Lacking a Title
A blog created to warehouse my work and thoughts during National Novel Writing Month
Monday, November 20, 2006
Posted by: Greg @ 12:15 AM.
Falling further and further behind.Bought parts to build a new computer and finally got in on Thursday. Spent the next two days getting it up and running and haven't had much free time on the side. I'm a realist and know I won't hit 50,000 words, but I plan on continuing to write as much as I can. I've enjoyed the change of pace in my life since I've started taking time every day or so to write (and read).
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
9928 words
Posted by: Greg @ 12:25 AM.
PreviouslyTwo days later, the collection of robotic remains had shrunk and then grown. With the help of the Majors, the Lieutenants had sorted through the remains and tossed aside all the robots which had taken too much damage to work with, as well as the extraneous parts. The roboticists had then set to work with their tools and computers to extract and analyze the programming code of the salvaged robots. But less than twelve hours later, General Kilpatrick had stopped by with news. Four of the commercial ships that had been taken by the robots had been found and recaptured, and the remains of the robots on board were going to arrive at the Directorate within the day.
The fact that the only robots to attack ships had been VeRN 83-IPs had been quickly ascertained by the roboticists, so Kiroshi had been happy to have news to tell the General when he had stopped by. She expected that by now, the SOD had grounded every ship licensed in the Core Alliance that utilized that robot model. And apparently, the cover story of an uprising in pirate activity being the cause of the loss of the commercial ships had been accepted by the public. When she had asked the General about that, she had briefly wondered what had become of the civilian passengers who had survived from the ship that she and Staley had been on board.
While Clovis and Sunnydale had been attempting to analyze the information from the robots, she and Staley had been trying to find a pattern among the ships that had been attacked. They had plotted each of the ships' paths prior to the attacks, as well as the positions of the commercial ships which had been recovered. And they had cross-referenced past ports of call. Kiroshi stared at the images of the lists and charts displayed on the surface of the tablescreen. No matter how she manipulated the information, she could not find a common thread. Leaning back from the table and tilting her head from side to side to pop her neck and stretch the tightened muscles in her shoulders, she saw Staley staring at his table screen as well. By his expression, she knew he had reached the same conclusion that she had. Nothing lined up. The only sign of any relation between the attacks remained the model of robot involved.
"Let's go see the twins," she said, eliciting a questioning grunt from Staley. She raised her voice slightly, "Cooper, come on. We know there is nothing useful in this information." With a swipe of her hand, she cleared the tablescreen and turned it off.
"I guess we're going to see VeRN, huh?" Staley asked with a sigh.
She nodded. "Unless our wonder kids have a better idea. And even if they do, I think it might be a good idea to go there anyway."
When they got to the lab where Clovis and Sunnydale had set up shop, Kiroshi and Staley found that they were both examining a wallscreen with lines upon lines of text, numbers, and symbols.
"How is it going, gentleman?" asked Kiroshi.
Turning around, the roboticists gazed at her. "Actually, we think we have found the problem," said Sunnydale.
Kiroshi started. That was certainly not the answer she had expected to receive. "What? Already? That's great work, Lieutenant."
Sunnydale grimaced, and Clovis shared the expression. "Unfortunately, it is not that impressive, ma'am. And right now, it is not very helpful either."
"Now wait a second, Lieutenant," said Staley, with a hint of confusion in his voice. "You just said that you found the problem. How isn't that helpful?"
Clovis answered. "Well, sir, once we were able to access a fully undamaged memory and programming core -- one of the ones disabled by Major Kiroshi's containment rupture, we think -- finding the coding itself, was not that hard. We just looked for code that should not be there." He motioned at Sunnydale. "Jon had done some work on the early version of these models and knew their basic code structure, so that did not take very long. But knowing where the problem is does not mean that we know what the code does, unfortunately."
"I think I understand you, Lieutenant," responded Kiroshi, hesitantly. "Does that mean you have done everything that you need to be here to do?"
"Yes ma'am," they replied.
Kiroshi smiled. "Well then, I have some good news. You'll be out of your adaptation suits soon. Major Staley and I ran into a deadend on our side, so we're all going to go pay a visit to VeRN's warehouse and laboratories. I will go see about getting us a ship. How much time will you three need to get everything you need together?"
Clovis and Sunnydale looked at each other for a second, before answering together, "Two hours, ma'am."
Staley nodded. "Should be more than enough time for me, too."
"Great, then we'll leave in three."
* * *
Five hours later, Staley had just finished stowing the gear that he had procured. Even with the limited time, he felt confident that he had secured enough material from the SOD armory and supply depot to fulfill any need that might come up. Kiroshi had asked him if he really felt like the FCP rifles and pistols, battle armor and supporting equipment was really necessary. His simple, "Yes" had brought a brief smile to her face. The two roboticists had simply nodded when they saw the equipment he had gathered. Despite their being SOD, Staley still was not comfortable with their qualifications if it came down to real combat situations. But then, he had been pleasantly surprised by the capabilities of the last person he had been unsure of, so he tried not to let his doubts bother him.
He asked the wallscreen to display the current time and the projected time for their arrival at VeRN's robotics lab and warehouse. Located in high orbit around Venus, the station rivaled Mars' smaller moon, Deimos, in size. While not necessarily the most advanced robotics company, the Venusian Robotics Network had, almost since its inception, been in partnership with the Core Alliance Fleet as the sole provider of robots for the Fleet's ships and construction yards. It had been an exceptionally lucrative partnership. But as a result of its narrow focus, several other robotics companies had secured similar partnerships with other industries. And none of the companies had gained dominance in the domestic, personal and recreational robotics markets. However, VeRN's space based lab was unrivaled by any of its competitors' labs, and was widely considered one of the aesthetic and technical wonders of the solar system. Staley rather looked forward to having the chance to see it.
