by C H Gideon
“I just…I don’t know.” Styles shook his head in exasperation, but then his eyes lit up. “Get Xi in here!”
Jenkins eyed him warily before nodding to Chaps, who disconnected from Roy’s neural link to carry out the silent order.
A few minutes later, Xi came into the cabin. “You wanted to see me, sir?”
Styles beckoned without looking in her direction. “Sit down and help me with this. I’m trying to run our code fragments, but they keep getting rejected.”
Xi gave Jenkins a questioning look.
“Do it,” Jenkins urged, swiveling the chair to face her.
She sat down and pulled up a series of command interfaces before saying, “You know I’m not half as good at this as you are.”
“You don’t have to be half as good,” Styles said dismissively. “I just need a fresh set of eyes. Tell me what I’m missing,” he said, transmitting the logs of his recent attempts to her station.
She pored over the data feed in silence for several minutes before cocking her head, and even in Roy’s dimly-illuminated cabin, Jenkins could see that her cheeks were covered in dried tears.
Frankly, he didn’t blame her. It sounded like Podsednik was circling the drain. But they were all on borrowed time if Styles couldn’t make this work.
“Did you try a trinary introduction sequence?” she asked.
“Yes, I did,” Styles replied. “Along with a quaternary, binary, and even an inverted Sokal technique.”
“Okay,” she mused as she tapped away, calling up feeds and isolating specific fragments before sending them back his way. “Do you see it?”
He shook his head in irritation. “No, I don’t. If I saw it, I wouldn’t have called you—”
“Look again,” she urged patiently, but firmly. “There’s a response pattern here. It’s symmetrical…”
“But inverted…” He nodded, gritting his teeth angrily. “That’s it. I wasn’t hitting the whole thing simultaneously. It’s not the code that’s wrong, it’s how it’s being processed and rejected.”
“Like Yin and Yang.” She nodded approvingly. “You’ve got to make sure the process is balanced from the start, or the individual units will reject it and the code won’t propagate.”
“Virtual harmonics,” he hissed irritably while his fingers flew across the console. “Thanks, Xi. That might be the break we need.”
“Do you want me to set up a feedback block in case it doesn’t take?” she asked.
“No time.” Styles shook his head firmly. “We’ve got to try this.”
“But if it doesn’t work…” Xi said cautiously.
“Then we’re all dead,” he said, tilting his chin toward a third monitor, “but those input patterns are becoming unstable, and some of the rock-biters are starting to twitch. It’s now or never.”
Xi seemed like she wanted to object, but Jenkins put his hand on her shoulder and waved her off.
“Okay.” Styles exhaled sharply. “Here goes nothing…”
He struck the execute glyph and, to Jenkins’ eye, nothing happened. Streams of data continued pouring across the displays and the rock-biters didn’t budge.
A few seconds later, Xi and Styles leaped out of their chairs and pumped their fists victoriously. “That’s it!” Styles said in mixed triumph and disbelief. “We’ve got control of the whole system!”
“I told you!” Xi beamed, high-fiving the chief. “Yin and Yang!”
“Virtual harmonics, baby!” Styles declared, but Jenkins was only cautiously optimistic that they had, in fact, achieved their goal. “Look at that, will you?” Styles strutted, gesturing to the monitor that showed the control unit’s status. “Have you ever seen something as sexy as that?!”
“Back up.” Jenkins made a ‘slow down’ gesture with both hands. “How do you know you did it?”
“It’s the same pattern we saw in the models,” Styles replied matter-of-factly. “We’ve achieved balance. Our code fragments have been accepted into the distributed architecture, which means that we can send any command to them that we want!”
“Once we figure out how to actually craft commands,” Xi said pointedly.
“Details, details.” Styles waved dismissively as he sat back down at his console with renewed vigor. “Never bother me with the details.”
“Some say that’s where the Devil lives,” Xi observed.
“Focus, people,” Jenkins grunted, “we’re not out of the woods yet. Or are we?”
“That’s true,” Styles agreed half-heartedly, “but we can see the tree line and daylight’s a-peekin’ through! Let’s try the first batch of commands, one by one, using the same harmonic introduction technique,” he said, and Xi nodded in agreement before they went about the unthinkable task of seizing control of an entire planet’s population of enemy soldiers.
Twelve hours later, Xi and Styles had improbably completed the task to Jenkins’ satisfaction.
“We can’t puppet these things,” Styles explained. “Whatever programming it was that let them function as a single-minded unit is beyond us. But what we have managed to do—” He gestured to a live video feed of the cavern. “—is upload the equivalent of general directions into small sub-groups.”
“The virtual architecture is very basic,” Xi agreed, “which is unexpected, but it’s the only way this takeover was even possible.”
Styles nodded enthusiastically. “It’s like whoever initially programmed these things had no idea that someone might try to do what we just did. It’s almost like the possibility never occurred to them.”
“Arh’Kel psychology’s different from our own,” Jenkins mused. “And you said yourself that this type of interconnectivity is totally new as far as we can tell.”
“We’ve never encountered rock-biters using anything like this,” Styles allowed. “But whoever developed this system—”
“Or adapted it,” Xi said pointedly, to which Styles nodded vigorously.
