Trial by Fire - eARC

by Charles E Gannon

  “Hey, dat’s better than us,” said Teguh, looking up eagerly. “Maybe you can figure something out, hey? Help my friends?”

  If the day had been any less absurd, any less surreal, Caine might have demurred. But with a city burning down around his ears, and surrounded by five eager faces that were, for the first time since he had met them, illuminated with something like a faint glow of hope, he could only say, “Let’s go take a look.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  West-Central Jakarta, Earth

  Caine leaned the fragment of mirror around the dangling remains of the window frame, resolved to get a better look.

  The Arat Kur ROV was a ground-pounder. It was far too heavy to go airborne, and improperly shaped to have a live operator inside. Its narrowest point was much thinner than an Arat Kur was wide.

  “Is it a robot?” asked Teguh.

  “No, I think it’s an ROV with an expert-system back up.”

  “What’s that mean?” asked one of the younger Indonesians whose long, mellifluous name Caine had learned, and promptly forgotten, three times now.

  “Yeah,” answered Caine, watching the slow, cautious advance of the Arat Kur unit, its two microturrets rotating protectively through rear- and flank-covering arcs. “Reporters like to call ground-drones like this ‘AIs,’ but there’s no intelligence involved. Just very sophisticated algorithms that allow the machine to operate independently for a short period of time.”

  “Huh,” nodded Teguh. “Yeh. I can believe that.”

  “Why?” Caine asked.

  “Well, these, eh, expert systems don’t like to go into stone or concrete buildings. They won’t chase anyone inside. Which makes sense.”

  Caine smiled at Teguh. “You’re right. Stone and other dense construction materials block signals. And the machine shouldn’t stay where it has to rely upon its own very limited expert system.”

  Teguh shrugged. “Sounds like a weakness, to me.”

  Caine smiled. “Me, too. Let’s go. I have a plan.”

  * * *

  “You sure this a good idea, bule?”

  Caine wanted to answer hell, no! but instead said, “I’m pretty sure it will work, as long as you’re certain these expert systems don’t shoot at unarmed humans.”

  “Haven’t seen them do it yet, and they’ve had plenty of opportunities since this afternoon.”

  “And you’re sure they have a capture mode?”

  “Yeah. Like I told you, we’ve seen these robo-Roaches come into areas where rebels or rioters have been making trouble. They find some older kids, do a spider-sprint, and grab them. Then they carry ’em back to the Roach motel—”

  “The what?”

  “The aliens’ compound. They took over the Presidential Palace. So, the Roaches ask the kids questions about anyone they know who might be a rebel. Always with an officer from the army standing there”—Teguh spat—“but then they let ’em go. Scares the shit out of the kids, but they’ve never been hurt.”

  Well, that’s reassuring. Sort of. “Okay, then. Are your people ready?”

  “Sure they are. Question is: are you ready?”

  Again: “hell no!” “Yeah. Here goes.” Caine ducked low and scooted out, under the level of the cars parked along the street. He peeked out at the Arat Kur ROV. It was still creeping forward, aware that its prey—Teguh’s trapped friends—had moved farther down the dead end street and were now unable to escape. But precisely where was that prey hiding?

  Well, here’s something new to think about. Caine rose slowly from his hiding place. He walked, hands open, closer to the Arat Kur ROV but also angled toward the looted and gutted stone bank across the street.

  The Arat Kur unit’s rear sensors detected him immediately. One of the miniturrets fixed upon him, the other began sweeping the unit’s rear, laboring to keep nearby upper stories and rooftops in its defense footprint.

  C’mon. Call your boss, and find out what to do. And who I am.

  The Arat Kur unit was utterly motionless for two seconds, and then—so suddenly that Caine’s stomach clenched and plummeted—the multilegged device whirled about and came at him with startling speed.

  Caine had been expecting the charge, but still felt terribly slow as he turned and sprinted into the bank, sure that, at any second, he would feel the Arat Kur equivalent of a taser probe dig into his back and sprawl him, twitching, across the debris-littered sidewalk.

