by Cate Dermody
“That sounds obscene.”
“I’m not the one flirting with the pretty woman.” Rafe turned to Alisha, performing a small bow of apology. “We’re normally somewhat more professional than this.”
“I’ll take your word for it. The drone, gentlemen?” Alisha let a trace of impatience color her tone, more than she actually felt. The two men straightened up like guilty children as she approached the wall and the prototype, circling the latter curiously.
It was not a friendly-looking thing, structured on a tripod of legs that, while rigid at the moment, were made up of jointed segments that looked as if they’d bend as easily as water. The body was circular, burnished silver distorting her reflection as she studied it. She could see fine lines of tight-fitting sections that made up the whole of the sphere, and reached out to touch it, holding the motion with a glance at Brandon. He inclined his head and she brushed her fingers over the material. It was cool and slightly rough, her fingertips less able to pick out the difference between the texture and the lines of the various sections than her eyes were. At a glance, the level of sophistication was astonishing, far exceeding the remote-controlled warrior-robots that had been used in the Iraqi war.
“Did you read The White Mountains before or after designing this, Mr. Parker?”
“Actually, it was The War of the Worlds that ga—” He broke off, startlement taking his voice. Alisha looked over her shoulder at him, eyebrows lifted in mild challenge and amusement. He wet his lips, swallowed, and said, “I think I’m in love.”
Alisha laughed out loud, crouching beside the drone. “I think you’ve been outgeeked.” She ran her fingers over the prototype’s lower half, shaking her head. “I see that there are sections that open—or so I assume—but I don’t see how it can sense anything without compromising its own safety.”
“Rafe?”
“Certainly,” the Englishman said.
Beneath Alisha’s fingers, the drone hummed to life. A glitter of red light passed over her palms, a whir sounding as the top half of the sphere circled to face her, although how she knew it was now “looking” at her, she wasn’t sure. Another host of red light shimmered over her: sensory lasers, she realized. They seemed to emanate from the whole of the drone’s globe, tiny pinpricks of light that sparkled from just within the silver shell.
A nearly inaudible click sounded, precursor to a faint whine of power as two sections of the sphere opened and slid back to reveal far more powerful lasers nestled inside the drone’s spherical body. The drone’s legs ratcheted up, giving it a sudden height advantage over Alisha’s crouched form. Her stomach cramped with nerves, the combat pilot part of her mind white with rage over having put herself in such a vulnerable position.
The only way out was forward. Through the drone’s legs. She could grab one as she rolled through, perhaps unbalance the thing long enough to vault the wall behind it. That would offer some protection, might provide a weapon. There was no time for doubt, not even for a quick breath toward hyperventilation, nothing that might trigger the drone’s attack mode. The muscles in her legs bunched, ready to propel her forward. Her taped ankle protested at the unexpected strain, suffering from pressure Alisha hoped didn’t show in her posture. Three. Two—
Brandon said, “Don’t move.”
Chapter 5
The effort of aborting her own leap forward before it began sent thin shards of pain through Alisha’s thighs. She snarled without sound, trembling with contained energy. It swam around inside her belly like too much caffeine, buzzing on the edge of illness. Her fingertips were cold, blood pumped into the vitals, all signs of adrenaline waiting to be used.
“The drone’s assessing you as a risk,” Brandon murmured. He sounded as if he was speaking to a frightened child, or maybe an unpredictable animal: calm and soothing, his voice pitched low. Alisha wasn’t certain if the tone was meant for her or the drone; somehow the latter seemed more likely. As if the thing were alive, she thought.
But then, if it was as advanced an artificial intelligence as Brandon suggested it was…She didn’t give herself over to the luxury of a shiver. She wouldn’t have in most cases, and with the drone looming over her she was even more reluctant to. Instead she spoke in as low a tone as Brandon had: “I am not carrying any weapons, Mr. Parker.”
“I should have done a pat-down,” Brandon said, though there was a dismissive note to his voice.
Yeah, Alisha thought, able to allow the rage she felt at least that much outlet. I bet you’d have liked that.
