Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) (2 page)

“. . . 
the
idea of a Free Mars has been gaining lots of ground.”

The senator
took his glasses off and began cleaning them, rubbing the glass with a
carefully folded cloth.  “So what do we need to do?”  Farrell looked
at him, momentarily lost for words.

“Well, at the
moment nothing.  But we do need to be aware of it.  I mean, that’s
what we’re here for, to flag up these potential hot-spots before they
become actual hot-spots.  I don’t know what we could do now,
practically.  Resuming elections would help politically, but with the
celebrations coming up -”

“What
celebrations?”

“Sometime in
the next few months the one hundred thousandth Martian will be born.  It’s
going to be a big whoop on Mars.  It may serve to focus minds on just
these issues we’re talking about.  So with that in mind, maybe some
counterprogramming might be of use?  We could give it prominent recognition
here.  Have a big parade with an address by the president, or something
like that.  Maybe we should have sent someone senior over there to lead
the celebrations.”

“Believe me,
Farrell, if I could send the vice president to Mars I would.”

“Well, I just
think we should be thinking along those lines.  Hearts and minds, you
know.  It’s probably nothing, but we should be keeping an eye on it.”

The senator
stood up and offered his hand.  “Thanks for that, Farrell.  Thanks
for bringing that to our attention.”  His face cracked into a smirk. 
“We’ve just got out of one war, we don’t want to be getting into another. 
Particularly one that’s a hundred and forty million miles away - we’d
lose home advantage.”  He winked.

Farrell
smiled.  “I’m sure it won’t come to that, sir.  Not if we keep on top
of it.”

The senator
turned and left.

Farrell and
his two senior aides got back to his office at the Department of Foreign
Affairs around 16:30.  Farrell sat at his desk, quickly checking for any
notifications on his secure terminal before kicking his chair back and swinging
his feet up onto the desk.  His silver hair made him look older than his
forty-eight years, and his matinee-idol good looks, which he’d
managed to kid himself had somehow been a detriment to his political career,
were fading.  “What time’s the address?” he asked the aides.

“Five
o’clock”.

“Can we get
it up on there?”  He indicated the blank wall opposite his desk.

“Sure.”

“Okay, we’ll
do that.  And do we have champagne, anything like that?”  The second
aide was looking down at her mobile communication device.  “I’m getting on
to that now.  You want the good stuff?”

“
Aw .
 . .  middling?  I do
want
the good stuff, but I’ll stick to what I can afford.”

“Okay. 
Four magnums of the not-quite-best champagne, on their way.”

“Great. 
Can you get everyone up here for the address?  Say, five minutes before?”

“We’ll do
that.  Should be great.  You know Shirley?”

Farrell
thought, blankly.

“She’s
assistant to the junior secretaries.  Anyway, she has a son in Mombasa. 
She’s going to be in bits.  It might make for a great photo, you hugging
her and looking understanding?”

Farrell
baulked.  “Oh come on, you hard hearted-bitch!” he said, but smiled
too.

“That’s the
kind of thinking I’m paid for,” the aide chirpily replied.

Farrell sunk
into thought for a little bit, then wondered aloud, “Are we right to worry
about Mars?  Is that even our department?”

The woman
aide looked up, startled.  “Well, it is foreign, isn’t it?  I mean,
how much more foreign can you get?”

Farrell
thought.  “It just seems, I don’t know, different, somehow.  So far
away that it’s not even foreign.  And surely it’s just part of the USAN,
isn’t it?  I mean, it’s not a country or even a state.  Marineris is
about the size of a small town.”

The aide cut
in, “No, it comes under us alright.  And we’re right to be monitoring.”

“But there’s
nothing to it, is there, really?  This chatter about breaking away,
independence and all that?  Armchair warriors and know-nothing
kids.  They’d shit the bed if we just left them to it, wouldn’t they?”

“Maybe. 
But we’re paid to be paranoid, so we are.”

“And anyways,
they’re halfway across the solar system.”

