I was dizzy and disoriented and the autonav was warning me we were far outside Izin’s curveball simulation, but empty black space now lay dead ahead and that was all I needed to know. I killed the bow thrusters and the engines as our spin died.
“Skipper, we’re forty degrees off!” Jase yelled as the tiny moon hurtled towards us. We were so close now, the port side of the view screen was filled with craters and dark jagged ridges.
“Too late!”
Every parameter was off, but one – the only one that counted – Vintari II and its moon weren’t in front of us! I triggered Izin’s curveball maneuver as the moon’s surface raced up towards us. A single large crater swallowed the view screen, and us with it, then the screen turned to static – except for the impact timer – as the Lining’s bubble fried half our optics.
It was a low power bubble, barely half the speed of light, but stable. If I’d tried the same maneuver at a thousand times the speed of light, the bubble would have collapsed and torn the ship apart. After just a few seconds, the sublight bubble dropped and we were back hurtling through flat space on our original course.
“Get the sensors out!” I yelled.
Jase quickly deployed our eyes and ears, bringing the view screen back to life. It was a little grainier than usual now that half the optics had melted, but at least we could see where we were.
Vintari II was to starboard and from our relative motion, I realized we were heading backwards across the planet’s orbit. A mini nova of brilliant white was expanding beside the planet where its small moon had been obliterated by the Soberano. As we raced away, the planet slowly eclipsed the expanding fireball behind it while molten droplets showered the planet’s upper atmosphere in a rain of fire. The fine particles quickly burned away, illuminating the planet’s dark side sky with an eerie orange light that was already triggering religious awe from the planet’s primitive inhabitants. The night the gods turned the sky orange and one of the two mythical sky travelers disappeared would mark a global turning point in their bronze age civilization that would influence their belief systems for thousands of years to come.
Marie gave me a wry smile, relieved we’d avoided the planet. “Only you would blind micro bubble inside a crater!” She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “I knew you’d think of something.”
I turned the Lining’s bow in the direction our flat space momentum was carrying us, watching Vintari II and its mini nova roll across the view screen to the port side. The dazzling golden orb of the Vintari star appeared on the starboard side and followed the planet across the view screen until it was in the center of the screen, dead ahead of us.
“Don’t thank me yet!” I didn’t need the autonav to plot this course. Izin’s simulation had planned to take us far enough away to clear the star, but we’d been way off course when I’d bubbled. “We need to blink again, right now! Jase, pull the sensors and let’s get out of here!”
I instructed the autonav to plot our next sublight micro-bubble, one that would take us safely away from the star, then nosed the Lining around so we were facing out into empty space. When the surviving sensors were safely stowed inside the hull, I gave the autonav control. The sixty distorters started gently curving spacetime around us, then inexplicably, they all lost power simultaneously.
“That’s impossible!” Jase exclaimed when he saw the energy readings fall to zero.
“Oh ho,” I said warily as I reset the autonav to try again. For a second time, the distorters began to charge, then just before they could form a bubble, they were drained of power again.
“What is it?” Marie asked.
“It’s no system failure!” I said, nodding to Jase to push the sensors back out.
When the view screen came to life, the Vintari star filled one side of the screen, and empty space the rest.
Jase took one look at his display and scowled. “They’re behind us!” He sent the optical feed from our stern sensors to the view screen, revealing the Mataron ship floating off our port quarter.
“They’re jamming us,” I said, “letting the star do their dirty work for them. There’s no weapons for the TCs to detect, just our own energy signature!”
“How long have we got?” Marie asked.
I glanced at the autonav. “We’ll hit the chromosphere in forty minutes.”
“They caught us fast!” Jase said, remembering the Mataron ship had been stationary high above the ecliptic plane only minutes ago. Now they were perfectly matched with us.
“Captain,” Izin’s voice sounded from the intercom. “Our processing core was just scanned. The ghost numbers are gone.”
This time, the Lining’s safety system hadn’t detected their attack. Had they learnt how to sneak past our radiation sensors since they’d loaded the SI into us over Deadwood, or was this something different?
“Lock a comm beam on them.” When Jase opened the channel, I said, “Mataron vessel, release my ship.”
The flight deck’s comm system came to life almost immediately. “Surrender the Codex and I will let you leave.”
I was tempted to say ‘what Codex’, but the Earth-tech jamming field we had hiding the Lining’s smuggler compartment would be no obstacle for them. For a moment, I wondered if our new burster could hurt them, then shelved the idea. Any weapon we had would be ineffective against their ship, while firing first would give them the right to return fire.
I nodded for Jase to close the channel. “Izin, have you removed the warhead from our drone?”
“Sirius!” Marie exclaimed, “You can’t give it to them!”
We certainly couldn’t fight a Mataron armored cruiser and if I refused to give them the Codex, they’d simply ride us down until the star burned us to a cinder. “They sure as hell aren’t going to let us keep it!”
“I have yet to remove the payload,” Izin said.
“Get started. I’ll meet you there,” I said, motioning for Marie to follow me.
