by Andrew Beery
"You OK?" Cat yelled over her shoulder as she continued to run down the corridor towards the last control point.
"Yeah. I tossed a smoker and one of the KayBees lit it up with a laser. I guess they're not designed for that."
"I guess not," Cat agreed. She placed the last nanite pack and triggered its deployment protocol. The pack dissolved as the nanites within it began to seek a route towards the main computer core. All the other networks had reported in. They would have control of each of the major systems including propulsion, weapons, navigation, and, most importantly, the Heshe AI once this last network finished installing itself.
They slowly worked their way back toward the shuttle and the rest of their team. After several minutes Cat stopped and checked her internal AI for confirmation.
"Cal, I did not get a linkup 'ACK' from the last quantum net. Can you confirm?"
"There has been no acknowledgement. The network was unable to reach the computer core."
Ben scratched his muzzle. "Did we place the pack in the wrong place?"
"Negative Commander. Based on telemetry I have received from the nanite web the core is no longer at the expected coordinates."
Suddenly suspicious, Cat asked her AI to confirm her suspicions. "Cal what is currently at the target location?"
"A three thousand cubic meter void."
Ben padded up to her. "Does that mean what I think it means?"
"It means," Cat said through teeth gritted in frustration, "that the hive has stolen one of the most advanced AI cores in the known universe and we have no idea where it is. What we need to do..."
She never finished her sentence. Out of the corner of her eye she saw three KayBee's round a corner and draw a bead on Commander Ben. Instantly she charged into action. Her Heshe enhanced muscles contracted and she jumped through the intervening space between the KayBees and her friend. Her own weapon targeted first one then a second of the attacking drones. The third however got his shot off. The laser caught Cat mid-chest and burned a hole the size and shape of a baseball through the space that had formerly contained a Heshe enhanced human heart. She was dead before she hit the ground.
"Damn," Ben thought. He grabbed her corpse by the hair and began a fast trot down the hall, away from the fighting– dragging her bumping and scrapping through the debris. Cat may be dead, but if Ben had learned anything from his time with her, she wasn't likely to remain dead.
Ben toggled his comm link. "Chief, what's your status?"
"We are just getting to the shuttle now. It’s still cloaked. Doesn't look like they've realized it’s there yet."
"Don't tip your hand yet Chief. These guys are a hell of a lot smarter than we are. You can be sure they know it’s cloaked and may well be following you just to get to it."
"Understood, Sir. What are your orders?"
"Hold fast and make sure you have your breathers on. We ran into a bit of a hiccup up here and may need to get creative." Ben shut down the comm link.
Five minutes later the Heshe nanites in Cat's body had done their work and she opened her eyes as it nothing had happened. Ben simply grunted.
Cat looked at her six legged friend. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Does it involve chocolate?"
"No."
"Probably not, unless you're thinking of asking Cal to take hold of the WhimPy's new control net, jumping us home, and hitting the KayBees still onboard with some aerosolized anesthetic."
"Pretty close," Cat acknowledged rubbing her chest where the laser had made the hole. Her uniform was a bit more risqué than she would have liked, but such were the fortunes of war. At least she was alive.
"I think the anesthetic might be problematic. If I'm not mistaken Cal should be able to assume control of a limited number of the station’s nanites and physically restrain any KayBees with nano-fiber cords until we can disable their Quantum nodes."
"See, that's why you're the Commodore and I'm just the mutt that carries the bags."
Cat scratched him behind an ear. "I was one of those bags there bub; and by the way, thanks. Cal, implement protocol 2B. Take primary control of the platform and restrain any hostiles."
Immediately, the lighting came up in all sections of the ship. "Commodore, the ship is temporarily secure, however, I am unable to restrain the hostile KayBees. As soon as I restrain one the hive mind overrides my control of the local nanites and the restraints are dissolved."
"Understood" Cat said. "What would you estimate the threat-level is for the hive learning to fully control the nanites?"
"Extreme. I am already encountering physical anomalies in the control interfaces to this ship. The hive is attempting to reconfigure and regain control."
"Buggers learn fast," Ben muttered.
"Chief, you following all of this?" Cat asked.
"Yes, Ma'am."
"We are going to have to destroy this vessel. Unfortunately crashing it into 47b probably will leave too much intact. We are going to need to make a run for Kepler-47 itself and let the sun destroy it. Chief, get to the shuttle ASAP. Ben and I are going to find an airlock and exit as fast as we can. I'm going to need you to pick us up outside. Understood?"
"Roger that, one taxi coming up, Ma'am."
"Cal, do we have intra-system jump capability?"
"Negative. The extensive damage to this platform severely limits hyperfield symmetry. Micro-jumps of no more than a half a kilometer are possible given the current configuration."
"How fast can the jump engines cycle? How fast can we microjump?"
"The hyperdrive can recycle several hundred thousand times a second, however, the chronoscope was severely damaged and degraded by the thermonuclear explosion. A temporal lock will be difficult to maintain with jump frequency greater than four or five jumps per second"
Instantly an idea germinated in Cat's mind and she grinned. "Chief... change of plans."
