InterstellarNet: New Order

by Edward M. Lerner

  Walking slowly along the queue, she greeted everyone in turn as the techs prepped their equipment. When they signaled readiness, Gwu moved to the first gaping tank. At each position, she offered a few words of support to a friend. It was humbling how many had similar encouragement for her.

  Somehow she kept her voice firm and resolute, holding her qualms inside. The crew-kindred had determined themselves to be too few for the challenges before them. How, then, could their brief farewells take so long?

  More than anyone, Gwu had shaped and championed Harmony‘s mission. Had she become too proud to acknowledge an error? Over and over, Gwu told herself: no. The mistake was not the mission; it was the crew constraint. A larger, more robust, onboard community, a population not limited by the capacity of the lifeboats, might have—would have, she insisted to herself—responded differently.

  She had watched with dismay as the radio dialogue with the Unity, at first a comfort, became impractical with distance. The messages that continued to stream past Harmony transformed from a virtual lifeline into a gnawing reminder of comradeship lost. As she fretted, the tiny community hurtling through the interstellar void at one-third light-speed grew ever more anxious and uncertain.

  Timidly at first, but in swelling numbers, the comments came: Their isolation was becoming unbearable. More and more the suggestion was made that they consider turning back. That was unthinkable. Gwu counter-proposed that the lifeboats, having so nearly doomed the mission, should now be used to save it.

  Slowly, that line of reasoning became the consensus.

  In her hearts Gwu acknowledged the truth: Here, as in the polite debates on Haven, she had far more shaped the discourse than she had been influenced by it. As ka, she held official authority only in times of shipboard emergency, but always an aura of prescient wisdom clung to her. The crew-kindred deferred to her whenever her opinion was sufficiently explicit.

  So now, after what had the appearance of a consensus process but was instead a reflection of Gwu’s will—and her pride?—the crew-kindred were retreating to the suspended-animation tanks in the lifeboats. Planned observations of the interstellar void had been delegated to the shipboard AI. The presumed advantages of a conscious and attentive crew would be foregone—but the mission would continue.

  News of their decision would eventually complete its light-speed crawl home. All would be deeply asleep by then, with responsibility for the ship throughout the coming years of coasting entrusted to the shipboard AI. T’bck Ra would rouse them when they approached the K’vithian system.

  At long last, Gwu, Swee, and the few still-awake techs reached the final lifeboat. She said her farewells to one more group of trusting friends as their tanks underwent final checkout. One by one, they lay down in their tanks, until none remained conscious but Gwu and Swee.

  They entwined wordlessly, reluctant to let go, until Swee, with a wry wriggle, slipped free. “I’ll see you when we wake up.”

  Gwu lowered herself into a suspended-animation tank, thinking: This will work. This will be the beginning of a new era for the Unity. The clear cover of the tank pivoted downward, sealing her in with a soft pffft. She called out to the empty ship, “T’bck Ra, take good care of our friends.”

  Drifting off to sleep, she wondered if the AI had heard her.

  With a shudder, Gwu jerked her thoughts forward to the present. She had awakened from years of suspended animation into a lifeboat ringed by armed aliens. The crew-kindred had been slaves to the K’vithians ever since. It took her several deep, cleansing breaths to control the shaking of her tentacles.

  She had assigned herself to this repair team despite the rush of memories she knew any trip to a lifeboat bay would bring. There was work to do, dangerous work she dared not discuss with any of the crew-kindred lest they be overheard.

  The spate of alarms now erupting across Harmony far outnumbered her technical specialists. That dispersal was vital to her plans, for it kept her experts fully occupied without raising suspicions about where experts were not sent—such as here. The team she had brought to this lifeboat bay was untrained to diagnose the erratic data stream from a nearby sensor suite.

  Gwu spotted a logistician staring perplexedly through the open hatch of a balky primary communications node. “K’tel Da,” she called. “You look like you could use a rest. I’ll finish checking that out.”

