Mapped Space 1: The Antaran Codex (39 page)

The Matarons also hadn’t demanded
me as prisoner, proving they didn’t know I still carried the raw ghost numbers
in my bionetic memory. Even so, a fragment wasn’t enough. I needed a full copy
of their synthetic agent for the Tau Cetins to take apart. That would get
mankind off the hook and might well end the Mataron Supremacy as an
interstellar civilization.

“This is a mistake,” Marie said,
thinking this was about handing over the Codex. “What’s to stop them blasting
us to pieces as soon as you give it to them?”

“Fear of the Tau Cetins,” I said,
turning to her and holding her arms. “There’s a woman called Lena Voss in Hades
City. If something happens to me, I want you to deliver my body to her.” Lena’s
people could tap my threading’s bionetic memory and extract everything recorded
there.

“What are you talking about?”
Marie demanded, shocked.

“Alien technology. It’s a bitch! Now
promise me. You’ll make sure I’m delivered to Lena if I can’t make it myself.”

“Now you’re scaring me, Sirius!”

“Promise me!” It was no longer a
request, but an order, the only real order I’d ever given her – ever would give
her.

“I . . . OK,” she said, sensing a
change in me she’d never seen before. “I promise.”

“You might cheat me every chance
you get, but I trust you more than anyone I’ve ever known,” I said, then took
her in my arms and kissed her – a goodbye kiss.

When I pulled back, there was
fear on her face. “Sirius, what’s going on?”

“I’d like to tell you, but we’re
out of time.”

I turned and knelt beside the Codex.
“You know what to do, Izin. Load it, fire it, then save the ship. Save
yourselves.”

“Yes, Captain,” Izin said as he
lifted the meter long penetrator out of the drone.

DISABLE AUTO-PURGE, I thought,
ensuring my threading would not delete my bionetic memory, even if my life
signs failed. I rubbed my hands together slowly, preparing myself. “All right,
let’s see what you’re made of,” I whispered, then placed my palms on the Codex.

An alien presence immediately
surged through the bionetic threads in my hands. It tingled at first, then the
dominating clone consciousness entered the biological threads woven through my
bone structure. It explored every organic filament, every nerve junction, every
memory sequence, searching for an anchor. Behind it came the genuine touch of
the Antaran Codex itself, automatically reaching out to my biological network,
unaware of the monster using it as a way to strike down its enemy.

The benign aspect of the Codex
measured my capacity, determined my fit and allowed the data to flow. The sheer
magnitude of it distracted me from the beast prowling through my body, searching
for a home. In an instant, eons of exploration – the collective work of countless
civilizations who’d collaborated on mapping entire galaxies – was visible to me.
Planets, stars, nebulas, all manner of celestial objects and the invisible dark
matter drifting among them, all flashed through my mind. Woven through this
vast cosmic tapestry were the precise, constantly changing pathways used by
billions of ships across millions of years to traverse dozens of galaxies. It
was far more than I could ever hope to recall, instantly translated into the
language I understood by the genius of the Antaran Codex.

It happened so fast, for a moment
I forgot the beast within, then it reared its head as it fought to take control
of a system it had never seen before and did not understand. It found itself,
not the master of the kind of complex electromechanical device it had been
designed for, but trapped in a bioelectric creation of unexpected simplicity. Try
as it might, it could find no way to imprint itself into a biologically based memory.
Finally, it swarmed towards what it perceived to be the central processing unit,
hoping to rewrite the base logic of what was to it, a strangely alien system.

Desperate to survive, the
synthetic intelligence revealed itself as the disembodied reflection of Hazrik
a’Gitor – his life, his character, his knowledge. It thought the way he did, it
plotted and schemed as he did. It was as ruthless as he was. Suddenly I knew
him as well as myself: Hazrik a’Gitor, Exalted Blademaster of the Black Sauria,
holder of the highest and rarest rank and a force within the shadowy world of
Mataron politics. As his synthetic consciousness began to overwhelm me, I saw
the universe through his eyes, through Mataron eyes.

For an instant, I was Mataron!

I realized how afraid they were!
Of all the others. Of us!

My head throbbed as the essence
of the Mataron master assassin tried to write itself over my identity. I was
sweating, shaking, crying in agony as it clawed its way into my mind.

“Sirius, what is it?” Marie
yelled as her hands tore at my arms. “Izin help me,” she screamed.

I knew I had to let go of the
Codex, but I couldn’t break free. Hazrik a’Gitor wouldn’t release me!

The Mataron synthetic
intelligence moved to its last strategy, to force a complete system shutdown
and reinitialize its new conquest.

I screamed as lightning bolts of
pain exploded inside my head, then a heavy metallic object crashed against my
skull.

* * * *

I awoke, blinking spots from my eyes. Marie
knelt over me with a concerned look. A blood splattered molecular spanner lay
beside her.

“You hit me?” I slurred, touching
my forehead, finding a small pressure pad in place over the wound.

“Only in the head,” Marie said
sweetly, “where it’d do no damage.”

“Can you turn off that siren,” I
said, “Or is that just the ringing in my ears?”

Marie smiled and stroked my hair
gently. “You know what they say, Sirius – love hurts.”

“It was the only way to get you
away from the Codex,” Izin explained. “The effect it has on you is most
surprising, considering the rest of us are immune to its influence. Why is that,
Captain?”

Izin was too smart for his own
good, always asking questions I couldn’t answer. “Maybe it knows I’m the captain,
and wants to control the ship through me.”

Izin blinked slowly, but said
nothing. I’m sure he didn’t believe me, but he couldn’t prove it wasn’t true.

