Code Breakers: Beta

by Colin F. Barnes

  Enna spoke first. “For the last few weeks I’ve been tracking them. It started out with unusual data patterns coming from an unknown node. Given how few networked computers survived, that’s always a concern. I traced the origins, discovered there were more survivors over the Russian borders. That’s when I got Gabe involved.”

  “As a spy?”

  Gabe nodded, said. “It’s partly why I disappeared after ya thought I double-crossed ya, man. That was all part of the plan: for you to get to Seca, and for Petal to stay safe, but well, that didn’t quite happen. Ya see, these Red Widows have got a hard-on for people with tech in ‘em.”

  “What do you mean exactly?” Gerry said.

  “They blame The Family,” Enna said. “And the advancement of technology in general for the war, and for the loss of their fathers and husbands. They were the last surviving adults post-Cataclysm on account of them being in a bunker system at the time. That part of Russia still segregated male and female roles within the military, and a quirk of circumstance meant that they were the sole survivors from that region.”

  “So you sent Gabe, a male, to infiltrate them? How did that work out?”

  “I had something to trade with, man,” Gabe said.

  “What?”

  “Information. Ya see, as I said earlier, they’d been in contact with some kind of old AI-like entity. Nothing like I’ve ever seen before. It’d promised ‘em all kinds of secrets and ways to take down The Family, take the Dome for themselves. I got on the inside, managed the comms for ‘em. Despite the Jags and ATVs at their disposal, when it comes to tech, they’re like cave people. So I extended my skills to ‘em, helped ‘em decipher the code from this AI. All the while feeding info back here to Enna.”

  “So what did they want with Petal? Why take Darkhan and GeoCity-1 for that matter?”

  “This AI, whatever it is, tipped them off about Petal, about what she could do. They tracked her when Jasper’s men took her away from the Dome. Gabe here ensured that she was taken alive.”

  “Told ‘em a little of what she could do, how she could benefit ‘em. Had to do something to keep her alive. And besides, it gave me the chance of springing her once we found out about where her chip came from.”

  “I still don’t understand why you let her travel alone. If she was sick,” he pointed to Enna. “You should have taken her, tried to help her.”

  Enna stood, her body tense. “I tried my best when she was with me the last time. I don’t know everything, Gerry. There’s a limit to what I could do. She is not like a normal person, or a transcendent for that matter. I’m sorry. I simply don’t have the skills or knowledge to help her. It was the only way!”

  “Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”

  Enna took a deep breath, sat back down. “We couldn’t leave her here with the Widows. You’ve seen what they would have done with her.” Enna pointed to Bilanko’s cell. “All that time alone with their grief and pain has turned them into brutal killers. They want blood and death. They’re delusional. She couldn’t have stayed, and you saw what happened at GeoCity-1. She had to find her home, for her sake. For all of our sake.”

  The loss of Petal to the unknown gnawed away at Gerry’s patience. He wanted to leave everyone behind, trace her route, and find her, make sure she was safe. But here he stood, stuck in the damned compound again.

  “What can we do here then?” Gerry asked. “What’s next? Do we have any idea where Omega is?”

  “They believe Omega is in Darkhan somewhere,” Enna said. “And I think they’re right. When Len went with you to City Earth, the Upsiders scattered, took Omega with them. It makes sense to come here to keep it safe. There are lots of defensible buildings, of old places to hide, none of Seca’s drones or hired thugs to monitor the place anymore.”

  “You mentioned the two servers could create and destroy AIs. How does that actually work? Is it something we can use against this AI entity?” Gerry asked, trying to piece everything together.

  Enna stood, rubbed her wrists. Red marks scored her skin from her cuffs, which now lay on the floor. “The two servers are a pair of the same entity,” Enna said. “Created by Sakura and Hajime Murakami, the co-owners and pioneering AI engineers of Old Grey Network Systems back before the war and the Cataclysm. They are Alpha and Omega because the two complete each other.”

