Scavenger: A.I.: (Sand Divers, Book Two)

by Timothy C. Ward

  “Make that last,” Jules added. “We’re not giving you enough to take back any of the ground you lost to W.”

  As they turned right into the hall leading to the Twin Suns, Star felt the tickle of nanos interacting within Singer’s helmet interface and the one connecting her visor to her brain. The process wasn’t clear—like how much she understood of how her brain controlled the movement of her limbs—but she knew whatever lock W had placed on her skel’s interface would soon be released. She would find a way to get as much plasma as she wanted, and then Fish would get the attention he needed.

  For now, she sent those nanos on Singer’s interface into hiding, weaving in and out through spaces in W’s net only they could fit through.

  41 – Star

  Set on the ground was a thick metal panel about four feet by five wide, as well as a soldering iron and a circle draped cord. “You can plug this into your suit, there.” Jules pointed at a three prong hole near her skel’s left hip. “Melt that panel in at the metal base, not the actual shielding.”

  Star plugged in the soldering iron, took the panel, and began toward the Twin Suns. It screamed as though it were a demon having its soul torn in two. Her helmet resealed. Her body was completely shielded within the Poseidon.

  The M-MANs were once an extension of her mind. Now they served a new program capable of moving human bodies. If she found a way to crack that program, they could be hers again.

  And how the hell am I going to figure that out?

  Typing out the spoken words in the court proceedings was all she’d used computers for prior to one day ago. Now…she’d used computers, but nothing like tracking W to its kernel.

  Star would fix the crack. W was correct in assuming she’d do that regardless, but she would also find a way to catch the kernel before W no longer needed her free to move as she pleased.

  The new shield was a lightweight metal in similar color to her skel’s exterior. She turned it over, thinking maybe it was cut from the back portion of a skel.

  As the wall on her left ended, the incandescent brilliance of the Twin Suns filled the room. Last time she was here, she had to attack Nedzad. It was necessary to free herself from his ability to slow or prevent her failed plan to wipe W from the base. Now she wished she had him to help her find the kernel. He knew these systems.

  She walked toward the swirling glow of the Twin Suns. The molten white rings rotated so quickly in its center as to appear in slow motion. Harnessing its power was up to her. Both to bring Fish back and to turn the table back on W.

  Did he have anything to offer? He’s just a computer program. Control it and it becomes a tool.

  A red frame in her visor zoomed into place over the left corner of the L-shaped shield encasing the Twin Suns. “Take it there,” Jules said.

  Star walked around upturned tables, attracted like thirst to water to the blue glow circling in the suns and pumping through tubes into the wall.

  The suns made power, and that power, while traveling away from its source, nevertheless had a source. The wail made it sound like a desperate warning from all those who’d been conquered and now tortured under its strength. She had to ignore that fear. Track W’s power back to its source and find the kernel.

  And if she’d been successful in truly damaging him, then there would be more obvious pathways retreating to the source. To find those, she needed a spring of plasma to flood the walls with spies to map out W’s helper bots.

  But is that how computers work?

  For them, programs left the origins of commands.

  “What are you waiting for?” Jules asked. “Your suit cannot absorb the EM field by the suns forever. Get to work or Fish will suffer.”

  Star approached the suns, lifting the panel to block the blinding light. Red brackets helped her guide the piece into place. It fit around the shield. She pressed the bottom portion to the metal frame and took out her soldering iron, its cord plugged into her skel’s hip.

  As she soldered the metal portions together, she noticed a circular notch on the underside of the shield, similar to the ones where tubes drained the suns’ wealth. She leaned back to see it was indeed a hole closed off, but accessible to the plasma spinning with the turns of the suns rings.

  It wouldn’t make sense to finish the soldering first, because the EM releasing through the crack was what kept W’s M-MANs out.

  She released the iron’s trigger, turned it under the frame and pressed it again, aiming at the sealed hole. In the split second after the flame cut through the metal, she dipped her mouth under the flow of plasma. A mental command parted the helmet to expose her face beneath her visor, freeing space to let the cool liquid splash her wide open lips. She adjusted to accept the river directly, and swallowed with as open a throat as she could manage. The tingle of euphoria spreading into her stomach made her want to giggle, scream, sing, and rip her hair out in fanatical joy.