As he walked out of the storeroom, he took the chance to relax in the approximately one-third earth's gravity that Kiroshi had set the ship's gravitational control at. The two Martian roboticists had been most thankful for the return to the gravity that they were used to. Reaching the common room, Staley saw that they had gone to their quarters and rid themselves of the exoskeletons that they had worn while on Earth. The lack of the oddly formed body suits revealed them both to be quite thin, but at the same time, quite muscular. Staley was still willing to bet that his shorter, but more muscular build gave him more strength than them, but increased his earlier low estimate of their overall physical abilities. He regretted that the ship was too small for a training room, or he might have asked one of them to spar with him. He figured it would be a fairly even fight. In his time undercover, he had not been able to practice his hand-to-hand fighting, so he was rusty on technique. But he had maintained a good strength and conditioning regimen.
Right now, both Sunnydale and Clovis were seated and were examining the information that they had extracted from the robots which was displayed on the tablescreen between them. He watched as their hands flew across the screen, manipulating the data and entering notes, trying their best to reverse engineer the code for the 83-IP robots. Sunnydale had said that if VeRN granted them access to their database, that it should become a trivialized problem. Staley had no doubt that VeRNs representatives would be more than accomodating to their requests when they saw the dataprint that General Kilpatrick had given Major Kiroshi that also carried the seal of the Commandant of the SOD and the seal of the Council of Three. The roboticists had also said that they wanted to do some analyses on any still active 83-IPs that VeRN might have in their warehouse. That would be the only way to determine when the robots' programming had been corrupted. And they would be able to verify their hypothesis that the corruption was viral.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
8443 words
Posted by: Greg @ 6:02 PM.
PreviouslyIt was five days since the ship landed on Earth. Other than his lengthy debriefing on the first day, Cooper Staley had not done much in that time. He had gone home to the house that he had not seen in over a year, called his mother to say hello, and caught up on the news from the past year. Venus had held its elections and the incumbent premier had been chosen to continue to represent Venus on the Core Alliance's Council of Three. Not that that was really news. All the past premiers of the three worlds had all served until they died, and always ran unopposed. Earth's World Series winner had won the Inter-planetary Series four games to three against the Martian League's winner. He perked up a little when he saw that the Sect of the Never- Setting Sun had been stirring up trouble on Mars and Phobos again. The Suns were the last major dissident group in the inner planets and were based on a strange mix of mysticism and politics. All the efforts of the Core Alliance over the past sixty years had been unsuccessful in disbanding or even silencing them.
But all of that was irrelevant to his current situation. Staley sighed and leaned back in the chair he was sitting in. He tugged at his uniform as he looked around the familiar decorations of the office he was sitting in. He had not worn the uniform in so long that it was somewhat uncomfortable, though not unfamiliar. Just as his gaze passed over the secretary, the only part of the office that was different from his last visit, for the umpteenth time, the radio on her desk squawked to life.
"OK, Jenny. Send him in."
Jenny looked up at him, her straight blonde hair curling in slightly before it ended just below her chin. She waited for a second as he looked at her.
"Well? Go ahead."
Feeling somewhat chagrined, Staley rose and strode to the door of the inner office. Opening it, he stepped through, closed it and snapped to attention, saluting the man standing behind the desk. General James Kilpatrick returned the salute and then waved Staley toward two high-backed chairs that were facing the desk.
"Ah, Captain Staley, good to see you again. Have a seat. We have a lot to talk about."
It was only then that Staley noticed the person sitting in the left-hand chair. He paused for a second as he quickly took in the uniform and face, which was open-mouthed in astonishment.
"Miss Kiroshi!"
"Actually, she is Major Kiroshi to you, Staley," chuckled General Kilpatrick. "I do have to admit that I was looking forward to getting to formally introduce you to each other. Anyway, do sit down. Like I said, there is a lot to discuss."
Seating himself behind his desk, the General continued. "You both know that it has been the Core Alliance Special Operations Directorate to have special ops soldiers, such as yourselves, in deep cover on various interplanetary commercial ships. And the assignments are completely random, so it is a random occurrence when two people are assigned to the same ship, but none-the-less it does happen. And be thankful that you were both on that ship. Other ships were not as lucky."
Both Staley and Kiroshi reacted to that news, but Kiroshi was a fraction of a second quicker. "Other ships, sir? How many? How many made it back? Do we know why this happened?"
"There were about twenty ships total on which the onboard robots coordinated attacks to wipe out the humans and to gain control of the ships. Only four, counting your ship, made it back. The other three happened to be Fleet ships - a cruiser, a small patrol craft, and," he paused, "The Relentless." That got another gasp from both of them. The Relentless was the Fleet's newest and biggest carrier and had been designated the Fleet's flagship. "Casualties on all the ships were high, but the robots never gained control of them, so no one knew what they were trying to do. But the civilian ships all disappeared. We lost two other deep cover soldiers on those ships. Your ship was the only ship from which we were able to get some idea of what the robots were trying to do."
The sun-reddened skin of the general's face tightened beneath his graying crewcut. "As for why? We still don't know. That is why you two are here. You will be working together to find out what is going on. This is straight from the Council. They don't want news of this getting out. The propaganda department is already working up a cover story for the disappearance of the other ships. And it is giving us another chance to crack down on the Suns. Since you already know that it is happening, that leaves the two of you to actually work on this. You will be working with a couple of our experts on robotics that we have pulled from their current contracts with VeRN. You will meet them tomorrow."
