Redeemed (Bolt Eaters Trilogy Book 3)

by Isaac Hooke

  The avatars of the other Bolt Eaters reclined in bathing suits on similar chairs beside him. All of them were present, including Marlborough. The only person missing was Manticore, but he wasn’t really a Bolt Eater anymore, so his absence didn’t count. Dee was keeping an eye on him, and would wake Eric if he tried anything suspicious. The other platoon members had given their own Accomps similar instructions, undoubtedly. Manticore had placed a few Sloth units in front of the compartment to help guard them; if any rogue Banthar robots staged an attack, Eric wouldn’t be the only one waking up.

  Some of the Bolt Eaters arrayed along the beach were lying directly on the sand. This included Bambi and Crusher. The two girls laid face down without an umbrella, their bikini tops removed for optimal bronzing.

  “Don’t know why you two are bothering to tan,” Slate said. His body was jacked, and insanely ripped. “When you can just move a slider and adjust your skin tone in real-time. See?” His dark skin became a deep black, then slightly lighter again.

  “It’s the journey, not the destination,” Crusher commented.

  “Just heard back from Arnold,” Mickey announced. “He says the army is going to withhold restoring any backups of team members we’ve lost until we give up the ship.”

  “Let them,” Marlborough said. “They’ll come around when they realize the ramifications of what we’ve done. Having a faster than light ship equipped with alien weapons in orbit gives you a lot of leverage.”

  “Technically we’re not faster than light,” Brontosaurus said. His avatar was even bigger, muscular wise, than Slate. “By traveling through wormholes, we’re bending space to us, and shortening the distance between ourselves and our destination.”

  “Actually you’re wrong,” Frogger said. “That is the definition of faster than light: the light reflected from our ship won’t arrive at the destination for hundreds of years. So we beat that light. We’re faster.”

  “So he says the army will withhold backups, huh?” Crusher said. “That assumes they even have any backups. Could be a bluff. The termites might have gotten to them.”

  “Could be,” Marlborough agreed. “But I certainly hope not.”

  “Why?” Bambi said. “Maybe it’s better that way. Their chance to rest in peace.”

  “Do you really want that?” Dickson said. “To never see Hicks, Tread, or Traps again?”

  “No…” Bambi admitted.

  “That’s what I thought,” Dickson said. “I used to think that we were reviving the fallen for them… so that they could continue to exist. But I realize now that it’s for us, the survivors. So that we won’t grieve. Because when we die in these forms, we’re dead for real. You can restore all the backups you want, they’re not going to bring this particular version of us back.

  “Consider all the clones that Arnold made of Marlborough, or the clones the aliens made of us. They all exist independently of us. We don’t have our consciousnesses inside of them. Just as theirs aren’t inside of us. They’re free to continue learning, and developing, and ten years from now, if they were allowed to live, they would probably be completely different, personality wise, from any of us.”

  “You bring up a good point, mate,” Dunnigan said. “But the way I look at it, it’s a comfort of sorts, knowing that if I go down, a version of me will still exist. It won’t be me, of course, but that version of me won’t know the difference. And neither will any of you. Just ask Scorpion. Could you tell when we were restored from backups? Did we seem different?”

  “No,” Eric told him. “You were all the same. And I was grateful to have you all back. Like Dickson says, restoring you was more a favor to me, than any of you.”

  The team members rested in silence for several moments.

  “That doesn’t really make me look forward to the coming invasion of the Banthar homeworld,” Bambi said.

  “No,” Crusher agreed. “We die there, we’re dead permanently. At least as far as our current minds and bodies are considered. And look at how old our backups are at this point? We’ll have no memories of any of this. The terrible battles we endured. The losses. How we’ve grown together since we left Earth, and restored some of the bonds we’d let turn stale.”

  “It would be such a shame to die, after coming this far,” Brontosaurus said.

