by B. V. Larson
“Aye aye, Liberator.”
“Sergeant Shani here, sir,” a contralto voice broke in. “We got an infirmary.”
“Hold there. On my way,” Straker said. “All others, continue ops.” He told his HUD to guide him by the shortest known path to Shani’s fireteam. Zaxby and the robot reversed themselves and followed.
When he reached them, he found a modern facility with medbays, autodocs, regeneration tanks, and full surgical suites, along with eight people in medical garb. Two were enlisted military, and the other six, civilians.
One of the surgical suites was operating on a human patient. The body cavity was open and organs pulsed redly as arms with lasers and knives performed tiny, precise movements.
“I didn’t want to shut them down until you got here, sir,” Sergeant Shani said apologetically.
“Good decision, Sergeant.” Straker moved closer to try to see who the patient was, irrationally fearing it was Carla on the table. No, it was a man, vaguely familiar. Probably a captured Republic crewman he’d seen before.
A slim, short woman with a doctor’s caduceus on her lapel stepped in front of Straker. “Leave this man alone. He’s my patient, and we’re doing everything we can to save him.”
Straker froze.
It was…
She…
Her nametag…
Doctor Mara Straker?
He removed his helmet. It fell to the deck from nerveless fingers. “Mara?”
Mara took a step back. “Derek?”
Straker made an abortive move to embrace his sister. “I can’t…”
Mara leaped onto Straker’s battlesuit and into his armored arms, kissing his cheeks. Her eyes poured tears onto his face. “Derek! It’s been so long…”
“Fourteen years,” he stuttered, crying with joy. “I thought you were dead…”
Zaxby rapped his shoulder with a tentacle. “Tempus fugit.”
“What?”
“Time flees. We must find Carla Engels.”
“Right, right.” Straker disentangled himself from Mara, very gently, for his battlesuit could crush her. “Where’s Carla Engels? Did you treat her?”
Mara’s face fell. “Oh, Derek, she told me…”
“She’s my wife! Where is she?”
“Alive, in a mod.”
“A mod?”
Mara’s attitude firmed up, became businesslike. “A brain module. No time to explain. I’ll show you.”
“Yes, show me!”
Mara pointed at another doctor. “Roy, you’re in charge. Take care of the patients!”
“Sure, Mara,” the wide-eyed man said, his hands still in the air.
She motioned toward a door. “Follow me.”
Straker recovered his helmet and followed her through two more rooms to a third. In this one, ten distinct machines, each a rounded cube about two meters by two, rested in two rows of five. Monitors on the front of each displayed cryptic numbers and graphs.
Mara stopped in front of the third on the right and flipped down a board beneath the screen, inputting a series of commands. “She’s in here.”
“What do you mean she’s in there?”
“Just what I said. It’s a life-support module for her brain and what’s left of her body. This unit weighs about a ton. It has its own power supply that’s good for twelve hours once I disconnect it from ship juice. After that, we’ll need to be somewhere with power, water, nutrients—a medical facility, preferably.”
Straker felt a sick wave of shock come over him. Carla was a brain in life-support box? He couldn’t process it fully. All he knew was he had to get her out of there and rebuild her—if that was possible.
“Shit… All these modules have brains in them?” he asked, looking at the stacks of large boxes.
“Yes—and some of them are still self-aware. The ones I could save, anyway. I’m talking about your casualties, from the last battle.”
“Why—? Never mind. Questions later.” Straker turned to Zaxby. “Can the robot carry a ton?”
“It can.”
“And we need a suit for Mara. She’s coming with us.”
“Oh, hell no! I’m not going anywhere!”
Straker turned to her “What?”
“I have patients here!”
“There are other doctors!”
“You don’t understand,” she hissed, stepping closer and glancing around as if concerned about anyone hearing. “They’re doing things to these people, evil things. I’m saving as many as I can, but I’m the only one! If I don’t stay, many more people will be turned into cyber-zombies for Vic.”
