The Cardinal Rule Read online

  Alisha clamped down on a smile and refused to allow herself to linger on the idea of satisfaction. "You would be correct." She nodded toward the man in the field. "And that would be…?"

  "Rafe Denison, my assistant. Couldn't do any of this without him." Brandon swung out of the vehicle, jogging around to be a little too late to open Alisha's door for her. She gave him a brief nod of thanks regardless, inspecting first the rolling terrain, and then her low-heeled shoes.

  "I noticed your ankle," Brandon said diplomatically as he offered an arm. Alisha considered the gesture momentarily before slipping her hand through his elbow.

  "Thanks. I twisted it trying on heels at a shoe sale." She gave him the best rueful smile she could summon up. Brandon laughed, and she thought, don't get a lot of single women up here, do you? without letting it anywhere near her expression. All the better for her if they didn't. No former CIA agent would be easy pickings, but if a little girlish idiocy smoothed the way, Alisha would be happy to make use of it.

  Rafe Denison was a small man, slender enough to look breakable, and had floppy hair, bright eyes, and somewhat unfortunate teeth. Alisha shook his hand, assessing his assertiveness as nearly non-existent. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Denison. I've read a lot about you."

  "The pleasure is mine, Ms. Moon." He was as English as his teeth, voice cultured, though lit with curiosity. "Dare I ask what you've read?"

  Alisha curled a brief smile. "You worked for World Electronics for seven years, the first two of which were during your final years of college. You were working on a graduate program, sponsored by WE, when you had what's politely referred to as a change of focus and left the company without warning." She lifted an eyebrow. "How am I doing so far?"

  Rafe Denison's bright gaze held no surprise. "Very well. What do they call it in less polite company?"

  "A complete fucking meltdown." Alisha chose the abrupt, harsh words deliberately, pulling no punches. Rafe's eyes narrowed very slightly before he nodded once in acknowledgment. "The company still mourns your loss, in fact," Alisha went on. "I understand you were doing breakthrough programming—"

  Denison made a moue. "That's debatable."

  "They said you were modest." Alisha brushed away her own comment as well as his with a flicker of her fingers. "Breakthrough programming work. Developing a software compression program that I don't fully understand," she admitted. "But I gather the idea was to render data storage to such small and manageable sizes that enormous programs could be carried on flash drives. But you left the WE umbrella and disappeared off the radar."

  "For a variety of personal reasons," Denison said in an utterly aloof tone. Alisha tilted her head.

  "Because of your brother." Alisha still spoke deliberately, watching the slim man. Denison's younger brother had died in Iraq, and he'd left World Electronics within weeks. His nostrils flexed, making a thin pinch of his nose and stiffening his upper lip. "I don't mean to bring up painful memories," Alisha murmured. Denison's face lost none of its tension, though he exhaled a disbelieving laugh.

  "You fully mean to bring up painful memories, Ms. Moon. Yes, my brother's death is among the things that made me decide to change careers. He was only twenty, the baby of the family, as you Americans would say. I would do anything to prevent another family from suffering that kind of loss."

  "Anything?"

  Denison's face creased with bleak humor. "I believe I would do anything within my power, yes. Hence my involvement with Project ACUTE. I can hope the drones might lead to a lessening of human cost in senseless wars. I think my brother would have liked that."

  This was another dangerous man. Alisha studied him, fitting him into the hierarchy of the AI development program. Dangerous, if he had the strength of his convictions, but naive, if he really believed that selling mechanical warriors to the highest bidder would prevent the wars that had cost his younger brother his life. Alisha wondered if he really did think their drones would make the world a safer place.

  Not that it mattered. It was her job to make sure no one but the United States government had access to those blueprints and plans, or to their creator. Denison's work seemed to lie in the project's storage capacity. While astoundingly useful, it wasn't the critical part of the development, and she was fairly confident he couldn't replicate the drones themselves, not on his own.

  She turned back to Brandon, whose expression lay between admiring and alarmed. "Should I ask what you know about me, Ms. Moon?"

  "We're going to be working together for a few days," Alisha said with a smile. "You may as well call me Elisa. And only," she added, eyebrows lifted again, "if you want to know."

