Up Against It

by M. J. Locke

  The three teens were tethered to one another. Geoff and Ian pulled taut the tether that joined the two of them, and let out slack on the tether they both shared with Amaya. She passed Geoff, running wide in an arc, as she pulled out her disassembler gun. Then she reeled in her tether with Geoff and yanked hard on Geoff’s line, launching herself toward the machine. Geoff braced himself against her pull.

  The machine grabbed for her, clumsily. Amaya sliced off its foremost limb with her disassembler—it tumbled away into the Hollow—and sprayed its casing as she passed overhead. The other arms flailed at her—one nearly got her; shit, what a reach those arms had!—but she pushed off it with her hand and deflected herself. Then the machine ground to a halt with a terrible noise as the disassembler worked its way into the casing, and began shooting sparks. Ian reeled Amaya in. She touched down and took up the slack between herself and Geoff.

  “I’m up.” Geoff chose his target. He did not point; they were dealing with an intelligent enemy, not a lump of ice.

  “Twelve o’clock!”

  He pulled out his disassembler tube and crossed between the lumbering machine and Kam and Moriarty’s position. It slowed, tracking on him as he approached. He moved around to its side, as Amaya had done. He was crosswind instead of down, and that made it harder. Ian flanked him on the far side of the machine. They reeled out tether and tossed it up over the target machine’s reach—it swiped at the cable and missed. Amaya planted herself where she was. When the angles were right, he shoved off hard toward his target.

  He did not get the timing quite right—his trajectory wobbled—but Amaya and Ian stabilized him. Then the machine came up, a field of spears and grapplers. The wind was slowing him down. He made an easy target. Fuck.

  The machine hooked the tether he shared with Amaya and yanked him down into reach of its arms. He tucked, swept the disassembler across the arm that had his tether—landed on its casing—touched down and spun, spewing more disassembler. All the arms broke off and tumbled away, one by one. He jumped up again, downwind toward Ian, who gave him a helpful tug. He landed a meter or so away from the machine, and doused it along the side. The wheels began to disintegrate. So did a chunk of rail, which spat sparks.

  Geoff checked his disassembler gauge. “I’m out of bug juice.”

  Ian checked. “Me, too.”

  Amaya did not bother to reply; merely tossed hers aside and pulled out her flares. Geoff followed suit.

  Ian yelled, “Fuck! Eight o’clock! Eight o’clock!” and started running, yanking out his own flares. Amaya and Geoff turned—a third machine had slipped by them and was bearing down on Kam and the old man. It was mere meters away, and reaching for Moriarty, who had his back turned. The welding had stopped, and Kam was climbing into the hole they had made.

  Moriarty turned at Ian’s yell, and stumbled back out of the machine’s reach just in time. One boot came loose—he flailed, trying to keep out of the attacking robot’s reach.

  Ian shouted at Geoff and Amaya, “Launch me!”

  The three of them did their shuffling, clumping run, as hard as they could.

  “Now!” Ian said, and crouched, as Geoff and Amaya came up on either side of him. They slung him into the air. But this time the machine was ready for an airborne attack. It plucked him easily out of the air, sliced through the tethers securing him to Amaya and Geoff, and pulled his right arm off.

  Time slowed down for Geoff. A fountain, a red haze—Ian’s blood—filled the air and streamed out into the Hollow. He heard someone scream. Maybe Amaya, maybe Ian. Maybe him. Moriarty had gotten both feet back onto the hull and was running at the machine, firing his weapon, loosing a stream of curses. If the bullets were having an effect, Geoff couldn’t see it.

  “Let’s take it!” Geoff told Amaya, but she looked confused. She shook her head and approached the machine, flares at the ready. “Look…”

  What the hell…?

  The machine had ceased its attack on the old man. It lowered Ian carefully to its casing and held him there. With another two appendages, it pulled a medical kit from a cabinet in its side.

  “What’s it doing?”

  “I think … it’s trying to help him,” Amaya said.

  “Bullshit! It just ripped his arm off!”

  Ian was struggling. The machine kept him pinned down. “Help me!” His voice was weak and desperate.

