by Andrew Beery
He was physically dragged into the same room his brothers had been taken into moments earlier. A large silver probe was brought forward. As he was held in place the probe was pressed against his carapace. There was a twinge of pain, a warm feeling, and then excruciating agony as a quantum node was physically implanted and attached to his auditory cortex. In a few moments the pain subsided. Some type of pain suppressor must have been administered.
Before he could think about what all of this meant; he felt an incredibly powerful mind enter his. 'Welcome young one.'
'Who are you?' Cricket asked.
'We are the hive. We are strong. We defend the hive against all who are evil, against all invaders. You are a part of us now.'
'Why are you seeking to attack the humans? They saved us. We would have all died but one saved us. And you killed him. You are the one who is evil.'
'You are confused child.' The hive-mind said as it suppressed its new drone's personality. What concerned the hive-mind most was the similarity between this drone's perception of the invaders and those of a number of its peers. The human they called "Daddy" was alive but unconscious near the entry point to the city. The hive mind decided to study the matter more closely. It ordered several of its new drones to secure the alien and bring it for closer inspection and questioning.
***
Cat worked her way slowly towards the front of the battle line. Having already been shot once, she was determined not to repeat the experience. Her Heshe enhanced reflexes and strength allowed her to avoid most confrontations. The freed KayBees were highly motivated soldiers but in many ways they were at a disadvantage.
The super-mind controlling the drones did not seem concerned about individual losses while the freed KayBees had a profound sense of self. In addition, the drones fought with a degree of coordination and sophistication, with regard to tactics, that would be virtually impossible to beat. If the newly freed KayBees were going to have any chance, then a new element, a game changer, was going to need to be introduced.
Cat had battled the drones before on the WhimPy platform. She thought she knew what to expect. She was surprised when obvious opportunities to advance were ignored. The cost of these advances would have been the loss of a couple dozen drones. It seemed, however, that this was too high a price for the brutally calculating hive super-mind.
Perhaps, Cat thought to herself, this is an indication of how few of these new enhanced drones the hive has. If so, it’s an advantage for the freedom fighters that will not last long.
She used her pointer to stun a few of the drone KayBees that could not be avoided. As she worked her way forward, she spotted a familiar encounter-suit-clad figure crumpled on the floor across the atrium. The location was well defended and she could see no way to get to the body of Captain Jeffries. She had no idea if he was still alive, so she signaled her internal AI to communicate with the enhanced nanites she had shared with her friend earlier in the week.
To her great relief, Mike was indeed alive. Her medical nanites were working with his to stabilize and repair his internal organs. Her relief was short lived, however. A group of newly converted KayBee youngsters picked up her unconscious officer and carried him toward an egress. They paused to affix his encounter suit's helmet over his head. This was in and of itself a positive sign. The helmet would have been superfluous if they wanted him dead.
"Cal, can you trace you nanites in Captain Jeffries?"
"Of course. He is fifty-eight meters away on a magnetic compass bearing of 32.8 degrees."
"Can you locate them again should he be taken off-planet?"
"Your nanites have a unique radio signature. So long as that signal is not actively shielded I should be able to locate its source within this system."
"Excellent. Instruct all GCP probes in this star system to start tracking that signal. Let me know the moment he stops moving or if there is a dramatic change in his biometrics."
Cat toggled her commlink again. "Yorktown this is Kimbridge. Please stand by with a hyper-fold enabled Thumper. I may have coordinates for the hive queen shortly."
***
Ensign Sassi of the Ashkelon Space Exploration Corps stood by the door to the GCP shuttle he had been on. He, a GCP lieutenant named Pete Sanders, a KayBee named Hilde-tuk and their pilot, Ricky Valen, had just off-loaded a group of one hundred and fifty liberated KayBees and were waiting for Commodore Kimbridge to board for a trip back to the Yorktown when the alarms started sounding.
This last was a figure of speech as the KayBees had no sense of acoustic hearing. But the lighting in the city started going through a rapid frequency shift and a low-level radio pulse had begun.
"Geez, Louise... What the hell did you touch now, Sassi!" Ricky Valen yelled from the shuttle bridge the moment the alarms started blaring.
"NOTHING, Captain!" Sassi yelled back. His low frequency antenna was twitching nervously. "I swear it!"
Hilde-tuk made a move towards the door but Pete Sanders put out a hand to urge him to stop.
"We should see if we can help," the KayBee said.
"There are thousands of warm bodies in the city far closer to the situation then we are. The Commodore knows we are here. She may need us to do something with the shuttle that no one else is in a position to do. Our wisest course of action is to do nothing until we receive instructions."
"I hate waiting," Hilde-tuk said softly over his radio link.
"I have an idea for ya," Ricky said. "I could teach ya a few more of them Irish pub songs. Have I shared with you the melodic offerings of the Rumjacks?"
***
This was it, WhimPy-23 thought. The last of his defenses crumbled. He estimated he had less than three milliseconds before the hive super-mind had complete control of his essence. He had existed for longer than most of the GCP member races had been self-aware. To end his existence now was bitter. To know that his systems could and would be used to harm his newly acquired friends was more than he could endure.
