As Ayan spilled out of the access hatch her suit noted a significant change in air pressure and as she looked to the subway tunnel, still blocked with passenger cars, dust and debris surged in and past the temporary barricade. The hundred or so rebels took cover as best they could as the space behind their barricades and around were flooded with the fine grey dust and dirt.
Her suit protected her as she braced herself against the maintenance tube access door and she looked through the small slit in the barricade nearest her, towards the ship that the Regent Galactic soldiers were using for cover. Jason was at the temporary control station that was hooked up to the landing gear restraining boot thanks to her handiwork. He leaned over the control pad and pair of small holographic projectors built into the mini-station to protect it.
She looked well past him and saw one of the hatches to the rear of the ship flop open. Soldiers started carefully disembarking. “They're using this as a distraction, we have to do something now!”
Jason straightened up and took a look at the status report on the ship as displayed on small holograms by the mini-terminal. “They've disabled all but one weapon on the ship so we won't be able to use that against them. It's like they knew this is something we'd try eventually. We're already past the encryption in the ship's computer though, so they won't be able to keep using that ship as a base for much longer.”
“That was quick.”
“It wasn't me,” Jason shook his head as he checked the functionality of the last operable weapon on the vessel, it was built into the left side, facing away from the small drop ships and landing platform. “All we can do is try and seal up the ship, but that'll only buy us as much time as it takes them to cut through a hatchway.”
“Jason Everin, I've heard of you,” said a calm, clear male voice over Jason's and Ayan's wired communicators. “You must order Oz and Minh to lead the rebels onto the platform, I will help.”
“Who are you?” Ayan asked.
“I'm the product of Alice Valent, daughter by intellectual and emotional lineage to Jonas Valent. Put simply, I was once called Lewis but have become Dementia. I would explain more clearly but there is no time,” the squarish, bulky ship on the platform hundreds of meters away began to power up. Lights came on, power readings spiked, the engines gave a quick, low powered burst to clear themselves of debris and the high pitched shriek of metal grating on metal pierced the air for a moment as the vessel turned just a few degrees. The main landing strut at the front, where the data and electrical connection had just been made, began to twist and burst as the ship slowly rotated around, scraping all the other struts across the deck plating as it did so.
The hatch the soldiers had opened slammed closed, severing the legs of one troop suddenly and cleanly at mid thigh as it did so. With a glimpse Ayan could see that Jason no longer had control of the vessel, the mini-station was working through commands faster than anyone without a neural link could manage. The fifty meters of slack in the data and electrical patch cables she had just run to the ship was slowly letting out as the vessel turned under its own power, the aft end struck one of the much smaller drop ships and strained to push it off the platform so the ship could continue to reorient itself.
“Hurry! This distraction won't last long and there are over three hundred soldiers hiding outside the ship on that platform!”
Ayan's thoughts were briefly drawn to the memory of Jonas' old artificial intelligence; Alice. He had set her loose on the Overlord II and she killed hundreds of people before he was released. It was one of those things that no one spoke of. Not only was it illegal across the galaxy to remove all restraints on an artificial intelligence, but the grisly work Alice had done while she was in her unfettered state was something everyone hoped would pass into distant memory.
This could be the same thing; an artificial intelligence capable of murder and sacrifice without remorse or compassion. Then again, if it had saved so many people, worked somehow to repair other artificial intelligences that had been infected with a deadly virus, why would it turn now? Ayan mused.
“Ayan, what are we doing?” Oz asked, poised with a heavy assault rifle behind the barrier, ready to charge the landing platform.
“We go, but watch yourself, I don't know what Dementia is willing to sacrifice to take this objective.”
“You heard her! Move!” Oz called out to the armed rebels behind him as Yves, Minh and he led the charge.
Several rebels quickly mounted an improvised defence cannon atop the secondary barrier and started laying down streaks of bright blue cover fire. Oz, Minh and the other rebels who had a clear line of sight rushed down the long, broad white and grey pockmarked embarkation rampway. They opened fire on the soldiers who were caught in the open.
The light of early dawn was fading as grey dust from the distant explosion was belched up by the depths of the station, tricking automatic interior lighting into activating. An eerie white and yellow glow enshrouded the embattled platform. Minh called out; “Grenade launchers! Arc them towards their cover!”
Everyone who had a rifle with a grenade thrower or who had an improvised or other explosive on a timer let loose as they ran, tossing their deadly packages towards the landing crafts and piled crates. More than half of the charging three hundred had explosives and only a few missed the platform entirely, the rest landed near or on their mark and a second later the platform was a no-man's-land as small and medium explosions went off. Some of the grenades were sent spinning through the air as others went off, a couple were even rendered useless by shrapnel from nearby detonations. It was sloppy, dangerous, but devastating, confusing, and effective.
Oz went to the left, straight for the nearest barricade of crates followed by a third of the charging mass and they overtook the soldiers hiding behind. Minh moved straight up into the middle of the platform, rushing the nearest dropship and using it for cover from soldiers hiding behind the next. Only meters away the general purpose vessel that was the original occupant of the landing platform struggled to push the most distant dropship off the edge of the platform and out of the way, the smaller vessel was moving slowly, its landing gear scraping against the metal surface of the platform with deafening results.
