The missile exploded really close to the unit. At the last moment, it was deflected to the side, as if it slid off an invisible dome above their heads and scattered a clump of trees. Only splinters and dirt reached the soldiers lying in the mud.

They heard the command. They got up and rushed in the indicated direction. They fell again.

"More focus!" The order in the headphones was firm.

They crawled closer to each other.

Once again, the rocket's flame flashed above their heads and veered off at the last moment. The explosion hit an abandoned wreck of a combat vehicle. The vibration of the ground beneath them and the wave of wet earth confirmed that someone up there bought them a few more minutes of life. The headphones compensated for most of the noise.

"Next step, the clump of birches. In sixty seconds, start." The voice was as cool as that of a professional poker player who just raised the stakes blindly.

Tinda wiped her visor. She saw the red ellipse marking the target but couldn't see the surroundings. The mud completely clogged the visor. She counted the people. She tapped each of them to ensure they had contact with her.

They didn't speak. Their consciousness was reduced to a small point on the screen before their eyes. Around them, tons of metal and explosive chemicals were falling. The earth lifted by explosions created a constant smoke screen up to the height of the second floor. The world thundered like the finale of a symphony concert. And the only place within many square kilometers that offered them a chance to survive had a five-meter diameter and was marked with a red circle and a decreasing number of seconds on their glasses.

"Zero!" she screamed as the circle turned green.

A few seconds earlier, she saw a powerful rocket turn the birches indicated on the visor into splinters and create a deep crater. They moved like production automata in the same second.

Only Marv stumbled and fell. Tinda saw out of the corner of her eye as he fell into a puddle. A glance at the counter made her realize she had to protect the rest of the team. She didn't slow down.

As the unit rolled into the crater after the explosion, another missile vaporized Marv, who was trying to get up from the mud twenty meters away from them.

"Marv!" Rid shouted.

Tinda grabbed his arm and looked into his visor, trying to make eye contact with the soldier. Rid exhaled air from his lungs with a hiss and didn't speak again. On her display, Rid's temporary cortisol spike returned to the standard level.

"Next step - the river. In ten minutes," the voice in the headphones sounded.

All nine looked at each other. They had time to clean the optics, check their weapons, and figure out where they had ended up. Mule lay down in the mud to conserve energy.

For the last two hours, they had been jumping like a knight on a chessboard. A few minutes jump, a few minutes jump. It was madness to push across the bombardment, but they almost succeeded.

"Marv was hit. I repeat 404," Tinda said into the radio.

"I know, confirming receipt of the report." The staff officer's voice seemed to take on a sympathetic tone. "I'm very sorry. You move out in six minutes."

***

"More, faster, harder!" General Alvin Sorenson watched the hustle and bustle of two dozen staff officers like a queen mother.

He smoothed the lapels of his uniform and frowned.

"I have a new report and request from the Hetman." Two steps below, an officer stood at attention and saluted.

"Report." The general didn't look at him, keeping his eyes on the entire landscape of the command room.

The vast hall was filled with desks, screens, cabinets with lots of lights, all bathed in blue light.

"The Hetman detected the operation of two Russian special units in Mongolia." The young man read the information from a tablet. "They took control of a silver mine."

"What does it matter?" The general was surprised. "We're conducting operations on the other side of the globe."

"Theoretically none, and that's what the Hetman finds interesting. Why is the opponent dispersing forces on such operations? They have plenty of silver, and Mongolia is fully dependent on their power."

"If a Christmas tree burns down in Red Square, will you come to me with that too?" Now the commander looked carefully at his subordinate.

The soldier waited a moment and finished.

"What's interesting is that the Hetman asked for permission to direct ten percent of the power for two hours to analyze this incident."

The general pondered. They were just finishing installing additional equipment to match the calculation speed of the enemy's headquarters supercomputer, and now new demands were emerging.

"Let it be," he muttered. "And when will we implement the new containers?"

Since the AI requests something, it's worth taking it seriously.

"They will be fully operational tomorrow," reported the officer who was just connecting cables.

By tomorrow, we might not be here, he thought.

The soldiers continued to perform their duties.

"The intensity of tactical actions is lowest in the morning, then I will conduct an analysis of this incident," announced the Hetman's speakers placed under the ceiling in the corners of the room.

***

The team huddled under the roots of riverside trees that had been washed out of the ground by recent floods. The river's waters had receded, but the fallen branches and freshly eroded banks were a reminder of the force that swept through the vast plains two weeks ago.

"This maneuver will be unusual," the mule began in a dispassionate voice.

The robot lay on the wet ground and directed its cameras toward the lazy current. The soldiers adjusted their equipment because such a speech usually meant they would soon be moving somewhere at a murderous pace.

