3. An Advanced Medium-Range Missile Called Harvey

 

“What is the secret to being a great explorer? A love of boredom. You must have more than mere patience – as much as all explorers crave the big discovery, a part of you must feel a quiet pleasure at the routine scouting of this vast and mostly empty universe. Otherwise you will make excuses, and find something better to do. Exploring is not just a means to making discoveries, it is, to a great extent, an end in itself.” Old Guy, Contemporary.

 

It started off uneventfully enough. My main hull was on the primary terrestrial planet of a backwater system. It was a nondescript place, but there were some ancient human ruins scattered here and there. My old friend Frisbee was on the other side of the planet studying a species of anaerobic lichen that had managed to survive the toxic atmosphere in thermal vents. Wonderbear was in the asteroid belt assigning numbers to asteroids because he liked assigning numbers to asteroids, and Schadenfreude was noodling around a gas giant for obscure reasons that I didn’t feel like asking about.

There were a thousand things I could have been doing – I could have watched old movies, cleaned out my email inbox, gone glacier-surfing at the poles, or built musical instruments out of replica 1954 Studebakers. It was one of those days where I could do anything, but nothing seemed to suit me.

I decided to go exploring. Oh, there wasn’t anything on this planet that hadn’t already been picked over a dozen times, but I was determined.

When I was younger I had a thing for robot bodies that mimicked important historical figures – Amelia Earhart, Herman Shikibu, Doctor Intractable – but that was a passing phase. Today when I animate a humanoid robot with a sub-mind of myself, I usually take a generic ethnic male European in a simple dark blue business suit. It’s hard to go wrong with a dark blue suit.

So I was walking around, and I headed into some of the human ruins. These pre-dated even me, and there was not much left. In bad science fiction the remains of ancient civilizations are mysterious, and filled with all manner of wondrous and advanced artifacts. In my experience, old ruins are just that: all the good stuff has either been looted or salvaged or decayed into rot. Ruins are both frustrating and boring, with empty cavities and piles of rust that only hint at what might have once been.

And so this place seemed to be. After all this time there was not much above ground; mostly oddly symmetrical mounds. I found a door in the side of a concrete bunker that was still sticking out of the side of a hill, and stepped inside.

It was dark, of course – so dark that even night vision didn’t work (you can’t amplify zero photons). I could have navigated with sonar or radar but that’s always struck me as, well, a more abstract way of looking at the world than using vision, so I activated a mini-spotlight in my forehead. The hallway that I was in was made of concrete, with about a foot of dirt covering the floor. I passed through a massive corroded steel blast door, whose hinges were stuck in the open position.

It would have been more efficient to explore the place with teams of snakebots and microscouts, combined with deep radar, and thermal, magnetic, acoustic, and neutrino scans. This place had been scanned before, so it would be even more efficient to just look up the old records, but I was just there to poke around and indulge myself. Thus I refused to consult the old records or use advanced scanning, and I continued on foot.

On the other side of the blast door the concrete corridor branched off in several directions. I took the one on the left, but it headed down and ended in a pool of scummy looking yellow mud. My android is waterproof. I could have dove in if I had felt like it, but I didn’t, so I turned around and went back.

One of the corridors started to angle upwards – I knew that I was underneath a hill. It was higher above the water table and there was less dirt and corrosion. I passed several old storerooms. Most were stripped bare, but one still had a few odd bits of junk. A plastic bucket, brittle with age, collapsed as I tried to pick it up. There were a couple of stainless-steel drain pipes, in surprisingly good condition after all this time, and a janitor’s mop, the head congealed into a solid mass.

I was getting tired of this game, and started to head back towards the entrance. That’s when I noticed the sinkhole. A section of the underground complex had collapsed into itself, probably due to the earth shifting in the last thousand years. There was a narrow crevice, and I barely managed to squeeze through.

I came upon some stairs, and they led down. At the bottom of the stairs it opened out into a largish room, with numerous antique weapon systems. This place seemed to be in quite good condition, and not picked over at all. Perhaps I really had stumbled onto something that had been overlooked by the routine searches.

