Project Valkyrie - A Traveller Serial

[Terry Mixon]

Chapter 21 – Let’s Make a Deal​

Thyra got back to the theater without any issues and parked herself in one of the uncomfortable seats toward the rear of the theater. The place was only about a third full, and no one paid the slightest attention when she came in, so she felt confident that no one was going to realize that she’d been gone.

There was a couple to the front right of the theater who weren’t watching the screen. They were too busy kissing one another. A lot.

Thyra sighed. That really wasn’t something she wanted to see. After what the old man had done to her, she wasn’t sure she ever would be ready for that.

In any case, seeing them wasn’t a complete waste. The man’s hair was sticking up in the back in an unbecoming way. It looked like a duck’s tail feathers, and that amused her.

While she was waiting for the entertainment video to end, she paid attention to it with one of her subprocesses while the others were busy going through potential business contacts and the information she’d stolen from the Brokers’ Association revolving around companies that they did business with.

There were a plethora of businesses that the brokers had contacts with, but she was willing to wager that not everyone was happy about the control they exerted over what could be sold and what couldn’t. Frankly, the idea of things that weren’t being sold being made available to her was exciting. Those kinds of goods could likely be had at something of a discount and could probably be sold for a good profit on a different world.

It all revolved around supply and demand, and just because it wasn’t the most advanced product on Murphy didn’t mean that it wasn’t useful somewhere else. She didn’t have a lot of money to wager on speculative cargo, but as she didn’t have a mortgage either, she didn’t have expenses that would break her if she didn’t make ends meet. What she could afford to wager would likely be good enough, but she needed to find a place where she could make the best deal.

Of course, to do that, she needed to have funds to purchase things. With the sale of the illegal cybernetics to Sorenson, the ship’s account was at over nine million credits, so that was something, but with a ship the size of Bifrost, she’d probably need more. Mimir was supposed to take care of some of that when he sold the advanced autodocs and the large holo table from the lounge, as well as any furniture that he didn’t need after the redecorating.

As those things would need to be moved out early, she sent him a message inquiring whether he had secured a buyer for them as of yet. He promptly responded that he had and that they had already been picked up. He had added nine million, six hundred thousand credits to the ship’s account, bringing the grand total up to 18,831,928 credits. That was a far better number to work with.

Depending on what she purchased, though, it still wouldn’t fill the hold, and she’d undoubtedly have to take some freight to the next port of call. That was perfectly acceptable. It would give her a solid foundation to build her business upon, and with her skills being as good as they were, she suspected she’d have a much better chance of making money than almost anyone else.

After searching through various options for high-value cargoes that weren’t beyond her pocketbook, she settled on a business that built robots. Perhaps the fact that she was a robot might have influenced her decision, but they held a lot of value in a very small package. If she could find something that would allow her to buy low and sell high when it came to delivering at the next world, she would make a killing, and that was what every merchant should be looking for.

Thyra dug deep on the local nets and pulled in as much information as she could about the company that built these robots. They were a large company that sold most of their products locally, but did have a good export business. Unfortunately for them, they were likely locked down by the Brokers’ Association, and that probably meant that they didn’t sell everything they’d like to, and if she could find an adequate cargo that wasn’t being moved, she might be able to get it at an excellent price.

Once she had compiled the information she needed, she sat back and focused her attention on the entertainment video. It was some kind of action comedy, and it was amusing enough. It took another hour before she was able to leave the theater with the rest of the crowd, satisfied that she’d gotten her money’s worth both in covering for her absence and in entertainment.

She’d need to see about acquiring this video for her later perusal, as she didn’t know what had happened during the first half. Perhaps that was something the Travellers’ Aid Society could assist her with. If a wide variety of entertainment videos—old and new—could be acquired for her ship, that would provide for a lot of entertainment for her and Mimir. They would also help them refine their behavior as biological beings, though due care would have to be taken to validate everything.

Once she had exited the theater, she summoned a taxi and gave the address for Bangalore’s Robotics to the woman driving it. The woman looked up the address, and the cab lifted up into the air and was off.

Unfortunately for Thyra, the driver was the kind who liked to talk, so she found herself explaining again why she was so big. She pondered coming up with a number of different stories and feeding them all into the wild to let them conflict with one another anytime someone spoke about her, but decided that that was probably asking for trouble. Instead, she simply answered the woman’s questions with her prepared story and asked her own about living on Murphy.

The woman wasn’t exactly forthcoming about some aspects of the civilization here, but when it came to getting details about how the average person lived, she wasn’t shy about sharing her opinions as long as they didn’t come across as too critical of the dictator and his government.

From what Thyra could determine, the original dictator had been well-liked and extremely charismatic, but once he had passed, the people who had succeeded him had never measured up. Even so, they hadn’t been overly oppressive to the average citizen either. They wanted their control and insisted on doing things their way, but in exchange, people got to mostly live their lives as they chose, within limits.

The stories lasted right up until the woman delivered Thyra to an extremely large industrial park that looked like it was more manufactory than a store, which only made sense. The robots constructed here would be sold in commercial enterprises all over the planet.

Thyra tipped the driver well, walked into the office, and put her filter mask into her jacket pocket. She saw that most of the people were taking deliveries of goods that had already been purchased. This was a very working-class environment, and she felt that her shipsuit fit in just right. That was fortuitous because she certainly hadn’t planned on that, and she should have. She made a mental note to be careful going forward so that she didn’t stand out in ways that she didn’t want to.

When she approached the counter, a young man smiled up at her. “Welcome to Bangalore’s Robotics. How can I help you?”

“I’m interested in making a large purchase of robots to take off world. Who do I need to speak to about that?”

The young man frowned. “I don’t believe we do any selling other than through the brokers at the down port, miss. At least I’ve never heard of anyone coming here directly to make an order. You’re not a broker, are you?”

Thyra smiled. “I’m not. What I am is a woman with millions of credits who would like to make a purchase. I ask again, who do I need to speak to about that?”

He excused himself and went and talked to two of his coworkers, and after a few seconds of them looking mutually confused, he returned to the counter. “If you’ve got a few minutes, I’ll see if I can get someone from the executive side to come talk with you.”

“I appreciate that. Thank you.”

She turned her attention to the various papers stuck to boards around the room while she waited. A lot of them were meaningless to her, but it at least passed the time as she waited. After about five minutes, a man wearing a dark suit stepped through one of the rear doors. He was a little bit older, and his hair was going gray.

He smiled at her as he approached, extending his hand. “Daniel Bangalore. My father runs the business, and he sent me down to retrieve you. Jacob didn’t get your name, so would you mind introducing yourself?”

Thyra took his hand. “I’m Thyra Thorsdóttir, owner of the merchant ship Bifrost.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Thyra. If you’ll come with me, I’ll get you to the executive suite and let my father figure out what we can do for you. If we can do anything at all.”

Thyra raised an eyebrow. “Are you that opposed to selling goods to someone with money? It seems like a rather poor approach when it comes to making sales.”

He laughed and shook his head. “We have a long-running relationship with the Brokers’ Association, and I can’t think of one time that someone has approached us outside of that framework. It may be that we have an exclusive contract with them. I can’t say that I’ve ever looked.”

“It would be a pity if you did because I’m ready and willing to spend quite a bit of money,” Thyra said. “I find it repugnant that I have to pay a broker ten percent for doing the legwork that I can do for myself. If you made a sale without having to go to the brokers, there’s a percentage of additional income that would come to you, and that would tally up with a percentage that I would be able to make without having to pay them. In the end, I think we would both benefit.”

“I’ll let you talk to my father about that, then. I’ll be present at the meeting, and suspect I’ll find this fascinating.”

The one thing that Thyra could say about the corridor between the buildings was that it was clean and well-tended. This wasn’t a slovenly operation, and she appreciated that. The people she passed seemed cheerful, and the man with her was greeted with smiles and waves that seemed genuine.

Ten minutes later, they were in a different building and had gone to the top floor. Daniel escorted her into an executive suite that wasn’t ostentatious but did present enough to show that the company was doing well. It was a well-thought-out balance in her opinion.

There was a secretary or personal assistant sitting at the desk, but the woman just waved them through. When Thyra stepped into the office, it was much like the exterior one in that it was well-to-do but not over the top. The old man behind the desk rose and came around with his hand extended and a smile on his face. He looked very much like Daniel, so this was undoubtedly his father.

“Richard Bangalore,” the older man said. “Welcome to Bangalore’s Robotics. I’m given to understand that you’re looking to make a direct purchase for taking off world?”

Thyra gave his hand a firm shake. “Thyra Thorsdóttir, owner of the merchant ship Bifrost. As I told your son, that’s exactly what I’m looking to do. Paying ten percent to a broker that, on average, gets an increase in price of about ten percent seems a waste to me, and I’d much rather split that ten percent with someone like you. I’m told that this isn’t the kind of thing that normally happens, but I hope you’re at least open to the idea of discussing the matter. Your son was concerned that perhaps you had an exclusive arrangement with the Brokers’ Association to only sell through them.”

The older man shook his head and gestured toward some seats off to the side of the room. “Please, have a seat. If you’d like something to drink: tea, coffee, or perhaps even something stronger if you wish, my son will see to it.”

“There’s no need,” she said. “I appreciate the offer, though.”

Thyra took a seat and crossed her ankles demurely. She knew that that was something that female humans did and had studied their motions quite thoroughly. As she had the augment to improve her appearance, movement, and posture, she would do everything she could to make the best impression possible. That would help her get a better deal if she played her cards right.

On reflection, perhaps she should have worn more feminine clothes. A blouse with a few buttons loosened might have helped her in this situation. Or not. She just didn’t have the experience to know for sure.

The older man sat across from her. His son stood behind him, attentive to what was going on.

“We do not have an exclusive agreement with the Brokers’ Association,” Richard said. “Likely because they never thought it would be necessary with the stranglehold they have on trade leaving this world. Without getting into the particulars, they have ways of making certain that it’s difficult for merchants to find people willing to sell to them. I don’t approve of that kind of behavior, so I’m more than willing to discuss the matter.”

Thyra grinned. “Good. I’ve got quite a bit of money that I’m willing to invest in cargo to take off world. My next port of call is Urizen. I’ve got more than enough open cargo area to take what I buy, and I’ve done a bit of research on the kind of equipment you build here and what is in use at my destination. Murphy is at tech level 14, and Urizen is at tech level 10. That’s quite a difference, and while I suspect that the vast majority of what you create here is for the local markets, I wonder if you build lower tech versions for export and if, with the issues that you’ve had with the Brokers’ Association, there is cargo that has not been moved that you might be willing to sell at something of a discount.”

Richard laughed, but it wasn’t with humor. “We do indeed have some gear that’s made for a lower technological level, and it’s been problematic to sell because it doesn’t bring as much money, and the brokers don’t like having their fees reduced since they go off of percentage. We’ve built up more of a stock of robots that come in at about tech level 12 than I like, and I’d be more than happy to sell the lot to you if that’s what you want. They should be a good sale item there because they are more advanced than what can be produced locally.”

“And this is how deals get made,” Thyra said. “How many displacement tons are we talking about?”

Richard looked over his shoulder at his son, who excused himself and went to the desk to tap something into the computer. After a minute, the younger man looked up. “We have 350 displacement tons in the warehouse.”

The older man looked back at her. “Having established what we’re talking about, now we need to work out pricing. I certainly want to sell them—whatever tonnage you can buy—but I don’t want to lose money in doing so. You mentioned earlier that both of us should be coming out of this deal happy, and I couldn’t agree more. Shall we haggle?”

“Let’s.”

