QE3-QW-Ch4-未校对

August, 2515 

By the time Iekanjika reached the biolabs for her second meeting, the bridge confirmed that the Puppet shuttle was off the Mutupa. The surgical chief saluted while the others came to attention. Iekanjika had grown up with the other scientists in the room. She returned the salute. Strapped to the table under plastic were three corpses recovered from the debris of Congregate fighter craft, bloody, torn by battle, and riddled with wires. The chips inside them had been removed for study. A monitor on the wall showed a dark image, where every so often a monstrous fish-like face came in and out of sight in the gloom. Iekanjika hooked her feet under a metal bar on the floor.

“You’re sure of the gravities they were pulling, Stills?” Iekanjika asked.

The fish aspect came into focus in the monitor.

“Normal ships wouldna cost us many mongrels,” the toneless machine voice replied. “They were hard as fuck to shoot down, and if it’s hard for me, they sure as shit are pulling gees that ain’t normal.”

“How fast?” she said.

“I was pullin’ fifty. Once I saw that didn’t cut it, I tapped above sixty a few times. They were blowing reaction mass like crazy, and I thought the Congregate were catching up with the tech, but that wasn’t the difference, although that’s shitty enough for you.”

Congregate fighters maneuvering at fifty gravities wasn’t good news at all; at those accelerations, the enemy fighters would be as hard to hit as missiles, like the mongrel themselves. But how? Stills’ people were engineered to survive the pressures at the bottom of an ocean, which meant that at sixty or more gravities of acceleration, no lungs collapsed, no bones broke.

“It was like the fuckers knew what we were gonna do,” Stills continued.

“They outfought you?” Iekanjika said.

“Nobody outfights us, darlin’,” he said. An edge of testiness crept into the flat machine tones of his translator. Stills normally used coarser language, but he’d become increasingly cautious with her as the war had progressed. Stills wasn’t responding to her rank; he’d bad-mouthed other Union generals and colonels, including Rudo, since she’d known him. But he didn’t swear at her.

“They can figure out your tactics?”

A barking sound emerged from the speakers, the sound associated with mongrel laughter.

“Even the dogs don’t know where we’re gonna move from one minute to the next,” he said. “I seen a mongrel pilot weave off a perfect attack path at the last second to make it harder. We’re showing cajones. Combat AIs can’t figure us out.”

Iekanjika had seen recordings of mongrel fighters harrying Congregate warships and defending Union ones. She’d stopped trying to control or shape the mongrel chaos. She’d detached the mongrels from the normal chain of command and let them find their own way through a fight. They were most frightening when simply loosed into a hot battle like a swarm of wasps. Until these new Congregate pilots entered the scene.

“How did these pilots stay in the fight, doctor?” Iekanjika said. 

“They were in acceleration gel,” the surgical chief said, approaching the bodies. “Soft prosthetic plastics reinforced their organs. These weren’t small surgical modifications and would be difficult to reverse.”

“Even harder to reverse now that we blew their asses off,” Stills said.

“What are the wires?” Iekanjika asked.

“We’ve heard of similar artificial neurology in some augmented Bank pilots, although we don’t have any samples to compare.”

“Second Bushido,” Still said flatly.

The name didn’t mean anything to Iekanjika. The Banks of the Anglo-Spanish Plutocracy guarded their technological secrets, as the Union guarded the mysteries of their inflation drives, but in the end, someone was always shot down and reverse engineering became another race in any conflict.

“So the Congregate captured or killed augmented Bank pilots... Second Bushidos, in some skirmish and reverse engineered something to throw at the mongrels flying for the Union?” Iekanjika said.

“Their chips contain AIs like we think augmented Bank pilots do, ma’am,” a major from the encryption team said. “We can’t decrypt any of their code.”

“AIs wouldn’t explain it,” Stills said. “I ain’t flown against the Banks’ best, but other mongrels have and these fuckers here don’t fly like anything I heard of the Second Bushido types. There’s something wacked going on.”

“Can you explain, doctor?” Iekanjika said.

“There’s been extensive DNA rewriting, most of it all the way to the germ line, but we think there are some recent somatic changes too, but I don’t know what any of these modifications are for.”

 “So the genetic modifications were twenty years old or more” Iekanjika said. “What kind of modifications would these pilots need be able to keep up with the mongrels? Faster reflexes? Faster cognition?”

伊坎吉卡到达生物实验室参加第二次会议时，舰桥已经确认傀儡穿梭机离开了穆图帕号。外科主任敬了个礼，其他人也都立正。伊坎吉卡和房间里的其他科学家一起长大。她回了个礼。塑料袋下的桌子上绑着三具从 “会聚 ”战斗机残骸中找到的尸体，它们血肉模糊，被战火撕裂，身上布满电线。他们体内的芯片已被取出研究。墙上的监视器显示着黑暗的画面，阴暗处不时有一张怪鱼般的面孔在视线中进进出出。伊坎吉卡用脚勾住地上的金属杆。

“你确定他们的重力吗，斯蒂尔斯？” 伊坎吉卡问道。

监视器中出现了鱼的身影。

“一般的飞船不会让我们损失多少杂种，"没有音调的机器声音回答道。“它们很难被击落，如果对我来说很难，那它们肯定也拉得不正常。”

