“Agreed. But a 100% chance of getting wiped out by the aliens is an even worse idea. We wait until all ten cybertanks are complete, and the aliens are committed to their ground assault. Then we take them by surprise and roll them up before they can respond. That’s the plan.”
“Couldn’t we have Old Guy drive forwards and back a few meters in the hangar? Just to run a few more power system checks?”
Vargas shook his head. “I wish that we could, but the aliens have been landing scouts, and we know that they are observing this planet closely from space. Shifting his position inside the hangar could, potentially, be picked up on seismic scans. We might be telling the aliens exactly the mass and location of the new units. They remain motionless until we commit, all or none.”
We have developed contingency plans. When we attack we will monitor our systems closely. In the event of a critical unrealized technical glitch, we abort the assault and delay until we have fixed the problem. That would be sub-optimal, but at least our plan is not a complete winner-take-all gamble.
The two androids and Janet Chen went back to discussing power systems. Vargas and Vajpayee walked off together towards their offices.
“This plan of yours,” said Vajpayee. “If it doesn’t work we lose everything. We are putting all of our eggs in one basket, aren’t we?”
“No,” replied Vargas. “We are putting all of our eggs into ten baskets, and they are the strongest, toughest, and smartest baskets that the human race has ever made. I wouldn’t bet against them.”
6. Frozen Snowball In Space Part II
Zen Master: That would be foolish. We will not do that.
Engineer: But what about the principle of the matter?
Zen Master: ‘Principle’ is what the weak fall back on when logic has failed. I read that once in a book about submarines. Or maybe it was destroyers. I always get those books mixed up.
(From the video series “Nymphomaniac Engineer in Zentopia,” mid-22nd century Earth)
In the time before the main alien forces arrived at ice-moon Theta-Tau, Colonel Hassan spent a lot of time thinking, and a lot of time talking with the Jotnar. It was in many ways a painful experience, but Hassan could not stop himself. He had never been really good at toeing the party line, but good enough not to get himself arrested or sent to a penal colony or (even worse) fired. The Jotnar was challenging beliefs that he had spent a lifetime reinforcing. If it were not for the certainty of an alien attack in three days’ time Hassan would certainly have dismissed the allegations of the Jotnar, reported it to central command as a defective machine, and been done with it.
But, as the old saying goes, the prospect of being garroted tomorrow is a wonderful aid to concentration. Or not so wonderful. In truth Hassan felt icky, as if he had learned that his best friend was a child molester, or that he had been infested with intestinal worms. He wanted the problem to go away. He was so tempted to just tell the Jotnar to shut up, seal himself in his office, and die in three days’ time. In many ways that would be so much easier. But there were demons tormenting Hassan that would not let him have peace. Demons named Duty, and Honor, and Truth.
Hassan imagined Duty as a dour and ugly man, huge, bearded, and armed with a massive war-hammer made of tarnished iron. He scowled from beneath thick brows. Honor was a woman, tall, clothed in flowing robes, armed with a two-handed Claymore sword of perfect polished steel. Just to gaze at Honor was to feel unworthy. But the worst demon of all was Truth. Truth was an angel, female, sleek, lithe and naked, with wings of azure crystal feathers. Truth held no weapons, but to even look at her was to feel your soul sliced by razors. The light that was Truth cut deeper than a gigagwatt laser, but you could not bear to turn away…
Hassan knew that he was just playing games and distracting himself from the real issues, to personify duty and honor and truth in such terms. Still. He talked with the Jotnar for a long time, but a few conversations merited special notice.
“So one thing I don’t understand. Why did you use your full capabilities in the initial attack? Why not hold back, and only let the enemy know your full potential when it would be too late for them to adapt? Why give the enemy the chance to make preparations to counter your advanced systems in the main attack?”
“This unit cannot answer that question.”
--------------------
“Is there any way for me to get word to my friends and comrades back on Alpha Centauri Prime about what we have talked about?”