  “We’re not dead yet,” Marlborough said. “And we don’t know if any of us is going to die. So I suggest we stop speculating. As far as I’m concerned, we’re not going to lose anyone else. We’re going to make it through this, and teach the Banthar why you don’t mess with humanity.”

  Again, silence descended upon the group. Eric listened to the waves, and the giggling of a pair of simulacrums playing beach volleyball nearby.

  “Maybe we should quit while we’re ahead,” Mickey announced into the silence.

  “Give up now?” Dunnigan said. “When we’re so close to taking down the Banthar for good?”

  “You don’t know that,” Mickey said. “Manticore could be lying to us. He might have no intention of destroying the main AI core. Maybe he plans to interface with it, and turn the whole planet against us. Sure, you say you have his AI core wrapped in a sheath, but what if he manages to transfer his consciousness into another vessel right under our noses? Like into the main AI running the homeworld?”

  “We definitely have to watch him, that’s true,” Frogger said. “Though if he tries something like that, we can just destroy the main AI.”

  “Interface with it…” Marlborough said, tapping his chin. “I kind of like that idea. Rather than destroying the AI, why not take it over? And gain control of all the resources of the Banthar. Their factories. Bioweapons. Starships. I’m not sure this is something we want to allow Manticore to attempt, of course, given how little we trust him. It might be something more for the Frogger or Scorpion types among us.”

  Frogger glanced at Eric. “You have a full copy of the Essential lying dormant in your AI core, don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it dormant,” Eric said. “But it’s there, partitioned off from my main consciousness, yes.”

  “Maybe it’s time to do some probing,” Frogger said.

  Eric pursed his lips. “I’ve been avoiding touching it. But I suppose I could use the hook in the guilt subroutine to plant some exploratory subroutines, and go from there.”

  Frogger nodded. “If you can get it under control, we can look into replacing the main AI that runs the homeworld with yours. Either that or using the same hooks to gain a similar foothold. We’d have to get our hands on Manticore’s alien scouts of course so that we could learn how to interface with the AI.”

  “Scouts are also running versions of the Essential,” Eric said. “If we can break into those, we can extrapolate that attack for the main AI.”

  “Maybe you’re looking at it the wrong way,” Brontosaurus said. “Maybe you should look into hacking Manticore’s AI core. Since he’s the one who already knows how to do all of this. Hack in, get his decryption codes, and take a full memory dump. Or better yet, force him to give you an unencrypted memory dump. He has to submit to you, after all, since you have his AI wrapped in a freakin’ pipe bomb!”

  “Actually, that won’t work,” Marlborough said. “We already threatened to blow him up if he wouldn’t reveal how to hack into the airship, or the mothership. He refused. Our leverage over him only goes so far. He knows we won’t blow him up, not yet, not while we need him. So I doubt he’ll willing agree to letting you dump his memory. We’ll have to hack in on our own.” He glanced at Eric and Frogger. “Looks like you two have something to work on.”

  “Hey, I thought this VR session was supposed to be about relaxing,” Frogger said.

  “It is,” Marlborough said. “But as soon as you’re done here, I’d like you to amp up your time sense and make whatever progress you can. We have to remove our reliance on Manticore, by any means necessary.”

  Eric nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

  “I’ll help,
if I can,” Frogger said.

  Eric glanced at Bambi and Crusher, and realized they were both looking at him. That was his hint to excuse himself.

  “Well, maybe I’ll get started early.” Eric logged out of Slate’s VR and launched his own private instance.

  He appeared in the bedroom of his virtual apartment loft. He wore a bathrobe.

  Bambi and Crusher appeared in front of him, one after the other. They clutched their bikini tops shyly to their chests.

  “No tan lines?” Eric asked.

  Crusher smiled seductively. “Wanna check?” She casually tosses her top aside.

  Bambi lowered hers demurely.

  “No lines,” Eric said, unable to control the sudden arousal. He shrugged off his bathrobe.

