Sunborn (39 page)

    It took everyone a few seconds to react to that. Charli spoke first:

   
/// John, he’s joined himself to the AI. ///

   
/What’s new about that? He’s been helping out all along./

   
/// Not just helping out. He’s actually—///

   
“I’ve melded myself with the shipboard AI,” Copernicus continued. “Too many components were damaged; I couldn’t fix them. But I could replace them...with myself.”

    Bandicut was shaking his head now. “This is too—do you mean you copied parts of yourself into the ship?”

    “Negative, Cap’n. There was a need for active control, without delay—and the existing hardware would not have served. The part of the AI that was still working is now part of me, and is mostly in my hardware. I believe it may have to be a permanent arrangement, Cap’n. But it was necessary.”

    Bandicut fought back a rush of dizziness. “Am I—?” Was he losing Copernicus? “Then you’re not...you mean you’re a permanent part of the ship, now?”

    “Yes, Cap’n, I think so. I’m still me. But I’m something else now, too.”

    Li-Jared strode toward the robot.
Bong-g.
“Then you’re...” He hesitated, uncharacteristically at a loss for words. His head weaved from side to side for a moment, as though he were trying to triangulate on the robot. “Are you running the ship now? Can you hold it together?”

    “And,” said Bandicut, “did you get rid of the intruder? The Mindaru?”

    “I’m fairly sure that I can, and that I did,” Copernicus said, still speaking from the walls. “When I shut down the AI, I isolated and zeroed out a lot of memory space. Of course, we must all remain vigilant...”

    “Coppy, you’ve—” Bandicut’s voice caught as he interrupted the robot, and he could only finish his thought silently:
You’ve sacrificed your identity...

   
/// To save us. Yes. ///

   
Bandicut swallowed hard, nodding to Charli. Beside him, he could feel Antares echoing his sadness. And Ik seemed puzzled, perhaps not entirely sure what to think or feel. “Well...
thank
you, Coppy. I guess, while you’re getting the feel of the ship, maybe the rest of us had better figure out what exactly we’re hoping to do next...”

*

   
It was only a little later that Jeaves reappeared, as a small, still holo hovering in the air. He reported that the internal realm seemed safe again. “I apologize for leaving so suddenly,” he said. “But I thought you’d rather have me absent than infected by the Mindaru.”

    “Hrrm, yes,” said Ik.

    Li-Jared made a twanging sound. “And are you?”

    “What?” Jeaves asked.

    “Infected by the Mindaru.”

    “I believe I am free of infection,” Jeaves said without expression. “I have asked Copernicus to run a scan.”

    Li-Jared shot an anxious glance at Copernicus.

    “I believe he is free, insofar as one can tell,” the robot said. “I can’t spare the bandwidth to give him a full-motion holo-presence right now. Forgive me, but...shouldn’t we be looking at what’s ahead of us? Our escape from the Mindaru trap moved us a good distance toward our destination, and I think we can see some pretty interesting features in front of us now.”

    Bandicut squinted forward. They were indeed flying through a spectacular region, a volume of luminous space walled by distant gaseous clouds. On the far side, the diamond-shaped group of four blazing stars beckoned them forward...or perhaps guarded the next passage, depending on how one chose to view it.

    Copernicus continued, “As you can see, we are in a region of extreme ultraviolet and X-ray activity. We are crossing a large bubble, essentially a cavern of open space that has been hollowed out of the nebula—burned away by the intense radiation from the four large stars ahead.”

   
/// I believe this is the region

   
which your astronomers call the Trapezium,

   
at the heart of the Orion Nebula.

   
Is it not? ///

   
Bandicut cocked his head, studying the four stars. /I think so. The angles are different, so it’s hard to be sure./ “Napoleon, that is the Trapezium we’re flying toward, right?”

    Napoleon bobbed his head. “I believe so, milord. We’re coming into the nebula from behind, so to speak. But after correcting for that, this cluster seems to match well with Earth-based star charts for the Trapezium.”

    “It’s certainly energetic.”

    “Under normal circumstances, I would say it is
dangerously
 energetic,” Copernicus said, a hint of warning in his voice.

