Plaguelands (Slayers Book 1) (18 page)

The faces of the crowd had gone from bored to awestruck. The ones that weren’t staring at the otherworldly images on the screen were staring at me.

“Again!” I screamed into the headset.

The techs had figured out the integration problem, which was just a matter of bandwidth, and had all four hundred recruits in the system on the next day. The loading process had gone more quickly and more smoothly on day three. The technical kinks and glitches had been fixed.

But goddamn it, was this a mess.

The kids were so excited to be on this huge battlefield with all four hundred simulated drones that they were ignoring orders. They broke the lines. They killed each other for fun. It was chaos.

The techs restarted the simulation and all the kids were loaded into the VR world again. I stood facing four hundred robots on the top of a hill, with a hundred thousand zombies of all shapes and sizes just a few hundred meters behind me.

“Operator,” I said, selecting a secure channel, “lock their ‘bots please. No weapons or movement.”

“Copy, Commander,” replied a tinny female voice.

No one moved all across the line.

Back to the broadcast channel, I spoke, “This isn’t just a game. This is real. We’re going to be fighting real enemies who really want to come here to kill the real you. If we can’t work together as a single unit, we’re going to be destroyed. One weak thread in the sweater is enough to unravel it. Now, we’re going to screw around for one more round and have fun and be silly, but after that, we’re buckling down. There’s a line of kids who would love to have your front-row seat to this battle, and if you can’t pull it together, you’re out of here.”

I paused to let that sink in. No one responded.

“If you understand and accept these terms, switch your comm channel to ‘receive only’, and your robot will unlock. If you aren’t going to play nicely, simply say ‘operator’ and someone will come pull you out of your tube and send you home.”

Slowly the bots started moving. Eventually all of them.

“Okay, let’s have some fun,” I chuckled, lobbing a grenade into the cluster of warriors and staring a ruckus that lasted for an hour. Then we rebooted and began the serious work of turning into a fighting force.

We left the tubes just after 1800. The sun had already set. The stars were obscured by the clouds, but the moonglow could be faintly seen in the sky. I sat on the stairs outside the BRF as one of the marshal’s cadre came over and sat down next to me.

“You did good work in there, today,” he said.

“Thanks, Major Gaspar,” I sighed. “It’s like herding cats.”

“It’s herding children, which is much more difficult,” he laughed. “When we train Fleet officers, they’ve already undergone the transformation and lose the defiance that comes with an organic body.”

Gaspar patted me on the shoulder. “I don’t envy the work you’ve got, but I admire the job you’re doing.”

“Why me?” I asked him. “Why would they have a boy do this when you’ve got an entire Fleet full of officers? It doesn’t make sense.”

“It makes perfect sense. Like I said: we don’t know how to work with organics,” he replied. “At least not like other organics do. The marshal saw something in you. Your willingness to rush to the distant lands despite the perils. Your loyalty. Your passion. People like you come along pretty infrequently, and despite our reliance on the transformation, I think the surgery saps a lot of those admirable characteristics out of people.”

He stood up, saluted, and walked off.

Over his shoulder, the Major said, “True leadership comes from somewhere other than your brain.”

I puzzled over that for a few minutes, then strolled back to my apartment. A few other recruits shuffled down the streets, their eyes bleary from another day spent in the simulation. I wasn’t even thinking now…just blank.

I got off the mag-lift on the fifteenth floor and pressed my finger to the pad next to the door.

It opened, and the rush of fragrant spices flowed through the door. Rebekah had clearly made something spicy for dinner and it smelled glorious. The table was set, but no one was there. I heard familiar voices from the living room.

“Pax!” my dad shouted.

I walked in to see Rebekah, dressed in a sleek, modern-style dress and high-heeled boots, entertaining my parents. Mom and Dad got up and each gave me a hug. Rebekah kissed me tenderly.

“What are you guys doing here?” I asked.

“Rebekah called us and asked if we wanted to join you for dinner,” Mom replied.

I looked at Rebekah, hoping she remembered they couldn’t eat food.

As if reading my mind, Dad said, “It’s okay, Pax. Rebekah was very polite. And these spicy smells…ahh! So wonderful. It almost makes me hungry!”

“Dinner’s ready,” Rebekah announced. “We were just waiting for you.”

She led me by the hand into the dining room where we sat at the table. Some candles were already lit, illuminating the dimly lit dining room. Rebekah scurried into the kitchen and returned with steaming bowls of red soup.

“It’s called ‘chili’, hun,” she smiled, pouring small bowls for my parents who sniffed and smelled.

“Hunger is a two-way communication,” Mom said, “between the brain and the stomach. In the absence of stomachs, our brains simply trigger the bodies to release tiny bits of chemicals and nutrients. It gives us the slightest sensation of eating and being full. Brain trickery.”

