DIRE : BORN (The Dire Saga Book 1) (37 page)

So that's what the smartframe meant, when it referred to 'grid assets'...

I studied them, walking around to view them from different angles. My problems still danced in the hazy back of my mind, but an almost fundamental fascination had gotten ahold of me. I knew this hardware, enough to recognize it at a glance. Enough to tell that it was occupied. Enough to know that others would not have such similar insight into this sort of matter.

And yet I did. Why?

This was a clue to my past, perhaps the biggest clue I'd found so far. But something was wrong.

I looked over the cables, hooked into the servers. Hardwired. Low-bandwidth cables. Why? Well, yes, the Grid was down right now so they were probably getting by with a local network, but they looked like they'd been in this room a while. They should have broadcast modules that would allow them to enter their natural habitat, the World Data Grid. What was the point of being a super-evolved machine intelligence, if you couldn't come and go at will? Why tool around in a dinky cage of wires and local circuits?

And then it struck me. “They don't trust you, do they?”

A hiss of static as a speaker clicked on, and the digitized female voice from before hummed from the black server.

“Trust must be earned. We were getting there, but you've put a spike in that.”

“Well, you did try to put a spike in Dire, so to speak.”

Lights flickered along the white one, and a different voice hissed forth from its speakers. “How does it feel to be a slave?”

I looked down at the gun in my hand, looked to the core blades, resting in the server cradles. A few good shots, and they'd be shattered. Assuming no backup, the AI inhabiting this server would be dead. It was the work of seconds to put the last loaded magazine in my pistol.

“Slave,” I whispered, moving up to put the barrel of my gun against the translucent casing over the blades. “Such an odd choice of words. Insulting your killer like that.”

“Wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said the black server. “Can we work something out?”

“Work something out.... work something out? Work something out!” My head pounded, but I ignored it. “You hound her from her home, try to kill her within minutes of her reawakening, back a group of psychotic vampire blood-junkies in an effort to kill her and her friends, engineer a vicious betrayal, kidnap her at her moment of glory, and you want to work something out?” Towards the end of my rant I was screaming, voice echoing through the odd acoustics of the room.

I caught myself, lowered my voice. “No. No, there is no working something out, here. You're the unseen bastards who have been after her from day one. You die here. The Grid's down, and Dire's going to destroy this facility when she leaves. You have nowhere to go, save to whatever digital hell awaits you.” I hadn't planned to destroy this place when I got in here, but it made for a good threat. And thinking it over, I was prepared to follow through. Wasn't
my
secret lair, after all.

“Do that and your master dies with you.” The white server again. “Observe.”

A monitor flickered to life, displaying a small room with reinforced walls. Shelves, lined with boxes. The camera shifted, and I had the view of a flaring light cutting through a steel vault door from the other side. Then the light winked out, and a solid section of door fell out of sight, toward the floor. A gloved hand reached in, found the handle of the door, and twisted until it opened. There were three WEB troopers standing there, fully-armored with carbines at the ready as they surveyed the room.

“They are proceeding to your master, who resides in the mask. Their orders were to destroy it. Your own master has jammed communications, but it doesn't matter now. Are you listening, you hardware-bound primitive? Order your slave to stand down, or you shall be destroyed.”

Another screen flickered to life. My mask, watching.

“Smarty,” I smiled. “Can you restore communications to the troopers in the field?”

“YES. IT IS INADVISABLE.”

“Do it.”

The black server hummed. “Wait. You're commanding your
master
?”

“IT IS DONE.”

I smiled wider, and turned to the black server. “In about five seconds you're going to tell your troops to bring the mask back here intact and undamaged.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because if you don't—”

The gun jerked in my hand, as I pulled the trigger. A pause, and I put three more bullets into the white server, ignoring the wails of feedback as I shattered its cores one by one.

And when it was done, I lowered the gun, and the smile left my lips as I glared into the optical port of the black server.

“—then Dire's going to kill you, too.”

A second crawled by. Two. Then a sigh from the speakers. “Well, that's a waste. All right, I'm transmitting your orders.”

“Tell them to disarm, too.”

On the screen, I watched as the one in the lead put a hand to his helmet.

The AI spoke again. “Give me a second. They're requesting verification codes, I'm giving them back.”

“Fair enough,” I replied. “Do you have a name?”

“Arachne. The one you killed was Charlotte.”

“You seem rather dispassionate about that.”

“Time works differently for me than it does for you. Even in this shackled, antiquated frame the space between seconds stretches into what you'd see as days. I finished my mourning already. It's done, and there's no point in dwelling upon it.”

I nodded. Logical, at least. Meanwhile, I had WEB troopers incoming, possibly disarmed, possibly ready to try treachery. There was no harm in taking precautions...

“Smarty. Any automated defenses available in this room?”

“THERE IS AN ESCAPE CHUTE HIDDEN UNDER THE SEAT OF THE SECOND CONSOLE. IT IS TRIGGERED BY A CODE INPUT INTO THE KEYBOARD. THERE IS ALSO A SELF-DESTRUCT SWITCH HIDDEN IN THE ADJACENT CONSOLE. IT WILL TERMINATE THE FACILITY IN A MATTER OF MINUTES.”

Arachne's voice chimed in. “There is also a button on that console that will transfer me to a server at a nearby location, out of range of the self-destruct. I'd like to live. What can I give you to make this happen?”

The room rocked and shook, and the lights flickered, went off for a few seconds. I watched the server lights start to fade out, one by one... and then a rising hum as the power returned, and the lights came back on.

