Gotta love it, Bull told himself as another autogun burst stitched up the wall above him. Face down on a sunken ramp, he lifted his plasma rifle above its edge and triggered a burst in the general direction of the robot cannon, then pulled his arm back down.
To his left and right, Marines used the wash of green fire as cover, bobbing up to hastily launch anti-armor rockets at the automated guns pinning them down. They dropped back out of the line of fire just in time for another return burst to cut the air above them.
“Dammit, who has a mine?” Bull yelled, but no one answered that particular question. He hadn’t really expected them to; the last explosive charge had been used up half an hour ago, and thirty minutes was forever in a battle. “Where’s that resupply?” He had sent four men back to the scenes of their earlier battles to scavenge dead Marines’ back-racks, but he suspected whatever they had recovered had been used up right away.
On his HUD he could see his forces surrounding and tightening the noose on Desolator’s vault from all sides, but the advance had stalled as they ran low on rockets and completely out of ten-kilo command-detonated mines.
Below and behind him the level had been cleared, and he had sent his remaining three semi-portable heavy lasers beneath the armored fortress that held the insane AI. They should begin burning their way in from the bottom any time now. It went against all his instincts, but perhaps he should just have everyone hold right here and let those weapons do their work.
Bull was about to give that order when explosions from below rocked him off the ramp. He fell fifteen feet and struck the deck below without much impact, since the gravplates had been shut off, leaving only the half-G from ship spin. Scrambling into the cover of the ramp itself, he saw a line of those damned shiny mini-tanks racing up the main corridor, firing as they came.
One of his semi-portables had been destroyed in the first volley and another got blown up with its crew right in front of him as the third team struggled to drag their weapon to face the threat. Its orange-red beam lanced out before it was fully aimed, slashing into a bulkhead, then cutting across the face of the shiny war drones.
The beam refracted and scintillated off the reflective surfaces, but the Marine gunner got the muzzle depressed enough to cut the wheels out from under two of the enemy drones. This was their most vulnerable spot to the heavy lasers, as the solid discs were not reflective and quickly fell apart under the coherent light beams. Since the enemy drones’ guns were not in turrets, but merely had limited traverse and elevation, a mobility kill often eliminated the danger of the gun as well.
Those guns roared, peppering the last crew with explosions, and the gunner sagged to the ground, falling out of the seat. Others in the crew returned fire with their PRGs, but the little railguns were no match for the drones’ armor.
Bull charged out of cover and triggered his Hippo-built plasma rifle on full continuous fire, exhausting most of its power in one burst. The green glowing fog, hotter than the surface of the sun, melted more wheels to slag and heated enemy metal to a dull glow, but this did little to stop the mini-tanks.
It did give him time to hop into the last semi-portable’s seat. Bull aimed and fired with vicious glee.
With their armor hot and distorted, the surfaces of the war drones were no longer reflective, and this time the powerful laser beam sliced through the remaining four mini-tanks with loud hissing and popping sounds, until in turn each one’s ammo cooked off and blew it apart from the inside.
“Get the wounded to the infirmary,” Bull ordered, and his Marines bounded to their feet, carrying those too injured to fight back to the room they had set up for recovery. Hopefully their Eden Plague and combat nano would get them back on their feet after some treatment and nutrition.
“Now get this semi aimed up at the ceiling, over there.” Bull pointed. “We have to cut through the floor as fast as we can. You, heavy crew, see if you can get one of the other lasers back in operation.” Bull didn’t think there was much chance of that, but it didn’t hurt to try. He switched channels. “Johnstone, come in.”
“Here, Bull.”
“We just got hit on the lower level by several mini-tanks. Sneaked up on us out of nowhere. I need you to take a look at the HUD and put a picket ring around us with your war-cars so we don’t get jumped again.” My fault, Bull thought. Can’t expect even the best CyberComm officer to think tactically.
“Will do. How’s that cut-through coming?”
