by Max Carver
Hope jumped the tables, landing among the spilled lab equipment; Colt resisted the urge to yell at her to come back.
He barely had a chance to realize what she was doing before she grabbed up a scalpel and leaped at the stocky surviving clanker, who was too busy trying to smack out the fire on his face to see her coming.
Hope landed with her knees in his chest and slashed his throat. Her scarf had tumbled loose, revealing her face, and now a spurt of the clanker's blood streaked across her nose and cheek like fresh war paint.
She tumbled to the floor and scrambled away as the burning, bleeding man staggered blindly through the room. He finally collapsed against an office chair, which rolled away, leaving him to flop down to the floor as his throat bled out.
“Wow, sis,” Colt said, looking at her blood-spattered face, feeling a little stunned. “That was... effective.”
“I just hope he didn't have weird sex diseases. I got some in my mouth.” She wiped her blood-soaked face with her blood-soaked hand, accomplishing little.
Colt looked at the two clankers, making sure they both died. He thought of the one he'd killed, out front, the slightly puzzled look on his face as his brains had fanned out across the wall behind him.
“I hate killing people,” Colt said. “Gives me bad dreams.”
“Clankers aren't people,” Hope said. “They gave that up. They chose machinery over humanity.”
“She's right,” Diego said, stepping close to Hope.
“Yeah.” Colt nodded, still looking at the dead men. “They chose.”
“No, I mean about the weird sex diseases,” Diego said, nudging Hope. “Maybe they have a test kit for that around here somewhere. You don't want to start growing tentacles out of your—”
“Quiet!” Hope snapped.
“Hey, just joking.” Diego threw up his hands and backed away, grinning. “I'm sure one or two tentacles would be okay—”
Hope clapped a hand over his mouth. “Shh.” She pointed.
Colt heard it too. Clanking boots, heralding the arrival of more clankers. They were coming from the back, maybe from another entrance into the building, as though they'd been planning a pincer move but been a little slow.
Colt and his friends were all out of ammunition. All they had was a somewhat used scalpel.
And no time.
“Hey, guys, everything good now?” Scabs wandered out from the office where he'd been hiding. He crammed a few pills into his mouth from a large brown jar he'd found. There was no sign of the 9mm he'd been carrying earlier. He'd probably lost track of it while rummaging for pills.
“Run!” Colt turned and bolted toward the exam room so they could leave the way they'd entered. Diego and Hope followed.
Scabs started to follow, then stopped short. He dropped the plastic jar of pills and grabbed at his throat, choking on a pill. The open jar crashed to the floor, and a hundred red pills rolled out.
“Scabs!” Diego said, turning back to help him.
A barrage of rounds hit Scabs, cutting him down where stood.
Two clankers stepped out from around the corner and looked over Scabs's body. One was tall and beefy, and the lower half of his right arm had been replaced by a compact machine gun. The second clanker was a pale guy with scattered plates of black armor and a number of long black tubes running in and out of him, all over his torso and limbs. He fired a weapon mounted on his left forearm, maybe a small railgun; the rounds screamed and blasted cavernous holes in the walls.
Colt, Hope, and Diego ran back through the shattered exam room to the lobby.
As they crossed the lobby and approached the front door, Hope screamed and abruptly flew backward. She slammed to the floor several paces behind them.
A black tube had coiled around her leg. It was rubbery and made a slapping, stretching sound, moving like a snake, or maybe the kind of obscene tentacle Diego had been joking about. The tube tightened its grip and dragged Hope back across the floor, toward the remnants of the exam room.
“I got her,” said the black-tubed clanker as he entered the lobby. The long, writhing tube was anchored in his torso, and it kept pulling Hope backward, closer to him. “Man, I love this thing. You should ask him for one.”
Hope screamed and kicked as the weird, hose-like black tubing kept dragging her across the floor. Colt and Diego chased after her.
The gun-handed clanker emerged to see Colt running his way, unarmed, and grinned as he raised his arm and prepared to fire.
