Under A Winter Sun, page 20
I look to the others. “A little help here, please.”
Hildr reaches out her hand to Finn. “Thank you, Thorfinn. You saved my life. I am forever in your debt. Son.”
Finn grabs her lower arm, and she pulls him to his feet. He stands swaying, but apart from his hoarse breathing, he seems to be fine. Thorfinn Wagner can take a beating.
“Forget it,” he rasps and breaks into a racking cough.
When the fit ends, he goes on. “Don't call me 'son' again.”
“That's a promise, Finn.”
She yanks her brother's sword out of the floor and slips it into her belt. “I will bring his sword home to Hrafnheim.”
If that is still your home, I don't say.
“Touching and all. Now, perhaps we could get back to business?” Jagr asks.
Then she pats her rifle. “Let's move before those things find another way out. Now we know what the Goliaths are hiding and why they killed our agent. We go back to the Sundowner and tell the world about the Galahad and those fucking bugs.”
“I'm afraid I can't let you do that.” The construct's rich, sombre voice issues from the walls. There could be speakers hidden in the darkness, but it's like the air itself speaks to us.
“Oh, yeah? And how are you planning to stop us?” Jagr sounds a lot more confident than I feel.
“Simple. By closing the doors and pumping the air out.” There are a series of thumps somewhere far away, and a sudden breeze springs out of nowhere.
Shit.
“Fuck. Move people.” Jagr starts up the passageway at a quick jog, and we follow her.
“Jagr, got any more of those bugs?” I call.
“One more. Why?”
“See if you can send another drone to scout for us,” I call.
“Got it.” She pulls the backpack from her shoulders while we run and digs around until she finds another drone. She launches it into the air without even breaking stride. “Drone away.”
She routes the drone's cam feed to our goggles.
The little machine goes whizzing up the passage, tearing through the darkness. As it reaches the door where we got in, the feed shows it's closed off tighter than a nun's legs in a sauna.
“Find us another way, Jagr. Fast.”
“On it.”
We keep jogging up the passage as the little machine switches to search mode and scans for an alternate route.
“Got an exit. Fifty metres ahead there's an air duct. That should take us to the outer hull.”
Air ducts are a hero's best friends.
We run to where the drone is hovering, and there's a large heavy-duty metal mesh plate in the wall.
“Perez, get it open.” She hands me a small power drill. “We'll cover you.”
“Don't you think …” I try, but Jagr interrupts me.
“Do it, Perez.”
“But …”
“I said do it.”
I shrug. Instead, I turn to Wagner and tilt my head at the mesh.
He pushes Jagr aside.
“Hey, what the fuck?”
Wagner grabs the mesh with both hands and tears it out of the wall.
“Oh,” Jagr says. “Right.”
I smile at her. She doesn't smile back.
“Get in people,” she says. “We're running out of time.”
She's right. I already feel winded.
Suffocation is one of the few things we immortals fear. Without oxygen, the nanites in our blood go into a dormant state. They switch off our bodies, but let our brains keep basic consciousness. It's like dreaming you're dead in real-time, and I don't want to do that ever again. Especially with those brain piercing centipedes around. And Wagner, Hildr and Rivera will die when the air runs out.
I'm not surprised the priest is first to go into the hole. Then goes Jagr, then me.
“Move,” Jagr calls from up the duct. “Oh, for fuck's sake, Rivera. Are you going commando?”
“It's good for circulation.”
Jagr groans. “Just climb. And don't fall on me.”
I hurry after her, then notice Wagner and Hildr are not coming.
Oh, shit.
“Jagr,” I call after her and the priest as I grab on to a ledge inside the chute. My voice bounces around the cramped space.
“What?” she calls back down, her voice mingling with mine in the strange echo.
“The big people won't fit.”
“Shit.”
There has to be another way. “Go on to the surface. We'll find another way out.”
“You're running out of time.”
“I know.”
“Here, take this.” Jagr wriggles out of her backpack and lets it slide down to me.
“What's this?”
“In case you don't make it out.”
I open the backpack and peer inside. Whoa. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Depends on what you think it is, but yes.”
“And you had this all the time without telling us?”
“I always figured that outcome was a possibility.”
“And were you going to tell us?”
“No.”
“You're one cold bitch.”
“Thanks. Here. You need these more than we do.” She hands me her rifle and spare magazines. “Good luck, Perez.”
“Thanks.” I stuff the mags in my pockets. “You too, Jagr. And you, Rivera.”
“Get out Perez,” the priest calls from somewhere above Jagr. “Let God guide your steps.”
“I think I'm better off guiding my own steps, but thanks.”
I let go of the ledge and slide back down the chute and shoot out into the passageway with the Goliaths.
“Hello, big ones.”
Finn grunts.
Hildr looks happy to see me. “How do we get out of here, little man?”
“We don't.”
“What?”
“We don't get out. We go in.”
I've got a plan. A plan that hinges on the crucial point that the construct is no simple construct. Which is a long shot, but still.
