Ghosts of Tomorrow

by Michael R. Fletcher

Stupid. But he had to try.

  He stepped into the room, saw the 5THSUN chassis and brought his gun to bear. Maybe he heard the word “No!” shouted over the sounds of destruction. Everything moved too fast.

  Compared to the two combat chassis, Griffin moved like he stood neck deep in porridge. Reality was something he only saw after it happened. He was still thinking about squeezing the trigger and the 5THSUN chassis had already turned a weapon in his direction.

  It knew he was there. Synapses fired, sent impulses crawling along sludgy biological nerves. Pull. The. Trigger.

  Abdul changed direction so suddenly his chassis shed parts and sparked in protest. His mad dive landed him between Griffin and the 5THSUN chassis. An explosion mashed Griffin to the ground as if by the very hand of God. His head rebounded off the marble with a hollow thunk and he tasted battery acid and blood. He saw sparks through the swirling plaster snowstorm and didn’t know if they were real or an artifact of damaged retinas. Another explosion silhouetted Abdul and the chassis didn’t move. Pieces of his friend scattered across the floor. At least two limbs were missing. Stuttering stabs of light picked at Abdul like a deranged Houngan savaging a rag doll with needles.

  Griffin sat up, the Tavor still clenched in his fists. He pushed himself to his feet and took aim at the 5THSUN chassis.

  His right hand didn’t shake any more.

  “Get away from my friend.”

  ***

  Androctonus, detecting motion from the front hall launched rockets and HEL pulses without even looking. It was a biological human and no real threat. Still, you didn’t get points for being sloppy. Then his opponent hurled himself into the path of this attack. When the NATU chassis crashed to the ground like a ballet dancer struck with quadriplegia in mid leap, Androctonus knew he had won. He pounded the chassis with a few more micro-rockets and HEL pulses to be sure.

  “Get away from my friend.”

  Amazing! The human was still alive!

  Androctonus focused on the rifle: Tavor 41 with a single shot grenade launcher mounted under the barrel. That could be dangerous. He watched the tendon’s on the man’s wrist contract and computed the most likely trajectory for the grenade. He moved before the finger had completed squeezing the trigger. Compared to a rifle round, the grenade moved at a glacial pace.

  Master Lokner, he tight-linked. I have a NATU agent here. Shall I dispose of him?

  The NATU agent advanced, opening up with the assault rifle, spraying fifteen rounds per second. Give the man credit for being brave. Or dumb as a stick.

  Somewhere behind Androctonus the grenade hit the wall and exploded.

  NATU agent? Lokner finally replied. Interesting. Bring him up.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: Sunday, August 6th, 2046

  Miles threw open his office door. “Christie. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  She looked up from her desk. “That noise—”

  “Gunfire. We have to—” A long barrage of explosions interrupted him.

  Whatever was happening down there, it sounded like a bad place to be. But he didn’t want to be up here either. He stared at Christie trying to formulate a plan. Nothing. Couldn’t leave. Couldn’t stay. Damn it! Think!

  Christie’s dark almond eyes were wide. “What’s going on? What’s happening down there?”

  “It’s NATU. I think they’re here for Lokner.”

  “Lokner?” she asked, confused.

  “Don’t ask. We have to leave—”

  “I’ve locked the stairway fire doors, and all elevators are under my control.” Lokner’s voice echoed over the intercom.

  Christie jumped at the tinny voice. “Who?”

  “Lokner,” said Miles.

  “Miles, please escort your secretary to your office and await further orders.”

  “Let her go, Mister Lokner. She’s not part of this. I’ll stay and we’ll figure out how to get out of this mess.”

  “No. You told her who I am. Anything that happens to her now is your fault.” Lokner sounded calm, but there was something to his voice like he found this terribly amusing.

  “Let her—”

  “She stays,” stated Lokner with finality. “I’m having Androctonus bring up the NATU agent. We’ll have a pleasant little conversation. Maybe we can straighten all this out.”

