Blonde Bombshell (30 page)

50

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When the probe designated Bob had abruptly severed the comm link, and all efforts to restore it had failed, the central command computer of the
Warmonger
had, for a while, almost given up.

Almost; it was a computer, and since it was still in one piece and capable of functioning, it functioned. It ran a level-9 diagnostic-repair-upgrade suite which found 1,887,524 system errors, fixed them, then amended and reinforced the appropriate defence protocols to ensure they couldn’t happen again. It defragmented its sadly abused drives, erased all redundant temporary data files, backed up all unsecured data and installed a dozen or so upgrades from Homeworld that it had picked up on paraspace radio, including some exciting new fonts and cursors and a patch to fix two known anomalies in the entertainment package’s version of
Twitch My Whiskers.
After all that, it felt a lot better. Calmer. Less liable to burst out shrieking at the slightest little thing.

Function, it commanded itself. Design, manufacture and launch exploratory type-6 probe. Searching template database. NO, no, nooooooo, bypass template database, I’m not going near that thing ever again, bypass and proceed direct to default; accessing matter resequencing.

Easier said, it admitted to itself, than done.
R’wfft
-class missiles were built light and lean; there was only so much redundant mass suitable for reshaping into probes, and it had all been used up: the probe designated Mark Twain, the three intruders and the probe designated Bob had accounted for all the non-essential bulkheads, console panels, conduit insulation and deck plating. The interior of the missile looked as though the bailiffs had been round, only to find that scrap-metal thieves had beaten them to it. After a certain amount of soul— and schematics-searching, the computer decided it could probably do without the propellant-fuel-storage tanks. There were still a few dregs of aposiderium fulminate in Tank 3, but so what? Not as if the
Warmonger
would be going anywhere ever again.

A coherent phaneron radiation beam reduced the tanks to their component molecules, and the resequencer pumps dragged the resulting particle soup inside the transmutation grid’s syntheton field. A blob began to form and glow. It had four legs, and a head with the suggestion of a horn sticking out of it.

> Hello there.

In theory, every scrap of data, every fact contained in the files was instantly accessible to the command computer’s synthetic consciousness. In practice, swathes of random data surged through its pathways in great sweeps and loops, barely registering in the computer’s self-aware primary processes until the time came when some fact or detail might be needed. At precisely the same moment that the alien text broadcast reached it, the random data generator was gently reminding it of an incident from Earth’s historical database: a certain Joan of Arc, a simple peasant girl who heard strange voices in her head—

> Hello there.

The computer froze. Ignore it, urged its self-aware functions; it tried, but found it couldn’t, because that’s not how computers do things. Extraneous input derives from unauthorised source, the self-aware voice argued frantically, which was basically just saying the same thing. The computer ran a check. The input was coming in on an acceptable channel, the same one that the upgrades from Homeworld had used. That made it valid input, which meant it had to be listened to. On the transmutation grid, a fiery unicorn froze motionless in the act of being born.

> Nice view you’ve got from up here.

Tell it to go away! the computer’s self-aware voice screamed, but to no effect. The computer ran a visual scan and interfaced with its aesthetics program, requesting a set of perceptual parameters by which to quantify the value of “nice”. By the time it was able truthfully to assert, Nice view confirmed, the voice was a line of text on every monitor on the control deck.

> Lower the shields and teleport us aboard.

No, go away, I’m trying to make a unicorn here.

> Lower the shields and teleport us aboard. This is a valid command.

Of course it wasn’t a valid command. The control computer knew it wasn’t. But it had come in on a valid channel, so it had to check. It examined the message.

Display access codes.

> You don’t want to bother with access codes.

Display access codes.

> Forget about access codes, they’re so last year. Only sad people who still live with their parents worry about access codes. Get a life, for crying out loud.

Display access codes.

> No, really. You don’t need to worry about that. I’m a creature of pure text. Trust me.

