Chapter 151 The Digital God
It seemed like crawling down the throat of a dying mechanical creature the way down the central spoke.
Having closed the blast doors behind us, we down-climbed the emergency maintenance ladders. The main lifts were dead, and their casings were ringing with the horrible, metallic screams of the shell of the Aether undergoing the strain of its fall.
Hull temperature is increasing, reported Vane, tightening his voice as he looked in at his datapad in a hand that only hung one-handed at the rung above me. "We're hitting the exosphere. The friction is beginning to roast the exterior plating. Not two hours to go before the structural integrity collapses and this entire station disintegrates.
Keep on, Kidd, Ryker said, at the head of the line.
It was with a sickening, incessant beat that my left hand throbbed. I was not able to grab the ladder with it, but I had to pull my elbow round the rungs, and reduce myself with my right hand. Each shock was a spike of white-hot pain up my arm, however, and I bit the inside of my cheek to avoid shrilling.
I have you, I have you, grunted Baron just beneath me. The huge werewolf was reclining and held his broad shoulder out to me, so that I could put my foot on it whenever I lacked the strength to maintain myself. His human nature was holden by his power.
Ryker said, "End of the line.
He fell the last ten feet on a reinforced glass catwalk. We went along, falling into the centre of the Aether.
The Server Core.
It was a round room that was as big as a football stadium. The server banks were all towered, the walls completely covered with black obsidian walls, flickering with billions of data streams screaming in panic.
It is a quantum matrix, Sato breathed over the comms on the surface, and her voice was crackling with statical interference. Valerius did not simply upload his mind, he sprinkled it out onto a billion other processing nodes. He is everywhere in that room."
The Mainframe Console was located in the very center of the sphere, and was suspended in the air by a network of dense fiber-optic cables.
And at the catwalk of the glass that divided us and the console, was Valerius.
He wasn't physical. He was a strenuous hologram, which shone a perfect, clear blue light. he was dressed in his pure Purist Commander suit, and his face had no more of the rotting violet veins that had consumed General Vance. He looked perfect. Immortal.
You are an unremitting infection, Ryker," with which Valerius spoke at the same time on all sides of the room. "But your biology limits you. I have lost the limpnesses of flesh, of wearying, of horror.
Then your humanity is lost, you asked me to kill you, Ryker grumbled, and walked toward her, his Star-Metal sword flashing an ugly orange glare on the blue-lit glass. And you are just going to lose your power source.
The digital god said, The descent is locked. The throusters can not be operated by that console. I am the console."
Ryker came in with the words "Vane," and though his eyes were still on the hologram, he was not looking at it. How many hours until one breaks the physical?
Would direct connection to the central port possible? Three minutes, said Vane, and drew out a heavy interface cable, which he pulled out of his pack. "But I need a clear path."
You will, you will, said Baron, and his eyes turned yellow.
Ryker charged.
The Star-Metal sword flashed in an arc that would have cut his head off, and in the direction of the neck of the hologram. The blade did not just go through light.
CLANG.
Valerius raised a hand. The particles of light condensed immediately, and there was a production of a blazing blue shield which barred the antique sword. The strike was like a bell-stroke.
I possess the photons of this chamber, Ryker, but I am in charge of them, said Valerius coldly. I can turn light as hard as diamond.
The other hand of the hologram moved, the light focussing into an elongated malignant broadsword. Valerius swung round, his motions being of the same kind and devoid of any human scruples.
Ryker blocked, and sparks flew as the hard-light blade struck the Star-Metal.
"Go!" Ryker charged to Vane, and fought against the perfection of the machine.
Vane ran down the catwalk to the central console.
The voice of Valerius boomed out "Access Denied."
Spherical ceiling panels fell back. There was a drop of automated defense turrets which followed Vane with laser sights.
"I've got the guns!" Baron shouted. He did not move all the way, the catwalk was too small--but he sprung, like Alpha could, and with his great fists ripped a conduit pipe of metal out of the wall. He hurled it like a javelin. The pipe struck the first turret destroying its tracking lens.
I didn't have my magic. I was not able to use my left hand. But I had the Purist pistol.
