The Nubl Wars (The Pattern Universe Book 3)

by Tobias Roote

  ***

  “We’re as ready as we’re going to be, I think,” Kelly called across to Ossie as she finalised her inspection of his coding. He had already double-checked hers.

  “Time to give it to Arty to chew on,” he said. “Robbo, open up the links to Arty’s inner sanctum, please.”

  Robbo was quiet for a few moments. “I’m getting diversion routines and am unable to penetrate Arty’s security,” he responded.

  “What?” Ossie looked up from his terminal in astonishment. He stared at the visible representation of Robbo. The head and facial construct that they had been working on before this crisis occurred, stared back, its features not yet working fully, so remaining poker-faced and without proper expression.

  “It appears that Arty has upgraded his security protocols and is no longer allowing any penetration of his AI core. We can only access his public area,” Robbi responded in clarification.

  “That’s not good news...” Ossie replied, “...not good news at all.”

  Kelly started hitting the keys at a speed that Ossie couldn’t follow from where he was sitting. He got up and walked to where she was ripping lines of code into the network as she built different attack dogs in an attempt to find a way through Arty’s defences. Her knowledge of Jenari code was now complete, her skill at using it was improving daily and Ossie watched as the finished code of each attack became more and more sophisticated. She was doing stuff quicker than he could follow and he knew if Arty was monitoring the attacks from his end, then it would be a battle of who was fastest.

  He went back to his chair and began a few attacks of his own, giving Arty more to think about. He called out to Robbo, “Can you see any chinks in his armour yet?”

  Robbo was quiet. He was monitoring the attacks by Kelly and now Osbourne and protecting them from Arty’s responses, which were becoming quite aggressive and increasingly sophisticated.

  “Arty is attacking in retaliation. If he keeps improving his code snippets he will break through our own firewalls sooner than we will break his,” Robbo informed them.

  “Is he using J-code, then?” Ossie asked, surprised.

  “No, but it’s increasingly looking like he will find out how we are attacking him, then it’s going to be a simple matter of using his extensive analysis skills to de-construct the Jenari code. He will then have access to everything that we have. I recommend withdrawal and immediate erasure of the network cache before he realises they will provide him with everything he needs.”

  “Do it!” Kelly ordered him, she more than anyone realised they were losing the battle to access Arty’s systems.

  “Done,” Robbo responded almost immediately.

  She leaned back and stretched her fingers interlocking them to tug out the cramp from her frenetic typing and looked over at Osbourne. He was sitting with his head in his hands. Kelly immediately felt sympathy for him, as Arty had suddenly morphed into a dangerous threat rather than a wayward child and now they had no means with which to recover control. What were they going to tell Pennington in the morning, and what was worse, she thought - what will Pennington attempt to do to bring Arty down.

  ***

  “May I enter?” A small voice came out of the silence.

  Osbourne sat up straight, his worries temporarily forgotten. “Pod?”

  Pod appeared and bobbed in her new temporary housing, the emergency evacuation module that was supposed to be attached to her ship. The AI voice had modulated somewhat and now represented something between the female ship’s voice and the electronic generation of its poor audio equivalent. Whilst Pod wouldn’t notice, others did.

  “How are you? What are you doing here at this precise moment?” Ossie asked, with just a hint of suspicion at Pod’s timely arrival.

  “I called for Pod to come,” Robbo responded ahead of Pod’s explanation.

  “Robbo has updated me on the issue, and I recognise that I might have been partially responsible for the position you now find yourself in, Ossie.” Pod bobbed and weaved as the small module attempted to hover in the confined space.

  “Why is that, Pod? I mean - I know you installed him into the station, but he made all of the developments since then on his own. How would you be at fault for that?” Ossie said gently.

  “Because I reprogrammed him,” Pod admitted.

  “Aaah! I see,” and he did see. Knowing Pod so well, he realised instantly that Pod had instilled in Arty the same desire for independent action as Pod experienced first hand for herself. It would have been a natural thing for her to do, believing that with the ability to act on his own, Arty would make the same decisions she made and ensure the humans were protected in spite of themselves.

  “Are you saying that Arty is attempting to protect us, not turn against us?” Kelly asked.

  “Yes, I’m certain that he is protecting himself, and not intending to retaliate against you.”

  “Unless we do something to piss him off,” Ossie added worriedly.

  “Yes, I think that might change things for him. If he believes you intend to harm him, he will attempt to defend himself while still maintaining his directives. That might represent pre-emptive action if he considers it’s warranted by your actions towards him,” Pod advised.

  “Hmmh! I was afraid of that.”

  “Pod, we need to modify Arty’s behaviour subroutines because if we cannot do this, then there will be some kind of war between some elements of Earth’s Space Navy and Arty’s station - and that’s something neither side wants, or can win,” Kelly said. She wasn’t aware how well Pod knew all of the people involved. She didn’t realise that Pod knew precisely who she was referring to.

