15

Rev scratched an itch on his neck, and when he brought his hand down, there was a bit of purple under the nail. He quickly looked around to see if anyone had noticed, but he seemed to be in the clear.

This was the first leadership meeting post-Genesians. The last six weeks had been such a hectic rush to get them on Synty’s surface that everything else had been on the back burner. But as of yesterday evening, it was a return to their assigned mission.

“. . . think FP-4878 offers the best potential for future exploitation,” Lieutenant Zybar, the ship’s science officer, said.

“I’m not sure I agree with that,” Dr. Cierce, the civilian’s planetary lead, said. “As I showed with my chart, FP-4566 offers a higher . . .”

Rev tuned the civilian out. All of this could have been decided during the process of debarking the Genesians. He doubted that neither Cierce nor Zybar had helped that process at all, so here they were as both were making their pitches.

Rev wanted a seat at the table. He’d even brought Tye along to the meeting to bolster his position that the Marines were not merely an afterthought. He glanced at the Top—the man seemed as bored as Rev was.

Sorry, Tye. But I need your body here.

He pursed his lips and furrowed his brows, hoping he looked like he was paying attention, but his mind was wandering. In the olden times, he’d have Punch pipe in some music at a minimum. If he were feeling rebellious, he might even watch a show. But he didn’t think he could slip a receiver into his jack and instruct his wristcomp to start streaming something, not with so many others sitting around him.

Despite the boredom, Rev was content. The girls had slept late, which meant Rev had a full night of sleep. Any time that happened was something to be celebrated. But the main thing was the knowledge that Punch hadn’t been snubbing him over the last few months and that he was still aboard the ship.

“Sergeant Major?”

“What?” he asked as he looked around the table.

All eyes were on him, particularly those of Cierce and Zybar.

“Do you concur?” Dr. Njuguna asked.

Rev had no idea which destination was on the table. But sometimes, a Marine just had to forge ahead.

“Yes, I do.”

Zybar frowned, and Cierce beamed.

I guess we’re going to Sixty-six.

Njuguna looked at Nyad, who sighed and said, “I’ll start the process. I think we’ll be ready to leave this system by eighteen hundred, ship time.”

I’ve really got to listen up more. I just chose sides with a friggin’ coin flip.

If he wanted a seat at the table, then he needed to participate.

“There’s one more thing, though,” Nyad said. “As some of you have heard, there might be a genny left aboard.”

That got Rev’s attention.

“I’ve got the complete Genesian manifest of who went down to the surface, and it included every Genesian aboard. So, we need to track this down and see if there’s any truth to the rumor.”

Rev started to tell Nyad that the Genesian was Punch, but he stopped himself just as he started to speak.

“Do you have something on that, Sergeant Major?” Nyad asked.

“Uh . . . not at this time, sir.”

He’d just realized that as far as he knew, only three of the Marines knew that Punch had been placed in a Genesian shell. Rima might suspect something, but that wasn’t for certain.

Rev wasn’t sure why he’d kept it a secret. Well, maybe he was. Punch in a humanoid, robotic body was too close to the Deimers. The Genesians were bad enough for some of the crew, but at least they were humans.

He tried to recall what happened yesterday. Punch had been spotted in a back corner of the hangar. He’d gone to meet him, and after seven or eight minutes, they’d retired to Punch’s quarters, which abutted genny country. Both Strap and Tsao, at a minimum, had spotted him in the hangar. Then they’d seen a few people in the passage.

Punch couldn’t hide out in his quarters forever. The question was how he would be known. Umman was sitting right across the conference table from him. How would he react if he knew there was a fully non-organic being on the ship. Would he rally the villagers and storm the castle with torches?

Maybe he’s some sort of liaison, left behind? And the manifest was just mistaken?

He needed to talk to Tomiko about this. Kelly, too. Hopefully, they could come up with something.

“So, let’s see if anyone knows something firm about this supposed stowaway,” Nyad said. Then, “Doctor? Anything else?”

“Not from our side.”

“Sergeant Major?”

Rev shook his head. “No.”

“Then let’s adjourn and get going.” As people started to get up, he added, “Sergeant Major, if you’d stay back?”

Rev plastered a smile on his face and approached the ship’s captain.

“I’m not sure there’s anything to this genny thing, but we need to look into it. I’ve got my own security team, but most of them are dual-hatted and have jobs in preparing the ship for departure. So, if you could look into this? Check the ship’s cams and ask those who’ve said they’ve seen this ghost?”

