The Machine Awakes (4 page)

It seemed that buying your way into anonymous employment within Helprin's organization was a fairly regular occurrence. His colleagues were a mixed bunch, to say the least. Some were fine, happy in their work and friendly enough. They included refugees and those forced by the war or circumstance to start over for all kinds of reasons. Helprin's Gambit was famous for second chances. If you had enough credits, you could buy a job, starting at the bottom and, with a lot of hard effort and a touch of luck, work your way up. No questions asked. No ID required. For those with an uncertain future, Helprin's Gambit was often the only option left, short of trying your luck in the lawlessness of a place like Salt City.

But there were others who took advantage of Helprin's unique hospitality. Deserters, criminals, outsiders. People on the run from trouble. People looking for it. Start at the bottom, get yourself—and your exploits—known by the right people, and maybe Helprin would recruit you to the somewhat less legal side of his organization.

Kodiak had done his best to avoid that crowd, but working at the bottom of the ladder wasn't quite a cakewalk. But at least it would be over soon.

And the new plan? Kodiak smiled to himself. The new plan was
good.

All he had to do was win at the Grand Casino, and win
big.
Normally, this only happened to a very few lucky players—less than natural odds, given the games were all controlled by the station's AI, carefully maintaining a balance of wins versus losses that kept the rich and famous coming while lining Helprin's coffers rather handsomely.

But if he could somehow throw the odds—if he could win, and win
enough,
then it would hurt Helprin. In fact, with a little computer know-how, he might even be able to win so much that Helprin's whole organization would be crippled. Okay, so maybe the result wasn't quite as final as it had been with the original plan, which would have ultimately handed Helprin over to the authorities, but for second best it wasn't half bad.

Kodiak completed the last touch-up to his work, flipped a row of switches to reconnect the system to the main station computer, then closed the access panel. As he replaced the microsolder in the belt of his maintenance worker's uniform, he touched the side of his glasses. Scrolling text spun across the HUD, too fast to read, but all in green. The tiny device he had wired into the terminal was a work of art, even if Kodiak said so himself. It had taken him three of the six months aboard the station to build it, although most of that time had been spent discreetly pilfering the components he needed from the maintenance stores.

Kodiak concentrated, and a new display appeared in his glasses as his system hack came online. A simple indicator appeared, showing a red cross icon, and he heard a tone, transmitted directly through the bone of his skull from one arm of the glasses.

All good. The hack simply interrupted the games computer's algorithms, introducing a new element that would throw a round of Sentallion in Kodiak's favor, the tone—inaudible to anyone standing next to him—giving him the heads up if he didn't catch the cross indicator in his vision. It was so simple, Kodiak wondered why nobody had tried it before.

Because, Von,
he thought,
you're a
bona fide
genius. Tales, my friend, will be told of your death-defying and quite possibly erotic exploits across the … well, across however many systems there are.

Another tone sounded in Kodiak's ear.

“Shit!”

Kodiak ducked back down into the channel as the service bay door slid open and the maintenance servitor returned, flying into its nest with enough speed to crush Kodiak's arm against the back wall had he not moved fast enough. Just a few centimeters from his face, heat wafted off the side of the servitor, the whine of its antigrav piercing in the enclosed space.

Peering into the tiny gap between the cube-shaped robot and the back wall of the dock, Kodiak watched as a small, pencil-like connector extended from the servitor and mated with the port in the computer panel. The panel's LED display changed from red to green; then a white indicator flickered as the machine synced with the station computer and entered its dormant, daytime phase.

Kodiak smiled to himself and stood in the tight space of the service channel, quickly packing the rest of his tools up and stowing them away in the utility pouches on his uniform. Careful not to touch the hot surface of the servitor, he crabbed sideways to leave the bay. With a quick glance around the lip of the docking bay's door, he pulled himself out into the service corridor.

