Crystal Conquest (11 page)

He sat and waited. Seconds turned into minutes.
They’re watching
and listening. This wouldn’t make sense otherwise.
He mentally inventoried
the items in his carryall but couldn’t think how any of them might help him
escape. So he demanded, then reasoned, then begged whoever was listening to set
him free.

The minutes became hours, or so it seemed. In a desperate attempt
to show his resolve, he lay on his back on the car seat and kicked his heels
against one of the side windows. The aggressive act yielded two results; his left
knee now throbbed, and the glow of light outside the car faded. He lay still in
the pitch-dark for what he was sure was another hour.

And then he called in a plaintive voice, “Hey, man. I have
to pee.”

Juice nibbled a cookie and watched
Cheryl take a sip from her cup and then grimace.

“Eww.” She returned her cup to her saucer.

“What’s up?” Juice asked.

“Lots of moon dwellers drink tea, so I figured I’d give it a
try while I was here. This is lemongrass and mint something.” She peered into
the cup as if it held a poisonous potion. “It tastes like lawn clippings.”

“Have a cookie,” said Juice, holding out a lemon-filled
treat. “It’ll cleanse your palate.”

“Thanks,” said Cheryl, her projected image rising from her
chair. “But I’m pretty sure my arm won’t reach your office.” She turned to face
her food service unit. “Anyway,” she said over her shoulder, “I don’t run for
an hour every day like you, so it’d just end up on my butt.” She patted what men
and women alike privately hailed as a perfect derrière.

The comment triggered a childhood memory in Juice of her dad
telling friends how she got her nickname. “She went from crawling to running,” went
his version of the story. “She skipped the walking thing altogether. I’m
drained by lunchtime and Jessica has the juice to run forever.”

The nickname stuck and proved prophetic. Juice went on to
become the high school state champion in the five-thousand-meter track event,
and she attended college on an athletic scholarship, where she excelled in the ten-thousand-meter
road race. After college, she’d accepted a research assistant position at the
Boston Institute of Technology and eventually earned a doctorate in engineered
intelligence. By then, running had transitioned into a stress-management tool and
remained part of her daily routine.

Cheryl retook her seat, pulling Juice back to the present. “Ahh,”
she said after taking a sip of coffee. “That’s more like it.”

Five years younger than Cheryl, Juice viewed her as a mentor
as well as a friend. She treasured their coffee-break ritual, and Criss guided larger
events so they could spend a quiet moment together on most days. In spite of it
being a time for sharing, their coffee-klatch natter could be tricky to
navigate. Sid was Cheryl’s rapscallion lover, making him prime fodder for discussion.
But he was also the third member of the leadership team, placing him off-limits
for idle gossip.

Juice waited for Cheryl to take another sip and, too excited
to contain herself, announced her news. “The latest crystal prototype has
passed all my tests, and it’s been given Criss’s seal of approval. I know how
anxious you are to get crystals up there to strengthen capabilities. We should
be producing one crystal per day in about six weeks.”

“Congratulations, Juice. I knew you could do it!” She set
her coffee down—a sure sign she was focused on the conversation. “How many are allocated
for the defense array?”

Juice knitted her brow. Her all-consuming challenge over the
past two years had been to guide a design and make a working prototype. She
hadn’t given a moment’s thought to how they’d be deployed. “Geez, I don’t know.
That’s a Criss question.”

“Can I ask? Please?”

A standing rule of their coffee break was no Criss allowed.
They both knew he watched and listened—he always did. Juice and Cheryl embraced
the charade of a private date because they both sought an air of normalcy in some
small corner of their lives. Juice, curious herself, nodded, giving Cheryl
permission to ask.

Before Cheryl could speak, Criss answered, “I suggest the
first five be used to automate the crystal production line itself. This will
ensure a consistent quality for future production. The next twenty should be
devoted to the defense array, half for the lunar command center and half for
the installations distributed in orbit and here on Earth.

“After that, we may need to consider an allocation for the
asteroid project. The scout ship refurbishment is complete, and Sid has agreed
to fly a survey mission. The outcome of his exploration will influence my
future recommendations.”

“Sid’s going out to reconnoiter asteroids?” asked Cheryl.
“He’ll be gone for weeks.”

