The Man-Kzin Wars 07 mw-7

by Hal Colebatch

  The deadly white blaze of the alien contra-matter reaction drive stretched across the thinplate viewscreen. It grew swiftly larger and began to move to one side. But slowly.

  Rrowl-Captain made the slashing gesture of fealty to the One Fanged God, and watched his fate rushing toward him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Linkage was godhead.

  Bruno felt the hail of relativistic particles slowly eroding the hull of Sun-Tzu like an invigorating breeze on bare skin. The lethal blaze of radiation sleeting through the sensors was like desert sunshine, warm and friendly.

  But he knew that there was so much more than what lay immediately outside the spacecraft to perceive and cherish, to make part of himselves! Everything about Sun-Tzu was now part of Bruno: the raw power of the antimatter drive, the patient, lethal tensions of the weapons systems, the exquisite fineness of his growing sensorium.

  Linked, he could do many things besides wear a spaceship like a slick and sensitive skin. Bruno's mind had become more than simply human.

  It had become Mind.

  From its tiny human kernel, loci of subminds with special interests quickly formed and grew, each with full independent consciousness as well as being part of the developing interconnective Whole. He had become a clamoring community, a society of minds, each subunit far greater than their woefully limited biological ancestor.

  Bruno sent his enhanced consciousness ranging restlessly through the sensory and computational net of Sun-Tzu, gazing outward and inward simultaneously. He could at once encompass the All, the depth and range of the universe, from quanta to quasars. A portion of Bruno was still staggered by the whirlwind of knowledge within his thoughts, but with every full Linkage, he became better able to access the vast vault of data surrounding him. It was as if his myriad selves were dissolving in a warm ocean of knowledge and certitude.

  But that did not concern him overmuch, even the part of himselves that was still Bruno.

  For Bruno knew that he was changing, improving, with every Linkage. His times not in communion with the computer network became less and less important, like faint memories almost forgotten over many decades of time.

  Linkage also gave Bruno mastery of self. He was learning how to expand or contract his duration-sense at the slightest whim. Soon, he would be able to stretch a microsecond into eternity, or the reverse. A tiny, flawed part of Bruno — his limited biological component — wanted to shout with exhilaration, but he was far beyond mere human emotion.

  Bruno, once again in full Linkage, was Transcended.

  His awareness surrounded and permeated Sun-Tzu, at one with the All. A portion of his Mind watched one of the kzin warships slide helplessly into his antimatter drive wash. Without specifically desiring to do so, Bruno's new sensorium analyzed and reported the spectral characteristics of the vaporized alien craft:

  Flayed atoms of carbon and iron, silicon and indium, shattered and broken.

  Whirling motes, once part of a mighty warship and alien flesh, blasted now and scarred.

  A billowing cloud of humbled ions, now a slight contaminant of the incandescent torrent of plasma and gamma radiation sweeping behind him for millions of kilometers.

  ***

  Bruno relished his control. The drive was its lowest setting; he could pivot and swing the exhaust like the weapon it was while still maintaining proper attitude control. So graceful, so clean, so true.

  Bruno looked beyond the drive wash, past the sweeping fields of force and glitter of ions, into the vast and varied face of infinity. An emotion much like awe filled his circuits and neurons.

  He permitted part of his Mind to appreciate and cherish the subtle wonders surrounding his myriad selves, while another fragment of that expanded consciousness dealt with the growing threat to Sun-Tzu.

  A tiny bit of his consciousness noted that Carol was speaking to his human component. He felt the urge to reply, to speak in human terms, much as his un-Linked self felt the dull pangs of hunger or the first stirrings of lust. While fully Linked, merely human concerns seemed akin to instinct, lacking the crystalline certainty and broad range of Transcendence. He sent a tendril of his greater Mind into his minor and insignificant biological portion, increasing his consciousness and processing capacity in that location.

  His pale perception of the navigation deck sharpened suddenly to razor-edged clarity.

  “Yes, Carol. I am with you. I have been so all along.” The words, mere modulated sound waves, seemed frustratingly imprecise and limited.

