Unstable Prototypes (55 page)

"The rebound shield. It is a man-portable,
regenerating, portable force-field. The field pattern is prolate
spheroid, the field strength is-" the engineer began to explain.
When he saw the look of worn patience on the face of his commander,
he pulled out a datapad and directed her attention to the landing
pad. "At the center is the shield emitter, strapped to a test
dummy. At seven o' clock are samples of our standard sidearms, at
ten o'clock is a plate of high density ballistic armor. Watch."

Another tap unleashed a barrage of shots from
the weapons, one energy and one projectile-based. When the
sizzling, zapping, and thundering had come to an end, the
shimmering shield was intact, and the armor plate was smoldering
and blackened. Every round had been bounced directly into the
plate.

"We have tested this shield with every weapon
we were comfortable discharging within the confines of the station.
The only time we've been able to collapse it was when Nelson fired
on it with the charge gun and nearly punched a hole in the
hull."

Purcell crossed her arms and allowed a wry
smile to come to her face. It had a peculiar quality, as though her
face was so seldom expected to show anything besides stern
disapproval or contempt that it was out of practice when asked to
display something like satisfaction. She pulled out her
communicator.

"Guard Unit 1, bring Karter to Docking Bay
B," she ordered. Once acknowledged, she turned to the engineers. "I
want to commend you, men. This is why we exist! I have no doubt in
my mind that dozens of ideas such as these, hundreds, thousands,
cross the desks of military assessors who clung to the old,
reliable ways, turning a blind eye to innovation and condemning
their soldiers to drown in the rising tide of progress. Not only
that, but-"

"Is she preaching again?" Karter called out
from down the hallway. "Do you people have to put up with that all
day every day?"

"Even you cannot tarnish this moment, Dee.
All of the news feeds are saying our names. We've sent a video
message taking credit for the Weston University attack, and even
now it can be found on every news source of record. Look at...
Wait..."

Purcell had looked to her datapad, planning
to show off their freshly earned notoriety, when something caught
her eye. The list of poor quality videos, what she believed to be
an endless sequence pale replicas of the Modane footage from
different angles, was still silently playing. She paused the
current video and tracked it backward. It was a shot of the gunship
and the troop carrier departing, something that was absent from the
Modane broadcast, and just before the crew door finished shutting
something caught the light. The commander tracked back again and
paused, zooming as much as the resolution would allow. Even without
further enhancement, she knew what she was looking at. Karter was
escorted to the doorway just as she frantically scrambled for her
communicator.

"You rang, Boss Lady?" Karter said, one arm
missing, the other restrained.

"Get me the assault team carrying the alloy!
Now!" Purcell ordered.

"That won't be possible for a few more hours,
Commander. They are taking a direct route. They won't be in range
of any communication nodes until shortly before they arrive. Why do
you need to contact them?"

"Why? WHY!? Look at this! Look at it! That is
a slidepad Alexander is throwing into the troop carrier. And we've
heard from them since then, and they did not report it, which means
they don't know about it. They can be tracked! And they are heading
directly here!" she raged. After a moment to regain her composure,
she turned to Karter. "How long after the alloy arrives will it
take you to get the CME Activators functional?"

"About two days," he said.

"Two days!? Why have you been wasting my time
if there is still two days of work to do!? I want those devices
completed no more than two HOURS after the alloy arrives."

"You can't always get what you want, boss
lady. Those lumps of fancy metal can't do their job unless they get
within a minimum distance of the sun, and they can't do that
without at least three layers of ablative ceramic. Each layer takes
fifteen hours to apply. That's forty-five hours minimum. We can do
all of the modules at the same time, and when they're done you'll
have your missiles in about twenty minutes, but the laws of physics
are dictating the timetable for the ceramic application. It'll be
done when its done. Hey, plasma burns on the walls. You guys been
testing my charge gun? Have you had any overheat issues? The new
peltier plate heat fins are-"

"Shut your mouth, Dee."

