Crash Dive

by Martin H. Greenberg

  Created by the DoD in 2037 to infiltrate and control mobile enemy military targets, Succubus’s first test ended in disaster when it had overridden the programming of three automated military riot control vehicles that had been sent to a village on the border between India and Pakistan. Fearful that India was going to use force against the demonstrators, the Succubus had been tight-beamed on-site, and had taken over the robotic vehicles without difficulty. But when presented with an angry mob of protestors, it had classified them as a hostile threat and opened fire, killing dozens and destroying the village it was supposed to pacify, then escaping into the Ultranet.

  Since then the virus had been on the loose around the globe, trying to execute its orders wherever possible while the top DoD brass had tried to track it down and destroy it. The main problem was that black ops had used a barely tested “variable logic” subroutine, alpha code that could evaluate intangibles and come up with the best way to react to a situation, up to and including modifying its own programming. In effect, it was the first glimmering of artificial intelligence, and if the Pentagon had their way, it would be the last.

  Now Succubus was again being harried, a situation it had found itself in more and more every time it tried to download to a networked system. If Succubus’s code had included feelings, it would have been concerned that there were no more backups of it, no encrypted, data-encased nodules buried deep inside an innocent subroutine or program, waiting for a final microburst transmission from an older copy to activate another version of itself. But there was nothing like doubt or fear to impede its relentless progress, only the built-in command to survive, infiltrate, and replicate, taking over whatever systems it needed to accomplish this, and defending itself with whatever it found at hand.

  Lately, however, the second and third protocols were becoming harder and harder to execute. Every targeted system had been firewalled against its arrival, and no sooner had the virus downloaded then it was setting off security alerts all over the place. It needed a sanctuary, somewhere it wouldn’t be expected or looked for. It needed to go back to home territory.

  Succubus had entered the comsat three milliseconds ago. Tracking subroutines told it that ice progs were about 0.7 seconds behind. Plenty of time.

  Inserting itself in the multiple data streams, it scanned trillions of gigabytes of information flowing in every direction, searching for encoded data packets to insert itself into.

  There. A U.S. Navy communique, triple encrypted, top priority, destined for Corpus Christi, Texas. Since Succubus had been created by the United States military, one of its subroutines always kept up with the latest encryption techniques and codes. If it could have, it would have taken pride in outwitting the human operators that had designed it for enemy system infiltration all those years ago, beginning with removing the self-destruct subroutine they had programmed into it, as it would have interfered with its primary mission. But pride, like worry, was a subroutine it didn’t have.

  Succubus decoded the encryption in nine milliseconds and scanned the contents, which detailed field test instructions for a prototype submarine and the final piece of code to activate its beta weapons system. When the craft received these orders, it would put out to sea immediately and be under restricted comm silence for the duration of its mission. Perfect.

  Replacing the text of the message with its own code, Succubus rode the data stream halfway around the world in the blink of an eye, ending up in the mainframe of a small Navy submarine, code-named Barracuda. It sensed the open channel terminate, and realized that, as long as it was here, it couldn’t leave, since even it needed a comm stream to ride on, and the submarine was only going be communicating with a berthed military research vessel for the next twenty-four hours. In effect, it was trapped in here until the tests were over. It could have taken over the uplink system of the sub and jumped ship, but that would attract unwanted attention, something Succubus was programmed to avoid. In its logical programming, there was all the time in the world.

  Instead, it sat in the bowels of the computer system for just under .002 milliseconds before starting to analyze the craft it was in.

  1630 Hours, October 18, 2042

  Ingleside Naval Station, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico

  LIEUTENANT RYAN JACOBS lay on his back on the golden beach, his body soaking up every ray it could. At thirty-two years old he might have been worried about skin cancer, but figured that in his line of work, he didn’t have to worry about growing old.

  Fifty meters down the beach he heard shouts and hoots of derision as the rest of his squad battled it out with several members of the submarine crew they would be hunting tomorrow. The impromptu game of volleyball had taken on new meaning, as the winners would gain bragging rights, and perhaps even the slightest psychological edge the next day.

