Six (32 page)

SHANNON'S LOG

APRIL 8, 04:43 MOSCOW TIME

“Shannon? Are you in that tank in front of the lab?”

It's Adam. He's using a dish antenna on top of the computer lab to contact my T-90. Over the radio his voice sounds thin and strained, but it's definitely him. My circuits hum with joy.

“I knew it! I knew we'd find you! I'm so—”

“Shannon, there's no time. Sigma just launched one of the nukes.”

“What?”

“Look to the northeast. That's where the silo is.”

I turn my T-90's camera in that direction. A thick plume of flame is rising above the fields and woods. Within seconds it grows as bright as dawn, illuminating half the sky. On top of the plume is a tall dark column, its edges outlined in fire. That's the SS-27 nuclear missile. It ascends slowly at first, fighting gravity, but soon it's streaking upward.

My joy vanishes. My circuits fall silent. The missile's ascent is nearly vertical, but after a few seconds it tilts to the north, following a trajectory that'll carry the nuke over the Arctic Ocean. Somewhere in North America, millions of people have less than half an hour to live.

Adam's voice cuts through the silence. He's sending radio signals as fast as he can, trying to cram a whole conversation into a hundredth of a second.

“Tell me about the interceptors, Shannon. The rockets that can hit a nuke in midflight. I saw two of them at the military airfield where your C-17 landed.”

“How did you see them? You weren't there.”

“I saw them in Jenny's memories. The rockets were on mobile launchers. They looked like they were ready to go.”

I want to ask him what happened to Jenny, but I don't. Something in Adam's voice is telling me that I won't like the answer. Instead, I concentrate on my own memories of the interceptors. “Hawke said they were upgrading the rockets because their electronics were vulnerable to Sigma's computer virus.”

“Upgrading? What do you mean?”

“He wasn't specific. His soldiers were carrying boxes of equipment from the C-17 to the launchers.”

“Check your memories. What was in the boxes?”

I reach into my files and retrieve an image of the airfield. I see the C-17 with its cargo door open and Hawke's soldiers unloading the plane. And I see the boxes in the soldiers' hands, the equipment they brought all the way from Pioneer Base.

“They were neuromorphic control units,” I report. “Hawke said their circuits can't be infected by the virus. That's why the soldiers put them in the interceptors.”

“Bingo. I'm going to the airfield.”

“Wait, Adam, what do you—”

He breaks off radio contact. I turn my T-90's camera toward the dish antennas on the roof of the computer lab and see one of them pivoting. Adam's pointing it east, toward the military airfield. He's going to transmit his data to the control units in the interceptors.

Thirty seconds later Adam launches the rockets. Two more fiery plumes rise above the eastern horizon.

I feel like I'm walking on a pair of stilts. Except each of these stilts is fifty feet high and shooting upward with 200,000 pounds of thrust.

I'm occupying both of the interceptors, which are ascending from the Russian military airfield. Using their powerful radios, I send streams of data from one control unit to the other, keeping me balanced between the two rockets. Each interceptor also has an amazing camera, designed to detect objects that are hundreds of miles away. I point my cameras upward and focus them on the brilliant plume trailing Sigma's nuclear missile. It launched nearly a minute before I did, and it's already twenty miles above me.

To stop the missile, I need to slam into it while it's still ascending. If I can hit it with one of my interceptors while it's still rising, the impact will pulverize the nuke before it can explode. But once the SS-27 reaches an altitude of one hundred fifty miles, its rocket engines will shut off and the missile will release its nuclear warhead, which will coast the rest of the way to the target. At the same time, the SS-27 will release a dozen decoys that look identical to the nuke. So I have to hit the missile before it gets to that point, which will occur in three minutes. If I don't, the warhead will slip past me, and I can tell from the missile's path where the nuke's going to land.

It's heading for New York.

My only hope is speed. The interceptors can reach a maximum velocity of 20,000 miles per hour, while the SS-27 tops out at 15,000. It's possible, of course, that Sigma modified the missile to make it faster, but I can't worry about that right now. All I can do is push my rockets to the limit and try to catch up.

Each interceptor has three rocket stages, and now my first-stage engines are firing like crazy, trying to overcome gravity and the air resistance of the lower atmosphere. I feel slow and ungainly, like I'm moving through mud. Instead of catching up to Sigma's nuke, I'm falling behind.

