Asterion Noir: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 4) Read online

  Good programming laid a solid foundation, but talent arose from the spark of genius that manifested with the perfect combination of every algorithm interacting with every process and every data store—technical skill, experience, memory, instinct, emotion.

  Asterions’ ability to refine their own programming—to make themselves better, then better again—elevated them above pure organics. An individual Asterion’s ability to recognize, then comprehend, how the whole could become greater than the sum of its own parts was the kind of existential revelation that got one promoted to Advisor.

  Her student had a long road in front of her.

  The maglev arrived at its destination nearly as soon as it had departed, and Maris adopted a quick, purposeful stride as she left the station behind for the factory.

  Vance Greshe was waiting for her when she reached the lobby, wearing a grimace on his rough-and-tumble features. “Thank you for coming. I’m sorry, I didn’t know who else to contact. He wouldn’t want me to involve outsiders, but he won’t let me get anywhere near him.”

  She smiled and touched Vance’s arm briefly. “I’m glad you did. How long has he been at it?”

  “A little over an hour. Luckily I happened to be here overseeing a software update for the assemblers, or he may have burned the factory down and him with it before I knew anything was wrong.”

  “Has he been drinking, or…?”

  Vance cringed. “I think we can safely assume. Unless he took something worse.”

  “Let’s hope he didn’t. All right.”

  “This way. He’s in the wing where we manufacture our limb augments.”

  She followed Vance along a hallway and onto one of the factory floors. The lights were tuned up to full luminance, rendering the flare of the blowtorch only slightly less dramatic than it would have otherwise been. Re-solidifying puddles of metal created a jagged path to its wielder, halfway down the second of five assembly lines.

  Dashiel’s sleeves were rolled up above his elbows, and his shirt hung half out of his pants. Sweat glistened across his exposed skin, highlighting a raw, blistering burn on one forearm. Self-inflicted, or simply the result of carelessness?

  She exhaled ponderously and slid her jacket off, then handed it to Vance. “If you don’t mind?”

  Vance took it with a nod, and she sidestepped the trail of destroyed equipment until she was a few meters away from him. Close enough to be heard, but outside the reach of his arm. “Dashiel, whatever are you doing?”

  The torching paused as he glanced over at her and frowned. “Maris? Why are you here?”

  His pupils were heavily dilated, and his eyes darted around out of sync with the rest of his body. Something worse it was, then. “It depends on why you’re trying to melt your own factory to the ground. If you have a noble enough reason, I’m here to help you do it in proper style. Otherwise, I’m here to talk you down off the ledge.”

  “Will have to disappoint you on both fronts.” He turned back to the line and swept the blowtorch across the next module.

  “This business is your life’s work—generations upon generations of your time, effort and ingenuity are represented here.”

  “Yep.”

  “Are you planning to visit the other dozen or fifty factories you own and burn them to the ground as well?”

  “Oh, I expect you’ll put me down before then.”

  She took a step closer. “Is that what you want? For me to put you down?”

  He stopped between modules to shrug.

  “Why, Dashiel? What is driving you to do this?”

  “None of it matters. Nothing but metals and machines, and what have they gotten me?”

  “Do I really need to answer that question?”

  Another shrug, and he dove into the next module with renewed vigor.

  She needed a different approach. Gods, she hadn’t seen him this out of sorts since Nika abandoned them both and vanished in a dead-of-night surprise R&R…. “I am sorry to keep asking this—I know it hurts you—but did you learn something about Nika? Is that what this is about?”

  The blowtorch veered sharply off course, swinging down to narrowly miss setting his pants on fire before it clanged against the line’s conveyor.

  Hope and fear kindled to life, each swelling to take up equal space in her heart. “You did. What did you find out?”

  “Not a damn thing.” He scowled at the assembler arms situated above the conveyor.

  “You’re lying.” She took another step toward him. “You don’t have the right to keep this information from me. She was my friend, and her absence has carved a hole in my life the same way it did in yours.”

  “Promised.” He twisted the blowtorch around in his hand until it pointed at his face.

  “Whoa, there. Don’t burn your face off, please?”

  “I’ll get a new one.”

  “Yes, but you’ll make quite a dreadful mess before you do. Put the blowtorch down and tell me what you promised.”

  He chuckled dryly. “Can’t tell you what I promised when I promised not to tell you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Oops….” He lowered the blowtorch halfway; the flame weakened, and she saw her chance.

  She took two long steps forward and swept her right arm up behind him to lock an injector directly into his port.

  The paralytic portion of the cocktail kicked in instantly. The blowtorch dropped to the floor, thankfully extinguishing before it landed, and Dashiel slumped down a safe distance away from it. She knelt beside him and wrapped an arm around his shoulder.

  “I’m going to take care of you. Now, what did you promise not to tell me? Where is she?”

  He blinked several times through drooping eyelids as the anesthetic portion began to do its work. “Doesn’t matter. She doesn’t want us.”

  It must have been the best night of sleep he’d had in years, Dashiel mused as he rolled over and hugged the pillow. Light flooded the bedroom from a sun already high in the sky…wait, what time was it? Why had he…?

  Shit.

