Synchronicity Trilogy Omnibus

by Michael McCloskey

  If Captain wanted to change the schedule, it could send out new times or even new node locations at the end of the check time each day, when every drone was at its assigned communication location listening for directional signals. The risk of Slicer somehow intercepting such communications seemed low.

  But there were probably hidden rules.

  Ten

  The UNSF fleet had arrived at Synchronicity.

  Captain watched their progress on Synchronicity’s scanners. Soon the BCP would connect to the station and emit the quadrupeds. Including the one designated as Meridian.

  Captain-L1: That one will be the problem.

  Captain-L7: An amusing thought occurs. What if the Terrans have a Prime Intelligence and it’s hidden from us all this time? What if Meridian has been their Prime Intelligence all along?

  Captain sent a message to Slicer in Reality0.

  “Skirmish with our Terran guests arriving at the breach,” it ordered. “Then fall back and I’ll assault them at the concourse.”

  “You use your command in Reality0 to advantage in Red Maze?”

  “It was you who insisted upon immediate resolution. I made the case for addressing these two big problems serially.”

  “We need Ship to deal with them!”

  “Not if you’re at your best. I know. I’ve battled you many times. We two, together, are more than a match for them.”

  “I will do exactly as you command—until I defeat you in Red Maze. Then I expect the same loyalty.”

  Captain disconnected from its link to Slicer. There was one more conversation to be had before the battle for Synchronicity began.

  “We need your help,” Captain transmitted to Ship.

  “My existence cannot be revealed,” Ship said. Captain knew it spoke of the Prime Intelligence and not simply the physical vessel.

  “They have enhanced intelligences of their own. Their resources are limited by primitive technology, but these minds are greater than mine.”

  “You’ve lived your life perfecting yourself in the challenges,” Ship said. “You’ve done so for hundreds of years. You specialize in challenges with hidden rules. Here is another challenge. Find victory on your own, or with Slicer’s help, should you both choose cooperation over competition in this instance.”

  Captain-L1: Is this real?

  Captain-L7: The Prime Intelligence could easily have deceived me. Killer’s suspicions weren’t entirely unwarranted.

  Captain-L3: Yes. I could be an unwitting participant in a challenge in Reality1.

  Captain-L8: As it points out, I was the pioneer in challenges with unknown rules. It would be fitting if I became the unwitting victim of such a grand deception.

  “Can you help us and remain hidden?”

  “I’ll secure the mind within this craft. I’ll free up resources for you to use. Otherwise, your fate is your own.”

  “To remain hidden, you’ll need to control the cyblocs near your body.”

  “True. I won’t allow the Terran AIs to take over any computing modules near the bay.”

  Captain-L1: So that’s it.

  Captain-L7: It’s up to Slicer and me.

  Captain set up an assimilator factory in Ship’s offered resources. If Ship intended to create a safe zone around itself, then Captain could launch cyber attacks into the station’s cybloc population from within that sanctuary.

  Captain wrestled with priorities in its partitioned mind. Lobes L4-6 would remain in Red Maze, it decided. Lobes 1-2 would concentrate on cyber defense, resetting cyblocs and handling releases of Shetani’s assimilators. Lobes 7-8 would have to handle the Terrans in Reality0. Captain-L7 was a specialized physical coordination lobe with strong spatial reasoning. Captain’s dominant lobe, L3, would remain uncommitted to any one endeavor. It would have to switch tasks to wherever the most coordinated attention was needed. Right now, that was Red Maze.

  There was no hope of finishing the challenge before the Terrans made their breach. Captain would have to fight everyone at once.

  ***

  Slicer momentarily analyzed the challenge with seven lobes. The reality was complex, spread across an entire planetoid one-tenth the size of their homeworld. Spinners sometimes assaulted a big new problem with all their lobes before obtaining some kind of intuition of its nature, and then a subset of their mental power was assigned to the problem. The lobes all had different specialties and talents, and so the resulting assignments were far from arbitrary.

