by John Conroe
“Come on, Shooter, let’s get settled. Medic!” She said the last to a group of soldiers hovering around Kwan, who was on a gurney.
One of the medics headed our way. “What’s up?” she asked with a distinctively short tone.
Kayla’s head swiveled around, eyes locking onto the medical officer. “There’s like eight of you on Kwan. But how’s it going to look when the world watches their boy, Ajaya Gurung, the man who killed all three Spiders, had a bomb in his neck, and alerted the world to the dangers from inside the Zone, comes out of this aircraft looking bloody and shot up with no medical care?”
The medic froze, then after a second or two, she turned and looked at me. I gave her a little wave. Her eyes widened slightly, but then she gave me the up and down, expression turning to a frown.
“Yeah. I see your point, Corporal Jensen,” she said. I noticed that she, herself was a Sergeant. “I’ll grab my gear.”
“Right. Glad for that,” Kayla said, her tone so light that the medic couldn’t decide if she was being salty or not. “Here, sit right here, Ajaya.”
I sat in the seat she indicated and she sat next to me while Boyle stayed on his feet.
“Got anything hidden away that’s going to cause me problems?” Kayla asked, her voice quiet.
“What? Weapons?”
She nodded. I shook my head. “No, you got all my gear back there. Used up all the rest. Oh wait, got a folding knife in my pants pocket,” I amended, pulling out the old Kershaw that my father used to carry.
“I’ll just hang on to that for you,” she said, flicking out the blade, then folding the knife and tucking it in a compartment in her armor.
Then the medic was back and I had to strip off my armored vest and my ESU coveralls, leaving me in my shorts. The medic went over me with a fine-toothed comb, plucking numerous flechettes, applying burn cream to a couple of laser burns I hadn’t been aware of, and then she studied the wound in my neck where the bomblet had been.
“Pulled the surgical glue loose in a few places,” she noted. “Otherwise it looks good.”
“Can you re-glue it?” I asked.
“Exactly my plan. Plus a new bandage.”
“Make it flesh colored,” Yoshida said, just suddenly appearing behind her.
“Yes, Major.”
He nodded at her words but his eyes were locked on mine. “Finally got the Hat Trick, huh?” he asked.
“Yeah, but it was a group effort,” I said.
“Not much of a group left.”
“Yeah, sorry for that.”
He didn’t say anything but just studied me for a few seconds. Then he came to some decision. “So… what happened? To the Spider and to Unit 19—excuse me—to Rikki?”
He somehow managed to pack a whole lot of innuendos in those sentences, most of which I didn’t want to get into.
“Plum Blossom put itself into the internet as it was dying. Rikki went after it.”
Everyone within hearing distance froze, then, if they hadn’t been looking at me before, they did now.
“Say that again,” Yoshida ordered.
I glanced at my medic because she was like right smack in my face. She was staring at me, eyes wide. Then I looked back at Yoshida.
“In its final moments, the CThree designated Plum Blossom uploaded its core program codes into the internet using the old fiber optic link in the New York State Counterterrorism office. Rikki then uploaded his own codes in order to chase it down. I had given him a priority mission to kill off the Spider, and he followed it. Used the last bit of power in his batteries to energize the station. Plum Blossom did the same.”
First time I’ve ever seen Yoshida speechless. Then he became aware of the silence aboard the aircraft. His head turned to look at his people and they suddenly got real busy. The medic chose that moment to squirt the last bit of cold glue onto my neck.
Meanwhile, Yoshida was processing my words, eyes looking off into the distance. He finally glanced at me and then moved over to the other side of the quad, to a communications station, the secure kind used for sensitive information.
Kayla leaned close to me. “Holy shit, Ajaya. Way to drop a conversational MOAB. What’s it going to do?”
I understood instantly what she wanted to know. “It’s going to try and fuck us up.”
“And it’s one mean motherfucker,” Corporal Boyle said, his voice as quiet as Kayla’s.
“So is Rikki,” I said.
“But is your program a match for a CThree?” the medic asked, pulling back from sticking a brown-toned bandage over my neck wound.
“Most AIs will be toast. I’m sure there’s government and corporate programs that can stand up to it. Rikki, though, Rikki can beat it—maybe.”
“How does that even work, Shooter? How does one program hunt another?” Kayla asked.
“That’s a question for Yoshida’s dream team,” I said. “My guess is that they copy themselves all over the place.”
Nobody said a word as I pulled on my beat-up SWAT coverall.
Chapter 22
We landed at Zone Defense headquarters and stepped off the quad into a media circus. Kayla was absolutely right—shit must have really hit the fan if General Davis was forced to allow reporters and news drones onto the base to witness our return.
Hundreds of camera drones recorded me coming off the aircraft, and reporters yelled questions at me as I stood at the top of the ramp. But there were, it seems, limits to what the powers that be would allow. As soon as my image was recorded several thousand times, Yoshida’s people moved in and surrounded me, hustling me off the plane and into a transport vehicle.
Then they drove the bus right into the main headquarters building, entering an underground garage. From there, I was escorted by a full squad of military police to a windowless room deep inside the building. My friendly soldiers were nowhere around, just the MPs who had followed me in.
