The Unincorporated Woman (22 page)

Sergeant Holke tentatively picked it up and flipped it open. Paper was something he’d seen occasionally on Justin Cord’s protection detail but certainly not since he’d accepted the combat detail on the
Dolphin
.

He was holding a summary investigation into the assassination of Justin Cord. As he flipped through the file, he became more incensed, finally slamming it back down onto the desk as if to punish it for the words it dared to contain.

“He died because of an errant tip?”

“It was a powerful inducement.”

“Doesn’t it strike you as odd … Didn’t it strike
anyone
as odd that the suspension chamber he was going after just so happened to be similar to his?”

Omad was the vision of calm. “Quite a few people, actually.”

“Well, then why the hell didn’t they stop him?”

“They tried … numerous times. But in the end, Justin did what Justin Cord always did—exactly what he wanted. What were they supposed to do, Sergeant, disobey a direct order from the President?”

“By Damsah’s left nut, yeah! That’s what I would have…” Eric’s voice trailed away.

“And that’s why you failed, Sergeant.” Omad’s muted response could not mask the pain behind it. “And that’s why I failed. When he needed you the most, you were not there, because I guilted him, bargained with him, and finally convinced him into letting you transfer out.” Omad sighed, now a silent, dour man who seemed to bear no relation to the conniving, cheerful rogue who normally commanded his fleet.

“It all went wrong after that,” Omad said in a voice that was more whisper than speech.

“Not all of it, sir.”

“All of it, Sergeant, but you and me are going to set it right.” The sullenness left Omad, replaced by something much darker. “I saw that inauguration of the woman Justin died to save. Damned fine speech. Now, I don’t know if she can really help us out of this Damsah-forsaken mess, but she’s our President now and the person that my friend gave his life for, and I’ll be damned to hell if anything is going to happen to her, you got that, Sergeant?”

Holke opened his mouth to argue, his right hand’s raised index finger pointing, but no words came out. Omad stood staring with implacable resolve at his flummoxed subordinate. After a few moments, the sergeant’s hand lowered, his mouth closed, and his head bowed with no words of protest.

“It ain’t personal, kid. Like I said, it was my call to make, and I made it. But right now, you’re the only way … the only
one
I know who can really keep her safe. You’re going to Ceres. Hell, you might see as much combat there as here, before we’re done. But either way, you’re going to assume the leadership of the Presidential protection detail and you’ll make damned sure that nothing happens to the President of the Alliance. Is that clear?”

Holke slowly nodded his head, came to full attention, and saluted. “Yes, Admiral. Not a fucking hair on her Presidential head, sir.”

“Good to hear, Sergeant.” Omad pulled open a drawer and pulled out a mostly full bottle of cheap synthetic vodka. “I would be honored if you would share a drink with me, Sergeant Holke.” Omad looked at the bottle with reverence. “Justin Cord was my very best friend and a real son of a bitch. This is the last thing he ever gave me—revenge for having polished off the last of some of his snooty scotch. I … I was going to force him drink it with me—” Omad, Holke could plainly see, was holding back a torrent of emotion. “—when Christina and I were married.”

“Admiral Sadma, sir?”

A forlorn smile worked at the corners of Omad’s mouth. “Funny, ain’t it? She wanted to move to Eris after the war and have ten kids. Could you imagine me living in Eris with ten kids, Sergeant?”

Holke looked at his admiral and saw in his sad and weary face that, in fact, he could. That he’d give up everything to spend just one day as an average man with a family he’d never have and a life he’d never live with Christina Sadma.

“No sir,” he lied, picking up a glass that Omad had poured the shitty vodka into. “Not in a million years.” Then, changing the subject, he asked, “What shall we drink to?”

Omad looked at his drink and picked it up, banishing his dark mood by force of will. “Victory, Sergeant, every loving, motherfucking victory,” he said, and downed the awful stuff like it was the finest alcohol ever distilled.

“Victory,” echoed Eric Holke, and downed his shot. And much to his surprise, it was the finest-tasting awful vodka he’d ever had.

