The gunship experimental was still aloft, slowly rotating while its engines released a ragged purr that didn't give one much confidence for their state of repair. The sleeker of the two had landed, its crew door deployed and a pair of armed soldiers at the ready. They were badly scarred, heavily tattooed, and sporting the same absurd goggles that Lex had seen in Ma's surveillance images. Michella, Jon, and Lex crept up to a chest high wall near the outside edge of the courtyard and huddled behind it. The ship that had landed was barely twenty meters away, and the other one was practically overhead. To make sure that the camera didn't decide to give away their location on its own, Jon switched the automatic mode off and handled it personally.
"It's them..." remarked Michella and Lex simultaneously, then replying in chorus. "You know them?"
"Those are the people who took Karter," Lex said.
"That ship. The terrorists I've been investigating stole several of them."
"That's definitely them," Jon nodded. "Some of the old footage you had me look through had brief shots of people dressed like that."
"What do you know about these people?" Lex asked.
"Stand by for news," she said, turning to Jon. "Is the feed running? How's the sound level? Okay, when I tell you to, push it live, and watch for my direction."
Michella pulled the emergency scanner out of Jon's bag and scoured the text logs for a few seconds, then handed it back to Jon and nodded. When the live feed light turned on, she spoke in a hushed but precise tone.
"Michella Modane, reporting now from the courtyard surrounding the Materials Science Building of Weston University. As you can see, the two ships belonging to the individuals responsible for this terrible disaster have got the whole of the university in a grip of terror. On the threat of a second attack, the police and military have been forced to maintain a cordon of no less than a half kilometer from the building. Latest reports estimate the death toll at nearly one hundred and fifty, mostly in orbital facilities adjacent to the target. That estimate is likely to increase as casualties on the surface are reported. Though unconfirmed, it is possible that these are representatives of a group currently under continuing investigation by both the authorities and this news organization. They call themselves the Neo-Luddites, drawing their name from a labor movement from the nineteenth century, and are composed primarily of disenfranchised veterans of active military duty. There is strong reason to believe that the group has members among the ranks of nearly all branches of military for most governments in the galaxy. They have existed for years, but their actions have been minor and mostly inconsequential until very recently, when they were believed to be responsible for a string of information breaches and equipment thefts across the galaxy. Since then their activities have escalated. If this attack is indeed the work of that group, then the ramifications are dire, as it means that they are now motivated, organized, and possessed of the technology to be a threat on a pan-global scale.
"Though most investigative bodies currently classify them as a terrorist organization, their current actions seem to be motivated by more than a simple attempt to cause panic. No statement of agenda has been issued, and the ships have deployed with military precision into the Materials Science Building. It is clear that they came here with acquisition in mind, though what they are after, and to what end, is unclear. We will attempt to keep our coverage rolling without attracting the attention of the attackers."
Jon lowered the camera shakily to the ground and slid it out beside the wall, adjusting it until it was pointed roughly in the direction of the men standing at attention outside the ship. He then pulled his hand back as though he'd been holding it in boiling water. With a gesture, Michella instructed Jon to mute the audio.
"Trevor, there was no indication that these people had anything remotely as dangerous as whatever it was these people used in the atmosphere. It has to be a recent development. Stuff like that is tightly controlled, so if they had been stolen along with their other thefts, it would have come up in my other research. You said they took that scientist. Could he have built those for them?" she asked.
"Knowing that guy, he might have just had them laying around. I guarantee he either made it or gave it to them."
"What sort of lunatics do you associate with, Mr. Alexander?" Jon asked.
"He's the only lunatic, I assure you," Lex said. "At least, the only lunatic of that caliber."
He looked around him. People were huddled around the windows of all of the surrounding buildings. Some were hysterical, others were concerned. Half of them had slidepads raised, providing a lower quality, shakier counterpart to the footage Michella was providing. The gravity of the situation was seizing his mind. This was real. People had died. More might die. Many more.
"What other things could this scientist make for them?"
