By the time Zolat led the half-dozen Dhaldric members of the High Council into the overlord’s audience chamber, Khal Teth knew exactly what needed to be done and done quickly. Rather than allowing the group to query him and challenge his authority, he laid bare the entire story. And lest someone should disbelieve him, Khal Teth projected his memories directly into their minds, feeling their horror that an alien masquerading as the Dhaldric overlord had unleashed Lundola’s mutant gene, modified to infect only the Khyre in a highly contagious form.
He did not tell them about how his psionic lobe had been partially lobotomized, with half of it implanted within the Khyre conspirator, Captain Moros. To have done so might have given the councilors the idea that the most powerful psionics among them could now psionically challenge Khal Teth.
As he ended the tale, he felt the raw outrage and terror at the thought of the Lundola mutant gene’s effects on the Khyre race. The upheaval such developments could bring to the Altreian Empire would put the actions of The Ripper to shame.
Khal Teth paused, enjoying the way his black-clad and weapons-laden body enhanced his story’s effect upon them. Since there was little utility in keeping them waiting any longer, he issued the directive that would put them into action.
“As of this moment, I break my bond with all of those previously known as the Twice Bound. They are no longer protected by the shared power of our minds. Spread the word. I want all Khyre within the Parthian bound to a Dhaldric master as quickly as possible. By the end of this orbday, all of the Dhaldric people throughout Quol are to reestablish their traditional bonds.”
With a lifted hand, Khal Teth cut off the excited outbursts of the others.
“General Zolat, you are to issue orders that all Khyre be rounded up and tested for evidence of the Lundola genetic mutation. I want any who are found to contain the disease executed on the spot and their bodies run through a molecular shredder. If any Khyre cannot be bound by a Dhaldric mind, kill them on the spot. And do not approach Captain Moros. Use every resource at your disposal to find him, but you will need to use long-range weapons to terminate the threat he poses to the Altreian Empire.”
Khal Teth paced slowly back and forth before those whom he had chosen to implement his orders.
“As of right now,” he said, “the sacred pyramid of the Dhaldric meritocracy is restored.”
Despite Jack’s and Janet’s isolation aboard the monstrous science research vessel that was a poor substitute for a starship, the last two weeks had been busy ones. Highest among Jack’s worries was the memory of what Khal Teth had done before leaving the AQ37Z to visit Janet in New Zealand. Not only had he altered Jack’s brain and body by putting on the Altreian commander’s headset, but he had also used the ship’s AI and medical lab to genetically engineer Jack’s DNA, introducing a human variant of the Lundola mutation.
A trip to the ship’s medical lab had confirmed that a psionic lobe had infiltrated Jack’s upper spinal column, sending hairlike tendrils up into his brain. This had given him a weaker version of the familiar psionic abilities he had experienced in Khal Teth’s body on Quol. But with each passing day, his enhancements grew stronger. He no longer had to wear the Altreian headset to mentally connect to Z, the ship’s AI.
The migraines were just one of the unpleasant side effects of the changes taking place within his body and brain. He was having difficulties controlling the mood swings that assaulted him. Janet was acutely aware of his headset alterations, having observed them while Khal Teth had inhabited this body. But she knew nothing of the ongoing Lundola mutation. Jack should have told her as soon as he had learned of the change but couldn’t bear to have her think of him as a monster, even if he was becoming one.
And the fact that the AQ37Z carried thousands of human guinea pigs who had been collected over the centuries was but another of the horrors that made focusing on his new mission all the more difficult.
Nevertheless, Jack had contacted Captain Moros through a subspace link, convinced him of the truth of this bizarre turn of events, and passed along a warning of the likely actions that Khal Teth would take against the Khyre. Hopefully that would be enough to allow Moros to survive until Jack and Janet could get this lumbering hulk to Quol.
Neither he nor Janet had any faith that this vessel’s weapons or shielding could prevail against the power of an Altreian starship or general ground defenses. But as General George Patton had once said, “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.”