  Vague, disjointed memories flashed through his mind, possibly in the wrong order. A sleazy street dose dealer. A blowtorch. Nika kicking him out of her hideout and possibly her life. Maris. A trail of melted equipment….

  Gods, what had he done?

  He downed a glass of water then threw on a shirt and shorts, which was when he realized his left forearm was swathed in bonding tape. Also, it was numb. He closed his eyes briefly as the realization hit him that a damaged arm was the least of the disasters awaiting him.

  He exited the bedroom to find Maris gliding around his kitchen and the aroma of Kiyoran coffee strong in the air.

  “Good morning. I prepared you breakfast, though I suppose technically it is lunch.” She gestured to one of the stools lining the kitchen counter. “Please, sit.”

  He eyed her suspiciously, but complied. “How much damage did I do?”

  She smiled blithely. “To your factory? You’ll have to talk to Vance about that, but I expect no more than a hundred thousand credits’ worth or so. What did you take last night?”

  He cringed at the number…but if he’d been left to his own self-destructive devices, it could have been far worse. Losing Nika had nearly ruined his life; if he didn’t start being more careful, finding her again was going to finish the job.

  “The wrong thing, clearly. What did you give me to put me down?”

  “Merely a paralytic/anesthetic concoction strong enough to knock you out for a while. Vance helped me get you home, so do thank him when you see him. If I may suggest a recourse, include money in your thanks.”

  She set a plate of fruit and danishes on the counter in front of him. “Eat your breakfast. Then you are going to tell me everything.”

  39

  * * *

  NOIR had gone quiet.

  Other than the infiltration of Ridani Enterprises—which had been a quiet intel-gathering hit devoid of their usual panache—the gro
up hadn’t made a peep since the Dominion Transit incident.

  Stars, did he just internally verbalize the opinion that NOIR had panache? Good fortune that his innermost thoughts weren’t recorded and scrutinized….

  Their relative silence troubled Adlai more than their crimes, frankly. It suggested they were gearing up for something big; they were busily zipping around the Dominion using simmed identities planted in the Dominion Transit database, gathering tools and intel and allies. For what?

  He sank back in his chair and rubbed at his face. He couldn’t shake a vague unease that had begun to settle into his gut recently—the sense of a carefully balanced governance system, which had not merely persevered but thrived for millennia now, suddenly teetering on the edge of chaos.

  The holding cells across the Justice Division complex were bursting at the seams, even as prisoners were convicted and shipped off to Zaidam with unprecedented speed, and the other Axis Worlds reported similar overcrowding. Massive and sophisticated thefts were being executed in the middle of traffic in broad daylight as if to spite him. A terrorist group sauntered through corporate headquarters and data vaults unmolested, and despite his legitimate best efforts he could not manage to pin them down.

  His hold—Justice’s hold—on law and order was slipping away. He couldn’t say when or why it had begun, and he shuddered to think about what waited at the bottom of the slide if it wasn’t halted.

  A notification arrived from the lab: results were ready on the limb augment deconstruct. Relieved to have a distraction from a question with no answer, yet fearful that accelerant was about to be poured onto the growing chaos, he stood and headed down to the lab.

  Erik Rhom gestured Adlai over as soon as he walked into the lab. Complex algorithmic systems did the legwork of the forensic analyses, but Erik kept a watchful eye on the assignments and acted as a check on the systems’ performance.

  Adlai gestured a greeting. “What do you have for me?”

  “Nastiness. I haven’t seen a virutox this sinister since that time Ballomere Neuralytics’ unfinished muscular regulator prototype got leaked into the nex.”

  He sighed. It wasn’t that he had doubted Dashiel’s veracity, but he’d hoped the supposed ‘virutox’ would be more glitch than malware. Chaos, closing in. “The broken bones that one caused kept the repair centers busy for months. All right, show me.”

  A 12x12 array of data points materialized above the table; on either side of it, graph after graph populated. He blinked. “Show me the highlights.”

  Erik chuckled. “You got it.” The reams of information shrunk to a single bullet list:

  Ridani Enterprises Model Vk 3.2 limb augment: foreign program suprafunctionality analysis

  • hidden in install routine

  • purpose of instructions is masked from users

  • installs invasive adaptive routines into the following kernel-overlay regions of user OS:

  ▪ personality (dampener)

  ▪ risk assessment (dampener)

  ▪ judgment/decision-making (alteration)

  ▪ critical thinking (disruptor)

  ▪ emotional response (dampener)

  ▪ impulse control (dampener)

  • routines increase their presence exponentially to reach maximum pervasiveness of 60% forty hours after installation

  • original programming is deleted and replaced by viral algorithms

  • original programming is unrecoverable except by overwrite of a backup from prior to infection (reinitialization and generation repetition)

  “Sixty percent replacement of existing programming?”

  Erik nodded. “Yes, sir. Two days after installation, the user is in all material respects a different person, to a degree that surpasses what you see in even a Grade III up-gen. And thanks to the critical thinking disruption, they likely never know what hit them.”

  “And this isn’t a one-off? Maybe an initial purchaser installed the malicious code then resold the unit?”

