by Ginger Booth
“The rest of us are stable,” Eli clarified. “Our nurse needs attention, Zelda.” He pointed to the bunk above his. “Three-Eight. Meet Ben Acosta, Commandant of the Colony Corps. And his evil wrench-wielding sidekick, Remi Roy of Sagamore.”
Three-Eight growled, “I thought Acosta was in Mars orbit.”
“So are you.”
Heedless of Eli’s ‘ow!’ of protest, Ben stepped onto his bunk to peer into the pressurized balloon bag. Three-Eight’s red furry face and dog-like eyes stared back. That was the damnedest thing. As a kid, he dreamed of going into space and meeting aliens. So far he’d only met people, or the aliens crafted by human hands. And the peoples of the home planet were perhaps the strangest of all.
“Pleased to meet you, Three-Eight. Welcome to the Colony Corps. Hope you don’t mind, because you’re stuck with us.”
He flicked his gravity to one sixth g, Mahina normal, and got Three-Eight’s shoulders, as Remi unlatched the bag from the bunk and helped lift him down. A rigid support board down the back made the life support bag easier to carry without bending the patient painfully. Remi helped him balance the awkward load on his shoulder. At one sixth g, the man was an awkward burden, but not too heavy. Remi picked up Zelda in his arms.
“You two air-tight?” Ben inquired, to make sure. When Eli and Kaol agreed, he ordered Thrive to evacuate air from this chamber. “We’ll be back in a minute.”
“I want to stay on Thrive,” Kaol requested. “If…it’s not a burden.”
“Sorry, bubba,” Ben informed him. “Tikki asked to nurse you in in his cabin.”
He caught the Denali’s face at the news. Kaol quickly shuttered his expression back to hunter standard dourness, but not before a flash of joy escaped. The pair had been estranged since Sylvan. But perhaps time together would heal old wounds. Ben hoped they could salvage a lifetime friendship as brothers.
“Ben,” Rover hailed him over his ear bud. “Can you update Groot? I’m afraid he might call Luna.”
“Patch him in. Groot! You never saw it. I didn’t do it. It never happened.”
“Not that! Ben, we’ve had another life support sabotage –”
“Busy today, buddy. I suggest you find the culprit and throw him out an airlock. Call you tomorrow morning! Let’s make an appointment for my team to come down and install your new life support. And you and me can have a heart to heart. In the meantime, remember. One word to Luna, and you don’t get your shiny new CO2 scrubber.”
“But couldn’t you come today –”
“No.” Ben cut the circuit. “Ready when you are, Remi.”
“Shouldn’t we fix Thrive before Mars One?” The engineer slit open the pink emergency bubble, and shouldered through. A bubble user from childhood, Remi had the knack for collapsing them without the remains clinging to him like cobwebs.
“No. Thrive could warp back to Mahina Orbital this way. Let the dockyard repair it instead of us,” Ben argued. “Mars needs to get done before we can blow this joint.”
They cheerfully bickered this out en route to Thrive’s med-bay, where they delivered Zelda and Three-Eight. Then they vaulted back up to collect Eli and Kaol to carry home to Merchant.
Ben didn’t admit his strongest motivation for warping Thrive home broken. He wouldn’t revisit Earth without word from Sass. There were exactly three BECT gateways in existence. He had final say on all of them. He wouldn’t argue his decision. She’d made her bed, and she could lie in it. She and Clay couldn’t die. They were home. If she thought they could fix a problem the size of Earth on their own, she could rego well try it before endangering his precious crews and ships again.
46
Mahina’s records are mute on how or why. But a rather backward colony suddenly began to flourish.
Sass gradually came to her senses out of a deep sleep. The bed was kind of hard. No, it wasn’t a bed. She slept on a thin mat on a tatami mat floor, a light sheet thrown over her in the sticky heat. At first she had a groggy assumption she was hungover. That’s why the world heaved ever so slowly and reeked of seaweed. She hadn’t suffered a hangover in a century.
And that thin high keening sounded heartbroken.
