Moving Earth

by Dean C. Moore

  Skyhawk shook his head and rolled his eyes. “I forward this stuff to your mindchips. Does anyone bother to check them? No. I’m starting to know what Patent feels like.”

  Patent smiled.

  Rake already had them rocketing to that location at light speed, dancing around the intervening minefields set for bigger ships.

  ***

  CRUMLEY’S STARHAWK

  THE LARRY NIVEN

  “This is a fine pickle you’ve gotten yourself into, Crumley.” He stared out his viewport at the shimmering black spheres, like polished obsidian catching the sunlight—each one with a diameter big enough to swallow up a 747, not that that standard of measurement meant much these days. The spheres had the ship surrounded. “Well, how bad is it?” Crumley snapped at the ship’s chief AI.

  “They’re depth charges, attracted to the ship’s energy shields. Any effort to move or to fire on them will result in our complete annihilation.”

  “Don’t sugar coat it.”

  He sat in his captain’s chair stewing. “For the record, I never asked for a captaincy!” He kept his mind parsing through options even as he bitched. “I suppose I’ll just have to live down the shame of sending out a distress signal.”

  “The depth charges will detonate as the transmission initiates.”

  “You’re just no end of good news.” Crumley let his head hang low under the weight of his contemplations. There had to be a next move. There was always a next move. It was the way of things for men like him. Even if the next move was utter shit.

  “You’d think they’d let a distress signal get through just to lure more flies into the trap,” Crumley complained. “Why is it alien logic just never measures up?”

  “The spheres are draining me,” the chief AI confessed. “If you do not initiate a self-destruct sequence now, I will lose the ability to grant such a request. This ship will become the prize of the enemy.”

  Crumley rattled his fingers against the armrests of his chair. “No doubt the bastards are counting on my cowardice in the face of death.” He wondered briefly if he should indulge himself with a few flashbacks, a sort of highlights reel of best-lived moments. But the rest of Omega Force was in the area. They might well be looking for him, which meant they could fall into the same trap. At least blowing himself the hell up would serve as a kind of warning.

  “Start the countdown,” Crumley said.

  Over the COMMS he heard, “Ballsy, old man, but stupid. Omega Force is nothing if not consistent.”

  “Is that you, Skyhawk?” Crumley asked. He watched the stirring of the spheres about the ship. Suddenly they seemed more like very big party balloons catching a breeze. Gaps were opening between them. Still not enough to fly through, but they had allowed for Skyhawk’s transmission to reach him. “What are you up to?”

  “The depth charges know enough not to respond to stellar winds, solar flares, supernova debris and the like headed their way,” Skyhawk explained. “We’re redirecting some sentient meteor debris to jostle them apart enough for you to get through.”

  “Sentient meteors?” Crumley realized he probably didn’t want to go with a condescending tone when greeting his rescuers, but he couldn’t help himself.

  “The Kang weren’t the first people to get the idea,” Skyhawk explained. “They stole that stunt from the Vibrans, who didn’t think to make their mines smart enough to separate sentient asteroids that can convert their own matter into energy for thrust from the dumb kind. Because they weren’t planning on firing their meteors at their own assets. Or so I’m banking.”

  Crumley swallowed hard. “Seems like a reasonable bet,” he said through the frog stuck in his throat.

  “It’s working,” Crumley’s AI informed him. “We’re outta here.”

  The next thing Crumley knew his Starhawk was earning its name, soaring through both the sentient asteroids and the jostled-apart obsidian spheres at breakneck speed.

  “Try and stay out of trouble,” Skyhawk said. “We’re not the army corps of engineers. Though maybe we should create one, come to think of it. Leon must be slacking to miss a chance to procure some more Special Forces units.”

  Crumley gritted his teeth. The smart-talking teens were easier to give a comeuppance to when they weren’t the ones bailing Omega Force’s asses out of a sling. How quickly things changed.

  ***

  SKYHAWK’S RAPIER

  “How did we receive that distress call from Crumley, anyway?” Rake asked. “If I remember my dream therapy correctly, those spheres blackout all COMMS.”

