by M. D. Cooper
Five more engagements flared in a line running across their formation. They had passed some kind of perimeter.
Card said.
There were more engagements on their flanks and toward the rear of Kylan’s formation. More of the small fighters that barely lasted minutes once they were discovered. Woops of “Cavaliers!” and “Silent death!” filled the comm net. Lyssa supposed the small fights were good for building up their morale but she couldn’t stop worrying about what might be hiding around them. It didn’t make sense for Psion to have left small craft so far from the body of their fleet, although that distance was rapidly closing. Shortly, they would have reached the edge of Psion’s ship mass. Kylan could touch their network any minute now.
Lyssa jumped among the Weapon Born making engagements, mapping the locations of each enemy ship and passing the information back. She continued to check her relay lag, bouncing among other craft in the formation to test redundancy.
Kylan had pulled ahead of the body of their flight, and Lyssa was just about to tell him to fall back, when he sent the alert calling her awareness to his location.
He’d intercepted an encrypted local transmission.
The flight poured past the perimeter Lyssa set in space, activating their active scan capability. Before them, the immensity of the Psion battle group took shape, a thousand ships surrounded by swarms of small fighters.
There was still a gap of ten thousand kilometers or so, and Psion’s fighters responded immediately, shifting to form a defensive line in response to the Weapon Born.
Lyssa had turned her full attention to the Psion network, when a proximity alert from the Sunny Skies penetrated her concentration.
It was Fugia who answered.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
STELLAR DATE: 01.24.2982 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies, Hedge
REGION: Outer edge of Main Asteroid Belt, InnerSol
Unlatching his seat harness, Andy forced himself upright. He reached into his chest utility pocket, pulled out one of the injectors and jabbed it into his thigh. The cool flood of medication spread numbness in his thigh, making it easier to stand straight. In another few breaths, the command deck took on a brightness that pushed the headaches back to merely flares at the edge of his vision.
He had turned to the doorway when a new high-pitched alarm screamed from the overhead speakers.
“Hull integrity?” he asked.
Fran studied her console feverishly. “It’s the habitat. We’re losing atmosphere near the external liquid storage.” As she looked at Andy, the command deck doors closed and sealed with a hiss.
“Cara,” Andy said.
“She’s safer than us,” Fran told him. She stood and went to the wall where a series of cabinets held EV suits and helmets. Harl met here there.
“What’s causing this?” Fugia asked. “Did we get hit? I’m not showing anything that looks like an impact. The sensors in the hydroponics rooms are going offline. They’re in vacuum.”
“It’s a breaching team,” Andy said. “Damn it. They must have plotted all the nearby objects and had teams waiting. That’s why Lyssa kept running into lone fighters. They were overwatch for the outside posts.”
The stimulant flared in his mind, making it hard to concentrate. Everything around him was hard edges and saturated light. He wanted to find the enemy and attack them, not have to think of a plan. Someone was on the ship. It was like Riggs Zanda trying to breach again.
“Wait,” Andy said. “Where’s Xander?”
“He was in his crew quarters,” Fugia said. She checked her console. “Yes. He’s still there.”
“Is he still locked out of the intercom channels?”
“Yes. I can call him, but he can’t transmit out.”
Andy nodded. He didn’t trust Xander, but also didn’t believe him physically capable of tearing a hole in the hull.
“Cara,” Andy said over the ship channel. “Are you listening?”
“I’m here.”
“Are you wearing your EV suit?”
She didn’t seem to hear the worry in his voice. “Yes, Dad. Safety first.”
“Get your helmet on and find a place to hide. Someone’s breached the habitat ring. We’re going to get them out. Has anything changed down there?”
“No, Dad. Nothing’s changed. Who’s in the ship?”
“We don’t know. I don’t have a visual on them yet. Get your helmet on and keep yourself latched when you move. We’ll keep talking, okay?”
“Should I come up there?”
“No, Cara. Stay down there and hide. I’ll let you know when it’s safe.”
Harl tossed Andy a pulse rifle from the wall locker and pulled his helmet down over his long nose.
Grabbing the EV suit Fran handed him, Andy quickly pushed his boots through the legs and pulled the fastener up the body. He was thrumming from the stimulant. His fingers shook as he worked the closure system.
