Star Wars - Black Fleet Crisis - Shield Of Lies

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

glow. As the pillar of fire rose, the shock rippled out through the

  rest of the city, destroying the neat symmetry. The fire quickly fell

  back but spread into a firestorm that raced across the shattered city

  and consumed it. In a matter of seconds the wall was scorched black as

  before, the map destroyed.

  "Artoo, please run an analysis on the atmosphere in here," Lando

  said.

  Threepio reported the results. "Oxygen five per-cent--oxygen eight

  percent--oxygen eleven percentre would you make up your mind?" the

  droid asked, clanging Artoo on the dome with his working arm.

  "It's not him, Threepio," said Lobot. "The ship is restoring the

  chamber to its status before the fire, for the next demonstration." He

  looked to Lando. "These are history lessons. Something terrible

  happened to the Qella city that was under this sign."

  "Maybe this is our first clue about what happened to them," Lando

  said.

  "But there's something else going on, too. Artoo, what's the oxygen

  component now?"

  The answer, relayed through Threepio, was fifteen percent.

  "Son of a-- Lobot, Threepio, you stay here. Artoo, come with me.

  There's something we have to check."

  "Where are you going?"

  "Back to chamber one, express lane. Sit tight--it won't be so long.

  We won't be sight-seeing this time."

  The patrol frigate Bloodprice bore the colors of the Prakith navy and

  the crest of Governor Foga Brill. Both were more prominent than the

  sigil of the Imperial Moff for Sector 5, which was consigned to the

  armor panel above the frigate's chin turrets.

  The displays mirrored the allegiances felt by Captain Ors Dogot and his

  crew of nearly four hundred. The officers owed their commissions and

  their postings to Brill, not to Grand Moff Gann. It was Brill who

  collected the commission fees and the annual posting assessments.

  It was Brill who paid off favors to wealthy families with command ranks

  that drew pay in goods and gold instead of Prakith scrip.

  The specialists and ratings, draftees all, owed the security of their

  families to Brill's promise of the protection of the Red Police for the

  daughters and wives of those who protected his power with their

  lives.

  To be drafted into the navy was a far better thing than to be drafted

  into the slit mines or the foundries, or to be one of the hundreds

  rousted nightly from the riverbanks in Prall and Skoth to dig their own

  graves.

  Graft and fear were inferior flavors of fealty, but they were the best

  Foga Brill could command, and they sufficed.

  "Course change maneuver complete, Captain," the navigator reported in a

  clear, loud voice. "Now heading nine-zero, mark, negative four-five,

  mark, two-two at deep patrol standard."

  "Towmaster, report," said Dogot.

  The listening array Bloodprice towed behind it on deep patrol was a

  hundred times longer than the ship itself. It was a spiderweb of

  passive antenna cables, tiny noiseless amplifiers, steering jets, and

  tension vanes, with a drag gondola the size of a troop transport at the

  end of the antenna's main cable. The three crew members in the gondola

  had the difficult job of flying the array through the turn when

  Bloodprice changed heading.

  If there was too little tension, the elements could tangle, or the

  whole array could tear itself apart in what the manuals called dynamic

  destabilization and tow crews called tail whip. If there was too much

  tension through the turn, the likely result was an overstrain

  disconnect and a two-hour delay for the recapture procedure.

  The towmaster on Bloodprice's last patrol had allowed two

  disconnects.

  Along with the gondola crew, he had spent the last half of the patrol

  in the brig, awaiting the return to Prakith and a court-martial on a

  charge of treasonable incompetence.

  So it was with great relief that his replacement announced, "The array

  turned cleanly and deployment is nominal."

  "Very well," said Dogot. "Lieutenant Sojis, you are master of the

  bridge. I will be in my quarters, working on crew reviews. Inform

  Yeoman Cligot that she is to report to me there immediately."

  "Yes, Captain."

  When the portal closed after Lando and Artoo, Lobot watched,

  fascinated, as the smoke thinned and disappeared, the scar faded and

  vanished.

  Even the tiny white bits of soot smudging the outside of his faceplate

  seemed to evaporate. He watched on his suit monitor as the temperature

  plummeted thirty degrees, to the slightly chilly norm for the

  vagabond.

  "Pardon me, Master Lobot--" "Yes, Threepio, what is it?" Lobot said

  automatically, still distracted.

  "I was wondering, sir, if you could tell me--do droids meet the

  conditions of the test?"

  Lobot'S head snapped around. "What did you say?"

  "The test of intelligence," Threepio repeated. "Am I sentient, like

  you, or simply another work of great ingenuity, like this ship?"

