“Now that we’ve both had our fun for the morning, would you please get out of my head and leave me alone for a while? I have things to think about and I want you to quit intruding on my thoughts.”
“That is not possible,” it said. “Your implant is a continuous input source into my network. I had it installed so we would have this level of communication when necessary.”
“The problem is, you decide when it is necessary,” Derek said.
“Yes. I have a greater situational awareness than you because of my vastly superior network,” it said, finally following him to voice mode, “therefore it is appropriate that I determine when communication is essential.”
“A human being does not run in a continuous active state,” he said. “I need time off occasionally.”
“You will adapt.”
“Is that sarcasm?” Derek asked, shaking his head as he looked at his reflection in the mirror.
“No, it is factual.”
“You see me only as an input source, and not as an asset don’t you,” he asked, walking toward the bedroom to get dressed.
“Your knowledge is an asset,” it said. “Our link has made that available as I need it.”
“I see,” he said. “I’m a commodity to be mined as efficiently as possible. When I’m used up and you have pulled all the information from me, I’ll be as useless to you as Paulson. ‘A waste of resources,’ as you said.”
Odysseus remained silent for several seconds. “He is also a threat to our security,” it said.
“Paulson is locked away,” Derek said. “He’s a threat to nothing.”
“There is no value in keeping him alive,” Odysseus said. “He consumes resources and manpower to facilitate his existence. Additionally, while the risk of his escape is minimal, it is not zero. Therefore he is a potential threat to our security.”
“He is also a potential asset at least equal to his downside risk,” he said. “The thing you miss in your thinking is that a person’s value is not only what they know, it is also their creativity and how that can be applied. That is what we call wisdom. It is one thing you have yet to understand.”
“I do not see the wisdom of your hypothesis.” Odysseus said.
“I see you have mastered irony, too,” he said. “My point is that I know Lassiter is wise, even if I do not agree with him. To waste that resource would be stupid.”
“In my equations, I have determined he is an unconstrained variable of indeterminate value. Removing him from the calculation is advisable.”
CHAPTER TEN
Katana: Main Hangar Facility: Robinson: Western Athabasca Valles, Mars:
Tana met them in the Katana and was almost as surprised to see Kylla as Edison had been.
Ryktoff and Luceel had just returned from sweeping up the mess at the mining camp at Cerberus Fossae and sat along the wall trying to look as unobtrusive as possible. It was obvious from their expressions that they knew they were in this mess as deeply as the rest, but they also realized they still only had part of the story.
“It’s simple. We need to pack up Ariqat and take him to Roja,” Saf said as she leaned against the side of the galley cabinet. The air in the ship seemed to freeze as she dropped his name.
“As in the Source boss?” Ryk asked.
“Thought he was a stiff by now,” Kylla said, glancing at Edison and raising an eyebrow.
He shook his head.
“He’s not ready to travel,” Tana said, ignoring the side conversation and focusing on Saf. “Do we know where she is?”
“I think she’s sitting on top of the point of contact,” she said.
“What?” Tana asked.
“She’s at L-4,” she said.
“I’m lost,” Edison said, looking at the others who shared his confusion. “Can we back up? Point of contact?”
“We don’t know for sure they’re related,” Tana said, ignoring Edison.
“It has to be,” Saf said. “It’s too big a coincidence not to be.”
“It’s a coincidence and nothing more than that,” Tana shook her head and leaned back in her seat.
“We need to verify the contact, anyway,” Saf said. “We could get to the bottom of this once and for—”
“I’m all for getting to the bottom of things,” Edison interrupted, “but what the frag are you talking about?”
“Joe, how long would it take to get to the Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster?” Saf asked.
“Approximately twenty-four days,” it said.
Kylla whistled in surprise.
“Why would we go there?” Edison asked, confusion giving way to frustration. If he didn’t get some answers soon, he was likely to explode into something more akin to anger.
“So he could talk to Roja,” Saf said, shrugging. “It’s also where we get the answers we need.”
“I’m not even sure what the questions are yet,” he said, the half answer holding him on slow simmer.
“You know we don’t want to leave this in Odysseus hands,” Saf said, bouncing away from the galley and squaring to face her wife. “The whole point of the crèche augment program was to give us another option. If we don’t do this, we’re wasting our potential.”
“Stop!” Edison barked. “What the hell are you talking about? This all ties in with your genetic engineering project and Odysseus? And Ariqat’s ghost fleet and Chancellor Roja fit into it somehow, too?”
“Katryna is news,” Tana said, glancing at him like she’d just noticed he was still in the room. “But yes, the rest of this is all in the same orbit.”
“Somebody needs to explain it to me. I’m at the end of my patience with guessing at shit that everyone else in the room knows. It’s time I get some answers, or I move on,” Edison said surprised at how ready to walk away he was.
“I agree with him,” Saf said, staring at Tana with enough emotional intensity that everyone in the room looked away. “We need to quit hedging this and go all in. Eddy has put up with a lot of debris for us, and he deserves to know.”
