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.
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 10thPanzer-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