"The artillery will set a curtain fifty meters in front and behind us. We will walk at a constant speed. Anyone who stays behind or gets ahead will die," the robot continued.

Then a gray streak began to grow across the sky from the west. It looked as if a monstrous gardener was about to water a bed on the opposite hemisphere of our globe. The stream grew by the minute and approached the unit crouched on the riverbank.

Some soldiers sighed heavily. The precisely measured barrage was approaching them unstoppably.

"I will mark the safe zone with a red circle on your visors. We move out in two minutes." The robot didn't even move.

The soldiers stood up and formed a tight formation around the quadruped. The commander whispered.

"Heh, listen to the mule. Keep your heads down and pray. I've never experienced anything like this," Tinda said, realizing how disturbingly ambiguous her comment was.

And then they experienced the end of the world. They felt as if an asteroid had broken up above their heads and buried them in an avalanche of millions of fragments. Smoke enveloped the entire surroundings. The pounding in front of them leveled everything it encountered like a great roller. The pounding with them completed the work of destruction. Both walls of fire, front and rear, moved at the pace of their march. Or rather, they hunched along at the speed of moving showers of doom. At some point, they instinctively grabbed the shoulders, straps, and harnesses of their companions next to them so as not to get lost in the smoke. Tinda grabbed the strap attached to the electronic dog leading them. Somehow, the missiles fell everywhere except where the unit was at the time.

"Faster," the mule urged them in an emotionless tone. "We're about to turn left and enter the ford."

Until now, they had been crawling on a sandbar with water up to their ankles. Now they began to wade into the cold depths. This was supposed to be a ford, and Tinda assumed it wouldn't be deeper than the robot's head level. She was wrong.

A few meters later, the mule began to dog-paddle. To the clouds of dust, fountains of flames, and the thundering of explosions were added the splashes of waves when an artillery shell hit the current.

Rid vomited and stopped for a moment. Years of training and special missions hadn't prepared him for something like this.

"Rid is leaving the life zone," the mule announced.

"Alexa! Take him!" Tinda shouted and felt herself getting nauseous.

The girl discarded the machine gun, which sank into the murky water, and grabbed her companion by the arm.

"I am marking the location of the MGK700 weapon," the mule informed.

Tinda intended to comment on it but refrained. Rid was more important than any weapon, and the mule had already managed to swim to the middle of the river. She turned around, Rid and Alexa submerged and began to swim. She bit her lips. There was hope they could make it.

The barrage, like a cyclone, slowly moved as the unit crossed the water obstacle. Finally, they reached the opposite bank, but it wasn't over. The mule immediately began to climb the slope. However, its motor skills couldn't overcome the sliding earth. It rolled down once, twice, three times. Finally, the soldiers realized that the approaching wall of fire would sweep them away if they didn't move.

The mule weighed three hundred kilograms, so there was no question of pulling it up.

"We're leaving it, move on, move!" Tinda shouted nervously.

The column of fire and smoke was almost upon them. They climbed hastily, gathered in a tight circle, and moved on. Now they no longer had a guide to display the red circle of life on their visors. They had to go by intuition. Tinda switched the image to thermal vision. Red spots of explosions filled the field of view in front of her. She turned her head. The same heat spots were visible behind. They walked, holding onto each other. Tinda turned around every few steps to ensure the detonations behind were at the same distance of about twenty meters from them as those in front.

Suddenly the whole world did a forward somersault. The ground was somewhere above, and the woman saw her own legs following the rest of her body down. A second later, Rid landed on her, and then the rest of the team.

They lay there, and the explosions became increasingly louder. She had no chance of getting out from under her colleagues' bodies. Not in a short time, not in the dust, not with full equipment entangling a dozen limbs, and not in such stress and fatigue. In a few seconds, the cascade of explosions like a giant broom would sweep them all away.

But then the barrage stopped. That meant they had reached the location. They breathed heavily for a few minutes.

Tinda counted everyone.

"Alexa, deploy the antenna." She took a computer from her backpack and turned it on. "We need to confirm we survived this..." she was at a loss for words.

Her breath was still accelerated, her hands trembled, and salty sweat dripped from her eyelashes.

"What now?" someone asked.

"We go there," the commander pointed to the edge of the forest.

Everyone except Alexa sat still and stared at the ground. They were at the bottom of a ravine, probably a former riverbed.

"In five minutes, you move to point D," the voice in the headphones said.

"Damn, but what's the objective?!" Tinda couldn't hold back.

They were being moved like pawns, she lost a friend and a mule, and she didn't even know why they were here.

"At point D, you will split into two teams according to the attached assignments." On the soldiers' visors, designations A1, A2, B1, B2, and so on appeared.

"What are we supposed to do? Kidnap someone, blow them up, interrogate, shoot, hack a computer?!" Tinda shouted into the microphone.