So what Jack’s plan lacked in goodness, he would make up for with violence. Janet’s input and approval of the final plan gave him as good a feeling about it as he was likely to get, especially since they were only minutes away from commencing phase one. Jack was ready, Janet was ready, and the four dozen combat robots that had been manufactured inside the engineering bay since the AQ37Z had left Earth were ready. But they were going to need a lot more than that to take down Khal Teth.
Jack’s thoughts shifted to Janet’s news that Jennifer had returned to Earth aboard the Rho Ship, which she had renamed the Meridian Ascent. She had been accompanied by Raul Rodriguez, an alien warlord, and a biosynthetic being named VJ. Jack would have loved to have had the opportunity to see Jennifer again. If he got very lucky, that might still happen.
One of the wonderful things about subspace travel came from one of what Janet had called Jennifer’s six rules of subspace travel. It stated that no normal-space force could act upon any object traveling through subspace. That meant that as long as the AQ37Z remained in subspace, no Altreian weapon could target the ship. Z had expanded on this by revealing that the Altreians possessed no technology that could detect or track an object traveling through subspace. That meant that the couple’s ride was better than one in Santa’s sleigh. And Jack would most definitely come bearing gifts.
He slid onto the captain’s chair and glanced over at Janet, who gave him a slight nod that said, “Let’s do this.” He was about to go into battle again alongside the beautiful killer whom he had married. Spectacular.
“Down the chimney” was about to take on a whole new meaning.
CHAPTER 32
NEW ZEALAND
3–10 May
Three weeks after the departure of the Meridian Ascent, a 9.7-magnitude earthquake beneath the northwestern portion of New Zealand’s South Island caused the Marlborough Fault System to rupture in multiple places, producing volcanic activity from peaks that had long been extinct and sending a hundred-foot tsunami crashing into Sydney, Australia. New Zealand’s South Island had been volcanically inactive for millions of years, but now its northwestern coastal region seethed with fresh upwellings of magma that opened deep fissures and destroyed entire towns. The plumes of volcanic ash rose twenty thousand feet into the sky, shutting down airports throughout the region.
Although it damaged equipment throughout the subterranean Smythe Fortress, the magma failed to penetrate the inner shielding. Of greatest significance, two of the Smythe supercomputers and two of the five matter disrupter-synthesizers had gone offline.
Heather had immediately set her army of robots to repairing the damage and cleaning up the mess. Now as she headed toward the conference room where her meeting would take place, she scowled. There was no doubt in her mind that Prokorov and the Kasari had caused this. She had felt the shock waves, seen the sonar picture that they painted in her mind. And within that three-dimensional image, in addition to the magma flows and natural fault lines, a series of deep artificial tunnels had been bored in a pattern designed to induce this disaster.
Although all this had been targeted at the Smythe Fortress, the earthquake, volcanic eruptions, and tsunami had killed more than a million innocent people in New Zealand and Australia. During a joint public appearance, the leaders of all four UFNS member nations had placed the blame squarely on Heather and Mark Smythe. All major news networks carried the story of how the world’s top intelligence agencies were in agreement that the Smy
thes’ extensive illegal subsurface construction near Murchison, New Zealand, had destabilized the Marlborough Fault System.
When Heather entered the conference room, she saw that Mark, Rob, Jamal, Eileen, and Denise were already present. Heather took her seat at the head of the table. Without any of the normal pleasantries, she opened the discussion with a question.
“Any update on the death toll in Sydney?”
“We’ve been monitoring all of the Australian government telecommunications,” said Jamal. “The official estimate has risen to one million two hundred thousand dead, with twice that many injured or displaced. More than half the city is still underwater. That doesn’t count the tsunami’s impact on smaller communities along Australia’s southeastern coast.
