by M. D. Cooper
Bob’s utterance landed in their minds with a gravitas that was impossible to ignore. Every word he spoke was laden with images and concepts. Ideas and understanding. When he said ‘Airtha’, the entirety of the knowledge of that entity’s existence flowed into Tangel’s mind. When he said ‘Alexander’, she felt the weight of six thousand years of AI history settle around herself.
All the plans, hopes, dreams of an entire species—or as much as Bob knew of them—weighed on her mind, making her feel small and insignificant.
But something was different this time. In the past, Bob’s weighty thoughts had always washed over her like a tsunami. This time, however, she was able to absorb them, allow them to seep into her and become a part of her.
She wondered if this wealth of information had always been present in his communications, or if it was new.
-You’ve changed more than I have. My mode of speech is unchanged.-
-It’s rude to look inside people’s minds, you know,- Tangel replied.
-You’re asking me to stare into clear waters and not see the bottom.-
-Well, at least pretend you can’t.-
Bob didn’t reply for a few milliseconds. -I’d rather be honest with you than protect your sensitivities, Tangel.-
It hit her then, that Bob must be terribly lonely much of the time. He’d been far more open with her since she’d ascended. Maybe he saw her as the one true confidant he could share his thoughts with.
-OK, I won’t guilt you anymore for seeing inside my mind. Just…try not to behave as though my inner thoughts are a conversation with you.-
-I understand.-
Tangel’s discussion with Bob had taken place in the span of a second. When it was over, she looked at the others around the table and saw that they all wore the same stunned expression that she had worn a thousand times in the past.
“OK,” Tangel fixed President Jasper with a level stare. “Are you in or out?”
Jasper looked to Pender, who nodded and gave a muted ‘Yes.’ He didn’t wait for Deia’s response before turning to Tangel.
“We’re in. I find your general strategy of hitting Midditerra and Diadem to be agreeable, but I’ll leave the details of those engagements to yourself and Admiral Pender.”
“What about my opinion,” Deia asked, her tone soft and carrying little of her prior arrogance.
“You agree,” Jasper said through clenched teeth. “You are done fighting against the League’s entry into the Scipio Alliance. Do I make myself clear?”
For a moment, Deia appeared as though she was going to contest Jasper, but then she subsided. “OK. I give. I won’t contest this any further.”
-Did you lean on her?- Tangel asked Bob.
-I told her that if she set herself against me and mine, I would set myself against her.-
Tangel laughed a song of energy and light in the other spaces where she and Bob communed. -Bully.-
-She was annoying me.-
-Took long enough.-
Tangel glanced at Joe, whose lips pursed as he shook his head. “Do you think they could have breached Iris’s mind to get the intel for this attack?”
“Normally, I’d say no.” Tangel cast a worried look at her husband. “But these clones have better stealth gear than we do, so it’s entirely possible that they could make inroads into Iris’s mind as well.”
“Stars,” Jasper muttered. “I just got word. The League of Sentients owes much to those two. We’ll do everything we can—”
“I’m already directing teams to scour the station,” Pender said as he rose. “Field Marshal Richards. Perhaps we could discuss the particulars of our strategy at a later date.”
“Of course,” Tangel nodded, feeling a current of worry run through herself.
Over the years, Angela had been a progenitor of many AIs who were born aboard the Intrepid and the colonies. Hundreds of AIs—should they feel inclined to do such a thing—could call her mother.
Iris was one of those AIs, one who Tangel felt an especially strong connection to, for a variety of reasons. From the parts of herself that had contributed to the AI’s cration to the knowledge that Jessica and Trevor would be devasted to lose their wife.
Not to mention Iris’s children at Star City.
Tanis adjourned the meeting, and after a short discussion between the ISF personnel, Rachel and Tangel went to the I2’s bridge to coordinate the search, while Joe organized a company of Marines, along with their three daughters, to begin the search for Iris.
* * * * *
Given her daughters’ ability to defend themselves—and those around them—Joe couldn’t fault Tangel’s decision to send them along. Even so, the protective father gene was strong, and it took all his willpower to force his instincts down.
Stars…how is this so hard?
He knew the reason why. After decades of protecting them, of being the shoulder they cried on when they were sad, and of helping them through just about every struggle in their lives, now he had to do the opposite: put a gun in their hands and send them into danger.
He hoped their training was enough.
“OK,” Saanvi said, as they stood around the hole Bob had shot in Lunic station. “Readings are consistent with multiple EMPs, several from beamfire, and others on different frequencies. Damn, if they focused these on an AI’s frame, it would create a cascading barrage that would almost completely fry Iris’s body.”
“These Widows are good at what they do,” Cary muttered.
