Authors: Gregory Benford
“Arm!” he whispered over comm. Ringing clicks answered him.
Slender, coiling forms now neared the main and side locks of the
Argo
. Killeen waited until the first made contact. It wriggled, forming a hoop around the lock door. Killeen saw small borers
fork out, bite into
Argo
’s hull. The others had reached their locks, were settled—
“Fire!” Beside each lock the planted mines exploded. Each made a billowing blue-shot cloud that ripped through the mech bodies,
shredding them.
Killeen allowed himself a smile. This first blow had gone well, but now there would be lives at risk with every turn of events.
He became aware that the assembly room had grown silent, pensive, watching him. He blinked, dispelling the outside visions.
Cermo stood at his elbow. He breathed in luxuriantly, pierced by the strange pulsing pleasure of being again, after so long,
in the thick of action.
“Posts!” he shouted. “Form the star!”
Airless, silent, the metallic landscape rose against the distant mottled black like a gleaming promise of perfect order. Watching
the view, Killeen thought it amusing that his job was to smash such smug geometric certainty, to bring living chaos.
He stood in the control vault, Shibo at his side. This was the first time he had commanded an intricate movement of the Family
without actually being there, participating. Family Bishop had a long tradition of Cap’ns who fought and risked and died with
their fellow Family. Now, operating from a true ship for the first time in long ages, that was impossible.
Only from here could he monitor all the small teams who swarmed over the tower, seeking the mainmind.
The shifting scene on the main screen was a direct feed from the all-scanner on Toby’s back. Killeen’s eyes narrowed at each
flicker of fresh movement on the disk plain, letting his own reflexes respond to the images. His hands tightened, unclasped,
tightened again.
Shibo looked at Killeen shrewdly. “You told Cermo, pick Toby?”
“Naysay.”
“Truly?” She seemed surprised.
“I ’spect Cermo chose Toby ’cause he’s quick. Sure, some crew’ll see this as pure favor. But if I overruled him, showed any
interference for Toby…”
“I see.”
“It’s a tradeoff. This scanner slows you down, makes you easier to hit. But—”
“It gives you a chance to warn him if he’s missing something.”
His mouth twisted with irritation. “Naysay! I was going to say, it puts him in the second skirmish line.”
“Which is safer.”
“Course.”
He turned to see Shibo’s silent wry smile. He was about to bark a challenge at her when he paused, made himself step out of
his Cap’n persona, and found himself making his “um-hmm” of grudging amusement. She understood him perfectly, and when they
were alone was unwilling to let him get away with the Cap’n role completely. He was about to kiss her—which was easier for
him than speaking—when the screen above shifted.
Toby was striding quickly across the disk plain, having trouble finding boot-grip. He was down in one of the myriad open-topped
“streets” that crisscrossed the disk, for unfathomable
purposes. The tower loomed directly overhead, larger than the eye could take in.
What had caught Killeen’s attention was Toby’s long leap out of the “street,” which had protected him so far. He rose to the
tower side, applied his magnetic coupler, and was drawn with a harsh clank to the studded tower wall.
Two other suited figures joined him. They raced along the wall, letting their boots seize and thrust. A thick-lipped opening
appeared over the horizon of the tower’s curve. The three dropped down it. Killeen saw that one was Besen, her white teeth
the only feature visible inside her helmet amid the yellow sunlit glare.
A sizzling report echoed. Something spat microwave bursts at them from a side passage. Low-level mechs always imagined they
could kill with mech weapons, never realizing that organic forms could shut out the electromagnetic spectrum and still function
quite independently.
Killeen was glad he had sent them in with their inboard receivers completely dead, except for the link through Toby’s all-scanner.
Toby and Besen surged after the bulky mechs and blew neat holes in each.
The squad twisted deeply into the tower. They worked without crosstalk, giving the mechs no electromag-tag. A hard yellow
glow beckoned down a narrow tunnel and Toby did not hesitate to plunge after it.
Killeen drew back, the lines of his face deepening, but he said nothing. Momentarily he turned to tracking the other squads,
giving maneuvering orders.
The attack was going exceedingly well. The squads flanked and parried and thrust with agile verve. The mechs were inept and
uncoordinated, once their initial plan failed. They probably planned to humble
Argo
with a show of force. These were guard forces, not fighters.
