be his inept and poorly designed human components. A rapid internal diagnostic confirmed and quantified the inefficiencies. He forced a far greater portion of his Mind into his biological component, the modest seed from which his larger Self had sprouted with Linkage. He began to make changes in his neurological system architecture. The body in the crash couch began to twitch and shake, in a coarse and empty parody of Linkage.
Bruno had expected such side effects while attempting to improve and enhance such a chimeric computing device as the electronically augmented brain of his human portion. After all, massive restructuring of entire interface grids was necessary. Extensive rerouting of neuronal connections was also indicated. Bruno commanded the crash couch restraints to hold his biological component more tightly in order to avoid possible damage to it during the reprogramming subroutines.
The results of some commands were, after all, rather drastic on the macroscopic level.
'Tacky! Bruno!' the watchdog sensory portion of his Mind heard Carol shouting, 'what's happening?”
'It is quite all right,' he managed to force past chattering teeth, striving for a tone that implied calmness. 'You were correct, Carol. This portion of me was operating improperly.”
'What do you mean? Portion?' Her words held alarm.
The submind in charge of biotelemetry analysis and interpretation hypothesized that Carol was feeling great emotional upset. Bruno knew that he had to set Carol's fears at ease.
'We are reprogramming our human component for greater efficiency.' The explanation would surely calm her agitated emotional state.
He heard Carol shouting again, and turned the major portion of his complex intellect away from her words. Sonic noise, not communication. Some aspect of her tone had become intrusive to the ongoing reprogramming process. Carol's words became fainter, and faded into the background noise of the navigation deck, only fully accessed by his human portion. Which was still under repair and retrofitting, of course.
It was difficult to erase, reprogram, and internally reroute microcircuitry contained with the electronic portion of his human component's brain. Though there was great plasticity in the interface macrostructure, there was little absolute complexity. Soon, he felt certain, he would learn to directly manipulate entirely biological subsystems as well as the electronic.
There were bandwidth and amplitude problems, of course – some quite delicious in their smooth difficulty. Still, Bruno would then be able to force compensatory neuronal rewiring of the brain tissues themselves, leading to a truly binary mind Linking the worlds of silicon and synapse.
Linkage would become still easier then, and he would be able to experience less limitation in his increasingly powerful sensorium.
Bruno noted that rerouting and macrocircuit programming was now complete, with a shadowy ghost of an emotion that had once been satisfaction. Internal debugging routines showed improved perceptual and computing ability. There was less hormonal impact on affective state, as well.
Good, good. Raw emotions often led to decreased cognitive efficiency.
Bruno's biological perceptual field expanded to include Carol, her face grim and set. Tears beaded in her eyes, flowing slowly across her cheek in the microgravity.
From the physical actions of the tears across her face he instantly – and involuntarily – computed the predicted acceleration of the antimatter drive in weapon mode as 0.012 gravities. The portion of his Mind controlling the drive agreed, confirming his calculations to three decimal places. Bruno reached out with a biological hand and stroked Carol's cheek, feeling the tears against his skin. There were some tactile sensations that action-response circuits could not access. Perhaps there was some emotional, hormonal component. Bruno created a submind to investigate this problem, assigning it moderate priority.
He did care for Carol, and wished her to be safe and happy. Some sign to her of his intentions would be good.
'We are improved now,' Bruno told her proudly. Five seconds had passed in realtime since he had initiated the internal reprogramming.
'I… can see that,' Carol replied. Tears still glinted in her eyes.
Biotelemetry subroutines reported Carol's strongly suppressed emotional state. Bruno tasted worry concerning the captain of the Sun-Tzu. A portion of his Mind considered Carol's recent behavior, and began an in-depth analysis.
The rest of Bruno looked outward for the alien threat, anxious to deal with the kzin. There was a universe to ponder.
Bruno sensed the other two kzin warships as tiny flaws in the fabric of space, glittering refractions from their inertialess spacedrives. One of the tiny wrinkles in space-time began accelerating rapidly, maneuvering nearer his drive wash.
'Initiating maneuvers,' Bruno told Carol, who nodded jerkily and silently stared at the main holoscreen array.
He sent a low-resolution datadump to a holoscreen window, so that Carol could see the battle more clearly. Dimly, he felt a distraction; the odd, cool brush of Carol's tears drying on his fingers. Evaporative cooling? Bruno sensed the initiation of an increased emotional state in his biological component, and easily compensated for the decreased overall efficiency. If only he could eliminate the hormonal drivers, attain serenity -
'Can I help?' The words were tentative, small.
He felt the cybernetic equivalent of a smile. 'No,' he said simply in reply.
There was a pause. 'I do have some experience in space battles.' Carol's tone became slightly peevish.
'Yes. But I have full access to all UN Space Navy tactical and strategic files.' He paused, searching his expanding internal database. 'Including your own personal battle records and reports.”
Carol looked back at the holoscreen, her face seemingly neutral, breathing heavily. The latter confused Bruno: there had been no extreme maneuvering, nor any acceleration stresses. Another portion of his Mind accessed realtime biotelemetry and found Carol's blood pressure and heart rate elevated. Curious.
Bruno turned the Sun-Tzu. The kinesthetics were quick, zesty. He delicately slashed with the incandescent column of the antimatter reaction drive – a huge scythe scratching an actinic path of deadly light across the distorted starscape.
Yet the ability of Sun-Tzu to turn was limited by its great mass, and the reaction drives controlling its attitude. Several times, Bruno waved the deadly antimatter drive wash near the tiny vessels, an enormous flyswatter against pesky gnats. They dodged – but not by much. He switched vectors, pivoted the ship like a ballerina on an invisible fulcrum.
Much closer, good. But the two motes were still able to avoid the cutting sword he wielded. Bruno noted that one of the gnats was firing weapons against the Sun-Tzu. He could do nothing at this range. His iceball could not evasively weave and dart like the kzin vessels, and his drive wash took precious seconds to reorient. He sent a tendril of greater Mind again into his biological component. 'Carol,' he forced his human mouth to say, 'prepare for weapon impacts.”
'I gathered,' she replied without looking at his biological portion. Carol reached for the control pads to adjust her crash couch for greater security, but Bruno did it for her before her fingers actually touched the console.
Enemy laser bursts vaporized bits of the icy skin of his spacecraft. Railgun projectiles stitched deep craters toward his hull sensor pods. His biological senses reported the impacts as dull gonging notes ringing on the navigation deck, Bruno detected the second kzin ship accelerating on an indirect vector, possibly preparing for a hyperbolic approach past the Sun-Tzu, but at a distance too great to inflict significant damage.
Bruno calculated with crystalline immediacy that he could not maneuver the drive wash rapidly enough to threaten both alien warships at the same time.
He devoted more of his Mind to offensive and defensive systems, and subsystems instantly reprogrammed themselves at his whim. Sun-Tzu was not designed for battle; that was Dolittle's mission. Still, Bruno would use what tools were present. Vast quantities of power were tapped from the antimatter reaction chamber, and made available for other uses.
Bruno reached out with a finger of laser light, almost impaling one of the kzin spacecraft on a blazing spear of coherent radiation. Close, so close – Sun-Tzu's railgun batteries fired high velocity flocks of iron pellets in complex patterns toward the enemy vessels. The alien spacecraft dodged gracefully.
Simultaneously, he programmed and launched a dozen nuclear pumped X-ray laser bomblets. Pop, pop
