Anja floated in a sea of endless darkness, a sunless black like the depths of hyperspace. She had lost track of how long it had been since she entered. Her body seemed to melt away as she lay immobile, her consciousness baring its skin to the dark and floating free.
A searing line of light stabbed into her eyes, making her wince and jarring her out of her reverie. She sat up slowly as the autodoc’s cover pulled back with a deep whirring noise. After a few seconds of painful negotiation between her retinas and the medical office’s cold white light, she was able to see enough to leave the examination table and slip on the thin robe laid beside the doc.
After dressing she left the room and went to the adjoining meeting area where Jesri was waiting. On the room’s display were David and Helene, still perusing the data feed from the exam. Upon seeing her come in Helene looked up and smiled warmly.
“Anja, good timing,” she said. “We were just finishing a preliminary read-through of your exam results.”
Anja padded barefoot to a chair, smiling at Jesri before she sat down and shifted until comfortable. The chairs were newly ordered from Xim Len’s fabrication workshop, modeled after the long-decayed original station furniture. They gave off a familiar scent of offgassing foam and plastic that filled her head with thoughts of her childhood - their creche had been finished only months before the Tam siblings themselves and the whole place had smelled faintly of new synthetics until she was fifteen.
“Anything jump out at you?”, she asked neutrally.
Helene nodded. “Quite a few things, yes,” she said, fiddling with a console outside the display’s view. “I think we should start by saying that you’re in no immediate danger. We were able to deactivate the link’s external communications while retaining all of the internal stabilization functions. Eleanor’s update hasn’t affected them yet.”
Anja narrowed her eyes at Helene’s choice of phrasing. “Yet?”, she inquired pointedly.
“It’s a complicated patch,” Helene explained, “but with the facilities here and the benefit of some extra time we’ve been able to improve on the analysis that David Zeta-Two performed shortly after it was loaded to your link.” Helene converted half of the screen into a data display showing a network diagram.
“Here is the initial impact of Eleanor’s modifications, as shown by Zeta-Two’s scan on Nicnevin,” she explained, pointing at a small area of the diagram shaded in blood-red. “Zeta-Two’s analysis at the time was correct - the impact was minimal and posed no functional issues. Unfortunately, there was no way for him to know the full extent of Eleanor’s alterations from that single data point.” She toggled her console and the red patch suddenly spidered outward to color adjacent areas.
“This,” Helene said grimly, “is the scan performed just now.”
Anja stood and walked closer to the display. She couldn’t tell precisely what was affected from the cryptic labels on the diagram, but the implication was not encouraging. “It’s spreading?”, she asked.
“It was spreading,” David broke in. “But we believe we’ve been able to halt its progress.” He minimized the diagram so that his face reappeared on the screen, his expression serious but not dire.
“Our thought is that Eleanor ran into a problem when trying to modify her own firmware, namely that the people who designed your links were absolute geniuses,” he said with a shake of his head. “I had assumed the Valkyrie program was using experimental technology, but the degree of neuromechanical integration they achieved is unbelievable - even when considering that your brains were designed for compatibility. They compensated for the inherent plasticity of organic neural networks by making the link constantly redesign itself to better interface with your changing neural architecture.”
“This would have posed a problem for Eleanor,” he continued, “because it makes the functions of the link impossible to attack via conventional means. Her solution was unfortunately almost as brilliant as the original design - she attacked the relatively static code that governed the rewrite process.”
Anja quirked an eyebrow at the display, her face studiously calm despite the chill she felt at his words. “That sounds very similar to cancer,” she observed. From the corner of her eye, she saw Jesri’s posture stiffen.
David nodded. “Not dissimilar. Fortunately, like cancer, it sounds much worse than it is and lends itself to easy treatment. The patch uses the behavior of the rewrite mechanism to slowly alter the functions of linked code segments. Unlike a biological system that is constantly ‘updating’, however, your firmware only reconfigures itself when it is in active use. This is why you experienced effects when you used the link’s communication protocols, since that is where the patch is currently contained.”
“The most important distinction, however, is that we can deactivate the affected system with no ill effects. Your external communication functions are currently disabled and the affected code blocks are dormant. This means no rewrites are occurring and no new blocks are being affected,” David concluded with an encouraging smile.
