Further: Beyond the Threshold

by Chris Roberson

  ::We’re currently taking readings, so a picture is still emerging,:: Xerxes said, ::but the forest appears to contain almost ten zettabytes of information. Even though the processing speeds involved in organic molecular signaling would mean extremely low clock speeds, that amount of data is sufficient to store a number of uploaded human consciousnesses.:: “What?” I sputtered, talking out loud, echoed and transmitted out via interlink.

  ::It’s our supposition that the minds of the surviving crew exist in the bacteria network as a kind of gestalt, an organic equivalent of a digital incarnation emulation like your friend Amelia.:: Just the mention of her name stung, but I didn’t let it slow me down.

  ::And you can’t leave yet because you think you’ll be able to…what?:: ::We think we can save them, Captain.:: Maruti’s tone was energetic, hopeful.

  ::I was afraid you were going to say that.:: I continued on, my feet pounding on the gray surface. I chanced a glance back over my shoulder and saw the Iron Mass following just at the edge of vision, with only the undulating surface of the planet preventing them from firing off another round with their light cannon.

  Jida and I reached the edge of the cairn forest, but I rounded it to one side and continued ahead to the ridge beyond.

  ::OK, here’s the plan,:: I said. ::The guys behind us don’t know that you two are on the planet, much less where you are. So you’ve got exactly as long as it takes for me and Jida to get to the Compass Rose and get off the ground to get this bacteria farm uploaded. Whether you can or not, I expect you to be ready to roll when we fly over, and then we’re getting off this rock. Agreed?:: ::Captain, I think that—:: Maruti began.

  ::Good,:: I said, cutting him off. ::We’ll see you momentarily.::

  SEVENTY-SIX

  Jida and I crested the ridge and saw the Compass Rose lying directly below us, escape just within our grasp. Then my faceplate went completely opaque as a gout of white light blazed between us, a shot fired from the Iron Mass far behind us. Jida’s wordless howl rang over the interlink channel, rattling around in my head.

  Blinded, I reached in Jida’s direction, grabbed hold of the first thing that met my hand, and leaped down the far side of the ridge, sliding headfirst down the rocky slope.

  ::Jida?:: I instructed my mantle to go transparent and turned to see that Jida’s left arm was completely gone below the elbow, ending in a charred stump.

  Jida’s faceplate went transparent, and I saw her tortured expression beneath. She was still conscious but didn’t seem able to concentrate enough to form words.

  ::Come on,:: I said, helping her to her feet with an arm around her back. ::They won’t be far behind us now.:: In the end, I had to more or less drag Jida bodily across the floor of the canyon, taking an eternity to cover a distance of only a few steps. Finally, we reached the Compass Rose, and I keyed the airlock to cycle open.

  ::Hang on, Jida,:: I told her. ::We’re getting out of here.::

  As the airlock cycled shut, I heard a familiar voice in my head.

  ::Captain Stone?::

  ::First Zel i’Cirea,:: I answered, in mock formality. ::Please tell me you’re calling with good news.:: ::That depends entirely on your definition of ‘good,’ Captain, but I doubt your standards are low enough for it to make a difference.:: The airlock cycled, filling with air and pressurizing, and finally, Jida and I stumbled into the shuttle’s interior.

  “Compass Rose, prepare for takeoff,” I said out loud as my mantle retreated below my neck, addressing the shuttle’s subsentient governing intelligence. Then I helped Jida into a chair and fit her with restraints to keep her immobilized. Fortunately, she’d at last lost consciousness, and I only hoped that by the time she woke again—assuming we lived long enough for her to do so—her medichines would have gone to work damping down the pain her severed arm must be causing her.

