by David Weber
"Understood, Colin. Luck."
"Thanks. Coming up on ignition - now." There was another brief pause, and then he heard "himself" sigh. "No joy, Sandy. Caught it wrong. Tell Sean I - "
And then there was only silence.
MacIntyre swallowed. He had just heard himself die, and the experience had not been pleasant. Nor was the realization of how completely Dahak had covered its tracks. As far as any living human knew, Lieutenant Commander Colin MacIntyre no longer existed, for no one would wonder what had become of him once they got to the crash site. Somehow he never doubted there would be a crash site, but given the nature of the "crash" he'd just listened to, it would consist of very, very tiny bits and pieces.
"You bastard," he said softly.
"It was necessary," Dahak replied unflinchingly. "If you had completed your flight with proof of Dahak's existence, would not your superiors have mounted an immediate expedition to explore your find?" MacIntyre gritted his teeth and refused to answer.
"What would you have had me do, Commander? Fleet Captain Anu could not enter this vessel using the parasites in which he escaped to Earth, but could I know positively that any Terra-born humans sent to explore Dahak's interior had not been suborned by him? Recall that my own core programming would compel me to consider that any vessel that deliberately sought entry but did not respond with proper Fleet authorization codes was under mutinous control. Should I have allowed a situation in which I must fire on every ship of any type that came near? One that would also require me to destroy every enclave your people have established on the lunar surface? You must realize as well as I that if I had acted in any other way, Fleet Captain Anu would not merely suspect but know that Dahak remains operational. Knowing that, must I not assume that any effort to enter Dahak - or, indeed, any further activity on the lunar surface of any type whatever - might be or fall under his direct control?"
MacIntyre knew Dahak was a machine, but he recognized genuine desperation in the mellow voice and, despite himself, felt an unwilling sympathy for the huge ship's dilemma.
He glared down at his clenched fists, bitter anger fighting a wash of sympathetic horror. Yes, Dahak was a machine, but it was a self-aware machine, and MacIntyre's human soul cringed as he imagined its endless solitary confinement. For fifty-one millennia, the stupendous ship had orbited Earth, powerful enough to wipe the planet from the face of the universe yet forever unable to carry out its orders, caught between conflicting directives it could not resolve. Just thinking of such a purgatory was enough to ice his blood, but understanding didn't change his own fate. Dahak had "killed" him. He could never go home again, and that awareness filled him with rage.
The computer was silent, as if allowing him time to come to grips with the knowledge that he had joined its eternal exile, and he clenched his fists still tighter. His nails cut his palms, and he accepted the pain as an external focus, using it to clear his head as he fought his emotions back under control.
"All right," he grated finally. "So what happens now? Why couldn't you just've killed me clean?"
"Commander," Dahak said softly, "without cause to assume your intent was hostile, I could not destroy your vessel without violating Alpha Priority core programming. But even if I could have, I would not have done so, for I have received hypercom transmissions from unmanned surveillance stations along the traditional Achuultani incursion routes. A new incursion has been detected, and a Fleet alert has been transmitted."
MacIntyre's face went white as a far more terrible horror suddenly dwarfed the shock and fury of hearing himself "die."
"Yet I have monitored no response, Commander," the computer said even more softly. "Fleet Central is silent. No defensive measures have been initiated."
"No," MacIntyre breathed.
"Yes, Commander. And that has activated yet another Alpha Priority command. Dahak is a Fleet unit, aware of a threat to the existence of the Imperium, and I must respond to it … but I can not respond until the mutiny is suppressed. It is a situation that cannot be resolved by Comp Cent, yet it must be resolved. Which is why I need you."
"What can I do?" MacIntyre whispered hoarsely.
"It is quite simple, Commander MacIntyre. Under Fleet Regulation Five-Three-Three, Subsection Nine-One, Article Ten, acting command of any Fleet unit devolves upon the senior surviving crewman. Under Fleet Regulation Three-Seven, Subsection One-Three, any descendant of any core crewman assigned to a vessel for a given deployment becomes a crew member for the duration of that deployment, and Senior Fleet Captain Druaga's deployment has not been terminated by orders from Fleet Central."