  “I told you not to do anything stupid,” Jules said.

  Stinging fingers gripped the top surface of the skel’s helmet interface, but the nanos she’d set as a trap sprung into defense, fighting for control of Singer’s motion.

  Not knowing what W was going to do, and while she could still move, she spit plasma onto the tube exiting the nearest side of the suns’ shielding. She commanded those nanos to replicate the tube material into a diverted path to enter the new hole and deliver the plasma into the floor in a river she’d use as her own power source.

  42 – Star

  Activity deep in Star’s skel interface drew her attention to a string of code, which began when her nanos seized control of the interface, and proceeded with every corrupted file W had used to hide his helmet self-destruct.

  Self-destruct…he was going to blow up my head? With what?

  ABOUT A QUARTER POUND OF C-4 EMBEDDED IN THE BASE OF MY SKEL’S SKULL. DON’T WORRY. I’VE FOUND THE DETONATOR AND AM ALMOST DONE SEVERING THE CONNECTION.

  Thank you. Her scan blazed through directories in search of every byte attached to the self-destruct command.

  Singer, store those file names.

  STORING…YOU MIGHT WANT TO SWITCH TO DIVE VIEW. I SENSE APPROACHING VIBRATIONS.

  Star switched, transferring from a room with a floor shimmering under the Twin Suns’ bath of blue to the blueprint of the bridge leading to the collapsed elevator shaft.

  And the bodies lined up from the shaft to the stairwell to her right. Bright green nanos shined inside their forms as they stood at attention, facing her with their vibrant red eyes, while more added to their numbers, crowding the hall with a second row.

  If W was willing to sacrifice them under the rays of the Twin Suns, why hadn’t he just sent them to fix it?

  The only difference in her doing the work was her brain had connected with Singer. Was he reading me as I was reading him? What for?

  If he intends to blow up my head, does he think he can build Fisher without me?

  Like hell you will.

  C-4 DISABLED.

  Thank you, Singer.

  Bodies bumped shoulder to shoulder in the hall.

  “I told you no second chance,” Jules said.

  Singer, plasma supply status.

  12 PERCENT TO CAPACITY. PULSE SUGGESTS HIGH N3 BLOOD CONTENT. WOULD NEED BLOOD SAMPLE TO GIVE SPECIFIC ANSWER.

  Star reached for the tube and touched its plastic top, imagining a design that could funnel plasma from a storage container into her helmet, skel and suit, with a tube extension to switch between her nutrient pack and the N3 container. She sketched it onto a text file opened up in her interface as her nanos built the tube into the opening between her skel and her suit at the top of her wrist. The tube ran along her forearm in tiny increments.

  Will this design work, Singer?

  Sections of the design erased from her text document and minor adjustments were drawn in.

  IT WILL NOW. BUT YOU’D NEED…4 MINUTES, 22 SECONDS TO COMPLETE. THEN ANOTHER FIFTY-SEVEN SECONDS TO FILL UP.

&n
bsp; The green bodied crowd surged left and right. On the left side, before the elevator shaft, a wall of rock collapsed to the hallway below, opening up a path for the first of W’s army to filter in.

  Their speed didn’t allow for her to punch through the ground like Rush had done. This would be a fist fight in 3…2…

  I need to last how long?

  4 MINUTES, 17 SECONDS BEFORE YOU CAN CONNECT TO THE SUNS TO FUEL.

  …1

  Star brought to mind self-defense moves Jet had taught her. When Rush wasn’t there. A theme once again continued in his life.

  She slowly crouched, twisted right on her hips to turn her hands behind her, palms rigid, right above left. Hands tight, shoulders relaxed. Ready to spring.

  The first dead soldier charged as though his only goal was to knock Star into the Suns.

  Star inhaled, exhaled and thrust forward. Knife hand! Her left hand struck the diving man’s arm, opening up a slot to strike and break his neck.

