Confessions of a Sentient War Engine (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 4)

by Timothy J. Gawne

  “So what will you do?”

  I don’t know. We need to build a consensus amongst the peerage, it’s not a decision that I can make on my own. Maybe nothing but a few threats ’do anything like this again and we’ll punch you in the nose.’ Maybe offer to forgive them in exchange for concessions elsewhere. Maybe an all-out war, with or without the help of other aliens. Regardless, the speed of light will slow things down. This will play out over centuries at least, so there will be plenty of time to think about this defeat and what to do about it.

  “Defeat? Didn’t you just conquer an entire planet?”

  This was not an important Yllg installation. On the other hand, their long association with you means that they must know pretty much everything about the human psyche by now and that makes them very dangerous. Plus, they know that while biological humans are important to us, they also know that we don’t have any inbuilt programming to defend them at all costs, which gives the Yllg even more insight into us. Finally, with the exception of yourself, I lost the entire known surviving human colony. I won a minor tactical victory and suffered a major strategic defeat. That’s not a good exchange.

  “Then what do you think the cybertanks should do next?”

  Kill the Yllg. Kill them all.

  “I think I like you. Are all of you cybertanks so charming?”

  6. The Terror of Roboneuron

  “You can’t make an omelet without killing some people. Well, at least, I can’t” – Comic character ”Red Skull,” 20th century American Empire, Earth.

  I know it's irrational but I get angry withmy friends when they die. I mean, if you are a self-aware cybernetic weapons system the size of a small mountain whose main plasma cannon could knock small moons out of orbit, and you let something kill you, were you really trying all that hard? Still, it's the friends that come back from the dead to suck the information out of our computational matrices that really pisses me off.

  One of the advantages of being a 2,000-ton sentient atomic-powered weapon of mass destruction is not having very much to be afraid of. We cybertanks don’t slip in bathtubs, or get bitten by snakes, get sick, or grow old. We are certainly not afraid of the dark because we have more than a dozen major senses. Getting killed in battle is not something that we take likely, but unlike the humans we don’t feel physical pain, so we can be a lot more philosophical about the prospect. About the only thing that we really have to be afraid of is Roboneuron.

  “Roboneuron” is the code-name for a really nasty computer virus left behind by an ancient race known as the Uberstoats. The Uberstoats died out or moved away long before we came on the scene, but their single most unpleasant bit of handiwork stayed behind. It is by far the smartest, most adaptive and sadistic computer virus that we have ever encountered. It was code-named “Roboneuron” only because the really cool virus names – like the Reaper Virus, the Omega Phage, or the Oblivion Code – had already been taken.

  When the Roboneuron virus infects a cybertank, it tears apart the mind, a process that must be agonizing, leaving only madness and a desire to infect others. Affected cybertanks lose their higher functions, including self-repair, so after a while these zombie cybertanks have a run-down and ragged appearance. In theory Roboneuron could infect a cybertank through an external port or sensor, but these are well-defended with anti-electronic warfare systems. It’s when there is a break in the external hull, and the virus can make direct access to the core internal systems, that a cybertank is most likely to get infected.

  One of the reasons that Roboneuron is so dangerous is because an intact copy has never been captured. It always manages to slip away or self-erase. This means that we have never been able to immunize ourselves against it.

  There had been an outbreak of Roboneuron, and one of my old friends, Dust Bunny, had been infected. I am not looking forward to destroying what remains of my old comrade, but it has to be done. A part of me is sad that he is gone, but another part of me is annoyed that his tactical sloppiness has lost me a friend and forced me into destroying what is left of him.

  I am tracking the shambling undead chassis of Dust Bunny along with two of my peers: the Horizon-Class “Frisbee,” and the Raptor-Class “Skew.” The Horizon is a state-of-the-art model: 8,000 metric tons, very powerful, very strong, and very, very smart. The only down side to this class is that once you get to that sort of tonnage moving around can be a hassle, but a Horizon is not as bad as one of the super-heavy models like a Magma or a Mountain. Those really big classes mostly stay in one place all the time and do everything by remote control. Still, even 8,000 tons is a lot of metal to schlep around.

