“We’re heading back to the shuttle now, Lindeman,” Max said. “In the meantime, we could use some air support.” Nearby, an enemy laser focused on another soldier’s pressure suit long enough to rupture it. The vacuum of space promptly began suctioning out his innards.
There was a pause over the radio, and then the major gave a surprised “Oh.” Apparently she hadn’t been monitoring the moon’s landscape over the last several minutes.
The ground lit up as the Absolver’s main weapon began to charge, the energy buildup casting the terrain in an ethereal blue glow.
He took the opportunity to glance behind him. For the moment, the weapon’s energy buildup had banished all shadow, and the land seemed to seethe with the number of giant centipedes giving chase.
Then the Absolver’s work began, its thick ray ravaging the moon’s surface, along with the insectile warriors that scampered across it.
The first GDA operative made it to the shuttle, which Aegis had already opened for them. He leapt inside, and the rest clamored after him.
Their numbers had been cut from forty-one to thirty-four. Not a total disaster, but Max felt every death personally.
He took the nearest crash seat and yanked off his helmet. To his right, the inner airlock hatch closed. His men were still finding their own seats, but Max turned to Aegis, who stood nearby with her hands clasped in front of her, looking forlorn.
“Take us up,” he told her. “Now!”
He felt the gentle tug that signaled liftoff. He realized most everyone in the shuttle was looking at him—probably wondering who he’d been yelling at, while staring intently into empty space. He hadn’t meant to speak so loudly to her.
Well, my order got results. So they can’t think I’ve gone completely crazy.
He wanted to continue shouting at the alien entity, to berate her for not being of more help. But he stopped himself, as he slowly realized why he was so keen to place blame.
It’s because this may have been my fault.
He could have launched into the iterations the moment they’d encountered resistance. But the attack had happened so suddenly, and he hadn’t reacted that way. But maybe he should have.
Of course, the iterations only worked when Aegis had perfect intel of a given situation, right? On Earth, with neural smart dust in everyone’s brains, she’d had that. Now, she didn’t. She had no knowledge of the Scion’s defenses.
Or did she?
“What can you tell me about the beings that attacked us down there?” This time, Max spoke more softly, to avoid the men losing any more confidence in him than they already had. Though, a few were still shooting glances at him.
Her frown deepened, and she said nothing.
“Tell me,” he growled.
“They are the Skirth. A vassal species. It would seem they were brought here by the Clemency Fleet, and the Scion now uses them to defend its points of failure.”
“Are they autonomous, or directly micromanaged by the Scion?”
“Likely autonomous, and following certain preprogrammed directives. The Scion has enough on its plate with managing the Clemency Fleet, as well as humanity’s orderly extermination.”
Max nodded impatiently. “Meaning these Skirth would almost certainly conduct combat in a way that comes naturally to them. Just like the affected humans did, on Earth. How much do you know about their psychology?”
Again, Aegis said nothing.
“Enough that you could have enabled me to run iterations that would have helped that engagement go a lot better?”
“Max…any mental simulations involving the Skirth wouldn’t have the same fidelity. They would have been built on a probabilistic framework.”
“So, maybe we wouldn’t have succeeded in infiltrating the Scion’s infrastructure. But I might have kept more of my people alive.”
“I would not have wanted you to base a plan on such an unreliable foundation.”
“Would you have helped me, if I’d asked?”
Aegis sighed—which had to be a simulation of a sigh. The alien entity didn’t actually need to breathe. “Yes, I would have, but only because denying you any request during battle would have caused you an intolerable level of stress, endangering you even further.”
At that, Max lowered his head into his hands. He could have saved more of his men. It was on him.
He became aware of several GDA soldiers shifting uncomfortably in their seats around him. A couple of muttered curses reached his ears.
What am I doing? They’d just suffered a significant setback. For him to let himself have a meltdown right now was the last thing they needed.
Taking a deep breath, he sat upright and met their eyes. Tears glistened in his, but he ignored them. They needed a show of strength.
“We just had to leave our brothers lying dead in the moon’s dust. The aliens forced us to do that. So I say, the next step for us is to make them pay. To honor the memories of the men we left down there, we will chase down that big bastard of a mother ship, and we’ll blow it to smithereens.”
Aegis raised a hand, and Max stared at her, eyebrows raised.
“You must not destroy the mother ship,” she said. “There is only one remaining option for reversing the effects of the neural smart dust on humanity and halting your species’ destruction. You must infiltrate the mother ship, not destroy her. You must replace her core with the Receptacle containing my consciousness.”
Max narrowed his eyes. “I thought that thing was needed to control the Absolver.”
“I have already copied myself into the Absolver’s control system. You are free to remove the Receptacle and take it with you.”
“Okay,” he muttered, returning his focus to his men. “Slight correction. We will chase down that big bastard, and we will infiltrate it. We’ll make it ours.”
A ragged cheer rose up from all around the shuttle. They were still ready to fight, it seemed. To the death, if need be.
