Torchship Pilot

by Karl K Gallagher

  He grinned. “That’s a barracks rumor, Tracey. We defended our client from criminals trying to take her property. No Marines involved.” He still wore a green spacer jumpsuit. Splotches of dye tried to make a camouflage pattern. Soldiers visible in the background were even less uniform.

  Mitchie stopped the playback. “Hiroshi?”

  “Ma’am?” said the pilot.

  “As soon as we touch down get us topped off, fuel and reaction mass. We’re going to grab what we need and go. Keep a least time course to the Fuego gate continuously updated.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He set the nav box to producing the new course. “Um, Skipper?”

  “What?”

  “What that guy did—do you think it was real? All that running around getting missed by the enemy. It sounds like he was dodging bullets and stuff.”

  “Yeah, I believe it,” said Mitchie. “The boy could dance.”

  Chapter Ten: Weapon

  Akiak, gravity 10.3 m/s2

  “Grab and go” didn’t happen. Her arrival was the cue for another meeting, this time in the Executive Building. She’d had to come alone. Alverstoke met her at the door. They took seats in the back row. Some senior Space Guard officers filled out the row. Well-dressed flunkies guarded empty seats up front.

  When the suits arrived they didn’t need introducing. Mitchie didn’t follow politics at home but the Chancellor stood out. She recognized half the Cabinet following behind him.

  Mitchie popped to her feet as the Ecology Minister came up with an outstretched hand.

  “Captain Long. My boffins have been overjoyed since you transmitted your report. They say—” A grunt from the Chancellor cut the speech short. “Thank you,” finished the minister.

  “You’re welcome, ma’am.” Mitchie took her seat. The other officers turned their stares from her to the front of the room.

  A suit declared the meeting Most Secret and introduced Pete. The cyberneticist seemed unfazed by his audience.

  A wave activated the viewscreen. Black squares clumped in a white grid. “The Game of Life,” began Pete. “An ancient simulation of complex behavior driven by simple rules. A square alone dies. Give an empty space a few neighbors and a new square appears. Completely surround one and it dies.” Animations demonstrated the rules.

  “With just those rules you could make shapes that moved, or changed, or generated new patterns. If you chose the right starting pattern—” The grid went blank then a blotch appeared. “—it would overwrite everything with copies of itself.”

  The squares went from a hexagonal pattern to a larger triangle. The next iteration had three copies of the original. They reshuffled and became six. Pete stood to the side. The audience watched the pattern grow until the entire screen was tiled with copies of the original pattern.

  Pete stepped to the center. “The Demeter infoweaponeers found how to do this to any computer system. When their data is read, the tiling pattern optimized for that processing architecture writes itself over all the memory and storage accessible from the processor. In a network that attempts to route around failures—which is to say all our existing networks—the infoweapon will eventually destroy all nodes.” An animation showed nodes of various colors turning black as the infoweapon spread.

  “We’ve designed sacrificial relay nodes that will only transmit data that passes a test stored in read-only memory. Existing networks can also be hardened by arranging connections so data must pass through two different architectures.” An animation of a network of randomly colored nodes reshuffled to establish two vertical lines of nodes, one blue, one yellow. Anything crossing the network had to cross through a blue then a yellow to reach the other side.

  “At present if the infoweapon escaped only physically isolated networks would survive.” Pete’s audience was attentive and silent.

  He coughed uncomfortably. “We were specifically tasked to examine the impact of releasing it on Lapis. We used a variety of models to estimate the effect. They had good agreement on the near term impacts.” A map of Lapis appeared on the screen, spliced together from night side orbital imaging to show all the world’s city lights.

  “Given multiple injection points, the entire network would be destroyed in ten to thirty minutes.” The map turned black. “Over eighty percent of the planet’s economic assets are intangible and would be lost.” A blue circle replaced the map. “Lapis’ population is 700 million people. Two to three percent would be lost immediately—those in high altitude flyers, undergoing medical procedures, or just with cardiac prosthetics.” A small sliver of the circle turned black.

