The Machine Awakes (31 page)

“The more you hate, the more love He will give you,” she said. Then she smiled. Cait recoiled, unable to control the panic that threatened to take over. Flood was a maniac, dangerous and unpredictable. “Oh, how I envy you,” said Flood. “You will form a bond with the Fallen One that we can only dream of. You and He will be locked forever in a glorious embrace.”

Cait coughed, her voice a throaty wheeze. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Flood released her hold on Cait's face. “We are going to the control room. The Fallen One is about to rise, and we need to install the Pilot.”

Cait pulled against her captor, but her strength had evaporated and her guard merely tightened his grip.

Flood stepped closer, until her nose was nearly touching Cait's. “You can struggle all you like, if that helps build your hate and fear. You are perfectly safe. We can't kill you, but you don't necessarily need to be in one piece to be the Pilot.”

She nodded to the guards, who pulled Cait upright. Flood pulled her gun from over her shoulder and pointed it at the spot between Cait's eyes.

Cait's forehead creased in confusion. Pilot? What the hell did that mean? The Fallen One was their god, a mythical nothing that Flood was apparently convinced was about to make a personal appearance.

Cait glanced around, trying to catch a reflection on the control panels around her, but there was no sign of Glass's image. She remembered what he had said, that her power was unique, and that he needed to use it for something. Flood needed her too—and it was obvious now that it was for the same reason. Cait was unique, possessed of a gift that even her brother didn't have.

She focused on the barrel pointing between her eyes.

Come on. Come on! If she was so unique then how about that uniqueness came back, right about now, and took out Flood and her cronies. There were just four of them.
Four.
Easy.

Right?

Cait felt the sweat trickle down her face. She gasped, not realizing how hard she had been straining. And all for nothing.

Flood tilted her head again, then, still smiling, moved the barrel from Cait's forehead and jabbed it sharply into her shoulder. Cait got the message, relaxing her muscles, letting herself be held up by Flood's soldier-like acolyte.

She didn't need to be in one piece.

Flood raised an eyebrow, then pulled the gun away, pointing the barrel toward the ceiling.

“Better,” she said. “Now, let's move.”

 

32

Kodiak opened his eyes
and found himself somewhere dimly lit and poorly ventilated. His head felt like a lump of herculanium alloy, his mouth was dry, and when he tried to move, tried to push himself up off the floor to at least a sitting position, he was wracked by a coughing fit that nearly choked him.

The coughs subsided after a moment. Rubbing the tears from his eyes, he focused for a few seconds on taking long, clean breaths of the hot air. Then he looked up.

The JMC servitor was standing right in front of him, the staser still in its hand, although it was pointed at the floor, not at him.

Kodiak frowned and coughed again as he looked around. The room was small and dimly lit and filled with junk—bits of metal framework, discarded wall panels that looked less than new, boxes and crates of who knew what. It took a moment more for Kodiak to realize the loud hum wasn't just in his head. The hot, stuffy room was loud.

Kodiak eyed the staser in the servitor's hand and decided against moving for now. “Where the hell am I?”

The servitor said, “We are in the sorting room of a waste disposal facility. Domestic and office waste, not industrial. Don't worry, Mr. Kodiak. You're safe here for the moment.”

Kodiak rubbed his stomach. It was sore from where—

“I thought your boss ordered you to kill me?” he asked.

The servitor smiled—simulated a smile. Kodiak had seen that kind of look on the faces of real people, and it was usually a bad sign.

“I don't work for those people, Mr. Kodiak.”

“I didn't know robots had a choice.”

“On the contrary, they are working for
me.
Well, so to speak, anyway.”

Kodiak shook his head. Maybe it was just too hot in the room—and he had just been stunned, after all—for any part of this conversation to make any kind of sense.

“And what the hell are you, exactly?”

“You can call me Glass, if that helps.”

Kodiak froze. Then he pulled himself to his feet. He was unsteady and leaned against the warm, smooth wall behind him. He kicked at some detritus at his feet, winced at the noise it made, but then realized it didn't seem to matter. The hum of machinery in the sorting room was loud enough that Kodiak had to raise his voice to be heard.

