But until someone came to talk to her, she had no way to tell where she was. The surgeon looked the same as they did everywhere, the standard Eckandi design found on that side of the galaxy. The room itself could have been on any Pristine vessel, except — she sniffed the air — it smelled new. How many recently built ships were there in either the Commonwealth or the Dato Bloc? And why would they send one to collect a single AI?
What had she missed?
She shook her head. She didn't have enough information to guess what had happened to her. And the last thing she remembered was the battle on the top of the MiCom building: the flyers, the mortar bombs, the Dato trooper, and —
Cane.
The return of that memory stung. One hand rose automatically to touch her temple where he had struck her unconscious. No pain. No pain anywhere, in fact: in her ribs, her shoulder, or her recently shaved head. Physically, she felt better than she had for days.
After a few minutes, something finally broke the deathly silence. She heard, distant at first, but growing nearer by the second, the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside her cell. Two people, she guessed, marching in perfect time.
Seconds later, the door of the cell hissed smoothly open. A pair of Dato troopers stood outside, framed in the doorway like statues. Reflections glistened disconcertingly across their grey, ceramic shells as, in unison, they took one step forward into the cell. Two black faceplates stared impassively at her as she waited for their next move. Neither one, she noted, was armed.
"You are to come with us, Commander," one of the troopers said, the voice issuing a little too loudly from the suit's massive chest.
"Why?" The defiant tone was automatic.
"Your presence is required elsewhere."
"Where?"
No answer.
She sighed. What was the point in resisting? Even unarmed, two troopers were more than a match for her. She would do better to save her energy for the interrogation that was surely to follow. At least that way she'd find out exactly where she was.
A large part of her suspected that she wasn't going to enjoy the process of finding out.
* * *
The troopers led her through a maze of passages and elevators, heading deep into the ship's infrastructure. If she hadn't already guessed that the ship was new, the short journey would have convinced her. Apart from a few small signs of Human occupation, the bulkheads and floors were virtually untouched.
Yet, despite the occasional evidence of life, the ship seemed more deserted than ever. She heard no voices, no footsteps besides hers and her escorts', none of the small mechanical whispers that betrayed a presence nearby. After a few minutes, even the presence of the two troopers began to unnerve her; they might have been machines for all the sound they made.
Eventually they arrived at a door, coming from the other side of which she could hear voices — and heated ones, by the sound of them. But the door remained closed, and neither of the troopers moved to open it.
"Well?" she asked, glancing from one impassive visor to the other, not really expecting an answer. "Are we going to stand out here all day?"
As though her voice had prompted a response, the door slid open and the troopers ushered her inside, taking positions on either side of the entrance.
The room was ten metres across, circular with a high, domed roof. The carpet was a plush burgundy pile, and the fixtures lavish for a military spaceship. At the opposite end of the room was a drink dispenser; low tables held a variety of finger food on glass plates; a quartered ring of comfortable armchairs faced a central holographic display. A meeting hall of some kind, or a senior officers' mess.
At the opening of the door, the argument had ceased in mid-sentence and three heads had turned to stare at her. She stared back, trying not to let her face betray her surprise.
"Well, Commander," said Burne Absenger, COE Armada's Chief Liaison Officer to the Commonwealth of Empires' civilian government. A big, middle-aged man with thick locks of orange-red hair firmly slicked back in a skullcap, his voice was warm and well polished but not quite able to hide an edge of irony. "It would seem you've been busy."
"And we'd like an explanation," snapped Auberon Chase, head of COE Intelligence. Rakishly thin and bald, he wore his uniform irritably, as though discomfited by its loose fit. His eyes burned without dissembling, anger naked for all to see.
Beside him was the head of Strategy, Page De Bruyn — a tall woman with shoulder-length brown hair who, it was rumored, held more power in COE Intelligence than her boss, Chase. She studied Roche with a quiet fascination.
