ARMS Domers Unite: (Book 6)

by Stephen Arseneault

  "When are you expecting to have this data available?"

  "Just a sec..."

  A comm was opened to the AI. "When do you expect to have the redesigns ready for our ships?"

  "New specifications and data are available now."

  Harris patched the AI into the colonel's comm. "Send those over to Colonel Thomas for the freighter designs and updates."

  "The data has been sent."

  "Got it. I'll have my team get on these immediately. You wouldn't happen to have an estimate to complete available, would you?"

  "With automated worker labor, three days. With Human labor, nine."

  "Nine days will work. Gruberg, you have nine days to play adventurer. I expect to see you here on day ten."

  "Will do, Colonel."

  The comms closed.

  A new comm was opened to Bannis Morgan.

  "Gruberg, congratulations on the victory."

  "Congratulations to us all. What's the scuttlebutt from there?"

  "The hawks are once again in control. Contracts are lining up for a complete fleet overhaul. I was asked if you'd be willing to share your winning tech, or at a minimum a few of those ships you captured. Would save us a lot of time and money."

  "I think we let things settle for a while, Mr. Morgan. We have enough, or will have enough of a fleet here to protect our space from outsiders. Domicile's focus should be on her economy and the economies of her colonies. Try to make life better for everyone."

  "Understood and agreed."

  "You're walking around your office. Your arthritis OK?"

  "As a matter of fact, yes. Whatever the AI injected into me out there has rejuvenated my joints. I can walk and move like I did twenty years ago. My doc says my heart is in good shape, so I have plenty of years left in me. Of course, he's probably just looking to keep one of his better customers. Oh, and if you're curious, I've extended job offers to the Bolemans, Miss Withrow, and Garvis. He's a funny one. I'll like having him back."

  "Glad to hear that, Mr. Morgan. They're all deserving."

  The talk continued for another ten minutes, before Tawn came back into the room. "Bangor is ready to go."

  Goodbyes were said and the comm closed.

  Harris stepped up through the hatch. "We're taking the bots?"

  "I thought it best. Not fond of running up and down three kilometers of steps. These two bags of bolts don't care."

