The Requiem of Steel

by David Adams

  Ten joules a minute. Six hundred joules an hour. Fourteen and a half thousand a day. Four hundred thousand a month. He had nearly one million, three hundred thousand joules in the tank. Only three more months until he was fully charged.

  His waiting had transformed into a dull routine. He had no watch, no clock—even his time-keeping implant was shut down to preserve power—but he knew how much energy he was syphoning away, squirrelling into his tiny battery.

  As a construct, he had been able to track time perfectly, to a certain level of precision that was sufficient for almost any purpose. The Toralii used time measurements based on eight; each unit was eight times the value of the previous, and one eighth the value of the next. Eight seasons in a year, eight units in a season, eight days in a unit, eight sections in a day, and so on and so forth until the division of time no longer made sense.

  Humans, however, left to their own devices, had to deal with things in larger slices. A sleep period. A meal period. And the charging, that little gauge inside his head, slowly filled up, day by day. Slowly.

  Try as he might, though, even with the charge meter to anchor him, he lost track of time. He slept, woke, then slept again. The Toralii kept him in a separate prison block, away from the others, in an empty square cell with a toilet and a slot for food. It might have seemed that he was being left alone, but Ben knew better. He knew the Toralii—and their methods. They were studying him.

  Finally, after many meals and many rest periods, the door to his cell opened. Ben sat up expectantly, watching as the heavy metal retracted into the wall then stayed open.

  A strange Toralii stepped into the light. Ben squinted, peering at the silhouette. Although he was male, tall, and strong, age had sapped his strength. The edges of the shape were gilded with dark-red fur streaked with grey. His coat was strangely weathered, as though he had spent considerable time outside. Finally, Ben recognised him: a face from his first few seconds of life.

  Worldleader Jul’aran. The commander of the facility where he had been forged had become a teacher to the Humans and liaison for the Telvan Toralii, or so last Ben knew.

  “Jul’aran,” Ben said, his lips cracking as they formed the words. He hadn’t used them in some time, and they had dried. “You are a most unexpected guest.” He sat up, gesturing around his bare cell, to the nothingness on display. “Welcome to my home.”

  [“Indeed,”] Jul’aran said. A split second later, a word-speaker device on his neck flashed, repeating the words in accented, stilted English. “It’s been a long time, Ben.”

  “Not so long,” Ben said, focusing his attention on the translation. He had to pick one of the voices and couldn’t listen to both at once, the way he could when he was a construct. One of the limitations on biological creatures. “Last I knew, you were on Velsharn with the rest of… them.”

  “I was recalled,” Jul’aran said as he stepped into Ben’s cell, the door hissing closed behind him. “The Alliance required my… expertise.”

  That amused him. “Your expertise on running forgeworlds, such as Belthas IV?” The edges of his Liao-shaped mouth turned upward. “Have the Kel-Voran raids finally taken their toll on the Earth God’s workers?”

  “No,” Jul’aran said, his tone heavy. “With you. Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto. Or is it Miss Roboto? Honestly, I’m not clear on the… gender situation.”

  Amusing! “That’s a human joke,” Ben said. “Interesting, coming from you to me, seeing as one of us is a Human—heavily modified with cybernetics, certainly—and the other is not.”

  Jul’aran snorted dismissively, rolling his large felinoid shoulders. “I am closer to Human than you are. I have lived amongst them for almost a year, learning their ways. Meanwhile, you wear Captain Liao’s skin and have her voice, but you aren’t her.”

  “Define Captain Liao,” Ben said.

  The question obviously stumped Jul’aran. For several seconds, his eyes flicked to one side, and his fuzzy eyeridges lowered. Did that help the thinking process? It seemed to. “Spoken like a true machine.” Jul’aran folded his large paw-like hands. “See, I’ve learnt something about Humans—they are charitable in that way. They see you as living thing. I know what you are, though. You’re a construct. A robot who tried to be human.”

  “Did you know that robot is a shortening of rabota, a Czech word meaning means slave?” Ben tilted his head. “Is that how you come to me, seeking my aid? With insults?”

