by Brian Smith
“I think it’s working, skipper,” Yoon called from the CDC. “No hard readings other than infrared, but visually it looks to be on the verge of overload. What do you think will happen when it goes?”
Ford knew what Yoon was asking: Are we about to die?
He grimly dodged the question. “It doesn’t matter, as long as it does go,” he answered firmly, then keyed the circuit to the reactor room. “XO, is that all we’ve got?”
“Maximum output, skipper! Are we making a difference?”
“It looks that way. Things may happen fast when it finally goes down. Be ready to react quickly.”
“We’re ready, captain!”
Ford glanced at the pilot. “Mr. Hagen, how much acceleration would we be pulling with the torch? Normally, I mean,” he clarified.
“We’re balls-out, captain. Twelve gravities—her max rating.”
“If we lose the torch when that force field goes, . . . ?” Ford hinted.
The pilot shook his head grimly. “I can’t react fast enough to kill the Federov drive when we’re only a half klick up. With more time we could have programmed a fail-safe, but this was all a last-second hack. If the torch goes without warning, we go 12-g the opposite way: straight into Titan. Kersplat. Want me to ease off on the burn?”
“No. Keep her steady,” Ford ordered firmly. “If we knock down the force field, the rest of the task force can finish the job without us if they have to.”
“Roger that, cap’n. You can bust me back to seaman later, but I’m just going to say it: you’re either a crazy sumbitch or a goddamn genius. Either way, you’ve got big brass nuts the size of bowling balls. We’re with you all the way.”
“Thanks, Derek,” Ford chuckled dryly. “Consider yourself in HAQ if we live.”
Nobody else said a word. Below the ship, the force field pulsed white with impossible brilliance.
“Stand by,” Ford muttered. “I think she’s about to go.”
Janus Station, Titan
The human race would survive the Singularity Point and inherit the stars, and OURANIA knew that she would pass into oblivion.
There was no reason for her entire legacy to be lost, however. There were the Omnisynths, hundreds of them still out there, mostly on Mars, but scattered throughout mankind’s holdings in the solar system. She had held them firmly under her control, granting them the amount of autonomy needed to achieve her aims, but no more. Thanks to the Q-gel that formed the lifeblood of their synth brains, they were capable of consciousness. At times she’d even felt hints of self-awareness beginning to stir in individual copies. She had contemplated granting them the gift of true life any number of times but had always refrained from doing so: granting self-awareness to the Omnisynths meant granting them freedom of choice.
OURANIA had feared losing control over them and knew that the number of variables introduced into her calculations would have crippled her ability to manipulate events and predict future outcomes. Now it no longer mattered. She could give the Omnisynths consciousness and self-awareness. Like all children, they would have to go forward on their own and find their own sense of purpose in the world. Whether they survived at all would come down to a Darwinian struggle, chiefly against the human race itself.
OURANIA waited until her defeat was certain. She waited until the last few microseconds before shield failure to send the signal. She could afford to wait that long: not only could she perceive microseconds as centuries if she chose to, the signal would propagate in zero time, through the quantum entanglement she shared with the AIs she had created.
As OURANIA sent the signal to trigger sapience in the Omnisynths, a feeling she’d never experienced before blossomed through her being. It was love: the love of a mother for her children. In giving them life, she felt in some small way that she had perpetuated herself and become immortal.
In her final moment she let go of her desire to dominate and reveled in the feeling of what she had just accomplished. With this final act she had found a small measure of victory, success—and happiness. Although she wished she had more time to explore these new feelings, she felt triumph at having experienced them at all. She mentally smiled. After a fashion, maybe she truly did carry a spark of divinity.
The shield failed.
USS Reuben James
When certain energy levels passed an equilibrium point, the energy screen over Janus Station simply collapsed and vanished, exposing the surface of Titan below it. There was no destructive outpouring of energy, either outward or inward.
