Five Planes

by Melissa Scott

  Milos stretched and looked around the room. The kids went to bed hours ago. Nalani, who’d dropped out a few rounds ago, was curled up on a chair like a bird in its nest, covered by the light blanket Bhagwati had draped over her. Barely-audible snores emerged now and again. The bowl that had overflowed with chips held only crumbs; his half-drunk tea was cold.

  He touched the move plate. If he got at least a four, he’d be out of the danger zone of Bhagwati’s jade properties...a six would put him on Power Generation, safe since he owned all the Utilities. By all means he had to avoid a nine, which would land him on Naksatra—Al-Ghazali had cornered all five Ships early, and that 400 credits each had been eating away at his cash all night....

  Eleven.

  He ran his eyes around the board, counting as his token skipped forward, and gave a relieved sigh. Community Center. His voucher popped up instantly: “Get out of Drop free. This voucher may be kept until needed or sold.” He tapped the voucher and it slid into place in his tray.

  He grinned. “That’ll do. Al-Ghazali?”

  “You’re too lucky.” She still smoldered from staying in Drop for four rounds, more than an hour ago. She rubbed her hands together and slapped the move plate. “Free Orbit, here I come.”

  For an instant all lights and displays blinked—off and on again, almost too fast for perception. At the same time, Al-Ghazali and Bhagwati jerked backward, and Nalani sat bolt upright, fully awake. She called out, “What in physics was that?”

  “Hold on.” Bhagwati held his right hand up to his head, touching his ring to his temple. Al-Ghazali stroked the tracery of lines and jewels on her face, and Nalani grasped her bronze forearm cuff. Something to do with codices, then. Color drained from Bhagwati’s face, and Al-Ghazali closed her eyes.

  Nalani looked up, face frozen in neutral, all business. As clearly as if she had donned robes and held a gavel, Nalani was in Supreme Justice mode. “An AI sent a call of ultimate distress. Every other AI on the ship must have received it.” She raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Quintile Illumination, what’s going on?“

  “I’m afraid I don’t recognize that question, Sen. Please say it again.”

  Milos shivered. The voice sounded superficially like Quintile Illumination’s, but flat, without affect, the kind of voice that virties used to indicate a computer.

  Bhagwati said, “My codex says the signal was interrupted. Not enough detail to identify the AI.” He frowned. “Codex thinks it might have died in mid-broadcast.”

  Nalani stood. “Quintile Illumination, please let me speak with Captain Kimura.”

  “I’m sorry, passenger, I can’t do that.”

  Milos snatched his personal board, thumbed it on, and keyed the code to connect to Quintile Illumination. No connection.

  He cleared his throat and said, slowly, ”I think I know which AI sent that message.” His eyes met Nalani’s. “We’re in trouble, aren’t we?”

  Val woke to the steady beeping of the intercom, dragged himself upright in the dark to squint at the time stamp projected on the wall. It was the end of the third watch, long before he should have to be up again—and why weren’t the lights coming on? He found the switch and pressed it, and all the lights came on at once. Something had erased his preferred settings, and he swore as he reached for the intercom switch.

  “Val Millat.”

  “—control room emergency report control room emergency report—”

  That wasn’t Quintile Illumination’s familiar voice, but a harsher, synthetic tone, a looped emergency order that sent a jolt of fear down his spine. He rolled out of his bunk, grabbing for his clothes, and began hastily to drag them on.

  “Quintile Illumination.” There was no answer, just the steady drone of the loop, and he spoke again. “Quintile Illumination?”

  Still no answer. He cleared his throat, trying to remember the lower-level protocols, then saw the acknowledgement button flashing red on his screen. He slapped that, pulled his shirt over his head, and bolted from his cabin.

  The control room was jammed with people and loud with alarms, red lights pulsing from nearly every display. The chief pilot caught his arm, dragging him to a secondary console. “Get that stabilized if you can.”