  Gabe added, “When coupled, they can be used to permanently destroy an AI, or as this thing hinted at: upload a consciousness. Don’t know if that’s true or not. Whether or not it’s possible, this thing seemed insane. Many of its comms were batshit crazy.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Gerry said.

  “So far,” Gabe said. “The plan is get the servers. Then pray.”

  “For what?”

  “That Petal gets to Criborg in time, and that they have something useful to help us fight the Red Widows, otherwise we’re looking at war with The Family, and we all know how that ended up last time.”

  “What about this thing you call an AI entity. What do you know about it? Did it have a name?”

  “Not a great deal really,” Gabe said. “All its comms were pseudo-religious bullshit, like some kind of crazed cult leader. It’s related to some pre-Cataclysm program of The Family. As for its name, it just referred to itself as the Patriarch. Also, its message coincided with access to the Meshwork being suppressed. I’m sure it’s related somehow, man. But I didn’t get a chance to dig any further. When Natalya, the leader of the Widows, figured out how to decrypt its messages I was relegated to an odd-job man. My stock ain’t worth a damn with ‘em now.”

  “What if Petal doesn’t make it?” Gerry said.

  Neither Enna nor Gabe spoke, clearly not wanting to entertain the possibility.

  A knock came from the door. Gerry gripped the sickle’s handle and stood to the side.

  The door opened, Gerry tensed ready to attack.

  “Hey, it’s just us!” Cheska said stepping in holding up her wrists, still restrained with the EM Cuffs. Malik and a few people from GeoCity-1 stood behind her.

  “Any chance of getting us out of these? We need to move now. I can hear them trying to get through the main doors. They’ll be here any minute.” Malik said.

  Gerry turned to Gabe, “There’s one door in, one door out. Unless you got any ideas?”

  “Yeah, man, I gotta plan.”

  Chapter 17

  Petal sipped fresh water from a cup, closed her eyes as the cool liquid helped take the taste of salt-water from her mouth. She yawned and looked over at Sasha’s holoscreen: nearly 23:00. She hadn’t slept properly for over twenty-four hours, and despite all the ‘Stems she’d had lately, her body demanded a rest.

  She slumped into the seat next to Sasha, stared at her, smiled to herself. Whatever the exact situation was, it was kinda cool to have a sister, if that’s what they were.

  Maybe she was a clone? That’d be cool, too. Petal had always wanted a family, and as close as she was to Gabe, he was still a man unto himself, a mystery, an enigma.

  The sub rocked violently to the left. A great booming sound accompanied the movement, and the display flashed with a series of numbers. Petal noticed the temp gauge spike. Which meant one thing: particle beam weapons.

  “It’s The Family’s drones, isn’t it?” Petal said.

  Sasha brushed herself off and levelled the sub. “Yeah,” she said.

  “Dive.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Sasha put the Sub into an evasive spin, and in a wide arc sent it back down into the depths, steering away from the reef, and the base.

  “How far are we from your compound?” Petal asked

  “Not far, but I can’t risk luring the drones there. I shouldn’t even be out here rescuing you. Jimmy’s gonna kill me.”

  “Not if the drones kill us first,” Petal said. “This tub got any weaponry? EMP, laser, missiles, torpedoes?”

  “Yeah, it has, but.” Sasha screwed up face and her cheeks blushed red.

  �
�You didn’t arm it before coming out?” Petal said, trying not to sound too derogatory. It was clear the girl was out of her depth, in more ways than one.

  “Well, I thought I’d pick you up and bring you back before the satellite came over. We’ve been tracking it for months, I got my times right, I’m sure I did.” Another blast hit the water and the sub jerked.

  “They won’t just give up,” Petal said.

  “You fought them before?” Sasha asked.

  “Yeah, occupational hazard.” Petal gave her a wry smile.

  “What do you do exactly?”

  “Lately it’s been hacking a bit of this and a bit of that, although very lately it was saving City Earth, and look at the thanks we’re getting.”

  “City Earth? You’ve been there? How did you get out?”

  The radar screen showed the four UAVs circling their position. No doubt they’d hold their weapons until they breached the surface.

