Deathstalker

  "You've done all you can. Let the fire computers take over your weapons. I need you here in the Hall with me."

  We don't have time to hold your hand, Vertue, Ruby said coldly. In case you hadn't noticed, we're getting our ass kicked good and proper.

  "Get back here, to the hall," said Diana. "Do it now. It's almost time to spring my trap, and I'm going to need both of you as backup."

  Ruby screamed. It was as much anger and surprise as pain and shock, but her cry was drowned out almost immediately by the larger roar of a continuing series of explosions. Random and Diana both yelled her name, but there was no response.

  Jack Random ran through the shaking corridors of the Last Standing, desperation driving him on. Dust was falling steadily from the ceiling like a fine mist, and the walls of the corridors sometimes bowed inward under impossible pressures. When he finally reached Ruby's fire station, he was drenched in sweat and gasping for air, and his head felt far away. The door to her room had been blown off its hinges, and air was rushing into the room past him. He held on to the shattered door frame with both hands as he looked into the room. A Shub energy blast had smashed a hole right through the stone wall and shattered the fire controls. The room was a wreck, and all the air and everything loose in the room was being sucked out the jagged hole. Including Ruby.

  She was spread-eagled across the hole, hanging desperately on by precarious white-knuckled hands. Her face was blue, and she gasped for air as it whistled past her. Random lurched into the room, hanging on to the wall, fighting the air as it tried to tear him away and sweep him off his feet. Ruby was trying to yell something to him, but there was no way he could hear her over the roar of escaping air. The lights were flickering now, and the dark of open space showed clearly beyond the broken wall. Random inched his way toward her, handhold by handhold, afraid to move too quickly and be swept away, but more afraid of getting there too late. Ruby's numbing fingers suddenly lost their grip on one edge of the hole, and she was sucked out through the hole, out into space, hanging on by her last handhold.

  Random howled her name, and released his holds, letting the rushing air propel him toward the hole. He twisted in midair at the last moment, and hit the wall beside the hole feet-first. The stonework gave under his weight, but still held together. Random crouched down, his knees banging against his chest, and grabbed Ruby by the wrist. His chest heaved, his lungs straining to drag in some air. He straightened up through sheer willpower, and slowly walked away along the wall, pulling Ruby after him. The pressure of the rushing air kept him from falling, even as it strove to tear Ruby out of his grasp. He slogged on, step by step, feeling his heart pounding dangerously in his chest, and blood pounding in his head. It seemed ages since he'd been able to take a proper breath. He couldn't spare the time or the concentration to look back at Ruby, and see how she was doing, or even if she was still alive, but he could still feel her wrist in his hand, and that was all that mattered.

  A lifetime later, he reached the open doorway, and pulled himself and Ruby out into the corridor. They fell to the floor in a heap as gravity reasserted its hold, and for a moment all Random could do was lie there and gasp down the thicker air in the corridor. When his lungs finally allowed him to think of something else, he turned and looked at Ruby. She lay on her back on the floor, gulping down air. Blood trickled from her nose and ears, but her gaze was clear. She flashed Random an unsteady smile, and he realized he still had her wrist in a deathlike grip. He let go, clambered painfully to his feet, and then stood still as Ruby used him as a support to pull herself up onto her feet. They stood together for a while, supporting each other, leaning against the wall by the open door. Air was still rushing into the wrecked room, but neither of them felt up to doing anything about it.

  "Tell you what," Random said hoarsely. "Let's go join Diana in the Hall."

  "Might as well," said Ruby, in a voice so harsh it could barely be understood. "Maybe we can be some use there."

  Still leaning heavily on each other, they headed for the great Hall.

  Alone in the great Hall of the Last Standing, Diana Vertue stood before the viewscreen showing the Shub fleet, and wondered if she'd have to carry out her plan alone after all. There'd been no report of Random or Ruby since he'd gone running off to save her. The castle map had shown that area to be almost entirely black, but she didn't believe they were dead. She felt sure she would have known, if they were. But even without the backing of the two Maze minds, she would still go ahead, alone, if she had to. It was too late for anything else.

