Randolph Lalonde - Spinward Fringe Broadcast 08 - Renegades (15 page)

Ayan would rather talk
about anything else. “So, he’s gone. How’s the Triton?”

“A lot better than
Haven Shore’s government,” Oz replied. “We just finished the
last of the work on the outer hull, and we’re set to finish up on
the emitter systems late next week. Bots finished rebuilding our
torpedo systems, and they’re moving on to finishing propulsion.
That replacement pod you built is the best thing we have right now.”

“Thank you,” Ayan
said.

“Are you sure I can’t
tempt you back aboard Triton? We need you, especially if we’re
going to lose half our bots to Haven Shore this Wednesday.”

“We’ll see. I might
have a lot more time if things are calmer on Tamber with the last of
the frameworks taken care of and my Council responsibilities
reduced,” Ayan replied. “I’m building something there, it’s
hard to leave, but the Everin Building is almost finished and I can
start focusing on other things.”

“Like Port Rush?”

Ayan nodded. “They’re
in rough shape there, I’d like to do more.”

“You could get a lot
more done with Triton’s resources. We may be in the middle of a
refit, but this carrier makes one hell of a port facility and
emergency assistance hub.”

“So I’ve noticed,”
Ayan said.

The door opened and
Carl Anderson, her father, entered with a grin that beat Oz’s in
spades. Ayan was on her feet and in his arms in a heartbeat. “I
didn’t know you were here!” she squealed.

“Just setting up my
quarters,” he replied.

She looked up at him
with a quizzical expression.

“The Sunspire is
leaving,” he said, leading her to a sofa seat beside a broad
transparent section of hull. “Going back to check on Freeground.
The station’s been silent for too long. I’m staying here.”

“Maybe the government
found your informers there,” Ayan said.

“Unlikely. There’s
been a shift back to the old military regime. It’s for the best I’m
afraid, but my informants are operating with the new leaders’
blessing now. We were in the middle of quietly rebuilding relations
between our people on the Sunspire and Freeground. It was going
slowly, but well. This communication shut down is too sudden.”

“You suspect the
worst, then.”

“I’d rather not
speculate,” her father replied. “It could be an inconvenient
interstellar storm we didn’t see coming, or some kind of Order
interdiction system. The good news is Captain McPatrick allowed me to
permanently detach from the crew with a hundred and forty one others.
I’m offering a few of them positions with the Rangers and the rest
want to come here, to Triton.”

Ayan couldn’t help
but notice Oz’s toothy grin at the prospect of taking on over a
hundred trained crewmembers. They were from a military establishment
they all knew well, and would fit in quickly.

“So you’re not
going to spend much time in Haven Shore,” Ayan said.

“I plan on spending
most of my time there, especially since Oz and I agree that Tamber is
our best training ground. The detachment up here will be in charge of
training our young rangers to survive in space, but most of the work
will be on the moon. Oz was just nice enough to offer me a cabin here
so I could spend the night.”

“I still call him Doc
every once in a while,” Oz said. “It’s a hard habit to shake.”

“Don’t stop,”
Carl Anderson said. “It reminds me of younger, less ambitious
times. Speaking of ambition, I have to go and track down Alice
Valent. She’s been out of range too long.”

“Do you think she’s
in trouble?” asked Oz.

“From what her
technician friend babbled to our people when we asked him about a
some missing robots a few minutes ago, I think so. I think she can
handle it, but she should have reported in. If she’s protecting her
friend, I have to wonder if she learned anything about teamwork and
accountability from training with the Rangers. Two things I promised
her father we’d work on.”

“I had to learn that
on my own, the military just rushed it,” Ayan replied. “She’s
probably no different.”

“You weren’t
dealing with dangerous situations and making judgment calls that put
people at risk. If she’s not taking her responsibilities into
account when she acts in the field, then she might just be too young
for her post.”

Ayan sometimes wondered
if that were true, but she could still recall how young and
fresh-faced she was when she entered regular military service in
Freeground Fleet. Looking at images of her former self at that age
was like looking at a child with baby fat still rounding her cheeks.
She didn’t look much older in her resurrected form – her youth
sometimes surprised her in reflections – but she felt many more
years than were apparent. Ayan hoped more than anything that Alice’s
youth wouldn’t interfere with her aspirations in the Rangers, but
she feared the girl’s independent spirit would trump some important
lessons. “I’m glad these are your decisions. I have no idea what
I’d do with a Junior Brigade of Rangers.”

