Vortex (15 page)

He was able to see through its electromagnetic sensors the way the Russo-Chinese automated drones began to shift course, beginning to take on a life of their own as human Combatants hooked in to respond to the American assault. Tom began to search for her, for that one person.

That’s how, through a hail of flak, streaks of particle beams, and explosions, Tom finally clapped electronic eyes on Medusa again.

Not Medusa herself, of course, but Medusa’s consciousness inhabiting some Russo-Chinese vessels. He saw Medusa’s ships glinting with sunlight, veering to confront the Indo-American vessels. Three . . . four . . . five of them, all in her control, all engaging different enemies.

Tom couldn’t help it. He couldn’t. He aimed the last bit of energy of the half-crippled weapon at Medusa and blasted at her, slashing the beam through space in an elaborate
M
. It was the closest thing to a “hi” he could muster.

Medusa responded with the fury of every single automated weapon in his proximity, all wheeling around, inexplicably abandoning their preprogrammed attack patterns and blasting at him.

Tom jolted back into himself as his weapon was destroyed, an ecstatic laugh bubbling on his lips. He’d missed her.

He soared back out of his body, seizing control of one automated weapon after another. One was a particle cannon, sparking with its last moments of existence. He burned a single thruster to insert it into the path of the Russo-Chinese Combatant he knew as Blinder. As soon as Blinder exploded, Medusa destroyed Tom’s cannon.

Tom zoomed back up into space, returning to the battle. Next, he seized a fully functional Indo-American weapon, and located Sturmovik, an annoying Russian Combatant who always charged straight forward, never maneuvering, never taking evasive action, firing at targets as they neared and trusting the other Russo-Chinese Combatants to do the work of protecting him. Tom found the lack of imagination aggravating whenever he saw feeds of the battles.

Now he parodied Sturmovik’s strategy by seizing control of a mobile artillery unit and mimicked Sturmovik with it—flying the mobile gun straight at Sturmovik’s ship. Sturmovik didn’t turn; it didn’t turn. They were on a collision course. At the last minute, Sturmovik seemed to realize no one was saving him here, and he tried to feint, but Tom’s weapon tore straight into his hull.

Medusa blasted him to pieces again, and this time before Tom could dive back into the system and return to the battle, his neural wire popped out and his eyes shot open. He found Heather standing over his cot.

“Normally I’d have several more drones up there, ready for me to interface with,” Heather said, as Tom squinted against the brightness. “But, as you know, I’ve had some reputation issues lately, and Wyndham Harks only footed the bill for one drone this time. Now . . .” She smiled coyly. “Check your chronometer, Tom.”

“Why . . .” Tom sat up blearily, then he went still when he saw the time on his internal chronometer. He began flipping from frame to frame of his memory, cross-referencing them with the time stamps, and realized from the moment Heather’s ship reached the site of battle, to the moment of his final obliteration, a mere thirty seconds had passed.

Tom gaped at the time in shock.

No wonder.
No wonder
Combatants needed neural processors. There wasn’t a human being on Earth who could keep up with that sort of speed.

“Wow,” Tom murmured. “We’re superhuman. We’re actually superhuman.”

Heather winked. “Puts it into perspective, right?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
HE MALFUNCTIONS HAD
spread outside the simulation chambers. A few high-ranking generals came for a status update with General Marsh, and the trainees they passed reacted as if to some terrible stench—clutching their hands over their noses and running away. As more trainees reacted to the high-ranking generals the same way, Marsh signaled Blackburn, who isolated the exotic computer virus before it spread through the entire system. Nevertheless, the generals were disgruntled over it, and it became a black eye for General Marsh—and for Blackburn himself, especially when he couldn’t find the source of the virus.

Blackburn was in a thunderous mood because of all the chaos. The programs were maliciously playful enough to make him suspect one of the trainees, but according to Wyatt, Blackburn also thought
that
might be a ploy, too, to throw off suspicion from someone else. It wasn’t a stretch to guess who had motive to see Blackburn fired. Obsidian Corp. had already put out feelers with the Senate Defense Committee, seeking a return to their old role of software writing at the Pentagonal Spire—citing the recent software issues as evidence it was necessary.

Blackburn began watching Tom more than usual, like he suspected him of having some hand in the breaches. Then again, Tom wondered uneasily if Blackburn had an idea of what he’d been up to. Medusa still hadn’t responded to him, so he tried annoying her by returning to the Citadel’s systems and planting the Gnomes virus right into her neural processor. Then he headed to Calisthenics. They went through the usual routine for Monday morning, with Blackburn guiding them through marching drills and an exercise where they reached down with exosuited hands and picked objects up, then put them back down.

Tom spent the whole time thinking of Medusa as Vik smashed a cantaloupe between his metal fingers, and Blackburn said, “Congratulations, Ashwan, you set off that bomb. Now you’re dust.”

