Stilicho cursed. “Rocket maintenance would have oxygen supplies, but they would be down there. Dammit!”
“Every colony has oxygen tanks lying around in case of emergencies,” Darian said. “All we have to do is to find access to the habitation modules and we would be close.”
“The Russians had grandiose plans for the colony, and they wanted it as large scale as possible for the projected population that they anticipate would arrive in due time,” Maia said. “Based on the ACE Corp reports during the evacuation, the Russians admitted that they had a small nuclear power plant that provided electricity to the elevators and habitat modules.”
“Where do you think this power plant is, Maia?” Darian asked.
“Based on the layout of the elevators, it may be in a lower level,” Maia said.
Stilicho swayed his head back and forth. “Since there’s no power to the elevators, how in the hell are we gonna get down to that level? Climb down?”
“Actually, these elevators may be operated manually in case of an emergency,” Maia said. “There should be a wheel underneath one of the floor panels.”
“Maia, you’re a genius,” Darian said as she began to use her hand flashlight to spot for any maintenance panels on the floor.
“Don’t encourage her,” Stilicho said as he noticed a yellow painted handle embedded on the floor. He gestured at Darian and they both crouched down beside it. Stilicho pulled the crank and the panel gave way to a red-painted wheel beneath.
Darian smiled as Stilicho started to turn the wheel. A slight creaking noise was heard as the platform they were standing in began to descend past the rest of the terrace. “You actually called Maia a ‘she’?”
Stilicho grunted as he kept turning the wheel counterclockwise. “So?”
“I thought you looked at robots and AI as nothing more than machines,” Darian said. “You’re evolving.”
Stilicho snorted. “They’re just things. I said that about Maia because she’s got a woman’s voice that I’m used to by now.”
Darian giggled. “You said it again. Maybe I ought to sponsor your PETR membership application when we get back to Earth.”
Stilicho growled. “Over my dead body.”
By this time the elevator had descended twenty meters, and another lava tube complex was plainly visible just below. Stilicho kept manually turning the wheel until the platform became level with a ledge that connected to what looked like a habitat module.
Stilicho stood up and wiped the fine dust from his gloves. “Maia, any clue as to what this level contains?”
“None at this point,” Maia said. “But since it looks like a habitat, perhaps there are some oxygen canisters that may be accessible.”
Darian led Stilicho to what looked to be an airlock door. The NASA special agent opened a panel beside the entryway and looked at the keypad. “Darn, it’s in Russian Cyrillic.”
Stilicho tapped his visor. “Maia, can you hack it?”
“One moment,” Maia said. “Done.”
The green panel lights seemed to indicate that the door should be open, but it remained shut. They waited for a few more minutes, but nothing happened.
Stilicho bit his lip. “What the hell? Is it broken?”
Darian ran her gloved hand along the edges of the door. There was a scarring of melted steel that seemed to form a seal over the opening. “No, it’s been welded shut. It looks like the Russians didn’t want anybody poking around after they evacuated, and made sure of it by sealing the whole thing.”
Stilicho grimaced. They had perhaps no more than two hours of air between them. “Wonderful, just what we need.”
As Darian continued to examine the door, she sensed a slight movement a few meters to the left. She twisted her torso and shined the flashlight at what looked to be a mound of assorted bits of junk and other wreckage piled up alongside the airlock. The moment she aimed the light near the bottom edge of the garbage pile, a red indicator light from something partially hidden in the jumble flashed back at her.
She drew her weapon. “There’s something over there!”
Stilicho turned. The lower portion of the pile quickly gave way, and a spider bot shuffled out, raising one manipulative tentacle in the air, as if to signal something. Stilicho tried to move backwards, but the air hose with Darian had become taut. Seeing a small wrench lying near the front of the airlock door, he bent down and picked up.
