Herb had noticed that two of the blue-grey machines from the planet below were now sitting motionless on the hatch.
“What are they for?” he asked.
“They’re for later,” said Robert, oh so slowly, while at the same time he reconfigured the thickness of the ship’s bull, making the stern slightly thicker than the nose. After all, the stern was catching most of the explosions.
He told the ship to ascend.
Herb’s world was so slow…Robert knew what Herb was about to say before Herb did, and yet Robert still had to sit and listen to the end of each sentence. It was important. Not to do so would be unsettling for the young man.
“Your machine didn’t work,” said Herb. The words moved at glacier speed. Robert already had the reply slotted in place, ready to play, while another part of his attention completed the analysis of the Ouroboros machines below.
“Patience,” said Robert. “These terraformers are faster at reproduction than those on the last planet. Give it time and my Mцbius machine will make enough copies of itself to be able to twist that loop around and reverse the terraforming process.”
“Oh,” said Herb. The ship was accelerating away from the planet’s surface again, getting ready for another jump. Robert could see the thought occurring to him. He knew what Herb was going to say next.
“Why are we stopping the terraforming of that planet? Surely terraforming is a good thing?”
“Only if you’re a human. Not everyone in the galaxy is,” replied Robert. “Jump in ten seconds…”
And then most of the ship’s propulsion system vanished.
In an instant all of Robert Johnston’s attention was directed to trying to keep the ship aloft.
There wasn’t enough of the propulsion system left to do that.
The ship was falling back toward the planet: impact in 13.2081177 seconds.
The ship’s self-repair systems came on line. They were fast, but not fast enough. Impact would still occur, now in 26.1187722 seconds. Robert Johnston added some of the nanotechs he carried in his own robot body to the ship. The reinforcements were enough to help the repair system complete its immediate task. The ship’s fall was halted: impact in (indefinite) seconds.
Now Robert split his awareness in two. Part of it continued to oversee the repairs; a larger part was directed to discovering what had happened.
He ran through the ship’s internal monitoring records and replayed the last three milliseconds before the propulsion system had vanished.
There was the answer. The ship had fallen victim to a stealth attack. Somehow the local security net had got a set of nanotechs onto the hull. That should have been impossible, given the defense routines Robert had set up, but even more incredible was the fact that the nanotechs had managed to do so without being noticed. They had worked their way into the propulsion system, making themselves into exact copies of existing parts. When they had converted enough of the system, they just…dissolved.
Robert Johnston was puzzled. They had dissolved too soon. If they had waited longer they could have left him with no propulsion system at all. Why so soon?
A second replay of the ship’s memory and he saw it. A routine internal scan had been initiated ten picoseconds before the attack. The enemy nanotechs must have feared detection; they acted too soon rather than be wiped out. Thankfully.
The threat had been identified.
All this took just under two seconds. Robert Johnston now felt it safe to split his consciousness further so as to interface with other layers of reality.
To Herb, it was as if the attack was still underway. Robert could see him as he was thrown out of the sofa, his left knee banging on the wooden floor. Robert could read the pain in Herb’s body as his left hand was twisted the wrong way and almost broke.
Robert Johnston was still funneling materials toward the propulsion system. There wasn’t enough mass in the propulsion chamber, so he sought it from elsewhere on the ship. Herb’s bedroom was quickly cannibalized.
The propulsion systems now operated at four percent efficiency.
Back in the slow world, Herb was thrown to the left, tumbling across the floor, hot coffee splashing over him as he went. A white vase fell to the floor, shattering next to his head. Meanwhile, the robot body was picking itself up off the floor, its face slack and utterly expressionless. The ship continued to shake and jerk around, but the movement was diminishing. Herb sat up slowly, favoring his right hand. As he stared at his left, Robert could see wave after wave of sickening pain sweeping through the human, centering on his knee. The robot body came and put an arm around Herb, helped him to his feet.
“Are you okay?” asked Robert. He helped Herb to limp across to his sofa and sat him down.
“I think so. My hand…No. It can wait. What happened?”
Robert began to explain.
All the while another part of Robert was examining the options of what to do next.
He had been too cocky, he had underestimated the capabilities of the local AI. He could not afford to make that mistake again.
Now he would have to take time out from the attack to replenish the ship’s resources. He calculated that it would take about four minutes. He estimated the Enemy’s ships would be here in five. So, just enough time to drop back to the planet’s surface and then get out again.
Much too confident. He would not make that mistake again.
Then another part of his awareness picked up the flickering of a warp transition. One, two, three Enemy ships inserting themselves into normal space. They had got here far too quickly. Another mistake.
He would have to jump again right now…
He looked at the warp field, began to coax it into shimmering life…
He was simultaneously observing Herb. Robert could read the fear that coursed through the man’s body at his announcement of the jump. Herb’s mouth was dry, his pulse rate increasing, his stomach pulsing, and yet his body’s functioning was still within acceptable parameters. Herb would experience far worse before this was over.
Something foreign still lurked on the ship.
Another jump. They reinserted into normal space and the lounge lit up with the brilliant white glare of an explosion. This time all of the viewing fields darkened. Herb felt as if the ship was skimming sideways, riding a wave, dancing and surfing toward a beach. He could feel the busy rumble of something like water beneath them.
“We’re riding the explosion,” said Robert, “just inside the wave front. They won’t be able to scan inside here. At least I hope not. No nanotechs could survive out there in that maelstrom, so we can assume we’re not going to be boarded again… We’re going to jump again in a moment.”
Robert’s face slackened, just for a fraction of a second, and then: “The top ninety percent of the hull has ablated. At least it didn’t breach…”
The ship rocked again as they began the transition back into warp. Herb was flung from his seat, across the room. He tripped on Robert’s sofa, catching his left knee again as he landed. He screamed with pain…