There was something strange about the sleek black vessel carving its way through the harsh glare of the datasea.
Sairyn shielded her eyes and peered at the approaching ship; it was unusual to encounter another blazer this far outside the core, and no ordinary prog could survive the unrelenting decompilation of the churning ocean. Even as she watched, she could feel the shifting electrons beneath her hull, repelled only by the force of her will as she skipped the waves. As a blazer she existed as both captain and ship, two individual threads of her runtime. If her attention faltered, the datasea would not hesitate to devour her.
“Trouble?” asked Enfi from amidships.
“Perhaps.” Sairyn glanced back at the precursor. He was too young for this; she should never have agreed to take him blazing with her until he’d proven that he could survive on his own beyond the core. If he fell overboard now, User forbid, he’d decompile in a nanosec. But it was too late to second-guess herself now, with an unknown ship running with the datastream on an intercept course too fast to outrun even if she hadn’t been weighed down with a cache full of location data. She’d barely believed her luck when Enfi had spotted land, an uninhabited node just waiting to be connected to the net; but there was no way for a blazer to initiate a connection. That remained the privilege of the core systems.
Enfi joined her at the prow. “Does your hull do that?” he asked after studying their pursuer.
“Do what?” she asked.
“Flux. It’s in constant superposition between decompilation and reconstruction.”
Sairyn peered closer, cursing herself for not spotting it earlier. “Pirates,” she hissed. “Compile a weapon!” For a picosec she considered dumping her cargo overboard for extra speed, but its value stayed her hand. Last time she’d set out from the core twice as many nodes were being lost each minute to corruption and malignant code as could be discovered. There might be millions of unconnected nodes out there on the datasea, but without blazers to provide precise gateway addresses, the people of the core would continue to struggle to survive in an ever-shrinking cluster of habitable systems. They were relying on Sairyn to bring her data safely home.
The deck glitched as she multithreaded her runtime into thirds: captain, ship and sinuous blade, its nacreous sheen reflecting sea and sky in equal measure. The weight of the hilt was reassuring in her hand, though what good it would do against the tall ship sweeping down upon them she wasn’t sure. Enfi’s fingers flickered through the air, carving a narrow-barrelled pistol from the worldcode. Concentration lined his brow, and if Sairyn could’ve split herself four ways she would’ve offered him part of herself. She’d done it before, but not with the datasea snapping at her heels and the risk of decompilation only a moment’s inattention away. If he aspired to be a blazer himself somesec, he’d have to learn to rely on his own ingenuity.
They were close enough now to hear the crackle and hiss of the pirate vessel’s flux, to see the silhouettes of the crew clustered at the rail. “Hold on!” Sairyn yelled, and Sairyn-as-ship veered away to avoid the leaping pirates’ descent, rewarded by a volley of splashes and screaming decompilation as the datasea engulfed its victims. Enfi lurched towards the rail, unbalanced by her manoeuvres. His pistol hung in the air where he’d been standing, semi-compiled but not yet finalised as the next wave of pirates flung themselves overboard, crashing to Sairyn’s deck and rolling to their feet.
The five who faced her weren’t blazers themselves. More likely they were like Enfi, hitching a ride with someone with the will to keep them afloat, though how some of them still stood Sairyn didn’t know. Not one of them had escaped the ravages of the datasea; decompiled limbs, clothes half-rotten, vast swathes of pixellated skin. These pitiable creatures were too far gone. They could no longer return to the core to rejuvenate their code. Their entire existence was the boundless datasea and the lust for conquest.
Before they could notice Enfi, defenseless and spreadeagled against the rail, Sairyn lunged. Her blade clashed with the nearest pirate, sparking as she leapt away and spun, the heel of her boot catching another in the chin. Retaliation came lightning-fast, but she rolled away from the flashing blades and lashed out with a low cut. Another pirate toppled, his corrupted leg severed, and crashed to the deck with a roar of anger. She knew better to dismiss him yet; the fallen pirate rolled onto his stomach, grabbed his sword and began crawling across the deck even as she turned to face the others.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Enfi regain his balance and make a grab for his pistol. The pirates saw it too, and amidst their momentary distraction, Sairyn grasped an opportunity. They’d learn their folly in fighting a blazer on the datasea! With a roar she sprinted forward, her blade slung behind her. Enfi’s pistol roared, tearing the head from the nearest pirate and decompiling him instantaneously. Sairyn-as-ship weaved as more figures gathered at the rail, but she felt - more than saw - the clawed grapples bite into her flesh and hold her still. They thought that would hold her. As Sairyn reached her foes she reconfigured the deck. Sairyn-as-ship compressed laterally into a sinuous line of rails and deck, just enough to give Enfi somewhere to stand.