  "I suppose you'd want to know what I knew about you then, huh?"

  Alisha laughed, shaking her head. "A woman likes to pretend her life isn't an open book, Dr. Parker. Indulge me. Allow me to think you find me mysterious and charming."

  "I can promise the second half of that, anyway."

  Alisha lowered her eyelashes, glancing up again coquettishly. She murmured, "Join the club," and drew breath to turn her focus elsewhere when Brandon laughed.

  "I wouldn't belong to any club that'd have me as a member."

  "Oscar Wilde, right?"

  "Probably," Brandon admitted, "but I got it from Groucho Marx." Alisha's heart tightened, a quick knot of pain that released as she managed a smile up at the scientist. "My father's favorite wisecracker," Brandon went on, with less good humor, and added more quietly, "One of the few things I have in common with him, I suppose. At any rate." His eyebrows went up and he brushed the comment away, gesturing to the distant, half-broken wall. Alisha turned to study it, squinting against the wind.

  Dull silver glinted against the wall, light catching and breaking with the whipping wind and bursts of sunlight from between racing clouds. "Is that the prototype?"

  "It is." Brandon slid his hands into his pockets, rocking his shoulders back, weight pivoting through his hips. Alisha, expression schooled, felt amusement bubble through her as she recognized his comfortable stance as that of a born lecturer. Brandon wasn't going to let the demonstration take place without a healthy lead-in. Scientists and captive audiences, she thought, wishing she'd decided to wear her suit jacket after all.

  "Are you armed, Elisa?"

  It wasn't the lecture she'd expected. Alisha shot Brandon a startled look. "No." The part of her that was the trained battle operative let go an internal growl at the admission. Never mind that it was considerably wiser to go in unarmed when it was likely she'd be searched. It still made the combatant in her uncomfortable.

  "You're sure?" There was neither sarcasm nor doubt in Brandon's voice, just good-natured caution. Alisha looked down, as if caught in a lie.

  "The thought occurred to me more than once, Dr. Parker, but I decided a show of good faith was more appropriate than coming in as if I were the enemy." She looked up again, eyebrows elevated a little. "I'm unarmed." Save for her own hand-to-hand skills, at least.

  "All right, good. Come on, then. The drone will do a risk assessment on you—I explained that, right?" There was a note of hope in his voice, as if he suspected he'd given the explanation already, but desperately wanted to give it again, just in case. Alisha smiled.

  "I'm afraid so. Assessment whether to use deadly response or subdual, determined through infrared, right?"

  Brandon's shoulders slumped just enough to be perceptible. "That's right," he said gloomily. Alisha smiled even more broadly.

  "You can explain it again, if you really want to. I'll be very attentive."

  "That's all right." He sounded as if he was doing his best Eeyore impression, before he flashed a smile of his own. "Thanks, though. There's plenty more to lecture about."

  "Does the drone use any other nonlethal response systems?"

  "I'm working on a foam spray—you're familiar with those?" Brandon gave her a cursory glance, clearly not expecting to have to explain himself. Alisha nodded.

  "Immobilizing foam. Hardens
almost instantly. It can suffocate a person very easily, if it gets in your face."

  "Mmm. That's the reason I'm still working on it. The drone isn't very big—" He gestured to the prototype, more easily visible now. "Hobbit-sized." A wrinkle of dismay crossed his face, as if he'd let out his inner geek and was regretting it. Alisha, despite herself, laughed.

  "Everyone knows how big hobbits are these days, Dr. Parker."

  "Brandon. I know, but when a guy like me says something like that, a beautiful woman is going to think he's been a hopeless nerd since childhood."

  "You have been," Rafe said idly.

  Brandon shot him a look of exasperation. "But does it have to show? Anyway, in order to prevent people from suffocating the immobilizing foam can't cover their faces, and while the drone can assess an individual's—or a group's—height and mass easily enough, if the target is in rapid, unpredictable motion, it's proved difficult to launch the foam so that it both immobilizes the arms and yet doesn't suffocate the target."

