Conlan decided it was time for him to find out how strong his bargaining position might be. Obviously Krong wanted him to convince the Prador that he controlled the runcibles so they would take one of them aboard without sufficiently checking it. Maybe he was integral to this desperate plan. Now he would find out. “I want a new identity, and all records of my old identity wiped. I want two million New Carth shillings paid to me in etched sapphires, and an unrecorded runcible transmission to any destination of my choosing.”
“Oh, is that all?” Jebel asked. “How about a Marineris Trench apartment, a new wardrobe and couple of courtesans to feed you peeled grapes?”
“If I thought all my demands would be met I’d ask for your testicles on a metal hook,” Conlan spat.
“Really,” Krong leant over him, very close, as if wishing Conlan would attack. “Here’s the deal, Conlan: you get to live. You get adjustment and a custodial sentence reviewed every ten years.”
“No way is any AI going to fuck with my mind. No deal.”
“Then there’s only one other option.” Krong stepped away from him, stooped and picked up the two tools from the bed.
Conlan wondered if he had pushed just a little too hard. Maybe adjustment wouldn’t be so bad…
Krong continued, waving the metal snips at him.
“This ship carries cold-sleep escape pods. You do what I say and one of them is yours. We fire it into deep space and maybe, sometime in the far future, someone will find that pod and open it. You could be lucky. The Polity could be gone by then. Or if it still exists you and your crimes might have been forgotten.”
Conlan eyed those snips. That wasn’t so bad. If Krong had acceded to his initial demands Conlan would have known the man intended to renege. This sounded real.
“You have a deal,” he said.
The U-space transmitter did not look particularly impressive, just a grey box sitting on the floor with numerous optics and s-con power cables feeding into it. But the technology that box contained was akin to a miniature replica of the one driving the huge runcible outside the chainglass windows on this side of the complex. The transmission of information being a considerably less complex procedure than transmitting huge cargo vessels, the transmitter required no AI—a simple synaptic computer served the same purpose.
Moria chose this particular room in which to base herself, since there was less of a chance of a breakdown of the single link between this console and transmitter in here. Any other console in the complex would have been routed through other networked com nodes, and she really didn’t need some idiot software glitch getting in the way. She had more than enough to do.
“Sit there.” Moria pointed to one of the three chairs behind the console desk, and George meekly walked over and ensconced himself. “And no more proverbs for the moment. I know what to do now and I don’t want you confusing the issue.”
George seemed about to say something, but instead clamped his mouth closed like a naughty child and removed his optic cable from his top pocket. While she watched he plugged one end into his aug, then the other end into the console, then sat with his hands in his lap. He appeared childish only for a moment longer, then straightened, something metallic gleaming in his eyes.
Moria placed her flask of coffee and cup down on the pseudo-wood surface and took the chair next to him. In her aug she again checked the time. Jebel had reached the Boh runcible some hours ago, and should soon be docking to what remained of the complex there. The Prador ship would arrive in approximately five hours, according to reports from the ground-based AIs—their data obtained from monitoring stations launched throughout the Polity some days into the war. She had received no communication from the Occam Razor, but then U-com became difficult from within U-space—a problem the AIs hoped to iron out sometime soon.
Moria plugged herself in and began running diagnostic checks on the huge and intricate systems she controlled. She ran up every fusion reactor in the complex to its maximum, routing power into storage in the runcible buffers at this end. Solar collector satellites stood ready to maser energy to the receivers on the runcible, should she require it—a highly likely possibility. Beginning to model the two runcible gates and all the energy systems involved, she slotted in the information revealed by the diagnostic returns. Then, because she knew she was procrastinating, she took a long, hard look at her data map. Certainly the planetary AIs would release processing space to her, but it was not that area of processing that most concerned her. She closely studied the nexus of the data map, where the AI should be, and where before lay nothing but errors and broken connections. Something now occupied the space, directly linked to the console before which she sat. It looked skeletal, with at present un-instated connection to that processing space on the planet below. It looked nothing like an AI, nothing like anything she had ever seen before. It was George.
“Are you ready?” she asked—through her aug.
“Set a beggar on horseback, and he’ll ride to the Devil.”
There, another proverb. What other reply to expect? Whatever the hell that meant she supposed it to be the best answer she would receive.
Moria set to work calculating orbital velocities and trajectories. At present the runcible face lay at a tangent to Trajeen, so she needed to turn it to ninety degrees from the surface. Sending the cargo ship through required a two-kilometre extension of the gate; now she needed an excess of two hundred kilometres. She worked out that this would take, with each gatepost travelling at its maximum of twelve hundred kph, averaged over the distance, more than five minutes.
Too long.
A particular fact niggling at her for some time now came to the forefront of her mind. Her plan stood a much better chance of working if she could initiate the warp only after the gateposts reached full extension. This meant her accuracy in positioning the posts needed to be well inside the tolerances set for the normal method of opening the gate. Over the next long hour she calculated what the new tolerances should be, and applied them to the system. Immediately thousands of errors appeared—possibly more than she could deal with.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” George told her, then added a proverb he used before, “When one door shuts, another door opens.”
