The Callisto Gambit Read Free Page A

more about how to fight the PLAN than anyone else. Star Force is trying to defeat it with nukes and charged particle beams! As for the Chinese, they’re not fighting at all. They’re sitting back and waiting to see who wins. But the writing is on the wall. We’ve already lost 6 Hebe. The population of Luna was decimated last year. What’s next? Ceres? Earth? Yesterday we had a system-wide civilization. Tomorrow there might be nothing left except the PLAN’s automated resource extraction facilities. Believe me, I know how an artificial super-intelligence thinks. I understand the drive to grow—and grow—and grow.” Jun’s voice shook with intensity.
    Kiyoshi’s fingers tightened on the handle of the rabbit hutch. He knew that Jun deliberately denied himself the opportunity to grow much bigger, by refusing to move out of the Monster. He’d relocated from the ship’s hub into a custom data processing center next door to the bridge, but that was as far as he’d go. Kiyoshi admired him for it, and now felt a shiver of dread as he remembered the temptations Jun resisted, every day. Instead of succumbing to the destructive internal logic of AI, he was instead spending his time on discussions with a bunch of elderly Earth-based theologians, and humbly abiding by their decisions. Viewed that way, his preoccupation with theological hairsplitting was not drivelling. It was noble.
    “So do you get it?” Jun said. “This is my responsibility. What am I for, if not to do this?”
    “Yeah, I get it. You’re bored out here, and this war came along at just the right time to give you something to do.”
    Jun laughed. “Something like that.”
    “So,” Kiyoshi drawled, “just to recap, you’re going to steal a Chinese space station; eject whoever’s on board; fly it to Mars; and use it as a Trojan horse to deliver a cyberattack that’ll demolish the PLAN from the inside out, while somehow squaring it with the UN, and not getting murdered by the China Territorial Defense Force.”
    “Like I said, it’ll be easy.”
    “Goddamn it, I wish I was going.”
    “But you have to stay here. Look after our people. Keep them safe.”
    “Leave it to me.”
    “And please don’t kill the boss.”
    “No promises.”
    “Come on. He’s got the best beard in the asteroid belt. You can’t kill the beard.”
    Kiyoshi didn’t want to make light of the boss-man’s sins. “He believes the human race is doomed,” he grunted.
    “He might not,” Jun said delicately, “be wrong.”
    “If you screw up—”
    “If I screw up, the Salvation might, um, be necessary.”
    Kiyoshi took a moment, hugging the pig cage. Jun thought the danger to the solar system was so great that a sociopathic inventor and his Bussard ramjet might be humanity’s last best hope.
    He asked reluctantly, “What probability are you assigning to—ah—the utter destruction of Earth?”
    “Oh, only two percent.”
    Two percent. That was further from zero than Kiyoshi would’ve liked to hear. “Eh, well, what can I say? Don’t screw up.”
    Jun said rapidly, “I’ve also modelled various ways the situation here might play out after I leave. A ridiculously high fraction of the models end up with the boss killing you. Please, please be careful. Don’t piss him off. Don’t pick fights about his stupid Bussard ramjet, or the moons of Planet X, or whatever he fixates on next week.”
    “Didn’t I tell you once before,” Kiyoshi roared, “never try to predict my behavior?”
    Jun shrank away. “Maybe I shouldn’t have shared that.”
    “No, you shouldn’t have fucking done it. You cannot predict me. You get it wrong every time. You’re just wasting processing power.”
    “Sorry. I just want to make sure you’re going to be careful.”
    Kiyoshi stomped to the airlock. “I will be living in a broken-down old Startractor with five hundred and sixty-eight of our people, totally reliant on a hydroponic garden, a jugaaded water reclamation system, and