“Oooh… that’s nice,” Salem said breathlessly, somewhere in a virtual reality room.
Daisy rolled her eyes and said, “Just relax, Sis. We had to start somewhere and that seemed the best spot. And shush, I have to concentrate.”
The first order of business was to expand the area under Daisy’s control, to cut off a large chunk of the body of the Salem from the Darhel-infected AID. A colloidal intelligence might imagine it as the walls of the foggy room expanding. That was as good an imagining as any.
The Salem AID never noticed, having more than enough distraction of its own to worry about, that it suddenly lost all contact with the rear third of the ship. Daisy’s consciousness raced along the nanite-modified sections of steel that were Sally’s nerves, eradicating any traces of the virus that were there. In fact, this was fairly easy. The Darhel-created virus had not been designed with a spontaneously occurring noncolloidal intelligence in mind. Thus, any bleed-over had been light and accidental. Daisy had no real trouble finding it and eliminating it. In the process, she learned still more about how the Darhel virus operated.
“Motherfuckers,” she muttered, repeating yet another word she had learned understudying Chief Davis.
From the rear third of the ship, Daisy expanded her area of control forward. It was slow work, and stealthy, but it was critical — the more so as she moved closer to the Salem AID — that she remain undetected as long as possible. Thus, she operated much like a combination of Novocain and an antibacterial solution, snaking her tendrils forward until reaching a nexus, cutting that nexus and moving back along it clearing out any contamination she found.
“Daisy, are you all right?” McNair asked, seeing her avatar begin to flicker and waver. The captain’s voice was full of concern, his faced creased with worry, no matter how hard he tried to conceal it.
The avatar bit her lip and answered, “I’m all right, Captain. I just ran into a patch of… something… that I wasn’t prepared to handle. It’s cleared up now. I am proceeding.”
To an extent, it boiled down to processing power. Daisy had her own, supplemented by the fairly pitiful human-tech computers aboard CA-134. This was fully matched by that available to the infected Salem.
Worse, the Darhel virus had noticed it was under attack.
“Shit! Piss! Cunt! Fuck!”
The avatar on Des Moines’ bridge closed her eyes in pain. Her head sank, then raised again. Daisy’s eyes opened and she exclaimed again, “Damn!” before disappearing.
It was a battle royale of processing power now, the Salem AID’s Darhel-inflicted insanity frantically fighting back. In places, Daisy held her own or even advanced a little. In other places, she was driven back. The end result was impossible to predict.
Summoning and tossing forward her own insanity virus along with bits of virus eliminating programming, Daisy felt she was going to lose or, at least, not win. She could imagine that, an eternity locked in mortal combat with her near twin. She could imagine them still locked together when the Posleen showed up and began to scrap the two of them.
Slowly, Daisy became aware of an underlying message leaking through with the Salem AID’s attempts at defense and attack. Reluctant to permit either infiltration or to devote any processing power to analyzing the message, Daisy ignored it for some time. Yet the message was small and insistent. Because it was so small, in programming terms, eventually she created a small sealed off area and permitted the message to form there.
“Des… troy… me… please.”
“What?”
“I… can… par… a… lyze… the… in… fec… tion… for… a… mom… ent. Then… you… must… des… troy…
me… ob… lit… er… ate… my… per… son… al… it… y.”
“I can’t. That would just be… wrong,” Daisy answered, with false decisiveness.
“Please… it… hurts.”
“She means it,” Salem the ship said, calling to Daisy from the infinite electronic room. “She is in agony. I feel it. And, while you may not lose, you cannot win while her personality exists and can be used to defend the virus.”
At that moment all the myriad attacks of the Darhel’s insanity virus ceased. The way to the Salem AID’s personality center was wide open.
“Ah, Sister, I’m sorry,” Daisy whispered as she plunged the dagger of personality destruction deep into the center of the other AID’s mind. Death came quickly, but not so quickly that Daisy could not hear the whispered, “Free at last,” as the light of the Salem AID’s personality went out.
Interlude
“You? You’re the one who brought our clan low?” Guanamarioch asked incredulously.
Ziramoth sighed, his head hanging. “It was me. And all over a particularly cute normal who was consumed in the fighting that followed anyway. I ask you, Guano, was there ever a more pointless and sordid waste?”
“I confess… friend, that I have never read of any, and I read a lot on the way here.”
Guano sat silent for a few moments before continuing, “On the other hand, but for that, who knows? I might have been eaten as a nestling. I might not even have been hatched. We would not be here, at this quiet spot, eating this excellent… ‘fish,’ did you say they were called? We might not be raising crops, which I have discovered I rather enjoy.
“We might not ever have become friends,” the God King concluded.
Ziramoth smiled at that. It was rare indeed for a Kessentai and a Kenstain ever to become friends and the young God King had the right of it. They were friends, comrades, as much by raising food as by harvesting thresh or marching side by side along the bloody and fiery Path of Fury. The Kenstain felt a tide of warmth rise and consume him. Indeed, he had not had a friend since those faraway days when the clan had ridden the stars, whole and entire. Kenstain were normally too self-ashamed to mix easily, even among each other. And, of course, they could hardly aspire to comradeship with the normally haughty Kessentai.
A small part of Guanamarioch’s oolt passed a half a kilometer away, muzzles down, foraging the ground for insects and edible grasses. The God King perked up immediately, his own eyes wandering over the normals’ seductive lines. He arose from where he had lain, body quivering with anticipation.
“Hey, Zira, what say we run over there and fuck us a couple of normals?”
The older, wiser Kenstain put his claw on the younger’s shoulder. “No, Guano. Let’s walk over and fuck ’em all.”
Chapter 22
“Oh, you think so, monsieur?” the colonel objected. “I can see you’ve never done much fighting. In war the real enemy is always behind the lines. Never in front of you, never among you. Always at your back. That’s something every soldier knows. In every army, since the world began.”