Lyon hadn't seen Dr. Marc-Paul Severin since February, in connection with the hunt for the missing Rina. He looked much as she remembered him: slim, with elegant features, wavy hair the color of honey worn to just touch his shoulders, and high-quality tailored clothing beneath his open lab coat.
"Mr. Ryland, Lyon," he said. "It's been quite some time, although Rina does mention you."
Lyon nodded.
"She told me that she stays in touch with you, too."
He smiled.
"I got a Christmas card from her and her boyfriend. Would you believe that they're planning marriage?"
"Mm-hm. They told me that, too."
He shook his head.
"I must admit that when I began that particular project that domestic bliss was not one of the goals I anticipated."
"All people want fulfillment and happiness, whether human, Newman, or machine," Lyon said. "And how we define it has a lot more to do with individual traits than race."
"Even so, I can't say that I anticipated my most dramatic breakthrough in artificial intelligence to be trimming a Christmas tree while singing carols with her boyfriend," he chuckled.
"I told her that if she starts baking fruitcake that it'd be proof something really important was lost in the transition," Lyon joked.
"Oh, yes, that's a handy excuse so I wouldn't have to blame my team's programming. But, I doubt that you called to chat about old friends. What can I do for you?"
"We have a Guild Quest, and we need access to Gal De Val Island to follow up a lead."
The smile vanished from the scientist's face, replaced by a quite serious look.
"I see. Then no doubt you'd like me to arrange authorization?"
"As a project leader, you have the authority to hire hunters and send them to Ragol. You could have us do something innocuous, like check some data collection device to make sure it's functioning or whatever might be appropriate," Ryland suggested. "That would get us access to the surface."
"Of course, if you actually had something for us to do, there's no reason we couldn't double up," Lyon added. "Laying siege to a Control Tower might be pushing it, but if the job's straightforward enough..."
"Solar radiance testing in the Seaside Area, perhaps?" Severin offered, the smile reappearing.
"Ryland has been looking a little pasty, lately," Lyon returned the grin.
"Seriously, though, I need to know something about your present job if I'm going to do this."
"You know that we can't disclose a client's confidences, any more than we would yours."
"I know, but I have a duty to the Lab as well to not work against our interests. The facilities on Gal De Val were the core of Pioneer 1's Lab operations, as you know, and we're still analyzing and evaluating the data from there. I can't just give you carte blanche because you helped me out of a tricky situation in the past."
"I appreciate that," Ryland said. He cupped his chin in his palm, thinking. "Would you accept my assurance that our client is a private citizen rather than the military, a corporation, or the Administration?"
This was getting dicey, since they intended to recover information done by a Lab scientist on a Lab project and give it to his daughter. On the other hand, Ryland was telling the truth in that Lucerne was not representing any outside faction, only herself.
"It's a private matter, then?"
"The client's family."
Severin though about it for a few moments.
"All right," he finally decided. "Actually, I do have a job you can take care of for me. One of the bioresearch teams needs an on-site analysis station and got our section to design it. If we can put it in place, then it'll save them having to truck it down and we'll look good."
"That sounds fine. Where at?"
"The Jungle Area, north section. The project has something to do with researching the alterations to plant life and whether it's the D-Factor or a function of Ragolian native life that make Merillias and their ilk ambulatory."
"Ten meseta says it's the latter," Lyon quipped.
"No bet; the fact that the plants are divided into male and female suggests broad baseline differences before the D-Factor was introduced. I'll have the quest posted at the Guild."
"Make sure you leave it open for a full team. Our side trip will require some backup," Ryland said.
"Fine with me. Good luck on your quest."
"Thanks. Here's hoping we don't need it."
~X X X~
The Hunter's Guild main offices were located in a commercial area in the heart of Pioneer 2's city and shared much of the décor with the buildings around it. The Lab, on the other hand, was in a completely different part of the ship, on the starboard side, and its ultramodern décor fit with the ship as a whole rather than the retro-industrial look of the city. Even the security had a different look, the army soldiers being replaced by uniformed Lab Internal Security grunts.
"This place always feels cramped to me," the Newman Hunter, Naomi, remarked to Lyon. She wore the skimpy outfit of most of her ilk, but her square-shouldered, thickly-muscled build made it seem more like workout gear than something designed to catch the eye. Lyon and Ryland had worked with her several times in the past, and had brought her and the hulking RAcast beside her, Gowan, in with them to act as backup.
