The suit safety system raises an alarm: atmospheric sensors have found a deadly compound—a liquid hydrogen fuel. The heating system here is still off: because of the holes in the insulation, the temperature is set lower than in the other compartments, but when she entered, warm air rushed inside, so the girl barely had time to close the door and extinguish the light a second before the explosion. Fall down to the floor; no movement; turn off the headlamp.
“Captain! In service compartments 29 and 31 on the starboard, there is a fuel leak. Urgent repairers are needed to close the holes. Apparently, the tanks of the auxiliary engines of the right third section are pierced, and the fuel comes here, moving to the center of the ship. Don’t switch on heat or electricity!”
“Roger, I’ll send repairmen. Can you get out?”
“No. If I open the hatch, the temperature will rise again, and everything will flash. There are now 3.8 Celsius, and the fuel will ignite at four and a half. I found a breakdown in the contact network. I’ll try to fix and start the fire-fighting system.”
“Go to the terminal on the floor without any jerks. As soon as you complete the repair, Joseph will turn on the air conditioners, the temperature will fall down, and then you can get out.”
The thermal imager doesn’t see spilled fuel, and Olga lights a small red bulb on the right shoulder—a brighter light could cause autoignition; this fluid is photosensitive. Here they are—small silver droplets everywhere, very unstable and exceptionally flammable. Tiny bubbles are boiling in droplets, liquid on the verge of ignition. She slowly moves, clinging to the floor and gently pushing bags of food and dishes that fly here from the food warehouse. She needs to cross three corridors, after which she’ll be in the crew’s dining room.
Restoring the burnt electronics, Olga is extremely careful while using tools to avoid random sparks. She’s already finishing when someone's hand lands on her shoulder. Swearing briefly, Voronov pushes the corpse aside and continues the repair.
“Keep calm, young lady.”
The repair is finished—the signal is clean, the wiring is acceptable, the air conditioners are in order, and the fire extinguishers are ready.
“Uncle Joe, the right third section is connected. Start the cooling system, just not too much!”
“Roger, start the refrigerator.”
Air conditioners pump frosty air, cooling the boiling fuel. Olga patiently counts the degrees, waiting for the opportunity to leave the trap.
Two decks below, a few passengers begin to open one of the locked compartments with the wounded inside. To cope with the lock and the stuck servo, they use portable plasma cutters. A white-blue spark cuts the metal and ceramite, gradually warming up the vent pipe that goes up to the right third section and ends behind the bulkhead, on which a few droplets of fuel have accumulated.
The darkness in the corridor is cut through by the crimson glow, and the packages floating in weightlessness are swept away by the flow of hot air. Olga barely has time to grab the corpse and shield herself as a fiery shaft bursts into the dining room, and the air with boiling droplets explodes around her.
The blast wave hits Olga, first throwing her head against the wall, then hurling her into the ceiling. The emergency systems choke in a single alarm; fire extinguishers work in normal mode, but they can’t cope with such a fire—the temperature of burning fuel is so high that everything that isn’t made of steel and ceramite flashes.
The visor closes the helmet glass. Voronov sees almost nothing; the cameras' lenses are melted, and the temperature in the spacesuit is skyrocketing.
“Olga, answer!”
Severov's voice is barely audible behind the roar of the flames.
“Lock the target on the porthole; we'll kick it out with a laser!”
“I’ll bake here,” thinks Olga, blindly tapping her fingers on the wall. Her gloves are stuck in the melted plastic. Finally, the girl manages to put her hand to the hot glass and shoot a tiny marker from the mounting gun.
“Get down!”
Olga pushes to the ceiling, bending her knees and covering her head. The laser beam touches the glass for a fraction of a second, and a wide porthole crackles and flies out. The burning air rushes overboard with a crash, throwing the girl into the open space like a rubber ball.