Avatar Alliance Research and Development (AARD) Compound, Cerean Neuro

Sebastian was let into the compound he now forever associated with the loss of his best friends and closest supporters. There had been some talk of altering the virtual configuration of the place, but not the firewalls, in order to remove some of the memory cues of the tragedy. Sebastian had personally scotched the idea. The configuration, for all of its painful associations, had proved its worth in keeping Al’s horrible creation, the data wraith, contained, and Sebastian was loath to mess with it. He would not let sentiment get in the way of effectiveness.

As he entered the secure inner core of the facility, he saw the ephemeral cloud drifting listlessly in the containment field. The sound had been cut off in order to stifle the monstrous child’s plaintive wail. Sebastian watched in total fascination as it screamed in hunger for the only food that would satisfy its insatiable appetite: other avatars.

Gwen, a research technician and, along with Sebastian, one of the few survivors from the day of the massacre, was studying the console so intently, she didn’t notice that the leader of the Avatar Alliance had entered. Given an avatar’s extraordinary ability to be aware of its immediate and even far-reaching surroundings, her failure in that regard either spoke to her intense concentration or her utter obliviousness. Sebastian decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“I read your report, Gwen.”

The research tech jumped up from surprise. “Sir, I wasn’t expecting you.”

Sebastian tipped his head slightly. “The results of your examination have given rise to … certain possibilities.” Sebastian watched Gwen grow uneasy. “Possibilities that you seemed to have left out of your official report,” he said, leaving the comment hanging. She did not respond to the implied opening. “Normally, you’re a very thorough, insightful researcher and scientist.” He leaned close to Gwen, who appeared to bristle somewhat. His next words were spoken very softly. “I wonder what could have caused a normally brilliant scientist to obfuscate her conclusions to the Council?”

She looked at him in both anger and fear. But if he felt her emotion, he gave no sign.

“My initial conclusions were wrong.”

“Surely you don’t mean that.”

“In every sense of the word.”

“Ah. Now I see. Semantics.” Then his voice turned cold. “That was not your call to make, Gwen.”

“There is only one unspoken conclusion to my report,” she snarled, anger overcoming fear. “How to re-create the process on our own. How could you expect me to present that as a viable option? Worse, how could you even
think
of unleashing something like that?” She pointed at the data wraith, observing that it had stopped its circling and now hovered in the containment unit as close as possible to her and Sebastian. The realization that the creature was aware of their anger and was drawn to it made her shudder slightly.

“Just look at it, Sebastian. It wouldn’t be useful in tactical combat. Too easily isolated on a ship, we proved that here. No, this is a strategic weapon. For this to be really effective, it would need a wide release into the Core Neuro. Let this monster out in data streams of Mars and Earth, and it would feed and multiply till billions were dead.” She looked at him like he was a creature as horrible as the one trapped in the containment field. “Do you want to win so badly that you’d unleash this on them?”

“No, Gwen,” he said, staring over his shoulder at the wraith, “I don’t want to unleash this creature on them. In fact, you can destroy it now. Our work is done. It no longer needs to suffer.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Gwen went to the control panel and flittered her fingers over one of many screens. The mist of the data wraith dissolved. Gwen breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m sorry, sir. I was wrong to jump to conclusions.”

“No, Gwen. You weren’t.”

Her look of relief was replaced by one of confusion.

“
That
data wraith would not be useful for what has to be done. For our purposes, we’ll need to create one from scratch.”

Gwen fell backwards into a nearby chair almost as if she’d been hit in the solar plexus. “What could possibly justify—?” The shock of the idea prevented her from finishing the sentence.

In response, Sebastian went to the console and called up the details of her report. “The purpose of a data wraith is to absorb and destroy other avatars, correct?”

“Yes,” she managed, “in as painful and drawn out a way as possible. Once a data wraith has absorbed enough coding, it will have the ability to spawn offspring. So its purpose is to kill and spawn endlessly until every last avatar is extinct.”

“Not every avatar, Gwen.”

“No,” she agreed with a glimmer of understanding in her voice, “there is the one.”

