Old Guy and the Planet of Eternal Night (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 6)

by Timothy J. Gawne

  The Order of the Librarians Temporal offers only one gift: properly curated data. It is simultaneously far weaker and far stronger than non-initiates realize.

  I was walking through the colony. It’s still mostly a collection of low sheds made of corrugated sheet metal, sprawling out a couple of kilometers in every direction from the now almost completely denuded skeletal remains of the original colony ship. Nevertheless, it’s neatened up a lot: the power and water lines are all buried, and the streets even have little signs giving them names.

  We’ve built ramparts around the city, and a ditch surrounded by minefields and AI-controlled free-fire zones. We started out making the defensive perimeter a circle (minimum fence for maximum area) but a circular plan drove people crazy. Everyone wanted a regular grid of streets, so now we are surrounded by walls that are a square five kilometers on a side. Technically we are a city, but everyone refers to the place as “The Fortress.”

  After the rupture, the name “Freedom (IV)” that our erstwhile president chose for the planet fell into disuse. “Midnight” had a strong run, but for some reason “The Planet of Eternal Night” ended up winning out by popular usage. It’s a long and awkward term, but then we hardly ever refer the planet directly. There is nothing on it of use to us; it’s just there.

  I passed a couple of six-year old boys playing soccer in the street. One of them saw me and, startled, whispered to his friend and pointed at me. They looked at me with big eyes. I waved at them. There was some skepticism about me after the break with the executives, but ten years of defending the colony has made me a minor hero.

  I never ever expected to be considered a hero of any sort. But it’s good to be a hero.

  The planet remains completely dark. There is only the pool of our own lights surrounding us. Outside we keep the lights on all the time, in case the monsters come, but inside the sheds we dim the lights to synchronize our circadian rhythms to a 24-hour clock.

  In some ways the darkness is a blessing. I’ve heard of other colonies with natural cycles of daylight far removed from what humans can naturally synchronize to, and it can lead to problems. Here we can set our days to whatever we want and the planet doesn’t care.

  Over it all looms the armored golden tower of the presidential palace. Nobody has had any contact with the people inside the executive zone since the rupture. (‘The rupture’ sounds so much better than ‘the mutiny’ or ‘the revolt’). We’ve argued over that many times, but we never got the nerve (or the stupidity) to try to talk to them, and as the years went on, it got easier and easier to ignore them.

  We’ve bolted the doors to their zone shut, and set alarms and booby-traps around it, but they’ve never tried to break out. I find that strange. In their situation, I certainly would have. Maybe they’re all dead by now. Or maybe, as Pascal has suggested, they are all insane and the idea has never occurred to them.

  The monsters. They come with no pattern, in ones and twos, or in hordes, small and nasty or big and lumbering. There was a period of over a year where none came at all; but sometimes we face weeks-long sieges with multiple waves.

  There are endless debates about what this is all about. Some claim that the planet itself has a collective consciousness and that it’s deliberately creating new lifeforms as a kind of immune system to drive out the alien intruders (which would be us). Others that inscrutable super-intelligent computers are experimenting on us, or that we have stumbled into a naturally hostile self-evolving ecology, or an abandoned testing ground for alien bioweapons. I belong to the faction that believes that there is a single controlling intelligence and it’s just messing with us when it gets bored, but that’s only my feeling. I have neither more nor less hard data on this matter than any other person.

  All of our attempts at setting up networks of satellites or scout drones are rapidly neutralized. Long-range manned patrols or attempts to settle other areas of the planet are sometimes left alone, but only for a time. Eventually these are wiped out or driven back to the main colony, by one set of monsters or another.

  The big lumbering types we’re getting pretty good at killing. Increasingly it’s the smaller infiltration and ambush creatures that are giving us trouble. You can have a man-portable plasma cannon that could turn a megaphant into a pile of ash, but round a corner and have a tiny stiletto-bug zip out of hiding and jab its neurotoxin-laden stinger into the back of your neck, and you’re done.

