“We get ourselves a main schematic of the station wiring. Then, we raid the laundry and get ourselves some maintenance overalls and get down to this business module 56. We get inside the wall panels and find the wires that control the clamps holding the can to the rest of the station. We splice those wires to a portable memory board. Then, we use the information Tully gave us to override the clamps command sequence and tell them to let go.” She allowed herself a grim smile at the expression on Schyler’s face. “Groundhuggers. You always think you have to blow something up or burn it down to incapacitate it. That’s why the Freers keep winning against you.”
“Well, then,” Schyler stood up and gestured toward the door, “I suggest you show us how it’s done.” He paused and lowered his hand. “There’s one thing that Al Shei has not considered. That’s the possibility that she might live through this.” He looked at them both steadily. “After we get her in there, I’m going to need options on how to get her out.”
Jump.
Repeater XK350-78104001-IBN780A-HI was slaved to ten sisters; 780B through 780I. The data squeezing by her was mainly gas miners’ requests for prices and credit from the Solar system.
Dobbs slipped through to the holding areas. On the way, she’d managed to put together a plan of action. It hadn’t taken long. She was not hampered by a plethora of options.
Dobbs touched Cohen, Brook and Lonn. Each of them, in turn, was touching two others. Messages shot back and forth between the satellites along the slave lines. The link spread out until it included all of the Fools, joined together like cells in a honeycomb.
This had been the reason Dobbs this repeater series. It was one of the few satellite clusters where there was room for this.
Dobbs passed her name and identifying patterns through those next to her, and received their names and patterns into herself. Stranger’s names and stranger’s touches filtered through her friends and stored themselves in her memory; Breckman, Govzy, Chan, Pierre, Davies, Kim, and on and on until they all knew each other. Anyone for whom a name and the touch of their outer self was not in her memory now was probably one of Curran’s talents.
They were just over five hundred. Three times the number of Curran’s talents. They needed to be. All of them, except for her and a handful like Cohen who’s bodies were on life-support, were under the pressure of time. The others could stay in the network twenty hours at most before they would have to drop out, and they’d already used up a portion of their time waiting here.
Dobbs had half-expected an attack while they were all in an obvious, immobile lump like this. But Curran hadn’t disturbed them at all. That could only mean he was using all his resources to ready his attack on the banks. Dobbs opened a path inside herself and let her memories of the strategy sessions slide out to Cohen. After them, she released her plan of attack. It wound through the gathering. Questions and suggestions shot back and forth until a consensus solidified between them all.
The randomizer matrices were already in place, waiting for their timers to count down. It was possible that Curran had sent his talent out with signals to speed up the process. They had to find one or more randomizers, take them apart, design viruses to disable them and set those viruses loose in the net. They had to get some Fools to Earth to coordinate with the banks in case Curran tried the distraction of taking down the transmitters. Ahmet Tey might listen to Dobbs, especially if she could get a character reference from Al Shei to him. So, she’d lead the Terran party.
The problem was, there was nothing they were planning that Curran couldn’t have guessed at, and he knew their weaknesses as well as they did. All AIs shared the same set of vulnerabilities. Messages between individuals could be faked. If someone was taken apart, all their memories could be used against their allies. You could only trust what you could touch.
They would have to divide into teams of four or five individuals that could act as resistance cells. They would have to use runners between the cells to carry messages, and even then there was the possibility of someone’s shell being used as a mask to conceal an enemy, the same way the shell of medical data had been used to hide Flemming aboard the Pasadena.
They’d need a base they could use to coordinate move and news between the cells. The best place would be the Neptune Exchange, the two huge space stations that formed the fast-time transmission gateway to the Solar system. Not only would that provide their hastily-assembled army some stability, but, if they could hold it, it would keep the single largest transmission point in the Solar system safe from Curran’s talent.
A third of them would head for the Neptune Exchange first. From there, Dobbs’ cell and ten others would head straight for Earth. The rest would fan out through the network, securing as many of the major junctions as they could.
Keep the data paths steady. Find the randomizer matrices and stop them. Find Curran’s talent and stop them. We must keep the credit base steady or Settled Space is going to fall apart around us.
We’ve got it, Dobbs, the answer came back five hundred times. We’ve got it.
They broke their mass link and scattered, gathering at the mouths of the junction paths in their cells. Cohen, Brook and Lonn stayed beside her. Dobbs angled her attention towards Earth, the heart of the network. She imagined she could feel the net tremble around her as all the others did the same.
“Curran’s talent might already be in the Neptune Exchange.” Dobbs sent the message across to the Earth-bound cells. “I’m going first. If I don’t send the all-clear in two seconds, they already have the exchange.” I can hold out against anybody for two seconds, she told herself. Even Curran.
She gathered herself up, heart, soul and all the nerve she possessed. She wished there was a prayer she could say. She wished there was someone who might hear it. There was nothing and nobody. There wasn’t even time.
She sent a ping-copy to receiver 501-BG-A12 at the Neptune Exchange. The signal came back in tact. That meant nothing. If the talent were there, they now knew she was coming.
Alone, Dobbs dove forward.
Chapter Fourteen — War
One.
Dobbs dropped into a crowded holding stack. She touched the ID packet. She had made the Neptune Exchange. She stretched out. Nothing disturbed the data streams as far as she could reach except her. She tripped a set of switches and sent a diagnostic down the nearest path and waited for it to come back. It found nothing except what was supposed to be out there.
Two.
Dobbs made a ping-copy of herself and set the transmitter to shoot it back to Cohen. She kept the diagnostic circulating and waited for the answering signals.
The diagnostic slipped back to her and Dobbs caught it. Before her next thought formed, a stranger fell across her, cutting her off from her surroundings. She twisted, but it rolled her aside. She swelled up against the swaddling presence and, in the next thought, hauled herself into a tight ball. The stranger didn’t respond fast enough and Dobbs shot out of its loosened grip.
There was another stranger looming over the receiver’s command stack. Dobbs lunged at it and shoved it out of the way. She barely brushed the new command configuration before the stranger’s compatriot dragged her backward, stabbing deep into her outer layers, seeking a hold in her private mind. Dobbs lashed out, cutting a swash clear through the stranger’s periphery. Anger lent her strength. These two had re-set the receiver commands to work in a loop with the repeater series. Cohen, Brook and Lonn were trapped. Her friends were frozen signals bouncing back and forth between the two receivers.
Dobbs aimed another swipe at the first stranger. The second grabbed her and sent her reeling down the path toward the transmitter. Dobbs tried to surge back toward the receiver, but both strangers filled the path. She punched at them. They hardened themselves against her attacks. Slowly, they drove her toward the transmitter holding stack. It didn’t take much to guess that they were going stuff her into the loop with Cohen and the others. Dobbs hurled herself against them, but together they were to massive for her. They shoved her backward.