The Stars Like Gods Read online

  As he sat in one of the chairs, he told what he hoped was the only lie he’d need to tell today. “Advisor Weiss is a friend of mine. He filled me in about his conversation with you a few weeks ago regarding your lab outpost on SR86-Roku.”

  The man nodded solemnly. “My employees…I expect they’re victims of the Rasu now.”

  “I’m deeply sorry.”

  “I feel like there should have been something I could have done to prevent it. There were unusual aspects to the transaction, and I should have pushed harder for details. Perhaps I could have saved their lives.”

  “I understand what you mean, but it wasn’t your fault. Asking questions likely would have only gotten you into deeper trouble. But you can help us make sure no one else suffers the same fate.”

  “I can’t imagine how, but I want to try.”

  “Excellent. Talk to me about kyoseil and alisinium—specifically, their volatility when combined.”

  “It depends on the allotrope of alisinium you use. Two of the allotropes remain stable, but the synthesized compounds’ performance is disappointing. Three allotropes display varying levels of instability—one is prone to breaking down, and the other two are prone to exploding. The sixth allotrope shows a lot of promise when combined with kyoseil. Its performance is exceptional, and it is fairly stable during normal operation. Unfortunately, the potential electrical output when power flows exceed strict parameters is too high to be safe for personal use.

  “When Conceptual Research took over—when they bought the assets, anyway—we were working on developing safety controls we hoped would allow the compound to be used in commercial applications. As it stands today, though, I wouldn’t be comfortable recommending its use even in high-risk industrial settings.”

  During the trip here, the images Palmer had captured of the Rasu stronghold had run in a constant loop in Dashiel’s mind. The massive platforms and the immense Dyson lattice, all orbiting an M2 V red dwarf star, draining the celestial object of its power. They could in theory inflict a fair amount of temporary damage on the structures, but they lacked the weaponry to destroy them, and they weren’t going to be able to build it in ten days.

  He’d told Nika and Palmer it might take a million nuclear bombs to trigger the level of destruction they needed, but the entire Rasu stronghold orbited a celestial object that generated the energy of four hundred million nuclear bombs every second.

  All they had to do was get the Rasu to that energy, or that energy to the Rasu.

  He’d almost dismissed the great-in-theory, impossible-in-practice idea the instant he’d thought of it. But then he’d remembered how Jerry had been damaged by an unexpected solar flare—damaged badly enough that it had tumbled helplessly through a planet’s atmosphere and crashed on its surface. Badly enough that it had taken the Rasu months to repair itself.

  And maybe, just maybe, there was a nugget of possibility in there they could work with.

  “High electrical output, you say? Simon, are you aware of the ceraffin?”

  “Are you kidding? News of them has spread like wildfire across the Dominion. I expect by tonight, there won’t be a single person who hasn’t heard about them.”

  “Have you tried one out yet?”

  “Oh, gods, no. You?”

  “Briefly.” Dashiel steepled his hand at his chin. “I need you to create a ceraff with me. I also want to invite Bruno Galesh, a metals expert, and Tamara Holtzen, a power expert.” He wished he could include Forchelle as well, but the forensics team tasked with locating the man’s psyche backup had thus far come up empty.

  “I know Bruno, and Tamara by reputation. Are you certain it’s safe?”

  “Safe for your own psyche, you mean? I am. So long as you activate the defense barrier designed for use with the ceraffin, your processes, programming and memories are in no danger. Please, Simon. We must come up with a plan to destroy or at a minimum severely cripple the Rasu, and we are out of time. I have the beginnings of an idea, but I need the knowledge and expertise of all three of you to transform it into a workable plan. Right here, right now.”

  “Well, I did say I wanted to help. I’m in.”

  40

  * * *

  MIRAI ONE PAVILION

  Nika hurried back to the conference room Lance had commandeered after returning from the Rasu stronghold. Dashiel arrived thirty seconds later, and she met him at the door. “Now you’re the one who looks exhausted.”

