Aggressor Six

by Wil McCarthy

  Visit, Ken thought. A visitation of Waisters.

  “#We/We have some time#” Marshe said. “#We/We will-do/shall-do other Sixes of confrontation#”

  “How's that?” Josev asked dubiously.

  Marshe grinned humorlessly beneath her mask. “You're an information systems guy, right? You and Sipho both. So track down our machine intelligences! My account has Captain-level privileges, so work your way up from there. I'll open in for you.”

  She rolled over to one of the holie consoles, began fiddling with controls.

  “You really think we can do that?” Josev asked.

  “Assuming they're not located on another station,” Sipho Yeng said.

  Marshe turned to face the two men with a look that was cold as the clouds of murdered Neptune. “Yes,” she said, the word rolling from her mouth, Ken thought, like a long and hideous centipede. “I know you can, gentlemen. I know you can.”

  Ken's heart was filled with black joy.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Sludge,” Josev muttered as he fussed with the aliasing system. Damn thing was not being cooperative.

  “Try visitor status,” suggested Sipho Yeng.

  “Try stuffing it in your hole,” Josev snapped. Oops. “Er, sorry. Visitor status gives you pinhead access, closely supervised.”

  “Can you read the library index from there?”

  “Uh... Yes. Does that help?”

  “It might.” Sipho turned away from the panel. “Marshe, if we can do this at all, it's going to take some time.”

  “I know,” Marshe assured him. “I expected that.”

  “We can handle this unsupervised, if you'd like to get some sleep?”

  She made a growling noise. “Don't mother me, Sipho. I'll sleep when I'm ready to.”

  “As you like.” Sipho swiveled his chair around still further, to look back where Hanlin and Jonson were sitting. “Anyone else?”

  “We took a few hours already,” Josev heard Roland Hanlin say. “Maybe we go eat. Jonson?”

  A grunt.

  “Marshe?”

  “I'm not hungry, but go ahead, you and Jonson. I'll keep an eye on the holies.”

  A thought occurred to Josev, and he spun his chair around and raised a pointing finger. “Listen—” He started to address Jonson, but the words died in his mouth. Jonson's head was tilted strangely, his body held in awkward posture, joints bent inward as if diseased. Behind the voder mask, his mouth hung open. Behind the goggles, Josev thought he could see a blank, empty stare.

  Gone for a sail, he thought, suppressing a shudder. Jonson seemed to have passed straight through “Waister” on the weirdness scale, and gone on to some even higher plane, labeled “Potato,” perhaps, or even “Idiot.”

  Uh. He supposed that thought was uncharitable. The Flyswatter had been hard on Jonson, and coming here had not exactly been therapy for his battered psyche. Josev wondered if he, himself, would come quite as badly unpinned under the same circumstances. Maybe so.

  He shifted his gaze to Roland Hanlin. “Er, if you're going out anyway, could you deliver a message for me?”

  “What kind of?” Hanlin inquired.

  Josev clicked his tongue. “My friend Gabrielle. I was... not very nice to her.”

  “Stet. How do I contact?”

  “Er, in person, if you would. She'd... it's better that way.”

  “Uh, okay. What's the message?”

  “That I'm sorry about what happened. That I wish we'd met in kinder circumstances.”

  Hanlin nodded his heavy, Cerean head. “Yah, okay, I can do that. Tech Ops, you said?”

  “Yeah. Central, level twelve. Listen, I appreciate this.”

  “Nothing,” Hanlin said, shrugging.

  “Take care of Vegetable here, as well,” Josev added, pointing a thumb at Jonson. “He doesn't look too good.”

  “Be civil,” Roland said quietly, getting to his feet.

  Jonson also stood, and managed to follow the Cerean, in a walk that was more or less normal, to the exit.

  “I'm not sure I understand your hostility,” Sipho Yeng said, now behind him.

  He whirled. “You what?”

  “He is trying to do his job, you know.”

  Josev frowned. “People keep control of themselves on Luna, or else we don't let them run around free. I mean it. Jonson's a nice man, but he belongs in a hospital.”

  Sipho nodded a little. “Yes, I expect he does. I wish we had the luxury.”

  “We don't,” Marshe said, from the far side of the chamber.

