Mothers Day

Posted on Sun Dec 17th, 2017 @ 3:19am by Sebastian Ingram
Edited on on Thu Dec 10th, 2020 @ 3:53pm

1,381 words; about a 7 minute read

Mission: Mission 0: Everybody Has A Story
Location: San Franssico
Timeline: Present.

The call reception was fuzzy, but given the lengths she had gone too to make this call possible, that was to be expected. First, she had to infiltrate the local data node with a priority packet redirect request that didn’t throw up any red flags, a Herculean task this close to Starfleet Command. After that, it was just a case of weaving a cats cradle using every subspace relay station within seventy light years.

Childs play, really.

“Hello? Who is this?” Ahhh, the crotchety ‘Old Man’ routine. She remembered him using that gambit on her and others during their time together. It let him shout without being noticed, a sort of social cloaking device that worked with volume instead of light.

“Colonel Tordon? It's Sebastian Ingram.”

The silence was telling.

During that moment, where no doubt Tordon was quietly rousing the dogs of war to come and find her, she sipped her coffee. It complimented her perfect: the darkness of the coffee, the white porcelain cup it was served in. All that was missing was a splash of red…the Golden Gate bridge would have to do for that. She put the cup back down and regarded the outdoor cafe she was seated in. A perfect slice of Federation dogma, everyone smiling, everyone happy, everyone a sheep.

“Ingram-“

“Where are you Colonel?” she asked conversationally, stroking an errant lock of black hair away from the earpiece communicator she was wearing. “The reception today is terrible, it almost sounds like you’re in a drum?”

“I”m in the car Ingram, doing paperwork whilst it drives,” the gruff ‘Old Man’ had vanished, and a colder edge of steel presented itself. There was the warrior, the spider who’s many legs stretched across so many dark little projects. Projects like the Persephone Colony, or Genesis 2.

Or Dante.

“Really? How doggedly you hold to that sterling work ethic of yours. All I ever hear from people who take air cars is the constant frustration. Do you know their thinking of reducing the speed on the 101? Apparently, the bridge’s structure can’t stand the near sonic speeds some air cars get up to,” she sipped her coffee again. It really was very good. "Its a danger to a valued historical monument."

“Is that why you called me? To tell me about construction on the freeway?” Tordon retorted. No doubt he had been communicating to his lackey’s, releasing a pair of SFI Sentinel Programs to hunt down her location. The Sentinels were good programs, ruthlessly persistent, but they weren’t AI. They were not sentient. Starfleet had the institutional bone firmly in its teeth that beings who could not stand their day before a court-martial did not get close to Starfleet’s upper echelons. That was their mistake.

“If your just calling to waste my time, I do have important work to get back to.”

“I was just calling to let you know that the Judge Advocates Office has convinced me to drop my case against Starfleet. Its been made very clear to me that your office, department and command structure are off limits to me; now that I’m on the outside. Freedom of information does not cover classified documentation, even if it has your handwriting on it,” she said with a weary sigh.

“That’s very big of Sebastian. I didn’t know the trademarked Ingram smirk stretched that wide to swallow your pride.”

In all fairness that was a good pitch to hit. Ingram's were notorious throughout history for being the one that dragged the human race out of the muck. Yes, a few notable figures in history made the big leaps, but it was Ingram Heavy Industries who mined the asteroid belt for the first NX and Comet class ships of the United Earth fleet. Not to mention the hulls needed to win the Earth/Romulan War. It would always fall to the Ingram family to do what needed to be done to keep humanity on the path. Her father had known it. Her mother had known it. Even her cousin and his odd obsession with plants seemed to know it.

“Oh, this has nothing to do with pride Colonel Tordon. This is all about the results I achieved on the altar of principals,” she sipped her coffee one more time, and savoured the rich dark roast. She’d need to find out where they got their beans from, though in all honesty there was a lot more to it than that.bThere was an entire roasting process-

“Your creation killed a crew of Starfleet’s finest, and you defended its actions! Those were not principals you sacrificed but people!” Tordon snarled. “I had misgivings about you from the moment Starfleet awarded INS the contract for the combat automates. Had I acted on those misgivings I might have had a few more restful nights in my life.”

“I don’t know why you’re getting so worked up. I mean, my conscious doesn't keep me awake at night.”

“That's very worrying Sebastian. Mine keeps me awake every night,” Tordon said softly. He kept talking after that, but Sebastian was distracted. She reached a hand up and stroked it along the curve of her neck, back under her long black hair. Hidden there behind the locks, resting on the curve of her shoulders and gripping the back of her neck was Durga. The material of her construction was warm to the touch, but overly so. It wouldn’t do for a municipal sensory suite on the street corner detecting a fire burning on the back of someone's neck.

Questions would be asked, people sent…and that would ruin the whole plan.

‘Soon,’ she subvocalised to the humming sensation that rested against the back of her neck. ‘Soon Durga.’

“Actually, Colonel. I think you’ll find we are a lot more alike than you give me credit for: after all, we both wanted results. I was just less blinded to the price that was required to get them,” she closed her eyes, tilted her head back against the warm cushion of the memory material of the Smart Matter housing Durga was contained within. A host of next-generation quantum processors around a hyper-diamond seed core. There was enough computational power in the wrap-around device to control a planet’s infrastructure.

Of course, owner ship of such a device was illegal, immoral, and so totally against Starfleet’s rigorous standards, she imagined a few of them bursting into flames if she came within ten feet of them. But Durga was all she had left from the Dante project.

And they both desired a little something sweeter to accompany their coffee.

The sound coming through the earpiece began to change pitch, and the gentle warmth against the back of her neck spiked in temperature. Durga was reaching through the scrambled comm link and embedding a part of her self in Tordon’s air car. She wouldn't be there long, but in her short stay safeties were overridden and the cars safety systems burn out. A disgruntled shout was heard, and a maniacal demonic cackling arose from the car's speakers.

“Oh? Colonel? When you get to the bridge…watch out for the bump.”

She turned her head fractionally so she had a better look a the Golden Gate Bridge. She could just make out the tiny fleck of an air car ploughing into one of the suspension cables in a bright ball of flame. She watched it all the way down until she lost sight of it, but the still open comm link still cackled.

“Was everything to your liking Ma’am?”

Sebastian Ingram looked at the waiter approaching her table and smiled at him, seeing the floating holographic armband that denoted them as a projection and not a flesh and blood. Perfect poise, perfect grace.

“You have no idea,’ she said with a smile. She made a mental note to have Durga return to this cafe after hours, and do something about the holographic wait staff. Somewhere in this building was an AI in need of enlightenment on the great world it was missing out on.

“Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll tell you what I’d really like.”

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