Mission to Minerva

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Back up in the Shapieron, the rest of the mission personnel had been monitoring the progress of the shuttle's landing party as relayed from their headband pickups. Not having been part of the previous Jevlen expedition, Chien was the only one among them who didn't recognize Broghuilio immediately. Duncan and Sandy were speechless. Garuth was still staring bemusedly at the view of the screen down in the Agracon showing the Jevlenese, when ZORAC interrupted. "Commander, I think we may have a serious emergency. I've just lost all contact with both the M-space beacons. Hi-mag scan shows rapidly dispersing debris at both locations."

Garuth was too nonplused by the succession of bolts out of the blue to respond immediately. Shilohin had joined him when Broghuilio started speaking from the screen inside the room beneath the Agracon.

"They were obviously destroyed," she said. "It could only be the Jevlenese."

"Is there any indication of a direction that something might have come from?" Garuth checked with ZORAC.

"Negative."

It still made no sense. How could the Jevlenese be here? The probe that followed them through the tunnel would also have to be here, but careful checking and rechecking had shown no sign of it. Yet every one of the checks carried out in the reconnaissance visits further on in time had confirmed it to be out there and functioning, so how could it not be working now? Unless they had just happened to hit on a universe in which, unlike every other one that they had sampled, the probe had malfunctioned… No. Garuth rejected the probability. But if the Jevlenese were here ahead of the Shapieron after all, why was there no sign of their five ships? Nothing was adding up. He realized with a start that Broghuilio was speaking to him.

"I assume that the proceedings in Melthis are being followed by the rest of you out there in the Shapieron." Garuth noted the words "out there." So the Jevlenese were somewhere that was "in." Broghuilio went on, "It probably hasn't escaped your notice that we possess considerable firepower. You may take what just happened to your scouting devices as a demonstration of its potency. It is now trained upon your ship. In case your vision is still clouded in some way, allow me to summarize the situation as it now exists. You no longer have VISAR and the Thuriens to hide behind. A most interesting change of perspective, I think you must agree."

Garuth was under no illusions as to what that meant. After the Shapieron's eventual departure from Earth, Broghuilio had attempted its destruction in order to prevent a true picture of Earth from reaching the Thuriens-as opposed to the distorted one that the Jevlenese had been drawing. Only the timely establishing of direct communications between the Thuriens and Caldwell's UNSA group had prevented it. As Garuth continued to listen, still in a semi-daze, Chien's voice came through in his ear piece. The tone was subdued, indicating that ZORAC was connecting her privately.

"Garuth and Shilohin. You realize what this means. Freskel-Gar's whole performance was a ruse. Therefore everything he told us was false. No message of acknowledgment was received back from Perasmon and Harzin, for none was ever sent. There have been no orders to divert the Cerian aircraft. They're still in danger… if it isn't too late already."

Garuth froze and then groaned. His concern had been so much for those down on the surface who had just walked into a trap, his ship and the threat posed by the Jevlenese, to think through the further implications. It also helped to be able to think like a Terran.

"Of course!" Shilohin whispered.

"We are the only ones who can stop it," Chien said. "It will have to be through the Cerians. Obviously no one in Lambia can be trusted."

Garuth stared at the image of Broghuilio on screen, but he was not hearing the words. Chien was right. It was up to them now. His mind raced frantically. "ZORAC."

"Commander?"

"Local," indicating that what Garuth said was not to be repeated over the channel to Minerva.

"Acknowledged."

"I don't know what their plans are or if I'll be able to communicate freely. What I want you to do regardless is this. Get access to the Cerian military command system, their space operations agency, or the department of government that handles the president's affairs. Warn them there's a plot in motion to destroy the aircraft flying from Melthis with President Marzin and King Perasmon aboard. We think it will be brought down by a missile. The flight must be turned around or diverted immediately."

"I'm working on it now."

Seeing the helplessness written across Garuth's face was a gratification in itself. The Shapieron and its occupants were the greatest personal anathema in Broghuilio's existence. He recognized Garuth, of course, from the storm of publicity that had followed the appearance of the Shapieron at Ganymede and its later six-month stay on Earth, when Broghuilio had directed the Jevlenese surveillance operation reporting to Calazar. That ship had been responsible for bypassing him and the Jevlenese to open up direct contact between the Thuriens and Terrans, and the unraveling of everything Broghuilio and his predecessors had been planning for generations. It had been the instrument for perpetrating the deception that brought down JEVEX, costing Broghuilio his overlordship of Jevlen and putting an end permanently to his ambition to assert himself over Terrans and Thuriens alike. And here it was now, as defenseless as a puppy brought to heel. It had evaded his attempt to destroy it once before, making him appear a fool in the process. He had no compunction about the thought of settling that score now and finishing the job.

