Ion 417: Raiju (15 page)

"You must be exaggerating. Nobody would do something like that."

"I have had many tests done during the years I was there, but finding information about my origin prompted me to make my way to my mother's home planet. I fried a few Selstlaks, and took off in this ship. It was only after I departed that I found out Traxel was on board."

The part that I knew they were waiting to hear about involved telling them how I had exploded the pistol in Traxel's hand. In order for them to understand that part, I had to tell them about Teyrn Elon's plan for me. I had been created for the sole purpose of being a weapon that could pass undetected through scanning equipment, and still be lethal when needed. According to the files I had seen, he felt that I was nearing the point when they would wipe my personality to instill a new one, controlled by Teyrn himself.

I told them both that this discovery had been the catalyst that set me on the course to escape, relating how I had spent so many hours studying every aspect that I could conceive for the escape. I even trusted them with my goal to lose myself among my mother's people. My fellow Humans.

They both listened in disbelief as I described my escape. Selstlak are known to be rather hardy in nature, as well as having a good deal of strength. Normally they can endure a large amount of shock before getting knocked out. The fact that I described killing two of them that were wearing suits was more than either of them could believe. I guess with what I have seen of other races, it does sound a bit improbable.

I answered what I could about my control of the electrical bursts. Panzo still had a hard time believing anyone could survive so much energy going through them, even after I reminded him that I'd blown the ship's systems. To quell the disbelief I set up a little demonstration in the longest spot we could. I had about eight or nine meters distance down the passageway to the table in the common room. Panzo set up one of his power meters on the table, telling me to give it all I had. I really think he doubted I could make my bolt go that far. He paled a bit under that fur when I reminded him that I was weakened when I had burned out half the ship.

"Ok, just a good jolt then, nothing to hurt the ship."

I stretched out a hand, feeling the charge centered there. I could tell that it was stronger than before. The water system had been really charging me up. When I let it jump, I held the power back enough that it would just reach the test probe. This was one time that I didn't mind being the test subject. The arc ripped through the narrow passageway, touching the probe as it lit everything in stark relief. I heard a soft 'wow' from the ship's computer. Panzo was still blinking away the after image as he called upward to the ceiling.

"Ok Lafiel, time to quit hiding! It's your turn for story time."

Seemingly coming from everywhere was an excited voice. It certainly carried the accent and tone of a Kanari female. I never imagined hearing an AI give a slight giggle when it talked. I also never guessed that an AI would have a history of itself, I mean beyond the chronological events of its creation. She talked of family as though she had been born, not assembled. As she went on it became clear that she had memories of a life as a Kanari. I'm sure that Panzo had heard this before. His attention was focused on the probe, which seemed to have melted into the glass partially.

"I come from the northern continent on Reliance, though my clan is small there. I always got a thrill out of watching the turbocraft flying over the hills. Just as soon as my paws could reach the pedals, I was taking joy rides in the ground car. Just as soon as the guilds let me, I qualified for flight instruction. The faster the aircraft, the better the thrill. I was hooked on flying."

I had to ask, "Panzo, are these implanted memories from a real Kanari? Is that how the voice sounds like it does?"

"Just be patient and listen. You'll find out."

"I'll get to it in a minute. Anyway, I soon mastered the aircraft and set my sights on the stars. It took me three trys to convince the Guard recruiters that I wouldn't wreck their precious needle ships. I was head of my class for the first two years, and nearly got my comet badge before... before I got sick with one of those diseases that has a name longer than your arm. Sliding through a curve at only nine gravities, and my arm snapped, along with three ribs. I limped the flitter back to the station.

It took the healers a week to figure out what had happened. They told me that within the year my bones would get so week that they'd snap under their own weight. My only choice was to get cybernetic implants and a titanium skeleton. My clan couldn't afford the surgeries, and even if I got them, I'd never be able to fly again. That seemed worse than dying.

