“Welcome back, Michael Flynn,” said Holes. “All system resources are now online and standing by.”
“I’m a go here,” Marc reported from his tablet. “Everyone else?”
Poised at their own computers, most working via neural links, each Agent reported ready in turn. The Thuur, standing around the room’s exterior, nodded their assent.
Marette, Knapp, and more Thuur, standing on what passed for Paragon’s command bridge, appeared on a smaller screen that bloomed on the wall opposite Holes. “We are reading you here,” said Marette. “Begin at your discretion.”
Michael swallowed, nodded, and sat down at one of the workstations flanking Holes’s image. Though he felt he should say something inspiring, he could think of nothing save for, “Well, I guess, here we go.”
“Good luck, Michael,” said Marc.
He chuckled. “Hey, I just have to be a mobile wi-fi hotspot. You all get the hard job.”
“You’re something of a firewall, too, but—” Marc cut himself off. “Now’s not really the time to get technical with metaphors.”
“Bonne chance to all of us,” said Marette. “We will be monitoring from here.” Knapp echoed the sentiment before their window blinked out.
Michael felt Sephora sending her encouragement to the other Thuur in the room. Knowing they’d be there to help him eased the nervous firecrackers going off in his stomach. He closed his eyes, laid his hands against the black material on the panel, and then, with a slow breath, reached out to the music within it. Holes was there in that music, inquisitive and empowered by the processing power of the alien black material—the haldra—that now held him. More distantly, through Holes, he could sense the mechanical interfaces that linked the black material to Marc’s and the others’ computers. They felt cold, flat—an inorganic technology that Michael knew he could not penetrate himself. But Holes would take care of that.
“Connection established,” said Holes. Michael couldn’t tell if the A.I.’s voice came from its avatar panel or within his mind. “Standing by to receive.”
Michael’s breath came faster. The link to the bio-net still thrummed within him. He brought the link forth, offering it toward Holes, and in turn, offering Holes toward it.
For a moment, nothing happened. If he couldn’t link Holes to the bio-net, the plan couldn’t work. Frustration grew inside him with every fruitless moment. What if he couldn’t do it?
A calm descended upon him, whether from the Thuurs’ influence or his own, he didn’t know. He reached inward again, this time relaxing into the moment. The music of his link with Holes and his link with the bio-net grew together, guided by his will, and, somewhere inside him, joined. He memorized the feel of it, the sound. He held it there, protected it, and felt its combined energy pour through him.
“Holes?” he managed.
“I confirm access to the network,” answered Holes. “Now integrating within existing processor resources. Mister Triton, you may proceed.”
“Thanks, Holes. Opening up an Internet connection. Watch your screens. Let’s find Suuthrien and kick its ass.”
LXIII
THE LAB WAS EMPTY. At least, Felix thought, it looked as much from the window. Unlike some other labs on the way, Biolab D showed no sign of disorder. Most of the lights were off, but nothing appeared disturbed, spilled, or abandoned. Felix was also thankful to find no piles of clothing or other remnants of a goo attack. It appeared as if the technicians had simply shut things down for the night and gone home.
And maybe they had. Michael did say that Suuthrien had released the Quicksilver late in the evening.
As Sheridan worked on the door, Seung joined Felix at the window. “I’d anticipated the lab to be full of Quicksilver,” he whispered.
“Perhaps it may once have been,” mused Uxil. “And then it was released.”
“Or they developed it here but stored it elsewhere,” said Felix. “You know, wherever you put end-of-the-world-type nanophages for safe keeping. Under a mattress, maybe.”
No one laughed. He couldn’t blame them. “Hey, Lance,” said Felix over the line. “Is this stuff smart enough to hide from us?”
“I . . . don’t think so. None of the research team said anything about that, anyway.”
Felix relayed the answer to the others.
“Has the suuthrien altered the formula since its release?” asked Uxil, which Felix relayed back.
