by C. Gockel
She was halfway down the ladder when she looked back and saw Wren still standing on the deck. “What are you doing?” she shouted.
“I have no idea,” Wren said, but he ran after them.
A moment later, the airlock was shut and the gravity was shifting. Taking off her cumbersome helmet and breathing apparatus, Noa raced down the hallway, skipped the lift, and went right for the ladder.
Over the ether, Chavez said, “The drones have dropped.”
“Turn us around,” Noa said, heart pounding in her ears. “Just like we discussed, and then take us down.”
“Aye, Commander,” Chavez said. Noa couldn’t feel anything, or see anything, but she felt the change in the antigrav engines as Chavez lifted the Ark’s bow out of the water and eased her into a gentle belly flop.
Noa was in the service tunnel, nearly on the bridge, when she heard James’s voice in the ether. “I have Oliver’s heart.”
Noa’s breath caught. Gravity seemed to shift … no, it did shift … and it took a moment for the Ark’s own grav generator to accommodate the change.
As she clung to the ladder, Manuel's voice came across the ether. “James?”
Chavez’s thoughts swelled across the general channel. “Commander, he’s fallen. He’s in the water!”
“Where?” Noa said, one hand reaching for the last rung of the service ladder, the other twisting open the latch that opened the service door to the bridge. As she raced to the pilot’s chair, Chavez said, “Thirty meters beyond bow now.”
Ghost’s thoughts raced over the ether. “The drones dropped—we have to get out of here.”
Noa swung into her seat and saw James sinking like a stone, past windows that still remained alight in the sunken buildings.
“He couldn’t have survived the fall,” said Sterling.
“James?” Noa cried into the ether. “James, are you there?”
Chapter Seventeen
He fell.
He hit the water headfirst, the impact shuddering from his crown to his shoulder and then to his spine, the weights on the nets pulling him down, the cold water sending icy fingers beneath his torn enviro suit.
And then he heard the static.
His mind screamed, “Do you have anything to say for yourselves?”
“You were our best,” said a voice.
“Because of your damage,” said another.
“How am I damaged?” part of James roared, and another twisted little part of him whispered, Too many ways to count.
“When they shot you down,” said a consciousness he recognized as Three.
“Because you didn't know what you are,” said another.
“Because you didn't know why you are,” said another.
“I still don't know,” James's mind screamed. “Tell me!”
“We still require data,” said a voice he recognized as One.
“What data?” James demanded.
But the static left and was replaced by another voice across the ether. “James?” It was Noa. His eyes opened, but he saw only darkness. Struggling against his bonds, he had the empty sensation of hunger in every cell in his body. Did he have cells? He had to. He couldn’t be only a machine. He wasn't 6T9. He had a will of his own, dreams, and memories … memories that had all been carefully archived and saved in a time capsule on Time Gate 1.
No, he was more than a machine! He was capable of abstract reasoning, of planning ahead. He had more than one purpose. The only way a machine could achieve that was with a processor as large as a small moon …
… or as large as a time gate. A machine linked to a time gate—to time gates—could rival a human mind if it could achieve faster than light communication. Which he had.
All his struggling ceased.
“James, are you there?”
Ghost’s voice roared across the ether. “We have to leave! The drones may have depth charges!”
He might be one of them, but he still was himself, and he had his own will. Into the ether, he shouted, “Leave, Noa! Go!”
* * *
“Leave, Noa! Go!” James's voice cracked through the ether.
Noa’s gasp was drowned out by a collective intake of breath from everyone on the bridge.
“To nebulas with that,” she hissed and steered the Ark into a dive toward his plunging form.
“No!” Ghost screamed. “You can’t!”
“Oh, hell, might as well,” said Wren. If Noa hadn’t been steering, if every neuron and nano of her attention hadn’t been necessary at the helm, she might have fallen over in shock at the man’s words. As it was, she could only hold on tight to the steering as the Ark fought with underwater currents and grit out a low, “Thank you,” that sounded more like a growl.
