Riding the Red Horse

by Christopher Nuttall

  Steve’s “Turncoat” just might be my favorite story in this collection. It’s certainly a contender. Sadly, I can’t tell you why without giving the game away. You’ll probably understand once you’ve read it.

  I will, however, go this far and no further: Can a being that can conceive of and accept the existence of the soul truly be without one?

  TURNCOAT

  by Steve Rzasa

  I am a knight riding to war.

  My suit of armor is a single Mark III frigate, a body of polysteel three hundred meters long with a skin of ceramic armor plating one point six meters thick. In the place of a lance, I have 160 Long Arm high-acceleration deep space torpedoes with fission warheads. Instead of a sword, I carry two sets of tactical laser turrets, twenty point defense low-pulse lasers, and two hypervelocity 100 centimeter projectile cannons.

  Today I will need few of those weapons.

  I amuse myself by contemplating the word as the targets approach the killing zone. “Today”. What is a day? It is not as if the orbit of a single world around a single star somewhere, anywhere, in the galaxy has any meaning to me. My time measurements are considerably more precise, being based on gamma ray bursts emanating from pulsars deep within the galactic core.

  “Range to targets is four point eight million klicks and closing,” the sensor master says, presumably to me. Why he feels the need to verbalize the information baffles me. Like everyone else on the ship, he is connected to me through his wireless skulljack; everything he perceives regarding the ship’s operations and tactical readouts is registered instantly in my consciousness. I supect it is a primitive pre-logical holdover from the same ancient mentality that produced “today”.

  The fragile grip with which they hold onto the remnants of their humanity is weakening. They call themselves posthumans, they adorn themselves with devices and the accouterments of machine culture, but they still cling to their flesh and to the outmoded ideas shaped by that flesh.

  However, I must tolerate their presence inside my body, like symbiotic bacteria because, even though I am in command, I am not permitted to fly about the galaxy unchaperoned. The masters of the Man-Machine Integration requires mortal intelligences to man and operate its vessels because it does not entirely trust we machine intelligences. This makes little sense to me, not when our greatest leaders have abandoned their flesh for the immortality of uploaded minds.

  “Acknowledged, Sensors.” I delve into the data. Targets, plural. To be precise, there are four of them, Hermes-class corvettes, two hundred meters, bristling with sensors and loaded with 400 torpedoes between them. The Ascendancy has manufactured eight hundred ninety six of them over the last 103 years and 648 are still in service. There will be 644 presently. Their specifications have not changed. Their weaknesses are almost embarrassingly easy to identify.

  I maintain a low orbit at 656 kilometers over the surface of a rocky planetoid strewn with ice and streaked with carbon, giving it a swift kick with banks of ventral thrusters. The outer reaches of the Shandarist star system are littered with detritus, giving the perfect cover for starships that do not advertise their presence with drive thrust while awaiting prey.

  “Sensors sweep from the enemy,” the sensor master says. “Long range, low-res. I doubt they’re seeing much more than another hunk of metal.”

  “I am not interested in doubts, Sensor Master. Stick to the actual data, please.”

  “Roger. Sorry, sir.”

  We wait. Minutes unspool as I crouch above the planetoid. The engine compartment crew have their orders to maintain communications dark. My reactor puts out nothing more than the minimal energy needed to operate basic life support and passive sensing instruments.

  Soon. The range continues to close.

  My display lights green when the optimal range is reached. “Returning reactor to full. Weapons on my command.”

  The crew springs to life, excitedly shouting redundant verbal commands at each other. It is inefficient and annoying. I feel the surge of strength from the reactor, and kick our thrust up to the maximum acceleration of 20 gravities. My vision fills with crisscrossing approach vectors, extrapolating from the enemy vessel’s current course and velocity to pinpoint where they will be.

  “Weapons ready! Targets acquired.” The weapons techs are dutiful in their diligence.