The spider bot seemed slightly smaller than the others they encountered. It was missing one of its forward tentacles, and its rear left leg moved erratically, perhaps indicating it was damaged in some way. The plastic torso was scarred, and loose wiring was dangling along its sides. The creature did not advance, instead it moved slightly to the side, as if expecting to be killed at any moment.
Stilicho’s hand trembled as he held the metal wrench in front of him. He glanced quickly at Darian. “What in the hell are you waiting for? Shoot it already!”
“Hold on,” Darian said as she kept her finger off the trigger but continued to aim at the spider bot. “It doesn’t seem to be aggressive.”
Stilicho was aghast at her sense of mercy. “It’s probably calling for reinforcements, that’s why. Take it out now!”
The spider bot shifted slightly to the side and placed the point of its tentacle over its sensory module before tapping twice on its own head.
“It’s trying to tell us something,” Darian whispered.
Stilicho’s grip tightened over the wrench. “Yeah, it’s telling us you’re an idiot for not shooting it- because its bigger brothers and sisters are on their way already!”
“Calm down,” Darian said. “I think it knows we can kill it. It looks like a much older model compared to the ones we encountered. Doesn’t look like it was constructed with the same components.”
“Who cares? It’s one of them. Light it up now!” Stilicho said.
Darian shook her head. For some reason, she didn’t feel threatened by this particular spider bot. There was something different about it, but she couldn’t place it due to the other stresses in her mind.
Stilicho moved to her side as he tried to grab the gun. “Give me that pistol!”
Darian shoved him away with her other hand. “Back off, Jones. Right now.”
Stilicho held his hand out, palm forward, expecting to be given the weapon. “If you’re not gonna shoot it then I will!”
Darian was tempted to aim the gun at him but she kept it close by her hip, ready to point it at either of them. “I’m not gonna tell you again, back off-now!”
Stilicho wanted to hit her over the head with his wrench, but he took a step back. “You and your goddamn PETR principles. You’re going to get us both killed, lady!”
Darian turned to look back at the spider bot. It hadn’t moved at all while they were arguing, as if patently waiting for them to find a way to talk to it. Then it hit her. She realized what it was. “Joshua?”
The robot was reading her lips. It raised its head slightly before pointing the tentacle down to the ground. It used the tip of its manipulative limb and drew a letter J on the dusty floor.
“Oh my god,” Darian said. “Maia, is there a way to talk to it?”
“One moment, analyzing,” Maia said. “It seems that an antenna module that was attached to its back has been broken off. That may be the reason why it has been unable to send a radio signal to you.”
Darian let out a sigh of relief. At least there was one robot that they could reason with. All that was needed was to find a way to communicate with it. “What can we do?”
“I think all you need to do is to reattach it,” Maia said. “It seems to be just dangling on its back. Joshua is evidently lacking the limbs to do that sort of operation.”
“Okay, so just reattach it then,” Darian said as she took a few steps forward.
Joshua quickly retreated. The spider bot waved its tentacle in the air, as if to tell her not to proceed.
Stilicho’s frustration was
at boiling point. He stood directly behind Darian, not willing to be dragged any closer, yet having no choice in the matter. “What in the hell is it doing?”
“I think I understand,” Maia said. “It is signaling that you should not repair its antenna, lest it come under control by the AI module that is commanding the other robots.”
“Then how can we talk to him if he’s vulnerable against that AI?” Darian asked.
“There is an alternative,” Maia said. “Stil needs to implant one of my interface jacks into Joshua, and I will be able to rewrite his master code using the malware worm that Karl had given us.”
“Now wait just a minute,” Stilicho said. “I am not touching that horrid metal tarantula spider thingymajig.”
Darian glared at him. “Do you want to run out of air out here and die? We need help and Joshua can help us.”
“I. Am. Not. Touching. That. Thing,” Stilicho said. “I’m already close enough as it is.”
“Just do it,” Darian said. “I can cover you from here if it tries anything. Maia is embedded in your suit server-so it has to be you since you’re her primary user.”