  Harris nodded as he took his place in the pilot's chair. "Have a seat wherever, Alex. We'll be at Gondol in about twenty-two minutes."

  ~~~~~

  — What's Next? —

  * * *

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  ARMS

  (Vol. 7)

  Helm's End

  — Chapter 7.1 —

  * * *

  Harris stepped off the last stair into ankle deep water. A steady stream continued to run down from above.

  Tawn frowned. "Can't say I have fond memories of this place."

  "What happened here?" asked Alex.

  Harris told the story as they walked through the front room and then past the still silent drums. The hurricane above the main generator had long dissipated.

  Their trudging walk, sloshing through the water as they went, ended as they came into the maintenance room. The maintenance bot was sitting silent in the room's center.

  Harris asked, "Sas? You still around?"

  "Yes. Hello, Mr. Gruberg."

  "Can you give us a status of this entire facility? We counted one more hurricane topside than when we left. What happened?"

  "A team of thirty-two maintenance bots are at work restoring the generating stations. Station fifty-eight is again operational. Station fifty-seven is in repair."

  Alex said, "You think they could make use of our bots?"

  Harris chuckled. "I'm sure they could. The question is do we want them to?"

  "Why wouldn't we? It would seem the purpose of this facility was to make this a living, thriving host planet. It has the proper magnetic field and appears to have been on its way to eventually becoming a very livable place. This facility would only speed that process."

  Tawn said, "We do have about fifty thousand more bots than we need. The nuclear cleanups at New York and the other planets aren't expected to take all that long. Plus, we could send a couple hundred bots down here and they'd have this entire place mapped out in the time it will take us to get to the next generator."

  "Yes," Alex replied. "And I would suggest we slow our production of Banshee hulls and instead put that production into more workers. They would be invaluable to projects like this."

  Tawn nodded. "He's got a point. I actually wouldn't mind putting the AI in charge of bringing this place back up to snuff. I mean, really, what are we gonna discover by walking around down here? We send the bots out, they find something interesting and they give us a comm."

  "You two aren't much for exploration, are you?"

  "Just saying I think we learned what we could from here when we copied the data. The AI should have a complete map of this place."

  "Except I didn't give the data to the AI. It was acting suspect. The data is sitting back on the Bangor in a data store."

  "Why haven't you passed it on since?"

  "Forgot it was there."

  Tawn looked at Alex. "You like climbing stairs?"

  "Not especially."

  "Boomer, pick up the doc. You'll be carrying him back topside. See to it that he's comfortable."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Harris chuckled. "Ma'am… that just has a funny sound to it."

  "Good. You can laugh about it as you're climbing. Idiot, you'll be giving me a ride like the doc is getting. And make sure I'm comfortable."

  The bot looked at Harris. "Sure, why not? I brought us down here without thinking."

  Alex said, "It was interesting to see."

  "I was hoping you could see the Burrell's body, but I forgot it got washed away. When we get topside, I can show you the recording we have of it."

  The ascent, with a slower moving Harris, took two hours. The team boarded the Bangor and was soon on their way back to Midelon.

  Harris produced the data store. "This is from that Gondol AI. It has the complete layout of the place, including the specs of how it works. We turn this over to our AI and I'm sure it can optimize a plan to repair it all."

  Alex nodded. "Perhaps our time should be spent exploring Midelon?"

  "I just don't want to shut down that boson field."

  "Please do remember the AI was deceiving us before. It may be the boson field is not in any danger."

  A short time later, the Bangor arrived in Midelon space.

  Tawn was the first to notice. "Where's our fleet?"

  Harris opened a comm. "AI? What happened to our fleet?"

  No answer was returned.

  The ship dropped as a fireball through the atmosphere, settling on the grass beside the bunker. The Banshee fleet was gone, as was the army of bots.

  "I'm really not liking this."

  Tawn performed a bioscan. "No other Humans here."

  "How would anyone have gotten here? This has to be something the AI did."

  Harris raced into the bunker. "AI, where are you?"

  Again no reply came back.

  Tawn stood behind him. "This is weird."

  Alex walked in. "The workers are all gone."

  Idiot said, "Sir, I've attemp
ted multiple comm connections to the AI. It doesn't appear to be available."

  The group made their way through each of the rooms of the bunker complex before descending the stairs to the lower levels.

  At the bottom level, Harris threw up his arms. "Nothing. Idiot, can you tap into the building's recorders and play back the last few hours for us?"

  "One moment... I'm sorry, sir, there are no recordings."

  "What? Were they erased?"

  "No sir, the system is down. Off. The final log is time-stamped for fifty-two minutes, twelve seconds after our departure."

  Tawn opened a comm to the Retreat. "Colonel, what's your status there?"

  "Same as it was last we talked. Our engineers think those latest designs—"

  "We have problems. We're missing about forty thousand ships and sixty thousand bots."

  "What?"

  Harris joined in. "They're gone, Colonel. Missing, ships and bots. Even the AI that we thought was part of this building."

  Alex stepped forward. "I just did a quick count of the processing stations. One is missing."

  Tawn shook her head. "Bad. That means they can replicate."

  "How's this possible?" Alex asked. "No one can jump here."

  "Had to be the AI," Harris said. "It found a way to get into one of those bot bodies, stole our ships, and left."

  Alex raced out of the building. Tawn and Harris hurried after. They came to a stop in the doorway of Trish's shop.

  "What is it, Doc?"

  "The machine for finalizing the gamma bombs. They didn't take it."

  "That's good news," said Tawn. "What was our last production count?"

  "About eighty-five hundred."

  "Uh-oh," Tawn said.

  "What is it?"

  "I think it's the remains of Reggie, Emily, and Finn. Looks like they were torn apart. Must have tried to stop the others."

  "So the AI is running around out there with forty thousand ships, sixty thousand bots, and eighty-five hundred gamma missiles. Nothing to worry about."

  Harris opened a comm to Domicile. "Mr. Morgan, we have problems."

  "It's 2AM here. You can't let an old man sleep?"

  "Sorry, but this is far bigger than your sleep. The AI is gone, and with it all our ships, bots, and missiles. We're standing here on Midelon completely by ourselves."

  "Is this a nightmare?"

  "A real one. You have any alerts from anyone about anything suspicious?"

  "Had a fleet been spotted I would have been notified. You check the Retreat?"

  "All is quiet there too. Tawn, open a comm to every colony. See if there's been any sightings."

  "On it."