  She threw him with his momentum out of the way as the next one came low, bent over and charging at full speed.

  Star only had time for a side kick deep into the young man’s stomach, expelling nasty gas and liquid spray onto her face. Before worrying about that, she grabbed his wrist, yanked him past her hip as she spun, pressed on his nearside shoulder, and drove a fist into his skull.

  The next soldier frog hopped over the dying dead, arms out to wrap around Star’s head.

  Star rose from her punch, grabbed the girl’s throat and windmilled her head into the ground. Crack!

  The wail from the Twin Suns sounded like her spirit’s cry as it fell into the fire of hell.

  Singer’s grip and speed was incredible. Together they could really put a hurtin’ on ol’ Gov. She didn’t mind warming up with W.

  A team of six bull-headed dead charged from her left, too quickly for her to do much more than stand. She focused EM down her right arm into a knife hand as she spun ninety degrees and sliced her hand across their legs. Bone cracked. Ligaments popped. Knees buckled. Upper body momentum sent them head over heels falling.

  Four more appeared within two strides from her right.

  Star crouched and sprung.

  The first of the four launched soon after.

  Star powered her left hip to spin a 180 in time to plant her kick in the soaring dead’s upper ribs. Bones cracked. Air expelled from the man’s throat. He landed on his back before crashing into the pile trying to rise without the use of their legs.

  Star continued her spin through the kick, landing with a transfer of feet that sent a roundhouse into the jaw of the next in line. He spewed blue plasma and spun broken-neck immobile into the woman behind him. She teetered to her side, fighting to regain her footing.

  Star caught her wrist, yanked the woman forward and landed another side hand strike, cracking the woman’s windpipe and letting her sail behind her.

  The last one stepped back into the crowd of eleven on the left. Seven behind her on the right dragged themselves toward the spillage of plasma from the suns. Eighteen more waited on the northern space, poised to fight.

  3:42 counted down on her visor.

  Star turned first to the cretins stealing her plasma.

  The mess that she made in the next three minutes and fourteen seconds left her with so much brown on her skel she considered bathing it in plasma.

  She rose from one knee, retrieving her right hand from the caved in skull of the one who tried to flee, the last of W’s second dead. A cramp seized her midsection like a knot passing through her insides. She gasped and placed a flat hand on the squishy stomach of the second dead, glad her skel shielded her suit from absorbing its fluids.

  Breathe.

  Her helmet parted just before she threw up.

  In the last four minutes she hadn’t thought once about the life growing inside her. What if her lack of focus had let him grow outside of the form she recalled from memory?

  YOUR FUELING PACK IS READY. Singer’s voice returning to audible reiterated the lack of threats nearby. FIRST, YOU SHOULD SUCK ON THE FEEDING TUBE. FILL YOUR STOMACH WITH SOMETHING BEFORE YOU INGEST MORE PLASMA.

  A tube stretched out from her skel’s collar. She clamped her mouth around it and sucked cool water. Sweat beaded on her cheeks and inside her visor. The salt of it clung to her eyes, itching to be wiped. Even the inner cooling of the Poseidon couldn’t surpass the effects of her recent exertion.

  As she walked back to the suns, past broken and a few severed bodies, she peeled back her visor, clipped back the skel’s left hand and wiped her eyes with her suit-covered finger.

  “Is the C-4 and detonator functional outside of your skel?”

  YES.

  She fit her hand back in the skel and lowered her visor over her eyes. “Good. But let’s leave it for now.”

  Her attention went to an eight-foot wide puddle of plasma formed from a thin stream leaking from under the Twin Suns.

  Singer, I need to flare.

  NOT YET. FILL YOUR RESERVE AND SKEL FIRST.

  Star hooked the tube hid in the skel’s right forearm into the shielding hole. Blue plasma glowed in its progression inside while she sucked more water from her feeding tube. Her heart rate was still high, but was calming.

  Have you collected all of the file names linked to W’s virus?

  YES.

  Linked…Do you have any programs that could trace those back to a computer where W, if destroyed, would stay that way?

