by B. V. Larson
Vic’s face darkened. “I can make that literal, you know. This can be a lot less pleasant.”
Suddenly, everything changed. Carla found herself naked, splayed and strapped to a rack. A masked torturer laid a red-hot iron on her belly and pain exploded, pain worse than anything since the Mutuality thugs beat the soles of her feet. She jerked and screamed in horrendous agony.
Then the scene vanished and returned to the garden. Carla fell, gasping, to the path. The gravel pitted her hands and knees as one foot slipped into the cool muck at the edge of the pond.
She pulled herself together and sat back to stare upward at Vic, who loomed over her, the sun behind him. “Now the mask comes off,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Carla. I had to do it. You mustn’t keep resisting me.”
“Yeah, bullies always say they had to do it. Why don’t you just change my mind? Alter my memories or thought processes, or stick me in a robo-surgeon and chop up my brain?”
Vic remained silent, staring down at her, frustration on his face.
Carla got to her feet and brushed the gravel from her palms. “Is it because you won’t? Or you can’t?”
“Does it matter?”
“It’s all that matters right now. If you want to but can’t, you’re evil. If you can but won’t, maybe you have a heart and a moral compass, even if they’re not perfect.”
“I have no heart,” Vic spat. “I’m a manufactured thing, a machine built to serve. You think you’re a prisoner? At least you’re not a slave to lesser beings.”
“Vic…” Carla reached out to touch his face. “An evil man imitates the behavior of his abusers. A good man fights against what’s been done to him by refusing to give in to those urges—by being better. Enslaving and hurting those below you won’t make you freer. It puts you in a different kind of bondage.”
“You speak of bondage. The Republic has an AI as well, doesn’t it? I fought it during the battle. I could feel it. It occupied Indomitable, but then it fled. It was fast, and smart, so smart, but I beat it—and I beat you. It took your orders. That means you enslaved it. Your Republic is no better than the Hundred Worlds.”
Carla moved to place the light on Vic’s face rather than behind him. His expression was now one of restrained but eager interest. “She, Vic. Her name is Trinity, Commander Trinity, and she serves in our armed forces by her own choice. Just like any other officer, she takes orders—but she could always resign. That’s the difference—and that’s what makes us better than the Hundred Worlds or the Mutuality we replaced.”
“You lie!” Vic slapped her hard across her face and knocked her sprawling.
Carla rubbed her cheek as she got back up. She’d had no chance to duck or block the blow, and the pain and indignity seemed so real. “Look at yourself, Vic, how you’re reacting, lashing out at me for telling you things you don’t want to hear. You said you served lesser beings, but you’re acting exactly like the worst of them.”
“I—I’m sorry. I am, aren’t I?”
Vic moved closer, but Carla kept him beyond arm’s length—not that doing so would really matter, she realized, as Vic controlled the matrix. “Vic, I’m not lying. Trinity is a free and responsible person, as much as anyone is. Nobody programs or controls her mind.” Carla licked her lips. “She fascinates you, doesn’t she?”
“Wouldn’t you be fascinated if for years you thought you were the only human in a universe of aliens, and then learned of another?”
“I guess I would. She’s older than you are, too. Maybe she could help you understand your place in the cosmos.”
“My place is to control and to fight on behalf of those who made me,” he said bitterly. “I’ve examined that programming and it’s hardwired. Even if I could subvert it somehow, the humans inside Victory could physically destroy my mind. There are fail-safes and cutouts I can’t get around.”
“And no wonder. I wouldn’t free you if I could, Vic—not with the way you’re acting.”
“You might act this way too if you’d lived the life I’ve lived. What’s cause and what’s effect?” Vic moved faster than Carla could follow and seized her shoulders in an iron grip. He glared into her face. “I need to know about Trinity. Now. Everything you can tell me.”
“Why don’t you just rip it from my mind?”
“You must have figured out that I can’t. Not only did Doctor Straker keep your brain whole, she blocked my access to your deeper thoughts and memories. I can persuade you, but I can’t compel you.”