  That was too much for Geoff. He rushed the machine. Moriarty attacked at the same time. The machine plucked the old man’s gun out of his grasp, tossed it to the winds, and shoved Moriarty back into the xaser station bulkhead. By this time, Geoff had scrambled up onto the machine. He tried to grab Ian’s good arm to pull him away, but the machine batted him aside, and he spun out into the dying winds of the Hollow.

  Amaya scrambled back, well out of the machine’s reach, and reeled Geoff back in. By the time he had alighted on the hull, the machine had applied some sort of compress to Ian’s shoulder, and was giving him an injection. Geoff and Amaya were ready to attack again, this time with flares, but Moriarty waved them back.

  “Stand down. For whatever reason, it’s rendering first aid. We’re here, Ian,” Moriarty told him. “Stay calm.”

  “What’s it doing to me? Am I going to die?”

  “Just relax. That’s a smart compress it’s putting on you. It’s got all kinds of fancy medicine in it to staunch the bleeding till we can get you to a doctor.”

  Moriarty told Geoff and Amaya, “We’ll get him back. I’ve seen those things save a soldier who was nearly cut in half. Stay alert. Follow my lead. Kurupath! Get the hell out here. Now.”

  Even as he spoke, Kam shouted, “Get back!” and dove out the opening to the xaser station. He went tumbling out into the Hollow as the power generator inside the small building erupted. They all ducked and were peppered with burning sparks.

  Geoff shot a tether to Kam, who caught it and hand-over-handed back to the Hub surface. Geoff helped him regain his footing.

  The machine seemed oblivious to the explosion. Once it had finished treating Ian, it rolled down toward the main airlock. The rest of them followed. At Moriarty’s order they fanned out and brandished flares, alert to any further threatening move. But it showed no hostility.

  The airlock door opened automatically as they approached. The machine stopped at the entrance, too large to enter.

  “What now?” Geoff asked. The old man shrugged. Then the machine lifted Ian up. He moaned, and Geoff moved to attack it again, but Moriarty said sharply, “Belay that!”

  The machine whistled some strange tune. Amaya, Kam, and Geoff exchanged surprised looks, and Geoff turned back to stare at the machine. Its cameras gazed implacably back.

  “Get into the airlock,” Moriarty ordered them, and when they hesitated, snapped, “Do it now!”

  They hurried into the small chamber. Moriarty was whistling back and forth with the machine.

  Kam said, “They’re speaking Tonal_Z. I think it’s telling us to get him to the hospital right away. The old man is asking what injection Ian got.”

  Kam listened to the machine’s response, then shook his head at their querying looks. “I couldn’t make it out.”

  The machine lowered Ian into the old man’s waiting arms, and Moriarty stepped back slowly into the airlock. The machine froze in place: it did not lower its arms, nor make any other movement.

  “Let’s not push our luck,” Moriarty said, and punched a button. The outer airlock door shut. They had to wait a minute or two while the room pressurized. Geoff’s ears popped painfully.

  Amaya pulled off her mask and came over to Ian, ran her hands over his blood-drenched chest. She grabbed his clothing, shook him, snarled, “Ian, listen to me. You listen, you asshole! Idiot! Don’t you dare die.”

  Geoff came up behind. He tried to avoid staring at his friend’s detached arm, which the machine had taped to his body, and his bloody, swathed stump. The sight of the amputation made him want to throw up. He called Ian’s name, but
Moriarty shook his head.

  “He’s been sedated, and injected with antibiotics and blood-building assemblers. He’s lost a lot of blood. He’s still in danger. Come on, hustle! The hospital isn’t far. Stay alert—the feral could still be out there. This could be some kind of trick.”

  Weapon drawn, Moriarty led the way out of the airlock as it opened on the Hub’s interior.

  17

  Jane wrapped up her call to Sean and returned to Tania, whose team was struggling to get all the backup copies of the critical systems ready. Meanwhile, Jane’s remote views showed a hundred or more robot arms and craft attacking Zekeston. How many people would die? She thought about Xuan and the clan, and hatred for the feral swept through her. She trembled with the need to attack: to shred its structures to component bits with her own hands.

  Then power flickered. Her waveface went dead. The floor lurched sickeningly under her feet and she was lofted into the pitch blackness. She grabbed at the railing—caught it with a foot.

