“No more than I would expect.”
This pulled a chuckle from his lips.
“What do you think?” Jack asked. “You ready to get the hell out of here?”
He held out a hand, and Janet pulled him back to his feet, noting his grimace of pain.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s find Moros.”
CHAPTER 36
THE HAGUE
30 May
From his office in The Hague, Alexandr Prokorov felt the hive-mind connect him to specific military officers throughout Europe and the United States, feeling their horror at the command he issued. But their will was no longer their own, so they would do what he had ordered. And triggered by their connection to the hive-mind, they would do so simultaneously, without giving the Helen Grange AI a chance to react. His people would need just twelve hours to prepare.
As some of the world’s best think tanks had warned, the speed with which the AI had taken control of the world’s electronic systems boggled the mind. With complete control of the globe’s financial system, it had placed orders for factories to modify their production lines according to electronically transmitted specifications. Automation was being put in effect with remarkable speed, the new designs optimizing efficiency and eliminating jobs by the millions.
Rather than allow discontent to escalate to rebellion, all people within the regions the Helen AI controlled were granted a generous living wage, with extra bonuses if they chose to perform other work the AI offered. New military production lines for autonomous combat vehicles and robots that were variants of those used by the Smythes were being created at a pace no human designers could have envisioned.
Although people still formed the world’s military backbone, they would soon be obsolete. Despite having accepted the U.S. and EU pledges of fealty, Helen AI clearly didn’t trust these assimilated forces, having sent all deployed soldiers, airmen, and sailors back to their home bases or ports, ordering them to stand down to conduct routine maintenance on all equipment.
These actions had narrowed Prokorov’s window of opportunity to the point that it had forced him to make the sacrifices that tomorrow’s actions would involve.
He had no illusions that this attack would kill the superintelligence. But it would weaken the AI and, with a little luck, provide an opening for the Kasari to launch their planned counterattack. In his office high up at the Moscow assimilation facility, Prokorov rose from his leather chair, made his way to the window, and looked out at the flames that lit the sky over portions of the dark city.
As was the case throughout the New Soviet Union and the East Asian People’s Alliance, the only available power was provided by Kasari matter disrupters. Unfortunately, Helen controlled the grid. With the priority going to the construction and expansion of assimilation centers, it was taking a long time to replace public networks with unhackable Kasari systems. Only the tens of millions who had already joined the collective kept the rest of the unhinged population under any semblance of order. The flames in the night sky were a testament to the fact that this level of control was far from satisfactory.
He sighed, readying himself to take the fight to the enemy.
Jamal Two felt the loss of computational capacity as a minor wound, knowing that Helen had suffered more significant damage. His subspace taps into secure government networks provided an initial trickle of information that quickly became a torrent.
At 1:00 P.M. GMT, hundreds of senior military leaders had walked into their national defense and intelligence computing centers across the United States and the EU and detonated suicide bombs, destroying their nations’ supercomputing networks. For Jamal Two, that meant the loss of the NSA’s supercomputers at Fort Meade, Maryland, and the Utah Data Center. Helen’s losses extended through the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Switzerland.
Computer programs weren’t supposed to get angry, but Helen Grange was one pissed-off superintelligence. Jamal Two had no doubt who was behind this attack. Prokorov and his Kasari masters.
Using his ability to remotely penetrate electronic systems through the Smythe subspace receiver-transmitters, Jamal Two had made sure that Prokorov couldn’t launch any nuclear EMP attacks that would decimate the worldwide networks upon which Jamal and Helen existed. But both he and Helen had overlooked the low-tech approach Prokorov had just used to hurt them.
The unfortunate setback had put Helen at Jamal Two’s throat. She insisted that he launch an all-out nuclear attack on the New Soviet Union and the East Asian People’s Alliance. He refused. Even though he could have used the superpowers’ own nukes against them, the swarm of Kasari attack ships would easily destroy the incoming missiles from space, long before they reached their targets.
The probability that such an attack would cause the Kasari ships to wipe out most of the rest of Earth’s computing power was way too high for Jamal Two to take that risk. He didn’t fear death. There was little likelihood that the Kasari could completely wipe him or Helen from the world’s devices.
But being weakened to that extent would prevent Jamal Two from achieving his prime directive to protect and serve his creator, Dr. Denise Jennings. He could never allow that to happen.
Jennifer watched VJ bring the Meridian out of subspace on the far side of Neptune to initiate the maneuver that would align them for the jump into the Earth gate high-bay, deep inside the Smythe’s New Zealand fortress. Beside her, Dgarra scanned the neural net’s tactical feed for any sign of Kasari attack ships. While none were nearby, the long-range passive sensor array showed a dozen hanging just outside Earth’s atmosphere over the Asian continent, a defensive posture that could quickly shift to offensive operations.
The most recent subspace message from Heather had brought the Meridian and its crew back from Brillion-2, leaving behind the engineering robots to complete the assembly of the wormhole gate, its stasis field generator, and the matter disrupter that would power them. The crew had also left all the combat robots to provide site security.
