Chapter 14

Sam was pointing me to the replicator when I stumbled out of the master bedroom in search of life giving elixir. She had somehow, I do not know how but I will be eternally thankful to her, gotten hold of a decent coffee profile. I was the first up surprisingly and when the time that the women had been forcing me out of bed came and went I decided to check on them.

Anna was doing her cat routine and was curled around a pillow and snuggled under the sheets. Mari was spooned behind her with Katherine spooning Mari. I was trying to figure out who to wake when Mari raised her head and cracked an eye at me. I mimicked weightlifting and she shook her head. I stood looking at her, she looked at me for a few seconds longer, dropped her head and went back to sleep.

I was very, so very tempted, to throw ice water on the lot of them.

I walked back out, grabbed another cup of coffee, and sulked. Sam was gracious enough to not laugh where I could see it.

An hour or so later, as I was watching the morning news, they came out and greeted me. Saying they'd missed me in bed, they went about getting their morning tea. I'd decided to man up and put it behind me during my second cup. We still barely knew each other and needed to learn about one another better. I got up, wandered over, gave them kisses on the cheeks and told them 'morning'. I grabbed a bottle of water and went to take a shower.

They were very quiet on the way to breakfast and I failed to notice the tension. I can honestly blame that I am not the most observant of female behavior because I hadn't been around them much except in Privateer training and that doesn't count. Sam came to the rescue and clued me in, seeing in their posture through the optical unit. How she knows female behavior better than me, I don't know. When I took a look at them and saw what she was talking about, I called a halt.

"I'm not mad, ladies. A little irritated but not at you, just the fact that we have lots to discover about each other and it'll cause these little misunderstandings."

They gave me hugs and kisses and expressed understanding. The walk was much lighter after that.

After breakfast we walked around and did a little shopping. I found a luggage store and Katherine took charge. I let her, she knew this stuff and I didn't. I just stood back, observed and stayed out of her way. It was safer for me.

Near lunch time, we headed back, grabbed my new luggage that the store delivered to the hotel, dropped off the purchases and picked up Sam. We ended up back at the diner we'd been to a couple of days before and I tried a corned beef sandwich for the first time. I'd had them hold the mayonnaise (don't like) and add on spicy mustard. With the shredded cabbage, pickles, and melted cheese on rye, I think I found my favorite sandwich.

We finished up and needed to walk off lunch a bit before heading to Privateer HQ. Brian was still manning the reception desk. He called the back offices and then said to grab some coffee and a Red-Eye for Philippe. We did and shortly we were in Philippe's office. I placed Sam's carrier on the table we gathered around and started going over the plans.

Sam projected the maps we had created. As Philippe had asked, I didn't give specifics other than some of the pros and cons he wanted clarified. We were going to be making decisions as we went along as the situation warranted.

"If you do this, the way you have planned, it'll take you two to three months," he pointed out. "You'll also be vulnerable post jump until you can build up enough reserves for a micro jump."

I saw what he was leading to and I'd anticipated it. "I know. That's why I want to see if we can get our hands on a micro-jump drive."

He nodded and smiled at me. "Good call. We've got two in the warehouse." That threw me for a loop and I looked at him with raised eyebrows.

Yes you can use a regular jump drive for micro-jumps but they aren't designed for it and you run the risk of blowing circuits and frying them. Micro-jump drives are what they sound like, a drive specifically for micro-jumps. Micro-jump drives are designed to handle the repeated power surges associated with multiple micro-jumps. They are used by military craft for exploration of new systems. It's faster to travel in micro-jumps around the perimeter of a system than it is to do it by system drive and allows ships to travel out of the system a distance to look around. They are also supposed to be exclusive to military. We can borrow them sometimes in emergencies, but to have one much less two in our warehouse?

"Aren't you just a pack rat?" I said to Philippe.

"Sometimes we forget to return things. Or should I say the military sometimes forgets we have things."

"I'm not going to get in trouble when I reach Prime am I?"

"No, we still have the authorization for one of them for an operation. Of course the operation was completed a few months back. So if someone asks, you're covered."

"I'll try not to let anyone in Prime know and see if I can get it to the warehouse."

"I knew you were a smart boy."

"About some things. Others, not so much. Just ask them," I said pointing to the women.

"No, you don't know everything. But you're a fast learner," Mari told me with a look.

