From: tolman%asylum.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Kenneth Tolman)
Subject: The cybertech wars: The battle for Joki
Date: 26 May 92 17:25:14 GMT

It was the year 3031, on the midafternoon of a June day.  The Koriali forces
had amassed a month before around the planet Joki.  The cybertech robot
warriors had fought valiently even for robots, and now were left to perform
skirmish actions.  The resistance was barely holding on through Joki's
prototype plasma shield.  The Koriali's were nearly assured of their success.
Down on the ground of Joki, in the city of Luna 7, two men argued...


  Brad stood underneath a ruined scraper, looking at the fires in the distance.
"See that fire," he said, "it feeds itself, and grows bigger, that is what
we need."

  "That fire will not help us," growled Thiru, "you need to think more."
He fingered his grenade launcher which contained but one grenade.

  "The fire is like an electronic virus, it grows and grows for its own ends"
replied Brad.  "We need something like that to serve us."

  Two enemy scouts flew overhead strafing with low powered laser beams.  Low
power beams specifically would only extirminate living forms without harming
structures.  Somebody began screaming a few blocks away.

  Thiru thought for a moment, "Yeah, if we could break the ice on that
Koriali slave ship, we could implant a virus which would take down the
communications.  Maybe set them on themselves.  Doubt it."

  Brad sighed, "They have uncoupled computers to prevent electronic viruses.
But they do have high level commands.  I have studied the specs.  We could
issue high level commands, but that is about it."

  The two men jogged away from the building as a screaming missile rained down.
They dove behind a vehicle as the building's lower floor detonated.

  "God damn it!, that facility is already down!" shouted Thiru.  "Fucker" he
waved his fist at the scout speeding away to the east.

  Brad was sketching in the plaster dust on the side of the car, "We have got
to have something self feeding, which will produce more of itself.  Our
defenses our so weak they will be effectively useless.  Once Joki falls then
the other planets will have to fight without us.  We need an ally, an ally
like fire."  An equation was written on the side of the car, an exponential
equation.

  Thiru smiled, "Hey good job, that equation will do us a hell of a lot of
good."  His voice was drowned out by many voices screaming in agony from
the nearest building.

  "Nuclear incindeary" said Brad, shielding his eyes from the bright light
that was eminating from the building.

  "Hey," said Thiru, "if we could perform a massive nuclear explosion just
up there,.. " he slammed his fist in his palm.  The shadow of his movement
appeared on the far side of the street in the light cast by the incindeary.
His huge shadow fist swept across the building.

  "Our old nukes didn't do the job well enough," said Brad, "but that's a
good idea...  Lets get to a terminal jack, now.  You have to break the ice
on the command slave ship."

  Thiru looked at his friend, "what the fuck?" But he didn't have time to
say much, for his friend was already running, and a cyber scout had
appeared strafing with low powered lasers.

  The low powered beams were firing into the ground behind them, spitting
up plumes of smoke where they struck.  The hiss of the ground as it
was struck was the only sign of its deadlyness.  Thiru could hear
that they were getting closer.

  "It must be trying for shielded personell, it has to have seen us by now"
shouted Thiru.

  "We have to get the fucking core," said Brad running ahead, apparently lost
in thought.

  Thiru sat and spun, pulling his grenade launcher up to his shoulder.  The
laser beams were striking a few yards behind them, and he new it was time
to face the cyber scout.  When Thiru spun around, the cyber scout reaimed
its weapons, directly at him.  Thiru pulled the trigger, "shouldn't be so
god damned cocky, you hunk of metallic crap"  A laser pulse fired out of
the cyber ship, striking Thiru in the leg.  His grenade was already
in an arc for the sensory gear on the ship, streaming out with a trail
of smoke.  The sensory apparatus on the front of the cyber ship exploded into
flames, and the scout visibly shook and dropped its corner.  The ship wavered,
and began to speed away, but ran straight into a skyscraper a five
hundred meters away and then  blew up in a beautful shower of sparks and
fragments.

  "Fucker," said Thiru, grabbing his leg.  "Brad, you shit, where the hell
are you going?"

   Brad was way ahead, pulling on the door to some building, trying to get
it open.  "I have got to jack in" he shouted back, "so do you, you are going
to break the ice"

   "Oh great," mumbled Thiru, "I break the ice while you play video games
in the god damned computer"  He limped as fast as he could to catch up.

  Another cyber scout had appeared on the street way behind him.  Thiru
threw the empty grenade launcher on the ground and tried to run, but fell.
Suddenly three men deshielded off to his left, and waved at him.  The
deshielding made them visible, and they carried hefty weaponry.  "Well take
him" said one of them.  Another scout appeared behind the first.

  Thiru got up and limped past them, into the building Brad had gone into.
"Did you see that?" said Thiru, "There were three shielded men heavily armed
that let us nearly get toasted back there."

