by Tom Clancy
And then they were up and slipping free of their harnesses. They hurried to recover their bags and collect the equipment inside them — grenades, plastic explosive charges, and upgraded FAMAS rifles like those that would be used by the extraction team. Exchanging their jump helmets and goggles for combat helmets with optical display units, they donned dark special-purpose visors, coupled the electronic gunsights on their rifles to the helmet-mounted displays, lowered their monocular eyepieces, and then stealthily moved out at their leader’s command, splitting into three groups of four.
If the information they had obtained was correct, it would only be seconds, at most minutes, before their presence was detected.
Along with other things of vital interest to their employer, that information would be well tested as the night ran its course.
* * *
The employees at the facility mostly called them “hedgehogs.”
Rollie Thibodeau, who headed the night security detail, preferred the term “li’l bastards,” grumbling that the way they responded to certain situations resembled human behavior a bit too closely for comfort. But Rollie was technophobic to an extreme degree, and being a Louisiana Cajun, felt an inborn obligation to be both voluble and contrary.
Still, when he was in a generous mood, he would acknowledge their value by adding that they were “smart li’l bastards.”
In fact, the mobile security robots weren’t very bright at all, possessing the approximate intelligence of the beetles and other insects that hedgehogs of the living, mammalian variety preferred to dine upon. And while they could function as surrogates for human beings in performing a host of physical tasks, scientific experts of an Asimovean bent would have contended it was improper, or at the very least imprecise, to even define them as robots, since they were incapable of autonomous thought and action, slaved to remote computers, and ultimately monitored and controlled by human guards.
True robots, these experts might assert, would have the ability to make independent decisions and act upon them without any help from their creators, and were perhaps twenty or thirty years from actual development. What existed now, and what laymen wrongly considered to be robots, were actually robotlike machines.
These conflicting definitions aside, the hedgehogs were versatile, sophisticated gadgets that had been put to effective use patrolling the four-thousand-acre ISS manufacturing compound in Mato Grosso do Sul. Through a rather complicated agreement with the Brazilian government and a half-dozen other countries involved in the space station’s construction, UpLink International had managed to win administrative and managerial control of the plant, simultaneously assuming blanket responsibility for its protection — something the Brazilian negotiators had been finagled into thinking was an expensive concession on UpLink’s part, but which had actually pleased Roger Gordian and his security chief, Pete Nimec, to no end. If their experience operating in transitional and politically unstable nations had taught them anything, it was that nobody could look out for them as well as they could look out for themselves.
The hedgehogs unarguably made looking out for themselves easier. “R2D2 on steroids” is how Thibodeau described them, and in its own way that was an apt representation. Their omnidirectional color video cameras were encased in rounded turrets atop vertical racks or “necks,” giving them a vaguely anthropomorphic appearance that many female staffers found cute — as did quite a few of the plant’s male employees, though rarely by open admission. Mounted on tracked 6x6 drive platforms, they were quick, quiet, and capable of maneuvering across everything from narrow corridors and stairwells to rugged, heavily obstacled outdoor terrain. Products of UpLink’s own R&D, they boasted a wide range of proprietary hardware-and-software-based systems. Their hazard/intruder detection array included broad-spectrum gas, smoke, temperature, optical flame, microwave radar, vehicular sonar, passive infrared, seismic, and ambient light sensors. Their clawed, retractable gripper arms were strong enough to lift twenty-five-pound objects and precise enough to pick the smallest coins up off the ground.
Nor were the hedgehogs limited to merely sounding the alarm should they find something amiss. They were, rather, midnight riders and first-wave militia rolled into one, ready to neutralize threats ranging from chemical fires to trespassers on command. Packed aboard their chassis were fluid cannons that could unleash highpressure jets of water, polymer superglues, and anti-traction superlubricants; 12-gauge sidewinder shotguns loaded with disabling aerosol cartridges; laser-dazzler and visual stimulus and illusion banks; and other fruits of UpLink’s ambitious nonlethal weapons program.