"I don't know... Anything... He could make these guys anything they want..." He said. His voice was distant, his eyes lingering on the hole in the clouds punched by the explosion.
"Do you have any idea what they could be after here?"
"I don't know... I... this is my fault, Mitch."
"What do you mean this is your fault."
"I knew he was taken days ago. I should have called the cops or something, or the marines."
"Did you know where they took him?"
"No."
"Then it wouldn't have done any good. Don't get me wrong, baby, you are stupid for not letting the proper people know. You're stupid for trying to take matters into your own hands. But making the call wouldn't have helped. No single police force has the jurisdiction or resources to go after these guys, and the military has already been after them since they stole the ships. I've spoken to someone inside the group, and they were definitely active military. Unless you had some concrete information to share, you probably would have just ended up tipping off their men on the inside. Now, how long ago was this scientist taken? Could he have been involved in the original ship thefts?"
"Uh... I don't remember. I think it was about a month ago. Not longer than that... You're right. Calling the cops probably wouldn't have helped, but sticking with the others and trying to find him might have."
"Honey, I think you need to calm down a bit. Even if this scientist of yours did build that bomb for them, I don't think he's the biggest problem. The way these people accelerated and organized, I think there is someone new in control. A few of my investigations turned up evidence to suggest it. That's the real source of the problem. That's the person who had them get your scientist in the first place, I'm sure of it."
"How can you be sure?"
"Feminine intuition and journalistic instinct," she said, taking his hand in hers, "So calm down, okay?"
"Why isn't someone trying to calm me down!" Jon hissed angrily.
"No offense Jon, but aside from the fact he's my boyfriend, if things start falling to pieces around here and we need to make a quick getaway, Trevor's the only one who is likely to get us out alive."
"... You need to calm down, Mr. Alexander!" Jon said in a counterproductive tone of voice.
Lex's mind churned as he considered his situation. He'd learned from the VectorCorp incident that sometimes you can't just sit idle and hope that things turn out okay. Sometimes you need to take a stand and see things through to the end. This was one of those times.
"They were trying to find him. We were trying to find him. We had to find where they took him..." Lex said out loud, mostly to himself.
"Did you find anything?" Michella asked.
"No... No, but they are right there. They are right there!" he proclaimed, as though he'd just become aware of the fact.
"Keep your voice down!" Jon urged.
"These guys are going to have to go back to the nest, right? These cops and marines and such should be able to track them when they leave, right?" Lex reasoned more quietly.
Michella shook her head, "Cloaking ships, remember?"
"Yeah, but that scientist told me once that cloaking w
as bogus because you can still track a cloaked ship with the right equipment. We're on Tessera. If anyone has the right equipment it is these guys!"
"As a matter of fact... I think I remember reading that somewhere..." Michella said, tilting her head and digging into her memory.
"Cloaked ships can be tracked by utilizing a meson emission analyzer array, but only at extreme close range," Jon said.
The others looked at him curiously.
"What? You had me doing research on cloaking technology for the report you're working on," he explained.
"So what you're saying is that by the time anybody with the right equipment shows up, these guys could be long gone," Lex said.
"Pretty much. It is designed to detect them approaching, not escaping. So... Oh Jeez, everybody get down, they're coming back out!"
Michella turned to watch, directing the audio to be restored.
"As you can see, the troops, for lack of a better word, are exiting the building now. They appear to be carrying packaged ingots. They are too far away to identify with the naked eye, but check back at the GolanaNews site soon to see if video analysis turns up anything..." she narrated, nudging the camera carefully to try to keep as much action as possible in frame until finally giving up and forcing it into Jon's hands, quietly insisting that he keep everything in view.
