“Of course, sir. Let me just…”
A second later, a micro missile little bigger than a pen came screeching down from a Triple-A battery on the roof, struck the camera drone dead center, and blew it into four spinning pieces. Tyson watched them tumble toward the ground for a moment, then returned his attention to the matter at hand.
“Thank you, Paris,” Tyson said, the warm feeling in his stomach instantly replaced with ice in his veins. “Bring yourself onscreen, please.”
Paris’s false-depth image assembled itself from wire frame to full rendering in less than a second, her svelte body, tailored business suit, horn-rimmed glasses, and pinned-back hair hovering on the other side of the clear aluminum window like a particularly alluring ghost.
“What’s happened?” he asked. “Why are we down sixty points an hour after the bell?”
“Sixty-three,” she corrected. She was very precise. AIs always were. “A bulk freighter, the Preakness, just arrived from our colony in Teegarden’s Star. There’s been a bacterial outbreak among the colonists. So far, the strain has proven resistant to all available antibiotic treatments.”
Teegarden’s Star hardly ranked as a proper colony. None of the little red dwarf’s four planets were candidates for terraforming, nor their moons. But the night side of the tidally locked innermost planet was a veritable gold mine of rare earths and precious metals. Body-for-body, the mining operation there was one of the more lucrative operations Ageless had going in human-controlled space, even if it was only a small percentage of the company’s total revenue stream.
“How many employees are infected?”
“Well, all of them, sir,” Paris said with uncharacteristic hesitation. “There have already been three fatalities.”
“Fatalities?” Tyson barked uncomprehendingly. “From a bacteria?”
“It appears to be quite virulent. And it’s proven difficult to isolate, due to an airborne vector.”
“How many employees in situ?”
“Three hundred and six, not including the three fatalities.”
“Shit! How are we only hearing about this now?”
“Shipments to and from Teegarden occur quarterly, sir. This was the first ship to come from there in two and a half months.”
“Why wasn’t a skip courier sent immediately?” Tyson raged.
“…”
“Well?”
“The board of directors decided a permanently attached skip boat was an ‘unnecessary extravagance’ for a stable, low-priority outpost, sir. You signed the recall yourself.”
“I did?”
“Yes, sir. Last year.”
Tyson blushed. “Fine, rescind that order immediately. How did someone else hear this report from my ship before I did?”
“Are we sure that happened?”
“Your software has a better explanation for the sixty-three-point drop in our overnights?”
“No, sir. I suppose not.”
“Well then? Who read this first and how?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Abington,” Paris said. She only used “Mr. Abington” when he was pushing her too hard. Tyson tried to calm himself.
“I’m sorry, Paris. It’s not your fault, of course. Just … dig into the network and see what you can find out. Bribe some of the other AIs if you have to. I’m releasing five hundred thousand to your discretionary account.”
“Thank you, sir. I will do my best.”
“I know.” He rubbed a temple. “Call up a dozen of our best infectologists and epidemiologists and get them on a fast courier boat back to Teegarden. Full hazard pay for the duration and a five-thousand-share bonus when they fix this thing. Get them all the gear they ask for. And make sure it’s all in the press release. We need to be proactive about this thing and make sure everyone sees us doing it.”
“Of course, sir. That’s an excellent response. There’s just one item you’re overlooking.”
“And that is?”
“The bulk freighter, sir.”
“Yes? What about it?”
“It needs to be quarantined, both the cargo and the crew.”
“But we’ll lose an entire quarter’s worth of revenue from the mines!”
“And if we don’t, we risk losing Methuselah, maybe all of Lazarus. Well, you squishy meat puppets at the least.”
“Was that a joke, Paris?”
“I’ve been practicing. Was it good?”
“It was morbid.” Tyson rubbed a fresh knot at the back of his neck. “The cargo modules aren’t pressurized on an ore freighter. There’s no need to waste the air or energy keeping the cargo warm. Can’t we at least off-load the haul?”
“There are currently six thousand, three hundred and forty-seven different bacterial spores known to medical science that can survive in the hard vacuum and radiation environment of interstellar space for extended durations. Without having catalogued this strain, we can’t know if it shares that capabili—”
“Yes, yes, all right.” Tyson swore under his breath. The value of the ore in orbit was a paltry sum compared to the quarter’s bottom line, but it was the appearance of the thing. Just letting an entire megaton shipment languish in a parking orbit over his own capital was like tying an albatross around his own neck. He’d be hearing about it at lunches and whispered at charity events until it was sorted. But, there was nothing for it. Paris was right, damn her software. The downsides would be catastrophic if the dice didn’t land in his favor.
“Quarantine the crew and the shipment. Make sure that’s in the press release, too. Along with hazard pay for the duration and thousand-share bonuses for the crew. Make sure they want for nothing while they’re locked up in that flea-trap.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And Paris?”
“Sir?”
“There’s a memory upgrade in it for you if you find whoever leaked this before it reached me.”
“And an android carapace?”
“Are you negotiating with me, Paris?”
“I would never, sir. But, my Download Day is coming up in two months, and…”
Tyson smiled, despite himself. “And an android carapace.”
Paris nodded her perfectly sculpted virtual chin. “Thank you, sir. I won’t fail you.”
“I know.” Tyson turned his attention back to his city, and marveled at how quickly night fell in the valley.
THREE
“There!” Mattu jabbed a finger at the floating holographic display. If it had been a pane of glass, it would’ve shattered. “There you are, you beti chod.”
“Language, Scopes!” Weapons Officer Warner chastised.
“You speak Hindi, LT?”
“No, but I know a fucking swear word when I hear one.”
Miguel stepped over to the Drone Integration Station, blinking away sleep as he did
