Her virtual windows all closed simultaneously. “What the hell!” she shouted, trying to reassert control. Her mind raced, trying to understand how they had managed to infiltrate and commandeer the family’s network. Movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she shifted her gaze upon her father. He was walking along the translucent wall, looking out over the carnage below. His hands moved through the air as he walked, and she knew in that moment that he had taken control from her and for the first time in a long time, she was grateful. She never wanted to be part of this, never wanted to have the pain and blood of others on her hands.
Her access to the command level functions was now restricted, but she could still review data from all corners of their empire. She noticed that her father had placed the entire war effort in Asia into the hands of his AI programs, and she could already see how the Chen alliance was benefiting from her father’s absence. That was irrelevant now; if they fell here, it wouldn’t matter if they lost Asia. The sensors reported that the constant radio broadcast had ceased. One by one their detection devices in the forest winked out of existence, leaving a swath of land effectively in the dark. She and her mother both began to walk toward her father, getting closer to each other as they did.
All three of them watched the tree line from their perch at the top of the Spire. They all knew something was coming, and they knew it was imminent. Her mother slipped her hand into hers. Maria didn’t swat it away. She knew more than her mother; she had actually met those that were assaulting her home. But she couldn’t be certain of the reception that her family would receive should these ghosts from the past succeed in this last attempt to reassert their control over the world. She hated them both, but that didn’t stop her from loving them at the same time and not wanting harm to come to them.
The tree line burst to life as hundreds of vehicles ranging from trucks to heavy armor roared out of it. The defensive systems immediately began to identify and classify each, setting significant priority level for the tanks that were mostly grouped toward the center, with a few toward the wings of the line, which was rapidly taking on a V shape, the pointed end aimed at them as it forged its way toward the breach in the Spire wall.
“Should have stayed dead,” her father said in a monotone. His body language betrayed his anger however. His stance was tense, his fists balled, and he shook slightly as he stared down at the advancing line below. This was not something he had accounted for. This could destroy all of his plans and make all the sacrifices he had made for the last fifteen years irrelevant.
Hatches along the defensive wall opened up once more, disgorging the second half of the defensive division that she had kept in reserve. These warriors from the past might have been much better at this than she was, but even she had learned the basics of combat, never commit everything to a single engagement. Her father still had some assets left to defend his dream and more were being produced in the manufacturing facilities below to replace those that had been lost.
The drones did not follow the same strategy from before. This enemy had weapons that were even more effective than their own at greater range. She watched from the POV of a squad of drones as they barreled toward the Marine line. Both sides going full tilt toward the other. The LDUs were the first to be targeted. The turrets of the tanks, which were classified in her view as M1-A3s, moved frighteningly fast from one target to the next. Their snub-nosed barrels front and center in the squat diamond turret. Every other second the small aperture in the barrel, no larger than her fist, spit out a high velocity dart that turned their Land Dominance Units, combat drones the size of a small house, into scrap metal and delivered a similar fate to any drone behind them.
The drone she was watching through was beside an LDU when it was destroyed. The heat generated by the impact of the high velocity dart passing through the destruction of the large robot created a shockwave that threw hers several dozen meters away. When its diagnostic system indicated that its legs had been sheared off by a piece of debris she switched to another. Just in time to watch as several baseball sized devices detonated above its squad, sending shrapnel ripping through their vital components. They dropped to the ground as if they were puppets with their strings cut.
The Marine line slowed, no longer closing the distance quite as fast. Their weapons inflicting heavy losses on her family’s units. But those that were destroyed were being replaced as the manufacturing units below the Spire continued to funnel combat drones out through the deployment points located around the entire defensive ring. New LDU’s joined the fray; the mortars mounted to their backs flinging smart munitions down toward the Marine line. Interceptors placed on each of their vehicles belched out small metal darts to intercept the explosive packages being flung their way, but as the volume of fire from the drones intensified, the prematurely exploding mortar shells got closer and closer to their targets. Soon they would overwhelm the defenses entirely. The Marines were beginning to lose the initiative and in a matter of minutes would soon be severely out numbered.
The moment that thought crossed her mind she realized how wrong the situation was. Why were the Marines slowing down? Why wasn’t their artillery targeting the deployment points on this side of the wall? Why weren’t they rushing for the breach point in the wall itself?
Her father must have come to the same conclusion. She and her mother watched as the entire drone army stopped its advance simultaneously and then began to retreat back to the wall. New drones being produced in the factories below were rerouted to the elevator system and dispatched to the hangar level near the top. The Marines held their position, firing into the backs of the withdrawing drones. Her father’s head dropped to the side, and he looked behind himself without turning.
“We have uninvited guests.”
Maria immediately activated her internal logs and found what had tipped him off. “Someone opened a stairwell door on level three.”
