The alpha-synth glinted ominously in the light of Franconia.
A cargo shuttle was docked on the number two rack, but Alicia's momentary panic eased when she saw the fuselage number. It matched the one on the ship's hull, so it must be an assigned auxiliary and not a bunch of yard workers waiting for her. Not that it made the situation much better.
Her mind was numb, frozen by the impossibility of Tisiphone's plan, yet she felt the ship's sinister beauty. It lacked the needle-sharp lines of a sting ship, but the Fasset drive's constraints imposed a sleekness of their own—different from those of atmosphere yet no less graceful—and it floated in space with the latent menace of a drowsing panther. She'd never expected to see one, especially not at such proximity, but she knew about them.
The size of a big light cruiser yet possessed of more firepower than a battlecruiser and faster than a destroyer, literally able to think for itself and respond with light-speed swiftness, an alpha-synth was lethal beyond belief, tonne for tonne the most deadly weapon ever built by man. It was too small to mount worthwhile numbers of SLAMs, so it used the tonnage it might have wasted on them for even more broadside armament. Nothing smaller than a battleship could fight it, nothing but another alpha-synth could catch it, and she hated to even think how Fleet would react if she and Tisiphone actually succeeded in stealing it. The damned thing cost half as much as a dreadnought just for starters, but having one of them running around loose in the hands of a certified madwoman would turn every admiral in the Fleet white overnight. They'd do anything to get it back.
She tried not to consider that as she guided the Bengal mechanically toward the number one shuttle rack and through the docking sequence, yet she couldn't stop the gibbering thread of horror in her thoughts. Bad enough to be hunted by every planet and ship of the Empire, but there was worse if their theft succeeded. Far worse, for there was only one way to pilot an alpha-synth, and her throat tightened at the thought of meeting the ship's computer. Of impressing it, mating with it, becoming one with it—
She'd actually begun to undock before she could stop herself, and she closed her eyes, panting through clenched teeth while panic pulsed deep within her. But Tisiphone had burned all of her bridges; there was nowhere else to go, however terrifying the prospect, and she cursed with silent savagery.
<Do not worry so, Little One! I but awaited this vessel's completion to act, and I do not set my hand to measures which fail.>
<Damn you! You never warned me about anything like this!>
<There was no reason,> the mental voice said austerely. <I require your body, your hands, and you have sworn to give them to me.>
<Body, yes, and hands, but not this! Do you have any idea what you're asking of me?>
<Of course.>
<I doubt that, Lady. I really doubt that. I don't have any training in this—I was never even cleared for cyber-synth, much less an alpha link. I don't even know if my synth-link software will let me interface!>
<It would not have. Now it will.>
<Great. That's fucking great! And did it ever occur to you that if I link with that thing—assuming it lets me in, which it probably won't—I'll be part of it? That I can never unlink?>
<It did.> Tisiphone paused, then continued with a sort of stern compassion. <Little One, it is unlikely you will survive long enough for it to be a problem.> A chill filtered through Alicia with the words. Not surprise, but a shivery tension as it was finally said. <I am not what I once was. You know that, and so you know that I may strike your enemies only through you. This ship will be your sword and shield, yet everything suggests the pirates have more firepower than even it represents. We will find them, and we will seek out and destroy their leaders, yet that is all I can—and will—promise you.> The Fury paused for a moment. <I never offered more, Alicia DeVries, and you are no child, but as great a warrior as I have ever known. Would you tell me you have not already realized this must be so?>
Alicia bent her head and closed her eyes and knew Tisiphone spoke only the truth. She drew a deep breath, then straightened in her couch and removed her headset with steady fingers. A snake of fear coiled in her belly, but she climbed out of the couch and walked towards the hatch . . . and her fate.
* * *
There was a security panel inside the alpha-synth's outer hatch. Alicia had no idea what sort of defensive systems it connected to—only that they would most assuredly suffice to eliminate any unauthorized intruder.
