Free Good King Sauerkraut by Barbara Paul

environment and man-made structures. Our job is to keep the army alive and functioning.” Osterman went on to explain that MechoTech was contracted to manufacture several different offensive systems the Defense Department had decided were bound to be the most effective, all of them robots of one kind or another. “Defense has abandoned the idea of a central supercomputer controlling an entire battle from one spot. Instead they want a series of interlinked computers that process in parallel. That way if part of the system goes down, other parts can take over its functions.”
    Mimi asked, “Is all this to be under the control of an artificial intelligence?”
    Osterman looked at Rae Borchard, who answered the question. “No, AI will be used in support only—to alert the operator to the most threatening target or solve the allocation-of-fire problem and perform similar functions. It’ll need to project probable outcomes of several available firing patterns and then recommend one. I have all the specifications here.” She distributed binders holding three inches of paper to each of them. “But all the decision-making will be done by the human operator. AI will function in an advisory capacity only.”
    Mimi smiled. “Good. Sometimes Defense has an unrealistic picture of what machine intelligence can do.”
    â€œNot anymore,” Osterman interjected. “They’ve gotten pretty sophisticated in the ways of robots and their programming. So by now you should be getting an idea of how big this project is. We’re subcontracting forty-two different companies just to work on optics alone. I forget the number we’ve got working on acoustic sensors—Rae?”
    â€œNineteen,” she said without hesitation.
    Osterman nodded. “Nineteen. Anyway, I’ve already got MechoTech’s designers at work on refining a robot tank that nobody’s been able to perfect in nearly twenty years of trying. And you four,” he grinned at them, “you four get the plum. Defense is convinced that a fully automated, remote-controlled weapons platform will be what determines the winner in future ground wars. They’re going to build their entire land-based defense system around it.”
    â€œA weapons platform,” King repeated. “What kind of weapons?”
    Rae Borchard answered him. “The people behind the Army Tactical Command and Control Systems in Washington have spent a lot of time trying to find the best weapons for field artillery as well as maneuver control and logistics manipulation. And they’ve decided the answer is electromagnetic guns.”
    King shook his head. “Capacitor storage. Takes up too much space.”
    â€œMaxwell Lab in San Diego pretty much has that problem licked,” Rae said. “The components are getting smaller with each new generation. Right now you could build an electromagnetic gun platform no bigger than an Ml Abrams tank.”
    King hadn’t known that. Excited, he pulled his legal pad toward him and started sketching. A lot of external work had to be taken care of before he could get down to the nuts and bolts of making it work—silhouette, for example. Tall and skinny for maneuvering through wooded areas, as flat as possible for open-field firing. Also, near-instantly changeable means of locomotion to match a changing terrain: desert, marsh, rocky areas, jungle.
    Osterman smiled a gangster smile in King’s direction and said, “You ought to be able to use the image-enhancement and other visuals already developed by the folks we’ve got doing optics for the robot tank and a couple of other things. We even stole the guys who were working on the mobile land mines. But Defense doesn’t want to depend on optics alone. The optics people have worked wonders in improving resolution even under bad lighting conditions, but they can’t do anything about removing obstructions to the