"Ceiling: low," Gowan stated. The male android's speech pattern was due to damage he'd suffered from a computer virus when directly interfacing with the Net; repairing it would have required removing a fair amount of his memory and personal development so that he chose to live with it, especially since he was perfectly capable of writing normally.
"I agree," Ryland said. "In the city, it feels like there's an 'in' and an 'out' even though the whole thing is within the ship. Here, there's no illusion of normalcy; you know you're in a man-made structure flying through space."
Lyon glanced at Gowan and shrugged.
"Organics."
"Psychology: curious."
"Har de har," drawled Naomi. "Are we going to stand here being badmouthed by a couple of glorified toasters?"
"Probably," Ryland said. "They won't get hoarse, so they can swap banter for longer than we can."
Lyon flipped his ponytail. He sneezed, signaling the end of the jokes and time for the hunters to get down to business. They approached the Guild counter, where as promised Severin had posted his job request.
"Five hundred meseta each? That's a little low for this, don't you think?" Naomi wondered as Lyon registered the team's acceptance.
"True, but giving us cover for our real job is part of the fee, too. Lyon and I get a favor and Severin gets to get his quest done at a discount."
"And it's five hundred less you need to pay us for the full run."
"A thousand, if you think about it," Ryland said. "You get five hundred directly, and I get five hundred that I can use towards defraying the cost of paying your remaining 3,500. Thanks to Severin's contribution, Lyon and I end up three thousand down instead of four."
"Ryland: upset?"
Seeing the look of confusion on the Force's face, Naomi hastened to translate. "He means does it bother you to be paying us instead of us pitching in and helping out for free as friends."
"What? No, of course not. You two are professional hunters like Lyon and I are, and we're asking you to risk your lives in combat with monsters, rogue security robots, and possibly rival hunters. She and I aren't doing it for free; we're getting paid a Guild Quest commission by a client, so why should we get paid and not you?"
"All right, so long as it's not a problem."
"Payment: delay."
"You mean, until we get our commission from our client, to hold off on giving you the three thousand Severin isn't paying until then?"
"Analysis: correct."
"But your part of the job will be done before then," Ryland protested.
"Quest: subcontracted job."
"He's right," Lyon said, coming up behind Ryland. "They're on our client's tab now. That's the way we'd do it in their place, right?"
"Right, but—"
Naomi laughed.
"Well, that puts me in my place. I was worried that he'd be mad about us getting paid at all, and instead he's upset that he can't pay us up front!"
"I'm just wondering, what if we don't successfully complete our client's job and therefore don't get paid?"
Lyon sighed.
"Don't be depressing."
"Seriously, if you don't get paid, we don't get paid, except of course for Severin's part of the quest which we'll have actually completed on his behalf. Right, Gowan?"
"Summation: accurate."
"See, Ryland, it's possible to be a professional and a friend at the same time."
"Speaking of the professional part," Lyon interjected, "we're ready to go."
The Lab's ship-to-planet teleporters weren't by the Guild, but actually located off their central command deck. Half the room was on an extension protruding out from the ship, so that the starry sky was not only outside the walls but even visible through clear panels in the floor. That part of the large room was manned by a variety of Lab workers at a console bank that ran the full U-shaped length of the room. At the other end, one could walk up to elaborate workstations for Chief Milarose, her assistant Dan, and a CALS system operator to use. All three were empty, so when the hunters arrived in the command center by warp platform they went directly to the teleporter. Lyon presented their credentials to the guard staffer, who was his usual pleasant self.
"Don't dawdle around; every minute you delay holds up vital research!"
"The Hunter's Guild should be proud of its professionalism," Naomi declared when the door to the short corridor leading to the teleporter slid closed behind them. "Think of all the Guild Quests, all the hunters that have come this way, and not once has a hunter grabbed that jerk by his ridiculous collar, dragged him to the teleporter, and hauled him down to Ragol with them. That's some iron-willed discipline right there."
As always, the four of them arrived on Gal De Val Island in the Central Control Area. A massive gate separated the transport platforms (one local, one surface-to-space) from the two control towers that reared up over the area, spires of brilliant light testifying to the arrogance of the scientists who'd attempted to tame an eternal spirit of chaos to their whims and failed. On the other sides were the deceptively placid waters of the lake formed by the huge damn that stretched between the towers, providing hydroelectric power to fuel the island complex's power needs.