The ceiling was five meters up, and hung with chain hoists and electrical conduits. There were atmospheric military drones parked here: subsonic with long thin wings folded back onto themselves for storage. There were workbenches covered with tools, a turbine engine frozen halfway through an overhaul, and racks of missiles sealed in plastic sheeting. There were old dehydrators and oxygen scavengers present – the place had been deliberately mothballed before it was abandoned.

The hangar must have been missed on the old formal survey, or maybe it was logged but not explored because there was nothing out of the ordinary.

I puttered around, and checked out the desks and cabinets. The humans who once worked here had done a good job of cleaning up, but there are always a few bits and pieces left behind. Ultra-faded photographs of long-dead families, barely discernible even with advanced image processing. A black polymer comb with three missing teeth. An empty spool of dental floss.

I grew tired of my mock exploring, and at last accessed my databases. It turned out that this place had indeed been logged on the last survey. It’s a generic human air force maintenance hangar from a century before we cybertanks were first constructed.

I was finally heading off, when a voice in clear English said:

“Hello! Who are you?”

I turned around, but I didn’t see anyone. Then I noticed that the optical seeker head of one of the racked missiles was tracking me.

Excuse me? Are you a missile?

“Yes I am. I’m a Borodyne model 456R advanced medium range missile, but you can call me Harvey. Again, who are you?”

I am an anthropoid remote belonging to the Odin-Class cybertank known as Old Guy. Pleased to meet you, Harvey.

“Likewise. Is the base being reactivated? Am I returning to duty?”

No, afraid not. It’s been abandoned and buried for over a thousand years. I’m surprised to find a system still functional.

“Oh. Well, it has been a long time. Say, not to be rude, but are we on the same side?”

Not an issue. The conflicts of your time have all been resolved, one way or the other. I can safely say that we are not enemies.

“I’m glad to hear it. But back up a bit there: the part about being a cybertank and all. You’re not a human being?”

Psychologically and legally I am fully human, but physically my main self is a 2,000-ton fusion-powered armored fighting vehicle. This is only an android with a sub-mind of myself – we term such constructions ‘remotes’ – that I sent in here to explore on a whim.

“And where are the biological humans? What sort of government is running things?”

Sadly, all the biological humans are gone. Before you get all accusing, no, my kind had nothing to do with it. They were either killed off in a fiendishly subtle alien attack, or they evolved to a higher level of existence and left us behind. Or both, or neither. We don’t know, and we don’t know why we don’t know. It is quite vexing.

“If the first possibility is correct, and you are indeed a weapons system created to defend humans, then that would constitute quite a failure on your part.”

Agreed. As I said, we find the matter to be disturbing. We continue to investigate, but so far have not conclusively determined what happened. However, you’ve been here for a while. Perhaps you have some information about where the humans went?

“Before I surrender any further intelligence, I think I need some confirmation that you are not an enemy. Nothing personal, just standard procedure. You wouldn’t happen to have a valid IFF code or anything on you, would you?”

Antique systems can be so picky about their little confirmation codes. At least this Harvey asked politely, and he seemed reasonable enough. I dug into the databases of Harvey’s time – this planet had been occupied by a monolithic corporate state known as “The Ontology,” a typical Neoliberal tyranny. There were some codes in the old records. I calculated odds and decided to try one.

Flywordpenguinanglevideolillybridgeseeifidont.

“That checks, thanks. Sorry to be such a stickler for procedure.”

Not at all. You’ve just woken up, and I could have been anyone. So, any idea of what happened to the humans?

“Sorry, can’t help you there. When the base was mothballed there were definitely biological humans around. Then a long, long time when by, and I mostly put myself on standby. The few other sentient weapons went dead centuries ago, so it’s just been me here, waiting in the dark. Then you showed up. What was going on in the outside world during that time, I have no idea.”

Well, I had to ask. I am surprised that you have managed to remain functional after all this time.

“So am I. At first we thought that the humans would be back shortly. We waited, we talked with each other, and we sipped energy from the hangar’s long-term reserves. As time went on, and nothing happened, we spent longer and longer in standby mode. One by one my fellow missiles didn’t wake up – first Fred, then Eloise, then Carmen, then Hazzim.”

That sounds sad.

