Storming Heaven

Chapter Thirty-Two

“I take it there’s still no sign that they have detected us?”

“There is no sign that they have decided to take notice of us,” the AI said, flatly. Lieutenant Justin Herald, known as Joe to his friends after an embarrassing mix-up at the training centre, could have sworn he heard a hint of irritation in the AIs voice. Most AIs never developed a sense of emotions, even if they had been designed to have that capability, but some developed them at the oddest times. Being cooped up in a tiny scout ship with a single human probably encouraged the AI to learn frustration and boredom. “I cannot swear that they have not detected us.”

“Ah,” Justin said, dryly. “They may have just decided to ignore us.”

“Precisely,” the AI agreed. There was a sudden note of warning in its voice. “However, after the Footsoldiers captured a Killer starship and they launched their blitzkrieg against human space, hundreds of observers and picketing starships have been wiped out by the Killers. It would be foolish to assume that they intend to continue ignoring us.”

“Assuming, of course, that that have detected us,” Justin said. He gave the AI’s console a cheeky grin. “If they haven’t detected us, they can’t make the decision to ignore us, can they?”

The AI didn’t bother to respond. Justin suspected that that meant that the AI didn’t want to continue the discussion, or perhaps that it regarded the whole discussion as foolish. It was probably right — it was a silly argument — but Justin had been on station, alone, for over a year. He was desperate for something to happen, even if it involved having to dodge an outraged Killer starship or fly through one of their gravity beams. Fifteen months was too long to be alone. He wanted a hotel, comfortable sheets and some company — he was past caring if it were male or female. The virtual reality simulator had its limits. He could program it to do anything he wanted, but none of it would be real, or spontaneous. It wouldn’t be anything more than a form of masturbation.

He smiled to himself, threw a mock salute at the AI’s console, and turned back to the reports from the hundreds of tiny passive sensors that the Defence Force had scattered throughout the system. The star system, bearing the unlikely name of Killer #34, was one of their major bases — and the closest one to Shiva. Justin was rather surprised that the Defence Force hadn’t targeted the star with a supernova bomb — it would have wiped out massive Killer factories, along with two gas giants and their suspected populations — but perhaps it was only a matter of time. He’d been warned to be on the lookout for Killer activity that suggested that they were preparing a new offensive, but there was no way to know just what they were thinking. If they were talking to each other, sharing intelligence or bullshitting about their latest sexual conquests — if Killers had sexual conquests — even the most advanced sensors the Community had designed couldn’t pick it up, let alone read it. There were only the low-level RF transmissions, seemingly nothing more than static, which seemed to be associated with every Killer installation. No one knew why that happened, although the general theory was that the Killers were natural radio transmitters and it was how they communicated in their natural habitat.

It was still am impressive sight, although he knew that humans could have duplicated it, if they’d not been trying to hide. The Killers had built massive structures out of the debris of several rocky planets — a shipyard, a massive fabrication complex and God alone knew what else — and defended them with several of their dreaded starships. No humans had dared approach the system without taking every precaution to remain hidden; as far as he knew, he was completely undetectable. No one knew if the Killers could sense his presence — even the tiny scout would make an impression on the fabric of space-time — but they hadn’t bothered to chase him away. His observations, he’d been told, might one day lead to the defeat of the Killers. It didn’t stop them being boring.

“We should just hit their goddamned star,” he muttered. “Hey, Brainy; can’t we take out the star ourselves?”

“No,” the AI replied, with a definite trace of strained patience. It was easier for the AI; it could link into the MassMind and correspond with hundreds of other AIs and human personalities. Justin had never been able to quite accept the MassMind personalities as real. He was no Radical Organic, who would believe that there was something sinful in trying to cheat death, but he just couldn’t see the connection. His mother and father had downloaded into the MassMind years ago, yet he rarely talked to them. Were they really his parents, or just computer programs that thought they were his parents? “We do not have the fabrication capability to produce a supernova bomb.”

“I know,” Justin said, tiredly. He’d read hundreds of posts in the various discussion forums he frequented concerning the supernova bomb and how it might be deployed, but they’d been short on technical details. Besides, blowing up a star probably violated some Defence Force regulation; there was certainly a regulation against unauthorised contact with the Killers. Every so often, a group of idiot Darwinists or Killer Worshipers set off to make contact with the Killers and inevitably ended up dead, if the Defence Force didn’t arrest them first. Their idols killed them for daring to approach. They never took the hint and realised that the lack of a Killer response to their signals meant that they weren’t welcome. “But wouldn’t it be really cool?”

“It would be very warm,” Brainy said. It wasn’t the AI’s official designation, but Justin had insisted — pointing out that he would have to spend most of his time alone with the AI — and managed to get his way. “The temperatures released by a supernova would be hot enough to melt entire planets.”