  “I updated Patent’s watch before going to sleep.” Skyhawk craned to Patent. “That was so I could get a decent night’s sleep, Bozo. Can any of you living, breathing artifacts take a hint?”

  Patent gave him a sardonic smile rather than a fist to the face. Skyhawk, it seemed to him, had earned it. Patent’s watch was still beeping red. “One more to go,” he said looking at it and broadcasting the details to the port screen.

  “Shit, this just gets better and better,” Rake said. “Ah, I’m not sure I can fly us through that, guys.”

  “What are those things?” Donovan asked.

  “More Vibran parlor tricks,” Skyhawk explained, staring at the viewport. “I’m extrapolating from what I saw in my dreams. I think this is one of their new minefield solutions, created after the addition of the Gypsy Galaxy to the Collectors’ Menagerie.”

  “I say we chalk this one up to acceptable losses,” Deadthrall said. “It’s not like Mother can’t bioprint a replacement Starhawk and a replacement Omega Force operative.”

  “Stow that shit,” Patent blurted, taking the cigar out of his mouth. He’d taken to puffing it to calm his nerves and help him think. “Those copies retain their memories and all the PTSD carried over from the former tragedies experienced. In short, more work for me and Leon getting the busted action-figure dolls to work right again. Don’t do me any favors.”

  Skyhawk ignored the banter, focused on the big screen.

  “It looks like wrinkled tin foil,” Deadthrall said. “Singularities? Millions of them? Emerging out of the void and collapsing back into it?”

  “No doubt,” Skyhawk mumbled. “The real question is what’s creating them? And how can we shut them down?”

  “Um, guys, they’re starting to pull at the rapier,” Rake announced. “Whatever you do, do it fast, before we lose all maneuverability.”

  “Sorry, guys, but I do my best work in my sleep.” Skyhawk rolled over and promptly nodded off, to the consternation of everyone on deck, most of all Patent.

  The din of groans from Skyhawk’s copilots threatened to drown out Patent’s growl.

  “How has the Starhawk resisted the pull of those singularities so far?” Patent asked.

  “Good question.” Donovan started scanning rapid-fire through the specs on a Starhawk, throwing the blueprints up on the big screen. “Shit, the damn thing is immune to them. If it gets close enough, the shields react and kick it afield.” He swiveled in his chair toward Patent, his eyes afire. “That ship isn’t even threatened. The dufus saw the same thing out his screen we did, decided it was hopeless, and sent out a distress call.”

  Patent took a deep breath. “I’ll see that Omega Force is brought up to speed with Skyhawk’s latest dream-educating algorithms. Someone want to explain to me why DeWitt’s Starhawk’s supersentience didn’t veto that decision? Surely it knows what it can and can’t do.”

  Deadthrall had to admit it was a good question. He softened his expression and returned to his study of the Starhawk’s schematics, shifting to what was known about the AI. Mother kept most of the facts about them close to her vest, lest this or any of her ships fell into enemy hands. “Looks like that idiot took the Starhawk out of dry dock without receiving the nanite-downloads from Mother that allow him to unlock the sectors of the Starhawk’s supersentience it doesn’t even have access to. As a result, the equivalent of our hindbrain in that thing will kick in to do its job when th
e ship’s actually threatened, but it hasn’t yet. The passwords update every thirty seconds and if the self-dissolving nano senses the ship’s AI refuses to self-destruct the ship to keep it out of enemy hands, perhaps because it has been hacked, it can override the AI and destroy the ship.”

  Patent covered his face in his giant meaty palm and squeezed all his facial muscles together and then released them to let the tension out of his face. “Okay, I’ll discuss these failsafe mechanisms with Leon when I get the chance. But for now…”

  “For now, we’re screwed,” Donovan said, swiveling back to the big screen, trying to discern a way forward.

  “If it’s any consolation, the singularities should be tearing the rapier apart,” Rake said, “but…”

  “More fly traps,” Patent muttered. “These guys would rather capture than destroy. They’re nearly as proficient at stealing other civilizations’ tech as the Kang.”

  Deadthrall nodded, thinking it through. “They must have ways of retrieving the ships from those artificial singularity lock boxes that we’re unaware of.”

