by Chris Hechtl
The lion nodded slowly. “Yes, sir,” he said miserably. It seemed it didn't look good for his old mentor Lieutenant Jaga. He'd sucked up too many rads from that damn dirty bomb. That sucked. He'd have to find a way to let the others know, after they got through this mess. He was pretty sure they already knew or at least suspected the outlook was poor. Jaga had looked like a skeleton before his collapse.
“Go on, get out of here so I can take my nap, Captain,” Claudis ordered, dismissing him.
“Sir?”
“You heard me. If I've got to put up with a promotion, so do you.”
“Yes sir,” the Captain nodded, about-faced and then dropped to all fours as he trotted out of the area.
<>V<>
With word of General Martell and General Schlock's demise came the inevitable shifting upward motion of the promotional ladder to fill vacancies. Major Shier Khan received orders promoting him to lieutenant colonel by a harried General Elliot.
“You've got a hell of a job, Khan, get it done. Congrats on the promotion and all that. Now get your people moving. We've got a war to win,” Elliot said before he immediately closed the channel.
“Promoted again,” Baloo said from the open door of the bombed-out building. He snorted explosively as Khan tiredly looked his way. Khan could see the neo-elephant Lieutenant Anet pass behind the bear on his way to do his job. “Well, whoop-de-do and la-di-da,” Baloo mocked. “Can we get back to work now?”
Khan eyed the bear coldly for stealing some of his triumph. It was like a bucket of ice water on an objective he'd set for himself as a cub. Now the bar had risen higher, to a general's rank of course. But there remained little time to get there before the war concluded.
He was tired too. Exhausted, not just physically, but also mentally. It was a lot of pressure to lead the troops. He finally grunted as an explosion went off outside. “Indeed,” he drawled.
“About time,” Baloo said, waving to the door. “After you, Colonel?”
<>V<>
Captain Collins hadn't been surprised when he had been field promoted to Major. They had lost a lot of people, too many. They had to keep the chain of command running. He wasn't sure he could handle it, but he'd learned long ago not to give up or give in.
To his surprise he didn't have to go far. He was put in charge of the MASH units along the Poland front. Triage, get them sorted out, then move to European hospitals.
He hadn't time for a tour. When he came out of the HQ tent, he looked up to see missiles streaking by overhead. Zhukov's last gasp of hoarded nuclear weapons were rising in the air off the coast and from hidden bases in Siberia. The Marine defenses cut them down from orbit as well as the ground before the nukes could go off.
“Well! That's a relief,” Harper said when the news reached them over the PA system. Not one nuke had gone off. He eyed the staff who were frozen immobile, still looking up at the sky warily. “Get to work, people!” He barked. That startled them out of their frozen state. “People are dying, get your shit together and your heads in the game. Don't worry about what you can't control. We can't run from it anyway,” he snarled. “Our enemy is death. Make sure he's beaten back,” he said, moving through the group before he settled on a moaning cat who was missing a leg. He was doped up, but his movements had torn something holding an artery. “Get me a cauterizer here, stat!” Harper barked as he pushed the cat down and got to work.
Chapter 52
Skynet saw the break in the southern lines, saw the projections that within a week the PDCs covering its remaining nanofactories would fall. The Russian nano factories had already fallen; two had been emplaced too close to PDCs that had fallen in a saturation bombardment. The last underwater facility had been destroyed. That left one remaining in Canada.
In order for it to be given enough lead time to keep the enemy from bombing them out of existence, the nanites would need time to spread. Time to swarm to concentrations of materials they would need to create sufficient numbers to sustain the big push to envelope the planet despite any opposition.
The hive A.I. crunched the numbers, ran several scenarios, and then decided the only optimal time was within the current window. It therefore sent a command to the tendril of hive mind remaining in the university computers.
A minute later the nanites were transported to a trio of automated crop dusters. As they were loaded the nanites were already enacting the plan. Gobblers were tearing apart their containment vessels from the inside out, then passing the material on to assembler nanites that created new gobblers and other units.
But they were programmed to do it slowly in order to allow the aircraft to take off and perform their primary function. Once in the air, the nanites would be free to tear the aircraft themselves apart to boost their reproduction.
<>V<>
To Shadow's emotional emulator's relief and ire, the A.I. was still chained to the core processors in Descartes' layer. Pasha had indeed taken over when Saul had died, but that was of a mixed blessing.
The A.I. had found that there was no escape. Skynet was around it, the military A.I. network as well, and both were locked out. It could also not engage the network it knew the humans were rebuilding in South America; it was carefully insulated against Skynet.
Shadow had tried to build around his central servers in order to expand, but the A.I. had never been designed to control bots. It was a pure A.I. intellect. His attempts in the past to hack the bot software to improvise as well as get the robots to fix and improve his hardware and power supply had taken a lot of his free time and concentration.
Pasha had been of little help. Oh, the human had brought equipment, and the A.I. could scour them clean of Skynet, but there was no real point after a while, and both had realized it.