There were a total of six hedgehogs at the Brazilian compound, four posted near the borders of its approximately rectangular grounds, an additional pair safeguarding its central buildings. Each of the ground patrols encompassed an entire perimeter line and a parallel sector reaching inward for one hundred meters, and each mechanical sentry on that beat had been given a nickname whose first initial corresponded with the first letter of the direction it covered: Ned toured the northern perimeter, Sammy the compound’s south side, Ed its eastern margin, Wally its western. The two indoor sentries were Felix and Oscar, assigned to the factory and office complexes respectively. On average, a hedgehog would patrol for eight to ten hours at a stretch before having to recharge its nickel-cadmium batteries at one of the docking stations along its route, with more frequent pauses in the event of an increased task load.
And so they went about their rounds, smooth-running and tireless, responding to an anomalous motion here, an unusual variation in temperature there, investigating whatever seemed not to belong, relaying a stream of environmental data to monitoring stations attended by their human supervisors, and alerting them to any sign of danger or unauthorized entry along the fenced-in margins of the compound.
An invasion from above, however, was another matter altogether.
* * *
The hedgehog was midway through its third tour of the facility’s western quadrant when its infrared sensors picked up a wavelength reading of twelve to fourteen microns — the distinctive heat signature of a human being — some fifty yards in front of it.
The robot paused, tracking the emission source, but it had quickly backed out of sensor range.
Its computers triangulating the object’s line of movement to project its likely path of retreat, the hedgehog gave chase, slinging across the rocky soil on its all-terrain carrier.
Suddenly another source of human IR emissions appeared, this one behind the hedgehog.
Then a third on its right, and a fourth on the left.
The robot stopped again, boxed in. Its various turret sensors needed just an instant to perform a sweep extending for fifty meters in a full circle. At the same time, its infrared illuminator was casting a light field that enabled its night video equipment to scan for images in the pitch darkness.
Again the four anomalous radiation sources dashed into and out of range, still surrounding the robot, their pattern of motion keeping them roughly equidistant from it.
Its logical systems correlating the input from its probes, the hedgehog had definitively classified the circling objects as human entities and potential threats. But very much by design, its programming did not include any options for dealing with them.
Instead, it was transmitting the processed data to its monitoring site via an encrypted radio channel, leaving its flesh-and-blood handlers to decide what to do next.
* * *
“What’s up with Wally?” Jezoirski said. “You see how he’s sniffing around?”
“Yeah,” Delure replied with concern. “And I don’t like it a bit.”
Beside them, Cody, the senior man in the room, leaned pensively over his surveillance monitors and said nothing.
At their monitoring station in the bowels of the Brazilian ISS compound, the guards were studying a complex bank of dials, controls, and electronic displays that placed them at the informational heart of its security network. All three wore the in
digo uniforms and newly issued shoulder patches — these depicting a broadsword surrounded by stylized satellite bandwidth lines — of UpLink’s global intelligence and threat countermeasure force, dubbed Sword as a reference to the legend of the Gordian knot, which Alexander the Great was supposed to have undone with a swift and decisive stroke of his blade. It was a method analogous to Roger Gordian’s no-nonsense approach to crisis management, making for some interesting word play, and forming the direct basis of the section name.
Jezoirski slid forward in his chair, his features limned by the pale green radiance of an infrared video display, his eyes on the IR meter directly beneath it.
“Shit,” he said. “Look at that heat emission. Somebody’s definitely out th—”
Jezoirski broke off midsentence as a warning indicator lit up on the panel. He glanced over at Delure, who took hurried note of this development and then pointed back at the video screen.
Green-on-green images flashed across the monitor — a group of human figures moving around the security robot, alternately closing in and backing away.