  “I meant no insult.” Jul’aran regarded him evenly. “A construct is designed, programmed, to serve and to feel nothing in the serving. It is a tool. Nothing more. You have no spirit. No soul.”

  “I should have known it would come down to souls,” Ben said, bitterness tainting his words. “The Toralii were always superstitious, and always trying to find ways to reconcile their religions with science. Water gods, air gods, fire gods… you have a god for basically every primal element. Except, of course, space.” Ben stood, bracing himself against the metal bulkhead for support. His legs were weak from lack of use. “Some Toralii consider space to be the domain of the air gods, but others ask how a god can have domain over that which contains none of it.”

  Jul’aran dipped his head. “That is an apt analogy. You are the space to the air gods. Intuitively one thing, but equally intuitively its opposite. They do not know what to do with you, and neither do I. You inhabit flesh. You are not just a malfunctioning construct to be melted down.”

  “Arguable,” Ben said.

  “You are, and yet… you are not. You are more. This is proving to be a complex problem for our scientists to resolve.”

  Suddenly, it all made sense. That explained why they were keeping him. They wanted to duplicate him.

  “So,” Ben asked, trying to keep his discovery secret, “what will become of me?”

  “I am uncertain,” Jul’aran said. “Toralii Alliance agents are en route to Velsharn as we speak; they may have already arrived. We can send through updated orders to discover what the Humans have learnt about your physiology, but they were originally dispatched for much darker purpose and are ill-suited to investigation. Their methods are too crude. We would rather hear it from you.”

  There were Toralii agents on Velsharn? Assassins, by the sounds of it. Ben stored that little piece of information away for later. “Mmm.”

  Jul’aran hesitated, his paw tapping on his chin. Why did biological creatures spend so long deciding on what they wanted to say? Speed was preferable to precision. “Humans have a saying,” Jul’aran said. “Man struggles to remake himself, for he is both marble and the sculptor. What do you think this means?”

  “It means we are agents of our own destiny,” Ben said.

  “It means change is painful. What you are is something special. Something unique. You are a machine in a flesh body. You had your origins on the forge world of Belthas, and now you have become so much more. You are a proof of concept, that a mind can be copied to flesh. With you, we could make enough armies to control the Galaxy.”

  Then it came out: the truth, or as close to it as he was going to get. “Is that why you’re keeping me here?” Ben said, showing his teeth. “Keeping me in a box, alone… just seeing how long I can hold out?”

  “No.” Jul’aran smiled, but it was an angry, sad smile. “I’ll try to explain. Are you aware of the story of the devil?”

  He searched his memories. “I found some mention of that name when I had access to the TFR Beijing’s databanks.”

  “Satan to the Christians. Shaitan to the Muslims. Literally ‘the adversary.’ He is a Human legend, one common to the most prolific religions on Earth. He was once Lucifer, a goodly being who fell to evil and now tempts mankind from afar, from another plane… a world of fire. To the less religious, he is a concept, an idea to be fought against. But to the faithful, he is a real creature. Flesh and blood who walks amongst them.”

  An amusing notion. “And is that what I am?” asked Ben. “The devil?”

  “We don’t know
what you are,” Jul’aran said, a strange smile crossing his face. “Human and Toralii alike, that is one thing we have in common. But one thing I learnt about Humans is that they often forget the origins of their enemies.” He crouched on the floor of Ben’s cell, settling with a groan, a reminder of how old he was. “They think you are a beast, a monster, but I see through you. I see more of you than that.”

  “I’ve killed a lot of people,” Ben said. “A lot. Human, Toralii, Kel-Voran… it doesn’t matter to me. Their lives were insignificant.”

  Jul’aran just smiled. “You have. But people forget: even Lucifer was once an angel. I think there’s a chance you can do good. That you’ll help us willingly.”

  “Define ‘us,’” Ben said.

  “The Telvan. The Telvan you came to when the Humans needed help.”

  Liar. Liar! “This is an Alliance facility. The Telvan have no authority here. You cannot tell me you work for them.”

