The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III (2 page)

Al Spencer knew perfectly well that no amount of running around could protect him for long. Given his circumstances, it was not merely possible that the KT were watching him; it was certain. His precautions were almost childishly simple, and he knew that too. They would be able to figure out what he was doing, where he was going—but perhaps, if he hurried, not
quite
quickly enough to prevent his going.
That
was the key thing.

He was going to see Bethany, and he wasn’t going to be stopped. What happened to him after that didn’t matter.

He found himself in a busy shopping district and stepped into a bustling mall-front toy store. He stepped into a quiet back corner of the store and pulled out the AID, hoping that everyone would assume he was just another busy father, albeit one in uniform, taking a business call while buying a surprise for his children.

Children. Spencer winced, felt a strange little pang in his heart for something that now would never be. He and Bethany had never had children. There had always seemed to be sensible reasons to wait—until they had a larger house, until the next promotion, until Spencer’s bosses eased up and he would have more time to spend with his daughter or son. There had always been good reasons to wait. And now the children would never be.

He discovered the AID was trembling in his hands. He blinked and shook his head, forced himself to concentrate on the situation at hand. “AID, voiceprint clearance.” It had been a while since he had used the thing. It might be smart to start off by making sure it would still work for him. An AID was literally a machine with a mind of its own, and AID units had been known to decide not to work for their owners after being shut off for a while. The programmers could offer no clear explanation of why. Folklore had it that the damn things just got sulky after being ignored.

“This is AID GHQ 97-558KD76, assigned to Captain Allison Spencer. Voiceprint clearance requestor identified as Captain Allison Spencer. Clearance approved. AID ready on line,” a tiny robotic voice answered.

Spencer frowned. The military-model AID units were a bit on the persnickety, overprecise side, too much of the spit-and-polish about them. This one had already picked up Spencer’s promotion—and was being careful to use it.

Persnickety AIDs had the reputation of being slavish to the rules—and of being touchy about insults to themselves, real or perceived, intended or unintentional. And it seemed to Al that getting stuffed into a desk drawer for months at a time could easily qualify as an insult.

None of that would matter so much if Al wasn’t intent on breaking—or at least bending—a few rules and laws at the moment.

Given a skilled operator, a sufficiently high-tech AID, and a willingness for both human and machine to break the law, a bandit AID could, in theory, turn its operator into a millionaire overnight.

But AIDs weren’t supposed to be able to assist their owners in the commission of crimes. In principle, if someone used an AID to commit a crime, the AID was supposed to
report
the attempt to the cops immediately—to the endless annoyance of the police computers that had to field such calls. The police ignored ninety-nine percent of AID-reported violations. The cops couldn’t afford to send out an arrest team every time an AID finked on its owner for jaywalking.

Of course, it was only the low-end, budget-brand AIDs, or young and inexperienced AIDs, that made such calls. It did not take an AID with any sort of learning bank long to realize the police computers were ignoring its calls—or to realize that its owner didn’t appreciate lugging around a stool pigeon.

Some poor bastards out there needed AIDs in their work, but could not afford one able to figure out squealing was useless. Thousands of harmless little salesmen lived in fear that a glorified mobile telephone was going to inform on them if they forgot to charge a client sales tax.

Which was why every AID sold on this world, even the cheap ones, had a scram button on it. Break the seal on that button, punch it in hard, and your AID was history. AIDs who squealed too much died. AIDs who learned
that
quickly discovered how to defeat their own hardwired instruction. AIDs who knew what was good for them cooperated with their owners, even in the commission of minor crimes. Everyone used AIDs to figure their income tax, for example.

But Al Spencer knew as well as anyone that an AID’s desire for self-preservation was no guarantee against the damn thing turning informer. Some models—including the standard military issue units—were known to rate revenge above survival. Every AID left the factory knowing how unpleasant things could get if it helped its owner commit murder or treason. The Kona Tatsu had ways of sucking information out of an AID that were just as nasty as what they did to people.

So what it came down to was that AIDs were supposed to squeal, but they never really did it, except sometimes.