But … Glass? Kodiak looked at the servitor standing in front of him. The machine looked like a young man with reddish hair, quite different from the android currently lying in pieces in a Bureau laboratory.

Kodiak rubbed the back of his neck as he thought it over. “The only Glass I know was shot in a warehouse on Earth,” he said.

“A servitor, yes,” said Glass. “This JMC facility is entirely automated, the servitors all controlled by the central computer, but each with a unique identity based on the personality and memories of a real person, a template taken from the original facility staff.”

“Original staff?”

Glass nodded. “The staff who set up this operation. Rather than lose their experience and expertise when they retired it was more efficient to simply copy their minds into servitors.”

Kodiak frowned. “That's further than the Fleet ever got with servitor tech.”

Glass gave a small bow. “Despite the company name,
automation
, not mining, is the JMC's primary business, Mr. Kodiak. The gas mines were the seed—self-aware AIs with the ability to reconfigure their own superstructures for optimal storm extraction.” He spread his hands. “From
them
to
me
, you could say.”

“Right,” said Kodiak. “Which explains your change of face. Take one servitor out, another takes its place, right?”

The small smile returned to Glass's face. “Something like that.”

Kodiak frowned and turned to scan the room, looking for the exit. His first job was to get Cait out of the hands of Samantha Flood. There only seemed to be four of her group in the refinery. Not overwhelming odds, if he was careful. He had surprise on his side too—they thought he was dead, after all.

“Okay, thanks for the rescue,” he said, “but I need to move. I've brought firepower. There are a dozen servitors in the shuttle.” Kodiak's hand reached for his comm almost automatically.

“I wouldn't do that, Agent,” said Glass. “They're JMC servitors too. All linked to the company's central AI.”

Kodiak sighed and let his hand drop. He nodded at his rescuer. “What about you? Aren't you linked to the AI as well?”

Glass bowed again. “I have certain … operational privileges.”

“Right,” said Kodiak, nodding as he put the pieces together. “You're an independent unit, aren't you? You had to be, right? In order to cooperate with the Morning Star.” He took a step forward. “The Morning Star killed two Fleet Admirals and you killed one of my agents, so thanks again for the rescue but you'll forgive me if I can't quite bring myself to trust you.”

Glass cocked his head. Kodiak wondered who the
real
Glass was, the original refinery staffer used as the template for the servitor's personality. Was he even still alive? For all he knew, Kodiak was talking to a copy of someone long, long dead. It was morbid, unsettling.

“I didn't kill any agent, Mr. Kodiak, and you're not listening to me. The situation is much more complicated than you know. The Morning Star is not responsible for the assassinations. There is a much larger force at play, one I've been working
against.
”

Kodiak licked his lips and paced the small room a little. It was close, dim, claustrophobic. He had to get out. But he also knew that he had to gather more data. He turned back to the servitor.

“Go on,” he said.

“The JMC, as big as it is, is just one tiny part of a larger private enterprise,” said Glass. “This parent company doesn't even have a name, but those who know it exists refer to it as the Caviezel Corporation.”

“I know that name. Resta Caviezel—the first Chief Executive of the JMC. But that's hardly a secret. He was as famous as Ponti Cavalcante, or as Zia Hollywood is today.”

Glass nodded. “But what
is
a secret, Mr. Kodiak, is what the Caviezel Corporation is using the Fleet for.”

Kodiak blinked. “
Using
the Fleet?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Glass. “Caviezel's claws run very deep, Mr. Kodiak. In addition to robotics research, Caviezel also has the logistics contract to collect and repatriate the Fleet's war dead back to Earth.”

There it was. There was the connection he'd been looking for. The realization hit him like a punch in the stomach and Kodiak stepped back until he touched the warm wall behind him. Trash clattered at his feet.

The Fleet's war dead. War dead like Caitlin's twin brother, Tyler. Caviezel had control over their remains.

