Animus Intercept

by Lawrence Ambrose

  It appeared to be mid-afternoon as they sailed upward across the pale blue sky to the east, the sun at their back just as it would've been on Earth.

  A shiny, grey-blue dirigible loomed ahead. They closed slowly. Zane made out staring faces in the windows. Human faces. Zane worked hard to contain himself. This was happening. This was really happening. As they continued their approach, Zane recognized Patricia, Horse, Mallory, First Ensign Adele O'Brien, and a few others. Patricia and Horse waved. Mallory flipped him off.

  A door on one end sprang open as they approached. The yellow jackets swung Zane in a slingshot motion and he flew cleanly through the doorway, rolling to a stop. Two of the yellow jackets, including Jahitz, dropped in behind him. Their comrades retreated swiftly into specks.

  Jahitz and his comrade shoved him upright and undid the restraining straps.

  "Well, look what the stork dropped off," Horse laughed.

  He and Mallory latched onto his outstretched hands and hauled him out into an awkward group hug where Zane had to remind himself to restrain his PA suit strength. Patricia held on after the others separated, her beautiful blue-green eyes peering up into his goggles.

  "It's good to have you back safe," she said.

  Zane cleared his throat quietly. "It's good to be back."

  "They didn't try to take your suit?" Mallory asked.

  "No, but they tried to take my gun. Didn't go so well for them."

  "Well, the bugs seem to be on the up and up," said Horace. "But having one of us in an aug suit with a DAH rifle still warms an old man's heart under the circumstances."

  "Any indications they might go back on their word?" he asked Patricia.

  "They're following us a few kilometers back in gliders, but we agreed on that. They want to observe us enter our ship and leave."

  "I can understand that," said Zane.

  "The Cheyenne will confirm there's no one else when we get within telemetry range. Unfortunately, they confiscated all of our BADDs and other tools."

  "I wonder if they'll be able to back-engineer them at some point."

  "They don't even use electricity yet, so that could take a while."

  Zane moved to the nearest window. Not much left to do but admire the scenery and suck in one last breath of the bizarre grandeur of it all. A herd of double-sized bison thundered through the plains below – he imagined the thunder – while a cluster of woolly mammoths looked on, sedately sampling the tall grass with their long, tree-limb trunks.

  Where was Zzull? He only hoped she was back there somewhere, following out of sight.

  Patricia came up beside him. "There's so much to learn here. Do you think Command would ever come back?"

  "I don't doubt it. Now that they have the key." He smiled sideways at her. "I'm afraid you'll be stuck for future missions."

  "They could just make a copy of her and send it," Mallory said. "Or that gay mad scientist could make someone else like her."

  "I can't be copied. No more than you could be copied."

  "Really? Why?"

  "It's complicated – and also classified."

  "Even above Cosmic?" Mallory was smirking as if he believed he had something on her. "'Cause we're cleared for Cosmic."

  "Cosmic, Need to Know." Patricia spoke calmly, her voice free of acrimony as far as Zane could tell. "Not that you'd understand the explanation anyway. I can say this much: I was born from probability – a probability of wave collapse and resurrection – a random event that cannot be duplicated."

  "I'm gonna guess the word 'quantum' is involved." Horse was giving her a dry smile.

  "You'd be right about that, Captain." Patricia returned his smile. "The genius of Dr. Spencer is that he identified a possible primal life force in the universe and was able to design an experimental method of harnessing it. I'm the result of his experiment."

  "But he could create other true AIs?" Zane asked.

  "Yes. But they won't be me. Even if he used the exact templates and attempted the most rigorous duplication of the conditions of my birth, he would fail. He made that point to me more than once."

  "You're one of a kind." Zane gave her a faint smile. "Somehow, I'm not surprised."

  "Thank you."

  Zane resumed his contemplation of the forests and plains passing below, suppressing a small itch of unease. Patricia's apparent attraction toward him had an obsessive, Glenn Close/Fatal Attraction feel to it – a reversal of Hal's antipathy that wasn't much less unsettling. If they'd harmed you, I would've destroyed them all. So she'd abandon logic and fairness for him? What would happen if she got pissed off at him for not returning her affections? What if she just plain got pissed? She'd be Glenn Close with MAME missiles.

