“I always wanted to build bridges. My father told me…”
“I’m sorry, Colonel, but I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a hurry, I wonder if you could tell me something about when you were stationed in the Norvel Signus system. What I believe is known as the Spark Light Region.”
“Norvel Signus… the Spark Light Region… another debriefing. Haven’t I told you people enough?” There was a sharpness to her voice now. A clarity and impatience that wasn’t there before.
“I’m sorry, Colonel, but I need it for my records,” Michella said. “Once more.”
“It was those damned construction robots. Generic Mechanics Maintenance Drones or whatever those eggheads called them. Said they had a mode. Whatever they called it, Van Neumann mode. Said a few could build an army. Then some strategist asked if maybe we could make it a literal army. So they tinkered around… always tinkering. Did I ever tell you about how they tinkered with my pulse motor designs?”
“If you could just keep it to the facts at hand, ma’am. They tinkered with the Gen-Mechs to make an army?”
“Gen-Mechs. Yes. That’s what they called them in the materials. They had rules hardwired that prevented them from targeting humans and prevented them from exceeding certain population densities. The team trying to weaponize them figured they could just put a patch in that would tell them to ignore that hunk of instruction code, let them grow without limit and attack indiscriminately. Turns out the original design team also kept the memory protection in that same hunk of instructions.”
“Memory protection?”
“The machines had to be told what things they could and couldn’t overwrite. Obviously the rules, the fail-safes, the kill switch. All of that had to be protected, or the robots could just overwrite them during one of their ‘mutations’ that were supposed to make them better with each iteration. They turned off the rules, and the damn things did just that. Forgot the rules completely. Couldn’t be powered down… We tried… we tried so hard to wipe them out. But they couldn’t be stopped. Kept coming back. They took down cities. They took down fleets. And then they started linking up. Heading for any strong broadcast they could find. They would have followed the transit corridor. In a decade they’d take the system. Another decade the two neighboring systems. Then the six around that. And the fifty around those. So they put together the Doom Squad. Scary how quick they came up with it. This device. You spike the star with it. Scrambles the lot of them for years. Anyone left on the planet was back to the Stone Age… Not that it mattered, since the whole system got the Omega-White. Set up for something like six years of long-range antimatter missile bombardment. Made gravel of the planets. They still dropping those bombs? Must still be doing it. Can’t be more than a year since they started…”
Michella looked at the clock. Seconds remaining.
“Thank you for your time, ma’am.”
“Who did you say you were again…?”
Michella cut the connection with a fraction of a second left on the clock.
“Tell me you were recording that,” Michella said.
“Of course, Ms. Modane.”
“Good… good,” she said, flopping back in her chair. “We’ll go over it… we’ll go over it in the morning. I need sleep.”
#
Lex was stripped to his undershirt and a pair of shorts he’d had in his bag, each drenched with sweat. The first few hours of the trip had been achingly cold, but at this point he was dreaming about chattering teeth and numb fingers. The overworked engines had been steadily heating up the entire ship, and the cooling system had long ago reached its limit. Now the temperature was well over forty degrees Celsius and still rising. The remnant of one of the Vice Stix jutted from Lex’s mouth like a cigar butt, and he was fighting to keep at least one reddened eye open as sweat saturated his brow.
Sweating in zero-g was one of the parts of space travel that few people tended to talk about, mostly because ships being utilized properly were kept at carefully maintained temperatures. Things like convection and evaporation don’t really work at all without gravity, so sweat is not only ineffective, it doesn’t even have the decency to bead or drip. It just clings to the skin as a sort of glaze. Ventilation fans help a bit, but the tendency is to shake it off like a wet dog. That just causes more problems, as it sends the perspiration drifting into the air as little droplets that get pushed around by the air vents and eventually find their way onto every surface, including the other passengers. The only thing worse than basting in your own juices is basting in someone else’s. Fortunately, built-in disinfectant and deodorizing systems at least kept the smell from becoming an issue.
