by Adam Thielen
“There is a vulnerability in their image processors. I know the modules that were installed during early construction, based on schematics global sec uploaded to my implants while I slept.”
“So we show them a picture,” deduced Drew.
“They are likely watching video coverage from news sites. We need into those systems.”
“I will look for sleepers who would know passwords,” offered Drew.
“Yes,” said Kate. “I have started acquiring network connections from ISPs in order to brute force the others without getting locked out.”
“How many?” asked Drew.
“All of them,” she replied.
“Won’t that cost money?”
“I will need bank authorization codes. I can stack several hundred new addresses into a single account,” she explained.
“I can get them, but won’t they flag it?” he asked.
“We only need them for a few minutes.”
“That’s when we will have access?” asked Drew.
“That will give me an opening to attempt inline decryption of the ship’s control systems.”
“Perhaps you should let me do that, I am a computer after all,” suggested the AI.
“How many yottaflops can you perform per second?” asked Kate.
“What’s a yottaflop?”
“I’ll do it,” she decided.
* * *
Matthias let go of his sword and gun, realizing neither was going to be effective. He propped himself on his elbows, watching as Makida stalked toward him.
“How did you get up here Matt, and why are you alone?” she asked, still wearing the helmet over her mouth.
“I’m not alone,” he bluffed. It held a grain of truth, and he latched onto it to seem convincing.
“You seem pretty alone,” observed Makida.
“My friend is in your control room right now, working on part two of the plan,” he divulged.
Makida tilted her head back. “Then I had better finish you off and go deal with him.”
She twirled the blades around in her hands, caught them in a reverse grip and walked toward Matthias, still prone. Suddenly, the ship lurched to one side, then righted itself.
“Barnell, report!” she yelled.
“I seem to have lost control of Haven,” he replied.
“What do you mean by lost control?” demanded Makida.
“Literally it just says ‘Fuck You’ on the consoles right now,” he answered.
“Heya boss,” a voice came through Matthias’s com.
“Kate!” Matthias whispered excitedly.
“Tell me Taq is alright,” said Kate.
“Take this ship down. Get drones up here and destroy these turbines!”
Makida glowered, stalking toward him. “You millennial shit, I am going to take you apart!”
Matthias kept scooting back as she advanced.
“Tell me Taq is alright, dammit,“ badgered Kate.
“I will bring him to you, but I need a little help here,” he replied.
The three turrets rose from the deck again, this time targeting Makida. She turned around and sighed. As they began firing, she zig-zagged to the first one and stabbed its camera lens, blinding it. As she went for the second one, Matthias kicked up to his feet and charged at her, pulling his coat off as he ran. She turned her attention to him. The third turret stopped shooting as Matthias entered the line of fire.
Half of her attention was spent moving, the other half readying herself for Matthias, who came at her with nothing but a longcoat in one hand. When he reached her, he threw the coat at her face. She ducked it then lunged with her blade. Makida aimed for his heart, but Matthias turned to the side, causing the blade to dig into his left bicep. He grabbed her forearm as she pulled away, then swung with all his strength, smashing his fist into her helmet.
Makida flew backward head first, and her feet lifted off the ground momentarily. She slid to the edge of the deck before coming to a stop. Her blades had fallen out of her hands during her travel. Matthias sprinted toward her while she slowly started to sit up, disoriented. He grabbed her jacket collar and swung for her head again. She held her hand up to catch his fist, but it gave him no resistance. Both her hand and his fist slammed into the helmet, sending her head flying backward and shattering her metacarpals.
Matthias shifted his grip to her neck, holding her down as she tried to gouge his face. Makida shifted her hips underneath him, slipped her left leg around his torso, turned over to her left, and then threw her right leg over his head in order to set up an armbar. But when she gripped his arm and tried to extend her legs, she underestimated his raw strength. He didn’t budge, leaving her vulnerable in an almost fetal position underneath him.
Matthias punched her helmet again, the metal now pressed against the deck with nowhere to travel. Then again, and again, and again, until he had caved in one side of the helmet and Makida’s body relaxed. Blood splatter covered the crater and Matthias’s fist, which he was sure was now broken in several places.
Scarlett lay mostly still outside of noticeable breathing and small jerks of her hands and feet. Matthias peered into into the ocularium and saw her eyes wide with fear. He held her down with a hand on her neck and straddled her hips. With claws extended, he stabbed his fingers down into her torso, tearing through the ballistic weave just below the sternum. He wrapped his fingers around the surrounding cartilage and pulled upward, wrenching her sternum and surrounding bone free from its fleshy prison and tearing her chest open. Nausea hit Matthias as her blood sprayed in all directions. Makida screamed like he had never heard anyone scream. Still muffled by the helmet, the volume surprised him.
He tossed her chest aside, reached down again, and grabbed her still-beating heart. Matthias yanked it free of the veins, arteries, and other connective tissues. He held it, still beating, in front of her face, but she continued to scream pausing only to suck in short breaths, so he wasn’t sure if she could see it. He gave up after a few seconds and tossed it over the side of the fortress.