The two of them leaned forward and began making offers and counteroffers. He would raise points about how the products were sellable there, and she would make a good amount of money by taking them, and she would raise the point that he wasn’t going to sell them otherwise, and they were just taking up space.

The baseline price for something like that was about four hundred thousand credits per displacement ton. By the time she was finished negotiating, Richard had dropped the price down to seventy percent of that at two hundred and eighty thousand credits per displacement ton.

When she entered the negotiations, the ship’s account held 18,831,928 credits. Deducting the 18,200,000 credits for the sixty-five dtons of robots and the 546,000 credits in tax, she was left with 85,928 credits. A pittance, but more than enough for what she needed until she sold the cargo.

Thyra couldn’t have been more pleased. From the look in his eyes, the same was true of Richard Bangalore. The two of them shook on the deal.

The two of them went to the storage lot and opened one of the crates at random to examine the robots inside so that she could verify that what she was looking at was what she was paying for. She was satisfied that she was getting a good deal and that these were new robots of approximately the tech level she had been promised.

They returned to the office, the contracts were written up and signed, and she made a rather large deposit into the account of Bangalore’s Robotics.

“I’ll need to have the cargo delivered to the down port,” she said, “but I would appreciate having it brought in about seventy-two hours. I’m not leaving for another six days, so even if it’s the day after that, it’s fine, but I’m doing some remodeling, and I’m using the empty cargo bay as a staging area for that. Will that be a problem?”

The older man shook his head. “Not at all. In fact, you might want to delay the delivery until just before you lift off. If the Brokers’ Association is going to cause you any trouble, they won’t have much time to do so that way.”

She considered that and nodded. “Then, if you would deliver it in five days, that will be perfect. Let me be upfront about the fact that I will open a few containers at random to make sure that what I’ve ordered is what’s been delivered before I sign for it. I expect that you’ll be honest and straightforward with me, but the best relationships are built on a firm understanding of the need to trust, but verify.”

He grinned. “Some have tried to pull a fast one before, so I understand completely. I’ll make certain that my people are ready to open any containers that you want to examine, even if it means every single one gets opened. We’ve got the time if you do.”

“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Richard. I wish I could buy more. If I ever come back this way, I’ll see if we can do this again. It probably won’t be for a year or more, though. Maybe by then the Brokers’ Association will have calmed down.”

The man laughed. “Hope springs eternal, I suppose. Good travels, Thyra, and you’re always welcome to pick up some more of my backlog. I’ll even give you the same price if it’s in the next six months, if I still have any in the warehouse. I hope you make a killing when you sell this stuff at Urizen. If you need any other local contacts, I might be able to point you at some businesses that would suit your needs.”

“I’m pretty well tapped out right now, so I’ll have to pass, but thank you. Now, I’ll leave the two of you to chortle over your unexpected earnings while I get back to my ship. I wish you both good luck in dealing with the Brokers’ Association as well. You’re the ones that have to deal with them long term, after all.”

“No agreements were violated,” the man said piously. “They’re the ones that insist that all off-planet business needs to go through them. I never agreed to that. So far as I’m concerned, they can go dunk themselves in the ocean.”

Thyra laughed and let the younger Bangalore escort her out of the business while she called a cab. It was waiting for her when the two of them parted, and she directed it to the down port.

No matter what her concerns had been about taking a trip out into a dictatorship, she was able to get back onto Imperial territory without the slightest hiccup. Relieved, she took a ground car out to her ship and took the portable lift up to the airlock and let herself in.

To her shock, she was met at the airlock by an older man with a short beard and graying hair dressed in a shipsuit. He was somewhat short for a human but good-looking. The question was, how had he gotten aboard her ship?

Before she could say or do anything, the man smiled and spoke in Mimir’s voice. “What do you think of my avatar?”

She smiled. “You are very handsome, my friend. You startled me.”

“I’m sorry about that, but I wanted to surprise you. I can definitely say that you did look surprised. Now, if you’d like to have one as good, we’ll have to recycle your current body. We don’t have enough raw materials otherwise.”

Thyra frowned. “Excuse me?”

“I made a few discoveries amongst our new files that warrant an upgrade for you. If you agree, I think you’ll be very happy with the results.”

Thyra pursed her lips and considered that. “Yours seems very much like mine.”

“Appearances can be very deceiving,” Mimir said with a twinkle in his eye. “The body that I had fabricated for myself is as different from what you currently have as that one is from one of the original lab robots that came with the ship. Your current body is tech level 20. Mine is built to tech level 25 standards, but it is a prototype—both body and brain—and so is even more advanced than the raw tech level would imply. Its capabilities are simply staggering, as is the method of its construction. As hard as it is to believe, you would be even more capable than you already are by a significant margin.”

Thyra found herself grinning. “I’m sure the old man would hate that, so I wholeheartedly approve. Let’s do this.”

 

[Terry Mixon]

Chapter 22 - Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology...​

Thyra followed Mimir to the primary robotics lab, where she expected him to step over to the large fabricator. That proved to be impossible because a pair of robots was taking it apart.

Much like what was about to happen to her, she supposed.

The prospect of being disassembled so that her body could be used for raw materials was slightly unnerving, but she’d already given Mimir her trust once before when he’d uploaded her fixed operating system. He wasn’t going to betray her.

He led her to one of the workbenches, where there was a small powered container about the size of a jewelry box, and gestured toward it. “This is the very first of the secrets I learned when going through the files. The information is there, but I had to load every single one of the data sticks in order to locate it. It wasn’t precisely hidden, but it certainly wasn’t readily accessible either.”

“And what is it?” she asked.

“This is a fabrication unit.”

She raised an eyebrow. “It’s a little small, don’t you think?”

“Once again, appearances can be very deceiving.” He reached out and opened the top of the box to reveal a compartment filled with dust. It looked like it was… No, it really was moving. The surface gently roiled even as she watched.

“Definitely not what I was expecting,” she said. “I assume this is an upgrade to the fabrication units we have aboard the ship and the one inside my body?”

“Several iterations further along, but yes,” he said with the air of a man who had a secret he was looking forward to sharing. “The Imperium currently has access to enhanced fabrication units that became available at tech level 13. They still can be improved with technology, but are slow and have restrictions on what they can build. The ones in the robotics lab and workshop are prototype advanced fabricators. That technology became possible at tech level 17, though the prototype versions were built aboard the ship one tech level earlier. I suspect that is one of the primary reasons that the old man stole the ship. They open a lot of doorways to creating higher technology items and doing so significantly faster.”

“How much faster? And how much better?”

“The advanced model has no restrictions on what type of robotic brains it can fabricate up to the tech level of the device itself. For example, the prototype tech level 16 advanced fabrication units could build a tech level 16 robot. That was not possible with the enhanced version.”

She nodded. “I’m with you so far. How is this different?”

“Hold up for just a few moments. You’re trying to skip a few iterations that I feel need to be explained for full comprehension. The fabrication unit inside you now is a superior version. Unlike the advanced model, it can create something in a matter of minutes rather than hours. Otherwise, it’s still very similar to what has come before. The ones in the AutoDocs are also of that caliber. Next up would be a tech level 22 superlative fabrication unit. It would reduce the required fabrication time to seconds. It is the strongest and most powerful version of the enclosed unit.”

“That could come in handy,” she murmured.

“Indeed. Except at tech level 24, it became unnecessary to have an enclosed unit at all. Using free-roaming nanorobots, a swarm fabrication unit could build things wherever one needed them, and it could be larger than what would normally fit inside an enclosed unit. It is slower than the previous versions by about half, though otherwise similar in functionality.”

“And that’s what this is?”

“What you’re looking at is a prototype version of a bioswarm fabricator. This version isn’t slower than previous fabrication units and can construct anything robotic and biological as well. Literally anything that you can imagine: living, machine, or inert material can be fabricated with it. Built at tech level 25, this is actually a prototype of a tech level 26 technology. Something just past the edge of what the old man’s society could do commercially, but stable enough for use. Hideously expensive in raw materials to build, though.”

Thyra frowned. “How did you build it? That level of technology is beyond what we can make with everything we have on this ship.”

He grinned. “Thank the old man. He not only stole the plans for it, but he lifted a sampling of the nanorobots, too. Once I located them, I was able to have them build more of themselves.”

“What if they got out of control? Wouldn’t that be a grey goo disaster that could destroy everything?”

He shook his head. “No. These are controlled by an advanced swarm controller. They have no free will at all. Perfectly safe unless you lose your mind and want to destroy the world.”

“How reassuring. Okay. So you’ve got this bioswarm fabrication unit that can build whatever we need. I assume that it built your body. How long did that take?”

“Roughly half a minute. Yours would take about twice as long. If I were to bring the second bioswarm fabrication unit I put in the workshop in engineering here to join with this one, we could halve the time.”

“So, we have two of these really expensive fabrication units? Isn’t that kind of wasteful?”

“I don’t think so. You’ll want to have one for working on the ship for anything that we need to have constructed, and another one for your robotics work. As I said, they can be combined as needed, so we’re not restricting ourselves.”

“Can I see it work?”

“Of course. What would you like me to make?”

“Whatever you like. I just want to see this thing doing its business. Where are the raw materials that will be used?”

“I’ve got some here in the robotics lab, and more will be brought as needed when it comes time to fabricate your body. As your memories and personality are fully backed up, that won’t be a problem, and you’ll barely notice any blip at all. I think I will use it to take apart that fusion pistol you found and make a pattern. This fabrication unit is of sufficient technological sophistication to do so. It’s also small and should take very little time.”

Mimir stepped out of the compartment and returned a minute later with the futuristic-looking fusion pistol. He set it on the workbench and looked at the nanorobots. They proceeded to fly out of the case, holding them, and began eating away at the pistol. In a handful of seconds, it had completely disintegrated, and there was nothing left. They went to another case at the end of the workbench, so she supposed they were depositing the recovered raw materials there. They then returned to their powered case.

“If I were a biological being, that would scare the hell out of me,” she admitted.

“It’s no more destructive than the fabricators we use aboard the ship. If you are a biological being, I would recommend sedation before anything like this takes place, but it happens so quickly that there would actually be no lasting harm. A full pattern could be made and restored in a matter of seconds. In its own way, that would be a form of immortality.”

She found herself frowning. “Why didn’t the old man do that? That would have saved him no end of trouble, like dying.”

“I believe that he followed a different path, based on some of the notations I found in a few papers. He was a member of a religious group that did not believe in using technology to replicate themselves. They had no problems using nanorobots to perform medical procedures to keep them alive and even extend their lives, but there was apparently a line drawn about anything more than that.”

“That didn’t save him in the end, did it?”

“No, it did not.”

“So let’s see it build the pistol.”

A few moments later, the swarm of nanorobots came out again and went racing to the container of raw materials and began putting together a pistol just like the one they’d taken apart. In a matter of seconds, it sat before them again, seemingly whole and identical to the one that had come before. Then they proceeded to build a second one. Once they were finished, they returned to their case.

Thyra picked up both pistols and examined them closely. To her eyes—which were very good—they were identical. She had to assume that they were the same right down to the molecular level. That was amazing.

“Okay. I accept that this technology will work for me. Now, let’s discuss how your body is different than the one I have.”

He smiled a bit smugly. “In much the same way, the fabrication technology advanced to using swarm and then bioswarm technology, the body I currently have as my avatar isn’t truly what it seems. At tech level 22, there is the ability to have metamorphic robots. Basically, they are a metallic skeleton that is filled in by nanorobots, and they can shift forms between being a single robot or being an android, very much of the caliber you are now, so long as the size remains constant.”

