Fool's War (6 page)

Roman Nose pulled himself upright and looked down at Yerusha as if he was memorizing her face. Then he turned and took in the greens with the same care.

“Pilot Jemina Yerusha,” Yerusha called past the greens to Roman Nose as he steadied himself. “Checking in.”

“Watch Commander Schyler,” he replied, his gaze darting between Yerusha and the security greens. “Wondering why the hell you’re doing it like this.”

Yerusha grimaced and shifted her one-handed grip on the wafer case so that its corner was no longer digging into her chest. “I was trying to avoid a hassle.” She nodded towards the greens.

Schyler stuffed his hands into the pockets on either hip. Dobbs saw the cloth bulge and strongly suspected he had just thumbed a button on his pen. She picked herself up and made a great show of dusting herself off.

The Green Man did not wait for Schyler to ask what was going on. He walked up to the threshold formed by the seal between Port Oberon and the
Pasadena
. Dobbs did not miss the grim look that formed on Schyler’s face. She settled herself back against the wall next to Lipinski, who was staring at the bizarre scene with his jaw hanging open. Dobbs reached up and closed it for him.

“Jemina Yerusha.” The Green Man let his shadow fall across the pilot.

“Yes.” Yerusha propped herself up into a sitting position.

“Registered with the Titania Freers?” He pulled a fold of film out of his pocket.

“Yes.” She tugged at her overall to straighten out at least some of the wrinkles.

He shook the film open. “You’re wanted for questioning in regards to the explosive decompression in the Richard III business… ”

“No, I’m not,” Yerusha replied calmly.

Schyler faced the Green Woman. “‘Dama, maybe you’d do me the courtesy of telling me what’s going on?”

The Green Woman blinked and gathered her professional lines. “The decompression event in the Richard III business module had features which match a pattern of… ”

“What they’re trying to say is that they think a Freer blew out an airlock,” chimed in Yerusha. “They’re trying to get us all tidied into the security can where we won’t upset anybody.” She glowered at the greens. “We were helping. Do you think I’m happy about the fact that I lost an arm and an eye for a bunch of ground-hugging… ”

“There are questions,” said the Green Woman firmly and loudly. “That need to be answered by the personnel on the scene.”

“The AIs recorded the whole thing… ” Yerusha swept out her good hand.

“The AIs cannot be used as uncorroborated testimony.” Green Man clenched the film in his fist.

“Oh right, I forgot,” sneered Yerusha. “We are capable of building intelligence but not of trusting it, or what it has the potential to become.” Her hand curled even more closely around the edge of the wafer case. “What an enlightened, progressive outlook you have, ‘Ster.”

Green Man strangled a sigh. “Let me help you up, ‘Dama Yerusha and we can get this over with.” He shoved the film back in his pocket and held out his hand.

Yerusha’s mouth twisted into another grin. “Unless you’ve got a specific warrant to enter the Pasadena you cannot take me out of here.” She turned her attention to Schyler. “I think that’s the reg, isn’t it?”

“Oh yeah, that’s the reg,” agreed Schyler, and Dobbs couldn’t decide whether his tone was bemused, or just confused. “Unless I decide to throw you out of there,” he added.

At the moment, Dobbs guessed, he was trying to decide who was annoying him worse, Yerusha or the greens.

“Are you refusing to cooperate with security?” Green Woman asked Yerusha pointedly.

“Am I being arrested?”

“No, but you are being stupid.” Green Man took a step forward. “Do you think anybody’s going to stop me if I just haul you out of there?”

“I do.”

Everyone in the hanger spun around. Resit stalked out of the corridor, burgundy skirt billowing around her ankles in lazy waves. She stopped right between the security greens and the entrance to Pasadena, then turned on her heel to face the greens. “I’m Zubedye Resit, ship’s lawyer for the Pasadena,” she said smoothly. “‘Dama Yerusha is under contract to Katmer Al Shei of the Pasadena Corporation, which makes her my client.” She paused to let the entire speech sink in. She folded her arms and tapped her fingers impatiently on her forearm. “Why are you pursuing my client?”

