Burnt Ice (19 page)

Harry said, ‘Yeah, it’s OK,
Marko. It’s OK, you’ll be fine. Just give yourself some time.’

Stephine just smiled and stroked
the side of his face.

~ * ~

When
he awoke again, this time in his own bed, Marko felt more like his normal self.
He struggled to get up and found it very difficult to get into his ship suit.
Fritz arrived in time and helped while Sirius stood by recording. Fritz looked
at the flapping empty sleeve. Stunned, his eyes widened and he looked up at
Marko.

‘We’re fucked, Marko.’

‘Yeah, I figured that. Where’s
Jan?’

‘No, you don’t understand — we
are fucked,
really
fucked.’

‘What else has happened?’

‘Nothing. We’re up against the
iceball, and pumping water. But how the hell do we get home?’

‘You’re a super-intelligent
dumbarse, Fritz. We have cryo units, a hellish good team, a shitload of fuel
and, yes, a long way to go, but we will get home. Sub-light, admittedly slowly,
but we’ll get home. Now, where’s Jan?’

‘On my way, Marko,’ buzzed his
comms. ‘Can I get you anything?’

‘Just yourself, Jan. I need a
feed, but nothing too solid.’

‘Sure,’ she said.

‘Fritz, go wake up my midi
please, mate, and send it here.’ requested Marko. ‘Oh shit! Everything is going
to be difficult without all my fingers.’

Jan arrived a few minutes later
with a large milkshake. Marko was very grateful. After a few moments he felt
alive again and wanted to get on with his work. His midi arrived in the room,
stopped in front of him then unfolded itself with the main screen moving to
where he could easily touch it.

‘Thanks, Jan. One of your more
interesting brews, eh? Right. Jan, Fritz, we need to build me a new arm. We don’t
have time to wait eighteen weeks for me to be back in the game. Now, this file.
Fritz, can you go see the boss and tell him I will need this lot please?’

He flashed a list of what he
would need across to Fritz’s wrist unit. He could have asked the captain
himself but wanted Fritz and the monitor out of earshot.

‘Now, Jan. Yeah, I’m probably
high on whatever was in the drink, but please don’t be pissed off with me. I
had a little look at your medical suite when you first brought it on board.
Sorry, but I peeled part of the standard outer housing away. Just what
are
you, Jan? I really like you and I think that you are a straight sort of person.
But that medical suite is non-standard. I didn’t run a database search over it
because I didn’t want to alert Lotus. But I haven’t seen a unit that compact
and with that level of sophistication outside a medical research unit.’

She leant over to him and
whispered, ‘You can tell Longbow if you need to, but breathe a word of this
otherwise and I shall put you in the tank myself. I am a specialist, I
fix
things, including people. I take them out of the game as required — if
necessary, permanently. I’m an assassin — and I’m rather good at it. That unit
is for me if something goes wrong. Yes, it can fix just about anything. The
Games Board would go berserk if it knew I had one. My controllers acquired it
for me. I am also a fully qualified field surgeon. Found it boring, but much
more interesting running my life this way. Oh, and I really do like you. Only
reason I haven’t bedded you is because I like you as a friend, OK?’

‘Umm, yes, right, good, OK,
thanks, I guess. Is my arm, the gonzo one, supposed to ache so badly?’

‘Yes. Now what do you want to do,
Marko?’

‘Here, this file; we can build a
really good arm in about fifty hours. I need you and your unit to attach it to
me. A small amount of the ball joint is still there, which is good to know. Can
your unit create a full interface, with the nerves and all?’

Jan looked at him seriously. ‘Yes,
but it would be more sensible to take out the ball and make a new one. I’ll
power up the unit so we can start work on you. Meet you in the medical room in
fifteen minutes. I’m glad you’re not dead, Marko.’

‘Ha. Thanks, Jan. Living beats
the hell out of dying, any time. But that thing was horrible. It just touched
me, the softest touch, and my arm was gone.’

She leant across and gave him a
quick kiss on the cheek, then left.

He believed her. Yes, she
probably was an assassin and, with that knowledge, he could cross another thing
off the captain’s rice paper ‘find this out for me’ list. It fitted, though. He
wondered who her target had been on the Cygnus 5. Maybe the octopoids had saved
her the job.

~ * ~

‘Marko,
how you feeling, chap?’

‘OK. Thanks, boss. It was nasty,
very nasty. My lost fingers really hurt. It’s weird.’

‘Chin up, Marko. If anyone can
cope, it’s you, mate. If it’s any consolation, the images we got before the
unit detonated showed two of those things. The other one was at the rear of the
unit. If you’d gone around the converter it would have killed both of you.
Still trying to work out how they got on board. Lotus analysed the fuel usage
on the lander and believes that they were both on the outside of it when you
guys came into the hangar. When we get back I’ll ask for an upgrade study into
them. They’re considerably more potent than we thought. And definitely more
intelligent. I’ve got your list. Yes, good idea. Our resident medic up to the
task?’

‘Yes, sorted.’

The captain nodded a few times
then said, ‘OK. Load up the files. I’ll get Harry onto the jobs. I’ll lend a
hand myself — ha ha! Not a great deal for us biological types to do while Lotus
is controlling the ice mining and water collection. Stephine is expanding the
hydroponics, so we won’t be lacking for food. Right. To business,’ he said. ‘Attention
please. I have run the figures. We know Administration will send a couple of
drone pickets to look for us in another fourteen days, so I figure that they
will then search for another two months along our expected route home. They
will spend another fourteen days waiting for us to turn up. So with no sign of
us after two months they will station courier drones and astronomicals to watch
at the major stellar LPs, and probably the Octopoid Library, for seven years.
Then the assumption will be made that we are totally lost, and they’ll start
re-lifing us.’

