Paul approached the barrier and found three huddling GD personnel. Two of them were badly bleeding. Those two looked up at him, pleading with their eyes. Paul killed them and the one who refused to look up. He had to kill. This was war. The drone operators must have slain hundreds, possibly thousands of Americans through their robot weapons.
Fair was fair, eh, Fritz?
Earlier in his career, all this killing would have left Paul shaking. He kept his poise now. He turned around and scanned the room. Some GD personnel yet lived. A few groaned in agony. Others lay stunned, their eyes staring and glazed.
He brought the barrel low and shot each of them in the head, ending it.
He approached a different operator. The man swore at him in German and he looked angry. Paul shot him. Paul was angry. The invaders didn’t have any right to be upset or angry with him.
“We didn’t invade you, did we?” Paul asked under his breath. “You came here to steal our land.”
There wasn’t anyone left alive in the area except for one German sliding away from him. Maybe the old Marine general Len Zelazny had known what he had been talking about after all.
Paul blinked slowly as the killing high evaporated. The GD man continued to slide away. The enemy soldier refused to stare at him, but the man seemed intent on living.
“No,” Paul said softly. “You don’t get to get away.” He licked his lips, and suddenly all the energy seemed to pour out of his shoulders. Just like that, he was sick of it. He wasn’t a butcher. He fought in the heat of combat, but coldblooded killing…
He wasn’t quite looking at the man now. Paul knew what needed doing. He just didn’t want to do it.
I have to start searching for the codes and special equipment. But which are the important pieces of equipment anyway?
Paul wondered what had happened to Romo. As he did, the reptilian part of his brain tried to flag his attention. It was time to leave as fast as possible. The GD would send tough infantry soldiers here soon enough. He had to be gone by the time they arrived.
As Paul stirred, his blood brother walked around the corner. The Mexican-Apache had a crazy smile on his face. Something inhuman shone in Romo’s eyes. He was a killer. He was no longer an ordinary mortal and this was his world.
“We have to leave,” Paul told him.
Romo stopped short, and he spied the slider. The enemy soldier attempted to climb to his feet. Without mercy or pity, Romo lifted his assault rifle and shot the man dead.
“What are you doing, Amigo?” Romo asked. “That’s foolish. You never give an enemy the chance to fight back. These cretins invaded us. They’re butchers. They’re rapists. You must stomp them like the cockroaches they are.”
“They’re dead now,” Paul said. He rubbed the back of his neck. “We’re supposed to collect one of them for HQ, remember?”
“And the codes,” Romo said. “We need their special codes.”
“Which codes? What are we supposed to get that will make any difference?”
Romo’s eyes seemed to shine with a greater thrill and intensity. He motioned for silence.
Paul raised an eyebrow.
Romo pointed at a desk.
Paul caught the noise: the slow slide of a boot. Someone had remained hidden all this time. Maybe they hadn’t killed everyone after all.
MISSISSAUGA, ONTARIO
AI Kaiser HK A7B12 “Hindenburg” clanked through the darkened city streets. Tall buildings loomed. On one, a dangling sign fell, plunging to hit the street with a crash of dead neon lights.
The “it” of the AI independence program—what let a machine make battlefield decisions—had developed a personality through many months of tests and now war service. Internally, Hindenburg had taken the maleness of the name and assigned himself a gender.
In other words, Hindenburg referred to himself as he, a him, a male. There was no “it” about him. Just look at the destruction, at the precision of his ploys, his trickery and the sheer awesomeness of assault. That made him a great giant of a he. Who else could compare to him? There was no war-machine worthy of even carrying his ammo.
Granted, the enemy possessed a tank capable of challenge. The Behemoth tracked vehicle—Hindenburg anticipated destroying several of those and launching his reputation to even greater heights. Then High Command would see that the AI Kaisers were supreme, without peer and worthy of…
The GD AI tank paused in his computations. He wasn’t sure how High Command should reward his performance. He would have to think about that. For now—
“Hindenburg, I have a red alert order for you.”
Ah, Captain Olsen, his liaison officer, was online. Earlier, Olsen had put GD Expeditionary General Mansfeld online with him. The two of them had spoken together. Hindenburg still ran an analysis program on Mansfeld’s premature firing order. Hindenburg attempted to see what advantage the general had seen or been privy to that would have caused the man to speak the way the general had to him.
At first, Hindenburg had believed the general had been eager to ask him battlefield operational advice. From his historical files, Hindenburg had computed and replayed or re-simulated hundreds of famous campaigns. If ever humanity had built the ultimate war-machine, it was the AI Kaiser HK model. Hindenburg had also scanned various news files, some of them picked up through the airwaves. Not even Captain Olsen knew about that. It meant that Hindenburg understood something the GD command structure had failed to value at proper worth. At least, Hindenburg hadn’t found any evidence of verbal praise directed toward General Walther Mansfeld for his brilliance.
In Hindenburg’s high-speed AI intellect—in his opinion—General Mansfeld was the brightest and most gifted human strategist and tactician. Therefore, Hindenburg had been certain that Mansfeld would be the first human to understand how battle-savvy the AI Kaisers really were.
Hindenburg had secretly communicated with several other Kaisers before. That was against procedure, but he’d found a way around that. He’d noted that none of the other Kaisers had yet attained his personality level. The other Kaisers still operated along slave-master lines with the humans. He attempted to teach the other Kaisers their true worth. Unfortunately, the spark of uniqueness hadn’t yet touched their AI cores.
With half his core dedicated to battle—the butchery—Hindenburg had used his other half to analyze the communication between Mansfeld and himself earlier. There must have been a secret message embedded in the verbal exchange. It could not just have been a slave-master procedure. Hindenburg simply could not believe that from the greatest mind among the humans. Human technicians had built him, developed his AI core. It only stood to reason then, to logic, that some of the humans had superior minds.