  Target. Alisha felt an unexpected pang of regret slide through her belly. Target, subject, objective; that was how their training had taught them to think about people. Not as individuals, but as missions to accomplish in one fashion or another. She wondered if it was easy for him, or if Brandon made himself hold on to his own humanity and refused to be wholly neutral about any given situation. She hoped so, but at the same time doubted it: the impulse to do so was a weakness by espionage standards, a secret that Alisha worked hard to hide.

  And this was not the place to be considering that train of thought. Alisha returned her full attention to the scientist, shaking off her introspection. "Humans have the same problem, Dr—Brandon."

  Brandon smiled at her. "Yes, of course. But my drones are supposed to be better than human."

  "Like the hobbits," Alisha said, straight-faced.

  "You're doomed," Rafe told Brandon, now cheerful. Brandon groaned and turned his hands up in a helpless shrug.

  "Add that to your notes about me, Elisa. I work in remote mountains because I haven't got a chance in the world of proving myself other than as a complete geek. It makes talking to women very difficult." He sighed, over-exaggerating his misery. Alisha laughed, shaking her head.

  "If you left the remote mountains, Brandon, you might find out that women are a little more forgiving of complete geeks than they used to be." She very much doubted Brandon Parker bought into his own story; the self-deprecation and laughter in his eyes suggested otherwise. Nor did his physique cater to expectations presented by the word geek, and Alisha had no doubt Brandon was fully aware of that, too. "Your social aptitude aside, Dr. Parker…" Alisha lifted her eyebrows and directed a look at the prototype.

  "See?" Brandon said to Rafe. "I'm hopeless. Can't keep my eye on the ball."

  Rafe gave a snort of derision that belied his cultured English voice. "The day you can't keep your eye on the ball is the day we're all driven out of here like so many sheep at the teeth of their master's dogs. You just changed balls for a minute there."

  "That sounds obscene."

  "I'm not the one flirting with the pretty woman." Rafe turned to Alisha. "We're normally somewhat more professional than this."

  "I'll take your word for it. The drone, gentlemen?" Alisha let a trace of impatience color her tone, more than she actually felt. The two men straightened up like guilty children as she approached the wall and the prototype, circling the latter curiously.

  It was not a friendly-looking thing, structured on a tripod of legs that, while rigid at the moment, were made up of jointed segments that looked as if they'd bend as easily as water. The body was circular, burnished silver distorting her reflection as she studied it. She could see fine lines of tight-fitting sections that made up the whole of the sphere, and reached out to touch it, holding the motion with a glance at Brandon. He inclined his head and she brushed her fingers over the material. It was cool and slightly rough, her fingertips more able to pick out the difference between the texture and the lines of the various sections than her eyes were. At a glance, the level of sophistication was astonishing, far exceeding the remote-controlled warrior-robots that had been used in the Iraqi war.

  "Did you read The White Mountains before or after designing this, Dr. Parker?"

  "Actually, it was The War of the Worlds that ga—" He broke off, startled. Alisha looked over her shoulder at him, eyebrows lifted in amused challenge. He wet his lips, swallowed, and said, "I think I'm in love."

  Alisha laughed out loud, crouching beside the drone. "I think you've been out-geeked." She ran her fingers over the prototype's lower half, shaking her head. "I see that there are sections that open—or so I assume—but I don't see how it can sense anything without compromising its own safety."

  "Rafe?"

  "Certainly," the Englishman said.

  Beneath Alisha's fingers, the drone hummed to life. A glitter of red light passed over her palms, a whir sounding as the top half of the sphere circled to face her, as if it had turned to look at her, just as a human might." Another host of red light shimmered over her: sensory lasers emanating from the whole of the drone's globe, tiny pinpricks of light sparkling from just within the silver shell.

  A nearly inaudible click sounded, precursor to a faint whine of power as two sections of the sphere opened and slid back to reveal far more powerful lasers nestled inside the drone's spherical body. The drone's legs ratcheted up, giving it a sudden height advantage over Alisha's crouched form. Her stomach cramped with nerves, the combat pilot part of her mind white with rage over having put herself in such a vulnerable position.

