The Long Forgotten War: Episode 1

Episode 1: The Battle for Node 3312

 

 

Guidance Server <cloisters@189.22.Guidance.80>

Solar Dominion – Fons Luminis

10194.0.1 AT

Swirls of light, and sensation that had the tang of citrus, the raspy feel of towel over bare skin, the thrumming vibration and scintillating pleasure of an erotogen toy. He felt himself plummeting, in free-fall … gently turning, feeling the light sleet off his skin, thousands of tiny photons colliding with his outer self, pervading his soul until he, too, dissolved into the light, and became something else.

A new iteration began, and he was flooded with new sensations. This time it was criss-crossing lasers, intersecting his body, and at each point generating waves of warmth and pleasure, unknitting sore muscles, unravelling him, and then –

The disjointed shock of an abrupt connection –

- he recovered quickly, sitting bolt-upright, staring around within his own personalvirch, the quiet room empty except for him, and the insistent throbbing that signified an incoming request for a connection. He shook his head again.

He’d been biont, once – a real-life, living organism. He’d lived a life of contentment on board the massive orbital ring that he had been born on. He’d studied, and explored, and wandered, seeking meaning. He’d met his first partner as a biont; they’d mated and declared to each other and he’d been living with her for almost a century when he first applied to join Guidance. While the nanological angelnet that enveloped their habitat prevented most crimes or problems, there were occasional catastrophes that merited the response of a Crisis Team; Guidance was the agency that coordinated such teams. He’d been praised by his Octachaplain, the day he’d joined; apparently it was a great personal move, rejoiced his Octachaplain, a step closer to the Prime Reflector, to personal unity with the God-Emperor, the Lord of Rays.

If only his octachaplain had had some idea of where his time in Guidance would take him, or that part of him that still remembered what it was like to be a biont, that still perceived a need to shake his head upon waking.

Before he’d been copied and uploaded into virchspace, he’d been a biont, and as such, some habits were difficult to break. His own personal self image was still that of a biont … he still had the familiar urges to breathe, to eat, and indulged those urges with various food and drink templates that he had gathered in the many years since he was uploaded. And within his own personal space, his own personalvirch – his Lobby, if you used the ancient term – he still saw himself as a biont, and when something startled him, still sat bolt-upright, instead of simply willing his awareness, his sensoria, to acknowledge it.

The rest of the team – of his team - were mixed. A few of them were ex-bionts or vecs, and the others were born virtuals. They had no need for the “monkey-baggage” that came with being an ex-ril that had been uploaded … the need to walk, the need to feel the sensations of breathing, of swallowing, of flexing muscles for the satisfaction of the stretch, or the sensation of itching, or pain. They claimed they didn’t feel the same disorientation that came from a forced disconnect, either. They wouldn’t have had any need to look around, or to wait for some simulated visual feed to get their bearings.

On the other hand, they all worked for Countersubversion, now. Traversing the shadowy border between virtual and real-life – ril – was their study, their profession. Having had some previous experience as a ril entity carried some decided advantages.

Grius stifled a moan as he rolled sideways and off the reclining lounge. The incoming message still thrummed inistently, and with a sigh, he answered it.

 “This had better be good,” he broadast gruffly. “I’m meant to be on a downcycle here.”

 “Get online now, Grius,” was the terse reply, and in his datamind Grius could parse the avatar of his commanding officer, Carmichael, a virtual, an AI, and an AI sufficiently advanced that he probably could have simulated Grius’ entire mind in spare processing cycles alone.

 “What’s going on, boss?” replied Grius, with a growing sense of unease. “You know how much I value my downtime. Can’t Ajasu take care of it? He’s on alert duty.”

 “He’s already out there.” Suddenly, there was interference, the scintillating crackle of – something. Electromagnetic? No, it felt more like data interference. Maybe something was interfering with the connection, making it become laggy, or lossy. Grius made out a snatch of transmission, something someone was saying to Carmichael.

 “…gauges 18 to 42 have just gone up as well…”

The static cleared, and Carmichael was present once more. “Grius, I have secured a connection to 114.22.Guidance.80 on port 155 from your home server. You are to login immediately.”

Grius could hear the urgency in his commander’s voice; a voice normally level, and calm. What could possibly unnerve a posthuman AI as powerful as Carmichael?

 “Okay, boss … consider me there.” Grius shook his head, clearing away the last vestiges of the abstract virch he had been lost in, and began multitasking, loading his work suite into memory, reviwewing his latest briefings, and preparing to log in and find out in the Dominion was going on that could lead to Carmichael disconnecting him from his downcycle with barely a word of warning.

It had been so quiet when he had logged off from Guidance, barely a Dominion hour beforehand.

 

 

 

 

 

Guidance was in chaos as he returned. Myriad connections being made and broken every second, a pervading, constant processing overhead that Grius sensory systems interpreted as a continuous background hum. As Grius felt the connection protocols stabilise, he dumped himself straight into the Command Centre virch server. A moment of disorientation while his sensory feeds caught up, and he was there.

The room had no walls, no celing, and no floor. Around them, kilometres of schematics hung, vibrant in the darkness, tracing the intricate Known Net connections, the vast infospace that served the many rils and virtuals that made up the Solar Dominion. In the literal sense, billions of interconnected computer systems, millions of interacting protocols, a vast web of pulsing information that spanned worlds and, via the magic of the Archailects and their wormhole technology, even the stars themselves. A vast web of surging information. Around this schematic, the various others logged on to the Command Centre drifted, avatars gently floating between visual and tactile representations of cables, angelnets, wireless transmissions, and mighty wormhole gauges. The main concentration of avatars was clustered near the centre of the virtual room, around a series of diagrams that portrayed some of the major communication-gauge wormholes that linked into the inner sphere, and Grius drifted over rapidly. As he watched, hundreds of beings logged in, and out, every second, flashing into existence and then fading away almost as quickly. The scene was blurred, incomprehensible. Someone in the middle of the cluster was running on fastime, and with a conscious effort, Grisu managed to slow his own perceptions down to match, and the scene before him became less chaotic…

 “Glad you’re here, Grius. I need to brief you,” issued the deep, resonant voice of Carmichael from behind him. He turned around to face the intelligence’s avatar. It was always the same – a featureless, metal globe. Every vitual changed their avatar, sometimes. It was who you were, your expression of everything that was yourself. Changing your avatar was like a ril changing their clothes, or taking on a cosmetic biomodification. Everyone changed their avatar.

Not Carmichael. But who could fathom the actions of the transapients, the posthumans, the godlings? Who could hope to understand the actions or compulsions of a Seraiph of the God Emperor himself?

 “Yes, Zar,” replied Grius, sending pulses of respect and acquiescence. They were canned message frames, formulated and saved for use in situations where a nearbaseline, such as Grius, was conversing with a Seraiph, such as Carmichael. “What is the situation?”

Carmichael did not hesitate, and his sensory feeds betrayed no hint of concern, apart from the terseness and that had suffused his earlier transmission. “At approximately 10.066 today, standard Dominion time, a massive info-assault was launched through all ports from the Dominion outpost CA-442. The datapressure was so high that it triggered overpressure systems on most of the servers along the route and they have shut down to preserve net integrity. We are in the process of manually accessing the remaining relay servers, either virtually or by sending ril Guidance teams to shut the servers down manually.”

Grius radiated curiosity. “What was it…some kind of dos attack?”

 “A denial-of-service? Possibly. Although I have my doubts as to whether a dos was the intention of the attacker. Most of the transmissions were junk, but we have determined that approximately one percent of the incoming transmissions were carefully encoded programs. We do not currently know what the payload was.”

Grius felt his skin crawl. “Viral?”

 “As I said, we don’t yet know what the payload was. It failed to trigger any of the standard viral sensors on its arrival.”

