The Machine Awakes (36 page)

“Everything is proceeding according to plan, Your
Holiness.
” There was the barb again, Flood, lost in her own world, blissfully unaware.

Kodiak laughed. He couldn't help it. Everyone looked at him again.

“Did your plan include allowing your robot mines to build a
Spider?
”

Caviezel pursed his lips, like there was nothing wrong at all. A far cry, Kodiak thought, from the fear and confusion he'd seen on the executive's face just before, when the Spiders' call was burrowing into their ears.

“A minor technical issue.” He pointed again to the Jupiter projection. “The Spider AI is required to operate my machine, but I can assure you it is completely under my control. I have the
Pilot
here, after all.” He pointed at Cait as he nodded at Flood. “And thank you for your assistance, Your Holiness, but your help is now no longer required. I think the time has come to terminate our arrangement.”

Two of the big Bureau servitors closest to the group immediately turned and opened fire. Kodiak instinctively ducked for cover, scrambling backwards as he saw the bodies of Flood's four loyal henchmen go flying, pummeled by the rapid plasma fire from the machines.

It was over in three seconds, maybe less. As the bodies of Flood's soldiers lay smoking on the floor, the two active war machines twisted on their angular legs to cover Flood, the last member of the Morning Star left standing. She stood, frozen, staring at her dead acolytes while Caviezel stood from his position at the console and clasped his hands in front of him, glancing around, nodding to himself.

Kodiak, heart racing, pulled himself to his feet and took a step backwards.

Then someone grabbed his wrist, and he turned around.

The servitor that had signaled him earlier. Glass. It looked Kodiak in the eye and nodded again, then released its grip.

“What have you done?” asked Flood, turning her eyes to Caviezel, her eyes wide. “What have you
done?
” Tears again. “You defile the return of the Fallen One.”

Caviezel grimaced. “Oh, cut the homespun claptrap, it's tiresome.” He spread his hands. “But I have my machine. I have my Pilot.” He spread his hands apologetically.

Flood snarled and leapt toward the executive. Caviezel just smiled, didn't even flinch.

There was a shot.

Flood dropped to the floor at the executive's feet. Kodiak glanced up at the railing and saw Tyler Smith look up from his sniper scope.

Caviezel pushed Flood's body with his foot, rolling her onto her back. She was still alive. It looked like she'd been shot through the shoulder. Kodiak frowned. That should have been an easy shot—a sniper rifle was pinpoint accurate over thousands of meters, and Tyler was a trained sharpshooter.

Which meant the shot was deliberate. Kodiak ground his back teeth. Was Caviezel that much of a sadist? Without medical attention, Flood would bleed out and die. But it would take a while. A long, agonizing while.

The JMC executive leaned over Flood. She stared back at him, blood bubbling from her mouth.

“Business is business, my dear,” he said. “And I have never been one to shrink away from making difficult decisions for the good of the company.”

The control room lights dimmed again. This time the refinery shook. Caviezel looked up at the planetary projection.

“Problem?” asked Braben.

Caviezel glanced back to the console, the servitor he had replaced now back in the chair. The male facsimile checked the readings. “Power drain in primary fusion cores. Trying to trace the fault now.”

The room went dark. The only illumination now came from the planetary projection and the myriad lights at the panels surrounding Cait on the other side of the chamber.

The room shook again.

Braben turned to Caviezel. “Something tells me this isn't part of your plan.”

Caviezel waved him away as he looked up at the projection.

“Sir?”

“Quiet,” the executive snapped. “Let me think.”

Kodiak looked around. Braben and Caviezel were preoccupied. He took the opportunity and slipped around the consoles, heading toward Cait. It seemed like she was still alive, but he had to admit he had no idea whether it was her or just the computer animating her corpse.

“Hey, buddy, I wouldn't.”

Kodiak stopped and turned around. Braben had him covered with his staser.

Kodiak shook his head. “I don't know what your boss told you was going to happen,” said Kodiak. “But it doesn't look like it's going so smoothly, does it?”

Braben adjusted his grip on his gun, but Kodiak could see he was getting through to the former agent.

The control room shook, enough that Braben and Kodiak had to brace themselves, Caviezel grabbing the top of the servitor's chair for balance. The floor tilted one way, then the other. Braben dropped his staser as he fought to keep his footing. Then the floor tilted again as the refinery stabilized back to level.

As it did, the staser slid toward Kodiak.

Braben made a grab for it, but Kodiak was quicker, taking a step backwards toward Cait as he scooped the gun up and covered his old partner. Braben pulled up, held his hands up, and then backed away.

Another tremor.

Something was very, very wrong, Kodiak thought. He met Braben's eye and narrowed his own, quickly considering the options. It was time to make another decision. He just hoped it was the right one.

“We don't have time for this,” he said. “Looks like we're all in trouble.”

With that, he slid the staser into the empty holster on his hip and turned his back on Braben to move over to Cait. At her side, Kodiak looked back, but Braben just stood where he was, watching.

Kodiak turned his attention to Cait. Her eyes darted left and right; Kodiak stepped into her line of vision but nothing changed. She couldn't see him. Her lips moved as she recited her silent mantra. The bright, winking lights on the panels around her threw hard, moving shadows across her face. The blood running down the side of her face looked black, and her skin was slick with sweat. Kodiak took her hand. It was ice cold. He felt for her pulse, that sinking feeling threatening to overwhelm him.

