Whistling Past the Graveyard

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Personal pride?” suggested Law. “The Caliban unit is a major career high.”

  “Maybe. We’ll go into that later.”

  “Couple other things to go over later, too,” said Law. “The security systems are a little weird.”

  “Weird as in vulnerable?

  “Weird as in totally invulnerable. I’ve never seen any system with this many safeguards and redundancies.”

  “Better safe than sorry,” quipped Flash.

  “I suppose,” Law said, but he sounded uncertain.

  “Okay…team meeting in thirty minutes. My quarters.”

  “We all going to compare our homework?”

  “Yeah, and then we’ll braid each other’s hair and have a pillow fight.”

  They were all laughing as the call was disconnected.

  Outside, the last of the fires was out now and the desert was in total darkness.

  Scarlett turned to Flint. “At the risk of sounding like a cliché,” she began, “but something about this place gives me the creeps.”

  “Yeah,” said Flint, “I know what you—”

  Anything else he was going to say was suddenly cut short as screams tore through the night. They whirled toward the access corridor.

  “What the hell—?”

  Those words were likewise drowned out. This time by the harsh rattle of automatic gunfire.

  And then all of the lights went out.

  -8-

  The room seemed to explode around them.

  “Down!” Flint and Scarlett yelled it at the same moment, and then they were diving for cover as someone with an automatic weapon opened up from the side corridor. Bullets chopped into the desks and chairs, tore jagged chunks from the poured linoleum floor, hammered into a Coke machine and blew sparks out of it, and burned through the air above their heads like a swarm of angry bees.

  Flint hit the floor in a chest-first dive that sent him sliding toward the wall with the Coke machine. Soda hissed and sprayed from a dozen holes in the casing, but Flint couldn’t see it. Except for the nearly continuous muzzle flashes at the far end of the room, there was no light.

  “Who the hell’s firing?” yelled Scarlett as she rolled behind a heavy desk. She had her pistol out but the barrage of rounds was too heavy to risk leaning out to return fire.

  “What’s happening?” everyone on the com-link was yelling at once.

  “We’re taking fire,” barked Flint. “We need back-up!”

  “Go Joe!” bellowed several Joes at once.

  Backup was on its way, but Flint didn’t feel comforted. The automatic gunfire was continuous. He kept waiting for the pause as the shooter or shooters swapped magazines, but there was no break at all. He pressed his head to the floor and risked a quick look. Almost instantly the gun barrel fanned around to chop the exact spot. He jerked his head back amid a swarm of splinters and ricocheting lead.

  “That’s belt-fed,” he shouted, and Scarlett nodded. “Mini-gun on a cart I think. I can see some of it in the flashes.”

  “Cover me!” she snapped, and without waiting for his nod, Scarlett got into a crouch, racked the slide on her weapon, and threw herself sideways toward another desk eight feet away. It was a powerful dive but not a pretty one, lacking her usual athletic grace. She twisted in midair as she jumped, firing toward the mini-gun, each recoil warping her flight path. In the darkness and thunder it was impossible to tell if she hit any of the hostiles.

  The gun instantly pivoted to track her, but as it did Flint rose up fast and opened up on it, aiming for the shadows just above the muzzle, knowing it was where the gunner had to be. Every shot hit home, every shot was true and straight.

  The mini-gun kept firing.

  “The hell…?”

  Scarlet landed hard and slewed around while continuing to fire. When the slide locked back, she rolled behind the desk and fished out another mag.

  There was no break at all in the gunfire.

  The desks behind which they were hiding were disintegrating and pretty soon it would be like trying to hide behind Swiss cheese.

  Flint would have given his left hand for a couple of fragmentation grenades.

  And, as if wishing could make it so, there was a tremendous explosion that rocked the entire room and a red fireball that punched into the ceiling and then flattened out. The sprinklers and the security lights both came on at the same time and it looked like red tears falling from a black sky.

  The minigun was finally silent.

  “Clear!” bellowed a deep bass voice.