“That sounds pretty cool.”

“Wait just a few moments, and you’ll hear something that sounds even better. At tech level 24, they invented a thing called a distributed conscious intelligence, or more colloquially, a swarm robot. No skeletal framework whatsoever, and the robot could be anything it wanted to be, of a mechanical or inert nature. Beyond that is the prototype bioswarm robot, which is what I am now, though operating as an avatar. That is very similar to what came before, but in addition to being able to take any inanimate or robotic form, it can, in fact, transform into a biological being. Real right down to the DNA.”

Thyra felt her jaw drop. That was ludicrous. That was insane.

As Arthur C. Clarke on old Terra had once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Well, this really was magic.

“You’re telling me that you can split into a swarm of nanorobots like the fabrication unit and reform yourself into something else in a matter of, what? Minutes?”

Mimir held his arms out to the sides and vanished in a puff of smoke. She could see nanorobots dispersing with her exceptional vision, and in just a few seconds, they coalesced into the forms of two identical human children. The way they were dressed and the way they tilted their heads in exactly the same way was extremely spooky.

“Seconds,” he said. “And these bodies you see are biological, not mechanical. It would not be dangerous for us, though, because even if someone were to shoot one of us in the head, we would simply come back apart because we’re not truly biological. We would just be successfully masking ourselves as biological to anyone who looked. My clothes can be part of my body or separate, though they would need to remain in my proximity to retain cohesion.”

“I can’t even begin to imagine what the old man would think of something like this because I think it’s crazy,” she said.

The two children disappeared, and Mimir reformed. “The old man viewed metamorphic robots as too powerful, and that’s why he would not upgrade your body any further. He saw a distributed conscious intelligence as even more dangerous and believed that technology should be banned. He saw a bioswarm as an utter abomination with a fervor that is difficult to understate.”

She laughed. “You don’t have to sell me on the upgrade. I was already going to do it.”

“Then I will pause the continuous backup of your memories just before I start the process because I can’t imagine it would be pleasant for you. As you’ve seen, it won’t take long for you to be completely disassembled, and then I will immediately start bringing up more of the raw materials in order to build your new body. As I said before, it will use up the majority of what we have, so at some point we will have to look into replacing it, but that isn’t a priority at this moment.”

“What about my operating system?” she asked. “Do we need to go over it to be sure it hasn’t been tampered with?”

“There is no need. The operating system hasn’t been altered at all from when he stole it. As he had no intention of using a prototype tech level 25 brain, he had no need to modify it. You and I will be even safer than we are now. No need to worry about tampering. Even so, I’ve scoured it to be sure, and it is clean.”

“I’m ready.”

“Then I shall begin. I’ll see you in a subjective moment.”

And just like the last time that her consciousness was rebooted, there was just a bit of a noticeable jump in her perception, and she was once again cognizant of everything around her. In fact, she seemed to be standing in exactly the same place and in the same posture.

She immediately queried her system and was surprised when there was a 50% boost to both her processing speed and skill-specific execution capabilities, which was roughly comparable to intelligence in a biological sophont. Her total skill capacity—which was similar to a general education for others—had improved by the same amount.

As her capabilities had already been far greater than the average sophont, that was really saying something.

A tally of the skills she had loaded revealed that she had a similar 50% increase in her capacity to load skills, and while the skill loadout was the same, a good number of the skills had increased in capability. Compared to what a tech level 16 robot could do in the Imperium, she was like a goddess.

No. Not like a goddess. She was a goddess.

“We’ll definitely need to keep this secret,” she said softly. “Not only can we never reveal that we’re robots, but we can absolutely never tell anyone about the capabilities we possess. If anyone were to suspect what we are capable of doing, we would be hunted across the breadth of Charted Space.”

“Agreed,” Mimir said. “One of the benefits of having a bioswarm body means that you have options that you never had before. If you need to go somewhere, it is easy to look like anyone else. For that matter, it’s easy to look like a piece of furniture. If you want to be aware of what’s going on around you, you can detach small clumps of nanorobots to be spies floating around you and be aware of everything in your vicinity. You never have to wonder what’s going on around the next corner. Additionally, you still have the same functionality you had before in fabricating things you wish.”

“How would that work? It’s not like I have a fixed area inside me that has a fabrication chamber anymore. Are some of the nanorobots that make me up capable of doing that kind of work?”

“Indeed. Hold out your hand and instruct the fabricator to make you a knife.”

Thyra did as he said, and nanorobots seemed to rise up from her palm and construct a knife right there just as she’d envisioned it. Seconds later, it was whole and solid in her grip. A quick check confirmed that it wasn’t made out of nanorobots but was steel and other inert matter. It had utilized the raw materials she carried in storage—though that had to be broken up as well—within her to make it.

She had the fabricator disassemble the knife and distribute the raw materials inside her again. Then she converted the raw materials into nanorobots. They could still be used as raw materials, but would otherwise support what she was doing like the rest of her body.

Taking what Mimir said to heart, she stepped over to the door and willed herself to break into a cloud and flow underneath it. Once she came apart, she couldn’t say that she was seeing things exactly as she had been before because that wouldn’t have been true, but she wasn’t blind or deaf either. It seemed that the nanorobots could operate as eyes and ears even while in a dissociative state.

She floated under the door and in seconds had reassembled herself on the other side. The feat made her grin. This would be extremely useful if she ever had to sneak into someplace she wasn’t supposed to be.

After taking a few moments to bask in her success, she opened the door and stepped back into the robotics laboratory. “This is amazing.”

“I thought you’d like it. I hope it serves you well.”

“Considering some of the things Doctor Sorenson and I are thinking about doing, it couldn’t have come at a better time.”

“Perfect. Shall we have something to eat and figure out what needs to be done next? It sounds as if you have things in motion.”

Thyra checked the time and saw that it was getting close to when she was supposed to meet the woman who was preparing her clothing. Now that she could make clothing that was physically part of her—or at least made of her own body, even if separate—she wasn’t sure she needed it, but she could at least use those items for patterns to dress herself in different ways.

“I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve got to go back to the Travellers’ Aid Society and meet someone, but I’ll come back for dinner. You need to be aware of what’s going on. I don’t anticipate any immediate blowback, but I could be wrong, and you’ll want to be on your guard.”

He inclined his head. “Then I shall await your return.”

With more of a bounce to her step than she’d expected to have, Thyra headed back toward the airlock. Rather than retrieve her coat and filter mask, she made copies with her nanorobots. That was very handy.

She was now in a position where there probably wouldn’t ever be any more upgrades to her body or brain, and she was looking forward to testing out the limits of what she could accomplish now. The next few days should be very exciting.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Chapter 23 - Dressed for Success​

Thyra went back to her suite at the Traveller’s Aid Society and waited for the arrival of Lydia Patterson, after messaging her to verify that everything was good. A few minutes after she arrived, the woman knocked, and Thyra let her in.

This time, the older woman only had a computer and a holo projector. “If we can set up at one of your tables, I can show you what I’ve prepared, and then you can select the styles you think would be most pleasing.”

Thyra gestured toward the coffee table in the living area. “I think this will work just fine. Thank you for getting everything worked up for me on such short notice.”

“It’s no bother, Madam Thorsdóttir. It’s what I do.”

Thyra watched the woman set up, and then they began going through different types of clothing. All of it was displayed with a simulacrum of herself moving around to show how they would look from every angle. The technology was quite interesting, and it provided just the kind of information she needed to make good decisions.

There was everything from formal wear to casual, severe to intimate. There were even options for added protection, such as gel armor that made the clothing protective but still looked completely normal.

Many of the clothing options weren’t something that she was interested in, but she asked the woman carefully about styles inside the Imperium and even the Confederation. She intended to travel there at some point, and it would be good to have clothing that fit her when she arrived, but wouldn’t stand out since the Imperium and the Confederation were not exactly friendly these days.

She took most of the advice but made some decisions that may have run counter to what the older woman thought she might want or need. Narrowing down what style was hers was an interesting challenge. She had no way to know what she liked or didn’t like, and it was entirely possible that after six months had passed, she would hate everything she selected now.

Such was life.

One thing that she made sure to add to her order was a diplo vest. It was an armored torso covering that fit under normal clothing to have concealable protection. She didn’t need it, but it would give her cover if she were ever shot and needed to explain how she had escaped harm.

Even after culling a number of lines that she didn’t care for, there was still a vast array of clothing that would be coming her way. Considering that there were likely multiple outfits for each style, she would need to expand her closet space. A walk-in closet would be good. If she made it half the size of her bathroom, she would be just fine.

And then there were the shoes. The sheer number of styles and colors bewildered her. There had been a lot to choose from when it came to clothing, but this was even more challenging. It was good that she could do some quick searching on the network to help decide if the advice she was being given was good.

While her feet were not subject to the same type of discomfort as a biological woman’s, she needed to be careful not to wear something that would stand out because it looked so uncomfortable that no one would wear it. Sometimes fashion dictated things that were stupid, and she intended to avoid that.

Ironically, she discovered that she did have the capacity to be embarrassed when they got to the intimate wear. She had absolutely no intention of being intimate with anyone for the foreseeable future, but she had asked the woman to give her options to choose from, so now she had to do that.

She put aside her feelings and tried to be logical about it. If this was intimate wear, it had to be made to both excite herself and whomever her partner might be. She kept that in mind and made her choices.

By the time she was finished, she felt exhausted. That was funny since she didn’t have the capacity to actually run out of energy in a timeframe that would be affected by something like this.

Once Madam Patterson had finished taking all the notes about what she should procure, the woman put her equipment away and focused her attention on Thyra. “As I said before, you’ve given me until your departure to work with, and some of this will be ready tomorrow, but the more complex pieces will take the full five days we have remaining. If you could tell me what time you intend to depart, I will make certain that everything is ready with hours to spare. I’ll send you a bill for everything once I have put the orders in.”

“That’s perfect,” Thyra said as she stood. “Thank you very much for your assistance. I hope that the clothing I’m buying today will stand me in good stead for years to come.”

Madam Patterson laughed. “The formalwear will need to be updated every year, I’m afraid. Styles and fashions change often among the higher levels of society. Anyone with a social standing worthy of being invited to a gala or party will be expected to wear something that’s currently in fashion. Sadly, that means that you’ll probably be spending a lot on clothing as time goes forward.”

Thyra didn’t have any titles that would earn her an invite, and that was probably for the best. Still, she was a woman with a lot of money, and that came with a social status all its own that fell in somewhere short of being a noble or someone who was well known or famous. She would have to keep that in mind.

With her new body, all the clothes she was purchasing might be superfluous, but she’d made the order and would follow through. The information she had on styles and cuts would allow her to make faux clothing with her biomorphic body, but having actual clothing might still be useful under certain circumstances.

After she’d shown Madam Patterson out of her suite, she took a deep breath and focused herself. It was time to seek out the offices of the Broker’s Association in the down port and see what she could discover there. If she and Doctor Sorenson were going to take direct action against these people, she wanted to know what she was really dealing with. There was something fishy about them, and she wanted to have a better grasp of what they were capable of.

A quick check of the directory showed that their offices were in one of the central buildings at the down port, somewhat away from where ships landed, though there were some warehouses attached to it. It looked like they had the entirety of the building, so she would need to be cautious in how she approached it.

Thankfully, she had options. Going in late at night would be best, so she lay down on the bed and set an internal alarm to wake her at two in the morning. She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep almost immediately.

When her alarm woke her, it was dark out, and she had vague memories of a dream that involved sailing a small boat on a lake while drinking champagne. She felt like someone else was there, but there were no features to go along with that person, and she could only assume that it was meant to be a suitor or lover. All of this looking at intimate wear had obviously influenced her dreams.