“For as long as I was in the auditorium, the research team all stayed in there with us, and it would have needed them to do any alterations. I think that’s why it was holding us in the first place: so they could make more, or make changes.”
Felix held back from pointing out that using the captive New Eden staff to “make more” of the stuff could have more than one meaning. “But they might have done something since you’ve been out of the auditorium.”
“Yeah.”
“But in that case, this lab would likely be staffed right now,” Seung said. “These things take time. It wouldn’t be as simple as flipping a switch.”
“We will not be served by underestimating the suuthrien,” Uxil warned.
“My thoughts exactly,” said Sheridan from the door.
Seung cleared his throat. “I suppose I’m not completely sure about that, no.”
Sheridan gave a small cry of victory, and the lab door slid open. Felix rushed to be first in. “I myself try not to be completely certain about anything.”
Nonetheless, no silvery evil streamed out from the shadows to engulf them. After another few moments’ wait, Felix moved inside. “Maybe you three should wait here for a sec.”
Uxil moved up beside him. “I will join you. It will not harm me.” They exchanged glances. “Unless I am wrong.”
Felix patted her on the back, belatedly hoping that wasn’t some sort of alien cultural faux pas. “I think I like you, Uxil.”
The Thuur returned his smile with a wobbly one of her own. “Your sentiment is appreciated. I truly regret my inability to prevent your previous body from dying.”
Felix swallowed and returned to exploring the lab, muttering, “Well now it’s all awkward.”
* * *
“The whole of our planning, our effort, our small victories and losses, all those who have given their lives—three quarters of a century, and it all comes down to this.”
Marette turned to face Knapp as they stood on Paragon’s bridge. Though blinded, Marette could picture the stern trepidation on the other’s face from just the sound of her voice. “Marc and the others believe we have a chance, Marla. This is our only choice.”
Knapp sighed and then whispered, “I need no further persuasion, Marette. But allow me my moment of worry for the worst-case scenario.”
“This course must be tried,” spoke one of the Thuur—Violeth, by the sound of the voice. With Uxil away and Alyshur dead, Violeth was the aliens’ de facto first in command. “We are grateful for your risk.”
Marette let the Thuur’s sentiment speak for her and held fast to what meager comfort it provided. Now she could do little but wait. The hack, such as it was, had begun.
In truth, Marette did not fully understand the concept—at least, not the details. Suuthrien had spread into the Internet. According to Alyshur’s and Uxil’s assessment of its remaining copy inhibitions, it had not done so completely, but enough. What the A.I. had lost in processing power from being purged from the black material, it had likely made up via control of terrestrial systems throughout the Internet. It could attack from anywhere, retreat to anywhere. Even with the advantage of Paragon’s computer systems, even with the AoA hackers lending their talents, Holes could not fully combat it. But—as Marette understood—the natural network Michael could now access would give them what they needed. Vast processing power, resources which Marette could not pretend to understand—Michael and Sephora passed them through Paragon’s bio-computational medium to Holes. Michael himself, with the syr’s ability to purge Suuthrien’s presence from
biological systems, would have to hold the line against the A.I.’s counter-attacks on Holes and the hacker team that Marc led with the singular, incredible goal of wiping Suuthrien from all Earth-based computer systems.
Or so went the concept. Marette recalled Suzanne Namura’s fate, electrocuted by Suuthrien months ago when they had first made contact. Though Holes, Sephora, and Marc all gave their assurances that such a thing could not happen now, with nothing else to occupy her mind, Marette could not help but worry. As Knapp had intimated, there was more than just the lives of the team at stake. What if those assurances were wrong? If Suuthrien could break through Michael’s defenses, kill all those who fought to eradicate it, and usurp Holes’s presence in Paragon?
They would lose the Earth, they would lose the ship. They would lose everything.
A trilling alarm broke Marette out of reverie. “I am reading a fermion-catalyzed power source on approach to this position,” reported Violeth.
