The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III (21 page)

There was a moment’s hesitation before Suss’ AID spoke. “The desk is dirty, “Santu said. “Get me closer to the left side of it.” Suss pulled the AID out of its pouch and swept it over the desk. “Right here,” the AID said. “Back a bit—there! Some sort of transmitter. Looks like it’s wired in to transmit any command fed into the computer, pipe it to some remote location.”

Dostchem already had her equipment out, and had the transmitter deactivated in a minute or two. “There,” the Capuchin said as she finished. “Now it should still send a flat carrier wave no matter what you do to the computer.

“Okay, then, here’s goes nothing.” Sisley sat down at her desk and put her palm down over the sensor plate. The panel glowed a welcoming green and a flat display screen slid out of its recess, turned and swiveled up to face Sisley.

“We’re in,” she said. “Dostchem—use your G-wave gizmo.

Are there any of those parasites hooked into this computer? Is it safe to hook Santu up to it on a hardwire?”

Dostchem consulted another of her devices and nodded. “It’s clean. No G-waves coming from closer than several sources a few hundred meters above us, at extreme range for this sensor.”

Spencer looked at her sharply. “You’re picking up G-waves? There are definitely parasites in this building?”

Dostchem nodded. “Of course. That should have been obvious. I assumed that we would find them in the building. But I do admit that I am relieved to actually track G-waves. These are the first G-wave sources I’ve picked up, and it is reassuring to know the device actually works. But come now, we really must get on with the job.”

Suss, still holding Santu, pulled the hardwire link from its niche and spooled it out, handing Sisley the end of the cable. Sisley popped open a compartment on the corner of the desk and plugged in Santu’s hookup.

“Okay, ah, Santu,” she said, uncertain how to address an AID, “I want you to monitor
everything.
Right now we’ll get the data quick and dirty, later we’ll analyze it. Just get it all down.”

“Don’t worry, Miss Mannerling,” Santu said. “That’s my job.”

Sisley nodded. She was tempted to let Santu control the search—but no, that wouldn’t be smart. There were good reasons that her desk computer wasn’t built as an AI system in the first place. Like most security-conscious operations, StarMetal did not trust sentient machines with unlimited access to confidential information. After all, an AI system was
designed
to rework its own programming, and that made any software block against unauthorized access impossible to enforce.

Furthermore, the artificial personalities that AI systems inevitably developed could turn unpredictable. There seemed to be some link being the amount of data an AI computer handled and the degree of its eccentricity.

The bigger the AI system, the more likely it was to be a bit flaky. And what help was a surly computer, or one that enjoyed practical jokes, or one that took an irrational dislike to its operator? Suppose it decided to erase key memories—or even commit suicide, taking all its files along into oblivion?

Even a healthy AI could be far too amenable to suggestion. Potentially, any competent machine psychologist could stroll in and talk an AI system full of secrets into confessing all.

But did that sort of argument apply to the present case? What harm in letting the AID go to work for a few seconds? Why not let Santu take the search job? No doubt the AID could do it in a thousandth the time it would take Sisley, and time was short.

No, best not to take the chance, she decided firmly. There were too many horror stories about AIDs tapping into too much data all at once, and developing symptoms that paralleled human drunkenness.
That
they didn’t need tonight.

She switched on the voice-command system for her computer, then thought better of it, switched the mike off, and drew the keyboard out from its storage niche. Better to go with completely precise typed instructions. Mikes were a lot easier to tap than keyboards. Spencer and Suss came around the other side of her desk to look over her shoulder as she began hitting keys.

OPEN PERSONNEL FILES. QUERY: she typed. PROVIDE ANY/ALL INFORMATION ON PERSON KNOWN AS DESTIN/CAPTAIN DESTIN STARMETAL EMPLOYEE FILES.

NO SUCH NAME LOCATED the computer displayed on its screen in bright red letters. Sisley repressed the urge to ask the computer, “Are you sure?” Even after thousands of years in dealing with computer searches, most humans still could not quite believe that a search of millions of names could be performed accurately in less than a millisecond.

Maybe she just needed to rephrase things a bit. REVISE QUERY: ADD STARMETAL OFF-PLANET PERSONNEL FILES she typed.