Two of the remaining pirates were lost instantly, the deck decompiling beneath their feet as they plunged, screeching, into the waves. The third took the full force of Sairyn’s charge, her blade cutting him hip to shoulder. He reeled backwards, crashing first into the rail, then over it. But even as Enfi’s pistol turned the cripple crawling towards her into a mass of fading pixels, more pirates launched themselves over the rail. Sairyn-as-ship shifted again, trying to dodge their descent, but the effort of on-the-fly reconfiguration – without letting either Enfi or their cargo slip into the deep – took its toll. She couldn’t keep this up for long.
But this time, even those pirates she dodged didn’t scream as they hit the surface. Instead they rolled, stood up, and advanced across the waves as if they were deck; a thin rectangle of the same sheer darkness which made up the pirate ship lay like ice atop the datasea, moulding around Sairyn’s hull. Whoever the blazer was who held the pirate ship together, they must have a will like iron. It would’ve taken all of Sairyn’s skill just to maintain such a large ship, let alone spare runtime for additional threads. She dashed the length of the deck to back-to-back with Enfi in front of the distorted cabin which held their cargo, watching pirates fall like rain. She tried reconfiguring the deck one last time, but there was nothing but sheet obsidian where the pirates landed. She couldn’t bear to look at them, twisted corruptions of once-good progs dragged bodily from the datasea, pieced back together, lost souls wishing for death. She would grant them peace.
But the struggle was brief. Enfi’s pistol fired twice before he vanished beneath a scrum of corrupted bodies. Sairyn danced a few nanosecs longer, her blade sparking as it cleaved pirate heads from necks, but then a lucky parry sent Sairyn-as-blade skittering across the deck. She retrieved her runtime instantly, the blade decompiling where it lay, but pirate arms pinned her to the deck as swords and pistols encircled her head. Her resistance was over.
She felt the blazer’s presence even before his heavy boots crunched onto her deck. The pixellated faces glaring down at her pulled back as their master approached. Sairyn gasped in recognition as he loomed above her; the Albatross, a man out of legend, his flickering face still recalling the handsome blazer who’d been the talk of the core when Sairyn was but a precursor. Lost at sea they’d said, and the core systems had mourned the passing of their brightest and best, not knowing that his fate was far worse than they could’ve possibly imagined. The datasea had claimed him as its own, his own form in flux even as his will struggled to maintain control. Pixels trailed like sand from his drab cloak – no, not drab, desaturated – piling haphazardly on her deck.
“It’s my lucky day,” the Albatross said. “A blazer, laden with treasure if I’m not mistaken!”
“Fight me for it,” Sairyn dared him.
“I already did,” he replied, and gestured around the deck. “You lost. To the victor, the spoils!”
Sairyn fumed, but there were too many weapons pointed at her head to consider doing anything stupid. She didn’t want to decompile. “Take it!” she muttered, and gestured towards the cabin. At their master’s nod, a pair of pirates hurried inside. There was a flash of light, a sharp bang, and the air filled with the scent of static. She couldn’t resist smirking. The Albatross was less amused.
“Disable the safeguards,” he growled at her, grasping her shirt in his fist. She met his gaze, unflinching. There was nothing they could do to her that could compare to the shame of returning home without her prize. But this time, she wasn’t alone. He clicked his fingers, and a pair of burly pirates thrust Enfi into her view. “Now. Or I’ll feed this precursor to the datasea, pixel by pixel.”
He pulled her to her feet and marched her inside. The cabin contained nothing but the data chest and the decompiled remnants of two dead pirates, but it was all part of Sairyn; she could feel the pirates outside holding Enfi hostage. She’d know if they tried anything – and the Albatross knew it – but right now there was nothing she could do but obey. The safeguards fell away from the chest like iron chains as she approached. A pristine node on the outer reaches of sector 0Ex2 was a valuable commodity, but not worth sacrificing Enfi’s runtime. One sec he’d make a fine blazer; she wasn’t prepared to let that potential go to waste.