For a moment Roche was unsure exactly how to respond. Confronted by three of the Armada's most senior officers on a Dato ship, in which she herself had only recently woken with no recollection of how she had come to be there, she felt at a total loss. And they wanted her to explain?
Then, for the first time, she consciously noted the contents of the viewtank. Her breath caught in her throat. COE Intelligence HQ. A massive structure reflecting the light of distant suns and nebulae, it was duty's focus for the millions of Armada officers like herself — and a sight she had come to believe she might never see again. Even if the view was at maximum enhancement, the station had to be close — probably no more distant than the Riem-Perez horizon of its hypershield, the closest point to it that any vessel could jump.
We're right on top of it, Roche concluded. Then: This is a Dato ship! What's it doing so close?
"Well, Commander?" prompted De Bruyn, her voice a dangerous purr.
Roche swung her attention from the tank and faced the woman's steely gaze. "I'll answer your questions as well as I'm able to, but I'm afraid that most of this is beyond me."
"Perhaps you should let us be the judge of that." De Bruyn smiled thinly. "When you've told us how you learned about the Palasian System, and why the information could not flow through the normal channels, then we'll decide."
Unsteady as it was, Roche stood her ground. "Apart from what I've seen on IDnet, I know nothing at all about the Palasian System." De Bruyn's eyes narrowed, but Roche plowed on, choosing her words with care. Regardless how she had come to be in this situation, one wrong word could end her career. "What has led you to believe that I do is something of a mystery to me."
"Don't play the fool with us, Commander," exploded Chase, stabbing a long bony finger in her direction. "First you turn up at HQ in the new Dato Marauder, a vessel regarding which we have only the vaguest intelligence, then you demand — not request, mind you, but demand — an immediate audience, here on the ship, to discuss a security matter so grave that it threatens the entire Commonwealth." He snorted as though the very idea offended him. "And now you have the nerve to tell us that you don't even know what we're talking about! Why we even agreed to this meeting at all is — "
"Auberon," interrupted De Bruyn sharply, shaking her head. Then, more smoothly, she added, "Let the girl speak."
"Yes," put in Absenger. "We'll never get anywhere if you carry on like this." Fixing Roche with a warm but exaggerated smile, he said, "Clearly this situation is of no benefit to anyone, Commander. So please, let's see if we can't sort everything out."
Roche opened her mouth, about to protest that it wasn't the outburst of the head of Intelligence that caused her reticence but a simple lack of knowledge. Before she could, however, someone spoke up behind her, from the entrance to the conference room.
"She's telling the truth."
Roche turned. Standing in the doorway was Ameidio Haid. With the faintest nod in her direction, he strode confidently into the room, his calm demeanor generating an air of authority.
"We used her image to make that call," he said as he approached. "Seeing she was unconscious at the time, we had no choice."
"What?" Chase's eyes flickered from Haid to Roche, searching for the connection between the two. "What's going on here?"
"That's entirely up to you." Haid took a seat on the opposite side of the room and crossed his legs,
to all appearances completely at ease. Roche noted the tautness of his muscles beneath the simple black uniform, however, and suspected that he was far from relaxed. "What's your preference?" he said. "An honest and open discussion, or a witch hunt?"
"This is preposterous," the head of Intelligence spluttered. "I refuse to be a part of any discussion involving someone of your ilk, Haid. A criminal, a barbarian, a traitor — !"
"You remember me, then," Haid interjected with some amusement. "But don't kid yourself, Auberon; we really aren't that much different from one another." Before the man could respond, Haid's expression became grave, the humor draining from his tone. "Let's skip the pleasantries, shall we? We have a few things we need to discuss."
Chase's face turned grey with rage.
"Of course." Burne Absenger took a position around the holographic tank, his heavy frame sinking easily into the contoured chair. Page De Bruyn hesitated a moment, then followed his lead, although her posture remained stiffly upright. Roche sat opposite Haid, where she could watch him through the hologram of Intelligence HQ. Chase remained standing until Absenger caught his eye and gestured sharply for him to sit.
