Authors: Christopher McKitterick
Still, they had problems to overcome before engaging in science. She stretched her neck to both sides and focused on issues at hand, splicing in to the computer. Data from prior to the explosion formed columns down the center of her splice.
“
Sir,” she said, “the ships attacking us aren’t ships at all but self-guided AI torpedoes manufactured by an NKK subsidiary called Z-tech.”
“
Artificial intelligences?” Jack asked, obviously for the benefit of their subscribers.
“
Of course,” she said, wanting to get on with real issues. “But the tech readouts say they’re not very smart. Our ship’s computer ought to be able to outsmart all three remaining torpedoes.” She had an idea.
“
As a matter of fact,” she said, splicing into the server’s symbolic representations of each external sensor and feedback transmitter, “I should be able to get inside their brains and shut them down myself.”
“
Good,” Jack said from behind her. “Get on it.”
She studied the landscape which she had programmed to look like a metallic wall of dials, readouts, buttons and LCDs. One reading disturbed her; apparently, the last explosion had knocked out the ship’s scoop. They were flying into battle unshielded.
Nervous, she reached tentatively toward the fast-approaching bombs. They appeared as three cylinders of dull red light against a background of pure black, except where Neptune lay; there, reflected energy burned bright white. She began searching every available feed and feedback BW the
Bounty
could access, and at last hit on the right channel. As she did so, the three cylinders merged into one and expanded to fit her whole splice. She smiled with satisfaction. If she could do this, they were in no danger, even with a burned-out shield.
The cylinder’s forward sensor arrays were visible as a patchwork of fluttering x-ray emissions, speckled white. To its left, the central processing unit, an orange box; and to the rear, the feed receiver, a grey disk. She first overloaded the CPU with a kilowatt pulse of radio from
Bounty
’s forward dish concentrated on the tiny power link, igniting it for a moment in white. When it faded to black, she turned her attention to the sensors. These resisted the next pulse, so she fired several more in varying BWs. The sensors seemed to be shielded, perhaps with a scoop like
Bounty
’s. However, she reminded herself, without a brain, these flying bombs wouldn’t know when they were near target even if they had functioning sensors. Can someone see if they lack a live brain? Best of all, they wouldn’t know when to explode. Danger had passed.
“
Sir, our bogeys are brain-dead now,” she reported, pulling out of the torpedoes she had just disabled. She watched them from a wide-angle pov. They had ceased following complicated trajectories and simply rocketed straight along their last path, diverging slightly as time passed.
“
Good work, pilot,” Jack commented.
Janus noted that data transfer from Triton had ceased. She dipped into it and ran the most recent 3VRD on file, splicing it in.
She was circling a mound of black material . . . no, it was the upper half of a buried sphere. A voice-over described something completely different, a shrine of some sort. She frowned. Why did religion have to play a part in this discovery? She tried to be open-minded and simply observed.
Obviously, the pov camera was a suit-mounted unit, not an implant or re-projection from the observer’s neural feedback. So this is what was so remarkable about the artifact. It projected images directly into the observer’s meat mind. Perhaps it was a communication device, replaying important symbols from the observer’s memory? The feed garbled momentarily and was replaced by an almost identical scene, recorded several hours later.
Although this information was fascinating, it presented more questions than answers. And Janus had no time for idle speculations.
“
Ready to launch the big fish,” Eyes said, tearing her away from the recording. “Time to light the fuse.”
Janus flipped to the script splice. Yes, as usual, Eyes was trying to get back to the script. Then she remembered that they were not just play-acting—when they fired a missile, they really fired a missile, and it eventually detonated. A wave of panic rushed through her.
“
Why?” she demanded in a murderous voice. She flicked off headfeed and glared at Eyes. The files about the artifact could wait. He didn’t answer.
“
Who are we shooting at?” she asked, then faced Jack. Her eyes narrowed. She wouldn’t sit idle while her crewmates destroyed the greatest discovery in the history of the race. “If you attack Triton, I’ll—”
“
Don’t worry, pi-lot,” Eyes said, gratingly. “This one’s for NKK. Watch the fireworks.”
“
It’s okay,” Jack reassured her. “Ignition in ten, nine, eight. . .” he counted, nodding to her. His eyes held that disarming look he sometimes gave her when she had lost her grip, when she most hated the universe of humans. Of all the men she had met in EConaut service, only Jack could comfort her with a look. Miguel had done that, once or twice, when she was a teen. But that was a long time ago.
She drew a deep breath, held it, released it. She felt recentered, rebalanced.
“
Fire!” Jack ordered.
Over their heads, a rocket engine screamed so loudly Janus had to tap down her audio feed. The heavy torpedo screeched along the metal of its launch tube. Moments later, only the faint hiss of exhaust told a massive ordnance had just been fired.
Janus hurriedly flicked back into
Bounty
’s server, found the torpedo’s pov feedback, and tapped in. She spliced in the computer controls and fed the data through its processors, asking to plot a trajectory. Moments later it overlaid a bell curve showing probable targets. Each was inside Neptune’s atmosphere. She relaxed. The alien artifact—if indeed that’s what it was—was not in danger.
She shut down all splices and overlays except for the pov camera of the newly launched torpedo, racing headlong with it toward Neptune. The gas giant spread across three quarters of her field of view. She sighed. Cool blue traced with pale streaks. So majestic, so peaceful.
A thought crept in and spoiled her peace: People lived and worked in that atmosphere. People the scriptwriters at Feedcontrol had tagged “enemy.” People who, if they couldn’t knock out the torpedo in time, if their defenses were already spent, were about to lose one of their fusion reactors. But there was no room for pity aboard a war vessel.