“I guess that artillery shell wasn’t knocked off course. Smart,” her mother said coolly. Maria noticed something in her voice and in her eyes. A subtle shift in the way she looked at her father as she said it. The hair on Maria’s arm rose slightly and she didn’t yet understand why.
The fountain flashed into her mind. “They must have anticipated we’d have security systems on the first floor, so they created a breach point to enter from above that.” She began to swipe through security camera footage. “I can’t see them."
This didn’t surprise her given her recent experiences. She contemplated coming clean to her father then and there. Letting him know everything that she knew about the Marine forces below. She quickly realized however that the time for that information to be useful had passed and no matter what she revealed at this point, it would not affect the outcome. She decided it better to not distract her father.
“Adaptive camouflage…” he said, distantly. His hands working rapidly. The sweat on the nape of his neck and the shaking of his body making it clear that the strain placed upon him directing so many operations, multi-tasking between his virtual vision and mental controls was beginning to take its toll.
The room suddenly became chilly, and Maria wrapped her arms around her chest. She looked at her father. “Daddy?”
He didn’t hear her, or possibly couldn’t. He was transfixed on the variety of operations he was running. She shifted her attention to her virtual vision and realized that he was manipulating the internal climate systems of the Spire itself. Every level above the hangar was rapidly dropping to frigid temperatures and a gust of wind began to pick at her clothing and hair as the circulation system began to channel the cold air downward. Every level below the hangar space increased in temperature, moisture added to the air to increase its humidity, and the blower system aided physics and helped it to rise upward.
A set of stairwell doors at the hangar level flew open just as a fine mist began to form in the vast space. Its large external doors having just rolled shut. Labor drones stopped what they were
doing and began advancing on the recently opened doors on foot or in their large loaders. The mist began to thicken and within seconds, the interactions of cold and humid air formed a thick fog. And that’s when she saw them. Ghosts in the mist, unseen in normal conditions but the water droplets were sticking to their armor, silhouetting them. They looked like apparitions, demonic beasts that were most comfortable hiding in the shadows of a child’s room, just barely out of clear sight. But they were there. Her feed blanked out for a moment and was replaced by a black screen for a fraction of a second with a single word upon it, ‘Updating’.
The view of the hangar reappeared only this time over a dozen red outlined figures were sprinting across the fog covered deck of the hangar. The system had applied the line to track them and a second later the hangar space erupted in violence. Every labor drone ran at full speed toward the squad of previously hidden Marines, flinging tools and crates they held. The soldiers responded with rifle fire that quickly dispatched dozens in a moment. Objects hammered into several of the forms and barely broke their stride. Given the speed they were moving and how easily they were shrugging off the impacts Maria assumed the armor meant to not only protect its wearer but also enhance their strength.
The wall of drones crashed into the Marines. The soldiers beat them to pieces with their rifles, flinging them like children’s toys across the space; their advance slowing only slightly. Those not engaged in direct hand to hand used their firearms to destroy the drones piloting the loaders into their formation. It was incredibly difficult to track, even with the computer’s attempt to outline the invaders. It was after all an estimation on the soldier’s location given how the water vapor clung to each of them. Maria squinted subconsciously trying to figure out the point to her father’s plan. There was nothing the labor drones could really do to this enemy.
A burst of flame appeared in thin air and one of the red outlines dropped to the grown. Maria was certain she watched the air pixelate. The closest form ripped the head off a drone and then grabbed their fallen comrade, dragging them behind a disabled loader. Lines of crimson flashed through the mist, crisscrossing and searching for the nearly invisible soldiers. Labor units caught in their paths flared and fell to the ground in heaps as they were sliced apart as the beams sought their prey. The Marines quickly found cover from this new threat. On either side of the hangar, the elevator cars were disgorging dozens upon dozens of combat drones. They began to be destroyed as the Marines returned fire, and then sought their own cover from the projectiles. Unlike the Marines, however, their numbers were growing and their fear of harm or death was nonexistent. The Marines were now trapped, being advanced on by two sides by combat units.
Explosions ripped through the end of the line of drones in the path of the Marines. A lone figure broke from the group of trapped soldiers and sprinted for the doorway to the stairwell that would access the family section of the Spire. Drones attempted to converge on the person, but they were destroyed by rifle shots from the runner and from covering fire from the Marine position. The door flew open and the Marine exited the fog filled hangar, ascending upward and disappearing from their camera systems. She couldn’t be sure, but she believed she saw one of the other Marines reaching for the runner when he broke from the makeshift fortifications, as if they were trying to hold him back. She didn’t know why that registered for her.
Tobor immediately took up a position between her father and the stairwell, staring at the doorway. It anticipated that soon a threat could come from that direction, but its algorithms had guessed incorrectly. The armored Marine force below had increased its pace, firing into the exterior deployment points of the wall to seal them off and prevent new drones from emerging. Those inside must have been in communication with those outside.