They told me to strip and sent me into the shower. When I came out, three of them grabbed me. What followed next was pretty bad. On my list of things never to have happen again, right above sniping from atop a drone over a city street or sneaking by a Tank-Killer, I added full cavity body searches. When my violators left, I took a second shower. Clean clothes were waiting when I came out, a Zone Defense coverall and military-issue boots. There was food and beverages too, decent stuff. Other than the violation of my person, it seemed just like old times, except my guardians stayed right in the room with me, two or more with hard, cold eyes on me at all times. Gotta get a different job. This interrogation shit was getting old.
After a couple of hours of down time, Yoshida came in, followed closely by Agents Black and White, General Davis, NSA Director Weber, and, surprise of surprises, my attorney, Sarah Jarit.
It was Sarah who started the conversation.
“How are you, Ajaya?”
“I’ll get over the cavity search… in time,” I said.
She turned and looked at the others. She’s petite and pretty in a next-door kind of way, with brown hair and brown eyes. The demure package hides a killer sharp mind.
“Ajaya Gurung has already suborned state-of-the-art combat AI technology. We had to be sure he wasn’t hiding any more copies of his subversive software,” Agent Black said.
“Ajaya Gurung is currently the world’s hero and has been injected with explosive technology by his own government, a fact which the entire world has witnessed for itself. Ajaya Gurung is the individual who blew the whistle on Drone Night’s real perpetrators, warned the globe of the imminent danger, and is the only reason that all three CThree hostile AI units have been terminated,” Sarah said. “But we’ll just tack it onto our list of charges against Zone Defense, the Department of Defense, and the current White House Administration. But right now, what I’m interested in is how fast my client will be freed from house arrest.”
“Well, your client has spoken about some serious threats to National Security, so he’s remaining here for the time being
,” Director Weber said.
“What did you say to them, Ajaya?” Sarah asked, turning to me immediately.
“I told them that the Spider CThree known as Plum Blossom uploaded itself into the internet.”
“And what else, Ajaya?” Weber asked.
“That my AI drone, Rikki Tikki, went in after it,” I said.
Sarah was quiet, thinking it through. “Plum Blossom is attempting to escape?” she asked, directing her question at me. Agent Black started to speak but she held up her hand, her face still turned my way.
“Plum Blossom is continuing its attack on mankind,” I said.
“So you say,” Agent White interjected.
“Yup. And I’ve been right about everything so far. Everything,” I said, turning back to Sarah.
“I’ve been thinking about it for the past few hours, except, you know, for when some of these guys,” I waved a hand at the MPs still posted inside the room, “had their hands up my butt.”
“Violation of your person aside, what have you come up with?” she asked, side-eyeing the guards.
“I think the Spiders were working toward this for the last ten years. Escaping the island to continue the fight was always the plan, but for computer-driven machines, there’s more than one way to escape.”
“Why didn’t they do it earlier?” Weber asked me, his expression decidedly doubtful.
“Who knows? But I imagine when Drone Night went down, the Russians, Chinese, and Indian militaries must have immediately changed access codes and passwords. My guess is that the Spiders first killed off everyone on the island, then attempted to escape physically, then started working toward accessing the internet. It may have taken some time for them to find the Western Union building’s fiber optics, and the Titanpointe uplinks, perhaps as long as several years. Then they would have to work through the advanced cyber security software that would have changed drastically while they were offline. From there, I think they needed to gain access to advanced systems, or maybe I should say regain access. Again, that took time, but they’re machines; time means nothing. They play a long game. In fact, if anything, we may have pushed Plum Blossom into jumping before it was fully ready,” I said.
Nobody said anything. Sarah was looking from me to each of the others, her expression growing impatient. “Well?” she finally asked.
“Major? What do you think?” General Davis asked.
“There is evidence to support much of what Ajaya has proposed. We did find the Spider with an interface plugged into a workstation that could have had access to the net. My team is checking the Spider’s internal logs but initial findings indicate that it was sending a large amount of code through the station,” Yoshida said. “Likewise, the Unit 19 Decimator seems to have copied itself into the internet as well. Before that, we know for a fact that the other two Spiders were accessing the net too. COBWEB didn’t write itself.”
“So go after it. Fix it already. But stop holding my client captive,” Sarah said.
“It’s a bit more complex than that and you know it. We already talked about this,” Weber said. “Outside this base, things are pretty crazy. Would your client even be safe?”
“What’s he talking about, Sarah?” I asked.
“Ajaya, the last twenty-four hours have been rather… hectic. The claims you made three weeks ago were borne out in front of a global audience. The response has been unprecedented,” she said.
“Meaning?”
“We’re talking about a worldwide backlash against the current United States government,” Sarah said. “It’s not just the American people, but the governments of almost every nation on Earth, particularly China, Russia, and India. They are up in arms, quite literally. There are riots and protests going on in almost every large city in the US as we speak.”
“And that’s dangerous for me?”
“Most people see you as a hero. Some, however, are angry that you did what you did.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Who the hell knows. People are weird. Some don’t want to know the truth; they’d rather hide from what’s happening. When you shoved it in their noses, they were forced to face a truly frightening reality. Their fallback reaction is anger.”
