“There is something else that should worry us,” Erin said. “Galileo is in the moon's shadow from here. So are Earth and the LEO Colonies. The only friendly tracking station we have facing Earthward is at the Sinus Iridum Highlands Station.”
The first officer nodded. “Sixteen gunships would be plenty to take that out. If they do, we’ll need to risk at least one multicruiser just to observe, or accept that we’re blind to what they’re doing down there.”
“And that takes another ship out of the fight with minimum effort,” Erin said.
Katana: Outbound En Route to L-4 Trojan Cluster:
They weren’t trying to run silent as much as they were just trying to get past the fleet without incident. They’d shut off their Plasma Induction Engine and were in free fall while they coasted for several hours along the outer edge of the ghost fleet. Their velocity was well above anything the fleet could reach, so they were in little danger unless there was something out there they didn’t expect. In space, surprises were never something you wanted to encounter.
Tamir bin Ariqat watched the wallscreen on the CrewDeck in fascination as Edison watched him. Under normal acceleration, he was too weak to move around well, but as they coasted Tana had given Edison permission to bring him to the CrewDeck to watch their flyby. “Where are they going?” he asked.
“Same place we are” Edison said.
“And where exactly is that?” he asked. They hadn't told him anything about their destination other than Katryna Roja would be there.
“The far edge of nowhere,” Saf said. She was floating in the galley making a snack while Joe flew the Katana.
Ariqat glared at her. He always had reacted badly to the presence of so many women in positions of power, and the density of pheromones on the ship made it worse. Under normal circumstances, he put up with it because he had to, but the neuroblockers that controlled his pain also enhanced his potential to act like an ass.
“The less you know right now the better,” Edison said. “Roja’s location is probably about to be ground zero for—”
“The end of civilization,” Ryktoff said from where he floated near the wall behind Ariqat. “That’s a huge mess looking for a place to land.”
Tamir twisted to look toward the source of the voice. It was obvious from Ryk’s positioning that he stood anchored in place to keep an eye on things. “I think it is absurd you are still treating me like a prisoner,” Ariqat said. “I am a chancellor of the Union and I deserve respect as such.”
“And how would that be Chancellor Ariqat?” Tana said, landing enough emphasis on the title to draw blood. She pulled herself down through the hatch from the upper deck to join them.
“I am being treated as if you don’t trust me,” he said.
“As I see it, you were at the least, complicit in creating a war fleet in violation of Union law,” she said, anchoring into the seat across from him. “You seem to forget that before you disappeared, you were part of the effort to discredit Katryna Roja and now it’s obvious that your trivial accusations of her wrongdoing were nothing more than an attempt to cover your own actions. I think that covers the trust issue fairly well.”
“Given what is happening now, I think we must put that behind us and stand together against a common enemy,” he said.
“If my opinion matters, I think that’s a thin justification for your changing allegiance,” Edison said, shrugging. “You’re barely more trustworthy than Tomlinson or Lassiter at this point.”
“You are exaggerating the reality—”
“Don’t bother,” Tana said. “We brought you along because you might have the potential to do something about this war. But now that we can see the results of your actions with our own eyes, we doubt you can stop it.”
“I do still have command authority,” he said. “I can order the fleet to stand down.”
She leaned forward, stared at him for several seconds, and shook her head. “Your face tells me you hope you do, but you can’t know for sure,” she said. “What you are, now that we know the attack is coming, is a witness who can clear Roja. Other than that, you have a limited value.”
“That sounds like a threat,” he said, lowering his voice to a snarl.
Saf pulled herself into the seat beside him and grabbed his arm. She shook her head and leaned in close to whisper. “It is not a threat. But trust me when I tell you this, I’ve left enough pieces of meat in the recycler to not think twice about another one.” He tried to jerk free of her grip and shock played across his face as she squeezed down with her augmented strength and his arm remained pinned in place.
“How dare you—”
“Saffia, we are being pinged by active tracking,” Joe interrupted. “One ship in the fleet has spotted us.”
“Which one?” she asked, releasing Ariqat’s arm with a flip of the wrist that almost sent him tumbling out of his seat.
“Until they hit us a second time, it is impossible to tell with only our passive sensors,” it said. “I assume it is one of the closer ships.”
“What’s the range?” she asked, glancing at Tana and then Edison.
“The nearest ship is 867,000 kilometers,” it said. “I am receiving an anomalous interference in internal RF infrastructure.”
“Interference?”
“Yes,” it said. “We are also receiving a transmission.”
“Put it through,” Saf said.
“Chancellor Tana Drake. This is Odysseus. I assume you are aboard the Katana. Your trajectory indicates your intent to approach a restricted area. I advise you to alter your heading and return to your place of origin. Your compliance with this order is mandatory, and failure to respond to this instruction immediately, will result in your ship and crew being forfeit.”
“Joe, shut down all com systems,” Saf snapped. “Somebody get Ariqat strapped in and prepared for acceleration. We need to get some distance now.” She glanced at Tana with an expression that looked like real terror.
