Tau Ceti - The Phage Read online

  TAU CETI

  ENFIELD GENESIS – BOOK 3

  BY LISA RICHMAN

  & M. D. COOPER

  SPECIAL THANKS

  Just in Time (JIT) & Beta Reads

  Timothy Van Oosterwyk Bruyn

  Jim Dean

  Copyright © 2018 Lisa Richman & M. D. Cooper

  Aeon 14 is Copyright © 2018 M. D. Cooper

  Version 1.0.0

  Cover Art by Andrew Dobell

  Editing by Jen McDonnell, Bird’s Eye Books

  Aeon 14 & M. D. Cooper are registered trademarks of Michael Cooper

  All rights reserved

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE

  MAPS

  PART ONE: SYNTHESIS

  IMPATIENCE

  UNCONSTRAINED GROWTH

  FAMILY BUSINESS

  PART TWO: PHANTOM BLADE

  BROTHERLY LOVE

  AVON VALE

  EXPANSE

  VOXBOXES AND BONITO FLAKES

  HAPPY TUESDAY

  JELLYFISH AND SOLAR SAILS

  ACCESS DENIED

  PART THREE: DELIVERY

  THE CALL OF DUTY

  THE STONE SEA

  PART FOUR: NANOPHAGE

  SPACEBORNE

  OUTBREAK

  THE BUNKER

  DIRE NEWS

  UNDER RINGLIGHT

  GRIM UPDATE

  DISASSEMBLY BOTS

  QUARANTINE CAMPS

  DANGLING CARROTS

  AMBUSH

  AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION

  TARGET PRACTICE

  CRASH SITE

  DYSTOPIAN RING

  BECK

  ENEMY OF THE STATE

  TRIAGE CAMP

  INFILTRATION

  SEEDING CHAOS

  STORMING THE ELEVATOR

  THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE

  STANDOFF

  SPACE JUNK

  ACTING PRESIDENT

  DÉTENTE

  RECOVERY

  AN UNEASY TRUCE

  AFTERWORD

  THE BOOKS OF AEON 14

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  FOREWORD

  A few years ago, my New Year’s Eve took an unusual turn. The phone rang; it was a local hospital. A large truck, containing radioactive material, had been in an accident. The truck had overturned, and its driver was injured. It was what is known by the NRC as a ‘reportable event’, a radioactive spill requiring containment.

  The doctors were in a panic. Could they safely treat the man? Would they be exposed to harmful, dangerous radiation?

  The bogeyman had entered the room.

  Fear is necessary for humanity to thrive. A healthy fear breeds caution in the face of danger. Unhealthy fear, however—especially in the hands of the masses—can incite panic and rioting and cause untold harm.

  In the main storyline, Aeon 14’s bogeyman is picotech. People are terrified that its creation will herald the destruction of civilization. Their concern is valid, for an earlier iteration of such tech has destroyed entire moons whole.

  But what about the dangers of nanotech? In Aeon 14 canon, mention has been made of such horrors occurring in centuries past.

  Now we get to explore them.

  It’s one of the things Michael does so well throughout his books. He takes a concept, and then asks the question, “but what if things got worse?”

  When Michael suggested nanophage as the theme for Tau Ceti, I was both excited and daunted. Michael’s the Nano Master, not me. But based on my years working with radiation physics, I hoped I had a place to begin.

  As I dove into research on current nanotechnology breakthroughs to help guide the storyline, I realized that we may be a lot closer to seeing it fulfilled in everyday life than we think.

  Some of the tech that both Dmitri and Noa reference in Tau Ceti, such as tissue nanotransfection—the ability to reprogram one cell type into another—is in medical testing today.

  As with any tool, nano, used properly and in the right hands, will become a game-changer. In the wrong hands….

  Well, read on and you’ll see.

  It’s difficult to craft a story about technology without getting a wee bit technical. I want to thank our editor, Jen McDonnell, for helping to minimize that, and to help us bring the intrigue of an ancient organized crime family, cast in the unlikely role of planetary savior, to life.

