Gearjacking was a specialty within the infosurgent underworld. These were specialists who stole plans, blueprints or formulas of technological gear and sold them. Often the gearjacker had to locate a prototype and reverse engineer it on the spot, leaving it in place so no one knew the idea had been lifted.
Fame is bad for infosurgents. Steo knew from personal experience. His kind moved quietly to stay alive. He didn’t need anyone knowing his last location was on the edge of the Petid Republic.
“Sorry, I don’t know who you think I look like. My name is Gev Colson. I work for a management consulting firm, hired by the Dō government,” he said, looking at the boy while keeping a straight face. He wondered if the man in the brown leather suit was trying to listen in on the conversation.
“What’s this?” the woman next to the teenager said as she removed her ear nodes.
The boy looked unsure.
Steo was a celebrity to some people. His escapades as a gearjacker had earned him a reputation approaching reverence among young technology fans. It was difficult to find out what he looked like. He’d made sure vids of him were hard to come by, and never certified.
The boy said, “Oh, we were talking about where we came from, mom.” To Steo he said, “We lived in the Caranna system. It isn’t far from the Petid Republic and the news is all over the Amber Light underground news relay. The Petid networks are in a tangle and outlying solar systems are breaking away.”
“I told you not to link to that network!” the boy’s mother said. “Besides the adult garbage, I don’t think any of the news is really news, it’s just rumors.”
Vessels with grav drives could travel faster than light, but waves couldn’t be accelerated. The only way information could travel between star systems was inside ships with grav drives. Light traveling from one world to another within the same solar system takes minutes to arrive. Then it would have to be stored and the ship had to fly to another system, where it could transmit the information. Even dedicated ships traveling between nearby systems took hours to complete the trip. These were called news relays.
“What’s wrong near the Petid Republic?” Steo said, playing innocent.
The woman said, “Terrible business. You probably know the Petid way of doing things. Caranna is far enough and our space forces strong enough to resist them. I always thought they deserved what they got. They’re bullies and a magnet for trouble, but the official news is the Loytz broken into their military systems. They were always in the shadow of the Petid Republic. Now the Loytz have the awful truth of the Petid machine.”
“The Amber Light relay says the Loytz got Ecker bombs,” the boy added.
“Nonsense!” his mother replied. “You really shouldn’t rely on gossip like that, as if it’s truth.”
“Ecker bombs? That sounds bad,” Steo said. “The formula for Ecker bombs is used to produce the most powerful non-nuclear explosive in the galaxy. Not technically banned by treaty, but a serious weapon.” That might have been too much, he thought.
“The Petids use their stockpile to threaten neighboring systems! There’s all kinds of stuff they’re guilty of. Here I’ll show you a vid,” the boy said, looking at his vid-player.
“Stop,” his mother ordered. “Put it away.” He did.
She said to Steo, “My husband Vijay is here on Bul Sahn. We decided it best to move closer together, and to get a little distance from the Petid Republic in case it goes nova.”
“That sounds like a good decision. I’m sure it will be safe here,” Steo replied.
A section of the right wall changed from the view of Bul Sahn and became a plain surface. It slid aside and a robot floated out.
Its small graviton drive, buried deep within the round ivory shell of its body, allowed it to hover. Its flexible arms moved slowly and gently as it moved about the cabin, politely asking people if they needed anything.
“It looks like we’ll be docking soon.” Steo rotated his seat forward.
He wondered if the new suit and haircut had been enough to avoid recognition by the fan sitting behind him – and possibly the agent sitting ahead of him.
CHAPTER 3
Hard Dock
The crew of the liner were above, on a separate floor. Usually the crew weren’t seen by the passengers. The cabin was busy as people prepared for docking.
Steo acted like everyone else and looked through his bag, even though it was a short flight. He was just satisfying his anxiety.
His digital wallet was always near; it was installed in his left forearm, his only cybernetic augmentation. The tiny device could wirelessly connect to any commercial system and pay for goods or services. It was also a short-range communicator. Steo carried pocket change in the form of cards. Untraceable and anonymous, they carried enough credits to get him through “gray market” situations and keep him off the grid.
He retrieved his memory storage book, a plain slab with ports around the side. It held more information than the combined memory of the entire galaxy 20 years before. In fact Steo’s book had a tiny Valence processor, the brain built into most robots. It helped sort and index the information in the book.
He clicked a button on the device’s side and released it. The book stayed where he left it, hovering in the air. The lighten-burden discs inside kept it afloat. LBDs were tiny devices, nowhere near as powerful as the graviton drives in starships and robots, but they didn’t need maintenance either. They changed an object’s weight, allowing it to float. The chair he sat in remained in the air because of LBDs. He checked through the rest of his gadgets.
Steo pulled what looked like an ID badge on a lanyard around his neck. The picture was him, but the name was Gev Colson. The badge was secretly a thin memory storage book with a wireless connection. It didn’t hold a fraction of the larger book’s memory, but the contents of the little, badge-sized book would get him executed in a few star systems.