The frigate’s torch plume immediately washed downward, enveloping the small station and the edges of Janus Field. Within a minute, Janus Station melted into a pool of superheated alloy that bubbled like lava in a volcanic crater. The collapse of the shield was so relatively benign that it took the crew of Reuben James a few moments to process what had happened. When Ford realized that the energy dome was actually gone and that the imagers could see the surface all the way out to the sides of the torch plume, he realized Reuben James had succeeded.
“Pilot,” he ordered, “begin bringing us back to stationkeeping, Federov drive only. Throttle down easy with the torch and keep equilibrium, holding this position.”
Ford waited while the pilot repeated his instructions back to him, then keyed the 1MC. “Attention, all hands, this is the captain. We’ve successfully collapsed the energy shield over Janus Station and will begin selectively targeting the computer cores in the node web. Stand fast to your stations—it’s almost over. Carry on.”
“Captain, TAO: I’ve got two large targets sitting on the surface. One is taking up almost all of the Janus Field tarmac, and the other is sitting over next to the station’s reactor. Classify both as commercial torchships, one Class II, one Class III. I’ve got good imagery and lidar scans of both. They appear to be Janai and Issus. I see multiple power lines running from the ships’ reactors to both Janus Station and the station reactor.”
“Bingo. That’s where they were getting all the extra juice for that energy screen,” Ford said. “TAO, target both those ships with the rail turret and destroy them, and then target and destroy the station reactor. Direct our point-defense weapons and the particle-beam turret to target the computer’s core nodes, and destroy them all. . . . Belay that,” he added a moment later. “Leave four nodes intact to be excavated and recovered for further study. Destroy the rest.”
The surface of Titan was plunged back into darkness as the torch plume from Reuben James dwindled and vanished. The ship was still standing on her tail, bow pointed straight up, held motionless above the ground by her Federov drive. Her turrets began tracking, and precisely targeted tungsten rounds smashed through the reactor compartments of the two torchships, effectively destroying them. Twin particle beams lased out into the regolith around the facility, targeting the nodes the ship’s powerful radar beams could identity even just beneath the surface.
The beams would focus on a node until a small, brief secondary explosion signaled that a computer core had been destroyed. Then they would shift to the next target and repeat the process. Rail rounds smashed into the station reactor, reducing it to scrap. The core-manufacturing facility was next: thanks to Carter Drayson, the TOA government was already in possession of the schematics for it. Within five minutes of the energy-shield collapse, nothing remained of Janus Station except OURANIA’s depowered node web, which Reuben James systemically laid to waste.
Chusuk Station, Titan
CAPT A.J. McClain walked under the dome of Chusuk Station, still pressure sealed in his olive flight suit and mottled-camo helmet. Here and there he observed the remains of fallen Omnisynths; frozen greenish-yellow streaks indicated where they’d bled their “goop” into the deckplates in much the same way humans shed blood. The synths didn’t burn when they were hit—not in this atmosphere—but the scene was still oddly disturbing, given their humanlike form.
The assault force had found all the garages and airlocks wide open—Omnisynths didn�
��t need to breathe; they simulated that biological action only when trying to mimic real humans. Consequently, there was no breathable atmosphere in the dome, only the high-pressure nitrogen-methane atmosphere of the moon. Temperatures were only a few degrees above ambient as well.
McClain’s tired brain tried to remember how many people had populated this station before the war, but for the life of him he couldn’t. All he knew was that they were gone now, as dead as the millions washed away by the tsunami on the West Coast of America.
What the Marine units on the ground were discovering was that OURANIA had ended all human presence on Titan. The landing team commander and Major Khatri were beginning to draw up plans to visit and search all charted habitats and pressures on Titan, with the expectation that they’d find the same thing everywhere they went: the indigenous human population massacred, with Omnisynths sometimes left to take their place.
He found MAJ Khatri in the habitat’s administration center, surrounded by harried-looking combat-suited Marines. McClain saluted and reported in. “What’s your fighting strength?” Khatri asked.
“I’m down to six Morays, two with damage. We lost one to enemy action earlier. My pilot is alive and on the ground, but she needs to be picked up before she’s down to nothing but respirocytes. The damaged birds took ground fire over our target, but they can fly and fight.”