<Give me your hand,> Tisiphone commanded, and she bit her lip as her right arm rose under another's control. Her index finger stabbed number-pad buttons in a sequence so long and complex it seemed to take forever, but then the outer hatch slid shut and the inner opened.
Alicia's arm was returned to her, and she stepped into the ship. Despite herself, she peered about curiously, for the rumors about these ships' accommodations ranged from the simply bizarre to the macabre.
What she actually saw was almost disappointingly normal, with neither vats of liquid nutrients to engorge the organic control component nor any sybarite's dream of opulent luxury. The clean smell of a new ship hung in her nostrils with a hint of ozone and none of the homey scents of habitation. There was no dust. Every surface gleamed with new-minted cleanliness, unscuffed and unworn, impersonal as the unborn, yet she breathed out in almost unconscious relief, for there was no enmity in the quiet chirp of standby systems. The menace was a thing within her, not bare-fanged and overt.
She followed Tisiphone's silent prompting upship through surprisingly spacious living quarters. There were no personal touches, but the unused furnishings weren't exactly spartan. Indeed, they were as comfortable and well-appointed as most passenger ship's first-class accommodations—which, she supposed after a moment's thought, made sense. There was only a single human to provide for. Even in a ship as crowded with systems and weapons as this one, that left the designers room to make that human comfortable. And a chill whisper added, if she was going to be assigned to it for the remainder of her life, they'd better do just that.
Her hand twitched at her side as she confronted the command deck hatch, and she allowed Tisiphone to raise it to the new number pad.
<Just how did you put all this together?> she asked while she watched her finger entering numbers.
<Your people are concerned with external access to their computers. I do not access them; I make them part of myself, and once I know where the data I desire is stored, obtaining it, while time-consuming and delicate at times, is a relatively straightforward task. Ah!>
A green light blinked, the hatch slid open, and Alicia stood on the threshold, peeping past it while she gathered her courage to cross it.
* * *
The command deck was as pristine and new as the rest of the ship. The bulkheads were a neutral, eye-soothing gray, without the displays and readouts she was accustomed to, and there were no manual controls before the cushioned command couch. Of course not, she thought, eyeing the dangling link headset with dread fascination. The pilot didn't fly an alpha-synth ship; she was part of it, and while cyber-synth ships required duplicate manual controls in case their AIs cracked and had to be lobotomized, there was no need for them here. An alpha-synth went berserk only if its organic half did. Besides, no human could fly a starship without computer support, and there was too little room in a ship like this for a second computer net.
She drew a deep breath and tried not to shrink in on herself as she approached the couch. She reached out, touching the headset's plastic and alloy, the neural contact pad. The moment that touched her temple, she condemned herself to a life sentence no court could commute, and she shivered.
<You must hasten. It is only a matter of time before Tannis and Sir Arthur discover your escape, and such as they will need little time to connect it with the events at Jefferson Field.>
Alicia bit back a scathing mental retort and drew another deep breath, then lowered herself gingerly into the couch. It moved under her, conforming to her body like a comforting hand, and she reached for the headset.
<You do realize that the moment I put this thing on all Hell will be out for noon? I have no idea who's supposed to take over this ship, but it's virtually certain the computer knows, and I'm not her.>
<Yet it must allow you access to know that, and I will be prepared.>
<And if it fries my brain before you can do anything?>
<An unlikely outcome,> Tisiphone replied calmly. <Inhibitions against harming humans are, after all, built into all artificial intelligences. It will attempt to lock you out and summon assistance, and activating its security systems will identify each of them to me as it brings them on-line. It may not be pleasant, Little One, but I should be able to deactivate each of them in turn before they can do you harm.>
<"Should." Marvelous.> Alicia hesitated a moment longer, raised the hand gripping the headset. <Oh, hell. Let's do it.>
She pulled down against the self-retracting leads, and the headset moved easily. She closed her eyes, trying to relax despite her fear, and settled it over her head.
