Tethered Worlds: Unwelcome Star Read online

  "Vallum Corps HQ still has that mystic AI overseeing the yards," Barrister said into the VAD lit cabin. "We have butted heads more than once over the nexus. I accessed a partial list through a less guarded annex of the Cohortium Representative Datalattice." The list scrolled by with pictures.

  "I told you to be cautious around governmental systems," Aristahl admonished. "Even one as benign as the Cohortium. Best to stay below their notice."

  "Of course, sir." Barrister sounded prim and perhaps a touch offended. "I know your priorities. I obtained the information without leaving any identifiable trace. Scientum AIs are like children."

  "Take care, Barrister. The true worth of an AI is not determined by processing power but rather its ability to interact smoothly, aid, and morally defend its person." Aristahl said it by rote. It was one of the maxims of AI creation.

  "I would never put you or Jordahk at risk."

  "Do not grow careless. Remember the Bitlord's creations."

  The room seemed to darken. The Bitlord. Only one man in the universe was genius enough, or conceited enough, to call himself that. A legendary Sojourner whose AI constructs were the most powerful known, and still might be despite two centuries having passed.

  Could AIs with extraordinary capacity for growth be corrupted by power? It was a question best left to technophilosophers. That some of the Bitlord's creations went horribly wrong was common lore. In the end, he hunted some down personally and allegedly made provision to destroy those escaping judgment.

  It was a morality play from which both humans and AIs could learn. It was a lesson close to Aristahl's heart, and its meaning wasn't lost on Barrister.

  "We have been together a long time, Barrister. Do not lose my trust now."

  Aristahl sensed the whirring, thinking, and reordering deep within the mystic AI. The linked metal bracelet with the purple coupling was silent as Aristahl examined it.

  "Point taken, sir," Barrister said, expressing uncharacteristic humility. "Jordahk needs time to establish his potential. Any system I can penetrate can also be penetrated by the Archivers. We must avoid them."

  Aristahl's face took on a thoughtful expression. "For now."

  "Speaking of danger," Barrister said.

  "Yes, I sense through Jordahk's link some sort of conflict. He knows how to take care of himself. My son saw to that. A growth experience will establish him amongst the crew." Aristahl concentrated as if peering at something far away. "A thresh, is it not?"

  "Yes, but with a violator AI."

  "A violator?" Aristahl stood and swept away the VADs. "Let me see."

  Barrister tapped the captain's eyes-only observation system and projected the crewroom. Jordahk stood in the middle of a hostile crowd, one meter in front of an octal.

  "Hmm... unexpected but interesting." Aristahl nodded in admiration.

  "Maybe for you," Torious said. Across the cabin he observed with interest the human interaction. "I thought there might be a fight." The bot injected disappointment into his droning voice. "The outcome of a thresh isn't likely to require my services. Although, he is facing an octal."

  "Shall we intervene?" Barrister asked, ignoring the nurse.

  Aristahl stared at the unfolding drama. "No. But I want to see everything on that violator."

  Red circles contracted around the octal's rings, and new VADs scrolled with technical specifications. Aristahl touched the offensive specs for more.

  "I am getting this from shadow-tapping Maximilian," Barrister said. "If I penetrate deeper he will be aware of my presence. Your progeny have trained him well. He is quite wily for an outdated scientum AI. No disrespect intended."

  "Request openly," Aristahl said, eying the crowd. "Apparently every human, robot, and AI on this ship is watching. It would be suspicious if we were not."

  The dark blue outline of the shadow tap VAD normalized.

  "Is it so wrong to resolve disputes with a fist fight?" Torious said. They continued to ignore him.

  "I do not care for violator AIs," Barrister said.

  Aristahl nodded, focusing on the odds board.

  Octals could be violent to people and ruthless to AIs. Outside the hacker community, violator AIs were despised, feared, and respected. They could be used to challenge the most powerful AIs, occasionally even mystic ones if octal hype was believed.

