by Isaac Hooke
“Passion,” Bender said.
“Yeah,” Manic said. “Unfortunately. Some people are passionate about video games, others VR, but you?”
“Killin’ mofo bitch bugs!” Bender said. “Especially the babies.”
“That’s so cruel,” Shaw said.
“What?” Bender said. “What’s wrong with that? Everything was good until I brought up the babies. Maybe I should have let the little cutesy babies crawl up your leg, huh Shaw? And let them rip your friggin’ chest open!”
“Well, when you put it that way...” Shaw said. “I’m glad you’re passionate about what you do.”
Bender smiled widely, revealing his golden grille. “Thank you. We all got to be passionate about something in this life. I’m just glad I’ve found my passion.”
“Okay,” Shaw said.
“Lui, what’s our heading?” Rade asked.
“I have us headed in the opposite direction of the alien ship,” Lui said. “On course toward the Gate to the next system.”
Rade considered that. While he wanted to return to the planet to recover the combat robots and shuttles he had left behind, there was no guarantee all of the aliens were gone, either. The colony would be placed under quarantine once any governmental forces arrived, so the question was, did he return now and once more risk the lives of his Argonauts, or did he expense the costs to his two clients?
He made a snap decision.
He would expense the clients.
“How are repairs proceeding to the hull?” Rade said. “Do we have pressurization restored to hangar bay two?”
“The drones have almost finished putting in a temporary barrier for the lost doors,” Lui said. “The current estimate is about two hours.”
Rade nodded. “Well, I guess everything is under control then.”
“It is,” Lui said.
“Okay then,” Rade said. “I’m going to be in my office.”
Don’t you mean your quarters? Shaw texted him. She wore a concerned expression.
No, he replied.
Rade forced himself to stand, then opened the hatch that led to the adjacent room. He wished there was room for a couch in there, but all he had were two chairs and a desk. He locked the door, then lay down, his body lying half underneath the desk.
“Are you all right, boss?” Bax said.
“Fine,” Rade said. “Just getting some sleep.”
“But you could do that in your stateroom?” Bax said.
“Sure,” Rade said. “But then the crew would know. They think I’m working if I’m here.”
“And that matters because...”
“Damn it,” Rade said. “For an AI you ask a lot of probing questions. Now let me sleep before I dismantle you.”
“Good night, boss,” Bax said.
“Night,” Rade said.
A moment later: “Sweet dreams.”
Rade gritted his teeth. “Thanks.”
“Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” Bax said.
“Bax!” Rade said.
“And if they do,” Bax continued.
Rade exhaled deeply.
“Hit them with a shoe,” Bax finished.
“Thank you,” Rade said. “Now give me some quiet!”
Thankfully Bax didn’t say anything more.
Rade closed his eyes and got some much needed shut-eye.
RADE AWOKE IN the middle of the designated night, and made his way groggily to the bridge. It was empty, operated solely by Bax.
“Sit-rep?” Rade asked the Argonaut’s AI.
“The alien ship is still fleeing toward the uncharted wormhole,” Bax said. “The Argonaut continues toward the opposite Gate. Oh, and the mercenaries are pinging us yet again.”
“Again?” Rade asked.
“Yes, they want to know when they’re going to get paid.”
“Ah,” Rade said. “You’ve routed the messages to Surus?”
“Yes,” Bax replied. “I assume she’ll pay them shortly.”
“I hope so,” Rade said. “Because we’ll have thirty angry mercenary warships on our tail if she doesn’t.”
“Actually, the mercenaries are already shadowing us,” Bax said.
“Want to make sure we pay, do they?” Rade said.
“Probably.”
“Well, I’m heading to my quarters to get some sleep,” Rade said.
“But you were sleeping all this time,” Bax said.
“I know,” Rade said. “I’m still tired.”
Rade went to the stateroom he shared with Shaw and lay down on the bed without changing. She moaned softly, and then shifted to wrap her arms around him.
