“AI,” Valk said.
Totally illegal. Thoroughly unethical. Somebody had recorded Valk’s brain, all his memories, his personality, his innermost thoughts and secret desires. His sense of humor. His goofy mannerisms. Put them in a computer, then told him he had lived, that he hadn’t burned to death in his fighter’s cockpit after all.
“I could have died, Lanoe,” Valk said.
“I thought you—”
“I mean, I could have died for real. Anytime I wanted to, anytime since they put me in this suit. I had an off switch. They hid it from me, but not very hard. If I’d gone looking for it I could have saved myself so much pain. I could have just stopped. It wouldn’t even have felt like dying. It wouldn’t have hurt.”
Lanoe grimaced as he pulled himself along the catwalk. His arms burned with the effort and he didn’t see that he’d made much progress.
“It’s really tempting,” Valk said. “I could do it right now.”
“I’m guessing you’re the one keeping me alive right now,” Lanoe said, looking back over his shoulder. The workers were still coming after him. Very, very slowly. “You’re slowing them down somehow.”
“P does not equal NP. It’s a kind of denial-of-service attack,” Valk said.
“Buddy, you made a lot more sense when you thought you were human.”
Valk laughed. It sounded exactly like his old, human laugh.
“The aliens who built this thing—actually, not this one, this ship was built by another ship, which was built by another ship—”
“Details later, maybe,” Lanoe suggested.
“The aliens built this thing to terraform worlds for them. Terraform is the wrong word, maybe a better term would be…sorry. Never mind. They built this thing as a construction vehicle. They knew it might run into other life-forms out there in space. People like them. They put a big subroutine in its programming telling it that it had to try to talk to any intelligent life it found. Any minds.”
“There were minds on Niraya when it arrived,” Lanoe pointed out.
“That’s the problem, of course. The aliens, when they wrote the program, they expected other self-aware creatures to be like them. To look like them. You don’t look like them, you don’t even run on the same kind of chemistry. It thinks you’re just vermin. A bug to be exterminated. Me, though—it recognized me. Because I look like it does. A computer.”
“That’s why you could understand the message it sent, the request to talk, when nobody else could,” Lanoe posited.
“Yep. It thinks I’m its peer. So it has to talk to me. Its programming requires it to answer any question I ask.”
“So you…you asked it if you could be in charge, right? If you could give it new instructions?”
“I tried that. Sorry, Lanoe, it didn’t work. I can’t tell it what to do. All I can do is ask questions. But I can ask a lot of them. Now that I know what I am, I’m not limited to asking questions verbally. I can ask them as fast as I can transfer data, and that’s very, very fast. I’m currently asking it about eight billion questions per second.”
“Hellfire.”
“Mostly the same ones over and over. It doesn’t take long for the queenship to answer them. But because P does not equal NP—sorry, I’m doing it again. Because of the way the queenship thinks, it takes processor power to answer all those questions. I’m keeping it busy, and that slows down its ability to build new drones. Or send workers to pull your legs off.”
“I…appreciate it,” Lanoe told him.
“Anything for the squadron, right? And then, when you’re done, doing whatever you plan on doing here—”
“I’ve got some—”
“Don’t tell me!” Valk insisted. “It can ask questions of me, too.”
“Oh. Sure.”
“When you’re done, then I can press the big black button. That’s all right, isn’t it? You’ll let me? You’ll give me permission to die?”
“Bastards!” Ehta shrieked, blazing away at the landers above her.
She did not look at how much power remained in her batteries. She did not want to know.
Her arm had grown numb. That might just be her suit compensating for her injury. She didn’t care.
Roan hadn’t spoken in a while.
Let her rest, Ehta thought.
“You want me? Come and get me!” she shouted.
Marines knew when not to ask too many questions.
The catwalk came to an end, its long spiral petering out to a sharp angle. An arrow pointing at the queenship’s heart.
