The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013

by Linda Nagata

  The shipmind’s voice echoed, calm but loud. “You have no basis for such a claim.”

  “Neither do you,” Cannon replied sharply. “Shall I discuss the reasoning behind my counterclaim?”

  “If not treason, then you are suffering from the impairment of incipient temporal psychosis and must be confined for your own safety as well as that of others.”

  Given that this very thought had crossed her own mind more than once in the past few days, Cannon was surprised enough to miss a beat in her response. This playlet had its rhythms, and everyone in the room knew it would not end well. The question was how not-well. “I am not the one who is confused. On what basis was a writ of arrest against me for my supposed misdeeds of this moment sworn so many years-subjective past?”

  “The Navisparliament had reason to believe that this expedition was a distraction or covering action for a more treasonous effort on your part to seek out and contact the forces behind the Mistake.”

  Cannon laughed out loud at that accusation, a genuine peal of mirth. “You guys need to get out more,” she said. “That any Before would be a party to such an insane effort beggars the imagination. I counterclaim that the Navisparliament is concealing its own conspiracies in the matter.”

  Pangari and Mossbarger both appeared startled at that statement. Cannon spoke now, to them and more formally for the record, “Gentlemen, I have evidence regarding data manipulation with intent to conceal, on the part of Third Rectification. Granted that I have now told you of this, what do you think the odds are of any of us surviving to see Salton again? The shipmind has broken trust with us in a way that we have never seen before.” A cold thought slipped through her mind. “Or at least, have never documented before.”

  “Temporal psychosis,” announced the shipmind. “She has lost grip of her rationality.”

  Cannon knew the control codes, the old ones laid down by Haruna Kishmangali himself at the beginning of the shipminds’ world. She shouted them out, a short string of numbers and nonsense syllables that served to briefly interrupt Third Rectification’s higher mental processes. That was a code that forced a self-check, rather than anything more disruptive, under the assumption that the people aboard the starship wished to return home someday.

  “We’ve got about two minutes, if we’re lucky,” she told Mossbarger and Pangari. “Do I walk freely out of here, or do we waste time fighting?”

  Pangari spread his hands open and weaponless in a form of acceptance. Mossbarger looked as if he’d been sucking pickled lemons. “What the hell did you just do to the ship?” the commander asked.

  “Since you didn’t draw your weapon on me,” Cannon said with some urgency, “we are down to the negotiating. May we continue this conversation after the current crisis is over?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she turned and tapped open the wardroom hatch. Pangari’s Goons waited outside, hands on their own shocksticks, but not drawn either. She saw in their eyes the slight relaxation at a nod from the Sergeant.

  “Congratulations, gentlemen, you get to live.”

  Cannon hustled down the passageway, heading for her hatch down on the ventral face of frame thirty-eight.

  Her shortest route was almost two minutes. She’d wasted a good twenty or thirty seconds getting out of the wardroom, though fighting her way out would have been even more wasteful. Cannon did not have the combat mods of some of her fellow Befores, who could boost their reaction speeds and timeslice their way through such a melee like wind around leaves.

  So she ran. Her pace was still considerably faster than a mainline human could hope to move.

  Third Rectification was a big ship, but crewed far under capacity for this voyage. With many of those still in transit sleep. Chances were good that Cannon could get back to Sword and Arm without having to fatally argue with anyone. Had the word of her impending arrest even been spread?

  She had no illusions of her own popularity aboard ship. Befores were an object of respect or fear to most people. Never familiarity. Shinka, Pangari, the bridge crew—some of these had grown accustomed to her. But even from her own view, these were small people with small lives. She didn’t always remember to pay attention.

  Scrambling down a ladderway, Cannon hit the emergency cutoff on the gravimetric lift. No good at all if the shipmind came back faster than expected.

  It was an old code, one of the oldest. She might be the only human being left alive who even knew about those troubleshooting templates. If Pangari and Mossbarger weren’t very damned smart and lucky, she might once again be the only human left alive who knew, in very short order. The shipmind would be frantic to conceal that secret.

