Ancestral Night

CHAPTER 27

SAID PIRATES WERE STILL OUTSIDE the swarming shell of Koregoi mirrors, still far enough away that we had a little time to plan. But they didn’t look happy, and while we were getting as much a as we could, we weren’t exactly gaining.

I guess what I’m insinuating is that we had a lot of concurrent problems to plan around. And I hate to say it, but our most immediate problem was that our AI was not paying attention.

Our AI was in love.

Perhaps it would be better to term it hero worship, but whatever it was, he would not shut up about how wonderful the Koregoi construct was, and how much its design and structure delighted him.

“You have to realize, what we’re dealing with here is a style of computational decision-making I’ve never encountered before. Its thought processes are an emergent property of its structure!”

While he was telling me this, I was physically upside down in an access tube with my legs sticking out into gravity and my upper half floating free, and let me tell you if you’re a downsider you have no idea how weird the whole concept and sensation of upside down is to somebody who grew up without it.

I was trying to find the correct ancient alien microcircuitry to pull or circumvent or correct in some manner in order to manually override whatever Farweather was doing or had done in order to hide herself from us. If she was hiding outside the ship, then I might be able to tune a few of our exterior sensors on the hull rather than away from it, and repurpose some of the Prize’s maintenance drones as roving eyes. With those assets in place, Singer should be able to locate any anomalies.

The problem was, the Koregoi apparently hadn’t planned for the possibility of having to remove space leeches. So I was having to do it the hard way. At least it didn’t need an EVA. I wasn’t sure I had the stones to EVA into what was likely to become a live-fire situation.

Singer was still raving about the brilliant qualities of his new friend.

Actually… okay. I was a little jealous. But I wasn’t a million-an-old engineered hive mind, so I knew I couldn’t really compete for cool points.

There’s only so much you can expect of any mortal sentience.

I was aware of the bustle of combat preparation throughout Ops, despite having my upper body shoved inside a wall. Suit boots moved past in fits and groups, and sometimes they were joined by the click and scuff of Cheeirilaq’s feathery feet on the end of chitinous legs.

“Please,” I intoned, pulling another crystalline plug that was probably some kind of holographic memory, if Singer and my guesses were right. “Tell me more.”

“It’s old,” Singer said, deaf to irony. “But it’s a mind. And it thinks very slowly. Or rather, it thinks at lightspeed, but over vast distances. It might take it three hundred standard minutes to pass an idea around its sphere once, crossing and recrossing itself, overlapping in waves that can alter every time they interact. Every time one of the nodes kicks up a slightly different version of the idea, or makes an adjustment or responds to an alteration, that joins the ripples passing around the sphere. The metaphorical wave pattern changes and is changed.

“Eventually, consensus is reached—think of it as the waves falling into a standing wave. Out of chaos, agreement emerges.”

“That seems very impractical,” I said, wishing I had an autogrip. My tool kit was so many particles, slowly sliding into the accretion disk of the Saga-star. You made do.

You made do.

“The star was smaller when it was built,” Singer said. “And it wasn’t designed to make decisions in a hurry.”

I came close to saying something sarcastic and Connla-like, but bit my tongue, thinking of my own history with hasty decision-making.

“I don’t think it’s fair of you to critique the design of that structure without respect for the functions it was designed to perform,” Singer continued.

I’d accidentally tuned him out for a minute. And he was defending his new boyfriend. “No, Singer. You’re right; I’m not being fair. So what is it meant to be thinking about? And why is it parked all the way out here?”

“Well,” Singer said, “I’m not sure.”

Of course not.

“But it likes to answer questions.”

“Can you ask it how to get away from a dozen pirates or so?”

“I can try. I can’t guarantee it will come back with an answer before you—or the pirates—die of entropy. I think… I think it’s a reference librarian. Of sorts. The world’s biggest problem-solver. And”—he sounded almost embarrassed, which wasn’t a personality protocol I was aware of encountering in AIs before— “it likes to sing. It sings with itself. All its parts in harmony or counterpoint. So when it came out to meet us, it was singing to us to see what sort of thing we would sing. And since you had the, er, key—”

“It likes you because you sing with it,” I hazarded.