  ::Go ahead, Zel,:: I said, sliding into the ship’s command chair and bringing up a control display on the wall before me. ::What’s happening up there?:: ::I take it from your apparent position that your plan worked and that you and the others have escaped?:: ::Yes, but only Jida and I made it back to the ship. Bin-Ney didn’t make it, I’m afraid.:: ::I’d instruct the Further to begin fabricating a new body for him to be restored into, but I’m afraid we have other, more pressing uses for the power at the moment. Evidently, as a consequence of your escape, a short time ago the Iron Mass ship initiated an attack on the Further.:: ::Further, what’s your condition?::

  ::The damage is nontrivial,:: answered the voice of the ship’s avatar, ::but so far, I’ve been able to maintain hull integrity, and there’s been no loss of vital systems.:: ::You’ve returned fire, I take it?::

  ::I’ve employed both launchers and emitters, to varying effect.::

  ::They’ve taken damage,:: Zel said, ::but so far, they’re in much better shape than us.:: The Compass Rose was almost ready to take off, its drives nearly ready to create the tiny bubble of distorted space that would break the bonds of gravity holding it to the surface.

  ::How much longer until the metric engineering drives are charged enough to leave?:: ::More than half a standard day, I’m afraid, Captain,:: answered the Further.

  ::If we last that long,:: Zel said.

  ::OK, keep at it, guys,:: I said. ::I’m rounding up the rest of the party and we’ll be with you shortly.:: “Compass Rose,” I said, “let’s go.”

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  As the Compass Rose lifted off, an even more familiar voice rang from the ship’s speakers.

  “RJ? Are you reading me?”

  It was a radio-frequency signal, picked up by the shuttle’s transceiver. I tapped on the smart matter of the display and drew up a communication interface.

  “Amelia?”

  Her face appeared on the display, as big as life. She appeared to be floating in a featureless white void, positioned right in front of the “camera.”

  “I’ve just managed to take control of the platform’s communication array.”

  “Are you OK?” I asked, even as I realized that I had no notion what an appropriate answer might be for a digital incarnation infecting a strange computer network.

  The image of Amelia smiled slyly and gave a slight shrug. “Ah, you know me, RJ. Always looking for a bit of excitement.” She averted her eyes momentarily, as though looking at something off-screen. “I’m monitoring the Iron Mass communications, and it looks like they’re almost on top of you. Did you and Jida make it there OK?”

  I glanced over at Jida, strapped to the chair beside me, short an arm. “We made it, at least. Bin-Ney got shot just—”

  “I know,” she said, nodding. “I’ve been reviewing their communications logs. That’s too bad, he seemed like a nice guy.”

  “No, he didn’t,” I said. “He seemed like kind of a pillock, if you ask me. But he was under my command, and I let him die.”

  “Maruti can bring him back, I’m sure.”

  I nodded slightly as the Compass Rose angled over the valley and rose over the crest of the ridge. “Maybe. But if Maruti doesn’t make it either, who’s going to bring him back?”

  “Look,” she said, her tone growing more serious. “Take this.”

  The display threw up a symbol, indicating that it had just received a considerable amount of data.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “That’s me,” Amelia said simply. “My memories, at any rate. Assuming you get back to the ship and the ship makes it out of here in one piece, you should be able to restore my consciousness from backup. Then it’ll be like nothing ever happened.”

  I looked at her image on the screen, my eyes narrowed. “Except it will have happened, won’t it? You’ll have died. Again.”

  Amelia looked away, refusing to meet my eyes. “Look, RJ, don’t make this harder than it has to be. I’m sure it’s just our parochial, primitive mindsets that make it difficult for us to accept the idea of death and resurrection, right? Even when we’ve experienced it ourselves.”


  I glanced over at Jida, who had clutched at her throat whenever she remembered what the Iron Mass had done to her in the past and who fought tooth and nail to make sure they wouldn’t be able to do it again.

  “I don’t know, Amelia. These future folks seem pretty concerned about the idea, too.”

  “Look…” she said, but then her words were cut off with a loud, penetrating squeal.

  A new face filled the screen. Jet black, a wicked scar down the left side of the face, the right ear missing the lobe, long horns sticking out from the dome of the hairless skull.

  It was Commander-of-the-Faithful Nine Precession Radon.

  “Ah, unbeliever,” Radon said, with snarling satisfaction. “Our network defenses have finally detected your little intrusion and are in the process of isolating the perversion of consciousness you’ve set loose in our system.”

