Transcendence (12 page)

You’re getting a little fed up with all this “Eyes” crap; you’ve got a name. “Get into position,” she adds.

“
Suck vacuum, bitch,” you say, stalking into the cabin. You feel the tacky plastic of the particluster subgun swinging from its shoulder strap against your ribcage.

“
Knock it off, you two,” Cap’n says after he’s stuffed his glass into a tangle of wires beneath bitch’s control panel.

Words and numbers begin to reel across your left overlay splice. The show’s about to begin. You slip into your seat, just to the left of Janus’. She’s so close you can smell the sweat on her alabaster skin. You sense the Cap’n behind you, feeling excitement mount while you resist the urge to flip to a pov that will place him in view. The subgun’s particle chamber digs into your side, sharp pressure but not pain.

The bitch has resisted fulfilling her part in the drama. This series has been Retropurist for too long. Tin Jack should have fucked her when the script ordered him to, long months ago. But he didn’t. Because he wouldn’t do her, an iron chastity belt was strung across your loins, as well. You have been repressed too long. Your subscribers have been repressed too long. They deserve more. They have paid for more.

Your smile tightens. One of the fingers of your right hand fondles the weapon’s cool aluminum trigger. You know something no one else knows, not the scriptwriters, not even the execs at Feedcontrol. You know how the script will change. Soon, very soon.

If bitch and Tin Jack can change things on their whim, so can you. Your reasons are justified. You will improve things.

“
Positions!” Pehr called. “I’m getting script directions now. Action in thirty seconds.”

This is what he loved best, the show, directing the show he and Janus and Eyes performed for their Earth- and otherworld-bound subscribers. The wine warmed his insides. The atomic rocket not far beneath his feet rumbled with massive power. Billions of people were about to join their adventure; at least, their interactives would make them feel as if they were aboard.

Pehr was a man who had always sought being alone while on Earth, yet couldn’t stand the loneliness. He knew himself well enough to realize that was why he married Susahn—to end the loneliness and the chain of depressing, meaningless relationships it produced. Here, at least, he was in the company of worldfuls of admiring viewers while still safely distanced from them by the immensity of space. He liked Janus, and he cared so little for Eyes that the cyborg barely earned his attention.

With script rolling across his splice, Pehr was able to imagine himself a hero in the minds of those subscribers. Suddenly, he was no longer a worn-out man in a beautiful young body, always pretending to be strong and decisive while actually weak and ridden by the weight of emptiness and guilt he had never escaped since his youth. Here, now, he was strong and decisive; it was more than just an act.

“
Ten seconds,” he stated, voice even and authoritative. “Janus, sit up straight. Eyes, get your hands on your control arm; you’re a bombardier now, not an irritating little cyborg.” The timer in the upper left of his splice ran down.

“
Action!” he shouted.

“
What’s that ship fast approaching from Neptune, pilot?” he asked, pretending to watch a nonexistent viewscreen on the wall before them. The scriptwriters had made it easy—he saw the screen in his splice. Janus, pilot now, glanced at her LCD readout.

“
Sensors indicate a fighting vessel,” she said as if the words were completely her own.

Pehr nodded, aware that she was not simply chosen for curr subjective beauty, but also for exceptional agility in extemporaneous acting. Like him.

“
Shall I prod ’em a little?” Eyes prompted.

“
Hold off a moment, bombardier,” Pehr answered. He watched a line go unspoken by Eyes—“Aye, sir”—and his face grew warm. This was supposed to be his show. A man lives for few things, and Pehr lived for the show. He had abandoned the rest long ago.

“
Janus, try to hail them,” he said quickly to hide the quiet.

“
They won’t answer,” she declared.

He had expected that response since NKK and EarthCo used different comm systems, their BWs slightly out-of-tune to one another. Janus twisted her piloting yoke. “Still nothing,” she said.

“
That cinches it,” Pehr said, feigning anger. “We’re up against an enemy craft.” Activity aboard the
Bounty
heightened.

“
Prepare for engagement,” he said in a low, booming voice.

He watched Janus tilt her head and spin her chair with a half-scowl on her face.

“
Sir, I’m getting something now,” she said.

It was an unscripted line. But an intriguing one. Pehr felt a surge of excitement; he loved the show best when they departed from script. Moving beyond mere mouthing of words proved that he was alive, not a puppet.

“
What is it?” he asked.

“
Just numbers . . . no, wait, there’s more—an antique surrender code.” She frowned. “It doesn’t make any sense, but I’m sure it’s directed at us. On a laser carrier-beam.”

“
Shall I launch a torpedo?” Eyes asked, clearly anxious to return to script. “Those numbers are targeting coordinates, I’m sure. Laser-guided. They’re zeroing in on us. We’d better shoot before they do or we’re fried.”

“
Is the transmission coming from the enemy fighter?” Pehr asked Janus.

“
No,” she answered, shaking her head. “The bandwidth’s not NKK, and the source is far more distant. I’m trying to pin it down, but all this energy we’re putting out is blocking the traceback. Has an odd designation . . . TritonCo? Ever heard of it?”

“
Captain!” Eyes shouted. “They’ve fired a pack of torpedoes at us.” His voice was on the edge of cracking.

Pehr looked over at the cyborg, unsure whether he was trying to resurrect the script or simply drawing attention to his character. Either way, it added drama.

“
Ten of ’em,” Eyes added flatly. Pehr watched the line roll past, Ten of ’em, it read.

Suddenly he was faced with a difficult decision, a real one. What if a civilian vessel were in their path and they destroyed it? But what if they truly were facing an enemy? What if Janus were simply picking up some stray transmission, and his hesitations were destroying the scene, deflating the show, killing his popularity and hope for interesting retirement? Killing those aboard
Bounty
?