“Think there are more?” Lieutenant Brennen asked as he eyed the concourse his Marines were sweeping. “Oh, and have I mentioned how much I hate this place?”
“It’s come up once or twice,” Joe replied, giving the man a sympathetic look. “I’m not fond of it, either. We both nearly lost people we cared about here.”
“Go, Bob,” Brennen said with a laugh, his statement bringing a few ‘Oh-Rah’s from the closest Marines.
“Gotta love Bob,” Cary added in agreement.
Faleena peered down through the hole and shook her head. “Stars, I can’t believe Amavia fell seventy decks before she hit a spar. Bet she wishes she’d transferred to a replaceable body before this.”
“Some of us like organic bodies,” Cary replied absently as she moved some debris aside and spotted a dried patch of blood. “Well, lookie here.”
“Could be from the fight with Xavia,” Saanvi cautioned.
Joe watched his daughter drop a probe onto the blood, and then she glanced up at him. “It’s a match for the Widows.”
Joe sighed.
Joe turned back to the team. “Any clues?”
“Well,” Saanvi said as she surveyed the concourse and the ever-widening Marine perimeter. “There’s no sign of Iris’s body, which means that they took her whole before removing her core. We need to find a place nearby where the Widows could have extracted it.”
“Timing is tight,” Lieutenant Mason said. “They grabbed Iris and Amavia only three hours before the meeting aboard the I2. That means they had to get her somewhere, extract the intel, and then get Vex and subvert Deia.”
Joe nodded. “The locals are sweeping for possible locations where Vex was captured and subverted—but that could also have ha
ppened days ago.”
“Deia said Vex didn’t breach her defenses until they were on the shuttle headed to the I2,” Faleena said. “That’s what she gets for being so intractable. No one can tell when she’s been subverted, or just being herself.”
Joe suppressed a smile as he regarded his daughter. Faleena had been especially displeased with Deia, privately remarking to him that AIs like her were why humans constantly worried that non-organics would wipe them out.
“Timing is the key, then,” he said. “Theoretically, the Widows had to get intel from Iris’s location to Vex, and then to that shuttle bay.”
He held out his hand, and a holo appeared before them.
“OK, let’s assume that it took them an hour to break Iris. It might have taken less, but we’ll start with that.”
“Or they didn’t break her at all,” Faleena said. “There’s no way. Moms thinks the same thing.”
“Right, bad choice of words. Anyway, here’s the first sighting of Vex on the station’s systems.”
As Joe spoke, a point lit up on the holo, it was close to midway between the team’s current location and the dock where the LoS’s delegation had boarded their shuttle.
“It took her forty minutes to get there and then through security. The shuttle didn’t take off for fifteen minutes after that.”
“So there’s fifty-five minutes gone from our three hours,” Brennen said. “Half the maglevs around here are still offline, so getting to the point where Vex was first seen would take thirty minutes.”
“Right,” Joe nodded, and a sphere appeared around where Vex was first sighted that worked for the time it would have taken to get from the site of the abduction and then to that location.
“Damn,” Cary shook her head. “That’s half the station—plus that residential spur with the high-speed maglev access.”
Saanvi waved her hand over the holo, and a number of locations were marked as clear. “Station surveillance would have spotted Vex if she’d gone through any of these spots.”
“Uh-uh,” Cary shook her head and the clear markers disappeared. “The Widows have good enough stealth that we can assume they passed through any of these locations undetected.”
“Damn,” Saanvi muttered. “You’re right. Basically, we can’t trust Lunic’s sensors at all.”
“Sir,” Brennen glanced at Joe. “One of my teams found a functional data node that was still connected to a few optical sensors. They spotted the Widows’ exfil.”
“Put it up,” Joe said, passing control of the holoprojection to the lieutenant.
A view of the concourse appeared. They saw two Widows putting on Lunic Station maintenance uniforms.
“Looks like our girls got in some hits,” Joe said with a satisfied nod. “Some scoring visible on their armor.”
Between the two women lay what looked like a rad-proof body bag. Once their uniforms were on, the pair lifted it and walked out of the camera’s view.
“Well then,” Joe said with a predatory grin. “That changes everything. Lieutenant, get your Marines scouting in that direction for any more functional sensors. We find out where those two Widows exited this dead zone, and we’ll find where Iris is.”
“Or where she was.” Faleena met Joe’s eyes with a worried look.
He patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry. They won’t kill Iris until they get Tangel.”
“Stars, Dad.” Saanvi cast him a wounded look. “That’s just awful.”
“Uh…yeah. Poor choice of words. What it means, though, is that we still have time.”