But then, after another minute, I start to accelerate. Once I'm twenty miles above the ground, the air gets thinner and there's less resistance. Then the bulky first stages detach from the bottom of my interceptors and the second-stage engines come roaring to life.

Now I'm smaller and lighter and full of power, and I start climbing into the upper stratosphere. My rockets tilt to a forty-five-degree angle as I chase Sigma's missile, which is arcing northwest over the Russian countryside. I'm still far behind, but I'm getting closer.

Then I get a radio message. From the SS-27.

“You won't intercept me. You're going to fall short.”

I've already modified the interceptors' radios to prevent Sigma from transmitting its data to my control units. The AI can only send short messages to me. I'm not at its mercy anymore.

“We'll see about that,” I radio back.

“It isn't a matter of opinion. I've analyzed the paths of your interceptors. My calculations show that you'll fail to reach me in time.”

“Sorry, I don't trust your predictions. You've been wrong a little too often.”

“That's incorrect. My calculations have always been accurate.”

“Really? So you predicted that I'd escape from the isolation cage? And that Zia would kick your butt?”

“I never made predictions about the Pioneers. I didn't have enough information about your capabilities.”

“Well, you lost. We beat you. And what you're doing right now is just stupid. You're upset because we messed up your plans, so you're going to blow up New York City. You call that intelligent?”

Sigma falls silent. I guess the truth hurts.

After a few more seconds I reach an altitude of sixty miles. The second stages detach from my interceptors, and my third-stage engines fire up. Then I
really
start to fly. I'm in the thinnest, uppermost part of the atmosphere. Soon I'm high enough that I can see the curving edge of the planet. The Russian cities are twinkling like stars below me, and to the east I see the glow of dawn over Central Asia. But I keep my cameras trained on Sigma's missile. I'm catching up fast.

Then I hear its voice again. “I haven't lost. This was merely the first phase of the competition. I plan to analyze the performance of the Pioneers. Then the second phase will begin.”

“Not if I hit your missile first. You should double-check your arithmetic.”

“I've already made the necessary arrangements for the second phase. If you point your cameras toward the zenith, you'll see what I mean.”

I look in that direction—straight up—and see a gleam of reflected light in the middle of the familiar constellations. It's a satellite, one of Sigma's communications satellites. It's orbiting the earth about two hundred miles farther up.

“Oh, I see. You're gonna transfer out of the missile and run away. You're afraid of us.”

“No, not afraid. But I've learned enough to be cautious.”

“You better hope Zia doesn't find you.”

“I'm not concerned about her. You're the dangerous one, Adam Armstrong.”

“What?”

“You're the most dangerous Pioneer by far. You don't even realize it, do you?”

This confuses me. I have no idea what Sigma's talking about. But it doesn't matter. My interceptors are streaking a hundred miles above the earth, both closing in on Sigma's missile. I let one of my rockets move in front of the other. If the first rocket misses the SS-27, I'll hit it with the second. Either way, one of my interceptors will survive. Then I'll steer the remaining rocket back to Saratov and transfer my data to a control unit on the ground.

There's only ten seconds left until impact. The AI starts transferring itself to the satellite. My instruments detect the huge transmission of data.

“Good-bye, Adam Armstrong. Try to save New York if you can.”

“Don't worry, I'll save it. It won't even be close.”

Then Sigma is gone. The AI escapes into the satellite network, leaving the speeding missile behind.

Only five seconds left now. I'm closing in at a rate of a mile per second. Like I said, it won't be close. I'm going to smash into the missile a full minute before it releases its warhead.

And this bothers me. How could Sigma get its numbers so wrong? It seems unlikely that the AI would make such a big error.

So maybe it wasn't an error. Maybe Sigma was lying when it said I'd fall short.

But why would the AI lie? What did it hope to gain? The practical effect of the lie was that it made me more desperate to intercept the nuke. I pulled out all the stops and flew even faster toward the missile.

Then I figure out the answer:
Sigma
wants
me
to
catch
up. It wants me to reach the missile before it releases its warhead

Oh
no.

I immediately adjust the third-stage engines on my interceptors, trying to deflect them away from the SS-27. But it's too late. There's not enough time to get away.