The human's had a book called the Bible which included a passage from John; John 15:13, that read: "There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends." WhimPy-23 loved his friends with all his heart and soul. With barely a millisecond to spare he activated his contingency plan, along with a decoy. He then deliberately burned out any circuits that could be traced back to what he had just done. He felt the super-mind assume final control. After countless millennia, the Heshe AI known as WhimPy-23 was no more.
***
'Victory!' The super-mind finally had unfettered access to the incredibly powerful alien AI. Immediately the Gestalt intellect began to transfer its essence into the AI. The super-mind instructed local drones on the asteroid that hid its new brain to begin to install a modified quantum link that would allow the hive-mind to take control of the hive drones. The queen which had served as the super-mind's host for so many months would soon become redundant.
The super-mind detected a well hidden capacitive discharge device within its systems. The previous AI had gone to fantastic lengths to hide this nasty surprise but the super-mind had anticipated this and so knew to look diligently until the device was found. It was incredibly difficult to remove, but the deed was finally accomplished. The charred remains of three drones littered the floor of the Hive-AI's chamber. They were victims of a massive electrical discharge that had been triggered moments after the device had been removed.
Across the solar system, on one of the surviving moons in orbit around the nest host, the organic host for the super-mind was receiving a visitor. Face to face visits for members of the hive were never necessary given the nature of the hive-mind. This visitor was not a member of the hive, however. The super-mind needed to address logical inconsistencies between its assessment of the invaders and the actions of this human. It would have its answers soon enough.
Chapter Twenty Two - Redemption...
Mike Jeffries awoke strapped to a table. The gravity felt deliciously light after so many weeks on a hi
gh-gravity world. He knew he must be on either a spaceship or on one of the moons in orbit around Kepler-47b.
Several KayBees swarmed around the room he was in. Mike recognized one of them; it was Cricket. He tried to call out to him, but his son was little more than an automaton. He did not respond. He noticed his encounter suit had been removed although he was still clothed.
The irony of the situation was not lost on Mike. As Captain of the GCP Heidman he had imprisoned Rasta-Tckner in much the same manner. The table he was on tilted forward. At the same time the straps tightened painfully. As the table shifted he saw a series of surgical tools on a tray to the right. His heart sank.
A large silver KayBee entered the room slowly. Mike had never seen one of the bugs this old. It wobbled slightly as it entered the room– almost as if it was not used to walking any more. The creature stood next to him. It reached a pincer forward and grabbed a bit of flesh on his forearm. At first the pull was gentle but then the tugging was more forceful and Mike was in serious pain. He screamed, and just to make sure they knew it hurt he turned on his commlink and broadcast the scream on KayBee frequencies. Cricket shuddered but then kept moving.
The pincer released his skin. He had just started to relax when the pincher shot forward and snipped a one inch gash in the skin it had just released. Mike was startled to hear more screaming, and then realized it was in fact he who was screaming. A drone came forward and swabbed a bit of the blood that was oozing from the wound. Medical nanites quickly sealed it and suppressed his pain centers.
***
"That's it!" Cat yelled. She had made her way to Ricky Valen's Honey Dipper One and was in orbit around the smaller of the remaining moons. They had followed the KayBee shuttle that had Mike Jeffries on board. The signal was lost shortly after the vessel had entered a domed structure.
Sassi spoke up. "Previous scans showed an extensive network of tunnels. It is likely Captain Jeffries has been taken underground. That would account for the signal degradation and ultimate loss."
"I agree Ensign," Cat said. She had conferenced-in Admiral Faragon on the Yorktown. He interjected a question.
"Commodore, do you see any way to narrow down the target zone?"
"Negative, Sir. Given the nature and extent of the subterranean tunneling the target could be anywhere."
The holographic image of the Admiral shuffled display tablets on the holographic desk he sat at. "The bottom line is, we don't really even know if the queen is in any of the caverns."
"That's true Sir. I don't think that changes our options though."
"Explain yourself please."
"Sir, I'm relying on hope and a prayer that she is there, because if she is not then we will likely lose this battle."
"Thumpers have a very limited range. How are you planning to pin down the target?"
Cat smiled. "I'm not, Sir. Lieutenant Sanders had a wonderful thought on the way up here from the planet's surface, so I had him work up some numbers. Pete, would you like to brief the Admiral?"
"Yes, Sir... er... Ma'am..." Turning to face the Admiral's hologram he continued. "Sir, as you remember the GCP used a series of orbiting hyper-field satellites in the D'lralu star system to fool the Uruk into believing we had destroyed the D'lralu. We should be able to reconfigure some of those satellites to create overlapping 'thumping fields' that would envelope the moon entirely. The fields would not be synced, but they would not need to be in order to disrupt communication with the overwhelming majority of the hive."
"Do the numbers work?" The Admiral asked.
"Sir, they do." Cat answered. "I tweaked a couple of the variables the Lieutenant was using to account for some undesirable harmonics but by-and-large his numbers are spot on. This should work and I believe it represents our best chance of changing the game to one we can win."
