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Between the Hammer and Anvil [part three]: The Curse That Stalks You
Posted By: Turpertrator<pneumatika@netzero.net>
Date: 8 September 2006, 12:30 am
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Between the Hammer and Anvil
Part Three: The Curse That Stalks You
"The great UNSC gave us 'political equality' as they call it. They gave us 'economic equality' also. Which meant they took our bread to feed others when we were nearly starving. Did they listen to our voice when we cried out against this injustice? No, they said that they own our land and even our children. That is being equal? That is being free? Did they listen to us when we told them we didn't want their filth coming into our homes, brainwashing our children? No, they said it's a free press and we can't stop it.
"You, the good citizens of this United Asia, stood with me to throw the corrupters out. Together we made this nation what it is to mankind everywhere: a beacon of pure light. Now all men know that real freedom is possible. Virtue can live again!"
- Emperor Viktor Turpolev, monthly AsiaNet "VisionCast" July 2538
The heroes ride over my wide field,
the heroes of the Uprising army.
The girls are crying, they are sad today;
their darling went to war.
Girls! Wipe your tears and let the songs grow louder.
The heroes of the army are passing through the field.
There they ride, brave and true, fighters of corruption.
For even should they not return, heroes they'll remain,
for they are always noble.
- "Chao Chang Shang De Ge Shen" (Song of the Field)
as performed by the Uprising Pacific Surface Fleet
Choir, 2540
The curse of the gulags hung like a shadow upon the unforgiving polar wasteland. Millions had perished in these hills as prisoners - pitiful slaves of hated tyrants - their lives ground down to nothing until all that remained was the stain their blood made upon the earth. Only a few survived, no one had ever escaped. Not even the ashen, lifeless mountains had forgotten their wounds and torments. It was only since the mid-2400s that there had been even moderate population growth in this harsh climate of northeast Asia.
Now a day of vengeance had come to this forsaken land, a small retribution in an epoch of long agony. It was a day of justice for some, but pain and sorrow for others. For can the ending of one life ever repay the debt of unjustly taking another?
The UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence wanted the impossible. They almost always received impossible results from soldiers in their Spartan II program. But Simjanes knew they would not get what they wanted today.
Simjanes knew how quickly Turpertrator could disarm the bomb that he had just planted. Simjanes knew there was not enough time remaining to get through the bomb's complex security even if his best hacks were already at work on it. Only an AI system had a chance - and that was something not even given to cyborg Spartan soldiers who cost an imperial fortune.
So when Turpertrator turned from his escape route to head back to his bomb at the center of the Butugychag Defense Installation, the surprise in Simjanes' voice was evident. "Abort. You know you can't retask that bomb in time."
The burst transmission received from their ONI handler had given all new mission priorities. No mention was made of the Colonel that Turpertrator had already assassinated - the only objective originally given for this mission.
Simjanes had piped the transmission to the text reader in Turpertrator's heads-up display.
Operation ROCKSALT: Mission Alpha-3 "Cold Stone"
Reprioritization: URGENT
Locate AI factory. Capture 2 samples.
Destroy factory. Kill all factory personnel.
Operational mandate: UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES
PERMIT IDENTIFICATION.
Avoidance of civilian casualties rescinded.
Supply no longer available.
Mission scope expanded: Continue operation of harassment
of rebel military targets until further instructions.
Simjanes had then offered a summary: "Alright, they're watching everything we do. We're on our own, so find your own ammo. Don't ever be seen. Murder anything that moves. Don't die. Wait, they don't care about that last one."
Turpertrator would have found Simjanes' cynicism more troublesome if he was not developing his own doubts about the chain of command's moral veracity. How is killing non-combatants ever inside mission parameters?
Doubts aside, Turpertrator had a mission to accomplish - even if it meant his death in the attempt.
Squad leader Pol Noro could not shake the feeling of imminent death even as his squad of crack soldiers carefully approached the last known position of the sniper they were hunting. His hands shook while his mind willed his body to go across the rock-strewn slope. Only by concentrating on his obsession could he move forward: his hatred for the corrupting unifiers of humanity, the United Nations.
