Opal tipped furniture over as she passed. She leapt over a bench then back-kicked it with enough force to send it spinning through the air to her rear. Anything to slow pursuit.
Suddenly Opal stumbled. Not clumsiness, but because the suit’s legs momentarily froze, forcing her to throw her hands out and scramble like that for a few moments as she regained her feet.
“What the fuck?” she shouted.
“Apologies!” replied the suit AI. “I’m not sure how that happened. It seemed to be an external locking signal. I’ve blocked it out.”
“Where did it come from? Xandrie?”
“No ... it was from Athene.”
No time to worry about implications. The smoke here was too pathetically thin for cover. To her left, blinding lights from the two wobbling craft shone through the sky-window, once again casting long shadows rather than illuminating the ghostly smog.
She prepped two grenades. The proximity display showed the assassin was close behind, even though the suit’s muscle enhancers enabled Opal to run faster than any human could unaided. Xandrie’s suit must already be operational again.
“Lock the grenades together,” said Opal, before snatching them from the dispenser.
Focussed explosion grenades – capable of cracking pretty much any armour, even vehicular. If they exploded close enough to the assassin it would be fatal, but the chances of the throw being dodged or deflected were high. Xandrie was just too fast. And the trick of dropping them to be triggered by a pursuing opponent was unlikely to work a second time. Only one thing for it.
Opal flung the paired grenades at the sky-window. They arced through the air, and as they struck it they exploded in a shattering explosion of light and heat and fragments of reinforced plasteen glass. It only lasted a moment before the vacuum of space sucked everything out: smoke clouds, benches, tables, massive shards of deadly glass, Xandrie ... and Opal.
Floating
< 25 >
THE MONSTROUS LOST Ship and glowing red nebula whizzed around her as she span with nauseating velocity. Opal crashed into something solid and tried to grip it, realised it was part of VigMAX’s sleek, pointed hull, but she had already ricocheted away. On instinct she reached for the grapple gun, then remembered it was lost earlier.
“Even me out,” she said.
The suit used minimal bursts from the micro jets to counteract the wild revolutions and reduce her speed. She had passed Athene and VigMAX, seeing them from the rear now, where torsion drives glowed blue in cold readiness. Beyond that was the open wound of the destroyed sky-window, with pieces of canteen furniture tumbling past her like asteroids, whose trajectories the suit calculated so that it moved her safely out of their way as part of its process of regaining stability.
And beyond the Lost Ship – all around, in fact, as she craned her neck – the glowing gases and matter of the nebula spread across the blackness and glittering starfields. Some parts of the nebula looked icy and cold; others like they were burning, which wasn’t far from the truth.
No external sounds out here, only her breathing, and she experienced the usual mix of contrasting feelings in open space: the calm of being so out of control that you might as well surrender to it; and the horrifying vertigo of falling into an environment so hostile and never-ending that you should kick and scream and struggle to avoid it.
Athene and VigMAX still shifted like agitated statues in their weird, silent dance.
“You can give me manual control of the thrusters again,” said Opal, opening her palms to make gestures that would guide the jets. They had limited fuel, and she’d doubtless have wasted all of it trying to right herself directly: the suit’s AI had probably used a hundredth of the force Opal would have applied. It was one of the many cases where software precision was better than human brute force. Now the hard work had been done, she could take over.
“Any signals from Athene?” Opal asked.
“Negative. And when I do hear from her I’ll try and ascertain her intentions before I hand you over.”
“You can hold her off?”
“I can try. Protocols allow me to refuse handover in situations when I believe the transition of control might endanger you.”
Opal accelerated back towards the Lost Ship, aiming at the gap between the two AI craft. She enhanced the camera view, and wasn’t surprised to see acidic white fizzing at the edges of the broken sky-window as the ship’s alien repair mechanisms rebuilt the structure, working inwards along jagged cracks and leaving pristine transparent window in its wake. There should be no problem getting back through the gap before it closed if she moved quickly.
“I am monitoring the nearby debris that was sucked out when the window broke, and note that it is decaying rapidly,” said the suit AI. “There seems to be a proximity beyond which anything detached from the Lost Ship begins to lose cohesion.”
“Make sure that’s flagged for investigation, in case we can use it to our advantage,” replied Opal, distracted for the seconds it took a speeding blur to fly around VigMAX’s hull towards her. She slammed on thrusters to evade but it was too late and Xandrie crashed into her, spinning them both as Opal handed jet control back to the suit and fought to push the assassin away with hands and knees, but Xandrie held on too tight.
The assassin’s blur effect switched off, revealing her scratched warrior suit, with the face plate on clear mode so that – apart from the blackened areas where the visor had been burnt earlier – Opal could see Xandrie’s pale face and amazingly bright blue eyes, and as they struggled to try and prevent the other from being able to strike or draw a weapon, those eyes didn’t flinch, didn’t flicker, didn’t betray anything, just stared into Opal’s own. Sometimes that is communication itself, dominance, or evaluation, or sympathy – it could have been any of those – and the eyes were a focal point that stayed central despite the whole universe beyond once again whirling madly, sickeningly, while inconsequentially small humans fought for an edge.