  Jordahk had never seen an octal outside a large urban center, and there were none, as far as he knew, on Adams Rush. Max had said nothing since Cranium lit up his tats. Though AIs couldn't experience fear in the same sense as humans, a circumstance that brought them close was the threat of becoming a drone in a violator AI. To them it was a fate worse than deletion. An AI would rather singlehandedly face off against one of the Bitlord's evil creations than have its brains ripped open and guts enslaved to an octal.

  "Core destruct nanos at stage one preparation," Max link-said.

  The compy housing Max, like all those security hardened, was built around an impenetrable seed of quadnapse-destroying osmium nanos. They could be released in an emergency, destroying core and data. Nanos weren't smart like micros, but this kind required little intelligence to turn a compy into a piece of decorative jewelry.

  "Don't let me end up a drone, kid. Wipe me first," Max link-said. "Awaiting saliva sample for stage two readiness."

  Destruct systems usually required some physical key from the human admin. Jordahk was not about to give it, even for readiness. It was hard to imagine a scenario where he would ever order their release in Max.

  "You've faced P-Star fleets at the Palisades." Jordahk's sub-whisper was more like a sub-shout. "You fought street-to-street on Utica Cyr with Otto Gen." He realized he was saying this as much for himself as Max. "We're not going be rattled by this techno-thug!"

  Now that he was finished admonishing his AI—and himself—Jordahk reseated his consciousness in his forehead. It was a mental exercise designed to make emotions his servant rather than his master. He'd learned the technique on Patram, of all places. He honed it during the months spent in rough martial arts training on Kraytcia with his parents.

  He needed to keep his head in the game. Any street thresh against an unknown opponent put the opposing AIs at risk, but Aristahl was counting on him. The success of this mission, and perhaps more, might be in the hands of this crew. So far that didn't fill him with confidence. Hopefully, first impressions were deceiving.

  He let all of that go. In a few seconds, Jordahk felt seated in his forehead. Fear could now be observed at a distance.

  A million amino fibrils had grown from his link over the years, intertwining throughout every corner of his brain. Aristahl insisted after implantation that Jordahk practice rigorous mental exercises designed to facilitate greater amino fibril growth. It was a bothersome and atypical practice. Then again, nothing involving Aristahl was typical.

  The readable changes in Jordahk's brain trickled down through the fibrils to the link and then to Max. The AI had never faced an octal, but he'd never faltered at the Palisades or Utica Cyr. A true AI existed to serve, and to serve well. Max's quadnapses reordered. Despite the years of their partnership, the AI was still growing.

  "Sorry." Max link-said. His voice sounded with new determination.

  Jordahk knew his AI, knew it would fight to the deletion—or worse—but would face it in a way that would make Otto Gen and himself proud.

  "Let's take it to him," Max link-said.

  "Oh yeah," Jordahk said aloud.

  Fear was a valuable weapon to an octal. But it was obvious to all that it had become a non-factor. Cranium was surprised, then switched to insults to throw his opponent off.

  "This isn't the streets, grime. I can't force a thresh for keeps. And even if I could, I wouldn't. That obsolete compy and ancient AI aren't even worth recycling."

  Jordahk was unmoved.

  "Barrister is watching," Max link-said.

  Although startled, Jordahk wasn't surprised. He hoped Aristahl would understand. "Send Barrist
er a backup map of your personality core."

  "What's the point? I'll never be the Max you knew reintegrated into another compy, even if you find one compatible." But he sent the map as ordered. "Better to just let me go if it comes to that."

  "Not. Going. To happen." Jordahk moved a step closer. "Let's do this, octal."

  The odds board pinged unexpectedly. Both opponents looked. A new gambler echoed Jordahk's wager. The line read, Aristahl Wilkrest: 100 @ 9 minutes +.

  Jordahk smiled. Thanks, Pops. He lifted his left hand, palm facing his opponent. Cranium did the same as their stares met.

  They each gave a slight nod and said in unison, "Vir Supra Machinalis!" The traditional words silenced the crowd as the two opponents slammed their hands down in a forearm lock.

  Instantly, the resonance transmissions flowed through them. The top of the thresh ball shot up. It separated into two pieces connected by a metal ribbon. Like a bolo, it wrapped around their clasped forearms. No one was letting go outside of capitulation, defeat, or the elapsing of nine minutes.