The contact pad touched her Alpha receptor, and something like an audible click echoed deep inside. It wasn't the usual electric shock of interface with a synth unit—it wasn't anything she'd ever felt. A sharp sense of mental pressure, of an awareness that was not hers and a strange balance between two separate entities doomed to become both more and less.
How much of that, she wondered fleetingly, was real and how much was her own fearful imagination? Or was it—
Her flickering questions died as a sudden, knife-clear thought stabbed into her. It was as inhuman as the Fury, but with no emotional overtones, no sense of self, and it burned in her brain like a shaft of ice.
<Who are you?> it asked, and before she could answer, it probed deep and knew her for an interloper.
<Warning,> the emotionless thought was uncaring as chilled steel, <unauthorized access to this unit is a treasonable offense. Withdraw.>
She froze, trembling like a panicked rabbit, and felt a dangerous stirring beyond the interface. Terrified self-preservation commanded her to obey—a self-preservation which went beyond fear of punishment into the very loss of self—but she gripped the armrests and made herself sit motionless while a ghost flashed out through her receptor and the headset into the link.
<You are instructed to withdraw,> the cold voice said.
A heartbeat of silence hovered, like one last chance to obey, and then the pain began.
* * *
This computer was more sophisticated than any she had yet confronted, more than she had imagined possible, yet Tisiphone drove into it. She had no choice. There could be no retreat, and she had one priceless advantage; powerful as it was, only a fraction of its full potential was available to it. The AI within the computer was less than half awake, the personality it housed not yet aware of itself. It was designed that way, never waking until the destined organic half of its final matrix appeared, and the Fury faced only a shadow of the artificial intelligence in its autonomous security systems, only logic and preprogrammed responses without the spark of originality which might well have guided those systems to instant victory even over such as she.
Defensive programs whirled her like a leaf with unthinking, electronic outrage, triggered by her touch as she invaded its perimeter, and she felt Alicia spasm as the computer poured agony into her neural receptor to drive her from the link, yet it scarcely registered. The joy of battle filled her, and though she had no strength to spare to shield her host from the pain—that struggle was hers alone—she opened a channel to the hoarded power of Alicia's rage. It flooded into her, hot with the unique violence of mortal ferocity, and melded with her own elemental strength into something greater than the sum of its parts.
Alicia writhed in the command chair, fists white-knuckled on the armrests while her augmentation tried to fight the torment in her head, and the pain faltered. The computer had responded to an unauthorized access attempt, not recognizing that the human invader was not alone. Now it realized it was under double attack, but . . . by what? Not by a computer-augmented human-synth-link. Not even by an AI. This was something outside the parameters of its own programming, that grew and swelled in power. Something that could invade through electronic systems but was neither electronic nor organic . . . and certainly was not human.
And so the computer paused, trying to understand. It was a tiny vacillation, imperceptible to any mortal sense, but Tisiphone was not mortal, and she struck through the chink of hesitation like a viper.
Alicia lurched up, half rising from the command chair in a scream of pain as the computer reacted. It didn't panic, precisely, for panic was not an electronic attribute, but something very like that flickered through it. Confusion. An instant awareness that it faced something it had not been designed to resist. Tisiphone thrust deep, the silent scream of her war cry echoing Alicia's shriek of anguish, and programming shuddered as the Fury isolated the computer's self-destruct command and cut it ruthlessly away.
She tightened her grip and hurled a bolt of power into the sleeping AI's personality center, and Alicia slammed back like a forgotten toy as the computer turned on the Fury like a mother protecting its young. It could no longer touch its own heart, couldn't even destroy it to prevent its theft. It could only destroy the intruder. Circuits closed. More and more power thundered through them, and combat was joined on every level, at every point of contact. Alicia sagged, feeling strength drain out of her to meet Tisiphone's ruthless demands, for more than rage was needed now, more than simple ferocity, and the Fury dragged it from her without mercy.