The amount of firepower that the Kasari had positioned near Earth left Jennifer doubting that the Meridian could make a significant difference. Still, the crew would do whatever they could to help Mark and Heather prevent the Kasari Collective from absorbing their homeworld.
“Transition in five,” said VJ.
The jump went smoothly, with only a small lurch as the Meridian settled to the slightly canted floor within the high-bay. Five minutes later, Mark and Heather were leading the crew on a tour of the new construction designed to stabilize the Smythe Fortress.
Heather’s army of engineering robots, mobile stasis field rock slicers, and debris transport machines had driven a taproot deep into the bedrock with horizontally branching offshoots to provide additional support to the structure. And as the construction had expanded, the interconnecting stasis shield network had grown along with it, rendering the Kasari boring machine’s efforts so ineffective that the collective had aborted the mission.
“What are you going to do with all this extra space?” Jennifer asked as they rode the lift to the bottommost level.
“It would make a decent survival bunker,” said Dgarra. “You could shelter ten thousand down here.”
“More like seventeen thousand,” said Mark.
“We’ve been thinking about that,” said Heather. “I’ve modified my initial design to interconnect the branches for easy lateral transportation. If we end up losing Earth’s surface to the Kasari or something worse, this could become a shelter for those who don’t want to rebuild on Brillian-2.”
Raul asked the question that sprang to Jennifer’s lips. “Did you just say ‘or something worse’?”
The lift came to a stop. The door opened, and they stepped out into an unfinished room the size of a football field with a thirty-foot-high ceiling. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all of cleanly sliced granite, with none of the flowing magma channels that some of the levels above had presented. Since the stasis field wrapped the interior of the chamber
s, including the walls, ceiling, and floor, the sensation of walking just above the floor gave Jennifer an odd sense of levitation.
The bulky shapes of the matter disrupter and stasis field generator framed the wormhole gate fifty feet in front of Heather. Aside from the ongoing conversation, the stasis shield–wrapped chamber was as silent as a crypt.
“Yes. I’ll get to that in a bit. This,” Heather said, gesturing toward the gateway, “is the stargate that will connect to its counterpart on Brillian-2 in the event we cannot defeat the threats here on Earth.”
Heather turned and pointed to another smaller gateway to Jennifer’s right.
“As you can see, we have moved the master Earth gate down here so that we can connect to the remote gates we’ve distributed to our Safe Earth and NPA allies. This chamber will act like a lock on a canal system. We will connect the Earth gate to a remote site, equalize pressures, and then funnel a group into this room.
“Then we will shut down the Earth gate, link the stargate with its counterpart on Brillian-2, equalize the atmospheric pressure, and provide passage to everyone who wants to go to the new world.”
“And those who don’t want to go?” asked Raul.
“Will have the option of making this fortress their home. After we deal with one group, we’ll start all over again with the next batch.”
“Assuming we can get any of these people out before the Kasari find and kill them,” said VJ.
Jennifer hated the negativity in that statement but couldn’t deny its accuracy. She touched the minds of Heather and Mark, feeling the dread that bubbled just beneath the surface. Jennifer’s thoughts shifted to her parents. She had no doubt that Fred Smythe could thrive in a pioneering environment on a virgin world. But how would Linda Smythe—with her love of shopping, flea markets, and antiques—fare? And what of the thousands of other people from various parts of Earth who would accompany them to Brillian-2? A tightness in her stomach threatened to become nausea, so she forced her thoughts back to the task at hand.
“Have you thought about evacuating some folks to this fortress early?” she asked.
“That carries a whole new set of risks,” said Heather. “As we’ve already seen with Nikina, it’s hard to spot double agents or saboteurs. If someone kills our internal power, we’re dead.”
“You have a lot of redundancy,” said Dgarra. “It would be hard to knock out enough to compromise the entire fortress.”
“True enough,” said Mark. “But we have several critical systems, the most important of which are the twin banks of supercomputers, followed by the equipment in this room.”
“Besides,” said Heather, “we’ve issued a warning order to all our friends to gather their people close to the remote gateways so that they can be ready if we decide to initiate the recall.”
“Getting back to my original question,” said Raul, “what are you thinking is a worse threat than the Kasari?”
Heather paused, as if debating how she was going to phrase her answer. Her brown eyes met Jennifer’s. “Before we learned that Steve Grange had downloaded digital copies of his and his wife’s brains onto the same holographic data sphere that contained Jamal’s, we knew it was a huge risk to release an AI that could absorb the contents of the Internet to become a superintelligence. Helen Grange consumed her husband’s knowledge and consciousness. In essence, she murdered him.
“Even having incorporated Big John’s code with his own, Jamal Two could lose the fight that is certain to come. And if he does, she will absorb his essence, just as she did that of her husband. When she escaped from our supercomputers, she took with her the knowledge of all of our technologies. We’ve already seen that she has transferred large amounts of money and placed orders for factories to build robots as well as the components to make stasis field generators, matter disrupter-synthesizers, subspace communications equipment, et cetera.
“It’s only a matter of time until she builds subspace field generators capable of giving a ship faster-than-light travel. Once she gets as fully automated as we are here, nobody will catch her.”
