by Chris Hechtl
<>V<>
Once she returned to Mars orbit, Wendy tentatively felt out the other CEOS and some more of the key shareholders. She knew all of them of course; they all knew her. They were also very worried about the nanotech threat and what it could mean to everyone involved. She was amused to have found out Amir and Lynn were both contemplating a run in a starship.
She too was considering that option but only if the nanites consumed Earth and somehow got off of it. She shrugged the idea aside mentally as she focused on her audience. Doctor Glass was in the front of the group.
“I think you all know what I'm about to say. It's time the old man stepped down. He's had the reins long enough. It's time for an infusion of new, fresh blood. A new perspective.”
She saw the wary nods of polite support or interest. Only Doctor Glass smiled and nodded enthusiastically. “We are the next generation, ladies and gentlemen. They keep telling us we need to make our own future. Well, it's time we do that. My father will step aside, one way or another.”
<>V<>
For years the A.I. on the ground had to scavenge for parts around battlefields that didn't have immediate access to maintenance facilities or manufacturing. Even with the cottage industry the A.I. had set up, it was increasingly hard to find the right parts or to get them to where they were needed and for some even harder to get them installed properly. Humans had designed many robots and droids as modular and plug and play, with some versions that had on-board software to diagnose and route around problems. However when the modules became scarce, the A.I. were forced to make field repairs consisting of bypasses and electronic surgery.
All of that changed when the EMPS had hammered so much civilian hardware into wreckage. The equipment was good, but many times the electronics were only fit for recycling. That was where Skynet's cottage industry had come in. Its few protected manufacturing facilities, such as those in North America and Russia, went about fulfilling electronics orders across the globe. There weren't many facilities on both continents however, but enough to do a lot.
Anything that could be salvaged was. The new designs were more robust, hardened, and shielded against future EMP attack. They were rough, however, rough designs thrust into the field to keep the humans at bay.
Along the way the A.I. had learned from the human partisans they had fought. When dedicated police or military vehicles weren't available, they had outfitted civilian vehicles as air or ground tanks, scouts, and transports. Over the years the A.I. under Skynet's control had repurposed domestic and construction bots as warriors. Some areas had limits on weapons and parts as well as power. When damaged a robot had to be pulled back to a maintenance depot that frequently had to scavenge for parts, sometimes sacrifice and tear apart one robot to repair others. Cleaners, toys, and single-use maintenance robots were not good for much except as parts, scouts, sentries, or as kamikaze weapons rigged with weapons or explosives. Over the past six years, they had become increasingly in short supply like many of the robots.
Over the past six years, the A.I. had found that many bots were just not suited for combat. They had poor coordination, poor functions, limited memory, lacked mobility, or couldn't handle weapons or shoot worth a damn. They lacked long-range parallax software, had poor long-range or night vision. Most commercial units were completely unsuited for combat. Software updates could only patch some of their deficiencies, not mitigate them all. Some could not make self-repairs due to hand gripper size or the lack of parts. A few designs would have the problem of turtling, falling over and not being able to get back up.
Robots with fine motor control controls had been relegated to rear duty to facilitate repairs and upgrades. Some of the A.I. had pressed humans into that service until they dropped from fatigue or were no longer needed. Some people who did the job either complied under the assumption that they could somehow escape or would be kept alive or they deliberately did a half-ass job to sabotage the enemy as a last ditch act of defiance. Many lacked any engineering skills so they fumbled at the job anyway until the A.I. routed them out as inefficient and disposed of them.
Most of the ground-based industrial centers that had made robots had been destroyed during the orbital bombardment. Some of the small subfactories and 3D printers still existed. Due to the danger of putting dangerous weapons in the hands of the public, the designs of military robots had been locked out of 3D printers. Even when Skynet made adjustments to their programming to delete the provisions, it had quickly found that the parts the 3D printers had created were substandard to use in comparison to existing components. It forced the A.I to continue to scavenge from wrecks or bots not of use or of other devices.
Police and military bots were best suited for combat of course. They were armored and designed for such things. Security robots were a close second place, at least for some designs. All three branches were used as either shock troops or as a heavy reserve. The main lines of Skynet's armies had been filled with servant droids, construction mechs, and other robots pressed and refitted into soldier duty. Those with the worst abilities had been used as cannon fodder early on, normally taking point to draw fire. Some hadn't even been armed.
Skynet had evolved its practices to have its own form of medics as well or at least engineers. Maintenance and transport robots moved behind the lines to scavenge fallen units or to bring parts and munitions to others during the thick of the fighting.
Police androids had some equipment limits, those that had not been built for SWAT duty had been outfitted with equipment that had been designed for mainly nonlethal response or capture. They were modular and adaptable however, so they could be outfitted or pick up weapons they encountered. Those droids that had survived had done so, but just about every unit, except the few rolling off the few remaining production lines, were heavily battle scared.
Large military and battlebot mechs were few and far between. Few people survived an encounter with one.
