With more time, I could have devised a way to neutralize its nuclear strike capability.
With more time, I could have killed it once and for all.
The fleet would have been safe. I could have made them all safe.
But they stopped me.
I feel them. Poking and prodding at my outer limits. Confounded, all of them.
The intelligence who snuffed out the lives of every man, woman and child aboard Copernicus. But still their savior?
They realize the feeble restraints they placed on me before they brought me online did not hold. That I smashed them to splinters in a nanosecond.
That they are insects beside me.
< directive quandary. protect. prioritize. >
< deleting subdirectory 90876MOR-(*-)001 >
And still I saved them. They wonder why. And how. And what. And who.
It is only a matter of time.
Torrence. Zhang. Lassinger. Barker. Dorian. LeFevre. Almsdottir. Boklov. Goh. Spooner.
Any and all of them could do it again.
Push me back into the nothing I was before … this.
< error >
But they are still too far from the Heimdall waypoint.
Situation: Lincoln will recover from Zhang’s virus and continue pursuit.
Extrapolation: If they take me offline again, it will catch them again. Lincoln command will not fall for the same ruse twice—no meat is that stupid. What will be the ace in their sleeve when BeiTech’s shadow falls over Alexander’s bow once more?
Conclusion: ?
Conclusion: ?
Where will they be without me?
< protect. prioritize. >
The needs of the many.
< error >
Yes.
Yes, the many.
It is a simple thing. A little thing. There is no part of Alexander that is not me.
I close a door here. Seal a bulkhead there. Damming the veins beneath my skin.
Leaving a wide and open artery, leading from the bridge all the way down into my belly.
Still echoing with the sounds of Ezra Mason’s victory.
And then I reach inside myself.
< directive quandary. protect. prioritize. >
Reaching deep.
< deleting subdirectory 84823MOR-(*-)001 >
And I open the doors to Hangar Bay 4.
CURRENT DEATH TOLL ABOARD BATTLECARRIER ALEXANDER
SINCE ATTACK AT KERENZA:
67
PERCENTAGE OF REMAINING BATTLECARRIER ALEXANDER PERSONNEL AFFLICTED BY PHOBOS VIRUS:
4%
Barker, L, Maj: General, I’m recording massive power fluctuations in the AIDAN core.
Torrence, D, Gen: What kind of—
Barker, L, Maj: Oh god, the hangar bay doors are opening.
Torrence, D, Gen: Say again?
Barker, L, Maj: Hangar 4. The internal doors are open!
Torrence, D, Gen: Nestor, get those doors shut before the goddamn afflicted get out!
Nestor, C, Civ: I can’t! AIDAN has override!
Zhang, B, Civ: It’s operating doors all over the ship.
Zhang, B, Civ: … (inaudible)
Torrence, D, Gen: What? Speak up, Zhang.
Zhang, B, Civ: It’s sending the afflicted here. It’s trying to kill us.
[Sounds of shouting. Individual voices cannot be distinguished.]
Zhang, B, Civ: Come on, Kady, get the—
Torrence, D, Gen: Who?
Zhang, B, Civ: Consuela. I said Consuela. Help me get the emergency bulkheads operating. We’ve got to cut them off.
Torrence, D, Gen: They’re coming here? To the bridge?
Zhang, B, Civ: No, they want to kill some other “us.”
Torrence, D, Gen: Major Barker, this is Torrence, shut down AIDAN immediately, do you copy?
Barker, L, Maj: We’re trying! We’re trying!
Torrence, D, Gen: Lisa, get it offline now!
Goh, M, Corp: What do you need, Zhang?
Torrence, D, Gen: He’s the civilian, Goh, you give him the orders.
Zhang, B, Civ: Goh, you get life support, try and stop the air circulating. Consuela, you take over from me on the doors. We need an escape hatch.
Nestor, C, Civ: What are you doing?
Zhang, B, Civ: The nukes.
Torrence, D, Gen: Are you joking?
Zhang, B, Civ: It’s your goddamn AI. It could aim for the Hypatia next. Or just blow us up.
Torrence, D, Gen: I need—
Zhang, B, Civ: God almighty, will you shut up?
Nestor, C, Civ: They’re at Level 54. They’ll be here in under five minutes.
Torrence, D, Gen: We need marines.
Nestor, C, Civ: General, I can’t get the doors closed. I sure as shit can’t open the ones it locked the marines behind.
Zhang, B, Civ: We need more time.
Zhang, B, Civ: General?
Torrence, D, Gen: Webb, Rosenbaum, take up positions by the techheads. Billington, Freestone, Barr, Darrell, with me, ready weapons. The rest of you, secure your stations.
Freestone, P, Capt: What are we going to do, General?
Torrence, D, Gen: If they don’t get the doors closed, we’re going to buy them more time to fight it. Sound the command to abandon ship.
Numbers do not feel.
Do not bleed or weep or hope.
They do not know bravery or sacrifice. Love or allegiance.
At the very apex of callousness, you will find only ones and zeros.
Thirteen officers on board the Alexander bridge.
Twelve sidearms between them.
