The City Who Fought

Chapter Seventeen

helpbosshelpbossowowow OW!

Simeon had never told anyone about the AI system. Well, nobody but Tell Radon. He was interfaced with the computers directly, of course; he could "remember" anything in the banks and use their capacities the way he could those of his own human brain. The AI program was something else again. It was as sophisticated as anything this side of Central. He and Tell had spent many a happy hour tweaking it further. Simeon needed the best. There were limits to how many tasks even a shellperson could do simultaneously, and many were far too routine for continual supervision. An ordinary human had the hindbrain for running heart, lungs, and other physical basics, a consciousness for thought, and a subconscious for monitoring and mental housecleaning. Simeon had the AI.

help! boss!

Of course, it was impossible to actually visualize what was going on in the AI system, any more than you could visualize every neuron firing in your brain. Simeon had chosen to make it something of a playground, with something he had always wanted.

"Here, boy!" Simeon called.

He was standing-he had a softshell body in the virtual world of the AI-on a grassy plain, cut up into pathways by tall hedges with gaps. The sensations were full-tactile; only smell and taste were missing. This part of the landscape was memory-scan and basic access-control programming, all analogued to the physical. Both sense and response, automatically translated into algorithms by a subprogram.

"Here boy!" He whistled sharply. "I'm here, boy!"

A dog bounded into view around a corner. It was the dog of his dreams, big and shaggy-red, with floppy ears and a cold wet nose. It was also the SSS-900-C's primary artificial intelligence program.

Now it was surrounded by a swarm of wasps, huge malevolent things with wingspans a meter across. Their beaks were hollow, and out of them wormed long pink tongues, lashing and rasping with serrated teeth set along their sides. A dozen bleeding wounds marked the dog's sides. One of the wasps clung to its head, with the tongue pulsing out and into the animal's ear.

boss! help!

The dog's barking voice was weakening. Simeon stepped forward, and the ground shook with his anger. Beneath it was fear. The pirates had clamped something to the communications console and now he knew what it was. A specialized battle computer, stocked with worm and subversion programs. If it took over his hardware, he was doomed.

He turned the Jets cap backward on his head and gestured. A glowing green enchanted bat appeared in one hand, a hand that was suddenly gauntleted with steel, part of the armor that covered him. With the other steel glove he grasped the wasp on the dog's head and crushed it, pulling. The long tongue flailed as he pulled it out of the brain, jerking and cutting bone with a tooth-grating sound.

On my own, then, Channa thought. "I am Station Chief Channa Hap," she said. "This is my colleague, Simeon-Amos."

The Kolnari commander remained motionless, like a statue in oiled ebony. His companion reached down and jerked her to her feet by the front of her coverall. Fingers like steel rods slammed into shoulder, ribcage, hip. Pain flowered through her in a wave that snapped her teeth shut with a grinding clack and left her limply boneless when he released her to sprawl facedown on the decking.

For minutes she was too limp to do more than sprawl. Amos had surged halfway to his feet. The Kolnari who had struck Channa turned and gave him a casual buffet across the side of the head: the sound was like a wet board hitting concrete. Amos flew backwards two meters and ploughed into the deck at an awkward angle. One of the others hooked him back to Channa's side with a foot. He lay with glazed eyes, breathing in a harsh rasp that sent bubbles of blood oozing from nose and mouth. She forced down an overwhelming impulse to rush to him, but their lives depended on her wits.

"Scumvermin address the Divine Seed of Kolnar as 'Great Lord,' " the second-in-command said. He put a foot on Channa's neck and ground her face into the coarse fabric that covered the floor. "When the Lord Captain Belazir addresses them, they respond with 'Master and God.' "

Eat shit and die, Master and God, Channa thought.

"Master and God," she managed to choke out, the words muffled by the synthetic fabric.

Belazir nodded benignly, a slight smile on his carven lips. "Let her rise to her knees once more. Ignorance pardons nothing but explains much. Do you understand?" he said to Channa.

"I understand perfectly, Master and God," she said to the Kolnari leader. "You're the Good Pirate and he's the Bad Pirate, eh?"

Belazir frowned a moment, then threw back his head and laughed in delight as he caught the reference.

"No, no," he said, restraining his companion with a slight gesture. The feral aggression in the other man's face was unchecked, but he sank back obediently. "You do not understand my good Serig's role at all." He turned to the other prone figures. "Up on your knees, scumvermin. Announce your functions."

The lights flickered. Belazir looked up sharply. One of the Kolnari spoke from beside the mechanism damped to the communications terminal.

Channa felt her stomach clamp with a fear older and more visceral than the pirates. Something was interfering with basic station functions.

The dog lay panting, healing visibly but more slowly than it should. The wasps lay crushed or buzzing malevolently at a distance. Simeon's great bronze shield prevented their approach. On its surface were concentric rings of figures. Great heros: Armstrong, da Luis, Helva. At last the dog crawled over and licked Simeon's ankles, whimpering.

good better make'emgoaway(!) boss

Simeon checked the dog, who had sustained no permanent damage, although there was some memory loss.