There was an old, old theory that uncertainty was a cornerstone of deterrence. Usually, that was true—but today it wasn’t going to work. Al had no choice but to use his AID in the commission of a major crime. One that might even be regarded as treason. No danger would stop him.

“AID, report ship name and location and confirm if certain person is aboard.” Al spoke a bit stiffly to the gadget, and found himself holding it the way he would a small dog that might bite. He made sure his finger was over the scram button seal and forced himself to relax.

“What is the ship?” the AID asked.

“Senator Hildebrandt Windsor’s ship.” Spencer held his breath. This was the moment of truth. If this AID was going to betray him, this was the moment. “Such information is under security block,” the AID announced. Al felt his mouth go dry. Either he’d get his information, or the KT would be all over this toy store in four minutes. At the first hint that his AID was reluctant to help, Al was going to scram the thing and toss it into a bin of stuffed toys. “One moment, please,” the AID continued. “Sidestepping security may take a moment.” Al breathed a sigh of relief. “Security overcome. I have access to all in-system ship locations.”

“So which is his ship?”

“The governor does not
own
any ship, but he is billeted aboard the
Bremerton,
currently in parking orbit.”

Damn smartass machine. But he’d settle for a helpful smartass. “Is his niece aboard?”

“Confirmed, Captain Spencer. Bethany Windsor billeted compartment four, B deck.”

That was another little stab in his gut. This AID not only used Al’s new rank, but Bethany’s maiden name.

Somehow, hearing it from the damn machine made it seem real, official. He felt a surge of anger welling up inside him. “Thank you, AID. Now—how do I get aboard to see her?”

“You cannot,” the machine said flatly. “Special orders have been issued specifically to keep you off. The crew has been told that Guard officers may attempt to desert and escape to Harmony Cluster by talking their way onto the
Bremerton.
You cannot get past them.”

Spencer felt his anger turn cold, calculating. “All right, then AID, I cannot get aboard. Then at least tell me how I can
try.”

Even as he listened to the AID’s patient instructions, Al knew the attempt would fail, knew that the KT could not fail but to keep a watch for him, knew that he was chasing toward disaster.

Deep in his heart, Captain Allison Spencer wondered if it was heroes or cowards who rushed toward their own destruction.

Chapter Two
Wires

Al Spencer came back to himself, just a little, and felt sick. How much time had passed? How long since he had been thrown off the shuttle, how long since the last drunken bar fight? How long since he had paid the Cernian to cut open his skull and put wires in there, install the pleasure implant in his brain?

Disorientation. Confusion. A feeling as though he had just appeared here.

A gap in his life.

Bethany, his life, his career. They all seemed a lifetime ago. What had become of them all? How had he gotten
here?

But then his worries faded. He blinked, sleepily, happily, and decided it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Not knowing, not caring, Captain Allison Spencer, High Secretary’s Guards, slapped down the button again. A pulse of pleasure, of emptiness, of exultation and omnipotence washed over him, sweeping away all thoughts, all concerns, all fears before it.

The numb rig was good—no, more than good. The numb rig was
Goodness,
the spirit, the embodiment of all that was good in the universe. Al reached down and picked up the battered metal box, careful not to jar the wire that led from the rig to the implant in his skull. He smiled at the box, held it to his filthy, unshaved face, caressed it, planted a respectful, chaste kiss on the grubby, much-used button that was the source of all pleasure. For a time that could have been a split second, or an hour, or both, he floated in ecstasy.

The rig was Goodness, he thought again, blearily, happily, pleased and proud to have discovered such an essential truth.

But the feeling was fading already. The glow of well-being was dimming, clearing enough so that bits and pieces of reality were beginning to shine through. He could remember again, remember bribing his way through the spaceport, bluffing his way onto the ground-to-orbit shuttle, the humiliating way he had been stopped attempting to board the
Bremerton,
the cool, professional way the marines had folded him up when he tried to rush the hatch. The Pact military didn’t much care for attempted stowaways—after all, they were, almost by definition, also attempted deserters.