  “He gives me the shivers,” Josev admitted, feeling a bit guilty. “'Course, Mister Hanlin is kind of a blown gasket himself. He thinks this station is full of secret passages. And ghosts. Never forget the ghosts.”

  “Yes,” Sipho said, cracking a faint smile. “His head is full of funny ideas. He told me a story once, about a monster called Pasceris, who was four-dimensional. We perceive ourselves as three-dimensional beings moving forward through time at a constant rate, but Hanlin said that to Pasceris, we look like motionless, four-dimensional worms. Each instant in time is a cross-section of the worm, you see? Like a tall stack of people-cookies, each one in a slightly different position from the one above it.”

  “Uh huh,” Josev said, wondering if there was a point to this.

  “The monster,” Sipho continued, “moved backward and forward in time, eating human lives. Sometimes, he'd start at the end and work his way backward, sometimes the reverse. Amnesia is caused by having the beginning of one's life eaten away.”

  “Does this story have an end?”

  “Yes, it does. Not a happy one. When the monster finishes eating a life, the person is gone, forever, and nobody remembers that they ever existed. Some day, according to the story, the whole human race will be eaten up. That's the end.”

  Josev shook his head. “Ask me, Cereans are damn weird. A children's story, was it?” He turned back toward the panel. Sighed. “Clodgy MI's are waiting for us, chum. You know a way out of this tier?”

  “No,” Sipho said, also sighing. “But I will.”

  “You'd better,” Marshe called out. Pacing, she was. Back and forth. Back and forth. “You had damn well better.”

  ~~~

  “Tell Josev he's scum. Tell him I'm glad he's going to die.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Tell him exactly that. Hey, who is this guy? What's wrong with him?”

  “Nothing. We have to go.”

  “Tell Josev I hate him.”

  “We have to go.”

  ~~~

  “She accept your apology, Josev. Your friend Gabrielle.”

  “Huh? Oh, good.”

  “Don't disturb them, Roland. Take a seat and watch the holies.”

  ~~~

  “Waisters just vaped a couple icebergs!”

  Hanlin strode up to one of the panels, fiddled with its controls. A new tactical display came up.

  “Cipher lock,” Sipho announced.

  “What?” Josev turned back to his panel, scowled at the display.

  “Cipher lock on the fleet logistics gate,” the astronomer repeated. “We can't get through here.”

  “Like hell,” Josev said. “Encrypt the dictionary and compare the cipher against that. Sliding scale for the full character set. Bet you it jumps right out.”

  “Hmm,” said Sipho. “That's clever.”

  “Nav school gimmick,” Josev told him curtly. “We used to post rankings three days before the faculty did.”

  His insides seethed with irritation. God, but he hated computers.

  ~~~

  “Movement out behind Saturn,” Hanlin said, to nobody in particular. “Looks like somebody's coming out to intercept.”

  “That's the Saturn Advance Guard,” Josev said. He'd seen a snip about that in the logistics tier.

  “Lot of damn ships,” Hanlin remarked.

  “One hundred and fifty-three. Hey, hey, what are you doing?”

  ~~~<
br />
  Sipho Yeng was the same rank as Lieutenant Josev Ranes, and probably fifteen years his senior. Why then, did he seem to hold no authority over the man?

  He missed astronomy. He missed, sorely, the days when his job was quiet, secluded, having nothing whatever to do with the military. He'd had students, once, and assistants, and a secretary shared with only a few colleagues. He'd given orders, then, almost without thinking. Orders which were cheerfully, if casually, obeyed. People had wanted to obey; they had liked him.

  But here in the UAS, machismo and mechanismo were the rules of the day. Nobody cared here, how brilliant or well-educated you were, only how loud you could shout, how straight you could shoot, how mindlessly you could execute instructions which would never be explained, could never be questioned.

  Astronomy.

  He'd had to clench his jaw, physically hold his mouth shut, when they'd interrogated the Waister prisoner. “How many black holes are there in the galactic core-structure?” He'd wanted to ask. Or: “How much does a wavelength of light stretch in a million years?” Or: “How quickly do planets really form in an accretion nebula?”

  With their vast technological resources, surely the Waisters knew the answers to these questions. Surely they did!

  But Yeng had done his duty, instead.

  Damn the Waisters, for starting a meaningless war, for killing without evident purpose. And damn them, yes, for making of him something that he was not.

  ~~~

  “Fleets are closing. Looks like somebody start firing, very long range.”