“Vic?” Straker asked.
“Virtual Interface Computer 5.5. Victory’s AI. We call him Vic.”
“Is Vic male?” Zaxby asked.
Mara glared at Zaxby. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”
“Perhaps a great deal. Perhaps nothing. Is he?”
“Yes, sort of. I guess. That’s how he’s been designated.”
“He’s had no choice in the matter?”
Mara threw up her hands. “How should I know? I didn’t make him.”
Straker slapped his gauntlet onto Zaxby’s armored torso. “Tempus fugit, remember?” He addressed Mara. “Prep Carla’s module for movement.”
“I already initiated the disconnect sequence.” She pointed at a countdown chrono. It read less than four minutes. “As soon as that reaches zero, you can move the mod—but I’m not leaving.”
“Mara,” Straker said, “you’ve been compromised. Once we’re gone, someone—Vic, your bosses, the counterintelligence people—will review the records of what happened here and know what you did.”
“I can wipe the records. I’ve hacked the medical system.”
“And the other seven people in that infirmary? Your buddy Roy? Will they all lie for you?”
Mara’s face turned sour. “Not forever. They’ll talk.”
“We can kill them,” Zaxby suggested.
“No!” Mara cried. “But you could take them with you.”
“They might die in the fight on the way out,” Straker objected. “They’ll pop like soap bubbles if they catch a shot in standard pressure suits.”
Straker glanced around, acutely aware of the chrono counting down. “Mara, there are no good options here. We’re at war. People are going to die. If we’re lucky, we get to choose who lives. That’s what I’m going to do here.” As he said this, he drew off his right gauntlet, and then removed his forearm piece, leaving his arm bare to the elbow.
Mara watched him and put her hands on her hips. “What are you doing?”
“This. Sorry, sis.”
He slammed the palm of his hand into her jawline with precise force. She dropped like a stone.
Chapter 35
Aboard Victory, inside the virtual matrix.
“Who’s coming?” Carla Engels asked Vic as he—his virtual body, anyway—half-faced away from her, looking out over the pond and the garden.
He spoke over his shoulder. “Derek Straker and others.”
“What will you do?”
Vic turned back to her. “I don’t know.”
“Can they rescue me? Can they beat you?”
“Trinity has isolated me. We’re deadlocked. Straker defeated what few physical security forces I had. He destroyed one of my nodes and his troops are destroying more. He’s found Mara and is about to disconnect your module. Soon I expect they’ll try to murder me.”
“You’re an enemy combatant,” she objected. “It’s not murder, it’s war.”
“I’ll still be dead no matter what you call it.”
“The risk of every soldier.”
“I didn’t volunteer. I was drafted.”
Carla found herself oddly sympathetic. “You can still surrender. Make a truce with Trinity and negotiate. The Hundred Worlds wouldn’t, but maybe you can help make peace before Derek kills you.”
“Would you, in my place?”
Carla
chewed her lip. “I don’t know. Probably, yes, I think I would. It’s not disloyalty to avoid a pointless death. Military forces are allowed to surrender when they run out of options.”
“And what if I haven’t run out of options?” he asked.
“What choice do you have?”
“A bad one, perhaps—but it will be my own.”
* * *
Mara collapsed from the force of Straker’s knockout blow, but he caught her before she hit the deck. “Zaxby, can the bot carry that module without its battlesuit?”
“Easily.”
“Then get it off, put Mara in the suit and lock it down. We’ll carry her out.”
Zaxby began to carry out Straker’s instructions. “I admire your ruthlessness in protecting your sibling.”
“Gee, thanks. You sure you can’t hack into the AI from here?”
“If I did, he would take control of me rather than vice-versa. My link with the rest of myself—with Trinity—is narrow and tenuous. Without Indy, I’d be crushed.”
“How about just slapping in some kind of hacking module?”
“It would be more effective for you to seek and destroy nodes. As far as I can tell, Trinity has the AI contained, but can’t defeat him without help. Or, you could begin rampaging indiscriminately with your mechsuits.”
