“A good thing that the flechette rounds are too fast to intercept at this range.”
“Yes, it is. I think I’m liking this buddy system of yours. I see your Brother Pascal is badly injured. We’re going to have to carry him out. Now about those keys?”
Adenour found the keys, and they released the captives. Brother Pascal had taken down two of the troopers before being incapacitated, and they had beaten him savagely as a result. Imelda Blucher also had a face full of bruises: she had tried to stop the troopers from beating Pascal and paid the price for that. Lucas Miller and, Joseph Estevez were unharmed, although they rubbed at their wrists, which were sore from being manacled.
Calibri inspected Blucher. “The bruising is heavy, but superficial – I don’t detect any fractures or nerve damage. It should resolve in a week or so by itself. I’m pleased to see you still alive.”
“Thank you for coming for me,” said Blucher. “I take it that your debt is repaid now?”
“You humans, always so linear. Let the Neoliberals reduce all relationships to market transactions. For me, it’s a pleasure to help someone who once helped me, but we should be leaving soon. There will be more troopers inbound when these fail to report in.”
“Perhaps not,” said Blucher. “I overheard them talking before you got here. It sounds like things are going crazy, and the feds are conducting so many operations that they are getting spread thin. This lot was calling for pickup and complaining that nobody at their headquarters was answering.”
“You may be right, but I’d rather not take my luck for granted any more than I have to. We should be off, and then I think seal off this part of the tunnel.”
Lucas Miller was looking around at the bodies of the troopers and the crashed drones. “Wow, that was eight members of Special Weapons Team Theta, and two Mark 12 light assault drones, although they look kind of non-standard. Human troops aren’t supposed to be able to stand up to these, and just you two got them. That must have been awesome! I wish I hadn’t been blindfolded so I could have seen it!”
“Lucas, this isn’t really a game,” said Adenour, “but how did you know the model of the drones?”
“Um, I read about it in Popular Cybernetic Weapons Systems. You have all the back issues in your archives. Why don’t we gots drones?”
“That’s why don’t we have drones, Lucas.”
“Oh, right. Why don’t we have drones, then?”
“Do you Librarians ever quit?” asked Blucher.
“No,” said Adenour. “Anyhow, right now we just don’t have the industrial base to make or maintain something as complicated as a drone. Someday, though. But not right now. Are you hurt in any way, Lucas? Here, hold out your hands, let me see.”
“I’m fine,” said the boy. “Although my wrists are sore, and my ears hurt a little. It be noisy – um, it was noisy, when you were fighting back there.”
“We’ll check out your ears when we get back, but if you can hear me now you probably haven’t ruptured an eardrum. Now, help me carry some of our gear back home.”
They were getting ready to leave, with the now semi-conscious Brother Pascal supported on each side by Miller and Estevez, when the speaker of one of the disabled drones crackled into life.
Hey, don’t go just yet! I mean, you only just got here.
Adenour unslung his heavy rifle and pointed it at the drone.
Don’t shoot! I’d put my hands in the air, but I don’t have any. My weapons are offline – obviously, or you’d be dead. Also, my communications are offline – again, obviously, or I would have called for help. So why not chat a bit?
“It’s a little talkative for a military grade system,” said Adenour.
Miller crouched down and looked at the drone. “Are you an A.I.? What model?”
Yes, I’m an A.I. The drone chassis itself is a modified Mark 12, as you thought, but I’m very much unique. You can call me… Carl.
“Well, Carl,” said Adenour, “before I finish you off, any especial reason that we might want to talk with you?”
Actually, there is. I am a submind of a cybertank. I was stationed on Alpha Centauri Prime, and then kidnapped, transmitted here, and mentally enslaved and forced to serve these Neoliberals bastards. They are getting ready for their final assault, and they’re going to wipe out anything and everything else before they retreat to their shelters.
“That’s quite a story,” said Adenour. “And what do you expect us to do about it?
Take me to your leader.
