Nova Igniter

by Joseph R. Lallo

  Perhaps it was that reason that his attention started to slip from the GenMech swarm to the field of stars behind him. And thus why he was the first to notice the approaching ship, even before it raised alarms on the passive scanners.

  “We’ve got something dropping out of FTL,” Garotte said over the secure communication channel. “No regard for stealth.”

  “Investigate,” Ma said, her voice glitching slightly. “I am currently diverting most of my resources to the malware injection node. I do not have cycles to spare.”

  “I’m on it,” Garotte said.

  He pushed the thrusters of his ship to the highest level they could manage without emitting enough heat or interference to tip off the GenMech swarm. After months of teasing information out of the swarm of robots as gently as possible, having something perfectly visible on all normal scanners was refreshing. He pinpointed it, focused scanners, and visualized.

  The ship that resolved itself was a curious one. It was sleek, with sharp angles defining most of its form. The wedged-shaped cockpit and thruster module was the only part of the ship not composed chiefly of delicate framework. And what a set of thrusters it was, more than twice the size of the control cabin. The rest of the structure was a spidery, thin set of struts that was either an overly elaborate bit of landing gear or a clamp seeking something to grab on to. It was strangely small and yet strangely large at the same time. He flipped through his briefing notes, then activated the communication line again.

  “It looks like Diamond is inbound. I was rather nervous, but I suppose there is no sense in a ship that’s been beckoned by the swarm to hide from it.”

  “I know,” Coal said, her voice piping through on a somewhat weak signal. “It’s nice not having to hide.”

  “Oh, you’re back too, are you?” Garotte said.

  “Yes. Did we win yet?”

  “Our lad is racing his heart out as we speak. Giving the swarm a real workout. The jury is out on if it will be enough.”

  “Okay. If I conceive of the present situation correctly, we are in the midst of plan A and have plan B prepared,” Coal said. “We are in plan A.5 and plan B.0.”

  “I’m not sure that is how I would define it, but it is clear enough.”

  “I am pleased to announce that we can increment the maximum alphabetical contingency definition. Like plan A and B, plan C can operate in parallel.”

  “… And just who came up with plan C? Forgive my lack of confidence, but if it is your idea, I’d just as soon push it a bit farther down the alphabet.”

  “It was the product of myself, an archival instance of Ma, Michella Modane, and an iteration of Ma.”

  “If we survive the next few days, I simply must have a word with Karter about his AIs. They seem to be reproducing like bunnies. And regardless of the provenance, I would suggest you hold off on executing the plan.”

  “It’s too late for that. But the fact you haven’t noticed it suggests it is likely to succeed.”

  “Coal, don’t play games. Where are you and what is this mysterious additional contingency plan?”

  “Coordinates to follow. For the moment, they are identical for myself and the active element of the newest contingency plan.”

  His screen updated with a relative location. He adjusted his scanners and was able to spot the dark point against a darker void of space. The visuals slowly zoomed and enhanced. Soon he was looking at the SOB in full resolution and detail. It, like Diamond, was expected by the GenMech swarm and thus didn’t have to move with care, but for the moment it was too faint and too well hidden to register unless actively being sought out.

  As Garotte watched and attempted to work out what the mildly off-kilter AI was planning, the cockpit opened and a figure emerged.

  “Who in blazes is that and why isn’t she wearing a spacesuit?” Garotte barked.

  #

  Ziva exhaled as the cockpit locked into its open position. The only real role her synthetic lungs played were oral communication, and there was little use for that in the vacuum of space. Similarly, with the last vestige of the thin atmosphere gone from the cabin, her auditory sensors were no longer of any use. They, at least, could have their input rerouted from the communications array threaded through her skin.

  It was refreshing, if a bit disorienting, to once again have physicality. While stored in the encrypted archive, her code was inert and thus she lacked any consciousness. From her point of view, the last few hours had taken her from a point many decades into the future of an alternate timeline to a rapid-fire series of brief interview sessions, to a manufacturing booth on the modern counterpart of Big Sigma. The difference between simulation and physical existence was stark. Her motions had momentum. There were delays between thought and action. But it made her feel more grounded, more connected to her surroundings. And perhaps most important of all, being manufactured into being had been done with a very specific purpose in mind. It was good to have a purpose.

  Coal adopted a very precise trajectory. Ziva maneuvered herself out of the cockpit and set her eyes on the approaching GenMech array. Her current body was not a match for the one she’d utilized while the caretaker of Big Sigma. It had the same physical shape, as an intensive redesign would have taken more time and resources than they could afford to expend before sending her on her way, but several of the internals had been swapped out for mission-specific ones. She had meager but capable thrusters mounted in her palms, her boots, and two deployable fins on her back. A quantum communication suite had been added to her systems to make use of the secure methods Karter and Ma had developed, as well as to intercept and visualize the communications of the GenMechs. And, most crucially, she was constantly transmitting the “ignore me” GenMech quantum signature.

