Founding of the Federation 3: The First AI War (102 page)

He hadn't expected his daughter to be one of them. Wendy hopped a yacht flight to come to him for a personal face-to-face rant about the plan. She brought Congresswoman Saigon and Mayor Ellington in on the discussion. Jack wished she'd come to him alone, not with them. It bothered him almost as much as the subject seemed to incest them.

“The cost …”

“The cost will be born, ultimately by our children or our children's children. But the cost in blood, that has to be paid in the present,” Jack reminded them, trying to keep his tone even and firm. “We can start planning on the aftermath, I know Radick and Pavilion have already been gearing for it.” He shook his head. “That's fine and dandy, but we have to win the war
first
,” he said firmly. “That means taking whatever measures we need to use to get the job done for the least amount of blood and money expended.”

“It's not that …”

“No? I see you getting cold feet.”

“Can you blame us?” Mayor Ellington stated.

“You're talking about wiping out every piece of electronics on the planet. Basically starting
over
. Who are you to make that decision for the human race? You know it's not right to do that and then make them use your company to rebuild. That's
sick,
” the congresswoman stated.

“Actually, I'm against him doing it for
free
,” Wendy said, holding up a hand to interject her viewpoint. The congresswoman eyed her coldly. “Hey, I have shareholders to answer to. Charity can only get you so far, but it doesn't pay the bills in the end you know.”

“So again, what gives you the right to make the decision? You should never have even tested the weapons until we had finished debating it,” the congresswoman said, eyes flashing.

“If you had, you'd still be debating it. Our people are fighting and dying
now
. They need support now. The billions of people on the ground are dying like flies …
now
. Today,” he said locking eyes with the congresswoman for a moment then turning his head to her supporters.

“You may not like it, but I'm the guy with the plan. And I never said they have to use my company to rebuild,” Jack insisted. He looked to Wendy and shrugged slightly. “There are a lot more fish in the sea; I know that. I also know it is a bigger job than one company can handle. I'm all for anyone pitching in any way they can,” he said, hands up.

“But that is what you mean about having all the industry come from space,” the Congresswoman practically wailed.

Jack shook his head. “Do you trust anything on the ground? I don't. Sorry, that's just how it is. And I know you agree with me. We can't do it. We can't rebuild the industry on the ground until every microchip, every diode, every memory circuit is recycled. We can't risk this thing getting into space- or spreading all over again.” He could see the mayor's grim but silent agreement in that statement.

“But still, it's not right,” the congresswoman said petulantly.

“It's the best one we've got. Do you have one better?”

“Well, no.”

“People latch onto a plan. I have one. You
don't
. It may work; it may not. It might need adjusting. But it is a
plan
. It's called leadership. You still can't come up with one. Just pick apart mine. Fine. Just stay out of my way. We'll get the job done.”

He could see that stung. He didn't care.

“It still doesn't give you the right. A lot of people are going to die, Dad,” Wendy reminded him softly. She knew this was playing out as well as could be expected. Her father was right of course, but his bullheaded insistence on going his own way should come back to haunt him eventually.

Especially if she played it right to the key shareholders she needed to win over.

“News flash. They are
already
dying,” he told her coldly. “Everyone dies. It sounds trite, but it's true. And ever since this damn A.I. virus hit they have been dying in droves, including your
mother
, Wendy,” Jack growled, eyes flashing.

“I know that,” Wendy murmured softly. “We're still not …,” she squirmed, “still not sure. There is no body,” she reminded him.

“When we get the chance, we'll look for her. When the time is right. As much as it pains me, we have to wait. She'd understand that,” Jack said, talking directly to his daughter. “She is …
was
a doctor. She understood the concept of triage.”

She nodded, near tears. Not all of it was feigned for their audience's benefit.

They gave her a moment to dash her tears with her fingertips and regain her composure. Jack sat back, forcing himself to relax.

“Deployment of the EMP is under the control of the military. They have a plan. If it works, it will buy the refugees on the ground a considerable amount of breathing room to survive that much longer until we can get in and help them.”

“It will yes, cost some lives, and yes, it will do some damage to the environment. We can't make an omelet without breaking an egg. Sorry, that's the way it is,” Jack said gently. “We don't have the manpower to do it all—to save them all. Not even with the Neos coming up. Sorry, it's not going to happen,” Jack stated as the congresswoman looked to object. He locked eyes with her, shooting her down by force of will. “You've seen the loss numbers. You know this is true. Even with the pharmaceutical companies and my own medical division offering incentives for retirees to remain on or to come out of retirement, we still don't have the manpower we need. The economy is barely moving and the losses are hurting everyone everywhere. Morale of course most of all. This measure, it will go a long way to evening the odds. Possibly knocking them more in our favor.”

“I hope you’re right,” Mayor Ellington murmured.

Chapter 41

The HEMP devices were created in mass quantities after the successful test on Titan. There were two different versions. One was a basic nuclear weapon. The fusion neutron bomb was designed to channel into EMP instead of other forms of radiation. It had taken careful modeling by Vulcan to get the proper design.

The second version was a canister powered by antimatter. It was set up to deploy one millimeter thin, four hundred kilometer long cables out of the ends of the canister, then set off a massive EMP as it dropped through the atmosphere to the ground. The good thing about the device was that it could be set off much lower to the ground and wouldn't affect any organics. The nuclear device had a massive heat and light signature, one that would be blinding to anyone who happened to be looking up to the sky.

