After hiding out. George got in touch with the Admiralty and explained that everything she knew had been recorded and passed to a secure data-holding corporation. If something happened to her, every government and media outlet in the world would get the full confessions of Project Flipper, faster than lightning. In return for her silence they were to pass to the UN such equipment as was required to maintain and repair George and her pod-mates. Belatedly, George signed the Official Secrets Act using the hands of a lawyer named Aslan who came highly recommended. So far George has kept her end of the bargain. She has never formally joined UNAT, though. She is a mercenary dolphin. A life in the Navy put her off belonging to things.
Rex and his squad are about to make their assault. George breaks off before the shallow sea becomes a problem. Soon she will need to cover the human soldiers as they make their own approach, but right now she is hungry and there are tuna nearby.
43
Rex
We come in fast over the waves, our craft low and swift and hard to detect. They came folded up like bundles of sticks. We shook them hard once and they unfolded like the wings of bats.
Bees’ units ashore are operating autonomously, locating and attacking sensor electronics, casting static on satellite images, foiling radar, clustering about thermal imagers to give false readings. Our rat and dragon shore team follow where she leads them, cutting wires and patching into comms.
Morrow Incorporated will know something is happening but not what. Probably they will not be deleting files or selling their share portfolios just yet.
The island is built to have only one easy point of access, which is the main dock.We go in the back way. Our infiltration team has identified the easiest climb up the artificial walls. Now they let down ladders and we swarm up as swiftly as possible. I am on the third boat. I am halfway up the ladder when the fighting starts.
Morrow’s first response is robots: quadruped units with gun mounts. Bees attacks them, transmitting electromagnetic interference to throw their aim. By the time I reach the clifftop the first wave have been beaten back, but they know where we are now. We move fast.
I had planned for us to reach the main manufacturing complex before running into Bioform resistance, because few places that employ illicit Bioforms have them on a long leash. It is not like when I was Master’s dog. They do not trust their Bioforms to be loyal. They do not know what it is like to be a dog and have a hierarchy and a Master. I could have been trusted with anything.
And it seems Morrow has learned the lesson, because Bees is signalling urgently.
Bees’ channel: Rex, Bioforms incoming (maps, images, numbers).
I send instructions to my squad and wait for the last two boatloads of us to make the climb. Almost immediately I am receiving reports from the soldiers on point, signalling when they engage. Bioform on Bioform is always the hardest fighting: we are tough as robots and think like humans. I link with my Big Dogs – improved from the ones I had in Campeche. It is time to join the fight.
The defending Bioforms are dug into positions ahead of the factories, along with heavy weapons emplacements and more robot units. Bees is already attacking the electronics without needing the order, confusing the targeting or simply shutting down systems so it is only the small arms we have to deal with. The small arms are big enough. I take stock, forming a picture of the battlefield from the feeds of my people, and then we are in motion. The enemy defensive position would stand off human soldiers very well, but we are faster than humans. We rush in on all fours, and three of my people are killed as we do. That is what we are for, though. It is what all soldiers are for.
Then we are in amongst them, behind the concrete shields and walls, and it comes down to shooting and biting. Bees cannot hack the enemy Bioform systems, and so their hierarchies make them fight us, and make them believe they are good dogs for doing so. I remember what it was like.
They are good models, better than the units they are making here for export. The fight is tough. I lose one Big Dog, ripped from my shoulder harness and its channel cut with a single electronic shout of static. I take the enemy that did it and ram him into the wall. He snarls at me. I get a hand on his jaw and force his head up and I tear out his throat.
Something strikes me like a small calibre bullet and bounces off. The air is very busy around me and for a moment I think I am being shot at.
Bees’ channel: Competition!
I do not know what she means, because this is new. These are Enemy Bees. Hornets, in fact. Their units are bigger than Bees’ bees. They attack her, and they attack the eyes and mouths of my people. They are nimble in the air and hard to kill. We are taking more casualties.
They are not guided by a distributed intelligence, though, which I think is intentional. Bees was never fully under anyone’s control. The hornets are just like robots, slaved to a computer.
Sellars’ channel: You need to press forwards.
I send her my situation report while crushing hornets in my fists.
HumOS and Bees have a rapid consultation. We are pressing ahead but the hornets are everywhere and hard to fend off. They pry their way beneath goggles and into masks, suicidal in their fury. The factory buildings ahead are defended by more dog-Bioforms, and I think I see something larger there, too. Morrow has been experimenting with Multiform squads. Morrow is not just a standard black market Bioform lab. Honey was right to bring me here.
Sellars’ channel: Ready.
Bees’ channel: Ready.
I am not asked if I am ready.
Bees releases a general electromagnetic burst that clears the air of everything. The ground between us and the enemy is abruptly littered with little twitching bodies, the electronic architecture linking the swarms together is overloaded.
My channel: Bees?
No signal from Bees’ channel.
We press forwards under fire and engage the second line of Bioform dog units. Behind them I see civilian humans in grey overalls entering the factory buildings. They move without panic or hurry even when stray fire cuts across them and kills some.
