Blade, page 4
part #4 of Inverted Frontier Series
Scenarios of attempted conquest swirled through the tumult of her mind. She had not acted on any of them only because none promised victory; rather, every simulation ended in her own extinction.
That is how it must end, she realized.
A final thought, one that felt both alien and true.
<><><>
The Bio-mechanic emerged last from Fortuna’s archive, after Urban and the Cryptologist had already left through the data gate. They would take the high bridge. His assignment was to secure Griffin’s archive.
Before leaving the outrider, he instantiated briefly within Fortuna’s library, where Clemantine—one of her several ghosts—waited for news of the success or failure of her assault. “Nothing yet,” she told him.
He nodded, then slipped away through the data gate, emerging now into Griffin’s library where he encountered a different version of Clemantine. Or rather, two versions of her, melding into one. He watched shock and rage appear on the face of that hybrid entity—and then she was gone. Erased. Deleted. Thoroughly overwritten. He saw it visually and sensed it through his cybernetic awareness. The information space she had occupied was now free.
Swiftly, the Bio-mechanic assessed the network for the presence of entities, whether allies or enemies—but he found none. None at all. Leaving him startlingly alone.
Of course he knew the Cryptologist and Urban to be on the high bridge, but he did not have access to that realm, and below it there were no ghosts, no other Apparatchiks, and no copy of Clemantine . . . because she had deleted herself.
He paused, indulging in a microsecond of admiration for her unflinching ruthlessness. Then he slipped into the archive, to see what he could find.
<><><>
The horror, the horror.
A shuddering thought, echoing out of ancient cultural memory as the Cryptologist took in the vicious chatter of Griffin’s philosopher cells.
Urban was with her, sharing the high bridge. In that place his emotions spilled over so that she could feel his hostility, his deep revulsion at the raw, brutal nature of this cell field. He in turn must sense her horror and her rising confusion, and her unwillingness to draw the logical conclusion.
*What has happened here? she pleaded, desperate for an explanation different from the obvious. *This is nothing like Dragon.
A sharp simulated hiss before he answered, *You say that because you encountered Dragon’s philosopher cells only after I spent centuries taming them. This is what it was like at the start.
*She did not try to tame them?
In his murmured response she heard an appalled admiration: *What a will it must have taken to hold them under her authority for so long.
Even as he spoke, he exerted his own far-reaching will across the hundred thousand links of the high bridge. An explosive demand to:
– go dark –
– yield to the pilot –
His argument shocked the Cryptologist. It reminded her that despite her repulsion, they were on the high bridge for a reason. They had a task here. It was on them to immerse themselves into the horror of Griffin’s philosopher cells and to take control of the field from within that hell.
She did not want to do it.
But she must.
*Your fear is bleeding through, Urban growled. *Edit it now.
She did, engineering a time-limited modification to her ghost that dampened the level of horror and revulsion she could feel. She did not have to enhance her determination. That was always strong.
Urban, enforcing his argument:
– unknown object / approach in stealth –
– yield to the pilot –
Allied lineages of Griffin’s philosopher cells objected:
The Cryptologist felt the warm whisper of navigational jets firing, counteracting Griffin’s rotation, steadying the courser as the philosopher cells scanned for whatever hypothetical object Dragon had tried to hail.
Again, Urban asserted his will:
– go dark –
– yield to the pilot –
Counter-arguments circulated simultaneously:
The Cryptologist acted at last, her response flashing across the high bridge, flooding the cell field:
– NEGATE THAT! –
– unknown: object –
– unknown: danger –
– observation required –
– stand down / yield to the pilot –
Urban echoed her argument, and gradually, factions of philosopher cells took it up too, reinforcing it, gradually overwhelming the counter-argument.
But then the cells found their prey.
Riding Griffin’s senses, the Cryptologist saw what the philosopher cells had detected: a speck of infrared warmth where none should be.
Her vision clarified. She identified the object. Urban recognized it too.
*A great ship, he murmured as if the knowledge annoyed him—one of those ancient ships that had carried humanity from star to star before the rise of the Hallowed Vasties.
The Cryptologist had only a moment to wonder what he had hoped to find, before a wave of vicious delight rolled around the cell field. The philosopher cells also recognized their prey:
The Cryptologist renewed her opposition:
– NEGATE THAT! –
But Urban made a different argument, a more clever argument, one aimed at appealing to the philosopher cells’ brutalist instinct:
– we are Chenzeme: strong / ancient / wise –
– demand: stealth –
– follow: target –
– locate: origin –
– kill: source –
For several seconds, all argument collapsed into quiet consideration. Then a murmuring of historical evidence ensued. Ancient memories circulated, reminding the cells of all the times their ancestors had stealthily followed a ship such as this one to a greater target, a living world.
