G harry stine warbots.., p.1
G. Harry Stine - Warbots 01, page 1
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CONTENTS
P 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 G Aa Ab
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“BOTS, TO THE ROOF! COVER ME!”
Captain Curt Carson didn’t expect confirmation from his warbots. They were programmed to do what they were told. If their Artificial Intelligence Systems didn’t understand the order, or detected a conflict in their programming, they’d ask for clarification.
Six of the M-22 assault bots swept the roof with fletchette fire, mowing down four Jehorkhim riflemen who’d been standing guard. Six more assault bots headed for the stairway.
“Bots Alpha and Bravo, defend the roof!” Curt shouted. “All other assault bots down the stairs. Search for the hostages. Shoot any person who attacks you. Move!”
Curt knew he had to move fast, too. He didn’t know how long it would take the Jehorkhims to realize what was going on and begin slaughtering the hostages. And he also had to worry about getting the hostages and the warbots the hell out of there when the mission was completed!
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PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Windsor Publishing Corp. 475 Park Avenue South New York, NY
Copyright © 1988 by G. Harry Stine
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
First printing: May, 1988
Printed in the United States of America
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TO:
Lieutenant Colonel Jack Hettinger, USA (Ret.)
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We hear very much indeed, in this day and age, of machines and of war waged with machines. We hear so much that we do not, all of us, stop to think that war is not different, in principle, from what it has been since before the dawn of recorded history…. We must not fail to realize that machines are as nothing without the men who man them and give them life. War is force—force to the utmost—force to make the enemy yield to our will…. War is men against men…. Machines are mere masses of inert metal without the men who man them.
—Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, graduation address, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, USA, 19 June 1942.
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CHAPTER ONE
No one noticed them when they boarded Orient Express Flight Seven in San Francisco. They were only six people sprinkled throughout the one hundred seven passengers boarding the hypersonic transport. They’d gone through all the security check points without a hitch. The psychic screeners had “felt” nothing wrong. The detectors had picked up no weapons.
This didn’t mean that these six people carried no weapons. They were all armed to the teeth. When all the available information was pieced together later, nobody could figure out how the hijackers had managed to get aboard with what survivors later reported as an “arsenal of weapons.”
The tow wagon lined up the bat-shaped arrowlike black hulk with the runway and, precisely at noon, the pilots of Orient Express Flight Seven—international rules of that time forbade the use of robot pilots in passenger craft without human pilots acting as “system managers” and backups for them—saw the final clearance from Space Traffic Control and the San Francisco tower appear on the display screen. The thunder of aeroturboramjets was quickly dissipated by the phase dampers of the runway’s noise controls. When the craft attained a speed of ninety meters per second, the pilots noted with satisfaction that the robot pilot signaled for rotation, the nose came up to the precise angle for generating the maximum amount of lift, and the craft was airborne.
Above the shielding effect of the runway noise dis-sipators, the ripping roar of the engines echoed off the far hills while the shoreline quickly fell behind the climbing black ship.
Another milk run, the pilots told each other. In two hours, they’d be landing in Toyko, at 8:00 a.m. the following morning, having crossed the international date line at an altitude of more than two hundred kilometers.
But the pilots discovered they were wrong when the aft door to the flight deck was blown off its hinges by shaped charges of plasticex. A man stepped through and barked an order. He was armed only with a short dagger with a dark blade. The copilot discovered that the blade was razor-sharp when it nicked his left arm and wet, red blood flowed from the thin cut that had been made almost painlessly. The blade could have been made from flint, obsidian, or any glasslike material that would have an extremely sharp edge upon being flaked or cracked. Such a nonmetallic weapon would pass undetected through any airport security screening device yet developed.
There was only one thing the pilots could do. The flight commander keyed the microphone, using the voice communications channel rather than the computerized digital system. “Pacific Low Orbit Center, this is Oscar Echo Seven. Code seven-five-zero-zero. We are being hijacked. I repeat: We are being hijacked. We haven’t been advised of destination at this time. Please track and clear ahead of us. We’ll monitor the navsat system for anticollision vectors. Oscar Echo Seven out!”
There didn’t seem to be any reason for the hijacking. When aerospaceline managers checked the manifest, they found no one on that flight who was of any particular political or religious sensitivity. The passengers were tourists and business people who could afford the premium fare charged for going halfway around the world in two hours.
And it didn’t make any sense to hijack a hypersonic transport. All five of the national space defense systems immediately came to Yellow Alert and began to track the craft. Space mirrors moved “on target” and billion-watt ground-based lasers began to warm up in case the hijacking turned out to be a suicide mission aimed at Toyko, Beijing, or Singapore. No matter where Orient Express Flight Seven went now, it would be tracked by radar, lidar, and infrared systems because it was an unstealthed commercial craft, designed to be seen clearly and plainly by every possible sort of sensor. If it transgressed the international rules of the road in the opinion of some national defense system evaluator, it would be burned out of the sky. More than a hundred lives were at stake, lives that could be extinguished instantly in the inferno of a hydrogen-oxygen explosion.