Jesri let out a weighty sigh of relief. “That’s great news,” she said.
“Great news for Anja,” David sighed, “but not great for our overall efforts against the Gestalt. We had hoped that a modified version of Eleanor’s patch would allow broad-scale data layer attacks against the Gestalt using our allies still in its network. Knowing what we now know about how it operates, I can’t recommend that course of action.”
“All of that is of course secondary to Anja’s good health,” Helene said reproachfully, shooting David an annoyed look. “We still have the rest of the data from the scan to scrub through. Hopefully it yields the key to removing the altered code from Anja’s system entirely. Until that time, you must not reactivate your external communication functions.”
Helene’s face turned serious. “I cannot emphasize this enough,” she warned. “Any additional use of that module risks spreading the code to other modules. If it moves to a critical module we can’t shut down, it will inevitably spread to the whole link. In the best case you will experience the same stability issues that you observed in Eleanor. At worst it could leave you essentially brain-dead.”
“Got it,” Anja confirmed with a shudder. “No link chatter.”
Jesri punched her lightly in the shoulder. “You’ll get used to it. My link was broken for a thousand years before we found the doc on the Grand Design.”
“Hopefully we find a fix before that long,” Anja grimaced. “Not having the link is only an inconvenience, but it remains inconvenient.”
“We’ll keep looking,” Helene promised. “You can count on David to pick this apart until we understand every subroutine, even if he’ll only focus on it because it’s strategically useful.” David grinned at her and shrugged, receiving a withering look in response.
Anja stood and inclined her head to both of them, smiling at the display. “Whatever your reasons may ultimately be, thank you for fixing me up,” she said. “If there’s anything you need from me to assist your research, just let me know.”
“We will,” promised David, a little too enthusiastically.
Helene glanced at him. “Anything within reason,” she added. “We’ll leave you two to your day while we review the full dataset. I don’t want to take up too much of your time until we have more concrete facts.”
“Thanks again!”, Jesri called, waving as the display winked off.
Anja slumped back into her chair, feeling suddenly fatigued. “Ugh,” she complained.
“You good?”, Jesri asked.
Anja raised an eyebrow at her sister. “Are you asking how I’m handling today’s threat to my health and well-being?”, she replied puckishly. “Fairly sure this is the least serious problem on our plate right now. If Ellie’s patch wants to kill me it’s going to have to get in line behind the Gestalt, the Kita-”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jesri replied, waving her off. “Big tough Anja.” She folded her hands and gave Anja a piercing look. “Be serious, though. Are you good?”
“Sister,” Anja replied irritatedly, “everything is fine. David said that it should be contained and they will undoubtedly force me in for scans every week-”
Jesri stood up sharply, cutting her off. “Major Tam,” she said coldly, “deliver a psychological self-assessment.”
A flare of anger burst momentarily behind Anja’s eyes as she shot to her feet. The familiar wording overturned dusty memories of their childhood training; a shattered girl with bloody hands still wracked with horror after enduring the phantasmagoria of the scenario simulator. She remembered the chill stares from a silent line of white-coated observers waiting to see if they had at long last reached the limits of their creation’s ability and will. The white coats had done their work well, though, and even before her pang of rage had begun to fade she found herself rummaging through the corners of her own mind with a cool detachment.
Was Jesri right? Was she overlooking something? She drew on her training, stepping out of her subjective view and turning the question over in her head while several seconds ticked by in silence. By the time she had answered the question to her satisfaction Jesri was looking at her worriedly, clearly regretting forcing the issue.
“Madam Examiner,” Anja said bitingly. “I am ready to proceed.”
“Anja, it’s fine,” Jesri said, wincing at her sister’s tone. “I shouldn’t have-”
“But you did,” Anja shot back. “So we will do it correctly.” She assumed a posture of attention and looked at Jesri with blank eyes. “My overall state is high-coherence, high-stress with an acceptable net-coherent outcome,” she said mechanically. “Major stressors are the recent death of my sister at my hand, the introduction of hostile code into my neural link by that same sister and the discovery of four other sisters’ bodies, two of which were actively being desecrated by hostile parties. Minor stressors include a recent severe injury during an operation resulting in the loss and regrowth of a leg, the deaths of several civilians under my care and a generally elevated level of life-threatening events compared to baseline.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Jesri blinked. “Fuck, this has been a bad couple of months,” she muttered.
