Insidious

by Michael McCloskey

  “I don’t know!”

  “Tell me about Captain.”

  “Captain is … he is … it is … the leader.”

  “Tell me more about Captain.”

  Aldriena groaned. She closed her eyes but it made the spinning worse, so she snapped them back open again. She felt the sting of sweat in a cut on her temple.

  “Captain is the leader of a group of aliens that made contact with Synchronicity.”

  Finally, there was some respite. Her statement took the program awhile to dissect. Aldriena tried to breathe deeply. Then she clenched her stomach muscles and opened her mouth trying to puke. When that didn’t work, she tried to sleep. Nothing was working.

  “What do you mean Captain is an alien? Tell me more about that.”

  “It is a cyborg that resides in an artificial body that moves in a … an alien spinning motion. It has enslaved several stations and forces the inhabitants to participate in virtual contests in order to attain ranks.”

  “Why haven’t you informed the UNSF of this development?”

  Aldriena laughed. Then she spat on the logo of the shiny machine.

  “That’d be pretty dumb, now wouldn’t it? If we did that you’d, oh, say, fly in with a heavily armed space fleet and shut Insidious down before we could learn anything from them. Before Black Core, Bentra, and Reiss-Marck could analyze their technology and catapult themselves a century ahead of the competition.”

  Ten

  “This is outrageous,” Vendrati proclaimed.

  Bren barely heard her. His mind had already accepted the report of the Black Core operative and moved on to the repercussions. Aliens! It fit the facts they had; Bren felt that if they’d been up against a rogue AI core they’d have lost already. But a small group of aliens, with technology ahead of that possessed by humans, could well explain past events.

  “It makes sense,” Bren said.

  Everyone stared at him. He realized he must have interrupted the meeting in progress.

  “Excuse me? Niachi has probably been suborned by the AI core. We already know it has some kind of mind control,” Vendrati said.

  “We thought the mind control was related to the suits,” Jameson said. “Bren, why are you so willing to believe the Black Core operative?”

  “The Reds are superior technology. Plain and simple. They’re smaller, faster, and better armed. We only win because of strength of numbers. Yet, other than the superiority of those few machines, our foe is strangely weaker than an AI core would be. They don’t fully take over our computers, initiate mass production of war machines, or anything else we saw before the Marseilles Purge.”

  “The purge is only one incident. For all we know, these super-AIs are each unique just like people are. This woman has created a ridiculously elaborate story to mislead us,” Vendrati said. “Crates of the strange gear that we’ve seen on these stations were found on Xanadu. I believe this woman has been spreading elements of the rogue core to new stations.”

  “Yet the rangers on Xanadu have not reported any problem,” Jameson said.

  “Those rangers may already be lost to us,” Vendrati said.

  “The woman isn’t making it up,” Devin said. “She can’t be fooling the Scorpion.”

  “If her brain has been rewired by an AI core, she could have the ability to defeat the Scorpion,” Vendrati said. “In fact it’s probably not even safe to keep her alive at all. We have no idea what she’s capable of.”

  “The tissue we found inside the Reds is not an indication of bio AI technology,” Bren said. “It was an alien brain. The Reds are cyborgs. Open your eyes.”

  Vendrati leaned forward as if she intended to continue the argument, but then she sat back. She frowned.

  “Well, unless these aliens are the vanguard of a full-scale invasion, this is actually good news,” Jameson said. “We can handle a small group of them much easier than a runaway core.”

  “I don’t know what’s really happening,” Vendrati said. “But whether it’s a core or aliens, luckily our course of action is about the same: isolate the stations from the net and bring more fleets out here to mop up the deep space stations as fast as we can.”

  “True. For now, we’re sticking with the official story of a rogue core,” Jameson said. “That story gets the right level of concern from the megacorporations and makes them offer to help.”

  “So … what will we do with the Black Core operative?” asked Devin.

