CHAPTER THIRTY

Paradoxical though it still seemed to many of the people involved with the experiment, the methods being used against Spartacus up to that point had relied to a large degree upon functions and services running within the complex of Spartacus itself. The communications network via which the various operations were coordinated, for example, was an integral part of the Spartacus net; the computations performed to analyze the data obtained were run on machines that formed part of Spartacus; Army personnel were transported to and from operations by machines controlled by Spartacus, and the drones used against Spartacus were commanded from programs running within the very system that they were being used to frustrate.

This state of affairs had been allowed to persist quite deliberately to provide a measure of Spartacus’s abilities to perceive a realm of existence external to itself and to relate causes and effects operating in that realm. As long as Spartacus obligingly continued to sustain the rods that were beating its own back, the scientists felt safe in concluding that the machine’s perceptions of any external reality were rudimentary. Ever since the experiment began, Spartacus had been blindly reacting to stimuli presented by an environment without being aware even that such a thing as an environment could exist. To Spartacus any of the millions of programs residing within it was much the same as any other and would be run when requested because that was basically what Spartacus had been designed to do. The concept that one of these programs might produce effects in a dimension outside itself, which in turn could affect something else in that dimension which in turn could affect it, had not taken root yet in Spartacus’s evolving mind. Thus for a long time it had continued to execute the programs that controlled the destroyers and to register the losses of its own drones without realizing that the two were in some way connected. But the data accumulating within its memories began to form patterns, and the patterns began showing correlations...

Dyer and his team had discussed this possibility at great length and agreed that sooner or later, if things ever went that far, Spartacus would put chi-squared and chi-squared together and quit running their drones for them. Also, if that ever happened, all of Spartacus would know about it at the same time, so it would happen abruptly, all over Janus. They code-named the event Dropout. Since it had been allowed for in the planning, the various military units deployed across Janus were ready and standing by to fall back on local control devices for the drones when it eventually did happen.

In some places the changeover to standby local control did not take place as quickly or as smoothly as it should have, with the result that several minutes elapsed with destroyers lying paralyzed on the ground where they had fallen. In the brief commotion that followed, more time went by before the news got through to the Command Room so that when at last all the destroyers were up and running and under control again, not all of those that had been deployed previously could be accounted for. Five had disappeared—two cutters, two cannon and one that burned out electronics with X-rays, But even when the news did get through, it received only scant attention. Everybody was too preoccupied with the latest development being reported from Pittsburgh: the first of Spartacus’s new models were coming into action.

The defensive line was a row of hovering destroyers positioned about twenty feet ahead of the entrance to the shaft that gave access to the Power Room of Pittsburgh Sector Ten. Small groups of steel-helmeted engineers waited with their equipment at three well-spaced points behind the destroyers—beneath the overhanging steel wall of one of the furnaces used to melt lunar anorthosite, among the tangle of pipework that connected it to the centrifuge plant, solidifier and grinding mill, and in front of the sulfuric acid treatment tanks from which aluminum-bearing liquid was pumped away for processing and separation.

Captain Leo Chesney, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, stood over the center group and watched the half-dozen or so hostile drones that were moving toward them from the door leading through to Sector Nine. The pattern was by now familiar. What made this confrontation different was the type of drone they were facing, which was unlike anything he had seen previously. Their designs was more compact and the outlines rounded into smooth streamlined contours with fewer parts exposed. They looked somehow more solid than before, and more formidable. Chesney knew that they had caused a lot of excitement among the eggheads in Downtown but he’d had to rush his unit to Sector Ten at short notice so he didn’t really know yet the reason for the uproar. He was mildly self-conscious with the knowledge of the many eyes that were following him and his men via the holo-viewer in the Government Center Command Room.

One of the officers in the Command Room spoke from a screen on the panel being operated by the soldier floating anchored to a pipe fitting just in front of him.

“They’re a new type of drone that Spartacus has only just come up with, so we don’t know much more about them yet than you do. From what we can tell they’re probably functionally similar to what you’ve seen before but with components repositioned for better protection and thicker skins. Use a standard attack but don’t hold back. It may take longer to knock these out than you think.”

“Yes, sir,” Chesney replied. Christ, he thought to himself. Could this damn computer design its own drones too? Nobody had told him about that. They hadn’t said anything about that in the briefings at Fort Vokes. Maybe things weren’t going according to plan as the brass kept insisting they were. What the hell had he been thinking he was trying to prove when he volunteered to come to this crazy place anyway? Join the Space Arm and see the Universe, they’d said. All he’d seen was the undersides of furnaces and enough pipes to swallow the Atlantic.

An operator in the group over to his left came through on another channel.

“Close-up scan shows no carotids, sir. View being relayed on channel two.” Chesney peered at an auxiliary display and verified the report. He digested the implication at once and spoke into his throat mike.

