Storming Heaven (33 page)

“This has to be tearing holes in their morale,” Justin pointed out, as he pulled himself to his feet and walked over to the food processor.  “Neat Scotch; no ice.”

Brainy made an unsettling electronic cough.  “Are you drinking so early?”

“There’s something to celebrate,” Justin pointed out, as the drink formed in the processor.  He took a single gulp and smiled as it ran down his throat.  The personalities in the MassMind swore that it was far from the real thing, but Scotland and the Distillers had been blown away over a thousand years ago.  “How often do you get to see a limping Killer fleet running home with its tail between its legs?”

“The Killers do not have tails,” Brainy pointed out, pedantically.  “They are creatures composed of a free association of cells.  They lack anything reassembling a human body, let alone tails.”

Justin shrugged and took a smaller sip.  “I can’t imagine what it must be like for them,” he said.  “Do you think that their butts sometimes vote to secede from their heads, or perhaps their legs rebel against their arms?”

“There is no way to be certain, but it seems likely they will have more of an AI-level merge rather than a human body, although they may have different cells for different functions,” Brainy said, after a moment in which he emitted a very human sigh.  “They may merge into one mental pattern and then separate out again without any of the hassles that human group minds would experience…”

“I’d hate it if half my body went one way and the rest went the other,” Justin said, dryly.  “I remember an old story when some dumb kid managed to work out how to talk to his body’s organs and learned that they thought he should eat less sweet junk.”

“Words to live by,” the AI said, mischievously.  “Your body is probably rebelling against the remains of that drink.”

“I’d better have another one to suppress the revolution,” Justin said, and laughed, before he placed the glass in the disposal and turned to the observation console.  “I want to build up as complete a picture of those ships as we can, even if we have to zone out parts of the remaining system.  We can still track anything coming to get us, can’t we?”

“Killer starships are very noticeable,” Brainy assured him.  “We will not be disconnecting the near-space warning system.”

Justin laughed.  The Defence Force was fond of sharing a joke about a pilot who had taken his starship out to an unexplored star system and powered down everything, apart from life support, in order to do some meditation.  Two days later, he had opened his eyes and seen – though the viewport – an advancing Killer starship.  It had come within metres of smashing right into the human ship and destroying it, without even noticing that it was there.  The pilot had survived, to find himself the butt of jokes right across the Community.  The general conclusion had been that the Killers had thought that he was too pathetic to kill.

“See that we don’t,” he said, finally.  The images of the Killer starships began to get clearer as some of the probes slipped closer, compromising their stealth to get a close look at the enemy starships.  Justin suspected that under normal circumstances, the Killers would ignore them anyway, but now…they might well wipe the probes out and then start looking for the command ship.  They had to be jumpy themselves after the loss of a third of their fleet.  No one would have hit them so hard since they had started their mission.  “What the hell did we hit them with?”

“Not specified,” the AI said.  “The probes are picking up weapons signatures comparable with particle weapons and energy torpedoes.  There are also several unknown signatures and odd gravity fluxes surrounding the Killer starships.  They may no longer be capable of opening a wormhole without repair and refitting.”

Justin smiled.  “Are you sure of that?”

“No,” the AI replied.  “There is no way to be sure.  I merely postulate it from the low-level power curves, seventy percent below standard Killer power curves, on the starship.  They are definitely running on short reserves, but they may be capable of rerouting power to the wormhole generator if pushed.  We are unable to determine the level of internal damage, nor do we have the information to tell us what impact having such damage will have on the ship.”

“And if they can’t,” Justin breathed.  The opportunity could not be missed, whatever the risks.  They might never have another such opportunity again.  “Get me a link to Sparta.  I want to make a case for blowing up this star.”

“One more victory like this,” Andrew said, “and we are ruined.”

He gazed out of the
Lightning’s
observation deck towards the remains of over fine hundred starships.  Most of the debris was little more than dust, but here and there were scattered components of larger starships, torn and ruined beyond repair.  The destroyed Killer starships – and the one the Footsoldiers had disabled at the cost of their own lives – were floating as little more than debris, although they had been so massive that some of their ships had survived their death throes.  The researchers were still trying to understand why some had vaporised – taking some of their tormentors with them – and others had simply blown apart into debris.  The general theory was that some of the starships had managed to power down their black hole cores before they died.  The others had vaporised when the black hole destabilised.

