Aurora Rising: The Complete Collection (177 page)

She found she had halted again. She forced a boot up off the floor and continued forward. The clock was ticking, and she had a mission to complete.

My father. I remember…he had an imprint taken a year or two before he died.

Yes.

Why didn’t you tell me? You’re in my head—you know I’d want to be told.

I couldn’t be certain what would happen. My analysis suggested the most probable scenario was nothing would happen, beyond an increased command of the battlefield.

Are the others experiencing these sorts of…anomalies?

No. But they received blendings of multiple imprints, thus any distinctiveness was lost. You are unique.

Her hand came to her mouth, only to be stopped by the faceplate.
Valkyrie, is it conceivable there was some element of, I don’t know, consciousness embedded in the imprint?

‘A mind is more than the sum of its individual components, more than neurons firing and chemicals flowing in response to stimuli.’

Not exactly what I meant at the time.

Nevertheless, the concept may be applicable.
I have learned much from our linking. I possess your neural imprint, and now I can see you. The imprint is not you. Not quite. But I have begun to discern the gaps, the traits it does not wholly capture. Using these insights, I’ve been endeavoring to construct a richer representation of your father’s mind within my own processes. It is leading to some rather interesting and unexpected results.

Like my father talking to me in my head.

…Yes.

In the distance a stronger light source began to cut away at the gloom. Valkyrie had been correct.

She wanted to pinch the bridge of her nose through the helmet, wanted to impose order on the jumbled thoughts and swirl of conflicting emotions. The implications of what Valkyrie had done were staggering, but they made her head hurt and her heart seize. She needed to pack them up and box them away for a later time, a time when she wasn’t in the bowels of a colossal, living alien vessel that wanted to kill her. And everyone else.

We’ll continue this discussion soon. You’re not off the hook for keeping this from me.

A reasonable response.

“Alex, be careful. It might have defense mechanisms.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mom.”

It will not have defense mechanisms.

No, it won’t. What would it possibly need to defend against? The notion of an ant getting this far is so absurd as to be laughable.

Yet here we are.

Yet here we are.

They began studying the hub as they approached and it gained greater definition. There was no metal and no frame. There was also no way through. The quantum core stretched floor to ceiling and wall to wall. The inputs streaming toward it on every surface met the core at defined junctures to disappear into the whole.

It reminded her a great deal of the orb powering the cloaking shield on Portal Prime—which was good news indeed.

We could wreck a few of the junction points and be done with it.

We could—and this ship would plunge out of the sky with us in it. Less relevantly to our survival, it would likely not have the opportunity to pass any corrupted instructions to other ships before doing so.

Both valid points. Plan B?

I recommend inserting a probe at one of the junction points so we can study the routines to determine the best route of attack.

Really? Last time I just stuck my hand into the middle of it.

The fact you are standing here now indicates it was not a death-inducing act, much to my astonishment.

She crossed the last twenty meters to the core’s outer edge.
When we get home I think we need to tweak your humor algorithms a bit.

Why? It is your humor.

Damn. No wonder I drive people nuts. You know, I think I’m just going to stick my hand into the middle of it. The field is larger than the one on Portal Prime, but it’s powering something far smaller. It’ll be fine.

She stood in front of the swirling wall of…what was it really? Light, energy, signals, quantum wave-particles carrying and analyzing data then making decisions and issuing instructions, all coming together to create an intelligence. Not true life, but intelligence nonetheless. She lifted her right hand.

In her comm her mother’s voice boomed with authority. “Alex, what are you—”

—0-11011100

1-1101-11-1-10110-10-1

001001-1110110-101

10-1-100-1-1

11111010

0-10100-10110-10-110

10-1-100-10-11-10001-1

1-101-1-11-1

01-10111-10-1101111

1-1100-1-10

0-1-10-10-101011-10-11

10-101-10-1

00-11-1111

11111-111

11001101

111-10-110

-1-1111100

00111-1-1-1

1-11-1000110-1-110001

0down-1

up1111

down1up-1

1down-1down

-1down000-1

0up1down0up

1up1down-10

down0up

0rightup1stable

1leftdown

1leftdown

-1leftup-1stable

0stable-1stable

1stable1leftdown

-1rightup0rightdown

1leftup1leftdown

0stable-1leftup

0stable0rightup

powertothrustersincrease12.2453

left8.9125shieldshiftΑ21

shieldshiftΑ43

Units β12Θ Α88Ξ Ω40Σ sync with this Unit to eliminate targets in 10.0-20.0 arc

power to thrusters decrease 4.7751

thrusters shift right 3.02889

acquire target track fire

increase shield strength 31.6168 at β102-233—

“Admiral Rychen, could you tell the
Cantigny
not to blow me up, please?”

