by Alex Lamb
‘Helm on lockdown,’ said Judj. ‘Cutting to emergency settings. Palla to med.’
Palla acquired her own floating work-bubble. Her eyes scanned it desperately.
‘Holy shit,’ she said as her fingers began to fly.
‘What?’ said Ira. ‘What’s happening?’
‘It’s Mark,’ she explained. ‘His vitals are going crazy. Looks like a Transcended-induced bio-assault. His micromachines are synthesising a pseudo-virus, just like they did for Will. He’s upgrading.’
‘His interface is screwing with the ship,’ said Judj. ‘We have to unplug him. We’re in Phote space. A rebooting ship is not okay.’
‘Fuck!’ yelled Palla. ‘Prepping transit to quarantine core.’
‘Rachel’s already in there,’ Ira pointed out, ‘and it only has space for one.’
‘Then she’ll have to come out,’ said Palla. ‘She’s been in there too long anyway. Prepping two transits. Clath, I’ll need your help with rad-shielding. The engines are still hot.’
‘On it,’ said Clath.
‘Enacting partial cleanse,’ said Judj. ‘Prepare for power-down.’
The virt vanished. Ira was suddenly alone in the dark watching a single winking red light above his face. Forty-seven seconds later, the yacht sprang back, its decor much restored.
By the time he arrived, the others were hard at work and Rachel was gone. He experienced a moment’s awe for the younger generation that had ousted him from power. The three of them worked furiously together, cooperating with fluid precision. He felt utterly redundant and fought back a laugh.
He had mixed feelings about Mark’s strategy of resistance to the Transcended. They were in over their heads and the mystery that Backspace presented was no closer to being solved. But after their treatment of Ann, he’d reluctantly come to the conclusion that the human race had to look out for itself. If that made fighting their corner harder, so be it. He wished he was down in the ark with her. He’d ached for her company every second since she’d gone away.
‘It’s like the virus that hit Will,’ said Palla. ‘But this time it’s bad.’
‘Bad how?’ said Ira. ‘Will’s virus was benign. Can’t we just leave it room to build smart-cells?’
‘I don’t think this one is doing that. And it seems really confused by Mark’s existing augmentations. His blood engines are misfiring. We need to shut it down before it kills him. Judj, copying you gene schematics.’
‘Got them,’ said Judj. ‘Modelling workarounds.’
Ira wondered why the Transcended had picked this moment. Perhaps they’d simply grown tired of waiting. As lords of the galaxy, they probably weren’t disobeyed that often.
‘Mark-package is secure and ready to go,’ said Palla. ‘Sliding him your way.’
‘Transit acknowledged,’ said Judj. ‘You’ll have Rachel in eleven minutes.’
‘Swapping to helm,’ said Palla.
The yacht vanished. Ira was surprised to find himself back in the cabin of the Ariel with Palla. She fixed him with a meaningful look.
‘The ship is yours,’ she told him. ‘We’re in Phote space. That means threats. We’re just a handful of light-years from Snakepit – two days at most – and we don’t have any time to waste. If the Photes have been trailing us, this is when they’ll strike. Then there’s the small issue of a possible life-threatening blockade when we get there. Try not to run into that.’
‘Understood,’ said Ira.
‘Please get us there in one piece,’ she said and winked out.
Ira seized the helm controls and felt a seductive shiver of delight. The ship was his again. They’d made it through the Zone, down past the gate and back almost to where they’d started. All that just to travel a few otherwise-uncrossable light-years closer to the galactic core. Now all that stood between them and the Snakepit System was Ann’s predicted nightmare scenario.
As Ira waited for his engines to come back online and his engineer to arrive out of transit, he felt utterly glad that he’d made the journey this far, no matter what happened next. With Ann in his life and something to fly, he was fully alive again, even if only briefly.
15.2: MARK
The second time Mark faced the Transcended, they didn’t bother with a slide show. He found himself dumped directly into the limitless white space he’d seen before. Zoe appeared before him. Her Edwardian gown had swapped to black and been augmented with a huge feathered hat.