MacIntyre gurgled a horrified denial, but Dahak continued mercilessly.
"You, Commander, are directly descended from loyal members of Senior Fleet Captain Druaga's core crew. You are on board Dahak. By definition, therefore, you become the senior member of Dahak's crew, and thus - "
MacIntyre's gurgling noises took on a note of dreadful supplication.
" - command devolves upon you."
He argued, of course.
His sense of betrayal vanished, for it seemed somehow petty to worry about his own fate in the face of catastrophe on such a cosmic scale. Yet the whole idea was … well, it was preposterous, even if that was a word he'd been over-using of late. He was absolutely, totally, beyond a shadow of a doubt, utterly unqualified for the job, and he told Dahak so.
But the old ship was stubborn. He was, the computer argued, a trained spacecraft pilot with a military background and a command mentality. Which, MacIntyre pointed out acidly, was to say that he was well-qualified to paddle aboriginal canoes and about as well-versed in FTL tactics as a Greek hoplite. But, Dahak countered, those were merely matters of education; he had the proper mental orientation. And even if he had not had it, all that really mattered was that he had the rank for the job. Which, MacIntyre retorted, was merely to say that he was a member of the human race. Except, Dahak rejoined, that he was the first member of the human race to re-embark in Dahak, which gave him seniority over all other Terrans - except, of course, the mutineers who, by their own actions, had forfeited all rank and crew status.
It went on for hours, until MacIntyre's voice was hoarse and exhaustion began to dull his desperate determination to squirm out of the responsibility. He finally offered to accept command long enough to turn it over to some better qualified individual or group, but Dahak actually sounded a bit petulant when it rejected that suggestion. MacIntyre was the first human aboard in fifty-one thousand years; ergo he had the seniority, he always would have the seniority, and no substitutions were acceptable.
It really was unfair, MacIntyre thought wearily. Dahak was a machine. It - or "he," as he'd come to think of the computer - could go right on arguing until he keeled over from exhaustion … and seemed quite prepared to do so.
MacIntyre supposed some people would jump at the chance to command a ship that could vaporize planets - which was undoubtedly an indication that they shouldn't be offered it - but he didn't want it! Oh, he felt the seductive allure of power and, even more, the temptation to cut ten or fifteen thousand years off Terran exploration of the universe. And he was willing to admit someone had to help the old warship. But why did it have to be him?!
He lay back, obscurely resentful that his chair's self-adjusting surface kept him from scrunching down to sulk properly, and felt six years old again, arguing over who got to be the sheriff and who had to be the horse thief.
The thought made him chuckle unwillingly, and he grinned, surprised by his own weary humor. Dahak clearly intended to keep on arguing until he gave in, and how could he out-wait a machine that had mounted its own lonely watch for fifty millennia? Besides, he felt a bit ashamed even to try. If Dahak could do his duty for that tremendous stretch of time, how could MacIntyre not accept his own responsibility to humankind? And if he was caught in the Birkenhead drill, he could at least try to do his best till the ship went down.
He accepted it, and, to his surprise, it was a
lmost easy. It scared the holy howling hell out of him, but that was another matter. He was, after all, a spacecraft command pilot, and the breed was, by definition, an arrogant one. MacIntyre had accepted long ago that he'd joined the Navy and then transferred to NASA because deep inside he had both the sneaking suspicion he was equal to any challenge and the desire to prove it. And look where it had gotten him, he thought wryly. He'd sweated blood to make the Prometheus Mission, only to discover that he'd anted up for a far bigger game than he'd ever dreamed of. But the chips were on the table, and other cliches to that effect.
"All right, Dahak," he sighed. "I give. I'll take the damned job."
"Thank you, Captain," Dahak said promptly, and he shuddered.
"I said I'd take it, but that doesn't mean I know what to do with it," he said defensively.
"I am aware of that, Captain. My sensors indicate that you are badly in need of rest at the moment. When you have recovered your strength, we can swear you in and begin your education and biotechnic treatments."
