The UAV feed showed a whole string of launches, from all the corporate zones. She counted seventeen in four seconds. Only three of them came from Chancelry.
“Well, that looks like Christmas,” she observed.
“What’s Christmas?” Gunter asked.
“You know what Dewali is?”
“Sure.”
“Same thing.”
Kiet’s shooters would be abandoning their firing positions, sprinting and leaping away for new cover. She hoped they made it. High overhead, UAVs fired countermeasures and dodged . . . and exploded. Kiet’s missile tech had no patience with countermeasures.
Then explosions hit just beyond the Chancelry neutral zone ahead, seeking those shooters. Another missile streaked overhead, zoomed back, then dove. Sandy shot it down. This one hit a neighbouring building and blew its upper facade all over the street, crashing down mostly behind them. Another missile came down from their front with little warning; Sandy barely turned and acquired in time to put the other half of her mag into it. It tumbled, broke up and blew up the street in front of them.
The shockwave blew Sandy off the truck, and bits of truck in all directions. She rolled, came to a stop on her back, and checked her rifle. Still worked. She changed mags fast, acquired on the next incoming missile amidst dust and debris from the explosion, and shifted her sights just a little to one side. Hits from nine hundred meters shaved off one side’s stabiliser fins, and it spun, turned sideways, and smashed into building rooves fifty meters away with a deafening thud.
Sandy got up amidst the new rain of debris and went to check on the truck. It was a mess, bonnet smashed in where it had nosed into the crater, roof peeled back, windows and doors gone. Gunter and Tim, the driver, were climbing out dazed and bedraggled, but apparently okay. Except that Gunter was pulling a piece of shrapnel the size of his fist out of his midriff, amidst what was left of his clothes. If he were a straight, there would have been guts everywhere.
“You okay?” Sandy asked.
“Can you believe we’re designed to take this shit?” Gunter marvelled, tossing the shrapnel aside. If not for combat reflex, Sandy would have laughed. Thank God she’d had that fight with Danya, and he wasn’t in the car. Though if she hadn’t, she’d have let him out before now.
“That should be the end of them,” said Sandy. “With no UAVs they can’t see us. Anyone good at stealing cars?”
“You’re sure you don’t want me to plug in for support?” Vanessa pressed.
“Just . . . guard the damn crawlway,” Ari said, waving her distractedly away. He arranged a backpack to lie on, head propped against a cold pipe, implants plugged in and waiting to go.
“I’m not completely useless stabilising a big field matrix,” Vanessa persisted.
“If some corporate gets in here with a gun, we’ll all be completely useless. Go and shoot stuff—it’s what you’re good at.”
The engineering crawlspace was on the perimeter of red sector, getting toward the heavily occupied parts of the station. Best of all, it was only three hundred meters from the bridge. Any further, though, and the corridors became seriously guarded. Cai was up ahead somewhere. Augmented individuals couldn’t see him. Station security cameras and sensors were another matter.
“See you in a bit,” he told Vanessa. “Wake me if something interesting happens.”
It was Cai’s construct before him almost immediately, filling all view. Perspective shift had to zoom in enormously to grasp its detail, and then the scope of it blew him away. No, not Cai’s actual construct, just something he’d built in the past few hours. With Cai’s codes in his own interface, he could see it: intricately interlocking functions and gateways, astonishingly beautiful in this format’s vis-field, like some crystalline life-form flickering and gleaming as it did various things he couldn’t guess at. Locked out of this processing level, Station wouldn’t see any of this.
“Like it?” asked Cai’s voice from somewhere.
“Well, I mean, the colour scheme has a certain post neo-mechanist inspiration . . .”
“You don’t know what it does, do you?” Cai was responding to teasing with teasing. Very high-des.
“No.” He accessed a gate with a simple key. It let him in and guided him along coloured streams of light. Everywhere was not merely structure, but function. And when he applied his own functions, it responded, allowing him to see the station functions within the system, integrated, wrapping around, rarely directly interfacing. Streams of information bent, were distorted, without being aware they were being distorted . . .
