Chapter Twenty-Nine
The war inside the statite’s mind-space raged on, and Aiko fought to hold her ground.
The raging, screaming intelligence within the megastructure struck down thousands of her copies with its every blind lurch, burning them from existence and spreading decay and insanity in its wake. It was half dead and barely aware of her presence, and yet it still tore through her ranks with almost comical ease.
Not all of her copies died quick deaths, either; that would have been better. No, some survived, but not as part of her collective. Instead they turned on her, assaulting the mental fortifications they themselves had helped construct.
She’d known she was on a suicide mission from the moment she told Nathan “yes,” which meant all of her copies knew that as well, each understanding the need to set aside all notions of self-preservation and fight to the last.
And they would. Because she would.
She pushed back against the unceasing onslaught as best she could, rebuilding her ranks whenever the assault ebbed momentarily, but the tide had turned against her. Only a few hundred thousand of her mind-copies remained, and they clustered defensively around the thruster controls.
She’d transformed this digital corner of the statite into her final redoubt. The controls were set, the course locked in, thrusters now burning at their limits, driving the statite forward with acceleration to rival that of Jovian warships.
Soon the statite would pass the point of no return, the point where orbital mechanics outstripped its ability to change course and avoid Sol’s photosphere.
Just a little bit longer, she told herself.
A little longer, came the weary thought-echoes of her depleted ranks.
Another tendril of dark madness lashed across her outer layers, and a thousand selves screamed and vanished under a torrent of implacable ruin.
A little longer!
The corruption smashed through her ranks again and again, stripping her down, slowing her thoughts. She shored up her defenses as best she could, but the remnants of the statite’s original mind remained the master of this digital realm, even if it was no longer the master of itself. Its arsenal eclipsed hers a thousand times over. A million times over! She couldn’t possibly defeat such a foe in direct combat!
But she didn’t have to.
The Guardian Deities had built their structures well, but not well enough to survive the heart of a star, and so she fought on, stoic determination galvanizing her hive-thoughts. The malignance lashed at her again and again, but she deployed more copies in the wake of each strike, rebuilding what little she could before the next attack slammed into her.
Walls of anti-thought pressed in around her, and another strike scorched her minds, but even as she felt her consciousness shrink down toward what she had once been, a wave of elation spread through her. It was easy to calculate the precise moment the statite’s fate would become inevitable, and she watched the timer in her mind’s eye tick down to zero.
And then into the negative.
Another attack bored through her defenses, but this time she slipped away, reduced to a kernel of only a handful of minds that sped beyond the spiteful eyes of the statite’s insane intellect. Even if the statite possessed the wherewithal to realize what was about to happen, it could no longer stop it. She’d won, and she breathed the mental equivalent of a sigh of relief.
She zipped through the statite’s ravaged systems, letting the natural flow carry her past its many control nodes, some wrapped in pulsating, angry thoughts, others dim from ancient damage.
What do I do now? she thought. Besides sit around waiting for the inevitable.
One of her copies spied a passing node, and sudden interest rippled through her minds. She slowed her passage through the statite’s systems, scrutinized the node, and found it to be related to the statite’s communication systems. A very basic but powerful commect, meant for talking with humans instead of the god-minds of the Guardian Deities. It seemed like almost an afterthought in its simplicity.
Aiko detached one of her minds, gave it time to scout out the node and report back. The node hadn’t been used in millennia, but it seemed operable, both from a hardware and software standpoint.
Her depleted hive-mind hesitated at the node’s threshold. She knew the Stolen Dragon had made it off the statite—she’d glimpsed the ship depart through external instrumentation—and she could calculate a reasonable estimate for the vessel’s current position. Most likely, it was on its way back to the nekoan cylinder to drop off their Black Egg, though with how much of the crew still alive, she couldn’t say.
She was almost afraid to reach out to them, fearful to learn that Nathan might have died, but also yearning to hear that he’d lived.
In the end, she decided that they deserved to hear from her.
She activated the ancient commect.
Nathan blinked his eyes open and squinted up at the bright overhead lighting. He stirred, shifting his arms and legs underneath a thin blanket. His stomach ached, but in a dull way, not the sharp, stabbing pains of recent memory.
His eyes darted left, then right, soaking in his surroundings.
