It now considered that, with the addition of the killer nanites and the obvious distress of the AI invasion fleet, the odds had changed to a fifty percent chance of Space Island securing a stay of execution.
Breaking the self-imposed rules it had adopted for this human showdown, Pod did a thorough scan of the island’s surface, discovering in the process that all the bots were similarly disabled; the invasion apparently thwarted by the smallest of things.
The nanites had somehow disabled them all. Yet, there were no trace of them on the bots that littered the Complex below. Just the three on the Mother-ship were being consumed by the nanites. Although the Fortress nanites that had been set to protect the brain and control centres were fighting back, slowly overcoming the killer nanites by their overwhelming numbers, fatal damage to the machines had already occurred.
Pod continued to adhere to its self designated protection of Osbourne and the others. It had not been able to save the soldiers that had inadvertently positioned themselves on the other side of the doors which had been destroyed by cannon fire. It regretted the loss of life, but didn’t have the time, or materials, to re-fabricate their patterns.
When it followed the Mother-ship and its phalanx of gunships back to the Fortress, Pod was surprised to find the complex was decimated. Searching for the reason for such a change of circumstances, it uncovered the remnants of a battle underground. There was more evidence of killer nanites having been released and still working.
Wisely, Pod decided to keep itself clear of any possible infection choosing to remain well above the now inactive shield. It instead scanned the structures below ground and as the island forces spread throughout the complex, the attention shifted to the control room area and a small shielded room that Pod was unable to penetrate.
Analysing it remotely, as being of the same constituent materials as the laboratory, Pod deduced that Ferris, who was nowhere to be found, had removed himself to the room. The Space Island forces were now seeking to gain entry to secure Ferris so it seemed all was now over for the rebel human leader.
It became plainly evident that it had greatly under-estimated the abilities of the humans on Space Island. They had not only fought off an invasion by a superior force and technology, but had also invaded and overcome the Fortress itself and won the day.
Realising Osbourne and Pennington had the matter completely under control, Pod, now feeling a little unsure of itself, jumped back into space. It decided it needed to re-evaluate its analytical capabilities, as whilst very satisfied with the outcome, it was aware that it had miscalculated the human abilities substantially. It was an error it did not want to repeat.
Osbourne placed the vial up against the door to Ferris’s safe room and tipped the remaining quantity of grey sludge onto the handle recess where it immediately clung to the doorway and began eating into the metal shielding. There was little danger this batch would spread beyond the doorway as the timer on the lifespan of the nanites was running out and it would only have sufficient time to eat its way through the door.
As they began to have an impact on the metals of the door and the frame, Goeth arrived back with two glass vials containing nanites he had recovered. He passed them gingerly to Osbourne, who used one vial on the hinged side of the doorway. As the grey sludge slid its way down the hinges utilising the force of gravity, it too began to eat its way into the door frame
Pennington waited until there was light showing through both sides of the doorway, then two of his biggest soldiers pressed themselves against the door which heaved open on one side leaving a single hinge holding the bulk of the door off the ground. It was breached; they were in.
They moved in, Goeth and Osbourne behind the three soldiers. Garner hung back, not sure whether to be involved, or not. He needed to be here; he had the Space Council to answer to. It would go a lot easier for him if he could speak first-hand about being there, in the midst, able to account for their actions from a personal perspective. Still, the idea of being this close to Ferris didn’t give him any comfort at all. So, he held back as much as he dared.
The room was a standard office in that there was a desk, chair, cabinets and bank of monitors on the wall and three on the desktop. There was little in the way of decoration in there and nothing seemed out of place, except for Ferris, that is.
Goeth moved quickly ahead of the soldiers and Pennington, all of whom were now standing with weapons raised in the firing position unsure of what they saw. Goeth understood immediately.
Ferris was sitting in a chair facing them, at least, what used to be Ferris. It was now a strange, mottled, greeny-blue carapace being that still in parts wore a military General’s uniform. Ferris looked bloated, the swelling brought on by the mutation overtaking his biological body.
It forced his body into stretching to an abnormal size without breaking, the leathery nature of his skin containing the pressure, turning the pressure inward, collapsing his vital organs despite the shielded sheaths grown around them. He had died a death that must have been excruciatingly painful, regardless of his ability to withstand the pain after months of enduring the mutation of his body. It had simply eaten him away from the inside.
Stubborn to the end, Ferris must have realised that excessive traumas, such as the sound grenades and the resulting damage to his arms and legs, would accelerate the reaction of the Ferrazine in his body. The stress brought on by losing, compounded by the added strain of seeing the computer room wrecked, seeing his plans being turned from pure genius to idiocy in moments because of unexpected intervention and a small flask of grey sludge, all led to a Ferrazine overload.
When Osbourne finally stepped forward and tipped the remaining vial of nanites onto the once superhuman body of Ferris, nobody intervened. Better this than dealing with the issue in a more public way. The Ferrazite had destroyed him; nobody wanted anything to do with him, or the by-product
Garner stepped forward and despite everything that had happened, stood quietly with head bowed saying a prayer for Ferris. Nobody else would mourn him, not after the deaths of their people today. They realised that Garner was mourning an old enemy and that this was more for him than for Ferris.