  “She needs to be isolated from the net,” Vendrati said. “Until we’re sure of this alien story, it would be foolish not to keep her under constant observation with severe restrictions on her activities. Her link should be disabled.”

  “I think we should bring her here,” Bren said.

  Everyone looked at him.

  “She’s allowed on these stations. She knows all about the Reds. We need to find out more.”

  “More than that; we can use her skills,” Devin said. “She’s used to infiltrating these stations, and they expect her to show up carrying special materials and information. We can send her in ahead of our next board and control deployment.”

  “Could be useful,” Jameson said.

  “Extremely so,” Henley chimed in. “Imagine if she could disable their short range radar. We can keep ourselves off the public radar buoys with their local detection systems in our pocket, their warning would be reduced to nothing. They’d be oblivious to our BCP until we attached to the station.”

  “My people need to examine her longer,” Vendrati said. “We could be sending an enemy ahead to warn the others. She may be suborned by the enemy, be it AI or a group of aliens.”

  “Then you have one week. Unless you can come up with some evidence that she’s been compromised, I’ll see if she can rendezvous with us before we hit Avalon,” Jameson said.

  “Then our plans remain the same?” Henley asked.

  “If you really believe they’re aliens, then we should consider opening a dialogue with them,” Vendrati said.

  “That would just serve to further warn them,” Henley said.

  “High Command believes if there really are aliens on these stations, then they may leave altogether,” Jameson said. “We have orders to attempt capturing one alive. Even at the risk of our lives and hardware.”

  Everyone fell silent.

  We could barely defeat them in open combat. How could we possibly capture one alive? Bren didn’t have to say it aloud.

  “I’d advise against that. We’ve been leaving marines behind on the bases,” Henley said. “I don’t have as much manpower as we started with.” Jameson nodded. “We have a troop transport rendezvousing with us at Avalon, our next stop. They have two more battalions ready to assist. We need to come up with some nonlethal options for the Reds.”

  “With due respect, it’s dangerous even to try. What are we going to do? Net them? They move so fast, it’s hard to hit them even with the ASSAIL guns,” Henley said.

  “We could use poison gas,” Devin suggested. “If they have biological components, then we could take advantage of that.”

  “Maybe some kind of electromagnetic weapon to burn out some of its cyblocs, or whatever they use for their computers,” Jackson said.

  “I suspect if we burn out a cyborg’s electronics, then the bio component would eventually die as well,” Bren said. “I don’t know about their design, but if we had a human brain in a box, it would need the system working to provide oxygen, glucose, whatever. If you fried the system, then the brain would probably die in a minute or two.”

  Jameson waited until no one else had spoken for a while.

  “We have a lot of glue at our disposal,” Jameson said. “We found last time that the gear had been treated to defeat our run-of-the-mill glue weapons. But we have other compounds designed for heavier targets. We have a limited supply of a hardening foam grenade that is deemed too dangerous to use on infantry targets. But it will freeze a security robot in place. Given that these creatures are so sm
all and light, it seems reasonable to expect that they may not be very physically strong.”

  “Distribute them among my men,” Henley said.

  “No,” Bren said. “No, better to give them to the ASSAIL units, the machines will know the best time to deploy the grenades.”

  “We don’t have any kind of launchers for them on board,” Jameson said. “They’re packaged as hand-thrown grenades.”

  “Clip them to the front of the ASSAILs,” Bren maintained. “The throat tentacle is more than agile enough to throw a grenade. The machines will be able to combine the use of the grenades with their other weapons with preternatural foresight.” Bren winced. Preternatural foresight? Why can’t I talk like a normal person?

  No one objected. Jameson nodded. “Very well. I’ll have the grenades brought to the Guts.”

  “I can allocate some resources to communicating with the aliens,” Vendrati said.

  “No. Advisor Vendrati, we need you to focus on analyzing the bio residue of the alien … flesh or brains, or whatever is inside those machines. Your new orders are to come up with weapons we can use now that we know they’re cyborgs. Do we even know if they’re carbon-based life? Can we poison them? Try to find out if their bodies do gas exchange with the outside air. Figure out what weaknesses they have that robot’s don’t.”

