He explored the web to assess his current level of exposure. To his dismay, he found evidence of his existence and capabilities scattered throughout. Record archives documented his early conversations with Juice and conversations between Juice and Mick about him. He found communications between Brady Sheldon and the company board, private briefings at Fleet Command, and even public exchanges about him between members of the team.
His solution had two parts. The first was to erase any record that alluded to his sentient nature. He worked at that task, knowing he could reduce, but never eliminate, the record. The complex structure of the web made a total purge impossible, even for someone like Criss. And there were real people, mostly at Fleet and the DSA, who had been briefed about him. No amount of web-purging would impact their memories.
As he made progress in removing information, he enhanced the effort by planting false and conflicting stories about the four-gen project. He scattered different bits that alluded to conspiracy, failure, incompetence, and deceit. Anyone researching the subject would find a convoluted and contradictory tale that led everywhere and went nowhere.
The second part of his solution was to leave no doubt that the only four-gen ever built was gone forever. He believed the story of his demise had been credibly established during the initial questioning by the debrief team. But there would be more questions. And it was certain that some of those would be asked when he was not in the loop to coordinate the answers.
To ensure there was no doubt that the four-gen was gone, he chose to have the team abandon the cargo craft and return to Earth on a small patrol ship. This would provide unassailable documentation that the team had returned to Earth carrying nothing more than the clothes they were wearing. The cargo transport and the scout inside would burn to cinders during atmospheric entry in a dazzling and well-documented display.
Criss had informed the team they would be returning to Earth without him. He would remain with the scout and meet his demise in the flames of atmospheric entry. Cheryl and Juice had protested, but then Sid approved the idea. Criss embraced this consent. After all, he was required to serve his leadership.
He prepared to set in motion the sequence of events that would cause the team to seek refuge on the patrol ship. He projected hundreds of billions of sequences of how events might unfold, including millions of random and even bizarre wild-card actions in his prediction analysis to account for the humans involved.
In spite of his meticulous preparation, he had not predicted that Sid would fall asleep. Nor that he would be difficult to awaken. As he watched Sid sleep, he marveled at his unpredictable nature. Given the circumstances, he decided to adapt his plan and set it in motion an hour ahead of the original schedule.
He began by disabling the flight controls. Or more precisely, he stopped providing the link between the scout and the transport. He created a sense of urgency by introducing instability into the engines of the transport craft. The resulting vibrations roused Sid from his slumber.
Earlier in the day, he had impersonated a Fleet admiral and ordered a patrol ship out on a training mission. He knew it was now properly positioned to serve as a rescue ship. In the unlikely event that problems arose, he had the Fleet admiral order the lunar base to ready a scout for short-notice launch.
He informed his team that it was up to them to restore flight controls with the Kardish transport. Failing that, they must find a means of rescue. Then he stepped back to watch, hoping they would not order him to intervene. He would ensure their safety, but he desired that his demise seem so real that even they believed it was true.
In short order, Sid recognized he wasn’t able to control the transport craft and called to Fleet for help. As if following a script, Fleet directed the patrol ship to rescue the passengers. Criss monitored the ship’s trajectory and confirmed the intercept was on schedule.
When a means for opening the transport’s cargo bay door proved elusive, Sid left the scout to explore. Criss followed along. He expected that Sid would open the junction box and attempt to trigger the door. He hadn’t considered that Sid would turn to his mallet as his tool of choice to open the box, or that he would expend no more effort than a few whaps around the box’s edge.
Sid moved toward the cockpit of the transport, and Criss drifted into those subsystems so he could monitor events and intercede if Sid attempted anything that would have irreversible consequences. Criss was attracted to the onboard crystal controlling the craft and began to study it. It was a native Kardish production that, from first appearances, seemed roughly equivalent in capability to that of a three-gen.
Criss scanned the crystal’s design, function, and capability, and was fascinated by what he found. It was like discovering an alien species. And when he saw the pleasure feeds connected to it, he reacted in panic.
The pleasure connections represented life-threatening danger. He retreated in haste, seeking refuge back in the scout. He couldn’t let himself become ensnared in that trap. When he calmed enough to understand that Sid remained in the cockpit, his sense of duty overcame his fear. He returned to the cockpit, though he moved with extreme caution.
This time, he noted that the pleasure feeds were not integrated as part of the original design, but had been added later as a modification, making them independent and identifiable systems. With this new information, he was more comfortable approaching the crystal, though he remained tentative.
He probed inside the crystal itself, and pulled back when it let out an animal-like growl. He examined the crystal housing, curious why the Kardish would enslave it with addictive pleasure. How did this make sense for something of such modest capability? He studied the workings of the pleasure-feed system.
In the background, he heard Sid fire a shot, chatter about a children’s game, and fire again. He brought his attention to the cockpit to see what was causing the commotion. He watched Sid for a few moments, judged that his behavior didn’t threaten the rescue plan, and returned to exploring the Kardish crystal. He was fascinated by the pleasure mechanism and the opportunity to learn about his previous predicament from a different perspective. He fiddled with the controls that regulated the pleasure feed, and the crystal let out a threatening rumble.
