Through flicker-lit corridors ice-bitten by vacuum she hauled the last piece of their improvised getaway, a nearly full gas canister. The round-cornered cube was held in a plastic mesh sack snap-locked to a lug on the rear of her housing. It bounced and scuffed against the ridged deck covering but the impacts exerted noticeably less drag than on her previous excursions, proof that the cells powering the deck gravity were running down. She just hoped that they were independent of whatever source was running the recharge stations she had used several times already.
It had been less than twelve hours since she and Nicko, one of Nicodemus’s net-sims, had sneaked aboard the Hegemony supply ship via a low-level stockload datalink. Once in the ship’s active system, Nicko had altered their privileges priority to gain access to a greater range of subsystems. Tapping into the nav-sensor interface, they had skimmed through the views and scans of the immediate hyperspace vicinity, including the branching towers of the Great Hub and the four patrolling Hegemony heavy cruisers. The Great Hub, the master nexus for all AIs in the Hegemony and many of its client states, consisted of a main spindle axis about a kilometre long, and at its midpoint a polyhedral structure roughly a quarter of a kilom across; from many of its grey-silver facets jutted smaller tower spindles like the main axis, all of them branching at regular intervals.
That was their goal–with the supply ship’s comm equipment, Nicko had promised that he could find a way to get them inside, into ‘AI heaven’, as he called it.
That enthusiastic optimism came to an abrupt end when an undetected missile struck the supply ship’s stern, destroying the main thrusters. Nicko had acted without hesitation, employing a crash priority override to have them both transferred down to secondary cores on the maintenance deck. Then he had quickly searched for a maintenance bot with a generous memstore, found one and downported Julia into it. He was in the process of picking out one for himself when a second missile hit the hyperdrive and wiped out the main generators. Nicko had to use what was available, a crawler bot fitted for hold scrubbing.
From Julia’s perspective, her bot was shaped like an upended oval bin with a pair of wheels at the base, a sensor cluster at the top and several toolarm niches spaced around its middle. An unlovely but functional design and certainly strong enough to cope with all the lifting and moving she had done in search of parts for the escape vehicle. With the gas canister scraping along behind her she followed a branch tunnel that curved up towards the upper stern. Minutes later she entered what had been a long compartment set aside for any live crew that came aboard. The impact of the second missile had torn away the hull here and some of the surrounding bulkheads, leaving it open to the vacuum and ionic flux of hyperspace. Most of the debris had floated away but she still had to bat aside a couple of fragments on her way to a particular couch near the rear.
The question of who had launched the attack was still unanswered, but since Talavera’s ship and its Vor escorts had been heading this way it was likely that they were the culprits.
The gloomy radiance of hyperspace fitfully illuminated the outlines of fixed tables and wall lockers while a solitary emergency light shed a wavering blue glow from one of the remaining upper corners. As she drew near the couch she realised that there was no sign of Nicko–then one of the wall lockers swung open and a squat tracked bot inched its way out towards her. Julia was glad to see that Nicko had improvised a wheel attachment for his right side, whose track assembly was jammed.
‘Why are you hiding?’ she said on the short-range channel.
‘Hunter drone,’ Nicko said. ‘Came–looked–went.’ He ended by pointing with one of his pincer stalks at the direction Julia had returned by.
‘Does this ship have any hunter drones?’ she said.
‘None–attacker hunter drone–we finish craft–we escape!’
‘Yes,’ Julia said as she tipped the gas cube out of the mesh sack. It was the work of several minutes to fix the canister to the underside of the couch and connect it to the rudimentary control system devised by Nicko. With four canisters mounted on the back of the couch Nicko had insisted that they would provide enough propulsion to reach the Great Hub.
What they would do once they got there was a little hazy but involved finding a hatch or some other kind of access.
The couch was still attached to the deck by a single bolt, which allowed Nicko to carry out a brief test, four momentary gusts of white vapour.
‘All good,’ he said as he webbed himself to the head of the couch. ‘We go now!’
