The sunfish had been confronted with aliens throughout their existence. That they’d never met anything like Vonnie before, that she mimicked their language and wore metal and carried tools — none of this would stop them.
To the sunfish, everything beyond the pack was a competitor for safe zones and oxygen. Everything was food. By necessity, most lifeforms in the ice had learned the same vicious reflex.
The sunfish attacked even when they were outsized or outnumbered. They’d learned to put the fight on their own terms. If they won, the pack expanded its territory. If they lost, not only did they have less mouths to feed, their dead became food for the survivors.
Until they could conceive of anything else, until they were able to conceive of anything else, their first response would always be violence.
The warring breeds she’d met seemed to be the remnants of an empire that had spread to the top of the frozen sky. Millennia ago, there had been a dormant period in Europa’s volcanic activity. Maybe someday there would be again. The carvings were short histories intended to aid the next alliance to rise from the chaos, offering commandments to share and proven methods to govern themselves in a hierarchy of scouts, warriors, workers, and breeding pairs.
Unfortunately, Vonnie had left a path of destruction through whatever civilization they’d managed to hold onto.
It wasn’t what they deserved. Worse, their kill-or-be-killed aggression would work against them now that the possibility of salvation existed at last.
What have I done? she thought.
The mecha gathering above her were American, yet relayed ESA signals. Lam pulled their search grid and told Vonnie how far she’d strayed. She was 9.1 klicks east of the trench where her team had gone in. She was also two-thirds of a kilometer beneath the surface, so the mecha rigged a molecular wire and dropped other lines around her including life support, suit support, and data/comm.
Another line lowered an emergency seal for her helmet before her visor blew out. Vonnie secured the bag around her neck, then inflated it with the attached air cylinder.
She let go of the ice. Her suit revolved dizzyingly as the machines lifted her, but the flood of voices was more intense. The men and women up top had accessed her records as soon as the data line connected. At a glance, her mem files must have looked like a running battle. She had gore and black rock mashed into every joint in her suit, her battered helmet, and her blood-stained gloves.
Someone murmured, “Vonderach, my God.”
But she was still thinking of the sunfishes’ potential and of the debts she owed, both to Bauman and Lam and to the native tribes she’d devastated. The sunfish were very human after all, with traits both good and evil. If they could be freed from starvation… If they were given a chance…
“We have to help them,” she said.
Surface of Europa Map
TOPSIDER
21.
There was only one survivor. They pulled her from the ice after four days alone in the dark, coated with blood and dust, her suit damaged at its knee, chest, gloves, and helmet.
The rock dust and frozen water vapor encrusted on her armor were extraterrestrial. So was the organic tissue. It belonged to Europa’s sunfish.
The blood inside the crippled suit was her own.
“You can’t delete him!” Vonnie said from her hospital cot, trying to sit up.
Administrator Koebsch shook his head. “We’ll leave most of the files intact.”
“I owe him my life. If you erase his personality—”
“Your AI is badly corrupted.”
“That’s not his fault. It’s mine.” Vonnie’s hand throbbed as she held a comm visor near her face, allowing them to see each other. Her cot was in a separate structure from Koebsch’s command module. Fresh muscle grafts on her temple and cheek kept her from using the visor properly, but her hand wasn’t much better off. Five bones in her fingers and wrist had been set with glue, and that was her good hand, her right hand. Her left was a swollen club. Otherwise it wouldn’t have been such a struggle to sit up.
As Vonnie rose, her blanket fell away, leaving her naked above the waist. By trade, astronauts could not be body conscious in their perpetually crowded living quarters.
Maybe she let the visor dip to her breasts and bandaged shoulder on purpose. Koebsch was a politician. If he was agitated by her body, it might rattle him enough to listen. Despite her injuries, Vonnie was lean and well-toned with clear skin and a long, slender belly.
“Let me help,” she said. “We can copy the files you want, then isolate them.”
“That’s what we’re doing.”
“But don’t delete the rest! Lam was a Chinese national. Human-based AIs aren’t illegal in his country. I know we can’t send him back to them. He knows too much. But we can give him sanctuary with us. It would be wrong to strip him down to pure data.”
“I disagree.”
Koebsch was forty-eight, blond, and Earthborn like Vonnie. Unlike Vonnie, he’d arrived on one of the high-gee launches five days ago. He had yet to adapt to low gravity. His face was always flushed. Vonnie wasn’t sure if she’d embarrassed Koebsch, so she tried again.
“You’re afraid of him,” she said. “I get it. You don’t need any legal problems on top of running our operation, but Lam is a proven resource. He’s the only one who’s communicated with the sunfish.”
“The sunfish are a separate matter,” Koebsch said.
Like everyone in the ESA crew, he’d adopted her name for the Europans. Her experience had been too sensational. The media loved everything about her odyssey, and, according to the news feeds she’d seen in the past day, most people were using the term sunfish across the solar system.
Her fame gave her leverage. “The sunfish are the only thing that matters,” she said, but Koebsch wouldn’t let her change the subject.
“Your AI attacked our diagnostics,” he said.
“That was a misunderstanding. Let me talk to him.”
“No. You’re… emotional.” Koebsch obviously intended to say more, but checked himself. “Get some rest,” he said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Vonnie shouted. “Wait!”
He cut the connection.
What should she do? The medics had stuck two intravenous lines in her arm, delivering simple fluids and complex mood stabilizers. She had trouble walking in any case. But she couldn’t let her friend die again even if that was what the real Lam might have wanted.
The ghost was too human. It had found its equilibrium while it was limited to her suit, using her armor like its own body, but after they were rescued, it had destabilized when it was subjected to an interface with their central AIs.
That didn’t mean he shouldn’t be saved. Vonnie knew he could be a formidable ally, and yet she had another incentive to save him besides the relationship they’d developed. More important than her personal loyalty was Second Contact with the sunfish. Koebsch needed every tool available before they went back into the ice.
Vonnie tugged her IVs loose and stood up, although there was no way to sneak out of the lander where the medical droids had operated on her skull and hands. Her med alerts chimed as soon as she disconnected the IVs.
A young woman in a blue insulated one-piece stepped into the compartment. Her freckled nose and big hazel eyes gave her harmless look, which she dispelled by barking like a cop. “What are you doing? Get back in bed.”
“I can’t,” Vonnie said. “There are complications with my suit. I need to assist with data recovery.”