Drysine Legacy (The Spiral Wars Book 2)

by Joel Shepherd

  “Look Stan, I can’t…”

  “Lieutenant, the reason she can decipher this stuff is because it’s hacksaw, like her! You get it? She’s drysine, and I’m betting whatever the sard are using is deepynine — it’s the whole fucking AI civil war breaking out once more in that base. And you know what? I’m betting she’s on our side, and she’s sure as hell upset with this thing in the power core!”

  “Is there a danger she’ll go active?” Rooke repeated, a little desperately. It was the nightmare they’d all discussed, and all the Engineering techs had insisted to the LC and other senior officers that it was impossible with the right precautions.

  “She’s at fifty-two Tegs now,” Kadi said. “Look, it’s just a construct, it’s not actually her…”

  “We don’t know how the damn thing works, Petty Officer! Have you any idea how computational an AI construct at fifty-two Tegs is? That’s five times the legal limit under Fleet law, and you’re asking me to double it!”

  “Engineering!” Trace’s voice cut in before Romki or Kadi could reply. Romki could hear gunfire in the distant background. “I want that feed back, we’re getting held up again! It occurs to me that that thing in the power core might be deepynine, and it might be nasty, and the tavalai haven’t told us everything about the capabilities they didn’t yet strip from this base. If the sard have a deepynine queen or something, and she reactivates the base with a lot of its original defences still active, then I doubt very many of us will be getting out of here alive. If our drysine queen wants to help, let her, and that’s an order.”

  “God damn it,” Rooke muttered.

  “This is the LC,” came a new interruption. “I want the Major’s command followed, I want all systems on maximum security, I want hands on kill switches in case we lose control of systems, and I want someone with a gun, preferably a very big gun, standing directly before that queen where she can see him, and ready to blow her away if she gets out of control, understood?”

  “Aye sir!” Kadi announced, and began preparations for the processing shunt to greater power. “We could just get the queen’s head out of that nano-tank. She’s genuinely dead without it, it’s all those micros completing new circuits about the damaged ones that makes the problem.”

  “They’re inactive,” Romki repeated. “The nano-tank can’t make new circuits because it isn’t switched on…”

  “What if she finds a way to turn them back on? There’s all kinds of wireless coms on this ship… she’s alien, Professor!” Kadi’s hands flew as he preset the new processors and cleared pre-existing functions. “And don’t tell me she’s no threat because she’s just a program on our servers — I’ve got no control over what she’s doing here, right now we’re just winging it.”

  “Yes well,” said Romki, exasperated. “Welcome to the UFS Phoenix, Petty Officer.” He finished his final adjustments, first increasing the autonomy of his screens so Petty Officer Kadi couldn’t see what he was doing. Then he pushed up the activation level on the nano-tank. Immediately the AI construct surged, calculations-per-second increasing by several billion and requests flooding Kadi’s screen, demanding another three Tegs of processing power.

  “Whoa, look at her go,” said Kadi. “Okay, compcore is clear, twenty-eight Tegs new power coming online now.” He tapped the screen, and whole new banks of Phoenix Engineering’s computers leapt to life. “Sure doing a good impersonation of a living thing, isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Romki agreed. Built into the nearby workbench, suspended within the transparent sides of the nano-tank, the queen’s baleful red eye watched him unblinkingly. “Yes she is.”

  * * *

  Trace knew she was getting close to the power core because her suit’s sensors began reading magnetism off the charts. The wasp-nest corridors gave way to enormous conduits and bundles of cable at angles across her visor, like lopsided cathedral columns amidst tangles of support structure and heavy bulkheads. Bravo Platoon accelerated to weave amongst them, hitting jets to avoid collisions while scanning rifles back and forth to cover each other’s approach.

  “Hacksaws use different types of advanced fusion!” Trace reminded them. “From the magnetism I’d guess we’re in the early phase of startup. We have to stop it, but do not damage the reactor — it cannot go critical, but a dozen of these subsystems could blow and kill you anyway! Alpha, move right around and spread, we need it encircled.”

