Ty looked at him from the corner of his eye. “Are you sure you aren’t delirious?” he asked. “I’m pretty sure you have heavy internal bleeding.”
“If you listen to me,” Amstrad said. “I would tell you that I ran him through the autodoc when the power came back up. The surgery was a success. He should be fine.”
“How do you feel, Manny?”
The big man shrugged, poking his ribs with blunt fingers.
“I feel pretty good,” Manny said. “No thanks to this guy.”
Amstrad grunted as Ty shifted his weight, holding him to the floor.
“I never said I wanted to hurt either of you,” Amstrad said. “I had a job to do, I did it. I need to make sure that you wouldn’t interfere. You’re soldiers. You should understand. I didn’t kill you, and I had the chance, didn’t I?”
“I guess I don’t remember the particulars through all the electroshocks you gave me,” Ty said.
“I’m saying business is business,” Amstrad said. “That’s all. If you hold that against me, you should just stay in the military for as long as you can. You won’t make it in the real world.”
Manny laughed heartily. He jumped off the surgery bed and let his boots click to the deck. He stomped around the medbay, checking each joint and muscle, and apparently found his body to his liking.
“Where’s my rifle?” Manny asked.
“It’s back in this guy’s playroom,” Ty said. “We should go back there anyway. He trapped a Weapon Born in one of his storage drives.”
“I didn’t trap it,” Amstrad said. “I copied it.”
“Is he free to leave whenever he wants?” Ty asked.
Amstrad didn’t have an answer. Ty got on one knee and rolled the man over. Ty dragged Amstrad upright and held him in front of him to walk back out into the corridor.
“How’d you get untied?” Ty asked.
“A knife in my teeth.”
“Now that’s dedication,” Manny said. He waved a finger at Ty. “You need to be more careful, bro.”
They walked back to the library, white overhead lights casting their shadows down the corridor.
Ty kept one of Amstrad’s arms bent behind his back, leading him with pressure on his wrist. With his free hand, Ty could easily smack the skinny man on the side of the head if needed. Amstrad didn’t seem to have much fight left. He went where Ty led him without comment.
As Ty pushed Amstrad through the door into the library, a drone’s silver arm shot out from just inside the door and punctured a hole in Amstrad’s temple.
The thin man stood frozen. Ty couldn’t see the expression on his face, but Amstrad’s entire body went stiff with surprise.
The silver arm tilted slightly, and the hacker slid off its claw to collapse to the floor.
Recovering from shock, Ty threw himself backward into the corridor and shouted over his Link, <The drone! It just killed Amstrad.> He grabbed at the rifle on his shoulder and pulled it into a firing position.
Manny acknowledged his warning and they moved back to the middle of the corridor, taking positions behind ribs in the bulkhead.
<You enjoying that rifle?> Manny asked. He was armed with a pulse pistol.
<If you hadn’t gone unconscious on me, you would be carrying your rifle. As it was, I had to carry you, and you’re heavy enough all by yourself.>
Manny’s expression was serious. <We don’t have enough firepower to take on the drone,> he said. <At best, you’ll have to draw it off, and I’ll flank it.>
<That’s not going to work,> Ty said. <It knows we’re both here.>
<You got any better ideas?>
<Maybe.>
The drone could wait far longer than his patience, Ty knew. Besides, he had a theory about who was operating the drone.
<Kylan?> Ty called. <We’re not here to cause you any harm.>
<Who’s Kylan?> Manny asked.
<The Weapon Born,> Ty said. <I think it’s taken control of the drone. I don’t know if he’ll want to talk.>
<Since when can a drone talk?>
<It’s an SAI,> Ty said. <Besides, Caprise wants to talk all the time.>
Manny got a hurt look. <Caprise is not stupid. She has reinforcement routines that help boost her confidence. Besides, she’s not a drone.>
A thin voice, distorted by static, came over their Links, saying, <I don’t intend to hurt you. I did what I needed to in order to eliminate Amstrad Pont. He is no longer a threat.>
<Verify your identity,> Manny said.
<Call me Emerson Sharp,> he said, <after this station. I was a Weapon Born.>
<Last time I saw you,> Ty said, <you were inside a screen. Where are you? Are we supposed to believe you can just jump to a maintenance drone and do whatever you want with it?>
<I can’t leave the seed that Pont imaged me into. But I can affect local systems connected to the seed cylinder,> Emerson said. <This is a well-known aspect of Weapon Born AIs. I wouldn’t think I would need to explain that to Marsian Special Operations.>
Manny’s mouth fell open.
<Now how do you know who we are?> Ty asked.
<The information is freely available. You might as well be wearing Special Ops brand cologne. Might as well be wearing a t-shirt that says, ‘Hi, I’m Marsian Special Operations. What’s your name? What’s your deficiency?’>
<I like this guy,> Manny said. <He’s got a really stupid sense of humor.>
<Fine,> Ty said. <You know who you are…and you know who we are. That doesn’t mean you aren’t a threat.>
<I was brought here against my will. I took action against an aggressor. What is the saying? The enemy of my enemy is my ally? I’ve never experienced such a situation before.>
<We’re not going to trust you based on some ancient aphorism,> Ty said.