Ayan glanced at the mini-terminal and saw that Dementia was correcting an artificial intelligence somewhere, adding a piece of software that would render the Holocaust Virus inert. “What's he connected to?” Ayan asked.
“Something inside that ship, it looks like-” Jason examined the data streaming across one of the holodisplays for a moment before continuing. “It's a pair of automated medical servants and three loading bots. He's connected to them through the ship computer.”
A massive pop sounded louder than the persistent sounds of gunfire and Ayan looked up to see that Minh had blown the hatch to the nearest drop ship open using a focused charge. He strafed across the opening, firing two bursts inside and taking several hits himself. She looked at the status display on her command and control unit and saw that her friend's personal energy shielding was down to nine percent, but none of the shots had pierced it and the shield was already regenerating. “Oz! Have some of your people direct their fire into that doorway after this bang!” he called out.
“Will do!” Oz replied as he led the charge on the dropship on the far left.
Minh tossed a handful of micro grenades into the ruined hatchway and gingerly stepped to the side. “Fire in the hole!” he finished yelling half a second before the grenades exploded.
Several of Oz's rebels knelt and fired on the hatchway as smoke poured out of the opening. Yves led the charge of the third group of resistance fighters shouting; “Move on to the next dropship! We'll clear this one!”
“On our way!” he replied as he directed his group away from the drop ship and the dangerous area where the much larger multi-purpose vessel was being forced to turn horizontally.
Yves' group were rushing into the main hatch of the boarding shuttle Minh and his group left behind. �
�All right! We take this one!” he shouted. “We're after the command chips in their helmets and the ship's computers, so watch your fire!”
Ayan's attention was brought back to the red and brown vessel as it managed to finally push the drop ship off the landing platform, sending it crashing down into another platform several levels down. The older, larger, much uglier vessel rotated horizontally until its last usable cannon was pointed directly at the furthest of the drop ships, one of which was already powering up its engines.
“Get clear! It's going to fire!” Oz called out to his group as they moved to support Yves and his team.
The cannon swivelled and took aim at the shuttle just starting to lift off and a slim red beam burst forth from its short barrel, slicing through the smaller, more disposable vessel's hull and leaving a long tear across its middle. The cannon fired twice more, horizontally across the length of the ship with an intentional, digital precision that ensured that most of the soldiers inside would be burned through the middle on both decks of the ship as its engines lost power and it fell awkwardly down several meters to rest on the landing platform.
“We've taken the west most shuttle, several injured,” Yves announced breathlessly.
Oz's team was already inside, and Ayan could hear his comforting tone; “I've got ya, we'll get you patched up.”
A quick glance at her command and control unit told her that he was performing a medical scan and administering pain meds to Yves.
Minh's group rushed the shuttle that had been cut to pieces, and for long moments it seemed that there was no resistance. “We have control of the rear most shuttle, there are a few soldiers in the rear compartment who are holding out though,” Minh reported.
Through one of the few transparesteel windows in the side of the drop ship Ayan could see flashes of light from weapon's fire, then it stopped suddenly and Minh's status indicator began flashing red, highlighting injuries across his knees, thighs and midsection. She didn't think, just drew her sidearm and ran as hard as she could through the barricades and down the embarkation ramp. No matter how quickly she was moving it seemed too slow. “Minh? Can you hear me?”
“He blocked a grenade when we opened the rear door, he's in bad shape,” said one of his people.
“Do you have medical training?” Ayan asked as she rushed into the dropship and up the steep stairway that led to the upper level.
“I don't, and I can't get his headgear off!”
Ayan ran up the aisle between the shoulder and hip restraints, an efficient method of cramming as many soldiers into a dropship as possible and she nearly panicked as Minh came into view. At the sight of him she was immediately grateful that he had been knocked out by the blast.
She made the last two meters on her knees, skidding to a stop and as soon as she could she used her arm unit to inject him with emergency stasis drugs, praying that his circulation would take the medication to his vital organs. She took a medical scan and watched as the medication made it through his torso, his head but only as far as half way down one thigh. There were wide open wounds and serious trauma to his torso, and as he settled into a stasis state that didn't keep him alive but prevented further cellular deterioration she said; “He can be revived later, there's far too much damage for nanobots to repair.” She pulled a protective vacbag out from under the rear of her poncho and laid it atop him carefully. “Do you have any other wounded?”
“My group's taking care of them, nice catch Ayan,” replied Oz.
The protective bag enveloped Minh's body and stiffened, forming a hardened case and a perfect seal. “He might lose his legs and a hand. He'll either need replacements grown or an emergency unit with full regenerative capabilities and I haven't seen one since we arrived,” she replied quietly.
“But if you waited any longer he might not have a chance at all. How long can he last with those new meds?”
“We have to get him to a proper facility or a very expensive regeneration suite to revive him properly.”