While Jon and Michella devoted their attention to the news event unfolding in the center of the courtyard, Lex was rummaging through his pockets. He didn't know what he could do, or even what he wanted to do, but he knew that whatever it was, it would have to be done now. That meant he'd need to do it with whatever he had on hand at the moment. His many pockets were emptied onto the ground and an inventory was taken. There was his own slidepad, as well as one of the spares that he'd been considering upgrading to. He also had a tangle of tiny tools and other useful gadgets, all linked together on what should technically be called a key chain, except that nothing Lex owned required an actual physical key anymore. Aside from those, there was nothing but the usual scattering of random candies, gum, poker chips and wrappers that typically found their way to the bottom of one's pockets.
A quick glance up revealed six men hurrying to board the experimental ship that had landed. The ship's engines were already flaring as a rather innocuous plastic crate filled with vacuum-sealed, brick-sized blocks of reddish metal was carried inside by two of the soldiers, while the other four brandished weapons and swept the courtyard with their eyes. As the last soldier stepped onto the lowered cargo door, it started to close, the ship raising into the air. Time was almost up.
"Think, think, think. What would Garotte do? What would Karter do? What would Ma do?" he rambled. Suddenly his eyes locked on the rugged little slidepad on the ground and shot open.
That was it! His brain clutched at an idiotic crumb of an idea, which tended to be the only sort of idea that ever came up in situations like this. He snatched up the slidepad, tapped at the screen, and proclaimed "Open Com Ma." Both ships were getting steadily higher, hydraulic pistons pulling the heavy cargo door shut. Lex quickly silenced the bellowing voice of common sense and sprung up from behind the wall, grasping the slidepad by its corner, and flinging it at the retreating ship. The pilot, the assistant, and the reporter watched as the device spun through the air.
People often feel that something that is extremely unlikely will never happen. No one ever chooses "edge" for a coin toss. As any lottery winner will tell you, though, sometimes the impossibly unlikely comes through. Sometimes, lightning does strike twice. Sometimes, the roulette wheel does land on double zero. And sometimes a panic-thrown piece of consumer electronics finds its way through the closing door of an airborne ship. By the time Lex realized his toss hadn't fallen short, bounced off, or failed in any of the dozens of other ways he'd predicted, the ships were firing their engines and flaring into the sky. A few instants later, far sooner than perspective would dictate, they vanished from view, hidden by their cloaking devices. Even the sound of engines slipped away. All who witnessed it stood dumbfounded for a few seconds.
Michella was the first to recover, snapping her fingers to draw the attention of the camera, which Jon had allowed to sag toward the ground. He quickly pointed it in her direction.
"We will continue coverage until local sources are able to take over. Stay with us for detailed analysis and continuing investigation. This has been Michella Modane," she said.
The feed light blinked off.
"Okay, push all of the raw footage to Lou. All of the video, all of the audio. Let him chew on it and work his magic. Then put the camera on action tracking with manual override. I want to catch as much as possible before someone with a better camera shows up," Michella said.
"Doing it," Jon said, making the appropriate changes to camera settings before releasing it.
Now that the journalism was done, one could almost see a physical transformation come over her. The diamond-hard shell of competence and professionalism fell away. She looked nervous, concerned. In short, she looked precisely the way someone who was standing in the center of a disaster ought to.
"Are you alright? Is everyone alright? How is your arm? Do you need a doctor? What did you do just then?" she gushed.
"Aside from the pending nervous breakdown, yeah, I'm okay," Jon said.
"Arm's fine. Don't worry about the arm," Lex said, collecting his things from the ground.
"What did you do? What did you throw?" Michella asked, crouching down to investigate his injury.
"Welcome back, Michella the girlfriend," he said as she fretted over the burn on his arm.
"Mmmhmm. Michella the reporter still wants to know what you did just there," she said.
"That slidepad was a spare from Ma's plan. She had it keyed up for communication, so I opened a channel to her and tried to get it on the ship. I figured she could trace it."
"Why would your mother know how to trace a call?" Jon asked.
"It's a computer named Ma," Lex explained.
"That's a weird name for a computer," Jon said.
"It makes more sense once you meet her," said Lex.
"... Meet her?" Jon asked.
"It's complicated," Lex said.
