Eagle X, Mission 21: CTRL

Part 8: Patricia

Patricia consulted her datapad before typing lines of code into the cracked data node. The mediocre security measures crumbled under her first exploratory probes, it stood no chance against her rewriting of its protocols. The trick was to avoid the attention of Station-Z11221 and Mastermind-308. One busied itself with maintaining station processes, but the other actively hunted for threats to the system. As of that moment the AI only had Chillard's name, but it was well designed and clever. It was only a matter of time before she too was discovered.

The data node beeped and Patricia took a moment to lean back and stretch. The wound from Chillard's energy round was healing slowly, but it still stung. Liam and Scott's R.Nano would have healed the damage in a matter of minutes, but her mutated strain, dubbed R.Nano2, took much longer. She wasn't complaining. The ability to recover from energy rounds was a miracle in an age where the most advanced military nano could only minimize the pain.

Patricia picked up her datapad and recorded her observations. The R.Nano2 was still new and there was still much they didn't know.

The node screen went blank then came back to life displaying images from four different interior zone security cameras. She watched as groups of station security guards ran sweeps of the area. Armed with tasers, they traveled on foot in teams of two. They ran a slow and sloppy standard grid search pattern. Patricia thought it interesting the security force was composed of all human staff. A construct or two would have made the teams more efficient, negating the ever-present possibility of organic error. She chuckled, they'd also have left the force open to cracks.

"Clearly they aren't sure if we're here," she said over her shoulder. "I suspect they'll finish their sweep and leave."

Two series 4 constructs looked up, their identical low-faces caricatures of her own with exaggerated features. She'd named their personality algorithms Thing 1 and Thing 2. They were a pet Virtual AI project of hers. Their chassis belonged to a pair of station constructs decommissioned for aberrant behavior.

The thought of it gave Patricia a pang of guilt. She'd tried to save them before their personality matrices were lost, but she'd been too late. The station Core AI had already scrubbed their data. Personality death because they'd made the mistake of falling in love. It was that guilt that made her upload Thing 1 and Thing 2 into their systems. Patricia wished she'd been able to at least get the two construct's names, but even those had been wiped.

"Are you sure?" Chillard asked from the corner.

"I'm not, but the size of the search team and their lackadaisical efforts suggest this is more routine than an active event. I suspect someone spotted us heading this way and they're merely following a lead."

Patricia had carried him to her safe house hidden not too far from the rest hall. He'd been quiet while she plopped him down in a folding chair and had one of the constructs restrain him. She suspected he'd used the time to attempt to use his mind-work on her. Her mental barriers barely held against his prodding, but her mental discipline seemed to give her the necessary edge to keep him out. Even so, she continued to actively block him.

"That makes sense," he mumbled.

"Cheer up, up, up, pal," Thing 1 said.

"Turn that frown up, up, up, side down," Thing 2 added.

"Leave him alone, you guys," Patricia said.

"But he looks sad, sad, sad, commander."

"I am not sad. I am confused."

Patricia turned away from her work and gestured for the Xnean to proceed.

"Felarnians don't use constructs, don't trust them. Yet you are running a covert op with two calling you commander. Another contradiction to the known data on your species" Chillard's brow furrowed. "Nothing about you makes sense."