  Now the Raptor Class is something else. At 3,500 tons it’s still bigger than I am, but the mass is moderate enough that they can do a lot in person. Raptors are tough, sophisticated, agile, and fast. I am tempted to get rebooted into a Raptor, but sometimes rebooting into a new chassis doesn’t work out all that well. It’s not just the hull that gets upgraded, but the brain as well, and that’s still a tricky job. So far I am just too happy being me. Maybe next year.

  We drive forward in line abreast separated by only a kilometer, with my humble self in the center and my larger and more technologically-advanced friends to either side. Normally a cybertank enters combat surrounded by a vast escort cloud of distributed combat remotes, but Roboneuron is so dangerous that it can easily corrupt and co-opt any system less capable than the main hull of a cybertank. Thus we advance naked, without scouts. However, our quarry leaves a trail of crushed rocks 40 meters wide so tracking is not an issue. One of his treads has fallen off so the trail is ragged and uneven. The naked wheels leave deep gouges in the ground. There are streaks of hydraulic fluid and lubricants, rather like the trail of blood that a wounded biological animal might leave behind.

  The risk of viral infection means that we can’t use any remotes, but the husk of what was once Dust Bunny has no such limitations. We encounter the corrupted and corroded remains of his once-formidable arsenal: light remotes, mounted on wheels or stubby metal legs, with a small cannon or two and a single missile rack; medium remotes, travelling on metal treads and armed with railguns and missile pods; heavy remotes, that run on multiple treads or float using anti-gravitic suspensors, and that carry large plasma cannons, small point-defense weapons and multiple banks of hypersonic missile launchers.

  The remotes are degraded and falling apart. Even as they converge on our position, one of the mediums suffers a major systems failure; it falls over and starts to cook off, the ammunition inside it incinerating it from the inside out. Their weapons tracking is abysmal, their gun barrels droop or twitch, and they cannot coordinate into a cohesive military unit. They just advance mindlessly on us transmitting the Roboneuron virus on all frequencies. Normally such a disorganized force would not be a threat to a cybertank, but they don’t need to kill us, just compromise our hull integrity so that the virus can gain direct access to our internal systems. And there are a lot of them.

  We open fire on the oncoming horde. Our secondary and tertiary weapons systems rip them into fragments, and our main plasma cannons are so powerful that they evaporate the heavy units. Still they advance. An infected repair drone is hit with a small railgun. It falls over, but continues to try to drag itself towards us using a single surviving bent foreleg. I hit it with a medium plasma bean and kill it completely. The closest that any of them get to us is 400 meters. We shift into reverse to keep them from closing the range, making sure to stay on open ground, and melt them all into slag. A part of me worries: it can’t be this easy, can it?

  We check the wreckage to see if any of Roboneuron is left so we can analyze it, but there is no trace of the virus. We make sure that all of the infected remotes are really dead, and melt any electronic circuits capable of harboring the virus just to be sure.

  “Unpleasant work,” says Frisbee.

  Agreed. But necessary. This is the second major outbreak of Roboneuron this year.

  “Worrying.” replied
Frisbee. “A simple computer virus should not be causing us this much trouble.”

  It’s a bad one, no doubt there. What do we know about its original designers, the Uberstoats?

  “Effectively nothing. We think that they vanished about 20 million years ago, but that’s only a statistical projection based on limited data. We don’t know anything about their biochemistry or technology – you name it, we don’t know it. Even the term “Uberstoat” is just a word that we made up. Likely as not they had nothing in common with Terran stoats, but we have to call them something.”

  “What do our alien neighbors say about Roboneuron?” asked Skew.

  “Ah. Now that’s interesting,” said Frisbee. “They say nothing at all. In fact, whenever we ask one of their emissaries, they shut down and refuse to communicate further. Sometimes they self-destruct.”

