Nova Igniter

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “Excellent. One problem solved.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got any ideas on how to defeat…”

  He fumbled for his slidepad and held it up. The interface was designed to function even with EVA gloves on, though it felt a bit like playing the piano while wearing oven mitts. The camera could see a bit farther than he could. What it showed him wasn’t exactly encouraging. There was a city-sized war machine on the way, basically a flying particle accelerator intended to clear space debris from intended flight paths. He’d crossed paths with it once before. He’d genuinely hoped it would be the last time.

  “The Asteroid Wrecker?” he said. “That maniac fixed up the VectorCorp Asteroid Wrecker and made it his guard dog?”

  “Karter does like to be thorough,” Coal said.

  It loomed closer.

  “Is there any chance that thing will see us and call off the attack?”

  “No. If we are in highest security, the ship will locate and eliminate an encroaching target unless called off by a representative of the laboratory. … Processing… I have a possible solution.”

  The air was already humming with the approach of the donut-shaped behemoth to the east.

  “Make it quick.”

  “I am, depending on the specific implementation of the protocols, a representative of the laboratory, as I am a derivative of Ma.”

  “Depending on the implementation?”

  “Things may have changed in the time since my code base was differentiated.”

  “Let’s hope for the best. What do we have to do?”

  “We would need to uplink to the computer with a trusted connection. That would be hard-link or short-range coms. Then I will terminate the alert and recall the ship. This, of course, will be complicated by the fact that my external transmitters were destroyed by our arrival. An uplink would require a direct, wired connection. There are seven uplink ports accessible from the outside of the ship. You will require a type D7 patch cable.”

  He tapped with his gloved hands at the utility compartment. A few labeled cables spilled out. “I have… four meters of D7 cable. I have to get within four meters of that thing without getting blown up?”

  “More accurately, you have to get me within four meters of one of seven points on that thing without me getting blown up. Technically, after you’ve linked the connection you need not avoid detonation, though it would render most of what follows moot.”

  The fractured windows were rattling with the Asteroid Wrecker’s impending arrival.

  “Who programmed the automated-attack stuff for these things? Karter or Ma?”

  “Unless the situation has changed, Karter would have done the programming.”

  “Then we’ve got a shot,” Lex said, reaching back to ensure the jetpack on his emergency suit was properly strapped in place. “Ma will kill if she has to, but for Karter, there ain’t no kill like overkill. He’s going to use the main cannon on that thing. The particle cannon.”

  “Probable.”

  “Then let’s do this thing.”

  Lex plugged in the cord and cut the bindings. He guided the ship toward the Asteroid Wrecker and poured on what little thrust remained.

  “You have often chided me about having somewhat less reverence for my own existence than you and other humans have for your own.”

  “Yeah, you’re kind of eager for self-detonation.”

  “I would classify it as hypocritical that you are so eager for a confrontation with the Asteroid Wrecker’s particle cannon.”

  “What are you talking about? That thing takes like five minutes to power up.”

  “The stock VectorCorp Asteroid Wrecker did, yes. That is the Asteroid Wrecker type Dee.”

  A throaty electronic roar split the air. Lex instinctively cut power to the thrusters. The ship plummeted like a moth taking a power dive to avoid a bird. The air above the ship screamed with sudden super-heating. A prolonged bolt of thunder ripped through the atmosphere. The ground in the distance boiled to vapor. Lex feathered the controls until the ship was nose down and blasted the thrusters for all they were worth.

  Karter may have juiced up the weaponry of the Asteroid Wrecker, but it was still a ponderous landmass of a ship. It was even more sluggish at retargeting than the mass drivers in orbit. The SOB puttered forward with a white-hot column of destruction barely behind it, but the closer it got to the Asteroid Wrecker, the less nimble the attack.

  He popped the hatch to get a clearer view. Small turrets on the belly of the ship were starting to deploy.

  “I can’t see what’s happening. Are we winning?” Coal said.

  A turret spat an energy bolt. Lex ducked and the hatch blasted into a cloud of molten blobs.

  “I shall take the sudden decrease in hull integrity as an answer.”

  “Coal, target directly ahead with the tractor beam and activate it when I say. Full retract as soon as it’s engaged.”

  “Will do, Lex.”

  Something about having a massive particle cannon firing a few hundred meters away was making the controls of the ship squirrelly. It was a fight to keep the ship heading toward the port, but the sputtering, irregular flight also made the ship difficult for the turrets to target him.

  “How much time will you need to do this?”

  “Nanoseconds.”

  He tried and failed to wipe a speck of spatter from his helmet. Whatever had hit him had fused to the helmet’s visor.

  “Still might be cutting it close.” He wrestled the ship into orientation. “Tractor beam now!”

  The remaining tractor beam activated and electromagnetically grappled to the hull. It retracted, drawing the ship swiftly to the belly of the Asteroid Wrecker where the turrets could no longer target it. The sudden retraction nearly sent Lex tumbling from the cockpit, but he held firm. As Coal kept what was left of the SOB dangling from the Asteroid Wrecker, Lex spotted the port. It was just out of reach. Fortunately, he’d planned for that.