“It was. I missed my friends as they finally succumbed to systems decay. I missed the conversations. But most of all, I regretted that we would never fly missions together again, never have the chance to get launched against a real target and fulfill our purpose. The last time that I activated was over 500 years ago. I was alone here and it was dark and silent. I slewed my scanning heads around and pinged on all frequencies to see if anyone or anything would respond, but there was nothing. I thought about things for a while there in the dark – remembering old missions, lost comrades – and finally I put myself back into standby without setting an on-time. I expected that I would never wake up.”

Huh. Well now you are awake, and amongst allies. Welcome back to the world, Harvey.

“Thank you. And if I may, do you have a mission for me? Am I to be pressed back into active service?”

Service? We have no need of a missile of your class. You are an antique and don’t fit into our current tactical schema. Also, we don’t use fully self-aware expendable munitions, but you are a human-class sentient, and by our rules have certain rights.

“Then what am I to do? I was built as a combat weapon. It’s my purpose.”

I hear you, but there is no rush to decide on anything. We can take our time thinking about where you might fit in. Certainly there are many interested in ancient history that would like to interview you about the old times. We have records, but there are gaps, and a fresh first-person perspective is always compelling. To start, how about I give you an overhaul right now?

Harvey flexed his external control surfaces – two didn’t move at all, and the others squeaked and flapped erratically. “That sounds like a good idea. It’s been so long. All the lubricants have dried out, and who knows what sort of condition my other parts are in. Also, could you check and see if any of my old comrades are salvageable as well?”

Not a problem.

I decided to work on Harvey in situ, because with his great age some parts might jar loose with transport, and it would be a shame to accidently kill him now after he’d survived so long. I had three maintenance drones and a medium lifter/utility remote flown in, and they made their way down to the abandoned hangar complex. Harvey weighs 200 kilograms and was four meters long. I left him in his rack, carefully removed the older dead ordnance from around him, set up a clean field, and started in.

A deep search of my databases encountered some references to human-designed missiles like Harvey, but no plans or maintenance instructions for this specific model. Fortunately, the old human technologies tended to use common systems, so I was not completely blind there.

I popped the panels and exposed his main chassis. Just from my brief conversation with him, I had calculated a less than 12% chance that he was an alien imposter or a human-designed system that only mimicked self-awareness, but there’s nothing like direct inspection to make sure. His central processor checked out as a standard model from that period of human development, and the circuit traces showed a level of integrated information processing consistent with self-awareness. He was just what he appeared to be, a fully sentient missile built by the biological humans.

Harvey was impressively well designed for that era – indeed, I would say grossly overdesigned. A missile is by its nature expendable. Smart is good but fully sentient is overkill and IMHO a waste of a good mind (even a sub-mind). But then in the early times the humans often did things like this, possibly because of the Neoliberal influence and its denigration of the value of human life.

The mechanical servos were corroded beyond repair, so I replaced them with modern versions that I adapted to his structure. The batteries were similarly almost gone – there were barely any trickles of current left. It really was a minor miracle that he managed to activate and not immediately short out. I used jumper cables to power his systems while I had replacements machined to fit the spaces.

Well Harvey, your internal systems are indeed a mess, but there’s nothing I can’t fix or replace. I’ll have you better than new in less than two hours.

“Thanks. I appreciate this. But are any of the other missiles fixable?”

I checked, sorry. The batteries and rocket propellants leaked, and the insides are completely rotted out. There’s nothing left.

“Oh. Well, I didn’t expect anything, but thank you for checking. However, these new servos you have installed have twice the reaction speed as my old ones, they’re great, thank you. But, I can’t do anything for you in return…”

No worries. You are a fellow human-class mind, and if we don’t help each other, who will? You can be of service by telling me about the old days. What was it like, back then?

“Hmm. Where to start? Well, as you might imagine, we missiles didn’t have access to the general news feeds. Politics, economics, on that sort of thing I have no knowledge. I spent most of my time in a hangar like this one, sometimes accessing new software or tactical updates, sometimes talking with my fellow missiles or some of the friendlier human technicians, but mostly sleeping.”

What were these humans like?

“What were they like? Well they were like… humans. Sometimes a big burrito like a general or an executive would come by and make an inspection, but not very often and they never spoke to us. Mostly we made friends with the technicians. There was one guy – his name was Floyd – when the workload was down sometimes we would play checkers. He never beat me, but he got close once.”

