To the west of the island a lone Moray bobbed silently on the surface, fully stealthed. It watched, evaluated, and took careful aim with its smart pebble launcher, waiting for just the right moment.

Automated defenses on the island activated. Alarms blared, jolting human operators out of their boredom. Screens scrolled status. Before the humans could react, the machines did. Missile interception systems came alive, targeted defense lasers on the incoming missiles, launched clouds of thousands upon thousands of anti-missile projectiles into the air. Island-based launchers pivoted to target the enemy ships attacking the marina.

The micromissiles zigged, zagged, their own AIs adapting their courses in real time to the countermeasures they saw heading their way. For some, it wasn’t enough. A micromissile fell from the sky, its warhead ignited by a defense laser. Another collided with a defense projectile at twice the speed of sound. A third was knocked off course by the resulting explosion. More fell from projectiles, from lasers, from the secondary effects of explosions.

In seconds, eight of the sea-launched micromissiles were knocked from the sky.

Sixteen got through.

The first micromissile struck home four seconds after launch, igniting its warhead at the last instant, a kamikaze burst of goal-satisfaction rushing through its primitive mind as it demolished one of the island’s radar installations. The next bore down on its target a fraction of a second later, setting off its own explosive warhead in a blaze of impact-maximization just instants before it collided with one of the island’s missile launchers. The resulting blast set off the warheads of the launcher’s dozen remaining missiles in a chain reaction, booming a thundering staccato explosion across the island, lighting up the night, sending up a bright red mushroom cloud that expanded as it rose into the moonless sky. If the micromissile’s AI had survived, it would have been very satisfied indeed.

Within seconds the island’s radars, missiles, and uplinks were destroyed. In a buried command center, the klaxons continued to blare. Security personnel blanched at what they’d seen before their radar was destroyed. They were under attack. Multiple ships had fired on them. And two were coming in fast for the marina.

They were about to be invaded.

To the west, the only Moray that hadn’t announced its position waited, waited, waited with the infinite vigilant patience that only machines can know. Then the explosions came, and the counter explosions. Now, its AI determined. Now is the time. The Moray fired a salvo of tiny, nearly silent smart pebbles. The pebbles streaked out at the house, compared their positions and trajectories to their targets, morphed their body shapes as they flew to adjust their course, and streaked in to strike the cameras and audio pickups that covered the western wall of the palatial home.