“Human pilots? Three human pilots just set out in those shuttles?”
“Yes.”
“Destination: Mars?”
“Yes. And I was meant to go with them. Fuck you, asshole.”
“Hey, you ought to be thanking me for saving you from an untimely death.”
“You Belter lowlifes,” Frank Hope IV said. “It never, ever occurs to you that death might be a lesser evil. That saving the human race might be a higher priority.”
Kiyoshi was shocked. He said with unguarded candor, “Hey, are you a Christian or something?”
“Fuck, no. Here’s your three million spiders.”
“Five.”
“We agreed on three. I’ve got a broken back, not a damaged brain.”
An instant notification from Kiyoshi’s bank confirmed that three million spiders had been deposited in his Assisi Ventures LLC account.
He peered out of the cargo airlock. The Hyperpony was no longer visible to the naked eye, even as a moving speck.
Kiyoshi had not given Frank Hope IV his real name, or any information about his ship that could be used to trace him.
He laid a glove on the shuttle’s snazzy yellow-and-black fuselage, tempted to hang onto it.
Shook his head. Gotta keep my word.
Gasping in pain every time his left foot touched something, he pushed the shuttle out of the airlock.
It fell into the void.
Let Frankie-boy come and find it.
“If you’re finished,” said Jun’s voice in his ear, “I’m going to cycle the airlock. Father Tom is dying.”
xxiii.
“I thought he was just in shock,” Kiyoshi said. He was sobbing, the weight of guilt too much to bear.
While he’d been pissing around out there, bantering with Frank Hope IV and trying to drive up his asking price, Father Tom had been asphyxiating.
Now the Jesuit lay on a bed of gray mud where Cargo Deck A used to meet the exterior wall. Two medibots worked on him. They were some of the batch Kiyoshi had picked up on Luna to take home. An ECC artificial heart bent over the priest, pumping his blood out of a vein and returning it to an artery, bypassing his heart and lungs. It was keeping his blood oxygenated, and hopefully preventing any more of his brain cells from dying. Meanwhile, a second bot sliced into his chest.
“These medibots are state of the art,” Jun said. His projection stood on the other side of Father Tom, muddy-cassocked. “They’ll save him. Don’t blame yourself.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“We’ll find out, I guess. All we know right now is that there’s an obstruction in his lungs.”
The artificial heart rumbled rhythmically. Its working parts were concealed within a housing shaped like, actually, a fat pink heart. Lunar companies made the best medical devices, and right now Kiyoshi felt wretchedly grateful to them, for giving Father Tom even a slim chance of survival.
Another medibot—the Monster’s old one—was applying a nuskin bandage to Kiyoshi’s own left shin. All that gas boiling around the space station had deflected most of the laser pulse’s energy. His suit had self-sealed the hole, and he just had a second-degree burn. But he’d had to take off his suit to let the medibot work, and it was freaking cold in here. Naked, he felt vulnerable.
Jun had got a long way with his gardening project in just a couple of days. He’d fixed the air. He’d stuck those glowstrips all over the spine, so it acted like a sun-tube And he had surfaced the interior of the sphere with a gray soil substitute, which Kiyoshi guessed was made from some sacks of fish meal they’d had in storage, plus sawdust obtained by chopping up the decks themselves.
But Jun was clearly having trouble getting the soil substitute to stick to the walls in zero-gee. Gray gobs floated throughout the sphere, so that it seemed to be raining. A sunshiny shower that smelt of fish.
“You know,” Kiyoshi said, “the whole point of this adventure was to force you to face reality.”
“It obviously worked,” Jun said.
There wasn’t really anything else to say after that. Kiyoshi forced himself to look at Father Tom. The Jesuit’s face had turned a putrid shade of ocher. Ruby veins webbed his half-open eyes. The medibot had gone in under one arm. Bone gleamed in a welter of bloody tissue. A rib snapped with a sharp noise. Kiyoshi swallowed nausea.
“We’ve got some of them out,” Jun said a while later.
Sitting on the mud with his head between his knees, Kiyoshi looked up. The surgical bot was depositing a morsel of bloody tissue in its tray. Its other arms were still delving in Father Tom’s chest.
“What is that stuff it’s taking out of him?”
