“But isn’t that utopian, to just wave your hands and say that anyone could do anything they want if we all just had more resources?“
“No, it’s not utopian at all. This poverty, this depth of human misery, this is utopian. It didn’t just happen, but was deliberately created by a planned population explosion so that the people at the top could use their control of resources to lord it over us all. It does not have to be this way. If we beat the aliens I will tear it all down or I will die trying.”
“Those are dangerous words.”
“Truth. Ten years ago I would have been executed on the spot for speaking them. Maybe even five years ago. Right now I am needed, and I have a stay of sentence. Still, a lot can happen. If we beat the aliens, well, both sides have plans. But I do need to warn you that in the days to come I will not be safe to be around. You might consider transferring to another directorate. There is time.”
“A wiser person would surely do so. But I think that I will stay here. If nothing else, we do need to beat the aliens, and your oh-so-impressive cybertanks will need the best power systems engineer on the planet to make sure that they don’t run out of gigawatts at the wrong time. I’ll take my chances.”
They clinked beakers of wine again. “I can’t say that you won’t regret that decision, but I do promise you interesting times.”
“So, if you don’t mind me asking, why aren’t you dating some bioengineered female?”
“That’s personal, but I don’t mind answering. The bioengineered females of my current generation are strong, smart, tall, and stunningly attractive. They are also incredibly stuck-up arrogant in-your-face she-bitches from the ninth circle of hell who erupt in screaming rage at the slightest provocation and I would rather date a spotted hyena.”
“In other words, they are just like you.”
“Ouch. Exactly so. Well, mostly so. To a great extent. Kind of.”
“Aren’t you worried about wasting your precious genes?”
Vargas snorted. “My precious genes? One of the great things about being bioengineered is that my precious genes are encoded in computer files. I can date whoever I want to. My genes can be passed on to whoever finds merit in them.”
“Don’t you believe in evolution?”
“Evolution is vastly over-rated. Granted, it created human beings, but it took it over a billion years and the entire resources of a rich terrestrial planet to do so. Evolution also created slugs, and lung-flukes, and neo-liberal economists: not something to be proud of. If I had a billion years and an unlimited research and development budget I could do a whole lot better. Give me intelligent design any day.”
“There is one more thing though,” said Chen. “Next evening we do this, we go to my quarters.” Chen lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Because you see, my place is even messier.”
9. A Cataclysm of Cybertanks
Zen Master: What is 'Occam’s Razor?'
Engineer: His first razor is that, when trying to explain something, the simplest possible hypothesis should have precedence.
Zen Master: Occam has more than one razor?
Engineer: His second razor is to never assume deliberate intent when stupidity suffices as an explanation. His third razor is to never assume stupidity when apparently ‘stupid’ behavior will make the person who is acting ‘stupid’ a lot of money. Oh, I made the last two up.
Zen Master: Occam would have been proud.
(From the video series “Nymphomaniac Engineer in Zentopia,” mid-22nd century Earth)
Space warfare is notoriously slow, except when it isn’t.
The battles with the aliens had been going on for decades. It was a steady war of attrition, with long-range probes and missiles wearing away at each other. In the Alpha Centauri system the Fructoids had finally eliminated all the human bases other than the main planet of Alpha Centauri Prime. Their network of deep-space weapons had methodically tightened around the world, but day-to-day life for most had not been greatly affected.
The humans tried launching counterattacks, but they didn’t know where the main alien manufacturing centers were. They could be distributed across the entire system. Any scouts or probes were rapidly intercepted by the increasingly dense network of space-based alien weaponry.
The planet of Alpha Centauri Prime was now isolated and surrounded, but a developed industrial planet is a tough nut to crack. It is effectively impossible to blow up a planet. While bombarding it with fusion bombs can take out the major surface-based installations, cracking industrial facilities buried kilometers deep is hard, and it’s almost impossible to be sure of getting them all. That means that the aliens would need to launch a ground assault to root out the humans, and a ground assault on a defended planet is an expensive proposition. If the alien landing forces could be defeated they would likely not have the resources to try a second time, and the humans would have a chance of taking back the initiative.
The humans saw the first wave of attack forces when they were about five days out. They were not moving terribly fast, but then all of the human deep space systems were gone so they were not going to get any early warnings. As expected, there were thousands of distinct incoming tracks. Most were simple missiles designed to take out as many of the ground-based defenses as possible, but mixed in would be the heavy landing forces. The trajectories had been intermixed so that they could not be told apart.
Anyone with access to a deep bunker moved there. The elegant above-ground palaces of the oligarchs were almost deserted. The hectare-wide ballrooms were eerily silent except for a skeleton crew of watchmen and maintenance staff. These few workers were probably going to die when the alien assault began, as there were no plans for them to evacuate, but at least they had jobs, and there was always a chance that they would not be killed after all.
The personnel of the cybernetic weapons directorate also evacuated to deep tunnels that were both below and far to the sides of the main cybertank hangars and construction complexes. A few volunteers still performed last-minute tweaks and tests – always keeping a careful eye towards the closest bolt-hole to the deep shelters, and a firm grasp on the comm devices that would warn them in case the alien attack arrived a bit before schedule.