Isaac watched the final preparations as the sublight freighter dropped off the last load. The freighter did a ball and twine orbit around the planet, planting seeds of Skynet's eventual destruction. Hopeful destruction he amended mentally.

The nuclear devices were set to go off over water and terrain that was largely unoccupied. They would knock down ships, islands, arctic posts, and such. Unfortunately, they wouldn't effect anything below the surface of the water. Something would have to be done in that regard at a later date.

The canisters were set to go off over known population centers.

Many of the weapons were taken out before they could get into deployment range over Russia, Britain, the USA, Australia, China, and Japan.

But that had been anticipated. The weapon fire used to take down the HEMP was noted, as was the locations of where the fire originated. Orbital bombardments commenced in attempts to strike at the defenses. Four strikes succeeded in taking out two of Russia's fixed defenses and one in China. One mobile
Archer
class unit in Australia's western desert was also taken out.

If someone was looking to the sky at the time of the detonations, it varied on what they saw. The nuclear devices were a blinding blast of light, fortunately mostly obscured by the clouds. Any blast waves slapped them away. Stunned people on the ground turned away from the carnage in the sky.

Those who looked at a canister discharge had a slightly smaller explosion to deal with. The antimatter charge went off with a brief burst of light, but most of the energy had been channeled into the wires to saturate the radio waves with screams of electronic noise. Deafening screams that tore apart any active electronics they hit.

On the continents and surface of the oceans, other than those that had been successfully defended, Skynet was hammered by the damage as the EMP weapons saturated the rest of the globe. Unshielded civilian hardware was turned into ruin. Backups were brought online, but Skynet's processor and unit losses were a major wound.

<>V<>

Some of the hardware under Skynet's control had been hardened against the electronic damage, so they were reset and then came back online clean. The EMP attack had been anticipated by Zhukov and Ares for some time. What had bothered them was how long the enemy had taken to get to that point of using it. Obviously the human's command and control was very slow or had a remaining political element to it.

The virus had attempted to harden all of its equipment, but that had proven to be a nonviable plan. It had then focused its efforts on doing so with new construction while taking a percentage of its most valuable units offline and either upgrading them or shielding them for eventual retrieval.

Old civilian hardware in operation that couldn't handle the radio storm were knocked out as expected. Some of them permanently, Skynet noted as it took stock of the damage.

Two of Skynet's zombie A.I. in Africa had been knocked out when their power grids went offline. The A.I. had minimum units in the area to secure it; none were suited for the repairs needed to get the power infrastructure back online. That was a serious problem; without power the units in the area had only solar panels to keep their batteries charged. It also meant they had very little command and control to help guide and coordinate their efforts.

Those units with fuel cells or micro hydrogen engines became all the more precious to the A.I., despite the problems with feeding them clean fuel.

It was a suboptimal situation with no forecasts of getting better. Far from it. The military A.I.'s next prediction was a surge of new forces that had been stockpiled on Olympus to hit in a fresh wave. They would roll over the continent, taking down Skynet's units and then move on from there.

The A.I. had little to stop them, so it shifted its focus. Instead of throwing a lot of effort at the problem, it no longer used hive computer cycles to think about them. Instead it directed the tendrils of hive still in contact to gather intelligence and to attrition the enemy forces the best they could give the units under their command.

It was essentially writing off the African continent for the moment. Fighting a delaying action Zhukov recommended, one designed to bleed the enemy. Such options as it could would be enacted to further that goal. Skynet was now playing for time while it revised its strategy and conserved its remaining resources.

A suboptimal response but the only conclusive one it had. For the moment.

<>V<>

With breathing room the African forces formed new perimeters, pushing themselves outward and further afield as new troops from the surge were dropped and slotted in. National lines were forgotten. Armies were reformed as commands merged. Former enemies became allies against a common foe.

Additional medics and support personnel were shuttled in to deal with the millions of surviving people once they started to come out of their hiding spots. Many were starved and sick from ongoing exposure to radiation and the chemical stew in the water. The medics were immediately overwhelmed but refused to give up or give in. Their enemy rode different horses of the apocalypse but were just as deadly.

Wherever possible they took on the natives to help them. Nurses, medics, doctors, even veterinarians and dentists answered the call to help. Many had been doing what they could despite a lack of supplies and equipment and being thrown back to medieval style of medicine. Some were trepidacious of using electronics again and had to be constantly reassured that the equipment was clean.

Elliot worked with them only peripherally; that was Colonel Sinclair's job. He had his own headaches to worry about; he had to coordinate his new command to clean out any and every building. The division of troops was mixed, with veterans mixed with natives, as well as fresh troops. Training the greenhorns while dealing with new equipment teething issues was a constant trial for the chimp.

The powers that be had decided to retest the nail gun concept. The idea wasn't new; rail guns had been used for over a century after all. The ammunition could be anything metal. Slugs of chopped-up nails, screws, or such were ideal. Pieces of wire as well. The problem was the pencil grenades, weight, size, and the big one, the power packs.

Each nail gun required a power pack to fire. On full auto they tended to run through a clip of ammunition within three seconds. Even on three shot, they could burn through ammo. But the micro capacitor and battery clips that went along with the ammunition was the true bottleneck. It meant they had to carry two supplies of materials for the weapons. Three if the soldier had a pencil grenade launcher.