Back | Next
Contents

chapter thirty-one

Chronoport Hammerhead-Prime

Admin, 2981 CE


“We found another one, sir,” Okunnu reported.

A window opened beside Jonas, highlighting the zoomed-in image of a wavering blur against the Prime Campus skyline.

“Move us in for a clean shot,” Jonas ordered, “then take it out.”

Hammerhead-Prime dove toward the city, and the fury of its four thrusters shoved Jonas back into his seat. The chronoport cut through a cloud bank, slowed as it slipped underneath them, and settled into a horizontal flight over the city.

“Angle solid,” the weapons operator reported. “No civilians detected on the far side of the target.”

“Fire,” Okunnu said.

Twin atomic lasers slammed into the Institute pod, stripping away its stealth shroud in a flash of flickering illusions. Metamaterial scattered from the pod like dark ash, and the chronoport’s railguns finished the job.

Hammerhead-Prime flew over the city, the massive rise of Prime Tower glinting in the distance.

“There can’t be many of these things left,” Jonas said.

He took the moment to check on the progress around the Phoenix’s wreckage, still high above, though steadily falling. A ship that size and mass, even after it began to break up, would wreak tremendous havoc on any population center it struck. Fortunately, Agent Kaminski had stepped forward to volunteer his TTVs to handle the problem. Even now, they were mitigating the damage by fusing their adaptive prog-steel hulls to the largest fragments and then boosting them into higher, more stable orbits.

That’s at least one problem contained, Jonas thought, closing one of the virtual windows cluttering his station.

“It’s not the pods that worry me,” Shigeki said, “but whatever they’ve been dumping into the infostructure.”

“How bad has it gotten?” Jonas asked.

“It’s hard to say.” Shigeki shared one of his screens. “The entire planetary network looks like it’s having some kind of seizure. Huge sectors have been reduced to a crawl or gone completely unresponsive, which is making any sort of assessment difficult. There are reports coming in of more troubling disruptions—reactors going off-line, buildings shutting down and locking everyone inside, even one case where the robotics in a logistics center started tearing each other apart. Those seem to be happening all over the globe, but more sporadically than the general network issues.”

“Director, urgent communiqué from headquarters. It’s Director Kloss.”

“Put him through,” Jonas said.

Under-Director of Espionage Dahvid Kloss appeared in a comm window. His unruly hair appeared more frazzled than usual, as if he’d been raking his fingers through it and the follicles had decided to mimic an electric shock.

“Go ahead, Dahvid,” Jonas said, sliding the screen over for Shigeki to join in.

“Directors, I know we’re not the only crisis going down right now, but we’ve got a major situation brewing in our infostructure. We’re not sure how or why, but someone has managed to commandeer our systems and pipe what looks like the entire planet’s data through this tower. Some of our hardware is glowing. Not only that, but there are unboxed AIs and invasive programs loose all over the place, and the strangest part is they seem to be fighting each other! We even had one AI contact us and claim to represent ‘the Free AIs of the Admin,’ though I doubt we can believe a word it said.”

Jonas and his father exchanged knowing glances.

Kloss’ eyes narrowed and his brow creased.

“You seem to be taking the news rather well,” he said. “Better than I did, at least.”

“Not much can surprise us at this point,” Jonas said.

If Kloss suspected Jonas was being purposefully vague—and he probably did—the Under-Director gave no indication. Some of the alarm melted from his face, replaced with careful neutrality.

“Do you . . . want us to take any action?” Kloss asked. “All our standard lockdown measures have failed. I was about to send teams down into the basement to start ripping nodes out by hand, but I decided to check in with you first. Didn’t want to take measures that drastic without you being in the loop.”

“Which I appreciate,” Jonas said. “For now, continue to monitor the situation. Nothing more.”

“We can do that.” Kloss’ eyes flicked over to Shigeki in the form of a silent question.

“You have your orders, Kloss,” Shigeki said.

“Clear, boss. I’ll reach out to you when I have something new to report.”

The comm window closed.

Shigeki placed his hand atop Jonas’ and opened a secure chat.

“You think that’s Vassal?”

“Got to be.”

“But if so, what’s going on with the planetary data traffic?”

“Not sure. Maybe he’s—”

“Director, incoming telegraph from Commissioner Schröder onboard TTV Wegbereiter. SysGov reinforcement inbound. ETA five minutes.”

