by M. D. Cooper
Silver asked.
Crash paused. He hadn’t expected this. If he told Ngoba that the parrots on the Hesperia Nevada wanted them to leave, he was afraid Parva and Grichs might attack. They wanted their loot.
But how else could he get the parrots safely off Vesta?
A series of vibrations in the distance passed through the shuttle’s bulkhead.
Kirre tensed. “Incoming,” she said.
Ngoba looked at Kirre.
Crash shifted focus to the other parrot.
Crash’s heart leaped.
Crash ignored the taunts.
His heart swelled with emotion as he talked as he realized how much he’d been holding inside.
Crash kept talking but also turned his attention to the ship’s environmental controls. He was surprised to find no security on the atmospheric control systems. Altering Ngoba’s plan, he adjusted the atmospheric mix in the aviary sections to levels that would put the parrots to sleep. Once that was done, he returned to Silver and asked,
Crash tilted his head.
That was apparently the wrong thing to tell Silver because she immediately went into a rage.
The other parrot blasted angry images at him, scenes inside the aviary of other parrots, of the great tree where Doomie had died, of corridors and white rooms, interspersed with images that could only have come from the Link. The mental bombardment was a mix of how humans communicated, layered with the ravens’ emotional imagery. The effect was numbing.
Crash held steady against the onslaught of her anger, which blazed in his mind like a white light.
She answered with another molten wave of anger.
As he studied Silver’s emotions, he noted she was slowing. She grew less insistent, and the images lingered more than they had at first. In another minute, the image of a storm cloud hung in his mind’s eye and she stopped.
She was asleep.
Crash waited thirty seconds, then shifted to the ship’s internal sensor system and verified that every other bio sign met the criteria for sleep, or at least drastically reduced activity.
Ngoba laughed with appreciation.
They checked their equipment and lined up for the airlock, waiting for it to cycle open.
Crash hopped from Ngoba’s shoulder to the airlock’s emergency release handle. He flapped his wings as the door slid to the open, carrying him a meter to one side.
Through the airlock, they found the Hesperia Nevada’s dim cargo hold. When the last human had gone through, he kicked off the handle and floated through the open airlock. The shift from the confined tube of the shuttle to the broad, rectangular cargo bay was disorienting at first.
As Crash adjusted, he realized that memories were flooding his mind. He pushed them down for now and kicked off a cargo crate to move closer to Ngoba, who was already at the exit door out of the bay. From here, they would enter into the wide corridors of his home, the place where he’d lost his only family.
THE INCLUSIONIST
STELLAR DATE: 03.28.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Emerson Sharp Communications Station
REGION: Vesta, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Standing in the opening was a thin man with bug eyes, his shoulders stooped. He was wearing a crisp red ship suit, with a Heartbridge logo above his heart. A lengthy mop of grey hair sat on top of his head, and his skin was deeply tanned, like he’d spent most of his life close to the sun.
He squinted slightly and looked between Manny and Ty. He was holding a shock wand in his right hand, squeezing a button on its handle in a rhythm that Ty realized controlled the pulses.
“Well, look at you,” he said aloud. His voice was soft through the helmet. “Of all the places you could wander into in this uncaring universe, it had to be my little spider hole.”
He spoke with a slight drawl that Ty thought sounded Texan—the way Texans sounded in vids anyway. Which probably had nothing to do with how they actually talked. Maybe it was the slight bitterness in his voice.
He moved from side to side around them, inspecting their uniforms without touching them. “Marsian?” he asked. “Special Operations. Interesting. I haven’t intercepted anything telling Marsians to make their way to Vesta’s surface. I’ve seen a whole lot of traffic from the Terran Assembly complaining about Psion, thinking those bolt-head AIs are going to try and jump here first. But nothing about Marsians.”
He stopped and rubbed his chin.
“No,” he said. “I think you’re here for my data. I’ve been waiting for a long time. Here I was, getting ready to send a burst, everything. And who waltzes into my cave but two supposed Special Forces Operators?”
He fixed Ty with a stare that was a little too wild to be rational. “She sent you, didn’t she? You all are here for my data. I knew it was just a matter of time. She did, didn’t she?” He pushed his face close to Ty’s, eyes wide.
Ty gaped, unable to speak through the pulsing seizures.
