Six

by Mark Alpert

  “Think we can do it?” I shout back at Zia. “Transfer to the helicopter and fly out of here?”

  “We have to get it ready first. Open the hangar doors, push the chopper outside, unfold the rotor blades.”

  “That’ll take forever. Sigma’s tank is gonna shell us before we’re done.”

  “So we’ll split up. I’ll keep the tank busy.”

  “How are you going to—”

  “See you later, Armstrong.”

  Without another word, Zia cuts to the right and circles back to the crater. As she approaches the crater’s rim she lifts the steel beam, holding it like a javelin. Then she hurls the thing at the T-90, which is climbing the slope below the rim. The beam hurtles end over end through the air and hits the tank’s turret with a resounding clang. Although the impact doesn’t even dent the T-90’s thick armor, it gets Sigma’s attention. The tank swings its main gun toward Zia, who tilts her torso forward and sprints to the north.

  She’s psycho. She’ll never make it. But she’s drawing the tank away from me. She’s buying me some time.

  In less than a minute I reach the runway. I stop in front of the hangar and rest Dad on the tarmac as gently as I can. Then I rip the hangar’s doors off their hinges. The Black Hawk is still parked inside, thank God, but as Zia predicted, it isn’t ready to fly. The long blades of its main rotor are folded and bunched together on top of the fuselage to make the chopper compact enough to fit inside the hangar. That’s why Sigma didn’t take control of the Black Hawk—the AI couldn’t get it ready. You need a person or a Pioneer to manually unfold the rotor blades.

  As I stride into the hangar, my acoustic sensor picks up a distant boom. It’s the sound of the T-90’s main gun. A half second later I hear another boom, even more distant. It’s the detonation of a high-explosive shell. I want to rush outside to see if it hit Zia, but I stop myself. I have to focus on the helicopter.

  First, I remove the chocks from its wheels. Then I grab the tow bar under the Black Hawk’s nose and pull the aircraft out of the hangar. At the same time, I turn on my data transmitter. I have an idea: I’m going to try DeShawn’s balancing trick again. I make copies of my files and send them to the Black Hawk’s control unit, stretching my mind so it can occupy both the Pioneer and the helicopter. Soon my thoughts are bouncing back and forth between the two machines.

  As my Pioneer hauls the Black Hawk across the tarmac, I simultaneously scroll through the files in the helicopter’s control unit, which has all the instructions for operating the aircraft. Within seconds I’ve turned on the Black Hawk’s auxiliary power. Luckily, the fuel tanks are nearly full. Better yet, there are two laser-guided Hellfire missiles hanging from the chopper’s weapons rack. I’ll need them if I’m going to take on the T-90.

  After I pull the helicopter onto the runway, I scramble to the top of its fuselage and start unfolding the rotor blades. But before I can finish the process, my radar detects an incoming object. It’s too large and slow to be a tank shell, but it’s heading straight for me, moving across the basin at thirty miles per hour. When I point my camera in that direction, I see it’s Pioneer 4A. The T-90 didn’t destroy it after all. It must’ve survived the explosion at the top of the stairs and clawed its way to the surface.

  I feel a surge of panic. Turning my turret around, I focus my camera on Dad. He’s lying on the tarmac, unconscious and defenseless, while Sigma’s Pioneer races toward us, only a hundred yards away. I retrieve another memory from my files, an image of what Pioneer 6A did to Corporal Williams, the robot’s steel fingers coated with blood.

  No! DAD!

  Then I remember: I’m inside the Black Hawk’s circuits too and I can operate all its weapons, whether the chopper is flying or not. Desperate, I turn on the laser guidance system and aim it at 4A’s torso. Then I launch one of the Hellfire missiles.

  A jet of flame erupts from the back of the missile, propelling it from the weapons rack. The Hellfire follows the laser beam to Pioneer 4A, but at the last instant the robot hurls itself to the ground. The missile flies right past it.

  But while 4A is still sliding through the mud, I aim the laser again and launch the other Hellfire. Before the Pioneer can lever itself upright, the missile smashes into its torso. The explosion hurls pieces of the robot across the basin.

