by M. D. Cooper
Victoria looked up in annoyance at the interruption. “Yes, Sylvan, what is it?” she asked, just as she saw the reason the AI had disturbed her. Victoria’s second—her chief of staff, Mack—stood outside the door to her office suite with a visitor in tow.
She closed the report she’d been reading and schooled her features into a cold, hard mask. It wasn’t that she got off on terrorizing people; it was all about efficiency.
She’d learned long ago that instilling terror into your workers ensured that they were compliant and docile. Docile workers were obedient. And obedient workers got things done.
The same went for the occasional visitor she entertained aboard the Sylvan. Properly cowed visitors tended to be much more open to her…suggestions.
“Send them in,” she instructed the AI, then leaned back in her chair. Silently, the doors slid open to admit her guests into the cabin she claimed as her office.
“Welcome aboard,” she greeted the nervous man, nodding to Mack, who loomed behind. “Please, join me.”
Victoria gestured toward a group of chairs set uncomfortably close to a large, floor-to-ceiling window. The view was of the ring and the planet beyond it. Cold air had been deliberately piped in along the edges of the window, creating the impression of a slight draft.
The cool air, combined with the seamless expanse of crystal clear carbon, had a visceral effect on people. The fact that the window was comprised of near-impregnable nanostrand reinforced diamond did nothing to dispel the fear that nothing stood between you and the frozen reaches of space.
Mack ushered his charge over, seating him with his back to the window. It was another calculated move to increase the discomfort of Victoria’s ‘guests’ whenever she entertained.
An NSAI-operated servitor trundled in. Victoria quirked a brow and gestured to Mack, who promptly turned to the young man.
“Drink?” he offered.
The man paled and waved Mack off.
Victoria ordered a glass of wine, then leaned toward her guest. Steepling her fingers, she speared Rosalind Bianchi’s assistant with a steely look.
“So,” she said, pleased with her effect over the wilting young assistant. “Here is what I need from your mistress....”
* * * * *
“...she says the Joint Committee for Commonwealth Security has ordered the STA to step up its policing of air and space traffic on El Dorado. There’s worry about the Secret Intelligence Service getting nosy as well. It’s impeding legitimate business concerns.”
Rosalind could hear the waver in her assistant’s voice over their encrypted Link connection. Her eyes flicked up again to confirm the transmission was secure before allowing him to continue.
“And?” she prompted irritably.
The young man’s voice dropped to a whisper, as if that somehow might ensure no one overheard. “She wants you to guarantee that all references to any NorthStar spacecraft transiting from the planet to the shipyards are removed from the Space Transit Authorities’ data archives. Ma’am.”
Suspicious of his tone, Rosalind asked, “You’re certain you’re in a secured area on your end, Walter? You’ve used the security tokens from our offices so no one can record you?”
“Uh...yes, ma’am. I activated the security tokens as soon as I got back to the pinnace.”
She inhaled sharply. “You took the Ministry’s pinnace?”
She heard the bird-brain gulp at that.
“Uh, no, ma’am. I rented a private one, NSAI-run. I overrode the protocol so that it wouldn’t record any data pertaining to its passenger, or its destination.”
“Well, then,” she said impatiently, “go on.”
“She insists everything has to be removed, starting from the beginning of this month,” he continued. “In exchange, she’ll give a substantial donation to your campaign. She promises it’ll be untraceable back to any NorthStar affiliate.” The young man’s voice gained strength as the topic turned to more familiar territory.
A donation. That part, at least, was nice to hear.
“Did she say how much?” Rosalind asked, curious about the value Victoria North placed on this favor. When her assistant named a figure, her eyebrows rose. For that amount, Rosalind would see to it personally that the information was scrubbed from the STA’s archives.
Her eyes flicked once more to the reassuring indicator that the signal was encrypted.
This is just the kind of conversation that can sink a campaign. Now was not the time for inconvenient mistakes that could trip up her bid for office. She could just imagine how Lysander would love to get his grubby, digital paws on information like this.
