But the bio labs still showed green. Even the participation of the night crews in the library demonstrations had worked out for the best. Maybe productivity and performance would be down for this shift, but that was a commercial issue. In fact, the departure of the human crews had simplified the lab situation. There was nothing there but automation and it showed all was well.
"FBI again requests clearance to take over."
Bob shook his head irritably. "Denied. As before."
Hmm . More than riot participants were being decertified. Three analysts from the Southern California utilities reported infrastructure failures in the campus area. Why would local infrastructure depend on certs from Credit Suisse?
"Correlation of systems failures with the revocation storm is ninety-five percent, Colonel."
No kidding . Even if the labs were clean, there was some kind of deadly interference here. Bob tapped the command he had been contemplating these last few minutes:
LAUNCH ALERT
"Analysts update contingency nine and give me a launch mark," he said.
There was a pause as the request was reviewed by the DoD/DHS combined Earth Watch. His CONUS Southwest watch was on a very short leash since Alice's breakdown:
But clearance came back in just five seconds.
Bob scarcely noticed his gee pod inflate. He would be the last out of the barn, so there was a lot to watch.
LAUNCH LAUNCH LAUNCH
"Uncrewed vehicles launched."
His displays showed thirty canisters of combat network-munitions shot high into the Southern California night. The uncrews were from the north side of the base, twenty kilometers away. Farther north, from MCAS Edwards, more primitive weapons rose into the heavens. Their manifest was a catalog of extreme possibilities: rescue lances (500), damage-suppression fogs (100), HEIR lasers (10), thermal flechettes/isolation variant (100) and then the last three, the nightmares sterilization-fog dispensers (10 by 10), HERF area munitions (20 by 20 by 4), strategic nuclear munitions (10 by 10 by 2). Analysts are paid to think worst-case but Lord . The bio labs were the only excuse for these items.
But in truth if you discounted the absence of follow-up equipment this was a fairly conventional load for a modern expeditionary force. Three times in Bob's career, such launches had ended in real combat. But those had been half a world away, in Almaty, in Ciudad General Ortiz, and in Asuncion. The most terrible weapons had never been used, though Asuncion had been a very near thing.
Tonight he was aiming all this hardware at his own neighbors, just thirty miles south of Camp Pendleton. Full force in an urban area was like going after rats in your kitchen with a machine gun. Keep your head down, Miri .
"FBI again requests clearance to take over."
"Denied. The situation has escalated." For the moment, hopefully just for the moment. If police and rescue could bring the system back up, then all the hardware that Bob had just boosted over Southern California would simply be an expensive exercise. But one good thing about being locked and loaded was that he had lots more call on resources: Gu grabbed analyst teams from all across the national workshift and pushed the intel and sensor backlog at them. Priority questions: Are the San Diego labs secure? What is the prognosis for the current system failures?
Meantime, Bob's launches had soared to the top of their trajectories. He tweaked the Edwards munitions still higher, delaying them behind the gear from Pendleton. If nothing was resolved soon, he would have to light the uncrews' jets. I need answers, guys !
But the analyst mob was still busy connecting a billion dots, looking for patterns and conspiracies. Then a single observation changed everything. A weather-service geek doing her monthly reserve duty grabbed a very high priority: "Twenty seconds ago. I see ad hoc signaling in the backscatter above here" and she drew an ellipse over San Diego North
County, covering much of Camp Pendleton. Somebody was making their own communications, simply blinking a light into the sky haze! The long axis of the scatter ellipse pointed right back toward UCSD. The words of the intercepted message streamed across Bob's vision:
Xiu Xiang > anyone clever enough to notice me in the backscatter: <sm>GenGen laboratory automation has been corrupted. The system is attacking anyone opposing it. This is not a game. This is not a joke. What? Yes, I'll tell them. There are two people still in the labs. They are good guys! They are trying to help.</sm>
The NOAA analyst spoke over the script display: "The message is a one-second burst, retransmitted twelve times. What you're seeing is the summed cleanup."
It was clear enough. Bob Gu's fingers tapped in their gloves, launching his marines.
Then his own gee pod came tight and for a moment Bob Gu was not paying attention. For a moment he could not pay attention. Battle commit put the combat CO himself into the fray. In this case, launch took his landing dart almost horizontally out of Pendleton. Maybe this is not a good idea , he thought muzzily. But he always thought that coming out of a twenty-gee railgun launch.
Now he had to recollect his wits and context. His team and equipment were on schedule. The unthinkable Last Resorts were still high overhead, flexible to the last. The network munitions were already at UCSD. And the bio labs still showed green, all secure and peaceful.
His own landing dart was seconds away from the UCSD.
There was something else that was important, something in the last few seconds. Xiu Xiang? Bob's recollection came unsquished just as a DHS analyst team presented its own form of the insight: Xiu Xiang. A not uncommon name. But in all of Southern California there probably weren't more than three or four who owned that name. And one lived at Rainbows End with Lena Gu.
Suddenly he had a good idea just who was in the crosshairs of all that he commanded.
30
When the Network Stops
The Library had chosen. For an instant, Timothy Huynh and all the night crew were silent. The crowds of real humans were quiet, and even the millions of virtuals took part in a coordinated stillness.
The Library had chosen and it had chosen the Scoochis.
On the Hacek side you could see the realization of defeat spreading. The triumph was real. How would the Hacekeans take it? There had been a few debacles in the late teens, when major belief structures had produced some awful art. Some were so bad that the circles themselves had shriveled and died. Who heard of Tines anymore, or the Zones of Thought? But tonight the Hacekeans had lost at the hands of others; they must do something maybe even something gracious.
The silent stillness of the mob continued a second more. Then Dangerous Knowledge suddenly turned away from the library. Its gaze swept fiercely across them all. After all, playing loser wasn't in its repertoire. But whoever was behind all the creativity was flexible: After a moment, Dangerous smiled gently and turned back to the library. Its voice made concession sound like the granting of a favor: "We bow to the wishes of the Library. Here you have won, O Scooch-a-mout."
Wails arose from the Hacek side, but Dangerous raised a hand and continued. "We give up our claims here. We remain as guests only."
Sheila > Night Crew: <sm>The Hacek people are in heavy discussion with the university administration. They're begging for whatever scraps they can get.</sm>