“Not at all Captain. The smart cloud is absorbing and retransmitting our signals, while barring all others. The battle composite imagery it’s feeding us is top grade. It’s showing us insurgents behind walls. I – I don’t know how it works.”
“That’s fine Lieutenant. However, I’ve just got intel on a much larger force that’s still in reserve. No location. Have you taken any prisoners? We need to know where the reserve is, over.”
“No prisoners Captain, these guys aren’t big on surrender. I can take my squad and go find some wounded on the battlefield, over.”
“Negative Lieutenant. Seventh Company is already out here, we’ll take care of it. You and the rest of Second catch a breather. You’ve had a hard day, over.”
“We’re ready for more, Captain. Shields out.”
She got to her feet.
“What the - ?”
Their feeds from cloud-based, cloud based computers spiking, a hundred helmets looked upwards. A red trajectory through the sky lit up in their HUDs. Impact warnings chimed.
The air shrieked as something flashed past, faster than sound. A cloud of fire and black smoke boiled up out of the city center.
“What the hell was that?”
Another red trajectory flared above them. A third. A fourth. She felt the ground shake from the blast waves.
“Khan, get me Battalion Command!”
“I’m trying Captain, no one’s answering, maybe the cloud’s interfering – “
“The fuck the cloud has to do with it; they might have been hit. Get me – “ she trailed off.
“Captain? Captain, who shall I radio?”
Uncomfortable with silence, the radio chirped.
“Shields, how do you use this thing? Hello? Can they hear me? Hello? This is Diamond, can anyone hear me?”
“This is Captain Chosukabe,” she took the radio, “Go ahead, Diamond, over.”
“They’re bombing the city. How about I go over there, and bomb them back?”
“Your light freighter has bombs?”
“My light freighter has freight.”
“Sorry, air sortie is a negative. If they’re using rockets– probably captured from us – they may have anti-air as well. A single Razorhawk would shred you, over.”
“I could take Shields with me. You want to be a hero, Lieutenant? He said yes.”
“Mister Diamond, I need you to go to Battalion Command and assist there. It may have been hit, and if there are casualties – “
“This is Battalion Command. We’re shaken, but we’re okay. The enemy is trying to suppress the one-fifty-fives. If we lose our artillery, this fight is over. Mister Diamond?”
“Go ahead Command.”
“Your air sortie is approved.”
Up on the plateau, olive drab tents were pitched in a circle. At their center smoke rose from an ash pile. ATV trucks, their Union markings sprayed over in black, were parked haphazardly beyond them. Gun limbers were abandoned in a heap; a man unzipped and began taking a leak against it. He looked off into the horizon, and into the sky.
“Target!” he ran, still unzipped.
Men rushed to their cannons. Loaders dropped clattering ammo boxes. Gun teams grunted red-faced, and swiveled business-ends around to face the interloper. Approvers climbed into reclined seats. Control crowns lit up and descended, casing heads in targeting holos and brainwave readers.
Like most apex killers, the Razorhawk AA cannon was beautiful. Behind a gun shield of six-inch thick diamondoid, automated hoppers fed a cluster rail gun cannons. There were six electromagnetic cannons, each as long as a man and wide as his thigh. They would fire in concert, a salvo of eighteen, clenched, spinning, iron darts. Their muzzle velocity was two kilometers a second. Gun computers networked and built composite radar feeds.
Reduced to a wire-diagram, an atmosphere-capable, light freighter was displayed before the approvers. ‘Y/N?’ Flashed before them in red.
Triggers were pulled.
Shot from behind, the crews of One and Two erupted in torn limbs and red mist. One man’s head was shot off, it struck the ground and rolled, stopping against Shield’s boot. He switched targets to gun Three, and kept firing. Beside, him six other Droptroopers were crouched behind rocks or lying prone, their bullpup-pattern rifles, muzzle flaring. Just behind them, gloved hands and boots swung up over the cliff. They heaved up and rolled away to make room for the next climber. An LLG opened up, sending blue lances into an ATV truck that had just started. Its engine block erupted in sparks and black smoke. The LLG kept on firing, melting it down to slag.
