“Heart, please! You can’t do that!” Johnson begged. “If your function is to maintain life, then surely letting the Cortex attack Earth would be a violation of your programming.”
“I am only programmed to aid life through my own actions. Preventing death caused by others is not within my programming. Also, my domain is the Visitor. Events on Earth are not within my purview.”
Bernhard nodded. “That’s why it didn’t do anything at all to intervene on either side while we were fighting the Nerve.”
Houston started pacing. “Look, everything about the Visitor and its organic intelligence systems revolves around programming, right? It must fulfill its programming at all costs. But we’ve already seen that there are loopholes that can be exploited, like how the Nerve stops lying altogether once it’s positively revealed. So that’s what we’ve got to do here.”
Bernhard nodded thoughtfully. “Heart, what did you mean by an improvised system to shut down Earth communications? What are you doing to make that happen?”
“From the moment the Visitor arrived in orbit around your planet, I have been absorbing radiation into the central systems so that I may rework it and create an electromagnetic pulse that would knock out all electronic devices on Earth. The resulting void in communications noise should be enough for the Cortex to receive its orders from the hive mind.”
Teng hissed in a breath. “That will not just break down communications. It will render practically all technology on the planet inoperable.”
“Including most of our higher tech weapons,” Bernhard said. “Anything more advanced than a gun would be useless. Tanks, fighter jets, nuclear missiles, everything with a computer in it. Earth would be completely defenseless.”
“The radiation,” Johnson said. “That’s why we didn’t pick up even the slightest trace of background radiation around the Visitor. It’s been siphoning and storing it. But, Heart, have you really been able to gather enough to create an EMP that would affect a whole planet?”
“The process was indeed slow, but I was able to accelerate the plan when another source of radiation was introduced.”
Johnson turned to Bernhard. “The nuke. Do you see? That’s what happened to it. If you had never allowed it on board, we wouldn’t be facing a countdown right now!”
“No, we would still be facing a countdown,” Bernhard said, unable to keep a quiver out of his voice. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Johnson was right. “We would just have more time instead of less than five hours. But, Heart, how did you even get the bomb out of the Ambassador? And where is it now?”
“Once I determined the source of the additional radiation, I teleported it to a secure vault within the Visitor. There is no way in or out of the vault without teleporting.”
“Teleportation,” Dufresne said with awe. “Didn’t the Nerve mention something about that? Heart, if you can teleport things, can’t you just teleport one of us into this vault?”
“For multiple reasons, I cannot.”
“What reasons?” Bernhard asked.
“There are three. The first is that teleportation cannot be used on a living organic organism. The process would kill it, thus violating my programming. The second is that, even if the Visitor was equipped with the sort of teleporter that might work on organics, the radiation within the vault would kill whichever of you was sent, thus violating my programming. The third is that allowing any of you to interfere with the process at work in the vault would prevent me from waking up the Cortex, thus violating my programming.”
“Programming, programming, programming,” Houston muttered to himself. His pacing became more frantic. While this worried Bernhard, both Dufresne and Johnson seemed to take heart in this. Seeing Bernhard’s look, Johnson came closer and whispered to him.
“I’ve seen him do this before. This is how he thinks best. The faster he paces, the closer he is to a solution.”
“Well then, by all means, let him keep pacing,” Bernhard said. “But in the meantime, the rest of us can’t just wait around for a little lightbulb to go off in his head.”
“Programming,” Houston muttered again. “We have to work within the confines of the programming.”
“Maybe there’s a way to shut the Heart off and prevent it from doing this,” Teng said.
“I would advise against this,” the Heart said. “Shutting me down would mean shutting down all life support systems in the Visitor. Doing this would result in your deaths, and assisting you in this regard would be a violation…”
“Of your programming,” Bernhard said. “You know what? All the artificial organisms on this ship really like to repeat themselves over and over and over. It’s getting kind of annoying.”
Houston suddenly stopped pacing and snapped his head to look directly at the pillar. Bernhard supposed that was the closest thing they could do to looking the Heart directly in the eye. “Heart, what exactly are you programmed to do regarding the Cortex?”
“I must assist in any way possible in the effort to let the Cortex receive their orders from the hive mind.”
“Okay, but what’s the process of them receiving those orders?” Houston thought for a second, then added. “Does every Complex soldier in the ship receive their orders at once?”
“They will not. Due to the distances involved between these Cortex soldiers and the center of the hive mind, the order for them to wake and commence the assault on Earth will be staggered. This will also assist in logistics as they are leaving stasis, so they are not all swarming the Visitor at once.”
Bernhard exchanged a knowing look with Houston. He thought he understood what Houston might be getting at. “Heart,” Bernhard said. “Does your programming specifically say that all the Cortex soldiers on the ship must be awake, or would your programming be considered fulfilled if only a few woke up?”
“My function in waking up the Cortex soldiers is considered fulfilled once the first soldier wakes from stasis.”