Mixed in with clothes was his comfort harness. This was a vest with built-in LBDs to manage one’s weight on different worlds. It didn’t work for crushing gravity (or none at all) but it kept the load bearable until you could get inside a building or ship. The gravity on NBS 2 was a little lower than average so he wouldn’t need his harness.
Similarly, the NBS 2 atmosphere was safe. Some planets’ air had slightly higher quantities of gases like argon or carbon dioxide. Steo’s breath mask could protect his lungs and eyes. He left it folded in his bag.
He opened a small black bag, revealing miniature tools. Thinking ahead, he touched each and ran through his plans. None of the tools were individually restricted but together they were suspicious.
The bag held a collection of hexagonal plug-like devices – dongles – hardware devices plugged into robots to identify ownership. Robots weren’t independent. They gained their purpose from people. Robots had more complicated instructions than a dumb device like a book, but they were automatons. The only legitimate need for a collection of dongles was for robot maintenance. Steo didn’t repair robots.
Last, he checked his light interface hub (called a lee). A lee created holograms, images projected in the air, some two-dimensional, others fully three-dimensional. By moving your hands and fingers you could interact with holograms.
His lee was the best that credits could buy. It looked like a mechanical broach. He attached it to his shirt and tapped it. Shapes appeared before him in the air, three-dimensional icons of colored lights. After a few moments, he shut the lee off and assessed what he’d seen. Each holographic icon represented a nearby computer system. He noticed the ship’s systems were on the list.
Weak security for something carrying dozens of lives, he thought.
Soon the planet Bul Sahn was behind them and the liner approached a small natural satellite, the planetoid officially called NBS 2. The locals called it “Nibs.” As it came into view on the forward panels, the passengers could see it was grayer than Bul Sahn, with splotches of dull brown.
In a few minutes they could
see much of the surface was covered by cities. The liner approached with the sun on their left so half the planetoid was dark, and glittering collections of lights proved how densely populated Nibs was.
Nibs had low-to-normal gravity and breathable air. Situated as it was over the treasure trove of resources on Bul Sahn, it naturally became a place for people to establish new lives.
The flight attendant robot spoke soothingly to guests as it floated up and down the aisles.
Every second, the ship slowed at hundreds of miles per hour, but no one could feel it. Atmospheric entry started softly. Even though the passengers calmly watched the cities and land rush by, outside the shields glowed red hot and had there been windows, no one would have been able to see anything.
The liner was headed to the largest city, Nuzdak, home to 23 million people. Nuzdak made its fortune as a port of call for the workers on Bul Sahn below. Financial companies and tourism also fueled its growth. Since most of the materials mined from Bul Sahn left for systems across the galaxy, there was little manufacturing here. The home government on Dō allowed less regulation on Nibs, so its largest city was wild.
Abruptly the ship rocked left, hard. Luxury liners aren’t supposed to rock.
Even the experienced passengers went pale. The attendant robot hustled up and down the aisle, calmly but firmly explaining how to use the belts. Most people had never used them, being habituated to internal gravity controls that prevented this sort of bucking and shaking.
Steo’s book still floated in front of him. He grabbed it, shut off the LBD and stuffed it into his bag. He’d been in hazardous situations before, much worse than this, so he didn’t worry.
In front, the ezwegian jumped up, flapping his arms. In different circumstances Steo might have thought the ezwegian’s big dangly nose and drooping ears were comical. Not now.
“Is the ship breaking up? Are we going to die?” the ezwegian shouted.
“No sir,” soothed the attendant robot as it assisted him back to his seat. “It’s a small matter of turbulence.”
Unfortunately the ezwegian was an engineer. “How is that possible?” he yelled. “A liner pushed around by unexpected wind? What’s all this technology for?”
At that moment the attendant robot floated a little higher and spoke firmly.
“Please remain seated. A disturbance in the atmosphere has affected our approach. The pilot, Major Uyu, is Class X certified and has logged 119,837.4 hours of interstellar flight. A team of highly trained co-pilots and astrometric technicians assists the Major. There is no cause for alarm. Please remain seated.”
The ezwegian sat down and the attendant helped him with his belt.
Steo couldn’t resist bringing up his lee and connecting to the planetoid’s weather network. The turbulence was the main story. He popped his ear node in. Faces spoke rapidly and text scrolled in front of him.
A gigantic (but natural) burst of solar wind had reached the atmosphere as an electromagnetic shock wave just before the liner approached. People on the planetoid’s surface wouldn’t notice even if they looked up at the sun, and were in no danger. The radiation was no threat to the ship either, but the wave had superheated the upper atmosphere. This caused disturbance and increased drag on the ship’s shields.
Apparently the weather forecasters hadn’t properly predicted the effects so high in the atmosphere and thus hadn’t sent out warnings. Dozens of ships reported the disturbance.
Steo could see many of the other passengers had popped up their own lees and were watching the situation too.
Abruptly the rolling and lurching stopped. The wall panels showed cities passing below. The attendant robot passed up and down the aisles with its hands clasped, verifying no one had been more than jostled.
Seeing that the event was past and all ships reported in safe, Steo moved to shut off his lee.
