Artificial Evolution

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “Mr. Alexander, we are still discussing whether or not you’ll be spending the rest of your life in a TKUR prison. Now is not the time to be asking for favors,” Paltrowe said.

  “Fair enough,” Lex said.

  “So where do we go from here?” asked Michella.

  Paltrowe took a breath. “Awareness of the threat is at this point unavoidable, so the most important thing now is to prevent panic. You will not be prosecuted for your crimes under the following conditions. You must make it clear that the threat on Movi has been thoroughly and completely eliminated. You must make it clear that functional containment procedures exist and that monitoring for this threat and those like it is universal. And you must not reveal your role in the development of the countermeasures. The last thing we want is to inspire people to follow in your footsteps and attempt to circumvent containment.”

  “What exactly are we supposed to tell people about the solution then?”

  “You will report that it was developed at some point in the last fifty years by a military contractor as a targeted countermeasure against the Gen-Mechs.”

  “A version of the truth that makes you look a lot better prepared than you really were.”

  “A version of the truth that will give the public peace of mind.”

  Michella considered the words. “What about my footage?”

  “We have analyzed and redacted the footage. You may freely utilize what remains.”

  The reporter’s fists tightened. “And what about the rest of the story? The origins? The original disaster?”

  “I won’t stop you from reporting what you believe to be true. But evidence of such things will be difficult to uncover.”

  Michella quietly pondered the offer.

  “Why are you thinking? This is a good deal. I vote we take this deal,” Lex said.

  “All right. That’s acceptable.”

  “Then you are free to go, but I suggest you go quietly and before the VectorCorp liaison arrives. They don’t like you any more than I do.”

  Michella and Lex stood to leave.

  “One last thing. What I’ve offered is not immunity. You are not absolved of your sins. The charges will continue to hang over your heads, with more than enough evidence to convict. So I urge you to keep your end of the bargain.”

  “I know all about the sword of Damocles, Captain. This is status quo for me,” Lex said. “Can you tell me anything about Garotte? Did you find him?”

  “The man known as Garotte was officially pronounced dead six hours ago. If you knew him, I am sorry for your loss. I know little of the man, but if his sacrifice was any indication, he was a fine soldier.”

  Lex nodded and he and Michella quietly opened the door.

  “These two are free to go,” Paltrowe instructed the ensigns.

  They stepped aside. “The exit is on the first floor. A clerk is waiting to return your personal effects,” Fleck said.

  Lex and Michella stepped into the elevator. When the doors shut, Lex looked to Michella and casually put an arm around her. She turned to him and got a face full of whiskers as Squee licked her.

  “Okay, Squee, get down for now. You’re killing the mood,” Lex said, coaxing the creature to the floor as the doors opened again.

  They found the clerk and requested their things. While they waited, Michella pulled Lex close.

  “So…” Lex said. “This was a heck of a thing.”

  “Yeah.” She looked down. “You’re not limping. How’s your leg?”

  “A little sore. How’s your hand?”

  She held it up. “There’s a scar. Nothing a little makeup can’t cover up until I can get a dermal appointment. Might be a while before that. So much work to do. Even with the limitations, there are stories for weeks. Months. And the revelations about the Neo-Luddites? And what Garotte did… I should do a story about that. About what he and Silo have been doing. About the differences a few people can make.”

  “I don’t think he’d want that. He spent a lot of time and energy making sure no one really knew who he was. I think even posthumous fame would have bothered him.”

  “Still, he deserves something. I’ll put some thought into it. Maybe after the rest of the story is told. But that’ll be a long while. I mean… look.”

  She pointed out the window. Unlike the detention rooms, the windows on this side of the building faced the city. They were near the top of a hill, which gave them a sprawling view of the freshly built and sparsely populated metropolis. There was evidence of disaster. Despite the fact the heroes had managed to keep the robots from ravaging any population centers, a planet-wide quarantine and communication blackout had consequences. Telltale signs of looting dotted the streets, and the only vehicles in the air were security and emergency crews trying to put the pieces back together.

  “What do you think of coming back here? After we go to Golana, get our heads straight, and dig Jon out of whatever mound of work they’ve dumped on him. I think there’s still a lot of work to do here.”

  “As long as GolanaNet is willing to pay the bills, I may as well. It isn’t like I’ve got any other major prospects, and there’s the whole Karter debt to worry about.”

  “We’ll get that handled. No reason that should fall on your shoulders alone… and we both know you’ve got at least one major prospect.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Racing.”

  He gave her measuring look. “Don’t screw with me, Mitch.”

  “I’m not screwing with you. I did a lot of thinking over the last few days. Especially when I was being illegally detained,” she remarked, raising her voice and glaring at the clerk. “I realized I might have been a little… unreasonable about the whole racing gig. Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s a stupid idea. I think it’ll be dangerous and I think it’ll be trouble. But you get in trouble walking across the street. And if you can get yourself out of the messes I get you into, then I should at least trust you to be able to handle your own messes.”

  Without warning Lex threw his arms around her and gave her a long and enthusiastic kiss.