Well ordered, however. I suggest you be careful as the line progresses into the interior. A slow defense can nevertheless
draw the swift, unthinking attacker into a trap
.
This interjection from his Ling Aspect reminded Killeen to order the side squads to attack the comm lines they met. They responded
quickly and severed several obvious lines. Killeen worried about the nonobvious ones. His Ling Aspect seized this opportunity
to hold forth.
You display a tendency toward far too clipped and brief orders, I have noticed. The great ancient generals kept their heads,
remember, and did not allow the disorder of battle to affect clarity. For example, a land general of far-ancient days, named
Iron Wellington, was directing a grand battle called Waterloo when he saw a fire threaten to break his troops’ line. He sent
a note which read, “I see that fire has communicated from the haystack to the roof of the chateau. After they will have fallen
in, occupy the ruined walls inside of the garden, particularly if it should be possible for the enemy to pass through the
embers to the inside of the house.” Graceful, accurate—and all written while on horseback under enemy fire, in the midst of
a raging military crisis. That should be your aim
.
Killeen grimaced, and his Arthur Aspect piped in:
I cannot but note that the message contains both a future subjunctive and a future perfect construction—remarkably difficult
forms even in relaxed circumstances.
Arthur was a scientist and lightning calculator from the late Arcology Era. He was precise, prissy, and invaluable. Killeen
pushed away both Aspects. He watched as Toby’s squad came coasting into a vast bowl lined with scintillant panels. Killeen
recognized this from Aspect-pictures he had seen years before. An old-style trap using crossfiring lasers.
“Get out!” he sent on a tightbeam channel.
Toby heard him, veered left. Acceleration slammed perspectives into a squashed blur.
The screen gave quick glimpses of convoluted conduits, incised slabs of pale orange, tangles of wiring. Bolts snarled around
them, ricocheting off curved metallic surfaces. Burnt-gold electrical overloads arced ahead of them along the side shafts.
“Mines,” Killeen sent. “Seal up.”
Though the fast-moving picture kept plunging down a wide tunnel, Killeen could hear the faint
snick
of Toby’s suit closing all possible current-carrying leaks. Voltages lurked all around them, lying in wait for humans who
could scarcely take a simultaneous unshielded Volt and Amp, so delicate were their interiors.
Killeen checked with several squads who had entered the tower. They were meeting the same clumsy defenses. The twisting warrens
of dense circuitry made it hard to figure the location of the mainmind. No Family had ever entered such a place. Experience
could not guide them.
Stranger still, there was obvious damage to some passages. A fight had raged here before. The cuts looked fresh, too. His
Ling Aspect said:
Perhaps this explains the rudimentary resistance we are meeting
.
“How?”
If someone else has taken this station, they might have left it with token forces
.
“Some rival mechs?” Killeen knew mech cities sometimes fought one another, competition run amok. Maybe the Mantis’s reception
committee had been knocked off?
Perhaps. We may discover more at the mainmind
.
Killeen watched the teams move on a 3D projection of the tower. Shibo entered fresh information as the teams reported in.
Quickly, blocks of detail filled in the large blank spaces in the tower projection.
Killeen thought he saw a pattern in the snaking tunnels. The station’s many corridors and shafts did not center on the disk
plain. Instead, they necked toward a point high above that, in the northern end of the tower.
He sent orders to the teams to vector that way. Then he turned his attention back to Toby’s scanner feed. It provided the
most complete views, which the
Argo’
s systems immediately integrated into the station 3D map.
Toby was plunging down a hexagonal shaft. Besen flew ahead of him. They both moved adroitly in the zero gravity, maneuvering
with experience born of daily drill on the
Argo
.
Ahead was another squad, which had reached the nexus first. They were attaching inputs to a huge blank cube.
—Mainmind,—came a comm signal.
“Looks like.”
—Wiring so can blow it, Cap’n.—
“Yeasay.”
Toby landed on the bulwark cube, boots thumping. Killeen watched leads attached, holes bored with quick darting laser punches.