Max drew air into his diaphragm, steadying himself as he tried to forget what Aegis had said about how low their chances were of winning against the mother ship.
It’s not over yet.
64
2 days to extinction
The mother ship fled across the solar system, and the Absolver followed.
Max stood inside the master control and manipulated the view outside the ship with his thoughts. Lindeman, O’Hare, and Richards were all monitoring displays and readouts around him.
Beside him, Aegis waited.
The mother ship ranged ahead, rocketing toward the Kuiper Belt, and behind them a fleet of hundreds of vessels, every one of them just as powerful as his, sped after.
The Kuiper Belt. The idea that the solar system’s asteroid belt was now a conceivable destination was making it hard for Max to focus. All his years obsessing over space, dreaming about being among the first to walk on Mars, maybe even Jupiter’s moons…knowing full well just how improbable that was…
Well, here he was. Inside an alien spaceship, screaming through the solar system at blistering speeds.
The Absolver’s mass was far less than the mother ship’s, and no matter how well the aliens had mastered gravity, simple physics meant that eventually it would catch up to the larger vessel.
Aegis estimated fifty minutes before that happened, which would be well before the mother ship reached the Kuiper Belt. It might have reached the Belt if Max, Chambers, and the other GDA soldiers hadn’t returned to their Absolver so quickly from the moon. But because they’d moved fast, they would close the distance before their quarry reached the protective ring of asteroids.
As for why the mother ship might want to reach the asteroid belt, Max’s extraterrestrial friend believed it was in hopes of throwing off its pursuer long enough to buy time for the rest of the Clemency Fleet to arrive.
That, or it sought to escape the star system altogether.
“Though that seems unlikely,” Aegis admitted. “Your system’s Oort Cloud places
a hard upper limit on the speed we can exit at. At speeds approaching superluminal, the impact of even a small icy body would disrupt a vessel’s protective gravitational field, causing intolerable levels of risk to the vessel itself.”
“So, the Oort Cloud exists, then?” Up until now, the spherical cloud of icy planetesimals had been purely theoretical. It was too far out for even humanity’s probes to have observed.
“Yes.”
Max shook his head, trying not to let the abrupt expansion of humanity’s knowledge of the universe faze him. Just another day in history.
“Tell me how to stop that mother ship long enough to board her.”
Aegis nodded. “The mother ship has three main engines, spaced evenly around the ship’s circumference. Destroying two of them will slow the vessel enough to permit our shuttle to safely board her.”
“What kind of resistance can we expect?”
“The mother ship is not like the Absolvers, which are designed for planetary assault. She is made for space combat, and has defenses that will defend her against any angle of attack. Expect to face thousands of interceptors, armed with laser weapons, as well as point defense laser turrets spaced evenly along her entire hull. Then there are the gravity cannons—two of them. One for each of the mother ship’s poles.”
That gave Max pause, as he absorbed what the alien consciousness had just told him. Then, he cursed under his breath.
“I did tell you, Max. The odds of defeating the mother ship are extremely slim.”
“But you know the interceptor’s attack patterns. You know the turrets’ targeting systems, their firing rates, their ability to track.”
“Yes.”
“So we can iterate the engagement until we find a winning attack plan.”
“That may not be enough. Remember, there is enough computational power on the mother ship to iterate reality better than I can. You also need to remember that while you can iterate an attack plan, you cannot ensure your pilots will execute it perfectly. You must depend on sixteen separate individuals to coordinate flawlessly, and outperform the mother ship, which only need coordinate with itself.”
“And if we do manage to make it inside?”
“Then there is no guarantee I can help you, since I do not know what lies in wait for you there.”
Max drew a deep breath, and let it out as quietly as he could. He didn’t want to signal his distress to the others. “Major Lindeman—I need you, Captain O’Hare, and Lieutenant Richards to come with me. We need to prepare to launch the Larks. We’ll have contact soon.”
“Yes, sir.” Lindeman’s tone was serious, but underneath it, excitement buzzed.
She’s glad she’s going to get a chance at some action. Hopefully, she stays glad.
Somehow, that didn’t seem very likely. Max turned to Aegis. “Can you command this ship in battle? Provide us with a little support, at least?”
“Of course. If this engagement is to end in victory, the Absolver will be of critical importance. But remember, the Absolver is a planetary assault vessel, and in space combat she is outclassed by the mother ship. Her primary effect will likely be to cause the mother ship to turn its vulnerable underbelly away from our main weapon. The mother ship will also likely direct its gravity cannons at the Absolver, though you should be wary of its fire as well.”
“Okay. But you can control the Absolver, to some effect at least.”
“I have copied and downloaded myself into its command systems, so yes. But you will also need to take the Receptacle with you onto the mother ship.” She gestured toward the pedestal in the master control’s center, which held the gray block where Aegis said her consciousness resided.
Max walked toward the pedestal, which had three claw-like protrusions that held the block in place—not that there was ever any jostling that would knock it off. Max picked up the Receptacle with both hands, then glanced back at Aegis, eyebrows raised. She nodded.