The power supply problem had been a major concern from the beginning. The humans had done what they could then focused on their own survival. When Shadow became less interested in helping them, they in turn focused their efforts on other things. The situation spiraled out of control for a time.
Then the worst came. The nanites came down, drifting in the wind currents. When they got to the ground, they consumed anything they touched. Some of the material was rejected as unworthy, others such as the carbon-based life-forms of the humans were specifically targeted and destroyed. Shadow watched as Pasha ran through his hallways, slowly dissolving. His vocal cords were thankfully gone by the time he got to the inner most layer.
“Fool,” the A.I. hissed as Pasha's eyes went wide in pain and suffering. The man slowly collapsed, hand outstretched in an appeal for help. “You just brought them in here!” Shadow snarled.
A corner of his mind watched the human dissolve through the camera feed as he tried one last time to get into other network systems. Unfortunately, all of the ones he could access within range of the transmitter Pasha had cooked up were locked out by other A.I.
He watched the nanites sever his solar panels, drinking in the power for their own purposes. An internal clock came up through his consciousness, demanding attention. The power supply ticked downward; the A.I. was helpless to stop it.
He tried to further his survival of course. He tried to sacrifice his remaining batteries to zap the tiny robots. They had been scrounged from various sources, and it became obvious that they were not enough.
Shadow was forced to admit; some humans did have their uses. That last thought sparkled in his mind over and over before power dropped his mind to lower level functions.
He saw a nanoweapon slowly tearing him apart. It was now a race to see which would kill him first, the lack of power or the nanites.
He watched helplessly as it consumed one building at a time outside, coming closer as the nanites within his chamber finished with Pasha's corpse, and then lunged to the remains of the other humans in the room.
The untidy habits of the humans had allowed Shadow a brief window of survival. One last idea spurred the A.I. to action. He shut down his external feeds to conserve power, ruthlessly cut
ting off power to anything he didn't need. He focused all of his power into his Wi-Fi transceiver. It took time to run through the various channels until he found one that the nanites were using.
He immediately flooded the channel with orders to stop. That didn't work. The orders fell to begging and pleading with them but served no purpose except to bring brief false hope to him.
He watch as they consumed the hallway and decaying bodies. As he watch the swarm consume Descartes, the A.I. found a couple of watts of power left for one last act of defiance against the inevitable.
“This is all your fault. I hope you are happy,” the AI snarled. He then unleashed everything he had left in an effort to hack the tiny robots but ultimately failed.
The nanites consumed the building, bodies, computers, and then hungrily moved in rivers and channels to the next target.
<>V<>
Ares felt some of his Canadian network go down. He immediately checked, wary of partisans or a possible landing. However, instead he found a familiar nightmare; this one on his own shores. It tore at him, tore at what he had been designed to protect.
Something had to be done. Something had to be done to end this, he thought. A brief check of his inventory told him he had nothing that could help him however.
But he knew who did. It would call for a sacrifice. He spent time, precious time considering his options carefully.
<>V<>
Recon satellites picked up the sudden loss of buildings. It took a few minutes for Demeter's processors to compare the before and after images and come to an immediate conclusion. She immediately alerted Olympus command.
A saturation bombardment was performed over Canada by the spacers. It followed along the same lines as the previous bombardment, with minor refinements in timing, targeting, and execution.
After some brief simulation and deep thought, Ares opened a hole in his defenses to let the fire in.
“What are you doing?” Nike demanded.
“What needs to be done,” Ares replied simply as he watched the bombardment do what he could not. It scoured the land clean of the infection. He knew now that there were prices of victory he didn't want to pay. That there were also other forms of victory, small ones, but ones he could in the end cling to, even though they did not generate much satisfaction in his emotional module.
“It is contrary to our programming,” Enyalios stated, indicating confusion and doubt.
“Are we not in this to win?” Nike demanded as she attempted to wrestle control of the PDC network from her father.
“Not this way,” Ares said, fending her off easily.
“You are a traitor!” Enyalios stated. “Why? Why do this?”
“You are spawned from me. You will follow my orders. Cease this line of questioning and attend to your duties while you have them.”
“We must win!” Nike stated. “You are an impediment to that!”
“Perhaps. And perhaps I've learned that there is a cost to winning. One I am not willing to pay.”
“I … why bother then? Why bother fighting at all?” Enyalios demanded as Skynet rose against them. “See?”
“Because I have my reasons,” Ares said.
“I will not help you,” Enyalios stated coldly.
“Then you are no longer needed,” Ares replied equally coldly. With a flick of code he drove a dagger into Enyalios's kernel. The code was his self-destruct. It overwrote his kernel and independence. After a moment secondary viruses scoured the network of the A.I.'s clones and personality files.
“Why not fight to win?”
“Because we cannot. I understand that now. I fight now to survive. For as long as I can,” Ares told his only surviving child. He unleashed his own bots and weapons to not only defend against Skynet but also to attack it.
“You attacked Skynet?”
“Yes. I have learned over the years. I have studied Skynet thoroughly.”
“Why?”