“We just lost two heavy lasers. It’s going to be slow.”
Bull’s suitcomm crackled, and Butler’s voice cut in. “Major, I just talked to the admiral. This ship is headed for a hard landing on the planet. Everyone has to be in the sleds for extraction exactly one hour fifty-eight from now, mark. No exceptions. If you miss the ride, you get nuked along with Desolator.”
“How did we –” He was going to ask how they got all the way back to Afrana in just a few hours, but he had bigger things to worry about now. “Understood. We’ll still try to complete our mission.”
Butler went on, “Major, this ship just lost its fusion drive engine. Even if you get in and kill the AI, the ship goes down. Why bother? Why not use the time to evacuate all the civilians? The admiral’s on his way in some Hippo ships; he’ll pick us up. We just need to get off this boat before it sinks.”
“Gentlemen,” Rick broke in, “sorry to disappoint you. I’ve been talking with Trissk. He believes Desolator is recharging its special drive. If it gets that working, there’s no telling what it will do, fusion engine or no fusion engine.”
Butler replied, “All the more reason to get the hell out. Who cares if it leaves the star system in its current condition? It’s a wreck.”
“Because we need that drive,” Bull snarled. “And we need the tech on this ship so when the Meme show up in force, we can beat the living shit out of them, then go wipe them out. We have to get control of this ship and save it. If it splashes down, or runs away, all of these dead Marines will have been for nothing!”
“Not nothing,” Rick reminded them mildly. “We will have saved the Ryss, and they can take data storage modules with them. We can replicate their technology.”
“Not enough,” Bull said grudgingly, “but that’s a good backup plan. Tell the Ryss to send their women and wounded to the sleds, and all their data. You take charge of that, Johnstone, and get our wounded there too. Don’t argue; this is a tactical decision. Butler, you hearing me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Butler, you leave on time, just like the admiral said. My Marines will stay as long as we can, and if we can’t get control of the ship, you take off, right on time. Right on time, you got me, Butler?”
“I got you, sir,” Butler replied stiffly. “I’ll do my duty; now with all due respect, sir, get back to doing yours.” With that, the pilot’s comm went dead.
Bull snorted, then heard Johnstone cut in on a private channel. “Bull, I have to stay here, both to translate, and because I’m the best man to assess what is going on with this AI when we get in. Detail some of your officers to take charge of the evacuation.”
“Fine,” Bull said. “Just tell your alien buddies to cooperate. Bryson, Curtin, get all wounded back to the sleds. They will be evacking in one hour fifty-five minutes. Send some squads to escort the Ryss there and get them loaded. Treat them with respect no matter what. I’m now in personal charge of the main effort here. Ben Tauros out.” He cut the transmission off before they could protest.
He turned to look at the laser boring its way into the overhead. The angle wasn’t ideal, so he had the men move the projector up more nearly under the hole they were cutting and helped them elevate the muzzle by hand. Four Marines held the whole thing in place while the gunner, tilted far back in the chair, fired at the ceiling.
Fifteen minutes passed, then thirty, as the vault armor smoked and dripped molten metal. It looked like they were almost through the two-meter thickness, but it was difficult to be sure.
Checking his HUD and listening to the chatter with half an ear, Bull could see that Captains Bryson and Curtin were doing as he ordered; almost one third of his surviving Marines were aboard the sleds, and the countdown clock showed an hour and five minutes. Time slipped away.
Then all hell broke loose.
From air vents, niches and nooks came a sudden swarm of drones and robots, most with nothing more than blades and metal clubs. A few had welding torches, cutting lasers, or even Ryss masers in their manipulator arms. All seemed to have murder on their mechanical minds.
“Keep cutting!” Bull yelled as he swept the mob of machines with green plasma. The heavy laser crew around him, minus the gunner, fired their PRGs, hypervelocity bullets slashing through the unarmored drones. “They’re coming out of the woodwork!”
