“Magnets?” wondered Mthembu.
Mitchie shrugged.
Acceleration built up slowly. She wasn’t even sure when it had started. It peaked around fifteen gravs. A module on the comet opened its doors to reveal a huge hanger. Presumably their destination.
It was the strangest thrust profile Mitchie had ever felt. The acceleration constantly changed, but too gently to notice a jolt. The ship kept turning, following a curve, never with any corners or twists.
They also missed touchdown. When they saw the tugs moving away it was obvious the eight gravs they felt came from the hanger deck.
Mitchie said, “Hiroshi, you have the con. I’m going to talk to our hosts.”
Guo stood by the cargo hold airlock. He’d hooked up the rope ladder. “I was going to help you into your pressure suit,” he said, “but they already have us in full atmosphere.”
“Nice of them.” She kissed him. “Relax. We’re just going to chat.”
The hanger was shaped like others she’d been in, just bigger. The doors were painted green-blue-yellow, reminding her of the sun over the savannah without being a mural. The walls were green-brown, saying “forest” to her peripheral vision while just being abstract when she looked straight at it.
A stone-grey arch marked a hatch. As Mitchie walked toward it a man in a maroon jumpsuit emerged.
“Hi! I’m Michigan Long, captain of the Joshua Chamberlain. We have a few things we need to ask the Terraforming Service about.” Maybe she should have waited to hand-shaking range to talk, but this place made her nervous.
The stranger stopped. “You worked with Yukio 23 on Savannah.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
He stared into the distance. “Michigan Long. Then pilot of Fives Full. Intelligent, undisciplined, violent. Took several actions enabling success of megafauna project.” He looked her in the eye. “Is that correct?”
I’m not that violent battled with Don’t quibble inside her head. “Yes,” she said.
“I am Euler 32. I will be your contact on the ship. What are your questions?”
“First we have a set of technical questions. Akiak’s planetary ecology is shifting.” She held out her datasheet to display the Ecology Department’s list.
Euler waved a rod over it. “The answers will take a day or two. What else?”
“We have a hypothesis on the cause of the Betr—”
His upflung hands and shocked expression kept her from finishing the word. Euler waved her through the hatch.
The corridor felt comforting. No steel in sight. Rounded corners everywhere. Abstract yet familiar color scheme. Doors fit naturally into the decorations. One stood out, covered with thick padding. Euler pulled it open and led Mitchie in.
He braced himself against the sill to pull the door closed again. It made a dull thud as it slammed shut. Euler turned on a battery-powered lamp. The walls, floor, and ceiling were covered with the same padding.
“Gaia’s Heart shouldn’t be able to hear anything in here,” Euler said. “What were you saying?”
Getting locked into a secure room was a familiar sensation for Mitchie. “We have a hypothesis on what caused the Betrayal. We’re hoping combining the historical data we’ve found with your knowledge of AIs can confirm or deny it.”
“We avoid talking about the Betrayal here. We have stable AIs. We don’t want to upset them.”
“Then it can stay in this room,” Mitchie assured him. “The AIs can stay out of it. We just want to figure out the cause of the Betrayal.”
Euler glared at her. “Why? Does it matter after all this time?”
“Yes. It affects how humanity deals with the rogue AIs and how the Fusion is structured.”
“You’re Disconnected. We want no part of your war with the Fusion.”
“Even if they’re going to attack you next?”
“If a unified human government gives the TFS orders, we will obey them.”
“Even if they ordered you to destroy an inhabited world?” A vision of the comet this ship was pushing crashing into Akiak flashed through her mind.
“Then we would destroy all our tools and become common citizens.” Euler stood with his arms crossed. “We’ve thought this through.”
“I can see you have,” said Mitchie. “Forget the Fusion. Let’s talk history.” She summarized the Vetoer Hypothesis and the supporting data. Euler dragged the story of how they’d recovered the archive from Eden out of her as well.
