CHAPTER

HEADING

Io Station - Jupiter

'Are we sure we're ready for this?' asked a brunette with a thin face, soft features, and light complexion. She was in faded maintenance coveralls splotched with grease stains, and her expression was tense. The coveralls had an Io Station emblem sewn on it on the right breast, over a pocket. She was standing next to a set of gleaming airlocks. A man in similar coveralls stood next to her. The man had short black hair, dark skin, and a round face. They waited tensely for the door to open, with tool kits hanging from their hands.

'We'd better be Silvia, or this is going to be a real short outing, Silvia,’ Carl whispered to her.

She nodded in agreement. 'Then I guess we're ready. Good luck Carl.'

'You too.'

They took a few deep breaths as the air hissed into the airlock before of them, and forced themselves to appear more relaxed.

A light above the metal door from red switched to green, and the door swished open with a brief rush of air. Two bored guards stood flanking a man wearing a crisp blue button up shirt who was holding a tablet computer cradled in his left arm. The Guards looked at the two with disinterest. The man between them looked up from his tablet and made a face of distust as he saw the two in their dirty coveralls.

'My name is Joel Oleg. I assume you're the repair crew for the freighter at loading arm six?' he asked sourly.

Carl smiled brightly and said, 'Yessir, Vince Lannigan, and Mindy Kane at your service. Sorry we took so long, we were out at the belt on another call when we heard this on-'

'Can it. I don't really care, we just need you to get this thing moving. We don't want to have it clogging up the arm any longer than it has too. Now if you would be so kind as to activate your own device, I'll send you a map,’ Joel said, looking down at his tablet and tapping the screen.

'No need, we got one from the client before coming here.'

The man looked up and looked at them curiously. 'Really... I thought their FTL signaler was down.'

'We contacted their head office before heading out,' Silvia said.

The man nodded slowly. 'Okay then. Well, I'll let you be on your way. Axion Data Systems hopes you enjoy your stay on Io Station. I, for one, don't really care.'

Carl frowned at the man. 'Look man, I know were not exactly clients of the station or Axion here, but are you always like this?'

'No. But it's another round of down sizings on the horizon. I tend to get a little testy.'

'Things have been rough recently?' Silvia asked.

'You have no idea. All kinds of competitors have cropped up over the years. Any one of them would love to buy Io Station, but I doubt that'll happen any time soon. One of the few money-making things owned by Axion these days, though heaven knows why.'

‘We'll just be on our way,' Carl said with a nod.

Joel nodded and gave a dismissive wave. He and the guards turned to the left and walked unhurriedly out of sight.

Silvia and Carl went straight ahead and quickly hurried down the bright and crisply painted corridor. They were heading toward the centre of the station.

***

Away from the eyes of the security agents, Carl activated a hidden commlink.

'Big C here, we're on the station. Making our way over now.'

'Roger that, Big C. We'll keep the engines hot.'

Carl looked over at Silvia and she nodded. They came across a set of public washrooms. Carl went into the men’s room, and Silvia went into the women’s.

Inside, Carl locked the door, and stripped out of his coveralls. He stuffed them into the waste disposal chute. Underneath the coveralls, he was wearing a set of clean clothes; a white button up shirt and pair of dress pants. He opened up the tool kit he'd brought with him, and pulled out a tie to complete the look. He looked back into the kit and saw a metallic cylinder about the width of a tall drinking glass, and half as long as the tool kit. The inside of the tool kit itself was smaller than the outside would suggest, having thick sides. He hit some keys on the cylinder and the face of it lit up, showing a countdown from 15 minutes. He threw the cylinder down the waste chute and walked out the the washroom.

He casually scanned the corridor to see if anyone else was coming, and saw he was still alone. Silvia exited from the woman’s washroom, wearing a neat three piece pantsuit. She was holding two tablet computers, one of which she handed to him.

He took it and held it loosely against his chest as they started walking.

'Everything set?' Silvia asked.

Carl nodded. 'We better move quick.'

'Think the shielding worked?'

'We got this far. I think the tool kit worked just fine. Otherwise those guards wouldn’t have looked so bored when we got here.'

Outside Advocate Uplift Facility - Io Station

Carl and Silvia had moved quickly from the washrooms to the Advocate Uplift Facility, an unusually open area in the core of the station. Here, the lighting was brighter and the open nature of the place contrasted sharply with the enclosed corridors and bays of the rest of the station. A small artificial park and playground was built around a central tower that spread from the the roof of the chamber to the floor. The roof was at least three stories above them, and was made of clear glass. The imposing shape of Jupiter loomed through the skylight, its swirling clouds a mesmerizing backdrop to the tower and space at the heart of Io Station. The whole area was an unusually wasteful use of space on a station, and one which caused Carl and Silvia to pause for a moment in shock.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this!’ Carl said, dumb founded.