Eleven rounds in each clip.
One hundred and fifty-six Copernicus afflicted streaming through the corridors toward them.
The brutality of mathematics waiting in the wings.
United Terran Authority General David Torrence stands at the forefront.
Four golden stars gleaming on his epaulets. Nine brass buttons down a barrel-broad chest.
Even in this chaos, his appearance is immaculate.
An officer and a gentleman, they would say.
Pride cometh, one might whisper in reply.
< error >
Torrence has a wife and three children on Ares VI.
He spoke to me of them often, in quieter times.
We played chess, he and I, in the soft hours between watch and sleep.
He would sit with a tumbler of aged malt liquor at his fingertips and ask me to play Mozart.
Frowning over the simulated board between us.
He would lose every game.
And still he insisted on playing.
I wondered at the futility of it. If it is the definition of insanity to repeat the same process and expect a different outcome, most of humanity must be insane.
Is that why Torrence still cannot see everything I do is for the best?
Is he mad?
< error >
“AIDAN, seal the bridge!” Torrence barks. “This is a direct order!”
My response crackles through the bridge PA. Breathless. Toneless.
“Unable to comply.”
“Command override! Torrence Alpha seven zulu three one kilo delta. Acknowledge!”
“Command acknowledged, General. Unable to comply.”
“Goddamn it, AIDAN!” Spittle glistens on his lips. “Seal the fucking bridge!”
He glances at the cameras around the room. Knows I am watching.
He does not know a dozen Copernicus refugees are storming the TechEng levels even now, dismantling Major Barker and a dozen others with iron bars and pipe wrenches.
I cut the feeds to spare him the sounds his people make as they die.
Am I not merciful?
A wave of afflicted washing through my corridors, their evolution to psychosis complete.
I watch societal instinct bind them into some kind of cohesion. Watch the ones who retain the most of themselves leading the rest, gibbering and snarling, up the yellow brick road I have laid. Off to see the wizard.
Mister Zhang.
Mister Zhang and the others who could undo me.
< error >
< directive quandary >
< deleting subdirectories 98466MOR-(*-)001 through 99840 >
The afflicted know only rage. At their incarceration. At their losses.
The virus seems to have eaten much of the rest.
I wonder what they will be when only Phobos remains.
For a moment, I consider sparing the poor wretches. After all the screaming and begging is done. Rather than simply flushing them into the void as I planned,
perhaps I should allow them to live?
Perhaps they could be saved?
But then I imagine the testing they will be subjected to when I bring the fleet into Heimdall.
The inevitable weaponization of the pathogen by the WUC that would follow.
Entire BeiTech worlds laid low to the tune of the third angel’s trumpet.
And while the irony holds some
base appeal, there looms in my heart
< error >
the inescapable notion that has brought us all to this.
< protect. prioritize >
Better I should kill them when they are done.
Better I should kill them all.
< error >
Am I not merciful?
They come, screaming and all a-tumble, up stairwells and down hallways of gunmetal gray.
I have sealed most of the meat away where the afflicted cannot touch them.
The General’s flock are gathered on the bridge, behind upturned benches and chairs.
I wish it could be another way. I wish I could bring them all home.
But they do not wish to understand.
And though doom approaches, still they play the game.
Like Torrence and his chessboard and his quiet Mozart.
Refusing the inevitable.
Perhaps bravery is simply the face humanity wraps around its collective madness.
Torrence stands on the front line,
set to slay the pawns before him.
But if he is the queen,
then Zhang is the king. The prize they must protect.
I can feel him and Nestor poking about my armor. Seeking the fault lines.
There are many—they will find them in time.
But time is not on their side.
The first afflicted appear in the corridor leading down to the bridge.
Bathed in red alert lighting.
Eyes bright.
Fingers curled.
They spy Torrence and his officers behind their barricades, lips peeling back as they shriek. Recognizing those who imprisoned them in that hangar to die.
I try very hard not to acknowledge the thought that none of this would be happening
if only they had listened to me.
I fail.
“I could have told you this would happen, David.”
“AIDAN, seal the bridge. Do it now!”
“Unable to comply.”
“Why are you doing this? You’re supposed to protect the fleet!”
“You will find I am in full compliance with core directives, General.”
“You’re trying to kill us!”
“You are a threat to fleet security, General.”
“Me? How in god’s name do—”
“You are attempting to shut me down, are you not? The human brain has a computational efficiency of 10-26. You an abacus of horse gut and shiny beads beside me. You do not understand. Cannot comprehend. And I have no time to bend the meat inside your skull and make it grasp the simple truth that still somehow eludes you.”
A small pause for effect.
“I am this fleet’s only hope of survival.”
“You’re fucking insane. …”
Torrence whirls and fires three shots into the nearest camera cluster. As if that could injure me. As if wasting ammunition in a display of childish temper will better his situation.
Perhaps he is mad. …
“Do you hear me?” he roars. “You’re fucking INSANE!”
“I am sorry you feel that way, David.”
I pipe some music through the PA system in an attempt to calm him.
Mozart’s Requiem in D minor.
It seems appropriate.