General Kilpatrick then had them recount the events on the ship for him, though Staley was sure that nothing that he asked about was not already in the debriefing report. He allowed his thoughts to drift and played back all his interactions with the woman he had thought was just an ex-Fleet navigator. He could not believe that he had not realized that she was, like himself, a special ops officer. As a result of his thinking, he was only halfway paying attention when the General caught him off-guard by saying, "And before I let you go, I'm happy to have this honor, Captain."
"Sir?" asked Staley, trying to catch up with the topic of the conversation.
Kilpatrick picked up a small felt-covered case from his desktop, stood up and walked around the desk. Both Staley and Kiroshi shot up out of their chairs, snapping to attention as Kilpatrick stopped in front of Staley. Opening the case, he removed what was inside and placed the case back down on the edge of the desk. Then reaching up toward Staley's collar, he replaced the double bar of Lieutenant with the oak leaf Major insignia.
"Congratulations, Major." Kilpatrick saluted, and Staley returned it perfectly. "Since you will be working together, I decided to give you equal standing so you won't have to worry about stepping on each other's toes. And you have definitely earned it anyway, Cooper."
"Thank you, sir!"
"All right. The two of you are dismissed. Be back here at 0800 tomorrow morning. The orderly at the front desk will clear you into a conference room to meet your robotics experts. Don't let us down, and good luck."
Staley and Kiroshi saluted, rotated on their heels and left the office.
* * *
The next morning, as she returned to the base, Nanae Kiroshi was still trying to get her head around everything that had happened. Two days ago, she had woken up in the base's hospital, unsure of where she was or how she had gotten there. After the doctors had checked her out and approved her to return to active duty she we debriefed. She was still sore from the shockwave, and the skin that had been regrown on two-thirds of her body after the plasma had burned it off was still tender, but other than that, she was fine. During the debriefing she had learned that Staley had gone into the engine room and finished off the two remaining robots. Then he and the rest of the crew had restored power to the engines and then he had assumed control of the ship and returned it to the proper heading. Despite that knowledge, the revelation that he was a special ops deep cover soldier, just like she was, had been startling, to say the least. Though she had to admit, it was obvious in retrospect.
His invitation to dinner had come as a surprise, but had been a welcome chance to get to know him, especially since they were going to be working together to figure this whole thing out. It had helped that he was buying. Tradition held that newly promoted soldiers were supposed to treat their squads to dinner. He had said that, even though they hadn't really been in a squad because they were in deep cover, he figured that considering what they had been through, the tradition would be okay with it. Especially considering how she had sacrificed herself to try to save him and everyone else on board.
Arriving at the towering, sleek building which rose up over the rest of the base and which was home to the Core Alliance's Special Operations Directorate, she maneuvered her vehicle down a ramp into the parking garage that formed the top of the underground portion of the building. The building itself was perhaps the most respected and feared building in all of the Core Alliance, if not the all of the solar system. The smooth exterior dominated the base's skyline in which their stood no other building higher than ten floors. It projected an aura of awareness, of watchfulness, and most of all of secrecy. The base itself was just outside of the largest metropolitan area on Earth, the mega-city Vircarogia.
The city, which was an amalgamation of several cities that had all grown together, covered about five hundred miles along the eastern seaboard of North America and extended about the same distance into the continent. The base itself was located just outside the metropolis, near the remains of a city that had been destroyed during the Dirty War in the year 2132. From the upper levels of the Directorate, Kiroshi remembered being able to see the remains of the white marble buildings, including the odd white spire that had survived the destruction. The unified Earth government had established itself thirty years after the end of that war. Its programs to consolidate growth and industry had sparked the growth of the mega-metropolises around the world. A full three-fourths of the Earth's population lived in the six primary cities upon its surface. And the colonies that the government had established on Venus and Mars had formed similar distributions over the past two hundred years.
The Special Operations Directorate had been established as part of the Earth's unification effort. The group it worked for was one of many that sprang up in the chaos of the aftermath of the Dirty War. Led by several very charismatic men and women, the New World Unity Force was one of the few working to unite the population of the earth. And it ended up being the most successful. There was no doubt that the SOD had been the key to that success. Established by members of the leading council of the group with training in military and covert operations who had honed their skills in the guerrilla warfare common during the war, and controlled by the oversight of the most ideological of that council, it had stretched its destructive and manipulative fingers around the globe. The men and women trained by the SOD had been startlingly effective at gaining control of the various warring states, and were quickly adapted to maintaining that control in what was becoming the hegemony that gave birth to the Core Alliance.
And now, the SOD continued to serve as both a secret police force and as a highly trained mobile military force. Aside from its fleet of interplanetary vessels, the Core Alliance had no other military to speak of. And there was no need for one - the only concern from outside the Alliance was the Outer Federation, which had been able to split away from the Alliance over one hundred years earlier. And internally, their job was pretty much limited to ferreting out and eliminating any and all of the revolutionary and rebellious groups, such as the Suns, that seemed to spring up in every corner of the Alliance. So the SOD was kept small, though the men and women who served in it were considered to be the most highly trained soldiers of all time. And now, Kiroshi thought with a sigh, they were faced with robots that were going out of control.
* * *
Staley sat at the conference table, staring at the inlaid video display, scrolling through the personnel files of the two robotics experts. The first thing that he noticed about Lieutenants Alfred Clovis and Jonathon Sunnydale was that they were both Martians. The Special Operations Directorate was notorious for being earth-centric in its recruitment. But for knowledge as specialized as robotics, he supposed, you had to get it from where you could. And these two certainly had the pedigree to back it up - training from all three of the major robotics companies, a dozen advanced degrees in computers, engineering, and cognitive science between them, and all that by the time they were twenty-three. They had been part of SOD for just over five years now.