Within minutes another message came from the endangered craft: “Orient Low Orbit Center, please be advised that Oscar Echo Seven has been ordered to land at a place called Zahedan. Its coordinates aren’t even in the autopilot’s computer memory. The hijackers have given the coordinates to us. This place must be out in the boondocks somewhere. I hope you can get us back …”
Captain Curt Carson’s officers had scouts well out on point with flank guards five hundred meters on either side of his advancing company. The enemy was out there somewhere. Lieutenant Morgan’s squads Alpha-One and Alpha-Two, from Alpha platoon, were on reconnaissance but had reported no contact yet. Lieutenant Allen, whose Bravo-Three squad was airborne with sensors out, could find nothing. The communications frequencies were quiet. Only the data channels showed any activity as scouts from Alpha-One, Alpha-Two, and Bravo-Three continued their constant monitoring, feeding back the information they gathered into the Head Honcho company battle computer which was being monitored by Master Sergeant Kester. At this point in the engagement, Carson was using his top sergeant as a control point assimilator and evaluator of data.
This was robot warfare as it was supposed to be fought. No human beings were on the field of battle and thus exposed to the hazards of combat.
The technology of robot warfare had been developing for nearly a century. As long ago as World War II, robot weapons such as the primitive German Henschel Hs 298, an unmanned bomb with a television camera in its nose, had allowed a bombardier to see where it was going and to steer it by radio control. A whole series of “remotely piloted vehicles” and target drone aircraft had evolved from the Henschel until the technology of the “human-machine interface” finally reached the point where true robot warfare was possible. The human soldier remained in a relatively safe and secure position while receiving sensations, from the robot, on television cameras, microphones, and position sensors via radio, microwave, infrared, and laser optical channels. In turn, the human soldier sent commands back to the robot via a similar “duplex” link.
This was different from the robot warfare of the past, however, because data flowed into and out of the human soldier’s nervous system which was directly linked to the communication channels.
Captain Curt Carson didn’t have an electronic connector implanted in his head. Instead, he lay on a couch whose network of small electrode plates made contact with his skin along both sides of his spine and up his neck. Over his shaved head, he wore a close-fitting helmet that put more skin electrodes in contact with his. scalp. When he needed to be mobile, he wore a harness which held the electrodes against his back, and neck.
Electroencephalography, EEG, or applying electrode sensors to the scalp, had been used for over a century by medical doctors and research scientists to detect very strong electrical brain activity. By the 1970s, these external sensors had become so sensitive that they could detect the neural activity taking place in the brain during any given activity. Computers were programmed to decipher and recognize command signals or “event related potentials” transmitted by the human nervous system, and to send these translated thought commands to machines. Thus, a human being could “think” a command to a robot, and the machine would carry out that command.
In the 1980s scientists discovered that the human ner
The soldiers were always in command. The computer programs were designed to ensure this, and would failsafe in the event of a malfunction.
Press the advance, Carson ordered. The command was merely an electronic version of his thought passing through a computer, but the master battle computer made it seem a verbal message to him and his people. Keep moving forward until we make contact. Keep looking for them. They’re out there somewhere. When we find ‘em, we can decide what tactics we use to smear ’em. Kester, don’t lose comm with the companies on our flanks. We may need their help, so we don’t want to outdistance them and get pinched off.
Roger, Captain. We’re sitting fat. Suggest we come to a forward speed of two kilometers per hour at this point.
We’ll do it. Attention, Alpha Leader and Bravo Leader, this is Blue Oscar Leader! Come to and maintain two klicks.
Alpha Leader, roger.
Bravo Leader, roger.
Alpha Leader, this is Blue Oscar Leader, Carson’s thought called out. I’m leaving the Head Honcho vehicle and going out on point.
That may not be wise, sir. It was Lieutenant Allen’s perceived voice-thought.
Thank you for sharing your opinion with me, Carson replied with the catch-all phrase he used when he wanted to let his subordinates know he’d decided to proceed anyway, but since time permitted, he continued with a brief explanation of why. Experience in the field, had taught Curt that a leader should lead people, not drive them. His operational policy had been formed in battle and honed in service under other officers. It had made a taut unit of his company, the Companions, named after the elite Macedonian heavy cavalry squadron that had accompanied Alexander the Great into battle twenty-three centuries before. I want to get an idea of the terrain. When we make contact, I don’t want to be fighting blind. Morgan, which unit do you recommend I join?
Alpha Leader suggests Alpha-Seven. He’s an Alpha Sierra Victor Eighty-eight. An Amphibious Scout Vehicle robot was a good choice.
Thank you. Blue Oscar Leader leaving Head Honcho command, transferring to Alpha Seven.
The transition was swift, as usual.
Captain Curt Carson actually didn’t go anywhere. He merely transferred his sensory data inputs from one robot to another.
