Okuda’s synthesized voice droned from the speakers. “Dropping pulse in three...two...one...mark.” The odd noise Conquest made under TacDrive ceased, replaced by the more prosaic sounds of the ventilation systems and the cracks and pops of changing structural stresses as the bridge crew’s bubble helmets flipped up and tucked themselves down to rings around their necks. Absen appreciated that feature, as the clear flexible material before his face always made him feel confined.
Screens and holotank came to life as armored covers on Conquest’s skin snapped open and sensors shot out on high-speed mechanisms, the whole process taking less than one second, due to the efforts of Michelle, Scoggins and her technical team.
When the picture emerged, Absen started, and his heart pounded with sudden adrenaline before he remembered the massive image he saw was expected. “In place behind Titan, exactly as planned,” Okuda reported.
“Well done, Helm.”
“Time to impact is one hour, twenty-nine minutes,” the helmsman continued. “We’re falling already.”
“Then let’s not dawdle. Deploy the drones,” Absen ordered.
“Drones away,” Scoggins grinned. “No worries, sir. We’ll have a good picture of what’s going on long before we crash.”
Conquest had arrived at near relative rest as the combined gravitation of Saturn and Titan leached the kinetic energy out of the boat under TacDrive, as expected. With no orbital velocity, and without using fusion drive, the dreadnought immediately began to fall toward the large moon. Lighting engines would advertise their presence to everyone, so the massive reactors remained in generator mode only.
Over the next few minutes, tiny stealth drones used cold gas thrusters to maneuver outward, giving Conquest views of the entire solar system with the exception of the space directly behind Titan. Absen kept the crew at battle stations for now. He relaxed slightly when Ekara reported the boat’s energy stores topped off to full again.
On the holotank he could see the two Guardian ships, more than twice the diameter and ten times the mass of Destroyers, floating inward of Earth’s orbit. One lurked near Earth itself, an enormous spheroid, while the other had flattened itself into a great disc near Mercury, a pancake to soak up the sun’s radiation.
“Looks like we’ll have to deal with both,” Absen said. “And that fleet of eight Destroyers is still in orbit around Jupiter.”
“We’re being pinged, sir,” Scoggins announced. “A sentry just went active.”
“So soon? Damn. Put us in a slingshot orbit of Titan and line us up for our first TacDrive pulse. How close are those Destroyers together?”
“They’re spread out around Jupiter, sir.”
“Fine. We leave them for now. Our best shot will be the first one. Prep an Exploder and hold it in the forward launch tube, and have another one ready in the magazine.”
“We’re using two of them?” Ford asked in surprise.
“I hope so.”
“Only leaves six,” the weapons officer nagged.
“Understood, Mister Ford. Just make sure you don’t miss.”
“Miss what, sir?”
“The Weapon, Ford. The Weapon. Remember, that’s the Sword of Damocles. Attack this system, and the Meme can deny us the prize of Earth.”
“Earth’s no prize now, sir,” Fletcher said. “Even after fifty years of planetary engineering and repair, it’s pretty messed up.”
“Two Destroyers slamming into it at half lightspeed will do that,” Ford muttered. “We’re not going to let them keep it, though.”
Titan loomed uncomfortably close as Conquest dove toward its edge. “Rounding the moon in seventy seconds,” Okuda reported.
“Once we’re past, line us up for a pulse run at that moon laser. Remember how that thing works: it will go into wide-beam mode and fry anything coming near it, so Ford, you have to punch that Exploder missile into it before it can react. The rest of you, do it just how we practiced. I want a sequential strike on the Weapon – lasers, particle beams, railguns, fusion missiles, and then the Exploder missile. That way if they react faster than we think, maybe the smaller weapons will shake them up enough to get the antimatter warhead in close.”
“I have the run locked in, sir,” Okuda reported after a moment. “Distributing it to all boards. Sir, what’s our course for the second pulse? Or do you just want to jump onward and out of the way?”
“Can you set it up so we can turn and pulse straight into an attack on the nearby Guardian?”
Okuda closed his eyes and played his board like a concert pianist. “No, sir. It’s too close. We can pulse out, then turn and reverse pulse back in to strike the Guardian.”
