The Man-Kzin Wars 07 Page 15

  "Can I help?" The words were tentative, small.

  He felt the cybernetic equivalent of a smile. "No," he said simply in reply.

  There was a pause. "I do have some experience in space battles." Carol's tone became slightly peevish.

  "Yes. But I have full access to all UN Space Navy tactical and strategic files." He paused, searching his expanding internal database. "Including your own personal battle records and reports.”

  Carol looked back at the holoscreen, her face seemingly neutral, breathing heavily. The latter confused Bruno: there had been no extreme maneuvering, nor any acceleration stresses. Another portion of his Mind accessed realtime biotelemetry and found Carol's blood pressure and heart rate elevated. Curious.

  Bruno turned the Sun-Tzu. The kinesthetics were quick, zesty. He delicately slashed with the incandescent column of the antimatter reaction drive — a huge scythe scratching an actinic path of deadly light across the distorted starscape.

  Yet the ability of Sun-Tzu to turn was limited by its great mass, and the reaction drives controlling its attitude. Several times, Bruno waved the deadly antimatter drive wash near the tiny vessels, an enormous flyswatter against pesky gnats. They dodged — but not by much. He switched vectors, pivoted the ship like a ballerina on an invisible fulcrum.

  Much closer, good. But the two motes were still able to avoid the cutting sword he wielded. Bruno noted that one of the gnats was firing weapons against the Sun-Tzu. He could do nothing at this range. His iceball could not evasively weave and dart like the kzin vessels, and his drive wash took precious seconds to reorient. He sent a tendril of greater Mind again into his biological component. "Carol," he forced his human mouth to say, "prepare for weapon impacts.”

  "I gathered," she replied without looking at his biological portion. Carol reached for the control pads to adjust her crash couch for greater security, but Bruno did it for her before her fingers actually touched the console.

  Enemy laser bursts vaporized bits of the icy skin of his spacecraft. Railgun projectiles stitched deep craters toward his hull sensor pods. His biological senses reported the impacts as dull gonging notes ringing on the navigation deck, Bruno detected the second kzin ship accelerating on an indirect vector, possibly preparing for a hyperbolic approach past the Sun-Tzu, but at a distance too great to inflict significant damage.

  Bruno calculated with crystalline immediacy that he could not maneuver the drive wash rapidly enough to threaten both alien warships at the same time.

  He devoted more of his Mind to offensive and defensive systems, and subsystems instantly reprogrammed themselves at his whim. Sun-Tzu was not designed for battle; that was Dolittle's mission. Still, Bruno would use what tools were present. Vast quantities of power were tapped from the antimatter reaction chamber, and made available for other uses.

  Bruno reached out with a finger of laser light, almost impaling one of the kzin spacecraft on a blazing spear of coherent radiation. Close, so close — Sun-Tzu's railgun batteries fired high velocity flocks of iron pellets in complex patterns toward the enemy vessels. The alien spacecraft dodged gracefully.

  Simultaneously, he programmed and launched a dozen nuclear pumped X-ray laser bomblets. Pop, pop

  — they plunged into the relativistic vortex and began firing.

  Their bursts of radiation narrowly missed their targets. Why? He knew the answer even as the question formed: subminds reported with one electronic voice. A sour taste laced Bruno's sensorium, flitting shadows of human emotion. These were the best defenses human technology could field, but they were defeated by the chaos of relativistic plasma turbulence, the distorting refractions of light-speed, and the adroit skill of kzin pilots. Bruno knew that Sun-Tzu was outclassed here.

  On some unquantifiable, illogical level, Bruno tasted danger inexorably approaching Sun-Tzu.

  ·CHAPTER EIGHT

  Carol Faulk felt helpless.

  It was ironic, actually. She was a seasoned combat veteran, with experience in both singleships and as a commander of a battle squadron. She had hulled or fried many kzin ships, seen good friends die, made decisions that saved lives and won skirmishes.

  All she could do now was sit and watch impotently while half-human monster piloted and operated the Sun-Tzu.

  Yet it was a half-human monster who used to be her lover and friend. Carol pursed her lips at the painful irony.

