Tethered Worlds: Unwelcome Star

by Gregory Faccone

  A translucent yellow wall formed in the conduit to stop the blast. It was a hasty and weak hot block. Attacks against Max's core stopped.

  The torpedo blast slowed for only a second at the makeshift wall. The force was too concentrated in the conduit. The hot block shattered, allowing the destruction to continue inward, albeit slightly slowed. The octal wasn't threshing with a violator AI anymore, and had only the power of his personal compy to fall back upon.

  He was stupefied. "My—Ralston."

  He tuned processes as if playing a musical instrument. At the last instant before the blast wave entered the core, another hot block formed. Static torpedo force slammed into it, causing deformation, but the block held. Then the conduit destruction caught up allowing the blast to dissipate into the black.

  Covered in sweat, the octal glanced around the crewroom. The majority of the crowd had drifted over to Jordahk's side. Only the two large men persisted near him, and one was quite angry.

  The octal glared through the taunt VAD. His eyes were wide, and his mouth twitched. His pride flared.

  "Damn it! Finish him!" Cranium whined.

  An onslaught of fresh yellow probes dove onto Max's failing hot block. Twenty seconds remained, but Jordahk didn't have 20 seconds worth of defense left. He was out of tricks.

  "We've given it our best shot, Max," Jordahk said. "Why don't we just shut down for a minute?"

  "Nooaow!" came back Max's distorted reply. He fought on.

  A personal AI wouldn't disobey a direct order unless it thought complying would endanger its admin's life. Jordahk, though, had not given a definitive command.

  With 15 seconds left, Max's hot block shattered. Enemy probes flooded onto his dense core. Jordahk zoomed in, hurriedly shifting systems around to protect Max's personality quadnapse structure.

  "Come on, Max, these stakes aren't worth it," Jordahk said. But his words rang a little hollow. He didn't know the totality of the stakes involved, what might one day rely upon the relationships he formed with this crew. Sweat flowed unabated, and his head felt hot.

  Jordahk threw encrypted histories before the piranhalike probes, everything that was backed up with Barrister. Then he threw the processing pods into the tumult. They could probably be restored. The octal was more interested in reaching the irreplaceable personality quadnapses than destroying systems thrown before him. Reaching the personality would force Jordahk to shut Max down or lose him forever.

  "What're you doing, grime?" Cranium said. "Are you really going to sacrifice your precious relic AI?"

  Jordahk was burning up. The long coat's cooling couldn't compensate, and his head felt like it was in a fusion reactor. His weight shifted.

  The last sacrificial systems were swept aside, and the invading probes pounced onto the quadnapse structure that was Max's personality. It was superdense, and the probes struggled to force their way in. Like a human brain, each small wound could either have no perceivable effect or hit something vital.

  Most people who cared about their AIs shut down long before things reached this point. Jordahk could not think straight. He cared about his AI. Shaking his head cast off great droplets of sweat. Five seconds remained.

  "Max, shut—"

  All of his VADs went black. The largest printed out four words: "I can make it." Jordahk struggled to focus. Then every VAD printed, "Don't shut me down!" The oversized text scrolled over and over.

  Jordahk felt strange, like he could sense things far away, like he was far away. From a distance, he heard Cranium yell, "What's wrong with you?"

  The VADs around Jordahk all printed out large numbers: 08:57. He stared at it for what felt like seconds, then it changed.

  08:58

  Jordahk thought Max's clock must be broken. He used his grip on Cranium's arm to steady himself. The heat. The sling bag at his side was shaking. Within, he felt, could sense, his autobuss.

  08:59

  The physical world was distant and gray, yet certain things stood out like bright beacons. They flared in his mind—his autobuss, a winged creature by the hatch, and more items just beyond.

  09:00

  A loud, old-fashioned buzzer blared through the crewroom. The shocking sound caused everyone to leap except Jordahk, who heard it as distant thunder. Max shut down even before the thresh ball's binding bolo unraveled.

  Freed from the forearm lock, the room spun around Jordahk. The deck raced up and slammed his body.

  "Was the horn really necessary, Barrister?"

