by Jerry
“I notice you guys aren’t expecting any misses.”
“Any intact targets at the end are points off your final score.”
“I’m getting scored on this?”
“No. Not really. Just keep knocking them out. This is it before lunch.”
“Roger that.”
Skip was in a rhythm, but that didn’t mean he allowed himself to get sloppy. He wasn’t just trying to hit the painted targets; he wanted dead-center shots. So every time he aimed, he zoomed in on the target and took careful aim. Often this resulted in him fine tuning the previous marker he’d lined up on the HUD. But while he was aiming in on target seventeen, he noticed a glint from behind the wooden structure.
“Something wrong, Commander? Targeting issue?”
“There’s something moving behind that target. I caught a reflection; might be from a camera or a cell phone.”
“Negative, Commander Harrison. This area is clear and secure. There’s nobody out there but you.”
“I’m at max magnification and I’m not getting enough resolution to confirm. Request increase to maximum visual clarity.”
“Again, negative, Commander. You have two targets remaining and a green light in the fire zone. Continue firing.”
There it was again. Something moved. It was over two klicks to the target, but with the mech’s digital optics, he saw it as if from across a dimly lit room. Remembering the manual control console, he glanced down at the lower right of his HUD. “Need to verify. Stand by.”
The menu was comprehensive, but expertly laid out for ease of use. It took Skip no time at all to locate the visual inputs and raise them to the Beowulf’s maximum value. The distant target snapped into crystal focus. He could make out the wood grain, the nail heads, the drips and runs in the slapdash paint job. And more important, he could identify two civilians on the firing range, huddled for cover behind the least safe object in the entire valley: Skip’s next target.
“Bogeys confirmed. We’ve got two unauthorized personnel on the firing range. Request MPs for collection and debriefing.”
“Negative, Commander. We don’t—”
“Did you not hear me? I have visual confirmation. This isn’t a mirage.” What the hell was Gus thinking? That Skip was making this up? That it was a bug in the software making him see what appeared to be a couple college kids—one male, one female—crouched in the shadow of a giant plywood target painted with a bullseye?
“This is a top secret facility. Anyone we send out there will be to eliminate them, not bring them in for questioning.”
Skip’s blood ran cold. “Commander Harrison to base, please repeat. I didn’t copy that last message.”
“Like hell you didn’t, Harrison. This is a live fire exercise. These are spies, whether they realize it or not. These kids get out of here with video, it’ll be all over the internet by suppertime. If we bring them in, it’s just more hands with blood on them when we have to make them disappear. Just take care of it, Skip. It’s only you, me, and a couple of the project crew here with me in the booth that even see them out there. This is the quick way—the secure way.”
“Sorry, Gus. I’m afraid I can’t do that. I refuse to murder two kids because they wandered into your top secret base. Your perimeter security got sloppy, and I don’t think they need to pay for that with their lives. Bring them up on charges . . . fine. But I won’t fire.”
“That’s an order.”
Skip brought the Beowulf to stand at ease, even though its arms lacked the flexibility to actually meet behind its back. Inside the pod, the meat version of Skip swallowed hard.
“We’ll discuss this when you get back to the hangar. In the meantime, stand down.”
That didn’t sound good. Gus had given up too easily. Immersed in shock-absorbent gel, Skip couldn’t even tell if he was sweating. But while his awareness of his physical self was limited, he still had the feeds from the Beowulf pumped straight into his brain. He heard the helicopter coming before he saw it.
Skip hadn’t been debriefed on the contingent of aircraft at Sand Lion Base. He could tell the engine whine of an F-52 from an F-54 in his sleep, but he didn’t know the prop signature of the AH-95 Kestrel. It wasn’t until it crested the mountains that he realized that they weren’t sending a transport to take the trespassers into custody. That Kestrel was coming to do what he’d refused to. Gus had sent in a cleanup crew.
This was on him. He was either going to stand there like the robot he appeared to be, or step in and do something.
