Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(26)
It had happened only once before, during a salvage on Mercury. The radiation levels had overloaded his paint band, causing it to malfunction. He had been lucky on that jump. The Minos colony usually executed foreigners by putting them in a low-grade rad suit, tying them to a post on the surface of the planet, and leaving them to a slow and painful death.
Satisfied with his appearance, James hacked the nexus and planted his cover. He was surprised. For a military installation, they made it very easy to hack into the central AI. In this time period, just about everything was patched into a distributed artificial intelligence. While his disguise would fool the naked eye, all the systems on the platform would be able to expose him. The AIs at the turn of this century were just coming into their own, and their advancement would grow by leaps and bounds until the AI wars seventy-three years later.
The strength of the distributed AI was that it was very difficult to take offline. The weakness of it, though, was that it was easy to access with an advanced enough intrusion system. All James needed to do was pipe into the stream, which for his advanced AI band was a simple task. Less than two minutes later, James became known to the Nutris Platform AI as Salman Meyer of Prince Rupert, British Columbia. He assigned himself to the central living habitat and proceeded to give himself as much clearance as possible without raising any red flags.
He also uploaded the schematics of the platform to Smitt. They would need to devise a plan if they were going to pull off a triple heist in such a large facility. It would take a few hours for Smitt to receive uploaded data through the chronostream. Until then, James had to find his own way around this maze.
James hated going into assignments blind. One of the reasons he was a long-tenured chronman, as in why he was still alive, was his attention to detail. He did not like surprises. The unknown was death in his line of work. James made a beeline toward the landing hub, where all the other visitors were being offloaded and processed. He became hopelessly turned around when he reached the portion of the platform with taller buildings and lost sight of where the transports were landing.
The alleys were narrow and looked homogeneous, twisting and turning in what seemed like random directions. Twenty minutes later, he found himself at a dead end. His patience wearing thin, James was about to activate his exo and jump on top of one of the buildings when a voice saved him from giving away his cover.
“What are you doing here?”
James saw the shadow of a giant monster on the ground in front of him and jumped, instinctively powering his exo to a low level as he turned to face the perceived threat. He gaped at the massive mechanoid, industrial by the looks of it, of a type that was commonly used around this time period.
Built with four arachnid-like legs and a squat humanoid upper torso complete with four arms and a head, it towered over him. James remembered battling militarized variations of these things during salvages to the AI wars.
He didn’t know how this damned thing had snuck up on him. It must have just gotten out of the ocean, since it was still dripping wet. Then the mechanoid laughed, a hollow, echoey giggle that sounded distinctly human. The large metal head with the smooth gray spherical face opened outward, splitting down the middle, revealing a woman inside.
A wide grin spread across her face. “I’m sorry. I find a sick joy in sneaking up on people in Charlotte here. Blame it on having four older brothers with vile senses of humor. Are you lost? New residents aren’t supposed to be back here until they’ve been through orientation.”
James caught himself staring at the woman. There was something distracting about her face. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it. “I got tired of waiting to get processed,” he said when he finally found his voice. “Thought I’d check out my new home.”
The predetermined answer seemed to work with her. She flashed him a bright smile. “Well, if you’re on the two-year contract, you’ll have plenty of time to learn all the nooks and crannies, all two square kilometers of it.” Her mechanoid hissed as several panels along the humanoid torso also split open down the center.
The woman, petite, wearing a tight black control suit that covered her entire body except for a small opening for her face, stepped out and jumped agilely off one of the mechanoid’s legs. James wasn’t tall by present-day spaceborn standards, but the top of her head barely reached his chin.
She walked up to him and stuck out her hand. “Elise Kim, Sector Two, research chief.”
James shook her hand. “Salman Meyer, nautical security, Sector Two…” He realized his mistake too late.
Elise frowned. “You’re on my security staff? I thought I had vetted all the guys personally.”
James’s mind raced as a graphic console opened in front of her face and she pulled up a personnel report. His information would be there but if she challenged him on any of its validity, he might have to kill her. He couldn’t afford the attention. His entry into the distributed AI wouldn’t stand up to heavy scrutiny.
Fortunately, she found his name and shrugged. “Ah, no wonder. You were only added three days ago. Here, I’ll walk you back to processing. Did you get your habitat yet? Wait, let me park Charlotte.”
Elise looked at the mechanoid behind her and pushed a button on the console. The mechanoid churned to life and walked away, presumably to a garage or whatever its holding area was. Satisfied, Elise gestured for James to follow her up a flight of stairs to a floating walkway connecting several of the buildings. The two strolled above the city, bathed by the cool sun and a gentle breeze blowing in from the west. The air felt so fresh it actually burned his lungs.