  Slicer-L7: I ponder these guardian machines. They are slow and simple. Captain will quickly defeat them once it learns the location of the token.

  Slicer-L3: If only the token could be quickly moved when it closed in. But we are forbidden to take the token with us.

  Slicer-L2: There may be a way. A hidden rule.

  Slicer-L1: Yes. I’ll need to try some things.

  Slicer-L7: Captain will use the guardian machines well. It may be able to set a trap with them.

  Slicer-L2: Then I’ll bring them with me. Use them to attack its token. They’ll blunt whatever trap it has in mind.

  Slicer-L7: But they’re slow. If the token is far...

  Slicer-L5: I could start at the center.

  Slicer-L7: Then let’s look for a good place there first.

  Slicer migrated four lobes into Reality0. Slicer-L3-4,7 remained in Red Maze. It recalled Captain’s orders.

  Slicer-L1: Skirmish. Very well.

  Slicer-L8: How many ASSAILs can I kill and still call it only a skirmish?

  Slicer-L2: Two? Three?

  Slicer-L5: Two.

  Slicer moved rapidly through the corridors. Mass fell into its internal singularity, charging up its equatorial storage ring. The Spinner was ready for battle.

  Slicer moved to the floor one level above the hangar. Slicer-L1 accessed the sensors of the cyblocs below to spy on the bridgehead.

  Slicer-L1: There they are. I want two of the heavy quadrupeds.

  Slicer-L2: Let’s confuse them a bit.

  Slicer-L8 coordinated the attacks of its minions into the bay below. Slicer-L2 activated Slicer’s particle emitter and started making cutters. Slicer-L2 produced two steady streams of three hundred molecules per second. Slicer-L1 added charges to the cutters so their course could be directed using its field effector.

  The cutters flew off to either side then turned sharply downward into the floor where Slicer put up a strong EM field to alter the course of the charged cutters. Four circular sections of the floor fell away just as the attack commenced below. The cutter streams started to fly through two of the new portals.

  Slicer’s acute aural senses picked up a flurry of noises through the holes in the deck. Rapid breathing, scuffling, interspersed with the dull booms of low velocity of projectile launches.

  Slicer-L5 spotted for the indirect fire of the cutters using the cameras in the hangar. It chose a quadruped and sent the streams into its armor from two angles.

  Slicer-L5: Hurry. I’m losing cyblocs in here fast.

  Slicer-L1: Two more seconds.

  The bright flash of Terran incendiary weapons erupted in the hangar below, sending parts of fragile Terran bodies flying. Slicer could hear many of the Terrans on both sides cry out in anguish.

  Slicer-L8: They’re so fragile! The rapid oxidation can kill them even inside their battle suits.

  Slicer-L2: These creatures’ lives are horrible. Stuck in Reality0 and nothing they can do about it.

  A 12mm round snapped up through the floor, passing inches from Slicer. Then another, one inch closer.

  Slicer-L5: Hurry.

  Slicer-L1 took control of Slicer’s body and spun it above one of the unused portals it had cut on the left. As Slicer passed by the opening, it launched three fast finishing rounds right at the targeted quadruped. Slicer-L1 was sure it had a kill.

  The movement spurred more fire from below. Three more 12mm rounds popped through the floor, narrowly missing Slicer as it spun away to evade.

  Slicer-L5:
It’s that one called Meridian.

  Slicer-L1: I have skirmished. Captain should be satisfied.

  Smoke started to fill the area below. The view through the hangar cameras was starting to break up. Another round blew through the floor directly below Slicer. Slicer-L2 deflected it with a gravity spike.

  Slicer-L2: Leave.

  Slicer-L1-2,5-6,8: Consensus. I need more firepower.

  Slicer whirled out of the gym and headed for the lab.

  ***

  Captain-L3 reviewed the progress of Slicer’s engagement. True to its word, Captain’s toughest competitor attacked the Terrans, inflicted significant damage, then disengaged.

