Against That Time
The Maauro Chronicles
By
Edward McKeown
An Imprint of Copper Dog Publishing, LLC
The Maauro Chronicles: Against That Time
Copyright ©2016 Copper Dog Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
Moondream Press
An Imprint of Copper Dog Publishing LLC
537 Leader Circle
Louisville, CO 80027
www.copperdogpublishing.com
Ordering Information:
Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.
Printed in the United States of America
Credits:
Author: Edward F. McKeown
Managing Editor: Michael H. Hanson
Creative Director: Helen H. Harrison
Proofreader: Julie Harrison Saunders
Cover Art: Pat Ventura
ISBN: 978-1-943690-06-0 (Paperback)
978-1-943690-08-4 (Kindle)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016943936
Fiction: Science Fiction
Dedication
To my mother
Catherine McKeown
and my father
Edward Francis Xavier McKeown
Sonnet 49
Against that time, if ever that time come,
When I shall see thee frown on my defects,
When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum,
Called to that audit by advis’d respects;
Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass,
And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye,
When love, converted from the thing it was,
Shall reasons find of settled gravity;
Against that time do I ensconce me here,
Within the knowledge of mine own desert,
And this my hand, against my self uprear,
To guard the lawful reasons on thy part:
To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws,
Since why to love I can allege no cause.
—William Shakespeare
Contents
Dedication
Sonnet 49
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
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Chapter One
To All Guild Operative Staff-Classified-
From Thieves Guild Central Advisory Committee
Subject: Artificial Intelligence Entity calling itself Maauro; first encountered in Kandalor system, present location unknown. This being is thought to be a self-aware AI created by an unknown and possibly extinct species. It has the appearance of a human teenage female, details below. All Guild operatives who have encountered this entity have been killed, wounded or disappeared. Several bases and vessels have been lost as well. Avoid all contact with Maauro. If attacked, alert Confederate or other government military authorities to her existence and the threat this ancient war machine poses….
Advertisement: Lost Planet Expeditions: Survey, Security, Trade Missions.
Exno-archeology a specialty
Contact Wrik Trigardt, Master of SV “Stardust” at First Landing Spaceport, Star Central.
“We find the lost.”
“I like it,” Jaelle said, smiling at me as she looked over my shoulder at the holo-screen. The smile was not for the faint of heart. Nekoans were humanoid; but with her fangs, yellow slit-eyes and mane of rough, blond hair; she had a leonine look.
I smiled back. “Maauro vetoed my original suggestion: “We’re the people who find your previous expedition.”
“She’s a very sensible, ancient killing-machine.”
I coughed. “Ah, she prefers android.”
Jaelle gave me the enigmatic look she reserved for discussions of Maauro. The rivalry between them for my attention was usually good-humored. Unlike Jaelle, Maauro had no sexual interest in me, but in some respects my relationship with Maauro was the closer. I’d found Maauro, abandoned for 50,000 years on an asteroid base of what we called the Old Empire. I’d saved her then and she’d returned the favor with interest since. Truth was, Maauro was my first real friend since I’d fled my homeworld in disgrace.
“The question is,” came an unwelcome, gravelly voice, “will it bring in any business before we starve?”
I turned from the screen and threw Dusko a sour look as the Dua-Denlenn strolled in and casually draped his lean form over a cheap lounge chair. He looked like a woodland elf gone bad: tall, with salt and pepper hair through which pointed ears poked. I could never get used to the pupilless eyes; blue from lid-to-lid.
“No reason it shouldn’t,” Jaelle said, leaning back in her own chair, complete with a cutout for her tail. “After all, Wrik is known for finding that Old Empire Base before the government grabbed it up.”
“No need to remind me,” Dusko said. “His other find on that rock cost me everything but my life.”
“Pity about that last,” I muttered.
“Wrik,” Jaelle reproved. “I thought you two buried the hatchet when we escaped from the Infester Artifact.”
“We are, perhaps, too much prisoners of the past to escape it so easily,” Maauro’s high, gentle voice injected. As usual, and despite weighing more than any of us, she’d silently padded up on the group.
We all turned as she slipped into the room. The slender android brushed back an errant lock of her long, black, hair-like filaments, which, bound with a yellow bow, cascaded down her back and framed her pale, delicate face with its impossibly large aquamarine eyes. She wore a midnight blue and dark red jump suit, which was simply her outer casing textured to resemble fabric. Maauro had patterned herself on a game simulation she’d hacked out of my ship’s computer; not realizing the image was an animation. Her ability to morph into different shapes had failed her soon after, or so she claimed. I suspected she’d come to identify with her new appearance and simply preferred it.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“Wandering about the city, observing the diversity and functions of biological life. I h
ave no need to rest and curiosity consumes me.”