  I had had an idea about that, and had set up a meeting with the head of the weapons sub-division of general engineering. His name was Hyman Rinseler, and he was a talented engineer and a good friend. I entered his workshop through the plastic sheeting door (someday we promise ourselves that we will all have real doors, but there is always something else more important). The workshop was a large shed with multiple long workbenches, the surface of each was covered in piles of random electronic and mechanical components.

  Some engineers like to have everything perfectly in order, all tools lined up in racks, all unused counter space clean and spare, but Hyman is the kind that thrives on chaos. Over the years I haven’t found evidence for one style of engineer being any more effective than the other.

  “Powered armor,” I said. “I want you to make us some suits of powered armor.”

  Rinseler crossed his arms and grunted. “Humph. Powered armor is all the rage in children’s adventure stories, but I had heard that it was never practical in the field. Too many joints, not as effective as fully automated systems. What do you want powered armor for?”

  “It’s true, past attempts at fielding human troops in powered armor failed, but that was back on Earth. We’re not fighting stand-up battles against a modern military, we’re dealing with exotic biological monsters. It’s dangerous to use non-sentient AIs inside the colony. They make too many stupid mistakes, and the time lag makes remote-controlled weapons relatively ineffective. Right now close combat with animals is taking a serious toll on my troops, and I’m not happy about it.”

  “Don’t you already have body armor?” said Rinseler.

  “Certainly, but it’s ballistic armor designed to defend against shrapnel and light projectile fire. It’s ineffective against penetrating stingers or blades, and doesn’t give complete coverage. I need something tougher, and all-around, that can defend against jaws and stingers and bonesaws and acid sprays and zombie spores and all the rest. Can you do it?”

  Rinseler got that far-away look that he gets when he’s thinking about a technical problem. In this state a neurotoxic multipede could have reared up and kissed him on the nose and he wouldn’t have noticed. Finally he snapped back to reality and refocused his eyes on me. “Yes. I can get five prototypes ready in two months. In the meantime I want to show you my latest project. I have developed an efficient system for turning certain classes of medical waste directly into vodka.”

  “Hyman, I always said that you were a genius.”

  --------------------

  Two months later I showed up at Hyman’s shop, and sure enough, there were five suits of powered armor ready and waiting. Three were of an identical medium design, one was a heavy model, the last a lighter scouting unit. I had brought Lieutenant Villers, Sergeant Brendan, and Corporals Wolfram and Harlan with me.

  I eyed one of the medium suits. It certainly looked powerful, with enough brackets on its back, shoulders and upper arms to carry a reinforced squad’s worth of weapons, but somehow it was more awkward looking than I had expected. The back bulged up and out in a pronounced hump, probably to make space for energy cells and other internal equipment. The head was grossly oversized, with an opaque metal visor studded with optical and other sensors. The alloy was polished and shiny, and I could admire how the joints slid over each other, but the feet were enormous, almost like a clown’s. But then I guess this thing must weigh hundreds of kilograms, and it would need big feet to keep the ground pressure down.

  “Now,” said Rinseler, “each suit is custom tailored, and I have to warn you, th
ere will be a break-in period as the suit’s predictive control systems learn to work with you. However, in the long run I promise that you’ll be pleased.”

  Brendan was eyeing the heavy suit that was meant for him. It was nearly as wide as it was tall, and made the other suits look like dwarves. “I’m already pleased.”

  “Custom tailored?” I said. “That doesn’t sound very practical for a military system. What about commonality of parts and spares?”

  “Oh,” said Rinseler, “the mechanical parts are interchangeable. It’s just that the internal padding has been molded to your individual body scans, and the biomorphic neural networks can only adapt to a single person at a time. If you need to, you can reset it to null and train it up on another operator, but you can’t copy it or transfer it to another suit. Sorry, but that’s the price of having this level of capability and energy efficiency in a small package.”

