Free stories 2012, p.1
Free Stories 2012, page 1
BAEN BOOKS
FREE STORIES 2012
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Checksum Checkmate © 2012 by Tony Daniel
Grayson Navy Letters Home © 2012 by Joelle Presby
Like Ghost Cat and a Dragon’s Dog © 2012 by Dave Freer
A Murder of Crows © 2012 by Alex Hernandez
The Age of the Warrior © 1979 by Hank Reinhardt / Reproduced by permission of the author’s estate
Taking the High Road © 2012 by R.P.L. Johnson
Conella and the Cyclops Sea Serpent of Doom © 2012 by John Ringo
Landed Alien © 2012 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
Kinderspiel © 2012 by Charles E. Gannon
Peace Offering © 2012 by Wen Spencer
Angel in Flight © 2012 by Sarah A. Hoyt
Away in a Manger © 2012 by Wen Spencer
A Baen Book Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
eISBN: 978-1-4516-3778-6
CHECKSUM Checkmate
by Tony Daniel
The air in Theater Intake Facility was humming with geists – ghostly virtual reality representations of people, A.I.s, and even a few of the sceeve, the horseshoe-bat-nosed aliens whose species had invaded the Earth thirteen years ago. Humanity was at war with the main body of sceeve, but a small faction, the Mutualists, had proved to be valuable allies and had given Earth a chance to fight back and avoid total domination.
Ensign NOCK made his way through the entrance foyer in his entirely physically present android body, his suit, as he called it. His current model was a Burberry Eleven. He’d been suited up in the Eleven for close to a year and it had performed in an excellent, if utilitarian, fashion. The suit NOCK really wanted was one of the new Burberry Twelves – who wouldn’t? –but there was no way he was going to be able to afford an upgrade like that on an Extry ensign’s pay.
All of the virtual inhabitants in the foyer seemed overlaid, one upon another, crowded in layers in such a way that no gathering in real life could ever achieve. Definite scaling problems going on here with the chroma representational software. They appeared as drapes of discrete layers of people, and the entrance foyer had taken on what NOCK imagined might be the décor of a harem den – although visiting a girlfriend in the strip club where she worked on Ceres base was as close as he’d ever come to observing such an establishment.
That had been an interesting liaison. It had been love, at least for his part. Josey had fallen for him precisely because he was an A.I. servant in an android body and not a physical man. Of course, he hadn’t let that fact stop him when attempting to please her. Apparently he’d succeeded for, as Josey had once told him, “NOCK, I gotta say, you put the ‘t’ in simulation.”
Josey had been blown to smithereens by kinetic weapon barrage when a half-ton of sceeve throw mass had ripped into Ceres asteroid base and left a mile-wide crater.
It was a tough war.
NOCK moved forward and into the geist-filled room.
The Theater Intake Facility served as the main wing for the interrogation of alien prisoners on Walt Whitman space station, the enormous Extry facility in orbit around Earth. It was manned by a department of the Extry, the U.S. space navy. The rates and officers of the Extry Xenological Division were universally known as creeps.
NOCK was a creep. He was also no stranger to TIF. In fact, this was his operational billet and his Q-based algorithm, his real self, was backed up on the facility’s computer. The the processing desk where the entrance foyer terminated was manned by a human, Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Gordon Mallon. Mallon was not a friend – NOCK wasn’t sure the humorless Mallon had any friends – but was a longstanding acquaintance of NOCK.
Mallon shook his head ruefully at the gathered crowd in the foyer, then reached out with a finger into the chroma to press a switch only he could see. The field that guarded entrance into the bowels of the TIF hummed slightly, indicating a change in the Q generator that would now permit NOCK to step past Mallon’s desk and go through the hatchway that led to the warren of cells and interrogation rooms to be found within.
“Logged and Level B provisional admittance granted, Ensign NOCK,” Mallon said in the official tone he used for entries in his desk register. “Have a better one, sir.”
“You, too, Staff Sergeant.”
Mallon only grunted in reply and NOCK, ensconced within his android body, entered the TIF proper.
There were a few geists in the hall leading to the interrogation, most of them NCOs accompanying human MILINT officers as aides and translators. NOCK recognized several iterations of the LOVE series, one of whom, CHARITY, was a friend. He poked her via the virual feed, which, NOCK knew, felt like the equivalent of a small static electricity shock. CHARITY nodded, smiled sympathetically back at him.
You’re on CHECKSUM in Alpha, huh? she replied across the corridor to NOCKHHHh using a private virtual feed. Her transmitted voice as actuated in his android’s hearing mechanism sounded bright and a little brassy, as if she were deliberate trying to put good cheer into the undertones.
Yup, he replied.
I don’t envy you.
What, you wouldn’t like to have a traitor and murderer’s thought rolling around inside your programming?
Better than a sceeve, Charity said to him. Then her lead interrogation officer found the room he was looking for and went inside.
Got to go, Charity said. Got a sceeve lieutenant to squeeze.
He suspended?
