The Last Cycle

by A. R. Knight

  All it took was one enterprising Teven, and then word spread around. Rebellious worlds started turning invasions into their own armies. Before long, and facing elimination by their own creations, the Chorus scrambled to bring back cast aside species like Flaum and Vyphen. Even then, that old version of the Vincere barely held on, and with the Sevora beginning to rise, the Chorus needed a stronger, better solution.

  The Oratus proved to be the answer.

  Except, apparently, the Amigga are changing their minds. Going back to how it was before. Maybe these new warbots are better, more resistant to the faults that ruined prior generations. If so, then the familiars on Cobalt aren’t the only path the Chorus is taking to its new future. One that doesn’t seem to have a place for other species.

  Regardless, the warbots aren’t active now, and if the Chorus loses here, none of this will matter.

  Sax starts looking for a way off of the level. The lift gates are showing red - locked. No chance of getting out that way, unless he wants to carve through with his claws, and there’s not enough time for that. Instead, Sax wanders past the warbots searching for an opportunity and finds a terminal in the center.

  Sax tries to boot it up, but the terminal rejects his own foreclaw with an angry beep. So instead Sax uses the claw he took from Kah down below, the limb now hardening into a stiff splay. It could almost be a weapon, if Sax felt like being morbid.

  When Kah’s claw touches the screen, it shifts and gives Sax an array of options, including the only one Sax wants to use.

  Below, where the Flaum attacked, Nobaa reached him from a safe space in the Cavignum. Sax retraces the call now, puts in the number and tells the terminal to send the signal. After a moment spent staring at a blinking gray screen, Nobaa answers.

  The Teven’s in a room bathed in Cavignum’s classic orange-and-chrome decor, though it’s ruined somewhat by the white and blue glows from all the terminals. Engee’s hook-covered carapace hovers nearby, her tiny arms reaching out and tapping away commands while Nobaa rotates a hole and sticks a small eye out towards the screen.

  “Sax, I never expected to hear from you again. Truly, we all thought you would die. You didn’t! That’s great news!” Nobaa pauses as Sax struggles not to snap the terminal in half. “But, where are you?”

  Sax takes a deep breath through his vents, opens his mouth to speak when Nobaa starts up again.

  “No, seriously. I’m tracing your call through the Meridia’s map and it doesn’t look like this level is supposed to be there. Wait. Are those warbots behind you?”

  Of course Nobaa would know about warbots. Of course he’d recognize them immediately.

  “I think so,” Sax manages to say. “They’re not running now.”

  “That’s good news for you. Otherwise you’d really be dead!”

  “That’s not why I’m calling,” Sax says.

  “Oh, yes. I suppose it wouldn’t be. What do you need? Anything I can help with?”

  “I hope so,” Sax says. “I need a way off this level. A lift, or somewhere to go where I can catch one.”

  “I can’t control the lifts,” Nobaa says. “But I can say that it looks like there’s a long lift above you. One that could take you right to the top. That’s what you want, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then, you need to get one more level up. If the lifts won’t work, try going to the ceiling. You’ve got those fancy claws, right? Use them.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me when to use my claws,” Sax hisses.

  “I was only suggesting! That’s all I ever do - suggest!”

  Sax is about to reply with some sort of insult when there’s a low beeping noise from his left. Then a rattle, followed by the soft click of a latch letting loose. With the microjets whirring up it’s not all that hard to learn what’s happened. A suspicion that’s confirmed when the warbot floats into view, those eight arms maneuvering weapons his way.

  “Nobaa, a warbot just activated,” Sax says, stepping away from the terminal and turning to face the metal adversary.

  “Don’t fight it! Run!”

  That would be a coward’s move, and Sax is no coward. Instead, Sax settles on his talons and gets ready to leap as the warbot floats at him. Sax wonders why it hasn’t opened fire, until realization strikes. If these warbots were ready to go, charged and set, they’d already be active. The Chorus would’ve sent them against Evva right away.

  Since the warbots are all still here, silent and waiting, their miners might not be charged. All their programming might not be ready. Which means the fight’s going to be up close and personal.

