Ali woke me up by loudly uncapping her fresh root beer against the exposed frame of her seat. Sucking the foam out of her bottle’s tip, she threw the hazardous pull-tab into the ice tray where Willie’s wired head had started its slow decay. “Found a tracker up his throat. The chainsaw cut it in half…” she explained. Sipping, she showed me what was left of the gore-stained spying device.
“How’s the hacking doing?” I yawned, glancing at the main polychrome monitor. Fighting the ICE consumed a lot of power. The fans flooded the cockpit with hot, dusty air mixing with the smell of rubbish that still enveloped my fur and Ali’s pink jacket.
“The computer's been diligent since we left Ijiraq’s orbit. The cracking’s over and it’s presently sending the drive’s content over the web, straight to Bismuth Ball—using the Guild’s underground satellites network.”
“Good.”
Speaking of the devil, the radio sizzled and Mancéphalius’s ominous synthetic voice echoed on a secured channel: “Greetings, Children of the Genome. Let’s be brief. As you know, radio contact can betray my position. I just started receiving William Stephenson’s data.”
“You’ll have what’s left very soon,” my partner replied. “It was taxing. But we managed to bring back the head.”
“The head?” the IA reacted after a five seconds delay. “What did you foment this time?”
“Simple anatomical-electronic detail,” I interjected while glaring angrily at my brainless Neanderthal. “Did you find anything interesting so far?”
My voice echoed through the static until the broker’s genderless tone could be heard again: “Recorded conversations, surveillance cameras’ feed or even DNA samples—as explained before, the sensor readings of ships or stations will lead us to Nora, your sister, by comparison games. They’re crumbs already converging into a knot… rather fascinating.”
“Like what?” Ali asked. While listening to Mancéphalius, my associate nervously passed her hand through her long blonde hair.
“There are some curious similarities between Nora’s movements and other unsavory individuals,” the data broker explained. Meanwhile, a beep warned us of the upload completion.
“Don’t you think the results got slightly mixed up inside Willie’s hard drive—or while traveling through the web? Wasn’t it better to send you diskettes?”
“The data is corrupted by numerous reboots—it’s not your fault, it was highly encrypted. For what I can discern, the ultimate piece of your puzzle could be retrieved from a friend of mine as much of Willie’s shattered intel comes from her. Her name is Carole Selena.”
“Friend?” Ali intervened as Mancéphalius’s voice faded.
“Partner—competitor… client, according to… laws of the market. Data Brokers don’t have friends or enemies… Just colliding interests,” completed the AI. We could barely hear him through the interference. “She owes me… favor. I’ll let her know… give you her Jovian coordinates. Godspeed, Children… the Genome.”
As the radio canal crackled, my sapiens turned to me to ask my opinion on the King of the Fairies’s last words. I convinced her to trust him.
“So far, he’s been very helpful,” she reckoned before sliding from her inclined chair to dive towards the hold.
“Indeed. But, Ali?” I inquired. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
I heard her grumble when she came back to grab the swelling head, and all her way to the airlock to trash it. Meanwhile, Mancéphalius had just sent us Carole Selena’s known coordinates. It was time to leave the Rings for Jupiter.
