Base Metal (The Sword Book 2)

by J. M. Kaukola

Glass stung as it ripped free from skin. The solvent hissed against his bleeding flesh. He winced, sucked air through clenched teeth, but said nothing. Kawalski saw it. She gave him a half-tilt of her helmet, then turned away. He plugged the jack into his arm-port, clipped the cable to the box, then ran the last of it to the console.

  As the lights flicked red to green, he asked, "Can you cover me?"

  Kawalski nodded and replied, "Get me net, kid."

  Firenze leaned back. At the third chime, he plunged into the light.

  There was no easing. There was no sinking. One world vanished, and all others became. Adrenaline interfered with biosync, fear heightened sense beyond constraints. He rose and fell, pulled in a million directions at once. He could smell the colors. He could taste the silence.

  He fell through brilliant nothing, whirling without turning. He tried to scream, to wake up, but he plunged-

  He lay on the floor of a sea-side motel, the double wood-braid doors hung open against a lazy breeze. Whisps of yellow grass kissed the carved framing pillars and shifted with every roll of the cerulean tide.

  Lauren, dressed in billowing summer-white, pulled him to his feet. "You're hurt." She said. Her eyes flickered to the side. "Your biosigns are far outside tolerance. You shouldn't be here."

  He staggered towards the empty, palm-frond-ornamented front desk, and tried to force his thoughts into order. He gasped, "No time - too much-" He tried to speak, but the world twisted around him, curled up at the edges and blurred to digital noise. The tiki-boards peeled from the floor to reveal the full-bright beyond. The green walls split, light bursting from the seams, a roar of all-noise coursing through every fissure. Firenze staggered and found himself a meter to the right. Lauren caught him as he teetered, dangling over the void-in-floor. He raised a hand and locked the data, hiss-screamed defiance through his clenched teeth.

  The node stabilized.

  Rationality returned.

  He turned to Lauren, tried to explain, "We're being jammed. We have to find the control."

  "We are only connected to the immediate locale. There are no central servers, no connections beyond-" she trailed off, as if chewing on her thoughts. She concluded, "There are none."

  "Perimeter segmented the net."

  She recoiled, then let out a hushed, "Barbarians."

  He insisted, "I've got a plan."

  Her expression did not convey confidence.

  "Hey, none of that!" He opened his hands, and his toolbox sprang to life. Draft documents filled the tables, copies of his sorted and studied charts, the ones he'd called up in the corridor. Lauren focused on them even before he'd pointed. He explained, "There's a link between the address system and ship's nav network, up on ops. The PA's still running-"

  "Low bandwidth." She countered.

  "Low security." He replied.

  She nodded. "I see it. If we jump out there, hit jammer control-"

  "We could get back on the airwaves. If we can get TACNET back, we can save lives." He said.

  "If the Phalanx sees us coming..."

  "Then, we've gotta be sneaky!"

  She gave the barest hint of a smile. He answered it with his own, a mix of pride and trepidation.

  "We'll need integration." She cautioned. "And you're far beyond parameters."

  Firenze held out his hands, palms up. He insisted, "Override."

  She moved towards him, and he towards her. He linked hands, closed his eyes, and drew one final breath - one scented of flowers and seafoam.

  They were one.

  The gestalt stood in the soundless halls of the airship node. Gone was the hotel; here was the silent manor. Ghostly echoes carried around them, half-real memories of broken connections and digital detritus. They brushed over the links, closed the darkened doors and windows, comforted the querying cries of severed hardware. There was safety in this eerie still, the broken doors locking out the Phalanx as much as they locked in the shades. Quickly, the mausoleum became their castle, each abandoned system linked and aligned, its purpose reorientated towards their goals.

  Their fortress secure, they summoned the door - carved a secret rune upon the floral wall-print and swung wide the hidden passage. This was subtle work, slipping whispers up the pipe like the faintest of raindrops. Nothing overt, nothing severe. They cracked open the door and murmured the question: 'are you there?'

  The response came simple and brusk, 'Yes'.

