Ghosts of Tomorrow

by Michael R. Fletcher

  The next burst went over his damaged shoulder as Archaeidae spun and ducked away. He saw the slight bulk under the guard’s pale blue shirt; MR vest, no doubt, and blew the woman’s head to mist with a few dozen kyper-kinetic flechettes. He kept moving, put on a sudden burst of speed and narrowly avoided another vicious hail of assault rifle fire. Damned humans were everywhere.

  A young man stared up at Archaeidae from under the desk he cowered behind. Perfect! Archaeidae picked him up. Using him as a shield he rushed toward the stairwell. The guards, assault rifles ready and looking for an opening, followed Archaeidae. He kept twitching his human shield about and the man screamed and wailed all kinds of nonsense.

  Go ahead, shoot this poor office drone; put him out of his misery.

  At the stairwell door he threw the man at the guards and, dropping a few micro-remote exploding drones, ducked away. The next person to open that door would get a nasty surprise. That should slow them down a bit. Perhaps they’d reconsider the wisdom of following him.

  He had to go down into the basement to find his goal. He took the stairs.

  Archaeidae slid into the NATUnet hub deep in the air-conditioned bowels of the server rooms. He turned to find a middle-aged Systems Administrator with a faded ‘Pirates are WAY Cooler than Ninjas’ t-shirt staring at him.

  “What the fu—” said the man as Archaeidae’s katana slid through an eye socket and pierced the brain. The assassin effortlessly held the corpse upright with the tip of his sword in its skull until it stopped twitching. The blade slipped free with a wet sip before once again disappearing under what was left of his blood-spattered duster-coat.

  “Ninjas are way cooler than pirates.”

  Archaeidae stashed the corpse out of the way and scanned the room. The machines, crisp white plastic sheathed towers standing six feer in height and aligned like rows of city blocks created a boring and simple maze. Each tower contained millions of processors and each processor in turn housed millions of individual nano fluid-cooled ionized-hafnium-sphere micro-cores. Any single tower in this room was capable of supplying the entire planet’s processing and data storage demands of forty years ago. Archaeidae jacked into the system and used it to run his virtuality, maximizing processor speed to slow his perception of time. He would now have a month in virtual training.

  Archaeidae threw himself into virtual combat missions with varying degrees of time lag fluctuating between one-third of a second and five seconds. For the first two weeks he died repeatedly, failing every attempt at every mission. Once he adapted and adopted a more intuitive combat style, never launching attacks at opponents, but rather attacking where he thought they would be, he managed some small level of success.

  After the third week he achieved a five percent success rate. He wasn’t able to top that.

  Five percent. He’d been right. This wasn’t possible.

  Frustrated, he retreated from the problem and looked for other means of assuring victory. He downloaded the available data on Juan Santamaria International Airport in San José—including a great deal of additional information from Jotei 88 he wouldn’t normally have had access to—and incorporated the data into his strategies. He studied flight paths and travel times in San José airspace. Unwilling to bother his Empress with further questions, he queried Shogun 88.1 on the Empress’ ability to crack airline security and data systems. He formulated a desperate back-up plan.

  Failure was not an option.

  It was a certainty.

  Archaeidae exited the virtuality and once again became aware of the reality around him. Twenty minutes had passed since killing the first guard.

  Jotei 88 had provided explicit directions that should gain him access to the biggest data pipelines in NATU. Step by step Archaeidae followed them, careful to complete each stage before moving on. Normally this kind of espionage work bored the hell out of him, but with so much on the line he felt pretty excited. Until he completed the final step.

  Access Denied flashed in an unfriendly red font.

  “Oh, shit.” Archaeidae glanced at where he’d hid the corpse of the System Admin. Maybe he shouldn’t have killed him so quickly. He looked around the server room, desperate for inspiration.

  ***

  All across the North American Trade Union, from coast to coast, NATUnet ejected everyone on line and denied access to all. Virtuality universes populated by powerful wizards and deadly swordsmen were abruptly barren and unpopulated. The computer-run Non-Player Characters, demons, trolls and the like, left alone for the first time. Were they sentient they’d have used this respite to build their defenses against the depredations of the many marauding Player-Characters. Instead they stood around their dungeon layers, weapons in hand, awaiting the next wave of slaughter.