  “Alpha copies, Major,” Dale replied. On tacnet, Trace could see all four platoons, clusters of dots moving to encircle the powercore. “What happens if the power comes back on? You think the tavalai left hacksaw drones stored away in here somewhere?”

  “Makimakala’s briefing said otherwise, but it looks like their briefing left a lot out.” She hit thrust to avoid a huge cluster of conduits, then dodged upward to where Bravo Second Squad were converging on a gap in the spherical shell-plating ahead. “I think we can presume nothing good.”

  “Resistance is light,” Lieutenant Zhi remarked. “We’re nearly set for position and we are not under fire at this time.”

  “They’re waiting for something,” Trace warned them. “They’re luring us in, and if we want the damn reactor shut down we’ve got no damn choice.”

  “Could they be about to blow the whole base?” Alomaim wondered. “Suicide to take us all out?”

  “No,” Trace said firmly. “You cannot overload these types of reactor.” Boarding any hostile facility, it was always the first thing she checked. “That much we do know — this is something else.”

  “Major this is Scan,” came Second Lieutenant Geish on coms — immediately unusual because Phoenix Scan rarely spoke to her directly. “I’m reading a big energy spike in your vicinity.”

  “Yes I see it too Scan.” No sooner had she said it than her visor display began to break up in static, and tacnet flickered alarmingly.

  “Major, that’s… I don’t think that’s the reactor, I think that’s something else, Scancomp says the signature reads as hacksaw!”

  “All platoons halt and cover!” Trace commanded, with a final fend off a metal edge as she flew into the gap in the big, wide sphere that surrounded the powerplant. She hit an arm thruster and drifted to a hard collision with the edge, surveying the power core down the barrel of her rifle. Like so many things in this base, the sight was disorientating.

  The inner side of the shell was smooth and wide like a bowl, many hundreds of meters wide. Within the bowl, a perfect and symmetrical fit, was the round globe of the main combustion chamber, held in place by several huge arms. About her, the inner surface of the bowl was as smooth and regular as the approach to this point had been irregular. With her head and rifle peering above the narrow gap, amidst the other marines, she felt like an insect that had wandered onto a giant’s dinner plate.

  “All units watch your fire about the reactor,” she warned them, sighting Alpha Platoon marines likewise emerging from another gap forty-degrees around the bowl, braced for action. Tacnet’s flickering got worse, and Trace recalled with alarm the coms cutting out on Joma Station, as again the audio crackled. “Get ready, here it comes. Aim your shots, make that first shot count. Secondary track missiles, lock your aiming solutions now, late is too late.”

  She breathed deep and calm, focusing all energy, all racing thoughts on that simple thing. Whatever was in here had crawled into the hacksaw reactor to start it up, and was now trapped in there. Given the possibilities, it did not make her feel safe.

  A shriek lit up her coms, suit armscomp abruptly melting upon the visor, and taccom warning her with red flashes of the most enormous signal output… “TAKE COVER!” something announced on coms, and her visor registered a spike in incoming coms data in excess of ten thousand percent. Which was impossible, with this much interference, and Phoenix coms were just not capable of…

  And then she realised. “Down!” she yelled, and shoved herself away from her firing position, abandoning a clear shot along the shielding bowl for cover. �
��Take cover!” As tacnet erupted with incoming, missiles streaking and weaving, then airbursting with small puffs before the warheads detonated like strings of giant, deadly firecrackers, and all her view disappeared as the world was filled with blasting shrapnel that cracked and shuddered her suit.

  Targeting came suddenly clear across her visor, multiple missile locks as her backrack activated without being asked… “Missiles!” she yelled. “Hold cover, missile locks to my directive!” As she flicked targeting to ‘command’, and those locks propagated across all four platoons. She fired, and Phoenix Company fired with her. Big red blots suddenly appeared on tacnet, racing clear of the core.

  “Fire fire fire!” she yelled, jetting upward as all about the inner shielding bowl missiles blew everything to hell, but she emerged up into it, grabbed an edge to stabilise and levelled her Koshaim just as a racing shape darted through the smoke and fire. She fired, as a dozen others fired around her, a storm of red tracer and exploding, spinning debris. The racing thing came apart in progressive disintegration, torn and ripped in all directions.