“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Quit lollygagging and just do it!”
Bracing himself, Stilicho took two steps forward as he pulled out an interface jack from his belt pouch. Darian also moved forward slightly in order to keep up with him. Just as Stilicho got within a meter of the robot, it instantly raised its tentacle up in the air, as if ready to strike. They could both see that the robot was apparently fighting with itself to try and restrain its violent impulses.
Stilicho froze. “Is that thing gonna hit me?”
“Just concentrate on placing that jack,” Darian said softly.
Stilicho knelt down slowly. The tentacle above him was quivering, and lowered itself close to his head. Stilicho ran his hand along the side of the spider robot’s torso, trying to find an interface port. Then he remembered Karl’s video as he was working on Joshua. It seemed that in the beginning of the recording, there was a part when Karl had placed something along the space in between the robot’s right legs. Stilicho used the mounted helmet lights on his suit and partially lifted up the top casing of Joshua’s thorax at his right side. Sure enough, there was an interface port in there. Stilicho plugged in the small stick he had before backing away.
“One moment, initiating,” Maia said. “Deleting combat protocols. Rewriting core coding. Uninstalling and erasing AI controller interface. Adding ACE Corp loyalty script. Uploading reactive antiviral suite and enhanced firewalls. Done.”
Joshua shuddered a bit as its legs curled up from under it. For a few seconds they both thought it was broken. The lighted sensor module on the robot’s head suddenly activated once again and the red light indicator seemed brighter than usual. Joshua extended its limbs and stood on its legs once again.
“You may now reattach the antenna, Stil,” Maia said.
Stilicho bent down, brought the antenna up and screwed it into place before plugging the com-link port back into Joshua’s side. “Okay, done.”
“Detecting com-link radio frequencies,” Maia said. “Completed. Network established. Hello, Joshua.”
The spider bot’s voice was that of a seven year old child’s. “Hello, Maia. How are you today?”
Stilicho’s eyes opened wide. “Jesus H Christ.”
“I am good,” Maia said. “Allow me to introduce my user, Stilicho Jones, and NASA Special Agent Darian Arante.”
“Hello, Mr. Jones,” Joshua said. “Hello, Special Agent Arante.”
Darian couldn’t help but smile. “Call me Darian, please.”
“Okay,” Joshua said. “Thank you for helping me out, Darian and Stilicho. I am very grateful.”
“Call me Mr. Jones,” Stilicho said. He wasn’t going to let some two-bit robot call him by his first name. “Now what happened to you?”
“Yes, Mr. Jones,” Joshua said. “When my daddy told me to go ahead and traverse around the outside for a test run, I did what I was told. The next thing I knew my core coding was being overwritten by remote command. For the next several days I was forced to travel until I found my way to this colony. Here I met another human, and he began to download my entire programming suite into his server. He took me apart and rebuilt me several times in order to learn about how I was constructed and copy my core components. Once he got what he wanted, he went ahead and threw me into the junk pile. Based on the updates that Maia has given me, these series of events happened approximately eight months and three days ago.”
“This other human,” Darian said. “It was Silas Balsamic, right?”
“Yes, it is highly probable that it is him based on the information Maia has given me,” Joshua said. “Although his looks were slightly altered.”
“How is it that you were able to break free from the AI’s control?” Stilicho asked.
“Good question, Mr. Jones,” Joshua said. “It seems that when I was discarded, it slightly damaged the antenna on my back, and the network link to the AI was partially inoperative. It took me some time, but I was able to suppress the combat protocols due to the fact that Mr. Balsamic had failed to delete my memory, and I still remember being with my daddy. I needed to find help, but I couldn’t reveal myself to the other robots in the area. So I hid out in this junk pile and set my mode to standby in order to conserve my batteries.”
“We’re glad to have you back to normal, Joshua,” Darian said. “Right now we have a bit of a problem though. As you can see, Stilicho and I are sharing the same air supply, and we need to get his life support pack refueled with oxygen, or we both won’t live for much longer. Do you know how we could access the habitat modules in this colony?”
