by J. N. Chaney
“I realize how much effort—” He stopped, blinking. “Wait. You have? Have what?”
“Figured it out.”
That cresting wave suddenly rolled back to where it had come from. “Really?”
“Dash, I might kid about stuff, but not this.”
He sighed, shaking his head. “No, of course not. Okay, so what is it? And how do we stop it?”
Elois answered by crooking her finger in a follow-me gesture, then walked away. Dash stared for a second, then hurried to catch up.
Viktor and Conover were waiting in Elois’s lab, along with several of her fellow scientists and techs. Leira showed up just a moment later while Elois was pulling up data on a view screen. She pointed at a complex array of lines and circles, all labelled with cryptic strings of letters and numbers. Dash assumed it all meant important things to Elois and her people, but to him, it looked like someone had drawn a distorted sketch of the Kingsport.
“This is the Deeper agent,” she said.
Dash crossed his arms. “Their virus?”
“It’s not a virus. It’s more like a bacterium. Or actually, more like a small colony of bacteria, except some are organic, um organisms—kind of—and others are nano-scale machines—sort of.”
Dash held up a finger. “I’m sorry, Elois, but could you possibly be any less clear? I mean, I thought you said you had this thing figured out. Kind of and sort of aren’t exactly making me feel that.
She returned a self-conscious smirk, then waved over one of her people that had been waiting to one side. Dash recognized Grunne, the specialist who’d helped develop a viral weapon they’d deployed against the Deepers earlier in the war, based on a weapon called the Stinger. It had been effective for a time, but the Deepers had eventually managed to develop countermeasures.
“Grunne here can probably explain it better than I can since it’s his field,” Elois said.
“Or not, because we specialists sometimes get wrapped up in our own jargon,” he replied, giving Dash a self-conscious smile. “But I’ll try to avoid that.”
“Please do.”
“What this does is essentially similar to what the viral weapon we employed against the Deepers did. That weapon disrupted the ability of the organic and inorganic parts of their tech to properly work together. This one inhibits the interaction between Dark Metal and other materials.”
“Uh-oh, that’s not good,” Leira said.
Dash glanced at her, then back to Grunne. “No, it’s not. In fact, this sounds like a complete freakin’ disaster for us,” he said, waving a hand at the micro-schematic on the screen. “We use Dark Metal in almost everything.”
But Conover stepped forward. “Wait a minute, though. Those tugs didn’t contain much Dark Metal. It was probably only used in their long-range comm systems.”
But Viktor shook his head. “You’re forgetting their AIs.”
Conover stared at him for a moment, then slumped. “Yeah. You’re right. All of our ships have AIs running on systems with substrates partly made of Dark Metal. Shit.”
Conover rarely used profanity. That he just had underscored the enormous threat they suddenly faced. He turned back to Grunne.
“Please tell me there’s something we can do about this.”
Dash expected some dour variation of we don’t know yet, but Grunne surprised him by nodding.
“We’ve experimented with this agent and found that it can propagate through normal materials like, say, the composite alloy armor of a warship.”
“Or a tug,” Leira put in.
“Yes. Or a tug. It damages what material it passes through this way, causing the scarring and pitting we’ve seen. But that’s incidental. It spreads until it encounters Dark Metal, whereupon it releases its true payload.”
“So it eats its way through a ship until it reaches the Dark Metal bits,” Dash said. “ That doesn’t sound like a solution to me, just a scarier description of the problem.”
“Yes, well, let me get right to that part then. This agent has no effect whatsoever on Dark Metal Two. In fact, in the presence of DM2, the agent completely breaks down.” As he spoke, Grunne tapped a control, opening a window on the viewscreen. It showed a simulation of the Deeper agent relentlessly chewing its way through a matrix of normal matter until it encountered a particle of DM2. As soon as it did, it simply fell apart, breaking into inert fragments.
“Sentinel, is there still regular Dark Metal used aboard the Archetype?” Dash asked.