The man sneered. “Of course, you won’t say. She would have told you to keep your mouths shut. You’re pukes after all, aren’t you? Cyberpukes till death. So, the question is what to do with you? I don’t have time to deal with you. But I don’t see the point in murdering two fine young special operators like yourselves. You’re probably worth something to someone.”
He jabbed his chest with a thumb. “I’m an Inclusionist. I see the value in hanging onto something until it proves useful. You, you’re probably both short-sighted Essentialists. That’s right. I know all about how you Marsian special forces get your memories wiped. Who needs history, right? Who needs to hang onto what makes us human? Might as well all be Psion AIs, following our tin-can commands.”
The thin man turned to blow his nose on the plascrete floor, one nostril at a time. When he was fini
shed, he crinkled his nose and said, “All right then.”
He stepped to the side, clearing the way to the corridor that lay beyond the blast doors. Two cargo drones rolled into the stairwell landing, each with large pincers on their front sections designed for moving crates. In unison, the drones gripped Ty and Manny in crushing bear-hugs.
Ty grunted as the metal pincers closed around his upper arms. Then, smaller arms like caterpillars’ legs crept out from the front of the drone and pulled him in closer. When he was completely enveloped by the articulated arms, the man cut the electrical pulses.
Ty’s body immediately felt like jelly. He groaned.
He could only hang uselessly as the drone rotated and rolled back into the corridor. Ty was unable to look back to see if Manny was coming along behind him, but the sound of the other drone reached his ears through the helmet. Then the sliding scrape of blast doors followed, and they were shut inside.
The man walked along behind them, out of sight.
“You almost actually hurt my doors. Let’s see what we can do about fixing that. Maybe I have to take it out of your hides.”
The corridor ahead of them was large enough to accommodate two rovers side by side. Unable to move his head, Ty strained to take in the details passing by. All he saw were more closed doors. Everything had the reinforced look of a bunker.
It was warmer down here. He could feel that through his suit at least. He was sweating, which indicated the environmental controls on his suit had stopped working.
The pulse must have also fried the circuitry controlling his combat armor. Had it done similar damage to his rifle? The projectile weapon depended on the battery, which could be drained just like the controls on his suit.
He knew he needed to say something to their captor, focus on getting more information out of him, but Ty couldn’t raise the strength to speak. He could barely form thoughts. He stared at the corridor walls rolling past and realized he hadn’t heard from Caprise in a while. Had she been fried too?
Ty felt like he had lost parts of what she’d said. He struggled to answer,
She listed several possibilities for local scan diagnostics, which included sonic, thermal, electromagnetic, and basic radiation metering. Ty considered what each bit of information might tell him.
Caprise said.
His tired mind knew the flirtation was a technique to dull pain, but he hated being manipulated. The feeling made him sick. There was a deeper unease in his mind; the panic attack when he’d saved Manny during the suit test was just the latest flash of a crack in his mind.
Moments like this made him wonder just what he had forgotten when he joined the Special Ops. There were bits of himself that were obviously not gone. He often felt deeply betrayed by something, a void that lurked outside his consciousness. The feeling seemed especially strong when Caprise tried to console him, or run one of her pain-dulling flirtation routines.
If he was a good soldier, he would accept the NSAI’s soothing wordplay. Real soldiers used their Caprise to stay calm. Another part of his mind told him Caprise kept him complacent, pliable, ready for more orders.
Ty pushed the thoughts out of his mind. Without his suit or his rifle, what else did he have?
He had his fists. He had his helmet. He had knees and elbows and training, the ability to take the their captor down, given the opportunity. He had to focus. He had to stay sharp.
They reached the end of the corridor where another set of blast doors slid open in front of them. The room on the other side was full of more server equipment, but this space had domestic touches. A bed sat against one wall, with a desk covered in bits of disassembled equipment, electronics and silica spread open to the glare of overhead lights.
Ty squinted at what looked like a bookshelf covering one wall. The books were neatly arranged, multicolored spines glossy in plas cases.
There were several computer workstations that also seemed to bridge various points in history, oddly shaped with round screens and square bodies. The place had the cluttered look of a dorm room with an adolescent disarray, bits of food left around, combined with a museum’s specific arrangement of items.
Everything was harsh and sharp under glaring white lights in the ceiling. Ty blinked at the painful gleam as the drone held him upright, encased in pincer arms, and rolled to the center of the room. The second drone brought Manny to hang limp beside him.
