Nemesis (The MechaVerse Trilogy Book 2)

by Jeremy Cunkle

  “I’m in the middle of like five things at the same time, if we could avoid pointless contact that’d be nice.” Kurtis signed off, his acerbic tone completely missing its mark. He stared at the communicator for a second; the call was very unlike Vera. He walked over to a dedicated computer station, typed in a set of commands that automatically began tracking Vera and the Dr.’s location as well as their vitals for whatever reason she wanted. An alarm would sound on his wrist communicator and any computer’s near him if anything happened to either of them. He returned to his work, the matter forgotten.

  Dr. Hesken was more clearheaded at the present then Vera. Her mind made the connection first. “Aurora intentionally hid the data from you, but also had every opportunity to conceal the evidence and chose not to. The fact that she allowed the call to Kurtis means we need to examine her motives a second time in regards to her concealing the effects of the drugs on Mikkhael.” Dr. Hesken made eye contact with Vera, lifting her chin and eyebrows slightly. “What’s your best guess as to why she would act that way?”

  Vera paced, forcing her emotions to wait until later when there was a more appropriate time to allow them to have their way. “I don’t know, she had clear instructions to send me reports of their effects and gave me every impression that she was doing so.”

  “You are missing the obvious link girl. Stop for a moment. She hid the side effects exactly because of your reaction. You must first remove your bias from a problem before you can analyze it. If she had shown you the effects, you would have forced Kurtis to re-organize her code, removing her ability to administer the necessary amounts to Mikkhael. For whatever reason, she has deemed the use of the drugs more critical than their effects. I would wager that Mikkhael came to the same conclusion as well.

  “I have seen first-hand the effects of the drugs, and have come up with my own remedies as best I could. It has been harder for me to look into the reasoning behind their use, but I have performed my own research into both your and Aurora’s work. Aurora has become indelibly linked to Mikkhael, and I believe she is perfectly capable of performing any action to help him regardless of cost. On some level she has managed to justify her actions. I would wager that without the heavy use of the drugs he would have died already.”

  Vera was shaking her head. “You don’t understand Mikkhael though. He will do literally anything to help him achieve victory. Deep down, to the point I don’t believe he realizes it, he never expected to live through this anyway, and the cost of his actions are entirely skewed towards the short term. It was always our role to ensure his every advantage, not become the catalyst for his death.” She finally stopped pacing, analyzing everything that had just taken place. Without realizing it, she cursed him again under her breath. “Bugger it all. That fool!”

  Vera looked up suddenly, clarity present again in her eyes, moving to racks of medicines and herbs, searching the rows of ingredients, collecting certain ones. Her mind was already racing in a new direction. She called out ingredients and their qualities verbally to the data slate on her side, having it analyze new compounds. She rushed to the table, hurriedly laying out her bounty, rushing to begin mixing them.

  Dr. Hesken took all of this in, always watching. She detected no signs of deceit in Vera’s actions. Her desire to help Mikkhael was sincere; however, the route that she took needed a guiding more experienced hand to steer her. Dr. Hesken remained stationary, observing the ingredients that Vera collected, waiting to make her decision. Vera’s choice of ingredients satisfied Dr. Hesken. Vera was a formidable woman who had just gained her respect and trust. Her decision made, she moved to collect a few ingredients that Vera had not thought of or overlooked in her haste.

  She moved next to the younger woman, rolling up her sleeves, handing her a jar full of an already ground substance to add. “Just 15 milligrams of this, it’s potent enough to help protect against the dependency but not dilute the compound.”

  Vera took the proffered bottle, reading the label, tears once more coming to her eyes. “Thank You,” was all that she could say.

  Dr. Hesken continued, handing her another bottle. “This will help it synthesize in his blood easier. The side effects will be different, nothing serious though. You need to organize a compound to weaken and vary the side effects as much as possible, giving the patient’s body as much opportunity to overcome their effects as possible. If you pursue just the effect you want from a compound, you can kill your patient. You are good, but I have decades of experience on you, although I might not look it. Get to work girl; there isn’t much time.”

  The good doctor continued to talk as she worked, in much the same manner as she used her voice to sooth a patient she was examining. That was until a thought struck her. She looked the girl next to her over. She was pretty enough, the way she carried herself was obvious now that she made the realization. “You love him, don’t you?”

  Vera stopped mixing, her hand frozen above the equipment. She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

  Dr. Hesken continued. “That helps explain a few things. Very well then, if he’s going to abuse the dosage levels, then we have to organize them in such a way to prevent overdose. You have some interesting ideas to build from; together we can do this correctly. It’s a woman’s job to guide the men we love and protect them from themselves.”

  They spent the next few hours in near silence, communicating only when necessary, focused on their work. It was only that evening, back in her assigned quarters, that Vera realized Dr. Hesken referenced her love for Mikkhael in the plural form. She laid in the bed, exhausted from the turn of events, a smile across her face as she fell asleep. Mikkhael had done it again, his sincerity and honesty winning someone else over to his cause. She wondered how many others on the base felt the same way as the Doctor. She looked forward to finding out.