Justin smiled. “That sounds like a sense of humour,” he said, dryly. The AI’s understatement was a nice touch. “And we would have roast Killer for dinner.

“Although analysis suggests that the Killers do have something in common with us, biologically, eating them would almost certainly result in poisoning and death,” Brainy said. “That would not include, of course, the certainty of radiation poisoning and other unpleasant fates. I was informed that you intended to die at seven hundred years old, in someone else’s bed.”

Justin smiled, openly. He’d said that to the AI once, when they’d been preparing for their mission — and, of course, the AI would never forget. It might even have approved. Humans tended to be more suicidal than AIs, even though AIs were considered expendable and humans were not, despite the promise of eternal life in the MassMind. An AI had no doubts about continuity. Brainy could run its pattern in another computer core and remain certain that it was the same AI.

He had wondered, in fact, why the Defence Force risked a human pilot and a scout ship at all. There was no reason why the sensor platforms couldn’t be controlled from light years away — with quantum entanglement communications the platforms could be controlled from halfway across the galaxy, if necessary — and there was no need to risk Justin’s life, but it was procedure and not to be questioned by mere mortals. He’d spent a few days researching it once and had concluded that the Defence Force, back in the days before Anderson Drive and trustworthy AIs, had decided that having a human input would always be useful. It made a certain kind of sense — most AIs lacked real imagination — but why did he have to be in the system itself? All it did was focus the mind… on the fact that it was a bare few AUs from the most powerful race in existence, one that destroyed human worlds for fun.

Hell, he thought. Why couldn’t that be the reason why the Killers slaughtered every other race they encountered. Maybe they thought it was funny!

“Give me a breakdown on their current energy emissions,” he said, finally. The Killers used gravity like the human race used electric power, or quantum taps. It struck him as odd — they should have been able to use quantum taps of their own — but perhaps they just preferred black holes. “I want you to…”

“Alert,” the AI said, suddenly. “I am picking up multiple wormholes opening within the outer star system.”

Justin pulled himself to his feet and ran towards the cockpit, throwing himself into the pilot’s seat and bringing up the helm console. “Report,” he snapped, as he checked the scout’s status. Their drives were cold, but they could be flash-woken within seconds. Unless the Killers were right on top of them, they should be able to escape before the Killers blocked them from using the Anderson Drive and ran them down. He’d seen others die that way, but he wouldn’t go that way, not if he had anything to say about it. “Are they coming after us?”

“I don’t think so,” Brainy said, plotting the location on the main display. “They’re actually heading away from us and…”

The AI’s voice seemed to change. “Justin,” it said, slowly. “The Killer starships have been in the wars.”

“You’re joking,” Justin said. He pushed the flippant side of his personality to the rear and concentrated on the reports from the passive sensors. “Do we have something close enough to eyeball them?”

“We have four probes close enough to get visual images,” the AI confirmed. “I’m downloading their live footage now.”

“And get it out of here as well,” Justin added. He sometimes tried to analyse the sensor take, but if the Killers decided to chase him out of the system, he wouldn’t have time. The human race had to know what he knew. “Get it to Intelligence and Sparta and everywhere else that might be able to use the data…”

“I have an image,” the AI cut him off. It appeared in front of him and Justin fell silent. “They’re definitely damaged.”

Justin said nothing. The mighty Killer starship, the most feared ship design in the galaxy, had been broken and torn. The once-invulnerable hull material had been cracked open in a hundred places, leaving carbon scoring marking the hull and signs of internal damage. It trailed a leak of glowing plasma, flaring out against the darkness of space before it faded into nothingness, suggesting that the battle to save the starship was barely underway. Justin was staggered — and impressed. No human starship could have survived that level of damage and carried on regardless.

He’d read a hundred tales of damaged starships somehow managing to make their way home after losing their FTL drives, but they were simple nonsense. No starship could take so much damage and keep flying, even at sublight speeds. It would have — should have — died in the vastness of space. The sight brought him to his feet in respectful silence, enemy ship or no, as it staggered home. No spacer could have been entirely unmoved by the sight.

The probe image panned out, revealing the other starships in the fleet. They were all damaged to some extent, some of them trailing even more plasma into space than the lead ship, somehow giving off a sense of defeat. No one who spent their entire lives amid starships could doubt that they had a personality of their own, even Killer starships, and these looked broken and battered. It shouldn’t have happened to us, they seemed to say; the universe has turned upside down.

“I don’t believe it,” Justin said, as the probe relayed an image of a gaping hole, revealing a broken and torn interior. “What happened to them? Did they run into something more powerful than themselves?”