“No, I believe you, Elisa. Just hold still for a minute. There’s something wrong.”
“No shit,” Alisha said through her teeth. She turned her head slowly, until she could glimpse Brandon and Rafe over her shoulder. Rafe looked pale, sweat visible on his brow even from several feet away. They both studied a flat plastic sheet, about the size and depth of a laptop computer monitor.
“It’s reversed the live target protocol,” Brandon said after a moment. More color drained from Rafe’s face; he must have been responsible for that protocol, Alisha thought. Good: she knew whose ass to kick when she got out of this. A crick formed in her neck, stinging enough that she rotated her head back, stretching it cautiously before casting a glance up at the drone. Red dots danced in her vision, laser sightings on the small guns that were pointed at her. For a moment a sense of the ridiculous swept her and she found a ghost of a smile playing at her mouth.
“Are those actual blasters, Mr. Parker? Laser weapons, rather than conventional?”
“Yes,” Brandon said absently. “This isn’t really a good time, Ms. Moon.”
Alisha wrinkled her nose, eyes closing, as close to a nod as she dared make with the drone hovering above her. “Of course not.” A few seconds went by, fear draining out of her and leaving more of the absurd in its place. The reduction in tension made sense, both physiologically and psychologically: the human body wasn’t meant to panic for more than brief, life-saving bursts, and her training taught her to think, not react. Still, Alisha felt surprise riding on the tails of reduced alarm. She hadn’t known an impulse to snicker in the face of danger was part of her makeup.
“So,” she said, letting that desire to laugh slide into her voice, brightening it to genuine cheer, “what’s its power source, anyway? I assume it’s internal, but that thing can’t be running on a Duracell.”
“Ms. Moon.” Rafe’s voice was strained. “Please.”
Alisha dropped her head and grinned. The drone above her adjusted its position with a click, evidently not yet satisfied that she was more than merely a potential threat, but neither willing to let her go. She lifted her hands until they were even with her head and began to straighten, feeling the play of muscle in her leg slowly tightening and releasing. The drone ratcheted higher, until she was upright and it stood a few inches taller than her, silver sphere gleaming with warning.
“You,” she said to it, “certainly have a psychological advantage.” At least in the first few moments, she added silently. The drone, somewhat to her relief, didn’t respond, and then with a soft whine the guns retreated, settling back into place.
A burst of relief flooded through Alisha’s body, emanating from her core and sweeping out to her fingertips and toes, leaving her goose-bumped for a few seconds. Hard on its heels came the heat of temper, making her even more aware of the cold bumps that spread across her skin. Amusement had its place in calming her when danger was imminent, but it fell fast to outrage now that the situation was resolved. Alisha turned to face the men, her jaw thrust out with anger. “A malfunction? Falling to friendly fire does not inspire me with confidence, Mr. Parker.”
“Nothing more than a reversed protocol,” Brandon said hastily.
“The difference between live and hard targets seems to me a rather significant one, Mr. Parker.” Alisha snapped the words out, grateful for the chance to channel some of her fury immediately, rather than having to suppress it. Quicksilver emotions roiled through her body, m
aking her clench her fists in anger. “Dare I ask for a demonstration, or will your prototype see fit to mow us all down?”
Brandon had the grace to look embarrassed. Rafe, beside him, all but cringed, stepping forward. Brandon blocked him with his shoulder and a fractional shake of his head. “I take full responsibility for the error, Ms. Moon. The demonstration should go smoothly.”
Rafe’s shoulders stiffened as if chagrin threaded through his body, though in almost the same moment he lowered his eyes, gratitude or acceptance slinking into his posture. He knew he was being protected. Alisha was certain she wasn’t meant to know, but it gave her an interesting insight into Parker’s character. Certainly there were men who would step aside from the chain of command, allow an assistant to take the fall, but Brandon’d chosen otherwise. Maybe the CIA had left a mark on him, after all.