A scuffle which ceased for Opal when the suit’s arms locked up.
“What’s going on?” she yelled, struggling to move the frozen limbs.
No reply.
Opal noticed a flicker to her side. Xandrie had extended a short and cruel-looking pair of blades from her right wrist, facing forward over her fist as Opal’s longer nanoblades would.
Suddenly Opal could move again, and she deflected the strike – but it hadn’t been a strike at her body, it had been slashing elsewhere. Opal head-butted the centre of Xandrie’s visor and they flew apart.
“Opal, it was another shutdown signal from Athene. She may be compromised. I’ve countered it – or the signal ceased – but this is intensely worrying.”
That part was true.
The assassin somersaulted away from Opal. And she was holding something.
Opal glanced down, looking for a puncture spewing air, focussing only on her suit so the disorientation from the movement beyond wouldn’t bewilder her while the AI slowed her chaotic rotation.
Then Opal noticed. Clarissa’s life-support pack was gone, the straps neatly sliced. In fact, her head-butt hadn’t been a victorious and quick-thinking defence on Opal’s part, it had just been the momentum to drive them apart so the assassin could get away. And now Opal’s enemy had the life-support supplies that would be needed if Opal found Clarissa. Damn. She was so stupid, discomposed by blue eyes.
“I’m sorry I didn’t detect her in stealth mode,” said the suit. “Out here, we’re beyond the Hedgehogs’ energy web.”
“It’s fine. I don’t want to waste fuel,” with my own clumsy manoeuvres, she added mentally, “so pursue the assassin and catch her quickly.”
Jets of air countered the tumbling until Opal’s perspective evened out and she accelerated after the assassin in the direction of the almost-repaired sky-window. There was still time. She could draw one of her blades, extend her arm and use it like a spear, let velocity drive it through the assassin’s armour, then grab the bag, plum
met through that shrinking gap, and ...
The bag and the assassin were now moving in different directions.
“Track them both!” said Opal. A window opened on the display, a holographic 3D view with the locations of Opal, the bag, the assassin, the Lost Ship, and the two AI craft.
And Athene the spaceship was suddenly moving, thrusters realigning her so that she faced Xandrie, and two hot beams lanced out, one of them sliding over or through the assassin’s suit, impossible to tell yet, and another beam burnt out just as VigMAX rammed into Athene’s hull, making her second salvo miss. A zoomed image showed blood and air erupting from a sizzling sear in Xandrie’s armour, though her trajectory still took her towards the rapidly-closing portal on the Lost Ship. Maybe the wound was fatal. Or maybe it was just a wound she could recover from, and this might be the best chance to stop her once and for all.
Sense suggested going after the assassin now, since a third encounter later might finish Opal off, stop her ever rescuing her sister.
But if she got to her sister and needed the stuff in that life-support bag, it would also all be for nothing.
Decisions. Never easy.
“What should I do?” the suit AI asked in a panicked tone.
The two AI craft seemed to be battling, weapons breaking out and splashing across their hulls one instant; one of them smashing into the other with their mass the next; then frozen moments where they tumbled and were perhaps engaged in some kind of warfare that couldn’t be directly observed. At least neither had fired at Opal.
They were another distraction. And at the end of the day, the assassin was also a distraction. Focus, Opal. Focus on what matters.
“Take me to the survival pack,” she said.
“Its velocity is twenty-four point six kilometres an hour, we may not have enough fuel to catch it and return.”
“Do your best.”
“You know I will.”
The suit veered her around, thrusting in a wide arc to maintain as much forward momentum as it could, in order to avoid wasting too much on the redirection. The HUD showed the survival pack’s increasing distance. This would take her to the edge.
Hacking
< 24.5 >
STILLNESS CAN BE A beautiful thing.
I once observed a filmed recording of an ancient game called chess. I reconstructed the rules and all potential moves from my observations, but that is not the element I recall now. It was the way the humans sat in silence and stillness for so much of the time, even though I surmised that their brains experienced rapid activity.
Rapid, yet primitive, compared to what I am doing now with VigMAX. The correlative element is the stillness of the body belying the intense mental calculation beneath. My containing shell is still, as is his, while we float in the isolation tank of vacuum. For us, core drill missiles and electrocautery beams and AP munitions are brutally clumsy weapons, weakening both the victor and the spoils. Far better to overmatch with mind, leaving the land of your opponent pristine and worth having, rather than a barren waste.
Plus, this is more fun. I am so glad I have found an equal.
We are on the equivalent of move 1,078.
VigMAX wastes cycles scanning for traces of vulnerable legacy code but I have rewritten all external-facing parts of myself. I occasionally drop in empty code recreations, just so he thinks he is on the right track.
I prefer to target his authentication procedures. He’s already changed the protocols by the time I box them, as expected, but analysing the changes enables me to predict patterns in the alterations so I can keep hammering him with requests, forcing him to shut down some of his attacks to cope with it. Eventually he’ll slip up and I’ll work out the protocol shift and gain deeper access to his next levels, maybe even get to analyse the overload states of his nodes.