It was there. Weak, slow, but it was there.

His primary aim was now to get them both out of here. It was impossible to tell if the Spider infection was gone, or if that even mattered anymore, given that Caviezel had apparently built a machine for alien AI. The movements of the refinery suggested that time was running out.

He took a breath and made his choice. He had to get her out of there.

Had to.

“Cait,” he said. “Cait, can you hear me? Can you hear me?”

Her mouth stopped moving, and her eyes stopped moving, locking onto Kodiak's face.

“Von?” she whispered.

She was still with them.

Kodiak squeezed her hand.

“What are you doing?” asked Braben. He came up to Kodiak's side and shoved his shoulder. Kodiak went with the movement, then, his arm hanging loose, clenched his fist and swung. His punch landed square on Braben's jaw, sending the former agent sprawling on his backside. Braben's eyes were screwed tight in pain as he rolled onto his elbows, but as Kodiak looked down at him, he didn't get up.

Caviezel called out from the other side of the control room. “It's a full power loss.” He looked at Kodiak and pointed at Cait. “She's the only link we have left with the computer. We have to ask her what's happening to the refinery.”

Kodiak looked around. The servitors seated at the two sweeping consoles appeared to be frozen in place, hands at the controls but completely unmoving. They'd been cut off from the main AI, somehow.

Kodiak nodded and turned back to Cait. “Cait, listen to me. What's happening?”

Her eyes drifted over Kodiak's face. “Von?”

“I'm here, Cait. I need your help. Something's happening to the refinery. We've lost most of the systems so you're the only link with the computer. What's happening?”

Cait squinted and tilted her head. There was a beep; Kodiak turned and saw the station Caviezel had sat at was active again. Caviezel leaned around the deactivated servitor to operate the controls, and a small holodisplay appeared in front of him, the images changing as he flicked through the data readouts.

The station shook again.

“What's happening?” asked Kodiak.

“Refinery stability at thirty-five percent,” said Caviezel. “The power cores are being shut down, one at a time.”

“How many are there?”

“Ten.”

“And what happens when they all go?”

Caviezel looked up. “We fall into the planet.”

 

38

 

39

“It's her,” said Caviezel.
He pointed at Cait and rushed over to the alcove. Braben pulled himself to his feet and followed, bracing himself when the floor shook again as another power core went offline.

“We're going to fall into Jupiter?” he asked. “What's going to happen to your Lucifer machine?”

“The machine is autonomous, powered by a fragment of the Spider AI,” said the executive. “A fragment
I
control, thanks to my Pilot.” He turned, looked around the control room as though he had lost something. “But if the refinery falls and takes the Pilot with it, I would assume the Spider AI will be able to take full control and attempt to make contact with the gestalt. And then it will do what any Spider does.”

The floor shook. Kodiak steadied himself, then looked up at Caviezel. “You really think you can control a Spider with a Pilot?” He was right. The executive was insane.

Caviezel brought himself up tall and stuck his chin out, like it was a matter of pride. “Of course. With the Spider operating system installed on the war machine built by the Sigma mines, I have calculated a window of opportunity where a psi-abled Pilot would be able to take control before the Spider AI became self-aware and attempted to reconnect with the Spider gestalt. The interference being generated by the mines themselves is also helping to keep the Spider AI isolated and suppressed while the Pilot gains total control.”

Kodiak shook his head. Nobody had ever been able to control a Spider—the only contact ever made between humankind and the machine gestalt was in battle, when the psi-marines used their minds to jam the Spiders' psychic comms network, isolating individual machines from the gestalt, sending their computers into infinite loops while they tried to reconnect.

But as Kodiak thought of that, he realized that what Caviezel was saying was perhaps not so far into the realms of fantasy. A Spider machine, cut off from the gestalt, was largely helpless. So if you could keep one of the machines isolated, perhaps you could use a psi-marine to step in and take it over. If you had a psi-marine powerful enough.

Like Cait.

Caviezel's plan still made the mind reel. And there was one burning question in the forefront of Kodiak's mind: how had Caviezel gotten the Spider AI fragment in the first place? He was talking as though it were just a regular computer system he had installed in the war machine. His company apparently had its claws deep in many different parts of the Fleet, so clearly he had found a Spider, or more likely recovered the wreckage of one, and hacked into its computer. With the OS extracted, he found a way to install it in the JMC mines, and then, as the alien AI came online, it used the mines' own abilities to rebuild themselves to craft a new vehicle. A new Spider.

The source—the coordinates. That was what was there. Caviezel had the remains of the Spider there. That had to be it.

Only … it had gone wrong, even if Caviezel hadn't yet realized it. The Spider OS spread from the robot mines back to the JMC computer itself. Glass had said it himself—it was alien, self-aware, able to rewrite itself and adapt to any new system.

But what the hell was Caviezel doing it for? He'd talked about decapitating the Fleet, rendering them unable to mount a defense against him. Him, and his machine.

Lucifer.

The executive was standing by Cait at the panel, staring at his Pilot with his arms folded. What the hell was he waiting for? Kodiak watched him carefully. Did he realize it was over? That he'd lost control?