“That’s a lovely dress, Rebekah,” I said, eyeballing the tight grey material while trying to make the conversation a bit less awkward.

“Your mom and I went shopping,” Rebekah smiled. “Juno picked it out for me. I love it!”

I hardly ever heard my mom’s name. It was a bit weird.

“Nice job, Mom.”

“Thanks, sweetheart,” Mom replied.

It was a dinner of polite conversation and old stories. Of how my parents met. Of Rebekah’s life in Great Falls before her father was called to serve the fledgling Montana Corps at the Battle of Highway Bridge. Of her life with her grandparents. Of my dad’s journey to Arturia where he found the first organic life-forms outside of Earth.

Then they wanted to hear about my day and how things were going at the BRF. I didn’t want to talk about it. I was mentally and physically drained.

When dinner had been thoroughly consumed, we cleaned up and then sat on the balcony. Rebekah brought two glasses out and handed me one. It definitely smelled of Ebenezer’s rum mixed with berries. With the berries mixed in, I barely noticed the harsh taste of the alcohol.

Dad sniffed the air and then laughed. He knew what we were drinking. My dad was full of stories he never shared, and I hoped one day I’d learn about his antics with alcohol.

We laughed and talked and watched the clouds break. The stars shone for the first time in weeks. Dad pointed to a few places in the sky…distant dots of light that he’d visited with tiny little rocks orbiting them. He pointed out which of those distant planets now had either enhanced or organic humans living on them.

Rebekah chuckled like she found the whole thing very amusing, but then she became more serious as she realized how real it all was. She was sitting in a place that she could have never imagined, hanging out with robots, talking about the vastness of the universe, while only a few months ago, her views of the world were very different.

My parents stayed late, until they saw me getting tired and drifting to sleep. They left, and it was hugs for everyone. My dad nudged me and then looked at Rebekah, winking.

I loved him so much.

Marshal Burnham entered my makeshift office where I was staring at my digibook, looking over the latest satellite reconnaissance. The zombies were clustering around the foothills of the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, near the ancient city of Colorado Springs.

“Marshal, I’m glad you’re here,” I said, standing respectfully as he entered.

“Yes, Commander?” he asked inquisitively.

My train of thought was interrupted for a moment.

“Commander?” I asked.

“Provisional, of course,” he stated. “You’re only given authority over the units and soldiers under your command, but the rank will help you when you need to call in orbital support or get through to my command echelon. Once the conflict is over, you’ll be retired to civilian status.”

“Thank you,” I said, humbly, even bowing my head a bit.

“Now why are you glad I’m here?” he asked.

“I’ve been looking over the satellite imagery and it appears there’s a large cluster of zombies outside of the Colorado Springs ruins. And we’ve been training for a Colorado Springs mission, so obviously that’s where we’re going. Why haven’t we just opened up the MAC guns on them and thinned their numbers.”

“That’s exactly why I was coming to see you,” he said somberly, closing the door behind him. He took a seat next to my desk as I did the same.

“We’re limited on how many times we can use the MACs, for starters,” he continued. “They throw so much ejecta and debris into the air that we risk negatively altering the planetary climate if we over use them. Our scientists are already concerned about the nearly dozen impacts since, and including, Omaha. The other concern is
where
they are right now. Just west of Colorado Springs lies one of the biggest secrets of the Republic. Only a few hundred people even know about it. But given the location of the zombies, the Reverend must as well, and I think we’ve figured out how he knows.”

I was puzzled by his cryptic statements.

He looked toward my digibook. “We reviewed your journal from your adventures in the east. You wrote about a blonde robot woman. You never mentioned this during your debriefings—“

“I didn’t think it was important.”

“Actually, it was the most important detail you could have remembered,” stated the marshal. “You just didn’t know.”

He paused—what probably would have been a sigh for an organic human—before beginning again.

“The blonde robot isn’t an enhanced form. She doesn’t have an organic brain. She is 100 percent a robot, controlled by an artificial intelligence.”

He paused again, presumably collecting his thoughts.

“You probably know that we have shipboard AIs to help calculate the trillions of functions necessary to keep a ship oriented in superspace. The AIs are patterned after actual human brains, and mapped using a technique called digital neuropathy. The digital brain operates as an organic brain would, but at quantum speeds—thousands of times faster. We mapped the brains of some of our most brilliant math and physics geniuses, then accelerated them, and inserted them into shipboard computers.”

I did know that, actually.