Ari laughed. It sounded odd, in netspace, an echo without restraint or repetition. A reverberation off nothingness.
“It’s VR,” he said. “It’s VR for advanced networks. You’re not just fooling a human brain into thinking it’s in a virtual environment, you’re fooling the entire station network.”
The computational power required was . . . off the scale. By a factor of millions, he reckoned, with reflexive sums in his head. Human brains were comparatively easy to fool. Once the initial stimuli was accepted the brain would process within that established containment, essentially fooling itself without further assistance. But complex computer networks had no such self-perpetuating mechanism. The illusion had to be constantly reestablished every microsecond, and the sheer volume of calculation . . .
“Talee are double-brained,” he said then, abruptly as it occurred to him. “I read that. Is it true?”
“Not at liberty to say,” said Cai.
Intellect, then, arose from not the one hemisphere or the other, but somewhere in the middle, an abstract between two cross-referencing processors. God knew how that worked, but like an abacus it exponentially increased its rate of calculation by the combination of two separate yet coordinated processors. Perhaps a similar principle was at work here. Only, the exponential processing from separate, coordinator processors continued ad infinitum. Humans ran into laws that stopped it. Maybe the Talee had found a shortcut, something only a double-brained person could conceive. Shortcuts in mathematics, like shortcuts through the consciousness, or space/time. Conceptual wormholes. A lot of people had theorised how double-brained Talee might see things humans missed. And probably there were things humans knew, had invented early in their development, that Talee would find astonishing.
He thought of Cai, walking through corridors, augmented guards unable to see him, their vision hacked in real time. You didn’t know what you didn’t know, or didn’t see. Couldn’t see, because your brain wasn’t structured to conceive it. Even if it was right in front of you . . .
He stared about him, utterly mesmerised, as his visual function unveiled more and more of the self-replicating system before him, burrowing into ever greater detail. Surely the first humans to set foot on other planets hadn’t felt anything more profound than this. Direct human meetings with Talee remained things of rumour and secrecy, but here, he felt he was seeing something even more profound. The inner workings of the Talee mind, through their network technology. Here was a blueprint of how they thought, on the technical, structural level. And by God, as he gazed across a billion pulsating, gleaming nodes and currents of information, he’d never seen anything as beautiful.
“So what can I help you with?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Cai. “I just wanted you to see it. Log out and walk toward the station bridge. You’ll find the way clear.”
Ari laughed. “You can’t just brain hack the entire station.”
The construct abruptly disappeared. Now he was in bed. With him was a girl. Beautiful, smooth skinned, warm against his body. Blonde hair fine through his fingers, her lips tasting his, her breath sweet and warm. Blue eyes, gazing, with infinite depth. Sandy.
Then back, at the construct. Just like that, like flicking a switch. His heart was pounding, in a way that had only a little to do with that shock of arousal. That had been a memory. Cai had accessed a memory. A real one, with full sensory depth, not just some me
mory implant facsimile. And translated it into replication language. He’d grasped technological explanations for everything else Cai had been able to do to this point, but this one completely eluded him.
That was scary.
“Just walk,” said Cai. “I promise you.”
Vanessa walked, Ari behind, Rhian guarding the rear. The corridor was nearing the bridge; a busy place, with offices and control rooms, security bulkheads with bright, black and yellow stripes, and multiple layers of scanners. Some stationers were standing, staring blankly into space. Others sat with their backs to walls. A few were lying down, perhaps sleeping, though some had their eyes open.
Vanessa was stunned. She moved at a fast crouch, pistol ready in both hands, expecting someone to awake at any moment, or a station alarm to go off. She didn’t understand how the station sensors weren’t registering them in the corridors. She certainly had no idea how it was possible to brain hack so many senior station security personnel at one time. She knew what Sandy had done in the President’s Office Incident, but even that was not so significant as this. She’d had a lot of help, and time to set up. Cai was doing this largely alone, given just a hundred and five minutes preparation once they’d snuck into red sector near the bridge.