“You know what they say about curiosity and the cat,” I replied, then looked at Jaelle. “Whoops, sorry.”
“I am not a cat. Your poor little monkey brain just looks for familiar patterns to hang labels on.”
“In any event,” Maauro said, “you need not worry for me. I believe I have persuaded the Guild that conflict with me is unrewarding.”
“Too true,” Dusko replied.
She eyed the Dua-Denlenn. “Do you still identify with the Guild? They cast you out.”
He yawned. “Old habits die hard. I suppose. No, I have thrown my lot with all of you. The Guild is no friend to me now.”
“Good,” she said. “The past should not concern us anymore— only the future. Speaking of the future, Jaelle, how did your arrangements go?”
“Well it took some doing to get us back in the good graces of Tenevan considering it’s been five years since we last did any shipping for her. But I believe I can talk her into letting us ship sunstones for her since we’re the only carrier that will go express to Star Central. We’ll barely break even on the first few loads in terms of shipping, but by taking a percentage of what the stones will go for locally and acting as her agent, we’ll clean up. We were incredibly fortunate to find her here on this world heading back to Frosteer.”
“So you are off to see her tonight?” Dusko asked.
She nodded.
“Sure you don’t want company?” I said.
“Too much chance of letting something slip if we are both there,” she replied. “We have too much to hide. Besides, you weren’t enthusiastic about the Nekoan baths.”
“Not at that heat! That’s not relaxing, it’s cooking.”
“Well, if I am going to make it,” Jaelle said, “I’d better get going. My bag’s back in my office.”
Jaelle kissed me. I was a little shy of doing that in front of the others, especially Maauro, who was watching with considerable interest, but shyness was not part of Jaelle’s character. She waved at Dusko then patted Maauro on the shoulder. Just short of the door, Jaelle exploded into a backflip and leapt with a yowl. Maauro casually, but quickly, changed position and snagged Jaelle out of the air.
“Why,” Maauro asked, holding Jaelle upside down, “do you persistently try to pounce on me? This has not worked once.”
Dusko shook his head. I grinned ruefully.
Jaelle smiled. “It keeps you on your toes, Kit-sister. One of these days I may get lucky.”
“Even if you did,” Maauro said, “your teeth and claws would never make any impression on me.”
“Nor should they,” Jaelle said, offended. “We are just playing, Kit-sister.”
Maauro upended Jaelle and set her on her feet. “Have fun on the southern continent.”
“I will. Keep the boys out of trouble.” She reached over and tousled Maauro’s hair before leaving.
“Your girlfriend,” Maauro said to me, “is an amalgam of unusual behaviors.”
“Hey, at least she likes you. That’s more than any of my exes would have managed under the circumstances.” Behind us, I heard Dusko give a Dua-Denlenn version of a sigh as he turned back to his screen.
We closed up the office on a successful day, our treasury full of credits for the first time since we’d arrived. Dusko vanished to pursue whatever occupied his spare time. Maauro forbade any genuinely criminal activity on the former crime-lord’s part, but we knew he kept his hand in on the local doings. As usual, we did not say good night.
I had no particular plans for the evening with Jaelle gone on a trading mission. When she wasn’t around, I sometimes hopped bars to kill time. I never came back to the apartment drunk, she wouldn’t put up with that unless we were both doing it, but Jaelle was used to males being gone for extended periods. It was part of her culture and she was independent even for a Nekoan female. Sometimes this left me with more time to kill than I was comfortable with.
I stood, suddenly restless. “Well good night, Maauro. I’m going to go hunt up some food and maybe a few belts afterward.”
Maauro turned to regard me. “So soon?”
I looked back in mild surprise. “We’ve been here twelve hours; it’s already nine. Not much left to do today anyway.”
“Oh.”
“Are you going up to the rooftop to visit the stars?” I teased.
“I suppose so,” she said distantly. “I have not had the opportunity to make new friends since we arrived. Any friend I do make constitutes a threat to our security. My pretense of being a mutated human is difficult to sustain on close exposure.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.” On our second voyage after fleeing Kandalor, Maauro had tried to pass as a teen girl with a pack of kids she’d fallen in with on Stauver, only to find out later that they had almost immediately realized her artificial origin.