Along came Flux Genetics and Cynet with an offer that would save my life and even let me fly again. The only catch is that they'd wipe my memory, and I'd be dead as far as the clan was concerned. It was a tough decision, but it was the only way I'd ever fly again. Even with the cybernetic implants I'd have been barely surviving.

At the time they came, all they talked about was how great it'd be for me to not just fly, but feel what the ship felt. I'd be trading my crumbling body for duratanium skin and bones. With my brain integrated into the computational neural network, I'd think faster than the best computers. All I heard was that I could fly again.

They tore off my body, and sliced me into the integrator; at least my brain anyway. Then the painful part as they tried zapping away my memories. After the third round I kept silent and let them think I was gone. I lost some stuff, like my first birthday, and the name of my pet greetl. I could have passed right by my sire and not recognized him, but I remembered most of my thoughts.

A bunch of painful and confusing stuff later I work up feeling like I knew every star system this side of the spiral, and feeling like I had a hundred arms and a thousand eyes and ears. I was strapped into a brand new Guard cruiser with a green crew ready for worthiness trials. To add more fun to this ride, I had a dozen technicians that jumped every time I said anything. If I talked without being addressed, they'd shut me down to find out why. So, I tried to keep quiet. I'm a Kanari, not a machine, I don't quit thinking merely because somebody flips a switch. They'd shut down the computer side, and I'd be in the dark with my own nightmares working a thousand times faster in the void of isolation."

I must have sounded diamond dense with my question, "You really are Kanari?"

Panzo answered for her, "Yes, and if they had listened to her, instead of thinking of her as a machine, then we wouldn't be here. On one of those trial flights she tried to warn them about an asteroid, but they shut her off instead. Seeing that they weren't going to make it, she attempted to take control of the flight panel. The technicians saw it as her exceeding the parameters they had set, and disconnected the interface.

The asteroid she had warned them of tore through just in front of the engineering section. A third of the crew was lost, and her project was deemed a failure. Her fate was to be torn up for scrap. Fate is a funny thing sometimes. The wrecked hull was brought to me for dismantling.

What started out as curiosity for the newest gadget to tinker on, became a mission to save her. My oath kept me from telling her family what had really happened, but maybe someday she can do that herself. In the meantime, what they saw as a failure, I saw as the grand chance to make Kanari ships fully Kanari. To satisfy the paperwork I scrapped a couple of obsolete computers."

"He stuck me inside an onet dispenser, vending drinks for the repair crews to keep me hidden. Not a glorious occupation, but I had company as he talked to me every day."

"When your ship came along needing a new AI, I was going to install the FGVII that I listed. That is, until I discovered your secret. The FGVII is in your hold because I had to make it disappear, and you have the improved FGVIIIx installed."

"I hate that name! Please call me Lafiel."

I had to laugh at that, "As long as you never call me project 417."

TOC

SHICHI

Three months went by faster than you might believe. It didn't take long for Panzo to make sure that Lafiel's connections were perfect. Lafiel would have been bouncing off the walls if she could, but she was the walls. I'd rather not have her bouncing the ship off asteroids as a substitute. This was her very first high drive trip and she was loving it. With the broad spectrum of sensors on the ship she could watch the systems slide by as the zeta field pushed us along.

Traxel spent a lot of time in his room when he wasn't hunched in the pilot's seat staring at the grey view-port, or trouncing us at Rampari. It turned out that Lafiel knew the game as well. Two weeks of playing and getting further confused with each game before I made a stunning discovery. There were official rules, and then there were Traxel's special rules, and what's more Lafiel had her own version of the rules. She had wanted to take the gold ship on a zeta slide, but give it a hard turn in the middle of the slide due to the diplomat aboard. Traxel brought up the rules saying nothing about curved slides, and she retorted that the rules didn't cover his down shift at the end of zeta slide. They had been covering for each other's modifications to the rules. It was infuriatingly funny, but now I knew why I couldn't beat him at Rampari. Many of the military geniuses that I'd studied had the same thoughts about rules. If the rules don't cover it, make your own rules that do.