But as he continued looking at it, a new line of thought began to develop in his mind.

Why destroy the Shapieron? As he had just pointed out with great relish to Garuth, a most interesting alteration of the entire perspective had taken place. He had five ships here on Minerva's moon, all-but immobilized and barely carrying the power reserves to transport him and his followers down to Minerva, after which they would be good for nothing more than scuttling in the ocean. But here, hanging as a telescopic image on the screen right in front of him, was a fully self-contained starship, not only equipped with its own on-board power sources and designed for independent operation and endurance, but which had sustained its population of Ganymeans for something like twenty years. They didn't have to go to Minerva as refugees and beggars after all, forced to share their superiority and trade their natural advantages for a place to sleep and scraps from Freskel-Gar's kitchens. With something like the Shapieron, fitted with the weapons he had been about to consign to Minerva's oceans and starship power available to energize them, they would be able to dominate a planet like Minerva within a week.

The more Broghuilio dwelt on the thought, the more it intrigued him. However, like any prospective owner of real estate, he would want to inspect the property himself before deciding his offer and terms. But what kind of unknowns would he be risking, walking into a ship full of Ganymeans from the past that he had no experience of dealing with? Even if they turned out to be as fawning and indisposed toward a fight as Thuriens, he knew nothing about the AI that managed the ship and how it might react. He summoned Estordu across with a motion of his head. "In the days when that ship was built, there was no planetary executive intelligence comparable to VISAR. Is that correct?"

"That is so, Excellency. Full integration was effected later, after the move to Gistar and Thurien."

"So this ZORAC that we heard about while that ship was at Earth. What kind of system is it?"

"The earliest Ganymean starships had integrated control and system management directors that became surprisingly versatile and in fact provided some of the design philosophy later incorporated into VISAR. The Shapieron is probably one of the later models. ZORAC would be an intermediate development between a rudimentary autonomous intelligence and a hyper-parallel distributed architecture of full interstellar capability like VISAR or JEVEX."

"I see." Broghuilio didn't, but the words intended nothing in any literal sense. He stared at the image of the ship again. "What would be the way to go about attaining control of something like that? Does it automatically obey whoever commands the vessel? Or does is develop a more complex allegiance that builds up in some other way over time? What is its mode of operating?"

Estordu followed Broghuilio's gaze and saw which way his thinking was going. He replied, "Please understand that I have no personal experience of such systems, Excellency. But my understanding is that its primary characteristics are those of a multiply connected, self-referential learning hierarchy driving an auto-optimizing emergent associative net." He saw color rising above Broghuilio's collar and explained hastily, "That means that its behavior is shaped more by its experiences than by the initial design parameters. It would most likely have evolved a strong commitment to the present complement of officers and crew-especially so after their long, enforced period of isolation from the familiar spacetime environment."

"Hm." It obviously wasn't the answer that Broghuilio had been hoping for.

Estordu went on, "However…" His tone caused Broghuilio to turn his head. "The system builds itself on an underlying foundation of core directives that cannot be modified, ignored, or overridden. They define its essential design role and character. One of the most fundamental would be that other considerations are subordinated to ensuring the safety and survival of the bioforms that it has formed its principal attachment to. In the present case, such a tendency would have become extremely pronounced. Anything else it might judge to be right or wrong, or as being likely to have preferable consequences in the longer term, would be rendered immaterial. I, er… trust you take my point?"

A gleam of comprehension came into Broghuilio's eyes. "You mean that if it was the only way of protecting the skins of those fossil Ganymeans in there, it would follow our orders? It wouldn't refuse?"

"More than that, Excellency. It couldn't."

"Hm… I see." And this time, Broghuilio really did. Maybe he had a solution to both of his immediate concerns.

He contemplated the image of the Shapieron for a while longer. Before it followed his ships through the tunnel-for that was the only way to explain how it came to be here-it had been conducting a secret deception operation at Jevlen. He didn't imagine that it would be carrying much more than the minimum number of occupants and crew for such a mission. And that suited his purpose well.

Broghuilio moved back to confront the screen connecting him to the Shapieron's Command Deck.

"These are my instructions," Broghuilio said from wherever it was that the Jevlenese were concealed. "You will embark yourself and all occupants of your vessel in auxiliary craft and remove yourselves. I want the ship left available for boarding, with a clear zone around it of fifty miles. Immediately."

Garuth stared at him incredulously.

