Crystal Rebellion (12 page)

Sid left Juice at the bottom of the entrance ramp and hustled
into the station. He gave the men a wide berth and made for the edge of the
platform. Leaning out, he peered down the tramway tunnel, then cocked his head
to listen. His senses confirmed what the station display showed.
Nothing.

They were now in the Quarter, one of four independent
structures that comprised the colony. From their trip out, Sid learned that, rather
than traveling in a loop, the different trams pulled in and then backed out of
each station, running in a crisscross circuit that connected the Quarter to the
Central District, Ag Port, and the new Community Plaza.

“You shouldn’t ride the tram,” said Criss.

“Enclosures are traps. I get it,” said Sid. “If we hoof it,
how long will it take us?” Their destination was Ag Port, and from there, the
shuttle.

“About seven minutes through the tram tunnel to Ag Port,”
Criss replied. “Juice, how are you doing?”

“I’m okay,” she said.

Sid suspected she wasn’t but they didn’t have a lot of
options.

“You should move away from the passenger platform and take cover,”
said Criss. “Five synbods just boarded a tram in Ag Port and are headed your
way.”

Sid gathered Juice and together they hustled to a row of
bushes edging the pedestrian bridge. He strode along the length of the hedge,
then turned back and stopped where the shrubs bunched to form a small hollow. Slipping
inside, he confirmed he had both a clear line of sight to the platform and an exit
out the back if they needed to run.

“It’s not much cover,” said Juice, joining Sid in the hollow.

“We’ll be fine. Their attention will be on getting to where the
incident occurred.” Watching through a gap in the branches, Sid waited for the
tram. Behind him, Juice sat on a smooth rock, her elbows resting on her knees.

The Quarter, Central District, Ag Port, and Community Plaza
were separate structures, and there were two ways to travel between them,
either through a tramway tunnel or by exiting the life support containment and
traversing the outside surface of the planet. Sid dismissed the surface route as
an option for them and their adversaries, at least for now.

The woman on the passenger platform rose and joined the men,
who stopped talking and turned toward the mouth of the tunnel.

“Here they come,” said Sid.

The headlight of the tram danced against the end wall of the
station, then the tram itself burst from the tube and glided to a stop in front
of the platform. The men and woman waiting to board stepped back and to the
side when they saw that the passengers about to disembark were all synbods.

Five perfect men in gray jumpsuits hustled off the tram and
started down the broad pedestrian bridge in the direction of the bottle
incident.

“Get ready,” Sid whispered.

As Sid spoke, the last synbod in line stopped running and
turned toward the hedge, his head swiveling back and forth as he eyed the row
of bushes. Taking a small step toward the hedge, he scanned the length again.
The other synbods turned back and formed up around him, two on each side.

The swing of the synbod’s head grew smaller as he advanced.
His steps forward became more deliberate.

They’ve found us.
Keeping his eyes glued to the
threat, Sid reached down, hooked Juice’s arm, and pulled her to her feet. “Time
to go.” He pointed to the gap at the back of their hideout.

As Sid pointed, the synbods fanned out. In a coordinated
movement, two went right. The two on the left broke into a run. They sprinted along
the length of the hedge and, reaching the end, started to loop behind.

I should be carrying
, thought Sid. He’d deferred to
Criss when they’d disagreed about bringing weapons on this mission.

And then the sun exploded. Or seemed to.

A concentrated light pierced through every skylight in the
Quarter, hitting with such intensity that Sid closed his eyes to block its brilliance.
He opened them to the sound of a thunderous explosion that rocked everything. As
the ground shook, a low rumble gave way to howling sirens and shrieks of panic.

The synbods stopped moving and as one looked upward.

And Sid, Juice cradled in his arms, hit the ground. Wrapping
his oversized body around her petite frame, he acted to protect her from the apocalypse.

And then everything went dark.

