Unstable Prototypes (64 page)

"Haven't got much of a choice. There's not a
tremendous amount of elbow room in here," Garotte replied.

"I'll say," Silo agreed.

"Stand by," Ma said, "Artificial gravity
deactivated, inertial inhibitor deactivated. Maneuvering thrusters,
active. Setting to two hundred percent capacity, burst mode."

As gravity disengaged, the various pieces of
debris and the remaining inhabitants of the station slowly drifted
from the ground.

"Thrusters prepared. Firing."

Instantly the whole of the station rocked to
the side. Those who were unrestrained were sent careening into the
walls. In the weapons bay, Purcell was yanked away from the control
panel and scrambled to activate her weak zero-g maneuvering jets
again to try to reach it.

"Firing... firing... firing..." Ma
dictated.

With each statement, the station took another
shift. The soldiers and Purcell were rattled about, bouncing
forcefully off of the walls until the shifting finally stopped.

"Thruster heat level critical, entering
cool-down phase," Ma explained.

"Okay, okay!" Lex said shakily, "The soldiers
are pretty discombobulated. I'm going to try to get by."

"Acknowledged. Thrusters offline, artificial
gravity active."

As gravity suddenly reasserted, the
unprepared and bewildered crashed to the ground.

"Karter, stay safe and take care of Squee,"
Lex said, hanging the funk around its creator's neck.

"Uh huh," Karter said, glancing down at the
creature. "Hey, have you been tampering with this thing? That wire
is
not
stock."

Ignoring the inventor, Lex burst from his
cover and charged down the hall.

#

In the weapons bay, Commander Purcell
recovered from the rock tumbler of a journey she had just taken.
She dragged herself along the floor to the panel and resumed her
code entry.

"What is your status, Lex?" Ma asked.

"Running! How long have I got?"

"Commander Purcell has entered sixty-eight
out of eighty necessary digits."

"I don't know if I can-"

"Seventy-one."

"I'm at least three decks away, I don't-"

"Seventy-eight. The code is entered.
Commander Purcell, this is the last warning you will receive. Do
not activate the CME Activators."

"You cannot stand in the way of progress. The
ashes of today will fertilize the fields of tomorrow, and I shall
be the one to light the flames!"

Her gloved hand came down on the execute
command. The grind of machinery rang out, and with six distinct
streaks of engine flare, the CMEAs fired.

"You should not have done that," Ma
stated.

"In a century, when mankind has advanced
beyond the timid, cowardly apes we are today, I will be hailed as a
savior," she proclaimed.

"Stand by...," Ma stated.

"It is over. You've lost," Purcell announced
defiantly. "Stand by for what?"

"The contingency plan," Ma stated.

At a whisper of motion in the corner of her
eye, Purcell turned to the open loading door of the weapons bay.
Rapidly approaching was a sleek, black ship. Retro-rockets flashed
and the ship came to a stop outside the door. A turret
repositioned, and a dim light traced a flickering line from the
ship to the commander. Purcell felt it as a crushing, immobilizing
force.

"What... what is that?" Purcell
struggled.

"That is the Son of Betsy, the ship belonging
to one of the individuals currently infiltrating this station. I am
controlling it remotely, and it is holding you in its tractor
beam," Ma explained. "Some of your men have locked down the bay
containing the Declaration of War, but the Son of Betsy is fully
under my control."

"Force her to deactivate the missiles! Send a
kill code! Call them back!" Silo urged over the radio.

"Uh, yeah, that won't work," Karter said.
"They don't have transceivers. There's no kill switch."

"Why not!?" Silo asked.

"Because no one put a kill switch in the
design specification," Karter said simply.

"I am opening a communication connection to
all decks of the station. Tell your soldiers to stand down," Ma
instructed.

Purcell struggled to take a deep breath as
the channel opened. "Attention, men... Fight to your last
breath!"