The head of Strategy sank into a seat at random. "Do we have any choice?"
"To be honest," said Haid, "no, not anymore. However, the choice to come out to meet us was your own. Ours was merely an invitation."
"You have an interesting way of greeting your guests," said De Bruyn dryly.
Haid shrugged. "You were asked to come alone. And unarmed."
De Bruyn snorted. "You couldn't expect us to simply walk onto an enemy vessel without any protection."
"Nor you expect us to allow an armed platoon to march aboard."
"Which your troops dealt with easily enough," said Chase with more than a trace of bitterness. "What are they? Mercenaries like yourself?"
"No. They're drones," Haid explained. "Or remotes, if you like." He gestured to the nearest Dato trooper, who instantly raised a gauntleted hand to open the black visor.
The helmet inside was empty.
Haid's smile widened at the response from his small audience: the in-drawn breaths and sudden stiffening of postures.
"Eyes and ears in the service of the one behind that message we sent. The one who sent me here — to clear the air."
Roche stared at the empty armour in amazement, then turned to face Haid. "You mean the Box, don't you?"
"Who else?" he said. "Who did you think was running this ship?" He laughed lightly. "Certainly not me."
"I'd assumed the Dato — "
"They're currently in the main airlock holding bay with De Bruyn's squad, waiting to be shipped to HQ." Haid shook his head. "Did you really believe we'd join forces with the Dato Bloc to betray you and the Armada? Morgan, we despise them almost as much as we despise the three people sitting with us now."
That brought an immediate response from Chase, but one less vicious than Roche had expected.
"How much do you know?" asked the head of Intelligence, studying Haid narrowly.
"Enough," said Haid. "Enough to see you face a court-martial, Chase. Not that I have any faith in the Commonwealth's judicial system."
"Wait a minute," said Absenger, raising a hand. "You're going much too fast for me. When you say that 'the Box' is running this ship, surely you can't mean the AI attached to the commander's arm here?"
"Why not?" said Haid. "It's perfectly suited to the task."
"But how? I mean, it seems hard to believe that ... " Absenger glanced at De Bruyn. "Surely this Box is nothing more than a communications AI commissioned to replace one in the Armada network?"
"The Box is much more than a 'communications AI'," said Haid, "no matter what you say. It's designed with the express purpose of infiltrating and ultimately corrupting Dato intelligent systems, such as those that run this ship, or the combat armour you see before you. That's what you ordered from Trinity, and that's what they built." His gaze shifted suddenly. "Isn't that right, De Bruyn?"
The head of Strategy looked uncomfortable for a moment, then exchanged another glance with Absenger. "We wanted something that could infiltrate Dato security from the inside."
Haid nodded. "And that's what you got — and more." He looked at Roche and noticed the slight wince on her face. "Don't feel too bad, Morgan. I didn't work it out myself, either. When you let me open the datalink, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. That damned machine is a maze of security probes and countertraps; given a century, uninterrupted, I might have come close to guessing what it was for. In the end, I didn't crack the Box; it cracked me. It needed another ally, and I was the one it chose."
"To do what?" said Roche.
"To help the two of you off the planet, basically. And to gain access to data processors powerful enough for it to discover its full potential."
Roche absorbed this for a moment, sensing an unspoken implication in his words. "You said another ally?"
"That's right. Adoni Cane was the first. That's why it let him out of the Midnight's brig and made sure he reached you before the Dato attacked."
Roche gaped. "The Box did that?"
"Of course. I told you there was something screwy about all that. The Box could see what was coming, and made sure you had at least an even chance of surviving."
"Who is this 'Adoni Cane'?" said Absenger.
"This is ridiculous!" Chase snapped. "I can't believe we're discussing Commonwealth secrets with these people — "
"Be quiet, Auberon," said De Bruyn, her eyes dangerous.
