by M. D. Cooper
Red flags waving in her mind, Fugia reinforced her standard Link safeguards and accepted the request. She gasped a little when the ID came back Weapon Born.
Why hadn’t they let her know that in the first place? What were they afraid of?
“Fugia Wong,” a male voice said, one she recognized as once having belonged to a human boy named Kylan Carthage, now grown into adulthood. “My name is Emerson Sharp. I need your help. Lyssa is trapped.”
ORDERS
STELLAR DATE: 08.18.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: SolGov Assembly Tower, Raleigh
REGION: High Terra, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Folsom still hadn’t decided the best course of action with Chancellor Osla. Leaving the man on Cruithne wasn’t the best option, but it was better than any others he could think of.
One thing he knew for certain was that the Andersonian could not come to High Terra. That would legitimize him in ways that would only harm SolGov. There were a multitude of black sites that Osla could be transferred to, but those locations would grant access to a host of other SolGov parties who would all have their own agendas.
No. Better to leave him on Cruithne. Not grant him a gram of legitimacy.
Ngoba Starl would make an excellent jailer. The man’s influence reached wide—many of High Terra’s elite had moved specialized cargo through the Lowspin Docks on Cruithne. While Starl was not powerful in a stellar sense, he was well-entrenched in his fiefdom.
With that matter finally settled in his mind, Folsom turned his thoughts to the specialist team he had sent to Ceres. They had gone to ground, waiting for the reinforcements that were necessary to finish their mission. They were safe for now, but that wouldn’t last forever.
Tasking a ship from the Hera Collective to extract the operatives once the mission was done was not an option. For all intents and purposes, Folsom was assassinating a foreign head of state—a bold move for him, and for a small nation such as Hera.
If it went wrong, he needed to wash his hands of the event, to protect his people and himself. Cara Sykes would make the perfect cover. She’d proven to be unpredictable, but the right kind of unpredictable.
He sent the words out into the void, waiting patiently for the response. Cruithne was currently just over an AU from Earth, which meant he was looking at a delay of over half an hour.
The senator busied himself with a thousand other tasks that begged his attention, doing them as much to distract his mind as to complete them, necessary so they were.
A nagging fear lingered that Cara would not hold up her end of the bargain. She was, after all, a pirate. It was also possible that her mental faculties were not what they once were, after her time in prison under Link suppression.
Folsom worried he’d have to spend a day playing tag with her, but then her message continued.
If Folsom’s mind wasn’t reeling from the implications of Carmaris trapping Lyssa in an expanse—something he didn’t fully understand—he would have laughed at the heartfelt ‘sorry’ she’d tacked on.
Keeping Lyssa and her Weapon Born in play as imperative, and Tim Sykes back from the grave could prove an interesting addition to Cara’s story and legend. And, of course, she wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else while the Marsians had him.
The words reached Folsom as he was eating dinner with a pair of senators from Uranus, attempting to convince them not to abandon SolGov. He knew that the Andersonians were spreading their word across Sol—many using the skills learned from the Humanity First rabble-rousers to build cells.
But he had not expected them to be so well entrenched in Cruithne that they would attack Ngoba Starl and Cara Sykes.
She didn’t mention anything about immediate problems arising from the attack, so he didnt press the issue further.
Though I’ll see if I can send someone there to assess the issue separately.
He chose his next words carefully. It was unlikely that they would be intercepted, but there was always a risk.
The senators from Uranus had left the restaurant by the time Cara’s response came. Folsom was staring into the bottom of his wine glass, wondering if he should request another pour.
He was home, washing his face before bed, and smiled as Cara’s words entered his mind.
BIRDLAND
STELLAR DATE: 08.18.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Night Park
REGION: Cruithne Station, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
With Adama sitting across his shoulders, Rondo studied the calm demeanor of the Weapon Born, Emerson Sharp.
The group sat in a section of Night Park set aside for picnicking. The wide chamber of the mining-nexus-become-outdoor-bazaar was alive with even more birds than the corridor where Crash had come to his rescue. Thrushes darted between the retail booths in the bazaar, while parrots perched on lines whose sole purpose seemed to be attracting their presence. As tourists wandered the open spaces between vendors, their attention was on the hundreds of birds.
Bird land, Rondo told himself again.
Adama purred and ducked his head into Rondo’s big palm, urging him to scratch behind an ear.
The presence of the birds wasn’t unpleasant, once he got used to them. Their songs made him realize how much of his life he had spent in the near silence of data centers, surrounded only by whirring and chirping cooling systems. There was something comforting about the songs, which followed patterns in irregular ways. He liked how the birds invited people in the park to watch and listen, performing little tricks for the children who held out bits of food or shiny trinkets for the dark-eyed ravens at the dry fountain.