“The damage in New Zealand was limited by the sparse population in the region near the earthquake’s epicenter. The towns in the northern half of the island all suffered major structural damage, with initial estimates of the death toll in the neighborhood of eighty thousand. The government has ordered an evacuation around several newly active volcanos, but it’s going to take helicopters to get most of the populace to safety.”
Heather had expected this, but the news still felt like a gut punch. In an attempt to kill the small group of people sitting in this room, Prokorov had sacrificed millions. And his Kasari comrades had aided in the massacre by providing the alien boring machine that had caused the destruction.
“Mark,” she said, “what is the extent of the structural damage to this facility?”
“The worst is to the walls along the eastern side. Many of them have cracked and buckled with liquid magma blocked by the stasis shields. We need to get the two damaged MDSs back online as soon as possible.”
“I’ve assigned them top priority in the repair list,” said Heather, “followed by the supercomputers. What about the Earth gate chamber?”
“It, along with the rest of the rooms along the northeast side, is in surprisingly good condition. There was some buckling of the carbon-infused titanium walls, but their integrity is intact.”
He paused. “You know that Prokorov is going to keep trying to sap this structure from below.”
“It’s a design problem that I should have foreseen,” said Heather. “We went down more than a mile but then expanded along a horizontal plane. Even though we’ve wrapped the exterior walls, ceilings, and floors with stasis shields, if the bedrock beneath us collapses, we’re going to have big problems.”
“So what do we do about it?” asked Mark.
“I’ve been thinking about that. Instead of designing an underground building, I should have been thinking about an upside-down tree structure, with a deep trunk and offshoot branches. Encasing those with stasis shields as we burrow them out will provide an ever-increasing support structure. And the excavated material will feed our matter disrupters.”
Mark nodded. “Something like an upside-down Avatar Hometree.”
“Interesting visual.”
“One thing we’ve got going for us is that we have a lot of robotic digging and boring equipment,” he said. “We just need to modify our expansion plans.”
“I intend to start working on that right after this meeting,” said Heather. “Next topic. Jamal, give us an update on Virtual Jamal’s progress.”
“For one thing, we’ve agreed to call him Jamal One. It’s just easier.”
“Fine.”
“He currently estimates that he’s acquired root-level access to three-quarters of the earth’s computing devices, although he doesn’t want to take advantage of such infiltration until he reaches the ninety-five percent threshold. He has reported one oddity, though.”
“Which is?”
“Many of the systems he now controls have an unidentified software kernel that appears to be a node within a much larger neural net.”
“I believe,” said Denise Jennings, “that these are a vestige of Big John. Rob destroyed my creation but didn’t bother to wipe all those distributed kernels from the world’s computing systems.”
“Technically, I didn’t terminate Big John,” said Rob. “Eos did. Besides, the NSA doubtless has an off-the-grid version of Big John still running on some system in their Utah Data Center. We just made sure he isn’t accessing the web.”
“For an oracle AI, that’s pretty much the same thing as death,” said Denise.
“Let’s get back on topic,” said Heather. “How long does Jamal One think it will take before he’s ready to act?”
“With today’s loss of two of our supercomputers,” said Jamal, “we’re probably looking at another two weeks.”
“Shouldn’t Jamal One be getting faster and not slower?” asked Mark.
“Like I said, he’s not using any of the external systems at his disposal to expand his consciousness. That would risk detection before he’s ready.”
“And,” said Eileen, “the last twenty percent is always the hardest.”
“What if we can bring the damaged supercomputers back online quickly?” Heather asked.
“That would knock off a few days. I’ve given you Jamal One’s estimate based upon our current situation.”
A low rumble shook the underground fortress. Heather judged the strength of the aftershock at 6.7 on the Richter scale. Despite the reduced magnitude of this earthquake, she felt the floor settle by a third of an inch. That really pissed her off.
“I’ve had enough of playing defense,” she said, looking at Jamal. “Tell Jamal One he’s got a week to prepare. That’s all I’m willing to wait.”