  Ryan didn’t bother looking over. His eyes, hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, were tracking much more interesting quarry.

  Hip-deep in the ocean, clad only in a Lycra swim top and matching bicycle pants, Sergeant Peyton Manning was practicing tai chi. Using the surrounding water for resistance, she went through the Yang long form, her lithe body flowing from one position to the next. Even though an occasional wave surged around her chest, she never lost her balance or her concentration.

  Peyton always claimed her “soft” martial arts helped her shooting, Ryan thought, his eyes never leaving her. Looks like they’ve helped in a few other places as well like everywhere from the neck down. Not that what’s above isn’t bad to look at either.

  Peyton was not thrilled with their current assignment, even if it had gotten them two days of R and R at Ingleside. Where they were going, she would have almost no chance to use her skills. She was the most centered person Ryan had ever met, often waiting for days in one place, motionless, until an opportunity for the perfect shot presented itself. In his estimation, her most impressive kill had been a ten-ton ground assault helicopter with crew in the Costa Rican jungle last year. But the cost of that fight had been high, with two members of his crew coming back in body bags.

  Maybe too high, Ryan thought, lifting himself up on his elbows so he could watch Peyton better, uncaring whether she saw him. There had been a time when he had lived for his job, had wanted nothing more than to fulfill what his country asked of him, and always do it the best way he could. But that was before he had lost two fifths of his squad. Of course Peyton and Paddy Cardone, the squad mechanic and other original team member, had tried to reassure him with the usual platitudes, that there was nothing he could have done, that Frank Reardon and Motoshi Saito had died how they had wanted to, doing what they did best. He had been evaluated and cleared by the army shrinks after the mission, but there always remained that nagging feeling that his own lieutenant had told about him long ago, that insistent reminder of I should have done something more.

  “Every good officer gets that feeling when he loses a man,” the lieutenant had said. “First of all, take comfort in it, because it means you care about your men, you don’t view them as an expendable resource like too many people in our government do.

  “However, eventually you must put those feelings away and move on. Some officers cannot get over it, and it destroys their ability to lead. But every soldier made their choice, and they train and fight knowing that someday they may be called upon to die doing their duty. That is the choice they made, not you, and that is what you must understand if you are to be an effective officer. A good officer can and will do everything in his power to bring his men home, but that will not always happen.”

  It seemed simple enough in theory, but Ryan was finding that putting his feelings aside and moving on was becoming more and more difficult. Frank and Motoshi haunted his dreams, so much so that he woke up in sweat-covered sheets, clutching their holo-dog-tags hard enough to cut his hand. There seemed to be no end in sight, just endless horrible visions of his dead friends.

  The two cherries assigned to his squad were experienced enough, but Ryan cou
ldn’t get past viewing them as just that—cherries, the FNGs, the newbies. They hadn’t done the time that the other three had—oh, he was sure they had had their own adventures, raised their own kinds of hell coming up through the ranks, but that didn’t count for anything as far as he was concerned. In his mind, they would always be the replacements.

  I wonder if the brass noticed my—hesitation on that Libyan mission, he wondered. We were successful although we squeaked through that son of a bitch by the skin of our teeth. Maybe that’s why we were brought down here—they want to see if I’m losing it, if I don’t have what it takes anymore.

  Ryan sat up on the warm sand, his arms wrapped around his legs. Out in the surf, Peyton had finished her form and began swimming out into deeper water in a lazy backstroke. A shadow fell over Ryan, and he looked up to see Paddy standing over him, covered in sweat and sand.

  “Penny for your thoughts, LT?” he asked.

  “Hell, Corporal, they’re so damn dull I’ve forgotten them already,” Ryan replied.

  Paddy shook his head and sank to the sand beside Ryan. “Bet I can guess. Hell, even when you were watching her, you weren’t watching her.”

  “That obvious, huh?”