Emerson Sharp’s frame was the form of a thin, young man with a narrow face and round eyes that looked just slightly unnatural. Rondo knew that the Weapon Born Kylan had been imaged from a real person, and this AI was a copy of Kylan, but at what point did they stop being Weapon Born and become simply AIs? He supposed there were fundamental differences in their neural frameworks and conception of mind that made them different than the Psion AIs, who were ‘pure’ by the definition of certain ancient scientists.
To Rondo, consciousness seemed the deciding factor in whether a thing was human or not, and he had either studied or observed firsthand the many variations that consciousness could take. Meeting Crash the grey parrot was yet another variation on the augmentations, digitizations and expansions of conscious awareness that he knew existed.
Wasn’t that one of the wonders of being alive, that everything changed? Always. Forever. If entropy was continuously
grinding the universe into space dust, then consciousness could be equally expanding into forms his tiny brain could barely conceive.
Rondo smiled. He appreciated how literally the parrot took everything. It was refreshing.
Emerson sat cross-legged with his hands on his knees, taking in deep breaths, and raising his face to the bright lights that illuminated the park.
Rondo had pieced together the events that led to Emerson’s creation on Vesta. It had been interesting to fit himself into the narrative, doing work for Fugia on another facet of the battle.
Fugia Wong sat with her legs to her side, knees together. She was wearing her semi-translucent visor that she often pushed up into her black hair as a headband. Now, her eyes were visible behind shifting, pearlescent whorls as she scanned the Mesh to verify the information Emerson had shared.
Lyssa was still on the Mars 1 Ring, caught in an unconscious state that had begun when she accepted an invitation to enter Camaris’s expanse.
“The lag is killing me,” Fugia said.
Emerson frowned slightly. “I’ve provided you with all the information you should need to verify what I told you. Do you not trust me?”
“This isn’t about trust,” Fugia said. “Don’t get yourself upset. I’m looking for other tidbits around your actions on Mars 1, specifically when you first engaged with Camaris’s shard there. You were led into a trap from the beginning, and it’s strange that Lyssa didn’t see it.”
“She doesn’t fear Camaris. I worry that she should.”
Fugia nodded, her eyes darting back and forth inside the visor. “It’s easy to see why Lyssa would think she was safe. It was a remote connection. She should have been able to cut it at any time. Camaris is strong and unpredictable, but demonstrably, not a strategic thinker. She tends to focus on what’s directly in front of her. That’s how Lyssa has been able to defeat her so many times.”
“It hasn’t been that many times,” Emerson said sourly. He was clearly worried about Lyssa, and didn’t seem to appreciate Fugia’s flippant attitude.
Just wait until you really see her angry, my friend, Rondo thought. You haven’t even begun to get her attitude.
It was interesting watching an AI display frustration. The frame was incredibly detailed. If fact, Rondo figured that if he hadn’t known Emerson and his friends were Weapon Born, he would have taken them for a bunch of military recruits with brooms up their asses. They carried themselves like they answered to a higher power...which he supposed was how a lot of people thought of Lyssa.
As a side query, Rondo had been monitoring the social sentiment over Cara having shot Lyssa in the arm back on Earth. While Cara Sykes had plenty of goodwill from the Andersonian vid Stars the Hard Way, which told adventure stories about her time in the Scattered Disk, Lyssa’s fans and followers were growing more vocal.
The Andersonian uprising had sent Stars the Hard Way into political territory. The vid was no longer simply entertainment. Joining its fandom was a political statement of support for the thousands of minor uprisings happening across Sol, and no local network could scrub the show from their channels.
Basically, no one could get enough of the Sykes family drama, and they’d gone too long without a fix.
Cara’s recorded fight with Llana, the star, of Stars the Hard Way had brought her new fans, as well as people wanting to know what was going to happen to Charles Osla, as if he was part of the story, while Lyssa’s disappearance had only fueled hundreds of fan conspiracies—with Cara as the villain, obviously.
People were scared, Rondo figured, and the stories helped them subjugate their fear into something mostly harmless. Maybe. He wasn’t quite sure what it all meant yet, but he was certainly enjoying the arguments between Completionists and Curators on the Mesh, who warred over how much of everything they should document, record, and archive.
“We did as we were ordered,” Emerson said. “Lyssa wanted to go after the shard, and we captured him. He seemed ready to destroy himself rather than provide any assistance.”
“Does a shard have free will?” Fugia asked. “Interesting question. They should. But it could be argued they choose to be slaves, just as organic humans do. We’re all weird that way, aren’t we?”