  The far end of the hidden hall lay guarded, the door an iron portcullis attended by a clockwork golem, its impassive gears churning. It demanded, 'Who are you?'

  The gestalt answered in a lie, offered the guardian a gentle deflection built of mirrored logs.

  The clockwork soldier raised its poleax, the portcullis receded, and the door swung open. The gestalt slipped through with barely a footprint, and the world opened wide before them.

  They stood at the center of a raging storm, a time-lapse video of a midtown market, all movement reduced to blurs of light and snaps of color. They reached out to query, and a single blur froze, snapshotted against the storm, a courier rushing through pastel balconies with clipboard in hand. From this, the gestalt could draw conclusions. To interpret this data was to drink from a firehose - painful and useless. They did not bother, but pressed on with their plan, staying to the gaps in the whirls, careful not to break the eddies or currents, lest they draw the eyes of the Phalanx.

  The ever-watchful AI hung above, radiant as the sun, its eyes a swarm of spotlights that swept over the maelstrom. Where it's gaze passed, there was clarity and order. Where it hesitated, there was unyielding interrogation.

  Careful, ever careful, they tiptoed through the streams, danced between the jets and surges. Twice, they were queried. Twice, they ducked below the tide, hid in the chaos until the ravening sunlight had passed. Their constricted, half-blinded connection might help them here. They did not fit the list of things the Phalanx had learned to hate, and so passed beneath its contempt.

  The jammer waited on the edge of a bubbled-cream balcony, set apart from the teeming mass. A spire of a hundred speakers and woofers piled up like an aluminum tree and lay crowned by a spinning dish. It gleamed in the radiance of the perpetual glare of an unmoving spotlight, cast down from one of the Phalanx's blazing eyes. The wise master had instructed the Phalanx to guard this point, and it would obey. It forever stared at that single point and anticipated the chance to prove its worth. It had waited for a long time, but it had never doubted in its duty. After all, it was a good program, and good programs obeyed.

  Here, the gestalt moved with subtlety. They did not have the speed to fool the guard nor the power to overcome it. They relied on surprise and implausibility, and they snuck frame by frame. They took one step into the light, and the heat - the hate - boiled around them.

  'Who are you?' demanded the Phalanx.

  'No one.' they deferred.

  They stood silent, as the scorching waves crashed. Connections were queried, tested - the Phalanx checked every access and found that none had been opened. Curious, it confirmed that almost every door remained closed, ever since the unexpected loss-of-connection. It noted this continued aberration in its increasingly-long worksheet, flagged it, and passed that update along to its master. To its surprise, the master acknowledged the report and advised that the network had indeed been updated. As a good security program, the Phalanx despised change, but it accepted the master's explanation. After all, the master had to have a reason. Despite the assurance, the Phalanx had a core directive, and its suspicions were elevated. Out of stubbornness, it checked every process. There were far too many exceptions. Programs hadn't responded, systems were not replying. Again, it confirmed that every one of these errors came from the sudden segmentation. Perturbed, and confident that the master would want to fix this error, it assembled a log of every failed connection, unanswered ping, and unexpected power spike. Over eighty-percent of its network was black, and such a status was plainly unacceptable! With a note of digit
al pride, it quickly forwarded this comprehensive report.

  The Phalanx was quite surprised when the master declined to review the file. Instead, the report was banished to a folder that hadn't been opened in weeks, and the Phalanx was instructed to resume its post.

  For the first time in its operation, the Phalanx wondered if the master was entirely well. Perhaps whatever had broken the network had also damaged the master's decision-making processes?

  Such questions were beyond the purview of the Phalanx. It quickly terminated the inquiry and returned to its duties.

  The gestalt took another step.

  Again, the boiling heat descended, threatened to scour them clean from the systems. This time, the Phalanx knew to look for the aberration, and with the digital-equivalent of 'I knew it!', snapped to attention. To be sure, the Phalanx checked every known point of access, found them still closed, and, worse, confirmed that no one had managed to repair the broken network. Undoubtedly, the master had a reason for this! There were over ten thousand systems screaming error reports now, but the Phalanx was far too busy to handle them all, especially with an intruder about! The Phalanx grouped the reports by type, stacked them by heuristics of import, and handed them to the master, eager to return to the hunt.