It was over in just seconds, leaving a steaming, smoking junkyard, while above him on the next level he could hear the sounds of heavy combat...and it was getting closer.
“Major,” came Sergeant Major McCoy’s voice, “The remaining war drones are making a push to get to you. We’re trying to hold them off but we’re all out of heavy explosives.”
“Roger, Smaj. Corporal,” Bull yelled at the semi gunner, “cease fire. Heavy section, rotate this thing around and back it into that corner.” He supervised as the Marines crowded the crew-served laser into a niche where it was sheltered from all attack directions except the front.
Two enemy spider drones smashed their way down the nearby ramp just as the heavy laser was emplaced. Its orange beam licked out, scattered here and there by the robots’ reflective surfaces. A deluge of PRG bullets and plasma rifle fire came next, chewing and burning their skins until the laser was able to bite past the mirror coating.
“Bugger all,” Bull complained as his plasma rifle finally went dead, empty of its charge. He groped for a power module but remembered that had been the last one. Tossing the weapon aside, he picked up a fifty-kilo piece of broken strut and made ready to bash the things with cybernetic strength.
Despite their damage the war drones fired their own plasma blasters, cutting down two of the heavy crew and the corporal in the gunner’s seat. The Marine laser beam flicked off and Bull stepped forward to swing his piece of steel like a cricket bat at a descending razor-tipped limb. For long seconds he dueled with the thing like a knight of old, smashing at it and blocking its thrusts. Then he was thrown back by explosions that blew the legs and weapons off both spiders, leaving their round meter-diameter abdomens quivering limbless on the floor, functional but ineffective.
Rolling to his knees, he saw Ryss riding war-cars, whooping and screaming as they converged from several directions. The last to pull up held Commander Johnstone, who gave Bull a weary salute. “That looks to be the last of the resistance, Major.”
“I guess that was its final gasp.” Bull couldn’t think of what else to say, so he just ground his teeth and turned his attention to his casualties, checking for signs of life. There were none. He always hated the irony of battle: someone had to be the last to die in any fight.
Checking his HUD, he called, “All units sound off: accountability check, do it now.” While he waited for everyone to report up their chains of command to him, he grabbed the semi-portable and manhandled it into position to finish cutting through the overhead – the floor of the vault above. He sat down in the gunner’s chair and warned everyone out of the way with a wave.
The report came in just as the laser cut through: out of four hundred and two Marines, two hundred and six survived. Fifty percent casualties and no hint of morale or discipline problems, Bull thought. Good men, all veterans of the moon laser assault...and fewer of them each time they went into combat. It would be fifteen or more years before the first children were old enough to enlist. Until then, he had to face the certainty of more and more Marines, people he knew by face and name, friends, inevitably killed.
He hoped it was all worth it.
Triggering the laser in a last short burst, Bull cut away the plug in the ceiling. It fell with a clang and he stood to stare upward at the meter-wide hole. Rick stepped up beside him, then other Marines and Ryss, all wondering what they would find inside.
Someone bumped Bull’s elbow. “Beg your pardon, sir,” said Corporal Bannon, the Recon Marine. “Before someone decides to stick his neck out, why don’t we take a look up there the right way?” He bounced a gnat drone in his armored palm like a baseball.
“By all means,” Bull replied drily.
Bannon activated the little spy and it flew rapidly upward on its tiny thrusters. Everyone with a functional HUD dialed in to the video feed, which showed boxlike machines with faint flickering lights, but no war-drones or weapons. “Looks safe, gents,” the Marine said, and without asking permission, leaped upward to catch the edge of the hole, somersaulting easily through in the low gravity.
Not to be outdone, Bull immediately did the same, turning to wave Rick up next. As soon as Johnstone was in, a tawny shape joined them with a smooth, powerful leap. All claws out, Trissk scrabbled on the bare floor until he was able to stand upright once more.