Moria sat for long minutes trying to understand that, then abruptly felt very stupid. She did not need to initiate warp at full extension at both gates, only the Boh one. This cut the errors by half and, she felt, brought the required calculations within parameters she could handle. She spent a further hour modelling gate operation under these circumstances, then saved the model. Now, to position this gate.
Where it ultimately ended up around Trajeen depended on when the Prador ship arrived and when it could be manoeuvred into position. However, she could run a rough projection based on an arrival time five hours hence. This she did, and then she began to move.
The positional drives fired up again and, slowly, through the nearby windows, she observed Trajeen rise, its blue curve filling the lower half of the view. The moment the runcible lay upright to the surface, and stabilized, she fired the drives in a different direction to send it in orbit around the planet, so it would arrive in position in five hours. Further adjustments would then be required, utterly dependent on the situation out at Boh. Now, with one of her models being updated in real-time via the U-space link and the test viewing sensors out at Boh, she observed Jebel Krong’s ship docking, and waited.
Consciousness returned by slow degrees, and during moments in the in-between state, Tomalon possessed no conception of being human. He was the Occam Razor. Through its sensors he observed the Trajeen system as a whole, not contracted to human perception, and realised what mere specks were himself, and the Prador ship millions of kilometres ahead. Then the lines of division impinged, for he did not control his own body, and he became aware of Occam.
“U-space currents have affected the duration of our journey. We have arrived two hours earlier than expected,” Occam told him.
> “Is this a problem?”
“It is, but one that can hopefully be resolved. I am presently in communication with Moria Salem, who controls the cargo runcibles. She has transmitted a plan of which you need to be aware.”
The information arrived at Tomalon’s interface with the ship AI, and he slowly and carefully worked his way through it. He felt a shiver when he began to realise what this woman intended to do, and what would be required of the Occam Razor.
“This is a serious proposition?” he asked.
“It is.”
“So we must continuously feed her information concerning our position and the position of the Prador ship, while we make an attack run on the Boh runcible?”
As he asked this, Tomalon began checking through the ship’s systems and infrastructure to see what Occam had done while he was unconscious. Various ship’s robots were busily working, strengthening or replacing structural members, taking wrecked machinery and burnt and twisted metal to interior autofactories to be cut up, smelted, and turned into replacement components for the ship. A veritable swarm of constructors presently worked its way around the hull, removing damaged plates and welding new ones into place. Others were replacing looms of fried optics and wiring. A whole weapons turret had been rebuilt. Yet he realised the ship would probably not survive a head-on encounter with the Prador vessel.
“I am beginning that run now. We will swing around the Prador ship to begin it. Ascertaining our intent, Immanence will accelerate and arrive there before us.”
“Well that’s just dandy,” Tomalon replied, wondering if he should transmit updates to his will and what the chances were of his body being found.
Urbanus and Lindy suited up and departed through the ship’s outer airlock into vacuum, each carrying four CTDs. Jebel observed them for a little while on the cockpit subscreen fed from an exterior camera. Their air jets flipped out little dissolving trails as they split up, each heading for different areas of the runcible to conceal their lethal parcels. He considered waiting another hour before going to get Conlan and taking him inside the Boh complex. Then Moria made contact:
“Jebel, the Prador ship just arrived early. Already they are transmitting on the frequency Conlan gave you. You must get him to reply ASAP. Prador vessel’s ETA at Boh is probably less than an hour once it gets underway—it is holding off at present.”
“That’s two hours early.” Jebel leapt up from his seat and, collecting his weapons, headed back through the ship.
“Yeah, I spotted that.”
“Can you still do it?”
“I can, I think, but if I can’t you still have your chance with the mines.”
“Though I very much wanted to be here, the plan was that we positioned the mines then ran. One hour doesn’t give us much time to do that.”
“That last fact would not have been changed had you decided to ignore me.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“I will be out of com henceforth. I’m going to be juggling with quite enough balls as it is. Best of luck, Jebel Krong.”
“Juggling balls—nice analogy,” he replied, but the connection closed before he could say any more, and now he stood at the door to Conlan’s room. Before entering Jebel initiated his comlink:
“Okay you two, get those mines positioned in double quick time—we’ve got company.”
“It’s here?” Lindy asked.
“Two hours early,” Urbanus added.
“My words exactly,” Jebel replied. “Now, you’ve no time to run checks. Get them positioned and get back here fast. I want you both back aboard within half an hour.”
Now, through his aug, Jebel checked the view through the concealed cameras in Conlan’s room, just as he had before entering the man’s cell back in the Trajeen complex. Supine on the bed the man did not seem preparing some ambush this time. Jebel opened the door and entered.
“Okay, time to go.”
Conlan sat upright, and Jebel studied him with what he knew to be ill-concealed contempt. Thus far he had learnt that Conlan was a hit man for some gangster organization on Trajeen before joining the Separatists. He was brave, that being a job requirement, but did not possess the kind of face-to-face bravery Jebel saw at the front. A knife in the back or the lengthy torture of a bound victim being more his style. Jebel wondered how he would fare with a laser carbine and a few gecko mines up against a Prador.
