Линда Нагата - Edges

Urban issued silent commands, turning off the view screen, returning the telescopes to the standard survey of the Near Vicinity, locking away the newly acquired image of Verilotus under a secure key—although this last, he knew, was futile.

Lezuri would surely have a means to capture images. There would be no metadata attached, no proof that it wasn’t faked, but it would be enough to inspire an examination of the telescope records, and after that a request for the original image.

Verilotus could not be kept secret and once its existence was known to the ship’s company there would be demands that the fleet go there instead of to Tanjiri.

Urban would not let that happen. To return this broken fragment of a warring god to his seat of power struck him as a fool’s choice. To risk encountering an entity of similar violent nature, possibly still in the fullness of her power… he would not do it.

He would not do it, regardless of the consensus of the ship’s company.

Still, he did not want to impose his will. That would lead to festering resentment. Better to argue his position… or circumvent debate by persuading Lezuri to take one of the outriders and go— get off my ship!

No. That couldn’t work. Lezuri would never risk getting in front of Dragon ’s gun.

Lezuri must want control of that gun.

As if to confirm it, the entity said, “We must approach in stealth. These two ships together are well armed, but she is not without her resources.”

“I’m not here to take part in your war,” Urban said as he waved aside the privacy screens, allowing daylight to flood the room. Subminds visited, updating him on the ship’s status. Everything normal, peaceful.

A message from Clemantine:

*I’m on my way home .

He glanced at her display of irises. They remained fresh and blue. No precipitous shift to white. Not yet.

Still, he understood their lesson: Nothing lasts.

You have lost so much of yourself, but this you remember from your origin: Strike first. Take without hesitation or be taken .

This is the credo that allowed you to rise above the Swarm. By this credo you survived your origin, escaped it, went on to create a world of your own.

You know now that world still exists. Knowing this, you are more determined than ever to return.

She may still be there. You suspect she is there. The biosphere is still there, and that is evidence of her presence—but you promise yourself it won’t last. You will end her tenancy, eliminate all trace of her failed art, re-create your world and your players as you intended them to be.

You will need this starship to do it, but the ship’s master continues to stand in the way of your ambition. You have sought to persuade him, you have promised to teach him, you have given him the gift of yourself, but he is resolved against you. A hard resistance that reminds you of her.

You envision the days of persuasion to come, the political maneuvering, vicious factionalism, false compromises, inevitable betrayals—and you have no patience for it. Better to end this stalemate now.

You are ready.

In the million seconds since you first sent your avatar among your people, you completed preparations for a first strike. Quiescent in the archives of both ships is a template based on one of your people—that one who was incautious enough to loan you his mechanical device. His ghost now belongs to you. It is a shell you will use to take command of both ships, an interface that will let you endure the violent alien nature of the Swarm contained within the philosopher cells… if all goes well.

If not, there is another plan in place.

Through your avatar you see the ship’s master, his eyes widening as he anticipates your intention, but for him it is too late.

Dancing across your avatar’s upturned palms is the tingling luminous silver shimmer of the ha —breath of life, breath of death—creation and disintegration both contained within a fog of adaptive molecular machines programmed by quantum instruction to fulfill your will.

The ha ladders across the gap that separates your avatar from his.

For all that you’ve forgotten, you never forgot this.

Urban glimpsed a fog of luminous silver sparks rising from Lezuri’s upturned palms, their shimmer suggesting a composition similar to the needle Lezuri had given him, although that was locked into a fixed crystalline structure, while this flowed.

He had never seen such a mechanism before. Maybe it was another demonstration, like the needle? He hesitated a full second, wanting to see it as benign. In that time, the silver replicated across Lezuri’s palms. It wound together, forming a tendril.

Instinct took over.

Urban stumbled backward, heart racing. He’d waited too long. The tendril leaped toward him with appalling speed, forcing him to accept the bitter truth: It was a weapon. What else could it be?

He remembered the protocol put in place years ago against this moment. He undertook the prescribed action, triggering a radio burst that would close the data gate to Griffin . Next he sent a submind to warn his ghost on the high bridge. Then he messaged Clemantine:

*Warn our people! I think—

The tendril touched him. Instantly, it expanded to envelop his body, enwrapping him from head to toe in a new skin, a skin that consumed him, grinding down through the layers of his physical existence, dis-assembling him so swiftly there wasn’t time to register pain or the shocking inadequacy of his own defensive Makers in the face of this new and unexpected form of assault.

All he had time to do was upload a ghost, a last imprint of this version of himself.

Clemantine was walking with Kona back from the dining terrace when Urban’s truncated message reached her: *Warn our people! I think—

Words sharp with a high-edge of panic, jumbled together in his hurry to get them out.

*Urban?

She looked ahead along the path that wound between neat cottages and pretty gardens, everything well ordered under a bright artificial sky.

*Urban!

“What is it?” Kona asked, though she had not spoken aloud.

“Something’s happened to Urban. We need to find him.”

A moment before, he had been at their cottage. She did not bother to recheck the personnel map, but took off running, aware of Kona following a step behind.

*Urban, answer me!

He did not.

She rounded the last bend in the path. Her cottage came into view. A luminous silver fog billowed from the doorway and from the window, dissolving the surrounding walls as it touched them, and leaching through the miniature meadow on the roof.

She came to an abrupt stop, putting an arm out to block Kona. Urban had said, Warn our people . Now she knew why. She composed a general message, dictating it out loud so that it doubled as a shouted warning: “Evacuate! Evacuate! We’ve got a runaway event. Take shelter now !”

The cloud collapsed just as her warning went out. It condensed into a thick silver liquid. Only a few centimeters deep, it flowed over the threshold and onto the patio, shimmering there for a few seconds.

Then it was gone, vanished. Evaporated? Or absorbed into the floor of the gee deck? She couldn’t tell.

She started forward.

“No, get back,” Kona told her.

She went on anyway, to the edge of the patio. From there, she could see in through the doorway. She could see inside easily because a meter of wall on either side of the threshold was gone, and so was most of the interior wall that divided the bedroom.