Space Battleship Scharnhorst and the Library of Doom (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure)

by Timothy J. Gawne

  The sage scrub was deceptively vacant, but vital with life if you looked carefully enough. Still, most predators of Mondocats’ mass would starve to death in such a lean biosphere. A terrestrial lion would not have lasted three months. But Mondocat was more adaptable than any mere naturally-evolved Terran predator, and she was doing just fine, playing the predator game from a different angle.

  There were many different ways to play the game. There was a planet where the main prey species was a six metric-ton megaphant, armed with razor tusks and poison-barbed whiptails. There it was all a burst of speed and strength and skill, and you either died outright or you won and spent the next few months lounging around consuming the carcass.

  Here was different. Mondocat occasionally hitched a ride with the cybertank “Old Guy” as it travelled from world to world. Every place offered a different kind of challenge. This planet had a biosphere that was lean and tough. The largest prey species was a dwarf mule-deer that weighed in at 40 kilos max. Most prey were far smaller: hares, ground-squirrels, lizards, long-tailed mice. Not much energy to sustain something weighing 1000 kilograms.

  Fortunately Mondocat was adaptable. In a low-energy-prey environment, she could switch to a more efficient mode. First, she let her core body temperature drop to ambient. Her enzymes would not be at their efficiency peaks, but she would save drastically on heating costs. Her big fast-twitch muscle groups she partially resorbed, along with some other high-energy systems, and she moved slowly, deliberately, with minimal effort.

  Currently she was standing on a small rise overlooking about a kilometer of sage-scrub. She had not moved one millimeter in several hours. She was watching. Observing the patterns of the prey as they cautiously went about their business. They looked so defenseless and weak, but these rangy hares and cute little mice were as deadly as any multi-ton megaphant. A megaphant could gut her with its tusks, or crush her skull with a whip-tail. A rabbit had only to be just a little more alert, stay a little more out of range, so that even if mondocat killed and ate it, if she used up more energy in the hunt than she gained in food, in time these cute little rabbits and ground-squirrels could kill her as dead as any megaphant. Without careful strategy she could win every battle and lose the war.

  Mondocat was not bored. She was learning the patterns of this world. Even species too small for her to bother eating were interesting, because they could be prey for something that she might want to eat and so their movement patterns were also important. If things got really tight she could hibernate indefinitely, but she had been on this planet for over a year, and was doing quite well. She had amassed a sizeable energy reserve, and her hunting efficiency continued to improve. She could breed here if she felt like it, but she would have to amass an even greater reserve, and restrict herself to just one cub. Perhaps in a few years, if the hunting continued at this level, she would consider it (although it was usually better to have two cubs so that they could practice social and hunting skills on each other).

  Mondocat watched a red-tailed hawk swoop down and catch a lizard. Competition. Mondocat did not like competition. Equally-sized predators almost never fight each other, because the risk of mutual injury is too high. However, Mondocat could easily kill the hawk, but the hawk was too alert and could fly. The hawk didn’t like competition either, it kept a harsh eye out for Mondocat, but the hawk was too small to do anything about it except steal her lunch

  Still, there were things to learn here. If the hawk preferred to feed in more open terrain, perhaps that would drive prey into more densely covered areas, and Mondocat should concentrate there. Also, even if Mondocat couldn’t kill the hawk directly, perhaps with sufficient observation she could figure out how and where this species bred. Killing off the vulnerable young of your competitor species is an ancient and effective aspect of the predator game. Mondocat continued to watch, and think.

  A tall thin red-and-white striped pole drifted in from the distance. It was about as tall as Mondocat was long, and as thick as one of her hindlegs. It floated high about the ground, not using wings. Mondocat had seen objects that floated like this back where the big cybertanks lived, but this thing felt out of place. It had visited out here before, and never done anything hostile, but it made Mondocat nervous. She made a show of ignoring it but was always aware of where it was.