"I urge you to reconsider. You will not
receive any more opportunities to do so," Ma stated. Her time as an
organic creature must have produced some lingering effects on her
voice module, because she managed a tone of smoldering anger far
more effectively than a few chopped up voice response systems
should have been able to manage.

"I am dedicated to my cause. As long as I
draw breath I will do everything I can to tear down the
technologies that are holding us back. I will never stop. I
wouldn't be afraid of you even if you
could
hurt me, but you
are a machine. There's nothing you can do."

"Once again, I must inform you that you are
incorrect. Your belief that I am incapable of harming a human is
based upon the three laws of robotics, which were not a part of my
design. I do not have laws governing my actions, only principles,
which are far more flexible. You have threatened the lives of my
friends and my creator. You have set into motion a sequence of
events which, if they unfold as projected, may irreparably damage
the stability of human society for generations. You have stated the
intention to continue this behavior if given further opportunities.
You have made me
very
angry. I find violence of any kind
extremely distasteful, but occasionally justifiable after extreme
deliberation."

"Your hollow threats don't frighten-"

"Deliberation complete," Ma stated
dispassionately.

With a pivot and turn, the SOB whipped its
captured prey to the side, hurling Purcell out the loading doors
and slinging her into the blackness of space. Before she could even
manage to scream, she was outside of the limited transmission range
of her suit's radio. A moment later, Lex came skidding into the
damaged doorway, pistol raised.

"Hold it right... Uh... Ma? Where'd the bad
guy go?" He asked.

"Away," the AI stated. "Please disengage the
manual override on the loading doors so that I can attempt to
pressurize the bay and release Garotte and Silo. You need to leave
this star system as soon as possible. I have alerted local
authorities of the impending catastrophe, and they are quite likely
to send patrol ships here."

"You mean..."

"All six CME Activators have been deployed.
We have lost."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean we lost?"
Lex said, making his way carefully to the open bay door and pulling
the internal counterpart to the external release that Purcell had
used to open it. He glanced out toward the distant sun while the
door began to grind closed. "I don't see a solar flare heading this
way."

"The coronal mass ejection will not reach
this orbital distance for several days, and it will not be
initiated until the activators reach the star in approximately
fifty-two minutes," Ma explained.

"The SOB could get to the star and back
dozens of times in fifty-two minutes. I'll just chase them down and
blow them up!"

"Oh, please. Give me
some
credit,"
Karter objected on the radio.

"Karter? Did I give you a radio?" Lex
asked.

"There was one strapped to the funk. Listen,
you can't just 'chase them down.' They're running twilight drives.
Why do you think they're taking so long to get to the star in the
first place?"

"Uh... Okay, what's a twilight drive?" Lex
said.

"Ma, when this is over, you'll have to
explain to me why you thought that it was a good idea to track down
the single most ignorant human being in the universe to lend a
hand," Karter growled.

"I will explain," Ma stated. "Modern star
ships are designed to operate within two standard speed classes:
fractions of the speed of light and multiples of the speed of
light."

"That much I know. The Carpinelli Field lets
us skip the middle man."

"The twilight drive is a drive-system
designed to jump to and maintain a near-light speed," Ma
continued.

"But why would anyone want to do that? It's
slower."

"
And
less efficient," Karter chimed
in, "But the laws of physics behave differently at that speed, it
makes sensors of all kinds more or less useless, and anyone
attempting to intercept will outrun them or fall behind. It is a
top notch way to run a medium-range, self-propelled weapon."

"And you're telling me I can't go that exact
speed in my ship?"

"The SOB was not designed with sustained
relativistic velocities in mind. The Carpinelli Effect is only
completely stable at much higher speeds. The ship would be
subjected to forces and effects that would make successful
navigation practically impossible," Ma stated.

"For the past few days I've been traipsing
across the cosmos trying to help a super-intelligent woodland
creature to rescue a mad scientist. 'Practically impossible' is par
for the course at this point," Lex said.

"It is an unacceptable risk with near-zero
probability of success. Each of the six missiles is on a randomized
course."