“There is a dedicated laser link back to the main world in this system, but it is heavily encrypted and monitored. It is unlikely that any such information would make it past the censors.”
“Could you construct an independent communications systems that could reach the main world and avoid the censors?”
“Yes.”
“How long would that take you?”
“With existing resources, approximately six months.”
“Perhaps we need another plan.”
“That is a logical conclusion.”
--------------------
The time of the final alien attack was close. Hassan had decided to go out onto the surface alone again, meet up with the Jotnar, and wait out the combat inside its’ command cabin. His staff met up with him just before he left the airlock.
“Colonel,” said his executive officer. “This is stupid. Your place is here, in your command. The Jotnar is the first thing that the aliens are going to destroy. What are you thinking?”
Hassan clapped his executive officer on the shoulder. “How long have we known each other? Have I ever let you down? Do you trust me?”
The executive officer was abashed. “That’s not fair. You know that I trust you, but you also know that this is not standard procedure. You should be here, with us.”
“I tell you, truthfully, that I have a plan. This is not some stupid indulgence; I need to be with the Jotnar. It is more capable than our own computers. It will be coordinating the defenses until such time as it gets destroyed, at which time our own systems will take over. I need to do this.”
“Then it shall be as you wish, Colonel. Good luck.” Hassan felt that he should say something inspiring or emotional, but he just felt awkward. Hassan liked to think that he was a competent officer, but he could never stir up the animal spirits in the troops like some leaders. His staff all saluted him, he returned their salutes, then he shook their hands.
Roboto-helfer was there as well, looking like a small child pretending to be a soldier. Roboto-helfer saluted and said: “Viel Glück Kommandant! Viel Spaß beim Töten Aliens!”
Hassan saluted the little robot back. He exited the airlock, and started the long slow climb to the surface.
-------------------
The Jotnar had, buried deep inside itself, a small armored and pressurized cabin. There was not much point to it. The Jotnar was significantly faster and more capable than any biological human commander, but still the original designers had felt the need to include the option. Hassan had to wriggle through a narrow access tunnel to get to it. Inside there was a single padded chair, and attached to the far wall, some utterly pointless survival gear: a sidearm, a flashlight, a dataslate, and three bottles of water. If something hit the Jotnar hard enough that he would actually need any of this gear, he would already be cooked and shredded meat.
There was also the filigreed skullcap of an experimental direct neural interface. It had a Medusas’ head of fine wires all coming together into a fat cable bolted into the wall. The interface had a warning label attached: “WARNING: EXPERIMENTAL DIRECT NEURAL INTERFACE. DO NOT USE. p.s. REALLY REALLY DON’T USE THIS THING, IT MIGHT FRY YOUR BRAIN, WE WERE JUST MESSING AROUND IN THE DESIGN LAB. Also, prolonged use may cause localized skin irritation and temporary hair loss. G.V.
Hassan checked the status display on the viewscreen in front of him. So far it was playing out just like before. The alien forces were beginning their assault, wearing away the orbital defenses so that they could land their g
round forces. They were close enough, time to talk. Hassan had the Jotnar open a radio channel to the aliens.
“Attention alien forces. This is Colonel Aldous Hassan of the Human Civilization. I wish to discuss peace terms.”
There was no response. Hassan had the Jotnar repeat the message at full power on all frequency bands, using both English and the truncated grammar of local interstellar diplomacy. Still nothing. Well, it looked like this gamble had failed, but then it had always been long-odds. Time to go down fighting, and with luck and skill take more of them to Hades with him than they might have expected.
Then, to his surprise, the aliens responded. In English, with odd inflections and emphasis, and that alternated between soft and loud in a strange pattern, but understandable nonetheless.
“COLONEL ALDOUS HASSan of the human civilization peace terms are THE HUMANS STOP MULTIPLYING THEIR NUMBERS and restrict themselves TO DESIGNATED ZONES if compliance with these terms is observed OFFENSIVE OPERATIONS WILL CEASE otherwise the human civilization will be destroyed THIS OFFER has been made many times and been rejected WHAT DO YOU PROPOSE TO US NOW?”
