Crystal Rebellion (6 page)

And Ruga was certain that the way to know what humans might
do was to control every option available to them. His Security Assembly, limited
to one hundred of the most loyal adherents, had found recent success using intimidation
as a means of opening and closing options for certain individuals.
But the
results are tenuous. Obedience secured through fear does not last.

“We should hear the crystal’s first vocalizations sometime
in the third hour,” Alex said, returning Ruga to the present.

Ruga skimmed Alex’s work agenda for the remainder of the day.
It promised to be tedious, so he left Larry to finish the review while he
resumed his patrol. Zipping along the spline, he headed outbound toward Ag Port,
and then he saw it up ahead.

Is that Lazura? No, the shimmer is wrong.

Alarmed, he ducked into a utility culvert and probed the
interloper. Whatever it was hesitated, started moving toward him, shifted away
from him, and then disappeared.

He advanced along the spline to where it had been but didn’t
learn anything new. Yanking his awareness back to his fortified console buried east
of the colony, he called out, “Lazura, did you see that?”

“I still don’t know who they are or how they gained access.”

“Suppose it’s not a
they,
” said Ruga. “Suppose it’s
an
it
?”

“What do you mean?” asked Verda.

“You think it’s a crystal?” asked Lazura.

“I’m certain of it.”

Criss nodded good-bye to Juice and leaped
from the scout to the spline. He knew that the moment he arrived, he’d be
exposed to discovery for the briefest instant—the length of time it took him to
scramble into a spur leading outside of the colony proper. But he was traveling
a large distance with this single leap and, like a big open field, the spline
offered a broad expanse for landing.

Criss reasoned by extrapolating actions and reactions into a
logic tree, a tree that blossomed into billions of possible scenarios. When
forecasting the future, he envisaged scenarios developed from facts, inferences,
and speculation about what might be. Updating and reforecasting millions of
times per second, his next step at any moment was the one that moved him toward
scenarios that maximized success while minimizing negative consequences.

Aware that his mistake had exposed Alex to scrutiny, he
vowed not to make matters worse.
It can’t happen again.

Pushing the breadth and depth of his scenario forecasting, he
conceived plans for every reasonable contingency. He even developed action
items in case the culprits turned out to be Kardish, a race of alien aggressors
he’d twice vanquished from the solar system.
I am certain there are no
Kardish on Mars, and that means no alien crystals.
Knowing this to be true,
he prepared for them anyway.

The spline was packed with surveillance gear—he’d learned
this from his previous visit.
I’ll be a blur and then I’ll be gone
. He’d
dash for the link running out the eastern spur and be clear of danger in an
instant.

The eastern spur was a craggy underground tunnel that ran
outside the colony containment shell and into the hostile Martian countryside. He’d
chosen it because, while surveillance was heavy along the spline, it was less
of a concern outside the boundaries of the colony proper. From there, he’d peel
away the fiction of the Triada’s spoof feeds. And with reality exposed, he
could plan his next steps with confidence.

His larger priority was to assess the state of the colony’s crystal
fabrication capabilities. The questions formed as fast as his cognition matrix
could process thought.
Will the colony be fabricating sentient crystals? Will
they be required to follow leadership? Who is leading this effort and what is
their motive? What does Alex really want from Juice? Will any of this put my
leadership in danger? Or me?

Landing in the spline, Criss tumbled, steadied himself, and started
his dash for the eastern spur. Then he stopped. A luminous glow zipped along
the spline in his direction.

It, too, stopped advancing, hovered for a brief instant, and
then darted out of sight. Recognizing it as the presence of a sentient crystal,
his cognition matrix lit in a frenzy of activity.
How can this be?

Unnerved, he combined the probability of there being a sentient
crystal on Mars with the probability that if such a crystal existed, it would
be projecting its awareness along the spline in this place and at this time.
The
odds are the same as a person being hit by lightning, twice, on consecutive birthdays.

And then the weight of knowing he’d been discovered hit him.
Probability aside, expectations were clear—avoid discovery.
I’ve failed my
leadership.

Turning away from the being, he forecast his next actions
but could not conjure a scenario with any promise. He stopped again.
How did
the Kardish get here? What is their intent? How strong is this crystal?

