Cavalier's Gambit 2 -ch9-

Chapter 9

Wayne looked over the contract, tilted his head to one side, then the other, as if viewing it from a different angle would somehow give him something different.

“Isn’t this ridiculous?” he asked, looking to Miriam, Josephine, and Wendy.

“Yes,” Wendy said, then laughed. “It really is. There’s no other way to say it. It’s ridiculous. They’re offering you four time what a normal mercenary company would be hired at, even if they were true veteran companies, too.”

“I agree with Wendy. It’s… over the top even if you were a veteran,” Miriam murmured, looking at the contract. “Even a Cavalier wouldn’t be able to command this kind of a figure. This is asking for… it’s not a photo-op but—”

“Presence,” Wendy said, nodding her head once in the immediate silence. “It’s presence. They want the man who holds a colonel rank in the Colonel and the MDF. The Cavalier Hesh himself.

“Want him somewhere with high visibility so that if something happened, it’d look bad. Look bad and suddenly involve the Confed.”

“Ah,” Josephine said, clicked her tongue, then laughed. “They did ask when our marriage would be finalized. They want you to be Wayne Hesh, husband to Josephine Hesh-Merkil.

“It’s all presence. To have you there in a place, where if someone were to attack, it would likely be a catastrophe for them.”

“Imagine,” Miriam began, then chuckled. “Imagine going against Cavalier Hesh, Colonel in the MDF and Confed, husband to the second in line to the Mirkil throne, against a border that’s currently quiet, and somehow expecting it to not become a political and public nightmare.”

“I don’t get it, but alright,” Wayne muttered and shook his head. “Feels kind of stupid. It’s not like a single point of conflict would hold up an entire offensive movement.”

“I mean, yes, if you think of it like that, that makes sense,” Wendy said then shook her head. “That assumes you wouldn’t move to intercept or engage though. Or be sent there. If you were, there’d be no choice or chance but for them to engage because you’d engage them.

“After that… well… did you ever look at the public response to your battle with the House Feda Freebooters, Wayne?”

“No,” Wayne said with a laugh. “I uh… no. Didn’t really care about it. Spent the day after that with Miri.”

Miriam for her part looked perfectly unbothered by his statement. Though he noted the corners of her mouth twitched as if she wanted to smile.

Their date had been pretty great and had ended in her room.

At her own request.

“Well, it was all in your favor obviously. There was a brief ‘why’ moment when people were questioning why you had announced your presence the way you did,” Wendy said. “Then someone made the connection that you were aware there might be people in the ruins. Like the little girl you saved.

“After that, it was all against House Feda. All of it. There was nothing… against you and House Feda suddenly needed a lot more help. The general public of the Confed just about rose up against the House as a whole.

“To the point that Feda’s companies, products, trade deals all got put under pressure. A lot of pressure.”

“It was frightening with how fast it happened,” Josephine stated with a nod of her head. “It’s the same reason we’re doing so well, just the opposite way. Yatuni has reached out to put down an entire manufactory plant in Mirkil space. Because, of course… Yuna.”

Chuckling, Wayne could only shrug his shoulders. Even Warhorse was running with a Yatuni weapon. They just worked really well for him.

“But anyways,” Josephine continued with a sigh. “They want you to be there as a deterrent but I don’t think it’ll matter. I think they’ll attack regardless if they want to attack and it won’t matter if you’re there or not.

“However… this is a chance to recruit people. From across the Confed and the MDF into the company run by Cavalier Hesh. We can easily pick up another eighteen people people to fill out a full twenty-four company sized dropship. Obviously most of these people would be coming with their own Walkers and skillsets but… I think it’s something that would do wonders for you as a Cavalier, let alone for … me.”

“Oh! Good point. Alright, let’s do that,” he said, smiling at Josephine.

“Does he always just become a golden retriever for you?” Wendy asked, glancing at Josephine.

In that moment, Wayne realized that Wendy wasn’t addressing the princess by any formal title. In fact, Wendy was perfectly at ease and without a concern or an issue.

“He does for certain people,” Josephine admitted with a sigh.

“Miriam, Tink, you,” listed off Wendy quickly looking at Josephine then nodded her head. “I’ll start putting together all the ones I’d recommend. I think having a scout squad of six that moves together, a heavy squad that’s just all Dreadnought’s, and the last group as a mixed fighting unit. Thoughts? Wayne? Miri? Josephine?”

Wayne thought about it, then nodded his head. It made perfect sense to him.

“Great,” he said. “Then… we sign the contract, I prepare for the campaign and… then we go. Are you all coming with me as a contact point or what? Something else?”

“I’ll go,” Wendy said immediately. “It’ll be a Confed station that monitors it all and if I’m there it’ll make everything else go smoothly. I don’t mind being the MDF liaison. Unless Miriam wants to come along?”

“Of course I’ll come along,” Miriam says with a laugh and a wave of her hand. “Though between the two of us we’ll be able to get a lot done. Though you’ll be rather busy, Josie. If the Mirkil House is being pulled in, it means that we’re going to have to worry about how the rest of the Confed perceives us and this.”