  “You are the best human being,” he said, lifting her up and spinning her around. “Hey, Clerk. Could you hurry up with the personal effects, please? I’ve got plans for this woman that require privacy!”

  #

  “You realize you can’t keep me here!” Ronzone growled.

  Despite the rather high bar Michella had set during her imprisonment, Chris Ronzone had managed to secure the dubious honor of “most outraged detainee.” Unlike the others, who had each admitted to at least some intentional role in the events on Movi, Ronzone alternated between claiming to be a victim to claiming to be responsible for all of the good things and none of the bad things. Now that Lex and Michella were on their way, Ensign Fleck had the misfortune of being assigned to the VectorCorp agent.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but VectorCorp was quite clear,” Fleck explained. “They are sending a liaison to discuss your involvement. As a showing of solidarity with the people of Movi, they have stated that the first VectorCorp ship to reach the planet will be the one that restores communication and transit. All special trips will be humanitarian aid. No special trips or special treatment for their staff.”

  “They’re making me wait until those idiots in logistics get things sorted out? That’ll be weeks!”

  “They estimate six more days.”

  “You’re talking to a goddamn VectorCorp agent. I know the timetables. Out in a meaningless corner of nowhere like this? They don’t have any standby equipment to retrace a route. And no way are they going to pull a corridor crew off one of the main drags to get this clump of dirt back on the grid. Three weeks, minimum.”

  “As I said, sir, this is a humanitarian effort.”

  “Yes, that’s PR lip service. It tricks morons into thinking the board of directors cares. The galactic attention span isn’t nearly long enough to remember if they meet their timetables. It’s all… why am I even t
alking to you? Get out of here and bring me someone with the authority to make some intelligent decisions.”

  Fleck gratefully took the opportunity to leave the room and lock Ronzone inside. Once the agent was reasonably certain he would not be heard, he put his finger to his temple and began issuing orders to his implant. Over the course of the conversation, he’d felt the device reconnect. Evidently the work crews had finished restoring a local communication network to the city. Since he had command access to all VectorCorp equipment, it was simply a matter of hopping his connection through the military equipment until he hit the relay ship, then onward to the functional portion of the VC network. In thirty seconds he was negotiating a connection to the home office on Verna Coronet.

  “Agent Ronzone here. I need a route scout to get out here to Movi and pick me up,” he said as soon as he heard the connection complete.

  “Hey, Chris. Man. You really got the ol’ sausage sandwich on this one, huh?” said the voice on the other end.

  “Who is that, Wilkens? Finally someone who knows how things work. So how about that route scout? This place is a swamp, and the military is keeping me under lock and key.”

  Wilkens pulled a breath between his teeth. “Sorry, Chris. No can do. The whole C-level was pretty clear. We’re going to have to act like angels for a while. I guess that reporter got her hands on some really good dirt. The kind of stuff that’ll only make us look like monsters if we try to squash it and fail. Not only are we fast-tracking the recovery of that planet, but we’re going to have to dial the Code 3 on Modane and Alexander way back.”

  “Good riddance. I really don’t think we need to be working on those two anyway. The way they live, they’ll get themselves killed before the year is out. How are things looking on my end at least? They’re going to get me off, right?”

  “Yeah, between legal and PR they’re pretty sure you don’t have a problem. Not with military or civil authorities anyway.”

  “What do you mean? I’m not looking at any internal reprimands, am I?”

  “Hey, man, I don’t know the details, but your access code is all over some pretty solid policy violations. Authorizing lockout bypasses. Acknowledging the existence of Code 3…”

  “It was necessary! I was saving lives!”

  “Save it for the disciplinary committee. Though it’s probably safe to say you’re off field work for a while.”

  Ronzone sighed. “Fine. After this assignment I could use a few months behind a desk. Oh. Look, could you do me a favor? If I’m going to be here more than a few more days, I need someone to pick up Barney…”

  #

  Silo sat quietly in her room. Unlike the others, she was being held in a much more prisonlike setting in a subbasement of the same facility. The door was reinforced, two armed guards were on duty at all times, and she was forced to rely on the plastic cutlery her friends had been spared. She’d managed to convince her keepers to allow an e-reader and had powered through a handful of paranormal romance novels between exercise sessions. It had been too long since her last high-gravity workout, and she could feel herself slipping. She was considering a few dozen pushups when she heard boots approach her door.

  “Open it,” came Captain Paltrowe’s voice from the other side.

  A lengthy sequence of key presses followed, then the hiss of the door’s locks disengaging. It slid open to reveal the captain with an additional pair of gunmen, bringing the count to four. Rather than the simple pistols carried by the ensigns who had looked after the civilians, all four were armed with heavy rifles.

  “Sgt. Jessica Winters. Follow me, please,” Paltrowe said.

  Silo snapped to attention, her time in a proper military quickly flooding back with a torrent of pleasant memories.

  “I see you found my real name, Captain.”

  “Your real name and your service record. It wasn’t easy. Care to explain why the computer can’t seem to match your face?”

  “That was Garotte’s doing, Captain.”

  “I suspected as much.”