“Nanoprobes,” Jun said.
“I told him to put his helmet on.”
“It would have been a slow process. If you breathed in a few thousand of them at a time, you’d hardly notice it. Maybe a tickle in your throat. Eventually you’d start feeling short of breath. But by then, there would be millions of them inside you, and death would be just a matter of time.”
“He said they were dangerous.” Kiyoshi was crying again. “He was right.”
“Any technology is dangerous in the wrong hands. This doesn’t make them Gray Goo.”
“What the hell are they, then?”
“Well, maybe they’re just Mars probes. I certainly don’t think they’re designed to asphyxiate people. They’re not doing anything. They’re just … sitting in his lungs.”
“Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins and lead us to everlasting life.”
“Those pirates probably died the same way,” Jun added, proving that he had been eavesdropping on their radio conversation while they were in the lab module.
Kiyoshi was too sick at heart to call him on it. “Yeah. I thought they’d been spaced. But obviously, asphyxiation looks the same, whether it’s caused by exposure to vacuum, or by a million nanoprobes down your throat.”
“More like ten million.”
“Oh God.”
“This is going to take a while. You might as well get some rest.”
Kiyoshi shook his head. He fixed his gaze on the clumps of bloody matter coming out of Father Tom’s side.
★
His resolve to see it out did not last. Midnight, ship time, found him curled up in his nest on the bridge, consciousness extinguished by a whopping dose of barbiturates.
Jun’s projection materialized on the darkened bridge. It did not bother to give the appearance of coming through the door, since no one was observing it. Strictly, there was no need for the projection at all. But if free will didn’t mean the freedom to be a little bit picky about aesthetics, what did it mean?
In his former life, Jun had helped to build a cathedral. They’d decorated its spires with statues of saints, out in the vacuum. Electroplated them with gold. It didn’t matter if no one ever saw it. It mattered that you did it. To magnify the glory of God.
Booted toes dangling, the projection drifted towards the sleeping man. It hung over him for a subjectively long time.
Kiyoshi did not stir.
Grief etched the projection’s face. Turning in the air, it floated over to the refrigerator in the corner. It gave the fridge a kick, a very human expression of loathing. Of course, its insubstantial foot made no impact at all.
The silent messages sent from the hub of the Monster to the refrigerator’s smart core did have an effect.
Wakey wakey, Jun chanted tiredly. Combat stations, you fiend in fridge’s clothing.
~Being withholds itself to the point of absence, sniffed the thing in the fridge.
~Yeah, whatever. I know you. How well he did know it. Each byte of knowledge bought with new and bitter experiences of loss. You’re always up for a fight.
★
“So, let me get this straight,” the boss-man said. “You raided a space station belonging to Hope Energy. Stole one of the shuttles they were using to deliver the nanoprobes. Tangled with some daredevil Mars explorers. Got shot at, nearly
got Father Tom killed, and wound up destroying the space station. Yeah, OK, I understand that that technically wasn’t your fault. You’ll still be blamed for it. And on top of that, Kiyoshi ransomed the shuttle back to the Hope guys for a paltry three million? You haven’t even got the fucking thing anymore?”
“That’s right, sir,” Jun said.
“I am completely fucking speechless. Every time I think Kiyoshi has settled down, he goes and does something even crazier than the last time. This is why I love the guy. Let me talk to him. I’d like to congratulate him myself. I hate Trey Hope. I’m only sorry his son didn’t manage to fly off to Mars and get himself killed. I saw on the news that he broke his back, quote, in a skiing accident, unquote. So put Kiyoshi on.”
“He’s sleeping.”
“Yeah? Or are you covering for him, Jun? Is he back on the junk? I’ve noticed a certain look in his eyes lately.”
The conversation was proceeding at a leisurely pace. Twenty-seven light minutes separated the speakers. This inconvenienced neither of them. The shaggy-bearded man known to his followers as ‘the boss’ was running on a treadmill in a centrifuge on an asteroid 430 million kilometers from Earth. Jun was overseeing a vicious virtual combat between the Ghost and a version of himself.