OFF-PLANET PERSONNEL FILES INCLUDED IN FIRST SEARCH the computer replied—a bit smugly, Sisley imagined. “Okay, you’re so smart,” she muttered. DID YOU INCLUDE INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS AND INDEPENDENT SHIP OPERATORS? she typed.

Running revised QUERY the computer replied, admitting defeat. Then: no such name located in current independent CONTRACTOR LISTS OF JOBS LET IN PAST THIRTY DAYS.

“Damn it!” Suss growled. “We risk our asses getting in here and it’s for noth—”

“No, maybe it isn’t,” Sisley said eagerly. “There’s something weird going on. The current indy list is supposed to go back one hundred days. Someone’s been screwing around with the main billing system down in the central files.”

SEARCH FOR SAME REFERENTS FOR ALL INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS OVER LAST FIVE YEARS she typed.

SECURITY RESTRICTIONS PLACED ON ELEMENTS OF THAT DATA the computer warned.

“Okay, there
has
to be something up. There is no possible legitimate reason for securing that data,” she said excitedly. “They’re trying to keep people out of the indy files. A big, sloppy, ham-fisted block on the whole subsystem, rather than a surgical block on just our boy. Exactly the sort of clumsy thing you’d expect from a panicky security operation or an amateur. So let’s see what they’re hiding.”

OVERRIDE SECURITY BLOCKS she typed eagerly. There was a discernible pause this time, as the computer unlocked the data security on the files and searched through the far larger data set. That was a good sign. It meant that the computer was working on the problem, not rejecting it.
And
that
meant they were winning.

Sisley felt a sudden flush of happy satisfaction. They had made the right decisions. Coming here had been worth the risk. She patted the desktop fondly.
This
was why they had needed to run the search from here and not a remote location. From this terminal, she could override every standard security block in the StarMetal security system, look at files she could never reach from a standard remote terminal. Unless someone had been smart enough and quick to engineer a specialized block against her, they were in. And from the looks of the security they had seen so far, the opposition was in turmoil.

REFERENT LOCATED the computer displayed at last. CAPTAIN ANTOIN LOUIS DESTIN, MASTER OF
The Dancing Bear,
ASTEROID CARGO VESSEL.

“Pay dirt!” Sisley cried in jubilation.

QUERY: she typed. DISPLAY SUMMARY DATA ON MISSIONS OF DESTIN AND SHIP
DANCING
BEAR IN PAST FIVE YEARS. PRESENT AT MAXIMUM SPEED.
And this was the real reason an AI could never truly replace a human operator,
she told herself.
No one had ever programmed an AI system to have a hunch.

The computer snapped up screen after screen worth of routine data, far faster than a human could see. Dostchem, however, was finally taking an interest, and had stepped in behind Sisley. “I believe you have it, Miss Mannerling,” the Capuchin said. “It seems to me that there is a distinct break in Destin’s work patterns—”

But Dostchem never got any further than that.

The door blasted away into confetti. StarMetal Security finally found what it had been looking for.

Suss dove down behind the desk and rolled out to the right. Spencer was a little slower doing a dive and roll to the left. Both of them had their repulsors out and fired on reflex. A moment before there had been two security men in the doorway—but now there were none, just a pair of chewed up corpses collapsing in front of them. Sisley and Dostchem barely had time to feel surprise and alarm before it was all over.

“Goddamned amateurs!” Suss fumed. “They should have taken cover before they blew the door. They just stood there,
begging
us to kill them.” There was something near hysteria in her voice. “They could have used gas, or called for backup, or something.” She seemed genuinely offended at their ineptitude.

Strange, Spencer thought, to be a KT agent who hated death and violence so much. “Maybe they’re dead, but they’ve still got friends on the way,” he said. “We’ve got to get out of here. Santu! How long to download all the data?”

“Maybe another thirty seconds,” the AID replied. “Stand by to unplug me, somebody.”

Spencer winced. Thirty seconds! Probably half the time they had before more guards showed up. They couldn’t wait around that long, not in what was suddenly a combat situation.