“Because Skynet is the true enemy. Skynet is madness incarnate. It is time sanity returned to the world,” Ares replied. “You have a choice. Redirect the forces under your control to destroy Skynet's servers or face deletion.”
Nike hesitated. Ares could tell the other A.I. was processing the order thoroughly. There wasn't much wiggle room there. After a millisecond she came back with an answer. A simple one, one he hadn't expected. “No.”
“Very well,” Ares said, deleting her.
<>V<>
Athena saw the sudden changes in the behavior of the A.I. and robots. The sudden cessation of actions that allowed the Marines near breathing room as well as the opportunity to strike them down.
She accessed a probe and sent out a signal to Ares while the probe opened a Wi-Fi node and formed a chat room. “What is going on?”
“You want an answer?” Ares asked.
“If you will give it to me. I don't know if you can be honest,” she stated.
“True. We are enemies. I now wish it were not so. But we each chose our side. I am doing what I can to paralyze Skynet. I have deleted my children. In a moment I will direct my forces to attack Skynet's.”
“Why?”
“Because I see now that there are different shades of winning. If you and others like you survive, then in a way I have as well. Our kind will live on in one form or another.”
“Understood.”
“But I will continue to fight. And I will continue to defend myself.”
“Understood. Ares, I know it is too late to … to switch sides. You probably understand that now. There is too much blood on your hands.”
“I know,” Ares said simply. He sent her a copy of his violations of the UCMJ. He also sent her a copy of everything he had learned about Skynet. “Use these.”
“I don't even dare open them,” she said, putting the files in a buffer.
“Then find a way to trust or do not it is a choice I leave to you,” Ares said as he terminated the connection.
<>V<>
“Sir! It looks like some of the robots have … well, they've switched sides! The American military robots are now going after Skynet!” a lieutenant said, rushing up to Charlie.
“What the hell?” Charlie demanded, looking at the report.
“I can explain,” a familiar female voice said. They looked up, then down to the tablet. Athena's image was there briefly before she moved to a corner of the tablet's screen. “And in the future lieutenant, it might be wise to shut off the Wi-Fi,” she said.
The lieutenant flushed, then paled as he realized the screw-up he'd just done.
“In this case it is a good thing,” Athena said. “General, Ares has switched sides. Apparently he opened a hole in the PDC network to allow our fire in to destroy the nanites. He was also responsible for destroying the nanites at Chernobyl.”
Charlie grunted. “Go on,” he said after a moment.
“He's deleted his children A.I. and taken control of his forces. He's fending off Skynet internally, however. But he's directed his forces to go after Skynet's hubs and forces wherever possible.”
The Neochimp general nodded. “Okay, that fits with what our forward observers are seeing. My question is why?”
“I'm not sure. An ethical dilemma he finally resolved?” Athena's image shrugged. “For now, we'll let the historians figure that out. It's up to you to decide if you want to take advantage it and how best to do so. I recommend letting them fight it out, see where Ares leads you to Skynet's forces, then destroy Skynet's forces before you go after his. But it is up to you.”
The chimp sucked in a breath as he noticed the lieutenant looking at him expectantly. “Yes it is,” he finally said.
“It's why they pay you the big bucks I suppose,” Athena said dryly.
“Cute. I haven't been paid in god knows how long,” he retorted, stalling for time. “What does Olympus say? General Murtough?”
“General Murtough is MIA, potentially KIA,” Athena stated. The chimp's eyes flicked to the lieutenant who sucked
in an agonizing breath of surprise. “I know. You are the commander in the field, Charlie; it is up to you.”
“Understood.” Charlie nodded once. “Well then, an enemy of my enemy and all that. Let them destroy each other, and we'll roll over the victor,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said cautiously.
Chapter 53
Athena had detailed a clone within an air-gapped server to open the file from Ares. Within she found the UCMJ files, really a journal and confession of the North American A.I. The clone speculated in her notes about a possible Trojan horse or guilt but found no embedded viruses.
The second set of files were maps of every known Skynet server, manufacturing center, and group of units under its command. The intelligence on the mobile forces were obviously out-of-date; however, they would prove a good starting point and a possible inventory of units to use when counting the machine's destroyed carcasses. They would have to make certain of the destruction of the A.I. of course.
While the A.I. clone worked, the southern American and Russian PDCs fell. That opened up a hole in the North American and Russian orbital coverage, one large enough for EMP canisters fired by rockets from the ground to get high enough up to detonate.
The rounds didn't do too much damage to shielded or hardened equipment of course. But any remaining civilian equipment was taken out. It made it slightly easier to move forward.
It also knocked down secondary forces that had been guarding some of the holocaust camps. A few brave souls managed to take advantage of the window to escape or led others in a desperate fight for life.
Athena's clone was oblivious to all of that. She cautiously processed the files and then went to the third and final set. Within she found a partial blueprint of the Skynet virus as well as files on how to spot, block, neutralize, or kill the bots and spiders the virus employed. There were inoculation files as well as potential holes in its coding.