The Albatross pushed past her as the chest cracked open, the raw data within washing over his face like sunrise. His back arched with pleasure as he duplicated the treasure Sairyn had searched so long to discover, the cabin lit with whirling incandescence. And then the chest swung closed, its original contents secure. In the Albatross’s hand he held a cube of shining data, the copied location of the node.
“Thank you,” he said, closing his hand around the cube as the data integrated itself into his runtime. His flux slowed, the corruption of a lifetime on the datasea halted, for a time, at least. “Good hunting, blazer. Perhaps we will meet again, somesec!”
Sairyn considered recompiling her sword and jamming it into his belly, but before she could act, a pirate hurled Enfi at her from the doorway. They crashed to the floor of the cabin together, even as the Albatross stalked out and slammed the door behind him. A raucous cheer went up from the pirates, and then Sairyn-as-ship rocked free on the datasea again, held in place by the blazer’s construct no longer.
Enfi seemed unharmed, though he had a dazed look in his eyes like he’d been hit too hard. Sairyn squirmed out from under him, decompiling the cabin around them as the Albatross’s vessel cruised away, heading for the pristine node. She sighed, burying her head in her hands as she watched them go.
“We have the data,” Enfi said, his eyes focusing as he staggered to his feet. “We can still secure the node.”
Sairyn shook her head. “It’ll take us nine microsecs to deliver this data to the core,” she said. “But it’ll take the Albatross five, maybe six microsecs to blaze his way back to the node. If he gets there before we can open a connection, he’ll block the gateway. It’ll be as if the node never existed.” Was it even worth returning to the core at this point?
Enfi smiled grimly. “Then we’ll have to recover the duplicate,” he said, “before the Albatross finds the node.”
Sairyn set Enfi adrift as the Albatross’s ship crossed the horizon.
He yelled, he fought, he cursed her in the User’s name, but despite his developing talents he was no blazer. Not yet. She couldn’t risk taking him with her, to be used as a bargaining chip to demand her obedience just like their last encounter. No, this time she fought alone.
She left behind a splinter of runtime moulded into a circular raft, just enough to hold Enfi and the data chest above the waves, then decompiled her ship. She was a blazer, master of the uncharted course, explorer of the edges of the infinite sea. She would strike like an arrow, and lay the Albatross’s decaying code to rest. She accelerated, arms back, head up, her boots skimming the waves as she exerted her mastery over the worldcode. The ship was nanosecs away now, expanding in her vision; she could feel the faint thrum of the Albatross’s will. He could surely feel her too, if his corruption hadn’t blinded him to her approach.
She wished she had a better plan: one blazer against another, except this time it would be on his ship, not hers. It was a tactical advantage; this time the Albatross would be the one wasting effort holding his ship together. It wasn’t much to go on but Enfi was right. The core needed every node they could locate, and she wasn’t ready to give up on this one just yet. She could only hope that the thinnest sliver of her attention she’d left monitoring Enfi wouldn’t be the edge she needed. She streaked closer, staring up at the obsidian hull. First: board the ship. Second: kill the Albatross. Simple. She gritted her teeth, and a pair of swords compiled into her waiting hands.
There was no time to climb aboard; she’d find a ring of steel awaiting her, the element of surprise truly wasted. Instead she exerted her will, hexagonal pillars of ship-stuff forming beneath her feet as she ran, dissolving in her wake. As she reached the top she leapt, clearing the rail and landing in a crouch on the deck of the Albatross-as-ship. Even if he’d been oblivious to her approach before, he knew now. It took the pirates on deck a moment to realise the danger; she could’ve cut them down before they drew their swords, but that would only delay her.
An alert somewhere in her runtime threatened to distract her, but she pushed it down. There was no time for trivialities. She sensed the Albatross standing at the stern of his vessel, and dashed the length of the deck towards him. A pirate lunged towards her, swinging a length of chain; she ducked, spun and cut through his neck with a single blow, then dashed on as pixels rained down around her. The Albatross saw her now. He glowed with absorbed data, even as he cried for his men to strike her down. But they were only progs. They couldn’t hope to match the speed of a blazer, and their captain knew it. Sairyn leapt, her swords singing as they curved for the Albatross’s defenseless neck.