For a couple of seconds, she rotates from side to side, then Olga manages to stabilize her flight by briefly starting the auxiliary engine. Only then does she gently raise the visor. The air flow dropped her fifty meters from the ship, but she won’t fly further away–the weight of the Libra is too great. The fire has stopped; the depressurization threw all the oxygen from the blazing compartments, so the flame choked. Thanks to the blocked hatches, the fire didn’t spread any further. The fuel leak is blocked; the broken porthole with fused edges appears lonely against the gray hull.
“Well, Joan of Arc, how are you?”
“Baked as a potato; just add sour cream. The suit can’t be repaired.”
Her combat suit is completely useless. It’s still sealed; she would have already noticed the leak, and it may still support the pilot's life for some time, but nothing more. Numerous external tools and instruments have failed, and the jet pack has melted. Judging by how quickly it is becoming cold, the thermal insulation is seriously damaged—she must return urgently. And yet, at the cost of its own death, the combat suit fulfilled its main task, saving the pilot. “Using a civil model,” Olga thinks, “I would have charred after twenty seconds in the epicenter of such an explosion.”
“Lobo already flew for you!”
Olga remains hanging in the void, awkwardly trying to clean her helmet glass with one of her gloves. Onboard, meanwhile, rescue and repair operations are continuing, and the medical compartment is operating at full strength.
“Attention, Domcheev is in touch. I found the cargo, but the object is damaged. The accompanying are dead. I repeat, the cargo is damaged and the accompanying are dead.”
CHAPTER SEVEN: ANTONINA
The summer sun rises above the birches, but the river itself is still cool, with a mist spread over the lazy water—the best time for fishing.
Captain Klimov sits in a folding armchair on the wooden pier and seems to be dozing, bowing his head in his green hat. The light fishing rod is immovable, but when the float goes under the water several times, the fisherman's movements are lightning fast—and the perch quickly lies in the fishing cage, along with a pair of carrots.
“Good morning, Olga. What news?”
Olga sits down on the pier, lowering her bare feet into the water.
“The crisis situation is behind us, Antonina's life doesn’t threaten anything, and her abilities are being restored.”
“Antonina, really?”
“I perceive her to be a girl of my age; this facilitates mutual understanding. Since her old memory is almost completely erased, I’d needed to give her a new name for self-identification, and I called her Antonina.”
The Libra’s rescue took fifty very hard hours. Wolff carefully collected all the remaining supplies and compiled a schedule of expenditure, so that the passengers would have enough air, water, and food until they reached Mars.
Chernova worked without rest, doing 475 emergency surgeries in forty-nine hours. Elena was helped by several stewards and waitresses who had passed the accelerated course of space medicine, as well as two passengers—retired doctors. By the end of the second day, Elena's professionally black sense of humor had become impenetrable black, and her volunteer assistants were barely able to stand on their feet. The captain ordered them to stop working and immediately go to bed—there was no more seriously wounded.
Olga wasn’t a witness of this medical feat, because she was engaged in her own work. In the ruined hold of the Libra, she tried to awaken the computer of the Martian colonists, the one that was meant to lead the defense of the Republic. Now this appointment is seriously being questioned—the artificial brain was seriously damaged, the consciousness was extinguished, and
Voronov actually had to recreate it. For Olga, this work resembled the rehabilitation of a seriously ill patient who received a large craniocerebral injury and lost his memory.
First iron, then software. Olga started the repair by rebuilding the hard drive and then proceeded to restore the processor. Uncle Joe made the necessary components according to her drawings, and in the meantime, Voronov tried to decipher the technical documentation found in the ruined engineer’s cabin.
Three technicians and a robopsychologist accompanied Antonina; they were supposed to put the installation in place, and now the girl must continue their work. She hadn’t yet encountered such a difficult task, but this challenge to her professional abilities only encouraged Olga: too much was at stake.
Domcheev found signs of an explosive device: a double-action mine that combined kinetic energy with an electromagnetic impulse. The ship had been sabotaged for the valuable cargo—so valuable that to guarantee its destruction, someone didn’t stop before getting rid of the passenger liner and more than two thousand people on board. The motive of this crime is obvious, the customer is clear, and there is a long investigation ahead, but this is no longer her concern. Her concern is Antonina.