  “I did spend the last two-and-a-half hours in a ceraff with three of the smartest people in the Dominion.” He tapped his temple. “Things are a bit overcooked up here at the moment.”

  “I’m sure. What did you learn?”

  He cupped her face and kissed her softly. “I might just have an almost-plan to save us.”

  “You’re astounding. Can we hear what it is?”

  “Yes, please.” Lance stood in the center of the room, arms crossed over his chest. The projection had been reactivated, and tiny Rasu behemoths swarmed around him.

  Dashiel chuckled under his breath. “First, the good news: we don’t need a million nuclear bombs, or even a hundred thousand, to destroy the stronghold.”

  “Why not?”

  He joined Lance at the center of the room and made a show of nudging the man off to the side. Then he reached up and wound his hand around the star at the center, though even at a micro-scale his hand stretched less than a third of the way around the celestial object. “Because you’re looking at one of the most powerful nuclear bombs in the universe right here.”

  “Um….” Lance frowned.

  Nika didn’t. “Of course! Not to mention the tremendous temperatures in the corona. But mostly the nuclear fusion in the core.”

  “Yes. And the Rasu are already gathering and amplifying the star’s power for us.”

  Lance’s frown deepened. “Great. How is this going to help us?”

  “We are going to use the Dyson lattice to create the galaxy’s biggest power surge.”

  “Still waiting on an explanation.”

  “Okay. First, open up the comm system so the rest of the Advisors can listen in, then tell them they should want to.”

  Nika waved Lance off, went to the control panel by the door and took care of it. “Done.”

  “Thanks. Here’s the short, somewhat understandable version: we send the Rasu the stasis chambers they are expecting, only we line them with a kyoseil-alisinium composite that, when exposed to the right dose of electricity, turns into a runaway energy fuse. We rig the chambers so we can set off those fuses on command and all at the same time.

  “In doing so, we cause an explosion powerful enough to temporarily blow up the platform containing the chambers. But more crucially, we create a massive electrical explosion.

  “Depending on how the platforms draw power from the Dyson nodes, the explosion should create a surge strong enough to send power flowing in the opposite direction, back to the Dyson nodes. Hopefully this will trigger an overload and an additional surge back toward the star, but it will almost certainly destroy the nodes and set off a cascading failure across the lattice. The destroyed nodes and their framework will quickly fall into the star’s corona.”

  Nika smiled. “I am a fan of blowing up the platform where they’re conducting the experiments on our people. If nothing else, it’ll end the suffering of any Asterions who are still alive in there, and it should also destroy any data they’ve gathered from their experiments.”

  Lance gestured dismissively toward Dashiel. “I can think of at least twenty-one problems with your plan.”

  “I’m not surprised. What’s the first one?”

  “For starters, Nika here made us wake up everybody who was in the stasis pods. The Rasu will notice if the ones we send are empty, so who do we send?”

  “We’ll figure it out later.”

  Nika laid a hand on Dashiel’s arm. “I won’t send a single additional person to that place—not to get tortured, and not to die.”

/>   “I know. We’ll figure something out.”

  She didn’t argue, not for now. But in the back of her mind, she started figuring it out for herself.

  Lance didn’t look mollified. “This is great in theory. But if we don’t succeed in destroying the rest of the platforms, most of the ships and, more importantly for our slightly longer-term survival, the communications satellites, all we’ll have really done is piss them off.”

  “If we take out the Dyson lattice, we’ll deprive the Rasu of their power source for a while, which will slow them down. But I agree—we need to take out everything else in the stellar system, too.”

  “And you have a plan to do this?”

  “I have a sketch of a plan. The details will fall disproportionately to you.”

  Lance made a circular motion with one hand, indicating for Dashiel to keep talking.

  “Jerry said half of the platforms were relay hubs attached to batteries, right?”

  Nika nodded. “Right. The Dyson lattice nodes transmit the power to the relay hubs, where it’s stored and distributed as needed.”