  Repairing the node’s overheating power supply was trivial. What took Gwu a little longer, and why she had kept her experts away, was her true goal: introducing a far more subtle problem. The cladding of fiber-optic cables was easily damaged. She scuffed and twisted several cables in the crowded junction box. The resulting light leaks, in and out of the cables, would cause unpredictable crosstalk between supposedly separate subnets. Impossible-to-reproduce errors were about to break out across the ship; the K’vithians, whose networks were wireless, would not soon imagine the cause.

  Gwu had long waited for an excuse to access a major comm node. It was only her bad luck that her first opportunity had been in a lifeboat bay.

  Now she must wait again, for this and other sabotage to blossom. Then it would be time to test her luck once again.

  CHAPTER 15

  “Score one for persistence.” Keizo eyeballed Art’s pressure suit with newfound confidence and proficiency. He had had plenty of practice since arriving in Jovian space. Other mission members paired off around them in the familiar ritual. “All green. Check me now.”

  “Persistence sounds nice, although some would say you’re being too kind. Some would say pushiness.” But Art had been stubborn with a purpose, and his obstinacy was finally being rewarded. He had agitated enough times after enough meetings that the next working session be held aboard Victorious that the Snakes eventually agreed. Unending polite refusal would have seemed evasive. “You’re in the green, too. Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  The group cycled the courier ship’s airlock and made their way to the main airlock of Victorious.

  Mashkith, Lothwer, and Keffah greeted them inside. “Greetings,” the Foremost said. “This way for the antimatter discussion.” Several humans, headed by Ambassador Chung, followed after Mashkith and Keffah. Lothwer guided a second group dedicated to commercial matters. Art’s punishment for his assertiveness—being in Chung’s good graces had been fun while it lasted—was to coordinate for the latter group. Keizo could contribute no special expertise to either topic, and elected to go with the negotiators.

  Art’s neck swiveled and craned as his group made its way to the same small conference room as the first onboard meeting, visor photomultipliers compensating for the dim lighting. Surely they would pass something of interest. “Will we get to see more of the ship today?”

  “Not today.” Lothwer gestured at a work crew guiding a crate-laden maglev cart down a cross aisle. “We are stowing new supplies everywhere. It’s too dangerous for non-crew to wander around the ship.”

  No one mentioned wandering. “We would welcome an escorted tour.”

  “We should do our work first, then see what can be done,” Lothwer said.

  A maybe that would become a no at the end of the session. “Then we should get started.”

  Their agenda was long but not terribly interesting. Some specialty items on the Snakes’ shopping list were in short supply; would the UP tap its reserves to facilitate their replenishment? So many ships were shuttling supplies to Victorious that inevitably some had been delayed by administrative SNAFUs of one kind or another; could the UP expedite their clearance? A few freighters were to carry chemicals with which insurers lacked experience; could the UP intervene to get those ships released? It was bureaucratic minutiae that made Art’s head spin, and which he would, as soon as practical, delegate.

  None of the issues could be solved on the spot, so Art allocated a bit of his attention to his real interest here: learning something new about the starship. The resupply had, from the start, involved large quantities of chemicals for the starshi
p/habitat biosphere. Questions about progress recharging the onboard environment invariably got generic or vague responses. With his suit’s enviro-sensors, he could actually take some readings.

  “Are you okay?” came a colleague’s query over Art’s implant. Only then did he realize he had whistled in surprise. Snake purchases from the sulfur mines on Amalthea had caused a major price spike on the spot market. Why were the concentrations of sulfur compounds in the air reduced since his first visit? “A stray thought. Sorry.”

  The commercial discussions dragged on, productive but hardly interesting. Suit sensors detected no big changes from the last visit except the sulfur-compound concentrations. He was glad finally to hear Chung in his earphones. “We’ve finished for today, Dr. Walsh. How soon will you be ready to go?”

  Not a subtle hint. “Lothwer, the other group is done. Perhaps we can cover our remaining topics by radio conference?

  “That is agreeable.”

  “Joe,” Art netted the translator AI. “What’s your impression?”