"In four minutes. In the absence of the mule, I will guide you," the voice was emotionless.

"We're not receiving orders from a human, are we?" Tinda asked.

The voice hesitated before answering. Tinda waited in silence for a minute.

"In three minutes," the voice said.

***

"Team 72 reports reaching point C," announced the Hetman through the speakers. "All other units are also in their positions. Requesting permission to initiate the attack on heading 187."

General Sorenson looked around at the faces of his subordinates, as if searching for confirmation. Both the attack plan and its coordination were the work of artificial intelligence. A gigantic computer that collected tons of information from the front in real-time and made decisions. It communicated simultaneously with hundreds of small, dispersed units on the battlefield and only expected authorization at key moments. His people only continuously reported and installed new modules to increase its computational capabilities.

Sorenson sometimes lost track of how much he was commanding the operation and how much he was a tool in the hands of the machine. However, the responsibility for his or the machine's decisions remained in his hands.

"The Marshal is ready," said one of the military engineers. "Maybe he should check the plan as a second opinion?"

The Marshal was a makeshift second supercomputer. The staff officers proposed launching a parallel machine that could verify the Hetman's moves.

"How long will it take?" the general asked.

"It has access to all the Hetman's data... I think about an hour," the technologist replied.

"Let it be. Hetman, calculate what our situation will be in an hour," the commander ordered.

Before a human could draw breath, the main computer spoke again.

"I'll take care of it, but we'll lose fifteen minutes of advantage. I propose to continue the shelling to hinder reconnaissance. Team 72 can approach the dam in the meantime."

"Let it be," the general muttered.

The staff officers continued connecting the newly delivered processor arrays to the main network and installing the new air conditioning for the next hour. They shouted communications like "not enough power," "it's not burning," "I'm ready if you are."

Sorenson drank coffee. When the war began a year ago, things happened at a weekly pace. Plan the action, ensure resources, deliver people, group, and execute tasks. However, over time, they began to accelerate. And they accelerated faster and faster. Recently, they did nothing but add new containers to the Hetman to catch up with the computational power of the enemy Federation's supercomputer.

The green dot representing team number 72 moved steadily across the map displayed on the largest screen.

Thousands of kilometers away, artillery shelling continued to cover the special unit's actions.

Suddenly, both supercomputers, Hetman and Marshal, spoke.

"Are we moving?" Hetman began.

"The scenario proposed by Hetman is deemed correct," added Marshal.

Someone forgot to change the voice synthesizer in the second computer, and both spoke in the same tone, causing confusion among the present people.

The general nodded and added a second later:

"Let them begin."

"During the coordination of the attack, I would like to propose considering modernization," Hetman spoke again.

"Speak."

"Combining the computational power of Marshal and mine will increase the horizon of reliable forecasting by eight hours."

"I object," Marshal interjected in the same voice. "That will deprive us of alternative situational recognition."

"I maintain," this time Hetman. "The bundle of permissible scenarios at this stage of the operation is narrow anyway. The second computer would only confirm my recommendations."

"I object, those eight hours are current now, tomorrow it will only be five hours of advantage, and we'll lose an alternative opinion."

"I maintain, five hours tomorrow, that's three hours the day after tomorrow. Still worth it."

"I object..."

The computers' argument echoed through the speakers for another five minutes. For the soldiers present in the room, this discussion resembled the internal monologue of a patient with a split personality.

"And such machines decide our fate," sighed the general and added louder. "Enough! We merge both units into one."

The military personnel got to work.

***

Awonia was called out of retirement when the Federation's military headquarters was blown up due to an enemy diversionary action. She had the most combat experience of all the commanders who survived. And she agreed without hesitation, finally able to return to what she loved most. Working for her country.

She slammed her fist on the table. Everyone in the narrow conference room fell silent. The work of the ship's thrusters could be heard. Unlike General Sorenson's room, their headquarters was lit in yellow. The ship they were on was three hundred meters below the sea surface. It was connected to the seabed by a thick umbilical cord. It was attached to an underwater base and simultaneously the largest server room of the Federation's navy.

"I understand that recent diversionary actions may have caused chaos. Destroying the command hovercraft, blowing up the dam, setting fire to the weapons factory, but for god's sake, why are we attacking a silver mine in neutral Mongolia?!"

No one answered.

"Who came up with this?!" she shouted again.

Several hands pointed to the five-meter screen mounted on the submarine's side wall.

"Spirit? Will you explain this?"

The screen lit up and displayed a map.

"The paradigm of the information cork," the speaker announced.

General Awonia Arendt raised her eyebrows. However, the machine didn't monitor the body language of its interlocutors, so the woman had to verbalize her question.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"How to understand this?"