This convinced her to sit bolt upright, to look for who cried so piteously. Sitting so abruptly made her dizzy, and she pinched the bridge of her nose. The past few hours returned to her dimly. They’d floated in the Pacific until dawn started to lighten the horizon. Fidget’s batteries were dead by then, Melkor unconscious, Clay and Sass desperately holding him onto their sheet-boat, exhausted. A shuttle came and hauled them in, and flew –
She had no idea where she was. Her neck snapped around looking for the others. Clay sat with his back to her in the room’s glassed-in porch, a breath mask strapped to his face. Sun reflected blindingly off placid water between plank walkways in some kind of lagoon. The familiar tell-tale lights on the slider suggested the add-on porch was an airlock turned lounging spot. She didn’t see Melkor anywhere.
But the keening came from an ottoman pushed against a glowing windowless wall – Fidget!
The captain crawled the few paces to the ottoman and kneeled beside her robo-toy’s shrunken form. Every follicle of fur except her whiskers had fallen out, victim to the caustic ocean waters. Her joints sagged with deep wrinkles, normally hidden beneath luxuriant fur. Sass blinked, then realized the poor creature just had a lot of extra skin to permit stretching in every direction. Her forepaws skewered a rag, to charge from the wall.
Sass held a hand out, paused for fear of hurting the pet, then laid it gently on Fidget’s back.
“What’s wrong, sweetie? Does it hurt?”
Fidget turned her face further away, and shook her head. “They’re gone.”
“Who’s gone?”
“Thrive. You told them to go, and they went.” Her sweet high voice broke. “And I’m supposed to do backups. But I can’t. I tried. I tried stealing cloud space…” She turned her face further away.
“No-no-no, Fidget!” Sass crooned. She turned the little wrinkly face toward her. “You mustn’t talk to the cloud. You delete those backups.”
The miserable face crumpled further and recoiled.
“You can’t talk to Mars from here, can you. You used the ship as a relay.”
The mink nodded. Tears welled in her eyes, and she flattened her muzzle harder onto her paws. “I promised to do backups! Without fail! Floki will be mad at me! I’m a bad girl!”
“OH! No, honey!” Sass automatically picked her up to cuddle. The mink didn’t complain. “We’ll find you some backup media. Don’t worry. How much do you need for a full backup?”
“I’m only little. A terabyte?” She sniffled.
“Well, then we’ll get you five or ten terabytes. Offline.”
“But everyone here uses the data wave.”
“No, sweetie. We’ve fallen in with thieves!” If she read her situation right, Sass was back to those halcyon conditions of her youth – people who wouldn’t let anyone know their business. She knew beyond doubt that boat people didn’t store data on Northern League servers. No. “I’ll find you offline backup. Now please, make sure you delete everything you stored on servers.”
Fidget tried to avert her face again. Sass clamped her jaw, kindly but firmly. “Everything. Immediately. Floki would agree. A good girl is a smart girl. One who practices safe computing.” Her gaze bore into the mink’s. “Delete every bit of it. No exceptions.” She paused. “Fidget…”
Her little whiskers quivered. Her pink nose sniveled.
“I promise, I will find you offline backup media. Today. Just as soon as I can.”
The mink scrunched her eyes shut, and began to sob. “I did it. I deleted the backup. I have no backups!”
Sass held her tight. “What a good girl. That was hard. But you’ll be OK. Floki will be so proud of you.” The captain was sure of it.
She also desperately hoped the creature’s illicit backups didn’t catch anyone’s attention. Or anything�
��s attention. For she had no doubt the powerful AIs that triggered a worldwide ban lived on as tools of the League. How could they not keep a few, safely hidden? The two-edged swords were just too useful.
Clay noticed the ruckus and joined them. Inherently in love with all things furry, he quickly teased and frolicked Fidget back to giggling happiness. The mink loved him. And why wouldn’t she prefer him? Sass was the bitchy captain who made her erase her last backup.
“We need an audience with the Taipan,” he informed her, once the mink was feeling better. “Heap big cheese in…this floating world.”
