Unstable Prototypes Read Online Free PDF

– but before long he'd snagged everything that she
was after.
    "What's next, Ma?" Lex asked as he piloted
his bike out of the store.
    "Our next destination is the starport. We
will need to board a first class flight, but first, you will need
to send your own ship autonomously to a maintenance station near
the flight path," Ma explained.
    "Uh. The SOB can't do long range autonomous
flight," he explained, nudging his bike in the general direction of
the starport.
    "Karter designed and built your ship, and I
was responsible for installing the software. I assure you, it is
entirely capable."
    Lex blinked.
    "Well why didn't anybody tell me?!"
    "You had not requested it. You had only
requested short range autonomy."
    "Then why did you put it in?"
    "The appropriate sensory apparatus and
computational power were present in the system, there was no reason
not to include it."
    "Are there any other features you didn't
bother to tell me about?"
    "Several. I can prepare a list for you, if
you like, following the completion of our current task."
    "Any reason you can't do it now?"
    "It is possible that you will be displeased
by one or more of the functions, and thus will be less inclined to
continue to lend your aid."
    "... See, now that's not very
encouraging."
    "Only one of them is potentially life
threatening."
    "Oh, well, that's not so bad," he snarked,
quietly questioning why he was willingly helping these people.
    #
    In a large space station, at an undisclosed
location, a woman by the name of Janet Purcell was pacing angrily
in the way that only a superior officer can. Her hair was short and
red; a brilliant, fright wig shade of red that was clearly the work
of chemicals rather than nature. The clothes she wore were strictly
military; black canvas fatigues, festooned with patches and medals
representing assorted service honors. Notably absent were flags or
seals indicating her military loyalty. She looked like she may have
been entering the unhappy half of her thirties, but her physique
was the training-forged build of a career soldier. A deep scar ran
from her scalp just above her left eye, circling across her temple
and cheek and ending at the edge of her chin. What looked to be the
feathery red beginning an electrical burn was just visible on her
throat at the neck of her fatigues. Hanging at her belt was a
combat knife laser-etched with the designations MME (MonoMolecular
Edge) and HFMO (High Frequency MicroOscilation) along the side of
the blade. To a layman, these terms roughly translated to "very
very sharp" and "makes a scary high pitched noise while it cuts
through things." The scary noise was caused by the fact that the
blade vibrated at a frequency just beyond the range of hearing, and
this frequency slowed a bit while it was sawing through... well,
virtually anything. In a chest holster, a plasma-pistol with a
bulging extended power cell was ready and waiting to be drawn. The
look in her eye suggested that it wouldn't have to wait long.
    "He is secured?" she hissed.
    "Yes, ma'am."
    "Again?"
    "Yes, ma'am."
    The man answering the questions was the same
one that had been the leader of the group that had ended up
kidnapping Karter. He was sporting at least three recently bandaged
wounds, and one hand was badly disfigured. Rather than the arctic
gear of his last outing, he was wearing composite body armor over
fatigues similar to Purcell's, and a high-powered plasma rifle was
strapped to his back. The goggles, however, still had a place of
honor on his head. The body armor, goggles, and bandages were worn
by nearly all of the soldiers without a task-specific uniform. In
this case, a name tag etched on the armor labeled him Crewman
Marx.
    "Explain to me how this happened," she
ordered.
    "The prisoner, Doctor Dee, appeared to be
cooperating. Our engineers agreed that the most recent design did
appear to be larger scale implementation of the small device we had
confiscated from him when we first captured him,"