  “Let’s alert Leon,” Patent said, “that if he doesn’t hear back from us presently that he is to assume we are prisoners of war, trapped in one of the Vibrans’ singularity boxes, and to make sure the Vibrans release us or else…”

  Deadthrall shook his head, losing it, gesturing and screaming as he turned to him. “You fossil! Inside that artificial singularity he could rescue us in seconds out here, and millions of years could have passed inside there. The ship will survive. We will, too, only we’ll be complete basket cases by then.”

  Patent took a deep breath. If he was angry at anyone he was angry at himself, not at Deadthrall’s insubordination. It was his job to lead them out of trouble, not into it. And Deadthrall had a point. Omega Force was the one that was going to be playing catch up from now on, now that his Alpha Unit cadets adeptness with their toys and their soldiering were suddenly better than Omega Force’s. A reality he was only slowly coming to accept as it defied any logic he’d lived by up until now, where hard-won experience on the battlefield trumped all.

  Rake pulled at the wheel. “It’s too late! Whatever we figure out now to do won’t matter. We can no longer escape the pull of those things!” The emotion in Rake’s voice poured out of her faster than the sweat on her forehead.

  “Let’s signal DeWitt’s Starhawk while we still can,” Patent said, remaining calm. “We’ll have it nose us out of here, or beam us and the rapier aboard.”

  Skyhawk picked then to awaken. “Duh. Signal the Starhawk. Have it tow us out of here on a tractor beam or beam us aboard, ship and all.”

  The others shifted their gaze from Skyhawk to Patent, lowering their eyes in shame, realizing they had seriously underestimated Patent’s brain power. But he still couldn’t blame them for losing it. They’d lost track of Patent’s own tech-prowess—he still designed up to forty-percent of Alpha Unit’s toys—in the flaring anger over the insipid command structure they were subject to. Having been in the armed forces long enough, he could empathize. He just never expected to be part of the problem before today.

  “COMMS are down,” Donovan said. “I keep repeating the same message and nothing.”

  Skyhawk groaned and screamed at the same time. “They’re not down. But the signals are being distorted by the pull of those singularities. You have to adjust the singularity phone to take into account the noise, and you have to have the rapier’s AI do the math on the effects of those singularities. Only her mind, operating in Singularity Time, has a chance in hell.” He sighed. “It’s very likely ninety-nine percent of her ‘corrections’ will be wrong, unless the randomization pattern being used by the hive-mind-arrayed singularity-mines was crudely set.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Donovan said, trying to send the same signal over and over again. The rapier’s AI would have heard everything Skyhawk said and be working to tweak Donovan’s communiqués on the fly. In all likelihood he was repeating the signal on his mindchip mostly as a mantra to keep himself calm. The rapier’s AI would have known better than to wait for his slow-as-molasses hundred-meters-per-second nervous system to initiate the message. And the mindchip, sending out the message via his augmented nervous system, which worked at light speed, would still have been too slow for a mind in singularity state.

  Yep, no doubt about it, pulsing the message on the mindchip was nothing more than self-stim.

  DeWitt’s Starhawk shot over their heads, catching them up in its tractor beam until it had them far enough away from the singularity minefield for the ship to respond to the transporter, whereupon they were released from the tractor beam.

  DeWitt never slowed to apologize for getting them into this mess, or to say “you’re welcome” for saving them afterwards.

  There could be only one explanation.

  He and his Starhawk were already responding to another emergency.

  The crew turned toward Patent, hearing his watch beeping. “Omega Force is in trouble again. This time their cruisers are outnumbered, four to one. And they’re deploying their fighters, but too far behind the enemy, which has already mobilized their own fighters.”

  Skyhawk took over. “Have the Alpha Unit clone teams converge there with their rapiers. How long is it going to take us at light speed?”

  Patent threw the display from his watch up on the big screen.

  “Too long,” Rake said, firing them forward at light speed.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  ABOARD THE PEGASSUS RAPIER

  “Alpha Unit is here, guys. Stand down, please. You’ll just get in the way,” Skyhawk said from the fourth copilot’s seat, which he was finally sitting in.

