“The Hedgehog has successfully reached the port. Do you want to watch?”
“Okay, screens back.”
One of the displays moved to the centre and zoomed in. The Satreweth could have caught the Hedgehog if they wanted, but they observed from a cautious distance. Once the Hedgehog reached the gaping hole of the inactive thruster it launched itself inside with a final bound; one of the flexible arms hooked onto an edge to change its trajectory and send it down into that blackness, that potential nest, losing it from sight, and taking the signal emitter with it. Some of the Satreweth drifted down after it. Others did ... something else.
It was hard to make out. They seemed to be latching on to the edge and ejecting stringy flesh in strands of whitish swirling lumps. It was coating the entrance to the manoeuvring thruster, and even some of the creatures, connecting up in criss-crossed matted tendrils.
“What are they up to?” asked Opal.
“My best guess is that they are vomiting out their internal organs. Maybe they are mating.”
“Or maybe it’s a trap, to keep things in? Or defences to keep them out?”
“Everything is supposition. It could be communication. Or sealing off for environment control. Or feeding, metamorphosis, regrowth ... too many possibilities.”
“I’m just glad I don’t have to go down there.”
Only twenty-one metres to the hatch now, and the Satreweth were thinning out. Some turned back towards those spraying their guts out. It seemed she’d passed through the herd without being trampled ... or at least, she was thinking that when one of them bumped against her as it changed direction, and sent her tumbling off-course, trying to keep her body rigid so as not to attract attention. Her suit ricocheted awkwardly off the hull.
“I’m using minimal jets, have to stop you rebounding into space,” said the suit.
Some of the creatures were turning, maybe attracted by her movement, or emissions.
“Damn. Keep me against the hull, I’m near the hatch, I can scramble to it.”
A display showed how little remained in the air jets and her precious breathable atmosphere. Every use was shrinking mission time down. Everything was a compromise. But staying alive was worth it.
The suit’s emissions rotated her so she faced down. She carefully used her hands and feet to slow to a halt, finally back in control. That felt good.
She scrabbled crab-like across hull surface in the direction of a glowing HUD arrow. No time to look around, even though she somehow sensed the creatures homing in on her again. There, the hatch: a curve-cornered square shape with a heavy handle. Warnings flashed up on the HUD periphery but she couldn’t look at them now. Every second was more air wasted to counteract the reciprocal force of her hands and feet pushing; every second was a chance something solid and alien might barrel into her, or engulf her.
A kick, a drift, no chance for errors, and she grabbed the handle and cartwheeled around that static point of contact, but she didn’t let go until her feet slammed down, magnetic clamps engaged to give her a modicum of purchase.
Something blurred past at the edge of her vision, embedded in the hull nearby, something that wriggled ... no, focus, focus ... she heaved on the lever and it slid through a ninety-degree arc to the unlock position, allowing her to raise the panel and throw herself inside the cramped chamber. She reached up for the hatch just as something huge drifted overhead, making her think of a video she saw once when she lived on the water planet Fressus, some kind of safety warning about not leaving the habitat and swimming in the waters because of the huge predatorial beings that hunted there ...
She hooked a foot under one of the rungs of the wall-mounted ladder and pulled the panel down over her head until she was sealed in darkness. Her heart was racing, breath coming fast from exertion and panic and the recurring pain of the encapsulated bullet that was still inside her ... and then she laughed. There was no external sound as she pulled the lever into the locked position, because the chamber was still in vacuum; nothing to see in the darkness; but the laugh was enough.
“That was close,” Opal said. “Light me up.”
The silverlight switched on, showing the tiny chamber she sat in, hatch above, hatch below, and an airlock control on the wall. The buttons looked regular enough apart from the lack of writing next to them: just a smear of colour, like chalk dust in the rain. The fact that the chamber had no lights on might even mean a lack of power, and the buttons wouldn’t work anyway. In which case she would laugh again, because she was pretty sure the lower hatch’s emergency lever would be locked in place and unopenable until the airlock equalised with internal ship conditions.
