Unstable Prototypes (4 page)

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! What is this, a scavenger
hunt? Listen, I'm not sure I've got enough available credit to
cover this stuff. I mean, what's a cheapo slidepad run these days,
five thousand credits?"

"High-end models would be preferred."

"Yeah, I don't have the cash to be buying
those things by the half dozen."

"Of course. Please stop at the nearest
gambling kiosk."

"Heh. This ought to be good."

Before long, Lex spotted a video poker
machine beside a coffee stand on one of the upper levels. Just as
cash had found a replacement in casino chips, ATMs had evolved into
Poker Kiosks. All one had to do was take a seat, load some of their
credits into the machine directly from their bank account, and cash
out to get a pocket full of fixed value, non-traceable funds. Best
of all, the machines didn't charge a service or convenience fee.
This was largely because virtually all of the people who sought to
use them simply as a way to convert money from credits to chips
took the time to play a hand or two, inevitably losing a bit in the
process. It was actually a fairly ingenious and effective system.
Unless, of course, you had a gambling problem, but society had
shuffled those unfortunates down to the bottom of the ladder long
ago. He settled his bike down and Ma hopped to the seat. The light
on her neck flashed, a log-in screen came and went, and a user
profile under the name Kyle Oscar Dunbrook appeared. As she worked
at the Kiosk, a patron of the coffee shop, sporting a latte larger
than his head, stopped and eyed the bizarre sight.

"She's my good luck charm. I always sit her
in the chair for the first hand," Lex explained.

The stranger shrugged, apparently satisfied
with the answer, and moved on. A moment later, Ma was finished
bringing up the account information. The balance was... unusual. It
seemed to say 5.45E11.

"Wh- Why is there an E in the available
balance field?" Lex asked.

"Scientific notation. The funds display of
this machine is only ten characters," she said, the screens
flipping through to the cash out tab.

"Wait... so Karter has more than ten digits
in his bankroll?" he asked, eyes wide.

"In this account, yes. There are others."

"... I should have become a mad
scientist..."

The coin tray on the front of the machine
quickly filled. There were five 100k chips, twenty 10k chips, and
twenty 1k chips. A moment later, four more 1k chips dropped. For
the appropriate frame of reference, if his various jobs managed to
bring in 100,000 credits combined, it was a pretty good week. He
was holding nearly two months salary in his hand.

"That should be sufficient to cover the
expenses. I would suggest you only deposit half into your account.
Liquid funds may come in handy."

"Whatever you say, Boss."

She logged off, he logged on, and in short
order his account swelled to a larger number than he'd seen in
months.

"Right, let's go shopping," he said.

The items on the list were snagged, one by
one. First was a harness-style leash, which was securely strapped
on so that Lex would stop getting irritated looks from security
guards and fellow shoppers. He also had swung by the pet food
section, but Ma assured him that Solby always seemed happier and
healthier when he was provided with the food Karter favored.
Specifically, beans and rice. Thus, frozen burritos and vitamin
tablets were chosen as her rations. Next, he managed to get a
decent deal on a combo-pack of six current generation slidepads
bundled with hands-free buds. At Ma's request, he'd splurged for a
few ruggedized cases, complete with lanyard and belt clip, as well.
The vague "blue clothing" requirement was fulfilled by a handful of
bandanas. The epinephrine gadgets were a little hard to find – they
were in the allergy medication area rather than the prescription
area, and everybody seemed to prefer the disposable ones rather
than refillable – but before long he'd snagged everything that she
was after.

"What's next, Ma?" Lex asked as he piloted
his bike out of the store.

"Our next destination is the starport. We
will need to board a first class flight, but first, you will need
to send your own ship autonomously to a maintenance station near
the flight path," Ma explained.

"Uh. The SOB can't do long range autonomous
flight," he explained, nudging his bike in the general direction of
the starport.

"Karter designed and built your ship, and I
was responsible for installing the software. I assure you, it is
entirely capable."

Lex blinked.

"Well why didn't anybody tell me?!"

