Battle Harem

by Isaac Hooke

  “Oh, I’m looking forward to that,” Jason said, unable to hide the sarcasm from his voice.

  Somehow he doubted there would be any feeding going on, considering they had no idea where they were going to find any food.

  6

  When Jason lifted the shroud of VR and returned to that bleak partition of reality known as the real world, he discovered only four of the Rex Wolf pups had remained behind, including Runt. The others had run off.

  “Guess the parent-child bond wasn’t as strong as we thought,” Jason said, trying to keep the mockery in his tone down to a minimum. In truth, he’d been hoping all the creatures would run off.

  “I’m going to name the big one Bruiser,” Tara said from beside him. “The one that follows it around, Lackey.”

  “Lackey? That’s a terrible name for a dog,” Jason said.

  She ignored him. “And the other guy, the one with the hair all over the place, Shaggy.”

  He glanced at her. It was hard to imagine that big, faceless war machine could harbor such a beautiful woman within its AI core. A woman who was currently taking in a bunch of acid-dripping bioweapons as pets.

  Then again, he himself was a deadly killing machine. Also without a face.

  “We still don’t have a way to feed them,” Jason said.

  “We’ll find a way,” Tara said.

  “Unless we can convince them to go cannibal on their brethren down there…”

  “You’re disgusting,” Tara told him.

  The drones finished repairing Tara, and he ordered them to 3D print more of themselves so that she could replenish her stock. First he had to pulverize more of the rock underneath them. Thankfully it was high in metals, so the drones had a ready supply of printing material.

  His own drones finished repairs to his hull, and he ordered them to help the others with the 3D printing work.

  When Tara had a complete drone repair swarm, Jason recalled his own. They returned to the storage compartment in his leg and the panel sealed.

  As the rest entered her leg compartment, she turned toward him. “Thanks, by the way. You’re all right. For a machine.”

  “Sure thing,” Jason said.

  Tara leaped down. “Runt. Runt!”

  The little one came running to her. But so did the other three. She proceeded to tell them their names repeatedly, in the same way owners did with their dogs.

  Jason didn’t pay much attention. He had leaped down behind her, and was already starting out to the west.

  She can catch up.

  She knew where he was going after all.

  He’d updated his map location based on the coordinates Tara had fed him. They only had about two hundred kilometers to Brussels.

  In a few moments, she was at his side, with the Rex Wolves behind her. Their footfalls left imprints in the dusty surface, and made resounding thuds with each step.

  “You like my war dogs?” Tara said.

  His noise canceler muted the external thudding from their tread, so he could actually hear her.

  “Not as much as their owner,” Jason said.

  “Really?” Tara asked.

  “Uh, considering you’re actually human, yeah” Jason said.

  “I’m not human,” Tara said. “Neither are you.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Jason said. “Sure, my mind is trapped in a mech, but inside I’m human. Through and through.”

  “If you say so,” Tara said.

  “Seriously,” Jason said. “What defines the human condition? Is it truly our exterior world? Or our rich inner world?”

  Tara didn’t answer for a few moments, and jogged quietly at his side. “When I awoke, I spent my first two days completely in VR. I couldn’t face what I’d become. I set up my inner world all cozy and hoped to just forget about what happened to me. But on the second day, as I stared out across the virtual beach, something clicked inside of me. I realized that the inner world wasn’t real. I realized that I wasn’t going to give up. That I would fight. And so I became War Bitch, and ever since then, I haven’t gone back to VR. Well, not until earlier, when we convened our little meeting.”

  “All right,” Jason said. “But that’s not even the inner world I was talking about. Because VR is just another manifestation of an exterior world. Sure, it might not be the ‘real’ one, but it’s still just a world. The inner world I’m talking about extends beyond VR, beyond the real world. It exists independently of either. It holds our moral compass, our imagination, our hopes and dreams. That world is what makes us human, not VR, not this.”