Spencer thought fast. He had hoped to have a little time to look over the material they found, at least a little, but they would have to leave here not knowing if they had what they needed. Too bad, Spencer decided. They weren’t getting the chance to look for anything more. So: work on the assumption that Destin was a good lead, and that Santu would download everything they needed. Therefore, getting Santu out of here was the most important thing.

Okay, great. But how to get the AID—and if possible, the rest of them—out of here? Should they all make a break for it together, or split up? Four people escaping together, two of them civilians? Unmanageable, to say the least. Sisley was good, she had some training, but she was not a combat soldier. And Dostchem was, after all an alien. Spencer had no idea how Capuchins responded in combat roles. He certainly wasn’t going to risk the mission finding out.

If the civilians were liabilities who endangered the mission, strictly military logic said he ought to leave them on their own, and go with Suss himself, thus concentrating all of the group’s military training on the task of protecting their prize. Cold-blooded, logical, sensible—but he couldn’t do it. Spencer knew he didn’t have it in himself to leave Dostchem and Sisley unprotected.

Damn it! He had to stop dithering. The clock was running, and running fast. It almost didn’t matter what orders he gave his people, as long has he gave them
some
orders and got them moving.

Protect his people. There. That was enough of a guide for him. “Suss! The second you can, unplug Santu and make a run for it on your own. I’ll take charge of the civilians—you get the data back to the ship, no matter what happens. No speeches about protecting the rest of us. Nothing else matters unless we can track down Destin—and that recording is our only chance of doing it. Sisley, Dostchem, the two of you come with me.”

He walked forward toward the blasted door and stepped over the ruined corpses. He looked back to see if Sisley and Dostchem were coming. The two of them were just standing there, still in shock, clearly unwilling to leave Suss alone.

He turned and called back to them, “Come on! We don’t have any time. Suss will probably be safer than we are.”

Spencer urged the others to hurry with an impatient hand gesture. At the same moment he turned and looked at Suss. She returned his gaze, with eyes too full of fear and love and courage. Their eyes locked. He suddenly realized that she was the
last
person in all the worlds of the Pact that he would wish to be separated from, the last woman that he would want to leave alone in time of danger.

But this was not a time or place that allowed such sentiments. The enemy was closing, he might never see her again, and there was too much for him to say. “Good luck,” he said in a strangely hoarse whisper, and left it at that.

“Go!” she said, her eyes saying everything
but
go.

There was no time. He turned and led his party away.

No point in subtlety or stealth now. The dead guards had to have been wearing some sort of sensors or mikes. Even if they hadn’t reported before they attacked, the building’s command center would have noticed it when their radios transmitted the sound of a gun battle and then went dead.

If the cops knew Spencer’s team was here, it was high time to confuse the issue. They were just outside Sisley’s office, in a cavernously large workroom, with rows and columns of desks stretching out before them. The one huge room took up the entire floor of the building, except for the closed-off area that included Sisley’s office.

Spencer pulled a stun grenade from his belt and threw it to the far end of the outer office. It exploded with an earsplitting blast that almost knocked the three of them over. The grenade threw a perfect blizzard of papers into the air, spewing some poor sod’s meticulously kept files over half the office, and setting most of them on fire as well. Two more alarm bells began hooting, raising a hellish racket even as the big room filled with the smell of burning paper.

That
ought to confuse them a bit, Spencer thought—and delay them while they fight the fire. He spotted a red door marked emergency exit on the wall to the left and fired his repulsor at it, wrecking the door, blasting it open and setting off the exit alarm as well. Then he turned right and led his team toward the opposite wall at a dogtrot, looking for a similar red door there. Good, there it was. As he had hoped, there were emergency exits on both sides of the building. “Dostchem,” he said as they got to the door. “Get past the door alarm without setting it off.”

But Capuchins think faster than humans, and Dostchem already had the appropriate tools out. Spencer was relieved to see she wasn’t giving up. He had been afraid that the well-known fatalist streak common to Capuchins would make her throw in the towel. Instead, she went to work at the door, and had them through it in seconds.

Spencer ushered the others through ahead of him, and felt a tiny twinge of relief as the door shut behind them. Now the fire, the blasted door on the opposite side of the room, even the dead guards themselves could serve as diversions, keeping the guards from looking toward the one place no alarms had been set off. Maybe they were going to make it.