When we reached the smuggler compartment hidden amidships, I removed the hatch cover, then wary of the SI lurking inside the Codex, turned to Marie. “Can you remove it?”
She gave me a confused look.
“It’s a long story and we don’t have time.”
Marie shrugged, then retrieved the Codex and offered it to me.
“No.” I backed away, refusing to touch it. “This way,” I said, leading her to the cramped bow compartment housing the drone launcher. Izin had removed the anti-ship drone’s nose plate and was releasing the restraints holding the penetrator warhead in place. I motioned to the deck. “Put it there, please.”
“Please?” she said surprised, then placed the Codex on the deck while my mind raced.
The Matarons were cleaning up, removing any trace of their involvement. The Soberano was gone and so was the synthetic agent that had taken control of her. Now they’d wiped our processing core, eliminating Izin’s work on the ghost numbers. All they wanted was the Codex, which told me they didn’t realize how easily Izin had reverse engineered their simulated agent. They must have thought our processing core had cracked it, so either they didn’t understand what a tamph was capable of, or they really didn’t know he was aboard. The trouble was, it didn’t matter what Izin knew, no one would ever believe a tamph – especially not the Tau Cetins.
The Matarons also hadn’t demanded me as prisoner, proving they didn’t know I still carried the raw ghost numbers in my bionetic memory. Even so, a fragment wasn’t enough. I needed a full copy of their synthetic agent for the Tau Cetins to take apart. That would get mankind off the hook and might well end the Mataron Supremacy as an interstellar civilization.
“This is a mistake,” Marie said, thinking this was about handing over the Codex. “What’s to stop them blasting us to pieces as soon as you give it to them?”
“Fear of the Tau Cetins,” I said, turning to her and holding her arms. “There’s a woman called Lena Voss in Hades City. If something happens to me, I want you to deliver my b
ody to her.” Lena’s people could tap my threading’s bionetic memory and extract everything recorded there.
“What are you talking about?” Marie demanded, shocked.
“Alien technology. It’s a bitch! Now promise me. You’ll make sure I’m delivered to Lena if I can’t make it myself.”
“Now you’re scaring me, Sirius!”
“Promise me!” It was no longer a request, but an order, the only real order I’d ever given her – ever would give her.
“I . . . OK,” she said, sensing a change in me she’d never seen before. “I promise.”
“You might cheat me every chance you get, but I trust you more than anyone I’ve ever known,” I said, then took her in my arms and kissed her – a goodbye kiss.
When I pulled back, there was fear on her face. “Sirius, what’s going on?”
“I’d like to tell you, but we’re out of time.”
I turned and knelt beside the Codex. “You know what to do, Izin. Load it, fire it, then save the ship. Save yourselves.”
“Yes, Captain,” Izin said as he lifted the meter long penetrator out of the drone.
DISABLE AUTO-PURGE, I thought, ensuring my threading would not delete my bionetic memory, even if my life signs failed. I rubbed my hands together slowly, preparing myself. “All right, let’s see what you’re made of,” I whispered, then placed my palms on the Codex.
An alien presence immediately surged through the bionetic threads in my hands. It tingled at first, then the dominating clone consciousness entered the biological threads woven through my bone structure. It explored every organic filament, every nerve junction, every memory sequence, searching for an anchor. Behind it came the genuine touch of the Antaran Codex itself, automatically reaching out to my biological network, unaware of the monster using it as a way to strike down its enemy.
The benign aspect of the Codex measured my capacity, determined my fit and allowed the data to flow. The sheer magnitude of it distracted me from the beast prowling through my body, searching for a home. In an instant, eons of exploration – the collective work of countless civilizations who’d collaborated on mapping entire galaxies – was visible to me. Planets, stars, nebulas, all manner of celestial objects and the invisible dark matter drifting among them, all flashed through my mind. Woven through this vast cosmic tapestry were the precise, constantly changing pathways used by billions of ships across millions of years to traverse dozens of galaxies. It was far more than I could ever hope to recall, instantly translated into the language I understood by the genius of the Antaran Codex.
It happened so fast, for a moment I forgot the beast within, then it reared its head as it fought to take control of a system it had never seen before and did not understand. It found itself, not the master of the kind of complex electromechanical device it had been designed for, but trapped in a bioelectric creation of unexpected simplicity. Try as it might, it could find no way to imprint itself into a biologically based memory. Finally, it swarmed towards what it perceived to be the central processing unit, hoping to rewrite the base logic of what was to it, a strangely alien system.
Desperate to survive, the synthetic intelligence revealed itself as the disembodied reflection of Hazrik a’Gitor – his life, his character, his knowledge. It thought the way he did, it plotted and schemed as he did. It was as ruthless as he was. Suddenly I knew him as well as myself: Hazrik a’Gitor, Exalted Blademaster of the Black Sauria, holder of the highest and rarest rank and a force within the shadowy world of Mataron politics. As his synthetic consciousness began to overwhelm me, I saw the universe through his eyes, through Mataron eyes.
For an instant, I was Mataron!
I realized how afraid they were! Of all the others. Of us!
