Ode To Defiance Chapter 6

1

Missing

The next epidemic could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist

— Bill Gates, 2018

The first evidence of the impending apocalypse revealed itself on the BrainTrust through the absence of a number.

Chance studied the number on her tablet. “Where could it be?” she asked the universe in general.

Dash, who was examining wallscreens displaying the vitals for one of the rejuvenation patients on board the

Chiron

medical isle ship, asked distractedly, “Where could what be?”

“The CRISPIER we were using for this wing of our deck.” They were on the Wenara Wana Monkey Garden deck; all the passage walls and most of the walls of the patient rooms were decorated like the lush jungle forest that grew into and meshed with Ubud in Bali.

Recently someone with more time than sense had gotten overly clever with the program that generated the renderings, so instead of a static display across the walls and ceilings, animations now enlivened the scenery. A monkey kept trying to reach out from the wall to grab Dash’s glasses, to no avail.

Chance glared at the monkey as if it were responsible for the missing equipment. “We’re missing CRISPIER serial number A32958.”

Dash studiously disregarded the virtual simian assault on her eyewear. “And it’s nowhere on the deck?”

Chance shook her head. “I had our bot wrangler send bots all over, looking for stray CRISPIERs. It’s nowhere to be found.” She pulled out her cell. “Hey,

Chiron

Security? Could you review the vidcams for the last couple of days for a machine that wandered off?” She pointed the phone at a CRISPIER down the passage and zoomed in. “It looks like this.” Chance nodded. “Cool. Call me when you find it.”

They strode into the next patient’s room. All these patients had been pre-checked by the brand new Dark Alpha 43 to ensure they would successfully receive at least some years of rejuvenation from Dash’s therapeutic injections. Each had consequently received a patient-specific cocktail of pseudo-viruses that would reconstruct their telomere chains, among other things. No patient had died, or even developed any serious side effects, in months. These would be no different.

After a quick check of the displays and a few words of encouragement for the man shifting irritably on the bed, they left the room again. Chance’s cell phone rang. “Hey, man. Did you find it?

What?

” After listening a bit more, Chance explained to Dash, “Two guys dressed like lab techs wheeled it out of here, down to the dock, and onto a small yacht.”

Dash asked, “Don’t the CRISPIERS have trackers on them?”

Chance reiterated the question for Security, then turned back to Dash. “The thieves wheeled the machine up to a second one, disconnected the tracker from one, and moved it onto the other.” She listened some more. “The trackers are pretty deeply embedded. Whoever snatched the CRISPIER apparently had some serious electrical engineering skills.”

Chance spoke on the phone again. “See what you can find out about the guys who stole it, OK?”

Dash asked, puzzled, “What would someone outside the

Chiron

do with a CRISPIER, anyway?”

Chance stared at her. “Well, it would be a wet dream come true for a molecular biologist or a geneticist. I mean, they don’t have anything like it dirtside.” The CRISPIER was used for manufacturing the rejuvenation cocktail, among other things. Dash and Chance were the most advanced, most skilled users of the machines at this point, but other medical researchers on the

Chiron

were moving fast to catch up and apply it to other purposes.

Dash nodded briefly, frustrated. “Yes, but we haven’t actually had time to write a formal manual for programming it yet. How could anyone use it without instructions?”

Chance shrugged. “I’ll bet you could figure it out without instructions. In some sense, you did.” Dash had been one of the two first serious users of the machine; the other had died a while ago. “They’d have to be as smart as you, though.”

Dash would have blushed had she been a pale Caucasian rather than a native of Bali. “Or you,” she insisted.

Chance scoffed. “Just you, Dash. As smart as

you

.”

Dash hated these kinds of compliments. “Hmph.”

Off the west coast of Africa, Ping hopped out of the hovering copter onto the rear deck of the one-time Benin Navy patrol boat that had more recently been commanded by pirates working for the Benin dictator. Ping had had the misfortune of accidentally capturing the decrepit warship over a year earlier and, lacking better ideas, had turned it into a prison for its erstwhile operators. The time had come to do something more sensible with both the prisoners and the boat.

Abshir cut the copter’s engines and got out on the pilot’s side.