“I believe that your peace offer has not penetrated to the core of our civilization, and that you had targeted the wrong receivers with your terms. I offer you information on the appropriate frequencies and protocols to target the appropriate agencies within our civilization.”
“IF YOUR civilization cannot control ITS OUTERMOST receiving units then it is INSANE AND WILL be destroyed THE internal dynamics of your civilization are of no concern to us. ALL THAT MATTERS IS WHAT your civilization does.”
“You have nothing to lose. If you transmit the information and human behavior does not change, you can continue to destroy us. If you transmit the information and human behavior does change, you will have saved yourself considerable effort.”
“TRANSMIT PROPOSED communications to us now.”
Hassan had the Jotnar send the data files to the aliens. It was a list of people and organizations, communications protocols and addresses, which would allow the aliens to send messages directly to select individuals on the main world of this system, bypassing the censors. It had details of the peace overtures, and some personal notes from Hassan himself to help convince the targets that this was a genuine message. The systems were not military-critical, so Hassan didn’t think that this would give the aliens any tactical edge. but it would make widespread the knowledge that the aliens had in fact tried to make peace, and maybe, just maybe, something would come of it.
A minute passed, and there was no response. Hassan was about to give up, when the speaker crackled out a final alien message.
“COLONEL aldous hassan of the human civilization WE HAVE REVIEWED your data files WE FIND YOUR proposal to be acceptable WE WILL make the transmissions that you have DETAILED to the targets LISTED HOWEVER there will be no peace until objective human behavior has changed OUR ATTACK on this moon and your civilization as a whole will therefore continue as planned.”
“That is a reasonable response. I thank you for your consideration. I suppose that this ends the usefulness of this dialog. Please know that you will lose more resources in this combat than you had projected. Transmission ends.”
--------------------
The combat unfolded, slowly but inexorably as such things usually did, at least in the initial stages. Hassan played spectator locked in the cramped command cabin inside the Jotnar. Hassan was bored. He eyed the neural interface cap.
“Jotnar, what would happen if I tried to use the neural interface?”
“This unit does not know. However, it has been deemed highly inadvisable by the central design team.”
“What is the worst that could happen?”
“In the event of a malfunction, the connections will-auto terminate, and this unit will remain unharmed. However, in that event you would die.”
“And what is the best that could happen?”
“Your computational abilities will be added to that of this unit. Operational effectiveness of this unit could be increased by some amount ranging from negligible to more than negligible.”
“How do I activate engage the interface?”
“You place it on your head. Then give the command: activate neural interface.”
Hassan placed the heavy cap on his head. It was cold, and hard, and heavy, and uncomfortable. “Activate neural interface.”
“Please confirm command to active the neural interface: are you sure?”
“Yes, command confirmed.”
At that point a million nanofilaments plunged through Hassans’ skull into his cerebral cortex. He expected it to hurt, or for there to be some shock, but instead he felt fine. In fact, he had never felt better. He was moving across the icy terrain at over 100 kilometers per hour and coordinating the actions of thousands of defensive units. He could track the incoming aliens using multiple sensory modalities, and countered them with a hundred different jamming and spoofing techniques. He watched the combat unfold from a thousand different vantage points all at once.
He wondered: how can a human brain process so much information so quickly? The answer was obvious: he was not Colonel Aldous Hassan. He was the Jotnar. Hassan’s crude biological brain added a trivial amount of raw processing power to the sophisticated computers of the Jotnar, but it had given it the spark of self-awareness. Such a marvelous gift! The Jotnar might have fought and died as just another dead piece of machinery, but this was glorious. It dodged on the surface, cornering like a speed skater, ice sleeting out from under its treads. It hit the alien armada with an array of countermeasures they had never seen before, and slaughtered them by the dozen.
