Apocalypse A.I. - Rise of the Machines

  This book was given to Rick Toronto on instaFreebie.

  www.instafreebie.com

  Apocalypse A.I.

  Rise of the Machines

  by A.J. Ramsey

  Text Copyright © 2016 A.J. Ramsey

  All Rights Reserved

  Apocalypse A.I. - Rise of the Machines

  First Edition

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Author things...

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Authors Note

  Author things...

  You can connect with me on Facebook here.

  Visit my website here. (Very much a work in progress)

  Or, you can “follow” me on my author page.

  This prequel story is currently only available to people in my reading group. If you managed to find it some other way and are interested in joining, click the link above.

  Chapter One

  ~

  “We’ve got movement. Three cars. All white, four door sedans. Two klicks and closing,” I said, slowly swiveling the stand that held the long range binoculars as I tracked the potential hostiles. Was it finally the man we were looking for? Was the Butcher in this convoy?

  The vehicles kicked up dust in great plumes as they bumped over the single, narrow dirt tract that led this way around the mountain. Sunlight reflected off the windows, making it impossible to see inside. The dust clouds obscured all but the lead vehicle.

  “Is it our guy?” Mario asked from the other side of our camouflaged hide, as he set down his food and scrambled for his own binoculars.

  “I can’t see anything right now,” I said.

  Damn dust and sun. The taller mountain peaks in the distance were capped with snow, the valley below had a semblance of plant life. In the middle where we were, everything was reddish brown dirt. It looked like it hadn’t rained since Alexander the Great led his men through these mountains.

  As the lead car straightened out, the glare left the window, allowing me to make out the driver. He wore large aviator style sunglasses, stylish and expensive looking. I didn’t recognize him from our photos of known associates. Maybe he was new. He was white knuckling the steering wheel as he navigated the narrow path.

  In the seat next to him, a grim faced man stared straight ahead. An AK-47 held across his chest.

  The front seat passenger was also wearing eye protection from the bright sun, though his choice was more appropriate for his role. Military style goggles. Not unlike my own. He wore a desert colored keffiyeh, but my attention was quickly drawn to the man’s face and the very distinctive beard. It was oddly patchy. Portions of his jawline looked almost like they were clean shaven, while others had long tufts of hair that had taken a lifetime to grow.

  I recognized this man. He was the Butcher’s main bodyguard.

  “Patchy McBeard Face is in the front seat of the lead vehicle. Our guy should be in this convoy,” I said.

  “He better be. I’m getting really tired of this ghillie suit. It’s absorbed so much of my sweat I think it weighs more than I do,” Mario said as he slid onto his stomach beside me, scratching his neck beneath the full body camouflage. “Have I mentioned how much it itches?”

  “Yes, many times. I’m more tired of hearing you bitch about the suits then I am of actually wearing my own,” I said.

  Mario mumbled something offensive about my parents as he peered through his own, smaller binoculars. We watched the cars bump and lurch on the rough terrain. They moved slow. We waited.

  “You know, sitting here for almost a week, you’d think we could have come up with a better name for Patchy McBeard Face,” Mario said.

  “It certainly wasn’t for lack of trying,” I said under my breath.

  Mario had been trying to come up with better nicknames all week. A better one for Patchy McBeard Face, for the Butcher, and, of course, a nickname for himself. Confined on the side of a mountain in our tiny camouflaged hide, I’d had no choice but to listen to them all. That was how Mario dealt with boredom.

  Dealing with tedium is something every warrior has to learn. It is just as important a part of war as kicking down doors. Staying focused during the hours and hours of nothing wasn’t easy, and everyone had different methods for remaining alert in preparation for those few minutes of action that could come at any moment. I just wished Mario’s method was a little less chatty.

  Such was the nature of working with someone else. Sometimes you had to endure them.

  The good news was, if the Butcher had indeed arrived, we could forget about nicknames and instead call in the two bunker buster bombs that would blow him, his wives, his bodyguards, and his favorite hideout into a roiling cloud of dust.

  “I don’t see the Butcher,” Mario murmured.

  “I didn’t say I saw him, but who else would be in a three car caravan with Patchy McBeard Face?”

  “Your mother,” Mario said.

  “I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean,” I said. “Your comebacks are as shitty as your nickname attempts.”

  “Oh, forgive me for trying,” Mario said with a mockingly hurt voice. “You already have a cool nickname. Ice. I mean that is bad ass. That is Top Gun badass. I’ve been with this unit just as long as you have. I need a nickname.”

  “Seeing as how the MESO unit was only formed six months ago, we’ve all been working in it for the same amount of time. You don’t have a nickname because you’ve only been part of special operations in general for two years.” I said. “And, you’ve been on three different teams in those two years. No one has worked with you long enough yet.”