“有多快？"她说。

“我用了 50 英尺。有一次我发现这样不行，就试了几次，都超过了六十。它们在疯狂地喷射反作用力，我还以为公理会的技术追上来了，但这并不是区别所在，虽然这对你来说已经够糟糕的了。”

公理会战斗机以 50 重力的速度机动根本不是好消息；在这种加速度下，敌方战斗机就像导弹一样难以击中，就像杂种自己一样。但怎么打呢？斯蒂尔斯的人被设计成能在海底压力下生存，这意味着在六十或更高的加速度下，肺不会塌陷，骨头不会断裂。

“就好像那些混蛋知道我们要做什么，"斯蒂尔斯继续说道。

“他们打得过你们？” 伊坎吉卡说。

“他说："没人能打败我们，亲爱的。平淡的机器翻译语调中透露出一丝试探的意味。斯蒂尔斯通常使用更粗鲁的语言，但随着战争的进展，他对她越来越谨慎。斯蒂尔斯并不是在回应她的军衔；自从她认识他以来，他一直在说其他联邦将军和上校的坏话，包括鲁道。但他没有骂她。

“他们能猜出你的战术？”

扬声器里传出一阵吠声，那是与杂种狗的笑声有关的声音。

“就连狗也不知道我们这一分钟到下一分钟会在哪里行动，"他说。“我见过一个杂种飞行员在最后一秒编织出一条完美的攻击路线，以增加难度。我们表现出了勇气。战斗人工智能都搞不懂我们。”

伊坎吉卡看到过杂种战斗机骚扰公会战舰和保卫联盟战舰的记录。她不再试图控制或塑造杂种的混乱。她让杂种脱离了正常的指挥系统，让它们自己找到战斗的方式。当它们像一群黄蜂一样被释放到激烈的战斗中时，它们是最可怕的。直到这些新的 “会聚 ”飞行员加入了战斗。

“医生，这些飞行员是怎么坚持战斗的？” 伊坎吉卡说。

“他们在加速凝胶中。"外科主任走近尸体说。“柔软的假体塑料加固了他们的器官。这些都不是小手术，很难逆转。”

“现在更难逆转了，因为我们把他们的屁股炸烂了。"斯蒂尔斯说。

“电线是什么？” 伊坎吉卡问道。

“我们听说过一些增强班克飞行员身上也有类似的人工神经系统，不过我们没有任何样本可以比较。”

“第二武士道，"斯蒂尔平淡地说。

这个名字对伊坎吉卡来说没有任何意义。盎格鲁-西班牙财阀银行守护着他们的技术秘密，就像联盟守护着他们通货膨胀驱动的奥秘一样，但最终，总有人被击落，逆向工程成了任何冲突中的另一场竞赛。

“因此，公理会捕获或杀死了增强型银行飞行员...... 第二布希多斯，在一些小规模战斗中，逆向工程的东西扔给了为联盟飞行的杂种？” 伊坎吉卡说。

“他们的芯片包含人工智能，就像我们认为的增强银行飞行员一样，女士。"加密小组的一名少校说。“我们无法解密他们的任何代码。”

“人工智能无法解释这一点，"斯蒂尔斯说。“我没有驾驶过班克斯的最佳战机，但其他杂种驾驶过，这些家伙的飞行方式与我听说的第二武士道类型的战机完全不同。这里面一定有古怪。”

“你能解释一下吗，医生？” 伊坎吉卡说。

“有大量的 DNA 被改写，大部分一直改写到生殖系，但我们认为最近也有一些体质上的变化，但我不知道这些修改是为了什么。”

 “这么说，基因改造是二十年前或更久以前的事了。"伊坎吉卡说。“这些飞行员需要什么样的改造才能跟上杂种们的步伐？更快的反应能力？更快的认知能力？”

“Good looks,” Stills said.

“From everything I’ve heard, Congregate laws are restrictive,” the surgical chief said. “And AI-human mergers run contrary to their mores.”

“Yet here are these pilots, damaging the mongrel squadrons,” she said. “How many were there, Stills?”

“Do I look like an accountant?” the mongrel said. “In the middle of a fight, fighters engage and disengage. I sure as fuck don’t know which ones are modified and which ones are cannon fodder.”

“Dig into this, doctor,” she said. “Stills, I’d like the mongrels to give me some recommendations for the next encounter.”

“Half the dogs are probably higher than piss right now,” Still said. “And we ain’t general staffers. Don’t you have majors and lieutenants to think for you?”

“You’re better,” she said. Then, she left.

“看起来不错。"斯蒂尔斯说。

“据我所知，会聚法是限制性的，"外科主任说。“人工智能与人类的合并违背了他们的习俗。”

“然而，这些飞行员却在这里破坏杂种中队，"她说。“有多少人，斯蒂尔斯？”

“我看起来像会计吗？"杂种说。“在战斗中，战斗机会交战和脱离。我他妈肯定不知道哪些是改装过的，哪些是炮灰。”

“医生，你来调查一下。"她说。“斯蒂尔斯，我希望杂种狗们能给我一些下次遭遇战的建议。”

“一半的狗现在可能比尿还多，"斯蒂尔斯说。“我们又不是一般的参谋。难道你们没有少校和中尉帮你们思考吗？”

“还是你厉害。"她说。然后，她离开了。