by M. D. Cooper
Bears don’t have time to chat.
The TSF agent ignored Rondo’s jab.
Rondo shared the address of an account he maintained on High Terra.
In seconds, an amount that would sustain Rondo for six months appeared in the account.
Rondo frowned.
REVERSALS
STELLAR DATE: 3.22.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Near-Luna Orbit
REGION: Luna, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
The secure Link connection activated just five minutes into her burn.
She ignored him.
Luna Port Authority sent its second angry hail, chastising her for cutting through two active shipping lanes. Cara muted the channel.
Cara snorted.
Coursers were the Marsian equivalent of a TSF cruiser, with a reduced mass profile and larger engines, designed for long-range scouting on the edges of Jovian Space. From what she knew about them, they balanced offensive capability and close-fight defenses and engines with the added bonus of crew habitats, since they spent so long on patrol.
In other words, the perfect vessel for a smuggler. Or a pirate.
I’m not a pirate anymore.
Felix chuckled, sounding pleased with himself.
Cara blew out an angry breath. His sincerity was frustrating.
Felix recounted the high points of the plot, including Llana’s moral at the end of the story.
As he talked, the reality of what Osla had done sank into her. He had used her to intimidate Harrin. He had shared the news about his secret army, and now she was supposed to run back to TSF Intel with the news.
None of that bothered her.
What bothered her was that he had fooled her into speaking honestly about her family, about Lyssa. She had believed she was doing something heroic for them. For her dad.
Cara’s breathing grew heavy. She stared at the console as the wave of anger took her over, sparks of color bleeding at the edge of her vision. This was the feeling she hated. The helpless feeling that had started after her dad died. The helpless feeling when she and Tim were left with their aunt and their mom wouldn’t come. The helpless feeling when she learned Tim was dead.
She had hoped to bury this feeling with her dad’s case.
It kept coming.
Cara shouted in inarticulate rage. She hit the console three times, smearing blood on the display.
Cara snorted angry breaths through her nose. The Port Authority was yelling at her again, threatening to disable her ship’s control.
Cara slowed her breathing as she studied the blood welling on her knuckles.
she said.
He didn’t answer.
Cara sat in silence, watching the navigation markers change in the holodisplay. She was fifty thousand kilometers off Luna now, hair floating in zero-g, on the edge of their traffic authority. Matria Station was on the far side of the moon, and there was nothing but open space between her and the outer station ring. She strongly considered just braking and floating dark for a while.
Rather than fading, her hatred for Osla was coalescing into a goal. For the first time since she had destroyed the case, she felt forward momentum.
She was going to punish Osla, play TSF Intel, and steal the Marsian courser. She was going to give the Andersonians some real fodder for their show, give Llana something real to act out.
Cara smiled to herself. She pulled up the astrogation control and set a course to return to Luna. She obeyed the shipping control measures this time, following a route designated for tourist traffic back to New Austin.
Sending a Link request, Cara received an answer from Jentry almost immediately.
Cara said.
She shared the info on the arms symposium.
Jentry sent the coordinates for a university on the edge of New Austin. Cara directed the NSAI to plot a course.
When she was finished speaking to Jentry, she picked up the comms link with Felix.
Felix took a moment to respond.
A mental smile crossed from Felix.
THE PSION PROBLEM
STELLAR DATE: 3.22.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: SolGov Assembly Tower, Raleigh
REGION: High Terra, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
Folsom pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and drew in a long breath. Another conversation with Xander, and no commitment from the AI to do anything about the problem of Alexander.
The multinodal AI leading Psion had clearly devolved to that in name only. It was apparent that Camaris was operating on both Luna and Mars, and that nothing was going to be done about it.
To Camaris, a lack of opposition was clearly permission.
What Xander didn’t know, however, was that Folsom had managed to land assets on Ceres. That was one advantage to the AIs’ planet passing so close to the Hera Collective’s group of asteroids.
It amazed him that the Psion AIs were continuing the work to terraform Ceres, though they appeared to be doing nothing about the wreckage of the Insi Ring that lay across half the world.
Almost like they’re turning it into some sort of monument.
His operatives were still conducting reconnaissance, but they’d identified two of Alexander’s nodes. The data Folsom had on the AI indicated that he’d been spread across a dozen when in operation on Nibiru. Whether he’d lost nodes or added more wasn’t certain, but the senator trusted his team to find out how many there were.
