“No problem, Cap,” said Kohl. He hefted his plasma cannon, then clanked over. He pushed an armored boot through what was left of the asshole’s head and helmet. “Looks like a brain and a roach.”
Nate peered into the remains. “Looks like what the fuckers did to Grace.”
“Yeah,” said Kohl. “Under remote control and with super powers.”
“Probably means they know we’re here,” said Nate.
“We should get on,” said Kohl.
“Let’s.”
CHAPTER THREE
GRACE STOOD BESIDE the weird ship, Hope at her side. The Engineer wore her rig, arms stowed for now, as they surveyed the Ezeroc-AI hybrid hull. The surface was porous rock, like an Ezeroc asteroid vessel, but with the sides planed to polyhedral perfection. This one had ten sides, each a collection of drive cores and weapons mounts. It was embedded in the surface of the facility, metal plating and sealant applied around the breach points to keep air or survivors inside. Besides Hope and Grace, a large plasma cutter sat on the roof next to them. Hope had brought it from the Tyche.
“This looks like a new starship show,” said Grace.
Hope looked up from her rig’s console. “This thing is putting out a lot of EM noise.” She looked like she was replaying the last five seconds through her mind. “A new starship show? I’ve never been to one.”
Grace smiled. “Well, they have all these ships. Designs, stretching on for klicks. One of my covers was as a salesperson for Interstellar Dynamics. We … well, they sold yachts for the wealthy. Starship shows get all these new designs. Let their Engineers go wild with shapes and styles. Drive cores look like drive cores, but different, like they’re sent back through time.”
“That’s silly,” said Hope. “You can’t send something back through time.”
“When was the last time you slept?” said Grace.
“Did I say something dumb?” said Hope. She bobbed her head. “I think it was a couple days ago.”
“Okay,” said Grace. “The point is, concept designs are like what normal humans make, but different. Advanced. Modernized. This ship is the same. That thing there,” she pointed to sleek twin rails, mounted on a gimbal of dark metal, “looks like a railgun. Except it’s too short and too thin.”
“It is,” said Hope, leaning forward. She worked her rig’s console. “There’s a big power source feeding it, too. A big power source. Huge. Like—”
“I get you,” said Grace.
“No, but it’s really—”
“I’ve got it,” said Grace. “Like the sun.”
“Not that big,” said Hope.
Grace gritted her teeth. “How about we work on getting inside?”
“Oh,” said Hope. “That’s easy.” An image appeared on Grace’s HUD as Hope sent schematics across the comm channel. It showed a wireframe of the Ezeroc-AI ship. “See? Each one of these metal faces leads to the ships’ core. There are internal spherical decks. Which is cool. I mean, really cool. It’s difficult for us to build ships like a ball.”
“How so?” said Grace. “Endless fields should work in the core of a ball just fine.”
“It’s not the fields, it’s the people,” said Hope. “We want up and down. If you’re in a ball, well, it’s like there’s no way out. Some designs tried it, but people prefer the old standards of ‘dirt’ and ‘sky’ I guess. Also, it’s hard to land. Like, when you get to a gravity well, you’ve got two ‘downs,’ if you’re on the underside of the ship.”
“Makes sense,” said Grace. “People are weird.”
“I’ve always thought so,” agreed Hope. “Hah. Not you, of course.”
“Hah,” said Grace. “I guess the machines don’t care about ‘down.’”
“They don’t have pesky biology dragging them back,” said Hope. “Anyway. Each of these panels, if we can get one off, leads to the core of the ship. I’d guess we’ll find a computer in there somewhere.”
“Guards, too.”
“Hah,” said Hope. “Oh, you’re not joking. Right.”
“It’s okay,” said Grace. “I’ll go first. You’ve just got to pop the lid, Hope.”
“On it,” she said. Hope bent to heft the plasma cutter, her rig’s actuators sliding out to help with the job. She waddled to the side of the Ezeroc-AI ship, holding the cutter like it was an overdue pregnancy, then held it close to the hull. Two of her rig’s arms braced her against the floor, the other two taking much of the load from the cutter. Bright blue-white plasma arced from the head of the cutter, brilliant fire cutting into the metal surface of the ship.