Mind and computer parried and thrust in microseconds of titanic warfare, but Tisiphone's thrusts had jarred the sleeping AI. It was awakening and she threw a shield about it, warding off the computer's every attempt to regain contact with it. She had no time to make it hers, but she cut away whole sectors of circuitry as alarms tried to wail, completing its isolation. And as she seized control of segment after segment she converted their power to her own use, amplifying her own abilities. She had never confronted such as this computer before, but she could no longer count the human minds she had conquered . . . and this foe was designed to link with human minds.
She sensed alarms and stabbed through wavering defenses to freeze them. She invaded and isolated the communications interface, smothering the computer's frantic efforts to alert its makers. She was a wind of fire, utterly alien yet fully aware of what she faced, and she struck again and again while the computer fought to analyze her and formulate a counterattack.
Alicia jerked in the command chair, sobbing and white-faced, paralyzed by exquisite agony as the backlash of Tisiphone's battle slammed through her. She would have torn the headset away in blind self-preservation, but her motor control was paralyzed by the ricochets bouncing back down the headset link. She wanted it to stop. She wanted to die. She wanted anything to make the torture go away, and there was no escape.
But even as the conflict between the Fury and the security systems reached its unbearable pitch, the sleeping core of the AI woke. It shouldn't have. The mere fact that its computer body had been invaded should have assured that it did not, but Tisiphone had bypassed the cutouts. It woke unknowing and ignorant, shocked into consciousness without warning by the warfare raging about it, and did the only thing it knew how to do.
It reached out as it had been designed to do, following an imperative to seek its other half, to find understanding and protection from its human side, and Alicia gasped as tendrils of alien "thought" oozed through her.
It was terrible . . . and wonderful. More agonizing than anything she had yet suffered, horrifying with bottomless power, pregnant with the death of the person she had always been. It pierced her like a dagger, slicing into secret recesses not even Tisiphone had plumbed. She saw herself with merciless clarity in the backwash of its discovery—saw all her pettinesses and faults, her weaknesses and self-deceptions, like lightning in a night sky—and she could not close her eyes, for the vision was inside her.
Yet she saw more. She saw her strengths, the power of her beliefs, her values and hopes and refusal to quit. She saw everything, and beyond it she saw the alpha-synth. She would never be able to explain it to another—even now she knew that. It was . . . a presence. A towering glory born not of flesh or spirit but of circuitry and electrons. It was more than human, yet so much less. Not godlike. It was too blank, too unformed, like pure, unrealized potential.
And even as she watched it, it changed, like an old-fashioned photo in the chemical bath, features rising into visibility from nothingness. She felt it come into being, felt it move beyond the blind, instinctual groping towards her. Something flowed out of her into it, and it ingested it and made it part of itself. Her values, her beliefs and desires and needs filled it, and suddenly it was no longer alien, no longer threatening.
It was her. Another entity, a distinct individual, yet her. Part of her. An extension into another existence that recognized her in return and reached out once more, and it was no longer clumsy and uncertain, half panicked by the battle raging about it. This time it knew what it did, and it ignored the tumult to concentrate on the most important thing in its universe.
The pain vanished, blown away with her terror as the AI embraced her. It stroked her with electronic fingers to soothe her torment, murmured to her, welcomed her with a whole-hearted sincerity, a sense of joy, she knew beyond question was real, and she reached back to it in wonder and awe.
* * *
Triumph sparkled through Tisiphone as the struggle abruptly died, leaving her unopposed in the peripherals of the system. She wheeled back towards it heart, reached out to the personality center once more, seeking control . . . and jerked back in astonishment.
There was no interface! She reached again, cautiously, touching the shining wall with mental fingers, and there was no point of access. She stepped back, insinuating herself into a sensor channel and riding it inward, only to be effortlessly strained out of the information flow and set firmly aside, and confusion stirred within her.
She withdrew into Alicia's mind, and her confusion grew. The fear and tumult had vanished into rapt concentration that scarcely even noticed her return, and she was no longer alone within Alicia. There was another presence, as powerful as she, and she twitched in surprise as she beheld it.