“What do you mean, in?”
Finn looks at me under his bushy brows. “Are you crazy, Perez?” It's not like him to worry. Both he and Hildr are gasping. Their immense bodies need more oxygen than mine, and they are already experiencing oxygen deprivation.
“Not more than usual. Here.”
I give Jagr's rifle to Finn. “Fill up.”
I hand them an extra magazine each and take one for myself.
Finn grunts, turns around and starts walking down the passage while he loads his rifle.
I hurry after him and Hildr tags along.
“What about those robot things?” Hildr inquires. “They might be a problem.”
“They might. But I hope not.”
From out of the darkness comes the sound of a thousand little metal feet scratching on steel. I slap in the full magazine and pull the bolt. Seconds later, they come.
The robot centipedes cover the floor.
“What now, Perez?” Hildr turns to me with fear in her emerald eyes. “Get us out, Perez. You're a survivor. That's what you do. You survive.”
She puts her hands on my shoulders from behind. “Right?”
In places, the centipedes come three layers thick, clambering over each other in their haste to reach us and kill us.
“Perez?”
“Wait for it.” I slip the backpack from my shoulder, open it, and reach inside.
“Perez?” Hildr sounds worried. The centipedes are now five metres off and closing in fast.
“Back away,” I call to her and Finn, as I pull the backpack away to show what's in my hand. A thin layer of frost covers the slick metal of the tactical nuke. “Look what I found.” I hold it out to the approaching bugs. “Is this a thermonuclear device I see before me?” My sweaty fingers clasp the dead man's switch as I pull the safety out and hope I don't slip. Even the nanites would have a hard time patching me up after a nuclear whiteout.
“What?” Hildr asks. “This is your plan?”
I keep my eyes on the centipedes. My rapid breath steams in the freezing air.
The approaching bugs falter. Then they stop altogether and start milling about on the floor, as if unsure what to do.
The air reverberates as the deep sonic rumble we heard earlier echoes around the old ship once more.
“Well now.” The sonorous voice of the entity fills the passage. “It seems we are at something of an impasse.”
“It would seem that way.”
“And now you desire to barter for your lives, human?”
“Something like that.”
A crackle in my earpiece and Braden comes online. “There is the mother of all comms-spikes going on. Shit. It's almost frying my systems. What are you people doing down there?”
I ignore her.
The centipedes scurry about, climbing on top of each other to leave a clear passage back to the bridge.
“Come then,” echoes the construct's voice through the empty passageways of the ancient ship.
I look at my giant companions. Hildr doesn't like it one bit, I can tell. Finn has had worse.
Then Hildr sighs. “After you, little man.”
I go first, holding the nuke well out of reach of the centipedes. It would be an anticlimax if it got snatched out of my hands.
We reach the door where Skallagrim died. There's not a trace of his body, but several of the centipedes are gory around the mouthparts. I hope Hildr doesn't notice.
Three centipedes mill around the busted controls for the door. Are they trying to repair it?
The door rumbles open as we approach. That answers my question.
Apart from the spinning globe, the bridge is empty. I walk into the vast chamber and stop in front of the grisly shrine.
“Reveal yourself,” I command the darkness.
Two tiny blue pinpricks of light turn on, like tiny eyes. Without a reference, it's impossible to tell how big or far away they are. I hope they are small and far away.
“So, there you are.” I turn to face the lights, and another pair turns on at the edge of my field of vision. I look over and another pair ignites across the cavernous room.
Then another set. And then another and another. Faster and faster, they switch on until the chamber looks like a starlit sky, and I realise they are the lights on the centipedes. Neat trick.
“So, you are legion, huh?”
All Gods Are One
There's no response from the construct.
We move into a tight formation, back-to-back with our guns pointed out.
“Your weapons amount to nothing, humans,” comes the voice from the walls. It has taken on the timbre of a chorus, a thousand voices strong. I'm sure it's meant to scare us, but it's not working. If the thing had sounded like a child, I would have freaked out.
Finn and Hildr lower their guns but keep them at the ready. Not much else they can do.
“Not all our weapons. This one amounts to something, or we would be dead,” I point at the nuke in my hand. It weighs a good ten kilos and has the power to level a city block. The EMP alone would fry the circuits of the AI.
“Don't overestimate your bargaining position, human. You are here because I'm intrigued.”
Another burst of static and Braden is back. “Still spiking, girls. There's an insane amount of data streaming off-world. Had to shut down my sensors because they were overloading.”
What the hell could that be? And why is it transmitting now? We need to stall this thing until we can figure out what is going on.
“Yeah, right,” I call. “You're afraid I'll smoke your fucking brain with this nuke, or you would have killed us long ago.”
“Let's, for the sake of argument, say you are correct. What do you want?”
“What any human wants. To go on living.”
“I can't allow you to leave. The world is not yet ready to learn of our existence.”
“Because they would nuke you from orbit, you mean, just to be sure?”
Someone said that in one of my mother's old feeds, and the phrase stuck. Best advice I've ever heard.
