“Run a patch from my voice box to the medical imaging systems,” she said. “I want to control the MIS by voice command. Don’t let the box make any external sound. Its function is to control the MIS. Understood? When I shout like this — yah! — make the MIS generate a terahertz pulse, then translate those signals back to me as normal sound.”
—It’s improbable the lifeforms will be able to hear frequencies in the terahertz range if you intend to broadcast their sonar calls.
“Just do it.”
Using Vonnie’s hands, the ghost began to rearrange the panel circuitry on her ravaged, filthy armor, creating a patch from her med pack to her helmet. That the sunfish wouldn’t be drawn to a terahertz pulse was good. She didn’t want to talk to them. She wanted a sensor independent of the ghost, because if she lived, her fight with him would be next.
—Here they come.
Her arms stabbed up. Her gloves clenched on squirming muscles. The sunfish squeezed their arms around her wrists as an eerie vibration passed through her chest. It was their sonar, an intimate, unpleasant buzz.
Her suit tossed them down and sprang out of the hole, chopping at the ice to seal them in.
The sunfish were too fast. One snarled itself around her boot. It hauled itself up her shins to her groin. Vonnie tried to run. She punched it loose, but the other sunfish roped four arms around her ankle, screeching.
Was it bringing more of them?
Vonnie wept as she stomped on them. They felt like rubber bumps until their bodies ruptured, spraying juice and guts up her legs. “I’m sorry! Sorry! Oh God, I’m sorry!”
At first she didn’t realize she’d escaped. In this gravity, spidering through the ice felt too much like combat — grab, kick, grab again — swimming off the walls and ceiling. She gritted her teeth and endured.
“Where are they?”
—No lifeforms in range.
“Scan again! Where are they?”
—No lifeforms in range.
Tidal pressures, heat, and gas had riddled the ice with fractures and melts. A few gaps lifted up like crazy subway tunnels. More often, there were honeycombs.
The openings teased Vonnie with dead-ends and obstacles. Sometimes her suit was able to bash through stalactites or veils of ice. More often the ghost backtracked or gave up a hundred meters of hard-fought progress even when Vonnie was desperate to hide and rest.
After 1.7 kilometers, the ghost reported more rock ahead. The ice she’d crossed appeared to fill a valley between two mountain peaks, which explained why the ice was cracked and soft. The rock formed a bowl. It radiated heat upward. It also supported this part of the frozen sky, because the mountains meant the sky could only drop so far.
Her suit leapt an abyss onto solid ground. They charged up an uneven slope, weaving among the hollows and dripping ice overhead.
—There are open lava tubes on our right.
“Pick one! Hurry!” Vonnie didn’t want to go into the rock. She wanted to climb it. But if she stayed outside, the sunfish were more likely to hear her. “Where are they?”
—No lifeforms in range.
Her suit clambered sideways and down. Vonnie counted every step. The noises around her deepened.
“We’re inside the mountain?” she said.
—Affirmative.
She wouldn’t get a better shot. Her hands tapped inside her gloves, opening her command codes. Then she launched a clumsy voice key assault on the ghost. “Authorization Alexis Six, all systems respond. Bajonett. Bajonett.”
The emergency order was meant to compartmentalize and suspend all AI activity within a suit, ship, or station. At school, they’d called it the Knife. Basic processors were supposed to take over. Instead, the ghost caused another interrupt. Feedback squealed in Vonnie’s ears. Worse, her voice box transmitted the same roar as if calling for the sunfish.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
The suit convulsed, slamming her face with unbearable pain — and then she had manual control.
She ran.
Her terror left no room for thought. It made her more effective. She forgot her wounds. She forgot her exhaustion. All senses tuned to the dark, Vonnie became her own momentum, reveling in every centimeter gained. She ran with her eyes shut, chasing the sound of her own boot steps. This channel in the rock was tight enough to reflect every noise back on itself, and she dodged through the space between each rattling echo.
15.
Her frenzy didn’t last. The ninth or tenth time she fell, she paused before standing up. Then she was running again, crashing through the rock less successfully than before. Self-awareness returned in fits and starts.
Fix your eyes, she thought. Test the system. If the ghost is gone, you can fix your eyes.
Climbing, slipping, staggering, crawling, finally she accepted that she had no choice except to take her chances with life support. She decided to stop and set her trap.
When the sunfish caught up, Vonnie was hidden on a rock shelf above a short cliff. She’d rebooted the ghost with some success. He was still no better than three-quarters logic, but she’d gained control of her medical systems and the nanotech was rebuilding her left eye. The ghost had fixed the sonar receptors in her helmet, so she could hear ultrasound again even if she couldn’t transmit. The two of them had also turned off her spotlight when they stripped her gear block for parts. First she’d used the light to set her trap, burning a false trail beneath the cliff.
She should have anticipated that the sunfish would ignore it. As they stole into the fissure below her, they crept up the sides of the rift and moved straight toward her hiding place, filtering through every thin cleft and pit.
Vonnie stood to meet them with her welding laser and a chunk of rock. “I need auto-targeting only,” she said. “Fire by voice command.”
—Von, that drops efficiency to thirty percent.
“Fire by voice command. Confirm.”
—Listen to me.
Her terahertz pulse detected movement sporadically, carrying new, ever-closer signals to her ears. She couldn’t tell if there were four or forty of them hidden in the rift, but their sonar calls were all around her.
She discerned another hint of arms, then heard the clack of a falling pebble. Their voices rose like a wailing song.
Her emotions were a different storm, but there was one clear idea at the center of it. She didn’t want to die badly. She didn’t want the wrong reasons to be her last.
Should she put down her weapons and let them kill her? What would that teach the sunfish about human beings?
The ghost said:
—I have six to eight targets, all well-concealed. Ten targets now. If we’re going to pick them off before they jump, I need full system access.
But they hadn’t jumped. Not yet. The sunfish seemed indecisive. Maybe their careful approach was an overture.
“They’re not attacking,” she said.
—They’re taking position.
“Last time they came straight at me. What if I’m far enough from their home? They might realize I’m not their enemy.”