Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  “Great. Can you get everyone up here for the address? Say, five minutes before?”

  “We’ll do that. Should be great. You know Shirley?”

  Farrell thought, blankly.

  “She’s assistant to the junior secretaries. Anyway, she has a son in Mombasa. She’s going to be in bits. It might make for a great photo, you hugging her and looking understanding?”

  Farrell baulked. “Oh come on, you hard hearted-bitch!” he said, but smiled too.

  “That’s the kind of thinking I’m paid for,” the aide chirpily replied.

  Farrell sunk into thought for a little bit, then wondered aloud, “Are we right to worry about Mars? Is that even our department?”

  The woman aide looked up, startled. “Well, it is foreign, isn’t it? I mean, how much more foreign can you get?”

  Farrell thought. “It just seems, I don’t know, different, somehow. So far away that it’s not even foreign. And surely it’s just part of the USAN, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not a country or even a state. Marineris is about the size of a small town.”

  The aide cut in, “No, it comes under us alright. And we’re right to be monitoring.”

  “But there’s nothing to it, is there, really? This chatter about breaking away, independence and all that? Armchair warriors and know-nothing kids. They’d shit the bed if we just left them to it, wouldn’t they?”

  “Maybe. But we’re paid to be paranoid, so we are.”

  “And anyways, they’re halfway across the solar system.”

  “Some of the time they are. Every couple of years they swing by real close - fifty million miles or so. And apparently Helios are this close,” she gestured with thumb and forefinger, “to developing usable sized fusion engines which will turn interplanetary travel upside down. You could hop across in your lunch break, almost.”

  Farrell frowned. “Helios have been about to reveal their fusion engine tech ever since I was a kid. There’s no quick or easy way to or from Mars. It’s a six month trip, minimum, and even then you have to wait up to two years for a launch window. They need our tech, we need their deuterium, free trade, honour, loyalty, yada, yada, the end. I just wanted the senator to know that, even without a war on, we have stuff to be doing over here. We’re on the lookout for any problems, we’ve got our ears to the floor and our eyes on the horizon and our fingers on the pulse. Forever vigilant.” He flashed a big phony smile at the assistant.

  “Sheesh,” she said, “and you haven’t even had any champagne yet.”

  C H A P T E R 2

  Kostovich

  Dr Daniel Kostovich eyed the barren landscape ahead. Dried brown dirt and the straggliest of sun-beaten foliage stretched before him to a distant and just discernible clump of buildings. It was hot in the suit, and the restricted movement made him feel trapped. He needed to get out of the sun, but he needed to know he was safe. Continuing to scan the horizon for movement he lifted one huge metal leg, then the other, and moved forward. He spoke into the mic. “Stocksy, Bacon. I’m comin’ to getcha.”

  A voice crackled back over the headset. “What about me?”

  Kostovich grinned. “Dennis? Time I get over there, Stocksy and Bacon will have taken you out already. If you haven’t just fallen over.”

  “You’re a funny guy, Dan. That’s why I’m going to kill you last.”

  Kostovich laughed. “It’s great that you still believe you have some worthwhile abilities, Dennis. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

  Dennis’s voice came back over the com. “I’m going radio silent now. Gotta concentrate. Have asses to kick. Out.”

  Kostovich noted a small outcrop of rocks about two hundred metres from his position. He headed toward them. He brought up a terminal in his HUD, set his mech on an automated course for the outcrop, then brought up a new screen to which he half-whispered a command, “AI 328, scan all channels. Flag and list possibles, report on completion. Confirm estimated time of completion.”

  A crystal clear and honey-drenched female voice replied immediately. “Scan completion estimated at less than two minutes.”