  “You leave her alone!” I shouted, rising up out of my chair.

  “Calm yourself,” Radon said, eyes glinting. “You’ll soon have more to worry about than one digital ghost. Your ship in orbit, for instance?”

  “My ship’s been taking everything you people have been throwing at it and returning fire in kind. I wouldn’t be so quick to claim victory, Radon.”

  The Iron Mass nodded, miming an expression of thoughtfulness.

  “Perhaps,” he said serenely. “But that will all change. Even now, my men are preparing to blow your ship out of the sky.”

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  I maneuvered the Compass Rose over the ridge and out over the cairn forest.

  Radon kept ranting over the radio frequency, but I killed the audio and concentrated on the task at hand.

  ::Maruti. Xerxes. You guys ready to go?:: I subvocalized.

  ::Oh, Captain Stone,:: Maruti effused, ::we’ve actually been able to record the data contained within the organic network, storing the gestalt consciousness in a repurposed part of Xerxes’s own body. It’s left him not entirely communicative, but—::

  ::I take it that’s a yes?:: I cut in.

  From a short distance away, our Iron Mass pursuers began firing energy bursts from their spears, which deflected harmlessly off the Compass Rose’s bubble of distorted space. Even the larger white-light cannon, which had ripped through Zaslow and Bin-Ney, and tore Jida’s arm off at the elbow, rebounded without effect off the bubble. But the failure of their weapons to make an impression didn’t seem to deter them from continuing the effort.

  The Compass Rose glided out over the forest of cairns, homing in on Maruti’s interlink signal.

  ::Oh, we see you, Captain!:: called Maruti’s voice.

  ::Great,:: I said, with little enthusiasm.

  I brought the shuttle to a halt just over their position and configured a display to give me a view straight down. I could see the chimp looking up, the robot beside him standing impassively.

  ::Erm, how are we to…That is, how do we get from here to…?::

  ::Just hang on, Maruti.::

  I wasn’t sure this was going to work. But Arluq had mentioned that it was a feature of the metric engineering drives that hadn’t been much explored.

  ::Compass Rose,:: I said, addressing the shuttle’s intelligence, ::distend the gravity field downward to the surface of the planet below us.::

  The shuttle indicated that it would comply, and I felt a shifting in my stomach, as though I were in an elevator that suddenly began to descend at great speed.

  ::Hold onto yourselves, guys,:: I said, calling down to the surface. ::This might be a little rough.::

  ::What do you mean? Oh no!::

  On the display, I watched as the pair of them suddenly fell up toward the underside of the shuttle, accelerating at full standard gravity. With the ship’s gravitational field extended to include them, their relative “down” had suddenly shifted from the ground beneath them to the center plane of the shuttle high overhead.

  Xerxes hit the hull with a resounding clang, Maruti with a sickening thud.

  ::Oh dear…:: Maruti said.

  ::Look,:: I called out, ::there isn’t time to cycle the airlock, so you guys will have to ride back outside. Just key your mantles for full protection and instruct them to adhere to the hull, and you should be fine.::

  ::But—: Maruti began.

  ::No time,:: I said, regretting my snappish tone but having no choice.

  The Compass Rose began to rise up, lifting higher above the surface.

  ::Zel, do you read me?::

  ::Yes,:: came the voice of the first.

  ::You’re about to get hit—and hard—by the Iron Mass, so it’s time to hit them first. Further, what was the name of that big gun of yours, the one that has a devastating impact but that you can use only once?::

  ::The field inverter?:: the ship’s avatar asked.

  ::That’s the one. It redirects the ship’s bubble of altered space outward, correct? And can change the characteristics of space in a targeted region? Like near-infinite gravity, or slower time, or such like?::

  ::Yes, but it’s a tremendous drain on the ship’s stores of energy.::

  ::I know, I know. And you’ve only got a half charge in the drives. But is there any chance you can pull power from other systems and give us one big shot?::

  ::If I cut life support on all but a few areas of the ship, I suppose it would be possible. But I don’t know how long I can maintain—::

  ::Good. Evacuate those parts of the ship.::

  ::Already done,:: Zel put in. ::We moved everyone into the center of the ship, into the Atrium and adjoining sections, when we came under attack.::

  ::Great. The ship’ll be a sitting duck after you take this shot, but if you don’t, it sounds like you’ll just be roasted instead.::

  ::Sir?:: the ship’s avatar asked, confused.