He didn’t answer.

“Your new friend sounds pretty great,” I said.

He sniffed, regaining something like a sense of humor. “Well, I think so.”

“We’d never want to interfere with your thinking. So you’re telling me the— Does it have a name? Other than Eschaton Artifact? Because I have decided I really dislike that.”

“I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “I don’t think the Koregoi named things. Not in the definite way we think of.”

“Right, so it needs a name. Well, congratulations, Singer. You have finally found an ancient alien artifact that’s not so much a Big Dumb Object as a Big Smart Object.”

“Well that’s a relief.”

I looked at Singer, by which I mean I stared up into the access tube toward the ceiling, and I frowned. “It is?”

“Sure,” he said. The walls of the Prize rang briefly, a soft chime. “It’s so usual for it to play out the other way.”

“By the way, have you tried hailing the pirates?”

“Neither they nor the Jothari are answering.”

Of course he had. I fiddled a tiny… well, it might have been a capacitor. I determined to treat it as one. The worst that could happen was an electrocution. “So what do we call it? Aeonmind? Nornstar?”

“Do we have to call it something?”

“It’s like an ent,” I said.

“Ent?” Singer asked.

“From a book. They’re… sapient trees. Very old. They take a long time to make decisions. It was a good book. Could have been longer, but at least it had a lot of appendices.”

“Ah,” Singer said. “I was thinking it was like Bao Zheng.”

If I had felt smug about knowing something that Singer didn’t, that smugness had a short expiration.

“I don’t know that one.”

“Bao Zheng,” Singer said. “He’s a minor Earth god—demigod—of libraries and research.”

“So like Thoth?”

“Demigod.”

“Thoth’s a real god?”

Singer ignored me and said, “You can propitiate Bao Zheng with fruit to help you complete a research project.”

“It seems like a god of research should be propitiated with cites and references,” I said.

“Haimey!”

“What?”

“That’s sacrilege.”

“Try it sometime,” I answered. “I bet you’ll find he’ll like it better.”

“I don’t wor— You are engaged in the ancient human tradition of ‘pulling my leg.’ ”

“Might be,” I admitted. I barked my fingers on the tube wall and yelped.

I rolled out from inside the tube. I heaved myself up—maybe I was getting used to the gravity, and Singer’s ability to reduce it helped—and stood, rubbing the small of my back.

“I regret to inform you,” the shipmind said with utterly faux pomposity, “that I have no legs.”

“We’ll fix that once we get your new robot body.”

“I do not require a robot body.”

I dusted my hands off, looking at the bustle around Ops. I had no idea what everybody was doing, but it looked important. “You do if I’m going to keep pulling your leg.”

Singer changed the subject. “There’s something else.” There always was.

“Baomind, if that is what we are calling it, is aware that its primary is destabilizing. It would like our help.”

“Are you telling me your new friend… needs a lift?”

“Its star is getting old.”

“Tell me we’re not going to destabilize the star further if we pull a million zillion kilotons of orbitals away from it.”

“You know I’m not programmed to lie.”

I blinked, and didn’t mention the whopper he’d been broadcasting to Farweather all dia.

“We have to help it!”

“I… agree.”

I located Connla in the flurry of activity. He was by Cheeirilaq, in front of the window. The Freeport and Jothari squadron was oppressively close behind them. We were ahead, for now, but they were gaining intermittently despite the fact that we were demonstrably faster than them. We could wink into white space, sure—and let them have this ancient and possibly impossibly powerful Koregoi artifact? I hadn’t said it, and Cheeirilaq hadn’t said it, and Singer hadn’t said it, and all the constables had been worriedly silent on the matter… and Connla hadn’t said it, so loud my ears rang with the absence. But the pirates and Jothari already had the gravity tech and were obviously learning how to use it. If they had the Baomind too…

It was hard to imagine that they would have the resources for war. But it was hard for me to even imagine such a thing as a war. So running away and giving them unfettered access to enslave or suborn this ancient and apparently friendly alien AI was not, realistically, an option unless there was no way out while preserving ourselves.