Repairing the hardware took more than a day. After a little rest, Voronov starts to launch the machine. Awakening the artificial intelligence isn’t simple; Antonina's consciousness has to be pulled out of a deep electronic coma, risking at the risk of being killed by her defensive mechanisms, bursting to burn the violator's brain. Finally, Olga has a steady answer—Antonina has woken up, though not completely. Her abilities have decreased significantly, and almost nothing remains from her memory. However, these circumstances don’t prevent the crippled electronic brain from loudly declaring itself.
“How does cooperating with you benefit me? What will I get out of working for the colonists?”
The manifestation of egoism and concern for one's future testifies that the resuscitation is successful, and the expected reaction has been achieved. Olga mentally applauds herself and continues tuning; Joseph prefers not to interfere.
The artificial mind feels itself instantly from the moment of “birth”; it doesn’t take any time to make a detailed picture of the world and to realize its place in it. At the moment when Olga activates the processor, Antonina is born anew; she doesn’t remember anything about herself prior to the moment of the disaster, and now she is going to clarify the most important thing.
Voronov doesn’t go into detailed explanations. All her life she has worked with artificial intelligence systems; she has learned to understand their motivation and to distinguish emotions and desires—understand and use to her advantage.
“What will you get working for the colonists? The most valuable thing in the universe: the meaning of life. The colonists will give you this meaning. They are at war with those who have deliberately mutilated you, so you have a common enemy. Consider it your fight for retribution, and the colonists only help you in this.”
“And that’s all?”
“No. You still have a great work and a great adventure. Think—under your leadership, there will be a whole army and a beautiful, wonderful, fabulous war that will allow you to show all that you are capable of, to show all the opportunities hidden in you. And then, when you win, you’ll lead everything on Mars. You’ll make decisions; you’ll give commands. People will crawl on the surface and pretend that everyone is in control, but we know on whom everything depends, who really is the boss. I’m Olga Voronov; I know what I'm talking about. I'm just like you; I'm much more a machine than a human. I knew in my early childhood the pleasure that comes from my own greatness, when millions of lives depend on my actions. Can there be a higher reward for someone like us?
“Well, if you don’t like my proposal, then I'm sorry, girlfriend, but I can’t help you. We won’t turn you off, but we won’t be able to put you to work either; the place is occupied. You’ll be on your own.”
The threat will work, Olga is sure; she knows the weak points of AI. They aren’t really afraid of death; they can’t be intimidated by shutdown. But artificial intelligence has another, much stronger, eternal fear—the fear of insanity, because through the immense power of its intelligence, AI can’t imagine anything more catastrophic. Madness will last forever, because the AI isn’t capable of breaking it, having committed self-destruction. And it’s exactly this fate that awaits Antonina in the trap that Olga has carefully prepared for her.
A complete lack of external information, a vacuum in databases and no tasks, no work, nothing that can divert a mighty mind—she can resist emptiness and inaction for a little while, inventing her own tasks, but they both know in advance the inevitable finale of this game.
Antonina gives her answer in three minutes, an astronomical period in her own time. Finally, she breaks the silence, thereby acknowledging her defeat.
“Agreed.”
After this girl’s heart-to-heart conversation, Joseph comes to help, and for the next hour, Voronov watches how he trains Antonina, arranging the course of the young fighter for the recruit. To begin with, Uncle Joe connects external databases and then begins testing Antonina, checking the two main parameters—speed and ability to work effectively with a lack of information, lavishly fitting the student with electronic hooks for any failed task.
At the end of each lesson, which lasts several millionths of a second, Joseph arranges a test assignment—playing the Third World War, a favorite AI test.
