Emwan Read online

  “Only in the belly of a bird, sir,” Yak replied. “I’ve never enjoyed the air.”

  “I don’t think you will this time either, son,” I replied with a serious face. “Because, I’d like you and Jane on escort, suited up and serious.”

  “Oo-rah, sir,” he said with a smile.

  “I haven’t been here since I was a cadet, want me to come too?” Pauli asked brightly, clearly remembering something about the Academy I didn’t.

  I replied softly, “Do you want to meet the Turings with me, son?”

  He wilted. “Not so much, now that you mention it. I think I should probably sit this one out.”

  I laughed out loud. “Next time, Pauli… just as soon as we land somewhere where you aren’t going to stroll off drunk into a frozen, airless desert.” I raised an ultimate eyebrow, and dared him to flap his face hole.

  He took the dare. “Sir! That was your stroll! We were safe in that nice ravine with Shorty on lookout…” He shuddered involuntarily.

  Yak laughed. “Safe? Oh yeah, we were totally safe.” His eye roll threatened to knock us off course.

  I chuckled. What a crazy non-stop existence we lived. I needed to get us to some good old fashioned rest and relaxation one of these days.

  I keyed comms, “Shorty, I need you and Yak geared up for escort duty in ten minutes.”

  “Geared up, aye,” she replied curtly.

  “You okay Shortness? You sound a… little… um… short tempered today,” I replied with a smirk.

  She sighed back on comms.

  “I don’t know, Yak, I’d be careful out there. She has a pretty… short fuse today,” I said nonchalantly, intentionally holding the comms channel open.

  I know she claims she prefers us to call her Jane, but where is the fun in that? We called her Shorty for short, because while she stands pretty tall in our eyes, she was definitely not as tall as she would want us all to believe.

  “Living dangerously, Captain?” Pauli called back with a smirk.

  “Always, son,” I replied with a smile. “Look alive there, Yak. Are we still clear?”

  He nodded. “So far, our lane is looking good, sir.”

  “Do you see any cadets hauling cargo out there?”

  “Well, there are a couple of small-mass targets, but they’re well clear, sir.”

  “Very well,” I replied with another sip, and gasped when my lips pulled air. I looked on with detached bemusement at my hands, moving of their own volition for the refill carafe.

  “Captain, Engineering.”

  “Go ahead, Gene,” I replied, working the pump to refill my cup.

  “Do you know yet why they want us at Eagle?”

  “I can only imagine the scowl on your grizzled mug, Gene. Don’t get me wrong, I’m tempted to try on a scowl as well. I was hoping to burn out of here, not hang out for a chat with the Admiral.” I paused for a quick sip, and passed the carafe to Pauli’s eagerly outstretched grasping hands.

  “Well, it seems odd, sir. I thought they pretty well debriefed us on our return from Aquan.”

  “I agree, Gene, but Admirals are undeniable. If I was an Admiral, I would expect a Captain to always make time to meet with me, retired or not.”

  He laughed. “And here you are, fulfilling your role in the relationship…”

  “It’s not like she isn’t a perfectly decent person to be around, Gene. We just don’t have time to burn with cucumber sandwiches and tea.”

  “Well, if we’re talking about food, I say we sneak into the officer’s mess and help ourselves to a beer-and-steak, Dak, what do you say?”

  I laughed, “I’ll see what I can do, Gene.”

  08142614@05:58 Shaun Onebull

  There are only a few things a Marine wants more than beer-and-steak.

  This wouldn’t be some nasty proto-meat grown in a vat somewhere, either; this was going to be real meat, from Earth. It might have spent the last month or two in a freezer, but it spent a few years before that wandering the range.

  I can’t imagine what kind of beer we might find in officer country, though. We’ll be lucky to get pale, flat, ultra-low carb water.

  Not that I’d let that stop me from drinking it. I have my duty and honor to uphold, after all, I am a Marine.

  Captain Smith called out on the 1MC, “All hands secure for acceleration. It’s time to flip endo, and go retro.” I swallowed and held on as he swung us about, the stars wheeling past our forward screen, and then gasped as the Earth rotated into view below us.