"You had not requested it. You had only
requested short range autonomy."

"Then why did you put it in?"

"The appropriate sensory apparatus and
computational power were present in the system, there was no reason
not to include it."

"Are there any other features you didn't
bother to tell me about?"

"Several. I can prepare a list for you, if
you like, following the completion of our current task."

"Any reason you can't do it now?"

"It is possible that you will be displeased
by one or more of the functions, and thus will be less inclined to
continue to lend your aid."

"... See, now that's not very
encouraging."

"Only one of them is potentially life
threatening."

"Oh, well, that's not so bad," he snarked,
quietly questioning why he was willingly helping these people.

#

In a large space station, at an undisclosed
location, a woman by the name of Janet Purcell was pacing angrily
in the way that only a superior officer can. Her hair was short and
red; a brilliant, fright wig shade of red that was clearly the work
of chemicals rather than nature. The clothes she wore were strictly
military; black canvas fatigues, festooned with patches and medals
representing assorted service honors. Notably absent were flags or
seals indicating her military loyalty. She looked like she may have
been entering the unhappy half of her thirties, but her physique
was the training-forged build of a career soldier. A deep scar ran
from her scalp just above her left eye, circling across her temple
and cheek and ending at the edge of her chin. What looked to be the
feathery red beginning an electrical burn was just visible on her
throat at the neck of her fatigues. Hanging at her belt was a
combat knife laser-etched with the designations MME (MonoMolecular
Edge) and HFMO (High Frequency MicroOscilation) along the side of
the blade. To a layman, these terms roughly translated to "very
very sharp" and "makes a scary high pitched noise while it cuts
through things." The scary noise was caused by the fact that the
blade vibrated at a frequency just beyond the range of hearing, and
this frequency slowed a bit while it was sawing through... well,
virtually anything. In a chest holster, a plasma-pistol with a
bulging extended power cell was ready and waiting to be drawn. The
look in her eye suggested that it wouldn't have to wait long.

"He is secured?" she hissed.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Again?"

"Yes, ma'am."

The man answering the questions was the same
one that had been the leader of the group that had ended up
kidnapping Karter. He was sporting at least three recently bandaged
wounds, and one hand was badly disfigured. Rather than the arctic
gear of his last outing, he was wearing composite body armor over
fatigues similar to Purcell's, and a high-powered plasma rifle was
strapped to his back. The goggles, however, still had a place of
honor on his head. The body armor, goggles, and bandages were worn
by nearly all of the soldiers without a task-specific uniform. In
this case, a name tag etched on the armor labeled him Crewman
Marx.

"Explain to me how this happened," she
ordered.

"The prisoner, Doctor Dee, appeared to be
cooperating. Our engineers agreed that the most recent design did
appear to be larger scale implementation of the small device we had
confiscated from him when we first captured him," Marx
explained.

"Cooperating? He depressurized three decks.
Even with emergency procedures, we lost five men. That does not
sound like cooperation!"

"We are still investigating how he managed to
gain control of the airlocks and override the safety
fail-safes."

"That is the third security breach since he
was brought to this facility. That is unacceptable," she cried,
hammering the wall beside her with a fist. A moment later her
composure returned. "You say the scale has been increased. Is it
enough for our purposes?"

"Engineering is just finishing a mockup now,
but they say that several key components necessary for activation
aren't included. They are going to run some tests shortly."

She fumed silently for a moment.

"Keep me apprized of the results. I am going
to speak with him."

"Yes, Commander."

Commander Purcell marched out of the room and
into the hallway. The cramped, industrial corridor looked as though
it had been designed by the same people who had made the first
submarines. Pipes and vents visibly lined the walls and ceiling,
and a grating covered more along the floor. She made her way down a
long curving hall, through a narrow door, and down a few ladders,
finally arriving at a much larger and more navigable space. This
was good, because there were six guards on duty. The same number in
another hall would have made it impassible. Three stood on each
side of a barred cell door. Inside was Karter Dee. He wasn't
looking particularly threatening at the moment, as it had been
discovered that both his whole left arm and his left leg below the
knee were mechanical prostheses, and had been forcibly removed
after being used rather creatively to wreak havoc. He was now
sitting on a chair that was the only piece of furniture in the
room. Even the lights had been removed.