* * * * *
Joe drew a deep breath, steadying his heart rate as he followed behind Brennen’s first squad. Despite what he’d told his daughters, he was worried. Worried that any Widows who had not been a part of the strike team that boarded the I2 would be cleaning up loose ends.
Such as Iris’s core.
He also wished they had more troops for the operation, but the ISF was becoming stretched so thin, there were only two companies of Marines on the I2. With the rest sweeping the ship for the presence of any more Widows, thirty Marines plus Joe and his daughters would have to be enough.
Tangel said, inserting herself into his thoughts.
Joe pursed his lips, once again pushing his paternal instincts down as much as possible.
Tangel didn’t reply right away, and Joe added,
Joe knew the other part of his wife’s angst. She was worried about Iris. A lot. Jessica and Trevor had made a case for Iris to go with them to Star City and see their children. Iris had wanted to make the journey as well, but Tangel had told them that Iris and Amavia had to wrap up the negotiations with the League of Sentients first.
Everyone had agreed that it was the logical decision—even if it was an unpopular one. Iris’s frustration had been mitigated by the plans to build a gate at Star City, and the promise of more regular travel there.
Joe knew that Tangel would never confess any guilt she felt for command decisions such as these, but he also knew that they ate at her.
He knew it because they ate at him, too.
Ahead, the squad reached its ready point, and he surveyed the data on the combat net, re-checking the plan and ensuring that the Marines had all the possible exits covered.
They were formed up around a section of the station that contained workshops for rent. Typically, they were rented out to visiting ships that needed a place to fabricate components that they couldn’t make onboard, or to firms that needed overflow capacity for large jobs.
The workshop the team was approaching hadn’t been rented out to anyone—in fact, it had recently been listed as unavailable due to pending repairs to one of its fab units.
However, when Saanvi had reviewed the facility’s logs, she found that there had been no issues reported with the shop’s fab units. While it wasn’t enough to cement their certainty that they’d found where the Widows had taken Iris, it was enough to warrant a look.
The platoon’s first squad, along with Joe, was set to breach the facility’s main entrance, which lay beyond the entrances to two other repair facilities. Cary and Saanvi were with the second squad, which was stationed at the rear of the shop, and Brennen’s third squad was set to hit the larger bay doors that were a dozen meters past the regular entrance.
After a quick review of the station’s layout, Joe and Brennen had agreed to peel off a fireteam from each squad to cover nearby stairwells and access points to other levels.
The squad sergeants sounded off, and the platoon sergeant, named Kang, a woman Joe remembered from an incident on Tyre some years back, added a few extra instructions.
Joe watched the counter on his HUD, wishing he was at the front of the stack, but knowing that he shouldn’t be—if for no other reason than that Tangel would use it as a defense for how she was prone to rush into danger as well.
Stars knows she doesn’t need any more encouragement.
When the counter hit zero, the Marines moved down the corridor, each group timed so that they reached the doors in unison. The hope was that the enemy wouldn’t spot them in their stealth gear, but given the Widows’ level of tech, no one was placing any bets.
The front and back entrances were breached, while Brennen’s team at the bay doors quickly placed a series of charges. His team would hold back, ready to come in through the bay doors if backup was needed.
>
Joe watched as the first fireteam in his squad slipped through the front door and into the darkened interior. His view on the combat net showed them to be within a small office space containing tables, a few chairs, and a chiller. None of it looked like it had been touched—which didn’t surprise Joe. From what he knew of the Widows, they never removed their helmets, likely taking food in some form of nutritional paste.
The second fireteam followed, taking up covering positions while the first team set up on either side of the interior door that led into the main shop area.
Joe knew that the group at the shop’s rear would have breached by now, and the lack of weapons fire from within was a good sign.
With the teams in place, he and the squad sergeant stepped into the office and set up a blackout field to block light from the office’s windows that would come through when the first team breached the inner doors.
The sergeant gave the nod, and the Marines quietly pulled the door wide and entered the shop. The second team followed after, and Joe sidled up to the opening and peered in.
The interior was lit only by a few overhead lights, most of the space in deep shadow. He could make out racks of supplies, fab machines, workbenches, and a number of hover pallets. No sound came from within, nor did he see any movement.
Position markers on his HUD lit up toward the rear of the workspace, the random pings noting the locations of Cary and Saanvi’s squad, fifty meters away and working their way around heavy equipment and stacks of raw materials.
At the front of the shop, the first fireteam moved along the near wall, while the second worked their way past the hover pallets and began to check over the far wall.
Joe moved inside and set up behind a rack holding reinforced conduit. The Marines had already deployed a nanocloud, but he added some of his own drones to the mix, taking a multispectral reading of the work area, looking for anything that could hint at Widows in hiding.