Berkeley’s mind stayed with the simple fact that Mally, in some fashion, had taken over the human subject. There should have been no way for the two of them to work together outside of the Styrahi stasis-mode construct. The brain used the protocol as an information source, yet the protocol was capable of assisting bodily functions by releasing hormones, adjusting biochemistry, and monitoring the central nervous system through direct contact with the brain. Actual movement of a subject via simple protocol was thought to be impossible. In theory, she decided, an aware protocol could physically control a body, but not unless there was an… agreement was the only word that fit. Normally, the dissonance between the physical and mental systems would not allow the two to work together as a human being. Mally was a soulless being in a human body, and eventually that would catch up to her. The metaphysics of it hurt Berkeley’s head, yet the problem was very simple in theory. Mally might be in control of the subject’s body, but she needed help to stay in control and pass for an adjusted member of modern society. There was more to being human than controlling a willing body.
The sun began a long, slow fall into the horizon ahead. Wisps of purple clouds brushed across the bright-orange sky. With warmth on her face, Berkeley settled in for the forty-five-minute ride to Esperance by opening a book from Kieran’s library, which made her feel as if she were spending time with her husband. There were so many things she wanted to share with him still. So many things he needed to know. So much love she wanted to give.
Before she closed her eyes to read The Gunslinger by Stephen King, a final neural message from her secure server in Esperance blinked active.
Scan complete and archived.
The ultimate precaution. Her files, and her own dedicated neural batch file, had been hidden. As long as no one thought to search behind Downy and Turk’s freezer compartment, her data would be safe. In the event something happened to her, Kieran would have everything he would need moving forward. Like the death letters Kieran had told her about, it would be her last chance to tell him all the things he would need to know. A similar letter from him was already in her queue in case she needed to read it. They’d laughed about the cautionary measures, cried in their wine a little, and ultimately come to understand they were necessary.
Life on the Outer Rim, or wherever they ended up, was far from easy. Danger lurked in every corner, especially with one side facing deep space and the other looking back on a collection of worlds that were totally incapable of defending themselves individually. Kieran’s theoretical unit, assuming it survived the exercise on Mars, would prevent attacks and counter enemy reconnaissance. For a moment, she considered sending him a message, but she decided against it. The fewer opportunities they gave the Terran Council to unravel Crawley’s plan, the better. With every hour Crawley failed to message her, there was the possibility that he hadn’t been able to escape Paris after all.
Loneliness again crashed down on her, and its weight felt like failure pressing on her shoulders. She’d been unable to acquire and isolate the missing subject. Her initial review of the message data failed to reveal the potential link to Chastity, and she’d never thought Mally could have survived their last encounter.
Some great protector I am. She winced and squeezed her eyes shut. Mally was much better at protecting Kieran, and herself, than I ever would be.
Her eyes flew open, and she sat up straight in her chair as if shocked by the cushions. What if Mally can be trusted?
Her mouth dropped open at the idea, and even as she immediately tried to diffuse it, Berkeley knew that she was onto something. Before Mountain Home, Mally had protected Kieran fiercely. Now that her own survival was secure and separate from Kieran’s, she might do so again. Mally thought she loved Kieran.
The protocol would protect Kieran at all costs. That was a certainty. Perhaps more than Crawley’s plans and preparations or Berkeley’s ability to reach across the digital frontier, Mally would be the perfect ally. As of that moment, Mally was still unknown to the Terran Council. They undoubtedly knew about the rogue subject but not that she was controlled by Kieran’s old protocol. Mally was incredibly resilient and very capable of connectivity that could provide intelligence. Every shred of information they could glean from the Terran Council could manipulate the odds in their favor. Given her anonymity, Mally could access systems on Mars, potentially with help from Lily, and protect Kieran there, too. It was a perfect response. Except protecting Kieran would mean leveling with her and putting all of the cards on the table. If anything, Berkeley decided, Mally deserved that.
But can she be trusted?
Before Berkeley could answer her rhetorical question, an encoded direct message traveling on a protected diplomatic signal downloaded from Lily on Mars. An intercepted Terran Council transmission ordered unknown recipients, approximately six of them on Mars, to report all interactions with any persons named Kieran and forward facial imagery immediately.
It’s all over. She bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood. Her chest threatened to collapse with ache. Even seeing Kieran again seemed impossible. The gradual coppery taste snapped her mind back to the present.
There’s no other way. Mally needs to know.
Berkeley sighed and opened a neural message. She composed it carefully, using nothing that would give away position or intent, and prepared to establish a contact she never thought possible. If she were correct, Mally would find it and come running.
