by Kalina, Mark
"The fuckers really got us good," Xulios said, and Nas fought to restrain a fresh spurt of the rage he felt from reaching his face.
The warheads, the military-spec high performance warheads, the warheads he had been paid with, were boobytrapped. It had been done very subtly. The infiltration had been hardware based, using nano-scale smart material modules that had grown into place, connecting into the control systems of the warheads, taking them over.
"All right," Nas said. "Here's the deal. Ylayn. You link in and see what you can do. If you can stop the new commands, do it. If not, or if you're not sure, then just disable the detonate-on-launch command and we'll jettison the warheads.
"If we do that, then be ready for FTL. We're going to make an almighty big bang out here, and lots of eyes will be on us.
"And if you can't disable the trap at all, the rest of the crew will stand by the shuttle and the escape pods."
"Right," said Ylayn and plugged in to her data unit. The unit was already connected to the warheads' control systems, and she plunged in to the data environment, perceiving it as a fugue state of sensory information. Not many data experts could read information the ways she could; she knew herself to be one of the best.
This was going to tax her abilities. The little nano-hijackers were linked into the system on a physical level, cutting out much of the control system, ready to deliver short-circuited commands to follow their own deadly agenda.
Despite the captain's orders, Ylayn did not bother to waste time trying to work with the actual command system. Maybe she could have overridden the trap that would detonate the warheads as soon as they were launched; she could have tried to feed false data to the accelerometers and a dozen other systems to do that.
But that would have been pretty risky; whoever set this trap would have probably expected that sort of move, would have set secondary and tertiary traps for it, buried in the command data structure of the little nano-modules that had taken over the warheads. Ylayn didn't really think she had the time to defeat multiple layers of traps, to carefully probe and test every step.
And besides, even if she could make it work, that sort of solution was... inelegant. Defeating the actual infiltrator systems... that would be the mark of a real artist. Of course if she failed, she and the Whisperknife might die. But then, high stakes really made the game worth playing. Ylayn suppressed a tingle in her body, concentrating her mind into the link.
The little nano-modules were clever work. Not Hegemonic hardware; the data structure was all wrong. There was no time for her to fully analyze then, to build a virtual simulation and run through all the possible variables. But there was a form-follows-function sort of vibe to them, and she thought that maybe...
Yes. They were almost impossible to reprogram, but not impossible to deceive. There was no way to reset the detonation timer... but what if she ran it forward? Obviously it would go off at zero... what about at negative one? She'd have to advance the clock faster than the cycle rate of the little oversight program, so that it was never actually at zero. Did the creators of these little devices imagine that their program might exist after the detonation? If they did, this would be the very last thing she ever did, Ylayn thought, and triggered the command.
"Got it," she said, with a slow smile, returning her attention to her own senses and looking at the Captain with a deliberately languid expression, to contrast the way her heart was hammering.
"Got it?"
"Oh, yes. The infiltrator systems are inactive, Captain."
"All of them?"
"Yes."
"OK, Ylayn," Nas said. "That was... good work."
"It was brilliant work, Captain. And I want my reward," Ylayn said, feeling her heart still beating hard.
"Reward?" Nas' voice held a hint of an edge. His crew didn't speak to him like this, usually.
"Oh, yes," Ylayn said with a smile. "I think we're going to be very busy soon, finding out who did this to us, dealing with them. And I want another hour in bed with you before we do anything else."
14
The Hegemonic Fleet swift-ship Ice Knife floated silently alongside a docking arm of the Yuro System Defense Fleet Orbital Anchorage Station. The station was a rectangular box, almost a kilometer across its long axis, gleaming bright silver where its alloy structure reflected the light of the world below it. A pair of counter-rotating spin-gravity habitat rings spun slowly at the far end of the station. An array of a dozen rectangular docking arms projected hundreds of meters from one side of the station, designed to hold the majority of the larger warships of the system defense fleet. Each docking arm was an articulated corridor, with runs of conduits and wires running down its length.
The entire length of the station flickered and flashed with blue orbital traffic control lights. Vast white flood lights illuminated ships being worked on by maintenance technicians and automated repair drones. Most of the ships docked at the station were guard-ships; much larger, but slower and not as sleek as the little swift-ship.
It was slightly unusual for a Central Throne Fleet ship to dock at a system defense station, but not unheard of. Fleet swift-ships and even lance-ships on patrol would sometimes come in to Yuro and get support from the System Defense Fleet.
The little ship was tethered to the docking arm, connected with a telescoping pressurized boarding corridor and with power and data lines. Those latter were necessary; the ship had pushed her singularity very hard, making a pair of very high stress FTL transits, and the reactor's femto-singularity had been allowed to safely decay. Now the restart process was underway. It took more than a hundred hours to verify the condition of the singularity reactor, re-form the femto-singularity itself, and then complete all the tests required to assure safe operation. Right now there were maybe eighty hours to go. The ship could have shaved dozens of hours off the restart time if there were pressing need, but there was no pressing need, and the procedure was moving ahead with all due deliberation and care.
