Catch the Lightning (20 page)

Joshua spoke. “Althor, do you have a bag?”

I looked back. Joshua was floating in the center of the cabin, his face pale. Althor took one look at him, then opened a panel in a bulkhead and pulled out a tubelike device.

Heather floated over to Joshua. She spoke in a low voice meant only for him, but the Jag picked it up and transmitted her words to my brain.

“What’s wrong?” Heather asked.

“I’m sorry,” Joshua muttered. “I think I’m going to chuck up everything.”

“Why are you apologizing?” She reddened. “You held it longer than I did.”

Althor went over and gave Joshua the tube. “Astronauts with far more training than you two get sick. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

Joshua smiled wanly. “Thanks.”

Althor returned to the cockpit and opened a bulkhead. He took out a bowl with a cluster of small domes attached to its inner surface and fastened the domes to various of the forward control panels. One by one a prong extended from the top of each dome, glowing with red light.

He unbuttoned his cuff and rolled up his sleeve, revealing his wrist guard. It was an odd image, a man in a conservative shirt wearing what looked like a gang member’s black leather guard. It’s an apt image for ajagernaut, though; controlled violence governed by the tenets of civilization. Their empathic traits combine with their enhanced combat abilities in a dualism that, at its best, produces officers who choose to live by a demanding code of honor, balancing their destructive abilities with a strong sense of ethics. It is also the reason why their suicide rate is so high; empathy and warfare don’t mix well.

He turned the inside of his wrist down and pressed his guard onto the prong on a dome.

“What are those?” I asked.

“Web mods.” He lifted his wrist, bringing the dome with it. On its flat side, which had been flush with the control panel, the tip of a tube glowed red.

He told me the red light was a laser. It swept over a micromesh inside the control panel, producing a diffraction pattern. The condition of the software and equipment controlled by that panel determined the shape of the mesh, and hence its diffraction pattern. The domes digitized the diffraction data and sent it to the miniweb in Althor’s wrist guard, which dealt with minor errors and referred more serious problems to his biomech web. For minor damage, it made fixes by sending commands to the dome, which translated them into a diffraction pattern for the panel. The panel responded by changing its associated systems until the mesh configuration they produced gave a matching diffraction pattern.

“For more extensive damage,” Althor said, “the domes act as diagnostic tools.”

“What do they tell you about the Jag?” I asked.

He grimaced. “That it’s a mess.”

“You got away,” I said. “That’s the important thing.”

“Boy, did he ever get away,” Daniel whooped. “He left those Jinn-19 jet fighters in the dust.”

Althor plugged the dome back in. “I’m not away yet.”

The Jag continued to murmur in my mind:… e
xceeded range of St-iy… Polar orbit, 500 kilometers… navigation systems corrupted… WARNING: ARROW systems deployed… radar directed/inertial update… IR terminal homing…
Throughout it all, the ship kept poking my brain, like the host at a party searching out the identity of a stranger who had showed up.

A siren screamed.

The cockpit lit up like a Christmas tree. Panels snapped away from my body, jerking forward to Althor. The crippled computer couldn’t control them, and they ended up pushing him down on his knees so that he was wedged between my legs and the forward controls, facing away from me. He didn’t waste time untangling me from the seat, just yanked the panels around his body. The cockpit changed shape to make him its focal point with me riding piggyback. In the cabin behind us, I heard the others getting into the cocoons.

The Jag tried to strengthen its link with Althor, but his mind recoiled—so it blasted its messages into my mind:
WARNING: shroud failed. WARNING: XB-70 aircraft carrying SRAM Rotary launchers. WARNING: air-launched missile approaching.

The cockpit disappeared.

I was in space, in a gigantic gold lattice of human-sized cells. I still felt the pilot’s seat, but the virtual reality was so vivid that the lattice seemed real. Earth hung below, sea blue and turquoise, showing North and South America scantily dressed in clouds.

Data scrolled inside the cell on my right. As soon as my attention shifted to it, the cell swelled to fill my field of view. Information flooded through it and my brain: missile trajectories, construction, tracking systems, Jinn-19, KC-135, a slew of acronyms I didn’t understand. It came far too fast to absorb. How did Althor process it all?

