Providence - Max Barry Page 0,86

generate sulfuric acid on contact with moisture. Nevertheless, he’d started trying to figure out how long he could remove his helmet before it would kill him, just to experience the glorious sensation of being free from it. The film would protect his eyes, but he would have to hold his breath, to keep the sulfur trioxide out of his throat and lungs.

Jackson’s hand came down on his. “See that?”

He squinted. At the apex of the mountain hung a dark curl of something like smoke. “Shit, it is a volcano.”

“Could be,” Jackson said.

“Then maybe it lets us get at something below the surface. Some mineral we can use in the converter.”

They watched awhile longer. The smoke twisted and curled but seemed anchored in place. Its movement defied good sense in a way he couldn’t quite figure. Maybe it was the gravity.

“You know what?” he said. “It kind of looks like a tornado. Like it’s spinning.” But as he watched, it faded away. Within a minute, it was gone. He looked at Jackson, who was still studying the horizon. “What do you think?”

“I think we should get moving,” she said, and began to slide down the rock.

12

[Gilly]

THE BENEATH

He cranked the manual release to Eng-1 and, as soon as the door opened wide enough, squeezed through. There were eight core housings, each drenched in soft green light that turned black as the warning glowlights strobed. He moved to the closest. “I’m in,” he said. “I have a board.”

Jackson: “You have ninety seconds. If what you’re doing isn’t working by then, you leave.”

“Understood.”

What he was doing was trying to exert manual control over the ship’s combat systems. Which was precisely what he’d said they should never do, because a human being couldn’t match the capabilities of an AI. But there was no AI; the AI was recovering from a coma state into which Jackson had plunged it with the kill switch. What they had was Gilly.

“Intel, how are you looking?”

“Good. The AI cold restart is almost complete. It should be fully functional within three or four minutes. I haven’t looked at Weapons yet, but I think I can run Armor.”

“We enter huk range in sixty seconds. You need to be back here before they start landing.”

He could see that wasn’t going to happen. It would take him at least that long to get to grips with the Armor subsystems, then he would need to run them for the few remaining minutes until the AI could take over. But he said, “I understand.”

Armor was primarily a network of interlocking electrostatic fields, which, when sufficiently charged, would seize anything that passed through and tear it into tiny, inert, directionless particles. The challenging part was maintaining that charge, since powering the entire network at once would require more energy than the ship could generate. Instead, the ship normally made it work by charging precise sections right before something hit them, based on its assessment of incoming projectiles. Gilly would need to track every incoming huk and key power to an appropriate segment of Armor at the right moment.

It seemed impossible, but as he worked, he felt the stirrings of excitement. He had always enjoyed a challenge, and right now he could set aside any thought of whether this might actually work and simply do the best he could. As he bundled up Armor segments, tying them to commands he could trigger at will, it even began to feel doable. Maybe Anders had been right all along, and they could run this ship like an old-fashioned stagecoach, blasting shotguns out the side.

He deployed a quick test and manually triggered a section of armor. Nothing happened.

“Shit,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Minor problem. It’s fine.” He saw his mistake. The electrostatic field didn’t appear from nowhere; it had to flow from generators on particular points on the ship’s hull. If he wanted to light up a segment, he needed to create a path to it.

“Hostiles firing. Gilly, you need to come back now.”

“It didn’t work. I missed something. But I can fix it.”

“If