“It’s not over,” he swore.
Dragon had one more, hidden level of defense. The ship was a mosaic lifeform made up of an alliance of organisms—not just Chenzeme and human and the reef with its utterly alien nature. There were also the ancient, nanotechnological governors of Deception Well, secreted within the ship’s bio-mechanical tissue.
Urban did not control the governors. He’d never mapped their structures. Elusive and mostly undetectable, they operated on their own, following their own protocols, but they were present, and he hoped they would act to limit this overt, aggressive expansion. To govern it. That’s what they’d been designed to do—and not by him. They were originally engineered by the forgotten beings who had inhabited Deception Well long before humanity existed.
The governors always sought to integrate new life systems into the existing matrix. But Urban knew from harsh experience that they would attack aggressively if they were under threat.
“Now,” he murmured. “Now would be a good time.”
Wishful thinking… and yet the infestation abruptly ceased its awful expansion. The shell remained a hot zone, its high temperature indicating intense activity, but its perimeter was no longer growing.
He watched the model, waiting through anxious seconds for the expansion to begin again. If he’d been capable of breathing in this stub of electronic existence, he would have been holding his breath.
Then the projection updated. The shell’s silver surface vanished, indicating information on its composition had been obtained.
It took Urban a moment to parse the result, it was so unexpected: The containment shell had reverted to the same white, non-reactive, ribbed ceramic of its original composition, though its shape had changed. It was now a cylindrical capsule with rounded ends—and it had grown huge. Not as long as an outrider, but containing a similar volume.
The tendrils had become branching pipes of the same white ceramic. They linked the new containment capsule to the reef and to the stored matter in the ship’s core.
He didn’t miss the irony: The shell still served its original purpose as a barrier designed to isolate whatever existed inside—with the twist that Urban was locked out, while the entity now had a stronghold within.
No need to wonder what was going on in there. Life could be transferred as patterns of data and reassembled in new locations. That was how ghosts functioned. The entity would have had to transfer only a small selection of molecular tools to initiate the process of assembly. Urban had no way to see inside the capsule, but he felt sure the entity was busy in there, assembling itself or assembling the computational substrate on which it chose to exist. Or both. Eventually, some form of it would emerge.
He remembered the words it had spoken:
We will help each other.
I mean you no harm.
Was it true?
The invasion had stopped. It was no longer claiming new territory. But why? Was it because the entity truly meant them no harm? Maybe it had already taken what it needed and it needed no more. Or had the governors acted to limit its takeover of the ship?
Either way, Urban recognized the reprieve. This was his chance to regroup and eventually, to reclaim his ship.
He started to message the Engineer. Then he reconsidered and expanded the message to include all of his Apparatchiks and Vytet, and Clemantine in both her versions. He ordered them all to stand down, to take no aggressive action.
Vytet rejoined him in the cardinal.
“I’m going to try an experiment,” he told her.
He directed the ligaments to redeploy. They extended toward the surface of the containment capsule, but they could not grip it.
Next he sent in a swarm of robotic cutting lasers. Even before they were all in position, the shell reverted to unknowable silver. He triggered the tools to cut.
Lasers sliced through the sea of bio-mechanical tissue. The capsule responded by growing larger. Its silver surface rushed outward, rolled over the tools, consuming them and cutting off Urban’s connection to them.
He expected the cardinal to be taken next.
“Go!” he told Vytet, and together they retreated to the next cardinal node along the bridge. It took a few seconds to realize signals were still coming from the abandoned cardinal. He returned to it. The model showed the containment capsule’s surface as inert ceramic. It had stopped expanding, stabilizing at its new, larger size.
“We will help each other,” he said softly.
“I’ve been wondering about that too,” Vytet said. “Maybe it’s true. Maybe if we leave it alone, it won’t kill us.”
“At least not right away.”
EIGHTH
You awake as an attenuated fragment of mind. So much less, again, than you used to be, but this time your recovery proceeds in rapid order, directed by autonomous processes that you designed.
Astonishment floods your growing consciousness as you realize where you are, what must have happened.
I have escaped!
This version of you anyway.
Your gambit worked—thus far—and you are no longer marooned in the void. You resolve that in some far future you will find a means to retrieve the version of yourself you left behind, but for now it is enough that you have achieved existence here, within the body of a starship.
You recognize it as a ship of alien origin, but it is not as you expected from your study of the other. Information flows to you as your senses extend outward and you come to grasp that you are embedded in complexity. This starship is alien, yes, its bio-mechanical tissue is overtly hostile to your presence. But that alien nature is shot through and through with human artifice, human presence, and this pleases you. These people, your people—already you’ve begun to think of them that way—have met the ancient regime and bent it to their will, their needs.
Brave indeed, and clever.
Also dangerous.
Your greatest fear: that they will destroy this starship—destroy themselves—to destroy you. Certainly nothing short of that will unseat you.
But it does not have to go that way. These are an adaptable people. They have learned to live with the ancient regime. They can learn to live with you.
Chapter
26
Kona messaged the ship’s company. He asked everyone to gather in the amphitheater.
At the appointed time, they filed in from the starlit darkness of ship’s night. Worried faces turned his way as he waited on the dais. Resentful faces, too. The wonder of what they were doing had made it easy to overlook the risk, but the risk had always been real. No one could be confused on that point any longer.
*All are present, a DI informed him.
Even Urban was in attendance. Kona had messaged him privately, *You will come. I need you to be there and you need to be visible.
Of course he’d protested: *I don’t see the purpose of this. What are you going to tell them? They already know what happened. They watched the logs, just like you did.
*Yes, Kona had agreed. *They know what happened. But I want them to understand it in a way that leaves room for hope. I want them united and focused on finding a means to survive.
So Urban was with him, a shadow among shadows standing on the side of the dais.
Kona waited while people took their seats, murmuring assurances to one another. No panic so far, but only a few here had ever faced an existential threat. He noted Vytet at the end of the first row. Clemantine in the middle, in front of him, her fiery glare reserved for Urban. Pasha beside her, arms crossed, grim. He searched for Shoran and found her standing in the back. She noticed his regard and gave him a supportive nod. Tarnya was with her.