Time to leave my own trail of breadcrumbs. She’d changed Crawley’s plan, but there was no other choice. She’d followed the emergency path Crawley had laid out in front of her, but the situation was worse than they’d believed possible. Mally was alive and seeking vengeance on the entire integration team, and the Terran Council was on the offensive. Telling Mally the truth was the only option. Mally would undoubtedly understand the reasoning of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” It was risky as hell, given their history, but if both of them really wanted Kieran to be safe, they would have to work together.
Berkeley sent the message and sat back against the seat. There wasn’t much more that she could do. Gathering their things wouldn’t take much time, and as much as she wanted to see Allan and the boys, it was better that she didn’t. The extraction team would be in place at 0400 the next morning, and there was little chance she would sleep. Instead, she’d clean the house and get it ready for Allan to sell, per the plan. Packing their few critical items would take only minutes. She was ready, but the nagging feeling that Kieran was in grave danger would not pass.
Crawley had assured her that Kieran was in good hands—that there were people on Mars who could be trusted to watch over him, and with them and Lily combined, he would be safer there than on Earth. His assurances were little solace to Berkeley. Crawley would understand the game had changed and that Mally presented both a unique threat and opportunity that could not be ignored. Kieran’s life was in danger, and Crawley was nowhere to be found. With him missing, there was no other option. Mally would come, and if she decided to protect Kieran first and foremost, as Berkeley suspected, they had a chance.
Berkeley sighed and rested her head against the cool window. Mally as a machine in a human suit would not do—she would stick out like a sore thumb. There were a million reasons not to create a symbiotic relationship between an artificial intelligence and a human body, but when it came to Kieran and the whole sleeper program, she couldn’t see any other way. Their biggest threats were on Earth, and if she and Crawley went underground, no one else could stop the Terran Council before they eliminated everything. If Mally could be trusted, she could stop them. There were issues to address, but it might be possible. Giving Mally what she wanted most could be the thing that pulled the errant protocol to Crawley’s side and would give them the advantage again.
Can an AI construct even understand stasis mode? Is that why Mally never bothered to try it in the first place?
&
nbsp; No answer came immediately. The setting sun filled the western skyline above the ocean and the receding lights of Perth. Closing her eyes to read, the first lines of text appeared across her vision and swept her away on the trail of a man in black. She needed the distraction, if only for a moment. Reading, she wasn’t alone. If she couldn’t be with Kieran physically, she always found solace in the things he loved.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
From the moment I walked into the Life Support shop and drew my tactical gear, checked my anti-G garment and helmet connections, and stepped into my parachute harness, my mind was a total blank. As much as I should have been thinking about the plan, the early pieces were already in motion. Until I climbed up the ladder to my Falcon and went about the process of strapping it on, there was nothing I could do about any of it. Whelan and his personnel had returned to their tanks fifty kilometers away, successfully briefed their soldiers on the plan, and were moving toward the objective.
I passed through the ready room, aware of many eyes on me. The pilots who were not part of our little mini-exercise wore smiles and talked in hushed voices. Those assigned to my little experiment were not so casual. My fellow trainees made up half of my air assets. They stood in a loose cluster near the door and watched every move I made but said nothing. I could tell by their smiles and nods they thought I was crazy. Peck grinned at me and made his way over.
“Hey, wingman.” He slapped my shoulder. “You all set for this?”
I nodded. “Think so.”
“Can I ask you a question?” Peck lowered his voice. “This whole thing was your idea, right? You comfortable being responsible for it, when—I mean if—it fails?”
“And when it succeeds?”
Peck smiled. His expression was anything but genuine. “Yeah, we’ll see. Gonna hit the latrine.”
I glanced at my watch and thought of Berkeley giving it to me at Christmas. “We step off in ten minutes. Don’t be late.”
“Don’t worry about me, Chief. I think you’ve got more than you can handle.”
My left hand tightened around the neck roll of the helmet I carried. For a split second, I envisioned smashing his head with it, but I blinked that thought away for two reasons: one, I had a mission to fly, and two, Peck ultimately wasn’t worth it. Having him on my wing was more blessing than curse. There, he would be out of the main fight and forced to support me. If he failed and I was shot down, a good portion of the fault would fall on him, which was cold comfort. This whole thing was my idea and would either blow up in my face or work beautifully. I wanted the second option desperately, but fear of the first kept invading my thoughts. I might graduate from flight training, but Fleet would have me hauling trash from Europa to Earth or something equally awful if I failed.
<
In the cavernous bay of hangar five, the aircraft set aside for the exercise were in various states of readiness on the floor. My Falcon, with Peck’s aircraft tucked behind my left wing, sat nearest the hangar doors. We’d be first out of the bay and into the fight. If things went the way I intended, I’d be the last aircraft to return after a successful attack that would leave Whelan sitting in the Styrahi headquarters.