The battle for the Razorhawk battery was over almost as quick as it started. Four weapons neutralized – their precious gun shields and all gazes, all facing the wrong way. Aziz waved his squad forward. Guns at the ready, they fanned out. A man without arms groaned as a trooper approached. HUD-visor down, the trooper shot him through the head and kept moving. Behind them at the cliff, the members of second squad helped their last team mates up over the ridge. Shields looked over and down – third squad was still only halfway up the sheer surface.
“Hurry the fuck up!”
A mortar crumped nearby. Falling dirt clattered off body armor.
“Take cover!”
More mortars fell, moving closer. Aziz’s squad had reached the far edge of the pleateau and were firing downwards, into the wadi. Shields ran to them.
“These must be the reserves!” Aziz yelled. They lay prone, heads peeping over. The entire wadi was a campsite, filled with troops and armored vehicles – all captured UEF gear. Sitting clustered in the center like nervous elephants, were several flat-bed, trucks. Deployed support struts anchored them. Piston-mounted, erectors aimed rockets at the sky.
“Thunderbolt launchers!” he pointed. Small arms fire stitched up cliff wall, towards them. “What are your orders?”
“We can’t get down there! And we can’t stay up here much longer, either!” along the cliff edge, the rest of the platoon were in position, pouring down fire. It was impressive – and accurate – but it wouldn’t bet the odds. In the wadi, four thousand fighters were starting to mobilize.
Shields pulled out his radio. “Diamond, this is Shields, over! Triple-A neutralized, and the primary target has been spotted! Commence attack run, over!”
Nothing. A rifleman snarled, a bullet punching into his shoulder.
“Diamond, do you read, over? Diamond? Come in Diamond, over?”
“They could be jamming us, Eltee! What now?”
Hordes of fighters began swarming out of the wadi. One mass rode pickup and bikes and starting curling around the plateau. The other, oblivious to casualties, started climbing up the cliff wall.
“Who needs Jack Diamond?” he pointed. “Get those guns pointing downwards!”
A squad from each platoon got to their feet. Mortar rounds and rockets thundered around them, but Sergeant Aziz was thundering too. Thundering about their balls, and waving a non-regulation knife. The knife sounded louder. They ran for the guns.
Bodies were slid off seats and blood wiped from contacts. Hoppers began whirring, the guns came alive. One by one, they titled downwards, into the wadi.
“Fall back! Fall back!”
The other troopers abandoned the cliff edge and ran. Right over their heads the sound barrier began breaking, 108 times per second.
“Remind me never to pick a fight with the Droptrooper Rangers.”
Diamond handed the Lieutenant a clear plastic bottle. Shields poured the clear water over his head and down his back. He swallowed a mouthful, and then spat another in the sand. It was tinted red.
“Once we hit the ammo dump, it was over. Good thing we were behind the gun shields. We still had a lot of injuries.”
“Any dead?”
“Thankfully no,” he handed back the bottle.
“So what happens now? In the big picture?”
“I’m just a lieutenant.”
“Every lieutenant wants to be general.”
/>
“Alright. I don’t need to see the numbers to know we took a beating. It’s one thing to fight a war with all your equipment, it’s another to fight crippled. That’s what happened here. It’s caused casualties. We can’t keep fighting this way.”
“Is there an alternative?”
“Oh certainly, yes. But it needs a successful vote in the Union Security Council.”
“All-robot armies.”
“Fourth Company is holding the oil refinery, supported by two Avenger smart tank platoons – the only tanks we have. Colonel Baumgartner threw everything we had at this fight - except them. There’s only one reason he’d do that.”
“I don’t see how an ancient refinery is going to help us print robot armies.”