"The Americans have equipment of a similar class to ours. We can divide the battlefield into smaller cubes and shorter time intervals. We can collect increasingly precise data on enemy and our movements, weather conditions, economic conditions, resource transports, human migrations, social moods, etc., but...," the computer paused. "We are limited by computational capacity. They know as much as we do, and we know as much as they do. Moreover, we know they know, and vice versa. Almost everything is common knowledge."

"Continue." She was tired of lectures conducted by machines.

"Therefore, an effective strategy is to overload the enemy with irrelevant information. The goal is for them to focus on analyzing noise instead of critical content. It's known that they will eventually figure out our strategy, but they will do it a few days too late. And in the meantime, we'll load them with more noise and more. Until the analytical debt exceeds their computational capabilities."

"So you came up with this?" she began to speak, but the computer interrupted her.

"To launch operations that will create noise. What are our specials doing in Mongolia? What significance does this operation have? And what are they doing in Armenia or the North Pole? Why did lithium and magnesium prices suddenly jump on the Beijing stock exchange? Why did the port in Massawa suddenly stop accepting gas carriers?" the computer continued dispassionately. "Will this shorten their planning horizon?"

"Let's assume it makes sense. What's next?"

"We need to divide the diversionary forces into even smaller units and launch more operations worldwide. For this, I need additional computational power. Ultimately, I would like to have two-person operator units operating in hundreds of thousands of places on all continents and in all countries."

Awonia pondered.

"How do we look with the new server station modules?" she directed the question to the present officers.

"They're on their way. We're installing one segment today. Two are planned for tomorrow," one of them replied.

***

From the sky, or rather from low orbit, a cylindrical container fell and embedded itself in the muddy meadow with a loud splash. Immediately upon landing, it disappeared. Tinda looked at the screen on her forearm; the package was five hundred meters from them. Orbital artillery still had precision issues. According to reconnaissance, there was no one or anything nearby, but maybe a civilian saw their supply landing and called for help. In the middle of the field, they would be exposed like a herd of wild boars. She preferred to wait.

As it started to get gray, they moved, crouching at several-meter intervals. After a few minutes of splashing through the soggy grass, they reached the umbrella. If someone were watching them, it would look like human silhouettes entering an invisible closet. The umbrella had a radius of three meters and provided invisibility to everything within its range.

They crouched next to the ceramic cylinder. The transmission began immediately when the container detected the unit's identifiers.

"The next task requires the Chmara system. The startup instructions are as follows," a female voice explained the steps to activate Chmara and operate it.

"What is the objective?" Tinda asked firmly.

The rest of the unit nodded to confirm that they were also keenly interested in this matter. They had been making their way to this place for several days. They were three hundred kilometers behind the front line, in enemy territory. They lost a friend. And they still had no idea what it was all for.

Despite years of training and practice, they were only human.

"The campus located on the other side of the forest, forty kilometers from here," replied the computer installed in the ceramic container. "Certain data is located in the computers of the technical department building. You must retrieve it and then destroy the infrastructure."

"What is Chmara?" Rid asked in a gruff tone.

"Chmara will ensure you have no issues entering the campus and moving around it. We anticipate you will have about an hour before the military arrives. The police will likely arrive first, but Chmara will handle that."

The screens on their forearms lit up simultaneously, confirming that the new mission data had been loaded into them.

For two days, they made their way through forests, fields, and streams. Finally, they stood under a high steel fence. The same female voice spoke in their headphones.

"You will split into two teams, alpha and bravo. Alpha will have six operators. The mission requires three, but probably two will die. One surplus will additionally secure the task. Bravo will secure the retreat. You will position yourselves here." Blue points marked B1, B2, B3 lit up on the map on their visors. Bravo, move out.

The voice waited a moment and spoke again to the alpha team.

"Deploy Chmara." Animations resembling the operation of the new weapon appeared on the alpha visors.

Rid took the tube, the main component of the Chmara system, from his back. Tinda and Jan took two drones from the boxes. Moments later, they rose to a height of two hundred meters. Thanks to their work, dozens of red dots representing people present on the campus appeared on the soldiers' visors.

Rid set up the stand and positioned the tube at an upward angle, like a mortar. He removed the safety from its outlet. He opened the ammunition box. It contained projectiles the size of a paper towel roll. He turned on the mortar controller. When the readiness message appeared on his visor, he inserted the first projectile. Two seconds later, it flew into the air with a whistle, tracing a high arc over the campus fence. It broke apart with a quiet thud over the parking lot.

He inserted five more projectiles into the barrel. They similarly exploded with barely audible sounds over various areas of the campus.

"You have forty minutes to extract data from the server room and twenty for evacuation. Time starts now. Good luck." The female voice didn't even try to be encouraging.

They cut the fence bars and broke into the university grounds. A blue path leading to one of the buildings, which looked like a large piece of yellow cheese with windows imitating holes, appeared on each of their visors.