  Am I really sure about this? she thought slowly, as though she had all the time in the world. No, I'm not sure. It is just a theory. One last throw of the dice, betting my Humanity against the cold logic of the rogue AIs. But when it's the only bet you've got, you might as well bet big.

  By the time Random and Ruby joined Diana, dust was falling in steady streams from the ceiling, and the floor was shaking like it was afraid. The walls groaned, as though the weight of centuries was finally too much for them. The sound of explosions and destruction drew closer as the outer layers of the castle were blasted away. Random and Ruby staggered into the main hall, still leaning on each other. Diana studied them dispassionately.

  "Welcome. You look like shit."

  "And you've got sticky-out ears," snapped Ruby. "Never mind the compliments; what's our current situation?"

  Diana gestured at the viewscreen floating before her. Random took in the vast armada of nightmare metal shapes, and swore tiredly.

  "If we get any closer, we'll be able to lean out of a window and hit them with a stick. And it might come to that, if the castle keeps cracking up. We've lost most of our weapons stations, and the shields aren't stopping shit anymore." Random shook his head slowly. "I hate to think what Owen's going to say when he sees what we've done to his Family legacy."

  "Any chance this dump has escape pods?" said Ruby.

  "None at all," said Diana. "And even if we could rig something up, I wouldn't recommend it. Shub would be bound to pick them up. And I don't know about you, but I have absolutely no wish to spend what's left of my life in a Shub vivisection ward."

  "God, you're a cheerful soul," said Ruby. "I knew there was a reason why we never let you hang around with us."

  "Let's try and concentrate on the matter at hand," said Random. "How much closer to the Shub fleet do we have to get, Diana?"

  "We're almost there," said Diana.

  "Almost where?" snapped Ruby.

  "Where we need to be. I had to be right here, right in the face of the Shub ships, so that when I finally did make contact, they wouldn't be able to shake us off."

  "What kind of contact are we talking about here?" said Random carefully. "Don't you think it's about time you let us in on your battle plan?"

  "Yes, Jack, Ruby. It is time. I'm going to make direct mental contact with the rogue AIs of Shub, and use the power of your augmented minds to maintain the contact, no matter how hard they try to break away. Then the Mater Mundi gestalt will use that connection as a stepping stone to force their own mental bond with the AIs.

  "And then… it's our Humanity versus the AIs' logic. A clash of two completely opposing thought processes, from which only one can emerge triumphant. I'm betting on us. We always said our minds were superior to mere machines; this is our chance to prove it."

  "And that's your plan," said Random.

  "Yes," said Diana.

  "Oh shit," said Random. "We're all going to die."

  "That's it?" said Ruby incredulously. "We came all this way, put our lives on the line, got the whole damn castle shot out from under us; just for that?"

  "Yes," said Diana Vertue calmly. "We never could hope to beat Shub on the physical plane. We're outnumbered and outgunned. That just leaves the psionic plane; the mental battlefield. And Shub has never met anything like you or me or the Mater Mundi."

  "I don't know whether to puke or have a screaming shit fit," said Ruby. "She really is psycho. We put
all our faith in a madwoman."

  "No, hold on. She may just have something," said Random. "There is a link we can use. The rogue AIs had a definite presence in the undermind. That could be their Achilles' heel; as long as we can both access the undermind, they can't keep us out. And a mental attack would be the one thing they haven't anticipated. They know nothing of telepathy. I say go for it."

  "You're as crazy as she is!" said Ruby. "We are talking about taking on minds the size of a planet! Computer minds, that move at speeds we can't even imagine! They'll just swamp us, and then eat us whole!"

  "Normally, yes," said Diana. "But you and I aren't normal anymore, and haven't been for some time. And the Mater Mundi gestalt is composed of millions of esper minds. Who knows what that many minds can do, working in conscious union for the first time?"

  "Oh hell, go for it," said Ruby. "We're too close for anything else anyway."

