by Erik Hanberg
“I don’t doubt it. But that’s the weakness. In her rush to get the new Lattice up and running in days instead of months or years, Dillon’s repurposing of Taveena Parr’s molecular machine may be her downfall.”
“I’ve got an army descending on Rome in the next few hours, so if you could speed it along…” Shaw said.
Florian nodded. “The first time you saw a sphere, what did it do?” he asked.
“It was a communications tool. The raiders used them to write on with their fingers.”
“Certainly. But it did something else too. Why was it that scientists weren’t able to get their hands on a sphere before Dillon?”
Shaw thought about it. “Because they… shrank. It was part of their security. When the raiders were done with a sphere, they were able to make it disappear into nothingness.”
Florian’s eyes gleamed. “Exactly. The molecular machines don’t just construct objects. They can deconstruct objects too. If we could figure out a way into the programming that runs the molecular machines, it’s possible that we might be able to give an order that makes the entire Lattice satellite network just… deconstruct in a matter of seconds.”
“Alberto said you were working on a computer virus. That’s what he meant?”
“It isn’t a virus so much as a secret kill switch that no one intended. Dillon built the new Lattice on the back of the molecular machines. In theory, the ability to deconstruct is still present in the molecular machines at the heart of each satellite. If we could fool the system into letting us give an order, we might be able to destroy the Lattice all at once.”
“What if we could sway Dillon or Galway or someone in the cartel to give the order on our behalf?” Shaw asked.
“It wouldn’t work. There’s no big self-destruct button just waiting for us to break in and push it, if that’s what you mean. This is something buried beneath the Lattice code that she wrote. If it were a more traditional computer, I’d say she wrote the software, and we’re trying to break in to the hardware. But we still think it can work.”
“What’s stopping you?”
Brother Florian gave Shaw a withering look. “This is theoretical. It could work if… If we can get into the system. If we can give the correct order. If, if, if. There are many variables.”
Shaw glanced at his wrap. Time was running out. “Keep at it, Brother Florian. I’m going to be very distracted for a while, but if I live long enough for you to finish your work—or at least to get close enough that I can threaten that you might finish your work— then I want to know immediately. If we’re losing in the streets, I want to know if we have this option.”
“Yes, Grand Master,” Florian said, and this time there didn’t seem to be any irony or bitterness in his voice.
Byron nodded and left Florian and his team of researchers, Alberto in tow.
“Where to next, sir?” Alberto asked.
“Up.”
Four hundred and fifty feet above the street level, Shaw stepped out onto the windy observation deck on the cupola at the top of Saint Peter’s Basilica. His entourage was with him again. In addition to Alberto and the saints’ avatars, Ellie’s avatar was floating next to him after she’d called him on the elevator ride up. Jane was sleeping and she said that she wanted to listen in. He tried not to get distracted by the avatar of his daughter, swaddled in the crook of Ellie’s arm.
Shaw walked a circuit around the dome at the top of the basilica, his attention both on the horizon and the buildings closest to the Vatican. To the north were the old Roman neighborhoods. Since Disunification, they had been converted into barracks—homes for the soldiers that protected the Vatican. To the east, was Saint Peter’s Square and the colonnades that defined the oval outdoor space. The square was still open wide to the streets in front of it, but from his perch, he could see the extension of the Vatican walls built after the pope reasserted the Papal States. In the distance, Shaw could see where the wall snaked its way along the Tiber and where it continued its path on the other side of the river, dividing the city into North and South. To the south was a large park, now a training ground for the army.
To the immediate west were the Vatican gardens and beyond that—
Shaw pointed toward the west over the Vatican walls. “Who controls that area?”
“We do,” Ignatius said. “So long as we have enough drones and bot swarms to keep out enemy forces.”
“And where is the army of Northerners coming from?”
“They still intend to arrive from the east,” Ignatius said. “Right up the road into Saint Peter’s Square.”
Shaw nodded as if he expected that. “And exactly opposite this point. As soon as the cartel has re-supplied the Northerners with new missiles and drones, we should expect an assault on our rear. It will come through here somehow. What’s that tower?” Shaw asked, pointing to a thick brick tower inside the Vatican garden.
“The Tower of Saint John.”
“Send fifty men there and have them fortify it. Hopefully that will be enough to slow down any attempts to flank us.”
Shaw circled the dome again. He leaned against the rail and watched the activity in Saint Peter’s Square. Men and women in the army now under his command were drilling. The scene was the very model of an army preparing for war. And yet…
“It’s not enough,” Shaw said.
“Pardon?” Ignatius asked.
“We need more than this if we’re going to win.”
“There is no one left,” Ignatius said. “This is everyone. We never predicted we would need a large army, not when we had arms to defend ourselves.”
Shaw drummed his fingers on the stone rail and gazed out over the Eternal City. Victory was going to take more than just troops—he would need to tear up the city itself to make it more friendly ground for defense. Home field advantage wouldn’t mean much if they didn’t put in the preparations needed.
He felt a strong mental barrier to the idea—it was Rome, after all. But hadn’t it been remade many times before? He made up his mind. “Start taking notes, Alberto. First, clear anyone out of the buildings on the other side of the colonnades. Demolish them.”