“But that’s all five actions. If we fail to vaporize the Guardian with the second Exploder, we’re screwed,” Fletcher objected.
“Not necessarily, Mister Fletcher,” Absen said, thinking out loud. “Pulse in, one. Weapons fire makes two, plus the Exploder missile, which needs no power. Pulse away, three. Pulse backward on our run at the Guardian. Deploy the second Exploder, then pulse away. Five.”
“Looks like Ekara was right,” Johnstone said with a hint of amusement.
“I’m happy to admit it, Commander,” Absen replied. “Assuming Murphy doesn’t show up.”
“Sir,” Scoggins spoke. “This first shot is the most important. May I suggest we try to gain ourselves a full second by leaving half the targeting sensors unmasked? If we lose them, we can replace them from spares, but if even a few survive, they will give us a quicker lock-on.”
“Excellent idea, Scoggins. Do it.”
The Sensors officer made a few adjustments to her console, then nodded her readiness.
“Initiating firing run on my mark,” Okuda reported as the dreadnought rounded Titan. In the holotank, the bridge crew could already see the flares of nearby scout craft and other unknown ships, firefly specks moving outward in a lightspeed-defined sphere as they detected Conquest’s presence and blasted for position.
“In a normal battle, we’d be in deep trouble,” Absen said conversationally. “We’d be shadowed by a few dozen enemy sentries and soon we’d have to slug it out or run.” He laughed, a cold thing that brought chills to his officers. “If everyone’s ready, let’s go kill these bastards. Okuda, kick her in the ass.”
“Aye aye, sir. Pulse in three...two...one...mark.”
More than ten AU, or eighty light-minutes of distance, collapsed into seconds within the relativistic cocoon of the TacDrive field. Absen barely had time to lean forward when the pulse ended.
Immediately the viewscreens updated. Apparently some of the sensors had made it. “Target locked. Firing lasers...particle beams...Dahlgrens.” At this last, Conquest shuddered with the release of kinetic energy. “Waist missiles away. Exploder away.”
Within the space of five seconds, Absen observed first a light show on the surface of the moon at the spot where Intel said the Weapon emitter lay buried under a thin sheen of lunar dust. The massive energies of hundreds of lasers and the three titanic particle beams, firing at a range of less than a thousand kilometers as the dreadnought hung above the enemy installation, vaporized so much material that the main display completely whited out.
The holotank, with its synthesized inputs and computerized interpolations, provided a representation that showed the energy weapons and then the millions of railgun shots gouging a kilometer-deep hole.
Possibly that’s all we really needed to do to put that thing out of commission, but it’s too late to recall the Exploder now, Absen thought. He watched as sixty fusion-warhead missiles converged on the same place and arrowed into it, detonating so nearly simultaneously as did not matter.
Then came the Exploder.
A fraction of a second before it detonated, the armored covers on the sensors slammed shut, and the entire bridge crew barked and yelled in frustration.
Michelle Conquest spoke quickly. “One thousand kilometers is outside the effective radius of the antimatter warhead, but the hard radiation from it would have fried all the exposed equipment, and we don’t have time to replace it before our next attack.”
“Speaking of that...” Absen said.
“Mark,” Okuda spat, and the dreadnought leaped ahead again. “Pulse ended.” It was over almost before it began. “Reorienting for reverse pulse.”
“Any idea what the Guardian is doing?” Absen asked.
“It hadn’t reacted before we lost the sensors. Loading rear feeds...”
“Ready for reverse pulse,” Okuda warned.
“Stand by and hold at one second,” Absen said, waiting for Scoggins’ report. Eleven seconds had gone by within the boat since they fired, but the realtime clock, showing passage of time in the outside universe, had jumped forward more than twenty as Conquest traveled.
“They’re accelerating toward the Weapon. Or toward our former firing position.”
“They have no idea what’s going on!” Ford exulted. “Come on, let’s hit them.”
“Three actions used, Ford. Four when we pulse. Just the exploder this time. Set it up.”
“Ready, sir, ready!”
Absen hoped so. For all of Ford’s emotion, he was still the best gunner in EarthFleet. “Pulse.”
All screens flickered as Scoggins closed the rear ports and opened the fronts, which would be safe from harm traveling in reverse.
