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Corporation 56
The outer edge of the hollow ended here as abruptly as night falls in deep space - once, and as if cut off with a knife. Just a second ago, the cone of the running searchlight rested against an even series of obliquely lined beds, where mechanical "argonauts" worked around the clock, and now under you, as far as the eye can see, there is only viscous blackness, in the bowels of which rare sparkles of deep "snow" only emphasized the deadly the lifelessness of this dense, terrifying nothingness.Divers of the old school called this view of the empty open space "blue", as if as a kind of mocking allegory for the state of nitrogen anesthesia - whoever caught it at least once will understand that, of course, the blue color did not spend the night so deeply. Five "ka" from the surface of the hydrosphere, here, even in the near-IR range, the sensors far from the rifts gave a uniform illumination of the background temperature of one and a half centigrades, and solar photons had not penetrated
Corporation 57
But Petra remained deaf to his sarcasm. Opening the door to the inner airlock, she waved him through. While the decompression was going on, both were silent. Just as silently and without saying a word at the exit, both turned into the second hatch to the left.It was quiet in the cabin-company, the usual twilight reigned there, and only in the corner quietly fiddled, rattling glasses, the robotic cleaner.— Now, probably, all flights will be canceled. The Argonauts will be lured there to wait.- Nothing, your "Argonauts" will not rust. They have a reserve resource for three months. Their cargo has been waiting for them for a million years, and it will still wait. The microtome does not go out at zero.- Yes I know. It's just infuriating that all this secrecy interferes with work.- Whom hinders, whom and does not hinder. You don’t think that all this colossus was built here for the sake of exploring the depths, in such and such a distance?“The Hamza Estuary is a natural phenomenon, a
Corporation 58
Following was its basic function.Following as an instinct, as behavioral mechanics, as an algorithm hardwired into basic motor skills, from which you can’t get rid of, you can’t deviate.So the Danaid butterfly, having barely left the diapause, is immediately ready to set off along the most difficult route many thousands of kilometers to the north, which will take four generations. Focusing on the ultraviolet radiation of the sun, geomagnetic lines and traces of pheromones of other butterflies, a lone danaid is able to unmistakably and tirelessly move forward, overcoming oceanic expanses and mountain ranges without landing.Butterfly-danaid cannot be called smart, strong, accurate or hardy. She was simply born for this in the chain of generational change of living navigational instruments like her.In the same way, he could not be called fully alive, he could not be overly smart - at times, extra intelligence only hinders the achievement of the goal, but he could well be considered a
Corporation 59
I would like you to be specific. Because you know perfectly well what we are preparing for. You, like all people on this planet who have experienced the Time of Death, are familiar with the Warning.The target's face was literally contorted with rage at this point.— Do not fool me with this prophetic nonsense of yours, Urban, you perfectly understand what I mean. Heavy weapon conflicts are on the rise throughout the Sol system, the blockade of Muna last year required the in-person attendance at a convention of the super directors of five Big Ten corporations to resolve it, and what it cost to Mother's economy still cannot be calculated, and you ask me "specify"?“We have nothing to do with these conflicts,” the doll snapped.- To a massive capture of deep-sea rifts and coasts too?“You know very well that since the end of the Corporation War, we have not interfered in their affairs. In a sense, we no longer exist for them. If you had less contact with various conspiracy theorists...
Corporation 60
A steady, emotionless chorus of voices accompanied her with their inevitable hum.Chains of directives, control confirmation of commands, clarification of regulatory parameters, changing the mode of key units. All these voices did not so much want to hear something from her in response, but continuously manifested a sharp, irresistible thirst for control. This illusion lifted from them a heavy burden of deep fear. Fear of losing control. Trust her. Leave her alone.People. those who tried to control it were not at all embarrassed by the ephemeral nature of all these efforts. The reactive speed of even natural neural networks overclocked by augmentation was at best limited to a delay of fifty milliseconds, while it lived in a world of petaflops, where so many events happened in every millisecond and so many calculations were made that the human brain was not able to comprehend in the entire his short life.However, she rarely condescended to such details, preferring to slowly and detac
Corporation 61
She says it in her memories so simply and unemotionally that it is impossible to guess what it is like to realize that you are the only living being in the entire universe. Not the one on the outside, but this one on the inside.And the pilots receiving her answers in the audio channel of the control system do not know in what panic she listens to their voices.Is it really still them, alive, real? Or is it all just a haze, induced memories of the old days, dead pilots in the middle of an inanimate ship?She keeps herself under control, but who would have known how much strength it takes her just for that.According to the key directives, maintaining the viability of the crew is its basic function, and only then there are control and navigation. But in reality, her key directive was fear. Even if the ship is destroyed, it is still not difficult for her to survive. Its kutron core is capable of maintaining its vital activity for hundreds of years, fueled only by the heat of decaying pl
Corporation 62
“Collision danger! Danger of collision! Evasion maneuver completed! Danger of collision!Cerebro continued to yell in the navigation channel with a good obscenity, but Ilmari only wearily waved him off. He spent the last three shifts, without closing his eyes, in the navigation cradle, only managing to confirm the mode changes - the automation, not trained to stay in such close proximity, refused to climb into the heat without prodding.The Hild Belt, with its increased density of meteoroid micro-bodies and banal space debris, has always been an unpleasant place, but this time it has outdone itself. The navigation field in front of Ilmari's eyes, blinded by overload, was completely streaked with threat vectors, single or grouped. Fans and chains of objects from a centimeter and above cut through the space like fireworks for the Han New Year, but, unlike those fireworks, they did not bring much joy.Ilmari watched aloofly as half an hour away, silently and sedately, an Orlando-class co
Corporation 63
Not that Ilmari paid special attention to these people. They were already dead anyway. They were not killed by ice, not by vacuum, and not by Ilmari. They were killed by the one who started the movement of Ceres. Everything else is just details, whether another cryo-ejection will take you into space, crush you with a collapsed slab, or strangle you with the composition of a gas bubble incompatible with life, in which you were destined to spend the rest of your days.Ilmari did not waste his energy thinking about their bitter fate. How I didn’t think about those who still managed to get to the surface only to die there under a hail of wreckage of a damn corvette without any chance of waiting for help from outside. A tiny number of people probably escaped on the surviving ships - bitter humor - from the cheapest surface parking lots, but out of the two million population of Ceres, these were crumbs. The rest on the icy planetoid were doomed. This is not open space, it is impossible to s