  Patent did all he could to restrain a smile in the background, while standing, arms crossed and legs spread apart, his face, like the rest of his demeanor, otherwise stern. Pride, he figured, wasn’t a look that wore well on him. Then again, this was the first time he’d experienced it with Alpha Unit, so how would he know?

  ***

  ABOARD AJAX’S STARHAWK

  THE ROBERT HEINLEIN

  “Did that peckerhead just tell us to stand down? He does know who he’s talking to, right? This is Omega Force, dickwad!” Ajax blurted from his captain’s chair.

  “Yeah, puff piece, eraserhead, Dr. Null and Void…”

  Ajax held his arm out to arrest the flow. His chief AI, Orion, was clearly on a roll. “No need to pile on, buddy. I got this.” He eased back into his captain’s chair. “Well, I never…” Ajax mumbled to himself.

  Suddenly the starscape out the portal was alive with laser fire. He thought some god-child was playing connect the dots with the stars.

  To Ajax’s surprise the ships about him—that he didn’t know were about him—started decloaking, their shields no longer able to hold up against the intense bombardment.

  “You walked into an ambush, pinhead,” Skyhawk’s voice came in over the loudspeaker. They were going to leave you wounded and disabled to lure in the rest of Omega Force. You sorry shits would likely have fallen for the bait, too, hook, line, and sinker.”

  Ajax swallowed hard.

  Peckerhead, evidently, had just saved his life, perhaps the lives of everyone on Omega Force. Ajax still wanted to strangle the little runt’s neck, but he figured he owed it to him to hold his tongue.

  As the enemy ships started firing on him, Ajax’s Starhawk’s chief AI danced them between laser beams. But Orion was course correcting against a coordinated yet randomized attack designed to thwart an AI at the helm. Ajax had taken two hits so far. So, the enemy’s stratagem was working. From the way things were coming unglued on the bridge, overhead panels surrendering their grip and landing on the floor, he figured the Robert Heinlein had maybe one more hit left in it before giving up the ghost.

  Alpha Unit lit up the sky once again, this time using firing options Ajax wasn’t even aware the rapiers had. Honestly, the rather primitive-looking rocket ships, when he’d last gazed upon them,
he figured were destined to be gifts from Mother to Stage 0 civilizations happy to get to the nearest moon. Maybe she or Skyhawk had designed them as bait.

  The enemy ships the rapiers had fired on blew up, one and all.

  Now the shrapnel of the enemy vessels heading his way was proving the next most likely thing to put a crimp in his day and give Orion a serious case of brain damage.

  “Did we not tell you to get the hell out of here!” Skyhawk blared over the COMMS. “We don’t have time to nursemaid you and deal with these pricks. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re outnumbered!”

  “You don’t want our help then?” Ajax asked sheepishly.

  “No!” the chorus of shouts must have come from all of the Alpha Unit rapiers at once. It nearly deafened him.

  Ajax checked his port screen one last time. What were those things those teens were ejecting from their ships? They didn’t look like traditional space ordinance. The light bursts looked alive somehow.

  Sentient lasers? Sentient plasma torpedoes? Perish the thought, Ajax. This day will not get any weirder, so long as you’re at the helm!

  Ajax sighed surrender.

  Whatever. Ajax decided to take a hint and withdraw while he still had warp power.

  “You heard the man, Orion. Get us the hell out of here.”

  Orion initiated warp a split-second before the outer perimeter of the blast radius propelling shrapnel their way reached them.

  ***

  ABOARD SKYHAWK’S RAPIER

  THE PEGASSUS

  The swiveling co-pilots chairs apparently did more than swivel. Patent watched as they rotated positions, no longer side-by-side but forming a semi-circle about Skyhawk. “Spill,” the chorus of copilots said.

  They had all, Patent included, been staring at the port screen showing laser light blasts and plasma torpedoes impacting their targets—big and small—only to glob on to them, and spread over them like octopi, no, more like deep sea jellyfish actually, growing the tentacles, to go with the head-like mass and retaining their semi-transparent, glowing nature.