  “Well someone’s happy to see us,” Crusher said.

  She slid down onto the bed. Eric joined her, and ripped off her bikini bottom.

  The next few minutes were a blur of sweaty body parts and groping. All too soon it was over, and Eric started again. When he had satisfied himself five times, Bambi at last rolled off him.

  “Mon Dieu, enough!” she said.

  “Hey, it’s called victory sex,” Eric said.

  Crusher laughed and similarly rolled off, resting her chin against his chest.

  Seeing that, Bambi grew jealous, and pressed against his other side, nuzzling his neck.

  “Do you remember the first time we ever tried a threesome?” Crusher asked.

  Eric chuckled. “Oh yeah. I remember kissing you, then Bambi, and then watching the two of you kiss. It was hot as hell at first, but then when you kept on kissing, ignoring me, I began to wonder if you even wanted me there. You seemed more into each other than anything else. I was starting to get turned off, in fact, and was about to turn away when you both finally turned you attention on me. And what followed afterward was the most awkward sexual experience I’ve ever had.”

  “It was, wasn’t it?” Crusher said.

  “Uh huh,” Eric said. “There were too many bodies, and none of us really knew what to do. After five minutes of trying to gyrate against one another, we finally stopped, looked at each other, and decided we probably weren’t going to try ever again, because the mechanics of the whole situation just didn’t work.”

  “And then you came up with the idea of creating two appendages,” Bambi said. “Really big appendages, at that.”

  “Yeah,” Eric said. “That made things a whole lot easier. It helped that you adjusted the positions of your vaginas as well.”

  Bambi giggled. “That was my genius idea.”

  “Yes, I’m willing to give credit where it’s due,” Crusher said. “But I wouldn’t exactly call it genius. Creative, maybe, but genius, no.”

  “You’re just jealous,” Bambi said.

  “Probably.” Crusher lay back, staring at the ceiling.

  Bambi remained cuddled against him.

  Eric’s mind began to wander, and he pondered how he was going to hack one of the alien scouts.

  Bambi interrupted his thoughts: “I’m afraid.”

  Eric lifted her chin with a thumb, and looked her directly into the eye: “We all are. What’s coming isn’t going to be easy. One or more of us could die. We all could.”

  “Way to boost morale,” Crusher commented.

  “I only want you to go into this knowing the truth,” Eric said. “It’s not going to be as easy as Manticore makes it sound. Especially considering that he plans to turn on us at one point.”

  “But you can detonate his AI core…” Bambi said.

  “True, but like Mickey said, he might be able to transfer his consciousness to another vessel before I do,” Eric said. “In fact, he might have already done so, and he could be remotely operating the mech.”

  “Well that’s a scary thought,” Crusher said.

  “I know,” Eric said. “Which is why it’s so important that we get rid of our reliance on him. And I’m still not convinced he hasn’t installed some sort of sleeper code in your units when he had access to the cores.”

  “But all the scans turned up clean,” Crusher said.

  By then Dee had finished sifting through Brontosaurus’ codebase, as had Dunnigan with his own. Neither Dee nor Dunnigan had found anything of note, so Crusher was speaking the truth. Still, that didn’t really set Eric’s mind at ease.

  “I know,” Eric said. “Which is all the more reason I’m worried. There are hundreds of ways to obfuscate code and its intended purpose. Manticore could have hidden something that not even an Accomp would identify as malicious. So all I can say is, I’m not really looking forward to this invasion. Not at all.”

  Both Bambi and Crusher lay their sweet heads on his chest.

  “Neither are we,” Bambi said, and closed her eyes.

  19

  Eric had amped up his time sense as soon as Bambi and Crusher logged out. Eric switched to his VR programming environment, which consisted of several flat screen monitors and keyboards for code entry, as well as 3D visualization trees for the different arrays he was currently monitoring. He had made a live copy of his entire memory, including those parts occupied by the Essential, and placed everything into his sandbox container. Then he inserted several pieces of exploratory code that he executed via the guilt hook, giving him access to the different arrays he was viewing now.

