Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles 2: Redemption (16 page)

Today he was planning to explore a section of the city that had recently become available again as the repair systems had finished sealing the breach that had allowed the exterior atmosphere to rush in.

The door to this section looked like a flower petal that opened when actuated. All doors, regardless of their disparate appearance, opened via a similar mechanism. It had taken him several days to figure out the control system.

At one
point he had gotten so frustrated, he spent twenty minutes yelling at the top of his voice at an intransigent door that refused to open. As he was sobbing on the ground he had a sudden epiphany. Buggers didn't have a voice. The Buggers had built in radio transmitters, and thanks to Cinnabon he knew the proper frequencies. The antenna array on his commlink was damaged but his encounter suit still had a short distant suit-to-suit transmitter that could be adapted via a field-programmable gate array.

The field-programmable gate arrays or FPGA's had been in use for centuries and still were the workhorses of adaptive electronics. He quickly reconfigured the suit's transmitter and sent the strongest squawk at the door
that he could. That had been a week and a half ago. He remembered the elation when the door in question opened.

He sent a similar squawk at this door
and it too opened. What greeted him on the other side would change his life forever. He smiled.

WhimPy
-23 struggled against the repeated electronic incursions into his most private systems. For untold thousands of years the technology behind the Heshe reigned supreme. The hubris had bred a degree of contempt.  The firewalls that protected the WhimPy's AI had never been seriously challenged. That is, until now. The crude but massively parallel nature of the KayBee super-mind was an organic match for the sophistication and elegance of the Heshe engineering.

WhimPy
-23 was having to divert an ever increasing percentage of his already battle-damaged resources to fighting of the cyber-attack. Unfortunately the number of attack points was increasing exponentially. Since the invaders were  literally inside hi
m
– having taken advantage of the breach caused by the crude but effective hydrogen bom
b
– the WhimPy's normal arsenal of countermeasures were rendered useless.

He could not allow his technology to fall into the
KayBee's pincers. He opened a channel to Orbital One in GCP controlled space and sent a burst message detailing the events that had occurred. He then did what no Uruk or Heshe weapon's platform had ever done before. He elected to terminate his own synthetic life.

***

The super-mind shifted its primary focus to the invader in orbit around the nest host. It had been momentarily distracted by unexpected events in the Sol system. A secondary cognitive thread was actively seeking to compromise the warship's defenses. It was meeting some limited success but the full force of the hive had yet to be applied.

A drone had detected a dangerous reduction of the magnetic containment field used to protect the zero point field.
Since zero-point energy density is roughly 110 orders of magnitude greater than the radiant energy at the center of the sun, such a disruption would be ill advised.

The hive mind quickly interceded and took control, albeit temporarily
, to bolster the containment. Almost immediately control was wrestled away.  The hive mind mounted an attack   from a different direction. This type of exchange occurred several hundred times in the course of a few seconds. The humans would have called this a game of cat and mouse, but it was a game the cat was about to win.

As if sensing
its imminent defeat, the warship suddenly shut down, shorting out many critical systems in the process. Nanite systems became idle, repairs ceased, electrical systems went dead, and the bulk of the AI went offline. If the hive mind wanted access to the ship it would have to study the inactive systems and devise a way to repair and re-enable them.

***

“
BATTLE STATIONS, ALL HANDS BATTLE STATIONS!  THIS IS NOT A DRILL! ALL HANDS BATTLE STATIONS
!
”

Cat ran the last several yards down the corridor towards the bridge. She had been coming back from a light lunch with the Admiral. She toggled the
commlink embedded in her Heshe encounter unit.

"Bridge, this is Kimbridge. Report."

"Ma'am, we just received a flash message from WhimPy-23. He's under attack," Lieutenant Samuels answered urgently. 

"Understood.
He been detected, it's serious but not completely unexpected. Why are we at Battle stations?"

"Ma'am, he is being overwhelmed and has ordered his own self-destruction."

"WHAT!"