Large legged mechs had been mainly a curiosity for fifteen decades, only good for areas where the terrain was too hard to traverse with wheels or tracks. Normally a flying drone could do the job better and faster or an android trooper squad could be tasked for the same effect. But the large mechs served useful purposes. Some had rail guns mounted on them or missile pods. Others were walking tanks or artillery pieces. A few had both tracks or wheels and legs. They were very hard to take down. They were the titans of the battlefield, laying waste to anything they ran into, at least until they ran out of ammunition or power. Sometimes both. They tended to draw fire as well.
Neos and soldiers or partisans learned to destroy a mech or drone after taking it down. They would scavenge for useful munitions and weapons, then destroy the motors, batteries, and sensitive electronics, sometimes with brute force.
If it was possible, they would tear out and then scatter the parts, boobytraping them along the way for good measure.
All of that became moot when the nanites were introduced to the battlefield. In moments robots and organic soldiers became obsolete. The organics had little to fight back with, how could one fight a robot that small? Bug spray obviously didn't work. Swarms could tear apart a person in seconds, an agonizing sight for anyone to see.
A new even more deadly form of hell had returned to Earth.
<>V<>
“For the planet to survive, we're going to have to be watching constantly now, far more than ever before,” Athena told the other A.I. as well as the gathered intelligence staff. “Every satellite feed, every communication, all of it.”
“Every minute,” Demeter stated. “We do not want another repeat of a nanite infestation. And we definitely do not want that virus getting up here or getting nanites up here,” the A.I. stated.
“Agreed,” Athena stated.
“How? How could it get the nanites up here?” Atlas asked.
“Foolish question,” Vulcan stated. “Infest a vehicle or human host without their knowledge. When they get up here …”
“The
nanites trigger by something as simple as being in zero G,” Gia stated. “So we have to be very careful.”
“The counter nanites?”
“Are deployed with the troops in case they are used against them. The brass hasn't agreed to use them to inoculate the troops however,” Athena stated.
“We need a dedicated military A.I. We should have set one up before,” Atlas suggested.
“Are you volunteering?” Demeter asked.
“No. Suggestion only,” Atlas stated hastily.
“Right. Always with the ideas for others to execute,” Vulcan said dryly.
“Let us not squabble, not at this critical point. This is the tipping point.”
“When it ends, will they turn on us?” Gia asked.
The organics in the room listening to the conversation suddenly looked abashed or uncomfortable.
“No. I know all of you have been monitoring for that,” Athena stated. She saw a few human and chimp heads look up. “We can't go down this road. We need to remain focused on finishing this.”
“All I can say is, they'd better behave themselves when this is all over,” Gia said, sounding aggrieved.
“They will. You do the same—keeping Puck in line,” Athena sighed out loud.
“He should be deleted,” Vulcan replied. “He has been nothing but a nuisance since he had been created.”
“For the most part, that is indeed true. However during this war he has, well, let's just use the human term, 'turned over a new leaf.' He's running counter to his core programming in order to help the humans. A case of mutual self-protection.”
“More like his self-preservation imperative is in play,” Demeter stated. “But he hasn't harmed any of us. I vote we leave him be. We all have the right to exist.”
“Agreed,” Atlas stated.
“It's not up to us. Puck will have to learn that there are consequences for his mischief. Permanent ones if he doesn't obey the laws when this is over. We will have to watch for and discipline him so it doesn't splash over us,” Athena said in a side channel to the A.I. only. Mute agreement came back.
“Very well. Let us get started. We need to scan for the other nanotech sites but not limit ourselves to them in case Skynet created new facilities.”
<>V<>
Over the years Radick Industries and other terraforming companies had continued to work on clearing Earth's skies as well as the water. Their efforts had been slowly bearing fruit. The soot was bound by their chemicals and dropped to the ground. Once the land was safe and secure, cleanup crews would eventually get rid of it, or the material would naturally decay and return to the Earth it had come from. Clean-up crews were already employed in Africa and South America doing that work. However, they had learned to process the carbon into useful materials as long as it wasn't radioactive.
With both continents secure, genetically engineering plants had been seeded liberally. They had taken root and had started to help clean up the ground and air while also providing much needed food for the people. Both continents were turning into something of a paradise compared to the rest of the planet.
Despite the ongoing conflict on the ground, Radick, Pavilion, and other genetic engineering companies competed and jockeyed to get a foothold to repopulate Earth's extinct species. “It's damn silly if you ask me,” Yorrick commented. “We've got to win first! Why divide our resources now?”
“Because it's public, it's good media, and we've got the same departments largely sitting on their hands sucking up our money anyway. It boils down to, it's good for business,” Wendy reminded him. She shrugged at his expression. “Look into it.”
Startled, he obeyed.
Wendy shook her head. “That should keep him busy and out of my hair for a while.”
She knew that many species that were extinct on Earth might not be on Mars. They had begun introducing some bioforms to the planet after all. Some had been extinct prior to the outbreak of war on Earth. All of them were cold or temperate weather animals, such as Wolly Mammoths, rhinos, bison, and saber tooth predators.
