Jackers

by William H. Keith

*The Will-be-Selves are not…

  **… ready, of course. I have other missiles.

  *What?

  **These.…

  *Rock…

  Kawashima turned his full attention to the virtual image of the planet, hanging now like a great blue-and-gold sphere astern of Donryu’s plasma flare. As that flare grew hotter, its radiation might well sweep across that part of the surface on the equator where rebels and Imperial Marines still struggled.

  So long as the weapon that had reached out and crushed Mogami was destroyed as well, it didn’t really matter. He would have liked to have taken Sinclair and the other Confederation leaders captive back to Earth, but the rebellion would be satisfactorily resolved if the leaders were killed, their fleet broken and scattered.

  Something very strange was happening to the Heraklean surface.

  The atmosphere just north of the Augean Peninsula had taken on a peculiar quality, glowing with an auroral light, sweeping around and around in a vortex of clouds that throbbed and pulsed with yellow lightnings.

  Buddha and all my ancestors… what is happening there?

  Lightning flared below, silent and vast.…

  Katya was hurled to the ground by the shock wave, which left her gasping, her breath sucked from her lungs. God… what had she just seen? Shaking her head, trying to clear it, she looked up as the wind whipped and shrieked across her back.

  Every man and woman on that ridgetop was down, Confederation prisoners and Imperial captors alike. There were no soldiers or prisoners any longer, only people struggling to survive in a wind gone mad. Beyond, kilometers beyond the ridgetop, the triangular shape of the atmosphere generator was wreathed in flickering, violet lightnings, as overhead, black clouds swirled about in a vast, dynamic whirlpool, the storm’s eye centered above the apex of the pyramid.

  The air crawled, against her skin, and her hair stood on end. The storm—such understatement in a word!—was causing frightful charges to build up in the atmosphere. Another flash of lightning, searingly brilliant, and she blinked hard against the green-and-purple afterimage. She must have imagined that; an instant before she’d gone blind, she’d thought she’d seen something peeling off the side of the mountain, then streaking skyward so fast that nothing could be seen but a bright, dazzlingly blue bolt of light.

  Moments later, the sonic boom hit, but Katya never heard it.

  She was already deaf as well as blind.

  “Collision alert!”

  “Point defense!”

  “Too late!”Donryu’s weapons officer sounded as though he was about to lose all control. “Damn it, too late!”

  “Point defense on automatic!” Kawashima snapped. “Analysis! What was that thing?”

  “A rock, Chujosan,” Donryu’s captain replied.

  “Nonsense!” the Exec protested. “You don’t throw rocks from the bottom of a gravity well!”

  Kawashima was already replaying the image in his ViRsimulation, slowing down the speed by a factor of nearly a thousand. Gonichi Obayashi was right. It had been a rock… or, at least, a large mass of partly molten iron, scooped off the surface of the planet somehow and hurled into space. Its brief passage through atmosphere had heated it white-hot; its velocity as it passed Donryu, missing by a scant thousand kilometers, had been nearly one-tenth the speed of light.

  Modern military literature contained many references to an old, old idea. In any war where one side controlled the high ground of space, bombardment of planet-bound forces became simplicity itself, so long as you didn’t mind running the risk of altering the planet’s climate. All you needed were a few small asteroids nudged into proper intercept orbits, or just a mass of nickel-iron large enough to survive the fiery plummet through atmosphere. A fair-sized asteroid had changed the face and the climate of Earth some sixty-five million years ago and driven the dinosaurs to extinction. Even a small asteroid dropped from orbit could annihilate a city.

  But the advantage was supposed to be with the force in orbit. A planet was a damn poor place to throw rocks from… about like standing at the bottom of a deep, dry well and chucking rocks at somebody looking down from above. The chucker was more likely to get one of his own missiles back in his face than he was to hit the target.

  But the rebels had somehow found a way of accelerating several tons of iron to a velocity of thirty-thousand kilometers per second. There’d been no time to dodge, no time to do anything but automatically record the missile’s passage.