As the single most powerful leader on Earth now, Garner could afford a moment of spiritual generosity. The moment passed. He turned and walked away.
He had a world to run and ‘by God’, he was going to make it all happen.
It took the full remaining lifespan of the nanites to dispose of the Ferrazine aspects of Ferris’s body. As their single-use power cells drained, they dropped to the carpet amongst the mush of the mutated elements. Now, completely inert and of no further use; they could be sucked up, or recycled into something new.
That which was left of Ferris was burned in place using chemicals from Goeth’s laboratory. Goeth smiled grimly as he realised that, despite his past loyalty to Ferris, his death was a welcome release from tyranny. His group of lab rats downstairs would be keen to depart the Fortress, he couldn’t blame them.
After checking the room for secrets and important records, and removing what was felt to be important, they sealed the room using a nanite paste which formed a thick steel alloy type skin over the entrance.
Outside in the control room, Goeth and Osbourne were talking about the time between Osbourne escaping and today. They had a lot to discuss and one of the main questions on Goeth's mind was what was going to happen to him. He broached the question with Osbourne.
“What do you think should happen with you, Dr. Goeth?” Osbourne used his formal title to separate their previous chats with an official enquiry.
“I admit I have been a willing party to the rebellion since the death of Jannson, but I believe I have much to offer Space Island in terms of experience and research.” He looked out the corner of his eye to try and gauge Osbourne’s reaction. He pushed his luck, “I’m sure your Mr. Callaghan will want to make use of me.” Goeth was hoping that mentioning Jannson would indicate whether or not he would be
held accountable. He knew that Osbourne had seen much of what was happening back in the days when the first Fortress was operational. Just how much did he know, or suspect and was he going to call him out.
Osbourne knew or suspected Goeth’s involvement in Jannson's death. He wasn’t going to trust the man any further than necessary, but it was important for the scientists to combine their efforts, at least until a new team had evolved from the two different laboratories. He decided to pretend indifference to the fate of Jannson while working out how to get justice for Jannson.
“We will have to leave it to Zeke to decide when he gets back from his space trials with our new Marauder class, spaceship. However, I don’t think there will be a problem if we can resolve to work together. I presume you will accept that you can no longer lead the laboratory and will have to be answerable to me?” Osbourne coughed to avoid breaking into laughter as he saw Goeth’s face drop at the realisation of that little bombshell.
“You have a spaceship - in space?” Goeth queried, his aggrieved look turning to astonishment at finding that his competitors had overcome the space travel issues. Not only that, but they had a viable ship. “You must let me be involved, I absolutely promise, you won’t have any problems from me,” he added excitedly as he realised that his work could take a big leap forward with this new information.
Osbourne smiled. “I don’t see a problem with that, Dr. Goeth. No problem at all.” With that, he guided him back to the Mother-ship where they discussed the transfer of it and the gunships to Space Island. There was much of the technology that was parallel with their own, which was hardly surprising considering they had been filching data from each other since this whole thing started.
Behind his calm and accommodating exterior, Osbourne was itching to put Goeth in his place and send him to jail for the murder of Jannson. However, there were exceedingly good reasons for not doing that, maybe never doing it. One of them was sitting on the suppressor mat in front of them - the Mother-ship.
Like Zeke, Osbourne would do whatever was necessary to put the world into space and help humanity begin a new millennia of space travel. He was aware that there was trouble brewing, it was part of that which drove him relentlessly forward in his labs, knowing he had to be one step ahead of Fortress, and at the same time prepare for an outside invader. An invader that was superior to them by an order of magnitude that placed humans on a par with the caveman by comparison.
“Dr. Goeth, we need this Mother-ship to be programmed to receive our verbal commands, can we go to the forward section and organise that?” asked Lieutenant Baxter, who was busy trying to coordinate the evacuation of the civilians including Goeth’s lab team.
“Ah, I see Mr. Burgess over there, he’s the IT specialist of our group, he is the best person to help you with Medusa,” Goeth responded, pleased to see his people were going to be part of the island team and thinking perhaps not all of his seniority had dissipated with the demise of Ferris. “Although, I did develop the processors, he has the coding skills that brought Medusa to life.
Burgess looked up as his name was mentioned and walked cross the ship’s deck towards them. “Did someone take my name in vain?” he smiled. Osbourne took an immediate liking to his easy going manner and confidence.
“We need to take control of the Medusa AI verbally, it's only programmed to respond to your mainframe which no longer exists,” Baxter explained to them. “We want to use this ship as a transporter to get everyone from here to the Island. With Ferris gone there is no point in anyone staying here,” he added.
Osbourne smiled at Burgess as he put out his hand to introduce himself, adding, “I would like to work with you on the AI, if you don’t mind. I have a particular interest in that field myself.” He led Burgess off to the control room at the front of the spaceship.
