Someone had called in the lasers and it was time to bail. Jackson pulled down his visor and ran a systems check on the rig. Detailed stats flickered in the corner of his vision, as he stripped all insignia. His hands absently double-checked straps and pockets. He had a visual on all weapons and the comms had cut off a few seconds ago. He watched in soundproof comfort as his team silently slid out of the belly of the airship. He went last.
Jackson disliked night ops. The fifty-thousand-foot freefall took a good five minutes in a wingsuit, and tonight Central Command had decided to play laser tag with gigawatts. The helmet gave him full-spectrum visuals of the guided beams crossing the sky, ionizing the air with a sizzle and the strong smell of ozone. Optics tracked their patterns, and a thin slab of silicon logic got lost in extrapolating danger levels. A laser caught one of the drone airships on return path. It tumbled gracefully, like the torch of some great juggler. Soon, all five ships were on fire. More information scrolled down the visor: no casualties. An EMP blast, its source and intensity neatly boxed in a corner of the screen; it caused no damage to the caged equipment. The helmet ran a self-check, just in case. Then he was suddenly low enough to be aware of the ground below. The vertigo pill wasn’t working very well.
In Jackson’s opinion, the bucket on his head was only good for stopping a small fraction of the bullets that came at it, and maybe overanalyzing the scene in the event of his death. Secretly, though, he liked all the extraneous information it provided. It gave him a sense of control and, likely false, security. Besides, he had no choice but to trust it. The visor presently shifted geometries, fading to a faint green. It was time. Arms spread, he steered the suit until the embassy was right in front, six thousand feet down. The optics acquired the target with a laconic blip. He pulled.
The canopy exploded out of the container, two hundred square feet of smart fabric unfolding with a gratifying snap. Jackson watched as the thermoptic faded to the color of the night, essentially disappearing above him. He checked objectives. His team was on fast approach: the first to infiltrate. With some luck, they wouldn’t have to fire a single shot, and the boys and girls from Foxtrot would handle all the dirty work in the west wing. Jackson flipped to Intelligence. The sat-recon showed a two-inch ledge above two of the top north windows. The map identified these as the library – their entry point. T minus eighty seconds. The helmet gave him a polite warning and took control. The parachute came to life and dropped into a tight spiral, staying on the dark side of the city. It pulled out of the dive at roof level and Jackson found himself gliding into the north wall at breakneck speed. At the right moment a control system convinced the canopy to flare hard. Jackson swung at a window, his fingers finding the small ledge, and the parachute detached, collapsing. It landed in a pool of scan-wire six stories below, which promptly incinerated the fabric. Jackson found a foothold, balanced himself. He fished out a digger and placed it in one corner of the window. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three…the highly localized explosive bore through the lock without so much as a crack in the glass. He kicked through, feet together, hit hard and rolled against a wall, gun in hand. The room was dark but he could make out neatly stacked bookshelves in nightvision green. He was in. T minus eight seconds. The rest of his team never followed.
He was alone on the single acre of enemy territory west of the Caucases - in the embassy of the Independent Monarchy of New Siberia. And, according to the rest of the world, he did not even exist.
They must have known, must have been waiting. His helmet coldly advanced through the objectives. No time for questioning or speculations; just follow procedure. He could lay low and wait for Foxtrot. If they had made it. Downtown Oslo was less than a mile away. A good place to get lost. He had to get out of here. He triggered comms override; wary of revealing his presence, he only scanned and listened. Nothing. He flipped to Intelligence, then Collective. All panels assured him the mission was running cleanly. He swore and switched on his gun. That, at least, was still working.
Jackson looked around and found the door. A sliver of light cut underneath. He flipped to Map and blinked at an icon. The image responded by plotting five possible routes out of the building. They essentially coincided. Realizing its blunder, the computer neatly collapsed them into one. Well, at least he didn’t have to choose. Jackson tried the door – unlocked. He slid the muzzle of his gun through the crack, then flipped to Collective. The recoilless H&K 728 Special readily interfaced with the helmet. A small window showed him the view through the gun sight, as he swiveled it around. A long hallway, bright white, deserted. He went back to the window and peeked outside. No patrols, but the scan-wire went all around. The door was the way out. He exhaled sharply and stepped into the hallway.