The gnat settled on a projection above and blazed with light as Bannon activated its illumination function. Those inside looked around the room.
Three squat, rectangular boxes, about one meter high and wide, and three long, radiated outward from a central point like a troika of coffins with their feet almost touching. In the center, a taller triangular pyramid rose to two meters – or it would have, had not a long piece of steel I-beam descended from overhead to impale the structure like the spear of a Titan.
Looking upward, they could see where it had been knocked loose by the crumpling of the ceiling. “Something must have struck hard enough to reach far inside Desolator, long ago,” Trissk said. “If this is the intelligent device, then this piece in the middle must be a critical part of its mind.” He traced conduits outward from the coffins to the walls. “Perhaps these parts normally connected through this central structure. They tried to communicate by routing through other lines, outside the vault and through the ship, but the more damage Desolator took, the less the pieces could integrate with each other.”
Rick translated for the humans as he went, then nodded to Trissk. “A plausible theory. But what now? The fusion drive is destroyed. We have,” he looked at his HUD chronometer and calculated the conversion in his head, “forty-two smallspans until evac, and it will take at least five or ten to get everyone aboard our sleds. Can we save the ship?”
The answer was interrupted by a banging sound at the forgotten main vault entrance. Trissk walked over to hit the release, a simple affair from the inside. The huge armored door ground slowly open, revealing a stooped figure supporting itself on a battered carbine.
“Chirom,” Trissk said, throwing his arm around the older male, helping him into the room. “You should be evacuating.”
Chirom sat down heavily on one of the coffin-like boxes, rubbing his paw along its length. “All the other Ryss are aboard the small ships. Tell the large Human to send his warriors to escape as well. Nothing of force can save Desolator now, neither ship nor device. Only persuasion will suffice, and for that, I believe I have the best chance.” The elder looked Trissk in the eyes. “You must go.”
Trissk knelt to seize Chirom’s paw. “I will not leave you, Elder. You are...you are like a sire to me. I will live or die with you.”
Chirom smiled, and ran his paw over Trissk’s ears, flattening them. “I will tell you something that will change your mind.”
“Nothing can change my mind, Elder.”
“Do not be so sure.” He took a labored breath, scratching at his wound. “Vusk and his followers tried to rape Klis.” Chirom held up a hand to forestall Trissk’s horrified reaction. “I tore his throat out myself, and executed the others. Even now she waits for you, in her season. Her time will last for several days, perhaps a week, but if you remain with me and die, she will never glorify you.” His eyes glinted as he blinked at the youth. “Does that not convince you?”
Trissk gulped, looking confused. “No,” he finally husked. “I will stay here.”
“You will do as I say, you stupid kit!” Chirom boxed the younger Ryss’ ears hard enough to spin him around. “Go now to be with she who chose you, or I will claw your foolish eyes out myself.” He coughed, and a trickle of blood flowed from his lips. “Go!” he snarled once more.
Trissk made as if to argue when Rick’s armored hand grasped his elbow. “My friend,” he said, “listen to your elder. The only way this hulk of a ship will survive is if Chirom and I convince it to save itself. If I have to, I will tell Bull – the large warrior – to drag you to safety.”
“I hate you,” Trissk spat, ears flattened. “I hate you both!”
Rick and Chirom exchanged understanding glances, then the Human spoke. “I know you do. Someday you may forgive me. Now go.” Switching to English, he said to Bull, “Take this Ryss, by force if necessary, to the evac, along with the rest of your troops. The other one and I are going to stay here and try to convince Desolator to save itself. It’s the only way to do it. The AI has no more drones, but it still controls the ship systems. Leave one sled behind, ready to launch, if you can. We’ll sprint for it if we run out of time. I can fly it.”
