Aaron left the path and started to run through the trees. His suit spun a stealth effect around him. After a minute slipping unseen through the forest he arrived at the administration block. There were two storeys above ground, while his research had shown ten floors cut into the bedrock beneath the forest. The secure storage vault was on the bottom. His field function scan revealed a complex array of sensors guarding the walls and surrounding swathe of garden.
He began to sprint past the last trees, accelerating hard with field-reinforced muscles until he was at the edge of the lawn, then jumped, extending his force field wide, shaping it into two long swept-back petals. Suspended between his invisible wings he glided directly at a specific window on the upper floor like a silent missile. He grinned into the air that rushed against his face and rippled his suit. Excitement was starting to build, which his biononics could only suppress so much. Even though he knew what he was going to have to do, he was still enjoying himself; this was what he existed for.
Aaron let out an em pulse from his biononics, targeted to disable the sensors and power supply around the window. When he was five metres from the wall, he triggered a disruptor effect. Glass turned to white powder and blew inwards with the sound of damp cloth being ripped. He cancelled his force field wings and dropped through the hole, hitting the floor with a roll.
Inside was a long finance department office. Deserted and dark. Door locked. He didn’t use the disrupter effect, simply smashed it down with amplified muscle power. The corridor outside ran the length of the building. Orange emergency lighting produced strangely angled shadows across the walls. His scrambler effect knocked out the net across half of the building. He jogged to the emergency stairwell and burst through. Vaulted over the rail and landed with a loud thud on the concrete floor below, integral force field absorbing the impact. He scanned round.
Two security managers were sitting in the control centre, both heavily enriched. They were standing motionless as their u-shadows interfaced them with the clinic’s security net and they struggled to make sense of what was happening across the forest.
The door broke apart as Aaron walked through it. Eight energy-dumps flew out from the bandolier straps under his suit, hand-sized black discs that zipped through the air like cybernetic hornets. They struck the security managers before either could fire a shot. Both of them were transformed into silhouettes of searing white light as their personal force-fields were relentlessly overloaded; tendrils of electricity lashed out from the incandescent shapes, grounding through the desks and chairs next to them. Ribbons of smoke crept up from the carpet round their feet. They began to thrash about as the discharge of energy soared to an unbearable thunderclap screech. Light panels in the ceiling detonated into splinters of bubbling plastic.
Aaron drew a jelly gun from the bandolier harness as the nimbus of light on the first manager began to fade. The man’s force field flickered erratically into a purple and orange shroud. Dark shadows infiltrated the dying luminescence, exposing swathes of smouldering uniform. Aaron fired. The manager disintegrated in a spherical wave of gore that splattered across the room. After that, Aaron simply waited a few seconds until the energy-dumps completed their work on the second manager, and her force field spluttered out. The room was plunged into darkness as she fell to the floor in a sobbing heap, barely conscious.
He knelt beside her and took the surgical cutter from his pocket. The little black and silver gadget extended its eight malmetal arms as he placed it carefully on her head. Unlike Ruth Stol the clinic hadn’t designed any beauty into the security manager. She had a plain round face with dark enriched eyes; the skin on her cheeks was red raw from the crackling electron currents. Tears were leaking across them as she gazed up at Aaron.
“Please,” she croaked.
“Don’t worry,” he told her. “You won’t remember this night when you’re re-lifed.”
The cutter settled on the crown of her head like some vampiric creature, the arms tightening to obtain a better grip on her singed flesh. Microsurgery energy blades slid out and began to cut. Aaron waited with only the sound of gooey blood droplets drizzling down from the soot-caked ceiling to break the dark silence of the room.
“Procedure complete,” his u-shadow reported.
Aaron reached down, and gently pulled the surgical cutter. It lifted upwards with a slimy sucking sound, taking the top of her skull with it. A small amount of blood welled up around the edges of the severed bone, dribbling down through the matted hair. Her exposed brain glistened a pale grey in the weak emergency lighting shining in from the corridor outside.