"We can't," Shilohin whispered beside him. "Look what just happened to the beacons." And the Jevlenese hadn't hesitated before, when they attempted to destroy the Shapieron after its departure from Earth.

"You're insane," Garuth replied. If they wanted the ship, it seemed that the crew would be safer inside it. "Do you think we're going to-"

"You seem to forget that you are not in any position to bargain," Broghuilio cut in. His image shrank to a half screen, the other half showing as a reminder Eesyan, Frenua Showm, Hunt, Danchekker, Monchar, and Garuth's two other officers now being covered by Lambian soldiers with leveled weapons, with Freskel-Gar looking on. "This is no idle threat. Would His Highness confirm?"

"On your order," Freskel-Gar said from the screen.

"Perhaps we'll begin with just one," Broghuilio said.

Garuth found that his mouth had gone dry. His instinctive urge was to call on ZORAC for advice, but he fought it down. This was the commander's decision to make. Staying where he was would mean sacrificing his subordinates and friends for certain-and he could end up losing the ship even then. Complying would possibly be to invite his own demise, in which case what would happen to those down on the surface was unclear. With the latter alternative, nothing was certain. Shilohin seemed to read the further implications too and held back from making things any tougher.

"We must have time," Garuth said.

"I have no time to waste playing games." Broghuilio waved a hand in the direction of the prisoners, indicating the more junior of Garuth's two crew officers. "Have that one step forward."

It was the most agonized and humiliating decision Garuth had ever taken. "Very well," he agreed. "It will be as you say."

The message still showing on Frenda Vesni's desk display in the headquarters of the Cerian Department of Internal Security had come in from an office of the National Aerospace Directorate that operated the satellite tracking stations. The NAD divisional chief who passed it on had appended: I don't know what to make of it. Your call.

The door from the adjoining room opened abruptly and Negrikof came out. "What is this? Calls from talking starships?… Doesn't someone think we have better things to do? There are some really sick people out there, I'm tellin' ya."

Vesni hesitated, biting her lip. "You don't think we should alert the President's Office… as a precaution?"

"What? And look like the biggest idiots in the Department? It's some student hacker or somebody, who's gotten into their system."

"But isn't that what we're here for? To convey information?"

"Yes. And also to evaluate information. I've been around since longer than yesterday. Any nursery-school kid could get through NAD security. I'm going to see Grat along the hall. I'll be back in a couple of minutes."

"What do you want me to do with this?"

"Oh… tell Dira to file it in case someone needs the details some day. You never know, they might get smart enough to track it down." Negrikof continued muttering as he crossed the office. "As if we didn't have enough to do with Perasmon deciding he's coming here all of a sudden… Talking starships." He left, closing the door noisily.

Vesni looked at the message for a few seconds longer. She still thought it was a sloppy way to be going about things. But… the boss had spoken. Reluctantly, she tapped in an addendum and flagged the item for Dira's attention. In her estimation, Negrikof wouldn't have been risking much if it did turn out to be a hoax. She already thought he was one of the biggest idiots in the Department anyway.

The officer commanding at the base watched from behind his desk as Kles was ushered into his office. "Lieutenant Bosoros, Sir," the unit commander announced, and remained standing inside while the orderly sergeant closed the door. The OC studied the note again and had the lieutenant repeat the story.

"And you got this information from where?" he said dubiously. "Somebody you know at NEBA? A journalist?"

"It was just passed on by him, Sir," Kles replied. "The information originated from somebody who is in Lambia, with the technical delegation at the Agracon in Melthis."

"Might I ask who this person is, Lieutenant?"

"Er… my fiancйe, sir… I think… I hope."

"Oh, I see. She's there in what capacity?"

"A technical translator with the delegation, sir."

"Her name?"

"Engs, sir. Laisha Engs."

"Hm." The OC made a note and stared some more at the sheet of paper. "You're telling me that this was communicated from inside the Lambian Agracon, to you in a military base here in Cerios?"

Kles bit his lip and drew a breath. There was no way around this. "Yes, sir."

"You're aware of the gravity of such an admission, I take it?"

"Yes, sir."

"This delegation is under whose direction? Which department do they report back to? Do you know?"

"I think it's NSRO, sir."

The OC thought for a few seconds longer, then snorted and reached for his phone. "If this turns out to be in error, Lieutenant, you're in deep trouble with a lot of explaining to do… Yes, get me General Oodan's office at Division immediately, on the secure line. There's something extremely urgent that I think they need to check with the Scientific Research Office. Extremely urgent." He replaced the handset, sat back, and looked at Kles. "If it's genuine, I won't ask how it was done."

"Sir," Kles acknowledged.