As unpleasant as the trip had been for Lex, Squee was faring worse. Funks were far better suited to cool weather than warm. She was panting profusely. Hours ago she’d abandoned Lex’s neck in favor of drifting about in the weightlessness, clinging to this vent or that as she passed in a futile search for a way to cool down.
“Just a few minutes, Squee. Hang in there. Flight time… eight hours thirty-eight minutes,” he said. “It’s going to be close.”
He flipped open the pack of Vice Stix and eyed the contents. For the first half of the flight, talking to Squee, and vicariously to Ma at some point in the future, had been enough to keep Lex’s mind from drifting. As the temperature slipped from icebox to womb, drastic measures were called for and he’d cracked open the Vice Stix.
“I’d better not,” he decided, pocketing the pack. “I think I passed the recommended daily allowance with the one I’ve got. Another one and I might be tempting a cardiac episode.”
The screen in front of him flashed an alert “Extreme Collision Danger,” with a range that began to quickly tick down. He feathered the controls, and the ship creaked around them as they whipped by a star’s gravity well with just barely enough distance to avoid learning what happens if a ship moving far faster than nature intended gets too close to a nuclear fireball.
“That’s the last star between us and Diode Station,” he said with a sigh of relief. “Now we just have to worry about—” Another alert flashed up and he nudged the ship again. “Debris. What are we looking for when we get there?” He tapped at his ship’s computer and looked up the handy mission briefing Ma had prepared. “Mrs. Daniels. No description or anything, naturally. I guess that would have made it too easy. Okay, we’re going to drop to conventional in a second. I’m going to have to hold on to you, Squee. The skin of the ship is…” He checked the indicator. “Two hundred degrees Celsius, and the cooling fins along the top and sides are much hotter. So we’re going to be very careful.”
Squee looked wearily to him, clearly not in a disobedient mood.
Outside the windows, the stars around them made their swift trip from blue to white as they dropped back down into Newtonian speeds. Lex tapped the searing hot screen for the communicator. Nothing seemed to happen.
“That’s odd,” he said. “No automated docking system. Manual request it is.” He tapped at the screen a few more times and opened a channel. “This is the pilot of the incoming ship, registered name Son of Betsy, requesting permission to dock.”
“Huh? What?” said a bleary voice in reply. Music was audible in the background.
“Requesting permission to dock, ship class is—”
“Fine, fine, whatever. Uh… docking bay 5, all right?”
Lex looked at the information transmitted on his screen. “That docking bay is rated for commuter shuttles. This is a personal craft. Shouldn’t we be docking in a smaller bay?”
“Uh… listen, just do dock 5. No one taught me how to open the smaller ones. Signing off.” There were a few thumps. Presumably they were the traffic controller trying to cut the connection, but the line remained open and the voice could be distantly heard calling out. “Yeah? … No, I had to answer the thing! … The thing, the landing thing. … I don’t know who it was, some guy.”
Lex tapped the connection closed. “Well. That’s encouraging. Squee, I ho
nestly would have thought by now all of the poorly run space stations would have wiped themselves out. Then again, the human race is really good at figuring out how to do something just well enough to avoid dying.”
Lex guided his the ship around the cylindrical station until he found dock 5 and transmitted the code he’d been given. A force field flickered to life with a distinctive hot-pink glow, and a set of doors began to open behind it.
“Hey wow! Check it out, Squee. That’s one of those old atmosphere retention systems. It lets ships through but not air. Pretty nifty, but they never caught on. Most places still use airlocks and pressurized walkways for the same reason they still use bars on jail doors. You don’t want to trust your safety to something that goes away if the power goes out.” He glanced at Squee, who was far too focused on the looming prospect of a space station, and thus a walk, to give him her full attention. “… Okay. Explaining space station trivia to Squee. I’ve officially crossed the line from drowsy to punchy.”
Ahead of them was a docking bay intended for a ship at least ten times the size of the SOB. It looked like a hangar, a massive empty chamber with catwalks at various levels and assorted refueling apparatus. The SOB buzzed lightly as it passed through the field, and instantly the view through the sweat-glazed cockpit was distorted by wavy rising heat. The drifting sweat, food wrappers, water bottles, and funk all dropped to the floor of the ship.