“Not bad, considering she just got here,” whispered Lipinski to Dobbs.

“Slow lawyers get eaten young,” Dobbs replied seriously.

Green Woman looked like she was forcibly swallowing something unpleasant. “Shouldn’t you be praying or something?”

Resit smiled. “It’s only time for the
Salatul Jumu’ah
, the Friday sermon. That’s optional for women.” She flipped open the flap on her bag and pulled out a film and her pen. “I believed I asked a legal question.” She squinted at Green Woman’s badge and wrote down the number. “Do you really want me to request that the recording of this conversation be transferred to your superior immediately?”

Green Man gave his partner a dirty look. “‘Dama Resit, we just want ‘Dama Yerusha to come to the security module to answer some questions about the … decompression event.”

“They couldn’t talk to me in my hospital bunk either,” said Yerusha to Resit. “They were hauling Freers out of there left and right.”

“Must have been interesting to see,” remarked Dobbs.

“Oh, that it was.”

Resit shot them both a “shut up” glance. “You have the authorizations on hand, I hope?” She tucked her own film away and held out her hand to the greens.

Green Man handed over a pair of films. Resit scanned them. “This does not give you the authority to pursue, detain or forcibly enter.” She handed them back. “I think we all have a complaint to register now.” She gestured towards the hatch to the station corridor.

“You’re not… ” exclaimed Green Woman.

Resit’s grin showed her teeth. “Oh, but I am. Shall we?”

Green Woman’s face flushed darkly. Green Man pointed up at the station camera and she swallowed again. Side by side, they headed towards the station airlock.

“Talk to her, will you?” said Resit to Schyler before she followed the greens out.

Schyler touched his forehead in salute. Then, he turned towards Yerusha and extended his hand. “I really wouldn’t try that again.”

Tucking the wafer case awkwardly under her arm, Yerusha accepted his hand and let him pull her easily to her feet. “Thanks.” She wiped at the sheen of perspiration that had appeared on her forehead. Dobbs knew she’d been right. Yerusha was not in any shape to be up and about. “I’m not about to let security shove me around, Watch. I’m under orders to you, not them.”

“I don’t care what you try to pull with security. I mean with Resit.” He jerked his thumb towards the airlock.

“Oh, marvelous,” Yerusha twisted her neck sharply and Dobbs heard a joint crack. “Another one who doesn’t like Freers?”

Schyler smirked. “Another one who doesn’t like unnecessary wirework. Filing a complaint on your behalf is not going to make her evening, I’d be willing to swear to it.” He stopped and took a good look at the blister on Yerusha’s arm. “Do you want to sit down someplace comfortable?”

She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

Schyler looked her up and down. “You’re lying,” he said bluntly. “All right. Since you acknowledge my command, you are ordered to get back to the hospital and have them do something about this.” He waved towards her bruised face and arm.

Schyler pursed his lips. “Lipinski, will you walk her down? I want there to be somebody who can holler for Resit if any other greens decide to pick her up.”

“Sure, no problem,” said Lipinski to the wall. “I’ve only got the whole data hold to reconfigure.”

“And you need to pick up the parts you ordered,” Schyler finished for him. “Good. That works out fine.”

The look that passed between the two men was one that Dobbs decided she would have to learn to read.

Lipinski left with Yerusha and Schyler turned slowly, thoughtfully to Dobbs.

“And you are?” he inquired.

“Evelyn Dobbs.” She touched her forehead in salute. “Master Fool for the
Pasadena
.”

“Oh, you’re our Lennox C.” Schyler shook her hand. “Impressive entrance.”

She beamed. “Takes years of special training.”

“I suppose,” he said, favoring her with the same calculating look he’d used on Yerusha, “that I don’t need to tell you that Resit really does not like Freers.”

“I got that feeling.” Dobbs nodded. “But thank you.”

Schyler leaned against the Pasadena threshold and rubbed his clean-shaven chin thoughtfully. “I hate to say this, Master Dobbs, but I think we’re really going to need you on this trip.”

Dobbs bowed. “‘Let a fool be serviceable according to his folly,’” she quoted. “I am also, by the way, checking in.”

