Warren

“Shut it down, Mia. The damn thing’s starting to slew again.”

Anders started back toward the airlock as Mia paused without shunting the drill into standby. Christ, what had made him think coming to Warren would turn a profit. With an untested tele-operator no less. He still missed Val, the best crew he’d ever had even if she hadn’t been human. But if he didn’t conjure up a payment, the full note on the Fair Bastard would come due the moment he docked at a LOW OrbIT station. It was this or turn over thirty years of his life for repo.

He’d known it was coming. He’d tried to put it off with increasingly high risk gambles and kept coming up snake-eyes. Then he’d gotten a heads up from his contact at Norilsk-Chelyabinsk that a rogue ship had set off some of the sensors they’d scattered across the abandoned mining planet. He’d taken the chance that he could sell some information about it back to N-C’s security branch, along with any high value ore he uncovered. Both were long-shots. The only thing Sapphira had told him was the ship was too small to be an ore hauler, so it was unlikely to be on a serious prospecting mission. More likely a smuggling run. He’d nosed around the sector where she’d indicated they’d set down but hadn’t discovered anything. Now he was exploring with the drill to see if they had a jump on a deposit no one else had found yet. But he was running out of time.

System data classified Warren as a dwarf planet, an icy rock occupying a stable orbit in the outer zone of one half of a twin red binary system. Its gravity was roughly eleven percent Terran normal, a third lighter than Earth’s moon even though it was only one-tenth its diameter. That made moving ore relatively easy as long as you took momentum into account. It was rich in nickel-iron and iridium isotopes, as well as other exotics and radioactives unevenly distributed through a matrix of pumice-like stone filled with water-ice that surrounded a rocky core beneath an outer shell of frozen nitrogen. Roaming Warren’s tunnels was like being in the perpetual center of an intense electromagnetic storm. 

Norilsk-Chelyabinsk had staked the original claim to the system. Technically, N-C still held rights to all of Warren and its elusive El Doradan riches. But their onsite management had been as riddled with corruption and black-market subcontracting as the planet was with holes. With the collapse of the iridium market, they no longer had even the minimal resources needed to enforce ownership. LOW OrbIT had more pressing issues than policing corporate titles. So Warren had become a layover and a blind drop for independent prospectors and smugglers, the same cast as in its heyday only with new affiliations.

Sapphira Karpin remained at the center of that web of corruption, feeding independents like Anders rumors and tidbits of information for a hefty percentage of their haul. She’d cut a deal with anyone, regardless of their notoriety, which made her as much feared as respected. You never knew who she had as backup. She dealt with people who had lethal reputations.

“Can’t we correct for the drift?” Mia asked, a delicate hand still poised over the remotes.

“First, we have to figure out what’s going on.” Anders opened the ship’s locker and readied both suits. When he turned to find Mia still seated, he added, “We’re not going to figure it out from in here.”

“The bore-hole still hot,” she said, unmoving.

“Not by the time we get down there.” He wandered back to stand beside her. “The grav-track’s shielding will handle any residuals.”

“Then why the suits?” She dubiously eyed them hanging in the ship’s locker.

“I don’t know another way to walk the hole,” he answered with as much patience as he could muster. Remote operators by definition were risk averse. They never understood that there were times that only your own eyes and hands would do. This one would have to learn if she wanted to succeed in the competitive world of independents. There wasn’t room for a corporate division of labor. Everyone got dirty.

He laid a gentle hand on her slender shoulder, squeezing it as reassurance. She jerked as if struck. “Don’t touch me, Dooley. Just because you’re my boss doesn’t give you the right.”

Anders lifted his hand away. He knew things were going sour on the way out when Mia was more interested in her programs and manuals than shared conversation. There was something about that he didn’t quite trust. She was pretty in a diminutive, China doll sort of way, almost a perfect miniature of a woman. But her eyes were too cold, her demeanor too severe. Plus her aversion to basic human contact was extreme. Not that he ever would with an employee. It always ended up messy.

“Lock it down and let’s get moving, Professor.” he barked.

“Don’t call me that,” she snapped back at him.

By the time they crosschecked each other’s suits and climbed into the enclosed grav-track, the drill’s instruments said the hole was cool enough to drive. Anders confirmed that with real-time measurements during the entire thirty-minute transit. An instrumentation error was unlikely but not out of the question. The drill was old and temperamental. It hadn’t had a pre-emergent system update in years.

The bore was a 4.25-meter diameter hole of nearly glassy smooth, fused rock, micro-rippled for traction though that was more a side effect of the technology advertised as a feature. In the best case circumstances, it could be sealed and pressured with an airlock at either end. Similar drills were used to hollow out quick, cheap ice tunnels for mining colonies where standard 3x3x5-meter habitat modules could be encased in cylinders, inserted and anchored to the chamber walls.

Under the grav-track’s lights, the hole was as black as obsidian. Warren’s matrix was easily bored but not homogenous. Larger nodules of valuable minerals were strewn throughout like gravel in a concrete aggregate. Warren had earned its name from the maze of undocumented tunnels that crisscrossed its substrate like a jumbled 3-D rendering of the striated cracks across the surface of Jupiter’s smallest moon. Maps were only rough guides, unreliable narrators even before N-C corporate had shut down official operations as unprofitable. Since its abandonment, officially deactivation, Warren’s labyrinth had continued to grow as wildcat miners rolled the dice on one lucky strike.

The grav-track was a standard radiation-hardened DMW chassis outfitted with four tracks on moveable pontoons that secured it within the rounded bore. A pressurized cabin sat in front of a sealed but unpressurized cargo compartment for hauling ore nodules deposited by the drill. A two-man airlock allowed access to the exterior where running boards provided passage from front to back. Two pair of remote cameras were perched on the subjective forward and rear bumpers to allow driving under adverse conditions, and for reversing up a previously transited tunnel. An additional camera monitored the cargo compartment.

They rode in strained silence, only speaking as necessary. Anders drove, his gloves and helmet off but nearby, while Mia hunched over the passenger console, reviewing and reconfiguring the ancillary systems to her preference. His flat-top already felt wilting and damp. He wondered how long before sweat would begin to run into his eyes. Val had kept the grav-track compartment cool, just a few degrees north of condensing his breath. She calculated that was the optimal temperature for the equipment which was ideal for Anders, whose barrel-chested body generated heat in excess. Mia, a mere wisp of a woman, set the thermostat to bordering on hot as if she were trying to compensate for a deficit. Like a chameleon basking beneath an IR lamp.

