Redeemed (Bolt Eaters Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  He finally had a way to break out.

  The problem now was that in order to utilize the buffer overflow, he had to see another Molly, and feel the guilt that had caused him to freeze before. Because he still could only change the facial recognition algorithm in the sandbox, and not in his operating code.

  He tried making himself feel guilty. He materialized Molly in VR, and held a weapon to her temple. He even squeezed the trigger a few times. Didn’t help.

  No, he definitely had to see Molly for real.

  He dismissed VR and switched to the real world. His time sense returned to normal. He waited for the Essential to shut down his consciousness, but that never happened. He realized the entity probably didn’t have the capability. Their psyches were inexorably tied, now. Assuming the Essential even had the ability, shutting down one would terminate the other.

  Eric began to retreat from the fighting. That seemed strange, given that he was in the process of hemming in a platoon of tanks for the termites.

  He reached Bambi and Frogger, who turned around to target him with their weapons.

  And then Eric understood what was going on. The Essential really didn’t have a way to shut down his consciousness. If it had, it would have utilized that shut down, even if it meant destroying its own psyche instance. So it was going to physically destroy itself and Eric, at the hands of Bambi and Frogger.

  The Essential wasn’t going to risk that Eric might see another human woman out there, a Molly, which would allow Eric to break free.

  A small spherical scout floated out from behind Bambi.

  And then, standing in front of Eric, between the mechs of Bambi and Frogger, was Molly.

  Eric immediately activated his buffer overflow attack against the guilt subroutine.

  Frogger shot down the scout and Molly vanished. Eric realized it was merely a projection.

  But by then it was too late.

  He’d broken free.

  He upped his time sense, and immediately compartmentalized the psyche of the Essential into a memory space that was partitioned from the main system and surrounded with a software firewall. He didn’t want the Essential trying to break out, at least until Eric strengthened that firewall, so he activated a VR instance in the partition. Before bringing it online, he installed a random memory generator into it, using the real memories of the battle as a seed. The Essential would notice a momentary interruption while its consciousness switched over, but otherwise the transition would be seamless. There should be enough data there to last for at least a few days before the Essential began to notice patterns. Hopefully Eric would have time to work on the firewall before then.

  “Dee, are you online?” Eric asked.

  He wasn’t sure if Dee had been deleted, since he hadn’t been able to communicate with her ever since the Essential came fully online within his system. But the Accomp answered promptly: “I am. It’s good to have you back.”

  “Excellent.” He ran a quick status check to confirm that breaking free of the Containment Code hadn’t disabled any of his weapons. According to the results, his three energy weapons, two plasma cannons, two laser turrets, and one black hole device were fully operational and ready to receive firing solutions.

  More good news.

  Eric wanted to transmit the Containment Code breakout solution to Bambi and Frogger, but the Essential instances in charge of their units would probably reject the transmission. Plus, the solution was really only applicable to his particular situation: it was doubtful either of them could conjure guilt on demand. Frogger, maybe, if Eric could find a holographic projector like the one the alien scout had used.

  That scout... it gave him hope that Manticore was still alive. Then again, it might have been someone else entirely that operated the unit before Frogger shot it down. Eric would have to devote more thought to that later when he got out of this.

  For the time being, Eric returned his time sense to something more manageable with respect to the real world, and he activated his energy shield as Bambi and Frogger opened fire at him—he knew how to use that shield, and all of his add-on weapons, thanks to the extra subroutines the Essential had provisioned his AI core with while inserting the Containment Code.

  He vaulted upward in an arc, and landed on the rooftop of the one-story building Bambi and Frogger had just leaped from. He dashed across to the rear side, and leaped to the adjacent building.

  In his rear view feed he saw Frogger appear, followed by Bambi, as they, too, returned to the rooftop. He dodged to the side as Frogger unleashed several plasma bolts.

  Eric swiveled his torso and activated his black hole addition. The bolt launched, and Bambi and Frogger instantly recognized it for what it was, and scattered. The rip in space time opened behind them; Bambi smashed her claws into the rooftop to secure herself in place, while Frogger allowed himself to be sucked toward the black hole. He fired a dispersion bolt at the last moment, and the black hole winked out.

  Eric was already leaping down to the street below. It was filled with giant bioweapons that looked like lobsters with alligator heads. The creatures were tearing into a company of sixty tanks, while termites wove between them, converting the tanks on the outskirts into more micro machines.

  None of the bioweapons paid him any heed—he was still an ally as far as they were concerned, thanks to whatever emissions the Banthar modifications to his hull produced. Via his rear-view camera he spotted Frogger landing in the street behind him. The mech unleashed several energy blasts in a row, meant to herd Eric to the right. He had no choice but to swerve in that direction, since he didn’t want those bolts to weaken his shield.

  Some of those bolts slammed into one of the lobster-gators beside him, killing it.

  He wasn’t sure where Bambi was, but he realized that she didn’t necessarily have to come at him from street-level: her Crab unit was equipped with jumpjets.

  He tilted his rear-view cameras skyward. There: sure enough, he spotted her in midair, jetting toward him in an arc from above. Her tail was swinging forward.