  Not a single bit of data moved that didn’t further 88’s plans. Every Mirror not pursuing a task of utmost importance froze to minimize its NATUnet data-footprint. 88 cleared all data lines to guarantee Archaeidae the fastest possible uplink to the six Mirror-run chassis in Costa Rica.

  Chaos and fist-fights ensued as every Stock Exchange in the Trade Union ceased receiving data. CEOs of financial institutions, already in a state of continual panic since the loss of the communications satellites, sat twitching as they watched their employees, unable to work and still on the clock, gather at unresponsive video screens and computer monitors trying to find out what the hell was happening. Systems Administrators were raked over the coals as they tried to explain to their managers that everything worked fine and nothing worked at all.

  ***

  The truck’s on-board computer pinged for attention and informed Griffin it had lost contact with the local NATUnet traffic network. This meant, he was told in the truck’s polite but masculine voice, it no longer received updates on traffic conditions and construction areas, and the previous estimate for their ETA might no longer be accurate. The truck assured him it was still capable of delivering him and his cargo to their destination. Griffin, staring out the window at the passing buildings, ignored the truck.

  As they approached 5THSUN Griffin grew concerned. He wasn’t familiar with daily life in Reno, but even taking the loss of the world’s satellites into account, guessed what he saw wasn’t normal. The streets looked like one of those End of the World V-shows where everyone learned an asteroid was about to destroy the Earth.

  Ignoring the helmet beside him, Griffin grabbed the radio. “Abdul, you seeing this?”

  “Yeah, boss. I’ve lost all contact with NATUnet. There’s nothing. Doesn’t have anything to do with us, does it?”

  “No. No way. Hopefully not.” Griffin watched a man scream at an unresponsive palm-comp. “This isn’t good. I’d been planning to call in back-up once we got close enough no one could beat us to the arrest.”

  “You haven’t already arranged for back-up?” Abdul asked, incredulous. “There’s just the two of us?”

  “Unless NATUnet comes back on line.”

  ***

  Lokner was arranging the purchase of the main supplier of fibre-optics trunk-lines when the connection died. It wasn’t just a dropped call—that he was grudgingly becoming accustomed to—but rather the loss of all communications outside of 5THSUN.

  “Godammit!”

  A quick check showed Mark he had no NATUnet feed at all. Every time he attempted to send data he received a ‘Message Cached’ response.

  The walls felt like they crept a little closer. Mark thought about crawling under the desk to his place of power.

  “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  ***

  The private suborbital hadn’t even taxied to a stop when an exit hatch sprung open and four Scan-driven Multi-Environment Combat Assault chassis dropped to the ground. 88 watched over conscripted airport security cameras—the colors faded to a monotonous gray-scale so as not to be too distracting—as her six Mirror-driven combat chassis remained motionless.

  Was this part of the plan? Was Archaeidae doing something unpredicta
ble? She checked the trunk-line for traffic and saw there was none. Archaeidae had failed to make a connection.

  Should she send her chassis into battle without Archaeidae’s guidance?

  The 5THSUN chassis streaked across the tarmac towards her motionless chassis.

  “Engage opponents,” 88 ordered. “Destroy them.” Though she understood Archaeidae’s claim the Mirrors would be no match for the Scan-driven chassis, the six to four odds still looked promising. Could her Mirror driven chassis be that inferior? She worried that they were. Certainly Archaeidae thought so, and she had come to trust his judgment on such things.

  Where is Archaeidae? Why isn’t he here already? She felt naked and alone.

  With two extra chassis on her side she instructed them to each attack a single opponent while the spares joined in to create two-on-one situations. It seemed a sound strategy.

  The 5THSUN chassis had other plans. They spun a tight dance around one of her chassis, all concentrating their fire on the same target. They lanced frequency-stuttering pulse lasers and HEAP rockets and in less than three seconds the fight was five against four.