They worked their way back to where the rental car was parked. Overhead, the skyways reactivated, though flickering red barriers were replaced with steady blue; emergency vehicles only. Police and paramedics were filtering slowly into the outskirts, while the heavily fortified explosive ordinance removal vessel of the military descended on the courtyard behind them. When they turned the corner to their vehicle's hiding place, they found a police cruiser waiting. The front grille of the cruiser was badly damaged and had what appeared to be a shard of what had once been a decorative lamppost protruding from it. A uniformed officer with recent armpit stains and a constipated look on his face was standing beside the vehicle.
"Are you the owners of this vehicle?" he growled.
"I believe it technically belongs to the Rackton Premium Choice Rental Agency," Jon said. A piece of the fender dropped off. "I don't think they're going to want it back, though."
"Let me clarify the question, then," the officer remarked through clenched teeth, "Which one of you was operating this vehicle when it endangered the lives of my men?"
"Who says it was one of us?" Lex asked.
The policeman pulled a bulky display device from inside his cruiser and queued up a sequence of images. They were all blurred and below normal resolution, likely shots cropped from cameras at great distances. They were also unmistakably images of Lex behind the controls.
"Ah..." Lex said.
"You are coming with me," the officer said.
"He was aiding me in investigating a breaking news story and acting only upon my specific requests!" Michella said, slipping sharply back into journalist mode.
"In that case, you are ALL coming with me," he stated.
"Come on! All I did was hold a camera!"
"Relax, Jon. We'll get this handled," Mich
ella said, "Just cooperate."
"That would be most appreciated," the officer said, with a tone and expression that inserted a handful of four letter words.
The three of them piled into the back seat of the cruiser.
"It is nice to finally be doing this stuff as a couple," Lex said.
"Next time give me a heads up. We could have done a double date," Jon said flatly.
Chapter 19
"Okay, once more," Silo said, eyes shut and hand gently massaging her brow.
"I've already told you three times what is going on," said Garotte.
"And I'm going to keep on asking until I get an explanation that actually makes sense!" she snapped.
While Lex and the others were engaged in their adventures in extreme journalism, Silo, Garotte, and Ma were slowly recovering from their escape. Their departure from the planet left them without gravity, thus prompting Garotte and Ma to strap in to two of the crew chairs. The atmosphere was gradually improved to the point that the oxygen masks could be removed. Likewise the temperature had increased until those without the benefit of a thick fur coat finally stopped shivering violently. During that time, the emergency force field that had protected Ma from the harsh surface of Manticore had remained intact. She had remained silent, operating the ship as best she could in the weightless environment until life support values stabilized enough for the emergency field to drop. The very instant it did, the AI grasped the slidepad tightly and selected a reply with a tap of its nose, proceeding to tap at various other controls while it was read aloud.
"I shall attempt to summarize the current state of events to your satisfaction. The cerebral tissue of the funk with the designation 'Squee' is currently being utilized as an organic processing unit to run a useful subset of the capabilities and functions available to Ma. For interface purposes, it can be interacted with and treated in a manner identical to Ma. Karter has been kidnapped by an as yet unidentified group who likely intend to use him to construct a CME Activator. It is reasonable to assume, based upon their methodologies, that their motivations for the acquisition of such a device are criminal or extremist in nature. It was determined that the most expedient, discrete, and reliable method to locate and liberate him would be to seek the aid of former allies. An individual named Trevor Alexander was contacted, and with his help, the man who currently wishes to be addressed as Garotte was liberated. Currently we are on a course for the nearest unmonitored, low risk location in deep space. Upon our arrival and the assertion that we have not been followed, we will assess the situation and determine our next objective, which at this point is likely to be, after the acquisition of an untraceable means of payment, a rendezvous with an equipment provider who will better supply us to complete our primary mission," the voice droned on without pause. When it reached its conclusion, she nosed the pad again. "Does anyone require medical attention?"
Unstable Prototypes Page 27