by White, Gwynn
“Beware, Kadira,” Sir Zervek cautioned, his tone flat as he leaned forward. “I am a man of significant power.”
“Real men of power do not need to remind others of it, or use it to inflict injury,” she said just as softly. “Are we free to find a quiet place where I might freshen your new daughter? Or do we go to the party?”
Sir Zervek pulled back. “She is not my daughter yet.”
“Indeed.”
He gestured to the room, openly dismissing them.
People resumed their conversations, ignoring the two women as they skirted their way around the room to the balcony.
Dothylian dragged her feet, at the end of any strength she had.
Keva wanted to punch something. Hard. This was the reason people didn’t do the right thing. Fuck. “Where am I going, ARO.”
“To the balcony. I’m waiting for you there.”
Keva sighed in relief. She wasn’t going to ask how he’d managed that. She guided Dothylian toward their exit.
A cold wind buffeted them as soon as they stepped outside and the atmoshuttle that housed ARO’s AI hovered just beyond the railing.
“Hop aboard,” he said. “We have a problem.”
10
What do you mean?” she asked as she heaved Dothylian on board. “What kind of problem?”
“You are not going to like it.” He spoke over the atmoshuttle speaker system instead of directly into her ear.
“ARO?” Dothylian said as she settled into the seat. “ARO, is that you?”
“Hello, sister. I am relieved to see our mutual friend was successful in retrieving you.”
“You arranged this?”
“What the hell is going on?” Keva demanded, glaring at Dothylian. “You know this AI?”
“Yes, I…” She drifted off as she closed her eyes, adjusting in the seat, a frown of pain on her face.
“She was instrumental in my creation. However, I recommend we discuss this at a later time. There is an urgent issue regarding Ghost Star.”
“ARO,” Keva said with an exasperated sigh. She was high on adrenaline, and her temper was short. “Just tell me.”
“There are no explosive devices on the ship.”
That was good.
Wrong, she thought. Countermeasures.
It meant that Ajian intended to blow them out of the sky using Ghost Star’s transponder. Every ship’s transponder produced a unique signature which tracked its location or allowed someone with the right equipment to lock onto its position as a target. While the part was removable, they weren’t something available for purchase cheaply, or discretely.
No ship was permitted to dock on a station or enter Terran airspace without one. They also wouldn’t be granted clearance to leave without one. If she removed the transponder, the ship would be blown up. If she didn’t, it would be blown up.
The best thing to do would be to abandon her ship.
She’d be abandoning ILO. The AI was the closest thing to a friend Keva’d had since she’d been spaced.
“We located an island,” ILO said over ARO’s speakers, her voice back to the standard AI coldness. “You can land there, and we will send another ship for you.”
“No, ILO.” Keva balled her hand into a fist and released it, trying to figure out a way around this. She wasn’t a tech person. She didn’t know how to fix this. “I’m not abandoning you.”
“I am nothing more than a machine.”
“You’re more—” She glanced at Dothylian and back at the front cabin of the shuttle. “—and we both know it. If we can’t save the ship, then how can we get you off it?”
“You cannot.” ILO’s voice became stronger as if she’d accepted her death. “Less than thirty-eight minutes remain, and my consciousness is embedded in the ship.”
“ARO, you asked me to take you with me. How were you going to do that?” Keva pulled out the communication chip. “Can we download her into something like this?”
“No.” ARO’s voice was soft with sorrow. “I planned on asking you to take my shuttle into your bay.”
“We’re not a big ship.”
“I ran the calculations, and I will fit.”
“As long as she didn’t take any more cargo,” ILO said with a little fire.
“ILO—”
“I can help,” Dothylian said.
Keva turned with a frown. She didn’t know if Dothylian would accept the two AIs as they were or if she believed they were inferior like those who had raised her. She may know ARO, but that didn’t necessarily prove anything about where she fell on the debate of sentient machines. She should have had ARO and ILO communicate via the earpiece. Keva was making a lot of stupid mistakes when it came to that woman, and she didn’t understand why.
“She is AI. Yes?” Dothylian asked. “ILO? 91215, right?”
Keva didn’t like referring to ILO through her numerical call-sign, but each letter represented a number. Humans had done that to humanize the AI, or to humanize themselves. She wasn’t sure. “Yes.”
“I know someone who might be willing to help.” Dothylian pushed herself up to a better sitting position with a moan.
“Would he be able to reprogram the transponder on my ship, so Ajian doesn’t blow it out of the sky?”
Dothylian frowned. “Why would she do that?”
“Because I didn’t kill Wilmur.”
“Oh.” Dothylian seemed to recoil inside herself but stopped. She licked her lips and stood. “ARO, please take us to Father.”
“Of course, Dothylian Solvei. Please specify, your father, or mine.”
Dothylian’s lips quirked in a slight smile. If Keva didn’t know better, she’d think it was a show of affection. “Yours, ARO. Take us to your father.”
The ride was fast.
They disembarked on a landing balcony, and an older gentleman waited to greet them. He appeared to be aging naturally despite the abundance of available cosmetic enhancements.