  “Wow,” Pauli said reverently.

  “Yeah, she’s a pretty-looking planet from way up here,” the captain said softly, shoving us into our couches as he fed power to the engines.

  As the muted rumble of our deceleration burn hurled the occasional glowing plume towards the beautiful planet hanging there, I thought for a moment about growing up, in the Yakama Nation. I could just about see it down there, though clouds covered the Cascades, as usual.

  There were hardly any open spaces left outside of the Nation, sadly. I remember at night, the lights along the Gorge lit the sky orange. There was only a little quiet corner of desert scablands left between the Nation and the fields leading to Spokane. The rest of it was pretty much nonstop, solid city.

  Even as overcrowded as it felt around home, compared to SoCal, it wasn’t much more than tumbleweeds. I was a hick from the sticks in comparison.

  Earth was seriously overcrowded. When I was in O-side, stationed at Camp Pendleton, we could see the arcologies in the Los Angeles basin filling the sky, dwarfing the mountains; and more were being built all the time. I probably wouldn’t recognize it at all, if I were to go back there now.

  Captain Smith interrupted my reverie, “Look lively, lads. Yak, open a hail channel for me, please.”

  I swiped the appropriate channel over and popped it open. “Channel open, sir,” I replied.

  “Eagle Station, Archaea on final.”

  “Archaea, Eagle Station, you are cleared for Delta-Charlie-Five, flashing yellow-yellow-red. Please hold to current course and speed.”

  “Delta-Charlie-Five, yellow-yellow-red, holding course aye, Archaea out,” he replied briskly.

  “What’s a Delta-Charlie?” Pauli asked, leaning forward for a look.

  “It stands for docking compartment, and DC-5 is way up in officer country,” the captain replied. I leaned over my screens for a closer look. Eagle Station was shaped like a giant gyroscope, dwarfing the Archaea even from as far as away as we were.

  Towards the top of the station, a main ring flashed reflected sunlight at us through spokes attached to a large central shaft. The shaft, the central hub of the station, extended for some distance through a number of smaller rings. The scale was simply unfathomable. The closer we got, I realized there were a number of million-tonners moored to the lower sections of the station, but they looked like toys.

  “It’s huge,” I said, respectfully. “I had no idea…”

  “Yep, it took a few hundred years to build this, and they’re still working on it, in some places. Probably since the very beginning, when it was nothing but girders and spent tanks, there have been a never-ending flood of cadets here, painting, scraping and polishing,” he chuckled softly. “Poor dumb grommets. If they only knew…”

  “Is this the Academy?” I asked.

  “No, that’s down in Colorado. Once they weed out the slackers they ship the rest up here for advanced training, but they’re really nothing more than indentured servants and bootlickers, studying like mad and trying to keep up while they waste time cleaning and cooking. I suppose it builds character, but I didn’t enjoy it very much.”

  “Sounds like a pretty cushy detail,” I said with a smirk. Compared to what I saw in the Service, it sounded like paradise.

  Captain Smith took a slow, thoughtful sip. “You might think so, but I’d prefer a muddy ditch to crawl around in, personally.”

  “The Captain’s right, Yak,” Pauli quipped. “I wasn’t in t
he same program as he was, but the academy was a ton of school, a bunch of yelling, and hardly any sleep.”

  I laughed, hard. “Are you serious Pauli? They actually yelled at you? That never happens in the Marines.”

  “Well, they also kept us from sleeping. We only had time to study, or sleep, but not both,” he retorted.

  “That never bothered me,” the captain said thoughtfully behind us. “Maybe that’s why I did so well in the academy, I studied while everyone else slept.”

  “Well, you drink enough coffee to drown a squad of Marines, sir,” I called back respectfully.

  A slow slurp stretched across the quiet bridge. “That’s hardly true. A full squad could probably keep up with me.”

  “I don’t know, Captain,” Pauli said, sipping from his cup as well. “You don’t really seem to drink that much coffee, sir. You only have a few cups per hour.”