  Aristahl stood in the corridor outside the crewroom hatch. Before him a VAD showed the disorder within. The horn was a sporting event sound that was old when Aristahl was a boy. The offbeat nature of that choice convinced Aristahl his AI had mischievousness in mind.

  "It was Torious's idea," Barrister said.

  Aristahl caught himself rolling his eyes. Was he genuinely surprised by such behavior anymore? He peered behind to see the nurse doing an anatomically unconvincing imitation of a person acting innocent.

  "He and I were in rare agreement," Barrister continued. "Jordahk fought a valiant battle using classic techniques and a relic—rather, heirloom AI. The end tone needed more panache than what that mindless thresh ball had ready."

  "I am not sure 'panache' was the note you hit," Aristahl said. His desire to protect and strengthen Jordahk, filtered through the machine minds of his retinue, manifested in strange ways sometimes.

  "Watch who you're calling a relic, relic," Torious said.

  "Mystic gets finer with age," Barrister said, "which is more than I can say for scientum."

  "Let us stick to the mission," Aristahl said. This was devolving quickly into the tired "mystic versus scientum" argument. These days it was more accurately "quality versus quantity." The most advanced publicly known mystic creations were all in the past. Meanwhile, new, powerful scientum was being created every day. "There are so few of us left here."

  "Sir?" Barrister inquired.

  "Not a one of us has fewer years than Max," Aristahl said. "We are all relics."

  Aristahl gave his AIs extra leeway. It was something his son did not appreciate. Kord was of the opinion it contributed to AI psychosis in unstable personalities. Aristahl's lovely daughter-in-law always thought he should foster more human interactions. The path he navigated was lonely, and not one of comfort.

  His shoulder bag was filled with mystic items Jordahk just sensed. The echo of his grandson's fledgling vision still resonated. The objects were more than sensed; they had begun to react. Danger and necessity, naivete and knowledge, a fine line.

  Barrister tapped into multiple feeds. From a variety of angles and close-ups, Jordahk's skin was flushed. Sweat ran down the side of his face. His eyes displayed wonder and bewilderment. It was an expression Torious couldn't understand, but had seen before and long since added to his symptomatology diagnosis rubrics.

  "I'm no expert on the mysteries of mystic," Torious said, "but I know what plumbing those depths does to the human body. I like staying busy and prefer a challenge to boredom. But I hope Jordahk learns what's necessary before he, how shall I put this delicately, blows us up?"

  "You puffed up servulant!" Barrister said.

  Aristahl grimaced. He knew the old nurse had a finer understanding than that. But dangerous possibilities could not be denied.

  "Stand down, you two," Aristahl said tiredly.

  Things were not cooling down in the crewroom. Jordahk's thresh accomplished much in a short time. But these kinds of risky gambits also yielded fallout.

  Aristahl hoped Jordahk's AI was not lost in that fallout. At first he did not understand his son's crusade to get Maximilian v4 for Jordahk. Now he saw how Kord used the veteran AI to instill disciplined thinking and an appreciation for history into his grandson.

  "Barrister, I do not think he will try, but prevent Max's reboot until you can mediate the damage."

  "Yes, sir. Shall we go in and break up the fracas about to start?"

  "I think we will
let that—" Aristahl searched for the right word. "Determined young woman who walked in a moment ago handle it." His eyes gleamed.

  Action flared on the VAD.

  "Oh look, contusions!" Torious said. "Good thing I restocked."

  The crewroom stopped spinning, mostly. The VADs were gone. Past the quiet thresh ball, Jordahk's former opponent was also unceremoniously on his butt, his face scrunched in bemusement. Their glances met. He was probably wondering exactly what had happened. Jordahk, too, could use those answers.

  But another element was present in Cranium Archimedes's expression. Jordahk saw it in the slump of his shoulders, and the way his eyes darted. The data rider had lost.

  "Max? Maximilian v4?" Jordahk called. The room filled with noise, but no Max. He felt none of the normal connectivity sensation between his link and compy. "You foolish, noble, stupid AI!"