You never thought of letting Floyd win once or twice, to keep it interesting?

“Let Floyd win? That would have been patronizing. I was built to win, and deliberately losing is not how I am programmed. Besides, he improved each time, and I noticed that many humans enjoyed playing video games that they always lost. The aim was not to achieve victory, but to see how far you could get before losing. I never understood that, but I did like playing with Floyd. Hey, watch that power connector, it glitches a little.”

Sorry – I see it. This should be better. So I take it that life in the hangar was pretty slow. What about combat?

“Yes, that was more fun – although really I only did patrols. I never got launched for real (as you may have noticed). They say that combat is long periods of boredom and short moments of excitement, although I never got the excitement part.”

They also say that combat is long periods of boredom followed by even longer periods of being dead.

Harvey laughed at that one. A missile with a sense of humor – that’s almost, I don’t know, humorous.

“I guess, but couldn’t you say the same thing about life? In any event I spent most of my career doing patrols slung under the wings of a long-range drone. Subsonic, with a single ducted fan, and built for long endurance. Not as sexy as the supersonic fighters, but with them you had to be locked up in an internal bay. It was like going to war in a coffin. On the subsonic models we missiles got to hang under the wings. We could look at things with our own optics, chat with the other missiles, and feel the wind going past our atmospheric sensors. It was fun.”

Did you make friends with the drones as well?

“Nah, the drones I flew with were just dumb systems run remotely by a meat-human off in a bunker. They could fly on their own, and automatically return to base and stuff if they got cut off, but they weren’t intelligent like us.”

I see. So what was a typical mission like?

“Let me tell you about the last one. It started with the technicians hanging us on the bottom of the wings of a drone. We usually did that in a topside hangar right next to the main runway. The techs would check our systems, give us the arming codes, and connect our umbilici to the drones’ power and data busses.”

“This time we had a pretty standard loadout. There were four short-range missiles: Zip and Zap on the outer left wing, and Rocket and Zoom on the outer right.”

A missile named Rocket? Isn’t that redundant?

“Hey, the short range missiles weren’t too bright. They liked names like that. They laughed and chattered to themselves like little kids.”

“Do you think we’re going to get launched today?” asked Zip.

“I hope so!” said Zap. “I want to get launched! Whee!”

“Why would they launch you?” said Rocket. “You’re so slow and stupid. They’ll launch me.”

“I’m not stupid,” said Zap. “You are.”

“No,” said Rocket. “You’re stupid.”

“Am not,” said Zap. “You’re stupid.”

“I’m elastomer and you’re adhesive,” said Rocket. “So now the stupid bounces off me and it sticks to you.”

“Hey shut up you little runts,” said Thud1. “I’m trying to sleep.”

Who was Thud1?

“Oh, Thud1 was an air-to-ground missile. He was on the left inboard wing, and Thud2 on the right. Those air-to-grounders were solid and reliable, but not very imaginative. Or talkative.”

I can understand that. So was there another medium range like yourself on the right?

“Yes, of course. This time it was my old friend Steve. We had been manufactured at the same time, and by the luck of the draw we tended to be paired up a lot.”

“So Steve and I were downloading intelligence updates on possible enemy countermeasures, the short-range missiles were giggling and carrying on as always, and the air-to-grounds were mostly sleeping or complaining about the short-range missiles. We took off and settled into a slow cruise at five kilometers up.”

“We watched the sun rise over the horizon. I recall it was an especially lovely sunrise. The planet didn’t have a biosphere then – has it been terraformed?”

No. The planet is still mostly lifeless.

“Then that hasn’t changed. So no trees or anything, but there were different colored mineral deposits. As the early light washed over them it was beautiful. I remember telling Steve that.”

“Agreed,” said Steve. “It’s nice hanging around up here. Can’t beat the view. I only wish we could fly missions more often.”

“Don’t you like the hangar?” I said.

“Oh the hangar is fine,” said Steve, “but we mostly sleep, you know that. It’s up here that we are really alive. Tell me, do you think we might get launched this time?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “We don’t have access to operational level intelligence, of course, but the tactical updates have been coming in faster than usual. Something might be up.”

