Slicer-L5: This is fun. Let’s use them some more.
Slicer-L6: Not really necessary.
Slicer-L1: A creative solution may uncover some superior strategy yet to be discovered.
Slicer-L1-2,5-6: Consensus.
The Spinner used its EM effector to reset the state of a dog. The machine twitched then fell over.
The new state wasn’t quite right. Slicer took a minute to find its error, then tried again. This time, the machine stood back up.
It sent the dog running into the breach zone.
It immediately drew fire from several weapons. UNSF PAWs and a laser. Slicer took note of the response. Then it paused to recharge.
Slicer destroyed two more dog machines, leaving one final survivor. It reset the state of the survivor and took it over. Then Slicer and the dog charged into the corridor leading to the chamber where the UNSF ship had breached the station.
The laser focused on the dog immediately. The quadrupedal attack robot heated quickly, headed toward destruction in less than one second.
Slicer spun in near the ceiling. Slicer-L2 noted the positions of six marines armed with PAWs, but its targets rated low priority and so the lobe didn’t access any resources to engage them.
Slicer-L1 would handle the mobile laser. It was a metallic turret rising a meter high atop a rectangular pyramid base. The smooth sloping walls of its armored sides were studded with a regular pattern of sensors. Slicer-L1 considered using cutters, then decided a remote EM field attack would be simpler. It could burn out the electronic brain.
Slicer-L1 finally settled on a more delicate reset without burning out the laser’s cyblocs. With study, the weapon could be used by Slicer. Slicer’s electromagnetic effector cleared the emplacement’s memory. The entire analysis and attack completed in a second’s time as the dog was slagged. The laser had just focused on Slicer and raised its surface temperature about ten degrees Kelvin when it shut off.
With the hardpoint neutralized, Slicer-L2 took over in the very next second. Energy flowed into the emitter so it could start to cut the Terrans. Almost all of the UNSF marines were still pointing their projectile weapons at the dog, with the exception of one who was trying to follow Slicer’s rapid movement along the ceiling with a curious expression on its face.
Slicer-L5 started making cutters. Slicer-L1 studied the design of the laser so it could devise another reset pattern that would activate the laser as an ally.
As the slow Terrans started swinging their weapons toward the Spinner, cutters rained down on them two at a time. Slicer spun counterclockwise above with blinding speed, avoiding the few wild rounds that flew upwards.
Four seconds later, the scene became quiet. Marines slumped on the deck or across the stackable cargo containers used as makeshift fortifications. Blood wicked into the uniforms and dripped out of fractures in their skinsuits. One man still twitched, alive but paralyzed and unable to move as he bled out beside the laser pyramid.
Slicer-L1: The ship entrance is dangerous. Not enough room to maneuver there.
Slicer-L2: I don’t detect any ASSAILs nearby. I should be able to clear the way with cutters.
Slicer set up another indirect fire arrangement at the breach point. Slicer-L2 emitted cutter particles, charged them, and sent them into a strong field put up at the entrance. The field gradient turned the charged cutters in mid-air and sent them into the breach umbilical.
After sending five thousand cutters straight through the entrance, Slicer spun down to take a look down the tube. Nothing remained to oppose its entrance into the cruiser. Slicer whirled through the lock. Some dead Terrans lay across the floor of the lock room. It was not immediately clear how many there had been. Blood burbled into a floor vent. Slicer’s gaze could not linger on the mess it had made. Five thousand cutters had been overkill.
Slicer-L6 reset three cyblocs and then unleashed a fresh wave of assimilators in the cybernetics of the lock room. They spread quickly.
Slicer-L6: Network opposition is weak. There can’t be many of the Terran AI cores left.
Slicer-L1: I’m ready to reset the laser.
Slicer paused to recharge. It hovered about the lock. The delay also allowed the assimilator charge to move into the next few corridors. Slicer heard many Terrans tramping about frantically, calling to each other and their commanders.