Her reaction drove an icy spike through Edison’s soul.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Personal Quarters of the Executive Director: Galileo Station:
It was late and Derek sat staring at the walls of his apartment, trying not to think. Every time his mind drifted, and he chased an idea, no matter how random, Odysseus perceived the thought to be an invitation to dialog. It intruded on every waking moment and often dragged him out of sleep to discuss something that had no point other than to prove it could infiltrate his mind whenever it wanted.
It was maddening.
As he got up and walked over to pour himself another stiff drink, his door pinged. He debated whether to ignore it, but instead he closed his eyes and focused on the door optic to see who was there. A miniature private courier-bot stood on its monopod leg in the corridor, balancing a small package on its hand rack and waiting for him to grant admittance.
He thought about the chrono and his implant supplied the time. 2245 hours.
“You have a delivery,” Odysseus said through his link.
“I see that,” he said out loud. ”Who sent it?”
“Unknown,” it said. “The unit is not broadcasting telemetry. This is unusual. I am notifying security to remove it.”
“Let me look at it first,” he said, turning to head to the door.
“I advise against it,” Odysseus thought to him. “It could be a weapon.”
“It could be,” he said, with a strange lack of fear. He opened the door, and the bot held out the box on the end of its arm. A small display screen on the front showed a message.
“Push the blue button on the unit FIRST. Then listen to the message. DO NOT DO IT IN REVERSE ORDER. J.T.”
Thumbing the delivery received icon, he took the package and closed the door as the bot bounced off to pick up its next delivery. Jahen Tanner, he thought, not remembering that Odysseus was listening in.
“Why would Dr. Tanner be sending you a package in the middle of the night?” it asked through th
e link.
“I’m not sure,” he said, lying and trying to drive the thought of what it might be far enough from his mind that Odysseus wouldn’t see it. He tore the package open, snagged the two items inside, and without thinking punched the button.
A whistling shriek split his world in two, forcing him to crush his eyes shut against the pain. A second later, the sound dropped to a hissing, like wind venting through an airlock and then faded to a distant growl that dropped below his awareness. His knees buckled, and he crashed to the floor gasping for air.
Frag me that hurts. Opening his eyes and focusing on the carpet, he tried to regroup. Odysseus didn’t respond?
Do you hear me? he thought, focusing on his link. Silence again as he got no answer. He focused on the optic in the corner of his room and came up blind. He looked down at the small item clutched in the palm of his hand. The button glowed and he could feel a slight vibration.
He looked at the other item from the box and picked it up as he pushed himself into a sitting position. It was a personal voice recorder and pushing the stud on the unit he realized he was about to listen to something without Odysseus eavesdropping. He was alone in his mind for the first time in months. It was strange and almost disconcerting to be back to being merely mortal.
The file unspooled and he held the device up to his ear to listen.
“I do not delude myself into believing that Odysseus does not know what I have done for you. I can only hope you will not betray me for my part in giving you back your privacy.
“What you have in your hand is a device that generates a scrambling field that will disrupt the neuro-transducer com system you have implanted in your brain. Because I do not have a schematic of the particular technology they employed in your specific system, I have made this a broad-spectrum device.
“As a result, the unit has a maximum range of no more than five to ten meters, so I advise you to keep the unit in your physical possession when in use. Additionally, when in use, it should block optical and audio surveillance systems to about the same range. This does assume connection to a broadcast network. It does not impact hard-wired technology, so do not take for granted that, when this is on, Odysseus cannot hear or see you.
“I hope it does not affect you in adverse ways, but depending on how extensive your implant is, the potential exists for collateral effects that I cannot anticipate.
“How Odysseus reacts to my having given you this is my only concern. Understand that it is only because Lassiter compensated me well that I have taken this risk. I owed him a debt, and I paid it in service to you.
“You can also consider this the end of my participation in your so-called government and its activities. I hereby resign from both my position on your advisory committee and all my other academic affiliations. I am leaving Galileo to return to private work.
“You will have no problems with me, and I hope to have none with you.”
Katana: Approaching the Jupiter Gap: En Route to L-4 Trojan Cluster:
Edison had strapped Ariqat into his bed in the MedBay and made it back to the upper deck before they jumped the acceleration up to a full-g. While the chancellor was still too weak to stand up to the acceleration, Edison knew strapping Ariqat in was more an excuse to keep him out of the decision-making process.
“We expected this would happen,” Tana said as she sat in an acceleration couch on the upper deck and stared out the windows. She would not make eye contact, and appeared to be trying to hide what she felt about how things had just changed.
“But we didn’t expect that when Odysseus got there, it’d be driving a whole fleet of ships and looking to start a war,” Saf said.
“Realistically, what does this change?” Edison asked. “As soon as we saw the ghost fleet heading in that direction, we knew what it was doing.”
“We now know with absolute certainty that it’s traveling on those ships. If a single active instance of Odysseus gets to the ESI contact point, it will take over every computer out there. We will lose our opportunity to keep control of anything.”
“Quintana mentioned a defense they had in place,” Edison said. “He says they’ve held Odysseus off with it.”