Staley did not have anything against Martians himself, though he had had to fight more of them than anyone else in his twelve years in the service. Their population seemed to be the source to produce the most anti-Alliance protests and resistance groups of all the colonies. But he had never encountered any of them on Earth before. Natives of the planet grew up in an environment where the gravity was much less than earth normal, which left them tall and thin, with an appearance of having been stretched out. To spend extended periods of time on Earth or Venus, they had to wear an exoskeleton that amplified their atrophied muscular strength and regulated their cardiovascular system.
He looked up at the sound of the electronic seal on the door to the conference room deactivating. He smiled in greeting as Nanae Kiroshi walked into the room.
"Morning, Miss Kiroshi."
She smiled and sat down across from him and looked at the dossiers on the tablescreen.
"You can call me Nanae, Cooper. I told you that last night. The rights and privileges of rank and all that."
"Heh. Old habits die hard I guess. Like I told you last night, I am still kicking myself for not realizing you were SOD too." He paused as she scanned through the files. "So, you see that our robotics experts are Martians?"
"Indeed we are, sir," replied a voice that strained in between breaths.
Staley and Kiroshi turned to see two oddly proportioned men, wearing SOD uniforms, standing at attention just inside the door. They appeared to be almost mirror images of each other. The only difference was their hair color. Both stood about six foot four, and were obviously very lean, despite the strange thickness of their appearance. The bulges and stretches of the uniform, plus their unnatural width, Staley reasoned, must be from the exoskeletons.
"Come on in, Lieutenants," said Kiroshi. "Have a seat. We were just looking over your files." She continued as they seated themselves. "I am Major Nanae Kiroshi, and this gentleman is Major Cooper Staley. I don't expect you know why you're here beyond that it has something to do with robotics."
"No ma'am, we don't," replied the blond one. Staley gave a quick glance at the tablescreen to see that he was Clovis. Sunnydale was the red haired one.
"We were both working on some research at PEARL, excuse me, the Phobos Engineering and Robotics Laboratory, when we received orders to pack for an extended vacation," said Sunnydale. He gestured with both arms and shoulders as if stretching. "To be honest, I had hoped never to wear this contraption again. Never feel like I'm controlling myself." Clovis nodded his agreement.
"Well, it will probably be a few more days, Lieutenant," responded Kiroshi, with a hint of a smile. "We have a bunch of robots for you to examine. We know there is something wrong with them, but we need to know what exactly, and why."
The Lieutenants blinked at her. "I beg your pardon, ma'am, but you brought us here to run some checkups on some robots?" asked Sunnydale, with a hint of exasperation in his voice. "That could be done by any techs you already have on staff."
Kiroshi nodded, keeping a calm face. "Firstly, we didn't bring you here. I did not even know your names or of your existence until yesterday. And these are not standard robots that can be hooked up to a scanner and run through a standard checkup. And the work you will be doing is classified so black, that you can consider yourself inside an event horizon. You won't see anything outside of your work, and no one outside of your work is going to see it either."
Now it was Clovis' turn for exasperation. "That is all well and good ma'am, but you still haven't told us why you need us here. What do you mean by 'not standard robots'?"
Staley decided to interrupt. "Forgive Major Kiroshi, Lieutenants. Neither of us are very pleased with this assignment either, and we are not sure what we need to do exactly. We just happen to be rather central to the problem, so the Directorate is keeping us inside the event horizon, if I may borrow Major Kiroshi's metaphor, just as you are being pulled into." He tapped the tablescreen. "That is why you two are here. According to your files, the Directorate considers you the two best men in robotics in the Directorate, and possibly outside of it as well."
"The problem is this. Last week on no less than two dozen ships, ranging from the Fleet's new flagship down through commercial transports, all the robots on board attempted to take control of the ships and to kill all of the humans on them. Major Kiroshi and I happened to both be in deep cover on board one of the commercial ships, and it was the only one of the non-military ships that was not lost." He paused. "I think it is safe to assume that the Fleet is going at the problem internally, as well. But the Directorate has it from on-high to find out what is going on."
The two roboticists had hung on Staley's words and sat silently when he finished, with faces that said that they both clearly expected him to continue on to tell them that he was just kidding. When he did not do so, they exploded, talking over each other, but exhibiting that strange familiarity of men of similar temperament and thinking that allowed them to finish each other's sentences.
"That's impossible! Robots..."
"...can't act outside of their programmed functions. Only way I can see it..."
"...is if there were some outside control. But robots aren't designed..."
"...for long distance communication. Though..."
"...they do communicate with each other over short ranges..."
"...if they are unable to complete their function alone. So maybe..."
"...if one's programming was contaminated..."
"...and passed it to the others."
"But that doesn't take into account..."
"...that there were multiple ships."
Looking back and forth between the two, Staley tried to keep up. "So you think it could be something like a computer virus?"
Sunnydale nodded. Clovis shook his head. They glared at each other for a second before their faces softened into consideration of the other's unspoken ideas.
"Maybe it would be best if we were able to see what is left of the robots," said Clovis.
Sunnydale nodded again. "If we can access their memory banks and their programming cores, we should be able to have a better understanding. Hopefully those parts of the robots were left intact."
"I'm afraid no one really took the time to ensure that the damage done to the robots was confined to specific areas," replied Staley as he rose from the table. "But we'll show you where they are all stored. If there is any equipment that you need but don't have, just let Major Kiroshi or myself know. We are not going to set a deadline, but I am sure you are both aware that the sooner we figure this out, the better.