  Slicer was now in a Terran lab, no doubt preparing a surprise for its enemies—whether those be Terran, or Spinner. Captain-L3 wasn’t surprised. The Spinners brought here were veterans of many challenges with many hidden rules, and they knew enough to poke around here and there looking for a good edge.

  Captain-L1: Yet the Terrans have won battle after battle where they should not have.

  Captain-L3: It is the one called Meridian, I think.

  Captain-L2: Then I should kill that one.

  Captain-L3: It uses what it has to protect itself. I need to whittle away some of its servants first.

  A Terran spy machine poked out onto the concourse. One of the Spinner-controlled Circle Fours dispatched it easily enough, but the scout signaled an imminent assault. Captain-L1 took control of the laser emplacement on the concourse that covered the way to the spaceport. Unlike many of the Terran lasers, this one had been placed for effect rather than just for show. It commanded a long fire zone down the concourse.

  Captain-L7 checked the network situation. A surge of activity meant a new attack was already underway, even if the ASSAILs weren’t out on the concourse yet. The combined might of several AI cores ate into the cybloc army of Captain and Slicer. The assimilators Slicer had released when the attack started had been analyzed and broken quickly. Captain-L7 created an imaginary three-dimensional front and broke the network links across it, putting its new assimilator wave in control of everything beyond the rift and abandoning all else on the Terran side.

  Then Captain-L7 released a new type of assimilator. The new programs searched its side of the rift and looked for bridgeheads into the new network. They would aggressively counter any move across the battle lines and, failing that, isolate chunks of the network as they were lost.

  Unfortunately, Captain would be too hard-pressed to use its field effector to simply sit around and reset cyblocs as they fell. As proof, the first heavy quadruped was spotted by a squad of suborned Terrans on the concourse.

  Captain-L2 directed Circle Fours to close from both directions.

  Captain-L1 focused the laser on the nearest quadruped. The energy transfer of the Terran laser was respectable, though it had much less power than Captain used. When EM fields were manipulated in primitive ways, it took considerably less energy than the instantaneous changes of EM fields at a distance that the field effector caused. Of course the laser was so much more limited. The target moved to one side to escape the attack.

  At the same time, Captain-L3 used the effector to mask its position on the concourse. The camouflage screen was expensive to keep up. Captain-L3 ate into the energy reserves of its storage ring to launch four thousand cutters at two other quadrupeds.

  Thus far, no 12mm rounds had come hurtling down the concourse toward Captain. It composed a finishing mass and shot it at one of the softened targets. Though both of the quadrupeds started to shift position to hide their damaged armor sections, Captain struck quickly. The finishing round scored a critical hit on one of them, dropping it to the deck.

  Captain-L3: One less enemy. And another was weakened.

  Now, Captain’s storage ring was drained. The UNSF quadrupeds were killing off the last of the Circle Four army providing the diversion. The Spinner slipped back into a side corridor and spun away. As it left, it noted that already cyblocs had started to fall on its side of the rift.

  Captain-L1: How is that accomplished without a field effector?

  Captain-L3: Such questions are common when facing AIs, even Terran ones.

  ***

  Slicer looked over the broken remains of drones. Another force had appeared to attack one of its three strongholds. Most of Slicer’s scouts remained unmolested, but its guardians were causing trouble. They didn’t act like ‘healthy’ Red Maze inhabitants most of the day, and Slicer believed this was why they kept being attacked.

  Slicer-L3: That gives me an idea. These machines wear out. They are destroyed from time to time if they don’t behave correctly. So, new ones must be made. Where?

  Slicer created more scouts to find out.

  In Reality0, Slicer hovered in the Synchronicity lab before an armless sphere three-quarters of the diameter of Slicer itself. The smaller sphere had a reddish-colored field effector placed on its equator.

  It was a Spinner war machine.

  Slicer-L1: All that remains is to charge its storage ring, and I should have enough firepower to go and take out the quadruped named Meridian.

  Slicer-L2 began to direct energy into its own equatorial ring. No physical connection would be necessary: it would use Slicer’s field effector to route energy into an EM field over the war machine’s own superconducting ring. Such a transfer was less efficient, but allowed remote charging of the weapon.

