery moving at blurring speed, a cylinder the size of a fifty-five gallon drum was presented by the manipulator arm, while the fabricator went back to work.

  "What is it?"

  "This is a magnetic bottle warhead. Just add electricity and anti-matter and this sucker will make a very big boom."

  "You were supposed to make a CME Activator. We want six of them."

  "Can't," he said.

  "Why?" she growled.

  "You don't have the parts, that's why," he said, indicating the screen, "Take a look at that list. You need all of those parts to make one CMEA. You've got most of the raw materials, but you're missing Esche alloy. Each warhead will need about 350 grams of it," he explained.

  "Why don't you just make it?"

  "Because this is an equipment fabricator, not a matter fabricator. Trust me when I say it is not worth the time or the energy to build or buy one of those. It is always cheaper to just get the matter through conventional means."

  "How do I know you aren't lying?"

  "You guys have the small scale version. Presumably you've disassembled it by now. Have your men cut open the reaction capsule and do a scan. They'll find a few grams of something they can't identify, and a quick look in the materials database will reveal it to be Esche alloy."

 
; Purcell turned to one of the soldiers. "Make the call. Utmost safety precautions," she said, turning back to Karter, "And if what you say turns out to be true, where do we get this material?"

  "With great difficulty. There are pretty much no industrial uses for it, so nobody mass produces the stuff. And it is fantastically tricky to synthesize. There might be five facilities total that can pull it off."

  "How did you get it for the small scale?"

  "Oh, I've got a small supply back on Big Sigma."

  "We will not be returning to your planet to get it. We aren't that stupid. Where did you get your supply?"

  "I got it from a colleague of mine, Dr. John Esche. I developed the alloy but he gets it named after him for coming up with the means to synthesize it. Where is the justice in that? You won't be getting it from him, though. He died a while back. It has some interesting electro-thermal properties, so it is popular for analysis and experimentation at universities. Your best bet is to raid one of those."

  "Have it looked into," she directed another of the soldiers.

  "Give me a hand, would you?" Karter requested, gesturing over the control panel to the work area.

  The manipulator arm had finished constructing a similarly crude duplicate of his now damaged mechanical arm.

  "Handy device to have around, eh? It made this new leg, too. I'll bet most people would pay an arm and a leg for-"

  "Shut up. You two, take Karter back to his cell. Give him his food and a hard copy of one third of the schematics and manual for the transporter. I want engineers in here to inspect both the warhead he built and the modifications to the arms. I want them to disconnect Karter's current arm, and leg. I want them to analyze and compare the original prostheses to his newly constructed ones. Whichever are less of a threat shall be provided during times when he is working, and withheld at all other times. While not in use, I want them kept in an externally locked, radio shielded containers inside the outer cell storage lockers. Power to this room will be physically controlled via a manual switch. Raw materials entering, as well as waste and finished products exiting, will be subject to strict audit, and any discrepancies will be reported directly to me. Go."