Though what we could do while running away as fast as we possibly could, I wasn’t certain.

At least they didn’t seem to have figured out how to weaponize the gravity yet. I should really get on that.

Perhaps I was being reasonably avoidant about building weapons.

My next job, however, was going to be getting into the symbiote’s senso and trying to help us find some sexy space-time curves to surf down.

Pretty soon, one way or another, we were going to have to duck.

I still couldn’t feel Farweather. I could feel the Freeporter and Jothari ships, however, and they were taking up more of my attention than I liked. Like somebody sliding into your personal space centimeter by centimeter, and not being subtle about it.

I started toward my friends. “Try it now, Singer.”

“Try what?”

“Locating Farweather. I quit messing around with all the electrogravimagnetic stuff this ship uses to monitor hull integrity and just got you some plain old-fashioned drone cameras. They should be available now.”

“I… have her. She is on the hull, as you suggested.”

Fuck, yeah! I nearly shouted. But I’m a professional, so I nursed my scuffed fingers quietly as I joined Connla and the Goodlaw by the windows.

“Gentlebeings,” I said. “I believe we can find you a pirate now.”

Unexpected side effects of a systemic alien nanotechnology infection may include migraine.

Yep, that was exactly what I needed right now. Apparently the combination of the pirate armada and the mirrors of the Baomind bending space-time plus whatever Farweather was doing to confound my senses was giving me an absolutely pounding headache that only partially responded to bumping my endocrine system. It was bad enough to make me nauseated.

“Tell me this isn’t lingering brain damage from taking an EM pulse to the temple,” I begged Sergeant Halbnovalk.

She shrugged sympathetically. “It might be. Brain injuries manifest in various ways over an extended period of time. When you get back to the Core, you’ll want a full scan.”

Halbnovalk gave me 16 milligrams of an opiate derivative, some caffeine, and told me to drink a lot of water and go lie down in a dark place. I took the pills and the water and laughed at her, but I felt like the joke was shared.

When you get a light-exposure headache, you can shut your eyes. The question of what to do when you’re suffering a headache due to a sudden gust of gravity is a whole different question. For one thing, I wasn’t sure what organ I should be turning off to mitigate the symptoms. For another, testing all of them one by one seemed likely to lead to catastrophic failure rather than relief.

There seemed to be some question if I would live long enough for the pills to take effect. And I didn’t have time to wait. So I just tried to tune that sensory stream out as much as possible. Which was doing Farweather’s work for her, but it was my only means of remaining functional.

I had walked away from Connla and Cheeirilaq to consult with Halbnovalk, and I was still rubbing my temples when I walked back. Grrrs and Murtaugh had joined them.

As I walked up, I gestured to the Baomind mirrors. “Will they help us fight?”

Singer said, “Unfortunately, they’re not a weapon, it turns out.”

Worried for nothing. Story of my life. “You said it sang flares out of its star.”

Singer said, “It can control the gravitation around it, yes. The flares are a side effect of that process.”

“So it’s been playing with its star because it was curious, and now the star is going nova?”

“Your statement implies a causal effect that is not necessarily the case.”

“As it may be,” Connla said. “Can your new friend sing a flare out of its star… for us?” He jerked a thumb out the observation port in the rough direction of pirates and Jothari.

“I am,” Singer said, “reluctant to request that the Koregoi swarm take an active role in tactical offense.”

You don’t want to give it any ideas, said Grrrs.

“Precisely.”

Beyond the observation window, in utter silence, the Freeport ships glided in pursuit. We were running before them as ships ran before pirates of old, and they were gaining—somehow.

This was getting to be a theme.

Dammit, we’re supposed to be faster than them. They should have to worry about g-forces—oh right. Never mind, Singer, don’t tell me why I’m wrong.

At least I’d remembered that they had artificial gravity as well.

Headache or no headache, I groped out into the fabric of space-time, wincing at blinding pain. I felt… It seemed like space was piling up in front of us. There was… drag, for lack of a better word. Drag, in a space that ought be void of fluid dynamics.

Singer, Farweather is dragging us down.

Let me— Oh. I see.

You can feel space-time now?