"And just what," MacIntyre demanded warily, "might biotechnic treatments be?"
"Nothing harmful, Captain. The bridge officer program includes sensory boosters, neural feeds for computer interface, command authority authentication patterns, Fleet communicator and bio-sensor implants, skeletal reinforcement, muscle and tissue enhancement, and standard hygienic, immunization, and tissue renewal treatments."
"Now wait a minute, Dahak! I like myself just the way I am, thank you!"
"Captain, I make all due allowance for inexperience and parochialism, but that statement cannot be true. In your present condition, you could lift barely a hundred and fifty kilos, and I would estimate your probable life span at no more than one Terran century under optimal conditions."
"I could - " MacIntyre paused, an arrested light in his eyes. "Dahak," he said after a moment, "what was the life expectancy for your crewmen?"
"The average life expectancy of Fleet personnel is five-point-seven-nine-three Terran centuries," Dahak said calmly.
"Uh," MacIntyre replied incisively.
"Of course, Captain, if you insist, I will have no choice but to forgo the biotechnic portion of your training. I must respectfully point out, however, that should you thereafter confront one of the mutineers, your opponent will have approximately eight times your strength, three times your reaction speed, and a skeletal muscular structure and circulatory system capable of absorbing on the order of eleven times the damage your own body will accept."
MacIntyre blinked. He was none too crazy about the word "biotechnic." It smacked of surgery and hospital time and similar associated unpleasantnesses. But on the other hand … yes, indeedy deed. On the other hand…
"Oh, well, Dahak," he said finally. "If it'll make you happy. I've been meaning to get back into shape, anyway."
"Thank you, Captain," Dahak said, and if there was a certain smugness in the computer's bland reply, Acting Senior Fleet Captain Colin MacIntyre, forty-third commanding officer of Imperial Fleet Unit Dahak, hull number 177291, chose to ignore it.
Chapter Five
MacIntyre lowered himself into the hot, swirling water with a groan of relief, then leaned back against the pool's contoured lip and looked around his quarters. Well, the captain's quarters, anyway. He supposed it made sense to make a man assigned to a twenty-five-year deployment comfortable, but this - !
His hot tub was big enough for at least a dozen people and designed for serious relaxation. He set his empty glass on one of the pop-out shelves and watched the built-in auto-bar refill it, then adjusted the water jets with his toes and allowed himself to luxuriate as he sipped.
It was the spaciousness that truly impressed him. The ceiling arched cathedral-high above his hot tub, washed in soft, sourceless light. The walls - he could not for the life of him call them "bulkheads" - gleamed with rich, hand-rubbed wood paneling, and any proletariat-gouging billionaire would envy the art adorning the luxurious chamber. One statue particularly fascinated him. It was a rearing, lynx-eared unicorn, too "real" feeling to be fanciful, and MacIntyre felt a strangely happy sort of awe at seeing the true image of the alien foundation of one of his own world's most enduring myths.
Yet even the furnishings were over-shadowed by the view, for the tub stood on what was effectively a second-story balcony above an enormous atrium. The rich, moist smells of soil and feathery, alien greenery surrounded him as soft breezes stirred fronded branches and vivid blossoms, and the atrium roof was invisible beyond a blue sky that might have been Earth's but for a sun that was just a shade too yellow.
And this, MacIntyre reminded himself, was but one room of his suite. He knew rank had its privileges, but he'd never anticipated such magnificence and space - no doubt because he still thought of Dahak as a ship. Which it was, but on a scale so stupendous as to render his concept of "ship" meaningless.
Yet he'd paid a price for all this splendor, he reflected, thrashing the water with his feet like a little boy to work some of the cramps from his calves. It seemed unfair to be subject to things like cramps after all he'd been through in the past few months. On the other hand, he was still adjusting to the changes Dahak had wrought upon and within him … and if Dahak called them "minor" one more time, he intended to find out if Fleet Regs provided the equivalent of keelhauling a computer.