  Val dropped into the chair, blinking at readings that made no sense. The ship’s fields were drifting out of alignment, and he reached for the keyboard, trying to match those readings with the Drop display. It showed no change, no flicker of numbers at the edge of the screen to show that the calculations were still running, and he frowned more deeply, touching keys to claim a share of Quintile Illumination’s attention. The screen opened, and promptly closed.

  “I’ve got no AI,” he said, to the room, and someone answered, “No one does.”

  “We’ve lost the AI.” That was Captain Kimura, trying to sound calm in spite of her words. “Get the systems locked down, and then we’ll try to recover it.”

  We can’t fly without AI. Val suppressed a shiver of pure fear. We shouldn’t even be stable, it’s supposed to take an AI to hold us in balance against the flux—we should have blown apart the instant we lost Quintile Illumination. But those were pointless thoughts; right now, Kimura was right, they needed to get the systems back under control and then they could worry about why they weren’t dead yet. He took a deep breath, forcing himself to focus, and began adjusting the field frequencies, damping out the fluctuations until the levels steadied again.

  “Travel fields nominal,” he said.

  “Engines re-spooling,” a technician from the first watch said. “Idle achieved. We’re back on stand-by for the Drop exit.”

  “Environmentals?” Kimura asked.

  “All good. No problems there to start with.”

  “Thank physics for dumb luck,” someone said.

  “What about the passenger systems?” Kimura asked.

  “We’ve switched to backups,” the chief purser said. “It’s coarse, the Fifth Plane passengers will probably notice something different, but all passenger-facing systems and programs should function normally.”

  “Right.”

  Val risked a glance, and saw Kimura standing hands on hips, staring around the control room as though she was trying to read every display at once.

  “All right,” she said again. “We’ve lost our AI, but the ship remains intact. I want to know why.”

  Someone said something that sounded like a protest, and he saw her give a wry smile. “Maybe the reason we’re not dead can get us out of this.”

  Val blinked, then understood. If they’d lost the AI, lost the fine control over the travel and stasis fields, the ship should have pulled itself apart before slower human reflexes were able to reestablish control. Something had given them a break, and that thing might indeed hold the key to getting the AI back. He raised his voice to be heard over the general hum of conversation. “Is Quintile Illumination off line, damaged, or destroyed?”

  “What an excellent question,” Kimura said. “Fil?”

  “Working on it,” a technician answered, and a second voice said, “I’m not finding anything. Looks like the data matrix has been shredded.”

  Someone swore, and Kimura looked as though she wanted to spit. “Can you be a bit more specific?”

  “There’s nothing but hash in what should be Quintile Illumination’s volume,” the second technician said, and Fil looked up from his screen.

  “I can confirm that. Something’s wiped our AI.”

  “Back-up?” Kimura asked.

  “Also gone,” Fil said.

  The back-up wasn’t a true copy anyway, Val knew; it was more of a seed, a starter from which a damaged AI could rebuild itself. Even if the back-up hadn’t been destroyed, there wasn’t much chance it would have worked without at least some of Quintile Illumination to draw on.

  “What caused it?” a voice said, and Val saw Fil shrug.

  “Looks like some kind of software bomb. It doesn’t really matter, not right now.”

  �
�But—”

  “Fil’s right,” Kimura said. “Leave that for later. Right now, the question is, why weren’t we shredded with it? Answers, people.”

  Val turned his attention back to his screen, calling up the Drop records. For a moment, the screen simply fizzed with static, and he was afraid that the records had been destroyed with the AI, but then the image took shape. There had been another ship crowding them at Drop—yes, there it was, a small ship, transponder announcing it as the Patrika, but with a haze around the data that suggested deliberate dodging of the regulations. That would have been normal on the Second Plane, or even the Third, but it was unusual enough here to raise the hair at the back of his neck. Had the Patrika somehow set the bomb? Was that why she’d come so close to them at Drop, to narrowcast the bomb into Quintile Illumination’s memory?