The paths instructed them to scatter. They dashed across the parking lot, hiding behind cars. As it turned out, unnecessarily. Whenever someone turned toward them, they fell silently. Students, security guards, lecturers, all were methodically struck.

When at one point, a projectile hit a girl standing exceptionally close, they saw what was happening before their eyes. A gray arrow pierced her chest, and the girl fell. It was mouse-sized drones descending from the sky and striking encountered people. One by one, dozens of people fell dead in complete silence, interrupted only by the faint buzzing of the attacking devices.

Five minutes later, they burst into the building's lobby.

"I've had enough," whispered Aleksander. "Was this genocide?"

"I don't know what it was," Tinda replied.

"New is coming. They warned that tactical control would be different this time."

"What kind of people work in the staff?!" Jan almost shouted.

"Those who like new toys," Aleksander said.

"I'm not sure they're people." Rid cast cautious glances at the stairs leading up and down.

"Psychopaths! Those were civilians!" Jan couldn't calm down.

"You have twenty minutes to retrieve the data and leave the area," the voice in the headphones urged them.

The soldiers looked at each other and moved. Every now and then, they heard a mouse-sized drone breaking a window and striking an unsuspecting person.

They ran up to the second floor, following the indications on their visors. Then they saw blue flashing sirens from the street.

"I think our time is up," Rid stated seriously.

Rid and Jan positioned themselves at the windows. Aleksander, with the other two operators, lay in wait at the top of the stairs. Tinda ran to the glass-walled room filled with server cabinets. As she entered through the sliding doors, a young man in a sweater turned toward her. She didn't even have time to open her mouth when a drone flew in through the window and struck the stranger. He slumped to the floor with an expression of boundless astonishment in his eyes.

She carefully stepped over him and approached the indicated terminal. She connected a plug equipped with a wireless transmitter.

"This will take ten minutes. Retrieving the data is the mission's absolute priority," the irritating voice sounded in her ears.

Through the clatter of breaking windows, the dull shots from her unit's rifles and the loud laughter of the series from outside broke through.

"Ten minutes, it's going to be tough," she whispered to herself.

"Tinda!" Rid shouted over the cannonade. "Tinda! How much longer?"

"Don't shout," she replied, hiding her nervousness.

"They're on the stairs!" Aleksander shouted.

"They're everywhere," she heard Alexa's voice, the leader of the bravo team, who was observing the area from behind the fence. "There's no clear path."

"Six more minutes," the tactical control voice chimed in.

At that moment, a piece of the floor collapsed, taking with it several meters of the external wall.

"Alek..." someone tried to call a colleague.

"I think they're blowing up the whole building," Rid shouted.

"Are they in such a hurry?!" Tinda asked, not taking her eyes off the counter.

Another explosion, and she saw the clear blue sky instead of a row of screens attached to the wall.

"Why didn't we wait until dusk?" she hissed into the microphone.

"There was no time, the mission is paramount," the voice explained.

"It's interesting how we'll deliver it now," Rid growled.

Another explosion. Another floor fragment collapsed, raising a storm of dust and debris. She switched to the unit's status. Only she, Rid, and Adie were left alive in the building. The rest lay buried under rubble a few meters below.

"Done. Open the grenade and remove the charge," the female voice instructed.

Tinda obeyed. She placed the memory block with the data downloaded from the university servers into the grenade.

"Approach the window and aim at operator B2."

She did so. At the edge of the forest, just beyond the fence, she spotted the red targeting dot lit by her colleague. She rested the rifle on the windowsill and fired from the under-barrel grenade launcher. The projectile rose into the air above the building roofs and then dived toward the designated point.

"Done," she stated resignedly.

"That's all. Evacuate," the voice replied.

The building shook. More explosions hit the structural elements. Someone planned to level the building with the ground. All to prevent them from completing the mission. She adjusted her helmet. Rid was gone. Adie had an uneven, weakening pulse. Besides, a large hole gaped between them in the floor. She wouldn't be able to get through to her.

Then something flew in that sucked in all the sound and air. She didn't even hear the detonation. She felt herself sliding toward the parking lot. The office building was tilting more and more to one side.

***

"What was there?" Awonia was more curious than angry.

On the main screen of the staff room, a film of the operation to recapture the building from the enemy was displayed. Actually, it was no longer a building, just a pile of rubble that, at most, could be used for sledding after being covered with snow.

"Plans for our Spirit," replied one of the colonels.

She raised her eyebrows.

"Actually, its prototype," the officer quickly added. "The general architecture."

"What was the architecture of the most secret computer in the entire Federation army doing at some provincial polytechnic?" she enunciated, rhythmically syllabizing.