  Of course it was crazy for him to be worrying about her now. He could do that after they were in their ship and safely underway.

  Their safe port came into view three and a half hours later: at first a small dark breach in the wall, and then the shadowy outlines of the Cheyenne in its cubbyhole between two worlds. They were almost home.

  Then they were close enough to see Andrea, Dana, and Dan waving at them through the forward windows. They waved back.

  "Order them to stay inside the ship," Zane told Patricia. "We'll come to them. Just in case."

  "Yes, sir."

  They dropped down softly on the ground in front of the wall opening and the Cheyenne. Jahitz and his companion opened the passenger door and hopped to the ground. Zane and the others followed. The two yellow jackets walked with them toward the ship. Zane stopped at the wall, turning to Patricia.

  "Tell them that's far enough," he said. She hummed and buzzed the translation. "Tell them I regret their loss of life and that I wish their wings will always carry them."

  "You've been paying attention," she said with a smile, and then conveyed his message. Jahitz and his companion offered no reply.

  "Also tell them," Mallory growled, "that if they ever mess with us again, we will crush their bug-asses."

  Patricia remained silent. Horse chuckled. Zane gazed out over the darkening skies, spotting the trailing yellow jacket gliders with his goggle-amplified vision but no Zzull. Not so surprising, since she had to fly unseen and probably couldn't match the air ship's seventy MPH cruising speed for several hours. They could afford to wait for her. Once they were in the ship, the Zikkzu couldn't hurt them. A few hours shouldn't make any difference – except to everyone's desperate eagerness to get the hell away from Animus.

  Then Zane spotted a shape approaching from the south, a flash of iridescent blue reflecting the setting sun.

  "I think we're about to have company," he said, pointing. "Zzull."

  "Good," said Horace. "Was starting to think she wouldn't make it."

  But as Zzull approached, wings furiously buzzing – performing a good imitation of a bat flying out of hell, Zane thought – his smile froze. Zzull was urgently pointing one hand like the repeated thrust of a dagger toward the air ship in clear warning. His stomach clenched.

  A line of rifle-bearing yellow jackets burst from the top of the dirigible, arcing down at them at racecar speed.

  Zane whipped up his kinetic rifle. Jahitz and his comrade seized the nearest crewmembers – Horace and Patricia – placing air handguns to their heads.

  "Kill the sumbitches, Zane!" Horace snarled, struggling fiercely against Jahitz's unyielding grip.

  The two yellow jackets shrunk down behind their captors, offering no vital targets to Zane's rifle. Meanwhile, the yellow jacket platoon was almost on them.

  "Mallory, get the others into the ship!"

  Mallory hesitated an instant before propelling Adele and the three remaining Peacemaker crewmembers toward the door. A group of yellow jackets carrying what appeared to be a chain net broke away straight for Zane. He leaped to one side but they adjusted in midair, releasing the net. Zane knew he was in trouble as the metal links flapped down over him, and in what was obviously a practiced maneuver twisted swiftly around him, cinching the ne
t as tight as a cocoon around his body. He dropped his rifle and tried kicking it toward Mallory, but the Marine was on his back, bleeding from two chest wounds. Zane strained against his chains, but a mere 5X strength made little impression. With his arms and legs pinned, he couldn't do much but stand and watch as the yellow jackets seized Adele and her three crewmates at the opened hatch door.

  Patricia was addressing them with harsh, machine gun bursts of humming, but the only response was one yellow jacket smacking his rifle butt into her head. As she slumped to the ground, the yellow jacket prepared to hit her again but was halted by Jahitz.

  The Zikkzu carried Horace, Mallory, and Patricia's unconscious bodies into the open outer hatch door. Horace and his four crewmembers were missing, presumably already inside.

  The yellow jackets were now inside the ship. That chilling thought accompanied Zane being hoisted off his feet and carried in after his crewmates.