“Several peripheral subsystems still employ Dark Metal as an active component. All major systems have been upgraded to DM2.”
“How hard would it be to replace those subsystems with DM2?”
“To do so with all five of the large mechs would use up almost all of our current stock of DM2 and would take several days. In the meantime, those systems could simply be disabled, and their Dark Metal components removed. As I said, they are peripheral systems, such as a redundant control module for the lower-limb actuators. The intent was to upgrade them to DM2 eventually, but there have been more pressing uses for the material.”
“Okay, let’s yank ’em,” Dash said. “That means our big mechs are basically immune to this stuff then, right?”
Grunne nodded. “This Deeper agent just doesn’t have the capacity to affect DM2, and this”—he gestured at the schematic of the Deeper agent—“wouldn’t be able to do so without a complete redesign.”
“So that only leaves absolutely everything else vulnerable,” Leira said, putting her hands on her hips and scowling at the viewscreen.
“Well, there is one other bit of good news. The agent is hard to synthesize in quantity and isn’t stable over a long term. It also has to be injected directly from what must be a complicated storage reservoir, involving cryogenics and highly specialized magnetic shunts,” Grunne said.
Elois stepped forward and tapped a control, clearing the simulation Grunne had run from the screen. “In other words, this weapon isn’t easily deployed from a projectile, like a missile. Like our Stinger, it really has to be delivered up-close and personal, effectively being injected right into its target.”
Dash tapped his finger on his lips for a moment. “Okay. That is good news. It means that your run-of-the-mill Deeper ship probably won’t be armed with this.”
“No, it would more likely be their Battle Princes and Bishops,” Conover said.
“Which means that, for the time being, our big mechs will have to do the heavy lifting when it comes to those bastards. Anyone else has to stay clear and keep the fight at a distance,” Leira replied.
Dash nodded. “Effective immediately, I want all salvage ops and anything else in our slower ships without armor to be suspended unless they have a heavy guard. Preferably mechs. In the meantime, let’s send a directive to the fleet that Battle Princes and Bishops are to be engaged in standoff battles at maximum possible range. And that every possible effort has to be taken to avoid letting them get in close enough to inject something into their ship.”
“And what if a ship does get infected?” Viktor asked. “Say one ship in a squadron or task force? What should the other ships do?”
Dash sighed.
It forces people to shove aside very human feelings and emotions so they don’t get in the way of carrying on with the pain and destruction and death.
“Protect the rest of the fleet, our allies. That all comes before anything else,” he said.
Dash didn’t elaborate, but looking around at the others, he knew he didn’t need to.
Dash instructed Custodian to work at fusing all available operational and strategic data and keep fusing it in real time, to stay on the lookout for Battle Princes or Bishops specifically. His big worry was a major Deeper incursion across a broad front, one that would tie up big chunks of the fleet, potentially leaving the specialized Deepers an insidious window of opportunity to try and infect the Anchors or, even worse, the Forge—which was now almost fully integrated into the burgeoning King
sport hub.
Custodian, though, was surprisingly unconcerned about the possibility. “The Anchors and the Kingsport include sufficient redundancy and systemic compartmentalization to mostly mitigate the effects of the Deeper agent,” he said when Dash and the other four pilots of the big mechs had gathered in the Command Center. “Moreover, the other Ais and I are working with Elois and Grunne on countermeasures. We believe we have several promising candidates, which would further increase the protection of our major assets.”
Dash narrowed his eyes. “Custodian, I’m hearing a lot of mostlys and promisings in what you’re saying. You’re usually more blunt than that. Is there something you’re not telling us?”
“Actually, there’s something I haven’t told you yet but was about to, before you interrupted me.”
“Yeah, Dash. Quit being so impatient,” Amy said.
He lifted one thumb, pointed it down, then moved his hand like he was stirring something. Amy’s eyes went wide.
“Rude!”
Conover stared blankly. “What am I missing here?”
“It’s a gesture particular to Passage. Amy knows what it means,” Dash said with a mischievous smile.