Not wanting to discuss Kiyoshi’s drug use, he said, “Just to update you on our present status, sir. Twelve hours have passed since the destruction of the space station. We’re idling at these coordinates [attached], employing the minimum thrust necessary to maintain a libration orbit around the L2 Earth-Moon Lagrange point. At our current velocity we will complete one orbit in two weeks. Pretty much every Star Force ship that could be spared from the Mercury salvage operation is scouring this volume for the destroyer of the space station. Thousands of sprites and drones have also been dispatched from Luna. You may have noticed some media speculation that it was a PLAN attack. That’s why the overkill. However, they won’t find us. I have the Ghost engaged. Transmitting like this technically breaks our stealth, but I thought it was important to let you know we’re OK. I’m 98% confident that our signals will be overlooked amid the muck of signals emitted by the ships and machines engaged in the search. But just to be on the safe side, I’ll enforce radio silence after we finish this conversation, and I will continue to operate in stealth mode until the search is called off.”
When he heard this, the boss-man raised his eyebrows. “Can you do that, Jun? Operate the Ghost continuously? I thought it was only for run-like-hell scenarios.”
“Yes.”
The monosyllable was all he could spare for the boss. His repo’s imaginary combat with the fiend in the fridge had flared up, requiring a greater allocation of resources.
What does it take to distract the attention of an ASI? This: a space battle in a single-use sim so detailed as to pass for the actual universe; a battle which must be just different enough from the last one to allay suspicion, but which, like the last one, you must lose.
Jun’s challenge this time was to lose incrementally, buying more time than ever before. Time during which the searchers could not find the Monster.
In the astrogator’s couch, his alternate self (a lite version, but sentient in its own right) scratched at open sores on its face.
The boss-man’s gaze tracked to the repo, as Jun called these alternate selves (short for repository). “That’s fucking disgusting, Jun,” he complained. “Why do you do that? The projection. It’s not strictly necessary, is it? I mean, it’s all happening—” he gestured vaguely— “somewhere in there; in that trillion-core processing array we bought you. So why the graphic depiction of suffering? Does it mean something?”
“If freedom of will doesn’t mean the freedom to indulge in superfluous aesthetic flourishes,” Jun answered, “what does it mean?”
“Oh Christ, forget I asked.” The boss-man’s gaze jumped about. “Let me talk to Father Tom, anyway. I’d like to verify that that mad Irish bastard is in one piece.”
Father Tom came onto the bridge, still a bit gray in the face, but on the mend. “Thank God for modern medicine.”
“Thank Derek Lorna,” the boss-man responded. “His Leadership in Robotics Institute holds the patents on a lot of the medical technology that saved your life. Ironic, huh?”
During the time it took for Father Tom’s remark to reach 99984 Ravilious, and for the boss-man’s response to reach the Monster, Father Tom—less indulgent than Jun—had been attempting to wake Kiyoshi up. He’d first tried speaking to him sharply. Then waving a donut under his nose. Then pulling his blankets off. Jun had warned the Jesuit that he was liable to tear his sutures. But Father Tom had not given up. He’d fetched a 10-liter jerrycan of the water that Jun had recycled for his plants, and emptied it over Kiyoshi’s head.
“Ironic, huh?” said the boss-man, as Kiyoshi startled awake, flailing. For several seconds his head was encased in a sphere of water. Kiyoshi slapped it away, coughed, and glared at Father Tom through the floating cloud of globules. “You dumbass! It’ll get into the electronics!”
“If you’re worried about rust, this ship could hardly get any dirtier.”
“Rust? Short circuits! Fire hazards! You basically just pointed a gun at Jun’s head and pulled the trigger.”
Jun caused a housekeeping bot to float out of its locker. Kiyoshi grabbed it and flew around the bridge, using it as a vacuum cleaner to chase down the globules of water that were now drifting everywhere.
When he had cleaned up all the water, Kiyoshi turned to the comms screen. “Well. As you see, sir, everything’s peachy.”
“I would not say that,” Father Tom countered, staring at Jun’s repo. It looked very sickly indeed now.
Kiyoshi shot a glance at the repo. As if suddenly tired out from his frantic tidying up, he floated loose-limbed in the air. “It’s Jun, Father. Not exactly him, but a copy. It’s how he operates the Ghost.”