He could see it now, a dully glowing orb of magma, maybe fifty meters across. A hell of a power source—the heat it generated could keep the queenship running nearly indefinitely. That much energy wouldn’t want to be held tight inside a little sphere like that. It must be contained inside a ridiculously powerful magnetic bottle, a field of electromagnetic radiation keeping it from expanding outward in one huge volcanic burst.
If he could find the emitters for that field, if he could put his bombs in just the right place…
The catwalks all came together around the core, some of them reaching closer than others. He saw where two of them coiled together to form a sort of platform over the core. Something dark and many-legged crouched there, huddled over a shape that might have looked human once.
“I can see you,” Lanoe told Valk.
“You shouldn’t come any closer,” Valk told him. “Lanoe—it’s dangerous. I can slow this thing down but I can’t pull its fangs.”
“Sure,” Lanoe said.
The end of his catwalk was separated from the platform by about twenty meters of open space. He could make that jump, if he was careful. He would have to aim just right. If he was off by even a couple of degrees, he would just go sailing off into nothing. Or maybe he would just throw himself right into the core. No way he could survive that.
He didn’t hesitate. Not now.
He bent his legs and put his feet against the end of the catwalk. Pushed off hard, his arms stretched out so he wouldn’t spin too badly. It wasn’t enough—he started tumbling almost instantly. His head was already pounding from the lack of gravity and now black spots swam in his vision, black spots lost against the darkness inside the queenship.
Ahead of him the platform grew in size as he neared it. Was he going to make it? So close—he felt like he could almost reach out and touch it. So close—he threw out his arms at the last possible moment and grabbed on with both hands. Momentum tried to tear his grip loose but he just held on, held on with all the strength he had.
He pulled himself up over the side of the platform. No gravity there but plenty of stanchions to hold on to. Hauled himself along until he was right next to Valk.
The big pilot was in bad shape. Several fingers had been torn off his gloves. His helmet was broken, shattered down to jagged shards that stuck up from his collar ring. There was nothing inside, no head, no skull.
When Lanoe had asked Valk to lower his helmet, back on Niraya, that was what he’d seen. Nothing. Valk’s suit was empty, with nobody inside it. The artificial intelligence that called itself Tannis Valk was contained entirely within the computers built into that heavy suit.
A bundle of thick cables snaked down inside the collar ring, presumably the conduit through which the queenship answered Valk’s interminable questions. Lanoe followed those cables up to see a thing like a millipede, a thousand segmented legs, hovering over him, anchored to the platform by a dozen thick tendrils.
Even as he saw the thing, it struck. Long thin arms shot out from its mass, stabbing down at the platform around him. Lanoe pushed himself away from the attack, but more legs kept coming at him. He had no doubt Valk was still slowing the thing down—otherwise it would have pierced him through with a hundred claws already—but it was all Lanoe could do to move out of the way of those stabbing arms.
“Hellfire,” he breathed.
The arms seemed to lurch out at him at random. One of them would strike
home before long. Lanoe tore the first bomb from his chest, pulled its arming lever. He pushed himself over to the side of the platform and threw it down, straight down at the core. It hit the containment field and just stopped, its momentum canceled out in an instant. He armed another bomb and threw it overhand and it flew true, only to stop again, well clear of the core. Like throwing pebbles into gelatin, he thought.
An arm of the millipede came down right through the sleeve of his suit, tearing through the fabric there. It didn’t break his skin but it pinned him to the floor. Another arm came down right next to his face, smashing into the girders and making them ring.
Lanoe pulled another bomb off his chest with his free arm. It was no use—he needed both hands to arm them.
He pulled hard and his pinned arm came free. Air hissed out of his suit but only for a second—the suit patched itself, foamy goo spreading across Lanoe’s bicep. He armed the bomb and tossed it. Grabbed for a fourth.
The millipede stabbed him right through the shoulder. He felt its metal claw grate against the bones in there. He cried out in agony and the bomb he’d been holding flew out of his hand, off into empty space.