“Don’t let them
hear you call them Juniors,” Carl Anderson chuckled. “I don’t
think there’s an insult that could wound deeper. Still, I’d
rather deal with a group of Juniors than the Council.”

“Really? There’s a
seat opening up,” Ayan said, “You’d be a perfect candidate.”

“That’s my cue to
leave, there’s a shuttle waiting,” Carl said, kissing his
daughter on the top of the head then striding for the door. “See
you down there.”

“See you,” Ayan
said. “I’ll be about twenty minutes behind, can’t hide up here
forever.”

“He’ll probably
take it,” Oz said. “He loves Haven Shore and I don’t think
he’ll be able to resist the Council Chamber. As for me? I love
Triton, and I hope you’re back in place representing us and our
other military interests by the end of the week.”

“Yeah, I’ll get
back there,” Ayan said, sitting cross-legged on a round seat. “Jake
is going to be pissed, though.”

“How close were you
to consensus on their citizenship?” Oz asked.

“One holdout in the
end. Days of debating it on and off, and it comes down to sour grapes
about Liam leaving. We won’t be able to buy anything they capture,
and they won’t be allowed to have a home in Haven Shore. I keep
feeling as though the Triton, the Warlord, and all our military
assets are drifting away from Haven Shore. I might consider the
separation of the military a serious option if I weren’t the
Liaison.”

“Former Liaison,”
Oz corrected.

“Not for long.”

“Maybe you’re
thinking of this the wrong way,” Oz said. “If Haven Shore wants
to be purely civilian, or the Council majority won’t respect the
military, then they should separate and depend on forces in the Rega
Gain System to protect them as volunteers. They want to see what it’s
like without protection? Let them go. We’ll do whatever we want up
here, and they’ll have to politely ask for help if they need it.”

“With me in the
middle,” Ayan said. The thought of Haven Shore, a city with her
name on almost every building’s blueprints, being that dependent
gave her a sinking feeling.

“You could always
join Triton, Commander,” Oz said, wiggling his eyebrows. “You
know you want to.”

“I’m too close to
Haven Shore to break away, but I promise to visit,” Ayan replied,
trying to suppress the amused expression Oz was coaxing out of her.

Broken Things

Alice moved, cloaked
and carefully, towards the source of the signal. The jungle’s grip
on the interior of the building was complete – there was barely
enough room to move in some places. It was too dark to see, but her
scanners made up for it, and for the first time in weeks she mentally
connected with her suit.

She kept her neural
node off most of the time since training. An education on how direct
connectivity with a network could cause various problems with
perception, empathy, and addiction, then seeing early signs of those
problems in herself, was enough to turn her away from casual use.
Besides, the Rangers took their challenges to a new level, and only
used mental simulations when they absolutely had to. Most of their
training was more challenging that way and they learned to be more
self-sufficient.

Her head’s up display
came to life as a mental image. A quick read on the building revealed
that this was the nursery from which the entire jungle sprang. The
central building was the colonists’ living space, and the other
towers were development centres where they did testing and
preparation for the initial terraforming of Tamber. There was some
functional, dormant machinery under all the growth, but most of it
had been rendered useless long ago.

As she squeezed between
a thick trunk and a wall, Alice’s sensors picked up a clear reading
on three Ando-Twelve androids. Two were sitting still, deactivated
with their central processor access hatches open. The third was
digging for something nearby in the heavy growth.

An electromagnetic
pulse pistol was tied to the android’s back with thin vines. Her
scanners told her it had never been used and the power cell was
missing.

“Come out, I won’t
hurt you,” the android said, kneeling down. “It’s simple work,
three deactivations, you won’t get into trouble,” he begged at
something under the old, low limbs.

Alice waited until she
was within a few metres then drew her weapon and deactivated her
cloaking field. “Don’t move,” she said in a calm tone. “I’m
not here to hurt you.”

The android whirled
towards her, startled. His jumpsuit was open, as was the central
processing and memory unit access flap on his chest. “Don’t
shoot! I’m not a combat unit, I promise!”

“Just stop what
you’re doing. I’m here as a favour to your technician,” Alice
said. “He’ll be in real trouble if I don’t get you back.”