The sudden stillness made him shiver. There was no obvious surveillance, but the light made him feel exposed and uneasy. Rumor had it the NewSib labs had reverse-engineered some Russian machinery after the war, killer AIs. Those were forbidden by the Athens convention, but there was no one left to enforce it these days. Jackson just hoped the heavy artillery was busy in the west wing tonight. He put a wall behind his back and stepped down the soft carpet. The H&K was level with his shoulder, safety off. The audio was full on now, amps picking up the slightest sounds, the million-line software looking for patterns, sources. Jackson’s own sounds got filtered out and then there was nothing left. Even bunkers weren’t this quiet. At the end of the hall, Jackson turned right and ran into a wall. He swore quietly, flipped to Map. The grid clearly indicated a stairwell at this corner. He swore again, and went left instead.
Ten minutes later Jackson was considering the possibility that he was lost. He had started off trusting his instincts, but he was no longer sure if he could even find the library again. The map was very wrong and he had forgotten to turn on tracking. The embassy was large, larger than he’d thought. And no stairwells. Might have to try some of the doors. And just then, he rounded a corner and found himself some twenty feet away from the shiny carapace of a guard drone. The machine was looking the other way. That it was a guard was fairly obvious – the rich selection of weaponry sprouting from its turret could put a Kondor to shame. Jackson stood motionless for a good ten seconds; then he had to breathe. He started slowly backing up. Meanwhile the helmet had scanned its database and had identified the model. The Volk IVa was as deadly a machine as any Jackson had studied. And no drone at all; powerful AIs rode under the titanium shell. It sported four variable convergence 20mm cannons in the turret, rockets, and a teargas/flame thrower. Unlike their four-legged predecessors from the war, the IV series had six legs, and a top speed of 50 km/hr. The rest of its bulk must have been ammo. Jackson had just about made it back around the corner when the turret spun in his direction. The lenses fixed him with a glint of cold recognition.
He ran. The amps delivered the complex sound of multiple motors and servos engaging after him. The H&K was useless against that kind of armor. The Volk’s only weak spot was the back of the turret and he had missed his chance in those first seconds. He took a turn at random, then another, and hit a dead end, brightly lit. He stopped.
The Volk came around a corner at a moderate speed. The machine moved gracefully, without wasted motion, shifting its mass at the turns and hardly slowing down. The impatient eyes of the cameras zoomed around, searching for the intruder. Multiple programs analyzed the images, scanning for patterns. In front of each door, it slowed down and interrogated the locks, then continued. Finally, it came to a stop at an intersection. It pulled a map from a memory bank and spent a few microseconds studying it. If the intruder had gone right, he would be trapped. The bio-circuits spent another microsecond rejoicing at the thought. The man had only been equipped with a small-caliber sidearm. Humans could be so foolish. No need for Intruder Alert, the Volk decided. This was going to be fun. Motors whined and the complex legs engaged again. Headed right.
Jackson managed to suppress his panic after a few seconds. This was going to get ugly. His armor was good, but in the end it always came down to hard, swift metal against soft, slow flesh. The helmet seemed to realize the urgency of the situation. It was overriding the display with the standard procedure. DON’T LOOK HUMAN. It was simple, and for once, it even made some sense. Jackson couldn’t think of anything better to do, anyway. He threw his jacket over his head and crouched in a corner. The H&K was under his armpit, sight pointed down the corridor. He waited.
He was here. The biochips smelled his sweat. The sweat of the man around the corner. The intruder. The Volk stopped. It ran a systems check, and charged the stunner. It also spun up two of the cannons, just in case. The legs hissed into a new configuration, pulling the flat belly several feet above the floor. This was just like playing war in the lab. It stepped forward. The hallway was empty. Multiple algorithms crawled out of the memory banks, chewing through the camera input, looking for shapes and patterns. Nothing. Infrared was useless, flooded by the wall halogens. The cannons drowned all sounds. As the Volk looked in confusion, ready to turn around, one of its software agents reported positive identification. The stunner rotated into place, locked on target.
Jackson watched the turret spin around and extend two platinum rods toward him. A stunner. Well, better that than… A thin beam shot out from the turret, ionizing the air around it, which in turn delivered a solid megavolt to the fragile human body. Jackson seized, then went limp. The helmet knowingly appraised the situation, and turned itself off.