“—had to have known that something like this was possible,” Styles completed, and Jenkins was both impressed and slightly concerned at the ease with which the two were finishing each other’s thoughts.
“Our best guess,” Xi explained, “is that this wasn’t considered battle-ready tech. It’s possible that it was installed early on in this crypto-colony’s development and that some kind of design flaw or oversight was missed. Whoever made the initial installation was unable to make adjustments for some reason.”
“It does seem like,” Styles said carefully, “one of this system’s primary purposes had to be to keep the Arh’Kel from following their standard model of behavior. Instead of congregating into centralized groups and building infrastructure in the typical fashion, they’ve remained more dispersed than is normal for Arh’Kel and only built a few relatively minor pieces of large-scale infrastructure, like the anti-orbital guns.”
“Can you use this system to see how many Arh’Kel are on this planet?” Jenkins asked, having waited the better part of a day to get the answer to this all-important question.
Xi and Styles shared concerned looks before Styles nodded. “We’re confident it’s between three and five million.”
At hearing that, Jenkins’ worst fears were realized: millions of rock-biters were lurking beneath this planet’s surface. It was nothing short of a holocaust waiting to happen. The main reason his armor battalion had been so devastating to the enemy was that he had specifically selected mechs which could stand up to Arh’Kel infantry long enough to deliver their payloads. Combined with their strange, unprecedented mob-like behavior, the body count he and his people had racked up was nothing short of astounding.
But his battalion was in shambles, with less than a company’s worth of mechs currently battle-ready and no more than that many more salvageable even under the best circumstances. There were currently no dedicated armor production facilities anywhere in the Republic, and the Marines’ power-armor was still badly depleted. In short, the Terran Armed Forces were w
oefully inadequate to the task of dealing with such a large-scale invasion.
Three million rock-biters, he thought grimly, briefly closing his eyes as he considered the havoc they could wreak on the relatively unsuspecting worlds of the Terran Republic.
“But that’s only counting Arh’Kel that carry these implants,” Xi pointed out. “It’s possible there are even more than that which aren’t connected to the network.”
“They can’t be allowed to get off this rock,” he said, his eyes snapping open as he came to terms with the magnitude of the situation. “What are our options?”
“First,” Styles said, “we’ve segregated the three thousand Arh’Kel here in the cavern and in adjacent tunnels.”
“We’ve formed four groups,” Xi explained, “since there are four major tunnels leading out of this nexus.”
“We think that sending off groups of that size will flip whatever smaller ones they encounter over to our protocols,” Styles agreed. “Eventually, these groups should grow to several thousand apiece, so when they reach other nexuses—”
“They’ll flip those.” Xi nodded eagerly, once again easily stepping into Styles’ sentence. “And we’ll write a general directive command which breaks them up into smaller groups that go off and repeat the process.”
“That’s…ambitious,” Jenkins said skeptically. “And it sounds too good to be true.”
“If I was a betting man—” Styles leaned forward, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “—and we all know that I am, I’d stake everything I own that these rock-biters were dormant when we arrived, which is why their tactics were so simplistic. I think they’re plugged into some variant of the One Mind network which has short-circuited their higher reasoning. I think they were waiting around, reproducing and building nothing but defensive weaponry, with the plan of getting picked up and taken to one of the colonies where they can wage war on us the way they always have. I think what we’re doing is, essentially, what the implant’s designers intended.” Styles jabbed a finger down on the desk emphatically. “We just happened to get here first and lucked into finding the backdoor before they overran us.”
Jenkins took Styles’ meaning plainly enough. He was suggesting that the Solar humans had played a part in this particular Arh’Kel crypto-colony’s development, and somehow coordinated with the main Arh’Kel government to have this huge stockpile of Arh’Kel infantry picked up and taken across the Terran Republic. Once spread across the Seven Colonies, there would be no way the Terrans could hold on without requesting help from their Solar cousins and finally submitting to their dominion.
The Terran Fleet had held the Arh’Kel fireships off at the wormhole gate, which was a testament to the Republic’s fast-growing space force. Still, the Arh’Kel had managed to destroy five Republic dreadnoughts in a single engagement, when not a single dreadnought had fallen in over thirty prior engagements.
They had stepped in something big here. This was far more than just his unit’s fight for survival. He had suspected, but the cold reality of it slapped him upside the head.
“All right,” Jenkins said, fixing them both with a heavy gaze, “everything we just discussed must remain compartmentalized. Nobody, and I mean nobody, outside this mech learns the details of this until I’ve had a chance to think it through.”
“You don’t think Fleet Command is somehow in on this, do you?” Styles asked warily, causing Xi’s eyebrows to shoot up in alarm.
“I don’t know what to think.” Jenkins cocked his head dubiously. “All I know is this kind of thing doesn’t happen by coincidence. There’s a decades-long plan at work here, and I’m not clever enough to see through it. What I do know is that we need to get off this rock ASAP. How long until you’re ready to send these groups off to start the domino effect on the rest?”
“We should have the code cleaned up in another hour,” Styles said confidently. “We might even be able to get a rudimentary surveillance system that gives us locations and force breakdowns of the various pockets as they flip to our new program.”