Now Dufresne seemed to be understanding the idea as well. “So you’re saying that if the Visitor was out of the communications haze of Earth for only a moment, allowing only a small group of the Cortex to receive their signal and wake up, you wouldn’t have a problem with us doing something to block the signal again after that?”
“That is correct.”
Dufresne and Houston looked excited, like they’d come up with the plan to save them all, but Teng looked far from convinced. “But that would not work. Once the Heart sends out the EMP to knock out communications on Earth, the damage to all existing devices would be permanent. The only way to create the communications haze again would be to rebuild every electronic device on Earth from scratch. There would be no way to have the haze back in time to keep every Cortex soldier on this ship from waking up.”
Zersky called out from the floor below them. “Yeah, you guys, I’ve been listening to all of this, and there’s another problem. If these Cortex soldiers are as badass as the Nerve said they were, then even waking up a few could still be a problem. If they get down to Earth, we would still have a ton of people die.”
Johnson shook her head. “No, don’t either of you see? If we managed to wake up a small number of Cortex soldiers before the Heart uses the EMP, then it won’t have to do that anymore. Right, Heart?”
“That is correct. My programming would then be fulfilled, and I would not be forced to use the electromagnetic pulse.”
“Maybe I am missing something,” Teng said. “I thought it was not possible to wake any of the Cortex while in the communications haze around Earth.”
“It’s not,” Johnson said. “But, Heart, are you able to move the Visitor? At least if doing such would allow you to fulfill your programming?”
“That is correct.”
Johnson looked at everyone else on the catwalk in turn with an impish gleam in her eye. “That’s the answer, then. We have the Heart move the Visitor outside of the low Earth orbit it’s currently in. The Cortex will receive their signal
and wake up once it’s outside the range of the communications haze, but the soldiers will also be further from Earth. The few Cortex soldiers that wake up will have a harder time getting to our planet.”
“This has all the beginnings of a possibly brilliant plan, Johnson,” Bernhard said. “But there’s still one key flaw. Once the Visitor is outside the range of the communications haze, then how would we ensure that we only wake up a small number of Cortex soldiers rather than the full army?”
“We would just have the Heart move the Visitor back into the haze,” Houston said. “Heart, you could do that, right?”
For the first time, the Heart paused before it spoke as though it were thinking and considering its answer. Finally, it said, “I could not.”
Bernhard bristled. “Can’t or won’t?”
“As much as I would prefer to follow your orders in such a way that would preserve as much life as possible, I could not. The speed with which I would need to move the Visitor in order to get it out of the haze before the pulse went off would create a level of momentum that could not easily be reversed. I would not be able to stop the Visitor and redirect it back into the haze in enough time to keep any of the Cortex in stasis. They would all be awake and aware of their orders before the signal could be blocked again.”
The three scientists deflated at that news, but Bernhard was undeterred. “Heart, if you moved us out of the haze, would there be any other way to block the signal from the hive mind?”
“The haze created by human communications is the only thing I have ever been aware of that could block the hive mind’s signal.”
“How strong do those human communication signals have to be?” Bernhard asked.
“It would not require a lot.”
Bernhard smiled. “As in, would the comm equipment we’re carrying with us be enough to do the trick?”
“It would not,” the Heart said.
Bernhard’s smile faltered. So much for that idea.
“What about the equipment on the Ambassador?” Johnson asked. “That’s powerful to get a signal back to Earth. Wouldn’t it be enough to interfere here?”
“It would.”
“That’s it, then!” Houston said. “We launch someone in the Ambassador so it will be out of range of the jamming from inside the ship. Then we move the Visitor, wake up one or two of the Cortex, our badass military guys take them out, and then boom goes the dynamite!”
“Intentionally causing an explosion on the Visitor would run counter to my programming.”
“Er, that’s not what I meant,” Houston said.
While Houston looked ecstatic, Bernhard couldn’t help but notice that both Johnson and Dufresne were more subdued. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Do you two see a flaw in the plan?”
“All of this still leaves the Visitor in play,” Johnson said. “We have to do more to disable the Visitor and make sure it can’t just be put back in range. The EMP will still be like a doomsday weapon just floating above our planet.”
“Maybe,” Dufresne said, her voice hesitant, “maybe we shouldn’t try to bring it back into range of the planet. We could simply have the Heart fly it right out of our solar system.”
“But as soon as we leave it with the Ambassador, the Cortex would wake up,” Teng said.
Bernhard took a deep breath. “You’re right. What they’re saying is that we’re not going to be able to leave.”
Houston suddenly lost all his previous joviality. “We would be stuck on the Visitor, forever, as it drifts through space.”
Bernhard’s heart got heavy. He truly would never see his daughter again, but she would be safe. Everyone’s daughters and sons would be safe. If the price that needed to be paid for that was that they had to sacrifice their lives, then Bernhard thought he could live with that.
Not for the first time, Bernhard wished he’d been able to bring his MP3 player. If he was going to be stuck floating through the void for the rest of his – probably very short – life, then it would be easier to bear with his beloved Ozzy, with Randy Rhodes’ and Zak Wylde’s guitar solos, with Shot in the Dark and Crazy Train and Bark at the…
Wait.