  They walked down a dimly lit hallway. Though it was clearly still part of a medical facility, the quantity and quality of the security precautions made it seem more like the medical ward of a prison than the secure ward of a hospital.

  “May I ask what became of Garotte, Captain?” Silo said.

  “Garotte is dead, Sergeant,” Paltrowe said.

  “May I ask what happened to his remains, Captain?”

  The group reached another fortified and guarded door. Paltrowe stopped and turned.

  “There are no remains because there is no Garotte and there never was.” She keyed in a code and the door opened. “Inside, Sergeant.”

  Silo quietly obeyed. The room was the intensive-care equivalent to her own cell. The lighting was better, and in place of a standard bed was complex recovery chamber—something of a cross between a recliner and a suite of life-support machines. A curtain was drawn around the chamber, and if someone else had been in charge, then it would have remained drawn until the suspense was unbearable. Captain Paltrowe, however, had no time for drama. She slid the curtain aside.

  In the bed was a man greatly obscured by medical paraphernalia. One arm and both legs were stabilized with carbon-fiber casts. A layer of vaguely flesh-tone material was layered over one side of his face. Silo recognized it as a burn treatment. Assorted wires were affixed to pieces of his anatomy to feed vital statistics to the surrounding machinery, and a tube was feeding oxygen into his nostrils. Despite all of this, it was still immediately clear that the patient was Garotte.

  A glimmer of almost painful relief flitted across Silo’s disciplined face. In different circumstances she would have tackled him with a rib-cracking bear hug, but his present condition and the armed guards made that inadvisable.

  “Lovely to see you again, my dear,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  “We found him two days ago. Radiation burns, multiple fractures, badly dehydrated. Evidently he’d positioned himself behind the Arbiter Beta and ejected the entire cargo door of his ship, then remote piloted it into position. When we found him he was entering a degrading elliptical orbit around the planet with a barely functional emergency beacon. Not sure if he would have burned up first or dehydrated, but he wouldn’t have lasted much longer regardless.” Paltrowe opened a plastic tub beside the door and held up a tangle of burnt pink cloth, the scarf Silo had knitted. “He was strapped to the door with this, and spare O2 canisters were tied to each end.” She stowed the scarf.

  “We’ve still not been able to uncover anything that I’m confident calling this gentleman’s real name. But I think we can safely assume Garotte is not it, and regardless, the time has come to retire that codename. Now that the two of you are together, and our doctors assure me that the former Mr. Garotte has got the mental clarity to make intelligent and sound decisions, we need to discuss your future. Due to the unique circumstances, I was obliged to allow your civilian collaborators to go, with the stipulation that they show the proper degree of discretion. You, on the other hand, are both soldiers. You should be held to a higher standard. You each knew precisely what you were doing, and you fully understood the value and importance of the regulations that you violated. Furthermore, you escaped from a TKUR military base, stole vehicles and equipment, nonfatally assaulted TKUR personnel, and caused billions of credits of damage to TKUR assets.”

  “Yes, Captain. I have confessed to my role in detail and am fully prepared to face punishment,” Silo said.

  “And I do nothing of the sort,” Garotte said. “I contend that I was on a scenic foot tour, taking in the natural delights of Movi, and took a wrong turn.”

  “You took a wrong turn while hiking and ended up strapped to the cargo door of a detonated vessel in high orbit,” Paltrowe said irritably.

  “The signs were very confusing.”

  “Permit me to share the findings of our intelligence officers. There is scattered evidence to suggest that a small organization has been
running a fairly successful counterterrorism campaign against the Neo-Luddites. Our agents speculate that most of the counteroffensives could have been achieved by a small taskforce if aided by significant data-based espionage and a low-detectability vessel. We believe the two of you are among the most successful operatives in the field when it comes to the very specific requirements surrounding the elimination of the Neo-Luddites as an organized threat. Central command further feels that the near success of the Neo-Luddite mission to acquire the Gen-Mechs highlights a significant shortfall in our own counterterrorism squads. During the quarantine of Movi, our forces uncovered and countered two separate Neo-Luddite operations intended to acquire a Gen-Mech. The second very nearly reached the planet. I’ll be brief. We have all of the evidence necessary to sentence you, without further investigation or trial, to the highest penalties in TKUR law, up to and including execution. But we are willing to suspend sentencing if you will commit to an open-ended tour of duty in the TKUR Special Forces. You will collaborate with existing black-ops teams and take part in coordinated strikes against Neo-Luddites and other internal and external threats to the TKUR and affiliated territories.”

  “You are offering me an opportunity to serve a legitimate role in the armed forces again?” Silo said.

  “I would suggest that both offering and legitimate are charitable terms in this context,” Garotte said. “The alternative is death, either after or in place of a lengthy imprisonment.”

  “If I may ask, Captain, if we accept, what are the long-term prospects?”

  “Pending the adequate fulfillment of your duties, we are prepared to assess your performance every six to eight months. At such time as it is decided you have paid your debt, we are willing to formalize your position within our organization, clear your record, and afford you the long-term benefits granted to all of our soldiers: promotion, training, and eventual retirement. You would be a proper soldier again.”

  A flash of hope flickered across Silo’s expression.