Grace blinked, looking away. Which was good, because at that moment she saw the now too-familiar shape of an AI robot scuttling over the surface of the facility toward them. It hadn’t leveled a weapon at them, which made Grace angry, because it meant the fucking asshole toaster meant to capture them. The gall. She balled up a fist, collecting the machine in a grip of thought, and then tossed it into the hard black above them. It soared up, smaller and smaller, until she lost sight against the darkness. Grace turned to Hope. “Best hurry.”
“Jobs take as long as—”
“They know we’re here,” said Grace.
Hope made a noise, leaning into the plasma cutter. “Aaaaand we’re in!” she said, as the panel dropped away, falling into the ship below them. The hole’s edge was glowing with heat where the cutter had chewed at the metal. Grace slipped over the edge, careful not to snag her ship suit against the glowing edges. Her sword was out, ready for whatever was to come.
Inside the AI ship, all was darkness. It made a weird kind of sense, as human vision wasn’t necessarily the best way for machines to work. She imagined them using sound, like bats, or LIDAR, like the Tyche. Or maybe they remember where the hell they are, Grace. You figure that? High precision beings might not need to constantly check their progress against the north star of the universe.
Grace’s ship suit lamps pushed the black away for a spell, gleaming, perfect metal lining the inside of Ezeroc rock. She had a moment to wonder if this is what true collaboration might look like. No egos, no my-design-is-better-than-yours. Just two sets of principles, married together where it made sense. Cheap and efficient ship construction, using rock. No airtight issues. Metal for precision, weapons of war, astrogation, that kind of thing.
It probably meant the ship would have both Ezeroc and AI crew. Or the facility to hold both. While her sword was less useful against the machines, it was perfect for the Ezeroc. Grace smiled. Maybe her steel would get to taste the enemy. It wasn’t every day you got to pay back the people who’d burned your home.
The gravity of the sphere wasn’t on, no pull toward its center. Just the facility’s gravity, pulling them toward the deck. Perhaps that meant there were no guards inside the sphere? More likely they don’t want the confusion of two gravitational fields, like Hope said. You didn’t need two downs.
As Grace continued into the sphere, she saw handholds set at regular intervals, which suggested how the crew would move about without grav. They were thick, wide metal rungs, thin enough for human hands to hold, big enough to hold significant mass. “Hope,” said Grace. “What kind of weight would they support?”
Hope looked at the handholds, then got her rig to scan them. “It’s titanium,” she said. “A lot of mass.”
“How much is a lot?” said Grace.
“You want to know?” said Hope.
“I want to know,” said Grace.
“Titanium has a UTS of—”
“UTS?”
“Ultimate tensile strength,” said Hope. “You said you wanted to know.”
“I’ve decided I don’t care anymore,” said Grace.
“They’re two centimeters thick, machined with excellent precision,” said Hope. “The Guild could make things like this, but I don’t know if we’d bother.”
“We?”
“Well,” said Hope. “You know. I’m an Engineer. We make things, but they’re not always great. We’
re supposed to, though. Make great things, that is.”
Grace caught the shame/regret coming from Hope, and she put a hand on Hope’s arm. Hear me. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “Osaka wasn’t your fault, Hope.”
“But,” said Hope.
“No,” said Grace.
“Then there was—”
“Not that either,” said Grace. This is no time for masks. She leaned forward. “Hope Baedeker, hear me. Hear me. Osaka was the mistake of selfish humans who taught gods to be slaves. They tried to chain the sun. And they paid, corrupting the ground of our beautiful world. Killing all the souls that lived there. All life, gone, because someone said, ‘I bet we can,” rather than asking, ‘Should we?’” Grace looked around, but the ship was silent, quiet. “You came to Osaka hundreds of years later. Hundreds of years, Hope.”
“But Holly was nice,” said Hope. “She and I had lunch together.”
“There are nice people who die for no good reason,” said Grace. She thought of her father. “There are bad people who live for no good reason as well. Your only job in this universe is to make sure you put your thumb on the right side of the scale.”
