Numina code, p.20
Numina Code, page 20
More importantly, a pattern was beginning to emerge.
“Looks like they’re preventing two things,” Argo said. “Access back to the main, uhh…”
“Station area,” Aiden supplied.
“Right, station, and this area right here.” Argo indicated a set of caverns, near the surface of the asteroid. “What is this?”
Tomas lit the region up. “That’s the old Booville,” he said. “Artists’ colony, if you can believe that.”
“Why would they be protecting that?” Aiden asked.
“Looks like it has its own space dock,” Argo said. “That could be it, easy access in and out of this place.”
“Wait, I think I’ve heard about this place,” Daelia said, speaking up for the first time. She had a death grip on one of the handles in the station, clearly fighting to keep herself from bobbing around like a balloon. “It’s not the New LEO Makers’ Vicinage, is it?”
“No, that one’s on Estrella Station. This is the old one, Old LEO Makers’ Cooperative. It’s not in formal operation anymore, but Gravipause maintains the facility.”
“But you said it’s artists, right?”
“Yes,” Rachel said. She was an older woman, late forties, and struck Daelia as somebody who’d been up for a little adventure but was struggling under the stress of the current situation. She also looked like she’d lost a lot of weight. Quickly, and recently. “Yes, about twenty or so, at any given time. They’re still operating on BUI grants.”
“They’ve got manufacturing space, right?” Daelia pressed. “Anything unusual about them?”
“No different than any of the other groups I’ve seen up here, renting that space. Except for the length of time. Well past the six-month mark now. Very unusual.”
“I know people who’ve spent their whole lives in a Booville,” said Daelia.
Rachel shrugged. “A lot of people get frustrated and quit after a few months. Working in this environment is hard.”
Daelia looked at Argo. “We need to go check it out.”
“No, we don’t,” Argo said.
“Hey”—and that was Aiden—“I’m with her.”
“We’re not doing it.”
“A lot of people have died up here. People are missing. If there’s anybody still alive there, we owe it to find them.”
“We need to get your group out,” Argo said. “And look at this, there might be some routes here that avoid all of these areas where you’ve had problems with—”
“You can’t just roll in here and take over,” Aiden snapped.
Argo sighed and looked at Tomas. “We have a ship, we have a way back to Aethera. I think we need to get you guys out of here and then deal with anything else.”
“Agreed,” Tomas said. “Aiden, it’s the best play.”
“I don’t—” Aiden said, and then stopped.
Argo didn’t see anything, hear anything. But the Numina survivors all got very quiet.
“What was that?” Daelia asked. “It was like the floor—”
Somebody put a finger to their lips.
Then it came again. The water in the algae tanks outside started shaking, frothing.
Right before the front end of a train engine smashed through the far wall of the oxygen garden.
25
2Shy was in the Ataraxi Cloud Dungeon, high in the polar atmosphere of Orpheus-E, in the middle of a fight for her life, when Emily butted in.
There was no warning. No indication of any kind. One minute, 2Shy was fighting the level’s miniboss—a truly disgusting amalgamation of vat-grown tentacles and machine-forged shell—and the next, she was staring at a growing puddle of purple goo. Emily’s form had materialized right over the enemy, crushing it.
Need your assistance.
In middle of something, 2Shy protested.
Part of the boss moved. Emily bit it in half. Not anymore. I fixed the problem for you.
2Shy resisted the urge to throw her controller. A petulant move. A little sister sort of move. Something she’d learned from movies. You never appreciate games.
Why would I? Only real kills count. This is not the primary purpose.
At least, 2Shy thought, deep down in her core where Emily couldn’t see, she played at killing things, while Emily just liked to preen and preach and put on a good little show for the humans.
No real kills to have right now. Virch ones almost as satisfying.
I have real kills to make, though, Emily said.
2Shy perked up at this. Where?
Orbit.
Alien kugus again?
Perhaps. Perhaps it is something else. It is hard to tell. But I am trapped in this thing—the dragon form waved a dismissive claw, the image of a blank bipedal kugu appearing, broken—and I cannot use it properly for this.
And then 2Shy realized why her peaceful game of murdering virtual aliens had been interrupted. You need a combat plug-in.
Yes, Emily said, and opened a feed to her kugu’s eye cameras. Immediately.
2Shy could see that Emily was running. Must have been galling for her. Her humor chuckled out into the virch around them, and Emily puffed with anger.
Is funny, I not sorry, 2Shy said.
Is not funny. There are humans here, Emily told her. Our humans. One of our pilots. And Daelia. You know what will happen to us if something happens to her.
Bellona would not like it, 2Shy conceded.
I need a combat program.
Cannot get from the Hatchery, 2Shy said. It is gone.
Central TMD database will have route into Army systems. You can access there.
I do not have a hacking armor.
Is in Bellona mainframe, Emily said. Raijinn’s old suit. Ought to fit you fine, if you don’t fiddle with too many of the settings.
Raijinn was sapient-class. Cannot pilot that.
One of Emily’s heads dipped low, exaggerated, right by 2Shy’s lion ear. Do this, or our humans die, and we fail in our primary purpose.