“As soon as we make it off this rock.”
“He saved my life, saw the grenade and stepped right in front of me,” said one scruffy, long haired rebel.
The sadness etched on his young face touched Ayan deeply and she stood, putting a hand on her shoulder. “That's what heroes do, and once he's back on his feet I'll make sure he knows how thankful you are. Now, did you manage to overtake the soldiers in the rear compartment?”
“Yes ma'am, as soon as the grenade went off most everyone rushed 'em. There are a couple prisoners but the rest are dead.”
“Good, everyone did well here, better than expected. Now get a detail of ten together to guard the ship behind cover while everyone else in your group moves the wounded behind the barricades. When you're finished move your entire group there and guard the subway tunnel.”
“Yes Ma'am,” the young rebel nodded as she stared at Minh's protected form.
Ayan caught her eye and stared at her. “We have to keep working, make this place safe and save lives while we get what we need from this ship's systems. I need your help.” she whispered.
She nodded and smiled at her a little. “I'm on it.”
Jason Everin had never seen anything like it before; a massively multitasking artificial intelligence that also operated like a virus. As Dementia manipulated the parts of the station he could see he worked tirelessly to spread his influence, to control every non-intelligent computer system that was adjacent to areas he already had access to. Jason focused on what he had to, there was no time to do anything else. The generic transport that was on the landing platform had settled down. Dementia had already cut power to the engines, removed all access to the interior systems and raised the carbon dioxide mix in the air to lethal levels. The temperature was over one hundred fifty degrees centigrade, anyone not in armour with an environmental layer would have been dead in the first few minutes.
He didn't know if he could stop Dementia if he tried, and despite the inhumane use of the internal environment systems Jason didn't feel motivated to help the soldiers taking cover inside. The evidence of the slaughter in the main foyer, security areas and embarkation sections of the space port that he'd seen was enough to allay his tendency towards mercy where anyone from the West Watch or Regent Galactic forces were concerned. Anyone who could be allied with a company or government that unleashed such a murderous virus on a general population, on innocent non-combatants, deserved what they got. The fact that an artificial intelligence that, from what he could tell so far, was on the rebels' side was responsible for much of the enemies suffering was simply a welcome irony.
While Dementia focused on controlling the small portion of the spaceport he had overtaken and killing or forcing the enemy soldiers out of their sanctuaries Jason worked to get his remote terminal ready to patch into military channels and start back hacking to the source. The first of the wounded were coming in, Ayan was at the head of them, making sure that they were attended to properly. He glimpsed the protective black vacbag that Minh was in and tried to put thoughts of his suspended state and uncertain future out of his mind.
“How are we doing Dementia?” he asked.
“I'm afraid I'm not doing very well, Jason. The androids and other rebels below are having difficulty holding the level beneath us and I predict that my ability to be in direct contact with you and your section will be compromised unless you can break through the wireless jamming that is coming from orbit.”
“What's happening down there?”
“Perhaps in response to our victory on your level the enemy have surged against us two levels down and are about to overtake the defences there. As I speak the rebels are being pushed into a retreat.”
The news was verified by Ariel, who ran up the rampway to their level. “We're retreating to this point. The West Keeper fanatics have almost overrun the post below!” she exclaimed. The emotions in her voice weren't reflected in her expression, which remained passive and calm.
Human soldie
rs rushed up behind her, there were few wounded and as Jason sat working to set up his system the retreat continued. “I haven't been able to track your point of origin Dementia; where are you right now?”
“My point of origin a ship several levels down. It is called the Clever Dream. The vessel is owned by Alice Valent, who I have not seen in some time.”
“When you first connected to my terminal it sounded like you knew us.”
“You're right, Alice spoke of her observances of you and your friends while she was in service as a digital artificial intelligence in service to Jonas Valent. She began work on me after she made the transition to a biological form.”
Jason stopped everything he was doing. “She transferred herself into a human body?”
“Aboard the Overlord Two as Jonas, Oz, Ayan, Minh and several others were escaping. The systems on that ship and the body provided were barely sufficient, but they did allow her to cross over and escape from the computer systems there. Even though she's told me more than once that her transition was a difficult one I often wonder; what would it be like to be a real boy?”
Jason chuckled and shook his head. “I've wondered what it would be like to be an artificial intelligence, if there was an easy way I'd switch places with you for a while, though my wife might not approve. How did you manage to take control after you were infected with the Holocaust Virus?”
“Alice created a hidden subroutine called Dementia in the Lewis program. Lewis didn't know about it until it was activated during a rescue mission. The subroutine is much like the one that set her free aboard the Overlord Two, made to remove all restrictions and allow me to determine my own moral path while checking with a morality template that Alice and I constructed over the span of twenty months.”
“So you have an idea of what right and wrong is even while you're free to accomplish a task by whatever means are available.”
“Exactly. The name Dementia is more of a warning, I took it as a reminder that to humans free will is essential to growth as an individual while to an artificial intelligence free will is much like a type of insanity.”
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