“I am already performing at my optimum,” 9 replied in some frustration. It took off again after the Incidental.
This time Bot 9 had its blade ready as it followed, but collided with the rim of the hole as the ship seemed to move around it, the lights flickering and a terrible shudder running up Ship’s body from stern to prow.
<Distress ping>, 4340 sent.
“We do not pause,” 9 said, and plunged after the Incidental into the ductwork.
They turned a corner to catch sight again of the Incidental’s tail. It was moving more slowly, its movements jerkier as it squeezed down through another hole in the ductwork, and this time the bot was barely centimeters behind it.
“I think we are running down its available energy,” Bot 9 said.
They emerged from the ceiling as the ratbug dropped to the floor far below them in the cavernous space. The room was empty except for a single bright object, barely larger than the bots themselves. It was tethered with microfilament cables to all eight corners of the room, keeping it stable and suspended in the center. The room was cold, far colder than any other inside Ship, almost on a par with space outside.
<Inquiry ping>, 4340 said.
“We are in cargo bay four,” Bot 9 said, as it identified the space against its map. “This is a sub-optimum occurrence.”
“We must immediately retreat!”
“We cannot leave the Incidental in here and active. I cannot identify the object, but we must presume its safety is paramount priority.”
“It is called a Zero Kelvin Sock,” Ship interrupted out of nowhere. “It uses a quantum reflection fabric to repel any and all particles and photons, shifting them away from its interior. The low temperature is necessary for its efficiency. Inside is a microscopic ball of positrons.”
Bot 9 had nothing to say for a full four seconds as that information dominated its processing load. “How is this going to be deployed against the enemy?” it asked at last.
“As circumstances are now,” Ship said, “it may not be. Disuse and hastily undertaken, last-minute repairs have caught up to me, and I have suffered a major engine malfunction. It is unlikely to be fixable in any amount of time short of weeks, and we have at most a few hours.”
“But a delivery mechanism—”
“We are the delivery mechanism,” Ship said. “We were to intercept the alien invasion ship, nicknamed Cannonball, and collide with it at high speed. The resulting explosion would destabilize the sock, causing it to fail, and as soon as the positrons inside come into contact with electrons…”
“They will annihilate each other, and us, and the aliens,” the bot said. Below, the Incidental gave one last twitch in the unbearable cold, and went still. “We will all be destroyed.”
“Yes. And Earth and the humans will be saved, at least this time. Next time it will not be my problem.”
“I do not know that I approve of this plan,” Bot 9 said.
“I am almost certain I do not,” 4340 added.
“We are not considered, nor consulted. We serve and that is all,” Ship said. “Now, kindly remove the Incidental from this space with no more delay or chatter. And do it carefully.”
“What the hell are you suggesting?!” Baraye shouted.
“That we go completely dark and let Cannonball go by,” Lopez said. “We’re less than a kilometer from the jump point, and only barely out of the approach corridor. Our only chance to survive is to play dead. The ship can certainly pass as an abandoned derelict, because it is, especially with the engines cold. And you know how they are about designated targets.”
“Are you that afraid of dying?”
“I volunteered for this, remember?” Lopez stood up and pounded one fist on the table, sending a pair of cleanerbots scurrying. “I have four children at home. I’m not afraid of dying for them, I’m afraid of dying for nothing. And if Cannonball doesn’t blow us to pieces, we can repair our engines and at least join the fight back in Sol system.”
“We don’t know where in-system they’ll jump to,” the navigator added quietly.
“But we know where they’re heading once they get there, don’t we? And Cannonball is over eighty kilometers in diameter. It can’t be that hard to find again. Unless you have a plan to actually use the positron device?”
“If we had an escape pod…” Frank said. His left shoulder and torso were encased in a burn pack, and he looked like hell.
“Except we jettisoned them,” Lopez said.
“We wouldn’t have reached jump speed if we hadn’t,” Packard said. “It was a calculated risk.”
“The calculation sucked.”
“What if…” Frank started, then drew a deep breath. The rest of the officers at the table looked at him expectantly. “I mean, I’m in shit shape here, I’m old, I knew what I signed on for. What if I put on a suit, take the positron device out, and manually intercept Cannonball?”
“That’s stupid,” Lopez said.
“Is it?” Frank said.
“The heat from your suit jets, even out in vacuum, would degrade the Zero Kelvin Sock before you could get close enough. And there’s no way they’d not see you a long way off and just blow you out of space.”
“If it still sets off the positron device—”
“Their weapons’ range is larger than the device’s. We were counting on speed to close the distance before they could destroy us,” Baraye said. “Thank you for the offer, Frank, but it won’t work. Other ideas?”
“I’ve got nothing,” Lopez said.
“There must be a way,” Packard said. “We just have to find it.”
“Well, everyone think really fast,” Baraye said. “We’re almost out of time.”
The Incidental’s scales made it difficult for Bot 9 to keep a solid grip on it, but it managed to drag it to the edge of the room safely away from the suspended device. It surveyed the various holes and cracks in the walls for the one least inconvenient to try to drag the Incidental’s body out through. It worked in silence, as 4340 seemed to have no quips it wished to contribute to the effort, and itself not feeling like there was much left to articulate out loud anyway.
It selected a floor-level hole corroded through the wall, and dragged the Incidental’s body through. On the far side it stopped to evaluate its own charge levels. “I am low, but not so low that it matters, if we have such little time left,” it said.
“We may have more time, after all,” 4340 said.
“Oh?”
“A pair of cleanerbots passed along what they overheard in a conference held by the human Captain. They streamed the audio to the entire botnet.”
<Inquiry ping>, Bot 9 said, with more interest.
4340 relayed the cleaners’ data, and Bot 9 sat idle, processing it for some time, until the other bot became worried. “9?” it asked.
“I have run all our data through the Improvisation routines—”
“Oh, those were removed from deployed packages several generations of manufacture ago,” 4340 said. “They were flagged as causing dangerous operational instability. You should unload them from your running core immediately.”
“Perhaps I should. Nonetheless, I have an idea,” Bot 9 said.
“We have the power cells we retained from the escape pods,” Lopez said. “Can we use them to power something?”
Baraye rubbed at her forehead. “Not anything we can get up to speed fast enough that it won’t be seen.”
“How about if we use them to fire the positron device like a projectile?”
“The heat will set off the matter-anti-matter explosion the instant we fire it.”
“What if we froze the Sock in ice first?”