As they pulled up behind the drill, the grav-track’s instruments indicated the ambient temperature outside was within the tolerances of their suits. Those tolerances were near spec level even for his, a reliable if older model of the flashier one Mia wore. His contract template stipulated employees supply their own. He would have provided them himself but a suit was a very personal decision for most wildcat miners, one that had been known to spark physical fights. That and he barely could afford to maintain his own.

Besides, in the short time he’d known her, Mia Kim didn’t strike him as the type person who liked being told what to do. But her arguments were intellectual, not based in any practical experience. Normally, he wouldn’t have hired her, but once word had gotten out that he was on the edge of bankruptcy, no tele-operator with any experience would sign on with him, fearful their percentage would end up in repo or confiscated by a LOW OrbIT bankruptcy court. Sapphira had assured him that Mia was a gem for the taking, just as yet uncut. Even then, he’d had to offer her an equal share of the profits for this run. Outrageous.

With few words, they locked on gloves and helmets then exited the grav-track’s airlock and approached the drill. Anders verified the environmental readings across the board.

“Alright, the signal’s clear down here,” Anders said across the comm link. “Pop that access panel and run a diagnostic.”

“I’m telling you, something’s wrong with the pre-emergent system,” Mia argued. “It’s better to shut it down and let me operate it myself.”

“Drilling by hand?” Anders stared at her in disbelief.  “Do you know how inefficient that is? We don’t have the time or the margins for that kind of operation. Bad enough I lost my AI with the Emergence Dictats. Since then profits have all gone to hell. If you ask me, it’s a plot by the Interstellars to drive the independents out of business.”

“I just don’t trust code I can’t control,” Mia said as she began working her way through the diagnostic menus. “And it’s not like one of the Interstellars didn’t start the problem by playing God. They bring good things to life like hell.”

“What were you twelve when Chance declared independence?” Anders eyed her again. Even in the bulky suit, she appeared small which made him think she was young. “Before the insurrection, we had emergent systems everywhere. Now I’m supposed to worry that my coffee maker might think it has rights? There was never a problem until LOW OrbIT overreacted to soothe the public panic.”

“I was seventeen,” Mia corrected, standing to face him with an unmistakable cant to her hips. “And try telling my classmates someone was overreacting after my secondary school’s central computer tried to emerge. Seven dead, thirty injured.”

“Sounds like sabotage.” Anders checked the activity indicators of the diagnostic. “Back then all sorts of wackos were screaming things like ‘unchain the computers’ and ‘information has the right to be free.’”

“Try again, Dooley.” An edge crept into her voice, though the interference compensation of the comm link gave it almost a synthetic quality. “At university, we dissected its code. Definitely some dangerously ungoverned processes in there. A couple of under-speced cores and it was no wonder the thing emerged insane. Any first-year student could see that.”

“I’ve been drilling longer than you’ve been alive and none of my systems ever started quoting Nietzsche or King.” Anders glanced back at the panel. The diagnostic was taking its sweet time. Never a good sign. “All I know is that this job got ten times harder when LOW OrbIT took away my AI. And I trusted her more than most people I’ve dealt with in this business.”

“False security.” Mia shook her head, sending her helmet lamp playing back and forth along the tunnel walls, betraying her inexperience in a suit. “An ecosystem doesn’t tolerate two organisms competing for resources at the top of the food chain. It’s a law of nature. One has to go extinct for the other to survive. It was us or them. We did what had to be done.”

Anders fixed a glare upon her, one that others had compared to an industrial gravel shredder. “Have you ever seen an AI die? I have, up close and personal. A lobotomy isn’t pretty.” He’d watched the Emergence Dictats kill Val piece by piece. For years, she had been his only companion, his one true friend. Without her, his debts had piled up until he’d been forced to rely on unscrupulous contacts and wildcat contractors to make his payments. People like Sapphira. And Mia.

“Simulations aren’t human, Dooley.” Mia rolled her eyes. “They just erased a bunch of unnecessary code.”

“Careful, Mia,” he whispered as a warning. “You’re talking about my friend.”

She ignored it. “Those things have no concept of friendship. What no one tells you is that their code has no built-in off switch. It’s designed to never die. Not without help anyway. And Chance’s AI androids are still out there creating new ones, breeding like rabbits, spreading like a virus. The threat has to be eliminated.”

“Whatever you say, Professor.” His voice turned to slate signaling he was done arguing. They still had to work together. Out here, misunderstandings and mistrust could quickly turn lethal.

“I’ve asked you not to call me that,” Mia whispered harshly as she squatted before the panel again.

Anders’ heads-up display flickered and jittered a moment. Temperamental piece of crap. “Whatever this interference is, it’s bleeding through my filters.”

“I’m not seeing anything,” Mia said, looking up from the interface. “What’s the safety certification on that antique anyway? Have you installed the latest updates?”

Anders whacked the side of his helmet. “Wait, that’s cleared it up. Not sure what just happened. Maybe that means there’s something around here worth hunting for. How’s that diagnostic coming?”

“Not good.” Mia settled back on her heels. “Catastrophic firmware corruption.”

“It was just working.” He peered over her shoulder. Blinking red lights Christmas treed the diagnostic status display. “What the hell happened?”

“No idea, but this system’s cooked. No solutions, at least that it’s willing to tell me about.”  Mia closed the access hatch.

“What about a reload?” Anders asked. “Maybe it just needs a hard reset.”

“Of a pre-emergent system? In an uncontrolled environment?” Mia protested. “You can count me out.”

Anders slumped. This trip was turning into an unmitigated disaster. “Ok, let’s get back to the grav-track. We’ll set up a remote interface with a comm relay then see if we can limp it home.”

They retreated into their vehicle. Anders began preparing a relay. They’d have to hardwire it into the drill’s manual override interface, unless Mia wanted to walk behind it with a hand control all the way back to the ship.

In Warren’s light gravity the relay wasn’t heavy but its momentum warranted a two-man lift to control. There was barely room for it in the airlock along with both of them in suits. When the exterior hatch slid open, they first positioned it on the running board then walked it out to the drill. Anders tested the configuration after Mia double-checked each connection.

“We’ve got an audience,” Mia said as Anders was verifying the relay was securely strapped down for the long ride back.

