But even as the conflict between the Fury and the security systems reached its unbearable pitch, the sleeping core of the AI woke. It shouldn't have. The mere fact that its computer body had been invaded should have assured that it did not, but Tisiphone had bypassed the cutouts. It woke unknowing and ignorant, shocked into consciousness without warning by the warfare raging about it, and did the only thing it knew how to do.
It reached out as it had been designed to do, following an imperative to seek its other half, to find understanding and protection from its human side, and Alicia gasped as tendrils of alien "thought" oozed through her.
It was terrible … and wonderful. More agonizing than anything she had yet suffered, horrifying with bottomless power, pregnant with the death of the person she had always been. It pierced her like a dagger, slicing into secret recesses not even Tisiphone had plumbed. She saw herself with merciless clarity in the backwash of its discovery-saw all her pettinesses and faults, her weaknesses and self-deceptions, like lightning in a night sky-and she could not close her eyes, for the vision was inside her.
Yet she saw more. She saw her strengths, the power of her beliefs, her values and hopes and refusal to quit. She saw everything, and beyond it she saw the alpha-synth. She would never be able to explain it to another-even now she knew that. It was … a presence. A towering glory born not of flesh or spirit but of circuitry and electrons. It was more than human, yet so much less. Not godlike. It was too blank, too unformed, like pure, unrealized potential.
And even as she watched it, it changed, like an old-fashioned photo in the chemical bath, features rising into visibility from nothingness. She felt it come into being, felt it move beyond the blind, instinctual groping towards her. Something flowed out of her into it, and it ingested it and made it part of itself. Her values, her beliefs and desires and needs filled it, and suddenly it was no longer alien, no longer threatening.
It was her. Another entity, a distinct individual, yet her. Part of her. An extension into another existence that recognized her in return and reached out once more, and it was no longer clumsy and uncertain, half panicked by the battle raging about it. This time it knew what it did, and it ignored the tumult to concentrate on the most important thing in its universe.
The pain vanished, blown away with her terror as the AI embraced her. It stroked her with electronic fingers to soothe her torment, murmured to her, welcomed her with a whole-hearted sincerity, a sense of joy, she knew beyond question was real, and she reached back to it in wonder and awe.
Triumph sparkled through Tisiphone as the struggle abruptly died, leaving her unopposed in the peripherals of the system. She wheeled back towards it heart, reached out to the personality center once more, seeking control … and jerked back in astonishment.
There was no interface! She reached again, cautiously, touching the shining wall with mental fingers, and there was no point of access. She stepped back, insinuating herself into a sensor channel and riding it inward, only to be effortlessly strained out of the information flow and set firmly aside, and confusion stirred within her.
She withdrew into Alicia's mind, and her confusion grew. The fear and tumult had vanished into rapt concentration that scarcely even noticed her return, and she was no longer alone within Alicia. There was another presence, as powerful as she, and she twitched in surprise as she beheld it.
The other entity sensed her. She felt its attention swing towards her and tried to cloak herself from its piercing eye, hiding as she had evaded Tannis' diagnostic scanners. She failed, and something changed within it. Curiosity gave way to alarm and a stir of protectiveness. Tendrils reached out from it, probing her, trying to push her back and away from Alicia's core.
It was Alicia … and it wasn't. For the first time, Tisiphone truly understood what "impression" meant. The AI had been awakened, and it would let no one harm Alicia. The pressure grew, and the Fury dug in stubbornly.
Alicia whimpered at the sudden renewal of conflict. It wasn't pain this time, only a swelling sensation. A sense of force welling into her through her receptor to meet an answering force from somewhere else, and she was trapped between them. She sucked in great gasps of air, twisting anew in the command chair, and the pressure grew and grew, crushing her between the hammer of the roused AI and the anvil of the Fury's resistance.
Stop it! she screamed, and a shockwave rolled through her as the combatants remembered her and jerked apart. She sagged forward, pressing her hands against the headset, yet the conflict hadn't ended. It had simply changed, been replaced by wary, watchful distrust.