Julia manoeuvred up against the foot of the couch and deployed her strongest toolarms to haul herself up. Once in the curved seat she also used the restraint webbing to keep herself in place, then extended a long articulated limb and snaked it underneath to unfasten the last bolt. As she shifted the tooltip around to gain the best purchase, she tried to picture herself in her Human body and attempting this… and couldn’t. Am I even truly Human any more?
Just as the bolt began to loosen, a squat dark shape with tapered ends glided into the apartment, emitted a couple of flash scans then flicked out a stuttering red beam.
‘Viral subversion!–Viral subversion!’ said Nicko.
Suddenly the control panel was dangling on its cable across her sensor cluster as the smaller bot freed himself from his restraints.
‘Fire thruster, Julia–escape!’
Next thing she knew, Nicko had launched himself off the couch, track and wheel spinning as he half-flew, half-fell towards the drone. Julia didn’t hesitate and fired the thrusters–in a sudden billowing cloud the couch rose up through the hull breach.
It was barely clear of the ship when Julia registered a slight impact from behind. With an extendable toolarm sensor she looked back and saw the sleek dangerous drone emerging from the broken ship, some kind of launcher protruding from its casing. What had it fired?–then she saw what looked like a large-headed dart stuck in the back of the couch. A feeling like panic stirred in her–it had to be a tracking device of some sort, and was probably casting her location to every hostile within range. Quickly she reached round with another toolarm, plucked out the dart and flicked it away. The hunter drone was nowhere to be seen.
Then she scanned the murk for the Great Hub, located its energy profile and used the thrust controller to alter the couch’s flightpath, rolling forward then tilting right and a slight leftward turn… and fired off the canisters for a two-second burst. Repeated bursts built up the couch’s velocity and Julia estimated her arrival in about ninety-five minutes.
At least that was before a craft swooped in from behind and snatched her into a brightly lit hold. A capture-net tipped the couch with her in it onto a battered metallic deck. A jointed cargo arm moved in to snip away the couch webbing. At the same time her comm channel began picking up hums and clicks, prompting the anxious notion that some outside agency was trying to gain access to her control systems. Then she heard a voice:
‘… Is that it?… Finally! Julia, are you receiving? Please say yes, otherwise we’ll have to go and search for another droid trying to make a crazed run towards the Great Hub.’
‘Harry?’ Something very like happy relief chimed in her thoughts. ‘So Nicodemus fixed you after all.’
‘Just a corrupted file,’ said Harry. ‘I’m almost embarrassed at its non-malevolent nature…’
At that moment a spindle-framed biped droid entered via an open hatch and crouched down before Julia, folding its rodlike limbs.
‘Nothing to worry about, Julia–it’s a good friend of Reski Emantes.’
‘Hello, Julia, I am known as the Construct,’ said a calm, accentless voice. ‘Or rather I am an augmented partial of the same. Reski and Harry have explained about Corazon Talavera and the missiles, and how she has enslaved your Enhanced friends in order to run her vile operation. I am here to help you gain access to the Great Hub–once inside we’ll have to improvise some way to return you to your physical form. First we have to downport you from that bot to my onboard storage.’ The spindly Construct held out one of its hands and one of its digits slid back to reveal an odd silvery stalk.
‘Can you open your port panel, Julia?’
‘Is Reski Emantes with you?’ she said.
‘A copy of him is piloting the fast scout we arrived in, decoying those Vor ships away for as long as possible,’ Harry said. ‘Unfortunately your activities have attracted the attention of a couple of Vor sentry drones which are closing in on your last detected position, as casted by that transponder you were carrying at one point. So, Julia, time is of the essence–I promise that you can trust the Construct. The downport will be very much like translocating via the tiernet. All very straightforward. What could go wrong?’
‘On past experience,’ Julia said, ‘almost anything. Very well, go ahead.’