“Some of the
time they are.  Every couple of years they swing by real close - fifty
million miles or so.  And apparently Helios are this close,” she gestured
with thumb and forefinger, “to developing usable sized fusion engines which
will turn interplanetary travel upside down.  You could hop across in your
lunch break, almost.”

Farrell
frowned.  “Helios have been about to reveal their fusion engine tech ever
since I was a kid.  There’s no quick or easy way to or from Mars. 
It’s a six month trip, minimum, and even then you have to wait up to two years
for a launch window.  They need our tech, we need their deuterium, free
trade, honour, loyalty, yada, yada, the end.  I just wanted the senator to
know that, even without a war on, we have stuff to be doing over here. 
We’re on the lookout for any problems, we’ve got our ears to the floor and our
eyes on the horizon and our fingers on the pulse.  Forever
vigilant.”  He flashed a big phony smile at the assistant.

“Sheesh,” she
said, “and you haven’t even had any champagne yet.”

Dr Daniel Kostovich
eyed the barren landscape ahead.  Dried brown dirt and the straggliest of
sun-beaten foliage stretched before him to a distant and just discernible
clump of buildings.  It was hot in the suit, and the restricted movement
made him feel trapped.  He needed to get out of the sun, but he needed to
know he was safe.  Continuing to scan the horizon for movement he lifted
one huge metal leg, then the other, and moved forward.  He spoke into the
mic.  “
Stocksy
, Bacon.  I’m
comin
’ to
getcha
.” 

A voice crackled
back over the headset.  “What about me?”

Kostovich
grinned.  “Dennis?  Time I get over there,
Stocksy
and Bacon will have taken you out already.  If you haven’t just fallen
over.”

“You’re a
funny guy, Dan.  That’s why I’m going to kill you last.”

Kostovich
laughed.  “It’s great that you still believe you have some worthwhile
abilities, Dennis.  Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

Dennis’s
voice came back over the com.  “I’m going radio silent now. 
Gotta
concentrate.  Have asses to kick.  Out.”

Kostovich
noted a small outcrop of rocks about two hundred metres from his
position.  He headed toward them.  He brought up a terminal in his
HUD, set his mech on an automated course for the outcrop, then brought up a new
screen to which he half-whispered a command, “AI 328, scan all
channels.  Flag and list
possibles
, report on
completion.  Confirm estimated time of completion.”

A crystal
clear and honey-drenched female voice replied immediately.  “Scan
completion estimated at less than two minutes.”

Inside the
mech Kostovich stood a little over four metres high.  Stood on the ground
next to it he would be less than half that size.  At twenty-nine
years of age he was the youngest department head at Venkdt Mars
Corporation.  His department was Research and Development.  He had
been a prodigy at school and often had to deny that his parents, in particular
his father, the renowned physicist Craig Kostovich, had modified him in utero
to be a
brainiac
.  He’d considered the
possibility himself.  His dad was crazy, but not that crazy.  Dan had
just been lucky with his genes, lucky with his nurturing family, who had
indulged his ‘experiments’ and ‘research’, and lucky to have been around when
the settlement at Marineris was still just about a frontier town with people
happy to let a little kid ask questions about the place, the landscape and the
fancy kit that enabled them to survive there.

He won a
prize for his advanced AIs when he was thirteen.  That was even reported
back on the old home planet, though somewhere near the end of the bulletins.

Kostovich had
breezed through school, embarrassing his teachers and alienating his
peers.  He started on his first PhD (artificial intelligence) when he was
just turned seventeen and completed his second (astrophysics) at twenty-two,
though that one was just for fun.

He’d raced up
the ranks at Venkdt by identifying flaws in their processes and suggesting
solutions.  Within a couple of years of starting there he had saved them
hundreds of thousands and made them millions.  In R&D he oversaw all
development projects, but his special baby, the thing he got hands-on
with (hands-on a keyboard, at least) was AI.  Kostovich didn’t need
to be a great designer of products or processes, though he had the skills to do
that, because what he really excelled at was designing AIs that designed great
products and processes.  With his knowledge of computing networks,
cyphers, telegraphy and encryption he could protect that intellectual property
from others and rent its power to them.

