He folded himself into a full lotus, closed his eyes, and began to hum quietly. I crossed my fingers and waited. Nothing. If he crashed, he did it very quietly. My turn. First I took my borrowed machine out of the security net. The kind of programming I was about to do tended to ring all sorts of bells, and I really didn't want to see the system administrator. I pulled Vaccine up on the screen alongside E-bola and went to work. It was touchy stuff. Vaccine was a pretty straightforward antivirus program, and it would make a good delivery system. E-bola was an entirely different story.
Every coder worth his RAM has written a virus or two, usually fairly benign little things. Most hard-core hackers have also at least conceived of, and probably coded, a little bit of their very own doomsday virus. Something designed to eat applications for breakfast, operating systems for lunch, and the hardware for dinner.
E-bola is mine. It makes Scorched Earth, which took down the whole mweb, look like a freshman's intro-programming project. It's also a very rough beta version, and too large to compile on anything short of a mainframe. Its biggest drawback so far is burn cycle. Like its namesake, it tends to kill its host too quickly for really effective transmission. I didn't see that as a problem in this case.
It took time I didn't really have to gut Vaccine and insert E-bola into the raw hole I created for it, and I had to cut a lot of corners on the way. I fed this new hybrid into the compiler, titled the job Saint George, and set it running. That was going to take something like another ten minutes.
I drew my sword. I was running an unauthorized compile on an Atropos.web computer. If I'd made any mistakes when I pulled out of the security net, alarms would be going off all over the place, and someone would undoubtedly be along to kill me shortly.
Five minutes passed without the world falling on me, and I was beginning to think I might get away with it. Then the door at the far end of the room slid open and my cousin Laric stepped in. He wore black breeches, boots, and a full shirt of white silk. The ensemble matched his beard and skin nicely, giving him a piratical air. More importantly, he was alone. I let out a little sigh of relief. Laric was one of the more civilized of Atropos's brood, and I had an excellent chance of reasoning with him. We'd even been friends once upon a time.
"Ah, Ravirn, how nice to see you again," said Laric. "We so rarely get a chance to exchange pleasantries." He drew his own rapier and dagger. "I must admit I'm surprised to see you under such circumstances. This"—he gestured at the machine that was running my job with his dagger—"seems a bit clumsy. You haven't the sense of a drunken raccoon, but you're normally more subtle." He slowly advanced until, with his last words, he was close enough to aim a cut at my left shoulder.
"Wait!" I yelped, leaping back. "Dragon! Fate Core! Big Dragon! Eris!" I probably could have been a bit more articulate, but I was a little on the tense side.
Laric shook his head sadly and struck again. This time I parried with my dagger and reflexively used my rapier to riposte toward his right thigh. After that I was too busy too speak. Laric knocked my first thrust aside with his sword and swept his dagger in a backhanded cut at my face. I leaned out of reach and aimed a stop thrust at his midriff. We'd exchanged another couple of dozen quick passes when the loud ringing of a bell behind me took my mind off Laric for a critical moment. He must have been startled as well. Otherwise his thrust would have skewered me instead of glancing off a rib and opening a long bloody cut in my side.
"Hold, enough!" I cried, leaping back. "I need to tell someone about this, because it's more important than my neck." He looked skeptical, but didn't press his advantage. I continued, "You can go back to trying to kill me in a minute if you don't like what you hear. Eris has hacked the Fate Core."
"What!? How did you find out?"
It was not a good time for the truth. I needed something that would convince Laric to listen to me, and with the curse hovering in the air waiting to twist my words the truth was not it. At the moment a well-told lie would be infinitely more convincing.
"I had this idea about how to hack into your server here." I outlined my ley-line ploy before continuing. I didn't tell him about my motivations, of course. "I was still investigating whether it would work and sniffing around the ley nexus when I found evidence that someone had preceded me. Knowing the amount of credibility I have with your grandmother, I thought I'd better have rock-solid proof before I took anything to the Fates. So I followed the line here and found a huge dragon of a virus wallowing around in the Fate Core."
"A dragon. In the Fate Core. Right."