Sass batted at the wrinkles in her outfit. Someone had taken their Pontiac clothes away, leaving them in loose cotton short-sleeved blouse and drawstring shin-length pants with patch pockets, breezy and blocky and exceptionally prone to wrinkles from the bed. She wore pale blue, and Clay a pale brick shade. The ensemble didn’t include shoes.
“Um, are these pajamas?”
“Everyone wears them,” he assured her. “Ready?”
“You want what?” The lean wrinkled old man scrunched his face in disbelief. Wearing only grey pajama bottoms, no shirt, he sat cross-legged on a large pillow of honor upon the tatami mats. Sass and Clay didn’t rate pillows, merely kneeled before him. His many tattoos spanned his visible skin, in the fang-rich curves of the tribal style, down to his hoary toes sporting overgrown toenails. Gold rings adorned his ears, and gold chains his age-sagging chest. He fanned himself with a laminated, much-faded Minnie Mouse fan.
The Taipan didn’t mention why he spoke English. Business purposes, Sass assumed.
“Offline backup media. A few terabytes.” The captain smiled warmly. “And a handheld computer if you have one. Maybe with a camera?”
“All our belongings sank in the Pacific,” Clay excused. They didn’t happen to have any belongings when they ditched the shuttle. But the claim was credible.
“Who boss here?” the man sneered at him. “You boss? You say she boss.”
Clay ducked his head. “You are boss, Taipan.”
“I know me boss! Backup media.” He snapped his fingers over his head imperiously. “Slates and coins. Half dozen.” One of the encircling guards levered himself off his mat and scurried into the airlock to pursue his errand.
The boss turned back to them. “That all you want?”
“We’re concerned about our friend Melkor,” Sass allowed. “Will we see him again soon?”
“Fish-face?” Taipan scowled. “We deliver fish-face to airport with yous. I no meet fish-face! American scum.” He tapped his bald pate. “Spy in the metal head. I wear true face. He no see my face.”
“I understand.” And Sass did. Melkor’s rarefied world of the power-brokers was Clay’s department. But now she was delivered into a den of criminals, home at last. “We no see your face. A boat near Okinawa. Thousands of boats, no names.”
He grinned. Some of his teeth shone gold as well. “Good.”
“And the airport will take us to America? With Melkor unharmed?”
Taipan shrugged. “Still breathing. We no like fish-face. America, yes.” He smirked. “Big place. I already forget where you go.”
Sass nodded warm appreciation. This was quite an interview, where everyone lacked curiosity about each other. Ask about the weather? No, she didn’t need to carry the conversation. His turf.
After a few moments of companionable silence, the boss asked, “Why you carry bald rat?”
Sass rearranged the folds of the towel she’d wrapped Fidget in, for warmth while her fur went missing. She hadn’t considered how handy it was for the sleek and beautiful beast to look temporarily baggy. Face uncovered, she turned the wrinkled little jaw to face the boat chieftain. “Our pet. She’s a…stoat.” Mink might be considered a luxury good.
“She old and ugly.” He wouldn’t admit his English didn’t extend to ‘stoat.’ Of course.
“Yes, but I love her so.” Sass wrapped the mink again, who…fidgeted. She passed her off to Clay to subdue.
After a few more minutes of casual conversation, feeling each other out, the guard returned with a cloth bag. Sass opened it and peered inside. He’d interpreted his instructions literally, providing six each of small hand-held computing devices, and chunky bronze-colored coins. She picked up one of these for study. Engraved filigree on the slightly convex faces made its case look more like an ancient watch fob, accentuated by a metal loop with a length of ball-chain, for keys or attaching to a belt loop, she supposed. On the opposite end was a nipple of the proper size for Fidget, if her mink had featured any secondary sex characteristics.
Another plus of the towel, now she thought of it. Perhaps she’d suggest to the parents that they add a touch of gender for version two. If they planned to continue sending their offspring out on undercover missions. The ethics of their choice didn’t trouble her. In the ex-cop’s experience, children survived all manner of idiot parents, and grew up to make their own bone-headed decisions, as the circle of life marched ever onward along its convoluted pig-tail path.
The cheap faux-bronze case didn’t seem to open. “How do I use this?”
