Though he was feeling something that-in a lesser mortal-might be termed terror, the Prince essayed a feeble joke: “There are laws at the quantum level?”
“As far as these pitiful computers are concerned, there are.” Helsdon squeezed in beside Xochitl, ignoring centuries of protocol and policy which would have relegated the commoner to some distant precinct of the Prince’s daily routine. The engineer’s fingers trembled as he jacked a hand-comp into the control console. “We were right in the middle of reprogramming everything to ignore known laws, to assume that the Planck-length components of these threads were… well then, you shut us down.” Helsdon laughed ghoulishly, his own fear cutting through any sense of social hierarchy.
Xochitl stiffened, his jaw clenching. Whom do you think you address, Anglishman? No one reproves me. Not even the Imperial family. It is not permitted. My father depends on my judgment. He sent me here to secure this situation. He Then the Prince realized his mind was wandering, even his exocortex had fallen silent while his human consciousness whirled in a dozen directions.
«Cognitive capability is impaired,» the exo finally announced, « by chemical reactions to the perception of incipient destruction. Injecting stabilizing compounds.» Xochitl felt a cool tickling sensation in his wrists and raised his hands in confusion. A moment passed before the thudding of his heart slowed and his mind cleared.
When the Prince focused again on the engineer, Helsdon was looking up at him in puzzlement, and as if at an equal. You shall not think me incapable of the task! Xochitl took a deep breath. “Can this sensor array be reconfigured? Tweaked to detect the barrier?”
“It will be slow work.” Helsdon squinted at the intentionally simple capsule controls. “But we-” He paused, staring at the navigational plot. “Isn’t that one of ours?”
Kosho watched with interest as the Khaid flotilla in the area around the Pinhole-at last-reacted to the Naniwa ’s approach. Intermittent bursts of message traffic came and went on the enemy channel and now they were chattering away again. The enemy battleships began to accelerate, swirling out and away from the entrance to the gap like a flock of huge, ungainly birds. Her eyes narrowed to see they were keeping reasonable cohesion and spacing, even when forced to redeploy from disorder.
But they had reacted a little too slowly, given her approaching speed.
“Salvo one away,” Konev reported, and the rumbling echo of launch rails discharging followed hard on his words.
A flight of shipkillers winged away from the Naniwa in a black wedge-exhausting the last of her ready magazines. Konev had been refining their attack vector for the past sixteen minutes and a formation of the remote platforms winged in, leading the swarm of Tessen missiles. With the response time from the remotes looping back through the main t-relay, the weapons officer had shortened his reaction time to the counter-missile storm erupting from the lead battleships. They had also pushed forward the reach of Naniwa ’s countermeasures.
“Lead remotes going to rapid-fire,” the Thai-i announced.
The flare of antimatter detonations began to spark in the darkness, almost lost against the fantastic roil of colors from the dust clouds. The Naniwa ’s course shifted a point, driving hard against the edge of the Khaid formation, running in hot behind the glare of the sprint missiles discharged from the remote platforms. A secondary cloud of anti-missile munitions had also hared away from the remotes and these slashed into the midst of the Khaiden point-defense, confusing their targeting and ripping up their own counter-missile launch.
The wave of Tessens hammered into the most exposed of the Khaid battleships. A cluster of brilliant flares erupted, each shipkiller warhead separating into dozens of laser emitters. A stabbing white glare rippled from one end of the Khaid battlewagon to the other, shredding shipskin and gun nacelles, cracking open the hardpoints at each rail launcher. The ship shuddered, veering off, and then two of the big maneuver drives blew apart, disgorging clouds of debris.
“Secondary remotes going to full burn… now.”
The other Khaiden ships burst away from the impact point, assuming she was trying to catch them edge-on, where their own fire would be blocked by friendly ships. Missiles and beam-weapons licked out at the speeding Imperial ship. The Naniwa swerved, punching into the dispersing formation where the battleship had fallen from line. The battle-cruiser’s beam-weapons lashed across the nearest Khaiden battleship. Anion impacts rippled over the flank of the bulky ebon vessel, but Kosho had no interest in going toe to toe with such a behemoth. Instead, the Naniwa slipped past, spewing a tight cloud of decoys-the last of the scavenged remotes-that raced off at a sharp angle, breaking for open space, away from the Barrier.
The Khaid ships swung round, belching more shipkillers and penetrators, their formation coalescing again. The Naniwa, engines dead for the moment, plunged into the Pinhole along the drive-plume of the stricken battleship. Only moments from crossing the Barrier line, Kosho jerked back from her executive threatwell as the entire constellation of icons and designators shifted abruptly. Looking up at the main holocast, she saw the familiar symbols winking out, replaced by a crude new array of glyphs flaring to life in the holo.
“What-”
Holloway pointed at Gretchen, his face ashen. Most of the navigator’s v-panes now showed a stream of unintelligible symbols and distorted images. “Shift piloting control to console two,” Susan barked, startling the Command watch from stunned panic.
“No,” Gretchen choked out, barely able to speak. The information density flowing across her v-displays was so dense, even with the assistance of the oliohuiqui to focus her mind she could barely process a tenth of the flood of images, sounds, models, and diagrams rushing past. She was grappling with an overwhelming-and terrifying-sensation that node 3^3 3 had woken from some ancient sleep. That the interfaces she had discovered-and prodded and poked-had been operating in some quiescent, dumbed-down state. Now, with the flood of information rolling in from the Naniwa ’s sensor array, the device had improved itself, or recalled capabilities long left idle.
Now she was giddily happy that the only communications method between her and the machine was a keypad-a stylus-what her visual perception could reveal. A more direct connection, she was sure, would have rendered her insensate. And mad, very definitely mad.
“I can’t fly this thing,” Anderssen gasped. “I’ll draw a path. You’ll have to follow.”
“Piloting control to console one,” Kosho commanded, settling her shoulders. Holloway was frozen, agog at the transformation of his control surfaces. In the threatwell, patterns of constantly shifting veils were beginning to emerge from the confusion of symbols and diagrams. Susan tried to focus, finding the hubbub amongst the Command crew distracting and the gelatinlike fluidity of the new control surfaces difficult to grasp.
Despite this, the Naniwa plunged through the Pinhole and into the unknown spaces beyond. Kosho’s grasp of the new controls-and of the information contorting her threatwell-grew rapidly. Her hands light on the flight interface, she sidestepped past both a stricken Khaiden destroyer and the spray of filaments which had torn the warship to shreds.
To Susan’s right, on the second tier of Command, Anderssen was beginning to groan in a peculiar way, as though iron nails were being driven into her eyes.
Down in medical, Hummingbird opened one eye to a bare slit. He’d heard nothing for the past fifteen minutes, which augured well. The second eye opened and he turned his head gently. No one was in sight-not a marine guard, not a medical officer, not even his lovely assistant. Alone at last, the old Mexica sat up, moving slowly, letting his heartbeat return to normal, blood flow resuming.