Deep within the complexities of her ghost, the Cryptologist suffered an anguish of unshed tears for the myriad holocausts ships such as Griffin had visited upon living worlds—a shattering of grief, instantly edited because she must not display such an emotion here.
With her horror contained, she re-introduced an earlier argument and expanded on it:
– stand down: yield to the pilot –
– stand down: go dark –
– stand down: stealth attack –
– kill all –
A promise too sweet to resist.
The Cryptologist sensed weak threads of resistance, but those endured only seconds before being crushed by the consensus of the field:
It was as if a switch toggled: in a single shared moment, the entirety of the cell field plunged into dormancy and the light of Griffin’s hull winked out.
In the next moment, the Cryptologist gave vent to her frustration. *Why? she demanded of Urban. *Why did Clemantine let herself suffer this?
She did not expect an answer. Surely there could be none, now that Griffin’s first mistress was gone.
Yet after several seconds of silence, Urban surprised her by offering a theory. *I think it was a measure of strength. She couldn’t allow herself to dream of escape, so instead she challenged herself to embrace this role. You know she was left to watch while the Chenzeme burned her birth world?
The Cryptologist had not known that.
Urban said, *It would be a kind of victory if she could dominate and use the ancient enemy in all its horror.
*That’s not victory, the Cryptologist said. *It’s letting yourself become them.
Nothing was hidden on the high bridge. She sensed his flash of anger—but contrition immediately followed. *Sooth, you’re right, he conceded. *Real victory is what you’ve done with Dragon—rewriting Chenzeme nature to create something new.
*It will take time to replicate that here, the Cryptologist said. *I will need to carefully wake the cells, survey them, analyze and catalog them, before we begin to change them.
Urban’s disapproval washed over her. *No, he said. *There’s no need to ever again expose yourself to that nihilistic violence. Just wipe them out, and regrow the field from Dragon’s modified lineages.
She winced mentally at such a suggestion. It would be a travesty to destroy all of Griffin’s philosopher cells without ever assessing how they differed from Dragon’s, or without exploring the memories they contained.
*You don’t want to do it, Urban observed.
*That’s right. I don’t. But more than that, I don’t think we can do it. Even when they’re dark, the cells retain some physiological activity—a sleeping brain, regulating the body. Wipe them out, and we kill the ship.
*There has to be some way you can do it. Get the Bio-mechanic to help you. Because we’re done—I’m done—with this horror. I should never have tolerated it for so long.
<><><>
Clemantine did not follow the Bio-mechanic through Fortuna’s data gate. She had already sent a ghost to Griffin by other means—one she did not expect to ever meet again.
Instead, she contented herself with waiting for news.
She did not have to wait long.
Seconds after it began, word came from Urban that the conquest of Griffin was over. *We’ve secured full control of the ship and sent the cell field into dormancy.
“And her?” Clemantine asked.
In a voice performatively bland, he reported, *She is gone. It happened that your ghost merged with hers and you deleted your hybrid self.
Confusion came first, swiftly followed by relief, such that she whispered a prayer of thanks to the Unknown God. Then she requested Griffin’s logs. She studied them, envisioning all that had happened as if it had happened to someone else.
It had happened to someone else because the experience of it was lost to her, wiped from all memory, leaving this version to wonder if she—given another run at fate—would have made the same decision. Would she have been so ruthless as to erase herself, even from the archive?
Yes, probably.
She had done the necessary thing. She always did the necessary thing. But by the Unknown God, what a hell her twin had endured!
And yet that hell had not corrupted her, not until the long years when she’d been left utterly alone in the void outside Tanjiri system, with no real-time contact and no updates.
I allowed this to happen.
A failure of duty that would surely haunt her down to her final spark of awareness.
Alaka‘i Onyx – Pilot’s Log
1281:092:04:46 HSW
The marauder has gone dark. It is a hunting strategy I once observed in my prior life, long ago, that last time I dared to voyage to the edge of all human civilization.
I was not naïve. I had heard reports of such ships, shared by rare survivors. I knew Alaka‘i Onyx must fare in stealth, with my every system cold, dark, and quiet. My companion vessel, Alaka‘i Jade, did the same, and we kept days of travel time between us. But these precautions failed to protect us.
Out of the blackness of the void, the pinprick white gleam of the marauder’s hull winked into existence. Holding fast to my silence, I could only watch as it closed in on my Jade.
I feel it closing in now.
Will we see it again before it strikes? Will we have time to know that death has come?
Chapter
7
On Dragon’s high bridge, Urban adopted the aloof, unfeeling aspect of the Sentinel. Easier to pass the time that way; easier to endure the hours that must elapse before the assault team could reach Fortuna.
Subminds kept him linked to his avatar, and his avatar kept him linked to his sentient missiles. Through their senses he knew, even as the time of the assault drew near, that nothing had changed. He said as much to the Cryptologist when she came in physical form to visit him in his chamber: “Nothing has changed. Not that I can see.”
