John Wright - The Golden Transcendence

Atkins stood alone within one of the wide corridors of the carousel, only a few miles from the bridge. The light was dim. The curving deck underfoot was paneled in an endless checkerboard of black thought boxes, all quiet as a mausoleum now, empty of any mind. The bulkheads to either side were crisscrossed with a tapestry of crystal cables and motionless leaves of dark purple glass, a type of technology or branch of science Atkins did not recognize. The carousel through which this corridor ran was at rest, and solar gravity made the local "down" not quite at right angles to the present deck underfoot. Because the deck curved, it seemed to Atkins as if he stood on the slope of a tall hill, a concave hill, whose slope grew greater the higher one climbed. Above him, the corridor rose, becoming vertical, then curving further to become ceiling, with inverted furniture and formations hanging head-downward overhead. Far below, in the distance, at the bottom of the slope, the deck was level, and he could see the glint and glimmer of some rapid activity, silvery nanomachines and diamond-glinting microbots swarming from one bulkhead to another, looking for all the world like a little stream of water babbling. Beyond this stream, the curve of the corridor rose again, like the opposite slope of a valley, narrowing with the distance, until it was blocked from sight by the curve of the overhead.

Because it reminded him of wilderness, because the ship was so unthinkably vast, so empty, Atkins felt alone.

He drew his soul dagger and spoke to the mind it housed: "Estimate the feasibility of seizing control of this ship. What are her defenses against an orchestrated mutiny?"

The dagger said, "Sir! Seizure by what party, how armed, and when?"

"By me. Right now. Before the lunatic owner flies the ship straight down into the hands of the enemy and turns her over to him."

"Sir! The thought-box ports have been jammed open. We, or anyone else, can insert any routines or mind information we wish without any fear of hindrance. Operating time will depend upon volume of information given. However, the system controls have been physically isolated from the ship mind, and every single connection (there are roughly four trillion circuits involved) would have to be reestablished into order to affect the operation of the environmental, configu-rational, drive, and navigational controls. More time would be required to reconnect secondary drives, tertiary drives, retrorailguns, communication hierarchies, internal system monitors, detection dishes, dynamic weight distribution, and balance controls, et cetera. The time involved is significantly greater than the useful lifespan of the ship, since each connection would have to be made by hand while the ships onboard systems attempted to dismantle it, and some of the main connections are behind adamantium hull armor, which would require the staff and equipment of the Jovian Equatorial Supercollider, as well as Gannis's staff and effort, to dismantle and repair. Sir! The project is not feasible."

"Make alternate suggestions." "Sir, yes, sir. Suggestion one: Mine the antimatter fuel cells to destroy all internal decks and quarters. Confront the pilot and threaten to destroy the ship unless he turns control of his armor over to you. This threat is not viable as it would destroy the workings of the vessel to be seized.

"Suggestion two: Threaten Daphne. Again, not a viable strategy, as there is a portable noetic reader aboard, easily capable of transmitting her noumenal brain information to any thought box aboard. Since none of the thought boxes are in operation at the moment, the number of hiding places for such backup copies in the case of Daphne's death far exceeds any search capacity. Of course, if you had the armor which contains the ship-mind hierarchy, you could find this hiding place easily, but that assumption defeats the purpose of the exercise.

"Suggestion three: Seize Phaethon in his armor, carry him to Jupiter, and have Gannis and his staff dismantle the armor with their supercollider. It should only take forty-two hours to dismantle the thinnest part of the armor plate beneath the supercollider's main beam, assuming Phaethon does not open the armor voluntarily, and does not move, resist, or struggle. "Suggestion four..." "Stop making suggestions." "Aye aye, sir."

"What about sabotaging the ship so that she cannot leave her present port, or disabling her to render her unable to tolerate the temperatures and pressures of the radiative layer of the sun?"

"Feasible. A sufficient charge of antimatter stolen from the fuel cells and delivered against the valves and back-pressure cylinders of any of the drive shafts would prevent the proper seal integrity needed for the ship to survive further descent, while not exposing the decks or internal structures to the solar plasma presently in the outside environment. The stealth remotes still aboard are in and among the ghost-particle array in the fuel bays, and could perform the theft and demolition in twenty minutes. Alternate suggestion: Have the stealth remotes destroy the ghost-particle array. Phaethon must rely upon the discharges of this array to pinpoint the position of the enemy vessel, or to use the array to form a scanning beam of some particle capable of penetrating the dense plasma of the solar core. With this array disabled, he will not be able to find the enemy. The stealth remotes could accomplish this sabotage within .05 second after your written order was recorded."

"Would he be able to repair the ghost-particle equipment?"

"Yes."

Atkins looked disappointed.

The knife continued: "Phaethon would have to make a voyage of ten thousand light-years to Cygnus X-l to find archeological records or reports on the technology involved. I strongly suspect such archeological evidence is available. This would enable him to repair the equipment. I estimate the voyage will take seventy years ship time and ten thousand years Earth time, one way."

Atkins looked up and down the corridor. Translucent indigo leaves glittered like glass. Endless black thought boxes stretched to the antihorizon overhead. Away underfoot, busy nanomachines gleamed and flowed like water.

She was a magnificent ship, truly. She should not be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy, and grant the enemy its victory.

He had heard Phaethon's insane plan, based on the insane idea that moral codes were some sort of law of nature. The whole plan was based on the faith that any sufficiently logical mind would reach the same conclusions about matters not of scientific fact, but about what was right and wrong.

Atkins knew that what was right and wrong was not written in stone. What was right and wrong were matters of policy, of expediency, of strategy. They were the tactics one used to win the struggle against the evils in life, against blind stupidity and relentless danger. Especially when everyone else was blind, and no one else cared to see the danger.

And tactics had to be flexible.

"Very well. Do it."

Daphne found Phaethon on the shining bridge, in his captain's chair. A fabric of white nanomaterial was draped around the shoulders of his gold-black armor, over one arm, and plugged into the floor. This cloak was making last-minute adjustments to the control hierarchies in the armor, and checking for any traces left behind in the now-vacant ship mind.

Phaethon was not wearing his helmet. He sat, leaning his chin on his hand, watching an image in an energy mirror, a faint smile of concentration on his lips.

Daphne spoke as she approached the throne, her voice echoing across the wide space: "Diomedes decided not to come. He's betrayed your trust in him."

He looked up from the mirror he was studying, and observed her.

She was wearing a version of Atkins's scale-mail, copied from the patterns in the bloodstains he had left on the auxiliary bridge. The chameleon circuit was tuned to a silvery gray hue, and the scale had been molded to fit her curved form, pinched in tightly at the waist. She carried a plumed helmet in the crook of her elbow. A low-slung web belt was draped around her rounded hips, flintlock dueling-pistol holsters swaying as she walked. In her other hand she held a naginata. (This was a short curve-bladed fighting staff traditionally used by the noble wives of Japanese samurai. It was hardly Victorian, British, Third Era, or Silver-Gray.)