They stared solemnly at each other for a few seconds more before a grin broke onto Anja’s lips. Laughing, the two sisters embraced closely before pulling back to arm’s length.
“I’m sorry, Anja,” Jesri said. “I may have been a bit harsh.”
“No, you were right to demand that I think about it properly,” Anja insisted. “The last few months have been bad. I probably would have answered differently if you had pushed me to do a self-assessment right after Nicnevin,” she admitted. “Elpis has been good. Training the squad has been rewarding and constructive. I think we have more of a concrete idea about how to go after the Gestalt than we ever had before we made contact with the resistance.”
Jesri nodded. “It’s been nice having allies again, even if they are strange ones.”
“Why would you say that about Rhuar?” Anja admonished with an impish smile, provoking a giggle from Jesri. “Really, though, I do feel good,” she said. “Even with this shit from Ellie knocking around in my head. Helene will insist on monitoring it, so there should be no risk of it spreading without our knowledge.”
“You’re right, of course,” Jesri sighed. “And even if it did spread I’m betting they could work something out, they’ve proven to be pretty resourceful.”
“Perhaps,” Anja allowed, her face turning serious. “But they will not have the chance to try. If it spreads past the link’s communication module I will resolve the issue permanently.”
Consternation spread over Jesri’s face as her sister’s meaning sunk in. “Anja, don’t joke,” she admonished. “That won’t happen, and even if it does we have options-”
“No jokes,” said Anja, shaking her head. “No delays. If it spreads I will die as myself, while I still am enough of myself to pull the trigger. I will not be like Ellie,” she said firmly, looking Jesri directly in the eye. “I will not make you kill me.”
She clapped her sister on the shoulder, ignoring Jesri’s stricken face. “I need to change out of this stupid robe,” she said, striding towards the door. “I have exercises with the squad down in the danger room this afternoon. We can grab dinner afterward.”
She flipped a casual salute to Jesri and walked back out of the room, leaving her sister standing alone in the quiet dark.
----------------------------------------
“This is absolutely unacceptable!”, Kvkitt yelled, moving to slam an arm on the desk but pulling up short after a wary glance in Jesri’s direction. The Arrigh station administrator took a moment to collect himself, then leveled a glare at the two sisters. “Excuse me. It is unacceptable, though. You commit an act of theft against the Kita, if not an act of war, then drop your stolen goods right beside our station.”
He shook his head in irritation. “They will hear, eventually, then they will make the reasonable conclusion that it was the Arrigh who stole the gate. The Kita will come here to take back what is theirs, putting all of our lives at risk.” A murmur went up from the rest of the room, where the various guild leaders were gathered for the discussion - although Tarl had decided to contribute to the meeting with his absence, much to Jesri’s relief.
Anja tapped her fingers on her forearm, looking bored. “It was necessary,” she said curtly.
Kvkitt’s expression darkened when he realized further explanation was not forthcoming. “You two are as bad as that bloodthirsty Tarl,” he spat. “Threats and violence, not honest talk. This is too much, you will see us all killed-”
“Okay, first point,” Jesri said tiredly. “You’re not going to get killed by the Kita. We have the resources to protect the station quite thoroughly and you can be assured it’s in our interest to do so.”
Belshi shot her a dark look. “I couldn’t help but notice,” he sneered, “that you felt the need to qualify that statement. If not my people, then who will be killing us? You, perhaps? Your sister? Will it be your yellow thugs?” The curmudgeonly Kitan banker had grown no fonder of her after the gate operation, but Jesri thought that was largely because he feared the Kitan government would link their brand-new foes with the gigantic new accounts he had brought in just weeks before.
“Nobody’s killing anybody,” grated Jesri. “Not the Kita, not us, not Tarl and his troops. We will stop any pending confrontation on or around this station.”