“I thought you might be.” He crossed the
Pasadena
’s threshold and waved for her to follow him. “Might as well formalize at least one of you.”

“Thanks.” Dobbs climbed aboard the ship that would be her home for the next eight months.

She had studied the plans when she had received the contract. The
Pasadena
followed the standard layout for packet ships. It was two bulbs held together by a long drop shaft. The larger bulb held the bridge, the berths, the kitchen, the shielded data hold and much of the life support. The smaller bulb held the engines and the reactors. The fuel and air tanks were strung on the drop shaft like rings on a pole.

Like the station modules, the shaft meant every deck was a hoop. Schyler led her around the curving corridor. This deck, which was probably the data-hold, was stark, with only labels and green memory panels to break up the white, ceramic walls.

Schyler took her into a briefing room. An oval table surrounded by enough chairs for
Pasadena
’s entire sixteen member crew took up most of the space. The wide wall at the far end was one solid memory board. Schyler settled into the nearest chair and used his pen to activate the table space in front of him. He wrote his authorization across the main screen and added
CREW CHECK IN
after it. The table absorbed the text and lit up two palm readers next to the active space.

“I’ll need your pen,” said Schyler.

Dobbs handed it over and he slipped it into the socket in the side of the table. Dobbs, familiar with the standard, Lennox-approved check-in procedure, pressed both hands against the palm readers that lit up in front of her. The table copied the contract from her pen. Then, it confirmed that the fingerprints that activated the pen were the same as those pressed against the reader and printed
ACCEPT
in front of Schyler. It did not speak, though, which surprised her.

Schyler saw her eyebrows arch. “Owner prejudice,” he said. “Neither Al Shei or Tully particularly likes the machinery to talk back.”

“Must frustrate the AI.” Dobbs lifted her hands off the reader and stuffed them in her pants pockets. “They don’t like being mute.”

Schyler shook his head. “There’s only two AIs on board this ship, and neither one of them lives in the hull. There’s Resit’s boxed law firm, and the Sundars’ medical advisory.”

Dobbs raised her eyebrows as far as they’d go and waggled them. “Al Shei doesn’t like machines that think either?”

“No, she just doesn’t like it when they try to think too much.” Schyler extracted her pen. “Partly it has to do with being such a mechanical engineer. Partly it has to do with flying with Lipinski for ten years.”

“That’s right.” Dobbs re-pocketed her pen. “He was at Kerensk, wasn’t he?”

Schyler nodded and Dobbs sighed. Most settlements and stations depended on artificial intelligence to run the power and production facilities that made life away from Earth possible. Twenty-five years ago on the Kerensk colony, one over-programmed AI bolted from its central processor and got into the colony network.

Panicked officials shut the computer networks down to try to cage it. Never mind the factories, the utilities, the farms. Just find that thing before it gets into the water distribution system and the climate control. Before it starts to make demands. Before it starts acting too human.

Electricity and communications went down and stayed that way. Before three days were out, people froze in the harsh cold. They began to starve. They drank tainted water. They died of illnesses the few working doctors couldn’t diagnose on sight.

When the colony did try to power up again, they found their software systems shredded to ribbons. It could have easily been human carelessness, but the blame was laid on the AI.

“Fifteen thousand, three hundred and eighteen dead,” said Dobbs to the table top. Not one of the worst AI break-outs, just one of the more recent.

Schyler’s brow wrinkled. “You too?”

Dobbs hooked one finger around her Guild necklace. “I was born there.” She’d been totally incapable of reason when the disaster happened, but she still carried it with her. The ideas of the screams, the desperation, the hundreds of useless, pointless deaths. All of it caused by one rogue AI, by a creature that found itself suddenly alive and didn’t know what to do about it. She could understand Lipinski’s fears, and why he would be infuriated by Yerusha, who actually wanted to try to reproduce such a phenomena, even under controlled circumstances. He knew about violence that could ignite between frightened, ignorant, wildly different beings. He possibly knew that, even better than she did, and from the look she’d seen on his face, he was less than willing to forgive the stranger for wanting to stay alive.