Of Fire and Night (19 page)

46

ENGINEERING SPECIALIST SWENDSEN

W
hen the two scientists proudly delivered the tiny upload pack with their repeater virus, Sergeant Paxton held it between thumb and forefinger. “Doesn’t look like much of a secret weapon.”

“If this works, all the compies inside the factory will immediately shut down,” Yamane explained with a calmness that Swendsen certainly didn’t feel.

“Then we can use the same idea for the other EDF battle groups,” Swendsen added. “
If
we get data copies out to them soon enough.”

The silver berets were ready to take down the besieged compy factory, and this time they meant business. No more practice. Lugging sonic battering rams, the new penetration team—five times the size of the previous squad—rushed up to the barricaded doors on the quiet side of the sprawling facility, choosing to enter through wings less likely to be occupied by the murderous compies.

Without slowing, the silver berets hit the factory door. Sonic rams made a deafening bang that Swendsen could hear even through his comm-receiver earplugs. The barricade buckled like a crumpled piece of foil and fell away.

“Move it inside before the clankers come running!” Sergeant Paxton yelled. “Move! Move!”

Protected by a phalanx of commandos, Swendsen and Yamane remained confident in their frantically developed virus. They knew the fix would work; they just had grave doubts about surviving long enough to implement it. Every one of the silver berets carried a tiny datapack copy: Redundancy increased the odds that at least one patch virus would reach the main programming station.

Silver berets plunged forward, weapons raised. Each one carried a projection grid that displayed the primary path for their insertion, along with alternate routes. The commandos ran, armor and weapons clattering, boots thundering across the floor. Swendsen and Yamane were already out of breath in their attempt to keep up, but knew they would be killed if they fell behind. The Soldier compies would close in on them soon.

The group rushed through narrow corridors lined with shelves stacked with fabricated components waiting to be assembled. As they had hoped, the wing was empty, and they encountered no resistance.

“Keep together. Hold it tight!” Paxton yelled.

The commandos did not let up, and Swendsen could see that even the weakest of these men and women was far more fit than either he or Yamane. As part of their training, silver berets ran ten kilometers every day. According to a popular mythos, they ate nails, played catch with boulders, and dangled from cliffs for the sheer recreational value.

The squad pushed into the white-walled clean rooms where Klikiss robot programming was impressed upon the control circuits.
I guess it was a big mistake to do that,
Swendsen thought. Too late now.

The point commandos dropped to their knees and opened fire as two Soldier compies emerged from a cold, vapor-filled vault carrying replacement modules. Not expecting to see human intruders, the compies spun about. The silver berets blasted them into shrapnel.

“Must be getting close,” Paxton said.

Swendsen nodded. “The central upload banks are right ahead.”

“Then that’s where we need to go.” Private Elman kicked open the door.

The background noise grew louder with the hammering of assembly arms, the crackle and hiss of welders, the clatter of moving conveyors. A thousand Soldier compies were at work producing more robots. The first two silver berets mowed down the standing compies with dense, depleted-uranium projectiles, knocking the robots backward, but more machines quickly replaced them.

Paxton shouted, “Can’t shoot them all. Blast and run—brute force, not finesse. We have to cut a swath through these tin cans.”

Swendsen pointed the way. The commandos formed ranks again and charged like an aggressive football team toward its goalpost. They knocked compies away using exploding slugs and electrostatic short-circuiting fields. But several Soldier compies seized hot weapons from the commandos, then grabbed the unarmed men and women and killed them.

Sergeant Paxton growled, “Look ahead and stay on target! Almost there.”

Several more silver berets fell as the group pushed through the sea of clankers. By the time they reached the control center, Swendsen was stunned to see that only Paxton and three other commandos had survived, along with him and Yamane. Nearly fifty silver berets had sacrificed themselves so the two technical specialists could get through with their patch virus.

Once inside the upload center, the last commandos barricaded the door as Soldier compies threw themselves against it. “How fast can you upload those viruses?” Paxton said.