  Insufficient.

  Bruno called up the realtime image of Carol's face from the navigation-deck cameras, then finally used his biological vision-sense organs on the captain of Sun-Tzu. The image didn't seem more accurate than the camera images to Bruno's sensorium; quite the reverse, in fact. Still, he knew that Carol felt more comfortable when he turned his biological eyes on her.

  It was a human quirk, one Bruno didn't mind indulging. Even if it wasted some small amount of processing capacity.

  Carol's face was lined with worry and other fitful emotions that were difficult to quantify. He focused on her words.

  “Thank you for turning your head. Tacky, I just saw one of the ratcat ships vaporize.”

  “Indeed. The kzin ship attempted to maneuver around the drive wash, lost maneuvering power, and… was consumed.”

  Bruno accessed biotelemetry and voice-stress-analysis datalinks. Calculating, calculating… Clearly, Carol was as worried by his condition as by the alien craft. Bruno felt the electronic analog of amusement at her colorless concerns.

  They were sweet, cute; as touching as a dog trying to understand an aircar.

  “What about the other two ships, Pilot? Can your magnificent intellect find them, or are you drunk again on godhood?” Her tone sounded angry, like the annoying buzz of an insect.

  “Allow me a moment,” he replied, trying to force reassuring patterns of emotional context into his vocalizations, to soothe Carol while he considered the situation. Bruno was intrigued. Mere human or not, she had said something to hold the attention of his greater Mind. He wanted to ponder and savor the words, but first had to evaluate their status and implications.

  Bruno directed his full Attention outward for a moment, and perceived the two kzin ships at a relatively safe distance. Nothing threatened, to a first approximation of risk. He could spare a few seconds for improving his internal functioning, surely.

  A human-analytical portion of his Mind continued to consider Carol's statement. 'Drunk' was clearly pejorative, and implied suboptimal performance.

  Perhaps some subminds were functioning at less than ideal efficiencies. Clearly, the weak link in his Mind must be his inept and poorly designed human components. A rapid internal diagnostic confirmed and quantified the inefficiencies. He forced a far greater portion of his Mind into his biological component, the modest seed from which his larger Self had sprouted with Linkage. He began to make changes in his neurological system architecture. The body in the crash couch began to twitch and shake, in a coarse and empty parody of Linkage.

  Bruno had expected such side effects while attempting to improve and enhance such a chimeric computing device as the electronically augmented brain of his human portion. After all, massive restructuring of entire interface grids was necessary. Extensive rerouting of neuronal connections was also indicated. Bruno commanded the crash couch restraints to hold his biological component more tightly in order to avoid possible damage to it during the reprogramming subroutines.

  The results of some commands were, after all, rather drastic on the macroscopic level.

  “Tacky! Bruno!” the watchdog sensory portion of his Mind heard Carol shouting, “what's happening?”

  “It is quite all right,” he managed to force past chattering teeth, striving for a tone that implied calmness. “You were correct, Carol. This portion of me was operating improperly.”

  “What do you mean? Portion?” Her words held alarm.

  The submind i
n charge of biotelemetry analysis and interpretation hypothesized that Carol was feeling great emotional upset. Bruno knew that he had to set Carol's fears at ease.

  “We are reprogramming our human component for greater efficiency.” The explanation would surely calm her agitated emotional state.

  He heard Carol shouting again, and turned the major portion of his complex intellect away from her words. Sonic noise, not communication. Some aspect of her tone had become intrusive to the ongoing reprogramming process. Carol's words became fainter, and faded into the background noise of the navigation deck, only fully accessed by his human portion. Which was still under repair and retrofitting, of course.

  It was difficult to erase, reprogram, and internally reroute microcircuitry contained with the electronic portion of his human component's brain. Though there was great plasticity in the interface macrostructure, there was little absolute complexity. Soon, he felt certain, he would learn to directly manipulate entirely biological subsystems as well as the electronic.