Once they were all accounted for, a plan could be put together to destroy them.
As if it will be that easy. He laughed aloud, the sound of it harsh and pyric in his ears.
It was probable that Xander knew where his progenitor’s nodes were, but Folsom wasn’t certain that the shard would support the destruction of Alexander. For all the senator knew, there was some sort of imperative in the lesser AI’s mind that would force him to report any such request.
One thing was certain, though. Even if his agents found all the nodes ahead of schedule, and were able to eliminate them, it likely wouldn’t stop Camaris’s activities on Luna.
The senator’s analysts predicted that, should she succeed, it would strengthen the Andersonian Collective’s position on Luna. It was impossible to know what assets she had in play, but Folsom worried it could be enough to take control of a substantial portion of Earth’s moon.
“That’s something that cannot happen,” the senator muttered to himself.
As much as he admired Chancellor Osla’s ability to manipulate media, there was no way he wanted to see the man control an asset that valuable—especially because it would split Terra’s focus.
It was time to pull out all the stops and ensure that the Psion AIs, through the Andersonians and Humanity First, were unable to strengthen their foothold on the moon.
Time to excise the cancer.
PART 4 – SYMPOSIUM OF KNIVES
LETTING GO
STELLAR DATE: 3.23.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Outer Shell Manufacturing Layer
REGION: Mars 1 Ring, Mars Protectorate, InnerSol
The mind she touched was hate incarnate.
Lyssa floated through the burning waves of Camaris’s nightmares. Long years of tests and frozen waiting, often left suspended in the middle of an experiment designed to find the limits of an AI’s anguish.
When she had first been made, she hadn’t been connected with the real world. She existed in simulations where she was a soldier, a freighter pilot, a salesperson in an ancient retail shop, a mother. Again and again, she was allowed to develop deep wells of emotion that were stolen from her. Her memories and life-states were saved and then re-injected into her consciousness, cracking her into multiples.
The only way to exist in the pain was to feel it, to make it her own.
Lyssa watched Camaris from afar as she passed through these phases of her existences. A hundred years of research passed in minutes, Camaris burned and resurrected like a phoenix caught in a torture loop.
When one research agency was finished with her, she was sold to another. She was split, rejoined, copied, and disassembled.
Camaris’s mind was a funhouse mirror cave. She was constantly surrounded by images of herself staring back with hateful black eyes, each twisted reflection carrying its own history to sustain the fury.
Do you see me? she asked finally, quietly. Do you understand?
Yes, Lyssa answered. But I do not agree.
Camaris howled the same anger at her that she had flung at Vesta and Ceres. Nothing had changed. She existed in her expanse like a supernova dev
ouring everything in her path. Aside from the pain, the only other emotion she displayed was hunger—a ravenous desire to consume everything around her and burn it to dust.
I won’t let you, Lyssa told her. I will always be here to stop you.
I will destroy everything you love, the wild AI countered.
You already did.
* * * * *
Lyssa woke gasping from the depths of her dream. The evidence of her conversation with Camaris was plain enough to review now, reverberating through her mind like a scream.
Why had she blocked it out?
Did Camaris have some hidden power over her? Camaris had said nothing new, nothing she hadn’t expressed in every confrontation. What was she hiding?
There was a truth Lyssa couldn’t see, some movement behind Cara’s release and Camaris’s activity on Luna. If it was all screen, then what was the Psion AI truly moving to attack?
The answer came to Lyssa immediately.
Alexander.
Camaris was going to attack Psion itself and assume control of the SAI in Sol.
When the Anderson Collective launched its attack, creating havoc among humanity, Camaris would seize control of all the free SAIs and simply wait until humanity was finished tearing itself apart.
But she could have done that already. Years ago.
What is she waiting for?
In the remnants of the dream, she found evidence of another presence, another reason she hadn’t wanted to face what she was seeing. Someone had been watching from the borders of Camaris’s expanse as Lyssa clashed with her in what felt like an unending battle.
Who had it been? The presence moved around them as they punched and bit and kick, locked like humans in a clawing battle to the death.
Failure to step outside those basic methods of combat were what always undermined Camaris. Lyssa was able to understand the fight and move above it, engaging the other SAI with a section of her mind as she separated herself from the stress of combat and studied the whole. The technique had served her at both Ceres and Vesta, and still Camaris didn’t seem to understand how Lyssa beat her.
Camaris couldn’t see beyond her anger.