Merchants in Freedom Read online

  Nodding, Volkov replied, “Light-speed lag would be murder on such a network even within a solar system, but you’d have to come up with some way to overcome it if you wanted an interstellar, hell, a galactic structure.” He looked up at the screen, and added, “Implantation techniques?”

  “Not quite,” she replied. “There’s more to it than that. This was a manner by which you could introduce someone gradually to the network, used primarily in the early stages of its development. The idea was to expose someone to the concept, presumably in the hope that they would ultimately connect themselves permanently into the link. It became obsolete once the implants were developed.”

  “The internet in the manner that the first cyberpunk authors perceived it,” Volkov replied. “Amazing.” He paused, then turned to her, saying, “Just why are you looking this over? Do you think that someone down there might not be permanently linked to the network, that there might be a rulership caste of some sort down there after all? That’s horrifying.”

  “No, I doubt that very much,” she said. “Once you start on this road, there’s no turning back from it. You keep pressing on, regardless of anything else, until you have the entire population linked into the systems. That’s only logical. I had something else in mind. That’s why I asked you to come.”

  “I was beginning to wonder,” the engineer said. He looked over the systems, then said, “Is this how we’re going to take command of, what did you call it, Guardian? I think we can put something like this together fairly quickly.”

  “I’m sure we can. It’s using components that we already have in our stores inventory. I uploaded the full list and added it to the database. As I said, it’s an incredibly advanced piece of software.”

  “It was able to come up with all of this so quickly?”

  With a faint smile, she replied, “I think that was a part of it. There’s something of the personality of the creators buried in this software. Oh, that’s inevitable with any creative work, even computer programming, but this is an order of magnitude greater. It adapts to the environment it finds itself in.” At Volkov’s expression, she added, “Don’t worry, Vik, it can’t infiltrate the ship. I made sure of that before we started. I’m using the shuttle’s database, and this is all hard-linked to this console, all the other connections disabled.”

  “If the systems are that creative…”

  “This is a memory, a warning, and perhaps a plea for help. Maybe they hoped that it would be found by one of those sleeper ships, maybe they figured that someone would stumble across it one day and seek to repair the damage that they did to themselves.” She paused, then added, “You realize, I hope, that the sort of network we’re talking about amounts to immortality. Or as close as anyone might ever realistically hope to get.”

  “Immortality?” He frowned, then said, “We’re getting pretty deep into metaphysics now, aren’t we? I’m nowhere near drunk enough to talk about anything like that right now, and we’ve got…” He paused, then said, “They’re still down there, part of the network? This is what we are fighting?”

  “Elements of it, perhaps,” she replied. “I don’t know. It’s something we can’t rule out. Maybe we are coming as liberators, liberators of ghosts, shadows of what once was.” She sighed, reached for a cup of coffee, then added, “It’s way above my pay grade, and no matter the circumstances, we’ve still got a job to do, and I’m going to need this installed on Shuttle Nine if we’re going to do it. The software’s all on board already.”

  “How are you going to operate this?” Volkov asked. “I don’t see any sort of control interface. Just the direct…” He paused, recoiled from the monitor, and said, “You’re going to link yourself into this nightmare, aren’t you? That’s your big plan. You’ll tie yourself into the computer systems, and go swimming around in the network yourself. It can’t work.”

  “I’m pretty sure that it can.”

  “Pretty sure? Once you go in, you won’t be able to get out.”

  “There are safeguards built into the system that should give me a chance of pulling this off and getting out again in one piece.”

  “You have got to be kidding. If you go in, you aren’t coming out. This isn’t just a question of a suicide mission. Are you seriously trying to tell me that you can go up against the collective consciousness of millions of beings and expect to win? That’s one monumental ego you’ve got there, Ronnie.”

  She shook her head, and said, “I won’t be alone, Vik.”

  “What, you’re counting on the assistance of an army of cybernetic ghosts still traumatized from the knowledge that they accidentally destroyed their world, their civilization, their very race? That is absurd beyond all measure. If this is the only way that we can win…”

  “It is,” she replied. “There’s no other way to do it. This is the only possible chance we have to defeat the Tyrants and save humanity. I know how melodramatic that sounds, but it happens to be the truth. Unless you’ve got another idea somewhere, something none of us have thought of.”

  “Of course not, but there’s got to be a better option than this.”

  “I don’t see one.”

  “Couldn’t we introduce some sort of virus right into the software, perhaps using a simulated consciousness?”

  “We don’t even have the knowledge to begin to put together something with that level of complexity, not even if I had the full resources of Earth at my back to build it and years of research time to work on it. I certainly can’t do it under these conditions. Turing himself couldn’t.”

  “Then maybe we flood the system with data, like we did…”

  “Last time we were overwhelming a single ship, and we damn near failed to accomplish that. You’re talking about bringing down a planetary-scale server. Can you imagine just how many sensor inputs it must have working at any one time? We don’t even have anywhere near the bandwidth to attempt it, and even if we did, doing it once means they’ll know we might try it and will have come up with a way to block it.” She paused, smiled, then asked, “Next?”

