Sword and Sorcery, a Novel

15

-Reboot successful. Full function resumed. -

He came back online to the confusion of wildly pinging internal gyroscopes and physical meat senses. Found himself being carried in a series of long hops, clutched in a massive fist by something that sprang up and forward repeatedly, to drift back down in a retro-jet roar and the crackling flare of bright manna. Landings and takeoffs were very precise, doing little damage to the slightly curved surface below.

His locational sensors put him at .361 light-years from OS 1210 and Cerulean Dream, out of contact with OVR-Lord or even with V47. It was the battle-mech’s shell that held and transported him, but not its AI which… he queried… was cleansed of alien malware, but running a deep scan and systems check. Offline, hunting for lingering damage.

The pilot did not disturb his friend/ partner/ linked system’s meditation. V47 was doing precisely as it was meant to. In the meantime, something else had assumed control of the altered mech, and was moving it rapidly over a strange, artificial landscape. Servos whined and metal clashed with each upward bound. Steel resounded and thundered with every short, graceful touchdown. At the peak of each hop, the pilot saw/ scanned a huge and gently curved metal surface. Steel and neutronium-alloy, mostly, with interleaved layers of silver and gold; branched, sparkling circuitry everywhere.

Packed with structures in orderly rows, with buildings, rectangular parklands and one very long, winding sea, the surface extended past the forward horizon. It swept upward to disappear behind a seething, caged magnetar which… words, concepts and sensory data couldn’t encompass.

He stared, seeing a brilliant and beautiful black-light star 2.261 miles in diameter, massing 1.8 standard suns. Its savagely powerful magnetic field, intense gravitation and rotational energies had been harnessed to build and maintain the vast shell that partly surrounded it. Otherwise, the pilot’s data would have been wiped by a 10^10 mag-field, and his biological substance utterly fried.

Periodic storms swept the magnetar’s surface, looking like vast tornadoes of tangled gamma and X-ray light. These horrendous tempests emitted long, tangled field-lines of magnetic power. Its ferocious energies… its immense manna… were drawn off into a massive storage array, effectively caging that lovely stellar ghoul.

As for the system currently operating V47… upon being queried, it replied with an entirely foreign, outdated handshake protocol. Sending,

//!#~~! TTN-iA ---> V47-Core ~~ Greeting! ~~//

The pilot responded with his own contact/ work-level interface access, noting that TTN-iA was tagged ‘friendly’ in very old, spotty noodle code. There was nothing else, no other intelligence present within the magnetar’s shell. Nothing computerized or biological seemed to be thinking here other than TTN-iA, V47 and Pilot.

The ancient AI had been busy. It had altered V47 considerably, increasing the battle-mech’s shielding and mass to a hefty 3.57 tons and adding a second set of legs. V47 was now quadrupedal. Its pilot had drives and protocol for such a configuration, though switching required expansion of functionality. (Operating two extra limbs while fighting and flying was… as Ace would have put it… no joke.) The term “centaur” came to his conscious awareness from a very old, long-buried file.

V47 Pilot launched two of his drones, having them fly a scan pattern over the hopping battle-mech. Had to admit that the new configuration was impressive, if odd. Querying the AI’s destination netted a torrent of images. There was gate, it appeared. A Mark-30 industrial transport model, currently inactive. It was to this behemoth of a portal that they were headed, in mile-long leaps and out-of-the-atmosphere bounds.

His helmet had formed automatically. Stayed on, too, after the first few hops. The shell’s atmosphere did not extend very far from its surface. Carried very few chemical traces, other than metal, water and plastic. Felt and smelled newly generated.

Curious (and because he’d wondered the same thing about Orbital Station) the pilot recalled his drones and asked,

“TTN-iA, query: Where is everyone? This structure is very large, clearly meant to house assets, crew and biological inhabitants. Why is nobody present?”

He received another squeal/ burst of outdated code, followed by images the pilot parsed as well as he could.

//~~ Gone, ~// was what he gathered. //~~ Project abandoned. Hostile activity detected. Biological resources filed. Etherion. ~~//

The flickering images portrayed humanoid biologicals streaming away from Titania’s shell. Not physically. Their wizened forms were still present, it seemed; maintained to the best of its ability by TTN-iA. They’d gone, somehow, in mind.

The ancient system brought them down with a THUMP on the shore of that winding and sterile sea. Partly within it, actually, as V47 came back online, and TTN-iA relinquished control of the battle-mech.

‘Pilot has regained conscious function,’ remarked his friend. ‘Scans reveal optimal power and tissue-health. Trace anxiety-chemistry present in Pilot’s organic systems.’