‘This is getting out of hand,’ she told him, scowling.
‘No shit,’ said Mark. ‘Want to talk about it?’
In the back of his mind, he knew it was pure folly to goad the Transcended. His entire species might be held accountable for anything he said. But what of it? Unless something changed, they were dead anyway.
‘Your crew have absolutely no idea what you’re playing with,’ she told him. ‘The fate of your species hangs by a thread.’
‘You just noticed?’ said Mark.
‘Listen,’ said Zoe. ‘Trouble is coming. Your people won’t be able to beat it now without swift action. The puzzle we’ve given you is a weapon. Solving it is understanding it.’
‘Nice,’ said Mark. ‘And then I just give up on my original plan and deliver it to Carter for you, is that right?’
‘Preferably, though we doubt you’ll do that.’
‘I might,’ said Mark. ‘All depends what answers I get.’
‘You’ll get none,’ she said bluntly.
‘Surprise surprise.’
‘The second thing you need to know is that the virus in your body will help you. You need to expose Ann to it.’
Mark couldn’t help laughing, even while he knew that he had absolutely everything to fear.
‘After you take her powers, you want me to infect her with something?’
‘It will help.’
‘Sure. You’re just going to make her all better again, I bet.’
‘Ann interrupted our dialogue with your interface. Without our action, she would have killed you.’
‘You guys are smart, right?’ he said. ‘You can read my mind. You have to know how ridiculous this sounds. The threats are clear and the manipulation is transparent, but your motives? They’re as murky as ever. What on Earth makes you think I’ll trust a single thing you say at this point?’
‘We’ve overstepped the mark on your behalf,’ she said. ‘The information we’re giving you now crosses the line.’
‘What line?’ said Mark. ‘Whose line? What am I supposed to do, just have faith in you? Trust in your greatness and worship your ancient power? I’m not wired that way and you know it.’
‘We don’t want your faith.’
‘So what do you want? Because it sure as shit looks that way from where I’m standing.’
‘We want the opposite,’ said Zoe. ‘We want to see if you’re capable of making good decisions without the benefit of free information.’
‘Where “good” is something you’ve decided in advance, I take it.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Zoe. ‘A long, long time ago. After more years of study than your germ-line has breathed air. We’ve made an investment in the human race so we want it to live, but only if humanity is actually worth saving. Consequently we’re giving your species the benefit of the doubt.’
‘So long as we do what you want, we get to live.’
‘No. So long as you save yourselves, you get to live. We’re just prepared to nudge the system under extenuating circumstances.’
‘I’d rather have a relationship between peers.’
She laughed at him, her eyes full of ageless disdain. ‘But you’re not our peers,’ she said. ‘That’s the point.’
‘That’s the best you can offer?’ he said. ‘Noblesse oblige on a galactic scale, backed by an unspecified agenda?’
‘Yes, exactly that.’
He snorted. ‘Why ever did you pick me? You have to know I don’t buy this kind of shit.’
She frowned. ‘We didn’t. We
’d have preferred any of your crew-mates other than Ann. That was a mistake you made – to presume your own self-importance in affairs. That error may be fatal for the lot of you.’
Mark felt a sting of embarrassment. ‘Bullshit. You’ve rigged this for me from the start. You laid the trail. You set up Rachel’s ship.’
‘We have no incentive to lie,’ she told him flatly. ‘The species at risk is yours.’
‘Come clean, you bastards!’ Mark urged. ‘Give me a reason to bite!’
‘This conversation is over,’ said Zoe. ‘Choose wisely.’
Everything disappeared like a vid channel closing.
15.3: ANN
Ann hung in a survival bag slung between workstations in the ark’s control room, wrapped in thermal layers. Through her visor, she watched Ira pilot through Photurian space. Ira, it turned out, was a gifted flyer. He’d abandoned the Ariel sim already, integrated his pilot couch into helm-space and updated it with several modern systems. He was, however, no roboteer, and still couldn’t handle an entire starship without a supporting crew. Which meant that he was going to need help for this next bit.