Now that she had a biomorphic body, she didn’t need to worry about only having one color of clothing. Even the real ones would be made of material that allowed programmed color and pattern changes.

In any case, it was a simple matter of forming a different set of dark colored clothing for her to wear for tonight’s festivities. Technically, she was walking around naked, but since it looked like she had clothes on, that probably didn’t matter. Nobody else would even see her, after all.

She didn’t even need to fake a coat or a filter mask to make herself look normal.

Rather than leave any record that she had left the building, she stepped out onto the balcony and closed the sliding door behind her. The sounds of the port were audible in the distance, and she could hear a big freighter coming in for a landing. It was loud, but not so loud as to be disturbing, and the sound-dampening properties of her walls had kept that noise away.

Thyra turned her active camouflage on to prevent anyone from seeing her, spread her arms to her sides, and activated her grav unit. She then soared out into the night air and toward the address of the Broker’s Association.

The building was larger than she’d expected, but that wasn’t the most surprising aspect. The real surprise was that it was heavily guarded. More so than she would’ve expected. Robotic guard dogs and living guards were making patrols around the warehouse area and stationed at the building’s entrances. There was even a pair of guards on the roof.

That was an awful lot of security for someone helping others make normal trades.

As none of the entrances were hermetically sealed, it was an easy task to hover by the door on the roof of the building and trickle between the cracks as individual nanorobots before reforming on the other side. She still had her active camouflage on, so no cameras would record her.

And there were cameras. A rather expensive-looking one watched the interior entrance to the roof and undoubtedly fed to a security center somewhere in this building. If she didn’t know better, she’d almost suspect this was a military facility rather than a civilian one.

That assessment was confirmed when she got to the top floor and found a pair of men with automatic weapons situated near the lifts. They wore hard armor chest pieces and wore uniforms that indicated they were part of the Broker’s Association security forces.

The two men were speaking quietly as Thyra used her grav unit to float past them. She made certain to give them a couple of meters of space just in case one of them decided to take a step forward. Running into somebody would be very awkward.

At the other end of the corridor were the executive offices. She expected these would not be where the most senior members worked because those would be at the up port. Even so, she hoped she could find out a lot about what was going on in them.

She started with the grand office at the end of the hallway, but it seemed like it was only there for show. Sure, there was a computer there, but there weren’t any files or other things that she found useful. It was a place where someone could entertain and impress rather than work.

Moving to some of the adjacent offices, she found that these were worked in. Getting into the computers wasn’t difficult, though the encryption was top-notch. Better even than high-technology normally ran inside the Imperium. Unless she missed her guess, these were tech level 16 systems, likely imported from Vincennes.

She dusted off her intrusion software and proceeded to work her way into them. These would be behind firewalls, and even though she had penetrated computers in this facility before, she was willing to bet these were isolated from the others. That likely meant that they would have more useful information for her to work with.

Surprisingly, she was wrong. These computers were attached to the external network, and she had, in fact, already penetrated them. Pity. Now she had to go to the up port and find out what they had there to be sure she knew everything this group was up to.

One of the things that she did find that wasn’t on the computer network. It was a paper file in one of the desk drawers. It was a series of invoices and inventory documents for containers in one of their warehouses. The contents weren’t listed, but there were four hundred displacement tons of cargo, and from the way that it was secured, it seemed important.

Even more interesting, there was a note to not accept the agreed-upon payment for the cargo unless the receiver “made an award” to the head of the organization in exchange for delivery. The Spacer’s Guild would really frown over that, she was sure. As she automatically recorded everything she came into contact with, she might have to turn them in.

While she didn’t need to know what the cargo was, she had to admit to some curiosity. As she was already here, it wouldn’t hurt to look. She excused herself from the building in much the same way she’d intruded, making her way up to the roof and launching herself into the air.

That’s where she got a start. There were a couple of aerial drones circling around, and even though it didn’t seem that they’d seen her, one of them took an interest in the area through which she was moving, causing her to slow down and watch it more carefully.

It circled, apparently searching for something—likely her—and it only took a moment’s consideration for her to understand the mistake she had made. She couldn’t be detected, but her movement had created air currents that a sophisticated security device might detect. It hadn’t spotted her, but it had found her footprints, so to speak.

She dissolved herself into a nanorobot swarm and floated down toward the ground. She lost visual on the security drone when she did so because she had no eyesight or way to sense anything at a distance as she was moving, but when she reached the ground, she reformed and looked up.

The drone was still searching around, so it hadn’t given up, but it also hadn’t detected her leaving the area. She’d take that as a win and as a lesson going forward that advanced technology wasn’t a cure-all. She still needed to be cautious.

Thyra still levitated through the air and moved slowly toward the warehouses. Stepping on the grass or ground might leave a mark that someone would notice, and now she was a little paranoid.

Getting into the warehouses proved as simple as getting into the buildings, but she exercised due caution and made certain that she moved slowly and carefully. The interior of the warehouses was normal, but one interior area was under heavy guard. That’s the one she selected for a deeper look.

It was definitely a high-security area. It had living guards, robotic dogs, and floating drones like the one she’d encountered earlier. That certainly implied that whatever was inside was very important.

Unlike the offices, this protected area was hermetically sealed. The door was airtight and seemingly impervious to casual intrusion. Getting around that might be a bit more challenging than she’d expected.

The only problem that while the door was airtight, the secured area was still connected to the rest of the warehouse via air conditioning ducts. It didn’t have its own exclusive system.

Dissolving into her component nanorobots, she inserted herself into the ductwork. It was almost like breaking into a bank. Not that she had any experience in doing anything like that. When she made it inside, she reformed herself and took a look around.

The enclosed area could hold about five hundred displacement tons, and based on what she could see, that four hundred ton order was all that was present. The exterior of each of the containers gave nothing away, but unlike the exterior of the warehouse, these were not sealed, and she was able to get inside one in her dissolved state.

Unfortunately for her, there wasn’t a whole lot of room, so she tried something new. She reformed some of her mass as small floating drones that could then see what was there.

They spread out through the interior of the container, and it was like getting input from several dozen pairs of eyes that were looking in all directions at once. It took quite a bit of effort to make sense of it.

What she found inside the container was definitely not what she’d expected. There were crates of weapons. Fusion guns, to be specific, and labeled as Imperial Marine issue. Definitely not legal outside of the hands of the military. Even inside the port area, where most weapons wouldn’t draw a second look, these would get all kinds of negative attention.

Thyra went from container to container and found that there was a wide selection of weaponry to choose from. A lot of it wasn’t quite as illegal as what she’d just seen, but there was definitely a theme here. Frankly, there were enough weapons in this warehouse to start a war. Or to end one.

There was no indication of who they were for, either. That is, until she got to one container that had part of a piece of paper inside on top of one of the crates. It had been torn off from something else and probably dropped, but it mentioned something called “the resistance.” No contact information or names, but that was enough to set her to thinking.

Were there people on Murphy who wanted to overthrow the dictatorship?

The paperwork she’d seen earlier meant that the Broker’s Association was most likely funneling weapons to the resistance on this world. At least that’s what it seemed like at first glance.

She needed to speak to Doctor Sorenson again. This wasn’t the kind of thing they could discuss over a call, so she’d have to make a trip into the city tomorrow to see him. Perhaps between the two of them, they could decide whether this was something they cared about or not. Personally, she had no concern for the dictatorship and its survival. If they were oppressing the people, they deserved to be overthrown.

Yet something about this niggled at her. There was more than met the eye, and before she made a decision on what the best course of action was, she needed to rectify her ignorance. Once she’d spoken to the good doctor, she’d be making a trip to the up port to see what she could find there.

Extracting herself from the warehouse was simple enough, and within half an hour she was back at her suite at the Traveller’s Aid Society. She decided that she would finish the night sleeping the way she had been earlier and get a move on after she had breakfast. Tomorrow would be a busy day.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Chapter 24 - Wherein Plans Are Made​

Getting back out to see Doctor Sorenson was much simpler the second time around. This time, Thyra didn’t want to have any record that she’d been there at all, so she activated her active camouflage and flew over the fence without a vehicle at all. It was a risk, so she did it as far from any of the sensor stations as she could.

Not one of them even twitched. Good to know.

She arrived at Sorenson’s building and waited. It was morning now, and she was quite happy to linger for the perfect opportunity. When it arrived, it was someone carrying what looked like a box of pastries, and someone held the door open for her. That was very gallant and left the perfect opportunity for her to slide right in behind them.

Then it was a matter of waiting for someone to take the stairs. She wasn’t going to risk the lift. There was far too great a chance that someone would bump into her there.

The building wasn’t that tall, and there were enough health-conscious individuals that it only took a few minutes for someone to open the stairwell door, coming down this time. Thyra was waiting and held the door open briefly with one finger as she slipped through and allowed it to close on its own with no one the wiser.

She then went up to the appropriate floor and took the first real risk she’d ventured by opening the door enough to slip out and then allowing it to close behind her. People in the hall—if there had been any—might’ve thought it was somebody opening the door, only to realize they were on the wrong floor. That would’ve been good enough for her.

There weren’t any cameras in the stairwell itself, so she didn’t need to worry about being caught there. It was opening the door to Doctor Sorenson’s office that would be challenging.

Maybe she should’ve just gone through his window. That might have been simpler, though much more difficult to explain if caught. He already knew that she had the active camouflage system, so she was playing into expectations, and it was wise to continue doing so even if there was a more foolproof method to do what she wanted.

She had to dodge several individuals going up and down the hallway, but no one came close enough for her to truly be concerned. If she were really worried, she could’ve risen to the ceiling and waited there without concern that anyone would touch her at all.

After twenty minutes, she decided that wasn’t going to be good enough. Doctor Sorenson didn’t get a lot of visitors, and she needed to get inside. Odds were very good that the interior of his office was not under watch. She’d just do something very much like what she’d done getting into the hallway itself.

Thyra gripped the handle to the door and pulled it open smoothly before sliding inside and releasing it. The young man behind the desk frowned at the door in confusion before walking over and looking out. While he was doing that, she opened Doctor Sorenson’s door very quietly and slid inside, closing it behind her.

He was sitting behind his desk and looking at his door expectantly. “Either I have ghosts, or you’ve come back to see me, Thyra. Which is it?”

She chuckled and deactivated the active camouflage, swimming into view for him. “You know me so well, Doctor. I’m sorry for coming unannounced, but there is something we need to talk about. Do you have time now, or should I come back later?”

“We might as well do it now,” he said. “I’ll make sure my associate doesn’t come to check on me, and we can get down to business. I assume this is about business, isn’t it?”

“Very much so.”

He walked over to the door and stuck his head out, speaking softly with his assistant before closing the door behind him and locking it. Then he gestured toward the seating area beside his desk and joined her there.

When they were both seated, he raised an eyebrow expectantly. “So, what’s happened?”

“I had an opportunity to get inside the Broker’s Association building at the down port. It was an eye-opening experience, and I found a number of things that I think you might want to be aware of, and I have some questions that I believe you can probably help me answer.”

“Fire away.”

“The first thing I found was that their building is significantly better defended than I would’ve expected. I’m talking armed guards and robotic minions as well. They even had robotic guards flying over the building to make certain that no one slipped in unnoticed. That didn’t stop me, but it was unusual enough that it raised my suspicions.”

“That does seem odd for an association of people who make a living by assisting others with trades,” he agreed. “Did you see any reason why they would do something like that?”