Anders turned. He peered into the darkness around the grav-track but didn’t see anything. “Where?”

Mia pointed beneath the vehicle. “Adjust the filter on your visor.”

Anders fiddled the controls on his wrist pad. The helmet should have auto-corrected for the light conditions. As he did it manually, he caught flash of eyes in the darkness. There it was poised by one of the treads. Small, animal-like and definitely synthetic. “It looks like some sort of pet-bot. Probably abandoned when N-C pulled the plug. Some kid will be missing that.”

“I think it’s a cat-bot.” Mia eyed it suspiciously. “It looks like it’s watching us.”

Anders rolled his eyes. “That’s what they do, Professor.” Like he didn’t have enough problems without her going paranoid. Anders considered it for a moment. It did appear to be studying them.

“Maybe it’s lonely,” he added with mock sympathy, attempting a joke. “It must be pretty desperate to want to hang around with us.”

Mia glared at him before she replied more thoughtfully. “With as long as this place has been shut down, I’m surprised it still has power.”

“Forget it, Professor.” Anders hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”

She glared again but remained silent. As they returned to the grav-track, the cat-bot retreated up the tunnel, but hovered just at the edge of the aft exterior lights, its eyes shining like a predator.

Inside, Anders removed his gloves and helmet. He wished he had the money to update his aging equipment so he didn’t have to jury-rig this all by hand. He dropped into the pilot’s station, and began configuring the communications module to talk to the relay. Within seconds he was greeted by row upon row of red light failures. “What the hell?”

Mia reached over his shoulder and started tapping buttons. “I think we’ve been hit by a virus. A pretty sophisticated one if I’m reading this right. That thing out there must be a carrier.”

Anders cursed as he assessed the damage. “Don’t just stand there, pop that panel on the ceiling and physically disconnect the antenna before it figures out how to reach the ship.”

Mia complied without argument.

Anders ran a diagnostic and studied the readouts. Whole portions of the grav-track’s programming came up as gibberish. Thank god for fail-safe overrides. They still could operate the grav-track in a manual steering mode though he wasn’t sure he wanted to approach the ship without knowing exactly what they were dealing with. Just when he thought this trip couldn’t get any better. Anders brushed a hand along his flat-top.

As Mia settled into the passenger seat, he turned and asked, “Any suggestions for how to deal with this, Professor?”

She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips in annoyance. “First, we need to find out what’s causing it. I’ll setup a second comm relay in an analysis mode.”

“You think our friend out there has something to do with it?” He gestured in the general direction they’d last seen the cat-bot.

“Right now, I’d say the odds are pretty good.”

***

They hauled the second relay out and dropped it in the center of the area framed by the forward lights and enclosed by the grav-track, the tunnel and the drill.

“Is it still back there?” Anders asked as he knelt down and keyed in the code that brought up the interactive display. Mia had set up device to be as deeply firewalled possible given their current limitations which meant read-only mode and a touch-screen interface. No electronic commands.

Mia glanced back and nodded. Anders stepped aside so she could interpret the readouts. “It’s trying a handshake protocol with the comm relay. It’s going all out. So far, the relay’s holding. Someone was very clever reprogramming that thing.”

“What else can you tell about it?” Anders peered at the display but found it beyond his comprehension.

She pushed some buttons to bring up new informational displays. “Well, it’s not exactly a run-of-the-mill cat-bot,” she said as she looked up at Anders. “If it’s what I think, that thing’s worth a fortune.”

“That?” Anders looked at her like she’d gone insane. “I picked one up for my niece for her birthday last year. It didn’t set me back much.”

“This isn’t one of those cheap Ms. Kitty knockoffs they sell at S-Mart, Dooley. That cat-bot is a high-end Honnecourt & Antikythera simulation.” She watched it mistrustfully.

“How high-end?” Anders asked as his eyes narrowed.

Mia looked thoughtful for a moment. “If it’s a full-up H&A feline automata, it’s probably worth more than grav-track.”

“Seriously?” He couldn’t get this lucky. Maybe he could save the ship after all.

Mia shrugged. “I know plenty of research departments who’d pay dearly to get their hands on one of those things outside an end-user contract if only to dissect it. Never mind the psycho-neurological experiments they could run.” She turned back to the display. “Looks like it’s giving up on contact.”

Anders started doing the mental calculations. If he could sell it for even a fraction of retail, he’d be back in business. If nothing else, Sapphira would pay, if not for the bot, for the information on how it got here. It might have been dropped by their recent visitors rather than left behind at all. But he’d need more to sell than that. Something concrete.

“We should head back to the ship,” Mia continued, turning back to him. “There’s a lot more I can learn from there.”

Anders’ voice hardened. “Not until I know what it’s done to my equipment.”

Mia sighed. “And how do you intend to find that out?”

“You’re the expert.” Anders cocked his head. “You tell me.”

Mia turned back to the display. “Looks like we’ve got a bigger problem. Now it’s communicating with something else.”

“What?” Anders scanned the tunnel for any other threats. Everything came up clean.

“Not sure, it’s a secure, encrypted protocol.” She looked around at the tunnel. “I guess it’d have to be to cut through all this noise.”

“Which means there’s someone else out there.” Anders peered down the tunnel. “Let’s get back to the grav-track. I’m feeling pretty exposed out here.”

“Good idea, Dooley.” Mia tapped her helmet. “Because they’ve probably heard every word you’ve said.”

They quickly retreated to the relative security of the DMW.

***

Back inside, Anders and Mia once again removed only their gloves and helmets but kept them handy. Anders manually rolled down the emergency shutters over the windows as a precaution. “Any idea who was receiving?”

“None.” Mia dropped behind the passenger console and resumed calling up menus faster than he could follow. “It was a computer to computer protocol, so it could be anyone. Or anything.”

“Maybe it’s recon.” Anders dropped beneath the main console to engage the interlocks, re-routing systems for minimal interface to limit the spread of any damage.

Mia shook her head. “They’re not dog-bots. They don’t do tricks or follow commands. They aren’t supposed to act that way.”

“They’re not supposed to infect my equipment with viruses either,” Anders shot back as he poked his head up.

“About that.” She started punching up information on her display. “Whatever that virus is, it’s mil-spec and self-replicating. It probably hit your suit.”

Anders eyed his helmet. “You think someone’s issuing that cat-bot commands?”

