by Erik Hanberg
“They’re growing shields made of nitrogen diamond,” Shaw guessed.
“Correct.”
“If they can’t have plows to hide behind, they want shields… made of one of the strongest material humans have ever created.”
“Drones are building straps for the shield so they can be carried on the soldiers’ forearms. That’s why they’re slowing.”
“What will a shield weigh?”
“Fifteen and a half pounds.”
He snorted. “At least they will be heavy to carry.”
Shaw heard an alert—a sign of another invitation to a chat room. He glanced at his wrap, expecting Galway or Fassino. It was Ellie.
Shaw’s breath nearly stopped. The advancing troops were still small specs in the distance.
“Pull me out if something happens,” Shaw said.
Aquinas nodded and Shaw put his hand to his temple.
Ellie usually hated chat rooms. She didn’t like being immersed entirely in a chat, disconnected from reality on one end or the other. When she called him, she was usually an avatar, standing next to him like one of the saints. And when he called, he usually did the same. When his job in the military meant that they often spent weeks apart, Ellie seemed to prefer the illusion of being in the same place together.
The chat room she was waiting in was their favorite pizza place in Saint Louis, a block from their high-rise apartment building. The atmosphere was bustling with energy, even if all the diners and servers were all part of the room’s programming. Shaw and Ellie were sitting at a window booth, a pizza and beers on the table between them.
Shaw waited for a sign of why she had called him, but she had a bemused expression on her face. He realized that they were both hesitant to begin. Ellie was in a rare place—she didn’t know what to say.
“Looks good enough to eat,” he finally said.
“I’m sure it is. The very definition of an empty calorie.”
“The chat room—” Shaw started, while Ellie said, “I know—”
They both stopped and Ellie looked around the restaurant. “I didn’t want to jump to you to see what you were facing. And I didn’t want you to see the interior of the Walden again if you didn’t have to. Instead I thought we could go on… a date.”
“And Jane?”
“Wulf is trying his hand as a babysitter. Instead of lullabies, he’s reciting the periodic table.”
Shaw found it in himself to laugh.
He picked up a piece of pizza and bit into it. His senses told him the smell and the taste were from one of the most perfect combinations of mozzarella, dough, and tomato sauce he’d ever experienced. Of course, it was all a simulation.
“Did I tell you I met the pope? He’s kind of short,” Shaw said, and now it was Ellie’s turn to laugh.
“And young,” she echoed. “I saw him on the cupola, remember? I hope you didn’t have to take a vow of chastity to join the Knights Templar, Grand Master Shaw,” she said.
Shaw rolled his eyes. “Please, I never want to hear that title again.”
“I remember jumping back to see Joan of Arc when I was young,” Ellie said. “That was just viewing her in the past, though. I can’t imagine what it’s like to actually interact with her.”
“I don’t mind telling you that she’s rather intimidating.”
“Maybe when this is all over we can—” Ellie cut herself short and it looked to Shaw like she was about to choke on a slice of her digital pizza. She held that face, and then she started to cry.
“What?” Shaw asked.
“We shouldn’t have done this, it’s going to distract you.” She made a motion like she was about to put her ring to her temple.
“No, Ellie,” Shaw exclaimed. “Don’t end the chat.”
Ellie put her arm back down, her head hung.
“I know why Jane and I are still alive,” she whispered. “We’re Taveena’s hostages. Galway and the cartel don’t care about us. Taveena doesn’t care about us. Well, maybe she does. A little more than Galway, at least. But not enough to let us go and risk her own neck. The cartel thinks they will lose customers if they kill an innocent child and Taveena will use that to protect herself as long as she can. We’re caught in the middle.”
“If I can stop Galway and the cartel, you won’t be caught anymore,” Shaw insisted. “Taveena won’t have a reason to hold you hostage.”
Ellie shook her head. “It’s not that simple anymore, By. The worse the war is, the less one life matters. How many soldiers are you facing? Thousands, right? Twice the number of men you have? If you killed them all and then Galway ordered the Walden blown out of the sky, would people truly care?”
