by Max Barry
“It’s ready to go,” he said. “But I want to stress again, using it will kill us all.”
“Just want it in the back pocket, Intel,” Jackson said. She counted down to contact: twenty seconds, ten. On Gilly’s board, the pulse system juddered.
Anders: “Firing. Firing.”
Jackson: “Seeing that.”
“No hits. Hostiles turned. They anticipated the pulse. Now again. Coming back at us. Count me down, Weapons.”
“Pulse ready in ten seconds.”
Gilly: “What’s that I’m seeing at range?”
Jackson: “It’s . . .”
“Looks like a hive bomb.”
“It’s . . . yes. Seventh hive, not expelling, no soldiers. Initial composition profile resembles the bomb. Contact in ninety seconds. Should be safe to pulse until then. Intel, verify, please.”
“Already on it.”
“Total hostile numbers at twenty-two thousand.”
Beanfield: “Twenty-two thousand?”
“Pulsing,” said Anders.
Twenty-two thousand, Gilly thought. That would make it the largest engagement of the war.
“Hostiles down. Nineteen thousand remain.”
“Whoa,” Gilly said. “Nineteen?”
“Nineteen, affirmative.”
“How can there be nineteen? Were they all inside pulse range?” He left the hive composition analysis to check the attack pattern himself. An arc of salamanders sprung up before him, closing toward a small blue dot. He manipulated the field, zooming in.
“Yes.”
“This formation is new. They’re in layers.”
Anders: “Pulsing in ten.”
“They’re shielding each other.”
“From the pulse?” Jackson said.
“Yes. The inner ring takes the brunt of the force. The ones behind are protected.”
“Pulsing,” Anders said.
“What does it mean?”
“It means they’re going to get closer. A lot closer.”
Jackson: “Hostiles down. Minor debris cascade. Seventeen thousand remain.”
“Only two thousand casualties that time? Two?” The destructive power of the pulse increased as the enemy grew closer. Additionally, it was impacting already damaged units. They should have been dying in greater numbers.
“We dialed it down,” Anders said. “Pulsed at only seventy percent.”
“Why?”
“Dunno. Ask the ship.”
He opened his mouth to make a hotheaded reply. Jackson said, “Ship is worried about the bomb.”
That was probably true. The hive bomb was still outside their theoretical pulse range, but a lot about it was unknown. He could understand if the ship wasn’t taking chances. “They’re going to reach huk range.”
“In thirty seconds, yes.”
“Pulsing in ten,” Anders said. “But we’re still dialing down. Fifty percent now, and dropping.”
“Shit,” Gilly said.
“I’m just going to say it,” Anders said. “Manual control?”
“No.” He stared at the shrinking ring of salamanders.
“Pulse is cold,” Anders said. “Ship has disabled it. What’s it doing, Gilly?”
He didn’t answer. They couldn’t know what the ship was doing; that was the point.
Jackson: “We have laser contact in five, yes, Weapons?”
“Yes. Three. Two. One. Firing. All batteries firing.”
On Gilly’s board, lines appeared in the salamander rings. Lasers, punching through their ranks. The ship didn’t normally resort to lasers, since they weren’t very effective when the enemy was spread out. But of course now they weren’t. They were in layers.
Jackson: “Mass casualties. Rising fast. Debris cascade. Scan obscured.”
Beanfield: “Power loss. Noncritical. We’re sucking juice from everywhere.”
Anders: “All batteries still firing.”
The salamander rings broke, fuzzed.
Jackson: “What are you seeing, Intel?”
“What?”
“The cores. Everything look normal to you?”
“Uh . . . everything’s green, yes.”
Anders: “Batteries eighteen through twenty-nine topping out.”
Jackson: “Intel, I want to be absolutely clear on this, you’re seeing no systems change? Nothing at all?”
“Nothing at all.”
Beanfield: “Power levels returning to normal across decks.”
Anders: “Retiring batteries eighteen through twenty-nine.”
“Thank you,” Jackson said. “One or two thousand surviving hostiles, but they’re dropping fast.”
“Banks nine through eighteen retiring. Banks one through eight. All batteries have ceased firing.”
“Reading zero hostiles. But with this much debris, it’ll take a minute to verify. In the meantime, we’re coming up on contact range with the hives.”
“Ship knew what it was doing,” Gilly said. “Had a plan all along.” He felt embarrassed. And worse than that: exposed. He had been trumpeting the ship’s infallibility since he boarded. But apparently he didn’t believe in it as deeply as he’d thought. “I want to apologize for my behavior.”
“No need,” Jackson said. “Hard starboard burn. We’re taking a wide berth of the bomb.”
“Good,” Beanfield said.
“Firing,” Anders said. “Batteries one through four.”
“First hive is down. Second hive. Third. It’s . . . all six initial hives destroyed.”
“Laser batteries returning to stow.”
“That’s it?” Beanfield said.
“Looks like it,” Jackson said. “We’re moving on. Ignoring the bomb.”
“What happened to scouring? Don’t we need to scour, Gilly?”
“It might be too dangerous,” he said. “Could be the ship’s decided it’s not worth the risk to scour.” He felt stupid and outclassed. He had no business trying to second-guess the AI. He should have known better than to try.