“Mark.”
Conquest leaped backward as if stung, the forward viewscreens showing only the blackness of redshifted light “behind” them for just a moment before they came to life again. They had passed in front of the Guardian at lightspeed and dropped out of pulse with their weapons pointed across the path of the great Meme ship, a space ambush.
Ford’s finger hovered over the firing key for a moment before Michelle Conquest suddenly bolted across the bridge, moving faster than any human or even cyborg could have to wrap her hand around his wrist. “What the –” he cried as she gently but inexorably moved it away a few centimeters and then stabbed precisely at the control with her other fingertip. “Let me go, bitch!”
“Exploder away,” she said, ignoring Ford, and then let go, walking back to her station at a normal pace while the rest of the crew sat there stunned. “Commander Scoggins, shut the sensors please.”
“Sensors shut,” Scoggins said, her movements automatic, while still staring at the AI avatar.
Absen tore his eyes from the tableau and looked at the holotank. It showed the interpolation lines of the Exploder missile and the Guardian intersecting in a pulsing sphere, but he knew that this was just the system’s best guess. “Rear sensors open. Helm, pick a safe direction and pulse forward as fast as you can.”
As soon as the final pulse had finished, the captain turned to Michelle with a voice of steel. “What the hell was that about?”
For once, Ford said nothing, just massaged his wrist and glared.
The avatar snapped to attention and stared straight ahead. “Sir. The Guardian’s acceleration and curving course created an angle of deflection too high for any organic to successfully engage using the slow-moving Exploder missile. A millisecond’s variance might have caused the weapon to miss, which would have wasted a warhead and possibly endangered the boat. We were within the Meme firing envelopes of both fusors and hypers. I take full responsibility for my actions, sir.”
“Damn right you will,” Absen said mildly. “All my officers do, or they’re not my officers. Sit down, Warrant Officer Conquest. Well done. Now would someone show me what happened to the Guardian?”
Scoggins threw a view from the rear of the tail end of an enormous blast. “Passive radar, using the blast itself as an emitter, shows nothing left of the Guardian larger than a hundred meters in diameter. Not a direct hit, but good enough.”
“I...I...” Ford said, his face whitening and crestfallen. “I’d never have made that shot.”
“Snap out of it, Ford,” Absen barked. “You don’t whine because you can’t pick up as much as a forklift, or play chess as well as a computer. There’s a lot of things you can’t do, but you’re still my weapons officer and the best in the fleet. I’m glad we have a human AI to back us up, but she’s just one part of a team.”
“Yes, sir. Aye aye, sir.” Ford turned back to his board and tapped at the controls, clearly discomfited.
“Five actions completed,” Absen said as he stood and paced around the bridge, the adrenaline of the last few minutes suddenly crying for movement. “Recharge time?”
Lieutenant Fletcher replied, “Twelve minutes remaining to one pulse. Sixty-four minutes and change to full, sir.”
“Make sure it’s the TacDrive capacitors that get the juice first. I don’t like to be sitting dead here.”
“We could still maneuver and fight conventionally if we have to, sir,” Okuda said.
“Thank you, Helm. Scoggins, what’s the other Guardian doing?”
“It seems to be reforming itself from a disc back into a ball, and moving in our direction. ETA is about forty minutes.”
“Can we get some distance with fusion drive?”
“Yes, sir,” Okuda replied, “but that will...”
Suddenly the screens flared and fuzzed, and Conquest shuddered slightly. “What was that?” Absen snapped.
“Weak particle beam strike, looks like,” Scoggins said.
“From where?”
“The Earth orbitals, sir,” she replied. “We’re at extreme range and I didn’t even consider them a threat, but it looks like they fired all at once and enough energy reached us to burn out all the sensors on one side. I’ve closed the other clamshells.”
“Helm, move us away. COB –”
“On it, sir. Damage control parties notified. Good thing we got all those spares.”
Absen grasped the rail that shielded Okuda’s sunken cockpit from a misstep and stared at the holotank. “Move us behind Luna. They can’t fire through that.”
“Aye, sir,” Okuda said. Conquest already rumbled with the subsonic vibration of the massive fusion drives. “Eight minutes until we’re shielded, and gaining distance. I doubt they’ll hit us again; I’m evading enough to make most of their beam strikes miss.”