"No, dammit. I have hard evidence."
"Show me."
It was a risk but… I sheathed my weapons and turned back to my console. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Laric bring his rapier up to hover beside my neck. It hung there for a long beat before he finally slid it back into its scabbard. Wishing Melchior were free to do the job, I roughly bandaged the cut in my side. Then I showed Laric what I'd found and what I was doing about it.
"I don't know about this," he said, tapping the screen where Saint George was laid out. "It has too much potential for going wild and taking out the whole Core. I think I should get Atropos down here."
"If you do, she'll kill me." I hesitated for a moment after I said that, waiting to see if I felt the pull of the curse. But apparently that was far enough from the matter of Puppeteer and its ramifications to let me get away with it. "She may not do it today, but there's no question she will. I might be able to dodge her for a few months, but that contest is too unequal to go on forever." I gestured at the dragon. "I found that thing, and I'm trying to do something about it. Don't you think I deserve better than execution for my troubles?"
"Bastard!" he snarled, putting his face scant inches from mine. "You killed Moric, and now you expect me to save your ass?"
"I'm sorry about Moric, I really am, but that was self-defense." I wanted to move away, but I held my ground. "If you bring Atropos in now, it'll be murder." There was a long silence.
"I should have cut your throat before I had time to think about it," he growled. "All right, we'll try it your way, but with conditions. First, you have to swear on your blood that you'll never ever tell anyone I let you off the hook."
"Fair enough." I placed my right hand over my heart. "I swear on my blood and my honor that it shall be as you say."
"Good. Now, here's the hard one. We aren't going to just let this Saint George program of yours loose. We'll ride it all the way in, and shut it down when it's finished." He glared at me fiercely, as if daring me to turn him down.
It was a nasty condition. It's a moderately painful procedure, and under the circumstances, it could easily have fatal consequences. In order to enter the magic-laced world of the mweb, you have to send your animating will, your anima, into the ether. If the program you're inhabiting dies, it takes your anima with it, and you die, too. And quite frankly, Saint George looked pretty flimsy next to that huge thing Eris had coded. But Laric was right, letting the E-bola side of Saint George into the Core without someone aboard who could pull the plug was an unconscionable risk.
Laric must have been hoping I'd turn him down, because he looked disappointed at my nod. Disappointed and more than a bit scared. I couldn't blame him. I was scared, too. But we were both committed. He leaned over, opened a panel on my machine, and pulled out a couple of networking cables. He handed one to me, then reached into his pouch and pulled out a tiny iron dagger. I looked at the athame with distaste, but that didn't prevent me producing a matching one. I plugged my cable into a socket in the pommel.
"I'm ready when you are," I said.
"After you."
I drew a deep breath and stabbed the athame into my left palm, bearing down until the simple cross hilt touched flesh. The pain was breathtaking, but fleeting, as my awareness was catapulted into the computer. I slid easily into Saint George. Laric joined me a moment later. Looking around, it quickly became obvious my hybrid had problems. The integration between the two p
arent programs was spotty, with E-bola banging around loosely inside Vaccine's shell. We were going to have to operate it almost as two separate programs.
"Do you have a preference?" I asked Laric.
"I'll take the Vaccine side. It seems pretty straightforward, and that E-bola thing looks gods-awful."
"All right then. Lay on, Macduff."
He grinned at me and aimed us for the Core. We slid through the twists and turns of the ley line like a guided missile, accelerating all the way. If I'd known what kind of driver Laric was, I'd have insisted he take E-bola. There was a moment of blackness as we crashed through the gateway, then we were arrowing across the sea straight toward the dragon.
We glanced off its back with enough force to rip great chunks of our code loose and send them tumbling into the waves. Vaccine was the best antivirus I've ever written. It was quick, sharp, and very nasty. But we hit the dragon's armor a half dozen times with no apparent effect before the beast finally noticed us. On our next attempt, it reared up with impossible speed, flaring its hood and preparing to strike. Laric put us into a steep climb and headed right for the open mouth.
"What are you doing!?" I screamed.
"Aiming for a soft spot!" He pointed at the monster's exposed palate.