  He and Tara were able to sustain a running velocity of forty kilometers per hour. They had a faster top speed of course, but going faster than forty was recommended, at least by the manual, only for short spurts: it was harder on the servomotors, not to mention the power cells. At forty kilometers per hour, when running in the sunlight, they were also able to keep their battery levels relatively constant. It dropped slowly, about one percent every ten minutes, or six percent an hour.

  So at forty kilometers per hour, that meant they’d reach Brussels in five hours, with only a thirty percent decrease in battery power.

  The big dogs were a different story, however. At first they were able to keep pace, but as the two and a half hour mark neared, the beasts showed signs of flagging.

  Jason decided to call a halt.

  He turned toward Tara. “Are they hungry?”

  “You were never a pet owner, were you?” Tara asked.

  “No,” he admitted.

  Tara regarded the animals, those big wolves with the heads of T-Rexes. “I’d say they’re more tired than hungry. Which is a bit strange, considering their size. Creatures like these probably need to eat their body weight in meat at least once every few days. I’m going to run a detailed scan.”

  She held out a hand, and a beam of light erupted from her open palm. She ran it over the greenish fur of one of the creatures. Those photons would penetrate the atoms composing the fur, bounce off different identifying molecules inside it, and then return to the collector for analysis. It was completely safe to the subjects in question, of course.

  “Interesting,” Tara said. “This fur isn’t composed of dead hair follicles, like you’d find in a human being. It’s actually alive. And more like the leaves of a coniferous tree than anything else.”

  “What are you saying?” Jason asked.

  “Chlorophyll,” Tara said. “The greenish color is chlorophyll. These creatures are self-sustaining, at least to a degree. They still need to eat, but they can last for long bouts without any food… they can probably survive a week or longer between meals. Likely they hadn’t even needed the mother’s milk we gave them, or if they had, their requirement for drinking it lasted only a short period after birth.”

  “So the aliens spliced chlorophyll into their genes fifty years ago,” Jason said.

  Tara nodded. “A gene that carried down through the generations, showing up in all of their mutations since then.”

  While Jason waited for the dogs to recover, he surveyed his surroundings. The same bleak, slightly rocky terrain dominated. There were no buttresses here, but there were outcrops.

  He and Tara had been following along what had once been the banks of a river, judging from the wide trench carved into the ground beside them.

  “What’s wrong?” Tara said, noticing his outward gaze.

  “Nothing,” Jason said. “Only… well, aren’t there supposed to be little European towns dotting the countryside on the way to the bigger cities? A few farms and associated farmhouses? Maybe a winery? Instead, all we have is that same bleak, rock-sand terrain, just a constant around us. The alien micro machines and their bioweapons sure did a bang up job of transforming the landscape during the invasion.”

  “Sure,” Tara said. “And the nukes and cluster bombs that the different military powers dropped in the region since then have finished the job.”

  “Sounds like you’re not proud of your hu
manity,” Jason said.

  “Sometimes I’m not,” Tara muttered.

  “We’re not to blame for what our forefathers did,” Jason said. “You know that.”

  “That’s true,” Tara said. “But still, I’m glad I’m not completely human, not anymore.”

  “Yeah, you’re only a war machine designed to inflict destruction, even better…” Jason said.

  She didn’t reply.

  “Well, anyway, all of this makes me wonder how much of Brussels will even be standing,” Jason said.

  “Guess we’ll find out,” Tara said. She stood. “Looks like the dogs are rested. Even Runt is chomping at the bit.”

  Jason glanced at the Rex Wolves: they were roughhousing each other. Well, except for Runt, who was running in circles, chasing his own tail.

  “Maybe chlorophyll DNA was a bad idea on the part of the aliens,” Jason said. “It’s like they’re kids on a candy rush.”

  “Did you have kids?” Tara said.

  “No,” Jason replied.

  “Then how would you know?” Tara took off at a run, and the four dogs followed. He shook his head, and released a burst of speed to catch up.