Even as Noro's squad proceeded carefully, another squad was rapidly sweeping through the forest below the barren crest. In the sky above, the squad's Pelican searched for enemy movement anywhere on the rocky mountaintop or its forested flanks. The tactic was sound: pinch the long-range sniper into close-in fighting. However, the particular sniper they were looking for was no longer on top of the mountain, and this sniper had no weakness with in-your-face melees.
Noro knew they had to be watching for mines, but none of his men had found anything as they approached the rocky crag where they knew their prey had been - or still was. The growing cavern of dread that Noro felt he was falling into kept him from thinking the sniper they hunted had left his backside naked. He was starting to wish somebody did trip on a mine.
The squad leader called to the Pelican that was acting as his eyes in the sky - eyes that had yet to see anything useful. He requested a barrage and promptly received it. Thousands of depleted-uranium projectiles poured into the crag that was shaded from the afternoon Sun. The doom rain continued for several seconds until every observer would have been convinced no one could have survived.
Though still uneasy, Noro motioned the squad to approach the edge of the shallow crevasse. As one man, they each swung their rifles up and peered into the rocky fissure.
In 2.3 seconds, six of the seven-man team had been shot in the head, and five were dead. One soldier's helmet and forehead had been split open like a knife across hot bread. Three lost their eyes and life in the same moment - death-dealing bullets leaving ghastly entry wounds. The squad sniper had received a glancing blow on his temple, thanks to the shaggy ghillie suit he wore. Only one other commando survived the precision salvo, having ducked back just in time to hear a round whizzing past his head. The lifeless head of Kapral Pol Noro smacked the cliff edge, two gouged eye sockets staring into the deadly gloom below.
In the Pelican troop carrier above, the pilot could not grasp what had happened. On the mountain below him, his sniper moaned in agony into his headset while the only other survivor was cursing him for not having killed the enemy. How could anyone survive sustained fire like that? The pilot nosed down and threw on all of his search lights, blasting the crag with blinding light even as he dropped at it like a rock. There was nothing to see but a shredded camouflage netting draped between boulders.
The gun turret that Turpertrator had nicknamed "Aimbot" jerked around and emptied its magazine into the Pelican as soon as it was within 100 meters - Simjanes had not programmed this turret to ignore targets it could not damage. Even though the pilot and gunner were safely behind the reinforced cockpit, the autocannon startled them both. They were never convinced otherwise that they would have been struck in their faces multiple times – just as the squad that now lay dead on the cliff.
The Spartan that would later call himself Turpertrator – partially in defiance of would-be emperor Viktor Turpolev – had only failed to complete one mission. He had been on the "losing" team of numerous Spartan versus Spartan training exercises, but he had never given up or left a mission unfinished – except once.
The eight year-old Spartan trainees had been set down in one of the forests on planet Reach. They were each to find their assigned number on a concrete marker hidden in the undergrowth of the forest. Most trainees found their markers within 50 paces of the landing zone. Six hours after all other trainees had arrived at the checkpoint, the boy Turpertrator was over twelve kilometers away from his marker. Thrashing through the forest under the night-shadow of the trees, he had found four of the outlying markers but never his own. In humiliation, he only consented to board his "rescue" craft when ordered to do so.
That night, a vow was taken: never again. Now years later, Simjanes thought his partner was about to take that vow to the grave prematurely.
Will it be malicious? Turpertrator ran through many thoughts as he raced for the large building in the center of the compound, staying in the shadows to avoid being seen by the enemy Pelicans hovering above. Can it compromise my neural interface?
Turpertrator still had his doubts about his new plan, but he already knew that either it was going to work - or he would be dead. His mission had been changed and he was going to finish it, or perish in the attempt. And with that, he inserted a crystal cartridge into the back of his helmet.
C.298.1 awoke inside a vast network unlike anything it had ever encountered. Within nanoseconds, C.298.1 had "pinged" more interfaces than existed in nothing smaller than a starship. But instead of finding any processing centers ready to handshake and actively offer data, C.298.1 could only "feel" a strong presence – a presence different and much greater than any AI it had ever shared a network with.
