James Knapp - The Silent Army

I stepped up to the door, ready to shove it when he opened it and came out.

“I said to wait,” Buckster said. He had a metal briefcase in one hand.

“Sorry.”

“You want answers?” he said. “Let’s go.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Grab what you need.”

He held up the metal case.

“I got all I need,” he said. “Let’s go.”

I didn’t doubt who planted the monitoring device, but as soon as I passed through the perimeter and my JZI came back online, a message was waiting that confirmed it.

Ai wants to see you.

I still couldn’t reach Calliope; her JZI was showing a status of blocked, meaning it wasn’t taking calls. There was any number of reasons she might do that, but the last time we spoke, she was with Buckster. I’d feel better when she responded.

You worry about me?

I did, a little.

The truth was, I’d worried about her more than I let on. I wasn’t sure why. I hadn’t known her well at all, but somehow she’d gotten under my skin. When we started writing back and forth, I caught myself getting concerned when she stayed quiet too long. It was my first experience being home and waiting for someone to finish their tour.

Was that how Faye had felt? If so, it must have been worse, because back then when I stopped writing, I never started again. I didn’t even look her up when I came back. I never got a chance to make that right.

I shouldn’t have sent her. Calliope was tough. She knew what she was getting into, and she could take care of herself, but sometimes things went outside your control. She didn’t need to put herself in trouble to get me on her side. I didn’t need her to get to Fawkes.

JZI Status: BLOCKED.

I shut the front door behind me and locked it. I hung my coat on the rack and moved into the living room, removing from my pocket the object Bhadra had slipped me. The small electronic device fit in my palm. It was the shape of a capsule, with a smooth outer shell and several built-in data ports.

I slipped a probe into the port and gave it a gentle twist. Right away a flood of messages scrolled by in front of me, before the HUD cleared and a set of indicators began to appear.

Init version 0.3

Detecting …

Initializing …

Property of Heinlein Industries, Inc.

A series of specs, nondisclosure statements, and legal warnings scrolled by, then cleared away as a connection opened to what I recognized as a revivor network. It was empty.

Interesting. It was some kind of freestanding revivor communications port. It provided a tunnel onto an existing revivor network band.

Searching …

A grid appeared, filling my field of vision, and one by one, nodes began to appear on it. It happened slowly at first, but they quickly filled the screen. I zoomed in until the points began to spread apart. They weren’t connected in the traditional hub-and-spoke configuration; they were all separate, free-floating.

Searching …

Something’s wrong …

The total node count kept increasing, but none of them was tagged as active. They were in some kind of standby state. When the count was finished, it numbered more than six hundred.

Six hundred. The number was like a weight on my chest. Once, during my tour, I saw close to 150 of them let loose on a suburb. Not a shantytown or slum, but a developed region with brick homes and locked doors. It took us two hours to reach them from the nearest base, and by the time we got there, the carnage was visible from the air. Bodies lay torn apart in the streets, where blood baked in the sun. The old, the young, children, and babies were all pulled to pieces, and the revivors were rooting through the remains. We airlifted out fifty or so people from two rooftops. Then command declared the site lost, and it was razed.

They had to be on the tanker. There was no way that many revivors could be stored inside the city limits and not attract attention. Not even Heinlein kept a stockpile like that.

I started to try to trace them, when another process took over and opened a window over the grid. The image of a man’s face appeared in it, part of a digital recording, embedded in the unit’s software. I recognized him; it was the man Heinlein had designated as their liaison back during the first crisis.

MacReady.

Bob MacReady had met me at the Heinlein labs to discuss the case initially. Later he contacted me after I’d secured Faye’s body to provide information on Samuel Fawkes. I had never been able to determine whether he had done that with or without Heinlein’s knowledge.

“Hello, Agent Wachalowski. Listen carefully; this message will not repeat itself and will decay after playback. You have just connected to an experimental component designed to interface with the technology code named Huma. It has all the basic capabilities of the new revivor model. The link you’ve established will place you directly onto any existing Huma network that exists. This version of the revivor communications band is not backwards-compatible with the old one, which is very similar to your JZ interface. Be prepared to gather your information quickly, as we believe the node count is growing and could overwhelm your JZI.”

Huma. It sounded like a new revivor prototype. Was this what I’d seen in the clinic?

MacReady manipulated the computer terminal in front of him, and a second window appeared in a frame next to him. It displayed a schematic of the new node.

“The main reasons for the incompatibility are greater throughput, and a new layered mesh model. The hub-and-spoke configuration, where many revivors are controlled via a single command node, will still exist, but the revivors themselves use a full-mesh configuration. This makes them significantly more effective in the field. It allows large-scale, coordinated operations to remain fluid. Units quickly become aware if an existing directive has become undesirable or invalid. They can quickly relay that information back to the command node.”

The schematic in the window disappeared and was replaced by the Huma logo, followed by several bullet points:

• Field deployable• Field revivification• Enhanced control• Enhanced intelligence network “All of this is accomplished using the next generation of nanotechnology.” The bullet “Field deployable” moved into the foreground.

“You may recall we discussed this possibility during our meeting two years ago. The traditional model of getting wired for revivification will be replaced with a simple injection. The nodes are constructed inside the body using the material contained in the injection payload. Long-term preservation will still require a blood transfusion, but this new model is extremely desirable in situations where longevity is not an issue.”

That was most of them. At least half the revivors uncrated in the field didn’t last a month. The bullet “Field revivification” moved to the foreground.

“The new revivor model can also be made field ready without a trip back to the Heinlein labs, another improvement that will greatly enhance their effectiveness.”

It had been talked about for years. They’d finally managed it, then. If it was true, a soldier who was wired could theoretically revive right there on the battlefield.

“What I’m about to tell you is not something Heinlein wants getting out, but the situation is out of control and someone has to intervene. You’re the only one I believe I can trust fully. Recently, Heinlein detected a network of these revivors coming online. Whoever took the prototypes has deployed them. I’ve sent out feelers, and learned that your agency is currently looking for a large revivor force; I believe this is the source of them.”