The service corridor was itself much narrower, the ceiling much lower, than the guest facilities over his head and below his feet, but the sudden feeling of space after working in the cramped servitor bay was a relief. He glanced up at the surveillance lens he knew was ten meters to his left—there was no point in trying to hide from it; if anything, that would look even more suspicious. For anyone watching, he was just one of the hundreds of station techs going about his duties.

As he walked down the corridor, he whistled to himself, watching a new timer in his glasses as the HUD counted down to the start of the Sentallion contest. Two point seven cycles—or sixty-four point eight hours, as a smaller line of text helpfully suggested.

Perfect. All he had to do was lay low, be his anonymous self, carry out his menial tasks as normal.

And then … well, then it was time to take down Helprin's Gambit once and for all. And if things worked out, more than just the facility. Helprin's entire operation would be crippled, hurting him in his most sensitive place—his wallet.

Smiling, Kodiak rubbed his hands. There were a few hours before he was officially due back on shift. Time enough for a shower and something to eat and to consider how everything was going perfectly according to the new plan.

 

2

“This meeting of the
Fleet Command Council is called to order.”

Commander Laurel Avalon winced as Fleet Admiral Sebela strode into the huge council chamber, his face dark, eyebrows knitted together in a familiar expression—all
too
familiar recently, Avalon thought. She glanced around the elliptical table, its black obsidian surface reflecting the pale faces of the most senior members of the Fleet, distorting them, bleaching them of color, making them look even more miserable, if that were possible.

Avalon's eyes flicked up. Everyone was watching Sebela as he stood behind his high-backed chair at the head of the table, grinding his molars as he stared into the middle distance. Then he sat, the rest of the council following suit.

Avalon flicked her gaze to the chair opposite. Commander Moustafa stroked his thin black beard as he met her gaze and nodded a greeting. Moustafa and Avalon were the youngest members of the Fleet Council by at least a decade. They worked in separate areas of the Fleet—despite his relative youth, Moustafa was a talented psi-marine and had quickly moved up the ranks to head his division's Academy training program, while Avalon was the youngest chief of the Fleet Bureau of Investigation, the Fleet's internal affairs department, in the agency's history. Their positions granting them membership in the Fleet Command Council, the pair had gravitated together—drawn into friendship not just because of their ages, but because Moustafa was perhaps the only member of the council who didn't resent her presence. The Bureau dealt with internal matters, not the art of war. For most around the Command Council table, she had no place in their conferences. Some didn't even think the Bureau was part of the Fleet at all.

“Gentlemen,” said the Fleet Admiral. Then he paused and looked at Avalon, before looking away without any correction. “As you are aware, the Fleet has been engaged on a mission in the Shadow system, coordinates eight-zero-eleven-zero by zero-zero-zero, theater designation twenty-eleven-six-two hundred.”

Sebela paused and leaned back in his chair. Nobody spoke as the Fleet Admiral once again stared into the middle distance. Avalon glanced around the table; all eyes were on their leader. She used the pause in the proceedings to flip open the slim folder in front of her. Inside was a file, printed onto wafer thin plastiform sheets for security, each page embossed with Avalon's Fleet serial number. At the top were two lines.

SHADOW PROTOCOL

—PRIORITY 1 SECRET—

The mission the Fleet Admiral was describing was beyond top secret. So much so that as Avalon leafed through the flimsy pages of the report, she could see that instead of text, the file consisted of line after line of solid green blocks. The report—the entire briefing document for the Fleet Command Council itself—was redacted.

Avalon glanced up at Moustafa. His folder was closed, but he tapped the cover with his finger and nodded at her. There was no doubt in her mind that he had exactly the same questions as she did.

A mission too secret for even the Command Council to know the details of? Unless the redacted files were just for her and Moustafa. Avalon's gaze moved around the officers sitting stiffly behind the conference table. Who
really
knew about the mission? Some here must have sufficient clearance. Perhaps Admiral Laverick, the Fleet Admiral's aide-de-camp? Or the Commandant of the Marine Corps, Vaughn, the man directly in command of the millions of Fleet troops spread out across the galaxy. That pair sat next to each other on Avalon's right. Neither moved nor spoke, their briefing folders lying unopened on the table in front of them.