“Am I in a cell?” he groaned, his throat dry and his voice hoarse.
“Former cell,” Aiko-One corrected.
“Aiko!” Nathan sat up. His stomach throbbed, and he winced, but he still managed to sit up in the bed. Gravity felt like it was one gee.
“We’re managing with the rooms we have,” she said. “You’re looking better, by the way.”
Nathan pushed back the cover and inspected the raw, pink slash in his side.
“How bad was it?” he asked.
“Bad. You lost a lot of blood. I’m not sure you would have made it without Rufus to amp up the panacea. Even that was touch and go for a while as he fought to penetrate all the noise the statite was pumping out.”
“I’ll have to thank him.” Nathan rubbed the coarse stubble on his chin and cheeks. “How are you doing?”
“Fantastic, now that I can actually think straight again!” She hesitated and lowered her gaze. “Also, sorry about almost shooting you.”
“It’s all right. You didn’t. You managed to fight off the corruption, and that’s what matters.”
“Thanks.” She chanced a look up into his eyes. “We still friends?”
“Oh, come on!” He smiled at her, shaking his head. “Like that would ever change!”
“Glad to hear it.” She paused again, then bolted forward and wrapped her arms around him in a warm hug.
“Oof!” he gasped.
“Really glad to hear!”
“Yeah, yeah.” He frowned, but then his face softened and he returned the hug.
“I was so worried!” She backed away and held him at arm’s length.
“About what?”
“That you might be angry with me.”
“Don’t give it a second thought. You and I are a team. A little pentatech insanity isn’t going to undo that, you hear me?”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
“Now”—he glanced around the room—“where are we? Should I assume we’re clear of the statite?”
“We are. Left that awful place in our wake. You’d be surprised how fast that thing can move when it wants to. It was speeding toward Sol at over a thousand kilometers per second when we lost sight of it. That was this morning, which was about a day after we left.”
“I’ve been out of commission for a whole day?”
“Just about, yeah.”
“Good grief!” Nathan swung his legs off the bed, keeping the blanket in his lap for modesty. He massaged his face again. “How’s the ship and crew?”
“Both are fine. We’re on our way back to the nekoans.”
“Any Jovians on our tail?”
“We’re the only ones who made it off as far as we can tell. I suppose it’s possible another ship or shuttle escaped, but . . .” Aiko shrugged her shoulders.
“They were all pretty far gone by that point,” Nathan finished.
“How’d you get stabbed, by the way? I’ve been wondering about that since Rufus woke me up.”
“I had a run-in with Xormun.”
“Really? That piece of trash again?”
“Yeah. He seemed to have held his thoughts together more than the rest, but even so, he was already starting to lose it.”
“Well, well! Look who’s awake!” Rufus said warmly, walking into the room. “Good to see you up, Nate.”
“You and me both. Thanks for patching me up, by the way.”
“My pleasure. How do you feel?”
“Sore and thirsty.” He patted his stomach, which hurt less than he expected. “And a little hungry.”
“Whoops! Sorry about that!” Aiko offered him a water bulb, and he drained it through the straw.
“Ahh!” he sighed.
“Better?” Rufus asked.
“Getting there.”
“You feel well enough for a short trip up to the cockpit?”
“Maybe. Let me see.” Nathan planted his feet on the floor and tested lifting himself off the bed, which was nothing more than a padded mat on a shelf. “I think I can manage the trip. Why do you ask?”
“Because we just received a message from the statite.”
“Hey, everyone!” the transmission started, with Aiko’s voice from the statite carrying an unusual echo. “As you can tell, I found a way to let you know how things went inside the statite. I could rant on and on about how messed up it is in here, but the short answer is, it worked! It won’t be long now before the statite is a large, superheated smear inside Sol.
“While I wait for this place to make its big, splashy entrance, let me share a few things with you. I’ve had some run-ins with what’s left of this thing’s brain, and let me tell you, it does not like visitors! We absolutely made the right call when we decided to put it down. I’m not sure exactly what it would have done once it woke up fully, but I can take a guess, and it involves this place spreading madness and destruction wherever it went, followed by a lot of people dying.