“Carbon. We can strip it from the oil and spin out plastic and diamond. Our engineers can set up a battlefield print shop inside of six hours. If Von Neumann weapons are authorized, all they need is a few nanite spray cans.”
“You think he’d go that far?”
“The Rangers have never lost a fight. The honor of the service is at stake, he’d better go that far. An all-robot campaign will see this war over in a week – and we’ll never lose control again.”
“People – baseline humans – under machine domination? Do you know what you’re supporting? Do you know our history?”
“Don’t patronize me, Jack. I don’t see that we have a choice. I hope your Commodore sees it that way, cause I know the Colonel does. Now not to change a controversial topic before Hitler gets invoked, but what’s with her?”
A brunette in black leather and thigh-highs knelt by the cliff-edge. She looked out over the blackened, smouldering, wadi.
“She’s been like that for ages.”
“Those were her people down there, Lieutenant. Remember, she’s not on our side.”
“Then why is she helping us? Not many locals are.”
“No, not many are. Which is surprising.”
“They’re just ungrateful bastards,” he tore the wrapper off a power bar.
“Do you really believe that?”
Shields thought for a moment, munching. “No. No I don’t.”
“Neither do I. There has to be something else going on. These past few days, these people have suffering a holocaust. Cities bombarded. Farmland torched. Refugees with nowhere to go. It doesn’t make sense that they’d be onboard with this.”
“Well I’m glad she isn’t. I’d hate to have to shoot her.”
Diamond’s face hardened.
“I’ll do my own dirty work.”
The freighter climbed up pillars of quivering-hot air, and turned on in its axis. Engines flared brighter than the setting sun, and powered towards falling darkness.
“I’m picking up something,” Elise leant against the seat harness and peered at the holo-screen. She turned around, eyes wide. “Radiation from space!”
Diamond pulled up a display on the main screen – the curvature of the planet. Half of it was glowing red.
“What does it mean?” asked Vidya.
“It’s the Van Allen belts, their protective fields around the planet created by its magnetic core. They keep the solar radiation from killing everything.”
“Why are they red?” asked Elise.
“Why are they red – on our nightside?”
Gasps and murmurs broke out from the cramped pack of soldiers behind. They peered through portals and pointed at the sky.
“What is that?” asked Vidya.
“Northern Lights. They happen when heavy radiation hits the poles, where there’s less protection.”
“We’re not near the poles, and it’s the whole sky.”
Ducking his head, Shields stepped on to the bridge. His face was pale.
“The fleet has been destroyed.”
“I know.”
“What’s he talking about?” demanded Vidya. “How can you know that?”
“Massive antimatter warfare. When you use that stuff, you get radiation, hard gamma and lots of it. We’re getting dosed with enough that we can see the effect with our naked eyes.”
“You have to contact the Commodore,” Shields squeezed the edge of Diamond’s chair. The veins popped on his arm.
“We can’t get through in the middle of a radiation storm, we have to try lasing them when we have line of sight,” he turned back to Vidya. “We built antimatter guns all over the Kuiper Belt, I’ve been on one. They’re huge. Each is designed to wipe out an Invader horde fleet, even bigger than the one that attacked this system.”
“Is that what we’re looking at?”
“No. That would happen in deep space, we wouldn’t experience this kind of radiation. What we’re seeing is point blank fire: or sabotage. Nothing in the fleet would have survived this. Even if they weren’t directly targeted, the radiation creates a huge kill zone.”
“They hacked the guns,” Shield’s voice was quiet and brittle. “Just like they did our orbital defense.”
“Are we being invaded?”asked Elise.
“I think so. They’re back to finish the job.”
Cullins VIII
“Commodore, we have a visual on the current swarm event.”
“On screen, Mr. Viegas.”
The main viewer lit up. Murmurs and gasps broke out. Doctor Jovanka stood and stepped towards the display. His eyes shimmered.
Cullins frowned.
“Mr. Viegas, are you sure that’s the target?”
