“They were mass murderers.”
“Acknowledged. Now think about the PLAN. The deadliest foe humanity has ever faced. Think about the force opposing it—Star Force—your force. Ask yourself why we haven’t won yet.”
She turned away sharply, trying to disguise the fact that he was backing her down. But of course, he’d know. He could read people like a scanner.
“I’m gonna go change out the CO2 filters.” They were down to reusing old ones, cleaning them by hand. “It’s starting to stink in here.”
“I’m only trying to help you,” he called after her.
xxv.
A buzz of celebration filled the ballroom. The lawyers were serving champagne. The rioters hugged their families. Medibots worked with laser scalpels, topical anesthetic, and bandages to de-splart them from each other.
Even the peacekeepers had jumped on Angelica’s bandwagon. Once freed from custody, they had taken it on themselves to round up the rest of the UNVRP executives. These gray-faced careerists were now trying to convince Angelica that they would have supported her, of course they would, if they had known what she was planning.
Angelica laughed and joked with them. But even from a distance, Cydney could tell that she was still on edge.
And why shouldn’t she be?
~They’ll never let her get away with this, Cydney subvocalized to her feed. ~You can’t just declare independence!!!
Her comms program replied: Transmission failed.
~Why?!?
No internet access. Trying again to connect with relay satellite … Attempt failed. Trying again …
“Shit,” Cydney said to Mork Rapp. “She’s blocking my comms!”
“Mine, too. But I don’t think it’s her. More likely to be Star Force.”
“Oh. Oh, of course.” Cydney realized she hadn’t seen any of the Marines in a while. Rather than risk a violent showdown, they must’ve decided to contain the situation and await further orders. “They must’ve shut down our comms so the solar system can’t find out what’s happening. I wonder how they did that?”
“They have a Heavycruiser. It would be the work of a moment to shoot down UNVRP’s relay satellite.”
“What’s happening now?”
A commotion had broken out at the doors of the ballroom. People pressed back, making way for someone.
Something.
A horde of monsters danced into the room.
Dark purple, matte-skinned, they resembled six-legged spiders, two meters high at the shoulder. Their headparts bristled with sockets, some with drill bits and cutter lasers attached. Above this hardware, huge eyes blinked vapidly.
Cydney screeched, “Oh my God! What are those? Where did they come from? What are they doing here?”
“They’re phavatars. Vinge-classes. An older telepresence platform. They don’t make them anymore. Too, um, non-humanoid.”
“You’re not kidding. They look like something out of an alien invasion movie.”
It did feel as if the ballroom were being invaded. Twenty … thirty … forty … Cydney gave up counting the phavatars.
It reassured her somewhat that the locals weren’t scared of them. Parents boosted children onto their backs. Party hats were jokingly placed on their headparts.
Angelica advanced to meet them, and offered a curtsey to the one in the lead. “Welcome! May I have your names?”
A voice boomed through the ballroom. “They call me Gonzo.”
“And I’m Mad Dog,” said a different voice.
The phavatars had no mouths; they were talking through integrated speakers in their headparts. Their rich, modulated voices did not match their inhuman frames.
“Honored to meet you,” Angelica smiled. She turned to face her human supporters. “In the Republic of Mercury,” she declared, “equality will no longer be a human privilege. Bots are people, too! It’s only fair that we should share the rights and responsibilities of citizenship with those who take the rads for us. So, let’s have a big hand for our non-organic friends!”
The applause was scanty, uncertain.
Mike Vlajkovic pushed through the crowd. He had a bald patch on the back of his head where the splart had been cut out of his hair. The phavatar called Mad Dog extended a three-pronged gripper. Vlajkovic shook it. His laugh acknowledged the incongruity of shaking hands with a bot.
“What do you know,” he said. “Sometimes, the good guys win, after all.”
Vlajkovic’s friends cheered that.
“Guess I misjudged you, Ms. Lin. It looks like we were on the same side all along. I’m not familiar with the arguments of the personhood movement, but these bots have been good friends to my kid, and all of us, over the years. So maybe you’ve got a point.”