They were immediately confronted by Amadin, an enormous beast of a man with maniacal rage in his eyes. Ciara had been collecting vidcam footage on the events taking place on the ship ever since the Prometheus archipelago wound up with

de facto

ownership of the vessel. The boat had suffered a total engine failure while attempting to attack the Prometheus isle ships. Since then, Ciara as Mission Commander of the archipelago had sporadically sent bots over with food, water, and tiny vid drones that scattered throughout the vessel as they approached.

Usually, the pirates on board destroyed the bots and as many of the vid drones as they could get their hands on after taking the food, although occasionally they allowed the bots to take an injured crew member over to the

Mount Parnassus

for medical assistance. Most of the injuries needing such assistance had been inflicted by Amadin. No one had actually died yet, but close calls were growing in number. Invariably, the pirates brought to the

Parnassus

begged not to be sent back, at least not until someone did something about Amadin. Killing him was the universally recommended solution to all the problems on the boat.

Ping had been training Abshir in hand-to-hand combat, and this was his final exam.

Amadin lurched toward Ping, his eyes glowing with his crude imaginings of what he would do with her. Abshir swept out a foot, causing Amadin to trip into the space where Ping had stood a moment before, then jumped on Amadin’s back and banged his face against the deck repeatedly.

It took a lot of banging. By the time Amadin stopped struggling, Abshir was panting heavily. Finally, he stood and faced the dozen other pirates who had formed a loose circle to watch. None of them had tried to accost Ping, tiny and harmless though she seemed. Apparently, word had leaked from the ones who’d received medical treatment on the Prometheus fleet’s flagship, all of whom had been allowed to watch her practice martial arts with her peacekeepers.

Ping clapped her hands as Abshir straightened and barked at the pirates, “Now, listen up! You have a new captain.” She pointed at Abshir.

Abshir looked back, startled. He started to point at himself questioningly, then realized that would not be very commanding and stood straighter to look every pirate in the eye.

Ping continued, “Salute your new commanding officer, or become shark chum the same way Amadin will once I get him back to the

Parnassus

.” She toed the hulking, unconscious body. After handing Abshir a pair of handcuffs, she spoke softly. “Abshir, have your men load this body onto the copter.” More to herself than to Abshir, she continued, “Hope the copter can still fly with this giant lump on board.”

Abshir barked the commands and the pirates did as he told them with remarkable cheerfulness, much enhanced by the opportunity to get rid of the maniac who had terrorized them.

Ping watched the way the men sorted themselves out and was not surprised to see a pattern. Ciara had been analyzing the vidtapes of the crew interactions since the first vid drone had survived long enough to capture some action.

The Accel testing systems Ciara used to identify people with the brilliance, grit, and integrity to receive BrainTrust membership were derived from much older algorithms from the 90s, which had in their day been very reliable at identifying people with advanced leadership skills. Ciara had updated those algorithms and fed them the vidtapes. Two of the pirates demonstrated the ability to forge men into teams. As Ciara had predicted, those two took their cues from Abshir and ordered the men around until Amadin was lugged aboard the copter.

Ping pointed at those two. “You are officially Abshir’s lieutenants. You will not only receive the basic needs of a sailor—food, water, and uniforms—you will also receive…” she paused to let everyone experience the rush of anticipation, “paychecks.”

She waved her hand across all the men. “You can all receive paychecks if you work hard and obey the captain. If not, you can join Amadin on his upcoming deep-sea expedition. Questions?”

There were no questions.

Ping dug around in the space behind the copter pilot’s chair and pulled out a tightly wrapped, crisply pressed blue shirt. The standard BrainTrust peacekeeper’s uniform was black pants with a yellow shirt; the new Navy uniform would be the same, except for the color of the shirt. She handed it to Abshir, and he wordlessly pulled off his peacekeeper shirt and put it on. It fit perfectly, of course, having been printed specifically for the dimensions of his body just that morning.

Ping then reached into her pocket, pulled out a pair of shoulder boards, and attached them. “I hereby declare you to be the Captain of the BrainTrust Patrol Ship

Storm King

. Good day, Captain,” she barked before climbing back into the copter, “I’ll be sending people, equipment, and bots tomorrow to get this tub operational again. First thing will be to strip out the dead diesel engines and put in one of the new beta batteries for power. Today, get your men organized and ready to work.”

Abshir, in a fit of enthusiasm, saluted her. “Thank you, uh, Boss.”