  Now, did we immediately jump into these suits and prance around? Of course not. Forget what you see in the movies, nobody operates something this sophisticated without doing their homework. We read up on the specs, and worked in simulations, and ran through contingency options. A week later, I judged that we were ready to give the real thing a first try.

  I stood in front of my suit. I punched in the control codes on the access panel on the left forearm: the visor raised up, and the upper chest opened out like the petals of a flower. I wriggled into it, feet first, but it was a tight squeeze. For a moment I felt claustrophobic, jamming myself into this heavy alloy casket, but a bit of mental discipline and I was fine. The chest closed and the visor lowered, and I was encased in the armor.

  My first impression was how great the view was. The visor’s optical sensors provided me with enhanced vision, which I could toggle through visible or infrared or millimeter-wave radar or ultraviolet at will. That was impressive. My hearing was boosted and I could focus it on a specific direction if needed. Then I tried to take a step.

  My left leg started to move, but the suit’s didn’t. Then it overcompensated and kicked forwards, nearly yanking my hip off. I reflexively stumbled back, and again overcompensated and ended up on my back stunned at the impact. This went on for about an hour. Eventually I learned to stand up, and take one or perhaps two steps without smashing myself into the ground. Still, even with the litanies against pain and frustration, I was getting sick of this and called the exercise off.

  The visor rose, and the chest opened, and I squeezed myself out of my armored suit. I was dripping with sweat, and even with the padding I was badly bruised over a large fraction of my torso from all the impacts when I had fallen or the armored limbs had wrenched my own faster than they could normally move. I think my fellow soldiers were, if anything, even worse off. Even if not, I was not going to look weak in front of them. I stood straight, regularized my breathing, and tried to look relaxed.

  “I once dated a cast-iron bitch,” said Villers as he tried to ease the kinks out of his neck, “but this was my first hyper-alloy one.”

  “Definitely a ball-buster,” said Harlan. He was sitting on the floor with his head between his knees. I think this was the only time I ever saw the man not fidget.

  “I’ve had less fun,” said Wolfram, breathing heavily and leaning on a worktable, “I just can’t remember when.” Then he picked up a plastic bucket and puked.

  “I still like it,” said Brendan. “Stop whining.”

  “Then why,” said Villers, “are you lying there stretched out on the floor gasping for breath like a beached fish? Are you trying to make nice with the floor after all the pounding we gave it?”

  “Shut up,” said Brendan.

  “That was great!” said Rinseler. “You guys are naturals!”

  “Naturals?” I said. “We spent an hour stumbling around like drunks, and the only enemy likely to fear us would be the much lamented floor.”

  Rinseler shook his head. “No, you’ve just started. The neural networks will be tuning themselves up all night. Tomorrow it will be a lot better. Trust me.”

  “Tuning themselves up all night?” I said. “You mean these things dream?”

  “Dream?” said Rinseler. “Well, I don’t know about that, but these aren’t super computers. Give me a building full of circuits and an energy budget of a megawatt, and sure, we could do this real time, but we couldn’t fit something like that into a suit. So they have to rehearse their errors in reverberating loops – just like you and I – when they are not in active operation. How good do you think you were, when you first started trying to walk?”

  I was too tired and too sore to argue, so I went back to my quarters and fell asleep. The next day I was back at Rinseler’s, and I think I was going to give it about ten minutes until I pulled the plug. I stared at my suit. It stared back at me impassively with its array of embedded optics. I keyed the command, and the visor lifted and the chest opened just like before. I wormed myself in and the suit sealed itself shut.

  I did a systems check, and then, gingerly, tried to take a step. To my shock, I did not fall over, or crash into the ceiling, or fly off to one side. I just took a step. Slowly, to be sure, a little shakey, but a step nonetheless. And then another. And then another. And then I ended up flat on my back again.

  The next day we were starting to jog, and I only fell over twice.

  The day after that I was running faster than I ever could unaided, and leaping meters into the air. I didn’t fall once.