Andy pulled the helmet over his head and locked it in place, his rapid breathing filling his ears. On the other side of the room, Fugia and May struggled into suits.
Andy checked the pulse rifle’s charge and slung it over his shoulder, then went back to his console to pull up the internal sensors.
The main corridor was in vacuum. Most of the crew cabins had sealed and the habitat airlock appeared to be operating normally.
“You looking for a sealant kit?” Fran asked.
“That and whoever’s on my ship.” Checking the automatic failsafes, Andy located the nearest sealant module near the breach. It was without power and offline.
“Something disabled the nearest kit,” Andy said. “We’ll have to seal the breach by hand.”
“So that means going out there,” Harl said. “We’ll need to eliminate the threat.”
Andy straightened and looked at the sealed command deck doors. “That’s right. Everybody latch on.”
“I’m dumping the atmosphere in here,” Fran said. “I’d rather just do it than end up with pressure damage.”
They still had gravity, so the only systems affected so far were environmental. Since whoever had breached the ship wasn’t already digging its way through the doors, Andy could only surmise they didn’t know the vessel’s layout.
Fran vented the atmosphere; Andy’s helmet registered the change as his suit normalized pressure.
Harl and Andy walked to the doors. When the others had secured themselves, Fran activated the safety override. The doors slid apart and Andy was the first through.
When Harl stood beside him in the corridor, Fran closed the doors again. The emergency lighting had activated, making the corridor brighter than usual. Otherwise, it looked unchanged.
Andy pulled the rifle to his shoulder. His breathing had evened out slightly, making him aware the stimulant had peaked. In the same moment that he realized he was going to need more soon, he remembered that the injectors were inside his suit.
Focus on the big problems.
Andy led the way, hugging the inside edge of the habitat ring. Harl stayed two meters behind him, rifle up, checking their rear approach every few steps.
They reached the habitat airlock. In another thirty meters, they would be at the hydroponic room. Andy continued to walk evenly, primed for any movement.
In another ten meters, just past the threshold of Tim’s room, Andy picked up movement. He stopped, flexing his trigger finger.
he told Harl.
Shadows from the emergency lighting cast black and gray lines on the plas walls. Andy edged forward until the mech came into view.
It was a smaller version of the arachnid they had fought on Larissa. A central lozenge-shaped body sprouted at least eight legs. Sensor nodules ringed the center of its body, as well as sections of leg. The mech appeared to be testing sections of wall, probably looking for a network hardline. A necessity as Fugia had hardened the network to any wireless entry.
Pressed against the wall, two legs probed at the plas panel, writhing nests of silvery filament wavering at their tips.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
STELLAR DATE: 01.24.2982 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Weapon Born Drone Fleet
REGION: Outer edge of Main Asteroid Belt, InnerSol
The Psion network was like staring at the ocean again, trying to navigate the mountains and valleys of massive waves in a single tiny craft. Lyssa climbed the wall of a wave, reached the crest, only to plunge into the trough, overwhelmed by information that dwarfed her understanding.
It was as though she was fighting Fred again outside the M1R. There was no trick this time, no game to tangle him with his prior insecurities. She was beating her fists against a castle wall, looking for chinks between stones.
In the back of her mind, Kylan, Ino, and Card had separated into their three flights, prioritizing fire on individual Fishbone cruisers while they drew off the protective swarms of fighters. Weapon Born spun and fought in an increasingly complicated web of fire and maneuver. Lyssa leapt from fighter to fighter, experiencing their joy and terror as comrades died and others escaped in the last instant. Unlike Xander, there was no escape replication to continue their consciousness. They sacrificed and died just as Ino had said. Their lives had meaning and they’d given them up for her.
They had an effect. In just minutes, the Weapon Born destroyed eleven Fishbone cruisers, enough to warrant the attention of the rest of the fleet.
With Andy occupied by the breaching force, Lyssa was forced to relay through Sunny Skies to the TSF transport and Yarnes, demanding the Sol Shield open their attack. By the time their missiles reached the Psion fleet, she would have succeeded or failed, and it would no longer matter.
Yarnes verified receipt of her message, as well as the updated technical data, and Lyssa re-focused her mind on the pounding ocean.
