by Ian Douglas
“Colonel Whitworth?”
He turned. A soldier in black-and-gray vac-suit armor with Special Forces patches on left chest and shoulder, came toward him.
“Here. I’m Whitworth.”
The figure saluted. “Sergeant Canady, sir. Ranger LZ assault team. We, sir, are in a world of shit.”
“What the hell happened?” He wanted to lash out at someone, anyone, for this disaster. “Why didn’t you pick the bastards up with your IR scans?”
He heard the blast of air across a mike as the Ranger sighed. “Sir, I don’t think there were any bastards! The fire was coming from up there.” He pointed, indicating the crater rim. “I think they have some kind of robot or teleoperated defense system. When we came in, we overflew and scanned for infrared leakage. If there were people, habitats, a ship, anything with operating life support, we would have seen the heat signature. But there was nothing!”
The words hit Whitworth like hammerblows. He’d been expecting some sort of token guard force or garrison…but not lasers aimed and triggered by men thousands of kilometers away. When had they set up the defense grid? After Picard, certainly, since the Navy had been making regular runs down here to collect ice for Picard’s life support. Maybe the UNdies had even planted the things before the US invasion, sitting here quietly, letting individual transports come and go, while waiting for the transports that obviously meant an all-out assault on their farside fortress.
With a cold, hard, sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, Whitworth realized he’d been guilty of the worst sin possible for a military commander.
He’d completely underestimated the enemy.
An hour later, he knew the worst. Out of 160 men in the South Polar assault force, 98 were dead, killed by the initial laser fire, or the crash of their transport seconds later. When contact was at last established with the North Polar group, his worst fears were confirmed. An identical ambush there had killed 82 out of 105; the survivors were in communication with UN forces and had decided to surrender.
There was, really, no alternative. It would be days before a relief force from Earth could arrive, and the tiny Army garrisons at Picard and Fra Mauro could offer no help. Their suit PLSS units would keep them breathing another twelve hours, or so, and they might scavenge more oxygen from supplies still aboard the wrecked transports, but they had no food, no water, and no way out save walking…
The alternative to an impossibly long and difficult overland trek appeared in the sky overhead two and a half hours after the brief battle that had marooned them. The ship was death black and diamond-shaped, streamlined except for the wire-cage basket housing landing legs, reaction-mass tanks, and a plasma engine mounted on the stern. The only markings visible on the vessel as it drifted toward a vertical landing on invisible jets of high-temperature plasma were a small, blue, UN flag painted on each of the three fins, and the name, picked out in gray lettering near the prow: Millénium.
The mystery ship reported at Picard. The “unknown” that had launched from Earth months before and vanished behind the Moon.
There was no question of fighting the thing. Ball turrets mounted in that sleek, black hull rotated, tracking men on the ground. Oh, they could have opened up with the handful of missile launchers or squad lasers recovered so far from the wrecks, but to do so would have sealed their fate.
He opened Channel 9, the universal emergency frequency. “This is Colonel Thomas R. Whitworth, commanding the US Special Forces Lunar Assault Unit, calling UN ship. We are prepared to lay down our arms and surrender.”
There was no other option open.
None at all.
THIRTEEN
MONDAY, 26 MAY 2042
Institute for Exoarcheological
Studies
Chicago, Illinois
0855 hours CDT
David was whistling as he entered the broad, skylight-illuminated lobby of the Institute for Exoarcheological Studies. They were waiting for him there, next to the fauxstone cast replica of the Sphinx, among fountains, palm trees, and rented vegetation.
“Dr. Alexander?” Both men flashed badges, though David was too startled to read them. “I’m Special Agent Carruthers. This is Special Agent Rodriguez. We have a warrant for your arrest, sir. Please come along quietly.”
“My…arrest! What charge?”
“Criminal espionage, violation of national security, and electronically consorting with agents of foreign countries with whom we are currently at war.” The two closed in on him from opposite sides. Handcuffs flashed. “You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. Should you require an attorney…”
As Carruthers recited his rights, Rodriguez snapped the handcuffs closed on his wrists, pinning his hands at his back. Passersby in the lobby stopped, watching curiously. Helplessly, stunned by the suddenness of the arrest, he stared up at the enigmatic and secretive face of the Sphinx. The replica was only a fraction of the size of the original, of course, crouched in one corner of the lobby among palms and tinkling fountain pools, but it was still large enough that David had to look up to stare into sightlessly farseeing eyes.
There was a rustle of fabric at his back as the recitation ended. Teri walked over, her PAD case slung over her shoulder. “David! What’s going on?”
“Nothing to see here, Miss,” Rodriguez said. “Go on about your business, please.”
“David?…”
“Call my lawyer,” David told her. “Julia Dutton. Her number’s on my v-mail address list in the office.”
“C’mon, Dr. Alexander,” Rodriguez said, tugging at his elbow. “You’ll have lots of time to discuss things with your girlfriend later.”
“Go on, Teri,” David told her, as they led him toward the front door. “Call her! I need help!”
“That’s for sure,” Rodriguez told him as they stepped outside. “Treason’s not so hot as a career choice, you know what I mean?”