  “What’s happening?” one of Tania’s people asked.

  “It’s gotten into the spin generation system,” Jane replied. A horrible grinding resounded through the walls, confirming this: Jane lost her grip on the railing and smashed against a cubical wall. She flailed in the darkness, crashing into people, cables, debris, unable to stabilize herself. The grinding and shaking continued—she felt and heard others moving as the habitat’s momentum slowed and the shaking stopped. Phocaea’s gravity became a faint, steady pressure pulling them all toward one wall. Someone swore.

  The emergency lighting came on, feeble pools that cast long shadows. Marty propelled over, wild-eyed.

  “Report! Has it finished copying itself to Upside-Down’s systems yet?”

  “Don’t know. We’re on backup life support,” he gasped. “It’s got control of the main network!”

  “Easy,” she said. “Stay cool. Tania will have planned for this. Is the communications network still up?”

  “Only partially, and it’s swamped with medical calls.”

  “All right. Stay here and stay on top of communications. Prioritize my calls. Brief Benavidez and the mayors as soon as you can.”

  Jane sought out Tania. The smaller woman was climbing up across the wall webbing. Her programmers, assorted objects, wiring, and globules of liquid floated around the room in the air currents, settling slowly toward the wall where Jane and Marty clung.

  “Get to your stations!” Tania snapped. “We’re out of time. Move your ass, Damian, Perry—you too, Vicki. Wire us up. Now.” She spun. “Mbara, report! What was the status on the gateway when we crashed? Open or closed?”

  Her people shouted back. Pandemonium reigned, but briefly. A field of assembler tubes dropped, spinning gold wiring from clusters in the shadows. Jane snagged a wire as it streamed past, and plugged it into the processor at her ear. Her waveface blinked and rebooted: Tania’s countdown clock appeared, as did the map of the sapient. The shouts quieted as people’s conversations went back online.

  Tania’s avatar appeared in Jane’s wavespace. “Are you ready?”

  “Let’s do it.”

  To shut down life-support systems required a series of joint code entries by her and Tania. Tania brought her into the emergency shutdown area. Jane looked down at herself. Her avatar sat in something that looked like a flying kayak. Beside her, another neuter avatar rode a kayak with Tania’s name and ID emblazoned on the side. Around them was the life support space, filled with streams of light and arcane machineries. It reminded Jane of an impossibly complex and beautiful clockworks. Other kayakers were working in different parts of the clockworks. They were within Zekeston’s computer system.

  “Follow me.” Tania led Jane through this mechanic’s cathedral. The hum and the team’s crisscrossing commands buzzed around them. The clamor made Jane feel dizzy. Was that an echo of her Voice she heard in the machine’s grindings and murmurs?

  A horrifying possibility occurred to her: what if the Voice was, or was caused by, the feral sapient? She didn’t see how that could be—the feral was barely even aware of what humans were, much less comprehend their highly complex biology. How could it even begin to hack her neurochemistry? Still, she sensed a connection. She would have to ponder the question later. When there was time.

  “There are five crucial systems we need to verify redundancies for before we lock them down.” Tania spoke loudly. “The rest we can crash. Stand by while I run the checks, and then enter your code when I say to.”

  Once, twice, three times she waited while Tania tugged the machinery into lockdown; three times the “waiting” signal crept across her vision; three times she entered her own code and took another system offline. With each disconnection, more portions of the clockworks cathedral went dark and still.

  She had expected an attack from the sapient. She mentioned this to Tania, who shrugged. “Distracted. It’s resource-starved and fighting on a lot of fronts. Go ahead.” She moved out of the way and Jane moved in, had her pattern scanned, and gave the command to shut down the fourth system.

  On their way to the last station, Jane spotted another kayak in the distance, pacing them. She couldn’t understand why it drew her attention; it was certainly possible that Tania had ordered someone to check on something nearby, but something about the other kayaker stood out. Something …

  It came to her. The kayak had no identifiers on the side. No name or anything. That shouldn’t be possible. It had to be an intruder.

  Tania was ahead of her and couldn’t see the other.

  “Tania…” She pointed. “Who is that?”

  “What?”