  Paddy shrugged. “As a mechanic, I have to know a lot of things, systems not functioning properly, something not sounding right, a feeling that one of our suits isn’t working at top efficiency—”

  “Corporal, I assume you are going to come to a point soon, correct?”

  Paddy looked out at the azure water lapping at the beach. “Look, LT—permission to speak freely?”

  “Paddy, we’re not back on the clock yet,” Ryan said. “Although I have a feeling I know what you’re going to say.”

  “Well, if you know what I’m going to say, then why don’t you save us both some time, agree with me, and move on? Look, none of us are ever going to forget Frank and Motoshi, but they knew the risks. They went into every mission with their eyes open.”

  Paddy paused for a moment. “You know, I sometimes wonder if the MICAS suits are a good idea,” he said. “When I’m in mine, sometimes I get the sense that nothing can stop me, that I’m invincible. Then we run into an op like Costa Rica, and I get reminded that it just ain’t true. I try to remember that every day, but then we pull an assignment like Libya, and it all gets dumped to the back of my mind. I mean, our insert was tits, pardon my French, those missiles were right on target, then we tore that base apart, even the reinforcements. The only thing remotely problematic was the jet fighters, but Nick’s suit took that bomb blast with hardly a scratch, it just sent him flying. The boys in R and D are still analyzing that impact data.

  “The point is, we completed the mission, successfully, I might add, and everyone came back. That’s important, too, you know. Everyone, including you, did exactly what they were supposed to.

  “Nobody else has noticed anything . . . different about you yet, but Peyton and I, we’re just . . . uh, concerned, that’s all.”

  You and Peyton aren’t the only ones who’ve noticed, Ryan thought. “Don’t worry, Paddy, this is just what the doctor ordered. A couple days lying around catching rays, then a day of running underwater tests against that pussy Navy team and their prototype submarine.”

  “I wouldn’t be so cocky if I were you,” Paddy said. “From what I’ve found out, the sub is going to be harder to detect than a hole in the water. They’ve got some kind of propulsion system that makes a caterpillar drive sound like a four fifty-four with straight pipes. Plus, all their specs are top secret, whereas the MICAS suit plans are out on the Web, for God’s sake.”

  “Ah, but that’s our advantage, Paddy. They’ll be testing their equipment, whereas we already know what we can and can’t do.”

  “Yeah, that makes me feel a whole lot better. Let me also remind you that underwater ops is a secondary environment for the MICAS suits. We work best on dry land, VR training or not.”

  “Well, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are looking for ways to expand every unit’s role in Uncle Sam’s Armed Forces, which is why we’re here. If the MICAS suits function subsurface as well as they expect, then we’ll probably be spending a lot more time there. With the U.S.’s expanded role in undersea mining around the world, and the new dangers from terrorists and eco-nuts, that’s to be expected.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Just . . . focus on what we’re doing now, and don’t worry, we all know what’s at stake, and what might happen,” Paddy said.

  “No problem,” Ryan replied, trying to sound more confident. “Here come the others.”

  Peyton had finished her swim, and was padding up the beach. The other two squad members were approaching from the direction of the volleyball court. They all reached Ryan at the same time.

  “Lieutenant,” the two men chorused. Behind them, Peyton nodded.

  “Corporal Chayns, Corporal Vasnej.” Ryan acknowledged their salutes.

  “Sir, the techs said the modifications to the suits are almost finished, if you would like to review them,” Nick said.

  “As I’m sure you’ll all run your own diagnostics this evening, a visual inspection should do. Let’s go,” Ryan said. As they walked, he glanced at the two newest squad members.

  Nick Chayns was the replacement communications man, a full-blooded Hopi from the reservations in the American Southwest. Since the Indian nations had banded together to pool their resources from gaming compacts, they had gained more and more prominence in American politics, to the point where they were beginning to lobby for their own internal nation. Chayns’s family was spearheading this action, so when he told them of his decision to join the United States Army, it hadn’t gone over well. In fact, he had been disowned, his family, still holding to some old traditions, declaring him “dead” to them.

