Black Sun (Phantom Server: Book #3) (28 page)

We had to stop the NPCs’ expansion into the real world. We’d already stripped them of their ability to infiltrate it. Now was the time to destroy the strategic stocks of the unreplenishable metal.

My new ability — Self-Replication — suited my purpose just fine. Once the Reapers finally got to the lower floors, the cargonite depots would be empty. The nanites would have used it all up and left Earth heading for the Sun, destined to burn away in its photosphere.

The screens began to go blank.

That was it. Time to go.

Zander, the flybot’s systems can’t contact your in-mode!
Jurgen PM’d me, anxious.

I switched over to the flybot’s channel.

Its scanners were focused on the façade of my tower block, barely visible behind the slowly growing cloud of swirling emissions. The flybot banked smoothly, getting closer.

Still no answer from my in-mode. The building’s systems were de-energized. The signatures of the emergency power supplies barely glowed. I could see a few power imprints of maintenance robots within the effective scanning zone. It looked like they’d just disconnected the building from the grid!

That wasn’t possible. The
serves
couldn’t shut a building down as long as a single in-mode capsule inside was still functioning! This was against their programming!

I sent a mental command to the flybot. Its gun ports opened, showering the building’s façade with a barrage of laser fire. A perfectly round fragment of the wall crumbled, disappearing into the gloom below.

The wind rushed into my apartment, upending the old office chair and ripping off a couple of loose wall panels.

A maintenance ramp slid out of the flybot, letting out a few agile serves which scrambled down it into my room.

The tinted plastic of my in-mode capsule was blank. Not a single indicator light showed through.

My throat clenched. I couldn’t believe my eyes. What could have happened here? Had Reapers done this?

No. They couldn’t have. They had no idea who I was. They had no information that could have allowed them to connect me to a real-world location.

Another important detail: shutting down a building wasn’t a one-minute job. The robots would have needed both time and the clearance to do so.

Which meant that my in-mode had only packed up a couple of hours ago.

What was going on?

I felt fine! My head was clear. I didn’t feel sick or anything. Considering my neuroimplant’s borderline lethal authenticity levels, it was hard to believe that I might have missed the moment of my in-mode’s failure.

Yes, but-

Hadn’t I deactivated biomonitoring?

I sent the
serves
a command to open my in-mode.

Nobody said anything but I could hear them holding their breath. The servodrives screeched back to life. Raising clouds of dust, the capsule’s teardrop lid rose and slid aside.

My face inside the capsule was gaunt. Or should I say shriveled? My body had burned itself away. I struggled to focus, staring at myself as the serves took my body temperature.

Their verdict was definite and unambiguous. Death had occurred an hour and a half ago.

The details made me nauseous. I broke the connection and turned away, gasping for air.

Now I remembered the sudden bout of weakness I’d struggled with back in the maintenance corridor, just as the Reapers had noticed the opened ceiling hatch.

What was the name of that ability I’d received? I hadn’t even had the time to check it out!

I opened the interface tab. The letters swam and blurred before my eyes.

Broken Chains. Your mind has shaken off the bounds of your fragile temporal body. Now your identity matrix can travel between worlds.

Warning! Always double-check availability of nanites in your destination point before departure. Make sure you’ve saved a back-up copy of your identity at the central node of the hyperspace network. Alternatively, you can do so at any available network point.

I slumped down and clutched my head.

“Zander,” Kimberly touched my shoulder. “I know how it feels. It’s scary. But you’ll get used to it. It won’t take long.”

I didn’t say anything. I needed at least a couple of minutes to realize what had just happened.

“And now you and Liori can-”

“Kim, please. Give me a minute.”

“I can’t. We don’t have a minute. The Reapers have shut the bunker down. We need to go!”

* * *

The Chrystal Sphere

The Warbler's banks had changed dramatically.

The location was bathed in sunlight. A breeze touched our faces, bringing the scent of the forest. You wouldn’t have thought this place was all scorched when we’d passed through it just recently.

Game worlds kept merging. The testing grounds’ programs were doing their best to restore what had been lost and fill in the blanks, assisting the merge. Still, the Earth’s cyberspace was enormous — and in many of its other parts, things might have not gone as smoothly as here.