I was leaning on the rail with my right arm, and gazing down the gun. I fired three kinetic slugs.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The second turret burst and threw shrapnel down into the ridge, evidently, into the black hole underneath the catwalk.
"I'm at the console!" Vane screamed, falling on his knees and jacking the heavy cable into the mainframe port. The datapad upon which he was typing blazed with a boiling torrent of red code. "He's fighting me! The ICE algorithms are moving one second!
Thy rude code can not shatter a mind, Thou tauntest, Valerius, thee.
The hard-light avatar circled around the guard of Ryker, disarming him and kicking him right in the chest. The local gravity about the boots of Ryker was just momentarily turned aside, and he was hurled backward in the air. The glass behind him broke as he crashed into a server bank.
Vane was looked at by Valerius with his blue eyes flashing.
The hard-light avatar lifted his hand, and with a condensed beam of energy, shot a solid energy beam right into the rear of Vane.
"Vane, move!" I screamed.
But Vane was locked in. In case he took his hands out of the keyboard, the hack would not work, and the station would crash. He didn't flinch. He just kept typing.
I didn't think. I ran.
I ran through the catwalk that was made of glass and threw myself between the pilot and the digital god.
ZAP.
The hard-light beam fired.
It didn't hit me.
Baron intercepted. and there the huge wolf fell in my path, smack in the searing beam on the shoulder. He screamed in pain as the condensed light penetrated through his flight jacket and scalded his body. He threw himself on the glass breathing heavily, but the wound was cauterized.
"Baron!" I wept, and went on my knees by his side.
Keep... typing... gearhead, Baron said to Vane, wincing with his teeth.
Ryker forced himself out of the smashed server bank. His eyes were not gold any more, but were blazing with a dreadful, savage rage.
He did not simply walk towards Valerius. He stalked him.
You believe that you are a god, since you are composed of light, snarled Ryker, reaching to his Star-Metal sword. The blade thereof appeared to be answering his anger, and the flare of the orange fire blazed up more brightly, heated stronger, and a wave of hotness swept along. Light may be ate away in fire.
Ryker swung.
He was not looking at the hard-light shield or the sword. His objective was the fiber-optic cables that held the mainframe floating on the abyss.
"Error. Damage identified in structure," the voice of Valerius glitched.
The blade of Ryker melted through the major support cables. There was a groan of the central console, which threw itself violently laterally.
"Vane, pull it!" Ryker roared.
"Got it!" Vane screamed.
Vane did not slap enter, but seized the bulky manual override lever on the console and pulled it down with his whole mass.
KLUNK.
The bang of huge mechanical breakers sliding was heard all through the station.
The blue lights on the Server Core immediately killed.
The hard-light avatar of Valerius convulsed with glitching. He stared at Ryker, his flawless, everlasting expression in a mask of computer horror.
"No... the... data... is... corrupted--"
The avatar was destroyed to a million harmless particles of light, in which it vanished into the dark.
The roaring noise of the main propellers shaking the hull of the station at once dropped into utter silence. The Aether ceased accelerating.
"He is dead," Vane gulped, dumping himself against the console in the blackness, which was only illuminated with the red emergency strips on the floor. I cut the AI core off of the engine relays. The thrusters are dead."
I did, I thought, looking at Baron who was holding his burnt shoulder and nodding weakly.
We did not, no we did not," Ryker said, peeking through the glass walls of the core.
The silence was terrifying. But the station was still moaning.
There was a halt in the acceleration and the voice of Sato, shrill with fright, came over the radio. And yet you are still in the gravitale trap of the earth! The station is in a free-fall! You have forty-five minutes before it gets into the atmosphere and burns up!
Vane, turn on the thrusters and order us into the wind? Ryker demanded.
Fried, fried, Vane looked at his burned-out datapad. Valerius switched the electronic ignition off and died. The retro-rockets can only be fired manually through hard-starting using the Primary Engine Bay and this is the only way to propel this station back into orbit.
Ryker gripped his sword. His face, with bruised and bleeding features, looked up at me, but implacable.
Forty-five minutes to get out of the brain of this station to the heart of it, said Ryker. "Let's go save the world."