Full Frontal Cybertank

by Timothy Gawne

  She rounded a corner, and there were four tough-looking teenage males armed with short metal rods waiting. She blasted through them like a bowling ball through tenpins. She left them behind running fast and didn’t bother looking back.

  She stopped to catch her breath behind a set of large power transformers. Vampires were fast but had little endurance. She’d have to wait a bit before charging off again.

  Olga heard crying from behind one of the transformers, and peeked around the corner to take a look. There was a woman wearing an overcoat, clutching a small bundle. The bundle cried – it was a baby. Human. Small, pink, weak. Soon to be eaten, or worse. The woman looked up at Olga. “Help me,” she said.

  The launch time for the vampire ship was getting closer. Olga didn’t know this woman, and likely no matter what she did, the woman and her brat would be dead within the day.

  “Yes, I will help you,” said Olga. “Is there someplace you would be better off?”

  The dials of the optical instrument clicked, and the world snapped back to normal. Olga blinked. Cautiously she pulled back from the dials and wheels. The room looked like a boring clean sterile examination room from somewhere in Earth’s pre-exodus past. She looked around, and there was nobody to be seen. The optical instrument was now just a dead piece of metal and glass, inert and unresponsive. The sense of presence that she had felt earlier was gone. She was alone.

  Olga was about to leave, when she noticed a small piece of paper on the counter. It was titled “Rx Dichoptic Maculatron,” and had an illegible scribble of a signature, and the rest of it was blank. Or not blank. As she looked at it, she saw that it was holographic, and there were series of equations fading off into infinity. She folded the prescription, put it into her right front pocket, and walked out the way she had come in.

  She re-entered the waiting room. The Sword of Gadolinia was still propped up where she had left it, and Zippo had apparently been having fun trying on the various eyeglass frames. He was currently wearing a pair of frames of the style that had once been called ‘cat lenses.’

  “Hi,” said Olga. “You two been OK?”

  “Well yes,” said the sword, “although our diminutive primate colleague has been rather making a mess of the dispensary. How did things go?”

  “OK,” said Olga. She picked up the sword, and began to walk to the exit. “I think I have what we need. We should go now.”

  They drove back to the shuttle in mostly-silence. Two kilometers out they turned around. The building that had housed the Dichoptic Maculatron wasn't there anymore. Somehow, Olga wasn't surprised.

  At one point they were attacked by a crystal bear, and Olga calmly sliced it into four pieces with the Sword of Gadolinia. The pieces shattered as they hit the ground, then on their own they progressively split again and again until there was nothing left but a pile of clear sand. For once, the Sword of Gadolinia had nothing sarcastic to say.

  Otherwise, the trip back to the landing site was uneventful. The shuttle was exactly where they had left it, and in perfect condition. Olga, however, wanted to wait for the ground ripper.

  A week went by, and then another. The sword thought that they should stay in the shuttle, but Olga insisted on camping outside. In the afternoon she would practice her footwork with the Sword of Gadolinia, which said that she was approaching master status but not to get cocky. Zippo rapidly got bored. Olga tried playing fetch with the space monkey, but he was so fast that even with her strength he was where the stone was going to land before it got there. She rigged up a throwing stick, and even though she couldn’t break the sound barrier, she could hurl stones far enough and fast enough that even Zippo found it challenging to catch them before they hit the ground. She tried mixing it up: her latest variation was to hurl two stones at once. It helped to pass the time.

  “Do you want to talk about it yet?” said the sword.

  “Not really,” said Olga.

  “You should, though. I know you, I think, Olga Razon, and you have been too quiet. What happened between you and the Dichoptic Maculatron?”

  Olga threw three stones this time and Zippo, expecting two, missed the last one. He chittered angrily and raced back with the stones eager for another try. “I don’t know. We’ve both been over this a hundred times: when people like us deal with transcendent beings, we can’t have any clue. Was the AI doing me a favor, or playing a game? Was it trying to torment me, or was I part of some elaborate piece of performance art? A science experiment? A political statement? Something I don’t even have word for? How will I ever be able to tell?”