“No one else could do it faster,” Swendsen said, then cringed as a barrage of gunfire echoed around the walls.

“Two minutes,” Yamane answered. He started to say something else, but an explosion drowned him out. He blinked, recovered, then repeated, “Two minutes.”

“All right, two minutes.” Without being told, the commandos barricaded the door. “You better not be exaggerating.”

The compies used weapons seized from fallen silver berets to shoot holes through the door. Staccato thuds and clangs rattled across the barricade and stitched a seam of holes along the walls.

Swendsen cringed over the control deck. Outside, a muffled explosion reverberated through the floor. “This is delicate work! How am I supposed to concentrate?”

Paxton gave a disbelieving snort. “Should I go outside and tell the damned clankers to keep it down?”

Yamane was concerned about a more practical matter. “If one of those projectiles destroys the equipment here, we can’t install our repeater virus.”

“Then I suggest you move faster than a proverbial speeding bullet.”

Working in intent silence amidst the background din, the two scientists copied the patch virus into the upload center and fed it into the imprinting transmitter. By design, each compy that received the virus would copy it and dump it to another compy, and another, and another. Once the cascade began, all the berserk robots would shut down.

At least Swendsen hoped so.

Compies shattered the makeshift barricade. Paxton and his comrades fell back and opened fire. “These are your last few seconds, gentlemen!”

“There, that’s got it,” Yamane said. “Ready to go.”

Swendsen hit the transmit switch. The brief but deadly nugget of new programming swept out into the compy factory.

The front robot ranks paused as the signal slammed into them, altering their core programming. They hesitated as the repeater virus was automatically handed off to the next machine and the next. The compies staggered, then froze, shutting down in waves. An expanding current of stillness swept through the clamor of the factory.

Swendsen and Yamane waited at the control upload deck, afraid to speak. The surviving silver berets looked at each other, then at all the suddenly petrified Soldier compies. Robot arms were outstretched, artificial hands ready to tear them apart. They looked like an avant-garde artist’s concept of a statue garden.

One of the commandos shouldered a compy aside with a crash. With a growing snarl he knocked another one down, as if clearing debris. Sergeant Paxton and the remaining silver berets got into the vengeful spirit, tossing compies until they had cleared a way out of the battered control center.

Formally shaking hands to congratulate each other, Swendsen and Yamane surveyed the now-silent compy factory with satisfaction. “They’ll never find their way out of that infinite loop.”

“We still have a lot of work to do,” Yamane said. “Simply understanding what initially went wrong could take months.”

“Save that for when the emergency’s over,” Paxton said. “We need to inform the EDF that your patch virus worked. They can start transmitting it to hotspots right now, save some of our battle groups.” He triggered his shoulder mike and broadcast his report.

“I’d feel more comfortable if we could just get out of here.” Swendsen wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, clearing droplets of perspiration.

“Agreed,” the silver berets said in perfect unison.

They made their way back through the frozen compies, amazed by the sheer number of motionless robots. Running the frenetic assembly lines beyond their design limits, the Soldier compies had increased their ranks tenfold.

“The nearest exit’s over here.” Paxton led the way. Ahead, they could see the hangar doors.

“Like whistling through a graveyard at midnight,” a silver beret said.

“Nothing to fear now,” Swendsen said. “It worked exactly as planned.”

Sergeant Paxton clicked his shoulder transmitter again. “We’re at door 1701/7. Be ready to let us out.”

“Acknowledged, Sergeant.”

One of the Soldier compies twitched.

Swendsen paused. “Did you see that?”

Yamane frowned, troubled by this unexpected technical problem. “They shouldn’t be able to bypass so quickly. I wonder if they’ve installed adaptive security programming in their new constructions.”

Eye sensors glowed. Two mechanical arms shifted. A polymer-reinforced torso straightened. Bullet-shaped heads swiveled.

“Oh, crap!” said Paxton. “Run!”