He’d been
head of R&D at Venkdt for two years.  The initial thrill had worn off,
somewhat.  He now found himself correcting tedious and obvious errors in
the work of others, and endlessly tinkering with his AIs and monitoring
systems.  He had risen rapidly, but now there was nowhere left for him to
rise to.  It wasn’t like he could be headhunted by
Hjälp
Teknik
 - they had less than a tenth
of the resources of Venkdt - and he had no desire whatsoever to
go to the home planet, a place he had never been and never wished to.  He
was fourth-gen Martian, and to him Earth was a foreign and backward
looking place, millions of miles away and of only academic interest.  He
was top of his particular tree at Venkdt, with only the board and Charles
Venkdt above him (and they weren’t going anywhere soon) and, all things
considered, that wasn’t a bad place to be.  It maybe lacked excitement,
but that could be had outside work in things like competitive IVR games.

The honey-voice
spoke, “Scan complete.  Two anomalies detected.”

“Okay. 
Run AI 14S and AI 14V on the anomalies.  Multi-decrypt and report,
please give me the estimated time of completion.”

“Completion
in five to six minutes,” came the reply.

Kostovich
manoeuvred the mech from behind the outcrop and spied the cluster of buildings.
 “Thermal,” he said, and the vista in front of him changed to a blue,
yellow and red child’s painting, which he quickly scanned.  Nothing. 
“How long to completion now?”

“Five
minutes.”

He made his
move, breaking from his hiding place and striding toward the hamlet.  At
pace the mech could travel at around 15km/h.  Right now he was vulnerable,
but he couldn’t have stayed hidden behind a rock forever.  Crossing the
open ground he scanned back and forth across the buildings, looking for any
sign of movement, his finger held lightly over the trigger in his right
hand.  At thirty metres out he heard a ‘
ratatatatata
’
and a percussive ‘
ka
-boom!’  It was
difficult to locate, but seemed to be from the opposite end of the hamlet.

Dennis’s
voice spluttered over the com.  “Son of a bitch.  Son of a bitch!”

“Morning,
Den,” said
Stocksy
.  “Thanks for the
missiles.” 
Stocksy
was now one up on them, and
had access to missiles in addition to the machine guns they had each started
with.

Kostovich hove
closely to the perimeter wall and inched around, trying to get a look down the
main street.  The buildings were Earth style, above ground and
battered.  The place looked like some of the news reports from the war on
Earth.

“
Stocksy
?” Kostovich asked into the com.

“Hey,
Dan.  Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty for you too.”

“See you in a
bit.  Looking forward to it.  You
seen
Bacon?”

“Nope. 
But when I see him, I’m
gonna
fry his ass!”

Bacon
crackled over com for the first time, “Never gets old,
Stocksy
,
never gets old.”

“Probably
camped out somewhere,” said Kostovich.  “Do you want him or shall I do
it?”

“Well,”
Stocksy
replied, “if I get him I’ll be on guided missiles,
Dan.  If you get him, it’s honours even for the final showdown on Main
Street.”

“I don’t need
superior hardware,
Stocksy
.  I already have
superior tactics.  Take him if you want.”

Kostovich
spoke to his AI, “How long to completion?”

“Two
minutes.”

Kostovich
knew Bacon liked to camp in buildings.  A building with a mech shaped hole
in it very likely had a Bacon camping inside it.  Bacon’s tactics were as
obvious as Dennis’s, so he’d be facing out into the main street waiting for
someone to wander down it.  Kostovich continued circling the perimeter,
carefully watching all potential danger points as he went.  He was just
crossing a side road out of the
ville
when the corner
of the building above him exploded into shower of dust and fragments, which
rained down about him.  Bacon was still on the machine gun; it had to be
Stocksy
.  Kostovich ducked and continued, working over
in his mind where
Stocksy
was.  It was a narrow
road, so to have hit the back of it he could only be in one specific area
midway down Main Street on the opposing side.  Glancing to his left as he
continued his anti-clockwise orbit of the town he saw some rubble. 
Bacon.