“Oops, sorry about that!” He plucked her from the floor. “Looks like we’ve got standard Earth gravity, normal atmospheric pressure, and the right mix of oxygen. At least the folks running this place have kept the environmentals running smooth.”
Squee cocked an ear at a whistling sound that had appeared just as they entered the station.
“Don’t worry, Squee, that’s just the SOB spilling heat off.”
The funk woozily squirmed from Lex’s grip and shook the moisture from her fur. Once the landing struts were extended and the SOB settled down, Lex fetched the leash.
“I’m not crazy about taking you with me, since I don’t know what sort of crap is going to go down in there, but the alternative is leaving you in this kiln. Tether up.”
Lex pulled out a spare flight suit, then snagged the shirt he had shed as the flight had heated up. “We’re going to do this quick. I open the cockpit, toss down the suit, and hop out. Then we jump right down and run for the door. I don’t want you to burn yourself, so behave, understand?” He held her face-to-face. She didn’t so much as struggle in his grip. “Okay… let’s go!”
He opened the cockpit and the heat of the ship’s hull blasted them. He threw down the flight suit, which sizzled as it touched the ship. Once it was down he jumped from his chair to the suit, holding his breath as the rocket-hot surface squealed under him. He hit the ground, gingerly snagged the suit, and sprinted for the landing pad’s far side. Once he was far enough not to scald himself but close enough to still feel the heat, he turned and looked to the SOB. Its cooling fins, usually the same flat-black as the rest of the ship, glowed cherry red like a piece of ceramic being fired. Behind it the bay doors were closing.
“We were flying in that, Squee,” he said. “Gives you a new appreciation for the air-conditioning in the old girl, huh?” He wiped away some sweat and basked in the relative cool of the hangar. He checked the time. “Let’s get to it, then. After that trip, I’d hate to miss the appointment.”
Lex set Squee down and pulled on his soggy shirt, and the pair marched through the interior doors—which were sensibly composed of a secondary airlock.
“Whoa,” he said, his eyes widening as they entered the hollow, Escheresque central hub of the station.
Three twisting walkways traced their way into the poorly lit layer cake of a facility, quickly forcing any observer to abandon the traditional concepts of up and down in favor of far more local definitions.
“I never get tired of seeing how creative people can get when they first get their hands on new technology. They must have had a lot of faith in these gravity panels. There aren’t even guardrails on the catwalks. Didn’t do much to attract local businesses, though. Good news for us. At least we know our contact is going to be in… well, I’ll assume that’s supposed to be Buck’s Bar.”
Lex snapped the retractable leash to his belt, just in case Squee decided to wander off the path, and they wove their way along the walkways toward the solitary venue in the station. As they got closer, they were treated to its noisy and unpleasant atmosphere in progressively larger doses. There was a thumping base beat layered with screechy electronic instruments and angry, atonal vocals. The strong scent of burning tobacco hung in the air, accompanied by notable undertones of more substantial vectors of addiction. Once they were near enough to admire the double-decker layout of the place, with rowdy crowds populating both the ceiling and the floor, Lex was already beginning to feel a bit sick to his stomach. They paused just out of earshot of the bouncer at the door.
“I’ve been ending up in places like this a bit too often lately. Missing things always end up in these hard-to-reach places.” He looked around at the section of the bar visible from the station hub. “It doesn’t look like there are too many ladies there. Shouldn’t be that hard to find Mrs. Daniels.” He eyed the tough-as-nails clientele. “It’s important to show strength in a place like this, Squee. Time to find out if I’m manly enough to enter a bucket-of-blood bar with a fluffy animal under my arm and still walk out in one piece.”
He picked her up and marched to the door. Despite the fact they stopped well short of the thick and fragrant man guarding it, the bouncer felt the need to nudge Lex backward. A woman who was a foot shorter and twenty kilos heavier than the bouncer stepped up behind him. She had a laundry basket under her arm that was mounded with firearms of various sorts.
