by M. R. Forbes
Naked. Seeing them, he understood.
"Son of a bitch," he said quietly.
The Tetron knew why they were here. It knew what they wanted and that it didn't have any other effective means of stopping them, except for this. Psychological warfare. The only way through was to kill their own. To attack and murder naked, defenseless people.
They turned around. All of them in unison, spinning on their heels and facing the rebels. Men and women of all ages. There were no children or elderly. The children and elderly were already dead.
Their eyes were wide and filled with fear, as though they knew where they were. As if they knew that they were standing naked on a wide swath of pavement as a human barrier between the rebels and the transport. The Tetron was allowing some portion of their minds to be present even if their bodies weren't their own.
"Colonel," Tio said, watching the display. His voice broke on the word.
"All stop," Mitchell shouted. The cars came to a pause twenty meters from the front lines, right behind the mech. The assembled mob didn't react.
"Check out the one on the right," Cormac said. "Third from the center. The blonde."
"Firedog," Mitchell said, his voice low.
"Sorry, sir."
Mitchell hopped off the back of his car, walking towards the front. He wasn't sure what he was going to do. They needed to get to the transports, and these people were in the way.
Kathy fell into line beside him, following him. Tio was right behind.
"Kathy, you shouldn't be here," Mitchell said.
"None of us should be here, Colonel," she replied. Her eyes were narrow, angry, and filled with tears. The sight of the rows of Liberty's citizens, naked and frightened, was enough to break anyone.
That was the point.
"Colonel," Tio said, catching up to them. "We can't kill innocent people."
"You, Tio? Of all of the rebels here, you're telling me this?" He was getting angrier the closer he got to them. So many had died already. Millions. To an enemy that had no concept or care for the value of a human life.
Mitchell made his way past the Knight to stand right in front of the line of civilians. Getting closer, his eyes passed the blonde that Cormac was making eyes at. He spared her a second glance, and then stared at her face.
Tamara King.
He could have laughed at the absurdity of it all.
"There has to be another way," Tio said. "I understand these people are under its control, but these are the people we want to free."
"So how do we get around?" Mitchell asked.
"Sir, I can land on this side and take the transport," Major Long said.
"And lose the Piranha? What happens if it sends drones after us?"
"Didn't you consider that before?"
He had. His original intention had been to station the mechs on top of the vehicle. A crazy, risky maneuver, but what about this whole thing wasn't crazy? "Yes. I had three mechs to defend it then. Now I have a fighter to run interference."
"Sir, with all due-"
"Major, I know what you're going to say." Mitchell paused, and then raised his voice so they could all hear. He made eye contact with Tamara King, betting the Tetron could hear him, too. "Don't you know that this is what it wants? If we don't get through, we don't make it to York. If we do go through, we do it emotionally battered and weak. Don't you see? It's afraid. Of us. Fifty people, when it conquered an entire planet. It couldn't kill you when it came here. It couldn't kill you in Angeles, and it couldn't burn you out of the forest. It didn't capture the Knife. It didn't even manage to kill him to keep us from getting him. And it doesn't know who the Creator is."
He took a few steps forward, getting closer to Tamara King. He could see some part of her recognized him. He could see another part of her wasn't her at all. He reached out, putting his hands on her shoulders to move her aside.
A fist hit him hard across the jaw, thrown by the person next to her. His head rocked to the side, and he reached up and wiped the blood from a split lip. He had wanted to see what it would do if he tried to move them away. Now he knew. Now they all knew.
"It's losing, and it knows it. It's desperate, and now it's trying to manipulate our humanity-"
The crack of a gunshot drowned out the next word and froze the rest. Tamara King's head snapped back, a bullet hole sprouting in the center, the rear blowing out and spreading debris across the next row of the line.
Mitchell's head snapped back to where Kathy was crouching against the Knight's foot. She fired a second round into the man who had hit him while he watched.
Another heartbeat and the stalemate was completely shattered, as the free people of Liberty made their choice.
Mitchell expected the Tetron to send its army forward, to attack them and try to overwhelm them with sheer numbers. As the rebels fired and the people fell, they moved only to block the path and prevent them from reaching the transports without having to kill them.
"Sir?" Perseus asked. Mitchell could hear the nervousness in the pilot's voice.
"The people have spoken," he said, feeling sick. "If we don't help them, they're going to use up all of their ammunition. Lasers only. God help us all."
55
"All systems operational. Here we go."
A thought brought the heavy transport off the ground, the large repulsors beneath it glowing a faint blue while it drifted slowly into the air. As it rose, Mitchell focused on the world ahead of them, desperate to avoid the ground behind.
Naked corpses littered the Sonosome factory tarmac. Blood ran along the pavement, so much of it that it had created a stream that fed into the grass alongside and stained it red. They were innocent people. Tools for the Tetron's sadistic games. He wanted to cry for them, to pray for them, to honor them for their sacrifice. He wanted to show them some respect after they had cut them down like nothing more than sacks of meat.