  “No, sir. It’s embedded in all three units provided. Sitting quietly, waiting for the installation software to boot up.”

  “Well, shit. Thanks for the fast analysis. Get the units into quarantined storage and send me the full report and the summary. I have some work to do.”

  On his way back to his office, he issued an alert to the Crime Prevention and Patrol departments flagging the augment model as a priority confiscation and quarantine item. Next, he checked to make sure the sentencing hold on the convicts and detainees with the augment installed—it had turned out to be a surprisingly lengthy list—had gone into effect.

  Finally, he requested an audience with the Guides.

  The d-gate room high atop Mirai Tower was empty except for the usual security dyne attendants. Adlai felt a twinge of shame at disturbing the Guides for a single matter, but it met all the required criteria for initiating such a disturbance. He was simply following proper procedure. He was highly skilled at following procedure.

  Once he cleared security he straightened out the lines of his suit and stepped through the d-gate onto the Platform. The anteroom too was empty and quiet, and the entry to the chamber sat open. An invitation?

  The Guides arrived as he walked toward the pedestal and were gazing at him expectantly by the time he reached it. He found the utter lack of all the elaborate formalities of the Quarterly Reports disconcerting, and without consciously deciding to, he fell into the traditional greeting nonetheless.

  “Guides, thank you for the honor of your time.”

  “Advisor Weiss, you have been quite busy in recent hours. A flurry of orders have passed across our awareness.”

  “Yes, Guide Luciene. The investigation into a recent theft has led to some troubling findings requiring action on the part of the Justice Division.”

  “We have seen the report. A virutox in a limb augment is an unfortunate development, but it does not threaten civilization.”

  “No. However, with over thirteen thousand potentially infected units on the streets, most of them unaccounted for, coupled with the catastrophic effects on any user of the augment, it is a threat to public safety.

  “We already have fifty-six individuals in custody who have fallen victim to the virutox, and the augment has only been available for just over a week. Their cases will all need to be reviewed and, in many cases, re-adjudicated. I anticipate dozens of new crimes are being committed by infected individuals while I stand here briefing you, and that this number will continue to rise until such time as we are able to confiscate the bulk of the augments.”

  Guide Selyshok responded. “This is a worrisome crime, but we are confident in Justice’s ability to contain the damage it causes. Why are the units unaccounted for? Industry actors are expected to keep meticulous records of their distributions, thus Justice should be able to pinpoint their locations without too much difficulty.”

  “The augment was developed, manufactured and shipped by Ridani Enterprises. However, three of the four transports shipping the augment model were hijacked and the augments stolen. I believe Advisor Ridani briefed you on the incident at our most recent Quarterly Report.

  “Thus far we have been unable to identify the thief. In the days following the crime, units of the augment began appearing in the inventory of gray and black market merchants on all Axis Worlds through a variety of intermediary distributors. The data trail has been corrupted, rendering us unable to track the path the augments took from theft to retail.”

  “These are sophisticated criminals, indeed. How were you alerted to the presence of a virutox in the augments?”

  “Advisor Ridani brought it to my attention after an associate of his alerted him to its existence.”

  Guide Luciene leapt in, a nanosecond shy of interrupting. “An ‘associate’? How did they discover it?”

  Adlai suppressed the frown that wanted to manifest. The details of uncovering the virutox didn’t seem like the most salient data point in comparison to the larger crime and its c
ascading effects. “Advisor Ridani did not share that information with me. He might not possess it himself.”

  “What steps have you instituted to contain the threat?”

  “I’ve issued a priority confiscation and quarantine order to all Crime Prevention and Patrol units. They will be taking proactive steps to quickly get as many units of the augment off the streets and out of vendors’ hands as possible.”

  This garnered no response, and the Guides remained silent for several seconds. He waited.

  Finally Guide Selyshok spoke, in a reserved and measured tone. “Advisor Weiss, we request that you rescind this order.”

  “Excuse me?” The words slipped out before he could compose them properly, and he hurriedly stammered an apology. “I only mean to say—”

  “Individuals who purchase this augment from black market merchants are, by definition, committing a crime by doing so. If it takes a later, additional crime in order for them to be apprehended, the result is the same. They are criminals who need to be brought to justice.”

  “Guide Selyshok, the crimes the virutox spurs individuals to commit typically carry far harsher sentences than the minor crime of making a purchase from an unlicensed vendor.”

  “Perhaps, but the effect is nonetheless to cleanse our streets of the criminally minded, and this is a laudable goal.”

  Adlai opened his mouth, but the response that bubbled up he could not allow to pass his lips. He cleared his throat. “It is. But I am sworn to follow the Charter, and it prescribes specific requirements which must be met for every crime and every sentence. The proper—”

  Guide Anavosa regarded him with a gaze so intense it burned directly into his soul. “Advisor Weiss, do you love the Asterion Dominion?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Do you desire to protect and defend it from threats to its foundational principles?”

  “Always.”

  “From threats to its very existence?”

  “I have dedicated many generations to this precise purpose. I’m sorry, I don’t understand why you’re asking me these questions. If I have offended you in any way, I apologize and humbly beg your forgiveness.”