“Yes,” Shaw insisted. “It’s murder.”
“It’s war. That’s what they would say. What is one or two lives lost after a thousand?”
It took a moment for Shaw to understand what Ellie, who had always seemed so bright and optimistic about everything, was truly saying. “They’re listening, you know,” he said. “The cartel. You don’t want to give them ideas.”
“I’m sure they’ve already heard it in my thoughts today. And it’s nothing a woman like Galway hasn’t thought of yet either. Do you hear me, though?”
Shaw opened his mouth to argue, and then saw Ellie’s face. He closed his mouth and thought about it. “You’re saying that if I win this battle, you think the cartel is going to kill you. But if I lose it, then Galway is going to wait for the clock to run out on her ultimatum…”
“The same result. Just a little later.”
Shaw couldn’t bring himself to think of a response. He desperately didn’t want this to be real. He stared at his pizza, looking for all the ways it was a false image projected by the chat room, but he couldn’t find anything wrong with it.
“We’re going to be casualties of war. One way or another,” Ellie whispered.
“No,” Shaw shook his head.
Ellie pursed her lips.
“This wasn’t a date,” he whispered.
“No. It’s goodbye.” Ellie leaned forward across the table and kissed Shaw hard on the mouth. It lasted for a few seconds. Somewhere in his periphery, Shaw sensed Ellie’s hand coming to her temple.
“I love you, Byron,” she said through her tears. “I know that for sure.”
“I will fix this,” he whispered. But the chat room had already dissolved. He finished the sentence back in Saint Peter’s Square, the approaching army now halfway up the Via della Conciliazione.
He shook his head, trying to clear it. Already he was awash with regret. Why hadn’t he said “I love you” instead of “I will fix this”? Why hadn’t he had asked to see Jane? Why hadn’t he tried harder to tell her it would be okay?
Because he wasn’t sure it would be okay, he realized.
“Once again… heads they win, tails I lose,” he said to the air.
“It’s war,” Aquinas answered, floating by his side. “Many times even the victors wish they had never taken up arms.”
“Is Ellie right? If we win today… do you think Galway will order the lasers to destroy the Walden?”
“Perhaps. But perhaps not,” Aquinas said. “It likely will depend on how you win today.”
Shaw made to put his ring to his temple, but Aquinas coughed significantly.
“If I may, Grand Master, the Northerners are too close for you to be away in a jump. You want to reach out to Yang, yes? To tell him he only has a few hours to convince the United States that they should destroy the cartel’s space lasers?”
“Yes,” Shaw answered, trying not to be disconcerted by the ease with which the AIs knew that. “And Professor Wu as well. She didn’t think she would have any luck, but it’s worth a try.”
“We will convey your messages, Grand Master.”
Shaw looked around. “And where is Alberto? I thought I told him to be at my side.”
“You need soldiers more than you need an aide-de-camp,” Aquinas said. “And we AIs can serve you more
quickly. In fact, Tim Yang has already replied. He says he’s working on it, and he says good luck.”
Shaw grunted. “Luck from Yang? That’s something, I guess. But Alberto?”
Aquinas raised an eyebrow. “Having him fighting will be more efficient and better deploys your resources.”
It was hard to argue with Aquinas.
“Perhaps you’d like to put on a helmet, sir,” Ignatius said.
Everyone else in the square was wearing one. Shaw wriggled into his, a general who couldn’t follow his own orders. He almost rolled his eyes and then realized Ignatius might have a reason for his suggestion. “Are we under attack?” he asked.
Ignatius spoke, “The cartel just released another swarm of bots heading our way. It exactly matches the number of bots we have left in reserves.”
“Why?” Shaw asked.
“If we win the ground battle, they want all our remaining defenses depleted. They think that if we win—”
“—They’ll just bomb us to smithereens. Got it,” Shaw said. “How long until they arrive?”