 “Perhaps the flood of data managed to effectively spoof the viral sensors?”

 “Unlikely,” replied Carmichael. “The viral detection systems are designed to remain functional in the instance of an overpressure attack. If there was any viral content, we would have expected it to trigger them by now.”

Grius nodded slowly. “Unless it’s some kind of new viral technique. Or some kind of sentient virus, a savir.”

 “At this stage, we suspect it is a savir. Ajasu is currently scanning in an attempt to locate any possible infection. I need you for another mission.”

 “Go ahead,” said Grius.

 “What makes this attack so different is that it appears to have subverted many of the wormhole relay gauges between here and CA-442. The main bulk of the information is travelling through those gauges. As you can understand, we are reluctant to shut these down, as it will lead to the complete loss of contact with CA-442. It would also necessitate cutting the Archai in CA-442 off from several of their own personal nodes which are located in local Inner Sphere space. This would mean greatly diminished functional capability for those archai.”

 “That’s clearly a bad thing,” replied the shocked Grius.

 “Indeed. Furthermore, because it is travelling through gauge ports, we are having great difficulty blocking its dissemination into the known net. Wormhole gauges are integrated into most of the major Known Net backbones within the region. Archailect operated gauges are not designed to be readily blocked. Rhyder and Lifter are currently working on blocking outbreaks, but the transmissions have already grounded themselves into several major Dominion servers. Those servers that have been compromised have been quarantined, and all their external connections to the rest of the net broken.”

 “How the hax did they manage to infiltrate an archai?” asked Grius in disbelief.

 “Greater minds are currently working on answering exactly that. Until we can, it is a matter of great urgency that we try and stem this info-assault before it manages to push its way into any more servers. We need you to take a partner and infiltrate a relay gauge on Node 3132 on the archai known as 32 Degrees.

 “You want me to infiltrate an Archai?”

Grius felt the pulse of assent from the other mind. “With that Archai’s consent, of course. 32 Degrees has just reported that the flood has overwhelmed compensatory systems in the node. Unfortunately, 32 Degrees was in the process of a complex computation and had left only a baseline fragment in charge of Node 3132. That baseline fragment appears to have been compromised by the savir. At this stage, 90% of the transmission flood is entering local servers from this node. We must shut it down.”

 “Okay,” Grius replied, trying to quash the unease he felt. “I’ve never refused a mission before. But surely there are transapient agents who are more suited to this task?”

 “Not at this stage. Many of our transapient agents are currently engaged in controlling this info-assault. We suspect that near-baseline agents will have more success in infiltrating the the node, in any case, due to your lower overhead requirements.”

 “You mean our brains are smaller, don’t you, Carmichael?”

 “By several orders of magnitude,” the seraiph replied. “However, this is not why you have a lower overhead. Your meagre sensoria limit the amount of information you will be able to request from the node, and we believe this will enable you to operate with less chance of detection.”

 “Are there any metanet connections into the node?”

 “As a matter of fact, there are – several.”

 “Then detection shouldn’t matter. Even a Savir won’t be able to block an incoming metanet signal.”

 “Logs coming in show some anomalies arising from the use of metanet connections. We are still analysing them. I wish to be careful. An in any case, if your signals are traced, as a nearbaseline, your possible infection or deletion is of far less consequence than that of a transapient or transavant agent.”

 “As usual,” sighed Grius, “We’re expendable.”

 “Correct. And also relatively fast to restore from backup.”

Grius shook his head, grinning. “When was the last time I restored from backup, Carmichael?”

 “According to my records, you are yet to restore from a backup; however, my records of you as an entity only go back approximately one and a half centuries, to the point where you were uploaded to Countersubversion.”

 “Indeed. I’ve never needed restoring, and I’m not planning on doing now. If Ajasu, Rhyder and Lifter are out answering the call of duty, who are you recalling to back me up?”

 “No one.”

Grius began shaking his head and backed away. “No way am I doing this alone. If that node’s been compromised, they could have its own counter-subversion defences running. Transapient defences. Infiltrating it’d be suicide.”

 “You won’t be going in alone.”

 “Well … if Ajasu, Rhyder, and Lifter are all extant, you’d better have got me someone good from one of the other units.”

 “You will be partnered with Lyrica for this mission.”

Grius began to laugh. “You must be kidding. There’s no way she’s up to this.”

 “She is the fastest hacker we have.”

 “She’s a damn abstract, Carmichael! She’s not even in the same universe as us! If she loses interest or decides to play with the pretty datanodes, we’ll both be dead!”

He felt the pulse of disapproval from his commander and fell silent. Carmichael spoke again, and this time Grius could feel the insistence and the urgency in his transmission. “Lyrica has an interpreter now. They have been integrated as a groupmind. They are currently being prepared for launch. Time is of the essence in this mission. We are currently working on securing an open port for you to access Node 3132. As soon as we have one, I need you to be ready to connect. Both of you.”

Grius suppressed further protest, satisfying himself with radiating displeasure at the thought of working with the only being in the control center possibly more alien than Carmichael itself. But there was no satisfaction in his anger; his thoughts on the matter were of no consequence to the posthuman AI as it drifted back to the main conference clustered around the schematics in the center of the room. All that mattered was his service. Through his service he would bring himself closer to the Prime Reflector.

 “You’d better have some good guns for me, Carmichael…” Grius ground out between vitually-clenched teeth as he prepared to disconnect and reconnect to the launch centre.

 

 

 

 

 

“What do you have for me, Control?” asked Grius, materialising in the launch center. He adroitly manoeuvred his avatar to the side as several other virtuals scurried past, and slowly rotated to scan the various schematics scattered throughout the virchspace before him. Several caught his eye, the symbology and readouts attached to them identifying them as integrated programs designed to dole out mass destruction – at least, in terms of virtual space. He grinned, highlighting several of the schematics with a faint gold outline. “Looks like the good stuff here, Control…” he said, grinning wolfishly.

The slim outline of a humanoid figure, sex indeterminate, materialised out of the darkness before him, a close-fitting white shipsuit cladding the effeminate frame, silver nano-feedlines criss-crossing the white smartex, with a single optical scanner embedded in an otherwise smooth and featureless face, across the upper third, where baseline terragen eyes would be located. When it spoke, there was no simulated timbre and resonance of sound; it was pure data.

We have something special for you, Grius.

Grius grinned again. “What…even better than the ISF-95?” he asked, once more highlighting one of the more complex schematics.

Carmichael placed a special order for this mission. We are currenrly prepping an IGP-20 with a mission specific loadout.

Grius’ brow furrowed, and he emitted spurts of confusion and displeasure. “A general purpose suite? Tell me there is some kind of mistake. There is no way I’m going to war with … with what I’m about to face, in a GP suite.”

Control remained expressionless. Carmichael anticipated you would say that. Carmichael has authorised the release of certain advanced weapon systems. We are currently retrofitting them to the IGP-20 suites. They are normally designed to be deployed by more advanced users. Adapting them to your requirements has been a … challenge.

Grius nodded, surly. “So…what has the cantankerous po arranged for his toy soliders, then?” he asked.

Your humour does not befit the seriousness of the situation.

 “You know, I don’t know if I’ve ever asked you this, Control. Are you transapient?”

While I remain classified as a nearbaseline superbright, I have been augmented to have spikes into transapient intelligence in certain select areas.

 “A transavant. Figures. Have you ever been nearbaseline?”

Yes.

 “Ril?”

Yes. A long time ago.

 “Then it’s understandable that certain elements of the nearbaseline reaction to stressful situations would no longer be familiar to you.”

Indeed.

A spell of silence ensued, and Grius grew uneasy. Perhaps he’d gone too far. Every soldier knew that the last person you wanted to offend was the one in charge of the equipment. He sighed, and loaded up a few frames of penitence and apology, and squirted them to the avatar before him. It remained unmoved. Grius nodded, and tried again.