The captain smiled warmly at his
crew on the screens.

‘So we have seven standard years
to get to one of those Administration drones. We don’t have the rare Earth
metals to make the components for another AM generator. We could move closer to
the star and search for them, but if we can’t find them, we will have lost a
lot of time, considering the distance we are from the Octopoid Library. If we
hollow out this iceball comet, park ourselves in the middle, then grab another
couple of smaller ones, with constant one-point-two gravity acceleration from
the fusion rockets, and then a flip-over halfway to decelerate, we will get
across in six years eleven months standard time.’

‘That’s right,’ said Harry. ‘We’ll
cook up this iceball and make it home slowly. Not FTL, but we’ll get there.’

‘Yes,’ said the captain. ‘We have
nice dirty ice beside us, so plenty of hydrocarbons to be had as well — that
means enough food without having to worry about strict closed circuit
provisioning. If we get bored we can just go into cryo hibernation. Any
questions? No? Good. We get the tanks filled. This will take another few hours.
We repair the hull, create a space for ourselves in the ice, then get under way
to the other comets.’

~ * ~

In
medical, Jan had Marko sit down next to her unit. It powered up, took a blood
sample, then precisely measured his shoulder with ultrasound and lasers. Once
it had completed its tasks it sent the precise dimensions of his existing ball
joint to the CNC mills in engineering.

Over the next couple of days
Harry, the captain and Fritz, under Marko’s guidance, built the hardware for
the new arm with the CNC auto lathes and mills. In the tubing, which was to
replace all the bones, they created the power sources which would be charged
with a blood supply from the biological Marko. The metal was coated with porous
ceramics, except the ball joint, which was milled smoother than glass. Marko
placed it into his biological generator, building up the synthetic muscles,
their bio-electrical circuits and nerves, artificial cartilage and, finally,
the chain-linked, flexible chitinous material for the skin.

He could have grown nice healthy
pink skin, but he decided to make a statement. He created a tricky interface at
the place he was joining it to his real skin. Time would tell if he had
designed and grown it right. Once all the information checked out through his
midi, Jan brought in her medical suite, which had created the redesign of the
nerve interface. They linked the two machines. With Marko’s midi controlling
the new nerves and the arm in a gel tank, they activated it. Over the next hour
the arm was put through its paces.

‘OK, Jan. It works. We may as
well do it. I figure I’ll have to be conscious throughout?’

‘Afraid so, Marko. It’s better
that way. First, we flood your system with some rather exotic surgical
nanotech, which is programmable through the unit. It shuts down all the nerve
endings. Another group will control every artery, vein and capillary. OK.
First, I have to excise the original nerve, which is trying to grow you a new
arm. Then remove the original ball. The unit will fit the new ball and weave
the synthetic flesh into your real self. The unit tells me that it will take
forty-five minutes. Oh, Lotus formally asked for permission to be fed data
streams, from here in the medical unit, so she can record your arm attachment.
I, as medical officer, have denied that per standard protocols of patient to
attending medico privacy. I am presuming that you don’t want her to see and
hear everything from in here?’

‘OK.’ Marko said. ‘I’ll cope. No
thanks, very happy for Lotus not to know what happens.’

‘Then it’ll take another couple
of hours to complete the integration. During that first phase, you’ll be
heavily sedated. You’ll feel nothing. Also, your bloodstream nanotes will be
hyper-activated, so you won’t have to breathe. Your heartrate will be lowered
to a couple of beats per minute, because the system wants you as still as
possible. Then it will raise you to a conscious level so it can test every part
of your arm with you in control. Now do you need to visit the loo? OK. By the
way, the unit is most impressed with your work. Would you like to get further
acquainted with Ernst?’

‘Ernst? You’re kidding me! You
brought an AI on board without telling anyone!
Shit!
Jan, you’re a real
shocker! And Lotus has no idea. Outstanding!’ He laughed long and hard and a
great deal of tension left him. ‘Oh sorry, Ernst. I am pleased to make your
acquaintance.’

Marko mused that it was just as
well that the medical unit was completely shielded, even from Lotus. Part of
the medico-patient interface was that unless expressly invited, no monitoring
or recordings were ever made inside the medical unit. The unit folded itself
out again until it doubled its size. A faceplate unfolded itself and a pair of
glasses presented themselves to Marko. He reached out and put them on, as two
small pieces slid inside his ears and the glasses activated.

‘Hello, Marko. I am Ernst. You do
not have to speak. Just think of what you want to say and I shall pick it up —
another of Jan’s security measures.’

In the glasses was the image of a
cheerful, wise old man. They spent a few enlightening moments discussing mutual
interests, with Ernst very keen to learn more of what Marko had achieved with
his ACEs. Ernst explained in detail the nerve interface and new nerves that he
had built for the project, based in part on Marko’s own work, his DNA, and the
considerable expertise that he offered. His persona was that of an eminent
surgeon who had wished to become an AI. Jan’s medical suite was one of his
proxies. They decided that further discussions were needed, as they had a lot
to offer each other, and agreed to design a more discreet method of
communication after the operation.