“Yes,” Joshua said. “Although the Russians sealed the airlocks to all the habitats before their evacuation, they left some maintenance tunnels open. I can get you inside this module. Please follow me.”
Chapter 20
The engineering access tunnel was a mere meter and a half in diameter. Stilicho and Darian had to crawl most of the way through. Joshua was able to retract his upper limbs into a more compact figure as he shuffled along. The tube terminated after a hundred meters into a large vertical shaft that extended both up and down. Embedded rungs jutted out along the length of the passageway. As soon as it came out of the hole, Joshua’s limbs converted into bipedal mode and the spider bot climbed up onto the rungs. With one of its limbs not grasping the rungs properly, Joshua used his one remaining tentacle to compensate.
Stilicho was the second one through and he looked down the length of the shaft. The darkened hole seemed to stretch down into infinity, like the passage to a stygian netherworld. The last thing he wanted was to slip and fall. “Jesus, that’s one hell of a drop.”
“You’d better hurry, it seems my oxygen supply is down to fifty percent,” Darian said.
Stilicho reached out and grabbed one of the rungs. “Joshua, do we go up or down?”
“We should ascend for twenty meters,” Joshua said. “There’s an engineering module up there.”
“Let’s go then.”
The climb up would have been easy, but the air hose that Stilicho and Darian shared was making it awkward to the point that they both began their ascent almost parallel with each other. Stilicho had to keep his head below his shoulders as he made his way up, while Darian had to hunch her shoulders in order to keep the air hose steady. It took close to fifteen minutes for them to get up to an adjoining platform. Joshua was waiting for them, and the robot pointed with its tentacle at the rows of air canisters that lined the shelves.
Stilicho unplugged the air hose from Darian and immediately started testing several of the tanks. His suit detected nitrogen and methane on the first six air tanks, and he was overjoyed when the seventh had oxygen in it. It was fortunate that the air plugs had a universal interface design- it was one of the few instances that all the countries that were involved in the colonization of the Re
d Planet did agree on. Stilicho used the high pressure mode to rapidly fill his life support system with much needed oxygen. As Darian began to refill her own backpack, Stilicho went ahead and cleaned the carbon dioxide filters on his life support by battery heat, since there was a fully charged power station beside them. Joshua did the same by doing a quick recharge of its internal battery.
“The air in my suit smells funny,” Darian said while cleaning her own filters.
Stilicho noticed a crowbar lying on a work table. Her picked it up and waved it around for a bit. “Maybe you farted.”
“You’re terrible when it comes to insults,” Darian said.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Maia said. “But based on the power output levels of this complex, I do believe that the nuclear power plant is nearby.”
“Let’s go,” Stilicho said. “Joshua, lead the way.”
The spider bot pointed at an airlock. “This is the engineering module. The corridor beyond should lead to the control room.”
Stilicho tapped his visor. “Maia, can you hack it?”
“One moment,” Maia said. “Done.”
The outer door to the airlock slid open, revealing a pile of hastily abandoned cargo crates. It was clear that the Russians had wanted to bring as much stuff back to Earth as they could carry, but the rockets just couldn’t take the additional weight. All three of them stepped inside. Joshua went back into his quadruped spider mode as the breathable air was cycled inside. Once the pressure was equalized, there was a green light shining above the opposite hatch.
Stilicho disengaged his suit’s air supply and took off his helmet. The air had an ionized smell to it, but otherwise it was unremarkable. He hung his helmet on top of his backpack before disengaging the manual levers that kept the hatch locked. Stilicho held the crowbar in his right hand and looked back at Darian as he was about to open the hatch. “Do you think anybody else stayed behind with Silas?”
Darian shrugged while pulling out the pistol. “I don’t know. We’ll soon find out.”
The Piranha Solution: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (Ace of Space Book 1) Page 25