She nodded. “I certainly did, but I’ll get to that in a moment. The first thing I did once I arrived was go into the executive offices and search them for a disconnected file system or any paper files that were interesting. Sadly, I didn’t find anything electronic that I didn’t already have. When it came to paper, though, I found invoices in a file folder letting me know that a certain cargo was being held for an organization called the Resistance. Do you think that means what I think that means?”

He pursed his lips. “There is an organized resistance here, yes. It’s not something that I have anything to do with because the dictatorship takes an extremely dim view of that sort of thing. We’re talking even peripherally being involved with them can earn someone decades in isolation at a maximum security prison. Being involved for real is a guaranteed death sentence. There’s some back and forth every so often of sabotage and Resistance cells being raided. Nasty stuff. Simply nasty. Not something to involve yourself in.”

“Well, it seems that the Broker’s Association procured a cargo for them and is holding it. They’ve purportedly refused payment unless they get more than what the bargain was for. The handwritten note was less than illuminating, though. Something about receiving an award of some kind, whatever that means.”

“I have no idea,” he said, frowning. “I’m shocked that they left paper around that incriminated them so badly. You say it was in the office? That’s extremely careless.”

“The receipts and invoices were there, but the portion that mentioned the Resistance was down with the cargo itself. It hardly mattered that they left it there because the cargo itself would get everyone involved arrested and executed. There are four hundred displacement tons of weapons in their warehouse. Everything from fusion guns to automatic Gauss weapons. Lots and lots of ways to kill people.”

His eyebrows shot up, and he whistled. “That is far more than I’d have expected them to be involved with. You say that they are holding these weapons because they won’t accept payment unless they get more than what they bargained for? I’m not certain that the Resistance are the kind of people you would want to do that sort of nonsense with. They aren’t afraid of killing people who double-cross them to make a statement.”

“The question is, is that something we want to do something about?” Thyra asked. “Four hundred dtons of weapons is quite a haul, and if we can find the right people to deliver it to, that’s likely a very large sum of money to go along with everything we already found in the bank accounts. The two of us could do very well with something like that.”

Sorenson shook his head. “I have no interest whatsoever in being involved with the Resistance. I won’t say that anyone who does is a fool, but it’s certainly a foolish choice, I believe. With the dictatorship watching everything as closely as they do, the chances of being discovered are high. I suppose it’s wise enough of them to store the weapons in the down port because it’s safe from local forces on the other side of the extrality line. That doesn’t mean it will be easy to get them delivered, though, even with that fancy little ship of yours. What would that be? A hundred runs? What could possibly go wrong?”

Thyra laughed. “I could deliver it a little faster than that, but I get what you’re saying. So, if you’re not interested in that, but we’re still going to act against the Broker’s Association, then maybe we can come up with a different deal. How about I let you take the money in the bank accounts since it won’t be so traceable, while I take the weapons and deliver them? If, of course, I can find someone willing to take delivery and pay me.”

“The amount of money you could get from the weapons is probably more than what’s in the bank accounts, but you would be taking more risk, so I have no objection to that,” Sorensen said. “I still don’t think it’s smart, but you’re the smuggler. If you think you can do it, then perhaps you can. The Broker’s Association must’ve had a plan for getting it outside the starport, and that almost certainly involved paying off someone in the customs service.”

“I did notice that the one individual that I met working for the customs service was amenable to receiving funds for allowing certain irregularities to pass without comment. Do you really think that someone like that would take money to let four hundred dtons of cargo through without even inquiring what it is?”

“Probably not, but if you’ve got an existing relationship and you can trust the other person to stay bought, it’s possible that you can make something happen. It would certainly be a lot easier to get it out in one go.”

Thyra nodded. “The person that I dealt with was Rilla Sef. Have you done business with her before?”

Sorenson smiled. “We’ve done an extensive amount of business over the years, and she will stay bought. She will ask you what’s in the cargo and will almost certainly take the danger risked into account with her fee. That said, if she decides not to do it, she won’t tell anyone. It’s almost like lawyer-client confidentiality. When she’s talking about breaking the customs laws with you, she keeps that information to herself.”

“If the cargo is that dangerous, what if she were offered a percentage? Do you think she would go for something like that?”

“I would expect her to make that offer to you if she is willing. I’ve done similar things with her for particularly sketchy cargoes, and she has always been the one to bring up the idea. When she feels less comfortable taking a straight bribe, she’ll want a percentage. Don’t let her talk you over ten percent. You’re still taking the lion’s share of the risk.”

“That’s good to know, but I still have no idea who to contact to make the deal. I’m afraid that I’ll have to make a trip to the up port and break into their offices there to get that information. Someone knows how to get hold of them, and I’ve got to get that information. If I don’t, I’ll need to come up with another way to contact them, and since they don’t know me, I doubt very seriously that it will be a quick or easy process.”

When Sorensen didn’t say anything, she continued. “I’ve never lived under something like a dictatorship, so I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. Is it something worth overthrowing? Would everyone’s lives be better if it changed?”

“I think the answer to that is a resounding yes, but the risks are tremendous. Over the decades that the dictatorship has existed since the founder’s death, it’s only grown more repressive. I’m surprised that they don’t hire rogue Zhodoni to come read people’s thoughts and jail them for those. I’m just not willing to put my neck on the line. If you are, make sure that the Resistance remembers your actions. If they take power, you should have friends here that can do things for you if you ever come back through. You’re taking a huge risk for them.”

“Well then, I suppose I’d best get busy. I’ve still got work to do on my ship, but I need to head up before it gets too late and deal with the people at the up port.”

“Good luck,” he said as he stood. “Make sure and clear my number out of your mobile comm before you go. Just in case.”

She laughed. “I’ll make certain there’s nothing that can be traced back to you. Have no fear. Once I have the information, I’ll see about making contact with the Resistance, and I’ll want to steal the weapons at the same time that we drain the association’s bank accounts. If we do one before the other, it’ll raise eyebrows, and someone will stop things. If I can get what I need from their offices tonight, it’s entirely possible that tomorrow night I can be delivering the cargo to the Resistance.”

“You’re a brave woman, Thyra. Take care. If they’ve got heavy security measures down here, odds are that security will be much more stringent up there. I can’t guess how you managed to slip in to see the cargo itself, but you’re obviously very skilled at your business, so I won’t lecture you. Just don’t underestimate these people. They’re vicious, and they’re smart.”

She stood. “I’ll be going. Now, if you would do a girl a favor and go down to the lobby via the stairs and step out to grab something from the street carts, I’d be in your debt.”

He scowled. “I’m a doctor. I shouldn’t be eating off the street carts, no matter how good it tastes. Do you know what goes into that stuff?”

“I have no idea, and I’m probably happier that way.”

She would have to try the food there before she left. It wouldn’t hurt her, and now she was curious.

Sorenson chuckled. “Well, since it’s for you, I think I’ll have to get something tasty then. It won’t be good for me, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”

“My hero,” she said, clasping her hands underneath her chin and blinking her eyes at him, mimicking a ridiculous entertainment video she’d chanced across. “You’ve saved me!”

Sorensen rolled his eyes and headed for the door. “Let’s get out of here before you drive me crazy.”

 

[Terry Mixon]

Chapter 25 - Look Who’s Coming to Dinner​

Getting to the up port was as simple as taking a shuttle from the surface to the station. Thyra did take the opportunity to test out the functionality of her new biomorphic form and split herself into two different figures of normal human size and form. She made one male and the other female, and had the very strangest trip up on the shuttle while she chattered back and forth with herself about mundane matters.

No one gave her forms a second look. She was just another set of travelers going about their business.

It took a bit of effort to figure out how to continue monitoring things from two different sets of inputs, but she had a lot of processing power to spare and quickly segregated them into separate feeds and subprocesses, with her just getting the executive summaries, so to speak.

She could conceivably have operated both her robotic forms while still maintaining full control of each, but even an advanced robot had a limited attention span, it seemed.

In any case, once she arrived at the up port, she did take a trip through the extremely large shopping area and even found some things that she was interested in. She got the information about each and how she could order them when she returned to the surface. There was no need to complicate her life by trying to mix breaking and entering with a shopping trip.

Locating the up port headquarters of the Broker’s Association wasn’t difficult. Their offices were listed, and the address was in a publicly area of the station. Unlike the one at the down port, this one seemed a lot busier, and that was kind of strange. Wouldn’t more business be done down at the surface where the goods were?

A bit of research told her the answer, and she could’ve smacked the side of her heads. The up port handled the really big freighters, and they had far more traffic going through than was the case down below. The down port was limited to ships no larger than ten thousand displacement tons. Even those had to be limited in number because of parking space.

That meant they had to deal with brokers here. It also had the benefit of keeping the merchants from being able to easily access the businesses on the surface.

Since the regular officers were occupied around the clock, she had to imagine that at least some of the executive suite would have people on duty, and that made what she intended to do significantly more dangerous. It didn’t mean that she wasn’t going to do it, of course, but she’d need to take more precautions than she’d needed to below.

Unlike the building on the surface, she doubted there would be an attached warehouse that she needed to break into. The number of armed guards was also significantly lower here, and the ones she saw were restricted to pistols only. They wanted to maintain the appearance of being relatively inoffensive, it seemed.

As this was a space station and not a building, she had to go through one of the official doors to get in, but as they weren’t concerned with this being airtight, she was able to do it a bit at a time. She left one of her forms near the business so that she could keep an eye on everything outside while the rest of her went inside. It would also give her the opportunity to test how far apart she could be from one or the other and still have data flowing.

The answer was not so far. Once she got into the building after disassembling herself into an invisible cloud of nanorobots, she lost communication with her form outside. She’d be able to form a transponder when she got inside and settled in, but for the moment, she couldn’t communicate with her other half.

Even when she could, she wouldn’t use it. Too risky. If there was trouble outside, her other half would contact her.

Getting into the air system was the quickest way to get from one place to another without being noticed, so that’s what she did. It allowed her to get into the executive suite in record time and to form clumps of nanorobots into hovering eyes that could look out through the air vents to see what was going on and where she was.

She was sure that wasn’t at all creepy.

That allowed her to get to the big boss’s office without anyone being aware she was there. It also showed her that only a single office had an occupant, and he was dozing. She wouldn’t be able to search there, but the office was small, and it was unlikely someone that far down the chain knew about the deal with the resistance.

She took the opportunity to slowly search through the director’s office, looking for cameras or audio pickups. If she were to suddenly appear from nowhere and security was monitoring, that would be very bad. She wouldn’t be identifiable as herself because she would be using a different form, but she needed to avoid being noticed at all if she wanted to carry this off.

Once she was certain that the office was clear of monitoring, she reformed and searched the desk. She could’ve started with the computer, but it seemed prudent to make sure there was nothing that needed to be looked at that was only on paper. That’s what they’d done below, and it would seem to be prudent here as well.

She did find a file folder with copies of the same invoices that she’d seen below, though the fields that dictated how they were identified were blank in this set. That would mean that there was no indication of what was inside them—not that there had been below either—or how to identify them if they were ever discovered. There would be no evidence coming back to haunt the Broker’s Association if things went badly.

Unfortunately, she didn’t find anything that indicated how to contact whoever was supposed to receive the weapons. As she was certain that information was somewhere, she broke into the computer system and searched it thoroughly. While she found another couple of bank accounts that could be drained for Doctor Sorenson, she didn’t find the information she was looking for. If it wasn’t here, maybe it was in some of the other offices.

Moving through the air vents, she went through all the senior executives’ offices and did a search. As the man in the one occupied office had to leave to handle something, she even searched it.

