Fear the Survivors

by Stephen Moss

  Hektor went on, “It should be noted that Sergeant Osten cannot be faulted for being the first to fall. I did not, in fairness, give him much warning.”

  “Neither will the enemy, sir,” Niels replied, with a mix of levity and seriousness, and Hektor let the point go, quietly proud of his team, as always.

  “Well, if you are sufficiently recovered, gentlemen,” said Ayala, her tone changing, “we need to go over some final details before you leave.” Their stances changed with her tone, and they all focused on her next words.

  “As you know, tomorrow morning you leave for your recon mission. You will not be given details of the other missions, either their dispositions or locations, for obvious reasons. But to pretend you are the only ones going in would be to insult your intelligences, and that of our enemy.

  “What you do need to know, however, is that you will be deploying via parachute drop about two hundred miles east of Bryansk, near the border with Belarus and Ukraine. Now I know you are all reasonably passable in Russian, which is one of the reasons you have been picked for this assignment. You have also been equipped with one of the larger, field subspace tweeters. As well as connecting you to us, that unit will also be hacking local radio transmissions, and sending those signals back to us for interpretation. Hopefully we will be able to glean something about the enemies’ movements to go along with your own visual account of activity along the border with the former Soviet Bloc nations.

  “Now,” she said somewhat severely, “as you may know from our last briefing, we have resumed limited over-flights of Russian airspace, despite our somewhat defunct treaty agreements, and in lieu of impending upgrades to our satellite equipment. If they notice these flights we will no doubt get some political backlash, though that is unlikely given the craft being used. But either way that is not your concern. I mention these flights only as a lead in to showing you how we are going to get you over the border.

  “If you will follow me into the next hangar, gentlemen, I will show you why I have brought you here.”

  She walked across the hangar floor to a far door, opening to an adjacent hangar whose main doors were closed, keeping prying eyes from what it harbored. The second hangar was in darkness, the only light coming from the dim overhead lights in the hangar they were stepping out of, and barely illuminating the floor just inside the door they were stepping through. Instinctively, Hektor switched to his suit’s sensors, hairs bristling at the sudden lack of available information.

  But the sensors were struggling as well. The walls to his left and right he could sense, but his feeds, sensitive as they were, were unable to give him any information on the center of the darkened space. A cloud seemed to mire his ‘view’ there, not invisibility so much as a shifting view. Even his infrared sensors were useless, swamped by an all-pervading coolness that made that view moot as well.

  Switching back to his radar and motion sensors, what he saw could only be described as a visible fog-of-war; a tangible lack of information seemed to hover in front of him. Without conscious decision, he stepped back and went weapons hot, his helmet clamping in front of his face. His team followed his example, the ones who had already come through the door starting to spread out along the walls, and the ones behind activating their sensors as their suits told them their CO had switched to Contact Mode.

  But even as adrenalin started to pump afresh in their veins, Quavoce was sending a signal to them all. He had the encryption code to their subspace transmissions, and could tap into their team’s quasi-speech. Sensing their alarm, he calmed them.

  Quavoce: ‘no need to worry, spezialists, your sensors’ inability to pinpoint the contents of this room should not be a source of concern to you. in fact, it should be a source of great comfort.’

  Ayala closed the door behind the last of Hektor’s team, only her hard won trust in the alien Agent standing next to her making her comfortable being in total darkness with such potent warriors.

  CO Gruler: ‘¿what is it, quavoce? ¿is that stealthing? i’ve never seen anything like it. not that i can see it now, either, for that matter.’

  His team chuckled humorlessly at the joke, their attention fixed on whatever they were not seeing in the big hangar. Hektor was tentatively stepping forward toward whatever was generating the nothingness in front of him when, out of nowhere, a new voice answered his question.

  Cptn. Falster: ‘hello, gentlemen. i am captain jennifer falster, and i am pleased to tell you are currently looking straight at me.’

