The Prodigal Sun (38 page)

“You’re bluffing,” said De Bruyn, her face pale. “You’ll never go through with it.”

“Really?” Roche turned back to the navigation console and raised the pistol. Three rapid blasts from the weapon quickly reduced the console to smoldering slag.

Haid stepped over to Roche’s side, staring at the ruined console in disbelief. “What have you done?” was all he could manage.

Ignoring him, Roche turned to face her captive audience once again. “It’s out of my hands now,” she said. “You brought us inside the horizon, so there’s no chance of slow-jumping out. I have as little choice as you.”

“What do you want?” asked Chase. His voice rasped in his throat, and his eyes were wide.

“The codes to reactivate the Box, of course,” Roche said, answering Chase’s question while staring at De Bruyn. “We all know that you can’t kill an AI—not really. Nor would you if you could. This particular AI cost the Armada far too much for that. It’s dormant for the time being, but still plugged into inputs. Give it the codes, and it’ll come back to life. And when it does, it’ll bypass the main console and change course.” She glanced at the screen. “If you don’t, then in about four minutes we will all die.”

De Bruyn’s expression was grim. She studied Roche for a few seconds before saying, “Then I guess we’ll just have to die.”

“Page,” said Absenger uneasily. “This is hardly the time to call her bluff. Just give her—”

“No!” snapped De Bruyn. “I’m not going to give her the command!”

“Then we’ll just sit here and wait.” Roche watched the screen for a moment, studying the flow of information. The Marine transport had swung away in a long curve that was taking it beyond the Riem-Perez horizon, and those few Armada warships patrolling the sector just across the Shield boundary were too far away to interfere. However, there were still the fighters to reckon with.

She looked quickly at Haid, only to find his gaze fixed on the wrecked console. An understandable reaction, but of no use to her now. She needed another option.

“Cane, those fighters are going to try to deflect us. Come with me.”

Haid came alert at once and took half a step forward. “He doesn’t have a palmlink.”

“He won’t need it. With his reaction rate, manual will do. Remember the Wunderkind in Palasian System…”

Turning her back on the Intelligence officers, she led Cane to the targeting console and rapidly showed him how to work it. The Dato cannon operated on the same principle used for decades; a complicated screen gave vectors and positions of the fighters plus views from various points on the hull. The weapons AI coordinated the full range of data and assessed optimum targets. On the manual setting, however direct real-time imaging and a simple control system, designed for rapid use during an emergency, fired the cannon.

Cane adapted quickly. Within moments, fierce bolts of energy stabbed at the Armada squadron, picking one of them out of the sky and turning it into ashes.

“Three minutes,” she said, turning back to De Bruyn. “Care to negotiate now?”

“Never,” said De Bruyn, although she seemed less sure of herself.

Bound into the chairs on either side of her, Absenger and Chase kept their silence. Absenger’s face was pale and his gaze fixed on the main screens, but Chase, despite his obvious fear, remained alert, straining at his makeshift bonds and swinging his attention from De Bruyn to the screens and back again.

“Even apart from dying,” Roche said, “you know that it would be in your best interest to give me the codes. You’re as afraid of the Wunderkinds as we are. Let us go, and we can track the one in the Palasian System for you.”

“Why should you want to do that?” said De Bruyn, keeping her eyes firmly on Roche.

“Because we’d like to find out as much as we can about Cane’s origins,” said Roche. “And what better way of doing so than through one of his own kind?”

De Bruyn snorted, but her eyes flicked back to the screen. “And what does Intelligence stand to gain from all of this?”

“Any information we pick up along the way can be relayed to you here. That way, you won’t be risking any of your own people.”

“No?” De Bruyn sneered. “You’ll be roaming through the COE unchecked. Who’s to say what you’ll do?”

“If you leave us alone, we’ll return the favor. All you have to do is give us the Box, and we’ll leave.” A muffled rumble echoed through the ship as the fighters fired upon the Marauder. Then another rumble, this time as one of the fighters came too close and paid the price. “Delay any longer, and we’ll have to start negotiating for repairs as well.”