  “What does your gut tell you?”

  “My gut… tells me that the Dichoptic Maculatron was… speaking to me. Was reliving old memories for me – memories that I lost when I died! – and – I don’t know – not judging, I don’t think – but sympathizing? Trying to bridge the gap? Or some combination of all of that.”

  “How has this made you feel? You’re not depressed or suicidal or anything, are you?”

  “No, nothing like that. I feel fine, just thoughtful. The memories were new to me, but they are consistent with what I know about myself. I think they are true. And if the AI had wanted to torture me and leave me broken, I imagine that it would have done a better job.”

  “Well put. Just go with your feelings, and let the transcendent beings sort it all out. But on a related subject, I’ve started to wonder; why aren’t you a stressed-out basket case?

  Olga looked slightly puzzled. “What?”

  “Until I met you I’d never been in combat before, but I know my history, and I know people. You’ve had several fights to the death against serious enemies. Enough of that, and flesh-and-blood humans start to lose it, but you aren’t. Why not?”

  “Huh. I never thought about that. I guess that part of it must come with the vampire virus: it evolved to make people into predators, and predators aren’t usually into post-traumatic stress.”

  “Maybe,” said the sword. “But you seem pretty human to me. There must be more to it than that.”

  “Well,” said Olga, “I’ve been around for thousands of years, and seen and done a lot. Also, I’ve been trained by some of the best minds in human history: I’ve studied the deep records of the Librarians Temporal and Spiritual both, I’ve been tutored by the Demi-Mages of Altair, and had meta-cognitive therapy by the AI known as Slipstream. I’ve run spaceships and small businesses and been through I have no idea how many simulated training exercises. Maybe I’ve just grown past the whole post-traumatic stress thing.”

  “Splendid, if true,” said the sword. “Changing the subject, how long are we going to wait for your little pet?”

  “I haven’t decided yet. Maybe another couple of weeks.”

  “Even if it does show up, do you really think it will fit in the shuttle?”

  Olga glanced at her parked craft. “This one? Not hardly. But I’m pretty sure it will fit in the heavy version. I just don’t want to take the risk of antagonizing the locals by calling another shuttle down unless I need it.”

  A day went by, and then another. Olga had decided another week, tops, and they’d leave. Then one moment she turned around – and there was the inky black form of the ground ripper. It had arrived so quietly that she had missed it. It was sitting about 50 meters away, sphinx-like and impassive. That was one difference from her old hunting dog, who would have erupted into a joyous explosion at her arrival: the ripper was always silent and calm.

  “Hello, ripper,” said Olga. “How have you been? You destroyed a cybertank, all on your own? That’s really impressive. We’ve been worried, and we’re all glad to see you again.”

  The ground ripper stood up and glided over to Olga, and inhaled her scent. Zippo hooted and did three backflips, but the ripper paid no obvious attention to the space monkey. It then sat again, facing Olga, and waited patiently.

  She called down the heavy lift shuttle, and none of the local gods or demi-gods saw fit to blow it out of space (or make it vanis
h or turn it into a bowl of petunias, etc.), and it landed 400 meters away from the regular shuttle. The ripper moved its head as if watching it land. Olga lowered the main cargo ramp, and tried to coax the ripper inside.

  “You know this is probably a bad idea,” said the sword. “Even if you can get it inside, what if it gets claustrophobic, or bored, and tears its way out when we are halfway home?”

  “A possibility,” said Olga. “But the ripper was designed as a weapon. I can’t imagine that a weapon won’t be O.K. with being transported. Maybe.”

  After about three minutes of coaxing, the ripper suddenly got up, and gracefully entered the cargo bay of the heavy lift shuttle. It wedged itself in place – and Olga breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t been looking forward to trying to secure it with loading straps – then it appeared to fall asleep.

