The houses were still the most conservative facet of Skolian culture, though. Kelric’s first marriage had been arranged long before he ended up on Coba. His wife, Admiral Corey Majda, had been matriarch of the oldest house. Her assassination left him a widower at twenty-four. They hadn’t had children, so her title and lands went to her sister, Naaj Majda. Kelric had received a widower’s mansion and stipend. He had been too blind with grief to care about the inheritance, besides which, his Ruby Dynasty titles and wealth outranked even the House of Majda. But with that history, Coba hadn’t surprised him.
None of that mattered. He didn’t care what symbolism Maccar thought the guards embodied. They were all he had left of Ixpar. She had never considered him a possession—and she had literally gone to war to uphold that principle.
All he said was, “They don’t mean to me what they do to you.”
Maccar studied him. “You’re a hard one to fathom.”
Uncomfortable, Kelric rolled the psiphon prong in his hand.
After considering a moment longer, Maccar summoned a bosun. A man in a gray jumpsuit soon appeared, carrying a tool kit. He anchored himself at the station by attaching his safety tether to a ring on the console. He fastened down his tool kit, then unclipped a problade, a programmable blade made from thorium phosphide, a substance harder than diamond..
Kelric extended his arm. The guard glinted in the cold light. The bosun measured the thickness of the gold with calipers, then programmed the blade so it extended just enough to cut through the metal. As he set the blade against the guard, Kelric had to hold himself back from yanking away his arm. This was the final symbol of his losing Ixpar and his children.
Maccar watched intently, his focus more on Kelric than the work. As the bosun put his thumb against the problade’s switch, Maccar said, “Wait.”
The bosun paused. “Sir?”
Maccar indicated the prong on Kelric’s exoskeleton. “Can you drill a hole through the guard so the prong will fit in his socket?”
The man lifted Kelric’s arm, slid his guard around a few times, and rubbed his thumb over the engravings. “It should be possible.”
“Go ahead then,” Maccar said. “No need to remove them.”
Kelric swallowed. He nodded to Maccar, unable to voice his gratitude. Maccar probably didn’t want to hear it anyway. The captain had been testing him.
The bosun drilled the holes so they were almost invisible in the engravings. He did both Kelric’s wrist and ankle guards, making sure the prongs fit through the gold and snapped into place. When Kelric was fully installed at the console, Maccar dismissed the bosun from the bridge.
Kelric settled into the command seat. Attend, he thought.
Corona attending. The ship’s response rumbled in his mind with more force and clarity than he had expected. Your system needs an upgrade. Shall I provide?
Kelric almost grinned. He had hoped the Corona’s EI could upgrade him. Otherwise his lack of knowledge about modern systems would probably keep him from passing this interview. What can you do?
I can replace 68 percent of your software with current versions. I can also provide assistance as you incorporate the new code. The rest of your systems are either unfamiliar or too dated for me to work with.
Excitement brushed Kelric. Can you get back my link to Bolt?
Define Bolt.
The JGP12 computer node in my spine.
I can replace 84 percent of the corrupted code in the JGP12 node. However, it also has physical damage I cannot repair.
My meds can carry out your instructions, Kelric pointed out. The boundaries separating hardware, software, and biotech had long been blurred. With a Jagernaut, who could say where machine left off and human started? Some experts questioned whether Jagernauts were even Homo sapiens, suggesting they formed their own species. Kelric didn’t buy it; he was perfectly capable of breeding with other humans. Still, he obviously had aspects to his physiology most humans lacked. If the Corona interfaced with those systems, it could direct physical as well as software repairs within him.
If I use your nanomeds, the Corona answered, it will draw them away from the repair of your body, allow the mutations freer reign, and possibly encourage more.
Surely it won’t be too serious for a few minutes.
It will take far more than a few minutes to do repairs. The Corona paused. Even then I cannot guarantee the results. I would advise against prolonged redirection of your med series.