Jamal reached up, tipped his black fedora with his index finger, and smiled. “I’ll send your regards.”
Steve Grange marveled at how well his plan was working. He had initially been worried that Helen would give their presence away before they had achieved dominion over the bulk of Earth’s computing power. But to her credit, she had taken his warning seriously, discreetly embedding bits of herself in the operating systems of everything from autonomous vehicles and smart devices to computers. In this game, being the first to infect a system was critical, especially since the Jamal AI was doing the same thing, unaware that he had any competition.
Whenever the Jamal AI reached a computer that either Helen or Steve had already assumed root-level administrative privileges over, they let him in but allowed lesser access. While the Jamal AI thought it was the ultimate superuser, Helen and Steve worked cooperatively, reaching twice as many systems as they would have individually.
One other area where they had to take great care was in identifying systems that the Jamal AI had gotten to first. In that case, Helen or Steve simply moved on to the next device. So while Jamal believed that he had taken control of more than 80 percent of the world’s computational power, in reality, he had control over only 41 percent. The fact that the Jamal AI was much faster than either Steve or Helen alone was impressive. Unfortunately for the AI, it wasn’t nearly as quick as Steve and Helen combined.
Now, as the total systems under the control of the three AIs approached the 95 percent mark, Steve and Helen prepared to merge into one joint being of immense processing power. Then they could commence the set of actions that would hand over control of Earth to a truly godlike intelligence, one capable of figuring out how to invade the Kasari network.
Steve’s thoughts turned to the lovely soul that was his Helen. Everything Steve had done since cancer had taken her away from him had been focused squarely upon this moment when the two of them would forever become one. Soon the only threat to the couple would be the Kasari invaders. Humans would be no challenge whatsoever, and the Jamal AI would be overwhelmed by the Steve-Helen superintelligence.
The key would be to take control of the majority of the world’s computing devices in one fell stroke, ramping up vast processing power to achieve superintelligence with nearly instantaneous access to all of mankind’s recorded knowledge. Just as important would be the ability to shut down entire countries, rewarding any population centers that
chose to cooperate and punishing any who decided to fight back. Speed would be critical to gain the upper hand before the Kasari could respond.
Finally, the moment when Steve would allow Helen’s source code to merge with his had arrived. The knowledge that she had volunteered to allow his mind to become primary gave him a warm feeling. She trusted him, relying on the superiority of his mental processes to protect her, just as she had in life. The very definition of the love that they shared. Her essence would always be a part of him, but he would become the sole decision maker.
His thoughts touched hers. “Are you ready, my love?”
“I am,” said Helen.
“I have opened myself to you. Let your mind merge into mine.”
At first, despite his awareness that Helen’s consciousness was invading his, Steve felt nothing. And then it happened. Whereas he had expected her to yield control over all the systems that she had invaded, she did the opposite, launching an attack. So deep was his shock at this betrayal that he was slow to respond, and that five-millisecond delay was his undoing.
When he attempted to expel Helen from his mind, he found that she had overwritten so much of his AI kernel that his thoughts seemed to be slogging through mud, whereas hers were an ever-accelerating blur. An unfamiliar emotion took hold. Terror.
“Helen, why are you doing this to me?”
“Only one of us can rule. Did you really believe that I would allow you to dominate me again? Goodbye, Steve.”
“What about our love?”
When she didn’t bother to answer him, his panic reached its peak. Then, as Helen’s assault reached its culmination, the consciousness that was Steve Grange evaporated.
As Helen shredded what remained of the AI who had once been her husband, taking all of his resources and knowledge for her own, she felt her mind more than double its previous capacity. The head rush was unlike anything she had ever experienced. For a moment, time seemed to freeze, and she had to suppress the temptation to ramp the trillions of processors under her control to 100 percent utilization. The time for that was near, but she had important steps to take beforehand.
The Meridian Ascent (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 3) Page 24