"Weather: ominous," Gowan noted.
"It seems to be a localized phenomenon;" Ryland said. "The rest of the island tends to be very sunny. I used to think that it was caused somehow by the Gal Gryphons that nested in the cliffs, but it persists even after hunters defeated the adults. Probably, it's created by something in the Control Towers, some project where Photon radiation affects the weather."
"That sounds like just another reason to avoid this area. Who knows what it could do to a person?"
"Naomi: paranoid?"
"Don't push it, rustbucket."
"I don't know; you have to respect a guy who can be an effective smart-aleck while only saying two or three words at a time," Lyon pointed out.
"Let's just get going."
They used the local transporter to travel to the thickly overgrown jungle area on the north end of the island. All four of them had experience in the environment while on previous missions, some even together, and were familiar with the vagaries of the area and the kind of creatures present. Even the androids, though, found it difficult to avoid being distracted by the sheer beauty of the area, the cascading waterfalls, flowering plants, and colorful wildlife—at least, that part of the local wildlife that wasn't trying to kill them. Lyon and Naomi kept the animated plants and long-armed prowling apes away from the others while Gowan and Ryland used firearms and techniques respectively in support or to bring down the stinger-spitting Gees that swarmed from the rainforest canopy. The battles slowed them down very little; the enemies were by no means weak but the hunters moved and worked as a team to bring them down one after the other. In relatively little time they had reached Severin's target site.
"Good grief, was this a tree?" Naomi marveled. "It looks like a cliff wall, it's so big!"
"There's a gap here; I think we can go inside," Ryland pointed out. They entered, and found that indeed, the massive trunk of the long-dead tree had been hollowed out by natural forces over time, leaving a cylindrical shell rearing dozens of feet high, and at least a hundred feet across.
"I can't even imagine how big this tree would have been while alive," Lyon marveled. "It's amazing!"
"Nature: inspiring."
"It looks like we're not the first people to find this place," Ryland noted. "Look over there."
He was right; near the far side was a free-standing computer workstation. Lyon went over to check it out.
"I think this is from Pioneer 1. Some of these areas were used for experimental testing, so these local stations were used for collection, processing, and transmission of data."
"Not unlike what Severin's friends will be doing, except that their team won't be present in the field. Of course, until we clean up the mess left by Dark Falz's appearance and Pioneer 1's bio-tampering, I don't think exploration and research without a strong security presence will be possible."
"Let alone settlement," Lyon agreed with her partner.
"Well, let's do our bit to help," Naomi said. "C'mon, let's get this stuff set up."
Severin's team had done a good job designing the equipment his associates would use; the components were sturdy, portable, and easily installed, making use of the latest in communications technology. They were designed to work in concert with the local CALS terminals that had been deployed, using them for their data-transmittal functions that bypassed routine BEE with the Lab's core AI's amazing capacity. It took less than ten minutes for the four of them to unload, place, and install the components, then watch it spring into life with pale blue and shimmering golden light.
"Well, that takes care of the excuse. Let's move on to the real job," Naomi summed up.
"Query: access?"
"You mean, how do we get there?"
Gowan nodded at Lyon.
"Tower security: release?"
"No, we won't need to get past the gate. The target site is in the Central Control Area, but it's an underground facility not connected to the Control Towers. We have a direct access code to connect the local teleporter to its arrival teleporter, so we won't have to take a more direct path down through the control tower facilities."
Naomi gave a sigh of relief. She had no desire to go tramping all over the island looking for the security controls necessary to get past the CCA's main gate.
"All right, then. Things are looking up."
They retraced their steps through the jungle and soon were back on the mist-shrouded platform under the stormy sky. Lyon set the teleporter controls to the coordinates Lucerne had provided them, then prompted it with the access code. The screen flashed Accepted: Access set for Research and Testing Facility #3 (Dam).
"After you," she said to Ryland. The others followed the Force, and after a moment of transition they found themselves stepping through the teleporter's pulsing blue perimeter field into the arrival chamber. The room was small and octagonal, with white metal walls striped by blue-green energy conduits running horizontally. The only thing in the room besides the teleporter pad was a fixed terminal connected to the platform. Lyon checked it quickly.