  Just how Sax likes it.

  The Oratus starts with a quick step around the terminal, bringing the warbot into full and centered view. With the dead ‘bots on the right and left serving as an audience, Sax sizes up his closing opponent.

  At around three meters tall, Sax is larger than the warbot, though the latter compensates for its size with those eight limbs. Sax counts a pair of swords in the mix, with two more bearing the apparently-dead miners. The other four hold what look like tools or docking appendages. So, two swords against Sax’s four claws and a pair of sharp, deadly talons. Those are odds the Oratus will take.

  Sax makes the first bet by digging his four main claws into the hanging warbot directly to his left. Whether because these warbots aren’t active, or because their armor is coming later, Sax grips, poking through the robot’s metal skin and, with a pivoting yank, breaking the warbot free of its chain. Thus shielded, Sax charges forward with the dead warbot covering his torso. At the last moment, as Sax sees his target pull back the swords for a swing, the Oratus throws the dead warbot into its live companion.

  The warbots crash into each other, their limbs hooking, breaking, scraping. Sax doesn’t let the maneuver go to waste either, following up the throw with a leap that carries him over the top of the two. Kicking his talons - his left into the top of the dead warbot, his right into the top of juddering live one - Sax crosses behind his target and drops to the floor. As he falls, Sax uses his tail to snake around one of the live warbot’s top limbs, one holding a syringe-like data-port connector.

  With his tail hold, Sax bites his talons into the floor when he lands and whips the warbot free of its companion and into another one, smashing its right sword arm into a hanging bot and crumpling it. Freeing his tail in the process, Sax whirls around, ready to dig his claws into the warbot’s back and finish the fight.

  Warbots don’t have traditional bones, joints, the usual constraints of biology. So when Sax turns around, expecting a free shot at a battered, distracted enemy, what he gets is a blazing sword coming towards him. The warbot’s reversed its limb, and the swing is accurate enough to shave a long, thin slice through the surface of Sax’s torso. A couple of Sax’s vents sting with the cut, but it’s not fatal, not serious, because Sax’s own instincts backed him up.

  The warbot uses the space bought by the swing to juice its microjets and get itself untangled, while Sax looks for another approach.

  What makes warbots so devastating is their ability to calculate, on the fly, the exact trajectory Sax might take on his attack. The warbot will be able to swing the sword to the perfect spot, right where Sax is going to be. Surprise, unpredictability - those are Sax’s assets, and he has to use them. His adversary isn’t going to give him the time, though. The warbot’s moving forward again, keeping that buzzing sword front and center.

  Sax back-pedals. He has no weapons aside from his claws, and Sax would rather not lose those to a swift swipe from that sword. The warbot’s pressing him now, forcing Sax back towards those lifts, which he could try to open with Kah’s claw, or…

  Sax grabs the claw and whips the stolen hand at the warbot, who swings the blade to catch the claw and sever it. The move, though, carries the sword away from its central position, and Sax jumps quick to take advantage. The warbot’s limbs are on the outside of its body, so when it tries to bring the blade back from its
wide swipe, Sax catches the limb just beyond the edge with his left foreclaw. His other three claws get to work tearing off the warbot’s back plate, which rips away with a second’s worth of swipes. Sax’s teeth attack the innards, a bite full of metal and glowing wires.

  He’s tasted better.

  The warbot shudders, its microjets fail, and the construct collapses to the ground in a metallic screeching shamble. Sax steps over the fallen thing and heads back to the terminal, where Nobaa’s still waiting on the call.

  “I’m back,” Sax hisses.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Of course,” Sax says, but before the Oratus can confirm his best route to the next level is a hack-and-slash ride through the ceiling, another set of whirring jets comes to life. Followed by another, and another. “More of them are activating, Nobaa.”

  “How many?”

  “There are dozens on this level alone.” Sax puts the numbers together - even without their miners, the warbots could manage to overwhelm him, and if there’s more than one level of these things, those buzzing swords could kill Evva and Bas too. “We have to stop them.”

  “We?”

  “You’re the Teven, think of something,” Sax hisses, then he has to back away from the terminal as the sword from the next warbot slashes where he was.