“Shall we, then.” The coolness of disappointment and anger still edged her voice, both of them quite real. The drone had frightened her; to discover that her fear had been prompted by a malfunction was somehow embarrassing. She’d expected the prototype to live up to Brandon’s pitch. Alisha quashed the nasty smile that she wanted to turn on herself. Get used to disappointment, little girl.
And stop looking for ways to find this man to be one of the good guys, she ordered herself. Parker needed to be assessed for his own skills and threat level, Alisha’s personal hopes and prejudices set aside. Although if the drone was going to prove this unpredictable, the security of the United States had less to worry about than she’d feared. Alisha flicked her fingers, an impatient gesture, and watched the two scientists all but hop to do her bidding.
With the bug worked out, Alisha had to admit the drone appeared to work flawlessly. Given a set of objectives—Alisha set them, Brandon’s hands darting over the flat panel to program them in as he explained, “The droid’s approach is autonomous. Once the mission is set, it chooses what it perceives as the best way to accomplish that. Its default programming always opts for nonlethal subdual, though in an outright combat situation it’s fully capable of making the decision to defend itself.”
“Second law of robotics.” Alisha’s anger was fading, curiosity getting the better. Brandon gave her a startled glance that blurred into a smile.
“Third, actually.”
“Mmm. My geek is slipping.” Alisha dismissed the error, nodding at the programming pad. “So it might opt to behave differently if I didn’t specifically want it to scale the farther end of the wall, yes?”
“Exactly. We can run the objectives twice, once with your detailed instructions and a second time allowing the drone to behave in its autonomous and natural fashion.”
“Natural.” Alisha’s eyebrows rose. “Is it possible for an artificial intelligence to be natural, Mr. Parker?”
“Philosophy’s not my strong point, Ms. Moon. All right. Program complete.” Brandon entered the command and Alisha put her shoulders back, watching the droid slip into action.
It looked, she decided just moments later, like alien technology. The three-pronged metal feet were surprisingly quiet against the ground, even where it was rough. The ratcheting legs allowed it a peculiarly smooth gait, the rounded body dipping and rising barely an inch or two as the drone flowed toward the far end of the wall. The stones there stood at least twice as tall as the drone did, even at its fullest height. Alisha’d chosen that entrance point deliberately, curious to see just how well the machine was able to scale obstructions.
It fitted its clawed feet into breaks in the wall—Alisha could easily envision it using windows in a city to the same effect—and drew itself up, one leg after another, spider-like. A glance at the pad Brandon held showed scans being sent back, allowing the droid’s human mentor to see what it saw. Its crown peeked over the top of the wall, light scattering to examine the area, searching for enemies. Then one foot snaked over, claws spread wide as it swung several inches back and forth. Brandon’s screen flickered with images, first normal color, then—“Ultrasound?” Alisha asked. Brandon flashed her a smug grin.
“Searching for land mines, C4, anything set into the ground that could damage it. Infrared is most effective on warm bodies, obviously, so we needed to give it a variety of ways to recognize dangerous objects.”
“Very nice,” Alisha said, full of warm approval. Brandon gave her another glance that made her smile. She checked the impulse to defend herself. If Brandon was going to sell his drone to her fictional buyers, she did need to approve. Nonetheless, after the years of work he’d put into it, having a complete stranger make cooing noises over his prototype had to be somewhere between amusing and insulting.
“I’m glad you approve.” His voice gave away nothing of the emotions Alisha thought he might feel, and that too made her smile. There was nothing like an old-fashioned spy game to make her day, she thought. Everyone holding their cards close to the chest, everything kept under wraps, to see who ends up with the best hand.
I love this job. Even with the distress created by the prototype’s malfunction, Alisha’s smile grew into a grin, and she let it linger, feeling no need to hide her enjoyment of the situation. The drone skittered across the field on the far side of the wall, still sending feedback to Brandon’s screen. Rafe touched Alisha’s shoulder, nodding toward the break in the wall.
“There’s a platform just on the other side, where we’ll be able to see everything more clearly. It’s about to reach the more dangerous areas now.”