The cybertanks themselves waited motionless in their now-quiet main bays. They would sit out the initial phases of the assault. Their hangar complexes were indistinguishable from the hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of low-slung living quarters and factories in which dwelt the vast majority of the human inhabitants. These masses of people had not been informed of the alien assault, as it had been judged by their betters that such an announcement would be bad for moral. In any event there were neither plans nor shelter to accommodate their billions. They worked on in their narrow cramped cubicles assembling electronic devices or handling customer service calls as they always had, oblivious to the external danger. Perhaps their ignorance was a mercy after all.
The last of the human low-orbital defenses were wiped out in a show of fusion bombs that was spectacular for the few still watching the skies from the planets’ surface. The fate of the orbital defenses had never been in doubt, but they wore away a decent fraction of the alien assault forces before being destroyed. Every little bit adds up.
Thousands of fusion bombs sleeted down onto the surface. Listening posts, telescopes, factories, and launching pads, were all destroyed by the hundreds. However, in this phase the Fructoids were at a disadvantage. Not only were most of the serious defenses well-hidden, but from space one metal shed looks just like another, and most of the alien barrage was wasted killing billions of harmless serfs as they worked stacked in their workshops and dormitories. The aliens were not stupid. They used thermal analysis and signals intelligence and who knows what sort of exotic pattern-recognition techniques. They got more of the defenses than expected – but until they opened fire the bulk of the human defensive systems, including all ten cybertanks, were safe and waiting for the enemy to close.
In
the next phase of the assault the Fructoids dropped thousands of large gray pods which, once they had successfully entered the atmosphere, split up and each released a thousand micro-scouts. These micro-scouts were not very capable, but there were a lot of them. They would spread out and try and infiltrate the human installations to see up close what the real military targets were and what were the distractions. The micro-scouts were easily killed by light defenses, but they still garnered the aliens some significant intelligence. Ultimately, however, the micro-scouts were defeated by the shear continent-spanning scale of the human slums, and the human defenses were still mostly intact and unlocated.
After the scouts the Fructoids committed another thousand fusion bombs to create a perimeter in a relatively remote part of the planet. Hundreds of huge alien constructs parachuted, aerobraked, or descended on anti-gravitic suspensors. Some of the precious human defenses opened up on the landing. They scored some kills, but not many, and in revealing their positions there were themselves killed in turn. Some of the alien machines promptly burrowed out of sight; they were the deep command centers and the seeds of manufacturing systems. Others spread out to hold the ground; they were sensor systems and anti-air defenses. Most, however, organized themselves into an army and commenced an attack on the human positions.
The aliens fielded a variety of more-or-less boxy devices, some rolling on wheels or treads, others skittering on spindly legs, and a few of the larger floating on anti-gravity fields. They were covered by flights of missile-carrying drones. The days that biological humans could profitably take the field had long since passed so the human ground army, superficially, looked a lot like the alien one. The two armies clashed; the humans scored many kills, but in doing so opened themselves up for retaliation not just from the alien ground forces but from their space-based forces as well. The human forces fell back into a fighting retreat, and the aliens advanced into the human-occupied zone.
When the Fructoids encountered a human habitation, they completely ignored the humans living therein as both strategically and tactically irrelevant. The humans living in their metal warrens would be startled as alien combat systems would burst through the light metal walls, flick here and there with a loud buzzing noise searching out and destroying critical power systems, and then leaving so quickly that the humans had barely had enough time to register what had happened. Sometimes a security guard would get off a shot, but they would be killed by the aliens before the bullet had even traveled half-way to where its intended targets had been a few tens of milliseconds previously. For the most part light fire from something as slow and ponderous as a biological human was so ineffective that the aliens ignored these guards completely.
They were out to destroy the critical infrastructure of the human civilization. Human beings per se were of no consequence. Without power the air-handling systems shut down and the humans simply suffocated. What the aliens were really looking for were the entrances to the buried shelters and command centers. When they encountered one, they would use nuclear-powered rock burners to melt paths down to the deep tunnels, and take them out with fusion bombs exploding from the inside.
The Fructoids were advancing at an average rate of about five kilometers per hour. This may sound slow, but for a planetary-scale ground offensive it is lightning-quick. At that rate the main human presence would be expunged from the planet in less than two months.
Three days passed. The aliens had advanced 360 kilometers into the human habitations. Along with the toll from the initial orbital bombardment, the number of human deaths was approximately five billion and rising steadily. Only the isolation of the human population into sheds and domes with separate life-support systems kept the toll from being higher.
Giuseppe Vargas and the senior staff of the cybernetic weapons directorate were in a hardened bunker three kilometers under the surface, and ten kilometers off to the side of Hangar Complex 23B. The room was cramped, the air clammy with humidity, and the walls bare concrete with a faint slick of moisture covering them. There was a central conference table and video-monitors connecting them to the planetary defense computers, to the ten cybertanks, and to the leadership of the other elite directorates: special weapons, space warfare, bioengineering, nanostructures, advanced physics, and applied epistemology. There were links to the support teams for the other nine cybertanks, each one of which was in a buried shelter near the hangar complex of their respective cybertank. In an emergency any single one team could coordinate the entire attack.