No, not a stray transmission, she had assured him: laser carried. It was possible they were about to face a real opponent, one that actually had a chance against them. Those flimsy fighters that jumped up from Phobos had been nothing more than scene props with sharp teeth, yet even they had scorched the hull.

“
Janus, you’re certain the surrender transmission isn’t coming from our enemy craft?”

“
Aye, sir,” she answered, cheeks glowing mottled pink.

“
Fire interceptors, then fire torpedo,” he ordered, thrusting out his arm and pointing directly into the camera. Several tiny rockets screamed along under the floors as they shot out of the
Bounty
’s holds. Then a brief thunder shook the cabin as a torpedo boomed from its bay.

“
I’m throwing forward the EM scoop, sir,” Janus said.

In battle, the fuel scoop was more a shield than an energy gathering device. It was able to collect most of the dangerous radiation from energy weapons and rechannel it through a heavy gauge duct that bled off part of the power to storage systems and radiated the rest through a resistor tube alongside the particle cannon. It stretched out from the rocket exhaust nozzle like an invisible bowl as wide as the hull of the ship, powered by the nuclear reactor in the rocket’s combustion chamber. The reactor also powered lifesupport, weapons, and the show’s weekly two-hour burst of feed.

Thrills ran through Pehr, a cool tingling softened by wine. They were experiencing a mystery as it unfolded, and their improvisations were not only far more interesting than the script, they were real. The subscribers would get their money’s worth during this series of episodes.

“
Torpedo launched,” Eyes declared. Pehr noticed that the back of the bombardier’s neck began to sweat. He also noticed the man’s fingers toying with his personal weapon. That seemed odd—what good would that do against a distant spacecraft?—but Pehr dismissed it; everything about Eyes was odd.

“
Torpedo intercepted, Captain,” Eyes said, only seconds after it had boomed free. His voice shook.

Pehr held his breath. What Eyes had reported wasn’t a line.

“
Damn,” Pehr growled, thinking fast. “Fire another.” Adrenaline trickled into his bloodstream as danger mounted. His nerves buzzed. Another metallic boom resounded through the craft. He felt slightly claustrophobic, protected from human-made weapons and the natural maw of vacuum only by a thin bubble of hull and an ephemeral shield.

“
Pehr,” Janus said, fingers dancing across her panel, “it wasn’t intercepted. It predetonated. If I’m reading data from the torpedo right, moments before detonation it sensed a BW shielded craft within knockout range.” She raised her eyes to Pehr’s.

“
It destroyed our enemy craft,” she said, clearly astonished. “Or maybe its own torpedoes.”

“
There may be more,” Pehr said, nodding as if wisely. They were running far from the script now. Far and free. Perhaps more enemy ships truly lie in wait in the dark jungle of space.

The episode had been scripted in such detail that he had assumed
Bounty
would be fighting nothing except 3VRD ghosts, but apparently NKK or its subsidiary, Neptunekaisha, had sent up interceptors. Strange for NKK to enter into direct conflict with EarthCo—the big corps had only fought through proxies for decades—but perhaps things were heating up a bit. Anyhow, he and Janus and the freak were now more than 10 AUs from EarthCo space. Maybe that would make NKK’s attack acceptable to EarthCo. Either way,
Bounty
would put up one hell of a fight; she still carried an impressive arsenal.

The excitement infused him with the odd sensation of life: If he died in combat, a hero to billions of subscribers, he would die glad and proud. He could even accept that that would mean he would never have a child to raise and with whom he could never unveil the wonders of the universe.

“
Continuously scan all external povs,” he ordered. “Janus, on what bandwidths was the bogey visible?”

“
No standard BW, sir. Ninety angstroms and higher. Nearly in the x-ray region of the spectrum.”

“
Get on it, then, both of you,” he said, delegating tasks to those who knew how.

He read a new line with scorn, but didn’t want to appear retro by not reading it. Anyway, without ads, the series would die before they returned home to their heroes’ welcome. The show was headed somewhere exciting. Action! Adventure! He would not let a bit of scripting get in the way of all that. He did the ad.

“
We’d better all chew a snapstick,” he said. That was enough of a plug, he thought, ignoring the rest of the idiot prattle he was supposed to spout. Adwriters and scriptwriters were clearly groups of far differing talent.

“
Aye, sir,” Eyes said greedily. He opened the custom Storpack at his side and withdrew one of the popcaine-laced sticks of gum, unwrapped it and tossed it into his mouth. Janus did the same, but distractedly. Knowing a barrage of cameras was following his every move, Pehr forced himself to fulfill his part of the ad.

“
Another one!” Janus cried, then turned her head and spat her half-chewed gum at the wall. “I’m tracking. . . . Detonation!”

Rising halfway from his seat, Pehr flicked to the forward pov of camera P1 to watch the action. A ball of light ballooned directly in front of the craft, just visible in the left-hand of the screen.

“
Bombardier, fire torpedo number three!” The ship rumbled again. “Begin cannonplay at will!”

Now the heavy particle cannon began firing a constant, luminescent stream at the invisible enemy ships. Pehr felt his brain begin to tingle and his thoughts race as the snapstick kicked in, magnifying his natural adrenaline.

Sound effects began thundering in accompaniment to the cannon. Pehr stifled a grin. Always, this—someone’s idea of how a silent cannon should sound—tickled his theatric mind.

In an instant they were swallowed in debris. A coaxial laser traced a path through the cloud that apparently had been a spacecraft and its destroyer. It glowed red in the energy of
Bounty
’s forward-blazing engine and violet where particle beams burned. As they passed through, the cloud opened like a blossom and the colored beams disappeared.