Swendsen and Yamane bolted. The surviving silver berets charged toward the door, but the Soldier compies revived too swiftly. Swendsen tripped on a compy that was just starting to move. He caught at a nearby robot to regain his balance, only to be grabbed by it. Terrified, he wrenched away, ripping a bloody gouge in his shoulder.

With the ammunition left in their weapons, the silver berets blasted away, yelling at the top of their lungs. Hundreds and then thousands of compies marched toward them, blocking the way out. They closed in from all sides.

Swendsen could see the exit, but it was much, much too far away.

47

RLINDA KETT

R
attling and tugging, nematodes chewed through the metal floor of the lift. From its sluggish movement and frequent lurches, Rlinda imagined at least fifty of the heavy worms must be clinging down there. How swiftly they had slithered up the shaft walls and clambered along protrusions, driven by Karla Tamblyn’s furious control.

Rlinda struggled to fasten the chest guard of her environment suit while BeBob fit her remaining glove in place. With a thud followed by loud skittering, the nematodes buckled the insulated floor plates, and a flash of serrated diamond teeth bit through a crack in the metal. Rlinda stomped her heel down as hard as she could, and the worm-thing disappeared. After only a brief pause, the nematodes flung themselves back with renewed vigor, squirming and sliding with a sound like wet leather. The ascending elevator slowed with a jerk, grinding in its track.

“Would it really hurt to let two lousy people escape?” BeBob groaned. “We didn’t even belong here in the first place.”

Rlinda was already sweating in her half-assembled suit. After seeing the nematodes make short work of the fallen Roamers down there, she knew the thick fabric would offer little protection. Those sharp teeth sent a shudder down Rlinda’s spine, but she had no intention of letting either herself or her favorite ex-husband be turned into worm food.

All business, moving as swiftly as she could, Rlinda turned BeBob around, checked his suit diagnostics and his air supply, and pronounced him fully green. “Now you check me out.” She backed closer to BeBob.

With a mechanical sigh of surrender, the lift finally ground to a complete stop, and it was still far from the top.

“That’s not good,” BeBob said.

“You’re the
master
of minimizing.” She tried to calm her breathing, but the skittering, thumping sounds of the worms grew louder from below, making her sweat even more. She was embarrassingly close to panic. “Hurry up!”

Nematodes ripped through another floor segment, and Rlinda had to jerk her feet away from the jagged mouths. BeBob checked her diagnostics, squinted at the readouts, then ran his gloved hands over her padded garment. “Enough foreplay, BeBob! Is my suit intact or not? We have to blow out of this chamber.”

“Want me to take shortcuts? You’ll be the first one to complain if your suit pops open in the vacuum.”

“My suit won’t help if those worms chew a hole in it, either.”

He adjusted something, then made a satisfied sound. “There, you’re good to go as soon as we put our helmets on.”

She popped the helmet over BeBob’s head and gave it a quick clockwise twist to seal its collar. “The lift shaft is probably jacketed and pressurized, with an emergency sphincter or two. Up top I assume there’s another airlock leading outside.”

BeBob said something, but his helmet muffled the words; when he pushed a suitcomm toggle on his chest pack, his voice came through a speaker in the collar of Rlinda’s suit. “—the way Karla Tamblyn is blasting everything down there, she might have cracked something open. If the shaft collapses, we’re screwed.”

Rlinda studied the roof of the lift chamber, finding the emergency access hatch. “BeBob, we have a wide selection of ways to be screwed. That’s why I want you out on the roof. I’m tired of these critters trying to eat our toes. I’ll bend down and cup my hands so you can step in them. Use my knees if you want, and open that access hatch so we can climb out.”

“Me? Shouldn’t I be lifting
you
up? You could go first.”

“Thanks for being a gentleman, BeBob, but I’m twice your weight. Even though Plumas has low gravity, let’s not get cocky.”

With a crash, the gathered nematodes bent another floor section until the opening was big enough for one to push its gelatinous red body through. Its skin membrane pulsed, and the protoplasmic body core thrust forward, squirting the creature halfway into the chamber.

