Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) Read Free Page A

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screen to which he half-whispered a command, “AI 328, scan all
channels.  Flag and list possibles , report on
completion.  Confirm estimated time of completion.”
    A crystal
clear and honey-drenched female voice replied immediately.  “Scan
completion estimated at less than two minutes.”
    Inside the
mech Kostovich stood a little over four metres high.  Stood on the ground
next to it he would be less than half that size.  At twenty-nine
years of age he was the youngest department head at Venkdt Mars
Corporation.  His department was Research and Development.  He had
been a prodigy at school and often had to deny that his parents, in particular
his father, the renowned physicist Craig Kostovich, had modified him in utero
to be a brainiac .  He’d considered the
possibility himself.  His dad was crazy, but not that crazy.  Dan had
just been lucky with his genes, lucky with his nurturing family, who had
indulged his ‘experiments’ and ‘research’, and lucky to have been around when
the settlement at Marineris was still just about a frontier town with people
happy to let a little kid ask questions about the place, the landscape and the
fancy kit that enabled them to survive there.
    He won a
prize for his advanced AIs when he was thirteen.  That was even reported
back on the old home planet, though somewhere near the end of the bulletins.
    Kostovich had
breezed through school, embarrassing his teachers and alienating his
peers.  He started on his first PhD (artificial intelligence) when he was
just turned seventeen and completed his second (astrophysics) at twenty-two,
though that one was just for fun.
    He’d raced up
the ranks at Venkdt by identifying flaws in their processes and suggesting
solutions.  Within a couple of years of starting there he had saved them
hundreds of thousands and made them millions.  In R&D he oversaw all
development projects, but his special baby, the thing he got hands-on
with (hands-on a keyboard, at least) was AI.  Kostovich didn’t need
to be a great designer of products or processes, though he had the skills to do
that, because what he really excelled at was designing AIs that designed great
products and processes.  With his knowledge of computing networks,
cyphers, telegraphy and encryption he could protect that intellectual property
from others and rent its power to them.
    He’d been
head of R&D at Venkdt for two years.  The initial thrill had worn off,
somewhat.  He now found himself correcting tedious and obvious errors in
the work of others, and endlessly tinkering with his AIs and monitoring
systems.  He had risen rapidly, but now there was nowhere left for him to
rise to.  It wasn’t like he could be headhunted by Hjälp Teknik  - they had less than a tenth
of the resources of Venkdt - and he had no desire whatsoever to
go to the home planet, a place he had never been and never wished to.  He
was fourth-gen Martian, and to him Earth was a foreign and backward
looking place, millions of miles away and of only academic interest.  He
was top of his particular tree at Venkdt, with only the board and Charles
Venkdt above him (and they weren’t going anywhere soon) and, all things
considered, that wasn’t a bad place to be.  It maybe lacked excitement,
but that could be had outside work in things like competitive IVR games.
    The honey-voice
spoke, “Scan complete.  Two anomalies detected.”
    “Okay. 
Run AI 14S and AI 14V on the anomalies.  Multi-decrypt and report,
please give me the estimated time of completion.”
    “Completion
in five to six minutes,” came the reply.
    Kostovich
manoeuvred the mech from behind the outcrop and spied the cluster of buildings.
 “Thermal,” he said, and the vista in front of him changed to a blue,
yellow and red child’s painting, which he quickly scanned.  Nothing. 
“How long to completion now?”
    “Five
minutes.”
    He made his
move, breaking from his hiding place and striding toward the hamlet.