The
Bremerton
Marines hadn’t even permitted him the dignity of arrest, charges, detention, had instead just thrown him back aboard the shuttle, bruised and battered in a dozen places, the most serious injury the one to his pride. The shuttle crew had ignored him too, shoved him out the hatch at landing, tossed him aside like so much garbage to be disposed of.

Too much of it was coming back. Not just his memory, but his senses. He could taste the foul bile in his mouth without recalling how it came to be there, smell the sourness of his uniform and his person. He could see the stained mattress he had been on—for how long now?

How had he come to be here, in a wire room, hooked up to a numb rig? How drunk had he got, in what bar, that he would have agreed to the numb-rigger’s harmless-sounding offer of a free sample? Shame and self-loathing washed over him, and uncontrollable tears of self-pity streamed down his face. No man likes to find the depths of which he is capable.

But the body learns quickly. Already Al Spencer had developed a reflex that would wash away all bad feeling. His finger plunged down on the button again, and a tiny pulse of electricity arced directly into his brain’s pleasure centers. The universe went away in a bloom of happy colors.

###

The Kona Tatsu man looked down at Spencer in disgust and sorrow. He should have expected this, he told himself. He
had
expected it, almost. What else could the poor bastard do when the whole universe turned against him, when his future was stolen without so much as an apology, when a lifetime of loyalty was rewarded with such callous cruelty, with a casual gamble for momentary advantage in some meaningless political game halfway across the Galaxy?

Then the KT man caught a whiff of what Captain Spencer smelled like at the moment, and disgust got the upper hand. Even so, there was a debt owed here. “Get him up,” he ordered testily. His two ratings stepped in, a bit reluctantly, and scooped up the softly giggling form of Allison Spencer. The two men started to drag Spencer out toward the waiting ambulance. “Hold it,” the KT man said. “He has to be unplugged before you move him, for God’s sake. Here, let me do it.”

The two ratings held Spencer in a standing position as the KT man stepped behind him, and gently reached up to where the grubby ribbon cable attached to Spencer’s skull. The incision had been done sloppily, that was sure. There might be danger of infection. Working carefully, he undid the retaining clip and pulled the cable free. A tiny pair of spiky wires, only a few centimeters long, stuck up grotesquely through Spencer’s scalp.

The KT man let the cable drop and stepped back around in front of Spencer. Still working with exquisite care, he pried Spencer’s fingers away from the numb rig and took the unclean device away from its victim. He threw the damn thing into the far corner of the wire room, drew his repulsor pistol and blasted it down into scrap with a single burst of glass beads accelerated to supersonic speeds.

The troll-like Cernian who ran the Paradise Wire Palace was angered enough to step forward in protest. “You must not do that! That is my property! I do naught illegal here. You burst in, steal away customer before he can pay his bill, I say nothing, I permit. But you draw guns and shoot my own—”

The Cernian stopped in mid-sentence, apparently recalling too late that this was no corrupt vice cop he was shouting at, but quite a different sort of animal. He closed his lipless mouth and gummed his jaw into a hideous imitation of a human smile. He seemed to have forgotten all his human speech for a long moment. “My apolllogeee,” he said at last, lisping out the last word in the Cernian equivalent of a nervous stutter.

The KT man stared at the Cernian a long moment. No, nothing illegal went on here—thanks to the bribes the numb riggers could pay. But how many lives had been ruined past all rescue in this fetid place? “Your apology will be accepted,” he said, “if I decide to let you live. You will know the results of my decision in a few days. One way or the other.”

The KT man fought back a feeling of overwhelming disgust and loathing for the alien. He, as much as any human, was influenced by the stereotype that all non-humans were criminals. It was an act of will to remember that the Pact was as much to blame as anyone for the fact that most criminal enterprises were run by aliens. Many planets had laws on the books to keep non-humans out of the best jobs, out of high-ranking professions and guilds. With every door to legitimate advancement closed, of course the aliens were channeled toward crime, toward the despised jobs humans would not do. Then the humans despised the aliens for doing the dirty work.