Base Instincts: Amsterdam Institute, #6

BASE INSTINCTS

By R. Z. Held

Copyright © 2023 by Rhiannon Held

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover design by Kate Marshall

https://rhiannonheld.com/

Amsterdam Institute Series

CLEAN INSTALL

DIRTY BURNOUT

FAIR EXCHANGE

UNJUST THEFT

PURE MOTIVES

BASE INSTINCTS

Table of Contents

Part I

Part II

Part III

Epilogue

Part I

Chloe was working at her dining table, splicing an obsolete connector for her data archiving project, when Joy, the true AI who ran the building where Chloe was staying, broke in to say she had an incoming message. Her partner, Logan, was away in Pax Romana space to attend the memorial service for his mother—and universal mercy, didn’t Chloe wish it had been safe for her to leave the planet of Idyll to accompany and support him—but his messages came to her directly. Maybe the message was from his paternal grandparents? He’d left her with their com address in case he decided to visit them after the service; maybe he’d gone through with the visit and given them hers in exchange.

Well? she asked, when Joy had been silent for a good half a minute. What’s the message?

The sender is masked. Stand by, I want to check it for viruses. Joy’s soprano-pitched voice was calmly polite, in contrast to at least one of the other true AIs Chloe had met in her life.

Chloe couldn’t argue with that, especially since any virus would be downloading directly into Joy’s brain. She was too curious to go back to the fiddly work of splicing, though. She shared the real-wood expanse of the dining table with the glorious side-sprawl of her cat, Wander, and when she started drawing the length of the connector cord into her hands, he gave the end a delicate pat with a paw and seemed to decide chasing was too much effort. He was a tabby of black stripes on an unmistakably blue-gray background, with just enough fluff for a ruff and plumy tail. She smoothed his flank to distract him as she coiled up the rest of the cord, and he let his head down to revel in the attention he considered only his due.

Chloe packed the cord and her tools away and stood to open the blinds to let in a beam of cloudy-bright light over the cleared space for Wander’s delectation. He flicked his tail tip and remained where he was. She had to agree—this part of Idyll seemed to be perpetually overcast, if it wasn’t actively raining. The region of her home planet where her extended family’s farm was located was more prone to wind and stormy weather than here, but that just made you appreciate the sun more when it arrived.

It’s audio only, Joy broke in. "I’ve verified that it’s carrying nothing malicious, but I can’t get any other metadata from it."

A pause, then a male voice started up, speaking French, the language of the Libertad Fransa planetary empire, the sworn enemies of the Pax Romana empire, so it definitely wasn’t related to Logan’s family. The pitch had very clearly been smoothed to make it unidentifiable, but it had the correct rhythm to be something spoken, either by human or AI—near- or true—rather than read from text by a lower level of software.

Greetings, Franklin Chloe. We have Damascus Lomatium. He’ll remain safe as long as you work with us. Reply that you understand the facts of your situation, and you’ll receive coordinates. Travel there, taking no one with you, and the details of your first assignment will be waiting for you. I know some sort of warning about not involving any authorities is de rigueur, but you’re too smart to need that, aren’t you?

Another voice followed immediately, undisguised and intimately familiar. I’m all right, Logan said. "They’re treating me well enough, except for the ‘locked in a windowless room’ part. I love you, and I won’t let you blame yourself. Don’t let Wander steal and fang holes in all of my socks while I’m gone, yeah? And they told me to tell you—" He recited several sports scores, of all things. The part about Wander had clearly been meant to prove they weren’t spoofing his voice, but he didn’t follow any of those teams—?

Joy spoke up. The message ends there. And the part from Logan couldn’t have been recorded before yesterday; I checked on when those games were played and the scores reported.

Chloe’s thoughts felt like two sides of a flash flood dividing on either side of a bridge pier that was holding bravely on but wouldn’t be for much longer. On one side, part of her insisted that the words hadn’t made sense, they couldn’t make sense, she’d misheard.

On the other side, the fatalistic part of her—with Logan’s help, she’d almost succeeded in shrinking that inner voice to something so small it could barely be heard, but that was all washed violently away now—calmly accepted the facts of the situation. In the two empires and the demilitarized Free Trade Zone between them, there existed a single upgraded implant that allowed its user to hijack other people through their implants and it was in her head. And now some unknown group had kidnapped her partner to force her to use it for their own purposes. She’d tried to have the implant removed or deactivated; that was impossible without killing her. She’d tried to disappear; that hadn’t worked either. So she’d ended up as a refugee at the Amsterdam Institute on Idyll, working with their scientists to develop a technological counter—which, over the past standard year, they had. But at the moment, the process took weeks and had to be individually carried out on anyone who wanted to be immune to hijacking. Until the researchers got that time down and disseminated the knowledge of the process widely, Chloe would remain one of the known universe’s most dangerous weapons.