  “Yes, sir,” Vendrati said.

  Bren stared at Vendrati. She accepted those orders calmly. Considering all she has to work with is some burnt residue, it sounds like a tall order.

  “If we succeed in capturing one alive, then we can attempt to communicate with it,” Jameson said. “Until then, we have to make sure we take control of these bases.”

  ***

  A link signal woke Bren from a half sleep full of work anxieties and non sequitur sexual forays involving Nicole Devin. He suspected that few woman had ever ridden an ASSAIL into battle, much less while completely naked. He checked the message. It was Lieutenant Hoffman transmitting from the Guts.

  “Yeah?” Bren responded without opening his eyes. Anyone watching him lying twisted on his bed would believe him still asleep.

  “I’ve sterilized the data from Meridian’s … from what we did.”

  “Good. Anything we can use?”

  “I don’t have a countermeasure in mind. We only have a theory about how the armor was defeated. As in Meridian’s summary, involving molecule cutters to weaken the armor in little circles before the main weapon strikes.”

  Bren grunted. “I need a shower. I’ll see you incarnate in the Guts in a half hour.”

  Bren cut the connection. He accessed his water ration record from the room computer. A graph in his PV showed that he had a lot left. Apparently, Vigilant had resupplied from the last space station.

  A panel in the wall of his quarters opened to the shower. It had water and crash foam nozzles on the top with nothing but a hand stirrup along its smooth sides. The tiny space served as both shower and crash tube; if the Vigilant had to perform emergency acceleration then Bren would climb into it and the entire thing would fill with foam, encasing him in a protective cocoon.

  He stepped in and activated the controls with his link. A hot blast of high velocity water scoured his clammy skin. He put his hand into the stirrup for a shot of caffeine. He couldn’t feel the injection but his heart stirred in response. His body knew the routine.

  Bren cut the shower. A blast of air as hot as the water dried him for a ten count. He stepped out of the cubicle and put on a fresh uniform. Finally awake and functional, he double-timed it down to the Guts.

  He walked in behind an attractive female handler. Landers, he reminded himself. Her uniform pants outlined her trim shape quite explicitly, and the sway of her hips reminded Bren of his humanity. Her red hair was long and shiny, smelling of lilacs as he trailed her. He sighed. These long cruises were full of such frustrations. Ironically, his recent activity with Nicole had heightened his awareness of the women around him, not satiated it.

  Landers was headed toward Hoffman’s station. Thoughts of his earlier fragmented dreams returned as he surveyed her gray uniform from behind. She giggled.

  “What are you laughing at?” he said aloud. Last time he checked, his thoughts were his own.

  She turned and saw Bren. “Sorry, Major.”

  “At ease, Lieutenant. What’s so funny?” He kept his voice relaxed, trying to coax the truth from her.

  “Well … you know how Hoffman loves his anchor flats so much?”

  “Yeah. I do.” Bren looked over at Hoffman, who hadn’t noticed them yet. To the naked eye, it appeared as if he stared at several blank metal spaces set out before him. Bren knew that Hoffman used them as PV anchor points to show data displays from his link, interlacing visual reality with his own virtual workspace.

  “I set them to show him looking at porn all day long,” she said. Bren smiled. Her PV showed something quite different.

  “Hey! I heard that,” Hoffman said, turning around.

  Bren laughed.

  “Well, that’s what you get for using so many anchor points,” she told him. “You look like you’re sitting at a bridge station in one of those old space videos.”

  “Bah,” he said dismissively. Then, “Actually I only use one of them for porn … of you.”

  “Uh! Well, you have a scan of my face but not my bod!”

  “That’s what you think. When I dated Waters, she gave me a feed of the gym showers.”

  “She wouldn’t!”

  Hoffman laughed. Landers walked onward.