  “No reticence. My guess is Lothwer will be happy to get us off the ship.”

  How accurate were voice-stress analyses of the aliens? He might never know, but what else did he have to go on? “We’ll need five minutes to wrap up, Ambassador.”

  Art summarized his action items, half-listening to the background chatter from the other meeting through Chung’s still-open mike. There were chairs scraping the deck, milling-around noises, thudding bootsteps, and then—

  “Shit! Ouch! My eyes!” Amid the human shouts were the high-pitched warbles of the Snakes; their translated utterances as pithy as and even more emphatic than those of the humans. “Okay, that’s better.”

  “Is everyone okay?” Art asked.

  “Yes.” Chung sounded shaken. “That must have seemed scary. From habit, I tapped the wall leaving the room to turn off the lights. Instead I turned the lights up. Of course our visors adapted and our hosts quickly overrode what I’d done through the ship’s automation. My apologies to you and your crew, Foremost.”

  Both groups had converged at the airlock when it finally struck Art: Snakes use implants. Had he seen any manual controls outside the airlock? “Foremost, why does Victorious have manual light switches?”

  “Only a few rooms do, for possible human use.”

  That made sense. It accounted for the light’s brightness and the placement of the control at a height where a human, not a much shorter K’vithian, would reflexively reach.

  A virtual throat cleared itself in Art’s mind’s ear. “The curious thing about Mashkith’s answer,” Joe said, “is all the stress in his voice.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Gwu had learned many things this trip. Among the least of her new skills was to slow her gait to what she considered a near standstill. It irritated her captors, several of whom were leading her yet again to Mashkith’s cabin, to scurry to keep pace with her. She cast a rueful glance upward, where long lines of empty bolt holes showed the one-time mounting points of suspended ceiling rails and hooks. Oh, to swing freely around and around Harmony‘s grand circumference. For an instant, the thought made her feel young again.

  They eventually reached their destination, and a guard knocked timidly. She entered unescorted. “My greetings, Foremost. Thank you for seeing me.” Her voice rasped. Sulfurous fumes inevitably leaked under the edges of her breathing mask, and she had been spending more time than ever in repair teams. She settled into a low chair, in the near eye-to-eye position Mashkith demanded.

  “Water?” he offered.

  She blinked at the unexpected, albeit minor, courtesy. Progress on his undisclosed-to-her plans evidently outweighed any concerns he might have about the ship’s ongoing ecological decline. In the cabin’s holo tank, small ships swarmed. The expected resupply? “Yes. Thank you.” Gwu accepted the bottled water, its nozzle adapted to an inlet in her mask.

  Strategy and deception were also skills mastered on this journey. So she automatically wondered: Did his good mood favor her plan?

  “Ka, what problems with repair? Our available options?”

  His good spirits could dissipate quickly. She plunged ahead. “Foremost, when this ship … changed ownership, many networks shut down.” Had evidently been, more or less, lobotomized, lest the automation be used against the invaders. Sometimes K’vithian biocomputers were grafted on as replacements. Other times subnets were severed, left to operate in a degraded, standalone mode. Yet other times they had simply made do without automation. “Lacking full automation, we could not see subtle degradation of the environmental systems, nor detect early warning signs. Those problems have accumulated.”

  “Yes. Last-meeting topic. What news?”

  “What is new, Foremost, is the inadequacy of our efforts to re-enable the suspended functions.” Years of neglect had taken their toll; little sabotage was required to maintain the reactivated systems in a state of instability. “Without restoring more of the higher-level controls, the onboard ecosystem will soon collapse.”

  He studied the claws of one hand. Did the gesture denote thoughtfulness or warning? “Sufficient time now for Hunters to supervise. Additional system restoration approved.”

  “Foremost, we lack the parts. Too much has been rendered unreliable by sulfur compounds in the atmosphere. Too many spares have been lost. We need more. Much more.”

  “Full inventory available for your use.”