  “You aren’t going to listen to reason, are you. Do you realize even for a minute just how insane this sounds? I can’t believe Commander Winter approved it.” She looked down, and he pressed, “He didn’t, did he. You spun some complicated web of technobabble about how you were going to access the network, and you never got around to telling him that you planned to make use of a direct brain interface.”

  “I need your help, Vik.”

  “You need help, all right, but we don’t have a qualified psychiatrist on board. This is turning into an obsession, Ronnie, and I can’t help but wonder if you haven’t got a little too close to this problem for you to look at it from any sort of an objective standpoint. You want this. You want this too much.”

  “Fine, I’ll admit that. I’ll admit that I have other motives. You see what the Tyrants are doing as a horror. I see it as the future, but one that we’re going to have to approach from a standpoint of caution and control. What those aliens did yesterday is no different from what we’re going to do tomorrow. The technological developments of the last few centuries all point directly at it. We need to beat the Tyrants, then get all of this home and start working on it.”

  “Until one day we are all offered the happy opportunity to throw away our individuality ourselves.”

  “Until one day we reach for the stars, truly reach for the stars, in a manner that nobody could ever dream of,” she replied. “All of this is out there, waiting for us. The first wave could begin in this generation. The key to the future. It’s right here.”

  “You are going to tell the Commander about this, right now.”

  “He won’t understand…”

  “Oh, I think he’s going to understand very, very well about this decision. And it is his to make, not yours. This isn’t a technical matter. Not now. It’s an ethical one, and a command decision. The future of humanity doesn’t get to rest on the shoulders of one hacker with stars in her ey
es. Either you tell him, or I will. And you don’t want me to be the one to present this to him. If he approves, I’ll help you. Otherwise, I’ll stop you. One way or another. Then we’ll be right back where we started.” He paused, then said, “You know I’m right. Somewhere deep down.”

  “No, I don’t,” she replied. “We’re wasting time.” She sighed, rose to her feet, and said, “Start building the interface. I’ll talk to the Commander. Let’s see what he says. But if he doesn’t make the right decision….”

  “He will,” the engineer replied. “Whether you agree with it or not, he will.”

  Chapter 18

  “Come in, Joe,” Winter said, as his old friend stood at the threshold for his cabin. “Get yourself a drink and pull up a chair.”

  “I came as soon as I got the message,” Morgan replied, serving himself a cup of foul-smelling coffee and sitting opposite his friend. “Why didn’t you list it as a priority? I’d have been down here in a couple of minutes.”

  “That would have shown on the system, and current circumstances suggest that might not be the best idea,” he replied, draining the last of his drink. “What do you think of Mendoza’s plan?”

  “Risky, but practical. I think we’ve got a chance of getting into position to make the attempt, but in all honesty, I think the odds of us getting out again in one piece are remote at best. Hell, that’s probably being optimistic. That doesn’t bother me, though. We’ve beaten the odds already so often that we’re living on borrowed time, and given the alternative…”

  “There’s more to it than that. More than was covered at the briefing. More than I knew at the time. Mendoza just came up here with a little admission, one that I’m pretty sure someone forced her into.” He paused, looked up at his friend, and said, “She’s going to have to hook herself into the network to make her plan work. Apparently, the only way to trigger Guardian is to set up some sort of neural linkage, and that’s going to require her personal presence in the system to do it.”

  “That’s insane,” Morgan replied, his eyes widening. “What makes her think that she won’t simply be sucked into the system herself. She could lose all sense of identity in the first few seconds. Worst of all, she might end up working for the enemy. I suppose we could do something about that…”

  “I was thinking about having someone with a pistol trained on her, ready to shoot if anything even looks as though its going wrong,” Winter replied. “Specialist Singh, probably. He’d already volunteered for the mission, and as soon as she establishes the link, he won’t be needed any more.”

  “You aren’t seriously suggesting that we go through with this.”

  Winter paused, sighed, then said, “In a sane world, of course not, but it’s increasingly obvious that we’re not living in that world, not anymore. Maybe we never were. This plan is insane. It’s probably doomed to failure, and the best outcome I can see is that we end up diving into the planet and delivering our kinetic warhead, but I’m still going ahead with the plan, just as we discussed at the meeting.”

  “You’re as crazy as she is,” he replied. “We can’t possibly even think about making the attempt under those circumstances.”

  “If you are worried about the odds, Mendoza is quite content with the idea that she probably isn’t coming back, and you said yourself not a moment ago that you accepted that this was probably a one-way trip. None of us are likely to come home from this one…”

  “That’s not the point,” he replied. “I don’t mind taking a risk if there’s even the potential chance of a payoff, but if we attempt this, the mission is doomed before it even starts.” He paused, then added, “But you never expected it to succeed at all, did you.”

  “No,” he replied. “All of this improvised equipment, planning to interface with an eons-old computer system, all of this is theater, Joe. I’m just glad that nobody else has worked it out.” He smiled, then added, “Though I suppose others might, and they’re just keeping it to themselves. They’re a good crew. Smart. They know what the real score is, as well as the rest of us.”

  “We’re going to ram the planet. Take that last resort.”