As I thought of him, the data flood receded, shifting back to the edge of my view. Several cells in front of me, a violet pulse formed. The Jag sent new data:
height, 194 cm; weight, 114 kg; eyes, purple; hair, purple; humanoid class, gamma—

It was Althor. The Jag was showing a representation of him.

A beacon swept the grid and played across my cell, probing it. Then it blinked out and the flood of data stopped. In front of me, the violet pulse elongated, forming arms, legs, a head. When it finished, Althor stood there, facing toward the Earth, his body made out of violet light. Representations of the approaching missiles appeared within the grid as red blips. The Jag had responded to my confusion, finding a way to present the data in a form I could absorb.

Six minutes to impact, the Jag thought.

Althor hurled a white orb at the missile swarm, and it streaked through the lattice.

I noticed a gray blur at the edge of my vision. In response to my attention, it moved into view, expanding into the detailed image of a satellite with an FSAF insignia on its hull. A turret swiveled on it and a beam stabbed out, highlighted in white by the simulation. The Jag reeled off statistics: coherent radiation—long range—impact in one second—and the computer-generated image of the laser beam splattered around our cell locations like liquid over a giant bubble.

Ninety-four percent of incident energy absorbed or deflected by plasma shield
, the Jag thought. It poured on more data: the “shield” was a plasma that deflected X-rays. That meant, however, that it was also opaque to electromagnetic radiation at lower frequencies. At the one point where the plasma intersected the hull, an observation probe extended through the shield, one advanced enough so that even moderate exposure to X-rayS couldn’t cook it.

The orb Althor had hurled reached the cloud of blips, missing the outermost missiles but catching one in the middle. The orb vanished, along with three blips. It was eerie” to see them disappear in silence, without even a flash of light.

No gas exists in space to be heated into afireball by an explosion, the Jag told me. Then:
Eighty-nine percent of incident X-rays absorbed or deflected by plasma field.

The bombs may have made no sound, but Earth responded with an explosion of words. The pilot of a chase plane yelled, “Jumpin’ crickets, that baby ain’t no fucking
scout
.” More reactions poured in as surface bases registered the explosions. Some urged a stop to the missile launches; others urged they be stepped up. One thing was certain: they were scared. This “baby” didn’t need a mothership; it had its own fangs.

Althor hurled another orb at the missiles. He had trouble with his aim; as soon as the orb started through the lattice, it was obvious it would go nowhere near its targets. He tried throwing another, with even worse results. The orbs tried to home in on the swarm, but either their tracking systems were also damaged or else the approaching missiles had some way of throwing off pursuit.

A gold rod in the “roof” of Althor’s lattice cube became supple, like a vine, and coiled around his wrist. When he raised his arm to throw another orb, the vine tugged, correcting his motion. The link between his mind and the system solidified—and Althor gasped with pain. As his cry echoed through the lattice, the vine snapped away from his wrist, flailing like a broken rubber band. His image faded into a smudge of purple. It reformed quickly, but with distorted and blurred edges.

Missile tracking systems failure rate at 64 percent
, the Jag thought.

Jaaaag
. Althor’s thought phased in and out.
Traaansferrrr to naaavigaa…

WARNING:
the Jag thought.
Navigation systems failing
.

Jag
, I thought.

A fiber detached from the lattice and coiled around my head.
Attending
.

Can you show me what’s wrong with navigation?

The lattice underneath Althor’s feet lit up, highlighting the rods that formed edges of the cube. Except they were no longer rods. They had become great twists of gold rope. Unraveling rope.

Althor let go of his orbs and grasped the navigation “rope,” clutching the ends to keep them from raveling. The orbs floated away from him, meandering around his grid cell.

Navigation control restored
, the Jag thought.
Weapons interface corrupted
.

Dropping the cords, Althor grabbed at the orbs. As his hand closed on one, the Jag thought:
Weapons interface integrity recovered by 21 percent. Navigation systems failing.