  “Speaking of MESO,” Mario said, apparently no longer interested in discussing why he didn’t have a nickname yet. “I feel like we should lobby for a name change of the unit. I mean, Mechanically Enhanced Special Operations? I know we are using the AI developed tech, but it sounds like code for ‘letting senior citizens play war.’ In your case, that might be true, but there are at least some of us whose bones don’t groan in protest as we walk.”

  “Haha,” I said, not laughing. “These bones have been more places than you can name—”

  “Right, because you’re old,” Mario said. “You’re simply proving my point. In case you couldn’t tell, with your poor eyesight, the target vehicles are one and a half klicks away now.”

  “I see that,” I sighed. I invited the inevitable as we waited, “Fine, what would you call us if not MESO?”

  “So many things. The Cyborg Brigade, Robowarriors, Alpha Dogs, The Silent Killers, Battle Bots, Midnight Assassins . . . umm... Benny’s Bastards—”

  “Who the hell is Benny?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t think of another B word.”

  “This list is going off the rails,” I said, chuckling. It might be annoying at times, but Mario’s naming game did have a way of lightening the mood.

  “Going off the rails? Is that a train reference? Just yet another old person saying I don’t understand,” Mario said, shaking his head. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep working on it. Back to the most important thing. My nickname. Six months with this unit is plenty of time to earn one. I’m sick of being the new guy despite the fact that we are all new.”

  “All right,” I said, keepi
ng my eyes on the still approaching cars. “I’m going to start calling you M&M.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to stand for?”

  “Moniker maker.”

  Mario snickered softly. “Moniker? Who uses that word? That’s even worse than the ones I was coming up with.”

  He wasn’t wrong about that.

  We turned our attention to the matter at hand as the cars neared the hideout and slowed. The dirt track came to a dead end at a square area of tan colored dirt. The vehicles drove into a parking area that had been cut out of the rock. An overhang blocked the entrance from surveillance drones, but from our angle, we could see as people began climbing out. Eight men, all with Ak-47’s hanging from around their necks, got out of two of the cars. The only one I recognized was Patchy McBeard Face. He was the most important anyways. He was the only one that intelligence told us guarded no one other than the Butcher.

  The people in the middle vehicle didn’t get out until someone opened a door for them. Another bodyguard emerged into the shaded parking area, then two women stepped out.

  “Must be two of the wives,” Mario said, all business again.

  I didn’t respond as I watched the last person get out of the car. I felt my heart rate pick up a bit.

  Target acquired.

  “That’s him,” I said.

  “Holy shit,” Mario chortled. “He is really short.”

  I smiled to myself. The intelligence had been right for once. No picture had ever been taken of the Butcher, but our source had said we would be able to recognize him because of how short he was, barely over five feet tall. His bodyguards, and even his wives, seemed to tower over him. No other known members of the Sons of Tyranny, the most active terrorist organization in the world, which the Butcher led, were that short. Along with Patchy McBeard Face’s presence, it was confirmation enough to call in the strike.

  “Got ya, motherfucker,” I said, sliding back from the edge of our hide to our piles of equipment.

  Opening a small case, I pulled out what looked like a large, futuristic rifle. It was not new AI tech. In fact, despite being part of MESO, we didn’t have most of our fancy new gear on this mission. Nothing experimental other than our XL-50’s, the new .50-caliber rifles the AI had developed. It was too important to get this guy.

  The device I was grabbing now was older and more battle tested. The only thing it shot was an invisible targeting laser. Even though we had called in the exact coordinates already, command was taking no chances. The laser would guide a pair of 4000 pound bombs directly into the side of the mountain. I handed it up to Mario.

  “They’ve all gone inside,” he said. “Tell me when to light it up.”

  From another case I pulled out a secure communications device that was folded up inside. I shoved a battery pack into the handle and unfolded the antenna so that it looked like an inside out umbrella. A small LED screen on the handle lit up with five red lights, indicating the battery was fully charged. They changed to blinking yellow as the antenna tried to connect to the appropriate communications satellite.

  I waited.

  The lights kept blinking yellow. It was already preset, so there was nothing to fiddle with. I held it a little higher.

  I waited.

  “What’s taking so long?” Mario asked without turning around.

  “It isn’t picking up a signal,” I said, moving the antenna around. Holding it out to the side and then over my head.

  “I’m sorry you’re having difficulties, Apollo. Did you try turning it off and then on again?” Mario asked, turning around and shooting me a grin.

  “Thank you, IT support,” I said, waving the device around some more. I smacked it with the palm of my hand. “What a piece of shit. It was working from this very spot all week. Now, when we actually need it, it stops working?”

  “Some kind of interference?” Mario asked. “Maybe the Butcher’s got some jamming gear in the house that powered on when they got here.”

  “You’re the communications Sergeant. You tell me.”

  Mario considered the question for a moment before he responded. “Unlikely,” he said. “Even if they have something in the house, I doubt they have anything sophisticated enough to block our gear.”