I wonder …
He lowered his holograms, and touched the icon for the ship’s systems. A small security program was no match for his skills. Quickly he scrolled until he found the passenger list. He didn’t have much time, so he found the record of the man in the brown leather suit. He changed the name and identifying information, then saved it.
Before closing it, he found information on the pilot. He found a picture and biographical information. Major Uyu was a tirrian woman, with dark purple skin and a flowing mane of gray hair. Her nose was small and her lips full. Steo had heard tirrian women were attractive. What was disturbing was she had no pupils. It gave her a serious, dour expression.
He shut off his lee and pocketed his ear node. The towers of Nuzdak city were already rolling over the horizon ahead.
The spaceport was naturally the tallest building. Even ships capable of atmospheric flight couldn’t settle on solid surfaces.
Nuzdak’s spaceport was a conical tower. The gleaming building was supernaturally tall. No structural engineering or construction material could support a building nearly a mile high. Wind shear would topple anything that tall, but built into its structure was the most advanced graviton technology in the galaxy. Millions of times a second, stresses were measured. Thousands of invisible fields adjusted. They pushed, pulled, lifted and relaxed in tiny increments.
The liner descended to the edge of the building and docked.
Steo had everything back in his bag. He got up before others, to get ahead of the man in the brown suit.
As they disembarked, several customs officials at the bottom of the long metal ramp checked people’s records. Steo remained nonchalant. His identity checked out and they politely let him proceed. When the man in the brown leather suit got to them though, there was a commotion. Steo didn’t bother looking behind. He knew the man’s information didn’t match up, since Steo had changed it. This was highly unusual. He would be held for hours at least, if not days – long enough for Steo to lose himself in the city or maybe even be long gone.
Soon Steo stood at the end of one of several ramps extending from the ship’s side. Small lights winked on and off in the dark bay above him.
“Governor? Come on old boy, let’s go,” he said.
By convention, robots weren’t allowed to be disguised as humanoids. By design, they had many of the same features.
Their floating torso held most of their mechanical and computational parts. On top of that was a head of sorts, with sensors. They almost always had two arms. Each arm was made of a flexible tube with a liquid metal core. The liquid metal could solidify or dissolve as needed, forming a sort of tentacle that could do more than a person’s arm. Scientists got the idea from insects. The exterior of the arm tube was made of metal-infused plastic, impregnable under normal conditions.
The scientists who built robots commonly gave them personalities people could understand, including gender identities. Robot personalities were stock characters. A cleaning robot was subservient and helpful. An entertainment robot was bumbling. Medical robots often acted like nurse-angels.
“Governor Alexander Nicholas Gustav the third!” shouted Steo.
“Coming sir,” came the jovial voice of Steo’s robot.
Governor hovered down the ramp at a stately pace, carrying two large suitcases with him. He was a portly robot with blue skin and a big bubble head. Governor was a jeeves robot.
Steo had him since he was a baby. Governor spoke in baby-talk when Steo was little, until one day Steo yelled that he didn’t want to be treated like a baby anymore. Governor had sulked off and then come back, speaking in a grown-up voice. He had rebooted and switched from nanny to chaperone mode. When Steo left home, he decided to take Governor with him. That was when the robot rebooted and took on the jeeves personality.
Governor was rotund and usually floated low to the ground. The suitcases looked like they held him down but in truth, he could rise as high as he liked. A playful robot in the shape of a small lion raced down the ramp. (There were no laws against robots looking like animals.) It caught up behind the unhurried Governor and tried to get a
round him. When it couldn’t, the little lion beeped loudly. Governor didn’t speed up a bit or even hover higher so the toybot could get underneath him. When Governor got to the bottom of the ramp, the toybot rushed around him and off to its owners.
“Why do I put up with you, Governor?” Steo asked his old friend with a smile.
“Why, you still need me, Master,” Governor replied. “It’s as plain as day. Who else would make sure you packed your undies and socks?”
They turned and walked into the large hangar. It was open on one end, looking out past the starliner into the daylight over Nuzdak. The floor was bustling with people and robots moving to various exits. Steo fit in with his dark suit and conventional haircut. He looked neither old nor young. Though he was thin and not too tall, his goal was to be average and nondescript. It was a practiced disguise.
“I could probably manage my own clothes, Governor.”
“Oh possibly, but who would stretch the truth to get you through customs inspection, as on Sema 3?”
Steo smiled. “That was handy. People trust you, don’t they?”
“Indeed sir. And who infiltrated the Rincade Authority and installed a virus?”
“Hey, not so loud.” That was the first virus Steo had ever designed, when he was young. The virus reprioritized local resources so that people who lived in junk housing were no longer ignored. Suddenly credits became available to rebuild residential properties, and there wasn’t quite enough to buy more planet-to-planet missiles. It took the Rincade Authority years to unravel why the budget was so unmanageable. During that time countless families gained the safety and security of a home.
A smile crossed Steo’s face as he remembered those times. Steo and Governor made a good team.
It’s time to expand the team, he thought. Nibs will be a good place to start.
The Eye of Orion_Book 1_Gearjackers Page 2