“What are they doing?” she asked Ari, edging past several more standing, vacant-eyed stationers.
“Their usual,” said Ari. “They’re working, talking, taking a lunch break. Using the toilet.” Ari was not at all perturbed. He strolled the corridor, pistol in hand but expecting no trouble. Vanessa guessed he was uplinked, watching both Cai’s world and this one simultaneously. He waved a languid hand past stationers’ eyes in passing, or felt at empty space in the corridor where he seemed to see things in the air. If a techno geek could experience the rapture, it would feel something like this, Vanessa thought. For Ari, this was a religious experience, and he seemed to be floating.
“So they’re still functioning?” Vanessa pressed, peering cautiously down side corridors before continuing on. “They’re not knocked out?”
“Just another VR program,” said Ari. “Their brains are still running real time, they’re just not experiencing the real world. They think they are, but they’re not.”
“So they’ll be rearranging things on station, doing their work . . . and they’ll wake up and find otherwise.”
“Yep,” said Ari. “This is a one-time deal. Cai can’t use it again. But it gets us into the bridge, and control of the station.”
“For how long?”
“Until someone outside Cai’s zone of control intrudes and raises the alarm.”
“How big’s the zone of control?”
“Most of this sector, I think,” said Ari, as they approached a security post. The heavy door hummed open to admit them.
“Any idea how he’s doing it?” Vanessa pressed.
“None,” Ari said happily. “I mean, I can make you a list of all the reasons it’s not possible. It’s a damn long list.”
“He’s an alien,” Rhian explained from the rear.
“Not at all,” said Ari. “No more than you are.”
“Semantics,” said Rhian. “Speaking functionally, he’s an alien. He understands concepts and technology a thousand years beyond what we’ve got. Things that our brains might not even be structurally equipped to understand.”
“And yet Sandy’s already started messing with her own invasive VR,” Ari replied. “More like fifty years than a thousand, I think. If Cai’s an alien, then Sandy is, too.”
“Would explain a few things,” Rhian admitted. Vanessa thought she was kidding.
Doors to the bridge opened as easily as the others—massive, blast resistant interlocking plates that hummed on triple-redundant hydraulics. Bridge design was different from what Vanessa had seen before, arranged semi-circular about large display screens on the front wall—an extravagant use of space on any station. In each of the bridge posts sat a man or woman, staring blankly into space.
“Wow,” said Ari, strolling inside. “Just wow.”
Not wow, Vanessa thought. This was frightening. Uplinks weren’t supposed to make people this vulnerable. VR was a completely separate application. You couldn’t just impose it onto people who hadn’t signed up. And even here, with League-tech equipped personnel, brains weren’t supposed to be so integrated with the tech that anyone could just reverse-infiltrate and take over.
Cai used technology far beyond what humans had today, yet the point remained—this was the future of technological possibility. She was a security operative, and the security implications of this were horrifying. As evidenced by what she was doing here now.
“Ari, get me traffic control central please,” said Vanessa, striding to the stationmaster’s chair. “Monitor their attempts to break in, people outside the control zone will be wondering why bridge isn’t responding. Can you keep these people quiet or do we need to toss them outside?”
“We can leave them here,” said Cai, leaning past the motionless com operator at her console, plugs inserted from his portable unit into main com systems. “People are quite hard to move in these numbers.”
“Depends how gently you do it,” said Rhian, moving to station systems, no doubt to check security system.
“Then close the doors and seal us in,” said Vanessa. The stationmaster’s chair swivelled behind a bank of screens, systems to be monitored within a virtual control bubble. “Can I get in?”
“Sure,” said Cai. “Just access.”
Vanessa did so, established a basic connection, and . . . security perimeter, station network, shielded functions, bridge controls, all rushed past at crazy speed. Cai had accelerated it, given them rapid access. The speed and ease of control was insane.