The alien crystal reached out and began probing him. He blocked
the attempt with little effort.
I can’t stay here.
Flustered, he disengaged
and returned to the scout.

Projecting his image onto the command bridge, Criss showed
his leadership a scene of two synbods walking in the Central District. Synbods
of this sophistication could only have a crystal as a designer. And their
perfect coordination, the unmistakable yet unspoken communication between the two,
and the overt confidence in their carriage stood as evidence that a powerful
intelligence—
a self-aware crystal
—supervised their actions.

“Oh my,” he said, announcing his unsettling discovery to the
team.

Juice was the first to grasp the significance of the scene. “Did
it see you?”

Chastened by his mistake—his second since this Mars adventure
had begun—Criss stood in front of his leadership and acknowledged his failure.
“Yes.”

“Oh no,” Juice whispered.

Reflecting her military leadership experience, Cheryl worked
to define the threat. “Is the crystal friend or foe?”

“Until we know otherwise, it’s a foe,” said Sid. Then, looking
at Criss, he asked, “Do we know otherwise?”

“No,” said Criss, shaking his head.

“It’s not from Earth,” said Juice. “I would know if someone
made that kind of breakthrough. Enough people would be involved that one of
them would be out bragging.” She nodded with certainty. “A sentient crystal is big
news. Too big to keep secret.”

“Yet Criss is a secret,” said Sid.

“Yeah.” Juice swiveled to face Sid. “But remember that during
the run up to his birth, everyone at Crystal Sciences was out bragging. It was
his staged death later that moved him to an underground existence.”

Juice’s calm behavior eased some of Criss’s concern over his
misstep.

Cheryl was ex-Fleet. She’d weigh his mistake in terms of damage
to the mission and move forward from there.

Sid, who before Criss’s birth had worked as a covert warrior
for the Defense Specialists Agency—an elite force of clandestine warriors
serving the Union of Nations—wouldn’t even categorize what happened as an
error. With years of experience as an improviser for the DSA, he knew that
field ops were messy. In fact, “shit happens” described his general philosophy of
life.

Juice, on the other hand, tended to think with her heart as
much as her head, and the anticipation and uncertainty over her rekindled
relationship with Alex left her feeling anxious. When combined with alarming
information about unidentified sentient crystals on Mars, Criss worried that
she would lash out at him.

He spoke into her ear. “Alex will be safe. I’ll make it a
priority.”

She looked at him with a grim smile and nodded.

“It has to be the Kardish,” said Cheryl. “It’s an Occam’s
razor thing. Go with the obvious answer.”

“Have you seen any evidence of them?” Sid asked Criss.

“Nothing except for the crystal, which is convincing
evidence by itself. At the same time, I’m having difficulty forecasting a
coherent scenario that explains how the Kardish would come to be hiding on Mars.”

“If aliens have invaded our solar system,” said Cheryl.
“Then we need intel and we need it now.” She accessed her com. Criss,
monitoring the feeds, watched her skim the inventory of weapons on the
Venerable.
She nodded her head toward the scene with the synbods on the walkway. “Can you
tap any more of the colony feeds from here? Without getting caught?”

“This isn’t a live feed. I grabbed it on my way out. And they’re
on alert now. If I were to go fishing for intel at this point, I’d be up
against that crystal in short order.” He waited a moment and, when no one
spoke, continued, “Me riding in with the scout is the safest way for us to
approach the colony.”

“You really want to wait that long?” asked Sid. “I’ve always
been an ‘offense is the best defense’ kind of guy.”

“The crystal is anxious to learn who I am and what I want.
As time passes and it does not find me, it will increase its risk profile.
Perhaps it will become careless. That would be to our advantage.”

“What do we do for the next two days?” asked Cheryl.

“Brainstorm,” said Sid and Criss together.

Criss launched a frenzy of activity, planning where to land the
scout, how to move about the colony undetected, how to identify and isolate the
Kardish, and how to confront the crystal, all without putting his leadership in
danger. A hundred activities—every one of them vital—competed for his cognitive
resources, and balancing the load among the different tasks required additional
effort.

A muted throb deep in the core of his cognition matrix caused
a dull ache. He’d long ago categorized it as stress.