“We have hundreds of thousands more starships,” Brent said.  The Admiral hadn’t been allowed to attend in person – the War Council had been reluctant to risk him – so he had used the MassMind to send along a holographic representation.  It was created using force fields and was almost like being there, in every detail, but one.  It wasn’t
real
.  “We’re refitting the entire Defence Force with the new weapons and developing new tactics for…”

“Picking them to death,” Andrew said, shortly.  The failure of the antimatter weapons to win the battle quickly – if they’d worked, they would have wiped out the entire Killer force – had cost lives and starships.  Brent was right, in a sense; the Defence Force could produce new starships almost at will, but lives were not so easy to replace.  If ramming the Killer ships was the only way to guarantee victory…they’d have to start building AI-controlled starships to carry out the attacks.  There was no way that he would order anyone to commit suicide.  “Or perhaps building new automated starships to take the Killers out.”

“We’re working on that now,” Brent said.  “We weren't keen on the concept of automated ships before, but if we set them up properly, we can control them at a distance without inserting AI cores without human oversight.”

Andrew nodded.  The first attempt to build an automated starship had failed dramatically when the AI had gone mad.  There hadn’t been many further attempts, not least because of a theory that the Killers were actually rogue AIs that had wiped out their creators and turned on the rest of the galaxy.  They knew now that the Killers had a biological component, but a Killer was as much machine as biological creature, a perfect merger between organic and inorganic life.  It did raise questions about what would happen, in future, to the Spacers.  Would they finally evolve to a point where they could merge human minds into starships?  It was what they wanted to do, in the long run; it was their holy grail.

“Operate them from a distance,” he agreed.  There were no theoretical barriers to such a concept, but it didn’t sit well with him.  It wouldn’t be so…exciting if they were far from any possible danger, nor would they have the awareness that they
were
in danger to keep them alert.  “What are we going to do now?”

Brent understood.  “We have an updated report from one of the scouts,” he said.  He shook his head in awe.  “We have a victory – a battle that is, for once, a clear victory – and naturally everyone starts filing reports on how great it is and their own plans for taking advantage of the victory.  It actually took them several hours to get the report to me; God alone knows what has vanished into the filters, never to be seen again.  The Killer fleet whose collective butt you kicked has staggered home, beaten and defeated.”

Andrew smiled, ruefully.  No human starship could have soaked up so much damage and escaped, but the Killers had survived.  The part of him that admired their technology and their ability to use it was impressed; the remainder of his mind was annoyed.  Every time he started to think that they might just be able to force a draw, the Killers pulled another trick out of their sleeve.  The general theory said that the Killers had stagnated, after literally thousands of years of easy victories against rocky-planet natives, but now they had one hell of an incentive to react, adapt and overcome.  They still had the technical advantage…

“And now we’re going to hit them where they live?”  He asked.  “The fleet isn’t ready for another offensive, yet; we need time to reorganise and refit.”

“We have other fleets,” Brent said, “but I wasn't going to waste a single starship on a system that is of no interest to us.  There are no human settlements there.  No one would want to live there, for they would be living right on their doorstep if they did.  I want you and the
Lightning
to take a supernova bomb there and destroy the system, along with the Killer starships.”

“They might jump out and escape,” Andrew pointed out.  “That’s what we’d do if we knew that the star was about to explode.”

“Yeah,” Brent agreed.  “Intelligence thinks, however, that they couldn’t pull out all of the installations they have in the system, not unless they can generate a wormhole large enough to teleport the entire star system away…”

“Which would mean taking the supernova with them,” Andrew said.  The concept was impressive, if a little scary.  The Killers had almost infinitive sources of power.  They could probably move an entire star system thousands of light years through a wormhole if they wanted, and had that much power on tap.  “They’d just be destroyed when it exploded anyway.”

“Perhaps,” Brent said.  “Between you and me – this is highly classified, but you have a need to know – there is a possibility that they might be able to snuff out the supernova with their gravity beams, perhaps even force it into a black hole rather than exploding outwards with deadly force.  No two simulations agree on what’s going to happen if they try, but the general consensus is that it should be very interesting to watch from a safe distance, a
very
safe distance.”

Andrew looked out towards the darkness in the distance, the invisible location of Shiva.  Some tugs were pushing human debris towards the event horizon, adding to the black hole’s mass by a tiny amount, while others were trying to salvage as much Killer technology as possible.  Andrew privately suspected that most of the debris would be completely useless, at least from a research point of view, but the Technical Faction needed as many pieces of Killer technology to study as possible.  The disabled starship was already being prepared for removal to a safe location.

“Yes, sir,” he said, finally.  He wasn't sure how he felt about triggering a second supernova.  Would it be just another nail in their coffin – or, now that the Killers had been forced to retreat, would it make it impossible to force a peace?  The Footsoldiers had had no way of communicating with their opponent.  “Sir…have we made progress on any way of actually talking to them?”