"The academics developed an extremely efficient decision-making computer. One that can be freely scaled, supplying it with new sources of information and new computational power. We took over this project and reassembled it. That's how Spirit was created. However, apparently, its simplified version still operated on university servers," explained another of those gathered, this one dressed in a civilian suit.

Awonia prepared to formulate another question for several seconds.

"What consequences does this attack cause?" she asked.

"The Americans will know how our brain works. This war is a race of locomotives. Whoever pours more information into the boiler will reach the finish line faster. And they just stole information about how ours operates."

"Spirit, what will their computer do in this situation?"

"Their advantage will be temporary until you change my architecture. They must act quickly to strengthen their position. I would suggest surprising and massive actions. Something that will leave us behind for longer. Long enough to change the entire board's layout," the machine recited.

"So what?" Awonia repeated the question.

"So a gambit," concluded the man in the suit.

***

"Gambit is sacrificing a piece in exchange for gaining freedom of movement for the pieces," said Hetman.

"Really?!" General Sorenson was looking at reports illustrating the progress of deciphering the data just sent from the special operation. "I just lost a unit of the best people, and you're wasting resources rummaging through Wikipedia?"

The computer didn't comment on this.

"When will you develop a new strategy?" the commander looked at his subordinates, who were waiting for any orders.

"Eight hours, and I'll be ready. Don't stop adding computational power because it's going to get intense," the computer replied.

The general ordered standard operations to continue until Hetman returned with a new plan. Then he went to sleep. He assumed that later there wouldn't be a chance to rest properly for a long time.

The American army built a railway leading to the command post. The largest, ever-growing like a fungus, computer was located directly under the headquarters to minimize data transmission time. Containers containing hundreds of memory arrays and computing units were unloaded by the dozen using container lifts and transported to freight elevators. These led to increasingly deeper floors where additional artificial intelligence modules were located.

After almost eight hours, the general got up, stretched, put on his uniform, and returned to the command post. Hetman was active.

"We lost two hours of advantage," he announced upon greeting. "But by following the new plan, we'll regain it with a surplus within the next day."

The general clenched his lips, his face turning red. He quickly moved to a small glass-walled office. He carefully closed the door behind him and dimmed the windows.

"Before I went to bed, we had an hour's advantage. We had the initiative, and now you're talking about losing two hours!" he snapped. "We're done for! Three hours wasted in one day!"

He kicked the desk, which didn't budge.

"Their AI will wipe us out! It's probably already testing backup plans for backup plans! Their reconnaissance has probably moved on to analyzing the impact of cracker composition on the frequency of our soldiers' bowel movements out of boredom."

"Speaking of analysis. I have a plan. I reviewed the architecture of their AI, called Spirit. It reveals one weak point. It gets distracted too easily, especially in the face of ambiguous information."

"Just like you, you dumbass! You just extended the war by several years and slaughtered half of our youth." He was exhausted from shouting, and besides, he realized how futile it was. "We just lost, we lost."

He leaned against the desk and stared at the wall for a long time. It was a dead end. Here two hours, there an hour, and step by step, the United States would yield the field to the enemy. Adding more containers wouldn't help because they were doing it too. And as the analysis of their supercomputer's documentation showed, it was much more efficiently scalable than our Hetman. Sorenson's head ached.

"Gambit. I just found our pawn," Hetman said after some thought.

Then he explained to the human what the only plan leading to victory was. After listening, the man said he needed some time alone. He returned to his room. Locked himself inside. And an hour later, he shot himself.

The sound of the shot wasn't heard, but when the general didn't appear in the staff room, they began searching for him. They found him on the floor with a hole in his jaw and the back of his head.

According to the chain of command, the oldest officer took command. He was an experienced analyst. After listening to Hetman's plan, he convened a committee.

The situation was increasingly dire because another two hours had passed. According to intelligence data, the Federation increased ammunition production by five percent, spare parts by three percent, and solar, nuclear, and wind power by fifteen percent during this time.

"That's the nature of the derivative. It grows faster than we expect," the supercomputer summarized these calculations. "Every second, changes occur at an ever-increasing pace. Now we have the advantage of the information cork strategy, but if we don't use it, we'll have nothing left. In a week, Russia will be two days ahead of us, in a month, two weeks ahead, in a quarter, two months ahead, and in a year, they'll organize a reservation for us where you'll be able to use electricity only for lighting night lamps."

The new commander convened a committee that voted that the gambit was the only option.

***

"The Americans are up to something," announced a young second lieutenant.

"That's the job," replied Awonia Arendt, the commander of the Federation forces, and shrugged.

"This time it looks strange. Spirit doesn't have a clear diagnosis. They halted the offensive and supply deliveries. They continue to produce ammunition, fuel, and drones, but they're not sending them to the front."

The general tilted her head. It was getting interesting.

"What this time?"