The vessel can! As long as I am part of the Prize—

“The Baomind been out here for millions of ans with nothing to do but think,” Connla snapped. “What makes you believe you could possibly give it any ideas it hasn’t had already?”

Maybe I can do something about this, Singer said.

I have a suggestion, Cheeirilaq said. Our most urgent problem is Farweather.

I could have kissed it, if I were the kissing type and it weren’t a giant bug.

Murtaugh didn’t speak. They just tipped their head at the window.

Grrrs said, How is Farweather more pressing than pirates, an incipient nova, and a system-sized alien AI?

Cheeirilaq buzzed. The pirates are still fifteen minutes of travel away. We’re not maintaining our lead on them, and shipmind says we should be. Friend Haimey has diagnosed gravitational manipulation on their part, or on the part of the Jothari. But Farweather seems a likely vector for that.

“If they fired now, it would take long enough for the projectile to reach us that we could dodge. They can’t use a beam weapon because the Koregoi mirrors are pretty good chaff, whether incidentally or by design.” Connla was at home in his role as strategist. “We should be pretty safe until they get close.”

“And Farweather is capable of sabotage,” I said. “And I think she’s the one doing something with gravity that’s tugging us backward like we were trailing a lightchute.”

“Great,” said Murtaugh, speaking finally. “We have roughly fifteen minutes until they’re in range.”

“Fifteen minutes can be a lifetime,” I said. “Connla, can you and Singer buy us more than that?”

I’m making some progress here.

Connla said, “We’ll get as much time as we can.”

“We also need to think about rescuing the Baomind,” I said. “If their star is that unstable, we need to move them as soon as possible.”

Cheeirilaq stridulated, Perhaps Haimey and I should go after Farweather, leaving the rest of you to sort out the larger problem. Division of labor.

I tried not to let on how badly my head was pounding. No sick time in a combat zone. No point in worrying my friends.

Then I realized I could tune it down a little more. I’d been without my adaptive functions for so long I was forgetting they existed.

Grrrs looked at me. It looked at Cheeirilaq. Its antennae drooped in resignation, feathery fronds folding softly. All right. I won’t argue. But you’re the mission command, Goodlaw. If you get killed running around in space for no good reason, because you just had to be in on the glamorous part, I’m not covering for you so your offspring get the death benefit.

Fair, Cheeirilaq agreed.

“I’ll back you up,” said Singer. “Haimey, put your helmet on.”

Didn’t I say I wasn’t chasing Farweather out onto the hull?

Because it was faster to travel through the ship than around it, Cheeirilaq and I did not exit from an airlock close to Ops. Neither one of us wanted to spend any more time outside the hull than necessary, given the possibility of a shooting fight. I was trying to tamp myself down as much as possible, but we had to assume she knew we were coming. And she was armed.

We exited the vessel much closer to Farweather’s presumed position, and from two different locks so we could try to flank her.

From the outside, without the reassuring solidity of the observation ports, both the Baomind and the pirate armada seemed more threatening. The Prize was the ice core of a strange technological comet. It streaked on a long arc that would curve it slowly and gently into the well of the enormous, dying giant burning iron at the center of this system. Nearly all of its light was still being eaten up by the flock of glittering dark motes that now surrounded us as well. We were at the heart of a trailing teardrop of Baomind particles, a long arc of them whipping out behind us all the way back to the numberless and incomputable motes that still enshelled the star. I could see now that they were not all the same size, though I had only been able to pick out the largest ones from the previous distance, even under magnification.

Nearly all the star’s light was eaten up. But more escaped as its sphere attenuated, reaching out into our enveloping pseudopod.

And beyond the swarm, along the trailing curve of the teardrop, the Freeport and Koregoi ships gave chase and dodged the tail. They were big enough, close enough to see unaided now, swirling and sliding around each other as they jockeyed for position. The pirate ships, unmagnified, could have been drone motes against the velvet of space. But the two Jothari factory ships were as big as moons, which is to say I could have covered them with my thumbnail at arm’s length.

I didn’t stand and watch for long. There’s only so much ox in a suit pack, and we were burning time even faster than I was burning atmosphere.