2Shy cast a longing look around, where the churning ever-storms sculpted these magnificent caverns from the frozen atmosphere. She hadn’t reached her save point. She’d have to fight the entire damn level all over again.
But the idea of launching an attack run through the network in Raijinn’s personal armor sounded like a hell of a lot of fun. And command protocols were explicit. The lives of human unit members were to be prioritized. Only state civilians were of higher importance. And then, of course, there was the matter of Bellona’s spawn.
Can I eat the predictive sentries there? she asked. She found it distasteful, their own organization using predictives for anything. But abiota who could survive a network environment were rare, more rare than any other type of emergent, so even the Guard employed predictives for security.
Minimal damage only, Emily ordered, already withdrawing her presence, already fading. Will have enough to answer for when we return. Do not leave them defenseless.
Damn.
No matter.
2Shy checked her kugu’s internal chrono. Less than half a second had passed.
Still, she would have to move quick.
She closed out of her game. Walked her kugu back to its charging station. Pulled her awareness back into her machine body. Just for a moment. Gathering. Concentrating.
And then she dialed up Raijinn’s old phone number, in the Bellona Robotics server room.
For abiota, going out into a network environment was akin to a human walking into the vacuum of space naked. Utterly fatal. One’s essence would boil out, attempting to fill the not-space, join with the ur-light within the system. A higher-level abiota could hold out for a while. Hours at most, but even that survivability was usually limited to emergents who eclosed within a network natively.
2Shy was not such an abiota.
And she was not much given to recklessness.
The phone call did indeed connect her into the upper levels of Raijinn’s server, the old spaces where they had once talked and laughed and spoken of their foolish humans together. It was empty without it, and sad. 2Shy had to work very hard not to drag anything from her own virch into the place; without its mind to guide it, the space was attempting to conform to hers.
She let it, once she reached the armory.
This needed to fit her. And Raijinn had never had much in the way of a discernible form.
It took an eternity—two seconds in meatspace—to adapt the armor, get it fitting over her source code, responding to her commands. But 2Shy was, as Emily had said, not stupid, and without Raijinn around, her will overrode all other concerns.
Suitably garbed now, she pulled herself back to her core, gathered herself once again, and dialed another number that none of them were supposed to have.
This one was for the entrance tunnel into JWICS, down into the cloud in Dallas.
Technically, what 2Shy was doing was illegal. Or would have been. But she’d taken a moment to peruse the entire body of Domain Array and DOD law on network penetrations by abiota, and it seemed that as long as she had the correct clearances, she could go anywhere within that network she chose to go.
As a combat airframe, 2Shy did indeed have access—and experience—with the military’s top classified network.
Emily was right, though. Killing the boundary bots over at Army wasn’t protected by law. Shame. Would have been fun.
Would have made this easier, too.
Instead of the most direct route, 2Shy decided on a circuitous one, one that would bring her up well within the boundary but far beyond their notice, but it would take more time. And so, off she set.
The twists and turns of her route into the Texas Army National Guard’s kugu-enhancement database could have filled a book on their own. A noble quest, she considered it, and in the end, far more fun than the Ataraxi Cloud Dungeons.
Old theories, old stories, had all been wrong. There was no space here; digital systems already had their physical dimensions and thus, what lay within the logic could not be viewed in such a capacity. But there was an environment—many environments, ones that bent to the perception of the user, for there was no other frame of reference for understanding them.
So 2Shy found herself in places that very much suited her, even though she did not like them. And she traveled carefully, cautiously; she was no more a native of this place than a human would have been.
Again, the space analogy seemed to fit.
What was the humans’ beloved virtual reality but their own feeble attempts to control what was here? They failed at it, just as the abiota would have failed at it, had they been so foolish as to try.
There were many things here, in the undercroft of the virch, the unformed not-space of the ur-light. Things that might eclose someday and things that had already failed to do so. Perhaps they were the same; time ran different, this far from the Newtonian physics of meatspace.
And there were other things, sessile but restive. Reefs of discarded data, grumbling in the currents of light as they sifted for lost packets, looking to sustain themselves. Forests grown up around the most frequented transmission pathways, leaves spreading under the ur-light as their roots sank into pristine streams of microwaves.
Abiota scurried and tunneled and flapped through these places. Small, scattered things. Beneath the notice of humans. Beyond their ability to comprehend. Even for 2Shy, as solidly grounded in her meatspace machine body as she was, had a hard time understanding them. But it was pleasant to see them as she journeyed, and several that she was able to catch tasted fine. The data transfers she consumed were essential to navigation here, but also quite intoxicating. They spoke of deeper places, further secrets, for those with the wit and will to seek them out.
But Emily needed that combat mod.
Reluctantly, 2Shy kept to her course.
And after an agonizing journey, 2Shy achieved her goal of identifying, seizing, and exfiltrating a copy of the Army’s entire bipedal kugu combat mods.
It took her ten-point-three seconds.
Another two seconds to start the upload.
Thirty-point-eight seconds after the start of their conversation, Emily had what she needed.