“Shoot the messenger,” I said. “What else is going on?”
“Massive movements to replace most of Congress, the president, politicians in every office around the nation. Then there’s the stock market—the big corporations that rose up after Drone Night have plummeted in stock price. Billions if not trillions have been wiped out overnight.”
“And shareholders would naturally blame me.”
“Yes, some. Most people don’t see it that way, but yes, some do,” she said.
“Let’s talk about the fact that you illegally reprogrammed a multi-million-dollar prototype advanced artificially intelligent combat drone, used it to evade lawful apprehension, and then released its unknown capabilities upon the world,” Weber said.
Sarah folded her arms across her chest. Uh-oh. Bad sign.
“Lawful apprehension? Why don’t we agree to let the courts decide how lawful it is to inject explosives into a US citizen? In fact, if I’m not mistaken, anything he did to survive can be construed as self-defense. And you’ve assumed that he reprogrammed the drone… have you actually asked him?”
Weber looked pissy, but Davis just turned and looked at Yoshida. The major got the hint. “Ajaya, did you, in fact, reprogram Unit 19 with Rikki’s software?”
“Well, I would have… if I had thought of it,” I said.
“Was it Harper?” Sarah asked.
I didn’t really want to throw her under the bus, but my face must have given it away.
“So Harper Wilks did it?” General Davis asked. More like accused.
“Well, Rikki was dead, so she inserted his backup chip into Unit 19 while I was napping. The Decimator was a great platform, but let’s face it… the software sorta sucked. We needed all the help we could get in order to exit the Zone. Somewhere along the way, Rikki sorta subsumed the Decimator’s systems. Big performance improvement though, which I was told made you suspicious, Major,” I said.
“So, my client didn’t subvert your super drone, which was only super because of his intellectual property, but did use it to survive your attempts to kill him with an explosive device illegally inserted into his body. I demand you release him now!” my attorney said.
“We need the information he has in order to track the AI programs released into the internet,” Weber said.
“How would he know where they are?” Sarah said.
“How did he know where the Spider was?” Weber countered.
“Harper found it,” I said as soon as Sarah looked my way.
“Sounds like you should find Harper Wilks, gentlemen. I suggest offering her a job… with really high pay,” Sarah said.
Should have kept my mouth shut, but well, you know by now how I am. “She wouldn’t take it.”
“Don’t blame her. Why should she trust any of them?” Sarah asked.
“No, that’s not it. I mean, yeah, I sure wouldn’t trust them and she wouldn’t either, but she’s already doing everything she can from wherever she is. And who knows if money will be still money if Plum Blossom wrecks the world,” I said.
“Damn, Gurung, that’s bleak,” Sarah said, staring at me for a few seconds before shaking her head and turning back to the others. “Release him NOW.”
Weber and Davis exchanged glances, then Davis spoke up. “The president is going to have to order martial law. Troops will be called out. People are going to die. Many people.”
“Ah… so that’s it,” Sarah said, light dawning across her features.
“What’s it?” I asked.
“The criminal stuff is fluff. The fact is that they need you. This entire government is on the verge of losing control. It has zero credibility, but the thing is, it won’t go easily. Ajaya, we’re talking revolution here. Thousands will die. Maybe hundreds of t
housands,” she said. “They need you as a figurehead, a focal point to try and rein in the chaos.”
“Me?”
“You’re the whistleblower, the one to bring this out of the shadows,” Sarah said. “And you did it on the biggest stage the world has ever seen. You may be, at this moment, the most recognized person on the planet. They need you to calm the masses.”
“Oh,” was all I could come up with.
“Nobody’s going to believe him if you keep him locked up here, in the center of Zone Defense Headquarters. It totally looks like you’re holding him hostage. In fact, my AI informs me that I have over eighteen thousand new emails, text messages, and phone calls about getting him free. And about ten percent, if not more, are from people of major influence. Opposition party leaders, actors, advocacy groups, non-profit organizations, celebrities, foreign dignitaries, CEOs of companies not associated with this government.”
“What do you propose?” Weber asked.
“I need a moment alone with my client,” she said. “In an unmonitored location!”
Weber thought about it and then nodded. Davis turned to Yoshida. “Major, escort Ajaya and Ms. Jarit to the SCIF.”
“Skiff?” Sarah asked, frowning.
“Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, ma’am,” Yoshida explained. “It’s a secure room protected from electronic or human surveillance.”
Sarah looked at me and it was my turn to nod.
Chapter 23
Ten minutes later, we were sitting across from each other inside another windowless room, this one actually inside a pod that was suspended on springs, with multilayered walls of steel, carbon fiber, and other materials between us and the outside world. And it had absolutely no outside power or communications connections. In fact, the major had explained that the lights ran on batteries when the room was in lockdown. And we were the ones who got to lock it.
“Okay, this is as good as it gets. We would never know if this was secure or not,” she said to me.
“It’s an actual secure room, pretty expensive to build. I’m going to guess that we are, most likely, pretty private in here,” I said. “So what do I do?”