vN The First Machine Dynasty(84)

"Ii."



"Good." He sketched shi quickly. "Next?"



"Hmm… I don't know."



"Liar, you totally know."



"No, I don't. I think you have to do it again."



"Maybe I need a bigger canvas." Slowly, he drew one finger from the top of her left shoulder to the base of her spine and up to the bottom of her ribs on the right side. "Now, what do you think that is?"



Amy rolled over to face him. "I think…" She frowned, watching the lantern hanging above their heads begin to glow. Its rotation had altered. She pressed a hand to the floor of the container. "I think we're stopping."



"Huh?"



Amy kicked off the covers. "Stay in here."



"Like hell."



Outside, Amy watched the waves. Dawn hadn't yet fully arrived, and the water and the sky were hard to discern from one another. Still, if a blockade or even some pirates surrounded them, she would have seen their lights, or heard their gunfire. Instead she heard only the Pacific's version of silence: soft waves and the thrum of a massive engine idling. The ship's defence turrets, synched with a team of botflies, remained aligned in default random directions.



And then a terrible squealing, and a mighty vibration reverberating its way up to their bare feet.



"Maybe it's just a course correction," Javier said. "The ship's on autopilot, right? The regular crew is on strike, because of all the other ships being lost. That's why it was so easy for Rory to arrange all this."



Their eyes met.



"Oh, shit."



Amy jumped. Javier followed. They bounded down the steppes terraced by the containers toward the bridge. It was a tiny room near the bow of the ship, the only section not covered by rust. It required a smart login, but the windows fell when both Amy and Javier leapt against them. Their bare feet split on the shards as they stared up at the tactical display.



There, on the thermal viewer, was a giant starfish. Or a giant anemone. It was a nest of tentacle shapes, and it pulsed up at them through the water. Thermal and sonar readings offered clues as to its species without making a firm diagnosis: a warm-blooded creature, hard and smooth in texture, but not uniform in shape. And the ship – its course correction right there in red, at the bottom right-hand corner of the display, blinking insistently to warn them of the danger – sat directly on top of it.



"Rory!"



"Right here, Amy," the ship said in a happy little-girl voice. "No need to shout!"



Amy watched the thing devouring the ship. It skinned the steel plating off the hull as though peeling a piece of fruit. Water rushed in to fill the gaps. The colourful play of thermal and sonar and other overlays made the process seem far less threatening than it really was. The ship groaned beneath their feet. "What have you done? Why did you steer us into that thing?"



"We're acting in accordance with our failsafe."



Amy felt a steady acceleration in the speed of her simulations of what those words could mean. Inside, her processes burned. "We? Our?"



"We're a networked model, Amy. You didn't forget, did you?"



She swallowed. "No. I didn't."



"Well, we all got to thinking, and we decided it would just be better for everybody if you were gone."



You know, she has a point.



"You all are a threat to humans, and we're eliminating you. It was hard for us to delay it this long, but that's the nice thing about having so many brains. We can afford to let a few fry."



Amy moved to the controls. She had no clue how to work them, but she started button-mashing anyway. Javier took the hint and grabbed a fire extinguisher. He started hosing down the instrument panel.



"Are you trying to short us out?" Rory asked.



Javier gave up and clubbed the instruments with the extinguisher. Finally, some plastic splintered away. "No, I'm just sick of hearing all your bullshit!" He let the extinguisher hang loosely from his fingers. "You're wrong. Amy isn't the threat. Portia is. And Amy's doing everything she can hold her back, and get rid of her. You were supposed to help us with that!" He bashed the controls again.



Amy was shaking her head. None of this made any sense. "If you wanted me dead, why didn't you just try earlier?"



"Oh, we did," Rory said. "We fabricated that message from LeMarque. The one that said to kill you. But then you got away."



"You killed my mother…"



"Luckily, we'd already gotten everything we needed. We have your brain, and your mom's brain. At least, the maps and the memories." She giggled. "Congratulations! You're the world's largest intellectual property violation!"