Jenkins set his jaw grimly, hesitating before bringing up the nearly-unthinkable. “I hate to ask this…”
“I can’t, even if I wanted to.” Styles shook his head firmly. “Maybe if I had a month, a dreadnought’s computer core, and a team of thirty people as talented as Xi—” He nodded deferentially to the young lieutenant. “—it would be possible. But ordering these Arh’Kel to self-terminate or start fighting each other is way beyond anything I could do right now, Commander.”
“Could you order them to congregate into a single location?” Jenkins asked pointedly, and for a long moment, Styles regarded him impassively.
But when the answer came, it was the one Jenkins was looking for. “Yes, sir. I’ve already included that protocol in the package. Once they’ve run out of fresh communities to flip, they’ll gather at a point eight hundred kilometers from here.”
“Good.” Jenkins nodded. “I don’t like it any more than you do, and frankly I’m glad the decision won’t be up to us, but this planet represents an existential threat to the Terran Republic. If Fleet brass decides to eliminate that threat, I’d like to give them an option that doesn’t require more human blood to be spilled on this God-forsaken rock.”
“Agreed, sir.” Styles nodded.
“Agreed,” Xi said. The idea rested in their guts like week-old, chow-hall Swedish meatballs.
“Good work,” Jenkins said, sinking back in his chair feeling nothing short of amazed. “We may have just saved the Republic. The bitch of it is, we probably aren’t going to be allowed to talk about it.”
“Not talking about it is a low price to pay for surviving,” Xi suggested.
“Good.” Jenkins returned the nod, standing to attention and prompting them to do so. He raised his hand in a salute, which they returned before he released his own. “Outstanding work, you two. Now let’s finish this and head back to the barn.”
Three hours later, the rock-biters had left the cavern, making their way into the labyrinthine tunnels that connected the staggeringly vast subterranean network. When the last Arh’Kel had gone, Elvira and Roy secured what little remained of the unsalvageable Flaming Rose with demo charges, which went off as soon as they reached the surface. Afterward, the battered war machines limped back to the plateau.
19
Wounds
“Lieutenant…” a male voice nagged, as it always did when she had finally managed to shut her eyes for more than two consecutive seconds.
“Go away,” Xi grunted.
“Lieutenant,” the voice insisted.
“Leave me alone!” she groaned.
“There’s been an update,” he explained, and Xi was beginning to suspect it was Strange Bed himself who was harassing her—though thankfully not in the manner for which he was notorious. “The commander wants to see you.”
“What is it?” she demanded, rolling over in the horribly uncomfortable cot beside Podsy’s bed. She opened her eyes and saw the now-familiar monitor displaying his vital signs. All normal.
“He didn’t say,” Fellows shrugged, “but frankly, there are people that need this cot more than you, so if you could get up—”
“Touch this cot and I’ll rip your balls off, grind them into burger, and stuff them up your nose with a fountain pen,” she snarled.
“My, my, at least someone’s feeling better around here,” Dr. Fellows deadpanned. “I must be doing something right for a change. Though you might want to get that ‘raging bitch’ gland looked at. I hear they cause a lot of trouble later in life…just ask my ex-wives.”
“I can’t understand what would make a woman think you were husband material in the first place,” Xi retorted, “but divorcing you was easily the smartest thing the four of them ever did.”
“No,” the doctor scowled, “making me sign a prenup was the smartest thing they ever did.”
She shot him a withering look before breaking down and giving an obligatory chuckl
e. “Fine, fine…I’ll go see the commander.”
She stood and stretched before looking down at Podsy, who hadn’t moved since Fellows had put him into a chemically-induced coma three days earlier.
“He’s stable,” the doctor assured her, giving her an expectant look and shooing her away. “The commander’s expecting you.”
“I meant what I said about the cot,” Xi warned, eliciting an eye-roll and mock gesture of surrender from the doctor before she left the field hospital and made her way to the battalion’s command center.
Things had been relatively quiet since the takeover, though Commander Jenkins had compartmentalized the results of their wildly successful takeover. Patrols continued as before, and Pounders and mech crews saw to their wounded. Complaints persisted regarding the low-quality ration packs and, more disgustingly, the necessary consumption of recycled dark water.
Fortunately for Xi, sealed bottles of fresh water continued appearing in places she would find them. She had little doubt who was giving them to her, but she was confused as to their meaning. Ordinarily, she would have suspected such gestures to be sexual advances and would have publicly spurned them. But this time around, she found herself perplexed so she had avoided a confrontation with the most likely suspect.
As she approached Roy, the first thing she noticed was that the command vehicle’s receiver dish was deployed. This only happened during scheduled links with orbital forces, which meant the commander was probably on the line with Fleet at that very moment.
Quickening her stride, she walked up Roy’s boarding ramp and heard Commander Jenkins’ raised voice.
“Copy that, Wolf Three-Niner,” Jenkins said in mild exasperation. “The area is secure; you are clear on all approaches. I say again: you are clear on all approaches.”
When the static-laden reply came, it was filled with disbelief. “Wolf Three-Niner requesting you repeat your last, Roy.”