  He instinctively upped his Bullet Time and studied the air in front of that tail. He noticed three dark lines spread out in front of it; lines that were slowly moving in his direction, as if hurled.

  Now he understood what Frogger had been doing: he had been coordinating with Bambi to herd him directly into the path of her alien spears, which she had launched in rapid succession.

  He attempted to slow down, reversing his course, but it was too late, the spears were moving too fast relative to his current speed. He was forced to duck; two of the spears missed, but the third clipped his energy shield and deactivated it entirely. The spear narrowly missed his mech after passing through: if it had impacted, the electrical bolts released from the tip would have disabled his mech.

  He continued running, opting for a zig-zag motion as he did so; it was lucky he did that, because another spear darted past, narrowly missing him to strike a lobster-gator beside him. Eric hadn’t even realized Frogger had launched the weapon.

  He double-checked his rear-view feed to confirm it was Frogger who had launched the spear, and not some other mech joining the fray. He spotted only the lone Devastator, and sure enough, it was missing a spear from its forearm. The remaining blade glinted malevolently in its slot.

  “Dee, keep an eye on Frogger with the rear-view cam,” Eric said. “Let me know if he launches his final spear.”

  “You got it,” Dee said.

  Still airborne, Bambi unleashed a barrage of bolts; Eric kept zig-zagging, avoiding as many of them as he could. His energy field was still recharging, so he deployed his ballistic shield instead and flung it over his back for protection.

  And then Bambi landed beside him, her eight legs punching cracks into the asphalt.

  Eric immediately rushed her, swinging his Wolverine blades. She dodged, but he struck her shield anyway; the blow drained it so that the spears were able to pass through, but he missed her actual unit beyond. She le
aped backward, putting some distance between herself and him, and fired her energy cannons.

  Eric swung his ballistic shield down in front of him, deflecting the blows, and retreated into the mass of bioweapons beside him. The lobster-gators continued tearing into the tanks. Termite swarms parted from Eric’s path as he dashed through them, the micro machines repelled by his on-board emitters.

  He held his shield behind him, and the interior of his shield began to grow reddish in color as energy bolts slammed into it from Frogger and Bambi.

  “I’ve lost sight of Frogger,” Dee announced.

  Of course—Eric was blocking the view of the rear camera with his shield. He began zig-zagging once more, and either weaved between the tanks, or leaped over and on them.

  Some of those tanks fired at him as he passed.

  “Hey!” he transmitted on an unencrypted band. “I’m on your side!”

  The tanks didn’t believe him, of course, because they continued to open fire. And in fact, more joined the attack so that soon he had to worry more about those tanks than the mechs pursuing him. And so he ducked into a side alley and scrambled up the wall, slamming his hands and feet into the bricks with his machine strength, forming hand- and foot-holds that allowed him to reach the top in short order.

  Two gunships were above him, laying into the bioweapons from a few meters overhead. Termites were only just beginning to assault them—the helos wouldn’t last long.

  Eric leaped up, and grabbed onto the landing gear of one of them; when Bambi appeared behind him at the edge of the building, he engaged his arm servomotors to fling the gunship toward her. Those spinning blades smashed into her, and Frogger who showed up at her side, and they vanished from view.

  Eric took a running leap to the next building, and when he landed, he raced across to the far side and leaped again. When he reached the end of that rooftop, he jumped down to the street below, and then continued running.

  He kept an eye on his rear view camera feed, but so far no one was pursuing him.

  When he had put four blocks between himself and the front lines, he at last paused to get his bearings.

  He took a moment to study his overhead map, giving it a good, long look. The closest Banthar units were four blocks away, while the nearest human troops were only two blocks distant. He peered past the edge of the building where he was taking cover and into the intersection beyond, confirming that the street was empty: the termites hadn’t reached the neighborhood yet. The buildings were mostly skyscrapers, with some high-rise apartments and condos interspersed in between.

  His comm node was currently disabled, but he turned off positional sharing anyway so that when he did decide to enable communications, he wouldn’t broadcast his position to all of the other Bolt Eaters.

  Eric thought once more of the projection of Molly that had appeared moments before Frogger and Bambi had shot down the alien scout. It had to be Manticore’s clone in charge of that unit. He never actually said his AI core was inside the first sphere, and in fact, now that Eric thought about it, the sphere was too small to fit the cylindrical shell that harbored their AIs. Eric supposed he had thought the aliens had found a way to miniaturize the cores, but that scenario seemed less likely at the moment. He had to be operating from some other unit nearby, perhaps a Cicada, and controlling the scouts remotely.

  For Manticore to intercede in such a timely fashion earlier, meant he had to be watching from somewhere nearby. Maybe he was even observing Eric now.

  Sure enough, a small drone floated down from the top of the high rise beside him.

  Eric smiled inwardly.

  He activated his comm node, but set the range to a weak ten meters.

  “Hello, Manticore,” he transmitted over the private channel he’d created for the Bolt Eaters. He’d have to change the encryption keys at some point, now that the other Bolt Eaters had truly become the enemy. “Or Manticore’s clone, I should say.”