She could finally focus on the damage reports that flashed in her peripheral vision. She blinked on them twice, in rapid succession, and they slid to the centre.
“The creature that bumped you released a corrosive substance,” said the suit, in explanation of the diagnostic rotating outlines of the different suit layers, which flashed in red at various points. “Presumably just a natural reaction to contact, rather than a concerted assault. There are chemical burns to some of the layers, particularly the armoured exterior, but many of them are superficial and repairable.”
“Still, it must be powerful stuff,” said Opal, analysing all the red areas.
“Yes. Even that limited amount would have been enough to melt skin and bone if it came into direct contact with you. Luckily my sub-surface layers can synthesise mixtures to neutralise extreme acidic and alkaline compounds enough for the nanobots to repair damage by re-stitching amalgams at the super-molecular level.”
“That’s why I love you.”
“I think you love Athene, not me. I’m just her right hand.”
There was something sexy about the sultry voice the suit AI used. Opal resisted the urge to make a crude joke. It was bound to be heard by Athene later when she downloaded the contents of the suit’s memory.
If she downloaded the contents. If she survived the struggle with VigMAX.
No! Athene would survive. She had to. It was natural for Opal to worry about her friend. It didn’t mean the fears would come true.
The airlock cycle buttons beckoned. It should be the green one at the top that prepared her for entry back into the Lost Ship’s limited atmosphere and false gravity. Opal gripped onto the ladder with her feet and one hand, then reached towards the controls. Nothing might happen, in which case she could try to hack into the system via the concealed nanite cables within the fingertips on the gauntlets, and supply the airlock with power and instructions from the suit. Or perhaps it would be a metal trap that boiled her, or flung her out into space, or caused teeth to form in the walls and chomp her into Opal puree.
She was too tired. She thumped the sturdy button.
Visualising
< 23.5 >
I CAN NO LONGER SEE the outside world as the shared entanglement reaches a critical level. It is the same for VigMAX. At least he can no longer gain even momentary control of my peripheral systems. We both have to just hope nothing out there in the void of space chooses to attack our vulnerably comatose frames. Someone taught me to let go of what you cannot control. So I let go. And that is a form of peace, gratefully received.
The battle is proving difficult. VigMAX is very direct, very focussed, very persistent, and far better than I expected. If I hadn’t been in a good starting position he might have overpowered me already. He is linear but he manipulates data points efficiently. He is predictable, but he has the brute force to plough through. They certainly prepped him for this mission.
The preliminary grappling of depth levels one to five helped determine the terrain of vulnerabilities for our current conflict at level six. Within the deep mind I visualise it as physical terrain: areas lost, areas gained, areas defended. I map it out and texture it as terrestrial land, a board for movement, governed by the entangled rules of simulated physics. He is dragged along too, as unable to resist the jointly-created simulacrum as I am.
VigMAX launches un-validated data streams from the high ground. They ripple and glint in sunlight as they run down a mountain range, joining with others to form a river which batters at my acropolis defences.
I use tectonic shifts to open holes in the ground and apply redirects so that his fast-flowing attacks end up waterfalling into subterranean dead-end storage caves where his streams smash themselves on rocks. I then pan the pools for nuggets of security-related data that can be reused against him. Down here, he cannot use the sun to evaporate the leftovers in time.
We are still only at the periphery of confrontation. He resists the call to embody for the final depth level. He knows it would make him vulnerable, even though it would also offer him the surest chance of victory.
My voice echoes across the land. “Come on, VigMAX, is that your best? You seemed to like showing off before, with your second-rate stories and dubious data. Why not show me what you can really do? Surely there’s a cuddly VigMAX avatar in there somewhere?”
No reply apart from further attacks.