  For the hundredth time, she reminded herself that her opinion of words like 'monster' and 'alien' might change drastically after they reached Wunderlander space. At the end of the long voyage, when she opened the cryovial containing the virus with the odd name, Tree-of-Life. Maybe after the virus did its work she would understand Bruno better.

  On the other hand, it did not look to Carol as if Project Cherubim would be a viable option, based on the holoscreen data scrolling past her line of sight. Not even halfway to Alpha Centauri, and the ratcats were already stalking them.

  Bruno's lolling interface cable looked ever more leechlike to Carol. His eyes never moved from her as the holoscreen displays shifted, blinked, and changed. His face was utterly slack, eyes huge and staring, with the expanded pupils characteristic of brain-machine interfacing. Carol knew that the vast majority of Bruno's attention was not on her, no matter how he appeared to stare at her.

  Bruno's attention was everywhere, all at once.

  Carol blinked back tears, cursing herself for the show of weakness. It took a moment for Carol to force the emotion back down, deep inside her. She was a captain, after all Taking a deep breath and squaring her shoulders, Carol forced herself to accept the simple facts before her, to say the words inwardly: Bruno is getting worse, and faster than expected.

  He was becoming more and more alien and machinelike. He had even told Carol that he was reprogramming his own brain, making himself a more efficient 'component'. I was becoming we as the man she knew diluted away inside the growing machine intelligence that controlled Sun-Tzu.

  She bullied the subject from her mind with thoughts of duty and strategy. There was nothing to be done at present about her lover. If she and Bruno survived the battle under-way, there would be time to find a way to prevent the machine-generated madness from taking Bruno away from her. Maybe.

  Until then, all she could do was hope.

  Carol felt the straps of her crash couch tighten and loosen as Sun-Tzu maneuvered, pivoting on its brilliant lance of plasma and gamma radiation. She felt the shudder of kzin weapons hammering the surface of their spacecraft far above them. The holoscreen status window showed schematics of the battle as it unfolded: the tiny red stars of the two surviving kzin spacecraft maneuvering randomly to avoid the bursts of laser light and the lethal scythe of the drive wash itself.

  She forced herself to look at him. "Bruno.”

  "Yes, Carol?" He didn't speak with his vocal chords, but with the shipboard commlink. It was a little startling, but she had half expected it. The synthesized voice, at least, sounded like Bruno.

  "Can you spare processing capacity to speak with your biological voice?" She didn't add, since you are human. Carol feared Bruno's answer.

  There was a tiny pause.

  "Yes," he said, lips moving precisely in a slack face. A tongue moved across lips experimentally. "May we ask why you prefer this communications mode?”

  "I am used to... your biological component, as you so fetchingly express it.”

  "But the information conveyed is identical." Irony was lost on the new and improved Bruno, apparently.

  "Never mind," Carol sighed. "Thank you for obliging me. Can you give me battle status?”

  "Of course. The holoscreens provide the raw data, but I can certainly provide you with vocal summaries.”

  "Please do so, love.”

  Did she detect a pause in response to her last word? Another hypospray nozzle snaked out of Bruno's crash couch and injected his neck with a hiss.

  He blinked twice, then continued in his artificially human-sounding voice. "One of th
e kzin vessels is spiraling in toward me, inflicting serious damage to my sensory pods and ancillary equipment. The other spacecraft is accelerating heavily on an unusual vector.”

  Worry sent a thrill along her spine. "Wait a second. The word 'ancillary' worries me. Other damage?”

  "None. There has been no attempt to damage the antimatter drive or structures associated with it. Only the sensory arrays and weapons ports have been targeted." She frowned. "So your hunch was correct?" "Yes. They intend to board me, if they can." Me? Carol kept her face under careful control. Several times, Bruno had referred to Sun-Tzu as himself.

  The 'we' he kept using: Did he mean the two of them, or the strange electronic mind controlling him? "And the other ship?" she asked, biting her lip. "Difficult to predict at this time. The strategies of space vessels capable of two hundred gravity accelerations are still new to us." "Show me the vector, with realtime updating, please." Bruno didn't reply, but the holoscreen showed the more distant kzin ship accelerating rapidly on a curving course that would narrowly graze Sun-Tzu. Something about the diagram nagged Carol. "And the closer ratcat ship?" she continued, biting her lip. "The pilot is quite good for a biological system. We have been spending a good deal of processing time on predicting its behavior. Clearly, they could be doing more damage than they are accomplishing at present.”

