Charles Stross - Singularity Sky

“It’s going to be sixteen hours, minimum, whatever happens,” Martin told him, trying hard to keep his cool. “The patches will be installed and active by the end of this shift, but I can’t release the system to you until it’s tested out fully. The regression tests are entirely automatic and take twenty thousand seconds to run. Then there’s the maneuver testing, which would normally take all week if this was a new hull we were upgrading. Finally, there’s drive qualification time which is three months for a new and untested system like the one your Admiralty ordered, and what do you think the chances are that you’re going to sit still for that?”

“Skip it,” Krupkin said briskly. “We’re going to be maneuvering on it tomorrow. Can you start the white-box phase today?”

“ Fuck it .” Martin pulled his goggles and gloves back on. “Talk to me later, okay? I’m busy . You’ll get your bloody drive mods. Just point me at a bunk this evening.” He dived back into the immersive interface, ignoring the commander — who took it surprisingly mildly.

Which was perhaps just as well. Martin was keeping a tight rein on his anger, but beneath the brittle exterior, he was disturbed. The business with Rachel had unsettled him; he was now intensely nervous, and not just because of the volatility of the situation. Her approach had caught him off guard and vulnerable, and the potential consequences ranged from the unpredictable to the catastrophic.

For the rest of the day, he worked furiously, checking the self-extending array of connectors linking the new drive control circuitry into the existing neural networks. He headed off several possible problems in the performance profile of the control feedback sensors, tuned the baseline compensators for extra precision, and added several patches to the inner hard control loops that monitored and pulled the hair on the black hole; but he left the midlife kicker traps alone. And he installed the special circuit that Herman had asked him to add.

He worked on into the evening shift, then started the regression tests going: a series of self-test routines, driven by software, that would exercise and report on every aspect of the drive upgrade. Installing and testing the module was the easy task: tomorrow he’d have to start testing how it interacted with the kernel — an altogether more nerve-wracking experience. So it was that, at 2500, he yawned, stretched, set aside his gloves and feedback sensors, and stood up.

“Aargh.” He stretched further. Joints popped with the effort; he felt dizzy, and tired, and slightly sick. He blinked; everything seemed flat and monochromatic after the hours immersed in false-color 3-D controls, and his wrists ached. And why, in this day and age, did warships smell of pickled cabbage, stale sweat, and an occasional undertone of sewage? He stumbled to the door. A passing rating glanced at him curiously. “I need to find a bunk,” he explained.

“Please wait here, sir.” He waited. A minute or so later, one of Krupkin’s minions came into view, hand-over-hand down the wall like a human fly.

“Your berth? Ah, yes, sir. D deck, Compartment 24, there’s an officer’s room waiting for you. Breakfast call at 0700. Paulus, please show the gentleman here to his room.”

“This way, sir.” The crewman quietly and efficiently guided Martin through the ship, to a pale green corridor lined with hatches like those of a capsule hotel. “There you are.” Martin blinked at the indicated door, then pulled it aside and climbed in.

It was like a room in a capsule hotel or a compartment on a transcontinental train — one with two bunks.

The lower one flipped upside down to make a desk when not in use. It was totally sterile, totally clean, with ironed sheets and a thin blanket on the lower bunk, and it smelled of machine oil, starch, and sleepless nights. Someone had laid out a clean overall with no insignia on it. Martin eyed it mistrustfully and decided to stick to his civilian clothes until they were too dirty to tolerate. Surrendering to the New Republic’s uniform seemed symbolic; letting them claim him as one of their own would feel like a small treason.

He palmed the light to low, and stripped his shoes and socks off, then lay down on the lower bunk.

Presently, the light dimmed and he began to relax. He still felt light-headed, tired and angry, but at least the worst hadn’t happened: no tap on the shoulder, no escort to the brig. Nobody knew who he really worked for. You could never tell in this business, and Martin had a prickly feeling washing up and down his spine. This whole situation was completely bizarre, and Herman’s request that he plonk himself in the middle of it was well out of the usual run of assignments. He shut his eyes and tried to push away the visions of spinning yellow blocks that danced inside his head.

The door opened and closed. “Martin,” said a quiet voice beside his pillow, “keep your voice down.

How did things go?”

He jackknifed upright and nearly smashed his head on the underside of the bunk overhead. “What!” He paused. “What are you—”

“Doing here?” A quiet, ironic laugh. “I’m doing the same as you; feeling tired, wondering what the hell I’m doing in this nuthouse.”

He relaxed a little, relieved. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“It’s my job to be here; I’m attached to the Admiral’s staff as a diplomatic representative. Look, I can’t stay long. It would be a really bad idea for anyone to find me in your room. At best, they’d assume the worst, and at worst, they might think you were a spy or something—”

“But I am a spy,” he blurted out in a moment of weakness. “At least, you wanted—”

“Yeah, right, and I’ve got your secret-agent decoder ring right here . Look, I want to talk, but business first. Are the drive upgrades finished?”

His eyes adjusted to the dark; he could see the outline of her face. Short hair and shadows made her look very different, harder and more determined. But something in her expression as she watched him made her look slightly uncertain. Business first, she said . “The upgrades are going to take some time,” he said. “They’re about ready for testing to start tomorrow, but it’s a risky proposition. I’m going to be ironing bugs out of the high-precision clocks for the next week.” He paused. “Are you sure this is safe?

How did you find me?”

“It wasn’t hard. Thank MiG for the security system schematics. Life Support and Security think you’re alone in here. I thought it was safer to visit in person than to try to page you.” Martin shuffled around and sat up, making room for her, and Rachel sat down next to him. He noticed for the first time that she was wearing a uniform — not a New Republican one. “You’re here for the whole voyage?”

She chuckled. “The better to get to know you. Relax. If you want to talk to your local diplomatic representative, that’s me. Besides, they need me, or someone like me. Who else is going to negotiate a cease-fire for them?”

“Aah.” Martin fell silent for a moment, thinking. He was aware of her next to him, almost painfully so.

“You’re taking a risk,” he said after a while. “They aren’t going to thank you—”

“Hush.” She leaned closer. He felt her breath on his cheek: “The drive patches you’re installing are part of an illegal weapons system, Martin. I’m sure of it. I’m not sure what kind of illegality is being contemplated, but I’m sure it involves causality violation. If they commence training maneuvers shortly, I’ll get a chance to see just what they’re planning to use the upgrades for. That’s why I need to be here.