“You are a frustrating person,” Emerson said.
Rondo snorted a laugh.
Fugia raised a finger, eyes staring straight ahead.
Emerson leaned back slightly, then glanced at Rondo. “What does that mean?”
“It means she might have figured something out. Or she just wants you to be quiet.”
After a few tense seconds, Fugia let out a deep breath and pushed her visor up on her head. She blinked and rubbed her eyes.
“I found Camaris’s data stream to Mars 1,” she said. “It’s a big pipe. She buried it among the other mainlines between Earth and Mars. It’s a bounce from the Marsian surface, which is interesting. I hadn’t thought to look in the data from the planet.” She nodded at Rondo. “We’re going to need to check that out eventually.”
Rondo grimaced. He hated going back to Mars, or going anywhere near Marsian territory if he could help it. She knew that, though.
All he said was, “Say the word.”
“Can you infiltrate the stream?” Emerson asked.
“We can, but we’ll want to be careful about it. Give me some time. I can use your help with it, as well. Once I’m ready, I’ll share the options, and we can develop a plan together. We may need to establish some physical relays between Cruithne and Mars to get faster connections. And once we figure out where she’s connecting to on Earth, we’ll need to investigate that as well.”
“But what about Lyssa?” Emerson asked, sounding miserable.
“Oh, don’t worry. We’re going to save Lyssa. We’re going to follow her connection back to Camaris, and destroy her expanse at the source.”
SPILLED MERCURY
STELLAR DATE: 08.19.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Amplified Solution
REGION: Cruithne Station, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
They gathered on the command deck of the Amplified Solution for its inaugural run following Fran’s upgrades. Cara hadn’t realized how much she missed being on the ship. She had grown used to bigger spaces, yet felt immediately comfortable when the airlock of the shuttle opened and she pulled herself into the tight maintenance corridor of the Momentum’s engine section.
Fran stood with her arms crossed, augmented green eyes flashing, and nodded with satisfaction. Everything had progressed according to plan except for the railgun, which required an upgrade to the hull and extensive stress testing. She had completed several EVs herself to check the drone welds and shielding upgrades.
“I like this ship,” Ngoba said. “But it lacks style. You’re going to need to do something about that. A ship with no soul is going to get a hole punched through it in no time.”
“What do you know about ships?” Petral quipped. She was sitting at the comms station, her fingers dancing over control screens.
Since discovering the data pipes between Earth and Mars, she and Fugia had been monitoring them constantly, both out of wonder at their complexity, and to eventually crack the Psion encryption.
Emerson Sharp looked constantly dubious at their progress, and continued to appear visibly frustrated that they weren’t storming whatever stronghold Camaris was using. He wanted to cut the connection and save Lyssa now.
For a Weapon Born, he was strangely robotic. However, the longer Cara observed him, the more small tells she realized gave away his anxious emotional state.
“I want to test this fancy espresso machine you were talking about,” Ngoba said. “Do you know how to pull a good shot, Cara?”
�
�Nope,” she said. “Why don’t you show me?”
Rather than bristle at the suggestion that he serve her, Ngoba rubbed his hands with excitement. He left the deck for the galley that was a quarter-turn down the hab ring.
“It’s going to be a good ship,” Fran said, still checking her work.
The ship’s model floated in the holotank, then disappeared as she brought up an image of Cruithne and its surrounding shipping lanes, followed by Earth and High Terra.
“Bring up Mercury,” Petral said.
“Mercury isn’t there anymore,” Fran told her.
“Vicinity of Mercury’s former orbit—this side of Sol,” Petral corrected, rolling her eyes. “I’ve got a bounce off High Terra that I want to look at. I’m sending you the location.”
“Have you found her?” Emerson asked.
“Like I just said, I’ve got a bounce off High Terra I want to take a look at.”
Emerson frowned. “What does that mean—‘bounce’?”
“A way to hide communication paths,” Cara said.
“Doesn’t every communication system practice redundant pathing?” the AI asked.
“They do, but most follow standard protocols,” Petral said. “There are millions of companies that provide the service. You can try to hide a signal inside the standard channels, or you can use something unorthodox to protect it through obscurity, or avoid charges, or because your equipment is out of date. There are hundreds of reasons. There’s a whole world of black market communications systems.”
“Looks like we may have more targets,” Cara mused.
“Let’s get this test burn under way first.” Fran’s words were brusque. “You’re not galivanting around the system, saving people, unless your ship works.”
Cara gave the engineer a warm smile. “Of course, Fran. Take us out. It’ll feel good to stretch our legs a bit.”