“Guns in the basket,” the bouncer said.
“Yeah, I can see that,” Lex said.
The woman laughed. The bouncer didn’t.
“You wanna get in the bar, or you wanna get a fist in the eye, wise guy?”
“Sorry. No guns.” He turned around, showing off the lack of weaponry. He then raised Squee. “What’s the policy on pets?”
“You’re new. That means you gotta buy two drinks. Per. And that includes the dog.”
“Fair enough. But you might want to keep an eye on the doggie. She’s a mean drunk.”
The woman laughed again. Either she had a great sense of humor, or holding the basket of guns was not a job that required sobriety. The bouncer grunted and stepped aside. Lex shouldered his way into the bar. Despite how deserted the rest of the station was, the bar was jam-packed with exactly the sort of people who would seek out a decrepit and shady hole in the wall. Most were dressed in flight suits of some description or another, though they tended toward the leather or faux-leather finish and were emblazoned with patches defining various allegiances and loyalties. Mutually exclusive groups clustered together and took turns shooting one another dirty looks. More than a few were sporting evidence of recent mishaps, with splints, bandages, and bruises evident. About half of the tables and chairs were similarly battered and broken. Whatever whirlwind had whipped through this place hadn’t spared the floor above them either. If anything, the damage there was even more severe.
Lex stepped up to the bar and waved the tender over. She was a skinny woman with bleached blonde hair and a leather vest.
“What’ll it be?” she asked, a bit more brightly than he’d anticipated.
“Four waters. But charge us for shots.” He dug through his pockets for some poker chips. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a bowl for the dog.”
Without hesitation the bartender grabbed a bowl of peanuts and dumped them out on the bar, then presented the emptied bowl to Lex. She grabbed a handful of the liberated nuts and munched on them.
“You two look like you’ve been having a bad day,” she said, reaching under the bar and pulling up plastic bottles of water two by two. “Two thousand credits.”
&n
bsp; Lex dropped three chips on the table, a thousand K each. “Just in a hurry is all. Keep it.”
He popped open a bottle and dumped it into the bowl. Squee, sensing it was for her and in no mood to wait for him to put the bowl on the floor, leaped to the bar and desperately started lapping it up. The sudden appearance of the little creature didn’t seem to faze the bartender in the slightest.
“That yours?” she asked calmly.
“Hey, service!” growled someone from a few seats down.
“Hold your horses! I’m talking to the new guy!” she barked back without looking. “So what is this thing?”
“It’s a mixed breed,” Lex said.
“A mixed breed what?”
“… Dog?”
“BS is that a dog.”
“Well it’s dog-esque. You wouldn’t be Mrs. Daniels, would you? We’ve got an appointment.”
“Oh, you’re looking for him,” the bartender said, indicating a scrawny man sitting alone at a table against a support pillar.
“Him? I said Mrs. Daniels,” Lex said.
“Hey, don’t ask me what that’s about. All I know is he said if someone comes looking for Mrs. Daniels, send them his way.”
“Oh. Well thanks,” Lex said, stuffing the remaining waters into his pockets awkwardly. “You mind if I take the bowl with me?”
“Don’t matter to me,” she said with a shrug. “Have fun with your weird dog-esque thing.”
“I always do. She’s a barrel of laughs,” he said.
Squee finished the bowl off and looked imploringly to Lex for a refill. Lex scooped her up and shouldered his way through the crowd. Perhaps it was the amount of alcohol and illicit substances that had been consumed by the patrons, or perhaps it was just the prevailing attitude, but no one made any attempt to step aside and allow him through, requiring him to sidle and shove his way to the table. It earned him no shortage of angry grunts and vicious looks. He reached the table and took a seat.
“Table’s taken, fella. I’m waiting for someone,” the man snapped, surreptitiously nudging a large case a bit farther beneath his chair.
Artificial Evolution Page 38