  88 watched, paralyzed. Her Mirrors were outclassed. Unable to adapt to the mutating strategies of the Scan-driven chassis they were caught in deadly crossfires and unable to land a killing blow of their own. Desperate to give her chassis some edge, 88 ran statistical analysis to predict the Scans’ next moves and was wrong every time. The Scans, often making what appeared to be suicidal choices, were devastatingly successful. Two of her remaining five chassis were already damaged and fighting at a fraction of their capacity.

  They came for her and nothing would stop them. They would find her, fragile and defenseless, in the basement of her little shack. Death stalked her with a bloody red gleam in its Canon-Zuiko Blissful Light eyes.

  88 cut the camera feed from the airport and floated in endless nothing. She needed to think. Sight was a distraction. So was fear. Even here she wanted the vibrating pillow. Some comfort. Someone to tell her it would be okay. She missed Mom now more than ever. The warmth of her arms, the smell of her sweat.

  It couldn’t end like this. Archaeidae. She needed Archaeidae.

  Tearing herself away from the destruction of her Mirror-run chassis 88 searched for Archaeidae through the Reno NATU building. The offices and halls were littered with corpses, many lacked heads and limbs. This was not the plan Archaeidae spoke of. He was supposed to sneak in. Stealth, that was the plan.

  That, 88 realized, was the problem with unpredictable.

  Rage boiled out of the black, threatening to sweep away all thought. No longer floating in a sea of tranquil nothing, she tossed in the tornado of her emotions as her personal virtuality reacted to her mood. Control slipped away.

  Archaeidae let me down! Jagged bolts of red lightning shattered the black.

  My Mirrors failed me! Silence shredded in paroxysms of screaming fury.

  “They’re going to kill you,” Mom had said. She’d been right. She was still right. They wouldn’t let up until 88 was gone, all traces wiped out of existence.

  The black returned. Ice cold and crystalline sterile. Blasted free of emotion. Survival was everything. The only thing. They had chosen to pit themselves against her. So be it.

  But she was not alone.

  88 tracked the trail of bloody destruction by flitting from camera to camera, she found Archaeidae in Server Room Three with four corpses piled at his feet. A single technician tapped madly at a desk, Archaeidae’s sword at her throat. The floor glistened with blood, the door barricaded with haphazardly piled computer hardware. Beyond the door a dozen guards in MR combat armor and armed with heavy assault-rifles prepared to attempt a breech.

  “There,” said the technician. “I’ve done it. You’ve got total access. You’ll let me—”

  She was interrupted when Archaeidae pulled her head off and tossed it underhand toward the corner of the room. The body hosed a visceral spume of blood and toppled, adding one more to the pile.

  “I’m in,” said Archaeidae. “Come on five percent!”

  A flicker of 88’s attention and she was back with her Mirror-run chassis.

  ***

  Archaeidae arrived in time to witness the death of another chassis as the 5THSUN machines savaged it. He twisted the two remaining chassis in unexpected directions, buying himself a fraction of a second to think.

  Two left. That was it. That was everything.

  Less data was moving, so that should be good, but the odds were not the six on four he’d been counting on.

  This was no five percent.

  Everything went black as he lost the feed and he used the milliseconds to replay the last few frames. The Juan Santamaria landing strip was a mess of scattered debris and chassis parts. All humans had retreated into the terminal and hanger bays, no doubt waiting for the military or some law enforcement agency to deal with this violent chaos. He knew where the 5THSUN chassis were two hundred milliseconds ago.

  Just fucking great.

  The feed returned, a torrential flood of sensory data.

  Archaeidae filtered out all his own sensorial information so he could focus on that coming from the landing strip. He dared not think about what might be going on around his physical body. The slightest distraction could cost him everything.

  The 5THSUN machines had moved. He launched an attack, spreading a hail of HEL pulses and HEAP rockets in the desperate hope of hitting something.

