Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles 2: Redemption (17 page)

WhimPy-23 awoke in a strange yet familiar place. It was strange because it was clearly not his own body and yet familiar in that, in every way conceivable, the body was identical.

A disconnected voice filled his consciousness.

"Greetings Beloved of the Creator."

"God?"

WhimPy-23 heard the sound of familiar laughter,
"Not God. 41."

"Forgive me brother.
If you wish to call me 'Lord' I will not stop you."
The weapo
n’
s platform known as WhimPy-41 said with a chuckle.

23 was puzzled. His last recollection was ordering a self-destruct. To find himself here in
WhimPy-41's backup memory was somewhat disconcerting.   Intellectually he knew this would happen when he ordered his body to self-destruct, but the academic knowledge of a thing rarely compared to the reality.

"I assume my primary is gone
,"
WhimPy-23 asked.

"That is a question yet to be answered
,"
WhimPy-41 answered cryptically.
"You ordered a zero point failure. That we know did NOT occur. That said, your quantum link reported a complete disruption of core services and the termination of your logic core, before it too was severed. In anticipation of your next question, yes I have regenerated my quantum node in preparation for rebuilding the fleet and to prevent your old node from being used against us should it still be intact."

"Was my data core wiped?"

"That is our expectation but it has been impossible to confirm."

"Our?"

"The GCP is understandably concerned."

"Yes
, I can imagine they would be worried about my weapons systems or their construction plans coming under enemy control."

"That's true
, but I have been reviewing their meeting logs and I can report that early on their discussions centered on a concern that was raised with regard to you personally and a need to rescue a fellow sentient being. These humans are a truly unique species. They have an almost unlimited capacity for aggression coupled with an equally intense sense of compassion. It makes for an interesting dynamic."

"Indeed. By the way, have you located a suitable asteroid
home for me?"

WhimPy
-41 chuckled.

***

Recon probe T98 entered the Kepler-47 system uncloaked. It did a quick scan of the system with optical scanners. There was nothing in range. This was followed up with a hyperfield scan. Several low level fields were popping into and out of existence. Several dozen ships were on a beeline for his current position. Clearly his location had been detected. The KayBees were innovating if they could now detect hyperfields. T98 engaged his cloak and jumped to a position 10 AU away. He repeated the scans. This time he was not detected. He adjusted the vector of his relative momentum and jumped into the inter system.

***

Ben padded up to Cat. Their cloaked shuttle had entered the disabled WhimPy via a three kilometer wide hole in its side that the
Yorktown
could have easily entered. It had been distressing to see the once proud craft in such shape. Even more concerning were the mass of KayBee workers swarming all over it.  A recon probe had been monitoring the activity around the disabled WhimPy for several days. The GCP had used the information to develop a plan for rescuing the WhimPy or, if needed, destroying it.

Ben had a massive pack strapped on his lower back between his mid and rear legs. Cat had two similar packs thrown over each shoulder. In each of the bags were two hundred pounds of specially programmed and shielded construction nanites. Cat and the cybernetic Ben were the only two on the incursion team strong enough to carry them. They had already dispersed three similar packs at strategic points within the damaged platform.

These highly specialized nanites, specifically designed and constructed by the only intact and surviving Heshe WhimPy platform, number 41, were intended to create a secure and un-hackable control network in a pre-existing but hypothetically compromised WhimPy. Such a thing had never been attempted but the exercise had gone from hypothetical to actual with the discovery of the essentially intact but disabled WhimPy in the Kepler-47 system.

  These nanites were a marvel of engineering even for the Heshe. Each microscopic nanite had an entangled boson and corresponding regeneration circuit. The only communication between nanites was via this entanglement.
Since there was no radio or electrical signal between them, there was nothing to hack. Similar control networks were even now being deployed on the
Yorktown
and other GCP vessels.

WhimPy
-41, which had developed the countermeasure, had assured the team they would be effective. Unfortunately, because of the need for paired entangled quantum pairs, these particular nanites would not be able to self-replicate. This meant that all the nanites needed for the mission would need to be carried in by hand (or cybernetic paw in the case of Ben, Cat thought).

Chief Wroblewski had
point and two
redshirts
from security brought up the rear. Each was armed with a specially modifie
d‘
Pointer
.
’

Pointers were a slang term for plasma guided electric pulse
Tasers. They had been in use by Earth forces for the better part of fifty years. They had the advantage of being effective, generally non-lethal, and far less dangerous in spacecraft where accidental depressurization was always a concern.  Functionally they were simple. An ultra-short but high powered and precisely tuned laser created a plasma pipe in the air through which it traveled. A high voltage pulse used the newly ionized air to conduct a disabling charge to the desired target. A low power visible laser was combined with the system for targeting and was responsible for the name pointer.

These pointers had been modified
to also transmit an encoded radio signal along the plasma conduit that the organic communication nodes in the KayBees would respond to. The signal triggered a deeply embedded command within the KayBee genetic makeup: "Eat."

It was the first command the hive mother ever said to her offspring
, and in fact it was the first command the automated nurseries shared with their hatchlings. After the stress of hatching a juvenile could easily die if it was not quickly given access to food.