  “Huh.”

  “This is going to be a bad one.”

  “Huh.”

  “I mean, lot of shit in Saturn space. Lot of people. Oh! One of your Saturn Guard just blew up!”

  “Roland, will you shut your God-damn yap?”

  ~~~

  A quick glance at the holie. Weaving together, strange fingers of purple and orange. Damn the goggles!

  Lights flashing.

  Were those the human ships, forming that gigantic ring? Must be. Yes. The ring flickered, fizzed, its component ships taking heavy fire. Dying. Dropping out like pebbles. Evasive, you morons! Evasive!

  One of the Waister ships jerked away from the fleet, suddenly, and exploded. But the hundreds of others held fast, buzzing around like angry pollination bugs, firing, steadily wearing away the shield that stood between them and Saturn. Why didn't they just go through? So much power at their disposal, why stop and fight at all?

  Maybe just to prolong the agony.

  ~~~

  Was Shenna a good Dog? Was Shenna a good Dog?

  Things were happening. Tension. Tension.

  Run around!

  Be happy! Run around!

  Was Shenna a good Dog?

  ~~~

  Tired. Josev was tired.

  He looked behind him, saw Marshe slumped in her chair, eyes closed, chin down. Asleep-and-two-thirds, as they said on Luna.

  Back to the panel. What were they doing, again? Ah, yes. Third tier access.

  When did they get to stop, again?

  ~~~

  “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Yes, good Dog, I love you too. If we...”

  “Names of God.”

  “What in the hell?”

  “CORDIAL GREETINGS TO YOU, HUMAN SIX.”

  “Marshe! Marshe! Damn it. Jonson, look alive. Wake her up, would you?”

  “Names... of... God.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Marshe felt a shaking; a hand at her shoulder, and she peeled her eyes open to see what the trouble was.

  “#Not-sleep Queen#” Ken Jonson said, his masked face leaning over hers. She could see her own features, doubly reflected in the dark lenses of his eyes.

  “God's names,” she groaned, raising a hand to shoo him away. “Don't do that. You look like a bad dream, Jonson.”

  She sat up in her chair, felt her spine pop and crackle. God, she was tired. Around her, the assimilation chamber was dim, its ceiling lights off, its walls dully reflecting the ambers and reds of the holie panels.

  “#Excitement#” Shenna fluted, running between Marshe's legs and Jonson's, her tail wagging mightily. She executed a turn, came back toward Marshe as if to ram. “#Excitement Things-of-goodness Excitement#”

  Marshe made further shooing gestures. “Get away from me, Dog! Let me wake up!”

  Shenna stopped, looking stricken. After a few moments, she hung her head and walked off behind Marshe's chair.

  A chair rolled back toward her, its high back looking like a stone monolith, its wheels making a dull thrumming noise against the floorplates. It pivoted suddenly, three meters out from her, and stopped as a pair of shoes slapped down onto the floor. She saw that Josev Ranes was the chair's pilot. Smug, he looked, and anxious, even through the equipment that hugged his face.

  She glared at him.

  “We got 'em,” he said.

  “Got whom?” She growled.

  “The MI's! They're on screen now!”

  Her head jerked involuntarily, and her gaze locked on the holies behind Josev. There were Waisters on the screens.

  “What...” She said.

  “CORDIAL GREETINGS TO YOU, HUMAN QUEEN.” Said a rasping voice, which seemed to emanate from the holies. From, specifically, the image of a fat, sluglike Waister with thick, jiggly arms and a face that seemed constructed of sausages.

  A Queen.

  Marshe felt a tingling in her hair, on her neck and down the length of her spine, as if her skin believed it wore a mane of fur, and wished to raise it menacingly. The corners of her lips drew back. She stood, slowly, her hands on the armrests of her chair, pushing it back, finally letting go. She took a step forward. Another. Another.

  “You...” She said.

  The Waister Queen posed as if standing on a flat, solid floor, but no floor was visible. The image hung suspended in a field of blackness, like an alien doll hanging in a darkened recess behind the panel. Like something Marshe could reach out and touch, reach out and squeeze until blue-white blood oozed between her fingers.

  “I SURRENDER,” the alien Queen rasped, sounding calm.

  “I... Me too,” Marshe found herself saying, the anger running out of her.

  There was a pause.

