Ironheart Page 10

  Oh, yeah. Because the buffers were down, if they were accelerating anywhere then the inertia would affect them. But why would Anya be pushing them?

  Willa’s voice crackled through the speaker: “Anya! Stop it! Leave them alone!”

  Anya’s voice replied; she was more excited than the men had ever heard her, and was having trouble remembering Willa’s dialect lessons. First she spilled out a great jumble of syllables, remnants of some unknown tongue. Then she reverted back to the Classical Galactic she’d spoken when they’d awoken her: “Wise, brave child! Thou hast learned so soon to pilot my shuttle!”

  “Leave them alone! Get that thing off the ship!”

  “But I am gone, dearest. Thou hast broken thy Canary free of my grapplers. Power down, Willa, lest thou do stress damage.”

  “Not till you call off your attack!”

  “But it is finished.”

  That was true. The inertial buffers were regaining full strength, and the floor was the plain old floor again. Madaku got to his feet and went to the console, staggering through the unfamiliar miasmic feel of bruises. Burran was already upright and checking readings. All systems were coming back online, though the red alarm still flashed.

  “Willa opened the hail to all channels, because she didn’t know which would work,” said Burran. “That’s why we can hear those two talking.”

  A good guess, thought Madaku, but there was no way Burran could actually know that. Unless their bond was so strong that he did automatically know why she did the things she did.

  “Power down, Willa,” said Anya, trying to soothe her. She almost sounded nervous. “Power down, I’ll not harm thee.”

  Then there was nothing more from Anya. “Willa’s cut the comm channel,” said Burran.

  “Damn, that’s right,” said Madaku, “why wasn’t I doing that?” He rushed to shut down all links between their AI and Ironheart’s. There could still be hidden portals; Madaku set the Canary’s AI to hunt them down, hoping it would be smart enough to recognize them all.

  “Systems are back online—I see Willa, she’s leaving the docking bay!” Burran was about to go tearing off after her, but he stopped short, doing a double-take at the console. “Shit, where’s Fehd?! The observation deck’s depressurized!”

  “I see his life signs—he’s alive—but he’s not on the ship! She came and grabbed Fehd off the fucking ship! Something smashed through the observation window and took him out!”

  Burran was already gone. Madaku spent a moment checking to see where the Canary was going—it was being pushed by an outside power, by the Ironheart shuttle that had rammed it, its own quiet thrusters offering no resistance. They were headed to the far side of the planet from Ironheart. Now he saw the shuttle detach, giving the Canary a further boost along its way with its own thrusters. For an instant Madaku panicked, but then he saw from Willa’s life readings that she had exited the shuttle in time and was back aboard the Canary. She must have set the shuttle to detach remotely.

  He raced out through the corridors. The unfamiliar klaxon was silent, but the lights still pulsed red. He paused long enough at one console to command all ship monitors to display his, Burran’s, and Willa’s relative positions. That way he could follow along as he ran, without stopping.

  He did pause to see if he could tell where Burran and Willa were headed. Both their blinking dots seemed to be converging upon a single point, and after a moment he figured out it was the pilot room. He wondered if Burran had even needed to glance at the read-out, if he had just known where Willa would go.

  He was about to go into the lift, when he realized with a start that would be reckless—the lifts might not be functioning properly after the attack. It was a bizarre thought, since it was almost unheard-of for anything ever to break down, but he knew it was true. So he slid down the nearby chute ladder three levels, then ran to the pilot’s room.

  Burran and Willa had beaten him there. Willa was activating the hyperface, and was about to affix the intuition bowl to her head. “What are you doing?” cried Madaku. “We can’t jump into hyperspace, just like that! We have to plot out the jump!”

  “We have to get out of Anya’s sight,” said Willa.

  “But it’s crazy to jump like this! It’s dangerous!” Knowing himself how stupid he sounded even as he spoke, he said, “Anya said she wasn’t going to harm you.”

  “Madaku,” said Burran. “Shut up.”

  “I actually believe her about not wanting to kill me,” said Willa. “Even though I don’t know why, exactly. But you guys, I don’t think she cares about.”

