A Time for Patriots

days are unmanned, and the military graduates more unmanned-aircraft pilots than manned-aircraft pilots these days. They can’t keep up with the demand for pilots and sensor operators, especially with all the military budget cutbacks. Jon has led the way in designing unmanned systems for years, but the pace is definitely accelerating. Any new ideas you come up with, get them into the system as fast as you can. If you don’t do it, someone else will.”

“Hey, we don’t need research or new-product counseling from some old retired guy,” Jon Masters quipped. “For some reason the great Patrick McLanahan has decided to check out of the real world and banish himself and his infinitely smarter son to the armpit of the world — which, I believe, used to be Battle Mountain’s unofficial designation, no?”

“Don’t be bad-mouthing my town, Jon,” Patrick said.

“Well, well, look who’s here,” another voice said, and Wayne “Whack” Macomber emerged from the Skytrain. “The famous disappearing general.” A former college football star and Air Force special-operations commando, Whack towered over the others. His face still bore the scars of being held captive and brutally interrogated by the Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye, or GRU, the Russian military-intelligence bureau, the year before, and he walked with a bit of a limp.

They shook hands. “How are you feeling, Whack?” Patrick asked.

“Better,” Whack said. “Thanks for all the visits.” Whack had spent several months in a hospital recovering from his injuries, and Patrick had seen to it that he visited him at least once a week; his former private security firm paid for his hospital bills and rehabilitation. “Thought I’d tag along with Charlie and Richter on this deal — hangin’ around the house and doin’ nuthin’ but rehab was driving me batty.”

“You bring one of the Tin Man units?”

“Of course,” Whack said. “Masters still wants to sell a bunch of them to the government, so I’ll demo it if they want. Actually, I kinda like wearin’ the long undies these days — the exoskeleton is like a whole-body brace.”

“Glad to see you up and around,” Patrick said. He turned to Jason and Charlie. “You guys are all set in this hangar — everything you asked for is right here. If you need help with housing, just ask, but the trailers are the best we have right now. The base is shrinking every day. We once had over six thousand here — now we’re down to less than a thousand. But we’re still—”

“I think I can take it from here now, General,” a voice said behind Patrick. He turned and found FBI special agents Chastain, Renaldo, and the other federal agents walking up behind him. “Thank you for parking the plane.”

“That’s my job,” Patrick said. To Jon and the others he said, “I’m just a phone call away if you need me, and if you’d like to explore the town later—”

“I think we may be very busy for the next few nights, General,” Chastain interjected. “Thanks for the offer.” His body language and tone definitely suggested that it was time for Patrick to depart, so he did. After he left, Chastain said to Masters and Richter, “He’s not to be hanging out around here except in his official capacity.”

“He’s a good friend, Agent Chastain, but I know how to protect classified programs,” Jon said. “I assure you, if the general wanted to be attached to this project, he could do it with one phone call.”

“I highly doubt that — at least, not with me in charge.”

“Same for me,” Richter muttered acidly.

“He would probably be the one in charge… if not your boss’s boss,” Jon said, giving Richter an exasperated expression. This was his first time working with the gifted Army engineer, who was all of his reputation and more: as irritating as he was brilliant. “How many times have you piloted a CID? Patrick’s been in combat inside one several times.”

“Let’s take a look at one of your robots, Colonel,” Chastain said, ignoring Jon’s remarks. Jon went up inside the C-57, and a moment later the left cargo bay opened and a container was lowered outside. At the same time the landing-gear struts extended, allowing the container to be pulled directly out from underneath the plane.

Richter went over to the container and unlocked the door, and he and Charlie pulled out an odd-looking gray object a little larger than a refrigerator — although it was a very large object, Chastain noticed neither of them had any trouble carrying it. The object resembled several dozen boxes of different shapes and sizes haphazardly stuck and stacked together. “That’s it ?” Chastain asked. “It has to be assembled first?”