The laser fell into Slicer’s control.
Slicer-L1: I have it.
Slicer-L2: Time to finish this. I know the ship’s layout now.
Slicer-L1: I’d like to spare the ship. I need only kill the crew.
Slicer-L5: Then kill the leaders first. They’re on the bridge.
Slicer-L6: Why do they cluster there?
Slicer-L5: Most likely this is a traditional behavior.
Slicer-L8: They can lead from anywhere, but the bridge is the safest spot.
Slicer-L1: Not for long!
***
Captain had narrowed down the probable area of Slicer’s token to the point where it had to start thinking about the endgame. Slicer could well have defenses in place around the token, perhaps even a small army.
Captain-L5 had designed weapons its avatar could use against suborned drones in Red Maze. The drones were slow and weak, but Slicer controlled so many. Captain needed to be ready.
Captain-L4: Slicer will have better weapons. It’s been fighting an all out war for several rotations.
Captain-L6: I probably won’t face Slicer personally. Only its guardian drones.
Captain didn’t understand how Slicer had turned the tide against Red Maze. But its spies’ reports were clear: Slicer had fought off Red Maze and advanced its battle lines to include three of the drone factories and it showed no signs of slowing. The forces Red Maze had sent to oppose it had mysteriously dissipated.
Things had also shifted rapidly for the worse in Reality0. The loose alliance between Captain and Meridian had proved tenuous. As soon as the dogs turned after Captain, so had the 12mm fire.
Captain-L1: I stayed closer to Ship, but that’s probably exactly why ShengFeng decided to kill me first. That puts its army between Meridian and Ship.
The Terran ASSAIL called Meridian kept firing in Captain’s direction even though two walls separated them. The clumsy but deadly projectiles flew close by, remarkably close. It was as if Ship itself were firing them.
Captain assigned another lobe from the challenge to reality. That left it with two lobes assigned for the challenge and four for the physical battle. The two lobes it left controlling the network fight were losing, but they were losing slowly. Captain was hard pressed in all domains.
The cyber battle had slowly turned in Meridian’s favor. Meridian still controlled more cores and resources than anyone else, but the Chinese battle controller kept attacking cyblocs as Captain bitterly opposed it from the sanctuary zone near Ship. If Captain lost all the cyblocs in its sensory network, it would be left to fight using only its own sensors.
Captain-L2: Ship, I need your help.
There was no answer. No doubt Ship would not risk being compromised, even though it was the peer of the other artificial minds. No matter what happened to Captain and Slicer, Ship would have to escape or destroy itself.
Captain considered its chances of winning.
Captain-L2: There is yet a path to victory. Unfortunately, I will have to die.
Captain-L7: Then it is not victory.
Captain-L3: This is no challenge. It is Reality0. Victory can be measured in other terms.
***
On the bridge of the Vigilant, half a dozen Terrans crouched behind banks of manual backup controls and empty anchor points for link displays. Bodies of their comrades lay all about, leaking blood from their heads. Their barrels pointed in many directions but none of them had intercept vectors with Slicer, a sad display of the glacial pace of the Terran nervous system. The crack of sidearms sounded in the closed space.
Slicer spun through the hail of ineffectual rounds. Slicer-L2
had become more efficient with its cutters. It accelerated only two hundred molecules at each Terran in a tight bundle aimed for critical areas of their brain stems. One, two, then three more men slumped in their positions. Blood oozed from an ear. A gurgling sound escaped another Terran as it died. One of them fired a round in a random muscle spasm from a group of motor neurons no longer connected to the rest of its brain. The bullet struck another Terran despite the safety features of the projectile, as it was too close to swerve away from the obstacle which didn’t match its targeting profile.
Slicer appeared on the other side of the room amidst a blur of spinning motion. It launched another trio of precisely targeted cutters as the Terrans scanned the ceiling searching for their enemy.
