Blindsight

“I think there’s someone new in there now. Bunch of submodules wired together and woke up somehow, I don’t know. But whatever’s in charge, I think it’s just panicking.”

Stuttering brightness on all sides. The spinal lightstrips flickered and finally held steady, at half their usual brightness.

Theseus coughed static and spoke: “ConSensus is offline. Reac—”

The voice faded.

ConSensus, I remembered as Bates turned to head back upstream.

“I saw something,” I said. “Before ConSensus went out.”

“Yeah.”

“Was that—”

She paused at the hatch. “Yeah.”

I’d seen scramblers. Hundreds of them, sailing naked through the void, their arms spread wide.

Some of their arms, anyway. “They were carrying—”

Bates nodded. “Weapons.” Her eyes flickered to some unseen distance for a moment. “First wave headed for the front end. Blister and forward lock, I think. Second wave’s aft.” She shook her head. “Huh. I would have done it the other way around.”

“How far?”

“Far?” Bates smiled faintly. “They’re already on the hull, Siri. We’re engaging.”

“What do I do? What do I do?”

Her eyes stared past me, and widened. She opened her mouth.

A hand clamped on my shoulder from behind and spun me around.

Sarasti. His dead eyes stared from a skull split like a spiked melon. Globules of coagulating blood clung to his hair and skin like engorged ticks.

“Go with him,” Bates said.

Sarasti grunted and clicked. There were no words.

“What—” I began.

“Now. That’s an order.” Bates turned back to the hatch. “We’ll cover you.”

The shuttle. “You too.”

“No.”

“Why not? They can fight better without you, you said that yourself! What’s the point?”

“Can’t leave yourself a back door, Keeton. Defeats the whole purpose.” She allowed herself a small, sad smile. “They’ve breached. Go.”

She was gone, fresh alarms rising in her wake. Far towards the bow I heard the crinkle of emergency bulkheads snapping shut.

Sarasti’s undead carcass gurgled and pushed me down the spine. Four more grunts slid smoothly past and took up position behind us. I looked over my shoulder in time to see the vampire pull the handpad from the wall. But it wasn’t Sarasti at all, of course. It was the Captain — whatever was left of the Captain, this far into the fight — commandeering a peripheral interface for its own use. The optical port sprouted conspicuously from the back of Sarasti’s neck, where the cable used to go in; I remembered the drone’s maxillipeds, chewing.

The sound of weapons fire and ricochets rose behind us.

The corpse typed one-handed as we moved. I wondered briefly why it just didn’t talk before my gaze flickered back to the spike in his brain: Sarasti’s speech centers must be mush.

“Why did you kill him?” I said. A whole new alarm started up, way back in the drum. A sudden breeze tugged me backward for a moment, dissipated in the next second with a distant clang.

The corpse held out the handpad, configured for keys and a text display: Seizng. Cldnt cntrl.

We were at the shuttle locks. Robot soldiers let us pass, their attention elsewhere.

U go, the Captain said.

Someone screamed in the distance. Way off up the spine, the drum hatch slammed shut; I turned and saw a pair of distant grunts welding the seal. They seemed to move faster now than they ever had before. Maybe it was only my imagination.

The starboard shuttle lock slid back. Charybdis’ interior lights winked on, spilling brightness into the passageway; the spine’s emergency lighting seemed even dimmer in contrast. I peered through the opening. There was almost no cabin space left — just a single open coffin jammed between coolant and fuel tanks and massive retrofitted shockpads. Charybdis had been refitted for high-G and long distance.

And me.

Sarasti’s corpse urged me on from behind. I turned and faced it.

“Was it ever him?” I asked.

Go.

“Tell me. Did he ever speak for himself? Did he decide anything on his own? Were we ever following his orders, or was it just you all along?”

Sarasti’s undead eyes stared glassy and uncomprehending. His fingers jerked on the handpad.

U dislke ordrs frm mchnes. Happier ths way.

I let it strap me in and close the lid. I lay there in the dark, feeling my body lurch and sway as the shuttle slid into its launch slot. I withstood the sudden silence as the docking clamps let go, the jerk of acceleration that spat me hard into the vacuum, the ongoing thrust that pushed against my chest like a soft mountain. Around me the shuttle trembled in the throes of a burn that far exceeded its normative specs.

My inlays came back online. Suddenly I could see outside if I wanted. I could see what was happening behind me.

I chose not to, deliberately and fervently, and looked anyway.