    At that moment, Ik slapped his hands to his temples and cried out in pain.
“Hrahhh!”
He lunged forward toward the viewspace, then suddenly dropped to a crouch, groaning. The others ran to him.
“S-stones!”
 he managed to cry, before choking to silence. He kept his hands clamped over his temples, as if holding his head together. His face was contorted by pain, his eyes drawn together.

    “Let Antares help him,” Bandicut said urgently, restraining Li-Jared, whose eyes were focused brightly on his friend.

    Antares already had one hand on Ik’s arm and another on his shoulder, her eyes shut, concentrating. After several seconds, she said, “He’s in pain, but I think it’s easing. Something in his knowing-stones, I can’t tell what.” Speaking to Ik, she said softly, “Can you tell us what’s wrong?”

    Very slowly, Ik raised his head. “Rrrmmmm,” he gasped with obvious effort. He lowered his hands cautiously. “It is...better. I am...sorry, it...” He paused, struggling to breathe. “A struggle. Something in my stones, trying to express itself. Not sure what.”

    Li-Jared leaned close. “My friend, was it trying to hurt
you
?”

    “I...don’t think so.” Ik sighed. “But it...I think perhaps the passage near that sun, and—” he looked up, catching Antares’s gaze “—and the
death
of the sun—and then this Mindaru thing we just went through...”

   
“What, Ik?” Bandicut asked. “What did those things do?”

    “Not sure. Hrah. Injured, maybe. Damaged.” Ik shook his head, as if to clear the remaining pain. With his long fingers, he massaged the area around his stones. “I think—they were fighting to clear these things.” He breathed slowly and softly for a minute, until his face returned to normal. “I believe I am...able to function now.”

   
Bwang.
 “Well, that’s good,” Li-Jared said. “Because we need you functioning, my friend.”

    Before Ik could respond, another voice filled the bridge, this one reverberating like a series of timpani.
“I-I-I wassss afrrraid-d-d-d youuu had beeeeen lossssst-t-t!”

    Bandicut nearly jumped out of his skin. “Ed?” he called. “Ed—is that you?” He swung from side to side, searching.

    “There!” said Antares, pointing to the ceiling.

    The hypercone was almost directly over his head, like a hanging, transparent stalactite. It was vibrating visibly, and glowing with a pale green light that pulsed as it vibrated. Bandicut reached up, felt a pronounced tingling in his fingers, as though they were encountering an electrical field, and stopped short of touching the being. “Are you okay, Ed?”

   
“Pleasssse...c-c-c-can you stop-p-p the ins-s-s-tability in that-t-t star-r-r?”

   
Bandicut felt his breath go out in a rush. He opened his hands as if seeking answers. “We’re going to try, Ed. If we can figure out which—and how—”

    Before he could stammer any further, Ik interrupted him by howling,
“Hrahh-luu-luu-luu! It will be a—”
rasp
“—hypernova! That is what it is doing!”
Ik sprang up from his crouch, snapped to attention, and pointed straight ahead. “That way! If we keep going, we will find it. The Mindaru
hypernova!
” Then he clamped his hands to his temples again, reeling in pain.

   
Antares was back at his side instantly. Bandicut pushed forward to join her. “
Hypernova!
How does he know that? Can you find out, Antares?” Bandicut’s voice was shaking as he spoke. If they were flying into the teeth of a hypernova...

   
“Yessss. It-t-t will-l-l destroy-y-y my homeworld-d-d.”

   
Bandicut glanced back at Ed. “Yours and a lot of others, if Ik’s right.” He leaned to murmur to Antares. “It’s really important that you find out why he said that, and how he knows.”

    “I will try,” she promised.

    Ik was grimacing, much as before. But when Antares voiced the question, Ik turned his head to look at Bandicut with eyes so haunted they gave him an almost skeletal appearance. “The Mindaru...my stones heard...”

    Shocked, Bandicut asked, “When did you hear the Mindaru?”

    “In the...AI,” Ik managed, before his words were choked off by another apparent wave of pain.