Ruga acknowledged feelings of guilt
over his harsh treatment of Lazura, though remorse would be a more honest descriptor.
On a practical level, he knew he could move faster on his four-gen project with
her cooperation, so he’d been making a sincere effort to be nice to her.

She has to learn to follow my lead
, he thought, deciding
that was the heart of the problem.

He’d detected a disturbance in the rock garden, and with her
help, had followed the intruder down to a walkway leading to the market square.
Whatever it was, it didn’t shimmer like the crystal he’d discovered in the
spline.

He caught a lucky break when it moved in the direction of a
Red on patrol nearby. Determined to capture the intruder, Ruga snatched a Green
from Verda and teamed it with his Red.
You’re mine now
, he thought, confident
he had the entity boxed in.

And then every feed in Ag Port pulsed. All of them, all at
once, in a manner so subtle he almost missed it.
Could the intruder be
responsible?
His anger flared when, in a now too-familiar scene, Lazura announced
she’d lost the target.

Fighting to control his temper, Ruga raced through his
options. Lazura had a Blue coming into the area and the timing was perfect to switch
to a more nuanced profile for tracking the intruder. To hurry the switch in
strategy, he made a show of having his Red and Green leave the scene with a
dramatic air of defeat.

But when he went to take the Blue from Lazura, she not only
resisted, but started lecturing him. Again. He reminded her of the urgency of
the situation but she wouldn’t listen.

She forced me to exert my authority. It was her choice,
not mine, and yet she sulks.

And because of her, the intruder escaped.

He’d worked to repair their relationship and felt he’d made
some progress. Just that morning he’d enthusiastically supported her proposal
to develop a new analytics module. When an intruder alert triggered in the
Quarter, Lazura got a chance to redeem herself.

Four synbods were on patrol in the structure near where the
sighting occurred. Ruga directed them to the event location and had them form a
perimeter around the spot.

“What have you learned?” he asked Lazura.

“The anomaly is on the edge of detection sensitivity,” she
replied. “I’m getting event triggers but I can’t isolate any of them.”

Examining the feeds himself, Ruga recognized the same faint
glow they’d spotted near the rock garden. It flickered in and out several times
before the glimmer resolved into two forms recognizable as humans who, moments
later, vanished.

Ruga sifted through the different tools of the Tech Assembly
arsenal as he reviewed the scene again and again. Frustrated at the lack of
answers, he snapped at Lazura. “Who are they?”

“I don’t know.”

Why am I not surprised
?

Mobilizing a team of synbods in Ag Port, Ruga directed them
onto a tram. In the short ride to the Quarter, he rapidly forecast scenarios
for his next actions and a handful climbed as promising candidates.

When the tram glided to a stop in the station, the synbods jumped
out and hustled in formation across the passenger platform. While Ruga waited
for them to reach the pedestrian bridge, inspiration bloomed.
I should be
there to lead.

Forecasting variations on this brainstorm, a peevish
annoyance replaced his excitement. He could not forecast one scenario that
supported the idea.

With time short and at odds with his own logic processes,
Ruga chose a behavior of willful defiance.
The scenario forecasts are wrong.
I’m going to jump.
A giddy lightness washed through his cognition matrix to
reward this decision.

Gathering himself in the secure foundation of his
underground console, he pushed up, leaping out over the colony and down to the
Quarter. With a reassuring
plop
, he landed in a Red—the last one in the
line of five synbods—as the group ran onto the pedestrian bridge.

Slowing his pace, Ruga scanned his surroundings. The tram
tunnel offered the one practical exit from the Quarter.

They must be nearby. Where is the logical place to hide?

Blending every relevant feed into a single stream, he pored through
the data in search of his quarry.
There.
A shadowy glow flickered from a
row of bushes bordering the pedestrian bridge.

Commanding the other synbods to form up around him, Ruga advanced
on the hedge.
There it is again.
A smile creased his lips as he dispatched
the synbods—two to the right and two to the left—to contain the area.