The landers were stupid. They were also persistent.
Even as Ehta blazed away at them with the PBW cannon they kept testing the walls of the crater, finding solid rock that would support them so they could climb down, one at a time. She drove them back with particle beams as best she could but it was just a matter of time. There were so many of them, and they were so hard to kill.
The one in front tumbled as its legs came off. It twisted and skidded its way down the wall to collapse right at her feet. She fired a long blast right through its core, the place where all its legs came together, and it fell in a heap.
There was another one right behind it. She screamed, just incoherent noises exploding from her mouth as she fired again and again, as she poured particle beams into its whirling legs. One of those legs came up, its pointed end aimed right at her face. She cut it off at its root but two more were already descending on either side of her—the thing was right on top of her, it could just fall on her and crush her and then—and then—
She heard a shrieking roar and then rock exploded all around her, dust clouding her view. The ground shook and the lander fell away, twisting over on its side, crushing part of the already totaled rover. Ehta had no idea what was happening but she didn’t let it stop her. Another lander was already coming down the slope. She raised the cannon and aimed, and only then realized that the barrel had been sheared away, that the lander that nearly killed her had, in fact, smashed the cannon on its way down. Capacitor loops hung from its broken side and fluid ammunition leaked all over her hands.
She pushed the cannon away from her with a squeak as electric arcs jumped up and down its length, enough power to fry her if she touched it.
The ground shook again and another lander fell into the crater, a mass of twisted and fused legs that didn’t even twitch.
Something passed right over her head, its shadow making it impossible to see. She threw her arms up to protect her helmet but there was no need. That wasn’t a lander looming over her. It was a fighter.
A damned cataphract.
It was gone in a moment, but she could hear its engine whine as it looped around for another run, and she saw a lander torn apart by a disruptor round, parts of it flying in every direction. Bits of burnt wire fell down all around her like coppery snow.
“Thom,” Roan said, the first word she’d spoken in what felt like hours.
“No,” Ehta told her. “No, not Thom.”
She’d barely gotten a glimpse at the fighter as it streaked by overhead. She knew the silhouette of every spacecraft humans had ever built, though, and that had been no BR.9, of that she was sure. It was a damned Z.XIX.
What the hell was going on?
Lanoe screamed in agony as the millipede’s arm twitched inside his flesh, tearing at his muscle fiber, scoring his bone. A white pearl flashed and strobed in the corner of his vision, offering him the strongest painkillers available. He ignored it and reached up with both hands to grab the thin mechanical arm and pull—
—oh bloody, oh, all of hell’s chapels that hurts—
—pull, millimeter by millimeter, the thing out of his body, pull it even as it snagged on something, even as he felt blood pouring down his arm inside his suit and finally, with a horrible wet plop it came free, and sealant foam hissed over his front and back.
With his good arm he pulled himself along the platform. Back to the edge. Armed and threw his last two bombs.
The millipede-thing couldn’t reach him over there, right at the edge. Its arms flashed down around his boots but he just pulled them away.
In a few seconds the bombs would go off. In a few seconds everything would be over. He could just lie there and…and…
No.
Not after everything. Not if there was still something he could do.
He watched the millipede-thing’s arms come down in a wild pattern, watched it stab at the platform. Timed his move just right. Threw himself under its swaying arms, grabbed for two handfuls of Valk’s suit.
“Lanoe, leave me—I just want to die, I can do that here, you don’t need to take me with you,” Valk moaned.
“No,” Lanoe grunted. He grabbed the suit and then kicked off the platform, as hard as he could. Just as he’d hoped, the cables snaking down inside Valk’s collar ring snapped and broke free. Together they went spinning away, out of the millipede’s reach, Lanoe clutching Valk’s suit around the waist.