HumOS’ channel: I have downloaded an image of Bees and am trying to re-establish connectivity with her units. There will be a delay before you have air support again, Rex.
Major Amraj reports at the same time, confirming his troops have secured the docks and are landing vehicles. I consider waiting for his reinforcements, but I am growing more and more unnerved about the way the civilians were acting. I want to know what is within the factories.
The larger Bioform units I saw earlier are bears. There are only five of them and they are not heavily augmented – little more than bears fitted with hierarchies and let loose. Bees could probably have disabled them and set them free, but Bees is not with us. We have to do things the old-fashioned way. My squad and I surround them, darting in when they are turned away, falling back when they round on us again. Our guns look for opportunities, shooting at their weak points. We bait them to death. It is not good but we have nothing better. Two more of my own are dead and nine wounded, who I send towards the docks to evacuate.
Sellars is at my elbow then.
My channel: This is not safe for you.
Sellars’ channel: I need to see. She says something else about being expendable but we both know it is not true. All of HumOS’ units are people, just like we are all people.
My channel: Bees?
“I’m working on it,” she tells me.
Then I get a signal from one of the dragon units. It is within the factory complex and has control over one of the doors, probably for a limited time only. We have our window. I gather my squad and hope that Sellars can keep herself alive.
44
From “The Beasts Within” by Maria Hellene
Chapter Sixteen: Man’s Best Friend
Henke is a home-grown Scandinavian dog Bioform, and she works in a doctor’s practice in Malmö. When patients arrive they are seen by a junior doctor or nurse, asked about their cond
ition and symptoms, and all the while Henke sits quietly there and analyses their scent. In the past, unmodified dogs have been able to detect conditions such as cancer, but never before have they been able to report it succinctly to their human co-workers. Henke is still pushing back the boundaries of her science. She compares her sensory results with patient histories and makes recommendations for further investigation. Her success rate is very high: even when she cannot say exactly what is wrong she can generally give her colleagues enough information that they can go the rest of the way efficiently and without wasted tests and scans.
One of Henke’s major problems is that the language she was gifted with breaks down when she describes her sensory input. Unlike many dog-Bioforms, she needs to be exacting in relaying what she senses. She is part of a network of medical dogs around the world who are constructing a new shorthand for the olfactory world, characters and descriptors rooted in the shapes of molecules and the intensity of neural firing.
Henke saves lives and also money. Every hospital and all the larger medical practices in Sweden and Denmark have dogs on the staff now – the specialised Bioforms represent an investment that, though costly, pays for itself. Other countries have tried to simply build olfactory machines to the same ends, but in the end mere computational power cannot yet match millions of years of evolutionary pressure towards analysing scents.
Medical science is one area that Bees has yet to contribute to. She has plenty of ideas on the subject, but perhaps it is best to tell her that people are not ready for sentient insects to be fitted internally. Bees is intrigued at the possibility of distributed intelligence at a smaller level, though. She – some of her – is working with the nanotech industry. Bees dreams of reshaping reality one molecule at a time, purging cancer cells on an individual level, 3D printing without a printer, augmented humans and Bioforms who can reconfigure their bodies on the fly, perhaps even turning lead into gold… From any other perspective these are ludicrous goals, but Bees’ human partners are far-sighted, rich and unbalanced enough not to accept others’ definitions of impossible. And Bees is functionally immortal. If these geniuses cannot achieve what she wants, she will wait for the next generation to build upon their work.
Henke sits in on a consultation with patient Ole Aesmundsen. Ole lives in a home under the care of Janicke, one of Henke’s sisters. Janicke is a specialist; she is intimately familiar with the health status of her charges and has brought Mr Aesmundsen in because she detects an irregularity in his heartbeat. Ole himself has not noticed. Janicke’s vigilance will allow his incipient condition to be treated before he suffers another heart attack. Henke and Janicke compare notes, which Henke will write up in her own medical language of canine sensoria and attach to Ole’s file.
In Cleveland, Ohio, Doctor Lucy Sung has become the first recipient of an augmented olfactory centre in her brain that allows her to link to medical Bioforms like Henke and understand precisely what they mean. The procedure is not perfect, but successful enough that already applications for the procedure are starting to trickle in. Doctor Sung’s interviews are marvellous to see, as the struggles to put into human words the world that until now only dogs have known.
45
Rex
We tear into the factory complex as a pack. The dragon that opened the doors slithers up to where the wall meets the ceiling to get out of our way, skin shifting to match the white walls. Sellars is still at my elbow and I whine a little because I will not be able to keep her safe. There are human guards ahead. We charge and I assume they will run but they do not. They stand and shoot, and then they fight us. It is not good. They kill some of us as we come in, and then their knives and electric prods are no match for us, but they fight until they are all disabled.
My channel: This is wrong.
Sellars’ channel: Agreed. She is still working on Bees. There is a shifting cloak of shiny black across her back where the mindless units have clustered in response to some pheromone signal she gave out, but Bees’ channel remains silent.