  But he made it through the doors into the bank and heard, just behind, the clatter of the ROV’s legs break stride. Caine didn’t stop: the unit’s apparent indecision was merely a split-second pause as it waited for an override signal.

  Caine, now in the hall leading into the bank’s interior offices, was glad he hadn’t broken his own stride. He heard the ROV resume its skittering approach, the bank’s broken picture windows scraping and screeching as the spiderlike legs smashed and dashed them aside in its crazed pursuit. Riordan reached the yawning freight elevator shaft at the end of the hall, grabbed the knotted rope that was hanging there, heard the ROV right behind him. He turned, saw the taser-dart dispenser on the front of the robotic arthropod snap open—

  —just as three of Teguh’s young Indonesians, waiting two stories overhead, dropped a small, jury-rigged counterweight. Caine, clutching the counterweighted rope, blinked at the rapidity of his upward acceleration and was both terrified and gratified to see the mechanical spider leap into the open shaft beneath him. Slowly but steadily, it began ascending, its legs spanning from wall-to-wall.

  As soon as the three young Indonesians grabbed Caine off the ascending rope, he nodded to a fourth, slightly older one. That fellow was waiting with bolt-cutters poised upon the elevator’s own counterweight cable, and at Caine’s nod, he closed the cutters with a snap.

  The steel ring that cinched the upper part of the elevator’s main cable to the lower half squealed and sparked as the bolt-cutters sheared through it. Released from the counterweight in the basement, the car of the freight elevator, waiting two stories farther up, began rushing down.

  The mechanical spider paused, sensors rotating upward to investigate the new sound—

  —right as the car crashed into it and powered the flailing unit all the way down to the bottom of the lightless shaft. Their joint plummet ended with a smashing sound akin to a head-on collision of dump-trucks.

  * * *

  By the time Caine got down the basement to inspect the remains of the Arat Kur expert system with bolt-cutters in hand, Teguh was already there, along with his friends who had been trapped at the end of the street. And entering at the same moment as Caine did was a rangy, muscular man in camos and a red beret: a defected Kopassus officer.

  Caine scanned the insignia of rank, tried to remember it from his days at Jane’s Defense Weekly, guessed. “Hello, Captain. I wasn’t aware these are your men.”

  The officer stopped, stared up at Caine. “We have no formal organization.” He looked at the broken Arat Kur unit. “I understand this is your work.”

  “Me? Hell, Captain, we all—”

  “Please. Your modesty and desire to include these men is admirable, but I must know: Was this your idea?”

  Before Caine had decided how to respond, Teguh piped up from the second rank of on-lookers. “You bet, Captain Moerdani. This one smart bule. He has training.”

  Oh good Christ—

  The captain glanced at Caine sharply. “Is this true? You are a soldier?”

  “No, Captain. I have some training. Very little, to be honest.”

  “Hmm,” he mused, looking at the smashed ROV again. “You seem to have enough. Now, before the enemy can—”

  “Captain, a moment please. I left my young friends back on the third floor for a reason. They should have rethreaded the part of the cable connected to the top of the elevator, now.”

  “And why did you have them do that?”

  “To lift it up a few feet.”

  “What? Why do—?”

  �
��Captain, with your permission, it will take less time to show than it will to explain.”

  The captain considered a moment, then nodded.

  Caine leaned into the shaft and shouted. “Winch it up on three, okay?”

  “Okay, Mr. Bule,” said a distant voice from higher up the shaft.

  Caine turned to Teguh. “Can your friends bring a few of those broken blocks over here? We’ll need them to jam under the elevator car.” By the time Caine was done making the request, half of the needed stonework was at the ready. He looked up the shaft. “One, two—”

  On “three,” the freight elevator car groaned off the Arat Kur ROV. As Caine had suspected, it was nowhere near as pulverized as an analogous human unit might have been.

  The captain’s voice was low. “Are you sure it’s—dead?”

  “Pretty sure, but let’s be certain.” Caine lifted the bolt cutters, started snipping selectively at a side-panel connected to the top of the thorax.

