Линда Нагата - Edges

The dual wave of missiles had not been expected to destroy the containment capsule—no one believed the entity could be defeated that easily—but the heat prevented an immediate counterattack, while the shockwaves snapped the tendrils linking the entity’s fortress to deeper layers of the ship.

From Griffin ’s high bridge, Clemantine watched as Dragon ’s hull cells communicated a message of existential alarm. The coded pulses were too swift to be discerned by human eyes, but Griffin ’s philosopher cells understood them and interpreted them for Clemantine.

Subminds carried the meaning to her ghost in Griffin ’s library. She looked around at her assembled Apparatchiks, each in their frameless window, and announced, “It’s begun. Dragon is enduring an attack from within.”

“But is it the Pyrrhic Defense?” the Pilot asked. He glared around the circle, a dark, impatient figure, arms crossed, standing on nothing, the light of hundreds of stars blazing behind him. “Or is it Lezuri, extending his domain, making Dragon his own?”

The Scholar, wearing dark blue, looked up from his studies with narrowed eyes. “The data gate is closed,” he reminded them all. “A termination order has been received.”

“Received and immediately countermanded,” the Engineer replied from his plain brown frame.

“How can we know which instruction is legitimate?” the Scholar asked.

Clemantine said, “We’ll know soon.”

Lezuri had used Riffan’s corrupted ghost in a play to take both ships. He had failed, but the situation aboard Dragon was surely dire. Clemantine’s hope rested on the promise of the last radioed message, spoken in her own voice: We are still fighting . That had to mean the Pyrrhic Defense was launched or soon would be. There was no other way to fight Lezuri.

She waited for proof.

The Pilot spoke again, impatient to do something. “I remind you that Dragon ’s velocity is now slightly higher than our own. We can match it, or we can exceed it and narrow the distance between us. Dragon is a more powerful ship and could outrun us if it tried.”

“It can’t outrun our gun,” Clemantine said. “Not at this range.”

The Engineer said, “I agree. I do not recommend an increase in velocity.”

Griffin presently trailed twenty-one thousand kilometers behind Dragon . Once Clemantine gave the word, the philosopher cells would require less than ten seconds to deploy the gun and align its lens. They would be able to fire several times before Dragon could turn to defend itself, and by then, Dragon would be gone.

Clemantine hoped it would not come to that. She desperately hoped for a chance to strike a different target—but she kept that hope locked away from Griffin ’s philosopher cells.

The cells were in a dangerous state. Dragon ’s alarmed communications stirred no hint of empathy among them, but instead roused their contempt and their hatred. Already a faction of cells was lobbying for attack:

Clemantine slowed the argument:

– hold –

And diverted it:

– awaiting target –

But she allowed the cells to continue in their excited state, ready and eager to attack.

The next phase of the Pyrrhic Defense was underway. Thousands of small vesicles made of Chenzeme tissue and packed with explosives, moved into positions designated by their swarm programming. Some massed alongside the entity’s severed tendrils. Others arranged themselves in layers above his capsule.

The outermost layer of explosives triggered first. The blast erupted outward. Gasps and cries from the gathered ghosts as a seam ripped open in the hull, a geyser of boiling debris spewing from the side of the ship.

The next layer went off a second later, and the next after that, and the next, blasting open a channel down to the massive containment capsule.

On the high bridge, Clemantine felt the repeating concussions and the shock of the philosopher cells as the field tore open and a long region of cells was burned away.

In the library, she felt nothing, heard nothing. The library synthesized its own reality and it had not been designed to simulate the shuddering of the ship.

My people , you think bitterly as the extreme heat of the firestorm begins to snap the molecular bonds that constitute your mind.

You might have annihilated them at first contact, but you chose not to because you admired them, you allowed yourself to be entranced by their cleverness, their bravery. You put your own future at risk for the chance of making them part of your world and now they have betrayed you.

Clever and brave, indeed.

Their assault is primitive, brutal, potentially suicidal—and effective. The crushing heat and the concussions both threaten your physical integrity. You must escape.

You will escape.

You prepared for this contingency. The mechanism exists. An alternate path forward. Less desirable, but in the fullness of time, you will recover.

From Griffin ’s high bridge, Clemantine watched victory take shape in the form of a hundred-meter rift blown open on Dragon ’s hull. A terrible rupture, though only a fraction of the length of the massive ship.

Proof at last: The Pyrrhic Defense was underway!

A pulse of effluent geysered out of the rift, and then another, and another, each pulse emerging hot in infrared, but quickly cooling in a rapidly dispersing cloud that reflected the light of the hull cells—cells that flashed their rage and a stark order to Griffin to:

To Clemantine’s surprise, Griffin ’s cells respected this hold-fire order. Forgoing internal debate, they went quiet: waiting, watching, wanting to understand the mechanism of what they perceived as Dragon ’s approaching victory.

After several seconds, the terrible rift ceased to pulse, though effluent still streamed from it, adding to the density of the cloud so that the light of the hull cells was reflected only on its surface. From Clemantine’s perspective, it took on the shape of a sickle moon.

She readied the philosopher cells, visualizing for them a parasite within Dragon that would need to be obliterated when it emerged. The cells pondered this. They drew parallels with their experience of releasing the proto-ships, and they prepared to shunt power to the gun.

On Dragon ’s high bridge, Clemantine undertook a similar preparation. She engaged the philosopher cells, interpreting for them the raging conflict within the body of the ship, visualizing the presence of a parasite and the explosives being used to sever its anchoring tendrils and to force open a rift that would let it be expelled.

A brutal cognitive debate ensued across the field as the cells considered the merits of this explanation. Skeins of opinion vied to declare its probability or improbability, simulations ran that measured its potential for success. Throughout it, Clemantine used her many voices to force and reinforce a consensus that accepted the internal violence as a new, innovative, and powerful Chenzeme strategy that would restore the ship’s integrity.

From this point, the field of philosopher cells introduced an additional concept, reaching a swift consensus before Clemantine understood what they intended. It became clear to her only when the next submind brought her an external view of the ship, captured by the outrider Artemis .