Demi-Captain Persios Talso gave the reactor restart readouts a cursory look and leaned back into the padded chair in his new quarters. He had not expected them to be large, there was no room to waste aboard a swift-ship, but their tiny size surprised him. He had commanded a Yuro SDF swift-ship for more than three thousand hours, earlier in his career, and that ship had boasted larger quarters. Of course that ship had been manned mostly by humans. This ship was Fleet, built for daemons; less volume was allotted to habitation space, giving more space for reaction mass and weapons payload.
The tiny quarters were bearable, he decided. After all, they came with command of this ship, and that was a very valuable thing indeed. For an officer of a system defense fleet to be given an exchange duty with the Central Throne Fleet was a mark of distinction. Only the best from the system fleets were even invited to serve a tour of duty with The Fleet. Only the best of the best would be invited to serve that tour of duty in command of a Fleet ship. So this was a significant honor, and a distinction that would stand out for him. Of course, he admitted, connections helped. And the fact that he was aristokratai helped more; a human would have a hard time serving on a Fleet ship. An assault-ship was large enough that extra command acceleration pods for human passengers could be carried without any real cost in terms of volume, mounted aboard carried aboard just in case. But most other Fleet ships didn't bother. Or couldn't, without significant cost in terms of volume, in the case of a Fleet swift-ship. And of course it would have been an uncomfortable fit for a commoner human, even with the courtesy of military rank, to serve among aristokratai daemons. That was no problem for him, of course. Though it was odd, he thought, to have everyone under his command be aristokratai.
But more important than this command itself was where it might lead. A good performance here might see him transferred permanently into the Central Throne Fleet. Then... then he would finally be able to do something notable.
For a moment, his mind wrestled with the familiar feelings this line of thought brought. H
is eyes darted back and forth, his bio-avatar's breath came short. Then the moment was past. Persios took a deep breath and collected himself. It galled him that he could not control the reaction... helplessness assailed him. But this ship might be the first step on a path away from that helplessness. Abruptly, he blinked and his face was calm again. For a moment he could not recall what had just disturbed him. Well, no matter.
A ping on his communications terminal signaled a new report from his crew. Persios considered for a bit; aboard his last command, a guard-ship, he had let his demoi executive officer handle such matters, leaving himself to deal with overall command, strategy and supervision, the proper work of an aristokratos. But here...
Persios focused for a moment, opening his mind to a wireless interface data feed; only low-bandwidth unsecured information could be accessed wirelessly, but for this it was enough. The report concerned the return of his executive officer, he saw. The man was of impeccable lineage, Persios admitted. He had come back aboard by data-link, taking up a spare avatar stored aboard the Ice Knife. That spoke of some haste. His new executive had been gone quite a while on his expedition to track down spare parts for the ship. Persios supposed that the man was truly devoted to the ship, though there was a chance he might have expected command of her himself. It would be best to watch him closely.
Perhaps it was time to head to the ship's "bridge." The space wasn't actually where the Ice Knife was commanded from, that was done from inside a set of command neural nets. But the bridge served as a sort of ward room and meeting place to deal with ship's business when the crew inhabited their humanoid avatars.
It would be a good idea to check up on his crew, Persios thought. He framed a command calling all of his senior officers to the bridge and sent it. Or tried to. The communication link was down. For a moment he was incredulous. How could a Fleet ship have such problems? But then the answer suggested itself. The ship had been in battle, under maximum acceleration for a long time. That sort of prolonged high acceleration, and even more, combat maneuvers that involved sudden changes in acceleration, were hard on a ship's systems. Persios frowned. It would have to be fixed, immediately. He reached for a direct interface cable and plugged in to send the command again. There was no link. There was no access to the ship's computer, no data available. The entire connection was dead.
That was intolerable. Making sure his uniform was perfectly in order, he glided quickly down the short passage-way to the bridge. This might be a Fleet ship, her crew might be among the best, and proud of it, and he might be only a system defense fleet officer; but even so, he was the captain and they would have some explaining to do.
Persios floated into the bridge and stopped himself, looking around. There were several officers here, including his executive, in his spare avatar. The man's face was the same, but the spare avatar was of a standard size and build, looking rather generic. Standing with the executive officer was a woman in Fleet blacks. Like the executive officer, her avatar had only the most minimal customization, but her face was recognizable.
"What in the Suns are you doing aboard my ship, Demi-Captain Tralk?" Persios said.
The woman turned to face him, and he noticed for the first time that she held a laser sidearm in her hand. She smiled, and said, "Actually, Demi-Captain Talso, I'm taking it back."
"Don't be ridiculous. I've been appointed to command here. You have command of one of the Yuro fleet's guard-ships!"
"This may be many things," Tralk answered, "but ridiculous is not one of them. Demi-Captain Talso, please plug in this data cable." She held out a high density data cable. "I'm sorry, Demi-Captain, but you're going to have to spend some time in a holding 'net. I assure you that you will have a full explanation of this, as well as a chance to protest through formal channels."
The woman nodded to one of the other crew members and handed over the laser. The man took it and looked pointedly at Persios.