“You’re awfully confident,” noted Escalating Irreducible Manifold, its gelatinous body shifting color tones slowly. “But I’m afraid most people will not be. Trade from the other stations will fall if this station is perceived as a travel risk.”
Jesri looked over at the blobby captain, settling for making eye contact with its center mass in the absence of discernable eyes. “You think trade will fall with the gate present?”, she asked. “These things are wonderful for trade, even with some rumors about the Kita you should be making money hand over…” She trailed off, looking at Kvkitt’s chitinous claws and Manifold’s utter lack of appendages. “Rapidly,” she concluded. “You’ll be making money rapidly.”
“I think you overestimate the gate’s draw,” Kvkitt snorted. “It provides what, half the multiplier effect of a standard mass ramp? That’s useful in the backwater where they found it, but this close to a real station ramp it’s a mere curiosity. At most it will draw in a few adventurous tourists. I don’t know how you managed to move the gate, but you’ve robbed it of any utility by bringing it here.”
Anja goggled at the annoyed insectile alien, then pressed her forehead into her hands in exasperation. “You can’t be serious,” she groaned, her voice muffled. Kvkitt gave her a bemused look, his beady eyes flickering in confusion.
Beside her, Jesri shook her head. “Kvkitt,” Jesri said wearily, “The folks who live in this part of space have been fighting over the gate for how long?”
Kvkitt gave her a look that was equal parts curiosity and annoyance. “About two thousand years, or at least that’s as far as our records show,” he replied. “It was only recently acquired by the Kita, but the Grand Tabernacle has placed great importance on it as a human relic. This is why their retribution will be-”
“Two thousand years,” Jesri continued, steamrolling over the sputtering administrator, “and nobody has figured out how to turn the damn thing on?”
A stunned silence descended over the room. “It - what?”, Kvkitt asked uncertainly. “The Kita use the gate on a regular basis, it functions just fine. The mass multiplier has been consistent as long as we’ve known about the gate.”
Jesri stood and began pacing, spitting out her words with annoyed fervor. “Advanced transit gates give a modest mass boost passively, something that results from the particular shape of their waveguides,” she explained. “An active transit gate, on the other hand, lends its own rather substantial mass to any ship using the gate. Anything from the smallest freighter to the largest ship you can squeeze through the torus receives the full supercapital-class multiplier from the station for their outgoing leg.”
Xim Len gaped at her. “That’s ridiculous,” she said disbelievingly. “With that sort of mass boost you would save days or weeks on any of the common trade routes. It’s absurd.”
“Absurdly profitable,” commented Manifold, its skin shimmering with barely-restrained emotion. “If what she’s saying is true Elpis is about to become the shortest path to anywhere. The station will overflow with traffic.”
“But this is even worse!”, moaned Kvkitt. “If the gate can really do what you say, the Kita will want it back desperately. They’ll send their whole navy to Elpis. They’ll wage a holy war!” A concerned mutter went up around the room as the guild delegates considered the prospect.
“They won’t,” Qktk said quietly. All heads in the room turned to look at him, hunched contemplatively in his chair. He flitted his many eyes between the guild delegates and stood up with a soft rattle of chitin. “Oh, obviously they would send the navy if they heard there had been some mysterious terrorist attack and that the gate had been stolen away to Elpis. However, the only ones who know that the gate was attacked at all are the imprisoned Kitan gate crew and a few people on the station. To everyone else, the gate simply appeared without explanation in a flash of light. Strange and wonderful,” he mused slyly, “as expected of these old human artifacts. Miraculous, even.”
Manifold quivered violently. “A clever ploy, but the Kita will never believe that story,” it said. “Even if the gate has ‘miraculously’ relocated itself, you hold its crew prisoner. They will still assume foul play on the part of the Arrigh.”
Qktk cocked his head at the gelatinous captain. “Why would we hold the crew prisoner? We need people to man the station, after all.”, he pointed out, sitting back in his chair. “We can lock out the self-jump functionality and return the gate to their control, the Kitan clergy can’t object to that. The gate is much more useful to them beside Elpis, as long as they believe they retain control.”