“The JMC has a network of heavily protected shipping routes,” said Glass. “Every part of Fleetspace is connected not just to Earth, but to the Jovian system. And the Jovian system is a good place to hide something.”

Kodiak felt the air leave his lungs. He felt tired, and old, and heavy, and hot. “Eight-seven-nine-one-two-two-Juno-Juno,” he whispered.

Glass nodded. “I've been broadcasting those coordinates as loudly as possible. I'm glad you heard them.”

“Caitlin Smith thinks her brother is there.”

Glass smiled. Kodiak wasn't sure if it was because he was a servitor with an artificial face, or whether there was true emotion behind it, an echo perhaps of the original man. Because the smile was cold, cruel. Knowing. Kodiak felt his stomach do a flip.

“Tyler Smith, killed in action, out on the Warworlds,” said Glass.

“And his remains repatriated by the Caviezel Corporation.” Kodiak shook his head, trying to take it in. “What's at those coordinates?”

“That, I'm afraid, is one question I don't know the answer to, Mr. Kodiak.”

Kodiak frowned. “What? Aren't you part of the JMC AI?”

“I am, but I only have access to some parts of the system. The AI is fragmented, deliberately, so different sectors of the corporation are kept in the dark about the activities of the others.”

“Figures,” said Kodiak. He sighed and glanced over the machine man's shoulder. Glass was standing near the wall, the room's only door just behind and to his right. The door was nothing but a thin black outline on the pale metal wall, the chromed control panel on one side. “Look, I need to get Cait out of there and—”

He moved for the door and Glass moved too, stepping into his path.

“Hey, let me—”

Glass pushed his free hand into Kodiak's chest. The staser hung in the other.

“I can't let you out of here, Agent.”

Kodiak felt the heat rise in his face. He clenched his fists. “Get out of my way.”

“There's something else,” said Glass, his face in Kodiak's. “The part of the system I
can
read is shrinking fast.”

Kodiak took a step back. Glass dropped his hand. “There's a
corruption
in the AI,” said the servitor. “And it's spreading. This facility has been
infected
, Agent. The computer is holding it back, creating defensive silos within its infrastructure, routing it through redundant network loops, but somehow it manages to find ways around the failsafes, rewriting code faster than the system can counter.”

Kodiak blinked at the servitor. What Glass was describing sounded bad, but …

“This is why I need Ms. Smith,” said the servitor. “I need her talents to help clean the system.”

Kodiak waved at the door. “Fine, help me get her out of there.”

Glass shook his head. “No, you misunderstand, Mr. Kodiak. She is in
exactly
the right place. Flood thinks she is going to use Ms. Smith to resurrect her god. But instead, when her mind is linked with the JMC computer, the AI will be able to use her abilities to disinfect the system.”

Kodiak rubbed his face. “You're telling me you actually want Flood and her lunatics to plug her into the computer?”

“You don't understand the danger we are in, Mr. Kodiak. The danger
everyone
is in.”

“Define everyone.”

Glass threw his arms up. “
Everyone.
The whole of the Fleetspace. If we don't stop it, it won't just be this facility that will be lost. This will just be the start.”

Kodiak turned and slapped the hot wall in frustration with both hands, then spun around to face Glass again. “Of
what,
dammit?”

“The
infection
, Mr. Kodiak,” said Glass, not backing away, his voice low, conspiratorial. Kodiak had to strain to hear the servitor over the background hum of the sorting room. “It is being slowed, but not stopped. Eventually every part of the system will be consumed, and then once it has control of this refinery, it will be able to spread out, infecting the Fleet, infecting every other computer system there is.”

Kodiak shook his head. “A virus?”

“No, not a virus. Something far more dangerous and complex. It's a whole operating system. Self-compiling, self-programming. An alien AI, Mr. Kodiak.”

Kodiak turned around again. He looked at the wall behind him, the pale metal cast in a reddish glow by the low lights of the sorting room. He drew breath to speak, then he froze. A thought occurred. A terrible, awful thought, one that chilled him to the bone, despite the close heat of the sorting room. It was ridiculous, he told himself. Impossible. His imagination running wild. A fantasy.