Free Noble Conflict by Malorie Blackman

Services.’
    Kaspar stared. One little search and it’d been reported back to his boss? Bizarre, or what?
    ‘At the peak, you had, let’s see’ – Voss flicked through a couple of holo-screens to get the figures – ‘nearly thirteen billion bots searching everywhere from sewage reclamation pump control to classified Guardian and Justice Directorate archives and using twenty-four per cent of available net resources. You want the exact number of bots?’
    ‘No, sir,’ mumbled Kaspar.
    Thirteen billion!
    ‘Well?’ prompted Voss. ‘Explain yourself.’
    ‘I was just curious about something and Mac is cleared to access secure material,’ Kaspar offered weakly.
    Mistake.
    ‘I don’t care if she’s got “Top Secret” laser-etched on both earlobes,’ ranted Voss. ‘She’s a librarian, not a Guardian. And you are a Guardian, at least for now. Your job is to stun bad guys, not to waste the time of purple-headed librarians. Stay away from her from nowon. You hear me? Don’t use semi-public datalinks. Don’t use your Guardian clearance for freelance fishing expeditions in other people’s lakes. Don’t clog up the network with loosely constrained searches. And do not play intelligence analyst or psychologist or any other amateur twatting about that you aren’t trained for. If you pull a stunt like this again, I’ll transfer you to a desk job that is so bum-numbingly tedious it’ll make you wistful for your stint in Public Relations. Is that clear?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘Get out.’
    Kaspar left the room and sagged the moment he closed the door behind him. Talk about being verbally flayed to within a centimetre of his life! He certainly didn’t much feel like finishing breakfast after that. Instead, he went across to Library Services. He had a horrible feeling that Voss’s anger may well have spilled over in Mac’s direction. As he entered, she saw him and waved. Damn, but she really was pretty.
    ‘Morning,’ she said brightly. ‘You don’t sleep much. Back for more research?’
    ‘Hi, Mac. Actually, no. I came to apologize for getting you in trouble.’
    Mac’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Am I in trouble?’
    ‘I thought maybe someone would have had a word about last night? Apparently we  . . . I  . . . used a horrendous amount of computer power.’
    ‘Nobody said a word to me.’ Mac frowned. ‘You got in trouble?’
    ‘Oh, yeah. Big time. I got told in no uncertain terms that using the entire datanet for pursuing my hobbies is not a great career move.’
    ‘Oh dear. I’m sorry. That’s my fault. I assumed you were working on official Guardian business, so I didn’t put an activity constraint on the bots. How many got spawned?’
    ‘Close to thirteen billion apparently. I didn’t realize I could screw up everybody else by doing what I did. My boss says I was hogging a quarter of all net resources.’
    ‘Not really. Voss was being a bit dramatic.’
    ‘I don’t think he’s the type to make stuff like that up. He read me the stats.’
    ‘You know what they say – there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Look, we were running overnight. At that time, a lot of computers are not working on serious business, they’re doing background tasks, like planning how much geothermal energy usage will increase in the next five years, or searching for radio signals from extra-terrestrials. If our bot usage had really been having a negative impact, we would have got an automatic warning.’
    ‘Voss made it sound like civilization was ending because I’d hijacked most of the bots in the system.’ Kaspar heaved a sigh of relief.
    ‘He would!’ Mac laughed. ‘The system is much more robust and adaptable than that.’
    Just then, Kaspar’s datalink and Mac’s monitor bleeped simultaneously. Kaspar keyed the ‘Accept’ switch on his link and an automated message began playing throughhis head-up display or HUD. It was a message directing him to log onto a computer.
    ‘Mac, I just got