We almost made it. The dragon was a beautiful piece of programming, but it was still just ones and zeros, incapable of anticipating the sorts of completely irrational actions people are prone to make. Still, all it needed to do was close its mouth. Huge teeth ripped through the outer program, tearing it and Laric to ribbons, but doing only minor damage to E-bola. The same lack of integration that had forced us to split control of Saint George let me tear myself free of Vaccine's corpse and slide down the dragon's gullet.
That put me into the thing's digestive track. It was dark, it stank, and I could feel E-bola starting to come apart around me. Big pieces tore free and scattered. My awareness split and followed them. As each string of code peeled off into the darkness, I went with it and we latched on to a different part of the dragon's command line. Then we started to feed. It didn't take long after that. I could feel the dragon's strength flowing into us as we became a thousand ulcers inside the dragon's stomach, each one boring itself a route to the surface. Inside of three minutes, the dragon was bleeding out through a hide that looked like scarlet lace.
Power cascaded through my soul and with it ecstasy. My many parts all wanted to feed, and we were surrounded by a feast of data. I don't know what might have happened then if one of my awarenesses hadn't bitten into a fragment of Vaccine. The electronic taste of Lane's cooling blood filled my mouth, and I gagged. I called out to the burrowing code strings, sending them the shutdown order.
The sound of an alarm filled the air. I opened my eyes and found myself back in my own body. I was kneeling over Laric's corpse. The feedback had killed him. His hand, where the athame had been, was a charred wreck, and scorch marks ran up his arm, but his face was almost peaceful. Reaching into my pouch, I pulled out a couple of coins and laid them on his closed eyelids. I slid another into his mouth as fee for the ferryman.
"Sleep easy, Laric. You died well."
Wincing, I pulled the athame from my palm and replaced it in my pouch. I was just whistling the spell that closed the magically charged wound when a harsh noise drew my attention to the room's door. Hwyl stood there, growling low in his throat.
"First Moric, now Laric," he snarled. "I'm going to eat your liver while it's still steaming."
From Hwyl that wasn't bravado; it was a statement of intent. His broad mouth opened in what might, in a face with fewer sharp, pointy teeth, have been called a smile. His only clothing was a loincloth that left little doubt as to his gender. The rest of his low and massive frame was covered with tawny fur. His long, thick arms ended in pawlike hands. Reflected light scattered from steel-tipped claws as he let out a bellow and raced to close with me. I was pretty shocky, but I wasn't quite ready to fold out of the game.
I yanked my rapier from its sheath and rammed the point of it deep into the charging were's hipbone. Hwyl let out a horrible scream as the area around the wound blackened and charred. The steel blade might not have hurt him, but the silver inlay was another story entirely. He spun away, clutching at the scorched hole in his leg, and tumbled to the ground. I could have finished him then and I probably should have, but I'd already cost my great-aunt two grandsons. I couldn't bear the thought of having a third on my conscience.
"Melchior," I said instead, "Exit Strategy sequence. Execute."
The webgoblin stood and drew a circle on the stone in front of him. It was about thirty inches in diameter, and he'd barely finished when the manhole-sized chunk of rock on which he was drawing dropped away into darkness. With barely a pause, Melchior jumped in after it.
"If you'll excuse me." I bowed to Hwyl. "I need to be going." I raised my sword above my head so I'd be in no danger of landing on it, and stepped into the hole.
Chapter Ten
It felt like I'd stepped into the top of a dark elevator shaft. That's part of the reason ley links are no longer in common use. I wasn't particularly thrilled about using one myself, but Atropos would have sealed off the higher mweb channels and with them all locus transfer protocol links the second the alarm sounded. It would take longer to get the ley lines closed, because it was a more involved process, but there was no doubt she'd shut them down as well. Fortunately, I'd already be gone.
A brief but immeasurable time later, light appeared below us. A moment later, we dropped out of thin air and fell several feet, hitting the table in the ranger's cabin with a jarring thump. My injured knee buckled, and I landed hard. Then the table collapsed, and we slid the rest of the way to the floor. Miraculously, considering how many sharp blades, claws, and fangs were involved, neither of us took any new injury.