“My friendship can be an unsafe thing,” she continued. “I fear that my nature and the occupation we have chosen to pursue would cause ordinary friends to be targeted as vulnerable parts of my network.”
She turned back to the window and the vast and bejeweled city glowing beyond the spaceport. Her shoulders were slightly hunched and her hands twisted together and pressed to her chest.
How could I be so stupid, so thoughtless? Maauro spent her nights here, usually on the roof, or wandering by herself in the city. Why didn’t it occur to me that a thinking being with emotions would fall prey to loneliness? I walked over and put my hands around her shoulders; contact she would not permit with anyone else. She half-turned, but did not look up at me.
“God, I’m an idiot. I don’t know why you put up with me. How about you come out to dinner with me, and then home? The apartment isn’t big, but you travel with less stuff than any other female I’ve ever known.”
“Jaelle will not mind?”
“Of course not, she’d probably rather I hung out with you than wandered around in bars. That was a pretty stupid waste of an evening anyway.”
She gently bumped her head against my chin. “Thank you, Wrik.”
We walk to the elevator bank with Wrik chatting amiably in his self-appointed mission to cheer me up. Meanwhile, I struggle with being ashamed of myself. The gestures I used, the duck of the head, the bent shoulders, the anxious twisting of the hands, are all artifice that I have picked up from various video entertainments. They had the desired effect, triggering Wrik’s strongly protective impulses, a fundamental structure of his personality. I have long noticed that the more I act like “a girl” the more Wrik treats me as one. Even as I have this thought, he is opening a door for me. A door I could as easily rip from the wall and crumple into a small ball. Intellectually he knows I am a genderless combat android, but on an emotional level, I am something else to him.
It bothers me to be dishonest, to be so rankly manipulative. For while I do prefer the stimulation of company, I do not fear solitudes as Wrik does, else I would have perished during my 50,000 year sojourn on the asteroid where he found me. But I do know that my other arguments against his plans for dangerous locations and altering his consciousness with unhealthy chemicals might fall on deaf ears. I fear that when he has too much time on his hands, he returns to old, self-destructive behaviors, taking foolish chances, brooding on old failures.
He will perhaps realize this at some point and I will tell him that I am a changed being since we met. With the part of my consciousness not occupied with light banter with Wrik, I wonder if this is not, in fact, true. My plan for this evening was to maneuver myself close to Wrik to guard against his reckless impulses. But I cannot deny something that is also true as I contemplate the evening before us. I am, in my own way…very happy.
Chapter Two
Maauro and I spent the evening as planned, dinner, then a lot of quiet conversation at my place. We watched old and bad video entertainments for hour
s as I made fun of them to her evident enjoyment. Just before I drifted off to sleep in the early morning hours it occurred to me to wonder how it could be so easy and so comfortable to be with an ancient machine that somebody made somewhere. All I knew was that it was true and that whoever built her had my undying gratitude. Maauro was the easiest being to spend time with that I’d ever known. She slipped off as I went to bed, for a bit of stargazing, with a promise to see me at work.
I walked into the office the next morning to find her there, true to her word. Maauro sat perched on my desk, beside her two cappuccinos sat steaming. She didn’t need to drink of course but liked to keep me company.
“Ah,” I said, reaching for the blue stone cup that was mine. I’d never been a morning person.
“Please do not be alarmed,” she said as I took a long appreciative sip, “but we are surrounded by Confederate Security Forces.”
I spat the cappuccino across the desk.
“Was it bad?” she asked, looking at the messy desk. “I made it the same as usual.”
“Confed?” I managed, looking around and out the window. “What do we do?”
“At present, you should finish your drink, which I spent time and energy to make for you and regain your composure.”
“I was thinking something more along the lines of grabbing guns and fleeing.”
“And where would we flee to on such a well-ordered and policed world as Star Central? Doubtless our ship is already locked down. No, we do not have sufficient intel to decide on a course of action. I do not believe we are to be assaulted without warning. Their tactical disposition and equipment suggest that they are more concerned with protecting themselves than with an immediate attack. I also doubt that Candace Deveraux has come all this way to watch someone fire a plasma rocket into our office.”
“Candace!” I said. “Well, well, it’s a small galaxy after all.”
“Not really,” Maauro replied. “The Milky Way is—”
“Never mind,” I said. “Should I get a weapon? Warn the others?”
“No to both. A powerful jammer is operating over our building. I could break it in a few minutes. However that cuts both ways. I am blocking their scanners. If it comes to weapons, stay flat on the floor. You know what I am capable of.”