Ping shook her head and saluted back before spinning up the props to fly home. Halfway back, Amadin groaned; she snapped a quick fist to his temple and knocked him back out. “Just don’t need the hassle of you waking up until you’re in the brig. Whatever are we going to do with you? Ciara won’t actually let me use you as chum for the sharks, darn the luck.”

She sat back and continued to mutter. “And now I have a Navy. What the hell am I going to do with a goddam Navy?”

On board the

Taixue

university isle ship of the Fuxing archipelago southeast of Hong Kong, the guest of honor finally arrived at her surprise party.

When Jam walked in, she found an enormous orange-raspberry cake on the conference table; Security Chief Hart was cutting the last of the pieces. Jam exclaimed, “Sorry I’m late. What’s going on?”

Lenora walked up to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “Congratulations, Jam! You’re fired.”

Jam stared at her. “I’m

what

?”

Julissa hugged her. “You worked yourself out of a job. A couple of the kids from Baotong and I can handle it from here.” Baotong was a tiny village from which Jam had rescued the people

en masse

.

Lenora gave more details. “Your idea for holding testing fairs outside the web addiction clinics is working brilliantly.” In China, a popular myth had gained traction that people who spent more than six hours a day online suffered from web addiction, and they were sent to rehabilitation centers with no computers but plenty of barbed wire. Jam had realized that many of the best and brightest of the peasantry would wind up incarcerated in such places and suggested focusing the resources for recruiting BrainTrust residents on them. This worked great for the BrainTrust and the “web addicts,” albeit not so well for the people who ran the centers.

Jam, who knew most about how unhappy those business owners could get, objected. “But what about the angry rehab bosses?”

Fan Hui, a Red Princeling whose father was a member of the Politburo, answered. “When they have a problem, Julissa flies me in, and I speak with them.”

Jam nodded. Fan probably didn’t talk explicitly about firing squads for objectors, but images of such events surely entered the minds of those to whom she spoke.

Lenora continued, “We’ve filled both the

Taixue

and

Mt. Helicon

with residents, and we’re working on a third ship.”

Song, an elderly but remarkable mechanical engineer and one of Jam’s first recruits, added, “And we’ve got new businesses springing up all over. Hardware, software…you name it.” He rubbed his hands together. “I have a team now.”

Jam smiled but remained uncertain. “So, what do I do next?”

Lenora chuckled. “I’ve been talking to Ciara. Now that we have things working pretty well here, we both think your skills would be better exploited doing something similar with her.”

Jam’s eyes lit up. “With Ping?” Ping was with Ciara, and she and Jam were old friends, having first met on their way to the BrainTrust.

Lenora nodded. “With Ping.”

Jam put her hands together, not quite clapping. Then she frowned. “I still have some things to finish up, though.”

Julissa nodded. “You certainly do. I have a list of stuff you need to do for me, among other things.”

Lenora smiled lazily. “Take your time. But as soon as you can leave, you’re out of here.”

Captain Levinsky, commander of the Israeli Super Dvora Mk-III patrol boat that had just made an unlikely contact, gawked at the vessel to which his XO pointed. “What the hell

is

that, anyway?”

The ship, four stories high and rocking slightly in the mild chop, was a most unlikely agglomeration of concrete and plastic. The entire superstructure had a slight glossy sheen in the noontime glare. He thought he could see bare pieces of rebar reinforcing the sides of the vertical metal culvert that seemed to be functioning as a smokestack near the tail of the ship.

On the top deck amidships, a gawky gantry-like skeleton of shiny steel rose slightly, strapped down with ropes. Of the whole the ship, this odd gantry was the one part that looked well-built and carefully engineered. The words

First Chance

were crudely written on the hull above the waterline.

You had to watch the ship carefully to conclude it was making headway. The captain suspected that, if they made it to the ocean and it got caught in the Atlantic Gulf Stream, it would slide backward.

The XO shrugged. “I sure don’t know what it is, Captain. And our intel people, watching the Gaza Strip peasants build it well outside the port, don’t know what it is either. Nor do our spies in Hamas.”

The captain brightened. “Oh, right. I recall the briefing.” He chuckled. “We thought about blowing it up on general principles when it was under construction, but then we got word that Hamas was considering blowing it up too. We figured that if Hamas didn’t like it, we’d just let it go.”

