We've Seen the Enemy

by Paul Dayton

  “My high gain antenna was damaged so the link would have to be hard wired. In addition, the Base has lost primary power and is operating on backup only. The repairs are necessary but simple, and they should be done within a few hours. If you could send in an engineer, maintenance personnel and perhaps a support vessel, it would be much appreciated.”

  ‘Was she flirting?’ Bishop couldn’t believe it. ‘And what was that with the wink?’ Her expression now had a hint of pleading to it, and Bishop felt embarrassed to admit that he was unusually attracted to this artificial persona. Out of all the women he had met in his forty nine years, he had never met any like this Angela, and she was a construct. When she said the word ‘much’, Bishop could have sworn that she was inferring some sort of sexual offer in exchange for their help.

  He had brushed up on his history of these Bases while they prepped for the jump and had heard of the A.I.s. An attempt had even been made to have odor banks installed. Scientists had successfully proven that odor played almost as big a part as vision to a human being. But this was uncanny and unlike anything he had expected.

  “What do you think, Commander Hollander?” Bishop asked.

  Hollander replied, “Angela, we can’t share sensitive military information, but there is a lot of information we can give you, such as active ant cells, hives and areas of recent activity. We also have detailed records of our history that you might ‘enjoy’. Give us a few hours to prepare the information, and then we’ll come visit.”

  “That will do Commander. Thank you for your generosity. In the meantime, I’ll get things ready at my end. It’s been a long time since I’ve had guests,” Angela said. She stole a glance at Bishop and then logged out.

  Bishop turned to see Hollander grinning at him. “It seems that you have quite an admirer, Captain.” he said.

  “I thought it was my imagination! I’m sure it was programmed to act exactly the way it needed to get the results it wanted, Commander,” Bishop said as he squirmed under the commander’s gaze. “What I would like to know, is its purpose.”

  “So would I. Seeing as it apparently likes you, why don’t you form a Drop Team and snoop around down there?”

  “I…Very well Commander.” Bishop was elated.

  “First Officer Dresdon, set up a drop team. Finley, gather up the information needed, would you? And make sure it’s edited,” Bishop added.

  “Yes, Sir,” Finley replied. He had also been extremely curious about this Angela, and he couldn’t wait to get his hands on her.

  Dresdon wasn’t happy with Bishop leaving the Bridge and said, “Respectfully, Sirs, I would suggest that I be the one leading the drop team instead of you Captain…”

  “Thank you Mr. Dresdon.” Hollander interrupted. “You are of course right, but based on the reaction we saw with this A.I. I think we can break the rules this once.”

  Four hours of sleep weren’t enough, but once again the crew’s morale was on a high as they worked feverishly to get everything ready. Views of Earth had been displayed by cartography in the ship’s mess hall and beamed back to the rest of the fleet.

  Bishop rubbed sleep from his eyes as he sat in the change room with his drop team. They had been ready to leave but were waiting for the ship historian and file custodian to put the finishing touches on the information dump.

  Bishop was going over his drop team’s personnel files while he waited when word came through that the file custodian had given his approval for the file release. He got up and nodded to the four with him, and just as he was about to turn around the historian came running around the corner with a large backpack on his back and an attaché case in his left hand.

  “It looks like you think you’re going somewhere, Mr. Finley,” Bishop said.

  Jonathan Finley was the perfect caricature of an historian: tall, thin, with a pasty white complexion and stooped shoulders. He had refused corrective surgery both for his back and for his vision, and because of it he wore thick eyeglasses like you would see on people in old 2D files. He had paid a month’s wages for them and took great pride in wearing them to the perplexity of all those that knew him. He was definitely not the type of person anyone would have on a drop team.

  “Sir, as you know, I am fully competent in the use of all storage devices, and I can improvise as needed. My capabilities necessitate that I go with you in the event that there be protocol, communication or connection problems. No one else is as fully capable as I.”