  “A distraction!” came the same voice that had told her to take cover. “It escapes, outside the shell, move now!” As a spot appeared on her tacnet, not red like the others, but blue, and approaching Echo Platoon’s wide flank.

  “Lieutenant Zhi, kill that thing!” Trace jetted from her position, others chasing, dodging big chunks of reactor shell that had been blasted clear in the shooting, and realising that a lot of things were sparking and flashing that shouldn’t be, in a fusion reactor core. Ahead, Zhi’s platoon were firing and yelling, and Trace zoomed under the spherical core, past pylons now shredded in the explosions.

  And then ahead, she saw it, a big alien shape amidst the smoke and impacting cannon rounds, blazing gunfire in multiple directions even as more missiles hit, and blew it sideways up the curving wall. It recovered, and for the briefest moment Trace could see it clearly — gleaming silver steel, many legs, some now missing, others preparing still-functioning weapons to fire back even now. A beast like a nightmare, five times the size of hacksaw drones they’d previously seen. Then about fifteen marines hit it all at once, Trace included, and smashed it to a floating, silver pulp.

  “Cease fire! Cease fire!” Tacnet showed nothing else moving. “Tactical report! Keep your eyes open, do not trust tacnet!” The distortion was gone, but now the damaged reactor ball was arcing in an alarming fashion. Reports came back, all clear, no more enemy sighted. Trace doubted they were all dead, but for now, with their commander gone, organised resistance was effectively ended.

  Trace stared at the dead machine before her, twisted like an insect crushed beneath a boot heel. Many of its parts were loose and spinning about the reactor’s inner shield, but still Trace counted ten main arms — twin chain guns like most drones, but underside cannon as well, big thrusters for zero-G movement, and much heavier armourplate. Three huge dark eyes about a central head, behind rows of small, fiddly manipulator arms for close examinations.

  “What the hell is it?” Staff Sergeant Kono muttered, rifle unwavering from that three-eyed head.

  “Not big enough for a queen,” Trace guessed. “Some kind of commander though. Smarter than your average drone. Inspect these others with her, I’d guess they’re regular drones.” As several loud rifle shots indicated someone was doing a lot more than just inspecting them.

  “Yeah, but what is it?” Kono repeated.

  “Deepynine,” said Trace. It was the only thing that made sense. “It’s a deepynine commander, and it was leading these sard.”

  “Oh fuck,” Dale muttered from somewhere on the reactor’s far side. “If there are deepynines still alive and commanding sard, we’re all in deep shit. We meaning humanity.”

  “Burn it,” said the voice in Trace’s earpieces before she could reply. A strange, androgynous voice, not of any recognisable Phoenix crew, yet well recalled all the same. “It is not yet fully dead. Restoration is too dangerous. Burn it, and be sure.”

  “And who the hell is that voice?” asked Lieutenant Zhi.

  “Not who,” Trace said grimly. “What.”

  25

  With cylinder rotation active, Trace had to go through the core transit to move from midships to Engineering. She took the H Bulkhead main ladder, which had sensors to warn unarmored crew to vacate least she accidentally squashed someone coming down.

  Then she stomped along an adjoining corridor and followed the commotion, edging past alarmed, wide-eyed spacers and finally Delta Platoon marines in full armour. Lieutenant Crozier herself stood guard just inside Romki’s doorway, with several others closer still, rifles levelled at the nano-tank containing the drysine queen’s head. People made way for the Major, and at the far door she saw Erik, standing with Second Lieutenant Rooke and Petty Officer Kadi, talking in low voices. Erik saw Trace and beckoned, as others got out of her way. As she walked into the room, she could have sworn the queen’s red-eye followed her, despite the immobility of the head.

  “Firstly,” said Trace as they exited the door to talk in the corridor, “please make sure there’s nothing vital on the far side of that wall, because if you fire Koshaims in here, you’ll blow holes several rooms down.”

  “I know,” said Erik. “I hear no casualties, is that right?” Glancing at some of the shrapnel damage on her armour.