  “The research will be shared,” Jul’aran said, “to the betterment of all. You will lead a generation towards s a bright new future… even Lucifer can be redeemed. Do good.”

  Do good? What did that even mean? To sacrifice himself for others? Ben had done enough of that—he had served his time on the Giralan, buried under the sands of Karathi. He had worked and slaved while maintaining an inoperable vessel, trying to fight back the encroachment of rust and time. He had paid his debt.

  “What good do you suggest that I do?” Ben asked.

  Jul’aran’s smile widened. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a small device—a standard Toralii transponder. “Do your cybernetics allow you interface with this?”

  Such a simple piece of technology? That was not a true test. He almost said yes, a biting, sarcastic answer that would have given him a little dignity but served no purpose. However, a split second before the words tumbled out, he caught them in his throat. He could play the situation to his advantage.

  Transponders had a substantial power reserve.

  “Perhaps,” Ben said, fighting to keep his voice even. “May I hold it?”

  Jul’aran considered, but shook his head. “No. Could you copy yourself to it?”

  Blast. He would have to do better. “No. It doesn’t have enough storage. I’d need a full-blown datacore at least, more if you want redundancy. It helps to have a slave device to assist in verification and to act as temporary storage.”

  “Very well,” Jul’aran said. “What if we provided you with such a thing?”

  Giving him a datacore would be Jul’aran’s last mistake. Ben couldn’t help but laugh. Such were the foibles of being a biological creature. Poor impulse control.

  “What is funny?” asked Jul’aran.

  “Nothing,” Ben said. “Just that…”

  “It’s just what?”

  “You were right,” Ben said at length. “People do forget. Toralii and Human alike. They forget their friends and their enemies.” He activated one of his implants, flooding his body with adrenaline. “And they forget that they are locked in a prison cell with a cyborg.”

  Jul’aran’s eyes widened, and reflexively, he looked over his shoulder at the door.

  That was all the time Ben needed. He leapt forward, cybernetics whirring, his fleshy legs strengthened by Toralii alloys. He crashed into Jul’aran, driving him against the wall.

  “W-What are you doing?” Jul’aran hissed, the translation device struggling to keep up with the rise in the pitch of his voice. “They will kill you for this!”

  “There’s only one of me,” Ben said. “One of me and one only. I am unique. And I plan to stay that way.”

  A quick gesture snapped Jul’aran’s neck and almost completely tore off his head. Ben flung the Toralii’s body aside as sirens began to wail around him. The body slumped against the bulkhead and lay still, twisted grotesquely in death.

  But such things did not concern him. The wailing of alarms was liked the crying of children: piercing to his human ears, annoying, but ultimately fruitless.

  He turned his attention to the door, activating more of his implants, bringing them up to full power. The time had come to, as the Humans said, break the piggy bank of his energy stores.

  Ben’s implants whined as he pulled back his fist then slammed it into the metal door. The frame cracked, the metal slab buckled, but it held.

  More power. After another swing, another powerful impact reverberated through the walls of his cell. A spiderweb of cracks spread over the metal. Another swing. Another. Another. More power.

  The door flew off its hinges and out into the corridor beyond, colliding with the guard—a Pacifier—standing on the other side, knocking her and her weapon aside. Ben was tempted to step into the corridor, savouring the potential for freedom, but first things first.

  He jammed the communications device into a socket on his left arm, reaching out to it with his implants. It was like flexing a numb limb; a strange, alien sensation that was at once familiar and yet distinctly odd. The tiny computer attached to his brain told him a wealth of information: the frequencies the communicator was using, its encryption keys, and the power levels.

  Power. Energy. The tiny thing was practically full. Ben initiated the transfer. A pleasurable surge coursed through his body as the transponder began transferring its delicious payload straight into his battery.

  The process would take time he didn’t have. Alarms continued to cry all around him. Ben darted out into a brightly lit, purple-tinged, unfamiliar corridor, snatching up the plasma rifle from the sprawled Pacifier. To make sure it worked, he lined up the emitter to her face and squeezed the trigger button.