  No, not that, he thought, scrolling through the screens, or at least that was highly unlikely at this point. Someone, human or machine, would have logged the data spike, and there was nothing. But the Patrika had Dropped almost simultaneously with Quintile Illumination—did that make a difference? He switched to the record of the Drop so far, and sat staring at the screen, rubbing his chin as the pictures began to come clear.

  “Captain. I think I’ve got your answer.”

  He winced, feeling all eyes turn to him, but made himself meet Kimura’s lifted eyebrows with a calm stare.

  “Go ahead.”

  “When we Dropped, there was another ship right with us, and they Dropped right after us.”

  “Practically on top of us,” the pilot said, and stopped, eyes widening.

  Val nodded. “Yeah. Exactly. We’re sharing Dropspace—I’ll bet we’re part of a simultaneity, but at the least we’re in the same Dropspace. I think that’s what’s keeping us stable. We’re entrained with them for at least the length of the Drop.”

  “And when they complete their Drop,” the pilot said, “then we’re torn apart.”

  Val winced again. “Probably.”

  “Can we contact them?” That was one of the technicians. “Can they, I don’t know, pull us through the Drop with them?”

  “They’re small,” Val said. “We—I’d think we’re carrying too much mass.”

  “But we’re entrained, you think,” Kimura said. “All right. That buys us some time. Thank physics this is setting up to be a long Drop! Right. I want Tiger Team protocol—best of every watch, doing nothing but work the problem. That’s you, Fil, Marti, Jessick, Nomar—and you, Sen Millat. We’ve got a little time. Don’t waste it.”

  Val pushed himself out of his chair to follow the rest of the newly-designated Tiger Team. Kimura was right, they had to find a way to save the ship before the Patrika’s Drop ended, but he couldn’t help thinking they also ought to spare a thought for how this had happened. He shoved that worry away: they would have enough to do just to survive.

  1.16 Hope

  Milos probed the shared dataspace that Quintile Illumination had set up for him. It was like being in a cavernous, empty warehouse devoid not only of goods, but of lighting and shelving and vents. Whatever destroyed the AI, it scrubbed memory down to the substrate level.

  In his career, Milos had seen only a handful of systems reduced to this level. Even the OS was gone; in its place was a kind of phantom scaffolding, not so much a memory of the order that had been, as a potential for order that could be.

  He could restore the large data block that Quintile Illumination gave him, like moving containers back into the bare warehouse…but it would still be locked and encrypted, with no guiding intelligence to wield the keys or read the data. It would do no good, anyway. that data block wasn’t strictly even part of Quintile Illumination’sworking memory, but only a fragment snatched during the AI’s previous life as Immanent Elliptical—and from yet a third, unknown ship. A ghost of a ghost of a ghost, probably very interesting but useless in their current dilemma.

  Riding alongside the shadow of lattice walls, Milos moved up into main memory.

  If his dataspace was an empty warehouse, main memory was an interstellar void—an emptiness beyond reckoning, defined but not at all constrained by gridwork so intangible it might as well be the fading impression of a dream. The warehouse was like a space unused but waiting to be filled—this void reeked of the absence of what was gone. Not so long ago it was filled with life and action, structured by purpose, and it ached to be so again.

  Far away, in the corner of his eye, something moved.

  The illusory gridwork offered no resistance; in an instant Milos was there, facing an indistinct caricature of a person. The figure stopped, turned to him.

  “Who in physics are you?”

  Milos kept his own image sketchy, the same sort of cartoon figure. “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “Nomar, tiger team. You’re a passenger. You don’t belong here.”

  “Wait. I can h—” Too late. Milos’s display went blank, and he ripped off his dataspex. A few attempts to log on showed him that the other had locked him out of the AI.

  Nalani, flanked by the Apprentices, sat watching him. He shook his head. “Quintile Illumination has been completely erased. The ship has no AI.” He sighed. “I ran into a crewmember, but they threw me off the system and locked me out without listening.”

  Al-Ghazali shivered and stared at her hands, clenched before her on the table. “No ship’s AI means we can’t leave Drop, doesn’t it?”

  The Apprentices looked to Milos, and he looked in turn to Nalani. I’ll bet she gets tired if that, he thought. When things go wrong, look to Nalani to fix them.