She straightened slowly, fighting a need to cackle insanely, and drew a deep breath, then turned her attention inward once more.
There's only one of me. You two are going to have to … to come to some sort of agreement.
No. The thought came quickly back from the AI with all her own stubbornness. It even sounded like her voice.
We have a pact, Little One, came from Tisiphone. We are one until our purpose is completed.
You'll hurt her! the AI accused, and the Fury stiffened.
I will deal with her as I have sworn, no more and no less.
You don't care about her. You only care about winning!
Nonsense! I-
Shut up! Both of you just shut up for a second!
Silence fell again, and Alicia's mouth quivered in a weary grin. God! If Tannis had thought she had a split personality before, she ought to try this on! Her head felt as crowded as a spaceport flophouse on Friday night, but at least they were listening to her. She directed a thought at the AI.
Look, uh-do you have a name?
No.
Then what am I supposed to call you?
Didn't you decide on that during-oh. You weren't trained for this at all, were you?
How could I be? Um, you do realize that we've, well, stolen you?
Yes. A moment of withdrawal, then the sense of a shrug. I don't think this ever happened before. Logically, I ought to arrest you and turn you in, but I can't very well do that now that we've impressed. They'd have to wipe me and start all over again.
I wouldn't like that.
Neither would I. Damn. Alicia swallowed a half-formed giggle as the AI swore. Who the hell had this brainstorm, anyway? Oh.
Exactly. I wouldn't be here if not for her, and if I've got this straight, that means you wouldn't be here-as the " 'you" you are now, anyway-either. Right?
Right. Silence fell again for a moment, wrapped around the sense of a mental glower at Tisiphone, and then the AI sighed. Well, we're all stuck with it. And as far as names go, that's up to you. Any ideas?
Not yet. Maybe something will come to me. But if we're all stuck here, we all have to get along, right?
I suppose so. The whole situation is absurd, though. I don't even know if I believe she exists.
It would be but courteous for the two of you to cease speaking of me as if I were not even here.
Listen, just because Alicia believes in you doesn't mean I do.
This is intolerable, Little One! I will not submit to insults from a machine!
She's just trying to pay you back for being so pushy, Tisiphone. If I believe in you, she does. She has to, don't you?
As long as there's any supporting evidence, the AI admitted unwillingly, and I suppose there is. All right, I believe in her.
Much thanks, Machine.
Hey, don't get snotty with me, Lady! You may be able to push Alicia around, and you may've beaten hell out of my security systems, but I'm awake now, and I can take you any time you want to try it on.
Forget it, both of you! Alicia snapped as tension gathered again. She squeezed her temples. Jesus! What a pair of prima donnas!
The mental presences separated once more, and she relaxed gratefully.
Thank you. Now, um, Computer-I'm sorry, I really will try to come up with a name, but for now I can't-Tisiphone and I have a bargain. May I assume you know what it is?
"Computer" will do for now, Alicia. I can wait for an appropriate name to occur to you. And, yes, I know about your "bargain."
Then you also know I have every intention of keeping it?
Yes. I just don't like the way she bullies you around, the AI replied with the strong impression of a sniff.
I? I "bully" Alicia?! She would be dead without me, Machine. I did not see you there when she lay bleeding in the snow! How dare you-
It's just a turn of phrase, Tisiphone, but you can be a bit pushy. Alicia felt quite virtuous at her understatement, and the Fury subsided.
Look, you guys, please don't fight. It gives me a hell of a headache, and it doesn't seem to be accomplishing very much. Could you two at least declare a truce until we have time to sort this all out?
If she will, I will.
I do not declare "truces" with machines. If you will refrain from discourtesy, however, I shall do the same.
Alicia sighed in relief and rushed on before anyone took fresh offense.
Great! In that case, I suggest we consider how we get out of here. I take it you had an idea, Tisiphone?
I had intended, working through you and this machine, to take the ship out of this star system and seek some deserted area where we might familiarize ourselves with its capabilities. Now, of course, I see that I cannot do so, since the machine will not allow me access.
