Unstable Prototypes (18 page)

"No offense, but how much help do you think
you'll be able to give without that transmitter?"

"My lack of a transmitter reduces my role to
one similar to that played by a human or other organic life form,"
she said.

"Yeah, but at least humans have thumbs."

"With irritation: Opposable digits are not a
prerequisite for usefulness," she spoke.

"Hey, I
said
no offense... Wait, you
actually had that sentence prepared? Am I that predictable?"

"Yes, Lex. You are that predictable."

Lex looked at her flatly while something very
much like a smirk graced her face.

"I'm getting outsmarted by a small furry
animal."

"Though I appear to be a small furry animal,
I am in fact an abridged form of a super computer's artificial
intelligence."

"Oh, come on! You knew I was going to say
'small furry animal'? Those words specifically?"

"Yes, Lex. You are that predictable," she
repeated, now with an unmistakable grin.

He crossed his arms and glared at her. "You
know, animals aren't supposed to smile."

"Though I appear to be a small furry animal,
I am in fact an abridged form of-"

"Alright!" he objected.

"-a super computer's artificial
intelligence," she finished, swiping again to add, "I apologize,
but due to the nature of my current means of communication, I am
unable to interrupt a statement once it has started."

"I'll keep that in mind."

As Ma went back to her task, Lex decided to
catch a few Zs. Since piloting a ship outside of the mapped routes
that most commercial ships relied upon was a dangerous and
questionably legal business, sleep often came in twenty minute
lulls in the trip itinerary. As such, Lex had become a master of
the cat nap. Given a few minutes and something to lean on, he could
catch forty winks at the drop of a hat. With nothing better to do,
he cleared some space on the top bunk, hauled himself effortlessly
up, and promptly passed out.

#

In her personal quarters on her space
station, Commander Purcell was busy looking over the early reports
from the engineers. To the best of their ability, they had failed
to identify any aspect of the fabrication improvements that Karter
had made that were overtly dangerous. The warhead similarly
appeared to be a standard one. The various component systems had
been enlarged and simplified, likely to make the design simple
enough to be manufactured with the jury-rigged fabrication lab, but
cautiously administered tests returned reliable results. He had, in
the space of a few minutes, manufactured a weapon that was an order
of magnitude more powerful than anything they had in their armory.
This fabricator would change everything. She'd briefly considered
abandoning the CME Activator entirely. With this device, they could
almost certainly manufacture their own smaller, more conventional
anti-electronic weapons. It would take time to stockpile enough to
launch a successful campaign, but a delay was preferable to the
inevitable disaster the lunatic inventor was downright eager to
cause.

Unfortunately, this space station and
virtually everything that they had been able to achieve in the past
seven months had been solely due to the financing and information
of their mysterious benefactor. Though the resources had allowed
them to come a long way in a short time, they did not yet have the
foundation to achieve their goals without continued support, and
that meant keeping the mystery partner happy. It had been made
quite clear since the beginning that the primary interest was the
acquisition of the design and means of production of the CMEA and
the subsequent elimination of its inventor. Until she'd succeeded,
she was stuck with both men.

As though he had been listening in on her
thoughts, the man himself chose that moment to ping her with a
request for secure communications. Purcell brought up the
appropriate interfaces, pulled out her keyboard, and established a
two way connection.

"Report," typed Remote.

"Fabrication facility complete. Before device
can be completed, raw material must be acquired."

"Have you experienced any resistance?"

"Only from the inventor."

"That may change."

"Explain."

"I have been informed that inquiries have
been made regarding your activities, originating from two separate
sources."

"Which activities?"

"The acquisition of the most recent additions
to your fleet, primarily. I researched the names associated with
some of the more successful inquiries. They were last active three
years ago, when they were used to acquire information for an
operation that would eventually result in the incarceration of a
group of mercenaries, each of whom have got connections to the
inventor. One of the mercenaries escaped from custody several days
ago."

"You think that it is related?"

"It would be foolish not to."

"How could the inventor arrange for the
release of a collaborator? He has been in our custody for weeks,
and he hasn't had any communication. His home base is under
constant surveillance, and no outgoing transmissions have been
detected."

"The inventor is not to be underestimated.
You would be wise to dispatch men to the retention facilities that
are holding the other members of the inventor's squad. Coordinates
will follow the conclusion of this communication session."

"I cannot afford to spread my headcount too
thin," Purcell typed.

This financier had been moving steadily from
the role of adviser to supervisor. His insistence upon dictating
precisely what she ought to do and how was pushing Commander
Purcell to the end of her patience.

"The one thing you have is manpower," Remote
replied, "The second source of inquiry appears to be journalistic
in nature."

"That is of no concern."

"It is of great concern. Right now your group
is invisible and able to prepare. If you were to be revealed,
forces could be mustered against you."

"The entire purpose of this operation is to
illustrate on a grand stage the validity of our message. That
cannot occur if we are not visible. We cannot be taken seriously if
we are not known."

"And if you are shut down before you can
apply the device, you will only ever be known as a pathetic,
ineffectual paramilitary group. I suspect one of your men may have
given information to the press. Get your men under control, tell
them to keep their mouths shut, and do only what you need to
achieve the goal at hand. There is a massive press convention on
Tessera. If a solid piece of reliable information were to spark
there, it would spread into a wildfire. You can't afford that. You
have your orders. Do what you must to acquire the necessary
resources to complete the devices as quickly as possible. End
Transmission."