  “That’s good.”

  They both stared at Dashiel, waiting to be enlightened on why it was good.

  “I should explain. Relay hubs act as both receivers and transmitters, which means they have the hardware and programming needed to do either job.”

  Now he was straying slightly closer to one of her skill sets. “Jerry’s been surprisingly forthcoming, but we understand nothing about Rasu programming, and I doubt we can get a full primer out of him.”

  “We don’t need to. It only matters that the programming and switches are there. Palmer, I assume you spent the time I was gone sifting through the Rasu material research I left you. If we get you the kyoseil and alisinium, can you build bombs strong enough to break through the hulls of the battery platforms?”

  “Yes. But like you said, the breach will be temporary. If the rest of the platform remains intact, very temporary.”

  “I know, but like the stasis chambers, these will primarily be electricity bombs. The hole only needs to exist long enough to allow an electrical surge through to the interior, where it can set off its own chain reaction within the battery. With luck, one strong enough to flip the receiver to a transmitter and overload the connected Dyson nodes.”

  Lance opened his mouth to retort…then closed it. An intrigued expression crept onto his visage. Nika didn’t know the man particularly well, but she’d hazard a guess that he had just started to buy into this crazy plan.

  “We’ll need a lot of bombs. Over five thousand if we want to take out all the batteries.”

  Nika interjected. “We have to destroy all the batteries, because all the batteries are Rasu.”

  “Damn, that’s still weird.”

  “It is.”

  “We have enough ships to carry the payload, barely, but it will take us weeks, maybe a month, to build enough Taiyok stealth modules, outfit all the ships with them and modify their systems to use it. And we have ten days.”

  Nika pursed her lips. “Noted, but it’s a detail problem, so let’s table it for now. As Dashiel said earlier, we’ll figure something out.”

  “Okay, we’ll table it, but not for long. In the most hypothetical of ways, this takes care of the lab, the batteries, and the Dyson lattice. What about the rest of the platforms?”

  Dashiel wandered purposefully through the projection. “We need to find a way to ensure they’re set to power receiving mode. If they are, they’ll get overloaded same as the Dyson nodes.”

  She knew something about this. “Jerry said the platform containing the lab acts as a sort of command center. It makes sense, given their paranoid nature: the dominant Rasu intelligence will be centered there. It’s running experiments to figure out how to control the rest. It stands to reason it will keep as much control as possible as physically close as possible. Perhaps the command center has a mechanism to order all the other platforms into receiving mode, or disable safety protocols, or something along those lines.”

  She sighed. “But even so, this doesn’t help us. Again, we don’t understand their programming.”

  Dashiel beamed at her, which seemed rather odd at this particular moment. “Mr. Eshett, have you been listening in?”

  Parc’s voice came over the speaker. “You know it.”

  “Why don’t you tell Nika and Commander Palmer what you told me while I was on my way back here?”

  “With pleasure. I’ve been thinking about those light patterns we observed in your simex memory, Nika. I said it reflected their language, but I think it would be more accurate to say it reflected their programming language—their programming syntax.”

  “But it was only a couple of seconds’ worth of programming. You can’t possibly extract enough information from it to understand the way they program.”

  “Nika, I’m hurt you think so little of me—”

  “I don’t—”

  “I’m kidding. But you have to admit, I am exceptional at what I do. And now I can pool those mad skills with other people’s mad skills, one thing leads to another and….”

  “You have a framework of the Rasu programming language.”

  “By the end of the day, yep.”

  She laughed. “Next time I see you, Parc, I’ll give you that bow you asked for back at The Chalet. You deserve it.”

  “Yes!”

  Lance raised a hand. “Would it be rude of me to wonder aloud how this gets us any closer to blowing up the rest of the platforms?”

