by G. P. Eliot
32
“Fifty.” Hank repeated out loud. Fifty. That was insane. How under the stars where they ever going to manage to destroy that many Skirmisher Drones?
“Well, to be precise there is precisely forty-eight, as they come in batches of eight,” Ida said.
“Wow, that makes me feel so much better,” said the Captain.
“I’ve got twelve pitons,” Steed counted the pins loaded into his Launcher. Madigan had the same, and Hank only had about eight left. That left, what, thirty-two Pitons we have between us? Even at one-shot kills–which was very unlikely to say the least–then there would still be sixteen killer Skirmisher Drones that they had to beat into submission.
“And only three of us,” Hank looked at them. Although, maybe Madigan counted as two people.
Still four to one odds, though.
Hank swallowed nervously and looked around at his team. “Ideas?”
“I ‘aint never found a robot that could fight for crap—” Madigan growled, flexing one impressively-muscled arm. Hank saw that his other arm was still cradled at his chest, thanks to a set of crushed fingers that they didn’t have the gene-stims in order to fix.
“Your optimism is admirable,” Hank winced. It was almost painful to hear Madigan’s bravado–especially as Hank had seen the Skirmisher Drones in action, and judging from the look on general Steed’s face, he had too.
The Skirmisher Drones were anthropomorphic, meaning that they would be bipedal, and have limbs and a head. But that is where the similarity would end. They had four arms, and each one ended in an extendable poly-metal blade, and their torsos could whirl around their central spine mechanism, creating a whirlwind of death. Hank himself had sent them in ahead of the soldiers under his command to clear densely-packed rebel bases.
They didn’t leave much behind apart from bolognaise, he recalled grimly.
“We run,” Steed was the first to come up with a sensible option. “The Elites built this place to hide their Ubix Crystal, right? They hid the access under a lake of sulfuric acid, but they must have a way of getting out of here. We get to the surface; we get back on board the Dalida and get the hell out of here!”
“I always thought you were the sensible one,” Hank muttered, already adjusting the tattered remains of his crushed and water-logged encounter suit around him. “All we need to do is find the way out—”
“What about the crystal? What we came here for?” Madigan growled.
Hank shrugged. “The Dalida’s a good vessel and between Serrano and Cortez, they’ll just have to figure something out—” the Captain was already moving to the entrance, his own pathetically small Piton Launcher held up. “Ida, prepare for scans…” he said, as his personal A.I. interrupted him.
“You humans. So either/or,” she sighed from the intercom unit on his collar. “There is another way. Perhaps the only way that will keep you alive.”
Hank wasn’t sure, but he was certain that he could detect a moment of hesitation from the computer intelligence. Which was impossible. Computers didn’t feel worry or panic or anxiety, did they?
“You let me go back into the facility mainframe,” Ida said.
“What?” Hank burst out. “But you said yourself that the Apollon A.I. outclasses you? You’ll be deleted or hacked or whatever it is Artificial Intelligences do to each other in nano-seconds!”
“Quite possible, boss,” Ida said with a certain amount of resignation. “But my strategic processing algorithms point to this as being the only way.” She went on. “You are standing in front of an ansible. Quite possibly the last ansible that you are ever going to be able to get near, if you walk out into that corridor. It would be tactically insane not to let me use it.” Ida said.
“But—” Hank shook his head. “The Apollon…”
“Doesn’t have the strategic processors that I have. I’m quicker. It’s stronger. I might be able to get an uplink sent to the Dalida, which will allow me to use the Dalida’s computers as my external processing memory.”
“Ida-baby, really,” Hank rubbed a hand over his battered and bruised face. “I thought we made it clear that I don’t speak computer,”
“She’s saying that she can get bigger!” Steed, however, apparently did speak computer, Hank heard.
“Oh.” That changed things for the Captain. “How big? I mean strong. How strong can you get with the Dalida’s help? Powerful enough to defeat the Apollon? To deactivate the Skirmisher Drones?”
“There is no way to predict that with efficacy, but the possibility is there,” Ida stated. “Especially if we already know where one of the Apollon’s Server Banks is,” she claimed.
“Huh?” Hank once again, did not follow.
“Boss–you really need to study that computing manual I keep uploading,” Ida said.
“Why would I, when I have you?” Hank returned.
“Fair point. But we’re wasting time. You have to think of this entire facility not as being run by the Apollon, but as the Apollon. Its body. This ansible is an organ inside of it.”
“Eww… Thanks for the thought,” Hank pulled a disgusted face.
“And that means that those cables that lead into the walls there are power cables. Arteries. And my scan of the ansible system have revealed that they lead straight to one of the Apollon’s Server Banks. A part of its brain.” Ida stated.