“Confirming ID,” the phavatar Mad Dog said.
Vlajkovic looked puzzled.
“ID confirmed. Searching local database.”
Mork Rapp said, “I’m getting a bad feeling about this.”
“Entry found,” said the phavatar. “Summary of DNA record follows. Admixture test: subject belongs to the European population group. Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA tests: 95% of reference sequences match sequences in the haplotype database for the Polish/Belorussian subgroup of the Slavic race. Conclusion …”
Vlajkovic started to move backwards.
“Pureblood,” squawked the phavatar. “Pureblood. Pureblood.”
It seized Vlajkovic, closed one gripper over his head, and twisted.
It threw something high over the crowd. There was a moment’s hush as everyone tried to see what it was. Then the screams started.
The thing was Vlajkovic’s head.
The phavatar dropped Vlajkovic’s body on the floor like a dirty shirt. Blood fountained from his neck.
People stampeded in all directions. The phavatars spidered in pursuit. Profanity-laced battle cries blared from their integrated speakers. They corralled two and three people at a time with their grippers. Blood splattered the Republic of Mercury logos on the walls.
“I was on 4 Vesta,” Cydney said to Mork Rapp.
“We won’t be hurt,” Rapp gabbled, pale with terror. “You’re not a pureblood, and nor am I. I know I look Thai, but my maternal grandmother was Vietnamese. Apparently, they’re distinct haplotypes—”
A phavatar crashed into the VIP seating area. It picked Rapp up by the armpits and held him so his flat, brown, Thai-looking face was level with its headpart. “Your ID isn’t in UNVRP’s database,” it said.
“I know, but I’ve got my DNA record right here.” Rapp waved his wristwatch at the phavatar’s eyes. “What file format do you—”
The phavatar cut him off. “Eh, who cares? Can tell just by lookin’ atcha, you’re another.”
It twisted his head off.
Cydney screamed and screamed. The phavatar silenced her. It grabbed her chin and clamped a gripper over her mouth. She tasted rust and Mercury dust, and knew she was about to die.
xxvi.
Only one person was left in the recycling plant: Elfrida.
It was quiet in the dim cavern, except for the sound of sewage trickling onto the floor. Elfrida sat with her back to the biowaste tank, which was slightly warm, owing to the decomposition of the organic matter inside.
An hour or two ago, she’d thought she heard a klaxon. But then the sound had stopped. Maybe she’d just imagined it.
She was alone.
Everyone had forgotten about her.
The loading door at the far end of the plant rolled up. “Yo! Goto,” said a voice amplified through a suit’s external speaker.
“Doug!” She struggled stiffly to her feet.
Half a dozen red, white, and blue EVA suits strode into the recycling plant. To Elfrida, they looked like angels of salvation. They surrounded her warily, as if surprised to find her alive and breathing. “How’s the air?”
“OK, except for the smell.”
The leader raised the faceplate of his helmet. Stubble grimed hi
s familiar features. “No worse than at home,” he said, sniffing.
“Are you really Grumpy Doug? Or one of the others?”
“The others have better things to do than rescue your Earthling ass.”
“Yes. Sorry. But it worked? You noticed? We all climbed into the tanks, to make them heavy enough to trigger waste collection alerts at your recycling plant. Then the captain of the peacekeepers had a better idea …”
“Yeah. S.O.S. I learned Morse code, too.”
“That was all of us jumping up and down at once.”
“‘All of us’?”
Elfrida’s elation faded. “The peacekeepers were in here with me. So were Vlajkovic’s guys. But then the Marines took them away. That was a long time ago. I don’t know how long.” She nodded at the streams of waste water spraying from the leaky pipes. “Long enough that I was seriously thinking about drinking that water.”
“That would’ve been a very bad idea. Have some gatorade.” Doug extracted a pouch from the thigh webbing off his suit. It was frozen into a solid lump. “We came across the crater. It’s cold out there. Push this button, it’ll defrost.”