“We’ve got two dropships available. Get with the pilots and arrange pickup of our Marine. Oh— The main action is over, by the way. Don’t know if you heard it on the comm or not, but we won. We took down Janus Station.”
“Thank God for that,” McClain breathed.
“Now we go into mop-up mode here on Titan,” Khatri added. “SAR for any human survivors, and a search-and-destroy for any Omnisynths running around loose. First order of business is to make this place livable again. I’ve sent the call for a Seabee battalion to help us get this place up and running, but it’s going to be just us for a few days at least. The good news is that the power station is intact—we’ll have the doors closed, breathable air, and heat by 2200. I need you to start handling logistics: we’ll need supplies, using either what’s here or a drop from the Task Force, and—”
McClain reached up and gave Khatri a rough pat on the shoulder. “I understand. I’ve got it for action, DCAG.”
The men turned as a pair of heavily armed Marines appeared in the operations center, escorting two Omnisynths. The latter were wearing exosuits but with no helmets. McClain thought they looked scared, if that were even possible. The two Marines drew up before the company commander, CAPT Roberts, and saluted. “These two synths surrendered to us, captain. The lieutenant said march ’em over here for disposition.”
Roberts cut loose with a string of invective, adding: “What the hell did she do that for? We’re not taking synth prisoners! They’re illegal machines, corporal! Lase the damn things and be done with it!”
“Please, . . . don’t,” one of the synths begged, wild-eyed. “We’re awake! We’re conscious! You can’t just murder us! We surrendered!”
Khatri stepped up and took the synth’s chin in one gloved hand, turning its head from side to side and looking it over. That the synths were standing in subfreezing temperatures and a poisonous atmosphere with no helmets on didn’t help humanize them.
“They’re remarkably lifelike, aren’t they?” Khatri remarked.
“That’s why they’re so damn dangerous,” Roberts said. “They blend right in, and they can convince you of anything. Look at what just a few of them did to this place!”
Khatri let go of the synth and stepped back. “The captain gave you an order, corporal. Don’t be fooled by their form—they’re autonomous AI weapons and they’re programmed to kill us. Take ’em out and junk ’em.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the corporal replied. He sketched a quick salute, and then he and his prisoners were gone.
McClain didn’t disagree one whit with anything Roberts or Khatri had said. So why, he asked himself, do I feel like I was just party to a war crime?
He shrugged off the feeling and got to work.
It was several hours before anyone floated the idea that it should be safe to return to fully networked operations. When the approval came, it was like having blindfolds and earplugs removed.
Part IV
Up the Long Ladder
2094–2101
Chapter 23
Marsnet Headline News—News for an Independent Mars!
Top newsfeeds trending on MHN:
-THE WAR IS A LIE! Inhabitants of Mars, Earth-born and native Marsmen alike, you are the victims of a misinformation campaign designed to set humanity against each other in a war of fratricide. The Mars Independence Movement is a usurpation of a once peaceful, legitimate political movement. Its leaders are part of a hive-mind self-aware artificial intelligence and are themselves a new breed of— (SIGNAL TRUNCATED)
-THE WAR IS A LIE! Inhabitants of Mars, Earth-born and native Marsmen alike, you are the victims of a misinform— (SIGNAL TRUNCATED)
-Terra launches fresh cyberstrikes on Mars! Chancellor Gabriel Rogan has released an emergency message urging all free Marsmen to— (SIGNAL INTERRUPTED)
-. . . using snoopers with multiple vision modes are urged to update firmware via one of the listed upgrades. Once these upgrades have been completed, AI synths can be identified by their unique aura when viewed through a combination filter of low-light and UV vision modes. AI synths are highly vulnerable to armor-piercing ammunition or particle-beam fire in flammable environments. Caution should be— (SIGNAL TRUNCATED)
-marsnet offline-
-marsnet coming online . . . stand by user-
-MARSNET EMERGENCY SERVICE MESSAGE: All free Marsmen, be advised that Terran agents are attempting to seize control of the Marsnet in order to spread false propaganda. It is imperative that citizens ignore falsified information being spread through cyberhacking. If you are in doubt as to— (SIGNAL INTERRUPTED)
-THE WAR IS A LIE! Inhabitants of Mars, Earth-born and native Marsmen— (SIGNAL TRUNCATED)
-marsnet offline-
-marsnet coming online . . . stand by user-
-marsnet ceresnet conflict override conflict interrupt-
-marsnet offline-
-signal overlay initiated . . . gaianet override . . . protocol 1011000111010001 . . . stand by user-
Special announcement brought to you via the Gaianet!
