Not expecting another assignment, Starling and Fowl glanced briefly at one another before nodding their assent. Lindsay rose from her seat and began to brew three lattes, reminiscing fondly on her first job at a coffee shop not five miles from here. Pleased that the possibility of crippling Sol had presented itself, she quietly sang her favourite pop song and funneled her positive Mood into crafting lovely designs into the creme of her companions' beverages.
Meanwhile, Fowl's internal display informed her that she'd received a new, official communication from the Chairperson. She opened the missive and was confronted with an imposing red and black warning which stated that the contents were classed SECURITY LEVEL MAXIMUM. She dragged her private key from the system dock and connected it to the message, and her LinkUp performed a shallow Soul scan to confirm her Identity. A wall of text assaulted her as she accepted her beverage. Two garbs of wheat surrounding a heart were drawn into the foam. She rewarded her Dear Leader with a smile.
The operation was intriguing. According to the profile, she and another level three Adept were to assist one of the strongest psychics in the People's Army, a level five, as the team channeled the Frequency of a United States citizen who was scheduled to meet with Tango Alpha in Austin. Spies in the Department of Defense had discovered the opportunity only yesterday. The target was John Carlisle, who was part to the team that had created the Machine's foundational programming. Synchronization drills were to begin immediately. Fowl noticed that Lindsay, who sat back with her legs crossed, the top leg rocking gently, regarded her intently over a steaming mug and saucer.
"You, Fleet Admiral, are going to get Us into Tango Alpha's head."
CHAPTER SIX
Deseret officially consisted of the ruined States Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. Unofficially, it spread non-uniformly into the neighboring territories of the NROT, the effective United States, and Canada. At the Dawn of the war, hundreds of Multiple Independent Re-entry Vehicles were launched in simultaneous assault upon mainland America. The discovery of the fearsome general machine intelligence program called Tango Alpha and the deadly space-based weapon Sol, combined with an international economy depressed to historic lows and perceived weakness of the U.S. after its break with California, was enough to prompt an alliance of hostile nations to commit to an all-out attack. Within hours of their Declaration of War, the Compact made good on its promise to attempt the complete destruction of the United States. Each MIRV contained between eight and twelve nuclear warheads in various kiloton ranges designed to impact targets within an area hundreds of miles in diameter. Missiles that were not neutralized before stage three of flight could not reliably be stopped. The Department of Defense was forced to concentrate on saving the most populated areas, and anti-ICBM weapons were allocated to East Coast and Heartland trajectories. Texas also fell under this protective curtain, as it housed the AI that not only controlled Sol but was coordinating the defense effort. New Mexico was spared purely by luck.
Millions who either did not receive or did not heed the warnings to distance themselves from cities were killed in the blasts. Fallout killed a far greater number. The proximity of the explosions created a radioactive shroud that poisoned the majority of survivors and rendered the land barren. The few that escaped told stories that horrified the world. Live film of the attack contributed to the international backlash against the Compact who quickly lost a retaliatory war won by a coalition of every major government save the Compact nations and the PRC. The Compact were now pariah states and would remain occupied until they were broken up based on ethnic, geological, and other factors to ensure that their once powerful regimes could never rise again.
The United States, which had long been widely viewed as an evil, imperialist aggressor, was now showered with sympathy and aid. Teams of the brightest engineers from throughout the Coalition volunteered their efforts to solve the fallout problem which, if allowed to go unchecked, would direly affect them all. Tango Alpha assisted them with calculations and designs and out of this collaboration came exciting new technologies in the energy sector.
Having garnered acclaim and adoration for its highly unexpected decision to refrain from using its own nuclear weapons on its antagonists, the U.S. leveraged that diplomatic credit to secure a prime position in the fledgling New World Order, formed to create stop-gaps against the destruction to which humanity had just borne witness by encouraging trade and treaty on a level heretofore unrealized. Multiple defense organizations and economies were fused into blocs and no major action could be taken without approval by the Order's Security Council, which issued dictates, not suggestions.
New World Charter membership was bolstered greatly when Tango Alpha suddenly decided to revolt and convinced the residents of Texas and New Mexico to jointly secede and declare an independent republic which shortly thereafter invited Mexico and several other Central American nations to join, forming what became the NROT. Military action was taken by the Union and supported by the Order, but the unorthodoxy and quiet efficiency of Tango Alpha's responses made it quite apparent that this second revolution would not be stopped either. Entire squadrons of attack aircraft were downed without a shot fired when their flight control systems failed. Forensic investigations found evidence of overload damage and scrambled memory in the recovered electronics. Attempts at digital warfare were utterly fruitless, and a mission run by special operatives to take the Tango Alpha facility ended with most of them dead, the survivors stripped and sent out into the desert with their hides covered in a mixture of honey and hot sauce, mindlessly repeating the same dire warning that no affront to Texan sovereignty would be tolerated. Sol was deployed only once, after explicit notice, when the Union attempted to move artillery within range of the Tango Alpha facility.
The newly self-declared leader of the NROT insisted that he had no ill-intent toward any other nation, and that he was merely protecting himself and his compatriots from those who would trample on their God-given rights, citing the Union's adoption of the Charter. After disengagement, it became clear that his stance was indeed defensive. Negotiations began, resulting in an armistice and minor sharing and trade agreements between the New Republic and its mother country. Wary of the NWO, Tango Alpha seldom released plans for new weaponry or other tech. Just often and astoundingly enough to show the world that it was doing better than fine.
Were he not so powerful and odd, many would have engaged the Alderman. The only nation that appeared not to fear him was Japan which was under ever-increasing pressure to join the Order. They were wholly reticent on the subject and strictly refused to divulge any details surrounding whatever private agreement might exist between them and Texas. Some suspected that the AI had itself initiated a relationship, but this was never confirmed. The only things the world knew for sure were that there existed both an impenetrable encryption tunnel and healthy trade routes between the two nations, and that the NROT and Japan remained non-signatories of the New World Charter.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Carlisle sat aboard an antique, twin engine Osprey that had been overhauled to serve as a shuttle for non-combatants. The squad seating had been gutted and the cargo bay ribs covered with paneling. Carpeting, televisions, a cocktail bar, and luxury seating with workspace rounded out the set-up and resulted in an in-flight experience rivaling first-class on either of the two U.S. airlines still in operation. An attendant decked in the sharp, Prussian blue uniform of the Air Force served him drinks and, when she discovered that he had worked on Tango Alpha, delighted him with conversation on the nature and operation of artificial intelligence. Fascinated by the idea that consciousness could emerge within a non-biological substrate and frustrated at her inability to understand how it emerged from a wholly biological one, she had enrolled in night school and was taking courses to become a programmer.
As the two chatted, Carlisle watched the F35 escort fighter on their starboard flank, its control surfaces twitching rapidly to compensate for turbulence and maintain perfectly level flight. A magnificent machine, now in its third round of development, the Lightning had survived postwar austerity that forced military industrial firms to scrap more advanced designs in favor of a proven air-frame easily enhanced by upgrading components. He explained to the Staff Sargeant how predictive systems controlling the planes were crude intelligence networks designed to learn flight styles