“Nothing so far,” Brent said.  “We know how they talk to themselves – I mean from body section to body section – using low-level RF transmissions, but we haven’t been able to locate any actual ship-to-ship transmissions.  If the plan to retune the black hole works” – he looked out towards the invisible black hole and frowned – we might be able to hack into their communications and decrypt them.  Overall, though, we could try…but we might be sending them anything from a challenge to do battle to the results of last year’s champion baseball game.”

“If the Killers play baseball,” Andrew agreed.  The Killers were just so different that it was unlikely that they had anything in common with the human race.  “What about breaking it down to basic universal fundamentals?”

“We’re working on it,” Brent confirmed.  “The trouble is that we may not be able to move beyond that to actual concepts…and, of course, we don’t even know if the Killers will hear us.  Their communications system remains a total mystery.”

“And if we blow up another of their stars, we might push them into trying to talk to us, rather than hitting back,” Andrew agreed.  “Has there been any sign of retaliation?”

“None as yet, but its only been a few hours,” Brent said.  “We’re watching closely for any sign of movement – with the Anderson Drive we can bring a refitted fleet in to engage any counterattacks – but so far we’ve seen nothing.  I’m starting to think that it’s time to launch additional fly-through missions for the known Killer systems, the ones they chased the observers away from.”

“And mark them down as possible targets for the supernova bomb?”

Brent scowled.  “There aren’t that many bombs,” he admitted.  “If we hit every known Killer system – over five thousand – it would take years to wipe them all out.”

“And yet, if they don’t talk to us, there’s no way to avoid it,” Andrew said.  “I don’t want to commit genocide, sir, but if its them or us…well, I know which side I support.”

“I know,” Brent agreed.  “So do I.”

He straightened up thoughtfully.  “I want you to hand over command here to your second, and then take the
Lightning
to Sparta.  By then, I should have permission to launch a second supernova attack on the Killers, or perhaps not.  We can’t slow the offensive now, Andrew, or the Killers will react.  I just wish I knew what they were thinking.”

***

Fee, fi, fo, fum
, Chiyo Prime thought desperately.  She desperately needed the humour. 
I smell the blood of human scum
.

The Killer mind knew she was there, now, and it was looking for her.  The desperate attempt to jump ship, the transmission of a personality duplicate out to the human starships and the brief moment of distraction she’d caused the Killer had announced her presence in ways the Killer could not ignore.  She’d sensed its surprise as it realised she was there and its horror at the concept of having been violated, even though Chiyo Prime hadn’t intended to board the Killer ship.  If the Killer had simply vaporised her craft, it wouldn’t have happened, but instead…

She sensed its gaze probing through the streams of data that made up the massive computer system and ran, flickering from one end of the system to the other, concentrating hard on trying to hide.  It was as if, she decided in a moment of humour, the Killer was peering through its body to find a tiny human; if she hid well enough, she might survive.  It would have great difficulty picking her out from all the other pieces of data – that was all she was, really; a piece of data – but when it found her, it would have no trouble ending the threat.  One of her duplicates was caught and swept up by the Killer mind - Chiyo Prime heard a last despairing scream before it vanished – yet the Killer mind was not fooled.  It kept advancing, quartering the system piece by piece, hunting for her.  It had one great advantage over her.  It knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what everything should look like.  Any discrepancies could be blamed on her.

I should have tried to overwrite its central programming
, she thought, bitterly, even though she knew that it would have been futile.  Another searching beam passed through the system and she cringed away from it, hoping to hide for a few more microseconds.  The Killer system was hardwired, like the core of the MassMind itself; there was no way that a program on the inside, like Chiyo Prime, could rewrite it.  She’d hoped that it would be possible to take command of the ship, but the Killers had designed the starship for one mind, the Killer hunting for her now.  It wouldn’t have accepted another Killer, let alone a human mind.  She concentrated and nipped between two blocks of data, running as fast as she could through the system…

The oppressive presence of the Killer mind, something she had always been able to feel at the back of her mind, faded slightly.  She wasn't fooled.  If the Killer had paused in its search, it hadn’t given up on finding her.  It would find and destroy her duplicates, one by one, and then it would destroy her – unless it found her first.  The more she thought about it, the more she wondered if the Killer would ever be able to separate her from her duplicates; they were, after all, the same person.  The thought was bitter; they might have shared the same memories, but they were growing apart.  The last time she had merged with one of them, it had been painful, a suggestion that they were no longer parts of her, but individuals in their own right.  There was a good reason why personality duplications were forbidden in the Community.

She almost smiled, bitterly.  Her final duplicate, the one she’d fired out into space in a desperate attempt to communicate, would probably end up bearing the blame for her crimes, maybe even being permanently separated from the MassMind as punishment.  She would be part of her - Chiyo Prime – so she would bear the responsibility – would she even be a different person?  After the Killer had finished purging its own systems, she would be the last Chiyo left in the universe.