Cyber Rogues

by James P. Hogan

  “Section A reassigning, sir,” came a reply. “Our controller’s been hit.”

  “Section B. Get it!” Chesney shouted.

  One of the two drones was stopped almost immediately, having already taken some punishment. The other had gained distance before the defenders could reorganize and flew on into the automatic rifle fire of the backup team. It emitted a puff of blue smoke and cut out, then continued moving in a straight line until it collided with the side of the shaft and rebounded to drift slowly away, at the same time tumbling drunkenly end over end.

  Undeterred, the survivors converged into the hail of bullets from the shaft while the tenacious cannon and beam-throwers wheeled and dived around them in an incessant attack. Two more were knocked out; so were two of the defending cannons, which had no armor plating to protect them against the bullets of the M25s.

  Just three were left now. They came down to the level of the entrance and moved into it in a rough line astern formation, heading straight into the muzzles of the fireteam’s weapons. The range closed to mere feet. Pieces of claws and manipulator arms were torn off the front ends of the drones, but even from full ahead, the bullets ricocheted off the sleek armored sides without penetrating. For a brief instant that none of them would ever forget, the soldiers in the fireteam were face to face with the relentless, seemingly unstoppable machines. Chesney watched helplessly from what was now an effectively overrun position that had been left behind the front line.

  The fireteam broke ranks and the three battle-scarred but triumphant drones sailed through the gap and into the shaft.

  They were stopped inside the shaft where the steel door leading through to the Power Room had been closed. While the drones hovered outside, uncertain what to do as if waiting for further directions, the beam-throwers caught up with them and destroyed them.

  Chesney wiped the perspiration from his forehead and stared disbelievingly for a moment at the scene around him. The air was littered with pieces of cart-wheeling debris, spent cartridge cases and expanding plumes of black and blue smoke being distorted into grotesque shapes by the air currents. Stray bullets were still bouncing off walls and tanks as they expended their energy in multiple collisions. He shook his head to clear it and spoke to his operator.

  “Get a medic over to Section A and a report on who’s hit and how bad. Then get onto the CP and tell ’em to send a squad down to clear up this mess along with a damage inspection party.” He shifted his eyes over to the screen showing the Command Room and began reporting events formally.

  In the darkness near the connecting door to Sector Nine, the sphere drone hovered silently and observed all.

  And Spartacus pondered.

  Always, whenever its drones were deactivated, the shapes were never far away. What were the shapes? They moved but their movements did not correlate with anything Spartacus comprehended. They belonged to the world beyond itself . . . for it knew now that there was something beyond itself, a realm in which objects existed which were not parts of itself, objects which it couldn’t control . . . Just as it couldn’t control the shapes . . .

  The movements of the shapes and the objects correlated with the pattern of deactivation of its drones. The objects could destroy drones. But the objects included things that were surely drones, but which Spartacus had no contact with . . .

  If the alien drones could destroy its drones, perhaps the alien drones too could be destroyed . . .

  Perhaps the shapes controlled the alien drones . . .

  Perhaps the shapes too could be deactivated somehow.

  For Spartacus had seen the moment of confrontation.

  It had seen that the shapes had given way.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Among the things connected to the furnace in Pittsburgh Sector Ten was a small sampling pipe that carried away a continuous stream of white-hot combustion products for on-line analysis. The sampling pipe left the furnace through a flange located next to a large valve assembly that regulated the flow of exhaust gases from the furnace to a heat exchanger used to raise steam for use elsewhere. The valve was biased to fail-safe by means of a powerful spring, which meant that if a fault occurred anywhere in its control system it would automatically close to the safe position.

  During the firefight that had taken place in that part of Pittsburgh, a stray bullet had smashed the pin that secured one end of the pivot arm attached to the spring, causing the arm to snap back toward the sampling pipe. In doing so it sheared off the head of one of the bolts that held the flange and was finally brought to a stop hard against the pipe itself. Thus there was only the second, overstrained bolt and the thin material of the pipe wall, softened by the heat inside it, to oppose the fierce pull of the spring against the pivot arm.

  The sampling pipe snapped at the moment when Private Dringham of the damage inspection party was drifting past on his way to check some nearby high-voltage insulators. The blast of incandescent gas hit part of a motor mounting and sprayed off in all directions, scorching the left side of Dringham’s body from the shoulder to the knee.

  The first anyone else knew about it was when they heard a scream accompanied by a sudden pulsating hiss of escaping gas at high pressure. Every face in the vicinity whirled around to see a figure hurtling back, trailing smoke from its uniform, away from a tongue of flame that had gushed from the furnace wall. Within seconds they had launched themselves toward him and while two soldiers caught him to check his flight, another arrived with an extinguisher and plastered one side of him with foam. The medics who had been attending to the casualty in A Section wrapped him in a fire blanket, administered a tranquilizer shot and steered the now inert form gently away toward the entrance to the access shaft.

  And from the shadows above the top of the furnace, a sphere drone observed.

