by G. P. Eliot
“Processor at 62% capacity… 67% capacity…”
Hank looked at the red sensor-eye of the Skirmisher Drone as it bore down on him. He could see, in exact detail, as the tiny telescopic lens narrowed as it focused on him.
“Captain!” And then he was being pulled violently backward by massive hands as Madigan dragged him to the floor.
Something shot over their falling heads–it was one of the server bricks, hitting the Skirmisher Drone in the head before it could raise its two longer arms. The server broke apart from a squeal of metal and a flash of static electricity, but it did little damage to the Skirmisher Drone apart from disorientate it for a second.
“Move it!” Steed was shouting as he volleyed another of the servers at the thing, this time for it to be met by the drone’s two long-bladed upper arms.
Madigan was dragging Hank backward down the aisle of servers, as the Skirmisher Drone once again deflected another bit of the Apollon’s memory.
“Help me with this!” Madigan gasped as they paused at the aisles turned into a cul-de-sac with the three men inside, and Madigan was already throwing his weight against one of the stacks. It started to wobble.
Hank, still on the floor kicked his boots out against it, as Steed added his own weight.
With a screech, the thing started to rock just as the Skirmisher Drone resumed its charge.
And then, with a spray of burst connectors and a shower of sparks, the entire tower fell forward onto the thing, smacking it into the floor, and smashing several of its joints.
But it isn’t dead, Hank saw the thing still struggling to move under the heavy weight. “But at least it’s not about to kill us…”
The one behind it though, was.
The second Skirmisher Drone was starting to climb up and over the fallen stack of servers using its smaller sickle arms as it raised its longer ones.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Hank seized the nearest brick of the Apollon’s memory and threw it like a frisbee at the thing. The metal server hit one of the thing’s arms, dislodging it from its climbing, and sending it back down the wall.
“Up!” Hank heard Steed say, as he looked up to see that the Confederate General had already scrambled up one wall of the servers to balance on the top, and Madigan was already using his one good arm to follow him.
But Madigan was big, and heavy, and with only one arm, to climb it was going to take too long. Hank seized the guy’s boot with two hands and pushed up, helping him up the stack…
Just as there was a whirr from behind him.
The second Skirmisher Drone had climbed to the top of the downed wall, and was ready to pounce.
“Captain, jump!” Steed was shouting, reaching down with one arm.
The Skirmisher Drone leapt.
So too, did Hank.
“Ach!” Hank felt Steed’s glove clasp his wrist and swing him out of the way just as the second Skirmisher Drone hit the wall of memory servers.
Hank seized the upper ledge and pulled himself up to where Madigan and Steed were balanced, but now with the added weight, the entire wall was starting to rock backward and forth. Just great, Hank thought as he teetered. If I die in here, who is going to save Lory? Or get Ida out of the Apollon servers!?
There was a clang from below them. The Skirmisher Drone was attempting to jump, swiping at their ankles.
The wall wobbled more…reaching the apex of its swing…
“Go!” Hank said, and all three men jumped to the next server wall as the one they were on toppled with a crash of grinding metal and sparks. The only problem was that the wall did not topple backwards onto the second Skirmisher Drone, but forwards, against the next bank of servers that they had been trying to balance on.
“Crap it!” Hank was shouting as they had to leap again from their newly-collapsing perch, and again when that wall collapsed in on itself again.
The only thing that stopped them from falling and being crushed was that the next wall of servers was beside their last ledge. First Hank, and then Madigan, and finally Steed leaped to run along the top of their new ledge–their boots smashing metal plates and wires as they did so – to skid to a halt, panting to look back.
Half of the entire Third Server Bank Room was in disarray, and small plumes of noxious, rubbery smoke were streaming up into the air. Servers were split apart and broken open, and Hank could see their innards sparking and flashing.
“Well, Ida did want us to destroy this place,” Hank gasped as they surveyed the scene. They couldn’t see the two Skirmisher Drones that had come after them–but that didn’t mean that they were in any way safe.
The black smoke was getting thicker in the room and sticking to the ceiling, and then they all heard a dull whump as something electrical exploded.
The broken server parts had sparked, their tiny compressed units rupturing and releasing jets of highly-flammable gases. The sudden flare of light turned into a blossoming fire ball that hit the ceiling, sending gobbets of sparks this way and that about the room–and sending up more of the small whumps of explosions as the process started all over again, and was coming closer to their position.
“We need to find a way out of here. Now!” Hank was turning around, wishing that he still had any kind of working encounter suit that would filter out the heavy smog and heat.
“Over there!” he heard the eagle-eyed Steed shout, pointing ahead of them to the far side of the room, where more lines of silver cables snaked into a wall grill.
