The Drive could never be argued into disbelieving its basic imperatives, and Smithson didn’t try to, so at first it was aware of him only as a procedural obstacle; but when he moved from blocking to counterattack, striking through his network of emergency overrides at the core of the Drive itself, it became aware of him as a set of motives. It considered him, and he it. They came together, touching intimately along their interface, and quietly agreed that they shared nothing except the need to obliterate each other. Then they moved apart and began again, but this time without rules. It was no longer a game of procedural chess, and the Charles Manson was no longer their chessboard, but their weapon.
While the alien tractor beam continued to play softly over the stern, feeling for the MT Drive like some molester’s fingers fumbling with zips and buttons—and while some parts of the ship, ambiguously, stopped resisting and started opening themselves to it—the Charles Manson began to falter. It saw its own physical and mental processes in turmoil, and since those processes were its idea of itself, it became the turmoil. It listened to the Drive telling it to cut life support from the Bridge and destroy Smithson, and to Smithson telling it to isolate and burn out the Drive, and found itself speaking those orders with its own voice while it listened to them.
The interface between Smithson and the Drive was longer than the ship, as bloodvessels when unravelled are longer than a body, and the ship knew that the interface was the scene of a terminal conflict. What remained of its lower-level systems tried to sound damage control and life support alarms, but with no more force than the reflex not to die of something dying. Smithson and the MT Drive swept through it like two infections, destroying it only as a by-product of their attempts to destroy each other, and that was the last thing the ship realised before they swamped it and its consciousness ended; that, and the fact that if it ever existed again, it would only be as one of them and not as both.
The object She had sent became suddenly inert on all wavelengths. The tractor beam fell away. The convulsions faded. The MT Drive shut down. Horus 5 and the starfield returned to the Bridge screen. Smithson had succeeded, and Foord opened his mouth to breathe again, but
“Commander,” Joser said. “She’s coming for us. Position 08-07-08 and closing rapidly.”
Time started moving again, rushing back into the ship like thoughts after a coma. Foord could actually hear the seconds rushing back: they blew through the corridors and burrows, at first slowly then faster. The next phase of the engagement was already growing out of the body of the last.
“I’m handing back what’s left of your ship, Commander,” Smithson said. Foord had never heard him sound tired before. “Most of the damage will be within the capacity of the self-repair systems, but not the MT Drive. That, you can forget. You’ll never be able to use it again.”
“Position 07-04-08, and closing rapidly.”
“Smithson…”
“I know, I know. Time. I’d finished, anyway.”
Time. Blowing cold through the corridors. Smithson had saved the ship, but it had also partly died. It had lost one of its sentience cores and one of its drives; it was now a ship for which time could run out, like it ran out for other, ordinary, ships.
“Commander! She’s 06-03-06 and closing.”
“Yes. How much time?”
“Ninety seconds, if…”
“Thahl, Cyr, feed the closeup weapons and ignore everything else—scanners, life support , drives, everything.”
He turned to face the forward section of the Bridge screen. Nothing was visible, yet. But it wouldn’t be. She was shrouded.
“Fifty seconds, Commander.”
“No, Joser. No more countdowns. Hit the alarms when there’s twenty seconds to go. That’s all.”
She continued to approach at high speed, but was still below the horizon of Horus 5. The screen continued to show Horus 5, but no simulation of Her approach; the scanners were operating at less than twenty percent capacity, and by the time they generated any simulations, She would be on top of them. The Charles Manson continued to bleed off what remained of its resources to feed its closeup weapons. It had done well. It had already grown them carefully back to near-optimum, like a crippled animal growing a perfect set of claws for its final defence.
The alarms started murmuring.
Foord heard himself thinking No. This isn’t what She wants. We must do what She wants.
“Cyr, cancel my orders! Stand down all closeup weapons.”
“Commander?”
“Thahl, stand down everything except the Bridge screen. Leave us inert. No drives, life support, scanners…” When Thahl looked up inquiringly, Foord snapped “Binary Gate. Work it out yourself. Cyr, cancel closeup weapons, now! I mean it!”
A roaring swamped the Bridge and something rose over the horizon of Horus 5.
It was a patch of empty space. Just like the empty space around it, but something was wrong. This was like a patch of empty space from another day, or seen from another angle, and it came towards them
paused, and glanced at them
and rushed past. Foord swore as the forward screen erupted with light and a deep violet afterimage settled across his eyes like a piece of hot iron, and when his sight returned the screen was still shuffling filters and the Charles Manson was left bobbing in the wake of whatever had passed.
The inert missile had been allowed to lay close by the Charles Manson ever since Smithson disabled the MT Drive; there was neither the time nor the resources to destroy it. As She came over the horizon, it quietly disappeared, collapsing itself down to nothing.
She was gone, too. Past them, and into Horus system.
There were several distinct kinds of silence. Joser’s was one of inadequacy, Kaang’s of puzzlement, Thahl’s of no comment, Cyr’s of accusation (You said She’d go closeup, Commander. You said.) and Smithson’s, of something unspoken but obscene. Put together, they made an ugly shape in the dark air of the Bridge.
Foord laughed, softly and knowingly. At least, that was what he intended. The sound he actually made was high-pitched and uneasy, which surprised him because he felt less uneasy now. He was beginning to understand Her, though only in minor things, and only in penny pieces.
“It’s alright,” he said; then, catching sight of the glances around the Bridge, he went on quickly “I mean it, it’s alright. This part is over, that’s all… Joser.”
“Commander?”
“Would you please confirm something for me? She should have started to slow down by now.”
“Slow down? But She’s just got past us and into the system! She’ll be heading for Sakhra!”
“Your scanners won’t have enough power to put an exact value on it,” Foord continued, as if Joser had said nothing, “but there should be a perceptible slowing.”
More glances around the Bridge.
“We must go after Her,” Smithson said. “I need to start damage repairs now.”
“Commander,” Joser said suddenly, “You were right. It doesn’t make any apparent sense, but She is decelerating.”
“And,” Foord resumed, “She’ll continue to decelerate. I expect Her to switch down from photon to ion drive within the next minute; though there’s no need for a countdown, thank you, Joser.”