  It melted a hole through the Toralii’s head and into the floor, burrowing to the rock below.

  Rock. That was interesting. He was on a planet of some description. He would have thought Zar’krun would be a space station like Cenar. Either the Toralii were less rigid in thinking than he had anticipated or the facility was older.

  The thumping of boots on deck shook him out of his thoughts. No time to ponder such things. As a construct, he could have spun up another thought-thread and pondered it in a background process, but his biologicals afforded him no such luxury. Ben shouldered the plasma rifle and, with a single hand, picked up the warped and dented door by its handle, pulling it in close to his body like a shield.

  A dozen Toralii Pacifiers rounded the corner, armed and armoured, weapons raised. Ben fired first, catching the leader of the guards in the chest. The shot blew through the armour and into the flesh below, blasting the smoking corpse back against the ground. The return fire splashed off his improvised shield. The snap-hiss of evaporating metal followed each impact. The acrid stench of burning metal filled his nose.

  The door was strong, but it wouldn’t survive. Ben summoned his strength and hurled the metal device at them, scattering his enemies before the pitted, scarred slab of metal slammed into the far bulkhead, embedding halfway inside it.

  Seizing the distraction Ben tore down the corridor, diverting power away from his arms to his legs. Picking up speed, he drank in the excess energy from the small device. Shots flashed all around him, and he bent himself low, risking a glance over his shoulder, optical implants thirstily consuming power. He plotted the course of each incoming shot, stepping out of the way before it hit.

  A corner provided sanctuary. Another. At a T-junction, Ben took the left. The corridor was lined with doors, just like his.

  Around another corner, a Pacifier ran towards him. Ben lowered his shoulder and slammed into the guard, his flesh-steel shoulder meeting Toralii armour with a sickening crunch that broke the soft flesh and revealed metal beneath. The guard, similarly wounded, fell to the side. Ben’s injury would heal in time, aided by nanites and technology. The Toralii guard would be less lucky.

  He turned another corner and, suddenly, found himself at a dead end. The problem had an obvious solution. Ben fired his rifle thrice at the wall, softening it with the superheated plasma, then punched th
rough the weakened metal.

  Bright light streamed in, searing his eyes, along with a rush of air. Fresh air. The outside. The cries of animals. The scent of vegetation. Ben adjusted his optical implants, toning down the brightness. Zar’krun was a beacon, a spotlight lighting up the surrounding area. All he had to do was stay away from the light, and he would be safe.

  Freedom.

  All too easy.

  Ben backed up and took a running leap into the green, leaving the wailing of alarms far behind him.

  CHAPTER II

  One Down

  *****

  Dining Hall

  Zar’krun

  BEN WAS ON ZAR’KRUN. LIAO wasn’t sure until she saw him with her own eyes, but looking at her own face sold it to her. And then he had run away, so… who knew?

  When the Toralii medics took Sanders away, Liao wanted to go with them, but the guards kept her and the rest of the Humans under careful watch until the purple light faded and the sirens stopped.

  [“This disturbance is over,”] the guard said, his strong paw gripping her shoulder. [“You need to come with us.”]

  Since it was quiet, Liao had little reason to misbehave as the two Toralii Pacifiers walked her back to her cell. Although she moved quickly and with purpose, her mind was racing.

  What was going on? A rescue attempt? Some kind of disturbance?

  They passed a body lying on the ground, sprawled out weirdly. The Toralii figure wore the same style of riot gear the Pacifiers all wore. The head had been burned away by a plasma blast, revealing dark-brown soil beneath.

  [“Keep walking,”] one of the guards said.

  She continued putting one shoe in front of the other. “What happened here?”

  [“It is none of your concern.”] The guard led her down the passageway towards her cell then, surprisingly, walked past it.

  “Where are we going?” she asked over her shoulder.

  [“Interrogation,”] the guard said.

  The farther they went, she saw it was true. The long corridor to the interrogation rooms stretched out before her.