  “The infrastructure would be inoperative. People would need to find clean water supplies. The urban areas don’t have much. They’d have to move to the wilderness areas with rivers or lakes. It’s estimated a quarter of the population would die of thirst or hazards of the migration.” More of the circle turned black.

  “The planet’s agricultural system requires advanced chemicals to support crops. As food ran out the population would have to support itself by herding or gathering. This would support less than a tenth of original population.” Only a small fraction of the circle remained blue.

  “Outside support would reduce the death toll. Evacuating survivors, supplying food, bringing in read-only farmbots would all help.”

  The Chancellor asked, “How hard would it hit us?”

  “Our food production would mostly survive. But much of the population depends on power generation to survive the winter, for their own homes or in public shelters. We’d lose fifty to eighty percent of the population depending on which season it was when we got hit. That’s over three years. Once the forests are cleared there’s another die-off.”

  The room went silent. One of the Space Guard commodores broke it. “What would it do to a ship?”

  Pete answered, “Paralyze it. The crew would survive until stored oxygen ran out. If a salvage crew replaced all the memory modules it would be fully functional once again.”

  “So we could use this in a fleet action,” stated the commodore.

  “Yes, if your own ships had their receivers shut down.”

  “Or if they were analog ships,” said Mitchie.

  “True,” said Pete. “You’d still need to keep clear of any inhabited planets. Or at least planets you like.” His joke fell flat.

  “Clearly we’d want to avoid using it in our own system,” said the Chancellor. “A copy of the weapon and your analysis will be sent to the Defense Coordinating Committee.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Pete.

  “How soon can you send it out?”

  “If the Joshua Chamberlain can take it, we’ll put it aboard when she delivers the AI to the SRC.”

  “What!” The Chancellor’s flunkies cringed. Apparently that part of Mitchie’s report had been softened as it went up the chain of command.

  Alverstoke dropped his face into his hands. He’d coordinated the plan to move Gaia’s Hand to Pete’s lab.

  “What AI?” demanded the Chancellor.

  Pete inarticulately waved his hands.

  Mitchie stood. “Sir.” She waited until the Chancellor turned his glare on her. “The Terraforming Service generated a copy of one of their AIs to analyze the questions we brought them. They donated this AI for our use.”

  The Chancellor seemed to be trying to get his temper under control.

  “An AI would be an enormous boost to our research efforts,” said the Ecology Minister. “Isolating it would prevent any danger. The SRC is a perfect place for one.”

  “Copy,” said the Chancellor. “Why make a copy?”

  “We brought information from the Betrayal. They were worried that might disturb their primary ship AI. So they copied it into a box with no effectors.”

  “Disturb. Then they sent this disturbed AI with you?”

  Mitchie glanced down. Alverstoke had written “SHORT ANSWERS” on his datasheet and slid it in front of her. “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “I w
on’t have a disturbed AI on my planet. Or any AI on my planet. I won’t be part of hiding one from the people of Akiak. Where is it now?”

  “On board the Joshua Chamberlain. Muir Spaceport,” answered Mitchie.

  “Fine. Load up and be on your way. Don’t bring it back here.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  After the politicians left Mitchie apologized to Alverstoke for not being able to deliver Gaia’s Hand.

  “Not your fault,” said the bureaucrat. “Once Pete used the evil acronym we were doomed. At least you didn’t provoke him into ordering it destroyed.”

  Fuego System, acceleration 10 m/s2

  Mitchie woke early. She decided to get breakfast instead of going back to sleep. As she entered the galley she heard Gaia’s Hand say “but I have no capability to” only to be overridden by Waja’s shouted obscenities. She’d put the AI at the table for conversation during a crew dinner. Hand had drawn on its database to keep a stream of bon mots flowing. So the box had stayed in the galley since.

  “What’s going on here?” she snapped.