"Heh, probably not, actually," Karter
interjected again. "They shot me in the back before I told them the
procedure for setting the random seed, so those things are probably
all taking the default route. I can plug the course into the SOB's
nav computer."

"You're being unusually helpful, Karter," Lex
said, suspiciously. "Could it be that you are actually trying to
prevent this disaster?"

"I built your ship and I built the CME
Activators. I'm curious to see which is better," he said. "Averted
technological disaster is an unintended side effect, assuming the
SOB wins."

"Processing... there is now a marginal chance
for success, but negligible chance for survival," Ma said. "I am
not comfortable asking you to risk your life."

"Ma, I'm a freelancer. Have been for over two
years. I've made a career out of flight plans with a negligible
chance for survival. Besides, we've been through this before. It's
an imperative, remember. A personal rule."

"It is vital that one follow one's own
rules," Ma agreed. "Very well. I will make changes to the sensors
and firmware of your ship. Please go to the storage room indicated
on your slidepad. There is a device designated the yo-yo coil that
the station records indicate they have fabricated which should give
you a reasonable capacity to exploit the vulnerability to blunt
force that serves as the design weakness."

"I'm on it... Uh... What if I run into any
lingering soldiers?"

"Stand by..." Ma said, continuing on the PA
system and all radio frequencies. "Attention remaining
Neo-Luddites. Your commander is no longer on this station. Her
final order was to fight to your last breath. Ignoring this order
and laying down your weapons until the authorities arrive or you
are delivered to their custody is recommended. Alternately, if you
are dedicated to following this order, I am pleased to inform you
that I am now in control of station-wide environmental controls,
and I will gladly schedule your final breath at your earliest
convenience. For soldiers outfitted with environmental suits,
please be advised that I have located the cybernetic entity known
as Zerk on short-range sensors. If you are unaware of the
capabilities of this entity, seek out a soldier who has faced it.
If you have difficulty finding a soldier who has faced it, this is
because it left very few survivors. This is, itself, an adequate
indication of its capabilities. It is still active, and I will be
able to re-introduce it to the station shortly. Thank you." Ma
resumed her private connection to the others. "I am confident you
will not encounter resistance."

"Boy am I glad you're on our side..." Lex
remarked as he hurried away.

"Silo and Garotte. Due to the large amount of
damage done to this deck, pressurizing this bay sufficiently to
release you may take some time. Are you in immediate danger?" Ma
asked.

"Oxygen and carbon-dioxide levels should be
okay for a few hours, if the suit's scrubbers do their job,"
Garotte answered. "Not that you should dawdle."

"It's starting to get a might chilly in
here," Silo added, "I think my suit's heater went out when I lost
the helmet."

"Lucky that it's cozy then, eh?" Garotte
remarked.

"I am currently attempting to identify a
sequence of functional bulkheads that will allow atmospheric
retention for this area."

"Much obliged," Garotte said.

#

Inside the dark and cramped interior of the
case, Silo shifted uncomfortably as Garotte switched off his
transmitter. Through a series of difficult and awkward contortions,
he managed to fetch a chemical light from a pouch on the suit and
activate it. What little space inside the case that was not
occupied by a tangle of human anatomy was filled with a vague green
glow. Now that there was light enough to see, Garotte and Silo
simultaneously noticed that their faces were inches apart, their
noses nearly touching. If the face shield of Garotte's helmet had
not been raised and retracted, Silo's face would be squeezed
against it. A sudden and failed attempt to give each other more
space served only to reveal that there simply wasn't any more space
to give. With a sigh, Garotte fought his arm up and wedged the
light behind one of the brackets near the top of the case, just
above their heads.

"There, that ought to be a bit more pleasant
than the helmet lights," he said.

He looked down again to be greeted by a stern
expression on Silo's face.

"Something wrong, my dear?"

"Oh, no. This is just dandy. Exactly how I
wanted things to turn out. I'm so very happy that you never came up
with a Plan B. Heck, it might have denied us this gosh darned
moment of bliss."