Discussion stirred as people compared opinions with those sitting nearby. Snatches of conversation reached Kona:
We have options.
So long as Griffin is safe, we can continue our struggle here.
We survived worse when we left Heyertori.
Even Urban sounded conciliatory as he approached Kona on the dais, saying, “We can use Artemis as the relay.”
“Good. Let’s do that.”
Then one voice rose over the others—Pasha, calm but blunt, asking, “What if the situation should change? A sudden, catastrophic change.” The crowd murmur melted away. “The entity breaks out, let’s say. All our efforts collapse into corruption and chaos.”
Vytet responded as if this was an engineering problem. “We add an additional failsafe. If Artemis detects a radio transmission, any transmission, its data gate closes. It accepts no further traffic from Dragon, until Griffin sends an all-clear.”
But that wasn’t Pasha’s concern. Kona had wanted to use this gathering to unify the ship’s company, to get them focused on finding a means to survival, but in the face of her challenging gaze, he felt unity receding.
She said, “What I meant was that we have to know when it’s over. We cannot take this thing to Tanjiri. We have to be ready to act before it’s too late.”
Motion in the back row: Shoran standing to speak. “We’re a long way from Tanjiri. Let’s just keep trying, all right?”
“Of course we should keep trying,” Alkimbra said dismissively. “But Pasha’s concern is valid.” He waved a hand to indicate the gee deck. “At what point do we give this up? When is it over?”
“It’s over when we lose command of Dragon,” Kona answered bluntly. He turned to Urban, who was now standing only a pace away. Met his hostile glare. “It’ll be done, then. That will be the break point. Our last chance to act.”
Urban’s gaze cut away, but returned just as quickly. “Yes,” he conceded—bitter and reluctant, but a welcome admission that he would have the fortitude to act. “No choice in it. We’ll destroy the ship if we can’t keep it.”
Kona waited for an expected protest from Clemantine, but it didn’t come. Her gaze was remote, seeing something invisible to the rest of them.
Aboard Griffin, Clemantine received the latest submind from her other self. As it integrated, her foremost thought became this: Halcyon days are over. It’s time for us to sync, to be one.
She savored the deep cold fury of her other self; she enjoyed it too much. That was the influence of the philosopher cells, her constant exposure to them changing who she was—even as she changed them. She didn’t like the idea of letting them inside her, but she needed that sharp edge to face them. Might need it even more, if the entity broke out. Later, in some hypothetical golden future, she would edit out the Chenzeme influence and be only herself again.
A message to her core self:
*It’s not the time to sync. We have different roles. Yours is to secure Dragon, by any means. Mine is to keep Griffin secure, on the chance you fail.
She closed the data gate as agreed and then summoned her crew of Apparatchiks. They appeared before her in Griffin’s library, contained within their frameless windows, all six eyeing her with somber expressions. They looked so much like Urban, though less careworn.
“You’ve received the latest logs,” she said. “You know how it is. The break point will come when Urban loses control of Dragon.”
Of the two ships, Dragon was far more powerful. If it fell under control of the entity, Griffin could neither out-run nor out-fight it.
The Engineer said, “In such a situation, our only viable means of survival is to strike Dragon and destroy it before it can turn and destroy us.”
“Yes, exactly,” Clemantine said, even as her focus shifted inward, a stab of grief for the home she’d made on the gee deck—but in that home, a reminder of the inherent promise of renewal in a blossoming iris.
She said, “We must be ready, and we must take no unnecessary risks.” She looked to the Engineer. “The reef is weak, but I need to draw from it for a course adjustment.”
“While reserving power for the gun?” he asked.
“Always.”
“I’ll monitor it.”
Next she turned to the Pilot. “Plot a position. We’re going to fall back. Achieve a twenty thousand kilometer separation.”
“Understood,” he replied sullenly.
“There’s no need to be… overt in our position. We all know the direction this is going, but for morale we can pretend otherwise. I don’t want Dragon directly in our line of fire, but give me a position that will let me put Dragon in our gunsight within thirty seconds.”
Chapter
27
Days passed. The containment capsule remained unchanged. It grew no new tendrils. It did not expand. But it maintained a temperature far warmer than the bio-mechanical tissue surrounding it. The heat of internal processes underway.
Riffan followed the situation closely. He could not forget the way he’d conducted himself at the Rock, how he’d let fear blunt good judgment. He’d wasted an opportunity. If he’d done a better job, if he’d responded more intelligently to the entity’s overtures, this whole awkward infestation might have been avoided.
He needed to let go of his provincial attitude and get used to the idea that he was… well, disposable. Any single version of himself anyway. There might be unpleasantness in a demise, but so long as there was another copy, a backup version stashed somewhere, then someone who was him would go on. That’s how Urban looked at things and Riffan could appreciate the logic of it. It was a philosophy that encouraged risk and bold choices in dangerous situations.
They were in a dangerous situation now. All of them under the gun, quite literally, with Griffin trailing at a secure distance, there to ensure Dragon did not become an enemy.
Kona had put it on the ship’s company to find a way out of this mess, to explore every possible option—and Riffan had an idea. A very simple idea. The trouble was, it might kill him—that was the sticking point—it was why he needed to adopt Urban’s philosophy as his own.
He drew a deep breath. “You’ve got this,” he muttered aloud.
The first, careful step was to send a fresh back-up of his ghost to Artemis, from where it would eventually be relayed to Griffin. He did that. Then he checked the personnel map for Urban and found him present at the cottage he shared with Clemantine.
Riffan allowed himself one more deep sigh. Then he rose from where he’d been sitting cross-legged at his breakfast table.
He would need Urban’s help to try his possibly fatal idea.
“Oh, hello, Urban,” Riffan said, working to sound casual. “Could I have a word?”
Urban’s half-closed eyes opened to take in Riffan. “Nothing’s changed,” he said irritably, from where he sat on the stoop of his cottage.
“No, I don’t expect that anything has,” Riffan countered. “That’s the nature of a stalemate. But I’ve been thinking. The entity did try to communicate when we were there at the Rock. It might be willing to do so again, if the setting was not entirely hostile. So I’d like to volunteer to go out there. Take the risk. Face to face, as it were. Try to get it to chat.”