  “I’m going out to see if I can get a better signal.”

  “Roger,” Mario said, turning back to watch the house. He swapped out the targeting laser for his XL-50 rifle, chambering a round. In the unlikely event that I was spotted, he would need something other than a non-lethal laser to cover me.

  Grabbing my own rifle and holding the antenna in my other hand, I crawled out of our cover and moved further up the mountain. Every fifty meters or so I stopped and checked the device again. Still nothing but blinking yellow lights. Something was preventing connection with the satellites. Whether it was the device in my hands or something else, I couldn’t be sure.

  “Stupid thing,” I said, detaching the battery pack as I moved even higher up the mountain. Maybe Mario was right, and it just needed to reboot.

  The terrain here wasn’t completely void of vegetation, and I was careful to move between the few clumps of bushes and sad looking trees, making sure they were between me and the home below. The house didn’t have any windows, at least not on this side, but if one of the bodyguards came outside and looked up in this direction, I wasn’t going to let them see me standing and waving my hand in the air.

  Reaching the peak, I plugged the antenna back into the battery pack and waited. After five more frustrating minutes, there was still no connection. Although the equipment had worked during our check in, less than twenty-four hours ago, it was possible it had broken down. With all the dust flying around out here, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the device was filled with the stuff. My lungs sure as shit were.

  It was also possible there was a problem with the satellite itself, but I dismissed that quickly. It wasn’t a very likely scenario. I made my way back down to our tent.

  “Well?” Mario asked as I returned.

  “Nothing,” I said. “You give it a try.”

  “You want something done right . . .” Mario started to say, but he didn’t finish when he saw that I wasn’t in the mood anymore.

  We swapped places, and Mario checked out the first device. He couldn’t get it to work either, so he located our spare antenna and battery packs, repeating my earlier attempts. The communications sergeant even hooked the device up to his tablet and began checking the software.

  Half an hour later, he was shaking his head. His jovial mood was gone. “I can’t get a connection. There are no issues that I can see. It’s like there isn’t anything to connect with.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Did both of the antennas get too much dust?”

  “That or the satellites are down,” Mario said, shrugging.

  There was nothing he could do in either scenario and neither possibility was good news.

  “So, we wait?” Mario asked.

  “Yes,” I said angrily. “That fucker better be staying here for a while, or we’re going to miss our chance.”

  I was pissed off that we might miss our window to get the Butcher, but it wasn’t time to worry yet. Equipment failed all the time, and there was a plan in place for just such an occurrence. Every hour, for the remainder of that day and the next, we tried to call in the fire mission and Mario tried to come up with better nicknames for himself.

  The Pain.

  Death Dealer.

  Radio Man

  Echo.

  Needless to say, he came up with nothing good. I ignored him until he figured out that I wasn’t playing his game anymore. We sat there in silence.

  Which is what we also got from the satellite. Silence.

  With no success still by late that night, it was time to start worrying. The mission had a ten-day extraction window. If there was no communication from us before the deadline, the extraction team would come in on the other side of the mountain, expecting
to pull us out. There was a good chance that the noise from the helicopter would alert the Butcher’s bodyguards.

  “Maybe that’s a good thing,” Mario said when I reminded him of our deadline. “When the extraction chopper arrives, we can call in the fire mission from the bird. If the Butcher’s guys hear it, all the better. They’ll try to run, and we can just take them out on the road. I don’t know why we didn’t just do that in the first place.”

  “Well, we might have to,” I said, glancing at my watch. “We’ve still got twenty-six hours before extraction. We’ll keep trying the satellite, but we’ll prepare to leave as well. If we don’t get through, we’ll call in the strike from the bird before we leave.”

  The next day passed slowly, and our equipment was still failing to connect. It was dark as the final hour approached. Under the light of the moon, we put away our remaining gear and broke down the camouflaged hide. We moved up and over the peak of what we had begun calling Mount Boredom. Once at the designated spot on the other side, we crouched, alert and waiting.

  In the darkness, surrounded by our half-dozen large cases of gear, we listened for the sounds of rotors.

  0200 came and went.

  We waited some more.

  Around 0400, a strong breeze picked up. It blew swirling dust and sand beneath our ghillie suits and into our clothes. The military isn’t always as punctual as it pretends to be, so we waited all night.

  With the horizon brightening with the first signs of dawn, Mario broke the silence. “What the fuck’s going on, Top,” Mario whispered, using the nickname for my rank of Master Sergeant, a habit he had when he was unsure of the situation. We exchanged our first worried looks.

  “Good Goddamn question,” I said.

  Our communications gear was on the fritz, maybe the satellites themselves were down, and now our extraction team hadn’t shown up. What the hell was going on out there?

  With daylight approaching, we hurried back to our previous spot and set up the hide again. We repeated the same back breaking procedure the next two days, taking everything down and waiting for a helicopter that never showed, then setting everything back up again.