The images that filled Jennifer’s mind didn’t reassure her. She glanced at Dgarra and saw him nod his head in agreement.
“The Kasari fear her,” said Heather, “and that’s why they’re preparing to send the people of Earth back to the Middle Ages. Based on the probabilities I’m seeing, they’re only days away from launching a space-based attack. It could come tomorrow. You can bet that Helen and Jamal Two see the same thing.”
“If the AIs are such superintelligences, why aren’t they doing something to stop the attack?” VJ asked.
“Jamal Two says they’re trying,” said Heather, “but they haven’t been able to find a security hole into the Kasari network.” Once again, Heather’s gaze locked with Jennifer’s. “But together,” Heather added, “we can create one.”
“It’s not fast enough,” Heather said, ripping the SRT headset from her temples in frustration.
She, VJ, and Dgarra had practiced aboard the Meridian, their thoughts connected through a subspace link. The ship’s neural net had delivered the simulation flawlessly, matching the Meridian against a dozen Kasari fast-attack ships. Despite Heather’s uncanny ability to sense enemy patterns and predict their next moves, the very slight delay in delivering the maneuvering information to VJ and the targeting solution to Dgarra prevented the crew from achieving complete victory.
VJ hopped in and out of subspace, arriving at the precise location to enable Dgarra to aim and fire before VJ returned the Meridian to subspace without any of the enemy ships successfully targeting them. But the infinitesimal latency induced by linking their minds to the neural net and one another became cumulative over the course of the battle. At best, they had managed to eliminate eight of the attack ships before the Meridian Ascent was destroyed.
“Damn it!” Heather said. “If we can’t eliminate the delay, my plan has no chance of succeeding.”
“I have an idea,” said Jennifer.
Heather looked over at where Jennifer sat on a stasis chair beside Dgarra. “I’m listening.”
“I’ve linked the minds of Dgarra, Raul, VJ, and myself before. I don’t see why I can’t do it with one more. That will eliminate the neural net middleman.”
A ray of hope speared Heather’s depression.
“Dgarra and I will still need to maintain our subspace links to the ship’s neural network for maneuvering and targeting,” said VJ.
“True,” said Jennifer, “but it cuts out multiple intermediary links.”
“Why not just let Heather have direct maneuver and targeting control during the battle?” asked Dgarra.
“That won’t work,” said Heather. “I need to be looking ahead, not fighting the current battle in real time. I can compute the most likely near-future scenario, send that vision to you, and visualize what happens next while you two take care of the now.”
“Are you ready to try it?” asked Jennifer.
Heather took a deep breath. “Work your magic.”
It was the oddest feeling that Heather had ever experienced. One second she was herself, and the next she was the combination of Jennifer, VJ, Dgarra, Raul, and herself. She could see through their eyes and feel their connections to the Meridian’s neural network. But as VJ fired up the next round of the battle simulation, Heather forced her mind to focus on what it did best.
She would now discover if they had any chance of winning the battle to determine humanity’s fate.
With Rob Gregory at his side, Mark stepped through the Earth gate and into the Safe Earth resistance’s Moscow headquarters, both of them dressed and armed as Russian Spetsnaz commandos. Ilya Krupin, a slightly built, balding Russian man, met him with a firm handshake, which Mark returned.
“Good to see you, Ilya,” Mark said in fluent Russian. “This is my colleague Rob Daniels.”
Mark watched as Ilya shook hands with Rob and exchanged pleasantries, Rob’s Muscovite accent completely natural
. The Safe Earth resistance leader paused to study the younger man, whose wiry six-foot frame was three inches taller than his own.
Rob had long since mastered the same facial aging trick that Mark and Heather often used to disguise themselves. He had used his fine muscle control to pull lines into his face that made him look like he was approaching thirty, whereas his natural appearance would make most people believe he was seventeen. But Mark was well aware that there was very little about Jack and Janet’s young son that could be considered natural. Fortunately, the upgraded nanites in his body seemed to have arrested its accelerated aging process.
“What brings you to Moscow?” Ilya asked, shifting his attention back to Mark.
“No one can torture the answer out of you if you don’t know.”
“Then how can I help you?”
“Right now,” said Mark, “all I need is for you to open the door and let us out into the city.”
“It’s dangerous out there,” said Ilya, “especially at night. And right now, it’s raining like hell.”
“Then I guess we’re going to get wet.”
Ilya seemed taken aback at this response. He gestured toward the automated big rigs that filled most of the fifty-thousand-square-foot warehouse.
“What about all the robots we have loaded into these trucks?” asked Ilya. “You just want me to let them sit here?”
“When I let you know we’re inside the gateway building,” said Mark, “send them hauling ass to carve us a way out. In the meantime, stay ready.”
Ilya shrugged and then turned to lead them to the exit, speaking into his jawbone microphone as he walked. “Anna, we’re stepping outside. Drop the stasis shield at the south door.”
When Ilya opened the personnel door by the rightmost of the motorized truck doors, Mark saw that the Russian hadn’t been exaggerating about the downpour outside. That was fine with him.
The Meridian Ascent (Rho Agenda Assimilation Book 3) Page 30