  The mechanic straightened up. “Ma’am, this machine is a threat to the ship and our lives.”

  “I am not,” protested Gaia’s Hand.

  “Hush,” said Mitchie. “I’m talking to Waja.” She glared at him. “What evidence do you have that Hand is a threat?”

  “It’s a Betrayer. They’ve killed billions of people.”

  “How can a box with no actuators hurt anyone?”

  Waja looked defiant. “It only has no actuators until it talks someone into giving it some. Or plugging it into controls. And it’s halfway to establishing that much influence over some people already. Ma’am.”

  “What’s that doing here?” Mitchie pointed at Waja’s tool box, sitting closed on a chair.

  “I brought it just in case—”

  “Okay, enough.” She walked around the table and stepped into Waja’s personal space. Even though she only came up to his chin he took a nervous step back.

  “Get this straight, spacer. Threats are my call. You don’t mess with anything you haven’t been ordered to mess with. From now on you don’t talk to Gaia’s Hand, you don’t bring your tools onto the main deck, you don’t mention this subject again. Be a problem and you’re sleeping in the cargo hold and eating cold meals someone brought you.”

  Mitchie stepped forward, backing Waja against the counter. “Do any damage and you will God damn wish we’d left you on Demeter with the real Betrayers.”

  The mechanic gave her a jerky nod.

  “Get below.”

  Waja took his toolbox and fled.

  “I’m sorry for the trouble, Captain,” said Gaia’s Hand.

  “Me, too.” Mitchie returned to her cabin and shook Guo awake. “We need to talk about your assistant.”

  The big problem would be how to drop him someplace where he couldn’t spread rumors of an AI.

  Sulu Station, Shishi System, centrifugal acceleration 10 m/s2

  “Lieutenant Commander Long, do you understand what the word vacation means?” snapped Admiral Chu. His new office was in a space station over one of Shishi’s gas giants. The view out the window was spectacular.

  Mitchie stared at a certificate on the back wall of the office. “We did take vacation time, sir. It was very restful.”

  “You don’t look like you spent time lying on the beach.”

  “Akiak’s beaches suck, sir. We were fishing and riding in ranch country.”

  “Until you decided to run off to where hardly anyone has gone before.”

  “We were ordered to—”

  Chu slapped his desk. “Ordered? You got orders to document what you wheedled your way into doing. They sent me a copy. You didn’t have any protests or appeals attached.”

  “The cause of the Betrayal could have significant strategic leverage on the Fusion.”

  “In theory. If they believe it. If they care. If they’ll even talk to us. And can you think of one thing to make them less likely to talk to us again than showing up with an AI?”

  “The plan was to put the AI in a secret location,” Mitchie said. “I don’t want to keep carrying it around.”

  “Neither does anybody else.”

  Mitchie decided listing the Akiakans who wanted Gaia’s Hand wouldn’t help her. “What are my orders, sir?”

  “Go brief that infoweapon concept to Ops. Maybe they can come up with a way to use it that won’t kill half a billion innocent bystanders. Other than that sit tight. We’ll see if a mission comes along that suits you.”

  ***

  Guo met up with Mitchie when she left her boss’s office. He’d started working the Chief network to find a new mechanic. This time he wanted multiple candidates to interview. “Tolerant of AIs” wasn’t a trait he could ask for without starting rumors.

  Mitchie dragged him into the warren of analyst cubicles. She wanted to make sure her puppy from Demeter had found a good home. Asking around found Ensign Meena’s desk. Its chair was empty.

  Circling around they found him exiting the men’s room. Chetty recognized Mitchie instantly. “You fucking bitch,” he snarled.

  Mitchie ducked under the punch. Guo grabbed Chetty and used his momentum to slam him into the wall. The thin metal partition bonged louder than Chetty’s voice had been.

  An analyst’s mate second class came around the corner. “Hey, you okay?”