“The colonnades?” Alberto clarified.
“No, the buildings. I want the rubble from the buildings to fill up the colonnades as high as you can. Right now, I can see glimpses of side streets through the colonnades. That’s unacceptable. I want so much rubble in them that no one would bother trying to get through them. Understood?”
Alberto nodded and Shaw turned his attention to the main thoroughfare in front of him.
“Along this main road that leads into the square, clear and demolish the buildings on either side of the street. Do it all the way to the river. But I want the route to remain passable. We’re going to seal off every possible access point to the Vatican but the one we want the Northerners’ troops to follow—but there’s no reason it should be easy on them.”
“Yes, Grand Master.”
“Make it happen,” Shaw said.
“Next… how many drones do we have at our disposal?” he asked the saints.
“As weapons?” Ignatius asked.
“As backhoes.”
Five minutes later, the historic square had been emptied of the Catholic troops and dozens of modified drones were excavating its cobblestones. “Please don’t dig up the obelisk and the fountains,” Clement pleaded. “The obelisk has been in that place for thirteen hundred years! The fountains were designed by Maderno and Bernini in the—”
“We can move the obelisk for safe keeping, Your Holiness, and we’ll try to keep the excavation from damaging the fountains,” Shaw cut in. “But I’m uprooting the square.”
The pope sullenly agreed and Shaw ordered men to work with drones to relocate the obelisk inside the basilica.
“What are you doing to the square, anyway?” Clement asked.
“This is the only approachable entrance to the Vatican that doesn’t have a forty-foot wall around it. It
’s where we’ll fight. There’s no reason to make the path easy on them. Rubble in the streets, and mud in the square.”
“He’s creating high ground, too,” Joan of Arc added.
Shaw nodded.
Drones were excavating paving stones and earth from the square and packing them around the outer colonnades, blocking off additional entry points into the square. They were drawing mostly from the edge of the square and working their way downward and closer to the Basilica. As they kept working, a steeper and steeper slope began to emerge between the entrance to the square and the Basilica itself.
“Just looking out from here, you can tell that the Vatican sits on a hill, but it’s pretty shallow. Not to mention that for an opposing army, the route to this spot is literally paved for them,” Shaw said. “There’s no tactical advantage for us. So I’m creating one. Anyone who enters the square will have to drop down into the gulley we’re creating before charging up this steep slope—where we’ll be waiting behind a five-foot embankment. They’ll have a hell of a path in front of them.”
“Maybe Zella Galway should have thought twice before challenging a Civil War buff to a ground war,” Ellie said. Shaw looked at her in surprise and she gave him a wan smile. “It’s the truth,” she added.
“Why don’t you just fill the gulley with water and create a moat,” the pope grumbled.
Shaw blinked and then laughed. “You know what, we could probably do that.”
“Would you like me to instruct the drones to break the water mains near the edge of the square, Grand Master?” Ignatius asked.
Shaw watched the construction and eventually shook his head. “No. We don’t want to actually keep them out. We’re not preparing for a siege. That would just give them time to re-arm and we’d be right back where we were this morning—hoping our weapons can last as long as theirs. We need to have this fight.”
Not to mention, it’s time Ellie and Jane don’t have, Shaw thought, looking in the direction of his wife’s avatar.
“Yes, sir,” Ignatius said.
“But have two drones standing by,” Shaw added after another moment’s thought. “Maybe we’ll find breaking the water main will be useful during the actual battle.”
“What happens if we win?” the pope asked.
“If we win, hopefully we can make peace with the Northerners.”
“An opportunity I hear you missed because you were too busy trying to save your family,” the pope chided.
Shaw’s face darkened. “You are welcome to fire me and run this battle yourself.”
The pope shook his head. “All right. Let’s say they don’t want to make peace. What then?”
“Either way, a victory here should make our case to China or the U.S. that much stronger. Hopefully we can convince one of them to destroy the cartel’s satellites and I can save my family.”
“And if we lose?”
“We can’t afford to lose.”
The pope took his leave after that and Shaw’s attention turned to the men in the square helping remove the obelisk.
“Do those soldiers at the obelisk have implants?” he asked Ignatius.
“Of those ten, six do, Grand Master.”
“And the rest of the army?”
“More than forty percent.”
Shaw played around with a thought that was slowly forming in his head. “We might be fighting with soldiers like the generals of old,” he said slowly, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t still use the Lattice.” Shaw thought of the way Dr. Coronovschi had used him to deliver Jane. “Is it possible to tandem with the soldiers?”
“Which one?” Ignatius asked.
“The ones who are the obelisk,” Shaw said. “All of them at the same time.”
“Tandem jumping into several minds and bodies is… technically possible,” Aquinas allowed. “But it might break your own mind in the process. I would not recommend it.”
“I could be a single mind—all our troops acting as one.”
Aquinas laughed. “All of your troops? You would never survive that much stimulus to the brain.”
“It would be useful, wouldn’t it?”
“Perhaps,” Aquinas said, “although the recent experiment you just conducted with your AIs and distributed computing may prove otherwise.”
