by M. D. Cooper
“One I hope you don’t intend to break anytime soon,” Terrance added.
Tanis looked at Joe and they smiled at one another. It was good to be back home.
INCONSISTENCIES
STELLAR DATE: 3241794 / 08.19.4163 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: GSS Intrepid, Security Operations Center (SOC)
REGION: LHS 1565, 153 AU from stellar primary
Tanis let out a long sigh and leaned back in her chair. Her old office in the SOC was exactly as she’d left it, down to the nicks in the desk and the stain on the couch where Terry had once spilled a glass of juice.
Outside her door, the SOC hummed with activity as every colonist out of stasis went through a re-interview process. Stats and transcripts from several of the interviewees hovered above her desk, keeping Tanis in the loop every step of the way.
She closed her eyes again and the virtual conference with the command crew snapped into place in front of her.
<…you don’t understand,> Abby was saying.
Tanis could spot gross exaggeration when she heard it. A lot of servitors and bots had been destroyed, but the damage she and Joe had done to the machine shops was minimal at worst.
Abby sighed.
The meeting ended and Tanis opened her eyes again to see Ouri standing in her doorway.
“That looked like a fun conversation, boss,” she grimaced. “You were making some choice expressions.”
“Just talking progress with the brass,” Tanis replied. “What I can do for you?”
“I wanted to talk about Collins.”
Tanis gestured to a chair. “Sit, but before you get started, no recriminations.”
Ouri’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “What gave it away?”
“Nothing, but I’m wracking my brain trying to see how I didn’t catch on to any of this, I figured you must be doing the same.”
Ouri laughed. “Good to know I’m not the only one.”
“Not by a long shot. If we hadn’t saved the ship on a dozen occasions we’d be in pretty deep hock right now,” Tanis said.
“I guess that does paint things in our favor a bit.” Ouri paused for a moment before continuing. “I’ve instructed Terry to look at what people have done since joining the crew or colony as much as what they did before coming onboard. Perhaps we can find some patterns that will point us in the right direction. I also have a team dissecting every move Collins made since he came on board. Hopefully we’ll identify any co-conspirators.”
“Pay extra attention to those last minute fill-ins we had on Callisto. It always seemed a bit odd to me that the GSS let people transfer in so late—even if their reasoning did pass muster at the time.”
“Already on it, Colonel,” Ouri said.
“Now you’re just kissing up,” Tanis laughed.
“Pretty transparent I guess.” Ouri shifted to stand up, but Tanis stopped her.
“I looked at the reports, the cylinders took a bit of a beating, how’s your little stand of trees doing?”
Ouri smiled. “Thanks for asking. Not too bad, the maintenance bots are cleaning things up, most of the damage happened further aft where the engine released some radiation bursts during the flare. Most of the damage in my neck of the woods was due to flooding.”
“We should have a gathering down there once it’s cleaned up. I think folks could really use that.”
“I know I could. I’ll see if I can put something on the schedule.”
“No schedule, make it spontaneous when things are ready. I’ll be a pleasant surprise.”
“Will do, sir.”
Tanis knew that even though the captain had given his ruling Abby would start to pester Terrance and he would go to Andrews. The captain was good at not reacting to pressure, but it wore on him and eventually he would come to Tanis to see what compromises could be made.
Tanis brought up her lists of colonists with investigatory experience. Engineers all but filled the roster, but people with investigatory experience were lacking. With the levels of terrorism and insurrection in the Sol system she expected more folks from counter-terrorist or counter-insurgency agencies.
Angela would have been a help, but with the SOC short staffed, she was doing interviews of the crew as well. Tanis could hear her in the back of her mind asking a plasma transfer specialist about his hometown.
Tanis knew it was unusual for her to be able to hear Angela so well. She had always had a very close rapport with her AI, but after the merge with the fighters in the Sol system she had been able to hear Angela’s thoughts more readily.
She knew her AI could see more deeply into her mind as well—it showed in some of the observances Angela made.
