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).

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Wednesday, November 15, 2006

9928 words

Posted by: Greg @ 12:25 AM.

Previously

Two 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.

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Sunday, November 12, 2006

8443 words

Posted by: Greg @ 6:02 PM.

Previously

It 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

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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.

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