“Yes, I imagine it’ll be a lot of PR events and the like,” she mutters, not looking up, but staring more at her hands. “It’s rather disappointing. I won’t even have time to get married let alone spend time with Wayne.”

“True,” Wayne said somewhat regretfully. He’d actually had a really nice dinner with Josephine and her dad. Quite a good time, in fact. To the point that he hadn’t even been thinking about what to say at all and just went with it all.

Jeremy had laughed a great deal though Josephine had been red-faced and pinched his knee at one point. He had been explaining his long running fascination with ‘Lady Mirkil’ at the time.

“Tink will want to go,” stated Wayne. “Think we can get them to let us take a garage module or something similar? We’ll need it to house all those Walkers as well as a drop ship. That or… I guess… a terrestrial base that they’re willing to give us?”

“Terrestial base,” Miriam said, a grimace spreading out across her face. “On the planet.”

Wayne made an ‘oh’ face and now understood the situation perfectly.

“Tink will remain here then,” he said, then laughed. “By the time I get back here, she’ll have Patchwork 2.0 done and working on something else just for fun. At what point do we need to take her designs and start building custom walkers off it?”

“Already ahead of you,” Josephine remarked with a laugh. “I just give her a list of parts that we have available now and she picks what she wants from it. The only request I had was she put together a diagram, blueprint, and parts list as she goes. She has a way of seeing Walkers that just… doesn’t… fit with how Walker Engineers see things.

“I’m going to have a number of broken and beat up Walkers dropped in front of her to play with, ask her to change or update parts, then make blueprints from it, sell them at an extreme premium to the military, and share the profits with her.”

“She won’t care,” admitted Wayne with a grin. “About the profits.”

Josephine opened her mouth, sighed, then nodded.

“She doesn’t care. She just wants the Walkers,” confessed Josephine. “I’m having different versions and types of all the ones you’re currently using, and a bunch of other ones she requested to work on. I asked her as well which ones she would want for your squad and she… had no idea.”

“He needs an actual armorer,” Miriam interjected with a shake of her head. “Tink is an amazing engineer and mechanics for Walkers, but she doesn’t know the what’s what and what would be best. She can get anything to it’s max, more so than any mechanic I’ve ever seen in my life or even heard of.”

“But not an armorer,” Wendy said, snapped her fingers, and grinned. “I’ll put in a request to the Confed about it. “They were looking for a way to grease up Wayne’s wheels. They finally got over me not getting him in a bed and are moving ahead again.”

“Oooh, that’d be a good thing to leverage out of them,” cooed Miriam and patted at Wendy’s hand. “If they ever do something stupid and try to fire you, just remember… the MDF is always hiring.”

“I already sent her a job offer,” Josephine slid into the conversation with a laugh. “She’s hanging onto it until she needs it.”

“Well, for right now I’m using my current job as a means to catapult myself into Wayne’s life,” Wendy admitted outright and with a wide smile as she looked into the other two women’s faces. “The moment I take the MDF job, I might vanish. So… I’ll take it… but later. I’m prioritizing Wayne access.”

Wendy only continued to smile at the other women.

“What? The race isn’t over. And he’s not saying no,” declared Wendy, her smile turning into a grin. “Look at him. He’s flattered. The Witty and Attractive Captain is here and he sees it and he’s willing to let me join the race.

“I was late, I was stupid, I just about went backwards a few times, but I’m on the track now. I’ll get there. I just have to run dead out and maybe cut corners at some point. Like asking him to dinner again tonight. For our third date so far.”

Somehow, that made Wayne laugh.

Only to have all three women look at him.

And he went quiet.

***

Looking through the AI’s for sale, Wayne slowly worked through them.

If he was going to be in an active warfront, he wanted to expand his AI load now while he could. Because realistically speaking, once he got out there, it was very much unlikely he’d be able to get a chance like this again.

He paused on one that could apparently display drone footage to the inside of his cockpit. The problem for the AI was that the display tended to not work as well on many types of Steel-Glass as it should.

Which didn’t mean anything at all to Wayne since his implant would just load up the information sent from the AI into his implant.

Grinning, Wayne tapped in the AI to his cart, adding it to the translation AI that was filled with languages, and briefly wondered what would happen if he happened to download a true AI.

One that could actually understand, respond, and hold a conversation. So far he’d been eating low-end AI that really were just glorified programs that were made to function with data provided and just sputter on their way inside of a Walker.

Then he had the sudden and ugly thought that if he did something like that he could end up with something sending him constant messages inside his own head. Or perhaps a constant string of text appearing in his view.

“Yep, nope, no real AI,” he muttered to himself and began to scroll down the list again.

Though he didn’t get far into the next page.

It was a mapping program that utilized all available data to map, chart, and plot the area around the user. This was an AI that was primarily used for hardware built into scouts. Walkers that moved ahead, drones, or planes coming overhead.

With a shrug, Wayne flicked it over as well. It’d be fine to add that one in and let it run in conjunction with everything else he had running in his head.

In fact, it was entirely likely, that the mapping AI would be able to extrapolate a great deal of information and map a great deal out. With any luck, it’d just operate without any difficulties.

