“What about the rest of Sigma’s tanks? Doesn’t the AI have more than a hundred of them?”
“The other T-90s are defending the base’s perimeter, ten miles away. It’ll take them at least fifteen minutes to reach the lab, and by then you should be able to pulverize the building and all the computers inside it. You also need to destroy the relay station that holds the communication lines between the lab and the missile silos.” He points at a smaller building in the photo. “If you do the job right, all of Sigma’s tanks will stop in their tracks. Then the Russian soldiers will move in and retake the base.”
It sounds great, a brilliant plan. I’m just not convinced it’ll work. It bothers me that there are only five tanks near the computer lab. “What if it’s a trap? What if the T-90s are rigged to explode as soon as we transfer to them?”
Hawke nods. “It’s a possibility. I can’t deny it. You’ll have to use your judgment. If you sense that something’s wrong, be cautious. Order only one of the Pioneers to transfer to a T-90. Then see what happens.”
“Sir, the whole thing feels wrong to me. I think we should postpone the mission until we find out exactly what happened at Pioneer Base.”
“Sorry, that’s not an option.” Hawke steps a little closer and lowers his voice. “Sigma’s computer virus is spreading to the American forces now. Over the past hour more than fifty of our planes have crashed. The whole Air Force is grounded and most of our missiles are inoperative. And it’s only going to get worse.” He moves still closer and rests his hand on my shoulder joint. It occurs to me that this is the first time he’s touched my Pioneer. “We don’t have a choice, Gibbs. We have to do this.”
I’m still not convinced. Hawke is wrong—there’s always a choice. And yet I can’t say no to the general. I retrieve a memory from my files, something I told Adam a few days ago when we were arguing about Hawke: Forget about yourself for a minute and think of the big picture. We have a job to do. And Adam said he agreed with me, a hundred percent. He loved to argue, but in the end he always did the right thing. Grief pierces my circuits. I miss him so much.
“All right,” I tell Hawke. “But I’m going to make a few changes to the assault plan. I have to talk with my team before we launch the Ravens.”
“Just make it quick. You gotta get to the computer lab before dawn. Once the sun comes up, the Ravens won’t be invisible anymore.”
Hawke lifts his hand from my shoulder joint and returns to his men. At the same time, I stride toward DeShawn, who’s pointing his camera at the dark fields of the missile base.
DeShawn turns his turret as I approach. His acoustic sensor must’ve picked up the sound of my footsteps. “What’s the word?” he asks. “When do we go?”
“Very soon. But first I want you to share some software with me.”
“Sure, what do you—”
“The program that lets you occupy two machines at the same time. I’m going to need it.”
I’m the first Pioneer to take off. I launch the Raven myself, hurling the three-foot-long plane into the sky above the clearing. Then I transfer my data to the drone’s control unit.
Except for the darkness, it’s not so different from flying the Raven above Pioneer Base. I use the drone’s infrared camera to view the terrain. In the clearing below I see the warm bodies of the soldiers and the cold torsos of the other Pioneers. To the northeast the fires are still raging in the city of Saratov, but when I point the drone’s camera to the northwest—toward Tatishchevo—I see only fields and wooded hills.
Within five minutes all the Pioneers have transferred to their Ravens. We rev up our electric motors and spiral upward, gradually vanishing into the night sky. Once we reach an altitude of five thousand feet we level out and arrange the drones in a V-shaped formation, with my Raven in the lead. Then we head northwest at forty miles per hour, cruising toward the missile base. No one on the ground can see or hear us. On a radar screen we would look like a small flock of geese migrating over the Russian countryside.
Soon we fly over Tatishchevo’s perimeter fence. I spot several T-90 tanks behind the fence, positioned at key points so they can monitor everything approaching the base. This is crunch time, the moment of truth. If Sigma detects us and figures out we’re not geese, the T-90s will fire their anti-aircraft guns. The high-caliber bullets will tear us to bits.
But the tanks don’t fire at us. They don’t move an inch.
A couple of miles past the fence I see one of the missile silos. It’s in an inconspicuous spot at the edge of a field. The silo’s lid is a cold steel circle, about twenty-five feet across, embedded in the ground. Scanning the terrain, I see more silos to the north and west. Dozens of them are scattered across the landscape. As I fly over the steel circles I think of the nuclear missiles standing below them. It’s an inferno hidden beneath the dark countryside, a holocaust just waiting to happen.
I’m scared. No doubt about it. I’m scared to death. I want to turn around and transfer right back to my Pioneer. The five-pound Raven seems so puny and defenseless compared with my eight-hundred-pound robot. As we soar toward Tatishchevo’s headquarters I get the feeling I may never return to good old Pioneer 4. I think of Adam again, and also my mom and dad. I don’t know where they are right now—the Army wouldn’t tell us where they’d hidden our parents—but I’m praying they’re not in a big city or on a military base. If we can’t stop Sigma from launching its nukes, I hope Mom and Dad are as far as possible from the blast zones.
Fifteen minutes into our flight I see something disturbing. Below us is a stretch of scorched ground and demolished buildings. The area is pitted with impact craters and littered with debris. According to the maps stored in my files, this was the site of the barracks for the 60th Missile Division. More than a thousand Russian soldiers were sleeping in those barracks when Sigma took control of Tatishchevo’s automated T-90s. It must’ve been a nightmare, all those tanks firing at the terrified troops. My infrared camera picks up the heat signatures of rodents scurrying in and out of the wrecked buildings. It’s been three weeks since the massacre, but the rats are still feeding on the corpses.
The headquarters complex is just beyond the barracks. When I’m a mile away I turn off my Raven’s electric motor. The propeller stops spinning and I drop about a hundred feet before settling into a glide path. Now I’m absolutely silent as I descend toward the computer lab. The other Ravens cut off their motors too and coast behind me, heading for the same target. We’re following a prearranged assault plan because we don’t want to use our radios now. Sigma might be able to detect the transmissions from our Ravens.
After another three minutes I’m circling the lab and the neighboring buildings at an altitude of a thousand feet. The other Ravens are gliding in slow circles above me. Pointing my camera at the ground, I view the same buildings I saw in the satellite photo. I also see the five T-90 tanks. They’re in exactly the same positions they occupied in the photograph—one at the lab’s front entrance, the other four at the building’s corners. This bothers the heck out of me. It seems too convenient, too easy. What if Sigma’s already inside all the tanks? If DeShawn could figure out how to occupy two machines at once, what’s to stop the AI from doing the same?