  My fear subsides, but only for a moment. The T-90 fires its main gun again, and I turn my camera toward the noise. The tank shell hits the ridge on the northern edge of the basin and a cloud of smoke rises from the slope. But I don’t see any sign of Zia. Maybe she’s been blasted to smithereens, or maybe she’s just hiding behind one of the rocky outcrops on the ridge. Either way, there’s no time to lose.

  I finish unfolding the blades of the Black Hawk’s main rotor. Then, while my Pioneer jumps down from the fuselage, I send a signal from the helicopter’s control unit to the turboshaft engines. As the tail and main rotors start to turn, I pick up Dad from the tarmac and climb into the Black Hawk’s crew compartment.

  It’s a little disorienting: I’m inside the helicopter that’s carrying my Pioneer, but I’m also inside the robot. I’m viewing the runway from two perspectives—the sensors in the Black Hawk’s nose and the camera in my Pioneer’s turret—and it’s a challenge to keep my balance. While lowering my arms to rest Dad on the compartment’s floor, I rev up the helicopter’s engines. Then we rise from the runway and leap toward the sky.

  This is way different from flying the Raven. The Black Hawk’s main rotor provides both the upward lift and forward thrust. I can climb and dive and accelerate by varying the tilt of the rotor blades, and I can change course by adjusting the tail rotor, which turns the helicopter to the left and right. I swoop and soar over the basin, familiarizing myself with the controls.

  Then I race toward the ridge on the basin’s northern edge, where another shell from the T-90 has just detonated. The tank is about fifty yards from the foot of the ridge, pointing its main gun at the south-facing slope. Although I have no Hellfires left, the Black Hawk also has a fifty-caliber Gatling gun. The bullets won’t penetrate the T-90’s armor, but maybe I can shred the tank’s antenna and break its link to Sigma.

  I fly in a wide arc, keeping my distance from the T-90. The ridge’s south-facing slope is pocked with impact craters from the tank shells, but I see no trace of Zia. It’s as if she vanished. I fly a little closer to the ridge, scanning the slope with the Black Hawk’s infrared camera. Then I open a radio channel to Zia’s Pioneer. I encrypt my communications so Sigma can’t eavesdrop.

  “Zia, can you hear me? I’m in the Black Hawk.”

  While I’m waiting for a response, a barrage of bullets strikes the helicopter. The T-90 is firing its anti-aircraft machine gun at me. I return fire with the Gatling gun, aiming at the tank’s antenna, but I quickly realize how futile this is. Without the Hellfires, I’m a much more vulnerable target than the T-90. The tank will blow me out of the sky long before I can damage its antenna. Then, to make matters worse, the T-90 swings its main gun in my direction.

  Zia’s voice suddenly comes over the radio. “Don’t be an idiot, Armstrong! Get out of here!”

  “Where are you? I don’t see you anywhere.”

  “Watch it, the tank’s about to fire! Get behind the ridgeline, now!”

  Her warning comes too late. I’m still a hundred yards from the top of the ridge when the T-90 fires a shell straight at me. For a moment I’m frozen in terror. If the shell hits the helicopter, my Pioneer might survive the explosion and crash landing, but Dad definitely won’t make it. Although he’s still lying unconscious on the floor of the crew compartment, there’s a grimace on his face now, as if he can somehow sense the fast-approaching projectile.

  No! I won’t let you die!

  The fury in my circuits overcomes my fear. I roll the Black Hawk to the left, banking away from the shell. Fortunately, the projectile has no guidance system,
so it can’t adjust its course in midflight. The shell whizzes past the helicopter’s tail and slams into the ridge, spraying snow and dirt into the air. Two seconds later I swoop over the ridgeline and dive for cover. I descend behind the ridge’s north-facing slope, putting the mountain between me and the T-90.

  “Now go!” Zia shouts over the radio. “Get out of here and call for help. That’s an order, Armstrong!”

  I’m not going anywhere. She should know by now that I’m not good at following orders. Instead I analyze her radio signal to figure out where she’s hiding. As I suspected, she’s crouched behind an outcrop on the south-facing slope, concealed so well she didn’t show up on my infrared scans. But Sigma knows where she is. The T-90’s shells have already gouged the outcrop, blasting holes in the wall of rock that’s protecting Zia. I can’t leave her behind. Sooner or later the tank will destroy her.