  Jordahk angled his feet to the right for open space to work. Cranium mirrored him. An anti-sound wall separated them. To prevent lipreading, mini VADs distorted their mouths. The rest became lenticular, viewable only head on. A myriad of anti-cheating protocols kicked in.

  Both men spoke in a continuous stream as their free hands manipulated VADs, fingers flying. The first 30 seconds of a thresh were always frantic. Jordahk configured how he would view the opposing thresh constructs.

  For this battle, he dared nothing fancy. No veneers of ancient wars. Rather, he chose a basic, common representation. Virtual mansions faced each other across an old-style residential street that acted as a sort of no-man's land. The V-shaped properties had wide front yards tapering back to the mansions at the apex. Bordering the street were fences composed of virtual wood slats so thick they resembled stockades. They represented a compy's first capital firewall.

  Behind the fences were hilly, scrub-filled yards leading to a natural stone bulwark. That was the second capital firewall. The walls were the key underpinnings of thresh defense. Jordahk had to make each one hold as long as possible. While defeat no longer meant the usurpation of Max, he could still be damaged or even destroyed.

  His mansion was all blue for the moment. No damage. "Hold fast, Max. Burn our cycles on defense until we see what we're up against."

  Octals were known for ripping apart compies, not willfully destroying them during threshes. It fit their twisted logic. Destruction in battle was a waste whereas dissection yielded valuable violator components. Either way, personality AIs wound up defunct.

  At the center of each mansion, behind its brick and walls was the core. It was the seat of Max's personality and most vital systems.

  Activity sprang to life already along the fence. Glowing tadpoles of yellow light, probes, slammed into the wood, breaking it down slowly. Jordahk sent out his white probes, and the street lit up with clashes.

  "He's pushing hard out of the gate," Max said. "Not really looking for weaknesses, just trying to bowl us over with brute force."

  Pounding probes against the front of a firewall was a good way to waste them. Max had no trouble calcing up replacements to keep up with front line losses.

  Across the street, the octal's construct differed in that two mansions with yards loomed, forming more of an "M." Max sent probes to both fences.

  Jordahk scrutinized the properties. "Okay, label the one on the left 'drone,' the other 'prime.'" The bricks of the drone mansion took on a grayish hue while the prime darkened to ebony. "He'd love us to attack the drone wildly. Probably filled with traps and dead ends. Still, he can't guard two properties as tightly as one." A law of diminishing returns kicked in when it came to adding more compies to a violator AI.

  Probe activity in the street dropped off. The octal's yellows weren't replaced to keep up with attrition. It was expected.

  "He's calcing something," Max said. Only so many computing cycles were available. It required many to construct an attack not easily unraveled. "You want me to calc up a defensive structure?"

  "No. Use the lull to press his fences. Find the weak spots. Put leftover cycles into calcing a static torpedo."

  "A torpedo? Going big," Max didn't hide his incredulity. Dutifully, a static torpedo icon began filling. "That's a lot of overhead to carry."

  "Pull your probes back once you find a couple of weak spots. We'll just blunt his attacks until the torp finishes."

  The anticipated assault came while Jordahk was examining the weak points. A flashing circle of light surrounded by yellow probes crossed the street. A pulse attack, cheaper to calc than a static torpedo, and a common first move.

  For the sake of communication, abstract computer processes like unraveling and degrading attacks were given visual depictions. Max's probes, acting like angry piranha, ably took out the yellow escorting counterparts. The remainder dove into the pulse. It shrunk with each impact, and in seconds degraded into nothingness.

  "That was big for a pulse," Max said. "More incoming."

  A second pulse emerged, then two more. They flew across the street and slammed into Max's fence simultaneously. They started boring through it, virtual wood splinters flying.

  "A blitzkrieg attack," Jordahk said. "Focus on the second one. Watch for surprises."

  Every remaining probe and the replacement trickle converged on the second pulse. The short, heated pummeling ended just before it breached the firewall. But the other two would not be stopped, especially with Max burning resources holding a half-finished static torpedo. The pulses bored through the fence, then uncharacteristically winked out in the yard beyond.