"Dee!" the Commander barked.

"What?" he snapped, as though she were
interrupting something much more interesting.

"You can't keep doing this forever."

"I think that I can."

"You realize that we will kill you if you
don't cooperate."

"Pff, no. If you could figure this out on
your own you wouldn't have kidnapped me to start with. This is a
lose-lose for you. I'm not going to cooperate, unless I get what I
want, so unless you are going to cave to my demands you can either
keep threatening and get nothing, or kill me and get nothing. I've
got all the power here."

"We have your latest designs. It is only a
matter of time."

"Lady, that design is incomplete, and you
don't have the tools to finish it. You don't even have the tools to
MAKE the tools to finish it."

"You won't stop us from achieving our
goals."

"What makes you think I want to stop you? I
couldn't care less about your agenda. You think you're the first
group of terrorists I've sold stuff to?"

"We aren't terrorists. We are
revolutionaries."

"Tomato, tomahto," he said with a waggle of
his remaining hand. "The point is, I was ready, willing, and able
to fork these things over by the dozen if you were willing to cough
up the money. I still am, but the price has gone
way
up.
Inconvenience fee, because for some reason you thought it was wise
to kidnap me."

"We couldn't afford to have you supply them
to anyone but us, and we couldn't afford to have you warning
anyone."

"Nondisclosure agreements and exclusivity
agreements. Think like a corporation, lady. They've proven much
better at enslaving the masses and pushing home their agenda than
all of the terrorists in the history the human race put together.
But no, you had to do things the hard way. So I had to make a point
or two, in the form of four very destructive escape attempts."

"Three," she corrected.

"You sure about that?" he said
doubtfully.

Purcell stared at him intensely, her mind
racing. Suddenly her eyes widened, she scrambled for her hefty
mil-spec communicator and thumbed the transmit button.

"Engineering!" she hissed.

"Engineering here," came the reply a few
moments later, accompanied by video.

"Do
not
activate the latest prototype
of the CME activator."

"It is already in the testing rig. We are
getting impressive power output."

Even over the transmission, a worrying
increase in the electronic hum of the equipment could be heard.

"Shut it down, now!"

"Shutting down."

The man in the video window tapped at some
controls. The hum had become a shuddering rattle by the time he
issued the appropriate command, and whatever had been causing it
was causing the lighting in the room to flicker and flare.
Gradually the rattle died away.

"The device is powered down," the technician
said.

"Disassemble it, and move it off the station.
Testing on any and all designs provided by Dr. Dee will now be done
planet side in Site C. Maximum safety protocols."

"Yes, Commander."

She closed the connection and turned her gaze
to Karter.

"Probably I should have kept my mouth shut
about that one," he said. "Oh well, next time."

"What do you want, exactly?" she fumed.

"Good question. Start making offers."

Her eyes narrowed.

"No," she decided. "We have not reached that
point. I'm not willing to make any deals."

"Heh. The terrorists won't negotiate with
me," he mused as the Commander stalked away.

#

Back on Golana, Lex and Ma had just arrived
in "The Upstairs," the orbital section of Golana Interstellar
Starport. It was made up of a series of rotating rings at the end
of long tethers that led to complexes on the planet's surface.
These tethers allowed elevators to haul crew, passengers, and cargo
into space in a cheaper and more efficient way than shuttles, and
the rotation allowed the outer rim of each ring to experience at
least a semblance of gravity in a cheaper and more efficient way
than artificial gravity generators. A side effect of the rotation
method, though, was that the full effect was only felt at the
circumference, where the paying customers were. The further in you
went, the less gravity. Right now Lex was quite near the hub,
working his way toward a place called "Blake's Stardock" and
learning how difficult it was to gracefully navigate in zero-g
while carrying a small creature and a bulky bag.