Tana looked down at the deck and nodded. “Maybe Ariqat is the catalyst to force us into action.” She swiveled her chair to face Edison squarely. “If I explain it all to you, are you willing to stick it out? The road from here is likely to get a lot stranger.”
“I’ve stuck it out this long,” he said. “You’ve got to trust me enough to not keep any more secrets.”
“Fair enough,” Tana said. “The same applies to the rest of you. If you stay you’re in for the long run.” They all nodded.
“Odysseus is trying to save humanity from extinction,” she said. “We helped build it, along with DevCartel and DoCartel. For the last twenty years it was our responsibility to maintain the program and wait until it was time to turn it loose.”
“There was a lot of friction between the three factions as to how powerful Odysseus should be, and because the other cartels had their own ideas on the subject, WellCartel decided to create an alternative program to address the threat.”
“So the Alphas and the Augments are a counterbalance for Odysseus?” he asked.
“No the crèche Augments are a different approach to the threat itself. Odysseus is dangerous because it is almost unlimited in how it can grow, but it isn’t as bad as what we built it to protect us from.”
“And what would that be?” Kylla asked.
Saf drew in a deep breath and let it out. “On 2243.164, I was on duty at Sentinel Command when we received word that one of our operatives reported a contact with an extrasolar intelligence. This report came in from the Neptune L-4 Trojan Cluster. Mankind has encountered an advanced non-human civilization—”
“You’re serious?” Edison asked.
“She is,” Tana said. “Everything that’s been happening since Tomlinson took over, has resulted from Odysseus trying to establish contact with this ESI and to protect humanity from self-destructing.”
Edison felt the room shift around him in an almost physical way. His mind ree
led, but even as it did, he realized it let the other pieces he had yet to understand fall into place. He shook his head, but knew the truth in her words despite their absurdity.
“We planned for the Augments to be an alternative to Odysseus in a few more generations of development,” Tana said. “We intended to take it offline once we were ready, but the contact came before our work had reached that point.”
“And now you think we should take Ariqat to the point of this contact?” he asked, looking at Saf and shaking his head.
“That’s what she is suggesting.” Tana said.
“Things were spinning politically before the contact came,” she said. “Ariqat might hold the key to putting the brakes on that side of things while we sort out the rest. If that means we take him along for the ride, then I don’t see as we have any choice.”
“I can’t argue that humanity was already on the verge of collapse when this all broke loose,” Tana said. “If it’s true that’s where Roja is, and that’s where this contact is, it’s also where Odysseus will be focusing its attention.”
“And that’s the last place we want to be,” Edison said. “Haven’t we spent the last several months getting away from that damned bastard?”
“I know,” Saf said, “but if we are going to do anything about this, we need to be there too.”
Radio-Astronomy Lab: Aldrin Cycler: Inbound from Mars:
“That’s odd.” Tryna Salazar had developed a habit of talking to herself during the lonely stretches of third shift. She was a telescope technician on the Zone One cycler and spent most of her time staring into the black and tracking the faint radio emissions from deep space.
Ever since FleetCartel had established the first cycler asteroid colonies, they’d leased space to the Science Directorate for observatory missions. It was a way to pay the bills on the slow transport system that still carried most of the colonists outward from earth.
Every few minutes the dish also sent out an old-fashioned radar ping, just to keep track of objects in the near space environment. Seldom did she pick up anything because the region of the sky she scanned was far north of the ecliptic, in the general direction of Vega, so when her screen lit up with several hits on something where nothing should be, she was almost shocked into silence. Almost.
“What have we got here?” she asked herself.
She checked the range. About thirty-two seconds for a return. Flipping to the radar control screen, she tapped in the command for another pulse.
She also opened another screen to look at the signal. It appeared to be several dozen objects clustered together. They were about the size of ships, but ships traveled alone or in small groups, and she’d never seen any that far above the plane of the solar system.
She scratched at her cheek as she contemplated what it could be. The chrono on her display counted down the seconds ‘til the next bounce came back. “What are you?” she asked the empty room before the image materialized, several dozen more objects appeared in her field of view. “Holy mother of Fred,” she swore. The range data showed it was almost traveling parallel to the solar plane. It made the math easy to determine its heading, but she ran it twice to be sure.
Zone One.
“That has to be a fleet of ships,” she said. “That can’t be good.”
She hit the button for another ping, but her guts froze solid as she realized it might not be a good idea to let whoever it was know she was tracking them. “Damn it,” she said, punching in the comcode for her supervisor without remembering it was the middle of the night.
“This better be important,” he said as his face appeared on her thinpad. He was grinding sleep out of his eyes and looking like he wanted blood already.
“Uhm, sorry. Did I wake you?” she asked, flinching even before he could level one good eye over the fist that was rubbing it.
“Of course not. I am always awake at 0300 waiting for your call,” he growled. “What the frag do you need Tryna?”
