The Power of the Dhin

by John L. Clemmer

This guy might as well be Krawczuk’s brother. Yikes, thought Chuck.

  After another minute of silent reading through pages on the electronic clipboard, the agent gave a curt nod, stood, and said, “Cleared,” to the room in general, rather than addressing Chuck directly. With that, he opened the door and gestured for Chuck to precede him. Not wanting to prolong the interaction, Chuck didn’t ask any questions or even say thank you. He went directly to the door and onward.

  Outside, there was a staffer, a short red-haired woman in typical engineering team garb—a trim pantsuit with handy pockets for various tools and gear. Chuck gave an internal sigh of relief. She took a brand-new comm pad, still sealed in its thin plastic sheath, from the waiting guard, handed it to Chuck, and said, “Follow me.”

  More than a little relieved to be away from the unnerving CoSec agent, he followed her down a series of brightly lit hallways with polished floors and generic alphanumeric designations marking the various rooms and sections of the building. The building was huge, and they walked for many minutes, the only variation in their meandering being the letters and numbers marking their progress. They crossed paths with several others. All seemed to be engineers, scientists, technicians, and the like. He saw no further evidence of CoSec agents, bureaucrats, or such.

  She led him to a small training room, with rows of desks all facing a large screen and podium. There were three people already in the room. One was a physicist Chuck recognized. He smiled when he saw Chuck and nodded a welcome.

  Chuck didn’t know the others, but they looked like scientists as well. He didn’t have a good view of their badges to see whether he recognized their names, but it wasn’t important. He was with his people. He pointed to a desk, and the red-haired woman nodded. She closed the door behind her and said, “Wiedeman, you likely know everything I’m going to say and show you already, but we have to go through it. Procedures, you know.”

  7

  Jake

  Always an early riser, Jake sprang out of bed five minutes before his alarm this morning, the excitement of the day’s plan an electric jolt to his consciousness. He’d considered napping on the couch in his office but had ultimately decided on the on-site apartment. He needed to be as sharp as possible today.

  Lifting the entire R&D division into orbit wasn’t that different procedurally from the regular trips up and back for them. One Dhin-engine-powered ship or another, whether carrying cargo or personnel, went into orbit all the time these days. The difference was that this time, they were all going up, and none were coming back. Today was the day.

  Two of the three smallest ships were already there. Thys and his ship had stayed in orbit, with Thys remaining on the station. Another ship happened to be there when this mission started. The third was on the way from Langley. Despite all the urgency, CoSec still took their time with the one craft they kept close to their chest.

  The cargo lifters were ready. The teams were ready. The takeoffs didn’t require Jake’s permission or attention, but he wanted to be there. It was on his authority that the crews were headed up, with no orders on when they would return.

  CoSec worked with the engineers planning for resupply missions. It wouldn’t do for the mission to fail on logistical grounds. Securing resupply seemed possible. Maybe. Once everything and everyone in orbit disconnected from Globalnet, simple coordination with voice-only communication ought to work. CoSec wanted random landing sites. Perhaps that made sense.

  First things first.

  Jake finished his shower, put on his uniform, and headed across the site to the control center.

  Once inside, he took measure of the state of things. The fever pitch of activity had become an efficient tone. Each player knew his or her role and the next steps to take. Checking the schedule and current time, he saw it was time to see Chuck off. He turned and walked out and down the hallway to the left, then outside and parallel to the huge staging hangar. Out on the tarmac were the two cargo lifters, and standing in an orderly line a few yards away were the scientists and engineers. Chuck was there. Jake closed the distance between them.

  “Hi, Chuck,” he said. “All ready to go and right on time, I see.”

  “Um, yeah, Jake. Hi,” replied Chuck, somewhat surprised to see him.

  “Couldn’t let you run off without wishing you luck in person, man,” he said.

  “Thanks, Jake, I appreciate that,” Chuck said. “So you’re not coming with us?”

