Robot Dust Bunnies (Argonauts Book 5)

by Isaac Hooke

  As he neared the shore, he activated aft thrust once more, bringing him up onto the beach. Then he fired one last burst to right himself, and then continued forward on his feet, occasionally thrusting when his ankles sunk too deep. He quickly used up all his fuel.

  He passed the lifeless masses of the horde, which had succumbed to the heat. The individual robots were spread across the rock, their bodies glowing a hotter blue. So far, the mechs themselves were still a cooler white, but Rade wasn’t sure how long that would last.

  He saw Sprint pause beside the edge of that lifeless mass of robots.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Collecting samples,” Surus said, kneeling. She stood a moment later, her metal fists wrapped protectively around the tiny robots she had gathered.

  The Hoplites raced into the protective columns of basalt, and the terrain became solid once more. They continued running, wanting to put as much distance between themselves and the heat as possible. Soon the binary suns were hidden once more behind the horizon.

  The glow of the Hoplites faded to red as the temperature returned to the standard one hundred and seventy. The lava on Rade’s shield had mostly sloughed away during the frantic retreat, though some cooled rock was still attached.

  “Let’s stop for a second to get rid of this lava still clinging to our shields,” Rade said.

  He paused to wipe his shield on a nearby crevice, and also slid his feet across the surface in an attempt to loosen the black slag caking his soles; it was like sloughing mud from a shoe.

  “Argonauts, update me,” Rade said.

  The Argonauts reported in. Their shields were in various states of disrepair, and jumpjet fuel was nearly exhausted across the board, but incredibly they had all survived relatively unscathed. Bender’s mech had to hop on one leg. Manic had lost the use of his shield arm—Manic’s shield itself had nearly dissolved completely away.

  “Going to need some repairs when we get back,” Manic said.

  “Just a little,” Rade agreed. “Shaw, any sign of our prey?”

  “No,” Shaw said. “This is odd, however: the swarm that was headed toward the research station came to a halt before arriving, and has formed a protective ring around it.”

  “I’m guessing they don’t want us going there,” Lui said.

  “Probably an accurate guess,” Tahoe said.

  “And this is a bit worrisome,” Shaw said. “The two HS3s you left behind at the base have ceased transmitting.”

  “That is worrying,” Rade agreed.

  “It has to be Alton and Corunna,” Surus said.

  “Maybe,” Rade said. He glanced at the beaten-up Hoplites. “But we’re not ready to face another robot swarm again. We’re getting off this scorched rock while the getting is good. Argonauts, we continue to the booster rockets.”

  And so he led the Hoplites onward.

  Shaw tapped in on a private line: “I was worried sick about you back there, watching so helplessly as events unfolded.”

  “I’m sorry you had to see that,” Rade said.

  “I’m even sorrier I wasn’t there to help,” Shaw replied.

  “Not sure there would have been anything more you could have done if you were here,” Rade said.

  “Oh no,” Shaw said. “This isn’t good.”

  “What is it?” Rade asked.

  But Shaw didn’t answer.

  fourteen

  Shaw resided on the bridge of the Argonaut. She tried to reactivate the tactical display that had overlaid her vision only a few moments before, but it refused to come up.

  “Shaw?” Rade said over the comm. “What’s wrong?”

  “My tactical display has just gone down,” Shaw said. “I’m flying blind. Bax, what just happened?”

  The Argonaut’s AI didn’t reply.

  “Shaw?” Rade sent. “Do you read?”

  “Rade?” Shaw transmitted. “Are you hearing me?”

  “Shaw, do you copy, over?” Rade sent.

  “Damn it,” Shaw said. “Bax, you better not be joking around...”

  The AI didn’t reply.

  She would simply have to command the ship from engineering, then.

  She got up from her station and made her way toward the bridge hatch.

  It didn’t open. Puzzled, she retreated a few steps and tried to enter the captain’s office. That door remained closed to her as well.