  Once she had all the apparatus set up, she shot them both a quick glance and said, “Better start praying.” Madaku thought that was a joke, until he realized it wasn’t.

  He was about to protest again, when Burran shot him another, even more dangerous look and said, “I’m telling you, Madaku. Shut up.” So Madaku fell silent, figuring, to hell with it, maybe Willa was right.

  But that was before the jump started, more suddenly than he’d ever known one to happen before. He had never realized how important to him those boring routines really were, until they were being skipped, and the lights were flashing funny, and there was a lurch that didn’t seem to happen in any particular place, or rather seemed to have a billion different centers, one for each atom of his body. No jump had ever been as dramatically noticeable as this. They were going to die! Their atoms would be scattered!

  A swimming sensation. His knees buckled; usually a voyage through hyperspace could pass unnoticed, if you didn’t already know it was going to happen. Even with a clumsy intuiter, as long as the failsafes were on.

  Gradually the quality of the light came back to normal. Madaku couldn’t tell if he was still feeling that swimmy, nauseous sensation, or if this were only the aftereffect of it, and they were back in realspace.

  Then he realized Willa was sobbing, and he knew they were back.

  She collapsed out of her seat, awkwardly fumbling with the releases for the intution bowl, weeping wildly, not quite in control of her limbs.

  Burran was at the console, already checking their location. Whatever the instruments said, he seemed not to believe them, and kept checking and re-checking. Finally he said, almost in a whisper, “She materialized us inside an asteroid.”

  “What?” said Madaku. One of the horror stories of ways one might die during a hyperspace jump was by reentering realspace at the same point as an asteroid that had gone unnoticed in the charts. For a surreal moment, Madaku thought Burran was informing him that they were all dead.

  But that wasn’t it. “A cavern inside one of these asteroids, circling XB-79853-D7-4. One of our drone probes charted it. There’s just enough space to nestle the Canary inside. She’s hidden us, but good.”

  Madaku only continued to gape in mystified horror. “But you mean we’re still in the system? With Ironheart? But why? Wouldn’t it have been just as easy to jump a billion miles away? Easier, even, because she wouldn’t have to risk our lives squeezing into this asteroid!”

  Burran smiled tightly, as if he were holding back some stronger reaction. “For Fehd, man,” he said. “Willa knows we can’t just leave him behind.”

  Willa was still on the floor, sobbing and spluttering, oblivious to them both. Burran knelt down and gathered her into his arms, rubbing her shaking back. “You’re the best,” he murmured. “You’re the best.”

  Ten

  Once Willa was calmed down and cleaned up, the three of them sat down over some tea and Willa told them what had happened. Once she’d arrived on board Ironheart, Anya gently told her that she was never again to leave. Anya had an errand to run over to the Canary. If Willa behaved, she would do her best to spare the lives of Burran and Madaku. Except for some hysterical weeping she whipped up, Willa basically went along with Anya’s instructions.

  After Anya left, Willa slapped a translation plug onto the nearest console and accessed the ship’s computer, ordering the plug to adjust the
readings and instrument controls to Modern Galactic Standard, Human. She assumed she would only have at the absolute maximum a minute to wreak havoc, before Anya saw her from her own console and ejected her from the system. But once logged in she saw that Anya had already left Ironheart, in a different craft than the shuttle. Since she hadn’t bothered to set any locks or safeguards behind her, Willa was able to run back to the shuttle without being stopped.

  “I guess she really wasn’t expecting you to crack that code,” said Burran to Madaku, looking at him with grudging respect.

  Willa didn’t understand the fine points of the shuttle’s controls, but with the aid of the plug she was able to tear it out of its docking port and accelerate it back toward the Canary. The scanners gave her weird readings from the ship’s vicinity, and she couldn’t figure out exactly how to decipher them. But before long the Canary was visible with the naked eye, and seconds after that Anya’s craft was also in view, a strange little thing floating near the hull by the observation deck, with tentacles waving in space like something alive. It was that craft which must have broken through the transparent plasteel of the observation window. Willa spent so much time trying to figure out how to shoot at the tentacled craft that she didn’t have time to learn how to stop; the best she could manage was to angle the shuttle so that when it hit the airlock neither ship was damaged too badly.