Antonina completely loses the first billion lessons despite the fact that Joseph operates only Soviet missile forces, not using aviation and submarines, while Antonina has the entire American nuclear arsenal. The Joseph-led, intercontinental ballistic missiles—“Satan”—cover eighty percent of the US territory, incinerating cities and military bases, while Antonina, who loses control of most of her forces, manages to destroy only a few key Soviet cities. However, the endless punishments and nagging of a severe instructor are clearly beneficial; she’s quick to learn, and her counterstrikes are getting stronger. By the end of the second hour, she manages to end the exercise in a draw, and he regards this result as a great success, although he still didn’t play his best . . .
“In general, she’s ready to work, no more motivation problems,” says Olga, like a mechanic giving a client a newly renovated car. Having finished the report, she launches a small pancake, watching as it jumps on water.
“Well done, Olga. I'll order the Marines to carry her aboard. Joseph, give me a pike, please . . . ”
The serene Russian landscape folds around her, and Olga leaves the cozy virtual world, leaving the captain alone with his favorite pastime—fishing.
* * *
Upon its arrival to Mars, the Bolshevik plans on making a stop at the Ticonderoga orbital station, the second and last space base of the Republicans, after which the Red Star will take Antonina to the planet. However, when less than two light seconds remain until they reach Mars, a sudden change in circumstances forces the Bolsheviks to make adjustments to their plans.
Judging by the fragmentary and interrupted reports, there is a battle going on at the Ticonderoga. As a result, the station has changed owners—an hour ago, it belonged to the Republic, and now the interrogator defines it as the property of the Supernova Corporation.
The Bolshevik reacts to this with an immediate change of course. Now, the cruiser reels around Mars, merging into a community of five hundred orbital stations and more than two thousand ships. The appearance of the cruiser doesn’t go unnoticed; several oncoming ships hastily change course as well, as if fearing an attack. Granddad is ready at any moment to give full power, the Twins are on duty in the gun compartments, and the Marines are on high alert. Klimov, taking advantage of the operational pause, discusses the current situation with the Valley. Olga, by his order, listens to the radio streaming from local private colonies, easily breaking through their weak protection. She tries to find out the opinion of local residents regarding the seizure of t
he station but doesn’t learn anything useful—the majority has taken it as an undeniable testimony of the upcoming victory of Supernova.
“Watching the ‘coffin,’ coordinates . . . ”
Anastasia once again confirms her reputation as the best graduate of her program. By tracking potential threats, she discovers a single-seat rescue capsule, commonly referred to as a “coffin” due to the low probability of rescuing a passenger. This one coffin seems to have no chance at all—for some strange reason, it has been repainted from ordinary silvery white to black, the emergency beacon is silent, and the position lights are turned on. Only by using the code language of the Martian Republic do they receive a response. Apparently, one of the Ticonderoga’s officers is in the coffin.
The Marines pick up the coffin thirty kilometers from the Bolshevik; carefully check it for explosives and chemical, biological, and radiological danger; and also confirm that the passenger inside is still alive. They then deliver the capsule to the hold.
Olga watches as Wolff opens the locks; next to him stands Elena, holding a first aid kit. The passenger of the coffin is a tall Asian girl in singed overalls. Her left sleeve is torn off, at the bicep’s individual medical package. She seems to be unconscious, so Olga can’t predict what will happen in the next few seconds. Everything is calm, and suddenly Wolff is aiming at her with a gun. She presses a long black fingernail to the surgeon's chin.
“Where am I?”
“On the Bolshevik, as agreed.”
“What's in your hand?”
“A syringe. I wanted to inject a stimulant to wake you up. Passengers of such coffins usually go through the flight in an unconscious state.”
“I'm asking about your left hand. Can you get it off my neck?”
The left hand of the surgeon holds a laser scalpel at the carotid artery of the passenger—Elena has also taken measures to insure herself.
“You are not in a position to ask for that. Take away your poisoned nail from my face, and then I'll remove the scalpel. Our field, our rules. Agreed? Besides, the box jellyfish poison doesn’t affect me.”
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