Elfrida pushed the button, wiped her lips on the inside of her forearm—the last clean patch of skin on her body—and gulped down the now-scalding gatorade. “That is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
“Invented in the good ol’ US of A.”
“I’m starting to appreciate your culture.”
“Sorry we didn’t get here quicker.”
“Is everything all right at Mt, Gotham?”
Grumpy Doug shook his head. “We’re under siege.”
“What?”
He took a moment, sucking on his suit’s rehydration nipple, then made eye contact. “Bunch of phavatars are trying to break into Mt. Gotham with a bucket-wheel excavator.”
“What?”
“We sortied through the service entrance. They’re not in the mines yet. Least, they weren’t a couple of hours ago. But you can’t get all the way here underground, so when we broke cover, they saw us. Picture this: we’re being chased across the crater floor by hostile robots riding in dumptrucks. We took a couple of ‘em out with the .50 cal. But it gets better. We’re running flat out, and I’m wondering where the fuck Star Force is. Well, I’m still wondering. Those two GTVs that were parked outside of here?”
“Yes, yes, I saw them.”
“They aren’t there now. And the Crash Test Dummy isn’t taking our calls.”
Grumpy Doug took a pack of gum out of his chest pocket and folded a piece into his mouth.
“My bet is they’ve run off,” said one of the other Americans.
“The phrase you’re looking for is ‘strategic retreat,’” Grumpy Doug said. “Remember, this is Star Force we’re talking about.”
He focused on Elfrida, chewing.
“You know anything about this?”
She sensed the tension in him. Realized this was why they’d made the dangerous journey across the crater. Not for her, but for what she might know. And she knew nothing. She could speculate about the identity of whoever had control of the phavatars, but if she were wrong, she might make things worse.
Desperate to help, she said, “Did you try jamming the telepresence frequencies? Do you have that capability?”
“No. That would be illegal.”
“Oh. Well, yeah, of course.”
“We need to get out of this shithole,” said the man who’d made the comment about Star Force running away.
“The door’s locked,” Elfrida said.
“Not a problem,” Grumpy Doug said. But his eyes stayed on her. “Goto, it ain’t no human being operating those phavatars. They’ve been hijacked by the Heidegger program.”
Efrida bent over, hugging herself as if to keep herself from falling apart. No. No. No. She realized she was saying it out loud. “No. No.”
“You were on 4 Vesta, so I was thinking you might know something about it. How to defeat it.”
“I don’t understand. How can it be—here? It’s trapped on Vesta. They’re monitoring it closely. It can’t have escaped. And even if it has, how would it have got in here?”
That firmware upgrade, she thought.
“It doesn’t have to be the same Heidegger program,” Grumpy Doug said, echoing her thoughts. “It’s software. It could be a new version.”
“Is it acting the same?” Maybe she could help, after all. “On 4 Vesta, it started by hijacking the infrastructure. Then it went through the population, killing all the purebloods.”
“Check. Check.”
“Oh, God.”
“On the bright side, it hasn’t got into Wrightstuff, Inc.’s infrastructure yet. There are times when it pays to be paranoid. On the other hand, if it breaches our airlocks, that won’t matter. We’re holding the phavatars off for now, but we are not set up to fight in vacuum.”
“You’ve got all those guns.”
“For use indoors. You cannot fire a machine-gun in vacuum. Overheating is the big issue. You can get away with single shots, but just try hitting those bastards one bullet at a time.” Grumpy Doug spat out his gum on the floor. “Want some? Stimulex. Helps if you’re going to have to run.”
“Thank you, I think I will.” The gum tasted like candied ginger. She smiled brightly.
“You’re up, Matt,” Grumpy Doug said to the .50 cal gunner. “Goto, we’re going to mosey out of here and attempt to link up with the Marines, if any of them are left alive. Cover your ears.”
The .50 cal gunner planted his tripod and pulled the trigger on his weapon. Ten seconds later, the recycling plant no longer had a door. Instead, it had a hole in the wall.
Beyond: darkness.