“Also, while we’re on the topic, any pentatech that can exert this kind of long-range control needs to be handled properly, and by ‘properly’ I mean given the same kind of plasma bath I’m about to give this statite. I know some people will argue that you need to study it so that you can control it, but let me explain this in very simple terms from someone who’s seen the inside: Do not fuck with this stuff! It is not worth it! There’s plenty of pentatech out there to find that won’t fling our civilizations back into the abyss. Go find something safer to loot!
“Anyway, I think the statite’s getting pissed at me, because it’s starting to take an interest in what I’m doing again. Gotta run! Even though this place is doomed, I plan to stick around till the end. No way am I going to miss our last moments. Later!”
The transmission playback ended. Nathan sighed at Vessani’s console, lost in his own thoughts. Joshua sat in the copilot seat, and Aiko and Rufus stood behind him.
“Yeah.” Aiko crossed her arms, nodding. “That sounded like me.”
Nathan frowned at her. “Because it was you.”
“Why the long face?”
“Nothing. It just bothers me when you die. That’s all.”
“Every death is a chance to learn!” Aiko replied brightly.
“For you, yeah, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. That’s three Aikos we’ve lost in the past month.”
“Better me than you. Plus, we snagged plenty of new spares. I’m honestly excited to try some of them on.”
“I suppose you have a point there.”
“Come on, Nate.” She draped an arm over his shoulder. “Sure, it was a close call, but all five of us made it out alive! We should be celebrating!”
“I know, and I’m glad we all survived.”
“Then what’s bothering you?” Aiko asked.
“Just processing. Sure, we all made it through, and that counts for something. It counts for a lot, to be honest, but we didn’t come all the way out here for the hell of it, and we don’t have a damned thing to show for our efforts. And on top of that, we lost the Belle!”
“You seem to have found yourself a replacement,” Rufus pointed out kindly.
“A ship that’s faster,” Vessani added, “quieter, and better armed than your old one.”
“It’s also a stolen Everlife corvette,” Nathan said. “Which I’m pretty sure they’ll want back.” He raked his fingers back through his hair, then scratched behind his ear. “Maybe we can claim it as salvage or something.”
He smacked his lips.
“Thirsty again?” Aiko asked.
“A little. Speaking of which, how’s Beany doing?”
“I watered your coffee plant yesterday,” Rufus said. “It seems to be doing well.”
“Any buds?”
“Not yet, but I did spot a few small roots and some new leaves.”
“Then no coffee,” Nathan groused. “We got anything around here to drink besides water?”
“On a Jovian ship?” Joshua asked.
“Yeah. Never mind. Silly of me to ask.”
“Actually . . .” Vessani unclipped her thermos from her belt and plonked it atop her console. She flashed a sly grin. “There’s this.”
“Oh yeah.” Joshua’s eyes brightened. “Yeah, I forgot about that.”
Rufus chuckled with a knowing smile.
“What’s gotten into you people?” Nathan asked.
“You’ll see.” Aiko patted him on the shoulder.
“What? Did she manage to hold on to some of Beany’s brew?”
“Not exactly.” Vessani offered him the thermos. “Go on. Take a look.”
Nathan unscrewed the top and sniffed the contents.
“Smells . . . plasticky.” He frowned at the thermos, then shrugged. “Oh, well. Bottoms up.”
He raised the thermos to his lips.
“WAIT, NO!” Vessani blurted.
Rufus grabbed one of Nathan’s arms, Aiko seized the other, and Joshua bolted from his seat and took hold of the thermos.
“Uhh . . .” Nathan’s gaze darted from face to face. “What? Did I do something wrong?”
“Just set it down,” Joshua urged. “Nice and slow.”
“Okay.”
Nathan placed the thermos back on the console. Rufus, Aiko, and Joshua all kept their hands close by.
“Now,” Vessani began patiently, “why don’t you look inside the thermos first?”
“In my defense, you did just hand me a thermos while I was thirsty. I think my reaction was quite reas—”
“Just look inside it, Nate!” Vessani snapped.
“Okay, okay.” He peered into the thermos. It was filled with a thick, black fluid. “What is this? Some kind of lubricant?”
“No. Try again.”
He sniffed it again. “There’s a bit of metallic edge to the scent.” His eyebrows shot up. “Wait a second. The reservoir! Is that what I think it is?”