The AI flipping began once again.

Quickly scanning over AI and moving through and past a great deal that just didn’t interest him in any way shape or form. A lot of them were for things that would never actually be of interest or use to him.

Only to stop and slowly scroll backward to one in particular.

It was a true AI, one that could talk, assess, and respond. Except that it was faulty. It couldn’t be transferred off it’s hardware, as it was an older class AI and didn’t have the same system architecture as current models did.

He knew there were AI models out there that could get bound or stuck inside of particular hardware and never be able to leave, but he hadn’t thought to find one trapped by age.

Wayne was interested in it, because if it was stuck in hardware, it meant it couldn’t be transferred away, nor could his implant eat it.

On top of that, it was a diagnostic AI, a high end one, but was discounted because of it’s limitations. Then Wayne grinned as he realized how actually perfect this was.

He pushed the AI into the cart, though he realized, the seller happened to be the AI itself.

Which was curious, to say the least.

His cyber-war AI reminded him that if he wanted to tear apart the tablet, all he had to do was put in a wi-fi or a blue-tooth usb and the implant could do the rest provided there was a wi-fi receiver added to his implant.

Which Wayne was most certainly not going to do.

The last thing he wanted to do was put an antenna in his head for someone else to try and get a radio station off of. Or a cell phone call.

The cyber-attack AI wasn’t that useful for him unless he was in a Walker.

Or… I buy a wireless wi-fi adapter I could attach to the magnetic port of my implant.

That could be interesting. If I wanted to crack into old hardware and data I could probably manage it. Though, that leaves me wondering.

My implant isn’t anything special, how is it running all these AIs?

How is it storing them?

Where?

What’s the storage space?

Do I need to like… upgrade it?

Hm.

Maybe the AI diagnostician can help me with that. They’ve probably seen a lot of wild crap.

If they’re old enough that their damn files and system can’t even be transferred anymore it means they’re way out of date. Lots of tribal knowledge stuff, right?

Wayne started sorting back through the AIs for sale and slowly came to a stop.

He blinked as he stared at the tablet and the red box telling him how to attack it.

Hesitating, he went to his computer and pulled out a USB stick that had a built in wi-fi connector from a desk drawer. He’d been using it for retro gaming in his off time and streaming it from his PC to a handheld Tink had fixed for him.

Stuffing the USB into the computer he waited as it powered up, then looked to the USB and waited for the red box to appear. It did and promptly asked him if he wanted to attack it.

Up to this point, it had never really asked him that directly.

He had been assuming that he didn’t have a way to let the AI activate or run it’s protocol or programming with his implant.

Except, he knew that wasn’t true.

His eye liked to constantly tell him about the status of things all over. It told him serial numbers, information, what frequencies things were on, and what was happening.

Anything with a blue-tooth, wi-fi, or celluar signal had always appeared for his left and and the paired implant.

Yet why hadn’t it for the red-boxes until this moment?

Because I never acknowledged it?

Cause I’m a fucking dumbass?

But the question… it begs the question of something more going on here. Because… I can access it.

Wayne pushed mentally at the USB and suddenly, the red box expanded.

And expanded again.

Then again.

Only for it to promptly display an explosion of emoji and collapse again.

The red box turned blue and it had a series of questions in them.

Install Arsenic?

Full, lite, custom.

Error log… error log?

With a grimace, Wayne tried to install the full version of Arsenic or whatever that was to the USB drive. As well as the error log that’d been presented.

The blue box filled with an install bar, as well as a text file appearing in it.

Closing his left eye, Wayne saw the whole hting vanish, which meant it was entirely because of his left-eye at the moment. His very inorganic and absolutely high-tech wizardly prosthetic eye.

He looked at the error log and froze.

The error log was filled with absolute nonsense.

Garbage inputs that looked like random entries, keyboard slamming, battle-royal-losing rage. The kind of input that just looks like a hand was slapped across the keyboard multiple times.

Wayne closed that and looked to the install to find it was done.

He pulled out the USB and stuffed it into the USB port of the tablet.

A blue window popped up almost immediately.

There was a prompt.

It was once more gibberish. Gibberish that was strangely as if it were a different language entirely. Followed by a bunni emoji and a pink heart.

“Errr… what?” Wayne asked.

There was no change from the box to his words.

“Pre-written commands, and in a different language,” he said with a laugh and then selected the option.

An immediate response from the box came up but he couldn’t read it. Once more it was in a language that wasn’t this own.

Followed by the window flickering red and blue as if it were a police siren. Alternating slowly between the colors.

Then there was a flicker and it became a solid blue again.

Once more there was some written responses that Wayne couldn’t understand at all.

“Man, now I need that language AI,” he said as multiple options came up from his tablet. All of them in that odd language that didn’t make any sense to him at all.

Wayne went back to shopping and ordered the language AI, mapping AI, drone AI, and diagnostic AI. Everything would be shipped to him. Because AI weren’t just programs, they were actual objects.

He was curious to see if the diagnostician could help him out to a degree. Maybe figure out what was going on with him in his implant.

What was going on with him as a whole.

Because it concerned him. It didn’t feel normal, or right.