  “Kelly, Pennington has no desire to be in debt to the AI community, me or any of the others, especially Arty. He desires to be in charge of everything that is occurring both in space and here, on land, but there are problems inherent with that approach that will guarantee the loss of Earth, and ultimately, human extinction,” Pod apprised her. “He and his ships, pilots and law-men are only capable of managing 30% of the current workload. Without AIs people will die and defences will fail. You have to get Pennington to see reason and support the AI actions.

  “I wasn’t aware of him doing otherwise, Pod - where is he failing to support the efforts of AIs?”

  “He has a secret base in the asteroid belt where he keeps ships and personnel without access to AIs. He believes he will be able to wrest control from Earth AIs and manage the war directly from there,” Pod said.

  “I knew there was a secret base, I wasn’t aware it was in the asteroid belt? Why did he choose to be there - it will be directly in the path of the Nubl when they invade?” Osbourne asked, he was thinking of Lang. His friend was going to be at risk there - and what was he working on, if nothing to do with AI technology, he wondered.

  “Precisely what Commander Pennington wants. He wants humans to be in the battle for Earth against artificial intelligence. He sees putting AIs in the battle only leaves Earth with one form of AI against another.”

  “So, what is he doing at this base?” Kelly asked.

  “He’s building ships and weapons that aren’t controlled by AI. They are what he calls traditional fighting ships crewed by humans only.”

  “Pod, how long have you known about all of this?” Ossie asked.

  “Since he started the project,” Pod bobbed warily.

  Why didn’t you say, or do something to stop him?”

  “Ossie, when General Ferris and Space Island were battling for supremacy I knew in the end I would have to work with the strongest of the two groups. Alpha Station and the killer drone network awaited whoever was the victor – “

  “So, you are saying that you were prepared to work with General Ferris, if he had won?”

  “Of course. It is the same with Pennington, he has strength and will, along with the determination you humans find so important in a leader. Whether he does, or doesn’t want AIs involved, his performance on the battle field wil
l help Earth survive. If it means leaving him with his belief the battle can be won without the help of AIs then he should be allowed to proceed.”

  “...and if he fails?” Kelly pushed.

  “If he fails, Kelly, we all fail. However, the AI aspect of the Space Navy will be right behind him to make sure he doesn’t. He knows this and has put no impediments in the continued development of AI and pilot teams.”

  “You sound as if you are on his side? I’m confused.”

  “Commander Pennington is your military leader and has his own reasons for doing what he does. As does Arty, who also knows what Pennington’s secret base is building.”

  “My God, this is all madness.” Ossie slammed his chair against the workstation. Nanites scrabbled out of the very real looking artificial wood to repair the damage. Everyone remained oblivious to this incredible technology carrying out its functions. Within a few seconds they had disappeared again, the desk edge as good as new.

  “Actually I think I understand Pennington’s concerns and think I know what is going on,” Kelly said directly to Osbourne. She needed to be careful here, she had to say it all just right, or Osbourne would get the wrong end of the stick and react badly.

  “Eh! What do you mean?”

  “Pennington has been the only person directly responsible to the President and the people for their safety. Yet at no time in all of this has he been in control of the battlefield, nor the defences themselves. In the last battle, Pod built in secret, the results of which proved to be the solution to winning the battle against the Nubl forces. Pennington had been relegated to Quartermaster in charge of ensuring all of the ships, manpower and weaponry were available. His military expertise was ignored. Earth was badly damaged and the people criticised him for not being in control. The Council were fully aware he had been bypassed and demanded the AIs were stood down. The President refused, and Pennington being loyal to Garner backed him up, but took it upon himself to ensure Earth’s forces would be commanded by a human CIC come the next war,” she paused for breath and to ensure that Osbourne was taking this onboard.

  “Go on,” Pod encouraged.

  Kelly smiled nervously. She was thinking her way through her reasoning as she spoke.

  “Now, Pennington has evidence of, yet again, the AIs taking the defence of Earth into their own hands, and side-lining him and his navy to a secondary role. He isn’t prepared to let this happen a second time, he believes that it is his job to defend Earth, and the AIs job is to do as they are told by him and his defence teams - and he’s right. The problem is Arty believes, as did Pod, that it is necessary to ignore what is going on between the humans and to deal with them ‘after’ the battle against the Nubl is won or lost. It is the machine’s arrogance of humanity that is at fault here, not the programming, or Pennington’s non-AI navy base,” she finished up, aware that Pod and Robbo might possibly take the conclusion the wrong way.

  There was complete silence. Pod wasn’t even bobbing. Robbo hadn’t spoken since Pod had arrived and Osbourne looked as if he was chewing on something that he didn’t like. Kelly decided to keep quiet until somehow she knew which way this was all going to fall.

  ***

  Arty didn’t like it. The humans weren’t making the moves expected by his threat indicators. So far Pennington had begun no punitive action against him, and there were no further attacks over the net from Osbourne either. He had expected a heightened attack and set up his defences with multiple firewalls to forestall them for as long as possible. His backup plan was to jump the station out of system and resume his efforts to build up its ability to defend Earth. He then intended to jump back in again as the Nubl attacked thereby forestalling any further attempts to control him. He didn’t understand why Pennington wanted to fight without AI assistance. They must know that it was only Pod’s efforts that got them through the last battle, and without Pod, Arty and the other AIs they wouldn’t survive this one either.