    Antares spoke without looking up from Ik. “He went into the AI after you did, to make sure you were okay. We couldn’t see what was happening, but he seemed to disconnect quite abruptly.” She closed her eyes and focused on Ik for a moment longer. When she raised her head, her eyes shone with fear. “John, he was in contact with the Mindaru, inside the AI. His
stones
were in contact.
Oh, no...”

    Bandicut blanched. “Are they damaged, or injured? Can you tell?”

   
B-dang-g-g-g.
“Are they
infected
?” Li-Jared asked bluntly, swinging to where he could peer into Ik’s eyes.

    “Damaged, yes,” Antares said. “Infected? I don’t know. I’m not sure I could tell.” Her gaze narrowed, and it seemed to Bandicut that she was trying to keep her fear to herself.

   
“How-w-w will-l-l you stop-p-p the star-r-r?”
 Ed asked in a vibrating voice that jerked Bandicut’s thoughts back to the other problem.

    “I once helped
make
a star explode,” Jeaves said, as though in another conversation altogether. “That was another time, another place. And the circumstances were different. But perhaps my experience can be helpful in
stopping
an explosion, if what Ik is saying is true.”

    “Listen, I don’t—”

    Copernicus interrupted Bandicut to say, “Let me change the view. If there is an impending hypernova, we might be able to see the signs.”

    “Someone please tell me—
what is a hypernova?
” Antares asked, looking from Ik to the viewspace to Bandicut. “You sound like it’s—”

    “A massive stellar explosion,” Bandicut said. “You know what a supernova is, right? When a star’s core collapses and it blows itself to smithereens?”

    “Sort of,” Antares said.

    “A supernova produces things like neutron stars and black holes.” Bandicut swallowed hard. “A hypernova is even bigger. Jeaves, can you—?”

    “An extreme release of energy,” Jeaves said, picking up smoothly. “Short of the Big Bang, there’s not much that comes close.”

    “But what causes—”

    “Sometimes a collision of black holes. But
sometimes
 a very massive newborn star will collapse abruptly in a gigantic explosion. It’s called a hypernova, and also may be a gamma-ray burster, because the shock wave of gamma rays is so extreme it outshines the whole galaxy for a few seconds. Copernicus, can you show an image?”

    Two windows appeared in the viewspace. One showed a star, one a galaxy. The star suddenly blossomed with intense light, and with a shock wave that billowed out into surrounding space. In the galaxy view a bright point of light erupted, and grew until it was brighter than the rest of the galaxy. After a few seconds, it faded from view.

    “I assume that would be...
dangerous
 to us?” Antares asked.

    Napoleon clicked and answered. “Not just us, but every life-bearing star system within a couple thousand light-years.”

    Bandicut felt as if he’d been slugged in the chest. “Earth...is fifteen hundred light-years from here.”

    “Yes,” Napoleon rasped. “There is a chance that much of Earth’s ecosystem would be fried, fifteen hundred years from now, when the radiation got there.”

    Bandicut had no voice to answer.

*

   
“If you could all please look forward for a moment,” Copernicus said. “Deep and Dark are leading us across the hollowed-out cavity of the Trapezium.”

    Bandicut squinted into the luminous space, but Antares said, “I cannot see them.”

    “Look about a hundred seconds of movement ahead of us, Deep to the right, and Dark to the left. Let me adjust the view.”

    The viewspace zoomed in. Two dark patches became visible against the distant, glowing nebula walls. Bandicut felt an almost immediate tickle in his brain as Charli reached out to make contact. /Anything?/

   
/// Yes. They’re trying to hurry us along. ///

   
/Do we know
where
 they’re leading us?/

   
/// Straight across

   
toward the four stars of the Trapezium.

   
I think our next destination

   
is one of them. ///

   
/Ah./ Bandicut cleared his throat. “Those four big stars ahead,” he said to the others, “are apparently the ones Deep and Dark want us to see next.”

    “Hrah,” Ik said in a strained voice. “Is one of them
*
Nick
*
? Isn’t
*
Nick
*
the star that
*
Brightburn
*
 told us to see?”