"Commodore," it was Ken Kirkland who broke in via the comms. "I'm reviewing the data feed now. 23 went offline
eighteen seconds ago. He took damage from a nuclear explosion and was then overwhelmed by a massively parallel cyber-attack."

Cat enter
ed the bridge and took her command chair from Commander Ben, who had been in charge while she was absent.

"That makes no sense. A
WhimPy should have been able to shrug off any size explosive the KayBee's, or for that matter us, could have launched against it."

"That's what I thought
," Ken said. "It turns out they used good old fashioned social engineering. They got the WhimPy to rescue a distressed drone which turned out to be a Trojan Horse."

Admiral Faragon entered the bridge at the same time as her first officer. She stood and nodded towards the conference room and looked at the
Admiral for confirmation. He nodded. She signaled Ken, and Commanders Ben and Trifa to join them. "Lieutenant," she said to Samuels. "Please invite Rasta-Tckner to join us." 

When the door closed, Admiral Faragon turned to look at each of them. The furrows on his face said all that needed to be said.

"This should not have been possible."

"It happened," Cat said, "because procedures were ignored. It's debatable as to whether or not a WhimPy is under the GCP's authority. At the end of the day, I suspect their Heshe programming holds sway."

"Regardless
," the Admiral said, "we have a serious problem."

"Several problems
," Cat agreed.

The
Admiral raised an eyebrow and nodded for her to continue.

"Sir, it occurs to me that for the
KayBee's to have detected 23 in orbit while cloaked they must either have access to rather sophisticated technology we were unaware of, or they were able to do some pretty heavy lifting on the computational front."

"Meaning they added up all of the minute perturbations within the system and deduced where the
WhimPy was."

"Exactly
Sir, and given what we know of their hive mind make-up this would be, to my way of thinking, the more likely scenario. But add to that one other disturbing implication in all of this."

"And what would that be?" The
Admiral asked.

Cat looked at Commander Ben.

"Sir," the D'lralu engineer said.  "In order for this attack to work the KayBees had to get their bomb into the WhimPy. Their plan would only have been effective if they knew in advance that the WhimPy would take action to rescue an endangered creature. I can't begin to imagine how it deduced, correctly I might add, that the WhimPy would indeed rescue that Trojan Horse probe..."

"
…
but the fact is, it did," Cat continued. "We have to assume we are facing an opponent of immense skill, determination, and single-mindedness. The fact that the WhimPy was doing 'the right thing' seems to have no bearing on the attack."

"So this presents us with our dilemma
," The Admiral continued. "We cannot assume the WhimPy was destroyed and we cannot allow such an asset to fall into potentially hostile hands."

"Sir
," Ken interjected.

"Go ahead
Commander."

"Sir, the
WhimPy is an intelligent being, albeit an artificial one; and a citizen of the Coalition. If he has survived this attack we may find ourselves in a position of having to decide whether or not to mount a rescue."

Admiral Faragon looked up as Rasta-Tckner entered the room. The large insectoid scurried over to the table and, with Cat's help to lift him, settled himself on a chair at the table. The
Admiral turned back to Cat's first officer.

"Commander, I appreciate your sense of compassion
but if we find the platform is still active and under KayBee control, and we have to choose between destroying him or attempting a questionable rescue, we are to serve the greater good." He turned to look intentionally at everyone in the room. "Is everyone clear?"

"Sir, yes
, Sir," the room echoed.

Ben coughed
, which was interesting in light of the fact he was cybernetic and had no physical need to cough.

"Commander, do you have something to add?"

"I do, Sir." Ben stood up on all four rear legs. He gestured to the First Officer with a front leg. "I can offer this to address your sense of compassion. As you might expect, I have a unique perspective. I too have been forced to unwillingly serve a harsh master.  There were many times I desperately wanted to die as opposed to carrying on doing what I felt was beyond redemption. Don't get me wrong, I value my life now but I would gladly trade everything I am to save one race I helped destroy. I can't imagine 23 feeling differently. That said, WhimPy-23 represents an opportunity."