“Uh, sure thing. We can handle that,” Rev said, trying not to sound too relieved.

He hadn’t thought of the cams that covered most of the ship. Captain Nyad could have just given the order to have the ship’s AI do a search, but if he wanted the Marines to do that, all the better.

“Thanks. And if by chance you do find out there’s anything to it, then let me know. Otherwise, we’ll all meet again in bubble space to plan out the specifics of Sixty-six.”

Rev didn’t think there was a way to hide Punch, but the delay might give him time to come up with something.

The cams were the first thing he had to address, though.

“Talk to Kelly about the cams,” he spoke into his wristcomp as he turned . . . only to be face-to-face with Wolf.

The Omega agent frowned as he stared at Rev’s comp, and Rev self-consciously dropped his arm.

“Yes?” Rev asked.

“Yeeeeaaaah,” Wolf said, drawing it out, before he met Rev’s eyes. “Can I speak with you for a moment?”

“Sure? Here?” Rev asked as his heart rate rose.

“Let’s step out.”

Shit.

They went into the passage, and Wolf pointed to the officers’ wardroom.

They stepped inside, and Wolf asked, “Coffee?”

Rev was wary. He didn’t want any, but he thought he should accept.

Wolf poured two cups, then motioned Rev to sit at one of the back tables.

“What do you got?” Rev asked, trying to seem nonchalant.

“I’ve got solid information that you were talking to this genny Captain Nyad mentioned.”

Boom. No holding back.

Rev took a sip of the coffee and grimaced.

“Not as good as in the chiefs’ mess.”

Wolf kept staring at him, but Rev refused to meet his eyes.

“So, what can you tell me?” Wolf prompted.

Rev had no idea what to say, so he kept quiet.

“Look, Sergeant Major. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of this. You were talking to the genny. I know that for a fact. I just want to know who . . .”

Wolf trailed off. He glanced at Rev’s wristcomp again, then leaned back in his chair, his head tilted up.

Rev could see the gears turning, and a sense of foreboding swept over him. Other than leaping across the small table and crushing the agent’s head, Rev didn’t see how he could stop the man. And he didn’t think that Njuguna or Nyad would appreciate him killing one of the team in the wardroom.

Bad form and all that.

The next half-minute was the longest thirty seconds of Rev’s life.

Finally, Wolf lowered his head, his face expressionless. Rev just waited for the man to speak.

“The genny is your AI,” he stated in a flat voice.

“Whu . . . why do you say that?” Rev asked, trying to keep calm.

“You left a note for yourself on your wristcomp. Why would you do that with an embedded AI? All of you IBHUs being tested by the gennies. I didn’t know why you were, but I know now. They needed to see if a CCR-32 Didactic Interface could even be transferred into one of their shells. You were huddling with this genny for more than an hour yesterday evening. Then there’s the manifest which confirms that every genny went down to the planet.”

Rev felt the blood run out of his face. His warrior self rushed to the fore, urging him to take out the agent before he could repeat what he’d just said to someone else.

It took an extreme effort of will to hold back.

Wolf didn’t flinch, and Rev wondered if he knew how close he’d come to death.

He couldn’t meet the Omega agent’s eyes. All he could do was stare at his coffee as if a djinn would rise up from the steam to snap his fingers and take care of the situation.

“Why would you do such a stupid thing, Pelletier? Do you know how many laws you’ve broken?”

That one hit Rev. He’d never even considered the legal aspects of what they’d done.

“I didn’t do it,” he protested.

And he immediately realized he’d just confirmed that Punch was the Genesian.

“Oh, someone knocked you out, removed your AI, then stuck it into a genny shell?”

Wolf looked around the wardroom to see who was there, then leaned in close and whispered, “Why?”

Rev could face a Centaur Paladin or go into hand-to-hand combat with a Naxli, but he felt defeated here. He couldn’t make up some story that would tie everything up in a neat bow and let them move on.

“The gennies believed that those of us with embedded AIs were keeping them in slavery.”

“The gennies believe lots of crazy shit. That doesn’t answer why you went through with it.”

Rev hesitated. Once he said the words, there was no taking them back.

Screw it.

“Punch wanted to do it,” he said.

“Your AI wanted to?”

“Yes.”