Then they got to experiment with metallic instruments that looked like irons for pressing clothes. They were called centrifugal clamps. One flip of a button, and the internal centrifuge activated, adhering the clamp to any nearby surface. Wyatt used them to climb all the way up a wall, then she got stuck, since she was too anxious to climb back down, even with a half-dozen people below her ready to catch her. Tom started climbing up to give her a piggyback ride down, but Blackburn ordered him to the ground. Then
he
started after her. Blackburn reached her side at the top of the wall, spoke quietly to her, and they started down side by side, one clamp at a time.

Tom was the last to stash his exosuit at the end of Calisthenics. Most trainees lowered the hanger, stepped onto it with the exosuit, then climbed out. Tom usually skipped the lowering-the-hanger part and jumped on top of it while it was still high, then took the suit off. Whenever he caught him, Blackburn gave him a weekend of restricted libs and scut work detail—cleaning around the Spire—but Tom did it, anyway.

Just as Tom popped his exosuit off today, a surprising thing happened: one of the suits came to life on its own, and two metal, exoskeletal hands shot down, seized him by the upper arms, and hoisted him up into the air. Tom gasped in shock, legs kicking out wildly, and words flared before his vision.

WHY DO I KEEP SEEING ANGRY GNOMES?

Tom managed a grin where he was dangling, his initial worry about an AI doomsday scenario fading away, replaced by glee that he’d finally gotten his reply.
“
Y
ou’re here! It’s so great you’re here!”
he said to the air.

STOP sending gnomes. I mean it!

Tom laughed, giddy. The hand wasn’t crushing him, just giving him a scare.
“Medusa, meet me online.”

I do not want to talk to you. Stop trying to contact me.

“Online. Once. Only once. Hear me out.”

No. You don’t know what you’re doing, Mordred. Stay out of our system. If I see gnomes again, I will come back here and kill you.

“Nah, I don’t think so. You might kill me one day, but it won’t be over gnomes.”

You underestimate how annoying it is seeing them everywhere!

“No,”
Tom said honestly.
“I know exactly how annoying it is. But I still believe you won’t kill me over it. People kill over money and power and love, but no one kills over gnomes.”

I AM NOT JOKING!

“Neither am I. Meet me. Come talk to me, and I’ll leave you alone.”

The machine drew him up closer, so he was staring into the empty space where eyes might’ve been.
You promise me one thing. Swear it to me: you won’t interface with the Citadel’s systems again. Then I’ll come.

“I swear,”
Tom said.

The machine released him so abruptly, he tumbled right off the hanger and smacked to the floor. Tom pulled himself to his feet, eyes on the exosuit, but it had gone totally immobile. Medusa had left the system as quickly as she’d come.

T
OM’S NEXT FLY-ALONG
with Heather was supposed to be an easy mission, a milk run. It was the rare day when Vik, Tom, and Wyatt all had their fly-alongs together. A handful of American Combatants and India-based Combatants were guarding harvesters, those ships that collected hydrocarbons from the atmospheres of gaseous bodies such as the atmospheres of Jupiter’s moons.

Heather took advantage of the opportunity to pry into Tom’s thoughts.

I’m ninety-nine percent sure Enslow is the one who told Marsh what I was doing. You can tell me if it was. I want to know,
she thought to him as they did a slingshot around Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons.

Can’t you get over it?
Tom wondered.

She ruined my career,
Heather almost snarled back in his thoughts.

Heather ruined her own career,
he couldn’t help thinking.
Wyatt just noticed what was happening.
Then he winced at what his thoughts had betrayed.

Heather thought,
Ha! So it was Enslow! I’ll destroy her for this.

No, you won’t,
Tom thought.
Wyatt may seem like a wimp, but, trust me, you don’t wanna mess with her.

They were both distracted when the harvesters ahead of them stumbled into a Russo-Chinese minefield. The Combatants snapped into action, firing their thrusters to place themselves between the mines and the harvesters. The mines locked onto their vessels and accelerated toward them, so the CamCos veered toward Europa’s surface, until gravity tore the mines down to burst against the massive ice layer.

Tom found himself gazing at that moon. Along with the underground of Mars, it was one of these spots in the solar system suspected of harboring microscopic life. Just suspected, though. Since they were both such strategically valuable, resource-rich territories, the Coalition shut down any efforts to actually test the territories for life. After all, it would be way too inconvenient, dealing with massive public protest if somehow the war eradicated the only life found to exist elsewhere in the solar system.

They completed their slingshot around Europa, launching straight toward Jupiter to catch up with the harvesters.

We’ll slingshot around Jupiter again to get some momentum for the return trip to the talons,
Heather thought.

Right,
Tom thought, mind flickering to those magnetized talons there to serve as collection points for spent drones to await refueling and future use.

Then I’ll enjoy having a word with Wyatt Enslow,
Heather thought viciously.

Wyatt did her job. You were the one who messed up.

I shouldn’t get him thinking about this or he’ll warn her. Hey, Tom, did you know we’re right on course to pass over the Great Red Spot?

Tom was entirely distracted.
Awesome,
he thought.
So awesome.

He stared, dazzled, through the vessel’s electronic eyes as the massive red spot of Jupiter slipped around the vast curvature of the planet. He gazed at the livid clouds. His neural processor told him the hurricane was three times the size of Earth, and it had raged for hundreds of years
.

And then, it happened.