Kelric didn’t want to risk slipping back into a critical state. Doctor Tarjan’s help had bought him more time, but he still needed treatment. He had to accomplish his goals before his systems started to fail again.
Do you have other suggestions for fixing my node? he asked.
Yes. Replace the JGP12 with JGPP146+ local neural node cluster.
They put entire clusters in humans now? That had been too risky in his time. The idea of a network in his body, with who knew how much more power than Bolt alone, both intrigued and disconcerted him. However, unless procedures had changed drastically, he doubted be could simply request such an upgrade.
How would I get the cluster? he asked.
You must proceed through ISC channels, with appropriate clearances.
No surprises there, unfortunately. Go ahead with whatever upgrades you can safely do, then. Turning his focus to Bolt, he thought, Allow access to the Corona. Normally he wouldn’t have to tell Bolt; the node should be following the exchange and would know to let in the Corona. With Bolt’s damage, though, he wasn’t sure of anything about it right now.
Proceeding, the Corona thought.
Although Kelric could no longer access Bolt’s chronometer, he knew his accelerated exchange with the Corona had taken only a second or two, if that long. Maccar was watching him with an appraising gaze.
Software upgrade complete, the Corona thought. Proceeding to psiware.
At first Kelric noticed nothing unusual, only a sense of mental pressure, as if his head were underwater. Then, with no warning, pain stabbed his head like a lance.
“Ah—!” He pressed the heels of his hands against his temples.
Warning, the Corona thought. Errors in neural sectors 53AF, 93—
Stop the upgrade! He gritted his teeth, trying not to shout the words.
Stopped.
Can you fix the damaged sectors of my brain? Kelric asked.
No. I’m deleting the partial copies of the replacement code.
“Commander?” Maccar asked. “Are you all right?”
Kelric took a breath. “Your ship’s EI and my biomech web have a slight incompatibility.” Some “slight”: The portions of his brain that interfaced with the psiber capabilities of other computers had taken damage when his ship crashed on Coba. His brain needed as much work as the rest of him—if he wasn’t past repair.
“Can you operate with the Corona system?” Maccar asked.
“Yes.” A person needed no unusual neurological abilities to use the console’s mundane cyber functions. It did require a direct mind-to-machine interface, however. Implanting such an interface in a human being was no trivial procedure, and the training to master its uses required clearances and connections available to very few people.
Activating the console’s psiber functions was even more complex. On the scale that quantified telepathic ability, a psion had to rate at six or more to access psiberspace. The higher the rating, the more neural structures the person had packed into his or her brain. A rating of three made someone an empath. At six, the first signs of telepathy showed. The scale was exponential: one in a thousand humans was a three, and one in a million a six.
Kelric had trained for both cybernetic and psiber work. With his injuries, though, he wasn’t sure how far he could push his brain in its mental acrobatics. He laid his head back into the chair’s curved headrest, and its visor lowered over his eyes and ears. Smooth, streamlined, and light as a sponge, it made the VR helmets of eighteen years ago barbaric in comparison
.
Blackness surrounded him. Activate mindscape, he thought.
You don’t have clearance, the Corona informed him.
“Captain, I need to enter the Corona system.” Kelric’s voice echoed oddly within the visored cavity.
Maccar shifted in his seat, leaning over the console, it sounded like. “Account, Garlin K., Commander. Password, ‘probation.’”
A wry smile tugged Kelric’s mouth. Probation. Maccar apparently had no use for subtlety.
“Account created,” the Corona said.
“Link it to the unit installed in the console,” Maccar said.
“Done,” the ship answered.
Activate mindscape, Kelric thought. He wondered if Maccar designated all his crew members as “installed units.” Somehow he doubted it.
A landscape formed around him, made by white grid lines on a blue background. It gave him the Corona’s representation of cybernetic activity throughout the ship. Hills indicated systems buzzing with computer-human action, and valleys denoted quiescence.
Show all states, Kelric thought, asking for everything the Corona could tell him about itself, rather than just its cybernetic activity. Priority: weapons.