Singer kept Cheeirilaq patched into my com, so I knew where it was and vice-versa, and that was helpful. We quartered, moving around the hull, spiraling in on Farweather’s presumed location while keeping her—we hoped—flanked and ignorant of our whereabouts. Singer was feeding us what he got from his drone eyes, but to be honest I was pretty disappointed with my work. The maneuverability and stealth were all right, but the resolution on their images was terrible.

Too terrible to be excused by me being in a hurry, or using repurposed tech. Some things you just can’t really get away with. But at least Singer wasn’t complaining.

Perfectionist, Singer snorted in my ear.

“Is there an echo out here?” I looked around in mock bewilderment. Then I dropped to my belly, because I was starting to crest the horizon on the curve of the hull from Farweather’s position. I didn’t want to be silhouetted. Being silhouetted results in getting shot.

The hull vibrated against my body. I tried not to think of enemy ships gaining on us, and just crawled forward. One of the smooth, sculptural, curved projections of the Prize’s hull rose up before me like a sand dune. I sheltered in its concavity. It was high enough that I could crouch there.

I’m in position, I said.

I too, Friend Haimey.

Under these conditions of flickering dim light that shaded into the infrared, the drones just weren’t giving me a useful feed. I gritted my teeth and took a deep breath and poked my eyes over the rise.

I yanked my head back down again quickly. Farweather was definitely there. She was sitting on the hull outside a little geodesic barnacle shelter, propped up on her elbows, watching the light show as if she hadn’t a care in the world.

It must be very restful to be like Farweather, I imagined. Pity her behaviors were so terrible for everyone around her.

I could just run up and grab her, Cheeirilaq said.

She’s got a gun.

So you get her attention and then I’ll run up and grab her from behind.

While she’s shooting me.

You have a gun, too. Shoot at her back. It paused briefly. Just don’t shoot me while I’m running up behind her.

Cheeirilaq, this is a terrible—

Two clusters of Baomind mirrors, one aft and one forward of the Prize, disintegrated into chaff and glittering shards. They coruscated outward with the force of an explosion, streaking clusters of firework chrysanthemum petals whose trajectory missed us by no more than a hundred meters, passing between our hull and our white coils.

We swept through the forward debris field almost immediately. I huddled behind my hull projection and covered my visor with my suited arms. The shrapnel exploded off the hull to every side, disintegrating into glitter.

Beam weapon.

Well, wasn’t that just peachy.

Suddenly I was standing on stars.

The Prize was still there. I was still magnetized to its hull. But the colors and patterning vanished abruptly, replaced by endless depth of field and moving swirls of light.

I boggled as I realized that the entire curvaceous surface of the Prize had just… gone reflective. I was standing on an enormous curved mirror, and I was reflected and multiplied in it myself, in a twisting novelty-show fashion.

The Prize might not be armed, but it had beam weapon countermeasures.

Stand by for evasive maneuvers! Singer yelled.

“Singer, we’re on the hull!”

The whole ship yanked sideways under my afthands. Somehow, I stayed attached. My magnets held, and something else was holding me. “Singer?”

I’m getting the hang of the gravity, he said. We’re gaining on the pirates again too. No time to explain, just go get Farweather and make her stop playing space anchor!

“Well, if you’ve got a handle on the gravity, pin her down!”

I can do that, can’t I?

There was a vibration through the hull.

I poked my head up again. Farweather lay supine, struggling against the weight of her own body. She didn’t seem to be holed, more was the pity. Maybe she’d bent space-time to deflect the stuff.

As I watched, she rolled on her side, then onto her belly. With a tremendous effort, she pushed herself to her hands and knees.

Waste, she was impressive.

Get her, Cheeirilaq said. So it was alive also. The Goodlaw’s senso informed mine of its change in position as it began to move.

I lunged up the rise in the hull—and it suddenly was up, because Singer was using gravitational forces to hang on to me. My boots rang vibrations through the vessel as if it were an enormous, silent bell. As I crested the rise, I saw Farweather turn her head to see me. I dragged the projectile weapon I’d confiscated from her out of its holster—confiscated sounds so much better than stole—and fumbled with my gloved hands for the actuator.

