Betrayer of Worlds (13 page)

“Perhaps,” Achilles and Nessus said, almost in unison.

Anyone
solicited Voice, too, to offer an opinion. Louis’s suspicions about Puppeteer attitudes toward AI had been correct. Nessus had directed Louis not to mention Voice.

“Confirmed,” Voice said on a private channel. “So far you have passed eighty-seven racks of that exact physical layout. No other configuration is nearly as common.”

“This must be it.” Louis took the stepping disc from its sling. He set it on the floor and it floated off.

The racks ran floor to ceiling, and he could not jam the stepping disc beneath. “Tanj! The frame uprights look fused in place.”

“Cut out a rack,” Achilles ordered.

The oxyacetylene torch in Louis’s tool pouch might work—or chopping at the ship might trigger an intruder response. Louis had no better suggestion. “Can you pull me out remotely?”

“If you are on the disc, yes,” Nessus said.

With his left boot clinging to the deck Louis pinned the stepping disc with his right boot. The disc itself adhered to neither the deck nor his boot. Carefully he shifted his left boot onto the disc—and started drifting. The boot magnets were too weak to grip through the disc.

He used emergency suit patches to fasten the disc to the deck and his boots to the disc. “Watch my helmet camera. If I move suddenly, pull me out.”

He tried to ignore how contorted the corpses had been, how pain-crazed their faces. If the ramscoop field activated, would sticky patches hold despite his own spasms?

He lit the oxyacetylene torch. Directly beneath the blue-hot flame, a spot glowed on an upright. There was no smoke, no scorching, no hint of melting. He applied the flame to the ceiling and deck with the same lack of effect.

With a sigh, Louis extinguished the torch. Decks, bulkheads, the equipment frames: they were probably made from the same impervious stuff as the hull.

“It must be
twing,
” Achilles said. “A programmable Pak structural material. There will be handheld tools to soften it. Search the engine room.”

“What do these tools look like?” Louis asked.

“I don’t know.” Achilles sounded pained by the admission. “I had that information aboard
Argo,
but the computers, like everything else, were destroyed.”

“Do not comment,” Voice said. “Nessus has not told Achilles we have the same files from Sigmund.”

On Louis’s heads-up display a small hand tool shimmered. He said, “I’ll see what I can find.” He peeled the patches from his boots and tromped off. In the engine room he quickly spotted a tool that matched the image still on his HUD but took other items to avoid suspicions.

Then Louis experimented. The proper tool, with its one dial turned all the way up, its handgrip tightly squeezed, sliced an interior bulkhead. In minutes he had detached a rack of suspected computer gear. He floated it above the stepping disc—and pictured it crashing to the deck on
Aegis.
“Turn the cabin gravity way down wherever you’re going to want this.”

“Done,” Nessus said. “Ready to receive.”

It took Louis eight hours to cut loose all the suspected computer racks,
or memory banks, or whatever they were, and teleport them, one by one, to
Aegis.

Finally the last rack was delivered. Louis stepped through, bone weary, right after. He intended never again to set foot aboard that death ship.

It would be best not to abandon an intact General Products hull for the Pak to reverse-engineer. On that much Achilles and Nessus agreed. But could they destroy it? That was the core of the matter, and the bridge echoed with their disagreement.

The impudence of the scruffy scout enraged Achilles.
He
was Minister of Science!

Achilles knew several ways to destroy General Products hulls—all closely held secrets. Simplest was antimatter, if you could find enough. They had none.

Without antimatter, you needed subtlety.

At its most basic, a General Products hull was a single, nanotech-built supermolecule. An embedded fusion power plant massively reinforced the supermolecule’s interatomic bonds. At very close range, and with extremely good aim, you could overheat the power plant with a high-power laser. Or, if you knew the details of the embedded software, a laser could reprogram the photonic microprocessor that controlled the power plant—right through an intact hull.

When these vulnerabilities surfaced, General Products had enhanced its designs. Antimatter remained a threat, for basic physics could not be denied, but the other hazards had been vanquished. In late-model products, thousands of heat pipes fanned out from the embedded power plant. Using the entire hull to disperse energy made overheating the power plant all but impossible. The extensively rewritten controller program resisted alteration. Finally, alternating layers of waveguides and mirrors encapsulated the power plant, to deflect and divert even the attempt to access the embedded controller.

Achilles had had
Argo
built in a brand-new hull. Nessus, whether from
sentiment or laziness, kept flying
Aegis
long after its hidden vulnerabilities became known. He was a fool.

If Achilles had been as careless, almost surely Pak lasers would have destroyed his hull during that endless instant he had spent frozen in stasis. He would
still
be in stasis, eternally adrift in the interstellar void. . . .

“There is another way,” Nessus insisted. “The Gw’oth way.”

Baedeker, not yet Hindmost, not yet even in politics, had had the opportunity to end the Gw’oth menace before it began. Instead he allowed the Gw’oth aboard his ship to learn the secrets of hyperdrive. In secret the Gw’oth built a hyperdrive shunt inside their habitat module. When they activated their shunt, the protective normal-space bubble carried off Baedeker’s own shunt—and with it the middle of his General Products hull.

“The Gw’oth split a hull,” Achilles rebutted. “The end of the hull containing the power plant remained intact. The loss is the same whether the Pak find a reinforced piece or a reinforced whole.”

Nessus looked himself in the eyes. “So we carry off the hulk’s power plant.”

That was—madness. “Holding
Argo
’s severed power plant against our hull is like toying with a hydrogen bomb. If the power plant destabilizes, the shock wave will atomize us.”

“The Hindmost says the power plant will not destabilize.”

Baedeker was a fool, and Nessus a bigger fool for listening. “Then I must speak with him.”