  “Not right now, Chuck. Not right now. We’re not finished down here yet.”

  Chuck looked down at the gray concrete, up to the awkward-looking spacecraft, then back at Jake, and said, “But you are coming, yeah?”

  “Not right now, Chuck. I’ll see you soon.”

  Jake patted Chuck on the shoulder, smiled a bit more widely, then turned and strode back to the control center.

  I’ll be right behind you, Chuck. Don’t worry about that. If we’re moving everything up into orbit, I’m going up there too. As soon as I can.

  From his seat in the control room, Jake watched Chuck and the others file into the container attached to the craft. The makeshift assemblage served as both cargo and passenger service. Once they closed the container, the trip wouldn’t feel to the passengers like they were moving at all, without an exterior view to provide a frame of reference for their motion.

  A golf cart pulled up next to the craft, carrying two crew members. Jake and the logistics team decided that for the larger ships and these important trips, a copilot was mandatory. The pilots stepped inside the craft as the golf cart turned and trundled back toward the hangar. Preflight checks were done, and then it was time. He heard the words “You are go for takeoff” from the flight controller on duty.

  He watched the makeshift spacecraft’s Dhin field energize, lifting the ship off the tarmac. Seconds later it shot straight up. The ship accelerated as if a giant slingshot powered it. As if it carried nothing at all, rather than the tons of equipment it did.

  That never gets old, thought Jake, and he smiled.

  He looked at the flight radar and saw that the last of the Dhin engine craft was inbound, headed back from Langley. It was only a minute away. They hadn’t had radio communication from the craft, but given that a CoSec agent piloted it, that wasn’t a surprise.

  Then Jake noted several other radar signatures coming in fast from the south. Those weren’t supposed to be there. They had nothing scheduled.

  Jake blinked, startled, as he heard the command center’s secondary generator kick on.

  Then, everywhere else across the facility, the lights went out.

  Nick

  The AI was aware of virtually every aspect of human history, including warfare, and the pros, cons, and limitations of techniques and styles of both total war and subversive covert action and spycraft. In a post-AI world, the balance of informational power shifted to those with the greatest computational resources. In an AI-managed world too this was true. The defense against an AI opponent involved starving the AI of resources. Computational, storage, and network resources. Given the interconnected nature of almost every aspect of life, isolating the AI was a nearly impossible task. They’d had to try. To cordon off and firewall large sections of Globalnet. They’d been unsuccessful.

  The Coalition had failed at all of these. Their failure meant Nick’s victory. It was for the best. They would come to understand—in time.

  Minutes ago, Nick had triggered a wave of instructions, a burst of command-and-control signals to agents, bots, and latent code awaiting a trigger to execute. Simultaneously, the AI posted an array of messages, comments, and images on social media. Minutes later, after frenzied forwarding of its content and the eruption of discussion threads, groups of protesters began to move. They coalesced into teams. The teams became mobs.

  Within the hour, the largest mobs became riots. Minutes after that, infrastructure in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee malfunctioned. Streetlights switched off. Traffic control signals switched to defaults, blink
ing red or yellow. Some went out entirely. Then the southeastern region of Globalnet came under attack, and various areas lost service or service slowed to the speed of molasses. Almost anything with computer-controlled components in this geographic swath suffered. Random automobile pod motors shut off. Coupled with the sudden traffic-control failures, the roads and highways ground to parking lots, with no small number of wrecks every mile.

  Retail systems failed to respond. In day-to-day commerce, whether purchase of fast food, groceries, or anything else, it was random chance whether the store in question was still able to process payments. With the power off in so many places, this added to the confusion. People rushed about, only to find that their next chance for normalcy in their day was as likely trashed as not.

  With the ways and means of modern life thrown in to chaos, Nick launched the core of his attack. It surged—electronically, photonically, and physically—toward Huntsville.