Mechs appeared nearby, obvious and awkward. They died in bursts of ruby phosphorescence. Killeen frowned. The mechs seemed
unusually slow and stupid. Had they simply gotten unused to human combatants?
A motion caught his eye. Indices showed a higher radia tion count….
even a slow defense can draw a swift, unthinking attacker into a trap
…
“Exit now!” he sent to Toby. Relayed, the order provoked a hurried finish to the mining.
“Leave the extra charges!” Killeen shouted.
—But they’re primed,—Toby sent.—I gotta—
“Even better. Go!”
Something appeared at the far end of the shaft. It was big and moved quickly but Killeen’s warning had gotten the squads clear.
The approaching shape did not have a good angle to shoot.
The two squads raced away into an exit tunnel.
“Blow those extra charges,” Killeen ordered.
—But they’re just floating,—Toby answered.—Won’t hurt the mainmind.—
“Do it!”
The answering percussive punch came rattling through the electromagnetic spectrum. A strange, descending wail cut across the
noise. Killeen frowned. The dwindling shriek was like the cry of a dying animal. Mechs never gave such a sound.
The big thing must have been caught as it passed the mainmind. Killeen guessed that it was the controlling influence here.
Only luck had let the squads escape. But there were still plenty of dangers.
Toby’s relayed images showed them racing into a tunnel that led straight away from the mainmind.
“No,” Killeen sent. “Take one that has turns. They’ll have
ambushes on the fast routes. And the turns will block the blast.”
In eerie stretched silence he watched the seconds tick on. The screen darted and swerved and lurched as Toby made maximum
speed in the zero gravity. The boy could windmill his arms and get his feet into position for a land-and-repel with perfect
timing. The screen whirled as Toby tumbled in the closed, narrow spaces. This swept twirling spotlights over the mad rush
of mechtech that came streaming up from darkness and vanished just as quickly.
At last they came to a long tunnel that showed starlight in a distant circle. Toby ram-accelerated toward it. The screen suddenly
jerked.
“The mainmind’s dead,” Killeen said. “That was an electromag-tag burst from it as it blew.”
—Great!—Besen burst in.
Killeen tensed. Toby tumbled soundlessly in the yawning blackness. Ghostly arms reached out nearby, blue and flickering, searching
for something to scorch. Further, Killeen knew, there were other presences called Inductances and Resistors and Capacities
which played mysterious but perhaps fatal roles in these electrodynamic corridors. He had learned to use them, but their deep
essences eluded the practical programs he had studied.
Toby veered. Three squads followed him in a quick dash for the opening.
Then the screen showed only swirling stars and the harsh yellow-white of the disk plain.
Toby spun and looked behind. From the tower opening came a crumpled form in a shiny suit, drifting with the still-dancing
radiance that had almost reached the main party.
Killeen watched as the view approached the coasting body. He recognized the backpatch of Waugh, a woman
originally of the Family Knight, now a Bishop. The form did not move.
It spun in stately revolution, as solemn and uncaring as a planet in its gyre. Toby approached carefully. Within the helmet
was shadow.
Then Killeen noticed a small dark patch on Waugh’s boot, a flaw perhaps struck by a near miss during the attack. It was a
small hole, hardly deep enough to break the suit’s vacuum seal. But it had allowed a voltage in and was rimmed by a burnished
halo. Killeen saw that Waugh’s helmet was slightly swollen and distended. He understood then why they could not see into it.
Carbon black masked the faceplate. He was grateful for this small fact, because then he could not see inside, where Waugh’s
head had exploded.
The memory came back to him as he ate the celebratory dinner. Waugh, a good crewwoman he had not known well. She had paid
the price for his decisions, and he would never know if somehow the cost could have been less.
Fortunately, her genetic material and eggs were preserved by
Argo’
s surgery. We must take measures to ensure that all Family can contribute to future generations’ genetic diversity. I advise—
“Shut up!” Killeen muttered. His Arthur Aspect had no sense of time and place and decency and Killeen was not in a mood for
his coolly analytical views. He glanced up from
his serving of baked savory eggplant and saw that no one had noticed his exclamation, or else were too polite to show it.
Ignoring outer manifestations of Aspect conversations was now considered good manners.
Argo’
s soft life was at least making the Family more refined.