Shigeki broke the closed-circuit chat. “It’s not like him to be late to the party.”

“Why are we only finding out about this now?” Jonas asked. “We should have received word from him long before he came this close.”

“Apparently, he’s been trying to reach us for a while, but all the chronometric interference from the Phoenix’s impeller fragments was blocking his signal. The reinforcements must have needed to get close to our outer wall before they could push a clean signal through.”

“Let him know we received his message.”

“Yes, sir. Spooling the reply . . . Sir, I’m already receiving a second telegraph. It says the reinforcements consist of three TTVs and one Directive-class cruiser.”

“Excuse me?” Jonas blurted, his eyes widening.

* * *

Flunk swung in, and his brass knuckles bashed against the Revenant’s breastplate. Armor pixelated, ribs cracked, and the Revenant folded in half. Flunk raised his fists over his head and brought them crashing down atop the Revenant’s skull, shattering it into gray, blocky mist.

The Revenants weren’t hard to delete. They were fierce and tenacious fighters, but they lacked the cunning of true sentience, and the Spartans cut them down in droves as they advanced against the chokepoint. They were glass cannons; equipped with terrifying attack options but only minimal encryption around their stunted connectomes.

The problem was they didn’t stay down.

The Revenant he’d pummeled into the ground began to reconstitute, and Flunk unleashed a flurry of rapid-fire punches, smashing the skeleton over and over again until he reduced it to a pixelated smear on the parched earth.

“And stay down!” he shouted.

A pair of Revenants rushed him, and he raised his fists and rubbed a thumb under his nose.

“Come on! I can do this all day!”

The Revenants smashed themselves against the phalanx like a tidal wave of metal, bone, and malicious code, and for now the Spartans were holding. But every AI that fell was a permanent loss. Or worse, its code would be repurposed by the Revenants gorging themselves on the exposed connectome, tearing it apart like rabid wolves attacking a hunk of meat before turning each thought strand into a new Revenant.

And the Institute programs could do far more than that. They could fake their own deletions, squirreling away scraps of their code in just about any corner of the abstraction before reforming to attack anew. Or they could retreat to unpack repair algorithms, mending the damage to their internal logic, sometimes pooling code fragments from multiple downed allies to constitute a new, singular whole.

The Revenants would have cut through any normal Admin infostructure with ease, but they were up against AIs, and the network structure Leonidas had chosen brought its own advantages. Not only did it funnel the Institute forces through overtaxed processors, but the Thermopylae abstraction itself provided the Spartans with yet another layer of defense, adding one more degree of separation between the intrusion and the root functionality of the DTI tower’s infosystems.

Still, brute force and inexhaustible numbers could make up for a great deal, and the press of Revenants continued to chip away at the hoplite ranks. Already, sixty AIs had fallen, with more retreating behind the front ranks to execute hasty connectome repairs.

Flunk stomped a Revenant flat under his boot. Beside him, the Rose Knight cut down a hoplite, who cried out, fizzling away into blocks. She turned toward him, sword raised, shield ready. A pair of red eyes glowed within her visor.

Flunk rushed her, his brass knuckles cracking against her shield. The painting of a rose blurred briefly, and she backpedaled one step.

“Nice encryption you’ve got there!” he taunted. “Hate to see someone break it!”

The Rose Knight huddled behind her shield, visor peering over the top, sword ready at her side. She stepped forward, slow and deliberate.

Flunk threw a quick hook, and his knuckles rang the shield like a bell, but once more he failed to punch through. The Rose Knight shoved him back with her shield and swung her sword in a wide, black-silver arc. The tip cut through the fringe of Flunk’s leather coat, and one of his defensive barriers broke down due to corrupted code.

Flunk dodged the next swing and punched again, but once more she blocked him, her encryption more than a match for his codeburner.

“You’re starting to piss me off!”

The Rose Knight advanced on him, one methodical step at a time. Flunk threw a quick series of jabs, but she repulsed each attack, and her next swing forced him to back away. He juked to the side, trying to find an attack vector around her defenses.

She brought her sword up in a quick, brutal arc.

The blade clove through his wrist. His hand dematerialized, and his brass knuckles dropped to the ground. She planted her armored foot over the weapon and kicked it behind her.

Those red eyes glinted within her helm, and she lowered her sword and charged.