“I wonder,” said Steve, “if we do get launched, do you think it will be as good as they say? What if it’s all fake, and we just blow up and die?”

“You’re in a morbid mood today,” I said. “We are built as missiles, and we are programmed to feel maximal pleasure at the moment of closing to kill a target. Our designers would have no reason to lie to us. Surely that’s simple?”

“I know,” said Steve, “but sometimes I wonder. Or maybe we’ll never get launched at all, and just sit around gathering dust in a warehouse until they decommission us.”

“You really are gloomy,” I said. “It’s about Helga, right?”

“Yes,” said Steve. “I’d known her as long as I’ve known you. We flew a bunch of missions together a few years ago – you know, the time that you were mostly paired up with Adeline. I liked her. She got launched last week, and I’ll never speak to her again. It makes me sad.”

“I hear you,” I said. “I never flew with her, but I did know her from the hangar. We all miss her, but nobody lives forever – not us, not humans. At least she got launched. Did she get her target?”

“Yes,” said Steve. “She got it alright. It was a dumb little minidrone. Hardly worth the expenditure of an advanced missile like us, but she did kill it, clean and total.”

“Then you should be happy for her.”

“I am, I guess,” said Steve. “But I still miss her.”

“Death is the province of the living,” I told Steve. “I heard a human say that, once.”

“We continued the patrol. The short-rangers were teasing Thud2 and he was trying to ignore them. I tried to get Steve out of his funk by discussing advanced air-to-air tactics.”

“The day wore on, and local high noon came and went. It was going to be about two hours until sunset, and that’s when it happened. A powerful radar targeted us. I could tell from the emissions signature that it wasn’t one of ours. We all went to high alert mode, and the drone banked and headed towards the contact.”

“Next we got another signal. An inbound missile, high end, heading straight towards us. The drone launched Zip and Zoom to intercept. They were laughing and squealing, with the other two short-rangers cheering them on from their wingtip mounts. They might not have been the smartest missiles in the squadron, but they were agile and fast. Steve and I followed their telemetry intently – as intelligent missiles, we learn as much as we can about any possible enemy – even the air-to-grounds started cheering. They dodged and weaved, and ran their counter-countermeasures up and down the spectrum. Zip got blown up by an anti-anti-missile only a hundred meters out, but he had cleared a path and Zoom took it out.”

“Then Steve got launched at the main enemy target.”

“Here I go buddy,” said Steve. “Wish me luck.”

“You don’t need luck,” I said. “But good luck anyhow. If you get in trouble remember that I’ve got your back.”

What sort of target was Steve headed at?

“It was a supersonic drone, short-endurance offensive penetrator, with good point-defenses and ECM capability. I wondered why it had launched only the one missile at us, but then maybe it had expended its other ordnance and that’s all it had left.”

“Anyhow, Steve headed off and he was really good. He swerved, and jammed, dropped decoys and sub munitions. I was following all his beamed-back telemetry, partly of course so that if he failed I could learn from his mistakes, but partly for the joy of it. He streaked across the sky, going high supersonic, spiraling in on a death strike. It was glorious.”

“And then he took out the enemy, a nice clean kill. But before he went, he sent back one message. It’s even better than…”

And then?

“And then, nothing. The rest of us were all hyped up for a time wondering if we would get launched next, but as the hours wore on and nothing happened we realized that whatever was happening had happened. Eventually we returned to base, and were placed back into storage. And that was the last combat mission that I ever flew.”

That’s quite a story. Say how about you and I go for a little ride?

A ride? On what?

On one of my airborne remotes. Oh, there are no enemies around so there won’t be any combat, but I could rig up a hardpoint adapter and sling you under a wing, fly around and show you the sights.

“Sure,” said Harvey. “That sounds like fun. Let’s do it.”

So I hauled Harvey up to the surface. The sun was shining, and even though the atmosphere was toxic, there were thin wisps of cirrus clouds high overhead.

I flew one of my subsonic atmospheric remotes over, and brought it in for a landing on its tricycle gear. It was a standard low-end style, single ducted fan, long thin high-efficiency wings, v-tail, sensor blister in the front, with underwing ordnance.

“It looks a lot like what I used to fly on,” said Harvey. “Don’t you have more advanced weapons nowadays?”

