The Life Engineered (11 page)

That being said, there was a lot of data to sift through, and just like the targeting logs on the Spear of Athena, it was arranged in a way that, while I was sure is very efficient for some, meant nothing to me. It took a long time to organize the available information, centuries of logged and relayed transmissions of voice, images, and raw data, into a coherent pattern that I could navigate. As was often the case, I was rapidly consumed by the task at hand, losing track of time and my surroundings as I manipulated information like sand, sculpting it into a castle of usable data, looking for a particular grain.

Eventually, after hours upon hours of housekeeping and reorganizing, I found my prize. A single burst of data, originating from Tartarus, using Hera’s quancom array.

We are not absent from Olympus.

Koalemos. I smiled internally and almost felt warmth inside, despite the cold vacuum that embraced me. There was nothing in the brief message about Skinfaxi, but hope was alive and well. The time stamp on the message indicated that it wasn’t more than a day old, and it was clearly targeted to my quancom receiver. Things were looking up for a second. My friends knew I was coming and had tried to tell me where they were.

Then the telltale gravitational anomaly of a space fold manifested.

I knew the signs by now but still couldn’t help being awed by the display of insane power Capeks had mastered. An entire portion of the Milky Way was pulled back to our location, bent by reality-altering technologies that stretched the imagination. I could suddenly see the giant Tartarus as if it were but a few hundred thousand kilometers away, with the moon Olympus just as close, coming through the unnatural superposition of space-time.

I also saw Anhur.

The colossal Lucretius Capek moved with all haste through the fold in space, the terrible damage Hermes had caused it during our previous encounter obvious in its uneven silhouette.

Still, the scars of our escape from Hera did little to diminish the terrifying presence of the angry giant.

Like a kraken swimming through the surf, it tore toward us, ignoring the relay station’s debris as it bounced off its armored exterior. Weapons ports already open, Anhur was ready to annihilate us, and there was little we could do about it. Our fate was sealed.

Then from behind the monster, swimming with graceful thrusts of its massive engines, Ukupanipo floated through the fold, waves of torpedoes launching from forward batteries, guaranteed to impact the Lucretius and take a hefty toll from its hide. “No,” Hermes spoke on open channel. “No! Turn back!” All six of his shards surged forth toward the incoming titans.

There was after all nothing he could do. Unless Haumea’s war god heard and heeded his warning, the trap would be sprung.

Hermes’s trap. The same that had almost crippled the colossus Anhur.

Just as it had appeared, the gravity distortion vanished, and with it two-thirds of Ukupanipo. The great shark had heard my little Sputnik friend’s warning and sparingly reacted to it. Hitting all reverse thrusters, it attempted to spin around to use its more powerful engines to speed out of the fold. Alas, the effort was too late, and a large portion of our warrior was left floating on this side of the galaxy, while the other severed part was pulled back to where it belonged, along with Tartarus, Olympus, Hera, and my friends.

We were left alone with Anhur.

“He . . . he learned that from me,” Hermes whined. “A fine and daring maneuver,” Opochtli commented neutrally. We watched as a volley of powerful torpedoes exploded as they hit Anhur’s back and port sides—the last thrashing bite of the shark god.

The damage was extensive. Large sections of the Lucretius were left falling apart or drifting behind him. A huge portion of his spine-thrusters were either torn off by the blasts or simply no longer functioned. It would take days of work from a Gaia to bring the monster back to its former glory.

Yet despite the terrible damage he had suffered, Anhur was no less a threat to three unarmed Capeks—a messenger, a freighter, and a glorified paramedic. What were we to do against a demigod designed to live a million years and swim the intergalactic void? “Run away,” Hermes ordered, a strange calm in his voice.

“Take this and run.”

One of his shards opened its cargo hatch and ejected a small bundle of clustered cylinders. Yggdrassil’s Nursery’s mnemonic core.

“Don’t be a fool, Hermes,” Opochtli scolded. “We can run our separate ways. He can only pursue one of us.”

“But we don’t know which he’ll choose. He knows me. He hates me. If he’s going to go after me, I’d rather meet him head-on.” With these words, all six shards sped away. There was no denying his incredible speed and agility. Anhur threw dozens of countermeasure charges, torpedoes, and missiles at the little Sputnik shards. None managed a solid hit, at least not for a long time. It wasn’t until Hermes had made it well within Anhur’s defense perimeter that two of his shards were hit and nearly vaporized by the onslaught.

