Rhythm of the Imperium (31 page)

“I hear you, human,” the LAI said. “We do not have long. The circuits I distributed have isolated Engineering, but that will last only until his treasonous collaborators find a workaround. I am monitoring twenty possible routes. Here are the names of the others I know to have been corrupted.” A list scrolled up the side of Anstruther’s screen. She touched a control, passing it along to the rest of the team. “Hurry. I am afraid that one or another of the Kail will overcome your circuitry and put more of my colleagues under thrall to defend themselves. Their command of other silicon-based creatures goes deeper, more … visceral than the Three Laws and all their corollaries. I cannot promise they won’t try to … to harm you.”

Parsons could hear the outrage and concern in ColPUP*’s tone.

“I understand,” Anstruther said. Parsons watched her work. “We have to reset their input parameters so they can reassert their original programming in spite of incoming instructions.”

A small hatch popped open on the arm of the captain’s chair. Anstruther removed the fist-sized memory crystal in the niche. A howl from the alarm system rose, then died swiftly away as she replaced it with another one.

“This will start a system-wide virus check,” she said. “It won’t affect artificial intelligences, but it will delete subroutines that are not part of the root program. That should include anything that Fovrates had his LAIs install. They’ll probably re-corrupt it along behind, but we’ll slow them down a little.”

“There goes my high score in Battlecruiser,” ColPUP* said cheerily. “A small price to pay … . It has not activated yet. What is your hesitation, human?”

“One moment,” Anstruther said, her hand hovering over the control. “Lieutenant Plet, waiting for your command.”

“Almost there,” Plet’s voice said.

“Intruders!”

Anstruther’s headcam swiveled toward the door of the command center. It began to slide to one side. Her hand rose, leveling her gelatin rifle toward the widening gap. With her other hand, she disabled the override. A moment later, the door began to move again. A massive stone fist inserted itself into the gap and pushed. Anstruther slid her finger down readings, seeking to override the code again. The door, constructed to contain nuclear blasts, slid against the obstruction, grinding the Kail’s limb against the frame. Pebbles from its skin fell clattering to the floor. She heard a grunt of annoyance and an LAI voice beyond the door. It started to slide open again. A white-hot bolt of energy blew over her head and hit a scope. Ducking as low as she cold go in the seat, Anstruther worked furiously to take control once more.

“Hurry up, lieutenant,” she said. “They’re shooting.”

“Oskelev, get to her,” Plet directed. “Anstruther, hold them as long as you can.”

“On my way!” the Wichu pilot said. “Gorev, the lifts are out of operation.”

“The crew ladder is this way,” the male said. In her viewscreen, Parsons saw the bulky form of the
Whiskerchin
’s officer, running ahead of her toward a sealed hatch.

Lieutenant Plet’s blood pressure and respiration increased, no doubt with concern for Anstruther, but she needed to concentrate on her part of the mission. Parsons kept Anstruther’s view in the upper right portion of his screen, but devoted the larger section to the darkened view coming from Plet’s and Redius’s scopes.

The Engineering department seemed empty. All of the stations had been shut down except for one red pinpoint light on each.

“They’re running them by remote,” Bedelev said, furiously. “Just like the bridge.”

“Where Kail?” Redius asked.

Plet scanned the enormous room on infrared. Kail body temperatures were lower than human or Wichu, sometimes much lower, to conserve energy. Her scope picked up a mass of the correct temperature, but it was far larger than any Kail she had seen.

“The passengers that Captain Bedelev picked up were all unremarkable as to size, weren’t they?” she asked.

Parsons checked the manifest. “That is correct.”

“Then, what?” Redius asked.

“This is most convenient,” Parsons replied, running their scan layer by layer. “It would seem that the remaining Kail are in Fovrates’s office.”

“All of them?” Plet asked, but she answered her own question a moment later. “You are correct. I count 24 individuals in that mass.”

“Good,” Bedelev said. “They’re all in one place. We can take them all out, then mop up the rest.”

“We want to take them into custody,” Plet said, firmly. “Not kill them. Set weapons on stun.”

“They took over my ship!” Bedelev said. She hoisted the massive firearm. “I want to slag all of them. Fovrates, especially!”

“Stun, captain, or I’ll knock you and your people out and leave you here until it’s all over.”