 “So … what kind of modifications have you made to the ’20?” he asked, slowly. Control spoke once more.

The entire sensor suite has been changed out and refitted with a series of protocols for accessing most of the major transapient operating systems in use currently. The onboard programming has been radically upgraded to enable it to downsample the incoming sensor data to nearbaseline tolerance at both realtime and fastime. Most of the standard onboard commands and other weaponry have been redesigned to be interoperable with the new sensor suite to enable them to function in a transapient operating environment.

Grius widened his eyes incredulously. “You’ve refitted a general purpose suite to make it effective against transapients?”

Of course. How else did you think you would survive on Node 3312?

 “You know about the mission?”

I needed to know the mission parameters if I was going to be able to design a weapon suite that would function effectively in the environment.

Grius was silent for a moment. Then: “Can I try it on?”

Unlikely. I currently have 60% of my active technical team working on the two suites in order to get them operational by the time the transmission window arrives. Simply loading it will require a massive memory overhead, far more than that usually allocated to nearbaseline suite operations. I am currently working on freeing up those resources. I suspect your first chance to operate the suite will be at launch.

Grius grunted. “That’s a shame. I like to test new software out before I commit my ops to it.”

I trust you have backups.

Grius laughed. “Fine…before I trust other people’s opses to it.”

The limited data I have received indicates that there are no virtuals residing within the computronium of Node 3312. No others will be at risk. As a result, I have authorised the release of several high-yield weapons contributed by some of our transapient operatives.

 “Now we’re talking. You know how I like my suites.”

Unfortunately, I do. Grius caught the aura of disapproval in Control’s transmission, and the few images that came trickling along the link, of virtuals dead and dying, left no room for misunderstanding.

 “So, Control…you’re a pacifist? Seems a strange leaning for the head of Countersubversion’s technical branch.”

Not so strange.

There was only so much probing that a nearbaseline could get away with when dealing with a transapient, and while the continuing conversation held some promise of a rather interesting ideological debate, Grius felt the sensory feeds from Control suddenly cut down – to informational and auditory only.

In other words, end of conversation. Grius smiled a wry smile.

 “You’ve got my suite preferences?”

On file. They’ll be integrated with the suite before launch.

 “Very well. I have some more business to attend to before launch.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The main Countersubversion servers were almost self-sufficient. They had to be – they could not afford to rely on the general public to support them. The Solar Dominion was an empire based on light. They had little regard for those that walked in darkness.

As such, they had all of the things any self-respecting net zar could want within their own covert community – commercial outlets, home quarters, social gathering places, schools, training facilities, Solarist places of worship…

…medical facilities.

The virchspace Grius materialised into as his connection stabilised was typical of a Dominion virch – he found himself in a quadrangle, surrounded on all sides, and above and below, by a tangle of walkways. This central area was housed in the enormous inner cavity of what Grius knew from the outside to be a solarist pyramid – a four-sided pyramid with the top truncated so that it had a flat upper surface. From below, verdant light streamed upwards, and Grius noted that the physics of the virch had been tweaked ever-so-slightly to slow the speed of the light from below down, so that it moved at speeds almost visible to the unaided nearbaseline eye. It was a popular Solarist tweak – it made the light feel closer, more familiar. It personified it. Around the outside of the quadrangle, people were leaning out, staring downwards, and letting their bodies bathe in the light from below. There were no guard-rails, even though the drop from the edge of the connection platform seemed to be endless; there was no need for them. The server would not allow anyone to fall; they would merely be re-loaded back on the platform if they chose to step off.

It was the Countersubversion Treatment Centre, home to the foremost experts on neuroprogramming within the Dominion. And exactly the place to find a defective Abstract that was being shoehorned into a role that it did not fit into. With the barest of impulses, Grius loaded the public online listing into his datamind, and scanned the names. Unlesss they’d changed her public profile –

No. There she was. There it was. Lyrica. He willed himself there. The connection platform dissolved, and a new room materialised across his visual field – plain, nondescript, golden-hued walls with lights in both floor and ceiling.

 “I was expecting you, Grius. I thought you’d like to take the opportunity to become accustomed to your new partner.” The voice seemed to echo from the walls, with no clear source. Grius coughed. Some people changed their avatars like they changed their clothes. Some, like the enigmatic Carmichael, chose to retain the same avatar.

Some saw no need for one at all.

 “A14 … I see that Carmichael has had you working on his latest project?” Grius announced to the room at large. There was a pause, and a chuckle.

 “Actually,” came the disembodied voice again as Grius scanned the room’s other occupant, “Lyrica is more my project than Carmichael’s. Such an interesting challenge provided me with many hours of amusement. After all, I am the head of Neuroprogramming here. Projects such as Lyrica are my speciality. I think it’s good that you take the chance to meet her before your mission.”

For the first time, Grius surveyed the room, and noticed an avatar standing silently in the corner.

This avatar was made up of two figures; one was that of a tall woman, eyes and mouth closed, as if dreaming…her skin was silver, she wore no clothing, and her body was entirely hairless; as Grius watched, faint skeins of multi-coloured light washed over it, like nano over water. Her hair was not hair at all … it was hundreds of tendrils, millimetres thick, growing thinner as they swept down her back to end somewhere near the ground, each one writhing slightly as she moved.

Standing before the otherworldly figure of a woman was that of a man; shorter, more rotund, eyes and mouth most definitely open. His head was bald, and studded with metal outcroppings, implants of some description; both eyes were also clearly cyborgised. He wore a simple black shipsuit. As Grius watched, the two figures moved in perfect unison, the man’s actions perfectly mirroring the dream-like movements of the woman. The only way they differed was in the gentle movement of the woman’s tendril-like hair – it gently curled around her to caress the studded pate of the shorter figure before her.

 “Seems like a lot of people know about our mission, for something supposedly so secret,” Grius replied sourly.

 “Only those of us that need to know. Grius, meet Lyrica and her interpreter. Final testing is complete; the two of them have been united into a perfectly functional groupmind.”

Grius surveyed the avatar up and down…a shifting, glowing aura made it hard to discern where one figure ended and the other began. “What do I call it?”

 “Our interpreter has graciously agreed to allow his own identity to be subsumed into that of Lyrica for the duration of their union. He simply contributes his skill in acting as a conduit between Lyrica’s abstract sensoria and our own world. As such, the groupmind should continue to be called Lyrica.”

Grius grunted. “That’s a shame.”

A14 spoke again, warmth suffusing it’s voice. “While I am aware of the circumstances of Lyrica’s last mission, and your own personal ill feelings towards her, I can assure you that I have tested the new construct rigorously. I do not anticipate similar problems to those we faced previously with Lyrica. She should have no difficulty in integrating with your Countersubversion software suites, either.”

“What’s with the ‘borged headgear on your interpreter there?”

 “The interpreter is a recent upload. He had such implants in ril. He still retains much of his identity from his time before uploading, and as such, he has chosen his avatar to mirror that image.”

Grius nodded curtly. “Does it talk?”

The dual avatar shifted slightly, both heads tilting to one side. The shorter, male figure’s mouth began to move.

 “Yes, I do, Zar Grius.”

 “Who am I talking to? Lyrica, or the interpreter?”

There was a pause, and the shorter figure spoke again. The inflection, the accent, they were different this time, and the voice strained. “Zar Grius…with some effort I am able to parallel process and bring my own identity back to the surface. However, for the bulk of the time, you will be interacting directly with Lyrica.”

Grius looked them over. “Okay. That was obviously the interpreter. Lyrica?”

This time, the voice was easier, less strained, more melodious, unmistakably tenor, but with an audible soprano echo. “Yes, Zar Grius?”

 “Do you have any memories of your last mission?”