“Listen to her, Page!” Absenger pleaded. “She’s making
sense.
You
know
she is!”

“No!” Chase’s sudden shout took them all by surprise. “We can’t risk letting HQ fall into the hands of people like this! Better to see it destroyed than
perverted
—”

“And leave the Commonwealth wide open to the Dato Bloc?” said Absenger desperately. “Without Intelligence, the entire defense network will crumble.”

“What difference would that make? With the Box in control of the network anyway—”

“You’re missing something very important here,” said Haid, stepping forward, urgency not only in his voice but his whole manner. “With the Box, we
would
have the power to subvert the Intelligence command core, true—but that doesn’t necessarily mean we
will.
The ruin of the Commonwealth is
not
the reason we came here.”

“Spare us the obvious lies,” Chase rasped.

“I’m telling you the truth.” Haid took another step closer, looming over the captive head of Intelligence. “The Box was ready to take over before you even arrived onboard. It could have destroyed your ships—and HQ—without using the
Ana Vereine’
s artillery.”

Perspiration was beginning to bead along Chase’s forehead, but if he was aware of it, he showed no sign. “So why didn’t you?”

“Because I didn’t want to start a war,” Haid spat. “This is a Dato ship, and word would have soon spread that—”

Further rumblings cut him off as the fighters made another assault on the ship.

On the main screen, the image of Intelligence HQ grew larger by the second. Roche noted the time before impact: barely a minute left. Her heart pounded inside her chest as the enormity of her action came home to her. The Box had sacrificed the entire crew of a frigate just to save her, but its action paled to insignificance against what she herself had set in motion. What made her think she had the right?

Even if De Bruyn gave them the codes that very instant, she doubted that the Box could act in time to save them.

“How very noble of you,” scoffed Chase, the show of bravado negated by the increasing quaver in his voice. “You who are threatening the lives of every person aboard the station! You haven’t given us a single reason to trust you on
anything
!”

“What’s the point?” Haid sighed and turned away, dismissing Chase’s disbelief with a shake of his head. He made no move to look at the screens. “How long until we hit, Morgan?”

Roche looked at the image of Intelligence HQ that had grown to fill the view. The massive docking bays and surrounding superstructure were now clearly discernible. Rapid bands of false color ran across the scene as communications Ais began to wind back the magnification, compensating for the
Ana Vereine’s
ever-mounting velocity.

For the briefest of moments, the horror of what she had done threatened to overcome her, but she fought the feeling down. What was done was done, she told herself. Now it had to be seen through.

“Forty seconds,” she said, amazed by the calm in her voice. “If you’re going to change your mind, De Bruyn, don’t wait much longer.”

De Bruyn mumbled something beneath her breath.

“What was that?” Roche said, leaning forward.

The head of Strategy raised her head and glared at Roche.
“
The game begins.
Satisfied now?”

Roche stepped away from the ruined console and glanced around her, hardly daring to hope. On the screen, Intelligence HQ seemed to race at them faster than the time allowed.

“Box? Can you hear me, Box?”

“Yes, Morgan, I can hear you perfectly. Although something strange has—”

“Not now, Box. We’re in trouble. Look at our course: you have to do something to save us, and fast!”

“Yes, I see. Immediate action would seem to be in order.”

“We’re inside the hypershield horizon!” she added urgently. “You can’t—”

“I know where we are, Morgan.”

She waited a second, but the Box said nothing more. The deck remained stable beneath her feet; the engines didn’t change their rate or direction of thrust.

“Didn’t you hear me, Box? You have to
do
something. I’m
ordering
you to!”

“And of course I will. Why the sudden panic? We have plenty of time.”

Roche spun to face the main screen. The view of Intelligence HQ fluctuated wildly as the Marauder’s velocity continued to climb. The space around the station had begun to red-shift and no longer showed any stars. As she watched with a strange mixture of fascination and terror, the communications Ais began to lose the adjustment battle. The vast, shadowy bulk of Intelligence HQ grew to completely occlude the galaxy behind it. And still the station grew, individual docks and bays becoming visible at the heart of the screen.

There was less than twenty seconds to impact.