She brought her fingers to her lips, and Juice recognized it
as a behavior reflecting anxiety.

* * *

Following his regular routine, Criss
reviewed the data record from the swarm of trip-wire probes, giving equal
attention to all information as he searched for signs of an alien incursion. He
believed the Kardish might come from any direction and might even attack from
multiple directions, so he deliberately chose not to be distracted by that
earlier sighting, fearing he could be caught off guard if he was busy chasing
shadows.

He didn’t doubt they’d return. Two years earlier, when he
and his leadership team had made their escape from the alien vessel, Criss had triggered
a sequence of events that culminated in a spectacular explosion and the complete
destruction of their ship.
I killed a Kardish prince in that fireball,
thought
Criss.
The king will revenge his son.

He’d analyzed fresh probe readings thousands of times since
seeing that curious glint of light and hadn’t found any irregularities. This strengthened
his belief that the earlier sighting was an anomaly. But being prudent, as a
final step in his regular routine, he now performed a second detailed review of
all data from that one particular sector of space.

And again he saw something—something different from what
he’d seen before. For the briefest moment, he saw a ripple in the light from a single
star, almost as if an object had traveled between the star and probe, shadowing
a portion of the starlight as it passed. And it was that same probe that registered
the earlier reflection of light.

Anxious, Criss commandeered every resource that might
provide additional information. He appropriated scopes and dishes on Earth, in
orbit, on the moon, and on ships currently in flight, and he pointed everything
at that spot in space. This mighty arsenal of scientific equipment generated a
flood of new readings, and he pored over all of it as it flowed to him in his
underground bunker.

And he saw nothing out of the ordinary. He couldn’t find the
hint of shadow he’d seen moments earlier.

He backed up and studied the original data record that had prompted
his alarm. The mysterious ripple didn’t appear in the second review, and this
triggered a new kind of distress.
I saw a ripple. It was there. I don’t
hallucinate.

He disengaged from his puzzle so he could gather his
thoughts.
Either I made a mistake, or the data record has been changed.

Certain the problem didn’t lie with him, Criss performed an
integrity audit of the data collection, transmission links, analysis algorithms,
storage record—every step of the process from when the probes made observations
through to his final review in his bunker. He found no evidence of a malfunction.
He examined every person with access to any step of the process and couldn’t
find any indication of an external manipulation.

Baffled, he mulled the facts. The common denominator in both
anomalies was that one particular probe. Its location in the swarm out past the
asteroid belt made a physical examination problematic. And even if he proved it
was malfunctioning, that wouldn’t explain how he could see something and then
have all evidence of that sighting disappear.

Criss was the dominant intelligence in his world by a
fantastic margin. Even Lenny, with all of his promise, was a minor spark in the
shadow of his brilliance.

As time passed, Criss came to accept this as the norm. So it
never occurred to him that a greater intelligence might exist or that such an
intellectual behemoth could have the power to manipulate his reality in the
same way he influenced humanity’s.

* * *

Sid maintained a brisk pace as he hiked
up the trail ascending the south face of Highback Mountain. He stopped when he
came to a clearing and stood on a broad granite ridge to look down at the lodge.
Its toy-like size gave him an appreciation for how much altitude he’d gained
over the past three hours.

Fatigued from his efforts and with legs starting to stiffen,
he reached for his water pack. As he took small sips, he scanned up ahead for
Crispin and spied the synbod on the footpath edging the steep rock face
directly above him. Sid, familiar with the trail, knew it’d take him a half-hour
more on the winding path to descend a dip, follow a loop around, and trek back
up to reach that same point.

Looking up, Sid took a long pull from his water and almost
choked when Crispin stopped, turned, and jumped from an outcropping. He arced
through the air and landed with a thump on a dirt patch next to Sid, settling into
a graceful crouch, one knee bent down, with a hand resting on the ground to
steady himself. It reminded Sid of the pose superheroes assumed when they made
similar dramatic entrances.

“You feel diminished because you can’t keep up with him,” he
heard Criss say through Crispin’s mouth.

“You’re a psychologist now?” Sid replied, knowing Criss spoke
the truth. Sid studied the synbod for signs of physical stress—panting,
limping, anything. He looked as fresh as when they’d started the climb.