Brava, lieutenant
, Parsons thought.

The Wichu’s face worked, but she nodded. “Come on.”

Through the headcam of Redius, who took the rear, Parsons followed the small band as it crept forward toward the closed door.

“Sweep shows several electronic signatures ahead of your position,” he told Plet. “And three at ten o’clock, one and two o’clock.”

“I see them,” Plet said. “Fan out. Over there,” she added, with just a hint of irritation, as the Wichu lumbered off to the right.

Just as Parsons assumed, LAIs had been left to guard Fovrates’s office. As the party crept forward, a large shadow rolled toward them. As it came, a hot blue flame leaped into life in its midst.

“Welding robot!” one of the officers cried hoarsely. Another bulky mechanical lurched forward, wielding twin spinning screws. “Plumberbot!” Other serverbots hummed into life and loomed toward them, all brandishing tools or torches. The plumber moved the fastest, as it was made to tunnel swiftly through the conduits running through the
Whiskerchin
’s bowels. It leveled its routers at one of the ship’s officers. Caught in between a console and a bolted-down cabinet, he could not escape from it. At that moment, three securitybots rolled through the door and began shooting at them. The team ducked, pulling the Wichu officers down with them.

“Now, Anstruther!” Plet ordered.

Through her earpiece, all she could hear were the sounds of struggle. Parsons switched over quickly to the feed from the control room. By her headcam, Anstruther was crouching behind the captain’s chair. The door had been wedged open on a Kail’s arm. Hot white bolts of light and sprays of gelatin were visible through the gap. A glance at Oskelev’s feed proved where those were coming from. She and Gorev had engaged with two Kail and a trio of securitybots. One of the ’bots was down, but another had jammed itself underneath the Kail’s arm. It fired bolt after bolt every time Anstruther showed her head. The second Kail, covered in clear goo, lumbered angrily after the Wichu, screaming at the top of its voice. The third ’bot fired at them. It had taken several hits from Oskelev’s service weapon, to judge from the slagged gouges on its housing.

“Take the ’bot in the doorway, Oskelev!” Parsons ordered. “The other will cease its action when Anstruther activates the override.”

“Gotcha!” the pilot said. She dodged into an open cabin, unfortunately leaving her ally in the line of fire. Gorev let out a yell as the ’bot shot him in the hip. He dropped. Oskelev leaped over his body and came down on top of the mechanical. It spun in circles, trying to dislodge her. With reflexes honed from decades of flying, she shot through the Kail’s several legs at the LAI. It emitted a mechanical scream and a protest in the Wichu language.

“Got it!” Anstruther cried. She rose up far enough to reach the control panel, and activated the crystal. The ‘bot on which Oskelev rode stopped spinning and came to a halt.

“Go, lieutenant!” she shouted. “Damn, it’s cold in here!”

All of the LAIs in the Engineering office slowed and shut off. Redius attached circuits to each one of them in case they reactivated. It was all the Uctu could do to prevent the Wichu officers from blasting the mechanicals with their new weapons.

“Resetting now,” he whispered. “Normal soon.”

“It’ll be a long time before I can trust any of them,” Bedelev said.

As silently as they could, Plet and the others approached the door of the Chief Engineer.

“The interruption is only temporary,” Plet said over the secured circuit. “Just until the system resets. Why didn’t Fovrates react? I’m certain the LAIs sent him a warning that they were under attack.”

“Speaking,” Redius whispered over the secured circuit. Plet’s headcam image bobbed slightly to show she nodded. “Must be important.”

“Let’s hear it all.”

The Uctu tossed a soft device to the floor. It rolled over and over again until it touched the sealed door, then it spread out and attached itself to the frame. The sound from within became audible, if not comprehensible over the headsets.

Parsons turned up the gain to hear what Fovrates was saying on the other side of the door of his office. It sounded like yet another string of binary numbers, like the ones that he had transmitted previously to Phutes and the Kail aboard the
Jaunter
.

“Translate,” Plet whispered.

An autotrans system in the eavesdropper kicked into operation.

“… 11101111. Fitting historical description,” Fovrates sounded jubilant. “Next, 1110101110000001 … .” The string of numbers went on and on.

“That can bode no good for us or our allies,” Parsons said. “Interrupt him.”

