So we can’t control them?
They’ll respond to commands delivered in person. That’s part of their core programming. But no, we can’t exercise any remote operational control over them.
Our proxies were staring at us. Raven eyed one cautiously. “I don’t know, Chief. This could get very confusing, very quickly.”
Andrea started walking. “Shake it off. We need the tactical support. We can’t assume anything, so approach any proxy as potentially hostile until you have evidence that it isn’t.”
“This is going to make response coordination difficult,” Veraldi commented.
“You’re absolutely right,” Andrea replied. “We have no way of knowing in advance if an android is friend or foe, and we can’t communicate with them beyond line of sight. We’ll have to consider the whole facility as the battleground.”
That was such a sobering thought that no one even replied. The loyal proxies fanned out around us like trained guards, but I don’t think any of us felt entirely comfortable to have them. Disconnected from the network, they were no longer vulnerable to malicious logic injection, but it was still difficult to ignore that only a few bytes of programming separated them from the proxies that had ambushed us.
Not for the first time, it occurred to me that our reliance on android proxies was a weakness—not just for Section 9, but our whole society. A facility staffed with human beings would have been much easier to defend, and would have required a much larger force to successfully assault. With proxies, we were already overrun before the enemy even breached the facility.
We passed the elevators, but Andrea didn’t break stride. “It’s not worth the risk,” she said, answering the unspoken question. “They could be hacked or boobytrapped. We’ll circle around to the stairs.”
I fully expected the stairs to be held by enemy-controlled proxies, but there was nothing and no one. If the roles were reversed and I was the one attacking, the first thing I’d do was deploy proxies to stop movement between levels. Thomas’s response to cut the androids from the network was likely why such an obvious choke point was left open. It cost us the ability to coordinate our response, but it denied the enemy the same advantage.
Andrea messaged Thomas. Any hostiles on level 4 near the south staircase?
No, but there is a small group at the elevators. Be advised, attacking forces have now penetrated the facility at both entrances.
Understood.
Raven and I took position by the door and waited for Andrea to cloak. Andrew and Vincenzo each kept their attention on the stairs leading further up and down. Andrea faded out of sight, and moments later the door swung open onto a quiet hallway. I stepped through and went left, while Raven went right, both of us ready to fire at the first sign of trouble. Seconds passed, and there was no movement other than our own shadows, no sound beyond the low rumble of the environment control. The corridor was clear for the moment, just as Thomas had said.
Andrea decloaked. “Vincenzo, Raven, I want you to secure the east side. Tycho and I will take the west. Andrew, rendezvous with Thomas and secure the lab. Your priority is defense. Everyone else is on offense. If it isn’t Section 9, destroy it.”
Andrea turned to the loyal proxies. “Force protection condition gamma.”
The androids obeyed, moving out to defend our facility with thoughtless obedience. Vincenzo, Andrew, and Raven formed up and headed off toward the east wing, and I followed Andrea as we headed west.
She didn’t say anything at first, not that I expected her to. We were fighting for our lives, after all. When we reached the vault door demarcating the west wing tunnels, she turned and grinned at me. “It looks like you’ve got a handle on your prosthetics.”
“Thanks, chief. It feels like I still have a long way to go, but I almost forget about them sometimes. Like they’re a part of me.”
She slid her finger across the door’s lockpad—circle, triangle, square, circle. “They are a part of you,” she said. “The hardest challenge of living with augments isn’t the meds or the regular surgical maintenance, it’s understanding that the technology and your body are one and the same. They’re just a container for your mind, the real you.”
The vault door’s locks disengaged. “I think I understand,” I said.
Andrea nodded then cloaked, and I pulled the door open. She decloaked a few paces beyond the door and signaled me to follow, her attention and weapon trained on the corridor ahead the whole time. I stepped through the doorway and tapped on her shoulder. She then walked forward at a measured pace and I followed, turning to walk backward every few seconds to check for movement behind us.
Ten meters down the hallway, we encountered a lone proxy. It’s back was to us and it seemed to be standing idle, but it was doing so over a body—a technician, judging from the uniform. Andrea gestured for me to hold my position. I took aim, expecting her to engage from where she stood, ready to provide overlapping fire. Instead, she cloaked.
The android’s chest burst open moments later and its feet dangled as it was lifted from the ground. Andrea shimmered into view with her arm plunged through the proxy’s body to the elbow. Her hand was wrapped around its graphene spine, detached synthetic muscle dangling from the broken vertebrae. She placed her free hand on the android’s shoulder and wretched her arm back. Its head twisted free as the body fell to the floor, dangling from the broken spine in Andrea’s hand.
I approached the technician’s body. “Looks like they were ordered to kill everyone they could.”
“I wouldn’t expect any of Section 9’s enemies to have discretion. Would you?”
I caught the oblique reference to Tower 7. “Do you think we rely on these things too much?” I asked her.
“They’re just tools,” she replied. She raised the android’s head and looked into its lightless eyes. “A human is what caused this. Once this is over, she’ll answer for it.”
We soon came upon another group of three proxies close to the west elevators. I looked to Andrea for how we’d handle them. Her silent approach was all well and good for a single android, but I couldn’t see leaving guns out of play when outnumbered.
The androids perked up and moved as a group around a blind corner. We heard a burst of gunshots a moment later. Andrea leveled her weapon and pressed against the adjacent wall. She gestured for me to take a position on the opposite side.
I settled against the right wall and cautiously moved up toward the corner. Something moved up ahead, and I crouched instinctively. Gunfire scored the black metal above my head, and Andrea returned fire. For brief moments—when stepping too hard or bumping against the wall—I could see our attackers. A faint ripple trailed in the air with their movements as they sought cover behind the corner.
“Active camo!” I called out, falling back the way we’d come.
“We need to—grenade!”
She threw herself back down the corridor as a fist-sized white cube struck the right wall and clung. I was already flattening myself against the floor before the thought had occurred to me to do so. Years of training expressed in a single, lifesaving action.
The Arbiter Academy referred to it as Maximal Life Affirmation—the greatest survivability possible in a shitty situation. At a good distance from the grenade, with a minimized cross-section, we’d have a 99% chance of escaping without injury if we did everything we were trained to do.