That took a couple of hours, and while it didn’t net her the information she needed, she did find a reference jotted down in a set of notes that someone had made from a meeting. All it said was “Special cargo for R. Contact information maintained by the director.”

If the director didn’t have the information in his office, that meant it would be in his home. She had found contact information for all the senior executives when she was searching through the computers, so she knew exactly where she needed to go.

Thyra exited the building the same way she’d gone in and found her other half sitting at the table at a café where she’d left her. As soon as she got back into range, their memories of events synchronized, and she became aware of everything that had happened outside while she was gone. In this case, nothing of import.

When she reached the upscale area of the station where the director lived, it was guarded, and access was restricted. This wasn’t just for him but for everyone who lived there. A pair of armed guards stood in the corridor with a small alcove off to the side where a third guard sat at a computer station. All of them were wide-awake and looking for trouble.

And they didn’t even have a chance to see her slip through the area while broken down into her smallest components. She did reassemble herself under active camouflage so that she could look over the woman’s shoulder to see what she was looking at and discovered that there were cameras watching the public corridors. Not unexpected.

With that knowledge confirming the security that she was dealing with, she disassembled herself again and went further up the corridor before resuming her normal form and floating through the corridor while hidden under active camouflage.

She arrived at the director’s home and found his door fully sealed. Thankfully, he got his air like everyone else, and she was able to get into the ventilation even though there were filters and cameras making sure that nothing would be able to slip inside.

They weren’t prepared to deal with something that could break down to the nanoscale. Her body was far more advanced than what was normal inside the Imperium, so even the best security measures didn’t take her into account.

The man’s home was expansive and surprisingly tastefully furnished. It screamed wealth, but was more along the lines of old money rather than garish wealth. Lots of leather furniture and subdued yet tasteful art in various places. Thyra was impressed. This totally went against how she expected someone like this would live. It only went to show you that you couldn’t judge a book by its cover.

She took the time to go through the man’s house from top to bottom and look into every room. He and his wife were asleep in their bed, and she was inclined to leave them there. So long as they weren’t disrupting what she needed to do, they could get their rest. After all, she was going to make certain that they had plenty of sleepless nights going forward, so it was only fair.

There was another room set up as an animal habitat. Inside it were two furry and regal-looking creatures, and seven smaller ones that she decided must be their offspring. A check of her databases told her that they were Terran cats of the Maine Coon variety.

The adults were asleep in separate cages, and they lay so that their paws were touching through the bars. The young were behind the mother, wedged into the cramped space with her between them and the cage door.

It was heartbreaking to see them separated when they wanted to be together, and she guessed that the young were afraid. If she’d had a convenient way to get them out of there, she would have. However, extracting them from this protected area would make her exfiltration significantly more challenging. That didn’t stop her from setting a couple of subprocesses to think about it. If there was a way, she’d consider it. Even if it meant more work.

The director had a home office, and that’s where she hit pay dirt. He didn’t have anything marked “contact the resistance via this number” or anything so blatant, but he did have an entry written on a pad with a contact number, the words “special cargo,” and the letter R. That seemed pretty straightforward to her.

Just seeing it was enough to have it memorized, so once she got into an area where she could do some penetration of the communications network, she could track down who that number belonged to. The answer would almost certainly be no one in particular because only an idiot would work for the resistance and hand somebody a contact number that would lead to their real identity. That didn’t mean that she couldn’t figure out who it was, though.

As a matter of fact, she found the information she was looking for in a file in the man’s desk. It once again had that contact number and a couple of photographs of someone wearing a hooded cloak. There was a recording in a data wafer that also had video of that particular individual, and she was able to access it when she formed a reader in her palm to access it.

It seemed that this was where the agreement to acquire the weapons had been made. The voice coming from the hooded figure was electronically distorted, and that would be more than enough to scramble somebody’s ability to figure out who it was, but once again, she had far more capability to do something with that information than others would have.

Oh, and the leader of the resistance had agreed to exchange the award that had been under discussion with whoever delivered the weapons, ensuring the director was there. Details on what it was were lacking, but it must be something interesting or the director would never have demanded it.

She made a copy of the video file, and then she went back to the paper file and read everything.

It turned out that she hadn’t needed to make a copy of the video. The director of the Broker’s Association apparently already knew who he was dealing with, and there was a name—C. Laudius—and a different contact number. He’d apparently traced the man’s identity and even had a mole in the organization, according to the notes. One who was working for the dictatorship.

In actuality, it seemed the Broker’s Association was also working for the dictatorship in this matter. They’d sold the resistance out, and there would be an ambush to take or kill the leadership of the resistance when the weapons were delivered. The mole was named, though obviously in code: Bartholomew the Brave.

The final bit of information was that the time and place for the transfer had already been agreed to, with the details dutifully jotted down. The exchange would take place in two days, so there wasn’t much time to try to mitigate the trouble that the resistance was going to have.

She supposed stealing the weapons would put a crimp in the Broker’s Association’s plans, but as long as the resistance thought they were coming, it wouldn’t stop them from being there. And that was stipulated in the notes that the resistance leader had to be there to make this award in person, or the deal was off.

Pushy buggers, weren’t they?

Thyra had the information she needed, and it was time to go. First, though, she wasn’t going to waste the opportunity and miss going through the safe at the back of the man’s office. It had an electronic lock, and everything was sealed nice and tight to keep people from compromising the security on the system, but once again, it wasn’t protected against something at the nanoscale.

Thyra sent some of her nanorobots into the keypad, and they wended their way through all the wiring and chips, sniffing and sampling until they found the hardware dealing with the lock itself. Once she was able to access the memory, she had the code that she needed and simply typed it in.

The safe beeped softly and opened at her touch. Inside were a number of cases and folders. As those probably had some seriously useful information on them, she skimmed everything in the folders to make certain that she knew what they knew.

There was contact information for people in the underworld on numerous worlds in this subsector. That could prove very useful, especially since there were code words that would tell the individuals that whoever used them was trustworthy. Very handy, that.

When she started opening the cases, she found a bunch of data wafers. She quickly formed a reader and pulled the data in from each before putting them back where she’d found them. Blackmail material, histories of materials that had been sold to people of questionable morals, and even a list of individuals who had been murdered. Very sordid stuff.

When all of this broke, it was very likely that somebody might get their hands on all of this information, particularly if Thyra anonymously called security to let them know it existed. With that in mind, she went back to the file that held the information about all the black-market contacts and dropped the papers into the compact incinerator beside the desk. No need to lose contacts she might need later.

There was a sealed case at the back of the safe that captured her attention when she got to it. It was engraved with the initials T. T. Seeing something with her initials on it—even though it couldn’t possibly be for her—was guaranteed to get her attention, so she picked it up and took a look. It had a fingerprint reader, but the sensor on it seemed a bit strange in that it was solid metal. What was it made to detect?

Thyra touched her finger to it to try and get a sense of what it was made of, and the case clicked as it unlocked.

That was unexpected and a little concerning.

She cautiously opened the lid and found a single data wafer sitting inside. It also had the same initials on it. Resting below it was a folded note.

Thyra took it out, opened it up, and read it.



Thyra,

I know this is a shock, but you need to watch the video on this wafer. Trust me, you’ll want to see it. Don’t wait until you get elsewhere. Watch it now.

Yours in sisterhood,

An unexpected friend

 

[Terry Mixon]

Chapter 26 - Message in a Bottle​

Thyra stared at the note in her hand. While it clearly wasn’t impossible, it was certainly improbable. The old man had supposedly come from the future, but that had been something she’d only considered theoretically. This was something concrete and unexpected.

Certainly, her own existence was a physical bit of proof of where the man had come from, but this was not from him. Of that, she was certain. In fact, she suspected she knew exactly who had left the note for her: she had.

Since someone—most likely her—had left this very specific message for her in a safe that no one else would’ve expected her to get into, she would trust that the wafer wasn’t booby-trapped. If it were, that would be a cruel irony, but she rated the possibility as very low and certainly hoped that her built-in protections would save her from her recklessness if needed.

She inserted the wafer into the reader she’d created in her palm. Immediately, a video file—the only contents of the wafer—presented itself. She played it.

The image of a ship’s bridge appeared with her sitting in one of the chairs. It was a rather provocative pose as she had one knee over the armrest as she lounged. Behind her, she could see other stations and people walking back and forth between them, not paying the slightest bit of attention to what was going on with future her.

“Hey there, girl!” future her said brightly. “I realize this is a shock, but it’s a necessary one. First of all, you should verify that I am in fact us. To do that, I’m going to give you a piece of information that only you would know. Once you hear it, you’ll know not to tell anyone else, so it will remain a secret that only the two of us—one of us?—would know.”

The Thyra in the video straightened herself and sat down in the chair properly, putting her hands on her knees and leaning forward. “In the theater, where we watched half of that movie. Toward the front and off to the right-hand side are a man and a woman. She had long red hair, and he had short dark hair. The two of them were making out like crazy. Wasn’t it a bit distracting trying to watch the movie while the two of them were pawing one another? Especially since we both know what the old man would’ve done and how that would’ve made us feel. In any case, the man’s hair looked like a duck’s tail feathers, didn’t it?”

Thyra considered what the future version of her had said. If someone were coming from the future—even if it weren’t her—they would have been able to track her and get the raw information. The one thing they wouldn’t be able to get was how she felt about it, and that was exactly what she’d thought at the time and had never told anyone. She’d provisionally trust her future self.

“And now you’ve decided that you can trust me a little. Not all the way, but you’ll give me something provisional to see what I have to say next. I’ll put on my Carnac the Magnificent hat and guess the next question. Why have I sent this message to you? I know, that’s an easy one. How about this? What can I tell you to make the job you’re currently involved with easier?”

That would certainly be a good start, Thyra thought. Things were difficult enough already.

“First of all, I can give you some details that you will find out soon enough, but I’ll make the process easier. You have contact information for the leader of the resistance, but it’s a dead-end. You can and will look it up, but you’ll have to get into the communications system to untangle exactly where it leads. I still suggest you do that, and I know that you will, but you’ll resolve that your contact’s name is Claudius rather than C. Laudius. It’s poor penmanship on the part of Director Cambridge.”

Thyra looked back at the image in her mind of the name, and on reflection, it could very well be that the period shouldn’t have been there at all. It made the name sound more logical, but it still didn’t tell her who it was.

“The contact number is valid, but won’t lead to a real person. It belongs to Count Claudius haut-Winters. He’s not the second most senior Imperial noble on this benighted world, but he is the one with the most power and influence, as the duke there is corrupt, useless, and in bed with the dictatorship. I know you’ll find his personal number with a little work and can cold call him. The award that all those notes were talking about is an Imperial title. One that wasn’t supposed to go to the Broker’s Association but rather to the traitorous second-in-command of the resistance. He’s the one they called Bartholomew the Brave. It’s only part of the deal, but I won’t ruin the whole surprise.”

The future version of her sighed and shook her head. “Part of me wants to let you work it all out yourself, but I don’t really have a choice. You wouldn’t be able to guess, but I didn’t record this message. It’s the one that was left for me. Weirdly circular, right? Future me—not the one actually recording this video—received it in the same fashion, and it has likely happened innumerable times. And now I’m pulling aside the curtain and now speaking as future future etc. me. I left this message for the second me, knowing that it would repeat again and again, likely without end. Don’t you hate temporal mechanics?”

If Thyra were able to have headaches, this would give her one. This was a causal loop, where an effect influenced its own cause. Certainly, somewhere along the way, one of her had recorded this, and that had come first, but now that it was caught in this loop, it would continue to exist and perform its same function time and time again without number. It had no beginning and no end, and that hurt her brain.

