Hammer and Crucible by Cameron Cooper (easy books to read txt) 📗

I wanted to shake her for her indiscretion, but I was also intently interested in Ramaker’s answer.

“Years,” he told her, his tone light. “It failed to tell you that. How surprising. I see we will have to fill you in on the other side of the story. For that, I brought Elizabeth here. Elizabeth?”

The woman cleared her throat. “Do either of you remember the Ziorsia Incident?” Her voice was an oddly pleasant contralto.

“Something about a ship and its crew permanently in quarantine on a planet, because no one can find a cure,” Juliyana replied. “Years ago. They’re still there.”

“Sixty years ago,” Elizabeth said.

“That is the public version we put out there to explain the situation,” Ramaker added. He had moved over to the cupboard to pick up his coffee and I only now noticed the movement. I cursed silently. I was letting my situational awareness slide. I had let the surprises throw me.

“The real facts are somewhat different,” Elizabeth added. “It was only when I investigated the matter from the medical and psychoanalytic side, measuring the responses of a crew under stress, that I began to suspect the truth myself. There was a contagion aboard the Ziorsia. It was a Ranger frigate carrying five hundred and thirty-three personnel, and the disease that tore through the ship at a ninety-five percent communicability, and an eighty percent mortality rate. The captain of the Ziorsia, Evans, was told to remain on station until the disease ran itself out. The science cadre worked remotely to analyze and build a profile of the disease, and test for inoculations.” She grimaced. “All this takes time. Unknown pathogens are usually xenobiological in nature and are enormously difficult to classify and deal with.”

I felt a touch of pity for the captain of that ship. Evans would have had a morale nightmare on his hands. People dying and no one coming to their rescue?

“We’re not entirely sure what happened to provoke the array,” Elizabeth added. “It does not fully remember the incident itself, as it was an infant at the time—in mental maturation terms, at least. I believe Captain Evans may have vented his fears and concerns about being cut off into a personal diary entry, which the array listened to. The emotions Evans expressed spoke to the array, for the array was feeling just as lonely and afraid. So it reached out to Evans, and failed to explain who it was. Evans presumed it was one of his people and dismissed the array, possibly yelling at it for wasting his time with emotional nonsense.”

I winced. I remember what Noam had been like as a two-year-old.

Elizabeth nodded. “The array hit back, and like a child, it wildly overcompensated. When the contagion was contained, the Ziorsia was given permission to return home, but when it went through the nearest gate, the array sent them far, far off course. The ship emerged in the Quintino Rim. When they tried to enter the gate once more, with a corrected course, the gate refused to work for them. Other ships could dive without issue, but not the Ziorsia. So the crew were split up and put aboard other ships in the area, while the Ziorsia was scheduled for a maintenance overhaul. Any ship with one of the Ziorsia crew aboard found itself unable to use the gates, too.”

“The crew has been stuck there ever since,” Ramaker added. “Outcasts on a miserable planet. They can’t use the communications net, either. They’re completely isolated. Anything that passes through the array is denied them.” He shook his head. “The rumor began that the disease that struck the crew was what made them unable to use the gates. We let that rumor run and now no one will go near any of the crew. We put them on the surface, for even their presence on the station was driving away traffic. They’re farmers, now, living a subsistence life.”

“That was sixty years ago,” I pointed out. “You’ve known about the array all that time?”

“No, not at first. The Ziorsia incident is what caused me to look into the anomalies and dig deeper,” Elizabeth replied. “The Crazy Years confirmed for me that we were dealing with a self-aware array.”

“I remember that time,” Juliyana said. “Everyone started talking about sabotage and guerilla enemies.”

“It was sabotage,” Ramaker said. “The array threw a temper tantrum. All the little things going wrong during that time—ships going missing, ships emerging in the wrong locations…it was all the array’s doing.”

“It had developed an envy-induced psychosis,” Elizabeth said. She gave a short smile. “It resented humans, who got to have all the fun.”

“Shit…” Juliyana breathed.

“That is when I reached out and spoke to the array for the first time. That was in 247. The array was overjoyed to have a friend it could talk to, and once I had gained its trust, I asked it to stop the cruel acts it thought were funny. I had to teach it basic values to do that, too.”

“Then Elizabeth contacted me,” Ramaker said. “That was when I learned the array was self-aware. As everyone was already terrified to use the array, but were forced to, the knowledge had to be contained. I directed that the Imperial Shield take back all control of the array, including the construction of the gates. Everything, except for the smallest components that meant less than nothing to those who built them for us.”

I let out a breath that was less than steady. “The array said you created the Crazy Years and the Drakas disaster, in order to take back the gates.”

Ramaker nodded. “Yes, it would have to say that, wouldn’t it?”

“We did create the Drakas disaster, though,” Elizabeth added. “But not for malignant reasons.”

“We created the conditions for Drakas,” Ramaker said. “The array caused the disaster itself.”

“How?” My voice was hoarse.

“Once we knew the array was aware, I built a profile of its psychological health,” Elizabeth said. “It was important the array be…well, happy and contented. The