“I’ll get on that.”

“Appreciated.”

Had she been breathing? She sucked in air.
That was bracing. Okay, we understand the language. Now to fuck it up.

It is all one program—solely the variables and the systems they affect change. I believe we can introduce a flaw at the root level which will propagate out to every system.

Only one little flaw? Surely we should introduce a few more to be safe.

Alex, safe
is
introducing a single flaw. This will give us time to depart and is less apt to be noticed by the governing program while it can still be corrected.

Where?

The code flowed past her in her mind as a sea of pulsing, twisting strings of light. Deeper and deeper she fell, until an intricate shape comprising six dimensions—
wait, she could perceive six dimensions now?
—appeared at the center. All paths led to the object.

Here.

She reached into the paradoxically dense shape, grasped onto a single string and let the corruption flow out of her fingertip, through the adaptively porous material of her glove and into the code.

The simplest of distortions to the most basic of calculations, but 2 plus 2 now equaled 4.2.

Did it accept the alteration?

Watch.

A tiny black filament rushed along the string with the rest of the code. Then it split to travel down two strings, then eight, then twenty-four.

She yanked her hand out of the hub and stumbled backward, landing on her ass on the hard and decidedly nonpliable floor.

“Alex, are you all right?”

She blinked repeatedly, trying to clear the artifacts of code flashing across her eyes.
Valkyrie? Are you good?

One moment…yes. I have reoriented my processes.

She climbed to her feet. “I’m fine. We’ve sabotaged the ship’s programming and are getting out of here.”

Well that was fun.

Indeed.

Stepping out of the alien chamber into the midst of the battle was like….

Emerging from a mother’s womb?

Can’t say as I remember. We’ll go with a jarring sensory assault.

“The recon vessel has acquired your locator beacon and is en route. Set a trajectory S 46°, 6° z W.”

“Understood.” She steeled herself, stepped into space and fired the thrusters—

—a damaged swarmer hurtled out of control from above the superdreadnought to skim the hull less than ten meters beneath her. Her arms flailed in a fruitless but instinctual attempt to get out of the way.

Then it was gone.

The swarmer had passed so close her spacesuit burned warm from the heat of the scorching metal. She fought to wrestle her pulse under control with the help of her eVi and Valkyrie.

Let’s try not to be sideswiped by any more large, careening objects on fire….

A wise course of action.
Valkyrie sounded a bit shaken herself.

She accelerated in the provided direction, trying to give a wide berth to any dogfights, and exhaled in relief when she saw the approaching recon vessel, temporarily uncloaked so she’d be able to find it. She angled to meet it.

Once she was latched on and gave the all-clear to the pilot, she again rolled onto her back to gaze out at the warfare, albeit with greater respect for its perilous savagery and her own fragile vulnerability.
Hell of a sight, isn’t it, Valkyrie?

I have never understood why humans engaged in battle against one another, taking lives for goals of lesser value—accepted it logically but did not understand it. This, however? This I understand. This willingness to sacrifice one’s individual life so others’ lives may continue, this determination to fight with every measure of one’s being and every facility of one’s mind and body and tools to defend humanity? It is…beautiful.

Valkyrie wasn’t seeing the beauty of the sunlight reflecting off gleaming starship hulls, or the shimmering laser beams crisscrossing space in vibrant colors, or the brilliant, fiery glow of exploding vessels. She wasn’t even seeing the beauty of man and machine at their apex, performing upon a tableau of a sea of stars and the powerful silhouette of a planet which had lain untouched by humans a century ago yet now was home to a billion people.

No, she was seeing the beauty of each act by each individual human soul—courage, heroism, determination, intellect, sacrifice—replicated tens of thousands of times over to forge a defiant stand against this grave challenge to their existence.

‘It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.’

Alex smiled.
Let me guess—William James?

Indeed.

A voice which she now so easily recognized reverberated in her head, stronger than before.
I’ll do you one better: ‘We are face to face with our destiny and we must meet it with high and resolute courage. For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.’ Theodore Roosevelt, who among other accomplishments did happen to be a student of William James for a time.