“All right, then. Engagement closed,” Jackson said. “If my math is right, we are now on track to pass Fire of Montana’s record.”
“Oh my God, yes,” Beanfield said. “At this rate, we’ll overtake their total accumulated kills by end of tour. Is that right, Intel?”
“Sure,” he said. “Sounds right.”
* * *
—
In debrief, Jackson stepped through the engagement, but there wasn’t a whole lot to say. They had encountered enemies; the ship had destroyed them; they’d done this dance before. Gilly had checked and double-checked, but there had been no unusual system activity during the engagement.
“So we’re back to standard ops,” Jackson said. “But we’re also deeper in enemy space than anyone’s ever been, so let’s stay sharp.”
“I wonder why we’re not scouring,” Beanfield said. “It almost feels like the ship’s in a hurry. Like it’s trying to get somewhere.” She looked at him, but he didn’t know what she was suggesting. “Like maybe the salamander homeworld.”
“Salamanders don’t have a homeworld,” Gilly said shortly. “They’re fully adapted for vacuum.”
“Some people say there’s a home.”
“Those people are wrong. If they came from a planet, we’d be able to deduce what it looked like from their physiology.”
“Can you ratchet down the aggression a tad?” Beanfield said.
“I’m just saying.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry.” He was jumpy and irritable. In between the engagement and debrief, he had run a probe on core bank 996, because it would have made a lot of sense to him if the ship’s room-hiding behavior could be traced back to a fault there, sustained either during the original damage or the subsequent self-repair
. But as best he could tell, the core was functioning exactly as it should be. So there was no good explanation.
“They have to come from somewhere,” Beanfield said.
“A mystery for the ages,” Jackson said. “I think we’re done. I recommend everyone grab sleep. I’ll pull a solo shift.” She glanced at Anders. “You still have forty-eight hours of confinement.”
Anders didn’t react, but Beanfield jumped as if someone had goosed her. “We can discuss that.”
“It’s already decided,” Jackson said, and left.
“Let me talk to her,” Beanfield said, after a moment. This sounded slightly mutinous to Gilly. He didn’t know why she was surprised that Anders’s sentence had only been delayed. That was common sense.
Anders shrugged.
“No one’s going to confine you.”
“Do the crime, pay the time,” Gilly said.
“Shut the fuck up, Gilly,” Beanfield said.
He stood. That was a pretty aggressive comment, he felt. But he let it go. Jackson was right. They had been on edge for days. Everyone would feel better after sleep.
* * *
—
He returned to his cabin and recorded a clip while he undressed. Normally, he tried to structure his thoughts for a particular audience, Service or his colleagues at Surplex or the general public, but he was tired and degenerated into a ramble that was mostly for his own benefit. He figured Service could figure out what to do with it. “As we’ve encountered new hazards and the ship has developed more sophisticated responses, it’s become harder for me to guess what it’s doing, or why,” he said. “It actually makes me wonder if I’ve ever been able to.”
He unstrapped his survival core and hung it by his bed. He balled his shirt and tossed it into a chute and pulled open a drawer and there was a new shirt, of course, white and pressed and never worn before, because the ship manufactured them.
“I’ve been concerned about the ship exhibiting aberrant behavior. But I’m starting to think it might not be aberrant at all. I’m fooling myself if I think there’s a line I can distinguish between logical and illogical AI behavior. The reality is, it’s all beyond my ability to assess. Maybe the ship hiding Eng-13 is the result of a fault I haven’t been able to detect, but maybe it’s just natural emergent behavior from an AI system that’s so intelligent, it is, in a lot of ways . . .”
He trailed off. He didn’t want to say the word alive. And not just because it seemed so silly, putting that on an official record, but also because, alone in his cabin, it suddenly felt like the ship was listening. He didn’t want it to hear him.
He shook his head. “I’m tired,” he said. “I’m not making a lot of sense. I’ll pick this up tomorrow.”
* * *
—
He was yanked from a depthless slumber by a low bleating. He sat up, groggy. The walls glowed purple. He pulled on his film and saw:
□ CORE #0127 SELF-CHECK FAILED (ENG-6)
It was the kind of thing that used to appear back when he had puzzles. He fitted his survival core, grabbed his belt and tools, and headed for K Deck.
Jackson popped into his ear, asking what was happening. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just woke.” He reached the ladder and spun the hatch.
“We’ve been engaging hostiles,” Jackson said, “for the last three hours.”
“What? While I was sleeping?” That couldn’t be right. He wouldn’t have slept through the klaxon. If it was met with no response, it would become progressively louder. At a certain point, the light would become bright enough to sear through his eyelids.
“There was no call to station. I’m only finding out about it now.”
The ladder was mechanized but he let himself slide as well, for additional speed. A small dark object struck his foot and blurred past his face. “What—”
“You all right?”
He gripped the ladder and punched a tactile button to make it stop descending. “There’s something in the ladder shaft.”
Beanfield: “Is this an engagement?”
Jackson: “Unclear. Attend station until we know. Intel, what’s going on?”