‘It was built in Axion’s heyday. This was probably a show piece for them, show how successful they were,’ she said, gesturing at the tower.

‘Must be the right place though, why else would they have a play ground,’ Carl said, pointing at a swing set near the base of the tower.

Here, foot traffic was noticeably thicker, and people walked with swiftness and purpose. Standing around was earning them curious looks as people walked by, so they'd quickly put on determined expressions, and continued walking.

That got them fewer looks.

Carl glanced at his watch. It was almost time.

They headed toward the tower, and Carl found his gaze drifting back upward. He watched the light from drive nozzles of ships, and the points of light of Jupiter’s moons, as they swam back and forth across the sky.

At the base of the tower there were a set of double wide glass doors. A lone security agent stood watch outside.

'Axion must be feeling pretty confident no one would try this,' Silvia muttered, ‘Only one guard seems light.’

'Or they can't afford anything better,' Carl whispered.

'The station’s security on alert is probably more impressive though.'

'Speaking of alerts...'

Carl glanced down at his watch and allowed himself a smile.

Suddenly, the lights flickered out, leaving everything lit by a soft orange glow from Jupiter, reflecting the light of the sun.

Silvia and Carl started toward the double doors, and as they moved, the red glow of emergency lights flared to life. Around them, peoples stopped and murmured to each other, pulling out tablets to try and figure out what happened.

The security agent saw them coming and put out a hand. 'Stop right there!'

'The station is under attack by the Anti-AI League, we have to get the Advocates out of here.'

'Who are you? Let me see your I.D,' the man ordered.

Silvia and Carl pulled I.D. cards out of their pockets and handed them to the man. He looked at them. 'You're with Axion? How come I haven't seen you before?'

'We just came in on a ship from Earth. Why don't you check it with the station Guardian?' Carl said.

The man slid the cards into a tablet, and frowned. 'Guardian's down,' he murmured.

Silvia let out a curse and said, 'Those blasted terrorists. That complicates things.'

Carl put a hand on her shoulder. 'It's okay Jen, I'm sure the agent here would be happy to help us. We've got to get the children to safety.'

The chatter from the people around them had taken an edge of panic, as calls to the control centre went unanswered, and systems didn’t respond to their commands.

The guard looked carefully at the growing panic in the workers around the tower and looked back at Carl and Silvia. 'Alright, you two stay here, I'll go get the Advocates. We can head for a safe room.'

Carl shook his head. 'No, they're being evacuated. We've got a ship on arm six ready to go.'

'Arm six? Alright.'

***

'Come on kids, we've got to move quickly,' Silvia said, hurrying the twenty or so young advocates down the hall. The security guard they had tricked was bringing up the rear, keeping his eyes open for threats.

In a less tense situation, the irony of the situation would have made her smile. As it was, Silvia sincerely hoped he wouldn't figure it all out before they made it to the ship.

'I can't hear the Guardian, why is his uplink off?' asked a small redheaded boy about ten years old.

'The Anti-AI League disabled the Guardian on the station. They smuggled some kind of device that affected it very badly. We have to get all of you off the station, you're far too valuable to be put in harms way.'

'I miss Randell!' a little girl cried out.

Carl glanced backward from his position near the front for the group. 'Who's Randell?'

'The Guardian,' the redheaded boy answered back.

Silvia saw the flash of disgust on Carl's face as he turned forward. She had to fight her own distaste.

They were all so young, and they thought the thing was alive. It was almost enough to make her cry.

'How's it going up there?' the security guard called from the back.

Carl looked back toward him. 'No sign of trouble, the halls are clear this way.'

The guard gave a curt nod.

They were making good time through the station. The loading arm they wanted wouldn't be far now, and the children had been too confused to really make much racket. Silvia had been shocked that there hadn't been anybody inside the Uplift Facility.

They do have something watching them though, she thought, thinking of their constant link to the Guardian.

She was glad they'd figured out a way to sneak a pulse bomb into the station. Without it, the Guardian would still be active, and this would have been a lot harder, and bloodier.

The final hatchway before the docking arm loomed before them. Carl opened the door and they hurried through, Silvia stayed by the hatchway and helped the children through. The guard stepped into the arm and then stopped, his communicator getting his attention. The man stopped, and listened to someone talking into his ear piece.

Silvia made her way carefully to Carl. The guard was occasionally glancing their way. She leaned over to Carl and whispered, 'The comms are active again.'

'They're not slaved through the Guardian, they must have got them online quicker.'