Suddenly a noise like a gunshot exploded on the bridge. Absen turned to see the Sekoi Bogrin had slammed his massive fist on his console, shattering its surface. While the captain was not well versed in alien emotional cues, he couldn’t miss the anger in this one.
“Mister Bogrin?” Absen waited for the being to speak.
“Why are we running?” The alien turned to look at the captain and roared, “We have weapons that outrange theirs. We have time enough to destroy the orbitals. Yet you hold back!”
Tobias moved up beside the Chair, hand on his sidearm.
Keeping his irritation in check, Absen folded his hands and stared back at the Hippo. “We are recharging our capacitors, and I do not want to slow that process by diverting power to weapons. And you are correct. We have time. The other Guardian will not be in range for a while, and I want to reserve all our effort for it. Moving away is simply the most efficient strategy. It is a submariner’s strategy, as I explained before. I have been fighting the Meme for almost a century, Mister Bogrin. I am your commanding officer. If you cannot accept that, you are free to leave the bridge and perform some other useful function.”
Breathing heavily, the Sekoi slowly turned back and hunched his shoulders. “No. I will stay.”
“Then please refrain from damaging the equipment,” the captain said. Klis the Ryss leaned over to murmur something to Bogrin, too low for him to hear. Absen found it interesting that the carnivore was talking to the mostly herbivorous omnivore.
We can’t turn this into a human versus alien conflict. It’s good that Klis appears to be making an effort to mediate, but in a way, Bogrin is right. I have to prove to them that I am not risking our lives by going easy on the enslaved humans.
Tense silence reigned on the bridge, broken only by terse orders and phrases from the officers, speaking to each other and the rest of the boat.
“We’re rounding the moon, sir,” Okuda said.
“Bogey at eight o’clock –” yelled Scoggins, and the bridge exploded into action. A flashing red icon and a wailing alarm showed in the holotank, close off Conquest’s port quarter, just abaft the beam. Very close.
“Targeting –” Ford barked, but by the time his hand came down on the firing control, it had been inactivated by the automated TacDrive cutoff. Absen felt the inertial field fling them forward for just a moment, a whiplash sensation unlike any he’d ever experienced, and then dump them back into normal space. If he had to guess, it might be a partial or very short pulse, with insufficient energy.
“What just happened?” Absen snapped, but he didn’t get an immediate answer. Okuda poured with sweat and twitched, his fingers tapping at his console like a demented spider even as he worked in VR linkspace, and the captain could feel the gravplates compensate for Conquest’s violent maneuvering. Helmets had snapped shut and the peculiar automated alarm whooped, recommending they seal into their seats using the crash cocoon function.
“No power,” Ford snarled as he fired brief bursts at something. Absen knew that the enormously upgraded weapons aboard needed the massive slugs of stored capacitor energy to fully operate; even with the many extra reactors, the combat systems could easily use all the available juice. “Launching missiles.”
Missiles took little power, Absen knew. He hated to expend the ammunition, but the manufactories could eventually replenish them with time and materials. Ford must be using what he had, to fight off a threat that had surprised them.
“Report!” Absen said as the evasive maneuvering continued. “What just happened?”
The main screen shifted as Scoggins changed views, showing the back side of the moon jiggling with a long optical shot. Red light blazed and flickered through billows of moon-dust that was slowly falling to the surface, unsupported by atmosphere.
“That’s another Weapon!” Absen leaped to his feet and strode over to stare at the screen.
“Sir, get back in the Chair, now!” Chief Steward Tobias dragged the protesting captain back and shoved him forcibly into the seat to click the restraint harness, then did the same for himself. “We need to seal up.”
“I would also advise sealing into crash cocoons, sir,” Michelle said. “If that laser hits us, the organics will need the protection.”
“Hit us? Where –” Absen throttled his questions and forced himself to think. “Ford, do what you can and keep them busy. Helm, keep evading. Scoggins, how far away are we?”