The target was two klicks away, and he was on foot. But his practice running up and down the valley had paid off. He was in between the Kestrel and the two civilians. All he had to do was keep himself interposed and get to them before the cleanup crew could maneuver for a clear line of fire. They wouldn’t dare risk damaging the Beowulf.
What had been an arduous task earlier in the day, Skip now did without thinking. He ran, and instead of his own legs, the legs of the Beowulf pumped beneath him. If he fell, so be it. If he didn’t try, he’d never forgive himself. But he knew the broken terrain of the valley now. He veered aside to dodge a boulder and avoided a crevice by lengthening his stride.
“Commander, what are you doing down there?”
“I already told you, Gus. I’m not killing those civilians, and standing by to do nothing is the same thing.”
The Kestrel was closing rapidly. The Beowulf’s rear-facing cameras allowed Skip a perfect view of it on approach even as he watched where he ran. It was flying chest-high to him, more like an escort than a team racing him to a common goal. Skip imagined that the pilot must have been either confused or conflicted. Could that bird have been patched in on the same frequency as Skip and Gus?
With the Kestrel not busting a rotor to beat him to the target, Skip got there first and stood in front of the cowering civilians. They must have wised up and realized that they were in trouble, because they were taking cover instead of making a run for it across open ground with a military helicopter in the air. What they thought of the fifty-foot walking robot was beyond Skip’s ability to guess.
“You’ve made your point, Commander. Stand down. We’re sending a team in to extract the civilians.”
Skip said nothing. The Beowulf’s shoulders slumped and he let out a sigh of relief that carried over the radio. The rear camera was a smaller image, so he turned to get a view of the strike team in full resolution. He saw the pilot and gunner both salute before turning their bird and bugging out. Skip’s greatest worry in this whole maneuver had been that he might have been forced to fire on friendly forces to defend the civilians.
The wait was another fifteen minutes while a search and recovery team flew in and extracted the two trespassers in handcuffs. He watched them fly over the mountains, wondering what came next.
“You still have two more targets, Commander.”
Of course. The mission. Whatever else buzzed around the periphery, there was nothing that was going to stop a multi-billion-dollar project from moving forward. It also occurred to him that by finishing off the last two targets, Gus ensured that Skip came back into the hangar completely unarmed.
* * *
The techs who extracted Skip from the pod acted like nothing untoward had happened out in the desert. He was unhooked, unplugged, toweled off, and helped into a military-grade bathrobe. His legs wobbled, and someone offered him a shoulder to hang onto. Someone else pressed a fresh cup of coffee into his good hand. They helped him as he headed for the showers.
But as soon as they exited the main hangar, there was a line of officers waiting for him. Time to pay the piper.
Except that it wasn’t. The assembled project team saluted. Even General Kogane and one Doctor Augustus Cliffton, standing at the end of the line. Skip stared in disbelief. Was he hallucinating? A side effect of prolonged exposure to the neural connections? The strike team from the Kestrel was there, too. He hadn’t seen their faces, but they were still wearing the same flight suit
s. And then he noticed the two “civilian” trespassers, now in uniform and saluting along with the others.
“What’s going on?”
The general and Gus strode down the line of officers blocking his way to the showers. “Damnedest thing I ever saw.” The general shook Skip by the prosthetic hand, heedless of the light coating of slime that the first shower would only mostly remove.
Gus circled around and clapped him on the back. “Skip, hated having to put you through that, but I knew you had it in you.”
“Had what?”
“You stood up to an immoral order,” the general said. “Doctor Cliffton had the legal authority to authorize that shot you wouldn’t take. You could have been locked up for that. Not only did you refuse to kill Corporal Sturges and Sergeant Banks, you put yourself in the line of fire to defend them.”
Gus guided Skip down the row of officers who stood in respectful silence. “Skip, the biggest hurdle this project has to overcome is the fear that when turning over control of a weapon system to an autonomous AI, it’ll turn on us.”