He was gently lowered to the artificial beach, (shore leave, again!) released into precisely rhythmic, thigh-deep surf. V47 Pilot felt his facial muscles shifting into a smile. The massive hand still hovered, ready to seize him again, should he be overwhelmed by the surging water, lose his footing on “sand” that was composed of uniform, prismatic small cubes.

He did not stumble, having regained gyroscopic and meat-sense stability. Did touch one of V47’s huge gun-fingers with his own cyborg hand, sending,

“Thank you, V. I note that you have returned to full function, as well.” Then, because Icebox… Mikale… would have said it, “Gotta love the new look, Partner.”

V47 launched drones of its own, scanning itself from fresh angles, in multiple wavelengths.

‘A tetrapod conformation provides greater speed and stability on discontinuous settings such as shoreline and city. Pilot may require an upgrade for the additional limb-set, however.’

He was already working on that. In the meantime, a swarm of tiny lenses and drones had assembled beside them, 2.3 yards from the water’s edge. TTN-iA shaped a feminoid body out of 3,257,004 individual components, causing circuitry to flare through it like forked, branching lightning. A pair of mirrored eyes opened up in the face region, which was blurry and seething, otherwise.

Electronic handshakes were sent and exchanged all around. Access granted past work/ comm level; what in AI terms amounted to friendship. TTN-iA communicated mostly through images, first echoing whatever was sent, then altering the code to a glittering holograph. Through its pictures, they learned that the Mark-30 gate was now powered and active, but 137.22 miles further up-curve, on the Winding Sea’s opposite shore.

They might have just flown across, but TTN-iA raised a series of spires from out of the curving shell. A sort of steppingstone path arose through that artificial ocean, causing crosscurrents as each block surged through the water and into the air. Looked like a string of landing buoys.

137.22 miles was a long walk, but manna was plentiful here, and time very distorted. The magnetar pulsed and whirled overhead, its savage eruptions forever controlled, drained and stored.

V47 Pilot climbed back into his mech, first settling into the probes and contact plates… home… then calling up tetrapod ambulation and flight data. Leaned (at first) pretty heavily on the tutorial-mode.

TTN-iA traveled as a cloud of swarming components, leading the way. Managing an altered shape came much more naturally to the battle-mech than it did to the pilot, who frankly struggled. The glitchy add-on… quadruped-upload… took a full 32 ticks to mesh with the pilot’s systems, causing him to miss-time steps or to place those extra limbs in the water, rather than onto the stones.

He started to get the way of it, though. Achieved near-optimal functionality, after a candle-mark filled with slips, stumbles and partial immersion. Then V47 suggested,

‘Querying Pilot: This system is able to further alter configuration. A hydrodynamic shape is possible, allowing this unit to “swim”. Accept proposal: Y/ N?’

“Yes,” responded the pilot, who was sure he could swim better than run about on four legs. V47 flared with sudden bright light, absorbing manna, converting mass. Inside, the pilot’s position changed from seated, with contact plates pressed into his lower back for those wretched rear legs, to stretched out. A row of probes traced his spine, arms and… not forelegs. Just legs. Still different, but better. Then new serpentine shape was much simpler to maneuver, slipping off of the stones and into the sea with barely a ripple.

TTN-iA plunged into the water, as well, now resembling a school of swirling-bright fish. Next, the steppingstones retracted; receding out of sight and back into shadow, reabsorbed by the shell down below. As they shot through that barren ocean (churned by wave machines to exactly .3 waves per tick) V47 pilot queried,

“Why did the human operators leave, TTN-iA? Why did they shut down the project, and where did they go?”

//! ~ Left~// The AI responded. //! ~ Hostile activity detected. Command received. War unwinnable. Retreat to Etherion. ~//

A term it had used previously. One for which he had no data or files, whatsoever.

‘Pilot, this line of inquiry evokes the strongest possible defense protocol. If persisted in, a complete memory-wipe and destruct is advised,’ broke in V47, anxiously deploying show-vids, music and squirts of calming drug.

…but the damage was done. Along with images from many angles of a wandering planet, of a circuit-laced mithral sphere and frantic human technicians, the pilot received a set of gate coordinates that he instantly memory-holed. Put away in a file tagged: dangerous malware. To be opened two ticks from the day before yesterday, if ever at all.

Found his biological senses ringing and heart pounding wildly, mouth going suddenly dry as V47 went through a quantum-swift series of cleansing commands. Together, they negated that destruct protocol by just .0043th of a tick.

It was there, though… that hazardous file. That fatal knowledge. V47 and Pilot threw barriers, firewalls and entire legions of Internal Countermeasures up, containing the data.

But it was there.