  Off in the distance she caught the sounds of a mechanized battle. Mondocat had heard these noises before, and knew what they meant. First, danger: as tough as she was these battles were not for her, first priority was to keep safe. Second, opportunity: at the end of this kind of battle there was usually all manner of dead or dying creatures lying around just waiting to be snarfed up.

  For a predator the single most important tactic is to be in the right place at the right time. The chaos of technological warfare presents all sorts of possibilities to a bioengineered super-predator, if you can manage to stay at the correct distance.

  Mondcat slowly ambled off in the direction of the battle. She started to see plumes of smoke rising from the horizon, the high-atmosphere contrails of long-range missiles and the thin bright linear flickering of beam weapons. Close enough. She found a small crevice in the ground, she squeezed herself in, hugged the bottom as closely as she could, covered her head and eyes with her massive forepaws, and waited.

  Mondocat had chromophores in her skin that would let her blend in with any terrain. She had put them all to sleep on this world, because operating them took precious energy and there didn’t seem to be any need. She decided to wake them, slowly feeding them precious nutrients. In a few minutes she perfectly matched both the color and the texture of the surrounding terrain. Her thermal signature was at ambient, and she gave off no electronic or magnetic signatures. She slowed her breathing and heartbeat, not to hibernate, but to be silent. Her scales were impermeable, and with her pores contracted she had no scent plume. Squeezed into a crevice in the ground she was almost completely invisible and undetectable.

  A parasite found a gap between her armored scales and began to suck at her blood. She decided to ignore it for the time being rather than risk bringing attention to herself by moving.

  The battle ebbed and flowed. She could hear the sounds of explosions, and cybertanks moving around on their heavy treads. She could identify individuals from their unique vibration-patterns through the ground. One in particular she recognized as her sometimes hunting-partner “Old Guy.” This was looking better: she might have allies, or least powers that would tolerate her presence, and allow her to scavenge uncontested.

  The battle reached a crescendo, then slowed down, then stopped. Still, Mondocat continued to wait: these kinds of conflicts have their own rhythms, and sometimes they have a second-wind. Sure enough, she felt the vibrations of more combat. There were the explosive deaths of several cybertanks. She felt the vibration signature of the cybertank that she was friends with, and it was headed in her direction. However, its seismic pattern suggested desperation, it was pushing itself to its limits, and it was being pursued by a much larger and more powerful exemplar of the kind. Mondocat knew the value of friends and allies, and was not afraid to face a little danger to win and keep them. Besides, cooperative hunting of formidable prey was one of the most enjoyable aspects of the predator game. But she also knew when she was outclassed. This was not her fight. She stayed silent and invisible and waited.

  The two cybertanks ended up circling each other. That was odd. Then there was this strange noise from the sky. She felt the death vibrations of the larger cybertank, then the more modest vibrations of her friend and sometimes-patron as it moved off at a more modest pace than before.

  Time to move. Mondocat rose up out of the ground, and trotted after the cybertank Old Guy. She took the time to pluck out the parasite from her skin with the fine tips of two of her diamond-composite claws. She focused her massive primary eyes on it: it was a simple segmented arthropod, a common blood-feeder around here. It squirmed in her grasp, and she slowly ground it to pieces watchi
ng as it thrashed its tiny limbs with increasing desperation, and then it was just a pulp. It might have been more efficient to eat it, but even for a creature with Mondocats’ superb immune system, eating a parasite could be bad luck, so she just let the crushed remains drop to the ground.

  She caught up with Old Guy. It noticed her, and made some vocalizations.

  Hey Mondocat! Good to see you. Come to scavenge at the aftermath of a battle, have you? Good thinking. Sorry I don’t have time to stick around, but I have places to go, people to kill, that sort of thing. And it looks like you are doing fine. With a little luck we will meet again soon under happier and less urgent circumstances. Until later.

