His ploy succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, and it was almost his undoing.
A flood of hardwired knowledge flowed into the two of them as the Sentry vomited its mind into its attacker. In effect, it babbled hysterically, simultaneously overjoyed and frightened by the contact. Slowly Ezekiel and Roger managed to calm and take control of it and eventually, like a surrendered animal too tired to fight anymore, they held it tight, mind and body, and took it home.
Chapter 17
“I want to get the base going again,” Skull said to Rae as they ate dinner, the quads two a side next to them at the table. While his avatar didn’t need to do so, he’d equipped it with senses as similar to a human as possible in order to share his family’s experience, and to maintain the illusion of normality.
“I want to help,” Andrew piped up.
“You always want to help with something new, until it actually comes time to help,” Leslie snarked.
“Kids, please,” Skull shushed them. “I think it might be useful.”
“Why?” Rae asked. “It’s barely alive, and the comet it’s on isn’t all that stable. Slap an engine on it and it might break apart.”
“All right,” he said reasonably, “we can find a better base body – a good solid asteroid. Zeke can keep his eyes peeled for one and let us know.”
“I still don’t understand why,” Rae replied. “We have everything we need on the ship.”
“It’s all our eggs in one basket, though, isn’t it?” Skull observed reasonably. “And that biomass is a lot easier to digest than raw rocks and comets. I could recycle some of it, make a new fresh young base, and consume the rest.”
“Ew,” Stephanie said, holding her nose. “That’s like, cannibalism or something, isn’t it, Daddy?”
“For a standard human it would be,” he replied. He found it always paid to be matter-of-fact when it came to discussing sensitive topics with adolescents. The more you get wrapped around the axle about something, the more they focus on it and become fascinated by it. Nothing like going into the details of digestion, elimination and reproduction to demystify the process and make it not interesting and “ew.”
“But,” he went on, “Meme ships are made to consume and reprocess just about anything. They like biomass best of all. If we ever discovered plants that could grow on asteroids without atmosphere, we’d have an ideal food source. Or if we could graze on Earth.”
“Humans don’t like Meme ships,” Charles said. “The tabloids are always talking about how they could go rogue or create another plague or something.”
“Standard humans,” Leslie corrected him.
“You know what I mean,” he replied.
“Why don’t you say what you mean then?” she answered.
“No bickering at dinner,” Rae said, her voice rising a bit. “You know the rules.” The two subsided with mutual glares. “All right, I can see your point,” she said to Skull again. “It might be useful to have a mobile base for ourselves.”
“A secret base?” Andrew asked, playing with his spaghetti.
The rest of the family stared at him for a moment before Skull replied, “That’s a damned fine point, Andrew. Yes, a secret base. Why not? We can always tell them if we need to.”
Everyone knew who “them” were. Standard humans. No matter how often they reminded each other they also were human, everyone knew they were very, very different.
“All right, I guess,” Rae conceded. “We’ll see what Ezekiel comes up with.”
“Hmm-hmm,” Skull replied, his mouth full of meatball. “Good spaghetti, hon.”
Rae smiled. “Grandma’s recipe’s still the best.”
The next ship day Skull presented Rae with three choices of asteroid.
“These all look suspiciously well selected,” she said.
“I had Zeke looking already,” Skull admitted. “I didn’t see you saying no.”
“All right. Then let’s get to work. When will we get there?”
“We have to go eat the old base first. I’ll ask Zeke to meet us there to help.”
“Good,” Rae exclaimed. “Always nice to see our firstborn.” Her eyes took on that faraway quality known to mothers everywhere when contemplating their offspring.
Skull couldn’t understand it, but he’d gotten used to it. He put his head close to hers and tightened up the room’s seal. Their children’s’ hearing was preternaturally keen. “Frankly, I miss him. He was such a good kid. People say an ordinary childhood goes by fast…try a Blend.”