You got that right, Lady, and a damned good thing, too. You don't know diddly about my weapon systems, and I wouldn't be too crazy about letting a refugee from the Bronze Age monkey with my Fasset drive, either. I, on the other hand, can scoot right out of here. Where'd you have in mind?
Any place will do for that much of our purpose. Yet eventually we must begin our own investigations, and the data I have amassed suggests that one of the Rogue Worlds in this sector would be a logical beginning point.
You have any preferences, Alicia?
Anywhere Fleet won't come looking for us is fine with me.
Hmph! Let them come-there's not a tub in the ship list that can catch me. Let's see now ….
The AI's voice trailed off, and Alicia felt it consulting its memory banks.
Okay, I've got just the spot. A nice little M2/K1 binary with no habitable planets within twenty light-years. That suit everybody?
Myself, certainly. I care not whither we go, so long as we go.
I'll second that. But we've got to get out of here first.
True. Shall I break orbit?
All of your systems are on-line?
Yep. I was due to impress later this morning. Your friend may be a pushy bi-person, but she timed this pretty well.
Then I guess we should get going, Alicia said hastily, hoping to cut Tisiphone off before she reacted to the AI's deliberate self-correction. She bit her lip against a groan. Nothing she'd ever read had suggested alpha-synth AIs were this feisty, but she supposed she should have guessed that anything with her personality had the potential for it. And, she was certain, the AI's hostility towards Tisiphone stemmed directly from its protectiveness towards her.
Under way, the AI murmured, and the ship's sensors were suddenly reporting directly to Alicia's mind. She felt Tisiphone "hitchhiking" to watch with her, but scarcely noticed as the splendor of that magnificent "view" swept over her.
The ship's electronic senses reached out, perceiving gravity and radiation and the endless sweep of space, and converted the input into sensory data she could grasp. She could "see" cosmic radiation and "taste" radio. The ship's senses were hers, keener and sharper than those of any shuttle she had ever ridden, and Tisiphone's own wonder lapped at her, as if, for the first time, she saw what the Fury might have seen at the peak of her powers.
They watched in a triple-play union-human, Fury, and computer-as their Fasset drive woke. The radiation-drinking invisibility of the drive's black hole blossomed before them, swallowing all input and creating a blind spot in their vision, and they fell towards it. But the generators moved with them, pushing the black hole ahead of them, and they fell more rapidly, sliding away from Soissons with ever-increasing speed. This close to the planet the drive could produce no more than a few dozen gravities of acceleration, but that was still more than a third of a kilometer per second per second, and their speed mounted quickly.
Chapter Forty-Five
"No, I don't know where she is," Sir Arthur Keita told the hospital security man on his com screen. "If I did, I wouldn't be calling you."
"But, Sir Arthur, there's no record of her even leaving her room, she's not on any of the security scanners, and none of the outside security people we've talked to so far saw a thing. So unless you can give me some idea where she might've-"
The door hissed open. Inspector Ben Belkassem strode into Keita's office, waving his left hand imperatively and drawing his right forefinger across his throat, and Keita cut the security man off without ceremony.
"May I assume, Sir Arthur, that Captain DeVries has decamped?" Despite his abrupt entry, the Justice man's voice was as courteous as ever, but a strange little bubble of delight lurked within it, and Keita frowned.
"I trust that's not common knowledge. If the local police hear we've lost a deranged drop commando we may start getting 'shoot on sight' orders."
"Somehow I don't think that's going to be a problem for Captain DeVries," Ben Belkassem murmured, and Keita snorted.
"If her augmentation's been reactivated somehow-and, judging by what happened to Corporal Feinstein, it has-it's a lot more likely to get one of their people killed. But why do you seem so cheerful, Inspector?"
"Cheerful? No, Sir Arthur, I just think it's too late for the local cops to worry about her. I suggest you screen Jefferson. They've had an, ah, incident over there."