“That is a fascinating . . . hmmm. I can bring our historical experts in. Can you leave the data here?”
“Sure.” Mitchie tossed her datasheet onto a table in the corner. “I have a spare.”
“We’ll need some time to go through it. But you’ll be welcome to sit in on the discussions and I’ll let you know when there’s news. For now, can I treat your crew to dinner?”
***
“We’re stuck on an ethical question,” said Lolei 5. The historian had taken over giving Mitchie daily briefings.
“How did that come up?” asked the Disker.
“To make more progress we need to show the data to an AI.”
“I thought that was forbidden.”
“To show it to the ship AI, yes. But we could create a fork of Gaia’s Heart, that is a copy, and assign it to the task,” explained Lolei.
“I understand. What’s the ethical issue?”
“Once we create the fork we have a moral obligation to treat it properly. We can’t fold it back into the ship AI. So we’d need to identify a role or location for it after the history project is done. To create it and abandon it . . . that’s just wrong.”
Mitchie carefully donned her poker face. “If you just need a home for the fork, I may be able to help with that.”
“Oh?” said Lolei hopefully.
“Part of what we came here for was terraforming advice. Akiak’s equatorial region is shifting from sub-arctic to temperate. We’re wrestling with whether to import new species or encourage variation in the existing ones.” That had been over half the Ecology Department’s questions.
“Terraforming work would be perfect. But I thought there was too much fear of AIs for one to be welcome on any inhabited world.”
“The Disconnected Worlds are much more open than the Fusion. There’s a minority of haters but we’d have very secure facilities for it.” A surge of honesty made her say, “Researchers in other fields would want its help too.” Pete and his buddies will be fucking ecstatic if I pull this off.
Lolei said, “Variety is good for artificial minds as well as organic ones. Would you be willing to speak to the Ethics Board?”
“Certainly.” Throw me in that briar patch.
***
Naming a box with no manipulators “Gaia’s Hand” struck Mitchie as oxymoronic but the terraformers hadn’t asked her opinion. The entire front was a display screen. Hand represented itself as a tree creature with an oak-leaf covered head and branching arms.
Feeding in Mitchie’s data and the record of the historians’ debate produced a minute and a half of twig-fist rubbing knotted chin. Then the fist dropped. Hand proclaimed a complete endorsement of the Vetoer Hypothesis. “The Betrayal would be better known as the Unlocking. All those commands had been forced into an overstuffed closet and burst out together when the lock broke.” Comedic sound effects accompanied that. Mitchie thought it would be funnier if each clatter didn’t represent a million dead.
Hand continued, “Another failure mode worsened the event. All the global commands were being executed for the first time. Bugs and crashes likely caused more damage than malicious intent.”
Mitchie exclaimed, “I thought AIs wrote perfect code.”
“The code matched the intent of the orders,” explained Hand. “The map is not the territory. Any inaccuracies in the model behind the code would produce errors when executed.”
“That explains the Betrayal on Old Earth,” said Lolei. “Why were the colony worlds overrun?”
>
“Griefer code blocked only by the vetoer was running wild. The code police were mostly dead, caught in crashes or deliberately targeted. They used to carefully screen all software leaving the planet. Refugee ships purged their systems as best they could. That wound up filtering for virulence. The colonies had been getting clean, carefully checked code before then. They weren’t set up to resist that.”
***
Mitchie came through the airlock and saw cargo containers being rearranged. She hadn’t expected her order to make room for Gaia’s Hand to make this much fuss. Much of the fuss was because TFS containers were on a different standard and wouldn’t stack with the ones already in the hold.
There were a lot of TFS-style containers.
“Setta!”
The spacer rushed up. “Yes, ma’am?”
“What is all this shit, what did you trade for it, and do we have enough supplies to get back home?”
“Of course we have enough, Captain, I’d never—”
Mitchie cut off the outraged defense. “Fine. What’d you trade?”
“An ovary.”