“He’s almost grown up now,” Rae replied, still with that look. “Tall and handsome just like you were. Are, I mean. Oh…” Her expression fell. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right. You forget sometimes, and so do I.”
That I’m not really me, but just a cheap-ass copy.
“That’s why I call you Alan,” Rae went on lamely.
“Because I’m not him. I know.”
“Because you’re better,” she insisted. “You’ve grown…outgrown your old weaknesses. And you have a family now. Fatherhood suits you.”
“It does.” For now. I’m actually glad that they grow so fast. Less guilt when they’re grown. He wished he could really talk to his wife, but how could he fully trust someone who once reached inside his mind and tinkered with it like a Harley mechanic?
That’s what we lost when I died. Full trust. Or at least the chance at it. Once that trust shattered into a thousand pieces, it’s damn hard to glue it back together.
Skull shoved that out of his mind as he did every time his brooding thoughts threatened to overwhelm him. He put on a smile and changed the subject. “So let’s go build us a new base.”
Chapter 18
When the message came to meet Mom and Dad at the old base, Ezekiel decided to surprise them with his catch. He had it under pretty good control now, with little fear of it suddenly bolting. Even so, Roger kept a good tight grip on it, and a tap into its nervous system, like a leash.
On the trip, he’d learned a lot of new stuff about the Meme, and the Empire, perhaps more than he wanted to know. That store of knowledge made it all the more important that he get his prize to Dad…and, he had to admit, to the quads. They would suck its mind dry for sure, just like everything they got near.
When he finally arrived, he was tired, but not unduly so. He hadn’t hurried. The Denham was already there, settled in against the old comet and apparently resting on top of the base. In reality, it looked like Dad was eating it, through some new mouths he had created on his underside.
“Hi, Mom,” he said when the link came up. “Look what I found. Can I keep it?”
“Oh, my,” she replied, immediately joined by his dad’s avatar. “That looks like a Sentry!”
“Yeah, I guess that’s how you’d say it in English. It knows a lot of stuff. I thought you guys would want it for intel exploitation.” That was the word for investigating captured things, if he remembered right.
“Yes we certainly would,” Rae breathed, amazed. “Bring it up to the side and pass it to your dad. Then you can set Roger out to pasture and come eat dinner with us. He looks tired, and I bet you are too.”
“Okay.” While reluctant to give up his new pet, he really could use a rest, and so could his ship. “Coming alongside now.”
Once the Sentry was firmly in the Denham’s grip, Zeke climbed aboard the bigger ship and immediately headed for his room. Even though a VR sarcophagus was supposed to take care of all of his human needs, he still felt grungy and smelled bad after days inside of it. One long hot shower later, he sat down to dinner with his family after hugs all around.
“That’s an absolutely amazing thing you did, son,” Alan said through his avatar. Zeke figured his dad was already exploiting the Sentry, as he had that distracted look in his eyes he got when he was splitting his attention.
“Thanks, Dad. Once you get all the data, can I have him back?”
“Let’s wait and see, all right?” Rae replied.
The quads all smirked in different ways, united in nothing except schadenfreude at any discomfiture of their older brother.
That’s what parents always say: let’s wait and see, Zeke thought in irritation, but held his peace. The thought of getting the Sentry as his personal pet was enough to put up with almost anything, so he kept his expression bland and refused to be baited. Instead he reached over and helped himself to some shepherd’s pie, one of Mom’s better dishes. Given that all the ingredients except a few spices were manufactured by Dad’s ship-body, mishmash things like casseroles, pizza or medleys tended to hide any discrepancies in taste.
Besides, he was used to it. Dad took on as much standard food as he could whenever he got in to one of the human bases, but he always ran out too quickly.
When dinner ended, the avatar led them all into a cargo bay, where they found the Sentry lying quiescent, an umbilical leading from the ceiling to a port in its side. “I’m keeping it unconscious, but I’ve already downloaded its whole knowledge store. Zeke, you can stay and join in or go get some sleep. Kids, I want you to link in and I’ll show you around this thing’s mind.”