Responding to her companion's quizzical look, Cat continued with a twinkle in her eye, "Ben, what happens when a temporal lock is lost during a hyperjump?"
Chapter Nineteen - A Time to Fight...
"You want to do WHAT!" Admiral Bud Faragon yelled. "Are you sure you are fully recovered Commodore?"
"Sir the physics are sound. Hyperfield mechanics dictate that theta remains conserved across a large enough sample of random time slips. Every time we jump we will move forward or backward a few milliseconds, but on average we will remain fixed in time." Cat said across her quantum link with the GCP Yorktown.
"And how again does this help us?" The Admiral asked.
"Sir we are moments from losing control of this WhimPy again. The problem is the KayBee hive mind uses an entangled quantum link to control its drones. We can't disrupt this link. Jumping around a point in time won't disrupt the signal, but what it will do is corrupt the integrity of the data flow."
Understanding dawned on the Admiral's face. He leaned forward in the command chair on the bridge of the Yorktown. "Meaning the hive mind will lose control of its drones on the ship and thus its ability to wrestle control away from you."
"Yes, Sir. It’s not that much different than the 'Thumper' design I left for R&D to develop before I left the Yorktown. Unfortunately it will also disrupt our ability to communicate with the Yorktown."
"Understood. When are you going to engage temporal shifting?" The Admiral leaned back in the command chair.
"As soon as I'm done briefing you, Sir; I need to have a conversation with Rasta-Tckner but then we'll be ready."
"Good luck, Commodore."
***
The super-mind was confused. It had been moments from assuming complete control of the invader's weapon’s platform. The invaders had created a new command and control network that it was unable to penetrate, but in the process they had revealed the control structures for the massive platform.
That alone would not have allowed the super-mind to claim victory but at the same time the invaders shared another secret: the control proto
cols for their nano-machines. It had taken quite a while, easily ten full minutes, to figure out what these tiny machines could be made to do – but the revelation was startling. The super-mind began to build its own command and control network and started the process of bypassing the invaders linkages. It was a running fight but it was slowing winning, then nothing.
Its link to the drones became garbled. It could actively re-sequence incoming segments of the data stream but this only addressed upstream data flow. The super-mind could not send a coherent data stream to the drones. As a result the drones were no longer under its control and no longer part of the collective intelligence.
This meant one of his two prizes had been wrestled from him. He would not lose the second. The super-mind secured the weapon platform's AI within one of his attack asteroids.
There the hive would have plenty of time to breach the AI's formidable defenses. The other asteroids were immediately deployed to a small red star called Gliese 581. Perhaps if the invaders were busy defending part of their already conquered territory they would not be in a rush to recover the second prize. The fact that they had already mounted a recovery effort simply validated the assessment that the platform and its AI were of great value. Studying it would greatly enhance the hives ability to aggressively defend itself.
***
Gasner-ra stopped mid-stride. It took him a moment to realize it, but he was free. There was an annoying garble coming from his high-speed node, but that was a small discomfort after months of forced enslavement. He reached out with his local organics and was surprised to learn he was not alone. Over a thousand of his hive mates were likewise free. With no access to a queen to integrate their thoughts they could not form a hive collective but they could talk freely.
Suddenly he heard a synthetic voice on his local node. For the first time since their worlds had been attacked he had hope. And it came not from their own people, but from those they had been seeking to destroy.
"People of the hive. I am Commodore Catherine Kimbridge from the Galactic Coalition of Planets. Please be at ease. We will defend ourselves, but we will not attack you. You are temporarily cut off from your collective. Whether you stay cut off is a decision you each will have to make. Those that wish to remain independent of the collective will be given the tools to disable your high-speed communications node. You will be shown what to do by a member of your race. Those that wish to remain with the collective will be allowed to leave this vessel unharmed and unhindered."
The thousand or so members of the hive spent the next several minutes discussing their situation. A video prepared by Rasta-Tckner demonstrated the use of a painless short range electro-magnetic pulse device that could effectively short-out the quantum nodes on a person by person basis.
In the end, only sixteen of the former drones elected to stay with the collective. Gasner-ra noted that all sixteen were the youngest of their contingent. These were the ones that were born into the collective and did not have a strong independent personality. In his mind this simple fact represented the greatest fear for his people should the hive super-mind prove to be unstoppable.
***
Mike was sick. He stood in a room with three of his children: Cricket, Jiminy, and their young queen Madam Roach. The three juveniles were engaged in a nervous shuffle and Mike could hear a high-pitched pining on his suit's radio. What they were looking at had obviously been shared with the rest of the brood.
The scene was ghastly. They had just found and entered this section of the city. The room was another nursery. But, unlike the one Mike had found several weeks ago, the eggs in this one had reached maturation without anyone to rescue the hatchlings from starvation. Hundreds of children had died.
Mike knew from the first nursery that he had found that eggs would hatch in groups of eighteen every fifteen days. That meant most of these infants had been dead longer than he had been in the city. It also meant there might be others–in other nurseries–that could still be saved.
"Madam, I need you to do something."
"Yes, Daddy?"
"We can't let this happen again if we can stop it."
"Daddy?"
"Honey, you know what I need you to do."