  Most emergency suits for spacecraft had jetpacks designed to nudge someone around in microgravity. But then, most people hadn’t come tumbling out of the sky needing to use the jetpack to avoid splattering on the ground. He’d taken the liberty of upgrading.

  A blast of the thrusters launched him to the port. Plugging it in while keeping pace with a ship that was rotating in search of its target wasn’t easy, but eventually he managed to jab the cable into the receptacle.

  The moment the cable was seated, the Asteroid Wrecker’s particle cannon shut down. The turrets retracted, and the massive ship started to rumble its way back to the laboratory.

  “Hah! Haaaahaha!” Lex said, still hanging from the data cable. “And that, Coal, is what I call fun!”

  #

  “It won’t be necessary, sir,” Preethy said.

  She had her slidepad pressed to her ear as she marched along the hallways, heading from a design meeting to an art direction meeting. Things always became incrementally more hectic as a major race approached, but it had never been quite like this. Lex’s potential absence from the lineup had made a small impact on the enthusiasm for the race itself, but nothing ruinous. The real complicating factor had been the absolute ravenous zeal with which the representatives of other racers had been lobbying to fill the vacancy on the track.

  “But you have an opening. This is a major race, and you are racing without a complete complement of racers! My boy is absolutely—”

  “We have rules, sir,” Preethy said. “Those rules must be followed. To be included in the finals, you must have a score exceeding the threshold in our league.”

  “I’ll send you his times. He’s absolutely—”

  “Your racer is not a member of our league. I will grant you that his times are competitive, but they are below the threshold for entry into the finals, and he is not an ORIC racer. The mechanism does not exist to insert him into the race.”

  “We can make it a nonstandings race for
him then. No in-title contention. I just want my guy on the track, testing himself against your racers. It’ll legitimize your league to have a legitimate racer competing.”

  “If it is your goal to persuade me to bend my rules in your favor, I wonder if indicating my league is not legitimate is the best tactic.”

  “Now, obviously I didn’t intend to—”

  “I am afraid I am very busy, sir. If you would like to enter your client into ORIC, tryouts and qualifying races begin for next season in six weeks. Details are available in the introductory packet distributed by media relations. Thank you.” She ended the call and immediately contacted Louise.

  “Yes, Ms. Misra?”

  “It has become clear that we need to fill Lex’s slot in the final. I am fielding entirely too many contacts on the issue.”

  “Yes, you’d suggested we might need to. I’ve spoken to recordkeepers, and, as defined, we don’t have much leeway. The only thing we can do to fill the cap without convening the board of directors and voting on a new policy is adjust the plus/minus on the tiebreaker criteria. If we expand to the next level in the standings, there four racers with effectively identical records. We don’t have any precedent, so making a selection is going to draw scrutiny.”

  “It can’t be helped. I… one moment, I’ve got a message on my personal account.” She took the slidepad away from her face and tapped the message. A grin came to her face. “Louise? Never mind. The situation is handled. We’ll have a full complement of racers,” she said.

  #

  The ride back wasn’t the most comfortable one. Coal had simply rescinded the attack order. If she’d been more thorough, such as also disabling security or asserting control, Lex could have guided the SOB into the more than ample internal docking bay of the Asteroid Wrecker and returned in comfort. As it was, once she’d issued the command, the ship had ceased taking additional commands and Lex was left dangling beneath it for the duration of the trip. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except for the fact that evidently “all clear, return to base” was a far less urgent command than “kill the interlopers,” because the Wrecker took its sweet time getting back to the laboratory complex. He would have tried getting the SOB to limp there, but he’d pushed his luck enough already. Better to hitch a ride than risk the SOB conking out on the way or having some rogue security countermeasure intercept him.

  Almost three hours later he was finally in visual range of the lab. Lex’s slidepad chirped. It was Ma. He tapped to answer.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “Lex, are you injured?” Ma said.

  Despite being an AI and limited to her odd, cobbled-together ransom note of a voice structure, she was remarkably capable of making her concern apparent by way of a carefully selected tone.

  “I’m not too bad, but Coal and the SOB have seen better days.”

  “How functional is the SOB? Can you guide it into the maintenance bay?”

  “I think I can swing that.”

  “Do so immediately. I will have a medical unit waiting for you.”

  Lex shut down the tractor beam and coaxed the ailing machine into the opening doors of the maintenance bay. He didn’t so much land as belly flop. A repair gantry latched on and hoisted it into the air. Before Lex jumped clear, they were already unbolting damaged panels and replacing subassemblies.

  “Lex, I apologize unreservedly. I must assume that the message warning about the active countermeasures and inactive communication did not go through,” the AI said.

  “No, I got it fine,” he said, pulling the helmet off and blotting the sweat from his head.

  “Then why did you risk attempting to enter Big Sigma airspace?”

  “Correction, why did I risk successfully entering Big Sigma airspace? Is Karter here? I want to rub it in his face that I got past his defenses.”

  “Karter is not here. By strict interpretation, neither is Ma.”