I dragged myself to my feet and picked up my rapier, sheathing it. Then I yanked off my court boots and grabbed for my Salomons. I didn't have much time before pursuit arrived. As soon as I had my boots on, I retrieved the shoulder bag holding my emergency kit from the mountain pack. The rest of my stuff wasn't likely to make an immediate difference in my survival and not having the bulk might.
Meanwhile, Melchior had snapped my blades back into the ski poles, grabbed my hat and gloves, and raced to the doorway, where dancing with impatience, he waited. Outside, it was cloudy and beginning to get dark. In Minnesota in winter, it's always cloudy and beginning to get dark, unless of course it's cloudy and already dark. While I stepped into my bindings, Mel climbed into the bag.
"Melchior," I said, kicking off toward the path, "White-out. Execute." He whistled out the long sequence of the spell, then gave me a concerned look.
"Ahh, Boss. In case you haven't noticed, we're miles and miles from civilization. Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"No, Mel. I'm not. But I think we'll need it."
He shook his head and hunkered deeper into the bag. The wind was already rising in response to the spell, and the first fat flakes of snow were falling. Before we'd gone fifty feet, the snow was thick enough to blur the outline of the cabin. That's probably what saved my life.
The first arrow put a hole in my cloak as it passed, but left me unharmed. I didn't expect to be that lucky twice. If the archer was Dairn, he didn't miss often, and I knew from hard-earned experience that his arrows packed a hell of a punch. Worse, as Moric's brother and Laric's first cousin, he had a very personal reason for wanting to hang my hide over his hearth. I swerved off the trail and into the trees, hoping the dense evergreens would obscure his vision. They certainly did mine. A nearby tree stopped a second arrow, and I picked up the pace as much as possible, which wasn't a lot. If I'd only been able to get a little farther along the trail, nobody on foot could have caught me, bum leg or not. But the undergrowth in the deep woods negated much of the advantage of my skis.
I hadn't gone far when the trees opened up in front of me, and a long steep slope tumbled away into white emptiness.
What I could see of the hill was uneven and covered with brush and deep snow. It was perfect ankle-breaker terrain and all too likely to end in a drop-off. I didn't hesitate. Another arrow passed over my head as I pushed off, but I was too busy watching the ground ahead to pay it any real mind. I had to dodge around two birch saplings and a raspberry bramble in the first few seconds. After that it was clear sailing for forty or fifty feet.
I'd covered perhaps twenty of those when the world grabbed me by the foot and threw me to the ground. My ski, gliding along under the snow, had caught on a root. The fall wasn't too painful. I'd been lucky in that the snag had caught my good leg, but my foot was trapped. I swore. Another arrow slammed into the ground a yard to my right. Looking back up the slope, I couldn't see the archer through the thick curtain of snow. Hell, I couldn't see the birch saplings, which was probably the only reason I was still breathing. Dairn was shooting by ear.
"Mel," I whispered, "see if you can get my leg loose. I'll lay down some covering fire."
This time the arrow whispered by a few feet overhead before vanishing into the snowy haze. I didn't hear it land. The snow muffled sound. I had my .45 half-out of its holster when I realized what a stupid move that would be. I hadn't a chance in the world of hitting Dairn, and the muzzle flash would pinpoint my position. I might just as well put up a please shoot me sign.
A very tense forty or fifty seconds later Mel whispered that I was loose. As gingerly as possible, I got to my feet.
Dairn must have been closer by then, because the next arrow passed between the bones of my left forearm like a hot coal going through a garbage bag. I felt my grip on that ski pole go limp, but the lanyard held, and it dragged behind me as I slid away down the slope.
If any more arrows came my way, I didn't know about it. The blizzard I'd summoned was up to full fury by then, and I couldn't see much beyond the tips of my skis. Fortunately, the slope ended in a solidly frozen small river instead of a drop-off. The ice was covered with six inches of snow. I couldn't have asked for better skiing, and not even Hwyl could have tracked me in such conditions.
WebMage Page 11