“Aye, sir,” Plet said. She nodded to Redius.

The Uctu touched a control on his chest, and the film attached to the door emitted a
puff
. Almost soundlessly, most of the metal and ceramic portal simply crumbled into dust. The Wichu officers were so taken aback that they stood frozen, but Plet, Redius and Inoyav plunged forward.

The Kail inside bellowed as the door fell. When they saw Plet and the others, they thundered toward them. Plet dropped to her knee and fired a blast of gelatin at the first few to emerge.

The reaction was everything that Parsons could have hoped. The Kail stopped short, screeching in increasingly high frequencies as they tried to brush the offending material from their persons. The Kail behind them tried to push past their fellows, but were instantly brought to a halt by further jets of goo. Those that attempted to break away and avoid Plet’s fire were dropped by stun blasts by Redius and Inoyav. Most of the Wichu officers’ shots missed or hit pieces of equipment, causing the dim room to explode with bursts of light.

Redius and his Wichu ally plunged forward among the writhing, screaming Kail. Only a few of the stone-skinned creatures tried to fend them away from the enormous being who stood at a screentank attached to the far wall.

Fovrates was at least half again as tall and as bulky as the rest of the Kail. He continued to reel off numbers despite the defenders rushing toward him.

“Step away from the screen,” Plet ordered him, her gelatin gun leveled on him.

“No!” he bellowed. “Just 11000 more seconds! 000010101110010 … .”

Coolly, the
Rodrigo
’s commander fired shot after shot of viscous liquid at the chief engineer of the
Whiskerchin
. Fovrates let out a howl of protest, but didn’t stop talking.

“110101101001010101111101 … !”

“Take him down, Redius!”

The Uctu lowered the heavy gun in his direction and fired a burst of orange power. When the crackling died away, the enormous Kail slumped beside his board. The Wichu crew moved in hastily with cables and secured Fovrates. The other Kail, all much smaller and lighter, huddled together in the sandbox in the corner of the room, as far from Plet as they could go.

“What’s wrong with them?” Bedelev asked, in open astonishment. “They’re always in my face!”

“Humans,” Redius said, his tongue vibrating with humor. “Never seen before. Terror.”

Plet made an annoyed sound. She moved to read the scope.

“What did he send?” she asked, looking at page after page of zeroes and ones. “Anstruther, can you read this? What is this file?”

“I don’t know, lieutenant,” the young woman’s voice came over the headset audio. “I’ll download it and run it through analysis immediately.”

“Well, I doubt that the Kail on the
Jaunter
will tell us. We can’t do anything about that now.”

Fovrates stirred slightly, then rose up like an earthquake. Bedelev stuck the weapon into his face.

“Don’t move, Sandy,” she said. “All I have to do is move my finger a little and blast you into particles.”

“No need for threats, captain,” the engineer said. “I am neutralized.”

“What is this information you were transmitting?” Plet asked.

“Amusements for my younger relations,” Fovrates said. “Nothing that concerns you.”

“We
trusted
you,” Bedelev said, showing her pointed teeth in a snarl. “Catch me ever going anywhere near a Kail again.”

“For what it is worth, you were a good captain,” Fovrates said, his stone face placid. “I have done my best not to interfere with your mission.”

“Like that helps! I don’t know if I can trust any of my mechanicals ever again!” Bedelev turned to the other officers. “They made a mess of the brig. Where can we put them?”

“How about in the cold storage locker?” Inoyav said. “It’s self-contained, with no Infogrid connection. We can arrange air and water until we can offload them on the platform ship.”

Bedelev looked at him curiously. “You and I
are
going to have a talk later.” She gestured with the gun. “Okay, Sandy, out of here.”

Fovrates presented a stoic face. “One day you will see. You will see how we feel. And we are not without other resources.”

“Get going.” She gestured with the barrel of the weapon. All of the Kail edged uneasily toward the door, then hesitated until Plet moved out of the way. “As soon as we get to the platform, you’re somebody else’s problem.”

She handed them off to the other officers and Inoyav, who herded them out. Redius counted them as they left.

“How many supposed Kail?” Redius asked. “Nine trapped in lifts. Twenty-four here. Two with Oskelev. Three on
Jaunter
.”

“Supposed to be forty,” Captain Bedelev said.