I took a deep breath, trying to
calm the throbbing inside my head, and searched for any trace of the Mataron
synthetic intelligence. It had vanished, but the memory of Hazrik a’Gitor
remained in my mind, my real mind, not my bionetic data store. Once the
connection with the Codex had been severed, the SI had lost contact with its
progenitor. Having found no way to embed itself into my biological system, it had
ceased to exist.

“Where’s the Codex?” I asked.

Izin pointed at the fully re-assembled
drone. “In there. As we are approaching the Vintari star, now would be a good time
to launch it.”

“How long was I out for?” I said
sitting up warily.

“Not long,” Marie said.

“The battle shield’s up,” Izin
said, activating the intercom. “Jase, what’s our shield’s status?”

“Bleeding star heat like crazy.
It’s starting to saturate. How’s the Skipper?”

“He’s alive and conscious,” Izin
said. “His head is remarkably durable for a human.”

“And the Matarons?” I asked.

“Still on our tail,” Jase said,
“riding us all the way down.”

I climbed to my feet unsteadily,
giving Marie a pained look. “Did you have to hit me so hard?”

“You can thank me for saving your
life later,” Marie said.

“I’ll thank you now, in case
we’re all dead later.”

“You’re really going to give them
the Codex?” she asked.

“I’m going to see how badly they
want it.” I gave her a mischievous grin. “Izin, keep the shield up, no matter
what.”

“Very well, Captain.”

While Izin went to engineering to
tweak the ship’s energy supply, Marie and I hurried to the flight deck.

Jase glanced at the patch on my
head curiously as I climbed onto my acceleration couch. “The shield’s at a hundred
and forty percent. It’s red lining across the board.”

Shield regeneration, stability
and heat dissipation were all failing simultaneously, something I’d never seen
before. If we didn’t put some distance between us and Vintari soon, we’d be
cooked.

The star’s boiling orange orb filled
one side of the screen, smeared by the red glow of our rapidly suffocating
shield. In the center of the screen was black space, while the other side was
filled with the Mataron armored cruiser, now encased in a soft glowing egg-shaped
field. Clearly, they were having an easier time of it than we were.

Jase followed my eyes to the screen.
“Our thermal sensor has their shield as the coldest thing out there.”

“Figures,” I said, taking helm
control, turning the
Lining
towards
the star.

“I had us angled away,” Jase
said, “so we could get out of here fast, if they let us go.”

“Change of plan.” I fed power to
the engines, accelerating the
Silver
Lining
towards the star.

Jase eyes widened. “Are you
feeling all right, Skipper?”

“Ten G’s should do it.”

“Do what?”

Marie leaned forward. “Sirius,
maybe you should let Jase pilot the ship, until you’re feeling better.”

“I feel fine! I’m just sick of
those God damned snakeheads playing games with me!”

“Diving us into a star isn’t
going to make any difference to the Matarons,” Marie said.

“It might!” I said as a now
familiar synthesized voice blared from the comm system.

“Why are you accelerating towards
the star?” the Mataron Commander demanded. “Give us the Codex and we will
release your ship.”

I nodded to Jase to open the
channel. “If I do that, I’ve got nothing for the Tau Cetins. On the other hand,
if I crash into that star, they’ll retrieve the Codex and show it to
all
their friends.” Now that I knew how
Matarons thought, I knew how to spook them. Their extreme xenophobia was their
weakness.

“You are throwing your lives away
for nothing. Not even the Tau Cetins could recover the Codex from the surface
of a star.”

 
“I know different!” Thanks to Hazrik a’Gitor’s
memories, I now knew the Matarons were completely baffled by Tau Cetin
technology, giving me a perfect opportunity to lie through my teeth.

“What do you know?”

“I know once the Tau Cetins retrieve
the Codex, you’re going to have to explain to the Forum, to
thousands
of other species, why you
tried to exterminate a bronze age people because you don’t like humans. And
from what I know of the Forum, you don’t have many friends.” I motioned for
Jase to cut communications.

“Skipper, that’s a terrible
plan!” Jase said.

“Can the Tau Cetins really do
that?” Marie asked incredulously.

I shrugged. “Who the hell knows
what they can do. The Matarons sure don’t and that’s all that matters.”

“They’re hailing us again,” Jase
said.

I relaxed into my acceleration
couch, ignoring their hail, studying the plating in the ceiling absently. “We
really need to get the
atmo
scrubbers replaced. Remind
me next time we’re in Hades City.”

“Are you going to answer them?”
Marie asked anxiously as the star loomed before us.

“Yeah, but not the way they
want,” I said, switching my console to weapons. I winked at Jase, then opened
the outer doors and fired the drone at the star. A point of brilliant white
light accelerated away from the ship at over two hundred gravities. The drone’s
shielding, designed to withstand short range defensive fire as it approached
its target, would get closer to the surface of the star than the
Lining
ever could. “OK, let’s hear what
the snakeheads have to say now.”

The flight deck’s comm system erupted
with the Mataron Commander’s synthesized voice. “What have you done, human?”

“If you want the Codex, go get it.
It’s got a homing beacon on it to make it easy to find. Easy for you, easier for
the Tau Cetins. I’m done talking.” I motioned to Jase to terminate the link,
then spun the
Lining
to face away
from the star. Behind us, the big Mataron cruiser rolled out from behind us and
dived after the drone.

Jase and Marie both gave me
astonished looks.

“Will they catch it?” Jase asked.

“Who cares! I just hope for their
sake that fancy ass shield can handle the heat down there.” The spacetime
distorters began charging, indicating the Matarons had stopped jamming us. “Now
let’s get the hell out of here while we can still fly!”

I caught one last glimpse of the Mataron
ship streaking down through the chromosphere’s superheated orange plasma clouds
then our screen went blank.

“Punch it,” Jase said, confirming
our surviving sensors were all safely tucked away.