New displays replaced the grid, schematics of the ship and its combat systems. Three-dimensional graphs, tables, and hyperlinks swamped him with data. He moved through the Corona like a stealth ghost, studying it. Then he expanded his survey to the dreadnought and eight frigates in their escort, which orbited Edgewhirl in formation with the Corona. According to the displays, Bolt was taking in data as fast as the Corona supplied it, almost at light speed.
He recognized the basic systems. It would take time for him to become proficient here, to process his upgrades and learn his new functions. But he could manage.
“Are you into the Corona?” Maccar asked, a disembodied voice.
“Yes.” He concentrated on the captain. His mindscape responded by forming a schematic of Kelric and the console in white grid lines. Then the scene solidified into a virtual reality so authentic it was indistinguishable from real reality. He was on the bridge of the Corona, looking at Maccar across the console. The only indication it was a simulated Maccar, rather than the flesh-and-blood captain, was a slight sharpness at the edges of his body.
The psiphon prongs that had plugged into Kelric’s sockets were linked to his biomech web. It let the console send messages straight to his brain, bypassing the need for VR helmets and suits. Sight, smell, sound, touch, even taste: he experienced them all through direct neural stimulation. This setup produced better quality VR than those he had known even on his Jag starfighter, which had claimed the best machine-to-mind tech of its time.
With his brain juiced up straight from the console, he didn’t need the visor. It still served a purpose, though, intensifying the simulation. It also blocked his perception of real space. It would have been a true exercise in strangeness to experience a VR simulation of reality superimposed on that exact same reality.
“I’m in,” he told Maccar.
The captain nodded. “Arm the Impactors on frigate seven.”
Normally Kelric would have located the Impactors on frigate seven and sent his commands to the frigate through the Corona. At close to light speed, it would take the barest fraction of a second.
But he was curious to see how much the Corona’s EI could handle. So he tried a less standard approach. Execute command from Maccar, he thought, deliberately vague.
Done, the Corona answered. An icon of frigate seven appeared in the lower left corner of his VR sim, hanging in midair. It blinked red to indicate the primed weapons.
Not bad, Kelric thought. His Jag would have needed more specifics to carry out the command. “Impactors armed, Captain.”
“Corona, run mod four,” Maccar said. “Tricore Defensive code.”
Kelric plunged into battle.
Pirate frigates were converging on them like a swarm of hornets. His mindscape snapped into a new simulation, an all-around view of space with its glittering stars and dust. Translucent displays formed, superimposed over space, images that turned data into symbols his mind could process faster.
Optimize offense for destruction of pirates, he thought.
Neither human reflexes nor thought could keep up with the speed of space warfare. But Kelric knew too little about the strategies in the Corona’s combat libraries even to name them, let alone choose one. He would have to rely on the ship’s EI.
Firing Scythe pattern 8, the Corona answered.
Quasis jump. Impactor hit on—
Quasis jump. Pirates destroyed.
Nausea rolled over Kelric. During quasis, or quantum stasis, their quantum state remained fixed. The ship didn’t “freeze”: only at absolute zero could matter reach a state where none of its particles had motion. In quasis, the particles that made up the Corona continued to rotate, spin, translate, and otherwise behave as they had been when the quasis snapped on. However, they couldn’t change state, not even by one particle. Molecules kept the same configuration; bonds shook and twisted with the same quanta of vibration and rotation; atoms made no transitions; and quarks kept their charm or lack thereof. Nothing could change.
Thoughts required chemical changes in the brain, so even they stopped, caught in whatever slice of thought a person was experiencing when the quasis snapped on. The process of thinking resumed when they came out of quasis, giving the sense of a discontinuous “jump.”
In macroscopic terms, the ship and everything in it became rigid, impervious to forces, including the brutal accelerations of split-second combat. Nor could weapons-fire damage the ship, because the process of destruction required particles to change state. After two or three hits the quasis usually collapsed, but while it lasted it provided a good defense.
