'The kzin vessel will reach closest approach to Sun-Tzu in a few seconds. It has fired no weapons, however. Perhaps it is trying to draw fire in order to allow the other vessel to inflict greater damage.' Carol's jaw dropped with a blaze of realization. Couldn't Bruno's vastly enhanced intelligence see what was happening?
She reached over and grabbed Bruno's arm. 'Listen, love, focus as much sensory capacity as you can spare on the close approach craft. Put some weapons against it, throw up debris, anything.' The flat half-machine tones took on a questioning note. 'Why are you so specifically concerned?' Carol wanted to slam her fists down on the useless command console. 'Don't you get it?' she grated. 'It's a bombing run. Do as I tell you!' By then, it was too late. The kzin craft, under cover of its fiercely attacking sister vessel, swept stealthily within a million kilometers of Sun-Tzu. It had already swung past them by the time energy weapons flashed lethal radiation. Relativistic distortions fuzzed the images further -
– And almost as an afterthought, a coherent lance of X-rays speared the enemy craft, spreading a glowing cloud of debris across space. The second vessel had already sheered off, racing for the opposite side of Sun- Tzu.
A blaze of light filled the holoscreen. 'Bruno?' Carol asked quietly. 'What happened?' Another slight pause, and Bruno once more spoke from his own lips instead of the commlink speakers. 'I am very sorry, Carol. The kzin have delivered a monopole bomb. It must have been heavily shielded to avoid my sensory array.' Carol swore. In the deadly heart of a monopole bomb, isolated north and south poles met violently, releasing great gouts of energetic electrons. These electrons would spiral, close to light-speed, down magnetic lines of force toward Sun- Tzu. When the electron storm struck Sun-Tzu's densest magnetic cocoon, the electrons would radiate powerfully, their orbits reversed in the magnetic mirrors. They would never reach the icy hull of Sun-Tzu, but they would have done their deadly task. Their electromagnetic wail would fry most electrical equipment not shielded deep within the spacecraft. The other kzin vessel would be safe in the 'shadow' of Sun-Tzu. Bruno still said nothing. Carol began striking keys on her crash couch console violently. The straps loosened and retracted, allowing her to float slightly upward in the microgravity. 'How long until impact?' she asked. 'Ten seconds.' The reply was as flat and toneless as the autopilot of an aircar. 'Well, let's get you and me down to Dolittle. I have an idea.' 'Impossible.' In a flash, she realized that disconnecting Bruno from his brain-computer interface would take several minutes, with heavy use of biotelemetric controls. And, fatally, that unshielded and vulnerable conductors ran from the hull of Sun-Tzu to the sensory array to the computer net… directly into Bruno's brain. 'I love you, Bruno,' Carol said. She grabbed his interface cable in both hands and took a deep breath.
CHAPTER NINE
Watching Carol's arm muscles tense as she gripped the interface cable, all of Bruno's vast consciousness tried to crowd into his inadequate biological portion in defense against what would happen next. Bruno's enhanced mind would not fit into the small space, wracking him in a horrible cybernetic analog of pain. No. He willed his arm to move toward his cable linkage protectively, and…
Carol, with a loud grunt, ripped his interface cable from the console with a sharp metallic popping sound.
There wasn't time to scream, even in realtime.
Bruno felt his Mind collapse and die. Transcendence guttered out like a candle flame in a raw wind.
The cold blackness roared into his very soul, a dark hurricane of torment. Loss burned like some dark acid, shattering his Transcended Self. Gone, gone – scattering its torn threads to the cosmic wind…
In what felt like death agony, Bruno sensed the electromagnetic pulse impact the Sun-Tzu's hull. Holoscreens flickered multicolored visual static and vanished, roaring. Sparks geysered from consoles. Navigation deck lights failed. The deadly pulse leaped like a striking snake of electrical potential from the exploding console -
– ricocheting from the white steel walls -
– crackling, searching, like a living thing -
– to the flapping end of his interface cable.
He felt the charge enter his brain like a lit fuse via the suddenly traitorous conduit of metal and silicon. Bruno's mind seemed to explode in a fireball-hot supernova within his deepest self.
The suffocating blackness was obliterated by a lethal Light.
11001010001111001010101011011111101010111011010011100
0101110111010111101001011101001001101010110011001111
The crashed aircar was upside down, silent and dark. With clumsy fingers, five-year-old Bruno released himself from his crashnet. He fell onto the inside of the roof with a painful thump. He lay there, panting and dizzy, feeling sick.
Burnt hair, scorched earth, a coppery wet smell. The aching blackness all around. He was very afraid.
Bruno could remember the explosion, the screaming, the long fall. He had no memory of the horrible crash.
His head hurt terribly.
Bruno turned his head to one side and tried to vomit, but there was nothing left in his stomach other than a trickle of foul liquid that burned his throat. Mumma will be angry, he thought, wiping his stinging mouth on a torn sleeve. He had to find Mumma and Papa, somewhere in the crashed aircar. The cabin had somehow become huge in the dark. He called and called, his voice echoing in the small space that had swollen so.
No one answered. Determined, he crawled forward with his arms, because his legs wouldn't work properly. They were numb, but at least they didn't hurt.
Nothing hurt as much as Bruno's head.
'Mumma? Papa?”
His left hand finally found his mother and father, still strapped side by side into their crashnets. They did not reply when he called, no matter how much he cried and pleaded. Finally, he shook them hard, making his head hurt even worse than before. His hands were wet and sticky, and tasted salty when he wiped his face.
Bruno cried, because his parents wouldn't hold him in the darkness, and wouldn't answer him. He had never felt so frightened and alone.
The headache finally became more than he could stand. Dizzy with pain and exhaustion, Bruno finally lay flat on the inside roof of the crashed aircar. Still crying softly, he reached up and touched the left side of his head, where it hurt so much.
His fingers sank five centimeters into his shattered skull. Into something pulpy and wet. Sharp slivers of bone pricked his fingertips. Lights exploded in Bruno's head, and he tasted the color blue, felt the smell of moist hay. He thought that he heard a siren in the distance, but he was in too much pain to pay attention.
Exhausted, he laid his pounding head down on the cool metal, to wait for his Mumma and Papa to wake up and take him home, to make everything all right. The aircar swirled around him dizzily. There were vague murmurs like anxious voices in the darkness, calling him.
Cold nothingness claimed little Bruno with clammy hands, and dragged him down into an unconscious void.
11001010001111001010101011011111101010111011010011100
0101110111010111101001011101001001101010110011001111
Bruno opened his eyes for a moment, still convulsing randomly. Dim, reddish corridor emergency lights winked and glittered. He watched the main ring corridor of Sun-Tzu flying dimly past him.
Carol was carrying him toward Dolittle. The low, microgravity lope as she ran made his head flop helplessly from side to side. His neck was an agony of fire. Bruno tried to force words past his lips, but it hurt to think, let alone speak.
He thought that he heard Carol telling him to hang on, that Dolittle was very near, but the words were slippery, skidding away like the emergency lights.
'Mumma?' he muttered, and passed out.