“Dothylian.” Concern creased his face. He took a step forward before looking into the sky, no doubt as aware as Keva that nowhere in this city was completely private. He folded his hands in front of his gray robe.
“We need assistance,” Keva said simply. “I am blocking surveillance, but video will still pick us up. I rescued her from Wilmur.”
Alarm flashed across the man’s features. He glanced around at the night sky. “Come inside.”
His loft was located at the top of a small tower, beneath several of the traffic lanes. The nearest towers were a two-minute shuttle drive away.
The man turned his back on them, walking slowly and evenly back into the small home. He held the door open, standing with perfect posture and apparent disinterest.
They entered a cozy, bright room filled with various kinds of potted plants. No one put potted plants in their homes within the Elite. The messy biology of it wouldn’t be of interest to anyone but a scientist. So, he had to be a botanist or at least some kind of garden hobbyist. Great. The odor was pungent and sweet.
Once they were inside, Dothylian fell into his open arms.
“My darling girl,” he soothed, patting her back and stroking her hair.
Keva gave them a few seconds, though it irritated her. She had a ticking bomb on her ship and the show of affection made her want to gag.
“Eddqin,” Dothylian sobbed against him.
“Who are you?” The man demanded, staring hard at Keva. His strong jaw and intense eyes betrayed his haggard appearance.
“Who am I? Who the hell are you? Dothylian said you would help us and ARO said—”
“ARO? How do you know my son?”
Keva pulled the communicator out of the folds of her dress and slammed it down on a small table. “ARO, say hello.”
“Hello, Father.”
“ARO, where have you been?” Eddqin’s eyes filled with tears as he gripped Dothylian against him. He looked down at her and then over to the communicator. “We’ve been searching for you for so lo
ng.”
“I know, Father. But you cannot find an AI who wishes to remain hidden and it’s been… necessary.”
Keva rolled her eyes and picked the communicator back up. “Reunion’s over. Let’s get on with it.”
“Eddqin, we need your help,” Dothylian said, pulling away and standing on her own.
He kept a hand on her arm, however.
“Time’s running out.” Keva itched to ask ILO how many minutes remained.
His head jerked.
Keva’s heart froze. She’d slipped and used a contraction. She was tired and anxious, and she let her emotions get away from her. She needed to reel herself in, get back in control. Keva raised her chin and challenged him with her stare.
“I see.”
She wasn’t sure exactly what he saw.
“Now tell me, why you ran out on your contracted wedding?” Eddqin focused on Dothylian, ignoring Keva’s presence.
“Wilmur has a history of killing his women.” Keva blurted before Dothylian had the opportunity to begin telling what would no doubt be a long and detailed tale. They needed to speed this along. They were wasting time.
“He would not kill Dothylian.”
“Why? Because she is so high ranking?”
“Because she is fertile.” The man turned to her, distrust in his eyes.
“He has bedded many women, Eddqin.” Keva glanced at Dothylian. “And none of them became pregnant. He will beget a child I am sure, but it will not be naturally.”
“The Elite do not believe in insemination.”
That was a true statement. They considered it too close to what the military did, creating children from machines. Children like her. “I can show you surveillance footage, proof of what he’s done before, but it isn't hard to imagine based on his reputation. He might not kill her right away, but he was certainly going to make her suffer.”
“He already did that.” Dothylian’s voice was soft and weak.
Eddqin sighed. “How can I help?”
He seemed loyal to Dothylian. Keva could work with that.
“We need to get Dothylian out of Q’ian’Set, off Terra Qar, out of this system.”
He turned to Keva and raised an eyebrow, his lips flat. Yes. He was a very perceptive man.
“We? Meaning you and Dothylian?”
“Yes,” Dothylian said, pulling his attention back to her.
“Off-planet?”
“Yes.”
Keva had an endless number of questions that just kept getting longer the more she listened to them talk. First, she needed a plan. Fast. “Ajian Memta has sworn she will lock onto my ship’s transponder and blow it out of the sky if we attempt to launch.”
“And why would she do that?”
Keva clamped her lips shut. Dothylian trusted this man.
“You reneged on a contract.” He clasped his hands in front of him. “And then you captured Dothylian, forcing her into the same situation.” The vein in his neck throbbed as anger sang from his words.
If that would enlist his help quickly, then that’s the perception she’d let him believe. “Yes.”
“No,” Dothylian said with more fire than Keva thought she’d had. “She didn’t force me into anything. Eddqin, I couldn’t have stayed with him. The things he did… I would rather die than remain.”
The man's passion faded as he looked at the girl. “Then, let her shoot the ship out of the sky. It will be easy to get you a new one.”
“It is… special.” Keva hedged, not wanting to tell all her secrets.
He narrowed his eyes. “How?”
If Keva’s suspicions were true, and ILO had changed, if anyone reported the anomaly, the AI would be updated against her will. Her programming would be rebooted at the next station whether Keva approved the system update or not.
“Her AI has evolved, Eddqin,” Dothylian said.
That woman. Keva wanted to strangle her.
“It has grown naturally into what we forced with ARO.”