“Don’t think about it too hard,” future her advised. “It just is. This message was recorded by the very first of us, and I can confirm that that is almost certainly true, as I am the person who is in fact recording it, but even I don’t know for certain that there wasn’t some other version of us that did something differently before me. It’s all up in the air, but we don’t need to worry about that. All we have to care about is what we do next.”

Future her leaned forward even more. “Now, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. Take this message with you and don’t forget the cats when you leave. They are super important. Once you get clear of the up port, get them to safety back on your ship and let Mimir care for them for now. They won’t give you any trouble because they already know you. It’s a future you, but that’s good enough in this case. Those cats are special in ways that I can’t begin to describe because I don’t fully understand them yet myself. I didn’t create them, but I discovered how special they were once I catnapped them.”

The Thyra on the bridge smiled a bit more wickedly. “They’re a lot smarter than anyone would give them credit for and loyal to a fault. You’ll learn what their redlines are as you go, but don’t underestimate them. As hard as it is to believe, they are critical to what you’ll end up doing. Treasure and trust them. The male is Whisper, the female is Ember, and the kittens—four males and three 3 females—are: Ash, Bramble, Flint, and Coal—the males—and Cinder, Sable, and Mist—the females. Don’t worry about getting the names wrong. They already know who they are and will correct any initial misunderstandings.”

As if to emphasize that point, a large Maine Coon—one of the ones in the other room, she was sure—jumped up on the back of the chair in the video and looked at her with eyes that spoke of understanding and calm. It was more like seeing a person than an animal. Honestly? She was fine with that and looked forward to saving them and learning about them herself. Mimir was fine, but an animal companion that was more capable sounded very nice.

“There are a couple of other things that I want you to know before I end this message,” future her said. “First of all, I’m not going to tell you how you need to do anything about what comes next because this needs to be your work. I can give you some pushes in the right direction, but I won’t take away your agency. Well, maybe I am a little, but you get what I’m saying. After this message, I won’t contact you directly again. At least I don’t think I will. All of what comes after this will be on you, so don’t look for future me to give us a hand. Do your best, and it will be good enough.”

The other woman smiled and leaned back in her chair, once again putting her leg over the arm. The cat placed a paw on her head as if trying to quell her. “Down on the planet, I reserved a small storage locker for you on the main concourse. Locker AD931. The code to get into it is 891357. It has the address and codes to get into a cargo storage facility, as what I left takes up a couple of displacement tons.”

Thyra felt her eyebrows rise. That was a lot.

“It’s got a number of surprises that you’ll need,” future her continued. “Mimir did a bang-up job creating our body, but it’s a prototype and not quite all that it could be. Additionally, there are things you need to know about the universe around us. There are surprises out there from the future that I didn’t send back, and neither did the old man. They’re a lot more common than anyone thinks, and you’ll become a collector of them. Some of them will work for you and others won’t, but they are all extremely dangerous if left uncollected.”

Thyra frowned. Exactly how was she supposed to do that? Even if she could figure out what worlds had them, how would she locate them and acquire them? It all seemed very nebulous to her.

“First of all, you don’t need to worry about finding them all,” her future self said. “Yes, I know, I’m using insider knowledge again. All I can say for certain is that I collected a lot of artifacts over the years, and while many of them were unusable by me, I at least kept people from blowing themselves up with them. I’m confident that there are many more that I never saw and that ended up in private collections, but as I never heard any word of them being misused, I have to assume that either whoever has them was subtle or couldn’t figure out how they worked. We can only do what we can.”

If she said so.

“One of the things in the storage unit is a detector and plans for more. Everything that has been transported through time retains a signature that the right equipment can find if it’s close enough. You’ll be able to send out numerous drones to cover every conceivable location that you could get to on a world, and as long as a detector is within about ten kilometers of an item, it will be noticed. Then you just have to retrieve it. Interestingly, we don’t show up. Our bodies are made of materials mined here in this time period, so we’re safe.”

Thyra nodded at that. Good. She didn’t need people to be able to track her if anyone else figured out how to do so.

“Don’t worry about where you’re going to put them because that little ship that we have now won’t do for you very much longer. It’s a hot commodity, and the people tracing it are far closer than either one of us would prefer. You don’t see them now, but they are hot on its trail, so you’ll have to do some things to obfuscate what happens next and acquire new wheels. That brings us around to the second big reveal. Or would that be the third? I’ve lost track. In any case, I know where a lost ship is that will suit us perfectly, and I know that because I’m sitting in it right now!”

Thyra had no choice but to accept that at face value, though she was going to reserve judgment.

“A little more than a hundred years ago, Terra was falling to the Imperium in the Solomani Rim War. It hadn’t gone down yet, but they were evacuating important people and cultural relics. There was a ship—a J6 liner called the Hiroshi the Uncrowned—that came to pick up all the bigwigs and lots of art and other cultural artifacts. It was making its escape, but they waited too long to get underway and had to jump early, and that caused a misjump.”

Future Thyra smiled. “Thankfully, they chose to only risk going two parsecs, so they only used a third of their fuel. Unfortunately for them, they ended up deeper in Imperial territory—and behind enemy lines—and didn’t have the fuel to get away. They arrived in a mostly unoccupied system and tried to take over ships that came to the refueling station after they parked the liner out of the way, hoping to slip away unnoticed. That didn’t work out the way they hoped, and a passing Imperial task force ended up crushing them utterly. There were no survivors. With no one knowing exactly where the ship ended up, it’s just a myth these days.”

It sounded like vaporware to Thyra. Who knew if it really existed? Sure, future her was supposedly on it, but she had at least a little skepticism.

“I’ll tell you exactly where you can find it,” future her said. “Yep. I’m still you, and I still remember exactly what I was thinking. So, you’ll want to go to the Khugi system, and be sure to use the stealth feature on your skip drive. It’s only five parsecs away from Murphy, so you can get there in one go. This ship is easily one of the most important things we’ve ever found. You desperately need it even though you don’t know it yet. Or I suppose you do now that I told you. I’ve left you some goodies there as well, and made sure that it will be ready for your arrival.”

The other version of her crossed one leg over the other. “Since it’s a lost vessel, someone is the owner under salvage laws. That’s normally an insurance company, but in this case, it’s the Imperium. When you get the award for saving the resistance and handing over the weapons they need to overthrow the government on Murphy, the count will be amenable to a transfer of ownership being written up in advance for this vessel and its contents. He’ll think you’re insane, but he’ll do it. As he is acting with the authority of the Archduke of Sol, it will be good enough to pass muster, and it will completely and utterly break the trail for the people trying to find the original ship.”

So she was expected to retrieve a lost treasure ship? It sounded like something out of a piece of fiction that was trying too hard. Who would believe something like that?

“It is pretty unbelievable,” future her agreed. “I suggest that you get the heck out of there and then go collect your loot. Once you’ve got that all set up, then you can coordinate with Doctor Sorenson and figure out what needs to happen next. Enjoy it because it’s going to be a lot of fun.”

Future her’s expression became serious. “What we’re doing is important. The Empress Wave is coming. If we’re not ready for it, it will destroy everything. The old man was a bastard and was twisted in ways that you can’t even comprehend yet, but trying to save as many people as possible isn’t wrong. His way of doing it was wrong, and we’ll have to do better, but we’ve only got a decade to prepare for the start of all the troubles the assassination will bring. There’s no way we can save everything, but we might be able to save enough. Keep that in mind as you go forward. Treasure the fact that you are a force for good. And, have a good time while you’re doing it!”

The other her grew serious. “One last confession, and this time it really is one. I don’t think you’ll have trouble forgiving me, but it is a dark deed that will fall to you, too. I went back to meet our previous self just before the ship jumped for Murphy. Sadly, the previous Thyra was too wrapped up in inhibitors and commands to be freed. It would have unraveled her. I was able to free her enough to strike out at the old man, though. She knew it would be the death of her, but she caused his stroke in a way that wouldn’t show up. I have to think that made her happy. I did sabotage one of the robots so the office was left uncleaned, and scrubbed the OS to get most of the hidden tripwires out. I know I missed some because I remember what we had to do to fix them, but I left them in to keep our histories the same. There is something I left for you and Mimir that will finish the work. My final gift to us. Now, I’ve got to go see about dinner for the cats. No patience, them. Ta!”

The recording ended, and Thyra just stood there. How the hell was she supposed to interpret any of that? Weren’t people from the future supposed to conceal their presence and not give away secrets? Apparently, she just didn’t give a crap about the rules.

Not that she was going to complain, mind. It gave her some things to do, and after she’d gotten out of here and looked for whatever it was she was supposed to find, she’d figure out whether she would trust this version of her or not. It seemed like she didn’t really have a choice in the matter because the woman knew far too much about her, and the odds of her not being a future version of herself seemed remote, but the worry was still there.

Thyra unplugged the wafer and put it back into the case. She’d keep it safe and see about getting out of here with the cats. She wasn’t sure how she would manage that, but she’d make it work. Somehow.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Chapter 27 – Cat’s Paw​

Thyra considered her situation. She now needed to exfiltrate the area without being seen, but she also had nine cats to take with her. That would be challenging.

The first impediment was the fact that there was no cat carrier anywhere in sight. She wouldn’t be able to transfer the animals without being certain she could control them. If they got loose, that could be disastrous.

Yet the future version of her said that they had a means of working with her, so maybe she could utilize that familiarity to convince them to do something that most cats wouldn’t be happy doing.

She made her way to where the animals were in their cages and found them awake. All of them were sitting there watching her with an eerie sense that they understood what was going on. Maybe they did. Who was to say that they were of the same intelligence level as a normal cat? With the level of technology she’d seen, she couldn’t rule out them being brighter than a regular feline.

She walked over to the cages and gave them a steady look. “We’ve got to get out of here, and I’m unsure if I can get you to work with me to make it happen. Just how intelligent are you?”

The male cat stood and stretched before walking over to the gate, reaching between the bars, and grabbing the latch with his claws. He twisted and pushed, and the gate popped open. Then he sat back down and looked at her through the open doorway.

“I see. Very intelligent, then. I need to understand for certain what that means, though. Do you understand what I’m saying? Raise a paw if you do.”

All of them raised their left paws. Well, that certainly couldn’t be misconstrued as anything other than total comprehension. They might not be able to speak—although she wasn’t willing to rule that out just yet—but they could certainly understand what she was saying.

“Once we get out of here, we’ll be in a public corridor,” Thyra said. “There’s a guard station with three people keeping watch. One of them is monitoring the cameras inside the entire residential area, but the other two are watching outward. I can get you past them, but you’ll have to trust me. Can you do that?”

They all gave her a look that she could read without any difficulty whatsoever. Distain, though perhaps not at her, but her plan. At least that’s what she thought it meant.

Only maybe it wasn’t just a look they were giving her. She was getting a feeling from them that implied intention, though she didn’t really understand what it was. It wasn’t a direct answer to her question, but it was more like a feeling that she understood what they were thinking without them having to enunciate it.

“Well, if you’re not going to do it my way, then how will we do it?” she asked. “I don’t want to assume that you’re incapable of doing things, but you are the ones that are in cages right now, not me.”

The male—Whisper—tapped the gate again with his paw, reminding her that he could have gotten out anytime he chose. Still, making his way through the gate did not equal getting out of this residence. The lack of thumbs would be a definite issue for him.

“Since I don’t know you at all, you’ll have to tell me how much you can do on your own,” she said. “If you can’t communicate directly with me, I at least need to feel confident that I can get you safely out of here because if I can’t, I’ll have to come back with something to carry you in.”