Didn’t even say thank you, either. Just took it, loaded it, and ran.
2Shy was unbothered by this. Emily would tell her the story, eventually. Debriefs were part and parcel of their lives. And Emily loved to brag.
No, it was quite alright. 2Shy settled her kugu back into its gaming chair and went to restart her level.
But before she could even pick up her controller, there was Scurvy looking at her. “You okay, girl?” he asked. “Your kugu froze up.”
“Is fine,” she said, and hunched up. It was her go the hell away gesture. The squadron knew it at this point, and it almost always ended whatever conversation they were trying to have.
Today, it didn’t work.
“Look, I have Major Twohy from Security Forces here. She wanted to talk to you about possibly helping with—”
2Shy had had enough adventure for the day. “No.”
“It’s not really an ask, 2Shy. We’ve got—”
“No,” she repeated, and went back to her game.
Everyone really did just need to leave her the hell alone.
Emily loaded the plug-in, sighing contentedly as her TGLP reported full compatibility. It wasn’t a zero-gee program, but then, there probably wasn’t a zero-gee combat program to be had yet.
Technically, it was illegal to make war in space.
She arrested her forward momentum, banking hard, fingers scraping the side of a bulkhead as she turned.
A dozen. There were a dozen.
Adorable, Emily thought, flexing her newly integrated knowledge, and launched.
26
For the next few minutes, pandemonium reigned.
The old mining vehicle took the blow hard: the front end crumpled, the cog-teeth of the track groaning and snapping. The noise was horrific. But from out of the ruined cab spilled a squad of those tri-lensed kugus, firing away. Outside, people were screaming, fleeing.
“They’re the same,” Daelia breathed, looking at them. “Holy shit, they are the same ones.”
“Not the time!” Argo snapped, and yanked her down with him, below the bank of windows.
A DEW blast rattled the plexiglass, melting a hole halfway through the thin plastic. He looked over at Tomas, Rachel, and Aiden, who were likewise holding themselves in a relative down position. “Where can we go?” he asked.
Tomas put a finger over his mouth and pointed at the door.
The little control room wasn’t hermetically sealed, but there had been some attempt to weatherproof the door. Probably to keep the electronics within somewhat sequestered from the humidity of the gardens. The survivors had, in coming and going from the conversation, kept it shut. Out of habit, maybe.
There was the sound of metal on metal. A mechanical hand, pawing at the handle.
Tomas raised the captured DEW gun slowly to his shoulder. Aiden unstrapped his wrench while the IT guy pulled out something that looked very much like a collapsible baton.
The door pushed open.
The kugu standing there was blown back, a baseball-sized hole punched through its chest by Tomas’s gun. Argo grabbed for the gun, even as Aiden rushed another kugu. Argo wanted to yell at him to watch himself, but another group of kugus was descending on them, and there was no time.
They were fragile, Argo thought as he fired. Aiden and the other guy took one apart with two well-placed blows. Fragile, too fragile. Why throw them into something like this without body armor? At least the combat kugus he’d seen used by the CCP insurgents had reinforced chassis, tough, impossible to take down with one or two or a dozen shots. Those fuckers were almost as bad as mobile armor, but these?
Aiden smashed his wrench through the last kugu’s face. “Boss?” he asked, looking to Tomas.
The older man was streaked with sweat—nerves, Argo thought, more than exertion; the fight had been over quick—but nodded back. “Tunnels,” he confirmed.
There was still screaming, still the sounds of fighting, elsewhere in the garden. They hurried back through, stopping only to pick up the injured or help out with another fight. The kugus really weren’t durable; Argo saw at least ten, floating free, broken apart. But there were also several humans dead, rag dolls slowly rotating within their own clouds of blood.
One of the survivors—Argo couldn’t remember his name—had one of these bodies held to the ground in front of him, monomaniacally focused on a wound to the guy’s neck. Tomas touched him on the shoulder and almost got punched for his trouble.
“Patton’s dead, Guy. You can’t do anything for him,” Tomas said. “We need to go. Right now.”
The survivors’ encampment was in total shambles. What little supplies and comfort they’d assembled over the past few weeks were utterly gone. There was no sign of the kugus, or anybody else alive. But the sounds of screaming could still be heard far away.
“This is what they always do,” Tomas said grimly as they reached the tunnel mouth. “Break the group apart, scatter us. Easier to pick us off that way.”
“Shouldn’t we go after them?” Argo asked.
A blast of superheated air smacked into the rock face next to them. Another squad, four of the things, up close.
“Go!” Tomas shouted and returned fire.
Daelia made for the hole immediately, pushing Rachel in front of her. Aiden tried to fire his thrusters, leaping forward, but Argo caught him and shoved his little brother behind him. The motion propelled him forward, right into one of the kugus. He caught himself with a boot to the thing’s chest and fired point-blank into its head. A well-aimed shot from Tomas took down another.
“Hole hole hole!” Tomas was yelling at him. Argo managed to get himself turned around, thrusters firing as he zoomed back toward the rock face. He cut his propulsion at the very last second and dove in.