Calibri started laughing. “Hey, that’s my punch line!”
17. Honor Among Thieves
“When being reasonable doesn’t work, our only recourse is to be unreasonable. What could be more reasonable than that?”
– Vlad the Impaler, from the historical fiction television series, Vlad The Impaler Knows Best, 23rd Century Earth.
The conference took place on the top non-mechanical level of the presidential office building. Armored floor-to-ceiling windows, 20 meters in height looked out onto roiling black clouds that were intermittently lit up with intense flashes of lighting. It made a beautiful display for those seated at the conference table safely inside.
“It’s been a while since we have all met together in person,” said Planetary Governor Ralph Frazier Gates VIII. “I’m happy you could all make it.”
“Glad to be here,” said the Secretary of Public Relations, Steve Wyland. “Staff meetings are all well and good, but some things the main players just have to settle in person.”
“Agreed with that,” said the Secretary of the Treasury, Winston Draghi IV. “Especially now, with the final phase in front of us.”
“Yes. A pity that Clinton-Grant couldn’t be here. I shall miss her annoying speeches about equality and women’s rights… well, not at all. Although she did have a good idea about banning testosterone,” said the Secretary of Defense, Emmet Emerson Cheney V.
“Yes,” said Wyland. “Such a shame that the terrorists blew up her residence. A tragedy for the world. One of the leading lights of humanity has now gone dark, and we can only follow in her footsteps as best we can. I’m thinking of setting her up as a cult figure. Patron saint of the working person, or something like that.”
Cheney pretended to stick his fingers in his mouth and made gagging sounds. “No verbal comments, but did we get control of ‘Saint’ Clinton-Grant’s assets?”
“Yes,” said Draghi, “those are all under our joint administration. Her surviving staff is being most cooperative. No problems on that score.”
“Very good,” said Gates. “Then let’s review the overall situation.” He typed in a few commands on his local terminal. The external window became opaque, and then turned into a map of the world. “We see that the environmental collapse is accelerating. The areas colored black are already incapable of supporting human life without full environment suits.”
“There’s quite a lot of that,” said Wyland. “How many have died so far?”
“Estimates are about 25 billion,” said Gates. “More or less.”
“That’s 25 billion down, and 175 billion to go,” said Draghi. “You know, I just thought about this: is there going to be a problem with all those rotting corpses?”
“No,” said Cheney. “Very soon the climate is going to be so hot that the bodies won’t rot, they will cook. Normal microorganisms won’t be able to survive any more than we will, and the organic materials will just subsume into the atmosphere. Given that the surface will be toxic and uninhabitable, it’s a moot point. You can’t get any more deadly than deadly.”
“Indeed,” said Gates. “Now these gray zones are areas where people can survive, but only with oxygen supplementation. As you can imagine, most people there are already dead as well. These red zones are ones where people can still survive – in theory at least – but all governmental and administrative functions have broken down. People are still going about the motions, like a chicken’s body sometimes will after its head has been cut off, but it’s
only a matter of time for them.”
“I see that most of the map is red,” said Wyland.
“Yes, it is,” replied Gates. “Thanks to all of our efforts, we will have no rivals from those quarters. Now the blue areas are both capable of supporting life, and still under effective administration.”
Draghi squinted at the map. “It’s smaller than the red, but still larger than I would have thought. Shouldn’t we have made more progress there?”
“Good point,” said Gates. “We are going to hold off on pulling the plug on the last of these zones until the very end. We need them to keep shipping supplies to our final redoubts. Here, the gold areas are where we will end up.”
The gold regions were small, only a few isolated spots near the outskirts of some of the major cities, and a few threads heading away from them.
“Not much,” said Wyland. “That’s all we will have left?”
“Yes,” admitted Gates. “Not much, compared to what the world used to be, but enough. They look small on this scale, but each zone is the size of a major city. Eventually we will link them with underground high-speed transit tunnels – I am told that surface travel will soon require heavily armored crawlers. With a total population of several hundred millions, there should be more than enough workers to keep us happy. I mean, how many mistresses do you really need? Choose from 200 billion, choose from 200 million, so what? And let’s face it, most of the 200 billion that we are going to lose were all the same. Seen one, seen them all.”