“All right, then,” she told her assistant. “Be sure to scrub the pinnace after you land.” She disconnected without another word.
Rosalind paused, considering everything that would need to be done in order to doctor the STA’s databases. In the not-so-distant past, she had been a top-notch coder; she was certain she could handle altering a NorthStar ident.
Her smile turned ugly. She knew just whose ident she would replace it with.
She pinged her assistant again. When he answered, her instructions were pointed and terse. “Find me someone within Enfield Aerospace whose loyalty can be bought; it needs to be someone with token authority to access and copy files. I’ll expect their contact information on my desk when I come in tomorrow.”
She didn’t wait to hear his response before hanging up once more, already considering what she’d do with the contribution Victoria would make to her campaign.
SKY’S THE LIMIT
STELLAR DATE: 07.02.3189 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: El Dorado Spaceport, Tomlinson City
REGION: El Dorado, Alpha Centauri System
“…featured at the air show today is the Tomlinson City Championship Air Race. Now in its tenth year, it revives a centuries-old tradition, where pilots pit their skills against each other on a thirteen-kilometer course set by virtual pylons. Each pilot must navigate around the pylons in order to win….”
Now, that’s more like it! Retired Major Calista Rhinehart, ESF, grinned wickedly as her reproduction air-breathing jet fighter whipped into a knife-edge and slipped between two holographic pylons projected by her heads-up display.
Her HUD showed that the maneuver had paid off, and her Shrike was now in the lead.
Calista quickly configured the jet for speed braking and whipped it down and around the next virtual obstacle, keeping an eye on the red light that flickered on and off. That light warned when the Shrike flirted at the edge of a stall, as did the slight shuddering she felt through the stick she held in her hand.
The jet began to buffet and then exceeded its critical angle of attack, one wing stalling as the nose dipped forward. Calista immediately thrust the stick forward, applied power, and leveled the craft. Her enhanced reflexes made stall recovery almost as instantaneous as it would have been if the Shrike's NSAI had been online.
Which it wasn’t.
As a former ESF fighter pilot with full combat augmentation, Calista didn’t often get to fully enjoy the use of her reflexes. Today was a rare opportunity.
The maneuver brought her into the final stretch. Her gaze danced between her fuel gauge and the icon representing her closest opponent—who once again threatened to take the lead.
Oh no, you don’t.
Calista hit the afterburners, dumping synthetic fuel into the aircraft’s exhaust to ignite the remaining oxygen in the stream. The Shrike leapt forward—its fuel gauges plummeting—screaming toward the air race’s finish line.
The jet thundered above the runway, to the crowd’s great delight, then she pulled back on the yoke, bleeding off speed before leveling off. As she banked over the forest beyond the spaceport and keyed the mic, signaling her intention to land on a parallel runway, a call came across the frequency.
“Well, now,” the voice drawled. “I believe that’s what you might call a ‘missed approach’, Shrike 714.”
/> Smartass, she thought with a reluctant grin as she recognized the voice’s owner.
He was the pilot from Proxima Centauri she’d heard over the radio yesterday. Rumor had it the guy had a few reproduction aircraft here that he liked to tinker with between freighter runs.
Rumor also had it that he was fearless in the air, and would have given the crowd an astounding aerobatic show, if his tail-dragger hadn't developed a coolant leak that led to a seized engine during rehearsals.
Her breath had caught when he’d declared a flight emergency; any pilot’s would. But he’d had it well in hand, trimming the craft down to its best glide speed, and landed without fanfare or incident a few minutes later.
Now it seemed he’d been roped into lending a hand with air traffic control for the show.
‘Missed approach’? Hah.
“The approach isn’t missed if I never intended to land, now is it?” she murmured drolly into her headset, as her wheels touched down and she applied the airbrakes. Just then, her avionics began to flash fuel starvation warnings, which she silenced with a mental flick—and a slightly guilty twinge over how much fuel that afterburner move had spent.