  “I’ll tell you about it sometime, but we kinda need to deal with these first, huh? How much air do we have?”

  Sasha checked the holoscreen. “About an hour.”

  “That’s us screwed then. Those drones can go for days. They’ll wait for us and then blast us out of the water.”

  Sasha slumped into her seat, kicked out in frustration. “I knew I should have listened to Jimmy. But oh no, I had to go and try and prove something.”

  “Who’s Jimmy? Tell me about him,” Petal asked, more to get the girl to calm down, think rationally. If she could take some of the anger and frustration out of her, then they could think more logically.

  “My father I suppose, kinda. It’s difficult to explain and, well, I probably shouldn’t be telling you any of this.”

  “What is he though? A medical doctor, a tech guy, engineer?”

  Sasha took a deep breath. “I suppose you could say he’s medical for the most part, but, look, it’s not that I don’t want to trust you, it’s just I’ve screwed up enough. Let’s see if we make it back, then you’ll learn about him, us, the whole lot.”

  “Fair enough. What’s the tech like on this thing, decent processing power? What about its remote access facilities?”

  “The computer’s a Legacy II. It’s standard for most military equipped subs and powerful enough. As for access to the systems, it’d be great if those UAVs weren’t jamming us. I can’t signal out, and the stealth doesn’t seem to be working. Jimmy warned me it wasn’t ready for real word applications, but in the tests, I don’t know. I was so convinced.”

  “Stealth? What kind of stealth?” Petal asked.

  “Look, how do I know you ain’t working for the Red Widows? You were in one of their Jaguars, wearing their gear. You even had one of their little religious books on you. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck.” Sasha raised her eyebrows, questioning Petal’s origins. She had to agree. It did look suspicious.

  Petal held out her forearm. “Would I be one of the Widows if I had one of your chips inside me?”

  “They could have taken it out of you, turned you to a double agent or something.” Sasha crossed her arms defensively. Petal could tell she didn’t really believe it.

  “And the fact we’re clearly related or perhaps the same clones doesn’t give you an idea that I might be on your side?”

  Sasha shrugged, plotted a new direction into the sub’s navigation computer sending it into a wide arc some two-hundred metres below the surface.

  “Look, we’ve got an hour before we’re out of air,” Petal said. “We can’t go back to the base, and we have no weaponry. Either you trust me and tell me more about what this sub can, and should be able to do, and let me help you, or we both stay here like sitting ducks.”

  Sasha opened her mouth and began to speak, but Petal was riled up now and seeing the girl wilt under her aggression sought to take the advantage.

  “You’re just a girl playing at real life. Do you really think those UAVs will politely stay up in the air? Do you even know what they are capable of? Did you not know that they could submerge too? What will you do when they decide to dive and find us down here in the dark?”

  Sasha’s eyes grew wide. “They can do that? Go under water, I mean?”

  “Of course they can. You think The Family make crappy equipment like this tub? They have the best resources and the best minds working on their stuff. They’ll be down here in no time. They’re probably just biding their time while they scan our systems for vulnerabilities. You really want The Family inside the computer of this thing?”

  “If they get in then they’ll—” Sasha looked away, perhaps subconsciously towards the base.

  “Yeah, they’ll find your base and probably nuke it. It’s far enough away from City Earth that it wouldn’t be a risk to them. And no one else would give a damn if some rinky-dink island gets blown to hell.”

  “I can’t do this,” Sasha said quietly, almost under her breath. “I’m not trained for this kind of thing.”

  “Then what are you trained for?” Petal asked.

  “Field combat,” she said, slumping her shoulders as if that was nothing to be proud of. Petal supposed it wasn’t when you were stuck in a submarine.

  “You’ve got a choice, girl,” Petal said. “Either you let me into the systems and let me see what I can do, or we swim about until either we’re out of energy, or the UAVs kill us. It’s up to you. What would Jimmy want you to do?”

  Sasha squirmed in her chair, pressed her lips together. She took a deep breath, then, in a resigned rush said. “Okay, then. Just don’t mess it up.”