  And, oh gods of my fathers, it’s happening again!…

  The lightnings gathered. The storm winds howled. Dev looked skyward, sharing his symbiont’s newfound vision sense, relying on infrared and mass sense as the clouds swirled in.

  **You/we almost had him that time. You/we…

  *… must adjust my/our aiming point to allow for…

  **… the target’s movement, exactly.

  *Ready.

  **Now!

  A one-ton chunk of iron and fabricrete, part of the support structure of the man-made mountain itself, tore free as powerful magnetic fields focused along its length and pulled, accelerating it in the wink of an eye. Lightning forked overhead; with a thunderclap of raw sound, the jagged missile vanished in a bar of blue-white radiance.

  Kawashima saw the second launch but had no time to analyze it, no time even to shout warning. Nine-tenths of a second after it left the planet’s surface, the block of half-molten slag slammed into the heavy cruiser Zintu, in orbit some five thousand kilometers away. Traveling at thirty-thousand kilometers per second, the projectile was moving too fast for the staid, low-velocity Newtonian mechanics of E=1/2mv2. The kinetic energy released on impact could only be calculated by the more familiar E=mc2, an equation that yielded roughly 1019 joules.

  Such numbers are meaningless; say, rather, that one thousand twenty-megaton nuclear warheads were detonated simultaneously. Zintu did not crumple or glow or burn. She was simply gone… and in her place stood a small and short-lived sun. Briefly, the Imperial fleet was bathed in the actinic glare that touched and dissolved those vessels nearest the ill-fated cruiser.

  “We must get away!” Kawashima screamed into the link. “Engage the power tap!”

  “Chujosan! No!” The ship’s captain was so shocked he didn’t even realize the magnitude of his rudeness. “This close to the planet—”

  “Do it! Now!”

  “It will take a few moments to run the Noguchi Equations.…”

  Lightnings flashed across the planet’s surface. Half a million kilometers away, the destroyer Urakaze exploded in a sudden gout of light, silent as death.

  The next missile struck Donryu, driving right up her stern long before equations could be run or the microsingularities of her K-T drive summoned into existence. The discharge of 1019 joules of kinetic energy transformed the kilometer-long ship into star-hot plasma in an instant.…

  Again!

  Lightning flashed, the missile seared into the zenith. In Dev’s own, inner eye, he towered above the planet’s surface, riding astride the winds, hurling lightnings, directing the storm against the scattering invaders in the sky.

  And they were scattering, fleeing into the depths of space. Dev focused his newfound power and hurled another missile through the protesting, cloven sky. Thunder cracked and rumbled, as the first rains began lashing out of the clouds. In space, another ship, a light cruiser, vanished, the sheer, raw energy of impact vaporizing her. He selected another target and fired. The mountain trembled with the launch. There were six enemy ships left… now four.…

  *Is this what you/we call war?

  And then, the towering, larger-than-life feeling vanished. My God, what am I doing? What have I become!

  **No. This is not war. It’s slaughter. Useless slaughter.

  The magnetic charge he’d been focusing for yet another shot into a fleeing Imperial warship dissipated, unneeded. In space far above Herakles’s equator, a cruiser caught at the fringe of a blast spun brokenly end over end, its c
ontrol systems smashed by a glancing blow. The four surviving warships, under full thrust now, fled, seeking safety in the empty depths of space.

  No more rocks pursued them.

  Chapter 28

  Reality… virtual reality. The two echo one another, mutually complementary, mutually supporting. Yet in the end it must be reality that lays the greater claim to our souls, for it is in our link with the universe as it is that we find the heart-quickening joy-flavor-terror-wonder that tells us we truly live.

  —Intellectus

  Juan Delacruz

  C.E. 2216

  Katya rose from the ground as the mysterious storm wind died away. Sight and hearing had returned, though spots still danced before her eyes. Clouds still swirled across heaven, bringing with them sheets of rain, but the spectacular lightning storm was ended. She stood there, feeling the rain pelt her body and she felt… alive.

  The rain lightened as quickly as it had come, dissolving to mist sprinkling the steaming ground. An Imperial trooper in full armor stumbled toward her, weaponless, his helmet gone, his eyes wide with terror. She stepped into him with a slashing elbow thrust, snapping his head back and sending him to the ground.