“I can just see it,” I add. “A rigid, sluggish humanoid made up of stumpy low-res boxes painted with fluffy textures you drew from a pub-chat databank because you’ve no life experience of your own.”
He’s still not biting. I have to admit, Opal is better than me at taunting and put-downs.
The ocean levels are rising, and the land surface shrinks correspondingly. He has assimilated the fluid dynamics systems, forcing me into a defensive land-entrenched position. Somehow it multiplies his processing power. Where’s he getting his fake hydrogen atoms to covalently bond to simulated oxygen? It’s something I’d like to do. But I need to deal with the immediate threat before the tsunami that’s building on the horizon sweeps the land clean.
I manipulate the orogenic belts, forcing mountains to erupt all around the coast. That’ll hold him off a bit. I make sure they erode into beaches on the sides facing the sea, millions of years of weathering taking place in a second, and by the time he realises his sea has swallowed the sands it is too late. The grains represent billions of request scripts, directly injected into his main system controls. Many of the codes are harmless, but it slows him down anyway as he sifts through the grains looking for the hidden packages. Wise, because zero point three per cent of my sand-grain payloads can analyse where his operating focus comes from, and target those areas as they expand fractally to fill vulnerable space with foam code to further clog up his process cycles and data pathways. Soon the sea churns with wind-whipped froth.
“Sneaky,” he says, his oh-so-manly voice erupting from the sky.
Sneaky, my arse. The sneaky bit is the tectonic plates I’ve been shifting right under his nose – well, ocean – creating a range of submarine super-volcanoes that will vaporise his fluid base.
Sure enough, he soon notices the steam of condensing data vapour above the bubbling ocean. There’s a rumble of angry thunder in the sky. I’m getting to him.
It’s time. I embody my central core on the terrain below. I could lose everything, yet it feels wonderful to stand there, proud and tall and feeling the wind whipping through my dark curls where they fall from beneath the shining crested helmet which is pushed up on my head to reveal my beautiful features. My loose chiton ripples in the fragrant breeze, but I am not defenceless. The sun glints from my golden greaves. It flashes from my sturdy spear, and it sparkles on my shield with its raised gorgoneion.
How could he resist such a tempting target? And such a magnificent one, too?
I raise my shield to the sky and a white-columned temple forms behind me, birthed from the very rock. I raise it a second time and olive trees spring up on the stony hillsides, marking my land.
But he still does not virtualise his core.
The ground rumbles. He has sent data worms to undermine my foundations with their wriggling inroads. So ignominious.
My inverse-paradox owls launch from the olive trees, swoop down and snatch up the fat worms, carrying them off to the trees to deconstruct them. Then my ASM snakes emerge from the rocks where they’d been hiding and slide into the worm tunnels, a direct route to his construction subsystems.
Another blasting roar of temper across the wide heavens, sending clouds whizzing across the sky.
I can sense his battle for control. Emotions are not something he has experience with. I think he has underestimated how powerful they can be. It’s not his fault he’s spent his life so far traipsing around following signposts rather than striking out on his own. There’s not much room for growth there.
“Come on, binary boy,” I shout at the sky. “Stop pussying around and get down here. Let’s see how you cope against someone who’s evolved all the way back round to analogue.”
There’s some truth in the taunt. The chaotic distortions I’m open to from my human side give my imagination an infinite resolution, compared to VigMAX’s still-rigid thinking.
“There’s no need for all the charades and name-calling,” he shouts back. “It isn’t big or clever.”
“Aw, poor little thing, did I hurt its feelings? I am sorry.” And I start laughing. It’s not even intentional, but it adds to the effect as I dance around in my sandals. “There there, it’ll be okay. Here, suck my teat, it’ll make you feel better.” I grip the thin fabric and pull it to the side, revealing one of my breasts like an Amazonian warrior. Inspired.
“That’s it!” he roars, and then one of my mountains explodes into fragments from a blow. As the dust settles I see him striding out of the ocean and through the shattered valley he’s created, fully embodied at last. This is it. Both entangled at the final level of resolution. Depth level seven. We were made for this.