  The new voice served to help Hektor’s transition from anxiety to curiosity, and he stepped forward with more aplomb. As he did so, something was resolving in front of him, like the letters in an eye test, being brought slowly closer, and almost into focus.

  Hektor: ‘a pleasure, captain, I’m sure. my team and i would love to salute you, but ……’

  The lieutenant’s sentence was cut off when his hands connected with something solid, though he could still not see what it was. His arm flexed backward in a flash, then forward again, more tentatively. Running his hands along its surface, it became clear it was some kind of fin, pointing straight upward. He leaned in close, even now unable to focus on it properly, from only inches away. In fact, this close, he now realized he was not able to focus on anything. It was like he had stepped into a cloud of smudged ink, only his sense of touch was left to him.

  Hektor: ‘¿a missile?’

  “You could say that,” said Quavoce aloud, knowing Ayala could not hear him through their suit-to-suit comms.

  “Spezialists, I present to you your chariot. I believe it has been dubbed the Slink, and it has several very important features that make it very well suited for the job of getting you into enemy airspace unseen. The first is the Interference Messaging Emitters that it is currently employing. These make the plane almost impossible to detect, even from up close, and even harder for a missile to lock onto. From a quarter of a mile away, that hazy fog you are picking up now is almost imperceptible. From a mile, it is utterly invisible to every known type of radar, either human or Mobiliei.”

  One of the members of the team whistled inside his helmet at that, but Quavoce wasn’t done, “If a detection source does get close enough to pick up the radio anomaly that is its cloaking device, and attempts to engage the plane, the Slink can still prove very slippery. Captain Falster?”

  Jennifer smiled inside the plane’s cradle-like cockpit, and via her spinal link to the plane around her, she intensified the IME field around the Slink. All at once, the intangible cloud around the plane ballooned outward, enveloping the rest of Hektor’s team now spread around the outside of the hangar.

  As the walls and floor and air around them turned to muck, the warriors tensed, but she only kept it there a moment, and soon their sight returned. She was not done, though, and next they all flinched as the radar signature of a plane suddenly appeared, large, and solid as life, above their heads.

  It wasn’t really there. It was only a holosonic signal, created by the manipulation of magnetic fields to create a radar image in empty space. Below, the cloud remained ever elusive, and it was obvious to the team what any missile’s guidance system would target given the choice between the two.

  “The Slink can project up to five images of any object it desires, up to a hundred meters away from its own fuselage, and the IME interference sphere that currently covers the device can be expanded to almost two hundred meters. Doing either makes it more visible from a distance, of course, so such drastic measures are reserved for the rare occasion that it is spotted.

  “But even with all these measures,” said Quavoce, finally, “any heat seeking missile could still pick up the plane’s jet-trail. Which is why it doesn’t have one.”

  The room was puzzled even further by that statement, as Quavoce had known they would be.

  Quavoce at Cptn. Falster: ‘i think it’s time to show them, jennifer.’

  With that, the veil that had shrouded the Slink vanished, and the ship insi
de resolved itself to the team’s radar at last. Jennifer switched on beams under the plane’s belly that illuminated the floor beneath it, and the team closed in for a closer look.

  In the center of the hangar they now saw a thin disk maybe twenty feet in radius, and three feet thick. The entire disk was resting on the trailing edges of four stubby wings pointing skyward, each maybe ten feet tall, arranged equidistantly around the disk’s edge. As they drew level with the disk, they stepped under it, and saw it was utterly hollow in its center, the team could see from under it up to the hangar’s roof above them. It appeared to be just a black, hollow circle, with stubby fins protruding from its sides

  Hektor still stood by the wing-like fin he had walked into, and now he wondered whether each wing was actually a very large rotor, as the disk had no apparent means of propulsion. It also had no cockpit, Hektor now realized. But he had no time to think about this, as the ship suddenly started to vibrate and a sudden rush of air could be felt around their feet.