Continue
Thursday, November 09, 2006
Brief update
Posted by: Greg @ 2:15 AM.
Been kinda distracted recently. That's what I get for picking up a new book (and a long one) when I should be writing. But more than that, I need to introduce a couple more semi-major characters and I don't really know anything about them. With Kiroshi and Staley, I had a basic idea in mind. But I didn't know that these other two characters existed until just now. I've got like 500 words written out from the time Kiroshi crossed the streams which answers some questions that both K and S have (and potentially the readers), but it definitely is sort of standing still.I am rather happy with myself for having gotten as much as I have. Not being in the practice of writing any more, 5000 words of something that I haven't planned out is pretty damned good. But I'm still another 5000 words or so behind where I ought to be. We'll see how much I put my free time to use for the next few days and see if I catch up.
Monday, November 06, 2006
5077 words
Posted by: Greg @ 12:48 AM.
PreviouslyFor what seemed like the hundredth time, Kiroshi went over what she knew about robots. They had been a part of daily human life for the last hundred and fifty years, but had only within the last twenty reached the point where they were humaniform in design. Supposedly their processing power was doubling ever five years, though their physical capabilities were still fairly limited. But that last assumption had proven to be wrong. The robots on this ship were not quite top of the line, but they were close. And they had moved almost as quickly and fluidly as humans. She had never noticed that ability before. In the past year since she had been here, the robots had moved very similarly to humans, but it had always been noticeably mechanical.
Unfortunately, there were no overriding controls on the robots like the earliest designers had hoped for. She vaguely remembered something about a group of scientists and engineers from about forty years before she had been born who had titled themselves the Three Laws Men, and had tried to get such controls adopted by all the robotics companies, but had failed for some reason.
Even with their high processing power, robots were always built with only a single specific function in mind. And while they could learn to do new thing and different things related to that function, you could not teach a robot whose function was to maintain a spaceship's engine to be a nanny to a child. That was pretty much the only industry wide standard, and had been adopted only because early roboticists had learned that a robot who could do many different things was often not happy doing just one. Kiroshi never understood why they always used human emotions to describe robots' reactions. It was not like they had emotions. But none of that seemed relevant to the question of why these robots - all Venusian Robotics Networks model 83-IP - had somehow gone very far outside of their originally programmed function.
Lost in thought, she stared out the bridge's viewport. Her thoughts drifted away from thoughts about the robots much as the ship drifted away from its intended route. Though the ship's engines had been cut the day before, the ship was still moving at near maximum velocity due to the low inertial drag of the interplanetary vacuum. The thin band of the asteroid belt was just becoming visible. On a normal return trip, the ship would have made a slight adjustment upward at this distance, to angle up over the belt. But that wasn't necessary now. The ship was definitely not going to cross the border into the domain of the Core Alliance.
But despite all the navigational calculations she had performed once she knew their heading, she couldn't figure out where they were going. Their current path would not pass close to any of the populated outer areas or any of the notable asteroids. Of course, by now, both the Core Alliance and the Union of Outer Planets would have noticed their extended silence and would have sent out patrols to try to locate them.
Assuming the patrols had been sent out within twenty-four hours of their last contact, unless one of the two alliances had a military presence in the area, it would have been at least another day before a ship would have been able to reach their last known location. And they would have sent several other ships out to scan for them in a circle around that same location with a radius of the maximum distance they could have traveled in those same two days. But it had now been nearly five days and none of the navigational systems had detected any approaching ships. That fact worried her even more than the chance of not taking back the rest of the ship. For some reason, she had the highest level of trust in Staley. He reminded her of the men she had originally trained and served with - quick-thinking and quick on their feet, and highly capable in any situation. Despite that, she had not told him her concerns about the lack of contact with rescuers. She did not want to weigh him down with extra concerns that were not of immediate relevance to his duties.
And then, as if by thinking of him, she had summoned him, the figure of Cooper Staley resolved itself in the corner of her eye.
"Ma'am, I thought you would like to know that the men finished burning their way though the door. We are ready to begin the attack."
She stared at the viewscreen for another moment before turning to face him. "Thank you, Staley. Go and rejoin the men. I will be with you in a moment and accompany the third squad."
She smiled slightly when he did not react to that. She knew he did not think she should risk herself as the only officer remaining on the ship.
"I don't expect to be in any danger. I am sure you will have things well enough in hand, Staley."
"Very well, ma'am. I'll be moving out with the first squad in fifteen minutes."
He turned and went back out of the bridge, unslinging his FCP and checking its settings and condition as he disappeared around a corner. Kiroshi picked up her own FCP, her fingers closing around the smooth contoured grip. She checked its power settings and fire type before pulling the strap over her shoulders and slinging the gun across her back as she followed Staley off the bridge. In truth, the feel of the gun in her hands and under her fingers as she examined it and the weight of it pressing between her shoulder blades comforted her. Despite her words to Staley, she was hoping to get a chance to use the gun. It had been so long since she had last used one in real combat that she missed the excitement of battle.
* * *
Staley shook his head once again. He could not believe that the navigator had decided to risk herself, but that was not something he could control. All young officers, everywhere, always felt the need to get a chance to fight. So he focused on repeating his instructions to the group of armed men. There were twelve of them total, divided into three groups of four. As he finished up, he saw Kiroshi quietly join the third group. He checked his watch and said, "OK. Time to go. At the first split, Mister Clark, take your squad ahead and down to the docking bay. I will lead my squad to the engine room. Miss Kiroshi will be leading the third squad, waiting at the split for either of the forward teams to radio in for assistance."
