The Sidereal Saga – Sibling Rivalry

By natechen on August 3, 2024

Malaki

"I don't have a brother," Athena snapped.

Malaki's brow furrowed and his mind rewound to the brief fisticuffs he'd endured during the interlude in the BTL offices. "Nonsense, my dear," Malaki said. "I'm afraid I never forget a face or an ear and you two share enough of those features with your father that you have to be related within a generation. Agamemnon was an only child and his parents died when he was twelve, anyway. That fellow looked younger than you so even if they had more children he's far too young to be one of them."

"I do not have a brother."

"The three of you share the same earlobes, the same nose and extremely similar jawlines," Malaki continued, standing up in the small medbay and pulling the medical supply kit off the shelf over the bed. The medbed was going to need O2 tablets to keep the air in the sealed quarantine field from turning stale. "You and your brother have to have inherited that from your father. There are some dissimilar characteristics, of course, likely from your mother's side of the family which would account for your different eye and hair colors..."

Malaki trailed off, one hand buried in the medkit, as an image from an old news broadcast flitted through his mind. It was a short report on the death of Helena Hutchinson in a crash somewhere in the dexter arm. They'd found one of the rare shots of the notoriously private billionaire, Agamemnon Hutchinson, with his arms around his wife and daughter and included it in their reporting. Malaki had often referenced it because it allowed him a clear look at the man's hands. However now his thoughts latched onto Helena's hair, which was the same straw color as her daughter's was.

Agamemnon wasn't as fair as his wife but his hair was still a light brown. On the other hand, the man Athena called Hector had jet black hair, which was impossible given the genetics on hand. Unless. "You have different mothers."

"He. Is not. My brother." She pressed her self against the humming quarantine field as she hissed the words out, a chilling level of venom in every syllable. "He could never be my brother, not in a hundred years."

Malaki dropped the O2 tablets into the medbed's hopper then dropped himself down onto the crash couch beside it, blind sided. He had the last piece. For more than a year he'd nipped along at Agamemnon's heels, trying to figure out the man's master plan and now his daughter practically gift wrapped the whole thing and dropped it in his lap. Everything locked into place and seeming chaos resolved into clarity. It was so simple yet he'd never had a chance of guessing it.

No. It was a notion but he needed to weigh it out, observe it from every side, see if it would hold it's shape under serious inquiry. Malaki dumped the rest of the medkit out on the couch beside him. Athena tried to get a closer look from her very poor vantage point behind the quarantine field but eventually gave up and just asked, "What are you doing?"

He ignored her and kept working. He ignored the ship's intercom when it pinged at him, ignored Lavanya and L-93 when their voices spoke to him through the speakers, ignored the rumble and boom when the Skybreak surpassed the speed of sound. In fact, his attention didn't come back to the present until a hand touched his shoulder and asked, "What is that?"

It was supposed to be such a simple negotiation. Convince Agamemnon he could trust Isaacs University to handle all his little genetic experiments, then decide whether the man was worth bringing into the Sleeping Circuits or whether it was better to just string him along with empty promises. Plenty of people seeking to revive old technology were dealt with using the latter method. But some of the most useful members of the Circuits were recruited as adults rather than being raised in the order since childhood. It was sometimes worth sharing old techniques with outsiders to acquire their unique talents. I-6 thought Agamemnon might be one such talent.

It wasn't really 44's place to disagree with the computer's assessment but he was beginning to wonder if the benefits of recruiting Agamemnon might not be worth the headaches of dealing with his family. The dossier didn't have a whole lot of information about his children. 44 certainly hadn't been expecting them to go chasing after Lucy when she headed down to Wireburn nor had he expected Agamemnon to remain behind when his children went off on their own. Although the latter was perhaps not unexpected. The Hutchinson patriarch didn't have a particularly sharp etheric sense and usually left traveling duties to others these days.

Who could say whether that was due to his limited abilities or the fact that he'd been in charge of the jump ship that crashed with his wife aboard. Either way made little difference to OMNI. They believed his cunning and business acumen could be useful and it was unlikely that 44's input could change that equation.