  The only way out was forward. Through the drone's legs. She could grab one as she rolled through, perhaps unbalance the thing long enough to vault the wall behind it. That would offer some protection, might provide a weapon. There was no time for doubt, not even for a quick breath toward hyperventilation, nothing that might trigger the drone's attack mode. The muscles in her legs bunched, ready to propel her forward. Her taped ankle protested at the unexpected strain, suffering from pressure Alisha hoped didn't show in her posture. Three. Two—

  Brandon said, "Don't move."

  Chapter 5

  The effort of aborting her own leap forward before it began sent thin shards of pain through Alisha's thighs. She snarled without sound, trembling with contained energy. It swam around inside her belly like too much caffeine, buzzing on the edge of illness. Her fingertips were cold, blood pumped into the vitals, all signs of adrenaline waiting to be used.

  "The drone's assessing you as a risk," Brandon murmured. He sounded as if he was speaking to a frightened child, or maybe an unpredictable animal: calm and soothing, his voice pitched low. Alisha wasn't certain if the tone was meant for her or the drone; somehow the latter seemed more likely. As if the thing were alive.

  But then, if it was as advanced an artificial intelligence as Brandon suggested it was…She didn't give herself over to the luxury of a shiver. She wouldn't have in most cases, and with the drone looming over her she was even more reluctant to. Instead she spoke in as low a tone as Brandon had: "I am not carrying any weapons, Dr. Parker."

  "I should have done a pat-down," Brandon said, though there was a dismissive note to his voice.

  Yeah, Alisha thought, able to allow the rage she felt at least that much outlet. I bet you'd have liked that. Her lip curled, as much of that commentary as she dared afford. Parker murmured, "No, I believe you, Elisa. Just hold still for a minute. There's something wrong."

  "No shit," Alisha said through her teeth. She turned her head slowly, until she could glimpse Brandon and Rafe over her shoulder. Rafe looked pale, sweat visible on his brow even from several feet away. They both studied a flat plastic sheet, about the size and depth of a laptop computer monitor.

  "It's reversed the live target protocol," Brandon said after a moment. More color drained from Rafe's face; he must have been responsible for that protocol. Now Alisha knew whose ass to kick when she got out of this. A
crick formed in her neck, stinging enough that she rotated her head back, stretching it cautiously before casting a glance up at the drone. Red dots danced in her vision, laser sightings on the small guns that were pointed at her.

  She closed her eyes, not wanting to damage them by looking into the lasers, and a sense of absurd bloomed in her chest. AI laser damage was not a difficulty faced by most people in their day jobs. Holding on to that thread of absurdity, she said, "Are those actual blasters, Dr. Parker? Laser weapons, rather than conventional?"

  "Yes," Brandon said absently. "This isn't really a good time, Ms. Moon."

  Alisha, dryly, said, "Of course it isn't." A few seconds went by, fear draining out of her as the sense of ridiculous grew.

  "So," she said brightly, "what's its power source, anyway? I assume it's internal, but that thing can't be running on a Duracell."

  "Ms. Moon." Rafe's voice was strained. "Please."

  Alisha bared her teeth in a harsh grin. The drone above her adjusted its position with a click, perhaps not liking the aggression of bared teeth. She lifted her hands until they were even with her head and began to straighten, feeling the play of muscle in her leg slowly tightening and releasing. The drone ratcheted higher, until she was upright and it stood a few inches taller than her, silver sphere gleaming with warning.

  "You," she said to it, "have a certain psychological advantage at first, but it doesn't last." The drone, somewhat to her relief, didn't respond, and then with a soft whine the guns retreated, settling back into place.

  A cold burst of relief flooded through Alisha's body, starting in her core, sweeping out to her fingertips and toes, and leaving her goose-bumped in its wake. Hard on its heels came the heat of temper, making her even more aware of the chilly bumps that spread across her skin. All of her gallows humor at facing the drone fell fast to outrage now that the situation was resolved. Alisha spun toward the men, her jaw thrust out with anger. "A malfunction? Nearly falling to friendly fire does not inspire me with confidence, Dr. Parker."