  CHAPTER SEVEN – GROUNDED

  “Family means no one gets left behind or forgotten” – David Stiers

  Kurtis prioritized the initialization of the software for the equipment Kiryl and Chief Engineer Thorsten would need, and then proceeded to calibrate all of it. After the trip from Earth, there was enough to keep him busy for weeks so he enlisted the help of his still developing AI, Argos, to take care of the equipment. Meanwhile he handled working on syncing each Mech armor they brought with them with the repair bays being customized to house them. Before leaving for Mars, Kiryl built him a customized mobile rig nearly the size of an anti-grav cart to house a powerful array of computer equipment. A curved monitor surrounded 270 degrees of his vision; currently split into twelve different segments, each dedicated to their own processes, and he used every bit of the resources available.

  Kurtis was an atypical computer technician, a pile of trash collecting wherever he sat still for any length of time. Caffeine drinks and junk food comprised the majority of his diet, allowing him to operate on minimal sleep for days at a time. Three keyboards were strategically inset into the desk that mostly surrounded him; it frequently seemed as if he managed to type on all of them at the same time. Under and behind the desk was jam packed with servers and dedicated processing power, more had been added anywhere uncluttered space appeared, as well as, above and around the desk.

  The first two days after their arrival on Mars had now passed, spent in a frenetic blur while helping his teammates, and he was itching to do the one that thing that bothered him the most, break open Aurora’s code. Opportunity finally presented itself when the others fell asleep, and he took full advantage of it. He backed the rig into a corner, locking himself away from the world and its distractions for a time. He called up the original Aurora’s program code stored in the drone back at the weather station, displaying it across the screen, a physical kill button in his hand the entire time. Before leaving for Mars, his worries about her behavior progressed to the point he created a physical switch that would disconnect her from her network, effectively disabling her should the need arise.

  The call from Vera asking to be
monitored haunted his memories; his finger caressing the kill switch as he delved deeper into the programming that rendered her consciousness. He gasped at what he saw as millions of numbers and characters splayed across the giant screen, nearly hitting the kill switch immediately. Despite his misgivings, he waited, delving further, seeking to understand.

  Aurora’s voice announced herself over the communicator on his wrist; she was refused complete access to the rig, her shells unable to see or access it and unable to use a camera or any other connection to infiltrate it. An impassioned debate began, Kurtis asking questions while his finger never moved from just above the switch in his left hand. He lost track of time as they continued the back and forth. She cooperated, understanding the consequences of not doing so, not seeking to hide anything from him.

  Hours passed unheeded. He reached for another energy drink, his eyes were blurry, head fuzzy, and he needed a distraction. When his hand passed through empty space where the cans were kept, he checked the clock, and then promptly realized he had likely just spent the entire night talking with her. It was 6:00 a.m. Earth time, or 6:30 Mars time. He looked down at his wrist, holding the kill switch through the night made it cramped and sore. Without hesitating any longer, he pushed the button, which was followed by an alarm on his communicator; the same alarm that would now be emitting from the others communicators. His friends would read the alarm description and join him soon. He knew he had to work quickly; time was not on his side.

  The first thing he did was bifurcate Aurora’s personality into two separate personas, meaning that including her shell controlling Mount Olympus and her original consciousness out at the weather station and the new one he just created, there were now three of her. He disconnected the side of her original programming that dealt with cyber warfare, cutting it off entirely from the main programming. It would slowly wither and die without the direction of the main personality. He then erected a series of firewalls around the part of her original persona that remained, importing it back to the base, re-writing her privileges in a blur, denying her access to anything outside of the very tiny computer she found herself confined to. He disabled all of her abilities to communicate. For the time being, her capabilities would be limited to displaying a self-projection of herself on the small monitor of a dedicated workstation next to his rig, cutting her off from the network where she could not gain access to additional resources and attempt to break out.

  At that moment, Alyona spun the rig to the side so that they could get his attention, momentarily sending him into a panic from the unexpected interruption, forgetting that he called for her. The three remaining members of the Omnos squad were now assembled, waiting for him explain why he woke them up from the first sleep they had since arriving, irritated from gathering them hours before they were supposed to go out on their first mission instead of leaving them to rest. Upon seeing the sheer terror on his face, their annoyance passed as they realized the alarm was legitimate. They stood waiting for him to gather himself and tell them what was going on.

  He coughed repeatedly, slowly re-gaining control; meanwhile, pointing to the screen, but it was enough. They could all code to various levels and quickly realized they were looking at the data that compromised Aurora’s host personality displayed across the enormous monitor. Hundreds of folders were open, showing different types of files, the size of the files showing just how bloated her code had become. Kurtis quickly caught them up to speed.

  “I got around to taking a look at Aurora’s code sometime last night, she cooperated with me fully or I would have deleted her, not just isolated her as I have. For the time being, she should be considered offline as an emergency precaution and will remain so for an unknown amount of time. I have also split her personality in two.” He spoke rapidly; panic underlying his tone.