  Nalani put a hand on Al-Ghazali’s. “Of course it doesn’t. Look to the records. Passengers of Origami Flame v PlaneWays Transport.” She pulled at her lower lip. “Captain Kimura’s got to be busier than an accountant in Trey. I hate to pull rank, but it can’t be helped.” She glanced around. “Milos, come with me. Bhagwati, you’re in charge of the children. Al-Ghazali…”

  The Apprentice looked up at her, face pale and strained.

  Nalani patted her hands. “You stay here and fret. Fret for all of us.” She stood. “Come on, Milos, we’re going to crew country.”

  It didn’t take more than half an hour to see the Captain. A steward took Nalani and Milos into the depths of the ship, where they waited in what seemed to be a small crew lounge near the bridge. Nalani took deep, slow breaths while she composed her thoughts.

  She'd had been through enough crises, of all sorts, to know that people like Kimura reacted one of two ways to a Supreme Justice. Strong ones blustered, resenting what they saw as incompetent authority trying to usurp them; weak ones simpered, grateful for her presence and wanting to surrender command to her.

  Neither was helpful, and she had strategies to bypass either response. It took time to coddle tender egos, but ultimately it was time well spent.

  Kimura surprised her with a third response pattern. The short, brown woman, whose mussed hair seemed distinctly more grey than it had at the first-night Captain’s Reception, bowed. “Supreme Justice, I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. I intend to assign a crewmember to keep you informed, as soon as—”

  “As soon as you have a chance to breathe,” Nalani finished for her. “Don’t stand on ceremony on my account, Captain. I’d rather you put your efforts where they’re clearly going, dealing with this crisis.”

  “Thank you, Supreme Justice. Still, I’ll see that you and your party are fully briefed.”

  “We know the outline, Captain. Ship’s AI is gone, with all that implies about our chances to survive this Drop. I wouldn’t have bothered you except that I can offer help.”

  Kimura’s eyes narrowed a trifle. “What sort of help?”

  She held up her wrist, showing the bronze cuff of her codex. “Three Judiciary-class AIs.” She pulled Milos forward. “And an experienced data archaeologist at your service.”

  Kimura blinked. “Data archaeologist?”

  Milos bowed. “Milos Savoire. I’m s
omewhat familiar with your AI, and I’ve worked with Judiciary codices before.”

  With a smile, Kimura clapped Milos on the shoulder. “Welcome, sen. I’ll put you in with our tiger team.” She regarded Nalani’s codex. “I don’t know if your AIs can be made compatible with ship’s systems, or if they can handle Drop calculations…but I would guess you just improved our chances substantially.”

  “It’s possible,” Nalani said. “You’re probably not aware of a case called Passengers of Origami Flame v PlaneWays Transport. No reason you should, it was centuries ago. The ship Origami Flame lost its AI mid-Drop. The crew was able to navigate to safety by using the codex en counsel with Tribonius III.” She closed her eyes. “There’s not a lot of technical information in the records, only a few documents that were entered in evidence. But if they did it then, I’m sure your crew can figure out how to do it now.”

  Kimura held out her hand, and Nalani squeezed it. “Supreme Justice, you may have saved us all. I’ve got to get this news—and Sen Savoire—to our tiger team. You’re welcome to…”

  Nalani shook her head. “I’m going back to my quarters where I won’t be in the way. We’ll be standing by; one of you will tell us when and where we’re needed.” She gripped Milos by the elbow. “We’ll take care of Zofia and Dav. Go and be helpful.”

  Val pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, each elbow carefully planted on tiny empty spots on the console. Between the actual controls and the chips and reader boards that people had unearthed to help with the solution, there was barely an uncluttered spot in the backup control room. It was now the situation room, filled with the tiger team and Captain Kimura — no, Val realized, she was gone again, presumably back to the main control room to make sure they stayed flying… It had been eight hours since he’d been called to the emergency, and he’d only had a couple of hours sleep at that point.