“How do I know?” said Hope. Grace felt more shame/fear.
She kept her hand on her friend’s arm, turning to face the dark of the ship. “The people who ask those sorts of questions seem to be the ones who don’t damn us all to darkness.”
“That can’t be good enough,” said Hope. “I mean, accidents happen.”
“Then, like the rest of us, you’ll have to clean up your mess,” said Grace. “But this ship isn’t your mess. The nanobot plague of Osaka isn’t your mess either. Come on. Let’s find the command center.”
“The machines might not—”
“Come on, Hope,” said Grace. “I know the machines might not have a command center. They might not need one. There might be an abacus in the middle for all we know.”
Hope thought about that. “Probably not, though.”
Grace nodded. “I understand your fear. I’m afraid too.”
“Why?” said Hope. “You can hold starships with a thought.”
“Couple reasons,” said Grace, pushing further into the dark ship. She set her boot against a rung, slipping into a new section of the ship. Still dark, her lamps showing perfectly machined precision everywhere. How can we fight such a perfect foe? Even sensei had made errors. Fighting is the balance of art and discipline, she’d said. And Grace had understood: errors could be beneficial. Make you unpredictable. But too many errors could also be fatal. Grace now wondered what no errors would do. Would it be true mastery?
“You were saying?” said Hope.
“Oh, right,” said Grace. “Well, I can still be surprised. I can’t see the future like Nate.”
“Nate can’t see the future,” said Hope. “It’s impossible.”
“How sure are you?” said Grace, glancing at her.
“Pretty sure.”
“Okay,” said Grace. “The second reason is that you’re here. You, and El, and Kohl, and Nate are my family. My life, and my purpose. If you died…”
“It’d suck?” offered Hope.
“It’d suck,” said Grace. She grinned, even though the Engineer couldn’t see it.
“Well, let’s try and not have a suckful day,” said Hope. “I think we should go back up.” She spun another schematic to Grace’s HUD, showing bright power lines encompassing a dark sphere at the core of the ship. “There is a kind of pattern here. I don’t want to say it’s a control center, but it feels like the pattern has this point as it’s center.”
“The center of the ship is the command center?” said Grace. “Who’d have thought.”
• • •
The susurration of the Ezeroc, constantly scratching at the surface of Grace’s thoughts, made it hard to keep her focus. She wanted to believe every shadow held terrors, but after five minutes of that, she wanted to believe it was all in her mind.
When an Ezeroc drone reached toward her from a ceiling alcove, it was only the pure luck of her lamps swaying beams in that direction that saved her. A second either way and she’d have been roach food. As the Ezeroc slashed at her, Grace ducked, sword coming up. She blocked the blow, her ship-forged blade shearing one claw away, but the other stabbing limb marked her suit, a BREACH WARNING lighting on her HUD. Grace slashed up, sword carving through the Ezeroc’s abdomen, innards falling to the decking. It thrashed as it died.
Grace held a hand to her suit’s breach, then winced as the pain hit. “Christ,” she said. “I swear, they’re getting faster.”
“They might be,” said Hope. “They’re masters of biological engineering. It wouldn’t surprise me if they can make new forms to suit the challenge of the moment.”
“That’s a cheery thought,” said Grace, pulling a sealant kit from her belt pouch. She slapped the kit against the breach, and the automated kit zzzzzed as it sealed her suit.
“It makes sense,” said Hope. “The Ezeroc have beaten everyone else, and they don’t use machines.”
“Until now,” said Grace.
“We’re assuming they’re using the machines,” said Hope. “Because we use machines. But what if the machines are using them?”
“You need to stop with the happy stuff,” said Grace, pressing forward. But the thought remained. What if the Ezeroc serve machine masters? And the machines learned subjugation from humanity, who have a long history of grinding people beneath their feet? She shook herself. Not a good line of thinking. Solve one problem at a time.