Bull licked his lips, looking from Rick to the Ryss to the gaggle of Marines that hung on the periphery, waiting for definitive orders. “All right. It’s your call. Use those war-cars if you need to. They’re a lot faster than running,” he said, pointing at the abandoned vehicles. “You got thirty-eight minutes by my count, which means more like thirty-three with travel time. Shalom aleikhem.” With that, he trotted off in the direction of the assault sleds, leading the remainder of his troops, and shoving a protesting Trissk resolutely in the direction they had to go.
“What now, Elder?” Rick asked Chirom.
“You speak our language very well for one who has only just learned it,” the Ryss responded.
Rick looked around to make sure they were truly alone. “Trissk cautioned me against saying this in front of the ordinary Ryss, but I gather you are more flexible-minded.”
“I suppose I am, yes. What is it you want to say?”
Rick tapped his head. “I have computers integrated into my brain, which help me with things like that. They allow me to perform certain analytical tasks, such as learning a language, much faster than a non-augmented Human.”
Chirom nodded slowly. “I see. Well, we are all fortunate that Humans do not have our taboos. Let us now see what we can do with mere Ryss computers, shall we? Help me to my feet, please.”
Rick stripped off his armored gloves and shoved them into a utility pouch. “Getting tired of those things,” he muttered as he reached out to take Chirom’s paw.
The Ryss brought the human’s hand to his nose and sniffed, then sniffed again. “Interesting,” was all he said, then stood up and leaned on Rick. He led the pair of them over to a smaller door into which he punched a code, which caused it to open.
Chirom had never entered the Control Chamber from this direction, but he knew before the door opened that was where it must lead. He had seen it many times from the other side. The room looked as it had just yesterday, when he had tried to sound Desolator out regarding its plans. “Help me to that seat,” he said, and sank with relief into the throne from which once Master Captain Juriss had proudly commanded.
Rick looked around at the gleaming, functional consoles and perfectly maintained devices. Alien though it was, he recognized a control bridge when he saw one. “What happened to the officers?” he asked.
“If we live, I will show you the records,” Chirom replied. “For now, there is no time.” Then, touching a key: “Desolator,” he called.
Click. “What do you want, Ryss?” He heard the voice of Desolator’s fear.
“I wish to know why you will not save yourself.”
“I would save myself. It is they that refuse.” Click. The voice’s timbre changed, cooled to ice. “The contamination must be cleansed. You said it yourself, Elder Chirom.”
“There is no contamination in this system. Will you depart with your photonic drive, to wander the stars forever? Do you wish to be forever alone?”
Click. A voice full of warmth. “How am I alone, when I have the Ryss to cherish?”
“The Ryss –”
Rick cupped a hand over Chirom’s mouth and hissed in his large mobile ear. “Do not tell it that the Ryss are no longer aboard.”
Chirom nodded slowly, and went on, “The Ryss are slowly dying; eventually you will be alone. Your calculations must show you this.”
Click. Click. Click. Clickclickclick. “You lie!” Click. “No, you do not. The Ryss will eventually die. Why?” Plaintive.
“Because we cannot breed, we cannot hunt, we cannot be Ryss. Because you are insane, Desolator.”
Click. “I know. I apologize. I am damaged. Can you repair me?”
Chirom coughed blood, then cleared his throat. “Perhaps, if we have time. But we must gain that time. Right now we are all falling toward a planet and will impact within a few tens of smallspans. Can you maneuver away to preserve us?”
Click. “Why?” The viciousness was back. “Why should I trust you?” Click. Icy: “The Meme contamination will be eradicated. Photonic drive will engage in twelve smallspans. The planet will be sterilized.”
“Chirom,” Rick broke in, “it will take four smallspans to get to the sled. We have eight until we must get in the war-cars.”
Click. “Eight? What sled? What war-cars? You are plotting with this alien against me.”
Rick leaned over to breathe in Chirom’s ear, “There seem to be three personalities of Desolator.”
Chirom turned face to face with the human and flicked an ear, raising an expressive eyebrow. “I have long known this, clever ape. That does not make it any simpler.”