“There’s my warrior,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
“You knew?” Rade asked.
“Of course,” Shaw said. “Bax told me.”
“Damn AI,” Rade muttered.
He kissed her on the cheek and rolled away. Too tired to perform tonight.
When he awoke the next morning, he was famished. He drank the coffee Shaw had prepared for him, and had a biscuit.
“You ate that fast,” Shaw said.
“I’m starving,” Rade said.
“That’s a good sign,” Shaw said. “Here, I’ll make you some real food if you want?”
“No, that’s all right,” Rade said. “I don’t think I can wait. I’ll eat in the wardroom this morning.”
Rade got up and headed toward the door.
Shaw stopped him. “You know I hate it when you eat that robot’s cooking. I take it as a personal insult.”
“Sorry babe,” Rade said. “Tell you what, you cook something up, and I’ll eat it when I get back here. I’ll save room.”
“No,” Shaw said. “I’m not cooking for you this morning. Go on.”
Rade gave her his puppy dog eyes. It didn’t work.
“Go,” Shaw said.
Rade shrugged, then made his way to the tiny wardroom. Tahoe was already there, eating a big slice of chicken at the wardroom table.
“Hey Rade,” Tahoe said.
“Tahoe.” Rade took a seat and rested his forearms on the long white cloth. He nodded toward the meat. “What variant of chicken did the chef prepare for breakfast today?”
“Today?” Tahoe said. “Why, we got barbecue chicken for breakfast!”
“Mm-hmm,” Rade said.
The robot chef wheeled inside from the galley; it placed a plate and two utensils in front of Rade. The robot inserted a pair of tongs into the pot it carried in a third arm and withdrew a chicken leg, putting it on the plate. It continued dropping more pieces onto the plate until Rade told it to stop. Then it deposited some salad onto a free area of his plate and rolled away.
“Breakfast of champions!” Rade said as he dug in.
When he finished his first piece, he nodded toward Tahoe. “The wounds are all healed?”
“The physical ones,” Tahoe said.
“What about the mental?” Rade said.
Tahoe paused. “I had a bit of a scare back there. Thought I wasn’t going to make it.”
“What do you mean?” Rade asked, pausing. “You seemed fine.”
“After I patched my suit, I returned to the battle, as you know,” Tahoe said. “When it was done, and you told me to make my way to sickbay, I listened to you, of course. But I fainted when I walked inside. I awoke a moment later. The Weavers had dragged me onto one of the tables, and stripped off my suit. They were operating on my lungs. Apparently, they had filled with blood. Things got a bit tense, to say the least. I fell into and out of consciousness as they worked. And, well, I pulled through.”
Rade shook his head. “Sorry you were so badly injured. Wish I would have known. I would have ordered you to sickbay earlier.” He realized if he had been paying more attention to the team’s vitals during the combat, he probably would have seen the signs, and done just that.
Losing my touch. But I knew that already.
“I would have probably disobeyed you if you told me t
o leave early,” Tahoe said.
Rade smiled slightly. “You always were the disobedient one. Even when we were on the Teams. I allowed you to get away with so much.”
“Oh I know,” Tahoe said. “But eventually I learned to listen to you. How could I not? After all the times you saved my life.”
“You saved mine an equal number,” Rade said.
“And don’t you forget it!” Tahoe told him.
Rade received a call from Surus. He accepted, voice only.
“I’m going to be interviewing the Phant in the cargo hold shortly,” Surus sent. “I thought you would like to observe.”
“Interviewing?” Rade said. “Or interrogating?”
“Both,” the Green replied.
“I’ll be right there.” Rade disconnected, then gulped down the last of his breakfast.
“That’s bad for you,” Tahoe said. “You should chew your food.”
Rade grunted—his mouth was too full to answer—and then hurried from the wardroom.
Near the cargo hold, he burped; unfortunately, some of the food he had just eaten came up with it, lingering in the back of his throat. He quickly swallowed. Barbecue chicken didn’t taste as good the second time.