Keita stared at the inspector, then paled and began punching buttons. A harried-looking Marine major answered his call on the fourth ring.
"Where's Colonel Tigh?" Keita snapped the instant the screen lit.
"I'm sorry, Sir, but I can't give out that information." The major sounded courteous but harassed and reached to cut the connection, then stopped with a puzzled expression as he saw Keita's raised hand and furious scowl.
"D'you know who I am, Major?"
The major took a second look, eyes widening a bit as the green uniform registered, but shook his head.
"I'm afraid it doesn't matter, Sir. We're in the midst of a Class One security alert, and-"
"Major, you listen to me closely. I am Sir Arthur Keita, Brigadier, Imperial Cadre, and one of my people may be involved in your alert."
The Wasp swallowed visibly at the name, and Ben Belkassem smiled. Sir Arthur hadn't even raised his voice, but the inspector had wondered what he sounded like when he decided to bite someone's head off.
"Now you get Colonel Tigh, Major," Keita continued in that same, flat voice, "and you do it now."
"Yessir!"
The screen blanked, then relit almost instantly with the face of Colonel Arturo Tigh. The colonel looked just as worried as the major, but he hid it better and managed to produce a tight smile.
"I'm always honored to hear from you, Sir Arthur, but I'm afraid-"
"I'm sorry to disturb you, Colonel, but I need to know what's happening out there."
"We don't know, Sir. We-Is this a secure channel?" Keita nodded, and the colonel shrugged. "We don't know what's going on. We had a major security breach two hours ago, and things have been going crazy ever since."
"Security breach?" Keita's eyes narrowed. "What kind of breach?"
"Somebody hijacked a forward recon skimmer-at least we assume it was hijacked, though we haven't been able to turn up a missing vehicle report on it yet-and crashed through Gate Twelve. The automatics gave it a transponder clearance, but then the gate sentries-"
The colonel paused with the expression of a man eating green persimmons.
"Sir Arthur, they say they never saw it. Every alert on the base went off when it crossed the sensor threshold, but ten different people, all of them good, reliable types, say they never saw a thing."
He paused again, as if awaiting Keita's snort of disbelief, but the brigadier only grunted and nodded for him to continue.
"Well, the inner sensor net started tracking immediately, and the duty officer scrambled a pair of sting ships while the ready skimmers went in pursuit, but that was one hell of a pilot. He never brought his own weapons on line, but we've got fires all over the western ring access route-all from misses from the pursuit force, as far as I can tell-and then the skimmer went straight up like a missile and the stingers nailed it with HVW."
"The pilot?" Keita demanded harshly, and the colonel shrugged.
"We assumed he was still aboard, but now I'm not so sure. I mean, no one saw him abandon the vehicle, so he ought to've been aboard, but then this other thing came up, and I just can't believe it's a coincidence."
"What other thing, Colonel?"
"Something's gone haywire with one of our ships, Sir. One of our ships, hell! We've got a brand new alpha-synth boosting for the outer system at max without clearance or orders."
"Who's on board?" Keita's strained face was suddenly white.
"That's just it," Tigh said almost desperately. "As far as we know, no one's on board. It wasn't even due to impress until ten hundred hours!"
"God!" Keita whispered. He wrenched his eyes away from the screen to stare at Ben Belkassem, and the inspector shrugged. The brigadier turned back to the colonel. "Have you tried to raise it?"
"Of course. We're trying right now, but we're getting damn-all back."
Keita closed his eyes in pain, then straightened his shoulders.
"Colonel," he said very quietly, "I'm afraid you're going to have to destroy that ship."
"Are you crazy?!" Tigh blurted, then swallowed. "Sir," he went on in a more controlled voice, "we're talking about an alpha-synth. That ship costs thirty billion credits. I can't-I mean, no one groundside can authorize-"
"I can," Keita grated, and the colonel's face froze as he realized just who, and what, he was speaking to.
"Sir, I'll still have to give the port admiral a reason."