“We don’t send it just flying off,” Bernhard said. “We ground it. Far enough from the Earth that the EMP couldn’t be used, yet close enough that we can still get someone to come and get us. And from there, we’ll still even be able to harvest it for technology, study it, and all the while maintaining a signal that will keep the rest of the Cortex from waking up.”
“Ground it?” Houston asked. “Seriously? The point it to get the Visitor away from it, not land the ship on the planet.”
Johnson perked up as she realized what Bernhard was getting at. “The moon?”
Bernhard nodded. “The moon. We ground the Visitor on the moon.”
Chapter Sixteen
By the time they had hammered out all the details of their plan, they were down to four hours before the Heart would set off the EMP. They tried to convince the Heart that the EMP wouldn’t be necessary if it just did as they asked it, but the Heart refused, saying that it needed to wake up the Cortex as soon as possible in order to fulfill its programming. Given that, the Heart had agreed to move the Visitor so that it would leave the haze just before it would need to use the EMP. Then, given their current course, it would be another half hour before the Visitor did its rough emergency landing on the moon.
Given the specifics they had worked out, the Heart estimated that roughly two hundred and fifty Cortex soldiers would receive their order from the hive mind before they were able to block the signal again. So the next four hours had to be dedicated to making sure, once they were awake, it wouldn’t seem like such an unfair fight when a couple hundred aliens intent on planetary destruction took on four soldiers and three scientists.
The bad news for this portion of the plan was that, no matter where they went and what they did to prepare, the team couldn’t split up. There were still Nerve worms out there, and the Heart had insisted that it was not within its programming to interfere with the Nerve’s machinations. The Heart wouldn’t even tell them where the Nerve might be hiding. The good news, however, was that the Heart was being helpful in all other things, provided they didn’t interfere with their programming. This included doing a certain amount of rearranging of things at Bernhard’s request. While he had doubted that the Heart would be able to do it so quickly, everything was prepared for them when they finally made it back to the hangar. All but three of the boxes containing the Cortex fighter ships were gone. The Heart had agreed to transport them elsewhere within the Visitor, under the condition that it wasn’t expected to damage any of them. In place of that large, startling fleet were three new vehicles: two of the mechs and one of the crab tanks they had seen in the trophy room. This was what they were going to use to fight off the Cortex soldiers.
The Heart, thankfully, assured them that it could transfer a portion of itself into each of the seven vessels, including the Ambassador, for as long as the vehicles remained in physical contact with the Visitor. Once they took off or left, each one would be flying solo.
“I still don’t know if putting me in one of these things is a good idea,” Houston said as they entered the hangar and took in its now relative emptiness. “You all saw how bad a shot I was with a normal human rifle, so how the hell am I going to be able to operate some kind of alien war vehicle?”
“I will be able to teach each of you the most basic controls in the vehicles you inhabit,” the Heart said. The voice had followed them the whole way back, speaking by vibrating the halls around them. Bernhard had almost gotten used to the disembodied voice when he’d been able to think of it as residing within the pillar. But now that it was out and following them around the ship, there was no way not to think of it as creepy again.
“Everyone pick a vehicle,” Bernhard said. “We’ve got roughly three and a half hours to learn how to use them.”
“I call one of the fighter ships!” Zers
ky said with a near child-like glee. Bernhard almost hated to disappoint him. Almost.
“No can do, Zersky. You’re going to need to man the Ambassador. It’s going to be tough enough with just one person flying it, but I also need someone who’ll be able to keep up alongside the Visitor as it rushed along to its final destination. Remember, if the Ambassador and the Visitor get too far apart, more Cortex soldiers will wake up, and we’re already up against pretty impossible odds as it is.”
Zersky did his best to hide his disappointment. Bernhard couldn’t help but smile.
“Relax. I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities in the future for you to fly an alien fighter craft in battle.”
As the group broke up and went in their prospective directions, all of them staying within sight of each other up until the last possible moment to prevent possession by the Nerve, Johnson stayed behind long enough to say a few words to Bernhard.
“Can you really believe that those words just came out of your mouth?” Johnson asked. The seven of them were the only people standing between an army of alien invaders and billions of unsuspecting people on Earth, yet somehow she looked for a moment like she might actually be having fun. And as much as it behooved Bernhard to admit it, he definitely saw the appeal. Johnson wasn’t the only one who watched a large number of sci-fi movies, after all. Bernhard might have been able to fly highly experimental aircraft in the past that most people couldn’t dream of, but he had already called one of the mechs for himself on the way here. No matter how well-trained the military had made him at hiding his emotions, even he couldn’t deny that there was a part of him that kind of thought this was awesome.
He didn’t let those thoughts stay in him for long, though, and he needed to make sure they didn’t stay with Johnson, either. “Jane, we’re about to face down an army of advanced aliens, and over half our team is dead. We need to stay focused and realize there’s not a very good chance of us surviving this.”
Alpha Contact Page 11