  Bishop could see that Finley had voiced this argument before, probably just a few minutes ago in front of a mirror. His erect and defiant stance looked painful, as Finley made a conscious effort to straighten out his back. He said, “Very well then. Against better judgment, I’ll agree to you joining the team, on one condition - that you do exactly as we say without complaint. Agreed?”

  “Yes, Sir!”

  The drop team’s Second looked at Bishop with surprise. Mat was a battle-hardened ex-troublemaker and one of Bishop’s best soldiers and pilots.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes, Number Two?” Bishop said, smiling.

  “We have no idea what’s down there. He’s had no formal training. It’ll put the whole team at risk.”

  “Thank you. He’s coming. At the very least, we can use him as a shield,” Bishop said, winking at Finley. Bishop had no in-depth computer systems training and had decided he might need him.

  Finley walked up to Mat. Painfully straightening the curvature in his back, he said, “I’m going. Get used to it. I know a lot more about computer systems then any of you and you need me.”

  The others laughed, but Mat stared them all down. Bishop shook his head and added, “Sorry Mat, but you’ll have to babysit. Use whatever means you have to to keep him in line.”

  “With pleasure, Sir!”

  Looking at Finley, Bishop added, “All joking aside, remember to do exactly as we say,” and he patted him on the back.

  They had packed light weaponry in their Maxon Type 1’s, knowing full well that they were no match for a fully armed and operational base. If Angela raised any concerns, Bishop could argue that the weapons they had were standard issue and that all soldiers had to carry them at all times, which was true. He hoped she wouldn’t notice the micro missiles.

  The call came through that the Support Ship was ready and waiting. Normally the drop team would landfall in a heavily armored assault ship, but because of the type of mission and the fact that the base needed a stand-in power supply, this ship fit the mission parameter. It was a ‘fifty tonner’, used in long skirmishes and capable of supplying ten megawatts of electricity per sol day for a month without re-supplying, and it had armor plating.

  “Let’s get going,” Bishop said as they walked down the ramp that led to the flight deck. On the deck all hands were on alert and readying attack ships for immediate launch. Bishop hadn’t stood down the Combat Status yet, and wouldn’t until this issue with China Lunar was addressed.

  He watched Mat walk, noticing the slight limp. He also noticed the well worn and use-polished butt of his sidearm sticking out of its holster. They had been friends for thirty years and fought side by side for seven of them. Mat was an unstoppable feral lion ready to pounce at the right minute. What made him so spectacularly good was that he waited for the right minute – a cold, calculating wait that resulted in the biggest impact. There was very little that could stop him once he had set his path on something.

  If Bishop had the choice of any one person to fight a battle with by his side, Mat would be number one, with Jack in second place. The thought of Jack brought back the reality that she was dead, and he quickly pushed it out of his mind. Now was not the time to grieve his friend’s passing.

  They finally reached the Support Ship, and Bishop looked at its ungainly structure as it sat there on heavy landing wheels. It was tall and wide, an ugly box-shaped craft only a soldier could love, with wings seemingly too small for a ship that size. But Bishop knew that the excess power the ship generat
ed was more than sufficient to power its gravitic drives and that its wings were there to stabilize the ship in rapid flight, not to generate lift. In case of grav failure, it could in theory glide to a survivable landing, and they were the most dependable of all the fleet ships.

  The egress gate on the ship was already open, and Mat jumped into the pilot’s chair once inside and locked in to the already idling ship. Bishop felt the Crystanium rod in his arm and the plate in his head vibrate slightly from the effect of the small graviton field the ship was generating, knowing full well that it would only get worse when full power was applied. As if reading his thoughts, Mat looked back with a big smile and asked, “Captain. Wondering if you would like a hug, Sir.”