He peered past his boots. There was movement down there. Multiple dark shapes. “It’s full of crabs.”
“What are they doing?”
“I don’t know.” He began to descend manually, one rung at a time. He was focused on what was happening below and didn’t notice that more crabs were descending from above until they scuttled past him. “God, shit!”
“Intel?”
“Nothing. Sorry. It’s fine. More crabs. They’re going the same way I am.”
“Toward Eng-6?”
That would make sense. If there was a fault, the ship would call crabs to it. “I think so.”
“Get down there, please,” Jackson said. “I want eyes.”
He resumed his descent. “If we’ve been fighting for three hours, how many hostiles was that?”
“Not many. Two or three hundred. From what I’m seeing, it wasn’t one large engagement but a dozen or so small ones.”
“Three hundred salamanders from twelve engagements?” That was hardly any. They had never encountered so few at once; no one had. “From how many hives?”
“One. And that was in the early stages of construction. No soldiers.”
“So, what, they just roam around in space now?”
“Apparently,” said Jackson. “This deep in VZ, I guess they do.”
“Or they’ve evolved new tactics,” he said, and stepped on a crab. He kicked it off the ladder and continued. “I’m almost at K Deck. There are crabs everywhere.”
“At station,” said Beanfield. “Life, checking in.”
He wondered about Anders. He didn’t know whether Anders had actually been returned to confinement. Then his boots found solid ground and there were so many crabs he couldn’t move without treading on them. The air was filled with the clicking and chittering of their movement. “Lights,” he said, because it was dark, and the ship didn’t seem to have registered his arrival. The walls glowed yellow, then began to cycle purple, as they had above. “Holy shit.”
“What is it?”
The corridor was full of crabs. They carpeted every surface, walls, ceiling, flowing like a tide toward Eng-6, swarming over each other. They bubbled from the ladder shaft and swept by, submerging his boots. “Got a buttload of crabs here.”
“Can you see Eng-6?”
“Not yet.” He began to wade through the crabs.
“Intel, I’m transferring control of the AI kill switch to Command.”
“Ah,” he said, “why?”
“Because I’m at station and you’re down there.”
He hated that. But it was hard to argue. She was the captain. Ultimately, it was her call. “Everything is fine at the moment.”
“Except for the unexplained fault,” Jackson said. “And the thousand crabs. And the secret engagements.”
“Anders is dark on ping,” Beanfield said. “With permission, Command, I’d like to force his location.”
“What are you talking about? He’s in quarters. He’s confined.”
“Actually, there’s an issue with that that I want to discuss with you.”
“Are you telling me you released him?”
“It’s complicated,” Beanfield said.
There was a metal squeal. Gilly peeled off his film to get a fix on its direction. It seemed to be coming from dead ahead. He pushed on, forging through crabs, trying to ignore the sensation of little spindly legs beneath his boots. When he reached Eng-6, he found crabs massed around the doorway, limbs weaving, knitting. The edges of the doorway were disappearing. The crabs were converting it to a wall.
He lunged forward and swiped at them with his gloves. “They’re walling up Eng-6!” He jammed his fil
m back on and kicked at a cluster near the floor, scattering them. “Fucking crabs everywhere!”
“Say again?” Jackson said.
The squeal came again, louder, and this time he located it as coming from Eng-6. He ducked through the doorway. Inside was Anders, kneeling atop one of the green core bank housings, pushing Gilly’s drill through the thick translucent polymer.
He was frozen by the insanity of what he was seeing. “Anders!”
Anders looked up. He had gotten himself a long screwdriver to use as a drill bit, Gilly saw. Of course he had. Gilly had described the technique in debrief.
“What are you doing?”
Anders hunched over the drill and drove it downward. White smoke leaped and twisted. Lines appeared on Gilly’s film:
□ CORE #0127 SELF-CHECK FAILED (ENG-6)
□ CORE #0126 SELF-CHECK FAILED (ENG-6)
Anders jumped down from the housing. He began to climb the adjoining one.
“What?” Gilly said. “What?”
“What’s happening down there, Intel?”
“Anders is drilling the ship!” He couldn’t understand what Anders was hoping to accomplish. “He’s destroying cores!”
“Anders,” said Jackson. “Stand the fuck down.”
Anders spun the drill experimentally, positioning it over the housing. “We don’t need the AI. I can run Weapons.”
“No, no, don’t drill it,” Gilly said. “Don’t drill it!”
Beanfield: “Anders, you won’t be confined. Please don’t damage the ship.”
Anders leaned on the drill. It began to squeal.
“There are thousands of cores!” Gilly shouted. “You can’t drill them all! Anders, stop!” He slapped the core housing. “Anders!”
Jackson: “Gilly, take him down.”
He wasn’t sure how he would do that. When he glanced around for inspiration, he saw that the doorway had shrunk. Already it was barely a quarter of its original size. The rest was dull yellow metal. Around its edges, crabs worked, knitting, walling them in. He yelped and ran to the door and swept them away. But there were too many: As he repelled some, others surged. “Anders! Help me!” He threw a glance over his shoulder, but Anders was still intent on the drill. “Anders!”