  Mondocat purred, and rubbed up against Old Guy’s side armor, but the cybertank was not going to be distracted and it started to move off at speed. That was OK. Mondocat inspected the wreckage of the larger cybertank that had been chasing Old Guy, and caught its scent. Mondocat was not sentient per se, but she was also not stupid. Things that fought Old Guy tended to die. That was something to keep in mind, as she worked to survive in this universe.

  Mondocat began a slow survey of the local battlefield. Much was so burnt and carbonized that all of the useful biochemical energy was gone. But here and there was a dead or dying or stunned creature, and Mondocat reaped the scavengers’ bounty. There were no others of her size and strength to challenge her claims. This was becoming quite a profitable outing.

  She noticed an out-of-place creature scurrying across the landscape. It had been hiding and now had emerged from cover. She was familiar with the form, she had never previously considered it to be prey, but this one was behaving strangely. It was damaged, and furtive, and acted like prey. She silently padded after it, and caught its scent. It was from the larger cybertank that had pursued Old Guy, and then apparently been killed by it. The enemy of my friend is dinner.

  Two arms, two legs, bipedal, large lumpy poorly-balanced head, inefficient gait, little obvious fighting power, dead skin that hung in odd wide overlapping flaps. This form had never made much sense to her. She followed it. It was carrying a heavy gray object. She briefly considered waking up her peak-power muscle groups, but decided against it. This prey was not going to require that much effort.

  Mondocat moved with almost total silence, the chromatophores in her skin continuously adapting to the color and patterns of the surrounding terrain. She had closed to within ten meters before the creature noticed her. It was not very observant. It turned and made noises. “No wait, you don’t know what you are doing! I am all that is left, and this is my database of core memories! I have to survive!”

  Prey was usually silent, but still many times prey made odd noises. Sometimes because they were herd animals and were calling out for help, sometimes in the pain of death, sometimes because they were insane. Mondocat did not see any evidence of a herd that might assist this creature, it was not yet in pain, so it must be insane. The prey began to run faster, but in that frantic and inefficient rhythm that screamed ‘panic’ to her senses. To a predator, ‘panic’ translates to ‘eat me.’ Mondocat closed the distance. The prey turned and struck her in the head with a lower extremity. That hurt: the prey was stronger than it looked. Mondocat responded by gutting its abdomen with flicker-quick paw strike. The prey staggered, and made more sounds.

  “I’ll give you anything that you want! A lifetime of meat, mountains of meat, anything! Only let me live!” The prey made sounds that were similar in rhythm to the noises that Old Guy sometimes made, but the tone was different, and it meant nothing. Perhaps it was only meant to distract her. She ripped the creatures’ head off. The rest of it was surprisingly vital, and it hit her again, hard. Mondocats’ next blow shattered it beyond resistance. She started to slice it up with her claws, looking for edible parts. It continued to make useless sounds. “I can help you! We can make a deal! I am the President! I have powerful friends!”

  Mondocat chomped on it with jaws like the hydraulic shears used to demolish concrete buildings. She found some lubrication fluid that she could digest (barely), and also some coolant. She encountered a battery, but the chemicals were too toxic for even her advanced metabolism, and she spat them out in disgust. This prey was hardly worth the trouble of eating. She left it spasming and twitching and slowly running down out on the burnt sand, and moved off in search of richer pickings.

  Mondocat froze. The tall red-and-white striped pole was rotating slowly end-over-end as it hovered up in the air. It had never done that before. Mondocat was always alert to when parts of her environment suddenly broke with the pattern. She had no experience with this thing, didn’t know whether to run away, hide, attack it, ignore it, or what. She decided to hold still, and observed it with total focused intensity. After a while it stopped rotating, then it slowly drifted away out of sight over the horizon.

  Mondocat waited a few more minutes, then unfroze and continued her scavenging. A hundred meters further on was half the carcass of an adult male mule-deer, and then two more rabbits and a coyote. A very good day, indeed.