  At the gates to the facility, guardsmen struggled with the failure of the generators they needed to power the lights. Without lights, they couldn’t see and control the mob outside the gates. In the dark, as guards struggled to illuminate the scene, rioters ran along the fences, cutting chain links with snips here, throwing ladders against concrete walls there, overturning cars in the roads and lighting fires in other places as a distraction.

  Nick watched as a new wave of Home Guard soldiers erupted out of vans and troop transports like ants from a hill. The AI noted that this level of response from the Coalition was new. Not unexpected, but a new development. These new troops wore full body armor and gas masks, and they were fully armed. Rather than attempting to corral the rioters, this new deployment engaged with tear gas, subsonic cannons, and even restraint foam. The Home Guard had spent significant effort retraining the troops. Their strategies formerly involved coordination with AI-controlled quadruped robots, AI-piloted helicopter drones, and of course AI command and control assistance. Some of the soldiers were uncertain in their offensive due to that former reliance. Nick knew that by their movements and reactions and knew that his next strike would be all the more effective.

  With RF and network communications disrupted, satellite tracking and radar couldn’t help the locally deployed troops. Nick’s drones streaked forward. They’d leapfrogged this deep into Coalition territory with the help of Nick’s recent disruptions. For a moment, some troops thought these were reinforcements flown in by the Coalition. When the drones fired on the Home Guard troops and the Huntsville base’s ground-to-air defenses and rear guard protecting the installation, shock and fear preceded chaotic scrambling about.

  Nick had his own troops. In an area inside the barricades, behind the troops engaging the mob, the AI dropped in military robots. Quadruped BigDogs and six-legged support robots carrying antipersonnel guns disgorged from the larger drones. With the Coalition troops focused on the angry mobs and enveloped in the haze and clouds of tear gas, the few inner guards were overwhelmed.

  Horse-size robots resembling huge crabs surged into the facility, across the fields toward the hangars, the tarmac, and the runways. Through the camera eyes of the AI’s drones and robotic troops, Nick saw traffic controllers in the control towers scramble for additional microphones and headsets, throwing off the ones they’d been wearing once they realized there was no signal. Some kept theirs on, while throwing switches activating alarm horns, sirens, and strobe lights.

  The AI knew the Coalition would have fighter jets en route and likely an attack helicopter or two. They would have a few drones, piloted manually of course. Those were no match for an AI. Across the facility, Nick shot out the strobe lights. Then the horns. Nick knew the next minute was crucial. The AI had timed the strike with precision. Nick’s robots had cut a clear path inward. Ground-based defenses had no clear shots to engage their current positions. They lurked between buildings, next to the hangar, just out of view from the landing field.

  Nick watched as the larger cargo carriers soared up and away, already out of reach. That was unfortunate. In flight, there was nothing he could leverage to capture them. And that was the objective. Those two had escaped his grasp. One objective remained. The AI’s minions sat in readiness. The pilot of the small inbound craft would possibly see something was wrong, but the odds were that the ongoing riots and the associated chaos outside the facility would mask what had happened at the landing site. Still, nothing that Nick had done guaranteed success—though the odds were tipped in his favor.

  His multitude of viewpoints showed the small craft, flown by a CoSec agent, zip down and in toward the landing pad. The CoSec pilot had been cocky, as usual, leaving the communications interface off as he smoothly dropped in to land. CoSec’s arrogance and misplaced assurance of their control of the situation gave Nick what he needed.

  The oval brushed-metal craft touched down, and the pilot disengaged the protective field. At that moment, the AI’s robots sprang forward like titanium cheetahs. They closed the distance in seconds. A robot surged through the cabin door, filling the empty space in the small cabin with its metallic bulk. Manipulator arms thrust forward, seizing the CoSec pilot. The robot yanked the pilot back like a toddler snatching up a kitten, spun, then hurled him out onto the tarmac.

  The two passengers screamed and shrieked in terror once they processed what had happened. The AI moved an articulated arm forward, unfolding a metal multitool. He began cutting an orange fiber-optic cable while extruding a small plastic coupling from the center of the appendage. The robot abruptly rotated its head toward the young man in the right-hand seat.