  “Why are you cutting there?” the captain asked.

  Caine explained as he continued to cut away at what looked like a mostly recessed hinge. “When we build ground-ops ROVs like this one, we know they’re going to take overhead fire. Lots of it. So we don’t put the sensitive electronics up under the dorsal surface. We snug them underneath, in the belly. I’m guessing we’ll get a look at its brains once we release this ventral piece.” With one last clack of the bolt-cutters, the rear belly plate of the unit sagged away from the rest of the carapace, revealing a mass of electrical components, most of which were still in reasonable condition. “Captain Moerdani, do any of your men have any expertise in computers?”

  The captain pointed to one of his youngest followers, who came forward quickly, eyes and hands eager.

  “What should I do?” he asked Caine.

  Who smiled. “Damned if I know. I’d just yank all its guts out.”

  “Why?” said the young man. “That could take some time.” He looked back at his captain.

  The entire group had now gathered around Caine, eyes bright with the victory they had just won. But their Kopassus CO was checking his watch. And probably waiting to hear me explain why it is worth the risk to stop and disembowel this Arat Kur ROV. So I had better make every word of explanation count. “Jakarta did lots of electronics and computer work up until three weeks ago. Tell me: how many of you know unemployed IT whizzes who are pissed at the government, who’d like to hack its systems, maybe try to get access to the invaders’ own code?”

  The young fellow nodded, a slow smile starting to spread across his face. “Most of them.”

  “And what do you think they could learn from the command and communication circuitry and processors of a remote-operated Arat Kur unit equipped with an extensive expert-system backup?”

  The young man’s smile was now very wide. “A whole lot, bule. They’d get a real good look at Arat Kur engineering. Prob’ly begin to play with Arat Kur programming languages. Either way, this is what they’d need to get started on that kind of work.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  Captain Moerdani looked up from his watch, said something in the flowing-water syllables that were characteristic of Javanese. Several of his men nodded, hefted their rifles up into assault carries, and spread out into the street, ready to scout the route of withdrawal. Then the captain turned toward Caine. “We’re leaving as soon as young Hadi is done cutting out the key components. You, too. You’re coming with us.”

  Caine shook his head. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea for you and your men, Captain.”

  “Why is that?”

  “The Arat Kur might come after me. Hard.”

  “Hmm. Yes. I’ll want to ask you some questions about that later. But whatever interest they have in you, they clearly want to capture, not kill you.”

  “Yes, well, they’re probably the only ones who don’t want me dead. On the other hand, your army, the clones, the Hkh’Rkh—”

  “The what?”

  “Uh, the Sloths. They all want to kill me.”

  Teguh smiled at him. “That means you’ll fit right in with us, bule.”

  Teguh looked up the fifteen-centimeter difference in their height. “Well, you almost fit in. Just hunch over some, and you’ll be fine. Now let’s get outta here.”

  Presidential Palace, Jakarta, Earth

  When Darzhee Kut’s shuttle landed in the courtyard of Jakarta’s Presidential Palace, Urzueth Ragh was waiting. It was clear from his posture that he had unpleasant news.

  Darzhee Kut bobbed at him. “What sad notes would you sing to me, rock-sibling?”

  “Chaos and crashing, Darzhee Kut. I have failed. The human ambassador, Caine Riordan, has escaped.”

  “Yes, I know. I received reports from our human partners. But their phrasing is that Riordan attacked President Ruap and then fled. You say escaped, which implies that he did not merely depart, but was imprisoned at the time he did so. What occurred between him and our human allies?”

  Urzueth told him. Darzhee Kut flexed restless mandibles. “Hu’urs Khraam was hasty, I think, to accept Senior Liaison Astor-Smath’s offer to provide Caine Riordan’s accommodations.”

  “I have thought the same thing, rock-sibling. I did not know it before I witnessed the exchanges between them this afternoon, but I suspect that Riordan’s first night in CoDevCo’s care might very well have been his last.”