  “Too little remains, and much of that will also have been damaged by contamination. I believe we must buy more.” To his bared teeth, an unambiguous expression on any carnivore, she hastily added, “I know the humans prefer K’vithian biocomps for most purposes, but they have also licensed the Unity’s photonics.”

  “Nanotech an invention of your people. Production of replacement parts by synthesis?”

  “Foremost, in other circumstances we could.” If you had not lobotomized our computers. “Without repairing the infrastructure, which also requires the new photonic parts, we dare not. The only safe way to operate nano-replicators is under aware real-time controls executing on massively redundant hardware.” She studied the holo tank. “The humans speak so picturesquely. Their term for the threat from escaped nanotech is ‘gray goo.’”

  “Understood. With what payment for new parts?” He pointed at the holo, at the awaiting supply ships. “Always a price.”

  Whose price? The humans’ or the Foremost’s? The latter, she decided.

  All her scheming had aimed for just this moment.

  “Foremost, I humbly ask a question of my own.” Into lengthening silence, she blurted, “Will my crew-kindred ever be allowed off this ship?”

  His head traced a horizontal circle. “Perhaps, once we have completed another voyage.”

  Meaning a new source of antimatter, which must reflect alliance with the humans. Meaning, presumably, a return to the K’vithian solar system. Meaning, at best, the exchange of one prison for another and eventual death in captivity.

  That grim response was only what Gwu had expected, and she had evoked it purposefully. The Foremost had to accept that isolation had finally driven her to a desperate bargain. He must believe her finally ready to sacrifice solidarity with the light-years-distant Unity to meet the urgent needs of the crew-kindred. “Then my duty is clear. To protect the crew-kindred, I must see the ship repaired.” Gwu slumped in a manner she felt confident the translator AI would report as defeat. “I have a confession.”

  “Explanation, ka.” Talon tips reappeared.

  “Far away”—where we were captured—“you demanded any InterstellarNet funds we carried. I told you the records had been destroyed.” As they would have been, had she not awakened directly into captivity. “I wish to … add something to that reply. It is true that the computer shutdown when you … came aboard … damaged the system’s higher-order functions. The financial records were destroyed.” Remorseful pause. “I chose not to mention that those records might be recoverable from archive.”
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br />   The words rushed out now, Gwu uncertain herself how much was nerves, how much the premeditated semblance of panic and sincerity. “Unspent, these credits will revert to institutions on Chel Kra. They will be reclaimed when all hope for the ship’s return has been abandoned. Letting reversion happen was my way to repay to the Unity a small bit of the cost of the voyage.”

  Curiosity and avarice won out over immediate anger. “Reversion by this time?”

  “Probably not. We are a patient and cautious people, and the ship is just now overdue to return to the Double Suns. But even if these funds were reclaimed … they came from trade between our two peoples. If they have been spent, it is most likely they were exchanged with K’vithians or a K’vithian trade agent. And even if not….”

  Mashkith was alert now. Rapt. Greedy. “Nine other InterstellarNet civilizations. Good odds.”

  “When our ship left the Double Suns, the United Planets was not even one of the Unity’s major trading partners. Almost certainly, the financial codes we carry were not spent with the humans.” She slouched further in her pretended shame. “I infer we will have departed long before radio-based protocols can uncover any discrepancy.”

  “How much?”

  Cautious planning had provided extensive mission reserves for possible repairs. The amount Gwu named would tempt anyone. “I’ll need access to the conscious level of the automation to unlock and decrypt that archive.”

  Slumped in a pose of regret, Gwu willed herself to stillness. You are ashamed of your weakness. You fear punishment for your admitted deceit. You are beaten. She was only vaguely aware of his pacing back and forth across the cabin. Back and forth. Back and forth.

  “Ka.”

  Her head whipped up.

  “My advice to you: no more deception. Ever.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Keffah perched on her guest stool, studying the large printout draped across a wardroom table. It was far easier to mark up a hardcopy than contrive a shared infosphere workspace to which Security would acquiesce. A mirrored visor hid her face. “My eyes are still watering.”