Crouching behind the man he had stationed at the corner to watch the doorway, he waved the first squad forward and followed them through the hole in the door. As the squad moved down the corridor, the men checked each room for sign of the robots' presence. It was slow going, and it took them thirty minutes to reach th the split in the corridor. Staley radioed the second and third squads to move forward and join them as he arranged his men in defensive positions at the corners of the split.
As the rest of the force arrived, the grim faced passenger he had put in charge of the second squad, Stephen Clark, formed up his squad to head down to the docking bay. Staley was pleased to see Kiroshi instruct her men to slide into the defensive positions that his men had already assumed. He looked over at Clark.
"You know what to do. Move out, and good luck."
Clark just nodded and sent his men forward.
"All right first squad. Let's go."
* * *
The wait was beginning to wear on the men. They were shifting in their positions, trying to stretch muscles that were sore and beginning to cramp. They had been waiting for over an hour as the other two squads moved forward searching the rooms along the corridors as they progressed toward the engine room and docking bay. Kiroshi ordered her men to stand up and move around and stretch out their muscles. There was not much chance that the robots had snuck by the two patrols to attack them here. She sighed and leaned back against the smooth metal wall.
As she watched the men stretching, the radio crackled to life again, with the voice of Stephen Clark coming over it. "We've just entered the docking bay. There does not seem to be any sign of the robots here. We are working our way through the personal craft now."
"OK. Thanks for the heads up, Clark," responded Staley. "We are just outside the engine room. They closed the door, but it is not sealed. We will be going through in a minute. Once you are done in the docking bay, rejoin Miss Kiroshi and then come to join us. Three robots in this one area is going to be tough."
"Got it."
"On our way when Mister Clark gets back," replied Kiroshi. "OK guys," she continued to the men around her. "Let's get ready to go. I hope everyone remembered to use the bathroom before we left."
A couple of the men laughed and she smiled gently at them as they finished stretching out and lined up, waiting for the arrival of the men returning from the docking bay. They did not have to wait long as Clark soon led his men into view at a jog.
"Give your men a few minutes to rest," she instructed him as she cast a critical eye over the men who were flushed and breathing deeply. "We don't need them to be too tired to fight. And we will have to fight, I have no doubt about that."
She was about to ask him if there was any sign that the robots had ever been in the docking bay, but was interrupted by a burst of static and Cooper Staley's voice over the radio.
"We are under heavy attack. Two men down. I and my other men are trapped in a room just outside the engine room. Acknowledge, over."
His statement was punctuated by the sound of FCP guns firing and hitting metal. Kiroshi waved her men forward as she responded, heart thumping as the adrenaline surged into her system. "We are on our way, Staley. Clark's squad just got here. Be there as soon as we can."
She broke into a run as she finished and moved to the head of the line of men. From the way he had called in, she knew now that Staley was definitely former military of some sort. Unslinging her FCP as she ran, she hoped her own training was not as rusty as she felt it to be. She was soon able to hear the whine, impact, and sizzle of the weapons fire ahead of her, and skidded to a stop as the corridor reached the final turn before the entrance to the engine room. Leaning against the wall, she snuck her head around the corner, trying to see the situation.
As she looked, a series of FCP bolts spat out of a doorway on the right and splattered against the far wall. Two mangled human bodies lay in the corridor and blood was splashed and smeared on the walls and floor. There was also the twisted wreckage of a robot laying halfway into the room that the gunfire had come from. Other than that, the hallway was clear. The door into the engine room was just a black rectangle.
She turned back to the men, selected two and instructed them to assumed covering fire positions at the corner and then another two men to move into the two doorways closest to the corner. They nodded, gripped their guns, and darted around the corner as the first pair fired into the blackness. Poking her head around the corner, Kiroshi gasped as a thin metallic object came flying out of the engine room. It struck the second man in the side, spinning him around. He screamed as a shower of blood arced through the air as the first man dove through the first doorway on the left.
That man recovered quickly into a kneeling position and began pouring bolts of plasma into the engine room. As she watched, another metallic object came flying through the darkened doorway at an angle toward the wall. It ricocheted up, off the way, hit the ceiling and again bounced away before slamming into the floor where the man had just been kneeling. She had been so amazed by the flight of the object that she had not noticed the man scrambling his way back into the room.
As she pressed herself back against the wall, she looked at the men with her. She realized that there was no way they could get into the engine room without armored and trained men without suffering extremely high casualties. And she could not be sure that they would even succeed.
She radioed Staley. "We are going to provide covering fire. Clear your doorway and close the door. We are going to cause a FCP containment collapse. After it happens, it will be up to you to clear the engine room while the robots are incapacitated."
"Understood. Will do." Staley's voice was calm.
She called out the same instructions to the man alone in the left hand room. Turning back to the men with her, she saw that their faces were white. Smiling grimly, she said, "I guess Staley told you about what happens when you cross two FCP beams when he had you burn through the door."
The men nodded.
"Good, I won't waste time on the details. You will all secure yourselves in the room right here," she motioned to a doorway into an engineer's cabin. "The engine room is about twenty meters away. The shockwave will definitely knock us around back here. But I don't know about the plasma wave. If it does reach this far, you will be safe in there." She paused and looked them over. "I do need one volunteer, though, to fire the second gun." She was not surprised that Clark said that he would do it. "Ok, the rest of you, go."
