The Great Destroyer (14 page)

“Wouldn’t that leave their forces vulnerable to attack from beyond our perimeter?” Jackson asked.

Yazov gave a bark of a laugh.  “You think the Terran Alliance would allow us to carry out such an attack?”  He shook his head.  “We know they can read television signals, and they would be pathetic creatures indeed if they had not yet figured out how to tap into the Internet.  They will not worry much about our taking offensive action, even if they present us with a tremendous tactical advantage.”

That was true enough, Jackson knew.  Takagawa had gone back to work overseeing the production of Charlie IIIs and the design of the next generation of Charlies, but had been interrupted frequently by calls from TA officials anxiously scaling back the Charlies’ freedom of action to respond to threats from the Ushah. 

The Charlie IIIs now had a standing order to protect the Arcani, but from their position, it was unlikely they could act in time to save any humans that the Ushah made a determined effort to kill.  Beyond that, they were allowed to repulse any attack by the Ushah and nothing else.

Jackson took a sip of his coffee, then asked, “So what do we do if the Ushah commander does as you expect?”

“My boys are fast,” Yazov said proudly.  “I will order them to converge on wherever the attack takes place.  They will isolate the breach, force the Ushah into a bulge, then pinch it off and destroy those lizard bastards.”

“Kharkov, but with the Russian doing the cutting off?” Jackson asked with a smile, referring to a World War II battle where the Germans had performed a similar trick against the Soviets. 

“Indeed,” Yazov said with a grin of his own.

Suddenly, the screens froze for several seconds.  “There’s some interruption in satellite connection,” a technician reported.

“Figure out what interrupted the connection,” Jackson said more calmly than he felt.  He had a sickening feeling that he knew what had severed the connection.  Sure enough, a call came in from the Space Administration, which Jackson fielded from a phone on one of the consoles.

“Our satellite uplink facility is undergoing a massive cyberattack,” Director Korzov said.  We can’t communicate with the satellites at all.  Impossible to tell how soon we’ll have them up and running again.”

The Ushah, it seemed, had taken to the Internet even more quickly than Jackson had feared.  And it could only presage one thing.

Joseph Igazi was struck motionless with terror in the Mozambique jungle for the second time in a month.  He and nine other squad members had been on the southwest end of the perimeter when the Ushah struck.  Ushah rail gun rounds tore through his unit, killing five and leaving two more horribly wounded. 

Ashanti Gutierrez, his squadmate, was standing a few feet behind him.  She screamed in a panic.  Igazi sprang toward her, grabbed her by the arm and threw her down behind a tree.  He collapsed next to her behind their tenuous cover, and she screamed, “What should we do?!”

Her fear steadied him.  The two had become lovers in the aftermath of the Battle of the Tunnels, when Igazi had won a brief celebrity status for being the one who had discovered the Ushah on the mainland of Africa.  He had even met Safety Minister Redfeather, who had congratulated him for his bravery in several public ceremonies.

Igazi had told his story to a journalist who paid him a year’s salary for it.  His newfound status—and, he liked to think, his calmness under attack—had led to Gutierrez relenting to his charms.  Now, he was her protector, and the thought of her seeing him flee was a more important factor than the threat of losing his life.

“Don’t worry.  Stay calm, keep behind cover, and we’ll get through this,” he said.

He heard the roar of two .50 caliber Gram rifles further to the west, as Charlies III-10 and III-12 came up to support the remaining Arcani in his squad.  A monotone male human voice sounded on the radio.  “This is Charlie III-10, I am 100 meters to your west.  Please retreat as quickly as possible to the west, and I will cover your escape.”

Igazi didn’t need to be told twice.  “Come on,” he yelled at Gutierrez, and jolted her to her feet.  Grasping her hand, he sprinted into the jungle as rail-gun rounds crashed into the trees around him.

In response to the rail gun rounds, Charlie III-10 fired his Gram dozens of times, and the rail-gun firing briefly died down. 
The robot must have hit at least one of the Ushah
, Igazi thought.

Then there was a terrible crash and the screech of metal on metal.  The Charlie had taken a hit.  Igazi slowed for a moment and looked back.

Charlie III-10 had taken a rail-gun shot in his right leg.  He was now balanced precariously on one leg, but as Igazi watched in horror, another Ushah round slammed into the remaining leg and threw the robot to the ground.

Igazi had stopped to watch by now in horrified fascination.  The Charlie didn’t exhibit any fear or desperation.  He pushed himself up with one arm and raised his rifle to continue the fight.

Igazi took a second to realize he had stopped.  The Charlie was simply doing what it had been programmed to do.  It had bought him crucial time to escape.

But Igazi didn’t run.  In a split-second, the former South African DMV employee surveyed the information available to him.  He knew there was a Charlie III fifty yards behind him, and he knew the Charlie had been damaged, perhaps severely. 

When the Charlies had arrived to give support to the Arcani surveillance operation at the beachhead, the Arcani had been given a tour of the robotic warriors and an opportunity to ask them questions.

Igazi had asked Charlie III-10, “If I am injured, at what point will you give up on me as a lost cause and run for safety?”

Charlie III-10 had looked down at the South African whose life had until just recently been so meaningless and said, “I will fight to protect you until my central processor has been destroyed, regardless of whether you are still alive.”