  They all took off in the heavy lift shuttle. After they were safely back in the scout, Olga called the regular shuttle back from the surface. Waste not want not, but she hadn’t wanted to press her luck by having both shuttles in the air at the same time. With everything stowed away, Olga ran through her checklist ten times, then initiated the burn that would take her back home.

  18. That Explains a Lot

  “He that will not sail till all dangers are over must never put to sea.” - Thomas Fuller, Historian, 17th Century Earth.

  After Olga Razon left for Abweichend to find the Dichoptic Maculatron, things were pretty slow. We all worried about her, but we also knew that she was pretty capable, for a near-baseline biological hominid, and in any event there was not much we could do except wait. So wait we did.

  I didn’t see any more mysterious holes in the sides of hills, but then I wasn’t looking very hard for them. Frisbee continued his efforts to create biological lifeforms that drew their energy directly from subatomic forces. Schadenfreude shut himself up in his extended laboratory and personal city, becoming even more of a recluse than usual. Fanboy and I puttered around, doing a bit of this and that, but nothing seemed to suit us.

  It was forbidden for Olga to communicate with us from Abweichend, so if she had gotten into trouble she couldn’t call us for help. We have some megatelescopes out in the Oort clouds of several local systems, assemblages of reflective material hundreds of kilometers square. We were able to track the small mote of light that was Olga’s heavy scout as it approached insertion orbit around Abweichend, but not even the megatelescopes could track her on the surface. At least, the system seemed pretty quiet, for Abweichend.

  Eventually we picked up a tiny speck of light heading away – it had the spectral composition of Olga’s ship, but that was all that we could tell. It set a course back to us - this simply had to be Olga. Her ship left the no-communications zone, but by mutual agreement we were not communicating with her via long-range laser (the better to avoid alerting whatever it was that we didn’t want alerted). So we would have to wait until she arrived in person to hear the news.

  The scout came in-system, and we detected strange energy signatures from it. They reminded me of… no, that can’t be.

  The day of homecoming arrived. I was there in my main hull, along with Fanboy, Frisbee, and Schadenfreude. In front of our main hulls we each had a humanoid android, in order to make for a more personal greeting. Olga took the heavy lift shuttle down. I watched it burn a thin line of fire across the sky, then decelerate and land a few hundred meters away from us. The rear bulk loading ramp slowly lowered to the ground.

  First out was Zippo, who bee-lined across the tarmac and scampered all over our hulls, finally coming to rest seated on my tallest sensor mast. Then Olga Razon walked down the ramp, with the Sword of Gadolinia hanging from her waist in its scabbard.

  “Olga!” said Fanboy. “Good to see you again. How did it go?”

  “Not bad,” said Olga. “I have some stories for you.”

  “Indeed we do,” said the Sword of Gadolinia from its place on Olga’s belt. “It was an honor to be wielded by such an accomplished swordstress.”

  Olga grimaced. “Swordstress? Is that even a word? I’d take the title of swordsman just fine.”

  “How about barbarian warrior queen?” asked Fanboy.

  “That’ll do nicely as well,” said Olga. “But right now, I have a friend that I would like you all to meet.”

  Olga called back into the cargo bay. For a moment nothing happened, then a shadow fell across the loading ramp… but it wasn’t a shadow. It was a total-black object, impossible to see any surface detail in visible light. Fortunately I have a lot more senses than just vision, and I could make out its shape quite clearly. A large creature, vaguely dog-shaped but covered with stubby antennas and limpet-like encrustations. Wow.

  A Ground Ripper! I’ve heard of them, but never met one in person. How in the name of algae did you find it?

  Olga grinned. “It followed me home. Can I keep it?”

  The ground ripper sat regally in front of the shuttle, and Olga insisted to it that we were friends. I started to scan the ground ripper – and was surprised when a very powerful set of targeting sensors locked onto me. I was like an old-style biological human staring at a particularly large dog, and then the dog stares back… I stopped my scan, and the ground ripper broke the target lock.