Cheeirilaq appeared behind her, the mirrored hull under its feet reflecting its forest of legs like a pattern generator run wild. It was seconds away from Farweather as the Prize twisted and spiraled beneath us, jinking in erratic helixes and randomly generated drunken lurches.

They’ll try a white torpedo next, Connla said through senso. A white torpedo is always faster than we are.

I’m trying to work out a gravity field weapon, Singer said. I can probably do it. I’m not sure I can do it in time. I’ve asked the Baomind…

And the Baomind would get back to him in three hundred minutes or more.

Check.

There was enough powdered Baomind in our wake that we saw the next beam coming, which is something I never expected to see in this life and never care to see again. Or more precisely, we saw its afterimage, as it seared itself into our retinas.

It scorched through the darkness. It didn’t harm us because the Baomind dodged into its path, though I didn’t see how it managed to intercept a lightspeed weapon. Koregoi tech, I tell you what. It’s something.

What was also something was the light show. This time, the drones did not disintegrate. They sparkled. The weapon beam reflected off their freshly mirror-perfect surfaces and scattered in disarray, glittering in a webwork of light before it dissipated.

Friend Haimey, pay attention, please!

Unbelievably, Farweather began pushing herself to her feet. She was clad in an old-style bubble suit with a wide visor for peripheral vision. The gold impregnated in the helmet made her look like she was wearing a halo. I felt Singer’s control on the forces holding us to him slip a little as she loosened his grip on her.

She balanced wide-legged, as if she were bracing under a load. Her gun came up. It seemed like her arm shook with the effort of holding it. Cheeirilaq galloped toward her like an emerald Sleipnir, all legs and spiky raptorial forelimbs.

I had to stop looking at it before she noticed.

I tried to sight down the gun, but it was shaking. No, I was shaking.

Pointing a live weapon at another human being is hard if you have any awareness of consequences. Your brain insists on telling you, over and over, what that projectile can do to flesh.

Farweather’s face changed. She took her eyes off me, though the gun in her hand never wavered.

“Those fuckers,” she said.

My skin began to burn. Something big was coming in fast.

Superluminal.

I could feel it out there. I didn’t know what it was or where it was coming from, but it was aimed right where we were.

We were out here alone. Nothing between us and the stars. And Singer—and the Baomind mirrors surrounding him—might as well have had flat feet on dirt, they had so little time to react.

“You FUCKERS!” Farweather screamed.

“Singer, duck!” I yelled.

She coiled herself. I lunged, an automaton heaving each magnetized boot in turn off the hull and feeling the shudder through my bones when it thumped back down.

My gloved fingertips brushed the fabric of her suit as she hurled herself up and out, a fantastic Peter Pan leap into the big nothing all around. Jets kicked in from her suit pack as she started a burn. More momentum to push her out of Singer’s tiny, artificial gravity well.

I jerked my head back to watch her leave, arms splayed wide, so violently I almost overbalanced and fell over backward with my boots still stuck to the hull.

“Fuck,” I said.

Singer said, Are you all right?

I flashed him what I was feeling as Cheeirilaq bounded up. It leaped into the void, an amazing arc with its bright wings spread reflexively at the peak, thrumming inside their skin against nothing. It snatched after Farweather with its raptorial arms and missed by what looked like centimeters. Slowly, it began to fall again, back toward Singer’s surface.

I could feel Farweather grabbing hold of gravity, twisting it like an acrobat’s silks. Sailing through the Baomind’s particles. Getting away.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a halo of mist stream out from beneath Cheeirilaq as it too boosted itself away from the hull of the Prize, using jets instead of Koregoi technology. The good cop was going to bring the criminal back, no matter what.

“Oh fuck it,” I said. I couldn’t let Cheeirilaq go after her alone. I’d promised to see to it that Farweather saw justice. I needed to.

I jumped after, gravity my friend as well.

Haimey! Goodlaw! Come back. I can’t wait for you!

“Don’t wait,” I said, accelerating as I followed Farweather past the fine line of the Prize’s white coils and into the flashing, razor-edged patterns of the Baomind mirror-swarm. “Run!”