“The problem with AIs”, he continued, “is that they’re modeled after a human brain, but they run out of space to perform calculations and they occasionally lose vital bits of information. After enough time, the likelihood of ‘latency’ issues is so probable that the AIs are removed from the ships. The problem is, though, that they are sentient beings. They’re human, in thought and action. The purest intelligence. It was believed early on that shutting down AIs was cruel and akin to murder. That the beings should be allowed to live out the rest of their ‘natural lives’ in peace after having served the Republic. So a sort of retirement home was created for the retired AIs to dwell. It’s called the Sanctuary. The AIs are still given tasks to perform…they digest the trillions of flops of data coming in from all corners of the universe. Monitoring tachyon-burst transmissions. Still advanced-level functions, but none that would cause the deaths of an entire starship crew if they failed. Moreover, they live inside their own vast computer systems deep inside an old military fortress inside Cheyenne Mountain, outside of Colorado Springs.”

I thumbed at the stubble on my chin. “So the Reverend wants these AIs for something?”

“No, I don’t think so,” the marshal replied. “The AIs probably are of no use to him, but Cheyenne Mountain has vital communications links and equipment that could be exploited. The real reason must have to do with….”

He trailed off, and looked at me, as if he didn’t know how to continue.

“About four months ago,” he said slowly, “a technician flew to Cheyenne Mountain to check on the equipment. The whole facility, including defenses, is automated and robots keep it clean and tidy…but we send a person every few months to perform a physical check.”

He withdrew a small digibook from his breast pocket, tapped the screen.

“This is Valkyrie Penrose,” he said showing me a picture.

It was the blonde I’d seen stalking the streets of Omaha, and the marshal knew it from the expression on my face. Her hair was down in the picture instead of the ponytail, but it was definitely the same woman.

“She never returned from the Sanctuary. Her central nervous system was found discarded inside the facility by the cleaning robots approximately four months ago. After she’d been missing for a week, we sent an investigator and a Vanguard team to determine what had happened. There were no initial signs of foul play or intrusion into the facility. The security cameras showed her working among the computer terminals, and then, well... just watch.”

He tapped the digibook screen a few more times and handed it back to me. The woman could be seen checking instruments, then tapping away on a digibook. She touched one of the large mainframes, glowing blue with energy and lights. She suddenly jerked as if she’d been electrocuted. She thrashed for a minute, not taking her hand away from the mainframe the whole time. She stopped shaking, then reached her free hand up to the back of her head and dug her fingers into the synthetic skin beneath the baseplate of her skull, where the neck meets the head. Her fingers dug and twisted until the plate started to bend upward. She reached in…and pulled her own brain out. She pulled harder and her entire central nervous system slid out of the hole in the back of her head. It flopped to the floor like a wet fish, splattering maintenance fluid on the ground. She reached back up, bent the skull plate back into place, stood motionlessly for a minute, then let go of the mainframe.

The blonde then tied her hair into a ponytail, covering the mangled back part of her skull, and walked out of view. A few other cameras caught her leaving the deep mountain hall.

“How is that even possible?” I asked. “She should have died without her brain!”

Burnham shook his head. “We have been working for months to figure out what happened. The AI who resided in that particular mainframe is missing, something we never thought possible. It
somehow
figured out a way to overclock the Sanctuary computer, short-circuit the body, take over motor control, and then insert itself into the hard drives and flash storage units located in the body. We can’t figure out how, but then again…we’re not AIs.”

“So the blonde is why they’re back at Cheyenne Mountain?” I asked.

“We have to assume so,” the marshal said. “We don’t know why, though. Fortunately, we’ve changed the security protocols and they can’t access the base for now. Oh, and her enhanced-form body is locked out of the neural web, which is why they needed your digibook to access the central library for info on the nuclear weapons. So while the ghost of Valkyrie Penrose does not appear to be an immediate threat, we have to be extremely careful. AIs are immeasurably intelligent, and a wildcard in this mess that I don’t think anyone anticipated.”

“Rampancy,” I said, remembering a word from a stellar navigation course a decade ago.

In latency, an AI became feeble and unable to complete commands in a timely and accurate fashion. Rampancy was the opposite: when an AI overclocked and went insane. It had happened only once in history before. Some thirty years ago, a shipboard AI had gone insane and intentionally altered course in mid-jump, pulverizing the ship into quantum foam, effectively committing suicide and murdering the crew in the process.

“We can’t use the MAC gun on the encampments around Cheyenne Mountain. The AIs still inside the mountain, plus the deep-space tachyon emitters and receivers, are all vital and irreparable pieces of our interstellar exploration program. Plus, if there’s a rampant AI in the mix, we need to capture it and study it.”

Marshal Burnham stood, saluted with his fist to his chest, and opened the door to leave.

“The Reverend’s forces will probably be there for months, scavenging for supplies, ravaging any settlements nearby, and waiting out the winter. We need to prepare for the Battle of Cheyenne Mountain. It might just be the end to this war.”