Chapter 29: Furtive Intent

He needed to be careful now. He knew they were on to him. The base had been flooded with too much information from too many directions in the past day or so. They thought they were being clever – but machines could never be clever enough to overcome human beings.

He hadn’t gone dark. He’d kept in contact with Lance as usual but it was all innocuous now. The last encoded message had given a simple warning: ‘Being watched’. Lance would understand.

He did his job, as normal. He was in charge of the base’s weapons vault. Well, weapons and any other dangerous items held on the base. There was a whole section filled with tech from a single Naval officer.

He’d thought the man a plant for the machines – he’d even considered he might be a machine. He wasn’t. He was human, a traitor to his race. A fool, just like all the rest of the Armed Services.

He had interesting toys, though. The manifest indicated the one table-sized gadget was a portable fusion reactor. The schematics were classified, but he’d had plenty of time to study it. He wasn’t a scientist – heck, he wasn’t even an engineer – but he was pretty sure he could figure out a way to make it go boom. They’d pulled the hydrogen tanks, but reconnecting them could be done quickly. Hopefully quick enough the AI wouldn’t even realize what was going on until it was too late.

The black armor was interesting as well. He just wasn’t certain how it worked. It looked too squishy to provide any kind of real protection. He was also pretty sure it’d never stretch enough to fit him.

“Everything still there?” Marlowe asked. Inventory management was a two person per shift job. Even the AIs weren’t stupid enough to have a single person in charge of the dangerous stuff. He’d been inventorying the right half of the hall while Marlowe had taken the left.

“No change,” he intoned.

“Did you see the vids on this kid, Hapsfeld?”

“Yes,” Hapsfeld murmured. “It was impressive.”

“Impressive hell,” Marlowe snorted enthusiastically. “It was fucking awesome. He was everywhere, jumping here, somersaulting there. Shit, I thought for sure the Marines would make taking him a priority. Instead, he ends up a Navy puke.”

“He is supposed to have a marked intelligence,” the man offered. Marlowe was young and easily excitable. A Marine since just after he turned fourteen, he was now closing in on seventeen. He’d not seen combat, however. Combat tended to drain the excitability – leaving the person more stoic or dead. “There are some interesting bits of equipment he designed in Aisle twenty-three.”

“Really?” Marlowe said excitedly. “I’ll have to go back and check it out. I mean, he was really flying around down there. They were shooting at him and he was like ‘Nope’ and just rolled out before they could shoot him. Then, they were like ‘blam’ and he was like ‘boom’ killing one guy and throwing another. I heard he was on base – maybe I can get his autograph or something.”

“Anything missing on your end?” Hapsfeld asked, changing the subject.

“Naw,” Marlowe responded drily. “Never is, is there? I mean, far be it from me to question authority – ‘ours is not to wonder why... ‘ and all – but inventorying this lot every week? Seems like a waste. The cage is sealed and there’s half a fucking platoon stationed in the concourse. Plus, most of this stuff is keyed so only an authorized user can fire it anyway. Seems like a lot of busy-work to me.”

“Never underestimate your opponent,” he murmured.

“What does that mean?” Marlowe asked, his face troubled.

“It’s Sun Tzu,” Hapsfeld replied. “‘The Art of War’. It means even though we can conceive of no way for someone to gain access to the weapons and use them, we should not allow ourselves to be lulled into believing they are safe.”

“Oh,” the boy responded. “Like Murphy’s law – ‘if something can go wrong, it will’.”

Hapsfeld just shook his head dejectedly. “Trust me on this - Murphy was an optimist.”

“Maybe,” Marlowe shrugged. “You want to fill the order on our desk or you want me to do it?”