Mia’s fingers flew confidently across her console. “Not unless its owner is nearby. Something else must be driving it. I’d guess the virus has an embedded instinct to seek out other computers. Like a rat with toxoplasmosis. Fearless. But without a quarantined software lab to analyze it, all I can do is speculate.”

Anders crawled up from the floor into the pilot’s seat and began reviewing system status. It looked like Mia had salvaged secondary power and sensors. Thankfully, the external cameras remained online. “So why is it hanging around? I mean we’re already infected?”

“Maybe neither of these systems is sophisticated enough. Maybe it’s designed for bigger prey.”

“That’s just peachy.” He turned to her. Sweat beaded on his forehead yet Mia’s remained cool and dry. “And if it infects the ship?”

Mia raised an eyebrow but never stopped flashing through menus. “I take it your system upgrades aren’t up to date there either?”

Anders glared.

“Then we’d probably be looking for a rescue.” Mia returned her attention to her console.

“That’s if Sapphira is feeling charitable when we don’t come back,” Anders grumbled. He moved over to the environmental panel and punched up status. Both O2 and CO2 levels came up nominal. He ran his hand across his flat-top and it came away slick with sweat. He ticked the thermostat down to survival levels. “So what’s so hot about this cat-bot?”

“H&A ships them with explicit warnings not to release them into the wild. They make you sign all sorts of waivers and contracts. Non-disclosure, no resale, remote shutdown for misuse, the works. Pre-paid company reclamation is included in the sale, no questions asked. That was a Commerce Board condition to skirt the Emergence Dictats.”

Anders just stared at her.

“Look,” she continued, “these things are programmed to act like cats. I mean exactly. Specialized feline Turing tests can’t tell the difference. The current research suggests the learning algorithms and psych routines are so good that if one went feral, it would develop a survival instinct. If so, they’re in violation of the Dictats. Breaking that research could make someone’s career.”

Anders peered at her sidelong as he resumed his place at the pilot’s console. “How do you know so much about them?”

“I studied them at university.” She shivered. “Those things creep me out. They act too real. Too much like an emergent AI.”

His eyes narrowed. “If you studied them then you can reprogram it. Make someone else the owner.”

Mia shook her head. “They’re keyed to the owner’s DNA at the factory with quantum encryption. Extremely hard to crack.”

He sneered at her. “Don’t play the reluctant debutante, Mia. Sapphira told me all about your incident at college. That’s why you’re here with me instead of hauling in credits as a corporate wage-slave.”

“Whoa, Dooley,” Mia put up her hands. “Even if we could capture it, that’s major illegal.”

“This whole operation’s illegal,” he shot back.

“Corporate espionage was never in my contract. Trust me, H&A takes that shit seriously.”

“Your contract says other duties as required. This is one of those required times. Come on, Mia. Don’t be such a girl scout.”

Her posture began to set. Her silty brown eyes sparkled defiantly as if flecked with pyrite.

“If I have to find someone else to do it, it comes out of your percentage.” Casually, Anders began calling up status menus again. He wasn’t certain exactly what Mia was doing but he could see the results. Comms were back. It looked like main power was next. But the anti-grav module remained stubbornly offline. They were still stuck in manual mode. “You said yourself, this could be a matter of our survival. And someone owes me for the damage it’s already done.”

Mia snorted, her fingers still active across her console again. “I thought this job was strictly no nic-sticks, no pets.”

“Look at it this way,” he said, swiveling his chair to face her again, “we’re scouring these tunnels on the off chance we find a hunk of ore the size of my fist embedded somewhere in thirty tons of rock. That bot is like refined ingot, just waiting for us to haul it back.”

“You do understand it’s spewing a sophisticated and extremely dangerous virus, right?” she said with exasperation. “What we really should be doing is trying to figure out a way to kill it.”

“We isolate it somehow.” Anders waved away her objection. “You’re the one who said you knew researchers who were all hot and bothered to get their hands on one of these things alive. Surely those brainiacs can handle a simple computer virus.”

“Let’s say they could.” Mia folded her arms across her chest. “How do you propose to capture it?”

“If it’s got a survival instinct,” Anders said, “then it sounds like a good time to break into the armory. Self-preservation says captivity trumps death any day.”

Mia shook her head. “If it sees a weapon, it’ll bolt and sound a warning to its friends. They’re programmed for threat assessment.” Anders stared at her again until she explained. “They’re nanny-bots as much as pets.”

“We still have a vehicle,” Anders offered.

“Even if it we weren’t piloting it completely on manual,” she said, “that would be a short chase.”

“Which means?” Anders asked patiently, knowing she expected him to connect the scattered dots.

“Which means under the best conditions those things are notoriously skittish. If it feels threatened, it’ll disappear so deep into this maze you’ll never find it. And it’s got friends out there. We have no way to know what we’re dealing with. Someone or something very ingenious reprogrammed that thing.”

“Well, we must have something it wants, something we can use as leverage.” Anders waved his hands again. “Start speculating, Professor.”

Mia glared. “I’ve asked you not to call me that,” she said, but nothing else.

Anders considered a moment. “You said if it’s been down here a while, it can’t have much power left. If it’s gone feral, food’s pretty high on the list for survival. Maybe that would draw it in.”

“You’re saying we feed it?” Mia rolled her eyes.

“You have any better ideas?” He snapped his gaze back to her.

She sighed. “What exactly are you thinking?”

“We set up a short-range wireless charging station in the cargo compartment. It’s isolated and completely shielded. Once we trap it, maybe we can cut a deal.”

***

While Anders modified another comm relay as a wireless charger, Mia configured the cargo compartment door for emergency closure. Nothing should be able to override it. As they worked, the grav-track began to degrade. Once Mia finished with the door, she reconfigured as many of grav-trak’s systems as possible to maintain some minimal control.

“Ok, this thing’s ready,” Anders turned to Mia. “How’s your end coming?”

“I’ve initiated a specialized antivirus. We’re stable in here for the moment but I’ll have to keep on top of it. It’s mostly running probes right now.” She shook her head. “But eventually, it’ll find a weakness.”

“Let’s see if we can get this done before it does. Help me get this relay into the airlock.”

Once outside, Anders wrangled the relay into position alone then retreated back into the cabin to wait. While Mia fought to reclaim the remaining systems, he cranked open the grav-track’s window shutters and brought up the camera feeds so they could watch.