<
I won’t. Thanks, Lily. Walking toward my aircraft, I focused on breathing, trying to lower my heart rate. A very familiar female crew chief stood at my aircraft’s ingress ladder.
“Master Sergeant Veer.” I grinned. “What brings you out to this little exercise?”
“I needed to requalify on the Falcon, and there was a pilot on the flight schedule I recognized. Thought he could use a little assistance.”
“I’m glad you did.” We shook hands. “This one ready to fly?”
Veer nodded, but the smile drained away from her face. “It is now, sir. There were a couple of things I noticed during power-up that concerned me.”
“Like what?” Plane captains—or crew chiefs, as they preferred to be called—were superstitious at best. Most of the time, their concerns were trivial, but they wanted the pilot to know and commiserate with them to ease their minds.
“Your flare and chaff buckets were emptied, the left gun was jammed, and your navigation cartridge had been altered.”
“What?” Flares and chaffs, in an exercise, weren’t a big deal. Neither was the main gun. A bad navigation cartridge, though, was serious business. I’d been set up to fail.
“The digital signatures we found were all Exercise Control operators, but it didn’t check out with their normal procedures. We also knew what you wanted, so we cleared your aircraft and all the others. Only three aircraft on your mission template were not affected. Worked all night to get the rest cleaned up and ready.”
I shook my head. “I’m glad you caught it.”
“Me too.” She smiled up at me. “This is a new low for EXCON. If you’d like, we’ll file a full report after the mission is complete. We thought it was bad with Commander Bussot, but somebody really wants you to fail, sir.”
<
I nodded to Veer. “Please file that report the minute I’m in the air.”
My eyes wandered over the sleek exocraft. Longer and heftier than the nimble Skyhawk I’d flown against Bussot not long ago, the Falcon was a very capable aircraft. The only single-tailed airframe in the Fleet inventory, the Falcon looked fast, sitting on the ground with twin over-sized engines and thick wings. Her appearance was more Panavia Tornado than F-16 Fighting Falcon, but I could see the second name fit better given the oval air scoops on the underside of each wing. I’d have felt more at home in the Skyhawk, but the Falcon would do nicely. Especially if it wasn’t tampered with.
“Any cockpit modifications or changes?” I asked Veer, my voice low so that only she could hear it.
“None that we found,” Veer said. “Neural connections were green across the board. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see more games from the controllers, sir. They think war games are a perfect time to screw up perfect working systems with one-in-a-million failures.”
Can you verify that, Lily?
<
My smile returned, and I held out my hand. Veer took it, and we shook hands. “Thank you… what’s your first name?”
“Shonda.”
“Thank you, Shonda. I appreciate it.”
“Bring it back without a scratch, and you can buy the crew a beer in the lounge tonight.”
“Consider it done.”
Veer walked away and left me alone to climb the ladder into the Falcon. As I stepped into the cockpit, I saw the other aircrews doing much the same thing in preparation to fly. Peck walked to his aircraft like a strutting peacock, which made me want to laugh. I settled into my seat, strapped in, and started the preflight checklist instead.
<
A private link to Whelan was my effort at gaming the exercise system. There wasn’t a rule that I couldn’t have a private channel—it was just something that hadn’t been done. I’d rather ask for forgiveness than permission. After I closed the faceplate of my helmet and let the heads-up displays appear, I used my lower lip to select button three. “Warrior Six, Shark One Two. Radio check. Over.”
“Welcome to the party, fearless leader.” Whelan laughed. “We’re rolling toward our LD. Should arrive at Charlie Papa Three in four minutes. Standing by for your orders.”
The operational map laid out the line between Styrahi and friendly territory as a broad yellow swath. The blue icon representing the 73rd Tank edged closer
to the line near Check Point three. Once there, Whelan’s forces would separate into two columns with heavy tank battalions to the front. A composite force of infantry and armored personnel carriers would perform a screen mission to hide the intent of the advancing battalion from the Styrahi. Making them believe the attack was coming from a different location was critical.
“Continue the mission. We’ll have eyes on the objective soon.”
“Roger that. Hey, Kieran? Good luck.”
“You too. Steel on target.”
Whelan chuckled. “You bet your sweet ass.”
<
“What would I do without you, Lily?”
<
“How’s she running?”
<
“Yes to both questions. It’s just how I grew up. Is that okay with you?”
<>
I laughed out loud. “That’s from Berkeley, isn’t it?”
<
Lily had been extensively programmed by my wife while I’d fully integrated a second time. I kept finding little nuances in her speech that had the effect of simultaneously warming my heart and making me homesick. There hadn’t been time to call. I’d been too busy with plans and getting some much-needed rest. I knew Berkeley would understand, but I really wanted to hear her tell me everything was going to be fine and to stop worrying myself to death. She knew me pretty well.
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