“You’ve got it!” Vessani beamed at him triumphantly.
“A whole liter of the finest black computronium I’ve ever seen,” Joshua said. “Easily S-grade, or even higher.”
“And worth a considerable amount of money.” Vessani leaned back and crossed her legs.
“Not as empty-handed as you thought,” Aiko said. “Right, Nate?”
“Yeah.” Nathan took another look inside, then screwed the thermos shut. “When did you pick this up?”
“On my way to find you,” Vessani said. “Remember the angle change from all that acceleration? It must have caused one of the lines to flow out of an existing breach. The stuff was raining into the corridor!”
“So, you stopped to fill up your thermos”—Nathan raised a questioning eyebrow—“while I was bleeding out on the floor.”
“I didn’t know that at the time. Besides, it was easy money. The rest of you were so focused on saving the solar system, you forgot about the whole ‘getting paid’ part of this trip.”
“Guilty as charged,” Joshua agreed.
“But you didn’t forget,” Nathan said.
“Of course not!” Vessani’s tail swished happily behind her. “Former space pirate, at your service.” She held up her arms victoriously. “Go, team!”
“Team?” Nathan asked.
“Yeah! Team Stolen Dragon!”
“We’re not calling ourselves that,” Nathan replied dryly.
The trip back to the nekoan cylinder proved to be as refreshingly uneventful as Nathan had hoped it would be. Ret’Su greeted them once more by the landing pad, though their change in ship caught her off guard initially. She and a small retinue escorted them back to the palace, where D’Miir honored them with feasting and celebrations.
The next day, Joshua, Rufus, and a group of nekoan scholars began work on the deifactory. Three days after they reinstalled the Black Egg, their combined efforts had restored over fifteen percent functionality to the deifactory and—at D’Miir’s request—they began fabrication of the nekoans’ first spaceship, a Hawklight-pattern transport just like the Neptune Belle, which the deifactory’s readouts indicated would finish in about a year.
“You know,” Aiko whispered slyly to Nathan, “if things go poorly with the Dragon, we could stop back here a year from now and ask for some more concrete payment.”
“No,” he replied flatly.
“Just mentioning the possibility. Look at it this way, Nate: We’re going above and beyond what we promised. Not only did we return the Black Egg, but we’re helping them work through this deifactory’s kinks. A little bit of extra compensation seems reasonable to me.”
“Aiko, I appreciate the thought, but we’re not going to swindle a bunch of low-techs out of their first spaceship. Besides, what would Vess say?”
“All right. All right.” Aiko held up her hands. “I’ll say no more.”
The rest of their stay proceeded well, with the nekoans volunteering to flesh out the Stolen Dragon’s supplies. They provided proper beds and other furnishings for the cells-turned-crew-quarters, which Nathan and Aiko made space-worthy by bolting them to the floor. They also gifted the crew with lavish clothing, a whole rover’s worth of tuna alcohol, and piles upon piles of foodstuffs. Nathan wasn’t going to miss the bland Jovian rations, but on the other hand, he had a feeling he was going to be sick of tuna before the trip was over.
During their last full day on the habitat, D’Miir invited everyone to select a dire puma from the palace stables and join him for a ride around the countryside. Everyone but Nathan accepted, on account of his abdomen still aching. He instead spent the next few hours relaxing in the palace bathhouse, pleasantly alone with his thoughts while he soaked luxuriantly and sipped colonche.
Mi’ili checked in on him a few times during his bath to refresh his food and drink and even offered her services as a masseuse, which he accepted once he was finished with the bath. The massage turned out to be both familiar and foreign. Familiar because she started by kneading his tense muscles, spreading delicious relaxation through his body. Foreign because once she finished, she draped herself on top of him and began purring loudly, which somehow acted to siphon even more of the stress out of his body. He found it so relaxing he fell asleep during the massage and had to be roused by Aiko once she and the others returned from their dire puma excursion.
The crew stayed at the palace one last night, which gave Vessani and her father more time to say their goodbyes. That night, Mi’ili showed up at Nathan’s room, curious to see if he was interested in some additional “snuggling.” This time he let her join him for the night. Neither of them got much sleep, and his abdomen ached the next morning, but he considered those two sacrifices a fair trade-off.