  Flint and Scarlett rose up together from their hiding places and their laser swept over the hulking form of Monster―who held a combat shotgun with over and under grenade launchers. Water from the sprinklers danced along the gnarled lumps of his massive arms and shoulders. He was not a handsome man, but at that moment both Scarlett and Flint could have kissed him.

  “Clear!” called another voice as Teacher’s Pet skidded into the room from the far side. He had his M5 in his hands and whipped it back and forth as he checked the corners and behind obstacles. “Clear!” he yelled again.

  Suddenly then the lights came on, flooding the room.

  The sprinklers shut off with a hiss.

  The red emergency lights dimmed.

  Silence settled around them.

  As if everything was normal.

  -9-

  Teacher’s Pet lowered his shotgun. “Flint, Scarlett…what the bloody hell happened here?”

  Flint got carefully to his feet and scanned the room. His ears still rang with the thunder of the gunfire. Amid the phantom echoes he heard Law and Flint yell at him.

  “Dial it down,” he growled. “No casualties here. Anyone else taking fire?”

  “No, but it sounded like you were in a war zone,” said Law. “What the hell—”

  “Unknown,” cut in Flint. “We have zero intel and that’s got to change. I want everyone to hold tight until I give the word. Stay on line.”

  “Look,” said Scarlett as she carefully crossed the room. Flint joined her, and Pet gave a long whistle.

  The minigun was a tangled mess of twisted metal that sagged from its pedestal. The vehicle on which it had been mounted looked like a golf cart except that there was no seat for a driver.

  Monster hurried over to it, his shotgun ready to finish what his grenades had started…but there was no need.

  There were also no bodies.

  He looked up in puzzlement.

  “Zero hostiles,” grunted Monster. He was six feet ten and built like a Bradley. His bulk filled the corridor and he looked around irritably as if annoyed there was no one with a pulse he could shoot. “Where the hell’d they go?”

  “I don’t think they went anywhere,” Scarlett said as she poked at the rubble with the toe of her boot. The floor was carpeted with spent shell casings. Thousands of them. Huge drum magazines anchored each side of the cart.

  “Huh?”

  She didn’t answer right away. “Never saw a minigun like this. Dual belts leading to a central firing chamber that feeds into the same set of rotating barrels.”

  “Worse than that,” said Flint. He tapped a scorched metal box that hung from the pedestal on a tangle of wires. “Look at this.”

  Teacher’s Pet bent forward and peered at it. “Is that a CPU?”

  “Ah,” Scarlett said as if she was expecting that.

  Pet looked at the others, his eyes filling with anger as he realized what it all meant. “Ah…c’mon, man, you frigging kidding me here?”

  Scarlett studied the wiring. “There’s an antenna array, too.” She straightened. “This is—”

  “What in God’s name is happening here?” interrupted a fierce voice and they turned to see Dr. Prospero come sweeping into the room. He wore trousers and an undershirt. Doc was right on his heels and it was clear they had just run there from the medical suite. Professor Miranda was a half step behind them. She had a small .25 automatic in her hands, but she held it with
professional competence. As soon as they saw the ruined desks and the mangled remains of the mini-gun they stopped in their tracks.

  Prospero’s face went purple with rage and he wheeled on Flint. “You maniac! You destroyed a four hundred thousand dollar prototype and—”

  “Hold it right there, Doctor,” interrupted Flint with steel in his voice. Prospero paused. Flint kicked at the shell casings and sent a score of them skittering toward the scientist. “In case you’ve suddenly gone blind, that prototype of yours just tried to kill us.”

  “Nonsense. The Kobold 118 is incapable of—”

  “If Monster hadn’t taken it out Scarlett and I would be dog food.”

  “Impossible.”

  Flint felt his control slipping. “I’m sorry…did you say ‘impossible’?”

  Prospero was not one for backing down. He stepped close so that he and Flint were almost nose to nose. “Yes, Chief,” he said in a way that suggested that Flint’s rank was of less consequence than a used Kleenex. “Kobold is a drone system. It can’t ‘try’ to do anything. Trying is an act of deliberate will.”

  “No kidding,” said Flint icily. “So what does that tell us about what just happened?”