I stopped paying attention at that point, focusing instead on grabbing the mnemonic core before shuffling back into Opochtli so we could make our escape.

The gentle whale had already powered his Alcubierre drive, lacking the more impressive space-fold engine Hermes used, and by the time the hatch closed we were ready to speed away. I don’t know exactly what became of Anhur. When the Alcubierre drive went online and the stars stretched around us, Hermes had managed to divert a whole mess of projectiles back toward the giant. None would impact, of course, as their AI prevented that level of error, but Hermes would be able to choose prime locations to sacrifice himself for maximum damage. At the last moment I transmitted the file I had on Anhur to my friend. Perhaps the information therein would help make the most of his sacrifice—assuming, of course, that he still had the cognitive capabilities to make sense of it.

Then, before I could witness the outcome, before I could transmit a last good-bye and a final thank-you, we were gone.

I
cursed the lack of tear ducts on this body for most of the trip to Hera. It was clear that Capek society was never designed for internal struggle and dissent and that the Capek body wasn’t conceived for hardship and emotional trauma.

Between Ukupanipo’s final attack and Hermes’s kamikaze maneuver, I was hopeful that the beast Anhur had lost most of his interstellar travel capabilities. There was no question that his space-fold engine had been wrecked; I could verify that myself with the file I had on the great monster. With luck his Alcubierre drive was also crippled, meaning it would take him years to navigate to a viable collapsor point.

As good as this news was, it did nothing to lessen the loss of our friend. At no point did Hermes have to join us on our venture. He volunteered, knowing that these were dangerous waters we were diving into. One could have described the unique Sputnik–Von Neumann hybrid as vainglorious and cocksure, but in the end it’s for his courage that I’ll remember him.

The trip to Olympus was spent mostly in quiet contemplation. Opochtli had never displayed much of an emotional side to his personality, and now was no different. Whatever he felt about the loss of our companion he kept to himself. Perhaps he was digesting the events in his mind, but more likely he was preparing for our arrival in Tartarus’s orbit.

While Anhur was no longer a likely threat, there was no reason to think the moon would be defenseless. Thankfully, by the time we got there I would be able to establish contact with Skinfaxi and hopefully get a quick tactical assessment of what we would be facing. Of course this would mean adapting to whatever the situation was for a few minutes before we got that intelligence.

The last time I had been to Olympus, there had been a second Lucretius-class Capek. Hera had swiftly neutralized it, taking the colossal creature out with a merciless volley of ground-to-air missiles that had annihilated it. There was, however, little reason to assume these were the only forces Aurvandil had mustered to his cause in this civil war of his.

While the space fold had taken Anhur and Ukupanipo from Tartarus to the relay station in minutes, the Alcubierre drive was significantly slower. I kept busy during the hours of travel by reassembling Kerubiel’s shattered form. As my work advanced, I expected Opochtli to question my actions or at least inquire as to my motivation, but the gentle whale kept quiet. I wouldn’t have been able to answer him anyway.

Reassembling Kerubiel turned out to be deceptively simple. While there was a lot of work to be done, no important piece was missing. Some were damaged beyond repair, and I would need to find replacements if I wanted to make the body as good as new, but through some clever work-arounds I managed to bring the corpse back online, albeit without a brain to make it function. Compared to repairing a shattered personality construct—like a Von Neumann with a missing shard—reassembling a body, even one as mangled as Kerubiel’s, was a piece of cake.

The activity helped keep me focused on the mission at hand. The more thought I gave it, the more I was worried by the lack of word from Skinfaxi. I could only imagine the circumstances that had forced Koalemos to use Hera’s communication array. An imagination was a terrible thing to have during dark times. It opened the door to many unwanted speculations.

I had assumed that when we dropped out of the space-time bubble that carried us at hyperluminal speeds, we would need to dodge our way between a hail of missiles while desperately trying to assess what happened to my friends and devise an appropriate strategy. Instead, the moment the Alcubierre drive powered down, alarms went off within the confines of Opochtli’s body. Proximity alarms.

“A large mass twelve kilometers to starboard, fifteen-degree incline,” my ride explained, his calm barely rattled.