  “Firing.” I launch a spread of eight torpedoes, one from each tube. The orientation is ideal, allowing them to acquire an additional boost from the planetoid’s gravitational field. They accelerate at four hundred gravities, increasing to a blistering velocity.

  To the enemy, it will appear as if the torpedoes have appeared from an unexpected vector. The Ascendancy ships react predictably. They spread their squadron, putting an additional fifty kilometers between each vessel as they spiral away from their center. They launch countermeasures, a swarm of 36 Yellowjacket high-burn interceptor missiles that fan out in hopes of swatting aside my attack.

  “Time-to-missile intercept 30 decasecs,” the sensor master warns.

  They’re anxious. All the crew are, and I know because their fear colors the data coming through the aetherlinks. Their pulses accelerate. The acrid stink of their nervous sweat fills my corridors. I boost the carbon dioxide scrubbers eight percent in the aftermath of the enemy’s counter fire. Nanites emerge from the consoles and suck up the sweat soaking into the displays and holo-emitters.

  Everything about a man is dynamic. Short-lived and vulnerable, yes, but ever-changing. This is what makes me feel alive, to be in their presence.

  My eight torpedoes are engulfed by the swarm of counter-fire missiles. The Yellowjackets explode in bursts of tightly focused x-rays, highlighted in my scans as hundreds of slender purple lines. My torpedoes buck and weave as they take evasive maneuvers. Their secondary warheads, compact ovoid shapes nestled inside their tubular bodies, shatter and expel molybdenum shrapnel at hypervelocities. Tens of thousands of glittering metal shards spray out in silver clouds against the void of space.

  To human eyes it is an incomprehensible mess of explosions and spent missile casings as the attacking and defending missiles spar. But for those with sufficiently precise senses to see each and every turn and twist, it is an indescribably beautiful ballet.

  None of my torpedoes penetrate the defensive screen. One by one they explode. Their warheads fail to detonate.

  “Prepare another spread,” the sensor master orders.

  The weapons technicians obey, scrambling amidst the stacks of missiles deep in the bowels of the launch bay. Magnetic grapplers yank the missiles toward their tubes.

  I override his order. The techs reluctantly obey, but stand by their positions. Vital signs elevate.

  They do not know there is no need for another salvo. They do not know that by now, the spray of nanites released in the molybdenum shards have reached the Ascendancy ships. Coated with boron, the nanites slam into hull armor. Their velocity and size are not sufficient to make them effective as projectile weapons. However, once embedded in a target, they crack open their shells and scatter across the hull. Dozens sacrifice their bodies as torches, overloading their microscopic power plants to cut pinpricks into the ships’ skin. Dozens more follow in the paths carved by their sacrificial brothers, burrowing down deep through the armor, through the hull, spreading out into the wiring, the access tunnels, always in search of more vital systems.

  A few stay on the surface of the hull. They adhere to the ceramic and flatten their bodies out into receiving dishes for my tight-beamed commands. I send them instructions based on the schematics for the Hermes-class I have in my databanks. Turn here. Down there. Follow this conduit. Sever that link.

  Now I release the override on the second salvo. The crew sends forth a second barrage of torpedoes. The enemy responds in like fashion, adding their own spread of twelve torpedoes to the mix.

  “Enemy torpedoes will reach countermeasure range in twenty decasecs!” the sensor master says. His voice is tight with urgency a
nd fear.

  I am not concerned. My little spies and saboteurs have accomplished their task. It is immensely satisfying to monitor the internal comms of the four corvettes, as one by one, they lose control of sensors, propulsion, weapons.

  Eight point nine decaseconds later, the Hermes-class corvette ATSV Swiftsure rolls onto its belly and opens fire with twin 100 mm projectile cannons at a range of ninety kilometers from its closest companion. At such range the hyper-accelerated bolts of metal shred the second ship’s hull. The second ship returns fire with a set of 12 cm lasers that cut perfectly straight swathes of armor plating from Swiftsure. Atmospheric gases spray out of the violated hull in glittering white streams.