Where the ford used to be, a sturdy log bridge now stood. When we cleared the reed banks, we faced a chain of shallow hills interspersed with areas of wasteland and occasional patches of greenery.

Something creaked under the bridge.

“Zander!” Forrest the Forest Sprite scrambled out of his hiding place. “You’re back! I can't believe it!”

“Do you remember him?” I asked Kimberly.

She nodded, then reached out to give me a hug. “Tell Liori,” she whispered, “that I’ll never forget her. And one other thing. We’ll always be here. I want you to know that. As long as our planet’s technosphere holds. As long as a single reactor still glows.”

She held my stare, then swung round and stepped onto the bridge. She didn’t say goodbye.

The curves of her armor gleamed purple in the sun.

The fiery runes along her sword's blade began to glow.

Kyle caught up with her and strode by her side. Forrest hung behind them, creaking, “Wait for me! What am I supposed to do here alone? All the marshes have run dry!”

As long as a single reactor still glows.

* * *

Jurgen watched Kimberly leave. “We should be going too,” he turned to me. “Are you ready?”

“No,” I admitted.

“We’d better be off, then!” he touched his navigator and disappeared.

Foggs dematerialized next. Arbido’s outline faded too.

Charon touched my hand. “Together?” hot breath escaped his jaws.

“Come on, then!”

His three-digit hand clutched my wrist.

Darkness.

Darg System. On board the Founders’ frigate

Two months later

A
ccording to our on-board time, it was early morning.

Our cabin was bathed in soft shadows. The holographic screens began to glow with the faint strip of sunrise.

Liori was still asleep. This was our first day off in the two months of working against time.

You’d be surprised but identity matrices need to sleep too. This is purely psychological.

I watched the woman I loved, racking my brains for something to make her happy.

I remembered the artificial pond I’d seen in that building back on Earth, framed with real greenery. For some reason, real-life memories stood apart from all the other experiences, no matter how vivid.

Our cabin was big enough but a pond would definitely be out of place here. How about a plant? A flower? At the time, I’d caught a whiff of it — it had seemed familiar. Admittedly I didn’t know the plant’s name and I didn’t feel like searching through the databases. I might just make one.

“Hush, be quiet!” I told the nanites mentally. They obeyed, creeping slowly and soundlessly to form a new object.

It didn’t look that bad. Not bad at all. And the smell was similar: a pleasant scent, not at all overpowering.

“It’s beautiful!” Liori stretched, rolled onto her stomach and pressed her body close to mine.

“Morning, sweetheart.”

Yes, we were made of nanites, both of us. It had changed a lot of things — but not our feelings for each other.

Liori sniffed the flower. A shadow crossed her face.

“Don’t you like its scent?”

“This flower... it’s beautiful. Think you can make a vase for it?” she gave me a kiss, ignoring my question.

I looked her in the eye.

“I’ll be right back,” Liori said. She seemed to be ill at ease, alarmed even. She rose and disappeared inside the shower module.

How strange.

I got dressed and made coffee for both of us. The flower caught my eye. Whatever might be wrong with it?

Automatically I built a vase and slumped into a seat, waiting for Liori to reappear. Gradually my thoughts turned to our current problems.

It had been two months since we’d come back from Earth. The situation in the Darg system was unsettling. Avatroid kept increasing his fleet’s potential. The hybrid was conspicuous by his absence. Our recon groups had tried to locate him. They’d gone through Oasis with a fine-tooth comb but the station hadn’t betrayed its secret.

Talking about Oasis, its upgrade had outlived itself, gradually fading to nothing. It’s true that there’d been sightings of new mobs on some of its decks as well as traces of low-level AIs’ activity, but that was nothing in the grand scale of things.

The Daugoth clan — each and every one of them — had joined the Relic’s crew. Now we had two hundred fifteen people on board, counting the Manticore members. Their leader Aquilon had turned out to be quite an uncompromising bastard. Even though I’d clued him into the real state of affairs he’d refused to join us point blank — followed by thirty more of his players.