“Not exactly,” Charlie said. She turned to the box she had just helped unload. “CID One, deploy.”

All of a sudden the object seemed to come alive. Piece by piece, the boxes shifted, folded out more pieces, shifted again, refolded and shifted yet again, and quickly it reconstructed itself into a twelve-foot-tall robot. When it finished unfolding itself, it adopted a sort of low crouch, like a hunter warming himself before a fire.

“The Cybernetic Infantry Device, or CID, version five,” Richter said. “We made it a bit taller but made it ten percent lighter, made the armor both stronger and lighter, increased the pressure in the microhydraulic system to boost actuator strength and performance, and miniaturized and improved the sensor suite. Battery life is slightly improved, and—”

“I don’t need to hear the sales pitch, Colonel,” Chastain interrupted. “Let’s see it work.”

Richter nodded at Charlie, who almost giggled with excitement as she spoke, “CID One, pilot up.” At that command the robot stood, crouched forward with its right leg stuck out straight behind it, and extended its arms backward. At the same time a hatch opened on the robot’s back. Charlie climbed up the extended leg, using the leg like a ramp and the arms like railings. She then knelt down on the robot’s back just outside the hatch, then started to enter the robot, legs first, followed by arms, and finally her head. When she was fully inside, the hatch closed. Nothing happened for several moments…

… and then suddenly the robot stood up, and it started hopping up and down, shaking its shoulders, and shadow-boxing with its immense arms and knotted fists like a boxer warming up and getting ready to step into a boxing ring. Chastain couldn’t believe how fluid and humanlike it moved — it was nothing like any other robot he had ever seen in his life.

“Pretty cool, huh?” an electronically synthesized voice said. It had Turlock’s phraseology, but definitely not her voice. “How do you like me now, Agent Chastain?”

“Amazing,” Chastain said. “How does she… er, it move like that?”

“Thousands of microhydraulic actuators being operated at increased pressure, acting like muscles and ligaments on multiaxis joints, responding to haptic commands using advanced processors,” Richter said. Chastain scowled at Richter, who was obviously trying to show up the FBI special agent. “A conventional robot might use one or two large hydraulic actuators to move a limb in one axis — up or down, left or right, in or out. The limbs on the CID are mounted on joints connected with powerful microhydraulic actuators that work completely different from human muscles. The CID has so many of these microactuators that some of its limbs can move in unhuman ways.” To demonstrate, Charlie rotated the lower part of the CID’s left leg around in a complete circle.

“How strong is it?” one of the other agents asked.

“Let’s find out,” Charlie said. She walked over to the C-57 Skytrain and carefully placed the CID’s hands under the center of the left wing.

“Don’t break my plane, Charlie,” Jon Masters warned.

“I’m doing it on the jack point, Jon, don’t worry,” Charlie said. Moments later, they could all see the left strut begin to extend. Charlie moved the plane about four inches up before carefully letting it back down. “It registered about twenty thousand pounds before I got a limit warning.”

“It just lifted ten tons ?” the agent exclaimed.

Charlie climbed out from under the wing. “How about I direct some of that power downward this time?” The CID crouched a bit, then flew upward about fifty feet, grasping onto the steel trusses overhead. “Hey, I think I can see my house from up here!” she deadpanned before dropping back to the concrete floor.

“The CID has survived drops from an aircraft exceeding two hundred feet in altitude and two hundred knots airspeed,” Richter said. “The previous version has survived RPG rounds and even thirty-millimeter cannon hits. It can operate underwater up to a hundred feet, and in a chemical, biological, and even radioactive environment for short periods. We can increase its effectiveness with packs that contain different weapons, sensors, even unmanned aircraft. It can—”

“Absolutely no weapons,” Chastain said firmly. “Director Fuller made that exceptionally clear, and I concur with his directive: the robot is not to be armed with any weapons. In fact, I don’t even want it out in the open unless involved in an actual operation against armed extremists or terrorists and it’s been determined that our