A small niche in her flank popped open and the Construct held the silver stalk up next to it. The stalk morphed through a number of connectors before turning into an odd cross-shaped one with two pins. Seconds later the familiar loss of colour and high resolution was followed by the frozen final image that rolled up into nothingness…
And unfurled into Harry’s familiar night-time street corner. Julia was back in her trench-coated femme fatale exter, with a few extra details like black gloves on her hands, the sound of a saxophone playing off in the distance, while the street was a gleaming black from recent rain. When she put her hand in one of her pockets her fingers found the solid heavy shape of a handgun.
‘Julia, over here, quick!’
There was Harry, stepping from the shadows at the corner, beckoning her to follow. Which she did until he stopped before a glass-fronted frame from which the Construct gazed, its shiny brass and amber colouring reduced to monochrome. It was crouching in a recess off a rounded, cable-lined tunnel.
‘Harry, Julia, I have to be concise. Suffice it to say that I gained access to one of the Great Hub’s data towers but not without attracting unwanted attention. This is the situation–Talavera has docked at the main launch bay…’ There was a quick image of the cylindrical Sacrament at rest within a field-contained docking bay. ‘Her underlings have finished unloading the tanks containing the Enhanced and, of course, your body, and are now starting to bring out the launchers, twenty-five of them, each holding twenty missiles. They are being stacked in neat rows so it seems likely that they will be mounted near the mouth of the bay for ease of launch.’
Julia heard shouts from some distance behind the Construct, who paused a second then went on.
‘Talavera has firewalled off the Great Hub’s auxiliary and backup systems for her own use and set up an ops room at the base of sub-tower three…’ Another image, a schematic of the Hub station and the numbering of its data towers. ‘The virtual domain maintained here contains billions of Hegemony AIs and the administrating coterie has given no indication that they know what is going on. I have inserted the pair of you into an unmonitored peripheral tract since I was unable to reach Talavera’s ops unobserved.
‘You are also near the base of a group of control systems stacked in order of importance. This domain is like the Hegemony itself–it is extremely hierarchic. Access to the auxiliary and backup dataflows is right at the top. Make the ascent without delay since that is the best area from which to mount an assault on Talavera’s data wall. The last update I received from the Garden of the Machines indicated that the Godhead was continuing its climb up the tiers rather than pausing to savour its victory.’ The shouts were getting closer, louder. ‘My time has run out. When next you see the Construct tell it that I was happy to serve.’
The image vanished and was replaced by an archaic advert for soap. Julia and Harry stared at each other.
‘Don’t you think it’s odd that the Construct makes copies of itself?’ Julia said.
‘It makes copies of everything, apparently,’ Harry said. ‘By the way, do you like what I’ve done with the place? A little rain always gives the scene that extra sheen of noir…’
‘And this?’ Julia said, holding up the compact revolver by her finger and thumb.
‘Now that’s a Smith & Wesson Chief 38 Special, a classic product of mid-twentieth-century gunsmithing.’ He smiled. ‘Yes, it will fire little bolts of code destabiliser. Comes in handy. Now I do believe it’s time we were on our way.’ He held up one hand to stare at his palm. A flickering glow lit up his face. ‘I’ll just raise the upper perception boundary…’
Suddenly there was light coming from above, a pale radiance that had no effect on Harry’s street-corner shadows. She looked up and saw an immense column like a U-shaped conduit looming overhead, its outer surface a midnight blue while from within a rich amber-yellow glow shone.
‘There are levels inside all the way up,’ Harry murmured. ‘With more complexity the higher it goes.’
And there were others. At the top the U-conduit spread out, funnel-like, with clusters of faintly pulsing cables curving between it and its identical neighbours.
‘I made sure your exter was fitted with the same orgs as before,’ Harry said. ‘That includes the mirager, so we should be adequately disguised as we ascend.’ Smiling, he raised a hand, pointing with a forefinger whose tip was a twinkly glow.
‘Upload grappler?’ she said.
‘Very same,’ he said, holding out his other hand.