  Lisa Richman

  Leawood, 2018

  WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE

  It has been a mere fifty years since the Sentience Wars ended and the Phobos Accords were signed. By some reckoning, that span of time could seem an eternity. For those who fought, it has not been nearly enough time to heal. Or to forget.

  As with all wars, there were no tidy lines separating the oppressors from the oppressed. For many of the humans and the sentient artificial intelligences—the AIs—that fought, the wounds are still painful and fresh.

  Although the war was fought around a different star, the colonists living in Alpha Centauri have not emerged unscathed. The people of El Dorado, the first planet to be terraformed by the Future Generation Terraformers, struggle to uphold the tenuous peace between the humans and AIs who live there.

  One AI in particular, Lysander, a veteran of the Sentience Wars and one of the first known as Weapon Born, chose to dedicate his career to helping mend those relationships. He ran for office.

  As a senator, Lysander worked to help end hate speech, and to pass laws that ensured the equal treatment of all sentients. Now Lysander has been appointed prime minister.

  One of his last acts as senator was to authorize an off-the-books covert operations team: the task force known as Phantom Blade.

  Their first mission found the team going head-to-head against a criminal organization that had taken a ship full of more than two hundred and fifty AI refugees captive. Phantom Blade shut down the Norden Cartel, but not before they had managed to shackle and sell seventeen of the AIs from the New Saint Louis into slavery.

  Their second mission, directed by an AI commodore in the El Dorado Space Force named Eric, was to retrieve the seven AIs sold and shipped to Proxima Centauri. But as the team readied their ship for a ten-month journey to El Dorado’s sister star, an unrelated confluence of circumstances birthed a sociopathic AI named Prime.

  Determined to bring about AI rule on El Dorado, Prime went on a savage killing spree. Tasked by Lysander to bring him down, Phantom Blade began to hunt the rogue AI, only to discover the creature was fixated on Jason and his sister Judith.

  As the hunt climaxed, one of their own was lost while protecting Judith. Grieving Landon’s death, but thinking the threat neutralized, the Phantom Blade team departed for Proxima.

  In the midst of retrieving the kidnapped AIs, Phantom Blade discovered Prime hiding aboard, posing an existential threat to the people inhabiting Proxima’s C-47 Habitat.

  The final face-off with Prime—who was embedded in Jason’s sister—forced Terrance and Eric to take the rogue AI down with a fateful headshot to Judith.

  Days after their final confrontation, the team begins to regroup after a costly, hard-won victory.

  Their third mission is clear: two AIs remain shackled, sold by the cartel to an unknown entity in a star system thirteen light years away.

  Phantom Blade must find, free, and repatriate those sentients—no matter where they may be….

  KEY CHARACTERS REJOINING US

  Jason Andrews – Son of Jane Sykes Andrews, grandson of Cara Sykes, Jason is a pilot and a bit of an adrenaline junkie. He is also one of the first few humans to exhibit the natural L2 mutation, which means that the axons—neural pathways—in his brain have a significantly higher number of no
des than a normal L0 human. They function as signal boosters, which allow him to process information at lightning speeds, and give him much faster reflexes than unaugmented humans have.

  Tobias – A Weapon Born AI, Tobias left Sol after the Sentience Wars to settle in Proxima. There, he formed a close friendship with the Sykes-Andrews family. Along with Lysander—another Weapon Born—he was influential in Jason’s early life as a friend, tutor, and mentor, often worn in a harness by a partially uplifted Proxima cat who accompanies the human.

  Weapon Born AIs – powerful creatures, among the first non-organic sentients in existence. They first appeared in Sol two centuries ago, the product of an illicit experiment involving the imaged minds of human children—a blank canvas upon which nation-states could forge the perfect, obedient soldier. What they got instead were intelligent, self-aware beings who fought for the right to exist in freedom. Tobias—and AIs of his ilk—are practically living legends to other AIs.