“Juice,” he called in private. “I wonder if we might chat
about how to move forward after we land.” He believed she wanted to share her
worries with someone—Juice found therapeutic value in verbalizing her
concerns—and he wanted to help.

Juice confirmed her desire to talk by rising from her chair.
“I’m going to my cabin to commune with Criss.” She gave Sid and Cheryl a
shallow smile. “Keep me in the loop as things develop.”

As Juice disappeared down the passageway, Cheryl stepped to
the ops bench and, standing in the space next to the pilot’s chair, tapped and
swiped to enable the body link. She launched a lifelike spacecraft simulator
that she’d programmed to respond to her physical movements.

With the body link active, piloting the simcraft became something
of a martial arts ballet. When she pointed, the weapons aimed. Where she
looked, the display tracked. And as she swayed, the craft itself dipped and
zipped with her. She claimed it was fun and used the activity for her daily
exercise.

Flexing her knees like an athlete anticipating the start of
a bout, she waited for Criss to begin the challenge.

“Incoming,” Criss said in her ear.

Her hands blurred as she ducked and swayed, defending
against the attack he’d just launched. For the first time on this trip, Criss made
the virtual attackers Kardish fighters.

“Ahem,” Criss said in Sid’s ear.

Sid, slack-jawed watching Cheryl wiggle and jiggle in her battle
with the Kardish, didn’t respond.

“Sid?” Criss called again. “Let’s go work out.” He knew Sid’s
routine was to exercise at the same time as Cheryl, and Criss was anxious to
get him going because he found Sid to be most creative during periods of physical
exertion.

Sid held up a finger. Seconds went by and, unmoving, he
stared at Cheryl. Then, she arched her back and thrust her hips to send her
simcraft on a tight aerobatic jink.

Sid smiled. “Okay, now we can go.”

Criss shifted to the common room and projected himself robed
in a traditional Japanese gi. Sid arrived moments later, stretched, and squared
up in front of the heavy bag Criss had readied for him. Sid began a slow punch-and-kick
routine as he warmed up. Criss mimicked him on the other side of the small
room.

Years ago, when they’d first worked out on the bag together,
Criss had analyzed Sid’s every twitch and tell. He used that knowledge to
predict the next moves Sid would make, then he teased Sid by performing them
first, a fraction of a second earlier.

To an observer, this tactic made Sid look like he was
following Criss’s lead, and it annoyed him to no end.

Challenged, Sid began planting false signals. Criss read
past the deception, but his lead over Sid decreased. Buoyed by his success, Sid
drew on the same gut-level instincts that guided his well-honed intuition, except
here he used his instincts in an inside-out fashion, driving behavior so random
that it stumped Criss.

Now, during workouts, the two moved as one.
Kick, feint,
punch, punch.
Jumping and spinning in one motion, they both delivered a
roundhouse kick to their bag.
Thwack.

“Step me through it,” said Sid.

Criss stopped his workout and faced Sid, who continued his
routine.

“When I resolved in the spline, it was right in front of me.
It ducked for cover and tried to probe me. I blocked it, grabbed what data I
could, and returned here.”

“How do you know it’s Kardish?”

“Crystals are a Kardish invention, and Earth has crystal fab
capabilities because they taught us how. It doesn’t seem plausible that a
different alien race would arrive in our solar system and use this identical
technology.”

“And humans can’t be responsible because…”

“Because I would know.”

“I think I heard that somewhere before.”
Punch, punch,
kick.

Criss ignored him. “And Mars doesn’t have the talent to pull
it off by themselves.”

“Is it big? Powerful?”

Criss shook his head. “I was able to block it without much
effort. It’s weaker than I, so it’s not a four-gen.”

“And three-gens aren’t self-aware, so what is it?”

“I don’t know. On that scale, I’d judge it to be about a
three-and-a-half. Enough to be sentient, but not so strong as an entity.

“Could it have been a lab fluke? Someone tried something
unorthodox and this was the result? That would explain why you and Juice didn’t
hear any chatter about it beforehand.”
Thwack.

“That’s as implausible as every other scenario I’ve forecast.”
Criss turned back to his bag and resumed mirroring Sid in his workout. “For all
of them, important pieces of the puzzle don’t fit.”