Rlinda stomped on its head with her full weight, bursting its body membrane and leaving it jiggling on the floor. Only seconds later, two others fought to squeeze through the same opening.

With a worried glance at the oncoming swarm, BeBob quickly stepped on Rlinda’s knee and put his other foot in the cradle of her hands. She boosted him up so he could fumble with the hatch. “At least it’s an analog mechanism. No electronics or control sequence.”

More nematodes began to work their way through, crystalline jaws snapping closer to Rlinda. Holding BeBob steady, she couldn’t move to squash them with her boots. She kept glancing down. The worms were almost through.

“BeBob, you think you could—”

He worked frantically until he snapped the latch and pushed open the trapdoor. “That’s got it.” She gave him a solid shove, and BeBob sprang upward in the low gravity, shooting most of the way through the hole in the roof. Catching himself on his elbows, he hauled himself up.

No longer needing to support him, Rlinda landed a swift, hard kick on the nearest nematode. It retracted briefly, then lunged forward again. Her second kick didn’t bother the creature as much, and some of the moist slime clung to her boot. From the grotto below, Karla Tamblyn’s dark energy drove the nematodes beyond any sensations of pain. “It’s getting harder to discourage them.”

On top of the lift, BeBob flopped flat on his stomach, stuck his helmeted head back down, and extended his hand. “Come on. I’ll pull you up.”

Rlinda didn’t see any other way. She grasped his gloved hand in her own, bent her knees, and counted, “One—two—
three
.” She sprang with all her strength. BeBob managed to tug her through the hatch up to her waist. She barely fit. Rlinda’s feet dangled and kicked while she struggled upward. BeBob seized her shoulders.

Unhindered now, nematodes tore apart the floor plates, chewed other access holes, and slithered like a nest of snakes into the chamber. Rlinda yanked her legs up and out of the way just as diamond teeth snapped at her heel. She climbed onto the roof and slammed the hatch back down with a clang. “Talk about a can of worms!”

Now that they were on top of the lift, Rlinda tilted her helmet back to see the dizzying height of the shaft above. “I really hoped the elevator would carry us a little closer to the top.”

“Look, rungs!” BeBob pointed. Like the ridges of an endless centipede, alloy bars had been implanted in the shaft’s jacketed ice wall.

“You’re kidding.” She imagined Roamers hauling themselves hand over hand up the shaft just for the exercise. “Do I look like an athlete to you?”

“You look beautiful to me, and you always have.”

Rlinda rolled her eyes. “I never pegged you as one of those daredevils who gets hot and horny when his life is on the line.”

“I thought I was being romantic.”

“Save it for when we get to the
Curiosity
. Once we’re away from this place, I guarantee you I’ll be in the mood. Come on, get moving!”

Below, the nematodes squirmed into the lift chamber, writhing on top of each other, then using their slime adhesion to crawl up the walls. They hadn’t yet figured how to get to the roof, but it would be only a matter of minutes.

BeBob gestured toward the rungs. “Ladies first.”

“You want to look at my big butt during the whole climb up?”

BeBob turned his helmet away as if embarrassed. “Actually, I was thinking you’d do a better job of opening the airlock at the top, and I wanted to give you first crack at it.”

“Hmmm, practical
and
romantic. Tell me again why I ever divorced you.”

“Because we couldn’t stand each other at the time.”

Rlinda had divorced quite a few men, but Branson Roberts was the only one for whom she still carried a torch. “Right. I like it better this way. Why mess with a good thing?”

She grabbed the rungs and started to climb. BeBob secured the crossbar on the roof hatch, though it would take the worms only a short while to chew through the metal itself. The thought was enough to give Rlinda some incentive. Though she made good speed in the light gravity, within five minutes she was puffing loudly into the echo chamber of her helmet. The suit’s recirc and cooling systems worked overtime.

