Cyberdrome (13 page)

Lorena was busy
drawing symbols on the input pad. “What?”

He pointed out
the display. “I guess I assumed that this ship was inside one of the simulated
worlds,” he said, still unable to pull his eyes away from the view.

“We are locked
out of the simulations, remember? We modified this Survey Vessel to operate
inside Core memory.”

He looked at the
image on the screen. “So, how are you guys getting around out there? You don’t
move this entire ship around, do you?”

She shook her
head and looked up at him. “Weren’t you briefed at all?” she asked. “All right,
this is how it is. In the bottom hangar of this ship, we have a number of
one-person vehicles called Tracers, which were designed specifically for the
Core. They are actually copies of what the Sentinels used.”

“Sentinels.
Those were Cyberdrome’s primary defense routines, right?”

“Correct. They
were all deleted in the initial attack on the system. Anyway, they were
actually humanoid life forms, so the Tracers were designed to fit humans.”

“All right, so
you, Maya, and the others, have been using the Tracers to locate the nodes and
attach deletion routines. When all five nodes are hooked up, you detonate them
all at once. Ceejer should go offline and we all get to go home. If that’s all
there is, then your mission should be a piece of cake.”

“A piece of
cake,” she repeated and her eyes seemed to glaze over.

He was about to
ask what she was thinking when movement on the display caught his eye. When he
focused on the location, he saw several small dots moving on the horizon,
rapidly approaching the hovering Survey Vessel.

“Hey, there’s
the rest of the team.”

Lorena’s eyes
widened. “What?”

He started to
point to the display, then a loud crash echoed down the hall and he felt the
floor vibrate. “That wasn’t the ship moving, was it?”

Lorena spun
around and looked at the display. She made a symbol on the pad and the view
zoomed in on a section of the Survey Vessel. They both stared at a large jagged
hole on the underside of the ship. Several bug-like things were jumping up from
the ground and crawling inside.

Lorena smashed
her fist against the wall. “Son of a monster bitch,” she whispered. “We’re
under attack.”

What do you
mean?” he asked just as the floor shuddered under his feet. “Under attack from
what?”

“This is all
your fault,” she yelled as she took off down the hall.

He heard a loud
crash behind him and ran to catch up with her. “What are you talking about?” he
yelled back. “How can this be my fault? I just got here.”

“Exactly.”

Then he
remembered. “Your team interfaced during a diagnostics window so that Ceejer
wouldn’t detect you. Leconte sent me in afterwards.” He glanced over his shoulder.
“Ceejer knows I’m here.”

“We’re not being
attacked by Ceejer,” she said as she turned a corner and ran down another hall.

“If it’s not
Ceejer, then what’s attacking us?”

“Something
else,” she said. “We don’t know what they are, but they are big and they—” She
abruptly slid to a stop at a four-way intersection and faced him. “Wait a
minute. Why
are
they after us?”

“Isn’t that what
I just asked you?”

“Coming into
Cyberdrome after the diagnostics window would’ve alerted Ceejer to your
presence, but the things attacking us are not controlled by Ceejer. They
shouldn’t know you’re here.”

“How do you know
that?”

“Trust me, I
know.” She looked him up and down. “You must be broadcasting,” she said.

“What do you
mean?”

She shook her
head. “That bitch put something inside of you.”

“Who? Leconte?
How? Why?”

Another crashing
sound made them both look down the hall behind them. “It doesn’t matter now,”
she said. “We have to get down to the Tracer hangar as fast as we can.”

“Can we stop
these, whatever-they-are, with Tracers?”

She glanced down
the three hallways in front of them. “I think our best chance is to get in the
Tracers and run like hell. If they follow us, we double back, reenter the ship,
and then get out of here.” She finally selected one of the halls and sprinted
down it. Alek had to work hard to stay up with her.

As he followed
her around a corner and down another curved hall, a loud crash stopped them in
their tracks. A huge creature stepped right through the wall in front of them,
its body completely filling the hallway.

It looked like a
giant robotic spider. It had a spherical body suspended by eight
multi-segmented legs with what looked like hydraulic pistons controlling the
joints. Its outer skin looked like some sort of rough-hewn metal and there were
scars everywhere.

He grabbed her
arm and pulled her away from the machine. “Is there another way to the hangar?”

“Yes,” she
yelled. “Back the way we came.”

Just as he
turned around, another wall fell ten meters ahead and another creature stepped
into the hallway. This one had a triangular head, four legs, and two clasping
arms held out on front of its torso. It looked just like a praying mantis.

Just like the
Spider, this thing’s metal body was covered by what appeared to be battle
scars. Before he could wonder what that meant, he realized that they were
trapped between the two creatures and there was no place to run.

The Mantis
charged forward and Lorena put up her fists as though she planned to box with
it. Alek instinctively shoved her against the wall and then pushed her down to
the floor. He then threw his body on top of hers, hopelessly trying to shield
her from the approaching creature. He closed his eyes and waited for the end.

“Hide!” she
yelled.

He opened his
eyes to ask “Where?” and watched her disappear right before his eyes. Before he
could react, he saw a slight blur as she grabbed his sleeve and yelled, “Hide!”

He felt
something slide over his face just as the body of the Mantis scraped the wall
above him on its way down the hall. He glanced up just in time to see the
Mantis lower its head and ram into the torso of the Spider behind them. The
Spider fell backward, but as it did so, it wrapped one of its long legs around
the Mantis. The Mantis twisted in mid-air trying to shake off the Spider and
they both crashed back through the opening in the wall. He realized that the
hallway ahead was now clear.

