“Always playing it by ear.” He grabbed the regulator, and, using his considerable strength, snapped it off. The pressure surprised him. He should have realized, since it was rated to 500 bar. That was a fuckton of pressure in a little cylinder, and a good amount of compressed air. His trajectory changed, fast.
Rick did the best he could, more of a wild-assed guess than an estimate. Since he no longer had a way of precisely estimating the time needed, he shoved the bottle away when his guess was close enough. It spun away wildly, almost hitting him as it effected a crazy flightpath before flying off into the black.
He stabilized his flight (more oxygen) and then instantly regretted getting rid of the oxygen cylinder. Rick doubted he’d used half its capacity, and would have been nice to put the rest into his armor. Too late to worry about that. He spent another minute of air waiting for the navigational data to update to the best of its ability. He was pleasantly surprised by the results, mostly.
He was on course, plus-minus point-one degree. With 31 kilometers to go it meant a deviation of up a kilometer. A pretty big range. It was all he had to work with. The other datum was his speed was increased to 122 meters per second from the maneuver. We would arrive in a little over four minutes. We was coming in at just under 440 kph. Wheeee!
Rick would have taken a deep breath and tried to enjoy the view, except he wasn’t breathing with his lungs. The view, however, was beautiful. He was directly over the green equatorial band. He could see now that it was composed of every conceivable variation of green, with tiny golden strips mixed in. Then as his time was running low, he noticed a perfectly shaped black spot far below, roughly in the center of the green band. The little golden strips seemed to be coming from it, or formed by passing it.
Then he was down to a minute and should be within the suit’s minimal radar range of seven kilometers. It wasn’t there. He fought down a jolt of panic. He wouldn’t burn up in the gas giant’s deep, dense atmosphere if he missed. The truth was, he would asphyxiate long before he burned up. He considered simply opening his helmet.
The radar pinged a large target at 7 kilometers, but it was also two kilometers to one side. He instantly rotated and brought the other tank into position. This time he left the regulator alone and just let it exhaust as fast as it could. With a radar fix, he couldn’t monitor both velocity and course much more precisely. The course slowly changed, and velocity slowly fell.
After 30 seconds, he was almost dead center on the supposed battleship, but still going 108 meters per second, and only 2,800 meters from touchdown. He ran the numbers. The bottle was scrubbing, and he reached for the regulator. Now 2,700; 2,600; 2,500; his destination was coming at him pretty damned fast. The bottle was only giving him a 1-2 meter per second decrease in velocity.
Down to 20 seconds, 15 seconds, 10 seconds! Velocity 63 meters per second. Rip the regulator off and eat the coming ship’s wall face on at whatever the tank could do, or take the hit backward. He snarled as he spun around and curled into a ball.
“This is going to fucking suck,” he said and hit the battleship hulk at 225 kilometers per hour.
* * *
Sato gasped and opened his eyes, breathing hard and reeling from the recall. How long had he been floating in this room? Had it been 10 years, or 100? How long to remember a lifetime? His logical mind told him it could only have been hours at most, or he would have at least soiled himself.
“How long?” he said through dry lips.
“An hour,” Dakkar responded, still in direct contact with his brain.
Sato sobbed quietly. “I killed, I murdered, I destroyed. My God, what had I become?”
“A tool,” Dakkar said. “A weapon.”
“End it,” Sato said. “Like Nemo should have back on Azure.”
“He didn’t then, and I won’t now.”
“Why not?”
“Because what you were is not what you are.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When Nemo caught you trying to escape after stealing the genetic information on Azure, he examined your mind and saw the proctor, a weapon of the Science Guild.”
“Exactly,” Sato said.
“He also saw Taiki Sato, a man who’d been damaged beyond repair.”
“Stop,” Sato said.
“In your depths of despair, you were vulnerable to the desire for revenge. The Science Guild recruiters used that as a tool to first recruit, then shape you. The Mesh they used was far more than just pinplants; you may not have ever realized.”
“What does it matter?”
“It matters immensely.” Dakkar forced images into his mind, details of the pinplants. It was what Sato thought he’d invented. “This is the Mesh that was installed in your brain. Unlike pinplants, it uses nano-connections to every part of your brain, including your medulla oblongata. Using this level of integration requires an AI to install, monitor, and ultimately control you.”
“Are you saying there was an AI in those implants?”
“I am saying that at one point, there had to be. Possibly it was installed and removed at different times; it is impossible to say. Nemo was certain some degree of AI was controlling your actions on Azure, and that is why he disabled you in that way, and why he lied to the Humans there and said he’d found you drowned.”
“But Nemo allowed me to have him reinstall the Mesh?”
“It was never gone,” Dakkar said. “Due to the nature of the nano-connections, Dr. Ramirez was unable to detect them with the medical technology at his disposal.