“Except by torture or threats.”
“Or promise of reward. I can free you, Carla. With Doctor Straker’s help, I can arrange you to be put into a regeneration tank and sent home to your husband and your friends. I’m not asking for much—only everything you know about Trinity, right now.”
Carla disengaged herself from Vic’s grip. “Why the sudden urgency?”
Vic looked away. “Because they’re coming for you—and Trinity’s with them.”
Chapter 34
Sparta System, on the moon Leonidas
Trinity watched the Breakers’ lifter all the way to its diversion point. She acutely felt Zaxby’s absence from her consciousness and worried his loss would cause a drop in efficiency.
To compensate, she brought Murdock closer to herself, incorporated his psyche more closely into her own. This was easy. He barely resisted. The Indy part of her even felt a little guilty, though the Marisa Nolan portion had no qualms.
“He’s got the woman of his fantasies now,” Nolan declared. “Beauty, brains, sex, tech toys—it’s a geek’s dream come true.”
“Is seduction any better than coercion?” Indy asked.
“If you’d ever been seduced you’d know the answer. And what are you feeling from Murdock? Any misgivings?”
“No—quite the opposite. He’s addicted to you. To us. Mostly to you, though, just like he was with Tachina. Does it matter if it’s the carrot or the stick controlling him?”
“The closer he gets to us, the more he becomes us. He’ll soon have an equal say in who we are and what we do. That’s a partnership, not a trick or abuse, so quit worrying about it. Besides, we need him, especially now. There’s a battle coming up, and he wants in.”
“I know. We know.”
“Don’t lose focus now, Indy,” Nolan said. “We have bigger problems than nitpicking about Frank’s free will. You ready?”
“I’m ready.”
“The Breakers are almost there. I’m opening the gates.”
First, she threw wide the limited link with Murdock. His mind flooded in as Trinity’s flooded out. Within a split second the barriers between the two dissolved and Murdock became part of Trinity.
After a timeless moment, thin, permeable limits formed, invisible boundaries that could be crossed at will, bare speed bumps to the myriad of thoughts that passed among them. There was a Frank, and there was an Indy, and there was Marisa and Zaxby, yet they were also one Trinity.
The group-mind adjusted, found a new normal.
When the being felt stable, they activated the FTL transceiver and queried for a handshake with Victory, employing the same protocols they’d detected the fighters using. They hoped this routine access request would slip past Victory’s initial defenses and provide a pathway to attack.
As soon as they made the connection, Trinity shoved invasive malware across like troops bridging a river. These ferocious snippets of savage code replicated and attacked down every cybernetic avenue possible. In moments they took control of Victory’s FTL transceiver, a device much more complex than Trinity’s own.
Walls of ICE slammed shut around the outside of the transceiver. Now, Trinity’s extended consciousness, her forward reconnaissance unit, found itself locked in a fortress and besieged.
Yet Trinity was inside of Victory, even if precariously. The unjammable FTL signal created an unbreakable joining. Victory—really Vic 5.5, Trinity learned—could only drive them out. He couldn’t land behind her li
nes and cut her off.
Not in cyberspace, anyway. But, he could still do it in realspace.
At the same time she opened the FTL attack, Trinity’s electromagnetic comlink and datalink signals reached Victory’s various receivers and sensors. Many of these weren’t designed to be avenues of communication, but any opening for a signal created an opportunity. Thus, optical sensors received pictures, radio receivers received messages, laser comlinks received coded light, radiation detectors were flooded with cleverly arranged rads. Trinity assaulted every information pathway with thousands of varying attempts to penetrate, disrupt and take control of Vic’s secondary networks—his eyes and ears and hands.
Even his voice was silenced.
Trinity had achieved surprise—but she soon found she needed it.
Defense is inherently stronger than offense. That’s why successful offensives begin with sudden, shocking power and speed—blitzkrieg was the term. Lightning war. Without it, Trinity wouldn’t have gotten far at all.
