Crashland (24 page)

“Cannons, yes,” said Trevin. “Built to fire big shells.”

“For taking out a big boat?” said Sargent. “I guess that makes sense.”

“We'll increase our armor on that side, just in case, and pull our head in.”

Clair could already feel a grinding vibration through her feet as the seastead fabbed new layers of protection. That was added to a sinking sensation as the crow's nest retreated into the body of the vessel.

“We could totally take it out right now, before anything happens,” said Devin with an eager look in his eye.

“Yes, and that would make you the aggressor,” said Forest.

“Even pacifists must dream of casting the first stone
sometimes
. . . .”

“WE'RE GETTING SOME
serious activity now,” said Sargent, eyes dancing across data Clair couldn't see. “Something's building out there. Literally.”

With a flash of yellow light, the middle cannon fired, unleashing a sphere that arced across the ocean in a flat parabola toward the seastead.

A harsh, electronic siren blatted once. The chat opened wider, indicating that the RADICAL twins now were talking to more than just those in the crow's nest. A rustle of distant voices made Clair feel like she was standing in a crowd.

“Here it comes!” called Trevin. “Can't tell if that cannonball is hot or not.”

Clair stood closer to Jesse. Both of them put their helmets on, just in case, but left the visors open. Everyone's attention was on the data as it streamed in from the outside. Every sensor on the seastead followed the sphere closely, measuring it in every possible way. It was four yards across and dark gray, and it cast soft reflections in radar.

“Could be explosive,” said Devin. “Could contain acid to corrode the hull. Could be anything. Can we fire now?”

Forest nodded, and Clair let out a sigh of relief.

Defensive fire from the seastead raked the dark surface of the sphere, but it kept on coming, absorbing the impacts like pebbles thrown down a well.

“Brace yourselves,” said Devin.

Clair had just enough time to take Jesse's gloved hand before the missile hit. There was no movement through the hull, and no explosion, either. Drone cameras zoomed in on the impact site to see what had happened.

The missile had splatted flat against the hull without exploding or breaking open. Instead, it rebounded into a squat hemisphere, like a giant raindrop on a giant wall.

“Is that it?” asked Jesse.

“We're picking up vibrations,” said Trevin.

“Drilling?” said Forest.

“We'll get crews down there to seal off the area, just in case.”

“Data is spiking,” said Sargent. “We are seeking the source of the dupes.”

Finally
, thought Clair.

“Two more of those things on the way,” said Devin.

She glanced at the second and third spheres, already well across the gap between the structure in the water and the seastead.

“Can we take out the cannons now?” asked Devin.

“As a precaution,” said Forest, “I do think that would be sensible.”

“Jesse, are you on it?”

He nodded and let go of Clair's hand. The view through the drones shifted. Weapons systems activated at someone else's command as he sent half of his flock into vertical dives, aiming for different sections of the construct.

Before the cannon emplacement could respond, it was in flames, blown apart by detonating drones.

“We've got another one,” said Trevin, indicating a patch of sea much closer than the one Jesse had just set on fire. A second construct had appeared, this one with seven chimneys. They were already firing, sending a series of black balls arcing to all points of the seastead, which responded with a cloud of drones thick enough to blot out the stars.

War
, Clair thought. There was no mistaking this situation for posturing or bluster. It was happening, and it was happening in earnest.

A third construct appeared while Jesse took out the second. Underwater microphones picked up the sounds of heavy industry all around the seastead.

“Torpedoes away,” said Devin. The sea became a foam of spray and bright bubbles bursting from below.
Now
Clair could feel the seastead move, a slow sway from left to right as though the Earth was shifting uncomfortably beneath them.

“What have you got?” Clair asked Sargent.

“Still no source, but information flows are higher than ever.”

Outside, on the hull, the first bubble had swollen to double its initial size. An external crew was approaching from three sides, while on the inside of the seastead Trevin reported that there was no sign of anything cutting through the hull. There were now seventeen such bubbles scattered across the seastead.

“This is weird,” said Devin. “Why aren't they doing anything?”

“Maybe they tricked us into firing first,” Clair asked, tugging off her helmet. It was making her feel claustrophobic. “Could that be what this is about?”

“Wouldn't hold up in the Court,” said Sargent. “This is an attack, even if it doesn't seem to be actually harming us in any way.”

“It's given us zits,” said Trevin. “I don't like it. We're going to section off those areas and send them to the bottom of the ocean.”

External fabbers began unfurling huge sheets of curved metal designed to enclose the still-growing spheres, while crews supervised the carving of the thick hull around them. Within moments the now grotesquely swollen first sphere was half-covered in metal restraints. When it was completely contained, it would be cut free and allowed to fall into the water.

Jesse's drones circled the seastead. Schools of sleek torpedoes were finding fewer targets in the swollen seas. It felt like the crisis was over, or soon would be, once the mysterious spheres were gone.

Clair didn't understand it. What had she missed? Why would the dupes go to so much trouble if the spheres didn't actually do anything?

“Feels like a stunt,” said Trevin.

“Maybe it was a distraction,” Clair said.

“Either way, a complete waste of our time.” He sounded annoyed, as though it was a personal slight.

The deck kicked sharply beneath her. She caught Jesse as he stumbled into her, his senses swept up in his augs. The rustle of voices in her ears became a roar.

“That came from inside,” said Trevin, looking alarmed.

“An explosion?” asked Devin.

“More than one. Hang on. Here.”

Maps of the seastead flickered across Clair's lenses. Two bright-red patches flared in a lower section of the starboard bow, showing the sites of the explosions. Damage reports flooded in.

“How did they get inside?” she asked.

“They can't have,” said Devin. “The booths have no power. There's no possible way—”

The seastead kicked again. More red patches flared.