Shaw could tell that Aquinas was trying to end the conversation, but he wasn’t interested in ending it. “What does it feel like?” Shaw asked. “You are monitoring the Lattice for anything that might relate to this moment. What does it feel like? How do you process that much data?”
“It’s what we were built for,” Aquinas said.
“Can I try it?” Shaw asked.
“Just like trying to control your troops through a tandem, it would break your mind.”
“You know my mental limits. You can see them as well as anything else in the Lattice. You could… throttle the speed of information to a level I can handle.”
“I know what your brain can handle, but not what you can handle. That amount of stimulus to the brain would be like taking a psychotropic drug from the previous century. Your brain would survive, but you might end up hopelessly addicted to the experience.”
“People took those drugs to expand their minds, didn’t they?”
“I believe they called it walking through ‘the doors of perception,’” Aquinas allowed.
“Isn’t that what I need right now? To open my mind to out-of-the-box ideas?” Shaw pressed. “What if there’s something in the raw feed of the Lattice that would reveal to me an idea that could save us?
Aquinas hesitated. And it didn’t seem to be a computerized pause just for Shaw’s benefit. He legitimately seemed to be weighing the question. “There’s no way to know for sure,” he eventually said. “It’s possible, though improbable.”
“Then I want to try.”
Aquinas looked at Shaw solemnly. “You are my commanding officer and I will do it if you ask me to. I can give you a pure feed from the Lattice at a scale that your brain will be able to handle, but I don’t think it will give you any fresh insight into this battle. It’s far more likely to turn you into an addict worse than any orgasm jumper. You might come out of the jump a fatally broken man. Is that worth the risk?”
Shaw remembered what Peter Mayfield had told him earlier—there was more than one kind of addiction to the Lattice. He looked to Ellie but couldn’t read her expression. He couldn’t tell if some subtlety in her gaze was lost in the translation to the avatar or if she was intentionally trying to keep her expression opaque.
“With a raw feed from the Lattice, I would know so much,” he said. “A general needs as much information as possible.”
“No. A general needs the best information,” Aquinas gently corrected. “You don’t need to experience the raw feed when you have us. Our experience together should have proven to you that a centaur is the strongest possible way to combat the cartel and the Northerners.”
“A centaur?”
“A human and an AI acting as one. The perfect balance of a human’s intuitive leaps and our processing power.”
Shaw looked out from the observation deck on the cupola and felt the wind on his face. He couldn’t explain it, but he wanted that raw feed more than he could even begin to describe. The warning of its addictive nature made him perversely more interested in it, not less. Finally he relaxed. “Ok,” he allowed, exhaling. “No raw Lattice feed… for now. But if I think it will be strategically useful, you will allow me to view it?” he asked.
Aquinas nodded formally.
Shaw nodded. “Then let’s get down to the square. The Northerners will be here soon.”
Shaw walked through what remained of Saint Peter’s Square, inspecting Catholic soldiers who had lined up in front of the steps of the Basilica.
He finished his inspection and walked back up the steps of the Basilica. Clement had been waiting for him, and once Shaw was at the top of the steps, everyone bowed their heads as the pope led them in prayer
.
Shaw compared himself to the men and women in front of him. The differences between these soldiers and himself, the non-Catholic non-believer, had never seemed more pronounced.
Everyone’s head lifted again and Shaw realized the prayer was over. Clement stepped back and invited Shaw to step forward.
He instantly knew his role: the inspiring speech before battle. It had been a staple of war throughout history. In jumps, he had watched generals and commanders on both sides of the Civil War give the speech with mixed results. He’d even once listened to Shakespeare’s version, the Saint Crispin’s Day speech, which was supposedly inspiring to people who didn’t know Shakespeare. To Shaw’s ear, the last couple of lines weren’t bad, but everything before that was mostly just filler.
He took a breath and held up his rifle. He showed it to the soldiers for several seconds before saying, “Up until last year, it had been several decades since an army had used a weapon like this against another army. Even here, in a divided country, last year was the first time in more than thirty years that we had to fight.
“A generation raised in peace doesn’t always know the ways of war. That is what our enemy hopes, at least. They are coming here. They are coming because they believe we are weak, that we won’t fight. That we will pick up our rifles and we will not know which end to point toward our foe.”
There was a small titter that passed through the soldiers like a breeze.
“They will soon find out they are mistaken,” Shaw said. “The enemy might outnumber us, but again and again through history, small bands of brothers and sisters like ourselves have held off larger forces. Give me ten soldiers fighting for their home over a hundred paid mercenaries any day.” It was the same logic the South had believed during the early days of the Civil War, which made it a highly suspect sentiment, but Shaw knew enough about courage to know that it felt right.
“But passion and a worthy cause are not enough,” Shaw continued. “We need more than that. We need each and every one of you. At some point today, our fate will rest on your shoulders. Will you rush forward with the men and women next to you? Or will you hold back? Take a moment. I want you to look at the soldier on your left. And look at the soldier on your right. These are the people you will be fighting next to. These are the people who will be counting on you in the heat of battle. Hold back and it’s not yourself you let down, it’s the person next to you. It’s all of us. But stand with them—fight for them—die for them if you must—and we will win this battle.”