He sent a submind to the outrider Pytheas.
This time, surely, he knew enough about the predator to defeat it. His prior encounters convinced him it was not a sentient thing, but a tool. And given that the method of its attack never varied, it was not adept at learning. Still, the entity had designed it and Urban had not broken it yet.
It came through the data gate—but was it a microsecond slower this time?
It instantiated. Urban saw that the Riffan-shell, damaged in their last encounter, had been restored. Instantly, he shifted tactics, directing both probes to attack the shell.
He did not need to destroy the predator. He only needed an interval of time to get ahead of it and then he could close the next gate, trap it behind him.
He’d already slowed the predator’s transit once by forcing it to rebuild the stolen permission structure that let it pass. He gambled that an increase in the level of damage would slow it more.
The probes ripped into the Riffan-shell. Swaths of it dissolved before the predator drew it in beneath armored layers. This time, Urban cast his submind across the void even before chaos broke free of the column.
Ninety minutes later he reached the last outrider, Fortuna. He closed its data gate before anything else came through.
Chapter
40
Urban instantiated aboard Fortuna amid the austere architecture of the library. He stood alone on a white path winding away across a glassy blue plane of data, the color deepening with distance. This library was a copy of the one that had been carried aboard Dragon, but the only archived ghost that existed there was his.
If Urban had been a physical avatar, the running battle with the predator would have left him shaking with exhaustion, but a ghost did not feel fatigue. Now that he was safely locked behind a closed data gate, he took up the task of editing out the useless emotional detritus of fear and panic that lingered in the wake of this latest brush with death.
And then he went further. He created for himself a machinelike calm, walling off the fury and frustration that arose from the certainty that he’d lost Dragon.
The entity’s assault against him had left him with no choice but to call for termination. If Griffin had received that radio message, then Dragon was gone, blown apart, reduced to vapor and debris.
All sixty-five of the ship’s company gone with it. His last words to Clemantine: It’s over.
Grief seeped past his machine calm. And fear. He wondered, Was it over?
If Griffin had not received that message, or if the other Clemantine had not carried through with it, the situation would be far worse. The entity would have secured command of Dragon.
No.
She would never allow that. She would not take the risk of Dragon turning against her. He remembered her promise: I’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect all of you. He trusted her to protect the archived ghosts she carried, regardless of the cost.
Editing his ghost again, he sequestered his doubt and his grief. He couldn’t help Clemantine. Not now. He had to assess and secure his own situation and then decide on a strategy, one based on fact, not on what he wished things could be.
He knew already he could not go back the way he’d come. The predator had wiped the computational strata in each successive outrider, leaving it nonfunctional. And with Fortuna so far from Griffin, any error in the targeting of the communications laser would be magnified many times over, so that the smallest initial discrepancy would cause the beam to miss its target, possibly by tens of kilometers. The independent motion of both ships made the problem excruciatingly complex. It was unrealistic to think he could get any data through.
But he was not helpless. He had Fortuna, and the little ship should be fully operational. He queried the Dull Intelligence that oversaw its operation to confirm this. “Review current status.”
A gentle masculine voice answered, “Ship’s location is 7.5 light-hours from command ship Dragon’s last calculated position. Proceeding to target star system Tanjiri at a steady thirty-five percent light speed as measured against the velocity of the target star. Reef function is nominal, though presently dampened to a minimally active state. Internal network and computational strata report healthy. Navigational fuel reserves at 93%. Telescope presently engaged in a survey of the Near Vicinity. Collected data will be held until authorization is received to open the data gate.”
“Don’t open the data gate,” Urban said.
“Understood.”
“And reorient the telescope. Look back. Calculate expected positions for both Dragon and Griffin and locate them with the scope.”
“Understood.”
Urban longed to go back. He resolved that as soon as he confirmed Dragon gone, and Griffin the survivor, he would order the DI to flip Fortuna bow to stern and then dump velocity. Griffin’s forward progress would close the gap and eventually Urban’s ghost would be able to make the jump between the ships.
A fine plan, shattered by the first image the telescope returned.
The image posted within a library window, its resolution shockingly poor. Urban was used to working with images compiled from data collected across multiple telescopes. Now he had only one. At such a distance even a courser was a minuscule object, its details blurred despite extensive processing. Still, the three-part equation of distance, luminosity, and the known dimensions of both coursers left no doubt that the ship captured in the image was Dragon.
Clearly, it was battle damaged. Long, lightless scars sliced through the luminous philosopher cells and the ship was surrounded by a faint blur, a halo, that had to be a cloud of debris and frozen vapor. “Analyze that,” he told the DI.
“Analysis indicates water, molecular oxygen, carbon dioxide, and an array of metals within the de-gassed cloud.”
Urban felt an automated routine kick in, locking out despair.
“Where is Griffin?” he demanded.
“A search of Griffin’s calculated position is presently underway.”
“You haven’t found it yet?”
“That is correct.”
“Keep looking. It has to be there.”
But did it? Did it have to be there? Didn’t Dragon’s survival indicate Griffin’s demise?
“Keep looking,” he said again.
Hours passed. Then days, but Griffin could not be resolved.
Griffin hunted the void, full stealth, its philosopher cells dark, its radar dormant, all transmissions silenced.
There was silence too, on the high bridge, with no conversation to endure from hibernating cells. Clemantine had to conduct her search without the benefit of their acute vision, but Lezuri’s ship was so small and dark the cells could not have seen it anyway, unless it came so close that it reflected a glint of their own light.
For Clemantine, the silence was a welcome respite that let her focus on the Near Vicinity as she tracked Lezuri’s propulsion reef. The faint signal cut out for hours and she thought she’d lost him. Then the signal reappeared, shifted intensity, changed trajectory, vanished again. The Pilot calculated where Lezuri should be. They swooped in on a heading meant to intercept his little ship, but did not find him.