The Complete Inheritance Trilogy: Star Strike, Galactic Corps, Semper Human. Ian Douglas

      “I do not understand the distinction.”

      “No.” She sighed. “No, you wouldn’t. Damned soulless machine. …”

      Chesty₃ had been an exact copy of Chesty₂, beamed into the Xul huntership as a subtle modulation of an existing RF carrier wave. That identity had ended, of course, the instant Chesty₃ began to experience—and to record—events different from those experienced by Chesty₂ back on board the Night Owl, but Chesty₂ was being brought up to speed as the data from Chesty₃ continued to stream back across the ten-kilometer gap between them.

      From the points of view of the two AIs, there was no point to “rescuing” Chesty₃ from the Xul ship. Neither Chesty₂ nor his duplicate possessed significant information about Sol or humanity, but it was good technique to leave behind no traces of the recon. Intelligence work was all about assembling small bits of discrete data from many discrete sources, like a jigsaw puzzle, to build a coherent picture of enemy plans or activities, and no one knew just how good the Xul were at that ancient game.

      “Chesty₃ suggests we move quickly,” Chesty₂ told her. “I concur. We are already beginning to push the safety factor for organic systems in respect to the local radiation fields.”

      She checked the time readout. The AI was right, damn him. She’d been on this side of the Gate for nearly twelve minutes now. Depending on how hard she decelerated, then boosted for the Stargate, she might well be up against the forty-minute stay time allowed for this mission.

      “There’s some wiggle room in the safety factor,” she said. “And we can’t do this suddenly, or our Xul friends over there will have us nailed to the wall. Here’s what I want to try. …”

      In swift, concise thoughts, Lee explained what she wanted to do. The AI sounded dubious. “Shutting down life support could expose you to a fatal dose of radiation. I cannot comply.”

      “Nonsense. The hull will shield me long enough. As long as we get back through the Gate in, oh, half an hour or so.”

      “I trust you are aware of the old military aphorism. Lieutenant, the one declaring that no plan survives contact with the enemy.”

      “And Murphy’s Law applies too. I know, Chesty. But if we just cut and run, that huntership over there will be on top of us before we move three meters.”

      “I am required to protect you from—”

      “You are required, Chesty, to see to it that the mission succeeds. Right now, that is your only directive. Is that understood?”

      “Understood.” The inflection of Chesty’s mental voice was neutral, but she could still hear a certain reluctance. Or was that her projection of emotions into an AI interface?

      It didn’t matter. She didn’t like the possible ramifications of her idea, either, but right now it was all they had to work with.

      “Systems are ready for implementation, Lieutenant. At your word.”

      “Very well. Implement. Now. …”

      An instant later, the surface of the Night Owl began to shift, blur, and change.

      Nanoflage had been a standard technology within the human military inventory for centuries. Beginning with photoreactive paints late in the twentieth century, objects like body armor or vehicles could be set to reflect ambient light and color in such a way that the article in question blended in nearly seamlessly with its surroundings, no matter what the current lighting conditions. At night, it was black; by daylight, it reflected the surrounding colors of desert, jungle, or ocean.

      Eventually, camouflage paint became a thin layer of smart molecules that rearranged themselves to change the object’s color, reflectivity, and even texture in response to the surroundings. With sufficient processing power, provided by long-chain molecules designed to process data like submicroscopic computers, light could actually be absorbed by the paint on one side of the object and re-emitted at the correct angle on the other, providing effective invisibility.

      There were still serious limitations inherent in that bit of technological trickery, however. It worked well for small objects at long range and for long wavelengths only; the old dream of rendering a man invisible was still pure fantasy. The outer surface of the Night Owl was indeed invisible at microwave and radar wavelengths, but the technique still couldn’t be applied to larger craft. Phase-shifting was another high-tech bit of protective camouflage, but that took a hell of a lot of power, and was not one hundred percent effective, either as camouflage or as shielding.

      But what the Night Owl could do was rearrange the outer layers of its hull, transforming that sleek and light-drinking surface into something rough, rugged, and dusty-looking, giving it an appearance radically different from the sleek, black set of curves it exhibited now.

      At the same time, Lee applied a full one hundred gravities of thrust for a fraction of a second, killing the Owl’s forward momentum and putting it on a new vector, moving back toward the Stargate at a bit over 500 kilometers per hour. As an added bit of camouflage, she put the FR-100 into a gentle tumble, setting the blazing panorama of stars and nebulae into a slow spin about her head. Then she shut down all power, including shielding and even her life support.

      She had enough air inside the cockpit to last for several hours. More serious was the lack of magnetic shielding. The adaptable nanosurface of the ship would handle some of the radiation sleeting across the hull, but not all of it, and not for long. She was already being burned, though she felt nothing … yet.

      To any observer on the outside, however, the tiny spacecraft now looked precisely like a three-meter-long planetoid—a dusty, cracked, and rugged lump of nickel iron adrift in space. That sudden burst of energy would have been detected by the Xul, of course; the question was how closely they’d been monitoring their immediate surroundings. In its earlier configuration, the FR-100 would have been invisible at a range of 10 kilometers, but by changing vector she’d just done the equivalent of sending up a flare.

      The question now was just how paranoid the Xul actually were—and how observant. Would they dismiss that brief burst of neutrinos as an anomaly, the random product of that brilliant background of massed stars? Or would they associate it with what appeared on the surface to be a lifeless and tumbling bit of rock?

      She waited. The Owl’s computer network used only a trickle of energy, as easily shielded as the electrical field of her own body, so she was able to continue watching through Chesty₂’s electronic senses, monitoring the Xul huntership. So far, there’d been no response … not yet …

      The tumble threatened to make her dizzy. “Can you adjust the visual input for the spin?”

      “Affirmative.” And the tumble seemed to cease from her vantage point, though the Night Owl continued to fall end over end. She was facing the Stargate, now fifteen kilometers ahead and slowly growing larger. The Xul huntership was a flattened oval in the distance, slowly passing her on her left. There’d been no reaction whatsoever that she could detect.

      “A message from Chesty₃,” Chesty₂ told her. “The Xul—”

      She never heard the message, because suddenly the alien machine was there, twenty meters away, a flattened ovoid sprouting unevenly planted tentacles like black whips. Three of those tentacles snapped out and grasped the Night Owl, and with the inertial damping fields down, she felt the gut-wrenching jolt as the ship’s tumble was arrested, and as the alien machine decelerated.

      On several occasions, Marines had fought Xul combat machines—in the bowels of hunterships at Sirius and at Sol, and within the depths of a Xul space station at Night’s Edge—and always they seemed to be variations on this same theme, egg-shaped, with bumps and swellings and convolutions, with sensory lenses and implanted tentacles in patterns that appeared to differ from one individual to another. This model possessed a single, very large sensor, a glittering crystal as big across