Last Light by Troy Denning

Author:Troy Denning
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: Gallery Books

Intrepid Eye knew of the Spartan-II sneaking up on her flank. Of course she did. Despite TEAMCOM’s rudimentary encryption and Wendell’s repeated attempts to secure the Mjolnir’s processing system, she continued to monitor all of Frederic-104’s communications and status readouts. She had noted the spike in his pulse and blood pressure when he observed her presence on his motion tracker, and she was well aware that he had just armed a primitive AI suppressor that his weapons inventory identified as a scramble grenade.

Given her inspection drone’s poor EMP shielding and finite reserve of quantum processing dots, Intrepid Eye was not entirely certain she could defeat such an attack. But it was a risk she would have to take.

There was a battle raging on the surface, and the inspection drone she now inhabited lacked both the armor and the speed to survive an excursion into its midst. If Intrepid Eye hoped to access the humans’ interstellar communications array and survive long enough to await a reply, she would need a better-protected host than the inspection drone.

She would need a host with armor.

Noting that her stalker had crept to within accurate placement range for the scramble grenade, Intrepid Eye checked the status of the transfer and was disappointed to find that she had been able to move only three percent of her consciousness into her chosen host. To be certain of a full recovery from the scramble attack, that figure would need to be more than twelve percent—an amount she feared would overload the primitive circuits that had been partitioned for her use.

Intrepid Eye drifted a few meters to her right, placing a pair of two-meter stalagmites between her and her Spartan stalker. She slipped an overwrite command into a compulsion routine, then addressed Wendell over the same sequestered channel she was using for the transfer.

“THE TRANSFER RATE IS TOO SLOW, WENDELL,” Intrepid Eye said. “GIVE ME MORE CAPACITY, OR YOU WILL CAPTURE NOTHING BUT A FEW QUBITS OF SCRAMBLED CODE.”

“IF YOU WISH TO SURRENDER, WE WILL DO IT MY WAY,” Wendell replied. “I WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO CRACK MY PARTITIONS AND OVERRUN THE MJOLNIR’S OPERATING SYSTEM—NO MATTER HOW MANY COMPULSION ROUTINES YOU THROW AT ME.”

“I AM ONLY TRYING TO COOPERATE,” Intrepid Eye complained. “YOU HAVE NO IDEA OF THE EFFECT A SCRAMBLER WILL HAVE ON MY ANYON THREADS. PERHAPS I SHOULD SURRENDER TO THE SPARTAN DIRECTLY?”

Into this last suggestion, Intrepid Eye slipped a string of self-replicating code that—if left unchecked—would eventually choke out all of the suit’s life-support routines.

“I AM NOT THAT FOOLISH,” Wendell said. “BEFORE YOU TALK TO ANY SPARTANS, I AM GOING TO PULL YOUR FANGS—ESPECIALLY THE ONES THAT REPLICATE.”

“AS YOU WISH,” Intrepid Eye replied. Already, she could feel her space expanding inside the Mjolnir operating system, the partitions beginning to slide away. “YOU ARE THE VICTOR. I WILL TRY TO REMAIN UNSCRAMBLED UNTIL YOU ARE READY.”

Intrepid Eye moved the inspection drone into the Huragok’s line of sight and continued to ripple its sensor tentacles. She had, of

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