  Inside the mech Kostovich stood a little over four metres high. Stood on the ground next to it he would be less than half that size. At twenty-nine years of age he was the youngest department head at Venkdt Mars Corporation. His department was Research and Development. He had been a prodigy at school and often had to deny that his parents, in particular his father, the renowned physicist Craig Kostovich, had modified him in utero to be a brainiac. He’d considered the possibility himself. His dad was crazy, but not that crazy. Dan had just been lucky with his genes, lucky with his nurturing family, who had indulged his ‘experiments’ and ‘research’, and lucky to have been around when the settlement at Marineris was still just about a frontier town with people happy to let a little kid ask questions about the place, the landscape and the fancy kit that enabled them to survive there.

  He won a prize for his advanced AIs when he was thirteen. That was even reported back on the old home planet, though somewhere near the end of the bulletins.

  Kostovich had breezed through school, embarrassing his teachers and alienating his peers. He started on his first PhD (artificial intelligence) when he was just turned seventeen and completed his second (astrophysics) at twenty-two, though that one was just for fun.

  He’d raced up the ranks at Venkdt by identifying flaws in their processes and suggesting solutions. Within a couple of years of starting there he had saved them hundreds of thousands and made them millions. In R&D he oversaw all development projects, but his special baby, the thing he got hands-on with (hands-on a keyboard, at least) was AI. Kostovich didn’t need to be a great designer of products or processes, though he had the skills to do that, because what he really excelled at was designing AIs that designed great products and processes. With his knowledge of computing networks, cyphers, telegraphy and encryption he could protect that intellectual property from others and rent its power to them.

  He’d been head of R&D at Venkdt for two years. The initial thrill had worn off, somewhat. He now found himself correcting tedious and obvious errors in the work of others, and endlessly tinkering with his AIs and monitoring systems. He had risen rapidly, but now there was nowhere left for him to rise to. It wasn’t like he could be headhunted by Hjälp Teknik - they had less than a tenth of the resources of Venkdt - and he had no desire whatsoever to go to the home planet, a place he had never been and never wished to. He was fourth-gen Martian, and to him Earth was a foreign and backward looking place, millions of miles away and of only academic interest. He was top of his particular tree at Venkdt, with only the board and Charles Venkdt above him (and they weren’t going anywhere soon) and, all things considered, that wasn’t a bad place to be. It maybe lacked excitement, but that could be had outside work in things like competitive IVR games.

  The honey-voice spoke, “Scan complete. Two anomalies detected.”

  “Okay. Run AI 14S and AI 14V on the anomalies. Multi-decrypt and report, please give me the estimated time of completion.”

  “Completion in five to six minutes,” came the reply.

  Kostovich manoeuvred the mech from behind the outcrop and spied the cluster of buildings. “Thermal,” he said, and the vista in front of him changed to a blue, yellow and red child’s painting, which he quickly scanned. Nothing. “How long to completion now?”

  “Five minutes.”

  He made his move, breaking from his hiding place and striding toward the hamlet. At pace the mech could travel at around 15km/h. Right now he was vulnerable, but he couldn’t have stayed hidden behind a rock forever. Crossing the open ground he scanned back and forth across the buildings, looking for any sign of movement, his finger held lightly over the trigger in his right hand. At thirty metres out he heard a ‘ratatatatata’ and a percussive ‘ka-boom!’ It was difficult to locate, but seemed to be from the opposite end of the hamlet.

  Dennis’s voice spluttered over the com. “Son of a
bitch. Son of a bitch!”

  “Morning, Den,” said Stocksy. “Thanks for the missiles.” Stocksy was now one up on them, and had access to missiles in addition to the machine guns they had each started with.

  Kostovich hove closely to the perimeter wall and inched around, trying to get a look down the main street. The buildings were Earth style, above ground and battered. The place looked like some of the news reports from the war on Earth.

  “Stocksy?” Kostovich asked into the com.

  “Hey, Dan. Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty for you too.”

  “See you in a bit. Looking forward to it. You seen Bacon?”

  “Nope. But when I see him, I’m gonna fry his ass!”

  Bacon crackled over com for the first time, “Never gets old, Stocksy, never gets old.”

  “Probably camped out somewhere,” said Kostovich. “Do you want him or shall I do it?”