  Darzhee Kut bobbed slightly. “It is pertinent to recall the many nearly fatal mishaps and mysterious attacks Riordan has endured in the past year. If he should be apprehended, it is imperative—imperative, Urzueth Ragh—that he be brought to our compound. As he requested.”

  “We sing the same song, to the note. I will go and pass the necessary word and then meet you at Hu’urs Khraam’s briefing within the hour.”

  “Just so.” Darzhee exhaled his familiar farewell and proceeded into the residential wing of the presidential compound—

  —but got no farther than the vestibule. Two technicians from the Remote Security Assets section were waiting there. “Speaker Kut,” said the smaller and slightly older one. “During our watch it is customary that we report any noteworthy successes, failures, anomalies to our superiors. They then indicate to whom we should direct news of such an event. Today we had a most unusual event, and our superior indicated that we must report it to you. Directly. Without revealing it to any of our nestmates.”

  Darzhee Kut grew cautious. “I thank you for your discretion. Now, what manner of event was this?”

  “It was a failure, sir. Or an anomaly. Actually, both.”

  “Please explain.”

  “We lost an automated patrol and security unit today, Speaker Kut, under unusual circumstances. Here is the report.” He deferentially passed a data tablet to Darzhee Kut who scanned down, and, before reaching the end, knew what he would see. “So you later discerned that the human you sent it to capture was Caine Riordan. And this was achieved with the biometric technology provided by the megacorporations? Excellent. You are sure that, at the end of the incident, Riordan was still alive?”

  “Yes, Speaker.”

  “You have done excellent work. I thank you for your attentiveness.”

  “Speaker Kut, there was a further anomaly we did not add to the report, but which you may see below, in this separate file.”

  “Why did you not include this further anomaly in the official report?”

  “Firstly, because we only learned of it after our shift of duty was concluded. But on consideration, we reasoned that it should not be shared in any data medium that may be seen by many eyes. Perhaps not all of which belong to our own species.”

  Overcoming his surprise at the subtlety of the technician, and faintly trepidatious as well, Darzhee bobbed his appreciation and asked, “What was this anomaly?”

  “It involves the fate of the expert system security unit we lost, Speaker Kut. There were evidently other humans waiting in or near the building in which it was
ambushed. Because after they disabled the unit, they disassembled it.”

  “They what?”

  “Disassembled it, Speaker Kut. Partially. Although inoperative, the unit’s electronics were mostly intact, and the humans removed them.”

  Darzhee Kut resisted the urge to retract his antennae. “I thank you for your report. I shall include parts of it in my briefing to First Delegate Khraam. Know that you have served the Wholenest most admirably in this matter and your names will be sung in harmony with the presentation of this datum. But be warned. You must share it no further. You have touched upon a sensitive matter that must be handled discreetly.”

  “Of course, Speaker Kut. We are honored to have our voices sung.”

  “And so they shall be.” With a polite bob, Darzhee Kut turned, and felt the world spin and reorient all in a single second. Caine Riordan had started the day in a safe ambassador’s berth, had almost been killed planetside, had escaped, had then met up with local rebels, was then almost recovered, but then—

  Although Darzhee Kut lacked the facts to prove it, he knew that Riordan had not merely fled from the unit that was destroyed, and had not merely tried to distract if from the rebels it had trapped at the end of that dead-end street. He had put himself out as bait. He had correctly reasoned that the Arat Kur were watching for him, that the unit would attempt to capture him, and that he could thus lure it into a trap that left it intact enough for the insurgents to lobotomize it. By now, they had surely passed the unit’s command and control package to their own experts for analysis.

  That much—that compromise of Arat Kur electronics and computing technology—Darzhee Kut had to report. But he could not mention Riordan’s name. If he did, it meant that the human’s status as a diplomat would be revoked. In short, it would mean issuing a death warrant for Riordan.

  But a further question presented itself. Even if the finer details of this incident remained obscure, what would Riordan do next? Something else that was particularly troublesome? And if so, was it not inevitable that both the Hkh’Rkh and the Arat Kur would endeavor to localize and eliminate such a threat—regardless of whether they had learned the threat was named Caine Riordan?