  The smug satisfaction in Lokner’s voice hardened Miles’ resolve. The man was crazy. He had to be stopped. How did Lokner think this would end? The answer was obvious. Lokner had ties with organized crime and was involved with crèches. He’d have no compunction killing the two of them. And Androctonus was on his way up. He’d be there any second. They had to move now.

  Miles led Christie into his office.

  Micro-nukes. Did Lokner have micro-nukes? That would be crazy! But then...

  Was he really going to do this? Planning the deadman’s switch was one thing. Using it was something else. He’d never hurt anyone in his life, and now he planned on threatening a man with death.

  Miles shivered. He wanted to cry, but no way he’d show that kind of weakness in front of Christie. Collapsing into his SmartChair he looked away from Christie, afraid to make eye contact. She mustn’t see he had a plan. Her reaction might warn Lokner.

  ***

  Griffin advanced, gun raised, emptying the clip in the general direction of the 5THSUN chassis. It flowed like water, and he chased it with a hail of Depleted Uranium Core rounds.

  The hammer fell with a click that echoed around the marble lobby. The Tavor was empty. The chassis lunged forward and ripped the gun from his hands, breaking three of his fingers and tearing flesh from bone. Griffin screamed and dropped to the ground, clutching his bloody right hand. His darkening fingers now sent messages of screaming agony and burned like they were being held in a pot of hydrochloric acid. He huddled them against his chest protectively as the 5THSUN chassis sunk claws through the MR armor and deep into his shoulder. Griffin screamed again.

  It was going to kill him. Rip him in half.

  Instead it dragged him up off the floor, lifted him like he was nothing. It stood him upright and let go. Only sheer force of will and a fistful of amphetamines kept him from crumpling back to the marble.

  Still alive. Mostly. But why? What could it want?

  Nothing good.

  The chassis shoved Griffin past the ruins of Abdul and toward the elevator. He stumbled as the doors slid open and he fell inside. Unable to extend a hand to catch himself he landed awkwardly, crushing the air from his lungs. He lay wheezing on the elevator floor. The chassis joined him in the elevator. Again it sank claws into his shoulder and dragged him upright. When it let go he sagged into the corner, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the chassis. He kept seeing the blasted ruins of Abdul. What had he done?

  “Yuuki o dashite,” said the 5THSUN chassis, sounding annoyed.

  “What?” Griffin croaked, his throat thick with dust.

  “Be brave. Don’t embarrass yourself.”

  “Oh.” Griffin stared at the chassis, its back turned contemptuously toward him. He was no threat. Blood leaked hot from the wounds in his shoulder. “Fuck you.”

  “That’s better,” said the chassis. The door hissed open and the elevator deposited them on the top floor. “But a little predictable.”

  ***

  Miles watched Androctonus shove the NATU agent into his office. The hand clutched to the agent’s chest showed fingers bent at painful angles. Covered in a thick layer of plaster dust, he looked otherwise unhurt. While all attention was on the new arrival Miles tapped a short custom command line on the desktop. If anyone noticed, they’d mistake it for a nervous drumming. Not too far from the truth. He had to repeat the command twice to get it right.

  The deadman’s switch was armed but not yet triggered.

  Please let it not come to that. There must be some other way out of this.

  ***

  Griffin took in the room. An overweight man with long red dreadlocks sat slumpe
d at a desk. A pretty Asian woman stood beside him, her hand resting on his shoulder. Lokner was nowhere in sight.

  “This is it?” An incredulous voice over the intercom. “They send one lousy beaten up agent for me?” The voice snarled something inarticulate then said, “Who the hell are you?”

  That must be Lokner.

  Dazed, Griffin fell back on routine. He repeated what he’d memorized by rote in the academy. “I am NATU Special Investigations Agent Griffin Dickinson. Mark Lokner, I have a warrant for your arrest as well as Search and Seizure papers for all 5THSUN Assessments property and chattels including, but not limited to, all data and information stored in any medium.”

  The fat guy, whose clothes did not at all fit the corporate profile, twitched his lips as if unwilling to commit to a full smile. They made eye contact and held it. The red dreads nodded almost imperceptibly. There was something there, but Griffin didn’t yet know what.