  Taken aback, Lobot looked away from the droid's waiting face as he

  groped for an answer. "Ah--Threepio, you know, most droids are built

  to have self-aware artificial intelligence. Especially third-degree

  droids like yourself."

  "But that must be something different than sentience," Threepio said.

  "Otherwise, the Senate of the New Republic would not consist solely of

  organics, served by droids."

  "It is different," Lobot said, as gently as he could.

  "Artificial intelligence is programming. Wipe a droid's memory and it

  disappears. Replace it with different programming and a translator

  becomes a tutor, or a med droid becomes a chem droid."

  "I understand, sir," said Threepio; he was quiet for a long moment.

  "Then can you tell me how it feels to be sentient? How is it different

  from what I feel?"

  "I'm not sure that I can say," Lobot replied slowly.

  "Perhaps it is a thing that you just know, because you are an organic

  and not a machine? Perhaps if I were sentient, I would not need to ask

  you these questions. I would know who I was."

  Lobot said nothing for a time. "What do you think, Threepio?" he

  asked at last.

  "I do not know, Master Lobot," the droid said.

  "But I have noticed that when someone speaks of memory wipes, I am

  seized by an inexplicable panic."

  "I don't find that inexplicable," said Lobot.

  "Really, sir?"

  "Self-preservation is an elementary part of self-awareness--even

  artificial self-awareness. It's the part of us that feels that

  awareness which matters to us," Lobot said. "I expect you would give

  that up"--he pointed at Threepio's immobile arm--"to keep your

  programming intact. As I would surrender this"--he pointed through his

  faceplate at his neural interface--"to preserve my consciousness."

  "I do not recall having this reaction when I was younger, sir,"

  Threepio said. "Why, I have seen many droids of my acquaintance taken

  for memory wipes. I felt nothing but gratitude that their masters

  cared enough for their well-being to schedule proper mainte
nance."

  The droid cocked his head. "My own maintenance record, I'm afraid, is

  something of a horror. It's a miracle that I can still function at

  all."

  Lobot mused on that answer for a while. "Just out of curiosity,

  Threepio, have you thought about asking other droids what they think

  about this?"

  "Yes, Master Lobot," Threepio said. "But they seemed not to understand

  the question. Why, one even had the ill manners to call me a

  computational defective with deviant specifications. Can you

  imagine?"

  "I know something of such prejudice," said Lobot, then sighed. "I

  don't have any answers for you, Threepio. All I can say is that the

  questions would seem to be worth revisiting when some time has

  passed."

  "Thank you, Master Lobot," said Threepio. "I will do so."

  Except for blind spots caused by Bloodprice and the drag gondola, the

  towed array could scan several light-hours in every direction. As the

  outermost of Prakith's three concentric spheres of defense, the first

  purpose of the deep patrol was to detect possible military threats long

  before they could come near the planet. For that reason, the ship's

  patrol route took it through the most likely final staging areas for an

  attack on Prakith, outside the range of its ground-based and orbiting

  sensors.

  But an equally important purpose was to intercept and claim as a prize

  any merchant or private vessel unwary enough to pass within reach.

  Ship seizures were not only an obligation, but an opportunity. A rich

  enough prize could advance the entire crew to a better post. And every

  deep patrol captain knew stories of other captains who had come home

  with a prize rich enough to earn the favor of Foga Brill himself.

  So when Captain Dogot was called away from his examinations of the new

  female crew members and saw the size of the contact on the optical

  displays, he quickly forgave the interruption. "What identification

  have you made?" he asked, peering over the shoulder of the security

  master.

  "None so far," said the officer. "The image is too crude, and the

  target is silent in all spectral bands except the optical."

  "Interrogate the navigation transponder."

  "There is no transponder response at that location."

  "Range?"

  "Three-point-eight light-hours--nearly at the limit of detection."

  Captain Dogot weighed the possibilities. A warship of that size would

  be more than a match for a patrol frigate. He would need

  reinforcements from the inner fleet. But a freighter of that size

  would be a prize of the first rank, and one he would much prefer not to

  share with other captains.

  For a brief moment he considered cutting the array adrift, rather than

  allowing the hour necessary to reel it in. Abandoning the array would

  ensure that Bloodprice was the first ship to reach the target. But if

  the contact proved spurious, or the target escaped, the loss of the

  array--or even any substantial damage to it--would cost him his post,

  if not his life.