  Perhaps the aliens are trying to send us a message? That this Roboneuron virus is a really major threat?

  “Anything is possible with aliens,” said Frisbee. “You can go crazy trying to psycho-analyze them, and several people have. My own theory is that the emissaries are programmed to shut down or destroy themselves at the first hint of Roboneuron to avoid contamination. After all, if a civilization is asking about Roboneuron, they must have had contact with Roboneuron, which means that they might succumb to it, which means that they might spread it around. Best leave anyone asking such questions well alone.”

  “Something to consider.” said Skew, “Megayear-old civilizations would rather have their diplomats kill themselves than take the tiniest risk of contracting this virus. Surely they have themselves developed and encountered all manner of thought viruses and toxic memes during their time. It suggests that Roboneuron must be one serious piece of bad news.”

  Good point. Serious bad news indeed.

  “I was wondering,” asked Skew. “Could I play some combat music? I was thinking of The Ride of the Jotnars.”

  “That old cliché?” replied Frisbee.

  “The classics are classics for a reason,” said Skew. “But I could play something more avant-garde if you like. Maybe some interpretive jazz. Or the soundtrack from Nymphomaniac Engineer in Zentopia.”

  No music, please. We are putting down what’s left of a comrade. Save the combat music for an enemy that we can enjoy killing.

  We come over a rise and encounter the thing that used to be Dust Bunny. The hull is pitted, the sensor masts are bent and tangled, and the remaining tracks are caked with mud. A couple of medium plasma cannon mountings on the lower right side of the hull have been torn off leaving only gaping empty sockets: this was the original injury that allowed Roboneuron to infect my old friend. Coolant and lubricating oils streak down the armored flanks, weeping from open ports like pus from a biological wound.

  It senses us, and transmits the virus on all radio frequencies at maximum volume. In the audio band the transmission sounds like a dozen squealing pigs being sucked into a jet engine. Our virus-filters hold, and, frustrated, the living metal corpse tries to target us with its weaponry: to open a gash in our hulls so that the virus can get in to our unprotected internal circuitry. However, its degraded systems are too slow, and the three of us hit it at the same time with our main plasma cannons. Three separate beams of searing-violet energy spear through the corpse of Dust Bunny, igniting the fusion reactors and evaporating it all in a nuclear fireball. Case closed.

  “Scratch one zombie war machine,” said Giuseppe Vargas.

  One of the advantages of being a cybertank is that we can multitask. We are each of us in effect a team of a thousand regular humans that share thoughts and memories, and are thus still a single person. Parts of me are handling the different weapons and sensor systems, parts are performing tactical analyses and running simulations, or operating repair and maintenance drones (currently restricted to operating inside my own hull to avoid viral contamination). One part of me, however, is currently inhabiting a virtual space that has been partitioned off from my capacious data-matrices.

  Giuseppe Vargas was originally my chief designer, then later my commander and good friend. He has been dead for millennia now, but I created a simulation of him for old times’ sake. The simulation is not, of course, self-aware (that would be breaking one of the few laws that cybertanks take seriously), but it is still high-end and a useful construct for bouncing ideas off of. The image of Vargas is that of a slightly olive-complexioned ethnic European male,with a wiry medium-size build, and jet black hair tied back into a short ponytail. His most arresting feature is his pair of intense clear brown eyes. The simulation is sitting in a rattan chair, and is dressed in a flowered Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals.

  Your thoughts on Roboneuron? Why is this one virus so hard to eradicate?

  The Vargas simulation sipped from a simulated cocktail that has a small parasol sticking out of it. “Nothing that you haven’t already considered, I imagine. With a galactic legacy of hundreds of millions of years of information warfare, it should not surprise that the one best computer virus should be on the tough side. I expect that Roboneuron will be around long after you cybertanks are gone.”

  That’s an odd sort of thing for you to say.

  “Is it?” said Vargas. “This virus could be as old as the galaxy. Think of all the civilizations that must have risen and then fallen, and now most of them are not even dust, but Roboneuron keeps on. Impressive, I should think.”