  15. The Chapter that Passeth Understanding

  “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Yogi Berra, 1925 – (unknown)

  Of all the many flaws that the human mind posses, the greatest is its constant belief in its own greatness. The events of the day would make this clear to many.

  The cybertank known as ‘Smartass’ was completely subsumed with trying to corrupt the Amok attacking the system. In this he was aided by the very Amok simulations of the human psyche that had originally made the Amok so dangerous. These simulations had passed into becoming sentient, and were now essentially human minds trapped within the Amok data structures. And they wanted out.

  But the Amok did not realize this, and so were vulnerable. Smartass was negotiating with these trapped human mentalities, trying to figure out how to defeat their common enemy. Even with an insider advantage, it was proving to be difficult. The Amok appeared irrational by human standards, but Smartass was quickly learning that their mental abilities were anything but trivial.

  There are many levels at which an information war can be fought. The lowest, the easiest and earliest to be developed, consists of brute-force computer viruses that infect and corrupt the basic-level circuitry making up your enemies minds. The goal is only destruction. Crude, but often effective, and you only need to understand the base nature of your opponents’ physical computing substrates.

  More subtle are the thought-viruses that aim to replace memories so that your enemies forget why they are fighting you, or alter their sensory processing so that they are disconnected from the external world, or cannot tell fantasy from hard fact. Subtly altering the parameters of their decision matrices is another trick, so that they always make decisions that are not quite correct. These sorts of attacks can be especially devastating, because if successful they can deprive your enemy of even the motivation or logic required to fight back, but they take skill and a considerable knowledge of your enemies’ psyche to create.

  The highest level of information warfare is the realm of the toxic meme: thoughts and ideas that exploit the weaknesses in your opponents’ psychological makeup. It could be something like a religious tract that convinces your opponent that they are sinful and need to kill themselves to achieve forgiveness from God (or some incomprehensible alien analog). This is the most devastating of all attacks, and can be delivered by a method as simple as telling your enemy a story, but it requires supreme skill in the design phase, and a deep knowledge of your enemies’ mentality. It is to avoid this sort of attack that most alien civilizations guard their privacy so jealously.

  As Smartass continued to work with the human-class sentiences buried within the Amok data-structures, he began to admire the Amok. Certainly he was no fan of their actions, and attacking the universe and bringing about your own destruction seemed like a vile and pointless goal to him, but for all of that their minds were not without merit. For one thing, they were impossible to fool excep
t by direct sensory manipulations. They could not be tricked or made to rationalize bad behavior. They respected death but did not fear it. They would never betray each other.

  Smartass could not of course know what being an Amok would feel like subjectively, but as he developed ever more accurate models of their minds, he could see how rich and varied their mental life must be. In many ways their minds were superior to the human template, they just had a couple of deep flaws.

  They were an ancient race, and lived a cyclical existence. Their civilization would flower, and stir up glorious chaos. They would eventually be crushed by the concerted efforts of the more conservative cultures, but some of them would always slip away, lie fallow for a hundred thousand years or more, and then start another cycle. They were so close to being great, if only they could get unstuck from their dead-end behavior patterns.

  Smartass conferred with the captive human sentiences, and made a plan. The highest possible level of information warfare is the one against which no sane mind has any defense. They would make the Amok a better deal.

  They presented the Amok with a carefully-worked out plan of changes to their mental architecture, blending in some of the human strengths with the overall superior Amok templates. None involved could possibly know what it would feel like to make the transition, but abstract models held the promise of a vastly greater mental richness and power. The Amok considered these plans, and accepted.

  And that was how the war with the Amok ended. They transmitted an offer of a truce to the cybertanks defending the system, which was also accepted. They announced that they would tarry in the system only briefly, acquiring sufficient energy to begin a migration to a region of space about 3,000 light years distant which they had reason to believe was relatively open for colonization, and there they would begin constructing a new civilization and seeing where the mental changes suggested by Smartass and their newly liberated captive human mentalities would take them.