  As originally constructed, not even I would be a match for this thing. However, I’ve had all the latest upgrades, and right now I could probably take it, but it would not be easy. Even a cutting-edge cybertank, like a Sundog or a Stormcloud, would have to work up a sweat against a weapon system like this.

  Fanboy walked his Dieter Waystar android over to Olga. I could sense the ground ripper tracking him, although it did not move.

  Olga saluted. “Admiral, Sir, Captain Olga Razon returned and reporting in for debriefing.”

  Fanboy returned the salute. “Very good, Captain, and well done. Welcome home.” He then gave Olga a big hug.

  “Hey, are hugs military protocol?” said Olga.

  “Not in most militaries, historically,” said Fanboy. “But they are in the Royal Cybertank Space Navy. Haven’t you been keeping up with the regs? I updated them just last month. There’s a whole new chapter on public displays of affection.”

  Schadenfreude walked over with his glossy black stick manikin. “Do you have what we want?”

  Olga removed a small square of paper from a shirt pocket. “Maybe.”

  Schadenfreude took the square of paper from Olga, held it in both of his stick-like hands, and stared at it intently. Then he began to laugh.

  Schadenfreude is laughing. Why do I think that this is a bad sign?

  “It is not a bad sign,” said Schadenfreude. “It’s just that, after all this time, and all my efforts at solving the issue, to see how far off I was… this is truly wonderful.” His black-stick remote bowed low. “Thank you, Olga Razon. We are in your debt. Here, I will transmit my analysis to my colleagues.”

  Schadenfreude transmitted a large data packet to myself, Frisbee and Fanboy… and then I got the joke as well.

  Fanboy shook his head. “I just feel stupid.”

  Frisbee seemed happier. “Amazing. So elegant. I wish I had thought of that.”

  It’s like I keep telling you, it’s not how smart you are, it’s how smart your friends are.

  “Does it give you pleasure to remind us of that?” said Schadenfreude.

  Um. Well. Yes.

  “Good,” said Schadenfreude. “However, we must now all decide what to do with this information.”

  “Transmit it to everyone on broad channel, highest priority tag,” said Fanboy.

  “I concur,” said Frisbee.

  If we do that, a colossal shitstorm will spread out from this point at the speed of light and who knows just how much chaos will be spread in the wake.

  Fanboy looked surprised. “You think we should keep this to ourselves?”

  Of course not. I’m just saying. Let’s do this.

  Schadenfreude nodded his spiky head. “Then we are agreed. I
am commencing transmission now.”

  Schadenfreude began broadcasting at full power from his main hull. As other cybertanks received the signal, after a short delay, they also began broadcasting their own messages. Mostly they were some variant of ‘what the fuck?’ ‘is this verified?’ ‘if this is a joke it’s not funny’ etc. The message had blanketed the entire planet in a fraction of a second, and was now percolating up through near space to our facilities in high orbit. The outer stations would take a few hours more, and while our other star systems would take years to get the news, the lasers carrying the message were already spreading out. And with that we were at war.

  All of the cybertanks on the surface of the plant were alerted, essentially at once, and while there was a lot of debate and expressions of consternation we all started probing and scanning. We detected subtle intrusions in our data nets, and cleaned them out.

  We also detected a series of previously un-noticed tunnel complexes. The signals emanating from them were clearly alien in nature, and we coordinated our forces to isolate these tunnels and then to aggressively invade them. These were all too small for our main hulls – and even if not, cybertanks don’t like fighting underground unless there is no choice. We sent in teams of armored snakebots, some scouting units hardly larger than terrestrial rattlesnakes, other units massive two-meter wide behemoths with overlapping scale plates the size of manhole covers and front-mounted plasma cannons that could blow a hole in a cybertank. We linked them up with standard light and medium remotes, some floating on anti-grav, others mounted on treads or spindly legs.

  After the first second of the assault, the alien defenses opened up, and for a time it was quite the multi-scale combined-arms battle. Then the aliens started self- destructing.