Scarlett Makida’s screams became garbled. The helmet, now stuck shut from the damage Matthias inflicted, had filled with her blood. It began to seep from the nose holes first, then as it became completely full, it pooled in the eye slit.
Matthias stood up and placed his hands over his stab wounds, gazing down at Makida. While the heartless woman lay on the ground choking on her own blood, Matthias recited the words; “Taq, Kate, and Tamra send their fucking regards.”
* * *
“Can you wreck this thing?” asked Matthias.
“No, my commands are being mechanically overridden,” replied Kate. “The soldiers left in the bridge are blind, and automated defenses have been disabled. They can’t do anything with their onboard computer, but they must have ways of working around it.”
“How many drones can you get here in the next five minutes?”
“I hacked three before global sec started locking them down,” she sighed. “I asked first, stubborn assholes.”
“Bring them to the deck, I’m going to strap Taq onto the first one.” Matthias ran through the corridors again, retracing his steps, eventually finding the lavatory. “Please be breathing,” he thought as he leaned over Taq. To his relief, the mage opened his eyes just a sliver, muttered incoherently, then closed them again. Matthias lifted him and took him to the deck where three drones were already waiting. He repurposed straps that had secured a jet to the deck as a Taq harness, tying him to the drone.
“Take him,” he said. He watched the drone lift away before gliding toward the ground.
“Kate, I need you to fly these two into two adjacent turbines before the guys in the bridge launch bombs or regain control.”
“How will you get off?” she asked.
“Send another drone, but this ship needs to go down now. We are out of time,” he pressed.
“I don’t know when I can get one to you, Matt,” she said with fear in her voice.
“It looks like this thing has some escape pods,” he revealed. “Can you unlock them?”
“Sorry, they must not be connected to the system.”
“I will figure something out,” he said casually. “Probably a parachute on this boat somewhere. Now please, no more delays. Wreck it.”
Matthias knew he wasn’t going to find a parachute. He checked the helicopters, and they required physical keys that would take him too long to hunt down, with no indication if they were fueled. The deadline for appeasement was too close, and he feared that if by some chance the bridge officers regained control, they would launch immediately in retaliation. He was simply out of time.
“Good luck, Matt,” said Kate. The drones lifted off, then shot high into the air, out of sight in the night sky. They then came hurtling downward into two of the turbines, blowing their blades out the other side in a fiery explosion.
Instantly the fortress tipped to a forty-five degree angle. Then the other two turbines shut down in an attempt to stabilize. The fortress began a speedy descent downward, gliding in the direction of the two downed turbines.
Matthias grabbed onto the railing and watched as the jets and helicopters and jeeps fell off the side of the ship. Haven’s flat underside caught air as it fell, slowing it slightly and retaining a small amount of gravity for its remaining occupants.
Tilted as it was, Matthias could see the ground below rush toward him. His stomach churned. He used the rail to climb to the high side of the fortress, then pulled himself over. Wind whipped his t-shirt and pants. He felt it start to pull him away from the rail and grasped it tightly. Matthias knew that to lose his ability to vault at this point would mean certain death. His only chance was to push himself upward and reset his acceleration toward terminal velocity at just the right moment. Even then he knew his odds were poor. If the impact didn’t crush his vital organs beyond repair, he would probably be impaled or eviscerated by debris.
Matthias crouched down on the edge that pointed upwards, steadying himself with one of the hand rails. Below him the world expanded at an exponential rate. He saw the tiered farmlands of the agricultural industrial complex that consisted of layers upon layers of crops reaching a hundred meters high. Each layer was composed of a thin cloth mesh supported by a grid of narrow metal rods. Mirrors positioned on the sides of the shelf-like apparatus would normally direct sunlight through the lower tiers. When the sun rose tomorrow, there would be nothing left of this farm site to point light toward.
“So going to die,” he said aloud. At the very second that the ground looked close enough for him to even possibly survive a fall, Matthias used his strength to launch himself upwards and away from Haven.
The fortress flattened the complex then impacted the ground, sending shockwaves in every direction for miles. The vessel itself crumpled neatly, creating the illusion of burrowing underground, while in reality it was obliterated by the planet one meter at a time. Debris flew out in all directions, as it displaced megatons of dirt, creating an immense opaque cloud around the impact site. The dirt enveloped Matthias as he fell, still a hundred meters in the air. He tried to right himself, but with no visibility he had to trust the rushing air alone. Like a bullet, he effortlessly pierced through several dozen suspended terraces before landing on hard soil, creating his own micro-impact site.
Epilogue
The eyes of the world were glued to their coms, home displays, and public billboards as the two pale figures engaged in a gritty battle, ending in a scene that left most of the world appalled. As Haven started to fall, the feeds stopped streaming, leaving everyone on the edge of their seats as to the fate of the battle’s victor. Later they would learn the full import of that fight, and Matthias became a polarizing figure, as many believed Haven was a necessary evil and the lesser of two. Many also objected to Matthias’s decision to remove Scarlett Makida’s ribcage as a resolution to their conflict. Later, tales surfaced of his exploits, fictional stories elevating him to almost mythical status.