"No, this is strictly a control panel for the teleporter; it doesn't have any greater function."
"Nor any reason to," Ryland noted.
"Okay, just so we've got this straight," Naomi spoke up as they began their preparations, "this is a follow-up after a Lab scientist and a hunter escort were killed here?"
"That's right," Ryland said, even as he was preparing the team with Shifta and Deband. "According to our client's information, the party was ambushed and only one member of the team survived."
"Ambushed by what?"
"I don't know. It's claimed that it was by people, but I can't be certain of the truth. The survivor was killed back on Pioneer 2 in a bar brawl we think was staged."
Naomi whistled.
"Better watch our backs, then. But it's a computer you're looking for, right? The one the expedition was using?"
"Right. It could be one of this installation's units, if any are intact, or it could be something they brought down with them. We'll just have to explore thoroughly and check out everything until we find it."
"Got it." She sighed. "SOP for a Guild Quest, then. Clear the area, look for the target at the end."
"Naomi: cynical."
The Newman snorted.
"Aw, c'mon, you old rust-bucket. You know as well as I do that three-fourths of jobs consist of 'go to X and bring back Y' and the ones that don't are usually 'go to X and kill everything hostile there in Z time limit.' This isn't anything different except we're doing it for a friend."
"Summation: accurate."
"Darned right."
"This is about where I would be flipping Ryland's ponytail," Lyon told her fellow android.
"Organics: humor overestimation."
"Who'd have known bad jokes would be the last refuge of the biological brain against mechanical replacement?" Ryland said with a grin.
"If that's the one thing we can't duplicate, it's no wonder they did create us."
"I stand corrected."
"Mission: commencing?" Gowan nudged.
"He has a point. We'd better get going before I have to refresh the support techniques."
Lyon and Naomi led the way forward through the heavy sliding door into a long corridor with the same general décor as the teleporter room, except for the left-hand wall, which was pierced by a series of oblong windows. Outside them, water rushed past in torrents, far fiercer than any hurricane. Eerily, there was no sound from the waterfall; the insulation of wall and window was absolute.
"We're actually inside the dam!" Lyon was impressed despite herself. "That must be what the area name meant; it was a literal description instead of just a general area."
"Is it part of the generating plant?"
"Probably not," Ryland said. "Pioneer 1's Lab wasn't exactly sensible when it came to safety and stability in area design, but I'd think even they wouldn't do weapons research in an area directly connected to a power plant. Just having them nearby would be bad enough."
"Surroundings: test area."
"Good point; this was probably just used for research and development; they'd use the Jungle, Mountain, and Seaside Areas for large-scale test sites. We already know the biosciences researchers did that."
They proceeded down the hall, which showed no signs of violence or other reasons to suspect that anything was amiss. After about thinly feet, they reached a T-intersection, the corridor continuing straight ahead to a closed door lit with a green light while a branch passage ran to the right. That door showed red lights, suggesting that it was sealed for security reasons.
"Straight ahead it is," Lyon said pragmatically. "I wonder why that door is locked, though. Dr. Lucerne's team would have had the area open, I'd have thought."
"Maybe it leads somewhere they didn't need to go, or maybe it just couldn't be opened from this side," Naomi made a few fairly innocuous suggestions. Ryland's ideas weren't anywhere near as nice.
"If there was a monster outbreak, security sensors might have sealed certain doors automatically to keep the creatures inside. Or Dorn might have retreated this way and locked it himself so he'd have free access to the teleporter while the attacks would have to use Ryuker or telepipes to make their escape."
"Probably, this facility is just in security mode since the explosion like everything else on the planet," Lyon split the difference. "With the AI Olga destroyed, there's no way to rescind the status, so the door locks, laser barriers, and so on reset themselves over time. Which isn't actually a bad thing, given how the monsters did too, at least while Dark Falz was still active. To say nothing of the security robots, whether infected by D-Factor, guided by a corrupted Olga when it was active, or just hostile to us because we're not Pioneer 1 Lab staff and without a system core can't tell them otherwise." There were a lot of possibilities as to why Sinow Berills and Sinow Spigells were a regular hazard on Gal De Val Island. "In any case, Naomi had it right."
"Oh?"
"It doesn't matter why there are sealed doors. We press on, we clear out the place, and with any kind of luck we find what we're looking for at the end."