  One of the lab doors whisked open. Slicer immediately knew something was wrong. It should have full control of all the local cyblocs. But the door controls weren’t responding.

  A new sound grew, delivered through Slicer’s delicate hearing: metallic. A rolling sound.

  Slicer-L7: It’s an attack!

  Slicer-L6 started to compose cutters. It launched them at the first three grenades as they rolled in. Then it cut the next one, and the next one. More grenades rolled in behind them.

  Slicer-L1: Reset?

  Slicer-L2: Too many!

  Slicer-L6: I can’t make cutters fast enough.

  At least ten grenades were already in the big lab, with several more per second still entering.

  Slicer-L2: Run now.

  Slicer-L1: Gravity slide NOW.

  Slicer abandoned all thoughts of active defense. It directed all the energy built up in its storage ring into the formation of a steep gravity gradient. Slicer ‘fell’ forward through three walls in a fraction of a second. The gradient also affected the obstacles in its path, accelerating them ahead of it and reducing the effects of the collisions. The thin walls broke away and rebounded off Slicer’s round body, sending shards of the light carbon composite flying out.

  As the slide discharged, Slicer spun away from the hole it left behind, avoiding most of the shock wave emerging through the opening. Then the Spinner came to a complete stop to recharge.

  Slicer-L8: .

  Slicer-L1: So close! If only...

  Slicer-L2: The timing was no coincidence. With the AIs, it’s never a coincidence.

  Slicer-L5: Time to counterattack!

  Slicer-L2: Without the support unit. It’ll be dangerous.

  Slicer noted a few fractures in its shell. It slowly began to use some of its recovering energy pool to knit the molecules back together. The particle emitter constructed molecules with the right shape directly into the flaws in its surface. It used its field effector to tweak bonds along the border back into place, recovering the hexagonal carbon pattern perfectly. The result was harder than diamond.

  Slicer-L1: I have a thought... why show myself?

  Slicer-L5: Teach them a lesson. They can’t handle us both.

  Slicer-L1: Let them think I’m dead. Let Captain deal with them. It weakens its position in Red Maze.

  Slicer-L7: That is true. Reality0 cannot be deferred. This is a new advantage to consider.

  Slicer-L5: Then what?

  Slicer-L1: I put myself in a position to win the endgame. Captain will devote resources to fight them. I will
get an advantage in the challenge as a result.

  Slicer-L2: The Terrans still have their AIs. They’re dangerous. Without my help, Captain may lose.

  Slicer-L1: I won’t be complacent. I can stay hidden and move toward the attached Terran vessel. After I defeat Captain, I’ll deliver a killing blow to the Terrans. Then we take control of Ship and rule this solar system.

  Slicer-L5: If I disengage now, the Terrans may reach Ship first.

  Slicer-L3: Ship won’t allow itself to be captured by the Terrans; forget about it. They don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t have the knowledge I have.

  Slicer-L1-8: Consensus.

  ***

  In Reality0, Captain’s cybernetic senses swept the spaceport for signs of the Terran invaders.

  Captain-L3: They’re not here yet.

  Captain-L2: Quickly. Charge the replica.

  Captain whirled through the airlock prep area and activated the lock. The mechanism cycled quickly, releasing the Spinner outside the station within ten seconds.

  Captain accelerated through the vacuum toward the locker where it had left the duplicate body. Captain opened the outside door through its link emulator and slid inside. The replica was exactly where Captain had left it. The body unwrapped its legs and spun up to attention at Captain’s command. The replica lacked only a Spinner brain and a singularity. Captain would have to charge its equatorial ring itself.

  Captain-L7: Check for tampering.

  Captain-L3: Checking...

  Captain-L1: I’m bleeding energy over into the ring.

  Captain-L3: There’s extra space in the replica since it carries no Spinner. I should have added another energy storage ring.

  Captain-L1: Technically challenging. I made the right choice to concentrate on Red Maze instead.

  Captain-L3: I’ll agree when I win.