  A grating screech of static sounded over the intercom. Was that laughter?

  “Chattel!” Mark screamed. “You think I’m fucking chattel? I am everything. I’m the god-damned future! Death is dead. I killed it.”

  “You’re finished Lokner,” said Griffin. “Too many people know.”

  A squeal of high-pitched giggling cracked through the small speaker. “Because I would not stop for death, the fucker stopped for me. You know who that is, Agent Dickinson?”

  Griffin sagged against a bookcase for support. Lokner sounded deranged. He didn’t feel ready for this. “No.”

  “Emily Dickinson. Sort of.”

  “No relation,” said Griffin.

  “All children and school buses and horse heads—but the first line was great.” There was a quick, bitten off cackle. “Well, after I fixed it.”

  The flood of adrenaline soured and drained into Griffin’s stomach. It hung there, heavy and fermenting. He had nothing left for this madman.

  “Nothing, Agent Dickinson?” crowed Lokner. “You didn’t get it did you? Everyone dies. No one wants to die. “

  ***

  Lokner looked down upon the room from his viewpoint within the building’s security cameras. Most of the cameras downstairs were dead, victims of the battle with the NATU chassis. Miles looked like he wanted to cry, and the NATU agent was so unsteady he might fall over dead at any time.

  “You’ll be a client of mine before long, Agent Dickinson,” Lokner joked.

  Dickinson looked confused. Why couldn’t they see what was plainly obvious? It was like talking to a room full of poorly trained baboons. The thought of Miles with a big red bottom gave Lokner another fit of tittering giggles he had trouble controlling. He was too damned funny!

  Death brought a whole new perspective to humor.

  Never mind. He wasted precious breath on these simpletons.

  Wait. He didn’t breathe so it couldn’t be wasted. Ah! But his time was being wasted. That was still real, right?

  He heard quiet but insistent scratching at his office door.

  “Not now, we’re about to win.”

  “Pardon?” said Dickinson.

  “Nothing. Androctonus—”

  Miles interrupted. “You’re going to kill us, aren’t you?”

  “It’s simple math, Miles. Really, what choice do I have?” He asked the question honestly but they failed to answer.

  Fingers drumming nervously, Miles sat at his desk like a strawberry-topped vanilla pudding in black shorts. He filled the over-priced SmartChair to bursting.

  Is he blinking back tears? Pathetic.

  ***

  “It’s not math,” Miles protested. “Don’t distance yourself from what you are about to do.”

  “About to do?” Lokner sounded surprised. “Androctonus will handle the doing. My hands are clean. There’s no such thing as virtual guilt.”

  “But—” Miles stopped himself. Christie’s hand on his shoulder squeezed tight as if to say, do it. Do it now. The NATU agent was either watching calmly or about to lose consciousness. Hard to tell. “You’re an asshole. You can’t believe you aren’t responsible.”

  “This is a waste of time. Androcto—”

  “You missed something,” said Miles. He turned to meet Christie’s stare, but saw agent Dickinson’s smile out of the corner of his eye.

  “I am?”

  “I’m root.”

  “So?”

  “Where you are, asshole,” Miles snarled through gritted teeth. “Root is God.”

  Lokner made a pfft sound. “You’re bluffing, fat man.”

  Miles touched his desktop. “See the big digital display on your office wall?”

  Lokner hesitated and Miles knew he was staring at the massive red numbers that had appeared on the far wall of his virtual office. “Yes.”

  “You understand what that is, right? You understand what it’s telling you?”

  “You’re too dangerous to be allowed to live.”

  Miles swallowed. That was one way of looking at it. Of course Lokner went there first. Could he defuse the situation? Lokner was crazy but still rational, right? Was that even possible? He didn’t like the answer he saw.

  “I am no more dangerous now than ever,” said Miles. “You never understood the true balance of power in our relationship.” As soon as he said it he realized it was a mistake.

  “You have no idea who you’re fucking with,” said Lokner, voice taut and angry.

  “I know exactly who I’m fucking with. And you scare the crap out of me.”