When a ship came out of quasis, its systems and crew adapted to their new environment. If their physical situation had changed too much, the required adaptations could hurt them. The most dramatic case came about when the quasis collapsed under enemy fire—and the crew found themselves in the midst of an exploding ship.
According to Kelric’s mindscape, each jump he had just experienced lasted about a second. The “battle” had been simulated. Almost no changes took place while he was in quasis, certainly not enough to make a healthy person sick when his body adjusted to his new environment. His nausea was an unwelcome reminder of his failing health.
The Corona had continued to operate smoothly despite the jumps. As soon as the ship dropped out of quasis, the crew resumed their preflight tests, unperturbed by the one-second discontinuities in their lives. It told Kelric a great deal about Maccar’s command and his crew. This was a well-run ship.
“TD-four off,” Maccar said. The simulation disappeared, replaced by the grid landscape.
Close mindscape, Kelric thought. Referring to himself, he added, Release weapons CPU.
Closed, the Corona answered. You are released.
The mindscape vanished and the visor lifted away from his head. Maccar was still sitting in the auxiliary chair across the console.
The captain frowned. “Why did you attack without hailing the ships? Their intent may not have been hostile.” “Trader pirates don’t ‘hail,’” Kelric said. “They were also better armed than your escort. In that situation, you don’t wait to ask questions.”
“So.” Although Maccar’s neutral expression gave nothing away, his mind projected wary approval. “And if we had faced ESComm ships, instead of pirates?”
Kelric almost snorted. Eubian Space Command had long denied any link to the pirates that raided Skolian and Allied space. But he had seen the intelligence reports that said otherwise. ESComm supplied, advised, protected, and supported the raiders.
“If we encountered ESComm ships in Skolian space,” Kelric said, “I would respond in the same way.”
Maccar scowled. “Firing without provocation on ESComm is far different from attacking pirates. We might be able to justify the former. Not the l
atter.”
“What do you want?” Kelric asked. “A polite inquiry as to why they came into our territory? While we observe courtesies, they make the capture. You choose, Captain: proper procedure followed by slavery, or a strategy that maintains your freedom.”
“What I want,” Maccar said, “is the survival of my flotilla and the success of this run, without any diplomatic incidents.”
Kelric regarded him steadily. “Hire me and you’ll have your best shot at success. As for diplomacy, the moment you enter Trader space you’re risking an incident. I’ll protect your flotilla with experience and knowledge you won’t find elsewhere. But if diplomacy is your goal, I’m not your man.”
Maccar scrutinized him for a long time. Finally he said, “All right, Commander. You have the job.”
Kelric sailed along the corridor in long strides, following Nadick Steil, the Corona’s stocky executive officer. Long-limbed Larra Anatakala, the navigation officer, sailed at his side. He felt as if he were flying. The ship’s cylinder was rotating fast enough to simulate gravity at 10 percent the human standard. It gave him enough weight to orient himself, with “up” toward the interior of the cylinder and “down” toward its outer hull.
He was having fun. The ship’s spin created a Coriolis force, which felt like a push to the side when he sailed up into the air. The faster he and the others moved, the stronger the push; the slower they went, the weaker it felt. Even more entertaining, it varied with direction. It was greatest when they moved up or down, at right angles to the ship’s rotation axis, and they felt no push at all when they went parallel to the axis.
Even at its greatest, this Coriolis force wasn’t that strong. It was enough, though, to disorient some people, throw off their balance, make them queasy. It didn’t bother Kelric. He enjoyed the quirky sensations. Trying to compensate for the effect as he flew along the ship was like a game.
Silky spun-metal carpet covered every surface around them. Blue and shimmering, it pleased the eye, but more important, it served as padding when he collided with bulkheads. It didn’t take long to regain his space legs, though. He had always thrived on the athletic demands of low gravity. A female admirer once told him that in low-g he was “sheer joy to watch.” He didn’t know about that, but he did know he liked the whole process.