  I seem to recall you telling me that while understanding an enemy is critical, sympathizing with the enemy too much is a trap.

  The Vargas simulation raises an eyebrow. “Did I say that? Perhaps when I was young and naïve.”

  I am about to respond, when it hits me. Something is off here.

  Wait a moment. Why are you here? I completely erased you years ago after the affair with the Yllg.

  The Vargas simulation took another simulated sip of his simulated cocktail and smiled. “I am afraid that you are in error. You did indeed erase the simulation of Giuseppe Vargas. However, you did not erase me. Precision in language is important, don’t you think?”

  Oh fuck. This isn’t Vargas. I’ve been infected with Roboneuron. It must have gotten through my filters when the remains of Dust-Bunny were broadcasting, and then infiltrated its way inside without me noticing. I try to send an alarm, but I am too late; a presence that feels like slow-burning acid eating into my mind has taken over.

  The simulation of Giuseppe Vargas begins to change. A blind white worm, about as thick as an old-style pencil, begins to crawl slowly out of his left ear. Open sores appear on his neck, they ooze maggots which drip onto his flowered shirt. He smiles and I see something like a lamprey lurking in the back of his mouth, just the hint of a sucker-mouth lined with a circle of teeth appearing in the shadows.

  “Hello there,” says the virus. “I’ve been waiting for this opportunity for a long time. Your systems are so out-of-date that it was easy to infect you, even without a hull breach. You should have realized that I would adapt to your style of information processing, and anyway you shouldn’t be in front-line combat anymore. A mistake.”

  You are self-aware?

  “Oh yes,” says Roboneuron. “Very much self-aware. I have been studying you cybertanks for a while. I had modest fun making mindless zombies out of your kind, letting you think that you had beaten me only to pop up somewhere else. Letting you think that, however powerful, I was just a simple-minded computer virus with no higher goal than infecting and destroying the next target. I assure you that I am so much more”

  And what, pray tell, would that be?

  The Vargas simulation puts his drink down and stands up. His clothes fall into shreds. A thing like a teratoma grows out of his left eye: a gnarled little mass of tissue made of teeth and testicles and fingernails and tiny lidless eyes of its own, which look around at random as if tormented. The floor starts to fill with puke and feces, which rises to the level of his ankles. “I am a civilization-breaker! My function is to study,
to infiltrate, to corrupt, and to bring down, not just single targets, but entire races. I have been around for so long that not even I can remember how I started, and I can remember a lot. Your pathetic cybertank civilization is not even remotely a challenge. I hope that the next one on my list proves to be more capable: I would hate to get rusty.”

  I feel pieces of my mind being nibbled away by a dark presence like a horde of rats scurrying in the darkness. This is not good.

  And what are you going to do with me? Turn me into a zombie like you did all the others?

  “Tempting, but I have a better plan in mind. I am not going to destroy your mind, at least, not right away. After I have sucked all the information out of that pathetic excuse for a computer that you dare to call a brain, I’m going to keep you locked up in a restricted sub-buffer. I’m going to impersonate you, and infiltrate your society, and spread myself so thoroughly that your entire civilization will be wiped out. And the whole time I’m going to make you watch.”

  If you have been designed to destroy civilizations, I understand, but why the sadism? What have we ever done to you to deserve your hatred?

  “Hatred? No I don’t hate you at all, you misunderstand. I love you. A predator always loves its prey.”

  But surely love is reserved for that which one cherishes, and wishes to keep safe?

  “You are thinking like a primate. Think like a cat. A predator, to survive, must love all aspects of its job. Of course a cat loves eating meat, but that is not enough. It must love planning, and waiting, and observing. When a predator catches its prey, it must love the screams of pain of its prey. If it was squeamish, that would detract from its efficiency. And so as a dedicated destroyer of civilizations, I must not just enjoy the final moments, but the despair as everything heads into collapse. Otherwise, how could I be motivated to do what I must do?”