The Killing Machine

This short story was the author's first published work of fiction in 1991. It has been presented in its original form with minimal editing.

A young soldier must work with an alien. Not an extraterrestrial, but one of our own making; an Autonomous Combat Vehicle with such sophisticated AI and Expert Systems that it blurs the line between machine intelligence and sentience. It is powerful, self-teaching, self-directed and in the absence of specific orders it makes its own decisions… But when i...