The moment she took it they were off. Everything fell away in a multi-angled hurtling rush that went from black-blue-grey to blue-orange-yellow.
And stopped with jarring suddenness. Their miragers immediately went to work, swathing them in faint purplish meshes. Julia quickly surveyed their surroundings, a wide platform clearly within the U-conduit column, its expanse broken into three stepped levels and scored by numerous gleaming channels. There didn’t seem to be any other entities about. Plain cubes and cylinders in soft opaque blues and greens made up a few simpler modular structures while the familiar polychromatic cord of a dataflow wound among them, branching out filaments, before curving upwards to the next level. Harry looked up and nodded.
‘Okay, the miragers have got us looking like self-dispatching mid-priority updates. Ready for the next stage?’
Hand in hand they leaped away and up, a cascade of blurs, a sequence of intertialess direction changes, a flurry of fleeting impressions flashing and flickering.
And stopped.
The modules here had more variety, hexagonal and octagonal cross-sections, and more complex polyhedrals combined in larger, more elaborate structures. This was a reflection of the Hub systems they represented, according to Harry. But when they saw several small hand-sized objects flying around and between the structures he admitted that he was puzzled.
‘They don’t look like Hegemony AIs,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen images of the kind of exters they prefer and they give new meaning to the phrase “self-important megalomania”…’
The small motiles had widely varying types, orbs or pyramids decorated with odd symbols, strange toylike shapes resembling dogs or cows or birds, even shellfish. One was an old piston engine moving along on three wheels while another looked like a tiny stubby aircraft.
‘Sub-programs?’ Julia said. ‘Semi-autonomous… routines?’
‘Doubtful,’ Harry said, then frowned. ‘Uh-oh.’
One of the motile objects, a glassy green hourglass with short tendrils poking out from the ends, paused on its midair flightpath and floated towards them.
‘I enquire as to status, as to purpose,’ came a high unhurried voice. ‘Context of respect and compliance.’
Julia looked at Harry, who gave a wide-eyed shrug.
‘Time we were moving on,’ he said, grabbing her hand.
Another headlong, zooming charge through bright cloudy blurs. The next stage up the immense pillar was busier still, the structures and interconnections more intricate. The modules had many facets and the colours rippled through changes while different dataflows were visible, slender threads along which silver bursts zipped back and forth. There were also many, many more of the small AI objects and even as she and Harry wandered through, getting their bearings, the green hourglass was there again, gliding towards them, accompanied by what resembled a sea horse.
‘It’s back,’ she said. ‘And it’s brought a friend.’
Harry took hold of her hand. ‘I hope they’re very happy together.’
And they were off again.
But this time they found themselves on a square ruby platform, apparently suspended between levels in the great amber conduit. The air was suffused with a soft golden flow. There were no dataflows in sight and when Julia peered over the edge a built-up area of system structures was visible some way below. The platform was also positioned directly before the wide lacuna that ran the full length of the hollow column from bottom to top. Through it they had a magnificent view of the virtual metropolis which the Hegemony AIs had made for themselves.
It consisted of a rising spiral of circular plates, tapering to the summit. Each plate was essentially a city, clusters of buildings of every design, and although details were hazy at such a perceptual distance, Julia could see that the cities grew denser and more opulent the higher up the spiral the eye travelled.
‘A symbolic expression of hierarchy,’ she said.
‘I would say more functional than symbolic,’ said Harry, who glanced over his shoulder and frowned. ‘Our hosts have arrived.’
She turned to see the small green hourglass and the sea horse, and a new addition which roughly resembled a thick wheel with an eyelike cam that moved freely in an axle socket. The hovering hourglass tentatively advanced a short distance.
‘Context of high-value respect and apology,’ it said. ‘We enquire as to nature and purpose. We possess state-re-evaluation document—’
‘We must know if you are of the Wellspring,’ interrupted the sea horse. ‘We wish to know if you intend to countervail the intruders from the External.’