  Zane took some small comfort in knowing that if the yellow jackets intended to seize control of the ship they would be tragically disappointed. That comfort didn't amount to much against the knowledge that they could kill everyone on board. Unless Andrea, Dana, and Dan had thought quickly enough to don PA suits and arm themselves. Then the tide could turn quickly. But those three were not soldiers, and didn't think like them. Zane wasn't optimistic.

  Zane's pessimism was confirmed when he was dragged into the main cabin. Andrea, Dan, and Dana were cowering against the navigation console, hands raised in submission, no weapon or PA suit in sight.

  "Captain," Patricia's voice greeted him, though her body lay unmoving in a yellow jacket's arms. "Your orders?"

  It took Zane a long moment to realize that Patricia was now addressing him through the ship's speakers – and to remember that her consciousness resided in the Cheyenne's mainframe system, not in Keira's body. Judging from the suddenly rigid postures of the yellow jackets and their puzzled twisting of heads, they were failing to make sense of either the voice's identity or origins.

  "Could you use Assault Nanites against them?" Zane asked.

  "Not without some significant reprogramming, Captain. There are several safety protocols against deployment within a ship that would need to be overcome."

  "So I've heard. Could you manage that anytime soon?"

  "In roughly five and a half hours."

  Zane shook his head and frowned. "Why don't we start by asking them what they want?"

  "Yes, sir."

  She hummed the question and translated their replies, spoken most loudly by Jahitz: "We have been told to permanently immobilize your ship and return those of you who survive to our city."

  "You could tell him that if they don't release us and leave the ship they won't have any city to return to," said Zane.

  "That was my thought. By the way, my body is now conscious and nearly repaired, but I'm pretending to remain unconscious. I'd rather my body didn't take any more damage."

  "Good thought. I'm not so sure about Mallory." Zane clenched his jaw. "We need to end this ASAP, but I'm not sure just threatening will be enough."

  "I know. I have an idea for a demonstration."

  A holograph blossomed in the forward part of the cabin: the top of a mountain covered with strange metal and stone statues and ornaments.

  "The Mountain of Remembrance," Patricia's voice softly filled the cabin, first in the Zikkan language, then in English. "I will give you ten heartbeats to release my crew and leave the ship. If you refuse, I will destroy your shrine. If you still refuse to obey my terms, I will then destroy your city. If you harm any of my crew, I will destroy your society. As I told your leader, Ashuta, I am part of this ship and can assume many forms. You can harm my crew, but you have no weapons that can touch me – while I have all our weapons under my control. Consider your response carefully." She paused. "You have ten heartbeats."

  Zane had little confidence in his ability to read the fly-people's body language, but the glances between the yellow jackets appeared to speak volumes of tension – along with their words, which could be summarized as: "Our orders have no instructions for this."

  "Your allotted time is complete," said Patricia.

  A muted thud sounded from within the ship. Railgun, Zane thought. She's actually doing this. Sonic thunder boomed back on them as the fifty-pound SHE round arched invisibly into the sky at just over 12,000 MPH.

  "SHE round launched," Patricia announced in English. "Aerial detonation in one minute, 23 seconds."

  "Tell them there's still time – that we can deactivate the explosive," said Zane.

  Patricia told them. The Zikkzu stood motionless, staring at Jahitz as if waiting for him to make the call. It wasn't as if he could consult with his superiors before making a final decision. Hadn't their leaders foreseen this possible result and instructed them how to respond?

  "Detonation in twenty seconds," Patricia stated.

  "All – fire upon their blinking light machine! Destroy it!" Jahitz's high-pitched hums were translated into a human cry in English.

  Jahitz and his team began pumping round after round into the weapons console. The heavy caliber metal pellets flattened and fell away from the plastisteel panels without making any impression.

  Then they were out of time. All eyes turned to the mushroom ball of light blossoming over the holographic mountain. The holograph dimmed a few shades to protect their eyes as the brilliant golden-white sphere persisted.