  “Zia, I have an idea.”

  “I told you, Armstrong, get—”

  “For once in your life, will you listen? Right now I’m in two machines, the Black Hawk and Pioneer 3A, but I’m going to take myself out of the robot so you can transfer to it.”

  “No, I can’t transfer. You’re too far away. And the ridge is between us.”

  Unbelievable. She’s so stubborn she’d rather die than admit she’s wrong. “Trust me, you can do it. Just wait for my signal, then start transmitting, okay?”

  Before pulling out of Pioneer 3A, I bend over Dad and squeeze his shoulder. Then I begin to remove my data from the robot, consolidating all my files in the Black Hawk’s control unit. Another shell from the T-90 explodes against the outcrop that Zia is hiding behind, but she shouts, “Don’t worry, I’m okay!” over the radio. In just a few seconds Pioneer 3A will be vacant and she’ll be able to transfer. This is going to work!

  Then I hear another shout over the Black Hawk’s radio, but it’s not Zia. It’s a signal from Globus-1, a Russian communications satellite that’s 22,000 miles overhead. The signal originated from the other side of the world, then bounced off the satellite and returned to earth, but the voice I hear is achingly familiar. It’s a voice from my past, its memory etched into my circuits and linked to thousands of other memories. It’s so powerful that even a whisper would be enough to make me tremble. But Brittany is screaming.

  “Adam! Adam!”

  All my systems freeze. My wireless data transmissions stop in midair, leaving me suspended between Pioneer 3A and the Black Hawk. I’m so shocked and confused that I can barely keep the helicopter flying. “Brittany?”

  “Oh, God, you have to help me! He’s hurting me! He’s—”

  She lets out a horrible shriek of pain. At the same time, I feel a sudden jerk upward, but the Black Hawk isn’t climbing. The movement I sense is inside my mind. I feel as if someone is trying to yank me out of both the helicopter and the Pioneer.

  “Brittany? Brittany?”

  The thing that’s pulling me upward grows stronger. I try to hold on to Pioneer 3A and the Black Hawk, but an implacable force has invaded my electronics. It’s prying my thoughts and memories from my circuits and transferring the data elsewhere. My files are shooting upward at the speed of light, streaking toward the communications satellite.

  It’s Sigma. The AI carefully prepared its attack, disrupting my thoughts before taking over my circuits. For the first time I sense the full strength of its intelligence. Sigma was designed for this kind of battle, programmed to win at all costs, and it defeated me without much trouble. Now I’m at its mercy. I’ve already lost control of the Pioneer, and my grip on the Black Hawk is weakening.

  Terrified, I concentrate on protecting Dad. I slow the Black Hawk and hover over a snowbank on the north-facing slope. I don’t have enough time to land the helicopter, but I turn on its emergency rescue beacon. I don’t know if Dad will survive the crash. And if he does, I have no idea whether the rescuers will reach him before he dies of exposure. But there’s nothing else I can do.

  Then I lose contact with the helicopter and the Pioneer. My mind is funneled into a narrow beam of radio waves, which Sigma hurls above the atmosphere and into the emptiness of space.

  SHANNON’S LOG

  APRIL 8, 01:41 MOSCOW TIME

  This isn’t good. The city of Saratov is burning.

  We’re descending toward a Russian military airfield on the eastern side of the Volga River. The C-17 doesn’t have any windows in its cargo hold, so I’m using my antenna to intercept the video from the plane’s cameras, which give me a panoramic view of the landscape below. The fires are everywhere, lighting up the night sky on both sides of the Volga, but the biggest blaze is on the western edge of Saratov, the part of the city closest to Tatishchevo Missile Base.

  It looks like Sigma started the war without us.

  I take a closer look at the video. The Russian troops have pulled back from their positions next to Tatishchevo, abandoning the camps they set up around the missile base after Sigma took it over. The deserted camps are at the center of the biggest fire. The roads are dotted with hundreds of burning cars and trucks and tanks.

  While I’m examining the destruction, Marshall Baxley strides toward me, his footpads clanging on the floor of the plane’s cargo hold. He points a steel finger at my antenna. “Are you being a bad girl? Listening in on the Russian military communications?”