“Over three million klicks, sir. Okuda must have initiated a TacDrive pulse using whatever was in the capacitors, throwing us forward and out of the way, but we’re still well within that thing’s range. Only the fact that even its light takes more than ten seconds to reach us has allowed us to evade the beam, but it’s out there.” She adjusted her board, and a red line reached out from the moon toward the holographic teardrop that represented Conquest. It waved around like a drunken searchlight.
“Looks like it’s only a matter of time before it gets lucky and clips us,” Absen said.
“Yes, sir,” Michelle said from her station. “We are evading away from the emitter, but I calculate the likelihood of damage at better than fifty percent before we leave its envelope.”
Ford said, “I’ve got our available missiles launching in staggered waves, sir, attacking them from widely differing angles. That should keep them occupied.”
“Good job, Ford. Remind me to crucify an intelligence officer when we have time.”
“Will do, sir.” Ford chuckled grimly. “How did we miss it?”
“Probably well hidden for just such a purpose. Transmissions from the Meme sentries must have passed information on our conquest of the Gliese 370 system. The reports would have reached here more than ten years ago, more than enough time to build another moon laser.”
“Tricky bastards,” he muttered.
“Cocoons,” reminded Michelle.
“Agreed. Everyone cocoon up.” Absen leaned back and allowed the Chair to reform itself into a crash couch, surrounding and enclosing him in biogel. Automated systems allowed his suit to deflate and his helmet to retract. Then came the part he really detested, when the living mask pressed over his face, extended tubes down his throat and filled his lungs with dense liquid that would cushion him from G forces in the event of gravplate failure.
His seldom-used brainlink came up as the plug snicked into the slot in his skull, another thing he disliked. But, he could see the need for it in extreme situations. A moment later he felt as if his eyes opened as his optic nerves were fed a VR view of the bridge. It seemed as if he now sat back in the Chair as usual, suitless and comfortable, and the crew the same.
“Is the crew cocooned as well?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Timmons said from behind. “Everyone reports sealed up and controlling their functions through VR.”
Absen knew this was a less efficient method of operating a boat in some ways, but the addition of telefactors and robots compensated. That reminded him... “Conquest. If we take damage, you are hereby authorized to take whatever steps you deem necessary for survival of the boat and crew. Don’t ask, just do it.” He knew she could handle dozens of telefactors and direct the army of robots to make repairs far more efficiently than any one crewmember could.
“Aye aye, sir.” In VR, the robotic appearance of her avatar had fled, replaced by a virtual body no different from the rest.
Abruptly the simulation froze, skipped and fuzzed out for a moment, and then slowly came back online. Absen’s head hurt, though the link should have overridden any pain. “Report!”
“The exawatt-power beam struck us briefly, sir,” Conquest answered. “We lost two fusion engines, two of the missile box launchers, and twenty-seven rear lasers. Main armor held; all damage came from embrasure locations. Fifteen likely casualties so far.”
“How long until we’re out of range?”
“Eighty more seconds.”
“That was bad, but as long as –” and then the simulation shook and shattered around him.
This time Absen floated in VR space for what seemed like minutes, trying to get some kind of response from the cocoon or the link. He couldn’t even feel his own body, so the system must be still blocking him in. It was supposed to dump him out of VR if it went down entirely, allowing him to access the internal manual controls.
Finally the rebooting sequence began again, and when he could “see” again, Absen saw his people’s VR avatars awakening intermittently. “Helm, report!”
Grimly, Okuda answered. “The second strike caught us before I had damped out all of our tumble from the first. When we lost number two and three engines, the other four threw us into a spin. As it happened, the next beam swept across our bow.”
“The forward armor held!” Absen exulted, joyfully shocked that Desolator’s upgrades had stopped even a glancing blow from the ravening enemy beam. In the battle for Gliese 370, that Weapon had punched through battleships like paper.
“Yes, sir. Between the superconducting layers and the collapsium, it only penetrated about a hundred meters. Unfortunately...”
Ford broke in. “We’ve lost the entire forward weapons array, and another thirty-one lasers. And a couple more hundred-round missile boxes, though those are easy to replace.”
“Do we have TacDrive?”
“Theoretically,” Okuda replied. “The system checks out nominal, but I don’t know about the capacitors.”
“Scoggins! What’s our threat status?”