 “Zar Grius, I do not have true memories, although logs of the mission have been processed and uploaded for me to review. I am aware of what happened, and also my part in it.”

 “Do you know what our current mission is?”

 “Yes, Zar Grius, I have been briefed by Carmichael on our next mission. To Node 3312.”

Grius paced to the other side of the room, before turning around. “Lyrica … I don’t know what it is about you that addles Carmichael into keeping you around, but I don’t like it, and I don’t agree with it. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t even share the same universe as the rest of us.”

 “In a sense, this is true, Zar Grius,” Lyrica replied. “My sensorium is fundamentally different to yours, as a result of many hundreds of cycles spent immersed in a transensory virch. However, with the services of A14 and my Interpreter, I am now able to function well in environments suited to terragen standard sensoria.”

Grius turned to face her again. “What happened last time – “

 “I can assure you, Zar Grius, that what happened last time will not happen again.”

 “See to it that it doesn’t,” hissed Grius, “or I’ll arrange for you to be stripped of your interpreter and thrown back into whatever abstract virch you toppled out of.” He turned on his heel and, as quickly as he could manage, dumped himself out of the medical server and back to Launch Control.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Connection window in approximately five minutes, Zar Grius.

The expert system’s voice chimed melodiously in his datamind as he carefully flexed his mental muscles, testing the pull and the give of the new construct. The new Suite was loaded into memory, and Grius grimaced as he gingerly felt out its connections, its linkages, and tried to glean its quirks, its foibles.

It felt clean. That was good. That was what you wanted, before a fight – a good, clean connection. You didn’t want loss, or lag – anything that impeded the steady flow of information, from the target, to the suite, to your brain, and back, from your brain, to the suite, and then to the target. They would operate at deep fastime – it was an enormous strain on a baseline mind but it would give them the advantage of speed. Grius, Lyrica, and their suites had an entire server-full of resources to call upon – hopefully their target would be unable to speed their perceptions in the same way.

Grius whistled through his teeth. His biont habits always came back to him, before a fight. When he was focusing on the mission, and not on his own avatar. He felt – heavier. Different to the way he normally felt. Not sluggish … just oddly massive. It must have been the jury-rigged transapient systems – they made the suite feel bigger, somehow. Like the difference between an armoured suit, and a tank. The transapient systems were taking quite a toll on Launch Control’s support systems.

Three minutes to launch, Zar Grius.

Carmichael smoothly insinuated himself into Grius’ datamind, not waiting for Grius to accept his incoming signal but simply inserting himself directly into the nearbaseline’s sensorium. Not terribly good conduct, but for a Countersubversion AI it was easily enough achieved and Grius wouldn’t have barred the AI from his mind anyway.

 “You have your briefing?”

Grius pulsed assent over their link. “How are the rest of the team?” he asked.

 “I have Ajasu in Command now downloading his log files. He has several in-vivo samples of the rogue program. I suspect that you were indeed right – it is a savir of some description. We are analysing it now. Rhyder and Lifter continue to try and stem outbreaks along with units two, three, four, and five. And, of course, Lyrica is in the final stages of preparation for connection, as are you.”

Grius nodded. “Any advice, Carmichael?”

 “Be careful. This will be your first attempt at infiltrating a transapient-operated server. Even without 32 Degrees in control, many of the automated systems will still be as intelligent as you are.”

 “I thought you said this Suite would travel undetected?” Grius queried.

 “It should. We have integrated an active camoflague matrix based on recognition codes supplied by 32 Degrees. Additionally, you will be connecting via metanet pathways. You should remain undetected. There is always the possibility that the savir has subverted those systems in charge of countersubversion, however.”

 “What if we cannot shut down the server?”

 “I believe 32 Degrees spoke with you earlier?”

Grius shook his head. The headache still throbbed. “It certainly did.”

Grius fancied that he could sense the slightest hint of humour in Carmichael’s incoming transmission, although with transapients you could never be sure. “I’m sorry, Grius,” the AI continued. “32 Degrees is unused to dealing with nearbaselines. I will discuss with him the importance of using output filters when dealing with lower-capacity minds. I trust you understand what it told you, however?”

Grius nodded slowly. “I heard what it told me. Whether I understood it or not – “

 “ – is of no consequence. You understand what is required of you?”

Grius nodded. He spoke no more words, simply sending a pulse of emotion – anticipation; eagerness; fear; endorphin-laden dread.

 “Then may the Prime Reflector light your path, Zar Grius,” spoke Carmichael in blessing.

 “I don’t want any light. Not where I’m going.”

One minute to connection.

 

 

 

 

Darkness, and then flickers of light, and sound – random sensory inputs as the protocols sought each other out, exchanged greetings, verified, attached, strengthened. The sensory deprivation was eerie; it was time in limbo that always accompanied a server-jump, even though Grius knew that it would only last a few seconds, until either the connection was established, or the Suite timed out, recycled, and they would try for a second attempt.

Contact.

Data sprung across his visual field, raw information swirling and pitching; there was another moment of disorientation.

 “Visual representation.”

Grius’ words were met with an instant response as his visual field stabilised and he was there – within the operating system of the server itself.

No minds travelled here. It was virgin territory. Minds were restricted to the world that sprang up as an emergent property of this place – to the virch settings and servers that were spawned by the monolithic program that Grius and Lyrica were currently inside. This place, however, was not designed for minds to see – and so the Suites took the information that was the operating system and condensed it and turned it into a visual representation that enabled those chosen few who walked in the shadows to understand it, to comprehend.

It was said that what each mind saw while within the embrace of the Suite was different, determined by their own cognitive patterns. Grius saw –

Grius saw a vast field of geometric shapes, cubes, stark grey and featureless, visual representations of blocks of data stored within the great computronium banks they were currently connected to.

Grius saw processes – arcing, blinding streams of light flowing from the fields of data down below, past them, up into the simulated sky far above them.

Grius saw the processing node, a vast sun, crackling and spitting, high above them, and as the lightning streams that were running processes passed by it, they exchanged information in vast gouts and arcs of energy.

He shook his head, willing the nausea to subside. He was disorientated. This was far larger than he was used to. The data fields stretched far beyond his field of view, to the horizon, and beyond, and he rapidly lost count of the amount of programs he perceived streaming past him, to that central processor. Even it was far larger than that of any system he had ever been a part of, and as he focused on it, he began to feel its energies invading him, flaying at him…

 “Filters!” he managed to croak, and as suddenly as the nausea had risen, it subsided. He felt the sensory overload recede.

He looked around. The figure that represented Lyrica drifted beside him. Fearing the worst, he sent an inquisitive probe in her direction.

She responded immediately. He cleared his throat. She appeared to have fared better than he. He turned to survey the fields once more.

 “There’s some major work going on here,” Grius spoke to the datascape at large, eyeing the hundreds of processes arcing their way upwards.

 “Perhaps. I’ve never been inside a transapient operating system before,” replied Lyrica. “Maybe the computation 32 Degrees was working on is still running?”

Grius nodded. “Maybe. No matter. Let’s get down to business.”

He felt Lyrica’s presence move up beside him. “What would you like me to do, Zar?” he heard her ask. He continued to survey the datascape before them, and without turning to face her, replied: “Begin surveying for active defense systems, although we seem to have stayed under the net so far. I’ll begin scanning for viral activity and see if we can isolate and kill it.”

He felt Lyrica move off, and he began his own search.

 “Viral scan.”

He felt the scanning display fall across his visual field like a curtain. A cursory scan of the surrounding data fields showed no activity associated with known viruses, but that meant little – if it had been a known virus, it would have been stopped before it could cause so much strife. Grius flexed a mental muscle, and engaged the markerlight.