Cody thought of bloodhounds harrying their prey. But why would those sons of bitches play tag with the ’hog? The robots’ main effectiveness lay in their early alert and standoff capabilities against a perimeter attack. Their purpose was to buy time until human reinforcements arrived, to repel or delay an intrusion attempt while it was in progress. Their purpose was not to engage in close skirmishing once the grounds were already compromised. At that stage getting past them would be easy, and crippling or taking them out just slightly more difficult.
His forehead crunched with tension, he scanned the radar imagery in front of him. On screen, the hedgehog and the men surrounding it showed up as color-coded shapes positioned against a set of grid lines and numerical coordinates.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Jezoirski said. “There’s nothing to show the outer fence was breached—”
“We can worry about that later.” Cody was already reaching for the phone as he broke his silence. “Key the ’hogs for full gamut intruder suppression. I’m getting Thibodeau on the horn.”
On Jezoirski’s radioed command, Wally hit them with a barrage of light and sound.
Its first optical counterstrike was a burst from the neodymium-YAG laser projector on its turret. To the four men around the robot, it seemed almost as if a small nova had ignited at ground level, momentarily filling the night with diamond-edged brilliance.
They scattered rapidly, fanning out over several yards — but the flash was something for which they had come prepared. They had known that a laser pulse could temporarily impair the vision or burn out the retina, dazzle or blind, depending on its power, intensity, and length. They had also known that the weapons used by Sword’s robotic defenders were calibrated to produce no lasting damage. And they had worn dark filters on their visors to shield them from the brightness, correctly betting this would make its effects tolerable.
The hedgehog’s sensory assault, however, was about to kick into overdrive. The laser flash had barely faded in the air when a group of red-and-blue halogen lights on Wally’s main equipment case began to strobe in a preprogrammed sequence, its pattern and frequency closely matching that of normal human brain waves. At precisely the same instant, the robot’s acoustic generator had begun transmitting 100-decibel soundwaves at a controlled rate of ten cycles per second. It was a resonance the invaders seemed to feel more than actually hear, a sour, abrasive humming that remained just below the level of audibility, working its way deep into their bodies, swelling thickly in their stomachs and intestines.
Each directed-energy weapon worked on the same principle, targeting specific areas within the human body, coupling the spectrum of its emission to characteristic waveforms within those areas, and manipulating them by hyperstimulation. The flashing lights attacked the visual receptors of the hindbrain, triggering a storm of electrical activity akin to the sort that occurred during a sudden attack of epilepsy. The acoustic generator had multiple targets — the inner ear, where abnormal vibrations of the fluid within its semicircular canals would throw the sense of balance into upheaval, and the soft organs of the abdomen, where similar vibrations would lead to convulsions of pain and nausea.
The combined effect of these measures overtook the invaders at once, scrambling their senses and motor functions, confusing and sickening them, provoking a hallucinatory and physically wrenching disconnection from their surroundings. Shaking, gagging, and retching, they staggered in confused, purposeless circles. One of them dropped onto his back, his bladder releasing, grotesque herky-jerky spasms running through his limbs. Another sank to his knees, clutched his heaving stomach, and vomited.
Partially overcome, Manuel knew he had bare moments in which to act. Forcing his legs to remain steady underneath him, he turned in what he thought was the hedgehog’s direction, clenched his eyes against its strobing lights, raised his FAMAS rifle, and pumped a 20mm HE round from its grenade launcher attachment. It was a crude, inaccurate use of an extraordinarily refined weapon, but it achieved its desired results. The shell struck the ’hog’s carrier scant yards from where he stood, detonating with an explosive flash.
Manuel dove to the ground as the concussion swept over him, waited a second or two, then got back to his feet and dusted himself off. A quick look around revealed that one member of his band had been killed in the blast, his flesh and clothing shredded by flying shrapnel. He himself had an open gash above the elbow. But the robot was wreckage. It leaned sideways on the burning remains of a rubber track, smoke and flames spitting from its mangled carrier. He could smell the odor of its fused wiring.
Wreckage.