  ::Never mind. Radon might be bluffing, but I don’t want to risk it. Charge up the big gun and fire on the ship.::

  A long moment passed in anxious silence as the Compass Rose drifted higher and higher above the surface of the planet below.

  ::We’re ready, Captain,:: the Further said. ::I can pipe you a visual feed from my hull, if you like.::

  ::Do it,:: I barked, and then thought to add, ::please.::

  ::My pleasure.::

  Suddenly, another panel of the wall before me reconfigured into a new display, and I could see the wicked shape of the Iron Mass houseship hulking against the sea of stars, the curve of the pulsar planet just visible at the edge of the image.

  ::OK, Further,:: I said, taking a deep breath. ::Fire!::

  Space rippled and rucked, and while I watched, the Iron Mass houseship seemed to shimmer and flex. One end of the ship suddenly collapsed in on itself, like an aluminum can crushed underfoot, and from the other side of the hull, a stream of debris jetted out. It was working!

  But then, without warning, space smoothed back out, and aside from the visible damage done to the houseship, everything seemed normal again.

  ::I’m sorry, Captain Stone,:: the Further said. ::I was able to produce the field and invert it, but as I indicated, the drives lacked power to sustain it. We clearly inflicted some damage on the Iron Mass vessel, but I’m not sure if it was sufficient to disable it.::

  ::Well, they haven’t fired their big shot yet,:: I said, cautiously hopeful. ::Maybe we can—::

  “RJ!” shouted the voice of Amelia from the display, her eyes wide and frightened. “I’ve been listening in on Radon while trying to keep ahead of his network defenses. It isn’t the ship that’s going to fire on the Further. It’s the platform!”

  “What?”

  “They’re loading the mass launcher with enough fissionable material to blow up a planet!”

  SEVENTY-NINE

  ::Further?:: I called out.

  ::We are completely immobilized, Captain,:: the ship answered. ::Firing the inverter used up virtually all our stores of power. We’ll be able to maintain limited life support within the Atrium and the bridge, but it will be the better part of a day b
efore we can move again, much less mount any kind of defense.:: “Damn!” I slammed my fist against the arm of the command chair, my teeth gritted.

  ::If it comes as any consolation,:: Zel said, ::we appear to have incapacitated the Iron Mass ship. If that had been the sole danger presented to us, your plan would have apparently worked.:: ::You’ll forgive me if I find that pretty cold comfort, First,:: I said.

  “RJ,” called Amelia, “I may be able to help.”

  I spun around in the chair, turning to face her image on the display.

  “What is it, Amelia?” I said eagerly, desperately. “Anything at all?”

  “Well, I’m still working out the specifics of the platform’s mining operations, but it appears that the mass launcher is controlled by two separate command systems. It’s essentially just a big electromagnetic catapult, like a giant gauss gun. One system controls the electromagnets that accelerate the payload to escape velocity.”

  She paused meaningfully.

  “And?” I said.

  “And the other controls the gimbals that are used to aim the launcher.”

  She fell silent for another moment, her mouth drawn into a tight line, and I recognized her expression. This wasn’t the Amelia who stayed up late nights with me, telling stories about her brothers or her favorite graphic albums from childhood or the names of the characters in the fantasy novels she loved. This was Amelia the soldier. This was the Amelia who’d been trained to kill with her bare hands and who’d piloted warships and exchanged fire in border wars all across the solar system. This was the Amelia you didn’t want to meet.

  “I can control the one, not the other,” she went on grimly. “I can’t stop it firing, but I can control what it’s aimed at.”

  “Bless you,” I said, and blew her a kiss.

  Radon was still on the other display, though his attention was elsewhere, shouting orders at someone off-screen. I toggled the audio channel back on and interrupted.