Neither had spoken of it. It wasn’t entirely unheard of and neither felt any pain or discomfort when it happened. They had enough to do and worry about without making up new problems.
A name appeared on the holo after Tanis ran a new search focusing on Terran federal agencies: Jessica Keller. The woman’s record showed that she was a decorated, if somewhat unorthodox, agent from the Terran Bureau of Investigations.
There was no reason why she had left the TBI; in fact, upon closer investigation Tanis was surprised to see that she didn’t seem to have the right clearances to be in the colony roster to begin with. Far from being a help, this woman looked like a new problem.
Maglev service to the cylinders had been restored and Tanis took a track that arched outside the ship. The starboard side of the ship was dark. Estrella de la Muerte, dim even up close, was barely visible anymore, providing no illumination. As the train arched over the dorsal hump and Sirius A, the Dog Star, came into view, its bluish-white light providing a bow-to-stern view of the ship.
There were a few repair crews working on external damage. Further aft, sec
ured by a multitude of tethers and nets, was the Fuel Dump asteroid. Crews would likely be working on it, extracting lithium for a burn of the Intrepid’s starboard engine, which would correct their vector and bring the ship back on course to New Eden.
Tanis’s attention was brought back to the task at hand as the maglev train slowed and changed tracks to one mounted directly on the port cylinder.
Because the track ran around Old Sam, the centripetal force caused Tanis’s stomach to lurch as down moved above her head a moment before the interior of the train pivoted to match. Half a kilometer later, it slipped through an ES airlock and slid to a stop at a station.
She looked around at the small, dark station; even the emergency lighting was off. She wondered if coming with no armor and only a light-wand was wise.
Tanis enabled her IR and UV visual overlays in addition to sending out of wave of nano to sonar-map the route to the stasis pods.
Tanis left the station and followed the map she had pulled from the Intrepid before boarding the maglev. Colonist stasis pods sheathed the sixteen kilometer long habitation cylinders, the area providing ample room for the 1.5 million colonists on the ship, as well as over a hundred thousand backup stasis pods.
With the power out she again had to find creative ways to move three decks up and one kilometer along the cylinder. As she struggled with an emergency hatch it struck her that roughly a hundred meters above her was Old Sam’s interior; a world filled hills, trees and lakes, kept in place by the centripetal force of the rotating cylinder.
Tanis said.
Tanis laughed aloud. It was good to know she could still keep Angela on her toes.
Before too much longer she entered a chamber containing stasis pods. Tanis had never been in this portion of the ship, and had never seen a stasis chamber this large. It stretched for hundreds of meters and must have housed tens of thousands of colonists.
Unlike the corridors up to this point, this chamber had power, though only emergency lighting was on. The illumination cast long shadows across the pods.
Tanis suppressed the feeling that she was surrounded by the dead, it was too easy to imagine the pods containing some sort of inhuman horror waiting to rise up and claim her.
Tanis turned and walked up an aisle, sending a command to the local systems to provide some additional lighting. The pods all looked much less sinister in the standard lighting. A command to the systems gave her the precise location of Jessica’s pod and Tanis passed the protocols to unseal it and awaken its occupant as she approached.
Stasis suits hugged the body perfectly and the former TBI agent’s figure was clearly visible as the pod began cycling through its wakeup process. The woman was quite obviously modified from human norm and her blue hair was just the beginning.
While she appeared of normal height—around one hundred eighty centimeters tall—her legs were disproportionately long and her waist was quite small. Her breasts were also rather large for her frame. This was obviously a woman who had rebuilt herself for a purpose, though it was not something one often saw in a TBI agent.
As Tanis watched, the pod’s lid lifted and the woman’s eyes fluttered open. True to form, they were purple.
The woman lay still for a moment, staring up at the chamber’s ceiling. Tanis assumed she was trying to Link to the nets. The local ones were up, but connections to the rest of the ship were unavailable. She must have learned something that alarmed her because the color drained from her face and she looked at Tanis.
“Is the local net’s timestamp correct?”