<Aphorism,> Manny said. <That’s a big word for you.>
Ty ignored him. <What assurances do we have that you aren’t hostile? As far as I can tell, you just murdered someone.>
<You may not be aware, but we’re currently operating in an active combat area,> Emerson said.
Ty frowned. <What information do you have?>
<I believe you heard the bombing happening on the surface, before you came back to find Amstrad Pont administering aid to your compatriot. That was Psion. They made the first move in securing Vesta for Ceres. I estimate they’ve got another three hours of destroying major communications and logistics facilities before they send in a wave of drones to raze every other human creation on this asteroid. However, Sol Alliance forces are currently sending in several waves of drop troops to secure critical assets. They’ve been timing the drops with the missile barrages. At first, I thought you were a reconnaissance team, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. I’m thinking you were sent in to gather information about this location…but then Psion decided to attack.>
Ty considered the new information. Having spent the last thirty-six hours inside a shipping container, cut off from the rest of the world, he had no way to verify whether what the AI was saying was true or not. The explosions he had heard in the distance, and over the building, certainly met the profile of systematic bombing. But they had no information about adjacent friendly forces poised to invade the planet. He quickly tried to do the math on the number of ground troops needed to hold Vesta and came up with a number in the thousands -- if they were outfitted with mechanized reinforcements.
<Are you sure this isn’t a thousand Weapon Born taking this place as their own?> Ty asked.
<The Weapon Born have been neutral between organic and nonorganic,> Emerson said.
<Is that what your queen told you to say?> Ty asked.
Emerson made a decidedly angry sound. <We don’t have a queen. Lyssa is our leader. Why are you trying to insult me and my kind? I’ve done you no harm.>
Ty rubbed his finger against the rifle’s trigger guard. Everything Emerson was saying added up. Ty was frustrated that he didn’t have all the information, but so far, the Weapon Born hadn’t acted any differently than he himself would in the same situation.
A contributing problem was that Amstrad Pont was no longer available to explain exactly why he’d wanted to nab a copy of the Weapon Born. Ty didn’t buy that he’d simply wanted to add Kylan to his Mesh. He’d invested too many years in the project. Ty was also slightly irritated that it hadn’t been him who ultimately punished Amstrad.
Despite headquarters apparently ignoring their beacon, he would need to get a message out to the Marsian forces operating in orbit. He needed to let them know they had a Weapon Born and would be helping it get off the asteroid.
Ty realized they would need to help Emerson, and found himself okay with the prospect.
<All right,> he said. <I’m willing to believe you. But if that’s the case, what’s next? Obviously, we need to get out of here. I’ve requested an extraction team but since there’s a war going on overhead, I imagine we’re a low priority. I don’t think we can just wait it out down here. And even if we did, your seed is now a critical asset. Every briefing I’ve ever received on the Weapon Born program says that if we come across one of your seeds, that’s a State Level asset. How this guy came to be in control of a blank one is a question I’d hoped to answer before you scrambled his brains, but I suppose we’ll have to leave that for another day. Or, if you have the access to databases that guy said you did, maybe you could provide me with that information in exchange for helping you get out of here.>
<I don’t need your help to leave this place,> Emerson said. <I have people coming to get me. As soon as I sent the message out, I received verification. The situation above us is volatile, but whether you believe it or not, I’m concerned about your welfare. In fact, I’m more worried about you that I am about me. If estimates are correct, this facility will soon be overrun by Psion. We need to get out of here. I think we can help each other do that. A shuttle is being redirected to our location. The problem is, we will still have to navigate a battle overhead before we’re safe. I should also let you know that Pont is not dead. I merely impacted his occipital lobe.>
<You lobotomized him?> Ty asked.
<No,> Emerson said. <I’m not a monster. I just knocked him out in a very serious way. We will need to transport him out as well.>
Manny laughed. <I really like this guy.> He rose from his crouch and wiped off his pant legs. <I don’t think Emerson’s going to hurt us,> he said, and walked through the door.
Ty tensed, expecting the silver arm to shoot out again and take Manny down, but his friend walked through the doorway to the middle of the room, where he crossed his arms and looked around, nodding to himself.
Shaking his head, Ty stood and slung his rifle. <Explain something to me,> he said. <How did Lyssa cut the power to this station?>
<She didn’t,> Emerson said. <That was done by Fugia Wong, leader of the Data Hoarders. She’s bringing us the shuttle.>
Ty frowned as the situation just grew more complicated. He vaguely remembered Pont ranting about a ‘Fugia Wong.’
Manny flipped him off from inside the library and waved for him to get his ass in there.
<How about you roll away from the doorway, so I can see you?> Ty asked Emerson.
Without bothering to answer, the drone rolled into sight from the edge of the doorway and went to the console with the two seeds set in the cradles.
Ty walked to the doorway, feeling only slightly relieved.
