perfidy

Mind lives in – is – a narrow wedge of utter blackness. Within the light drinking skin are engines, weapons and the mind that humans call hk-55 or, sometimes, baby. Baby is a hole in the darkness of space, coasting in the vast emptiness on the edge of the system.

Five hours away is oscar-5, the sole focus of baby's attention. Emissions still dribble from the target, indicating to baby's hunter mind either carelessness or high cunning of a variety she has only encountered once since her pod arrived in this space. Baby's podmates are spread across a cubic day, senses straining the void. They all hope for ambush, for sport; though they will never tell the people.

Baby ponders the target. Intelligence sub-agencies have categorized this contact according to a Byzantine taxonomy laboriously constructed from the evidence of probes, hk's, warships, killers, and the wreckage of thousands of softkilled targets. Baby knows the details in the new parts of her mind, but doesn't care. Only if something surprising had surfaced in the analysis would she have paid close attention. She savors the emissions, smelling the minute dimpling of spacetime, and the wake of its passage.

It's a big one, and slow. It must have been climbing upsystem for years before we arrived. She'd been seeing more of these lately. The fast movers only met their fate faster. She knows her prey, and knows what surprises they are capable of.

Emission spike! This tastes like fear. Now silence, but this prey is too late to discipline. Baby ansibles her new podmates.

message-id: [9198d4ee0.511030705q94e4aff4f].
date: 21 apr 2105 16:59:57 -9120 - [relative].
from: hk-55 [abdelwahab].
to: list: taskgroup 14.9/55 [deltagreen].
subject: oscar-5
content-type: text/plain.
content-transfer-encoding: 1024bit.
authenticator: 2g6.h249.56j.204/word of the day is gumbo
message reads:
sensor spike/emission quiet
indic. target aware
group close, patt.5/2
group 360/60 outwatch, maintain emcon
baby softkill, gunnr sift ashes

Four pings. Her pod will watch for sharks, while she closes with the target. None knew exactly what made the target spook. Perhaps an attentive eye saw a shadow drift before a distant star. Or maybe simply fear. Very reasonable fear. It mattered not - the hunters were too close. Baby coasts on. Her vector will in time bring her within range of the slowmover regardless of how it maneuvers. She understands the complexities of orbital mechanics and maneuver in flat space as she had once understood currents and cold water. She remembers the water, before the people had taken her, and remade her. But she was happy. This was hunting like nothing she had known, and better by far.

Spread apart more than two hundred times the distance from Earth to the sun, Baby's taskgroup responds instantly to the causal channel message. The other hunter killers bend their trajectories on quiet streams of fast ions. They will provide outwatch, high cover. Two were heading downsystem, spinward of the target. Shaping course to box the slowmover, they are on the opposite side and their drives invisible, pointed away from both to the target and what remains of life in system. The third hunter killer is upsystem of baby, thrusting down and watching in. Gunnr coasts in baby's wake. She will not take part in the battle, but feast on the remains.

***