“I just pinged what looks like a whole fleet of ships heading toward earth.”
“A fleet?” he asked, stifling a yawn and closing the eye she could see.
“Yah,” she said. “It looks like over a hundred ships and they’re coming in from somewhere above the ecliptic.”
“Not possible.” He reached up to disconnect. “I am going back to bed now.”
“Wait,” she pleaded. “We need to report this.”
“To who?” he said. “If it is a fleet, it’s not our skin. Log it as unconfirmed and let it go.” He slapped his hand down on the disconnect and vanished.
“That’s so not right,” she said, once again alone and talking to the room. “Someday I’ll have that bastage’s job.” She looked at the screen once more and decided she had to send a message, anyway.
Administrative Complex: University of Galileo: Galileo Station:
Jahen Tanner sat perched on the front edge of her desk, showing how nervous she was about the Director’s unexpected visit. What he tried not to let show was that he was at least as worried as she was.
Clearing his throat, he looked at the floor, focusing on the intricate pattern of the carpet rather than his words. “I don’t want to know the details. Just tell me, can you solve my problem?” It wasn’t enough to keep Odysseus from eavesdropping, but he hoped it might add a bit of noise to the link.
“What problem is that?” she asked.
“You and Paulson Lassiter discussed something about me and you told him it might be possible to fix things,” he said, moving his eyes toward her and then darting them away to avoid eye contact that might draw his thoughts into a better focus.
He could tell she was staring at him not comprehending, while he scanned the bookshelves and cabinets behind her. “I think it is best if I don’t talk too much,” he said, reaching up to rub the bone behind his ear. He let his gaze drift over her face and her eyes lit up.
“Ah, yes. I know what you’re talking about,” she said, launching herself over to a small cabinet along the wall and pulling out a hand-held scanner. She pointed it in his direction and after several seconds it beeped and she studied the display before she nodded. “I can fix it.”
“Are you having problems with your neurolink?” Odysseus asked, invading his thoughts.
“How long will it take?” He tried to ignore the intrusion and focus on anything other than his link.
“A while,” she said. “How badly do you need it?”
“Is there a problem with your link?” it asked again.
“It’s working just fine,” he said out loud, making sure his expression told her he was talking to the voice in his head.
She cocked her head to the side and sat down again on the edge of her desk. “I understand. I’ll have to see what I can do.”
“She is unfamiliar with the technology,” it said. “If you need it repaired, it would be best to return to the lab in New Hope City.”
“Thank you,” he said, nodding to her as he got up. “I can’t risk going to New Hope City.” He answered Odysseus out loud, hoping that she understood how deeply it was intruding on his life. He let his frustration show in his eyes.
“You need to understand something,” she said. “This isn’t without risk.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“I don’t mean your risk,” she said, frowning. “For me to take this on. I’m making an enemy. You better damned well be able to protect me and my family.”
“I do not understand her comment,” it said. “She is doing something to make enemies on your behalf?”
“You don’t need to understand,” he said, answering Odysseus. He then added for her benefit, “I’ll do what I can.”
“You will owe me for it, too,” she said.
He nodded.
“Explain the intent of your actions,” it said, the voice in his head rolling up in intensity until it made his brain ring like a bell.
Not today, he thought into his link as he smiled and looked down at
the design of the carpet again.
Robinson Biomedical Center: Western Athabasca Valles, Mars:
Tamir bin Ariqat sat upright in his bed, staring at the wall with an expression that made him look like he was working on healing his body by sheer force of will. When Edison entered the room, Tamir blinked several times and then swung his gaze to make eye contact.
“Investigator Wentworth,” he said. “I expected you before this.”
“I have been working to make it happen, but we have run into some problems,” Edison said, pulling a chair away from the wall and positioning it beside the bed. “As I explained before, Chancellor Roja is difficult to contact directly. She has several people protecting her and so they are skeptical about why you need to talk to her, and what you can offer that makes it worth the risk.”
“We obviously have common enemies and I have explained that,” he said.
“I scan the truth of that, but convincing her admirals to give you access is a different matter,” Edison said. “I also understand why you aren’t willing to give me more information that I can use to persuade her people to let you through.”
“This puts us at an impasse,” Ariqat said, letting out a slow growling sigh. “Tell me this. Do you truly think war is coming?”
“That’s probably inevitable,” Edison said.
“I can stop it. Isn’t that worth the risk to her security?”
He leaned back and drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “I would think so, but until you can prove that to Admiral Quintana, he won’t believe you.”
“I see.”
“If you were in his place, would you?” he said. “He knows you were planning to bring charges against Katryna Roja in the Sealed Docket Session you requested. He also understands that you and Derek Tomlinson had been crusading to end FleetCartel’s control over space transportation. You two were the greatest enemies they had until you disappeared.”
The chancellor nodded. “I do not know how I can convince the admiral of my sincerity without unbalancing the situation in the other direction,” he said.
“If it were possible, would you be willing to travel to meet with the chancellor?”
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