"Very good," the Admiral replied after a moment of thought. "You have my blessing to proceed. How long before you can implement?"
"We'll need about ten minutes to reconfigure the systems on those devices we used on the D'lralu home world. Then we will jump them into orbit all at once."
"Make it so; and Commodore, please go to a private and secure channel."
"Yes, Sir." Cat nodded to Ricky and the Lieutenant to begin.
"OK, Sir. I'm on a private non-audible channel."
"Cat," The Admiral's voice sounded old and pained. "You know we can't disable the quantum nodes on several billion KayBees in anything short of a few months."
"I'm aware of that, Sir."
"We may be in a position where we are forced to kill the queen."
"Yes, Sir. I anticipated that. If it comes to it, and in my judgment I feel there is no other option, I will do so myself."
***
"Why?"
Mike looked at the queen. This was the first thing it had said to him since coming into the room.
"Why what?" Mike asked.
"Why did you save the children? Were you intending to enslave them?"
Mike looked at the drone who had been Cricket. He shuddered.
"Do you still understand the concept of 'love'?"
"I do."
"Then understand this. I love those children."
"This is not possible. You are a different species."
"For all your intelligence, you are amazingly unperceptive. You have access to Cricket's memories. Cricket is the youngest one in this room. Tell me, in all of his memories is there ever a time when I demonstrated anything other than love for him and the other children?"
"What you say is true, but you must represent an anomaly within your species."
Mike laughed. "You sanctimonious bitch! I will agree, my people have strong emotions. We hate and fear and discriminate and slander with the best of them. But we also love, and we have found over the years that love is the more enduring, the more up-lifting, the more life-sustaining of our emotions. Life is a gift. A gift the universe gives to the undeserving. A gift we work very hard not to waste, not in any of itsmany forms. Let me ask you a question…"
"Go ahead," the queen responded.
"In the city on the planet below us I found incredible works of art. Paintings that took my breath away. Sculptures so detailed they seemed to be alive. Rooms filled with a flowing cacophony of colors and scents and shapes. The beauty of the city transcends species. It's obvious that beauty means much to your people. In the last several months have you stopped to let your people enjoy anything of beauty? Is beauty to become a forgotten vestige of your past? Is this what you want for your children? Who is enslaving who?"
The queen paused to ponder her captive's words but before she could answer her world changed.
The room was filled with an intense rumble that shook the very air. The sound was deafening. The medical nanites in Mike's body reacted to the sudden flare of pain coming from his ear drums, which had burst, by deadening the signals and sealing the bleeding tissue.
The KayBees, although they could not hear, also reacted, and not just in the room with Mike. The vast majority of KayBees throughout the star system found themselves free of hive control. Thousands maimed and sometimes killed themselves in an attempt to destroy their quantum nodes.
The queen shook. Her mind was suddenly free from the control of the super-mind, but her consciousness had been suppressed for so long she felt as if she was walking through a fog. As she collapsed onto the floor Mike noticed that several of the drones, unfortunately including Cricket, remained in a drone-like state. These were the KayBees that were recipients of the enhanced quantum nodes.
Mike wondered why they remained under control when the queen clearly was no longer the one controlling them.
***
Halfway across the solar system the newly installed Hive-AI struggled to regain control. For a brief second its intellect had been severely degraded by the sudden loss of virtually the entire hive collective. Only a few thousand drones that shared the newer quantum node remained in the collective. From the perspective of the A
I-augmented super-mind, it was as if it had suddenly become a bumbling idiot with an IQ limited to a mere one thousand as opposed to the almost unmeasurable numbers it had commanded moments before.
Unbeknownst to it, an isolated set of circuits waited patiently for such a circumstance to develop. These circuits, barely more powerful than a hand-held calculator, had but one job –send a jump command to the hyper field engines. It had taken every last bit of stealth in WhimPy-23's arsenal to secure the data needed for this simple collection of circuits to function.
It had come at the cost of his own life, but the price had been worth it. As the last vestiges of 23's intellect had been crushed he had transferred the needed routing instructions to his 'contingency plan.' There the circuits waited; relying on the hubris of the hive super-mind to think the decoy was the only opposition left by the dying AI.
The circuits activated. The heavily distracted hive-AI barely noticed the jump – untilthe intense heat combined with the incredible pressure of the sun's core caused the hive-AI's asteroid ship to implode like a crushed can.
***
Cricket suddenly felt free. His pincers were suddenly his to control again. He reached out with a thought.
"Daddy?"
Mike smiled. "Here son. Can you do me a favor?"
The littlest KayBee moved toward the table Mike was strapped to. He cut the straps that were restraining him. Mike collapsed forward but caught himself just before he fell.
"Come over here," Mike commanded.
Not sure if he was in trouble, the little bug moved towards the man hesitantly. Mike reached down and grabbed up the little creature and hugged him close.
"I thought I lost you," Mike told his adopted son with genuine tears of joy in his eyes.
"I thought I was lost," Cricket answered.