“Dick?”
Oh.
Shit.
(—his new access to the nanotech core programming triggered the logic bomb that Richard hadn't uncovered. And the Montreal started, picoseconds later, to take herself apart.)
“Just a moment, Jenny,” Richard said into her brain. “Get me Alan. Now!” And while she kicked herself toward the door, he sent his own freshly cracked “family” of nanites to war and coded an emergency message to Prime Minister Riel.
0827 Hours
Tuesday 19 December, 2062
PPCASS Huang Di
Earth orbit
Captain Wu stared, unmoving, out the window in his ready room as Min-xue drifted in. The captain didn't turn, so as the door irised shut Min-xue cleared his throat and waited. When there was still no response, he hesitantly drifted closer to the captain and cleared his throat again. Beyond the window, a crescent Earth and a crescent moon drifted side by side. Min-xue couldn't quite make out the silvery threads of the three orbital elevators from this distance, but he could catch the glittering flash from Clarke or one of its sister platforms.
“I am not a war criminal,” Captain Wu whispered.
Min-xue's heart rate spiked. “Captain?”
The captain turned just far enough to fix him on a darkly glittering gaze. Min-xue realized the man had been drinking, and that the wetness that shone in the corners of his eyes was not from the drink. “I am not a war criminal,” he said again, more strongly. “And neither are you, Min-xue. There are times—”
Min-xue almost fancied that Earth grew larger over the captain's shoulder in the moments before he spoke again. “—you must decide, yourself, what to do with the orders you are given. I have family,” he continued, rushing now, as if the words might clot and dry up if he didn't press them out fast enough. “Family that could suffer if I am disobedient. A child. Do you understand?”
“No, Captain.”
“A man must judge his own conscience.”
Min-xue saw the trap and nodded. “My conscience is in the keeping of the service,” he said. “And of yourself, Captain.”
Captain Wu would not look at him. “I suppose you have family, too.”
“A sister. A mother.”
“Then remember this conversation, Second Pilot. And ask yourself if one who gives his conscience into untenable keeping is not a war criminal, after all.”
0828 Hours
Tuesday 19 December, 2062
Allen-Shipman Research Facility
Toronto, Ontario
I run.
Valens is coming in the other direction. He hits the wall as I go by and falls into step behind me. “Riel just hit the panic button,” he gasps as I grab a corner and ricochet toward Elspeth's office. I should have left the damn chips with her.
Richard, what the hell does “just a minute” mean, coming from you?
“Just a moment. It's all right. We just suffered another attack, and — how fast can you have Alan on-line?”
Fast, if you can tell me where to get the nanites to go with the chip.
“Looked in your veins lately?”
Shit. You don't mean — Shit. Yeah, he means it. “Fred!” Ellie's in her office, merci à Dieu, playing with Alan. Richard, report. Valens and Ellie start shouting in unison as I pull Elspeth out of her chair and crawl under the desk, cracking the service plate off with my steel hand. I don't bother to pull the screws. Meanwhile, I open my brain and my mouth and rattle everything Richard tells me to the two of them.
“Richard says the ship was hacked — a more direct attack than last time. He's protecting Montreal and he's got the nanites cracked but so does somebody else, he's spawned subselves on Calgary and Vancouver… marde! Ow!” as the chip goes in and a fat spark bridges and I hold my breath, praying I haven't fried the system. The chip hangs in a mess of wires like entrails under the gutted desk. “Alan, can you hear me?”
Alan's voice is cooler than Richard's. I poke my eyes over the desk, watching the swirl of blues and greens that Elspeth chose for the new AI's icon. “I can hear you, Master Warrant.”
“Good.” I can't see Valens, but Ellie's eyes go wide as I pick up a shard of the plastic service plate and jam it into my meat hand hard enough to make the juice spurt.
“Casey!”
“Fermez la gulle, Fred. I know what I'm doing.” Blood drips, thick as ketchup, clotting already. Never let 'em figure out you haven't got a clue what's going on. Dick, you on it?
“Hell yes. Just jam it in there.”
Electricity?
“Jam.”
Never let it be said I can't follow orders.
It's not an electric shock that gets me either, because I'm still reaching forward when everything goes fuzzy and then gray. I'm not certain I got the blood anywhere near the desk, but the carpet is cool against my cheek and then everything tunnels down to black.
Elspeth grabbed for Jen's shoulder as she slid forward, got under the bigger woman and cushioned her fall away from the corners of the desk. She found a pulse hastily, saw Jen's eyes open and unfocused and heard her breath hiss through slack lips.
Valens was beside her, pushing her out of the way to check Jen's airway. “What just happened?”
Elspeth shook her head and grabbed Jen's wrist.
“Dunsany?”
Richard, be right, Elspeth thought, and shoved Jen's hand into the mess of wiring hanging from the desk.
Something sparked. Something hissed. This is fucking silly. And then there was silence.
Richard felt Jenny fall away, felt the moment when the worm he'd never quite managed to circumvent activated in her processor arrays and her voluntary muscles went slack. Ramirez, he snarled, and assimilated the core personality of his no-longer crippled other self. The Richards merged seamlessly as quantum time streams, and felt and linked the spawned copies of himself in the Calgary, in the Vancouver. Irritated—annoyed—that the nanite webs didn't reach into the Unitek intranet, that he couldn't reach out through them and access the raw, archived code that would let him fight for the Montreal on more equal terms — Richard marshaled his own nanite armies and resolved to battle the enemy in the very streets and gutters of the Montreal and the brains of his friends.
He was losing.
In a matter of instants, part of the Montreal's reactor coolant system failed. An emergency vent sprayed glittering, radioactive snow: pressurized water spewed, froze, sublimated into the void. Richard diverted water from hydroponics, sacrificing long-term life support for the immediate threat. He jammed airlock interfaces before they could cycle themselves and—“Leah! Tell your father”—stopped all but seven of the Montreal's deadly pressure doors from slamming down like guillotines—“Captain, another attempt at sabotage is under way. I insist you find Christopher Ramirez now”—and felt the sand slipping from under his feet as if the tide came in from all directions at once.