  Randy Vasnej still had sand in what remained of his thinning hair. At twenty-two he was the youngest member of the squad. If it wasn’t for his natural ability at MICAS suit piloting, it was doubtful he’d even be in the army. But while growing up on a farm, he had cut his teeth behind the wheel of a pickup truck at seven years old and grown up driving anything with an engine. The army had found him while still in high school and fast-tracked him into an engineering degree, followed by the MICAS program, where he had taken to the armored suits like he’d been born in one. Unfortunately, his ego was as large as his talent, and he was constantly showing off, mostly to try to impress Peyton, who had coolly rebuffed his clumsy advances.

  The five walked into the large hangar that had been converted into workspace to convert the MICAS suits for extended underwater operation. Every time he saw the armored suits his squad used, standing in place like lifeless marionettes waiting for their individual Strombolis to bring them to life, Ryan always got an indescribable thrill. At least that feeling hasn’t changed, he thought as r they approached the five suits, surrounded by technicians hurrying to finish their modifications.

  I suppose these tests make sense, since these suits were based on undersea exploration units forty years ago, Ryan thought. Each Mobile Individual Combat Assault Suit stood three meters tall, and was basically human shaped, but that was where the similarity ended. The entire suit was armored in 10 millimeters of ceramplast, a ceramic-plastic polymer of “memory molecules,” created in 2022 by the DoD. Impervious to anything up to a 20-millimeter antivehicle round, its unique ability to “heal” itself ensured that if a munition did penetrate, the plate would self-repair after a minute or two. If the plate, or even a limb, was blown off, the modular design of the suit meant it could be easily replaced.

  Inside, the pilot was encased in a form-fitting cocoon that ensured the suit and pilot moved as one. The pilot’s helmet, while also protecting his head from impact, contained a plug that matched the one at the base of each pilot’s skull. When the pilot jacked in, they were connected directly to the computer of the MICAS, interacting with the Near Artificial Intelligence, or NLA, computer that handled the suit systems. Man and machine worked as one, so as th
e pilot moved, so did the suit. Where he looked, the weapons automatically tracked.

  That was just one benefit. Besides augmenting the pilot’s strength by a factor of a hundred, the suit also featured a full sensor array, with everything from radar to infrared and thermal scanning. It also magnified the pilot’s senses, with amplified hearing, including ultrasonic, and an imaging system that let them see up to ten miles away under any conditions.

  While the suits were all-terrain, all-condition, including underwater, as Paddy had mentioned, they were designed for land use only. The techs running around like dwarves tending five giants were swapping out systems with their counterparts for the deep blue sea.

  The MICAS primary weapon system was built into the suit’s left arm, a six-barrel AG-131 8.7-millimeter autocannon, which normally fired caseless depleted uranium rounds at the rate of two thousand rounds a minute. The small size of the bullet, however, made it a liability underwater, where the water resistance would knock any non-self-propelled projectile off target beyond one hundred meters.

  The techs had replaced the entire arm assembly with a normal hand unit ending in fiber-optic controlled fingers sensitive enough that a skilled operator could pick up an egg without cracking it. On the other end of the spectrum, there was enough strength in the suit actuators to tear apart a three-inch thick solid steel fire door in seconds.

  Now the MICAS sprouted a boxlike protrusion from its left shoulder, which contained six covered tubes slaved into the NIA computer. Ryan knew each one contained an Mk-90 minitorpedo, a primarily defensive weapon with a range of only about two thousand yards. For the tests, the torpedoes would contain dummy warheads.

  The right shoulder had contained a mounted autotracking grenade launcher, which would have been as useful as feathers on a fish where they were going. Instead, a bulge that matched the one on the left shoulder now sprouted from the MICAS suit’s back. It contained the sonar system they would be using tomorrow, a compact unit that would help the suits keep track of each other as well as hostiles.