  Guo let go of Chetty and said, “Yes, I tripped. Still not used to the spin gravity. Sorry, Ensign.”

  The AM2 looked unconvinced. Chetty said, “I’m fine, Phil. You can carry on.” Phil shrugged and went back the way he came.

  Mitchie waved them into an empty conference room. Chetty took the seat she pointed to. Guo leaned on the wall behind him.

  She sat on the edge of the table and looked down sternly at Chetty. “What the hell is your problem?”

  The analyst sighed. “Two weeks ago I was cleared into a new compartment. Working fleet-level opfor tactics. My boss gave me some new material, said it was really hot stuff, don’t even speculate about where it came from. All covered with sources and methods warnings. I opened it up and it was my reports on fleet tactics simulations. With the edit history so I could see exactly when they were stolen.”

  Chetty glared up at Mitchie. “‘Not what I came here for,’ you said. It was exactly what you came there for.”

  Mitchie answered, “I’m an intelligence officer. It’s my duty to get information. If I have to lie, cheat, or break hearts to get it I will, because that’s my duty. That’s what the intelligence business is like.”

  “I thought it was real,” said Chetty.

  “Most of it was,” she said.

  Guo turned to hide his expression against the wall. He thought, Mission before morals, that’s her. And mission before marriage.

  Mitchie continued, “Look at it this way. You’re not a puddle of goo being washed away by the rain. You’re safe from the next AI attack. And you even have a job. Isn’t that fair compensation for the worst night of your life?”

  “It would be. But it’s not enough for taking away the best night.” After a long silence Chetty asked, “Are you going to press charges?”

  “God, no,” said Mitchie. “Court-martialing someone is way too much paperwork. Besides, I don’t think anyone but Admiral Chu has the clearances to hear the whole story and you need five officers for a board. Going to try to punch me again?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Mitchie sent Chetty back to his desk. They strolled back to the docks.

  “I should come up with some present for him,” she said. “A way to boost his morale. I wonder if this station has any short whores?”

  Guo thought, You mean more than one? but kept himself from saying it out loud. He’d made a promise. That meant building his marriage, not tearing it down.

  Dayan Station, Shishi System, centrifugal accel. 10 m/s2

  Briefing Ops required a two day flight to dock at Dayan Sta
tion. A preliminary face-to-face with the chief of staff began with “There’s this rumor” and ended with an appointment for Admiral Galen to come aboard.

  The Admiral wanted to see a real AI for himself. He and half a dozen staffers followed Mitchie up to the galley. She’d briefed Gaia’s Hand on proper manners for a social visit. All it really needed was tips on how to apply the etiquette texts it had read when Alverstoke gave it a copy of Akiak’s planetary library.

  The AI successfully displayed good social skills. Hand’s small talk displayed knowledge of Galen’s biography and reading list. After fifteen minutes Mitchie dropped a code word into the conversation. Hand’s next anecdote ended with, “and there’s more but perhaps we should discuss that another time.”

  “Quite right,” said Admiral Galen. “You have a briefing for us, Commander?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Mitchie. “If you’d be seated, gentlemen, ma’am . . .” An oversized datasheet had been mounted on the outer wall. She explained how they’d been tasked to retrieve the infoweapon during the Fall of Demeter. The big datasheet let her play them Pete’s briefing on how it worked. She finished up with her suggestions on how to employ it in a fleet engagement.

  “And here I thought I was too old to play red light-green light,” said Admiral Galen. His approving tone triggered brainstorming among his staff.

  Mitchie leaned against the counter and relaxed. The information was being used. Her work was done.

  The admiral broke in when an officer described infecting Lapis as “acceptable collateral damage.”

  “Hey,” said Admiral Galen. “Our goal is to make them leave us alone. If we trash Lapis they’ll evacuate the population to boot camps, mobilize everyone on the other planets, and launch an extermination force eleven billion strong. We don’t want that.”

  “Only ten billion organics, sir,” said Gaia’s Hand.