by Isaac Stone
“I need everyone to listen to what I have to say,” Ash announced to the rest of the crew when he had them in one spot. “The corporation wants us to find some kind of war criminal who’s been on the run for the past twenty years. The money is huge, more than we’ve ever been paid to do for a job of a similar size. The good thing is that it will be enough to retire on if you want to quit. The bad thing, we haven’t been given the location where he’s located. I’m sure it’s hot.”
“How hot is hot though?” Jack asked Ash. “Did your contact give you anything?”
“We didn’t get that far, and I don’t think we’re going to get that kind of info until we take the job,” Ash told him. “The money was high, but I told him we would need to talk about it.” The other members of Team Omega floated around the command center and listened to the discussion.
“Why did you put things on hold,” Theo asked. “If anything, I would’ve expected it to make you to go ahead and agree to take the job.”
“No,” Ash returned. “I’ve always had a policy of discussing the job before we take it. It’s why everyone is here.”
“So how much money did he mention?” It was Makulah’s turn to ask the question. “That will weigh a lot on our decision.”
Ash told them and waited for a response.
No one said a thing for a few seconds. He could see the look of amazement on their faces. This was a huge amount of money. More than they ever expected to earn from any job. Actually, it was more money than a contract security firm could expect to earn in five years. He heard a few of them whistle at the amount.
“They want this guy pretty bad,” Ester told him. “No way is he worth that much money. I don’t care if he’s some kind of criminal mastermind or not. There has to be another reason. Did they tell you everything?”
“My contact in the corporation seems to think he learned some secrets no one else had before he went on the run. Or afterwards, they were unclear on that point. He’s the man responsible for what happened on Ganymede years ago.”
“For a thousand gold planets we’ll haul in whoever the hell they ask us to!” laughed Jack.
Ash found Jack Lantern working in a body shop around the orbit of Mars. It happened in the beginning when he first sought out people for Team Omega. Jack had talent when it came to working the codes. There were many complex cybernetic systems used by the corporations who made their money around the orbital platforms. Jack was not recognized by his superiors. They viewed him as another body to fill a chair and keep the data flowing through the electronic pipes.
He was born in an older part of Earth that had not been touched by the various wars, which rained over the planet in the years following the break-up of the major nation states. Jack’s father claimed to be one of the richest men in the county outside Philadelphia, or what was left of it. He wasn’t worth anywhere as much as he claimed. This became obvious when Jack’s family went through his dad’s books after the old man took a long walk off a short cliff. It became apparent Jack’s dad was flat busted broke and hid it by siphoning off the money allocated to his children’s’ trust funds.
Overnight, Jack went from one of the most popular kids in his normal school to a big joke. His friends would snicker at him in the hall and his sisters were no longer invited to important functions. Jack’s mother cried herself to death when she discovered her late, saintly husband had blown all his money at a local bordello.
“At least he had some fun before he died,” was all Jack said at his father’s funeral. His mother, thought to be a pillar of virtue by the community, hounded his father as far back as Jack could remember.
Thus, Jack was forced to become a member of those who worked for a living and earned their wages by the sweat of fingers. He punched keys. Jack used the small money he had left over from the sale of the estate, most of which went to pay off the family debts, to enter a trade school for aspiring coders. He quickly rose through the ranks, as Jack knew that he had no other options if he wanted to survive.
His sisters were not so lucky. One married an older man and tried to make it seem to be for love, the other vanished into the shady world of raw materials trading in the asteroid belt. By the time Ash found him, Jack hadn’t talked to any of his family members in years and didn’t care a thing about them.
Ash kept some files on a few of the people who owed him favors in the corporate world around Earth orbit. A few of them would let him know if there were any good opportunities in the way of jobs coming up or people he might want to add on his team. One of his contacts let him know when Jack’s contract was up.
4
“A bit of mystery, a bit of danger, and a boatload of cash,” said Ester, unabashedly excited, “What’s not to love?”
Ester Sontag’s background was that of a poor family. Her parents farmed a little patch of land allocated to them by the Martian Land Allotment Authority. She was one of the first children born on the terraformed Mars after the Planetary Climate Control Board certified it for colonization. One of the few pictures in her small hovel showed a large crowd of assembled colonists standing at attention as the first governor for their territory welcomed everyone to the new world.
She was also born on the third year of the Great War between the different Old Earth nations who claimed larger parts of the planet for themselves. Her earliest memories were of troop transport vehicles rolling across their planted fields on the way to the front. Her dad watched the big tires destroy his hard work and didn’t say a thing.
“It will be over in a week,” her mother commented.
It lasted a good five years.
Ester couldn’t remember how many times she was evacuated from the homestead. It was at least four times in the first year of the war, perhaps more. Each time they returned to fields destroyed from bomblets and grenades. Huge craters were in front of their small house. The last time the refugee assistance people dropped them off the barn was gone, burned to the ground by stray incendiary fire.