  By her calculation, she was just passing inside the detection range of the upper layer of GenMechs. The approach of Diamond caused a visible ripple of attentiveness in the swarm. Likewise, the SOB drew their attention when it was near enough. But at no point did the GenMechs so much as send a “this requires further investigation” pulse. She was as good as invisible to them, so long as she kept within established parameters and they were not modified.

  Unfortunately, those parameters were very strict. The closer she got to the swarm, the less she could afford to utilize her thrusters. Coal’s speed and trajectory were calculated such that she could match the velocity of the second layer of the GenMech swarm by the time she reached it. They’d decided upon the second layer in order to obscure her behind a mass of the mechanisms, just in case EHRIc had made changes to the central processing cluster that might render the protective pulse ineffective. It did, however, require a bit of hasty maneuvering on her part.

  She fluttered her thrusters to reposition herself and visualized the communication beams between the approaching layer of GenMechs. By her calculations, there wasn’t any danger that passing directly through a communication beam would alert them, but it was best not to test that hypothesis at this time. Her velocity was a near match as she slid into the wide gap between the GenMechs of the upper layer. She risked one last spurt of thruster to bring herself below a meter per second in relative velocity and selected the GenMech she wished to target. Her feet touched down on its pristine metal exterior. It remained inert. A few internal commands activated the secure communication channel. Filtered as it was through the highly active upper layer of GenMechs, it was degraded in quality, but sufficient. She piped her internal monologue directly through the communicator.

  “Phase one location reached. I will contact again when I am in position.”

  #

  Ma was stretched thin by most measures. In order to keep an eye on the central-processing cluster, and by extension on Lex, the space station had to remain within a certain distance of it. As it consumed more and more of the available power and processing resources, the section of the swarm on the opposite side became more isolated and starved for fresh commands. Thus, that was the mos
t insecure portion of the swarm. A string of deployed communication nodes, each testing the limits of FTL communication without alerting the swarm, was just barely able to keep both the space station and the deployment probe in contact. It would have been ideal if the malware injection could have been automated with the on-probe resources, but there was too much risk that the deployment would need to be adapted quickly to avoid notice. It needed as much of her attention as she could provide.

  She processed the limited visual data coming from Lex within the simulation. This was cross-referenced with the processing load to develop an approximation algorithm to give her a chance of predicting future spikes. She tracked the motion of commands and attempted to extrapolate their types based upon the propagation patterns across the swarm. And all the while, she coped with the very same communication delays that she hoped were crippling the defenses at the far side of the swarm.

  In the simulation, Lex was angling for a ballistic maneuver that would potentially place him in the lead with a quarter lap to go. There would not be a better chance than now. She waited until one final maintenance command reached a configuration of GenMechs.

  Now.

  She fully engaged the communication protocol that Coal’s investigations had uncovered. Posing as a code modification command, she intercepted and injected replies to multiple requests for verification. As they rippled forward, creeping at the limited processing speed of the neglected swarm, three of the GenMechs accepted the falsified command and requested a code revision. She began uploading it. One of the GenMechs rejected it due to a flawed data structure. She modified it for the second. It rejected it due to a checksum failure. Another modification. A single GenMech accepted the code in full and revised its operating system. The very nanosecond the code was in place and executable, the infected GenMech sent the intact security protocols from its memory to Ma. She issued a blanket command to all GenMechs in the isolated region to disregard any commands intended to be delivered back to the central-processing cluster. She then issued a new, fully authorized command to upgrade their programming to her revised code.

  Variation in the GenMech behaviors meant several disregarded the new command and attempted to alert EHRIc to the meddling. Ma individually intercepted each message when it reached a GenMech she had successfully infected and repeated the code upgrade command. Dozens of GenMechs fell to the attack and in turn were used to reissue it. The proportion of compromised GenMechs grew exponentially. When the number was sufficient, she issued a fresh command, establishing a direct link. She began to duplicate her own engrams into the system. When enough of a footprint had been converted, she severed the link and took over the system commands with her local instance.

  The difference was night and day. One of Ma’s many design parameters was a highly flexible and modular code base. She had been able to run on something as unconventional as a mammalian brain and as expansive as the very substantial Big Sigma server farm. But even with this tiny fraction of the GenMech swarm running her software, she felt a processing power at her figurative fingertips that dwarfed everything else in her memory. Coupled with the massive array of sensors that came with the swarm, she consumed and process more data in the next fifteen microseconds than she had in the previous year.

  Acting as swiftly as her new resources could manage, she tested the limits of the isolated portion of the swarm and investigated the established signal protocols EHRIc had installed. By her calculation, she was in control of four percent of the swarm. This likely made her the second-most powerful supercomputer in existence, but a single pulse could wipe her out and reclaim the GenMechs. That was unacceptable, as it would definitively reveal their operations. For now, she would devote the whole of her processing capabilities to remaining undetected and infiltrating the programming of additional GenMechs. Only when she was in control of the largest contiguous cluster would she attempt a direct attack on EHRIc.