  Prospero’s eyes cut back and forth between Flint and the drone. Doubt clouded his features. “I…” he began, but did not finish the sentence.

  “Let me check the system,” said Professor Miranda quietly as she stepped forward at an angle that forced Flint and Prospero to step away from each other. It was a deliberate move calculated to dial down the tension, and everyone allowed it. A shouting match was not going to increase operational efficiency. She unclipped a small toolkit from her belt and selected a screwdriver. She quickly undid the four tiny screws that fastened the faceplate to the CPU casing. There was a small pop as she pulled it off.

  “The security tapes were intact,” she announced. “I had to break them to take the faceplate off.” She showed the cover to the Joes. The security tapes were slowly turning color from beige to red. “Breaking the tapes releases chemicals that change the color. They were normal color when I opened it.”

  “Always the same color?” asked Scarlett.

  Miranda shook her head. “No. Beige was Monday’s color, which is when I last worked on this unit. I select a new color for every day.”

  “How many people have authority to install the security tape?” asked Teacher’s Pet.

  “Only Dr. Prospero and myself,” she answered. “And when either of us does that we’re under constant video surveillance. The digital files are stored in the security office.”

  Flint tapped his ear mike. “Law, you get that?”

  “Copy that. On it.”

  Prospero scowled as he realized that others beside the Joes in the room were eavesdropping on the conversation. He said nothing, but his expression conveyed his displeasure.

  Flint managed not to fall down and die.

  He tapped his earbud again. “Yo, Joe! Headcount and location. Did anyone take any fire?”

  Immediately the other Joes scattered in and around the Island sounded off.

  “Bruiser on deck―I’m outside with Flash. We’re checking the perimeter. Zero hostile contact.”

  “Shock Jock here, Chief. Quiet as church out here. I’m running scans on the drones Dr. Prospero tore up. No one out here but us Joes.”

  “Schoolgirl in the house. I’m down in Operations,” Schoolgirl replied. “No one home, everything shut down and locked.”

  “Good,” said Flint. “Jukebox…where are you?”

  “I’m in the generator shed, Flint,” Jukebox said. “Got a lot of boards fried down here. Halo never kicked in, so I’ve been putting out fires.”

  “Deliberate?”

  “Could be…but it’s hard to say. Looks like a mother of a power surge.”

  “Okay, everyone stay on station and stay on the line.” He gave them a brief rundown of what happened. A lot of theories got thrown around but nobody came up with a reason to think that they were experiencing an actual attack.

  “Hope the Doc’s toys are still under warranty,” quipped Flash.

  Flint grunted and turned to Prospero. “I want a complete rundown of every single malfunction you’ve had that resulted in a weapons discharge.”

  But the scientist was already shaking his head. “Malfunctions? No, no, no…there haven’t been any.”

  “Not one?”

  “No,” insisted Prospero, “and there can’t be because as I said, this system is a drone, it has no autonomous capabilities.”

  “I know.” Flint smiled thinly at Prospero. “As you’ve heard, my team is on the line with us right now and a full-scale search is underway.”

  “Affirmative,” said Flash in his ear.

  “This is sabotage, Chief,” said Prospero. “Odd that it only happened after your team arrived.”

  Flint took a challenging step forward. “You want to explain that comment—?”

  “Wait…” said Professor Miranda in such an urgent tone that everyone turned toward her. She held a penlight and was using it to examine the inside of the CPU. “Oh my God! Doctor…look at this.”

  Prospero and Flint gave each other two seconds of the Alpha Dog glare and then they turned to see what the professor had found.

  “What is it?” demanded Prospero.

  Miranda handed the unit to the senior scientist, who immediately frowned as he laid eyes on the inner workings. “This isn’t right,” he said softly.

  “What isn’t?” asked Flint.

  Prospero ignored him and instead directed his comments to Professor Miranda. “This is one of Kong’s devices. The AI256?”

  “I think it’s the 257,” said Miranda. “Look, it has a smaller microprocessor unit and—”

  “Whoa―stop right there,” ordered Flint. “What is an AI256, and why do you two look like you just swallowed scorpions?”