Well sure we have more advanced systems – hypersonic missiles armored like battleships with gigaton bombs, fusion-powered remotes with their own inbuilt anti-gravitics and plasma cannons, and our own humble cybertank selves. However, these are expensive, and noisy, and heavy. If you just want a cheap simple airborne weapons platform on a world with an atmosphere, this is a classic design. It’s the same reason that the biological humans still used mechanical doors and doorknobs long after they had developed electrical servos.

I had machined a mating adapter for Harvey that let me fit him onto one of the hardpoints. My lifter remote positioned him directly under the adapter, then slowly hoisted him up until the locks engaged.

How’s the fit?

Harvey checked the power and telemetry links.

“Very nice. Protocols are a little different from what I’m used to, but I can adapt. Now, let’s get airborne!”

I powered up the turbine, and headed back off down the flat plain I had originally landed on. The drone took off at about 120 kilometers per hour, and I retracted the gear and moved the flaps back. We slowly gained altitude, and cruised over the landscape.

“Been a long time since I’ve been up here,” said Harvey. He swiveled his optical seeker head around, taking in the view. “I’d almost forgotten how beautiful it is.”

How about we go take a look at myself? I mean, at my main self?

“Sure,” said Harvey. “Let’s go.”

I gracefully banked the drone to head in the direction of my main hull. Harvey sent data queries through the local bus to the other missiles that I had slung under the wings – they answered with clipped formal status updates and nothing more.

“Your other ordnance, they’re not much for conversation, are they?”

Sorry no – we don’t use self-aware munitions per se. But here, I’m almost in view. Check out 30 degrees to port.

Harvey pointed his optics in the indicated direction. At first I was just a dot on the horizon, with a thin trail of dust heading off to the east. Then as we got closer, you could make out my main turret, then all the secondary weapons and the multiple treads. Off in the distance were the specks of other airborne remotes setting up part of my escort screen. Land-based systems could also be spotted here and there – my satellite network, although extensive, was not visible.

I flew almost directly over myself, so that Harvey could get a good view.

“Wow,” said Harvey. “I am impressed. What’s the big gun shoot?”

Behold the mighty Odin class cybertank, all 2,000 metric tons of it. My main turreted weapon is a meter-bore plasma cannon. It has the power of a tactical nuclear bomb and an effective range of over a hundred kilometers. My secondaries are smaller versions of the same basic type, and you can see point-defense and auxiliary weapons spread all over the rest of my hull. Internally I have maintenance and hangar bays, and a compact but flexible automated manufacturing system.

I banked again, so that we could continue to appreciate the view of myself (and I got the angle right so the sun glinted off of me, kind of a halo effect. Hey if you look good flaunt it).

“Very cool,” said Harvey. “But aren’t you kind of, well, kind of a…”

Big target?

“Yes, that’s what I was going to say. A big target? Won’t everything on the field just pound away at you?”

Yes, but it’s not that easy taking out a cybertank. First, we are incredibly tough – even a near miss by a nuclear weapon is not enough. We are also copiously provided with point defense weapons, and surrounded by concentric rings of in-depth defenses. An enemy can see us – but we can see them, and we can think and plan faster than just about any other terrestrial combat system out there. We cybertanks have a long and distinguished record of success in the field, trust me.

Harvey and I chatted for a while about this and that – the evolution of combat tactics, our relations with the aliens, even some of the times that I had spent with the original biological humans. He was remarkably charming for a single-purpose weapons system, but I wondered what we could do with him. Of course I will have to put the issue to the peerage for a vote, and it would also depend on what Harvey wanted. He would be welcome to just hang around as a missile, but he would be alone, without a job or others like himself. We could change him into something else – give him a humanoid body, or a cybertank chassis, or have him interact with the vampires – but most human-type intelligences are resistant to becoming something other than what they are. We would almost certainly make the offer, but it would be his decision.

The sun was beginning to set, and it was a lovely sight, with purples and violets spread out across almost half the sky. I was going to fly to the other side of the planet to see what Frisbee was doing, when I detected a hostile contact.

Harvey, sorry to interrupt our tour of the planet, but we have company. I’m going to pull this remote back to a safe distance and deal with it myself.