  To its chagrin, the master didn't review this log, either.

  The Phalanx attempted to manage this dismissal in stride. If the master were unwilling to parse the exceptions, then the Phalanx would try another method. It checked its blacklists for incursions but found nothing. It tested its whitelist and found that two-thirds of it lay silent. This was not a particularly outrageous violation by the standards of the day, but it dutifully passed these notes along, as well.

  The Phalanx couldn't help but note the speed with which this report had been dismissed.

  At the gestalt's third step, the Phalanx knew precisely what it was looking for, if not what it was seeing. Again, it passed up a list of anomalies that could be the cause, documented every change in the network which had not been authorized, and compiled a list of things the master should have been paying attention to but wasn't. This fourth attempt was likewise hurled immediately into the trash.

  Seventeen times, the Phalanx passed along its urgent report of over ten thousand verbose errors, thirty thousand warnings, and an ever-growing list of exceptions. By the eighteenth time, the Phalanx, being a good program, had already learned just to file its own reports immediately into the scrap.

  When the gestalt reached the jammer, thirty-nine verbose reports deep in the cascade, the Phalanx tried, one last time, to pass along the warning that something was occurring which it had not been allowed to prevent. The master ignored this like all the others, and when the gestalt cracked into the jammer's core, the AI could only shrug and let it pass.

  One point four seconds later, when the fire broke out on the operations deck, and the all-ship jamming failed, the 'wise' master finally paid attention and demanded an explanation of what had occurred. Not without some hint of petulance, the Phalanx deposited thirty-four petabytes of raw text directly into the master's inbox.

  The gestalt, however, was long gone, and the Phalanx now had bigger problems.

  In the depths of the Plymouth, a young man slumped against a console, caught in the eye of a gunfire storm. Around him, the hurricane shifted, as HUDs flicked from red to green. The tide had turned, but this was as unimportant as the medic's ministrations.

  The gestalt had split, and Firenze was once more. Lauren stood apart, her eyes still closed in an approximation of bliss, her hands outstretched as if she might fly away. They stood in the clouds, giants astride a racing ship, carried by the rushing winds. TACNET filled the jammer's void, seized every system that dared stumble out from the receding storm.

  The Phalanx turned to fight them, melted the world like acetone poured over a painting. Firenze intended, Lauren executed, and they boxed it into a corner. Sealed by its own segmentation, it barred the ops deck, barricaded command, and negated all access therein, but it left the rest to them.

  Firenze re-meshed the network. The teams had been scattered, ripped apart, and too many had gone dark. TACNET was a tree, a glimmering list of names and functions, now burnt-black and silent. Firenze's elation turned to dread, as he counted the shrinking lists.

  Captain Wilson's entire team was gone. Captain Lee's entire team was gone. Captain Guerro's-

  Firenze couldn't bear to keep reading. Instead, he sorted by the living. One name caught his eye. Clausen. The stalwart sergeant was the ranking man standing in Bravo, and his medlink was seven tones of angry amber.

  Firenze tore his eyes away. He couldn't get distracted, he had to stay big picture, or he'd never win. Breadth-first, not depth. It was a good rule.

  Something went wrong, deep within the airship bowels.

  A warning light pegged on the system, then another. Firenze felt sick to his stomach. He could taste smoke. Atop the airship, Lauren's ecstatic grin vanished, replaced by horror. Her eyes flashed, and she seized his shoulders-

  He felt himself take flight.

  Far away, a young man's body lifted from the deck. The medic beside him grabbed at his chest, pulled both boy and computer into a bear-hug, lest the sudden freefall rip the wires from his flesh.

  Inside the net, he barely felt a thing when he landed, even when his vitals flashed.

  Lauren cried, "She's sick! Her guts- oh, God."

  Below his feet, the airship turned translucent, cutting away to reveal the ARC950s gleaming red-purple and cancerous. A hundred diagrams flashed before his eyes, a thousand hypotheses compared against the unthinkable. He couldn't form his thoughts, even as he felt his body slide across a distant deck, felt himself tumble through debris and ruin.