“How long to
completion?”

“Forty-five
seconds.”

Kostovich
pulled back from the perimeter and ran around it in the direction he had been
going.  As he passed the building Bacon was hid out in he fired a burst of
machine gun fire into it, but was gone before Bacon could make the full turn
necessary to return fire.  Bacon was turning back when
Stocksy’s
missile hit him, and he was out of the game.

“Head
shot!” 
Stocksy
declared.

Kostovich
made for the top of Main Street.  “Completion?”

“Completing
in ten,
nine .
 . .”

As the
countdown finished Kostovich peered gingerly around the corner and up Main
Street, where he could just see
Stocksy’s
missile arm
pulling back behind the corner of a building.

“Decryption
complete.  Competing systems owned.  Total time five minutes and
forty-three seconds.”

“Please run
AI M22 on competing system
Stocksy
.”

Kostovich now
stepped boldly out onto Main Street and walked up it at a casual pace.

With a flick
of the eye he switched the com to
Stocksy
.  “
Stocksy
?  Comin’ to get
ya
,
fella!”

“M22 is now
complete on competing system
Stocksy
,” said the AI.

“Dan?” said
Stocksy
, “I hate to do this,
but .
 . .” 
Stocksy
ran across the street, all the while locked
onto Kostovich, who implacably strode toward him.  Just before the midway
point
Stocksy’s
mech
juddered as two missiles launched from the forearms, leaving a cloud behind
them as they streaked down Main Street. 
Stocksy
had planned to run back into cover on the other side of the street, but on
seeing his missiles get away, locked-on and with no reply, he decided to
stop and savour his moment of victory.  The huge mech skidded very
slightly as it came to a stop on the far side of the street.

The missiles
streaked passed Kostovich and out of the end of the
ville
. 
At first
Stocksy
couldn’t figure out why there had
been no satisfying double boom, and the smoky missile trail blocked his
view.  For a split second he knew something was not right.  In the
time it took him to figure out what was wrong the missiles had already turned
about and had rushed back to the place from whence they came.

Ba-Boom!

The top of
Stocksy’s
mech
was totally
destroyed.  The lower half fell to its knees like it was bowing before its
superior.

“Good game,”
said Kostovich.

“Goddamn,
Dan, that’s cheating!” said
Stocksy
.

“It
technically isn’t,” said Kostovich.  “If you don’t like it we can turn off
cyberwarfare next time.”

“We should,
too,” Bacon chimed in.  “It gives you an unfair advantage.”

“It’s advantageous
to me, but it’s perfectly fair.  Only a fool wouldn’t play to their
advantages.”

“I’m done
here,” said Dennis.

“Me too,”
said Kostovich.  “
Laters
.

“
Laters
.”

“
Laters
.”

“See you
later, guys.”

Kostovich
pulled off his headset and slumped back into the sofa.  He blinked twice
and shook his head, quickly looking about the room to re-orient himself.

He glanced
over at his terminal screen and could see something blinking red in the
notification area.  “Put that up on the wall,” he said.  The terminal
appeared on the wall in front of him and he began to read.  “Show me that
report, bottom right,” he said.

“USAN
Monitoring?” the AI asked.

“Yes.” 
The report enlarged to fill the wall and Kostovich began to read it, glancing
through the lines with a slight frown.  He had sent one of his AIs to
covertly worm its way into the USAN’s secure information systems months
earlier.  The operation was so delicate that, initially at least, it was
not to report back.  Its preliminary task was to remain undetected while
it monitored the system.  Kostovich had programmed it to monitor as long
as it felt necessary.  Any sort of premature call home risked
exposure.  The AI was absolutely not to do that until it was convinced it
could do so safely.

Like a
forlorn lover Kostovich had waited for his AI to return.  He had assumed
it would take a few days before he heard anything, but very quickly the days
had developed into months.  He didn’t know what might have happened.