Finally, her dad decided to give up on his dreams of being a farmer and sold his land to a church elder, who added it to his own holdings. The man had enough money to place a wall around his own compound. The elder was also rich enough to hire mercenaries who protected his land from any stragglers from the wars. This was another problem, starved deserters who would break into farmhouses in the middle of the night in search of food and guns.
Her father found a place for them in a resettlement village toward one of the big towns. She didn’t know anyone there and was too young to remember much of her life on the farm, other than it was a better life than lining up every day to receive provisions for survival. Her mother made sure she was enrolled in a church school and kept her daughter away from the leering looks of men in the camps.
Ester grew up to be a tall blond woman who excelled at numbers. Her mother wanted Ester to marry a good church member, but she wanted to attend college in the city. Her family finally relented and let her earn a degree as a lawyer. She passed bar exams and went to work off world, massaging the numbers on the corporate accounts while she sent her extra money home.
The same day she learned both parents had passed away from a plague that raged through the camps was the same day Ash called on her after work. She held the letter from a distant relative and starred off into space as he approached her. One of Ash’s contacts told him about a solid woman who excelled in a multitude of fields but need an opportunity to shine. This was just the person he needed as part of his team.
“Hello,” he told her. “My name is Ash Wednesday. You don’t know me, but I’ve heard about you. How would you like a job on board a gunship chasing smugglers and pirates?”
It took her three seconds to answer yes.
“Look,” Ash finally spoke up after the debate over the job had lasted long enough, “I will go there myself and bring him back if I have too. I put it to a vote because we have no idea what we are up against out there and I don’t want to lead you into a trap. I will b
e happy to claim the reward for myself if I have to do so. This is a lot of cash and I don’t want to walk away from it.”
“We have no idea what we are walking into,” Makulah reiterated. “How can you expect us to go ahead and agree to something we don’t know much about?” His eyes narrowed while he floated around the command center.
“We didn’t know much about what waited for us when you all voted to attack the Orion hideout on the dark side of the moon,” Ash pointed out to them. “We were hit the moment we landed outside their containment dome. We almost lost the entire ship when they fired that missile.”
“Not the same kind of situation,” Kris pointed out. “We had dealt with that bunch before near Demos and knew what to expect. Hell, we were paid to take out three of their chop shops in the asteroid belt. It’s not a valid comparison.”
“Why couldn’t you get more information from your contact?” Jack demanded. His brown hair flared next to his red skin while he challenged Ash.
“It’s all he would give me prior to the hire, like I said,” Ash explained. “The name, Simon Haddo, and a picture. The details they will transmit once we agree to the job. Likewise, they’ll send us his last known whereabouts only if we agree. Look, if you don’t want to do it, I’m sure there are plenty of other firms who will. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve already approached someone else.”
“Maybe they already sent someone in there,” Theo pointed out. “For all we know, there might be plenty of other people sent in and never came out. It would explain the money and lack of information.”
Everyone else nodded their heads in agreement. Ash could see the meeting wasn’t going as planned. He was serious about going in and getting the target on his own. It wouldn’t be the first time. When he first established Team Omega, he had very few people on the staff and had to leave the two people he had working for him behind while he went to claim bounty on a notorious drug dealer in the asteroid belt. He’d brought the woman back himself because he needed the cash. One man with a rifle could accomplish a lot in this universe if he had the will to do so.
“You would be smart to listen to him,” a voice said from the back of the command center. “Where Simon Haddo goes, riches and wisdom are never far.” Everyone turned around to see the speaker.
It was Barbara Ann the android. No one had heard her unlatch herself from the chair. She drifted across the command center in her green gown with the long hair forming a halo around her head. She drifted past the group and toward the main screen. Her divine voice mesmerized everyone as she came to a stop at the front of the ship. Ash heard Jack inhale softly as Barbara Ann went past him. She touched him lightly, but he didn’t seem to respond.
“What do you know about Simon Haddo?” Ash questioned as she came to a rest. “You still haven’t told us what you were doing inside that pirate ship, and I’ve about had it with all the intrigue. Your idents make you untouchable, but that doesn’t mean I can’t confine you to quarters.”
She turned her bright eyes on Ash and smiled. “They all wanted me, but I wouldn’t allow them a thing. The pirates were very disappointed I wasn’t for them.”
“You were on the freighter?” Makulah asked her. “I thought that thing was supposed to be hauling ore and nothing else.” He had a puzzled look on his face.
“I guess someone lied to them,” she explained. “They found me after the crew was dead and decided to take me on board their ship. The one you wasted so many of your bombs tearing apart.”
“We didn’t have much of a choice,” Ash explained. “When they decided to take the freighter, it condemned them to death by the laws of space faring. Besides, you just told us they killed the crew.”
“You wasted your ammunition,” Barbara Ann explained. “Because the pirates were already dead. You didn’t need to attack their ship.”
“Dead?” Theo asked her. “From what?”
“From me,” she explained. “They tried to rape me and I killed every one of them. It only took me five minutes to do it.”