Ezekiel was happy to go rest. Staying in the biological mind-link with Roger was exhilarating but tiring. He knew that Meme could do it for long periods of time without resting, but his body was human, mostly. It needed a break, and his brain needed sleep.
Chapter 19
When Ezekiel awoke and wandered into the common spaces, Rae was in the kitchen cooking breakfast hash. By this he deduced they were even lower on standard food than they thought. She did add a dash of real chili pepper, and she put a bottle of his favorite Atascadero hot sauce on the table next to the plate she set before him, so life wasn’t so bad after all.
“Thanks, Mom,” he said with put-on brightness designed to appease parents. Being polite deterred getting a lecture, which he supposed was the point, a kind of social symbiosis. “Where is everyone?”
“Exploiting that Sentry,” she said as she plated some hash and then dumped the rest of it into four bowls. “Once you’re done you can take these to your brothers and sisters.”
“Yeah, okay.” He shook drops of spicy sauce onto the plate and then shoveled seasoned hash into his mouth.
Mom sat down across from him, looking at him the way mothers do. Or at least, the way mothers on TV seemed to, which was the same as his own mother. He’d never met anyone else’s mother for real. He focused on eating, hoping she wouldn’t start some kind of “conversation.”
Fortunately she seemed content to just stare at him with that funny smile she had. As soon as he could, he finished, dumping his plate and spoon into the sink and grabbing the bowls, balancing them on his hands and arms like a diner waitress. “See you!”
“Bye,” Mom replied.
In the cargo bay he expected to see a scene of science, with inexplicable tubes and biomachines and his siblings in miniature lab coats or something. Instead they all just stood next to the quiescent dolphin-like Sentry with their palms resting on it and their eyes closed.
Dad’s avatar hung out to the side and turned his head when Ezekiel came in. “They’re exploiting it.” His mouth turned up in a smile.
“Cool. What are they gonna do with it?”
“We’ll see.”
“Dad…I want to keep it. It could do all sorts of stuff. I could train it to push more asteroids around and stuff.”
“You know, son, I could make you a Sentry any time, that knows you from birth. This one is special, though, because it has some fragmentary memories it inherited from the three Meme that got away, as well as all their standard military programming. It’s too useful to just make into a pet for you. I’m sorry.”
“Aww…”
The avatar smiled. “Don’t go saying I never let you have any fun. When I was a kid I could only dream of having my own spaceship and flying around the solar system.”
“When you were a kid they didn’t even have computers!” Ezekiel retorted.
Dad just shook his head in amusement. “Besides, we might have a use for this little guy when the Destroyer shows up. I’d hate you to get too attached to him.”
“He might get killed!”
“Exactly the reason I don’t want you to become fast friends.”
Ezekiel looked around at the scene, realizing he wasn’t going to win this argument. “Okay. Well…I’m going to get back to work, then.”
“All right.” Dad lifted a hand in farewell. “Well done with this thing, son. It might make a real difference.”
“Thanks, Dad,” he said, reddening at the praise. As smart as they were, such special recognition for him alone had come more rarely lately. It felt good to have done something they didn’t and couldn’t.
Still…his potential pet just got snatched away from him, turned into his siblings’ lab experiment. Boo.
He called Roger back to dock, and boarded. Maybe if he found another Sentry out there he could keep that one.
Chapter 20
Year Four
“I wanted to see it for myself.” Admiral Absen gazed at the main screen on the bridge of the refitted EarthFleet ship Artemis, a heavy construction platform rather than the warship she was designed to be. Despite the proliferation of facilities on captured asteroids, and the many ships now zipping around the solar system, she was still the biggest space vessel ever built by humans.
Captain Huen sat comfortably in the Chair. “That’s really not seeing it, sir,” he said in his smoothest of British accents maintained by the upper crust of Hong Kong society, legacy of ninety-nine years under foreign rule. “But we can go to the docking port and take a real look.”