Traxel had the pilot seat, with Lafiel to back him up there. That was a bit of a touchy subject for him. He was accustomed to being the only pilot. Panzo had the engineering seat, and that left me standing around looking useless. A few more of Teyrn's little secrets came out when I had Panzo start teaching me how to work the auxiliary panel.

It seems that Teyrn had a few surprises hidden in the ship. The dorsal pod was a sophisticated electronic countermeasures array. It could nullify several versions of radar, or give out a false image of us. We could be made to look like a battle cruiser on their sensors, or disappear altogether. More than half of the systems' governments had banned such devices on civilian ships.

The ventral pod contained a rack of forty missiles, correction, thirty eight remaining missiles. These weren't as powerful as the skip missiles Teryn had sent after us, but they would still hurt. These were relics that had been part of the ship's original design and never removed after it was sold. Though weaker than even the Reliance Guard ship missiles, they could cause quite a problem for anyone fool enough to come after us. This was also only a secondary sting for the corvette.

The primary sting of the corvette was the charged particle accelerator cannon the ship was built around; our spinal mount. When these ships were decommissioned after the Garand War the guns were supposedly removed. Somehow this one had escaped that fate. It could send a fifty kilo slug with enough speed to punch through a battle cruiser. Not just through the armor, but in one side and out the other. We had thirty of the slugs, some of which were the splintering version. During the war half had been micro-nukes. Pirates beware! It was listed as our secondary cargo hold; what a joke. It was also why I had to squeeze past equipment when I'd fried the electrical system.

Panzo puffed up with his deductive abilities, "A true director would have known that I'd discover such things, and would have insisted upon my bond immediately."

Even after the discovery that I wasn't a senior director, it was decided that I was still captain. Cordovans weren't good in command positions, unless they were female. Traxel could make quick decisions, unless it was a critical situation, and then he cracked without leadership. Panzo had his oath to me. He couldn't be in command over me, and still take orders from me. Lafiel was the ship. If a patrol ship captain wanted to meet our captain that just wouldn't work.

I may have been the captain, but I was also the least experienced when it came to space travel. We were coming up fast on Rage, and needed a good plan for entering the system. I spent the last week before dropout running firing simulations with the missiles. Lafiel fed simulated scans into the displays, and I practiced blowing them up with imaginary missiles, or playing decoy tactics with the ECM.

I know I wasn't all that good, but it didn't help any to have the other two watching as I practiced. The sudden intakes of breath, and not so soft sighs did little for my confidence. I returned the favor by setting up a static charge on the meal table a few times. I especially loved the time when the static charge had built to the point where Panzo's skewer repulsed out of his hand to stick in the ceiling. It was better than watching a two centimeter arc jump from his food to tongue.

On her installation, Panzo had given Lafiel full control over the auto comm, and so she programmed it to send out the identity of a merchant out of Muuaca system. With our departure from Reliance, Sugnoff, the traffic control computer had given us a burst of the latest news. Luckily the batch had included some from Muuaca to improve our appearance. The Rage central controller would pick that up as old news and dump it as irrelevant. We certainly couldn't use the old name of Chanda's Folly, so we voted and came up with Denkou Comet. Denkou was a word I had learned watching the scans of my mother. It meant lightning in her tongue. I tried to argue that it didn't represent Traxel and Panzo in the name, but they declined naming it Bug-Zapper Fuzzy Comet.

I guess you could say that it was Teyrn Elon and Flux Genetics making our escape possible. Coming into Rage I charged up the ECM pod just before the zeta field collapsed, and set it to total obscurity. Anyone close enough to visually see us would have noted the auto comm burst that flashed out carrying the news and our name as Denkou Comet. Panzo suggested that we complete the disappearance by changing the looks of the ship while here.