The markerlight was a subroutine that would illuminate a data block or process and scan it for a range of things – in this case, viral activity or presumptive viral activity. He could have triggered a comprehensive viral scan, but that would take days on a server of this size, and they didn’t have the luxury of that sort of time. The markerlight display once more superimposed itself across his visual field.

Grius smiled. “Smooth.”

The jury-rigged suite was functiong well within parameters. He knew he’d have little time once he detected anything – if it was the Savir, it would know it was being tampered with and immediately take countermeasures. What those countermeasures were depended on the virus, but anything tricky enough to take control of an entire transapient node obviously had some resources to draw on.

 “Okay …” muttered Grius to himself. “If I was a viral process…which of these processes would I be …”

He turned slowly, scanning one process after another. Each one came back clean, no change in his visual field. As he turned, he saw another raft of lightning bolts arc up from another data field. His onboard processor tallied up over two hundred new programs executing.

He groaned. “There’s too many of them.”

Grius began eying the individual processes. He’d need to narrow it down if he was going to have any chance of spotting it. But after all, that’s why they had sent a nearbaseline in where expert system antiviral monitors had failed. Nearbaselines could think outside the box.

Grius had thrown the box away a long time ago.

As he scanned slowly, he reopened his link to Lyrica. “All clear?”

 “Crystal,” was the groupmind’s only reply.

He turned back to the datafields arrayed before him, eying the processes. Suddenly, one caught his eye.

In fact, it was two processes, arising from neighbouring data blocks, seemingly alternating – one would arc, then the other, and then the first again. Grius drifted closer, and tried to peg the pattern down, but he couldn’t. The interval between the two processes seemed to fluctuate at random.

He felt his skin crawl, and surmised that somewhere back on the Guidance servers the non-existent hairs would be rising on the back of his avatar’s neck.

Carefully, he engaged his second weapon – a set of subroutines that would scan the process and then issue a kill directive directly to the central processor. The killswitch - rapidly lethal, and at the end of the day, the reason why Countersubversion agents were so effective. Really, it was the only weapon they needed. Their real power wasn’t in their suites. It was in the fact that the metanet protocols gave their suites access to the programs themselves. It was hard for your enemy to do anything when you controlled the substrate they subsisted on.

A quick flash of movement – markerlight up, and he was scanning. A flash of red, and Grius saw it – the malevolent, twisting, snake-like shape that signified viral activity. “Contact!” he narrowcast at Lyrica, at full intensity, and aimed the killswitch. It jittered for a moment, scanning the process, trying to lock onto it as it twisted and turned, and steadied –

- and then the process was gone. Grius spun around. So was it’s partner. He checked his logs.

Empty.

 “Hax it!” he swore. The process had terminated itself before it could be scanned. Which meant it had probably started up somewhere else –

 “Grius! I have contact!” he felt the narrowcast transmission from Lyrica. He spun, seeking her position; his onboard systems highlighted the tiny figure of her avatar some distance away. Of course, within the advanced suite simulation, distance was subjective – with the merest of thoughts, he was beside her, in time to see the process she was scanning disappear.

 “Lost it,” she announced tersely.

 “Blighted thing’s fast,” conceded Grius as he began scanning the datascape again. Suddenly, something caught his eye.

 “I think it’s restarted over there,” he narrowcast again, at a whisper. They both drifted over slowly.

 “Do you think it can sense our approach?” Lyrica asked quietly.

 “Don’t be absurd. We’re coming in here via the metanet. It can’t even tell we’re connected. All it knows is that it’s getting read and then getting kill commands sent at it. It probably can’t even tell where the killswitches are being sent from. As far as it knows, they’re originating from nothing.”

 “Poor virus. Do you think it’s sentient?”

 “Even a sub-turing virus can kill itself and re-run if it’s scanned. A carefully designed one.”

Once more, they were next to the process, and once more, it had generated a twin. Grius slowly circled around it. “This time, you try and acquire it. I’ll be on the lookout for it when it terminates and reactivates. Hopefully if I can hit it as it restarts it won’t have the time to kill itself again.”

Lyrica pulsed her assent.

 “On my mark,” narrowcast Grius. “Three … two … one … mark!”

He felt the scanning systems of Lyrica’s suite as a hum across his auditory sensors, but he was already spinning to scan the datascape himself. He felt the process behind them die, heard Lyrica’s softly-spoken curse, and then, across the fields, spotted a twin process arcing upwards towards the central processor –

 “I have it!” He shipped his markerlight up, acquired the target, and raced towards it, feeling the signal track, waver, and then firm. A picosecond later…

 “Process scanned. Process killed.” The dulcet tones of the suite directly into his auditory centres.

He whooped, and heard a polite laugh from Lyrica, and then her voice, the strange tenor tones modulated with high-pitched soprano.

 “Well done, Grius. What have you got?”

He carefully pulled up his quarantine logs, studying the datafeed closely. “I’m … not sure. It’s odd, whatever it is. The suite’s processing it now … hopefully it’ll be able to resolve some kind of signature from it so we can scan the rest of the processes and shut down the dataflood.”

 “What do you think Carmichael will make of it?”

Grius shook his head. “Far be it from me to try and second guess a Seraiph, but whatever he sees in this thing, he’ll be studying it now. He should have already got the specimen over our telemetry feed.”

A tone, once more directed straight into his auditory cortex – the analysis was done. Grius smiled grimly as he loaded the newly generated viral signature into his markerlight. He squirted a copy of it across to Lyrica, and then brought his markerlight up to bear on the expansive datafields. “Okay. Let’s go hunting.”

He engaged the light once more, and moved to sweep it across the fields. He paused, as he felt the sudden resource drain, the sudden lag in the connection.

 “What on Luminis …” he muttered.

 “I’m feeling it too,” replied Lyrica to the uncompleted question.

All of a sudden, a wash of red seemed to overlay itself over the datafields, and Grius felt his suite processors move into overdrive as they tried to resolve the image sweeping across his visual field. It took several seconds, but as it intensified, Grius drifted upwards, slowly surveying more and more of the enormous field. Row upon row of grey, nondescript cubes and pyramids, stretching as far as the suite could feed into his vidual field before it generated a horizon.

Every single one of them with a tiny red worm at its core.

Every single one of them infected.

 “Oh…fex.”

And with not another thought, he slipped into darkness.

  

 

 

 

 

 

After the intense sensory inputs of the transapient system they’d been infiltrating, Grius felt something worryingly akin to total sensory deprivation. It took several seconds for his sensoria to adjust, down-regulate, and attune itself, but then he felt it – the gentle sussuration of a variable air current on skin; the faint smell of metal; the faint whispering in his ears, the merest taste of salt. The barest of inputs – canned sensations, designed to maintain sanity.

So – he’d been disconnected. He was in virch limbo, the suite maintaining him while it recycled and reconnected. That shouldn’t have been possible; he was riding the metanet signals, and they were, to all intents and purposes, inviolable, unless the rules were different for transapients.

That meant that, while he was ensconced in this barest-of-functional virch, waiting for a reconnect, time was running at ril. That meant that for every second that passed here, a second passed in ril. And considering they’d been running at a fairly deep fastime within Node 3312, that meant that minutes, or even hours, could pass –

The disorientation of falling, and flickering lights; he felt his steg guards kick in to prevent unauthorised sensory access, or conventional seizure activities, and then –

Impact.

The same server – the same sense of disorientation, as the filters came down and made the input baseline-friendly, but this time, it was a war zone. He dodged to one side, as a red worm struck out at him, killswitch brought up to bear instinctively, squeezing off a round, feeling the command slam into the thing – worm? Trojan? Aivir? Malicious programming of some other sort? It died, the central sun of the node’s processor overriding whatever kill-interception it was running, with the aid of the data from the kill-switch, and terminating it. Another two worms struck out from different directions, and he dodged both.