“Reset,” Lorena
whispered, then reappeared beneath him. She then pushed him off her and
sprinted down the hall past the machines.

“Wait,” he
yelled as he tried to stand. When he reached down to push off the floor, he couldn’t
see his own arm or hand. Camouflage, he realized. He quickly lifted his
invisible right arm to his mouth and said, “Reset.”

As the Omnisuit
switched back into the outfit he had selected earlier, he jumped to his feet
and ran down the same hall, jumping over torn metal and bent conduits.

As he ran past
the opening in the wall, he glanced over and saw the two creatures locked in battle
in the next room. The Mantis had broken off one of the Spiders legs and had
another one in its claws. He didn’t wait to see who the victor would be.

A minute later,
he came to a hallway leading back toward the center of the ship. Taking a
gamble, he headed down it. When he entered the central lobby, he saw Lorena trying
to force open one of the elevator doors.

“Thanks for
waiting,” he said dryly.

“The power might
be out,” she said, ignoring his sarcasm.

 “Maybe your
ship’s security locked it because of the attack.”

She stared down
the hallway and her face turned pale. “If that’s the case, we’re trapped here.”

“Can’t we just
use the Omnisuits to hide from them?”

“Camouflage mode
is more limited than you might think,” she said. “The suit has to scan whatever’s
nearest to you and duplicate it in the fabric. It uses a lot of power and you
can be detected if you move at all.” She jumped at a bang that echoed in the
room. “Besides,” she added, “these are Predator-class programs we are dealing
with. We
—
”

“What?” he
interrupted. “I thought you didn’t know what they were.”

“I didn’t tell
you everything, all right?” She seemed angry, or maybe it was just fear in
disguise. “I think whoever stole your Cyberphage used it to carry a bunch of
our company’s Predator programs into the Core.”

“You guys made
those things?” he asked, realizing that it was more proof that the attack on
Cyberdrome was an inside job, despite what Cloudhopper thought. 

“We designed
them for the military for one purpose only.”

“What’s that?”
he asked.

“Chaos! Their
sole objective is to create havoc, and destroy anything in their path.”

“A diversion,”
he said. “They were probably brought in here to keep the Sentinels occupied
while something else was going on.”

“Perhaps,” she
said.

“So, how many
types of Predators are there?”

“There were four
main designs,” she said. “The two you’ve already seen, plus a Raptor and a data
miner
—
something we
call a Mole, although it looks more like a worm.”

“So? What’s the
worst that would happen if one of those things catches us?”

She stared at
him intently. “You don’t understand, newbie. At this level of interface, the
only connections our brains have with our real bodies back home are the autonomic
functions, like breathing and heart rate. All other senses are connected to
this reality.”

“That means that
if we get hurt in here...”

“It will feel
absolutely real,” she said.

“And if we die
in here
?
”

She stared at
him. “It could sever the few remaining ties we have with our bodies. We could
end up just like your father.”

He stared back
at her for a moment. “We need to get off this ship.”

She looked down
and her face lit up. “I’m an idiot,” she said. “There’s an emergency access.”

She opened a
small circular door on the floor with a touch of her finger on a DNA reader. He
saw a ladder descending into darkness.

“I hope you’re
not claustrophobic,” she said as she headed down the ladder.

He followed her
down and closed the hatch above him. “I am a little, but it beats getting torn
apart by one of those things.”

“I agree,” she
said from below him.

As they
descended the ladder, he whispered down, “I think those machines up there might
be even more dangerous than you realize.”

She stopped and
looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

“Did you notice
the scars on their bodies?”

“No, but what
does that—”

A sound above
them made them both look up at the dark tube. “Do you know what a Panspermia
bomb is?” he whispered.

“They’re old
school, right? Used to reformat simple planetary simulations—to give them
life,” she whispered back.

“I—I think
someone put a Panspermia bomb inside my Cyberphage—along with your
Predators—and it somehow detonated. Maybe your Sentinels damaged it when they
fought it.”

She stopped
descending and mumbled something he couldn’t hear.

“Panspermia
blast waves are designed to keep going until they cover an entire planet,” he
continued, hoping he wasn’t giving himself away. “If it detonated here, the
wave probably wouldn’t stop until it covered the entire Core, reformatting—or
at least changing—everything in its wake.”

“Go on,” she
said.

“If your
Predators were near the bomb when it went off, it’s possible that it used their
source code as a template to ‘bring life’ to the Core.”

“But that
wouldn’t explain the scars,” she said. “The Predators were modeled after machines.”

“I don’t know.
Maybe one of the Sentinels was close enough to the blast center to have its DNA
scanned as well. The human part of the Sentinel code could’ve combined with the
Predators’, somehow reformatting them into part machine, part living organisms.”

She stared at up
him. “You’re talking about living machines.”

“Capable of
repairing themselves and evolving into something better,” he added. “If you include
the fact that they are the size of busses...”

They stared at
each other in silence. Then a crashing sound from above reminded them that they
were not safe yet. They continued their descent. When they finally reached the
bottom of the ladder, Lorena touched a section of the wall and a circular door
spiraled open below them. They dropped down into a dimly lit, wide circular
room. A ring of large oval doors covered the entire outer wall.

“The designers
of this ship sure like circles,” Alek said as he walked to the center of the
room. He stooped to peer out a small porthole on the floor. He saw the ground
passing beneath him and realized they were on the very bottom of the Survey
Vessel. “Where’s this ship taking us?”