"Get up," he said. "Run."

run!

"Change it as you go," Simeon said. "Game." He added specifications.

game!

The hedges melted and shifted as the dog ran, long ears flopping in the mild afternoon sun. A new sound came from around a long corridor in the memory-maze. A long raw raaaaaaaaaaaaaaa sound, like-what was that ancient holo? Like a chain saw! Then the beast that made the noise surged around the corner.

Wow, Simeon thought. Worm program, indeed.

The end of the creature stretched off into the distance, a grayish-pink tentacle covered in rough-edged scales. It was two meters thick, an endless segmented arm of tough fibrous muscle, dripping acid mucous. Where it passed, the bare ground smoked. Each drop of slime turned the dust into a pulsing globule the size of a fist, like a wet cyst. When these popped, a long-tongued wasp crawled out, flexed its wings, and took to the air to join the buzzing cloud around the worm. The head of the thing reared up suddenly, sprang open like a fleshy blossom. Twenty looping pseudopods whirled around it, each one tipped with a lidless eye. At their meeting was a series of circular mouths, one within the other, each ringed with pyramid-shaped teeth of urine-colored diamond. The teeth spun and clenched and gritted over each others' adamantine surfaces in a continuous blurred roar of hostile sound.

"By their programs shall ye know them," Simeon intoned, suddenly wishing that he had not made the construct he inhabited in this virtual reality quite so vividly lifelike. He could definitely do without the dry mouth, pounding heart, and sinking stomach right now, for example. He could change the setting, but that would deprive him of one more slender advantage: his familiarity with it. So long as the matrix remained, the intruder had to fight on his terms.

"These people are not going to garner many SUM's," he said resolutely, and stepped forward, raising his shield. Central awarded Social Utility Marks to a number of unlikely people, but this would really be stretching the bounds of possible recipients.

"Come on, you bastard!" he shouted aggressively. "Nobody hurts my dog!"

The worm program struck. Simeon groaned, stamped his feet into the ground, and braced his shoulder against the shield. Data/fangs gnawed at it, recoiling with a sound like frying bacon amid choking clouds of green vapor. His bat flailed, knocking aside eye-tentacles and tongue-wasps. For a long subjective time there was only batter and strike, leap and wiggle and dodge. The oozing serrated mouth loomed in constant menace. It wants to swallow my pattern whole and assimilate it in one gulp! Tongue-worms flicked alarmingly around his head. They would subvert the Master Control Programs with their probes. He continued to flail the wasps out of the air, stamped them underfoot, swung the bat, and an eye exploded in a shower of black syrup like a giant overripe fig. Finally, the worm recoiled for a moment, and Simeon whirled aside and fled, dodging and jinking through the maze.

Got to keep it off-balance, confused, he thought, listening to its triumphant screeching hard on his heels. Every muscle in his "body" already felt bruised. But it was more satisfying that way, too. Knowing you'd disorganized a section of code wasn't nearly as much fun as seeing blood-or ichor, in this case-fly and feeling flesh pulp under a blow. The howl sounded again, closer.

"Talk about your slash-and-burn data collection," he gasped in time with the pounding of his stride. What sort of maniacs would let something like this loose inside an information system? It had to be destroying as much as it gathered.

Got to make it think it's won, eventually. Isolate it in the outer subsystems of the computers, keeping the ultimate control-keys behind barriers the worm thought were the edge of the entire system. Otherwise, it would infest the whole system, like maggots in rotting meat. Including his own mind, unless he committed suicide by severing all connections between his organic brain and the data system.

That was an unfortunate image. He flashed back to the refugee ship and the dead Bethelites, their bodies moving with burrowing life.

I will pull the plug first, he thought grimly. Theoretically, it was impossible to self-destruct the station. In practice, he probably could. Win or die.

"Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" the worm screeched.

"As Channa would say, eat shit and die." Simeon panted the words out as he turned a corner and took a stance again. Thorns and leaves flew into the air as the data-worm tried to smash directly through to him. Then there was a huge splat sound and a wailing cry of pain as it ploughed into the stone core of the hedge. That persuaded it to come around the corner. It seemed larger; frothy pink blood streamed around the working, palping mouths. Some of the teeth had shattered on stone, but they regenerated as he watched. The worm's approach made the ground shake. Behind him, he could hear the wuffle and growl of the AI, setting new barriers and deceptions.

"Step right up, lay right down!" Simeon bellowed. Don't worry about the others. This is going to take all your attention for a while.

"Raaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

This time the gravity bounced them about as the lights flickered. Belazir turned to the technicians with a well-controlled snarl of impatience.

"What now?"

"Great Lord, there is unexpected resistance. We thought the worm was successfully penetrating the Master Control programs, but they wiggled free. We are making progress, but the AI is exceptionally agile-the parallel-"

Belazir cut them off with a gesture. "I am interested in results, not jargon-laden excuses. Grasp the core in your fist, and quickly."