Time seemed to slow as Colt ran straight at the guy's barrel, and nothing he could do would stop it. He had a last look at his sister howling in agony and fury as the weird-tubed guy dragged her closer and reached out to grab her.
I was careless, Colt thought. We should have blocked the back door. We should have—
Another part of the corridor wall exploded behind the clankers. Something erupted from the other exam room, the one they hadn't already trashed. A cloud of drywall and dust erupted.
Colt dropped to his knees beside his sister. The black tube wrapped around her leg was tough as leather, and it squirmed like an eel or a worm, resisting his attempts to uncoil it.
Then he saw what was emerging from the other room, and he froze.
It was a reaper, a skeletal black steel machine that looked like a walking corpse. This one was a battered, stripped-down old infantry robot that looked like it had been dumped on Earth after seeing better days and more important wars. Such damaged things patrolled the ruins, hunting the local scavenger population, keeping the remaining Earthlings firmly crushed under Carthage's heel.
Reapers could use any number of weapons, but their primary sidearm here in the ruins required neither ammunition nor plasma cells. It was a cheap instrument of oppression, a steel staff that could be extended and retracted, tipped with clusters of movable blades at either end. Among the scavengers, the weapon was simply known as a cutter.
The reaper skewered the gun-handed clanker with the extra-long central blade on its cutter, stabbing the hefty guy right through his upper back.
“Stop!” the black-tubed clanker screamed. “We're with you! Stop! Contact Simon Nix! Simon Nix!”
The reaper drew back, as if surprised by what the black-tubed guy was screaming. Colt noticed the reaper was missing half its left arm, severed at the elbow joint, and its chassis was crisscrossed with heavy scoring and melt damage, likely plasma burns from old battles. It wielded the cutter with its one remaining skeletal steel arm.
“Yeah, that's right, you stupid socket-fucker!” the black-tubed guy shouted. His voice had gone high and squeaky, like he was about to cry. “We had a deal with Simon Nix, and now you stabbed Lonnie!”
Two smaller, curved blades emerged on either side of the reaper's central blade, moving at low speed, forming a kind of pitchfork shape. Rather than stabbing, they slowly pushed the skewered clanker forward, sliding him off the long central blade. He fell to the floor with a sound like a box of tools dropped on concrete.
“Lonnie!” The black-tubed guy knelt beside the first one. “Lonnie, can you speak?”
The reaper drew back its cutter. It spun the long weapon at high speed, bringing around the long, scythe-like blade at its opposite end.
The black-tube clanker barely had time to react as the blade sliced through the tubing that curled around his exterior. It passed through his neck, harvesting his head from his shoulders like ripe grain. His head hit the floor, and his kneeling body toppled over, bleeding out onto his dead friend.
The coils of black tubing around Hope's leg went slack, but it took Colt several long, precious seconds to get her leg untangled and help her to her feet.
During that time, the reaper contracted its weapon a bit, making it shorter but leaving the blades extended on both sides. The reaper turned and approached Colt, Hope, and Diego.
“Don't move,” the reaper hissed, which was bizarre. The reapers rarely spoke, if ever. “Show your faces.”
Colt's heart was already
hammering. Diego looked to him, but Colt could only shrug. Cooperation seemed like their best hope of survival, though it was a thin hope.
“Here's mine.” Hope nudged aside her scarf, which had fallen loose during the fight anyway. Her face was still smeared with blood. “You got a problem with it?”
Colt and Diego pulled down their scarves too. The reaper's head moved slightly as its black lens eyes scanned the three of them.
Maybe it's looking for someone, Colt thought. Maybe it'll go away and keep looking and leave us alive.
“Now dance, real sexy,” the reaper said. “Boys only.”
“What?” Diego asked.
Now that the machine had ceased its attack, Colt noticed the ribbon cable plugged into the back of the reaper's skull-like head. It trailed back along the hall and through the ruptured wall.