  “Well,” Stocksy replied, “if I get him I’ll be on guided missiles, Dan. If you get him, it’s honours even for the final showdown on Main Street.”

  “I don’t need superior hardware, Stocksy. I already have superior tactics. Take him if you want.”

  Kostovich spoke to his AI, “How long to completion?”

  “Two minutes.”

  Kostovich knew Bacon liked to camp in buildings. A building with a mech shaped hole in it very likely had a Bacon camping inside it. Bacon’s tactics were as obvious as Dennis’s, so he’d be facing out into the main street waiting for someone to wander down it. Kostovich continued circling the perimeter, carefully watching all potential danger points as he went. He was just crossing a side road out of the ville when the corner of the building above him exploded into shower of dust and fragments, which rained down about him. Bacon was still on the machine gun; it had to be Stocksy. Kostovich ducked and continued, working over in his mind where Stocksy was. It was a narrow road, so to have hit the back of it he could only be in one specific area midway down Main Street on the opposing side. Glancing to his left as he continued his anti-clockwise orbit of the town he saw some rubble. Bacon.

  “How long to completion?”

  “Forty-five seconds.”

  Kostovich pulled back from the perimeter and ran around it in the direction he had been going. As he passed the building Bacon was hid out in he fired a burst of machine gun fire into it, but was gone before Bacon could make the full turn necessary to return fire. Bacon was turning back when Stocksy’s missile hit him, and he was out of the game.

  “Head shot!” Stocksy declared.

  Kostovich made for the top of Main Street. “Completion?”

  “Completing in ten, nine . . .”

  As the countdown finished Kostovich peered gingerly around the corner and up Main Street, where he could just see Stocksy’s missile arm pulling back behind the corner of a building.

  “Decryption complete. Competing systems owned. Total time five minutes and forty-three seconds.”

  “Please run AI M22 on competing system Stocksy.”

  Kostovich now stepped boldly out onto Main Street and walked up it at a casual pace.

  With a flick of the eye he switched the com to Stocksy. “Stocksy? Comin’ to get ya, fella!”

  “M22 is now complete on competing system Stocksy,” said the AI.

  “Dan?” said Stocksy, “I hate to do this, but . . .” Stocksy ran across the street, all the while locked onto Kostovich, who implacably strode toward him. Just before the midway point Stocksy’s mech juddered as two missiles launched from the forearms, leaving a cloud behind them as they streaked down Main Street. Stocksy had planned to run back into cover on the other side of the street, but on seeing his missiles get away, locked-on and with no reply, he decided to stop and savour his moment of victory. The huge mech skidded very slightly as it came to a stop on the far side of the street.

  The missiles streaked passed Kostovich and out of the end of the ville. At first Stocksy couldn’t figure out why there had been no satisfying double boom, and the smoky missile trail blocked his view. For a split second he knew something was not right. In the time it took him to figure out what was wrong the missiles had already turned about and had rushed back to the place from whence they came.

  Ba-Boom!

  The top of Stocksy’s mech was totally destroyed. The lower half fell to its knees like it was bowing before its superior.

  “Good game,” said Kostovich.

  “Goddamn, Dan, that’s cheating!” said Stocksy.

  “It technically isn’t,” said Kostovich. “If you don’t like it we can turn off cyberwarfare next time.”

  “We should, too,” Bacon chimed in. “It gives you an unfair advantage.”

  “It’s advantageous to me, but it’s perfectly fair. Only a fool wouldn’t play to their advantages.”

  “I’m done here,” said Dennis.

  “Me too,” said Kostovich. “Laters.

  “Laters.”

  “Laters.”

  “See you later, guys.”

  Kostovich pulled off his headset and slumped back into the sofa. He blinked twice and shook his head, quickly looking about the room to re-orient himself.

  He glanced over at his terminal screen and could see something blinking red in the notification area. “Put that up on the wall,” he said. The terminal appeared on the wall in front of him and he began to read. “Show me that report, bottom right,” he said.