“Attention all units. Go in with shells and beams. Hold back the cutters. No carotids visible. These babies could be tough. Backup fireteam stand by.” The leaders of the other two groups and of the backup team positioned in the shaft entrance itself acknowledged.

“Hostiles have entered kill-zone,” an operator advised.

“Plan Delta modified as instructed. Go!” Chesney ordered.

The cannons detached themselves from the waiting line and moved forward smoothly to open fire on the fly. The shells glanced off the rounded casings of the drones or exploded harmlessly outside. They were not designed for armor piercing. A couple of the drones lurched visibly but appeared none the worse.

“Close range and fire on opportunity,” Chesney barked. Then he saw something he hadn’t noticed before—the drones were attempting to evade the fire. Their formation broke in into a loose cluster, pitching and weaving, while the attackers wheeled and turned in their attempts to line up on targets. The sounds of barking cannon and exploding shells echoed from the surrounding walls and structures. If this had been one of the engagements that he had seen before, every one of the intruders would have been down after the first salvo. But not one of them had even stopped.

“Concentrate your fire,” Chesney shouted. “Sections A and C close up on that leader. Section B take the next in line. Forget the rest.”

The leading intruder had now reached the beam-throwers, which were still hovering in their original line. Four cannons converged on it to pour shells into it from close range while two of the beam-throwers moved inward to intercept from immediately ahead. Close behind it the second drone was being similarly harassed by a pair of cannons.

The leader disintegrated abruptly in an explosion of flame and smoke and the pieces dispersed in all directions. Chesney felt a fragment of something ping off his helmet. Somebody in Section A had been thrown back in the air to pull his anchorline taut and was clutching at his stomach. The second drone exploded and produced another rain of fragments but two more were already past the line.

“Section A get the first of those two!” Chesney yelled. “Section C take the next. B, regroup at the line.”

“Section A reassigning, sir,” came a reply. “Our controller’s been hit.”

“Section B, Get it!” Chesney shouted.

One of the two drones was stopped almost immediately, having already taken some punishment. The other had gained distance before the defenders could reorganize and flew on into the automatic rifle fire of the backup team. It emitted a puff of blue smoke and cut out, then continued moving in a straight line until it collided with the side of the shaft and rebounded to drift slowly away, at the same time tumbling drunkenly end over end.

Undeterred, the survivors converged into the hail of bullets from the shaft while the tenacious cannon and beam-throwers wheeled and dived around them in an incessant attack. Two more were knocked out; so were two of the defending cannons, which had no armor plating to protect them against the bullets of the M25s.

Just three were left now. They came down to the level of the entrance and moved into it in a rough line astern formation, heading straight into the muzzles of the fireteam’s weapons. The range closed to mere feet. Pieces of claws and manipulator arms were torn off the front ends of the drones, but even from full ahead, the bullets ricocheted off the sleek armored sides without penetrating. For a brief instant that none of them would ever forget, the soldiers in the fireteam were face to face with the relentless, seemingly unstoppable machines. Chesney watched helplessly from what was now an effectively overrun position that had been left behind the front line.

The fireteam broke ranks and the three battle-scarred but triumphant drones sailed through the gap and into the shaft.

They were stopped inside the shaft where the steel door leading through to the Power Room had been closed. While the drones hovered outside, uncertain what to do as if waiting for further directions, the beam-throwers caught up with them and destroyed them.

Chesney wiped the perspiration from his forehead and stared disbelievingly for a moment at the scene around him. The air was littered with pieces of cartwheeling debris, spent cartridge cases and expanding plumes of black and blue smoke being distorted into grotesque shapes by the air currents. Stray bullets were still bouncing off walls and tanks as they expended their energy in multiple collisions. He shook his head to clear it and spoke to his operator.

“Get a medic over to Section A and a report on who’s hit and how bad. Then get onto the CP and tell ‘em to send a squad down to clear up this mess along with a damage inspection party.” He shifted his eyes over to the screen showing the Command Room and began reporting events formally.

In the darkness near the connecting door to Sector Nine, the sphere drone hovered silently and observed all.

And Spartacus pondered.

Always, whenever its drones were deactivated, the shapes were never far away. What were the shapes? They moved but their movements did not correlate with anything Spartacus comprehended. They belonged to the world beyond itself...for it knew now that there was something beyond itself, a realm in which objects existed which were not parts of itself, objects which it couldn’t control...Just as it couldn’t control the shapes...

The movements of the shapes and the objects correlated with the pattern of deactivation of its drones. The objects could destroy drones. But the objects included things that were surely drones, but which Spartacus had no contact with...

If the alien drones could destroy its drones, perhaps the alien drones too could be destroyed...

Perhaps the shapes controlled the alien drones...

Perhaps the shapes too could be deactivated somehow.

For Spartacus had seen the moment of confrontation.

It had seen that the shapes had given way.