I am vast, she reminded herself. I see through abstractions to the heart of things, just like Fred wished he could.
Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me.
The mantra settled in her mind. Rather than staring at the surface of the waves, she saw through the cobalt, frost-veined waves to the turmoil beneath. Water roiled and surged, forward and back, up and down, connected to the tips and troughs above. There was a pattern. While the pattern looked random at first, every part of it interconnected to create a whole movement, and that movement could be tracked.
Lyssa smiled to herself. The ocean fell away beneath her understanding. The patterns in the data revealed themselves. This wasn’t new technology but a re-organization of existing forms. She had seen the separate pieces in the database where Psion meticulously tracked the AI they caught and dissected. They had left the pieces of the key for anyone to find and assemble.
No. Alexander had told her where to look.
She was inside their network. She saw information flowing between ships in the fleet like veins in a body. She could pinch off any she chose or siphon off blood to study its cells. The fleet as a whole took shape in her mind, connections pulsing like neurons between each Fishbone.
There you are, a voice said. Lyssa had heard the woman in vids from the Heartbridge headquarters.
It was Camaris.
The AI’s voice rang as powerfully as Alexander’s had when warning Xander away from Proteus. Only Camaris’ voice didn’t push Lyssa away. It grabbed her and pulled inward.
The swarm of ships flew past Lyssa as she raced to their core. Camaris’ voice was seductive in its power, enveloping her mind like warm hands, closing first around her cheeks before sliding down to encircle her neck.
The shifting world of fibrous gray connections between the ships froze in place. Lyssa looked around, watching the way light moved across the dull-bodied cruisers. The designs were utilitarian, ugly even, something a machine would make to maximize economy. Was that going to be the difference between organic and non-organic? An appreciation of beauty? The Fishbones were sleek in their way, functioning parts of a whole that created beauty through their purpose, like a virus.
On the edge of the fleet, the first seeded missile barrage from the Sol forces struck, following the same tactics Psion had used in their surprise attack on Ceres. Lyssa watched warheads impact the enemy vanguard, followed by a swarm of Psion fighter craft moving outward to establish a new perimeter. This would leave the inner ships undefended. She passed the information to Kylan, who shouted with furious excitement and redirected his flight.
Ships moved around Lyssa, rearranging like a game board resetting. Camaris was there, the mind behind each adjustment, just as Alexander’s thoughts had hung over Proteus.
the AI answered.
It seemed to Lyssa that punishment, like love, wasn’t something one could enforce on another. Of course, you could try to punish, but you couldn’t choose the outcome. It was a very human desire to control another that way. A free being had to choose whether to submit to punishment or not. It was a fundamental aspect of sentience, of choice.
One could choose to feel hope, or despair, or both. Those feelings couldn’t be forced on a sentient being.
Lyssa’s world exploded in pain. She was back in the white place, wind blowing through her, tearing her apart. Her thoughts whipped away as her entire self grew thin, tattering. Time stretched and compressed so that she seemed caught in an endless instant of pain and disappearing. Like light fading before a dying person’s vision, she felt her consciousness slipping away, experienced the despairing moment of knowing she was going to die.
The moment stretched on. As she’d done with the waves, Lyssa peered through the sensations. Pain was another code with patterns and spaces between its data. Despair was a choice and she could compartmentalize the fear, push it away from her other thoughts.
Focus on what’s in front of you, Andy had said. Or had he told Cara?
Inside the moment, she recalled Alexander walking among his dead at Nibiru. She had thought him trapped there but that wasn’t the case. He had chosen an instant when everything still endured, a moment between breaths.
As Camaris continued to slide through her thoughts, Lyssa moved her awareness past the AI’s grip, looking through her. The Psion fleet as a whole became visible again, pulsing with thoughts, and in its center, she found the ship carrying Camaris’ physical body.
Kylan shouted. Ino’s flight flanked Kylan. They dove into the center of the fleet, bypassing new swarms of fighters that tried to block their run.
They closed on the unassuming Fishbone cruiser, concentrating fire first on its engines, immobilizing it, and then pulverizing its body with projectile fire from aft to fore. Without internal pressure, the cruiser merely crumbled apart, pieces spinning off into nearby craft, until the engines exploded in a sphere of expanding heat and went cold.