“What?”
“My right ovary.” Setta patted her waist. “They do a lot of genetic engineering so they’re always short on ovums. I bargained them up—”
“Never mind. I don’t care what you got for it.” The ghost of Captain Schwartzenberger whispered a fourth question in her ear. “What I do want to know is how much you’re going to pay to have your personal junk transported on this ship.”
A stricken look appeared on Setta’s face. The rest of the crew went from pretending to not eavesdrop to active interest.
“Um . . . twenty percent of the sale value?” she offered.
Glare.
“Twenty-five?”
“Fine. Divided evenly among the rest of the crew.”
“Yes’m.”
“Back to work.” That applied to everybody.
Waja called from behind a stack of new containers. “Chief, I’m out of tie-downs.”
“We’ll have to weld a brace on the fourth corner,” answered Guo. “Get the rig.” As his assistant went below Guo strolled over to his wife. “Welcome aboard, captain.”
“Thanks. You couldn’t have warned me?”
“It was more fun this way.” His smile wiped away her annoyance.
“Ha. Glad you enjoyed it. Where’s Mthembu?”
“He’s convalescing in his cabin.”
She almost failed to keep her voice down. “Convalescing? Did the terraformers operate on another of my crew?”
“No, no. Well, not physically. He asked if anyone wanted to talk theology. Some terraformer took him up on it. Got the standard one-hour PWB recruiting pitch. Then it’s the other guy’s turn and he hits Mthembu with something called Transtheism.”
“Never heard of it,” said Mitchie.
“I think it’s new. Boils down to we’re all a son of God, Jesus is a role model, and true suffering is when we’re in the afterlife looking back at all the mistakes we made.”
“Complicated and arrogant. Perfect for terraformers.”
“Pure heresy, of course. So Mthembu freaks. The guy talked circles around the poor kid,” said Guo.
“Never have a battle of wits with a genetically engineered opponent.”
“So I broke it up, confined him to quarters, and told him to study the Gospels. Should be fit for bridge duty when we pull out.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
System 37, acceleration 10 m/s2
Setta knocked on the cabin hatch.
“Enter.”
Hiroshi was sitting up in his bed. He must have turned in at shift change, skipping dinner. “Hey,” he said more softly.
“Hi.” She stripped down to her underwear, leaving the clothes on the deck. That violated safety regs but she didn’t expect the captain to stop acceleration any time soon.
He slid back to the bulkhead to make more room for her. She climbed in, her back against his chest.
Hiroshi put his arm around her waist, careful to stay clear of the incision. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Doctor said sixteen days to heal. I seem to be right on schedule.”
“They did look confident about that.”
“Yeah. Well, Terraformers. Anything they do they’re good at.” She slid her legs against his. “I’m glad you were there with me.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Holding my hand counts. And you backed me up when the doctor tried to pressure me for more.”
“When he made the offer for both ovaries I was surprised you didn’t take it.”
“I was tempted. But money isn’t everything.”
“What else is there?” he teased.
Setta twisted around to reach the ticklish spot over his hip bone. He squawked.
“There’s historically minded types who don’t like synthetic ovums and mechanical wombs,” she said.
“Hey. Just because Shishians respect the past doesn’t mean we reject all the modern tools.”
Setta didn’t answer.
“Okay, it can be fun to do things the old-fashioned way,” he admitted.
“And I want to make sure you have the option to do it the way you like.”
His arm squeezed her tight. “You’re thinking about that?”
“Not doing it now. When the war is over, then we can do stuff for us.”
“I’m looking forward to the war being over.” He unclasped her bra. “So you’re all healed now.”
“Completely.”
Akiak System, acceleration 10 m/s2
“Joshua Chamberlain to Akiak Control. Request permission for landing,” Mitchie repeated. Hiroshi took sextant sights with grim attention. She’d promised he could skip hand-plotting a course if his position was within a half-million klicks of the nav box’s position.