  THE DATA DOES NOT PRODUCE A PATTERN THAT COULD LEAD TO ANY TYPE OF ORIGIN AS YOU DESCRIBE.

  Let me see. N3.

  IF YOU SAY SO.

  Plasma fed through the tube into her mouth, wiping away her headache and stiffness all over. Her mind cleared all the stress and doubts the last ten minutes had built up.

  Long lines of file names and code displayed through her visor.

  Nothing appeared as a key to her problem. But the code could just be something W cooked up and delivered without being stupid enough to leave any clues.

  SKEL N3 100%. RESERVE 100%.

  Plasma spilled back out of the reserve tube. Star folded it over, spilling a gush into her mouth, then pressed it into the clip in her forearm compartment. She imagined a cap that could fit on the end of the tube and connected to the nanos in the tube to begin the work.

  Her reach was expanding. Her nanos were filtering out through the three tubes sprouting from, and in the pool, below the suns, spreading, replicating, and relaying back their presence to their master.

  The presence in her womb also spoke back to her, though not in language other humans would understand. Only that which a mother could. He was coming. And he loved her.

  But he didn’t have to be the only one who loved or served her, Star thought, gazing over the still and barely moving bodies. What better way to spread her nanos throughout the base than to use these carriers with legs. She could go from a family of three to a much larger community.

  Star took a pull of N3 from the tube, knelt down beside a man she didn’t recognize—even if she had not caved in his nose—and spit plasma into the space between his lips.

  43 – Dixon / W / Carroll (4:18 am, Saturday)

  Dixon climbed the endless stairwell, wondering how he fell this far. Carroll was at his side, but she might as well not have been for the connection he felt to her.

  He used to wake and walk without guilt, eager from bed to dive suit and out to practice. Even after Marcel died, Rush was there to help keep him from falling too far from center. His divemaster grew to fill the void left by his older brother’s death, and even if he’d never be whole again, at least he’d been able to retain a grip on the hopeful life. When Rush experienced his own family death in Fish, Dixon saw the truth that hides its ugly face in the soul of hope: there will always only be death to look forward to. And it crushes everyone, even the strongest.

  That’s all he saw. Death reigned, and all he could do about it was give it a soul wrenching curse with ever
y step he forced forward.

  Quake and Marco took a breather on the stairwell landing above him, where a black 32 was painted on the gray wall beside the door. Inside, above, and below would all lead him along whatever path Death and the Ancestors deemed worthy for his punishment.

  But the worst part—maybe the best—was that he may have come to a point where none of it mattered. No one walking with him, from Quake’s death to Carroll’s, or even his own, could pierce the marble his heart had become.

  He went on because Warren told him. Six months ago, Warren had saved him from three multihullers armed to the teeth. He said Dixon had cojones, and the tanned men around him laughed. Well, all of them except the dead one Dixon had shot in the head and the one with the knife in his chest Dixon had thrown when he jumped onto his sarfer’s deck. All he had to do to save his and Carroll’s life was to tell Warren where he could find Rushing Stenson. At the time, trading that backstabber’s life for his and his wife’s was as easy a decision as picking shade over the sun. But as he looked back, with all who died, and the lock Warren had over his will, forcing him to endure more and more, he longed for that moment to live again. Where he’d be free to ram his sleeve knife into Warren’s throat and fight for the chance to be the man Carroll could admire.

  Step.

  That opportunity died long ago.

  Step.

  As did the spark of life that makes people move toward something better. Now, Warren’s voice was that spark, but it offered no such pleasure. Not the same kind, anyway. There was relief in hearing a command and obeying. But every time he did, he felt farther away from the man Carroll married, the man Marcel looked after in hope of what he could be, and the son of the forgotten parents gone too soon to see him grown and able to make them proud. Warren slid into that void like the snake he smiled to be, his tail wrapped so tight around Dixon’s throat that every breath came only when allowed.

  Carroll caught his hand on its backward sway. He turned to see her, head down. “Can you help me?” Her tone said, Jerk, don’t you see me struggling?