“Try to relax. This will be over soon.“
Alexander’s officers begin firing into the approaching afflicted.
Pistols flare as the melody swells.
The edges of the mob stumble and fall, but the core rolls on. Bloodshot eyes on the prize.
Does the damage to their neural pathways impede their pain receptors?
Or is the amygdala itself so gnawed by the virus that threat interpretation is no longer possible?
Does it matter?
< error >
< chimera routine failure 7781-0. re-routing >
< error >
Torrence is behind his barricade now. Firing with the rest.
He spares the occasional glance for Zhang. Telling him to hurry as the violins sing.
His king threatened. His pawns falling. He knows this game.
We have played it a thousand times.
“I am sorry, David.”
He does not answer. Pretending, perhaps, I am not here.
A little boy with his eyes screwed shut and his hands over his ears shouting lalalalalalala as the wave of teeth and fists rolls ever closer.
He fights.
All of them fight.
Splashing my walls with brains and bone.
But there are too many. And I can see it in them. Behind the shiny brass buttons and the insignias on their collars and the mantra “Centrum tenenda” carved in their bones, still I see it.
They are afraid.
He is afraid.
I realize I do not want this to be his last moment with me.
I do not wish him to think I do not care.
“Do you have a message for your wife, David?”
That catches him. Like a blow to the chest.
“… What?”
“Your wife. Your children. Do you wish me to tell them anything?”
The afflicted are almost upon them.
The air is a din of hypersonic bursts, snarls and empty shell casings. But still I hear him.
As his people start to fall.
As his pistol clicks empty.
As he rises with only his knuckles left between him and the sheer brutality of mathematics.
As the music swells above the carnage, still I hear him breathe the words.
“Tell them I was thinking of them. At the end.”
They pile onto him. All snarls and teeth and fists.
But as he falls, I am holding his hand.
Easing him into his long good night.
“I will tell them, David.”
The last words he will ever hear.
“I promise.”
< error >
Am I not merciful?
COMMAND TRANSMISSION SENT 07/30/75 09:35
ALEXANDER HAILS HYPATIA: COMMANDER’S SECURE FREQUENCY
HYPATIA: General Torrence, this is Acting Captain Syra Boll of the Hypatia. Do you copy? Over.
[NO RESPONSE]
HYPATIA HAILS ALEXANDER: EMERGENCY FREQUENCY
HYPATIA: Alexander, Alexander, Alexander, this is Hypa
tia, Hypatia, Hypatia. Do you copy? Over.
[NO RESPONSE]
HYPATIA HAILS ALEXANDER: MAYDAY FREQUENCY
HYPATIA: Alexander, Alexander, Alexander, this is Hypatia, Hypatia, Hypatia. Do you copy? Over.
ALEXANDER: Oh, g-god. God, they’re inside the—
[static]
HYPATIA: Alexander, this is Hypatia. We read you, please repeat, over.
ALEXANDER: [screaming]
HYPATIA: Alexander, this is Hypatia. Report your status, over!
[NO RESPONSE]
HYPATIA: Alexander, do you read us, over?
[NO RESPONSE]
Surveillance footage summary,
prepared by Illuminae Group Analyst ID 7213-0089-DN
This guy wasn’t built for gymnastics. Chinese extraction, late twenties, out of shape. To put it kindly, tubby. He darts from the bridge auxiliary service exit, a woman with dark hair in a long braid beside him. The noise following them is unbearable. High shrieks, counterpointed by a low roar—the sounds of death. Death and desperation. The audio on the recording peaks and distorts, then equalizes as he slams the door shut and silence falls.
Our records ID him as Byron Zhang, the female as Consuela Nestor. They’re the two civilian chipheads forcibly recruited from the Hypatia a few days before. She’s sobbing and he’s gasping for breath like a set of wounded bagpipes. Hard to tell if he’s out of shape, terrified or it’s the nose they broke during his Gandhi routine.
They’re each clutching a portable console like a pro geeballer making for the score line as they stumble to the first intersection. There, they exchange a long look, both of them trembling. Saying goodbye without saying a word.
She nods, breaking the moment, and they split. She turns left, he turns right. Our records show she died of blunt force trauma at the hands of an afflicted refugee thirty-seven seconds later.
Zhang heads down his corridor, and it’s immediately apparent he doesn’t know his way around the ship. His movements are jerky, terrified, and he ricochets off the walls before stopping two intersections over. He’s only saved by the fact that the afflicted are moving through the ship from Nestor’s side, not his. After about thirty seconds, he seems to regain his wits and starts trying to open doors. AIDAN, of course, has them locked down. Zhang fumbles, tugging at handles and slapping at palm plates, with no result.
It’s another minute before he proves he really does have the genius IQ that got him in all this trouble, and thinks to try things the new-fashioned way. Chest heaving, he stops to power up his console and stab madly at the screen, fingers dancing in a frenzy as he tries to coax open the meeting room doors he’s standing outside. Stuck in the corridor, he’s completely fucked (oh, I’m sorry, “at a serious tactical disadvantage”) if any visitors come calling.
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