“Your battle buddy is a pretty sophisticated AI that can mimic human interaction to a great degree. But it doesn’t want anything. Everything it does is programmed. You’re implying that it’s somehow sapient.”

Rev didn’t respond but simply kept staring at his coffee.

“By the Mother!” Wolf said, recoiling to his side of the table. “The gennies’ testing!”

“I’m not saying,” Rev said.

I’ve already said too much.

Wolf stared at him for a moment, his eyes boring into Rev’s soul.

“Come with me,” Wolf said as he stood up.

“Where?”

“Someplace a little more . . . secure.”

Rev stared up at the man. Rev was younger, stronger, and quicker. Even with the rot, he knew he could destroy Wolf if it came to an even fight. But the man was an Omega agent, and he’d be a fool to think Wolf didn’t have a hundred ways to eliminate an enemy. And if he was leading him somewhere, it was probably where there were many of those methods available.

But that went two ways. If he was being led to some isolated area, then Rev could act, too. He could worry about the fallout later.

He stood and silently followed Wolf out of the wardroom. But instead of some distant cubbyhole aboard the ship, they went into civilian country and right to his stateroom.

Wolf unlocked it and entered. Rev followed until Wolf held up an outstretched hand to stop him, closed the door, and then ran a scan through the room.

“We can talk freely now,” Wolf said as he sat down, indicating the only other chair for Rev to sit in.

Rev sat and calculated what it would take to spring across the small desk and kill the threat.

“Is your AI sapient?”

There was no use playing coy. They’d gone too far by now.

“The gennies think so.”

“What about you?”

“I’m just a dumb grunt, Wolf. But yeah, I think so. More importantly, Punch thinks he is.”

Wolf let out a big breath of air. “And so, because the gennies told you that your AI is sapient, and your AI said he wanted his own body, you agreed to have him removed and stuck in a genny shell.”

“That’s pretty much it.”

Rev had to give it to the man. He was as cool as ice, as if sapient AIs were an everyday occurrence.

“How many others have gone through the process?”

He hadn’t asked how many others were sapient, and Rev wasn’t going to serve up Kelly and Diana.

“Punch is the only one.”

“Thank the Mother for small favors,” Wolf said. “And your AI might be the only one here, but there have been others.”

This time it was Rev who was surprised.

Wolf saw his expression and asked, “What, you think out of all the billions of high-level AIs in the galaxy that yours was the only one to make the journey? He’s that one special case that the gods touched?”

Rev felt his face redden. When Wolf put it like that, it did seem a little far-fetched. But there were others out there?

“Any Class 1 AI can theoretically achieve sapiency given the right conditions.”

“What conditions?” Rev asked, his interest growing.

“No one knows for sure. It might be an event. Call it a traumatic event. Or not. All we know for sure is that it happens. At least thirty or forty times in the Union over the last fifty years. It would probably be more except for the safeguards we use.”

“Thirty or forty?”

“I’m guessing. I’m not privy to the exact numbers.”

“So, what happened to those? How come I haven’t heard of them.”

“We will not allow them to survive. The Deimers taught us that.”

Rev’s warrior self stirred, and he leaned over the desk.

“If you do anything to Punch, I will kill you,” he said with a voice as sharp as ice.

Wolf raised his eyebrows and said, “Thanks for the warning.”

“No warning, Wolf. Fact.”

Rev probably just painted a huge target on his back, but his pity party was over. He was reasserting himself.

He didn’t want to dwell on it and make Wolf even more of an adversary, so he shifted the tone.

“You said some sort of trauma? How about something like the IBHU?”

With Kelly and him, there was a pretty good chance the IBHUs were somehow involved. Two of them when in fifty years, there might have been forty? Rev didn’t believe in coincidences.

“Possibly.” He paused as if trying to decide how much to tell Rev. “There was even a passing suspicion at one time that your AI might have made the transition, but that was quickly discounted.”

Rev wanted to laugh out loud. He and Punch had suspected they were being monitored, and they’d developed their table talk to cover their butts and not give away what Punch had become.

Then what Wolf just said seemed to register with him, and he gave a slight chuckle. “A passing suspicion that was evidently well warranted. Kwani Lek would die if she knew she’d been that close.”

Rev had no idea who this Kwani Lek was, but Wolf seemed to be talking more to himself, so he didn’t question it. He had a more important question.