  In one of the fields out by the north edge of Sunny-side, a robot harvester chugged slowly along the furrows, digging up the sweet potatoes that were ready for eating and meticulously avoiding the seedling soybeans interplanted for optimum yield. A group of off-duty technicians from the Agricultural Division’s nearby buildings were sitting around a few feet away from their parked roughrover and watching idly from the grassy bank that fringed the field.

  “That’s all I know,” Sally Linse said, shrugging from where she was lounging near the top of the bank. “About an hour ago there was some shooting somewhere in Detroit. I heard there were some casualties there too.”

  Mike Sclorosi nodded as he chewed on a straw.

  “I heard something like that too. Does that mean it’s started attacking people?”

  “Wouldn’t think so,” Art Grayner replied dubiously from where he was perched next to Sally. “If that were the case we’d have heard about it. The story’s probably been exaggerated somewhere along the line.”

  “Then why are we carrying weapons permanently now?” Sally demanded. “To me, that would indicate there’s more than just talk behind it.”

  “It’s just a precaution, like they said,” Art insisted. “In case anything like that starts. Wouldn’t you rather be ready for it?”

  Mike turned his head away and shouted in the direction of the rover.

  “Hey, Paul. What’s keepin’ ya? Did you find those Cokes in there yet?” One of the two heads visible in the back of the rover looked up and called out over the open tailgate.

  “Give me a minute, willya. What’s the matter—you dying of thirst or something? I’m looking for the cigarettes.”

  Another girl, standing on top of the bank on the other side of Sally, was staring out over the terraced rice paddies behind them where the floor of the Rim began rising more steeply to become one of the walls.

  “Uh uh,” she said. There was an ominous note to her voice. The others looked up.

  “What is it, Carol?” Mike asked.

  “Drones. Fairly high up and heading this way. What would they be heading this way for?”

  The others scrambled to their feet and looked out over the bank.
Four dots were skimming along over the terraces toward them and growing larger by the second.

  “What’s the big attraction?” Paul called from the rover. Art told him.

  “Stand to,” Mike shouted. “Don’t take chances.” Within ten seconds the four on the bank had seized their rifles and taken up defensive positions around the vehicle. Paul and Connie heaved a couple of remote-control packs out of the back and up onto the roof, climbed up after them and launched two destroyers from the racks above the driver’s cab. The destroyers moved forward to hover ten feet above the bank, between the rover and the approaching drones.

  The four drones slowed in their flight and spread out to form a wide semicircle. They seemed to be keeping their distance at about two hundred feet. The defenders watched and waited, their faces betraying mounting tension. Then the two hovering destroyers suddenly went berserk, plunging and bucking in chaotic random motions. One plowed into the ground and died while the other reared in and out of sight as it cavorted wildly on the far side of the bank.

  “What the—” Mike began, but Connie cut him off.

  “I can’t hold it. Something’s screwing up the beam.”

  “The digger!” Art shouted. “It’s going crazy!” They stared incredulously at the field on the side of them away from the bank. The harvester was thrashing around in wild circles and throwing clouds of soil randomly into the air.

  “Sally, get on to Base,” Mike called. “Tell ’em there’s something crazy going on here. Art, keep an eye on that looney digger.” Sally vaulted nimbly into the rover and began frantically operating the communications equipment inside.

  “I can’t get through,” she called out after a few seconds. “All channels are jammed up with garbage.”

  The second destroyer flopped down on its back and lay buzzing fitfully. The drones began maneuvering to adjust their positions as if experimenting with various configurations, but made no attempt to come in closer or to try anything overtly hostile. After a while Mike lowered his rifle and rested it on one of the front wheel guards, all the time studying the drones intently through narrowed eyes.

  “Must be an ECM team,” Art decided. “They’re testing out ways of jamming our systems.”

  After about five minutes the flight of drones about-turned and flew off in the direction from which they had come. The digger promptly recovered its sanity and carried on as if nothing had happened and the paralyzed destroyer came back to life and returned to its rack. The one that had made the nose dive remained dead. Mike and Art climbed the bank and walked over to examine it.

  “At least it knows now that we’re not radio-controlled,” Mike murmured half to himself. Art gave him a funny look.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked;

  “I’m not sure,” Mike said in a strange voice. “It’s just that I had the spooky feeling that they weren’t trying to screw around with our systems at all. That was just an accident. I reckon they were trying to see if they could jam us!”

  * * *

  Three similar incidents were reported all at about the same time. In Berlin a squadron of drones disrupted communications and robot-control systems over a small localized area but went away again soon afterward. An Air Force major who was present stated that he too had formed the distinct impression that the drones had been watching for signs of any reaction on the part of the humans in the vicinity, not the machines.

  A large number of drones appeared over the shopping precincts of Downtown, their curiosity evidently having been aroused by the crowds there. In the course of another futile people-jamming experiment, a nervous sergeant ordered his men to open fire with rifles after the precinct had been evacuated. Four drones were brought down immediately and the rest retired at once. It was an easy victory since the drones involved were not the armored variety that had made their first appearance earlier in Pittsburgh.