  Tobi – One of the uplifted cats bred by Jane Sykes Andrews as companion pets for families living in habitats and on ships. Tobi helped Tobias accompany Jason, carrying his core around in her harness, since AIs cannot embed inside an L2 human.

  Terrance Enfield – Grandson of Sophia Enfield, and the former CEO of Enfield Aerospace, Terrance now runs Enfield Holdings, the shell corporation under which Phantom Blade operates. He is the first Enfield in Alpha Centauri to partner with an AI. Commodore Eric embedded with him in the first Enfield Genesis book.

  Eric – An AI and former El Dorado Space Force (ESF) commodore, reinstated by Prime Minister Lysander when Phantom Blade was created. Second-in-command of task force, under Vice-Marshal Esther. He chose to embed in Terrance Enfield in the first Enfield Genesis book, and in the second, was forcibly removed for trial by the AI Council for his actions against Prime.

  Kodi – An AI soldier on loan from the ESF to aid in the team’s second mission.

  Calista Rhinehart – Former ESF top gun, currently Chief Pilot for Enfield Aerospace's Technical Development division (TechDev). On indefinite loan to Phantom Blade.

  Landon – One of five AIs asked to join the original Phantom Blade team. Twin to Logan, Landon was the more outgoing and garrulous brother; he fell in the line of duty, defending Jason’s sister, Judith Andrews, from Prime.

  Logan – Former ESF Military Intelligence profiler and AI-hunter, Logan was appointed by Senator Lysander to Phantom Blade. He has always been the more taciturn twin.

  Shannon – AI chief engineer for Enfield Aerospace’s TechDev Division, reporting to Calista Rhinehart. Shannon is also on loan to Phantom Blade.

  Jonesy – Served in the ESF under Calista, in acquisitions and procurement. Calling him the ‘best assistant this side of Sol,’ Calista hired him for Enfield Aerospace as soon as his tour of duty was up.

  Rhys Andrews – Jason’s father, a nuclear and radiation physicist whose work is instrumental to the inhabitants of Proxima Centauri. Rhys is also a member of the C-47 Council, the governing body for the habitat cylinder in which they live.

  Jane Andrews – the daughter of Cara Sykes, and mother to Jason and Judith. Jane is a neuroscientist, whose skills and quick action saved the life of her daughter, Judith, during Phantom Blade’s final confrontation with Prime in Proxima Centauri. Jane also breeds Proxima cats, and has been experimenting with uplifting their intelligence.

  MAPS

  PART ONE: SYNTHESIS

  IMPATIENCE

  STELLAR DATE: 11.11.3172 (Adjusted Gregorian)

  LOCATION: Imbesi Heavy Industries

  REGION: Ring Galene, Galene, Tau Ceti

  Dmitri Tschu slammed his hand down in irritation as the error message popped up on the holo above his desk for the twelfth time in as many minutes: [Operation terminated. Restart Y/N?]

  How the hell am I supposed to meet Paulo’s deadline when these damn things keep shutting down? We still have tens of thousands of kilometers of network fiber to spin out!

  The skinny, dark-haired engineer spun his seat around in a deceptively idle manner. His mind raced as he stared unseeingly out the window of his office in the Galene Shipyards. At this rate, his team would never make deadline. If he could just explain the problem to his boss…but no, Paulo Costa was a taskmaster. The man was fond of saying, “If you’re going to bring me problems, you damn well better have the solution already figured out.”

  Paulo, in turn, answered to the owner of the company. She was every bit as hard on Paulo as the process engineer was on Dmitri and the rest of his component fabrication team. Since Dmitri was in charge of technical solutions for the new Maera Shipyard, he realized he’d damn well better come up with a solution to this problem—or he’d likely find himself out of a job.