He would never get their cries out of his head. He was sure that was why the Tetron had allowed them to cry. He would never forget their faces. He was sure the others wouldn't either.
The back of the transport was a massive, blank space. Big walls with no view outside and magnetic clamps arranged along the floor to hold the more common machine cargo that it carried. It had taken some effort to get the Zombie and the cars locked down with them in a designed order, but every action they took against the enemy no matter how small was a comfort in the aftermath of the massacre.
He couldn't speak for the others, but he was nauseous, cold, and angry. He was a warrior. One of the elite. He had been in battles before. Hundreds of battles. No matter the mission, no matter the opposition, it had always been about orders, about discipline, about the bigger picture. It had never been personal.
Now, it was personal.
There were rules of engagement. There were laws both written and unwritten about the treatment of enemies. The Tetron didn't follow any of them. In fact, they made a mockery of them. If this singular entity had intended to break his spirit, it had failed in that as it had in so many other ways. He was more focused and intent on destroying it than he had ever been.
Did the freedom fighters feel the same way? He didn't know. More than half of them had climbed the ramp into the transport and found a place to vomit, to cry, to release all of the emotions that their forced actions had caused. One by one they had returned to continue the mission, to get the cars and mechs on board, to get the transport airborne and on its way towards the capital city.
Mitchell checked his grid. It was clear, save for the blue mark of the Piranha flying alongside and the second mark of the Knight. Perseus was crouched on top of the transport and using its electromagnetic locks to stay planted on the vehicle. Mechs weren't the best defense in space, but they were better than nothing, and all pilots were trained to walk starships.
"How is the transfer coming?" he asked Zed.
"We've got the package free of the Zombie," she replied. "We'll have it loaded in fifteen."
&n
bsp; Mitchell retrieved the map of the area from the transport's CAP-NN. The system was a tortoise compared to the speed of military grade AI, and he sighed while he waited for the data to feed into his p-rat. The transport was old, at least a hundred years or more, designed for a time when two pilots might be used on a single, long trip. There was no value in replacing it when all it had to do was carry machinery from one point to another. He should have been thankful, since the primitive, un-networked nature of the beast had made it immune to the Tetron's control.
"We'll reach York within twenty. See if you can speed it up."
"Yes, sir."
"Valkyrie, any sign of the enemy?"
"No, sir."
"Go on ahead and make sure our path is clear."
"Roger."
The Piranha burst ahead of the carrier, vanishing from the grid a few seconds later.
Tio moved up into the cockpit, taking the seat beside him. His face was still pale, his eyes red. Mitchell was certain the Knife had killed people before. Greylock had been called in on more than one occasion to deal with the warlord's militias, who tended towards violent seizure of valuable resources over acquiring them through legal channels. The scene at the factory had still brought the man to tears.
"How are they holding up?" Mitchell asked.
"They are hurting, and I don't think any of us, yourself included, will ever be the same. They'll survive. What you said helped. About the enemy's desperation. Do you believe it?"
Mitchell nodded.
"It is going to be expecting us."
Mitchell nodded again.
"We have no intel about its defenses, other than what General Cornelius reported on the ground capabilities of the Marine base in York."
"We can't fight them head on," Mitchell said. "We get the package delivered and pray that it works. If it doesn't, it's going to be up to you." He found the stream uplink station on the map, placing a marker there. It was three kilometers from the city center, where the Tetron was embedded in the ground. "We have to be careful not to get too close to it. The core is radiating pulses, enough to drop this old tub in a hurry. It also knows we have a plan, something we think will counter its control over the others. You're the expert, do you think it will have figured out what we intend?"
Tio looked out the small carbonate window at the head of the transport while he thought. The mountains were rising ahead of them, preparing to reveal York on the other side.
"It is difficult to say. Especially now. It has discovered subtleties in logic that I didn't believe was possible. Taking the human element out of what happened at Sonosome, conceptually the maneuver was brilliant."
"I'm not so sure about that. I'm pretty angry right now."
"Precisely. Your emotions make you more susceptible to making mistakes and taking illogical risks. The same for the others. What if they stand and shoot when they should be ducking and covering? What if their rash decision leads to our entire defeat? You are a trained soldier. You have experience mastering your emotions. The others don't."
"It already outnumbers us one hundred to one. I don't think it needed the extra help."
"That's a human expression of logic based on emotion. The Tetron, on the other hand, uses data culled from thousands of years of humanity. More years than you or I can even contemplate. Even without that, there is precedent for the ability of the few to overcome the many. Take Thermopylae for example. Seven thousand Greek soldiers against an army twenty times its size. They held out for over a week."
"They still lost?"
"Yes, but that isn't the point. As long as there is one person to fight, the chance of loss exists, even if it is infinitesimal in size. There can never be a number large enough to satisfy the overall equation."
"Okay. I get that part, I guess. How does it relate to its reaction to our plan?"