The harvester they were escorting plunged out of their sensor range. Then the other harvesters hurtled toward Jupiter. CamCo vessels began to follow. Tom saw Cadence Grey’s ship diving in a suicidal course for Jupiter. Yosef Saide’s ship veered after them, then collided with Elliot’s ship, blasting them both to pieces.

Wait,
Heather thought.
Wait, wait, wait. Something’s wrong.

And suddenly, it was their turn. Their thrusters roared to life and fired, propelling them straight toward Jupiter in a death charge.

Uh, Heather?
Tom thought as that swirling red mass of storms grew larger and larger.
You should aim us somewhere else.
The ship began shaking violently as Jupiter’s gravity exerted more and more of a pull on them, and he felt Heather trying to fight whatever force it was that had seized control of their navigation.

Through the sensors of their ship, he could see more and more CamCo vessels veering in fatal death plunges, heat shields blasted by the friction with Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Oh my God,
I’m not in control of the ship,
Heather thought.
I think we’ve been hijacked.

Tom felt a thrill of excitement and worry.

Their own heat shields lit as they plunged into Jupiter’s outer atmosphere, the vessel jolting furiously, pressure mounting on a hull not designed for atmospheric travel. They burned hotter and hotter as they plunged deeper into Jupiter’s gaseous mass, gravity accelerating them to a lethal speed.

Soon, gravity began to buckle their hull, and the red clouds on all sides began to tear at them, battering them with vicious, six-hundred-kilometer-per-hour winds. In the fleeting moments before their destruction, Tom focused on the buzzing in his processor and leaped out into the vessel, interfacing with it, momentarily dazzled by the alarms blaring in every system as Jupiter consumed it.

And then, for a microsecond, maybe two, his brain met another person’s, a neural processor that wasn’t his, that wasn’t Heather’s, interfacing with their ship and directing its death plunge. Shock suffused Tom. Who was . . .

At that moment, their vessel was obliterated, snapping Tom back into his body in the Pentagonal Spire.

A
LL THE TRAINEES
were ordered to the cell adjoining the Census Chamber, and one by one, they were escorted in to have their memories of the event extracted.

The guard poked in his head, calling for the next trainee. “Covner, you’re up. Martin, you’ll be next.” Walton rose and followed him from the room.

Tom’s stomach was in knots. No one had used the census device on him since Blackburn had interrogated him for treason. The Middles around him chattered away.

“I’ve never had the census device used on me,” Jennifer Nguyen said.

“Oh, it’s straightforward,” Lyla told her. “You think about something, then the memory uploads. It’s sort of cool.”

Tom started laughing. He couldn’t help it. He ignored the dirty looks the two girls sent him and kept staring at that door, feeling like a mass of nerves. Yes, he knew this wasn’t going to be like the last time he’d sat under that metal claw with Blackburn at the controls. He really did. Intellectually. But the very idea of there being anything cool about the machine that had nearly driven him insane struck him as hilarious.

He forced himself to stop laughing and leaned back against the wall—the wall of the same cell where he’d been confined for two days. It was also the waiting room for those scheduled for memory viewing. His eyes kept straying to the spot he’d punched, over and over, while his mind was fraying.

“Guys, think,” Vik proclaimed, a crazy glint in his eyes as everyone swung their attention toward him. He spread his arms. “We became brave new pioneers in human history: we were all brutally Jupitered today.”

“Jupitered?” Lyla echoed.

“Killed by Jupiter,” Vik explained. “No other warships have crashed into Jupiter before. Ours are the first.”

In the corner where she was sitting, back to the wall, Wyatt spoke up, “Elliot and I weren’t.”

Vik sent her a startled glace. “You guys didn’t get destroyed?”

“No, we did get destroyed. Elliot and I were hit by Yosef’s ship when
he
started to plunge into Jupiter,” Wyatt explained.

“So you
were
Jupitered.”

“
Yosef
killed us, not Jupiter.”

“So you were Yosef’d—because of Jupiter,” Vik said.

“Because of kinetic energy!”

“Kinetic energy directly caused by the gravity of
Jupiter
.” Vik clenched his fists before him. “The most diabolical planet of them all.”

“That’s so stupid, Vik. Jupiter isn’t diabolical. It’s a gas giant, and we owe it our lives. A lot of asteroids that could cause mass extinction on Earth hit Jupiter instead of us because of Jupiter’s gravity.”

Vik shook his head. “You forget, Enslow: a lot of asteroids that wouldn’t even end up anywhere near Earth get redirected toward Earth by Jupiter’s gravity. If human beings never move beyond this planet, odds are, we’ll all get wiped out by a meteor someday, perhaps even a meteor that only reaches us because of that gas giant you so eagerly defend. All humanity could be Jupitered one day. That’s as diabolical as it gets.”

She rolled her eyes. “If you want to talk about future doom, then one day the sun will use up its hydrogen, turn into a red giant, and destroy our planet anyway. Does that mean the sun is evil?”

“We won’t get sunned for a few billion years, Evil Wench. We could all get Jupitered tomorrow.”

“Stop saying ‘Jupitered.’ It’s not even a word! You made it up.”