The Belt: The Complete Trilogy

by Gerald M. Kilby

  “What?” said VanHeilding. “How many of these people are we talking about?”

  “The algorithm estimates a number in the hundreds, possibly as high as a thousand.”

  VanHeilding stood up. “A thousand… How can this be? It’s a radioactive wasteland.”

  “They live inside the mountains. This area has numerous caves and abandoned mines. It’s a warren.”

  “This cannot be allowed. If these people are off-grid, then they are in violation of the law. Their data belongs to the network. Any group of that size, no matter how remote, could potentially introduce gaps in the dataset, and by extension errors in the algorithm. They must be either assimilated or eradicated.”

  “Point taken, Pao. But the bigger question is whether these…vagabonds are part of the plan. Are they helping McNabb?” VanHeilding was now standing in the viewing gallery, looking down on the planet.

  “Unlikely. The algorithm has concluded that they are a secretive people, primitive even. Any foreign intrusion would be viewed with deep suspicion, even hostility,” said Marlyn.

  “So they could help us?” said Pris.

  “Not directly. But they could hinder McNabb and his team from progressing with their mission.”

  “They still need to be dealt with, and swiftly.” Pao’s avatar rippled.

  “Agreed,” said Yoko.

  “The algorithm concurs, and to implement this course of action, it requires the deployment of human ground forces. Thirty should be sufficient.”

  “Very well.” VanHeilding waved a hand. “Give the order to dispatch thirty of our security personnel from here on the orbital immediately.”

  “This is turning into a VanHeilding operation, Fredrick,” said Pao. “Let’s hope you do a better job of it than the last time you butted heads with McNabb and his team.”

  “I assure you that they are going nowhere. Their plan has already failed; this is simply a mop-up operation.”

  The avatars went silent for a moment. It seemed that there was nothing left to say. One by one they signed off, extinguishing like candle flames in a draught, leaving Fredrick VanHeilding with nothing more than his thoughts.

  As he looked out, he could already see several shuttles preparing to leave the orbital, packed with security personnel bound for the Wasteland. Soon, he thought, McNabb will finally be dead. Maybe this is a good time to tidy up the rest of his crap? It’s something I should have done a long time ago. My mercy is my weakness. Time to change that.

  12

  So It Begins

  The war room, as it was known, wasn’t really a war room as such. Its purpose and function in the subterranean metropolis of Shin-Au-Av was not a place where battle plans were drawn up, or great campaigns planned—until now. Neither was it just a room. It was, in fact, a series of old stone buildings that had been used as storerooms and workshops ever since its current occupants had arrived and began living in these ancient ruins. Over time, as the citizens fabricated ever more elaborate and complex systems of growing food, filtering air, pumping water, and distributing energy, they tended to localize the monitoring of all these disparate systems in one place. Here, the technology of their existence could be monitored and managed, and so it became known as the war room.

  The technology was rudimentary, like most else in the citadel. Antique monitors charted the rise and fall in demand for resources by the systems that enabled such a society to survive in this subterranean cocoon. Over the years, it had been added to and greatly expanded to accommodate a multitude of buildings. From their roofs, great bunches of cables and tubes snaked their way all across the central cavern basin and out to every corner of the vast cave. Some of this cabling went even further, extending beyond the cavern and its connecting tunnels out to the very exterior of the mountain itself. These provided the conduit for the cameras by which the overseers in the war room could view the outside world. The feed from these cameras was rendered in pixelated, muted color across six mismatched and slightly disheveled monitors clustered together in the war room.

  An equally disheveled technician sat in front of them and pointed at several specks moving across the horizon. “There! You see them?”

  Tugo rested a hand on the back of the operator’s chair and grunted. “Shuttles.”

  Beside him, several of the tribe’s elders also watched as the craft began to circle around before finally landing in the valley, where they proceeded to disgorge a large contingent of well-armed security personnel.

  Tugo and some of the others had been monitoring the buildup of drones and personnel for some time. Each new observation compounded on the last, and soon they began to lose count of the military resources accumulating against them. An estimated fifty scout drones already buzzed in the sky above, each probing and testing the access tunnels and mine shafts that peppered the area. These, at least, were easy to deal with, and the tribe had learned a long time ago how to evade detection.

  The scout drone’s primary function was observation, not engagement. That said, they did possess a single, low-power pulsed energy weapon. It was lethal at short range, but once fired, the drone would have to wait for a few seconds before it could fire again, giving its target a chance to take cover, or fire back—assuming they survived the first encounter. But the tribe’s primary defense against detection by this drone was simply to block up the access tunnels with rubble. The drone didn’t have the capability to circumvent this primitive defense; its weapons system was too weak to be effective against a mound of rock.

  Tugo wasn’t concerned with these drones. But there were also ten to fifteen security drones now joining the hunt, and these were of more concern. They were bigger, with a powerful laser system coupled with a formidable pulsed-energy plasma cannon. These could make short work of the hastily constructed rubble barricades that the tribe was now assembling. But their size—almost three meters in diameter—made them nowhere near as aerially dexterous as their smaller siblings, the scout drones. They couldn’t navigate the narrow shafts and tunnels that a human could, so by being careful, the tribe could also avoid coming into contact with these machines.