Goeth walked over to the other scientists and a discussion followed over the transfer of their experiments and research, much of which had disappeared with the consumption of the mainframe by the killer nanites. There was a lot of hand-wringing and anger, but pretty much everyone was relieved to be moving out of the shadow of the Fortress and Ferris’ fearsome tempers.
Within the hour, Medusa, as the ship was now called, was on its way with a large contingent of the local population of workers. It would be some time before all of the assets and equipment were removed and they still had to deal with the African Fortress complex as well as the Asian Space-port which somehow needed to be kept operational. There was much to do and Garner was exhausted by the end of the first week of reorganising everything.
Zeke was still in space, debugging the Marauder, and would have to be apprised of the situation before too long. Garner expected that to be the clincher in pulling Zeke fully back into the programme to get them into space. Yes, things were moving along well.
Whilst everyone was pleased with the outcome, not everyone was welcomed to Space Island. The friction between the two groups of scientists was evident from the outset and Osbourne had a major job settling the personalities involved.
Much to his private relief, Dr. Goeth came out fully in support of him. Despite Goeth’s motivation being borne of self-interest, Osbourne nonetheless accepted the man’s help in integrating the teams. Slowly they began to share their work and results.
It wasn’t long before the research began racing ahead. Driven by the competitive natures of talented individuals, the scientists, realising that skills lacking on both sides had previously held them back, now found that solutions seemed relatively easy to find and implement.
Pennington took in the security and military personnel from all of Fortress’ bases without having to concern himself over divided loyalties, because there was no longer a question of choice. He doubled his command over the weeks and quietly took control. He weeded out personnel that were not suitable material and promoted the ones that fitted in well. The bases ran like well-oiled machines as slowly, the different organisations integrated.
The base in the Far East he kept as a military space-port because its set-up was already covert and suited as a military camp . Only a few people knew it existed and its location was deemed ideal to use for a build up of the growing number of military ships and fighters.
Using the existing gunship designs created by the Fortress, but wisely adding in human security personnel to manage the on-board AIs, they soon had a large force of over forty atmosphere-based security cruisers and for the first time the logo of the SCSS was seen in places other than Space Island.
Many of the countries represented on the Space Council noticed the absence of the military headquarters on Space Island and whilst most of the members were ambivalent about their departure, some were either concerned that the Island was unprotected, or worse that the SC had effectively lost over-watch of their behaviour. Garner himself had such concerns, but trusted his friend, Pennington. He also understood more than any other, the urgent need to expand the Space Force beyond a simple glorified policing organisation.
Now Osbourne, Lang and the newly unified team were working flat out without animosity and with tremendous productivity. The software compression issues were resolved and the new multi-purpose nanites were becoming mainstream, but only for the production of military ships, weapons and ancillary equipment.
The technology was too volatile for general use as yet. Until more was known of the long-term risks of allowing the programmable nanite technology loose on the world, it would not be commercially developed. It was massively disruptive technology in the hands of unscrupulous manufacturers, or weapons developers it could wreak havoc.
The inhabitants of Earth were already reeling under the social changes wrought by the technology released by Zirkos and the Fortress. Another radical technological advance at this point might just be enough to send the commercial and social structure of the planet spiralling into an economic chaos. They needed a safe and secure population at the moment, not one in cataclysmic meltdown.
It had only been two short week
s ago that the Fortress and Space Island battle for global supremacy had been resolved. Progress since had been nothing short of miraculous. Garner was constantly amazed at how quickly ships took shape from his window. It almost seemed like overnight there was a new ship in his view; sizes and types varied now as their production speeded up.
They had developed large commercial transit vessels that could double up as spaceships when the need arose, but their main thrust was in small, hyper-fast Marauder dual air and space fighter craft that carried the SCSS emblem on the side. These disappeared into service almost as soon as they came off the production line so nobody really noticed how many of them actually got built.
Garner knew that between the island and the eastern military production facilities, they had a fleet of almost a hundred of them already flying, prepared for when Zeke got back and space training could begin.
- 17 -
Pod’s quiet departure from Earth had gone unnoticed. It returned to space to resume its tireless work in defence of the planet below. This meant its own projects now took up all its processors attention. As it hovered inside the empty asteroid, the centre of its small universe, it continued to develop new technology from the patterns in its archive.
In designing and building weapons and monitoring systems, it was deliberately incorporating the scientific and technological progress made by Osbourne’s teams into its own developments. It logically reasoned that whatever it built, the humans had to be able to modify, and later improve, the designs using their own existing technology base.
Pod and Osbourne had discussed this approach at length in his lab. Pod thought it was logical to give humans the ability to leapfrog from one level to the next provided they could see and understand the technology. It was pointless giving them inventions that they had no ability to comprehend. It was a dangerous prescription and Zirkos had cautioned the two AI’s on such a danger well before he disappeared. Pod felt there was justification for maintaining this approach so ignored all of the esoteric designs that would be so far advanced they would appear to be magic to the humans.
POD (The Pattern Universe) Page 16