Elfrida clambered over the rubble behind the Americans. Now that she’d seen first-hand what the .50 could do, she appreciated that Vlajkovic and his friends must have exercised considerable restraint, or there wouldn’t be a hab here anymore.
But the Heidegger program was not something you could kill with weapons. Did the Americans understand that?
They regrouped in the dark corridor. In the glow of helmet lamps, a trickle of sewage spread around their feet. It was apocalypse-quiet, except for the ringing in Elfrida’s ears.
“Jen, we got comms?” Doug asked one of the women on his team.
“No. Maybe if we go higher up.”
“Do not accept any pings from the UNVRP network. Remember, it is now the Heidegger network.”
“I’m not stupid, sir.”
They walked in single file along the corridor. The Stimulex gum was not working for Elfrida. She felt like she’d mainlined a pot of coffee, but she didn’t feel any less scared.
“The air doesn’t smell good,” she whispered.
“No, you’re right,” Grumpy Doug whispered back.
“Maybe the Heidegger program has shut down the atmospheric rebalancing unit. There are like no pressure seals in this hab.”
“According to my suit, CO2 is up, but only by a tenth of a point.”
“Why are we whispering?”
“On account of we don’t want anyone to hear us.”
“Um, we just demolished the recycling plant. I think everyone knows we’re here.”
“Point.” A feral grin sliced across Grumpy Doug’s face.
“Oh God, that smell.”
She stutter-stepped ahead, breasting the overlapping circles of light from the Americans’ helmet lamps.
Wetness gleamed on the floor.
Doug caught up with her, grabbed her arm. They bunched up in the mouth of the corridor, facing the atrium. A splinter of light glowed above. The shadowed shape of a corpse hung over the balustrade of the L1 mezzanine.
Elfrida pulled her gaze down to the farm.
At first, she thought the hydroponic troughs had been wrenched off their racks and piled up in the middle of the atrium.
Then she realized the pile was bodies.
They were heaped on the floor. Headless, gutted, rippe
d apart like soft toys. More bodies hung on the vegetable frames, as if they’d been thrown down from the upper levels.
Nothing moved, except for blood dripping, swelling the puddle at their feet.
Elfrida threw up that gatorade. Some of the Americans were throwing up, too.
Not Grumpy Doug. He cradled his machine-gun, alert. “That smell?” he said. “I should have known. The smell of death.”
“It wasn’t like this on 4 Vesta,” Elfrida choked.
“Version 2.0.”
Her gaze fell on a severed head. It had belonged to a man with a buzzcut. A Marine.
She remembered the carnage-porn in VC000632’s search space. The Heidegger program was making that gruesome fantasy real.
“It’s evolved,” she gasped. “It’s developing a—a sense of style.”
“Did you hear that?” Grumpy Doug said sharply.
They all went quiet. Jen the comms officer was still retching.
And she was the first one to die.
The vinge-class must have been lurking on one of the mezzanines overhead. It fell silently, and landed on top of them before they knew it was there. Its cutter laser attachment carved blue arabesques in the air. The beam slid across Jen’s chest and her suit sprang apart like a pistachio shell. Blood rained on Elfrida’s forehead. She was on her knees on the regocrete. Jen’s body crumpled, close enough for Elfrida to feel the hot steam from the woman’s entrails.
Bullets stormed over her head. The vinge-class reared, clashed its forelegs together, let out an ear-splitting electronic squeal. Grumpy Doug was shouting. Gunfire chewed into the walls and ricocheted off the phavatar’s fleximinium frame. Elfrida laced her hands over the back of her head, kneeling, as small as she could make herself.
It got quiet again.
She could hear herself breathing. She was still alive.
She slowly raised her head, and saw the legs of the vinge-class planted in front of her face.
“Get the fuck up, monkey bitch.”
Elfrida obeyed. Her knees trembled with terror. She looked away from Jen’s body. She could not see Grumpy Doug or any of the others, alive or dead. They must have run away. Staged a—what was the word? A strategic retreat.
The Mercury Rebellion Page 21
