Old Guy and the Planet of Eternal Night (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 6)

by Timothy J. Gawne

  It took about ten minutes, but we got them all. They didn’t try to hide and wait for later, but we had to make sure so we coordinated with the civilian police to systematically search for any sleeper units. Luckily, we didn’t find any.

  I was still breathing hard. I‘ve been well trained, but combat is scary even for the most grizzled professional. I noticed that Pascal was completely calm, however, as if she had just gone out for a walk.

  “Combat seems over,” said Pascal. “I’m going to go see if I can help with the wounded.”

  I followed along after her. “How did you do that?”

  “Do what?” she said.

  “Outperform professional soldiers in an urban streetfight? You’re not a trained soldier. You’re an academic. You can’t do this.”

  “How do you know what I am trained in?” said Pascal. “Oh look, this person seems alive. Help me stop the bleeding from the where the left foot is amputated – yes that’s good – can you help me carry her to the hospital?”

  I handed my rifle to Pascal and picked the woman up in a fireman’s carry, and walked as fast as I could towards the medical hut. “Seriously, how did you do that? Are you some kind of under-cover special forces secret agent?”

  Pascal shook her head. “No, I am, as I have said, a member of the Order of the Librarians Temporal. We are a militant order, and we all train with firearms. We also have learned mental techniques of focus and discipline. By the way, I’m keeping my carbine, thank you very much. It’s been too long since I’ve been properly armed. That’s an article of faith, with us.”

  “I am skeptical. I’ve never seen anyone not on accelerant drugs move that fast. What are you using? Aggressol? Offensitrin? Level Three?”

  “Sorry to disappoint, Lieutenant, but I’m not using anything. With the right mental techniques, spinal reflexes can be pre-programmed and set to perform coordinated motions faster than the cortex would normally allow. Although most people are incapable of learning this.”

  My comms beeped. It was Sergeant Villers, I had ordered him to go back to our HQ.

  “Hello Sergeant,” I said, “what’s the overall situation?”

  “Fewer than 50 dead, we think, and almost no damage to the infrastructure. But I have some bad news for you, and I have some bad news.”

  “Tradition is that you tell me the bad news first.”

  “Well, Captain Johnson had the great poor taste to get himself killed. As the most senior Lieutenant, you are now promoted to brevet Captain, and officially in charge of our entire merry band.”

  “OK, then. And what’s the other bad news?”

  “It seems,” said Villers, “that our president has noticed what’s been going on, and she has decided to take personal control of our military strategy. Because The People deserve no less.”

  “Oh fuck,” I said.

  “Oh fuck indeed,” said Villers. “Your orders, sir?”

  I sighed. “I need to stop by the hospital, and then I’m going to the late Captain Johnson’s HQ, and talk with his aides. In the meantime I am giving you a direct appointment to second lieutenant, and putting you in charge of our platoon. Trellen out.”

  “Ooh,” said Villers. “Bad news all around then.”

  We got to the hospital, and I gently lowered the woman onto a cot. She wasn’t in bad shape, just missing a foot. She thanked me for helping her. She was a tech in the communications directorate. Unfortunately outside of the executive section our medical supplies were primitive. She’d live but probably have to put up with a crude prosthetic for the rest of her life. Her medical bills would be formidable, depending on her insurance options. At least she was alive, and communications didn’t sound that physically taxing.

  I stood up and headed off to the company HQ.

  As I left, Pascal called out after me. “Captain Trellen. You should really read that book.”

  7. Meanwhile Back at the Ranch

  “Meanwhile back at the ranch - a humorous phrase indicating a simultaneous happening, derived from old Western TV shows or movies. Something exciting would be happening out on the range somewhere (or in town, etc), but at the same time something else would be happening at the home base, i.e. the ranch.

  The bank is being robbed by Smoky Joe and the Goatnose Gang! Will Whitehat Willy be able to foil the desperadoes in time? Meanwhile, back at the ranch, little Betsy has discovered a gold nugget in the family's stream.”

  - Athene Airheart, random Earth human, 21st century.

  On a desolate planet of eternal night, a lone sub-mind of myself awaited news of the expedition to the Lesser Redoubt while in the company of self-aware suits of powered armor.

  I was in the acting command center of The Fortress in the company of Colonel Villers and several of his aides. “Colonel,” called out an armored suit that was sitting down at a communications alcove, “I think I have an audio signal from Trellen, but it’s faint and garbled.”

  “Put it on the public-address system, please,” said Villers.