“Treason! What the hell are you talking about?” Damn! They must have found out about the fax.
“There’s a war on, fella,” Carruthers said. “Maybe you hadn’t heard. Sharing classified information with foreign nationals is—”
“Look, damn it!” David interrupted him. “I know we’re at war. But there’s a, a fellowship within the scientific community that transcends national borders. The people I was communicating with are friends of mine. There was no spying involved!”
“That’s not for us to decide, sir,” Rodriguez replied. “You’ll get your chance to explain it all in court.”
“But, you know, Dr. Alexander,” Carruthers added, “we’ve been keeping a close eye on you for some time now. What was happening here was sufficient grounds for us to get a court order to access your home network. Seems you’ve been electronically passing confidential files to the, ah, what is it? The First Church of the Divine Masters of the Cosmos.”
“What, those nutcases! You’ve got to be kidding!”
“You’ve been feeding them classified documents for the past couple of months, and we’ve got the records to prove it.”
Still protesting, David was hustled into a black Lancer Electra waiting outside.
Recruit Platoon 4239
Parris Island Recruit Training
Center
1120 hours EDT
“Listen up, now, recruits. You’re about to meet the best friend you have in this world besides your rifle!”
Jack sat cross-legged on the deck at the forward end of the squad bay, listening attentively as Gunnery Sergeant Knox addressed them. The platoon was leaner now, after four weeks. Attrition had continued, though at a slower pace now that the deadwood and ballast had been jettisoned. Platoon 4239 was down to fifty-six men. They were still tired nearly all of the time from the grueling schedule of up to seventeen hours a day of drill, exercise, and training, but at least now they acted less like a herd of sheep chivvied along by screaming DIs. Now, they moved with purpose.
And a common goal.
“Each of you will now remove the device you’ve just been issued from its holster,” Knox said.
Jack did as he was told, sliding a small but massive black case from his pouch. It looked like a computer of some sort, a PAD folded closed to protect screen and keyboard, of course, but a computer nonetheless. Folded, the device was about the size and shape of a paperback book, though it was considerably heavier. He could see a line of data jacks and power ports along one end.
Jack felt a surge of excitement, closely followed by an almost reverent nostalgia. He’d been so busy for this past month that he’d not realized how much he missed his computer at home.
“The device you are holding,” Knox continued, “is the Marine-issue HP-9800 Mark III Personal Access Device, or PAD. Do not open it until I give you the word to do so.” Knox held up the PAD in his hand. “Two hundred years ago, a combat rifleman was expected to be able to march and drill in close formation, stand shoulder to shoulder with his fellows in the battle line, and give fire and reload while taking fire from the enemy. Combat has changed in two centuries. Not only the weapons and the techniques have changed, but there has been a profound change in the way riflemen are expected to operate in combat. To stand shoulder to shoulder with your buddies while you loaded and fired your musket took bravery, but you didn’t have to be smart. Today, we expect you to be smart, because being smart spells the difference between victory and defeat, between you scoring a kill and what’s left of you coming home in a body bag.
“The PAD will help you be smart. To fight smart.” He pointed to a catch on one of the long ends. “Press here to open your PADs. Now! Open them, but do not touch the ON switch until I give you the word!”
It opened just like a book, too, revealing two screens of dark, high-impact plastic. A single small button, inscribed ON/OFF, was recessed into the case at the lower right; a tiny camera lens was set into the plastic just above the top screen.
“The HP-9800 Mark III Personal Access Device is a computer,” Knox said, “two and one-half gigahertz, one hundred twenty-eight gigabytes of one-hundred-fifty-picosecond RAM, and onboard laser-read quantum-state crystal storage with a capacity of three hundred terabytes. The built-in gallium-selenium-arsenide dense-charge battery provides power for eighteen to twenty-four hours of continuous operation and can be recharged in one hour from either AC or DC sources, including your pliss converters or the power pack for your standard Sunbeam M228 Squad Laser Weapon.”
Jack felt a patronizing amusement as Knox ran through the PAD’s stats, though he’d learned by now to keep his face impassively neutral with the smile well hidden inside. The device was impressive, yes—especially in its rugged construction, theoretically allowing it to be carried, jarred, dragged, dropped, bumped, kicked, and stepped on in hard vacuum, desert sand, thick mud, ice, or seawater at temperatures ranging from minus one hundred to plus seventy degrees Celsius and keep on working. By civilian standards, though, it was almost laughably primitive. His own home system, running at 4 gigahertz with almost a terb of 80ps RAM and 650 terbs of storage, was far superior.
It was a lot bigger, too, and not nearly as robust. The manufacturers of these devices had outdone themselves in making Marine-issue PADs as indestructible and idiot-proof as possible.