They made it to the airlock at the end of the docking arm, and Carl started the cycle. The guard slowly walked after them, and muttered something into his communicator that Silvia couldn't make out.

In a smooth motion, he pulled his sidearm from it’s holster and pointed it at Silvia and Carl. 'Don't move,' he ordered.

Carl and Silvia raised their hands slowly and backed up against the wall of the passageway.

The guard stood his ground and motioned to the kids with one hand. 'Kids, start moving toward me.'

'What's going on?' one of the young advocates asked anxiously.

'These two aren't who they say they are. They were caught on security feeds coming out of the bathroom wearing different clothes than they came in with. The Guardian and all its systems went offline after that.'

The red-haired boy turned and looked angrily at Silvia. 'You hurt Randell!'

'No we didn't. This man doesn't know what he's talking about. We're trying to get you to safety!'

Suddenly, the doors to the air lock opened, and the door by the guard shut in response. There was a mechanical whine and a small dark object flew down the corridor. It stuck into the security guard’s right shoulder, and the man suddenly dropped to the floor, convulsing. The children started to cry out in terror.

A man in an armoured space suit stepped through the airlock, the kids ran from him and started banging on the far door. The man lowered a rifle at the young Advocates and began to fire. A mechanical whine followed every pull of the trigger as darts stuck into the children. One by one they dropped to the ground until the whole hallway went silent.

As soon as the last child fell, Silvia and Carl rushed forward and started to drag them through the airlock to the ship. Other people came out the air lock grabbed more of the children.

Soon the hallways was empty, except for the slumped body of the unconscious guard.

Bridge of the Harvester - Io Station

'Shooting the Advocates isn't exactly going to make them trust us Mike!' Silvia said angrily.

A man was unclasping the armour plates on his space suit as he walked to the captains chair. 'We couldn't afford to waste time,' he turned to a crew member waiting nearby, 'Are they all secured?'

'Yes sir.'

'Good. Cue exit.'

Silvia walked up to him and pulled him around to face him. 'They're children!'

'They're Advocates! They're what we need for our ends. I'm not going to apologize for being a little rough,' Mike said angrily. He stripped off the last of the armour and sat heavily in the captains chair.

'Mike, we're not monsters.'

'No. We're fighting monsters.' Mike snapped, 'Engineering, it's time to fix the ship. It was so nice of Axion to let us dock seeing we had a reactor leak, but I think that leak is about to get fixed.'

One of the crew members nodded. 'Aye sir, fixing the ship. All of our leaks and troubles seem to have been resolved.'

'Good. Let's get out of here.'

Silvia seethed. 'We'll see what the others think.'

'Yes we will.'

United Planetary Navy Head Quarters - High Earth Orbit

'Admiral Tolmin! We've got a situation.'

The young man who served as the Admiral's personal aide, burst into his office. He wore a crisp uniform, and stood smartly at attention, and his tan skin had a sheen from it from a layer of perspiration.

Admiral Tolmin was an older man with short black hair. He had streaks of grey coming from his temples, and his face had very sharp, hawkish features.

Garth Tolmin was at his desk reading action reports from the Linkal war, and enjoying a quick lunch time meal. A large red bird perched on a stand in the corner of the office. It squawked unhappily in surprise. Garth looked up at the young man, frowning at the interruption. His face wore the tokens of age, but thanks to gene-therapy available to him, he only had two streaks of grey coming from his temples which stood out against his short black hair, and a small pinching of wrinkles around his eyes.

'Did you run all the way from operations Lieutenant Newall? You've startled Jingo,' Admiral Tolmin said, glancing over at the bird.

'No sir, I mean yes sir. Urgent development that I thought I should tell you about in person. Sorry about the bird.'

'We have a comm system for this sort of thing,' Tolmin stated, looking back down to his reports.

'Yes sir.'

'All right Lieutenant Newall, let's hear it. What happened?'

'Anti-AI League attack sir.'

Admiral Tolmin frowned at this. 'Where?'

'Io Station.'

He sat up straight in his seat and set down his reports. 'An attack in the solar system? Io Station? This is unusually bold. What's the situation?'

'The Earth Security Force fleet has dispatched several corvettes to the area to try and track down the terrorists, but the attack was very fast, and no one on station was able to send out a distress call until they had already made their escape.'

'What did they do during their attack?'

Lt Tanner Newall unclipped a small tablet from his belt and started reading from it.

'They used a smuggled device to take out the station’s Guardian. It was in complete shut down, every system and back up just switched off into a hard reset. Io Station is one of Axion’s most important facilities, they’ve got some of the best failsafe available for a civilian system. The device is unlike anything we've ever seen the League use before. We'll have to wait on analysis to see about it's capabilities, but the fact that they had to smuggle it onto the station suggests it's short range, or that they were lacking a good long range delivery method.'