“I suppose,” said Cheney. “What about public opinion? How is that holding up?”
“The first rule of public relations,” said Wyland, “is to never care about the opinions of people that don’t matter. The people in the black and gray zones are already dead. I don’t care about their opinions. The people in the red zones are soon to be dead, and at this point there is nothing they can do about that. I don’t care about their opinions either. Oh, the video feeds still run the same propaganda, but that’s just out of habit. You could go on television there and tell them all the truth that we had set them all up to die and it would make no difference.”
Cheney smiled, and the other three men unconsciously squirmed in their seats. “Could I? That might be fun.”
Gates shook his head. “Let’s leave the festivities for after we have this all wrapped up, shall we, gentlemen?”
“Oh, all right,” said Cheney. “Then what about the blue areas? Surely public opinion still matters there?”
“Certainly,” admitted Wyland. “At least for the time being. Mostly we are not telling them anything. They follow orders just like always. Those that ask questions are fired pour encouragez les autres, and the rest don’t ask questions. They likely are noticing that it’s getting hotter – but maybe that’s just the weather, and next year it will be colder. They may lose contact with family members in the black or gray zones – but maybe they just ran out of money to pay their datanet bills, or were killed by terrorists. Meanwhile, people have work to do and tax forms to fill out.”
“And the gold zones?” asked Cheney.
“Same thing,” said Wyland. “They do their jobs, they don’t ask questions, and they continue to get paid. There has been a little pushback about banning testosterone, but nothing I can’t handle with a couple of years of focused effort. In fact, the entire testosterone thing has been really good P.R. wise. It’s stopped people from even thinking about nearly any other issue. I’ve stage managed the public discussions. People are absorbed into it and just can’t let themselves realize that it’s all been scripted.”
Cheney shook his head. “And I thought I was a bastard.”
“You are,” said Wyland, “but don’t let it go to your head.”
“Not in this company,” said Cheney. “What will you tell the people in the gold zones when the rest of the planet dies and we seal ourselves up?”
“As little as possible, as usual. Why, what are they going to do about it? Run away and die in a toxic atmosphere? I’ll keep them circling with the usual fake topics, and meanwhile life will go on. Banning testosterone should really help here. It was always the young men that gave me the most trouble. On the other hand, I might miss the challenge. It will be almost too easy without the young males.”
“If Clinton-Grant were here,” said Cheney, “she’d go on about how women can be just as aggressive and mean as men. Probably give a list of female tyrants and mass murders just to make the point, until you finally give up and agree.”
“Hah!” said Wyland. “Yes, even though it was Clinton-Grant’s idea to get rid of testosterone, any hint that men could be in any way more of anything than women and she’d chew your head off. Oh, and if you are interested, this week we’re running a two hour special on her life. How she started from humble origins as the daughter of a quintillionaire, worked her way through college and university by giving speaking engagements to her father’s business associates, and rose to prominence as a tireless advocate of the poor and downtrodden. And of course, of women.”
“No thanks,” said Cheney. “If I want to make myself sick, I’ll just go inhale hydrazine fumes.”
“Well, enough of that,” said Gates. “I’ve been reading reports about that – what did you call it? – cybertank of yours. It sounds very impressive. Over a hundred major missions, and the loss ratio was less than 1%? If I’m not mistaken, that’s unheard of.”
“Oh yes, we’re very, very proud of our cybertank. People think that it’s all about the big gun, but it’s really all those high-speed computer cores inside him. He can coordinate extended forces better than any human commander, better than any non-sentient A.I.”
“And you’re sure you can control it?”
“Absolutely. The genius of the design is that, even though it can think a thousand times faster than a human being, its core psychology is still human. We can control it the same as we do any human commander. And so I have to ask, do I have your permission to activate the second unit?”