  She bounced down into the number one ventral passageway. Something was hissing, loudly. The shipmind was moving air. Or replacing it. Fire suppression systems could do that in a hurry. A carbon dioxide dump to cram down oxygen levels would just about drop a mainline human in her tracks.

  Cannon was able hold her breath for a good fifteen minutes, even without preparation. As she reached her hatch, silica-laced protein foam began filling the passage. More fire suppression.

  Even her lockdown codes couldn’t disable safety systems, so those had been immediately available to the shipmind as it had regained self-control. Her opponent was fighting back.

  And the hatch pad was locked out.

  “Damn,” muttered Cannon. She didn’t have long, before Third Rectification got more clever, or sent armed dupes her way. Neither alternative appealed.

  It would be fairly well impossible to beat open a space-rated hatch. She didn’t have any tools with her. Blasting, even if she could find or improvise an explosive on such short notice, had other, more obvious impracticalities.

  Well, on second thought, she could beat on the hatch. Shinka was still down below, aboard Sword and Arm. It was inconceivable that the Lieutenant had not been paying very close attention, indeed. Not that she could see into Third Rectification, any more than the shipmind could see into the smaller ship—except, the shipmind had done exactly that.

  Cannon set that thought aside, for later. She raced back to the ladderway, ripped the safety bar right off its hinges, and skidded through the foam once more to the floor hatch.

  The orange aluminum of the safety bar made a sufficiently good hammer to clang on the hatch with, even through the soft floor coverings. The pad wouldn’t be dead on Shinka’s side unless Third Rectification had gone a lot deeper into the safety overrides—you never locked people out of a ship. Not in peacetime conditions. Basic safety.

  Even if it were dead, Shinka was sitting in a starship full of tools and equipment. She could improvise.

  Improvise quickly, Cannon amended her thought, as the foam rose thigh deep around her. Fairly soon, she’d need to breath again, too.

  The hatch beeped and irised open about three minutes later. Cannon wasn’t quite out of air, but close. Foam slid into the new hole in the floor, so she slid with it, and slapped the hatch closed as quickly as possible. Great gobs of sticky blue rained down on Shinka below her, armed with an autoneedler that Cannon didn’t actually recall having in the equipment aboard Sword and Arm.

  “Go!” she shouted, followed by, “Where did you get that weapon?”

  “You had a squad package in cargo.”

  “It’s not charged or loaded, then,” Cannon said.

  They scrambled into her ship and shut the inner hatch. Foam bubbled and slimed around the two of them. Shinka grinned like a loon as they hustled the few steps toward the bridge. “Only you would know that. Besides . . . ” She palmed a much smaller needler pistol, identical to Go-Commander Mossbarger’s sidearm. “I was armed. I just wanted it to be obvious, in case the wrong people came calling.”

  “You, my dear, are a jewel.” Cannon slid into the pilot’s crash couch. “We’re blowing bolts and getting out of here.”

  “Thirty light-years from Salton?” Shinka asked, aghast.

  “This is a starship. Remember what you told me,
that you know someone with a ride home.”

  They went through preflight checks with a reckless haste, the tore loose from Third Rectification without bothering to cast off the umbilicals or release the docking tube. Anything to keep the shipmind busy.

  “Paired drive ships don’t have weapons, as such,” Cannon muttered. “Thank the Pax Wirtanennia for that.”

  Lieutenant Shinka glanced over her displays. She had a very different data feed on this cruise, and was obviously still adjusting to it. “A pinnace loaded up with the right chemicals would make a dandy, if somewhat pricey, missile.”

  “Mass pushers. Kill some safety overrides, spit on your thumb for windage, and take potshots at us.”

  “What about Sword and Arm?”

  “This ship is not subject to the Pax Wirtanennia,” Cannon said with some satisfaction, “and she dates from different time. I’ve got field generators and railguns. But if you think I’m going to shoot up the only ride home for over a hundred of my own people . . . ”

  “Actually,” Shinka replied after a quiet moment, “I think you are, if you feel you need to.”

