“I know that, Twerp.” Attie picked up the band, turning it over to inspect it more closely. It looked exactly as she remembered. “But the tech team said your data had been corrupted beyond recovery. Who gave you a message?”
“Before we continue, I must ask you to verify your identity.”
“Attie Swan, oh-two-gamma,” Attie responded automatically. Marlis’d had a bad habit of leaving the wristband in the locker room on their old ship, and the family had installed anti-theft protocols to make sure it never got hacked.
“I am afraid that access code is no longer sufficient,” Twerp replied. “Please tell me the name of the movie character you used to play when you and Marlis were children.”
Blinking in confusion, Attie plopped onto her bunk, disregarding the rumpled blankets. Marlis must’ve reprogrammed the AI after joining the pirates. Attie looked toward the empty spot on the wall where her favorite movie poster had once hung. Before escaping the Icarus, Marlis had left a scrawled message on the back of the poster. It’d said Syndicorp had staged the terrorist attack that’d caused Mom’s death. Which was absurd, of course. Why would the corp do something like that?
Perhaps Marlis had left more information with the AI.
Suddenly worried about who might be listening, Attie brought the AI close to her face and whispered, “I always played Sheila Crosby, even though Kris was my favorite. Marlis threw a fit if she didn’t get to play Kris.”
“Your identity is confirmed. Thank you, Attie.
Attie brought her legs up and leaned back against the wall, cradling the AI against her knees. The disk had no visual display, interacting only by voice. Casual observers might not even realize the device was an AI. “Who added this new protocol?”
“Several unauthorized attempts to access my systems forced me to adapt my programming. I estimated there was a ninety-nine point six chance that only you or another family member would be able to correctly answer this particular question.”
“Good thinking,” Attie said. An AI like Twerp wasn’t considered sentient, but was intelligent enough to adapt. “Now tell me how Marlis ended up with pirates.”
“There was a gunfight in a bar. But that is not important now. I must return to Marlis and assist her.”
Attie’s throat tightened. A gunfight in a bar. How very like her sister. “Marlis isn’t here, Twerp.”
“I have a code that will allow me to set up a rendezvous point with her,” Twerp said. “However, my wireless capability has been damaged. I need you to connect me to the ship’s comm system.”
Attie couldn’t breathe for a long moment. If anyone heard even a whisper of this conversation, Attie would be back in the brig. “I can’t do that, Twerp. I’m being watched.”
“My code is encrypted and I can mask my signal.” Twerp’s voice was too loud. Too open. Too obvious.
None of this felt right.
Setting the wrist band down on the rumpled blankets, Attie rose and paced the small confines of her cabin. What if Twerp was a spy? It could’ve been left behind as a plant by the pirates to gather information. This so-called code to contact Marlis could be a way to send information to the enemy.
Attie stopped pacing and stared at the floor. Along with the posters and other personal memorabilia she’d removed from her cabin after Marlis left, she’d discarded the fluffy rug that had once covered the metal deck. Only standard issue items for her from now on. Strict adherence to protocol had helped her rise in the ranks before, and she was determined to prove her loyalty to Syndicorp.
What if Twerp’s arrival is some sort of test the admiral set up?
That would explain how the supposedly irrecoverable AI had shown up out of nowhere on her doorstep. Attie lifted her gaze to sweep the corners of the room, looking for potential cameras. Any hesitation on her part could make her fail.
She snatched up the AI. “I’m going to take you to the admiral.”
The band vibrated against her palm. “If you do that, I will be forced to self-destruct. Syndicorp is a threat to Marlis. I cannot allow them to reach her. It is my duty to keep her safe.”
Torn between the need to help her sister and the desire to prove her loyalty, Attie hesitated. What if Twerp really was just trying to help Marlis and taking the AI to the admiral led the corp to her sister? Marlis would be shot on sight.
Attie felt sick with indecision. “How do I know you’re not here to trick me?”
“I have no way to convince you except to remind you that my Prime Directive is to monitor Marlis’s health and safety. To do so, I will sacrifice myself if necessary.”
Twerp was willing to give up existence to help Marlis. Attie was her sister—she would never be able to look at herself in the mirror again if she didn’t try to help Marlis, too. Even if it meant failing a Syndicorp test. “Okay, then. Tell me exactly what I need to do.”
Doug paced his prison cell on board the Icarus, attention half on his footsteps and half on the feed coming through his cybernetic implant. As a Syndicorp top-secret test subject, he was physically quarantined to the lab, but Dollard did not know how much freedom Doug actually enjoyed. The nanites embedded in Doug’s body allowed his cyber sensitivity to stretch for parsecs past the dampening field, and given enough relays, he could remotely access computers at the edge of the galaxy. Under Syndicorp’s orders, he’d hacked competing alien corporations, diverted warships, and even caused the downfall of a small planetary government.
On his own, he mostly just used his ability to keep tabs on his twin sister.
Lisa had escaped this hellacious test facility and rid herself of the nanites before she became like Doug—more machine than human. As a cyborg, he could never join her. But he could keep her out of Syndicorp bounty hunter hands. It was a simple task to tweak the data streams whenever