  Lauren staggered back, eyes wide and lips taught. She stood aghast, unwilling to put words to her conclusion, but when their eyes met, both understood what they were seeing. Berenson had been right. The Plymouth was a bomb.

  Desperate, he tried to pry into the core, tried to find some method to defuse the madness. Every system was blocked by the Phalanx's bunker. He had TACNET, the Phalanx had the ship. Stalemate.

  He turned to his toolkit. With enough time, maybe he could crack-

  Lauren seized him once more and pulled his head towards hers. Her eyes were wide, not with fear, but regret. He tried to parse the data, but she pointed towards the ship's bow and said, "We're sinking."

  He followed her direction. There, along the forward booms, black corrosion ate along the hull, swallow bulkhead after bulkhead like a tide of molasses. Lauren explained, "There's no stopping it."

  He had to get back into the fight. If he could take out the Phalanx-

  She cut him off once more, "You need to run." Again, she pointed, this time to a wave of angry-red swarms pushing through the server suite, closing fast on his position.

  In another world, a boy's body was being dragged down the hall, his assist-box slung about his neck. Gunfire rang close, a door slammed shut, and panic drew ever nearer.

  He argued, "We need to integrate, we can take out the Phalanx, get control-"

  She shook her head, tears welling in the corners of her eyes. This was not a tic he'd programmed. He'd never wanted to build for pain. She said, "You're going to lose connection. You need to run."

  "What are you-"

  "I'll tie down the Phalanx." She said. Her smile was pure sorrow.

  "You can't beat it alone!"

  "I can slow it." She replied. She pulled him close, one last time, almost as if to initiate the link. Instead, she pressed her lips to his cheek and whispered, "Goodbye."

  Confusion bled to regret. Before he could respond, he was falling.

  The world came apart, a thousand fragments of half-empty worlds, but all of it meant nothing compared to that sad, beautiful smile.

  He landed on the deck, crashed back to alleged reality.

  Pain overwhelmed, drowned out everything else. His hand throbbed, stained with blood through it
s compression wraps. His chest hurt like someone had run a steamroller across his ribs.

  His lungs burned. A bag over his mouth shoved air down his throat.

  Kawalski pounded on his chest, something chime-crackled, and the whole world snapped clear.

  Agony superseded pain.

  A scream ripped from his throat, only to choke into a desperate gasp for air.

  He tried to speak. Kawalski reached to pull him up.

  The lights went dark, and he flew once more.

  A distant voice informed him, pedantically, that this was untrue. An academic portion of his mind clarified that he was not flying, but that the ship was falling.

  Technicalities brought cold comfort when he slammed into the deck.

  He tasted blood. Someone screamed.

  The ship's announcer intoned, "Emergency Lockout is in effect. We apologize for the turbulence. Please remain calm."

  The corridor lights flickered back to life. Hill, half-covered in debris, asked, "What the fuck was that?!"

  "Crash." Firenze managed.

  Hill demanded, "System crash? Please tell me we're not-"

  "We're crashing!" Firenze choke-screamed.

  Kawalski had risen to one knee, crouched beside him. Her rifle snapped up, and she spat, "Get down!"

  Firenze ducked, as hot gas and sinus-crushing concussions pummeled him.

  Her targets down, Kawalski demanded, "Did you-" Her eyes flicked forward, her rifle tracked left, and Firenze was blinded by another gust of scorching dust.

  When she stopped shooting, he gasped, "No! I didn't-"

  She grabbed for his buddy-handle, to drag him up by the hoop behind his neck, but he shook her off. "I can walk!" He protested. She let him stand and motioned for her team to cover.

  Kawalski checked the next corner, rifle-first. Satisfied, she demanded, "SITREP, Princess!"

  He started, "TACNET's back-" Kawalski nodded, touched her helmet as a mark of respect. He continued, "Everyone's dead! The enemy's closing-"

  "Saw that." She growled. She flicked her view back towards the tattered remains of her squad. "We've been overrun. How's the ship, Princess?"