  After only a couple of minutes on the run, the four Rex Wolves broke off, racing away to the north.

  “Runt!” Tara said. “Bruiser! Lackey! Shaggy! Come back!”

  “Let them go,” Jason said.

  “No.” Tara swerved to the north.

  With a sigh that carried over the comm, Jason followed.

  In the distance, he spotted a herd of bright green… porcupines seemed the best term. They sat in place, lounging in the sun, obviously equipped with the same chlorophyll DNA as the Rex Wolves, though perhaps in greater abundance, given the needle-like spines that enveloped them.

  The herd remained stationary only an instant after he sighted them: the giant green porcupines had become aware of the incoming Rex Wolves, and they got up as one, taking off at a run.

  Bruiser began to bark loudly, and the four dogs picked up the pursuit, with Bruiser on point because of his speed, and Runt on drag.

  There were two laggards among the porcupine herd, and the Rex Wolves homed in on them.

  “Are you sure these dogs of yours were born in the last week?” Jason said while pursuing. “They behave nothing like puppies.”

  “They’re not dogs, in case you haven’t noticed,” Tara said. “But you’re right, I can’t be sure.”

  “So maybe they haven’t bonded you as a mother after all,” Jason said.

  “Maybe not,” Tara agreed. “But they’re willing to accept me as their master, and that’s good enough.”

  The porcupine creatures were about the same size as the Rex Wolves; Jason lifted his right arm, and deployed his energy weapon, figuring he’d do the dogs a favor.

  Tara reached across from where her mech was running beside him, and gently lowered his arm. “Let them subdue the prey on their own. They need to learn.”

  Jason lowered his energy weapon, and folded it away.

  Bruiser leaped at the porcupine that was lagging the most, and wrapped his salivating jaws around its thick body, pulling the creature to the ground. The porcupine struggled in place, but then Lackey came in and bit off the head. That ended its struggling.

  Shaggy tackled the next lagging porcupine, clamping his jaws around the neck. The porcupine struggled for several moments, its life force slowly bleeding away.

  Runt meanwhile hovered around Shaggy, yipping his moral support. The rest of the herd continued running away.

  “If they have chlorophyll needles on their skin, why do they need blood?” Jason said as he watched the creature die.

  “Obviously they have a cardiovascular system,” Tara said.

  “So essentially they’re super evolved plants,” Jason said.

  “That’s one way of looking at them,” she agreed.

  Eventually the animal that Shaggy had pinned to the ground ceased moving, and then the Rex Wolf released him. Shaggy oozed that acidic saliva onto the meat first to soften it up, and then dug in.

  Bruiser and Lackey were already dining on the porcupine they’d taken down. The sharp needles dug into their faces and necks, but the animals didn’t seem to notice or care. Apparently their gullets were resilient enough to handle the needles as well, because they swallowed entire sections of skin and muscle whole.

  “Guess they were ready to move off of milk,” Tara commented.

  Runt hovered near Shaggy. The little guy was whining, but Shaggy ignored him, except for the occasional snap when Runt tried to get too close to the kill.

  Finally Shaggy tore off a big chunk that was free of needles, and tossed it to Runt, who yipped happily and dug in. Runt growled at the meat, striking it with his paws as he dug in, as if he was mad at it.

  “I love them,” Tara said dreamily.

  “You would.” Jason walked away, not really in the mood to see peaceful creatures disemboweled and eaten. Still, it was the circle of life, he supposed.

  A circle he was no longer part of.

  I can never die.

  He wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad.

  Actually, not true. I can die. If something out here gets to my AI core, I’m gone.

  While he could no longer die of natural causes, he’d always have to be on the defense, especially in a land like this, where unnatural causes were the primary source of death.

  When the animals had had their fill, Jason and Tara headed west once more. Before leaving, Tara scooped up some meat, and shoved it into her storage compartment.

  “What are you doing?” Jason asked.

