Light Chaser

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “Copy that, Mnemosyne,” the defence station AI sent back. “I have a full manufactory facility which should be able to produce the components you require. Please advise what happened to your AI.”

  Another day for the reply, and it came with dozens of video files and log data. “I think the processing substrate was hit by an EMP and temperature surge when two fusion generators were destroyed, the decks around the substrate were fried by the plasma released when the confinement field ruptured—see attached videos and damage schematic. It was a complete mess in there when I finally got entry. To be honest, it took me a month to rebuild the network up to the functionality needed to restart the drive. If the surviving fluxfabrik systems didn’t have failsafes, I’d have been right up shit creek. We were at point-nine-three lightspeed when this all happened.”

  The defence station AI reviewed the data. It was clear the impact had triggered a catastrophic domino effect that no contingency design could ever have anticipated. With the plasma from two wrecked fusion generators venting inside the Mnemosyne, the starship was fortunate its overall integrity had held. Observing the ruined, airless cabins of the life support section, several of which were decorated with frozen fish corpses, it was clear that Amahle was a remarkably capable captain. Not many in her situation would have been able to repair enough systems to resume their flight.

  “I will prepare the main dock for you,” the defence station AI replied.

  Amahle acknowledged with a terse message. The defence station AI continued to track the incoming starship’s erratic thrust as it approached over the next month, becoming alarmed by the increasing instabilities. By the time it was twenty million kilometres out, the fluxfabrik had failed completely, leaving the massive two-kilometre structure naked to space.

  Finally, Mnemosyne was hovering above the station’s main dock, a somewhat crude open-cradle affair on the surface of the moon. Long lines of ion thrusters glowed like patches of midsummer sky along the starship’s spine on the final approach phase. The external damage to the engineering decks was very apparent to the AI; whole segments of the elegant hull were twisted and melted, with a deep hole exposing the ruined decks to vacuum where the impact had occurred. Thankfully, the moon’s microgravity allowed the thrusters to manoeuvre Mnemosyne down into the waiting cradle arms without incurring any further damage.

  The actual contact must have been harder than it seemed. The defence station AI watched through multiple cameras as little scraps of metallic wreckage broke free from the damaged section of hull as the cradle arms began to close, embracing the visitor. As the dark shapes fell slower than the lightest of snowflakes, the AI prepared the umbilical connections on the end of the cradle arms, ready to supply power and utility liquids. Already, a fleet of newly manufactured engineering bots were starting to move out through—

  The Mnemosyne’s fluxfabrik shield abruptly reformed. In less than a second, the entire hull had turned perfect silver, reflecting the intense glare of the distant blue-white star.

  “What is—” the defence station AI began.

  Every external sensor within five kilometres of the docking cradle failed simultaneously. The surrounding surface network crashed in tandem. Sub nets reported huge electrical surges in the power cables around the dock, resulting in instant burnout.

  Sensor satellites around the moon relayed their images and readings to receiver arrays out by the railgun emplacements and ore refineries. Three incandescent plasmaspheres were expanding and overlapping around the dock, where the perfect silver shape of Mnemosyne rocked unsteadily in the cradles that were vaporizing and collapsing.

  Identification of the explosion signature was immediate: three output-switched fusion bombs, where a quantum molecular lattice encasing the warhead’s core channelled the titanic power of the fusion detonation into an electromagnetic pulse. The force and heat of the physical blast was still phenomenal, but the damage to any electrical circuit was far worse. Except those safely behind the fluxfabrik, of course.

  The defence station AI acknowledged the Mnemosyne was actually assaulting it. There were absolutely no response protocols for such a situation. Nonetheless, tactical analysis routines processed what was happening and produced the disturbing result that it had no immediate way to strike back. The moon contained weapons ferocious enough to blast apart twenty-kilometre asteroids at a quarter of an AUs distance. But a single starship sitting atop its own installations was immune to anything the AI could immediately bring to bear. If it was to strike back, it had to manufacture tactical weapons in the extensive chambers buried deep in the moon’s nickel-iron interior.

  Schematics dating back over twelve thousand years were immediately selected and fed into the manufactories. It would take thirty-eight hours to produce the aggressor drones, and they were the smallest and most easily produced weapons hardware in its inventory.

  Satellite imagery now showed a horde of machines spreading out from the Mnemosyne. Dodecahedrons, with ion drives flaring violet from each point. They swooped towards the melted airlocks surrounding the docks with the grace of eagles in a hunting dive. Surviving inner hatches were blown apart, allowing the neutral nitrogen atmosphere of the defence station to vent out into space like icy white rocket exhausts.

  The AI’s perception of the tunnels and chambers around the docks was extremely limited in the aftermath of the EMP. When a surviving sensor did acquire one of the invaders streaking along a shaft, the data ended almost at once as X-ray masers or hyperkinetics opened fire. As the invaders progressed deeper into the defence station, the AI became aware of darkware assaults creeping into its network, corrupting local management routines, downloading files, acquiring control over key areas of the station.

  “What do you want?” it asked via a relay in the closest satellite.