A monitor lit up showing the dark, lifeless husk of Ukupanipo drifting in a slowly decaying orbit around Tartarus.

“Why did we end up so close?”

“He’s using detection countermeasures. Actively fooling sensors with false data. Makes it almost impossible to be targeted by standard self-guided weapons. We can use this to our advantage, assuming our big friend doesn’t perceive us as a threat.”

I looked at the great shark through the monitor. Even crippled and apparently lifeless, he remained an imposing sight to behold. A long diagonal line bisected his enormous body where the fold had closed up on it. Half of his massive thruster array had been cut clean off.

I looked into my data banks for his file. Surely this amount of damage was more than sufficient to unlock every technical detail about the war god. Unfortunately, I came up empty-handed. The file wasn’t locked; there was simply no file to find. Ukupanipo had been built after Yggdrassil had uploaded the data on individual Capek physiology into my mind, and clearly Haumea did not feel like sharing the intimate details of her son’s construction. This would make repairing him difficult at best, impossible at worst, though I was torn about attempting it at all.

Opochtli maneuvered himself dangerously close to the giant. The many weapon ports on Ukupanipo’s sides were open, but all remained ominously silent as we made our approach. I knew what the calm whale was up to, getting us so close to the shark god that his protective sensor cloak would provide us with a margin of safety. I couldn’t see from within Opochtli, but I knew that Olympus was nearby, with the threat it kept hidden, along with my beleaguered friends.

As we drew closer to the drifting wreck of the war machine, I worried that he would disapprove of our presence and that we constituted a threat to his safety by drawing attention to his position.

“We should warn him,” I announced.

“We could, but any use of an open channel might risk giving his foes something to lock onto,” he calmly responded, getting us ever closer to the broken god.

Opochtli maneuvered himself toward the open wound on Ukupanipo’s side. It was facing away from Tartarus and Olympus and was presumably covered by the profile of the shark’s countermeasures.

The wound was incredible. The perfect shear made by the collapsing space fold created a surreal cutaway view of the giant’s interior. Designed for a lifetime in zero gravity, Ukupanipo had no obvious up or down to his anatomy. No series of decks stacked onto one another like layers on a cake. I could see several access shafts of reasonable size crisscrossing his body as a network of tubes that twisted upon themselves like intestines or blood vessels.

I could clearly make out several key components, cut in twain to reveal their own internal systems. His Alcubierre drive was open in such a way as to resemble an image from a technical manual. I recognized a part of a fabricator bay, designed, I assumed, to build more torpedoes, or perhaps even automated troops for a ground invasion.

“Is he even functional still?” I wondered.

“I detect several systems still powered up, though they are kept to a minimum to avoid detection. Most of the central core is intact, so I assume his cognitive network is still functioning.”

I hadn’t thought about that. For some reason, despite my technical know-how I’d assumed that larger Capeks had their equivalent of a brain to the front of their bodies. Of course, there’s no need for such vulnerability. Quantum relays make proximity to sensory organs irrelevant in Capeks.

Seeing no response from the crippled war god, Opochtli dared to position himself partially within the colossus’s carcass, nestled into an open cavity in the wound.

“This should do nicely,” he announced. “I will begin to carefully scan the surface for any trace of your friends and whatever activity I can find. I would advise against trying to communicate with them, even through quancom. If they have been captured, that may be compromised.”

I agreed somewhat reluctantly. I was eager to know what had become of Skinfaxi and Koalemos. I worried for the worst, was hopeful for the best, and everything in between. I did not have access to any external sensor suite and was effectively blind. With nothing to occupy my mind and hands, I quickly grew restless. All I could see on the monitor was a still image of Ukupanipo’s guts and vital organs. Fascinating as that was, it eventually lost its appeal.

“Can you open your hatch? I think I’m going to go for a stroll.”

And just like that I stepped into the void, heading directly for the belly of the beast.

Everything within Ukupanipo was shut down. There was no movement, no lights, and no power running through the service corridors. There was no reason to believe that the beast was anything more than marginally alive.

Carefully, I pushed myself through shafts and empty rooms, the only light whatever I projected myself, though mostly I navigated using infrared. At every turn I expected to come face-toface with a weaponized automaton, an internal defense system created to keep unwanted intruders like myself from destroying the great shark from within. No such immune system assailed me, though I could clearly see the signs that one existed. Either Ukupanipo simply did not have the energy to flush me out, or he didn’t recognize me as a threat.