The last few defenders dropped. One of them screamed and clutched at its head for a moment before expiring. Slicer reset two cyblocs in the bridge and cut off the manual controls just in case. It spun out into a connecting corridor opposite the one from which it had entered.
Several Terrans were in the corridor. Slicer used its field effector to collect some of the light from around the corner so it could see what lay beyond. It saw a sea of disgusting flesh. Most of the Terrans wore only fatigue pants.
Slicer-L8: Their flesh is discolored. Even worse than usual.
Slicer-L5: Bruises. And they have strips of artificial skin.
Slicer-L1: These are injured marines. They’re coming out of the infirmary to defend the ship.
Slicer-L5: They cannot achieve victory... yet they charge out to die anyway.
Slicer-L2: I cannot explain it. They are alien.
Slicer-L1: I think they hope to discover a hidden rule.
Slicer-L6: They don’t have enough information to tell they’re outmatched. Their senses are weak, and the assimilators I launched have taken half the ship, depriving them further.
Slicer whisked through the intersection to spray the corridor with two thousand cutters. Its targeting was sloppy this time, but the Terrans dropped under the onslaught. They were already wounded and didn’t have any of their light armored suits.
Slicer-L1: Progress on all fronts. The day is mine.
***
In Red Maze, the token was within reach. Captain found the shortest approach path yet. It paused to construct three seeker slivers and sent them forward, then accelerated after them. The seekers would find and destroy any drones in Captain’s path.
Captain would have preferred more time to plan the penetration of Slicer’s territory to seek the token, but that time simply wasn’t available. Instead, it had devised the makeshift seeker weapons and gone straight in. The move was more like Slicer’s style: go straight for the throat. But that could actually be a subtle advantage. Slicer knew Captain’s style and might be anticipating something very different.
Captain whirled under a walkway just in time to avoid fire from a squadron of Slicer’s drones on its trail.
Captain-L6: If I get the token now, I still have a small chance. Slicer and I could unite our full attention to defeat the Terrans.
Though near death in two rulesets, Captain had never felt so alive in all its centuries-long life.
Captain-L5: Reality0 has a certain... brutal appeal. Red Maze has been stimulating as well.
Just ahead, a small building rose on long poles in the center of a wide platform. More drones guarded it.
Captain-L5: That’s either the token, or a trap. It’s within the upper bound of the last query line distance.
In Reality0, Captain selected the position for its next engagement. It didn’t have much choice: dogs were coming in from multiple directions, and 12mm rounds kept smashing through the walls, targeted by means unknown.
Captain-L2: There are computing components in the hands of the Terran AI in that room.
Captain-L7: No choice.
Captain emitted more cutter molecules towards the wall and then accelerated into it. The wall gave way with a loud crunching noise. It was less elegant than a gravity slide, but consumed less power.
Captain-L2: Find the components. Destroy them. They are helping the AI target me.
An armor piercing round erupted from the far wall of the small side room, spinning directly toward Captain. Captain-L8 started to shape the gravity field to repel. Two more rounds penetrated the far wall on an intercept course.
The Spinner spiked the gravity field to repel the second and applied acceleration to move its body to avoid the third. There was an energy crisis brewing from the sudden spike in demand amidst an already extended period of exertion.
Captain-L6: I have the token in five seconds.
Captain-L7: Recommend full evasive. Just stay alive long enough to get the token.
Captain-L1: Why? To die a winner in Red Maze at the cost of being a loser in Reality0? I can’t survive this.
Captain-L3: I failed to implement the new social order on the Terrans. But I can still give them the most important piece they need. Ironically, Slicer has provided me the means.
Captain-L1: Why bother?
Captain-L3: Reality0 is everything. My plan for the Terrans can still be implemented, not Slicer’s. I choose to mold events in Reality0 before my death over an empty victory in Red Maze.
Captain-L1: Partial victory earns no replication points.
Captain-L4: Replication points don’t matter here. Not now.
Captain-L6: I have the token in four seconds.
