“The famous Vonderach,” Ribeiro said. “You are as beautiful as you are daring, senhora.”
“Danke schö, Colonel,” Vonnie said. Inside, she was seething at Koebsch. He’d backed her neatly into a corner, saddling her with a workload that would keep her in his sight for the rest of the day — maybe longer.
She’d imagined she could outmaneuver Koebsch and reach Lam before anyone else. Now he’d put her in position to assist the FNEE hunter-killers.
What kind of directives had he received from Earth?
The next moments were hectic. Moving in a daze, Vonnie took the station beside Ash as Koebsch opened another display, speaking with a legal program. Ash refused to meet Vonnie’s eyes, burying herself in her datastreams.
Tavares appeared on Vonnie’s showphone and introduced herself as if they’d never spoken. “My name is Sergeant Claudia Tavares,” she said.
Vonnie didn’t want to put the other woman in a bad spot. “I’m Vonderach. You’re coordinating the FNEE response?”
“Affirmative.” Tavares was visibly relieved.
“Your mecha still use ROM-4 protocols, correct? Our probes can send and receive those signals, but there will be a delay in translation, maybe as much as two femtoseconds per petabyte. Can you lag your response times to match? Otherwise we’ll see progression errors.”
“Affirmative.”
Most of an hour passed in a rapid exchange of adjustments. The AI of the FNEE mecha were dull compared to those of the ESA probes, but in some aspects, the older, larger machines were also more robust. They were built for abuse.
Far below, Probes 110 and 111 stopped advancing through the ice. Koebsch intended to use their sensors like a fence, preventing Lam from moving any deeper into the ESA zone. At the same time, on the perimeter, 115 decrypted most of its datastreams as it was joined by seven FNEE diggers and gun platforms, allowing the FNEE mecha to share its telemetry.
If the Brazilians realized 115 maintained a private channel inside the ESA grid, they said nothing.
Lam’s identity also remained a secret.
Vonnie overheard Ribeiro discussing the AI’s appearance in his mecha with Koebsch. “Our analysts found traces of Chinese programming among its defenses,” Ribeiro said. “They allow human-based AI in their country, you know, and they told us to stay off Europa. They deny unleashing the AI upon our systems, but we believe they tried to hamstring us.”
“That’s not unexpected,” Koebsch said. “Your country buys most of its deuterium from China. They want to protect that income.”
“They are lovers of dogs,” Ribeiro said off-handedly, drawing another smirk from Ash, who covered her mouth by chewing on her thumbnail.
You little sneak, Vonnie thought, not without admiration.
How the heck had Ash made Lam appear like a Chinese AI? Because of his nationality? His original mem files had been based in PSSC ROM-20 protocols, which Vonnie had modified into ESA standard ROM-12 when she assembled him.
Ash could have resurrected his source codes. More likely, Ash had grafted new packets of Chinese code into Lam’s menus. The ESA maintained a library of stolen PSSC encryptions, and Ash had proven masterful at subverting AIs. It helped that her equipment was a cut above everything in the FNEE camp. If she’d laced his menus with PSSC recognition codes, Lam must have sounded like he was trying to hide his origin during his first exchanges with the FNEE when in fact he was only writing that code out of himself. Ash had double-crossed the Brazilians and Chinese, leading one to accuse the other…
What game was Koebsch playing at?
From his indignation with Vonnie, he’d expected the Brazilians to blame the ESA. Yet as soon as the Brazilians asked for help, Koebsch offered them an alliance. That meant the ESA leadership on Earth had prepared Koebsch for either contingency. They’d known about Lam through backchannels with Ash or Frerotte.
I thought I was a step ahead of Koebsch, but he’s left me behind, Vonnie thought. Why? Why is it so important to make the Brazilians our friends instead of leaving them in a loose association with the Chinese?
Down inside the ice, the FNEE mecha crossed into ESA territory. Probe 115 moved with them, then branched away into the catacombs as the surviving ESA spies and Probes 110 and 111 sifted through the ice. They hoped to flush Lam from hiding or to discover his trail.
Near the sunfish colony, the spies registered two flurries of activity — one brief, the other sustained for twelve minutes — but neither was Lam. Both movements were accompanied by sonar calls, and the second included a staccato drumming in the rock. The sunfish were reacting to the mecha invasion.
Other members of the ESA crew appeared on their group feed, indignant and confused.
“Koebsch? Koebsch? Why are there FNEE mecha mixed with our probes!?” Pärnits shouted as O’Neal said, “This goes against everything we’ve accomplished.”
Koebsch shut off access to his station, glancing once at Vonnie. “You explain,” he said. “If they want to haggle, that’s your job. Tell everyone they can monitor our progress if they want, but no one interferes. Frerotte is in control of our spies. I’m in charge of our probes. That’s final.”
Vonnie managed to nod. “Yes, sir.”
I’ve never heard him like this, she thought. He’s flattering with Ribeiro and rude with us. He almost seems like he’s punishing himself, too. Koebsch might agree with Dawson about changing our approach to the sunfish, but he’s loyal to our crew. He hates letting the Brazilians into our grid.
I need to talk to Ash and find out what’s really going on.
The wait was excruciating. Koebsch kept both women at their stations long after Vonnie resolved the progression errors between ESA and FNEE mecha. He made Ash stand by for more file transfers even when Ribeiro said his team was done.
As the FNEE mecha and Probe 115 skittered through the ice, Vonnie worried that a Brazilian gun platform would light up the darkness at any instant, riddling Lam with its 30mm chain guns.
Each of the FNEE war machines looked like a table with eight crab legs and two short-barreled turrets. Ammunition belts sprang from its top in coils sheathed against the cold. The sensor array was small and crude and tucked between the guns. Its legs were sized like those of a sunfish, yet less articulate, with four hinges. Worse, the legs were naked steel and arranged incorrectly in two rows instead of around its circumference. All of these factors would hamper any attempt at communication if the sunfish were unwitting enough to talk to these bulky, jerking mecha, which also carried STAT missile launchers.
A month ago, after erecting their camp, the Brazilians’ statement that they’d deployed the gun platforms for self-defense had been absurd. Gazing through the machines’ sensors made Vonnie want to punch someone — not Koebsch — preferably the bastards on Earth who’d set the ESA/FNEE union in motion.
The gun platforms’ radar was crosshatched by target finding programs that continuously adjusted for range. These were not self-defense mecha. They were weapons.
Vonnie could only try to make sure the gun platforms didn’t mistake 115 for an enemy or key on the movements of the sunfish colony. She advised Tavares again and again as their datastreams jumped. “That’s not the missing probe.”
“Affirmative,” Tavares said.
“These blips here are more sunfish. This is Probe 110. This noise is probably tidal cracking around Gas Vent D-7, but let’s keep tabs on it.”