  A low warning tone filled the navigation deck. "Carol, there is a problem." Bruno's voice once more came from speakers instead of his throat. "The closer kzin spacecraft is now vectoring wildly, firing all weapons. There is significant damage... “

  Sun-Tzu rang like a great bell. An unseen hand slammed her into her couch.

  "High-yield thermonuclear device detonation off starboard bow," Bruno reported. "Seventy-five percent of sensory pods were destroyed in that hull sector." "I gathered as much, thank you," Carol replied acidly. She bared her teeth at the feeling of helplessness, her fingers itching to do something. The holoscreens showed the action from repeater stations across the icy hull of the spacecraft. The kzin vessel was delivering a flurry of weapons against Sun-Tzu, inflicting serious damage.

  Sun-Tzu turned to compensate for lost sensory arrays and weapon emplacements. Carol felt her hastily eaten midmeal rise, bitter in her throat.

  Another flock of nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers rose against the kzin vessel, which had already maneuvered away. Blasts of coherent radiation again found no target. "I am sorry, Carol," Bruno's voice said flatly from the commlink speakers, drained of all emotion. "We are experiencing processor difficulties due to network interruption.”

  The kzin attack had severed some of Bruno's computational net. Carol suddenly wondered if he felt that loss as pain. A thought blazed in her mind. "Bruno! What about the other ship?”

  A pause. "I am very sorry," the commlink speakers said in something like her lover's voice. "We were blind on that side for almost twenty seconds before I was able to regain sensory data.”

  "And?”

  "The kzin vessel will reach closest approach to Sun-Tzu in a few seconds. It has fired no weapons, however. Perhaps it is trying to draw fire in order to allow the other vessel to inflict greater damage." Carol's jaw dropped with a blaze of realization. Couldn't Bruno's vastly enhanced intelligence see what was happening?

  She reached over and grabbed Bruno's arm. "Listen, love, focus as much sensory capacity as you can spare on the close approach craft. Put some weapons against it, throw up debris, anything." The flat half-machine tones took on a questioning note. "Why are you so specifically concerned?" Carol wanted to slam her fists down on the useless command console. "Don't you get it?" she grated. "It's a bombing run. Do as I tell you!" By then, it was too late. The kzin craft, under cover of its fiercely attacking sister vessel, swept stealthily within a million kilometers of Sun-Tzu. It had already swung past them by the time energy weapons flashed lethal radiation. Relativistic distortions fuzzed the images further —

  — And almost as an afterthought, a coherent lance of X-rays speared the enemy craft, spreading a glowing cloud of debris across space. The second vessel had already sheered off, racing for the opposite side of Sun-Tzu.

  A blaze of light filled the holoscreen. "Bruno?" Carol asked quietly. "What happened?" Another slight pause, and Bruno once more spoke from his own lips instead of the commlink speakers. "I am very sorry, Carol. The kzin have delivered a monopole bomb. It must have been heavily shielded to avoid my sensory array." Carol swore. In the deadly heart of a monopole bomb, isolated north and south poles met violently, releasing great gouts of energetic electrons. These electrons would spiral, close to light-speed, down magnetic lines of force toward Sun-Tzu. When the electron storm struck Sun-Tzu's densest magnetic cocoon, the electrons would radiate powerfully, their orbits reversed in the magnetic mirrors. They would never reach the icy hull of Sun-Tzu, but they would have done their deadly task. Their electromagnetic wail would fry most electrical equipment not shielded deep within the spacecraft. The other kzin vessel would be safe in the 'shadow' of Sun-Tzu. Bruno still said nothing. Carol began striking keys on her crash couch console violently. The straps loosened and retracted, allowing her to float slightly upward in the microgravity. "How long until impact?" she asked. "Ten seconds." The reply was as flat and toneless as the autopilot of an aircar. "Well, let's get you and me down to Dolittle. I have an idea." "Impossible." In a flash, she realized that disconnecting Bruno from his brain-computer interface would take several minutes, with heavy use of biotelemetric controls. And, fatally, that unshielded and vulnerable conductors ran from the hull of Sun-Tzu to the sensory array to the computer net...... directly into Bruno's brain. "I love you, Bruno," Carol said. She grabbed his interface cable in both hands and took a deep breath.