He poised his left hand a couple of centimetres above the gory naked flesh. The skin on his palm puckered up in seven little circles. Slender worm-like tendrils began to wriggle out of each apex. He brought the hand down on her brain, and manipulated his force field to bond the two together, preventing his hand from sliding, even fractionally. The tendrils insinuated themselves into her neurone structure, branching again and again like some plant root seeking moisture. These tips were hunting out distinct neural pathways, circumventing conscious control over not just her body but her thoughts.
Synapses were successfully violated and corrupted. His mentallic software began to pull coherent strands out of the chaotic impulses.
Her name was Viertz Accu. A hundred and seventeen years old. Advancer heritage. Currently married to Asher Lei. Two children. The youngest, Harry, was two years old. She was upset that she’d pulled another late shift; little Harry did so like her reading to him before bedtime.
Aaron’s software moved the acquisition focus up towards the present.
All earlier emotional content was now superseded by sheer terror. Body’s sensory input was minimal, sinking below waves of pain from the force field collapse. One memory rising above all the others, bright and loud: the surgical cutter descending. Starting to repeat. Thoughts becoming incoherent as the memory degenerates into a psychosis loop. Limbs shake as bodyshock commences.
Forget that, Aaron’s thoughts instruct the brain he now rules. He has to concentrate, to exert his own thoughts to squash the terror memory. His influence is assisted by the flawless positioning of the neurone override tendrils, making it impossible for her to resist. A different kind of mental pressure is then exerted. Her conscious thoughts wither to insensate status, effectively sinking her into a coma.
Stand, he commands the puppet body.
It straightens up, and Aaron rises beside it. His hand remains locked in place on top of her ruined head by the mucilage force field.
Clinic security system review. Schematics flip up into their mutual exovision, showing alert points. His u-shadow ends its roguish electronic assaults as he accesses the clinic net through Viertz’s private secure link. False signals are generated within the administration building to replace the equipment he neutralized during his entry.
Codes. Up from Viertz’s own memory and her macrocellular clusters spill file after file of codes for every aspect of the clinic. He deploys them to damp down the security net, reducing it to a level-zero state. Another set of commands reset the smartcore’s alertness, convincing it that it was receiving malfunction warnings and the security managers now have everything under control.
Several operatives across the forest are calling in.
It’s all right, he mouths and Viertz sends on a secure link. There’s been a spate of glitches, those boogledamned glints have been getting into the cabling again. They were chewing on a node, little bastards. Boogledamned is a phrase Viertz is fond of. Glints are tiny native rodents infesting the forest and always causing problems to the clinic and its machinery, despite two illegal attempts by the management to exterminate them.
Generally the explanation is accepted. Viertz exchanges a few more in-character comments with colleagues, and signs off.
Vault.
They walk along the ground floor corridor, side by side, Aaron’s hand still firmly in place on her head. Viertz’s code opens t
he lift doors. Aaron extracts additional overrides which will clear him to accompany her down to the bottom.
The vault level poses more of a problem. It is covered in sensors, all of which are linked directly to the clinic smartcore through isolated, protected circuits. There are no overrides he can utilize to smooth his passage. If it sees him it will immediately query his identity.
The mission is now time-critical.
As the lift reaches the vault level, Aaron uses an em pulse to kill all power circuits and unguarded systems. His scrambler field disables the protected security network. The smartcore now knows something is wrong, but cannot detect what. The entire floor is an electronic dead zone.
Aaron slides the lift door open with his free hand. Metal provides considerable resistance. The activators emit a screech as they are buckled by the pressure he exerts. He steps into darkness. Field function scans and infrared imaging reveal the short, empty corridor ahead. He walks along it with the zombie Viertz marching beside him until they reach the large vault door of meta-bonded malmetal at the end. Both wall and door are guarded by a strong force field, powered independently from within. His free hand strokes across the undefended corridor wall until his fingers are resting over the armoured conduit carrying part of the security net’s cabling. He presses down. A small disruptor pulse disintegrates the concrete. Dust pours out, and he pushes his hand deeper into the hole. He has to excavate up to his elbow until he reaches the conduit. There is a brief clash of energy fields and the conduit shatters, exposing the optical cables inside.