At some level, Igazi recognized that the answer had been programmed in, had been taught to Charlie III-10 by his creators in Houston.  But he also thought that however those values had been instilled in the Charlies, they were worthy of respect.

Instead of running off, he yelled to Gutierrez, “Keep going!”  Before she had time to ask what the hell he was doing, he was off and running back east toward the sound of the gunfire.

He stayed low, trying to keep trees between him and the Ushah closing on Charlie III-10’s position.  Through the foliage, he caught glimpses of the robot propping himself up with one arm and using the other to aim and fire his rifle at the incoming enemy.

Then a third shot tore into Charlie III-10, and he jolted back.  The round had struck his upper chest, detaching his right arm and tearing a jagged hole near his shoulder.  His Gram flew several feet away, and Charlie III-10 was left face-down on the jungle floor.

Igazi was almost there now, and without thinking twice about it, he grabbed the robot’s rifle.  Though it contained a small computer to link up with the Charlie’s internal processor to improve aiming, the operation of the rifle itself was not complicated.

It wasn’t hard to understand the Gram rifle, but it was hard to wield it.  The damn thing had to weigh more than forty pounds, and Igazi knew that it fired a massive .50 caliber bullet large enough to destroy an automobile engine.

The South African aimed down the barrel and through the scope at the end.  He had never fired a weapon before in his life, but he had seen enough movies to know the general idea.  Time stood still as he sighted a squat green shape moving against the foliage, running at Charlie III-10, at him. 

Igazi barely had time to worry about the recoil of the massive weapon when he squeezed the trigger.

The rifle slammed back against him, and if his adrenaline hadn’t drowned out most of the input from his nerves, he might have worried that he had broken his shoulder.  He could have anticipated the problem.  The Charlies were seven foot tall, 300-pound behemoths; Igazi was well short of six feet tall and weighed about half as much as the robots.

Miraculously, his first shot was straight and on point, tearing through the midsection of an Ushah and throwing him back onto the jungle floor with a gout of blood.  The other Ushah charging forward took cover and started pouring rail-gun shots into the area, shattering tree limbs and sending leaves fluttering through the night sky.

Charlie III-10 saw what was happening and said aloud through his speaker, “Arcani, you must retreat.  There are too many of the enemy.”

“You wouldn’t leave me behind,” Igazi said dumbly, then scrambled the last few feet to the damaged Charlie’s position.  The robot was truly a mess, and Igazi had to remind himself that, like a computer, Charlie III-10 could continue operating as long as his power supply was undamaged and his central processor was intact. 

With two legs and one arm missing, Charlie III-10 only weighed about 120 pounds.  Igazi didn’t think he could carry that much, but he was ready to try.  He grabbed Charlie III-10 by the waist and tried to heave him up on his shoulder.

“Wait,” the robot said.  “Pull the emergency release lever for my main battery pack.  It will dramatically lessen my weight.”

Igazi did so, and suddenly Charlie III-10 was a manageable 70 pounds.  “Give me my rifle, and I will cover our withdrawal.”

A rail gun round spanged off the battery pack, and Igazi dropped it, yelling, “Shit!”  He thrust the rifle into Charlie III-10’s one remaining hand, pulled the robot onto his back and took off running.

Igazi had no idea how Charlie III-10 could aim from his bounding back, but it wasn’t long before he was almost thrown off his feet by the recoil of the rifle being fired at the incoming Ushah.  After another three shots, the Gram clicked on an empty magazine, and Charlie III-10 dropped it to lighten Igazi’s load. 

Though he couldn’t make great speed, Igazi was careful to dart between and behind the thick foliage, and the Ushah return fire peppered the area around him in a less accurate manner as the attackers lost sight of their retreating enemy in the dark of the jungle. 

“The Ushah appear to have turned to the right and are advancing up our line,” Charlie III-10 said.  Igazi’s heart was pounding hard enough to pop out of his chest, he thought, but he didn’t dare stop or slow down to see if the robot was correct.  He didn’t even reply; he just kept running, trying to put as much distance between himself and the Ushah as he could.

After six minutes of desperate running, with the sounds of battle moving north behind him, Igazi placed Charlie III-10 on the ground and collapsed behind a thick tree.  “We are safe now,” Charlie III-10 said.  “The Ushah are pushing north, destroying the other Charlies as they go.”

There was no trace of emotion in Charlie III-10’s voice, Igazi thought.  Igazi didn’t know much about programming generally, let alone how the Charlies were programmed.  But he could imagine Charlie III-10’s internal struggle with competing directives. 

The robot had been ordered to protect Igazi’s squad, which was now relatively safe.  His next priority would be to support the other Charlies, but he was clearly unable to do that with only one arm.  He tried pitifully to push himself forward with his one arm, but he must have realized that the effort was futile.  He couldn’t carry the rifle and move himself at the same time, and his programmers must have incorporated some ability to recognize when a task was practically impossible.

“There’s nothing for you to do but survive this,” Igazi said, the adrenaline starting to subside in his veins.

“Surviving while the Ushah are destroying the other Charlies is not optimal,” Charlie III-10 said simply.

How much is going on in that robot’s head
, Igazi wondered.  Igazi replied, “You will have a chance to avenge them, I think.”

Charlie III-10 made no reply, and Igazi began to wonder if his auxiliary battery had run out.  Once he had caught his breath, he picked the robot back up and continued on his way, walking quickly away from the sounds of battle intensifying to the northeast.