  Nodding, Winter said, “That has been my intention ever since we saw that wormhole. We’re going to make the attempt, and we’re going to act as though we can get those missiles into the sky, but when we fail, and we both know that we’re going to fail, it will put us in a perfect position for a ram, and make the biggest fireball that dead world has seen in thousands of years.” He took a deep breath, and added, “Why do you think we stripped down to a skeleton crew. Oh, I’m concerned about security, about sabotage, don’t get me wrong, but there’s a hell of a lot more too it than that. If we’re going down, then there is no sense at all in taking everyone on board with us.”

  “Just to get this out of the way, I’m still coming along for the ride,” Morgan said. “You’d be lost without me. I take it you were hoping that Bianchi would take the hint.”

  “I could order her to stay behind, but I’m not going to do it. Most of the crew seem happy with how the split went. No sense upsetting that particular apple cart at this stage. Though Commander Galloway did offer to join us.” Shaking his head, he continued, “I never thought of that for a minute. If this goes wrong, if we have to think of something else, then I need somebody who has been involved in this right from the start in the driver’s seat.”

  “When she sends that transmission, all hell’s going to break loose, you know,” Winter said. “If we succeed, will it be…”

  “At best, the people have been lied to and betrayed for decades,” Winter said. “They deserve the truth. They need it, even if they don’t know it.”

  “You’ll bring down the government. That’s pretty much guaranteed. Though I doubt very much that anyone will particularly find themselves weeping for the loss.” He grinned, then added, “Some good will probably come of it, anyway. One last little parting gift for everyone before we move on to the next world.” He paused, then said, “There’s something else, isn’t there.”

  “Let’s just say that there’s a reason I’m waiting three hours before we begin our attack, after the rest of the fleet has left.”

  “You think someone’s going to defy orders?”

  “I think that one of the other ships in the fleet has been suborned, and will head to the homeworld of the Tyrants under conventional warp drive to warn them about what we’re planning. The whole deal, including the attempt to hack into the ancient network. In any case, I damned well hope so. It’s a major part of the battle plan.”

  “Wheels within wheels,” Morgan said. “You’ve really gone into detail on this one. I hadn’t thought of most of those possibilities. Though all of this seems like it’s just a little too clever to actually work in practice. You’d be laughed out of Staff College with a presentation like this.”

  “True, but as long as it works, I don’t care, and it isn’t as though I’m likely to be asked to show how I’ve made it work. There isn’t going to be a Board of Inquiry, and there isn’t going to be anyone to second-guess what we do here. I’ve had to make a choice, and I’ve made it.”

  “Why did you want to see me, then?”

  “Two reasons, really. The first is that in the event that something happens to me, that I drop dead on my way up to the bridge before the battle, I need someone who knows the whole battle plan who I trust to follow it through. That’s you, whether you or Bianchi like it or not. I’ve already written the orders that put you in command in the event of my death. The second reason is that, maybe, I need someone to look at my workings.”

  “You want some assurance that your plan is actually going to work?”

  “Let’s say that I want someone to tell me that I’m not out of my mind, that I haven’t gone insane, that I’m not about to bet the entire future of the human race on the longest of possible long shots.”

  “I don’t think I can tell you that, because as far as I can work out, that’s precisely what you are doin
g, but I also can’t provide you with any sort of credible alternative. There isn’t one. We’re out here, on the edge of space, and we’re on our own. Effectively, if not actually. There’s no support, no relief, no chain of command. Three dozen people, the crew of this ship, are going to decide whether we live or die. You get to decide that, pretty much.”

  “I guess I do,” he replied. “There are just so many damned variables, Joe. Far too many for me to even begin to calculate the odds of success. If we make one mistake, one solitary mistake, then it’s all over. If their defenses are stronger than we thought, then the same thing happens, and there’s something that still bothers me about all of this.”

  “You’re worried that we’re doing exactly what the Tyrants want us to do. That we’re still dancing to their tune, whatever it is.”

  “That’s it exactly,” he replied. “I can’t quite get past that one problem. They’ve tricked us before. That’s their specialty. They knew this system was important, but they didn’t throw enough here to stop us.”

  “Maybe the aliens are still around. Maybe we’re getting help we don’t know about. Not that it particularly matters at this stage.” Placing his hand on his old friend’s arm, he said, “We’ve been through a lot together over the years. Nothing that quite compares with this, I know, but still, we’ve seen a lot of action, wandered all over this part of the galaxy for a long time. Trust me when I tell you that I think you’re doing everything that can possibly be done. There’s no more you can do than that. It’s just as you said. Too many variables. Too many elements to the plan that we can’t even begin to calculate or plan for. And it’s going to be that way until this is over.”

  “Nothing like this has ever happened before,” Winter said. “The whole fate of the human race resting on a single battle, a single moment. And if we succeed, there’s a reasonable chance that nobody will ever know. There’ll be some unexplained deaths back home, but I suspect that there will be more than enough politicians still breathing to cover them up, and the mystery of the Tyrants will just be another unsolved puzzle for the conspiracy theorists to play with, until the end of time.”