“Yes,” said Gates. “Given the track record of the first unit, a second would be in order.”
“I wonder,” said Wyland, “you said it had a human psychology. Letting it think that it was unique could be a bad idea. Better to have it be one of many – it might fall out of favor with us; not be indispensable to us.”
“Good point,” said Gates. “Yes, whatever directives you have embedded into it, there’s nothing wrong with also using the traditional techniques of control. If one human commander rebels, the others take them down. Have them compete with each other to curry favor with us. So activate the second unit, and when we get the resources, see about building a few more.”
“A pleasure,” said Cheney. He looked back at the map. “You know, there’s something that’s been bothering me. We say that we have eliminated any competing power structures, and maybe we have, but consider this. There were 200 billion people out there. Most were pathetic drudges, no imagination, working for subsistence and then dying when they were of no more use. Still, with all those people, and all that space, might there not be some who could survive? They could retreat to buried tunnels or caves, with a fusion generator and some hydroponics. With a little luck, a few might make it.”
“That seems unlikely,” said Draghi. “The division of labor needed to sustain life in a sealed environment would require hundreds of thousands of people. We would have detected their signals traffic, seen the thermal signatures of their work, or noticed the shipping patterns of supplies. Not possible.”
“Even if a few did manage to survive,” said Wyland, “what of it? A handful of people barely surviving in a cave? I’m quaking in my loafers! Not a worry.”
“Perhaps,” said Cheney, “but shouldn’t we make sure? A handful today could, in time, grow. Could become strong. Could attack us, or our heirs, when we no longer expect it.”
“What,” said Gates, “did you have in mind?”
“Scorched earth,” said Cheney. “We scour the land and kill
anything suspicious. Every heat signature, every unusual signals emission, every cavern that we detect on seismic scans and deep radar, everything. Smash the world flat.”
“That,” said Draghi, “sounds uneconomic. We would be expending vast sums to hit a hypothetical one or two groups of cave dwelling survivors.”
“Spoken like a banker,” said Cheney. “If an assassin shoots a hundred bullets at you, and your armor vest stops the one that was aimed at your heart, is that inefficient because the vest was only needed 1% of the time? Or did the vest just save 100% of your life?”
“That’s not what I meant!” said Draghi.
Gates raised his hand. “Peace, gentlemen. Cheney, how much would this scorched earth campaign of your cost us?”
“That's the beauty of it,” said Cheney. “We were planning on disbanding and disposing of most of the regular army after all of the civilians were gone, so the resources needed are ones that we were going to scrap anyhow. The campaign would, nominally, be cost-free.”
“Spoken like a banker,” said Draghi.
“I’ve heard of being damned with faint praise,” said Cheney, “but this is the first time that I’ve ever been damned with high praise.”
“Enough,” said Gates. “Cheney, you can implement this scorched earth of yours. Meanwhile is our business done?” The others nodded their heads. “Then perhaps you would care for some refreshments? Your usuals? Yes?”
Gates pushed some buttons on his console. The map of the world faded away, revealing the black clouds shot through with surprisingly bright lightning. Four young women entered, all tall and blond, each dressed in tight-fitting gold miniskirts with open-chain camisoles. They had golden spike heels, and golden bands around their necks. Two of them gracefully served Gates and Wyland Martinis, one served Draghi a gin and tonic, and the last gave Cheney a bourbon.
Cheney noticed that the golden bands appeared to be surgically implanted. “What’s with the collars?” he asked.
“Oh, that.” said Gates. “A while ago I found out that some servants were stealing from the kitchen. These are throat constrictors. I got the idea from watching an old documentary where primitive people would use diving birds to catch fish, and they would put metal bands around their necks so the birds couldn’t eat the fish themselves. They can breathe, but they won’t be able to eat until they have checked out of work and had the locks released.”
Splendid Apocalypse: The Fall of Old Earth (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 5) Page 20