Her thoughts were interrupted.
“
Pilot Librarse,” the TritonCo scientist said into her ear; she had forgotten to shut down his channel since it wasn’t vid tagged or spliced. His voice was energized with excitement. Janus switched off the Neptune pov and spliced in the recorded 3VRD of the object, listening to the scientist while looking at the artifact near him. It rested at the bottom of a ditch—no, an excavation.
“
I’ve just discovered an entrance into the object,” he said.
Janus’ attention surged. She closed her eyes, shutting away her natural pov, listening. The bombardier wove a backdrop of cannon fire.
“
Got another one,” Eyes declared.
“
I wish there were a way to transmit this,” the scientist continued, “but what the naked eye sees here qualitatively differs from splice imagery. If you’re interested, you’ll have to visit. Please, we are on the verge of learning something great. Please do not attack. No one else has come as far as I. I fear NKK and Neptunekaisha are disinterested in pure science. If the Project dies, I fear no—”
But the rest of his words were drowned out by a shattering explosion that began in the floorplates at her feet, drove through her bones as if someone were pounding her ankles and shins with a mag-hammer, and crushed her thighs and back into the gelfoam of her pilot’s couch. Then followed a flood of sound, registering in her brain as the equivalent of whitenoise. And then ceased the feeling of gravity that went along with deceleration. She floated up from her couch, rebounding off the flat ceiling with the equal and opposite force of the explosion.
When she flicked on the external sensors that had been tracking the disabled missiles, she realized her mistake. The missiles had been redirected, clearly from an outside operator. She hadn’t considered that potential. Only someone who had spent a lifetime living inside machine intelligences could possibly have gotten into those braindead rockets and taken manual control. Two had snuck up in the shelter of the ship’s exhaust and detonated nearly within its nozzle. The last was still on its way, closing the gap fast.
“
Do you feed,
Bounty
?” a man’s voice hissed in her head. Outside her head, another man screamed like a wild animal. Eyes.
Everything was going to pieces. One hope remained. One bit of knowledge gave her strength: Even if
Bounty
were destroyed, even if she died, at least the alien artifact would survive. With that knowledge—with the knowledge that humans had just uncovered the first proof of extranthopic life—she could die in peace.
Though not yet prepared to die, though she wanted to see the artifact herself, Janus felt grateful to that distant Asian man. She set to work preparing defenses and contingency plans.
“
Bitch!” you shriek, floating near the ceiling.
What has she done? Are you going to die? No, you can’t die now. No, Daddy, your boy won’t die. Too many plans, too many things left undone. She can’t steal your whole future.
“
I thought you said you’d disabled those torpedoes.” You thrash ineffectually against the cabin’s air. “This is what we get for buying into NKK’s trickery. A science project, shit! This proves your Nik buddy is a liar.”
You finally right yourself, pushing off the resilient ceiling. You land in a seat and strap in. Do it now, if for nothing else but revenge.
“
Cap’n, launching big fish two,” you say, voice scalding hot in your throat. Your finger lances out. In the corner of your right optic you see bitch coming at you.
A reaction! She wants to kill you. She knows you’re mailing the Dark Angel to her precious Nik down on Triton. She still believes the weapons installation is some spacefuck treasure. You’ve finally gotten into her head.
Well, she’s too late. Your fingertip feels the spring loaded button sink in its panel. Screech and thunder as the second heavy fish tears free of its overhead berth. The angular thrust from its launch makes Janus drift past you, fingernails raking the back of your seat with a dull scrabbling sound.
You switch on a rectangular display in the center of your left eye and enter the torpedo’s mind. It’s warm in there, smelly like the inside of an oil drum. You program a guard to stand watch over its systems, a slick red cock pulsing with purple veins. Bitch will stay well clear of your missile’s mind. You know all about her retro aversion to sex. Maybe she can manage to ignore her disgust and try to push past, but she’ll be distracted from noticing the second defense as it burns her card.
“
Suck on this, Niks!” you tell the sneaky little men on Triton. Bitch will figure out a second meaning when she enters the fish. She crouches on the back wall, getting ready to pounce.
Time for the next step in your plan, the one nobody has suspected. To make sure it’s still worthwhile, you take a millisecond to reaffirm that the
Bounty
’s still transmitting the goods to Feedcontrol. Yes. A grin tightens the tendons in your neck. Then you check tactical data. Not so good.
Bounty
has slowed down too much to escape Neptune’s gravity field, and it’s approaching dangerously close to Triton.
No matter. You can deal with that in a moment.
You unsling your particluster subgun and aim it at Cap’n Jack. Your knees hold you in position against the armrest.
“
Smile, Janus darling,” you tell her while staring into Cap’n’s green eyes. Your glorious father had eyes nearly that color. The trigger mechanism tightens against your finger.
“
What are you doing, Lonny?” Cap’n asks. He seems remarkably calm for having such firepower pointed at his intestines. One of the ship’s systems crackles; you taste it at the back of your mind as burnt copper.
“
I think that’s perfectly clear,” you tell him, and turn your attention to bitch. “Wouldn’t you say?” you ask her.
“
Don’t be a ’quin,” she says.
What kind of response is that? Assume just simple defiance; anything more might distract you.
“
Be reasonable, Lonny,” Cap’n says. “Maybe you didn’t notice, but we’re disabled, adrift in enemy space. We’ve got to work together.”