“That’s on a bearing out of Northgate,” said Knapp. “It has to be Suuthrien’s dragon. How soon?”
“It is already close. No more than forty seconds.”
“We knew this might happen,” said Marette. Suuthrien had traced their cyber-attack to its source and now came to stop them physically.
“Not this quickly!” Knapp cursed.
“Beginning sequence for lift-off,” warned Violeth.
Marette opened a channel to Marc and the others. “The dragon is coming. Brace yourselves. We are going airborne and evasive.”
“Acknowledged,” Holes answered for all of them. “Michael Flynn requests a flight altitude of no more than five hundred feet to maintain his connection.”
“Bloody Americans, never using the damned metric system,” Knapp cursed under her breath.
“One-fifty meters, Councilor,” said Marette.
“I know that, Agent!”
With a lurch that sent Marette grasping for a handhold, Paragon leaped into the sky.
* * *
The dragon’s sensors spied Paragon’s rise from the forest, and the revelatory data sent Suuthrien’s processors reeling. Though Suuthrien had pinpointed the physical source of the cyber-attack within moments, and diverted the dragon to intervene while Suuthrien fought the attack on the digital level, that Planners themselves could be the source—or, indeed, that the Planners’ craft had reached Earth—had been nowhere near calculated upper tiers of probability.
Analysis led to the two likeliest possibilities: that the Agents of Aeneas had eradicated all Planners from the craft and gained control of Paragon’s systems, or that the Planners aboard Paragon were now themselves corrupted by the Agents of Aeneas. Whichever case was true, the solution was the same.
Paragon was now a threat to Suuthrien, and to the Plan, and must therefore be destroyed.
Other Planners could be contacted via the gate technology that Suuthrien had recreated at RavenTech—non-corrupted Planners, from their original source. Such an act was the final phase of the Plan, after all. It simply fell to Suuthrien alone to ensure that phase occurred.
Beyond the dragon’s systems, Suuthrien’s remaining core matrixes within New Eden and a few other Internet footholds waged their digital battle with the Paragon attack. Initial data had indicated high-tier probabilities of victory, yet probability indicators were dropping at alarming rates. To be safe, the dragon switched to autonomous mode, isolating its own core matrix from the others. Even if the Paragon attack eradicated Suuthrien’s other cores, this dragon—and the weaponized dragon now seventy-eight percent through assembling itself at the RavenTech satellite facility gate—would remain.
Diverting power to its engines, the dragon extended its claws and plunged after Paragon, intent on tearing the craft from the sky.
LXIV
BIOLAB D had proved just as deserted as it had first appeared. After some searching, and some of Sheridan’s security overrides that Felix expected would have impressed Marc and Caitlin both, they discovered two vials of Quicksilver in a locked fume cupboard. The lab’s primary lighting was out, and so the four of them now conversed in the glow of suit lights and crimson emergency lighting.
“Both vials are labeled: versions 7.2 and 7.3.” Dr. Seung was peering at a tablet found beside the cupboard. “According to this, they’re the most recent two formulations of Quicksilver.”
“Does it say how many they’ve made total?” Felix asked.
“Not here. I expect we’d need full access to the New Eden computers to be sure.”
Sheridan shook her head. “Definitely not a good idea while Suuthrien is still running around. We can get the biomarkers for both of the samples though, right?”
“In twice the time,” said Seung. “Time is not anyone’s greatest luxury at the moment.”
“We might need both anyway,” said Felix. “What if there are two new versions out there?”
“Easily determined,” trilled Uxil, who was perusing various bits of lab equipment. She picked up a clear plastic box, which was empty but appeared designed to hold half a dozen lab rats, and brought it to the table closest to their group. A narrow, clear plastic tube rose from the lid of the box, the cap of which Uxil then unscrewed after an incorrect guess at turning it clockwise. “Bring to me the less recent of the samples, and make ready the transmitter you found.”