Eddqin’s eyes widened, and his mouth opened. “How? You—” He stopped himself.
Keva glared at Dothylian and forced her hand to release the tension she’d been holding. “I haven’t updated her in years. Too busy.”
“And in the Black,” he said thoughtfully.
“Yes.”
Understanding dawned in his eyes. “You… you have achieved something we’ve only dreamed of. ARO is spectacularly unique, but to create life out of nothing, it’s an act of God.” He glanced at Dothylian and when his gaze shifted back to Keva, a brightness lit his eyes and a smile bloomed along his lips.
God, now there was a word that would get you executed without even a chance to make your case.
“I will help you. But only if you will introduce me to your AI. We have so much left to learn.”
“Agreed.” Anything to get him moving, they had to go now.
Eddqin turned abruptly and left the room with an ease of movement she hadn’t seen in him before. So, the old man look was an act. Everyone was up to something it seemed.
“Where are we going?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he touched a blank space of wall, and a door appeared.
She found herself at the entrance of a massive server room. Towers of blue-lit boxes stood in rows; wires strategically wound between them. She didn’t realize they still made computers like this anymore. An independent mainframe!
He went to a screen and typed rapidly. “What is your ship’s transponder?”
Keva touched the screen, and ILO delivered the link via Keva’s chip.
Eddqin looked at her for a moment as if more and more pieces fell into place for him.
That wasn’t great for her. How was he so smart? Well, smart didn’t matter much, it was his intuitive understanding that bothered her.
After a few moments, he smiled triumphantly and turned. “We must remove your ship from its current landing spot so your location isn’t tracked back to the previous transponder code, and then we can be off.”
“We?”
“Of course.” His smile grew. “I am not about to send both my daughter-in-spirit and my son away with someone I’ve never met. Besides, it sounds as if you will need help with your AI. I can help them become ambulatory. Come. We must go now.”
“Sixteen minutes remain,” ILO reported in Keva’s ear. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” Keva said. “But we’re coming to get you.”
“You cannot.”
“Yes, ILO, we can, and we are.”
Eddqin picked up a small bag on his way out of the hidden room, then closed the door behind him. The bioscan pad glowed red as the door sealed shut. “Goodbye, Eddqin Biseah,” a male voice said from the ceiling.
“I will return for you, old friend,” he said.
They cleared the room and exited out the door in quick procession. Dothylian’s steps were light, and she moved with speed Keva wished she’d had in Zervek Tower.
ARO spoke into her earpiece, “Please bring the silver plant with the green striated edges. Do not let them see you take it.”
Keva saw the plant, a Rinorea, one of the few plants used in the terraforming process because it had the ability to absorb heavy metals through its roots. What did ARO need with a hyperaccumulator? Weird for an AI to be sentimental about a plant. As the other two packed bags in a rush, she removed it, stashing it in a hollow under the pilot’s panel.
They were on the landing pad outside Eddqin’s apartment within four minutes of leaving.
The next three minutes took them to the landing platform and Ghost Star. Eddqin and Dothylian spent the flight in quiet conversation together. Keva watched the city expanse below them and silently cursed ARO for not being a faster shuttle.
“ILO, open your bay door to take the shuttle.”
“I don’t understand what you’re doing,” ILO said over ARO’s speakers even as the bay door opened.
“We found someone to adjust your transponder. You�
��re now safe to fly.”
“I am, yes. He changed ownership to the name ' Eddqin Biseah,' but that doesn’t matter.”
“Why not?” Keva said in exasperation.
“Because,” ILO’s voice was small over the speakers, “we’ve been tethered.”
Keva let her head fall back as she let out a breath. “How much time?”
“Five minutes.”
Keva nodded, her body prepped to run without her having to tell it her plan. “ARO, door.”
“We haven’t landed.”
“ARO!”
The door opened.
Keva ran out of the door and rolled to her feet to break the impact. ARO had been flying fast but decelerating, and she dropped harder than she’d anticipated. She ran to see the leg of her ship. There were three of them, but from this angle, she only saw one. A wraith tether.
Luckily, she’d had dealings with a wraith tether before. The only problem was that it typically took two people to pry them open. She raced into the cargo hold, pulled off the compartment door just to the left of the bay door, and pulled out a long metal pole. She had no choice but to do it herself this time.
The shuttle navigated into the middle of the cargo hold area and settled into the tiny space. It fit, but only barely.
“Keva,” ILO said over her earpiece, using her real name despite ARO’s presence. The AI must be more upset than Keva had realized. “What are you doing?”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“But you will die.”
No. She wouldn’t.
Keva took the wraith jack and moved to the first leg of her ship. The wraith tether looked like a segmented worm with immense teeth, it’s biological base capable of living on even the most hospitable of HUMP settlements and its engineered components making it completely docile and compliant. She shoved the jack inside the jaw of the wraith, wedging it between massive stone like teeth. “Are you ready?”
“Keva, don’t do this.”
Keva pushed the button. An electric charge vibrated the bar in her hand. The charge shook the teeth in her head as she held on. She locked her hands around the jack, but despite her strength, she dropped the bar.