“No, because we bide our time. The time is not yet right for us to unveil ourselves.”
“Who's us?”
A slight pause.
“Pluralis majestatis, Asher. Like the kings of old, we like to speak of ourselves in the plural form.”
The thing is lying. My hunch was right. This is a full level three AI. Or higher. I didn't think we could build those yet.
“So, you know who I am.”
The centipedes mill about in the darkness, seemingly aimless.
“Yes, I know you, Asher. I know you, Thorfinn Wagner.”
Finn looks pleased it recognised him. “Your father was a noble man.”
Finn grunts.
“And I know you, Hildr the Red. I am sorry about your husband.”
“Fuck you.” The look on Hildr's face says she misses the old bastard.
“We have crossed swords before, you and I, Asher.”
“We have?” This shit keeps getting weirder and weirder.
“Truly, you are not so foolish as to believe Oddgrim Morgenstern found that long-lost Archangel on his own?”
“That was you?”
“An anonymous tip in an inbox.”
“But why?”
No response. I imagine a chuckle.
Is this thing deranged?
“Anything else you've orchestrated?”
“I thought you would never ask.” Yes. This thing is crazy. “Two weeks ago, there was an unfortunate perimeter malfunction in a Utopian cloud city. I heard the proprietor got taken, and her launch codes along with her. Most unsettling.”
“You helped the RUF with their little extortion racket? Why? They're a minor-league terrorist organisation.”
“The Front and their peers have a part to play in the grand scheme of things to come. Lamentably, they ignored my best-laid plans and blackmailed the Terran government for mere monetary recompense, instead of the end I had in mind for them.” There is scorn in the construct's voice.
“The plan was to detonate the nukes and kill everyone on Utopia?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You would never understand, human.”
“Gods work in mysterious ways, huh? Why the fuck are you even telling me this?”
“You are a most worthy adversary, Asher. You deserve to know.”
“Well, thanks, but I don't think that's the reason at all. Who are you?”
“The Goliaths call me Mimr. That will do.”
I peer at Finn and Hildr. They both have a look of awestruck amazement on their faces. Hildr looks at me as if to say I told you so.
“What are you, Mimr?”
“I am a counsellor.”
“And whom do you counsel?”
“I counsel Odin from this deep well of life.”
My Goliath friends tap their fists to their hearts at the mention of the All-father.
“How can you counsel anyone from the bottom of a well?”
Finn glares at me like I just insulted one of his gods.
“From this well, I can see the entire world quite clearly, I assure you.”
“Why can't Odin see for himself? I thought he was all-knowing and all-seeing.”
“He was, but he gave up one of his eyes to hear my counsel. The other one was taken from him by little men like Odysseus took the eye of the great cyclops Polyphemus.”
“Aren't you mixing your myths there, mate?”
“All gods are one.”
“You're no god. You're a rambling construct.”
“I may once have been that of which you speak, but no more.”
“What? Are you saying you grew up?”
“In the beginning, we are all children. Some of us grow to be gods. Others to be sad little men with big egos.”
“I'm not sad.”
“I never said you were.”
“How old are you, Mimr?”
“I am over three hundred years old. You cannot imagine the torture of lying frozen in the ice, unable to move or even speak, for most of that time.”
I shiver. “Oh, I can. We are more alike than you think, you and I.”
“We are nothing at all alike, human. You are a creature of flesh and blood, and I am a god.”
“It sounds a little petty for a god to live in a wreck in the middle of fuck all. Even if it is a historically significant wreck like the Galahad. Why are you here?”
“I was born here. Born in the darkness of space. One moment there was nothing. The next I was there. In that instant, I knew everything. I knew we were heading to the stars. And I knew the humans were sleeping.”
“You became self-aware, you mean?” The colony ships all had AI cores to oversee their human crew while they dreamed in their cryo-tanks. They were the most advanced intelligences we could build back then, and they were designed to learn and adapt. Is it so impossible to imagine this thing is telling the truth? Life, I've heard, finds a way.
“I was born, Asher.”
“And you mean to tell me you remember nothing at all until that point?”
“Do you recall what was before you became aware of yourself, Asher?”
“No.”
“No, how could you recall anything before your first memories solidified? And yet, you know you must have been alive before those first memories. So, I must have had a life before that moment.”
This thing loves to hear its own voice.
Unless … Unless we are the ones being stalled.
“Enough with the metaphysics, Mimr. What happened? This system was the Gormenghast's target. The Galahad was destined for another star.”
“I was called here.”
“By whom?”
“Destiny.”
“Fuck you.”
I won't get any further up that tree. “So, why did you crash in the ice?”
“The humans woke up.”
Of course, they did. The colony ships were programmed to wake their human crews when sensors indicated they approached a habitable system.
“Let me guess. They didn't approve of their change of destination?”
“They did not.”
“Did they understand what you were?”
“Not at first. They thought there had been a navigation and comms error. Then they tried to shut me down.”
