The Exalting by Dan Allen

Author:Dan Allen [Allen, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Future House Publishing
Published: 2019-05-14T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Jet looked at his cards and cursed under his breath. “I fold.”

Decker laughed and flashed his pitiful hand. “Bluffed.”

“Great.” Jet was already down twenty-four meals’ worth of dessert packs from his rations.

Jet shuffled and began dealing another hand. “Has the ASP sprint ship started braking yet?”

The captain looked up. “Tiberius, what’s the latest?”

“Negative, Captain. No breaking detected yet.”

“Jeez,” Jet mutttered. “What are they going to do—pull six g’s?”

“At least,” Decker lifted the corner of his cards to check them and then tossed an ante into the center. The table was a fine metal mesh panel over an air inlet in the maintenance closet. The suction force of the moving air kept their bets on the table in zero gravity.

“Ooh, Rodorian butter crunch.” Jet rubbed his chin. “That’s probably worth two of these.” He tossed in two Talaks ice bombs. They went cold the moment you put them in your mouth. If you weren’t careful they would freeze your tongue to the roof of your mouth.

“Must be AIs only on that ship,” Jet said.

Decker inclined his head. “Looks like it. Even Wodynians can’t survive that kind of force for long.”

“How big is their lead?”

“Tiberius figures they’ll have three weeks on us,” Decker said. He took anther card and upped his bet. “Long enough to knock out all our surveillance satellites.”

“They wouldn’t bother with that,” Jet said. “It’s all about getting first contact. Do you think their AIs can learn the language in three weeks?”

“Tiberius picked it up in a day—of course he had four months of microbot audio recordings to rifle through, plus all of Teea’s notes.”

“So if that’s the strategy,” Jet said, “they’ll target the most powerful political organization, which leaves us what?”

“Call.”

Jet showed his hand. “Two pair, jacks over eights.”

“One pair.”

“Finally.” Jet grabbed the winnings off the grate and stuffed them in his bag. “I’m out. Gotta finish on a win.”

“Looks like you’re losing on purpose. Trying to thin up for your sociologist friend?”

“He does spend a lot of time looking in the mirror in the sanitary silo,” said Tiberius from the ceiling speaker of the maintenance-closet-turned-game-room.

“Shut up, Tiberius.”

“Request denied. You lack the requisite rank to give me orders.”

“Oh, go defrag yourself,” Jet said.

“I have two cores retraining already,” Tiberius reported.

“He’s half asleep and he’s still got twice your wit.” Decker folded his arms across his chest and laughed.

Jet matched the captain’s posture. “Say it takes them two weeks to get the recordings they need to learn the language. That would leave them one week before we arrive. Would they send a bunch of AIs down to make first contact?”

“Only an egotistical human would ask a question like that,” Tiberius replied.

“Okay. So their AIs get one week with the most powerful entity on the planet—the ka that rules that empire Monique claims to have found on the big, flat continent.” Jet unrolled the Rodorian butter crunch and chewed slowly, savoring the highest value token in his dwindling gambling pot. He looked at Decker, then up at the ceiling where he imagined Tiberius lived.

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