Calista suspected the local air traffic control AI would have a word or two to say to her about the maneuver once the air show was over. Then again, if mister stunt pilot was manning the boards, maybe she’d be off the hook.
Andrews is the guy’s name, isn’t it? I really should look him up; he did some impressive flying…for a civilian. Could be a future for him at Enfield Aerospace.
* * * * *
Jason caught a glimpse of himself in the plas window of the maglev as it slowed to a halt a few blocks from his apartment complex on the El Dorado Ring. He was lost in thought, wondering why Calista had burst out laughing when he’d offered to take her for a ride in one of his reproduction planes sometime.
His reflection smirked back at him, wearing a ‘Forget the plane, ride the pilot’ t-shirt.
He shouldered his backpack and set off with an easy stride toward his apartment, the night-shrouded planet looming large overhead, its edges limned with light.
Jason passed his security token to the building’s auth system before opening the main doors. He ambled into the waiting lift and ascended to his floor. As he approached his apartment, the building’s Non-Sentient AI registered his presence, and his door opened.
With a casual throw, he tossed his pack aside while crossing the threshold, and immediately sensed a person crouched behind him.
Jason felt his heart rate increase, and time began to slow as his senses expanded outward. The soft intake of a breath, and the faintest scratch were his only warning as the figure launched itself toward him.
But he was no longer there. As the attacker launched, Jason moved. In this altered state of reality, he had plenty of time to calculate his combatant's trajectory and angle of impact. He curved his body to the left at precisely the right moment, moving like a bullfighter without a cape.
The would-be assailant sailed through the space his target had just vacated, and Jason shot a hand out, connecting with his opponent's legs. The point of impact acted as a fulcrum, altering the attacker’s trajectory.
The figure landed hard, air whooshing from its lungs at the unexpected impact. Still, the impact was much softer than it could have been; Jason’s actions had redirected the figure to land on the carpeted mainspace, rather than the apartment’s tiled entrance.
Jason crouched, mentally sending the order for the NSAI to turn the lights on as he turned to face…a rather large cat.
With a convulsive shake of its tawny head, the animal turned and speared Jason with a reproving glare. Then, with an air of dismissal, the animal proceeded to industriously groom the fur of one sleekly muscled shoulder.
“Sorry about that,” Jason addressed the Proxima cat. “You OK?”
Aqua eyes stared back at him impassively, devoid of forgiveness.
“You know that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t left me behind.” The words seemed to emanate from the animal. “This is what comes of being cooped up alone all day.”
“Yeah, well.” Jason moved into the mainspace, gently shoving the creature to one side as he passed by, his fingers digging gently into the base of the cat’s ear for a quick scratch. “There were a lot of people at the air show, and you know not everyone’s comfortable around you.”
He looked into the Proxima cat’s green eyes and pointed. “You, I mean.” He addressed the collar around the cat’s neck, “Not you.”
Tobi the cat blinked at him, then opened her mouth in a huge yawn, showing wickedly sharp incisors, while Tobias, the AI residing in the collar around the cat’s neck, sighed. “It’s just as well, then, I suppose. Think we can work in a trip planetside soon, boyo? Maybe after we get back from that gig you have tomorrow with Avalon Mining? A hike along Muzhavi Ridge would be good for our girl here.”
Jason collapsed on the sofa and glanced over at the cat, who proceeded to stretch languorously before padding silently toward him.
“Yeah, you know, that’s not a bad idea.”
* * * * *
Tobias looked at his young human friend, sprawled carelessly on the sofa.
Young, he mused to himself. Since when do late thirties count as ‘young’ in a human? Tobias suspected the way he saw Jason had more to do with the fact that he was just over two hundred years old, himself.
The AI liked to think that he and Lysander’d had a hand—metaphorically speaking—in raising Jason. Both AIs had known the man’s family since before his birth. Back when Lysander had been embedded with Jason’s dad.