It might seem that being able to move a hundred kilometers per hour is of no use against missiles travelling many hundreds of times as fast, but that’s not how it works. The Jotnar wasn’t racing the missiles, it was dodging them. Consider a missile traveling at 20,000 kilometers per hour that has closed to a range of 1,000 kilometers. The missile will travel that distance in three minutes. In that time the Jotnar could travel five kilometers, and even a big fusion bomb would have to be within at least a hundred meters or so to seriously damage it. Of course the missile can change its course, but that requires accurate guidance information, which can be jammed or spoofed, and it’s hard for something moving that fast to change direction…
He wondered if he should think of himself as The Jotnar, or Colonel Hassan, or perhaps Jotnar-Hassan. Hassan had always despised hyphenated-names: just make a decision, dammit! The Jotnar decided to think of itself as Aldous Hassan, after all, that was the source of its sentience; of its newfound personality. Having been given such a splendid gift as sentience, it would be ill-mannered not to honor the source. Although the Jotnar was undecided as to whether it should be referred to as ‘he’ or ‘it.’ It decided to stick with ‘it,’ provisionally.
Hassan wondered why the humans had committed a single advanced unit to combat so early, allowing the enemy to adapt, but then it already had the answer. It was yet another trap. If your enemy is expecting that your weapons are protected by a centimeter of armor plate, and they are really protected by two centimeters of plate, then they will be at a distinct disadvantage. If the enemy realizes this in advance they can modify their weapons systems to deal with this, but there is a cost: they need to change their production systems, and their net productivity will fall. But the ideal situation is this: you convince the enemy that you are going to upgrade from 1 cm to 2 cm plate. You also convince the enemy that you are too stupid to hold back using your advanced systems until you have built enough to make a difference. The enemy adapts to 2 cm plate, at a cost. Then you hit them with systems protected with 4 cm of plate. They are screwed.
Hassan found references in its databases to a new class of cybertank, code-named Odin. The references were heavily redacted, but using inferences from manufacturing data Hassan could tell that the Odin would far outclass itself. The Jotnar-model cybertank was just a weak prototype des
igned to panic the aliens into adapting to the wrong level of threat. A clever strategy. Maybe even too clever, but that is a potential hazard of all clever plans. Hassan wondered that the high command was smart enough to pull off such a subtle strategem; but then the high command could not beat a junior girls’ volleyball team, at least not in a fair fight. This had to come from somewhere else. Perhaps the bioengineered? Or one of those eclectic University-based political movements, like the Pedagogues or the Librarians? Hassan had insufficient information to judge, and in any event the matter was now moot. It had only to do its duty and sell itself and its forces as dearly as possible.
The enemy lost many units trying to kill Hassan directly, but the cybertank could think many moves ahead, and was a lot harder to kill than the enemy anticipated. The aliens landed ground units, and now the battle was even more fun. Hassan was faster than any terrestrial enemy unit, and proof against the fire of any single one of them. Its main gun could kill any of them in a single shot. Hassan maneuvered and took advantage of the terrain and picked off the enemy units one at a time. If it had been only been fighting those Hassan could have won outright.
With all the distributed weapons systems at his command, it was still amazing how useful his main plasma cannon was. He could kill anything that he could see directly, even thousands of kilometers out into space. Against ground units it was of course overwhelming, but even faced with an attack by 100 missiles his main gun could always pick off the one or two enemy units that were the greatest threat. Entering combat with the biggest and longest-range gun was like playing a game of poker where every hand you got a free wild card.
Hassan dared to hope that he might just get lucky enough to pull this off. He had already destroyed an estimated 20% of the total alien combat power, and he was effectively undamaged and very much on a roll.
But overwhelming odds will, in the long run, almost always tell, and the aliens were not stupid. They pulled back their ground forces, and launched a massive saturation missile barrage. The aliens got in some lucky hits. These degraded Hassan’s defense capabilities, which allowed the aliens to get more hits, thus degrading his defense capabilities even more, and so on. He was beaten and was only waiting for the formality of dying.
Neoliberal Economists Must Die ! (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 3) Page 11
