Starshine: Aurora Rising Book One (62 page)

Instead she saw what Meno ‘saw’: a seemingly infinite three-dimensional grid of pulsing, spinning translucent orbs. The orbs grouped together in formations ranging from tiny to massive and complex. Threadlike filaments connected the groupings, and always there existed structure and order, sharp lines and hard right angles.

The grid overflowed with color. The entire spectrum was represented in the spinning orbs, every and each color all at once. When viewed in the corner of her eye, an orb appeared a prismatic swirl. If she turned her focus to one, however, it transformed to pure white light.

The orbs, of course, signified the qubits composing the
Siyane’s
security control system. Much as Schrödinger’s cat, until observed a qubit held all possible quantum superpositions of 0 and 1. When she observed one, the prism resolved to white; when Meno ‘observed’ one, he measured its true state.

As such, her presence here was largely superfluous other than to guide Meno to the appropriate access points—and to make certain it didn’t rewrite the
Siyane’s
weapons, propulsion and life support systems to be more efficient while he was in there.

Besides, she liked the view.

“Begin recording.” She needed to image the security controls because when she finished it had to be put back as she found it, leaving no trace she had been there. She didn’t want to cause trouble for Caleb, even if she was a little worried about him. The odds of this new relationship of his working out well in the end were only slightly north of nil…but he never had been the cautious sort.

Recording initiated.

“Excellent. Overlay Alexis Solovy’s fingerprints.”

Overlay successful. Security is requesting secondary encryption key. Analyzing.

Meno had named ‘himself’ at her suggestion. At the time it was devouring ancient philosophical texts and had taken the name from the Plato Socratic dialogue on virtue, knowledge and belief. It continued to burn spare cycles contemplating the notion of inborn knowledge and whether, lacking a soul, it nonetheless possessed such knowledge.

Secondary encryption key: Д085401Н129914С. Would you like to know my hypothesis on the meaning of this key?

She smiled to herself. Artificials were tightly regulated, monitored, circumscribed, feared and often reviled, and with good reason. Perhaps excepting the last one, anyway. They possessed incredible processing ability—but computers ran many facets of society. Those CUs were also powerful, capable of zettaFLOP calculations and zeptosecond accuracy. Yet no one feared them, because they were dumb. They did not think; they simply calculated. Oh, a well-designed VI could create a convincing impression of thought and even personality, but it was still executing defined programming.

Synthetic neural nets, on the other hand, were designed for that exact purpose: to
think
. To learn. To adapt. To improve.

Their greatest feature was also their most dangerous one: curiosity. Mia delighted in Meno’s childlike inquisitiveness and thirst for knowledge. But though it wasn’t registered, she otherwise obeyed all the prescribed safety precautions. Because it
was
like a child—a hyper-savant child wielding unfathomable power and no perspective, no wisdom born of hard lessons and experience and no sense of
boundaries
which might keep it in check.

So while she supplied Meno with endless zettabytes of information—history, art, literature, science, data on the very universe itself—she provided it no connections to the exanet or the local Romane infrastructure network. In fact, its hardware did not include
any
external networking capability, save for the single point-to-point node which allowed her to remotely interface with it. While interfacing, the only outside information it received came through her personal cybernetics. Hence the fingertips on the panel.

“Maybe later. Are there any other authorized entrants?”

Kennedy Rossi and Charles Blalock.

“Is the secondary encryption key the same for them as well?”

It is.

“Terrific. Register Caleb Marano as an authorized entrant and input his fingerprints. I’ll let him know the key when he returns. Then mask the authorization.”

Caleb hadn’t specified precisely why he needed access to Alex’s ship. Most likely there wasn’t any precise reason at all; he would merely be preparing for multiple possibilities. She did have a good idea why he didn’t simply
ask
for access. The possessiveness—and protectiveness—Alex exhibited regarding her ship had been blindingly obvious within thirty seconds of meeting her.

Mr. Marano now enjoys authorized access, should he provide the ship his fingerprints and the key.

“Thank you, Meno. Open the hatch, would you? We’re going to need to get him usage of the flight systems, too.”

PANDORA

I
NDEPENDENT
C
OLONY

“
W
HAT?
D
UDE,
I can’t hear you.”

Noah leaned in closer to Dylan, to no avail. Between the strobing prism beams dancing across the sky and the synchronous musical and visual performance, he could hardly hear himself think, much less hear anyone else speak. Then again, the point of the circus wasn’t to think, but rather to experience. To
feel
. To get wasted.

I said do you want another drink? I’m heading to the bar.

A beer, man—but a good one.

He leaned against the railing and drew in a deep breath, enjoying the warm night air and the smoothness of the sensory deluge.

Yet his thoughts inevitably drifted. He had caught the news of the destruction of the Surno facility on Aquila. His father must be
so
pissed. It wasn’t his sole interest by far; Surno accounted for maybe ten percent of his holdings at most. But it would definitely sting.

