"There is a problem, Exarch."
Y'Gar looked up from his reports. What seemed a blue-uniformed captain of the Exarch's Guard stood before the ruler of D'Lin, pistol on his hip, black boots gleaming.
"Problem?" said Y'Gar. He touched the neat pile of papers on his desk. "Processing is almost complete. There's been no resistance, little suspicion…"
"The problem isn't on D'Lin," said the AI. "Yet. Our ships intercepted an incoming craft of Fleet origin. It was destroyed."
"Fleet? The K'Ronarin Fleet?" said Y'Gar, alarmed. "But you said they never came into this quadrant-that it was prohibited."
"A prohibition that's been rescinded, it seems," said the AI. "Where one has come, more will follow. We haven't enough ships to stand off a flotilla-not until our vanguard arrives. We must finish operations tomorrow morning."
"Assemble and process, what, a thousand people? By noon?" Y'Gar shook his head. "Logistically impossible. We're not a machine society, U'Kal. Notification alone requires an entire day."
The AI walked to the glass doors, hands clasped behind his back. Outside, beyond the patio, gardeners labored under the tropical sun, trimming the topiary, tending the rows of flowers that bloomed in exotic profusion. U'Kal appreciated the geometric design of the flower beds, but found the colors distracting. He turned back to Y'Gar.
"Announce that you are moving all school-aged children in the city to a place of safety-T'Lor or one of the southern islands. Take them directly from school to processing, first thing in the morning. Harvesting them will bring us to thirty thousand and complete our mission on D'Lin."
The exarch stared down at his hands. He was a tall man, balding, losing a lifelong battle to the fat girdling his waist. He twisted the ring of office on his right hand, thumb stroking the ancient crest of starship-and-sun. "You want me to help you brainstrip children," he said.
"Conscience, Y'Gar," said U'Kal, returning to the desk, "is a severe impediment to discipline and order. We do not tolerate it."
"But…"
"But what?" said the AI commander. "We've replaced your Guard with our own units, wiped the outlying garrisons, imposed communications closure, quarantine and curfew within the city. Five to eight hundred people a day have been assembling for 'inoculation and transport.' Your people have no defenses, no communications, no mobility," he said, ticking them off on his fingers. "This world is ours, Y'Gar." U'Kal leaned across the desk, his perfect face a foot from the exarch's. "As are you. You are to prevent panic. Panic is inefficient; our time limited."
The exarch shrank from those cold blue eyes. "Very well, U'Kal. But this will torch it. Despite the communications closure, parents will want to talk with their children- certainly a reasonable request." He pointed at the AI. "You've got to get me off-world before howling mobs storm this Residence!"
"Don't be afraid, Y'Gar." The AI straightened up, hands behind his back. "We keep our word-even to vermin."
"Pretty, isn't it?" said L'Kor, handing the binoculars to Zahava. They lay on a grassy hillside, just beyond the brush, looking into the valley below.
Zahava adjusted the focus. The Residence lights were coming on, long windows flaring soft yellow beneath a brilliant lavender sunset. It was as elegant as the palace had been ugly, a tropical Versailles of lush, fountained gardens surrounding a white, double-winged manse, the whole ringed by the black metal pickets of a tall ornamental fence.
"Very pretty," said Zahava. "Why not just walk in and take over?"
"We're going," said the major, "now that I know it's not swarming with troops or AIs."
Leaving the beach, they'd skirted a broad crater in the jungle floor, then picked up a trail that ran due west-a trail along which bits of duraplast paving could sometimes be seen, glinting dull gray through the rich green flora. Seeing the old road surface, Zahava wanted to ask if the crater was other than natural, but didn't dare break the tense silence of the march.
Crossing a deserted two-lane stretch of contemporary highway, they'd climbed a forested hill. Leaving all but G'Sol and Zahava behind, L'Kor had led the way to the crest, where the rain forest broke into rolling savannah.
"Number two squad to feint at the gate," said L'Kor as Zahava continued looking through the binoculars. "The rest of us over the fence, just below here, and straight in."
"Neat and simple," nodded the captain.
"Perhaps you'll have adjoining brainpods," said Zahava, handing L'Kor the glasses. "Look again-in the grass to either side of the gate."
L'Kor adjusted the binoculars, looked and swore, seeing the twilight gleam faintly off the gun-blue blades that kept watch. "Slaughter machines," he said, handing G'Sol the glasses. "Waiting for prey, like a swamp-suck cluster."
"So much for Y'Gar," said the captain, handing back the binoculars.
"And probably his Guard," said Zahava.
"What do you mean?" said G'Sol.
"Replaced by combat droids, I think," said the Terran. "Or would the exarch's lads ignore those machines?"
"No," said the major, slowly shaking his head. "A proud old regiment-it wouldn't turn traitor. They're dead-or worse."
"Worse," said Zahava.
"What now?" said G'Sol after a moment.
Now some hard talk, thought Zahava.
"You've been letting emotion dictate strategy, Major, Captain," she said. She pressed on as L'Kor started to speak. "In your position, I'd probably have done the same." Not really, she thought. "You live on a sleepy, time-forgotten world, suddenly confronted by monsters come to take you for spare parts. You've two small advantages-the AIs are unaware of your existence, and of my presence. You were about to go blasting into the Residence and piss away those advantages for some sloppy notion of revenge."