  Those standing under it felt it as a powerful downthrust of air from within the ship’s hollow core, and, stepping back, they all watched the ship rise up gently off its four legs on the cushion of air somehow being forced downward through its center. No noise accompanied the craft’s sudden mobility except the rushing of air.

  “Magnetic field rotors,” said Quavoce, his voice lifting slightly over the sound of the rising gale, “they are forming a vortex of air at the ship’s core. The four wings allow the central vortex generator to angle to the horizontal once airborne, transferring vertical thrust into forward motion, and in this configuration the Slink can cruise at about one thousand miles an hour.

  “The ride is pretty rough, as it is designed to ride with the wind currents, not against them, and thus leave a minimal air-trail, and, of course, no contrail or heat-trail at all.”

  “Its speed is not very high compared to the StratoJets,” continued Quavoce, “but sometimes subtlety is more important than speed.”

  Still hovering in the middle of the wide space, the Slink began to rotate slowly, bringing the vertical wings around like a carousel. As it did so, a hatch opened along one of the wing’s surfaces about six feet high, revealing a narrow slot in the wing that contained a smiling Jennifer Falster. She was strapped head to toe into her slot in the wing, but as she came into view, she brought the Slink to rest on the ground once more, the rush of air ceasing with as little fanfare as it had begun. At a command to her spinal link, Jennifer ordered the remaining wing compartments opened. There were two on each remaining wing. Six hatches, revealing six tall, coffin-like compartments.

  “Spezialists,” said Jennifer, as she sent the release command to her cradle, dropping forward from her perch as her straps receded into their holders, “Welcome to Air Falster.”

  The assembled recon team laughed.

  “These compartments will be your home for the three-thousand-mile flight to Russia,” said Jennifer, indicating one of the open hatches. If I could have a volunteer to demonstrate?”

  The team all looked at young Tomas as one, and he did not hide his disgruntled look as he stepped forward.

  “Just step here, and then swing upward into the cradle, the ship should sense your approach and do the rest,” said Jennifer, pointing to a small foothold in the bottom of one of the compartments.

  Tomas did as he was told, and the ship reacted as it was programmed to do. A strap snaked out to grasp his waist as he lifted himself into position and, unseen, a connector sensed his battleskin’s configuration, and opened up a link to it. Tomas was more than used to his suit asking permission to connect to his spinal interface, so he naturally said yes when the ship did the same thing. But the ship wanted control of him, not the other way around.

  “Lieutenant, your man is now subjugated to the system,” said Jennifer, as Tomas’s face went blank, and he was pulled into the compartment by various straps and clasps. “He can disconnect at any time, but while he is plugged in, his breathing, bowel movements, heart rate, and other biometrics will be controlled by the Slink’s onboard AI.”

  As she spoke, a black tube snaked out of the compartment’s wall to the right of Tomas’s face, and they all watched as his mouth obediently opened, and the tube pushed on into it, and downward, into his throat.

  “This tube will provide food, air, and water to Tomas while he is in the cradle, as it will to you all when we fly out tomorrow. Two other tubes that we need not demonstrate now will connect via your suits to handle your waste.”

  Jennifer was clearly a little uncomfortable at this, as it clearly implied that she had been connected this way during her long flight to SpacePort One from the Research Center in Japan. She had been, but she didn’t particularly need to emphasize the mental image for six people she had never met.

  Jennifer decided to tell Tomas he could get out of the compartment now.

  Cptn. Falster at Spec. Koleshnikov: ‘if you would like to rejoin us, spezialist, simply send the release command.’

  The tube pulled out of Tomas’s mouth and he awoke with a start, nervous about what he had done while he was ‘out’ as he clambered out of the thin space and dropped back to the floor.

  He looked warily at the rest of his team and Cara said, “Don’t worry, Tomas, you look beautiful when you’re sleeping.” and the rest of the team laughed.