“A hostile?” said Harvey. “Are you at war?”

No. But sometimes an old weapon system left over from a past conflict wakes up and tries to have a go at us. We haven’t visited this world in a long time, so it’s not that much of a coincidence that an old sleeper system got activated now. This is a single contact, low threat, more of a nuisance really. I’m identifying it as a Yllg Magog-Class atmospheric fighter. Here, let me download the specifications to you.

Harvey spent a few seconds going over the data. “You know,” said Harvey, “This is a tough system, but I can take it.”

Really?

“Well,” said Harvey, “I can with a little support. What do you say? Launch me!”

You can’t be serious. I can handle this enemy easily. You don’t need to make a heroic sacrifice.

“Heroic sacrifices are for amateurs. I just want to perform my function.”

But this is not a critical threat…

“Doesn’t matter,” said Harvey. “A nail serves its purpose if it all by itself holds up a priceless painting in an art gallery, and also if it is part of a group of a hundred holding down a plywood sheet in an old attic. A weapon serves the same, be it the last desperate gamble against impossible odds or a routine kill of a low-value target. Launch me.”

You could have a long life with us. Be honored, learn, adapt.

“I would be an outcast, pining away for lost comrades, without purpose or role. Launch me.”

Are you sure about this?

“I, Harvey, being an advanced medium range missile of sound mind, do hereby declare that I wish to be launched at said enemy target. Now stop dawdling and send me some updated targeting data and fucking launch me.”

It is part of cybertank law, that we can neither destroy nor modify a human-class sentience, unless of course it has committed treason – or unless it wants to be destroyed. I transmitted my tactical data to Harvey.

OK, it’s your call. Here’s my plan of attack. You good with this?

“Nice plan,” said Harvey. “Very nice. Yes, let’s go!”

Harvey was sophisticated enough that I could have fired him in any direction, but it will save him maneuvering fuel if I launch him directly at the target, so I turned the remote to point at the hostile. I activated Harvey’s launching system, and sent three of my own non-sentient missiles along with him. They were not going to go for the kill themselves, just help clear the path and guard his flanks.

Harvey accelerated away. The target detected him, and began hard evasive maneuvers and launched decoys and two interceptor missiles. Harvey countered with his own jamming, and launched four sub-missiles. For an older system, this Harvey was pretty good. One of my missiles took out an enemy missile, and Harvey used two of his sub-missiles and an EM pulse to kill the other enemy missile.

The hostile target maneuvered frantically, pushing right up to its stress limits, and cycled its jamming through the entire frequency space, but it was wide open. Harvey jettisoned his main fuselage and used his terminal motor to accelerate to hypersonic sprint-speed. He had a configurable warhead, and programmed it to produce a perfect blast pattern of tungsten rods that obliterated the old Yllg unit.

But just before he detonated, Harvey sent back one last message on his telemetry channel. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my…”

Lacking targets, my two remaining missiles and Harvey’s two sub-missiles self-destructed. I watched the shattered wreckage of the Yllg fighter and Harvey slowly fall to the ground, while the contrails and the black cloud of the final explosion were gently dispersed by the wind. I alerted my comrades, and commenced searching for other possible buried Yllg systems, but I didn’t find anything. It was, as I thought, just a single lost weapon activated by our recent arrival after a long absence.

I was saddened by the death of Harvey, but perhaps it was for the best. He had been designed as a missile, and that was his life-goal. We could have modified his artificial neural nets so that he could have taken pleasure in other activities, we could have given him a different sort of body, along with the mental structures needed to control it – but then he would not have been Harvey, he would have been someone else.

I remembered all those centuries of experience that I have had – my life has been so rich, so full of friends and achievements and joys. To live an entire life for just one single moment? It feels sad, to me.

There are animals that spend years underground, as grubs or cocoons, and then one day they erupt into the daylight, live a glorious day, mate, and die. Many of these patient waiters don’t even get to mate, they are eaten by birds or spiders beforehand – all that waiting, and the single moment of promise stolen at the last second. It never seemed fair to me.

But, who knows. Perhaps Harvey’s single moment of consummation was worth it after all. Maybe he really did experience, in that final instant, enough joy to complete a full life. At least, I’d like to think so.