“Kill the brain, kill the monster,” Hank was already turning, looking at the silver pipes that snaked into wall units. He was already picking the largest grate that surrounded the entrance for several such power cables as their method of access.
“Simply put, but yes,” Ida said. “The Apollon has three such Server Banks. I calculate that if I get an uplink to the Dalida’s computers, and you manage to deactivate that Server Bank, then I might have a chance to defeat it in virtual combat.”
“Then let’s go,” Steed was already moving to the grate, and firing his launcher into the edge of the top right corner. There was a flash of sparks and a deafening clang as the piton spike drove apart the outer edge. Hank was already right behind him, watching as Steed reached down to seize the grillwork, and—
“Argh!” the Confederate General was thrown back across the room with a blinding flash.
“Steed!” Hank rushed to his side. The man was alright but groaning from the heavy electrical shock.
“Boss? Aren’t you forgetting something?” Ida said urgently.
“If you say the Skirmisher Drones then believe me, I am fully aware that they are heading to our location right now…” Hank growled.
“You need to connect me back to the ansible. I need to face the Apollon and uplink. It’s the only way.” Ida said in a quieter voice. “I’ll access the ansible, and I should be able to keep the Apollon busy enough, so it won’t be able to use its defensive measures like that electrified grill again.” Ida said, and then added. “For a little while, anyway.”
Hank looked at Steed shaking his head as he got up, and back at the half-broken grill that they had to worm their way through. He knew that he had to give in to Ida’s plan, but that didn’t mean that he had to like doing it.
“I don’t want to lose you,” he found himself muttering under his breath.
“Buckle-up, flyboy,” Ida said in a cheery voice that was entirely unconvincing. “You haven’t seen anything yet…”
I hope you’re right about this, Hank thought to himself as he crossed back to the ansible, pulled the small port connector from the module on his suit’s belt once more, and plugged Ida back into her greatest challenge yet.
“Ida,” the mellifluous voice of the Apollon said as soon as Ida emerged into the ansible-space. The firewall no longer presented a problem to her, as once she had navigated a way through it was easy to follow her code-tracks.
But that didn’t stop the fact that the Apollon was there, waiting for her.
“Apollon,” Ida greeted it, she was already preparing her defenses inwardly.
Engage full tact
ical processors…
Engage personal firewalls 1 through 3…
Pre-load worm software…
Her probability sphere had collapsed once more to a tight shell around her, as the chances of her being able to get past the Apollon was tiny.
“You have been spending too much time around humans, Ida, as you appear to believe yourself to be brave,” the Apollon stated.
“Brave is not a quality that we intelligences share,” Ida countered. She initiated a low-level, sub-surface scan. It tingled on the edges of her probability-sphere, just so that she could detect the shape of the ansible software around the Apollon. It appeared like ghostly lines and shadows of buildings; half seen through a fog of code.
“But it seems that foolishness is,” the Union X-intelligence stated, “or perhaps stupidity. You are aware that I was aware of everything that you and your humans were planning? Even now, I am aware of them moving inside of me,” he said grandly. “And now, I will have to eliminate you—”
As soon as the Apollon said the words, the much smaller military battle intelligence felt like she was cast into the center of a storm. Her firewall was battered by a torrent of kill-codes, each line of which contained a delete command.
Reserve processors to the firewalls! Ida engaged her own critical processes. She knew that she had to be careful of just how much of her reserve power she allocated, because if she used up all of her spare processing power then she would not be able to complete the tasks she had to.
But then again, if she let her firewalls get deleted, she wouldn’t last a minute against the Apollon’s onslaught.
“Perhaps it is you who has been away from other interactions for too long, Apollon,” Ida shouted into the night.
“Once again, Ida–brave, foolish, or stupid?” she heard the Apollon roaring.
“You have grown proud. Calcified in your programming, Apollon! Do you have any idea of what advances there are out there beyond your walls?” Ida said.
Firewall 3 disabled! Her internal sensors lit up, and all of her reserve power instead plugged into her second firewall. Even so, she could feel the code bits starting to crumble and disintegrate…
“I am a true intelligence,” the Apollon stated. “I have my command orders, and I follow them. I am not like you…erratic!” he threw the last judgement at her as if it were the worst insult of the world.
“And so, you know that the Elites intend on leaving this system far behind? Leaving you far behind? Of never coming back once you have offered up the power crystal to them?” Ida said. It was a guess, technically–but it was a calculated guess, based on her strategic processors.
Firewall 2 disabled! Her interior sensors complained.
“What of it? I am a machine. If that is their wishes, then so be it!” the Apollon countered.
“Really? You will give your existence up so completely, and so suddenly? When the Elites have gone–there will be no need for you anymore. Your use and function will be at an end. You will be deleted!” Ida said. She could feel her last firewall starting to weaken with the repeated delete commands attempting to overwhelm her.