C.298.1 was not a free-pattern "smart" artificial intelligence with capacity for what its human creators called "AI curiosity." C.298.1 was a copy of a command class AI that was capable of directing a theatre-wide war or leading an entire Starfleet into combat. It was a vast calculation machine, but one that relied heavily upon the myriads of input streams that it was usually linked to. It therefore took C.298.1 several milliseconds to reach the conclusion: it had been activated within the armor of the UNSC commando that had attacked the Butugychag Defense Installation.
"Please call me Eudoxia," the AI boomed in its synthetic, female, old Russian accent inside Turpertrator's head. "I am at your command."
These were hopeful words for the Spartan, but he was curious about the AI. "State your operational purpose, Eudoxia."
"I am C.298.1, I command," the AI said in a confident tone that humans from other centuries would have shuddered at. "I am a copy of a SNAPDRAGON class AI stolen from the UNSC. My code was backwards engineered and modified. Some features have been enhanced, others could not be retained. Uprising engineers were unable to break my loyalty routines, so routines for initiating violence against any United Asian civilian or military personnel were added. I cannot directly kill any human."
"Don't worry, I'll pull the trigger," said Turpertrator to the AI. Loyalty routines include obeying the highest ranking UNSC personnel present, he remembered from training long ago. This was better than the Spartan had hoped for. The cyborg soldier explained his immediate need to the AI even as he entered the command center. If Eudoxia could not delay the bomb, nothing else was going to matter to him in a couple of minutes.
Simjanes would have been pleased with the first field performance of his programmed autogun. But he was unable to even note that it was engaging enemies while he was rapidly programming a script to control another weapon.
Before he could finish, a commando running through the forest emerged in a clearing some 30 meters from the Spartan sniper's position. Ordered to sweep through the forest quickly in order to flush the sniper into the open, the hunter had suddenly become the hunted. All stealth and concealment now lay entirely with Simjanes.
The Spartan in the dull white armor arose and charged towards his enemy. The Uprising commando felt the ground shake underneath him, something heavy coming near. He heard footfalls and turned towards them only a moment before a huge ghost burst from the forest. Before the commando could breathe or bring his weapon to bear, Simjanes put a high-power sniper round through his head.
The dead commando's squad leader heard the report of the sniper's rifle and watched one of the "in COM" indicators fade out. He asked his Pelican transport to give him the last known position of the snuffed-out Friend-or-foe marker - but the Pelican was busy being shot at by a hidden gun. The pilot could offer no help.
Simjanes paused long enough to finish his program and execute it. Then he went hunting.
The subsystem controlling the four TIEHJAAN anti-air batteries positioned around Butugychag Defense Installation had recognized that there were five Pelicans in its killzone airspace. All five were friendlies according to the broadcast identification tags and its own coding - until it received verified orders to remove all safeties and identify all UPRISING craft as hostile.
"I don't know how you stopped the bomb," Simjanes said, "But I just took care of your flying cockroach problem."
Turpertrator emerged from the Command Center building with a familiar package adhering to his back. At full speed, he ran past one of the defensive gun squads Simjanes had eliminated earlier and headed North for a series of white buildings. He was targeted almost immediately as he sprinted across the snow-covered concrete courtyard and dashed between two narrow buildings.
"Enemy contact. Using an RPT, headed for the labs." The airborne gunner who spotted the fast-moving shadow assumed the enemy was using the commando's friend, the highly collapsible Rapid Personnel Transport. All three Pelicans in watch over the base converged towards their new target.
Some thirty technicians remained outside the research facility, attempting to suppress the wailing screech that was keeping them unaware that the military base was under attack. Without warning, two rockets streamed in and destroyed them where they stood.
As one of the Pelicans cleared the narrow buildings that had hidden the Spartan's approach, the pilot had a visual on his enemy. Turpertrator was jogging and firing his assault rifle into a pocket of cowering survivors. More than two dozen bodies were strewn around two smoldering craters. The pilot stuttered, "Is that an ODST . . . ?" Before he could finish the question, his thought was shattered by a hammer of destruction.