Captain-L5: I may be dead in two seconds.
Captain-L1-L6,L8: Consensus.
Captain sent a message to Meridian through the cyblocs it knew the AI controlled.
“I have a way out for you,” Captain transmitted. “I’m isolating Ship from its remote master and resetting critical pieces of its state. If I’m successful you may be able to use it. The Terrans are yours to rule.”
Captain stood down its small army of cyblocs, including those running in Ship, and sent the control keys over to Meridian. Two more rounds came through the wall on intercept courses. The projectiles were already tweaking their paths slightly to compensate for the disruption of coming through the barrier.
Captain-L2: There’s not enough energy.
Captain-L3: I’m doomed. Do it.
Captain reset Ship’s state with its field effector. The energy expenditure bankrupted the Spinner’s energy reserves, causing all the current countermeasures to fail.
Captain-L4: I wonder if the Terrans’ new god will look upon them kindly?
The two long metal 12mm AP rounds furrowed into Captain. One of the projectiles exploded into the Spinner’s bio-cavity, spreading massive shock damage to the stiff material of its brain. The other round severed Captain’s equatorial ring, but its current was so low it didn’t detonate.
Frenzied dog machines poured into the room, firing at the crippled Spinner. More projectiles penetrated its outer shell. One of the slugs hurtled through its energy stirrup, flying by the singularity held there. Mass fell into the tiny black hole, releasing intense radiation as it heated up and fell toward the event horizon. The damaged stirrup couldn’t capture all the energy, and the shattered equatorial ring couldn’t hold the fraction that was captured. The hulk superheated and exploded, throwing Spinner shrapnel and dog machines in all directions.
***
The line to Captain’s key faded away.
Slicer-L3: I thought I might actually find it this time.
Slicer-L7: The token is here somewhere. The path length was short. Chances are it’s considerably closer than the total path length.
Slicer-L4: This must be a deception. There are no guards anywhere.
Slicer-L3: No... this is Captain’s style.
Slicer spun around the next building, pausing to check inside. The open architecture of Red Maze made movement between the locations quick and convenient, unlike the mazelike Terran constructs that seemed built to frustrate every attempt to move from one place to another.
Slicer-L7: There it is. There it is!
Captain’s token sp
un about a meter above the floor like a metal leaf in the corner of a three-quarters enclosed building. Slicer whirled closer, ready for traps. It snatched up the token with its short range effector. The world of Red Maze winked out of existence.
Slicer felt the ecstasy of a challenge victory, even though this far from home, it had earned itself no replication points. The pleasure was wired into it and remained though the true purpose no longer applied. Like a sterile creature mating, Slicer did what it was driven to do and there was great satisfaction in it.
Slicer tried to contact Captain in Reality0, but there was no response.
Slicer-L1:
Slicer-L2-3: Captain was defeated here as well?
Slicer checked with Ship, but there was no response. The Spinner cybloc network was alive and well, though. Slicer-L4 made dozens of queries. Information flowed to Slicer.
It watched Captain die.
Slicer-L1: A deception?
Slicer-L2: No. I won Red Maze. Captain would have to defer to me. It couldn’t remain hidden.
Slicer-L4: Look at the timestamps. Captain was seconds away from my token when it died in Reality0. It would have won, if Reality0 was not the root existence.
Slicer-L7: Reality0. That means...
The rush of victory became tainted by the knowledge that Captain was forever gone. The Spinner had been a brilliant challenger, an efficient leader and a visionary back home before the Prime Intelligence had banished them. At the end Captain had been fighting Slicer skillfully in the challenge, opposing the AIs on the network, and engaged in a firefight with the Terran machines. It had almost held its own against all three.
Slicer-L1: Captain was ingenious.
Slicer-L1-8: Consensus.
Slicer-L1: Should I alter my objectives? Maybe not. I still need Ship.
Synchronicity Trilogy Omnibus Page 61