“What does it mean?” Conover asked her. She leaned in and whispered something to him.
Now his eyes flew wide, and he gaped at Dash. “Rude!”
“May I continue?” Custodian asked.
“Yes, please do, Custodian,” Dash replied.
“As I was about to say, while I believe that the Anchors and the Kingsport are relatively secure, the bulk of our fleet is less so. And that’s clearly a problem, but again, not as serious as it may seem. The Creators were quite thorough in ensuring their warship designs were also resilient to harm, particularly when it comes to biomechanical weapons.”
“Makes sense. They were planning a fight against the Golden, after all,” Jexin said.
“Exactly. Our major vulnerability is our allies, particularly the Rimward League and the N’Teel.”
“Really? But their tech shouldn’t be vulnerable at all. It doesn’t contain Dark Metal,” Amy said.
Dash got it, though. “Their tech isn’t the problem. It’s our tech that we’ve transferred to them. It’s kind of layered on top of their tech, which means it’s not as well protected as the stuff purpose built by the Unseen. Right, Custodian?”
“That’s it precisely. And to that end, it may explain why a signal that would correspond to three Deeper Bishops is now approaching the N’Teel homeworld,” Custodian replied.
Dash stared for a moment. “Really?”
“Truthfully, Messenger. This is no attempt at humor.”
“Oh—holy shit. Okay. Amy, Conover, you’re with me. Go strap on your mechs. Leira, you and Jex stay here but be ready to bug out and intercept any other Battle Princes or Bishops that pop up.”
It struck Dash as he hurried for the Archetype that everyone had smoothly followed his orders without hesitation. Even after all this time as Messenger, he still found that pretty amazing.
Dash flung the Archetype aside just in time to avoid an x-ray laser shot from one of the Bishops. He responded with a hip shot from the dark-lances, which, to his shock, hit dead center mass. The dark-lances then fired again, JETS directing them in a coordinated attack with Amy on a second Bishop.
The N’Teel homeworld loomed closer. They’d only managed to catch up to the Bishops at all because of the fearsome speed of their upgraded mechs. But they’d still cut it close, only getting within range when the Bishops were a little under ten minutes from atmospheric insertion.
To make matters worse, Custodian had contacted them as they closed the gap.
“I’ve just had further discussions with Elois and Grunne. There is another aspect to the Deeper agent that we hadn’t previously realized,” he’d said.
Dash swore. “Of course. Let me guess, it’s something that’s going to make it way harder and more dangerous for us to confront them—as if it wasn’t exciting enough already.”
“Actually, no.”
“It—oh. Really?” Dash envisioned it being something all scientific and esoteric. But if it wasn’t immediately relevant…
“Can it wait? We’re about to get really, really busy here.”
“It may not be of critical importance to your immediate battle, but it is still something you should know—which is why I’ve bothered interrupting you even though you’re about to get really, really busy.”
Custodian was getting good at loading his words with snark. And, of course, it wasn’t like he was the type to just dabble in some small talk across light-years and comms relays through gates. “Sorry, Custodian. What’s up?”
“Simply put, the Deeper agent is capable of infecting systems that don’t use Dark Metal. In fact, that seems to be its primary purpose. Its effect on Dark Metal was either intended as a diversion, or there’s some advantage to using Dark Metal as a vector. In any case, it appears to be designed to physically infect systems, bypassing protections, and then injecting its deleterious code directly into them.”
“Oh. So this thing is mainly intended to attack our allies, then. Because their systems would be especially vulnerable to it.”
“That is one possible interpretation, yes.”
It explained why these Bishops were making a straight, high-speed shot at the N’Teel homeworld. If they could spread a rampant infection of their agent there, they could potentially knock the N’Teel out of action as Realm allies. More fundamentally, it would be a massive black eye for the Cygnus Realm and Dash himself. It might threaten the stability of their other alliances. After all, if the Realm couldn’t protect them from such an insidious, hyper-tech threat, then who could?