‘According to my models, we should hit the first signs of the blockade somewhere within the next six light-hours,’ she told him.
She’d been watching him fly over his shoulder for most of the last day, pausing only to check on the Subtle robots that kept waking up in the ark and creeping around.
‘I recommend dropping warp and running out the feeler-drones. They double as blockade detectors. If we go any closer without using them, we run the risk of being trapped.’
‘Dropping warp in five,’ said Ira. ‘Clath, Rachel, to stations, please. Judj, could we borrow you from internal defence? This next bit’s going to be tricky.’
Ann jealously watched them work and rubbed her hap-gloves to keep her fingers warm. She was supposed to be investigating the ark and determining its viability as a refuge for the rest of the crew. As it was, she’d barely started finding her way around. The ark’s interior was enormous compared to a human ship and full of surprises. But if the Photes hit them now in the numbers she’d projected, none of them was going home, in an ark or otherwise. That meant she had to help.
Lines of drones sped away from the Dantes. Ann waited until she was confident they had an adequate lead and that feedback signalling had been established.
‘Okay, Ira,’ she said. ‘I recommend proceeding carefully at twenty lights with stealth active. I also suggest deep sensor-sweeps in high wavelengths between every warp-burst.’
‘You’ve been a very attentive backseat driver of late,’ Ira observed with dry amusement. ‘While I appreciate your concern, I’m surprised we’ve reached that point in our relationship already.’
Ann writhed inside. She still had no idea what to do with Ira’s closeness. As the days passed, it only made her more uncomfortable.
‘You did the same to me before we reached the Flaw,’ she said, struggling for levity. ‘I’m just returning the favour.’
Unfortunately, the situation wasn’t light. According to her calculations, this was when they died. And that was something Ann was no longer sure she wanted.
The ship slid carefully forwards. The return pings from the drones filled Ann’s ears. A map of the apparently clear space ahead filled her visor. She barely dared to breathe. Minutes ticked past.
‘All clear so far,’ said Clath when they were an hour in.
Ann could practically hear the physicist thinking, I told you so, and fought back anger. They weren’t out of the woods yet. Backspace had been unpredictable, yes, but now they were in Phote space – her speciality. In all likelihood, they were only alive because they’d somehow underestimated their enemy’s cunning.
Yet as they crept closer to Snakepit, no threats erupted out of the dark. Clath fell silent while Ann felt mounting sensations of embarrassment and dread. The closer they got, the clearer it became that the level of Phote traffic was below even their most optimistic speculations.
Ann squeezed her hands for warmth and hated the looming uncertainty. It wasn’t that she needed her models to be right. She was past that. It was just that if they were this far off, something glaring was missing from their understanding of the situation – and glaring usually meant dangerous.
‘I don’t like this,’ said Judj.
‘We’d guessed,’ said Clath. ‘Staying alive is nice, at least.’
‘Sure, if you know why it’s happening,’ he retorted. ‘This is eerie. I’d feel better if there was a disrupter field or two for us to avoid. Finding nothing smacks of trouble.’
‘Agreed,’ said Ann. ‘Can we do another deep sweep for warp-light and use the gravity-wave detectors?’
‘Already on it,’ said Judj. ‘I’m seeing nothing. This place is as silent as the grave.’
The reality settled over her like cold fog: there was no blockade – not a single ship. She was wrong. Again.
‘Their strategy must have changed,’ said Ira gently.
Ann clenched her jaw. She didn’t need the truth cushioned.
‘Of course it’s changed,’ she snapped. ‘But Photes don’t innovate except under intense environmental pressure. So what’s the pressure? What are we missing? Why aren’t we dead?’
They closed on Snakepit’s heliopause without detecting a single sign of the Photurian civilisation at work. Instead of relief, Ann felt overwound like clockwork on the brink of breaking. A quick look at the timer in her visor told her that she’d now been watching on tenterhooks and sucking stimmo out of a bag for about nineteen hours straight.
