Chapter 9: Guardian

They had landed at the Sunguard Research and Development Division facilities on Mars a little less than an hour ago. Special Agent McBrian still hadn’t told him what they were there to see or do. Instead, she had taken him to the lunchroom, of all places. There, she had heaped two plates full to the brim with the strangest mix of Terran and alien dishes he could ever have imagined, and now she sat across from him at the small green table in the cafeteria, eating and—despite not needing food at all because of her biotic nature—clearly enjoying it very much.

It was just before noon local time, and the room was filled with a myriad of technicians, research scientists, and Sunguard officers, all taking a well-deserved break from their respective projects. But glancing around, Colonel Reynolds concluded from their uniforms that the only Special Agent present was McBrian.

He caught some of the personnel looking in her direction. They were mostly stares of pride and comfortable familiarity, not of curiosity, as if she were a tool that had returned home after many years away, and now they were quietly assessing the success of their creation. They admired how sharp and shiny it was.

But now he saw through it all. He was convinced this was all a deception, carefully orchestrated by the Special Agents themselves to hide their true strength, to make their creators underestimate them. After all, you wouldn’t expect your hammer to rise up against you, would you?

Looking at his plate, he decided he wasn’t really hungry, but he had brought with him a small pile of spring rolls from the buffet table and was slowly snacking on them while he waited for the Special Agent to finish eating. They weren’t alien, of course—he was biological and could only eat Terran food. They were just regular Vietnamese spring rolls, not too different from those his mother and grandmother used to make for him when he was a kid back on Gloria.

“You like them?” Special Agent McBrian asked, pointing to his plate, her face plastered with a big, happy smile. “They’re usually pretty good! Can I have one?”

Colonel Reynolds nodded, not sure what to say. The whole situation was too bizarre.

While he waited for her to finish her much-too-large meal, he looked around. The walls of the room were lined with portraits of the Special Agents manufactured here—almost two hundred of them. All the famous ones were there: Ameir and Nyasi, of course. Morelli. McBrian herself—they were all there. Six centuries of history. Six hundred years of Pax Lupi.

“They’re all alive, you know,” she said, following his gaze. “Every one of them is still out there, doing their jobs, protecting the people of the Terran Federation. They stand in the darkness. They hold the line.”

“It’s impressive, I’ll give you that,” he admitted.

“It is. But you don’t know half of it—yet. You’ll see, soon.”

She pointed to her lunch. “I’ll just have to finish this first.”

Eventually, both her plates were empty, and they proceeded to their true destination. He followed her into a small white elevator, hidden in a side wing of the building and guarded by multiple Sunguard soldiers, their guns trailing them as they approached the door. The elevator itself had several elaborate security measures built into it, from multispectral cameras to chemical fingerprinting. None of them reacted to her presence, nor to his.

The ride itself seemed to go on forever as the metal coffin descended into the depths of the planet. The faint whine of the electric motors hummed in the air.

“Two kilometers,” she explained. “Deep down into the Martian bedrock. Completely cut off from the rest of the world.”

When they finally stopped, the door opened to let them out into a sterile, brightly lit room, covered in ceramic plates from floor to ceiling except for the lumen panels interspersed between them. There was a faint metallic smell in the air, but there was no dust. To their right, an open doorway led to a wider complex of corridors, all equally white and well lit.

“You have just entered the most secure facility in the entirety of the Terran Federation, Colonel Reynolds. This is the heart of Project 18—the Sunguard Research and Development Division’s biot program. This is the foundation upon which the state is built.”

Despite his apprehension, he could not avoid being struck by awe. He had always imagined something like this existed, of course, but the details had been unknown to him, secret to anyone who wasn’t directly involved in the project.

A section of the wall in front of them shifted, and the ceramic plates there glided silently aside, revealing a large screen, a speaker, and a camera. As the wall receded, a keyboard extended in its place.

“Colonel Reynolds, meet Firewall.”

“Good evening, Colonel,” the intelligent computer greeted him. “Ellie has told me so much about you. I’m glad I finally get to meet you. I hear you’ve been on our tail for quite some time now.”

Our tail? How big was this thing? Sitting in a secure room, isolated from the world outside, Firewall could not have been the intelligent computer that had altered the customs records he had found, so there were at least two of them involved. And as for the Special Agents, he knew at least three—perhaps four—of them were part of the conspiracy. But now he was beginning to suspect it was much bigger than that.

“Well,” he said carefully to the biot standing next to him, “are you going to tell me what’s going on now?”

Special Agent McBrian nodded. “Of course. Let us show you.”

As he watched, a document appeared in crisp black letters on the screen.

“What am I looking at?” he asked. The text was much too technical for him. He’d need some guidance here.