  Afterwards it was like flying on the ground. It wasn’t just the raw power of the suit, it was the speed and balance which surprised me. I had expected that, at best, I would be as fast and coordinated as I ever was, just carrying more mass. But the suit and I were figuring each other out, and the power wasn’t just letting me carry armor and weapons, it was letting me move faster, with a higher power-to-weight ratio and greater agility.

  After the eighth day of training, Brendan wanted to sleep in his suit, and I had to order him out of it. I decided to start up with live weapons training.

  We were in our standard practice zone, an area just outside the ramparts to the south of The Fortress. We were close enough to the pool of light from The Fortress to be reasonably safe, but far enough out that stray shots will be caught by the ramparts.

  We were spread out in a loose formation, the five of us covering a kilometer of front. Our weapons brackets were loaded with plasma cannons, smart grenades, micro-missile launchers, hypervelocity flechette guns, and flame-burners. We linked up with each other, and took on a simulated enemy. We were good.

  Certainly we were not as good as a purely robotic force controlled by a high-end AI would be. I’ve seen those in action (or more precisely, tracked on a computer monitor: systems like that are too fast for the human visual system to track reliably). But non-self-aware AIs are just too dangerous to let loose in a populated area. At least, not if you care about the population. They have no common sense. And fully sentient AIs are too dangerous, period.

  We had been at it for half an hour, and were in the final stages of mopping up our imaginary opponents, when I got a call from the lieutenant I had put in charge of the company while I was out playing with toys (I know I should always delegate and remain nominally in charge, but what kind of commander never leaves his HQ, and besides, I’m having fun and Rank Has It’s Privileges). It seemed there had been another infiltration attack over on the east side, near some of the hydroponics, and what should we do about it?

  I know what I should have done. I should have stopped playing with my new toys, and hustled back to headquarters, and delegated squads to do a sweep of the at-risk sector while keeping a sharp watch on the rest of the colony just in case. But I didn’t do that.

  I had my acting executive officer set up a perimeter, and my four armored colleagues and I went sailing up over the ramparts at nearly 50 kilometers per hour, and raced into harm’s way. I blame the suit for my lapse of judgment: it was like a drug, I felt invincible.

  We arrived on the scene, a
nd passed through our troops standing guard around it. On the surface it appeared quiet, just low sheds with the deep purple lights of the hydroponics leaking out through cracks under the doors. There had been some alarms from the olfactory sensors, and a worker had called in an alert and then gone offline, but that was it. We spread out and began a sweep.

  I cycled my vision between visible and far-infrared, but saw nothing. My fellow armored suits were all linked to my feeds, and we were coordinating with central HQ, but so far nothing.

  I passed through a hut that was full of pumps, valves, and tanks of chemicals. I heard nothing but the low thrum of the pumps, and the crunch of my armored feet on the gravel floor.

  I left the pump room, and walked through a narrow alleyway between two buildings. My visual display was overlaid with a map of the surrounding area, and the positions of the other armored suits and the perimeter guards. We had covered about a third of the questionable zone and not found anything yet. I hope these aren’t micro-sized creatures. In that case it could take weeks to clear the area.

  That was when I heard gurgling. Strange gurgling, almost gargling, coming from inside one of the sheds. I was closest, so I informed my team-mates, and entered the building. It was a center for processing and recycling fertilizer, with large open vats of something that I was glad my suit’s olfactory sensors were editing out. I heard the sound again, and this time it coincided with ripples breaking out across the surface of a vat on the far side of the room.

  “Everyone,” I said over the comms, “I think here’s something here. Brendan, you get in here with me, the rest hang back to the left flank so we each have clear fire if we need it.”

  “Copy that,” said Brendan. The big man joined me in the fertilizer room, and side-by side we walked down the middle of the space towards the sound of the gurgling. I was carrying a variety of grenades and a medium plasma cannon. Brendan had two like it, one on each shoulder, as well as a binary-reactant flamethrower on each wrist and a programmable grenade launcher on his back. I had all my forces manning the section of the perimeter that we were facing back off and take cover, so that if need be Brendan and I could open up without worrying about hitting our own.