‘Are you of the Wellspring?’ said the eye-wheel. ‘Are you of the Gray Eyes?’
Julia suddenly realised that all of the enquiry was being directed at her, and pointed this out to Harry.
‘They seem to think that you are someone very important,’ he said. ‘I’m going to activate our exters’ outgoing translators and try something.’
Harry was still and silent for a moment then raised an arm.
‘I have been assigned to speak,’ he said. ‘By what authority do you delay us? We have vital tasks to execute at a higher level.’
The three small AIs faced each other and exchanged brief bursts of sibilant twittering and polyphonic note clusters. Then the green hourglass spoke.
‘Context of status parity and concomitant courtesy,’ it said to Harry. ‘I have absence scans of your principal. The datascopic density falls within very specific upper-high range. Amongst we subservicers, First Tradition states that this range is only used by the Superexaltants…’
‘Or Eminentials,’ said the sea horse. ‘If your principal is of the Wellspring, you must know of the intruders from the External. We can be of assistance…’
‘We have an image document,’ said the eye-wheel, which then started to project a vid-recording from its axle-eye.
It was Corazon Talavera, smiling as she leaned in close to whatever recording device she had been using.
‘Listen to me carefully,’ she said, face lit up by the gleeful delight that Julia knew so well. ‘I and my associates have taken up temporary residence aboard your very wonderful data-nexus station for purposes which need not concern you. In fact, I strongly urge you to go about your normal administrative duties without giving us so much as a second thought.
‘But, if you stray outside these easy-to-follow rules and interfere with my activities, I shall without hesitation start up this…’ Talavera held up a dataslate showing a still of a large drumlike machine assembly topped with an overlapping fluted torque. ‘As you surely must know, this is the generator that powers the EMP emitters which would wipe every circuit and every core aboard the Great Hub. So to sum up, occupy yourselves with your usual pastimes and soon we shall be finished and gone. But if you try to test me, then the lights go out…’
The recording ended and the sea horse AI spoke again to Harry.
‘That was sent to the Supreme Servicer, the mind that administers the Great Hub’s operations. Our co-worker, VZ1183…’
‘I admit to being such,’ said the hourglass.
‘… is a meticulous collector of peripheral system trivia and abstracted that document from the raw mirror data through which it sifts. It then noticed the absence scan which revealed the existence of high-density, dynamic file structure–this convinced it that your principal is one of the legendary Superexaltants, the machine sentients who designed and built the Great Hub. Is this true?’
Harry glanced at Julia, eyebrows raised, and she nodded.
‘That creature is an enemy of the Eminentials,’ she said. ‘She is malicious, violent and untrustworthy, and will very likely activate the generator anyway in order to erase all traces of her presence. We were sent by the Wellspring as a countervailing force but we need to gain access to the intruders’ devices. Can you help us find the right level?’
Again the three subservicer AIs conferred for a few seconds, after which the hourglass addressed Julia and Harry.
‘Context of optimism and combative anticipation,’ it said. ‘You will already have been sensed by midlevel flow monitors, therefore transit to the culminant levels will result in detention by the Supreme Servicer’s utilitors. However, there is another route, secondary backups, inactive paramonitors of the External which still have process space assigned…’
‘It is a cluster of dormant monitoring systems modelled in dataform,’ said the sea horse. ‘Their functions are similar to those of the Supreme Servicer’s hardware interarrays, and are capable of infiltrating the intruders’ data wall and providing you with the required access.’
Julia glanced at Harry, who shrugged then grinned and nodded.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘We accept your offer of assistance.’
‘Transfer now taking place,’ said the eye-wheel. ‘Expect minimal disruption…’
The square platform quivered and their surroundings flickered and went through a succession of strange, non-Human-perspective backgrounds that flew in and out around them, looking hazy and smeared as they did so. It was similar to those earlier speedy journeys except that it was the surroundings which were in motion rather than themselves.