  They had been fighting side by side on planet Helo when an ant Air/Fuel Rocket exploded a few dozen yards away, driving scraps of steel and concrete through the air. A large chunk of concrete had smashed Mat’s knee and broken Bishops thigh bone. Other odd bits and pieces had ripped apart Bishop’s arm and crushed a part of his skull. It was a miracle Bishop survived and he knew he would have died had Mat not been there. The CBAssist system was an older, surgically implanted system that linked his mind and augmented vision with Mission Central and automatically provided emergency drug delivery. It had kept him out of shock, but the damage was severe. After glancing at his shredded arm and realizing he would never fight again, he begged Mat to let him die. Mat refused to listen, used his rifle as a splint for his injured leg and single handedly dragged him back to their jump ship. Once inside, he quickly lit a cigar and made himself comfortable as he prepped the drop ship for takeoff, while the medics stabilized Bishop.

  The intense pain he felt in close proximity to a gravitic-drive ended Bishop’s career as a soldier and eventually led him to where he was now. He felt no regrets now that he was Captain and was happy Mat had ignored his plea. They had never talked about it again.

  Everyone had strapped in except for Finley who was having trouble with the latches. Gomez laughed as he unbuckled to help him out. Once strapped back in, the ship powered up and Bishop clenched his teeth. To keep his mind off the pain, he thought of Mat’s call sign, Bam-Bam. He was given it by the top brass after one outstanding mission where he took out an Ant Carrier ship by boarding her with his teammate John ‘Bulldog’ Bullshaw, sneaking over to the power generating section, and dropping a small fission bomb into the recycler, knowing that it cycled every 47.3 minutes. They escaped by the skin of their teeth as the Carrier lit up.

  Landfall was uneventful. Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, had only a wisp of an atmosphere that extended itself two kilometers above the dark surface, and Mat would have missed the landing site completely had Angela not turned on the landing lights. The landing site was sitting off to one side of a two hundred meter deep crater. The starlight shadow made it near invisible.

  Mat turned on the spotlights and slowly swung them around the perimeter of the landing circle as he searched for an entrance of some kind into the base. There was none that he could see, and his sensors told him that no weapons were activated. He touched down in the center of the landing circle.

  “Scan detected,” the ship comp said. “Level 4. Duration, .09 seconds.”

  Mat looked out the transparent screen and noticed a cloud of dust rising just off the side of the landing area, and he focused the spotlights there. Within a few moments, two more lights lit up in the area and Mat could just start to make out the outline of a large metallic box.

  “I guess that’s our way in. Time to suit up everyone,” Bishop said. The Support Ship had the Maxon 1’s locked into carriages, and the six prepared to put them on. Mat was already in his as per standard flight requirement. Bishop and the other two grabbed an assortment of standard tools, including a mini laser cutter. Bulldog, a junior member of the drop team, bagged a few specialty weapons to cover all the bases.

  Finley had never been in a Maxon before so he watched the others get in and attempted to do the same. Fortunately, they were relatively straightforward, and a few minutes later he was picking up his aluminum air-tight attaché case with his robotic-sheathed hand.

  Bishop’s pain had started evaporating as soon as Mat shut down the Grav-drives. He felt the beginnings of a migraine coming on and that was the last thing he needed. “Mat, anything showing up on the scanners to worry about?” he said as he took meds to prevent the migraine from getting worse.

  “No, Sir. Scanners show perimeter base defenses inactive. For now.”

  “Very well then. Let’s go knocking. Looks like that box might be our ride.”

  They exited and Mat did an experienced low-gravity jump over to the large metallic box, scanning the area while in mid jump. Bishop and the others followed until Finley jumped and over-propelled himself, flailing his arms as his body started to rotate out of control. His briefcase went sailing away but Mat jumped and caught it just before it hit the ground. Finley finally landed hard, his body slamming into the side of the metallic box and bouncing off past Gomez, who reached out his hand and grabbed him. “Easy now, Rospo,” Gomez said. “You OK?”

  “Yes,” Finley said, blushing. He remembered his briefcase and looked around wildly for it but couldn’t find it. Mat, who was standing behind him, knocked on his Maxon and handed him the briefcase when Finley turned, who hugged it as if it was his only child. In all this confusion, nobody had noticed that Finley’s bumping into the box activated lights on a front panel. A door opened on the side on the very obvious elevator.