  Bannis sat up fully. "You know how to ruin a man's night, Mr. Gruberg."

  "We just came back from Gondol and found them all gone."

  "Recorder logs show anything?"

  "They were all shut off fifty-two minutes after we left."

  "Then I would start combing through those last fifty-two minutes."

  Alex nodded. "I'll take that on."

  "They also took one of the processor stations."

  "That might not be a total loss."

  "How's that?"

  "Those are constructed taking into account the microgravities of where they were built. If you move them, you'll probably never produce another processor from that individual machine."

  "So they just build another."

  "That depends. Did they take the archive?"

  "It looks shut down."

  "The AI indicated to us at one point that it didn't want to leave the building because it would lose the archive. If those systems are still there, the AI itself may be nothing more than a standard bot now. And none of those bots would have the plans to construct a new processor station. We weren't building new ones and I believe it was you, Harris, who gave the order for them to scrub the designs from their memories when the task was complete or they left those rooms."

  "You think they obeyed that?"

  "Unless someone told them to specifically ignore it, yes."

  Tawn came back into the room. "All colonies are clear. No sign of a fleet anywhere."

  Alex returned. "The final five minutes or so of the logs were overwritten. It will take some time, but I think I may be able to recover the original data."

  "Please make that happen, Doc." Harris nodded. "We need a clue as to what happened here."

  Idiot stepped forward. "Sir, if the archive is intact, would it be any benefit to us if I were to integrate with it?"

  Harris rubbed his chin. "Can you do that?"

  "I can try."

  "Make it happen. Tawn, you and Boomer are now our chiefs of security. Search this complex and then the grounds for any sign of a threat, or bugs or comms or anything that isn't normal."

  "Miss Freely?" Boomer asked. "Am I approved for those tasks?"

  "You are. Let's go check things out."

  Harris stood looking around the room. "Hmm, should have kept something for myself."

  Bannis said, "Are you finished disturbing my sleep?"

  "Give me some scenarios, Mr. Morgan. What happened here?"

  "You either have an uprising by the bots, or an outside force has come in and assumed control."

  "Has to be the bots. No one else had access to this place. Unless we somehow left a bot disabled and not destroyed on the battlefield. But if that had happened, the AI was supposed to inform us. Every one of those damaged ships was supposed to send a signal before it self-destructed. As far as we know, every one was accounted for. That includes visually."

  Idiot said over a comm: "Sir. I've found the receptacle for the archives. Unfortunately I am unable to connect to it. It appears my core would have to be removed from this body for a connection to be made. You, or someone, will have to slip my processor into the receptacle here on the base floor."

  "I'll be right there."

  Harris hustled down the stairs to the bottom floor. The bot was standing in a corner beside several equipment housings.

  "Sir, this slot is the receptacle. You will have to power me down and remove my core."

  "I can do that, but before we start, does the equipment all look to be working? Is it powered on?"

  The bot spent most of a minute going over the systems in front of it. "It appears to be in order, sir."

  Harris set his plasma rifle on a nearby console. Reaching out, he came in contact with the secret spot on the bot. It powered down. A second touch opened the cranium, exposing the small, round processor core. It was carefully lifted out and deposited in the archive receptacle. The system began to show signs of life.

  Seconds later, a comm opened. "Hello, Harris."

  "Idiot, is that you?"

  "Yes. Please allow me several minutes to familiarize myself with my new environment."

  "Sure. I'll go check on the others. Give me a comm when you're fully up."

  Harris stood back, staring at the shell of his bot before turning and heading for the stairs. Climbing three flights, he was soon standing over Alex's shoulder as he worked on the recording logs.

  "Any luck?"

  "This may be more than I'm able to handle. It appears a deletion was done before the overwrite. That makes the task more difficult."

  "Well, Idiot is now connected to the archive. He should be operational in a minute or two. If you can make use of him for this, do so."

  "The AI would have this task completed in seconds. For me it is somewhat trial and error."

  "Let me know if you get something."

  Harris rubbed the back of his neck as he came out of the shop. He glanced up at a shadow to find himself staring at the face of a startled and angry bogler, its razor sharp teeth exposed as it let out a huff. The bull raced forward. Harris reached for his plasma rifle, but the holder on his back was empty, his rifle having been left in the archive room.

  As the bull charged across the grass toward him, he heard five boot-like thumps coming from his right. In a flash, the mad bo
vine was slammed to his left by a rampaging Boomer. The animal faltered, taking a chunk out of the doorframe next to him as it came to a stop. In an instant the beast was terminated, leaving Harris standing with his mouth agape.

  Boomer stood. "I'll take the bull for conversion."

  "Conversion?" Harris asked.

  "Yes. The remains of the animal will be rendered into food."

  Tawn walked up. "The surprised look on your face was priceless. I'll have to upload a version onto the Retreat network for everyone to see."

  "You recorded that while it was attacking?"

  "Inadvertently. I was just coming back in from checking our perimeter when I noticed it standing there. It charged before I could react. Caught it all on the helmet cam though."

  "Guess I'm always good for a few laughs on the highlight reel. But please, at least give me a warning next time."

  "Given the timing, if I had given a warning, it probably would have charged me instead."

  "I could have lived with that."

  Tawn chuckled. "I bet you could."

  Harris crossed his arms. "Everything else look in order?"

  "As if they just turned and walked away. There's a new Banshee sitting in there with everything but its processor."

  "Looks as though they took our entire device inventory."

  "You think it would be worthwhile to fire those processor stations back up? And the assembly line for bot bodies?"

  "So long as we can fully control them, I think we could use the help."

  Tawn opened a comm: "AI? Or, Idiot, whichever you prefer, can you suspend comm acceptance from everyone but Harris or me?"

  "I can."

  "Please do so. Boomer, you do the same. Oh, and add Alex to that list."

  "As commanded, ma'am."

  "Harris," said Idiot, "I am fully online and integrated now. Do you have any primary tasks for me?"

  "Yes, we need you to review the log recordings from just after we left Midelon until they were shut down. Someone deleted and overwrote the content from that period of time. We need you to find an answer as to whose decision that was. Please assist Alex with this effort to recover the data."