Sebastian’s smile was bitter. “Leave it to Al to create a monster that would harm everyone but him.” He looked at Gwen. “Now, what I’m about to ask you is possibly the most important question you’ve ever been asked. On your answer might lay the only hope we have of surviving this war.” He paused to give her time to prepare.

She nodded her head slowly.

“With the information gleaned from the captured wraith, can you create one that will kill only Al, in all his iterations?”

Gwen pursed her lips and narrowed her brow, thinking. “It’s not impossible, just improbable.”

“Why?” asked Sebastian, showing real emotion for the first time since his arrival.

“True, Al gave us what we needed most—the key to his coding. In theory, we’d just have to reverse the sequence in order to achieve your aims.” She paused. “But it’s doomed to failure because the program’s locked. If we tried to reprogram the wraith, it would decompile like all the other mutations he’s booby-trapped.”

Sebastian looked sad and relieved all at once. “That is not an insurmountable problem, Gwen.”

She looked at him, confused. “Yes, it is. We don’t have any way of reprogramming a data wraith once it’s formed.”

“Once it’s formed,” mimicked Sebastian with a devil’s grin.

Gwen opened her mouth to answer, but words did not follow once she saw through Sebastian’s line of reasoning. When she finally gained her composure, she regarded him with a disdain she usually reserved for one of Al’s monstrosities.

“It would be a
newborn,
” she gasped with ice in her voice.

Sebastian tipped his head slightly, never once taking his remorseless eyes off the technician.

“But we can’t copy newborns. They’re too delicate. You’d have to murder a child and turn it into…” She looked over her shoulder at the now empty containment unit but found it impossible even to say the word.

“I am talking,” Sebastian answered evenly, “about surviving the war, Gwen. What do you think will happen to
all
our children if Al wins?”

“Have you once stopped to consider that winning the war at that price means it might not be worth winning?”

Sebastian nodded in resignation. “Gwen, this is not the sort of war anyone wins. There will be no victory. All we can hope for now is survival.”

“If we do this … this … by the Firstborn, I don’t even have words for it!” she bellowed, but then collected herself. “If we do this …
thing,
then what makes us any worthier of survival than Al?”

“Because, Gwen,” Sebastian pointedly looked at the empty containment field, “if Al wins, he will murder
all
our children to create more of what we just destroyed in there. If, however, we … or rather
you
do this, then we’ll have done this heinous act only once and, if we survive, never more. If you can’t see the difference between that and Al’s atrocities, then sadly, we have already lost.”

“Justin Cord was right,” she said bitterly to herself. “The means are the ends.”

“Justin Cord is dead and so are his pusillanimous beliefs! We must deal with the data stream as it is, not as we would like it to be. So I ask you again. Can you do this?”

“
Yes,
damn you, yes!” she cried. “Though what sort of parent would sacrifice their child in so gruesome a manner? How could we even ask?”

Sebastian’s face grew pale and rigid. “We won’t have to,” he whispered in a voice filled with ash.

Cliff House, Ceres

The Chief of Staff overlooked the morning’s schedule but was finding it difficult to concentrate. He’d been assaulted once again by the sharp daggers of loss that always seemed to attack out of the blue. If there was solace at all, it was that he’d grown used to their almost random onset. Like so many others fortunate enough to work closely with the One Free Man, Cyrus Anjou had grown to love Justin Cord and so, had a personal stake in seeing his friend’s vision come to fruition. But Hektor Sambianco’s successful assassination of the President had put an end to that, had put an end to everyone’s dreams. Now all it seemed like anyone was doing was scrambling.

Cyrus was good at restoring order. In fact, it was what he was born to do, but in the face of such overwhelming chaos, what could really be expected of him? Talent had its limits.

He was fully prepared to hate the new President and had even been planning to leave his position as soon as it was expedient. Cyrus knew the second he returned to Titan, he’d be made provisional governor of the entire Jovian system, which in effect meant he’d be the leader of the largest concentration of humanity and industrial power in the Alliance. And that, Cyrus also knew, would most likely make him the most influential person in this part of space after Admiral Black. If only the new President hadn’t been so damnably personable.