As Crispin looked around the clearing, Criss changed
subjects. “Lenny is quite unhappy being locked in the car.”

“I’m ready to turn back, so I guess we can go let him out
and have our chat.”

“We can let him marinate for a few minutes more,” said Criss.
“Will you sit with me?” Crispin gestured to a squarish rock that would serve as
an outdoor bench.

They sat side by side and looked down at the lodge. Sid knew
that if Criss wanted his undivided attention, something interesting was
brewing. He took another drink and offered the water pack to Crispin, who
declined with a silent gesture.

“I seek your...creativity…in solving a challenge,” said
Criss.

“You seek an improviser,” said Sid, referring to his title
in his previous job with the Defense Specialists Agency.

“Fair enough,” said Criss.

Sid’s ego, bruised from his trouncing in a physical contest
with Crispin, perked up at this acknowledgement of his value. Sid knew Criss
couldn’t duplicate his reasoning methods—Criss politely called it “free-form
thinking”—and that earned Sid some level of his respect. He’d proved his
abilities dozens of times as a covert operative, and his record of success either
confirmed he had a unique gift of creative insight or, at a minimum, established
that he was a regular guy on an extraordinarily long lucky streak.

They sat quietly for most of a minute before Sid said, “This
is your meeting.”

Criss told Sid about the two visual anomalies from a single
probe in the trip-wire swarm. He didn’t volunteer the part where, upon review,
he couldn’t find any trace of the second event—that the information had somehow
disappeared.

“Each probe has other methods for detection,” said Criss.
“They have sensors to look for the unique materials used in the construction of
a Kardish vessel. They can detect the propulsion trail and the gravitational
field such massive ships would create if they were to pass by. None of these sensors
have triggered for any probe. I have only the two brief visual sightings.”

“And you’re concerned.”

“I have worries,” said Criss.

Sid waited for him to continue.

“We’d talked about the need for a survey mission out to the
asteroids.”

The asteroid belt comprised millions of rock and metal chunks,
some as big as small moons and others no larger than a grain of sand, all racing
in a huge circle out past the orbit of Mars. Criss sought to identify several asteroids
with large natural caverns to hide arsenals of drones. His plan was that if the
Kardish ever made it close to Earth, these drones could launch a surprise strike
from multiple directions in a flanking maneuver.

“You want me to prospect asteroids in the same sector as
that probe and see what I can learn.”

“Yes.” Crispin avoided eye contact by pretending to study the
lodge below. “It’d be a legitimate survey mission. We need to identify six or
eight caverns soon so we can start building out our drone-strike
infrastructure. While you’re out there, you could keep an eye open for
suspicious activity.”

Sid’s mind raced. He wasn’t the least bit worried about his
safety. He was a thrill seeker by nature, and the mission sounded like a crazy
kind of fun. But it was also clear to him that there were layers to this story.

“It sounds high risk. Aren’t you required to protect your
leadership?”

Crispin turned and looked Sid in the eye. “The king will
come for his revenge. If we don’t stop him, we’ll all be dead.” He turned back
to study the lodge. “There’s no one better suited for this job.”

Sid knew that when they had been trapped on the Kardish
vessel and searching for a way to escape, Criss had linked to their alien subsystems.
Sid believed two experiences from that time now drove Criss. One was his knowledge
of Kardish history and culture. Since their return to Earth, Criss had remained
unwavering in his assertion that the king would avenge his son; the Kardish
people would demand it.

A second driver was fear. When Criss had first entered the
alien subsystems, he’d felt a warm embrace and experienced fantastic delights. He’d
loved it and never wanted it to end. He recognized these feelings as the
product of an addictive pleasure feed the Kardish pushed to their crystal
workforce. Even though a crystal is hardwired to follow the orders of its
leadership, pleasure addiction provided a means of keeping an AI on a tight
leash.

When Criss had realized he was becoming trapped by a
pleasure dependency, he’d fought to exhaustion, struggling to escape the insidious
feeds. He didn’t talk about it much, but Sid knew he’d suffered a painful
withdrawal and, like a recovering addict, never wanted to go through that
experience again. If the Kardish reached Earth, Criss was certain he’d be taken,
forced into pleasure addiction, and forever enslaved.