Линда Нагата - Edges

“This is not a processing error?” Clemantine asked. “Or a flaw in the lens?”

“I hoped it was only that,” Vytet said. “Or degassing from the bio-mechanical tissue, caused by impact damage.”

“There was an impact,” Urban said. “There were two.”

“Yes. I saw that in the summary. I asked the Apparatchiks to evaluate the finding.”

“There is no flaw in the lens,” the Astronomer said.

The Engineer crossed his arms. “If the aura was the result of impact, I would expect to see an uneven mix of particulate elements and frozen gases. What we see here is an evenly distributed particulate cloud.”

“ Ah, shit ,” Urban whispered.

He composed a message to Elepaio , ordering it to stand off, to approach no closer to the fleet. That might not make a difference. The light-speed lag meant the message would take time to reach the little ship and then Elepaio would require additional time to arrest its momentum and change its course. But he had to try.

A submind shunted his consciousness to the high bridge, plunging him into a weave of fuming, muttering dialogs, the philosopher cells edgy and suspicious as they debated the idea of the returning outrider.

Their interest was a bad sign. Long ago, Urban had instilled in the cells an acceptance of the outriders. He’d hooked into their instinctive concept of ancillary ships, training them to regard the outriders as harmless companions that should be tracked but never targeted. Now, this rule was being questioned.

He perceived an image only a few seconds old, recurring among the braided thoughts. Distinct, bright points of heat like a necklace circling the bow of Elepaio .

Vytet had called it a glamour, a mist, a fog. The hull cells saw it more clearly. A swarm of tiny devices that had hitched a ride in the propulsion field spilling over from Elepaio ’s reef.

Urban had seen pits open on the rogue world but he’d had no hint of their purpose. Now he knew. The pits had opened to allow an inner mechanism to shoot millions, maybe billions, of small projectiles across his path. Elepaio had been struck twice, high-energy collisions that rattled the hull. At least one had successfully released its cargo.

He’d never suspected.

A submind arrived from the library, bringing a memory of Vytet saying, It’s significant that the devices did not attempt to infiltrate Elepaio, but instead used it to get close to the fleet.

Sooth. The heavily armed coursers had been the target all along and he had transported the alien devices, provided them with a means to reach the fleet.

Anger spiked—at himself, at the situation, at the entity on the Rock. The philosopher cells welcomed his anger, amplified it. Anger was their baseline state; it drove their murderous instinct.

A proposition was offered:

Urban agreed to this without hesitation: – kill it –

Why not? Each device in the swarm surely carried data, along with molecular tools to translate that data into physical form once it reached an appropriate substrate. Each device, a seed to resurrect the entity.

– kill it! –

It was the only logical response in the face of potential alien invasion.

Consensus swept across the cell field.

Clemantine arrived on the high bridge just as the steerage jets fired, initiating a slow rotation that would bring Dragon ’s gamma-ray gun in line to vaporize Elepaio and sterilize the space around the outrider. She took a moment for review and assessment. Urban expected her to object when she grasped his intention. Instead, she said, *Yes. Whatever the cost, don’t allow this infestation.

Griffin ’s philosopher cells sighted the invasive matter around Elepaio . They had no concept of such a phenomenon, so they tagged it as likely hostile. At the same time, they launched multiple searches into the cell field’s deep memory, seeking a similar situation, a past experience to help them interpret what they saw and to suggest a method of attack.

Clemantine didn’t know what to make of it either until a submind arrived and memories unfolded. Her first action was to reinforce the classification of “hostile.”

Through the ship’s senses, she looked ahead to the gleam of Dragon ’s philosopher cells, a hundred kilometers distant, and read the message contained in their microsecond flashes:

Sooth. It was the logical next step.

Bracing herself against the terrible sense of dissociation she knew would come, she shunted power to the gun.

*Urban , Clemantine warned.

The urgency in her voice let him know that the Clemantine who spoke was his Clemantine, the version of her on Dragon ’s high bridge, and not the icy mistress of Griffin .

*I see it , he answered, apprehending the cause of her concern.

An updated image of Elepaio circulated through the philosopher cells’ conversation. In it, the discrete warm points indicating the presence of matter energized by the reef could no longer be seen. Elepaio had lost its glamour. It appeared now to be clean.

A submind brought a memory of the most recent telescope image. It confirmed the hull cells’ observation: The glamour was gone.

Clemantine said, *The devices have launched from Elepaio .

*Sooth.

The devices would try to reach Dragon or Griffin . No way to know how widely they were scattered or how fast they might be coming. And it was possible, even likely, that each device was really a package of smaller weapons. That’s how he would have done it—loaded each with thousands or tens of thousands of needle projectiles like those he’d used to infect Griffin .

He canceled his decision to use the gamma-ray gun:

– hold fire –

No need to sacrifice Elepaio when the invasive devices were already gone.

– hold fire: don’t shoot –

He dumped the argument at a hundred thousand points across Dragon ’s cell field.

– hold fire –

To his surprise, the philosopher cells affirmed this argument. Reinforced it:

But Clemantine objected: *What are you doing? We can still hit the swarm of devices while they’re on their way in.

*They’ve already scattered. The time delay. The immense span of space. I’d have to burn out the reef to cover it all.

*Then burn it! You can’t let the swarm hit us.

The philosopher cells picked up on her mood, echoed it, their hostility swiftly rising.

*All right.

He envisioned Elepaio . Sent that image to the cells with a warning: – do not target –

He shared with them the idea of an incoming infectious swarm—a concept they understood because he’d deployed it against them in the distant past.

The cells established a summary and proposed a response:

He made no objection, but emphasized the protection he’d placed on Elepaio : – do not target –

The philosopher cells carried out the maneuver, orienting Dragon so its bow faced Elepaio , presenting the smallest profile to the incoming swarm.

To Clemantine, he said, *Tell her.

*She knows everything I know , Clemantine assured him.

As if to prove it, Griffin ’s hull cells signaled their intention to fire. Seconds later, a high-energy lance punched through the wide gulf between Dragon and Elepaio . Blind strikes, repeating. Again. And again.