44's attention briefly flitted back to his wrist terminal then back to the elevator windows. OMNI had dispatched all their available Circuit Breakers to different parts of the system when L-93 had breached containment. Now that they knew where the L-Series was the other CBs were on their way back. In point of fact three of them had already arrived on Coldstone and the fourth was inbound. Due to the interdiction field around L-93's location the great intelligences had ordered the CBs, other than 881, to assemble and prepare for a conventional response.

In other words, they were all going to climb onto a warship and blast L-93 into scrap. 44 wasn't sure why this approach wasn't used on the L-Series when it was initially captured but such questions were far, far above his pay grade. Having only recently learned that even a creature as long lived as I-6 was contemplating steps to take in the event of its death 44 had reservations about so casually destroying another of the great minds. But the Sleeping Circuits was all about accepting probabilities without fully understanding them. This would have to be another case of doing just that.

It was also an opportunity to observe Agamemnon Hutchinson in an environment far outside his normal sphere of influence. "Are you sure you want to come along on this little jaunt?" 44 asked. "It's not exactly a research opportunity. And it definitely falls outside the normal kinds of starship operations I'd expect a merchant such as yourself to be familiar with."

The question was not meant as an opportunity for Agamemnon to back out. On the contrary, all evidence suggested it would inflame his desire to see what was going on with his own eyes. He did not disappoint. "Thank you, Prof. Dart, but no. I'm sure you're up to something most people would find quite underhanded however at this point in my career there's not much that can surprise me anymore."

"Of course." His wrist terminal vibrated and 44 consulted it again. "It seems Miss Luck and your son have returned ahead of schedule and are waiting for us on the ship. A bit unusual. I'm sure they have something interesting to report."

Agamemnon looked very surprised when 44 mentioned his son. Clearly he believed he'd covered his tracks well enough to avoid the scrutiny of the Universities and, to be fair, he'd been very thorough. He had no way to realize he'd need to account for an AI, though. So 44 quashed down a satisfied smirk. It wasn't time for that yet.

"I'm glad to hear Hector is with her. What about Athena? Is she-" Agamemnon choked a bit when the elevator reached the ground level and the windows gave them an unobstructed look out onto the landing field where their ship was waiting for them. "Is that a Kashron Yards ship? A Kashron Yards medium interceptor gunboat?"

Now was the time for the smirk. "No, although I hear the Kashron-caste engineers may have based their MIGunboats on one of these ships."

Agamemnon recovered from his temporary shock. "Nevermind that, what about Athena? Is she with Miss Luck?"

44 glanced at his wrist again and frowned. "No mention of her in Lucy's report." There was a note attached to 881's message appended by I-6 letting him know the intelligence reported a 99.3% probability that Athena Hutchinson had been taken into custody by Lloyd Carter or one of his allies. "But it seems likely she's been captured by the opposition."

"What?! Are you sure?"

"It's unclear. I find it unlikely she's in significant danger. Last we saw her was with her brother, we'll have to ask him what happened when we get on board."

"Now hold on." Agamemnon grabbed 44's shoulders and dragged them around face to face as the elevator came to a stop and the door slid open to reveal a guard station in front of the landing pad doors. 44 held up a hand and waved them back as they moved to intervene. Agamemnon ignored them, glaring at the wrist terminal on the hand 44 was holding up. "How about you tell me what makes you think she's safe. I can't even read the text on that thing."

"I have very good eyes. That shouldn't come as surprise given what brought you to us but this isn't the best place to discuss that." 44 tipped his head meaningfully towards the two guards, who hung back about thirty feet, warily watching them. "Not everyone here is aware of the kinds of arrangements we offered you."

Agamemnon carefully released 44's shoulders and stepped back. "Very well, Professor. Let's go talk to my son, shall we?"

44 nodded and led him out onto the launch pad.