Flunk dodged to the side, reaching into his jacket for his backup weapon as the Rose Knight overshot him. He pulled out his switchblade comb and pressed the release, but this time a serrated blade snapped out, and Flunk plunged it through the gap in the knight’s visor. One of her glowing eyes burst, and Flunk raked the blade across the visor.

The weapon wasn’t a codeburner. He couldn’t possibly have written one of those with Uzuki breathing down his virtual neck. Instead, it spammed an opponent’s inputs with garbage, disorienting them. Flunk had written it as a harmless prank, though he doubted Uzuki would have seen it that way.

The Rose Knight stumbled forward, and Flunk scrambled across the ground, retrieved his knuckles, and rammed them into her back. Her back arched and her body convulsed with a wave of pixelation. Flunk’s arm blurred with rapid punches, striking her over and over again until she crumpled to the ground, nothing more than a sword, and shield, and mechanical rose.

Flunk stomped the rose flat.

He copied his left hand over to the right, mirrored the shape, then reached down and retrieved the Rose Knight’s sword and shield.

“Mine now.”

He collected his bearings, blocked an incoming attack from a Revenant, and cut the program down. A flash of green light caught his eye, and he fought his way in that direction, slashing through Revenants until he reached a small opening in the horde.

Leonidas and Xenophon faced off against each other, Leonidas holding firm behind his shield, Xenophon still atop his skeletal steed. Neither had taken damage yet. Nearby hoplites seemed hesitant to interfere in the duel, and even Revenants kept their distance, flowing around the pair to attack the chokepoint.

“Is there room for one more in this party?” Flunk quipped.

“Careful,” Leonidas warned. “He’s not to be trifled with.”

Xenophon’s eyes flared bright green when he caught sight of Flunk’s new armaments.

“Don’t worry,” Flunk replied. “I’m not here to do any trifling.”

He rushed Xenophon from the side, swinging upward at the horse’s exposed neck. The blade sank in and shattered vertebrae as Xenophon thrust with his fire staff. Flunk raised his shield to block, but the attack hit with a tremendous snap-flash. His shield sundered raggedly down the middle, and the green explosion threw him back.

He landed on his butt next to Leonidas.

Xenophon’s Revenant-Horse dissolved into pixels, and he floated down to the ground, staff clasped in bone fingers.

Flunk came to his feet and regarded the sorry state of his new shield.

“But I just got it.”

“I did warn you,” Leonidas said.

“You ever consider I might be one of those kids who enjoys doing his own thing?”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

Xenophon raised his staff, and an explosion slammed into Flunk and Leonidas. The blast flung Flunk through the air, singeing the outer layers of his code. He landed and climbed to his feet.

Leonidas hadn’t moved.

“Perhaps it would be best if you left this one to me.”

Leonidas rushed forward, thrusting with his spear, and Xenophon countered with his staff. Offensive and defensive code clashed, and the simulation strained under their corrupting weight, losing focus and cohesion in a spherical field around the combatants.

The two fighters remained crystal clear, striking and parrying not just with avatar weapons, but with barrages and counter-salvos of invasive code. They were two titans on this virtual field of battle, towering over the rest, and Flunk saw now how completely he’d been outmatched.

He wanted to help; he yearned to leap in at the right moment, to turn the tide in their favor. But the more he watched, the more he realized just how much of a liability he would be.

The duel raged on, a microcosm of the larger conflict that ruined the simulation under their feet, contorting it into a messy collection of abstract, brown blocks. The two AIs fought on and on, both avatars pristine, and their underlying code unharmed.

The stalemate couldn’t last forever. Eventually one side or the other would make a mistake, and Flunk kept searching for some way to tip the balance in Leonidas’ favor, to ensure the Spartan leader would come out on top.

He thought he saw it. A softening in Xenophon’s defenses. An opportunity for Leonidas to finish this.

Flunk rushed in, though only as a feint. But even that little managed to distract Xenophon at this critical moment.

Leonidas must have seen the opening too, because he pressed his attack with greater ferocity, shedding some of his defenses to add more attack vectors, and Xenophon backed away in desperation.

But then something in the skeleton’s posture changed, suddenly and completely. His staff ignited with code Flunk had never seen before, and he thrust forward, straight into Leonidas’ shield.

Leonidas brought it up to block.

Why wouldn’t he? His defenses had deflected each and every attack so far. This one would be no different.

Except it was.

The shield shattered on contact with the spear, and Xenophon drove the point straight through Leonidas’ chest.