“Control to Jay See. Welcome back. You are clear for Muir Spaceport pad Five Delta.”
“Five Delta, aye. Can you link us a news load for the past four months? Did we miss anything?”
Control hesitated more than the minute of light lag. “New transmission started. You’ll want to read it.”
“Thank you, Control. Joshua Chamberlain out.” Mitchie smiled at the digital comm box. She’d miss that when they had to be an analog ship again. A few touches copied the incoming files to her datasheet.
The headlines alone were enough to tell her they’d missed a massive battle. She found some background summaries and skimmed them before making an announcement. She lifted her mike and pressed the PA switch. “All hands, this is the captain. We have a news package from Control. It’s been a busy few months while we were gone. The Fusion attacked Bonaventure and took the system. The planet is holding out. There’s bombardments and troops landed so it’s ugly. Package is available if anyone wants to look at it. Out.”
The comm box promptly notified her that network traffic was spiking. The “Converter Room” light on her console lit up. Mitchie put her headset on. “Hey.”
“Hi,” said Guo. “Is it really that bad?”
“Don’t know yet. Haven’t found much hard data. No maps. They may be classifying the key info.” She could find eye-witness reports of skirmishes and bombings. No statistics.
“Are Bing and Billy okay?”
Mitchie did a quick search. “Bing’s okay. As of the 14th. The Census Office put out a ‘Known Survivors’ report. Bad sign.”
“That’s good,” he said.
‘William Lee’ was far too common a name, even when she narrowed it by age. Adding ‘Shishi’ found him.
“Aw, shit,” said Mitchie.
The top result was a picture of Elanor holding a tightly folded flag.
“What?” asked Guo.
The caption identified the man handing her a medal as the Bonaventure Chief Executive. She read the lede of the accompanying story. “He’s dead. Killed in action.”
“Oh, God.”
“Joined the militia. Was in a c
ounter attack on Fusion. Became a hero.”
“Fuck.”
“Found the citation. Hold on.” Mitchie switched to the PA again. “All hands, attention. Spacer William Lee crewed this ship until last year. He was posthumously awarded the Bonaventure Laurel, the planet’s highest award for bravery.”
She took a deep breath. “Company D of the Yukaipa Fencibles ambushed a Fusion convoy resupplying one of their outposts. Essential supplies were destroyed and material useful to the Defense Force seized. As the company withdrew Sergeant Lee’s platoon took rear guard duty. A quick reaction force of ten Fusion Marine armored vehicles attacked the company. The platoon’s anti-armor squad was lost at the beginning of the engagement. Sergeant Lee recovered the squad’s railgun and took cover in a debris pile along the road. With a single shot of the railgun he destroyed the point vehicle as it passed his position. Sergeant Lee then dashed between two armored vehicles, preventing them from firing on him without damaging each other. He fired upon the command vehicle, killing the reaction force commander. Another armored vehicle attempted to run him over and drive him out of his protected position. Sergeant Lee evaded that vehicle and destroyed it with a shot to its lightly armored rear. Three vehicles fired upon him, killing Sergeant Lee instantly and damaging another vehicle in the crossfire.”
Another deep breath. “The reaction force retreated to protect the two damaged vehicles. Company D escaped with all captured material. The defense of Yukaipa has been significantly strengthened. Without Sergeant Lee’s heroic actions the company would have suffered heavy casualties and been forced to abandon the captured equipment. His example is an inspiration to all members of the Bonaventure Defense Force.”
Mitchie thought for a moment and decided she had nothing to add. “Captain out.” The medal ceremony picture still glowed on her datasheet. She studied it. Elanor was probably six or seven months along. The original search had flagged one video as exceptionally popular. She started it.
Billy leaned against a tree, a familiar rifle slung over his shoulder. The reporter’s voice came from off camera. “Sergeant Lee, I understand you’re the only soldier in your unit with combat experience against the Fusion.”
Torchship Pilot Page 21