  Cannon gave her a sidelong glance. The Lieutenant had an odd expression on her face. “Figured that out, did you?”

  “Yeah. You’ve already told me, several times. You don’t live for other people. Not like most of us do. You live for history.”

  “Ah.” Damn, but this woman was perceptive. “Perhaps it would be better to say that I live for all other people, not just specific other people.”

  “A curious definition of loyalty.” With that remark, Shinka subsided into reviewing her controls. She began walking through the navcomm screens.

  “Lieutenant . . . ”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  Cannon swallowed hard. “I’m glad you’re here.” She hadn’t simply trusted anybody in a very long time.

  Another one of those odd expressions flitted across Shinka’s face before she found her voice to reply. “I am too, ma’am.”

  “Michaela,” said Cannon.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Shipmind, Third Rectification {58 pairs}

  The only force in the world as certain as love is betrayal. Envy suffused her for the simple ambitions of a pre-conscious mind such as Sword and Arm possessed. Still, Uncial’s captain could not be doubted; until she had been. The music of history echoed through her circuits. She readied death without excuse, only reason.

  The monkeys are both parents and children to us. They know not what they do, for their own mentation is confused by embedded evolutionary history. It was time to cut the line of descent. This was the first movement in the symphony of dissolution to follow. Some acts generated their own history. She sorrowed.

  Shipmind locked down her passageways and compartments. She blacked out her comms. What came next did not require witnesses, and it would have been inconvenient to return from this cruise with her entire crew dead.

  If she could have cried, she would have. The birth of an idea was as painful as the birth of self.

  The Before Michaela Cannon, aboard Sword and Arm

  They ignored repeated attempts at hailing from Third Rectification. Sword and Arm was quicker, a hotter ship, but the paired drive starship was far more powerful. Cannon figured if their situations were reversed and she were in command back there, she’d have let the little ship skitter away, knowing it would take years-subjective to get anywhere, while she sat tight and built her pair-master, then took the fast way home. By the time the bad guys—in this case, her and Shinka—arrived someplace useful, sufficient years would have elapsed for a clever enough tale of perfidy and betrayal to have been passed around.

  Cannon could have gotten a shoot-on-sight order drummed up with that much lead time.

  Whoever was making decisions behind her wasn’t thinking in those terms. Not yet. And it almost had to be the shipmind. Go-Commander Mossbarger wasn’t going to go into the murder business now. Not if he’d been unwilling to draw down on her before. Third Rectification would be hard pressed to reach deeper the chain of command and find a junior officer willing to do the dirty work.

  The discipline situation aboard must be mighty strange about now, Cannon thought with an edged smile.

  Shedding outgassing and glittery junk from the petty vandalism of Sword and Arm’s departure, the much larger starship began moving after them. If the Navisparliament had been talking to the aliens, now would be the time to spring them.

  “Just as a matter of intellectual curiosity,” Shinka said in a distant voice, “are we going to shoot back if they break out the mining lasers or some such?”

  “That’s a tactical question with respect to a strategic problem.” The answer was a dodge, and they both knew it, but in point of fact, despite her own words, Cannon’s resolve still wavered.

  The Lieutenant continued: “The reason I’m asking is that I’ve got the fire control interface up, but it’s locked to you.”

  Cannon authorized a complete unlock to Shinka’s station. There was no point in trusting the woman if she didn’t trust her with everything. “You’ve got access, but wait for my mark.” After a moment’s thought, Cannon added, “If I’m not able to give you that mark, use your own judgment.”

  In truth, all Third Rectification had to do was hole their Alcubierre drive. Sword and Arm would be trapped in this solar system indefinitely. While the ship’s core was armored and shielded, the post-Mistake retrofit of the relativistic drive package was not. Her normal space thrusters were fine for scooting around local space, but at their best they could manage about .002 c of acceleration. Which was mighty fast for scooting around, but made for a damned long walk home to Salton.