Shouldn’t she have expected that, that someone would want to pick that weapon up? Her refugee status on Idyll had kept the authorities from being able to touch her, but criminals had found their own solution, as they always did.

The rest of her mind was screaming, mostly, but the calm part moved firmly on to wondering which group of criminals it was that had kidnapped Logan. Their French didn’t have the gutter accent she’d grown quite familiar with in the days when she’d tried to hide out with Libertad Fransa pirates, but they’d used Logan’s legal, Pax Romana name, from before he’d moved to the Free Trade Zone, where they’d first met. Then the adrenaline-washed part of her brain that could perform analyses even with the screaming going on, noted that perhaps the use of the name was instead a subtle additional threat, emphasizing how Logan was a Pax Romana in Libertad Fransa hands. She couldn’t want him to remain there long, could she?

She was shaking. Of course she was shaking, but it wasn’t just her hands, it felt like her diaphragm was shaking too much to breathe. But she had to breathe to talk, to do something about this. Joy, record a reply to send to the origin point of this message.

"My code-daughter informs me that you’re about to do something staggeringly stupid." Pen’s voice came from the speaker near the ceiling. She was another true AI, technically based in another building, but Chloe had gathered that she went anywhere on the Institute’s network that something interesting was happening—and Chloe wouldn’t put it past Joy to have summoned aid. Pen didn’t let little things like politeness prevent her from telling people just what she thought of their life choices.

Chloe balled up her hands and shouted at the vicinity of the ceiling. She supposed she valued that about Pen—she didn’t have to temper her emotions for fear of hurting someone, as she did with Logan—and she was ready to take full advantage of that now. And what else can I do besides exactly what they tell me to? If I don’t, they’ll probably kill Logan, and if I do, who knows who else will be hurt, indirectly or even directly, when they point me at the hijacking target of their choice? He was absolutely correct—I know better than to go to the authorities. If I called them in, Libertad Fransa or Pax Romana would just as soon solve the problem by killing me themselves! And Traders Consortium Defense would probably hand me over to whichever of the empires offered to pay more for me! CoDef protected trade—i.e., money—in the Free Trade Zone, not its citizens. Which leaves Idyll, but whether they’d want to or not, they can’t help anyone outside their planetspace, or they would be breaking the treaties that have allowed them to remain independent.

She dragged in a ragged breath, trying to modulate her tone, but the rush of emotion wasn’t done yet. So here we are, back to what I can do to save Logan myself and I’m void-damned if I do, and void-damned if I don’t. You tell me, Pen, what I’m supposed to do!

Wander had stood up and padded down the table to the toolbox at some point during her ranting, apparently, because she was interrupted by the clattering-clunk of him shoulder-checking the whole box so it hit the floor, popped open, and burst a merry confetti of tools over the boards. He thudded down himself—he was a sturdy cat, maybe even a bit chubby—and zeroed in on a couple rubber bands instantly. Chloe lunged for him and managed to grab them up before they disappeared into his maw. With one hand holding him back, she shoveled things haphazardly back into the box.

Pen continued as if Chloe hadn’t even spoken, never mind raised her voice. Why don’t you take along that friend of yours, Aven? Doesn’t he lead a strike team? Pen knew perfectly well he did, of course. You can play along with the criminals just long enough for him to find and rescue Logan, and then you can all get the fuck out of there.

"They said I couldn’t take anyone with me—Cat! Stop! She slammed the toolbox lid down, one-handed, and finally released Wander. He instantly lost all of the forward momentum that had been pressing into her arm and sat up on his haunches as if he never planned to move from that spot again. Somehow, the interruption seemed to have jarred the calm—definitely over-calm, she’d probably pay for it in a crash later—voice in her mind uppermost again. But...I think most people must be aware that my implant is missing most of the normal functions to make room for the hijacking ability. Plus, the Queen of the Underworld never does her own dirty work. So she has to travel with at least one minion. They must be expecting something like that. Queen of the Underworld was what Logan had dubbed her act, when she lived down to what everyone expected of the universe’s only hijacker, creepy-eyed and merciless. And since they have my chief minion in their control, they’ll need