“Excellent.” Alisha climbed over the low stones, Rafe offering her a hand, and laughed, studying the platform. It was only five or six feet high, tall enough to see the entire field from. It was also tall enough to let the men look right up her skirt.
“I think I’ll come up last,” she said as mildly as she could. Rafe frowned, looked her over, then blushed, his ears turning scarlet. Brandon, a few steps behind them, brushed by and climbed the ladder with absolutely no notice of the byplay at all. He even offered Alisha a hand as Rafe stepped out of the way, once on the platform.
“Thank you.”
“Sure. Now,” he said, nodding at the drone, “you set it to take the most straightforward path to the west edge of the field. No avoidance of possible obstacles. This is what it’s seeing.” He handed her the pad, tapping its screen. “Land mines, primarily. Not a friendly place to go walking in.”
“Really,” Alisha said dryly. Brandon gave her an absent smile and nodded toward the field.
“You’ll want to watch out there. The first mine is coming up on its left—”
Without altering its fluid walk, the drone scooped a stone off the field bed and threw it several yards. It landed with military precision on the mine, nothing more than a blip on the screen before the explosion rattled the platform Alisha stood on. “It’s always preferable to use what’s handy rather than its weapons to activate unfriendly artifacts,” Brandon yelled above the noise. “A random explosion might be a local animal getting in trouble,” he added as the boom faded. “Whereas weapon fire is always pretty obvious.”
“Although six land mines going off isn’t likely to be a whole series of unfortunate animals,” Alisha said a few moments later, as the drone worked its way through a string of bone-shaking detonations. Only once, on a concrete pad that had obviously been added to the field for just such demonstrations, was it obliged to resort to its own internal weapons systems to discharge a mine. Two bolts of red smashed from its guns, concussive force and heat exploding the mine with what Alisha thought of as violent satisfaction. “What about live targets?”
Brandon held up his hand as if to say, “Wait.” The drone reached its first objective—the west edge of the field—and turned north, running with liquid metal grace. “Over smooth terrain, it can reach twenty-five miles an hour,” Brandon said smugly. “Eventually larger drones will be able to move much more quickly than that, but it’s already a lot faster than a human.”
A human-shaped target, complete with an AK-47 in silhouette, slid up from the g
round. Alisha’s stomach tightened, recognizing a threat; the drone reacted nearly as quickly as she did. Information flowed into the pad she held, an assessment of danger that she struggled to keep an eye on while still watching the drone. The whisper-whine of laser fire sounded as she jerked her gaze back and forth, the “insurgent” on the field flattened by the force of the drone’s blasts. As it hurried north, another dozen targets popped up, some wildlife, some human, one or two of them unarmed. One, no more than child-sized, “ran” forward on a mechanized slide. This time the drone reacted faster than Alisha could: her gut said “harmless,” even as details about the “child’s” bomb-laden coat poured into her hand-held.
Deep sonic waves, sharp enough even at the distance, and not aimed at her, to churn Alisha’s belly, hammered the “child.” Beside her, Brandon flexed his arms, an aborted signal of action and pride. “Errs on the side of caution,” he said. “It’s not perfect: if a suicide bomber is timed instead of self-destructing, I haven’t yet figured out how to quickly and safely disable bombs, but even in the face of imminent danger when a target appears to be less than adult the drone will choose incapacitation over death. In the worst-case scenario a drone can be programmed to cover a suicide bomber’s body with its own in an attempt to mitigate the damage to the general populace.”
“What happens when your AI develops a sense of self-preservation?”
Brandon shot her a frown. “I’ll cross that bridge if we come to it. We’re a long way from developing artificially based sentience, Ms. Moon.”
“I hope you’re right.” Alisha turned her attention back to the drone, which had ignored a frightened family of refugees and incapacitated another threatening figure as it reached its northern-most goal, a white flag. Incapacitated, Alisha thought with an almost silent snort. More like obliterated. “Can its program be changed so that it just returns by the most expedient route?”
