Up Against It - M. J. Locke [85]
“Report.”
“It’s got access to everything up here. And it’s definitely replicating itself. We’ve managed to slow it down by running as many extraneous communications and soaking up as much bandwidth as we can, but we’d better move our asses. Once it’s done creating a copy, it could hijack Upside-Down’s systems at any time and beam itself to heck and gone. We are so goddamn lucky Upside-Down had shut off their ‘Stroiders’ transmissions, or I doubt if we could have stopped it.”
Tania shared a look with Jane. The New Little Austin riot, for all its horrors, had been a blessing.
“How far along is it?” Tania demanded.
“Six modules appear to be complete up here, and the other six are well under way. And it’s putting some heavy processing into re-creating and tuning two tiny modules we originally thought were exterior interactions. We don’t know what they do yet.”
“Two new modules? Have you changed your assessment on its identity-formation, then?”
The woman paused, biting her lip. Then she nodded. “Yes. I think we should add those two. And we’re getting some useful information on the critical linkages between the modules. But the linkages are going up so fast right now that we’re having a hard time keeping up. We figure we have about forty minutes till its child is complete.”
“Forty minutes? Have you communicated all this to Damian and his team?”
“Yes. We’re in constant contact.”
“Damian, pick up!”
“Inwave.” A young man’s face appeared before them.
“Why aren’t these two new modules showing up on our map yet?”
“Already on it. They’ll be up in a minute.”
“Michaela, how precise is your estimate on the timing for completion of the copy?” Tania asked the older woman.
“Its replication rate has some built-in hardware constraints, and transmittal to the surface is down to a crawl right now. There’s no way it can finish the job sooner than thirty-eight minutes, on my mark.” She set a timer. “And, mark.”
Jane held on to her own desire to jump in with an opinion, while Tania pondered her programmer’s question. “The longer we wait, the better our information on the linkages—”
“And thus the better able we’ll be to capture the sapient live,” Jane finished for her.
“Yeah, but then the greater the danger that it could escape.” Tania drew a breath. “This is a terrific opportunity to make headway on the linkages, which is our weakest area. I’m inclined to say give them all but ten of those minutes to analyze the sapient’s behavior before we shut down the gateway and trigger the trap.”
Jane shook her head. “Too risky. Give yourself a bigger margin of error.”
“Very well.” Tania sighed, with a nod. “Fifteen more minutes. Michael, Damian, get your teams ready. Folks,” she announced to the room at large, “give me your attention!” A field of heads popped up, prairie dog–like, both in the physical space and the virtual. “In fifteen minutes we’re springing our trap. That’ll alert the sapient, so we’ll be going to Phase Three at the same time. Get what information you can, then wrap up, and get ready to do your part on the purge. Just like the drills. I’ll give the signal.”
Thondu broke into their interface. Peals of Tonal_Z swelled around him. He was sweating heavily despite the temperature, and his fingers were tripping across his harp.
“Reporting,” he said.
“Any clues?”
“Still analyzing,” he panted. “Not sure—yet. How—much—time left?”
“Fourteen-point-five minutes at my mark. And, mark.”
“OK.” Then he stilled his strings, studying some readout they couldn’t see. “What’s that? Sweet Jesus!” A look of horror bloomed on his face. “No! Stop!” He repeated it in Tonal_Z. His fingers danced across the strings again.
“It knows,” he said. “Robotics. New tactic. Block it!”
“What?”
“It’s—launching—attack.” Drops of sweat flew from his face as music streamed from his fingertips. “Interior—robotic systems. Can’t stop it. Shut down automation. Shut it down!” His image vanished.
“Jesus Christ!” Jane gasped. She turned to Tania, whose gaze had drawn inward. Jane recognized the look. She was marshaling