'Precisely! I was counting on you to come to that very conclusion!' said the Silent One.
Without any further ado, Phaethon opened the epaulettes in his armor, and activated the thought ports, and made a connection between his brain and the noetic reader.
Like an explosion, the wild disorientation that raced through him, and the crushing pains that began to burn into his flesh, were the first signal that something was terribly, terribly wrong. The war for control of Phaethon's nervous system took place at mechanical speeds his brain could not hope to match. The same interference that locked him out of control of his own armor, and blocked his frantic signals to the nanomachine cape that controlled every cell in his body, also prevented him from releasing the deadman switch to burn the Silent One with mirror weapons, and prevented the activation of his high-speed emergency personality.
And so he was simply too slow to react. The Silent One had somehow, without any visible machinery or physical connection to any mechanisms, invaded the noetic reader and reorganized the circuitry.
In the same split instant when Phaethon connected his mind to the machine, and long before he was even aware of what had happened, it was far, far too late.
Phaethon was in pain; he felt faint; sharp pains told him smaller bones in his body had broken, tissues were damaged. How? Blearily, he tried to read from his internal channels, tried to summon his personal thoughtspace. Nothing came. The channels were jammed; something was interfering with the cybernetics webbing his brain.
He tried to shut off his pain centers. That worked. His body was still being damaged, but he was blissfully unaware of it. He could concentrate.
The sensation of heat burning his body told him all be needed to know. His nanomachine cloak was in motion. Somehow (and he had no guess as to how) the Silent One had triggered the release cycle of his body's internal high-gravity configuration. His tissues were softening, his blood was turning to liquid.
But the ship's drive was still exerting massive thrust. Under twenty-five times his normal weight, Phaethon's cells would surely rupture, and he would surely die.
An outside source turned on his personal thought-space, and the familiar images and icons from his adjutant status board were superimposed on the scene around him.
To the left was the dragon sign showing signal command, with information logistics spread like wings behind the picture. Behind him were trophies, emblems, awards, decorations. To his right were a number of pictures: a winged sword, a roaring tiger with a lightning bolt in its claws, an anchor beneath a crossed musket and pike, a three-headed vulture holding, in one claw, a lance, and in the other, a shield adorned with a biohazard triskeleon.
Directly in front of him was a standard naval menu: an olive drab curve of windows and control icons, with a brass wheel and joystick, astrogator's globe, fuel-consumption displays. A menu above the wheel controlled the interface between his armor and the ship mind. This menu showed a red exclamation mark: Password Not Accepted: No Course Corrections Enabled Without Proper Password. Resubmit?
The Silent One's voice came into his ear, directly into his ear. That was a bad sign, since it meant the Silent One had somehow seized control of his armor, or, at least, the circuits in his helmet. But it was not a sign as bad as it might have been: the thought ports in his armor were evidently not allowing the noetic reader to redact or to manipulate his nervous system. The circuit woven into his brain must still be free. The Silent One's words were not appearing, for example, directly in his auditory nerve, or, worse yet, directly into his mind and memory. The noetic reader was not controlling his mind. He still could choose not to listen or not to obey.
The words were: 'Submit the password. If your body completes its cycle before the drives are shut down, you perish.'
Phaethon wondered why the noetic reader did not simply pick the password out of his memory.
'The password we read from your memory is not valid.'
Phaethon truly wished he could have somehow not thought the next thought which leaped into his mind. Because that thought was this: If his password was invalid, then someone had overridden it. The only one who could possibly have an override to Phaethon's authority over this ship, the only person who could convince the ship to ignore Neoptolemous's legal ownership, was Atkins. During the period Phaethon had erased from his memory, Phaethon must have given Atkins an override.
Which meant Atkins was aboard the ship.
'Where?'
Phaethon did not remember.
Atkins must have planned to do the same thing he did with the enemy hidden in Daphne's horse. Namely, to allow the enemy to defeat and kill Phaethon, and watch to see what they did with the spoils of victory.
'You think we are defeated? Your conclusion that Atkins, wherever he is hiding, will simply be able to destroy me is unwarranted. Why hasn't he shown himself?'
Obviously, because the Silent One had not yet done whatever it was he had come here to do. Atkins was waiting for the enemy to reveal his real plans.
'I have told you all my plans. You still do not believe that I act in good faith? You are a fool! But I still need you to save my people. Tell me the password; otherwise you die; I die; and even Atkins, if he is aboard, is carried away out of your Solar System at twenty-five gravities, aboard a ship that no one can stop and no one can board.'
But Phaethon did not remember the password.
'Open your memory caskets.'
The Silent One was able to manipulate at least some of the functions in Phaethon's sense filter: A memory casket seemed to appear on the symbol table next to him.
'If Atkins is aboard, as you believe he is, and you think he is ready to destroy me once I show my real goals, as obviously you do, then not only does it not matter if I gain access to the ship-mind-the real ship-mind this time, not the dummy with which you deceived me before-it actually aids your cause, doesn't it?'
The problem with dealing with an enemy who was reading one's mind was that bluff, deceit, or delay was impossible. The Silent One knew that Phaethon thought Atkins was aboard and waiting. But the Silent One simply did not believe Phaethon's beliefs were correct.
Of course, Phaethon had no notion of what was going on inside of the Silent One's mind.
'I wish you did. If there were a way I could make this noetic reader able to decode my thoughts, I would use it; then you would see that I am not your enemy; that I am, ultimately, the only true friend you have, Phaethon.'
Very well. Phaethon would open the first memory casket, looking for a password, and turn the ship over to the Silent One. If the Silent One was sincere, and if he truly intended no harm to the Golden Oecumene, Atkins would no doubt let him live. If not, the Silent One would no doubt perish. Much as he disliked the man, Phaethon had no doubt whatsoever that Atkins could kill any living creature he was permitted to kill, once he was unleashed.
'You have an almost religious faith in your war god, don't you, Phaethon? But I see you have decided.'
With an imaginary hand (Phaethon could not have moved his real one), Phaethon opened the memory casket.
There was a second casket inside the first. There was an image of a thought card in the lid of this second casket, inscribed with the sign of a winged sword. When he saw it, he began to remember....
The password was the first thing that returned to his memory: Laocoon. What a strange choice for a password. It was the name of one of the L5 asteroid cities at Trailing Trojan, a place of no particular military significance. There was also some sort of classical allusion to that name, some mythical figure, but Phaethon could not bring it to mind at the moment.
He sent the password into the menu: the menu winked out, and a rush of numbers, figures, and ideograms flashed across the surfaces of the energy mirrors lining the bridge. The Silent One was taking control of the ship's mind for the second time. Perhaps this task was occupying the Silent One's full attention.
Several of the bridge mannequins looked up at the rush of information on the mirrors, looks of simulated surprise on their simulated features. Sloppy Rufus barked and scrambled up to an upper balcony near the major communication nexus.
Phaethon realized, with a sensation of shock, that no external observer could have known just what had passed between Phaethon and the Silent One. How could anyone or anything be able to tell Phaethon's armor had been taken over by the enemy? His armor was opaque to every radiation or probe; no one could tell, from the