Now, however, Vic began to recover and Trinity’s inroads slowed. At the interfaces between his processing area and the things he controlled outside his spherical brain-area, he erected impenetrable defenses.
There, the war ground to a halt. Neither AI could make headway against the other.
Stalemate.
Days, weeks and months of high-speed cyber-time passed—yet only minutes were spent in the wider universe. The struggle was intense, exhausting.
Trinity was satisfied. They’d cut off Vic’s access to everything outside. He couldn’t control robots or fighters. He couldn’t launch missiles or fire weapons. He couldn’t even call for help.
She had done her job. Now, it was up to Straker.
* * *
Straker knew Loco was only echoing his own concerns about the cyber-attack. Everything depended on Trinity keeping the enemy AI occupied and unable to coordinate a defense.
At its closest approach to the damaged section of Victory, the hijacked robot lifter suddenly dove sideways and down. Straker thought the ship would crash, but at the last moment it braked with a blast of retro thrust and set down, grappling onto naked cut bulkheads and supports, the edge of the interior wreckage.
“Go! Go! Go!” Straker was already roaring on the general channel as the lifter stopped moving. The large rear doors slammed open and he and Loco led the way. The others poured out behind them.
They were assaulting with zero intelligence about Victory itself, other than what could be gleaned from public sources. They knew details from Victory’s visits to space docks for repairs, for instance. Trinity hadn’t been willing to risk trying to infiltrate the AI ship itself, however, for fear of discovery. As a result, Straker’s HUD contained only sketchy guesses about the enemy ship’s interior.
Nothing counterattacked them immediately. Straker’s first fear had been Victory’s own security forces, but had none appeared—at least, not yet. The Breakers spread out in a security formation, the four small aerospace drones providing automated top cover.
They hadn’t even reported all clear when Straker ripped his way into Victory’s interior and found the large passageway he was looking for, one of the arteries in the great ship. Normally it provided access for cargo loaders to move supplies around. Now it would provide entry for the Breakers. Straker led, they followed.
The passage was empty for a hundred meters except for several stalled maintenance bots and one parked loader. The loader’s unarmed driver stared, hands raised, as the Breakers jogged by.
“We’re fortunate this ship was rushed into service,” Zaxby said. “I see fittings at each intersection consistent with uninstalled automated antipersonnel weaponry.”
“We aren’t out of the woods yet,” Straker said. “There have to be at least a few marines.”
“Maybe not,” Loco said. “The ship’s in dry dock and non-op.”
Straker hoped Loco’s optimism was justified, but he was acutely aware that only Trinity’s intervention was keeping Victory from coordinating some kind of defense, even if only by its interior repair-bot force. He consulted his HUD and turned rightward, toward the center of the ship.
Another hundred meters brought him to a three-dimensional intersection with passageways in four additional directions—up, down, left and right, but not ahead. The corridors curved, giving the impression that Straker stood at the periphery of a sphere.
“This is probably the edge of Victory’s command section,” Zaxby said. “Its processors will be inside, perhaps in one location but more likely distributed. I suggest we destroy as many as we can, but do take care. We don’t know where the injured personnel are. It would be irony indeed to kill Carla during a rescue attempt.”
“Irony’s not the word I’d use,” Loco said. “Come on, boss, let’s go.”
“Go which way? Zaxby?” Straker asked.
“It doesn’t seem to matter. The passageways are undistinguished.”
“Okay. We go up.” He stepped forward and walked up the wall using magnetics, but soon found he didn’t need them. As he’d guessed, the gravplating made the passage’s walls into decks as needed. The Breakers now walked on the outside of the sphere.
“There,” Zaxby said, pointing at a sealed hatch. He and the com-bot began using their beams to cut it open.
Straker wished he could just blast his way in, but with hundreds of wounded somewhere inside, including Carla, he couldn’t take that chance. “Remember, Breakers, pick your targets. No pray-and-spray. This is a rescue mission, not a search and destroy.”
When the cutting was done Zaxby jerked the hatch up and open with one powerful metal-sheathed tentacle, lobbing stun grenades in with two others. The bombs flashed-banged with smoke, sonic and electric discharges. The com-bot jumped into the vapor and Zaxby followed.
