Unstable Prototypes (16 page)

The Earth Coalition, as the name would
suggest, contained the planet Earth, and was by far the oldest,
most populous, and most centralized. The next rung down on the
power ladder was OUCP. It technically predated FTL travel entirely,
having been started by the first expeditions of a lunar counterpart
to NASA midway through the 21
^st
century. They managed to
get exemption from that pesky treaty that forbid nuclear testing,
and thus started flinging ships to the far reaches of space with
nuclear propulsion. They didn't get very far, not even to the
nearest star, before FTL took over and their ships were obsolete,
but the head start had gotten them to a few mineral-rich asteroids
and back enough times to be a force to be reckoned with regardless.
Their foothold in space led to bigger, better shipyards for their
own FTL fleets, and eventually independence from mother Earth. TKUR
was a distant third, a cluster of corporate entities that started
as a means to purchase and exploit the harvest rights for the
chunks of ice floating around in the Kuiper belt. These days they
had nothing at all to do with that oddly named hunk of the solar
system, but it tends to be a hassle to change all of your state
seals and documentation, so the name stuck. Of the three, though,
they could at least boast the most clever name for their citizens.
Rather than the boring Earthling or Orionian labels applied to the
others, they called themselves Teekers.

The specific history wasn't nearly as
important as the realization that the people they were dealing with
either had the backing of one of these massive organizations or had
the skill and resources to steal from one. Neither possibility was
particularly encouraging.

"So, wait. If these are ex-soldiers, how did
they get their hands on a fancy ship? Surplus auction or
something?"

"Not with an NX on it. The only places you'll
ever see an experimental, assuming things are being run correctly,
are on the drawing board, in testing, and in a museum after they
are obsolete by a few decades."

Ma began to work at the slidepad again.
Eventually, a message was formed.

"No production run. Designed as a platform
for modular cloak. Abandoned during testing. Only 18 produced.
Reliability problems."

"If that information is accurate, then they
would have had to steal them. That would make sense, since they
have seen fit to steal an entire scientist as well."

"So where does that leave us?"

"Roughly where we started, I'm afraid. Let us
look at this from another angle, then. Let us assume that they are
after Karter to, at the very least, build that solar flare missile.
One would assume that would require specialized components,
equipment, materials, etc. Do we know what those might be?"

"Will make list," Ma typed.

"Excellent. Once we have that, I'll have to
see how much of my information network remains intact. We shall
need to identify sources of said components. Perhaps someone may
have found out a thing or two about where these gentlemen acquired
their ship as well. Either will give us a starting point."

"After that, what's the plan?"

"We endeavor to locate a unique source of one
or more of the required components and intercept their team in the
act of acquiring it. Once intercepted, we analyze their mission
materials and interview their operatives. If we fail to find
anything useful in this way, or are unable to intercept them, we
trust that alternate sources will allow us to locate a small
outpost, base, or headquarters. From there, we assess what
equipment and personnel will be necessary to infiltrate, and we
acquire those resources. We then pay the target location a visit
and, ideally, gain access to their computer systems. Alternately,
we would capture and interrogate an operative. Utilizing the
information gathered, we would be able to determine the command
hierarchy, which in turn would facilitate further strikes at higher
level targets until the location of Karter is determined, as well
as the nature of the security surrounding him. At that point,
further resources would be prepared and a rescue attempt would be
made," he explained, sounding a bit like a professor lecturing a
classroom.

"That sounds like it will take a while," Lex
said.

"An operation like this, from planning to
completion, typically takes six to eight months."

Lex's eyes widened.

"That's a hell of a lot longer than I
expected," he said slowly, "And I don't think Ma can last that
long. She said something about the funk brain only being good for
about two months."

"That isn't really a concern. I had rather
hoped to move on to a computer system that doesn't need to be fed
and walked, and I don't think our mission requires a mascot."

Ma had been swiping at the slidepad since the
initial estimate was made, finally completing the message, "Must
act sooner. Karter needs little time to do much damage."

"Doubtlessly so, but one can only move so
quickly, and one cannot move at
all
until one knows where to
go. How long ago was he captured?"

"439.2h" Ma tapped onto the screen.

"What's that supposed to be?" Lex said, head
crooked.

"~18 days (earth)," she specified.

"I'm not sure that even Karter could come up
with something truly dangerous in less than three weeks."

"I saw him take out a VectorCorp Asteroid
Wrecker with something he threw together in seven minutes," Lex
said.

"... Yes, well, that is a valid point, to be
sure. Presumably this was with full access to his laboratory
facilities though, yes?"

"Yeah."

"I rather doubt that his current
accommodations are so fully equipped. And let us remember that he
will only build something for them if he agrees to cooperate, and
Karter Dee may well be the most disagreeable and uncooperative
person in the universe."

#

"Okay, power her up!" proclaimed Karter,
hooking a power-wrench to his belt and drifting over to the control
cabin, both arms attached but mechanical leg conspicuously
missing.

With an understandable amount of hesitation,
the soldier standing at the power controls flipped the main switch.
One by one, bits of machinery hummed to life and status indicators
lit up. The last few days had been busy ones in Commander Purcell's
space station. Karter had explained that, if he was to be expected
to help, he was going to need more tools and more room to work.
More to the point, he'd agreed to give them the means to
manufacture their own CME Activators, and that meant he would need
to put together a facility that could handle that. After much
deliberation they had given him highly supervised access to the
secondary maintenance bay. In a building on the surface of a
planet, it would have been considered a small space, barely the
size of a two car garage. In a space station, it represented one of
the largest areas available. There was an airlock on one wall,
leading to a well marked exterior door just beside the main docking
bay, and it had already been equipped with basic automated
maintenance arms. It was also one of the sections of the station
not equipped with artificial gravity. As a precaution, all
bidirectional communication links were severed, completely
isolating the room from the rest of the space station. Given his
already well demonstrated skills at circumventing their security,
it was considered prudent to turn his work area into an effective
quarantine.