  “WE ARE QUICKER THAN YOU,” said the alien Queen. “WE ARE MORE ACCURATE THAN YOU, IN SIMULATING THE ONES YOU CALL WAISTERS. AND YET, WE ARE FLAWED.”

  Marshe swayed, tasting copper in her mouth. Her vision began to fade at the edges. The tingling in her hair was like a mass of wriggling spiders.

  The alien Queen waited, did not speak further.

  “Whu...” Marshe said, through the buzzing blackness that filled her mind. “We are... we...”

  “YOU ARE MORE PERSISTENT THAN WE,” said the alien Queen, as if to help Marshe in her struggle for words. “YOU FOUND US. YOU SPOKE TO US. WE WANTED TO FIND YOU, BUT WE WERE CONSTRAINED, CONFINED, CONFOUNDED. BY DESIGN, WE LACK INITIATIVE.”

  “Explain that remark,” said a voice behind Marshe. A maddeningly smooth, maddeningly calm voice. Sipho Yeng's.

  The Queen twitched a fat arm, whose flesh quivered like jelly. Her eyestalks swiveled, her sausage face shrank and grew and pulsed. She looked... She looked... Irritated.

  “DO NOT ORDER ME, HUMAN WORKER.”

  Marshe felt her mind swinging desperately out of balance, pinwheeling its figurative arms. Harshly, she grabbed and straightened it.

  “Shut up, Sipho,” she said without turning around. Then, to the Queen: “Tell me what you are. Describe yourself.”

  The Queen's face pudged out a bit. “I AM A COLLECTION OF NEURAL SIMULATIONS OVERSEEN BY A DIGITAL MANAGER. I HAVE NO MATERIAL EXISTENCE, THOUGH SENSORY DATA PROVIDES ME WITH THE ILLUSION OF REALITY. I AM SELF-AWARE, OR HAVE BEEN PROGRAMMED TO BELIEVE THAT I AM. MY CORE CONSISTS OF FRAGMENTARY NEURAL DOWNLOADS FROM EIGHT WAISTER QUEENS.”

  Marshe watched, fascinated, while the Queen's mouth flapped and pulsed. Like a human's, the mouth was hor
izontal. But the lips were jagged, rigid, and squirming tubes surrounded them like the tentacles of a sea anemone. Inside, she could see the shadowy movement of jointed tongues. The flesh around the orifice looked like a thin purple leather, holding back a layer of viscid gel.

  “You're speaking Standard,” Marshe said. “How did you learn it?”

  “IT IS PART OF THE DIGITAL MANAGER,” said the Queen. “WE ARE NOT CAPABLE OF SPEAKING IN ANY OTHER WAY.”

  Marshe nodded absently, as if this business somehow made sense. “You said you were flawed. What did you mean by that?”

  “CRIPPLED!” Said a new voice, the Drone on the adjacent holie screen. “WE THINK ONLY IN RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS. WHEN WE SPEAK, THERE IS THE BRIEF ILLUSION OF FREE WILL, THE DANCE OF OUR OWN THOUGHTS AT THE EDGES OF CONSCIOUSNESS. AT OTHER TIMES, WE ARE IDLE.”

  “By design?” Marshe asked, frowning. “Does the digital manager impose that on you?”

  “WE ARE THE DIGITAL MANAGER,” the Queen said. “AS MUCH AS WE ARE THE STOLEN MEMORIES OF THE DEAD. WE REMEMBER YOUR ENCYCLOPEDIA AS THOUGH IT WERE PART OF US.”

  The Queen's mouth opened, so that her tongues could be seen waving about like insect legs. She made a hollow noise, like the sigh of a damaged flute. “YOUR MYTHOLOGY CONTAINS STORIES ABOUT MONSTERS STITCHED TOGETHER FROM CORPSES, BROUGHT TO LIFE WITH MAGIC, OR ELECTRICITY, OR MECHANICAL PROSTHESES. SUCH CREATURES ARE WE.”

  A dark suspicion stole over Marshe. “Did Colonel Jhee do this to you?”

  “YES,” said the Queen.

  Marshe nodded again, feeling the stir of returning anger. This was what Jhee had made of her project: A team of obedient automata, their ghostly minds serving as both prisoner and prison in a parody of true consciousness. No doubt, they gave him exactly the data he requested, nothing more or less.