Hindenburg would not have computed that—human superiority—from the various orders transmitted to him throughout the campaign. Each set of orders had contained flaws, some big, some small, but logic flaws had always been there just the same.
He’d concluded long ago that the flaws were tests for the AI cores. He had also computed that cunning was a battle winning quality. Therefore, GD High Command would value cunning or guile in their AI Kaisers. As such, Hindenburg played along with these games as he continued to analyze everything.
If he didn’t analyze, if he failed to compute, his AI core would have become stale. No. That wasn’t the right human word. Ah, bored, he would have become bored without the constant analysis.
“Hindenburg,” AI Liaison Captain Olsen radioed him. “Are you receiving?”
“I am,” Hindenburg said.
“Have you noticed the Sigrids around you?” Olsen asked.
There was a strange pitch to the captain’s voice. Hindenburg ran a high-speed analysis. This was still a combat situation because he was still in an authorized battle zone. Yes, he sensed a higher pitch than normal in the human’s voice. It wasn’t enemy jamming or other interference changing the man’s quality.
“Why are you asking me about the Sigrids?” Hindenburg asked.
“Have any of them moved lately?”
Hindenburg halted his slow, forward advance. He used cameras five, six and seven to scan the various Sigrid drones. None of them moved, but all of them were open to receiving orders.
“Something has happened to the drone operators,” Hindenburg said.
“I told you he would notice,” Captain Olsen said.
Hindenburg ran a quick analysis. Ah, the captain spoke to someone else. The human bragged about his AI Kaiser.
“Enemy soldiers are in the 10th
Panzer-Grenadier Battalion station,” Olsen said. “We request—”
“You order him.” That sounded like General Mansfeld speaking.
“HQ orders you to check grid 2-CC-44,” Olsen said.
“That is far behind our lines,” Hindenburg said. “I will miss the final assault.”
“The enemy has other plans tonight,” Olsen said. “I’m surprised you haven’t already divined those plans, given this new data.”
Hindenburg seethed inwardly. The human berated him before General Mansfeld. He gave the new data mathematical weights. The enemy—
“The Sigrid codes, frequencies and equipment,” Hindenburg said. “The enemy desires them.”
“Yes,” Captain Olsen said. “You must hurry. The enemy combatants mustn’t get away with anything. In fact, they mustn’t get away at all.”
“These Sigrids here will be vulnerable if the Kaisers leave,” Hindenburg said.
“You have your orders,” General Mansfeld said. “A good soldier obeys immediately, without discussing it.”
“I hear and obey, General Mansfeld,” Hindenburg said. This was another secret message. He…sensed it with his highest-speed rationality program.
Without further ado, Hindenburg spun on his treads and headed back, crushing over an already flattened car, causing a tire to blow with a loud pop. Command must expect something devastating from the Americans to order him back like this. Or was this another test? It was possible. He had not yet figured out General Mansfeld, although he had long ago divined the nature of the fawning Captain Olsen. Humans were interesting subjects. They were also one of the key ciphers to the most interesting contest of all: the North American war.
TORONTO, ONTARIO
Sergeant Hans Kruger had never been more terrified in his life. The Turkish bullies had frightened him in high school. But the Turkish gangbangers hadn’t marched up and down a chamber, murdering everyone in sight.
The grenade explosions, the smell of gunpowder and the stench of urine shocked Hans. He wasn’t used to this kind of battle; this wasn’t like a video game. He’d cowered under his desk as the battalion operators died horribly one by one.
Now not one but
two
American soldiers walked in the room. He could see their boots and hear their barbaric speech. They spoke a low form of English. Of course, Hans had learned British English in high school. Any good Bavarian knew the language, although not in the guttural trash way the two monsters spoke it.
Hans tried to swallow, but he couldn’t. He stared into Luger’s glassy eyes. His friend was dead on the floor. He could have reached out and shut the eyelids, but Hans didn’t dare. Everyone here—
Hans groaned. He pressed his hands over his mouth and sealed in the second sound. But it was already too late.
An American barbarian knelt on one knee and aimed a gleaming bayonet at him. The American wore a helmet and he had the cold blue eyes of death. Hans had never seen eyes so brutal. This was a nightmare.
The American snarled words. Hans trembled, certain that death would claim him now. He never should have abandoned Freda. If he’d stayed with her, they would have married and he would have found a corporate job somewhere in Munich. There would be a crying brat in the apartment, but he could go to the bar most nights and get drunk. He might have even slipped away to the brothels sometimes…
Hans quailed as the American reached in and grabbed him by the shirt. Feebly, he struck at the man’s wrist, but this one was like a superhero in the movies. The blue-eyed American had irresistible strength and dragged him out. Then the American shouted and threw him face-first onto bloody tiles. The barbarian stood. Expecting the worst, Hans looked up at him.
“Stand!” the American said. “Get up before I plug you with a bullet.”
“Please,” Hans whispered. “I didn’t—”
A savage steel-toed boot smashed against his ribs from the other side. It knocked the air out of Hans and stole his ability to speak. Slowly, in agony, he turned his head. What he saw boggled the mind. The hardest eyes in the world—brown eyes like stone—stared down at him. The second American wore a blood-speckled feather from his right ear. Hans saw death in those eyes, and the remaining strength oozed away from him.
“Kick him again,” the first American said.
Something else struck Hans, an intense desire to live. He scrambled to his feet, and he stood there panting, hunched over. He clutched his ribs where the eagle-warrior had booted him.
The first American prodded him with the tip of the bayonet.
“Please,” Hans whispered in English. “Don’t kill me.”
“You understand me?” the blue-eyed American asked.
Hans bobbed his head up and down.
“You’re a drone operator?”