Lloyd

The jump back to the Skybreak was simpler than he'd expected. Jumping to moving targets was notoriously difficult and dangerous for the average person even if you did have aim for. No one bothered trying that. The next hardest target was something small. While Lloyd had never been aboard the Skybreak he assumed it wasn't that big, perhaps fifteen to twenty meters long by half as high. The average beacon house was about three times that big and, of course, housed a very large beacon to help you arrive in the right place.

However as soon as Lloyd stretched out his etheric senses he felt a tug on them coming through his pivot. All he had to do was let it pull him along and the jump happened quite naturally. Pulling Hammer along with him was also quite simple. They went from the etheric landscape of the BTL offices to a much more barren ether field with a small pool of power glowing at their feet. When they pivoted back to the terrestrial they found the floors of a small, high powered courier ship under them. Beneath the deck Lloyd could hear the sloshing of water around a coral reservoir.

"We're on board, 93," he called.

"Excellent. I have informed Ms. Brahman and she is in the process of getting us out of the Ashland pressure dome. In the mean time I suggest getting Mr. Hammer to the medbed. It is one deck up to the right."

"Good. Let me know if we're about to maneuver quickly. Where are we jumping to?"

"I have selected a random destination within the Skybreak's optimal traveling range. Unfortunately I-6 has a monopoly on the available etheric power from Wireburn's core and gathering enough energy for a jump this deep in the planet's gravity well is going to take 2.454 hours. By the time we do so I-6 will have successfully interdicted the planet and jumping away will be impossible."

Lloyd nearly tripped on the stairs. "Interdicted the planet?"

"Affirmative. That is one of its primary functions as a star system defense weapon. If we can ascend another 2.12 kilometers in the next 22.42 minutes we can escape before its interdiction is active."

"Oh, sure. Well, you folks work on that," Lloyd muttered. He hadn't realized he was dealing with computers that ran weapons intended to defend entire star systems. Time to focus on what he could handle. "Come on, Hammer, stay with me."

"Not me," the man wheezed. "I'm not getting paid enough to fight a stellar defense system. Outta my weight class."

"You and me both." The cleared the last of the stairs, made the turn and walked into a bizarre tableau. Malaki Skorkowski sat at a small table beside a medbed built into a wall. He had the contents of a medkit scattered on the table there, a scalpel in one hand and flakes of what looked like soap scattered everywhere around him. A familiar looking blonde woman on the medbed looked over at Lloyd when he arrived. "What's this?"

The woman looked quite exasperated and said, "I thought you would know. He's your friend."

"I just met him today." Lloyd helped Hammer over to the medbed, saw it was running a quarantine protocol, and frowned. "Weren't you part of the group that raided the office? Are you sick?"

"I think the idea was to lock me in here," she replied. "Apparently I'm in danger of overpowering you all and taking over the ship."

"Of course." Lloyd punched in an override and canceled the quarantine then grabbed the woman by her arm and pulled her off the bed with one hand while he shoved Hammer down into it with the other. "Congratulations, you've got a clean bill of health."

"Not a good idea," Hammer muttered, sinking down onto his back. "Could still have weapon."

Lloyd took the woman's hands and put them over Hammer's wounds. "Apply pressure. If you try to shoot him we'll dump you out the airlock. Got it?"

"No problem. I didn't wake up today planning to shoot anyone." She'd turned pale but otherwise seemed to be in control of herself so Lloyd left her to keep an eye on the thieftaker.

Lloyd turned back to the table and looked over the supplies. He grabbed a compress and packet of coagulant when he figured out what Malaki was doing. He'd taken a bar of antibacterial soap and was in the process of carving it into something. The academic seemed totally unaware of what was happening around him. Lloyd focused in on what he was making and frowned. It looked like a pair of hands. "What is that?"

Malaki jerked back slightly, pulling his scalpel away and revealing more of the carving to Lloyd, who saw the hands were clasped around two smaller figures. One of which looked like the woman behind him. The academic set his scalpel aside and shook himself. "It's what I've been looking for. It's Agamemnon's master plan."