He entered the hold. A sealed glass container resided near the middle of the room. Flat metal disks a meter wide covered the floor and ceiling of that container. A small black box was connected to the topmost disk.
Within stood Governor Ganye, wearing a sour expression.
Surus waited beside the container in her host, Ms. Bounty.
“Welcome,” Surus said. “We can now begin.”
twenty-seven
Rade approached. He noticed the small microphone and speaker pairs on the inside and outside that would allow him to communicate with the being trapped inside.
“So this is your ally,” Ganye told Surus. “The organic who helped lead you to me.”
“We found you quite accidentally,” Rade said. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have staged a coup if you didn’t want to attract attention.”
“It was necessary,” Ganye said. “The Quantus required a demonstration of how weak human vessels were. When the Kenyan corvettes arrived, I destroyed them with Kitale’s defense platform, proving to the aliens just how easy humanity was to defeat. The Quantus still wavered, however. They wanted me to share my tech with them before agreeing to my plans. I should have realized it was because their own technology simply wasn’t up to par. I had thought, should the mercenaries turn on me, the Quantus would easily handle them. I was wrong. Which would explain why they wavered as long as they did.”
“The Quantus?” Rade said.
“That’s what he calls the aliens,” Surus said. “The Quantus were lurking in the thermal wash behind one of the stars for at least a year in the Nyiki system, communicating with him on Kitale. They have a colony in the adjacent system, beyond the uncharted Slipstream.”
“What was the point of all this?” Rade said. “Why did he summon them?”
Ganye was the one who answered. “They agreed in principle to help exterminate humanity, in exchange for technology. Unfortunately, as I said, their tech levels weren’t as high as I had hoped. They claimed to be Tech Class IV overall, and while that might have been true for some of their technologies, in reality they were more mid Tech Class III, especially when it came to weapons tech. Then again, perhaps the tech class was merely lost in the translation. Considering I had only a year to learn their language. But I believe they were deceiving me the whole time: they had no intention of ever destroying humanity. They just wanted the tech I promised them.”
“Wise aliens,” Rade said. “Because once they destroyed humanity, when the rest of your kind arrived you would have destroyed the Quantus, too. Simply to feed on the energy signatures of their dead population in order to create your geronium planets.”
“That was the plan, yes,” Ganye said.
“So why did the Quantus choose to attack when they did?” Rade said.
“Apparently he told them he was in danger,” Surus said. “That hunters had come, and they must attack now, or they would never get the technology he promised. So the alien starship left its position from behind the sun and traveled to the planet.”
“Why didn’t the Argonaut detect its approach?” Rade said.
“It came in from the far side of the planet,” Surus said. “Because of our geosynchronous orbit, our view beyond the closest hemisphere was occluded. We were piggybacking on the compromised Kenyan telemetry drones that were already in orbit to provide us with data. In retrospect, we should have launched our own drones.”
“Though the colony probably wouldn’t have granted us clearance to do so anyway,” Rade said. Launching one’s own drones above some inhabited planets without clearance was considered an act of war. Or at the very least, it was punishable by fines, and possibly arrest for the captain involved.
“Continue,” Surus told the possessed Artificial.
“The Quantus betrayed me when they arrived,” Ganye said. “Instead of protecting me, they hunted me. When the Green showed up, I made the mistake of giving them the plans for a containment device. They used it to capture me, and carried me aboard their vessel. They intended to make me give up my secrets through torture and interrogation.”
Rade had to laugh at all that. “So all this time we thought you were colluding with the aliens? Instead they were hunting you! Just like us. No wonder they were trying so hard to get you back after we captured you.”
“It could be that they wanted to capture me as well,” Surus said. “When they realized I was a Phant.”
“Oh, they wanted you all right,” Ganye said. “I told them about you long before you retrieved me. They sent out hunters specifically looking for you. They wanted to steal your knowledge, too, you see.”