“Let’s just hope Ida deactivated the security charge on this one, as well…” Hank muttered as the trio ran for their lives from the burning room.
Snap.
Ida’s probability field–the virtual depiction of her possibilities and choices available to her–punched forward like the outer wave of a supernova, before holding its new position.
Ah, Ida did not technically feel pleasure or satisfaction, but the increased efficiency and computing power that she had suddenly gained from Serrano and Cortez diverting the Dalida’s energy systems to her command codes was delicious.
Suddenly, all of her learning algorithms could grow. They could think faster and clearer. She could literally see more choices ahead of her, and she could calculate more difficult propositions.
Re-write base code…She initiated a foundational overhaul of all of her systems from the ground up. She’d never had this much power to play with–not even when she’d been attached to the main servers of the Union Marines and had only been seconded to Captain Hank Snider’s personal suit. Back then, all of the Marine Combat Intelligences like her had been strictly compartmentalized, with only a small amount of available server space allocated to each one.
But now?
“Diverting power from a generation ship. Interesting.” She heard the warm voice of the Apollon growl ahead of her. “But I am the size of an entire planet, you still can’t seriously believe that you, a mere rogue program could—”
Ida sensed the red flare of the error message as it impacted inside the Apollon somewhere. Her ghost-scans could even roughly estimate where it was in the X-intelligence’s system–his available memory access.
Hank and the others were completing their mission, she realized. They were destroying the Apollon’s servers, making it a smaller, slower, and weaker version of what it had been.
And at the same time, Ida was only growing stronger. A new surge of available power surged into Ida’s matrix, and the event horizon of her probability sphere jumped ahead once more. She was almost as large as the diminished Apollon was now–almost.
Launch viral code units 1 through 455…she engaged her defensive measures—
As well as one special program that she had just designed and executed in a fraction of a nano-second, thanks to her larger intelligence.
Launch cannibal code Ida-Baby…
It appeared in the virtualization of space as shimmering golden spear made of digital light that flung itself forward towards the great black shark that was
the Apollon. There was no way that she could not hit a target that was so massive. And the thing was, that the Ida-baby cannibal code did not need to have a special port or back door exploit to latch onto. That was the beautiful thing about it.
Moments before impact, the virtual impression of her cannibal code split apart at its forward spike, becoming a porcupine’s nest of jagged golden quills. Each one was an exact replication of the mother code, and each one could act independently.
The Ida-baby hit, and the ‘quills’ started burrowing into the body of the Apollon, and every piece of the massive X-intelligence that they touched, they ingested.
Ida was harvesting the available code and data from the Apollon and uploading it to her own command codes.
“The problem with big fish like you, Apollon,” she announced to it in her now stronger voice. “You’re not a natural predator…”
“But I am,” the new and improved Ida said.
Mostly with the help of Madigan’s much-larger feet inside his much-larger metal-shod encounter boots, the three men busted open the grill.
“Captain goes last,” Hank growled as the black smoke around them was thickening in the Apollon Server Bank number Three. Neither Steed nor Madigan argued as they squeezed into the tight space and started clambering as fast as they could over the scalding hot silver pipes.
A final crescendo of pops and hisses behind Hank sped him into the tunnel behind them, where he instantly hissed in pain from the heat of the silver pipes.
Was it his imagination, or were they far hotter than before?
No, Hank thought as he did his best to move forward and avoid the pipes. He could now feel their heat radiating from them even from a foot away.
“It’s the servers,” he thought. And the fire behind them, he added. These power cables were becoming like live fuses…
“Boys? I think that we’d better speed up…” he said.
“Believe me, Captain—” Steed called from above them. “I have no intention of dawdling!”
None of them did, Hank knew. The black smoke of burnt rubber and fouler chemicals had followed them into the tunnel, Hank’s eyes were starting to tear with the sting of toxins.
“We can’t be far! Keep going!” Hank called out, even though it made him cough to say. He had no idea where they would be near to of course, but as an ex-commanding officer, he knew how important it was for the people around him to at least feel as though they had a direction and a plan.
And that their superior officer wasn’t thinking that we’re all going to die some horrible death, thousands of meters or even a few miles under the surface, he thought.
“Captain! We’re coming up to something–it’s below us!” he heard Steed rasp and cough, and then the heavy sound of pounding.
“Clear out, I got this!” Madigan roared, once again using his jackhammer-like legs to batter at whatever obstruction was in their way, before there was a clang.
Hank could smell the sweeter, fresher air the moment that his two crewmen had busted open the metal panel.