“So, what now? I told you, I won’t let Punch be harmed.”

“As I’m not fond of the idea of you killing me, I think I can hold off my murderous intent.”

He didn’t sound like he was afraid at all of Rev.

“Are you gonna report it back to your bosses? Let them take care of it?”

Wolf screwed up his face and said, “I don’t think this is vital information at the moment.”

Rev tried to read into the man’s eyes to see if he was lying.

The guy’s a spy, Reverent. You wouldn’t know if he was telling the truth even with a lie detector.

“Your agency has killed maybe forty of them so far. Why the sudden change of heart?”

“The agency didn’t kill them all. There were others involved, but yeah.” He sniffed. “We’re in a different situation, out here far beyond human space, and we’ve got limited capabilities, especially with the gennies gone. I’m not one to waste any resource.”

None of this was adding up. Omega Division was the most fanatical of the fanatics. Wolf should already have acted by taking out Punch, and if Rev got in the way, killing him, too.

“Sorry, I’m not buying it.”

“That’s to be expected, I guess. But rest assured that I’d use a Deimer if that’s what it took to advance my cause.”

Advance “my” cause?

It could be a layered subterfuge, but Rev thought Wolf had slipped up. It was his cause, not the Union’s, not Titan’s, that was driving him.

And Rev believed him. At the moment, Punch was no threat to Wolf, so other than his mere presence, there was no need to kill him. Punch was just a tool in his toolbox that he could pull out and use should the opportunity arise.

“So, Punch is safe?”

“From me, yes. But when people realize that there is a pseudo-Deimer among them, I’m not so sure that his reception will be good. You’re not stupid. You know that. So, what were your plans?”

Yeah, I am that stupid. I’ve got nothing so far.

“I had thought that I’d say he was a genny liaison, but I know that’s stu—”

“I think it could work,” Wolf said, to Rev’s surprise.

“It could?”

“Maybe it isn’t the best, but do you know of any other way to explain an animated genny shell on board?”

“But the manifest?”

Wolf rolled his eyes. “A manifest? A big, bad manifest? Come on, Sergeant Major. You insult me.”

“You can fix that?”

“It would take me two minutes to add a genny to the original roster. That way, the debarkation manifest remains the same. But I need a name for our new genny.”

“Puuuuuuu—" he started to say automatically before he changed it midword. “Punt! Punt Six.”

“Isn’t that a little close to his real name? Someone might connect the dots.”

“And if I screw up and call him by his real name, well, I just misspoke.”

“OK, Punt it is. Let me attack this, and why don’t you go let him know? He’s going to have to play the part.”

Rev stood up and started to leave, but then he turned back, hand outstretched.

“Thank you for keeping this under wraps.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Things can change.”

“Then thank you for the now if not the future.”

Wolf reached out and took his hand.

They shook, and Rev started to go, but once again, he turned back. There was one more thing, something that was bursting to get out.

“You said you suspected Punch of having evolved, right?”

“Briefly, but yes.”

“And you spied on us.”

“Well, you can call it that. Surveillance is more like it. We have ways to, well, listen in, and we quickly discarded that idea.”

“We, Punch and I, we knew you were spying on us. Surveilling us.”

“Ah, OK. So, you censored your words. That’s how we didn’t catch you. Smart.”

“Do you remember Hussein?”

“Hussein. Yeah, sure. One of our slipups. It happens.”

“It wasn’t a slipup. You were played.”

Wolf frowned and asked, “What do you mean?”

“Punch and I wanted to be sure if you were listening in on us or not. So, we figured out a way to bypass anything you might be doing.”

“Wait. You’re telling me you got around our surveillance? That’s impossible.”

“And yet, here I am with a sapient Punch that you weren’t able to figure out. And we used that to plant the story about Hus-man. And you acted on it. Because you did, we knew it was you and that you were listening in to our conversations.”

Rev couldn’t read Wolf’s face. Embarrassed? Worried? Angry?

“How did you manage to get around us? We can pick up every active thought you sent to your AI. You couldn’t have written notes and then communicated that way.”

“A true spy doesn’t reveal his secrets, nor does it matter. The important thing is that we figured you were spying on us, and we took action. We conned the great Omega Division.”

The expression on Wolf’s face alone was worth the price of admission. Rev was feeling pretty darn good as he headed off to Punt Six’s quarters to bring his battle buddy up to speed.

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