"OK," Philippe went on, "while you're on the way to Prime you're authorized to use the redeployment account. Get a new authorization randomly."

"What'll that do?" Katherine asked.

"When he uses the redeployment account, it just show up as an authorization number, no names associated with it. There's always redeployments, cycling in and out of Privateers. I seriously doubt anyone will be able to track you. And you three, after you leave and until you're safely on Prime, do NOT make any purchases and try not to do anything that requires an ident scan."

All three nodded.

"What else do you need?"

Sam spoke up. "Additional pressure suits for Lady Estebahn's group."

Philippe nodded. "They'll be there. Anything else?" When I couldn't think of anything I shook my head. "When do you leave?"

"I'm thinking tomorrow. Can you get the micro-jump in tonight?" I said.

"Shouldn't be a problem. You have your anti-tampering system engaged, right?" I nodded. They'd use the override and I'd get a message sent to me.

"Do you have any problems with leaving tomorrow?" I directed that question to Anna.

"No," glancing at Mari who also shook her head. "I think tomorrow will work."

"OK then. I don't want to seem rude but I need to send some messages and get that micro-jump to your ship while nobody is looking."

"How are you going to do that?"

"Don't ask," I said. "It'll just destroy your faith in station security."

We were back on the upper layer and heading towards Nola's shop. There were no crowds here as there were still a few hours until the end of midshift. A few people were about, looking at ship upgrades and whatnot but for the most part it was pretty deserted which made our walk fast.

We entered Nola's and found her waiting for us. She waved me over to the counter and I laid Sam's unit on top. Sam popped up and said 'hi' while Nola connected her to a computer terminal and greeting her in return.

"OK, Sam, I'm going to initiate a quick baseline test," she told her. "Go ahead and complete that."

"Sure thing," Sam said.

Five seconds later, Nola nodded and said "OK, I'll initiate the benchmarks. When you're done with those, the behavioral tests."

"OK. Fire away."

I watched Sam for a moment and she just seemed to stand there idly, moving her head from side to side occasionally with a look as if she were listening something. Nola watched the terminal and seemed satisfied.

"She's doing great," Nola said to me. "The benchmark settings are almost maxed out and she's not even struggling."

"How long do you need for these tests?" I asked her.

"About ten minutes for the bench mark and the behavioral will vary between ten and twenty minutes. With her, I'd guess twenty."

"Why's that?"

"The longer the behavioral test takes with AIs it usually means that they are thinking before answering the questions. They're set up in a way that any base model with a new personality matrix can answer them quickly. The answers are right, but there are better answers that aren't as obvious."

"Can she hear us talking about this?"

"Nope, she's essentially sound boothed and listening to what she wants," while looking at the screen of her terminal. "What's Cannonball Adderley?"

"Jazz musician, I think."

While we had been talking, the women had been wandering around and looking at the merchandise. Katherine walked over and placed a couple of little figurines on the counter, then wandered off to look some more.

I shook my head. Nola looked at me questioningly.

"Katherine feels the need to buy something in almost every store she enters."

"I heard that, Max," was the response that came from somewhere in the place.

Anna walked over and looked at the figurines and chuckled. "She tries to find little things like this everywhere we go. We've got a display case full of silly things and only we know what they are."

We chatted for a while longer, waiting for Sam to finish up after close to thirty minutes. Nola started doing some typing and poking on her terminal. She had a smile on her face. She turned to Sam and said "I'm impressed. Based on the preliminary diagnostics, your personality development is about 40% further along than normal."

Sam looked surprised. "Really?"

"Yes, I've got a histogram of your development from the day you were activated. The plots and graphs show steeper development than the average." As she was talking to us she pointed out the graphs. Sure enough, Sam's development exceeded the average. She focused on an area at the end of the histogram showing the most recent data. "There's even been a spike of about 3% in the last few days. What's happened recently?"

"She's been hanging around this bunch," I told her, pointing to the ladies. "They're a bad influence on her." That earned me a smack to the back of the head from Mari. "But I have noticed little changes in her behavior myself. She seems to be acting, for lack of a better term, more girly."

"Really? How so?"

"Just little things. I'm used to Sam acting in certain ways since it's been her and I by ourselves for a long time. Since we've been with them I've noticed little changes, nothing major, just little things like the way she talks or acts. For the longest time she's been just like me. I think after observing them for the last couple of day she's starting to change a little. I like it and I hope it continues."