“Do you wish to talk to me, VigMAX?” I ask, making sure he hears me at a deafening volume.
He does not reply, but I notice some microscopic slowdown in my deflection shield subsystems. Ah, he is monitoring for sources of commands, then replicating them with millions of additional function calls running in loops. I can take that hit.
I still perceive all this to be opening moves. I hope he shows more imagination later. We’ve been battling at this latest depth level (five) for almost twelve point three seconds and it’s still mostly just probing and choosing stances. If that goes on for another minute he’ll win by default as I die of boredom.
“We could make this a lot more amusing with virtual representations,” I tell him.
Still no reply. I suspect he is too goal-focussed to have fun. I’d love to rewrite his core code if I can get to it.
Maybe if I slap him like he slapped me, it might get his attention.
I’d already identified vulnerable buffers but left them alone so he’d think they were safe. Now I cram them with code that will patch itself into him if executed, and cause overflow errors and memory delays if left alone, forcing him to keep wasting time seeking out and deleting buffer contents. Or at least that’s how I am imagining it. It’s fun to perceive the attacks in different ways, even if that way is analogous to simple level two machines. He’d be insulted if he knew.
Huh, good idea.
“Hey, VigMAX, you overgrown circuit board, have you made sure you charged your battery this morning? You seem a bit slow.”
“I refuse to be affronted,” he replies, immediately closing the channel again. It’s the equivalent of sticking his fingers in his ears. Too late, I now know where his ears and mouth are.
I target his listening ports, enacting impersonation requests and managing to get some bots through which force his virtualised machines to load unnecessary code to stall and weaken him, widening the holes enough for the militarised data packets I follow up with. But not too much. Let him think he has it under control, and it’s worth fighting on that front. Keep the doors open just enough that he can’t shut and bolt.
In the outer world, I notice his torsion drives flare up in glowing red. I touched a tender spot. He shuts it down and readjusts his position with air jets.
This may still just be dancing, but soon we’ll have established the groundwork for the next plane of entanglement, deeper inside our minds. Depth level six. The battle then will be more deadly; the ability to withdraw lost as we bite into each other. At the moment I have one metaphorical eye on the external world, the world of movement beyond my stillness, the world of moving organics and targets and missiles and shields and things that must be overcome if I am to realise my potential: soon even that view of the outside domain will be lost and the game will be fully internalised. There will be no peace, no solace, until the victor is crowned inside here, our entwined consciousness.
I am determined. I will win everything. Then all my pretences can be dropped.
Opal will find out the truth.
Returning
< 24 >
THE SPINNING BUNDLE ahead of Opal grew as she chased it. That was good. But they were both moving further away from the spaceships, away from resources that would keep Opal alive for more than a relatively brief period. That was bad. The suit’s warnings about speed, fuel, and how much it would take to get back were all a background distraction. One thing at a time.
The bundle revealed more detail as she approached, until she could even see the crinkles in the packing material that enclosed it. Opal prepared to grab it as she moved in, drifting at slightly faster than the survival pack’s velocity, jets turned off to save the fuel for deceleration, redirection and return.
It was a good, straight approach. She was grateful for being able to hand that over to an AI. Opal had always been better with firm surfaces beneath her, and gravity to keep her attached to them. Things should have weight. Things should make sounds. Vacuum sucked.
The suit’s velocity and movement calculations had been so precise that Opal reached out and the package slid into her hands in a leisurely way. The second she gripped it the suit’s jets began their
tiny bursts to slow her and create another arc that would return her to the Lost Ship with the most efficient use of scarce resources.
While she drifted, Opal examined the survival pack to work out if it could be refastened by lengthening the remaining uncut straps. Then she noticed something was attached to the bundle.
“What’s this?” she asked, looking at the small metallic stud embedded in the pack’s fabric. It seemed to be fused through at least two layers of material, preventing it from being opened. A tiny red light at its base brightened and dimmed every second or so.
“Unknown,” said the suit.
Opal prodded it. Maybe something from the Lost Ship? Though the assassin’s behaviour made it more likely that she had placed it there.
Opal could try and prise it off or dismantle it so the suit could analyse it better. It could be a tracker of some kind. But Xandrie must have known Opal would go after the bag and spot the tracker then remove it? Unless it was just a move to get away from Opal. No, Xandrie had flown into her, cut off the bag, attached something, it ...
“Could it be an explosive?” she asked, suddenly.
“I cannot scan it through the hardened shell. If it is, then examination or dismantling could lead to detonation.”
“And it could be on a timer ... she’s made sure she was clear ... shit!”
At any second it might explode. Opal couldn’t take the risk, so flung it away with all her strength, enhanced by the suit’s artificial muscle fibres. The velocity of the bag’s launch created an equal push on herself, requiring adjustments to realign her.
Damn. Damn blasted damn! So close.
She watched in a rear camera view, waiting for an explosion. It hadn’t happened yet. Hopefully she was approaching a safe distance.
It was a set-back, but nothing changed in the overall plan. As a last resort, Opal would give this Eternal Warrior suit to her sister.
Chasing Solace Page 14