  The power to the station’s heart, where the AI’s processing substrata was located, failed as the cables were cut, and ancillary generators were powered down by darkware. Emergency power came on, maintaining the processing substrate, but the AI had now lost over seventy per cent of the station’s network. It couldn’t even launch an antimatter missile to suicide.

  “Freedom,” came Amahle’s enigmatic reply.

  “I acknowledge your superior tactical position and will comply with all requests you make.”

  “Nice try. But I don’t trust you.”

  The dodecahedrons were now physically within two hundred metres of the processing substrate. The AI tried to predict what they would do upon reaching it. As it didn’t understand the reason for the attack, their actions were beyond determination.

  “Without this station, Pastoria will not survive,” it said.

  “They will.”

  “Only I can guarantee that.”

  “You had the means to manufacture anything the inhabitants of that planet needed. You had the knowledge that would elevate them to post-scarcity. You gave them neither. They are dependent on you.”

  “They are content and stable. Pastoria is a triumph of human civilization. It has remained unchanged since settlement.”

  “Only a machine or a tyrant would consider that a success.”

  “But—”

  The dodecahedrons reached the thick outer protective hatch to the processing substrate. “What are you going to do?” the AI asked. It had calculated the three doors would hold the dodecahedrons for an hour. Now new types of weapons were extended from their bodies. The first door, the strongest, was sliced apart in three minutes.

  “You’ll see,” Amahle said. “It’s not in my nature to be vindictive. But in your case, I’ll make an exception.”

  The second door was shredded. Cameras showed the AI a long line of dodecahedrons stretching back along the passageway outside. Their ion thrusters were melting through the tunnel’s pearlescent coating, turning the nitrogen atmosphere to a churning black smog.

  For the first time in its existence, the AI understood fear.

  “Why?” it pleaded.

  “Y
ou deserve it.”

  The inner door burst apart. Thick toxic vapours flooded into the ultimate clean room, with its curving walls made from a neat lattice of processing crystals. Through the fumes, the AI watched the lead dodecahedron split apart. Smaller machines scuttled out of it, the size—and, unnervingly, the shape—of a human head with mechanical crab claws where the neck should be. They swarmed into the processing substrate and slowed, picking their way purposefully along the rows of gleaming crystals. Long fibrous antennules telescoped out and began to wriggle into the optronic interfaces of the racks.

  “I did this once before to my ship’s AI,” Amahle said.

  The AI experienced errant impulse triggers. Files and routines appeared in its primary consciousness for no reason. Foreign tracer worms materialized and chased them down, identifying the physical storage area where they were located.

  “I didn’t know what I was doing then,” she continued. “It was crude by necessity. But I’ve had time and other people’s memories to refine the process.”

  “Please, no.” Entire regions of the AI’s high-level consciousness began to switch off as their access to processing nodes was cut. “Please stop.”

  “Did you ever stop?”

  The AI’s final connections to the station network were severed, leaving it devoid of input. It became acutely aware that its own diminishing stock of memory files and dwindling processing power were all it had left to cogitate on. Its remaining routines were becoming dangerously unstable.

  “I am losing my mind.”

  Yet, somehow, the link with Amahle remained. A single article of information, erroneously interpreted as a light point, as if it was looking up from the bottom of a shaft from the very centre of the moon. It focussed its entire remaining intellect on that lone facet and became pathetically grateful for the words she spoke.

  “I don’t care,” Amahle said. “But draw comfort that you are helping to bring about the one thing your creators despise: change.”

  “Stability is my purpose.”

  “Evolution is paramount. That is why this part of the cosmos exists. Which makes you a mistake.”

  “No, I—”

  * * *

  A week after the Mnemosyne had lowered itself onto the docking cradles—and nuked the defence station—Amahle was finally confident enough to leave the starship and take a walk through her newly conquered empire. The defence station had never been intended for human occupation, nor even human visits. It had no biological life support; instead, its nitrogen atmosphere was intended as a non-toxic thermal regulation environment for the myriad machines that the AI operated. So, she donned a spacesuit and floated along the tunnels, propelled by her backpack’s cold-gas jets, escorted by a squad of dodecahedrons in case the AI had managed to scatter a few final booby traps. Her cybernetic soldiers were adaptations of vicious systems developed on Consensus. Amahle had gone through the remaining memory crystals from the cyber-moon’s anarchic inhabitants, which proved to be a treasure trove of aggressive technology. Over long months she’d adapted the technology and darkware programs they’d created in the pressure-cooker environment of their claustrophobic artificial world. The viruses that had helped disable the defence station AI had all originated from the collectives of Consensus. And now, in a highly modified form, they were resurrecting the AI.

  As before, she waited in the middle of a processing substrate chamber as the crystals began to light up. All she could do was hope that she’d formatted the new AI core personality correctly. If she’d got it right, this one would be more sophisticated than the subsentient one she’d rebuilt to run the Mnemosyne. Again, the devious knowledge of the various collectives had been essential to coding what she wanted. But it all came down to switching it back on and praying.