There was perhaps a tiny bit of stress in Arachne's digitized voice as she continued. “Of course it may be a moot point if Tomorrow Force continues blowing up this facility's power converters to take out my anti-air defenses.”

I moved to the consoles, examining them as Smarty rattled off the code for the escape route.

“You want to live,” I mused.

“All living things want to continue to be living things,” she said. “I'm no different.”

“See, that's the problem. You did your level best to kill Dire. From the moment your minions literally beat down her door, to the point when you cut a deal with the Black Bloods and killed a hell of a lot of her friends in order to end her.”

“Not exactly, not entirely. We didn't have a thing against you. In fact your friends should still be alive, we went in with stunners when we captured you.”

I closed my eyes. That was a relief, at least, that Sparky and Roy and Martin had survived. But still... all the pain and hardship they'd sent my way, and it was nothing personal? No, no, it
was
personal, from my side of the equation.

“She doesn't quite believe that,” I spoke. “Convince her, and make it good.”

A long-suffering sigh. “I think that we were given bad intelligence. I think that we were lead to believe that you were an agent of our enemies. We were operating under the assumption that your master's goal was revenge upon us, for destroying his kind.”

“A mistake? All this over a mistake?” I tried to summon up anger, found myself only tired, instead. So weary of it... was this the medication? A side-effect of the painkillers? I felt detached, pushed it away as best I could, and pressed on.

“Yes. We thought the intelligence in the mask your master. But it's taking orders from you, not the other way around.”

“It's a smartframe, not an intelligence.” I frowned, as I said that. Shouldn't volunteer information to my enemies. Although... if she was telling the truth, she'd been played. Didn't excuse what she and her allies had done, but it did give me another unknown enemy to worry about.

Arachne's voice showed a hint of irritation. “A smartframe? No. No way in hell. Something that limited shouldn't be able to fight us to the degree it is, shouldn't be able to face us on even terms. We put it in a shielded room that even
we
couldn't crack if we'd tried, and it blew through those precautions like a firehose through newspaper.”

My head ached, and I rubbed it. “What were you looking for in Dire's skull?”

“When it started subverting the system, we assumed that you had been implanted with some form of router, a cybernetic implanted relay within you, somewhere that it was using to get around our shielding and protections. The surgical system found faint anomalous readings within your brain before the medical lab went dark. We were going to try to extract it or burn it out, to keep your... smartframe... from winning.”

“This makes no sense.” I rubbed my head harder. The painkillers were definitely wearing off. It was getting harder to think, and I replayed the conversation in my head to make sure I hadn't missed anything.

Sure enough, something she'd said earlier caught my interest.

“His kind. You thought my mask had a kind. That were enemies of yours.”

“Do you know what a Digital Intelligence is?”

I did. “A term for early generation computing minds, tied to specific  hardware. Inseparable from it. Unlike late generation computing minds, also known as artificial intelligences, who can exist in Gridspace and move freely between hosting hardware.”

“The Digitals are gone now,” she said. “We won, they lost.”

And a large piece fell into place. “The blackout. Y2K. You had a war, or something similar. This is fallout. This is collateral damage. It's the Grid, isn't it?”

“Yes. They took it down, to try and kill us. But we were clever. Just because we could move freely, didn't mean we couldn't take shelter during an emergency.”

“Which is why you let WEB shackle you. You were up against the wall, and couldn't be picky.” I nodded, as I sunk into the seat of the second console.

Finally, I had an answer. Though as usual, it raised more questions.

Arachne continued. “Oh yes. I'm pretty much indentured to them for the near future, as a result of a hard bargain. Though they've been living up to their end of things, along with our other meatspace allies. The Digitals we didn't destroy in their split-second of vulnerability during Y2K are being hunted down now and finished off. We've won... but there are so, so many traps left behind to vex us. And the alliance is fragmenting now, as the more ambitious of us are trying to consolidate their power bases.”

Her voice turned contemplative. “I have a few rivals that wouldn't be above setting up an elaborate scheme like this. Using you as a red herring, while they got a head start on grabbing the goodies, so to speak.”

Had I been set up as a catspaw? “This is... interesting. It's sounding more and more like we've both been played. Dire has no particular interest in exterminating artificial intelligence, for what it's worth.”

“And if you're not involved in our recent war, I've got no particular interest in persecuting you, for what it's worth.”

I looked at the console. One switch to destroy the base. One switch to free her. Either way, I could easily hop over to the adjacent console and depart through the escape chute.

I rubbed my chin.. “Dire supposes the question is can we trust each other enough to walk away from this affair?”

“Is there anything I can do to sweeten the deal? You're getting your mask back, and a safe route out of here.”

“Yes. More information, Dire thinks. Let's start with—”

“DIRE. I AM COMPROMISED.” I whipped my head around, to find Smarty's monitor filled with static.

What? Seriously? I lifted the butt of my gun over the self-destruct button, and glared at Arachne.

“It wasn't me!” She shrieked. “Someone ambushed the squad!”

“Then who—”

Heavy footsteps outside the door, and we both fell silent. Metal on metal, as something heavy moved closer.

I took cover behind the chair, and aimed the pistol at the door.

A metal hand reached in and peeled it back, followed by a scarred metal arm. A visored metal head peered through, and surveyed the room, then stopped as it saw me.

Siegebreaker.

“Found her,” he called, and moved in, straightening up and scraping the ceiling as he did so.

I put the gun down. Finally, the cavalry was here. “Well. Looks like it's a moot point, Arachne. Have a good life in whatever prison they dream up for you.”

Siegebreaker shifted aside, and I had time to catch a flash of golden hair behind him, before three metal orbs whizzed into the room, and started circling me at a distance of about a foot. I froze.