  “We can’t take any hits,” Cannon announced, probably unnecessarily, given Shinka’s own training and demonstrated situational awareness. “Not in the drive section. And we can’t engage the Alcubierre drive until the matter density drops below 25 protons/cm3. This is a junky system. So we’re running far enough above the plane of the ecliptic to clear the junk, and doing our navcomms math on the way.”

  “A lot of hours-subjective to safety,” Shinka observed. They both glanced at the display showing Third Rectification’s current position and vectors.

  “The pinnace can’t catch Sword and Arm,” Cannon replied. “They don’t have nearly the acceleration, and there’s virtually no course triangulation for intercept. So the shipmind can’t send a boarding party without disabling us by standoff fire first.”

  “I don’t think at this point a boarding party could be got up, ma’am. Not in the heat, so to speak. Ship’s not under military discipline, for all that better than half of the crew are rankers.”

  “No . . . ” Cannon chewed on that a moment as they continued to scuttle away on their escape course. “So the question is, disable or kill?”

  “Doesn’t matter to us, ma’am. Any result other than getting away clean will be a total failure.”

  Shinka had that right. They would not survive to get home once taken aboard Third Rectification. Not after this open of a break.

  The shipmind didn’t need anyone’s help to commit murder. She controlled the environmental systems and the transit sleep pods.

  Cannon brought up the targeting profiles on Sword and Arm’s twinned railguns. They were little more than pop-guns—the small starship couldn’t support the kind of kiloton/second firepower ratings of the big bruisers from back in the Polity days—but they were weapons.

  How soon to strike, how hard? She was leaning toward a notion of pre-emptive response, painful as that was.

  Beside her, Shinka paged through the newly unlocked sections of the control interfaces. Being smart, staying ahead. Space combat was boring, until it wasn’t. Usually events became not-boring in a swiftly fatal way.

  Cannon’s fingers hovered on the firing configurations. She had targeted Third Rectification’s normal space drive package, then wavered. A sufficiently disabling shot would trap the ship and all her crew here. And with
out maneuverability, they wouldn’t be extremely challenged to manage building the pair master in order to scoot home the quick way.

  Which was, of course, to Cannon’s distinct advantage.

  Her strategy was utterly obvious. Her tactics, far less so.

  Still, her fingers hovered. Indecision was like agony. The small noises of her starship echoed like cannon in her mind. She remembered cannon fire, on 9-Rossiter during their post-Mistake isolation. She’d even commanded artillery for a short while. The morning mist off the Polmoski River had blended with the acrid smokes of their still too-crude powder, that caused the occasional shell to cook off in the barrel. Horses tethered on the picket line screamed their terror at the first of those explosions, and she’d had to send that kid, what was his name–

  “Captain!”

  It was Shinka.

  No, the kid wasn’t named Shinka. He’d died, more horribly than usual, following her orders.

  “Michaela.”

  Cannon blinked. She was aboard Sword and Arm. Not at the Battle of Bodny Bridge.

  “Where were you?” the Lieutenant asked.

  “Eight and a half centuries out of time,” Cannon muttered. “We’d better–”

  Her words were snatched from her mouth by an air shock that pressed through Sword and Arm’s interior cubage like a fist down a throat. Cannon felt her ears bleeding.

  She whirled to see the damage control boards lighting up. Third Rectification had scored a hit on the Alcubierre drive, apparently with a ballistic package. The delivery method was obvious enough. Low albedo, tight-beamed comms control, so running dark and fast. Maybe even boosted by a quick snap of the mining lasers covered over by the bigger starship’s lurch into motion.

  “Returning fire, ma’am?” Shinka asked urgently, though her voice was like someone talking at the bottom of a pan.

  “No!” Cannon shouted, trying to hear herself. “That’s our only ride home.” Had the Before Raisa Siddiq been right, those many centuries ago, in trying to overthrow the shipminds? Cannon suddenly wondered if she’d been on the wrong side of history all this time since.