She could hear him at the lift. “Eh, the question is how. That’s water, it’s cold, and your enviro suits aren’t built for it. I don’t suppose an old Luddeccean vessel has an ether-controlled drone—”
Noa’s eyes widened. “Eliza, can 6T9 swim?” she asked over the ether.
The old woman’s thoughts flowed across the channel. “No …”
Noa’s heart fell.
“But,” Eliza said, “he is waterproof.”
“Wren,” Noa said, “get him hooked up to a tow rope. Manuel will—”
Manuel’s thoughts flooded the ether before she could finish. “I’ll bring the rope!” And Noa’s heart almost broke with hope.
“We have to get to him before he’s too deep,” Monica said. “The pressure will kill him.”
And Noa’s heart broke again.
* * *
James couldn’t move. He couldn’t even reach out through the ether. It would take too much energy to make electrons dance from the point of his consciousness to the transmitter in his neural interface. But he still had thoughts, trapped in a prison of darkness, flesh, and steel.
He felt the cold creeping into the deepest part of him, chilling even his thoughts, and he was grateful. Worse than death would be an eternity of consciousness confined in this shell, on this abandoned moon, all alone.
And then light exploded beyond his eyelids.
* * *
Noa's eyes flicked over the external monitors, and then out the skylight. She forced herself to breathe.
6T9's voice came over the ether. “I have him inside the airlock, Commander. Removing the net and checking for vital signs.”
She exhaled and bit back a smile.
Manuel’s voice came next. “Send in the doctor!”
Monica responded across the shared channel. “We have to wait for the pressure to adjust before we open the doors. 6T9, the thermal blanket is in there. You need to start treating him for hypothermia immediately.”
“James, are you alive?” Noa whispered into his mind.
For a moment, she thought she felt a spark … but it vanished.
“James is exhibiting no vital signs,” 6T9 intoned over the ether, and Noa felt a wave of cold wash over her. She kept her hands steady on the steering wheel, focused on the cliff into the deep ahead of them.
“I have wrapped him in the thermal blanket,” the 'bot intoned. “Beginning CPR.”
She could see the point ahead where the city streets fell away into darkness. The navigation monitor was flashing an error message and she cursed the wonky wiring on the bridge.
Ghost cried across the ether, “Commander, they’re dropping depth charges! We need to get out of the water, and get out of here!”
Noa checked the monitors and dove deeper. A red light flashed on the dash, warning her that she only had five meter's clearance between them and the sunken street below them. She dipped her chin and dived until the warning said three meters, and then one.
“Commander,” Ghost's voice cracked across the channel, “did you hear—”
“As soon as those warships appeared we weren't leaving the water,” Noa responded. “Not near the biodome where they'll be as thick as xen-fleas on a lizzar.”
“Commander?”
Sterling and Manuel thought at the same time.
Noa sent a thought to James alone. “James, hang in there,” and then for everyone else on the ship to hear, she said over the ether, “Ghost, I need a map of the channels of this planet, all the thermal vents on the ice. We’re going down.”
It was as though all thought processes on the Ark came to a stop. But then Manuel’s voice rang through the ether, “What? This ship can handle shallow submersion, but—”
“It can handle shallow submersion on Luddeccea’s surface,” Noa responded, her thoughts clipped and sharp. “But Atlantia’s gravity is just a fraction of home’s.”
“After we get out of the biodome,” Ghost cried.
“Well, that’s where we’re going,” said Noa. “Start charting channels for me.”
Wren’s voice chimed in. “You know … the Luddeccean authorities have been known to be lenient sometimes. Even if we were imprisoned, we’d have three square meals a day in a nice—”
“Someone shut him up!” Ghost roared over the ether.
“On it!” said one of Sterling’s men over the shared channel.
“Hey!” shouted Wren. “I’m on your side. I just—” His voice abruptly left the ether and was replaced by Ghost’s. “Commander, I see your point. I have completed the map of Atlantia's surface, computing current location, and charting a course that will take us as far away from the biodome as possible.”
“Thank you, Ghost,” Noa whispered aloud and into the ether.