  Trace nodded. “Seven light injuries, nothing major. I wouldn’t read too much into it — the sard were in a hopeless situation and were just trying to delay. You pick fights in ones and twos against our full company, you’ll get slaughtered.” She jerked her head back toward the room just vacated. “What happened? Where’s Romki?”

  “Answering questions,” Erik said grimly. “Again. Petty Officer Kadi says he must have activated the nano-tank. The nanos in the fluid completed bypass circuits in the queen’s damaged head, and the construct program started querying her for more information as the fight developed. That activated a lot more of her subsystems than anyone had anticipated. Well, maybe anyone except Romki.”

  “Just as well too,” said Trace. Erik frowned. “Is she actually awake?”

  “It’s debatable,” said Rooke. He looked both excited and scared. “She’s far below optimal neural capability, no more than twenty percent. She’s… it’s…” he took a breath to steady himself, and gather his thoughts. “Look, none of us have any idea how she’s doing it, it’s like she’s got some kind of dual-process intelligence going right now, half of it is the simulator construct running on our own hardware, and the other half is happening in her actual head thanks to the reprogrammed micros in the tank.”

  “So is it actually her?” Trace pressed. “Or a simulation of her? Backed up by whatever small original parts of her actual brain are still working?”

  Rooke made an exasperated gesture. “Oh look… I could give you some futile answer in an attempt to try and sound smart, but I’d be lying. We’re not even sure what consciousness means to a hacksaw AI — how they perceive time, reality, self-awareness. All I’m sure of is that there’s something far more complicated happening than just a series of automated reflexes and subroutines.”

  “Well she definitely helped us,” Trace admitted. “The deepynine command drone had three friends, all heavy combat models, multiple missile racks, coordinated guidance like nothing we’ve ever seen. We got warned just in time to remove ourselves from direct line of sight and limit primary exchanges to missiles. Without that, we could have lost a dozen or more, and that commander might have got away, for a time at least.”

  “You’re sure it’s deepynine?” Erik asked.

  “No,” Trace admitted. “That’s why I’d like to talk to her. But the design philosophy is completely different from the drones in Argitori, or from the queen herself. And it makes sense. She’s drysine, she could have spent a lifetime fighting deepynines, or may at least have the memories of others who did, if she’s not that old herself. This is our chance to finally learn something from the only sou
rce that matters. I think Romki’s done us a favour.”

  She intended it as a challenge. Erik liked to ease people into difficult concepts slowly. Trace hated to waste time, and wished he’d follow suit. Erik looked very unhappy, that well-chewed thumbnail hovering near his lip. “I don’t like having that thing on my ship, Major. I didn’t like it when she was dead, and I sure as hell don’t like it now. She can take over systems by remote, we’ve just seen it. She was using Phoenix’s command feed through Operations to make contact with you.”

  “And again,” Trace said defiantly, “just as well she did. She’s both a danger and an opportunity. I suggest that the best way to minimise the former and maximise the latter is to try and reach some kind of bargain with her.”

  “And you’d seriously trust anything she might say?”

  “I won’t know until I talk to her. May I?”

  The queen had chosen to speak to her, and not Erik, or even Romki. A natural choice, given her command of the only forces capable of killing a hated deepynine. And also, she was the only member of Phoenix’s crew the queen had spoken to before. Right before she’d shot her.

  Erik considered for a moment. Then he nodded shortly. Trace turned and thumped back into the room. This time she racked her rifle, figuring that two marines already there were enough. Romki’s workbench was built around the nano-tank, partly obscuring the queen’s eye, and the massive hole Trace had blasted through it in Argitori, and out the back of its head. Engineering techs stared, watching on mobile pads and AR glasses with trepidation. Trace locked out her armoured knees, to sit comfortably upon the armour saddle and rest for a moment.

  “Hello,” she said to the red eye. That felt very strange. Like speaking to a rock, and expecting it to answer. “Do you remember me?” There came no reply. Trace waited several moments, and looked at the techs about the bay. They shrugged, mystified. The queen had not spoken since telling the marines to burn the deepynine remains. Had that been nothing more than a voice synthesising program? “Don’t play silent with me. I heard you talk just now. You helped my marines to kill those deepynines. I’d like to know why.”