ALTERED AGENT
STELLAR DATE: 3227225 / 09.29.4123 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: High Terra, Sector RC3.4
REGION: Earth, Sol Space Federation
5 Months before the Intrepid departed the Sol system
Jessica’s boot crashed into the steel door, forcing it open against the protests of the apartment’s occupant. The man on the other side flailed and lost his balance, hitting the floor hard. She strode through the entrance to his dingy home and he scampered back on his hands and feet like the most awkward of crabs, the expression his face one of total fear.
“Mr. Jameson,” Jessica said. “You’ve not pleased me, not pleased me at all.”
“Agent Keller, don’t kill me…please don’t kill me,” Jameson’s voice quivered.
Whoa, that sure is leaping to a conclusion, Jessica thought as she looked impassively at the cowering man who appeared near tears. She really hated getting information from crying people, especially with all the sobbing and gasping. It took a long time to calm them down and reassure them—only to threaten them again.
It was tedious, but she softened her stance and expression.
“Jameson, are you high? I’m TBI, we don’t just shoot people. We have district attorneys that need a reason for their existence—we hand scum like you over to them.”
His eyes grew wide and he raised his hands. “You can’t do that! They’ll make me talk…and then I’m dead for sure.”
Jessica reached back and swung the door closed, or as closed as it could get after her boot had forced it open. She walked forward and Jameson continued to back away from her.
“Oh for god sakes, man, get up already. I feel like I’m talking to some ring urchin.”
That wouldn’t be far from the truth. This apartment was pretty rank, close to one of the waste processing centers on the ring. Not the sort of place landlords could charge a lot of rent for, or attract decent residents to.
Jameson could probably afford better, but it suited him to be here. He slowly got to his feet and moved as far away from her as the space would allow.
Jessica sat down in a hard plastic chair and regarded the man. He was skinny, his cheeks gaunt and hands all knuckles and sinew—a sign of too many mods and not enough body to support them. His system was slowly cannibalizing itself for energy. Unless he altered his body to accept and store more calories he would be dead inside of a
year, two at most. He must know it; maybe he didn’t care.
His sunken eyes didn’t seem to fit in the sockets right, probably a cheap set that weren’t a custom fit. Why anyone would ever skimp on the eyes was beyond Jessica. Getting the eyes right was the most important thing. She had spent considerable sums of her own money on her pair of deep purple peepers, there was no way was she going to install the baseline units that the Terran Bureau of Investigation offered its agents.
“Look, Jameson. I’m not here to take you in; I’m not here to shoot you. I just want to talk.” She tried to use her most soothing voice. It probably didn’t come off that well since she was wearing Trellan FC9 body armor, the best protection available below a fully powered suit.
She pulled the helmet off, tucked it under her arm, letting her glossy blue hair free, and gave her head a shake to let it settle around her shoulders. Maybe if she reminded him she was a woman he would stop freaking out.
It seemed to help. Though the armor was heavy, it was well fitted. The waist was tapered and the amount of bosom under the plating was fairly obvious. Other than the joints, the armor was smooth and its matte sheen had a certain utilitarian look to it. Some guys got off on that sort of thing.
“Well, I guess that’s OK,” he said, his eyes seeming to be tracing the outline of her body. What do you need to know?”
“I’m looking for a guy. Goes by the name of Myrrdan. I got word you’ve dealt with him.”
Jameson snorted, for the first time not looking completely scared. “Him? He’s nobody? Why would you want to find him?”
“I’ve got my reasons. Word has it that you saw him earlier today, he bought some access time on one of the Non-Sentient AI super nodes through you.”
The NSAI super nodes were extremely powerful computers, often more powerful than dozens of combined sentient AI. They were useful in managing complex systems that required little ingenuity. In short, tasks that would bore humans, or sentient AI to tears…or whatever the AI equivalent of tears was. An NSAI super node could do things like plot the orbits of electrons around a quintillion atoms in real time, or index the entire wealth of human literature in a matter of minutes. They were also great at hacking through security.