  “You’ve locked me in, have you?” Shaw returned to the bridge hatch. Her Implant still formed an adhoc network with the combat robots remaining aboard, one of which was stationed right outside the bridge. The overhead map, which operated independently of the Argonaut’s AI, was still active, and showed the positions of those robots as blue dots.

  “Cora,” Shaw said, using the nickname for Unit C, which resided just past the door. “Are you able to open the entry hatch?”

  “Negative,” Cora replied. “The AI appears to have locked me out.”

  “Me, as well,” Shaw said. “I don’t suppose you can use your rifle as a laser cutter?”

  “I can,” Cora said.

  “Summon the other robots to the bridge area,” Shaw commanded. “Get them to help.”

  “Will do,” Cora replied. “By the way, Ulysses is in engineering already.” That was the nickname of Unit U.

  “And?”

  “He is locked out of the AI and most of the subsystems,” Cora continued. “However, he tells me he has managed to reboot the weapon systems and regain control of the relevant subsystems.”

  “Well that’s a relief,” Shaw said. That meant Corunna wouldn’t be able to use the Argonaut to fire at the Hoplites.

  “Do you still want me to cut you out?” Cora asked.

  The robot’s words evoked a strange image in Shaw’s mind, and she instinctively lowered a protective hand over her abdomen.

  Like cutting a baby from the womb.

  “Proceed,” Shaw said. “With the AI gone rogue, I can’t stay aboard the bridge. It’s not safe here. Bax could decide to vent the atmosphere at any time.” The easiest way to do that would be to open all the breach seals and hatches between the bridge and an airlock, and then open that airlock.

  “But there are precautions in place to prevent such a thing,” Cora said. “Even when an AI has gone rogue. The Machine Constitution—”

  “Can be reprogrammed,” Shaw finished. “Don’t assume anything. You heard about what those robots did to the Russian scientists. Now listen, I need to get to the nearby armory and suit up. Grab a few grenades. Throw on a rifle. Plus a certain stun weapon. Then I’ll feel more comfortable. After that, we’ll proceed to engineering and see what we can do to help Ulysses.”

  “As you wish,” Cora said.

  Shaw waited impatiently. She had a good idea what was going on with Bax. If Corunna had time to infect the AIs of the shuttles with a virus, then she had time to inject malicious code into Bax as well. In fact, when Algorithm reported the time bomb virus in the Dragonflies, the first thing Shaw had done was instruct Bax to search for any problem code. But Corunna had hidden her tracks well, apparently, because Bax found none.

  I should have looked myself.

  But who was she kidding? She had limited knowledge of hacking, and wouldn’t really know what to look for. Sure, she had enough knowledge to use the privilege escalation rootkit she had cached in her Implant, but that was basically hacking DFY—done for you. She chose an option from a menu and let the kit do its work.

  But speaking of the rootkit... since she was locked out of her own system, she supposed it was worth a try to run the kit while the robots worked.

  A plume of white smoke appeared from the hatch as Cora fired the laser rifle into the metal from the other side, and so Shaw removed herself from the area. That plume slowly edged upward, leaving a molten line in its wake.

  Going to be a while yet.

  She activated her rootkit, pointed it to the virtual remote interface of the Argonaut’s AI, and then let it run. She wa
sn’t expecting much, however. It would attempt to access various backdoors known to exist in previous versions of the AI variant. And while Bax wasn’t set to automatically update when new patches were available, TJ and Bender reviewed all the latest versions and applied the patches themselves, so Shaw doubted any of the backdoors would actually work. There were also various brute force attacks the rootkit would attempt, but unfortunately the AI would block about ten failed access attempts.

  It only took about five minutes before the rootkit reported its failure to access the system.

  She stared at the hatch, waiting impatiently while Cora worked. The other robots had yet to reach the bridge—they had been confronted with breach seals along the way. Apparently Bax had taken it upon itself to make it as hard as possible for the robot crew to maneuver around the ship. More of Corunna’s doing, no doubt.