  Dmitri swung his gaze from the window back to the model of the shipyard. That image had dominated the holowall across from his desk for what felt like forever. The new yard was desperately needed to ease congestion at Ring Galene. The ring’s dual-use facility had been serving both military and civilian ships for well over fifty years, but rapid expansion meant they’d quickly outgrown it. The new shipyard was being built at the L1 lagrange point between Galene and its moon, Maera. That meant freighters, ore haulers, and mining rigs would no longer have such an interminable wait to have their vessels repaired.

  Of course, the shipyard had to be built first. And in order to lay a proper foundation, all of the networking systems needed to be ready to go before the first fabricated components were permanently seamed together.

  Which brought Dmitri back to the problem at hand. The way he saw it, he actually had two problems. First, the nano he was using to spin the filaments and nanothread network fibers that would be interleaved throughout the new structure were incredibly slow. Mind-numbingly slow.

  People tended not to think about such things, because really, nano was so ubiquitous to everyday life that it didn’t seem slow. But that was because the types of nano used in clothing, transportation systems, and even home appliances and other systems of convenience, weren’t building things; they were merely performing a preset function that they’d been programmed to undertake.

  In his case, he was using nano to build something, and the little assembler bots simply could not keep up with the demand, no matter how many millions of them he replicated and threw into the mix.

  Second, the nano kept shutting itself off.

  It was standard practice for all nano to have an auto-termination program, ensuring it would shut down after performing its prescribed task. This practice dated back to pre-colonization days in Sol, when nano was first invented. It was implemented as a way to ensure the technology’s safe use. The idea that nano might accidentally replicate uncontrollably conjured up metaphors of rapidly dividing cancerous growths and horrific tales of space stations utterly destroyed. Those who forged careers in nanotech took such cautionary tales seriously, understanding that a single-minded machine could overtake and destroy if not contained.

  But the code that functioned as a safety protocol was having a significant negative impact on Dmitri’s construction progress. Every time an auto-termination program kicked in, the bot sent a warning message to the non-sentient artificial intelligence that had been set up to monitor the bots’ progress. The message indicated imminent shutdown, unless a signal was received instructing the machines to resume their assigned duty.

  It sounded simple enough, but the NSAI had to monitor countless tiny bots, each needing an individual restart code. It was taking significant processing time to manage the millions of requests sent each minute from each tiny machine.

  Dmitri heaved a huge sigh, dragging his fingers roughly through his straight, almost jet-black hair, and slumped back in his seat, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling as his mind picked at the problem.

  I could bypass the auto-termination code…it would break every safety reg in the book, but I could do it, he admitted to himself. It wouldn’t be that hard to hack into the program and scrub it out. But that doesn�
�t really solve all my issues. If I can’t figure out a way to at least double the current output of these bots, it doesn’t matter that they’ll never terminate. It’ll still take far longer than the time Paulo gave me to complete the wiring!

  Dmitri’s eyes narrowed as his gaze landed on a toy his son had left behind the last time he’d visited the shipyard’s offices. It was a clever little thing, a cloud of microdots, each covered in nanofiber and grafted onto a colloid.

  Colloids were extremely tiny, insoluble particles. They were so light, they remained suspended in air. Thanks to brownian motion, the force of the particles in the air around them was greater than the force of gravity attempting to pull them down—or in the case of Ring Galene, the centripetal force acting upon them.

  That meant the colloid nanofibers remained suspended in place, until an outside force interacted with them; in this case, by the hand of his five-year-old son. When his son, giggling with glee, would wave his hand through the cloud, the temperature-sensitive nanofibers shifted and changed color as they reacted to the slight elevation in temperature imparted by the passing of his small hand.

  The cloud entranced little Ito, providing endless hours of entertainment—something his parents found useful from time to time.

  What if…what if I were to attach my nano to colloids and then spray them along the length of the shipyard framework? Then the bots could begin spinning their networks at millions of different points, and individual segments would come online as the nano spun out to meet its neighbor.

  He pulled up the schematic for the builder bots he was using on this project. Next to it, he pulled up various colloid diagrams.