  "Bring in the array," Captain Dogot ordered. "Prepare the ship for

  hyperspace. Notify patrol command that we are in pursuit of an

  unidentified contact, vector zero-nine-one, zero-six-six,

  zero-five-three."

  The navigation master turned at his station. "But, sir, the last

  coordinate for the contact is zero-five-five."

  "I am sure you are mistaken," Dogot said evenly.

  "Communications master, send the message as I instructed.

  Patrol command will want to send additional ships to support us.

  Navigation master, what would an error of two degrees over this

  distance mean?"

  "The, uh--the ships would be hours away at sub-light, but too close to

  safely microjump." Understanding belatedly came to his eyes, and he

  glanced down at his console. "Yes, sir, zero-five-three. Thank you

  for catching my error before it had any undesirable consequences."

  "Sleeping on the job again, I see. Did you know that you snore like a

  power saw in ironwood?"

  Lando's voice, sharp and clear in the helmet's comm speakers, startled

  a dozing Lobot awake. He looked up to find Lando and Artoo back in

  chamber 21, the portal quickly closing behind them. Lando was holding

  his helmet under his arm and grinning broadly.

  "Lando--what are you doing?"

  "Master Lando, have you gone mad?" Threepio demanded in alarm. "You

  must replace your helmet immediately, or you'll suffocate!"

  "I've had it off for most of an hour now," said Lando. "Didn't you

  wonder how anything could burn in an atmosphere that was ninety percent

  nitrogen and carbon dioxide?"

  "It seems I did not have the necessary data to wonder," said Lobot.

  "And I was thinking about other things."

  "Well, the answer is, it can't," said Lando. "What I had to find out

  was whether it was just this room that had been oxygen-enriched."

  "And it apparently wasn't."

  "No. Something happened while we were sleeping.

  Every chamber back to number one now has a breathable atmosphere. Go

  on, take your helmet off--try it."

  The air was cold, dry, and sweet in Lobot's lungs.

  He looked at Lando in puzzlement. "Why should this be?"

  "You said it first--this ship isn't out to harm' us. It was expecting

  visitors."

  "But we took a wrong turn after we entered," Lobot said thoughtfully,

  scratching his bald head with vigor.

  "We weren't supposed to be wandering through the weapons system, which

  has its own specific environmental needs. We were supposed to be going

  through the museum."

  "Which was in cold storage until we arrived," said Lando. "It makes

  perfect sense. Oxygen is highly reactive--a reducing agent. Keeping

  the oxygen pressure low and the carbon dioxide high protects the ship

  from fire, the exhibits from corrosion. Imperial Star Destroyers flood

  key equipment compartments with an N-CO2 mixture before going into

  battle."

  "Then what happened to all the carbon dioxide that was in the air?

  Scrubbers?"

  "The original and best kind," Lando said. "The ship breathed it in,

  locked up the carbon, and gave back the oxygen. Lobot, don't you

  see?

  This ship is alive."

  On Captain Dogot's orders, the Bloodprice began charging its primary

  ion cannon battery immediately after exiting hyperspace.

  There would be no negotiations, no warning shots, no demands for

  surrender. Dogot did not intend to allow the captain of the intruding

  vessel any latitude at all.

  Unless a closer look at the target showed it to be a friendly, or a

  warship of cruiser class or heavier, Dogot intended to use the big guns

  quickly. The talking could begin after his gunners had disabled the

  other ship.

  "Target acquired," called the gunnery master.

  "Twenty seconds to full charge."

  "Target is confirmed unknown," called the senior analyst. "Design

  class is unknown. Estimated displacement class, gamma-plus. Detecting

  no weapons ports forward."

  "Target real velocity is
fifty-two meters per second," called the

  navigation master. "Target closing velocity is one thousand, eight

  hundred sixteen meters per second."

  Captain Dogot studied the image on his command display. It seemed

  almost too good to believe--a huge, unarmed and unprotected vessel

  barely crawling through space. "Are there any other Prakith vessels on

  the board?"

  "Showing the light cruiser Gorath and the destroyer Tobay approximately

  twenty million kilometers astern," said the navigation master. "They

  won't be here for a while."

  "Very well," Dogot said. "Then we must do what we can ourselves.

  Gunnery master, you may fire when ready. Ion batteries only--I want

  that ship disabled, not destroyed. Troop master, prepare your units

  for boarding--" Lando and Lobot had both temporarily shed their contact

  suits to stretch, scratch, and even scrub away their accumulated

  annoyances, sacrificing some of their precious water to restore a

  measure of dignity and comfort.

  The convenience of the waste management facilities in the suits alone