Probes and Sunfish Map
36.
Vonnie scrolled through their maps, measuring the unguarded space left by the loss of 114 and most of its spies. “How close is 115?” she asked. “Do we know where the intruder went?”
“No,” Frerotte said. “115 is on the move, but it’s three minutes away. I had 14 and 15 in different catacombs to spread our coverage.”
“They should have been together,” Koebsch said. “That’s why we sent them down in pairs. We probably wouldn’t have lost 14 if the probes were able to support each other.”
Privately, Vonnie doubted it. Whatever hit 114 would have walked right over 115 as well. Frerotte’s decision to separate the probes was the sole reason they had the ability to bring new eyes and ears to the scene quickly.
There were two more probes in the ice, 110 and 111, but those mecha were seven kilometers northwest of 115. Except for their spies, there were no other ESA mecha beneath the surface other than a hundred beacons and relays, none of which were mobile, equipped with AI, or combat capable.
“I want you to call Sergeant Tavares again,” Koebsch told Vonnie. “Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.”
“You called the Brazilians?”
“Yes. They’re not answering. But I can’t figure out what they think they’ll accomplish. That’s why I want to keep this quiet. Mecha can be replaced. What we don’t need is an international incident.”
“Tavares said they didn’t like us monitoring their grid,” Vonnie said. “Maybe this is the end of it. They kill our spies. Then they retreat. You don’t think they’d invade our zone, do you?”
“Maybe they’re distributing their own spies. Right now they could march a hundred probes through the border without us knowing it.”
“115 will reach the gap in thirty seconds.”
“We’ve been blind for nine minutes. Even if nothing’s there now, I’ll be forced to waste time and resources hunting FNEE mecha inside our lines.”
Vonnie nodded, considering Koebsch’s change from ’we’ to ’I.’ For him, the attack was a blemish on his record.
“115 is on site,” Frerotte said.
She looked through the probe’s eyes. As always, the environment was as dark as obsidian. Her display was modifying 115’s radar into holo imagery.
Sprawled on the rock were the battle-scarred remains of a FNEE digger. It had been a sleek, six-legged machine with two cutting blades like a scorpion’s claws. One leg was missing. Two more appeared inoperable, shredded and crushed. There was also laser scoring on its head where its sensor array had been slashed open.
“114 couldn’t have caused those burns,” Koebsch said. “They must have hit some of their own diggers while they were blasting. Then they decided those mecha were expendable. They used their damaged mecha to lead the assault.”
“I guess.”
Scattered nearby were pieces that may or may not have belonged to different FNEE mecha. 114 was missing. There was not a trace of ESA wreckage. There were no sounds or vibrations of mecha leaving the site in any direction. Nor did 114 respond to 115’s signals.
“I think 114 fought the digger and won, but there were other FNEE mecha,” Koebsch said. “They took 114. That’s what they were after. They want to copy your design work, Von.”
She watched as 115 crawled up the side of the cavern, trying to analyze the scuffing and chip marks in the dusty floor. There were marks in the wall, too, where 114 had vaulted onto the rock like a real sunfish.
Microdating the prints was impossible. Too many tracks had been laid within seconds of each other, and yet 114’s tracks were all on the ESA side of the perimeter.
That means our probe wasn’t led away by a Brazilian slavecast, Vonnie thought. Had they carried it? Or did 114’s last set of tracks lead back into ESA territory?
“Let me call Tavares,” she said, leaving her station.
The showphone was on the other side of the compartment, no more than three steps away. She didn’t make it that far. Frerotte left his own station and said to her, quietly, “It wasn’t the Brazilians.”
Vonnie didn’t answer.
“There’s no way their software could trump ours, especially not in a stand-off between 114 and a wrecked pile of junk like that digger,” Frerotte said. “Its gear block is half gone. You heard its signals. It was modifying its SCPs to broadcast through every transmitter it had left — infrared, sonar, X-ray. Hell, I saw coherent light signals like Morse code. It couldn’t have been less efficient, but it subverted our probe anyway. It knew exactly how to hack in.”
“It was Lam,” she said.
“So what happened? He transferred from the digger to the probe?”
“Yes.”
“Von, I think the situation’s starting to get out of hand. We need to tell Koebsch.”
“I will. I swear. Let me call Tavares first.”
Frerotte clutched her arm more roughly than necessary, pulling her back from the showphone. Was there fear in his eyes?
“I know Lam was your friend, but that’s not him any more,” Frerotte said. “He’s been down there for weeks. That’s a long time for an AI.”
“Tavares might have some idea what he’s been through. I think he’s trying to reach us.”
“Why won’t he answer 115? You don’t know what he’s thinking or even how he’s thinking. FNEE hardware is barely compatible with our AI, especially a human-based AI. He would have adapted. That means deleting some parts of himself and absorbing FNEE programming to compensate. What if the conversion included some of their security protocols? He might think we’re the enemy.”
“I thought you were a biologist,” Vonnie said. She was fishing for some admission that Frerotte worked for an intelligence agency, but he said, “This is biology. AIs are living systems. They break under strain just like people do.”
“Let’s wait and see.”
His grip tightened on her arm. “Human-based AI are illegal because they’re more likely to fragment,” he said. “They turn into something… more virulent than any machine-based program. Lam is in one of our probes now, which will make it easier for him to hack into other mecha. If he clones himself, he could multiply through our camp.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I watched it happen on the Ensley 2.”
Vonnie laid her fingers over his, gently removing his hand from her arm. “You’re not old enough,” she said.
Ensley 2 had been a joint NATO/PSSC orbital station that tumbled into the Pacific in 2087, the flaming shrapnel of its hull missing Indonesia by a few scant kilometers.
Constructed during the early years of the new space race, after the Chinese revolution but prior to formation of the Allied Nations, the Ensley series were primarily a Western effort that had involved China’s space agency as a means of easing poor relations between NATO and the People’s Supreme Society. By treaty, they were civilian stations intended for science, solar power generation, crops like wheat which also produced oxygen, and the export of those food and oxygen supplies.
The Chinese astronauts among the Ensley crews had numbered less than forty… and they’d died with their Western colleagues in the AI attacks that initiated the brutal, eighteen days of World War III.
“I was right out of school,” Frerotte said. “I had a good head for zero gravity and I get by on six hours of sleep a night, so they slotted me in three jobs in hydroponics. That’s why I lived. I was working when the SCPs shut down life support and smothered half the crew in bed.”