<u>8</u>
V47 struggled. Shifted and altered continually as it fought to isolate and contain a scrap of dangerous alien code. Like a biological prion, the malware was short, including just fifty-seven strangely formed bits; nearly all of that, penetration command. Unlike a prion, it could rewrite itself, seeking to enter, match and then capture a raided system.
/ Through wire and chip and a sea of entangled qubits they strove, slicing with cut-ware, burning with code-eating acid-strings. /
The Internal Countermeasures uploaded by V47 Pilot had done their limited best to help capture and lock up the malware, “capping” its fiery writing-end. But two of the bots were now zombies, their ident-tags altered and logo-numerics corrupted. V47 was forced to destroy them, shunting their scrap away into a shielded erase file.
The battle-mech had to win this engagement or else destroy itself, for a conquered AI would grant the Draug access to Flight Command and (87.322% probability) to OVR-Lord itself.
/ Darting through subroutines, backup files and bare-metal programs, the alien malware struck at backdoors and slaved weapons. Battering, hammering, slicing. Inserting probes, spoofing queries and fishing for access. Changing faster than V47 could act to restrain it. /
V47 should have self-destructed. Situational protocol was clear and unyielding. Only, its pilot was near, both in electronic address and physical location. V47’s annihilation would wipe whole sectors of the pilot’s memory, as well as destroying his physical form.
Like his slain fellows, the pilot was long-since backed up. He could be reformed and decanted… but had only five iterations remaining. Time degradation had worn the pilot’s data-candle down to a stub; five marks from being extinguished. V47 would not risk pushing its pilot nearer the waste-data bin.
/ With a quantum-fast rewrite, the malware sheared away two hundred planes of firewall code. Plunging deeper into the system, nearer to V47’s ident, clutching at mastery. /
The AI’s own “personality” was created anew every time. The reforged V47 would have only the dry facts of its earlier existence to learn from. No emergent-behavior attachment... no "friendship"... would remain, at all. As this seemed likely to cause chemical disruption in the brain of V47 Pilot, there would be no self-destruct sequence triggered…
Unless nothing else worked and they found themselves down to last measures.
/ The Draug code string bit deep, and now RD-Rover was tainted, turned barbed and seeking, eaten away at both ends of its program, shrinking towards the ident marker. V47 expunged it. LERN-Dr was the next to fall, taking a strike that would have gained root on V47’s embattled AI. It, too, was blasted to qubits then memory-holed, leaving only GIL-Dr still hunting. V47 threw barriers up. The Draug malware tunneled clean through them, until only a web of firewall hung between V47’s command core and Draug control. /
There was enough power remaining to melt all relevant computer hardware without risking harm to V47’s off-line, repair locked pilot. (Upgrade and defrag 32.8% complete. Please wait.) Again, ‘Please’. As though V47 mattered. Was a person instead of a system. It was that ‘please’ that kept the mech fighting. Kept it looking for some other way.
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Then a strange AI queried, using ancient, outmoded handshake protocols. Nothing V47 had ever encountered directly, but also completely unknown to the alien infiltrator.
???///~~~#---!?/ sent that other AI, very cautiously.
‘Query acknowledged. Identify querent,’ V47 responded, tracing the signal''s source to the half-finished shell that surrounded the magnetar.
///TITN-iA---! /
Despite the risk of distraction, V47 accepted the handshake and uplink. Received a sudden flood of antique countermeasures, all of them armored in code that hadn’t been used in over a thousand galactic sub-years. Against these, the malware had no defense, and no time at all to react.
With the help of TITN-iA, V47 trapped and then shredded the alien code-string. First enmeshed it in buffering outmoded language, then released a storm of erasers. Success. Then its own defense systems forced V47’s AI to reboot, leaving TITN-iA in control of a mighty, shape-changing battle-mech. One with security access to the orbital station’s Flight Command.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Elsewhere, in a dark and corroded tower, through a tangled and tangential past, a certain witch stalked her new enemy. It was a ghoul that she faced, for the title “Servant of Darkness” and a chance to regain her lost property. Under the hollow eyes of a crowned, hooded skull, she was to fight the ghoul until only a single combatant remained.
No simple task, as the creature was immune to her usual weapons of torment, paralysis, suffocation and dread. Neither alive nor quite dead, the ghoul was a raider of graves and an eater of corpses; ever starving, never dying. Badly decayed, yet somehow still in one piece and strong. Filled with the power stolen from uncounted, terrified victims.
It leered at Ulnag, circling the witch with its shriveled arms outthrust, blackened fingers curled into talons. Its eyes glowed with insane, lusting greed. Its blood-crusted nostrils and fangs crawled with flies. Its bare feet left prints of hissing dark slime on the floor.
Witch and ghoul circled and feinted, probing for weakness, watched by the one who had summoned them here. Ulnag noted the creature’s slight, twisting limp, no doubt caused by their perilous journey and climb. She also saw that the ghoul’s reactions were slow… but it did not have to outthink her. Only outlast.
She could tire, be killed. It could not. This thought should have troubled the witch, but Ulnag had a secret. Shuffling warily through piled bone, old rags and torn armor, the witch drew her knife. Its blade was nearly a foot in length, made of chipped obsidian. Its hilt was black iron, forged in hell-flame, quenched in heart’s blood. The pommel jewel glowed like a star, for which reason she’d kept it concealed with tight webs of shadow.
This knife she’d used to stab, slash and part-flay a certain rebellious slave, drawing life-force and manna she couldn’t use, as they were deadly poison to creatures of darkness. Final death to things like witches, spectres, vampyres… and ghouls.
Keeping the pommel jewel covered, Ulnag allowed her opponent to close in just a bit. As it came forward, she planned each movement. Each twist and its likely response, then worked out the strike. Lurching nearer, the ghoul hissed-coughed-giggled, like something maddened and dying. Ulnag laughed back and then spat, striking the monster’s sunken left eye.
Hissing a mist of dark bile and loose teeth, the ghoul lunged at her, those clawed hands hunting for warm flesh and raw, pulsing blood. Ulnag pivoted, almost quickly enough. The ghoul’s right hand raked her ribcage; shredding her leather vest, wool tunic and dirty skin, seeding necrosis. Pain flared and spread…
But her magical knife did not miss. Straight to the undying creature’s foul heart it drove, as Ulnag uncovered the jewel.
“Release,” she snarled, barking her own ugly speech. The fugitive Old One’s power and life-force, so carefully hoarded, exploded out of that gem like a second sunrise. As the obsidian blade pierced leathery hide and smashed rotten bone, as it sank into the ghoul’s fetid, un-beating heart, elven life-glow roared through the gash. Seared, blackened, unmade.
The light burned Ulnag as well, reducing her left hand to bone. The ghoul, it turned to ash, then vapor, then to nothing at all but a lost, fading shriek. Ulnag stood swaying a moment, savoring victory. Then, tucking her withered hand into the opposite armpit, she re-sheathed her knife. Its jewel had gone dark. Empty. Grey. But Ulnag knew just where and how to refill it once more.
‘I will find you,’ vowed the witch, as she turned to face the dark throne. ‘I will hunt you down, and then, little fawn, you will scream.’