“They focused the blackwall protocol on detecting unusual processor loads during a system-wide attack,” Joe said. “It works by forcing the targeted processor core to reboot while a human commander manually disables broadstream communications. As long as they shut it down before the system can reestablish, the degraded transfer speed of the narrowband com prevents a second infiltration attempt.”
“The AA goes into hiding?” Edison asked.
“Exactly,” Joe said. “The lower data throughput allows a slower computer to detect and delete the Odysseus code before it can complete subsequent attacks.”
“I suspect that Odysseus will adapt to use short range com to upload smaller infiltration segments,” Saf said. “These might keep the overload trigger from activating and allow it to prevent the broadstream from being locked out.”
“There is evidence to support her conjecture. The interference I detected prior to the transmission was covering a foreign AI code element,” Joe confirmed. “I purged it immediately, however it came through other open RF systems.”
“Other RF systems?” Tana asked, turning to face Saf and unloading a dose of anxiety like a tidal wave.
“The standard design for shipwide AA infrastructure is based on internal radio frequency connection. These local-com transceivers are not part of the actual communication systems, because they are hardware dedicated for specific tasks. At close range an attack could overpower them and make them susceptible to attack,” it explained.
“800 kiloklick is close range?” Edison asked.
“Apparently, close enough,” Saf said. She opened a screen and looked at processor flow diagrams. “It looks like Joe’s clean, so we’re safe.”
“I hate to point this out, but there’s a real problem with that,” Edison said. “There isn’t 800 kiloklick between any two stations in Zone One. If FleetCom’s blackwall doesn’t stop this kind of attack, doesn’t that mean they’ve got no hope of keeping it out?”
“And when the ghost fleet gets there, neither does the Armstrong,” Tana said.
Inside the Kanahto: Tacra Un: L-4 Prime:
“Whoa.” Chei gasped as he stopped inside the door and Rocky and Ian both plowed into him. They were also on the brakes or the impact would have sent them all tumbling across the floor. If it was a floor. “I think we’ve found what we’re looking for.”
Unlike the other chambers they’d explored, which were all crammed with unidentifiable hardware and machinery in layers of decks, this one was an open sphere almost 500 meters in diameter. The lighting was dim and the outer wall above their entry point appeared to be a transparent plasglass dome looking out on space above L-4 Prime.
If the center node of the language matrix was an amphitheater, this was the Grand Coliseum of the universe.
“Dutch have you got our location?” Chei asked as he stared overhead at a smaller sphere that hung in the center of the dome. As his eyes adjusted to the lower light levels, he realized it gave off a slight blue glow.
“Is outside?” Rocky whispered, clearing her throat and then adding, “We appear to be on surface of L-4 Prime.”
“Negative. You are forty-seven kilometers below your last position,” Dutch said.
“That’s by far the longest jump from any of the aht-oolawath,” Chei said. “Almost to the center of the Kanahto.”
“Careful,” Ian said as he stepped forward and gravity realigned him perpendicular to the inner surface of the sphere. They’d all gotten used to gravity doing strange things, but the almost ninety-degree shift was shocking to watch him pivot through.
Five-meter wide hemispherical pits, spaced around the interior, covered the entire lower half of the chamber. “Looks ahn control consoles?”
“Might be,” Chei said, swinging upright to the new floor orientation and
following him over to the nearest one.
He looked down into it and shrugged. The entire inner surface of the pit was featureless smooth material, like the pedestals in the amphitheater and a console like shelf extended all the way around the inside. “Do we jump?”
“I suggest we survey interior first and determine if there is irregularity in any control area,” Rocky said. “This might indicate a main console position.”
“Yah, there you go being all logical,” Chei said, grinning at her.
“I am communicating with the Tacra Un and it confirms you have reached the main control facility,” Dutch said. “It does however advise that you should exercise extreme caution when accessing the control interfaces.”
“Got it,” he said. “Put a kid in a candy kiosk and tell him he can’t eat anything.”
“It did not say not to access the controls, just to exercise caution,” it advised.
“We can eat any candy we want, but must remember some may be poisoned,” Rocky said. “Is not good.”
“Essentially accurate,” Dutch said.
“Will it give you any clue what things do what?” Chei asked.
“It says you are not ready yet,” Dutch said. “Your understanding of the language is still incomplete.”
“Frag me,” Chei said. “We’ve covered every word it’s thrown at us, what else is there to learn?”
“It has not explained this,” Dutch said. “It said only that there is a level of understanding you still lack. It used a word that is not in the database to define this.”
“What word?” he asked.
“I am not sure.” Dutch paused for almost a full second. “I understand the word, but I cannot articulate it.”
“You cannot articulate it?” Chei asked. “Is it an error in your vocalization processor?”
“Negative,” it said. “This word does not have an audible form.”
“Then how did it tell you this word?” he asked.
“When the Tacra Un and I communicate, it accesses my quantum logic core directly, and there is no language processor in the process,” it explained. “This is similar to the way AA talk on broadstream networks, but is several times more intimate.”
Redemption of Sisyphus Page 11