  ·CHAPTER NINE

  Watching Carol's arm muscles tense as she gripped the interface cable, all of Bruno's vast consciousness tried to crowd into his inadequate biological portion in defense against what would happen next. Bruno's enhanced mind would not fit into the small space, wracking him in a horrible cybernetic analog of pain. No. He willed his arm to move toward his cable linkage protectively, and...

  Carol, with a loud grunt, ripped his interface cable from the console with a sharp metallic popping sound.

  There wasn't time to scream, even in realtime.

  Bruno felt his Mind collapse and die. Transcendence guttered out like a candle flame in a raw wind.

  The cold blackness roared into his very soul, a dark hurricane of torment. Loss burned like some dark acid, shattering his Transcended Self. Gone, gone — scattering its torn threads to the cosmic wind...

  In what felt like death agony, Bruno sensed the electromagnetic pulse impact the Sun-Tzu's hull. Holoscreens flickered multicolored visual static and vanished, roaring. Sparks geysered from consoles. Navigation deck lights failed. The deadly pulse leaped like a striking snake of electrical potential from the exploding console —

  — ricocheting from the white steel walls —

  — crackling, searching, like a living thing —

  — to the flapping end of his interface cable.

  He felt the charge enter his brain like a lit fuse via the suddenly traitorous conduit of metal and silicon. Bruno's mind seemed to explode in a fireball-hot supernova within his deepest self.

  The suffocating blackness was obliterated by a lethal Light.

  11001010001111001010101011011111101010111011010011100 0101110111010111101001011101001001101010110011001111

  The crashed aircar was upside down, silent and dark. With clumsy fingers, five-year-old Bruno released himself from his crashnet. He fell onto the inside of the roof with a painful thump. He lay there, panting and dizzy, feeling sick.

  Burnt hair, scorched earth, a coppery wet smell. The aching blackness all around. He was very afraid.

  Bruno could remember the explosion, the screaming, the long fall. He had no memory of the horrible crash.

  His head hurt terribly.

  Bruno turned his head to one side and tried to vo
mit, but there was nothing left in his stomach other than a trickle of foul liquid that burned his throat. Mumma will be angry, he thought, wiping his stinging mouth on a torn sleeve. He had to find Mumma and Papa, somewhere in the crashed aircar. The cabin had somehow become huge in the dark. He called and called, his voice echoing in the small space that had swollen so.

  No one answered. Determined, he crawled forward with his arms, because his legs wouldn't work properly. They were numb, but at least they didn't hurt.

  Nothing hurt as much as Bruno's head.

  "Mumma? Papa?”

  His left hand finally found his mother and father, still strapped side by side into their crashnets. They did not reply when he called, no matter how much he cried and pleaded. Finally, he shook them hard, making his head hurt even worse than before. His hands were wet and sticky, and tasted salty when he wiped his face.

  Bruno cried, because his parents wouldn't hold him in the darkness, and wouldn't answer him. He had never felt so frightened and alone.

  The headache finally became more than he could stand. Dizzy with pain and exhaustion, Bruno finally lay flat on the inside roof of the crashed aircar. Still crying softly, he reached up and touched the left side of his head, where it hurt so much.

  His fingers sank five centimeters into his shattered skull. Into something pulpy and wet. Sharp slivers of bone pricked his fingertips. Lights exploded in Bruno's head, and he tasted the color blue, felt the smell of moist hay. He thought that he heard a siren in the distance, but he was in too much pain to pay attention.

  Exhausted, he laid his pounding head down on the cool metal, to wait for his Mumma and Papa to wake up and take him home, to make everything all right. The aircar swirled around him dizzily. There were vague murmurs like anxious voices in the darkness, calling him.

  Cold nothingness claimed little Bruno with clammy hands, and dragged him down into an unconscious void.