  Petal arched an eyebrow. “Please, I’m the expert here. Now swap seats and give me your login credentials.”

  Sasha complied. Petal navigated through the sub’s system via the holoscreen. It was slower work than using a gesture-capable tablet, but at least her apparent twin could see what she was doing. Maybe even learn something along the way.

  Petal hacked the system easily. Within minutes she had bypassed the encryption and logged in as a super-root user, gaining access to the system’s core file system and code libraries. She supposed given that the sub was still in development they hadn’t anticipated someone would be driving it about and wanting to get into the code. It was certainly clean, well-commented, and elegant. She gave the developers that at least.

  It took another five minutes to find the portion of the system that controlled the stealth module. It was a clever piece of tech. As Petal ran through the code line-by-line constructing a model of it in her head she had to give Jimmy and his coders a great deal of credit. The code was borderline genius: a polymorphic structure with its own machine-learning AI component that sent random signals to billions of nano-cells on the outside of the sub. Each one of the cells would make a note of the light falling upon its surrounding and recreate the photons within its own light transmitters so that anything that looked upon it, be it a satellite, drone or person, would effectively see nothing other than its surroundings, rendering it completely invisible.

  The radar facilities appeared to work in a similar fashion, allowing a complete pass-through of any radar. There was one problem, however: Jimmy hadn’t quite finished the code. There were various functions and methods that the code relied upon to compile correctly that simply didn’t exist yet.

  “Well, can you fix it?” Sasha said after a while, all the time fidgeting in the seat next to Petal.

  “Yeah, I can do it. But I need something from you first.”

  Sasha rolled her eyes. “What do you want?”

  “When we get back, I want you to introduce me to this Doc of yours.”

  “You’ll have no worries with that,” Sasha said. “He’ll kill me for all this, and will likely kill you second.”

  “Oh, I doubt that. I can be charming when I need to be.” To prove the point, Petal pouted her lips, swept her hair back, and busted out her best smile. “See?”

  Sasha shook her head and laughed.

  Petal couldn’t believe how much they l
ooked alike. Despite the differences of hairstyles, it was like looking in a mirror.

  “I best get to work then,” Petal said.

  “Okay, hurry.”

  All the time Petal worked at coding the missing functions, she kept catching glimpses from Sasha, her face a mixture of awe, wonder, and confusion. No doubt the very same look that Petal had on her own face when looking at Sasha.

  Almost at the same time they both spoke. “It’s weird, isn’t it?”

  They laughed together, before they became silent, stared at each for a few long seconds.

  Petal turned away, back to her screen. “Okay, just adding the last bit.” She completed the last of the required functions, rebooted the machine to compile the new code. “Right, let’s see if this works then.”

  “I hope so. For both of our sakes.”

  The radar blipped once, then twice.

  “They’re here.” Sasha pointed to the video feed of the rear camera.

  Two drones had submerged, and in a corkscrew pattern dived down into the depths, sweeping the waters for their location.

  “Have you fixed it yet?” Sasha said, her eyes wider now, a little hint of panic twitching at the corner of her mouth.

  “Almost,” Petal replied as she error-checked the last of her functions. It failed on the first reboot. Caught on a snag somewhere. After a while of debugging the original program, she eventually understood how the polymorphic code worked. Realising her mistake, she navigated back to a segment of code and typed in a fix. She ran a quick test: no errors. “That should do it.”

  The drones drew closer. The video feed had them at less than fifty metres away.

  They would be within visual contact in a matter of seconds.

  “Hurry,” Sasha said, her leg bouncing up and down, making a tapping noise against the hull.

  “I’m nearly done. Rebooting now.”

  “Oh crap, they’re getting closer. Thirty metres, they’ll see us.”

  Petal moved her hands swiftly across the holoscreen, waiting for it to catch up with her movement. How she wished to have had a direct connection instead. She could have done this in half the time. Hopefully this Jimmy guy could put her dermal wrist implant back in, give her back some of her abilities.