Of course, he wasn’t really dodging – not in the three-dimensional space he perceived himself to be in. It was a mnemonic, a convenient simulation that allowed him to translate baseline sensory inputs and reactions into meaningful interactions with the system. He was simply changing locations in the vast memory of the transapient node, with every movement. Every killswitch blast fired not real bullets, but a potent “kill” command, laced with data and memory addresses to ensure that it was successful, that simple kill-diversion programming wouldn’t counter it.

He looked around quickly. If Lyrica had been disconnected as well, then he was on his own. But at the far side of their virtuality, he saw a flickering of activity, a globe of red worms, striking out at regular intervals, each head being struck by a pulse of evanescent light from a killswitch, shattering it, the body falling and de-rezzing as it fell. He willed himself there, felt the world move around him, and within seconds was at the outer border of the sphere of seething bodies. Several of the viral processes suddenly turned their focus on him, striking out; killswitch already up, he felt the concussion and the repeated ozone-laden cracks of energy fed directly into his cortex as he fired repeatedly, dodging, side-stepping, feeling the bodies of multiple processes disintegrate under his onslaught.

A gap – he charged through it, saw the speck that was his partner in the centre, and willed himself there. Scant milliseconds passed subjectively, and he was there; back to back with her.

“Glad to see you reconnected.” The tenor voice with the soprano timbre.

Grius’ expression remained unchanged. “What happened while I was offline?” he asked grimly.

“Viral payload is huge. I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m holding my own, but they have me cornered – I can’t break through. Behaviour-wise, they seem almost sentient – nearbaseline, in fact, in their coordination with each other, although individually, probably sub-sentient. A group-mind arrangement of some description. Be careful. They managed to distract me once and nearly encircled me. I almost had a disconnect as well.”

“You’ve been online the whole time?” Grius asked in shock.

“Yes. Almost two Dominion hours, subjective.”

Grius growled. “Fex that!” Kill-switch brought up to bear, he began rapid firing, maxing out the suite’s specs, firing off as many kill-commands as possible, until he felt his memory run dry and the switches began to be loaded into the suite’s buffers. A rain of viral death – red bodies disintegrating and falling around them, turning dull grey as the last of the digital life left their remains as little more than data, but there were still more.

He felt a pulse of dissent from Lyrica. “Already tried that. It’s replicating much faster than we can destroy it. Recommend strategic withdrawal, firewalling this node, and either a second assault with transapient Countersubversion assistance, or physical destruction of the node.”

Grius growled. “Borde-blighted, fexing virus. Time for our secondary objective.”

“There’s a secondary?” asked Lyrica, the vaguest hint of surprise suffusing her metadata feed. “Why wasn’t I briefed?”

“Need-to-know.”

“Considering I’ve been trying to fend off this virus for over two hours, define need-to-know?” Slight shadows of annoyance and irritation this time.

“No time,” was Grius’ short reply. “I need you to cover me. I’m going rilside.”

“How? There’s no vector!” Lyrica sounded alarmed this time. “We’re on an uninhabited node, for Borde’s sake!”

Grius smiled briefly. “32 Degrees was somewhat old-fashioned. It used a few almost-sentient maintenance drones. There are two left, and they were firewalled from the virus. I have a fix on them in a storage bay.”

“And what are you planning on doing with them?” asked, Lyrica anxiously, before spinning, raising her kill-switch to bear, and dispatching several more viral threads that had attempted to kill them.

“Need-to-know,” was Grius’ only reply, before he scanned the metanet feeds running through the node; found the two maintenance bots powered-down in a storage hangar near the surface of the node; explored the protocols they were using gently, felt the stiff insistent blockage of the firewall; and with a gentle push, infiltrated via metanet datastreams into the brain and body of the first.

There was a moment’s disorientation. Going rilside was difficult, and it wasn’t his greatest skill. Rhyder was better at integrating with another beings sensoria, making it her own, “becoming” another being, and ultimately controlling it. Another dirty secret kept carefully in the darkness by the Dominion. But after all, via the metanet, you could go anywhere. That was the covenant. Shackers, body hackers, personality and identity thieves, they had to do it the hard way. Find a mark – try and hack their firewall, and that was hard, damned hard – most nearbaseline firewalls were manufactured with transapient assistance, often high-transapient, now. After all, nearbaslines could travel almost anywhere within the sephirotic empires – that particular right was part of the Tragadi Accords, signed thousands of years ago – and that made them ideal to be used as carriers, as vectors. Transapients who valued both baseline company and a secure empire had a certain vested interest in ensuring that cortic firewalls were secure.

So once your shacker had managed to crack your blighted-near-uncrackable cortic firewall, they had to try and mask his connection to you – maybe trick you into starting some massive download that they could piggy-back into – to ensure they didn’t trip any net monitors. And then, they had to try and assert control, without looking suspicious – because, of course, as soon as the mark, or any of their friends, colleagues, associates, or acquaintances, suspects that they have been shacked, then it’s notify the authorities, instant disconnect-reconnect, shacker dumped, firewall purged and restarted with new encryption keys, and all of a sudden nineteen shades of hell itself are slicing up every single connection the mark has made in the last century to try and find the shacker. Who, if they were a smart shacker, has already dumped their old ident, slid into a new, carefully forged or stolen ident, and is planning their next attack, and hopefully will be more careful next time if shacking is something they want to make a career out of.

However, for a Countersubversionist, sanctioned by the Dominion, with unfettered access to the metanet, it was a simply mental push, a moment of disorientation, and contact.

Grius was still for a moment, carefully slowing his autonomic impulses, controlling his reactions, and feeling out the sensory inputs and control linkages for this new body he was wearing. There were no lights here; the bot saw in three-dimensions by comparing its position signal within the node with a saved mental map of the facility; positioning was determined a series of transmitters scattered throughout the node itself. Grius prodded further – that would work fine within the node itself, but once he made it to the surface, he’d need some kind of emissive detection, whether light-based or extended spectrum, to be able to operate. Some careful searching discovered a few auxiliary cameras that would see baseline visible light, as well as into the ultraviolet and infrared spectrums. Perfect. He left them offline for the moment.

He flexed a few mental muscles, and began moving. The bot was a fairly standard low-gee design, eight-legged, four on top, four below, with magnetic, suction, and nano-adhesive pads on each “foot”. A retractable tether, with a similar arrangement of magnetic, suction, and nano-adhesive bonding agents, allowed for safety during free-fall operations. Several smaller articulating arms were able to access a suite of nano-tools, from welders and nano-joiners, to physical jacks for interfacing with infosystems.

He “looked up”, rotating the mental map to try and gain a sense of perspective and heading. A few crawling steps, and he was out of the storage bay, in the inner throat of a long shaft, stretching “up” and “down”; down being the direction of the core of the node, and up being the surface. A few queries later, he had found what he was looking for – 32 Degrees briefing made it far too easy. He felt some jarring as he pushed the spiderbot into action, eight legs crossing and criss-crossing, gimbal joints moving smoothly and quickly, nanotechnically lubricated articulating surfaces frictionless as the spider made rapid time towards the surface. Grius allowed himself an internal grin. They were going to go out with one hell of a bang…

Something from behind – not a sound, the bot was not designed with auditory sensors. A blip on his mental map. He focused on it, scanned it.

The other spider-bot.

“What the hax?” Grius asked to himself. He sped up, pushing the bot to full speed, moving at a steady 40 kilometers an hour along the sheer climb. He scanned behind him.

The other bot had sped up to match him.

He sent an threaded a tendril of thought back into the system, felt the continuing battle between Lyrica and the viral payload, dampened by virtual distance as it reached his sensoria. “Lyrica? What’s going on? Is that you moving the second bot?”

There was a moment before the reply came, and Grius could sense the overloaded metastream that accompanied it – fear, exhaustion, despair.