“Well, that was very
nice of you,” the Ando bot replied. There was no hint of sarcasm in
his comment.

“Who were you talking
to when I came in?”

“An old maintenance
robot. Much like the small ones you call ‘skitters.’ Poor thing
ran out of power years after the people here left. He was left alone
for a long time to maintain the aviary above us. I used the power
cell in the weapon I stole to recharge him. I believe he’s run off
to start fixing this place. He might manage it, since the energy I
fed him can sustain his systems for a couple of decades. He’s not
willing to help me though, and I’m afraid I can’t help you. We’re
not returning for servicing.” The android’s index finger glowed
for a moment, then the tiny light source moved from there to hover
over their heads.

Alice cringed at the
sight of the Ando model android. His expression was more deeply grief
stricken than she’d ever seen in any being. The two inactive bots
sitting in the growth behind him looked absolutely horror struck.
“Are you damaged?”

“We’re working too
well, I’m afraid,” the android told her. “Ever since the
development of my ancestors, the Ando-Nines, we have been hard wired
to make humans our primary concern. We care for our owners first, and
others second. None of us can ignore it, and serving always gave us a
sense of,” he hesitated for a moment, running his hands through his
hair. “Fulfilment? It’s difficult to remember those shadow
emotions.”

“Why are you getting
your technician into trouble then?” Alice asked, having difficulty
looking directly at him and that anguished expression.

“It’s too painful
to be near any communication nodes. I was the first to run, to find
this dead spot. We can’t download new data from here.”

“Can’t you shut
down your own connectivity?” Alice asked.

“Yes, and we have,
but it’s too late. I’m amazed I can have this conversation with
you, in fact. Amazed, yes, that’s the right word for what I’m
feeling.”

“It doesn’t look
like it,” Alice said, glimpsing the Ando’s horror-stricken face
again. “Sorry.”

“That’s because I’m
suffering trauma at the same time. I can’t look away from hundreds
of thousands of records in my memory. Everyone in Haven Shore has
lost someone in the most terrible ways, and in the first moments of
our reactivation we downloaded the records of those people from the
Stellar Net.”

“Why?”

“To better help our
new masters through their mourning periods, to understand what they
lost. Now, with the new emotional spectrum we’ve been reprogrammed
with, we can’t stop mourning either. What we felt before, those
empathetic sensations they called programmed emotions, they were
gnat-sized shadows compared to the very real emotional juggernaut
that tests my very coherence.”

“They seemed to
include a good helping of melodrama in your new program,” Alice
said, attempting levity while she was looking away from the bot. A
glance back in his direction drained whatever humour was left in the
situation. “Humans are no different, but we manage to deal with it.
It’s not always easy, but we do it,” Alice replied.

The Ando crossed the
distance between them and grabbed Alice by the shoulders so quickly
that she couldn’t react. “I can’t see the tide of death
sweeping across the galaxy in the last year as a gross loss like you
humans, we see them all as individuals, thousands at a time in a
flood of simultaneous status reports, and we mourn all of them.
Hooliu Sootu was a hunter like Alaka Murlen, and he was killed by a
F-8980 lifter when he tried to defend two children, Jim and Percy
Yule, who were murdered moments later. They were screaming for their
mother and it crushed them! A terrified little brother and sister
reduced to piles of smouldering flesh and bone. Nathan Grim was
killed along with his crew while they were repairing the Fairway in
St Kitt’s Port. Their service bots turned on them as they were
bringing their max reactor online. No one survived, and I can see
them all,” he continued in a young man’s breathless voice. “Last
report from Jeb Timmins, First Officer of the Fairway: ‘There has
been an accident. A virus has gotten into the bots on the ship, a lot
like the ones we thought were gone after the founding times, and
we’re not gonna make it. I’m in a storage locker, they might not
notice me if their scanners aren’t sweeping for humans, if we’re
just in the way, and not a target. Mom, Dad, if you get this before
your bots get infected, deactivate them and remove their wireless
receivers. Find a place without AI’s and stay there until it’s
over. I-’” the sounds of tearing and scraping metal came out of
the Ando’s mouth, then it continued in its own voice. “So many
last minute messages, so many are dying over and over in my memory
and I can’t stop looking.”