With that, the connection dropped. Purcell
clenched her fist and pounded angrily at the wall. She pulled the
datapad from its mount and flipped her way through the information
her men had provided, including a list of institutions confirmed to
have supplies of Esche Alloy. There were a few nearby, but most
only had enough for one or two warheads. One of them, however, had
enough for six, with more to spare. A smile came to her face. She
stood and marched from her quarters, prompting the soldier at
attention outside of her door to fall into step behind her. It was
Crewman Marx, the man who had somehow fallen into the position of
second in command. In a normal organization, a position like that
would have been earned by performance or seniority. In Marx's case,
it seemed to have had more to do with proximity.

"Get five squads ready," she ordered without
looking, winding her way through the halls of the station, "Three
equipped for surveillance, two equipped for assault and
acquisition. I will provide the coordinates and exact orders for
the surveillance squads shortly, but they will be keeping an eye on
some prisoners who, if released, may become problematic. These are
military prisons, so we should have men on the inside. Tell them to
keep their eyes open. I want to know if anything happens involving
those inmates. The other two will be going on an asset retrieval
mission. High risk. I want people with experience in heavy
ordinance and urban combat. Understood?"

"Yes, Commander," replied the soldier.

"Then
move
!" she ordered, taking a
final turn and arriving at the cell holding Karter.

The inventor was currently in full lock down
mode, with both prosthetic limbs removed. The floor of the cell was
littered with plastic wrappers from energy bars of various sorts. A
bar was sticking out of the corner of his mouth like a cigar as he
attempted to flip through a stack of printouts featuring a
carefully selected portion of the designs for the transporter. A
black dry erase marker was perched behind his ear and schematics,
equations, and diagrams were littering the metal walls of the
cell.

"Karter!" she bellowed.

He looked up.

"Boss lady," he mumbled, tucking the papers
under his single intact arm and awkwardly reaching up to tear off
the external portion of the energy bar. "You need to teach your men
the subtle distinctions between candy bars and energy bars. Here's
a good starting point: Candy bars do not contain cranberries."

"That antimatter warhead you made... how
quickly can you produce them?" she demanded.

"In usable form?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to launch them, drop them, or
deliver them?"

"Does it matter?"

"Launching will require a sturdier support
frame and a propulsion system, dropping won't require a very hardy
power source, and delivering will need a remote trigger of some
kind."

"Evenly split between the three."

"You give me the parts and two days, I'll
give you two dozen, eight of each. That assumes you've got a ready
supply of antimatter."

"We use it to fuel the ship's reactor."

"Oh, too good for fusion, eh? Okay, then. Let
me out and I'll load up the appropriate design modifications and
teach you how to use it... for a price."

"You are already being paid."

"I'm being paid for the CME Activators, not a
whole arsenal of mass destruction. I don't work for free."

"You want more money, I presume?"

"Considering the fact that I continue to be a
prisoner, I'm beginning to care a bit less about what's in my bank
account. Something a bit more immediate and tangible is called
for."

"You won't be getting the rest of the plans
for the transporter until we're through with you."

"So I'd gathered. That's not what I had in
mind."

"What, then?" she growled.

"I give you the designs and the training for
that stuff, I keep my arm full time."

Purcell closed her eyes and weighed the
options. The last time he'd been left in his cell with all of his
limbs attached, it had cost the lives of several personnel... but
there was no doubt that he could deliver the weapons she was
requesting, and with them, things would change.

"I don't know what all of the thinking is
about, lady. You get WMDs, I get the ability to scratch my ass
without putting down my crappy granola bar. That's not the kind of
deal you sit around considering."

After a moment, Commander Purcell pulled out
her communicator.

"Get me engineering."

Another moment passed and a voice
answered.

"Engineering here."

"Have you completed testing on the
prosthesis?"

"The arm or the leg?"

"Both."

"The new one uses standard mechanics with a
multi-contact connector for control and communication. Looks
proprietary."

"Any secondary functions?"

"Negative. Normal range of motion, with the
exception of full wrist rotation. Strength level is above human
thresholds, but not by much. Power system is a high density
battery, current limited. The battery would run down to nothing
fairly quickly if the actuators in the arm were pushed too hard for
too long."

"There, see? Harmless," Karter said.

"I hesitate to call anything harmless when
you are involved, Karter. I'm quite certain that when they coined
the phrase 'Idle hands are the devil's workshop,' they specifically
had you in mind," Purcell said.

"That is an idiotic phrase. Idle hands are
definitively nonthreatening. It is when they start getting busy
that things get dangerous. So what'll it be, boss lady?"

"Fine. You'll have your arm. But I'm doubling
the guards."

"If that helps you sleep at night," he said
with a shrug, "What do you suddenly need the big guns for?"

"That does not concern you."

"I figure you're probably going to use them
to get your hands on the Esche alloy."

Purcell turned to him, face blank.

"I'm calling that a yes. Which means you'll
be bringing enough firepower to level a city to a college
campus."

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

"You need to work on that poker face, boss
lady. So, man-portable weapons of war targeting civilian population
centers. Tell me again how you aren't a terrorist?"

"We are revolutionaries! We are going to show
society that it has allowed itself to become weak!" she
declared.

"Great. I triggered the manifesto..." he
grumbled.

The commander dug out her communicator, a
hefty slidepad derivative.

"Do you know what this is?"

"Yeah. It's an ancient mil-spec data radio.
That thing must be ten years old."

"Ancient indeed. And still standard issue to
half of the galaxy's military. Look around you! This space station,
this equipment, and the infrastructure of every city on every
planet in colonized space is decrepit and static. Even the newest
models are rehashed versions of the old. We have ceased to
innovate, Karter. We've ceased to push the horizons. You of all
people should appreciate that. We've become comfortable,
complacent. Society is a living thing. And when living things cease
to adapt, adjust, and improve, they die off. Weaponry has hardly
advanced in the last three hundred years. Travel has barely
advanced in the last fifty. Even the expansion of colonization and
terraformation has slowed to a crawl."