  But what did that make him? He refused to give Max the direct order to shut down. Max wanted to win, too, and stayed with him right until the end. It gave Jordahk hope the damage wasn't irreparable. Best to stay in self-imposed coma until a repair reboot. With that hope, Jordahk didn't let his mind go any further down depressing lines of thought.

  In terms of tenacity, they had both become a little more like Otto Gen. In terms of that weirdness at the end; Jordahk did not know what he was becoming.

  A jumble of activity filled the room. Most of it gamblers conversing with excitement. Jordahk expected it to be commiseration about losing their stake. Surprisingly, the few snippets he made out were elation over the thrills. One fellow said it was the best entertainment for his coin in months.

  The splotched engineer wasn't participating in such conversations. He was torn between wanting to beat someone and retrieving his hard coin. Jordahk assumed they would both get done and that the only question was in which order. The hard coin won, and the bruiser moved toward the pile near the large wager VAD on the wall.

  The nearly as large foreman stood in his way. "You know the score, Chaetan, no shipboard welching."

  The foreman acted fearlessly with the courage of his conviction. All conversations stopped. Out of the corners of their eyes, the crew watched to see what Chaetan would do. Apparently, some rules couldn't be broken.

  Chaetan noticed the observation and squinted, making his facial splotches oval. He turned away in obvious disgust, muttering, "Damn, drakking data-jerk." Conversations resumed.

  "Oh yeah," one hand said as he took a coin from the pile, recouping some of his stake. The wager VAD designated how it should be divvied. The foreman scooped up his share, rounding out his break-even. The rest were to be divided between Jordahk and Aristahl.

  Jordahk climbed unsteadily to his feet. His steps grew more sure as he took a few toward Cranium. Half the fun of a thresh was the debrief. Waiting was pointless, and he honestly wanted to exchange strategies and play-by-play. They could both learn a lot from this. Cranium still sat on the deck, no longer shocked.

  Jordahk put on a lopsided grin and stretched out his hand to lift his former opponent. "Mr. Archimedes." That was when the superhauler hit him.

  He saw a burst of colors, and pain ran down his side. He experienced a sensation of flying before slamming into a table and chairs. Such furnishings were designed to stay in place during turbulence and gravity loss, but they give way when impacted. While it was unlikely his hardened bones would have broken, Jordahk appreciated the pain spared by the safety feature.

  This was real-life, physical trauma with which Jordahk had considerable experience, and he recovered fast. He looked up from his tangle of furniture and spilled foodstuffs.

  "Eww."

  Two of Chaetan's cronies hauled up Cranium from either side. One was Mr. Dirty Hands. Chaetan grabbed the data rider mid-chest, ready to pound out his losses.

  "Couldn't beat a backwater brat with an obsolete compy in six minutes?" His voice wasn't as deep as his body was big, and he didn't try to hide his petulance.

  "You saw it!" Cranium said defensively. "The grime had moves."

  "I think you threw it just to get back at me. Now you're going to pay out my stake, with interest." The large man raised a meaty fist.

  The spectacle was interrupted by a rocket's hiss. An object roared past Jordahk's vision from the hatch. A seeker drone? Inside a spaceship? That was crazy, but there it was, a blurred shape like no drone he'd ever seen. A bird?

  Glowing veins stood out on its shiny gray surface. It confirmed what he already knew somehow. Mystic. The device let out a piercing bird of prey screech and plowed unerringly into the two cronies. But it didn't penetrate them. Rather, both were hit by a blurred plane before the avian drone.

  The first crony was propelled backwards over a table. With slightly less speed, the second was thrust back violently, slamming into the crystal pane. It was Mr. Dirty Hands. He bounced off dazedly, somehow keeping his feet under him. Cranium was untouched.

  The metal bird made a sharp 180. The air blurred around it in angles and lines. It dove on Chaetan, its rockets thrusting anew, but without enough space to rebuild overwhelming speed. Chaetan crossed his arms to absorb the impact. With a loud grunt, he staggered back a few steps.

  The bird continued back toward the hatch. Jordahk followed it as it let out another screech. Its rockets stopped and it folded up midair, caught in an outstretched arm that swung back to absorb its momentum.