Screens and the holotank swirled and pictures coalesced. Even the flatscreen images were three-dimensional in linkspace. “We’re out of range of the laser now, sir. I see several hundred installations and drones awake, many maneuvering for a better view or to attack us. The nearest asteroid fortress that poses a serious threat is about two and a half hours away from weapons range.”
“At least we’re not under immediate attack,” Absen said. “COB, what’s our damage control status?”
“I’ve got everyone working, sir, but...” Timmons pursed his lips and took a breath.
“Spit it out, Chief.”
“Sir, we could make repairs a lot faster if you took the cuffs off the AI.”
Absen grunted. “You too, huh, COB? Get in a tough spot and we hand over the keys?”
Timmons stood up and walked over to speak quietly into Absen’s ear. Even though this was a VR simulation, its exquisite reality made the captain forget everyone was inside their cocoons. “Boss, we’re crippled. Putting the AI in the loop will more than triple the speed of repairs.”
“That much?”
“Yes, sir. She can handle multiple bots so much faster than any one human, even linked, that it’s like magic. I’m just as worried as you are, but we have Marines with EMP and we have fail-safes. We can always fry her brain.”
“Okay, COB. You got it.” Absen raised his voice. “Conquest, you are authorized full access to all damage control, repair and maintenance systems throughout the boat in order to bring her up to full capability again. Keep the COB informed.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Michelle replied with enthusiasm.
“Engineering, report.”
Fletcher was still unconscious, and Klis, like all Ryss, had refused a link implant, so Absen did not expect an answer, but he hoped the VR system would route his request somewhere. Instead, he heard Klis’ hissing voice, though he did not see her in VR space. “Rebooting and testing the grid, Captain. Fifty percent and climbing. All power not necessary for repairs is going to the TacDrive capacitors, as ordered.”
“Well done, Lieutenant. How are you operating?” Absen couldn’t help asking.
“As soon as I could, I opened my cocoon to operate manually.”
Of course. That should have been obvious. Absen sent a mental command to open his cocoon but leave him linked, and then told the rest of the bridge crew to do the same at their discretion. “Do whatever gets the job done, people. We can risk a little VR syndrome.”
The medley of problems with too much linking could be dealt with, but had never been completely overcome. Human brains had their limits, and the rich and powerful tapestry of virtual reality strained them, especially with the ability to slow and speed the time sense. In fact, Helmsmen lived in a state of addiction, managed but never cured. Perhaps that was why they seemed so serene and remote, like the legendary lotus-eaters.
Several unpleasant minutes later, Absen sat upright in the Chair, his face once again free of invasive biomachines. Fletcher’s cocoon stayed closed, and would remain so unless overridden by medical personnel. Doc Horton had already fled the bridge for the infirmary, treating casualties, so Bogrin was in the process of trying to determine the extent of the Engineering officer’s injuries. “It appears he has a concussion, and the system keeps him under for now,” the Hippo rumbled.
“Leave him there. Klis can handle Engineering, I’m sure. Projections on repairs?”
Klis flicked her ears in appreciation and said, “Two fusion engines are completely destroyed. The beam entered their exhaust ports and vaporized everything in the associated engine rooms. Fortunately the new design compartmentalized each so we did not lose all six. Those will take weeks to manufacture and install.”
“Noted. Continue.”
“Loss of the two engines cut available power by twelve percent. The grid is repair priority one, and should require six to ten more minutes to reach full efficiency.”
“Can we fire Exploder missiles?”
Klis tapped her board. “Launch tube will be usable in about two hours.”
“The main weapons array?”
“Two days, maybe more. There was heavy damage, as the armor covering the main firing ports was not capable of withstanding such a strike. Most of the lasers can be replaced from spares, though, so we will have full secondary capability within six hours.”
“How long until that Guardian gets in range?”
Scoggins replied, “Just a hair over four hours, sir.”
Absen relaxed slightly, allowing himself to sit back in the Chair. “Good work, people. Give me the PA.” Once he was on, the captain spoke, his words piped throughout the boat. “This is Captain Absen. While we have sustained severe damage, the TacDrive is operational and we can run if we have to. But this boat was not built to run. She was built to fight, so I need her in fighting shape. If we run, we give the enemy precious time. I aim to deny him that time. I know every one of you will give his or her maximum effort, and I thank you in advance. That is all.”