  "There's definitely something strange about those pulses," Max said.

  "You don't see anything sneaky in the yard?"

  "Nothing I can detect."

  Jordahk glanced at the static torpedo progress bar; it was almost ready. "Okay, keep our probe complement up. Sweep up the yard and let's close those holes—"

  Two red intruders flared to life in the yard near the fence holes. They manifested like giant, angry centipedes. Zigzagging wildly, their thrashing bodies leveled hills and sliced through scrub. That represented Max's systems being taken offline bit by bit.

  "Penetrators!" Jordahk said.

  "I can't close the fence and take them down. Call it."

  Jordahk took in the totality of the yard. The penetrators were tearing it up, and yellow probes poured in the fence holes. "Take down the penetrators, then we pull back and defend here." He indicated a choke point deep within the yard, closer to the stone bulwark than the fence.

  Yard terrain was formed by the micro components of a compy. Lower areas were easier for an enemy to take offline, while high ground benefited the defender. The spots where the hills naturally funneled activity were choke points.

  "Sacrifice the plum tree to preserve the peach tree," Jordahk said.

  "Are you quoting ancient stratagems again?"

  The static torpedo was ready, but it was an active attack and cost Max cycles every second he held it. Jordahk needed to fire it, but the front line had to be stabilized first.

  "They've won a round or two," he said, a little defensively. This battle wasn't exactly shaping up to be his finest.

  He fought back a wave of insecurity. His disastrous delay on Adams Rush paraded before him, as did his fear moments ago. The latter could be traced to a beating taken on Kraytcia that still bothered him. At least he felt reasonably confident about one thing: his knowledge of strategy and tactics. His father had inculcated, drilled, and war-gamed with him all his life.

  White probes raced out from the mansion, careened down the yard's hills, and pounded penetrators into nothingness. "That was tougher than it should have been," Max said. Already enemy probe activity was dipping again.

  "He's got bags of processing power, Max. We need to give him something else to think about. Fire the static torpedo into the drone fence."
/>   A virtual shudder preceded a large torpedo shape racing out from Max's walls. It crossed the street, detonating in an intense flash. The expanding red sphere deleted nearby probes.

  The destructive leading edge pushed at the drone's fence. The AIs were fighting a million calculation duels, but the tide was turned by the torpedo's stored power. When the explosion finally faded, a swath of the fence was down and the drone's yard was wide open.

  "Flood it with probes, Max. Let's not lose anything big in traps."

  As expected, white probes winked out in snares or disappeared down false paths in the drone yard. But the terrain was being mapped out, and the octal didn't burn cycles defending it. Apparently, losing the drone yard was no big deal. He had nastier things to calc up. The wait was short.

  "Incoming torpedo," Max said, "and it's big. Should I go out to degrade?"

  "Send half our probes. Pull the rest back to guard the stone bulwark."

  The octal's torpedo had to travel over Jordahk's yard to reach his choke position. It gave Max more time to degrade. Probes dove and collided valiantly, but they hardly made a dent in the oversized charge. It detonated between the confining hills of the choke.

  With no nearby firewall to contain the explosion, it spread rapidly over the yard. The red sphere grew unevenly over low scrub and higher ground like an acidic amoeba.

  "Fight it, Max."

  The AI's efforts were surprisingly effective. The torpedo was more about size than dense calculation. Still, the explosion covered an extensive chunk of yard. Aside from a few hills, territory caught within its circumference went offline. Dead systems turned to faint, virtually flat terrain.

  Jordahk sized up the damage. It could have been worse. "Okay, position probes on remaining hills. Let's keep him from the stone—"

  Out of nowhere, a penetrator materialized, then a second. Crushing red bodies, propelled by multiple legs, tore at whatever was still functional in the yard.

  "Does everything this guy hatches have a secret surprise?"

  "Take them down?" Max asked.

  The penetrators thrashed away, and Max didn't have enough probes to stop them. A good general knows when to cut losses.