Elshire Technologies, Brickstown, 22:48
Malcolm Elshire signalled the door of his shop to open and regarded the Portent balefully from behind his counter and his cup of coffee. "This better be good," he grumbled, as the other man crossed the room.
"Vigil." The Portent reached to retrieve a backpack slung over his shoulder. "I would like you to take a look at a robot for me."
"Uh-huh." Malcolm sipped his coffee, and nodded. "I'm, uh, not seeing a robot, though."
The Portent set the bag on the shop counter and undid the zip. The Zenith WarCry Mech's head had been quite securely fastened to its body, and the process of prying it free had done little to improve its appearance. Elshire recoiled, swallowing a mouthful of scalding coffee on impulse. "Jesus! All right, get that damn thing in back before someone sees it." He pinched the bridge of his nose as the Portent casually lifted the detached head and carried it into the workshop behind the counter. "I could've done without this."
* * *
Ten minutes later, Elshire was hunched over his worktable, studying the robotic cranium closely. Wires ran from the concealed housings in his arms to the exposed circuitry of the damaged head, and his eyes glowed slightly as the subprocessors hidden behind them performed their calculations.
The Portent stood watching quietly from a short distance away; behind him, Asuka Miyamoto, vigilante engineer extraordinaire, held up a medical scanner, examining his injuries. "Tell me again why you're bothering us with this?
Thought the Militia was meant to be back in action."
"I did not wish to disturb Juniper at this late hour. And the Militia may possess the skills to assist me, but they lack your equipment."
"Well, it's probably for the best." Elshire looked up, the glow fading slightly from his eyes. "The thing that makes this robot special... it's invasive. Viral. If you hooked it up to a normal computer, you'd have a fight on your hands to keep it from taking over."
Asuka nodded reluctantly. "So someone made a virus that turns the Mechs against the Council? Pretty impressive."
Malcolm shook his head. "I don't think this was done on purpose. I think the machines did it themselves."
The Portent frowned. No-one could tell. "How is that possible?"
"Originally, I couldn't say. My guess is that the Council were trying to upgrade their Zenith AI, and didn't realise how far they were going. This robot thinks it's alive."
Malcolm glanced in the direction of the computer beside him, which began to display reams of 1s and 0s. "It's broadcasting now, trying to contact the others like it. I'm jamming the signal, but I can see what it's trying to say. This... it's a level of machine intelligence I've never seen. If it's not digital sentience, it's close."
"You are telling me," the Portent said, quietly, "that I have just decapitated a living being."
Malcolm sighed. "I'm a scientist, not a philosopher. You tell me whether it's alive. But it's smart. Self-aware. And angry."
Asuka nodded. "And a self-replicating viral intellect. If these... things can get the equipment together they could spread worldwide. Your proper informational apocalypse."
"They're not giving anything away, though. I've searched for any clues as to their plans, but if this robot knew anything, it's deleted the files. They must have a headquarters somewhere, but - "
"I'll find them." The Portent turned to leave. "Thank you. I will inform you of what transpires."
* * *
Asuka watched him leave, shaking her head slightly. "What goes on in his head, Malcolm?"
"You're asking me?" Elshire shrugged. "Whatever it is, it keeps him going." He paused as Asuka opened her locker in the corner and began gathering her equipment. "You're going to follow him, aren't you?"
Asuka looked up from fastening her bracers. "Kid's got the right ideas, but he's going to get himself killed." She glanced toward the door. "And if he's got it in his head that these robots are alive... well." She pulled down her goggles. "One way or another, this thing isn't going any further."
Knights Exemplar: Wolfram, Autumnfox, Starlit Spirit.
Militia: The Portent, Wavekite, Mr. Sandman.
The Cadre: WarpLocke, Zajin.
Numerous others.
((I originally wrote this for the Militia forums. Then they imploded. So, here it is. Feedback, comments, you get the idea.))
Crey's Folly, 19:43
The warehouse was cold and quiet. The Portent ducked behind a stack of storage crates as his audio receptors picked up the dull clang of metal feet on the floor grating, a squad of the Council's Mech Men approaching. Or at least, the Council's design; the human soldiers manning this base had fled scarce minutes before, their half-panicked radio chatter yielding little explanation.