Haid watched the brief interaction with some amusement, and Roche suddenly realised how well he was playing them against each other. Absenger, the politician, the smooth talker; Chase, the reactionary hothead; and De Bruyn, perhaps the most dangerous of the three, sharp and coldly calculating.
"Adoni Cane is a genetically modified combat soldier," Haid said, as casually as though discussing the weather. "The Midnight plucked him from a life support capsule located by its beacon eight days before arriving at Sciacca's World. The ship's surgeons examined him in situ, but didn't have time to contact HQ. The data they collected then, plus more from our own examinations on Port Parvati, makes for very interesting reading."
The viewtank's image of Intelligence HQ vanished and was replaced with a three-dimensional scan of Cane, segmented in places to reveal his inner organs. Lines of data scrolled down the corners of the tank, listing metabolic rates, genetic comparisons, cellular structures, neural connections ...
Roche studied it in disbelief. This was much more detailed than she'd seen in the rebels' headquarters. How Haid had managed to get hold of the Midnight's data was beyond her.
Then she realised: the Box again, although why it had gone to the trouble to save the data, then keep it a secret from her and the rebels, remained unknown. For the moment, curiosity about Cane overrode that about the Box.
She could see, now, where the survival capsule had been physically grafted to him at stomach, throat, and thighs via circular wounds that had healed within days of his emergence. The Midnight's chief surgeon's tentative conclusion was that he had indeed been grown in the capsule and subsequently given a basic knowledge of language and movement by implanted educators. Given the condition of his tissue and the lack of radiation damage suffered while in deep space, Cane appeared to be roughly one year old, although his mental age was far above that. The obvious conclusion was that, although the capsule had drifted for at least a year before being found, the timing of its discovery had been carefully planned. Even with the capsule's sophisticated organic vats, only superficially examined on the Midnight, Human tissue could not have been sustained unharmed for longer than a month or two.
Cane, therefore, wasn't an innocent cast adrift by some unknown tragedy, lying dormant in the capsule waiting to be rescued. He had been built for a purpose by someone who had wanted him to be found. Now. The only question that remained unanswered was: how long had the capsule been drifting before it brought him into
being?
No one else in the room seemed ready to ask the obvious questions — questions she had asked back on Sciacca's World — so she spoke for them:
"To what end?"
The answer came from an unexpected quarter.
"To purge the Commonwealth and its neighbours of Pristine Humanity, of course," said Page De Bruyn, her voice hushed. "To wreak revenge on the descendants of the people who destroyed the creators of such creatures. Adoni Cane is a Clone Wunderkind, courtesy of the Sol Apotheosis Movement."
"Another one?" said Chase, his face pale.
"It was always a possibility," said Absenger grimly.
"Will someone please tell me what you're talking about?" said Roche.
Absenger sighed heavily and opened his hands. "Twenty-five days ago, a similar capsule also containing a single occupant was retrieved by the courier vessel Daybreak not far from one of our systems. Daybreak's captain had time to report the discovery, but little else. Before she could transmit a detailed report, all communication ceased and the ship disappeared. Two days later, Daybreak reappeared, broadcasting an emergency beacon. The commanding officer of the nearest military base sent out a tug to rendezvous, and took it in for repairs. Not long after, we received garbled messages that the base was under attack — then that too fell silent. By the time the Armada sent a battalion to investigate, the entire system was in flames."
"None of this was on IDnet," Roche said.
"You covered it up," said Haid, speaking not in response to her question but to De Bruyn. "Possibly the greatest threat the COE has ever faced, and you tried to sweep it under the rug."
"We didn't know what had happened," protested De Bruyn. "It could have been anything: rebellion, disease, war. We had no way of knowing. But we had to enforce a quarantine to keep people out, to prevent more deaths."
"Palasian System," said Roche, finally making the connection.
Sean Williams & Shane Dix - Evergence 1 - The Prodigal Sun Page 33