We tear down doors and then we find the laboratories. For a moment we are quiet, not because of what we see but because of what we are. We all came from places like this; every one of us has some faint first half-memory of the lab where they grew us and built us. The Morrow lab is far larger than any illegal operation UNAT has seen before. There are lines of tanks here, many occupied by half-constructed Bioforms. There are tables over which the surgical machines hang poised like spiders. Everywhere there are humans – scientists, technicians. They do not stare at us and do not run, but just keep working. There is something wrong with them all. I see eyes go wide, and little twitches that I know mean they are going to run away, but they don’t. The smell of fear rises and falls, over and over.
More enemy Bioforms are charging in, bowling over the humans in their haste to get to us. We start shooting again, and soon we will be brawling.
My channel: Find out what is going on here.
Sellars ducks down and tries to concentrate, but her headware is having trouble accessing the system; Morrow has put it on lockdown and she is thrown back again and again.
Bullets scar the counter that she hides behind. My sole Big Dog returns fire. The battle is taking place across a crowded room and still the humans do not run. Every time they try, something makes them return to their work. Even when we have destroyed their equipment with our claws and our guns, so that the floor is a carpet of broken glass and metal splinters, they stand there with wide eyes. And they die. Every stray round, every sweep of a claw has a chance of finding a hapless lab worker in its path.
I take the matter in hand and push my people forwards, taking their views and giving orders. More of the enemy are pushing in, scrambling over the bodies of the fallen in their haste to join the fight. And they want to fight; it is in every line of their bodies, in the smell of them, but I know it is the hierarchy telling them it is – what were Honey’s words? – a sweet and honourable thing to die.
And they die, and so do we. I stand beside Sellars as she desperately tries to reboot Bees or hack into the laboratory network. She winces and flinches with every shot. She is here for her loyalty to her sister-selves, and she has come even though she knows she will probably die. She is braver than I am.
I link through to Major Amraj. His troops are close now, dealing with robot defences that line their side of the laboratory complex. I have a brief set of images and maps from his comms officer and confirm our position. At my knee, Sellars swears and restarts her attempts, thwarted by the countermeasures the lab system is deploying. Bees stirs fitfully on her back.
A big cat Bioform catches me off-guard, too concerned with what Sellars is doing. He strikes me in the chest and slams me into a couple of the civilians. One is killed, the other surely badly hurt, but still she tries to return to her post and keep working, like a broken machine.
I have a hand on my enemy’s jaw; his claws rip through my armour vest and peel it off me, drawing red furrows in my chest. The talons of his feet rake at my thigh. Strong, but not heavy: I throw him off and try to shoot him, but my remaining Big Dog is not tracking properly. He comes back quicker than I expected and knocks me down again, tearing me up more. My squad are all busy with the others, outnumbered, and besides, part of my wants this to be my fight. I always liked things to be simple even when I was losing.
But things are never that simple, and just as well for me. The cat makes a go for my throat, and we meet teeth to teeth. His eyes are mad with rage and righteousness, and I wonder if his master is telling him Good Kitty every time he snaps his jaws shut or whether that does not matter for cats.
A shot strikes him in the side, not enough to go through his own armour but it throws him off me. The cat yowls around, looking for the new enemy. It is Sellars with one of the guards’ big guns. In the half-second before the cat kills her, the scout dragon unit is at him, swarming up his side and driving in poisoned teeth. I am signalling Sellars to get back but she is ignoring
me. The bulk of her attention is elsewhere.
The cat throws our dragon across the room and lunges at Sellars. I cannot get in the way quick enough, but Sellars explodes with black, buzzing bodies.
Bees’ channel: Integrity 31% Multiple faults detected operational swarm lifespan limited hello Rex hello hello buy me time I need to work here kk?
The cat rears back when Bees reactivates and that gives me the chance to grab him about the head and try to break him. He is a good model. He is a better model than me. I do not think he was made here but he has been slaved to their hierarchy. I want to be able to save him but I am not even sure I can kill him right now. His claws are in me, tearing me up. I try to throw him again but he turns in my grip like an eel and then his jaws close on my head, teeth punching in hard in a flash of pain and I am I am I am too old for this I hurt I hurt I think of Dragon signalling his death after they shot the words out of him I think of Bees saying goodbye I wish I had the chance to speak to Honey again I wish I understood just a little more of what was going on or what will happen next I restore functionality routing around the damage and I am back in control. I am not out of the fight yet. Where am I? What is going on?
I have his arm clasped in my jaws, and even if I am an older model my bite is stronger than his bones. His teeth are at my face. One eye is offline. I feel fangs grinding at my skull. I have to shut down all the damage reports because they are all I can see and then he bites down deeper and again jolt and flash inside my skull until until the memories come lose and I am thinking of Retorna but not the fighting just the times between when I was in the sun and had no master and no war and Doctor de Sejos would talk about the good dogs her family had once and and and I was a good dog wasn’t I always tried to be a good dog was all I wanted to be.
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