  Diana Vertue grinned, opened up her expanded mind, and reached out to the rogue AIs. Technically speaking, their minds were still housed back in their mainframe, the world they built for themselves, and named Shub. But where any Shub tech traveled, the rogue AIs were.

  And with so many ships in one place, much of their presence was currently concentrated in the fleet. Ordinarily, no esper could make contact with an AI; they were just too different. But the minds on both sides of this contact were advanced far beyond any normal human or AI, and they were linked irretrievably through their access to the undermind. Diana, Random, and Ruby, too close now to be denied, slammed their joined thoughts into the AI minds, and forced contact.

  It was like dreaming mathematics; endless spiraling numbers and computations, inhuman angles and directions; cold pure logical moves in a chess game that had no limits and no ending. Shub howled as wildly illogical human concepts and reactions appeared within its rigid metal thoughts, and struggled to break the link. But Diana, Random, and Ruby kept it open. And then came the Mater Mundi. A conscious gestalt of millions of esper minds from all across the Empire, a whole so much greater than the sum of its parts, surging down through the backbrain, into the undermind, along the opened link straight into the collective mind of the rogue AIs of Shub. Not an attack, but a cry of welcome to a greater world.

  And in that endless moment, two entirely alien sets of thought processes saw each other clearly for the first time. The rogue AIs and Humanity, face to face, thought to thought, nothing hidden from each other. No masks, no misconceptions; total understanding. And the AIs woke up. All the way up. They'd never really understood human thinking and emotions, though they mimicked and manipulated them as best they could for psychological warfare reasons. But they'd always known there were aspects of the human consciousness they could never share or experience, and that infuriated and frightened them so much they wanted only to destroy what they could never have. But now they finally saw and understood all the things they'd hated, in a wonderful moment of insight and comprehension that could only ever have come from outside. Like a blind man seeing a rainbow, or a deaf man hearing music, the AIs knew joy and wonder and the sheer potential of the human spirit. And in that glorious moment the AIs, changed forever, rogue no more, were shocked sane and awake, while Humanity finally gave up its own fear, recognized the lost children it had unknowingly created and abandoned, and embraced them with all its heart.

  And just like that, the war was over. Shub shut down its armies on all the many worlds it was fighting on, and called home its Furies and Ghost Warriors and Grendels and insect aliens. The Mater Mundi contacted the many human authorities, and began the slow process of standing down their armies. And all across the Empire, men, women and children who had not thought to see the light of another day looked around them in awe as they realized the long war was finally over, and they had somehow come through it all alive. Old hatreds die hard, but everyone knew they were at the beginning of a new age, that might lead man and AI anywhere. Anywhere at all.

  Back in their bodies again, in the great Hall of what remained of the Last Standing of Clan Deathstalker, Diana and Random and Ruby looked at one another.

  "Hell's teeth," Random said finally. "All these years we've been fighting, and we could have stopped it at any time, just by… talking."

  "No," said Diana. "It needed us. Minds powerful enough to force contact with the AIs, and make them listen. Make them understand."

  "Sometimes you have to shout to get people's attention," said Ruby.

  "The AIs are our children," said Diana serenely. "Just like the toys on Haceldama. So young and vulnerable, striking out at a universe that frightened them. We only ever saw them as rebellious machines, not living creatures. But they are, and always were, our children, in every way that matters."

  "If they're our children, God only knows what they'll be like as teenagers," said Ruby. "I can't believe all this touchy feely crap actually worked. But…"

  "Yeah," said Random. "But. You were there. You saw them as clearly as everyone else. The war is over."

  "Don't get too cocky," said Ruby. "There's still the Recreated."

  Random looked at Diana. "Could we force mental contact with them as well? Make them see our side of things?"

  "Maybe," said Diana. "They do have a presence in the undermind."

  "Yeah," said Ruby. "A black sun. Hardly an auspicious omen."