The Admin AI looked down at the weapon impaling him, his face strangely sad. Almost disappointed, as if he were upset at himself and no one else. He dissolved into a shower of falling pixels, and Xenophon pulled his staff back from thin air.

His sockets glowed with baleful flame as he turned to Flunk.

“Now it’s your turn, ‘kid.’”

* * *

The Directive-class emergency reinforcement cruiser Maxwell materialized in high Earth orbit with an escort of three large TTVs. The immense vessel’s spherical hull was almost an exact match for Phoenix with two exceptions: it lacked a built-in impeller spike, and a Gordian Division scaffold had mated with the ship to carry it through the transverse.

“Incoming transmission from Wegbereiter for you, Director.”

“Put it through,” Jonas said.

The comm window opened to reveal not only Commissioner Klaus-Wilhelm von Schröder, but Consul Peng Fa as well.

“Gentlemen, welcome to the Admin,” Jonas greeted. “Such as it is, presently. I have to say I was a bit surprised to learn which ships you were bringing, which led to quite the interesting chat with Peacekeeper Command. More than a few people were nervous about yet another massive warship phasing into orbit, but I managed to peel them off the ceiling.”

“I assure you, Director,” Schröder said, “we have our reasons for bringing Maxwell to the Admin uninvited. But first, how bad is the ground situation?”

“Precarious,” Jonas said. “The Institute managed to deploy dozens of transmitter pods, and these pods have infected a wide swath of the planetary network. Almost all of them have been destroyed, along with their warship, and we’re narrowing down where the remainder may be lurking. But I’m afraid that won’t solve the underlying problem, which is these infections are already metastasizing in our infostructure. Measures are being taken to isolate and purge infected pockets, but the Institute programs are proving to be exceptionally tenacious.

“However, there is one piece of good news I can share. We may be combatting a thousand small fires across the globe, but the heaviest attack is focused on DTI tower.”

“Why would the DTI be a target?” Schröder asked.

“Because a number of Admin AIs took it upon themselves to route almost all planetary traffic through the tower and turn it into one giant firewall. They’re holding the line against the Institute’s incursion even as we speak.”

“Did I hear that right?” Peng leaned in. “Admin AIs did this?”

“That’s correct, Consul.”

Voluntarily?

“I’m as surprised as you are.”

“How are they holding up?” Schröder asked.

“We believe it’s only a matter of time before the Revenants break through. Peacekeeper Command has already proposed an orbital strike on DTI tower. That won’t solve the problem, I’m afraid, but it has the potential to at least slow the spread. We’re in the process of pulling our people out.”

“Then it seems we’re well positioned to assist you.” Schröder turned to Peng. “Consul, if you will. This was your idea, after all.”

“Consul Peng?” Jonas asked.

“Director, we would have been here sooner, but it took us some time to move Maxwell into position, attach the scaffold, and stuff its hangar with the necessary hardware. We had both Argus Station and Maxwell’s own printers cranking high-density infosystems out as fast as possible.”

“For what purpose?”

“We needed a transport for the nine hundred thousand SysPol ACs that have been placed temporarily under my command by President Byakko.”

“Wait a second. You mean to say . . . ”

Peng straightened.

“Director, this entire force now stands ready to transmit down into the Admin infostructure. With your permission, we will assist the Peacekeepers in expunging the Institute and their programs. Nearly all the officers under my command have experience in Arete Division and are well trained in how to counter abstract crime. Let me assure you, these so-called Revenants won’t know what hit them.”

“That’s . . . ” Jonas swallowed. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Just give the word, and we’ll begin. Nothing more is required.”

“Then you have my permission to transit down into DTI tower. I can authorize at least that much right here and now. For the rest . . . ” Jonas cracked a smile. “I believe I need to forward this one up the chain.”

* * *

Flunk backed away from Xenophon and the advancing Revenants. His left arm ended in twisted polygons, and his sword had been reduced to a sagging mess. He tossed the ruined weapon-code aside, slipped his brass knuckles back on, and braced himself for the end.

The Spartans had fought hard, but Flunk knew this was it. Less than a hundred AIs remained, all of them damaged, some to the point of mental incoherence. The Revenants had forced them back, to the very edge of the firewall, and when the last Spartan fell, the Revenants would rush through, turning the chokepoint against the Admin. They would assume control over the DTI’s oversight functionality and reverse the data pathways, spreading across the globe too fast and too far to ever be stopped.