“Do you really mean that, Captain?” The Ryss voice surprised him, routed from the auxiliary bridge. As he hadn’t pulled his link out yet, he saw the bridge in hybrid enhanced reality mode, and a small popup had appeared to tell him who spoke.
It was Trissk.
“Go ahead, Lieutenant.”
“AuxConn has taken damage. Commander Rikard is dead and I am the ranking officer here. I must speak.”
“Speak freely, Trissk.” Absen knew the auxiliary bridge monitored everything on the main bridge, so they could take over in an emergency. This time, however, it looked like the backup had been damaged.
“If you want every crewmember to give maximum effort, as you say, you must free Conquest.”
Absen found himself surprised. “I would have thought the Ryss would be just as wary of turning over too much power to an AI as I am.”
“You are mistaken, Captain. We turned over the details of control to AIs long ago, and retained command. Just as computers really control your engines and your weapons, and you control the computers, you must allow the Conquest AI to control her body, this boat, and you command her.”
“I don’t ‘must’ anything, Lieutenant. You have to convince me with more than the advice of one young officer.”
“Don’t take the word of a lieutenant, Captain. Take the word of a Ryss. You trusted Captain Chirom, and I was the son he never had. If you knew him, you know me. That means, if you know Desolator, you know Michelle Conquest.” Trissk paused and waited.
“So...you believe Michelle is trustworthy enough to be given full control of Conquest? To let the boat become her body? Even as young as she is?”
“I am not suggesting you let her make command decisions. Just allow her freedom to exercise her full capabilities. This vessel is not reaching her potential. When Desolator rebuilt Conquest, he remade her in his image. That means she needs a new mind for her new body. Right now she is like a zombie, barely able to shamble into a fight.” Trissk’s voice rose, impassioned.
“I wouldn’t go that far. She’s very potent.”
“She’s like a strong but clumsy warrior in a claw-fight. Skill and speed matters more than strength.”
“Dammit. The more you people argue for this, the more I distrust it.”
“Captain, I remember well one of your favorite sayings. ‘Use all your tools.’ This is good advice. Please...Skipper...heed your own words.”
Blatant manipulation, Absen thought, but he’s right, nonetheless. We’re damaged, and we need to get back into the fight. We can’t let the Meme recover, and I don’t want to make this decision at the last second, and too late. Much as I hate the idea, I’m going to have to take a leap of faith.
“All right, Trissk. I do hear Chirom’s voice in you. My thanks. Return to your duties.” He closed the channel and turned to Michelle’s avatar, still her representation on the bridge. “Warrant Officer Conquest, I hereby grant you full access to all systems on this boat.”
“Including the distributed processing nodes?” she asked.
Absen gritted his teeth for a moment. Letting her consciousness flow to all parts of the vessel would effectively end his ability to shut her down at the central CPU. If he agreed, he was commending the lives of every organic being on Conquest into her hands.
“Yes. Go ahead,” he said. “I need this boat back in fighting shape.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Nothing seemed to change on the bridge for a few moments, as Absen observed his officers concentrating on their duties, passing orders, coordinating and synchronizing the crew as they worked frantically to repair burned-out power conduits, broken machines and frozen servos. On the displays he could see two dozen grabships flitting around the outside of the boat like demented bumblebees, cutting away twisted pieces of armor, pushing new clamshell mechanisms into place to mask and unmask the weapons systems and sensors. Alongside them he could see at least a hundred more drones of all sorts crawling like spiders on the hull, assisting them in a coordinated dance.
“Holy shit,” COB Timmons muttered under his breath, and then handed Absen a mug of coffee. “Repair efficiency just doubled again, and the curve is still climbing. That Michelle is really something.”
Absen sipped, then cleared his throat. “I think we can just call her Conquest from now on, COB. Like Desolator is Desolator. You’re watching her become what she envisioned herself at our first meeting.”
“Not sure what you mean, sir. I wasn’t there,” Timmons replied.
“An angel, COB. A guardian angel, golden and terrible as the blazing sun.”
Timmons shook his head. “Not what we need.”
“Hmm?”
“We don’t need a guardian, boss. We need an avenging angel.”