  “Need this to properly train the dogs,” Tara replied.

  7

  As they got closer to the city, the small party did eventually begin to pass the husks of farmhouses and the farms they were built upon. Oftentimes the walls were smashed in, the barns collapsed, no doubt thanks to the roving bands of bioweapons. Those farms gave way to villages whose buildings were made of plaster walls and tile roofs. Again, they were often husks, and there was no metal of any kind.

  During the invasion, the alien micro machines had relied upon metal to reproduce, so things like antennae and window frames were completely stripped away in those regions where the machines had passed, but since most of the buildings were made of plaster and concrete, they survived. The micro machines had sometimes derived metal from the terrain, extracting iron ore from exposed rocks for example, but they had preferred the already processed metals found in human constructions, hence the complete plundering of anything metallic. And given what he saw around him, the aliens had certainly done a thorough job of ransacking the place.

  There were a lot of abandoned rubber tires though, no doubt thanks to the vehicles that had once existed here. There was also a road, but it was hard to discern, given all the dust that had blown over it. Potholes marred its surface, and blast craters had carved away huge chunks of it.

  The buildings became denser as the party moved west. They all seemed so small to him, almost like doghouses, thanks to his size. That was one of the problems with being a mech: your sense of proportions got all messed up.

  There were lots of places for bioweapons to hide around them. Jason didn’t want to spend time looking for those creatures, however—that wasn’t his mandate. Occasionally the dogs ran off to pursue some scent or other, but they always promptly returned. One time, when the Rex Wolves came back the pack ran right past Jason and Tara, evidently afraid of whatever it was they’d encountered. Jason kept an eye to the north, wondering what the hell they’d stirred up, but thankfully nothing ever came that way.

  Jason was the first to spot the city proper up ahead. He zoomed in while he ran, gazing over the rooftops of the intervening villages, and switching control of his feet over to autonomous sensors.

  Like in the countryside, surprisingly many of the buildings were intact.

  “Do you see it?” Tara said.

  “Yes,” Jason told her. �
�You think there are any humans hiding inside?”

  “No,” Tara said. “The residents would have been ground up by the machines and fed to the alien bioweapons, along with all other animals on the continent. And if any managed to survive the passage of the machines, the roaming packs of mutated bioweapons would have long ago finished them off. That, or the radiation.”

  “And now those mutants only feed on each other,” Jason said.

  “That’s what it seems like,” Tara said. “Those that don’t live off the sun, anyway.”

  He reverted his zoom level, and continued toward the city.

  In about ten minutes he had reached the outskirts, according to the map. The buildings here looked no different than those of the outlying villages—they were either one or two stories tall, sometimes three. The road was almost completely intact, and didn’t have blast craters. But it still had a ton of potholes—that’s what happened when the local government didn’t maintain the roads for fifty years.

  Jason halted, as did Tara. The dogs obediently did the same.

  Jason glanced at Bruiser. The bioweapon was sitting on its hind legs, and its mouth was open, its tongue drooping as it panted.

  “I wonder if these Rex Wolves would make good scouts?” Jason said.

  “The kids aren’t trained,” Tara said. “But why don’t you send ahead one of your repair drones? Attach a camera to it, and we’re good to go.”

  “Except I don’t have a spare camera,” Jason said. “You?”

  “No, but the repair drones can print anything we have aboard our mechs…” Tara said. “Servomotors. Cameras…”

  “Good point,” Jason said. He checked the library of Teaching AIs, and found one that dealt with programing drones.

  Gotta love having your mind stored inside an AI core.

  “I’ll be right back,” Jason said. “Keep the kids occupied, will you?”

  “I love how I’ve got you calling them kids now,” Tara said.

  Jason frowned. Or at least he would have, if he had lips.

  He traveled into the street, passing between the two story apartment buildings. It was somewhat cramped: because of his size, it was almost like traveling through a corridor. The roofs beside him were covered in red brick tiles.