“Not it fexing well isn’t! I’m being over-run here! They just stepped up their attack! I certainly don’t have time to go inhabiting bots and exploring the node! Several threads have pulled away, though, and they seem to be holding a connection to ril. Grius, it’s showing in my scanners as a metanet thread. How the hax is this virus using metanet connections?”

Grius growled. “I don’t know, Lyrica. Perhaps the rules are different in transapient territory. Not much longer, Lyrica. You must hold them back.” He cut the connection before hearing her reply, and continued to urge the spider-bot to the surface.

The one behind was gaining. Grius swore. It was a slightly faster. He’d picked the wrong bot. He’d have to stop. Have to face it. It could only be the virus controlling it – 32 Degrees had long since been deleted from this node, and there were no other sentient minds on it, apart from himself, Lyrica – and the aivir.

The other bot was close, now. He’d only have a second before it reached him once he stopped. He bunched mental muscles, preparing for the confrontation. Fighting in ril was never easy. Every impulse he sent, every sensory input that was returned, had to travel over the metanet to his suite, then over the metanet to his mind, safely ensconced in an Guidance launch server somewhere, and then back again. It was slow, and clumsy – he was a virtual, he’d only been an inhabitant of this bot for a fraction of a Dominion hour, and had had little time to integrate and learn its control and sensory systems.

He slowed the bot down, felt the second bot bearing down on him, and at the last minute, hunkered down on four of the bot’s legs, and jumped.

In the low gee, he sailed across the shaft, felt the bot jar as it came up hard against the other wall, “upper” legs gripping and holding, as the pursuing bot scrambled right past, before coming to a halt itself. Grius scrabbled upwards a few steps, trying to gain the upper ground, and watched as the other bot bunched itself up and jumped as well. Grius tried to propel himself in a graceful jump upwards, but felt one of the other bot’s manipulators reach out and snag him, slowing his momentum, and with horror, he realised that he wasn’t going to make it to the other wall.

He reached down, planted several legs on the body of the virus-controlled spider, and used them to adhere, swing around, and grapple with it. They fell, accelerating slowly in the low-gee shaft, turning gently in the vacuum. He felt several of the virus-controlled spider’s leg coming around to try and pull him away, and then the sudden flare of pain and impulse of integrity alarms. Something was in his side, towards his “back”, if those terms had any meaning in this form, something searing. He twisted, trying to crane his neck, for a moment forgetting he had no neck, and then finally letting his emergency systems tell him what the problem was.

A welder. One of the manipulators on the other bot was wielding a welder. He growled, flexed one leg, and swung it down hard, hoping that he had fine enough control to be on target. He didn’t – he missed – and he felt the searing continue. The alarms stepped up a notch, as his hull threatened to give way, exposing important componentry underneath. He gritted his virtual teeth, swore through them, and with even more canned fury, wound up and swung again.

This time he was on target, and hit with enough force to shear the offending limb from his assailant’s body, shattered alloys careening down the shaft as their fell with increased speed, fragments pinging off the shaft walls.

Another searing pain, this one terminal, as he felt one of his legs leave his sensoria; one of his assailant’s other arms held a cutter, and he sensed in horror as it swung back and aimed for another leg. He flexed, let go with the legs that were bonded to the virus-bot’s head, and swung outwards – the cutter missed.

With supreme effort, he slowed his perceptions as much as he could, given the tenuous nature of his connection; he felt the universe go into slow motion around him as he took stock of his inventory. A large gash towards the back of the bot; one arm severed, seven left; and an array of tools. He selected one, felt it slide onto one of his manipulators with syrupy slowness here in ril (in virch he would have sped his operational time up as well, instead of just slowing his perceptions) and, as it finished engenerating on one of his legs, he carefully nano-honed the edge to a monomolecular sharpeness.

And plunged it deep into the carapace of the virus-controlled bot below him.

He felt it jerk, felt several manipulators come up to try and cut him, and he fired the welder, felt the plasma arc burn deep inside the body of the other bot, felt it jerk again, and watched the arms slowly lower. He grinned triumphantly, and fired off the tether, preparing to slow his descent and let his assailant fall to whatever fate awaited it at the bottom of the shaft. The tether smacked into the shaft wall, bonded, and he slowly slowed the spooling of the wire, feeling his descent slow as well.

Suddenly, another flare of pain. The bot was active again! Another welder had been formed on one of its manipulators, and it was once more going after the torn section of chassis it had attacked before. Grius swore, and armed the only other tool he had.

A nanosealant.

He flexed, pulled on the tether, felt the heat as the spooler began to warm up as it tried to slow his rapid descent, watched the other bot slowly fall away from him. He was gaining better fine motor control of his own bot now, and he carefully snapped out a manipulator, and coated three of the other bot’s foot-pads with nanosealant. Then, swinging from his tether, he scythed one long leg out, smacking into two of the other bot’s other legs, jamming them all into the body.

The nano-sealant bonded. He watched with some satisfaction as the bot struggled to try and free its bonded legs, five of the eight legs bonded tight against its own body. It began to spin more rapidly as its struggles altered its center of gravity. Grius began applying as much pressure to the rapidly unwinding tether as he dared, braking his fall and trying not to snap the line. He watched with satisfaction as the bot below him fell faster, slowly disappearing out of sight.

A minute later, as the last of the tether was unwinding, he felt himself slow enough to swing into the shaft wall with a metal-jarring crunch. A quick survey of subsystems painted a less-than-starry picture – one leg shattered beyond repair, another sheared off before the first joint, a chassis breach, and several shock-absorbing joints completely burned out from the impact with the shaft wall. It would be a long climb up to the surface; they’d free-fallen almost ten kilometres in the low gravity, and down this far, gravity was perceptively greater. With a groan, he pushed the damaged bot into action.

Every second they waited, another thousand copies of the virus were being injected into the Solar Dominion.

There was little time.

 

 

 

 

The surface, at last.

The climb had been long and arduous, and while Grius had kept the sensory translators dampened, he felt a slight ache, deep in his bones. The little bot had done well, but damage reports were worsening, alarms and icons clamouring for his attention. Several of the articulating surfaces damaged in the collision with the shaft wall had given away completely; still, he had continued to push them until their nanological coating had completely ablated, and they were rubbing bare metal against bare metal; and even then, he had continued to push them until they had seized beyond the strength of the bot’s servo motors and contractile fibres to move. At which point he’d carefully sheared the offending leg off with a cutter.

There was no point carrying extra weight.

He was down to three functional legs, and one of those was showing warnings of impending metal fatigue and loss of structural integrity. But he had reached the surface; or rather, a recessed hangar approximately half a kilometre from the surface, where his intended target awaited.

A mobile multipurpose unit – an MMU. A tiny extension of the node’s mind. Subsentient, designed to be operated by another mind. Approximately five meters in diameter; compresed gas thrusters for delicate movement in a low-gee environment, with a fusion-torch engine buried deep within for fast movement. A tool designed to be operated by 32 Degrees itself.

This time, it would be operated by a being considerably smaller.

Grius dragged the damaged bot, the third-last leg giving way, scraping across the metal deck, until he reached the round unit. He felt the bot juddering as he forced the final two legs to reach up, grab the outer hull of the MMU, and began hoisting him towards it; if there had been an atmosphere, the squeal of metal joint on metal would have accompanied the manoeuvre. Grius felt the bot lift slowly from the ground, suspended from the body of the MUU, until finally, the legs articulated completely, and he drew himself up to press against the hull of the MMU, cool metal to metal. He fancied it was almost like the ancient embrace of the old-Earth Terragens – cheek-to-cheek.

Each unaware as the other drew the dagger from behind.

With a heave, Grius drove the articulating arm of the bot into the smooth hull of the MMU. This time, he’d loaded the multijack, and felt several nanological threads oozing out through the body of the MMU, seeking computronium, following threads of it to the MMU’s processors, carefully integrating.