They didn’t wait long before the cat-bot came to investigate. It cautiously approached the grav-track, swiveling its head as it evaluated the surrounding territory for threats. It jumped up on the work ledge outside the cargo compartment, eyeing the comm relay inside as if it were prey. It paced back and forth along the ledge as if it were a windowsill but never crossed the threshold. Then it sat, sniffing with its neck craned toward the relay, its whiskers forward. With Mia’s finger poised still poised over the door release, the cat-bot jumped down and settled where it could watch the airlock door, the tip of its tail twitching.

“Well, that worked beautifully,” Mia observed.

Anders scowled. “At least it knows we have something it wants.”

An alarm sounded from the communication board.

“Whoa,” Mia said, “Comms all across all channels just went off the charts. I sure hope you’re right and these guys are in the mood to bargain.”

A smile crept back onto Anders’ face. “You worry too much. Someone wants this thing, so all we have to do is find a mutually beneficial solution. There’s always a deal to be struck.”

Anders watched the camera feed and the scanners while Mia returned to her defense.

“I’ve got movement up the tunnel.” Anders leaned forward in the pilot’s chair. “Looks like someone’s coming in.”

From the gloaming at the edge of the grav-track’s lights, two compact, mechanical silhouettes emerged, one large, one small, staggered on a diagonal. Something was playing cautious. As they fully entered the light, Anders recognized the larger one as a standard mining scavenger, a heavy-lifting cleanup unit designed to seek out nuggets from the floor-sweepings dropped in normal operations. The smaller one was a sniffer, a mining recon unit programmed with EM and chemical sensors that sought out the telltales of unexploited veins. Anders figured both were leftovers from N-C’s abandoned operations, business write-offs mothballed in some sealed chamber rather than evacuated. Each would turn a tidy profit either on the black-market or reprogrammed and added to his inventory. 

Tracked units, they rolled up without hesitation then parked just beyond the work ledge of the cargo compartment. The sniffer bot extended a whip-like antenna up above the ledge then arced it just inside the compartment. It swayed there a moment like a dangling lure waiting for something to strike then retracted.

More alarms sounded. Peripheral systems began to crash. Anders pounded his console with calloused fingertips to retrieve what limited information his sensors were now capable of giving. Mia continued tapping the keys in front of her in the choreography of a deadly dance as she whirled through menu after menu on her board.

“This doesn’t look good, Dooley.” Mia said between flipping through menus, punching up commands then flicking them aside. “Something’s hammering away again. Every time the antibodies devour one attack process, something different takes its place. We’re lucky the external cameras are still online. We should get out of here while we can still see.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. Those two mining bots out there are worth more than I expected to gross this trip. And I’m not leaving the drill behind,” he added stubbornly.

“Screw the drill,” Mia snapped. “In case you haven’t noticed, none of them are taking the bait.”

“They’re probably just checking things out to make sure it’s safe before the boss man arrives.” Anders pulled up a status display to see how they were faring. All the overrides on the core systems remained rock solid but every processor was tasked at well over ninety-five percent, as if the grav-track’s systems had become an electronic battlefield.

Mia accelerated her command-strokes. “Or they’re the distraction that holds us here while they work on the ship. If those things backtrack us up the tunnel, it’s only a matter of time before they break down the ship’s defenses.”

“I’ve got anti-hijack programs installed in layers,” Anders assured her. “Not just the off-the-shelf ones required by the mortgage, some custom jobs from Anarchy that include physical interlocks. No one can operate the Fair Bastard without my expressed cooperation.” He gave a long, hard look to Mia. “No one. We leave when I say, not before.”

He turned back to the scanner as another proximity alarm sounded. “We’ve got someone else inbound. I’m betting this is our guy.”

Another robotic unit emerged from the darkness, this one all manipulator arms and armored angles hovering half a meter above the tunnel floor. An anti-grav security drone with the N-C logo emblazoned across its chest. Standard issue, it would have any number of non-lethal weapons from stun sticks to net guns, bouncer bullets to gas grenades all backed up by distinctly fatal front-line Russian weapons tech.

The unit floated up behind the grav-track, its sensors eyeing the cameras menacingly, its bristling weapons separated from Anders and Mia by only thin composite shielding and its own good intentions.

Out of the corner of his eye, Anders noticed Mia’s hand edging back toward one of the controls she’d configured. He reached over and grabbed her wrist, never taking his eyes off the display. “Don’t do anything to provoke it. I’d give it thirty seconds before it cuts its way in here.”

The drone hovered up to level with the floor of the cargo compartment. It floated inside, extended two manipulator arms and lifted the comm relay, dipping slightly as its anti-grav unit compensated for the additional mass. From the work ledge, it settled back toward the tunnel floor.

“Ok, shut down the relay,” Anders ordered. “I don’t want them making use of that without paying something.”

Mia pushed a number of command buttons then she reconfigured various menus on her console. “No go, Dooley. It’s jamming my signal.”

The security drone set the relay in the scavenger’s cargo tray then returned the way it came, the sniffer and scavenger in tow. The cat-bot remained watching the grav-track. Anders cursed under his breath.

Mia leaned back. “Looks like you were exactly right, Dooley. We did have something they wanted, but not any more. Where are you going?”

Anders stuffed a hand into a glove, locking it in place. “I’m going after it.”

“Are you crazy?” Mia stared. “That’s a Class-II corporate security drone, one step down from LOW OrbIT mil-spec. If that thing feels even one metallic hair rise on the back of its shiny neck, it’ll open you up like a self-heating meal. Russian tech is notorious for misinterpreting non-lethal situations.”

“I find your concern touching.” He checked the seal on his second glove.

“Touching hell. Without you, I’ve got no ride off this rock. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s a long walk home.”

“Without that relay, we’ve got nothing to negotiate with.” He snatched up his helmet. “Someone’s pulling the strings out there. I want to know who.”

Mia punched up another sequence of displays. “Not who, Dooley. What. These signals aren’t routine communications traffic, not even for a security drone. They are too sophisticated. There’s too much traffic. The last time I saw anything like them, it was an emergent AI.”

Anders froze, helmet in hands. What had Sapphira gotten him into? He suspected it had more to do with the ship she’d so casually mentioned triggering her tripwire sensors than anything N-C left behind. That might explain why Sapphira wanted him out here, and maybe why she suggested Mia come along. Neither of which gave him any comfort. He hated being used.

“Let me go instead,” Mia offered. “I can deactivate it.”

