Dark Tempest Read Online Free PDF Page B

the custodians could see my confusion. It was there for the jury to see. There was evidence all over me. I couldn’t even remember what I’d done myself. I was an ex-con, and here was someone called Amelia Jeffries who picked me out on an identity parade, and said that I positively was the man who stole her handbag.
    “So I was back in the shit for something I didn’t know whether or not I’d done, with no Rogan or merchant ship’s captain to help me. They set my bail for three months. I tried to tell them that I had computer skills, but they told me to shut up, because skilled workers weren’t needed on three-month bail contracts. They needed manual labour.
    “I woke up the next morning to the racket of the cell being unlocked. Someone had come to pay my bail. Who was it, some sweating sadistic slave-driver from a forge? I nearly laughed. It was none other than Marcus Taggart. I realised at once that I’d been framed. I said nothing. Nothing I could’ve said would’ve proved anything about Taggart, and I’d only be risking him retracting his offer on my bail.
    “Down we went to the docks, and I boarded the ship now docked to your fine Shamrock . So there you have it, Archer. The rest you saw with your own eyes.”
    Jed looked hesitantly at the man. His explanation seemed to make sense, and it did show him in a somewhat different, although still entirely dishonourable, light. She pushed the modicum of sympathy she’d briefly felt from her mind. Wolff was still stupid, badly bred and a petty felon. “So you are nothing but a tramp, a criminal and a cheap hacker?”
    Wolff made a face. “You can’t really call it hacking. Not when the computers involved have AI. No, you have to persuade them. You have to make them like you.”
    “Computers do not develop affections for people,” Jed scoffed.
    Wolff arched an eyebrow. “And your ship does not like you? What is that, if not a computer?”
    “My ship is programmed to do as I say.”
    “Ah, but no Archer ship would accept a common man as its instructor. Your computer sympathises with the way you think. After a while it adapts to you, and nobody else can affect it. What better failsafe than loyalty? But the major flaw is that computers are essentially logic and, although they are more resilient in this manner than men, they can be bribed and appeased.” Wolff scratched his leg. “I see you have managed to seek out and destroy my ink cloud virus.”
    “You imply you can inveigle the approbation of a ship such as this?”
    Wolff smiled slyly, watching Jed sideways. “If I wish to.”
    “Accomplice of scum. I would do well to kill you as a precaution.”
    “I would have to first overcome you. I would be unable to fully take charge while you were still conscious. This computer is essentially an interface, and not an independently thinking unit.”
    “And that? If you are the expert of computers, why let Taggart install that device?”
    Wolff looked at the computer on the floor. “That is the work of a charlatan. Taggart did not like to put his life in the hands of others. I was just a bail slave, framed and bought for my abilities. He knew I was in disapproval of his refusal to divulge his intended course.”
    “A commendable stance.”
    “And one that cost him his life.”
    Jed glared at Wolff, and both were silent for a moment. “Can you release it?”
    Wolff seemed to choose his words carefully. “I could, if you were to let me.”
    Jed had a worrying notion of him inside the workings of her ship, inside her own head, fighting with her over command of the Shamrock . “You think me a fool?”
    Wolff smiled inscrutably. “I make no such assumption. I merely wish to ensure this ship at least does not voyage toward a suicide finale.”
    Jed’s lips pulled back over her teeth. “T’would still be folly to place the wellbeing of my ship in the hands of some wandering varlet.”
    “It is not possible to disconnect it now.” Wolff cast his gaze toward