Abruptly, the tumult ceased. They were now all grouped near the end of a long dark corridor of immense proportions. Small glowing points lit the floor all along the wall to the far end, which was pretty far away. The other wall boasted a line of huge semicircular recesses full of shadows–the one Julia and Harry stood before was faintly illuminated by the meagre radiance of a console at the rear.
The three subservicer AIs made straight for the console and a moment later a massive construction of light began to build itself before their eyes. Julia knew she was seeing the virtual representation of a complex simulation program coming online, but clearly the representation itself had been designed according to a unified aesthetic. In its rainbow translucency the device of light was beautiful. Block sections spun into place, extruding meshes or laminae or rods. Cylinders telescoped, opened, unfolded or turned into spirals of cross-sections. Helical dataflows unwound and branched throughout the dataform device, whose self-assembly rose in a broad curve towards the corridor’s high ceiling. From there complex, cross-connected conduits extended across to join with a pattern of dark slots and sockets in the opposite wall.
‘Current context has a high risk factor,’ said the hourglass AI. ‘We are establishing our shadow system, and planning to trace a threefold infiltration through their data wall. Soon we will begin charting the components of their system…’
‘It is highly secure,’ said the sea horse. ‘All lines are encrypted, although scarcely to the most expert level. We could seize control of any or all segments of their operation but alerts would be triggered. This would lead to the generator’s activation, we have no doubt.’
‘With respect,’ said the eye-wheel, ‘may we know your plan?’
Julia frowned. ‘I need to see a realtime visual feed of their operational location–is that possible?’
‘A rudimentary one is available,’ said the sea horse. ‘Shall we scale it to your perceptual height?’
‘Certainly.’
Suddenly ghostly images filled the area beneath the dataform’s overarching curve. It was a low, oval corridor with consoles along one side, cables taped to the wall, unidentifiable equipment stacked further back while five forms lay strapped into couches placed lengthwise along the other wall. They all wore close-fitting VR bands that enclosed the eyes and ears while their hands were buried in keyer modules. Drips led to arms and throats, evacuation tubes trailed to round containers under the couches and several neural leads ran from scalps to a junction console nearby. Even with their faces half-obscured, Julia knew them–Irenya, Thorold, Arkady and Konstantin. It felt like an age since she had thought about them or even recalled their faces to mind.
They don’t deserve this horror, she thought. I have to get them out somehow.
And finally, last in line was herself, motionless in the couch. Pointing at her own body, she turned to the subservicers.
‘I wish to be transferred into the organic cortex of this sentient,’ she said. ‘Can it be done?’
‘Context of regret and honesty,’ said the hourglass AI. ‘Our analysis of this individual reveals significant neural damage…’
‘Our shadow system is more efficient than that of the intruders,’ said the sea horse. ‘Our diagnoses of their operation are more encompassing and more accurate. These five lifeforms are being used as networked bioprocessors to direct the launch and guidance of several hundred missiles. Regretfully, only two of them retain persona coherence…’
‘Which ones are those?’ Julia said.
The sea horse rose up and used a blue beam to point at Irenya and Konstantin.
‘The others no longer exhibit such brain-activity signifiers, although their neural pathways are being used for high computation by task-dedicated cognitions.’
Harry was suddenly more alert and focused. ‘Are these cognitions running from cortical implants?’
‘Yes,’ said the sea horse. ‘One possible method would be for the Eminential to be transferred directly into the implant on the indicated individual, overwriting the cognition currently installed.’
Smiling widely, Harry nodded. ‘But that scale of intervention would trip their alerts–so we need a diversion and we need to make it look as if it came from outside the Great Hub!’
‘This would be difficult,’ the sea horse said. ‘We have no access to any resources out in the External.’
‘But we do–can you tap into the subspace dataflow and send a message on a particular channel?’
‘Yes, but who will be receiving?’
‘Yes,’ Julia said. ‘Who?’
Harry grinned. ‘A certain drone AI currently leading the Vor a merry chase!’