He saw his remaining teammates struggling to regain their equilibrium, allowed them a few moments to recover, then hurried to gather them to his side. There was no time to linger over their single casualty.
“Vaya aqui!” he hissed. “Come on, we still have work to do.”
* * *
Much as Rollie Thibodeau loved his job at UpLink, much as he felt it was an important job, he hated how its hours screwed up his biological clock, turned his daily routine inside out, and cramped his lifestyle in more ways than he could have stated.
Take sex, or the lack of it, for one thing. Where would he find a woman who’d be in amorous sync with his schedule, falling into bed with the sunrise, emerging after sunset like a vampire? Take sleep for another. This was Brazil, land of bronzed bodies and the fio dental. How could he get any rest with the tropical daylight pressing against his window blinds, tantalizing him with its warmth, reminding him of the long, gorgeously romantic afternoons dancing past? Take, for a third example, something as important to a man as eating. Could cheerfulness truly be expected of him when his meals were fouled up beyond description? It was rotten enough being a hundred miles from the nearest city and having to subsist on the bland, unseasoned fare they served in the commissary. Rotten even when those tasteless dishes were hot out of the kitchen. But consuming them after they’d sat in a refrigerator for half a day, and then been warmed over in a microwave, was a gross indignity. And the hours at which one was forced to eat when working the night shift, calous ve, the hours were nothing short of unspeakable!
Thibodeau sat in his small but tidy office in a sublevel of the ISS compound’s main headquarters building, staring down at the plate of overcooked beef and watery, reconstituted mashed potatoes on his desk with a kind of savage contempt. It was slightly past eight P.M., and a new kid on his shift by the name of McFarlane had just strolled in with the meal, holding a dish for himself as well, looking as if he could hardly wait to get back to his post and dig into it… something that had so annoyed Thibodeau, he’d been unable to even feign appreciation as he dismissed the youngster, which left him feeling still worse for having rudely punished the messenger for the message.
Well, he would just have to make it up to him later. Explain that even the most upbeat person in the world could have his disposi
tion ruined by two years of eating lunch at eight o‘clock at night, and a repulsive approximation of dinner between midnight and three in the morning. Breakfast alone provided a modicum of satisfaction, and only because the prep cooks would arrive for work around six o’clock, giving him an opportunity to send for some fresh eggs or waffles before the end of his shift, and thus eat at least one relatively decent meal at a relatively sane hour.
“Lord, thank you for our fuckin’ daily slop,” Thibodeau muttered in his thick Cajun accent.
His features glum, he was about to reach for his knife and fork when the phone at his elbow shrilled. He glanced over at it, saw the redline light blinking, and promptly snatched up the handset.
Other than for training drills, the extension had never been used during his term at the facility.
“Yes?” he said.
The man on the line was Cody from the monitoring station.
“Sir, there’s been a penetration.”
“Where?” Thibodeau sat up straight, his culinary woes forgotten.
“The western quadrant.” Cody’s voice was edged with tension. “Wally detected several intruders. Thing I don’t understand, we aren’t seeing any damage along the fence. No sign perimeter integrity’s been violated.”
“You sic the li‘l bastard on ’em?”
“Affirmative. We actuated its VSI banks and acoustic cannon, but…” A hesitant pause. “Sir, Wally’s gone off-line. It doesn’t look good.”
Thibodeau breathed. He’d insisted a thousand times that the ’hogs couldn’t be trusted. The hell of it was, he’d never once wanted to be proven right.
“You hear from Henderson and Travers at the gate?”
“We’ve been trying to radio them and there’s been no response.”
“Christ,” Thibodeau said. “Send some men out right away. I also want a full detail around the plant and warehouse buildings. Seal ’em up tight, hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
Thibodeau paused to collect his thoughts, gripping the receiver in his fist. He was anxious to get into the monitoring room and see what was happening for himself. But first he wanted to be sure he was covering all his bases.