Ghostworld (Deathstalker Prelude) by Simon R. Green Read Free Book Online

THREE
----
    Looking for Answers
    STASIAK and Ripper lounged bonelessly in their seats, bored and restless, watching without much interest as the esper Diana Vertue tried to make contact with Base Thirteen’s computers. She’d been trying to patch the Darkwind’ s computer into the Base’s systems for some time, with only limited success, and she’d begun to mutter under her breath. Finally, by working together with Odin and improvising madly, she and the AI had managed to forge a tentative link between the pinnace’s onboard systems and the Base’s computer net. Diana studied the incoming data closely, and winced at the state of the Base’s systems as they reluctantly opened up to her experimental probes. Thirteen’s computers were shot to hell. Half the manned systems had crashed, and there was no trace anywhere of the Base’s AI, which was supposed to protect the systems from such devastation. And there was something definitely odd about the computers she had managed to reach.
    Diana frowned, her fingers darting across the comm panels, and watched intently as one by one the pinnace’s monitors came to life, information flowing in an endless stream across the glowing screens. Her fingers pecked and stabbed at the keyboard as she tried to sort out the important data from the dross, her frown deepening as the picture unfolded. Whatever had happened at Base Thirteen, it hadn’t been an accident. This kind of selective damage had to have been deliberate. Though whether the attack had comefrom outside the Base or within had yet to be established. She half-smiled as she heard one of the marines sigh heavily behind her. It was probably Stasiak. He hadn’t struck her as the type to have a long attention span.
    “You don’t have to stay, you know,” she said briskly, without looking back. “There’s nothing you can do to help.”
    “It’s our job to look after you,” said Stasiak. “Make sure nothing happens to you. And if that means sitting around in a nice warm cabin instead of tramping around in the cold, waiting for my extremities to drop off, well, I know where my duty lies. After all, with the Captain and the Investigator both wandering about on their own somewhere, Rip and I are all that stands between you and whatever horrors lie waiting out there in the trees. Right, Rip?”
    “Right,” said Ripper.
    “The proximity mines are all the protection I need,” said Diana. “And the pinnace does have its own force screen, in the event of a real emergency. Now, I’m going to be doing this for some time, and believe me, this is as interesting as it gets.”
    “How much progress have you made?” asked Ripper, and Diana gave him points for at least sounding as if he was interested.
    “Not a hell of a lot,” she admitted, sitting back in her chair and letting her fingers rest for a moment. Things would have been going a lot quicker if she’d been allowed direct access to the computers instead of having to work through the keyboard. But she wasn’t high enough in rank for that privilege, and besides, she was an esper, and therefore not to be trusted. Ever. She realised Ripper was still waiting for her answer, and pulled herself together.
    “Most of the Base’s computers are off-line, and seem determined to stay that way, no matter what I do. They’re not responding to the standard code words or entry routines, and I can’t even find the Base’s AI. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear it was hiding. It’s as though someone or something just shut everything down, and then wiped half the memory crystals. The subsystems overseeing the mining machinery seem to be mostly intact, but what little information I’m getting from them is pretty depressing. The machinery is working at barely twenty per cent efficiency, and dropping. Unless we come up with something to reverse this process, or at least slow it down, everything will just grind to a halt in a little under forty-eight hours. And once they’ve