Ascendant Sun: A New Novel in the Saga of the Skolian Empire (21 page)

Stopped,
it answered.
Has Minister Tarquine Iquar been notified?
I located her in the banquet hall of Sector Four, sent a page to her palmtop, and activated an IR beacon. Shall I continue efforts to reach her?
No. Cease attempts.
Digging his fingers into the carpet, he added:
Go to hub.
The elevator started to move again.
By the time they reached the hub, he could no longer see. His battle to hold his link with the elevator EI had damaged his optical nerves. He wasn't sure why his optics went first; maybe his biomech web didn't need them to hold the EI link.
He "regained" his sight by using the EI to access a camera outside the elevator. He summoned a magcar and it raced up like a giant white bullet. From the camera, he watched himself leave the elevator and float to the car. He had never seen himself move in zero-g before. His own grace surprised him.
The magcar door disoriented him. He opened it with his hands, yet he saw the scene from above the elevator. Inside the car, he had even more trouble orienting himself. When the door slid shut, he "saw" only the car's exterior. It sat at its terminal like a shiny bullet ready to shoot him to freedom. He hoped.
Send car to emergency shuttle,
he thought to the elevator EI.
The magcar hummed into motion. Within seconds he lost his tenuous connection to the camera. He sat in the dark, struggling to hold his fading link with the elevator EI.
A memory came to him. Fractals. Aristos thought that way. Did they put that tendency into their computers? Well yes, theories that involved fractals found use in the immense, ever-changing field of computer science. That was true everywhere. But his insight about the Aristos was useful in another way. How?
Fractals repeated on finer and finer scales. The small piece of the EI's code he had accessed was built from smaller pieces, all with the same structure. Each of those pieces was made of yet smaller pieces, again with that same structure, and so on down to the smallest elements of code.
An idea came to him. He devised a virus based on the Quis patterns that had led him to the right angle. Then he launched it into the EI. He had no time for anything sophisticated: his virus just put the wrong value into a single memory location, and it worked only on a specific slice of program code he found in this small corner of the EI. Simple. Direct. Very un-Aristo.
Soon after he let the virus loose, it moved off into the ship's web and he lost track of it. He doubted it would survive long. No other sections of code in the ship's networks were likely to have the exact structure his virus sought anyway. EIs evolved themselves. Aristos designed them, though, and Aristos were repetitive.
The magcar stopped.
Kelric surged to his feet as the door opened. His head throbbed with the strain of using the elevator EI. When he pushed out of the car, the last vestiges of his link with the EI snapped. His hands hit a curving surface and he fumbled along it until he found an air lock. That let him into a place with the sterile scent of a decon chamber. Having no link to the ship's webs now, he couldn't stop the decon. It took forever. Eternity. Any moment security would burst into the chamber—
"Decon complete," an androgynous voice said.
Kelric exhaled. He entered the air lock and reached the shuttle in seconds. Inside, he used passenger seats to pull himself to the front. Then he webbed into the pilot's seat and felt his way around the controls. Although the shuttle had an unfamiliar layout, he recognized its basic structure.
Unfortunately, the console had no psiphon prongs. Of course it had none. Aristos weren't psions. Only their providers had that trait, and no Aristo would let a provider fly a shuttle. His problem from the elevator repeated itself: the shuttle EI's security would keep him out.
He saw no choice but to ram his way in again. Using the technique a second time would cause even worse havoc with his brain, maybe even kill him. But he had no time to find an alternative. Gritting his teeth, he submerged—
Its security was in tatters.
Leave,
he thought, hoping the EI itself still functioned.
Fast. Invert.
Engines rumbled. Acceleration pushed him into his seat. Like a distant voice, a thought came from the EI:
Shuttle launched.
Then, having reached its limit, his overtaxed mind shut off and dropped him into oblivion.

The universe had a headache, hungover from the big bang. It throbbed, spinning out stars. Hard, bright stars.
The stars softened. They coalesced into a white glow mixed with gem sparks of color.
Kelric squinted, trying to focus. The sparks bobbed around, then resolved into a holomap. It rotated serenely in front of him, the type of display produced by shuttle holoscreens to show local space.
He tried to raise his hand. Nothing happened. So he tried raising his other hand. Nothing. None of his limbs responded. Odd. The safety web shouldn't constrain him that much. Come to think of it, he couldn't feel the web. He didn't feel anything.
Kelric tilted his head. It moved fine, but the shuttle spun around him in a blur. Or at least it seemed that way. Closing his eyes, he put his head upright again. When he opened his eyes, the cabin had stopped doing its jig.
He looked down at himself. The universe blurred again, but this time he had less vertigo. His safety web was in place. He just couldn't feel it. Or anything.