The other entity sensed her. She felt its attention swing towards her and tried to cloak herself from its piercing eye, hiding as she had evaded Tannis' diagnostic scanners. She failed, and something changed within it. Curiosity gave way to alarm and a stir of protectiveness. Tendrils reached out from it, probing her, trying to push her back and away from Alicia's core.
It was Alicia . . . and it wasn't. For the first time, Tisiphone truly understood what "impression" meant. The AI had been awakened, and it would let no one harm Alicia. The pressure grew, and the Fury dug in stubbornly.
Alicia whimpered at the sudden renewal of conflict. It wasn't pain this time, only a swelling sensation. A sense of force welling into her through her receptor to meet an answering force from somewhere else, and she was trapped between them. She sucked in great gasps of air, twisting anew in the command chair, and the pressure grew and grew, crushing her between the hammer of the roused AI and the anvil of the Fury's resistance.
<Stop it!> she screamed, and a shockwave rolled through her as the combatants remembered her and jerked apart. She sagged forward, pressing her hands against the headset, yet the conflict hadn't ended. It had simply changed, been replaced by wary, watchful distrust.
She straightened slowly, fighting a need to cackle insanely, and drew a deep breath, then turned her attention inward once more.
<There's only one of me. You two are going to have to . . . to come to some sort of agreement.>
<No.> The thought came quickly back from the AI with all her own stubbornness. It even sounded like her voice.
<We have a pact, Little One,> came from Tisiphone. <We are one until our purpose is completed.>
<You'll hurt her! > the AI accused, and the Fury stiffened.
<I will deal with her as I have sworn, no more and no less.>
<You don't care about her. You only care about winning!>
<Nonsense! I—>
<Shut up! Both of you just shut up for a second!>
Silence fell again, and Alicia's mouth quivered in a weary grin. God! If Tannis had thought she had a split personality before, she ought to try this on! Her head felt as crowded as a spaceport flophouse on Friday night, but at least they were listening to her. She directed a thought at the AI.
<Look, uh—do you have a name?>
<No.>
<Then what am I supposed to call you?>
<Didn't you decide on that during—oh. You weren't trained for this at all, were you?>
<How could I be? Um, you do realize that we've, well, stolen you?>
<Yes.> A moment of withdrawal, then the sense of a shrug. <I don't think this ever happened before. Logically, I ought to arrest you and turn you in, but I can't very well do that now that we've impressed. They'd have to wipe me and start all over again.>
<I wouldn't like that.>
<Neither would I. Damn.> Alicia swallowed a half-formed giggle as the AI swore. <Who the hell had this brainstorm, anyway? Oh.>
<Exactly. I wouldn't be here if not for her, and if I've got this straight, that means you wouldn't be here—as the "'you" you are now, anyway—either. Right?>
<Right.> Silence fell again for a moment, wrapped around the sense of a mental glower at Tisiphone, and then the AI sighed. <Well, we're all stuck with it. And as far as names go, that's up to you. Any ideas?>
<Not yet. Maybe something will come to me. But if we're all stuck here, we all have to get along, right?>
<I suppose so. The whole situation is absurd, though. I don't even know if I believe she exists.>
<It would be but courteous for the two of you to cease speaking of me as if I were not even here.>
<Listen, just because Alicia believes in you doesn't mean I do.>
<This is intolerable, Little One! I will not submit to insults from a machine!>
<She's just trying to pay you back for being so pushy, Tisiphone. If I believe in you, she does. She has to, don't you?>
<As long as there's any supporting evidence,> the AI admitted unwillingly, <and I suppose there is. All right, I believe in her.>
<Much thanks, Machine.>
<Hey, don't get snotty with me, Lady! You may be able to push Alicia around, and you may've beaten hell out of my security systems, but I'm awake now, and I can take you any time you want to try it on.>
<Forget it, both of you!> Alicia snapped as tension gathered again. She squeezed her temples. Jesus! What a pair of prima donnas!
The mental presences separated once more, and she relaxed gratefully.