So Dash raced past the Bishops, pouring power into the Blur drive to get ahead of them and interpose himself between them and the N’Teel homeworld. Amy and Conover kept pressing home their attacks from the flanks, forcing the Bishops to either try and dodge, slowing their charge, or ignore it and just take the hits.
As soon as he judged himself far enough ahead, he spun the Archetype and decelerated hard. It made him think of a kid sliding across a polished floor in wool socks and finally skidding to a stop—or, in this case, to a stop relative to the Bishops. All three of them poured x-ray laser fire at him, slamming hits into the Archetype’s shield over and over. Dash ignored them, letting JETS time his fire with Amy’s and Conover’s. One of the Bishops finally took a crippling blow. It staggered and started to drop back.
“Amy, you need to finish that asshole off, and by finish him off, I mean reduce him to nothing but dust and broken dreams. We can’t afford to let an intact piece of one of these things end up on the surface.”
“With pleasure!” Amy said, sweeping the Talon in a graceful arc toward the stricken Bishop. Dash turned his attention to the other two.
He deployed the power-sword. Harolyn and the others joked that he loved using the up-close-and-personal weapon. But it was effective, bypassing many of the countermeasures that could affect ranged weapons. You couldn’t spoof the target of a power-weapon.
The Bishops raced in. They fired as they came, but Dash took it on the Archetype’s shield. At the last moment, the two Bishops split, but Dash had anticipated that. He slammed the Blur drive to full power, directing the thrust to shove him right into the path of one of the Bishops, while turning back and pounding a burst of rail gun fire into the other. Then he turned back and swung, as much on instinct as anything else.
He was rewarded with a most satisfying thump against the power-sword as it slashed through the Bishop, cleaving it almost in two lengthwise.
The energy of the impact made the Archetype spin, hard. Dash straightened out and sought out the third Bishop. He’d hurt it, but it still raced on toward the N’Teel homeworld, now filling almost half of the starfield. They were close enough that Dash could see the glitter of towns and cities on the night side of the terminator.
He growled a curse and again firewalled th
e drive. The Bishop must have done something to put on an extra burst of speed because the Archetype didn’t catch up as quickly as Dash expected it to. He snapped out dark-lance and nova-cannon shots, used the distortion cannon to yank backward on the Bishop with powerful gravitational pulses, and kept closing. His quarry, he had to admit, was good. The Bishop jinked and slewed and skidded, desperately trying to throw off Dash’s aim. Some of his shots landed, but some didn’t.
Dash glanced at the tactical display. Amy and Conover had finished off the other two Bishops, taking the time to essentially reduce them to constituent atoms. It meant they were too far back to be able to help.
“Sentinel, are we going to catch this bastard before he hits atmo?”
“Currently, no. We may kill it, but we are unlikely to be able to destroy it entirely. Its remains’ momentum will carry into the atmosphere.”
“This is the part where you tell me that will completely incinerate it when it becomes a meteorite and finish the job, right?”
“Some of the Deeper tech incorporated in the Bishop is likely to survive reentry, unfortunately. Atmospheric shock and friction isn’t likely to do much harm to it.”
“So some of it’s gonna land somewhere.”
“Some of it’s gonna, yeah.”
Dash smiled at Sentinel’s sass but immediately turned serious again. “Okay, we haven’t really tried pushing the Blur drive past the stops yet, outside of our first trials. I’m going to increase the drive demand to, oh, let’s say one hundred and ten percent.”
“That could damage the drive.”
“Well, that would be why it’s more than one hundred percent, right?”
“You’re the boss.”
Dash amped the drive up past its normal safety stop, fully ten percent over its theoretical design limit. The drive lived up to its name, blurring the Archetype forward and sending it lunging after the Bishop fast enough that the first hints of relativistic effects began to creep in.
He let the drive run past its redline for only a few seconds, then backed it off just as the main status flicked to yellow. But it had been enough. The Archetype zoomed up behind the Bishop, Dash firing all the way. He finally skewered it with the twinned dark-lances, whereupon its drive went dark.
