The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [104]
Almost in the same motion he slapped the hatch controls with his other hand. As the ramp rose up to seal the craft, Robert headed for the pilot console, scarcely pausing to toss the gun into Kao Chih’s hands.
‘Even Shyntanil weapons have safety catches,’ he said, sitting at the controls. ‘You can now shoot me if you like but it might distract me from flying us out of here!’
Kao Chih, racked with shame, said nothing as he slumped into one of the hard seats.
The deck tilted as the assault craft rose, swung round amid a storm of weaponsfire, and moved down the angled launch shaft. Thrusters ignited as the open hull doors loomed and the craft shot out from beneath the Shyntanil cryptship. Robert gave a satisfied nod as he scanned the instruments.
‘Just as I hoped, those dozen interceptors are still trying to engage the Suneye vessel. Both ships have lost control of the asteroid as well so it should take them a while to clear up the mess. Enough for us to fire up the hyperdrive and transtier our way to the Roug system … ’ He paused. ‘And warn them what’s on the way – which just happened to be my orders.’
‘I see … I see that I have been unduly suspicious. My apologies
Just then, one of the rescued crewmen waved a hand in the air, face looking as if he had just woken up. ‘Can somebody please tell me what the hell’s going on?’
Robert grinned and made a gesture inviting Kao Chih to fill the fellow in on current events. Kao Chih sighed, nodded, then moved over and began to explain.
JULIA
The datasphere of Earth was a multilayered phantasmagoria of wildly exotic, near-endless delights. It was also a pitiless sinkhole of corrosive depravity, ultracommercial illusions and callous delusions, all cunningly crafted. And it was an intertwining system of security webs and counter-intrusion nodes, a maze of peril where the promise of deletion was everywhere.
And running through it was the Glow, a virtual playground for Humanity’s Earthbound 10.9 billion, plus the population of the moon, Mars, the Jovian satellites and the nomadic mining habs, which added another billion. Arenas, theatres, battlefields, art installations, historical subworlds, stocks and speculation crucibles, sensuality extravaganzas, word-by-word political drama, sport of every kind, wildlife of every kind, refinements of every kind, fripperies and trivia of every conceivable shade of irrelevance, and all available in a deluge of unrestrained abundance.
From the moment they arrived at the edge of the datasphere, in the auxiliary buffer of a mothballed weathersat orbiting Mars, Harry warned her to keep her wits about her.
‘I’ve already sent a coded message to Reski Emantes,’ he said. ‘He maintains a private network for Glowless transactions, very secure and very safe, but it cannot be accessed at a distance. Therefore we have to transvector ourselves through the data-sphere to a datanode close enough to gain access. In the meantime you should have this.’
He handed her a small brassy ornament of a boy sitting on a rock and holding an archaic spyglass to one eye. Frowning, she studied it.
‘A sensory org?’ she said.
‘Something like that,’ Harry said. ‘It’s a mirager – it reads dataflows and watches for the presence of nullors, which are tracker-catchers or karcers, which are hunter-killers. Then it puts up a protective shell of fake info and idents merge-adapted to the immediate vicinity.’
Nodding, she considered their surroundings. They were standing in a long corridor whose ceiling was open to an immense cylindrical space criss-crossed by dataflows, some like chains of pulses, others like tightly woven braids, and a few bright as molten steel. Stretching up, a distance haze made the higher flows pale, almost insubstantial.
‘It sounds as if you’re expecting trouble,’ she said. ‘Should I be worried?’
He smiled. ‘Anxious, perhaps, not worried.’
‘How does that affect the exters? Will our appearances change?’
‘No – we’ll continue to appear as we do between us while