As the footsteps receded back into the warehouse's halls, the Portent rose to his feet, watching the departing robots carefully. Basic vision, radar, passive EMR showed nothing unusual; if these robots were more, or less, than they seemed, it wasn't obvious from their construction. Not Nemesis' facsimiles, or illusions. The Council built them, or someone with full access to their methods.
He powered up his stealth suit and moved forward as quietly as he could. Ahead, the corridor broadened into a loading bay, where several more squads of mech men were patrolled, some accompanied by the anti-gravitic Hoverbots. Nothing seemed exactly out of the ordinary, except for the lack of any living troops alongside the mechanical.
Atop the gantry at the far side of the bay, a lone Warcry mech stood supervising the scene. That was no more unusual; the larger, more intelligent robots were built specifically to oversee their lesser kin. But there was something different here. As the Portent crept closer, he realised that the armoured giant seemed... restless.
He slipped behind part of the stair railing and ran a full scan. Again, the Warcry mech seemed externally to be a standard design, but for a slightly increased heat signature in what appeared to be its central processor. But its movements were off - it was pacing slowly along its gantry, and when it paused to silently direct its subordinates, it seemed to be gesturing to them. The Portent scanned the local frequencies to try to hear what orders it was giving, but nothing he could find matched any Council encryption, just an intermittent stream of binary code.
A proximity alert flickered on the periphery of his vision. He remained still, letting his visual focus pan around to identify the cause: a group of three Mech Men that had reversed their patrol route and were approaching his hiding place. Had they noticed there was something out of place? His stealth field made him hard to see, but not invisible, and these robots were not limited to the human senses. He tensed, ready to move.
More alerts flashed up - the robots had changed from a patrol to a search pattern. As quickly as he dared, he moved his hand to the controls on his wrist, setting his systems to combat mode. As his gauntlets began to charge with power and his helmet went into its targeting routine, he felt the equivalent process taking place in the back of his mind, his skills awakening at the scent of combat. He took a deep breath and slipped effortlessly into the all-too-familiar patterns engraved in his memory.
He launched the attack in a trance, as always, springing from cover and loosing off a volley of charged bolts at the nearest patrol. The ionised bolts needed a higher charge to deal with a robot than to stun a human, and the energy drain caused his stealth field to flicker. He darted behind fresh cover before cutting it off, redirecting the power flow to his gauntlets. His motion sensors told him that one of the Mechs he'd fired on was still active; two more groups were now circling to cut him off.
He waited until the nearest Mech was almost on top of him before forsaking his cover, firing a burst of suppressing fire as he bore down on his enemy. He jumped, kicking off the Mech's head for extra height, and engaged his flight harness in a short burst, curving in a slow backflip onto the upper gantry, across the room from the Warcry mech. Below, the lesser robots spread out to find cover, forming a rough circle in the centre of the bay. The Portent crouched behind the low railing as a hail of energy bolts hissed through the air toward him.
The scream of jets told him what was coming next seconds before a Hoverbot rose into view, its gyros whirring as it took aim. The Portent crouched and leapt for it, visor flashing a dozen warnings, and clung on, grappling the machine with gauntleted fingers as it twisted and struggled to right itself. He fought down an inexplicable instinct to trying tearing it apart physically, and reached to his belt for one of the explosive charges held there. He strapped the bomb to the back of the Hoverbot, set its timer, and kicked off, firing a volley of energy to repel it as he fell to earth, amid a circle of waiting Mechs.
The next few seconds passed in a blur. The Portent reached for his suit controls just as an opening volley of fire slammed into his armour, staggering him. The second volley would likely have finished him, if the careening Hoverbot overhead hadn't chosen that moment to slam into the hapless Warcry mech, and explode.
The Portent would wonder afterwards whether the robots paused from the disruption of their command transmissions, or from genuine shock, but one of the two bought him the time he needed to disengage the safety locks and channel his power supply's output through the absorption cells of his stealth suit.
* * *
After the echoes had died away and his systems had begun to recover, he found a crowbar in a side room and climbed the ramp to where the Warcry mech had stood. Impressively, it had managed to crawl several meters in spite of its shattered legs. It aimed one of its arm-mounted weapons at him, but he kicked it aside and hefted the crowbar. Secrets and lies. I need to know which ones it's hiding in there.
((To be continued...))
Knights Exemplar: Wolfram, Autumnfox, Starlit Spirit.
Militia: The Portent, Wavekite, Mr. Sandman.
The Cadre: WarpLocke, Zajin.
Numerous others.