  “Her cyber warfare abilities have passed so far beyond the control of anyone, the damage done is unimaginable. As you remember, she was equipped with the ability to react dynamically to any situation she encountered. She was also equipped with advanced cyber warfare abilities. These factors combined with her quantum processing capability and incredible amount of dedicated processing power combined into one mission, waging war on the entire Mars Interweb.

  “Instead of going around their systems, at some point her logic decided to take a head on approach against the entire PDF apparatus, and that includes the Interweb itself. I have no idea why she made that decision, but with that in mind, she compromised tens of millions of computers, slaving their processing power, adding it to her own. At some point, the PDF realized this, and they began fighting back. At first it appears to be simple conventional cyber-warfare, a whose stronger kind of battle, that was until she began to be overpowered. At that point it seems she changed tactics, replicating new copies of her personality, creating shells and then installing them on each infected machine. This continued as she spread her way through different sets of networks. Civilian, government, military, space, you name it she tried to corrupt it, continuously multiplying shells of herself and installing them on each new machine her code enslaved.

  “Each personality was a weaker copy of herself, all set to attempt different sets of tactics, each seeking an individual path to victory that was then relayed back to a central command and control server to be integrated into an exponentially growing network of information. Hundreds of millions of copies were made, if not billions. Some went about attacking; using traditional methods like denial of service, phishing, etc. others wrote custom viruses. Some performed defense for her and the other personalities, serving as dummies or erecting firewalls. Still others replicated as quickly as they could, continuing to infect more and more machines and networks.”

  Kurtis paused for effect; and to take a breath while he collected his thoughts. “The scale of what happened is unreal. We thought the other rebel factions were likely behind all those automated freighters that crashed, gas lines exploding in the cities, airships falling out of the air, utility stations exploding etc. that began occurring a month ago and have continued since. We were wrong. I have clear evidence that it was all caused by Aurora. The scale of the damage quite frankly, is unbelievable. She brought this planets’ Interweb to its knees, entirely crippling it and everything that relied on it. Once I knew what to look for, I began looking for signs of how the PDF responded.”

  Kurtis paused scanning his notes once again; quietly cursing in his once native German, so unnerved was he. “Mein Gott.”

  “The PDF military was forced to declare a Broken Arrow level of crisis, the absolute highest crisis level there is. They worked hand in hand with civilians and almost everyone on this planet capable of coding, because at every level the spreading corruption from Aurora’s copies crippled all aspects of the system in an ever-expanding radius. Their effort has been so extreme, that it has taken tens of thousands of engineers to fight her off, at best achieving the current level of stalemate. The networks are so clogged by this cyber war that they are completely useless. Satellite feeds, landline, radio, you name it. They are fighting across every available spectrum, and that’s why there is no outside communication capability.

  “Their strategy has been the only realistic one. They created viruses that specifically target the shells she spawns, overpowering and deleting them. They wall off the machine with upgraded firewalls, and then manually unplug it from the Interweb so that it cannot be exposed again. They then have to re-install a clean version of any original software, although upgraded to fend off her infections. The scale of the operation is…. Immense; and can only be compared to the amount of data lost through the fighting.

  “Her code is so thoroughly corrupted from the exposure to these viruses through the central command and control server, and the spawning of so many individual personas that I had to isolate her core from the outside world. To be entirely honest, the PDF need to win this particular fight, and we need to help them. I would delete her, but she has absorbed so much data that at some point it wo
uld be inevitable that during the lengthy process she would turn on us and go rogue. Long before I completed a data dump of her code we would all be dead and countless millions of others on Mars.”

  Kurtis looked at the dedicated console where Aurora was currently confined to, the rest of the Omnos squad members following his gaze. The console did not possess a microphone or speakers, Kurtis had ripped out its wireless ability, camera and microphone immediately after moving her to the console. Such was their terror that they faced away intentionally while they spoke. The face of her self-projection stared at their backs, a feral grin marring the image.

  “I am going to enlist Drogdyn and his team for help; at some point I will need to rest. I will not be able to join you in the field until this is taken care of. I see no choice but to hive off parts of her, deleting them manually. This also means that Mount Olympus is mostly defenseless for the meantime. We no longer have access to early warning satellite systems or computer controlled fire and control systems, the same as anyone else. Argos will have to take over Aurora’s duties; however, he was not purpose built for the task and Vera will initially need to show him what to do. When you are out in the field you will be as blind as the PDF until Argos is brought up to speed. Good luck to us all.”

  * * * * *

  On their fourth day planet side, Alyona, Vera, and Kiryl used the dedicated magnetic launcher tunnel in the Auxiliary hangar to launch their Mech Armor from Mount Olympus and pilot them for the first time. The weather was clear, the sun shone brightly as they marveled in the feeling of flying through the lower Martian gravity in their giant Mech armor. Phobos, the larger and closer of the two Martian moons, and the only one visible from the surface with the naked eye, streaked through the sky above as they gathered at the pre-designated rally point, after twenty minutes of initial maneuvers. Phobos name translated into panic or fear, a good omen for their first steps on Martian soil against the PDF.