“Your PADs will function as computers in their own right, of course,” Knox continued, “but their true power lies in their ability to tap into either the Earthnet or a special Marine tactical network, or tacnet. To accomplish this, they use a radio-connect onboard modem at 98K baud, fast enough to allow the transfer of high-resolution, full-color video. By connecting with the local network, you will be able to use your PADs as full-capability vidcom units; to download orders, tactical information, and updates; to use your PAD as a full-featured mapping and autolocation device; or to access other computers in order to extend your PAD’s computational power or to retrieve or to uplink data. Tactical range for the radio modem varies with the signal strength of local Net repeaters but is typically on the order of one to two kilometers. By connecting your PAD to any uplink station and antenna, however, you can access any Net system or data base required through available communications satellites, which gives you essentially unlimited range.
“You may now press the ON switch. Do nothing else, touch nothing else, until I give you the word.”
Obediently, Jack pressed the button, and the double screen came to life. The lower half showed a graphic representation of a keyboard and was obviously configured as a touch-sensitive screen. The upper half showed the Marine globe-and-anchor, the single phrase “ENTER PASSWORD”: and a winking cursor.
“Your PAD is password protected. This is to prevent the enemy from accessing our communications codes and protocols in the event your device falls into their hands. Further, there are certain special passwords which you will memorize. If you are captured and forced to divulge your password, one of these special passwords will not only scrub your PAD’s memory, it will release enough energy from the battery pack to render the device unusable.
“For now, you will all use the password ‘recruit’ to access your machines. You may do so now.”
There followed an inevitable period of confusion, as several of the recruit PADs refused to function. Several might have been genuine faults, though in at least three cases, it turned out that the operators were trying to access their devices with either “recrute” or “recroot.” Recruit Kirkpatrick was still having trouble getting the case open and needed help, accompanied by a suitable chewing-out from Knox, to work the catch.
Eventually, though, all of them had operating PADs, and all were tuned into the Parris Island Recruit Training Command tacnet. Knox led them all through the basic operations of the device, using it as a calculator, as a data bank with range and ballistics information for various ATAR rounds, and as a vid-com. They learned that, so long as they were recruits, they would only have access to a single specific and very narrow channel on the local tacnet—this, Knox patiently explained, to keep some ham-fisted idiot-brained recruit from tapping into Earthnet or the Pentagon and causing a disaster of global proportions.
They also met AIDE—the Marine Corp’s Artificially Intelligent Dedicated Executive, a decidedly masculine and somewhat narrow-minded version of Sam, without the pictures.
“AIDE is your friend,” Knox told them. “Your advisor and your mentor. He will act as your on-line agent. Tell him what information you need, and he will get it for you, either on a general search or by searching databases that you specify. He can communicate with you audibly through the PAD’s speakers, through your helmet radio headset, or—if you require silence to avoid giving away your position to the enemy—by printed words on your screen or relayed to your combat helmet’s HUD. For those of you used to those high-powered civilian AIs, with artificial personalities and full-vid presentation and all the rest, AIDE will seem a bit spartan, definitely a stripped-down version of those slick-chassis jobs. But, believe me, it will do the job.”
Jack suppressed another smile at Knox’s description of the AIDE as stripped-down. He much preferred Sam when she was stripped down…and he suspected that she could do just about any agent work better, faster, and with a more efficient use of onboard memory than the military-issue AIDE. And this thing didn’t even have a visual component.
Funny. He hadn’t thought about Sam during the past month, even in his dreams. He’d been too tired and too stressed lately, he supposed, to waste any energy on a fantasy simulation. That part of his life, he realized with a small, inner start, seemed very distant now, almost like the life and memories of someone else entirely.
He might not be a Marine yet, but, by God, he was no longer a civilian either.
Knox led them through several routines involving their
AIDEs, retrieving specific pieces of information from the recruit tacnet, including their drill and training schedules for the next week, and the menu for evening chow. The AIDEs’ voices, male, deep, and with the precision and decidedly artificial inflection of low-grade, no-personality AIs, turned into a male a cappella chorus as all fifty-six of them responded to recruit queries together.
It didn’t take Jack long to get the hang of either the PAD or his AIDE. The PAD was slow and clumsy compared with his computer at home, and the AIDE had all of the simulated intelligence of a doorknob, but he knew he was going to be able to work with them just fine. He wondered how he could get at the AIDE’s source code, however. He’d done enough tinkering with Sam to have a good idea how basic artificial-intelligence programs worked—the non-self-aware ones, at least—and he thought he knew three or four tricks at least that might put a bit more zip in the thing’s operation.
At least he could find a way to give it some personality, some inflection in its voice and speech patterns! Somehow he doubted that the Corps in general or Gunnery Sergeant Knox in particular would appreciate his tinkering with the standard, Marine-issue AIDE. Still, he knew he was going to have to try, sooner or later. It was a challenge.
“From now on out, ladies,” Knox said with that now-familiar and almost pleasant menace in his voice, “the vacation is over! If you thought the first four weeks of recruit training were hard, you soon will learn that they were a freaking vacation compared to what you’re about to hit! Your physical training and drill will be continued and escalated, of course. But your classroom training, your knowledge skills, will be sharply accelerated. You will be expected to learn how to use your PADs and your AIDEs to full advantage in order to master the information you must acquire if you are to pass your qualifying exams. They will serve as notebooks, as learning devices, as research tools, as brains as you continue your studies, because you have not yet been issued with Marine-quality organic brains!”