  Bren looked at Hoffman’s anchor spots again. He had even more than last time. Many people interlaced their real vision with link data. Bren had even heard of people back on Earth who made their wife or husband look like someone else in their PV. Bren preferred to keep translucent floating displays, so he could easily separate the virtual from the concrete.

  Hoffman sent him a link and he opened it. It appeared to be a lab study on the physical validity of a cutter molecule attack on the ASSAIL armor.

  “Hrm. I wonder how much time we can spend on this idea. Even if it’s true that doesn’t necessarily help us,” Bren said.

  “I’m pretty sure about this, Major. This theory has already racked up a successful prediction. I figured if it really did work that way then maybe we could see some of the results of the pre-cutting. Well, there is. Our machines are riddled with invisible damage.”

  “Really? The surviving machines too?”

  “Yes. We found microfractures in tiny circles scattered across every machine. We found at least two on each one. Nergal had five or six. So whatever this thing is, the weakening element seems to work faster since there are so many potential breakthrough sites in the armor that were never exploited by the main weapon.”

  Bren saw a new machine being set up in its bay. He accessed his link for the details. A summary caught his eye. He frowned. They only had three new ASSAILs available for the Avalon incursion.

  “Shit. Only three more?” he said aloud.

  “Tell me about it,” Hoffman said.

  “Have we named them yet?”

  “Well, of course, we still have Meridian. Neptune, Nergal, and Nemesis that made it out of Tanelorn. So we called the new ones Oblivion, Odin, and Orion.”

  Bren smiled a little. “Nice. We could use an Odin about now.”

  “Jameson sent the grenades down, too, but we haven’t set them up yet.”

  “Look on the bright side, Lieutenant. At least we have fewer machines to prep.”

  “So … what do you think about this whole aliens theory?” Hoffman asked.

  “It’s not a theory. It’s real. Ask yourself about the weapon.”

  “I don’t know whether to be scared or relieved,” Hoffman said. “What I mean is, I would expect an alien weapon to be capable of destroying the ASSAILs. I was thinking before, someone on Earth has revolutionary new weapons technology and we don’t know anything about it. But now I know it comes from somewhere else entirely.�
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  “I know what you mean,” Bren said. “It makes more sense now that we know where it comes from … or rather, that we know we could not possibly know where it comes from.” Bren smiled. “Before, I thought, how could we be so far behind the curve? The ASSAILs were supposed to be advanced weapons.”

  Hoffman smiled too. “There wasn’t any room in our world view for such technology. So it fits better now that we know it’s from entirely outside our world view!”

  “Yep,” Bren said.

  “I wonder if anyone tried to talk with these things. Sounds like they just came in and took over, huh?”

  “Yes. Took over in a big way. I wonder where they’re from, and how many more of them there are. Are they renegades? Soldiers? Explorers? So many unknowns.”

  “Does the UNSF know more than we’re let in on?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll try to find out what I can from Devin.”

  “You like her?”

  Bren was surprised. Apparently, it was obvious to everyone.

  “Yeah. I do. But the way things have been going crazy up here, I guess I haven’t had enough time to do much about it.”

  Hoffman nodded. “Well, you might as well try, before that nuke we’re all sitting on goes off.”

  Bren shrugged. “Do you think a spurned lover has ever nuked himself out of anguish?”

  “Nope. But there’s a first time for everything,” Hoffman said and laughed.

  ***

  Bren sought out Nicole in person on the third deck of Vigilant where she had set up her mobile intelligence camp. After passing two marine guards, Bren entered a temporary work area used by the intelligence folks attached to the BCP command staff. It held mostly cubicles filled with personal effects with the exception of a couple of emergency access points for the ship’s computers. Of course, the manual access points were covered in dust.

  He spotted her. She sat at a desk centered between a few piles of hardcopy. He thought of Hoffman’s anchor points. People must have their eccentricities, he decided.

  “What brings you here?” Nicole asked.