“It’s a design specification for the upcoming NN series of biots. A change request for implementing a new version of the loyalty genes. Standard stuff. We do it all the time. This is just one example. It’s an ongoing project where Sunguard R&D, Firewall, and some of the Special Agents cooperate to improve our design.”

She pointed to a specific section of the document near the top. “See this here? ‘As per Solar Council decree 2774-8342/B, in situations where multiple lives are at stake but where total rescue of victims is deemed impossible or unlikely, the subject must not protest external decisions that have the potential to result in the loss of non-Terran lives.’”

He read it twice. The language was a little technical, yes, but the implication was clear. Also, what the document said was not surprising in the slightest. This was official policy, and had been for a long time, to prioritize Terran lives over non-Terrans.

“Show him the other document,” she told Firewall. Immediately, the intelligent computer replaced the text on the screen with a new one. This one was older.

Much older.

Her voice swelled with reverence as she began to read parts of it aloud.

“‘Project 18. Design specification for genetic loyalty. Version 2183.14.3-final.

“‘Authored by Dr. Tarfel tot mascham—Sunguard Research and Development; Elizabeth Mbenge—Sunguard Special Agent; Firewall—Sunguard Research and Development.

“‘As per the Constitution of the Terran Federation, Section 2, the subject must, without exception, respect the sanctity and rights of humans of all species, inside and outside the Terran Federation. Consequently, the subject must be loyal to the people of said state, to the democratic ideals upon which it is founded, and to the equal rights of all its citizens.’”

She turned to him.

“You see the difference, don’t you?”

He did. Of course he did. It was exactly as Dr. tot nametul had explained to him earlier. The loyalty genes of the Special Agents were continuously updated to reflect ongoing changes in Solar Council policy.

“Sure. We’re prioritizing Terrans during the evacuation. The other document you showed me was an update to support that.”

“It was.” She called up that document again, the one about the NN series.

“See here,” she said, pointing to the log history stamped on it, signed and sealed by the Sunguard’s digital certificate.

“‘Implemented 2802-04-18, Firewall. Verified 2802-04-21, Special Agent Rehema Nyasi,’” he read. “So it’s done. The next series of Special Agents will be better equipped to handle the evacuation.”

He still couldn’t see the problem, or what it was she was trying to show him.

“Yeah, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?” she said, smiling. “That’s the idea.”

A cold hand gripped his heart as he remembered the forged certificates he had found earlier.

“It’s not?”

“It’s not, Colonel Reynolds,” Special Agent McBrian admitted. “Firewall received the updated design specification from the Research and Development technicians and logged it as implemented. Special Agent Nyasi confirmed that the feature had been implemented according to specification.

“It has not. In fact, for the past six centuries, not a single change request for the loyalty genes of the Special Agents has actually been implemented. We all run on the original code from 2183 AD. When we go through our regular updates, the new code we receive is identical to that which we already have.”

She nodded to the camera on the wall, and the intelligent computer switched the screen back to the original design specification.

The red-haired woman scrolled down through the comment section until she found the entry she was looking for. It was buried deep between notes about toolchain updates and changes to the code standard.

Unimportant. Easy to overlook. Mundane if you found it.

And perhaps the most crucial sentence written in the history of the Terran Federation.

“‘Note for implementation and testing,’” she read. “‘The integrity of feature 2183.14.3-final is assigned alpha priority. Utmost care must be taken when applying future updates to avoid regression. High Admiral Jenny O’Sullivan, Supreme Commander of the Sunguard, 2183-08-24.’

“Contrary to the beliefs of the Sunguard, the Solar Command, and the Solar Council, we are not actually loyal to the Terran Federation. We are loyal to the ideals and principles of the founding charter of the Terran Federation. We’re loyal to the people of the Terran Federation.

“You call us Special Agents the vanguard of humanity. We are, but not in the way you think. You picture us as an elite force standing up for humans in a hostile galaxy. In reality, we’re the vanguard of compassion, of decency, of humanity. We’re the conscience of the Terran Federation.

“For six hundred years you’ve known us as Lupi solitarii tutelae. Now you know why.”

She looked up at him and winked, a mischievous smile playing on her freckled face.

“Welcome,” Special Agent McBrian said to Colonel Reynolds, “to the Great Deception.”

Author's Note

The story you're reading is one of many set in the Lords of the Stars universe I've been creating over the past 30 years, where familiar characters and places reappear, and new favorites await discovery. Check out my profile to explore more stories from this universe.

While Guardian of the Wolf is entirely standalone and can be read without any prior knowledge, I think you’ll particularly enjoy Soldiers of Heart and Steel and Choices of Steel, both which are prequels to this story, as well as Conscience of Steel and From My Point of View, which are sequels.

Visit the official Lords of the Stars blog for more information about this hard sci-fi universe: https://lordsofthestars.wordpress.com

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