He turned back to his prisoners. What naked faces they have, he thought. In a new conquest, it was often so. Those who survived long learned better, but it could be entertaining.

Reports of the station's assets and supplies were flooding in.

Better than I expected, he thought exultantly. Far better. Unimaginably rich! This facility could build dreadnoughts, given a little time and the plans which were available in the Clan's computers.

The High Clan's greatest weakness was the lack of large purpose-built warships. They could turn out frigates, more or less, but for larger craft they could only modify captures. No cobbled-together merchanter could rival the performance of real battlecraft. A warship was more than a ship with weapons and defense-systems: it was a single organism, almost living in itself. Must we abandon the shipyard? The frustration was as agonizing as the satisfaction of taking the station was euphoric, with its destruction as a second orgasmic "hit." On the other hand, possession of such equipment would cut generations from the great plan, the spreading of the Divine Seed of Kolnar and the power of the Clan.

Even worse was the humiliation the Clan had suffered for too long. The human galaxy teemed with such prizes, yet the Clan fleet must skulk about the outworlds, gnawing discarded scraps: border worlds, miserable settlements of poverty-stricken exile, like Bethel. Skulk like jackals, even as they had been driven from their lands and possessions on their ancient homeworld. Gnawing poor bones, while feasts like this lay spread before them. Intolerable! It was not to be borne!

His pleasure dissolved. "You have maintained physical separation?" he asked, his irritation at this check palpable.

The technician ducked his head. "Of course, Great Lord. No data enters our machines from this system save by hedron. All such hedrons are first analyzed to the last byte of information. Our duplicate backups are kept powered down and physically severed while any captured data is running."

Belazir nodded. "Continue," he said, satisfied that elementary precautions were being taken. You will suffer, you will suffer, ahhhh, how you will suffer, he thought, barring mental teeth at the universe that stood between the Clan and its apotheosis. All of them would writhe in the fist, one day. "You have a preliminary report?"

"Affirmative, Great Lord," the technician said.

Why can technicians never use a simple word where their accursed slang can be stretched to fit? Belazir wondered as he heard the technician out.

"We captured the message logs in the first penetration, before the AI reacted. No nonroutine messages to Central, except the arrival and spontaneous destruction of a large, mysterious ship. Little evidence was left. Central said they would search their files."

With a white-toothed grin, Belazir condescended to give a nod in reply. "Excellent! Order: launch the message torpedo. Summon the transports, all that can be spared; also personnel for the disassembly."

He looked around at his fighters, smiling. "Well done. We will settle in, drinking the prey dry and eating it to the bone at our leisure. Staff, draw up a preliminary plan to strip as much as possible as quickly as possible and load efficiently when the transport arrives."

Smaller, high-value loot would go to the victorious flotilla, of course. He would have to arrange priorities: priorities that would give the Bride the first and best pick, and t'Varak's Age of Darkness the last and worst, of course.

Part of his attention had been on Serig's interrogation of the prisoners. He brought his head up, smiling at the executive officer's wit.

"He says," he translated for the benefit of the scumvermin Serig had been taunting, "that he will explore your internal environment, Environment Systems Officer Coburn."

No! Channa thought hard at her. Don't resist, Patsy!

The older woman's broad fair face was flushed, red spots on her cheeks showing her rage. The pirate reached a hand down her shirt and squeezed a breast casually.

Patsy spat in his face.

Channa started to rise. Belazir jabbed a precisely calculated toe into her bruised stomach. She collapsed to the deck again. The pirate grabbed her ear in strong, almost prehensile toes and forced her head around.

"Watch, scumvermin," he said pleasantly. "And learn not to defy the High Clan."

Behind her there was a flurry as Amos tried to rise again. A Kolnari pounded her heel into the small of his back over the kidneys and he collapsed with a stifled shriek, thrashing. Nobody else moved.

Simeon, she thought desperately. Simeon!

Serig touched his face where the spittle ran and spoke in his own language. The other Kolnari laughed or grinned, watching with bright-eyed interest. Patsy took advantage of his inattention, lashing out in a kick at his groin. A fist snapped down and met the rising foot with a sound like a mallet hitting rock. Patsy gave a sharp gasp of pain. With bound hands, she was thrown off-balance and staggered back against the coffee table. The Kolnari laughed as she almost fell, stripping away his harness and tossing it aside. The briefs came away with it, memory-plastic rolling up into the belt. The stationer's clothes followed, torn away as if they were paper while one hand held her immobilized, clamped to her jaw. He stepped back and stood like a licentious Greek statue, gestured.

"Down," he said in Standard. "Spread."

Yes, Belazir thought, looking down at Channa. In the end, this one is mine. But not at once. With subtlety.

As a child, Belazir t'Marid had been the despair of his mothers and nurses. For all their whippings and shock-rod treatments, for all the day-cycles spent locked in the hotbox, they could never break him of the nasty habit of toying with his "food."