“And why would the prisoners collaborate with us?”, Kvkitt scoffed. “I’m given to understand you were quite brutal during the assault. Will you simply threaten their lives again?”
Belshi grunted in realization, shifting his bulk to sit upright. “The cowards surrendered and had their priceless relic snatched out from under them. The humiliation would be unbearable if word got out, they would be exiled, excommunicated, their names erased from their family line.” He inclined his head slightly to Qktk. “If we offer to ‘return control’ of the gate they would be fools not to accept. They avoid the shame of surrender and enjoy the prestige of serving aboard a seeming miracle of the faith.” He coughed and spat contemptuously, causing Xim Len to edge away with a disgusted look. “The Tabernacle will gain power when the story circulates,” he said with a disgusted look, “so they will support the fiction even if they disbelieve it.”
Jesri nodded, winding a strand of hair around her finger as she thought. “Most of the crew survived the assault, thanks to Rhuar and D-, ah, his deceptions,” she said, correcting herself hastily. “We can pass off the customs ships and the few dead garrison soldiers as mysterious losses resulting from the transfer.”
Kvkitt seemed caught off-guard at Jesri’s casual brushing-aside of so many deaths, but quickly regained his composure. “My government will not be pleased that the Kita have gained a foothold near the station,” he admitted, “but once the implications of the activated gate become clear they will be hard-pressed to object. An increase in trade numbers will do much to keep them from taking action against the Kita.”
Jesri looked around at each of the guild heads in turn. “So we have a plan? Everyone clear on how we’re playing this?” She leveled her gaze at the Kitan banker. “Belshi, we going to have any issues from your end?”
“Pfah,” he spat. “You think I’m the patriotic type, with the company I keep?” He indicated the assembled guild heads with one bony arm, cackling wetly. “As long as I’m making money and we’re not all dead, I’m happy.”
“It’s a conspiracy, then,” Kvkitt said glumly.
“So it is,” Jesri replied brightly. “Here’s to productive cooperation.”
Anja stood abruptly and walked towards the door, causing Jesri to furrow her brow in concern. “Hey Anja, you okay?”, she called out.
Her sister shot back a questioning look. “Yes? I was just going to go talk to Tarl, since he took over handling of the gate crew. If we need the prisoners to be cooperative it’s probably best that we get them out of Ysleli custody as soon as possible.”
Jesri blanched. She hadn’t actually thought to discuss the short-term treatment of the prisoners with Tarl, an oversight that seemed increasingly critical the more she considered it. “You had better get down there, yeah,” she muttered.
Anja gave her a sparkling grin and vanished through the door. Xim Len looked bewildered, her delicate wings fluttering. “How did you end up working with that scaly butcher anyway?”, she asked. “You’re crazy, don’t misunderstand me, but you can be reasoned with. He seems to enjoy bloodshed for its own sake.”
“How did we meet Tarl?”, Jesri asked contemplatively. “That’s kind of a long story, but the short version is that Kick insulted his honor and blew up half his fleet.”
For the second time that day the room turned to stare at Qktk, who shrank back and shot a reproachful look at Jesri. “It was all a misunderstanding,” he muttered. “And it wasn’t even close to half. Maybe a fifth.”
Xim Len edged farther away from Qktk, her eyes wide, while Belshi seemed to regard him appreciatively.
“Jim’s teeth,” Qktk swore. “Look, we were only trying to distract them-”
“Is that why Tarl’s soldiers call you the Demon of Ysl?”, Manifold asked. “I heard a couple of them talking.”
“Hrmph,” Belshi said contemplatively. “I’ve heard the name ‘Thousand-Eyed Nightmare’ used here and there. I had assumed they were simply being xenophobic barbarians.”
“Now that’s just ridiculous,” scoffed Qktk. “Even counting minor eyes-”
“Just roll with it, Kick,” Jesri advised, sitting back in her chair with a grin. “You’re lizard-famous. They don’t give a scaly yellow crap how many eyes you have.”
Qktk looked around the room, his decidedly-fewer-than-a-thousand eyes moving from the bewildered and discomfited faces of the guild leaders to Jesri’s self-satisfied grin.
He sighed. This was what he got for picking up passengers.