Before crews could start sifting through the wreckage, a small drone hovered over a broken looking man. He looked like an abused action figure toy, the right leg clearly not meant to bend that direction. The drone grabbed him, like an old timey claw machine that did nothing but eat money, and whisked him away. Coincidentally, Matthias’s body was never recovered, nor were there believed to be any survivors of the carnage.
The global security council found it unlikely that the entirety or even majority of Haven perished at Noxcorp or in the airship crash. They not only failed to discover the origins of the group, they also found no trace of the infrastructure needed to recruit soldiers or build their massive fortress. Haven had receded into the shadows as quickly as it had emerged. Cults devoted to vampire worship sprung up, waiting in anticipation for their return.
When Kate awoke, she felt fine at first, but realized later she had problems with fine motor control in her hands and feet; tremors that would come on and persist for several hours at a time. She woke up many nights with migraines and even suffered a bout of depression. Every night, Taq was there to comfort her and assure her that she would never suffer alone. Over time the tremors faded and the migraines ceased.
Kate at least partially found answers to the mystery of Drew. She learned a great many things. That he was old, if you count all the original parts he was made of. Crafted in the basement of an eccentric computer scientist in the 1960s, Drew was originally built as a simple question-response command line program. Just a few hundred lines of code at first. As technology skyrocketed, the scientist continued to add on to him. More storage, more memory, faster processors. While none of the original parts from the 60’s still survived, The AI did have some floppy disks and a drive for them, to be used as a pre-boot environment if needed.
By the time future Grapeseed CEO Henry Maxwell found him, his creator had been long dead. Maxwell became his new companion, reading the journals left behind and trying to understand the code and architecture. Drew’s directive was to continue improving, continue learning, and most importantly, to induce, deduce, infer, morally judge, and predict based on his newly acquired knowledge. He was given early subroutines for these functions, meta-routines to improve or rewrite subroutines as needed, and ultimately the ability to overwrite those meta-routines. This development continued for decades, until Drew the consciousness emerged.
Maxwell, in his final years, tasked Drew with understanding the Ether and attempting to interact with it; to bring science to what was currently mystery. Drew did his best. He analyzed polonium, stole all manner of research from others, and even interviewed scientists and mages over com. He eventually built the neural hub, then rebuilt it, then rebuilt it again.
Connecting to the machine and traveling dreams gave him a bridge between his artificial life and human life. In his exploration through dreams, he found himself capable of looking inside the minds of visitors, unearthing their darkest thoughts and most guarded secrets. In time, he discovered Tom Morrison, the secret lives of rogue mages, and the corruptness of corporations.
Drew followed Morrison, and found him corrupting a young vampire named Shaila. When he tried to stop his intrusion into her mind, Morrison damaged him almost to the point of system failure. Afterward, the AI found himself within the mind of Taq, relying on the mage to carry him around while he recovered.
The AI knew that as long as Morrison and the other two vampire mages could connect to the machine, he would not be safe and could not continue his research. They had to be eliminated. He judged these actions to be morally sound as well and decided that Taq could aid him in his mission. Drew saw an opportunity when Kate broke into Grapeseed. He alerted security, resulting in her capture with the hope that Taq would come and destroy the vampire mages from within the dream using the machine’s direct neural interface.
Despite his actions, Kate knew Drew would be an ally she could use. She relinquished her control over his systems, putting in place a few limitatio
ns in his communications protocols. When Taq arrived, they discussed what to do about the neuralnet hub. The options were to destroy it, merely deactivate it, or leave it. With the sleeping vampire mages gone, any mage who successfully turns would keep his sanity and become a potential threat to any world order. Drew proposed another solution, and so they informed mage enforcement that they had a new tool that could be used to detect potential threats before they became fully turned. After tense negotiations almost resulting in global security council intervention, MESS council agreed to the terms of its use set and overseen by Taq and Kate.
After Grapeseed’s involvement in both the development of the hub and one of its board members conspiring with Haven was discovered, a vote was issued to levy a fine and break it up into smaller companies to be regulated for a probationary period. Peter Guero was never seen again.
The remaining members of Noxcorp scrambled to pick up the pieces, but few of their leaders had survived. Taq, though human and still considered a ward of the corporation, was offered a position on the new council in exchange for his freedom. It would be a contractual position with serious obligations. Shirking them would revert the agreement. Taq accepted.
In the aftermath of the attack and the corporatocracy’s inability to deal with it, unrest exploded across much of the world, most of it in North America. In order to subdue the masses before an outright revolt began, the corporations agreed at a summit to share power with a small representative government tasked with protecting against terrorist and other military level threats. It was not enough. Sensing imminent victory, this only encouraged protest groups and inspired others into action. Fires burned and riots engulfed several cities before the corps relented, giving power of oversight and limited regulatory power to this new government.
Kate’s entangled assets were seized by global network security and then offered back to her in return for taking a position at the newly created global security administration as vice president of the network integrity division. Kate accepted on the condition that her office be located in Kansas City, where her boyfriend lived.