The fingertips of this hand extrude slender filaments which penetrate the optical cables, immersing themselves into the blaze of coherent light flashing along the interior. His enrichments are interfaced directly into the smartcore through an unprotected link. A torrent of destructive software is unleashed by his u-shadow, corroding the smartcore’s primary routines like acid on skin. In the first eight milliseconds of the assault, the smartcore loses over half of its intellectual processing capacity. Its default preservation routines withdraw its connections to the vault security system, allowing it to retreat and lick its wounds in isolation.
Aaron’s u-shadow turns its attention to the connections along the other end of the expropriated optical cable, and examines the security network inside the vault. It takes less than a second to map out the system’s nodes and kubes allowing it to remove the smartcore’s control and safeguard procedures. The force field switches off, and the thick door opens with a low swish of retracting malmetal.
Aaron removes his hand from the ragged hole. He and Viertz walk forward in tandem, passing through the air/dust shield with a gentle buzzt. Independent lighting panels click on, revealing a shiny oblong chamber filled with floor-to-ceiling racks of translucent pink plastic kubes.
The registry is a simple slim pedestal of metal just inside.
Viertz accesses the dormant software within. She is asked for her DNA-based authority certificate.
As he passes the threshold, Aaron’s field scans reveal two strange energy signatures emerging from the walls on either side of the vault. It is the final failsafe to protect the priceless half-million secure memorycells within the vault. Not listed anywhere in the security net inventory, and quietly imported from a Central World where such technology is unexceptional. Two guards with heavy weapons enrichments sealed within the temporal suspension zone of exotic matter cages. Their enrichments were already fully powered up when they began their two-year duty period. They do not ask questions as they step back into real-time, they simply open fire.
Aaron’s force field is immediately pushed close to overload as it struggles to protect him and Viertz. His disadvantage is terribly obvious as energy beams pummel into him and the woman. Dense waves of scarlet photons ignite with blinding ferocity around his chest and arms. He staggers back half a step.
Send authority certificate.
But the pedestal uses non-military grade hardware. It cannot receive and acknowledge any information in such a hostile electromagnetic environment.
“Shit!” His bandolier belts launch a flock of electronic counter-measure drones and five niling-sponges. The guards twist away from the threat, ducking behind the racks. Aaron reaches out with his free hand and manages to grip the top of the pedestal as the last of the energy barrage drains away from his force field. The filaments emerge from his fingertips and try to burrow into the nodes and cables underneath the metal.
Both guards spin out from behind the racks and open fire again. The niling-sponges cluster together and activate their absorption horizons. Energy beams from the weapons curve bizarrely through the hot air to sink harmlessly into the black-star blooms now drifting sedately in front of Aaron. Their horizons start to expand significantly. The guards shift to kinetic carbines. Their hypervelocity projectiles are unaffected by the niling-sponges and smash against Aaron and Viertz. The force field flares bright copper, shading up towards carmine. Aaron can feel the strain the impacts are punishing his body with, reinforcement fields are struggling to hold him upright.
On your knees.
Viertz sinks quickly to the shiny floor, presenting a smaller, more stable target. His filaments have penetrated the metal casing of the pedestal, and begin to affiliate themselves with the fine mesh of optical strands beneath.