“You hacked a reaper?” Colt nearly shouted the words. “Who are you?”
He ran around the reaper, as though it wasn't standing there with its weapon dripping gore from the men it had just slaughtered.
“Colt, careful!” Diego shouted, but Colt didn't slow down. He had to find the person behind this. It was a level of skill Colt and his group desperately needed. They could hack and even reprogram the simpler, smaller machines, but not even the rebels actively fighting the machines knew how to hack major military hardware like this.
Colt followed the cable into the shattered exam room. It ran up through a recently smashed hole in the ceiling, still dripping bits and pieces of ceiling tile.
A young woman knelt at the edge of the hole, gripping some kind of black sphere in her hands. Colorful symbols rippled on the black sphere's surface, moving and flashing, mesmerizing. He'd never seen anything like it. The ribbon cable controlling the reaper was plugged into the bottom of the sphere by way of a cube-shaped adapter.
The sight of her gave Colt a sudden warm glow. Despite the carnage they'd just been through, her ability to take control of the machines filled him with a strange, rare feeling: actual hope for the future. Actual hope for a world ruled by humans, free of machines.
“You and your friends better get moving,” she called down. “Our location's blown. Drones and reaper wagons will be on the way.”
“Who are you?” he asked. He didn't recognize her at all. She had large dark eyes, black hair drawn back in a ponytail, skin the color of cinnamon.
“It doesn't matter.” She unplugged the ribbon cable and let it drop to the floor. “We all have to run.”
“Come with us,” Colt said. “We can help you. We can keep you safe.”
“You?” She laughed. “I had a nice tight hiding spot here, and I just blew it to rescue you and your girlfriend from those bums.”
“She's my sister.”
“We don't have time for this. Go!” She drew back from the hole and out of sight.
“Wait!” Colt called after.
“Colt, we have to run!” Hope grabbed him by the arm as she and Diego caught up with him.
“We need her,” Colt said. “We need to learn how she did that, how she hacked a—”
“Everyone back home is desperate for medical,” Diego said. “I found insulin in the Total-Freez. And antibiotics. It's a good haul.”
“We can't just let her go,” Colt said. He could feel the rush of excitement changing to fear—fear that he'd never see the girl again, fear that the better future she represented was already lost.
“Yeah, let her go. That's exactly what you need to do.” Hope yanked on his arm, hard. His sister was stringy but tough, a lifelong scavenger.
“Take the supplies. I'll meet you guys back home.” Colt pulled free of Hope's grasp and ran toward the back door of the exam room, toward the labs instead of the front door.
“What?” Hope said.
“Go. That's an order!”
“Order? Who do you think you are?” Hope snapped. “Don't get killed chasing a strange girl, Colt! You don't know where she's been!”
“Come on.” Diego took Hope's hand, and they headed for the front door, their pockets and backpacks crammed with fresh medical supplies. If the raid had gone off without a hitch, they would have stuffed the battered Snack-O-Vend with even more, but now the slow little machine would cause deadly delays. The vending bot had to be abandoned, along with the hacked reaper.
Colt ran through the back rooms of the clinic and pushed open the stairwell door, hoping he could catch up to the girl before she fled the building and before the machines swarmed in to exterminate them all.
Chapter Three
Carthage
Audrey Mariossini Venable Caracala, youngest daughter of the powerful Caracala family, watched the security presentation from the very back row of the Panopticon. She sat in the outermost ring of the circular room, which descended in round tiers toward the center.
The sprawling arms of planet Carthage's vast security state occupied the rows ahead of her and around the room—army generals in green uniforms heavy with medals and ribbons, navy in blue, space fleet in gold, special services in quietly unadorned black uniforms.
Politicians sat in the inner front rows, dressed in the soft, flowing, brightly decorated clothing currently in fashion. They wore deliberately fragile satin slipper-shoes, as if to prove that they did no manual labor and walked nowhere that wasn't carpeted. The politicians' hair and wigs were elaborately styled and piled high, their makeup intricate and brightly glittering, all to look good for the media.