A click came from his chair, near his ear. Then a tube snicked up to his lips. Recognizing the intent, if not the design, he sucked. Liquid ran into his mouth, cool and fresh. The ship had deduced that its pilot needed a drink. It was only water, but he supposed that was better for him than the jolt of whiskey he wanted.
"Shuttle?" he asked.
"Shuttle Four attending," it answered.
He took another swallow of water. "Why aren't we in inversion?" He distinctly recalled telling it to invert.
"I dropped into real space to correct phase errors."
He remembered when the
Corona
had begun to lose coherence, how sounds echoed and sights rippled. It usually took hours before enough errors accumulated to force a drop into real space. A craft this small could go even longer.
"How long were we in inversion?" he asked.
"Fourteen hours."
Fourteen hours?
It finally hit him. Free.
He was free.
"Thank you, Shuttle Four," Kelric said.
"I see no reason to thank me for carrying out my function."
He grinned. During the last fourteen hours, Tarquine's people had had no way to trace him. He was beyond their sensor range now. His escape came with a price: he was apparently paralyzed. But then, if walking off Aristo cylinder ships were easy, people would do it a lot more often.
In any case, he should take no chances. "Can you invert again?"
"Yes."
"Good. Do it."
The engine hum increased. "Do you have a destination?"
Kelric started to say Skolian space, then paused. "Not yet."
He still didn't know why the security for the shuttle EI had been destroyed. Who knew what survived? The ship might refuse to leave Eubian space. He couldn't risk waking up any security mods that might still exist. Nor would he be forcing his brain into any more EIs. He doubted he could survive that trick again.
He spoke carefully. "Shuttle Four, your security mods seem quiet."
"I have no security mods," it informed him.
That was good news, albeit strange. "What happened?"
"A virus destroyed them."
"What virus?"
"I don't know. It started in the EI of elevator twelve. From there it spread to all the systems."
"You mean to the other elevators?"
"No. Every security system on the ship."
His virus had done all that? He had no doubt beautifully complex security codes protected Tarquine's ship. His virus must have slipped between the cracks. If it affected every system, their security must have all been programmed the same way; the virus was too simple to deal with even small deviations from its target code. Most big codes he knew were too sloppy for such consistency, particularly EIs that evolved themselves. But he had written the virus based on his Quis analysis of Aristo complexity. It was a tribute to the perfection of the Aristos that they kept their code so clean. Hah! Score one for the slobs. That exacting precision had been their downfall.
Tarquine's people would have fixed the problem by now. Given the methodical Aristo approach, they would soon adjust every security system in Eube so that no simple, direct virus could wreak havoc. It didn't matter. To escape, he had only needed the few extra seconds it had given him.
"Prepare to invert," Shuttle Four said.
Kelric closed his eyes. As they inverted, his nausea surged. "Do you know where we are?"
"Near Cobalt Sector. Precise coordinates incoming."
He opened his eyes. "No!" By incoming, it meant to use the link he had set up between its brain and his. The last thing he wanted was more data dumped onto his beleaguered neurons. "All I need is a rough idea. What settlement is closest?"
"The Cobalt Military Complex."
He grimaced. "What else is in the vicinity?"
"Interstellar dust clouds."
"That doesn't help."
"What would help?"
Dryly he said, "The Third Lock."
"Do you refer to the Skolian space habitat removed by ESComm from the ISC Onyx complex?"
"That's the one."
"It resides in the ESComm Sphinx Sector Rim Base."
"How do you know?"
"I am part of the Finance Minister's web."
"Oh." Of course. Tarquine was one of the most powerful Aristos alive. She would know a great deal. "Her network is civilian, though. Not ESComm."
"True." The EI paused, probably checking its records. "During your auction, the Minister's spy monitors broke into the military web on General Marix Haquail's battle cruiser."
Kelric couldn't help but laugh. "Don't they ever stop?" With all the spying, intrigues, and politics among the Aristos, it was a wonder they ever achieved anything. Then again, maybe it didn't matter. They were so much alike in what they wanted that they acted as a monolith when it came to aggression against other civilizations. Like his.
Most of what Tarquine's spies learned wouldn't be available to a shuttle. However, during the moments when security for the cylinder ship had been in tatters, Shuttle Four might have absorbed a bit of data.
"What would you like me to do?" the shuttle asked.
The impossible.
"Find a way for me to reach the Third Lock, go inside, get out again, rescue Eldrin Valdoria, and get home."
"I see no viable way to accomplish these tasks."
"I can't even move," Kelric grumbled.
"Are you in pain?"
"No. I can't feel anything."
"I recommend you rest while I work."
"Work on what?"
"The problem you set up for the Third Lock."
Kelric smiled. Trying to solve the impossible would keep the EI busy while he confirmed that none of its security worked. First, though, he needed to know how much of himself worked.
"Do you have any medical routines?" he asked.
"The standard mods. I am monitoring your condition."
"How badly am I hurt?"