There was also a captain acting as liaison with the planets’ regular military, and, off in the corner, a middle-aged woman in a designer suit who was an undersecretary to someone of alleged high status. She had done little since arriving other than complain about the food or her quarters or the air conditioning. At this point nobody paid the undersecretary any attention. She was trying to act unconcerned about this and failing utterly.
Vargas addressed them all. “Have we come to a consensus? Is the plan ready?”
One of the speakers activated; it was from the Thor-Class cybertank Whifflebat.
“We have been running simulations, collating the data from the aliens attack, and confirming our analysis with the regular military. All of my fellow cybertanks are in accord. The odds will not get better if we wait. We should attack now.”
The liaison captain with the regular military spoke up. “We also are in accord. Things are as good as they are likely to get. This is the time.”
The heads of the other advanced directorates spoke in turn: they were also in agreement. The undersecretary of whatever attempted to say something, and Vargas told her to just shut up. She sputtered in rage, and from a speaker came the raspy voice of the cybertank Old Guy, saying:
Madame undersecretary, with respect, on behalf of all ten of us cybertanks, I respectfully confirm, please shut the fuck up.
The undersecretary turned deep red and opened and closed her mouth without speaking, like some bizarre species of deep-sea fish.
“Are you ready?” asked Vargas.
Old Guy here. Let’s do this!
“Sparky reporting. All systems perfect and set to go!”
“Jello here. I’m probably as prepared as I will ever be.”
“Crazy Ivan here. Absolutely ready to start.”
“Whifflebat here. All set.”
“Target here. Systems 100%, power 100%, remotes online, datalinks online, ready.”
“The Mighty Wombat is powered-up and thirsts for alien blood!”
“Backfire here. Ready.”
“Moss ready.”
“The Kid here. I’m ready. But after this is over, can I get a better nickname even if I don’t screw up?”
“Then start the attack, and good luck to us all,” said Vargas.
In order to keep the element of surprise, the main cybertank hangars had been built without large doors. The ten cybertanks burst through the walls without effort, shearing off workshops and conduits. If they won, the hangars could be repaired, and if not, nobody would miss them.
As the tanks raced into the open for the first time, by mutual agreement, instead of corporate sponsorship labels, they each sported a single bumper sticker on the rear of their hulls (cybertanks don’t have bumpers but the terminology is traditional). They read:
Old Guy: All Your Base Are Belong To Us.
Whifflebat: Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible.
Jello: Contents May Have Settled During Shipment.
Target: Do Not Remove This Sticker Under Penalty of Law
Sparky: When Cybertanks Are Outlawed Only Outlaws Will Have Cybertanks.
Backfire: (letters in red) If This Sticker is Blue You Are Driving Too Fast.
Wombat: Unleash the Wombats of War!
Crazy Ivan: Vote Crazy Ivan for President. You’d be Crazy Not To.
The Kid: Your Tax Dollars at Work.
Moss, however, had placed his sticker on the front of his chassis, positioned low on the hull just
above a central track. In small print, it said:
If you can read this, I’m grinding you under my treads..
Moss, that bumper of sticker of yours is the best! I didn’t know that you had a sense of humor!
“I don’t” replied Moss.
The aliens were nothing if not alert. Across the entire planet their forces reacted like a school of fish that had suddenly sighted a predator, wheeling around to redeploy to a more favorable configuration to meet this new threat.
Janet Chen was the first human to notice the reactor fault in Wombat. “Wombat,” she said, ”power down your reactor now!”
“Too late,” said Wombat. “It’s gone beyond that. I’m done. I’ve already transmitted the analysis and fix to my siblings. They should be alright.”
Chen’s fingers danced over her keyboard, and she took in the complex power-system schematics and telemetry. “It’s what I was worried about. A large reactor like that should not have gone into a mobile unit without field tests. There was a vibration in a minor system that fed back on itself. Wombat is going critical.”
There were wails from a speaker. It was Wombat’s support team back in the bunker near his home base. “Don’t die, Wombat!” and “Try to hold on!” and “You were always the best!” Wombat just said: “The mighty Wombat loves you all. Goodbye.” Then he exploded and was gone.
The liaison to the regular military addressed Vargas. “Should we abort the counter-attack?” Vargas turned to Chen, still pounding on her keyboard and pulling up reactor schematics.
“I think they are fine. It was an overlooked vibration – dammit I kept telling you that simulations can’t find everything! – but the fix is easy. Unless there is another flaw like this buried in another subsystem, they should be O.K., but the only way to make sure is to run more dynamic tests. Just give me one day.”
The military liaison spoke up. “That would give the aliens a full day to adapt. We have the charge; we will never get another chance to hit them fresh and unprepared like this. It’s a calculated risk but when the odds are not in your favor that’s how it has to go.”
Neoliberal Economists Must Die ! (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 3) Page 16