  ***

  Since the 5THSUN chassis dragged him in here, Griffin had watched the big man, Miles, tap at his desk. He stared at the man’s clothes; the Schrödinger’s Cat: Wanted Dead & Alive t-shirt, the brand new black shorts. Those clothes, flying in the face of corporate dress codes, were no accident. He’d seen people who dressed like this before.

  Lokner and Miles weren’t far off bickering like children. He suspected he’d walked into the middle of something that had been building for a while. He felt lost, like he’d missed something important. Glancing over to the young Asian woman, he could tell she felt the same.

  Lokner snorted. “You don’t have the balls.”

  Miles rubbed at his eyes and sat back, as if distancing himself from his desk. “You know I can’t lie worth a damn. So I’m not lying.”

  ***

  Miles told the truth, Lokner heard it in his voice. Mark looked around his bare office. The door had crept closer, grown bigger. The scratching grew in volume. They waited, salivating, outside his office door. He heard them breathe. They wanted in. It was difficult to think. He wanted to crawl under his desk to his place of power.

  Not yet, he could beat this fat fuck.

  Lokner played out various scenarios in his mind, different possible outcomes stemming from his limited choices. He saw it immediately. The game wasn’t over. Miles hadn’t thought this through. Lokner knew Miles didn’t have the stomach for murder. No way he’d let Lokner die as long as he got what he wanted. All Mark had to do was let Miles think he’d won.

  Miles, guessed Mark, had figured Lokner would be forced to let him leave and then Miles could stop the countdown from anywhere. But with NATUnet down and all communications dead, there was only one place Miles could stop the countdown. Right here in his office. It was so funny Lokner had to kill the feed to the intercom while he choked down wails of uncontrollable laughter.

  There is a god! Could there be any more incontrovertible proof?

  He might have to let the woman and NATU agent go, but he could send Androctonus to kill them once he dealt with Miles. He turned the intercom back on. He had to play this right. The perfect amount of desperation.

  “We can deal, right? You’re not going to kill me, are you?”

  The camera feed from Miles’ office flickered and died. Damn it! Had Miles done that? Didn’t matter. Lokner didn’t need to see to beat the likes of Miles. This was a battle of wits.

  ***

  The confidence drained from Lokner’
s voice and everyone heard it.

  Miles felt a tug of pity for the Scan, and struggled to quash it. Lokner was dangerous and deranged.

  “I can reset the countdown,” said Miles, “and I can stop it. But I won’t until we’re safe. I don’t trust you. Once Androctonus is long gone, we can talk.”

  Noticing Agent Dickinson staring past Androctonus, Miles turned to see what had his attention. There, standing in the doorway was a tall thin figure in a shredded and blood soaked tan duster-coat which hung to the floor. A huge black cowboy hat, pulled low, shadowed its face. The cowboy apparition raised its head and Miles stared into demonic red eyes set deep in a chrome death’s head. The cowboy showed gleaming fangs clutching a ragged cigar stump. The tan duster fell open exposing two matching Japanese swords.

  ***

  Androctonus was surprised when Miles looked right past him. He realized everyone was looking past him. His mind kicked into combat mode. They were trying to fool him into thinking there was something behind him but there couldn’t be. That chassis he trashed in the lobby couldn’t possibly be operational enough to make it up here without Androctonus hearing it. It must be Sawscale, reborn already! Androctonus turned, torso spinning as the tank treads stayed in place. His left arm tumbled away as something sheared through it at blistering speed. Alarms informed him his armor had been penetrated.

  And again. And again.

  Androctonus saw the samurai-cowboy as a Japanese sword entered his armor with impossible ease. It wasn’t Sawscale returned to life as Riina had promised.

  This wasn’t right, they always—

  ***

  Archaeidae looked at the gathered humans. He slid the katana free from the motionless chassis and held it up to show them. The edge of the blade was smoky and difficult to focus on.

  “Monofilament edge on a ceramo-polymer-whatchamacallit composite blade. The Empress gave it to me.” He returned the katana to its place at his side.