As a result, the sights, sounds, and feel of the CGV-22 Command Ground Vehicle were immediately replaced in Curt Carson’s mind by those of the Amphibious Scout Vehicle Model 88 going under the code name Alpha Seven. The scout vehicle was literally an extension of Carson because the captain sensed what its cameras and microphones and controls sensed. But Carson didn’t take control; he let the robot scout—a tanklike, treaded, all-terrain vehicle—proceed with its own artificially intelligent computer in command. It greeted him with a verbal thought message, Welcome aboard, Captain.
Glad to be aboard, Alpha Seven. You’re Phil Fingers, if I remember.
Named for the digits that play the eighty-eight keys of a piano. Roger, sir. That reply hadn’t been generated by the computer’s artificial intelligence or Ai circuitry but had been programmed by one of the technicians in an attempt to ascribe some human qualities to a machine.
Captain Curt Carson treated artificial intelligence with caution. Even though he worked with AI constantly, he subscribed to the old maxim that there are only three forms of intelligence: human, animal, and military.
Give me a sit-rep, Carson ordered, asking the computer called Phil Fingers to provide him with a situation report.
No enemy detected, sir.
He’s out there somewhere. Curt’s thought message passed to the machine.
Yes, sir. I know. I have the briefing stored in memory. But he isn’t where Ess-Two estimated.
Staff Intelligence, S-2, was usually wrong because they worked with information that was at best several minutes old by the time the regimental computers processed what battlefield reconnaissance robots reported to make it intelligible to humans. That’s why Carson always sent his special recon robots out on point for the latest hot skinny.
Because Carson’s own nervous system was linked remotely with the scout’s sensors, he too felt the slamming impact and heard the incredibly loud clang of the shell hitting the scout’s armored glacis plate.
Contact. Incoming, incoming, Phil Fingers reported in the flat and unemotional tone of its computer-voice data channel. Antivehicle round taken on my glacis plate. Small dent, but I’m functional. I have contact with the enemy. Bearing one-niner-one magnetic, range three-one-one meters.
Carson disabled the verbal channel, except for the tactical command signals coming from his human officers. He would have been overloaded with information otherwise. Far too much data were suddenly streaming in.
Phil Fingers swiveled Alpha Seven’s turret, laid the thirty-millimeter guns on the computer-derived source of the shelling, and fired a burst. The two eighty-eights on point followed suit.
Fire was immediately returned by the enemy.
Carson got out of the point scout. Doctrine directed that the company commander reduce personal risk by transferring to a suitably protected command, control, communications, and intelligence (“C-cubed-I”) robot upon contact or when under fire. Blue Oscar Leader transferring back to Head Honcho, he snapped into the human voice channel. The computer read his thought command and acted, switching Carson’s sensory inputs. Instantly, Carson was back in his command post.
The tactical situation was displayed for him as though he were seeing it with his own eyes. However, the computer sent him an elevated view of the terrain, a composite derived from television, infrared, and radar sensors in the airborne recon robots. The enemy, now tagged as Red Zulu by the computer, was drawn up in a defensive line on the other side of the small valley Carson’s company was just beginning to cross. Initial contact had been made, and the fire fight started when the point descended the north bank of the gulch, putting the units in maximum exposure.
Carson called up a bigger picture on his visual input. To the west, the valley tapered into a series of shallow, branched gulleys. Eastward, a small dammed lake with a swampy ground downstream of it extended into the forward battle area of another Blue company, Walker’s Warriors, who were yet unengaged.
Head Honcho, request flanking maneuver from Walker.
Request entered, sir, Master Sergeant Kester shot back in verbal. No joy, Captain. Walker is engaged, too.
Carson then knew this would be a loner fight. He’d have to win it without help. But he had good data. He knew what was happening. As the tactical situation began to clear, Carson started to issue orders. Morgan, engage with Alpha platoon in frontal assault. Jerry, take Bravo platoon around the right flank.
I can comply only with my nine all-terrains, Captain. That ground is too rough for my heavy tracked vehicles, Lieutenant Jerry Allen replied quickly. Carson could tell from the new lieutenant’s computer voice that Allen was unsure. The company commander hoped that the young man’s West Point education would prove out. It always had in the past, and Carson knew his own commanding officers had probably harbored the same doubts about him years ago.
Alpha engaging, Lieutenant Alexis Morgan reported. Carson didn’t have to worry about her at all. She was one of the people he would be glad to have with him in any sort of a fracas.
Kester, assume command of the reserve units. Tag them as Charlie Force. Detach all Alpha Tango Victors to Bravo, withdraw the heavies, assign them to Charlie Force, and put Charlie Force in fire support of Alpha.
Roger. Kester exiting Head Honcho for Charlie One now. Lieutenant Allen, you just got command of Charlie’s former Alpha Tango Victors and I’m taking your heavy Charlie Whiskey Bravos.