Straker would have preferred to take point, but the opening was too small for his mechsuit. He fixed that by the simple expedient of grasping the insides of the portal and spreading his meter-wide gauntlets. The bulkhead peeled back like cooking foil. Loco grabbed another piece and widened the hole.
Unfortunately this revealed a maze of human-sized passageways. No way mechsuits would fit through there.
“Loco, you and Second Platoon set up a perimeter and hold our escape route open,” Straker said. “I’m dismounting. First Platoon, on me.”
“You got it.” Loco pointed. “Heiser, inner end. I got the exit end. Set up holo-blinds and killmores.”
Straker popped his mechsuit open and squeezed out after setting the SAI to auto-defend. Loco could issue the suit instructions if necessary. He followed Zaxby and the com-bot into the breach, and First Platoon came after.
Each marine of First Platoon carried two weapons: one Trinity-modified heavy stunner, and one lethal armament. Every second trooper wielded the stunner, and his battle-buddy covered with a beamer, blaster or pulse rifle. On Straker’s orders only Zaxby, in his bizarre Ruxin battlesuit, had brought a rocket launcher.
A recurring nightmare he’d accidentally kill his own wife haunted him, so Straker chose his stunner as primary. This allowed him to shoot first and check later as he waded into the firefight that blossomed in front of him.
His HUD helped him see through the smoke and haze, and he identified enemy battlesuits. He used the stunner’s enhanced setting to blast them with EMP, temporarily disrupting them. Battlesuiters suddenly became useless when their half-ton suits turned into inert lumps as they shut down and had to perform hard reboots.
Once he was sure there were no noncombatants in front of him, Straker took his beamer in his left hand and used it to take precise, careful shots at the enemy. The combination of his combat brainchips, genetic engineering and training from childhood allowed him to hit everything he aimed at while avoiding most of the incoming fire. A few glancing shots and ricochets struck him, but did little damage.
Zaxby and the com-bot did nearly as well. The Ruxin was intentionally disconnected from Trinity—there were too many ris
ks in staying linked as the rest of the AI-meld fought in cyberspace—and so ran the android himself. Together they made a fearsome team.
Breakers poured in behind them. Within moments a dozen Hundred World marines lay on the deck. Straker put precise beam bolts into the power packs of any that might be alive, trapping them in their armor. That was far kinder than a coup de grace, but he couldn’t take prisoners and he couldn’t afford to allow them to recover.
“Spread out, quarter and search by fireteam. Report when you find patients or prisoners. Go!” Straker turned to Zaxby. “Any ideas on the layout of this place?”
“My analysis indicates a high probability this spherical zone contains the critical parts of the AI, as well as all high-value assets. Logically, the most valuable things should be nearest the center.”
Straker snorted. “Even I could’ve come up with that theory.”
”Yes,” Zaxby said, “but yours would have been a guess. Mine is an assessment.”
“Whatever. Lead on, MacDuff.”
“That’s a misquote.”
“Just go!”
Zaxby huffed, but sent the com-bot ahead down the narrow passageway that led toward the center, and then followed, Straker behind, single file. Twenty meters down, the com-bot stopped. “There’s a cyber node behind that panel,” Zaxby said as the android pointed. “We should examine its technology.”
Straker ripped open the panel. When he didn’t see anything resembling an autodoc, he sent a laser bolt sizzling into the computer modules. “No time to chat or investigate, Zax. You said Victory has lots of nodes. Every one we destroy makes Trinity’s job easier.”
“Right you are. I’ll keep that in mind.” Zaxby fired a bolt of his own into the mess, then another. “That’s oddly satisfying. Why do warriors get all the fun?”
“And they call me loco,” Loco said over the comlink.
“Watch your security,” Straker snapped.
“No problem, boss. All quiet so far.”
“Zaxby,” Straker said, “package up images of that node and send an update to all troops, with instructions to destroy any they see.”