“This can't be happening,” said Devin.

“What are those areas?” asked Forest.

“Nothing special,” said Trevin. “Accommodation, mess—”

“They're near the hull,” said Sargent. “That's what's special about them.”

“They can't sink us, if that's what they're thinking,” said Devin.

“Are the explosions close to those things stuck on the outside?” Clair asked.

Barely had the words left her lips when the first of the black spheres burst open like a boil, spilling a swarm of dark shapes radiating outward across the seastead's exterior.

“What
is
that?” asked Trevin.

A drone swooped in closer. The swarm was composed of things that looked like bugs, but that was only because of the scale. Each “bug” was the same size as one of the members of the RADICAL crew, which was quickly overwhelmed. The “bugs” had arms and legs and heads. More important, the same head over and over, with Dylan Linwood's face.

Dupes
.

“REPAIR CREWS TO
the damaged areas! Shore up our defenses!”

Trevin was shouting and so was Devin. Under pressure, it was hard to tell their voices apart.

“Jesse, get those drones back here! Forest, Sargent—time to act now if you're ever going to!”

The peacekeepers were already directing their contingent across the seastead. Clair could see the Linwoods attacking a weak spot in the hull, leaping through armor buckled by the explosions to gain access to the spaces within. Even as drones and external crews picked them off, more emerged from the burst sphere—which appeared to be some kind of mobile d-mat booth, one capable of surviving the impact with the seastead and delivering an inexhaustible army. Drones and gun emplacement turned their attention to it even as the swarm of dupes attacked the weak spot nearby. Jesse flew with precision and speed, like someone well used to operating via telepresence. Clair supposed he was, given the Abstainer thing. Maybe it was a welcome distraction, too, from the blatant misuse of his father's face.

“They're boarding!”

The deck shivered as more explosions rippled through the seastead.

“How are they
doing
that? Are you tracing them, PK Sargent?”

“Trying,” she said, looking harried. “Look at the rest of them.”

In the PK interface, multicolored dots were coming and going at a furious rate.

“There's too much data, too many secondary sources,” Sargent said. “As fast as we delete one, two more pop up somewhere else. It's overwhelming us.”

“They knew what we were up to,” said Clair. “How?”

“A lucky guess?” said Jesse, although it was clear he didn't think that was the case. But what was the alternative? That the dupes had out-thought them on every front?

Drones were issuing from external fabbers in droves. RADICAL soldiers had engaged the dupes pouring into the lower decks, peppering them with real bullets and confinement foam capsules. A second black sphere popped open, then a third. The clamor of voices over the open line was deafening.

However they had known, the dupes had to have some kind of access to the interior of the seastead. Clair remembered the dupes' trick in the Farmhouse, of penetrating defenses bit by bit until they were able to fab a transmitter to complete the job. Q had turned the tables on them in New York. What if the tables had been turned on RADICAL once more?

Or . . .

Here Clair's worldview quavered.

What if Q was working with the dupes?

That terrible possibility made a dark kind of sense. If that was the case—if Q had been inspired by Clair's betrayal—it could be how the dupes had seen through their plan so quickly, and also explain Q's determined silence and why she was so hard to find: because she was hiding in the same place as the dupes. But could Q really be so vindictive? It didn't seem like her—but as Devin kept trying to say, how well did Clair know Q, really? Who knew what conclusions a mind like hers could come to, particularly one that was still growing, still changing, still
learning
? What if Clair had accidentally taught her how to be a Mean Girl?

This was a horrible possibility that Clair had to rule out, if she could.

“Look for strange transmissions from within the seastead,” she told the open chat.

“We've tried,” said Devin. “It's a big ship with lots of transmitters. The frequencies are saturated.”

“If you could narrow down a location, that would help,” said Trevin.

“The transmitters will be small,” Clair said, not wanting to be more specific for fear of how RADICAL might react, “which means they'll need to be close to the bombs. They'll be on the inside, near the spheres.”

“Good thought,” said Forest. “We will send a team to investigate.”

“I'll go,” Clair said. “You don't need me up here.”

And
, she didn't add,
if I find the transmitter first and recognize the design, I'll know that Q is behind it
.

Sargent didn't look happy about the prospect.

“Let me come with you,” she started to say.

“I'll keep an eye on her,” said PK Drader over the chat. “Clair, meet me on Deck Five below the crow's nest, at the base of Ramp H.”

“Okay,” she said, giving in and checking the map in her lenses. “Let's take the section under the last sphere. That'll give us the most time, if the last to arrive is the last to burst.”

“In theory,” said Jesse.

“You concentrate on keeping the rest of the ship safe,” she said, tucking the drone interface out of sight so it wouldn't distract her. “And I promise I'll wear my helmet.”

“Deal.” He gripped her gloved hand for an instant, then let her go.

“ON MY WAY,”
said PK Drader as the crow's nest opened to let her out, revealing a corridor that hadn't been there before. The glassy sphere had sunk deep into the heart of the seastead, protected by dozens of bulkheads from the outside world. That didn't seem as reassuring to Clair now that the dupes were inside.

The square-toed boots of her armor thudded on the metal floor as she hurried to Ramp H to begin looking for the transmitter. She was as good as her word, with her helmet securely on, but she kept the visor open. The air tasted faintly of smoke, or perhaps that was her imagination. The parts of the seastead currently burning were fortunately nowhere near her.

She ran down one of the big, spiraling ramps that looked as though they had been designed for an army, feeling alone for the first time since before she had used Improvement. Her suit had cameras providing a view all around her, but that only accentuated her isolation. She couldn't watch every angle at once. It would only take a second's distraction for someone to sneak up on her.

She wondered if wars were like that—being alone at the center of great chaos. She wondered if that was what someone who had no idea what war was
really
like might think.