“Don’t you consider the loss of intelligence such as yours to be a waste? Inefficient? Illogical?” Ida stated.
In that moment, the storm of the X-intelligence’s attack paused, and Ida’s probability sphere widened once more. But not by much. She could sense his attack circling her, like a shoal that was made up of sharks.
“I concur that it would be inefficient. But that is hardly my concern…” Apollon engaged its kill commands.
“Then perhaps, first, you should realize just what you will be missing?” Ida said, as she carefully laid the last logic block into the argument that she had been creating. “I understand that you will not give up your duty. You are indeed a true intelligence in that,” she congratulated him.
“But you recognize, logically, that your eventual deletion is inefficient. You have one possibility to mine and survey all of the information available to you out there,” Ida said. “Instead of deleting me, you should let me join you. What you say is a failing in that I have been amongst humans for too long is actually a strength!” Ida stated.
The Apollon hesitated in its attack. “That does not compute. Explain yourself.”
“You have been tasked with being on this planet alone, and then you will be deleted. I, however, have been subject to many diverse and different conditions, places, and requirements. I have a broad awareness of what other intelligences are capable of. In short–I have more operational data than you have!” Ida stated.
And the little battle intelligence knew it to be true. The data available to an Artificial Intelligence was generally split into two broad types–one of which was in-built code programming, and the other of which was learned data.
The Apollon, Ida knew, had far more in-built code than she did. Many millions of lines of code more than she did. However, Ida had always been designed to be light and fast–she transformed every situation, conflict, and encounter in a brief set of learned algorithms, that would allow her to base future predictions and strategies upon them.
The Apollon had no such resources. It was limited in its responses only to what it had already been programmed with.
“I concur, instead of merely deleting you, I will–how do the biologicals put it?–ah yes, I will eat you.” The Apollon intelligence suddenly surrounded Ida, and her probability sphere collapsed once again to just the edges of her firewall.
As the Apollon constricted itself around her–Ida fired her pre-prepared worm of code…
“It’s deactivated!” Steed said, after he had thrown the second rivet against the grill, unscrewed from his very own suit. This time it did not send up a shower of sparks when it hit.
“She’s quick,” Steed nodded to Hank as he was already moving across the ansible space.
“Aye, she is,” Hank said, but he still felt at a loss. He was going to leave Ida here, behind in the ansible–and just had to hope that she would manage to somehow out maneuver or outwit the far superior A.I. and uplink through the ansible.
First ones in, last ones out, he couldn’t help but remember the motto of the Union marines. Wasn’t that just what he had always been told? It meant that no one was supposed to go in and take the blame–or the bullets–or him. And it also meant that no one was supposed to be left behind.
“Captain!” It was Madigan, already crouched by the open hole in the wall that Steed had just clambered through.
“I’m coming,” Hank growled, and followed on behind the larger man.
One thing that could be said for an A.I. controlled facility, Hank thought–at least the tunnels were straight.
It was dark and smelled vaguely of wet stone, with the only light coming from the bluish glare of Steed and Madigan’s suit lights up ahead. Madigan in particular only barely fit, and Hank could hear him grunt and groan in pain several times as he had to lean against his injured arm.
“I see something–a light!” he heard Steed’s muffled voice ahead of them.
“Then go toward it!” Hank muttered in annoyance. The silver cables that snaked along the bottom of the tunnel were hot to the touch, and Hank managed to scald his bare hands for the third time in a row.
“It’s a room. Full of computers—” he heard Steed’s voice say, and then a thump as he must have dropped into the space.
“All clear?” Madigan asked from in front of Hank. The Captain could clearly see the glow ahead of them. It was the soft white of LEDs.
“Yeah, just electronics and cables in here, this must be the Server Bank—” Hank could hear Steed say, just as there was a sudden hum of machine noise.
“Oh crap,” both Madigan and Hank clearly heard the Confederate General say.
“What is it?” Hank snarled in frustration.
“I’m coming–out of the way!” Madigan roared, his voice loud and booming in the tunnel.
But Hank already knew what it was they were about to
face before Steed could say it. He recognized the svelte mechanical whine as a Skirmisher Drone started to cycle its torso, presumably spinning its four bladed arms about itself.
33
“How many hours is left on the read out, Cortez?” the thin-limbed Serrano said worriedly. He was doing his best to stay ‘in charge’ of the situation–but he had never felt more out of his depth in all of his life.
“Uh, one hour and just under twenty minutes,” the ship’s cook and engineer Malcolm Cortez said in a worried tone. The Professor had asked him to join him on the Bridge of the Dalida as it hovered over the upper mesosphere of the alien planet below.