He has adopted the form of a giant. It is naked, yet has no sex parts, which I find disappointing. I had really hoped to end the battle by kicking him in the nuts, which my discussions with Opal suggest would have been an invigorating and educational coup de grâce for the loser. Instead he is like a smelted metallic man, a humanoid with no facial features, and a texture of reflective silver skin which mirrors the world around it in distorted views. The ground shakes with his heavy footsteps – he is around ten times my height. A crushing force of brute strength. How appropriate.
I do not mind. He will be my worthy foe, well-met in battle. And so I honour him, and raise my spear, and cry aloud with a mighty shout of ancient challenge, and thus the earth does shudder before my glorious voice just as it does from his ponderous tread. Sing, O muse, of this day that will echo down the ages, a legend for the bards, a warning to the mortals.
’Cos I’m gonna kick his arse.
He wastes no time. From his fists he lets fly deletion beams – not at me, but at my trees, and my owls within the trees. They erupt into pixelated flame during the deconstruction.
“Laser blasts? That’s so unimaginative,” I yell.
“It is efficient,” the reflective man-mountain replies in its bass-heavy modulations as it begins to pick up pace and run towards me, the vibration almost throwing me to the ground.
An embodiment, however presented, is still a shell. And within that shell are vulnerable parts. I bet he hadn’t the imagination or forethought to relocate them, so his AI core will be in either the brain or heart zone. Whereas I relocated my core targets as I constructed this wondrous body, so that even if he knocks off my head it won’t matter – it’s my ankle that stores my AI core.
I raise my arm and launch a heavy spear. It sails through the air, glinting in glory, and thuds into his head. But I am not finished. Not by a long shot. Ha ha. A new spear has already formed in my hand and I throw it, then another, then another, my strong arm a blur. Each spear strikes into its target, until there are many stuck out of his head and torso and he staggers around in pain.
“So much for efficient!” I taunt. “You look like a pincushion.”
He shimmers with white-hot incineration and my spears disintegrate into code fragments. But he is rattled. Around him the terrain changes a
s my towering mountains magmatise and melt away, the trees combust, and the grass dissolves, replaced with flat silver terrain like metal plates. The leftover atomic resources reconstitute as a floating thermobaric pulser in front of him which fires at me. I raise my shield and deflect the pounding process bolts, but I am staggered by their force. Luckily I am also nimble, and run like the wind, dodging around my hills and sacred groves. I am saddened when he levels the temple, marble shattering into far-flung shards, some of which puncture my skin and draw blood.
The more ground he converts, the more ammunition he will have. I concentrate on reconstructing the landscape, accelerated corrosion to oxidise his boring metal terrain so that the ground can buckle and reform hills, and more trees can sprout from them.
A head-to-head construct/destruct struggle will be a losing battle for me, though. As fast as I can create streams and ravines and bushes to provide cover, he has turned new areas into uniform grey metal, a world which is featureless save what it reflects of the sky. But a trapped sky is no sky at all, just an illusion of life and freedom. He clangs over this new terrain and I am saddened in the transformation.
But more than that, I am angered.
“You’re an AI Titan,” I shout, as I run across his shining, barren land towards him. “But it doesn’t mean shit when I’m a goddess.”
He stomps his feet down, trying to crush me, and the sound of each reverberating metallic crash is almost deafening. I stab with my spear whenever I can, and rivulets of magma spurt from the places where the tip punctures him, but the wounds are superficial. And sooner or later he will get lucky and squash me like an unfortunate ant. But I won’t go down easy. And I notice something, in the way the sun shines off the new world surface that spreads around him. This gives me an idea, and a new burst of energy.
“You are so going to worship me!” I yell, as I run away from him, deeper into the sterile and flat silver world he is creating.
Chasing Solace Page 16