“The machine side of the Charonians responds to logic, to orders, to programming. But consider the living side. The living side responds to the same primordial urges that drive all animals, all living things. Fear, excitement, the urge to procreate, the herd mentality, whatever warped and distorted shreds of instinct that still whisper through the lifecode of a hundred worlds. We imagine the overmind, the controlling consciousness of the Charonians, as making its will known through logical, rational, cold, hard orders issued to other machines.
“That all might well be the case. But it might well be just as accurate to think of a nervous shepherd trying to cajole a herd of frightened sheep back toward safety—or a ruthless hunter shouting commands to a pack of half-trained wolfhounds.”
The Guardian was one of many. Hundreds of its kind orbited this world, and thousands more patrolled the skies over the other planets of the Multisystem. The Guardian was far down in the Charonian hierarchy, and its freedom of action was severely limited. It had no significant capacity for free will. All it could really do was whatever it was told to do, and it had been told to detect and destroy any large body that threatened the world it guarded—a protection this world was much in need of.
For reasons unknown, this world seemed to suffer from far more than its share of space debris—much of which, erupted from the planet itself. How that could be, the Guardian neither knew nor cared. Perhaps the objects rising off the planet were the spawn of some sort of aberrant rogue Breeders, though they did not match any of the profile points for rogues. But such complexities were beyond its comprehension and well outside its area of concern. All it knew was that it must destroy whatever threatened the world that it guarded.
But the Guardian was not pure machine. The organic part of its being was a tiny, but vital, fraction that gave the Guardian some small shred of what might be termed imagination, some minute capacity for abstract thought.
These abilities allowed the Guardian to conceive of its own capacity for error, let it look forward to the consequences of those mistakes. Normally these were of no great consequence. But just at present the Multisystem was on edge. Through all the myriad communications links and nets ran the murmur of danger, the rumor of fear. The emotional underlay built on itself, reinforced itself. The Guardian was growing more wary, more fearful, and therefore more zealous. It watched for error, and struggled to prevent it, or foresee it.
It might have misread the orbit of this object, failed to account for the variable that would cause that body to shift its orbits, failed to realize those seemingly inert objects were actually rogue Breeders that might awaken at any time and savage a fallow world.
Far better to attack a hundred truly harmless lumps of skyrock, reduce them to unthreatening rubble, than to let a single truly threatening target get through.
And yet, there were always limits to capacity, varying degrees of threat, the need to conserve today’s resources so as to be prepared for tomorrow’s dangers. There was even, as a secondary consideration, the safety of the Guardian itself. Guardians had no particular need or desire for self-preservation—but were acutely aware that the Multisystem as a whole needed to conserve resources. The Guardian would be happy to sacrifice itself—if the gain to the Multisystem outweighed the loss of an asset.
The Guardian could not meet all potential threats to the world it shielded. Especially not now. Not when there was so much activity, and when soon, very soon, things would get even busier. And yet… and yet… its superiors were forcing the Guardian, all the Guardians, into higher and higher states of alert. The Guardian, of course, obeyed its orders, but it also responded to the tone, the mood, the emotion behind an order. Fear, real, deep fear, lay behind the commands from on high, and that fear was seeping into the Guardian, even as it was instructed to conserve its energy, choose its targets carefully, stand ready for the greater battles to come.
Go forward/hold back; be vigilant now/prepare for future battle; kill all possible enemies/make no wasteful mistakes. The dissonance was most disturbing.
The Guardian longed for better, clearer guidance—but preparation for battle was going on at every level of the hierarchy, and every being was swamped as the entire Multisystem girded itself for the coming crisis.
It had a job to do. It could focus on that, find solidity and sureness there.
A target headed out from the planet on a long, looping trajectory that would lead it out toward the singularity and back toward the planet, coming dangerously near it. It might well be perturbed into a planetary impact course. The target was a significant potential threat that the Guardian could deal with easily. The Guardian swung itself about and calculated an intercept course. It came about broadside to the target, and moved toward it at maximum acceleration.
Within seconds, the Guardian was moving at sufficiently high velocity to pulverize the object. It ceased acceleration, made a tiny course correction, and prepared for impact.
The Guardian smashed into the target, sending debris spinning off into space in all directions, leaving a new crater in the Guardian’s exterior, bits of twisted metal and plastic fused into its surface. The impact left the Guardian a trifle shaken for a moment or two, but that was to be expected.
The Guardian slowed itself and settled into a new patrol orbit.
Watching.
Waiting.
Afraid.
Wolf Bernhardt paced the floor of the control center. He was exhausted, barely able to keep his eyes open, but too wound up even to imagine rest. Halfway there. Halfway. Half the cargo carriers on their way. Loss rates were high—not as high as feared, but not as low as hoped.
But so far, so good.
“Confirming CORE P322 impact with Cargo Craft 47,” Joanne Beadle announced. “CC47 destroyed.”
“Manifest?” Wolf asked, not even looking toward her. Was it something irreplaceable? Would they have to rush a new cargo craft to replace it, send a new craft up against higher odds than the one that had been destroyed?
“Just a moment. Ah, medical supplies, sir. But it’s a duplicate. Redundant to CC15, which NaPurHab has already taken aboard. No need for relaunch.”
“That’s something, anyway.” But what about the cargoes—and lives—he could not afford to lose?