When he realized what he was doing he groaned and dropped his head back to stare at the art painting the night sky.
Don’t even
think
about getting involved, Noah. Not your problem—not the business, not the war. Just keep the party going.

He accepted the beer from Dylan with a wry smile and greedily turned it up.

At that moment Ella lurched out of the crowd and fell into him. He held the bottle out to the side with one hand to avoid sloshing it all over him and grasped onto her with the other. “Hey baby, careful there.”

She gazed up at him, eyes unfocused and blurry. “Noah, hi…. Whatcha doin?”

He chuckled. “Not what you are, apparently.” He steadied her and tried to position her on the railing next to him, but she draped her arms clumsily around his shoulders. “You’re hot, you know that righ…?”

Ella was pretty enough. But she was unstable when sober, which was an increasingly rare occurrence, and nuts when she was high. And if there was one rule he lived by on this mad planet, it was
never stick your dick in crazy
.

He eased her off him. “Yeah, baby, I know that.”

“You wanna—” She reached for him again, missed and tumbled to the floor.

He squeezed his eyes shut, muttered a curse under his breath and crouched to pick her up. Sometimes having a conscience goddamn
sucked
. “Come on, Ella, I’m taking you home.”

“Don’t wanna—”

“Yes, you do.” He rolled his eyes at Dylan and began guiding her through the reveling crowd to the lift. It wasn’t terribly late; if he got her tucked into bed reasonably quickly, perhaps he’d return.

The lift circled the building as it descended, and she swayed unsteadily against him. He willed patience. She didn’t…‘live’ was a strong word. She wasn’t
staying
far from the club.

The lift settled to the street level and he maneuvered her in the proper direction. They walked slowly down the street, then veered onto a narrower thruway. The entrance to the residences where she stayed was located about a hundred meters farther on the left.

“Oops!” Ella tripped and stumbled forward.

Noah leaned over to try to save her from sprawling upon the ground—

—the brilliant white stream of a laser pulse sliced centimeters above his head.

“Ella, get down!”

“Wha—?”

He grabbed her arm and dragged her along the thruway, trying to stay low and near the wall. They came to a door, and he shoved her into the alcove. He slammed on the door but it appeared hard-locked. “Dammit! Okay, I need you to stay here, stay hidden. I’m going to—”

“But I wan—” She pulled away from him and staggered into the thruway.

“Ella, get back here!” He reached for her at the same instant the laser sliced through her neck and she crumbled lifelessly to the ground.

“Motherfu—” The shot had come from close range. He yanked the small kinetic blade he carried from the narrow pocket in his pants and lunged toward the shadow he saw moving against darker shadows.

He plowed into a body and they both crashed to the ground, each grappling for an advantage. He swung blindly in the dark and connected with bone, at least if the loud
crack
was any indication. Before he could do further damage a knee came up and rammed him in the nuts, sending a wave of nausea up his chest into his throat. He fought it back and stabbed wildly while struggling to hold the flailing gun away from his body.

Abruptly his knife met pliant, sluggish resistance. When the man’s grip on him fell away, he decided the knife had found the man’s gut. He wrenched the gun out of the attacker’s hand, climbed to his feet and pointed it at the attacker’s head.

“Who do you work for?”

The man writhed on the ground, clutching at his stomach in the darkness. “Fuck
you
. They’ll send more. You won’t last the day.”

“I’ll take that bet.” He pulled the trigger.

It took twenty seconds of banging on the door for Brian to open it. Music wafted from the living room, punctuated by high-pitched laughter.

“You need somethi—?”

Noah grabbed his shirt by the collar. “Why is somebody trying to kill me?”

“What? Hey, let go! I don’t
know
!”

“Is it because of the explosives job? They were for the Vancouver bombing that just happened, weren’t they?”

“I told you, I don’t
know
! Give me a break, man….”

He tightened his grip instead. “Why did you offer the job to me? Did Nguyen tell you to?”

“No, man. Calm down, okay?”

“I am
not
going to calm down. I got shot at and an innocent girl is dead!”

Brian’s eyes widened into saucers. “
Shit
. Look, the request came from higher. They didn’t tell me how much higher.”

“Why?”

“I don’t
know
.”

His grip clenched to the point it began choking off Brian’s air.

“Okay, okay….” Noah loosened his hold a miniscule amount, and Brian gasped in a breath. “I
did
overhear one thing—I got no idea what it means though.”

“
What.
”

“Something about you needing to do the job cause you’d worked with some guy named Marano.”

“
Caleb?
What the hell does Caleb have to do with this?”

“I got no idea! That’s all I heard, I swear. I didn’t know they would try to take you out, man, I
swear
.”

“Fuck.” He let go of the shirt and shoved Brian into the apartment. “Don’t come looking for me, you understand?”

He spun and stormed down the hallway, pausing once to punch the wall in frustration. He had no choice. He was going to have to bail, and bail
now
.

Noah scanned the travel schedule from the relative safety of a group of tourists. It was the middle of the night, but there were
always
tourists at the spaceport. He wore a cap he’d bought on the way pulled low over his face.