Karter rolled his eyes, "You've got the
greatest scientific mind in the galaxy at your beck and call, and
you are telling him to shut up just when he starts to talk shop?
You should be-"

"I said shut your mouth!" she demanded. She
turned to one of the guards. "Get his arm out of storage. And you,
Dee. Set aside the parts necessary for the remainder of the CMEA
components and then catalog everything we've got. Disassemble any
unnecessary equipment and add the parts to the available resources.
Start manufacturing weapons, equipment, anything combat oriented,
starting with what I've seen here. I want to see my armory full to
bursting, and I want field manuals for any new equipment drawn up.
I don't care how new, how unstable. I want my men armed for
war."

"Is this for real? Are you honestly going to
let me do this? Because you've been blowing hot and cold during
this entire operation and I don't want to get all tasted up for
some bleeding edge prototyping just to have you start PMS-ing and
send me to my room again right when I hit a groove."

"Get to work!" she bellowed, grabbing his
jumpsuit and hauling him close, "And remember this. The stun device
in your arm is more than capable of stopping your heart, so don't
try anything funny. Take him away."

"Pff, like you even know the tech specs on my
heart," he scoffed as they took him away. "I designed it
myself."

Purcell turned back to her engineering team.
"I want usage recommendations for these devices drawn up and
distributed, and be prepared to do the same for anything he turns
out between now and the arrival of the alloy." She addressed her
second in command. "I want you to get any soldiers not currently
supporting mission critical operations to maintain a constant state
of combat readiness. This station is on red alert until those CMEAs
are completed and deployed. If someone is coming, I want them to
have to go through hell to get to us. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, Commander."

"Good. And that goes for all of you! I want
whoever these people are to be flying right into the jaws of a
lion."

#

The unusual assemblage of heroes had found
refuge at a transfer station similar to the one that had been the
site of Garotte's escape. The number of stations like this numbered
in the thousands. They were supposed to be well-secured, but a
greater number than anyone would like to admit simply didn't have
the time or resources to keep the cameras running and the patrols
sweeping. Thus, the Declaration and the SOB were able to secure a
weightless double-sized docking bay without anyone so much as
asking their names. In a predictable illustration of priorities,
they did remember to ask for payment in full, which was provided
via one of the seemingly endless supply of false bank accounts that
Karter and Ma kept handy. Now the group was coping with an aspect
of military campaigns such as this; boredom. Silo was painting her
nails, Garotte was tinkering with a piece of equipment inside the
Declaration, and Ma was draped loosely around Lex's neck to keep
from drifting uselessly around the interior of the bay.

"So let me get this straight," Lex said,
staring at the inert pile of machinery called Zerk. His eyes were
lingering on the blood stains on its fingers, and he had decided to
stay well outside the ship. "This thing won't wake up unless you
give it an adrenaline shot or something like that?"

"That's right. Perfectly safe," Garotte
said.

"And they just had it alive and well in
storage, so once you juiced it, it could seek out a power
source?"

"Yes."

"Isn't that... idiotic? I mean. Shouldn't
they have taken it apart? You know, so something like this wouldn't
happen?"

"It was designed to be tamper-proof, and it
can't be entirely powered down because it has biological components
that need to be kept alive. Plus, the brass in charge of research
always like to keep one functional example of their favorite toys,
just in case."

"Okay. So is insanity a requirement for
anyone above a certain military rank?" Lex asked.

"It is considered a prerequisite for
officers, I believe," Garotte replied.

"So
that's
why I never made it past
sergeant," Silo mused. She blew on her finished nails. "Well, I
guess that proves that you can paint your nails in zero g. Have you
found that ship yet, sweetheart?"

"At last check, it was not yet within
communications range," Ma replied.

"Well, have you checked recently?"

"I have initiated a scripted contact
sequence. The device attempts a connection once every twenty-five
milliseconds."