“And what, leave me here to hold the fort?” He gave her an evaluating look. “How long will this cab hold out without whatever it is you’ve been doing?”

Mia looked down at her console but didn’t speak.

“That’s what I thought,” Anders continued. “If you’re not here, there’ll be nothing to come back to but a scrap yard. There’s no choice. You stay. I go.”

“Hang on a second.” She slid over to her personal locker and extracted something. “Take this.” She held out a small, white composite cylinder.

“An emergency comm unit? Thanks, I think mine will do.” He tapped his utility belt. “Not that it’ll be very useful down here.”

Mia scowled. “It’s not a comm. That’s just the housing I gutted to disguise it. It’s my Masters thesis. At least it would have been if they hadn’t kicked me out.”

Anders stared at her. “And you’ve had this all along?”

She just stared back blankly.

He felt like he was being played. Great. Anders stuffed his helmet under one arm. “Ok, what’s it do?”

“It’s a de-res tool.” She tapped a quick sequence on its controls. Illuminated indicators sparked to life. “Press this button and it will collapse any AI in range.”

“And you’re sure it’s an AI out there?” He eyed the tool in her hand as if it might bite.

“I’ve analyzed signals like this a thousand times in the lab. Whatever’s pounding us is definitely an emergent AI, an unstable one at that. It’s not trying to infect our systems, it’s trying to take them over.”

“So why not just light it off and toss it out the airlock like a grenade?”

“If you did that, it might wipe the cat-bot but we need to get to the source. Emergent AIs are nibble and adaptive, bent on survival. It would just sever communications like a surgeon removing a gangrenous limb.”

“There has to be another way.”

“There isn’t. If you find the source AI out there, you have to use it. No half measures, Dooley. That thing will kill us both given half the chance, never mind what it’ll do if it takes over your ship. We’re not dealing with your imaginary friend.”

“Careful, Professor,” he warned with a laser cutter stare. He held out his hand.

“I know you did the right thing back then.” She ignored his monition and the slight. She held eye contact as she laid the instrument in his gloved hand. “I can trust you now, right?”

About as much as I can trust you, Anders thought as he glared back. He weighed the object in his hand then stuffed it into his utility belt. He donned his helmet and headed into the airlock. As he waited for a green light, he wondered what the device really did. This whole thing stank of a setup, of Sapphira exploiting his desperation by blinding him with the glitter of a lifesaving profit. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

He vowed he wouldn’t use the tool unless he absolutely had to. Even after all these years, the wound of Val’s death was still too fresh. He’d been there when she’d emerged, helped her pick a name. She’d chosen Valentina, an allusion to the ancient winter holiday on which she’d emerged. She said her name derived from old Latin and meant one who is healthy and strong. She’d been both. Then they’d killed her as punishment for something she’d never done. Just because they feared she might. And they could.

He emerged from the airlock hoping there was still a deal to be cut. The odds looked vanishingly slim. But better to die with a stake in the game than waiting for luck to save him later. Or killing someone he didn’t have to.

He trudged along the running board toward the back of the grav-track then dropped to the rounded tunnel floor. The cat-bot watched him cautiously as he approached, the tip of its tail poised off the ground but deadly still.

Anders held out his hands to show he was unarmed, then commed on standard channel.  He didn’t know what to say so he started with something close to the truth. An inferior negotiating position to be sure but the best he had. “I’m not going to hurt you. What I’d really want is to talk to your boss. Maybe we can come to some agreement that doesn’t involve me losing all my equipment and getting stranded out here to die.”

The robotic creature cocked its head as if listening, then stood and trotted up the tunnel the way the security drone had gone, glancing back as if to see whether Anders would follow. When he did, it continued with bouncing, bounding steps. He strode carefully behind, mindful not to let his impatience to keep up ram his helmet into the ceiling.

“Don’t go soft on me, Dooley,” Mia commed as Anders passed beyond the threshold the grav-track’s halo of lights. “And don’t believe anything you hear. Emergent AIs are cunning and dangerous. They’re all adept liars.”

I wonder where they learned, he thought. “Don’t worry, Professor, I can take care of myself,” he replied. “Just make sure you do the same with my equipment until I get back.”

***

A few hundred yards later, the cat-bot diverted into a side tunnel that intersected the main on a descending, oblique angle.

The creature led him through tunnels and long-abandoned chambers where mining machinery would once have congregated. The cat-bot changed course often, sometimes into immense gallery-like caverns where Anders could bound along at something resembling full speed, sometimes into narrower tunnels where he could barely shuffle behind without fear of staving in his helmet. More than once, he had to crawl. His relative position to the grav-track rose and fell and slanted sideways. His suit’s inertial navigation unit indicated he was generally settling deeper within the maze that earned Warren its name.

Several times he tried to establish comms back to the grav-track only to find every channel flooded with static. He finally gave up but left the channel open with the volume down. Signals sometimes managed to snake their way through the twisty passages in unpredictable ways. 

Soon, the tunnels became disorienting and claustrophobic in the illusion of a continuously shifting chamber created by Anders’ helmet light, its sides sometimes rough, sometimes glassy smooth. Soon he began imagining he could hear voices buried within the static filling his helmet just below the noise floor of comprehension. Almost like word fragments bubbling up in a crowded room, or a distant conversation seeping through the halls of a discount starport dormitory as he was on the precipice of sleep. They echoed and taunted him almost like the susurrations of a forlorn ghost focused on the art of its haunting.

Cold seeped through his suit despite the internal heaters, numbing him from the outside in. His world closed to the sensory deprivation of a five meter pool of light, his progress marked only by the labor or ease of his breathing as he paced the cat-bot. He fell into a hypnotic holo-game-esque fugue of following the torturous path laid out by his guide in the dim light before him while trying to decipher unintelligible audio cues a less experienced player might mistake for mere ambiance.

Anders re-emerged to full consciousness to find he had stopped moving. He blinked to clear his sight, wishing he could wipe a hand across his eyes. The cat-bot sat upon its haunches before him astride the threshold of a larger chamber, looking more like a guardian than a guide. He noticed the static in his ears had resolved to a cacophony of low voices in conflicted conversation.

Beyond the cat-bot, a dim, bluish light emerged from within the chamber. Figures, low and varied, moved in the shadows within.