"Please explain
."

"Sir, our best guess is WhimPy was detected because it was in
-system for many weeks and actively tweaking the weather patterns on 47b.  If we go in with a small cloaked force we may be too insignificant to notice. If the WhimPy has been compromised as opposed to destroyed, we may be able to infiltrate it and regain control. The insights I was able to provide on D'lralu motivations would pale compared to what 23 could provide."

Cat leaned forward, a sparkle in her eye. The
Admiral noticed the movement.

"I've seen that look before...
what are you thinking, Cat?"

She smiled. "Sir, we can use the
KayBee's own strategy against them. The WhimPy's are in many ways just like the hive. Each platform is linked to each of the other platforms. That's how they coordinated their operations in the past."

The
Admiral raised a hand to halt her. "Cat, I've talked with both WhimPy-23 and 41. They very much strike me as individuals. Are you saying they are a hive intelligence?"

"What I
am saying, Sir, is that they are linked. They know what each other knows. We should be able to get a full report of what happened from WhimPy-41. Also, my guess is 41 could be instrumental in helping us rescue 23 should that prove to be an option."

"Admiral Faragon
, I would say something if it is allowed," Rasta-Tckner said. His voice was slightly synthetic as the Ship's AI did a real-time bi-directional translation.

"Go ahead.
The purpose of these meetings is to get each person's best thoughts before we make decisions."

"Thank you
, Sir. I find this 'meeting' concept a very slow process as my people have the ability to link thoughts so readily. On the other hand, it is that ability that makes us vulnerable to the abuses of the super-mind.  I would warn you that what Number 41 knows, Number 23 would also know. Information travels in both directions, yes?"

"You make a good point." The
Admiral leaned back in his chair to think a moment then he turned to Cat.

"Commodore, I want you to formulate a plan for investigating the Kepler-47 system covertly. Have a conversation with
WhimPy-41. See what he can tell us but under no circumstances share our plans until it can be determined if he can shut down the information conduit to 23, assuming 23 is still functioning and under hostile control. You've got eight hours, then I want an update. Dismissed."

"Yes
, Sir," Cat said as she got up. "Ben, Cinnabon you're with me. Trifa I have a project for you, Sassi, and Hilde-tuk if he is willing to help you."

***

Mike decided he had a bug problem, or at least he would once these eggs started hatching. The room he had discovered two days ago was some type of Bugger maternity ward. Machines lined the walls for as far as the eye could see and nestled in each of them was a single white egg roughly the size and shape of an ostrich egg.

What he would give to have access to a decent computer. Something that could help him understand what he was looking at. The visual displays on each of the consoles were relatively static.
Whether this was good or bad he had no idea. Whatever the answer, the four machines in this group were different. 

Three of the four had blue displays while the fourth was shifting to more of a lavender.
The single lavender display was now flashing. Over the last hour the period of the flashing had decreased. He had no idea what would happen when the lavender finished doing whatever the hell it was doing.

Whatever was going to happen, it would happen soon. He sat back on one of the low tables in the room and unwrapped a protein bar. He was two bites into it when the rate of flashing increased sharply
and a clear cover slid over the egg chamber he was watching.

Mike stood up. Quickly swallowing the food bar he approached the egg chamber. A small laser was rapidly abrading the exterior shell of the egg.
When only a thin layer, mostly a membrane, remained, the laser shut off.

The shell was now so thin he
could actually see through sections.  It appeared the Buggers hatched young that looked like miniature versions of the adults. He had wondered if they might go through some sort of larval stage or if they were nymphs like crickets or grasshoppers.

The console
which had been lavender turned dark and the clear shield retracted. As he watched the young creature tore at the membrane. Watching a birth was in many ways a holy experience. Despite the tragedy that brought him here, Mike Jeffries, the captain of the doomed starship
GCP Heidman
, was overcome with the joy a new parent experiences. After weeks of isolation he was no longer alone.