Baedeker
and
Nike joined the hyperwave consultation. They were rivals of Achilles, and of one another, for the hearts of the Experimentalist Party. Apparently they had united for the moment against him.

Radio waves creeping between Hearth and the edge of the Fleet’s gravitational singularity added two minutes’ delay each way. While they exchanged civilities, Achilles studied his adversaries.

Baedeker was burly. He wore his mane tightly woven in characterless braids, its array of precious stones extensive but mundane. His mane, naturally a pale yellow-brown, had been dyed a rich gold. It clashed with his sash of office.

The coiffure, like its wearer, was unfit for a Hindmost.

Nike was petite, his pale tan hide without spots or other markings. His tawny mane sparkled with gemstones and filigreed gold chains, but no more brightly than his eyes shone with ambition.

He
resembled the Hindmost he once had been—and schemed to be again.

“You asked for a consultation,” Baedeker began.

“Thank you, Hindmost.” Using the title galled Achilles. Nike had waived such formalities among ministers and scouts. Not Baedeker. “I question using the so-called Gw’oth method to destroy what remains of
Argo.
”

“A decoupled hull power plant
will
shut down,” Baedeker insisted. Undertunes and subtleties of posture reminded that he had once been a senior engineer at General Products.

“Really?” Achilles warbled skeptically. “Has someone tested extracting a power plant using a hyperdrive jump? How many times?”

The gibe drew silence. Emboldened, Achilles continued. “If you are mistaken, we will lose everything we might have learned from the Library.”

Nike leaned toward the camera. “You mean: we will lose
you.
”

“Are we humans, to embrace danger?” Achilles sneered.

His voices dripping with sarcastic harmonics, Nike sang, “Those crazy enough to leave Hearth must be crazy enough to protect it.”

“Achilles was only vulnerable when he presented his heel,” Nessus added. “Where did I hear that?”

“Enough!” Baedeker spread his hooves, straightening his necks assertively to glower down on the camera. “Questing for secrets of the Library was never Concordance policy. That you made the attempt, Achilles, will be addressed when you get back. And lest there be any question, Nessus remains hindmost aboard
Aegis.
”

Take orders from
Nessus
? Achilles trembled with fury but said nothing.

Baedeker went on. “Our objective remains to avoid provoking the Pak. Nessus, you must destroy
Argo.
Nothing can connect the lost Pak ship with the Concordance.”

“And if the attempt to destroy
Argo
also destroys this ship?” Achilles chanted. If
Aegis
sails forever through hyperspace, its crew bloodstains on the walls? He resisted the need to paw at the deck. There was nowhere to run.

Baedeker and Nessus exchanged meaningful glances. “If that happens,” the Hindmost sang, “we will honor your sacrifices.”

.   .   .

From two decks away Louis heard without understanding another acrimonious round between Nessus and Achilles. They sounded like orchestras tuning up, and whistling teakettles, and cats on whose tails someone kept stomping. Argument that heated had to involve unpalatable choices. Then, if Louis’s ears could be trusted, at least two more Puppeteers weighed in: a hyperwave consultation.

He synthed a meal while waiting for the dispute to end. Eating slowly, he finished still waiting. He synthed some brandy.

He got out his notepad and began sketching nothing in particular. But every drawing he started turned into some horror from aboard the Pak ship. Someday, maybe, he could exorcise a few demons this way. It was too soon and he ripped those pages from the book.

“Louis,” Nessus finally called over the intercom, “please join me on the bridge.”

Louis dumped plate, drink bulbs, and utensils into the recycler. He found Nessus alone on the bridge. Achilles must have lost this round.

“Ah, Louis. I require your services as copilot.”

“Of course.” Louis took his seat. “Will Achilles be sharing piloting duties with us?”

Frostily: “No.”

“To Hearth, then?”

“Not just yet. We have cleanup to do first.”

Not
a characterization to which Achilles would have taken kindly. Louis supposed that was the source of the quarrel. “The Pak derelict?” he guessed.

“Yes. Lest clues remain of Citizen involvement, Achilles had planned to detonate a second nuclear device aboard the Pak ship. He lost the bomb, like everything else on
Argo.
”

“I don’t suppose this ship carries a nuke.”

For an instant, Nessus looked himself in the eyes. “Only in a manner of speaking.”

Louis considered. “Ah, the fusion drive.”

“Correct. While you hold the drive flame on the wreck, I will keep my mouths to the hyperdrive controls.”

Ready to jump at the first inkling of danger. “And Achilles disapproved of that plan?”

Another look-himself-in-the-eyes moment. (An ironic laugh, Louis decided the gesture signified.) “No,” Nessus said, “he and I found something more . . . fundamental about which to disagree.”

No need to worry about that, Louis decided, until he survived this escapade. “While the main drive fires, our aft sensors will be blind. I’ll need a probe with remote sensors. Ideally something expendable.”

Expendable
made Nessus twitch. Still, he lipped and tongued his console and two holograms opened. The first holo was a computer graphic showing
Aegis,
the Pak wreck, and a streaking dot to represent a newly launched probe. The second image showed the view from the probe itself.

Nessus said, “I have launched a short-range probe and linked it to your left joystick.”

Louis positioned the robot craft for a side view of the derelict, then returned his left hand to the propulsion controls. With thrusters, he nudged
Aegis
to within a hundred meters of the derelict and aimed the ship’s main drive straight at his target. “Ready when you are.”

With mouths muffled by their grips on hyperdrive controls, Nessus said, “Proceed.”

White-hot fusion flame spewed from
Aegis
’ stern. The plasma, splashing and searing, engulfed the Pak vessel. Bow thrusters strained to offset the force of the main drive.
Aegis
bucked and thrummed with the contending energies. The Pak ship drifted under the pounding of the plasma stream.