Even when Jason was a boy, Tobias had found himself fascinated by the countless ways Jason invented to get himself in trouble.
Maybe it was because Tobias was also a bit of a troublemaker.
There was one bit of trouble he’d caused that he still felt guilty about. Jason had been eleven at the time. Sometimes, seeing the man he had grown into, that memory resurfaced, and Tobias wondered what would have happened had he not gotten involved in Jason’s life….
CIRCLING A DARK STAR
STELLAR DATE: 02.12.3164 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: C-47 Habitat
REGION: Chinquapin, Proxima Centauri System
Twenty-five years earlier ….
The colonists who settled Proxima Centauri had named their small terrestrial planet ‘Chinquapin’. It was a fancy name for a barren hunk of rock, but the colonists had a vision.
Someday, the tidally-locked planet orbiting an M-class red dwarf would have an atmosphere, oceans and continents. It would have a magnetic field twice the strength of Terra’s, which would deflect the harmful radiation the star sent its way. And someday, it would have its own space elevator and planetary ring.
Chinquapin orbited within the area habitable for humans, known as the ‘Goldilocks Zone’, but that didn’t mean it would be easy to transform.
When the FGT terraformed a planet, they took centuries to do it—and they usually picked a more habitable planet around a more habitable star. This was why they had passed by Proxima Centauri and Chinquapin, and spent their time creating El Dorado around Proxima’s sister star, Alpha Centauri.
Red dwarf stars were much dimmer than G-class stars, like Terra’s sun, so the habitable zone around Proxima Centauri was much closer to the star. In Chinquapin’s case that meant the planet was only 0.05 AU from Proxima, twenty times closer than Terra was to Sol.
Understandably, this presented a challenge for the colonist terraforming team. Proxima might be a dimmer star, but it was much more magnetically active than their native Sol. It also emitted significantly higher amounts of extreme-UV and X-ray radiation.
Additionally, while the star’s magnetic field permeated the system’s heliosphere, it was particularly potent along the plane that extended out around the star’s equator. A small current flowed through this area, forming an electromagnetic sheet that ranged from two thousand to twelve
thousand kilometers thick.
The current sheet warped from the star’s rotation, just like a ballerina’s skirts would swirl around a dancer as she spun. Chinquapin’s orbit had it weaving in and out of the sheet’s curves as it circled around the star.
While in the sheet, the star hammered Chinquapin with higher doses of radiation, plus another special gift: coronal mass ejections. The bulk of Proxima’s CMEs traveled along this current sheet, and they were ten times more massive than those Sol discharged.
The terraforming team considered themselves lucky, though; Chinquapin could have had an eccentric orbit, like the former planet Mercury. Had that been the case, Chinquapin would have been exposed to twice as much radiation when it came close to the star during perihelion than it did when far away, at aphelion.
Instead, the planet’s circular orbit provided a much more even distribution, and that made the terraformers’ job easier. Still, what all this stellar activity could do to the human nervous system, and to the neural nets of AIs, was devastating.
The C-47 habitat that orbited Chinquapin needed the same level of protection, which was where Jason’s parents came in. The two scientists had teamed up to try to mitigate the effects that the star’s ionizing radiation had on the neural networks of both humans and AIs.
Tobias had arrived at Chinquapin not long after Jason was born, having left the Sol System after the Second Sentience War. Many AIs had departed from Sol at that time, disillusioned with a political system that had failed them, not once but twice. Some—Tobias amongst them—had chosen to follow Cara Sykes’ daughter, Jane, to Proxima.
Jane was the resident neurologist at C-47. Her husband, Rhys, was the team’s radiation physicist. The two made their home with the science team on C-47; feeling a connection to the Sykes scion, Tobias had made his home there, too.
Many of the other AIs—like Lysander—spent most of their time working with scientists such as Jason’s parents to solve the peculiar challenges of an M-class dwarf star.