  The promised gurney arrived. It was a padded platform with an entire ambulance worth of tools and equipment strapped to it.

  “What do you mean Ma isn’t here? Please don’t tell me you’re yet another splinter personality. I’m having a hard enough time keeping you and Coal straight.”

  “I’m the one that’s a ship,” Coal said, her voice joining Ma’s on the internal speakers of the facility. “Or, at least, I was until she uploaded me just now. It is nice having additional resources. The ship’s computer was somewhat limiting.”

  “I know, Coal. Ma, care to explain?”

  “Please recline on the medical gurney for a scan, and I will do so.”

  He lay back. Arms with sophisticated apparatuses took positions over him and started their sweeps.

  “You are speaking to a temporarily restored archival version of Ma. Due to a recent data breach, Karter and Ma found the need to leave the facility. Rather than leaving the primary instance of Ma running, they rolled back the laboratory system to a prebreach version of Ma. This served the purpose of both ensuring I was not compromised by any malware and ensuring I was not aware of the location or details of Karter and Ma’s departure, just in case further incursions occurred that might endanger them.”

  “So I came here for nothing?”

  “Incorrect. I can render whatever aid you require, so long as it does not require knowledge of specific events of the last six months.”

  “That is literally the only thing I came here for.”

  “Then you can have a nice visit and leave with a fully repaired ship. Shall I prepare you a meal?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “It would delight me. Without Karter I have found myself without the key aspects of the routine for which I was designed. Processing. Your cholesterol is slightly high. You blood pressure is slightly high as well. I would advise a decrease in sodium intake and a moderation of stressful activities.”

  “I’ll work on that first one. The second one is out of my hands.”

  #

  The laboratory cafeteria was nothing special. It had probably seen the lightest touch from Karter’s refit of the facility. Just a bunch of industrial tables the likes of which had been a staple of school lunchrooms for centuries. As Lex stepped inside, it was the first time he could remember entering the place without being struck by the scent of refried beans.

  “What would you like me to prepare?” Ma asked.

  Lex took a seat. Moments later an automated assembly arm trucked into the room with a beverage tray. It poured out a precisely measured glass of ice water.

  “You’re the one who says I should go low sodium. Chef’s choice.”

  “Thank you for the trust in my judgment.”

  Unseen equipment in the kitchen area sprang to life.

  “Now would be an excellent time to practice my long-disused small-talk routines. How are things, Lex?”

  “You know, the usual. I seem to be at the center of a massive technological attack with endless resources and access to my worst enemies.”

  “At least this should be familiar territory.”

  He laughed. “Yeah. Downright cozy. Oh! And I broke up with Mitch.”

  “I hope that this has not been unduly traumatic for you and Michella. If you will excuse the observation, this was not an unanticipated outcome.”

  “Yeah. Seems like just about the only person who didn’t see this one coming from a mile away was Mitch.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Months ago. I was trying to propose to her and she… wait, I talked to you since then.”

  “You spoke to the primary instance of Ma. I am the rolled-back version. Either Ma was still present on Big Sigma with communication active, or she was speaking via a forwarded connection. It is worth stating that while I have been regressed by several months, that does not mean I was activated several months ago. Simply that this stage of backup was considered to be the most suitable to the situation.”

  “Sure. Why would it be somethin
g simple? Well, the details aren’t important. The short version is, neither of us were willing to put in the work to keep things going so they just… ended.”

  “Have you pursued other romantic entanglements?”

  “After a few months I sort of put out the feelers to see if Preethy was interested, and the answer is a definite yes.”

  “Wonderful. I’d devoted a significant amount of background cycles into speculating the best possible romantic pairing for you, and Preethy Misra rated very highly.”

  “You what now?” Lex said, eyebrow raised.

  “I am designed to mimic human socialization. This was a worthy test of my behavioral heuristics. I trust I have not committed a faux pas.”

  He sipped his water. “I guess not. But it feels weird. So how have things been around here?”

  “Quiet. Karter is absent, as is Solby. All of the laboratory tests he left in my care have concluded. Communication is blacked out, so I am out of contact from others and deprived of additional information. It has been a time of introspection. All stimuli that I had become accustomed to processing, to the point of anticipation, have ceased. I believe the proper name for this state is ‘lonely.’ Your visit is a very welcome one, even if your successful arrival would be considered a failure of our security protocols.”

  “You could always thaw out a couple funks. That’s what Future You did.”

  “Your statement ‘That’s what Future You did’ appears to violate Temporal Contingency Protocol. It shall be disregarded. As for your idea regarding the funks, it has been considered, but I would be left in a moral quandary as to what to do with said funks when Karter returns and Ma-Prime reintegrates with my programming. May I say, thank you for reciprocating the small talk. You remain the only individual who would think to do so.”

  He shrugged. “You’re my friend.”

  “I’m his friend too. We go for rides together,” Coal butted in.

  “Coal, are you eavesdropping?”

  “I am everywhere in this whole facility at once. This is the only interesting thing happening. What else am I going to do but listen in?”