functioning properly.”
“Cable checked and operating within specification.”
“Resume data collection.”
“Resuming from previous data point.”
Satisfied, Kutisha removed her overalls. She still wore business clothes underneath. Even though no one would notice, it made her feel professional.
“Prometheus, monitor the Chindi news and inform me of any new developments.” She plopped herself down in the seat before the control panel, grabbed her nexus pad, and lost herself in gravity wave analysis.
Hover-Tank E9-11
Heading for Mt. Karthala
Kill them or be killed by them. It was one of the slogans Corporal Bomani remembered as a kid during the AI War, and it kept running through his head. He held to the conservative belief that even if a machine were endowed with the most impressive artificial intelligence, it was still just a machine. Perhaps it was in defense of humanity, or in an attempt to suppress jealousy of a machine’s immortality, either way he just couldn’t stomach using the term kill for a machine. Even the whole us-verses-them mentality itself placed AIs on the same level as humans. Some people even considered him a bigot for not embracing equality with AIs. Ironic: he protected people from rogue AIs, and some of them hated him for it.
The cabin of the hover-tank pitched to the left, and Corporal Bonani’s head struck the bulkhead.
“Ow!”
“Stop whining,” Corporal Machario said just over the roar of the engines. “You should be wearing a helmet.”
“It’s amazing,” Bomani said grabbing his helmet, “that a ride in the newest model hover-tank could be so jarring.”
“What?”
Bomani leaned toward Machario and raised his voice. “The term hover should be synonymous with the word smooth.”
Machario smiled. “Have you ever seen a pilot sit in back with us?”
As if in confirmation, the hover-tank banked steeply to the left and Bomani -- with his helmet half on -- struck his head again. Bracing himself with a hand on the bulkhead he said, “I bet we have more fatalities inside the tank than outside.” He activated the intercom for the pilot. “Lowa, are we over the swarm yet?”
“Cut the chatter,” she said. “Have I activated the in situ?”
Bomani knew the answer was no, but looked the indicator lights anyway. Three battles, one day. This was not his father’s nemesis: battle mechs -- mechanical warriors equipped with artificial intelligence processors -- this was an enemy he couldn’t see … well, couldn’t see one at a time. It was combat they hadn’t trained for. They lost almost half their cell in battle with the first swarm. He counted the odds and didn’t like it. They had two swarms to go.
Machario looked at him and tapped his heads-up display. “Take a look at our destination.”
Bomani sat up pulled down his helmet display, focused the word “Destination,” and blinked. A map appeared showing their route to the Gravimetric Lab.
“I checked out the detail screen,” Machario explained. “It says two AI units need protection.”
“You’re kidding. We’re protecting AIs now?”
Bomani zoomed in on the lab schematic and switched to a live view of it from a satellite. Its familiarity stirred emotions that he thought he had buried. He flipped to picture of his wife on his display.
Machario shot him a look of pity. He couldn’t see Bomani’s display, but could recognize the expression on his face. “Try not to think about her,” Machario said. “This is just a mission, dude, just another freakin’ mission.”
Vantu Gravimetric Research Facility
The perimeter alarm sounded.
Kutisha, sitting at her desk absorbed in data analysis, looked up. She wasn’t expecting visitors.
Prometheus turned on a hologram above the control panel that showed a handful of buildings, the surface level portion of the Vantu Gravimetric Research Facility. The bright floodlights threw stark shadows across the empty parking lot, visitors building, maintenance shed, and her lab.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Prometheus answered. “I have been maintaining standing wave patterns and detecting minute graviton fluctuations. It takes ninety percent of my processing cycles just to do that.”
“If the exterior sensors don’t show movement, then switch the image to infrared and zoom out.”
The image took on a monochromatic haze and pulled back. It overlooked the facility’s fence and the sparse vegetation covering the lower eastern slopes broken by a thread, a lonely, winding road, and the only exit off this side of the mountain. Out of the depths, she saw lights of two hover-tanks skimming the surface.
Kutisha pointed at what appeared to be a pool of water lit with a faint infrared glow sliding uphill towards the complex like a gravity-defying flood. “What's that?” she asked.