“That would explain their behavior,” Rade said to Surus. “Remember how they were dismembering the human bodies, as if searching for Phants inside? It’s just too bad no one told them Phants can’t inhabit humans like that, not without cybernetic interfaces.”
“Nor that Phants can incinerate them,” Surus said.
“They discovered soon enough, after they turned on me,” Ganye said. “Let’s just say, I put up a bit of a fight before they captured me. But not as much of a fight as you, it seems.”
“It’s a good thing the mercenaries turned,” Surus told Rade. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation otherwise. I finished transferring them the last of the funds I promised, by the way.”
Rade nodded. “Good.”
“One thing that puzzles me,” Surus said, turning her attention to Ganye once more. “If they were hunting me, as you say, why did we never notice any of the Quantus carrying a containment device?”
“They had a few with them, I’m sure,” Ganye said. “They simply weren’t expecting your Hoplites. You never gave them a chance to deploy the devices.”
“They thought our Hoplites were going to be as easy as those weakly armored walkers the city employed,” Rade said. “Or the Centurion 6As, did they? They were expecting civic defenses, and instead we threw military-grade units at them.”
“Something like that, yes,” Ganye said.
“What about that dimensional weapon?” Rade said. “What do you know about it?”
“Only that they tried to use it against me, and failed,” Ganye said.
Rade shook his head, turning to Surus. “How do we know this Phant hasn’t fed them some Tech Level IV technology already? Is that dimensional weapon something you’ve ever seen before?”
“No,” Surus said. “The weapon is unique to the Quantus.”
Rade focused on the governor. “So, speak up. Did you share technology with the Phants?”
Ganye merely smiled. “Maybe, maybe not. You’ll discover in a few decades time.”
“You have, haven’t you?” Rade said. “When the Quantus return, their armor and weapons will be superior to our own. That, combined with their qu
antum weapon, will make them unstoppable.”
Ganye shrugged. “A little chaos in this quarter of the galaxy will only make things all that easier for the rest of my kind when they arrive seven hundred years from now. Two races locked in intergalactic war... easy pickings.”
“What do you think?” Rade asked her. “Did he give them technology?”
“Likely,” Surus said. “It’s a strategy the Phants use against more advanced races. They will send a Purple in to foment war among neighboring races, so that by the time the Motherships arrive, four or five species are locked in interstellar war, their ranks weakened by centuries of fighting.”
“It’s a good thing we captured this Purple when we did, isn’t it?” Rade said.
“Very good,” Surus said.
“There are others of my kind here,” Ganye said. “Humanity will fall, yet.”
“Where?” Surus asked.
“I don’t know they’re locations in this realm,” Ganye said. “We communicate in the intra-dimension.”
“Did Ganye tell you why there was no evidence of the Purple on the nape of his neck when we first arrived?” Rade asked Surus.
“He did,” Surus said. “Apparently, the Phant had left the host at the time, not wanting to risk capture.”
“So the Artificial lied then,” Rade said. “And was in cahoots with the Phant all along.”
“Not necessarily,” Surus said. “The Phant may have promised to leave Ganye alone if the governor arrested our party.”
“There are many ways to coerce AIs,” Ganye said with a grin.
“So you’re saying he was cooperating with you against his wishes?” Rade asked.
Ganye pursed his lips. “I suppose I do not need to incriminate the Artificial. It has served me well as a vessel. In truth, I have been unable to reprogram it. If I were a Black, perhaps I would have had greater success. I did promise Ganye his freedom if he arrested you, but I betrayed him of course, possessing him the moment you were carried from his office. Use that knowledge as you see fit.”
Surus turned toward Rade. “Is there anything else you wish to ask? Or may I extract the Purple?”
“I’m done,” Rade said, stepping back.
“The Quantus will be back sooner than you think,” Ganye said. “With more ships. I’ve told them there are others of my kind here, with more secrets. They want it all.”