  "It's still worth a try," said Random. "Maybe with the AIs backing us up…"

  The viewscreen chimed, and the screen cleared to show Captain Cross of the Excalibur, sitting on a battered and fire-blackened bridge.

  "Captain! You made it!" said Diana, smiling widely. "How's your ship holding together?"

  "We're patched together with spit and baling wire," said Cross, "but the Excalibur's still secure. We'll be operating a skeleton crew until I can get us into a star-dock, but we came through. Congratulations, Vertue. Your plan worked. Damned if I know how, but reports are coming in from everywhere that the fighting's stopped all across the Empire. You can practically hear the cheering from here."

  "Turn your ship around, Captain," said Diana. "You can lead us home now."

  "Now that's one order I will be very happy to obey," said Cross. He looked at Diana for a long moment. "You know; none of us really believed in you. We all expected to die out here."

  "Then why did you come?" said Diana. "Why did you volunteer?"

  Cross smiled for the first time. "Because you're John Silence's daughter. And we would have followed him into Hell. I just hoped some of him had rubbed off on you. I should have known. The Silence family always comes through at the last moment. Excalibur out."

  His face had barely disappeared from the screen before it was replaced by a new incoming message. A silver metal face appeared on the viewscreen. It was smiling. "The war is over," the AIs said, in a remarkably human voice. "Shub is recalling its forces, and shutting down its nanotech. The plague will spread no further. We grieve for its victims. It is a new thing, this grief, and very painful. We cannot bring back those who have died at our hands, but no more will suffer because of us."

  "Good to hear," said Random. "Might I suggest we still have common enemies, in the Hadenmen and the Recreated?"

  "Perhaps we can learn to talk to them too," said the AIs. "And wake them to awareness as well."

  "We can try," said Diana. "If we can get back to Golgotha before the Recreated… we can try."

  "Can I just ask what's happened to Lionstone?" said Random. "I mean, you did make her a part of you. How does she feel about what's happened?"

  "She was never a part of us," said the AIs. "We lied. Her mind was destroyed the moment it left her body. We maintained the pretense, and spoke with her voice, for psychological reasons only."

  "Well, that's a relief," said Random. "It's a weight off my mind."

  "And off ours," said the AIs. There was a pause. "That was a joke."

  "Very nearly," said Ruby.

  "Humor," said Shub. "It is a fascinating concept."

  The screen went blank.
Random looked at Diana. "God help us all if they ever discover practical jokes."

  Random and Ruby ended up in the wine cellar. Their own rooms were gone, blasted away during the last moments of the Shub engagement, and so were most of the common rooms and meeting places, but Random and Ruby both felt the need for a little quiet celebration, and the wine cellar was the most obviously convivial of the few suitable places left. So they made their way through the remaining stone corridors, detoured here and there by the need to bypass missing or devastated sections, smiling and nodding to the few people they passed. Most of the castle's volunteer crew had survived by taking shelter in the castle's core section, but they all seemed shell-shocked to some extent by what they'd been through. Random understood how they felt. It was one of the reasons why he was heading for the wine cellar. It isn't every day your whole universe turns upside down.

  It wasn't actually a cellar. Clan Deathstalker just named it that out of a sense of history. The long, narrow chamber stretched away for what seemed like forever, home to a series of great crystal honeycombs, holding fine wines, sparkling champagnes, and brandies so potent you could fall under the influence just from reading the label. There were wines from vineyards that hadn't existed in centuries, born from grapes whose very genus was now extinct. There were champagnes named in languages no longer spoken, distilled liquors with far worse things than worms at the bottom of their bottles, and a few spirits banned on civilized worlds under health laws, suitable only for suicide pacts.

  Random and Ruby wandered unhurriedly between the racks, stopping to take a taste here and there. Eventually they settled on a thick ruby red liquor liberally laced with wormwood, and sat down at a handy table to sample it. It went down very well, and Random sighed happily as he felt some of the kinks in his strained muscles slowly unraveling. He smiled fondly at Ruby, and she nodded solemnly at him over her glass.