  “But how did that disable Anya’s craft?” asked Madaku.

  “I have no idea,” said Willa. “The plan wasn’t to ram the Canary, the plan was to shoot Anya’s tentacle-ship. I rammed the Canary partly because I couldn’t figure out how to stop, partly because I figured I could bore through the hull and force-dock, as long as I could instruct our AI to let me in. Then once I was inside I ran to the pilot room so I could jump us out. I was gambling that I could get us away before she boarded.”

  Burran was going over what little data they had from the attack. Anya’s hack had mangled most of their deep data from the ten minutes before the jump, and he was mainly left with only video footage of the attack, in a variety of spectra. “I don’t think you damaged her craft, babe.” He squinted at his monitor, as if that would help him see it better. “It looks like she just backed off, once you force-docked.” He looked up at Madaku. “And readings show that, before we jumped, Ironheart’s thrusters were operational. I thought her realspace engines weren’t working?”

  Madaku remembered how he hadn’t been able to find anything wrong with them, how mysterious their malfunction had been. He remembered the strange patterns of decay they’d picked up from her scramblers. What if the Ironheart AI had been functioning perfectly well, and the decay had been a camouflage, a false overlay on top of the real readings? “I guess she lied about it,” he said, flustered, embarrassed.

  Willa’s face squeezed itself together like a fist. “I’m so mad at Anya!”

  “What did Fehd mean?” said Burran. “‘She walks in vacuum’?”

  “There are lots of religions and legends about creatures traveling through vacuum,” said Madaku. “Lots of bogeymen. You know how superstitious Fehd is. Something must have scared the crap out of him so bad he reverted to childhood, and then when he looked out the observation port he, I don’t know, he thought he saw her floating out there with no spacesuit, maybe.”

  Both Willa and Burran frowned dubiously, but neither contested his theory.

  “We’ve got to figure out some way to get Fehd back,” said Burran.

  “I’ll go with you,” said Willa.

  “No you won’t.” Before she could argue, Burran said, “Anyway, you’ve got to stay with the Canary in case we need to hyperspace out real quick, once we get back.”

  Madaku didn’t say anything. He was ashamed of the way his eyes kept twitching down to check the passive receiver on the room’s doctor, in the hopes that Fehd would have died. But the beacon constantly broadcasting from his brain-chip confirmed his continuing survival. To find out anything more specific about his condition they would have needed to engage a link, which, unless it were couched in a transparent tendril, Ironheart would have been able to detect and trace back to their location, and use to hack into their system. Since Fehd was alive, they would have to rescue him. Madaku understood the necessity of that. But it would be by far the most dangerous thing he had ever done, and he couldn’t help but wish for a reprieve.

  They were all alone out here, though. If they tried to send a subspace distress call, Anya would detect it. No matter how fast rescuers arrived, Ironheart would arrive faster.

  Meanwhile, they had switched off the chips in their own brains, as well as asking the Canary’s AI to shut off all ship’s emissions—only self-contained systems were running, and as far as they could tell they were transmitting no data. Madaku had never before even considered neutralizing his brain-chip. According to the doctor, he no longer existed; he couldn’t help but again and again run his eyes over the black spot where his readings used to be. And because they’d muffled all their subspace hyperlinks, no alarm was sent to the Registry, the way Madaku had always assumed would happen if his brain chip suffered trauma or seemed to wink out of existence.

  “Madaku!” He realized that Burran was asking him something; from the annoyed tone of his voice, he’d apparently been repeating himself for a while. “Madaku, snap out of it!”

  He shook himself. “Sorry, sorry—what were you saying?”

  Burran was about to repeat himself. But his monitor beeped—he looked down at it and froze. “It’s her.” At first Madaku thought he meant she was here, or in the vicinity, and his insides froze. But it wasn’t that: “She’s sending out a message. By fucking radio.”