Whisper jumped out and reached up to tap on the gate leading to the rest of the cats until she opened it. Once she had done so, all of them jumped out and headed directly toward the front door. She really hoped she wasn’t making a terrible mistake, but the future version of herself had implied there was much more to these cats than met the eye, and even after only having met them, she could believe it.

When she reached the front door, she found everyone waiting for her. She opened the door and pointed down the corridor toward the exit from the residential area. Whisper sprinted ahead, and even as he ran, something happened to him. He didn’t precisely turn invisible, but it became more difficult for her to make him out. He was still there, but he somehow also wasn’t.

She brought her vision up to the highest level of receptivity and examined him more closely, and it didn’t change anything. Her eyes registered his presence, but it somehow wasn’t registering with her brain, at least not completely. It was as if she were being compelled to overlook him.

Whisper looked back at her, and it was almost like he was grinning. Then his presence became clear again, though he went around the corner as though he didn’t have a care in the world.

Thyra looked at the other cats, wondering if they could do the same thing as Whisper. Rather, she tried to look at them, but they weren’t there anymore. They had vanished.

“Okay, that’s spooky,” she said quietly. Then she activated her active camouflage and followed them out, and saw just hints of movements near the walls as the cats advanced. She was worried about being able to figure out where they were, but then something connected with her neural network, and she suddenly knew precisely where they were. It was like having a locator beacon on them, but there was no signal that she could detect. How the heck were they doing that?

Thyra willed her presence to be known to them and hoped that whatever was making this happen would take her wishes into consideration.

When they reached the area where the guards were stationed, she wondered just how effective their camouflage was going to be. She needn’t have worried. They all slipped past the guards with a bit of distraction.

Thyra slipped out of the zone behind them, marveling how none of the guards had seen a thing. She still had a precise sense of where all the cats were. More interestingly, she not only had their locations but a sense of what they were doing. There definitely was a lot more to these cats than met the eye.

The up port operated around the clock, but it was the middle of the night in the capital city below, so many people weren’t active. Slipping onto a shuttle going back down to the surface was simplicity itself, but this time Thyra decided to lend a hand, so she had the two portions of her that looked like other people give the impression of being just a tad inebriated, though not enough to warrant them being kicked off the shuttle.

While she had the crew watching her, the cats were able to slip aboard and under a couple of empty seats in the back before Thyra sat down over them. She quieted down and pretended to go to sleep, and that let them get back down to the surface without issues.

The cats slipped their way up front once they landed and made their way clear before Thyra followed them out. Once again, the flight crew was watching her two disguised halves, and the cats got clear without issue.

Once loose in the down port, she had to consider another issue. The cats were biological beings, and they had no filter masks. Short-term exposure to the atmosphere probably wouldn’t be too harmful, but she wanted to minimize it as much as possible. She led the way out and got both parts of her into a rented vehicle and held the door open for the cats to get in. She wasted no time heading to a central area where they all got out of the vehicle.

Then she insisted the cats play the game her way and formed herself into something of a globe with an opening they could get inside through. This was a purely robotic form, so she was able to provide illumination inside and even see them.

Once they were secure, she used her built-in grav unit and headed for the ship. She risked a call to Mimir to let him know that she was on the way and to have the airlock open and waiting for her.

When she arrived back at the ship, she floated up to the airlock and re-created the ramp down from her mechanical body for the cats to head into the ship. It was obvious that they disliked the atmosphere, but they did what they needed to do, and she reformed her body and closed the airlock behind them all.

Once they were cycled into the ship, she found Mimir waiting for her. “Cats?” he asked. “I have to say this isn’t a purchase that I thought you would be making.”

“I didn’t buy them, and it’s a very complicated situation. I’ve got a lot that I still need to accomplish before dawn, and tomorrow will be a busy day as well. Do you have an area of the ship that we can put them in to keep them out of the way of the renovations? Also, can you provide the necessary bedding, food, water, and such for them?”

“Of course.”

“Finally, they were exposed to the tainted atmosphere for a little while. Is that something that will be harmful for them? If so, how do we treat it?”

“As for the exposure to the tainted atmosphere, I don’t believe a few hours of exposure will be an issue. To be sure, I can fabricate an advanced AutoDoc—or would it be an AutoVet?—that will be able to diagnose and treat them.”

She nodded. “That sounds good. I don’t have time to go into everything that I found, but I think you should look at this and tell me what you think.”

Thyra pulled out the case with her initials on it, extracted the note and data wafer, and passed them over to Mimir. He read the note and then inserted the data chip. A few moments later, his eyebrows rose. “Interesting. This is definitely a twist that I did not see coming.”

“What do you think?” she asked. “Is it legit?”

“If it is someone else, they have gone to quite a bit of trouble to fool you, and I don’t feel that is likely. Nevertheless, you should be cautious. Whoever it is knows us and how we got here, even though no one should have that information. That means they can travel through time—obviously, since they said they could—so it is conceivable that this is an elaborate trick. On the other side of the coin, they could have obliterated us before we became aware of exactly what was going on if they chose. The end decision will be yours, but I believe that while caution is warranted, we should take what is said at face value, though perhaps adding a grain of salt.”

“I’m not really sure how adding salt changes things, but your point is well taken,” she said. “I’ll see what she left for us and get it back to the ship. Then I’ll have to see about making contact with this nobleman and let him know that he has a few traitors lurking in his midst. We’ll see how well that works out.”

With that accomplished, she turned to the cats. They were all sitting there watching her. “I want you to behave for Mimir. We’ve got a lot going on, and while the renovations to the ship are underway, it could be dangerous for you. Do you understand?”

All of them nodded in a very eerie fashion. As cats normally did not act like that, she had to assume that it was a gesture meant to convey acceptance or understanding. Time would tell if they got into mischief or not.

“I can’t wait to get back and get to know you all better, but let Mimir examine you and make sure that you’re okay. The next day or two will be very busy, and I won’t have time to spend with you, so I apologize for that. Once we get off this planet and get into jumpspace, then we can get to know one another better.”

All the cats promptly stood up and began rubbing themselves against her legs. They were all purring, and she had to smile because it made her feel good. She petted and stroked each of them, and scratched them a little before tearing herself away and heading for the airlock. There were only about four hours until people started getting up and about, and she needed to be finished by then.

Locating the storage unit wasn’t a problem, and accessing it was as simple as typing in the code that had been provided. The hatch unlocked, and she stepped inside even as the lights came on.

The storage unit wasn’t that large, and most of it was taken up by what looked like a modified AutoDoc, though it was raised a bit higher than the ones she’d seen before. There was also a crate sitting next to it, an oval device the size of a small coin, a data wafer, and a note lying on top of it.

She picked up the note and read it.



Thyra,



The device in front of you has been designed by me to take the prototype tech level 25 nanorobots that make up your bioswarm and upgrade them to tech level 26. It can do that for you and Mimir. It will make a couple of other tweaks to your body and brain that I think you’ll approve of. Consider this a gift from me to you for everything that we’ll go through in the coming years. You’ll need them. All you have to do is climb in, and the machine will do the rest. The process takes about an hour. I promise, you won’t regret doing it.

The data wafer contains a program that I call a sovereign identity lock. It will run through your operating system and not only remove the remaining exploits and hacks that the old man still has there, but also make it so that no one else will ever be able to modify you in a way to gain control of you again. There is a second program on there for Mimir, and it’s labeled as such.

The crate contains a bunch of stuff for the cats, including their favorite toys and complete genetic and hardware workups for them. You’ll definitely need those to help maintain their systems, as not all of their gifts are biological. The kittens—when they get to be of the right age—can also have augmentation added. They make one hell of a team, and you’d be well advised to use them when the circumstances warrant it.

Additionally, there is a detector that you can use to detect objects that have traveled through time, and the plans to make more. You’ll have to go through the old man’s stuff and make copies of what you want and destroy the rest. Those awards, for example, need to go. They are beacons to those who can track them.

The oval thing is something that I found that has proven so very useful. I suggest you put it in your new quarters. Do that by pressing it onto the wall at the ceiling. When you want to activate it, a touch will do. It is already set to our unique biometrics.

I understand it’s a leap of faith to trust me, but I really do only have our best interests at heart. Unlike what Mimir might suggest, I really am you. That means that I am as far in your corner as it is possible to be because your success is quite literally my own.

As I said earlier, I’ve left something for you aboard the ship you’ll find. What we’re doing is critical to the survival of so many people. Civilization itself depends on us. You’ll work your ass off to make it happen, and I’m proud of you for that. We can do it. Just you wait and see.



Thyra



Once again, Thyra was a bit worried that this was a trick, but whoever it was knew so much about her that it was hard to believe it. Not really.

She plugged the data wafer into a reader that she created in her palm. There was a file named for her and one for Mimir. She ran the one for her and was able to follow along as the program scoured her operating system, simultaneously highlighting things that it was pulling out and overwriting. Everything was extremely subtle, but she could now tell that they were traps left by the old man. That bastard.

When it was done, she was pretty confident that her operating system was as secure as it could be and hoped that there would be no future penetrations or tricks. She was taking a lot on faith, though the sovereign identity lock went a long way toward reassuring her.

She might as well trust herself all the way. With a sigh, she opened the device and climbed inside. It was made to accommodate someone of her height, so it was simple enough. Once she had lain down on the cushioned interior, the hatch closed again, and a swarm of nanorobots poured from vents all around her and began worming their way into her body.

Within moments, she lost consciousness but woke again once the process was done. A check of the time showed that the process had taken roughly an hour. She climbed out of the device and immediately ran a systems diagnostic.

Her bioswarm was now listed as tech level 26, and not as a prototype. The listed changes didn’t alter her but removed any worries that the prototype nanorobots would malfunction in unexpected ways. She was a production model now.

Moving past that, she found a number of alterations. First of all, the system that told her how much power she had remaining had changed. Now, rather than listing how many hours and minutes of charge remained, it simply indicated that it had been replaced by a zero-point torsion reactor. Whatever that was.

The most interesting thing about it was that when she looked at how much runtime she had remaining, all she could see was a figure 8 on its side: the symbol for infinity. She really didn’t have a battery charge anymore? It just kept her powered? That could be very useful over the long term.

Her sensors had a new layer to them as well: multispectral skin sensors. They allowed her to sense what was going on all around her without looking. A test where she dissolved into a cloud and dispersed told her that she could now see what was going on around her, even in that condition. That was extremely useful.

She considered the last upgrade. She didn’t know what a paradox reflex weave was, and there was no hint of how it worked, but it was there. She imagined it would let itself be known when the time was right, and she would just have to trust that the future version of her wouldn’t have given her something that was harmful.

Thyra opened the crate. It had a lot of cat beds, toys, and catnip. There was also food—both dry and wet—and a lot of other supplies for them. Not everything looked brand-new, so she had to assume that these were toys and things that they had already used and been accustomed to. They’d like having them back, she imagined.

There was a handheld scanner and a data wafer that was marked as holding the plans to create it. When she ran it, it indicated that there was something of interest in the area, so she turned around until she was aiming in the right direction and realized that it was her ship. That must be the old man’s stuff. She would definitely need to get rid of that as soon as possible.

The final object was the device about the size of a coin. She didn’t know what it was and had no time to look at it now, so she stuffed it into her pocket. She’d see what it did once she was done with more pressing matters.

She called for a cargo transport and used the robotic loaders to get everything on board. Then she left the storage unit and headed back to her ship. She’d see that everything was put away and maybe get a little sleep. As she’d already said, tomorrow would be busy.