My head throbbed as the essence of the Mataron master assassin tried to write itself over my identity. I was sweating, shaking, crying in agony as it clawed its way into my mind.
“Sirius, what is it?” Marie yelled as her hands tore at my arms. “Izin help me,” she screamed.
I knew I had to let go of the Codex, but I couldn’t break free. Hazrik a’Gitor wouldn’t release me!
The Mataron synthetic intelligence moved to its last strategy, to force a complete system shutdown and reinitialize its new conquest.
I screamed as lightning bolts of pain exploded inside my head, then a heavy metallic object crashed against my skull.
* * * *
I awoke, blinking spots from my eyes. Marie knelt over me with a concerned look. A blood splattered molecular spanner lay beside her.
“You hit me?” I slurred, touching my forehead, finding a small pressure pad in place over the wound.
“Only in the head,” Marie said sweetly, “where it’d do no damage.”
“Can you turn off that siren,” I said, “Or is that just the ringing in my ears?”
Marie smiled and stroked my hair gently. “You know what they say, Sirius – love hurts.”
“It was the only way to get you away from the Codex,” Izin explained. “The effect it has on you is most surprising, considering the rest of us are immune to its influence. Why is that, Captain?”
Izin was too smart for his own good, always asking questions I couldn’t answer. “Maybe it knows I’m the captain, and wants to control the ship through me.”
Izin blinked slowly, but said nothing. I’m sure he didn’t believe me, but he couldn’t prove it wasn’t true.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm the throbbing inside my head, and searched for any trace of the Mataron synthetic intelligence. It had vanished, but the memory of Hazrik a’Gitor remained in my mind, my real mind, not my bionetic data store. Once the connection with the Codex had been severed, the SI had lost contact with its progenitor. Having found no way to embed itself into my biological system, it had ceased to exist.
“Where’s the Codex?” I asked.
Izin pointed at the fully re-assembled drone. “In there. As we are approaching the Vintari star, now would be a good time to launch it.”
“How long was I out for?” I said sitting up warily.
“Not long,” Marie said.
“The battle shield’s up,” Izin said, activating the intercom. “Jase, what’s our shield’s status?”
“Bleeding star heat like crazy. It’s starting to saturate. How’s the Skipper?”
“He’s alive and conscious,” Izin said. “His head is remarkably durable for a human.”
“And the Matarons?” I asked.
“Still on our tail,” Jase said, “riding us all the way down.”
I climbed to my feet unsteadily, giving Marie a pained look. “Did you have to hit me so hard?”
“You can thank me for saving your life later,” Marie said.
“I’ll thank you now, in case we’re all dead later.”
“You’re really going to give them the Codex?” she asked.
“I’m going to see how badly they want it.” I gave her a mischievous grin. “Izin, keep the shield up, no matter what.”
“Very well, Captain.”
While Izin went to engineering to tweak the ship’s energy supply, Marie and I hurried to the flight deck.
Jase glanced at the patch on my head curiously as I climbed onto my acceleration couch. “The shield’s at a hundred and forty percent. It’s red lining across the board.”
Shield regeneration, stability and heat dissipation were all failing simultaneously, something I’d never seen before. If we didn’t put some distance between us and Vintari soon, we’d be cooked.
The star’s boiling orange orb filled one side of the screen, smeared by the red glow of our rapidly suffocating shield. In the center of the screen was black space, while the other side was filled with the Mataron armored cruiser, now encased in a soft glowing egg-shaped field. Clearly, they were having an easier time of it than we were.
Jase followed my eyes to the screen. “Our thermal sensor has their shield as the coldest thing out there.”
“Figur
es,” I said, taking helm control, turning the Lining towards the star.
“I had us angled away,” Jase said, “so we could get out of here fast, if they let us go.”
“Change of plan.” I fed power to the engines, accelerating the Silver Lining towards the star.
Jase eyes widened. “Are you feeling all right, Skipper?”
“Ten G’s should do it.”
“Do what?”
Marie leaned forward. “Sirius, maybe you should let Jase pilot the ship, until you’re feeling better.”
“I feel fine! I’m just sick of those God damned snakeheads playing games with me!”
“Diving us into a star isn’t going to make any difference to the Matarons,” Marie said.
“It might!” I said as a now familiar synthesized voice blared from the comm system.
“Why are you accelerating towards the star?” the Mataron Commander demanded. “Give us the Codex and we will release your ship.”
I nodded to Jase to open the channel. “If I do that, I’ve got nothing for the Tau Cetins. On the other hand, if I crash into that star, they’ll retrieve the Codex and show it to all their friends.” Now that I knew how Matarons thought, I knew how to spook them. Their extreme xenophobia was their weakness.
“You are throwing your lives away for nothing. Not even the Tau Cetins could recover the Codex from the surface of a star.”
“I know different!” Thanks to Hazrik a’Gitor’s memories, I now knew the Matarons were completely baffled by Tau Cetin technology, giving me a perfect opportunity to lie through my teeth.
“What do you know?”
Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex Page 29