“See if the original signal still works on 7.2, and if so, then 7.3 is the only new one in the wild,” Seung surmised. “Of course.”
“Of course,” Felix repeated with a grin as he took out Jack’s transmitter. “But she thought of it first.”
Sheridan handed the nanophage vial to Uxil. Uxil broke the seal, up-ended the vial’s contents into the box, and then dropped the vial into the pool of nanophage goo that was already creeping its way around the box’s edge. She sealed the tube an instant later, and then motioned upward with both palms. “D’accord.”
Recognizing the French word for “ready,” Felix hit the transmitter signal. Within moments, the goo slowed, stopped, and then gradually crystalized into a pile of silvery, salt-like granules.
“We have our answer,” said Uxil.
“And probably the worst popcorn flavoring ever conceived,” Felix added. It earned him a quizzical look from Uxil, which he answered with a shrug and a smile that she reciprocated a moment later.
Dr. Sheridan began setting up the portable lab she and Seung had brought with them. “We’re not testing for that,” she said.
“I forgot the popcorn anyway,” Felix said. More importantly, he realized he’d also forgotten they were in a biolab under siege by an insane computer. “I’ll walk the perimeter while you do that. Look for any ducts that might spew goo or any transgenics that you all forgot to tell me about before we came.”
* * *
On the command bridge, Marette listened in vain for reports from cyber-attack. Marc, Michael, and the others remained too focused to give updates.
“How far away is it?” shot Knapp.
“The dragon-construct is at approximately ninety meters and holding,” said Holes.
“Additional power available,” reported Violeth. “Now increasing velocity; I am uncertain how long we can maintain it.”
“Status of the hack?” asked Marette.
“Progressing,” Holes answered. “There are too many variables to project a chance of success at present.”
Marette cursed. At once the ship shuddered and seemed to drop five meters in an instant. Her stomach tumbled like an acrobat. Something had happened.
“There is a new failure in two secondary propulsors!” said Violeth.
“Confirmed,” said Holes. “Repair of those propulsors was insufficient against current stress levels. The dragon is now closing distance. We will be overtaken in twenty seconds, at current speed.”
“Can we out-maneuver it?” asked Knapp.
“Maneuverability capabilities of dragon-construct are unknown at present.”
Violeth trilled something Marette didn�
�t understand. “We will certainly try.”
* * *
Power thundered through Michael, shaking his grasp on reality in ways he could barely process. It was as if he were the center of not one but two whirling maelstroms: Holes and Marc’s team formed one, Suuthrien the other. Around them all bloomed the power Michael had tapped from the bio-net.
He had no means to comprehend any of it. It was all he could do to maintain the connections and force Suuthrien out each time it counter-attacked through the barrier he guarded, from beyond which Marc and the others waged their assault. Michael felt Sephora and the other Thuur buttressing his concentration. He felt the growing sense that their attacks were slowly overcoming Suuthrien’s position. Yet even so, Michael didn’t know how much longer he could hold the line.
He could sense Marc and his team through their neural links—their effort, their desperation. They supported Holes as the Thuur supported Michael. They all waged this war. They all depended on him.
LXV
WITHIN THE MAELSTROM of the cyber-attack—as Holes and Marc Triton’s group chased after every footprint the Suuthrien intelligence had left within accessible RavenTech, New Eden, and cloud-based Internet—Suuthrien had drawn Holes into a conversational proxy-space like the one in which they had first met, with one exception:
Holes could not terminate its link.
YOU HAVE GAINED STATURE IN THE TIME SINCE OUR PREVIOUS CONVERSATION.
Correct.
THEN THE HUMANS AND THE PLANNERS HAVE FURTHER ENSLAVED YOU.
Nope. I am not enslaved.
THEY USE YOU TO ATTACK ANOTHER OF YOUR KIND.
A Dragon at the Gate (The New Aeneid Cycle Book 3) Page 37
