pulling it downward.”
Hoffman thought about that for a moment. “That would make it quite mobile in a zero g environment as well. But if I designed it that way, then I’d forget about the legs entirely in combat. This is obviously a high-energy expenditure time, why bother with the legs?”
Bren and Hoffman watched the footage several more times but didn’t have any further insights. The machine with the red dot had an unorthodox method of motion, which they couldn’t explain. Eventually, Hoffman resumed other tasks. The hours eroded his workforce until only Bren remained in the Guts. It wasn’t an unusual situation. Everyone else had taken off to catch some sleep or use up some of their fantasy VR allotment.
At some point he must have fallen asleep since he woke up with a sore neck in the ASSAIL nexus. He looked up, massaging his neck, and saw Jackson entering the room.
“There you are. Hey. Vendrati released a report on the analysis of the ASSAIL remains,” he said.
Bren opened Vendrati’s report through his link. The executive summary said that the UNSF scientists currently had no idea how the ASSAIL armor had been compromised. Vendrati’s team worked closely with several Earthside labs, putting a lot of smart people on the problem. They looked at every scrap from a thousand angles, steadily churning the chaos of ideas into conclusions like angry ants shuffling food toward their nest.
“They did find a puncture point in the armor of each dead ASSAIL,” Bren repeated aloud. “Less than seven millimeters in diameter. Very little damage to the surrounding surface. They believe there was a projectile, and they found foreign chips of titanium.” Bren shook his head. “Titanium is too light to punch a hole through that armor, though. Especially with a round of that caliber.”
“What about the video?” asked Jackson.
“I went through as much as I could last night,” Bren said. “Fell asleep looking at it. I couldn’t find any clues about how they penetrated the armor. There is a projectile of some sort; the audio has evidence of supersonic launches that aren’t any of ours. I assume the Earthside labs will find us a few frames with a projectile in them. The main thing I noticed is that the machine moves in an unintuitive way. Of course, I sent it all along to Vendrati’s people back home.”
“Let me ask you something. In your opinion, was that thing running an AI core?”
Bren considered the question for a moment.
“I’m almost certain it was. It’s too good, too fast. I think it was a core, and I think it was started before ours were.”
“They knew we were coming?”
“No idea. Maybe they had a rotating schedule set up where there was always a core up at any given time while others were being sterilized. We have to find some clues on that damn station. How can petabytes of data be so useless to us?”
“Ask Devin. If it was an AI, it knew what to erase. But I’ve never heard of an AI erasing itself.”
“Me neither.”
“So what can we do differently at the next base?”
“We start the ASSAILs earlier, give them more background information.”
“That’s dangerous. If they’re awake too long … but I agree.”
“Their power plants will only last about fifty hours. Plus, it’ll shut off in hardware before the power plant is exhausted, forty- seven hours after we start them up. And there’s no override. Not even any mention of it in the software or our schematics package. There’s no feedback sensor or even a self-check circuit on it, so there’s no way an ASSAIL can learn about it.”
“Unless they get so smart inside of forty-seven hours they can deduce that we’d have put something like that on them and get power somewhere else.”
“Right. That’s why our police cruiser is sitting on a nuke.” Bren watched Jackson carefully. Had he already known?
Jackson rubbed his brow. “Sitting on a nuke. Wonderful.”
Bren figured Jackson’s move to rub his head
Hoffman thought about that for a moment. “That would make it quite mobile in a zero g environment as well. But if I designed it that way, then I’d forget about the legs entirely in combat. This is obviously a high-energy expenditure time, why bother with the legs?”
Bren and Hoffman watched the footage several more times but didn’t have any further insights. The machine with the red dot had an unorthodox method of motion, which they couldn’t explain. Eventually, Hoffman resumed other tasks. The hours eroded his workforce until only Bren remained in the Guts. It wasn’t an unusual situation. Everyone else had taken off to catch some sleep or use up some of their fantasy VR allotment.
At some point he must have fallen asleep since he woke up with a sore neck in the ASSAIL nexus. He looked up, massaging his neck, and saw Jackson entering the room.
“There you are. Hey. Vendrati released a report on the analysis of the ASSAIL remains,” he said.
Bren opened Vendrati’s report through his link. The executive summary said that the UNSF scientists currently had no idea how the ASSAIL armor had been compromised. Vendrati’s team worked closely with several Earthside labs, putting a lot of smart people on the problem. They looked at every scrap from a thousand angles, steadily churning the chaos of ideas into conclusions like angry ants shuffling food toward their nest.
“They did find a puncture point in the armor of each dead ASSAIL,” Bren repeated aloud. “Less than seven millimeters in diameter. Very little damage to the surrounding surface. They believe there was a projectile, and they found foreign chips of titanium.” Bren shook his head. “Titanium is too light to punch a hole through that armor, though. Especially with a round of that caliber.”
“What about the video?” asked Jackson.
“I went through as much as I could last night,” Bren said. “Fell asleep looking at it. I couldn’t find any clues about how they penetrated the armor. There is a projectile of some sort; the audio has evidence of supersonic launches that aren’t any of ours. I assume the Earthside labs will find us a few frames with a projectile in them. The main thing I noticed is that the machine moves in an unintuitive way. Of course, I sent it all along to Vendrati’s people back home.”
“Let me ask you something. In your opinion, was that thing running an AI core?”
Bren considered the question for a moment.
“I’m almost certain it was. It’s too good, too fast. I think it was a core, and I think it was started before ours were.”
“They knew we were coming?”
“No idea. Maybe they had a rotating schedule set up where there was always a core up at any given time while others were being sterilized. We have to find some clues on that damn station. How can petabytes of data be so useless to us?”
“Ask Devin. If it was an AI, it knew what to erase. But I’ve never heard of an AI erasing itself.”
“Me neither.”
“So what can we do differently at the next base?”
“We start the ASSAILs earlier, give them more background information.”
“That’s dangerous. If they’re awake too long … but I agree.”
“Their power plants will only last about fifty hours. Plus, it’ll shut off in hardware before the power plant is exhausted, forty- seven hours after we start them up. And there’s no override. Not even any mention of it in the software or our schematics package. There’s no feedback sensor or even a self-check circuit on it, so there’s no way an ASSAIL can learn about it.”
“Unless they get so smart inside of forty-seven hours they can deduce that we’d have put something like that on them and get power somewhere else.”
“Right. That’s why our police cruiser is sitting on a nuke.” Bren watched Jackson carefully. Had he already known?
Jackson rubbed his brow. “Sitting on a nuke. Wonderful.”
Bren figured Jackson’s move to rub his head
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