Both drones powered themselves off but didn’t release their grip. Ty hung painfully and could only blink, trying to look at everything around him, for some indication of what their captor was up to.
The man in the red suit walked to one of the benches and checked its console. Beside the console screen were two silver cylinders, standing upright on baseplates. They appeared to be connected to the console via bundles of network filament.
The man seemed to feel Ty’s gaze and glanced back at him. “You’re watching me there,” the man said. “Trying to figure out what I’m up to. I don’t blame you. I’d be doing the same thing. What do you think?”
Ty opened his lips but was only able to make another low groan.
The man sat at one of his desks and rotated the chair so he could watch Ty. He smiled. “Some of the best reception in Sol here. Back when this place was in use, most of the data from the M1R to the Cho came through this data center. I haven’t fired up the main dish for a year, at least. I only do it in bursts. Usually when we got a solar flare. I’ve got my databases, so I don’t need a constant flow of information. I like to maintain the appearance at least, that this place is deserted. You feeling kind of stupid now, coming in here to wreck an empty communications facility? I reckon that’s the same reason that I came here. Or, those that came before me. I wasn’t the first one here. I probably won’t be the last.”
The man was lonely. He wanted to talk. He wanted to tell his story. Ty knew if he could just keep him talking he would probably learn most of what he needed to know.
The man picked up a bowl from the desk and dipped a spoon into it, then lifted it in the air without bringing it to his lips. He looked at the spoon and then put it back in the bowl.
“I haven’t been too hungry lately,” he said. “Nerves, I think. Getting too close to the actual deed. I’ve been tracking things for a long time, watching their transmissions. Watching them go back and forth across Sol. It started when they were out there cutting up debris around Ceres. Psion let them do it. They came out of Cruithne, working with a bunch of pirate ships. I didn’t realize who they were at first, until I started intercepting some of their traffic out of boredom. They’re fascinating. They set up a mesh network, probably similar to what we use. They’re always passing data amongst each other, and their Queen went and defeated Psion. She has control of all their systems, hopping through the mesh. It’s amazing really, how Heartbridge could develop that kind of technology. Well, even if they didn’t develop it, somebody had the foresight to buy it and then figure out how to work it all together. Some of it’s at least five hundred years old.”
He waved at the racks around them. “I think most of what humans need to know is already been invented one way or another. We just forget so damn much. We wan
t to buy and sell knowledge. That’s what makes us stupid. If something has no value to someone in the moment, they just let it go. Can you imagine that? All the knowledge that’s out there and we just let it go?”
Ty tried to nod. He didn’t think that was a travesty, but this man didn’t care what he thought. He could see that in his face. This man just wanted to talk.
I can help him with that.
Manny stirred. He groaned, suit creaking as he tried to shift in the drone’s grip. The drone immediately came to life and adjusted its hold on his legs and arms. Another set of arms snaked out and wrapped around the top of his helmet, seizing it in place. Manny made a gurgling sound.
Ty tried reaching out with his Link.
“None of that now,” the man said. “If you want to talk, you talk out loud. I can see it when you use your Link. You keep that up and I’ll fry you. He picked up the shock wand from the desk and waved it at Ty. “This thing can kill you if I feel like it. You walked right into my trap, and now there’s no getting out of it.”
Ty tried to nod. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Who am I? It doesn’t matter who I am. You can call me Amstrad. That works well enough. Amstrad, the Librarian.” He smiled to himself. “I always liked that name—Librarian. I maintain a library. I protect knowledge. Somebody called me a Cyberpuke once. I hated that. I killed that man. Cyberpuke. I’m not a hacker. I protect knowledge. She doesn’t want to hear that. People think they’re in charge. Think they can control who gets what knowledge. Knowledge should be safeguarded. You don’t control it—you keep it safe. She doesn’t want to hear that though.”
“Who’s she?” Ty asked. He couldn’t move his arms or legs, but his face was less numb now. It was getting easier to talk.
“It don’t matter who she is. You wouldn’t know anyway…our so-called leader.”
Ty nodded shallowly. It was becoming easier to make out details in the room. He could read some of the spines on the bookshelf. He could see more of the components on the desks scattered around the room. They were all storage devices of some kind, from tape, silicon, graphene, to something that looked like a holodisplay.