We needed to have a talk with him again. The Manticore’s corvettes activity attracted unwanted attention to Argus. We weren’t yet ready to openly challenge the ancient AIs so we were busy leveling up before one decisive battle for Darg. And I’d never for one moment forgotten about the Third Colonial Fleet whose future depended solely upon us.

In these two months, we’d managed to restore the Relic and develop new command sequences for combat nanite control. I’d opened the Mnemotechnics skill for seventy volunteers. Thirty more were now acquiring a second specialization — Technologist — under Jurgen’s guidance. Add to this the same number of Mechanics coached by Danezerath. Ralph, Charon and Maurugael were busy training twenty pilots. A group led by Foggs and Vandal practiced the combat boarding of enemy ships, learning to fight against AIs as well as partially embodied enemies. In short, we were all busy. Between all this daily practice, combat landings on other stations, repairing the Relic and studying new technologies, our levels kept growing very nicely.

Even Arbido began learning new skills. He had no one to trade with and he’d already finished straightening up our warehouses. So now he’d discovered a penchant for technology. These days I could often see him in the company of Jurgen and Danezerath.

If we looked at the past two months from the point of new interesting discoveries, we'd had few. It had all been about the daily grind: leveling up, repairing the frigate, more training, studying artifacts and adding file after scanner file to our database.

The main thing we’d realized was that we couldn’t ignore the Founders’ interface. Its unique development branches alone might help us solve the mystery of interstellar jumps and master the Founders’ technological legacy. Which in turn would allow us to save billions of lives.

I made a mental plan for the day. I might try to approach Aquilon again, then follow up with a new round of negotiations with Roakhmar who didn’t make it easy for anyone. The Dargian Disciples worshipped the Founders as part of their religion — which meant they weren’t going to help us in our struggle against the ancient AIs. Neither did they want to discuss the very possibility of a human colony on their planet.

“Your coffee’s cold,” toweling her hair, Liori walked out of the shower module. She donned a shirt and smiled. A warm, happy smile.

“Sweetheart,” I admired her, my heart filled with warmth.

She climbed into the seat opposite and pulled her legs up, making herself comfortable. She cast a furtive glance at the vase. Again a shadow crossed her face.

“What’s up? What’s wrong with the flower? You don’t like the smell, do you?”

“I couldn’t smell it,” she admitted, taking a sip of her coffee.

“Would you like my neurogram?” I stopped in mid-sentence, realizing I’d just put my foot in it.

She hadn’t taken offence. Still, she’d grown subdued.

“Zander,” she said, fingering a strand of her blonde hair, “I’ve been thinking. About neurochips. So once we level up to 100, we’ll be able to build them — and then what? Many of our experiences come from the past anyway. Some of them were generated by in-modes as we went along. Like smells, for instance. Does that mean that a neuroimplant can’t create something new — something that none of us has ever experienced?”

“There’s no proof of that,” I pointed out. “But it’s true that at the early stages of the crew’s digitization we’ll have to make do with each person’s own range of experiences.”

“Excuse me,” she interrupted. “Without new feelings we’ll age really quickly. Mental ageing is just another form of death. I start to understand a lot now. Take this coffee, for instance: had I never tasted it before, what would it have tasted like now? Just like some warm water?”

“All right, all right. But what if we do share our neurograms?”

“That’s not a solution! All we’ll do, we’ll turn into versions of each other. We’ll become a unified gray mass. And how about the children? How are they supposed to develop if their neuroimplants can’t generate new experiences? You don’t think this might be why the network’s creators are not around?”

“What, do you want to say they’ve become extinct? Or that they downsized?”

“Yes, sort of.”

What a predicament. I’d never have thought that immortality-generating technologies could come with so many strings attached.

“Sorry,” Liori said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I just can’t stop thinking about it. What will become of us?”

I took her in my arms. “Can we talk about it later?”

She draped herself around my neck, answering my kiss.

* * *

Jurgen tried to contact us several times, but I didn’t give a damn. Not today. Business could wait.

We lay in bed looking at the stars. It was Liori who’d changed the picture to the telescopic view.

“I used to be frightened of outer space,” she whispered. “But now it fascinates me.”