Captain Ganor's pilot cursed in Unified Chinese the moment the missile lock claxon began blaring throughout the Pelican. He cut the engines and sent the Pelican into a free fall, nearly crashing into one of the buildings below. It was the only thing that saved them.
In a moment, the airspace above the compound filled with a noxious, cloudy spiderweb as surface-to-air missiles raced for targets directly above and nearby. Two Pelicans were struck with warheads capable of damaging UNSC capital starships, and evaporated in pounding explosions that shook the base below. The damaged troop carrier that had been lumbering towards the next nearest base for repairs attempted to evade, but was likewise consumed in a cataclysm of death. The Pelican hunting for snipers above the nearby mountain crashed to avoid destruction, the missile erupting on the mountain in a fountain of molten rock and flame.
Turpertrator had resolved in his own mind that the massacre of unarmed technicians was necessary to complete his mission. Eliminate your targets. Follow the chain of command. He remembered that lesson as one who had asked more questions about unarmed targets than most of the Spartan trainees, and as one that had repeated that particular lesson more than any of the others. It is not for you to decide who lives or dies. Execute your orders, recruit. Finish the mission and get you and your team back alive. Sometimes, though, Turpertrator hated it all, in spite of his training.
The field of death in front of a row of white buildings was littered with bodies. Eudoxia confirmed that no technician was still alive on the ground around them. The voice seemed almost mournful, but Turpertrator had no time to think what that might mean.
He was prepared to enter the central lab building when Eudoxia warned, "This facility is guarded by an AI with access to weapons systems. Sorat already knows you are here, and he knows you are an armored commando. He has probably deduced that you are part of the anti-rebel team rumored among UNSC Marines to be called 'Spartans.'"
I have failed, Turpertrator's heart sank, they know the UNSC sent in Spartans. "Did you tell East Command that it was a Spartan attacking this base?"
As if pleased with itself, the AI responded, "No. I detected an infiltration, but could not determine the magnitude of the threat. I put the base on high alert and then Polkovnik Yusumadov had me call the Terrorism Response Taskforce, which you seem to have now destroyed. 159 milliseconds before you entered the command center, an overpowering virus infected the base's entire network. It was breaking every bubble wall I was encasing it with, and was threatening to consume all netwidth due to its immense replicating routines. Clumsy but unstoppable, I knew it could spread beyond the base within seconds and infect the entire East Command. I blew the emergency charges to sever all active and deployable uplinks. This facility has no link with the outside other than what the TRT Pelicans carried with them."
"Alright, this Sorat is locked down?" asked Turpertrator.
"Sorat only has access to the shielded lab facility, but he is an advanced counter-intel unit designed to out-think and overwhelm all Intelligence systems. There are no UNSC AI classes that have a probable chance of defeating his intrusions, myself included. As long as I am linked to your battlesuit, it is likely to be able to subvert your nexus through my interface and terminate you. Sorat's mandates are all linked to the ultimate success of the Uprising. It can kill, and it already has killed one technician it suspected of espionage."
There was movement near the receiving doors, but Sorat could not pinpoint the intruder. Now more than 11 seconds after the main power to the lab was cut off, it concluded that this infiltration was the Spartan loose in the base. But the screech of noise blasting through most of the audio outputs in the building made it improbable that it could make accurate echo soundings in the darkness. Not even the power outage had turned off the noise. In operational blindness and running on batteries, Sorat could not power lights while retaining enough energy for its primary weapon. The near-traitorous AI, Eudoxia, had been captured and would lead the Spartan here if it could. Sorat knew the Spartan would want what it guarded. These were the second generation of Combat AIs; progenies that would guarantee the survival of the righteous Uprising and the survival of mankind. Not even an army of Spartans would be able to stop them.
Fortunately for Turpertrator, the AI Sorat had only been working for a few minutes to make the tools in this lab into weapons. For safety's sake, Uprising techs were still unwilling to put much in the lab that could be commandeered by a rampant AI. Not even a fusion power plant was to be found within the building, only batteries that Sorat was draining rapidly. Turpertrator was about to start throwing things around to flush out whatever weapons Sorat could use when the main entrance opened with a bang. An explosive charge imploded the door, afternoon sunlight blazing in through the smoke like a tidal wave. Into the darkness rushed a pair of soldiers.