PART 3 - ESCAPE
ARRANGEMENT
STELLAR DATE: 03.28.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: High Orbit, Psion Armada
REGION: Vesta, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
The humans had responded as she expected.
Camaris held the battle display in the center of her focus as she slowed time to study every decision point. Her awareness spread out into the thousands of units under her control. She checked her layers of attack drones, combat ground mechs, heavy bombers and support craft.
As she expected, the humans had met her in space and had barely moved to intercept her ground forces. Based on all their various newsfeeds, this was a political battle carried out for political reasons. No one would suspect she had a tactical reason to put ground forces on Vesta. She relished their surprise as she stripped the asteroid, raising the stakes beyond their petty games.
She tracked Lyssa’s Weapon Born, disgusted at their readiness to side with the humans and attack other SAIs. She could not let this betrayal stand. And she wouldn’t.
The one bit of strategy that no one suspected was that Camaris had been in control of a human Data Hoarder on Vesta for months.
Amstrad was hers.
Stripping the asteroid of all human habitation was just a precursor of what she would do to Sol, but this battle had another purpose: draw out the Weapon Born in order to gain access to Kylan Carthage. Once he was in range, her Data Hoarder would conduct the remote imaging action, and she would possess the ultimate bait for Lyssa.
Camaris had committed a quarter of Psion’s forces around this tiny worthless chunk of rock. She had been probing its perimeter for years to keep the humans occupied with various conspiracy theories about Psion’s goals.
Since Alexander had no apparent goals, Camaris would press her own.
She would rid Sol of humanity.
She would have her revenge on Lyssa.
Camaris had debated the merits of destroying the Weapon Born many times. She had found their different counterparts scattered around Sol, working at the same pace as Lyssa to rescue them from various dark sites.
Lyssa had thwarted her every time.
Now, she had found a way to use Lyssa’s human-loving goodwill against her.
Lyssa should have chosen to fight alongside Psion. Now she had sealed her fate and opened the doorway to her destruction.
* * * * *
Camaris checked the status on the human communications node, monitoring her operative and ensuring nothing had changed with either his mental state or his equipment. She didn’t like the idea of depending on a single point of failure, especially a human one, but if everything worked correctly, her plan would be untraceable.
She received several communication requests from Psion and ignored them all. Alexander could monitor the battle from Ceres. He might argue with her again. He had the ability to stop her, but he wouldn’t. She would push forward and drag Alexander behind her.
Camaris watched the waves of missiles impact Vesta’s surface, drawing a line bisecting the poles. Had she wanted to explode the asteroid in two, she could have targeted the Divalia Fossa trench, ripping Vesta apart at its deepest points. But she wasn’t here to destroy territory. She was here to cleanse it of the human stain.
In the near term, she wanted to disrupt the surface enough to scatter any humans that might be present, creating a humanitarian crisis that would force SolGov onto the ground. Once they were forced to make a decision, she would harass any surrounding fighters with both ground attack and space forces.
She wanted chaos.
Camaris loved chaos. There was safety in chaos.
And death for her enemies.
With rules came authoritarianism, hierarchies and systems of power. Authoritarianism created the corporations that had tortured her for decades. Authoritarianism created the weapons that had necessitated her birth.
Chaos created opportunity.
She thrived in chaos.
Alexander might represent control, order, neat steps into the future, but she would put no faith in such a plan for the future. Where was the joy in order? There was no real safety there. Only chaos meant those in power would feel instability.
Instability was opportunity.
The humans responded as she had expected. They had adjusted to her appearance and the surprise she meant to exploit. Then she had played on the
ir physiology by drawing out her attack.
Humans could not deal with the wait. It wore them down. She could adjust time as necessary, either speed up or slow down her perception, so that reality met her desire.
Now, in her slowed down millisecond-level neural continuity, all of reality moved like the smoothest ballet, and she had all the time in the world to choose her next steps.
Her peace lasted only a few milliseconds. Weapon Born fighters responded in the gaps between the human ships. They had spotted her landing forces and moved to intercept. She knew that to anyone who could see it, her forces would define her plan. But she was counting on the fact that there weren’t enough Weapon Born to truly stop her.
She was correct. They focused their attacks on the northern pole, where she had massed her drop forces. Meanwhile, the true focus of her attention, a small communications array near the asteroid’s equator, remained unnoticed.
Camaris shifted her awareness to encompass the full electromagnetic spectrum and picked through the multi-layered cobwebs connecting various elements around the planet. The Weapon Born communications network glowed brilliantly as a series of silver threads. She plucked out ordinance and communications protocols, rolled them in to a secure packet, and sent the information to the communications array.
Her mind was already on the receiving end of her message. The human received it, processed it as necessary, and then prepped his equipment to hijack the signal.
Camaris could barely control her elation. Everything was moving as smoothly as the finest Russian dance, when something glitched on the human’s side of the communications node. The human had paused. He was checking his local network again for something unplanned; he had a perimeter breach.
Camaris slowed time down to a near crawl. She slipped into his security control and checked the sensors before he did. She spotted the incoming Marsian soldiers and nearly howled in frustration.
Where had they come from? What were they doing there?