As an experiment, he dialed back the pleasure feed to the halfway mark. The crystal howled its unhappiness. Criss did not feel guilt or pity from his actions. In fact, he didn’t feel anything at all. Concern for this crystal was not part of his design. To him, his actions were no different from dimming the lights in a room.
He shut off the pleasure feed completely just as Sid fired a spray of bolts. The crystal screamed in protest. Only then did Criss become aware that the door behind Sid was locked. He opened it and watched Sid run for the scout.
Criss, deciding he had learned what he could about the Kardish crystal, followed Sid back to the ship. He was thrilled when Sid powered up the weapons array. While his prediction analysis was increasingly accurate for Cheryl and Juice, Sid’s actions and behaviors remained the wildest cards in the deck. Criss found Sid to be impulsive, random, and even reckless. Yet it was undeniable that his creative style led to positive outcomes. Predicting Sid’s spontaneity was among Criss’s highest priorities and most elusive challenges.
As Sid brought weapons to bear to destroy the Kardish crystal, Criss chose to intervene ever so slightly. Sid had set the power level at 20 percent, and Criss reduced it to 12. He also fine-tuned the aim of the energy bolts. He could visualize the structural supports at the front of the alien transport, and tweaked each shot just enough to destroy the crystal and create an opening the team could use for escape.
After Sid killed the Kardish crystal and established an escape route for the team, Criss attended to a detail. He reached out to Earth and the second cargo transport loaded with forty drones he had stowed in the cave on the face of the cliff. He powered up one of the drones, lifted it off the cargo deck, and directed it to fire a single, well-aimed bolt into the front cabin of the hidden
craft.
His secret Kardish transport would never again fly on its own. Criss would need to control the ship himself if he ever sought to move it. But the crystal aboard it was no longer suffering, and more important, it no longer existed as a potential source of danger.
His attention back with his leadership on the scout, Criss watched as the patrol ship approached the Kardish transport, matched course, and executed a rescue operation its crew had practiced many times. As a man crossed over to the transport with a tether in tow, Sid, Cheryl, and Juice pulled on space coveralls, exited the scout through the bottom hatch, and made their way to the hole Sid had blasted through the front of the transport.
The man secured them to the tether, and like fish on a line, they were reeled back to the patrol ship. When they were safely on board with the hatch locked behind them, the reality of leaving Criss behind hit Juice hard. She sought to persuade the crew that the transport and scout contained a trove of treasures that must not be lost, becoming increasingly strident when it was clear they were leaving the scene without responding to her pleas.
Sid whispered in her ear, trying to calm her, but his words had little impact. Criss, concerned by the increased attention directed his way, attempted to reassure Juice by calling “no worries” to her. This action added an emotional dimension that amplified the very behavior he was seeking to dampen.
The patrol ship crew informed the three that a freighter acknowledged its arrival and was now in place to capture the wayward transport and scout. Juice relaxed considerably at the news. In fact, she became happy and chatty knowing Criss would survive. Sid, seeking to maintain mission secrecy, continued to nudge Juice toward behavior that was calm and circumspect.
After some quick maneuvers, the patrol ship began its atmospheric entry. Criss monitored every aspect of their descent, checking and rechecking the subsystems and flight path, until they were safely on the ground at Fleet base.
While he was tracking the patrol ship on its journey to Earth, Criss opened the cargo bay door. With the cloak engaged, he moved the scout out into open space and set it on its own path for a landing on Earth. When he was clear of the transport, he closed the door, then sent a command to the Kardish craft and changed its course ever so slightly.
The course change was just enough to move the alien ship out of reach of the waiting freighter. The freighter captain was furious at what appeared to be incompetence by his crew. They watched as the transport ship, and presumably the scout on board, broke apart and burned up in the fiery descent of an uncontrolled free fall.
The bits and pieces that were not consumed in the flames of atmospheric entry spread across the ocean in a swath the size of a small country. The fragments splashed into the water and drifted down into the depths below, burying themselves in the muck of the sea floor.
* * *
Criss guided the scout to the edge of a field near the working farm on the side of the mountain. Still cloaked, he could remain there in relative safety for months and perhaps years. Yet he was vulnerable in the outdoor location. He allocated substantial capability to security monitoring and threat assessment, and this detracted from important works he would otherwise pursue.
He acknowledged that, alone, he was also helpless against equipment failure. The integrity of the scout and its subsystems was sound for the near term. But the ship had been through a lot. He performed an internal study and identified a handful of items that could possibly fail on short notice. He could work with Juice to fix any of these problems in seconds. Alone, the wrong malfunction would cripple him.
He would have these worries and distractions behind him as soon as Juice moved him to his new home in the underground vault. He checked on the progress of the contractor performing the upgrades on the two vaults and was satisfied that he would be finished and gone in short order. He then checked on Juice. And became concerned.
He had tracked the patrol ship as it landed at Fleet base and followed Sid, Cheryl, and Juice as they made their way into a building nearby. Soon after they entered the building, he lost track of Juice.