  It was tricky, because he had to map the alien data into a format that was compatible with his human operating system. As far as he could tell, the Essential was running an emulation layer that made these translations in real time, converting its data into something that would work in his mind, with his subroutines. Given what he had so far, he had a sneaking suspicion that the alien arrays were by nature eight dimensional, but he could only represent them as nested hash maps in human software, which was a real pain to navigate.

  He was stepping through the exploratory code in debug mode, because he had no other way to output the data he retrieved in real time—there was no alien console output to print debug messages or anything like that, or if there was, he didn’t know how to reach it.

  When he finally had a feel for the alien data formats, and what they contained, he began inserting different probe attacks, which were meant to call different regions of memory that looked like they contained executable code. Sometimes the code produced output that was unintelligible—that meant the code he had attempted to execute was data, not something meant to run. Other times, the code ran in a sensible manner, and produced output data that he could evaluate.

  Eventually he had mapped out a subset of the different subroutines of the emulation layer, along with their parameters, but he had no real idea what each of those subroutines actually did. Not without a real world subject to test. That would be one of the alien scouts Manticore operated.

  Frogger had been working to hack into one of those scouts without Manticore knowing it. Like the Essential instance inside them, the scouts ran an emulation layer that translated the commands Manticore sent into something the scout could understand. It was written by Manticore, a former human being, and thus used human programming languages, making it susceptible to hacking. It helped that Manticore had installed human-style hardware in the form of a remote interface into the units, which provided a wireless entry point into the emulation layer. So far, Frogger still hadn’t found a way in.

  Eric shared the subroutine list he’d mapped so far with Frogger, in the remote chance it might help him. He figured he’d try to break into the scout later once he finished mapping all the different subroutines.

  He exited VR at one point when Dee informed him that Manticore was making an announcement. In the real world, he stood once more in the control room aboard the mothership. Several mechs had assumed defensive positions near the doorway, and augmented the firepower of the Sloth units that Manticore had deployed just outside.

  “I’ve taken the mothership through the rift,” Manticore said. “And I’m entering orbit above the Banthar homeworld using the
inertialess drives. I have the locations of all the major cities, and I’m positioning the vessel for optimal launching of the airship invasion force. That, and to take down any defense platforms, both on the surface and in orbit, as well as the rift creation rings. I’ve sent a message to the Essential AI on the homeworld to explain our early return. I haven’t heard back yet.”

  “Did you send the message we agreed?” Marlborough asked.

  “I did,” Manticore replied. “I told the Essential that the humans have developed a new time weapon.”

  Slate giggled. “That’s going to seriously mess the bitch up. Talk about a mind fuck! The Essential is going to be poring through its archives now, looking for even a hint of alien attacks throughout history. Though shit, can you imagine if a weapon like that actually existed? There wouldn’t be any historical archives to look at: we could travel back in time and kill off all the Banthar by eliminating their sole progenitor.”

  “Like someone should have done to you?” Eagleeye commented slyly.

  Manticore had nothing more to add, so Eric quickly logged out before Slate or anyone else said anything more. He didn’t have time to listen in on idle chitchat or in this case, the crude banter the platoon was known for.

  Before switching to VR, he spoke to his Accomp: “Dee, I have a lot of spare background cycles at the moment. I want you to use them to try hacking Manticore’s alien scouts.”

  He didn’t have high hopes; he’d have to try himself when he had more time.

  “Are you sure you have so many spare cycles?” Dee’s disembodied voice answered from the dark environment around him. “Last I checked, you had an alien AI running in a separate partition, a VR subsystem to entertain that AI, a sandbox process containing a complete duplicate of your consciousness and that of the alien, several debugging processes... should I go on?”

  “Er, well, make do with whatever spare cycles you can find,” Eric said.