  Three warbots are coming at Sax now, gliding around the terminal and surrounding him, leaving only one option. Sax gathers his legs and jumps towards a line of still-dead warbots behind him. He lands and scrambles up one, leaving heavy grooves in the thing’s body. From there it’s up the latching cable, climbing with his claws until Sax makes it to the ceiling. A couple of hard strikes push the tips of his claws through the top tiles, letting Sax cling to the surface and look down as the warbots consider the best way to pursue him.

  “Hold them off!” Nobaa calls, the sound tinny and small coming from the terminal. “Engee and I are thinking!”

  “Think fast.” Sax starts to move, because the warbots are getting the idea that their microjets can loft them high enough to take swipes towards Sax.

  The Oratus isn’t moving at random, though. Sax’s muscles and sharp claws let him skitter across the ceiling faster than the warbots can follow, and he circles around them back towards the collapsed corpse of the first one. When he gets there, Sax lets go of the ceiling and drops, landing on top of the downed warbot. Its metal comrades are closing quick, those swords glowing red-pink with hot energy, when Sax uses his claws to shear off the swords from the dead, grounded warbot. Because the blades are made for the machines, they don’t have hilts or grips like normal swords might, but Sax doesn’t have the luxury to complain.

  Without an internal battery, too, the swords don’t burst to life. But Sax proves their worth anyway, swinging to counter the first warbot’s pair of blurring strikes. The swords are made to withstand the heat and force of themselves, so Sax’s makeshift defense counters the assault, clashing, sparking against the warbot’s attack. The warbot’s moves aren’t difficult to block at first, but these things are designed to evolve, adapt. The longer the fight takes, the more the warbot’s going to target Sax’s vulnerabilities, make the Oratus miss, make him lose some limbs.

  Which, all things considered, Sax would prefer to keep.

  So he jumps back, grabs that last bit of space between the line of warbots and the lifts, and throws one of the swords. It’s a straight strike, a line-pierce that, even without the energy, carries an Oratus’ strength and a super-sharp blade right through the first warbot’s front armor. The sword sinks in deep and prompts a telltale crunch, a high-pitched whir as components wind themselves up without restraint, followed by the warbot’s plunging collapse to the ground in front of Sax.

  It’s a moment of triumph stolen when more warbots on Sax’s right and left spark to life, detaching from their cables and making their way towards him while the other, already active ones float over their disabled friends. Sax has one sword and his back to a pair of locked lifts. Not the best situation.

  When surrounded, with no other options, the best move is to limit the number you have to fight at once. Straight ahead, Sax has at least two warbots in a line. To his right and left there’s one apiece. Get through one of them, and maybe Sax has a chance to get away, buy himself some time.

  So Sax feints right, flips the sword to his right foreclaw and leans that way, drawing the warbots in that direction and forcing the right warbot to raise its sword in a straight defense designed to block a throw like the one Sax just made at its companion. Already learning. Shifting his weight, throwing his tail to the right to help swivel him around, Sax pivots and launches to the left, over the stabbing charge of a warbot who thought it had an open shot at the Oratus’ back. Sax’s leap carries him over the warbot’s blades, with Sax bringing his talons up into a tuck to avoid the scorching slices.

  As Sax crashes into the advancing warbot, he uses his midclaws to clamber over the machine. With his right foreclaw, Sax jams his other blade through the top of the orb, stuttering the warbot into collapse. Sax rides the machine to the ground, then yanks the blade out with his right midclaw and breaks into a run, ducking and weaving through the crowd of hanging warbots, more and more of whom are starting up to life. Sax can move for the moment, but he’s going to be overwhelmed in the next.

  “We’ve found an opportunity!” Nobaa’s screaming through the terminal rises above the medley of mechanical whines. “These warbots are still running old software! That’s why they’re not active - the Chorus must have known they’d be vulnerable!”

  Sax, who’s cutting wildly with the sword as he runs around the level, doesn’t get what the Teven’s saying. So what if the warbots haven’t had their internal programming changed - it’s not like Sax can adjust it now. The Oratus barely has time to duck and dodge sword strikes. More and more warbots are activating and the level’s filling with the whir of microjets and the whine from the swords.