She checked to see that the doorway with the man in it was closed, and saw that the robot which had been blocking Staley's door was gone. She looked to Clark. "Set your FCP to continuous, just like with the door. You will just have to hold yours still, and then I'll bring mine to intersect it. Hopefully inside the engine room. It will cause the electromagnetic field around the beams to collapse and the plasma will explode outward. It will definitely at least disable the robots." She could not help but let the stress enter her voice. She was trained and experienced in combat, but this was not something she had ever been taught about beyond the devastating result.
She settled into a kneeling position. Clark stood behind her. On her command, he began firing. Taking a deep breath, she pulled the trigger. The two beams sliced into the darkness of the engine room. Slowly, she angled her beam upward. The beams seemed to waver as they neared each other. Then they intersected. A backwash of energy surged along the beams, causing the guns to rock in their hands. But the beams, bending, stayed connected for what seemed like seconds but lasted only a split second. And then they exploded. The shockwave raced down the corridor lifting the bodies of the three dead humans. It slammed the bodies into the wall as it tore around the corner. She felt suddenly weightless as she lost contact with the floor and was then slammed into the wall behind her and lost consciousness.
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Thursday, November 02, 2006
2395 words
Posted by: Greg @ 10:21 PM.
Previously"Ma'am."
That was Staley, a surprisingly able fighter and leader for a common ship's cook. She assumed he had some experience in the military, though there was no sign of it in his personnel file. Even on a luxury yacht like this one, there were undoubtably members of the crew with a criminal past. Or a history that they were trying to forget.
"All right, Staley," she said. Turning to face him, she saw him standing in a vague semblance of military attention, his rifle slung on a strap across his back. At some point he had found a chance to switch into clean clothes. A luxury she envied him. But his tangles brown hair and the grease and faded bloodstains on his hands from the fighting and defensive construction and repair work suggested that he hadn't showered.
She continued, "You know as well as I do that without control of the engine room, we're going to just keep drifting here until we all die of starvation. You said that you think the robots fused all the blast doors to their frames to seal off the rear of the ship. We need to get through, and the only way I can see for us to do so is this. Set up a rotation of men with FCP guns focus firing at the door and melting their way through."
He nodded, "It's risky, those guns are damned dangerous, but sounds like a good plan ma'am. Will probably take a few hours though." Hesitating, he asked, "Aren't you worried that they disabled the engines like the did the comm room? If they did, we're going to lose a lot of people for nothing."
Kiroshi shook her head. "First, we're not going to lose any more people if we can help it. You've handled things well, but I want you to take as many precautions as you can to ensure the safety of the rest of the crew and the passengers who are helping us. And, no, I doubt that they'll disable the engines. We know they've cut the connection from the bridge to the engine room, but they aren't going to disable the ship entirely. They aren't just trying to kill us, they want something else. And they need the ship functional to get it. Whatever it is."
She paused, looking thoughtfully at the cook. Even though this was a fairly small ship, she had rarely encountered him since as an officer she ate with the passengers not in the crew's mess. But over the past year that she had been on board, she had developed a respect for the man for his reported calmness and influence with the other crew members and his continual good behavior. And that respect had grown greatly over the past few days.
"Look, I'll be honest with you, Staley. You have been risking a lot for everyone on board so far, and I know I'm asking a lot more out of you now, so you deserve to know everything. When the robots had control of the bridge, they changed our course." She raised a hand to cut him off as he opened his mouth to respond. "No, I don't know where we are headed now, but it doesn't matter. When we took the bridge back and they sealed themselves in back there, they cut the engines, so we are drifting, but not toward any place we ought to be. Best as I could tell just from a quick look out the view screen, they moved us into a wider orbit, I don't think we'll ever pass through the asteroids as we are. And we're definitely not on any of the standard shipping courses, so no one is just going to happen upon us out here."
The initial look of surprise on his face had quickly turned into one of worry.
"I don't like it ma'am. Robots going crazy and trying to kill everyone is one thing. I'm not trained for it, no one is, but that's something that you can deal with fairly easily. But the idea that they have a plan and a goal outside the ship is no good at all. You can't let the passengers know. Or most of the crew." His mouth twisted bitterly. "No offense ma'am but I'm getting tired of all the moaning and complaining from the passengers. If this got out, it wouldn't get them to shut up any sooner."
Grinning at him and picking up the FCP gun she had set on a table by the door, she replied, "Well, let's go make sure they don't have anything except your cooking to complain about."
* * *
Thirty minutes later, Cooper Staley was watching as a squad of men were focusing their FCP guns on a series of points which he had marked out on the blast door leading to the engine room and docking bay. As he watched the men, each kneeling behind cargo containers and resting their guns on top of them, he summed up his instructions one last time.
"Remember, focus on your spot. Keep the gun on continuous, and don't cross the streams."
The last part came out a bit harsher than he had intended. The men all knew what would happen if they slipped and the field-contained plasma beams encountered and disrupted each other. His description, which had spared only the details of why he had first hand knowledge of the result, had left several of the men looking sick to their stomachs. And remembering how he got that knowledge hadn't left him feeling much better.
"Miss Kiroshi wants us all to make it back to Earth. She says we've lost enough people to these damn robots, lets not fuck up and kill each other."
He looked over his shoulder at the two other squads of men sitting and standing in the corridor with their own guns. Some were toying with their weapons, others appeared to be napping or praying. Most of the crewmen had never used an FCP gun outside of their earliest training, and the passengers had probably never held one before being pressed into service over the past few days. But they were all essentially combat veterans now. None-the-less, Staley couldn't help but wish for someone else who had real combat experience and training. He knew some of the crew had been living on the fringes of society and lived a rough and tumble life in the back rooms and cantinas before the Outer Alliance of Planets had cleaned out the pirates and gangs which had infested the asteroid belt and moons of the gas giants, but a fully trained and battle tested soldier was worth the lot of them. Even an ex-Core Alliance Fleet pilot like Kiroshi supposedly was would have been great, but she was the last of the officers left and needed to stay alive as a sign of leadership. The last thing they needed was some arrogant asshole vacationer thinking he knew how to lead combat operations and trying to give the crew orders.