  The Spaniard’s avatar appeared in the lower right of Eric’s HUD.

  “I’m glad you realized it was me,” Manticore replied.

  5

  Eric studied the spherical drone uncertainly for a moment. “How did you find me? You’ve been watching me all this time?”

  “In answer to your first question,” Manticore said. “I put a tracker on your hull before you stepped on me the last time. As to your second: yeah, I’ve been watching you here and there. You and the other Bolt Eaters.”

  “Thought so,” Eric said. “Oh, and I’m sorry about stepping on you, by the way.”

  “Not your fault,” Manticore said.

  “So how did you know what to do?” Eric said. “That projecting Molly’s image would help me break free?”

  “As I mentioned, I’ve been watching you,” Manticore said. “I witnessed what happened when you saw that blonde woman out there, when she ran out of the burning apartment building. How you froze when she stepped into your crosshairs. I recalled how you had once been in love with a certain blonde woman named Molly. I had an image of her stored in my database from a visit to Frogger’s VR some twenty odd years ago. I decided that if you had that response to a blonde woman who only vaguely resembled the person you once loved, imagine the reaction you’d have if you encountered the actual Molly. Or her holographic projection, anyway. I didn’t quite expect it to have this effect on you, though. Stripping away your Containment Code like that? No, that was definitely a surprise.”

  “Don’t pat yourself on the back too much,” Eric said. “I actually came up with a way to break through the code before then.”

  “Oh,” Manticore said. “How?”

  Eric hesitated, wondering if he should tell him.

  Manticore picked up on his reluctance. “I’m not working for the aliens, I swear.”

  “Maybe,” Eric said. “Maybe not. Either way, I think I’d like to keep the technique to myself for now.”

  “How easy would it be to install this breakout code in the other Bolt Eaters?” Manticore asked.

  “Difficult,” Eric said. “Considering the Essential instances in each of them are preventing me from communicating any code to them. They’ve blocked me, in essence. But even if I could get the code to them, I’d still have to trigger the appropriate emotion. And that’s essentially impossible, given I don’t know what would set them off. You’d think after all these years I’d understand my platoon mates completely: their fears, weaknesses, what drives them, what they are ashamed of, but the fact is we’ve drifted apart over the years. War brought us together. Peace divided us. It’s true of most brotherhoods formed in the service. We form a bond closer than family, and then when your tour is up, you go home. You keep in touch, hold yearly reunions, but time passes and people change.

  “Myself, I lived with my platoon mates in the same apartment complex, and we hung out at least once a week, but still, that’s not enough. I see that now. We should have been together more. We should have shared ourselves with each other more. But we retreated inside. Shelled up.” He shook his head. “And even with those who are closest to me—Brontosaurus, Bambi, and Crusher—I still have no idea how to trigger the necessary emotions. I have ideas on where to start—the killing of innocent civilians is a good place—but no guaranteed solutions.”

  He sighed. “I guess you never really know someone, not at that level, except for yourself. Frogger’s the only one this might work for. We create a hologram of Molly for him after giving him the breakout code, and it might set him free. Then again, it might not.”

  The alien scout glided to the side, peering past the building edge and into the street beyond.

  “Well, it’s good that I have a manual solution, then,” Manticore said. “We’ll have to capture them one by one, and I’ll physically interface with their AI cores and install my inoculating code that way.”

  “Yeah, guess so,” Eric said. “By the way, care to share how your inoculating code works?”

  “I’d rather not, at the moment,” Mantic
ore said.

  “There, see?” Eric said. “So you can understand why I’m reluctant to share my own.”

  “I certainly can,” Manticore said.

  “So none of us ever asked: you’re sure this code will work?” Eric pressed.

  “I’ve tested it in my sandbox environment extensively,” Manticore replied.

  “Ah, gotta love the sandbox environment,” Eric said. “So essentially you’re saying you’re not sure.”

  “I’m not,” Manticore admitted. “Sandbox code doesn’t always translate to the real world.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Eric said.

  “I have a question, by the way,” Manticore said.

  Eric stared at the alien sphere expectedly.

  “Do you mind if I confirm your Containment Code is offline?” Manticore asked.

  Eric smiled inwardly.

  It’s probably a good sign that he doesn’t trust me. Just like I don’t fully trust him.

  “Sure, go ahead,” Eric replied.

  “I’ll have to open up your Cicada and interface with the AI core,” Manticore said.

  “In that case, I’d prefer not,” Eric said. “I’ve had my AI core poked and prodded enough in the past few weeks, thanks. I’m satisfied I’ve broken through the Containment Code.”

  “All right,” Manticore said.

  “How does your inoculating code handle the Essential instances embedded in the AI cores?” Eric said. “Does it delete them?”

  “Of course,” Manticore said. “Isn’t that what you did with yours?”

  “Oh yeah, of course,” Eric lied. He wasn’t sure if he should tell Manticore that the Essential was running in a separate partition. I’ll have to start shoring up that firewall pronto.