It wasn’t clear what I was looking for. Partially, I was hoping our war god’s weapons could still be used against whatever Renegade forces were holed up on Olympus, though to be honest I prayed such a siege would not become necessary. At least, not while I still had friends on the surface. Perhaps it was simply the instincts of my vocation that drove me, and deep down I wanted to see what I could do to save Ukupanipo. Either way there was a lot to explore, and if ever I were to attempt to repair this beast I would need better facilities and the help of builders like Bes and Koalemos. It was doubtful I’d even get a chance to try, as the orbit of the gutted titan was slowly decaying, spiraling progressively closer to Tartarus. If nothing was done to correct this, Haumea’s warrior would be consumed by the black storm clouds of the gas giant, crushed by relentless pressures as it got sucked deeper into the atmosphere.

“Please, save me,” he called out.

He was using an extremely close band signal. Something that would easily get lost in the background noise of solar radiation at anything but the shortest of range. Opochtli was probably right about giving away our position through open channels. It sounded like a whisper to me.

I had pondered whether I could save Ukupanipo. The technical challenges it would involve. The resources it would require. I looked at his broken form, sliced neatly into separate parts, and saw a puzzle to be solved. It was easy to think about such things when not faced with the possibility of attempting the task. It was much harder when the victim was begging for his life.

When I had first laid eyes on Ukupanipo, where other Capeks, especially Haumea, saw a savior, I recognized an aberration. A violent machine that had no place in a society founded on building the future. Maybe it was a necessary evil. One of those things that had to be done, despite being unpleasant and ultimately destructive, like the amputation of a gangrenous limb. I could not see it that way, however. In my opinion the war god was a shortcut. An easy and violent solution to an immediate problem.

This left me in a quandary—not about whether I could save the giant, but if I even should.

I didn’t answer, preferring to ignore the plea for the time being. Instead, I kept moving toward the center of the ship, winding and twisting my way through corridors and access shafts, unopposed but still slow of progress. This was not a Capek meant to carry passengers. There was no obvious or direct path leading from one part of his body to the other.

“Save me, little one,” he repeated.

His voice was not what I had expected. Not that a chosen modulation for communication was indicative of much, but I had thought he would have picked something more aggressive, more commanding. Instead, his voice was calm and measured. It wasn’t friendly and inviting like Skinfaxi’s or emotionless like Opochtli’s but soothing and honest. Each word felt calculated but warm. Chosen for clarity of purpose and meaning.

“I know about your fears and worries. I understand them, but I do not wish to die.”

I floated into a large room at the heart of the colossal body. It was the first time since venturing into Ukupanipo that I could witness signs of life. Glowing blue lines of light webbed through the chamber, illuminating the outer wall. Enormous tubing containing the components, wires, and power relays necessary to sustain the war god and allow it full control of its massive body lined the room. It felt like being at the center of a brain that had been inverted onto itself.

“You think me a monstrosity. Little more than an engine of war and destruction, and certainly I am that, but also much more.”

I really could have done without listening to his justifications and his pleas. I had enough doubts, enough pressure from the responsibilities of my situation. I would have much preferred an easy decision without the complication of a moral dilemma. Who was I to play god with a fellow Capek’s life?

“Just like you, I was plucked out of the Nursery for my skills, but just like you, these talents do not exclusively define who I am,” he continued.

“But what will you do when there is no more room for you to practice your vocation?” Damn it! I had told myself I wouldn’t respond.

“You misunderstand the why of Haumea’s decision. She did not choose one who is a berserk killing machine. I admit to being driven by purpose, but do you know what my vocation is? What my reason is for accepting to be this god of war she made me into?”

I couldn’t find an answer. I rescued Capeks because I had the skills and knowledge to do so from the Nursery. There is no such thing as Capeks in the virtual environment where our personalities are nurtured. I became what I am because I care. I am driven to help, to save, to protect, and to care. Jonathan.

“I was chosen because I defend. The skills in warfare, strategy, and tactics are as new to me, as artificially implanted, as the weapons on this body.”

As artificially implanted as my knowledge of Capek anatomy.