Wrapping two strands of wall-weed around herself, she said, “I’ll wait with you.”
He closed his eyes. Another minute passed. Another, and another.
Now, he thought. The team would have just arrived. If something was going to go awry, it would do so now.
“Still no change,” he murmured aloud for the benefit of the Cryptologist.
But then, just seconds after he spoke, Griffin went dark.
“There!”
He said it in a whisper because this was no moment of triumph. However it fell out, this was a tragedy, a failure.
Necessary, though.
Speaking softly, he told the Cryptologist, “I think we’ve done it. I think she’s gone.”
<><><>
Four more hours until a report could be expected from Fortuna.
Urban watched and waited, and the Cryptologist waited with him. But he observed no further changes.
After a time, he sensed a shift in the pattern of the Cryptologist’s breathing, a nervous catch, accompanied by a quickening of her heartbeat.
Restless?
No. Curious, as her next words proved. “I am wondering why you are here, Urban, and not in Clemantine’s house. Is she angry with you?”
His right hand, hidden in the wall-weed, clenched tight. Just a few hours ago, he had brushed off a similar question from Jolly. But now, perhaps because of the intimacy of their shared hours on the high bridge, he found he could answer the Cryptologist. With a slight, self-deprecating smile, he told her, “Not angry, exactly.”
Even so, the tension between him and Clemantine was real enough. After all, he had mistrusted her counterpart long before she could bring herself to admit there was a problem; and he had followed the Cryptologist’s suggestion to send the missiles within range of Griffin without consulting her; and though in the end Clemantine had been the architect of their assault, Urban felt sure she resented his ready willingness to extinguish the entity she still regarded as her other self.
“This has been hard for her?” the Cryptologist suggested.
It sounded like a question, so he answered it that way. “Yes, it has.”
“And it’s been hard on you.”
“We had to do it.”
“Yes.”
After this odd exchange, she subsided into a long, long silence—and time ran down.
Urban observed the ship’s company gathering now in the amphitheater, anticipating the arrival of the first reports from Fortuna. Only a few people took seats. Most milled restlessly, talking, talking—eager, anxious, angry.
“It will be soon,” the Cryptologist said. “I think we should go.”
Urban was surprised to find himself smiling. A real smile this time because he was certain now that the assault had been successful. There would have been some sign, some violent reaction from Griffin if the thing had gone awry. “Yes,” he agreed. “We should go.”
He dressed—his usual snug trousers and gray long-sleeve shirt—and they left together.
Riffan saw them coming as they approached the amphitheater. He hurried to meet them, with Jolly at his side. “Nothing yet?” he asked.
Urban told him, “Griffin went dark right on schedule. That’s all I know.”
“But you think it’s okay?” Jolly asked, his gaze wary.
“I think we did what we set out to do.”
He knew the truth of it a moment later when his submind returned. The news must have shown on his face because Jolly asked him, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
He shook his head, unwilling yet to answer. Brushing off all further questions, he made his way past the gathering Dragoneers and into the amphitheater, where he stepped up onto dais. All chatter ceased as he strode to its center.
He looked for Clemantine. Saw her near the doorway opposite to the one he had entered, standing between Kona and Vytet.
Urban had a DI monitoring the data gate, but he didn’t need its report to know she had not yet received news from her surviving ghost aboard Fortuna. Her questioning expression as she looked at him told him that.
He messaged her, saying softly, *It’s done.
She cocked her head, puzzled, no doubt wondering why he knew and she did not.
He didn’t try to explain, but turned to the ship’s company and announced, “Griffin is again part of the fleet, with the Cryptologist as its pilot, just as we planned.”
He made no mention of the brutal poignancy of Clemantine’s fate—falling inadvertently into a strange chimera of her two selves—and the shocking choice that chimera had made to erase itself.
As murmurs of relief swept the gathering, he darted another glance at Clemantine. Her wary gaze told him she suspected not all had gone to plan, but she asked no questions.
He returned his gaze to the ship’s company. Only half of them, at most, were sitting down. The rest stood in front of the dais, or by the doorways, or in the aisles on either side. Ever since learning of the assault on Griffin they’d been restless and resentful. Not because they objected—the situation with Clemantine’s dark twin was well known—but because they had been kept in the dark.
Now questions unfolded, sharp with impatience:
Is that all you mean to say?
What actually happened, Urban?
What happened to the other Clemantine?
He didn’t try to answer, offering a second revelation instead: “From Griffin’s high bridge, I was able to confirm that the fusion engine we sighted belongs to a great ship of ancient design.”
“Human then,” Kona said, still standing close to Clemantine.
“Almost surely,” Urban agreed, eager to reinforce this new direction for the discussion. “But it hasn’t answered our hail. Whatever intelligence animates it has chosen caution.”