The XO went back on point. “Well, now it’s our hot potato. It just breached the three-nautical-mile limit on Palestinian fishing boats.”

Levinsky peered at the ship. “Doesn’t look like any fishing boat I’ve ever seen.” He pondered for a moment. “I don’t suppose they have someone on board casting a line, do they? That would make it easy.” If there were a flyfisher aboard the oddity, Levinsky could just blow the strange vessel to hell and gone and leave it at that.

But the XO shook his head. “Not that easy, I’m afraid.”

The captain sighed. “OK, tell them to heave to. I guess we have to board them.”

Khalid watched as his two closest friends—really, his only friends—practiced trying to kill virtual renditions of the two deadly opponents they would one day have to defeat.

Wall to wall, brilliant fluorescent lighting made the windowless room feel almost like it was bathed in sunshine. The light splashed unevenly from the rock walls and patches of reinforcing concrete.

The stench of partially dried sweat filled the still air as the fighters shifted to and fro in a flurry of strikes and counterstrikes. Finally, Sabaah accelerated from an already nearly-invisible whirl of speed to reach past the even skinnier arms of his opponent, completing a throat strike. He had once been a skinny little computer science geek specializing in driverless vehicle hardware and software but had turned martial artist to meet Khalid’s needs.

Meanwhile ex-rocket-scientist Uwais, taller and stronger than Sabaah and as graceful as any gymnast, grappled his virtual enemy before being slammed to the ground by his full-feedback haptic sensor suit. His virtual opponent danced up to his side.

Khalid killed the virtuality after the haptic feedback kicked Uwais twice in the kidneys. He turned to Sabaah. “So, you think you can take her in real life?”

Sabaah wiped his brow. “Of course I can. Don’t try to fool me. I know the real person is slower than this virtual simulation.” He shook his head. “She has to be. No one could really be that fast.”

Khalid frowned. “And yet, you were even faster for a couple seconds at the end. Allow me to repeat: I’m not augmenting these simulators. You must be able to defeat these simple renderings since the real people will be just as fast and far more cunning.”

Khalid held his hand out to Uwais, who reached from the ground to let Khalid help him up. “And you.”

Uwais’ chest heaved. “I don’t get it. She’s not as fast as Sabaah’s opponent, but…she doesn’t just anticipate your next move. It’s like she can see the future.” He smiled, a lopsided horror since he’d lost much of the musculature in the right side of his face in the missile strike years earlier. “Sort of like

you

can see the future. Are you

sure

you shouldn’t be the one to take her?”

Khalid shook his head. “I’ll have my hands full with other things. You have to get as good as she is at seeing the future.”

Sabaah spun to strike at Uwais’ shoulder; Uwais casually swung his forearm, deflecting the blow. Sabaah spoke confidently. “Don’t worry, Uwais. You’re getting there.”

Khalid walked to the corner of the room that held the first aid kit, where he filled a syringe with a translucent green fluid.

Uwais shifted to offer his shoulder. After the injection, he rolled his arm around. “Dare I ask what that is?”

Khalid smiled. “A little something I cooked up based on some research by one of the professors on the BrainTrust. Accelerates the firing of the synapses in your muscle tissue a little bit. It should give you an edge.” His voice turned stern. “Once you can anticipate as well as she can.”

Sabaah offered an alternative. “We can beat them as a team. Once I take out the little one, we can take out the other together.”

Khalid, who had planned to start them training on team tactics in another day or so, nodded. “Well said. As a team, no one has ever defeated us, and no one ever will.” He paused. “But they have trained together as well. It still won’t be easy.” He looked at Uwais again. “And you still have to get better at one on one.”

Uwais shook his head as if to clear it. “Again, then.”

Khalid was about to flip the virtuality back on when Sabaah gestured.

“Khalid, who are these whores, anyway?”

Khalid spun sharply, angry. “Never call them whores. I thought we were past that kind of disrespect.” He looked at Sabaah, who was laughing softly, and Uwais, who had joined in the laughter, and relaxed. “Ha-ha. Yes, you both know how to pull my strings. Well done, I guess.” His voice turned harsh once more. “But one reason never to call anyone a whore is that it leads you to underestimate them. You must

never

underestimate these two. Never.”

