“If you’d let me get back on the command channel, I’ll give him whatever orders you want him to carry out,” Fife flared. “For God’s sake, man, stop thinking about him like he’s some kind of runaway truck! He’s doing exactly what a good officer would do if he was cut off from his high command and knew there was a breakthrough in another sector. He’s using his own best judgment! But he’s not out of control . . . not yet.”
“Not yet,” Wilson repeated, almost under his breath. He shook his head abruptly. “No . . . damn it, Fife, for all I know that last signal of yours is what made it run wild in the first place.” The Coordinator swung around, his finger stabbing in the general direction of Major Durant. “You . . . you’re supposed to take charge of those monstrosities. You were shown how to talk to them. Do it. Make the damn thing heel . . .”
“It won’t work . . .” Fife began, but no one was listening to him now. Durant still didn’t have a voiceprint on file in the fighting machine’s computer, and Jason wouldn’t accept orders without proper identification. In fact, on top of everything else this was just the sort of thing to make it harder to stop the Bolo. Once Jason heard an unauthorized voice on the command channel, he’d become suspicious of any ~attempt to stop him. He might even shut out Fife on the suspicion that he was captured and being forced to issue false commands. . . .
He slumped against the wall. All he could do now was trust in the Bolo’s programming . . . and hope the Sierrans couldn’t do anything to make the situation worse.
There wasn’t much cause for optimism.
“Command to Unit JSN. Stand down. Stand down and await instructions.”
My programming does not recognize the voice, and I quite naturally reject the order for the enemy falsehood that it is. I am still not sure if the enemy presence behind our lines represents an infiltration force or an act of treachery, but this attempt to subvert me confirms my deepest suspicions. Headquarters has been taken by hostile forces, and there is no telling just how far the rot has spread. I must assume that no other loyal forces are available to assist me. The resolution of this battle is up to me and me alone.
I am free of the narrow, twisting confines of the pass now, and there is an open highway leading straight to my objective. Climbing over the berm that lines the paved surface, I increase speed quickly. My sensors continue to tap in to every available source of information, including real-time satellite reconnaissance feeds and the chaotic communications channels, but I know I cannot fully trust any outside information source. It seems that I must rely, when all is said and done, more on my perceptions and internal projections than on conventional sources of data.
For .05 seconds I contemplate the similarities of my situation and that of Lee before Gettysburg. Perhaps this is what it is like to be a human commander, forced to make decisions without being able to process, or even to collect, all the relevant facts.
It is not a situation that stimulates my pleasure center. I realize, as I continue to drive toward my objective at maximum speed, that I finally have a referent for a word I have long pondered the meaning of.
The word is doubt.
“Nothing. It won’t respond.”
David Fife didn’t react to Dupont’s cheerless words, but Coordinator Wilson did. Pacing angrily back and forth across the narrow confines of the command center, the civilian’s features were black, drawn. Suddenly the man stopped in mid-stride and gave the two guards bracketing Fife a curt gesture, dismissing them.
“All right . . . I don’t have any choice now. Stop it, Fife. But if you’re not playing straight with us, I swear I’ll kill you myself. . . .”
Fife ignored him, springing across the chamber to bend over Durant and key in the microphone. “Command to Unit JSN. File immediate VSR and stand down to alert mode two!” He transmitted the message in a compressed, high-speed burst and waited, fingers digging into the back of the chair. There was no way to tell what the Bolo would do now.
The pause was unusually long, nearly three seconds, before a reply cam back. Fife was surprised when it didn’t come as a voice transmission, only as a printout on his monitor. “Unit JSN on independent operations mode. Request positive identification; transmit code 540982.”
“You’re in!” Durant said. “What’s the code group?” Her fingers were poised over the keypad, ready to ~enter the appropriate numeric code.
Fife shook his head. “I know the code group he’s asking for. It’s a null . . . he’s just trying to play with an enemy by asking for a series of meaningless entry codes. It keeps the bad guys talking while he keeps on closing in.” He looked back at Wilson. “I tried to warn you, Coordinator. He has no way of knowing if he can trust me anymore. So he’ll carry out whatever mission he’s assigned himself before he stands down.”
“What about auto-destruct?” General Kyle asked quietly. “I know there’s a destruct system incorporated in all your self-directing Bolos.”
Fife fixed him with a cold stare. “I won’t destroy ~Jason until I’m sure he’s a threat to friendly forces, General. Right now I’m not convinced of that. He didn’t even return fire on the battery that took a pot-shot at him earlier. Until he does something that endangers our forces directly, he’s still the best hope you people have of getting the situation out there ~under control.”
“He’s right,” Durant said unexpectedly. “He’s right. Listen to him, General. Coordinator.”
“Sir!” a technician interrupted the tense moment. “Message from Second Montana Regiment. Major Reed, acting CO. He says Colonel Chaffee turned traitor and fed bad coordinates to the regimental artillery. Ordered a retreat right on the heels of it. He’s trying to sort things out, but he doesn’t think he can hold. Colonel Chaffee’s been killed in an artillery barrage, and the regiment is falling apart . . . What the hell?”
“What is it, Corporal?” Wilson demanded.
The technician hit a switch on his panel, and the speakers in the command center came to life with a crackle of static and an even, level voice Fife recognized instantly.
“Soldiers of New Sierra, this is Unit JSN of the First Robotic Armor Regiment, CANS. The enemy has breached our perimeter and compromised our command structure. Rally in defense of Hot Springs Pass and the road to Denver Prime. We are not yet defeated, only surprised and pushed back. We can still win the victory. New Sierra expects that every man will do his duty today. . . .”
Lieutenant Bill O’Brien was hunkered down behind the wreck of a mobile artillery carrier, watching as Sergeant Jenson tied a crude tourniquet above the bloody stump of Private Marlow’s left wrist. Days ago, even hours ago the sight would have made him violently sick, but in the past few hours O’Brien had seen so much horror that one more such sight hardly effected him.
The soldiers of Alpha Company had fled down the pass, taking heavy casualties all the way, and now they were reduced to a handful of desperate men, their ~retreat cut off by the ANM troops who had erupted from the pass to pour down the main road toward Denver Prime. The only reason any of the defenders still survived was the simple fact that there weren’t enough survivors to offer any real threat or draw the enemy’s attention. As further enemy forces continued to cross the mountains, though, that situation would surely change.
His headphones crackled: an incoming signal on the command channel. O’Brien was torn between feelings of relief and fury. Since the orders to retreat, there had been no coherent communications from higher authority. Now there was nothing he and his pitiful handful of survivors could do, no matter what orders came in.
“Soldiers of New Sierra, this is Unit JSN . . .”
O’Brien listened to the signal, hardly believing what he was hearing, stirred in spite of himself. New Sierra expects that every man will do his duty. . . .
And in that same moment, explosions blossomed among the enemy APCs around the base of the pass, a dozen blasts in quick succession, each pinpointed on one of the armored vehicles. In an instant the wave of hostile reinforcements was transformed into the same kind of smoldering wreckage O’Brien had seen among the New Sierran defenders when the friendly fire had ripped through their unprepared ranks.
A low rumble shook the ground, different from the distant crump of explosions, different from the sounds the personnel carriers had made before the attack. It started almost imperceptibly, growing rapidly closer like the approach of a summer thunderstorm echoing among New Sierra’s jagged mountains. O’Brien peered cautiously from cover. . . .