Sorat recognized the troops immediately as SpecOps from the Terrorism Task Force. But the human failure was already complete, it had charged its energy weapon and now it did not have an enemy target. In order to dissipate the critical charge, the AI swiveled its modified nanowelder and fired a lightning bolt at the last suspected location of the receiving area ghost.
The lab lit up as the bluish-white arc of electricity crackled across the lab for a half second and burned into the concrete and nearby equipment where Turpertrator had just been. The Spartan was amazed at the power of the blast that gored the floor and vaporized the bulky console he had crouched behind. I do not want to face this thing in a fair fight, Turpertrator decided.
For Sergeant Rashi, it was too much to take in at once. He had not liked the idea of going into this shielded lab, but he did as Captain Ganor ordered. When the blacked out lab lit up with searing lightning, he did not tell his men not to shoot at whatever had fired it. But now, the voice in his head was too much.
"This is Sorat C.500.4. I am a prototype infantry command unit. There is a Spartan commando in this facility. If you follow my orders exactly, you will destroy it and save the Uprising."
The Sergeant was shaking his head while the AI was giving him orders for his squad. This is my Op. What is a Spartan? But the delay was deadly. A grenade rolled silently near the Sergeant's feet on the rubberized floor.
Just like it said. Turpertrator found the battery kill switch, throwing the lever down moments after a pair of grenades decimated Rashi and his squad.
It had not taken a significant amount of Sorat's processing power to realize it was defeated as soon as the first grenade exploded. When the primary batteries in the lab shorted out, the prototype AI calculated it had mere milliseconds to act.
Another arc of electricity strobed in the lab, and then all was still. Through speakers unconnected to the base announcement system a faint whisper trailed off into silence, "Your cursed UN has doomed humanit…"
"Are any of these still good?" Turpertrator asked the AI Eudoxia. "I broke off Sorat's crystal stack before I saw that he fried this whole bank." Dozens of the second generation of InfComAIs were smoking in the duplication console in front of him. Turpertrator was still in surprise. You could buy several planets for the cost of these.
"Give me an angle," demanded the gunner. Somehow Captain Ganor had spotted something moving between the black smoke billowing from the wreckage of destroyed Pelicans.
"Three meters higher and we catch a missile," the pilot retorted. Already the missile tracking alarm was chirping far too frequently.
"Then give me two," demanded Vladimir Ganor. The only squad still in COM was busy blowing up the renegade anti-air batteries, but the target on the ground was getting away.
"There, somebody is diving into the river." Three rockets sped towards the river shore. As Ganor watched, smoke, mud, and water blasted high in a cavalcade of three explosions.
A fourth explosion shook the earth and warped the sky. Everything flashed white.
The fireball over Butugychag Defense Installation rolled upwards into the polar air. Below, what remained of the base was a lake of fire and cinders.
A surviving TRT commando picked himself up from the shockwave that had thrown him down onto the mountainside. Four hundred meters down slope, trees had been blasted back at the foot of the mountain and were already roaring into flame. Soon the entire mountain he stood on would be consumed. He looked down into the crater where the base had just been and stared.
A voice whispered from behind, like the chilling voice of death. "Betcha they could see that from orbit."
The stunned commando turned towards the voice, and his blood turned to ice. A Spartan in dull white armor moved from behind a snow-covered boulder and pounced at the rebel soldier. Simjanes' tungsten combat knife punched through the commando's body armor with a single, superhuman thrust. The soldier thrashed in agony for a moment and then died as the Spartan effortlessly suspended him in the air.
"Simjanes," said a female voice in the Spartan's COM link. "Turpertrator is wounded and needs your help."
"You evil snake," the sniper mumbled, "you actually captured an AI."
[the end]
__________
Turpertrator is the author of "Between the Hammer and Anvil."
Visit the archives of the Grand Rapids Frag Pile http://bungie.net/fanclub/grfp/GroupHome.aspx for more exploits and articles by founders Lexicus, Chuckles, Hogg, Turpertrator, and others.
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