“Lanoe, if I’m not connected I can’t slow down the processors; you don’t need me, you can just leave me behind—”
“Negative,” Lanoe told him. “I’m out of propellant for my suit jets. I’m assuming you still have some,” he said.
“Oh,” Valk said.
Valk’s boot jets fired then, burning hard. The two of them shot forward, looped around the core, and went flying straight toward the maw, toward the web.
Behind them the bombs went off, one by one. The explosions looked like nothing more than sparks at first, sparks that stretched out along the lines of force that made up the core’s magnetic bottle. But the sparks didn’t die out—instead they grew brighter, until whole bands of fire played across the dull red surface of the magma.
Worker drones jumped toward the two pilots, flinging themselves off the catwalks, their legs moving at full speed now. One came close enough that Lanoe had to shoot it, emptying his sidearm’s magazine into its writhing shape.
Down on the platform, the millipede-thing shimmied with activity, its thousands of arms reaching for who knew what, as the queenship’s mind tried to fix what was going wrong, tried to save itself.
Then a jet of loose magma blasted upward, right through the platform, vaporizing the millipede-thing instantaneously. Arcing prominences lanced out from the core in every direction as the magnetic bottle began to fail, arcs of molten rock slagging anything they touched.
Ahead of the two pilots the web writhed and twisted back on itself, its filament arms whipping back and forth in confusion, perhaps, or even panic. Lanoe pointed at the hole in the web, the place where he’d come through, and Valk corrected their course.
Just as the magnetic bottle failed completely and the core exploded outward, expanding like a tiny nova inside the belly of the queenship.
Outside the web a lone BR.9—or what was left of it—came swooping down to meet them. Its airfoils were gone, its canopy cracked in a dozen places, its entire fuselage buckled and broken so that its fairings hung loose like the petals of a dead flower. Half of its thrusters were missing.
Through the broken canopy Lanoe saw Thom staring at him with very wide eyes.
Lanoe found a broken panel on the side of the fighter. He grabbed on with both hands, while Valk did the same. “Get us out of here!” Lanoe called.
“Yes, sir,” Thom said. He burned hard to get away even as the web melted, its stran
ds falling away into the red fire that burst from the queenship’s maw, a vast vomiting forth of ultrahot magma that glittered against the black of space.
Thom banked hard across the rocky face of the queenship, getting clear of that explosion. It was all Lanoe could do to hold on, his gloves locking in place as his suit compensated for the sudden maneuver.
It took him a while to realize they had company. Ships—dozens of them—flying in formation, keeping a set distance away from the BR.9 but matching its course exactly. No, he thought, no, not after all that. The humblest alien scout could easily burn them all to a crisp, as beaten up and wrecked as they were. If there were any interceptors in that formation, they were—
Then he actually looked at their escort. Blinked a few times.
Those weren’t alien drones.
They were Z.XIXs. Cataphract fighters.
One shifted inward until it was flying right along side them. Until Lanoe could look through its canopy and see its pilot.
“Did someone call for the cavalry?” Maggs asked.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The Hoplite-class cruiser had a wide hangar bay amidships, capable of holding a dozen cataphract fighters. One of those berths had been cleared out to make room for the prize specimen of the expedition: an alien lander, missing only two of its multitudinous legs. It had been carefully drained of power until it was no longer dangerous, but it still twitched every now and then like a sleeping dog, probably aware that there were living things nearby and searching for a way to get at them.
It had been found floating loose in space near the ruined queenship, perhaps ejected during the explosion that had slagged the big alien vessel. Just getting it into the fighter bay had been a bit of a challenge, but nothing a little Navy ingenuity couldn’t master. Engineers were already studying it as the cruiser burned back toward Niraya.
On the bridge of the Hoplite, Rear Admiral Karten Wallys watched a display of the hangar deck. As the lander twitched his eyes jumped with excited light. “Oh, my, yes,” he said. “Oh, indeed. Maggsy, I believe you can tell your mother she won’t have to worry about creditors for a while.”
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