“Your first mistake was when I initially talked to you. I didn’t notice at the time, but I’m cursed with a very good memory. You mentioned the TEC’s involvement before anyone else knew about it. I let it slip by me because I was checking people for prior employment by the Executive. I forgot that there were other sorts of relationships.” Dom looked down at Levy. “It’s about Paschal, isn’t it?”
Levy looked frozen.
“Klaus contacted you, and you saw it as a way to get close enough—”
“Stop it.”
“You engineered all this to distract him. To give me a shot at his back. To make me want to.”
Levy jumped up and grabbed Dom’s collar. “You have to stop him. What he did on Paschal. You have a chance to do it—”
“I should kill you.”
The doors opened and Levy let go of him.
Dom checked the corridor, saw it was empty, and held the door open. “I’m not going to kill anybody.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to know what’s going through your head, Johann. But if you want Klaus, this elevator is going straight to the tower.” Dom tossed the laser rifle into the elevator. “That weapon has a good range.”
Levy looked down at the rifle.
The doors closed on him.
* * * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Zero-Sum Game
“Never play chicken with someone who has nothing to lose.”
—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom
“All men think all men mortal, but themselves.”
—Edward Young
(1683-1765)
07:45:00 Godwin Local
“The whole idea is insane,” Shane yelled at Mosasa. Her suit was working overtime, and her breath tried to fog the inside of her helmet. The readouts were showing that the atmosphere outside the suit had reached a near-zero oxygen level and the pressure was dropping.
Mosasa showed no effect from an environment that would have KO’d any normal human in less than two minutes. “It’s our only chance.”
“You’ll flood the compartment.”
“You can set your personal field to block the radiation.”
“What about Random? What about you?”
“Shane,” came Random’s voice from the walls, “we have seven minutes before the resident marines cut through that door.”
“Damn it!” Shane didn’t like what she was feeling. It was all falling apart around her. “Can’t you get to flight control from the computer?”
“They were expecting this,” Random said. “I can’t get out of the secondary core.”
Shane looked up at the ceiling panels. Beyond them was the center of the ship, where the contragrav was.
“Can you do it?” she asked Mosasa.
“Once I crack the control box, I can make it do anything I want.”
“What about the radiation?” Shane couldn’t help but think of the legendary quirks of quantum extraction contragravs. The things were nasty when you ran them within the operation specs.
“I’m not human, Shane.”
“Does that mean you can sit next to that thing while it’s running?”
“Time, people,” Random said. “Move it!”
Mosasa stepped on a ledge and pushed aside one of the heavily shielded panels. A warning light came on, filling the room with a flashing yellow glow. He looked at Shane and gave an all-too-human shrug. “I guess we’re about to find out.”
Mosasa disappeared up the hole.
“I do not like this,” Shane said.
“Mosasa can do it.”
Shane quietly adjusted her personal Emerson field to screen her from harmful radiation. The adjustment cost her three minutes on her environmental containment. She pointed her plasma rifle at the door and waited.
“I’m sorry, Shane.”
“Why? This isn’t your fault.”
There was a pause. “I can’t explain fully. My surface is a mimetic reproduction of human psychology, but my thoughts are—different. Most intellectual beings don’t have the equipment to foresee the consequences of their actions.”
“You saw this coming?” Shane asked.
“I could have.”
“I’m the idiot who put myself in this position, Random. Don’t blame yourself for my mistakes.”
“A moral question.”
“Hm?”
“Does prior knowledge of someone’s decision—and the consequences of that decision—require you to share responsibility for that decision?”
Shane didn’t have an answer for that.
Time seemed to stretch into infinity as she waited for something to happen. She watched the chrono in the corner of her headsup and watched the numbers change too slowly.
“Why weren’t you horrified?” Random asked.
“Huh?”
“Two AIs, working independent of any supervision. Most Bakuninites would find that too disturbing. You’re Confed material, you should be screaming in horror.”
The chrono changed to read 07:48.
“Maybe I will, when I’ve got a chance to think.” Sweat was rolling down her face, despite the cooling system, and she desperately wanted to wipe off her forehead. She blinked her eyes and wished for a sweatband.
“I just appreciated your concern for Mosasa.”
Shane nodded inside her helmet and kept watching the door. She thought she saw something and began to run her visor through its enhancement modes.
Random kept talking. “He’s the closest thing I have to a son.”
Please God, Shane thought, don’t tell me the AI’s losing it.
“Look, Random, I chose my team, okay? That’s you, Mosasa, everyone. Do you have any surveillance on the corridor out there?”
“No, they’ve locked me in. The only pictures I have are the ones they pipe in.”
Shane kept staring at the door. Her visor’s setting had locked into the IR, and the door was beginning to glow around the edges. Heat trails were piping in from the sides.
“Random, they’re cutting in from the other side now.”
“They’re early,” Random said matter-of-factly. “Some of the onboard marines must’ve been in position when we boarded.”
“It’ll take them two to five minutes to cut open the door.”
“How long for Mosasa—?”
“Seven to ten.”
“Been nice knowing you, Random.”
“You can hold them off. There can only be five at most.”
“Only one of me.”
Her chrono flipped over to 07:49.
Parts of the door were now glowing in the visible spectrum. The marines out there must have a cutting torch.
She dialed her MacMillan-Schmitt for maximum discharge. Not a setting recommended for firing inside enclosed spaces, especially with a fully charged wide-aperture plasma rifle. But a second shot probably wasn’t going to happen.
“What’re you doing?” asked Random.
“Setting this on full.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
Shane laughed. More like suicidal. There was a good chance of her filling this room with plasma backwash. That’d fry her just as bad as the troops outside the door. “The jet might vent out.”
“There’s only ten meters down that corridor before there’s another emergency door.”