"Well, maybe you should try again."

"I have made more than two hundred and forty
attempts to connect since the beginning of this sentence."

"Are you sure that you've got the right
slidepad?"

"I am absolutely certain, and inquiring
repeatedly will not accelerate the discovery process," Ma
explained, "So stop asking."

"Well okay, Miss Snippy," Silo remarked with
raised eyebrows. "We'll see if I ever feed
you
any hotdogs
again."

"If you're through harassing the computer,
send her my way. I've got something I could use help with," Garotte
said.

"Sure thing," Silo said, drifting over to Lex
and reaching to scoop her off of Lex's shoulders.

"I am quite capable of responding to a
request without aid. Thank you," Ma stated.

She crouched and shoved lightly off of Lex,
drifting slowly into the ship. Lex steadied himself a bit and
watched her go. It was interesting. She'd sounded irritated. It
wasn't that she'd selected the most irritated voice segments
available to her, she actually sounded annoyed. In fact, the
various different voices that made up her unusual vocalization were
all a bit closer together, as though they had been smoothed out and
blended together somewhat.

"What's gotten into her?" Silo muttered under
her breath.

Lex turned to her, then motioned for her to
follow him as he drifted behind the SOB. She joined him there.

"You're good with guns, right? You're a good
soldier?"

"One of the best you'll ever meet."

"You're also an attractive woman."

"Well, thanks, hon."

"How did a pretty thing like you get mixed up
in a situation like this?"

"Now that's not really appropriate,
Mister-"

"Don't you worry your pretty little head. Us
men will take care of everything from now on."

"Listen, I don't think-"

"I'd hate for you to break a nail while the
men are busy fighting-"

Silo grabbed him by the chest of his flight
suit and hauled his face close to hers.

"This had better have a point, honey."

"The point is, you're more than what you look
like, and you're more than what you do. You're a whole person, and
when other people don't treat you like it, it can be pretty
irritating."

"But that's not the same thing. I
am
a
person. She's an animal."

"And she's a computer. But most of all, she's
a person. Understand?"

"That's a little hard to swallow, hon."

"I'm not asking you to embrace the idea. I'm
just explaining why she's acting the way she's acting."

Silo looked doubtfully toward the Declaration
where Ma was doing her best to hold onto a hand grip, analyzing a
piece of equipment Garotte was holding.

"Can this device be made to function with
this ship?" Garotte asked, holding out a roughly constructed
control box with torn and dangling wires protruding from it.

Ma squinted at the device. "I am afraid I did
not include the appropriate information to make that determination
in the subset of my full complement of subroutines and data that
was downloaded to this physical instance."

"Well, that's rather unfortunate,
because-"

"Stand by," Ma said, closing her eyes. The
indicators on the data radio on her back began to blink madly. A
moment later the displays and controls for the Declaration became
similarly active. "Accessing Armistice schematics. Accessing repair
and installation guidelines. Accessing EMOF device interface
hardware and command protocols. Access denied. Attempting code word
clearance utilizing Karter's credentials. Access granted. Indexing.
Processing... Processing... Yes, Mr. Garotte, I can help you
install the device. Please locate and remove overhead access panel
25b."

"Hey," Lex said, poking his head into the
ship, "You guys think maybe we should be plotting and planning, or
something, so that once we know where they are, we'll know roughly
what we want to do?"

"Normally I would say yes," Garotte said,
holding firm to a hand grip and pulling the access panel free, "But
depending on the outcome of this little upgrade, any prior plans we
might have made would need to be seriously rewritten."

"What is that?" Lex asked.

"Just a little gadget we managed to tear out
of a Luddite ship before it exploded," Garotte explained.

"Unhook the four cables and unbolt the
secondary shield generator from the emitter assembly. When they are
detached-" Ma began, suddenly her head jerked up and her eyes
opened wide, "Connection established. Tracing connection."