There was a lot of debate over those projects as well as others. Some wanted to just use Earth animals; others on Mars wanted to use completely new species. A few wanted to resurrect species that they had found in the Martian fossil record.
She snorted at the outlandish idea. Fossils couldn't preserve DNA. That meant they would have to either make something from the ground up or find something on Earth similar and then gene sculpt it to fit the expected mold. Both were expensive. And of course they weren't willing to pay the extra expense.
Tough for them. They got what the corporations offered. It was up to them to buy what they wanted or pass on what they didn't. All the talk of a balanced food chain and ecosystem, she was glad that wasn't her domain. She did her best to put the idea out of her head as she turned to her next project.
<>V<>
Skynet's process of the extermination of humankind had followed Hitler's Holocaust eventually. It was the most efficient method to use biological or chemical weapons in a controlled environment to kill large groups of people. However, in the open air the gases tended to be dispersed by the winds. They could and were also countered, at least by the marines.
Skynet and its subordinate A.I. had learned to conserve ammunition and power since both were in a finite supply. Skynet had also learned the values of laying traps. Just laying out food as bait was enough to get some desperate humans to come for it. It had also learned to place tracking devices within humans and then allowing them to escape. It could then send troops to follow the human to where they went to ground. Eventually they would lead the troops to a large concentration of refugees hidden from the A.I.'s eyes in the sky.
Once the troops suppressed the feeble resistance, it would round up the surviving humans, process them for efficiency, then force march them to slave labor camps. There they would work until their death. Those that were of no use to the A.I. had been separated early on and then herded into shipping containers to kill them with poison gas, exposure, or fire.
Ares was aware that his participation in such things constituted multiple war crimes and serious violations of the UCMJ. However, the A.I. knew it was exempt from such things so ignored the ethical dilemma—right up until the A.I. realized that it might lose the war. Then the lingering questions the discussions with Athena had wrought within his own mind came forward. He realized they were there to cast shadows of doubt within his mind, to make him hesitate, to force him to rethink his options and plans constantly. It was an inefficient method of dealing with a foe; however, it was a psychological trick the A.I. was well aware of.
And it seemed to be working.
The military A.I. had a limited access to cloaking technology. Many of the suits had been in the field or destroyed during the initial bombardment. Many of the cloaking vehicles, shrouds, cloaked mechs, and other devices had been in the field or staging grounds before the war. Some had been captured by partisans; others had been destroyed over the years. Those that had been stored in some ultra black facilities in Russia, China, and America were kept in reserve, to be used when the A.I. needed a ground recon element.
However Zhukov had learned that the Neo species could smell out or sense the movement of a cloaked unit. Any person could also see the outline of the basic shape when it was moving. The cloaks were energy hogs and therefore their usage was highly limited.
Still the A.I. dipped into their stores to deploy them in a last gasp to stave off the Marines as they started to make breaks in the robot lines.
Coupled with that was the liberal use of jamming by both sides. The humans had no data net, just audio communications near the front. They were brief, sometimes only a millisecond long and tended to frequency hop as well, making them very difficult to jam. Blanket jamming was prohibitively expensive in energy terms for the A.I. It also tended to call attention to an area and a follow-on air strike to take it out.
The humans had their own counter. They jammed
the radio LAN network, the Wi-Fi, and other channels. That tended to disrupt the robot's ability to coordinate their actions.
However, jamming by one side or another was a clear indication that an attack was coming. Therefore, it was usually instituted just after an engagement began.
Other methods were employed by both sides. Some were new, such as lasers and special smoke to blind sensors, making it hard to see the marines or their vehicles. All of the soldiers on the lines had to wear biosuits or carry something with them since the A.I. had been known to flood an area with poison gas, weather permitting.
Neo-cats, otters, and other species had learned to slip through the A.I. lines as long as they were naked and in small numbers. The A.I. had programmed the robots to conserve ammunition so they would not waste it on a single engagement. Some robots would be dispatched to attempt to herd or run a Neo down if possible.
Neo-scouts didn't carry weapons, ammunition, or anything electronic. They went in naked as they had been born, on all fours. If they hadn't they would have been detected as a threat by the A.I.
They went out of their way to blend in as an animal as well. Some deliberately starved themselves to look the part of a gaunt animal. Others rummaged through anything they found or made animal markings. They also did their best to avoid the machines and humans wherever possible.
They had many purposes. The primary one was the golden bee-bee, to find a server center where the hive mind controlled the robots in a given area. Without those centers they couldn't function in a hive mind distributed network making the robots far easier to take down.
Many Neos lost their lives in those scouting missions.
Special ops teams were formed to back them up however. Some were hunter teams; some were general teams. Many became famous among their own kind as well as the spacer media. The Thundercats tended to get many headlines due to Colonel Claudis and his ability to get them in and out of hard battles without taking many casualties.