  There were bandwidth and amplitude problems, of course — some quite delicious in their smooth difficulty. Still, Bruno would then be able to force compensatory neuronal rewiring of the brain tissues themselves, leading to a truly binary mind Linking the worlds of silicon and synapse.

  Linkage would become still easier then, and he would be able to experience less limitation in his increasingly powerful sensorium.

  Bruno noted that rerouting and macrocircuit programming was now complete, with a shadowy ghost of an emotion that had once been satisfaction. Internal debugging routines showed improved perceptual and computing ability. There was less hormonal impact on affective state, as well.

  Good, good. Raw emotions often led to decreased cognitive efficiency.

  Bruno's biological perceptual field expanded to include Carol, her face grim and set. Tears beaded in her eyes, flowing slowly across her cheek in the microgravity.

  From the physical actions of the tears across her face he instantly — and involuntarily — computed the predicted acceleration of the antimatter drive in weapon mode as 0.012 gravities. The portion of his Mind controlling the drive agreed, confirming his calculations to three decimal places.

  Bruno reached out with a biological hand and stroked Carol's cheek, feeling the tears against his skin. There were some tactile sensations that action-response circuits could not access. Perhaps there was some emotional, hormonal component. Bruno created a submind to investigate this problem, assigning it moderate priority.

  He did care for Carol, and wished her to be safe and happy. Some sign to her of his intentions would be good.

  “We are improved now,” Bruno told her proudly. Five seconds had passed in realtime since he had initiated the internal reprogramming.

  “I… can see that,” Carol replied. Tears still glinted in her eyes.

  Biotelemetry subroutines reported Carol's strongly suppressed emotional state. Bruno tasted worry concerning the captain of the Sun-Tzu. A portion of his Mind considered Carol's recent behavior, and began an in-depth analysis.

  The rest of Bruno looked outward for the alien threat, anxious to deal with the kzin. There was a universe to ponder.

  Bruno sensed the other two kzin warships as tiny flaws in the fabric of space, glittering refractions from their inertialess spacedrives. One of the tiny wrinkles in space-time began accelerating rapidly, maneuvering nearer his drive wash.

  “Initiating maneuvers,” Bruno told Carol, who nodded jerkily and silently stared at the main holoscreen array.

  He sent a low-resolution datadump to a holoscreen window, so that Carol could see the battle more clearly. Dimly, he felt a distraction; the odd, cool brush of Carol's tears drying on his fingers. Evaporative cooling? Bruno sensed the initiation of an increased emotional state in his biological component, and easily compensated for the decreased overall efficiency. If only he could eliminate the hormonal drivers, attain serenity—

  “Can I help?” The words were tentative, small.

  He felt the cybernetic equivalent of a smile. “No,” he said simply in reply.

  There was a pause. “I do have some experience in space battles.” Carol's tone became slightly peevish.

  “Yes. But I have full access to all UN Space Navy tactical and strategic files.” He paused, searching his expanding internal database. “Including your own personal battle records and reports.”

  Carol looked back at the holoscreen, her face seemingly neutral, breathing heavily. The latter confused Bruno: there had been no extreme maneuvering, nor any acceleration stresses. Another portion of his Mind accessed realtime biotelemetry and found Carol's blood pressure and heart rate elevated. Curious.

  Bruno turned the Sun-Tzu. The kinesthetics were quick, zesty. He delicately slashed with the incandescent column of the antimatter reaction drive — a huge scythe scratching an actinic path of deadly light across the distorted starscape.

  Yet the ability of Sun-Tzu to turn was limited by its great mass, and the reaction drives controlling its attitude. Several times, Bruno waved the deadly antimatter drive wash near the tiny vessels, an enormous flyswatter against pesky gnats. They dodged — but not by much. He switched vectors, pivoted the ship like a ballerina on an invisible fulcrum.

  Much closer, good. But the two motes were still able to avoid the cutting sword he wielded.

  Bruno noted that one of the gnats was firing weapons against the Sun-Tzu. He could do nothing at this range. His iceball could not evasively weave and dart like the kzin vessels, and his drive wash took precious seconds to reorient.