"It will divide its forces according to potential targets it has identified. I would expect the broadcast uplink to be well defended."
"But not destroyed?"
"No. I believe it needs the broadcast station as much as we do. I saw the fighting when you arrived. I saw the ships appear from hyperspace to attack you. If it is controlling them from a distance, it has to be using the uplink to send the commands."
Origin had said Tetron technology allowed for realtime communication across any distance. Had it altered the station to send signals that way? Could Origin broadcast a warning, even if they couldn't receive a reply?
The mountains were getting bigger in the small viewport. Mitchell guided the transport ever higher to clear them, watching the trees of the Preserve thin out as they began to climb the rocky terrain. He spotted the Lincoln Pass to the north, identifying the presence of a half-dozen mechs and a number of soldiers by the pattern of them against the earthen backdrop. They were too far out of range to be a threat to the transport, and too far away from York to reinforce it.
It didn't stop the Tetron from putting on a show. Thunder echoed across the distance as the mechs opened fire on the soldiers, reducing them to nothing in the blink of an eye. Then they turned on one another, trading volleys until everything was still and silent again.
"What the frig was the point of that?" Mitchell growled as the transport crested over the peak and lost visual with the Pass.
"I don't know, Colonel," Tio whispered. "I don't know."
56
Christine sat in the center of the blank room, her legs crossed, her arms resting palm up on her knees. It was a meditative position. An arrangement of balance and peace and calm.
Slow.
Steady.
Her counterpart had left her alone after its efforts to destroy the uprising against it had failed. After the starship had crushed the city of Angeles too late to prevent Mitchell's escape.
"Data has been collected," it said to her on its way out.
She had tried to stop it. She had told it that she would succeed where it had failed. That Mitchell would die at her hand because he trusted her. It had refused. She was corrupt, as far as it was concerned. Tainted. Incomplete.
What did that even mean?
At first, she wasn't sure. She knew she was one of them now, though how that had come to be, how that could even be possible when she could trace her memories all the way back to her childhood still eluded her. She had cried over the statement. She had laid on the cold floor and wept. Then she had pounded the walls in anger.
She was incomplete. Imperfect. A creation that had gone wrong.
When she had finally calmed, she had returned to following its actions, listening in on its communications. It knew she was. It didn't care. She was no threat. Her configuration was of no value.
The data stack was.
It was the truth of her, she knew. Where she had come from. It knew what she was when it had taken her, even if she didn't. Somehow, it knew.
Would she know if she were complete?
It was working to decrypt it, and so she was listening. When it discovered the truth, she would as well, and then she would understand why she had helped Mitchell, and why she now wanted him to die.
No, she already knew why she wanted him to die.
The problem was that he wouldn't. Despite every effort, he survived. He fought. He overcame.
Because it wouldn't let her out. It wouldn't set her free.
And now he was coming.
She had watched it all through its eyes. The image of his mech burning, the zombie face bathed in flames. It embedded itself in her mind as though she had seen it a thousand times before. She couldn't shake the image. The symbolism. She couldn't help but admire his strength and courage.
She remembered kissing him. It had been quick and desperate, and even before she knew what she was, she had questioned it. It wasn't logical or rational. It was something else. Something that lived in her that she didn't sense in the other. Something that reached beyond reason.
Tainted. Incomplete.
The words crossed over her, and she didn't fear the
m. She didn't deny them. Perhaps she was. Wherever she had come from, she was different. She understood that now.
The wall in front of her pulled away. She stayed in the lotus position while her counterpart entered. It was still wearing the military fatigues, still playing a part that it didn't understand.
"The data stack is nearly decrypted," it said.
She was interested in that. Very interested. "Is that why you came?"
"Yes."
"Mitchell is still alive."
"Yes. He is resourceful. He has continued to manipulate the probabilities."
Christine stared at her clone. Was it suggesting that he was somehow altering its equations? Did it not understand that not all things could be decided by data alone?
"You should let me go. I can end this."
"No. The data stack will be decrypted."
Christine continued to sit. The configuration stood immobile, a living mannequin, while the core of its being completed the decryption. She knew when it was done because she could feel the data streaming through the Tetron's many neural pathways, electrical signals radiating from everywhere around her.
She closed her eyes, feeling the data with her hand, reading it at the same time the Tetron did.
Origin.
The name held meaning. So much meaning. It was her, or she was it. Two parts of a combined whole. The name meant something to the Tetron as well.
"We have found you," it said in a whisper.
The data continued. It was a never-ending river of information, of experience and understanding. It spread throughout the Tetron, and throughout Christine.
The configuration across from her jerked once, twice, and then fell to its knees in front of her. At the same time, a smile broke Christine's placid calm, a sense of wonder and excitement and joy finding its place back in her being. The Tetron didn't understand. They couldn't understand, no matter how desperately they tried.
"What is this?" it asked her, on its hands and knees, crippled by the data.
"Humanity," she replied.