“Positive, Sir. Swarms Alpha through Echo have already joined the event. Swarm Foxtrot is still en route, and will impact in T-minus four mikes.”
“What’s that thing’s wind speed?”
“Averaging at two hundred and fifty kilometers per hour.”
“They’ve created a Super Swarm,” said Jovanka, the screen lit his face. “They’re combining their processing power to create a single entity. It must be magnitudes more powerful than the component swarms. They must have been proto-forms. This,” he pointed, “this must be the Xeno-Transcendent’s true form.”
“It’s an F-3 tornado.”
“It is a Category Three: Transcendents as we don’t know them. We are looking at billions of insects, working together in concert. So many wings, so many metabolisms venting heat. Such an event will naturally create its own weather conditions. Like the close passing of a starship.”
“That thing can tear trees out the ground. It must be destroying its own bugs, too. Why would a brain take a form that damages itself?”
“We think nothing of damaging our brain cells, every time we have alcohol. If there’s anything we’ve learned about the Xeno-Transcendent, it’s that it’s very comfortable with expending great resources for a fleeting but decisive objective. Human worshippers sacrificed in orbital bombardments, and now, being used to feed the swarm mind itself.”
“So are you saying that its motives are beyond our reckoning?”
“No. I think I finally understand what we are seeing.”
“Which is?”
“On larger worlds, storms grow much larger in size. They persist longer as well – the Red Spot on Jupiter for example, is over five hundred years old. For all we know, it is as old as the solar system itself. We have also seen the insect vectors activate, and reproduce with the speed of a nanotech plague,” he stopped and turned around. All eyes were on him.
“Imagine Commodore if you will, a world ravaged by a single tornado – that never ends. It annihilates forests, jungles, villages, and carries on about its way. It has a whole planet to strip for materials. Its components are quickly destroyed, but also recreated quickly. Perhaps the storm is also fed by smaller storms or swarms, merging along its path. Even a small planet is a truly vast space. It will be years before the storm returns to feed in the same place again.”
Machines hummed: the only sound on the command deck.
“Commodore,” Viegas was pale. “Shall I prepare a firing solution?”
“Standby, Mr. Viegas,” Cullins raised his
finger. “I appreciate that now we’re looking at every single one of these brain insects, on the planet. This is indeed the time to take the shot and finish this war, once and for all – “
Scattered applause broke out.
“But there are some questions that need answers. Sun Tzu didn’t have the chance to ask them, but we do.”
“Sir?”
“We’re baselines, Mr. Viegas. We understand war in baseline terms. In the invasion, we quickly achieved dominance in space, air, and land. To us, that was victory. But we are fighting an AI war. We cannot engage in that space, but perhaps we can get a clue what’s happening there. I don’t intend to fail the way Sun Tzu did. He had an excuse though; he couldn’t even recognize his enemy. We however, can. If we fail here today, we have no excuses.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Doctor Jovanka, maybe you’re insights can help me.”
“My staff and I are at your service.”
“Well, why did it gather the swarms, at all? That blew its cover. Why has it chosen to build them aggressively, consuming its own followers to do so?”
“You may recall from our earlier chats, that I said we should evidence of processing surges,” replied the Doctor. “Swarming means processing power. The swarms appeared right before the orbital defenses betrayed us. I believe it needed a processing surge, to break the code walls protecting them. Probably, to also crack the Oort defense systems as well.”
“A calculated risk then. Reveal its true form, but cripple us.”
“It would appear so.”
“So why is it still swarming? Presumably it got what it wanted from the surge. It should disperse them for safety.”
“True. It must still surging for other objectives.”
“Sun Tzu?”
“Unlikely. It incapacitated him without needing a surge, in the first place. That would have been a long, drawn-out, infiltration. Brute power would have been less important than subversion.”
“Then this can only be about code walls, again.”
“Commodore,” Viegas cut in, “Colonel Baumgartner grounded his air support drones because they were behaving erratically.”
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