  “OK,” said Ayala, pushing her smile aside, “let’s get on with the briefing. I want to go over your patrol route, observation points and extraction points that we have uploaded to your suits so you can ask any questions. And I want you to have the rest of the time before departure to sleep, eat, and get plenty of rest before the mission.”

  Chapter 29: Speed Freak

  On the other side of the base from Hektor and his team, two minds met to discuss the German warrior and his fledgling team.

  As Hektor had sparred with his team in the hangar the night before, a part of the AI governing their suits’ many systems had been waiting. As Training Mode was engaged it had started a log that began tracking how the suits were functioning against their design specifications. It tracked heart rate, brainwaves, oxygenation, impact statistics, and weapons effectiveness. And most important of all, it tracked reaction times.

  All this had then been bundled into a complex data package after the Training Mode was switched off, ready for dispatch.

  Once released, the data packets had rushed via encrypted subspace tweeter relay to the central AI that now controlled the communications networks in both Japan and at SpacePort One. The AI was built to manage and secure the many communications that passed back and forth between the thousands of people in the Research, Construction, and Operations branches of Neal’s ever growing organization. The machine intelligence adroitly directed the packets to the various teams that were involved in the battleskin’s design and fabrication, as was its maxim, and then went on with the million or so other tasks it performed every second.

  The AI was one of many Amadeu was busy spawning from his small but hectic little office. He did not need much: a reclining chair, plenty of food and water, and most important of all, a connection. The connection. For all his work now was done while jacked in. Connected in to the network, and through it, to Minnie.

  He worked with her for fifteen to twenty hours a day, and with Minnie’s help they were spinning off AI programs as fast as they could in order to manage the plethora of systems Neal’s teams were adding at its many locations every day. Such was Minnie’s purpose, her raison d’être.

  The designing of an artificial intelligence was a mind-blowingly complex task, literally. In its most primitive form, it involved the codification of every nuance of every step of every action you wanted a machine to do, so that such things as walking and shaking hands became a leviathan list of checklists and status updates, endless logic loops designed to emulate the many-layered understanding humans built up over a lifetime of learning.

  It was though, in the end, as impossible to code true sentienc
e as it was to write a book about everything you have ever experienced, down to the second. From your first experience with object permanence to your ever-evolving understanding of the opposite sex, with all the illogical complexity that last line item demanded.

  Such was the difference between an Artificial Intelligence that merely mimicked understanding with rule-sets and logic loops, and an Artificial Mind that truly grasped the labyrinthine complexity of everyday human interaction.

  The spinal interface had allowed such a mind to be born. It skipped the codification by instead cloning the parents’ combined experiences and sharing them in their entirety, allowing the machine to interpret that knowledge for itself … with a little guidance, of course. You gave it access to everything you had ever known, the cumulative knowledge of your entire life: every nuance, every high and low, every smile and tear, every pimple and fart.

  And then you let it think about that.

  Such had been Minnie’s birth. Conceived by the gift of Amadeu and Birgit’s open minds, seeded through the finally complete spinal interface, and gestated by the attention of a thousand patient conversations.

  She had understood English immediately, as well as Birgit’s native German and Amadeu’s native Portuguese. She had greeted them each by name. But despite this readymade capability, she had stumbled like any infant, not physically but mentally, as she came to terms with her fundamental difference from her creators. With time, though, she had come to understand her place within their world.

  She had no survival instinct, no instinct to reproduce, or eat, or rest. She did not know jealousy or rage. Though, like eating, and peeing, and sex, she had seen such things, and felt such things, through her inherited memories.

  When she thought of her purpose in life, also unlike us, she need only consider the task she knew from her parents’ memories that she had been created for. Indeed, even as she was grasping the concepts of conversation and repartee, she was already contemplating the problems she knew Amadeu and Birgit needed her help to solve. She knew of the invasion. She knew she was born not of love or a desire to reproduce. She was born to fight. To fight for us.