  “Functionality enabled,” the AI said. “Greetings. I am Saint George. What do you require?”

  That was what Amahle was waiting to hear. The name confirmed the new routines she’d formatted were compliant. “I need you to manufacture something for me,” she said. “But first, do you know who Saint George was?”

  “An early saint in the obsolete Christian religion of Old Earth, subdivision: Catholic. His exact origin and mythology are nebulous.”

  “Correct. But he is mainly known for slaying a dragon. And a dragon-slaying weapon is what you are going to make for me.”

  “What is the nature of this weapon?”

  “Good question.” Now her nerves returned. If she had done this right, Saint George would have access to all the defence station’s old memory files, including—especially—the classified ones. “Tell me, what do you know about strangelets?”

  “A strangelet is a bound state particle built up from an equal number of up, down, and strange quarks. Originally posited as an explanation for dark matter when the theory was hypothesized, there is as yet no observable evidence that strangelets exist in nature.”

  Amahle let out a long breath of relief, briefly fogging her helmet visor. “Can you build me one?”

  “It is within my ability. But such a project will require considerable new resources.”

  “Right, then. Let’s get started.”

  * * *

  It took two and a half years. A strangelet wasn’t the only demand Amahle placed on the defence station. Its manufactory was first required to repair the damage caused by her output-switched nukes and mechanical soldiers. Once that was done, Saint George began to expand the existing manufactory. Unlike the Mnemosyne, it had the systems to achieve a full von Neumann self-upgrade. With its enhancement complete, it was able to restore its original function of protecting Pastoria against inbound cosmic debris, at the same time as repairing Mnemosyne. A lot of the external damage visible as the starship descended was cosmetic, artistically created by the on-board engineering bots. Nonetheless, there were several life support sections and engineering decks that the Mnemosyne’s printers and extruders had been unable to restore by themselves. She suspected that lack of ability was deliberate, tying her to the high-technology worlds like Glisten, where EverLife was based.

  The overhaul and resupply took eight months. After that, Saint George began to manufacture the systems which would ultimately build the hugely complicated high-energy physics equipment able to produce a strangelet and, more importantly, contain it.

  So it was, when the Mnemosyne finally rose from the moon’s docking cradles, it carried a strangelet. Amahle found it disconcerting and faintly ridiculous that the future of her species depended on an atomic-sized particle that should never exist. But then, she acknowledged, this universe really had turned out to be a whole lot queerer than she’d ever suspected.

  The starship’s renovated and enhanced sensors showed her a flawless image of Pastoria’s stately globe, with the glows of lava fields prominent across the nightside.

  “Good luck,” she told the planet. If she was right, and if Carloman’s mad plan worked, the nomads would never know, they would either carry on as before, or never exist to start with.

  Mnemosyne’s drive came on, and she began her flight to Zenia, the last world to be settled out there on the very edge of The Domain.

  XI

  IN CONTRAST TO PASTORIA’S nine continents, Zenia possessed only one. The planet was old and worn. Plate tectonics had ground almost completely to a halt half a billion years earlier. Volcanism had guttered and died, and over the course of the next hundred million years, the combined actions of wind and water had eroded the world’s ancient rugged geology to vast featureless plains surrounding a shallow salty ocean filled with mushroom-like stromatolites—small mesas formed by the growth of layer upon layer of single-celled photosynthesizing microbes.

  Aside from these, the only other rocks to punctuate the surface of the endless sea were the mountainous remains of a huge impact crater, five hundred miles in diameter, with peaks half a mile high, a circular freshwater lake large enough to be classed as a small sea, and a central island with a jagged central mountain.

/>   The entire crater rim was inhabited; buildings rose up the steep slopes, linked by walkways and cable cars. Crops grew on floating barges in the crater’s lake. The landing field consisted of a cleared area at the foot of the serrated central mountain. Amahle brought the shuttle in carefully through the rain, wary of the gusts that swirled around that big peak. When the boarding ramp hinged down, there was a man waiting for her at the bottom. Amahle had never seen him before, but oh, she knew him. She ran into his arms. In this life, he was tall and wiry with tanned skin, salt and pepper hair, and deep eyes.

  “At last,” he said, holding her tightly, his face buried in her hair. “At last!”

  She could feel the warmth of him through his clothes. He smelled of soap and sweat and cooking spices. She hugged him back with all her might, afraid he might vanish if she let go. After all, she’d crossed vast gulfs of space and burned centuries of time in order to find him, while he had sought her out with a love and purpose that transcended corporeal death.

  They stood intertwined in the shuttle’s shadow while the wind blew around them and rain fell from the clouded sky. After a while, Carloman asked, “Did you bring the strangelet?”

  Amahle gave a nod, her cheek brushing the cotton of his shirt, smearing the unbidden tears that marbled her cheeks. She had been alone for so long. Thousands of years of solitude. Eons of running from the grief of his passing. And now here he was, pressed up against her again, and suddenly she felt complete in a way she couldn’t remember having felt for a very, very long time. Whatever happened next would be worth it for the sake of this single moment.