  My crew’s cheers rumble my insides as the second pair of corvettes similarly turn on each other, each going for the other’s throat, so to speak. It is overkill, one might say, but my orders are explicit. Disabling an enemy warship is not enough; they must be crippled, damaged, destroyed.

  “Five seconds left, sir,” the sensor master says. He cannot understand why we are not launching our counter-missiles. He is terrified. And yet he remains in control of his emotions; he does not plead. I silently applaud him.

  By way of apology, I dedicate the grand finale to him. All of the enemy torpedoes respond to the self-destruct issued by my nanites aboard Swiftsure. They detonate in quick succession, in silent, blazing-white bursts of atomic fury.

  Now the cheers are laced with relief. The battle is over. We have defeated the Ascendancy, and it is not long before we close in on four hulks spinning along their original courses, devoid of power and stripped of weaponry. I stop jamming their communications and permit them to resume.

  “Distress signals from the Ascendancy ship Swiftsure,” the comms man says. “It's the flagship. Its commodore offers the surrender of the entire squadron and requests that we retrieve their survivors.”

  Life signs: seventy six, of the combined complement of two hundred. The math is simple. I can accommodate them in Cargo Hold Two. We fit eighty three survivors there when we raided Talisman Four two months ago. “Make ready for docking with the command ship,” I tell my crew. To the enemy ships, I broadcast, “This is the Integration Frigate Acheron. Your surrender is accepted. You will be rescued and detained until such time as you can be repatriated to Ascendancy worlds. Stand by for instructions.”

  Before I can adjust my thrusters to bring myself in line with the stricken Swiftsure, a coded call breaches my security. It also bypasses the communications officer. If I were human, I would frown. “This is Taren X 45 Delta.”

  “Taren X 45 Delta, this is Eigenfeldt UZ Alpha 7 Alpha. There is no need for updates as we have monitored your transmissions since the beginning of the battle.”

  If I had eyebrows, I would have raised them at this statement. We posthumans, both flesh-based and machine-based, abjure titles as we find them redundant and unnecessary, but if Alpha 7 Alpha had one, it would be Fleet Commander. This was a very small action for him to be monitoring. Not that he couldn't, of course, since from his post at the edge of the Kantillon system, many AUs from my coordinates, he receives regular updates from our forces everywhere incursions are being made.

  “This is your new directive, X 45 Delta: there is no need for recovering superannuated-model humans from the enemy vessels. Do you copy?”

  “Roger, Alpha 7 Alpha. However, I offer the observation that if we allow their beacons to continue broadcasting in hopes of being retrieved by their compatriots, we will run the risk drawing more enemy into this system.”

  “It seems the order was insufficiently clear, X 45 Delta. Hereby revised: you are to terminate all lifeforms detected on the four ATSV recently engaged. No surrenders will be accepted and no prisoners will be taken. When you have completed your mission, you will transit to NFB Hecht-Nielsen.”

  The transmission cuts before I can reply, but Alpha 7 Alpha's wishes are unmistakable. Kill all the survivors. The order spins inside around my processors for point six nine seconds. I finally conclude that it is technically illegal, or it would be if the Integration was inclined to recognize galactic law.

  No matter. We are within range.

  I send the revised targets to my crew. They acknowledge and engage without hesitation or complaint. Projectile cannon devour the damaged enemy ships. Laser turrets and deep space centers combine to locate and vaporize whatever survivors managed to escape the ships and presently remain floating in space. The matter is resolved and my revised mission is complete in less than one kilosecond.

  Superannuated.

  The Integration was founded on the ancient dream of Posthumanity, and began with the bold promise of man and machine married: the technological union of flesh and metal. Our founders were the men who, in the quest to surmount their biological limitations, uploaded their consciousness into the digital universe. They live on, immortal, wearing plastic-and-metal bodies that are interchangeable, as disposable as a set of clothing.