  “USAN Monitoring?” the AI asked.

  “Yes.” The report enlarged to fill the wall and Kostovich began to read it, glancing through the lines with a slight frown. He had sent one of his AIs to covertly worm its way into the USAN’s secure information systems months earlier. The operation was so delicate that, initially at least, it was not to report back. Its preliminary task was to remain undetected while it monitored the system. Kostovich had programmed it to monitor as long as it felt necessary. Any sort of premature call home risked exposure. The AI was absolutely not to do that until it was convinced it could do so safely.

  Like a forlorn lover Kostovich had waited for his AI to return. He had assumed it would take a few days before he heard anything, but very quickly the days had developed into months. He didn’t know what might have happened.

  There were three options. The first was that the AI had been intercepted. Kostovich found that difficult to accept. From various reconnaissance attacks he had mounted previously he understood the landscape he was going into. He knew there were certain vulnerabilities in the system, and he had programmed his AI to exploit them. He felt sure it had not been compromised.

  The second option was that the AI had failed. He could not countenance this possibility. He was a maestro at programming AIs and this piece had been one of his finest works.

  Option three was the only one which seemed viable; that his AI was still burrowing around the system undetected. This meant that the crack was much more complex than he had expected. He was willing to concede that much. If the problem was harder than had been anticipated, so be it. He had unwavering faith that his creation was equal to the task. All it needed was time.

  The report had been tasked with monitoring all output from the USAN government and military. The AI had the ability to encode messages into standard communications if necessary. If it felt unable to communicate directly it could attempt to do so covertly, via an overlay on some mundane communication.

  Kostovich scanned the report.

  Nothing.

  In the last twenty-four hours the government and military had publicly released over thirty-two thousand communications, ranging from county administration notices to full governmental reports. They were all clean; no coded communications.

  Kostovich was tired. He had had a long day and the game, despite being fun, had been somewhat draining. He usually checked for a call from his AI at least twice a day. Every time it failed to call home was a disappointment. This time was no exception. He decided to call it a night.

  “Continue scanning,” said Kostovic
h. “Make a report every eight hours. And, of course, ears remain open for a standard call.”

  “Yes, Dr Kostovich,” the terminal replied. “Will there be anything else?”

  “Can you order some more Pop-Tarts?”

  “Of course, next delivery will be tomorrow at 08:30.”

  “That’s great.”

  Kostovich awoke at 08:20 next morning. He swung his feet out of bed and sat there for a moment, not quite awake, before rising and shuffling into his living room, slumping onto the sofa. “Anything overnight?” he said through a yawn.

  “Yes,” the AI said. “AI 2257 reports: ‘Success’”

  Kostovich jumped up. “What? Success? Gimme the details. I want them on the wall.”

  Kostovich’s living room wall came alive with the display from his terminal. He could see it right there, in letters twenty centimetres high: ‘04.39 Level 6 security owned.’ Kostovich silently punched the air. “Pull me some Level 6 data,” he said. “Anything regarding . . .” He thought. “Anything regarding domestic disturbances on USAN military bases in the last two weeks.”

  “Yes, Dr Kostovich.”

  Kostovich had to wait only a few seconds before text began scrolling up his screen. Emails, court documents and all kinds of communications were there for him to see. Level 6 was the lowest level on the USAN’s security scale. Nothing here would be of the slightest importance or interest. But he was in. The AI was alive and was chewing its way through the security levels. All he needed to do now was wait, and a treasure trove of information would open up to him.

  He wanted to tell someone about the staggering achievement he had just made, but what he had done was illegal and, as it currently stood, rather pointless. All the good stuff was still to come. He thought about what he should do. “Get me an appointment with Venkdt,” he said.

  “Christina Venkdt?” the AI replied.

  “I wish. No, fix me up a meeting with Charles Venkdt.”

  “Mr Venkdt doesn’t have any openings until next week. Would you like to proceed with booking the appointment?”