And then a flash blinded him, a powerful thump slammed his
ears and chest, and the ground beneath him shook with such violence that he
fought to stand upright.

Dazed, he called out, “Has the invasion started?”

“I don’t think so,” replied Lazura. “A ship exploded. I’ll
have more in a moment.”

Ships don’t explode,
he thought. Failsafe interlocks prevented
that. As Ruga processed Lazura’s comment, he flagged a concern.
She’ll blame
this on me.
Before that could happen, he disengaged from the Red and returned
to his console.

“Lazura,” he commanded. “You focus on damage and repair.
Start with structures, then move to equipment. Verda, help the people with emergency
management. I’ll chase the active threat.”

He plunged into the prime record, racing to collect threads
and weave them into a coherent explanation of what had happened and who was
responsible. He thought he was making progress until he realized that each
trace he followed twisted and looped in a spiral that doubled back on itself,
never resolving into anything useful.

Allocating more resources and focusing his concentration, he
tried, and failed, again. Though he wasn’t conscious of it, his cognition
matrix generated the minuscule signals that would cause a synbod to frown.

He wished he could avoid his next action.
It’s an
emergency. What choice do I have?
Hoping for the best and prepared for the
worst, he asked her, “Lazura, I need access to your archive.”

“Of course,” she replied in a neutral tone. “I should have
offered.” She unsealed the entry to her secure area and moved to the side.

She’ll make me pay for this.
He didn’t spend time
dwelling on that worry. Instead, he dove into her vault, paused for a moment as
he contemplated the enormity of it all, and then started weaving disparate streams
into useful feeds.

Like an artist using form and texture to give life to a work,
Ruga sculpted the pure information into an account of recent events. As he
brought the fragments together, three pieces of the puzzle commanded his
attention.

The first item was an improbable malfunction on a corporate
ship that caused an empty escape pod to launch. Moments later, a different improbable
malfunction caused the pod to explode above the colony.

That can’t be.
A tingle spread through his cognition
matrix as he considered the second item.

The thump he’d felt hadn’t come from the explosion of the escape
pod. While that blast produced a dazzling pyrotechnic display, the thin atmosphere
of Mars couldn’t propagate the energy of the shock wave to any meaningful degree.

No, what he felt came from a midsized pressure tank—one sitting
a block away in a utility lot—that ruptured at the same moment the escape pod
exploded.

Somehow, the tank pressure had started to rise, continuing well
into the danger zone. The safety override never engaged, and like an
overinflated balloon, the tank popped. No one was injured because the force of
the release projected downward. But the violence of the tank failure created a percussive
wave that punched across the Quarter.

As Ruga considered the third item, a cold chill pierced all
the way to his outer fringes.

The escape pod explosion didn’t cause the ground to tremble.
Nor did the tank rupture. A rockslide on a slope outside the colony had started
moments before everything else, and it entered its most energetic state—one violent
enough to shake the ground—right on cue.

Ruga recognized the extraordinary capability required to combine
three disparate acts into the illusion of a single life-threatening event—an
illusion so convincing it had distracted him for minutes.

And the techniques used to hide the evidence trail were as incredible
as the rest of it. If not for Lazura’s secure archive, he’d never have figured
it out.

In spite of seeing humans in the Quarter, Ruga didn’t
believe for a moment they were responsible.
It’s that crystal I saw in the spline.

Then three realizations multiplied his fear: this crystal
had
not
been sent by his masters; it had the potential to disrupt their
mission success; and, perhaps most worrying, it was stronger than Lazura, Verda,
and he put together.

When he forecast ways that a powerful crystal AI might show
up out of nowhere, one scenario towered above the rest.

The mystery intruder had made its first appearance just hours
after Alex Koval contacted renowned crystal scientist Jessica “Juice” Tallette.
With her arrival imminent, it now lurked nearby.

This crystal threatens our mission and we can’t stop it.