“But I did turn on you.”
General Kogane walked with them, taking up a flanking position on Skip’s left. “Senator Kearny on the Armed Services Committee insisted on this test. He didn’t want any piloting system that could pose a risk to civilian populations—specifically our own. We haven’t had much luck finding pilots, and he’s been making noise about shutting down the project. I’m packing up the data from today’s showing and leaving it on his doorstep like a bag of turd. We’re in business.”
“What the general so eloquently means is that as of today, it’s official. You are the future of America’s AI program. We can teach you any technical skill you need for various combat systems. What we couldn’t replicate is this.” He slapped Skip in the chest, right over his heart.
* * *
This was getting monotonous. Skip had lost track of the number of times the ordinance drones had reloaded his missiles and .50 caliber magazines. Just because this was a mental endurance test didn’t mean it had to be tedious. Helicopters lowered a new set of targets into the valley amid the wreckage of the old. He idly wondered where on base they were getting all the wood, and who they’d pressed into service nailing targets together and painting them. It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing an enlisted soldier would expect when he gets shipped off to a top secret base, Skip imagined.
The voices in his ear kept changing as well. Far be it for Gus to put himself through the arduous task of keeping a headset on this whole time. But at least the rotating crew came with a relaxed familiarity. Most of them didn’t even identify themselves to Skip by rank. There was Kirk, Alphonse, Rick, Sam (short for Samantha, he guessed by her voice), and even Captain Walsh, who he kept trying to avoid calling Fiona. Skip had zero doubt that her offer still stood, and he didn’t want her catching any hint that he might take her up on it. The fact that it sounded like she was second in command to Gus on the project made it all the more crucial to keep things compartmentalized.
Skip wanted to rub his eyes but there was nothing to rub. Scraping the mech’s forearm across the front of the head would only momentarily block a camera or two. His physical arms were restrained and the muscles not receiving impulses from his brain. His eyes were closed behind the protective goggles; or if they were open, he couldn’t tell. All signs of physical fatigue were absent, but he felt them the same way his foot would sometime itch, or his right hand would ache.
“Commander, you’re up.” It was Fiona’s voice on the radio. He couldn’t tell if she was trying to tease him with double entendre or had just been careless.
“How many more sets of these do I have to take down? Can we maybe switch it up with some agility drills? I’m starting to get a little stir-crazy in here. How long has this even been going on?” They’d disabled all timekeeping in the software. He wasn’t supposed to be watching the clock, but he couldn’t help asking.
“Sorry, Commander Harrison. You know we can’t tell you that. Please just proceed. Acquire target one.”
Skip grit his teeth and locked in on the target nearest to his position. The system would have allowed him to designate all eighteen, then rapid-fire knock them all out. But one by one at the direction of the control booth was what they wanted. “Roger that.”
They crawled through the exercise at a snail’s pace. Fiona had him examine each target site after impact before moving on to the next. Near as Skip could tell, it was just busy work. It must have taken half an hour to mow down the full set of targets.
While they waited for the resupply drones, Fiona got chatty. “So, Commander, I hear you’ve got kids. How old are they?”
“What are you talking about? You’ve got my personnel files right there, don’t you? You know I don’t have kids.”
“My mistake. Sorry, Commander.”
“Hey, no problem. You can make it up to me by cutting this marathon short and buying me dinner.” Why he wasn’t starving was a miracle. There must have been some nutrient delivery system somewhere among all the equipment hooked to his body. And he didn’t mind leading Fiona on a little if it got him out of the pod.
“You are married though. What’s your wife’s name?”
“Madeline. Come on, this is all part of my record. What gives?”
“What’s she like? Where’d you honeymoon? How does she smell in the morning?”
This was getting way too personal. There was no way any of this was relevant to piloting a mech or any other military system, and it was none of her goddamn business. Skip told her as much.