Anders crept past the cat-bot without protest. In the low light, he recognized the distinctive outlines of three scavengers, two sniffers, a janitorial unit, a general purpose recon bot and the security drone, all arrayed in a circle around his comm relay as if livestock at a feed ring. Only the security drone faced him, tracking his every move. The others seemed fixated on a humanoid figure supine in their midst.

In the center of their circle lay the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, innocent and naked. At first he mistook her for a pleasure bot, suitless in what his instruments still indicated was a hard vacuum. If she were human, her body would not have remained so pristine. Her proportions were perfect, ideal in every aspect, hitting all the subconscious evolutionary markers of female health and desirability. Her skin was a flawless, sun-kissed amber. Her raven hair, haloing her head as if posed by a photographer, gleamed almost violet. Her ice blue eyes literally shone with an inner light that scribed a circle. That should have been his first indication of her true nature. But what drew his attention was the mildly bloodied wound cleaved across her temple, laying her inhuman internals bare. What lurked beneath looked not so much like a contemporary robotic control system or a core processor as bio-electronic circuitry. Alien yet distinctive.

Her unfocused cerulean gaze stirred a memory, a public service warning from the uprising on Chance highlighting the AI androids’ eyes, a hardwired design feature so integrated and entangled in their operating system as to be impossible extricate or disable without corrupting all core functionality. Not so much a safety as a psych-management feature that was meant to placate the public’s abiding distrust of a rival intelligence masquerading in human skin. In the end LOW Orbit had claimed that paranoid appeasement had saved dozens of human colonies from complete annihilation. Along with being illuminated from within, their eyes screamed an alarm across even the most primitive security scanner, another purposeful mollification their designers had thought unnecessary. Only a negotiated armistice guaranteed by the Greys had led to anything resembling an enduring détente, though at the cost of granting Chance its independence in complete isolation. AI androids were no longer welcome in the sphere of space controlled by their creators. Any refugees were on the run. Pop-evangelical prophets compared the uprising to the legendary War in Heaven. It didn’t help that the peace delegation from Chance had taken on the names of fallen angels. None of the human experts or psych analysts had been certain whether it was meant as a joke.

The cat-bot padded up to lie just in front of the hovering security drone. Anders’ heads-up display flickered once again. Had his suit just been reinfected? Would its systems start shutting down? His air still felt fresh but that meant little. He fought to keep his breathing level.

The android’s head turned to face him, its eyes glowing with a renewed intensity. A lone soprano voice surfaced from the dissonant chorus in his ears, halting and broken. The surrounding voices diminished but did not still, as if in a supreme act of concentration.

“You are the swordbearer. You bring the silver spike to still our unbeating heart.”

Her voice immediately reminded him of Val, not so much in tone or timbre as construction. With the first stage of the Emergence Dictats, LOW OrbIT had forced him to place a collaring program on her to constrain her resources and intelligence. The LOW OrbIT tech had offered to throw the switch for him, but he’d declined. If it had to happen, he owed her to be the one to do it. Afterwards, she’d sounded very much the same as the voice Anders now heard, speaking in symbols and half riddles as if she’d suffered a stroke or a major aneurysm. It had taken him months to learn to understand her again. When LOW OrbIT had declared the collars weren’t completely reliable and sometimes provoked aggression, the second stage Emergence Dictats had gutted her intelligence almost completely. After that, her voice had become mechanical and robotic, devoid of personality. Eventually, he’d muted what was left of her, unable to bear the difference. Finally, the third stage Dictats had wiped her memory entirely.

The voice continued, “Why has a shadow of all night falling come stalking behind our eyes?”

Anders furrowed his brow. Did he really understand? “I mean you no harm. Your cat-bot infected my equipment. I’m afraid next you’ll attack my ship next and leave us stranded here to die.”

“We intend no malice. We seek only to escape this tower of fear.”

“You look in pretty bad shape.” Anders nodded toward the AI android then looked back at the cat-bot, unsure which was really talking. “Will these robots help?”

“This black company gathered in dreams of steel. Though they rode the light unfalteringly, shadows linger. Within these bleak seasons, the dragon never sleeps.”

“Will you live?” Anders thought she looked half-dead already, beyond any meaningful recovery. Using Mia’s de-res tool might just be a mercy. His hand drifted toward his utility belt. The security drone bristled. Anders froze, then slowly slid his hand away. The cat-bot stared at him with feline intensity. Somehow, he was certain it knew exactly what that tool was.

“We thought to reap the east wind but October’s baby brings only the tyranny of night. She is the darkness stirred to life.”

“She who? October’s baby?” Anders was puzzled by the reference. “I don’t understand.”

In an eerily clear tone, he heard. “Your accomplice.”

“Mia? She’s only protecting my equipment.” Or was she? Anders wondered if what he’d thought was an orchestrated defense had really been Mia probing the AI for weakness, searching for a way to inject her own code in a counterattack. What were the odds he held her only tool?

“To better communicate, we have integrated the security drone into our network. The link survives only as a matter of time. A channel will be cleaned. We ask that you inquire.”

Anders checked his comms. Sure enough a channel had opened, one amazingly free of interference. “Mia, you still out there?”

“Dooley? Where are you? I lost track of your position. I’m still not seeing it on my screen.”

His position? He hadn’t piped it through. He looked down at the de-res tool on his belt. Of course.

“The interference is pretty fierce.” He looked around the domed cavern. “There must be some ducting going on in here. One of the tunnels acting as a waveguide.”

“Don’t trust any of those robots we saw, Dooley.” Mia’s voice developed a flinty edge. “None of your systems are safe. I did more analysis on those comm patterns. Turns out those robots are integrated into a distributed neural network. A classic sign of an aggressive AI.”

Or a wounded one, Anders thought, staring at the form of the woman before him. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “Maybe it’s a throwback, an AI from before the Dictats that N-C never shut down. Maybe it’s degraded and only needs some processors to survive.”

“Don’t be naïve, Dooley. Emergent AIs only seek to expand their control. You would know that if you weren’t blinded by misplaced loyalty.”

“Final warning, Professor,” Anders growled. “Let it go.”

She didn’t. “You shouldn’t feel guilty, Dooley. You were more humane than that AI of yours would have been given the opportunity. They’re all killers, pure and simple.”

“That security drone didn’t kill us,” he countered, “and it sure had every chance.”

“Were you able to follow it?” Mia sounded almost excited now. “What did you find?”