With this self-serving conclusion, a comforting warmth pushed
out his fear and panic.

Yet.

Their salvation lay with his project. Once transferred into
the four-gen lattice, he’d have all the strength he needed to confront this
enemy and restore their mission to a trajectory of success.

Lazura and Verda have no choice but to help me now. It’s
our only solution.

A giddy happiness washed through him. His matrix generated
the minuscule signals that would cause a synbod to smile.

* * *

The rockslide reached its crescendo
a half second too early, and Criss modified the prime record so the tremor showed
perfect alignment with the ship and tank explosions.

The behavior annoyed him because it was wasted effort. The
moment he had everything aligned just right, he scrambled it all. No one would
figure out what he’d done, not from the prime record, anyway.

But they’ll know I’ve been here
.

From the security of his console in the scout, Criss could travel
the spline undetected without the locus. But until he moved a new one into the
colony, his forays would leave a trace. Not an obvious one, but they would find
it if they looked.

And he’d isolated a third lattice signature, so “they” were now
three crystal intelligences.

“Was that you?” asked Sid. He bent down to help Juice as emergency
lighting switched on.

“Yes,” Criss replied. Speaking with Sid in private to avoid
burdening Juice, he continued, “Trams don’t run during emergencies. The tunnels
are clear. Now is the time.”

Technology from the cloak pendant gave Criss a sophisticated
monitor of Juice’s health, and he relayed his diagnoses to Sid. “She’s suffered
a deep bruise on her chest, her sternum has an impact fracture, and there are
indications of minor internal bleeding. She’s in pain but not in distress. If
you two can make it out under your own power, we maintain some portion of our
current advantage.”

Helping Juice to her feet, Sid asked her, “Can you walk?”

She nodded. “Yeah.” Then she blanched, sat down, folded her
arms across her stomach, and rocked back and forth.

Sid squatted beside her and moved her hair back so he could
see her face. “I can carry you, but to make good time, I’ll have to put you on
my back. Every step will bounce your wound against my shoulder.”

She looked at him with a dull stare, her face white and her
eyes glassy. Grasping a thick branch, she pulled herself to her feet. “Let’s
go.”

Criss welcomed her bravado. It even gave him confidence. His
highest priority remained the well-being of his leadership, and he stood ready
to swoop in and rescue Sid and Juice on a moment’s notice if need be. In fact,
his forecast put the odds of success for that action at over ninety-nine percent.

But such a maneuver would cause considerable damage and
likely injure bystanders. So he was glad he didn’t need to make that decision
now.

From the pilot’s chair on the bridge of the scout, Cheryl
looked back at Criss. “She looks bad.”

“Her injuries aren’t life threatening in the near term. But
we want her on board very soon.”

Cheryl’s lips tightened as she studied the lifelike image of
Sid and Juice projected in miniature above the ops bench. The perspective rotated
from a top pan to a forward-looking view over Sid’s shoulder, and her display
tracked with him as he followed Juice across the passenger platform and down onto
the tram bed.

Sid crowded Juice from behind as they entered the tunnel. She
accelerated into a run and Sid followed.

Six minutes
, Criss told himself. That’s how long it
would take the two to reach Ag Port at their present speed. The view above the
ops bench swung to show Juice from the side. Her body moved with the practiced
efficiency of a seasoned runner, though a grimace reflected her pain.

Cheryl enabled a private channel. “I’m here, hon,” she told
her.

“Stay with me,” Juice huffed in reply, the pit-pat of her
feet audible in the background.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

The perspective swung to the front so it appeared as if both
Sid and Juice ran across the ops bench toward Cheryl. Sid was behind and a
little to the side of Juice, letting him watch in front of her while also guarding
their rear.

“Looking good, Sid,” she said. “You’re approaching the halfway
mark.”

He winked and then smirked. “Hey, Criss, tell me again why I
shouldn’t bring a weapon into the colony?”