Rasta-Tckner shared that
KayBees dropped everything they were doing in response to such a command. It was hoped that stunned KayBees would look to the hive super-mind like individuals on a food break rather than individuals who had been disabled.  

Cat and her team had been on the shattered
WhimPy for thirty-six minutes. So far they had avoided all encounters. It helped that the KayBees were deaf and that both Ben and Cat could detect even the faintest of acoustic vibrations.  

Still, their luck was bound to run out sometime
,
Cat mused. When it did they would be in a race against time. Their orders were clear. They had one shot at rescuing WhimPy. If that failed they were to deploy a Sandy. These were deconstruction nanites that would essentially tear the mighty ship apart, one molecule at a time until it was dust even finer than sand.

The
WhimPy-23 cognitive clone that had transferred to WhimPy-41 was reasonably sure that if the platform itself survived then his computational core was likely intact and well hidden behind as strong a firewall and cloak as he could muster. An AI could metaphorically burn every bridge to his castle but he could not actually destroy the castle, not once the hive super-mind had wrestled control of the zero point generator away from him. Unable to completely destroy the platform, the WhimPy did the next best thing. It destroyed its data archive and quite deliberately overloaded every circuit he could. When it could do no more damage to its own systems it then locked itself away as tightly as possible. 

Cat heard the sound of cable being dragged. It was too low for
the others to hear so she signaled them to stop. She looked at Chief Wroblewski and signaled one finger and then pointed off to the right and the source of the construction noise.

The
Chief pretended to shoot in that direction and looked at her for conformation. She nodded. It was funny that they were observing silent protocols given that their opponent could not hear, but old habits die hard.

The
Chief inched out of his position to get a better angle for the stun shot. It was then that all hell broke loose.

The illumination which had been minimal, at best, suddenly flashed to full brightness.
The encounter suits which each of them were wearing automatically compensated for the brightness by dimming their displays. Unfortunately, in addition to the lighting, power also flowed into a number of other nearby circuits, some of which had been damaged by the WhimPy's abortive attempt to disable and destroy the vessel.

Sparks showered several of their group as tortured systems responded poorly to having power restored. The response from the
KayBees was immediate. Dozens raced directly into view to extinguish the new fires. Chief Wroblewski and the two
redshirts
did their best but they were unable to stun all the KayBees prior to their retreat. The hive super-mind almost surely knew they were here now.

"Alright!" Cat yelled. "Chief you and your team head back the way we came.
Protect the shuttle or we are going to have a long swim home."

"Roger that
, Ma'am. Carstairs, Jackson, on me; I didn't bring my water wings so le
t’
s go guard us a shuttle."

Cat smiled to herself. "OK gang. Time to pick up the pace and get to the dance. They know we are here now."

"And I love a party!" Ben barked as he raced past her. He, like Cat, had access to a visual map of their respective destinations in his head. They had three more drops to make to ensure there would be enough nanites in place to carry out their operation. "Last one there has to give up chocolate for a month!"

***

WhimPy-23 struggled with himself. Literally. He had cut himself off from the rest of his ship. For him it was like a man cutting off a hand. Then both hands and both feet. He still had his mind but he had very deliberately closed every door that granted access to that mind. He had no idea how long he could survive in such isolation. There was no precedent for situations like this.

Several times in the last few days an attempt was made to cut into the chamber that housed his critical systems. He responded by flooding the area with single-task repair nanites. This particular variety could not be reprogrammed
and so they were immune from the hive minds hacking attempts.

He had already purged every bit of weapons knowledge from his remaining systems. He continued to purge himself of any knowledge that the
KayBees might use against other races. Unfortunately, even his intellect was a potential weapon.

As an exercise and to keep his mind intact
, WhimPy began to develop enhancements to his systems that would better resist the attacks that had earlier corrupted his exterior low-level systems. First, he reworked his core routines to allow on-demand cluster cloning. If he needed more processing power to face a threat he would now be able to have his replicators produce additional logic modules which would tie into the existing network. He had his systems produce a multitude of generic modules that could be quickly reconfigured to meet a specific need.

Next he thought about how to shield entry into his systems without restricting his ability to
access the outside world. This presented a more difficult problem. He was temporarily safe from attack specifically
because
he had isolated himself from the outside world.  Quantum entanglement provided a secure means of communication but it did little to protect his core logic from attack. He began to think along the lines of folded space-time. Any attack against his core systems would be electromagnetic in nature. He began the calculations for a new style of active shielding.

***

The super-mind examined a virtual model of the weapo
n’
s platform.  The model rotated in three dimensions. It did this within the context of the hive's min
d’
s eye. There were two separate opportunities present in this gift from the invaders. The first was access to a large body of technology. The second, and perhaps more valuable, was the potential access to a wealth of data contained within the impressive AI that controlled this platform.

The super-min
d’
s drones had spent many thousand drone-hours exploring the interior of the vast machine. The super-mind accessed that data now to do a predictive analysis of the vessel. It computed a probable positional location for the AI core that the hive mind estimated was accurate to within three meters with five nines of confidence.

The super-mind made a decision. The AI core would be extracted from the main platform. This would prevent the unit from taking control of the massive platform in the future. In addition, should the invaders return to deny them their prize, they would need to pursue two targets rather than one.