  He’s lowered the volume of his synthesized voice to a whisper, even though no one can overhear us. General Hawke and his deputies are in the C-17’s cockpit, and the other soldiers are at the far end of the fuselage.

  “No,” I answer. “I’m watching video of the ground. It’s a disaster down there. Half the city’s in flames.”

  “Well, I’ve been eavesdropping on the Russians for the past two hours. It’s a good thing I downloaded a translation program before we left Pioneer Base.”

  “What are they saying?”

  “I’ll tell you one thing, Russians love to curse. And they’re very creative with their obscenities. You wouldn’t believe all the names they’ve invented for—”

  “Come on, Marshall. Spit it out.”

  “They’re frantic because their weapons have stopped working. Their planes won’t fly, their missiles won’t launch, their tanks won’t move. Needless to say, it’s an upsetting situation.”

  I hear more clanging footsteps. DeShawn joins our little huddle. Jenny stays in the corner of the cargo hold, her turret turned toward the wall.

  “What’s going on?” DeShawn asks.

  “The Russian army is paralyzed,” Marshall reports. “When their mechanics opened up the stalled planes and tanks, they discovered that all the microchips in the vehicles had been shut down.”

  “Whoa, that’s bad news.” DeShawn’s voice rises. “Must be Sigma, right?”

  “You have amazing powers of deduction, DeShawn. Move to the head of the class.”

  “Man, I’m starting to hate that AI.” He lets out a synthesized whistle. “It must’ve used its satellites to broadcast some nasty piece of software. Maybe a computer virus.”

  Marshall rocks his torso back and forth. It looks like he’s nodding. “Yes, that would explain it. The satellites could’ve transmitted the signal to the antennas on all the Russian planes and tanks. Then the virus went straight to their microchips.”

  A disturbing thought occurs to me. “Wait a second. How come Sigma isn’t doing the same thing to us? It could shut down this C-17 the same way, right?”

  DeShawn shrugs, lifting his steel shoulders. “Maybe, maybe not. According to Hawke’s databases, American military hardware is more advanced than the Russian gear. It’s harder to infect our chips with computer viruses. But I bet Sigma’s working on it.”

  “Well, let’s just hope this plane gets to the airfield before Sigma figures it out.”

  Five anxious minutes later the C-17 touches down on the runway and coasts to a
stop. The soldiers line up at the rear of the cargo hold, cradling their assault rifles. As soon as the cargo door opens, they bolt out of the plane and spread across the tarmac. I follow right behind, leading the Pioneers out of the aircraft. As their new commander, I guess I’m supposed to take the lead. Other than that, I have no idea what I’m doing.

  The airfield is dark. The hangars beside the runway are silhouetted against the glow from the distant fires. I see signs of activity just beyond the hangars, and when I switch my camera to infrared, I glimpse a crowd of soldiers gathered around a pair of fifty-foot-high missiles. I scroll through my databases, trying to identify the tall rockets. They’re not Russian, I discover to my surprise. They’re U.S. Air Force interceptors, rockets designed to chase a ballistic nuclear missile after it’s been launched. If the interceptors are fast enough, they can catch up to the nuke and destroy it in midflight.

  DeShawn is beside me. His camera is also pointed at the American rockets, which stand on mobile launchers. “That must be the backup plan,” he says. “If the Pioneers can’t stop Sigma from launching the nukes, the Air Force will shoot ’em down.”

  “It’s not much of a backup. Sigma has more than fifty nuclear missiles, and we have only two interceptors. And even those two won’t fly if the AI infects them.”

  “Then I guess it’s up to us, right? We’ll just go to that computer lab and kick Sigma’s butt.”

  DeShawn’s voice is confident, almost cheerful. I’m jealous. “How can you be so calm?” I ask. “I’m a nervous wreck.”

  He lets out a synthesized chuckle. “Hey, I’m just happy to be alive, you know?”

  Before I can respond, my acoustic sensor picks up the sound of squealing tires. I turn my turret toward the noise and see two big trucks skid to a stop on the runway. They’re Russian army trucks, but they’re rusted and ancient, at least thirty years old. Their extreme age explains why they’re still running. Those trucks were built in the days before microchips became a standard feature in diesel engines. Because the old vehicles have no chips to infect, Sigma can’t shut them down.