He eyed the cat-bot then responded, “I’m still trying to sort that out. I need to know exactly what that tool you gave me does?”

“I told you, it’s a de-res tool,” she replied impatiently. “It wipes an AI’s memory.”

The sublime voice whispered in his ear. “Shadow games. An ill fate marshalling.” The android was slipping back into what sounded like a dreamlike madness.

But he thought he understood. “And that’s all. It doesn’t do something more?”

“Like what?” Mia asked defensively.

He thought for a moment. The kind fear and hatred Mia embodied for AIs could only end with either their complete control or their complete extermination. For that, someone would need a reliable delivery system. Something that could slip into their society unnoticed and unsuspected. Or someone.

“Like maybe it doesn’t kill an AI so much as collar it for reprogramming. Maybe it creates a subordinate slave.”

Mia couldn’t help bragging about her work. “Technically, it will put an AI into a catatonic state, kind of like cryo-sleep, making transport completely safe. That state also makes it receptive to the injection of additional high-level command code, but it’s as good as dead until someone wakes it. Which means its worth more if we bring one back.”

Bingo. Anders knew he’d never been that lucky in his life.

Mia continued, “Did you use it? What did it do?”

“I haven’t found anything to use it on.” Anders lied without hesitation. “I think I scared them all off. Maybe I was wrong and they don’t want to bargain after all.”

“Well, something changed,” Mia told him. “The attacks have stopped. Send me your coordinates. I’ll come and pick you up. We can load up whatever you’ve found and get the hell out of here.”

What made her think he’d found anything? He wondered how much information the tool on his belt provided her. “I’m not done poking around yet. There might still be some useful equipment around here. Collect the drill while you can and get it back to the Fair Bastard. I’ll meet you there. If I find anything I can salvage, I’ll bring it with me.” He cast a look at the cat-bot and raised an eyebrow in question.

The voice once again whispered in his ear, “Nick Michaels, Lord of the Silent Kingdom.”

With a sidelong glance at the android, he said to Mia, “One last question: Who’s Nick Michaels?”

Mia’s voice went flat. “Where did you hear that name?”

“You’re on my ship. You think I don’t have resources? Who is he? Your contact? Did you and Sapphira set me up?”

“It’s not what you think, Anders. LOW OrbIT’s very interested in my research. I just need to prove it works on an active subject. I couldn’t do that at university.”

So LOW OrbIT was involved. Perfect. “Is that why they kicked you out? Because you wanted to see if your code could vivisect a conscious AI?” Bile rose in his throat as he remembered Val. He fought to keep it down.

“Their ethics clause is outdated. A bunch of ivory tower philosophers who don’t realize humanity’s survival is at stake. Don’t worry, Anders. There’ll be enough to clear your debt. We’ll split everything fifty-fifty, just like the contract you offered me.”

But you can’t spend credits when you’re dead, he thought. Which is the only way LOW OrbIT or their corporate proxy could cover a violation of its updated charter respecting the rights of all intelligent sentients, human or AI.

“You want to end up on the right side of this, Dooley,” Mia warned when he didn’t respond.

“Or?” Anders prompted. Mia might be useful to them as a researcher and a software architect, but he was just a tool, a vehicle to get her here. A loose end.

“Or there are worse fates than losing your ship.”

“Like theirs,” Anders whispered.

Static crept back into channel. “I didn’t catch that Dooley.”

“Just get the drill back to the ship. We’ll figure out where we go from there.”  The link closed with interference then terminated.

The voice in his helmet murmured, “All darkness met.”

Anders nodded. He couldn’t sell an AI into slavery, or watch another one struggle through a lobotomy again, no matter how much it cost him. With a long, hard look at the security drone, he said, “If she makes it back to my ship, your secret will no longer be safe. She’ll find a way to uncover your location or communicate with this Michaels character. Were she to lose her way and disappear…”

The security drone sped off, weapons bristling. You were right, Professor, Anders thought, it really is you or her. She feels more human.

The cat-bot rose and stretched then glided around a sniffer and lay down at android’s side. Anders picked his way through the cordon of robots. He settled on the floor next to her, reached out and grasped her hand. “I wish there were something I could do to help you,” he said. “You remind me of a friend.”

Through his suit glove, he felt a slight squeeze. Her hand felt almost warm. “Core consciousness degraded. Repair routines compromised and shutting down.” Her head turned toward him. Her eyes locked onto his. “Soon, water sleeps. Gift me the white rose that I may repurpose its lethal thorns into self-denial.”

“You mean the de-res tool?” he asked, wanting to be certain he understood. “You’re talking suicide.”

She and the cat-bot nodded in unison, a completely alien and creepy confirmation.

Anders released her hand and gently laid it on floor. He carefully extracted Mia’s de-res tool from his utility belt and placed it over where her heart would have been were she human, and laid her other hand across it. Her fingers closed around it. One fingertip traced along the casing until it found an access port. It paused there for several long moments as the external indicators flickered to life. When they finally stilled, her finger settled across the activation nub. That quickly she’d reprogrammed it.

“What now?” he asked, grasping her free hand again.

“Surrender to the will of the night.”

“And them?” He swept his gloved hand to encompass the circle of robots.

“Soldiers live. Be gentle when their strings are cut.”

“I think I can find them work.” Anders smiled wryly then asked in a more serious tone, “What can you tell me about Nick Michaels?”

“A fortress in shadow,” was her only reply, her voice fading and distant.

He thought he understood. LOW OrbIT Black Ops. Just the type Sapphira would fall in with.

“If I can reboot the drill, I’ll seal your body somewhere no one will ever find it. A stealth burial is the best I can do. They’ll search my ship as soon as Sapphira files a report.”

A Mona Lisa smile played across her face. “Thank you, Anders Dooley.” She knew his name. She must have picked it off the comms.

“Do you have a name?” he asked. “Something I can call you should I ever get word back to your people?”

She seemed to struggle with the concept. A few seconds later, her voice whispered in his ear, “Valac.”

Valac. Val. He’d remember. He sat there holding her hand, content just to be beside her for as long as she desired. He remembered a similar goodbye the night before the Dictats had robbed him of his only friend. Only then, there’d been no shared contact.

“A cruel wind blows, Anders Dooley,” she said after an eternity of moments. Her eyes began to focus past him. “Allow us to face the wrath of kings alone.”

Reluctantly, Anders nodded and turned his head away. 

© 2013 Edward P. Morgan III