He was honestly surprised when she'd wanted to lead one of the squads. Maybe he'd underestimated fighter jocks. He snorted. More likely, he had just misjudged her. As the crew cook, he rarely encountered her outside of full crew gatherings and she'd always been very reserved, but she had eyes that took in every detail that they saw. He had been sure she was a smart woman, that's for sure. And having seen her take control and heard the way she issued orders since the executive officer had been killed, he was beginning to think that she could handle herself in pretty much any situation.
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Wednesday, November 01, 2006
1073 words
Posted by: Greg @ 10:33 PM.
PreviouslyAt first, things had gone poorly. The crew and passengers had been scattered and unorganized, but under the command of the executive officer, they had managed to unite. He had led a group of about 30 crew and passengers from the dining lounge to the weapons locker, and had then gone about locating the remaining humans on board. They had set up their base in the crew quarters which was the most isolated area of the ship, and had worked their way out from there. The executive officer's goal had been to reach the bridge and communications room to get a message out requesting help. He led the successful recapture of the bridge, and had single handedly taken out three of the robots in the process. His glory was short-lived however, because in the subsequent assault on the communications room, he and five of the men in his squad were eviscerated by a robot which had literally thrown itself down the corridor at them. None-the-less, they were able to deal enough damage to the robot that the rest of the survivors had been able to destroy it and take back control of the communications room.
The capture of the communications room had been followed by two days of near inaction by both sides. The communications officer had been killed in the initial attacks, and even if he had been alive, the robots had destroyed the communications equipment. That discovery, coupled with the executive officer's death took a lot of the inertia out of the human effort to recover the ship. Nobody was sure why the robots stopped attempting to wipe out the rest of the humans.
Hopes that the robots would leave the survivors alone were shattered early on the fourth day. The sentry's alert of incoming robots over the intercom was shortly followed by the sounds of his violent death as the spasms that wracked his body made his hand clench down on the radio transmit button. The remaining armed men and women scrambled awake and into their defensive positions as the rest sought refuge in the rear-most compartments. It was then that the tide of the conflict turned in favor of the humans. The robots, already at two-thirds of their original strength, had committed another five to the renewed attack on the humans. But the defenders, thanks to their makeshift defensive fortifications had eliminated them all with only minimal loss of life.
Recognizing the swing in power, the crew's cook, a man named Staley, had led a group to take back the remaining sections of the ship. They returned bearing several of their number, but also two more of the robots and the news that the remaining three robots had sealed themselves in the engine room and docking bay. That news had caused the crew and the smarter passengers to regret their earlier rejoicing at the apparent turn of events. The passengers who were less knowledgeable about the realities of space travel had not taken very long to recognize the look of concern that covered the faces of their companions.
Two hours later, that same look of concern was still on the face of Makiko Kiroshi. As the ship's navigator, she was the crew member officially in command of the ship now that the captain and executive officer were dead. That thought added a grimace to her face. She had never wanted to command a ship. In fact, she had never wanted to serve on a ship in any role, but she squashed that thought mercilessly. There was no time to rehash old complaints. Forcing her face to return to a trained look of calm, she ran her eyes over the remains of the robots again.
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First words
Posted by: Greg @ 1:02 AM.
There were twelve of them sitting in mix-matched chairs around the cafeteria table. Except, they weren't in a cafeteria. This was a makeshift meeting room that the crew and passengers had originally used as a temporary headquarters. Now that they had reclaimed the bridge and most of the rest of the ship, it was where they were storing the remains of the ship's robots which they had destroyed. There were still three left, though. And they still had control of the ship's engines and docking bay.The shapes in the chairs were obviously humaniform -- two arms, two legs, head on top of the body. Well, the ones that still had all four limbs and a head. All of the durametal bodies had burn marks and holes in them where they had been struck and torn apart by the weapons that the crew had been able to obtain from the weapons locker before the robots had gained complete control of the ship.
A room just off the medical bay was home to a similarly gruesome scene. Except the burns and holes and absent limbs marred the bodies of nearly fifty of the seventy-five crew and passengers who had been on board the ship when it left the Sulfura Springs Luxury Resort Station in orbit around Jupiter's moon, Io. And the bodies hadn't been positioned in chairs in a crude semblance of a company board meeting, or a jury at its work. No, these bodies were laid out in rows. Only a few had been granted the dignity of a white sheet to cover them. Not that the sheets were white any more. Lasers cauterized wounds almost instantly, but many of the bodies had been ripped apart by the durasteel blades and hooks that the robots had equipped in place of their hands.
The chaos had begun four days earlier, while most of the passengers were relaxing in the ship's lounge after dinner. In a coordinated effort, five groups of the ships maintenance and engineering robots had taken over the key areas of the ship, including the bridge, communications room, engine room, and docking bay. After killing all the crew and passengers that they encountered in the initial assault, they began to systematically take over the other sections of the ship and kill the remaining humans on board. However, the ship's captain had been able to alert the crew and passengers to the attack, and gaining swift access to the weapons locker, they made an effort to defend themselves. Over the following three days, working their way from the crew and passenger quarters, they had been able to destroy most of the robots and retake most of the ship. But it had come at a terrible price.
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