Clemantine cocked her head. Vytet was right. It was astonishing. So much so that something felt off. Her initial suspicion deepened. “All that,” she said thoughtfully, “and yet Dragon remains such a large courser. How much larger was this ship when Urban first hijacked it?”
To her astonishment, the Scholar shrugged—a dismissive gesture, foreign to his usual formal manner. “Early records are incomplete,” he explained. “But this venture has always operated on the edge of possibility.”
Did he mean that as a philosophical answer?
Clemantine traded a puzzled look with Vytet. “In my experience, a massive courser escorted by six outriders constitutes a formidable fleet. I don’t call that operating on the edge.”
Vytet nodded agreement. “Mass will always be a limiting factor, but Urban must have felt very comfortable with Dragon’s reserves, since he chose to replace both lost ships.”
“All lost ships must be replaced,” the Scholar said. “The sensing capability of the fleet is essential. Without it, Dragon would be vulnerable to a stealth approach from a true Chenzeme starship.”
On the Null Boundary Expedition Clemantine had witnessed just that kind of stealth approach. Her ghost existence did not prevent a shiver as she remembered it. “By the Unknown God,” she murmured. “Near or far, I hope to never see another Chenzeme starship again.”
Urban used radar to study the span and the composition of the debris field, but he was able to detect only a handful of objects, widely scattered. None posed a threat to the fleet.
The Pilot said: *I need Pytheas to be replaced.
*It will be, Urban assured him. *In time.
The outriders held backups of Dragon’s library, but they served primarily as scouts and watch posts. All were part of Dragon’s telescope array. With Pytheas gone, the Pilot’s oversight of the Near Vicinity was degraded.
*It will be replaced in less time if we initiate growth now, the Pilot carped.
Urban strove to keep his voice soothing and reasonable. *You know the gee deck has reduced our reserves of essential elements. You know the Engineer has advised against initiating growth of a new outrider until those elements can be replaced.
*The Engineer offered a second option.
*I’m not going to cannibalize the gee deck, Urban told him.
By the Unknown God, Clemantine would kill him if he undid all their work of the past two years. The gee deck needed to be finished.
He told the Pilot, *You know I have to balance multiple priorities. Use what you have. Monitor the Near Vicinity as best you can.
After a day, when there was nothing more to see or do, Clemantine retired again to the archive. As before, her ghost roused at regular intervals to conduct a routine status check of the ship.
Urban tracked her ghost during those inspection tours, each lasting less than a minute. He adjusted his time sense to match the time that she perceived, even as he remained aware of every second, every hour, every day that slipped past.
Five days, and then ten, and then fourteen.
The first time Urban had lost outriders, fourteen days had separated the two incidents. This time, the fourteenth day passed quietly. The fifteenth day followed it, and then the sixteenth.
Twenty days went by. Then thirty. Forty. Fifty. Sixty.
Urban dared to believe they’d be all right.
Then the sixty-third day arrived and his sanguine belief shattered. From his post on the high bridge, he saw the explosion—a diaphanous flash of blue light so brilliant, so close, he knew it was Khonsu, the last outrider in his vanguard, closest to Dragon.
He adopted the protective filter of the Sentinel, aloof and untouchable, as a fearsome debate raged among the philosopher cells.
The temperament of the cells was forever malign, aggressively hateful, imbued with unrelenting anger. No gentleness in them, no sense of wonder or awareness of the magnificence of creation. They were a machine mind tasked with carrying out the genocide of technological species. Nothing more. Nothing less.
They’d captured the explosion of Khonsu in memory. Now they replayed the event, over and over, analyzing every aspect of it. Urban felt the intellectual effort as they fought to develop an explanation for the incident, and to determine what the potential threat might be.
Clemantine’s ghost joined him on the high bridge. *This shouldn’t have happened, she messaged. He felt her anger, even against the agitation of the cell field.
*It’s not over, he warned her.
*Sooth. What happens when the cell field is damaged by debris?
*We keep control, he warned her. *Regardless of what happens.
The philosopher cells comprehended the threat. They monitored the expansion of the debris field, a task made easier this time because Khonsu had been so much closer than Pytheas. They identified three fragments with enough mass and relative momentum to seriously damage Dragon’s hull if they struck.
An alliance of cells submitted a proposition: <deploy the gun: vaporize the threat>
A sharp spike of excitement from Clemantine. When she’d suggested using the gun before, distance and the chaotic movement of the debris had made it impractical. Now, the situation was different.
She pointed this out, in a bitterly ironic voice: *The philosopher cells have experience enough to know their range—and they’re confident.
*Sooth, Urban agreed, too aware of the history of destruction contained within the memory of the cell field. *But it’s not without cost.
He’d used the gamma-ray gun when he’d hijacked the ship, and twice more since then, but he did not like using it. *The gun pulls so much power, it weakens the propulsion reef and destabilizes the ship.
He considered denying the philosopher cells the option of the gun. He had the ability to do that. Over the centuries he’d expanded and strengthened the branching structure of the bridge, increasing its links to the cell field so that he could overwhelm any debate among the philosopher cells and drive the discussion to the consensus he desired.
But he already needed to replace two outriders. He did not want to risk the added burden of major damage to Dragon—and he could not predict the path of the debris because of the unknown effects of Khonsu’s shattered propulsion reef.
*Let the cells have their way, he told Clemantine.
*All right. Her tone grim, but eager. She wanted to see this, to experience it from the other side, from behind the gun this time. No longer helpless prey.
They withheld input, let the cells find consensus on their own. It didn’t take long. The window of opportunity was limited. The cells had to act while the fragments retained heat and could be easily tracked.