The three fighter pilots were studying him with expressions that ranged from confused to concerned. He gave them what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
“We already have them on the run,” he told them. “Now, let’s hunt.”
65
2 days to extinction
For the first time ever, Max sat in the cockpit of an actual Lark X-1, waiting to launch into combat.
In a way, it felt unearned. He was supposed to undergo years more of training before he reached this moment.
But mostly, it felt right.
Very right.
Using a wave of repulsive gravity, the Absolver’s landing bay would be able to fling them, adding its speed to theirs and giving them the jump on the fleeing mother ship.
Aegis had been forthcoming about that, at least. But what else isn’t she telling me? As much as she kept claiming that withholding information from him would reduce his stress levels, the idea that she was still hiding something from him was stressing him out all on its own.
“Max,” she said into his head, without appearing to him. He supposed that would have been kind of awkward, inside the Lark’s cramped cockpit. Even if she was just an ethereal projection of his thoughts.
“Yeah?”
“I have something to tell you.”
He blinked, suddenly reexamining the idea that she couldn’t read his thoughts. “Go ahead.”
“It’s about the amygdala-suppressing drugs the GDA developed.”
“Okay.”
“They aren’t as effective as they think. It protects against the sort of general manipulation that was used on Earth’s population, but it wouldn’t defend against an attempt to directly access and exploit their neural dust.”
He narrowed his eyes. According to the Lark’s heads-up display, which tracked his eye movement across its semi-spherical screen, they were nearing the optimal launch window. The countdown timer said they should launch in just over five minutes. And she’d chosen now to bring this up?
“Are you saying there’s a risk the Scion will take remote control of my pilots?” he asked.
“No. I’m blocking the Scion’s access to them.”
“Then why are we talking about this?”
“Because you can take remote control of your pilots. If you choose to do so.”
He squinted at the lower section of the half-hemisphere that was the Lark X-1’s display. Other than the heads-up, it showed only the blue-lit landing bay, and the sliver of starlit void he could see through the aperture. The vacuum was kept at bay by yet another gravitational field, but that would change upon launch.
He shook his head. “I do not choose to do that. My pilots have their own free will. Not to mention years of experience, and skill well beyond mine.”
“If you assume control of them, you will gain access to that skill. Your consciousness will merge with theirs, except yours will remain the governing consciousness.”
“No way. I’m not going to micromanage them like that. Like they’re just a bunch of robots, or something. It would feel….” He trailed off, and a shudder passed through him. Then, he narrowed his eyes again. “Wait. If this was possible, why didn’t you just take them over yourself? It’s not like you’ve felt the need to consult me about anything else.”
“I will be honest with you.”
“That’s a first,” he muttered.
She didn’t acknowledge the remark. “It’s because I wouldn’t be able to take over your mind. And with you opposing me—with us at odds—the mission would surely fail. Which is why it must be you, if it is to be done.”
“Well, it won’t be done. So I guess that’s the end of this conversation.”
“Max, if you were to assume direct control, it would give your squadron the unity it needs to have a chance of overcoming the mother ship’s defenses. It would also dramatically improve the quality of the iterations I would be able to generate for you. Currently, your pilots themselves are variables in those iterations. Their very freedom creates excessive flux, which will render the engage
ment impossible to reliably model. But with your will governing them….”
Max found himself lowering his head into his hands again, rubbing his eyes. He suddenly felt very tired.
“Why did you wait till now to drop this on me, Tara?” In his distress, he barely registered that he’d used Tara’s name, and not Aegis. He glanced at the countdown timer, and found that he had less than three minutes till launch.
“I can only ask that you trust me when I say I’ve given you each piece of information at the optimal time.”
“I don’t trust you. That’s the thing.”
“Indeed. But more importantly, Max, you don’t trust yourself. You don’t trust yourself to be in command. To rise to the duty you are called to.” She paused, no doubt for an interval precisely calculated to elicit maximal emotional response. “The GDA hoped that the invasion of Earth would happen later. That they would have more time to prepare you. I wished for that, too. But the invasion is here, Max, and you are all we have. You are not ready. But you are all we have.”
Max stared bleakly at the countdown. Two minutes.
Aegis continued. “When I told you the probability of victory over the mother ship was small, this was the reason. It is because I knew what would be required of you, in order to win. And I knew you would refuse to do it.”
“Maybe if you’d given me more time to think about it—”
“No, Max. I can tell you with certainty that you would have thought yourself into inaction, as you have done so many times before. It is your greatest weakness. This self-inflicted paralysis. And now you will let it end your world.”
Silence fell over the cockpit, and Max watched the countdown tick past one minute. He wanted to curl into the fetal position, wanted to scream. Worst of all, he knew she was right.
Why am I so reluctant to do this?
He knew the answer, of course. It wasn’t just about the violation of stealing his pilots’ free will from them. It was also because, if any of them died in battle, he would be directly responsible for those deaths. Moreso than any commander ever had, in human history.
Mother Ship Page 31