  But physical troops—that was a different matter entirely. That was ominous.

  Several thoughts rushed through Tugo’s mind in a swirl of trepidation. There was no way to look at this development and see any positive outcomes; they simply had no defense. Sure, they could fight, but that would mean revealing their existence and the true strength of their numbers. Once that genie was out of the lamp, there would be no putting it back.

  “Shit,” was all he could manage to say.

  “They know we’re here,” said Adsa, who had been monitoring the buildup for some time. “We’ve been discovered.”

  “They’re just looking for that crew,” said Esa. “They don’t know anything about us.”

  Adsa wasn’t convinced. “I don’t like it. This is bad.”

  “This is your fault, Tugo. If you hadn’t brought that crew here, then none of this would be happening,” said Padooa, who had just arrived in the war room after hearing about the buildup. “You have put our very existence in jeopardy.”

  “That crew sealed our fate as soon as they landed,” said Tugo. “Bringing them here made no difference.”

  “We should hand them over before it’s too late. All they want is that crew. Once they have them, we will be safe again—they’re not interested in us.”

  “You really think so, Adsa? My guess is they already know about our existence. You seem to forget we’re dealing with an AI. They know way more than you could possibly imagine. It has most likely figured out, from all the tiny bits of data those scout drones have collected in the last few hours, that people are living in these caves. It has probably extrapolated our exact number based on nothing more than the level of moisture in the air. You have absolutely no idea how much an AI can divine from something as innocuous as how the wind blows.” He looked around at the others. “They know we’re here. They know we’re living off-gr
id, and they’re here to do something about it.”

  “But that crew is still their top priority,” said Adsa.

  “If what they told us at the council meeting is true—and I have no reason to doubt them—then yeah, that crew is number one on their list.” Tugo went back to looking at the monitors.

  “Then we should hand them over now. Release them immediately so that they’re taken by the security forces—that’s really all they want.” Adsa was adamant.

  “Maybe that’s all the VanHeilding Corporation wants, but the algorithm will not countenance a cohort of our size living off-grid. We will either be assimilated or eliminated.” Tugo was beginning to sound pessimistic.

  “So, what are we going to do?” said Adsa.

  Tugo shrugged. “That’s a very good question.”

  “Screw them,” said Esa. “I say we fight.”

  “We should put this to the council.” Padooa was resolute; Tugo could sense it in her.

  “Agreed. We need to establish a consensus on what action to take.” Adsa, as usual, sided with Padooa.

  “Sir, you better take a look at this.” The technician pointed to a camera feed that had focused itself, as best it could, on a cluster of shuttles that had landed in the plateau. Around twenty security personnel were milling around in several groups, checking weapons and getting orders. But in the background, Tugo could see several industrial robots extraditing themselves from the cargo hold of one of the shuttles. The robots were the approximate height of a human, with tri-pointed tracked wheels at their base. The central body was well-armored and bulky, with two highly articulated arms. These machines would have no problem moving rock and rubble.

  “Shit, mining bots. That’s all we need.” He stepped back from the monitors and turned to his second-in-command, Pliny, who had also been watching the military buildup. “Get Sasha, Renton, and the others. Tell them to meet me at the armory on the lower level.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And tell them this shit just got real.”

  His second-in-command nodded and jogged off.

  Tugo looked at the monitor again for a second, then placed a hand on the technician’s shoulder. “I’ve got work to do, but you let me know if anything else lands, okay?”

  “Will do, sir.”

  Tugo turned to the elders. “No one touch that crew until I get back.”

  “Where are you going? We have an emergency council meeting to attend. This is critically important,” said Padooa.

  He spun around. “Where am I going? I’ll tell you where. I’m going to organize the defense of this city, the defense of everything that we have shed blood and sweat and tears over for the last decade. That’s where I’m going.” He stabbed an index finger at them. “You go and talk about it all you want. And while you’re at it, if you hear the sounds of explosions and screaming, that’s our people dying out there.” He spun around again and strode out.

  By the time Tugo arrived at the armory, his anger and frustration had receded somewhat. The others were all there, those that he had trained for this very moment—a moment that all of them feared would arrive someday. Well, today was that day.

  By the law of averages, it was a wonder they hadn’t been discovered long before now. Perhaps it had given them all a false sense of security, that they could live free and be left alone in peace. As for the Elders, he couldn’t really blame them for their panic. Direct confrontation was not their ethos. After all, they were the ones who chose to separate themselves and their followers from the slavery of the outside world. But Tugo was under no such illusions. He knew the algorithm would come for them one day, and there would be no escape…only the will to fight.