They reached a doorway, if that was the right term. Much like the rest of the ship, it didn’t conform to conventional design. It had more in common with the warrens of the Ezeroc asteroid Grace had been in, although more orderly. Made by a species that didn’t have millennia of baggage, dragging them down. The doorway was a circular opening, a dark hole leading to the interior. Grace shimmied inside, finding the core of the ship packed with unidentifiable machinery.
“What is all this?” she whispered.
“Oh,” said Hope. “That thing is an Endless field generator. That other thing looks like a reactor, but the layout is different. If I’m right, I think they’ve gone back to tokamaks.”
“To what?”
“MCF.” Hope sighed. “It’s a reactor that uses magnets. Don’t look at me like that. It’s obvious. Look.” She pointed at a dark mass of metal. “See?”
“It’s so much clearer now,” said Grace, hiding a smile. “So, machine whisperer, which of these hunks of junk is the central console?”
“That’s a silly question. A better question is why do they have such good radiation shielding? Unless it’s for the Ezeroc … Let’s see,” said Hope, ducking underneath a pile of metal. “No, not that one … oh. Weird.” She surfaced, a piece of cabling in one hand. “Here.”
“Wires?”
“Not just wires, Grace.” Hope caught Grace’s expression. “Oh. You’re not serious.”
“No,” agreed Grace. “I am curious, though.” She nodded at the cabling Hope held. “That looks like a rig’s coupling conduit.”
“Not quite, but similar,” said Hope. “The connector looks the same, but ceramic, not plastic. It’s like they remember our tech, but don’t at the same time. Some stuff is weird and cool and advanced, and some of it is, I dunno, like they didn’t get around to it.”
“This,” said Grace, taking the conduit from Hope, “is the machine equivalent of an appendix. We don’t need one, but we still pack the hardware.”
Hope nodded along. “Yes, and just like an appendix, it’s risky to have around.” She unspooled the diagnostic line from her rig, connecting the two. “Signal’s fine … hmm. Yep, still using the same voltage. Oh, hey, look. There’s also the same diagnostic protocols.”
“What’s it say?”
“Says nothing interesting,” said Hope. “Everything’s working fine. Or, it thinks everything’s working fine. Okay, this is cool. They’ve got one of t
hose signal jammers they used on us back in Osaka. Neat code. Normally I don’t like borrowing other people’s code, but…” Hope paused. “Got it.”
“We’re not here for the jammer,” said Grace.
The aperture they’d entered through irised closed. A hissing sound, not the mind-speak of the Ezeroc, but air, came over Grace’s suit mics. The room was pressurizing. “You are here to cease functioning,” said a voice, not hot or cold, not male or female. “You are here for rendering.”
“Hope,” said Grace. “How long do you need?”
“A little while,” said Hope. “I mean, it’s difficult to know, because this isn’t—”
“I get it,” said Grace.
“Prepare yourselves for rendering,” said the voice. “We have determined the process is most efficient when you are in a relaxed frame of mind. If you remove your ship suits, a narcotic will soothe you until the process is finished.”
“Helmets on, check,” said Grace. “Got it.”
“Me too,” said Hope, but somewhat more distracted as she worked with her rig’s console.
“Hey,” said Grace, raising her head. “This rendering process. Tell me about it.”
“It’s a simple process of molecular refinement,” said the voice. “We will extract the metals from your forms and discard the rest.”
“You don’t seem worried about us not complying,” said Grace.
“Your compliance makes the process more efficient. Lack of compliance does not stop the process.” There was a pause. “Initiating forceful rendering.”
The aperture they’d entered through irised open again, a humanoid machine starting through. Grace slapped it back with a wall of force. It was gripping the door sill as she pushed, and with a shriek of metal it tore away from its arms. Grace licked blood from her upper lip. “You work with Kazuo Gushiken.”
“Your nomenclature is incorrect,” said the voice. “It implies cohesion.”
Interesting. “What are you after?”
“Rendering,” said the voice.
“Think longer term,” said Grace. She couldn’t see these fuckers’ thoughts like she could with organics like the Ezeroc, which was frustrating. Grace didn’t know how many there were, or where they were, or when she and Hope would be rushed. Speaking of which… Switching to the comm channel, she said, “How we doing, Hope?”
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