“By your hasty demeanour I suspect they have arrived?”
“You suspect right.” Jebel stepped aside and drawing his thin-gun waved Conlan to the door. The killer shrugged, stood and walked over, eyeing the weapon as he passed. Jebel supposed he had considered going for it and rejected the idea. “The airlock is down there on the left.”
“Do I get a suit like yours?” Conlan asked as they entered the corridor.
“No need. This lock leads directly into the Boh complex.”
Reaching the lock, Jebel gestured for Conlan to open it. The exterior door already stood open, having been shunted aside for the embarkation tunnel to connect. They pulled themselves through the tunnel in zero gee, then finally clumped down on the grav-plates in a short tunnel leading to a junction with one of the complex’s corridors.
“Go right.”
The corridor led past accommodation units for the runcible staff, and finally terminated in a secondary Control Centre, previously in operation while the runcible was being built, but closed down when the AI took control. Moria had, however, since brought this place back online.
“Choose a console.”
Conlan moved ahead, shrugged, then plumped himself down beside the nearest console. Jebel removed an optic cable from one of his pockets and tossed it to the man.
“Remember—your life depends on what you do next.”
“Oh I do understand that.”
While Conlan opened up his aug and plugged in, Jebel studied his surroundings. A row of screens to his right gave him a clear view across the runcible, with Boh, the gas giant, looming behind. Within the room a horseshoe of consoles faced a bank of screens, many of which were running tech data way above Jebel’s knowledge; some however, showed different views outside. On one he could see a spacesuited figure busily at work undoing an access hatch, elasticised lines holding the figure in place. By the size and shape he guessed that to be Lindy. Another screen showed a partial view of their docked ship and still others showed star-speckled blackness. He returned his attention to Conlan.
The man now sat bolt upright, his eyes closed. Speaking out loud he delivered the message as instructed, though if anything lay hidden in his words, Jebel guessed he wouldn’t know until too late.
“Yes, I have control of the Trajeen cargo runcible, and through it, control of the Boh cargo runcible.… There are a few technicians still aboard here at Trajeen, but—No, they can’t—not with the AI knocked out.… No, none on the Boh runcible. You are clear to take it.… Yes, I look forwards to that.”
The conversation was brief, and of course much more than Conlan’s life depended on it. The lives of nearly a billion souls hung in the balance. Conlan leant back and opened his eyes. “Y’know, even from a translation you can pick up a lot.
“Oh yes.”
Conlan turned to face him. “Unless your mines work, everyone is going to die here. I reckon I stand the better chance in a cold coffin in vacuum.”
Maybe the man believed that. Probably they were weasel words to try and get Jebel to drop his guard a little.
“So what else do I have to tell him?”
“In a little while you’ll tell Immanence that those few technicians remaining aboard the Trajeen cargo runcible have managed to seize back some control, specifically of the positional drives of the Boh runcible.” Jebel turned to look at him. “Those technicians will fire up those drives to open the Boh gate.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to,” Jebel told him.
8.
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand—<
br />
Great, now she was getting a headache, which added to the feeling, despite her having applied for and received planetary processing space, of her head being filled to bursting point. Despite the early arrival of the Prador vessel, it had been necessary to slow the runcible’s orbital speed to bring it to the right place at the right time. All her previous calculations she’d completely erased, since they no longer applied, even very roughly. The calculations she presently ran were a living thing. She knew the result, the solution, but necessarily needed to keep altering the input values in keeping with data received from the Occam Razor and the test sensors out at Boh. Sometimes, deep in all this, she lost sight of her ultimate aims, but looking out through her own eyes at the changing horizon, storms and cloud banks passing underneath her, snapped her back to reality. If she failed, that view might well change, horribly.
Returning her attention to the Trajeen runcible she again checked her preparations, hesitated for only a moment, then initiated the Skaidon warp. Her view altered immediately as the shimmering meniscus flickered into being beside her. Though the present drain on the fusion reactors lay within acceptable limits, she knew that later the need would rise beyond those limits, so onlined extra power from the solar collector satellites. The power they supplied, by maser, to the gateposts, slotted into her calculations and gave her greater manoeuvring space. She now gave the instruction for the gateposts to begin parting, though she did not yet intend to throw them out to their full extent, since their tendency to drift while the entire runcible was being moved could wreck everything. She now considered some other calculations.
The C energy, though not a true representation of what would instantiate beyond the meniscus because of the exponential progression that took place actually at the meniscus, was very substantial. Moria briefly considered taking the Boh runcible buffers completely offline, ran some calculations, and felt a sudden thrill of horror at the results this rendered. The Boh gate itself would last about .005 of a second, and it seemed possible the entire energy burst could actually ignite the gas giant itself—turn it into a small, swiftly burning sun. Not a great idea. She could not do that; however, she did not have to work the gate as intended for the transmission of cargo ships. The output velocity did not have to be the same as the input, for she could borrow some of the C energy and add it to the latter.
Prador Moon: A Novel of the Polity Page 18