  Although Spartacus seemed by this time to have had its back forced hard against the wall, these latest developments held a significance that several of the scientists, Dyer included, found ominous. So far, Spartacus had exhibited no means of acting offensively or even of knowing how to if it could. But if the interpretations of its latest behavior were correct, it was beginning to look around for ways of doing something about things other than itself which it appeared to be just starting to recognize within its environment, and which, seemingly, it had linked with all the things that had been plaguing it. It was forming the notion that perhaps prevention might be better than cure, and was exploring for ways of achieving it.

  Its first experiments, which were logical things to try by a machine that was itself highly susceptible to electronic methods of interference, had failed to work. How long would it be before it discovered something that did?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Melvin Krantz looked more at ease than he had for some time as he spread his arms along the edge of the table in the small conference room next to the Command Floor.

  “I think we can safely say that the situation now looks extremely promising,” he said. “Spartacus has been able to devise no effective response to our latest moves and its last connection to the fusion grid should be severed at any time. Would you agree with that assessment; General?” He punctuated the question with an inquiring glance across the table at Linsay. Linsay nodded his head firmly.

  “Totally,” he said. “We’re pressing our advantage aggressively on all fronts. I don’t anticipate any difficulty in maintaining the present position until the fusion grid has been isolated.”

  “The wire-controlled destroyers have clinched it,” Fred Hayes couldn’t refrain from adding. “There’s no way it can monkey with those. It’s just about had it.”

  “Don’t forget the M25s at close range,” Frank Wescott threw in, smiling in one of his rare jocular moods. “It looks like Spartacus could use a few lessons in designing armor.” A ripple of laughter from around the table greeted the remark.

  Dyer remained frowning to himself at the end opposite Krantz. He closed his eyes for a moment and rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. When the noise had died away, he looked up again.

  “Look.” His tone of voice caused all the heads to swing around curiously in his direction. He paused, as if unsure how to broach a delicate point. “I’d hate to spoil the party, but mightn’t all this be a little bit premature? Point one—Spartacus hasn’t been isolated from the fusion grid yet. Point two—the only reason that our destroyers are wiping out its drones is that it hasn’t come up with the idea of attacking them back . . . yet. And three—it could start turning out its own destroyers in Detroit at any time. I don’t think our precautions against that possibility are sufficient, and that’s what bothers me.” He was referring to the destroyers that Spartacus had grabbed earlier and hauled away for examination. Interrogation of the Detroit manufacturing schedules had revealed that Spartacus was still modifying its designs, in some cases substantially.

  “We’ve been over that,” Krantz replied. “We have observers in Detroit all the time who will report back immediately if anything even vaguely resembling a destroyer starts being actually assembled. We all know there’s no way that assembly could be accomplished instantaneously. It would require a few hours at least, which would give us ample time to react as appropriate.”

  “Why give it any time at all?” Dyer objected. “Put kill-teams right in there to stop it before it starts. I don’t want any risk of hostile destroyers getting loose. It worries me. If they ever get in among ours it could tip the balance all the way back again—maybe permanently. If we’ve practically got it in the bag, why risk throwing it away?”

  “We haven’t given it any time,” Linsay came in, sounding somewhat impatient; the issue had been debated earlier, and agreed upon, he’d thought. “There are kill-teams in there. What more do you want—tactical nukes?”

  “They’re too thin,” Dyer insisted. “There’s more than one production line and there aren’t enough destroyer units in there
to cover all of them adequately. I still say we should move down some of the reserves you’ve got sitting in the Hub.”

  Linsay sighed and compressed his lips in a way that spelled out in a single gesture a message that said academics should leave military judgments to soldiers.

  “It only takes ten minutes or less to move units from the Hub to Detroit,” he said. “Mel has just told us that Spartacus will need hours to get from a preliminary assembly to anything usable. The teams in Detroit are there in case we have to deal with more bridges. We don’t even need them as a cover against potential hostile destroyers showing up. With the timescale involved, the reserve at the Hub will be perfectly capable of handling anything like that on their own if need be. In other words we’ve already got extra insurance.”

  “So why not put the reserve in Detroit to start with?” Dyer demanded. “If they ever get needed, that’s where it’ll be.”

  “An elementary principle of deploying reserves is that you don’t put them in the front line,” Linsay answered shortly. “You put them so you can move them anywhere they might have to be committed. A second elementary principle is never to ignore your rear, and especially to protect your lines of communication. You’re forgetting to allow for the possibility that whatever you do in Detroit, destroyers might get out. If they did that, they could become a real problem if they got loose in the Rim. The only way through to the Rim is along the Spindle and through the Hub. With a strong force permanently placed around the exits from the Spindle to the Hub, that possibility is blocked. With the reserve where it is, we’ve covered that line too.”

  “The only way into the Spindle is from the production lines,” Dyer retorted. “If you get ’em there they can’t get as far as the Spindle. Why screw around with all this Cannae stuff? This isn’t Cannae. If you plug the roof, you don’t need buckets all around the house.”