  Prospero plucked a plastic-coated unit the size of a button from the CPU and held it up between his thumb and forefinger. He waved it in Flint’s face. “This is your villain, Chief.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s an artificial intelligence module designed for the next generation of unmanned tactical combat vehicles.”

  “Artificial intelligence?” Flint’s heart sank. In his earjack he heard Flash curse.

  “Yes, Chief,” said Prospero.

  “One of your toys?”

  “I don’t do AI,” he said as if that field of science was akin to selling crack in middle school playgrounds.

  “Who does? AI was on last year’s budget report. You signed off on it.”

  “Dr. Kong’s team did all of…that.” Prospero still looked like he was sucking a lemon. “Kong was working on full automation systems. It was a small department and I had no plans to include it in this year’s budget request.”

  “And yet it just happens to be in the CPU of one of your combat drones?” asked Scarlett, one eyebrow arched.

  “I obviously had nothing to do with that,” said the scientist, dismissing even the possibility of such a thing. “I said Dr. Kong’s team was working on this. Kong had a stroke five months ago. He’s in a coma in Las Vegas and is not expected to recover. I believe that is in the same report from last year.”

  In his ear, Law said, “Yep, it’s there. Blink and you miss it, though.”

  Flint said, “Who’s continuing Kong’s project?”

  “There were only three people on his team,” explained Prospero. “None of them is advanced enough to lead the project. They’re all a half-step up from lab monkeys. Kong never used top people. He didn’t like to share the byline on any potential patent, so most of his team are graduate assistants with low level clearance. They only worked on peripheral aspects of the hardware. None of them wrote code for the operational systems. Besides…I shut the whole project down until a suitable replacement could be found.”

  “And—?”

  “I haven’t spent a lot of time looking. As I said,
AI is not the primary goal of this project. The Island is a drone shop.”

  Flint digested this. “Who has access to their research and materials?”

  “I do.”

  Flint gave Miranda a hard look. “Who else?”

  She shook her head. “Only Dr. Prospero. We certainly didn’t plant the AI unit.”

  That served up a moment of silence as the Joes and the scientists processed the implications.

  “Swell,” said Doc with a sigh.

  Flint touched his earbud. “Law…it’s confirmed that we have zips in the wire. Lock this place down. Bruiser, you stay outside with Flash. Seal the perimeter. Nothing gets in or out. Shock Jock, I want you inside with Schoolgirl. I want all staff locked into their rooms. Personally check all doors. Law―initiate J-94 security redirects. Blank all keycards and replace them with our team code.”

  “You can’t do that—” began Miranda furious.

  “Shut up,” barked Flint. “Jukebox…lock yourself into the power shed. I don’t want another lights out.”

  “On it.”

  Immediately red lights mounted high on the walls flashed with crimson urgency. A recorded female voice spoke from speakers mounted below the lights:

  “THE ISLAND IS GOING INTO LOCKDOWN. ALL STAFF WILL OBSERVE SECURITY PROTOCOL ALPHA 1. REPEAT…”

  To Monster and Teacher’s Pet Flint said, “Coordinate with Law. Everyone is on two-man patrol. You find anyone―anyone―from senior staff to pot-washer third class that’s not locked in their assigned quarters and obeying all of the Alpha Security protocols, you bag ’em and drag ’em. I will want to have a talk with them.”

  They saluted and headed out.

  “You copy all that, Law?”

  “On it. I’m downloading the fingerprint and retina scans of the whole staff to team PDAs. Everyone should verify the identities of every single staff member. Anyone can wear a nametag.”

  “Good call.”

  Flint eyed Prospero and Miranda. He debated locking them in their rooms, too, until his team had a chance to sweep the entire facility. The Island was a big place. He also wanted to get out of there and think it through alone. He was still jumpy from all the adrenaline that had been dumped into his bloodstream during the brief but harrowing firefight. It made it hard to maintain the air of detachment that he preferred to show, especially in front a of touchy high-maintenance jackass like Prospero.