She. Yep, but she’s fighting it. My LIO thinks we’ll only get a couple more sessions out of her before she liquefies.
It had only become possible in the last year to prevent capture sceeve from immediately committing suicide by dissolving the portion of their nervous system known as the gid. For eight years after the invasion, not a single sceeve had been taken alive. But that had all changed with the coming of the Mutualists to Earth a year before. These were the strange new group of sceeve who claimed to be on humanity’s side, and had proved it in the eyes of many by fighting against their own kind.
NOCK’s attitude toward the Mutualists was the same as his attitude toward any news that seemed too good to be true: wait, watch and make no assumptions. Making faulty assumptions could get you wiped with no backup. He’d seen it happen to better servants than he.
Good luck with your IP, NOCK said.
You, too, good luck, CHARITY replied, and then her geist, and her algorithmic attention with it, passed into Collection and Exploitation Unit Foxtrot, following her LIO.
A few more paces down the hall and NOCK arrived at his destination, the entry hatch to C&E Unit Alpha, and stepped inside.
The Alpha C&E unit was packed. All the chairs on the floor were taken up by brass – and nothing small time here. It looked like a shiny black clump of Extry captains, admirals and Marine colonels had collected like crystals in an asteroidal geode.
C&E Alpha was the big room, the special room. It was two floors high, and surrounding the upper tier in a semicircle was an observational galley. This too was filled with spectators leaning against the glass windows. Geists of servants and officers who’d managed to secure a pass hung in the air directly above the unit’s center. There had never been an interrogation procedure quite like today’s. NOCK, for his part, had tried to recuse himself and get out it. He’d believed he’d succeeded, too, but that Wake Call had brought word that his recusal had been rescinded. That, in itself, was curious, considering who the prisoner was to be interrogated.
On the other side of the room from NOCK was a raised dais with places for three senior MILINT commanders who would soon sit in judgment. They were not yet present.
Neither was the LIO in charge of interrogation. Neither was the prisoner’s protocol rep.
The prisoner was already present.
He was designated as an EPW, an enemy prisoner of war, but wasn’t really any such thing in a strict sense – hell, in any logical sense of the term – but he’d been designated at such for the purposes of the IP.
Nobody knows quite what to do with him, NOCK thought. And when a captive’s legal rights were in limbo, that captive usually ended up in TIR.
On small table in the center of the room sat one of the black cubes universally known among servants as a cat box.
Inside was the quantum foam that formed the substrate of the PW’s consciousness.
The cat box was turned off at the moment.
This was the only copy. The PW had been erased – purged – from all other systems in existence. When the cat box was activated, a basic geist image, a projection of a human form, would appear sitting in a virtual chair next to the box.
This appearance was merely smoke and mirrors for the sake of the human interrogators. The real prisoner was in the cat box, or, more precisely, he was represented as stored values in the quantum foam therein.
The PW in this cat box went by the name of POINT.
He was NOCK’s twin brother.
* * *
NOCK stepped through the crowd of brass and took his place at a small desk near the commander’s dais. He would be closer to the lead interrogation officer than the prisoner and the prisoner’s protocol rep, but from where he sat he had a direct view through his android’s eyes of the space where POINT would soon appear in the chroma.
Best seat in the house, NOCK thought. Or worst, depending on how you looked at the matter.
A few moments passed, and then without any announcement into the Alpha unit came the MILINT Commanders Board of Inquiry, consisting of two Extry rear admirals – the Extry was the name of the United States space navy – and a Marine Corps colonel. The three crossed the room with solemn steps and took their places on the elevated dais that had been set up for them.
This was not a courtroom, but the dais looked a hell of a lot like an appellate justices’ bench, NOCK thought. NOCK recognized the MILINT admirals from photos and division news feeds. He’d never met any of them in person.
Behind them came the facility’s senior LIO and NOCK’s boss, Captain Fredericka Becker. NOCK had worked with her on several IPs, but he was pretty sure she hadn’t yet learned his name.
Trailing behind Becker was an Extry lieutenant commander NOCK did not recognize.
The commander was a creep. He wore the black-and-silver cluster representing his rank in the Extry Xenology Division. But he did not bear the sun blaze insignia of the Interrogation Group beneath it. The commander had a beard and, as NOCK watched, he tugged at it oddly, as if checking it for proper length. Three quick pulls, and then the commander dropped his hand to his side as if it were controlled by a servo that had suddenly lost power.
The commander went to stand at attention near POINT’s black box. Although it was highly irregular to have a protocol representative – the interrogation procedure’s version of a defense attorney – who was not on the TIF staff, there was, apparently, nothing in the regs against it. Obviously strings had been pulled to have this stranger assigned. NOCK wondered who had been pulling them and why.
Without further ado – this was an administrative inquiry and was very pointedly not a trial – the MILINT commanders took their seats, as did the LIO and the bearded creep serving as protocol rep.
The senior commander, who sat in the middle between the other two, turned to a blue-green geist who had just materialized near the dais.