  A laser pistol rested in the holster at his hip. Drawing the gun, she advanced across the torn and scorched ground. Two more Imperials approached, saw her, and ran the other way. She let them run. The enemy was harmless now, demoralized by what had happened.

  What had happened? She still wasn’t sure. Other soldiers gathered in small and fearfully huddled groups atop the ridge. Katya noticed that some groups included both Confederation and Imperial troops. The events of the past few moments appeared to have obliterated those differences that had once divided them.

  She was reminded of genie and human, singing together in the barracks at Stone Mountain.

  A warstrider loomed against the smoky sky. It was a Ghostrider, and it bore on its prow the name Victor.

  It was Vic Hagan’s machine.

  “Katya?”

  “Vic!” She nearly fell into his arms as he dropped off the rungs set into the Ghostrider’s leg.

  “God, Katya! What happened here?”

  She turned and stared up at the mountain of the atmosphere generator. It was silent now, still wreathed in clouds, but no longer spitting lightning. Parts of its regular surface looked uneven now, where huge chunks had been torn away.

  “I’m not sure, Vic,” she said. “But I’m hard-jacked certain that the Heraklean Naga had something to do with it, and if I’m right about that, then I’ll bet Dev had something to do with it too.”

  “You mean… he’s alive?”

  “I think we’d better grab a magflitter and go find out.”

  “Where?”

  She looked toward the atmosphere generator, wreathed now in muttering purple clouds. “There. Up there on the mountain.”

  Dev was deeply shaken. Arguing from a strictly military viewpoint, he decided that perhaps he should have tried to destroy all of the Imperial ships. He’d certainly been trying to do just that… and he could have succeeded had he tried.

  On the other hand, he’d all but annihilated the Imperial squadron, destroying fifteen of the nineteen enemy ships. The survivors would return to Earth and other Imperial bases, bearing the story of a frightful, inexplicable, irresistible Confederation weapon, of white fire and destruction against which there was no possible defense.

  For as long as this war continued, the Imperials would remember Herakles and wonder what weapon it was that the Confederation had used there. Hell, it was just possible, if there were any among their leaders who had a modicum of sense, that the bloody nose they’d received here this day would lead them to grant the Confederation independence without any further fighting.

  Dev hoped so.

  With a thought, he dissolved the side of the Naga traveler that had sheltered him through that artificial storm. The air was steaming wet, and still tasted of ozone and summer lightning. Stepping out onto the side of the mountain, he wavered a moment, then dropped to hands and knees. He felt so… weak.…

  **I/we must part company now.

  *Why? Your enemy is crushed! And I/we have a new Universe to explore!

  **I/we… I don’t want to be a god. I can’t be a god.

  *What is a god?

  Dev couldn’t answer. He was lying on his side now, unable to move. He didn’t remember falling. Rain drizzled from a leaden sky.

  **Please. Leave me.

  *Agreement/disappointment/sadness. It was good not to be lonely.

  **You won’t be lonely. We’ll still… talk. And I’ll introduce you to others. But I don’t think I can manage having you inside me like this. Not all the time.

  *Was there discomfort? Damage?

  **No. Temptation.

  *What is temptation? I don’t understand.

  **Never mind. Can you leave me… as I was? Uh, you don’t need to break the back again.

  *l would never do such a thing! You are Self!

  **I am… I want to be human.

  *You… love…

  **… Katya, yes.

  *Katya… loves you too. She told »self«. I do not…

  **… understand… no. But it is good…

  *… not to be lonely.

  A feeling like a ripple of warm silk passed along his chest. Dev opened his eyes, but the sight of the Naga supracell spilling out of his chest along thousands of hair-thin tendrils, slowly growing larger as it retreated from his body, was disconcerting. He kept his eyes closed until he felt his perceptions dwindling, felt the radio link with the Naga snap.

  When he opened his eyes again, he was alone on the ledge.

  When he tried turning his awareness inward, he found… nothing. Nothing! He could no longer examine himself internally. His entire being felt… smaller, and sharply limited. Only five senses!