This meeting itself was classified, but there would be press conferences afterward, assuring the people of Carthage and its allies and client worlds that all was right in the galaxy. Politicians were expected to wow and entertain the public with a constant supply of exciting new looks, fashions, and hairstyles to keep the citizens at home guessing and excited. The appearance of the politicians always drew much more media attention than any of the vague policy content of the press conferences.
In the front row, on the innermost tier, sat Audrey's father, Francorte Eldari Antoniou Caracala, the Prime Legislator of Carthage and the most influential man on the planet. His clothing was the most delicate of all, made of fragile layers of frothy silk held together with threads of gold to match his hairstyle. His long blond hair and beard plumed out like a lion's mane, chemically frozen in place, plated in thousands of little circles of gold that gleamed around him like a divine aura.
He had been prime legislator for twenty years, most of Audrey's life, with no retirement plans in sight. The old term limits had been lifted for him, and Audrey knew he hoped to pass the position to his son one day, her older brother Marcello.
The thought of her pompous, vapid brother ruling the known galaxy often made Audrey cringe in despair.
At the very center of the room, at the lowest point, stood Simon unit QCK001879, commonly called Simon Quick. Holographic glimpses of the latest battle on a rebellious world revolved slowly around him as he spoke. Images of Carthage's self-driven, autonomous tanks and drones destroying enemy bases flashed hypnotically, quietly backed by instrumental patriotic music. All eyes were on him.
“The majority of rebel leaders on planet Marymount have been captured, lawfully tried by judicial androids, and executed,” said the Simon. “Others have fled into the mountainous regions on the planet's northern continent, but we don't expect them to survive the eleven-month winter. After four to six weeks of cleanup, we can publicly announce that the rebellion has ended and the people of Marymount are once more safe from extremism and terror.”
A smattering of applause floated among the three hundred or so people gathered for the monthly interstellar update.
The other interplanetary security interns on Audrey's row clapped too, and Audrey joined in, a bit reluctantly because she wasn't informed enough about the situation on Marymount to have a strong opinion. Still, she didn't want to appear unpatriotic. That wouldn't do—not for a security intern, certainly not for the daughter of Prime Legislator Caracala.
Audrey was twenty-four, curren
tly in her fifth year of the seven-year Political Academy. Most Political Academy students were the offspring of top military and political officials or the wealthy commercial elite, and she was no exception.
Perhaps Audrey had been selected for this top security internship because of her academic accomplishments and other activities, or perhaps simply because of her name. That question plagued every development in her life. She wanted to get ahead on her own merits, but doors to opportunities were always flying open, and she was always being ushered through them, on to the next benchmark, the next obligatory checkpoint in the life mapped out for her, her own little cursus honorum to prepare her to wield power later in life.
Today, Audrey would be giving a presentation in front of this entire room, her father included. It was the first presentation of her internship, and she was so nervous she could have chewed off her own fingertips.
“In new business,” Simon Quick said, and the bombed-out cathedrals of Marymount vanished, replaced by multiple images of a blue water-drop world orbiting an orange dwarf star. “We have initiated assimilation of Galapagos, a mostly aquatic world of minor agricultural and industrial note. It is within the logical path of our expansion. Moreover, they contracted for planetary defense with Ruckwold Industries—”
“Yes, what's happening with Ruckwold?” asked the prime legislator.
“Plans move apace, sir,” Simon said. “That operation is highly compartmentalized.”
“Their planet should be ours by now!” barked a fat space fleet admiral in a shiny gold uniform. “This delay is unacceptable!”
“You have my gravest apologies, sir,” Simon Quick said, bowing his head as if chastened. “However, planet Ruckwold and its defense industry lies, as we are all aware, at the center of its own web of alliances. The Ruckwold bloc is in no position to truly rival ours, but moving against them with maximum efficiency requires calculation, positioning the proper assets, recruiting the proper influencers—”
