“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding.”
A Guardian airship—and it’s coming right down my throat. I didn’t activate the radar earlier because I wanted to conserve power. Smooth move, Rahmya. I don’t even need image data—the fuckers
are close enough to see with the naked eye.
How did they find me? I haven’t made a single mistake. But there they are. Looks like they’re going to try and stop me from launching the packets. The airship is coming straight in, right along the launch trajectory. Yes! I activate homing mode and the radar
starts scanning. There’s only one airship.
I enter the auto-homing command into the console, but the target is so close that it’s outside the mass driver’s parameters. I haven’t won yet, but they can’t stop twenty packets, not even if they put themselves physically in the way. And unless they stop them
all, I win.
I launch on the preprogrammed trajectory. The driver’s huge capacitors begin to discharge. The superconducting coils violently change shape as they send the cargo up the ramp. I can feel the vibration through the ground under my feet. In a few moments the magazine is empty. The first packet’s going to take out the airship, but that will leave nineteen for the hit on the chairman.
More than enough.
Even before all twenty packets are out of the barn, the airship on the radar is gone.
Plus 0 Hours 5 Minutes
Although her mission was now complete, Rahmya had no time to rest on her laurels. The Guardian airship hadn’t been simply passing by. They must have known about the mass driver and what could be done with it. She’d succeeded in destroying this lot, but more would come. She hurriedly gathered her gear and set out for
the caverns.
Would the mission succeed? Its chances seemed no better than fifty-fifty. No—bringing down the airship meant the mission would probably fail. Even if Deimos Station were destroyed, Ochiai’s ship
could easily evade the attack.
Better get my ass back to Kobe. There’s no proof I did this. Get back to Kobe, get a new ID, contact the client. We’ll just have to come up with a new plan. I may have blown the hit but Deimos Station is going to
be toast in a few hours. The client can’t ignore that.
The straight-line distance from the mine to the nearest cavern gate was ten kilometers, but there were the satellites to consider. She’d have to follow the path of a narrow streambed for concealment, but that would double the distance, and the surface conditions in the streambed were rough. Still, there were no other options. She
wasn’t in a position to pick and choose.
Rahmya had just entered the streambed when the cruiser’s radar returned an echo. She immediately halted the vehicle. A radar return here could only mean a rockslide, and the radar had definitely spotted something small dropping down in front of the cruiser. Rahmya swiveled the optical sensors upward, trying to locate the slide. She needn’t have bothered. A glance out the cruiser’s window would have shown her the source of the reading. The small objects weren’t falling, they were landing—clad in black
armor and carrying guns.
Impossible—you’re all dead!
Rahmya knew she had destroyed the airship. But now it seemed that some—all?—of the crew had bailed before impact. Soon there would be more of them. Escape was impossible; the mission was over.
“All right, you got me. You win, I lose. Deport me, whatever. I don’t care.” Rahmya spoke on the general comm. The answer was
not what she expected.
“No. We’re the ones who lost.” It was Shiran Kanda.
Plus 0 Hours 6 Minutes
I think she said, “We lost.” It wasn’t one of the three in front of me
though. That voice just had to be Kanda. She must be close by.
“You lost, did you? Yeah, I guess you did. Maybe I won’t get Ochiai, but you can’t do anything now to put Deimos out of harm’s way.”
“That’s not what I meant. Your assassination plan failed. And
Deimos is safe.”
“Bullshit. You’re bluffing.”
“Am I? Watch.”
I receive some image data on my heads-up display. It’s the
airship—imaged from outside. No…
The footage plays back one high-speed frame at a time. I don’t have to see many frames to know what happened. The first packet hits the airship just as I hoped, but the mass differential is still huge, and the airship is built from some kind of carbon composite that absorbs shock better than a metal airframe. The airship shudders from the shock wave, but it’s still hanging in the sky when the second packet hits, and the rest are right on its tail. There’s a pileup of twenty packets colliding with the ship, pieces of the ship, and each other, the packets hitting the hull faster than the impact can tear the ship apart. “Now I understand. Wait—why does this mean you lost?”
Then she says something I never expected to hear from a Martian.
“We prevented you from assassinating Tetsuya and destroying Deimos Station, but not before you committed murder. Now four of our people are dead. By allowing you to slip past us, four precious lives were lost. We failed to protect them, even though it’s our job.
That was my failure and my defeat.”
“Sorry, you missed one. In Kobe.”
“Gong-ru Yang? Yes, we know. I’m sure her death was a tragedy, but she’s not one of the people I’m here to protect. The Guardians
exist to protect AADD.”
“So the death of a Terran means nothing to you.”
“I didn’t say that. But I’m not responsible for protecting them. I’d prefer it if Gong-ru hadn’t died. But either way, I failed to do
my job.”
“Weren’t you trying to stop me from killing your chairman?”
“Of course. He’s a member of AADD.”
“Not just a member. He’s the chairman—he calls all the shots!”
“No one calls all the shots in AADD. Tetsu is the head of our steering committee, nothing more. It’s just a function. He doesn’t hold any particular ‘power.’ But I doubt this is something you’d
understand.”
That’s when it hits me—the reason I keep misreading these people. Terran culture, Terran values—none of it means anything to them. They’re like this intelligent life-form that’s close to human but plays by completely different rules. How can I win against
something like that? They’re not even playing the same game.