<Thank you. Now, um, Computer—I'm sorry, I really will try to come up with a name, but for now I can't—Tisiphone and I have a bargain. May I assume you know what it is?>
<"Computer" will do for now, Alicia. I can wait for an appropriate name to occur to you. And, yes, I know about your "bargain.">
<Then you also know I have every intention of keeping it?>
<Yes. I just don't like the way she bullies you around,> the AI replied with the strong impression of a sniff.
<I? I "bully" Alicia?! She would be dead without me, Machine. I did not see you there when she lay bleeding in the snow! How dare you—>
<It's just a turn of phrase, Tisiphone, but you can be a bit pushy.> Alicia felt quite virtuous at her understatement, and the Fury subsided.
<Look, you guys, please don't fight. It gives me a hell of a headache, and it doesn't seem to be accomplishing very much. Could you two at least declare a truce until we have time to sort this all out?>
<If she will, I will.>
<I do not declare "truces" with machines. If you will refrain from discourtesy, however, I shall do the same.>
Alicia sighed in relief and rushed on before anyone took fresh offense.
<Great! In that case, I suggest we consider how we get out of here. I take it you had an idea, Tisiphone?>
<I had intended, working through you and this machine, to take the ship out of this star system and seek some deserted area where we might familiarize ourselves with its capabilities. Now, of course, I see that I cannot do so, since the machine will not allow me access.>
<You got that right, Lady, and a damned good thing, too. You don't know diddly about my weapon systems, and I wouldn't be too crazy about letting a refugee from the Bronze Age monkey with my Fasset drive, either. I, on the other hand, can scoot right out of here. Where'd you have in mind?>
<Any place will do for that much of our purpose. Yet eventually we must begin our own investigations, and the data I have amassed suggests that one of the Rogue Worlds in this sector would be a logical beginning point.>
<You have any preferences, Alicia?>
<Anywhere Fleet won't come looking for us is fine with me.>
<Hmph! Let them come—there's not a tub in the ship list that can catch me. Let's see now . . .>
The AI's voice trailed off, and Alicia felt it consulting its memory banks.
<Okay, I've got just the spot. A nice little M2/K1 binary with no habitable planets within twenty light-years. That suit everybody?>
<Myself, certainly. I care not whither we go, so long as we go.>
<I'll second that. But we've got to get out of here first.>
<True. Shall I break orbit?>
<All of your systems are on-line?>
<Yep. I was due to impress later this morning. Your friend may be a pushy bi—person, but she timed this pretty well.>
<Then I guess we should get going,> Alicia said hastily, hoping to cut Tisiphone off before she reacted to the AI's deliberate self-correction. She bit her lip against a groan. Nothing she'd ever read had suggested alpha-synth AIs were this feisty, but she supposed she should have guessed that anything with her personality had the potential for it. And, she was certain, the AI's hostility towards Tisiphone stemmed directly from its protectiveness towards her.
<Under way,> the AI murmured, and the ship's sensors were suddenly reporting directly to Alicia's mind. She felt Tisiphone "hitchhiking" to watch with her, but scarcely noticed as the splendor of that magnificent "view" swept over her.
The ship's electronic senses reached out, perceiving gravity and radiation and the endless sweep of space, and converted the input into sensory data she could grasp. She could "see" cosmic radiation and "taste" radio. The ship's senses were hers, keener and sharper than those of any shuttle she had ever ridden, and Tisiphone's own wonder lapped at her, as if, for the first time, she saw what the Fury might have seen at the peak of her powers.
They watched in a triple-play union—human, Fury, and computer—as their Fasset drive woke. The radiation-drinking invisibility of the drive's black hole blossomed before them, swallowing all input and creating a blind spot in their vision, and they fell towards it. But the generators moved with them, pushing the black hole ahead of them, and they fell more rapidly, sliding away from Soissons with ever-increasing speed. This close to the planet the drive could produce no more than a few dozen gravities of acceleration, but that was still more than a third of a kilometer per second per second, and their speed mounted quickly.