“I’ll make you a deal, Skip. You tell me every little thing about you and your wife, I’ll get you out of that pod. How’s that sound? I’ve got the authority on medical grounds, and you’re not scheduled for removal for five more days.”
“Days? You can’t keep me in here for days. I’m climbing the walls in here already.”
“I’m listening. I’ll even clear everyone out of the control booth. Just you and me. Consider it a therapy session. Now . . . what’s it like when you wake up beside her in the morning?”
Skip hated himself. He hated that Fiona was using him as cheap entertainment. But the thoughts of Madeline were a comfort to him, and he opened up for his own peace of mind. At the start he spoke tentatively, but eventually he was answering Fiona’s questions on the most intimate of topics without giving them a second thought.
An unfamiliar voice came over the radio. It was faint, not something Skip was probably meant to hear. “Doctor Walsh, we have it mapped.”
“What was that? Map of what?”
Fiona’s voice was quieter as well, as if she were holding her headset’s mic away from her mouth. “Excellent. This time let’s delete virtual synapses 32719 through 32745, and the two clusters here where he got sidetracked by sexual thoughts about me. We don’t need an AI that gets distracted so easily.”
“Hey! What are you doing up there?”
“Oh, dammit. He heard me. It’s nothing you need to worry about. You’re a good pilot. We’re just going to make you a better one.”
“By deleting parts of my brain?” Skip was wrung out. He couldn’t process all this. It sounded like they were planning to eliminate parts of his personality. Could all the wires, needles, and neural connectors really do that?
He wasn’t going to take this lying down. Skip ran for the tunnel that led to the hangar. The door was closed, but he had a fresh rack of Dragonfly missiles that said he was getting through. This would be the end of the program for him. Probably get him thrown in a hole somewhere. But they couldn’t take away his memories. Life in a concrete box would be better than living as a hero and not remembering a lifetime with Maddie.
“Captain . . .” The tech’s voice held a note of rising worry. She’d be a lot more worried if she got in the way of them pulling Skip out of the pod.
Fiona sighed. “I’ve got it. Not like it’s the first time he’s done this . . .”
The Beowulf s
topped in place, no longer responding to his commands. The visual inputs went dark. Then all sensation vanished.
* * *
Gus walked with him from the jeep. On the helipad, the RAH-109 Gyrfalcon waited for him, its engines quiet. It was an easier walk than the inbound trip a month earlier. The trials had been better rehab than the actual clinical treatment Skip had gotten after getting his prosthetics. And to think, all it had taken was a few billion dollars worth of top secret equipment and a team of the military’s best minds. He didn’t even have a noticeable limp anymore.
“You sure you boys can get by without me?” Skip asked with a grin.
Gus shook his prosthetic hand. “We’ll manage. The software version of you is a champ. Hardly know it wasn’t the real Skip Harrison.”
Skip gave a melodramatic shiver. “Kinda glad I can’t tell Maddie about all this. Not sure she’d like the idea of every mech in the US Army knowing what she looks like naked.”
“US Army isn’t keen on that, either. The AI is going to be based on you. It’ll have your moral compass and values, mental toughness and all that jazz. But we’re going to pare it back to the essentials for field use.”
“Won’t that compromise those values you’re after? I mean, if it weren’t for my wedding vows, I’d have slept with Captain Walsh in a heartbeat, regulations be damned.”
“Oh, the core’s still the same. But I can’t imagine you wanting the AI to remember your bank account numbers, email password, kids’ favorite ice cream. That’s all yours, and that’s stuff you’re welcome to keep private. Right this minute, we’ve got a team working diligently to separate the personal from the professional. Hell, even if it weren’t for the privacy concerns—and you and me both know that’s not the Army’s top concern here—we need to keep the file size manageable.”
“You’re telling me that giant thing can’t handle all of me?” Skip grinned at the thought that his brain was too big for a machine that size.
Gus chuckled and walked Skip to his ride off base. “All this time and you still think we’re going to make mechs? That project was a pipe dream. It doesn’t even run.”