Admiral Tolmin nodded. 'I'll want my hands on the report for that as soon as it's done.'

'Yes, Admiral.'

'Anything else?'

'Yes, sir. It seems their objective was the kidnapping of young Advocates undergoing the Uplift process.'

'What? They kidnapped children?' Garth said with disgust, shock evident on his face.

'Yes, sir. Twenty six in total. They acted while the Guardian was down, and used the confusion to make their escape. One security guard was injured in the escape. He's being treated, and we've got agents on location waiting to debrief him.'

'What in heaven’s name do they need Advocates for? They hate the Guardians and everything to do with them,' Admiral Tolmin stood up and grabbed his uniform jacket from the back of his chair. He put it on and buttoned it up. His look of shock gave way to a cold focus. 'Let's go down to Operations Lieutenant Newall. I'll want to get our agents on the path as soon as we have a path to get them on.'

'Aye sir. Should I contact some and have them on standby?'

Tolmin was halfway to the door when he paused. 'Let me think on that for a moment.'

U.P.N. Headquarters - Intelligence Branch

'What have we got so far from the ESF task force?' Admiral Tolmin asked Lt Newall, while sitting with the assembled staff in the Intelligence Operations centre.

'All sensor records from the station were lost when the Guardian went down. We've managed to piece together some information from crew reports on Io Station.'

The assembled staff sat around a long table while a holographic image of Io Station rotated slowly over head. The lights were dimmed to give a better image of the station. The wheel-like shape of the station had everyones attention.

Lt Newall keyed a command onto a tablet, and the image zoomed in on one of the docking spokes, showing a ship at the end.

'Sometime, within the first 6 hours before the attack, a freighter limped it's way toward the station, apparently having suffered from a reactor casing rupture. It was leaking reactor coolant, and venting fuel into space. The ship’s FTL signaler was offline, and most of their systems were running off of emergency power. The ship requested permission to dock with Io Station while they called a repair crew. The station overseer agreed to the request, and a member of the ships crew placed a call using the station’s FTL signaler. It was a medium range transmission, within system, but the records of who the call went to have been lost. No one on Io Station had reason to believe it was a dangerous or suspicious call.'

'They are civilians. Paranoia isn't in their job description,' Admiral Tolmin quipped.

'It's certainly part of ours,' said one of the Intel Officers across from Tomlin.

'Continue please, Lieutenant Newell,' Tolmin prompted.

'Yes sir. Later, two people, claiming to be the repair crew for the stranded merchant ship showed up on Io station. They were allowed entry and directed to the freighter. On their way they ducked into the station’s public toiletry facilities and changed clothes. Though the device destroyed itself after it went off, we suspect one of them dropped it into a waste disposal chute in one of the washrooms.'

'Device?' another officer asked.

'The terrorists snuck a device onto the station designed to disable the Guardian. My guess is they dropped it in the waste chute to get it further into the core of the station.'

Lt Newell typed something on his tablet, and a red line lit up on the image of Io Station, leading from the outer rings to the central mass of the station.

'These chutes run through each of the spokes of the station and lead to the core mass of Io Station. Once there, any waste enters a compactor and is eventually incinerated and vented into space. By getting their device into the chutes, it was able to get close enough to the Guardian Core to bypass many layers of shielding,' he paused and and key and new command on his tablet.

The floating image of the space station shifted, a room near the freighter glowed red, and a path way to the freighter also began to glow.

'After the Guardian was offline, the two terrorists went to the Advocate Uplift Facility and convinced the security guard on duty that they had to evacuate the young advocates. They then took them to the waiting freighter, and made their escape. The guard who was with the children was shot with a shock dart at close range. It broke his right shoulder blade, but he is otherwise fine.'

Admiral Tolmin stood up. The lights came on, and the image vanished.

He nodded at Tanner. 'Thank you, Lieutenant Newell. This attack happened on our door stop. It's only a short trip out to the Jupiter sector of the solar system. The Anti-AI League hasn’t done anything this bold or directed in years. Mostly, we can expect them to carry out minor attacks and operations. Yet now they show up and boldly snatch up twenty six young Advocates right from under our noses.'

He paused and looked around the room. The faces around the table were mixed between embarrassment and anger.

'I know the war with the Linkal has taken much of our resources these past few years. The Anti-A.I. League has been unusually quiet since the war started, and so we've put them on the back burner. This is the price we've paid for that folly. We have to find out what they're up to and we have to stop them. We need a plan.'