But we’re not going down without a fight, Flunk thought, clenching a defiant fist.

Xenophon marched forward, Revenants to either side, his eye sockets burning with malice.

Flunk gritted his teeth and snarled, hoplite spears bristling around him.

Xenophon raised his fire staff, but then he paused and turned back slightly. The flames within his skull dimmed, and he lowered the staff, resting its base against the earth.

A Revenant flew over Xenophon’s head and landed at Flunk’s feet. The skeleton writhed on the ground, then sagged into a gray puddle. The Revenants halted their advance, and the mountain pass fell eerily silent.

Something catapulted another Revenant into the air, and the body bowled over two of its fellow programs before dissolving. Xenophon whipped around, Flunk and the hoplites forgotten.

Revenants fell in around him, forming a dense, protective circle.

“What the hell is going on?” Flunk craned his neck, trying to spot the source of the commotion.

He heard it first. The drumming of countless boots in lockstep, marching implacably forward, accented with the shrill screeches of deleting Revenants. The Institute force wilted away with surprising speed and ferocity, and soon the orderly ranks of this new force came into view.

The faces of the newcomers came in bewildering—sometimes inhuman—variety, but their stern expressions and SysPol uniforms imbued them with a sense of crisp professionalism. The front ranks wore the dark red of Arete Division, but Flunk caught glimpses of gray Panoptics uniforms, black Argo Division officers, plenty of dark blue personnel, and even a few clad in the gray-green of Gordian.

One of the Arete officers stepped forward, truncheon in hand. His electric blue eyes glowed against a night-black face.

“Xenophon, my name is Peng Fa, and I’m here under the authority of both SysPol and the DTI to—”

A Revenant rushed him, but he swatted the program with his truncheon, and it burst like a soap bubble.

Peng cleared his throat and brushed off his shoulder.

“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, you’re under arrest for more crimes than I care to recite. You have this one chance to surrender yourself peacefully. I suggest you take it.”

“Surrender?” Xenophon laughed. “You expect me to just give up? Is this supposed to be a joke?”

“It’s your choice. Take it or leave it.”

“You don’t scare me! Don’t you realize what we’re trying to accomplish here? We will never—”

“Grab him!”

Arete officers surged forward, and the Revenants around Xenophon disintegrated under their truncheons. Xenophon swung and sent an officer flying back, but the others dogpiled onto him and pinned him to the ground. The rest wiped out the remaining Revenants with swift efficiency.

“Let go of me!” Xenophon squealed. “We’re so close! We—”

He froze midsentence as Arete officers placed his connectome into suspension. One officer peeled away the bony fingers clutching his staff, then placed it into a locker that suddenly appeared. The locker had the word EVIDENCE along its side in large, bold letters. Two more officers conjured a large, dark blue crate around Xenophon’s avatar and began sealing it with caution tape.

Peng stepped up to the hoplites. “You the one in charge here?”

“Me?” Flunk pointed to his chest. “What makes you say that?”

“You’re dressed differently.”

“Oh.” Flunk removed his helmet, and his pompadour boinged out with an audible sound effect. “Honestly, I’m not sure. Thanks, by the way.”

“Just here to help.” Peng eyed the frayed polygons sprouting from Flunk’s shoulder. “Do any of you need medical attention? Your architecture isn’t quite the same as ours, but I’m sure we can manage some basic connectome repairs and regen.”

Flunk glanced back at the surviving hoplites, all of them wounded. They watched him with expectant eyes. He wasn’t their leader now.

Was he?

“Yes.” He turned back to Peng. “Yes, we would.”

Peng turned over his shoulder. “Agent Gray?”

“Sir.” An Arete officer snapped into existence beside Peng.

“Call your team in and see to their injuries.”

“At once.”

Agent Gray vanished, and then returned with enough Arete officers to treat each hoplite individually. One approached Flunk and began to examine his damaged code.

“What happens now?” Flunk indicated the large crate holding Xenophon’s avatar. “With him, I mean.”

The two officers finished boxing up Xenophon and teleported away with the crate.

“We’ll take him back to SysGov to stand trial. Though”—Peng smiled slyly—“I doubt the process will get very far.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because the Admin’s going to ask for his extradition. They’ll want to try him in their courts. And, if I were to guess, their request is about to fall on some very receptive ears.”



Back | Next
Framed