  When the golden sphere faded several seconds later, the mountain peak looked like the burnt end of a stick. The monuments, statues, trees – even most of the jutting rocks – were gone. A thirty kiloton explosion could do that to you.

  The yellow jackets made a keening sound. Patricia supplied no translation, but Zane suspected none was needed. It was the universal, wordless sound of grief.

  Several of the Zikkzu's extruded claws from their hands and pressed them to their captives' throats. No blood drawn yet, Zane thought, but that could change in an instant. Could they hold their emotions in check and face their options with clear heads?

  "The next target will be Zellsor," said Patricia, in Zikkan and English. A holograph of the city they'd come from replaced the charred sacred mountain. "Current population, 115,244. Launch of weapon in ten heartbeats."

  "Don't do this," said Jahitz, his voice a moan in the English translation.

  "Release my crew and leave the ship," Patricia replied.

  "Let my people go!" Horace called out in a southern preacher's voice, smiling grimly. Zane had to smile with him. Fucking Horse. The yellow jacket holding him tightened his grip around his throat, but none of them spoke.

  Another thud followed by thunder.

  "SHE round launched," Patricia informed them, in English and Zikkan. "One minute, twenty seconds until impact."

  The yellow jackets stood as if trapped in amber.

  "I gotta hand it to you, Zane," said Horace. "Your girlfriend is one cold hardwired bitch."

  "Thanks," said Patricia. "I think."

  "And what's going to happen when you vaporize the city?" Dan Mueller rasped. "Do you think they're going to find that amusing? Unless I'm missing something, what's to stop them from slaughtering us all where we stand?"

  "Well, Chief Engineer," Horse drawled, "how about the loss of their entire civilization?"

  "How do we know how these things think?" Andrea asked, squirming in the grasp of her captor's thick, reticulated arms. "They might all be prepared to die!"

  "I know how they think," said Patricia. "I know their entire history. They are strong-willed but not suicidal."

  "Patricia, are you really going to destroy that entire city?" asked Dana.

  "Yes, unless Captain Zane orders otherwise."

  Thanks, Zane thought. He'd been enjoying the silly delusion that Patricia was in charge. An objective, emotion-free machine making choices on pure logic. Except Patricia was neither emotion-free nor objective. She was, as Horse had pointed out, a "hardwired bitch." Nor was she in
charge. The responsibility for the death of thousands of sentient beings who were their distant cousins would rest squarely on his shoulders alone. Now he knew how Truman must've felt – if Truman hadn't hated the Japanese.

  "Fifteen heartbeats from detonation," Patricia announced in her calm, weather-reporter's voice.

  "My bond-mates and children will die," one of the yellow jackets spoke up.

  "All our bond-mates and children and everything we built," another added.

  Jahitz lowered Patricia's body – still feigning unconsciousness, Zane assumed - to the floor. The other Zakkzu loosened their holds on the crew, their eyes glowing red at him.

  "We agree to your terms," he said. "The ship and its crew are yours."

  "Then I recommend you leave now – as fast as you can," said Patricia. "Only then will I disarm the explosive."

  Jahitz and his people didn't dawdle. The yellow jackets released the securing straps on Zane's chain straitjacket. The crew fell or stumbled to one side as the Zikkzu swarmed out of the cabin toward the outer hatch so fast they were just a yellow and black-striped blur. Zane's rush of relief mixed with awe and a small flush of fear: unarmored and unarmed, humans would be grist to the mill for these creatures. God help them if they ever developed their level of technology.

  But wait. They did. A long time ago.

  Patricia picked her human body off the floor while the others rubbed their arms and shook off the impressions of their captors. Zane set aside his relief that she and the others were okay as he disentangled himself from his chains.

  "Are they leaving?" he asked Patricia.

  "They all entered the air ship's passenger cabin, which is rising. Zzull is on the ground south of the entrance, registering weak life signs. Lieutenant Mallory is just outside the ship - severely wounded but stable."

  "Stay put," he said. "I'll get Mallory, then Zzull."