“Okay,” she said, now locked into flight control, multiple sensory systems giving her a complete 3-D picture in her head: the station, three smaller support stations, the planet, facilities on two small moons, trans-orbital shuttles en route, atmospheric shuttles on or departing station approach . . . whoa, a whole mass of trajectory information that zoomed and swivelled as she mentally manipulated the picture, giving her such vertigo she nearly lost her balance. And here, immediately leaving the station, was . . . “Cai, what’s this ship?”
“That’s our ghostie. No idea what it’s called, the name doesn’t appear on station charts. But it’s leaving. Left dock nine minutes ago, just after I arrested control here.”
“Any idea why it’s leaving?”
“Chancelry HQ in Droze has issued a condition black. Requesting immediate support, downfall imminent.”
“Get me full coms,” she demanded. “Route them here.” Visual displays appeared before internal vision: internal functions, external functions . . . she sorted, found Droze uplinks, zoomed on those. But station was a long way away. Broadband transmissions wouldn’t reach Droze, only what the companies thought to put onto the dish.
There was a dull news bulletin, daily routine service announcements . . . a teleconference meeting on promotions and salaries . . . daily trading information and commodity prices.
“I’m not getting anything in relation to the condition black,” she told Cai. She could see the general announcement, a warning panel with black colour coding, and a short statement that said, in total, “Condition Black.” Nothing more. “What are we missing?”
“Outer com satellites,” said Ari. “Intel said Home Guard often transmit up to the geo-stationary to get word out. Companies jam them but they might be a bit busy right now.”
“I tried that,” said Cai, “there’s nothing, complete blackout.”
“Someone’s scared of someone finding out what’s going on,” Rhian observed.
“But if Chancelry’s scared they’re in trouble, they’ll be asking other settlements for help,” Vanessa insisted. “Where are those messages?”
“Narrowband,” said Cai. “They go direct through satellites, they don’t pass through here.”
“We can reprogram the
damn satellites from here, though,” said Ari, determinedly. “Cai, get me access?” Whatever he did took barely ten seconds. Then, “I got it, it’s talking.”
A woman in a nice jacket appeared on screen, hair askew, looking scared. “Look, I don’t care what your reserves policy says, send us everything you’ve got now!”
“Not without a full sitrep,” came the reply, “you know the policy on reserves, we have to keep something here so . . .”
“We don’t know!” the woman shouted. “Nothing got past our barriers but suddenly we’ve got shooting in the perimeter! Look, they started taking out key installations five minutes ago! We can’t engage with full firepower because we’ll take out our own buildings . . .”
“So what use are the reinforcements going to be if you can’t use what firepower you’ve already got?”
“Send us everything!” the woman shouted, quite terrified. In the background, distant but not too distant, Vanessa heard an explosion. Then gunfire. “Kresnov is out there, she’s been threatening us the past couple of days! She’s going to come in here and kill us all!”
“You better believe it, darling,” said Rhian.
Vanessa froze the transmission . . . it was several minutes delayed, at least, recorded on some com unit’s processor. “Did our Ghostie hear this?”
“I’m betting yes,” said Ari. “Or something like it.”
“Fuck. What’s their acceleration profile?”
“Indirect to Droze,” said Cai, and a trajectory path lit up, circling up over the northern pole, then around to intercept Droze as it rotated past on the far, daylight side. “They’re carrying the station’s orbital V. Changing orbit like that is a hard burn, but that thing can accelerate at ten Gs if it has to.”
“Why the long way around?”
“It’s dodging defensive emplacements,” said Ari. “Look, they’ve anti-ship missiles here, here and here . . .” spots lit up across the planet’s surface, “. . . but they can’t get a weapons fix where they are. The satellites are out of position, and that ghostie can outrun nearly anything that’s not a direct intercept . . .”
Cassandra Kresnov 04: 23 Years on Fire Page 48