"You want me to link up with the others like the game we played yesterday?" There was an almost human tremor in her voice. She was afraid.
"Yes honey, but this time I need you to link with everyone. We have GOT to do two things; learn how to access the city's data net, and find any other nurseries – before it’s too late."
The young queen, her carapace silver unlike her coppery brothers, shuffled back and forth in what Mike knew to be extreme agitation. "Daddy, I don't want too! I'm scared!"
Mike went over to the young creature and picked her up to hold in his arms. Certain things transcended species. The loving embrace of a parent; even, or maybe especially, an adoptive one, was one of them.
"Sweetie, the danger of losing control like what happened to your parents is minimal. That queen was linking with billions, you are only going to link with about seventy. Linked together and learning from each other you can do things with a speed that can't be matched as individuals. I need you, they..." pointing to the egg chambers, "need you. Besides, I'll be here to protect you."
"Promise?"
Mike hugged the little creature. "I promise," he said and meant it.
***
It took Mike's children the better part of a week but they finally gained access to the city's internal data grid. Unfortunately they discovered two dead nurseries and another where they were able to save only the last hatching.
In the process of gaining access to the internal networkthe children learned to read and speak‘Bugger.’ The hive mind was an extremely efficient mechanism for learning. Whatever a single individual learned, the entire collective learned. Insights were shared in a like manner. It was obvious to Mike that even in their current numbers the hive was a genius intellect. He knew it was simply a matter of a uniquely alien biology, but he was never the less proud of his kids and took abundant opportunity to praise them.
Once the kids had access to the city's data there was an explosion of activity. Mike worked with the little queen to ensure a strong priority was given to locating other nurseries.
It became abundantly clear they were in serious trouble. The city was orders of magnitude bigger than even Mike had anticipated and the number of nurseries was staggering. They numbered close to a thousand. There was no way their small band was going to be able to save everyone, and every day they delayed finding a solution children died.
"We have to call for help," Mike said out loud.
"We cannot," Cricket said, speaking with the voice of the collective. "We would be subsumed and you would be killed. This is unacceptable."
"Listen to me. We all die eventually. I'm not in any particular hurry, but I would die a thousand times over if it would prevent the loss of life we are talking about here."
He stopped to hold Cricket so he was staring directly into the little bug's face. "Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few..."
"…or the one, Daddy," Cricket finished. "There must be another way."
"I wish there was too. Tell the others to bring the city's communication array online. We need to do this now, before any more children die."
***
Captain Lastila of the Ashkelon Space Exploration Corps settled in her command nest. Her new ship, Enduring Friendship, was one of the first designed by her race to employ the human's computer technology. It still filled her with awe that she could speak to what was essentially a machine and get a meaningful and well thought out response. If only the same was true for her fledglings.
Her youngest, Rastii was sulking in her quarters. He had wanted to come to the bridge but she forbade it until he was older. To be fair, she recalled a similar argument between herself as a young fledgling and her father who had commanded one of the first Ashkelon interplanetary spaceships.
&
nbsp; Her musing were cut short by an alarm klaxon. "Computer, report!"
"Sixty-five asteroids massing in excess of twenty million kilotons each and with a relative velocity of 28,000 kilometers an hour just jumped into this star system. They are on a collision course with Ashkelon. Estimated time to impact twenty-five minutes."
"How were they able to jump in? Aren't the hyperfield inhibitors online?"
"Indeed they are; however, it appears the KayBee fleet has learned from past experience and jumped outside of the damping zone."
"Are the GCP defense platforms in place?"
"Affirmative."
"Lieutenant Rula, inform sector command that we have a confirmed attack in progress."
"Aye, Captain!" the younger female answered crisply.
Turning in her nest Lastila faced her weapons officer, a human on loan from the GCP. "Commander Martinescu, coordinate with WhimPy-101. I want options that don't include letting them hit or destroying them outright."
"Yes, Ma'am."
"And Andrew..."
"Yes, Ma'am. Send a signal to the GCP, let them know what is happening."
***
WhimPy-101was the first of a new series of Heshe weapon’s platform. They were slightly smaller than the original platforms by virtue of the fact they were constructed from previously excavated asteroids from the Kepler-47 system. There were in facttwenty-eight of them–corresponding to the twenty-eight that had been surrendered by the KayBee forces that had attacked the Sol system.
Each WhimPy had a clone of WhimPy-23's AI and was modified to use quantum encrypted communication between its various internal systems. Also, unlike the original WhimPy design, these platforms were designed from the onset to be peacekeepers. They had an arsenal of disabling technologies at their disposal. These included high yield EMP devices, hyperfield inhibitors, cloaking technology, adaptive and secure nanite systems, massive shield emitters, and a special tactical system called a Thumper.
Thumpers were a special device created specifically for dealing with the KayBees. It created a highly random null temporal flux within a ten kilometer radius of the unit by using a highly specialized hyperfield generator. Like the WhimPy in the Kepler-47 system that had a defective chronoscope, Thumpers created a field where time randomly fluctuated around a central point. Unlike that WhimPy, Thumpers were compact and could be carried by four men or an LS3 BigDog transport robot.