"I have something," another officer called out. "They launched a nuclear weapons convoy."

"Are they changing the deployment of warheads? Or are they going to drop them on us?" she asked.

This was unprecedented. Weapons of mass destruction of this class were an effective deterrent against themselves. No one had used them so far.

"Raise our readiness level."

"This looks like an act of desperation," suggested another officer.

"A higher state means installing warheads on delivery systems and opening launchers," another added.

"Let them see. We see their maneuvers too."

"One of the missiles left the launcher," interrupted a nervous communication officer.

"Ours or theirs, damn it?" Awonia asked.

"Theirs."

Silence fell.

"Connect me with the president."

"In my opinion, it's just a feigned action," Spirit spoke. "I suggest doing nothing."

"The president!" Awonia barked.

She took the offered receiver and connected with her superior's office. She briefed him on the current situation. She put down the receiver and turned her gaze to the main screen. It glowed red.

"We have authorization," announced the communication officer.

"I'll take the code card. Initiating the Uroboros procedure." She placed her hand on the reader in her console.

"The American missile was launched. It rose to five thousand meters," someone reported.

"I, General Awonia Arendt, authorize access to the Uroboros system," she declared in a grave voice.

"This is how the most intelligent species on this planet dies," whispered the previously silent lieutenant.

"Five thousand meters doesn't match any trajectory," Spirit stated.

"I, General August Andruski, authorize the Uroboros procedure." The oldest present placed his square hand on his reader.

They both took out cards the size of... a credit card. They bent them in half. The hidden batteries activated, and the cards lit up with a rhythmic blinking light.

"August, on five." She looked at her companion sadly. "One - silence - Two..."

"It's a tactical missile. Its range ends in Arizona," Spirit stated. "It reached its maximum altitude and is now descending."

Silence fell.

"Did you already say 'five'?" the old general broke the silence.

Awonia didn't notice she had stopped counting.

"Where will it fall?" she asked.

Silence.

"Where will it fall, you fool? Is it so difficult?" she urged him impatiently.

"It will fall on Fresno in California. I just don't understand why," the supercomputer replied. "I need to analyze this."

It fell silent.

"Young one, report," Awonia said, still holding the blinking card in her outstretched hand.

"General, maybe we should temporarily postpone this," suggested August Andruski.

They put the cards back in their pockets.

"In half an hour, it will hit the city center."

"Maybe they introduced some masking?" Awonia asked.

"I don't think so. Besides, this type of carrier rocket has a short range anyway," replied the intelligence analyst present in the staff.

"So what's going on?" General Awonia Arendt looked around at the faces of those gathered, searching for an answer.

"Are we waiting for it to hit?" August asked.

No one answered, but they waited. For that half hour, everyone whispered as if they were at a funeral. They wandered around the staff, drank liters of coffee, and waited.

"It hit," someone said quietly. "Fresno ceased to exist."

"What now?" the gray-haired general asked.

"I have no idea." Awonia sat heavily. "We don't have a procedure for a suicide attack. It doesn't make sense. They vaporized half a million of their own citizens."

"It was a tactical charge, it has a much smaller range. I'm just checking." One of the analysts ran a simulation on his computer. "About fifty thousand plus those who will die from radiation sickness and cancer."

"But why?" Awonia spoke more to herself than to the others gathered in the room.

"Spirit, have you come to anything?" the old general asked.

"It's a very interesting problem. It actually equalizes all the scenarios I've prepared so far. I found an interesting analogy in the thirteenth century in Europe when God was supposed to recognize his own."

"Answer!" Awonia ordered.

But the computer continued to babble about uncertain assumptions, chains of reactions, and references to antiquity.

"What's happening?" she asked her subordinates.

The youngest soldier raised his hand uncertainly. She gave him a nod.

"Reset it?"

"Are you crazy?" she took a deep breath and shouted. "It's like resetting a blast furnace. It will take a week."

The young man shrank in his chair.

"Other ideas!"

"Run a self-diagnosis?" someone else suggested.

"How long will it take?"

"In combat conditions?" he hesitated. "No one knows."

"Execute," the general commanded.

By the end of the day, hundreds of logistical lines transported resources as Spirit had set them up a few hours earlier. Production in small autonomous workshops and large factories, where a few people still worked, continued. Units conducted shelling according to orders, but the war turned into a positional one.

All the gears of the military and civilian industry seemed to turn slower. Spirit behaved like an aging philosopher. It was overwhelmed by doubts and lacked decisiveness.

Then they understood. They understood it when America redirected its logistics to new tracks. It doubled the industrial effort for military actions. It was clearly preparing for a major offensive. They understood it when their Spirit still couldn't issue any key decision except to maintain existing orders.

"It's an information bomb," said the youngest officer, the one who had previously suggested resetting the supercomputer, in an uncertain voice. "They clogged it with this incomprehensible move."