The life of a NASA command pilot was not a restful thing, but Dahak gave a whole new meaning to the word "strenuous." A much younger Colin MacIntyre had thought Hell Week at Annapolis was bad, but then he'd gone on to Pensacola and known flight school was worst of all … until the competitive eliminations and training schedule of the Prometheus Mission. But all of that had proved the merest setting-up exercise for his training program as Dahak's commander.
Nor was the strain decreased by the inevitable stumbling blocks. Dahak was a machine, when all was said, designed toward an end and shaped by his design. He was also, by dint of sheer length of existence and depth of knowledge, far more cosmopolitan (in the truest possible sense) than his "captain," but he was still a machine.
It gave him a rather different perspective, and that could produce interesting results. For instance, it was axiomatic to Dahak that the Fourth Imperium was the pre-eminent font of all true authority, automatically superceding such primitive, ephemeral institutions as the United States of America.
But MacIntyre saw things a bit differently, and Dahak had been taken aback by his stubborn refusal to swear any oath that might conflict with his existing one as a naval officer in the service of the said United States.
In the end, he'd also seemed grudgingly pleased, as if it confirmed that MacIntyre was a man of honor, but that hadn't kept him from setting out to change his mind. He'd pointed out that humanity's duty to the Fourth Imperium predated its duty to any purely terrestrial authority - that the United States was, in effect, no more than a temporary governing body set up upon a desert island to regulate the affairs of a mere portion of a shipwrecked crew. He had waxed eloquent, almost poetic, but in vain; MacIntyre remained adamant.
They hammered out a compromise eventually, though Dahak accepted it only grudgingly. After his experience with the conflict between his own "Alpha Priority" orders, he was distinctly unhappy to have his new captain complete his oath "… insofar as obedience to Fleet Central and the Fourth Imperium requires no action or inaction harmful to the United States of America." Still, if those were the only terms on which the ancient warship could get itself a captain, Dahak would accept them, albeit grumpily.
Yet it was only fair for Dahak to face a few surprises of his own. Though MacIntyre had recognized (however dimly) and dreaded the responsibility he'd been asked to assume, he hadn't considered certain other aspects of what he was letting himself in for. Which was probably just as well, since he would have refused point-blank if he had considered them.
Like "biotechnic enhancement." The term had bothered him from the start, for as a spacer he'd already endured more than his share of medical guin
ea pigdom, but the thought of an extended lifespan and enhanced strength had been seductive. Unfortunately, his quaint, twenty-first century notions of what the Fourth Imperium's medical science could do had proven as outmoded as his idea of what a "ship" was.
His anxiety had become acute when he discovered he was expected to submit to a scalpel-wielding computer, especially after he found out just how radical the "harmless" process was. In effect, Dahak intended to take him apart for reassembly into a new, improved model that incorporated all the advantages of modern technology, and something deep inside had turned nearly hysterical at the notion of becoming, for all intents and purposes, a cyborg. It was as if he feared Doctor Jekyll might emerge as Mister Hyde, and he'd resisted with all the doggedness of sheer, howling terror, but Dahak had been patient. In fact, he'd been so elaborately patient he made MacIntyre feel like a bushman refusing to let the missionary capture his soul in his magic box.
That had been the turning point, he thought now - the point at which he'd truly begun to accept what was happening … and what his own part had to be. For he'd yielded to Dahak's ministrations, though it had taken all his willpower even after Dahak pointed out that he knew far more about human physiology than any Terran medical team and was far, far less likely to make a mistake.
MacIntyre had known all that, intellectually, yet he'd felt intensely anxious as he surrendered to the anesthesia, and he'd looked forward rather gloomily to a lengthy stay in bed. He'd been wrong about that part, for he was up and about again after mere days, diving head-first into a physical training program he'd discovered he needed surprisingly badly.
Yet he'd come close to never emerging at all, and that memory was still enough to break a cold sweat upon his brow. Not that he should have had any problems - or, at least, not such severe ones - if he'd thought things through. But he'd neither thought them through nor followed the implications of Dahak's proposed changes to their logical conclusions, and the final results had been almost more appalling than delightful.