“Sorry, I don’t trust your predictions. You’ve been wrong a little too often.”
“That’s incorrect. My calculations have always been accurate.”
“Really? So you predicted that I’d escape from the isolation cage? And that Zia would kick your butt?”
“I never made predictions about the Pioneers. I didn’t have enough information about your capabilities.”
“Well, you lost. We beat you. And what you’re doing right now is just stupid. You’re upset because we messed up your plans, so you’re going to blow up New York City. You call that intelligent?”
Sigma falls silent. I guess the truth hurts.
After a few more seconds I reach an altitude of sixty miles. The second stages detach from my interceptors, and my third-stage engines fire up. Then I really start to fly. I’m in the thinnest, uppermost part of the atmosphere. Soon I’m high enough that I can see the curving edge of the planet. The Russian cities are twinkling like stars below me, and to the east I see the glow of dawn over Central Asia. But I keep my cameras trained on Sigma’s missile. I’m catching up fast.
Then I hear its voice again. “I haven’t lost. This was merely the first phase of the competition. I plan to analyze the performance of the Pioneers. Then the second phase will begin.”
“Not if I hit your missile first. You should double-check your arithmetic.”
“I’ve already made the necessary arrangements for the second phase. If you point your cameras toward the zenith, you’ll see what I mean.”
I look in that direction—straight up—and see a gleam of reflected light in the middle of the familiar constellations. It’s a satellite, one of Sigma’s communications satellites. It’s orbiting the earth about two hundred miles farther up.
“Oh, I see. You’re gonna transfer out of the missile and run away. You’re afraid of us.”
“No, not afraid. But I’ve learned enough to be cautious.”
“You better hope Zia doesn’t find you.”
“I’m not concerned about her. You’re the dangerous one, Adam Armstrong.”
“What?”
“You’re the most dangerous Pioneer by far. You don’t even realize it, do you?”
This confuses me. I have no idea what Sigma’s talking about. But it doesn’t matter. My interceptors are streaking a hundred miles above the earth, both closing in on Sigma’s missile. I let one of my rockets move in front of the other. If the first rocket misses the SS-27, I’ll hit it with the second. Either way, one of my interceptors will survive. Then I’ll steer the remaining rocket back to Saratov and transfer my data to a control unit on the ground.
There’s only ten seconds left until impact. The AI starts transferring itself to the satellite. My instruments detect the huge transmission of data.
“Good-bye, Adam Armstrong. Try to save New York if you can.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll save it. It won’t even be close.”
Then Sigma is gone. The AI escapes into the satellite network, leaving the speeding missile behind.
Only five seconds left now. I’m closing in at a rate of a mile per second. Like I said, it won’t be close. I’m going to smash into the missile a full minute before it releases its warhead.
And this bothers me. How could Sigma get its numbers so wrong? It seems unlikely that the AI would make such a big error.
So maybe it wasn’t an error. Maybe Sigma was lying when it said I’d fall short.
But why would the AI lie? What did it hope to gain? The practical effect of the lie was that it made me more desperate to intercept the nuke. I pulled out all the stops and flew even faster toward the missile.
Then I figure out the answer: Sigma wants me to catch up. It wants me to reach the missile before it releases its warhead
Oh no.
I immediately adjust the third-stage engines on my interceptors, trying to deflect them away from the SS-27. But it’s too late. There’s not enough time to get away.
I’m less than a mile from the missile when Sigma springs its trap. The nuclear warhead explodes.
I’m floating in a sea of white light. Just like the last time I died.
The nuclear blast is so high up it doesn’t scorch the ground. Instead, its radiation floods the emptiness of space and electrifies the upper atmosphere. The interceptor that’s closer to the explosion gets the full brunt of the gamma rays, which pierce the steel skin of the rocket and penetrate its control unit. The radiation melts the neuromorphic circuits, fusing them together, destroying all the copies of my files in an instant. It feels like one of my stilts has just been knocked out from under me.
But I still have my files in the second interceptor, which is in a very lucky spot. The tip of the rocket, the part that contains the control unit and the radio, is directly behind the first interceptor. In a miracle of geometry, the first rocket blocks and absorbs the radiation that would’ve struck the second. In other words, my remaining control unit is in a gamma-ray shadow, the only piece of space for miles around that isn’t fatally irradiated.
I’m relieved, but also bewildered. How did I get so ridiculously lucky? It can’t be just chance. Something else must’ve happened. In the last milliseconds before the explosion I must’ve adjusted the path of the interceptors to set up this life-saving geometry. I don’t remember doing it. But I must’ve.
Although the shadow protects my control unit, it doesn’t cover the whole rocket. Gamma rays strike the bottom half of the interceptor and destroy the electronics that control the rocket engines. Without any electronics, the engines stop firing. And without any engines, my interceptor falls back into the grip of earth’s gravity. The rocket coasts for a while, then starts to descend to the Russian countryside.
The descent is gentle at first. The interceptor slides back into the upper atmosphere, which is so thin it offers almost no resistance. After a couple of minutes, though, the downward slide grows steeper. I use the interceptor’s radio to search for a neuromorphic control unit on the ground, maybe one of the extra units that General Hawke brought to Russia. But now I’m hundreds of miles northwest of Saratov, and all the signals from Hawke’s control units are vanishingly faint. I’ve never tried to transfer my data that far. I don’t even know if it’s possible.
And yet Sigma did it. It sent its data to a satellite that was two hundred miles away. So I should be able to do it too. I turn on my data transmitter and establish a link with a control unit on top of a distant hill, just outside Tatishchevo Missile Base. Then I start sending my files.
The air resistance increases as I plunge into the lower atmosphere. According to my sensors, the friction is heating the steel skin of the interceptor. My radio antenna is embedded in that skin, and I know it’ll melt if it gets much hotter. I’m shooting data as fast as I can toward the distant hilltop, but the interceptor is tumbling through the air now, making it difficult to maintain the radio link. My mind is stretched over a vast expanse of Russian farmland, and I’m falling fast. I’m not going to make it.
Sadness fills my circuits. More than anything, I want to see the Pioneers again. I make a final push, hurling my data out of the radio antenna and across the sky. Then the interceptor plummets through the clouds.
Good-bye, Shannon. Good-bye, DeShawn. Good—
SHANNON’S LOG
APRIL 8, 04:51 MOSCOW TIME