Zworykin too. As Admiral and commander-in-chief of the Psi-Marine Corps—Moustafa's CO—he wore the same striking black uniform as his junior officer, and with his wavy dark gray hair brushed back from his forehead, he cut an impressive figure. As he sat with one elbow on the table, tapping a single finger against his lips as he watched Fleet Admiral Sebela, Avalon saw the corners of his mouth twitch into a slight smile.

He was the only person in the room who didn't look afraid. Whatever the Shadow Protocol was, it had the whole council spooked. Except Zworykin. In fact, thought Avalon as she watched the Psi-Admiral, he looked pleased. Like a cat, waiting to pounce.

Moustafa cleared his throat discreetly and the Fleet Admiral seemed to snap out of it. He looked around the table like he was surprised to find himself sitting there with a dozen senior officers around him.

“I must report,” he said at last, “that Shadow Protocol has resulted in complete failure.”

Now there were gasps around the table, mutterings from the other officers. Avalon frowned, unsure of what they were all talking about, angry at being left out. She glanced at Moustafa across the table from her, and this time he shook his head. Next to him, Zworykin hadn't moved, hadn't taken his eyes from their leader. Hadn't stopped smiling.

The shiny black surface of the meeting table flickered into a deep blue, and a three-dimensional holographic representation of a star system appeared in the air above it. It was sparsely populated—the star at the center, labeled as
SHADOW
, a few asteroid fields in a close orbit, and, farther out, a red cube indicating a Fleet ship or structure. Floating above the cube was a serial number, the official Fleet manifest designation, and then a name. It was a U-Star—but not a ship, a
space station.
Avalon leaned forward to see the tiny text a little better. It read:

UNION CLASS FLEET STARSHIP

RPOS
ΨυΨ

COAST CITY

The Fleet Admiral took a deep breath, his hands spaced out on the table in front of him. “I regret the RPOS station U-Star
Coast City
was lost with all hands.”

Avalon leaned back into her chair, sinking into the padded leather, cold against the back of her head. The holodisplay changed, from the computer representation of the system to an actual three-dimensional image. It was beautiful, clouds of red and blue arcing symmetrically from a black central point, the star field beyond rich and colorful. The Shadow system was now home to a nebula.

“The star Shadow, an asymptotic technetium star, unexpectedly went nova mid-mission, destroying the
Coast City
and saturating the system with exotic radiation,” said the Fleet Admiral. “The system is now classified Iota-Black. No Fleet access.”

Then Sebela slumped in his chair and passed a shaking hand over his face. When his hand returned to the table, Avalon saw his eyes were closed. There were more mutterings around the table, but nobody seemed to notice his near faint.

And then someone started clapping. It was slow, mocking.

Psi-Admiral Zworykin.

“Congratulations, Fleet Admiral,” he said, clasping his hands in front of him. He smiled again. “Well done on another glorious failure.”

The officer on Zworykin's right—Commander Hammerstein, from some technical division of the Fleet that Avalon didn't remember—turned in his chair and stared at his colleague, a shocked look on his face.

“A little respect, please!” he said, gesturing toward Sebela. “The Fleet Admiral has been commanding this operation personally for months now, and—”

“Oh, shut up, Hammerstein,” said Zworykin. “You have no idea what our beloved Fleet Admiral has been doing. None of you have. Do you know how far our glorious leader was willing to go to win the war? The kind of
deal
he had planned?”

Hammerstein's face was still red, but now his gaze flicked between Zworykin and Sebela. Sebela had opened his eyes, but was sunk back in his chair, deflated.

“What are you talking about?” asked Hammerstein.

Zworykin looked at Hammerstein with a cold, cruel expression. Avalon suddenly wished she were somewhere—
anywhere—
else. The atmosphere in the council chamber was electric, dangerous.

She met Moustafa's eye and he nodded. They should leave, the both of them. Avalon stood up.