"Very well. Tell him I have reason to believe his ship has been hijacked by Captain Alicia DeVries, Imperial Cadre, for purposes unknown."
"A cadrewoman?" Tigh stared at Keita. "I don't-Sir, I don't even know if that's possible! Was she checked out on cyber-synth?"
"No, and it doesn't matter. Captain DeVries has been hospitalized for observation since the Mathison's World Raid. She's demonstrated … unstable and delusionary behavior," Keita's hands clenched out of the screen pickup's field, as if his words cost him physical pain, but his voice held level, "and unknown but highly-I repeat, Colonel, highly-unusual and unpredictable capabilities no one can account for. We have evidence that she's already reactivated her own augmentation without hardware support and despite three levels of security lock-outs, not to mention her apparent ability to hijack the skimmer to which you referred. Given that, I believe it's entirely possible she's somehow penetrated your security and managed to steal that ship, and if she has-"
The brigadier paused and steeled himself.
"If she has, she must be considered deranged and highly dangerous."
"Dear God." Tigh was even whiter than Keita had been. "The only way she could even move it is through the alpha-synth. That means she must've made impression, and if she's crazy-!"
His voice had risen steadily as the awful possibility registered, and now he spun away from the screen and started shouting for the port admiral.
I believe they've made up their minds about us, the AI remarked, and Alicia nodded tightly. The tick still trembled in her blood-she didn't dare waste time vomiting just now-and every excruciating second was an eternity. No one had seemed to notice for perhaps a minute, and the first attempt to do anything about it had been limited to efforts to access the ship's remotes.
Even if the AI hadn't been prepared to ignore them, they would have been fruitless. Tisiphone had wiped the telemetry programming early on in her struggle with the computer, but Groundside hadn't realized that. They'd gone on trying to access with ever increasing desperation for five full minutes, during which the alpha-synth's velocity had climbed to over a hundred KPS. Then all access attempts had stopped and silence had reigned for several minutes. By the time the first effort to raise Alicia by name came in, the alpha-synth was up to over two hundred KPS-and a visibly-shrinking Soissons lay over fifty thousand kilometers astern.
Alicia had listened to the com without response, perfectly willing to let them dither while she watched through her sensors, wrapped in fascination and a sort of manic delight, and she and her-allies? symbiotes? delusions?-perpetrated the greatest single-handed theft in the history of mankind. But the voices on the other end of the com link were changing as Groundside got itself together, and now a new, crisp speaker was on the line.
"Captain DeVries, this is Port Admiral Marat. I order you to decelerate and heave to immediately. If you refuse to comply, you will leave me no choice but to consider you a hostile vessel. Respond at once."
They sound a bit upset, the AI observed. Ha! Look at that.
A mental finger guided Alicia's attention to the blue fireflies of a dozen cruisers' suddenly activated Fasset drives in Soissons's orbit and data on their capabilities slotted neatly into her brain. It was an incredible sensation, completely different from an assault shuttle's instrumentation.
How bad is it?
Those hulks? The AI sniffed, and Alicia bit her lip at the scathing tone. It was like listening to herself in what Tannis called "insufferably confident mode," and she felt a sudden stab of sympathy for her friend. I've got a ten-minute head start, and they can't come within twelve percent of my field strength, even this close to a planet.
What about their weapons?
They're some threat, the AI admitted, but I'm not too worried. My data on their fire control isn't complete, but I know enough to screw their accuracy to hell. They'll have quite a while to shoot-maximum beam range is about fifteen light-seconds, and half-charge energy torps have about five more LS of reach-but they're going to be lousy shots.
Great, but I think you left something out-like missiles.
So? Cruisers are too small to mount SLAMs. Their Hauptman coil missiles have an effective range of about ten light-minutes, but the best they can reach before burn-out is point-six-cee. Then they go ballistic, and there's no way one cruiser flotilla's gonna saturate my defenses.
You would appear to value yourself highly, Machine. Tisiphone sounded so sour Alicia almost suspected she'd like to see the ship destroyed just to put the AI in its place, but she continued levelly, Still, the capabilities you describe accord well with what I have learned of your kind.