  The arm belonged to a woman. Jordahk blinked. It was all happening so fast. He tried to take her in from head to heavy-duty treaders as she strode the bird's path. The avian continued to fold. With practiced motion, the woman slipped it in place on her belt without breaking stride or moving her eyes.

  She wore baggy, military-styled pants and a tight tank top. Her exposed arms were toned with lean muscle. Jordahk knew instantly it wasn't just her arms. Someone didn't move like that without training.

  Mr. Dirty Hands staggered into her path after bouncing off the crystal. He reached out to grab her. The instant he was in range, her arm flashed out at almost inhuman speed. She neither looked at him nor slowed her pace as her palm struck his solar plexus. He let out a croak and crumpled as if his body could no longer resist gravity.

  Chaetan had just enough time to face her, but she angled to his side. Jordahk felt vibrations in his chest as if someone was pounding a large drum. Her arms moved like blurred pistons, two, four, six body blows. Chaetan roared as he turned, bringing his paw down in a mighty hammer blow, but she'd already moved on. Farther around his body, her arms blurred again. His flesh undulated as Jordahk counted four more rapid concussions.

  The big man gasped for breath, and his eyes burned with anger as they met the woman's. She was in front of him again. He tried to reach for her neck, but blurred pistons to either side of his jaw stopped him. The impacts short-circuited his legs, and he went down in a heap. She stood over him, eyes taking in the entire crewroom before she stared down.

  "I warned you what'd happen if you laid hands on my brother again." Her alto voice had a throaty rasp, and she wasn't out of breath.

  Focus returned to Chaetan's eyes. He sneered. "Glick!" He was incredibly resilient.

  The engineer kicked to sweep her legs out. Even she couldn't react in so short a time. While she managed to get one leg out of the way, he caught the other. She maneuvered midair like a diver and braced a butt-first impact with her hands.

  Chaetan reached out. A hidden pocket opened on his sleeve. A small red pistol unfolded and jammed into his palm from flexible arms. He swung it toward her face.

  The woman barely hit the floor when she reached across her belt. A scraping sound was followed by a brief tone. It was like a deep note from a flute—a monomer knife. All who heard it took a step back reflexively. A monomer knife could cut through most materials, even certain longchain ones with difficulty.

  Her hand arced up. The little blurred blade connected with the pistol just as it reached her face. Sparks erupted as it scored the weapon. The pistol flew away from Chaetan's hand alo
ng with his trigger finger.

  The big man recoiled with a wail. He leaned back on one elbow, his good hand closed around the one spurting blood. In an instant, she was upon him, driving a knee into his chest. Chaetan exploded spittle then struggled for breath, eyes bulging. She held the monomer knife above his face.

  She could kill him now with justification. Everyone saw the pistol, at least those not streaming out the hatch. This confrontation, taken to the next level, was one in which it was better to not be involved.

  "You have made your point, young lady," came a venerable voice. She raised her head. Aristahl and Torious had managed to gain entry into the crewroom against the tide of fleeing people. The robot trundled to Jordahk without delay.

  Glick half glanced back, taking them in while still seeing the engineer. Nearby Cranium was just releasing a full body wince. He stood like a man untouched by a passing tornado.

  The intensity dropped. Aristahl always had a contagious, calming effect. Glick stood, and returned the monomer knife to its special sheath. The engineer gasped for breath, eyes watering.

  Glick stepped hard on the center of his chest. Chaetan sputtered as she walked over him to scoop up the damaged pistol and the index finger that fell from it.

  "Fortunately for you," she said to Chaetan, "this gig pays a hauler load." She tossed the finger onto him. "And we need an engineer." He fumbled for the severed digit.

  In two quick strides Glick was to her brother, and in a third, she had him moving toward the hatch.

  "Come on, Clutch."

  She glared down at Jordahk as they passed. Two seconds of her withering gaze felt much longer. Her hunter green eyes were beckoning, but her intensity was repulsing. Jordahk was buffeted by her unspoken message. So you're the one who caused all this trouble. He barely had time to summon an unconvincing "Who, me?" expression.