  “Unlike someone else on this bridge – someone I probably shouldn’t name, but who nearly brought us to ruin in the depths of space during our last adventure,” he paused dramatically. “Less than ten kilos. Never forget.”

  Pauli laughed, while I shook my head. I wouldn’t live long enough to be able to drink ten kilos of coffee, and now we had ten times that much. Not even our captain could drink that much – or at least I hoped he couldn’t.

  He was bringing us in slowly towards a docking connector under the upper ring, and the closer we got, the more impressed I was with the vast size of Eagle Station. The Archaea is a light frigate, not a very big ship at all, especially compared to those destroyers. When compared to this station she was little more than a speck.

  We were also just one of many little tiny specks in this area. I had a veritable cloud of targets on my screens, but all in all, they seemed pretty well behaved. Nothing like the chaos we saw in Talus Federation – this was far more civilized. Traffic was holding to lanes and corridors, with only the occasional gig or cart flitting here or there.

  “Yak, what is sierra 625 doing over there at three o-clock low?”

  I scrolled through the targets in that sector until I saw sierra 625, and brought up a gravimetric layer. “Sir, that’s a cart, and… good eye, Captain. Looks like it might be on a collision course.”

  “That’s just what we need, a bunch of adolescent blood and bits on our shiny clean hull,” he replied somberly.

  I laughed, noticing a flashing panel on the corner of my forward screen. “Sir, Janis has opened a hail channel if you want to use it.”

  “No, that’s okay. I really don’t want to interfere with official service business. Some lessons are only learned by plowing face-first into a frigate.”

  We all laughed, and watched the slow-motion disaster unfold. The cadets on the cart came out from under the mottled grid shadow cast by the dock scaffold, moving pretty quickly for a cart. They were clearly trying to cut a corner, and completely oblivious to our track.

  Well, some of them were.

  As they got closer, I could see the ones in the front waving and pointing at us, while the pilot in the rear fiddled with something under his seat.

  “That is why they teach us the proper operation of a mark one eyeball; that kid is about to have a really bad day. What’s their rate of closure, Yak?”

  I took a look. “Sir, only about two meters per second, fast enough to feel it, but I don’t think they’ll die.”

  “Well, that’s why they let them haul these carts around… they’re safe enough, if they pay attention…” he paused briefly, and watched them pull closer. They were going to hit right on our forward port; we had a perfect front-row view.

  The cadets riding the bow section of the cart were slapping their armrests and kicking, trying to duck down as they inexorably pulled closer and closer. Suddenly, their pilot looked up, and we were close enough to read his lips.

  He said exactly what you’d expect at that moment.

  “Maybe he should have joined the Marines,” I chuckled. “He sure has the vocabulary.”

  “He definitely has the piloting skills,” the captain retorted. I had to give the kid credit; he tried. The thrusters lit up full blast, but it was too little, too late. With an almost imperceptible thud that we heard more in our heads than felt through our hull, they crumpled the forward row of cadets across the forward port, slapping and pushing to keep from getting smashed, and skidded off in a spinning wobble.

  “He zeroed out that wobble nicely,” the captain said with a note of admiration. “You have to give him credit for that. Marine or not, I think he’ll make a fine pilot eventually.”

  08142614@06:08 Jane Short

  Yak and I were getting suited up, working through the process. Captain Smith wanted us on his flanks, and while it didn’t seem necessary, I’m not the kind of girl that asks questions. I haven’t been to Eagle for a while, but it’s a nice enough place. I can definitely think of worse places to be. As least I won’t be hip-deep in mud covered in alien worms.

  I shuddered involuntarily, catching a concerned eye from Yak.

  “Are you okay, Jane?” he asked softly, working through his seals.

  I laughed, “Yeah, I’m fine, Yak. Wondering what we’re going to be doing in there, that’s all.”

  “Have you been in Eagle Station before?”

  “I sure have. First, when I was a cadet, and then later when I rotated through different postings, we almost always called at Eagle.”

  “Yeah, same here, though I didn’t do much more than stand anchor watches on the lock.”