His sword compiled instantly, his hand raised in a perfect parry to her strike. Yet as their blades clashed, momentum carried her forward, sending them both crashing to the deck in a tangle of limbs and blades. Sairyn scrambled to her knees, blinking to clear her vision; the Albatross lay beneath her, momentarily stunned. The ship flickered, pixellated, but held firm. As she searched for a weapon, her fingers found the metal insignia sewn into his coat, pixellated and corrupted almost beyond recognition. She remembered the surge of pride she’d felt as they pinned it to her collar. The mark of a blazer. It was true. What could have happened to turn him into this corrupted mockery? Would the same happen to her if she spent the rest of her life on the datasea?
The alert pinged again, dragging at the edges of her perception: a notification from the splinter of runtime she’d left behind. The raft, empty but for the data chest. Enfi was gone. He’d been safely aboard when she last checked, but she couldn’t be sure how long ago that was, so absorbed she had been in her assault. Had he fallen overboard? She tore herself away from the grief that threatened to overwhelm her. There would be time to grieve once this was done.
It had been a momentary distraction, but the picosec of hesitation cost her dear. She snatched up her fallen blade, poised to drive it home, but before she could strike, strong hands caught her. The progs under the Albatross’s protection were fighting for their very existence now. They couldn’t survive on the datasea without his ship. Sairyn struggled, but even decayed as they were, the pirates were too strong.
The Albatross laughed, long and slow, his mirth slowly turning into a hacking cough. He raised himself from the deck on his elbows. “Too slow, blazer,” he said. “You should’ve taken your chance.”
“All I want is my data,” she said.
“And I want a node where my crew can live out the rest of their runtimes, away from all this!” He gestured at the datasea. He shook his head, pixels dripping from his hair. “I don’t want to kill you, blazer, but I will if I have to.”
“I spent minutes searching for that node,” she snarled. “You’ll have to kill me to stop me taking it back.” The Albatross rose to his feet with a sad smile on his face. He stooped to recover his sword, then tapped it against his palm.
“As you wish,” said the Albatross, and raised his sword.
A shout rose up from the rail as the familiar roar of pistols rang from the datasea. Bullets punctured the air, the Albatross’s crew racing to repel their assailant. Sairyn couldn’t hold back her relief as she recognised the whoop of excitement that resounded between volleys. Enfi! But if he was here, and not with the raft… The Albatross glanced away, shouting orders to his crew, and Sairyn took her opportunity.
She twisted, violently, dragging one of the pirates off his feet and round in a wide arc in front of her. She kicked, a spray of desaturated pixels skittering across the deck where her foot connected, and he let go. Before her other captor could react, she pinned his hand to her arm and spun, throwing the pirate across the deck.
The Albatross may have once been a blazer, but time and corruption had dulled his reflexes. He barely had time to throw up his hands to defend himself as Sairyn’s sword compiled and drove into his chest. He coughed, spluttered, then cried out as the flux of his tortured flesh intensified. When she pulled her sword free, the bright dataglow intensified, shining from the gash in his chest.
“You shouldn’t have taken what belongs to me,” she whispered, plunging her hand into his chest and ripping the data free. He wheezed one last breath, then decompiled, and the ship dissipated with him. All around her pirates screamed as they fell, finally meeting the fate the Albatross had saved them from. She fell with them, the datacube heavy in her arms. There would be no skimming the datasea while she clutched it to her chest; it would drag her down until she decompiled or became a reflection of the monster she’d just destroyed. She tumbled, repartitioning as she fell. Sairyn-as-ship began to manifest in the hail of pixels, but not fast enough. The datasea loomed endless and cruel as she plunged towards its embrace.
Enfi’s whoop echoed from the surface as she crashed into an unfamiliar deck. She rolled to her feet, still clutching the precious data in her arms as she admired the sturdy little boat Enfi had compiled, his brow furrowed with the effort of holding it together. She clapped him on the shoulder, and laughed in relief. “Bet you think you’re a big-time blazer now,” she said.
“I think I’ve got a lot to learn,” he replied, his voice strained with effort. He sagged as Sairyn recompiled her ship around them, his boat collapsing into a puddle of pixels as she steered them out of the Albatross’s wake.
She set a course for the core, for home.