“Four minutes.”
“Last time they sent a bot swarm we had ten.”
“All our defenses are concentrated here. Now that they’ve redeployed, they’ve been able to bring their weapons much closer.”
“And how long until the Northerners are within firing range?” The army was more than halfway down the boulevard, still picking away through the rubble. They were close enough that Shaw could make them out individually.
“Also four minutes, at the pace they’re going now.”
Shaw grunted.
“There’s more,” Ignatius continued. They’ve launched drones too.”
“One to match every drone we have, right?”
“Yes, Grand Master.”
“What will that leave us in reserve?”
“Eighteen missiles.”
“And the cartel has?”
“None, yet. Their new missiles are still being constructed and shipped,” Ignatius said.
“So if I wanted to, I could rain down eighteen missiles on the street in front of us and be done with this battle,” Shaw said. “We’d win.”
There was that AI pause again. “That depends on your definition of victory, Grand Master,” Aquinas said.
“Yes.”
Ignatius coughed. “Shall we deploy our remaining bot swarms and drones?”
“Yes, but don’t engage.”
“Don’t engage? Sir?”
Shaw pointed forward and up into the air. “I want the drones and the swarms to wait right there. A hundred feet in the air.”
“Yes, sir.” Ignatius didn’t question it, and Shaw knew it was because he was intensely trying to think of anything else besides the reasons he had given that order. He didn’t fully know himself and he preferred to keep it that way. Something told him it was the right thing to do. And so long as it stayed in his subconscious, it would be much harder for someone snooping to figure out why.
Shaw focused on the oncoming troops. They had arrived at the square. It was time. No more preparation, no more waiting. It was time for action. He stretched his neck, a tick he’d developed right before a bout in the ring. It had become a small ritual for when there was nothing left to do but fight.
“Tell me when Lattice-guided shots on target will have at least a ninety percent success rate,” Shaw instructed.
“In thirty seconds, Grand Master.”
“Pass along the order to take aim but wait for my signal.”
Above him, millions of bots swarmed over the square meeting hundreds of drones. He’d deployed them all, and now it was as if they were standing at attention, hovering in the air right where he had ordered them to be—a hundred feet above the muddy slopes of Saint Peter’s Square. The buzz from the swarm and the whooshing blades of the drones created an immense noise that blanketed everything in the square. It wasn’t loud so much as omnipresent.
Thirty seconds passed. The Northerners were holding back at the edge of the square. As if they were waiting for something. There were rows and rows of them, lined up shoulder to shoulder, each with their nitrogen diamond shields held high.
All at once the din filling the square increased, and Shaw knew what they were waiting for. He could see a dark swarm of enemy bots snake its way up the boulevard behind the Northerners, and from either side of the colonnades, waves of drones poured in.
As if on cue—as there surely was a cue given by Fassino to the implants of his soldiers—the Northerners rushed forward, spilling into the square and charging up the hill. The drones, the swarm, and the army of Northerners were all descending on his position at once.
Shaw took a deep breath. “Fire!” he shouted.
The Battle of Saint Peter’s Square had begun.
Chapter 9
Shaw had shouted his order, but only a few heard it. Ignatius and Joan of Arc relayed the order to fire down the lines. Red beams of lasers and a hail of bullets rained down from the embankment.
In the face of the oncoming fire, the Northerners ducked behind their shields as best they could. For the most part the shields protected them, though Shaw saw several fall. Too few, if he wanted it to have any effect, and the Northerners were still advancing on his position.
The embankment of dirt and cobblestones he and his men were behind was five feet high. From the perspective of the Northerners at the bottom of the artificial slope, very little of Shaw’s head would be exposed. But with a Lattice-guided sight, it wasn’t inconceivable.
Shaw watched more of his soldiers fire lasers into the Northerners, and watched as their bright lines of fire bounced off their nitrogen diamond shields.