"Arrest that woman," Persios said. "If needs be, set that laser to electro-static and stun her."
"I can't do that, sir," said the man, and leveled the laser at Persios.
It might be set to electro-static stun, Persios thought. In that case, the laser would be set to a pulse frequency and energy level that would disrupt human and biosim neural signals, stunning its victim, sometimes knocking him out. Biosims were somewhat less susceptible, but not immune. A human body or a full bio-avatar such as he wore would be utterly vulnerable. Of course, the weapon could just as well be set to a fatal power level. So long as they did not shoot him in the head, his neural net would survive the death of his avatar, and so he would survive, to be put wherever they wanted him.
"Please do not resist, sir," the man said. "I'd rather not shoot you, but under the circumstances, I will do so if you give me the slightest reason."
"This is mutiny!" said Persios.
"That's really debatable," said Tralk, "but as I said, you will get your chance to report and make your claims before proper Fleet authority."
Persios held still as the executive officer plugged in the data cable and initiated the link into a storage neural net. The world went dark.
---
Nas Killick was "pacing" in free-fall as he talked, absorbing his momentum with bent legs and then launching himself back across the compartment; bouncing off the walls.
"Alright, people, let's get this started," Nas said. "As soon as the EVA crew gets the outer hull masked, we're going to put ourselves on a maximum priority courier vector for the habitable planet. Ylayn, you make sure that the local traffic control tags us as a courier. Can you do that?"
"Sure, Captain. We've been drifting for a while after an FTL emergence, and they'll see that as soon as they review their wide-scan optical sensor logs. But 'we just had a little singularity trouble, is all,' Ylayn said.
"Counterfeiting an out-system courier ident... no problem at all," she continued. "So long as it doesn't have to hold up to any non-automated scrutiny."
"OK," Nas said, "do it."
Nas turned next to look at his engineering chief. "Senny, as soon as we're in orbit, find me an orbital service tanker and buy us some reaction mass. I want full tanks, Senny, but don't get gouged. This business has been too expensive already."
His crew moved to obey. Nas kept "pacing."
The answer was almost certainly here, in this system, Nas knew. The trap could not have been a simple timer. The nano-triggers had been built into the warheads before the Whisperknife had loaded them, but there was no way for his would-be killers to have known how long the job against the freight-liner would take. So a timer would have been nearly useless; set too short, and his ship would be destroyed before he finished their job for them; set too long, and he might have fired or traded the warheads away before the trap was sprung.
So that left a command-activated setup, and that meant there had been a signal to activate the trap. Knowing that, Nas had ordered Ylayn to scan sensor recordings for any signal that might have been the activation code. That had taken her a while, but in the end there had been only a few dozen signals that coincided with the activation time of the nano-modules built into the warheads. It had not taken long to rule out all but one signal, a signal that had been broadcast from the New Capital City of the system's main habitable planet.
Yuro wasn't a system where the Brotherhoods had vast resources, but there would be some resources; some people who owed favors, or could be bought. No one tried something like this with a Brotherhood captain and just walked away from it. There would be traces, Nas knew, and he would track them, however long it took. And when he found them... Brotherhood "policy" demanded that he leave a strong object lesson. But even if Brotherhood policy had been silent, or opposed, Nas was going to make sure there would be a lesson here. No one was going to get away after doing this to his ship and his crew.
15
It was a strange kind of dark, Zandy thought. There was nothing here. Nothing to see. Nothing to hear or feel. Nothing to see or hear o
r feel with. And she had been here before. Once before, when it had all started, it had been dark like this.
"You can't be serious," her mother had said, when Zandy had told her.
Zandy remembered those words with such vivid clarity. She remembered the start of it all, now, with a clarity that surprised her. She remembered her mother looking at her with disbelief and annoyance, standing in the kitchen of their apartment, with the yellow-flower print walls and the fake-wood-textured plastic furniture crowding the little kitchen.
The apartment they lived in had been a ground floor unit, which was a luxury of sorts, since the ten-storey pre-fabricated plasticrete buildings in this residence zone did not have elevators. Even so, Zandy had made the climb up the exterior stairs almost every day. When she had been a child, there had been friends living on the higher floors. Later there had been a boy from floor eight, who had been her first lover. And always, there was the view from the roof.
From the roof, you could see the City Center dozens of kilometers away. The towers of the City Center rose like narrow crystal fingers into the sky, shining mirror-bright in the daylight. At night they were lit with rainbow fire; dozens and dozens of towers, maybe a hundred all together, most about a kilometer high, picked out with gold and blue and red lights. A few towers stood much higher, spires of pearl and gold gleaming in the day's sun, or lit from below with massive floodlights against the night sky. At night the lights of the aircars flowed around the towers like streams of fireflies, aerial rivers of light.
There were no aircars in Residence Zone Garnet. No towers. No buildings more than ten floors, none less than five, and, for that matter, nothing in between; only two patterns of pre-fab buildings had been used to build the residence zone. Along the main streets the ground floors were commercial and office space with residential space above. On the side streets the buildings were pure residential.