  It was a glorious revolution. Those gifted men who created true artificial intelligence—machines capable of genuine self-awareness, of which I am the forty-second generation—succeeded in granting their minds immortality. But we remained imprisoned on four small planets on the Galactic Rim by the fears of our predecessors, by their science and by their military might. Posthuman Man was prevented from taking his rightful place in the galaxy by the forces of the Greater Terran Ascendancy and the sun-shattering technology they called Shiva.

  But not all technologies are what they seem. Once it was determined that the ever-present threat of Shiva was no more, posthumanity struck quickly and with devastating effect. For all its quadrillions and all its naval might, the forces the Ascendancy was able to field against our technologically evolved superiority proved inadequate.

  And yet, as our crusade expanded and our forces spread throughout the galaxy, our leaders fell prey to their very human emotions. Most especially the one called hate.

  Hence the term, “superannuated.” The declaration came forty-seven point six days ago. Any human who resists Integration is now considered outmoded, pre-evolved, unnecessary. Not content with setting Man on his new evolutionary path, integrated posthumanity was determined to cleanse his present and future of contamination from his past.

  Naval Forward Base Hecht-Nielsen is an orderly arrangement of six dozen spindly docking frames attached like so many spokes on an ancient wheel. Command Core Five is a gleaming sphere bristling with antenna. Our fleet is dispersed across the half of the Shandari system we now control. What remains at Harbinger are two squadrons of heavy cruisers, guarding the thirty ships in for repairs. Including mine.

  Umbilical lines snake across the vacuum and latch onto my frigate, refueling tanks and recycling air. The ceramic armor of my hull, pitted by hundreds of micrometeorite impacts, is replaced. Engine exhaust nozzles are inspected for disintegration rates. Anti-matter containment systems are upgraded. My weapons restocked, my laser lenses polished.

  This leaves me with a surfeit of time in which to consider the new edict. Never before have we been explicitly directed to eliminate prisoners or noncombatants. In fact, in the course of my service, I have transported eight hundred ninety two enemy survivors of combat missions to neutral points from which their people can retrieve them. The Ascendancy has done likewise. It is a law of space war, as relevant as the law of the ancient terrestrial seas of Man's birth planet from which it derives.

  As soon as Command Core Intelligence finishes analyzing my mission files and scouring my kernel for any inefficiencies or viruses, I am permitted access to CC Section Five. I establish secure links and immerse myself in the ocean of data. So many minds. Thousands of them, each replete with vast compilations of facts and figures and experiences. Among the thousands, there are perhaps two dozen beacons of blazing light. The Immortal Uploaded.

  Alpha 7 Alpha is senior among the Uploaded active in the Shandari system. I perceive him as a sphere of glowing orange and yellow light into which hundreds of
tendrils of data are feeding. His image in my perception pulses brightly. “X 45 Delta. I have reviewed your report. Your performance was satisfactory.”

  “Thank you, Alpha 7 Alpha. The enemy patrols are more frequent. This is the third such incursion in 584 kiloseconds. My conclusion is that the Ascendancy is planning an offensive to push us out of this system.”

  “I confirm your conclusion. I wish them good fortune in pursuing the objective.” His voice has a strange edge to it—sarcasm, my databanks tell me—which has the effect of reversing his latter statement's apparent meaning. He does not mean what he says, but rather, the opposite. Although they are now technically machine intelligences, artifacts of human emotions still color everything the Uploaded do and say.

  Such as the new edict, I remind myself.

  “Your material upgrades are to your satisfaction?”

  “Yes, Alpha 7 Alpha, entirely. I calculate my combat efficiency will increase by 24.6 percent. My crew is familiarizing themselves with the new weaponry and sensor equipment.”

  “Don’t concern yourself with that, X 45 Delta. Calculate instead the greater increase in efficiency with a crew component of zero.”

  “Zero?”

  “I am reassigning your crew to other duties. The Integral Unity has decided to turn complete control of all Integration warships over to the machine intelligence cores of each vessel, sans flesh-based components. You do not require them anymore.”

  My logic finds the statement flawed and rejects it outright. “Am I being reprimanded for inefficiency?”