  One of those blades will land a cut sooner or later, and Sax won’t survive what follows.

  11 Trespassers

  Learn why we were made, and then destroy our makers. Seems simple enough, but doing either requires getting out of this safe room. The terminal’s been no help, so the four of us are standing in front of the door, willing it to open.

  “What if I scream for help? Think anyone will answer?” Viera asks.

  “Try it.” I don’t think anyone will, but it’s worth a shot.

  Malo and I, with T’Oli coating me in its own body armor, take up positions on either side of the door, and at my nod, Viera commences with a series of truly terrifying shrieks. She howls that the window’s cracking, that we’re about to get sucked into space, and that I’m suffering from some sort of critical illness. It’s inventive, it’s scary, and I’d come running if I heard it.

  Or maybe I’d head the other way.

  The door, though, stays shut. Resolute.

  “Guess they don’t care if we die in here.” Viera sounds offended.

  “More likely they can see what we’re doing and know there’s no real threat,” T’Oli patters. “I would bet someone from the Chorus is watching every move we make.”

  “You could have suggested that earlier,” I say. “Saved us the trouble of listening to Viera.”

  “I believe letting loose can be healthy,” T’Oli replies.

  “It did feel good to scream,” Viera agrees. “You should try it, Empress. You’ve got to be frustrated.”

  I am, but it’s not the kind of frustration that’s helped by screaming and shouting. I look at the door again, “T’Oli, you think they’re watching us?”

  “I doubt there’s anything in the Meridia that isn’t watched, Kaishi.”

  “Then why don’t we give them a show?”

  T’Oli tilts its eyestalks, which, seeing as those stalks are resting on my shoulders, makes it look like I have a pair of gray growths spiking out of me.

  “Make your sword,” I suggest. “Let’s try and hack o
ur way out of here.”

  “I don’t think the door is thin enough?”

  “Guess we’ll find out,” I reply to the Ooblot as it forms up along my hand, its skin hardening into a razor edge. “You ready?”

  “For you to hit me against a door? Technically, I am as sharp and as durable as I can be, so yes. Hit away.”

  “Sorry,” I say as I take the first swing with my right arm.

  It’s an overhead chop, meant to slice the door vertically down the middle. Instead, T’Oli’s edge strikes the metal and bounces off, though the Ooblot does manage to leave a small groove where I hit.

  “That’s going to take a long time,” Malo says from his corner, watching.

  “If you have any other ideas, I’m listening.” I try to keep frustration from nipping at the edges of my words, but it’s hard. Chipping through this door with T’Oli is going to take more time and strength than I have, and that’s not counting whether the Ooblot’s going to put up with the abuse.

  I give Malo a few seconds, but no inspiration flies from his lips, so I lift T’Oli up for a second strike. Both of its eyes wince, and mine do too. And I swing. There’s a clank, a screech of metal and another piece, a little larger, falls out to the ground. I sweep the chunk away with my foot - it’s barely bigger than my fingertip - and get set for round three.

  When the door opens.

  There’s no warning. No gradual twisting of locks or command from Ferrolite that we’re about to get introduced to some new guards. Instead, from one moment to the next I’m looking at a gray metal barrier and then a pair of annoyed, black-furred, blue-uniformed Flaum. Their miners are holstered, their claws are at their sides, and their beady eyes go right to the Ooblot I’m wearing on my arm. Behind them, the once-crowded halls of the Chorus ring look very, very empty.

  “Hi,” is all I can think of to say.

  Malo works faster, flying out from the side to tackle the left Flaum and drive the furry creature into the ground. That draws the eyes of its companion, which opens it up to a swing once my instincts kick back in. These Flaum are meant to keep us here, not help us. Yet when my right hand, with T’Oli on it, lands, I don’t feel the smooth stabbing of a sharp knife but the jolt up my arm of a hammer blow. My target stumbles backward, to the other side of the doorway, and its hands go towards the matted fur spot where I’ve apparently punched it.