“Oh, crap,” Prometheus said. “It appears to be the subject of the Chindi incident -- a swarm of Forger Class Nanites.”
Kutisha trembled. She suddenly felt vulnerable on the naked mountaintop, the lab's walls providing but a gossamer veil of protection against the nanite onslaught. As if to validate her fear, the perimeter fence dissolved like sugar cubes in hot tea before the advancing swarm.
“Did you see that?” he asked. “What they did to the fence?”
“Call the military base.”
“I already did. They’ve sent hover-tanks.” Graphic overlays on the holographic image showed two hover-tanks with model name and distance from the complex. “That’s it? Two?” Prometheus asked. “They just sent two hover-tanks?”
Kutisha, trying to remain calm and unruffled, said, “Exercise the close-down option.”
“The what?”
“Isn’t there’s some procedure that activates the airtight seal on all points of entry and turns on positive air pressure? I think we have it. It’s supposed to be an artifact of the AI War when biological and chemical weapons...”
“You mean the lockdown option?” he asked. “I’ll do it.”
She heard several clicks in the air ducts and down the hall towards the main entrance, and felt the air pressure change in her ears. Kutisha glanced at her hands -- she had been unconsciously fidgeting -- and held her hands together in an effort to stop. “Prometheus, this is a former military complex, right?”
“Yes, that’s why we have lockdown.”
“Are there some sort of weapons we can use?”
“Oh no, they got rid of those and moved them to the base.”
“Figures.” She started fidgeting again but stopped quickly. She sat on her hands. The hover-tanks swept low and sprayed an iridescent green mist over the swarm that turned into sticky foam and seemed to solidify in seconds. But as soon as it did, small pockets of nanites crawled over it, regrouped, and advanced anew.
“Ah,” Prometheus gasped, “they’re not killing them all. Close the lab door.”
She looked up at the speakers. “Seriously? This is a flimsy door. The outer door has the seal. It will stop them. This one won’t. Don’t worry. They’re not coming after you.”
“Then why did they come here?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Stuff your overalls under the door.”
She looked at the gap underneath the door. “I doubt that will work.”
“Of course not, but it makes me feel better.”
She yielded, if only to silence him so she could concentrate on real solutions. She looked at the hologram again. The hover-tanks were coming in for a second pass. They overtook the swarm, swept low, and dropped off sixteen spheres about a meter in diameter. The hover-tanks spun around and continued spraying while the spheres hit the ground rolling in a sawtooth pattern with the swarm just a few meters behind them. They slowed and unfolded into velociraptor-like Mech Shock Troopers and, by the looks of them, more advanced than the mechs used in the AI War: quicker and stronger, with narrow heads and lithe frames. They walked on their toes with such
speed and dexterity that the hologram refresh rate couldn't keep up. Kutisha smiled despite her misgivings. “Impressive,” she muttered.
“According to my analysis, the shock troopers may not survive,” Prometheus said. “Their exoskeleton was designed for the last war, and leaves them vulnerable to nanite infestation. Where an armor-piercing projectile can’t penetrate, synthetic microbes might. If indeed the swarms have formed a neural-net with each nanite acting like a brain cell, then they may achieve a collective consciousness. However, my analysis shows that even then, they do not have sufficient processing power to act with human-level intelligence. They need ...”
“They need real processors and memory like ones in an AI,” she finished. “Like you.”
“Yes, or the battle mechs. I do not have full access to military records for these newer mechs, but there is speculation that the nanites could commandeer the older battle mechs by penetrating their armor, and seizing control of their memory and processors like a parasite. The battle mechs have no internal immune system.”
“Then why did they send mechs? Same stupid military that...” She didn’t allow herself to continue the thought. It was an accident. He could have just as easily died at home. She suppressed her bitterness and watched the flickering image of the battle raging outside between the large and small machines. It reminded her of a battle between locusts and ants. No, the scale wasn’t right. More like elephants and ants. The mechs used a gun, slung to a pack, that spewed what looked like the same foam the hover-tanks used. Several of the mechs