“I’d like that,” Absen responded.
“Ms. Rikard, you have the conn.” Huen stood up to turn over his position to a tall thin woman with Commander’s stripes. “Follow me.”
The ship’s captain, the admiral, and four stewards – Tobias, Shan, Schaeffer and Clayton – walked along Artemis’ central corridors, so like Orion’s own. As sister ships that is to be expected, Absen mused, but already they have diverged due to the damage and renovation of the station, and the use to which this ship has been put.
Crew and passengers crowded through the corridors, but moved for the command party. Shan made sure of it by going before and calling out, “Make way!” in a carrying voice. Civilians, some of them not fully understanding, were pulled aside by EarthFleet ratings if they did not get out of the way of their gods-on-deck fast enough. Navy tradition wasn’t the only driver of this behavior: no one took security lightly, or wanted to be the target of a steward’s ire.
The walk from the bridge, buried deep in the middle of the cylindrical ship, to the docking port in the nose, took less than two minutes, as it was only around two hundred meters distance along a straight corridor. Once they arrived, they were able to look out upon their objective from a range of a mere thousand kilometers. It appeared as a dim grey sphere that filled a large part of their direct view.
Ceres. The planetoid, largest object in the Asteroid Belt, bulked over nine hundred kilometers in diameter, a quarter that of Earth’s moon, but far less massive. Its gravity pulled at only about three percent of Earth’s, so Artemis’ current orbit was very slow, a controlled drift.
Composed mostly of ices and clays, nevertheless the planetoid was slated to become the arsenal of EarthFleet. The new mechanical fusion reactors, now being produced by the thousands on orbital factories, could process its materials and it could power machines, and metallic asteroids had already been soft-landed on its surface to provide the necessary construction substances.
“You can’t really see much detail from this viewport,” Huen said, “but it does provide perspective. We are in a slowly descending spiral. Our engines can give us almost a half G, plenty of power to maintain orbit or get away if we need to. In about four days we will land the ship atop one of the many large iron asteroids that have been set down in a massive field near its north pole.
Special landing struts will keep us far enough away from the surface that waste heat will not cause us problems.”
“I hear all the structures will be fitted out with pylons like that,” Absen said.
“You are correct, sir. With gravity so low, one can almost imagine that, instead of being on the surface of a planet, the facilities are actually sitting next to a massive asteroid that happens to have a tiny attraction. It’s all a matter of perspective.”
“Yes, I see,” and Absen did. After this long in space, he had gotten the hang of not thinking only in terms of up or down. “And how long until the first ship is built?”
“Projections say three years.”
“Leaving at most three years of production, which yields…”
“About ninety thousand kamikazes. You know the rest of the order of battle.”
Absen nodded. “I’m still very uncomfortable with this tactic, but there are plenty of volunteers, and maybe none of them will have to use their final option.”
Huen shrugged. “Many nations in times past have employed suicide warriors when their backs were to the wall. Some used condemned criminals and promised them pardons if they survived. Some were religious zealots driven by visions of Paradise. Some, like those that provided this eponymous Japanese name ‘kami-kaze’ – Divine Wind – died for the nation, or a warrior’s code. Ours will be just one chapter in a long history of honorable sacrifice.”
“I know.” Absen stared at the dim ball, so cold but so vital to Earth’s defense. “It still seems odd that, with all the tremendous industry on Earth, we come all the way out here to make the shipyards.”
“The orbital factories are scheduled to capacity already. While Earth’s resources are close to them, extra materials in the form of asteroids have to be brought from beyond the orbit of Mars. Here, the asteroids are all around us. Once the Pseudo-Von Neumann factories we carry are running, they will build more modular factories in logarithmic progression. By that time they will spread out over the surface of Ceres. Then, about three years from now, they will stop making more factories and will start making weapons and ships.”
Plague Wars 06: Comes the Destroyer Page 9