  Brad was opening some terminal connections under a table. He had a frown
on his face, and did not comment to what Thiru had said.  "Lets go" was
all he said.

  The grid was a light blue mesh of lines which appeared before them.
Ruined computers showed up as only slight gaps at nodes where there
was no activity.  Surprisingly, the matrix activity was still pretty high
even thought the planet was nearly demolished.  Thiru sped off towards
the satellite uplinks, Brad was descending into the classified scientific
data.

  Brad passed by empty node after empty node, until he found the main library
computers.  It was up, and running well.  The image of a short man in
glasses appeared before him.  "Access code" was all he said.

  "Alpha omega, citizen class 4571," said Brad, "identity number 1447962100jql"

  "Access," said the short man, pausing, "accepted."

  Brad dove into the crystal that had appeared, scanning the walls for
indexes.  He quickly found planetary core data, and began scanning it.  He
wasn't reading fast enough, so hacked up a pattern searcher which would
expand on its own key words through search and add.  He didn't have a lot
of time.  While that ran he tried to access into the fusion link.

  "Access denied" said a voice somewhere, and a snake appeared hissing and
writhing.  "Citizen class 4561 I.N. 1447962100jql attempting breach of
classified information," the snake said.

  "fuck you," said Brad.  He pulled out a viral slowdown, and began seeking
the memory region the snake was run out of.  He found an adjacent region,
and planted the slowdown.  The snake began to writhe slower.  Brad began
trying to figure the access method, darting in and out of the snakes path.
His right arm screamed in pain as the snake caught up to him on one pass.
A deep voice now intoned over the entire region, "I.N. 1447962100jql attempting
access breach in fusion link.  Apprehend."

  A slit of light opened, and he darted in it.  The snake followed him in,
slowly.  He pulled up some files, and began autoloading files he did not
have time to read into his implanted chip.  He found the something he wanted,
which was a list of reaction equations for plutonium.  They were exponential
equations.  He darted back out, and looked for his search and add program.
It opened up and gave out a stream of planetary core data, indicating
locations of plutonium.  23% of the planetary core underneath the south eastern
continent of Hillio was made of plutonium.

  Thiru suddenly appeared, looking at him.  "I broke the ice"  Thiru did not
look well, "I have a wedge to slip back in with, they will notice soon."
He looked at Brad's arm,  "hurt by a library computer?"  Then he began to
laugh, and laugh harder.

  "fuck off," said Brad, "lets go"

  Thiru looked at the information streaming out of the search and add program,
and wrinkled his brow.  They sped off across the blue landscape, towards
the satellite uplinks.  When they passed through the uplink, Brad noticed
all the tricks that Thiru had pulled off, and was a little embarressed at
his own inadequacy.  It did not matter much anymore though.

  They came to the wedge, and Brad slipped in.  Thiru grabbed him as he
was nearly through.  "You can't do it man, what the fuck are you doing!
I figured it out, you fucking traitor"

  Brad jerked back, "The Koriali's have 90% of their forces around this
planet, look!"  He pointed at a map of the planet with the tactical positions
of the ships.  "We have the chance to win this war!"

  "Not that way, we have to fight on!  You fucker," Thiru reached in to
grab him with the other arm, but Brad had already bit his attached arm
and broke free.  The wedge began to collapse.

  "No you fucker!" screamed Thiru, "our own scouts are still fighting, we
have a chance!" His arm was in the collapsing wedge, and he tried to hold
it open so he could slip through.

  "Even if we held them off, the other planets forces are too weak to
fight them, we had the strongest position!  Forget it Thiru, we are going
to die one way or the other."  The wedge was nearly closed, and Thiru had
to pull back.

  Thiru managed to say only a bit more, "Hey, good luck kid" he said, and
he said more words which could not be heard.

   The command ship was arrayed neatly, and only certain high level commands
could be executed.  No viruses could be transmitted out, hardly any real
information.  But enough for Brad.  He scanned through all the planetary
core data he had, and then through the equations.  He formed a targetting
command, and executed it.  Then he formed a firing pattern sequence, and
directed the Koriali forces to lay down a heavy bombardment in a specific
region. The Koriali forces obeyed the orders without question.




  Far far away, a Koriali commander watched the battle as his ship sped
into the region.  He was confident they were going to win this war, and
was glad that the most important battle was nearly over.  Soon they would
mop up the other planets with inferior defenses.  He looked back at the
battle scene. He saw all of his ships laying heavy fire into one
region of the planet.  He wondered what the hell they were doing, he did
not remember that in any briefing.  Then he saw with horror as the planet
shot out a mantle plume, and then detonated in massive explosion.  The
Koriali ships hovering over the planet were consumed by the fire, and the
farther out ships did not withstand the impact of the shock wave.  He
watched 90% of his forces dissapear with one explosion, and he sat onto his
knees, and cried.