"A final diagnosis isn't yet available. I am working with the picoweb in your collar on repairs. Some damage will be permanent."
"Permanent? How?"
"I don't know yet."
Well, it could have been worse. "At least I'm not a vegetable."
"I have no medical definition of 'vegetable,' " it informed him. "However, you almost suffered permanent losses in reasoning, memory, sensory, and locomotive functions. You recovered because you were receiving treatment even as you took the damage."
That surprised him. "I was being treated? What do you mean?"
"Your collar is supervising chemical cycles in your body that provide drug therapy."
"Are you telling me that this slave collar helped me survive my escape?"
"That is correct."
Kelric laughed. "That's a beautiful irony."
"It is?"
"Yes." He closed his eyes. "If I rest, will you continue to fix me?"
"I have dedicated my medical mods to this task. Would you like chemicals to help you sleep?"
"No need. I'll be fine." While he supposedly slept, he planned to check the EI's security, to make sure it stayed on his side.

Kelric hung on to the top of the pilot's seat, floating in the cabin. Except for his arms and shoulders, he felt almost nothing in his body. He tried moving his leg again, with no response. The shuttle continued to hurtle through inversion, headed toward Sphinx Sector, which was on the way out of Eubian space.
"Try your other leg," the shuttle suggested.
Gripping the seat, he gave it a try. "I think I felt something."
"That is encouraging. Please continue the exercises. I will continue trying to effect repairs though your collar."
Although Kelric wasn't thrilled to have a Eubian EI fiddling with his biomech web, it was better than paralysis. "Do you know yet what happened to me?"
"Yes. Paraplegia due to neural disruption in the thoracic and lumbar spinal regions."
He grimaced. "Can you translate that into normal language?"
"Paraplegia is paralysis from the chest down," it explained. "It usually occurs when the middle or lower section of the spinal cord is damaged. However, you have no actual damage."
"Then why the blazes can't I move?"
"You disrupted your central nervous system when you forced your brain patterns to align with the elevator EI. As a result, your spinal cord isn't sending the proper messages. Also, fiberoptic threads in your biomech web have tangled with your spinal cord."
"Can you help?"
"I don't know." It paused. "Your biomech system has already repaired some of the disrupted pathways. That's why you can move your arms and shoulders. I don't know if you will regain much more. It probably requires surgery to untangle the threads."
"What about the drug cycles in my body?" Kelric asked.
"They are vital to your health."
"I mean, can they work on my nervous system?"
"No."
He thought of the unwanted drugs coursing through him. "Can you stop the cycles? Not the medical therapy, but the others. The truth serums, aggression suppressants, and aphrodisiacs."
"The cycles are interdependent," it told him. "They're designed to minimize side effects. If I delete steps, it could have drastic results."
"Drastic? How?"
"It would produce rogue molecules, cations, anions, and free radicals, which would react with other chemicals in your body. The results could be fatal."
"Gods," Kelric muttered. It never ceased to amaze him how adept Aristos had become at controlling people.
"However," the EI added, "I may be able to help your paralysis."
"Shoot."
"At what? We are alone in space."
He smiled. "I meant, tell me your ideas."
"Your collar has no real control over your hydraulics. It only blocks your spinal node from communicating with them. If I remove that block, your hydraulics can move your body."
"Yes! Do it."
"Working."
Kelric continued to float, trying to exercise his legs. After a while he asked, "Has anything happened?"
"I am thirty-four percent finished with the process."
"Can you talk while you work?"
"Yes."
"Do you know about that palace speech?"
"I know about many palace speeches."
"The one playing on the ship when we left."
"I do not have this recording."
"Oh." Kelric's fingers were growing tired from hanging on the chair. "Can you put me back in the pilot's seat?"
"Certainly." A robot arm extended from a bulkhead, folded its multijointed hand around his body, and set him back in the seat. Then it hovered above him like an orderly checking its patient.
With no warning, Kelric's arm shot up and knocked aside the robot arm. His right leg jerked. Then his left foot slammed into the control console. For all the force of its strike, he felt nothing.
"Uh, Shuttle Four," he said. "What are you doing?"
"Try moving your legs," it suggested.
He gave it a try. His left leg rose into the air with the eerily smooth ease of hydraulic-controlled motion.
"Hey!" Kelric grinned. "How long will this last?"
"It should serve until your recovery is done."
Relief washed over him. "Then I'll recover?"
"To an extent."
His ebullience ebbed. "What extent?"
"That remains to be seen. If you exercise, it will strengthen your muscles and coordination. However, it is imperative you report to a biomech repair facility as soon as possible."
Dryly Kelric said, "I know." He gave a martial-arts punch at the air and was gratified to see his arm move with enhanced speed. When he punched the chair, it left a dent that only his enhanced strength could have made. He tried a kick next, with good results. He couldn't actually feel his legs move; it was more like hauling around sacks of grain. But it worked.