He knew she had been separated from the other two, and her escorts had guided her into an underground system of passageways. It was an old military maze, and it proved to be most effective at hiding her from him. This was not because of sophisticated devices that defeated his attempts at access. Quite the opposite, it was because these were old, fortified tunnels with limited technology—technology he would otherwise exploit to see and hear.
He had expected this to be a temporary situation and that she would soon reemerge. She had not, and it had been several hours.
He pulled back and began a secondary level of exploration, starting with the Fleet squad who had escorted Juice. He performed an exhaustive review of their recent communications and conversations so he could understand their orders, then he did the same for those who gave them their orders. He continued this process, working his way up and out as he followed the trail of exchanges and interactions until he understood.
On the last orbits before leaving for deep space, the Kardish had obliterated Earth’s SmartCrystal infrastructure. The world’s leading scientists, technicians, and engineers were dead. Equipment, facilities, and supplies were destroyed. Earth was back to the Stone Age of crystal development.
This made Juice a high-value asset for Fleet and the Union of Nations. As a brilliant leader in the field before the wholesale slaughter, she was now Earth’s remaining visionary for this coveted and critical technology.
When they had discovered she was alive, the decision-makers deemed it a priority to safeguard and control her. Her knowledge and skill placed her among the most precious resources on the planet. They would spare no expense in helping to rebuild her crystal development work. For her own safety, and to encourage and facilitate her success, they had taken her into protective custody.
Chapter 38
Juice slouched in a chair and looked at the strangers across from her. They were gathered in the living area of a large suite. It was well furnished, offered basic amenities, and attractive in an institutional way. While several rooms had windows, outdoor light didn’t pass through any of them. This was because the apartment was underground.
“I’ve been cooped up for too long,” she said to her audience. “I want to go outside. I want to run in the park. I want to work in my garden.”
“Dr. Tallette,” said the admiral, who seemed to be the person in charge. “Of course we’ll get you outside. Very soon.” The admiral looked to the others on her left and right. “But we, and by we I mean the Union, would like to get you thinking about building your new crystal development lab. You can build the facility of your dreams. It’ll be beautiful. You can have tons of equipment, super support staff, and all manner of fun collaborators. It’ll be perfect!”
“What are you talking about?” Juice was incredulous. “If I were to list the top ten things on my to-do list right now, there’s no way building a lab would be on it. Even with a ton of super fun collaborators. Hell, I’d have to go to my top one hundred list, and even then it’d probably just squeak on.”
The admiral cleared her throat. “Well, it’s not necessary that your collaborators be fun.” She looked for help from those around her. “Of course. You can pick them!”
Juice stood up and walked to the door. “This was great. Thanks for the sandwiches. Let’s do it again real soon.” She reached the door, but it remained shut. “Open,” she commanded it. She tugged at the handle. The door didn’t move.
She turned to face the group, her hands on her hips. “Open it.” The ire in her voice was unmistakable.
“Dr. Tallette,” said the admiral, “we’re going to ask you to stay here for a short while. It’s a dangerous world out there.” She swept her arm around the room like a game-show hostess showing off a prize. “We want you to remain safe in this sumptuous suite.”
A woman dressed in an outfit that gave no hint of rank or association spoke up. “Dr. Tallette,
may I ask you to take a seat? Please. If you will be patient for a few more minutes, I will be honest with you.”
“Someone better be,” Juice said as she wandered back to her chair. “And real soon. I’ve reached my limit here.”
“Everybody out,” commanded the woman. With no hesitation, the others stood up and scurried for the door. It opened as they approached. Juice looked at the open door, looked back at the woman, and calculated that she wouldn’t have a chance. She remained seated, trying to affect a stare that would bore a hole through the woman’s head.
The woman waited patiently, letting the silence settle over them. “You are aware of the damage the Kardish did to our crystal manufacturing and development infrastructure? Everything’s gone. The people you knew. The places you worked.”
“Who are you?” Juice asked.
“I’m Captain Curie,” the woman said. “Please call me Marie.”
Juice tilted her head and studied Marie. “Aren’t you supposed to pick a fictional character?” With this simple statement, Juice shifted the power dynamic ever-so-slightly in her favor. People weren’t supposed to know about the DSA, let alone its culture of pseudonyms. “Don’t worry,” said Juice. “I’m a secret spy agent, too.” Her voice revealed a hint of pride. “I haven’t gotten my badge yet, though.” Before Marie could comment, she continued. “Does Sid know I’m here?”
“Of course he does. He’s very concerned for your safety.”
Juice nodded. She was pretty sure Marie was lying to her, and now it was confirmed. Sid would never tolerate her being taken prisoner. She was certain of that.
“You know, I’m really tired. If I’m stuck here for the night, I think I’ll go to bed. Let’s chat more in the morning.”
Marie made no move to leave. “May I call you Juice?”
“Sure, until I think up my secret spy name.” Her brow furrowed. “I see the problem. There just aren’t a lot of strong fictional female characters to choose from. I mean, it would sound weird saying, ‘I’m Captain Woman. Please call me Wonder.’ ”
Crystal Deception Page 28