She rubbed her eyes and glanced around at her improvised cabin. In a moment of self-reproach, she saw just how lacking it was as a viable refuge. The place was a tip. She’d already turned it into a kind of zero-gee nest, full of floating drink-bulbs and poorly tethered packs. Good at cleaning the universe of Photes she might have been, but as a builder of shelters for her fellow crew-mates, she apparently sucked.
The tension in her broke unexpectedly. Behind it lay a very human exhaustion, and with it, apathy. What was she good for now? Certainly not research or strategic planning.
‘I need downtime,’ she told the others, and felt ashamed.
Nobody stopped her when she signed off. Because, of course, they didn’t need her at all. With anxious, bewildered hands, Ann started clearing up the mess she’d made. What else was there to do?
15.4: WILL
Will woke aboard a ship. By the size and shallow, domed profile of the cabin, it looked like the upper level of a nestship’s spherical core – the Ariel Two, perhaps, or some other vessel of equivalent size. Everything had been decorated in soothing, pleasant whites and greens, like the Galatean ships of his youth. He was lying in a bioengineered crash couch of a design he’d never seen before.
He glanced around. Had he actually made it out to a starship, despite the odds? He’d been escaping, he recalled, from someone called Balance – a monster who wore a weird plaster mask of his own face – but the details were upsettingly fuzzy. Perhaps the transfer of his thread-copy to the ship hadn’t finished before being choked off, leaving gaps in his memory. Will screwed up his concentration and tried to recall exactly what had happened. At that moment, though, Ira and Ann walked in.
‘You’re up!’ said Ira.
Will stared at them both. He hadn’t expected to see them here. They both appeared to be in the best of health, and younger than when he’d met them last. Except he’d seen Ira recently, hadn’t he? Maybe Ann, too.
‘We didn’t expect you to recover so quickly,’ said Ann. She checked a medical band on his arm. ‘It was touch and go. Whatever Snakepit did to you, we were worried it was going to be permanent.’
That was right, he’d been down on Snakepit, trying to get out. He’d watched himself die, but from a distance. And then he’d been alive again, kissing someone and watching himself drink martinis while wearing a hat. Suddenly, it all made remarkably little sense. His recollectio
n of the past started unravelling in his mind like a dream. Which was, of course, exactly what it had been – a software-imposed vision inflicted by an alien world trying to climb inside his head. The longer he thought about it, the more obvious that was.
‘It’s great that you’re back but the planet’s virus is still in your system,’ Ira assured him. ‘We think it’s gone dormant, waiting for another chance. The only way we can fix that is with interface surgery, otherwise it could recur at any time.’
Will remembered something about merging with Snakepit, but getting out of there was a blank.
‘You rescued me,’ he said stupidly. ‘You came back.’
‘He’s quick for a superbeing, don’t you think?’ Ann drawled. ‘You’ll have to drop all your wetware blocks,’ she told him. ‘Completely power down your internal security. Just say yes when the cues appear. As soon as you do that, we can start. But this needs to happen now. It’s life or death again, I’m afraid. Your smart-cells aren’t operating normally any more.’
Will scowled, suddenly wary of the urgency of the situation. For reasons too vague to be rational, he didn’t trust it.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Ira. ‘He’s been up shit creek before. He knows how situations like this play out. It’s better than using a shock key, right, Will?’
The gnawing sense that something had gone badly wrong built steadily in Will’s mind. How long had he been down on the planet? How in Gal’s name had they got him out?
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I’m still struggling with this. Can someone fill me in on exactly what happened?’
Mark chose that moment to walk in carrying a huge pink cake. Will blinked at it in astonishment. A cake aboard a starship?
‘Is this the wrong time?’ said Mark. ‘I heard Will was up. I hope you guys don’t mind.’ He glanced down at the enormous confection he was carrying. ‘Yeah. I know what you’re thinking: this is ridiculous. But we had to do something to celebrate the moment, didn’t we? I mean, it’s not every day you get your dad back. So I set the fabber running overnight.’
Ann looked annoyed. ‘This should wait until after the last surgical pass,’ she said.