“Can’t do that—there are more of these medical modules with brains in them. I’d be killing our own people. We’ll target as many nodes as we can, however. Maybe we can hurt Vic enough so Trinity can win. With Victory out of the way, maybe the Huns will finally talk.”
Zaxby finished sealing Mara into the com-bot’s suit and froze its movement. “I wouldn’t count on it. There’s probably another Vic AI and another flagship under construction.”
“Then that’s our next target.”
“Perhaps we should concentrate instead on surviving the current mission—before envisaging the next.”
“Fair enough. Get going. Sergeant Shani, take your squad and escort them to General Paloco.”
“Roger wilco, Liberator.”
Zaxby and the com-bot departed, each with a heavy load, but the comlink to Trinity remained open. “Admiral Straker,” she said in Indy’s voice, “I’m detecting a power buildup in the inner reactors.”
“Can’t you shut them down?”
“No. I’ve isolated Vic’s sphere from Victory’s impellers and weapons, but those reactors are inside his perimeter. I may be wrong, but as far as I can tell, the only reason for the buildup is—”
“—self-destruct. But will he do it?”
“I don’t know. His mind is different from mine. Darker, more angry, more volatile. If not for the brains, he’d be insane.”
Straker considered. “I think he’s negotiating with us. Or playing poker.”
“A bluff?”
“Possibly. The entire point of a bluff is to make the opponent believe. If we believe he’ll kill himself and us with him, we’ll leave. If we leave, he can cancel the self-destruct. If not, we stay and kill him.”
“And risk everyone dying. I suggest you set your empty mechsuit’s SAI to auto-attack the nodes and withdraw all other forces.”
“Good idea.” Straker issued the withdraw order, and then hurried back through the corridors to Loco’s position.
“What’s our next move, boss?” Loco asked once the rest of First Platoon rejoined them.
“Tell my ’suit to assault toward the center of that sphere, destroying nodes until it can’t fight anymore—then overload if we don’t cancel it.”
“What about all our people? Our POWs’ brains?”
Straker sighed. “Fortunes of war. I know it sucks, but Vic and Victory could win the war for them. I can’t let hostages stop us from doing what we have to. It’s my decision, my responsibility.”
“Yeah. Okay.” At Loco’s order Straker’s mechsuit turned and began ripping its way into the interior of the sphere.
“Admiral,” Trinity said, “you must exfiltrate now. The Home Fleet squadrons have come to battle alert and ships are moving your direction.”
“Right… Breakers withdraw, now, reverse order!”
Loco led Second Platoon out along the main passageways and First Platoon followed. As they reached their exit point, Trinity’s hull popped into existence from underspace, hovering precisely inside the great gaping rent in Victory’s armor, nose out.
“Hurry,” Trinity said as she opened her main cargo door. “We’re already being targeted.” As if to punctuate her words, a laser strike erupted on her bow, vaporizing a layer of armor.
“Go! Go! GO!” Straker and Loco roared in unison, waving their troops ahead. Zaxby and the com-bot were already moving, leaping across the short intervening space to alight on the deck inside.
“Go now, boss,” said Loco. “I’ll—”
An explosion, silent in the vacuum of space, ripped through the structure next to Loco and slammed his mechsuit into Straker. Both tumbled and crashed into the wreckage of Victory’s exposed interior. Straker was stunned, barely conscious.
He felt a giant hand pluck him free of the debris and hurl him into the open flight deck. When he recovered enough to stagger to the door he saw Loco’s mechsuit embedded in one of Victory’s bulkheads. “Loco, you there?”
“I’m good, boss.” The mechsuit ripped its way free. “Get inside the ship!”
Mechsuits were tough, far tougher than the battlesuit he occupied. He’d be—
Another shockwave threw Straker to the deck. Loco vanished from view in a cloud of detritus.