  Could he possibly go back to what he’d been?

  It was a long time before he allowed himself to feel again, and then it was with the hesitant caution of a man who thinks he might be badly hurt, who fears the pain will come with his next wrong movement.

  He suspected, though, that the parting Naga had left some changes intact. He retained a clarity of thought he’d not possessed before, a clarity undimmed even by the crushing exhaustion that pinned him now to the artificial mountain ledge.

  The Naga was gone, withdrawn into its underground lairs. Dev felt a sadness, a loneliness unlike anything he’d known before, worse even than the day he’d lost his father.

  Or possibly it was his father he was missing now; he’d never been able to mourn him, not really. Tears ran down Dev’s face, mingling with the rainwater there. Tears of sadness for his father, and his mother too. Tears of happiness, too, for Katya… for he thought he could feel her approach.

  Katya and Hagan arrived with a flitter moments later. “Dev!” She cried, vaulting from the vehicle and racing to his side. “Dev! You’re alive!”

  Vic helped him stand. “Thank God, Dev! I thought…”

  Katya threw herself on him, hugging him close.

  He clung to her, losing himself to her reassuring warmth. Somehow, he managed a ghost of a smile. The tears continued to flow. “I’m… human,” he said.

  Epilogue

  Tharby padded on bare feet across the richly carpeted floor, bearing a tray as he’d been trained. As he approached the Master’s artroom, the door dissolved and Sonya walked out.

  As was the rule in the Master’s house, the ningyo was nude, while he wore only a white fundoshi wrapped about his loins. They were forbidden to speak to one another, but they made brief eye contact, and she gave him a curt nod.

  These past few days, it had been necessary to be extremely careful around the Master. He spoke little, but from what the household servants had been able to piece together, the Empire had lost a battle, possibly a very important battle, at a far-off place called Herakles.

  Tharby didn’t know the significance of that battle, but he did kn
ow that if the Imperials were unhappy about it, then it was good.

  Captured on New America, he, Yodi, and Sonya had been loaded aboard a transport and shipped to Earth, to Singapore Synchorbital where the ponderously fat man they knew as Master had ordered them interrogated, then retrained for his personal servant staff. The interrogation had been brutal and painful, but soon ended. Service to the Master was brutal and painful as well, and showed no sign of ever ending. Sometimes, Tharby nearly despaired.

  Silently, he entered the artroom, which Sonya had just told him was clear. He paused a moment inside as the door rematerialized at his back. Inside, there was a tatami mat, a rack of swords, and the desperate, silent agony of the inochi-zo.

  Tharby felt a powerful kinship with the twisted artform; they both were genies, though the living statue possessed far less of the human genome than did Tharby. Swiftly, he set the tray down, then approached the statue. Its pain-racked eyes followed him, pleading.

  “I told you I would come,” he told it. Reaching into his loincloth, he extracted a small bottle, unsealed the stopper, and poured the liquid contents into the soil from which the inochi-zo grew. The dark, human eyes blinked twice, then closed.

  “Peace, little brother,” Tharby told it. With luck, the Master would assume it had died of some unknown illness.

  Someday, somehow, perhaps Tharby and the other servants could arrange the Master’s death as well.

  “The day is coming, little brother,” he told the dying statue. “You will be avenged.”

  The genie turned, picked up the tray, and walked proudly from the room.

  TERMINOLOGY AND GLOSSARY

  AI: Artificial Intelligence. Since the Sentient Status Act of 2204, higher-model networking systems have been recognized as “self-aware but of restricted purview,” a legal formula that precludes enfranchisement of machine intelligences.

  Alpha: Type of Xenophobe combat machine, also called stalker, shapeshifter, silvershifter, etc. They are animated by numerous organic-machine hybrids and mass ten to twelve tons. Their weapons include nano-D shells and surfaces, and various magnetic effects. Alphas appear in two guises, a snake-or wormlike shape that lets them travel underground along SDTs, and any of a variety of combat shapes, usually geometrical with numerous spines or tentacles. Each distinctive combat type is named after a poisonous Terran reptile, e.g., Fer-de-Lance, Cobra, Mamba, etc.