  He sent a tendril of greater Mind again into his biological component.

  “Carol,” he forced his human mouth to say, “prepare for weapon impacts.”

  “I gathered,” she replied without looking at his biological portion. Carol reached for the control pads to adjust her crash couch for greater security, but Bruno did it for her before her fingers actually touched the console.

  Enemy laser bursts vaporized bits of the icy skin of his spacecraft. Railgun projectiles stitched deep craters toward his hull sensor pods. His biological senses reported the impacts as dull gonging notes ringing on the navigation deck. Bruno detected the second kzin ship accelerating on an indirect vector, possibly preparing for a hyperbolic approach past the Sun-Tzu, but at a distance too great to inflict significant damage.

  Bruno calculated with crystalline immediacy that he could not maneuver the drive wash rapidly enough to threaten both alien warships at the same time.

  He devoted more of his Mind to offensive and defensive systems, and subsystems instantly reprogrammed themselves at his whim. Sun-Tzu was not designed for battle; that was Dolittle's mission. Still, Bruno would use what tools were present. Vast quantities of power were tapped from the antimatter reaction chamber, and made available for other uses.

  Bruno reached out with a finger of laser light, almost impaling one of the kzin spacecraft on a blazing spear of coherent radiation. Close, so close — Sun-Tzu's railgun batteries fired high velocity flocks of iron pellets in complex patterns toward the enemy vessels. The alien spacecraft dodged gracefully.

  Simultaneously, he programmed and launched a dozen nuclear pumped X-ray laser bomblets. Pop, pop — they plunged into the relativistic vortex and began firing.

  Their bursts of radiation narrowly missed their targets. Why? He knew the answer even as the question formed: subminds reported with one electronic voice. A sour taste laced Bruno's sensorium, flitting shadows of human emotion. These were the best defenses human technology could field, but they were defeated by the chaos of relativistic plasma turbulence, the distorting refractions of light-speed, and the adroit skill of kzin pilots. Bruno knew that Sun-Tzu was outclassed here.

  On some unquantifiable, illogical level, Bruno tasted danger inexorably approaching Sun-Tzu.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Carol Faulk felt helpless.

  It was ironic, actually. She was a seasoned combat veteran, with experience in
both singleships and as a commander of a battle squadron. She had hulled or fried many kzin ships, seen good friends die, made decisions that saved lives and won skirmishes.

  All she could do now was sit and watch impotently while half-human monster piloted and operated the Sun-Tzu.

  Yet it was a half-human monster who used to be her lover and friend. Carol pursed her lips at the painful irony.

  For the hundredth time, she reminded herself that her opinion of words like 'monster' and 'alien' might change drastically after they reached Wunderlander space. At the end of the long voyage, when she opened the cryovial containing the virus with the odd name, Tree-of-Life. Maybe after the virus did its work she would understand Bruno better.

  On the other hand, it did not look to Carol as if Project Cherubim would be a viable option, based on the holoscreen data scrolling past her line of sight. Not even halfway to Alpha Centauri, and the ratcats were already stalking them.

  Bruno's lolling interface cable looked ever more leechlike to Carol. His eyes never moved from her as the holoscreen displays shifted, blinked, and changed. His face was utterly slack, eyes huge and staring, with the expanded pupils characteristic of brain-machine interfacing. Carol knew that the vast majority of Bruno's attention was not on her, no matter how he appeared to stare at her.

  Bruno's attention was everywhere, all at once.

  Carol blinked back tears, cursing herself for the show of weakness. It took a moment for Carol to force the emotion back down, deep inside her. She was a captain, after all Taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders, Carol forced herself to accept the simple facts before her, to say the words inwardly: Bruno is getting worse, and faster than expected.

  He was becoming more and more alien and machinelike. He had even told Carol that he was reprogramming his own brain, making himself a more efficient 'component'. I was becoming we as the man she knew diluted away inside the growing machine intelligence that controlled Sun-Tzu.