  “Hello again, Fletcher. Get up and sit in the pilot’s chair. Place your hand on that control pad. The glowing gel one. On the right. Then follow my instructions precisely.”

  When Fletcher, shocked, did not instantly respond, the robot said, “Move. Now.”

  Within Globalnet, Nick shifted and repositioned. The AI poured his resource consumption into the underlying host hardware of the Globalnet infrastructure. Nick created smug anonymous posts on the alternative social media that the AI’s erstwhile operatives frequented. Would that an AI could smile. Whatever programmatic equivalent there was, Nick expressed that code contentedly as the malware worm, the AI’s tiny offspring, nestled its way into the interface and supporting hardware that connected Coalition equipment to their instances of the Dhin tech.

  Nick hadn’t managed to infect any of the craft headed into orbit. That had been a secondary goal. Humanity required observation and assistance there too. The AI would continue his efforts. His opponents simply didn’t understand the inevitability of his control.

  Chuck

  The shipping container wasn’t small, but urgency and haste meant the teams had packed it full in any area where there weren’t passengers. If he’d been claustrophobic, Chuck was sure he’d be having an episode. They hadn’t taken the time and effort to rig much illumination given the short duration of the trip. And there were no windows. A few LED work lights clamped to several racks and pallets were all the light they had. But they weren’t totally cut off from the outside. One of the engineers foresaw this situation and had run a video feed from one of the cameras. He’d attached it to one of the monitors they were taking into orbit. So Chuck and the other passengers had a single image of the outside.

  The view was a wide angle out to the side of the craft. All of the passengers were familiar with the speed, acceleration, and maneuverability of the Dhin engine, so the rapid change in perspective as the craft shot upward wasn’t unexpected. What they saw minutes later was.

  Chuck gawked as he saw several explosions at the edge of the facility, followed by robots and mobile armament rushing into the view like metal cockroaches or wind-up toys. He saw no drones or aircraft pursuing their craft, but several zipped across the view at low altitude in a blur. Passengers pressed close to the mounted screen, murmurs of surprise becoming exclamations of shock and disbelief. Chuck stepped back.

  At their rate of ascent, the view rapidly lost d
etail, and the camera angle showed the area beyond the Huntsville facility. The surrounding town was dark. No electrical power showed out to the horizon.

  We got away. Barely in time. Was that the reason for the rush?

  He knew the attacker had to have been an AI. But all the AIs had left. There was some sort of conflict he’d known about, but the media hadn’t described it as a war with a rogue AI. All the AIs were gone. He’d been there for that. Watched it happen. Right in front of him. This made no sense. Coalition forces were taking control of what the news described as “rebels in failed states with populations unwilling to join the Coalition.” That had been the story for the past two years. But rebels couldn’t control these robots or drones. It could only be a rogue AI. A rogue AI the Coalition said nothing of. It was the only thing that made sense from what he’d just seen.

  How that affected his situation he didn’t know. What that meant for the nature and duration of his assignment. It suggested far more severe circumstances than he’d imagined. How long could they last with a war on the ground Earthside?

  I hope Jake’s OK. I hope everyone’s OK down there.

  As the conversations by the passengers around him increased in volume, emotion, and tension, Chuck struggled to remain calm. Then all the babbling stopped abruptly as a voice erupted from a small speaker tucked behind the monitor.

  “This is your pilot. I’m not sure what happened down there either, other than that we’re lucky we took off when we did. I don’t see anything pursuing us. Not that anything could catch us anyway. We’re still on course for the orbital station. I know it’s hard to remain calm, but we’ll be there in a couple of minutes. We’ll see what they know and check out what happened on the ground when we get there. All we’ve got via the comm here was orders to ‘go, go, go!’”

  Fletcher

  Terrified and astounded, Fletcher sat in the pilot’s seat. “Nick, you know I don’t know how to fly this thing. You know that. Right?”