  What was it that Rade had told her after the alien empress ordeal?

  Beware of Greens bearing gifts.

  She wondered how Corunna had installed her virus into the AIs of the shuttle and the Argonaut without alerting the rest of the crew. Bax was equipped with several anti-tamper mechanisms. She must have disabled those first, and then erased all logs pertaining to the action, including video, so that when Bender or the AI itself reviewed the weekly logs, nothing would stand out. Corunna would have converted Bax over to her side first, and when that was done, the shuttles would be an easy thing.

  But why wait until this moment to exert influence over Bax?

  Then Shaw realized Corunna must be on the way back to the Argonaut at that very moment, likely using the distraction provided by the robot behemoths to launch from the Russian research base. And with Bax on Corunna’s side, the AI would have neglected to mention any such launch to Shaw.

  I have to stop the aliens.

  While she no longer had rights to the internal cameras aboard the ship, she could still access the video feeds of the different combat robots, and she did so to observe their progress. The Centurions were taking a long time to cut their way through breach seals, at least until one of them reached the armory and grabbed some of the plasma rifles the team had acquired in the last mission. After that, the seals ceded much more easily, as the older model hatches found aboard weren’t designed to disperse the heat from plasma beams, and the Centurions burned through the hatches and join Cora momentarily.

  In moments Shaw was free of the bridge, and she hurried with her combat robot escort toward the armory. Bax still hadn’t vented the atmosphere yet. So far, so good.

  She reached the armory and picked out her usual cooling and ventilation “cool vents” underwear. She stripped off her clothes and slipped on the tight bottom section of the one-piece undergarment. The cool vents felt tighter around her thighs than she remembered.

  Have I really put on so much weight since the pregnancy began?

  She could switch to one of the man sizes, but then the extra fabric in the suit would bunch up and she’d have trouble fitting the jumpsuit. No, she had to stick with this one.

  I’ll have to get it resized at some point.

  On the plus side, at least she didn’t have any hardpoints protruding from her body to worry about. She didn’t know how Rade could put on the cool vents with those in the way.

  Before she donned the upper body of the garment, she paused to touch her belly. “Hold tight, Alex and Sil.”

  She shrugged on the upper body portion. It felt extremely tight around the waist area. None of the undergarments were really all that loose in the belly area in the first place, and she worried it was too much pressure for the babies.

  They’ll be fine, she told herself.

  She grabbed a jumpsuit containing a strength-enhancing exoskeleton. At least those suits were resizable, as they contained inner actuators that shrank to fit the occupants, similar to the cocooning cockpits found in mechs.

  She secured the helmet and the jumpsuit pressurized. Too late she remembered the accelerant injection that would lower her adaptation time to the new environment; she tried to cancel it, but the sonic injector applied it into the dorsal venous network of her right hand anyway. She worried that the accelerant would harm her babies in some way, though previously the Weavers had promised everything would be fine, and in fact suggested that she and the babies would be better off with the injection. She hoped the robots were right.

  She grabbed a bunch of grenades and secured them to her harness. Those would damage the passageways if she used them, but not enough to cause a breach. She considered taking some explosive charges as well, but decided she wouldn’t need them. She slid a laser rifle over one shoulder by the strap, and grabbed the spare stun rifle. She’d need that to disable any Phants that came aboard.

  All geared up, she had her robot escort bring her to engineering.

  “What’s the sit-rep?” she asked the combat robot on duty inside the entrance when she arrived. The door had been blown open by a plasma rifle burst.

  The Centurion pointed toward the access panel located deeper in the room, where Ulysses resided.

  “I’m attempting another reboot,” Ulysses said. “This is my fourth.”

  Shaw went to the panel and felt around underneath with one hand. TJ kept a special security chip hidden below the panel—basically a rootkit specifically designed for Marauder-class AIs. By plugging the chip into the provided connection before booting, it made privilege escalation easy.