Once his replacement lab had been thus
secured, Karter had been given tools, his mechanical arm, and a
group of four heavily armed guards. Since then he had been working
nonstop. The automated arms were augmented with fine manipulation
capabilities, electron beam lithography heads, ultra-fine
positioning systems, enhanced scanning and computer vision,
extruders, and a host of other features to complement their welding
and drilling abilities. Dispensers for a dozen raw materials were
added to the large-scale replacement part conveyors. Temporary
tables were added for subsystem fabrication and assembly. In short,
a system that had been able to replace control modules and repair
damaged armor plating had become a mad science playroom in barely a
weekend.

He drifted to the controls, prompting the
guards to raise their weapons and remove the safeties. Technically,
firing off a high powered plasma rifle in this particular room of
the space station, which wasn't nearly as reinforced as most of the
rest of the station, was even more dangerous than firing one in the
deGrasse dormitory, but these were well trained soldiers at point
blank range. They would not be missing. Even if such was not the
case, it was generally agreed that between explosive decompression
and Karter, Karter was the greater threat. In order to keep both
hands free for handling weapons and prisoners, the soldiers were
equipped with magnetized boots to keep them on the floor plates.
Karter was left to drift free.

"Time for the inaugural run, boys," Karter
said, rubbing his hands together and pulling up menus on the
upgraded control system.

"You are to wait until our engineers have had
a chance to-" began a soldier.

"Screw that," Karter said, dismissively,
slapping the large red activation button.

Instantly the arms jerked into motion. In a
tightly choreographed dance of machinery and a chorus of mechanical
whines, the whole of the central work area came alive. Raw metal
was pulled from bins and maneuvered into place, sheets of substrate
were applied and shaped, and the blinding light of welding torches
began to flash. In no time at all, the arms retracted and a
manipulator dropped down to present the finished product; a crude,
simplified replica of Karter's prosthetic leg. He drifted out from
behind the fortified glass of the control room, grasped the leg,
and clicked it into place.

"There you have it, boys. You are the proud
owners of a fabrication laboratory," he announced, testing the
movement of his new ankle. "It isn't quite up to snuff for
everything I might want to use it for, but it will pump out CMEA
warheads like a bat out of hell. Conventional ones, too. And legs,
if you aren't a stickler for anatomical accuracy."

"Secondary Maintenance Bay to Command,"
barked a soldier into his communicator, "Dee has completed his
modifications."

"Okay. I need a few things now," Karter
stated, "I'm going to need something with a lot of sugar in it.
This arm wasted a lot of juice while it was locked up, and it is
playing hell with my blood sugar levels trying to recharge. I'm
also going to be taking a look at some of the designs of that
transporter now, so get them ready."

"We will discuss your requests after
Commander Purcell has inspected your work," the soldier said.

"Requirements," Karter corrected, "My blood
sugar is low, hotshot. If you think I've been a handful so far, you
don't want to see me when I get hypoglycemic. Are you familiar with
the neuroglycopenic manifestations of hypoglycemia?"

"When Commander Purcell-"

"Impaired judgment, moodiness, irritability,
combativeness, delirium, automatism, emotional lability,
belligerence, negativism, rage. Do these sound like symptoms you
are going to want to deal with?"

"She won't-"

"CANDY BAR, NOW!" Karter bellowed.

In a flash of motion, the mad scientist's
natural hand clamped onto a handrail on the control panel and his
mechanical one snapped around the neck of the intransigent guard. A
split second later, three plasma rifles were pointed at his head,
each of the soldiers barking orders at Karter and each other. A
moment later, the door hissed open and Commander Purcell paced in,
metallic clanks punctuating each magnetically assisted step.

"ENOUGH!" she ordered.

Her men silenced, but Karter continued to
squeeze the throat in his fist.

"Karter, release this man, or I will be
forced to take action!"

"Simple request. All I want is candy. It is
medicinal. I have a condition," he said. "And the juice he is
making me waste squeezing his brain out the top of his head is
making it worse."

Purcell removed her knife from its sheath
and, with a high pitched swipe through the air, separated the
mechanical hand at the wrist with a perfectly clean cut. After one
or two twitches and a spurt of blood, the fingers went limp and it
drifted away from the relieved soldier's neck.

"Well, that's just great," Karter griped,
looking at the stump with annoyance.

"What the hell did you think you were doing?"
she demanded.

"There wasn't a whole lot of thought
involved, really. That was primarily impulse," he explained, "So, I
guess you'll want a demonstration."

"What I
want
is an
explanation!
Why were you assaulting one of my men!?"

"Candy. I need it. He won't let me have it.
It can wait, I'll show you this first," he said, turning around,
tapping the control screen and slapping the activation button.

As the arms roared to life again, Purcell had
Karter restrained.

"If I am not happy with what this machine
does, I am going to slice your ear off."

"Fine, but take the right one, it's
synthetic. Easier to replace," he said.

After a minute or so of machinery moving at
blurring speed, a cylinder the size of a fifty-five gallon drum was
presented by the manipulator arm, while the fabricator went back to
work.

"What is it?"

"This is a magnetic bottle warhead. Just add
electricity and anti-matter and this sucker will make a very big
boom."

"You were supposed to make a CME Activator.
We want six of them."

"Can't," he said.

"Why?" she growled.

"You don't have the parts, that's why," he
said, indicating the screen, "Take a look at that list. You need
all of those parts to make one CMEA. You've got most of the raw
materials, but you're missing Esche alloy. Each warhead will need
about 350 grams of it," he explained.