"They sacrificed their own city to suspend our artificial intelligence," stated General August Andruski.

"Yes, general, they sacrificed a pawn to take the queen," he added with more confidence. "A classic gambit."

"And we lost half a day of operational actions. And it's still not waking up. Reset it," Awonia ordered. "We can't wait any longer. And connect me with the president."

In the following days, while Spirit was being rebuilt by a team of specialists, they analyzed the situation in all directions. They could manually control tactical actions, but that meant combining units into larger groups, which in turn exposed them to enemy attacks, losses - an additional ten percent. They could hand over coordination of production and deliveries to officers, but similarly, it meant combining orders and transports into larger ones and additional buffering at every step of the processes, losses were another fifteen percent. Finally, they could analyze reconnaissance data using distributed computers, but synchronizing them into a comprehensive picture would take at least an hour. An hour, in a situation where they completed a full command loop in a quarter of an hour. Every action they took would hit a void because the enemy would have disappeared from view three quarters of an hour earlier. But before that, they would have made a successful attack on their infrastructure, units, production means, civilian targets. It made no sense.

Three days later, they signed the act of capitulation. The war was over.

***

Tinda was on the third floor at the time of the university building's catastrophe. When the structure began to tilt toward the parking lot. Just before the collapse, she made one last desperate move. She opened a steel server cabinet, which miraculously turned out to be empty. She squeezed inside and closed the doors. The cabinet consisted of a thick metal frame and shelves. It was bolted to the floor.

Tinda curled up as the cabinet, along with the floor, slid down and was then buried under bricks and concrete, entombing her under tons of rubble. But Tinda survived.

The food and water supplies in her backpack lasted her a week. When the pile above her makeshift sarcophagus was finally excavated, she was ready. She jumped out of the cabinet dirty and smelly and saw stunned workers. She knocked the first one down with a butt stroke and ran toward the fence. Moments later, she disappeared into the forest. When she managed to get twenty kilometers away, she called for help. The next day, a local intelligence cell found her crouched in the bushes. A week later, she was lying in a field hospital on an aircraft carrier. And two weeks later, she received a medal and was invited to a ceremonial presentation at the headquarters. Then the war ended.

The entire country celebrated victory. When Spirit was defeated and the cognitive distance between the two armies began to grow exponentially, the enemy laid down their arms. Hetman's gambit terrified both sides of the conflict. The Federation government, at Spirit's urging, decided it was more beneficial to lose militarily and not devastate the country than to continue kinetic actions. The United States government analyzed how to cover up the elimination of its own city. However, Hetman proved effective, and its shutdown was not an option.

Tinda became a hero. Her mission allowed the capture of data on the enemy's supercomputer, enabling the identification of its weak points and the preparation of a new strategy.

Thus, no one thought to check her briefcase. No one dared to suspect her of anything.

"The nation is grateful to you," solemnly announced the newly appointed general.

She nodded. That morning, she landed on the headquarters building's roof and was brought to the command room for the promotion ceremony and the awarding of medals for her and her fallen unit.

"Is there anything we can do for you?" he asked her after pinning the decoration.

She nodded again.

"Then speak." He made a serious face.

"To whom can I express my gratitude for this bold plan?" she asked.

The general frowned. Sorenson was dead. The main originator was Hetman.

"Come, I'll show you, Colonel." Besides the medal, she was also promoted to a level where she should be privy.

She took her briefcase, and they went to the elevator. They descended several floors. When the elevator opened, the woman saw endless rows of containers bathed in blue light.

They walked between them.

"Here's our savior," the general began. "This is Hetman. The genius who saved the country with this gambit."

"Or a psychopath," she stated. "Who murdered tens of thousands of his own citizens, including my friends."

"It's a simple calculation: tens of thousands in exchange for millions." The general smiled slightly.

"That was my unit. My people. This computer sent us on a mission from which there was no return. In which dozens of civilians were incidentally slaughtered. And he knew it from the start," she expressed the thoughts she had been gathering during her time under the rubble and in the hospital. "I'm a soldier, but I don't agree with such equations."

The general stepped back half a step, not understanding the woman's change in behavior.

Tinda kicked the suitcase under the cabinet. At the same time, she pressed the detonator she held in her left hand, hidden in her pocket.

"This is a dirty bomb. It will explode in fifteen minutes and contaminate this floor, the floor below, and above for several years. Get out of here if you want to live," she announced loudly and slowly.

The general and the accompanying staff officers were stunned.

"Now go!" she shouted and stomped at them. "Get out of here!"

They rushed to the open door. The woman smiled to herself.

"Now you have a castling, bastard." She ran to the stairs.

She activated the alarm on the stairwell, and the server room was automatically cut off from the outside world.