  He flipped a toggle and Anya’s smooth voice flowed from the wall speakers, already in mid-phrase: “... and no harm shall come. I shall not lie to you, and claim that I meant no harm to your friends. My intention was to kill them, trusting that I could make up their loss to you, given time. But such is my aim no longer. Not because I care anything for your menfolk. Not even because you do, though I hate to bring you displeasure—time would heal that, I tell you. But now I see that you are so stubborn, and wild, that you will die to keep your companions free and alive. Such passion and battle-readiness speaks well of you, and I shall honor it, both for your pleasure, and to avoid that any evil may befall you. Again I say, if you will only come on board my ship, peacefully, and depart with me, I shall do no willing harm to your companions.”

  “Why use radio?” hissed Madaku, keeping his voice down as if Anya were really in the room with them and might overhear.

  “Because she knows we’ll detect it passively, without having to switch on something that’ll give away our position,” said Burran.

  “Yeah, but wouldn’t she assume we’d hyperjumped out of range?!”

  “Like I keep saying, we have to stick around to save Fehd,” growled Burran. “Anya knows that, as well as Willa and I do.”

  Well, apparently he was the only coward in the whole fucking galaxy, according to Burran. Madaku kept his mouth shut, resisting the urge to say that he’d only meant they might have jumped out to the far verge of the system, in which case it would have taken Anya’s signal hours to reach them. But he supposed she had the time.

  He tried to calculate the quickest someone could jump in from the nearest population center, if the Canary jumped out of Ironheart’s range just far enough to call for help over subspace. It would take almost a week. Madaku knew there was no way he could convince himself that was an acceptable time-frame for retrieving Fehd (although, without an intuiter, it wasn’t like Anya could jump out of the system). He had to face it that they were going to need to go in there and get him, themselves.

  Gods damn it. Why the hell had she taken him, in the first place?!

  Anya was still talking. “Come to me, Willa. Be my companion. I promise, nothing shall ever harm you again. I will show you worlds. I will....”

  “Turn it off, please,” said Willa.

  Burran obeyed
. “It’s recording,” he said. “The AI can listen and tell us if there’s anything we need to know.”

  “What was all that?” said Madaku. “Anya has a crush on Willa?”

  “Who doesn’t,” said Burran. “No offense, hon, but I think in addition to your lovely personality she might also want an intuiter.”

  “Otherwise she’s stuck here,” said Willa.

  “And she thinks we’ll trade you for Fehd, and the three of us be marooned here ourselves?” said Madaku.

  “Well. We can be kinda sure she won’t kill me, because she needs a pilot. That’s not true of Fehd, though. And you guys would only be marooned a week or two, without me. As soon as Anya isn’t hovering around listening anymore, you could send a subspace distress signal.”

  “It’s a moot fucking point, because you’re not going,” said Burran.

  “Anyway,” said Madaku, “regardless of what she promises, she’d have to destroy the Canary once she had you aboard. Maybe she would try to hide the fact from you, to keep you a cooperative intuiter. But if she lets us live then, like you said, we’ll send out a subspace distress call and get the Registry after her.”

  “Madaku,” said Burran. “You’ve made a great start at deciphering Anya’s exotic code. Ready to apply that work to a malicious code spray?”

  “I think I should be able to launch a randomized attack on her systems, yes. But I’m not confident it’ll do much damage. Especially since I suspect Anya’s invested more time and tech in both offensive and defensive systems than are in any AI I’ve ever dealt with.” He hoped no one would ask about the transparent tendril, because his confidence level regarding that project was near zero.

  “Fair enough. Let’s hope the spray is enough to at least momentarily confuse her defenses.” Burran went to Willa and put a hand on her upper arm. “I’m gonna have to ask you to do something dangerous, babe.”

  “Seems like you two are the ones doing all the dangerous stuff.”

  “I don’t know. I’m gonna need you to hyperjump out of this asteroid long enough for the shuttle to unlock from the Canary—if we leave from the asteroid she’ll see our hiding place. You’ve got to pop us into some other patch of realspace here within the system, then as soon as we’re away pop yourself back into the asteroid, where she can’t see you. I know it’ll be rough, doing two jumps in a row like that. But you’ll have to recover pretty fast, because as soon as we rescue Fehd and have him in the shuttle, I’m going to send out a radio burst to signal you to hyperjump again, back to that rendezvous point. And once the shuttle is docked, before we’ve even left it, I want you to hyperjump as far away as you can manage. And after that, baby, you can sleep for a month.”