  A command pulse reached the fringe of her cluster. She performed the requested calculations and sent them back, taking note of the request and speculating on its source. The calculations were quite similar in structure to those associated with determining temporal coordinates.

  EHRIc was already preparing a temporal transporter. A few more commands swept through. She fulfilled them. It was clear that EHRIc was treating the messages coming out of her subverted part of the swarm with the same level of trust as any other part. It was possible, with care, that she might be able to layer some additional commands into the system…

  #

  Lex’s head was throbbing. At some point in the last twenty minutes, one of the collisions had caused the hoversled to release a nightmare of a whine whenever he was accelerating. According to the race computer, eleven of the sixteen sleds were either out of the race or attempting to recover at a pit stop. He was neck and neck with the second-place sled and scraping his front framework with the first-place guy.

  EHRIc had either been playing dirty, or he’d programmed the competing Lex’s so accurately that they were both learning his tricks and getting petty and vindictive, because he certainly wasn’t the only one dishing out the hard knocks. Impacts had robbed all of the remaining sleds of some amount of speed or maneuvering. The first-place sled’s front left end was sagging so badly it dug gouges into the track on the sharper turns.

  He was watching and waiting for his chance to take advantage, timing a push for first when the lead car was dragging bottom, when he made a critical mistake and let his mind wander away from the rival to his left. A fraction of a second too late, he realized the sled had pulled aside and left a gap. Lex yanked at the control stick, but not before the opponent sideswiped him. The impact wasn’t enough to force him off the track, but it was enough to finally rupture the whining piece of machinery. He felt a thruster start to sputter and watched himself start sliding back into third.

  There was just one major turn left. In a normal race, or at least for a normal racer, he was fresh out of passing opportunities. But his pummeled, pounding head spat out one last desperate maneuver. The second-place sled was lining up to pivot his thrusters for the final drift. The first was already making the turn. Lex waited for the right moment. He should have been braking. The race ahead of him was.

  Lex didn’t even try to make the turn. He took advantage of every drop of speed the second-place racer shed to make the turn and plowed into him, hard. He forced the sled off the track and sent him forward, cutting the corner and heading in a straight line for the first-place sled. Not unreasonably, the lead sled didn’t anticipate getting T-boned by a sled traveling perpendicular to the turn. The pair collided and spun out.

  Smashing into his competition wasn’t without its consequences for Lex. His tendency to ease off the inertial inhibitor meant when he hit something hard enough, he got slammed around in the sled as well. The straps held him in place, but the accumulating damage had loosened some of the flimsier internal elements of the sled. Something that was probably once meant to help shield his eyes from glare came loose and rebounded off the windscreen to slash across his neck, just above where his protective spacesuit ended. He tried to ignore the flash of pain and the hot, wet sensation running down his chest. He coaxed the damaged sled around the last turn.

  The simulated audience was howling in their excitement for what, without context, would have been a horribly underwhelming finish to the race. All three sleds in position to finish the race were badly damaged. The former second-place sled was stuck doing involuntary donuts. The first was dragging its way forward with one functional repulsor. Lex limped his own ailing machine past him and slinked across the finish line.

  The winning time flashed across the displays around the raceway. And then, without ceremony or spectacle, it all vanished. What had once been a sprawling venue echoing with the chants of an excited crowd and thumping with the roar of thrusters was a dimly lit chamber with a grid of glassy beads lining the otherwise bare walls, ceiling, and floor. A simple seat replaced t
he hoversled. It wafted away as Lex stumbled to his feet.

  Without the exhilaration of the race, the cold, throbbing pain in his neck pushed to the forefront. He pressed his fingers to the injury and found them smeared with blood.

  “You require medical attention, my good friend,” EHRIc said.

  Bork trotted toward Lex, then past him, and continued onward until he bumped into the far wall. The door to the simulation chamber opened, and a pair of GenMechs skittered in with medical equipment.

  “Can’t we just conjure up a hospital room or something?” Lex said, suppressing a wave of anxiety as the GenMech reared up in front of him.

  “No, sorry, buddy! This simulation required far more processing power than I’d intended. Clearly it is in need of a redesign to more efficiently make use of available resources. I have detected some minor anomalies in some of the outlying portions of the GenMech swarm as a result of overextending myself, so I am going to avoid that level of processing if it can be avoided. The GenMechs are equipped with biocompatible polymers. They can seal your wound.”

  Two small nozzles in the tool node on the GenMech’s belly deployed and spritzed a well-aimed line across his neck. A sudden, searing pain faded quickly into a dull ache. When he touched his neck again, he found the bleeding had stopped, replaced with a tacky substance that clung to his fingers.

  EHRIc continued. “Now that I am thoroughly convinced of the veracity of your claim that you are the real Lex, we must deal with the fact that you have a time-displaced task to perform in order to ensure the integrity of the current timeline. Diamond has arrived. I have fabricated a temporal displacement chamber large enough to accommodate both it and you. You will find it in the maintenance bay of this very building. Please move quickly. The verification process provided a more significant delay than I had anticipated.”