  Dashiel shook his head. “Not rude. But here’s the thing: we’ve been scanning Jerry since it got here, and between the scans and the sample it provided, we’re actually starting to learn some useful information about how the Rasu function. Notably, though they can alter themselves to serve virtually any function, it’s not only their outward shape that changes when they do.

  “They are physical creatures, not metaphysical ones, so they have to take on the precise form of what they need: circuits, amplifiers, data storage drives, heat generators, engines, weapons, the list goes on. They don’t merely mimic the functionality of a given machine—they become it.”

  “Great. What does that mean?”

  “Ones and zeroes. On and off, and the superpositions in between. When they’re machines—say, power distribution hubs—it means they can be sliced. And if Parc and his ceraff come through on the programming, they can be diverged.”

  Nika gasped aloud. “Oh, my gods. You want someone to infiltrate the central command platform and disable the safety protocols.”

  “Damn, Ridani. We’ll make a half-decent military strategist out of you yet.”

  Dashiel shrugged, but she could tell he was pleased with himself. “Thanks, but I’ve already got a full-time job I’d like to get back to someday.”

  Nika dropped her chin to her chest. A peaceful certainty settled over her, and it was powerful. She thought perhaps she could draw strength from it, through to the end.

  She looked up and smiled. “Well, that decides it. I’ll be occupying the stasis pods.”

  Dashiel spun toward her. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ll send myself to the central command platform. Eight thousand copies of myself.”

  “No, there’s no reason for you to go. We’ll send blanks—unawakened, empty bodies.”

  “There’s every reason for me to go. First and most importantly, you just admitted we need someone to infiltrate the platform. I challenge you to name a single person more qualified to do so than me.”

  “Parc will have a better grasp of the prog—”

  “We are not sending Parc back into that place.”

  Dashiel held up both hands in surrender. “No, you’re right.”

  “Besides, he’d never survive to reach wherever we need to reach.”

  His face fell. “Neither will you.”

  “Not one of me, no. But this is where it gets interesting. I won’t be alone. Eight thousand copies
of me, each one possessing my skills, my knowledge and my memories. Each one possessing a thorough understanding of our plan and, here’s the kicker: each one joined together with me in a ceraff.”

  “A Nika-ceraff! I love it!”

  Dashiel scowled up at the speaker in the ceiling. “I don’t.” He crossed the distance between them and took her hands in his. “Do you understand that all eight thousand copies of you will die?”

  “Yes. And then I’ll wake up on a cot somewhere, probably in this very building, with their memories of what happened on the platform. Better too many memories than none at all, right?”

  “Nika—”

  “And if I don’t take on this mission, then this me will shortly be dead, too, along with every other Asterion. Dashiel, I want to do this.”

  A hesitant throat cleared off to their left, where Lance stood looking vaguely sheepish. “I hate to interrupt—I genuinely do. Ridani, you’ve done incredible work today, coming up with all this. It’s insane, it’s brilliant, and it might even be so close to doable.

  “But even if everything you’ve laid out works, the only Rasu you’ve permanently destroyed is the Dyson lattice. The platforms are in pieces, but as you’ve said, they won’t stay in pieces for long. Then there’s still the ships and the satellites.” His mouth drew into a thin line. “Tell me you’ve got one last magic trick up your sleeve.”

  Dashiel tried to smile, but didn’t quite get there, and his gaze never left her. “We estimate that at any given moment, the Dyson lattice is capturing approximately twenty percent of the star’s energy output. What do you think is going to happen when every node overloads and sends all that energy streaming back where it came from?”

  41

  * * *

  MIRAI JUSTICE CENTER

  The Justice Advisors called the ceremony to order, and Adlai stepped to the front of the room and launched into a prepared speech.

  He began by listing highlights of Spencer Nimoet’s Justice career; Nika didn’t know about most of them, but it made for an impressive list. His heroic actions during the current crisis followed, all true. Spencer’s relationship with NOIR didn’t specifically come up, instead hovering just beneath the surface of many of the stories told, but it was fine. Everyone who mattered knew.