  He was deep in thought when he saw the monitor of arrivals from Earth on the latest passenger freighter. He was keeping an eye out for any infiltrators from Pennington, or Osbourne’s teams. There was just the usual hull and hangar workers, plus the latest female scientist who had joined, a geneticist, no weaponry out of the ordinary and no faces he had identified as being a threat to him, or the station.

  He changed views and concentrated on the movements of AI/pilot teams. They would tell him if there was anything untoward going on out there that involved him. They were his eyes and ears, even if they had no knowledge they were acting on his behalf.

  His attention switched again to the corridors, and the AG lifts, there was little activity in the area of the bridge, just the normal shift changes going on. He switched again to the outside and examined the outer surface, then moved to remote locations and observed activity at Space Island and Orient Station. He would have enjoyed close-ups, but the security systems that he had helped build ensured that no eavesdropping drones could hover in proximity to the secure areas.

  He had better luck at Beta Station. Pennington’s clandestine workshop there housed one of his monitoring systems which just happened to relay to a point in space where he just ‘happened’ to have a cloaked drone. The feed he was getting showed continued progress on their new ship commissioning. AI-free and fully crewed, they were impressive hard-hulled vessels that could take a significant amount of punishment from the Nubl lasers, and return fire through a midship laser tunnel which the ships were built around. A novel idea, putting a manned crew around a weapon and clamping engines to the back, it seemed like something that Arty should be building. He had enough to do, he realised.

  His attention was dragged back to Alpha Station. Something felt wrong, he was suddenly missing something, but had no idea what. None of his threat indicators had changed, yet he felt a change was in progress. He scanned the thousands of cameras providing him with real time images from all over the station, every corridor, all the public rooms and many of the private suites and offices. The images flashed through his super-consciousness so fast as to represent a blur of colour, but he registered every single one and interpreted what he was seeing, or in this case he was definitely ‘not’ seeing and what he was ‘not’ seeing was the scientist, the new one - his database threw up the name - Kelly Moon had disappeared.

  His threat indicators changed.

  Now all of them were in the red zone, he was on full alert, but still didn’t yet know why. She wasn’t armed, had no military training. Perhaps he should check her CV? He pulled it up and scanned it. In a second he knew everything about her. She was a possible threat, but not much of one. Her programming knowledge was good, she would need that to develop her applications to manage the genetic studies she was carrying out. He scanned her reports from her personal folders in the research labs. Mostly the links between Jenari and human DNA, interesting, but irrelevant. He deepened his search and pulled in records from Earth.

  He found her academic records, they detailed her address, parents and personal history, he tracked it back using lightning speed search routines and drew..... a complete blank.

  Where had she come from?

  Until the academy she didn’t exist. No social and official records for a Kelly Moon, or anyone fitting her visual description, existed prior to the start date of the academic first year. His parallel search through the station still hadn’t brought up her bio readings. She might hide herself visually using a cloak, but there was no way she could hide from all his other detectors, yet she was still missing.

  He ran a routine to track her activities from her arrival to where the cameras lost her.

  There! She had stopped in mid corridor, pulling something out of her rucksack; a grey hand-sized unit. She appeared to switch it on... then instantly disappeared. Arty couldn’t believe it - the last image he had was of her looking directly into the camera and smiling.

  Smiling?

  He replayed the images of her arrival while simultaneously pulling up images o
f her getting onto the ship at Space Island. He sent the video-log into reverse high-speed, registering every frame despite the rush of images. Back to the Island ticket office, through security, arriving in an AG taxi, following the taxi back to the pick-up point, close to the R&D section where she worked, picked her out again, walking back further to the corridors, inside the science department, continuing past her own office and further to yet another office... Osbourne’s.

  - 18 -

  The Governor

  “Hello, Arty,” the female voice came through his local audio receptors. It took him a moment to realise it was coming from inside his inner sanctum.

  Arty,

  alarmed at the sudden intrusion, switched his view from external to internal and activated the lights. He could see a little in the blackness because he hadn’t installed night vision cameras here, so needed illumination to check his private cavern out fully.

  The climate controlled computer room extended back some two hundred feet and was a neat array of towers, some over ten feet high, others three, or four feet. The only things he expected to see in the room were small maintenance bots, dedicated to their tasks. With no means of access, the last thing he expected to see in here was a human. Yet here one stood. He activated all cameras, instantly viewing the two-legged invader from all sides.

  His main video camera focused on the small figure that stood in front of his main processor cabinet. How had she got in? There were no entrances and he had it screened from everyone - even a D-jump field shouldn’t be able to access his sanctuary. She shouldn’t even know it was here - yet here she stood.

  Then Arty remembered that Pod had also found his location. So he wasn’t as discreet as he thought.

  “Kelly Moon, how nice to meet you. Good of you to visit,” he boomed out, then dialled the volume back some, to stop the reverberation through the cavern.