  “Oh look, a cozy room for the six of us,” Gomez said, uncomfortable with the thought that they had no control over their surroundings. He turned to Bishop and said, “Wish you had let us use the Maxon 4’s, Sir. These suits are barely better then my undies.”

  “That’s cuz your undies can stand up and walk by themselves,” Mat replied.

  “And that’s just how you like them, isn’t it?” Gomez replied as the others laughed, but they all felt uncomfortable. Type 1’s were unassigned, light action suits with limited computing and scanning abilities and no weaponry. Bishop had made his position clear, that they were guests and not an assault team, and his decision had obviously been final.

  The elevator descended by itself, and all could see the air pressure slowly rise on the display until it reached one atmosphere. Suit sensors informed them that the air was suitable to breathe, but Bishop still refused to take off his helmet until they got out of the elevator.

  All combat soldiers had subcutaneous computers wired into their bodies as part of their CBAssists, and Bishop never had his removed with the change in assignment. Now it superimposed the base layout on their retina, showing them their present location according to last known info. Their objective was to have half of the team reach the computer room and the other half continue to the base power generation floor, the lowest of all the levels.

  Within moments the elevator stopped at the floor housing the central computing units, and Finley jumped out, eager to look at the base computers. Mat grabbed him by his life support and yanked him back. Pinning him against the back wall, he stared into Finley’s visor and said, “Nobody goes anywhere without Captain Bishop or I saying so! Understand?”

  “I don’t see what the problem is!” a visibly upset Finley replied, but he quickly stopped talking as soon as he saw Mat reach for his sidearm. A few more seconds with Mat looking in Finley’s eyes were enough to convince him that Mat or Captain Bishop always went first.

  Mat turned to look down the passageway that had lit up with the arrival of the elevator.

  “Welcome home, gentlemen,” Angela said over their suit comm. Bishop looked at Mat and mouthed the word ‘Home’ with a questioning expression, and Mat just shrugged his shoulders.

  “Feel free to take off your helmets. I assure you that everything is perfectly fine, including the temperature. I made everything as cozy as possible considering my circumstances.”

  The others looked at Bishop, who slowly unclasped his helmet lock and removed the
helmet. The air was stale but breathable, musty and dry.

  “I apologize for the low moisture content, my recyclers were shut down to keep my equipment from degrading any further. Down the hallway you will find the floor nexus. Just take the hallway marked ‘Base Operations’ and you will find the base library where you can access my system directly. Stay out of the dormitories. Most of the crew members chose to end their lives there and I have had insufficient resources to transport them all to the surface for a proper burial.”

  Bishop looked at Mat and said, “See what you can do with the power equipment,” and hand signaled him to keep his eyes open. Mat picked two others, leaving Bishop with Gomez and Finley who continued to the nexus while Mat and his group descended.

  They went through a set of blast doors that were already open and continued to the desk in the middle. Bishop noticed the dust on the floor and on the tracks where the blast door slid, which told him that the doors appeared as if they stopped working or simply weren’t used.

  “I take it you weren’t expecting guests, Angela?”

  “I like the way you pronounce my name, Captain. No I wasn’t. As I’ve mentioned earlier, I haven’t had guests in a very long time. Please feel welcome and stay as long as you like.” Angela’s voice had an unusual eagerness to it, as if her programmers hadn’t gotten things quite right.

  Bishop looked around the nexus and saw nothing out of the ordinary at first. In the center stood a half-round kiosk with an area on the inside for occupants. It was definitely military in appearance, and he could just see the top edge of four monitors. The kiosk itself had a one and a half meter high crystanium outer wall and it was marked with dents and scratches.

  Bishop walked up to the wall and peered over the edge. Perfectly positioned behind it on comfortable looking chairs were the desiccated remains of three humans long dead. Bishop motioned Gomez over.