  Shaw couldn’t find that chip, so she dropped to the deck to peer underneath.

  “If you’re looking for the security chip,” Ulysses said. “It’s missing. I checked already.”

  “You’re not supposed to know about that,” Shaw said, rising. “Neither was Corunna.”

  “Yes,” Ulysses said. “Well, she found out, one way or another. In any case, I’ve been inserting my own jury-rigged code. I plan to keep tweaking it between each reboot. Hopefully, I will have the system completely restored in an hour.”

  “Not sure we have an hour,” Shaw said. “But continue.”

  “I’m booting now,” Ulysses said.

  The overhead map reappeared on Shaw’s faceplate.

  “Looks like you’ve got it,” she said.

  An alert sounded as the overhead map updated with fresh data relayed from the Argonaut’s AI. A shuttle had arrived in the first hangar bay. A Russian model. Two blue dots emerged from it. They were labeled Rade and Ms. Bounty.

  “Our prey have arrived,” Shaw said.

  The new dots flickered and vanished.

  “Damn it,” Shaw said. “What happened?”

  “Sorry,” Ulysses said. “The AI managed to circumvent my new subroutines before I could clean everything up. There’s still malicious code in play.”

  If those two dots were truly friendlies, they would have remained connected to her Implant, and thus indicated on her overhead map. But they were not.

  “Well hurry up!” Shaw said. “At the very least, get me access to some of the cameras.” She glanced at her Centurion escort. “The rest of you, we’re proceeding to Hangar Bay One. We have some intruders to catch.”

  The combat robots piled through the exit into the passageway outside, and jogged two abreast in the cramped corridor. Shaw followed near the rear, with two units behind her on drag.

  She would have launched some HS3s to scout ahead, but none of those were aboard at the moment, having deployed with the Dragonflies to the surface.

  She thought of Rade, and hoped he was all right. She worried that more of the robot swarm would pursue the Argonauts.

  She dismissed the thought.

  I have a boarding party to repel.

  She continued through the passageway, with the Centurions leading the way. Halfway to the hangar bay the combat robots in the forefront hefted their rifles.

  “Halt!” one of them said.

  Shaw peered past them, but spotted no one.

  “They were in the scuttle,” the Centurion explained.

  “Forward!”
Shaw said.

  The combat robots hurried toward the scuttle that led to the deck below, but the hatch sealed before they arrived.

  “Open it,” Shaw said.

  The robots aimed plasma rifles down at the hatch, and unleashed several shots. In seconds they had cut through.

  There was no one waiting in the passageway below.

  Shaw glanced at the overhead map; there was only one other scuttle leading to the current deck.

  “You three, proceed down there,” Shaw said. “Flush them toward the next scuttle. You two, remain here and guard this opening. The rest of you, with me.”

  Shaw hurried forward. The robots in her escort quickly assumed positions in front of and behind her.

  She accessed the video feed archive of one of the Centurions that had spotted the intruders, and she played it back in the upper right of her vision as she moved. She saw the two helmeted figures peer from the scuttle. The robot had identified the pair as Rade and Ms. Bounty, according to their public profiles. And indeed, the faces of Rade and Ms. Bounty peered out from behind the helmet faceplates. Then the pair ducked from view.

  Shaw dismissed the feed and continued forward.

  Her group reached the scuttle and waited. The lid was sealed.

  The Centurions aimed their weapons down at it. Shaw also pointed her stun rifle at the lid, though she kept her distance from the robots, remembering how easily Phants could move between the things. It would have been trivial for the alien to seep into the deck unnoticed, and enter one of the Centurions.

  Her suit protected her from a seepage attack like that, thanks to the anti-Phant EM emitter she had installed. Unfortunately, the robots did not have the same protection.

  Should have had all of the Centurions suit up. Too late now.

  The minutes passed. Nothing happened.

  “Where are they?” Shaw said.

  “They should have arrived by now,” Cora agreed.

  “Unless they’ve already come through this way...” Shaw said.