Sabaah pressed him. “You still haven’t told us who they are.”

Khalid pondered the request. He would have to fully brief them someday, so there was no harm in a little knowledge. Before flipping the simulation back into action, he answered briefly. “Their names are Jam and Ping.”

Diab, the nominal captain of the giant Palestinian floating tub, stood slightly hunched before Captain Levinsky. Levinsky knew that Diab knew that the lives of everyone on board depended on the outcome of this encounter.

Diab could not help the bit of pride that filled his voice as he spoke of his vessel. “I know the

First Chance

does not look like much, but she really is seaworthy.”

The captain decided to let that go and looked at Diab almost sympathetically. "Any terrorists on board?"

Diab scowled. "There better not be." He continued more cheerfully, "About half my residents are children, and half of the rest are mothers."

Levinsky grunted. Just because they were children did not prove they were not terrorists. Still, the more he extended his current line of thinking, the less he cared if they were terrorists. "We have to search the boat."

Diab nodded; he had clearly expected this. "I personally checked for guns and RPGs coming on board. You won't find anything like that here."

The captain waved to the commander of his Marine detachment. "Good. I don't want trouble any more than you do."

Diab stayed skeptically silent at this claim.

As the Marines scattered through the ship, Captain Levinsky walked to the bow, signaling Diab to come along. He pointed to the west, across the Mediterranean that stretched, glimmering in the sunlight, beyond the horizon. "Just exactly where are you going with these women and children?"

A soft glow entered Diab's face, a glow the captain had trouble recognizing on a Palestinian. It was a glow of hope. "I'm bringing my family and my friends and their families to the BrainTrust."

The captain barked a laugh. "How are you ever going to get to San Francisco?"

Diab shook his head. "We're heading to the Prometheus archipelago."

After a moment, the captain nodded. "Of course. Just go around the bulge of West Africa, and you're there." He paused, puzzled. "Are you sure they'll let you join? I hear they have very strict vetting processes before admitting new members. All their cabins are reserved for the best and brightest the world can offer." He looked skeptically at a boy and a girl kicking a soccer ball along the narrow deck. The captain figured the ball would go over the side any moment, but somehow, the players evaded this fate again and again.

Diab chuckled. "But we aren't planning to board their ships." He patted the gunwale. "The

First Chance

meets all the standards required to be a full-fledged isle ship. We're bringing our own cabins, in effect."

The captain gaped at him, then spluttered, "But...but...this is nowhere near big enough to be an isle ship. And nowhere near..." His voice faded before he finished the sentence.

Nowhere near elegant enough, or seaworthy enough, or shipshape enough

.

Diab's chuckle turned to laughter. "She's not very beautiful, is she? But that's not a requirement. The main structural requirement to be an isle ship is to have a spec-standard gangway that can hook up to the gangways on the other ships." He moved to the port side, pointing up to the skeletal structure on the top deck that the captain had noticed from a distance. "That up there is a fully conforming gangway. Their own policies state they have to let us hook up." His voice turned glum. "Assuming we can afford the attachment fee." His voice became determined. "I'm sure we can negotiate something."

Captain Levinsky craned his neck to look skeptically at the gangway structure. “It looks well-built,” he confessed before muttering, “Unlike everything else about this tub.”

Diab looked like he was struggling to decide how to respond.

But no response was necessary. For the captain, that gangway and the care that had gone into its construction was enough. It all made sense in its own desperate way. He was glad he wouldn't be there when...if...the

First Chance

reached the Prometheus fleet. He spoke on his radio. "Men, wrap it up. We're leaving."

When the Marine lieutenant in charge of the search returned, the captain asked, "Find anything?"

The lieutenant shook his head. "No, sir. Lots of women and children, just like he said."

The captain grunted, then turned and shook Diab's hand. "Good luck to you, sir."

When Levinsky returned to his ship, his XO gave him a puzzled look. "You're letting them go?"

The captain shrugged. "Not our problem anymore. If they get where they're going, they'll be the BrainTrust's headache." He pursed his lips. "But I doubt it will come to that. With that tub, they'll capsize and drown before they reach Gibraltar. Either way, not our problem."