“What’s going on?” Haid joined her at the console. His face was a mask of confusion. “Why aren’t we changing course?”

“I don’t know!” Her fists clenched in frustration, and the question she formed was barely a whisper. “What the hell are you doing, Box?”

Ten seconds…

“Please assume crash positions,” said the Box. Then, to Roche alone:

She pushed a stunned Haid down into the nearest chair, then fell into the one beside him, clicked a restraint harness closed across her chest and checked briefly that he had done the same.

Five seconds…

“We’re not going to make it,” Chase said softly. Trapped in his seat, directly across from her, his eyes were wide and staring. On the weapons display to the right of him, the surviving fighters could be seen wheeling away to escape the impact. Below the screen, still hunched over the weapons console, Cane at last lifted his hands from the controls. He turned and looked at Roche.

De Bruyn’s bitter laughter, strung on the edge of hysteria, cut the tension like a knife. “All for nothing!” she screamed. “All your lies!”

Two seconds…

Roche’s fingers dug into the armrests of her chair. Across from her, Cane stared… unconcerned.

One second…

The solid mass of Intelligence HQ exploded out of the viewscreen and—

—disappeared.

The
Ana Vereine
shuddered from nose to stern. Roche exhaled in one explosive gasp, the nauseating aftereffects of what felt like a short slow-jump twisting her insides in a knot. But it couldn’t have been that. It wasn’t possible.

The screen showed nothing but stars.

For a long moment there was only silence on the bridge of the
Ana Vereine.

“What…?” Haid began.

“We jumped past it,” Roche said at last, softly and half to herself. “We
must
have—somehow.”

She hauled herself to her feet as the
Ana Vereine’s
engines finally began to kill both its headlong velocity and its spin. The tension drained from her arms and shoulders, leaving her feeling weak. She hadn’t realized she had been gripping her armrests so tightly.

She sagged backward against the consoles and turned to face the others. Haid’s grin echoed the one spreading across her own face. “We made it.”

“Box!” said De Bruyn, straining forward against her bonds. “
Silence between
—!”

But Cane was already at her side. He clamped his hand firmly across De Bruyn’s mouth, silencing her instantly.

“Box,” said Roche. “You are hereby ordered to disregard all commands from Page De Bruyn—especially any containing the words ‘silence,’ ‘between,’ and ‘thoughts.’ Is that understood?”

“Perfectly, Morgan,” replied the Box smoothly—and Cane removed his hand from around De Bruyn’s mouth.

“And, Box… ?”

“Yes, Morgan?”

“Just how the hell did you do that?”

There was a brief silence before the Box answered. Roche could almost hear it laughing to itself at her expense. “I assume,” it said at last, “that you refer to the fact that we appear to have slow-jumped across a Riem-Perez horizon?”

“Damn right,” said Haid. “It can’t be done. Our anchor drive should have blown and taken us with it.”

“Correct.” The Box paused. “So the obvious conclusion you should draw is that we didn’t slow-jump.”

Roche frowned. “Then—?”

Before she could complete the question, the ship shuddered and she felt again the sensation of slow-jumping deep in her gut. She turned in puzzlement to study the screen. There, off to one side, close but no longer threatening, Intelligence HQ reappeared.

“I don’t believe it,” she said, realization finally dawning.

“I had no alternative,” said the AI. “If the ship was unable to slow-jump inside the hyper shield, the hyper shield generator had to be removed.”

“You jumped the entire
station
?”

“Naturally. It moved, and we stayed behind. I programmed the jump to give us just enough space and time to clear the shield. That way, there was no chance of it colliding with us when it returned.”

Roche still couldn’t believe it, and by the look of his face, Haid couldn’t either.

“So you
did
infiltrate HQ, then?” he said.

“Eventually. It took longer than I anticipated, even though all I really needed was enough time to take over the hypershield generator and reprogram it to perform a single slow-jump. Approximately thirty seconds in all. I can finish the job now, if you like.”

Roche shook her head. “Later, Box. At your leisure. We have other things to worry about now.”

Across the room, Chase found his voice. He said simply, “The thing’s mad.”