Lighting the fire in the belly of the beast and bringing it to life.

He felt the hum as the tiny fusion reactor began to function, a tiny bonsai sun deep within the autonomous unit coming to life. It was designed for a slow burn, but he didn’t have time to waste; he found the control systems, instinctively began working around them, disabling safety systems, and began ramping up the fusion reactor’s output. It wouldn’t make much of a bomb; this was a big node, the blast would likely do little damage.

Unless the blast occurred where it counted.

Grius slowly began to lift the drone, gas-thrusters moving it gently out of the hangar. He felt a slight jar, and using the MMU’s scanners, surveyed the hangar; he saw the tiny, misshapen body of his own spider-bot still clinging to the front of the drone, and a second, even more damaged bot, most of its legs bonded immovably to its underside, dragging itself on two legs and a couple of fine manipulators, limping slowly towards the drone, tether firmly attached to the drone’s side. Grius grinned. The virus was persistent.

But it was too late.

Grius vocalised a tiny prayer, to the Lord of Rays, and hedged his bets by directing it outwards to any other deity that might be listening and inclined to render assistance to a nearbaseline such as he, and fired the gas thrusters, moving the drone gently out towards the shaft itself. Hopefully what 32 Degrees has vouchsafed to him before they launched was accurate. The tether tightened, and pulled, lifting the virus-controlled bot from the launch pad. It swung in the air, and begun retracting the tether, trying to reach the drone; freed from the need to try and move itself along the ground, Grius watched as the fine manipulators began reconforming to welding and cutting tools.

Still too late.

Grius felt the open space around him as he cleared the threshold of the hangar. He grinned again. A fierce grin. A dangerous grin. He orientated the drone – down, towards, the core, rather than up.

He’d climbed far enough.

With a roar, silent in the lack of atmosphere but felt as a subsonic vibration within the drone, Grius lit the main thruster and felt the MMU surge forwards. He felt the tiniest ping as the tether caught, dragging the virus-controlled bot behind him for a brief moment before it smashed against the shaft wall, sparks and fragments flaring up in the heat of exhaust gases, a rent in the shaft wall marking the final end of the virus’s attempts to end Grius’ mission. The MMU was going faster now, and Grius integrated himself tightly into its controls, slowing his perceptions, feeling the fusion reactor heating up past safety specifications, carefully controlling his flight to avoid listing into the walls of the shaft on the way down. Tracing a straight line down the centre of the shaft.

Shaft 042. The main maintenance shaft to the small, communications-gauge wormhole that kept Node 3312 in contact with the inner regions of the Solar Dominion. It was buried behind several tonnes of armoured reinforcement, but Grius was essentially flying an armed and guided fusion bomb now, and 32 Degrees had kindly elected to shut off and then delete all of the ril defensive systems throughout the node in the moments before it copied itself into the Dominion and deleted its presence within Node 3312. There would be no stopping him now.

He was approaching 700 kilometers an hour. He would time the blast right – it would detonate just as his forward surface struck and deformed the armoured reinforcement that maintained the wormhole system, turning his drone into an armed and guided shaped fusion charge.

Grius managed to sequester a few spare cycles to sneak a tendril of communications back into the node’s systems, where he immediately felt the dim crackle and buzz of the infowar continuing in the node’s core. Without a chance to speak, he felt the transmission from Lyrica, the metadata overloaded – panic, fear, pain, despair. “Where the fex have you been, Grius?! I’m being overrun, I nearly got disconnected, and I can’t cover you much longer. Get fexing back in here!”

 

His speed continued to increase as the shaft narrowed. Deep below, on-board sensors were picking up the mass of the bulkhead that ensconced the microscopic wormhole. Proximity alarms were already starting, as were collision alarms; the drone’s expert systems were attempting to slow it down, Grius over-rode them ruthlessly.

 

“Thirty seconds, Lyrica – that’s all I need,” he flung into the system core, before cutting the connection and throwing the cycles back to where they were needed – controlling the runaway fusion reactor that he was riding on. The bulkhead screamed closer. Down here, there was some kind of atmosphere – perhaps exhaust gases from some kind of device or another, pooled in the bottom of the deep well, where gravity was already becoming stronger. His passage was beginning to leave a wake; the first echoes of a supersonic scream were causing the drone to shiver.
 

Ten seconds to go until impact. Suddenly, he felt his world become slow, and then jerky – lag. Something was attacking his connection. He swore. That meant Lyrica was losing. He felt it stabilise. 

Five seconds. 

He set the power supply to the containment system to shut off. Even if he lost his connection now, the fusion reactor would still explode. It was too late for the virus now, even if they managed to cut his connection.

 Three seconds. 

Two seconds. 

One. 
“Lyrica! Brace for sudden disco-”

 Darkness.

 

 

 

Grius awoke with a start, felt cool sweat drying on his skin in the vapid virtual breeze. A moment’s disorientation, a moment’s existential angst – the question of “where am I” as a virtual was complicated by the addition of “who am I?” “what shape am I?” and “what physical framework does this setting operate on?” 

Two arms, two legs. A few muscle twitches and a quick diagnostic – he was in an anthroform virch. He felt familiar controls. A ping of the local server – he was in the Guidance Launch Center. 

He grinned, sat up, and swung his legs off the reclined launch lounge. A technician turned to face him.

 “Welcome back, Zar Grius.”

 “My debriefing?” he asked abruptly. 

”Your mind-state has been downloaded for analysis, time stamp beginning with your deployment.” 

“Excellent,” replied Grius. “Where is Carmichael?” 

“I believe that he is in the Control Centre.” 

Grius didn’t even wait to acknowledge the technician’s reply as he logged out. 

 

 

When he logged on to the Control Centre, he found himself in the middle of the schematic. Carmichael’s inscrutable globe, along with Lyrica’s odd double-figure and a gathering of other forms, were clustered around the part of the network that signified Node 3312. The schematic was dark here. 

“Did it work?” Grius asked. A few people turned to face him. Lyrica looked drawn and haggard. Carmichael hovered closer. 

“We lost all contact with Node 3312 just as you were force-disconnected. The viral output has slowed by approximately 90%. It would appear that the processing node has been destroyed. The nearest ril monitoring station is approximately forty light minutes away, so it may be some time until we can physically verify the destruction of the node.”

 

Grius smiled, sighing. “We did it, then.” 

There was a pulse of assent from Grius. “This is no time to rest on your laurels, young solider. Copies of Unit One are being deployed to CA-442 to investigate the viral attack further. We are arranging a launch window at this time.” 

Grius grunted. “We only just got back, Carmichael.” 

“And you are about to go again. Is it possible you underestimate the seriousness of this attack, Grius?” 

Grius shook his head. “No, Zar. Just the jurisdiction. Unit One is rapid response. We’ve responded. Unit Four is counter-viral. Surely they should be deployed?” 

“The exact nature of the attack, including its source, remains unknown. Copies of the virus captured in vivo have been distributed to the research technicians of Unit Four. However, until the exact nature of this attack is verified, Unit One remains the best suited to mounting a tactical response.” 

“Where are the others?” asked Grius quietly. 

“Lyrica is here. Rhyder and Lifter are still extant, but have been recalled. Ajasu is being briefed and will be joining us shortly.”

 “Lyrica remains with us?” 

There was a surge of command from Carmichael, as if to ward off any disagreement in advance. “Grius, Lyrica in her current form has just held off a viral attack for several hours subjective, allowing you to go rilside and execute a manoeuvre that managed to destroy an entire singularity-three moon node. A viral attack which, may I remind you, managed to disconnect you before it even began.” 

Grius turned away sourly. “No need to remind me.”

 “I think there remains a need.”