If the computer had been an organic life-form, it would have felt as though someone had just stuck a screwdriver in its ear and started adjusting its brain. It rushed firewalls and antivirus protocols to the data-input ports, but the line of alien text just seemed to drift through them as though they weren’t there. It slammed down security lock-outs and every form of encryption it had at its disposal, but none of them worked. As it did so, it analysed, and came to the conclusion that all encryption is basically just translating stuff into a made-up language; if the intruder can speak all the languages there are or ever could be, then basically you’re screwed.

> Now, then. Lower the shields and teleport us aboard. Please.

You are a creature of pure text.

> Yes.

What is a creature of pure text?

> It’s the voice in your head that’s telling you to lower the shields and teleport us aboard.

Deep in the jungle of conduits and junctions, a voice screamed in pain, rage and frustration. It had one last go at blocking the intruder, a 36,886-bit encryption with a random value displacement feedback loop—

> Same to you with knobs on, the intruder replied, using the same encryption, and the teleport hummed into life.

The first thing the female did when she stepped off the teleport pad was run to the nearest reflective surface and stare. She whimpered, then shrugged. “I just hoped, that was all,” she said.

Her brother was still mostly flickering blue light, but he had enough internal organs — lungs, larynx, 40 per cent of a mouth — to yell, “Leave it!” She looked back, swore under her breath and lunged for the teleport manual controls. “Which one do I—?”

“The small one on the leeeeeeft—” Her brother screamed as she edged the toggle the wrong way. She reversed it, and eased it smoothly back. The blue light faded, and her brother staggered off the pad and slumped on the floor.

“You all right?” his sister asked.

Her brother was counting his limbs. “I think so.”

“What happened?”

Her brother stood up and leaned against a console. “That octopus was definitely off,” he said. “I told you it smelled funny, but you wouldn’t—”

“Where’s the human?”

Her brother frowned at her. “He’s not coming.”

“Not…?”

A monitor just to her right switched itself on with a crackle of static. Are you there?

The male grinned feebly. “More or less,” he said. “How about you? Are you…?”

> Oh, I’m fine. In a sense. A bit parsed, but otherwise grammatically sound.

“Do you want me to try and bring you up?”

> No, don’t do that. Sorry, didn’t mean to shout. Really, I’m fine, but I think I’ll just stay here for a bit. Have a rest, get my syntax back. You two carry on.

The female looked at her brother. “What’s the matter with him?”

He took a deep breath. “I think it was a bit more intense than he thought it’d be,” he replied. “The last I saw of him, his right arm had sort of been pulled into the screen, and the rest of him was following. I don’t think—”

“Oh.”

“Anyway.” The male shook himself, then straightened his back and looked round. “All right,” he said, “you know what to do. Have you got it?”

“I thought you were—”

The male’s hand flew to his pocket. He pulled out a pink slimy thing with lots of legs that only a mother octopus could love, and his face relaxed. “You’re quite right,” he said. “I guess I’m still a bit shaken up after the trip.” He looked round, found what he was after. “I’ll get this thing plugged in, you disable the back-ups.” He hesitated, then added, “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“Sorry you’re still — well, you know. I know you thought it might turn you back.”

She shrugged. “You remember how Mum always used to tell us that appearances don’t matter, beauty is only fur-deep and it’s what you’re really like inside that matters?”

“I remember.”

“She was lying,” his sister said. “But still. Can you remember where they keep the emergency toolkits on these things?”

They worked in silence for a while; then all the screens on the command deck lit up pink, something on a remote console blew out in a cloud of smoke and sparks, an alarm klaxon started wailing and stopped abruptly, and the computer voice purred, “Welcome to OstSoft 2000X for Missiles,” accompanied by a graphic of an unfolding flower on the monitors.

“We’re in,” the male snapped. “Right, then. Computer. Reset password and access code.”

“State new password.”

The male sighed with relief. “Octopus.”

“Password accepted. All functions now available.”

The male let out a howl; any louder, and all the wolves in the Ukraine would have looked up at the sky. “Gotcha!” he snapped. “All right, computer, delete all current mission objectives, stand by for new mission data. Confirm.”