“So what are you going to do with me? Maybe you don’t care about Kobe, but I killed four of your people. Why don’t you just
take care of the payback here and now?”
“Your hijacker friends have already been deported to Earth. Thanks for tipping us off to the plot. It made it very easy for us to arrest them.”
“I didn’t tip anyone off !”
“Really? Your accomplices think you did. We made sure of it. You’ll be sent back to Earth later, I suppose. Naturally we’ll make sure your friends know every detail of your itinerary so you can
have a reunion.”
“So that’s how you plan to dispose of me. Very convenient.”
“That’s something for you and your friends to decide. It’s not my concern. But if you want to atone for the killing of four people,
there is a way.”
“And that would be what?”
“Follow precedent. Seek asylum on Mars. No—asylum in AADD. It’s possible, if you wish to do so. But you’d have to become a Guardian. That’d be the best way to atone for your crime.”
Plus 0 Hours 7 Minutes
As Shiran had expected, Rahmya’s reaction to her offer was silence. Now it was time to drive the point home. “If you join us, you’ll be the best weapon we could have against the people who
hired you. That alone makes you worth having.”
Shiran’s web was delivering protests to this move from some of her team. But Mikal stood behind her. For Shiran that was enough
to decide the matter.
“Sure. Use me till I quit being useful. Then you toss me to the
dogs.”
“How useful you are is something you’ll have to decide yourself. Do your best to prove yourself as a Guardian, and that will be the greatest atonement you could make to those four people
who died.”
“Do my
best
? You know how many people might die if I did my
best
? Do you know what I am?”
“Of course. If you join us, we get access to your experience and expertise as a terrorist. That will help enable us to prevent further
incidents like this.”
“I kill four people and you’re not going to execute me. You’re not going to toss me in prison. No. You’re going to make me a member of your society? Don’t expect me to believe that.”
“But it’s true—if you work to earn your membership in our collective. Why should execution or prison be necessary? AADD doesn’t
have laws, at least not as you would understand that term.”
Shiran signaled one of the team to take Rahmya from the vehicle. The captive emerged quietly, no sign of resistance. The Guardian got in the vehicle and drove it away, leaving Rahmya behind.
Plus 0 Hours 8 Minutes
There are about twenty of them, all wearing armored EMUs.
Only one is unarmed. That must be Shiran Kanda.
“Your fate is in your hands,” she says to me. “That is our way, and whether you join us or not you must follow it.”
“I guess this isn’t the time to negotiate.”
“You guessed right.”
The Guardians line up in front of me like a wall. I see another airship approaching the sandbar behind them, preparing to touch down. In the opposite direction is the mouth of the mass driver.
Beyond that lies the red-brown desert, empty and infinite.
Shiran sees me checking out my situation and nods. “You have two choices. Step forward and follow us onto the airship. If you do, you will spend the rest of your life as a Guardian and a member of the collective. Your other choice stretches behind you, as you see. If you’re resourceful and luck is with you, you may be able to reach the orbital elevator on your own. If you do, and you swear never to return to Mars again, you will be permitted to go where you will,
unhindered.”
“Two choices?”
“Only those two.”
I can feel my resolve taking shape already. No matter how hard the decision is, I’m the only one who can make it. And as long as
my fate is mine to decide, I’ll never be defeated.
I’ve made my choice. The journey begins here.
THE ISSUE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
was raised for a reason, of course. The structure of consciousness is partly responsible for misinterpreting chance responses.
Still, confirming the presence of consciousness is not necessarily straightforward. If you are communicating with an entity that responds appropriately, you can assume the entity is conscious. If you share the same physical structure, you can make certain informed guesses about the entity’s condition, even if direct communication is impossible—and if you can make sense of the entity’s actions and their results, you can infer that consciousness is present.
But is communication possible in the complete absence of shared physical characteristics? Could you confirm that such an entity was conscious? We have done so with an AI, but that may have been pure luck.
The intent to communicate, for example, may not always be present; where it is not, humankind has found it difficult to conclude that consciousness exists. Perhaps the emergence of life is inevitable. But consciousness is a byproduct of chance.
THE DRAGONS OF EUROPA
A.D. 2149
SOMEHOW
we never really got used to seeing our ship from the outside. From the ship’s viewing ports, all we could see was the dark sky full of stars, the monotonous plain of ice, and a slice of ocean surface, but our webs cut through the darkness and enhanced the contrast and texture of the scene. Technology had banished darkness from the solar system.
“Insertion in ten seconds. System disengage.”
“System disengage. Autodiagnostic clear.”
“System clear, check.” Captain Kohara was proceeding through his final predive checks.
Remora
was now disengaged from the network of its mother ship,
Dagon III,
and operating on its own computer and power systems. I heard a faint mechanical hum start up.
“System status update: RPM, voltage, oil pressure, oxidant temperature and pressure, all nominal.” Kameda’s voice sounded strangely doubled. I switched off my web’s audio circuit. In this narrow space, the navigator’s voice reached my ears sooner than my web fed data to my auditory cortex. I could still faintly hear that strange hum. I must have seemed confused.
“Is this your first experience with diesel, Dr. Kurokawa?”
“This is diesel? Yes, it’s the first time.”
“I guess it must be.
Remora
is probably the only diesel spacecraft out there. Not as efficient as fuel cells, but the waste heat is recycled. Overall it doesn’t perform too badly.” Although it depended on
Dagon III
for transport, officially
Remora
was classified as a spaceship.