A couple of energy-dumpers skim towards Aaron. He shoots them with a simple ion shot from an enrichment in his forearm. His force field has to reformat momentarily to allow the ions through. It is a weakness which the guards exploit ruthlessly, concentrating their fire. He feels the kinetic projectiles lance into his shoulder and upper torso. Combat software reports five direct hits. Field scans reveal the nature of the foreign projectiles. Number one is a straight explosive, which is countered by a damping field, turning it to a lump of white hot metal. Two releases a pack of firewire tangles, which expand through his flesh, ripping it apart at a cellular level, incinerating as they go, wrecking biononic organelles. They can only be staved off by a specific frequency disrupter field to attack their molecular structure, which has a debilitating effect of the biononics still functional in the area. Three dispenses a nerve agent in sufficient quantity to exterminate five hundred humans. Biononics converge quickly to counteract the deadly toxin. Four is another explosive, neutralized along with one. Five is a cluster of micro-janglers, microbe-sized generators that jam his nervous system, inhibiting biononic and enrichment operations; a secondary function is to induce pain impulses. They require a scrambler field to kill them.
Blood pumps out from the cratered flesh and torn suit, to be flattened back beneath the reformatted force field. The surrounding fabric of his suit is quickly saturated. Biononics congregate around the edge of the wounds, acting in concert to knit the damage back together, sealing up veins, arteries, and capillaries. Inside his body the firewire tangles halt their expansion as the disrupter sabotages their molecular cohesion. It is too slow, they are causing a massive amount of damage. Damage which is amplified by the microjanglers.
Aaron flings his head back to scream in agony as the microscopic technology war is fought within his muscles and blood vessels. But still he keeps hold of both Viertz and the pedestal.
His biononics shut off a whole series of nerves, eliminating the pain and all sensation in his shoulder and arm. A disconcertingly large section of the medical status display in his exovision is flashing red. Nausea plagues him. Shivers run along his limbs. The field medic sac in his thigh pushes a dose of suppressants into his bloodstream.
Another wave of kinetics pound him. He is in danger of falling backwards. His biononics and enrichments are reaching maximum capacity. Countermeasure drones do their best to confuse the enemy targeting sensors, but the narrow confines of the vault almost make such systems irrelevant.
His filaments interface with the registry kube in the pedestal.
Send authority certificate.
The registry software acknowledges Viertz’s authority. And the u-shadow runs a searc
h for Inigo’s secure store. It locates the memorycell. The physical coordinates are loaded into Aaron’s combat routines. A volume of eight cubic centimetres to be held inviolate. The rest of the vault’s structure is now expendable.
He lets go of the pedestal and Viertz. The woman slumps forward, a motion which jolts her unsecured brain. A fresh upwelling of blood bubbles out around the circle of cut bone. The protective swirl of niling-sponges deactivate, their black horizons folding in upon themselves. Aaron raises his head and smiles an animal snarl through the clear air at the guards. Their barrage has paused as they take stock.
“Payback time,” he growls enthusiastically.
The first disruptor pulse smashes out. Half of the precious racks rupture in a maelstrom of molten plastic. Both guards stagger backwards. Jelly gun shots hammer at their force fields. Energy-dumpers zip about, launched by both sides. Black niling horizons expand and contract like inverse novas. Kinetic projectiles chew into the vault’s concrete and marble walls. More racks suffer, shattering like antique glass. The plastic catches fire, molten rivulets streaking across the floor, spitting feeble flames from their leading edges.
Aaron positions himself between the guards and Inigo’s memorycell, shielding it from any possible damage. He manages to puncture the force field of one guard’s leg and fires the jelly gun into the gap. The leg instantly transforms to a liquid pulp of ruined cells. The guard screams as he topples over. His force field reconfigures over the stump, allowing the blood and gore to splash across the ground where it starts to steam softly. Energy-dumpers attach themselves to him like predatory rodents. He thrashes about helplessly as his force field diminishes.
Now it is just Aaron and the remaining guard. They advance on each other, each trusting in his own weapons enrichments. This is no longer a battle of software or even human wits. It is brute strength only which will prevail now.
At the end they resemble two atomic fireballs colliding. A shockwave of incandescent energy flares out from the impact, vaporizing everything it touches. One fireball is abruptly extinguished.