Feeling vibrations through the shaft wall, she imagined Karla’s continuing mayhem in the grotto below. Though the Tamblyn brothers had caused them plenty of headaches, Rlinda would have helped if she’d had the option. But this was a mess of the Roamers’ own making; she and BeBob had no part in it.

High above, she could see a necklace of lights marking the top of the shaft and the waiting airlock. Huffing, she grabbed the next rung, then the next, and the next. Her muscles ached, and her lungs were on fire. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d exerted herself so. BeBob climbed steadily behind her.

When she heard tinny thumps far below, she realized that the nematodes were battering against the roof of the lift chamber; through sheer numbers, they knocked open the hatch and began boiling out onto the roof. Exuding gelatinous slime, the nematodes adhered to the smooth shaft wall. They squirmed like caterpillars, circling around the borehole—and climbing fast.

She paused to glance down, saw the red nematodes gaining ground. “No need to look, Rlinda,” BeBob called. “Just assume they’re getting closer. If you hear my scream and then a crunching sound, you can be sure you’re next.”

She pulled herself nearer to the surface and freedom. The Roamer environment suit carried a kit of useful tools, but once she got to the top, Rlinda would still need time to finesse the airlock. Doubts began to pile up in her mind, brought on by fear. What if the airlock had a fail-safe system that disabled in the event the lift chamber was not sealed in place, or if the doors at the bottom of the shaft weren’t properly sealed? She didn’t even want to think about that and concentrated only on climbing.
Climbing
. Her mind was already planning how she would fudge the airlock controls. There had to be some sort of emergency egress mechanism.

Rlinda reached the top so unexpectedly that she was startled to find no more rungs. The inner airlock door was sealed, as she’d feared, and the control panel wasn’t one of the standard models. She yanked out the tools clipped to her suit and went to work. When she exposed the controls, she found handwritten notations on all the wiring. “How am I supposed to figure this out?”

BeBob kept climbing, a dozen rungs beneath her. “As fast as you can—that would be my preference.” Then he yelped.

The closest nematode reared up just below his leg, and BeBob kicked hard enough to knock it loose. The creature’s slimy adhesion wasn’t strong enough to hold, and the invertebrate dropped down the shaft. But seven other nematodes were chomping their way up after it, with plenty more behind those.

She didn’t see any way she could decipher these controls and cycle the airlock in the time they had available. She did, however, understand the standard automatic-purge routine. She made up her mind. “Wrap your arms around one of those rungs, BeBob, and hold on.” She dragged the blade of a screwdriver across the circuitry to short out all safety interlocks, then manually cracked open both the inner and outer pressure doors.

With a thump of decompression, the air inside the shaft was sucked out like a cold beverage through a straw. Hooking her boot around one rung and her arms around another, Rlinda held herself in place as evacuating air rushed past. BeBob clung just beneath her.

Far, far below, at the bottom of the shaft, an emergency seal door clanged into place to protect the inhabited underground grotto, and sphincters closed off the shaft at several levels. At least something was still working properly.

The shaft’s air geysered out, pulling the bloated scarlet creatures from the wall. The nematodes shot outside into the hard vacuum like wet tendrils of phlegm. Once they hit the freezing emptiness, their skin membranes could not hold their internal pressure, and they exploded.

The tug of wind lasted only a few seconds until the shaft was drained. Rlinda reached down to grasp BeBob’s hand, pulling him up, and the two of them climbed through the jimmied airlock door. Outside they saw shelter huts, piping, wellheads, several large water tankers. And the
Voracious Curiosity
.

Rlinda laughed with relief to see her ship, then looked down at the splatters of crimson ice and shredded worm bodies. BeBob bounded past her. “No time for sightseeing. That woman could crack through the crust at any minute.”

She didn’t need to be told twice. Within moments they got themselves aboard, and Rlinda coaxed the engines to life. “The
Curiosity
’s still pretty battered, and it looks like those Roamers never got around to fixing everything. But she can fly.”

“Then let’s fly!”

And they did, leaving Plumas mercifully far behind.