“I am receiving a tactical download from Sparta,” Brainy said. There was a long pause as the AU stretched out the drama as far as it would go. “They would appear to be the survivors of the Battle of Shiva. The Killers retreated from the battlefield.”

Justin burst out laughing. “They fled,” he carolled in delight. If the AI had been human, he would have hugged it tightly. It wasn’t right, he would have admitted later, to gloat over the downfall of so many mighty starships, but they were the Killers! Every human in existence was raised to fear their wrath, their determination that no other forms of life but their own should exist, their invincible starships… and now they had been broken! They were still dangerous, but they were not invincible. “They ran from us!”

“So it would seem,” the AI agreed. There was a heavy note of satisfaction in its voice. “The Defence Force wants an update on their current status.”

Justin nodded. “Put us on a hair-trigger,” he said. Even damaged, so many Killer starships would have no problems making short work of his tiny scout. “If one of them even farts in our direction, I want us out of here.”

“Understood,” the AI said. “I am continuing to monitor their activities, but it does not seem if they are any more aware of our presence than the local Killers.”

“This has to be tearing holes in their morale,” Justin pointed out, as he pulled himself to his feet and walked over to the food processor. “Neat Scotch; no ice.”

Brainy made an unsettling electronic cough. “Are you drinking so early?”

“There’s something to celebrate,” Justin pointed out, as the drink formed in the processor. He took a single gulp and smiled as it ran down his throat. The personalities in the MassMind swore that it was far from the real thing, but Scotland and the Distillers had been blown away over a thousand years ago. “How often do you get to see a limping Killer fleet running home with its tail between its legs?”

“The Killers do not have tails,” Brainy pointed out, pedantically. “They are creatures composed of a free association of cells. They lack anything reassembling a human body, let alone tails.”

Justin shrugged and took a smaller sip. “I can’t imagine what it must be like for them,” he said. “Do you think that their butts sometimes vote to secede from their heads, or perhaps their legs rebel against their arms?”

“There is no way to be certain, but it seems likely they will have more of an AI-level merge rather than a human body, although they may have different cells for different functions,” Brainy said, after a moment in which he emitted a very human sigh. “They may merge into one mental pattern and then separate out again without any of the hassles that human group minds would experience…”

“I’d hate it if half my body went one way and the rest went the other,” Justin said, dryly. “I remember an old story when some dumb kid managed to work out how to talk to his body’s organs and learned that they thought he should eat less sweet junk.”

“Words to live by,” the AI said, mischievously. “Your body is probably rebelling against the remains of that drink.”

“I’d better have another one to suppress the revolution,” Justin said, and laughed, before he placed the glass in the disposal and turned to the observation console. “I want to build up as complete a picture of those ships as we can, even if we have to zone out parts of the remaining system. We can still track anything coming to get us, can’t we?”

“Killer starships are very noticeable,” Brainy assured him. “We will not be disconnecting the near-space warning system.”

Justin laughed. The Defence Force was fond of sharing a joke about a pilot who had taken his starship out to an unexplored star system and powered down everything, apart from life support, in order to do some meditation. Two days later, he had opened his eyes and seen — though the viewport — an advancing Killer starship. It had come within metres of smashing right into the human ship and destroying it, without even noticing that it was there. The pilot had survived, to find himself the butt of jokes right across the Community. The general conclusion had been that the Killers had thought that he was too pathetic to kill.

“See that we don’t,” he said, finally. The images of the Killer starships began to get clearer as some of the probes slipped closer, compromising their stealth to get a close look at the enemy starships. Justin suspected that under normal circumstances, the Killers would ignore them anyway, but now… they might well wipe the probes out and then start looking for the command ship. They had to be jumpy themselves after the loss of a third of their fleet. No one would have hit them so hard since they had started their mission. “What the hell did we hit them with?”

“Not specified,” the AI said. “The probes are picking up weapons signatures comparable with particle weapons and energy torpedoes. There are also several unknown signatures and odd gravity fluxes surrounding the Killer starships. They may no longer be capable of opening a wormhole without repair and refitting.”

Justin smiled. “Are you sure of that?”

“No,” the AI replied. “There is no way to be sure. I merely postulate it from the low-level power curves, seventy percent below standard Killer power curves, on the starship. They are definitely running on short reserves, but they may be capable of rerouting power to the wormhole generator if pushed. We are unable to determine the level of internal damage, nor do we have the information to tell us what impact having such damage will have on the ship.”

“And if they can’t,” Justin breathed. The opportunity could not be missed, whatever the risks. They might never have another such opportunity again. “Get me a link to Sparta. I want to make a case for blowing up this star.”