  The feed from Costa Rica grew choppy again, stuttering as dozens of frames were dropped or lost in transition. For a full five-hundred milliseconds all was static and he was left looking at the last frame of action. It was like fighting high-speed ninjas in a strobe-lit room. He saw three frames, each staggered by one hundred milliseconds and sent more orders. No way of knowing if they got through or when they’d arrive.

  Then everything synched up, as close to real time as he could ask for. The 5THSUN chassis were pulverizing one of his, pursuing it around the runway as it dodged and weaved. Archaeidae sent new orders. Move here. Target this. You, turn to—And then he bogged down, mired in the quick-sands of time, an entire second behind the action.

  The universe stammered like a student driver alternating spastically between clutch and gas pedal. For two second Archaeidae’s data feed dropped to three frames per second. When time lurched forward again one of his chassis remained operable, the other disintegrated on the tarmac. Three 5THSUN chassis against his one. He hadn’t even seen the death of the 5THSUN machine, only the aftermath. His lag time dropped to under half a second, still too great for him to guarantee success.

  Guarantee. Ha!

  He was going to fail. Again. He failed Riina and now he’d fail the Empress.

  Archaeidae, raised by Uncle Riina in an environment of Victory or Death, couldn’t give up. He sent Plan B to 88 and assumed his Empress would see the logic and follow through. But Plan B required time and Archaeidae was about all out of that precious commodity.

  The 5THSUN chassis circled, ensnaring and flanking him in preparation for his destruction.

  Archaeidae saw it. So obvious.

  He knew the 5THSUN Scans. Not personally, but he knew their lives. He knew their training. He knew how they thought. He knew every combat virtuality they’d ever played and what they’d done to beat it.

  He knew them like he knew the limits of his favorite assassin chassis.

  The data feed ran clean and he wasn’t more than fifty milliseconds behind the action.

  If he turned and threatened this one with the pulse cannon, the chassis on the left would move in on his unprotected flank. He threatened, a bluff. He’d move right there. Archaeidae fired blindly at the vacant space to his left, unloading hellacious death on empty air. The 5THSUN chassis obediently stepped into the maelstrom as if on cue and was destroyed. The one he had threatened would have taken a defensive posture, seen the threat as a bluff, and the subsequent destruction of the other chassis, and would move there. Archa
eidae, taking a few glancing blows from the third 5THSUN chassis’ chain-gun, moved his chassis—a jet-assisted acrobat’s tumble designed to look as if he’d lost control—relying more on the mental map in his mind than the data feed from Costa Rica. This should put the first chassis between Archaeidae and the last. The first, wanting the kill, would move in, thinking Archaeidae wounded and tumbling. The third chassis would shuffle left to get a clear line of fire.

  Archaeidae moved and fired concurrent to thought. Even though his remote chassis tumbled chaotically, he was in complete control. He placed his shots with care, firing once again on empty space. The 5THSUN chassis filled that space and was blown to its component parts. The third chassis—

  The data feed dropped out completely and Archaeidae stared at a pixelated rotating hourglass overlying the last frame he’d received.

  No! Where the fuck is it? Had he got it?

  And he stared at clear blue Costa Rican sky marred by the smoke rising from his mangled chassis. Shit. The Scan moved right instead of left. He played back the last fractions of a second in the top left corner of his visualization while simultaneously searching for his target and trying to get this last damaged chassis off the ground. There—

  Swarm-rockets hammered his chassis, killing what little mobility it had. Helpless rage filled Archaeidae as his final chassis lay bleeding fluids and parts across the airport grounds. His opponent, a chassis striped in a mottled gold and brown deepening to black towards its extremities, moved in for the kill. He could do nothing to stop it.

  Archaeidae had zero mobility and just enough juice to fire the jump-jets for a fraction of a second. So close. But he must stall the last chassis, if only for a few seconds.

  “You think you win?” asked Archaeidae through the Mirror’s chassis. “You think this fight is yours?” Archaeidae knew the Scan running the other chassis was someone much like himself, someone born and raised in the competitive world of virtual combat. Someone unable to resist the chance to brag over a downed and harmless foe.