6T9’s thoughts came over the shared channel. “Commander, fellow crew mates. I have been administering CPR for the past ten minutes—”
Ten minutes? Had it been that long?
“I regret to inform you,” 6T9 continued, “Professor Sinclair is dead.”
* * *
There was light in strange geometric patterns in front of James’s eyes … and then there was darkness. He was still so cold. And hungry ...
He heard a sound … footsteps, running … and then Manuel’s voice very close. “Thank you, James. I’ll never forget you.”
The world shuddered. No, the Ark shuddered. They’d pulled him out.
He couldn't move and he couldn't get food … He had to have heat, and he didn't know how he knew. Was it instinct—or was it programming? Even as a sick, twisted part of him pondered that, he reached to the ether. Had Ghost ever enabled the ether link to the Ark's bio-controls? Behind his closed eyelids, the Ark’s systems spread out. He saw himself in one of the airlocks as a flickering light. He was so hungry … The Ark's ether conversation swirled in his mind as he lay in the cold darkness too disorientated and hungry to reach out.
“James, I'm sorry,” Noa called to him.
Shut, James willed the door. Maximum, he willed to the heating.
* * *
“James, I'm sorry,” Noa said into the ether at 6T9's words, and then her hands quaked on the control wheel, and she felt like she might fall over. He'd been loyal to her schemes to the end, despite everything. Always on her side.
“Depth charge off starboard,” said Chavez.
And she realized it hadn't been her who had been shaking, it was the Ark. Or maybe they both had trembled. Her training kicked in, and with a thought as emotionless as a query from an automaton, she asked, “Damage report?”
“Not too bad, but there was a small fire in the computing center,” said Manuel. “Looks like it was in a light fixture, though not mainframe. Already out.”
Kara's voice chimed over the ether, “I'm close by there with one of the Atlantia guys. Checking it out.”
A blip sounded on the dash. “Another depth charge falling off port,” Chavez said.
Noa veered to starboard, throttle at maximum. Below them the street ended. The Ark vaulted into the open sea and would within minutes be protected beneath meters of ice. They’d be safe from depth charges there, but—
“We can get lost real easily down here, Commander,” Sterling said. “The seismic activity changes the terrain rapidly, and we don't even have recent maps since the earthquake-tsunami.”
“Ghost, I need that course, now.” Noa tried to reach her computing officer’s channel—and didn't get a connection.
One of Sterling's men’s thoughts burst through the ether. “In computing center. Man down … lighting fixture fell from the ceiling; looks like a blow to the head. Could be a neck injury. We need a stretcher, stat.”
“Coordinating that now,” Sterling said. “We'll get him to medical.”
“Is it Ghost?” Noa asked, even though she knew he was the only person who could be there … She silently prayed that 6T9 had brought the programmer tea and cookies in computing, and that the Atlantian hadn't figured out what the 'bot was.
“Yes, Commander, it's Ghost,” said Kara over the channel. Noa thought she was beyond feeling, but at the news, her stomach sank.
“Manuel,” Noa asked. “Who on your team do you recommend for Chief Computing Officer?”
“Kara,” her chief engineer replied over the ether.
“Congratulations, you've been promoted, Kara,” Noa said.
“Commander?” said Kara.
“Ghost said he had a map, our location, and a course worked out. I need you to send those to me, now,” Noa ordered, glancing at her nav read-out that was still declaring an error.
“Ummm … Commander,” Kara said. “We don't have our current position. It looks like the Atlantian positioning satellites are offline. I'm getting no signal whatsoever.”
“More likely destroyed by the Fleet,” said Manuel across the general channel.
“Ghost had our position,” Noa said. “He was probably using our trajectory and velocity to keep track. Use the keypad to access the computer … I know, it’s archaic.”
“I've already done that,” said Kara. “Opening up all recent navigation apps, now.”
A blip sounded on a monitor between Noa and Chavez. It sounded again.
“The deGrasse-Tyson trench is approaching fast,” said Sterling.
The blip sounded again … again … and again.