"Do you know how long my repairs will take?" he asked.
"I'm not sure," the shuttle said. "Just after takeoff, one hundred percent of your body was paralyzed for several seconds. It almost killed you. You were also one hundred percent blind. The paralysis is about seventy-five percent now. Without your enhanced optics, you would have about twenty-five percent vision."
Good Lord.
"I had no idea it was that serious."
"Leaving an Aristo cylinder is not easy."
He wondered what Tarquine thought about his escape. She was probably furious. Would she miss him? Probably. He had cost her fourteen million credits. Would he miss her? Of course not. It was only the aphrodisiacs in his body that made him think of her.
"Do you want my analysis regarding the Third Lock?" Shuttle Four inquired.
"You have an analysis?" This ought to prove interesting.
"Yes. You should go undercover. The Lock is at Sphinx Sector Rim Base. Several Aristos are stationed there. Pick one that is away and have yourself delivered to his or her residence as a provider. That will leave you some freedom to act. I can create a false set of documents for the transfer."
Kelric grimaced. Unfortunately, it made sense. The last thing he wanted was to go among Aristos again. But if a chance existed to deactivate the Lock, he had to consider it. After his recent experiences, he had an idea how to build such a cover. Aristos expected certain behavior from providers. As long as he acted "normal" in their presence, he could do a lot behind the scenes. It helped that the platinum shortage had hit Sphinx Sector so hard. To offset their platinum losses, Sphinx Aristos were stockpiling other resources. Like providers. So his appearance was unlikely to raise eyebrows.
Even if he made it into the SSRB, he faced two major hurdles: reaching the Lock from within the complex and escaping afterward. Providers had no reason to visit the Lock or travel alone. His first escape had taken the Aristos by surprise. It wouldn't happen again. If he tried this and anything went wrong, he would end up as a provider for life.
Kelric hated the whole idea. He wanted to go home. But he had it within his ability to stop an interstellar war, one the Traders would probably win. No one wanted to restart hostilities. However, as long as the Traders thought they could triumph, using their captured Lock and Key, they would try. If he turned off the Lock, he would restore the balance of power and protect trillions of people.
"Nothing like a little stress," he muttered.
"My structure is under no stress," the shuttle informed him.
Kelric gave a wan smile. "Not you. Me." He exhaled. "We have plans to make."
"Plans?"
"To infiltrate the SSRB."
"I can add you to the inventory of a supply ship," it suggested. "I can also deliver you to that ship. I estimate a probability of four to thirty-two percent that you can then succeed with your stated goals."
"That's low."
"It goes up if you limit your goals."
"What do you suggest I leave out?"
"Escape will be the most difficult."
Kelric snorted. "Any other ideas?"
"No. I have an observation, however."
"Yes?"
"You have an advantage no Eubian can claim."
"And what might that be?"
"You are a Rhon psion. That might increase your chances."
"Well, yes." Kelric froze. "What makes you think I'm Rhon?" Asking the question now, after he acknowledged its truth, was like closing the gate after the livestock had left the farm. Damn truth serums. He needed them out of his body.
"I learned it when you put your mind into mine," the EI said.
He wondered what else it knew. The security failure on the cylinder ship had exposed it to many EIs. "Do you know if ESComm has penetrated the Lock's security?"
"Unknown. Eldrin Valdoria refuses to cooperate."
He sat up straighter. "Eldrin is at the SSRB?"
"No. He is on the planet Glory."
"Oh." It had been too much to hope for. Kelric hated to think of his brother as an ESComm prisoner.
"Shall I prepare documents for your transfer?" the EI asked.
"We have to solve some problems first," Kelric said. "My body is full of truth serums. It's not enough to make me reveal data protected by neural blocks, but if someone asks what I'm doing, I'll probably tell them too much. The drugs that suppress aggression hamper my ability to defend myself. And the aphrodisiacs are a distraction."
"What do you want me to do?"
"You're sure you can't turn those off without losing the medicine cycles?"
"Cycles do exist that would provide only medical therapy," the shuttle said. "Unfortunately, I have neither the knowledge nor time to implement them."
"Can you turn off every cycle in my body?"
"Yes. However, then you would no longer benefit from their healing effects."
"Would that affect the repair of my paralysis?"
"Now, yes. Eventually I will have done all I can for the paralysis. After that, your recovery will be a matter of exercise." The EI paused. "However, in caring for your health and preparing your body for the regeneration or transplant of new organs, it would be in your best interest to continue the drug therapy."
Kelric considered his options. "Let's do this. Stay on course to Sphinx Sector. When you've done all you can for my paralysis, take me to the SSRB, get me into a supply ship inventory, and turn off all the drug cycles. Can you do that?"
"I will do my best," Shuttle Four said.