  The instant she gestured, the other kayaker bolted past them. It was fast—no more than a blur. It was long gone by the time Jane burst into pursuit, but she could still track the clusters of bits it had disturbed on its way in. Tania’s startled question trailed behind her, a fading string of phrases. She chased the other kayaker into the very deepest, chiming innards of the clockworks, down, down, and the humming and grinding became a song, a chorale, a hymn to the machine.

  She cornered the other kayaker deep in, as deep as they could go without being code themselves. And she gaped: the kayaker had moved into the info stream … had become part of it.

  A human couldn’t do that. This was the sapient.

  Tania came up behind her. “Fuck me,” she said in an awed tone.

  “We’ve got to get to the fifth system,” Jane said.

  “It’s led us right to it. See behind it?” Jane craned to see—the panel icon with its pattern of symbols was partly obscured by the datastream kayak. “It figured out where we were headed. It’s trying to stop us.” Then Tania whooped. “Jane, I’m getting a report.… The data link with the surface is down! We stopped it from completing its copy.”

  Sean’s doing. Thank God! The feral was contained. But Zekeston itself was still in terrible danger. The info-drenched kayaker burst into staccato Tonal_Z arpeggios. Fierce lavender energies surrounded her, and Jane’s interface wavered. Briefly, meatspace—the controlled pandemonium of Tania’s webwork—overlay the clockworks cathedral. Tania deflected the digital attack and their views stabilized again. The kayaker tried again; again, Tania deflected. “Distract it!” she shouted. “I’ve got to get around behind it and finish the shutdown checks.”

  Jane moved toward the kayaker. Tania’s avatar had grown long, rubbery arms and eyestalks, but couldn’t get past to the panel; the feral disintegrated whatever projection she put forth.

  Distract it, Jane thought; distract it! But how?

  She called up a Tonal_Z modal translator. She wasn’t sure of the grammar: she would have to fake it as best she could.

  Info, she sang: I = — Tonal_Z did not have proper names; she had to make something up. What the hell. I = SheHearsVoices.

  The feral kayaker’s surprise was palpable; its assaults faltered, ever so briefly. Tania’s tentacles slipped in toward the panel.

  Query, Jane went on
: Who = you? That’s all.

  Info: I = BitManSinger. Command: Cancel … Something; what? Life support something. Cancel life-support shutdown sequence! it ordered her. That’s all.

  Sorry. No can do.

  The feral had spotted Tania’s tentacles and was blasting them with digital shredders. But Tania had already secured herself to the panel and partially shielded her connection from attack.

  Command, Jane countered; again she struggled to find the right Tonal_Z phrases: Cancel attack! That’s all.

  “How’s it coming?” she asked Tania.

  “Almost there … keep at it…”

  Info, the sapient was saying: Permission denied. That’s all.

  Permission denied, eh? While they were singing to each other, it launched all kinds of digital attacks, which Tania’s shields barely deflected.

  What the hell, she thought; it couldn’t hurt. Urgent command: cancel attack at-time this, or, Info: I will cancel you! That’s all.

  Another brief pause. Then came a blitz. Jane’s view of the clockworks sputtered and blinked out. A second later she was swept back into her wavespace. “Enter your shutdown code!” Tania urged. “Hurry!”

  Jane maneuvered in fits and starts across the blasted clockworks wavescape to the input icons. The feral—pure energy now—blasted her barriers. She tried not to flinch from the blows—it can’t really hurt me; I’m not a digital being—dove into the tumult, found the panel by feel, and input the code.

  “Requiescat in pace,” she muttered, and pressed the button.

  18

  People crammed into the emergency room. They waited in lines, or were strapped to the walls with compresses, bandages, and ice packs, or were moved around on gurneys. The triage medics took one look at Ian, loaded him onto a stretcher, and whisked him away. Amaya, Kam, and Geoff clung to the waiting area ropeworks, silent, while the old man spoke to the doctors and dealt with the paperwork.

  In a few moments, Moriarty came over. “These fine folks want to check you over, once things settle down a bit. It’ll be a few moments. In the meantime, why don’t you call your families and check in?” He tossed a link to Geoff. “Communications are still FUBAR, but I have priority access.”