I reached forward. Shimmering with blue light, my arms stretched across the lattice, longer and longer, until they reached Althor’s cube. I took hold of the cords at his feet.

Navigation integrity restored
, the Jag thought.

Althor spun around.
Tina! Get out of the system! This could damage your brain
.

Get the bombs
, I thought. I pulled back to my grid cell, bringing the navigation cords. They dragged along my arms until the shimmering blue skin broke and swirls of electronic bits dripped onto the grid.

Althor whirled back around. He hurled more orbs, and they streaked toward the warheads. With the missiles closer now, it took less time to reach the swarm. Most of the orbs missed, but they came around and went after the missiles again, homing with better accuracy than before.

More red blips disappeared. Only two remained.

Missile tracking failure at 84 percent
, the Jag thought.

Althor swore and yanked down a rod from the lattice above him, It split in two, one half coming away in his hands while the other lengthened until it reformed the cube’s edge. The half in his hands grew, molding into a massive gun. Even as it formed, he was bracing its bulk against his shoulder.

Then he fired. As a beam shot out from the virtual representation of the gun, the Jag poured out stats:
focused, beam, 2.2 MeV, antiprotons… particle penetration into nucleus… excitation from bound to unbound state
—and the beam hit the approaching blips.

They disappeared. Just like that. Quiet as a night on the desert. ^Vith a gasp, Althor sagged to his knees.

Missile launch from XB-70 craft in quadrant sixteen
, the Jag thought. Another swarm of red blips appeared in the lattice.

Althor struggled to his feet, hefting up his mammoth gun. He moved as if the virtual weapon were too heavy to lift. His image wavered, then became distinct again.

Tracking systems inoperational
, the Jag thought.

NoOoOoO
. Althor’s protest vibrated.

Switching to backup
, the Jag thought. Then:
Unable to access backup modules
.

I’ll DOOOooooo
it, Althor thought. He reached toward a group of gray cells behind the gold cubes where we stood. His arm pulled out longer, longer—

And stretched so thin that it detached from his body. It dropped through the lattice as a dead weight, bits of memory pumping out the stub on his shoulder. His image distorted, then melted onto the grid like wax pooling at the base of a burning candle. His virtual scream curled through the grid, fading as his image dimmed.

I was alone with the warheads.

JAaAaAaG!
My cry bounced everywhere.

A thread coiled toward me.
Attending
.

Is Althor dead?

Commander Selei has discontinued
.

What does that mean?

Commander Selei has discontinued
. Then:
My El functions are degraded. I have lost autonomous capability. You must input commands
.

Commands? Get us out of here
, I thought.

Navigation degraded by 94 percent. Backup inaccessible. I cannot execute command
.

Then blow up the bombs
.

Tracking systems inoperational. Weapons /navigation interface corrupted. Backup inaccessible. I cannot execute command
.

I didn’t want anyone executed, including us.
Can you make us invisible?

No. Shroud nonfunctional
.

What’s wrong with it?

The codes that control it are corrupted
.

Show me in a way that I understand
.

Look up
.

I looked. A sky hovered within the lattice.
What is that?

A representation of the code
.

I could “see” the errors. They showed like cracks, a mess of fissures that turned the sky into a giant jigsaw puzzle.

Fix the sky,
I thought.

Specify “fix.”

Make some plaster
.

Specify ‘plaster.’

Like mortar. To repair the cracks in the shroud
.

The shroud consists of energy fields, projections at various electromagnetic wavelengths, modulation of hull properties, and evasive maneuvers. It cannot crack
.

I pointed at the jigsaw puzzle sky. Make plaster to fix that.

Specify nature of replacement code
.

I don’t know how. Can’t you?

Damage to my web has deposited data in the wrong memory addresses and erased crucial links
.

What does that mean?

I am too injured to properly rewrite my own code.

I concentrated, submerging my mind more deeply into the Jag. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I was lending it my Kyle abilities to augment its El brain. In a sense, I was helping it heal much as I had helped Althor. All I understood then was that it needed ideas on how to fix its “sky,” suggestions that might help as it struggled to rewrite its damaged code.