The Spire’s tracking system let out an alarm. A single projectile had been launched from the forest. They all watched as the artillery shell, shining brightly in the fading light arced toward the top of the Spire. Time slowed as it raced upward and toward their exact point. Her mother wrapped her arms around Maria and her father turned to look at them both. Remorse clearly permeating his every thought. Maria knew this was how they all died. Darkness flashed as the sunlight disappeared and then her world exploded.
15
Her back arched as she desperately pulled air into her lungs. Searing pain accompanied every second of the action and flowed down to her legs. She stared, in absolute silence, up at the sky awash in the golds and purples of sunset. It was gorgeous, a testament to the many wonders that were trivial to something on the scale of the universe. A strong breeze blew a cloud of smoke over her, obscuring her view and snapping her back into the moment. She wasn’t dead. She should have been, of that she was certain. She tried to roll over but the fiery sensation in her legs intensified and they refused to move. She let out a scream, only she didn’t hear it as much as she felt it. Panic filled her as she fought conflicting urges to grip her ears versus check her legs.
She took a deep breath, calming herself and trying to push the agony she felt away, but was only partially successful. Tears streamed down the sides of her face as she forced herself to sit up. She knew she was screaming through the motion but still couldn’t hear it. Stretched across her legs was a smoking piece of twisted metal. Stenciled on its surface was a partial QR code. Her contacts worked to translate it and revealed to her that the piece was from a UCAV but couldn’t tell her which type. She didn’t need them to though. She already knew and it didn’t matter one damn bit. She could smell her skin burning.
She grabbed the edge of the crumpled sheet of metal, a jolt of pain streaking through her arms and into her brain. Her back spasmed and she nearly let go, instead she used the adrenaline coursing through her veins to press the base of her palm into the underside of the edge and force the twisted sheet up. She swung her badly burned legs from underneath. Staring down, she looked in shock at the singed and still slightly smoking flesh, unsure as to where her leggings ended and her charred and blistered skin began.
At that moment she wanted nothing more than for her mother and father to come to her, to hold her and make this all better, but they were nowhere to be seen. Tears continued to cascade down her cheeks, and she took the sleeves of her shirt to wipe them from the side of her eye to the back of her cheek. Her palms came back, fresh blood upon her blistered hands. She ran them along the side of her head up to her ears. A faint ringing began and she realized that she had lost her hearing in what had been a massive explosion. She sat there, trying to understand what had happened and why she wasn’t dead. She looked at the debris from the UCAV and realization flooded over her. The dark flash before the explosion, it was from this destroyed aircraft. Her father must have recalled the air assets she had deployed North before this attack had occurred. One of them must have placed itself between them and the path of the artillery shell. If it hadn’t, she would be dead right now.
Hands wrapped themselves around her and she turned to see her mother. Her immaculate hair and makeup a disaster matched only by the debris strewn floor of her father’s sanctum. Her mouth moved, but Maria could make out nothing she said. She didn’t have to though. Her mother ripped at her blouse, tearing off a section of it in a display of strength that Maria never would have thought the older woman capable of. She began to wrap Maria’s legs and as she did, Maria looked over her mother. She saw shards of glass still embedded in her mother’s skin over her exposed arms and legs. A bloody line also cut across the back of her head where something substantial had impacted.
All anger and resentment she had toward her mother vanished in that instant. She completely understood that no matter what happened, her mother was absolutely dedicated to her. She would suffer anything. She would do anything for Maria, and in that moment, it became clear to her why her mother had gone along with her father’s insanity. There was no scenario where Maria didn’t suffer greatly. Had she turned her husband in to the authorities, their entire family would be shamed an
d Maria would have born the stigma of being the child of the man who wanted to kill the world, for the rest of her nearly limitless life. To be responsible, even if only partly, for that fate was beyond what her mother could allow.
The floor shook and they both looked in the direction of where her father had been standing. A large piece of fuselage from the UCAV began to lift upward. Slowly, carefully, it tipped up onto its edge until it was pushed off to the side. Tobor stood directly in front of the setting sun. Its dented and burned chassis surrounded by the fiery disk of the far away star. It extended a hand downward to her father, who lay motionless on the ground. For moment she feared he was dead, but his hand reached up and grasped the wrist of her robotic protector. Slowly but surely he was pulled to his feet.
Her father moved near the edge of the floor, his feet crunching the shattered glass strewn about as he did. His legs wobbled and his feet slipped on the newly made surface, but nothing stopped him from looking out upon the chaotic struggle between the old world and the new that was unfolding below. A strong gust of wind struck them all, and she thought her father would fall over the edge as he put his arm out and balanced himself. For a brief moment she hoped he would, the desire for this nightmare to be over tugging at every fiber of her being. So many dead because of him, so many of those who remained were dying because of his twisted logic. He was the single largest mass murderer in history, and he deserved to die.
The Spire Page 35