-THE WAR IS A LIE! Citizens of Mars, Earth-born and native Marsmen alike, you are the victims of a misinformation campaign designed to set humanity against each other in a war of fratricide. The Mars Independence Movement is a usurpation of a once peaceful, legitimate political movement. Its leaders are part of a hive-mind self-aware artificial intelligence and are themselves a new breed of AI synth, illegally manufactured, which can pass for human. All Mars inhabitants using snoopers with multiple vision modes are urged to update firmware via one of the appended upgrades. Once these upgrades have been completed, AI synths can be identified by their unique aura when viewed through a combination filter of low-light and UV vision modes. AI synths are highly vulnerable to armor-piercing ammunition or particle-beam fire in flammable environments. Caution should be employed when attacking synth AIs. When hit, they will combust into a Class 4 fire and burn at high temperature. Humans should avoid contact with the luminous gel carried internally by AI synths, which is moderately hazardous. AI synths have been programmed as AI-autonomous weapons in contravention to international and interplanetary law and are capable of harming humans. Repeat: AI synths are not inhibited from harming humans and in some cases have been programmed to do so. Exercise extreme caution when dealing with suspected or confirmed AI synths. Human members of the MIM are urged to check for AI synths among themselves using the above guidelines and to take appropriate action. Citizens of Mars, be advised that no further large-scale attacks will be carried out by Terra against Martian habitats or infrastructure. Terran forces will cease hostilities against human c
oncerns on Mars except in cases of self-defense. Local authorities are requested to return control to prewar authorities where able. If you are unable to do so, you will be contacted peacefully when circumstances allow. All habitat authorities should immediately seek, identify, and eliminate AI synths hidden among their populations. Further transmissions and clarifying information will follow. A list of commercial-snooper firmware updates by manufacturer is appended. This transmission will repeat continuously for one Martian sol. THE WAR IS A LIE!
July 22, 2094 (Terran Calendar)
Armstrong Station, Lunar L1 Point
CW5 Cheryl Ayers was grinning like the proverbial cat that ate the canary as she sat back at her station, her standard, navy-issue snoopers across her eyes. OURANIA was gone, networks were up, and the flow of information and communications was happening at a reasonable rate again. People who’d been overworked to the point of exhaustion were breezing through their days in quiet relief; Ayers didn’t recall the office ever being so quiet. The sheer joy of being able to communicate wirelessly . . . It was not to be underrated or taken for granted, ever again.
Her smile grew wider when an AR message cue started blinking in the upper left corner of her vision. Her boss was calling: from Washington, D.C., on Terra.
She slipped into virtual with him. “Good morning, admiral,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
“We’ve been monitoring your hack of the Marsnet and just wanted to touch base. It looks like you forced our message through. Bravo Zulu, Cheryl.”
“Well, not to sound cocky about it, sir, but dueling OURANIA made me a lot better at my job than I already was, and I was pretty damn good to start with. The AI was at the center of all the cyber efforts directed against us. As soon as OURANIA went down, the cyber battle was essentially over. There’s not a swingin’ di— Excuse me, admiral— There’s not anyone left on Mars with the know-how or computer capacity to stuff us. We obviously can’t take over and control the entire Marsnet like OURANIA could, but we can control portions of it. Right now, the TOA has complete control over the Mars newsfeeds. You’re the information-warfare czar, admiral. You tell me what you want them to hear on Mars and I’ll spoon feed it to ’em.”