The crew was silent. Finally, Makulah spoke. “How?” he asked, “Did you have some gun with you they didn’t find? You didn’t have one on you when you entered the ship.”
“No, I didn’t need one. I tore out the throat of each pirate I encountered once I decided to eliminate them. I made sure to clean myself before I came over.”
Ash looked at his crew in disbelief and they returned his expression as the hands of several hovered warily over their sidearms. It wasn’t hard to believe that an android that could cross the empty void of space could do a lot more than travel without a suit. She’d been designed to do quite a bit. This was a very special project, which is why she didn’t appear on the list of custom android models they’d examined. Barbara Ann was a special girl indeed.
“But you don’t have to worry,” she told the crew. “I only kill in self-defense. I was built for survival.”
The crew was silent, and unconvinced.
“And Simon Haddo is hiding inside Infinity Station,” she told them.
Androids were a new technology when Ash was born. The concept was around for a long time. In the early years of the previous century, technicians designed robots with silicon exteriors that resembled humans. Known as “Living Dolls” they were used as sexual toys and novelties. None of them was biological in the strict sense. Nor did they have self-awareness in those days. Such innovations would take years to achieve.
To create a true android, the creation would have to follow the patterns of living flesh in exacting detail. Since advanced embryonic research on humans was banned by several treaties after the Titan discoveries, this had to be accomplished in secret. In most cases, the official research was done on stem cells, the patterns of which were grown using synthetic materials into something the scientists and bio-engineers could fashion into what they wanted.
With the complete mapping of the human genome, it was possible to cause different gene expressions to turn on or off in developing embryos. However, once the curse of genetic disease was eliminated from the population, more work had to be done to fabricate a synthetic being from base material. All it needed was a few special donor cells and an android could pop out of a chamber as a full adult in a matter of months.
The first results were not good and there was a continual debate over the morality of what was being done. Although it was possible to fabricate an adult male in six months inside a chamber, the result lacked any kind of mental awareness. He would come into the world in the same manner as a newborn baby. The creature would need instructions that took years.
After many years of research, it was found to be possible to implant knowledge into the organ patterned after the human brain by passing the higher reasoning centers with genetic implants. This process wouldn’t work on normal humans as the body rejected any attempt at brain implants. However, it could be done with androids. Soon, females were grown too.
Now it was possible to create a person designed specifically for a job in less than a year. They only had the awareness given to them by their designer. Morality was built into the brain also. Still, the planetary governments were leery of artificial humans, which might someday overtake their creators. For this reason, the number of androids made was very limited and regulated. Many were designed as companions and some for dangerous jobs normal humans couldn’t do. Anyone who purchased an android had to assume full responsibility for it.
This is why Barbara Ann was such a surprise. Someone had her fabricate to specification. For what purpose, Ash couldn’t discern. To not appear in any catalogue or guide, she had to be very select. Barbara Ann had to be registered as an “artificial”; it was against several laws to pass one off as an original human. If someone had passed her off as human, they had to have bribed many officials.
Ash stood in amazement as Barbara Ann went past everyone making sure they all were in agreement with her. She seemed to know every trick to get people to agree to travel to the orbital station where Ha
ddo was located.
“How is it you know so much?” Theo asked her as she stopped by him. “You’re an impressive model.”
“Hush!” she said to him. “I was built this way. There is nothing special about me. I am the daughter of fortitude. All I want to do is see everyone happy. You will know happiness if you travel to where this man is located and bring him back.”
Ash stood with one hand on a handle and watched her at work. Barbara Ann certainly seemed fabricated to make people bend to her will. Perhaps she was designed to be used as a sales tool or diplomat, he couldn’t tell. There was supposed to be limitations on what they were used for in the open market. At one point, a corporation was discovered to be finding ways to make super soldiers for the military. It was put under edict and shut down immediately. There were just some things the powers in authority would not tolerate. Everyone feared an army of genocidal monsters who had no restrictions about killing everyone in their path.
Her eyes shone every time she turned in his direction. Ash felt tenderness toward her, something he hadn’t allowed himself in a long time. He wanted to leave this ship right now and take her to some place quiet. He imagined himself with Barbara Ann in a lake and….
Ash shook his head and came out of the haze. What the hell was wrong with him? He turned to the audio system where he communicated with Char.
“Is there anything strange about our atmospheric composition?” he asked the AI. “Anything which might have appeared in the last five minutes?”
“Negative,” Char told him. “Atmosphere inside Thelema is very normal. Nothing unusual to report.
At least she isn’t pumping pheromones into the air, Ash thought. It occurred to him when he noted how everyone reacted to her. Pheromone manipulation was also supposed to be a crime, but there were ways around every law if you had the money and influence.
She appeared to be too perfect to be a simple pleasure model. And why would anyone build such abilities into Barbara Ann that allowed her to survive in no atmosphere? Ash could only speculate in the design work that had to have gone into her for that ability. He wanted to ask her what other environments she could survive inside, but decided against it. In due time he would find out what he needed to know about her.