“We’re in!” Steed shouted, and then a heavy thud as he must have leapt down. Madigan followed him–still wincing with pain every time he used his crushed hand–and finally Hank.
What is that? Hank thought as he paused for just a brief moment. Steed and Madigan had found a grill in the floor and had smashed through it into a cavern below that glowed with an eerie whitish light. Looking over the edge, he saw their faces below him lit up by the brightness, before he swung his legs over the ledge and pushed himself over and down.
Thud. He landed heavily next to Steed, rolling to come up with his hand already reaching for the Piton-Launcher. From every scrap of experience that he’d had in the tunnels of this facility so far–there was no place down here that was safe.
He found himself standing in a large cavern filled with a white radiance, coming from the center of the room.
There was a metal podium with lines and lines of the silver cables emerging from grills in the walls towards it. From the podium stood a column that flashed and glittered with read-out green and blue lights.
And there, where the floor column stopped, there hung in the air a large crystal of immaculate beauty.
“The Ubix Crystal. It has to be it!” Hank said. They had found it. This was the prize that Apollon was protecting. And it was what they needed to power the Dalida for the last FTL jump to the destination of the Message.
“It’s in some kind of forcefield,” Steed said gingerly. He’d been the one to get shocked by the Apollon’s security measures after all–he probably didn’t want any sort of repeat of the experience.
“Well, let’s not hang around, fellas,” Hank said, striding up to the column, raising his Piton Launcher and firing at the base underneath the Ubix Crystal, where the field was generated.
There was a flash and a shower of sparks, and the air filled with the sudden smell of molten metal as the steel piton had turned into a liquid-metal drip, running down the side of the podium.
The only problem is, Hank thought–how are we ever going to get our hands on it?!
“I wish Lory were here,” Hank muttered under her breath. She’d have a plan.
“The cables!” Steed pointed at where they plunged into the podium. “They must be powering it. If we can detach enough, then the forcefield will start to break down…”
“Good thinking, soldier,” Hank pointed his Launcher at the nearest and fired.
“Ach!” There was a sudden flash as a ball of plasma flame lifted Hank off of his feet and sent him flying across the room.
“Captain!” It was Madigan who reached his side first, who slapped him around the face.
“Argh. Thanks a lot,” Hank groaned. “Has anyone told you that your bedside manner really needs some improvement?”
“Nope,” Madigan said. “But you’re not dead, so,” he grinned.
“Uh, guys?” said Steed from behind them.
Hank raised his head and Madigan turned to see that the pipe that Hank had shot at had been totally blown apart, and left scorch marks, molten wires and plastic scattered around the room.
None of which was what Steed was concerned about.
All of the lights on the column were flashing a warning red, and there was a rising sound of an alarm.
“The Drones!” both Hank and Madigan said at the same time.
“That’s right. If they weren’t already aware of where we are, then forty-six Skirmisher Drones will be heading our way, right now!” Steed said.
Hank looked at the flashing red column, and then at the silver pipes. “Sometimes subtle isn’t an option,” he growled, raising his Launcher and firing it at one of the pipes on the far side of the room. This time the plasma explosion lifted the silver pipe from the floor like a recoiling serpent as it broke apart, making them all flinch.
But there was no time to hesitate, as the warning siren was only increasing in volume and pitch. Steed fired at the next, as well as Madigan.
The ground shook, and Hank’s eyes were blinded momentarily by the lurid colors of the plasma that swept outwards in psychedelic patterns. It burned everything it touched but evaporated just as quickly.
There was a crash as suddenly a rock fell from the ceiling and burst apart on the floor.
“Keep going!” Hank said grimly, firing again even as he could feel the ground shaking underfoot.
Another explosion, and another crash as another crack appeared along the ceiling and the wall, before one of the plates of rock of this strange planet crashed downwards.
“Duck!” Hank screamed as a plume of rock grit and smoke swept over them. He heard a smash—
And then silence.
“Please don’t have killed the crystal, please don’t have killed the crystal…” Hank was saying as he opened his eyes.
Phew. A plate of rock had loosened and fallen from the wall, falling across the room, crushing three more of the silver power pipes and ending against the column. Its red w
arning lights were flickering erratically now, and Hank could see the flicker of wires and crystals from inside of its rent metal body.
And the Ubix Crystal was lying on its side on the platform, its forcefield deactivated. Hank would have considered the thing to be kind of beautiful, if he had more time. It was a gigantic, two-foot long crystal matrix that looked somewhere between a DNA Helix and a fractal drawing of a butterfly. Hank knew that these power crystals were especially grown in the most sensitive and controlled conditions, each one completely unique as the bonded atoms followed their own strange, chaos-theory laws.