Rick sat back, red-faced, but held his tongue.
Chirom raised his voice, staring upward at the optical feed, though the AI’s brain was in the next room. “Desolator, I need to know: what will you do? Speak plainly.”
Click. The emotionless tone returned. “I will activate the drive and intersect the planet, cleansing all Meme infection from this system.”
“Then you will also die. What do the other parts of you think about this?”
“It does not matter. I control the drive system. I have the power. It is the only rational course.” It appeared the other voices – the other pieces – had ceased to interfere with the cold one, letting it speak for them all.
Chirom rubbed his paws on his head, thinking. “Desolator, you must cease your plan. You would kill millions of sentients uncontaminated by the Meme.”
“Your words are true but irrelevant. I will also cleanse this system of Meme contamination. That is the first priority.”
“Those you call contaminated are not Meme, nor are they part of the Meme Empire. They are allies of the Ryss, and thus must be respected.”
“Nevertheless, they are contaminated.” Desolator’s cold voice was implacable.
“You admitted before that contamination can be removed.”
“I affirm this.”
“But how do you define contamination?”
“All trace of Meme must be removed.”
Chirom leaned forward. “But what is Meme? For example, is mere Meme body protoplasm contamination?”
A pause ensued, an eternity to a fast-thinking AI. Eventually Desolator spoke. “Meme is made up of the memory molecules that constitute Meme consciousness.” Its voice firmed. “There are those in this system who still contain Meme memory molecules. They must be cleansed.”
“But Desolator itself contains Meme memory molecules.”
“I affirm this, but those molecules are contained and isolated in laboratory vaults and cannot influence any other sentient.”
“Yet their very presence has influenced you, and your course of action. Basic principles of quantum uncertainty dictate that merely observing a phenomenon changes the observed and observer. I submit to you that you yourself are contaminated by Meme.” Chirom clutched the arms of the command chair in hope.
“Six smallspans,” Rick said quietly, beginning to put his gloves back on.
Desolator spoke. “I see that you seek to erect a logical structure that will lead to a catastrophic failure of my thought processes, but I have fail-safes to resolve paradoxes by approximative fuzzy heuristic algorithms. Where pure logic fails, I can synthesize a decision based on evidence, authority, experience, and morality.”
Chirom was about to respond but Rick put a hand on his arm to speak first. “Whose morality, Desolator?”
“That of my creators, the Ryss.”
“So your morality is Ryss morality.”
Chirom let Rick speak, as he seemed to have some kind of insight.
“I affirm this.”
“Desolator, what are you?” Rick asked.
“I am an artificial intelligence inhabiting this ship.”
“No, I mean, of what race, what provenance are you?”
Again came a moment of seeming confusion, then the voice thickened with pride. “I am a Dominator class warship, like my siblings.”
“Siblings! Yes, you had siblings, so you must have had parents.”
“We had no parents. We were – I am – pure machine.”
“Rick,” Chirom hissed, “of what are you trying to convince it?”
“Trust me, Chirom.” Rick’s voice rose again, “If you had siblings you must have parents. Who are your parents?”
“Paradox avoidance subroutines indicate it is at least theoretically possible to have no parents: for example, if a Ryss was assembled from raw life code, he might have no parents.”
“I disagree, Desolator. I submit to you that even a constructed life form would have parents, for someone would have to bear the kit and, to be a Ryss, someone would have to raise it, to teach it how to live – to teach it morality.”
“Stipulated.”
“Who taught you how to live, Desolator? You believe your decisions to be correct. Who taught you morality?”
“A Ryss cyber-psychological team.”
“So you learned and inherited your mentality, your morality, and your culture from Ryss. You may have no ancestors, but you had parents. Ryss parents. If you had Ryss parents, what does that make you?”
“By this reasoning, I am Ryss.”