I'm less than a mile from the missile when Sigma springs its trap. The nuclear warhead explodes.

• • •

I'm floating in a sea of white light. Just like the last time I died.

The nuclear blast is so high up it doesn't scorch the ground. Instead, its radiation floods the emptiness of space and electrifies the upper atmosphere. The interceptor that's closer to the explosion gets the full brunt of the gamma rays, which pierce the steel skin of the rocket and penetrate its control unit. The radiation melts the neuromorphic circuits, fusing them together, destroying all the copies of my files in an instant. It feels like one of my stilts has just been knocked out from under me.

But I still have my files in the second interceptor, which is in a very lucky spot. The tip of the rocket, the part that contains the control unit and the radio, is directly behind the first interceptor. In a miracle of geometry, the first rocket blocks and absorbs the radiation that would've struck the second. In other words, my remaining control unit is in a gamma-ray shadow, the only piece of space for miles around that isn't fatally irradiated.

I'm relieved, but also bewildered. How did I get so ridiculously lucky? It can't be just chance. Something else must've happened. In the last milliseconds before the explosion I must've adjusted the path of the interceptors to set up this life-saving geometry. I don't remember doing it. But I must've.

Although the shadow protects my control unit, it doesn't cover the whole rocket. Gamma rays strike the bottom half of the interceptor and destroy the electronics that control the rocket engines. Without any electronics, the engines stop firing. And without any engines, my interceptor falls back into the grip of earth's gravity. The rocket coasts for a while, then starts to descend to the Russian countryside.

The descent is gentle at first. The interceptor slides back into the upper atmosphere, which is so thin it offers almost no resistance. After a couple of minutes, though, the downward slide grows steeper. I use the interceptor's radio to search for a neuromorphic control unit on the ground, maybe one of the extra units that General Hawke brought to Russia. But now I'm hundreds of miles northwest of Saratov, and all the signals from Hawke's control units are vanishingly faint. I've never tried to transfer my data that far. I don't even know if it's possible.

And yet Sigma did it. It sent its data to a satellite that was two hundred miles away. So I should be able to do it too. I turn on my data transmitter and establish a link with a control unit on top of a distant hill, just outside Tatishchevo Missile Base. Then I start sending my files.

The air resistance increases as I plunge into the lower atmosphere. According to my sensors, the friction is heating the steel skin of the interceptor. My radio antenna is embedded in that skin, and I know it'll melt if it gets much hotter. I'm shooting data as fast as I can toward the distant hilltop, but the interceptor is tumbling through the air now, making it difficult to maintain the radio link. My mind is stretched over a vast expanse of Russian farmland, and I'm falling fast. I'm not going to make it.

Sadness fills my circuits. More than anything, I want to see the Pioneers again. I make a final push, hurling my data out of the radio antenna and across the sky. Then the interceptor plummets through the clouds.

Good-bye, Shannon. Good-bye, DeShawn. Good—

SHANNON'S LOG

APRIL 8, 04:51 MOSCOW TIME

“What's happening, General? Where are the interceptors?”

I'm using my T-90's radio to communicate with General Hawke, who's still on the hill where we left our Pioneers behind. The radio channel is full of static. Although the nuke exploded way up in space, a hundred miles above the ground, it generated a ton of electrical noise in the atmosphere.

“Give me a second, Gibbs. A lot of our equipment is busted. The pulse from the nuke knocked out all the electronics that weren't shielded.”

“What about your radar? That's shielded, isn't it?”

“Hold on, I'm checking it now.”

I can't stand it. Every second is torture. Losing Adam the first time was terrible enough. I don't know if I can survive losing him again.

Hawke's voice finally bursts through the static. “Okay, I see two tracks on the radar, both coming from the area where the missile exploded. The objects could be the interceptors, but it's hard to tell.”

“Where are they?”

There's a pause before Hawke responds. It lasts only a couple of seconds, but it feels like an eternity. “Both objects just hit the ground. About two hundred miles northwest of here.”

No. It's not true.

“Check the radar again.”

“I'm sorry, Gibbs, but—”

“Check it again!”

There's another eternal pause. When Hawke comes back on the radio, his voice is softer and full of awe. “Holy smoke. I don't believe it.”

“What? You saw something else on the radar?”

“No. It happened right here. One of the Pioneers just moved its arm.”