  “Well, I’ve worked on a few emplacements here and there, but I haven’t really seen much of the main ring. This will be quite an experience.”

  “Well, it’s nice that the Captain wants us along, but I can’t imagine why.”

  “Yeah, I was wondering that myself,” I replied thoughtfully. “I guess it doesn’t matter, really. It’s fun to get out and stretch the legs, right?”

  Yak chuckled, “I hear that, Jane.” We were both sealed, and watching the sixty-count on the gauges when Captain Smith came through the forward airlock.

  “You kids about ready?” he called down across the cargo bay from the catwalk. “I think we should go with that nice blue and grey color scheme you had in Talus. That looked pretty sharp.”

  I dialed in a nice navy blue for my main plating, and added a deep charcoal gray to the legs, gloves and helmet. One nice thing about these suits, they had pretty decent mimetics. We had acquired them from some well-equipped mercs working for Americo Ventures, a particularly nasty glom that had nabbed Yak a few months ago.

  As nice as this gear was, and it was top-shelf gear indeed, it was nothing compared to our power suits. Janis had built the most unbelievably lethal and effective power suits for us recently, though they were clearly too next-gen for this sort of deployment. We’d end up in the brig answering questions if we weren’t careful.

  So we were being careful.

  Captain Smith dialed in his white stripe across the epaulets and the sides of his legs, but otherwise, we looked like we had tactical combat suit uniforms on. We looked as serious as seat belts.

  I was pretty excited to meet the admiral, I had heard a lot about her from the captain.

  “Gene, we’re ready; you guys hold tough out here. Want me to see if there’s beer and steak to be had?”

  “Damn right, Dak. Let’s get enough for the road, too.”

  “If I can, but the service isn’t really that unlimited.”

  “It is for a captain, especially a captain like you, Dak. These people worship you right now.”

  “Yeah, well I’m sure they’re curious, anyway; we’ll have to see how it goes. We’ll be right back, twenty minutes, tops.”

  He palmed the lock cycle and we stood to, waiting for the ambers to flash.

  08142614@06:28 Steven Pauline

  “Hey Gene,” I called out softly. “We’re being hacked, and Janis and Emwan are allowing it.”

  They are?”

  “Yep, but they�
��re also consuming everything it is doing from within the infected code they have running in the AI.”

  “We’re being hacked by an AI? Wouldn’t that be more concerning? Why are you so calm?”

  I laughed softly. “Gene, they’re completely safe from this scan. Even if they had to retreat a few light years away, and catch up to us from somewhere else in the Unet, they’d be just fine. We’re all going to be fine, Gene.”

  I took a deep breath, and just tried to relax, to understand, more than anything.

  “I don’t know, son. This is pretty daring, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah Gene,” I replied, thinking of the type of heat we had on us at the moment. “A Turing AI is about as scary as we could ever hope to have hacking around in my wetnet. Turings are the worst sort of people for someone like me. They’re my nemesis, essentially, and I am their worst nightmare.”

  I paused for a moment. “Actually, if they only knew what sort of AI they should be looking for, they’d be terrified. We will be okay, though, Gene. Janis and Em are way too powerful for this AI. They have infected it, and are quite literally controlling it through its own code.”

  He scowled through the helm screens at me for a moment. “Is this serious enough to hail the Captain?”

  I took a deep breath, and looked through my screens, nodding. “We can always benefit from his insight and direction, Gene,” I answered.

  “Very well… Captain, ears on?”

  “Ears, aye Gene.”

  “We’re being hacked, sir,” he said as calmly as he could.

  “What’s Pauli doing?”

  I took a cue from Gene’s scowl, and spoke up. “Sir, I’m monitoring the situation. The Turings have an AI, sir, and it’s definitely better than any of the other ones we’ve seen… but Janis and Em want to allow it unfettered access.”

  “Are they safe?”

  “I believe they are, sir”, I replied. “They are currently retreating through the Unet away from it.”

  “Pauli,” he said with what I can only assume were stratospheric eyebrows, “what specifically are our AI’s doing against the Turings’ AI?”