  The armory was an ancient stone building, isolated on a wide terrace on the northwestern quadrant of the cavern. The stonework was much older than most of the other buildings, rougher cut, but still spoke of great skill and craftsmanship by those who built it back through the mists of time. The walls were almost a meter thick, the sills above the doors and windows carved with strange symbols whose meaning had long been forgotten. They had chosen this building for both its strength and its relative isolation—just in case it accidentally blew up. Such were the risks associated with storing antique ballistic weapons and ammunition. But as Tugo glanced along the shelves and racks, he could see that they were all empty, save for the odd broken relic here and there.

  His group was all here, so he wasted no time exchanging pleasantries. Instead, he sat on the slab floor, grabbed a small chalk stone, and scratched out a basic map of the cavern and its main access routes. The group gathered around.

  “Have all these points been blocked up?”

  His second-in-command, Pliny, knelt beside him. “Yes, all routes leading to the cavern are blocked with stone and rubble. We’ve also got teams in behind, all armed as best we can.”

  “Is it true they brought in manpower…and robots?” Sasha asked.

  “Yeah, around thirty or so are heading our way. They’ve got two mining bots with them.”

  The group looked anxiously from one to the other.

  “Those bots will make short work of any barriers we put up, so here’s what we need to do: we need to create a secondary fallback ring. The gap between the two should be set with whatever explosives we have left.” Tugo’s hand moved around the map on the floor, scratching out rough locations. “When they’re through the first barrier, wait until the tunnel fills up, and then blow it. That should slow them down.”

  “What about after that? What should we do then?” said Renton.

  Tugo went back to scratching rough marks on the map. “Create low barricades to use for cover, around fifty meters back. As soon as they break through, we can start picking them off.” He looked back at the group. “Any questions?”

  They shook their heads and mumbled for a moment. “What about the Elders?” said Renton. “What do they say?”

  Tugo rubbed his chin and stared at them. “They’re talking about it.”

  This invoked a laugh. “Great…that’s useful. I feel so much safer now.”

  Tugo stood up. “They have served us well in the past, and maybe if we get through this, they will do so in the future. I’ll talk to them, see what they can do to calm those who are too young or too old to fight.”

  “And that crew we captured, what about them?” said Pliny.

  “They’re the reason we’re in this mess,” said Renton. “They brought all this down on us.”

  “That they did. But they may yet have a part to play.” Tugo stood up. “We don’t have much time. Start getting the word out to everyone, and start getting those barriers built.”

  As the group began to disperse, Tugo picked out two fighters. “You two come with me.”

  “Yes, sir. Where to?”

  “We’re going to visit that crew. We’re going to do something we should have done from the very beginning—and maybe, just maybe we’ll have a chance to live through this day.”

  13

  Beyond the Citadel

  Scott and the crew had been herded back into their holding pen after the session with the council. Scott, for his part, still found it hard to believe that the elders of the tribe wouldn’t help them in their mission, preferring instead to bury their heads in the sand. The algorithm, and the AIs that controlled it, wasn’t going away. In fact, it would be ramping up its attempts to find them and the quantum device. But he wasn’t the only one who was frustrated.

  “I really don’t understand why these morons don’t want to help us. I mean, this will secure their future.” Cyrus waved his arms in anger.

  “You have to see it from their perspective,” said Steph. “They don’t just hate the algorithm…they despise everything it stands for: the complete control of humanity by an AI. So simply handing that control over to a QI is just more of the same, as far as they’re concerned.”

  Scott could see how they could think this. What was a QI but just another computer? Yet the reality was very di
fferent. As things stood in the System, the QIs were humanity’s best chance of regaining order. But during the session, he came to realize that there was a deeper reason—one he’d failed to consider before revealing their mission to the tribe initially. It was simply that the ideology which sustained the tribe was the belief that one day humanity would ultimately destroy itself, and they would then be free to leave Shin-Au-Av and start a new and better era of human civilization atop the ashes of the old. They didn’t just want the algorithm destroyed, but the whole rotten and corrupt world gone.

  Yet he sensed that there were those around that table who didn’t entirely share this view. But their voices weren’t heard; instead, they bowed to the party line. Maybe their numbers were too small, or maybe there was a very good reason they chose not to challenge the authority of the majority. Either way, it mattered little now. Here they were back in the cell—back to square one.

  Yet before they could start to work out how they might escape, Spinner needed to be brought up to speed. Neither he nor Jonesy had known the true intent of the mission, and now that it was all out in the open, he wanted to know what the hell was going on.

  The two specialist mining engineers had been contracted to help them get into the sublevels of the Dyrell facility. They also knew that the mission had its dangers, but that was all. What the crew was planning once they gained access had been kept from them.

  “So, what you’re saying is that we’re planning to screw over the AI…the algorithm that controls those drones that killed Jonesy?”

  “Yep, that’s the plan.”

  “Well, count me in. Let’s go take them down.” It seemed that Spinner, far from being pissed off about being kept in the dark, was now eager to seek revenge. But even though it was better to have him focused on the mission than mooching around, he still viewed getting to the facility without specialist equipment as an almost impossible task.