Taipan frowned, skeptical, and drew a same-model ‘slate’ out of his patch-pocket. A coin hung from his belt-loop. He plugged nipple into slate. “Nipple always break off. Buy new one. They design for that. You really not from this world, huh.” Apparently he hadn’t quite believed it before.
“We’re from here. We visited other worlds. Now we’re back.”
“Huh.” He promptly waved for the guards to escort her out. This news he had every intention of claiming he knew nothing about.
Sass didn’t blame him a bit. She rose with her prize satchel, to beam at him and offer a deep bow. “Thank you so much for your generosity and kindness, Taipan-sama!”
He flicked his fingers and agitated his Minnie Mouse fan. “Get gone.”
Sass kept the coin in her fingers. This she passed to Clay in the airlock for Fidget to play with. They then clattered onto the floating board walkways that threaded through this rustic floating village, to catch their shuttle and airport connection in the world that floated beneath the League’s iron-fisted notice. She was in her element now, with a gorgeous reliable man by her side.
“Clay, you ever think about marriage?”
He froze. The guard behind walked into him, and shoved him forward. Then he tripped.
Score! Sass exulted.
They clambered up a steep point in the…hanging bridge at that point, which fed into a plank alley solidly attached to the flanking buildings. Those appeared to be barracks. Sass couldn’t imagine what good it did them to decorate the roofs with palm fronds. Then down onto a dock walkway again.
“Ceremony,” Clay eventually answered the question. “A wedding’s purpose is a celebration to include family and friends. We should wait til we’re home.”
A weight lifted from her shoulders. She breathed deep of fishy weedy waters through the breathing filter. “That’s smart.”
“Yeah, and red tape. I need to hire a lawyer. You know, specify what you inherit, versus my son, and grandkids, and their kids. Of course, Thrive is all yours.”
“You’re pissing me off now, Rocha. Paperwork. Romantic.”
“Right. We’re kind of in the middle of something here, Sass.”
“Ooh, look at the floating palm island!”
Clay grabbed her elbow. The other guard poked her between the shoulder blades. The captain resumed walking, and gave up rubber-necking after another bungalow cut off her view of the palms. “Now I wish I’d asked for a tour of their greenhouses.”
“Because that’s what’s important here, dear.” Clay arched an eyebrow.
Yes, things were looking up.
47
Earth’s AI Wars were born in a super-soldier research program that got out of hand.
Voronin lined up a pool shot while his latest visitor traversed the miniature golf course. Nothing interesting. They’d reviewed the latest draft of t
his year’s budget for Eurasia. The door closed behind her. He began his stroke –
The secret AI Nably spoke. “Master, I have news.”
The president of Russia scratched his nice bank shot. He grimaced and sighed. Forbidden to speak when anyone could overhear, Nably developed a habit of interrupting him just as Voronin welcomed a few moments to himself. “What news?”
“The intruders carry an AI. A powerful one.”
“The intruders are gone,” Voronin noted sourly. No, he had no idea how they managed it. But he was certain that starship retrieved its captain and executive officer from the Pacific somehow, and then took off, making fools of thick lines of defense. Then Oslo was predictably tedious about the nuking of Kazakhstan.
Lupinski assured him the gift box they left behind held important advances in crop genetics. The President of Russia, leader of the Northern League, didn’t trouble himself much with crop genetics. He asked if they would enable two billion to live on Earth. Lupinski admitted probably not. Enough said.
“The intruders are en route to America. With the Pontiac mole Melkor.”
He stilled, and straightened from his pool table. Voronin prided himself on perfect posture. “We have them?”
“We do not. The boat people have the interstellar visitors.”
“We’ve allowed an AI to fall into their hands?” This was an outrage! “Wait – how could they carry an AI through Pontiac and Hakone? Unless…the captain herself is an AI!”
This possibility was explored at Pontiac, and abandoned. She had some sort of reboot sequence from death. Other than that, her mentation was human, of fairly ordinary intelligence. Not too dumb, not too smart, about right for the sort of low-grade leadership who needed to bond with her troops.
“No.” Nably displayed a wall-sized image of some pathetic looking creature, cuddled to the captain’s breast, wrapped in a towel.