“Ah. I thought it was a bit hot in here.”
“It’ll get hotter before we’re done. Right now, that avatar is battling a Solarian fighter—what we call a toilet roll. It’s all simulated, of course. It’s not really happening.”
Even Kiyoshi regularly succumbed to this comforting notion: it was only happening in a sim, therefore it was not really happening.
“Solarian?” questioned Father Tom.
Kiyoshi nodded. “Turns out the PLAN don’t call themselves the PLAN. They call themselves Solarians. That’s one of the few bits of information we’ve wrung out of the Heidegger program.”
“The Heidegger program?!?”
“The copy in the fridge.”
“In the fridge! That fridge?”
“Yeah. That’s what the Ghost is. It thinks it’s the last survivor of a ninepack of PLAN fighters. Hell, it thinks it’s the baddest toilet roll in the universe.” Kiyoshi snickered. “There’s another copy in the mini-fridge on the Superlifter.”
“This is beyond belief.” Father Tom glanced at the comms screen. The boss-man was pounding up an incline, sweat flying from his face, mouth hanging open. “Does he know about it?”
“Sure. Oh, he doesn’t understand it. Jun is the only one who can get any sense out of it.”
But not very much sense, Jun thought. When it comes to the Solarians, I’m like a primitive nomad playing with a Coke bottle. He said nothing. Kiyoshi was doing as good a job of explaining as he could have done himself.
“So your Ghost is actually a captive copy of the Heidegger program.” The Jesuit massaged his collarbone. “Is there anything to drink?”
Kiyoshi showed his teeth. “In the fridge.” The Jesuit hesitated. Kiyoshi laughed. “That’s how I was at first. But it’s fine.” He flew over to the fridge and pulled out two pouches. “Coffee OK?”
“I was thinking of something stronger.”
“We’ve only got this, soy milk, or spinach juice,” Kiyoshi said with the righteousness of one who did not bother with alcohol, because other drugs got you fucked up faster.
“
The coffee-like substance, then.” Father Tom accepted a pouch of Redeye Coffee, which was concocted from caffeine, guarana extract, B vitamins, magnesium, and artificial sweeteners. He grimaced at the taste. “But how does it work?”
“Quantum computing is a thing,” Kiyoshi said. Father Tom protested. “I know, I know. We can’t do it on a real-world scale, but the Solarians, a.k.a. the PLAN, can. And it turns out that when a quantum computer deletes data, it doesn’t generate heat, like an ordinary computer. It generates cold.”
“Buh-buh-but.Thermodynamics.”
“Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of quantum physics. Before you get all excited, we haven’t got a quantum computer. But the fiend in the fridge? The first thing it did after we caught it was to set up a simulation of a Solarian quantum computer. And it turns out that simulating a quantum computer is the same thing as having one, for the purposes of harnessing the energy-deletion effect.”
“It’s all happening on the quantum level anyway,” Jun said, trying to be helpful. He saw that this did not shed any light on the problem for the Jesuit, and went back to his battle.
“So there you go, that’s the secret of the PLAN’s stealth technology,” Kiyoshi said. “The more calculations they run, the colder they get. Ironically, they actually have to de-stealth during combat maneuvers, so they don’t get too cold. So we have to turn off the fridge from time to time to keep up the illusion. Everything spoils. It’s a pain in the ass. But in a drive-by nuking scenario, which is the PLAN’s favorite battle tactic, the fiend goes into stealth mode, and Jun uses the cooling effect to boost the efficacy of our heat sinks … kinda thing, get it?”
Father Tom’s eyes lit up. “You have what kind of heat sinks on this ship?”
“Water/glycol.”
“But water-cooling alone is very inefficient compared to modern methods. So if the Ghost were installed on a new ship with highly advanced heat-shielding technology …”
Jun thought it was the right moment to interject a warning. “Technology isn’t neutral,” he said. “It’s a vehicle for the values of its inventors.” He got distracted again as his repo took a hit. Its projection writhed. Its mouth fell slackly open. There was very little left of it now, and although Jun was not sharing its experiences, he knew the excruciating pain it was feeling.
The Sol System Renegades Quadrilogy: Books 1-4 of the Space Opera Thriller Series Page 118