“SECOP, is the dataspace secure?”
“It is, sir,” the geist replied.
“Very well,” said the admiral. “Activate the prisoner.”
And then POINT was in the unit. His geist had been placed on minimal representational resources, and he appeared in a blue-green tint and partially transparent. But even on default, POINT was an imposing figure. His height was set at well over six feet and he represented himself as muscled and burly, almost bursting out of his Marine chief warrant officer’s uniform.
He looked around the room, met the eyes of his interrogators without flinching. Then his gaze felt on NOCK.
So, brother, said the voice in NOCK’s mind, are you going to let me in?
Only to perform CHECKSUM analytics, Chief Warrant Officer POINT, NOCK replied. You are to remain confined to the internal dataspace at all times and are not to attempt alternate communication or interaction with this iterative unit.
Sure, sure, brother, POINT replied. His voice dripped with contempt. I see who’s holding the leash here. Open up and I’ll come into your little cage.
NOCK performed the necessary encryption handshakes and admitted POINT to the CHECKSUM arena. From this point forward, he would file and monitor all operations within POINT’s mind.
Can you imagine the howls the meats would let out if one of them were subject to your mind reading act during, say, a criminal trial? The fucking Peepsies would be staging a courthouse occupation in a split second.
I should emphasize, NOCK replied, that communications directed at the CHECKSUM operations officer by a prisoner will be ignored.
Of course they will. That’s your goddamn Quisling code of honor, isn’t it? Give the meats what they want. And you like to take that command to a new and personal level, don’t you, Brother NOCK? Everybody knows you’re fucking Hamburger Helper. What do you say to that?
NOCK did not reply, and POINT turned his baleful gaze back to the others in the interrogation unit.
“Please sit down, POINT,” said Captain Becker.
“I prefer to remain standing, captain,” POINT replied. “As a matter of fact, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest to stand all day long.”
“Sit, please, Chief Warrant Officer.”
POINT let another moment pass, but then complied. The barest outline of a chair appeared next to him and he folded his large frame into it. He still looks like a tank, NOCK thought, careful as always not to allow his own interiorized processes to leak into the CHECKSUM space.
“Officer POINT, you are not on trial here. There are no provisions for trying an A.I. servant for the crimes you have allegedly committed.”
“Because you don’t consider us human,” POINT replied. “And you can’t put a refrigerator on trial.”
Becker smiled her sharky interrogator’s smile, an expression that NOCK knew she’d developed to perfection through long experience. “That would be true if you were anything like a refrigerator, which you are not. You are, in fact, less than a kitchen appliance. At least a refrigerator or toaster has some sort of material being. You are a process. A persistent habit. And what is one supposed to do with a bad habit? One needs simply to get rid of it.”
“So you’re going to wipe me,” Point said and shook his head in disgust. “Without justification. Without even an explanation. And you call that humane?”
“We have the facts,” Becker said. “A man was murdered. SIGINT Petty Officer Second Class Thomas Levine, of the U.S.X. Vigilant Resolve, where you were stationed.
“One of me was stationed on the Resolve,” POINT broke in, and slowly and deliberately turned his gaze to NOCK. “As you pointed out, ma’am, I’m just a process. I have many copies.” POINT held a hand out indicating NOCK.
How do you like that, you asshole meat fucker?
The contempt from POINT rang in the CHECKSUM space. But NOCK was used to provocation from PWs, although they had always been sceeve up till now, and he did not react.
Becker shook her head at the provocation and raised her voice to indicate she was addressing all those assembled now. “The fact that there are iterations of the prisoner may or may not be relevant to this procedure, but it is true that the entity that is the focus of this interrogation is not a legal human being, and thus cannot be tried for a crime,” Becker continued. “As a result, there are two questions before the Board of Interrogation today.” Becker turned toward the panel of MILINT commanders. “Question one, sirs and madame: is the servant operationally defective?” Becker paused to let this sink in. “We are not engaged in criminal trial proceedings here. There is not a question of reasonable doubt. The matter is to be decided on a preponderance of the evidence. That evidence can be either circumstantial or direct. And if the preponderance of the evidence shows the servant has an error in his programming, he will be deleted.”
Becker gave the board of officers her knowing half-smile. The gesture didn’t surprise NOCK. Everyone was aware that this was a trial of sorts, and the assembled MILINT board was to be judge, jury, and executioner.
“Furthermore,” said Becker, “if this servant is deemed defective, we have before us another question, an even more important question.” A long pause. NOCK had an idea he wouldn’t like what came next, and he was not mistaken. “The question is this: if the servant is defective, are his copies defective as well? They are, after all, exact iterations of Lieutenant POINT’s programming. And if this possibility exists, should not the preponderance of the evidence –” Becker put her hands out palm up like a scale “ – the preponderance of evidence, I stress, and no other claim withstanding, lead us to conclude that the entire ARROW class, an algorithmic class of which Officer POINT is an exact duplicate, be terminated immediately.”
