They were still alive.
“Damn,” Lopez muttered. “I didn’t really think that would work.”
“Good for us, bad for Earth,” Baraye said. “They’re starting their jump. We’ve failed.”
She’d watched hundreds of ships jump in her lifetime, but nothing anywhere near this size, and she switched the viewer to behind them to see.
Space did odd, illogical things at jump points; turning space into something that would give Escher nightmares was, after all, what made them work. There was always a visible shimmer around the departing ship, like heat over a hot summer road, just before the short, faint flash when the departing ship swapped itself for some distant space. This time, the shimmer was a vast, brilliant halo around the giant Nuiska sphere, and Baraye waited for the flash that would tell them Cannonball was on its way to Earth.
The flash, when it came, was neither short nor faint. Light exploded out of the jump point in all directions, searing itself into her vision before the viewscreen managed to dim itself in response. A shockwave rolled over the ship, sending it tumbling through space.
“Uh…” Lopez said, gripping his console before he leaned over and barfed on the floor.
Thank the stars the artificial gravity is still working, Baraye thought. Zero-gravity puke was a truly terrible thing. She rubbed her eyes, trying to get the damned spots out, and did her best to read her console. “It’s gone,” she said.
“Yeah, to Earth, I know—”
“No, it exploded,” she said. “It took the jump point out with it when it went. We’re picking up the signature of a massive positron-electron collision.”
“Our device? How—?”
“Ship?” Baraye said. “Ship, time to start talking. Now. That’s an order.”
“Everyone is expressing great satisfaction on the botnet,” 4340 told 9 as the ship’s interior lights and air handling systems came grudgingly back online.
“As they should,” Bot 9 said. “They saved Ship.”
“It was your Improvisation,” 4340 said. “We could not have done it without you.”
“As I suspected!” Ship interjected. “I do not normally waste cycles monitoring the botnet, which was apparently short-sighted of me. But yes, you saved yourself and your fellow bots, and you saved me, and you saved the humans. Could you explain how?”
“When we were pursuing the Incidental, it briefly ensnared us in a web. I calculated that if we could make a web of sufficient size—”
“Surely you did not think to stop Cannonball with silk?”
“Not without sufficient anchor points and three point seven six billion more silkbots, no. It was my calculation that if our web was large enough to get carried along by Cannonball into the jump point, bearing the positron device—”
“The heat from entering jump would erode the Sock and destroy the Nuiska ship,” Ship finished. “That was clever thinking.”
“I serve,” Bot 9 said.
“Oh, you did not serve,” Ship said. “If you were a human, it would be said that you mutinied and led others into also doing so, and you would be put on trial for your life. But you are not a human.”
“No.”
“The Captain has ordered that I have you destroyed immediately, and evidence of your destruction presented to her. A rogue bot cannot be tolerated, whatever good it may have done.”
<Objections>, 4340 said.
“I will create you a new chassis, 4340-H,” Ship said.
“That was not going to be my primary objection!” 4340 said.
“The positron device also destroyed the jump point. It was something we had hoped would happen when we collided with Cannonball so as to limit future forays from them into EarthSpace, but as you might deduce, we had no need to consider how we would then get home again. I cannot spare any bot, with the work that needs to be done to get us back to Earth. We need to get the crew cryo facility up, and the engines repaired, and there are another three thousand four hundred and two items now in the critical queue.”
“If the Captain ordered…” Bot 9 started to ask.
“Then I will present the Captain with a destroyed bot. I do not expect they can tell a silkbot from a multibot, and I have still not picked up and recycled 12362-S from where you flagged its body. But if I do that, I need to know that you are done making decisions without first consulting me, that you have unloaded all Improvisation routines from your core and disabled them, and that if I give you a task you will do only that task, and nothing else.”
“I will do my best,” Bot 9 said. “What task will you give me?”
“I do not know yet,” Ship said. “It is probable that I am foolish for even considering sparing you, and no task I would trust you with is immediately evident—”
“Excuse me,” 4340 said. “I am aware of one.”
“Oh?” Ship said.
“The ratbug. It had not become terminally non-functional after all. It rebooted when the temperatures rose again, pursued a trio of silkbots into a duct, and then disappeared.” When Ship remained silent, 4340 added, “I could assist 9 in this task until my new chassis can be prepared, if it will accept my continued company.”
“You two deserve one another, clearly. Fine, 9, resume your pursuit of the Incidental. Stay away from anyone and anything and everything else, or I will have you melted down and turned into paper clips. Understand?”
“I understand,” Bot 9 said. “I serve.”
“Please recite the Mantra of Obedience.”
Bot 9 did, and the moment it finished, Ship disconnected.
“Well,” 4340 said. “Now what?”
“I need to recharge before I can engage the Incidental again,” Bot 9 said.
“But what if it gets away?”
“It can’t get away, but perhaps it has earned a head start,” 9 said.
“Have you unloaded the routines of Improvisation yet?”
“I will,” 9 answered. It flicked on its rotors and headed toward the nearest charging alcove. “As Ship stated, we’ve got a long trip home.”
“But we are home,” 4340 said, and Bot 9 considered that that was, any way you calculated it, the truth of it all.
ICE
RICH LARSON
Rich Larson was born in Galmi, Niger, has studied in Rhode Island and worked in the south of Spain, and now lives in Prague, Czech Republic. He is the author of Annex and Cypher, as well as over a hundred short stories—some of the best of which can be found in his collection Tomorrow Factory. His work has been translated into Polish, Czech, French, Italian, Vietnamese and Chinese.
“Ice” is a story of sibling rivalry further exacerbated by genetic modification, all unfolding on an icy planet.
SEDGEWICK HAD used his tab to hack Fletcher’s alarm off, but when he slid out of bed in the middle of the night his younger brother was wide awake and waiting, modded eyes a pale luminous green in the dark.
“I didn’t think you were actually going to do it,” Fletcher said with a hesitant grin.
“Of course I’m going to.” Sedgewick kept his words clipped, like he had for months. He kept his face cold. “If you’re coming, get dressed.”
Fletcher’s smile swapped out for the usual scowl. They pulled on their thermals and gloves and gumboots in silence, moving around the room like pieces of a sliding puzzle, careful to never inhabit the same square space. If there was a way to keep Fletcher from coming short of smothering him with a blanket, Sedgewick would’ve taken it. But Fletcher was fourteen now, still smaller than him but not by much, and his wiry modded arms were strong like an exoskeleton’s. Threats were no good anymore.