Providence - Max Barry Page 0,40

lock Anders in his cabin. Talia didn’t say that. She was having trouble concentrating. She felt rattled. Her mind kept returning to the hole in station and what she’d seen beyond.

“We’ve lost Materials Fabrication,” Gilly said, pulling up a schematic. Gilly didn’t appear rattled at all. If anything, he was energized. She was jealous of his ability to see this as a fascinating development. He pointed. “Here.”

“You mean there’s no function?” Jackson said.

“I mean it’s gone. It detached from the ship.”

There was a short silence.

“Well, shit,” Jackson said.

“The ship can rebuild itself,” Gilly said. “But this will test it. Mat Fab was seventy thousand tons. We’ve also lost structures all across here”—he gestured—“and here. Plus there’s a lot of incidental damage. At least five hundred huks penetrated Armor and passed straight through.”

Just when she had learned to love the ship. She had thought they understood each other. There had been a trust. Then her whale had floundered. She was gripping the table as if bracing for the floor to drop away. It wasn’t the ship’s fault, but she felt a little betrayed, to be honest.

Anders said, “So we have holes?”

“Had. All breaches are now repaired.”

“I want you to inspect Life station,” Jackson said. “Make sure it’s up to code.”

Gilly nodded, then eyed Talia. “What was it like?”

“What?” she said.

“The breach. Your core deployed. Must have been scary.”

“Oh,” she said. “I’m over it.” She gave them a smile, her resolute one, and they nodded, and Jackson began to talk about subsystem damage. Talia was slightly tempted to raise her hand and say, Excuse me, you know what? I’m actually not over it. I thought maybe someone would notice. But apparently I have to come right out and say it. Do you mind if we talk for a minute about how terrified I am? But she could imagine how that would go. She could roleplay it:

Anders: I don’t follow, since I, personally, seek out near-death experiences and find them to be awesome.

Jackson: This is a debrief, Life. Your feelings aren’t relevant except insofar as they imply personal weakness. There’s a time and place to discuss such things, and it’s when we get back home, with someone else.

Gilly: [stares mutely].

What she needed was herself. She wanted Feed Talia to sit her down and hold her hand and tell her it was okay. Go ahead. What you feel is important. She should go to her cabin and watch some old clips. She could stare at the screen and let Feed Talia comfort her, since Feed Talia was the closest thing to a real person around here.

“What about the damaged core bank?” Jackson said. “Is that repaired?”

Gilly shook his head. “That’s the one part of itself the ship can’t fix. But it’s not a significant loss. There are thousands of cores. No single one in particular matters much.”

“One in particular took down Weapons and Armor.”

“Yes,” Gilly said, “but only because of a really unusual set of circumstances. The concussive wave from the hive bomb caused corruption in a core and also, separately, in the ship’s ability to detect that kind of fault. So it couldn’t tell what was wrong.”

“So the enemy has a Providence killer,” Jackson said.

“No, I don’t think so. I doubt they had much of an idea what the blast would do. I think they got lucky.”

“Justify that,” Jackson said.

“Well, for starters,” Gilly said, “there are thousands of core banks that weren’t affected. So if it was a plan, it’s not a reliable one. But more important, this is what salamanders do. They try something, and most of the time, it doesn’t work. If it does, they all start doing it. Experiment, learn, adapt. That’s their entire strategy.”

“So we should expect more bombs?”

He scratched his face. “Yes. Some of them escaped, and we didn’t scour the battlefield. But the ship learns, too. If we have another engagement before it’s developed a counter, I’ll be shocked.”

“I don’t want to be shocked. I want to be sure. Will