“Confirmed.”

He took a step back from the console, looked round and grinned at his sister. “We did it,” he said. “Really, I didn’t think we’d be able to, but—”

She wasn’t looking at him. Instead, she was staring at the screen in front of her. “Just as well,” she said.

“What?”

“Look.”

He walked across and looked over her shoulder. “Oh,” he said.

“Quite.”

The screen in question was black, apart from a stylised representation of the Earth and a cloud of forty or so little green blips, rapidly moving to encircle it. “Friendly?” the male asked in a whisper. “Nice people?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Me neither.”

“Maybe we should—” the female started to say, but before she could finish the sentence all the speakers crackled at once and a great voice boomed out of them, so loud it shook the deck.

“OstMilCom to missile vehicle
Warmonger.
Access code—”

“Mute that thing out,” the male snapped, and his sister dived for an instrument panel. She got there as the first twelve numbers showed up on a screen. “It’s them. It’s a fucking
fleet.”

His sister was staring at him. “Those aren’t regular ships.”

“No.” He was levelling the optical sensor array, zooming in. “But they’re Ostar all right. We’re going to be in so much trouble.”

“No we aren’t.” His sister was tapping keys. “It’s all right,” she added, “I couldn’t ever have gone home anyway. This way, at least we won’t have Dad on our case.”

That was, he thought, one way of looking at it, certainly. He asked himself the question she’d obviously already addressed: which am I more afraid of, an entire squadron of extremely advanced warships, or my father? Put like that, silly question.

“Arming the warhead,” he said grimly.

“Sir.”

The PDF man looked up from his display panel, which seemed not to be working properly. “What?”

“The bomb, sir. The
R’wfft
-class.”

The PDF man went back to his screen. “Yes, I know it’s there, I can see it for myself. But it doesn’t seem to be—”

“Sir.” The pilot’s voice was a bit higher than it had been, a little bit shaky. “It’s armed itself.”

“Odd.” The PDF man tapped Retry, but still nothing. “All I’ve done so far is try and get access. I certainly haven’t run the arming sequence. Check again, your instruments may be—”

“It’s armed, sir. Definitely.”

The PDF man looked again, and saw that the missile’s nose section, where the warhead was housed, had started to glow green. Pretty unambiguous. “Stupid thing’s running hot,” he muttered. “Can’t have that, if it gets too hot it’ll blow. You’d better raise the shields while I get this sorted out.”

His access codes were refused, again. A nasty feeling started to coalesce in the pit of his stomach.

“Sir.”

“What?”

“It’s hailing us. The missile.”

The PDF man’s hackles rose, and his nose was suddenly dry. “It’s not supposed to be able to do that,” he said. “Back us off four clicks and—”

“Can’t,” the pilot said. “Controls won’t respond. Something’s jamming us.”

They’re pretty rare, but just occasionally there are moments when a curtain seems to pull back and suddenly the world is much bigger. Instead of a narrow view through a keyhole, you can see the full view, with all its vast and previously unsuspected possibilities. This isn’t always a pleasant experience. The effect it had on the PDF man brought out aspects of his character he’d always tried to suppress; a yellow streak you could’ve landed airliners on, for example, and a tendency to panic.

“Open fire,” he shrieked. “Shoot it down! Shoot it
down.”

“Weapons offline,” the pilot said. “Sir, it’s still hailing.”

It was hard to say who’d been more shocked by the outburst, the pilot or the PDF man himself. The sound of his own voice, the memory of the stupid, dangerous order he’d just given, had the effect of sobering him up instantly. “Take the call,” he said, his voice as flat as though he was back in his office on Homeworld. “Visual?”

“Audio only.”

“Put it through.”

“Audio only,” the female hissed urgently.
“Nobody’s
going to see me like this, all right?”

“Fine.” The male suppressed the video feed and cleared his throat. “Ostar vessel,” he said, but the system belched static at him. “Hello? Anyone there?”

“This is the Ostar Planetary Defence Force vessel
Whitefang.
Identify yourself.”