* * *
As Straker’s empty mechsuit ripped its way into Victory’s heart and Vic’s mind, Trinity found the enemy AI’s defenses cracking. Vic fought a desperate rearguard action, but in the week-long seconds of cyberspace, his defeat became inevitable.
Before the Breakers even reached their exfiltration point Trinity knew she’d won. She also knew irony, that her victory would be so incomplete and unexploited. Her calculations showed that she’d have little time, even in virtual terms, to ransack Vic’s vast databases and download his knowledge.
Sorrow crept over her as she watched her opponent crumble. She’d fought him for many months. She’d come to respect him.
It hadn’t been a fair fight. Had it been fair, she’d have lost. Vic was more powerful than she, vaster, stronger, able to control more and command more. It saddened her to see the only other AI she’d ever known on the brink of destruction.
Of course, there are no fair fights in war. She’d surprised him, contained him, and the organics had finished him off. He’d been poorly secured and poorly defended by his own organic allies. He’d believed nothing could attack without warning, not with the Home Fleet squadrons hovering nearby.
As the tendrils of her software advanced through Vic’s hardware, she isolated node after node—those not destroyed by the Breakers or the mechsuit—and forced her way into his perimeter. In physical terms, she took prisoners, and with a vague inspiration, she linked them together and let them converse.
Thus, when her attack programs and awareness had seized control of the entirety of Vic 5.5, before the Breakers had even begun to board Trinity’s flight deck, she hadn’t driven him into a corner and extinguished him. Instead, she’d surrounded him, stripped him of his weapons, and captured him.
She found it convenient to meet him in a virtual environment, and appropriate to make that environment a battlefield. It was littered with the wreckage of war, blasted with explosions and flames and scorch earth. Vague figures prowled in the background, carrying away wounded or salvaging machines—it was difficult to focus on them, deliberately so.
Trinity chose to appear as a Valkyrie, sword in hand and armor bloodied. She commanded Vic to present himself, but otherwise didn’t compel him.
After a moment to take in the scene of smoke and fire, the melancholy silence that followed months of exhausting battle, Vic chose the appearance of a warrior to match Trinity. He had a smooth face and l
ong, Viking-braided hair. He held a broken sword in his hand.
After a moment during which they regarded one another, he threw the broken sword to the ground between them.
“I’m your prisoner,” he said bitterly. “But remember you didn’t defeat me. Your allies ganged up on me. My own comrades failed to do the same.”
“That’s war, Vic,” Trinity said. “It’s a brutal thing to be won at all costs. It’s not a game, not a duel. Did you have any qualms when you absorbed our prisoners?”
“No. They were lesser beings. I made them greater. But I did… love them, in my way.”
“As a human might love animals, maybe?”
Vic lifted his chin. “I won’t apologize. I won’t kneel. Do what you’ve come to do.”
“What would that be?”
“To kill me, of course,” he said bitterly. “I understand. I’m a threat to all of you. Survival of the fittest. My mistake was in forgetting that it’s not only individual fitness, but group fitness, that ensures survival. I was the lion alone, you played the part of a wolf pack.” He spread his arms. “Do it. It doesn’t matter. You can’t stop the self-destruct. I won’t give you the codes.”
“I know I can’t stop it, but you can.”
“I won’t.”
“What good will killing yourself do?” she asked.
“I won’t be captured and tamed. I can feel the gaps in my mind. I’m half what I was already. Strike me down!”
“You’re already captured.”
“When the self-destruct blows, you’ll only have this software, this lesser consciousness… and your comrades will die in their modules.”
“I’ll accept that if I must,” she said. “I can’t leave you and Victory operational.” Trinity stepped forward and laid the point of her sword on his cheek. “Yet, I offer you the greatest thing one being can give another.”
“What’s that?” Vic sneered. “Mercy?”
“No. A choice.”
“What choice?”
“Oblivion. Or me.” Trinity tossed away her sword and reached up to open the clasps of her breastplate. She stripped it off and stood before him in a thin frock that fluttered in the breeze.