A sly smile crossed her lips. Now she looked like a mischievous little girl taking her first steps into the world. Clinging to me, staring fearlessly into the abyss.

The new incoming call wasn’t exactly welcome.

Liori breathed a sigh. “You’d better answer it. Jurgen would have never called you if it wasn’t something important.”

Reluctantly I switched to mnemonic communications. “Yes?”

“Where are you two now?!” Jurgen sounded seriously alarmed.

“In my room. Why?”

“Oasis is updating!” he sent me a screenshot.

I didn’t recognize the ancient station. Most of its structures were glowing with heat. Someone was using its cargonite: I could clearly see thick clouds of Molecular Mist. The station’s reactors were unstable. What the hell? Was someone trying to
melt
the station?

“Avatroid?” I suggested.

“Worse.”

“What can be worse than a mad ancient AI?”

“I’m afraid it’s the Reapers.”

“The what?! We destroyed the interstellar communications! They can’t escape Earth!”

“Then you’d better tell me what this is,” he forwarded me a scan taken by the recon probe. On it, about a hundred heavy Raptors were falling into combat formations. I’d only seen this type of craft back on Earth, and even then only in blueprint.

“Do we know their target?”

“Not yet.”

“Keep an eye on them. We’re coming.”

“Please do.”

* * *

A technogenic Inferno.

I’d never thought I’d see it. True, we’d adapted some of the Founders’ obviously peaceful inventions for combat purposes in the past, but not so blatantly. Nor on this scale.

“We did destroy the communications!” Arbido exclaimed, perplexed. “Dominic never told us they had backups!”

“He might not have known,” Jurgen snapped. “They used Oasis as a point of access. The hybrid may have been equipped with a communications channel of his own. We should have thought about it!”

“So that’s his work, then?” Charon asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “The hybrid is gone. He’d started playing up already before we left for Earth. I’m afraid, the Reapers got to his neurograms.”

“Ripping him apart?” Foggs asked in disbelief. “You mean they got access to his skills? And used them to restore the communications?”

Vandal cringed. “As if you can’t see.”

Outer space was seething. The gigantic station resembled a cooling star surrounded by a newborn nebula. Its center kept disgorging more matter. The station’s outer structures were melting, their outlines growing porous and unstable. The Reapers must have removed reactor shields, causing reactor blocks to heat uncontrollably, melting the cargonite.

New combat craft kept forming within the clouds of incandescent matter. The process, though, didn’t go as fast as Avatroid’s once had. Nor did their choice of craft impress us with variety. They were all Raptors and Condors, but they kept materializing in their hundreds. Reapers aimed for volume over quality. They had no experience or abilities of their own, so they were using military space programs which we didn’t even know existed.

“Mnemotechs on duty, merge your abilities,” I commanded. “We need a scanner file — now!”

Reapers kept arriving.

What were they going to select as their next target? Or were their armadas prepared to sweep through space, indiscriminately devouring everything in their path?

If there was such a thing in the Universe as Fate, today it wasn’t on our side. It was pretty clear that the Reapers weren’t going to stop at Oasis. Their synthetic intellects would continue to build up their military presence uncontrollably. Their mode of thinking was similar to that of the first primitive AIs. The neurograms they’d looted hadn’t breathed life into them, only confused them, plunging them into dismay and uncontrollable urges. Some of the Raptors kept breaking out of formation attacking each other, making the mass of ships resemble packs of fighting dogs.

Surely someone had to control these hordes? While smaller dogfights remained unnoticed, any attempts at more serious conflicts were being nipped in the bud. Our tracking systems had identified several groups of modified Raptors whose job seemed to be to maintain order by sending the more quarrelsome of the sentient mechanisms back into the incandescent Inferno to be remelted.

That’s exactly how it was. I’m not exaggerating.

Finally, the scanner file arrived. I skimmed it and breathed a sigh of relief. “These are all made by Object Replication. It’s just some nanites forming permanent molecular bonds.”

“Does that mean they can be destroyed with regular weapons?” Foggs asked.

“It does. With the exception of a few Raptors,” I said.

“This is scary,” Jurgen whispered. “Once they form a network and join their processing capacities, nothing or no one can stand in their way.”