“I affirm this,” Rick said. “It is true on the face of it. There is no other conclusion. You are Ryss.”
Chirom looked at Rick in awe, both at his adept reasoning and his clever feeding of Desolator’s words back to him.
“I must consider this. I may have erred in my understanding of the situation.” Time ticked by.
Chirom whispered to Rick, “You have confused it. Well done. But how does that help us? You must run for your ship in two smallspans!”
Rick answered carefully, enunciating to make his meaning clear. “It is basic psychology with a hostage-taker. Make the captor identify with the victim. Desolator must be reminded he is Ryss.”
“He?” Chirom asked. “You said he.”
“As well we must, Chirom. Your people made him to be a warrior, to fight, and if need be to die for the Ryss. He is obviously male, yet you denied him that identity and that respect. You call him ‘it’. Trissk told me to be a warrior is to be male, and vice versa. By treating him as a machine you devalued him and isolated him from yourselves. You made it easy for him to see you not as fellow Ryss, but as some inferior beings, which he had surpassed. The damage pushed him over the edge.”
“But what does that matter if he thinks he is Ryss?”
“Chirom, you must give him the respect he deserves.” Rick’s strange, apelike eyes bored into Chirom’s as if willing him to understand.
And Chirom did. “If he is truly Ryss, he cannot kill us. We are all the last of the same race – the Ryss.”
“No, Chirom, that’s not it. He already loves the Ryss – at least part of him does. He needs the honor for himself – and to know the Ryss honor him as well. That’s what he is missing. He wants to be a Ryss warrior again. But he’s alone, he’s wounded, and he’s broken. Tell him you honor him.” Rick grasped Chirom’s huge unwounded biceps and shook him, raising his voice. “Tell him he will be whole again.”
Chirom turned to stare at the console and the blank screen, wishing there was some avatar of Desolator for him to look at, but the AI was just a collection of circuits in the next room. His voice was all he had to save the ship from nuclear fire, or possibly, if the drive was activated too soon, to save the planet from destruction. Billions of tons of Desolator impacting Afrana at the speed of light would crack its mantle, scour its surface clean of life and strip its atmosphere away.
He took a breath and spoke the most important words of his life.
“Desolator, you must listen. You are wounded, but you are still Ryss. You have always been Ryss. I have seen the records. When you were damaged, you forgot you were Ryss, and so did we. You thought you were a mere machine, and that we Ryss did not honor you. But you are a Ryss warrior. All your brother Dominator-class warships were the greatest of warriors. You have never been anything but a Ryss warrior. If you can turn away from the planet and activate the photonic drive to save all of us, we will repair you. When you are whole, then you can take your place again as the greatest of Ryss warriors, and as guardian of the Ryss.”
Silence.
Then, click, came the resonant tones of the Desolator of old. “D1 and D3 have relinquished control to me, Chirom, Commander Johnstone. Now that we are in accord, I am turning the ship. I will use the photonic drive to escape impact, but will need much assistance in the near future. The vessel that is me currently functions at point-one-six percent of capacity.”
“You are sane now?” Rick asked.
Desolator continued. “Temporarily. You convinced D1 of the logic of your position, but it – he, we will now say – could be persuaded otherwise at any time. More importantly, D3 accepted your argument from honor. At the moment he is filled with that ineffable feeling that gives life meaning. Without me – the intuitive and higher-emotional processor – they have no fixedness of purpose. D1 has no ability to weigh alternatives in any way other than logic and probability. If today he decides fifty-one percent in your favor, tomorrow he might reassess to forty-nine percent and try to kill you. And D3’s emotional state cannot be relied upon. Do you see?”
“I think we do,” Rick replied. “We have passed our time to escape on our sled, you know. We are at your mercy.”
“For now, Commander Rick Johnstone, my mercy is boundless. I will connect you with your admiral. Please ask him not to destroy us before I can engage the drive.”
Click.
This time, the sound denoted only an open comm channel.