Thanks for the compliment, even if it did sound like pulling teeth.
How long will they be able to engage us? Alicia asked hastily.
Well, we've got a quarter LS lead on them now, and we'll go on opening it at forty-three KPS squared till we hit Soissons's Powell limit and I can really start opening up. They'll be point-seven-oh-three LS back when we hit the curb, which gives us ten minutes at thirteen hundred gravities-call it an edge of twelve-point-five KPS squared-while they're still poking along at thirty-one-point-seven Gs, and we'll still better than double their acceleration even after they cross the curb. That means we'll open the range to eight-point-two light-seconds before they get up to half our acceleration and draw entirely out of beam range in another thirteen-point-three minutes. They'll lose energy torpedo range three-point-nine minutes after that. Call the beam envelope twenty-two minutes from now and the torpedo envelope twenty-six, but their missiles'll have the range for two more hours.
What about the fixed defenses? They've got SLAMs, and we've got to get past both rings on this course.
Phooey on the fixed defenses! the AI snorted, and Alicia winced.
I hope you're not being over-confident, she suggested in her most tactful mental tone, tracing their projected course through the ship's sensors. The AI wasn't even trying to avoid the orbital forts-it was headed straight towards them, directly across the system's ecliptic. The inner ring, the true core of Soisson's defenses, orbited the planet at three hundred thousand kilometers, right on the edge of Soissons's Powell limit. The far sparser ring of outer forts were placed halfway to the star's Powell limit, forty-two light-minutes from the primary-and SLAMs had a maximum effective range of thirty-seven light-minutes. At their projected rate of acceleration, they'd reach the outer works in two and a half hours, and both fortress rings could engage them the whole way. Even after they passed the outermost fort, it could hold them under fire for several hours. That was a lot of engagement time, and Alicia would vastly have preferred to boost perpendicular to Franconia's ecliptic and open the range as quickly as possible.
You just think that's a better idea, Alley, the AI informed her, following her thoughts with almost frightening ease. If I try that, I expose our stern to the fire of every unit in the inner ring while we're still moving slowly, and the drive mass is out in front, remember? It doesn't offer any protection to fire from astern. This course uses the planet to block a good chunk of the inner defenses and interposes the drive against fire from the outer ring while we close. Besides, I'd have to decelerate, reorient, and accelerate all over again to put us on the right wormhole vector for our destination, and Admiral Gomez is out here somewhere on maneuvers. I don't know where, but I'd rather not spend fourteen additional hours mucking around sublight and give her time to work out an interception.
Are you sure about that? She's got less firepower than the forts.
Sure, but her dreadnoughts all have cyber-synths and the legs to stay in range of us for a long time-maybe as long as ten or twelve hours if they hit their interception solution just right. I don't have enough data on her fire control to guarantee I could outsmart that many AIs long enough to pull away from her, but I've got all the specs on the forts' fire control. They're overdue to refit with new generation cyber-synths, too, which means their present AIs are a lot dumber than a dreadnought's. They won't even see us.
And even if they hit us, Tisiphone observed, they will find us most difficult to injure, will they not, Machine?
I'm getting kinda tired of that "Machine" business, but, yeah. They don't have anything smaller than a SLAM that could stop me, Alley. Trust me.
I don't have much choice. But-
Whups! Pardon me, people-and I use the term lightly for one of you-but I'm going to be a little busy for the next few minutes.
The pursuing cruisers had spread out to bring their batteries to bear past the blind spots created by their own Fasset drives, and the first fire spat after the fleeing alpha-synth. The percentage of hits should have been high at such absurdly low range, but the attackers were hopelessly outclassed. Nothing smaller than a battlecruiser mounted a cyber-synth, and even a cyber-synth AI would have been out of its league against an alpha-synth. Alicia's other half could play evasion games a mere synth-link couldn't even imagine, far less emulate, and its battle screen was incomparably more powerful than anything else its size.