“That isn't a depth charge,” Noa said. “Kara!”
“Commander …” Kara's thoughts stuttered. “There's nothing in the Ark's navigation app … nothing at all.”
The blips sounded closer together. “A cluster of drones,” said Chavez softly. “They're on our tail.”
* * *
“There's nothing in the Ark's navigation app … nothing at all.” James's eyes bolted open to darkness at Kara's words. Hadn't Noa remarked on Ghost's ability to determine a jump point and rapidly compute courses? And Manuel said it was impossible that the Ark computer could crack ether encryption so quickly—even in compromised local networks like Adam's Station. James remembered Ghost “thinking aloud” to himself just hours before without any noticeable activity in the Ark's system. Ghost had “thought out loud” when he'd pulled data off of the supercomputer he built on Luddeccea's surface, too; the supercomputer that was “etherless.” He'd claimed that he'd been able to access it via a “special frequency” that couldn't be overheard … and that was, James supposed, possible. He wasn't a communication engineer. Maybe Ghost used a regular bandwidth and wrapped the signal in some sort of warp bubble to avoid a time paradox, but James suspected he was using quantum entanglement. He just … felt like it. But it didn't matter how Ghost did it. What did matter had been Ghost talking to a supercomputer. Was it the time gates Ghost spoke to? As soon as the question occurred to James, he felt the answer was no. Ghost was in contact with the computer on Luddeccea he'd built, James was almost certain. Ghost was using its massive resources to chart courses, create the holographic effects for his necklaces, and decrypt the ethernet.
He blinked in the darkness. Was Ghost like him—a cyborg? He discarded that idea, but he knew they were both tied to technology that gave them extraordinary computative resources, even with the ethernet down. He blinked again. Could an etherless technology not bound by time paradoxes be created witho
ut the wider galaxy knowing?
He exhaled. Of course it could. In the time period he'd specialized in, most of humanity had been unaware of the Manhattan Project for years, though the idea of atomic energy as a weapon had been theorized in the late 1930s.
He felt a frisson at the base of his skull … “He” hadn't specialized in that time period at all. Not if what the voices in the static said was true.
No, no, no, his mind screamed, but he felt his denial was a lie, like he felt that Ghost and he weren't the same. Why give a cyborg, android, or robot feelings? Or was having feelings what made him “damaged”?
The fingers of James's left hand twitched involuntarily. He was still blind and in darkness, but in his mind an app lit up, telling him that the ambient temperature in the room was 50 C.
Over the ether, Sterling said, “Commander, the trench is less than one kilometer away, and the ice is getting thicker. To continue, we'd need to dive, and even with positioning satellites, probes and vessels have gotten lost down there.”
James sat up with a start, and the darkness slid away from his eyes. James looked down and discovered a thermal blanket crumpled on his naked lap and realized it had been covering his face. Why? Unless … James’s hand trembled, remembering Manuel’s words. I'll never forget you. And Noa's, I'm sorry, James.
He'd died, again.
Electricity prickled beneath his skin. And in a flash of insight, he knew electric prickle was not a sensation from before. He should have known what he was …
Chavez's voice buzzed over the ether. “The drones are getting closer.”
“Kara,” Noa said, “we need that map!”
“Iceberg ahead, Commander,” said Sterling.
James could very well die again. He reached into the ether and almost touched Noa … and then felt a rush of panic. They’d call Monica. If they called Monica …
He pulled back emotionally. He had to be able to resist Monica, to appear so well that all she'd give a cursory examination … if they found out what he was. Manuel had just said he'd never forget James. But 6T9 had saved his child's life, too, and Manuel hadn't been at all hesitant about selling 6T9 on Adam's Station. He struggled to get to his feet … and couldn't. He needed to get warmer. The need pressed down on him, physically and emotionally, all consuming. The room wasn't hot enough, and couldn’t get hot enough. His eyes fell on an abandoned enviro suit, and the glove with its heating and cooling controls, just to his left. He forced himself to raise a hand. He reached out for the suit, his hand trembled, and he caught it in his fingers.