“Lasers only!” he shouted. “Bullets won’t pierce those shields!”
Just as he said it, he heard a bullet whistle by his ear—he didn’t have a nitrogen diamond shield and a bullet could kill him as easily as a laser. He checked the strap on his helmet as he turned his attention to the drones and bot swarms.
He didn’t know what was worse—the menace of the utilitarian drones—that could just as easily build a plow or an earthworks barricade as they could kill—or the swarm of bots that looked like a dark cloud sweeping up the Via della Conciliazione. There was no time to decide. Both were nearly on top of him.
He didn’t bother giving an order, but pointed to Ignatius again. Even that was unnecessary, of course. Ignatius was already responding to Shaw’s thoughts. But Shaw felt extreme distaste for how he had somehow both ordered but not ordered the missile strike on the plows. Just pointing to Ignatius was enough to make him feel like he was giving a direct order.
The drones and bots that had been waiting for his order fanned out from their position. Shaw’s drones split into two groups to intercept the Northerner’s drones, while his bots pushed down the slope to meet their swarm.
It was hard to tell exactly what was happening in any given battle between drones or bots, but the overall trend was clear: the bot swarms were canceling out the bot swarms and the drones were cancelling out the drones. Each weapon was met with a weapon exactly equal to it. Both weapons had perfect information from the Lattice. There was no upper hand. The best either could do was evenly match each other, fighting until their reserves wore down to nothing or they disabled each other simultaneously.
Either way, it was exactly what Galway had intended—the perfectly matched battle in the air had depleted all of the bot swarms and drones at Shaw’s command.
Except, Galway had missed one thing when she sent the drones and bots in for the kill. One thing that Shaw’s subconscious had flagged. Gravity.
As the bots and drones battled, the destroyed drones began falling from the sky—onto the advancing Northerners directly below them.
The rain of debris from the now-spent drones quickly turned to a deluge and the air seemed to be filled with falling metal bits. The drones weren’t any larger than soccer balls, but they were heavy, and they had a series of blades, extruders, and oth
er tools extending off of them. Depending on how they fell, they would either make a big dent or a bad slice in a soldier. The Northerners were now attacked from two fronts: the fire from the embankment at the top of the hill, and the drones coming down from the air. Their helmets would be fully capable of protecting their heads, but many forgot that and raised their shields to the sky, exposing their bodies to fire from Shaw’s soldiers.
Like the drones, the swarms were also extinguishing without doing any real damage. The bots from the now-useless swarms were falling from the sky gracefully onto the square, like the wisps of black rain Shaw had imagined earlier. The disabled nanobots could not hurt anyone. In fact, any individual bot could barely be felt.
A cloud of falling bots came down on a squad of Northern soldiers. Maybe they couldn’t be felt, but the squad instantly panicked when they realized what was blanketing them. Finding bots that could convert flesh to graphite land on your clothing and skin was terrifying, even if your brain told you they were disabled. The men and women in the bot cloud were screaming as they scratched and flailed wildly, trying to get the black dusting off of them.
“Tell them they can use bullets again,” Shaw said to Ignatius. He didn’t need to shout. The buzzing and whirs of the drones and bots were mostly gone.
The fire from his troops increased, and for a moment, it was shaping up to be a massacre. The panicked Northerners in the bot swarms and those who held their shields above them instead of in front of them were easy pickings. The effectiveness of his ploy surprised even himself, and Shaw tried to steel his heart against its worst effects.
But after a few seconds, the sky stopped raining disabled bots and drones, and the Northerners began to retreat en masse back to Via della Conciliazione. The momentary slaughter had stopped.
“Tell them to stop firing when they are out of range,” Shaw said. “We can’t afford to waste anything. They’ll be coming back.”
“We narrowed the gap between your army and the Northerners considerably just now,” Ignatius said. “They still outnumber us, but they aren’t twice our size anymore.”
Shaw looked down the muddy slope and saw the bodies left behind by the retreating army to prove it.