US Navy Admiral Edwin Beck, making a futile attempt to blend in with the crowd, stood outside by the transparent gunwales of the main promenade level of the isle ship

Elysian Fields

. He watched with dark hostility as the laser ice show danced across the sky and Enya’s

Orinoco Flow

soared from immense speakers on all sixteen of the interconnected isle ships.

The admiral wore civilian clothes—black jeans and a flannel shirt, protected from the weather by a crisp cream-colored waterproof jacket with a thick layer of insulating pile. His wife had presented him with the jacket years earlier so he could stay warm and look somewhat spiffy even when out of uniform. His look of command, however, even without the uniform, sometimes inspired even nonmilitary men to start to salute before checking themselves.

Tourists crowded the deck, all gaping and cheering as the laser beams, every color of the rainbow, bounced from the tiny shards of ice blown hundreds of feet into the air by the powerful pumps of the isle ships.

Oddly, the crowd did not press too close to the admiral, perhaps because he kept clenching and unclenching his fists as if contemplating whom to strike next. A small circle of empty deck space surrounded him, with only one person standing close enough to shout into his ear as the rhythm changed. Queen’s

We Will Rock You

, known locally as the Founder’s Song since they had played it when the first isle ships first left port for the open seas, now blasted across the archipelago.

Lieutenant Jeremy Lambert, his adjutant, yelled above the cheering, “Much more sensible than fireworks for a shipboard display, I’d say. Much better control, and no risk of fire.” He licked his lips, already chapped in the bitter wind. “And the way they operate the lasers to generate scenes against the ice is remarkable as well. The isle ship renderings are excellent, but the scene of homebrew copters playing laser tag, using the lasers to generate images of lasers being beamed between battling copters, is, well, elegantly recursive.”

Beck clenched his fists again. “Doesn’t anyone besides me understand this is not so much a celebration as it is a practice exercise for advanced weaponry?”

Lambert pursed his lips. “Well, sir, I suppose fireworks were also weaponry when they were first used for celebrations. And this is November second, Autonomy Day, after all. The day the original isle ships crossed from America’s territorial zone into international waters. Pretty much the biggest celebration on the BrainTrust calendar.”

He swept his hand across the scene as the whole archipelago participated in generating the ice spouts, the laser art, and the throbbing music. “And it’s the only celebration everybody aboard shares, when you get down to it.” The BrainTrusters came from all over the world, bringing the oddest celebrations from the most obscure cultures. Just about everyone also celebrated some sort of Winter Solstice, although the entire archipelago had pretty much adopted Christmas as the time to exchange presents, regardless of religion or ethnic group.

The admiral shook his head. “Still, if we had to engage these supposedly unarmed ships in combat, what could those lasers do? See how the lasers shift frequencies continuously? Can they melt our missiles with infrared? Kill our pilots with gamma rays? How are they even doing that?”

Lambert shook his head. “Free-electron lasers, sir. They can shift the frequency of the output by modulating the transverse magnetic field strength of the undulators.” He rubbed his hands together. “They can certainly beam infrared, but unless they’ve made a breakthrough, the frequency modulation tops out in the x-ray spectrum, so there’s no danger of gamma-ray weapons.”

Another symphonic work,

Exodus

, burst from immense speakers on all sixteen of the interconnected isle ships. Lambert shouted even louder, straining his vocal cords, “But I doubt these lasers are strong enough to be dangerous, even though they can go infrared. We have the most advanced military laser research in the world, sir, and even ours have severe limitations.”

Beck answered softly, yet somehow his voice could still be heard over the din. “Why would you doubt they finished the job we started? These people make breakthroughs all over the place.”

Lambert responded respectfully, if doubtfully. “Not really sir. If you look at all the technological advances they’ve achieved, they invariably deal with making a profit or living on the sea. There’s no evidence they’ve developed any tech that’s useful only for military applications. There’s certainly no budget for it in the Consortium’s records.”

“Hmph. Well, let’s hope we don’t find out the hard way that they’ve squirreled away a military R&D effort.”

“Indeed, sir. A war with the BrainTrust would be unfortunate, even if easily won.”

Admiral Beck did not respond to this. He was pretty sure that war with the BrainTrust was pretty inevitable. That was the reason, after all, that he was here studying their oversized cruise liners. The Chief Advisor had demanded it.

The grand finale began as the BrainTrust’s anthem saturated the air: Katy Perry’s

Firework

.