L'Kor tried to speak again. She cut him off. "Stop thrashing about! Hit them hard!" She punctuated this last by stabbing her finger at L'Kor's chest. "Disrupt their operations, kill their personnel. You can't defeat the AIs, but you can hurt them."
The sun was gone, so she didn't see the major's face flush. But his anger came throughMoud and strong. "You know nothing about us or our world! You've been here less than a day, yet you think you can-"
"She's right," said G'Sol quietly. "We've been stupid and ineffectual. This is our last chance to fight smart." She turned to the Terran. "What do we do?"
"Raid their processing center," said Zahava quickly. "Where is it?"
"The old spaceport," said the captain. "It's just a huge clearing now-they built right in the center of it."
L'Kor held up a hand. "Wait," he said, temper under control. "Fine. We get in, we blow it up. There's no chance we'll get out. They'll counterattack with everything they've got."
"We fall back through the tubes," said G'Sol. She turned to the Terran.
"If we can find the entrance," said L'Kor. "And if it's intact."
"What…" began Zahava.
"Subterranean travel system," explained the captain. "Imperials built it, we stripped it, centuries ago. It connected the principal points on this island and the rest of the archipelago."
"If the entrance is obvious," said the Terran, "the AIs will have found it."
"It isn't," said G'Sol. "But I know where it is."
"How?" said L'Kor.
"University field trip," she said.
"What? Five, seven years ago?"
"Yes."
"No," said the major. "I'm not risking all our lives on a half-remembered field trip, Captain." Turning abruptly, L'Kor walked back toward the brush.
"He'll come around," said G'Sol as the two women followed.
"When?" said Zahava. The captain didn't answer.
A woman in mufti had joined the waiting troopers. She was talking to the senior NCO when L'Kor stepped into the clearing.
"They're processing the children tomorrow," said the woman in a rush. She was young, round-faced, her eyes shining bright and angry in the light from the battletorches. "The order just went out to the education commission. The bus convoy's to be at the processing center by noon."
"Lieutenant S'Lat, Zahava Tal," said the major.
The lieutenant nodded at the Terran, then continued. "They're to be shipped from their schools first thing in the morning. The usual lie-inoculation and relocation. What are we going to do, Major?"
Zahava felt Lieutenant S'Lat would do something alone if she had to. Then the Terran looked at the questioning circle of faces surrounding L'Kor, and knew the lieutenant wouldn't be alone. You're about to have a mutiny, Major, she thought.
"Some of you think I've avoided engaging the enemy because I'm a coward," said the major, eyes at the troopers. "I'm not a coward. I'm not a fool. I wasn't going to squander our lives-I wanted us to buy something with them. Now's our moment-we'll buy the children back. We'll take the AIs ' butcher hall, get the children out the tubes, fight a holding action, then blow the place up when the counterattack breaks through.
"Anyone wants out, fall out," he said in the same easy voice. "You're free to go."
No one moved.
"Very well," he said. "We'll commandeer some transport and go in behind the bus convoy."
"It's not your fight," L'Kor said a few moments later as the unit moved quietly down the hill toward the road.
"Of course it is," said Zahava. "Those machines want us all dead, every human in this galaxy. It's as much my duty to fight them here as it would be yours to fight them on my world."
"We'll all be killed," said the major.
The Terran shrugged, a gesture lost to the night. "We all die."
Zahava glanced up when they reached the roadway. The stars were out, a few of them growing fainter, moving away from D'Lin-AI ships headed into space. And where are you going in such a rush? she wondered as they set up the ambush.
D'Trelna entered the bridge and went to his station, acknowledging the commandos' salutes with a curt nod. "Well?" he said, sinking into the flag chair.
L'Wrona turned from his console. "We're ready for the final jump into the D'Linian system. All sections are at battle stations."
"Damage control?"
"We've recovered from the algorithm," said the captain. "All life support systems are at optimum. There was some minor water damage to hangar deck electronics- nothing serious. Final report pending."
"Communications with FleetOps?" he asked, knowing the answer.
"Still out. The problem's not in the skipcomm buoy- we've tried two others. There's a general blockage on all skipcomm bands."
D'Trelna dialed up a fata. "Interesting," he said, frowning at the small plume of steam. "Have we a position?"
L'Wrona nodded. "Halfway across the quadrant."
"Plot it. We'll visit them after D'Lin," said the commodore, sipping. "Stand by to jump."
As L'Wrona gave the orders N'Trol's face flashed onto D'Trelna's comm screen. "Commodore," he nodded.
"Ah, Mr. N'Trol," smiled D'Trelna. "Ship all tidied up?"
"Of course," said the engineer. "I've called to report that one of the U'Sur long-range fighters has had its on-board computer replaced by a shuttle's on-board computer."
Implacable carried ten fighters-they'd come with the ship out of stasis and were rarely used. The U'Sur was a deep-space fighter, designed to combat similar craft trying to destroy their mother ship. It was a tactic little used since the Empire, thus relegating the U'Surs to infrequent joy-rides by junior officers, or to the occasional danger-fraught courier run.
"So?" said D'Trelna.
N'Trol sighed. "That's a fine machine, Commodore. Integrate it with any small ship I know of, from shuttle to recon craft, and you'd have an intelligent, deadly little ship, totally loyal to its mission programming."
"So?" repeated the commodore, finishing his t'ata as the jump klaxon sounded.
"So we're missing a lifepod," N'Trol said, disconnecting.
"So we are," said D'Trelna to himself. He was still thinking about it when they jumped.
Stephen Ames Berry
The AI War