  The command center was filled with a staticy sound, and I could hear only little snippets of words. Down, damaged … engaging … arrive at … what expect… skitarri … until it, thirty to forty … wait … It was almost worse than useless, but did convey the sense of a force that was being severely harried but still intact.

  “Skitarri?” asked Duchamp “think that’s it?”

  “Hard to say, Lieutenant,” said Villers. “If so we’ve faced worse.”

  “We’ve also faced easier,” said Duchamp.

  “True,” said Villers. “Send the third and fifth companies out, move the rest in support.”

  Duchamp’s fingers flicked across the control console as he began relaying the Colonel’s commands to the different units. For some of the smaller buttons and controls Duchamp used talons that he extruded from his fingertips. All of the armored suits were far more dexterous than you would expect of something with such large and blocky hands, but Duchamp was a real virtuoso. I wondered if the biological Duchamp had been a pianist?

  The minutes passed, and the contacts on the screen firmed up. The armored suits show as blue squares, and potential enemy contacts as red dots. Why are the bad guys always red? The red dots on the display flick on and off or suddenly jump to one side as the intelligence is updated. As time goes on, the number of red dots steadily increases.

  And yet, no ginormous blue square (which would be my main self). Not only should I have been readily detectable by now on seismic scans, but at this range I could have easily powered a signal through the interference by brute force. It’s beginning to look like the main me didn’t make it. Bummer.

  “Colonel sir,” said the suit at the communications alcove. “We finally have clear audio.”

  “Then let’s hear it,” said Villers.

  “Hail, Fortress!” I recognized the deep voice of General Lysis Trellen. “We are nearly home, but could use some assistance.”

  “Hail, General Trellen!” said Villers. “What are you facing?”

  “Skitarri, mostly, but some heavy units in backup. Not sure of the category, maybe Juggernaut, maybe Tendril, maybe Apocalypse. Maybe all three.”

  Villers twitched slightly at hearing the last named enemy. “Apocalypse? Are you sure?”

  “No I’m not sure,” said Trellen, “but as I said, it’s mostly skitarri.”

  “Any estimate of their numbers?” asked Villers.

  “Uncountable,” said Trellen. “Let’s put it this way: we need to slow them down and effect a retreat into The Fortress. They will over-run us if we stand.”

  I was by this time dying to ask ‘what happened to Old Guy?’ and ‘what is a skitarri?’ but I knew better than to interrupt professionals in the middle of a hard-fought combat. Fortunately, Villers asked for me.

  “I’m not detecting the cybertank,” said Villers.

  “We had a run in with Behemoth,” said Trellen. “Old Guy fought valiantly. He drew sufficient enemy forces away to allow us to dis
engage, and appeared to escape the planet in a heavy lift shuttle. Regardless, we shall not have the cybertank’s fire support in this engagement.”

  “Understood,” said Villers. “Our advance forces should be linking up with you in five minutes. Now about your left flank…”

  I was pleased to learn that my main self had fought valiantly, and even more pleased to learn that I had possibly survived.

  I stood back and watched the combat progress. The armored suits were certainly impressive, their tactics about as good as anything that I could have come up with considering what they had to work with. Viller’s forces advanced and then provided covering fire while Trellen’s men retreated into their lines. The now-combined forces commenced an almost textbook retrograde operation; pulling back in stages, with static units defending the moving ones.

  We finally got video feeds of these skitarri. Most of the lighting came from the firing of plasma cannons, which gave the video a strange, stroboscopic aspect, but I could make the enemy out well enough. At first they looked like armored suits themselves, but they were oddly asymmetrical, almost melted looking. Fortunately for the armored suits these skitarri did not appear to possess ranged weaponry, but there were a lot of them and one-on-one they were at least as powerful as the suits. They were armed with a variety of heavy maces and hammers, and could shatter even heavy armor if they got to melee range.

  The fight finally got close enough that two of the wall-mounted plasma cannons that I had repaired were able to open up. They were each slightly less powerful than one of my own hull-mounted secondaries, but still they did significant damage, the searing-bright beams reaping whole sections of the enemy like wheat. Infantry is all well and good, but nothing dishes out hurt like good old-fashioned heavy artillery.

  In the distance, past the ranks of skitarri I made out something large, but I could not get a good look at it. Some sort of optical cloaking field? I could not tell. Whatever it was, it was at least cybertank-sized. It did not obviously engage our forces itself, but its brooding presence was unsettling. Maybe it was a purely psychological weapon?

  The armored suits came within range of The Fortress. One of the large gates was open, and the troops were retreating within, but the skitarri were trying to over-run the suits before they could all escape. 200 suits were lined up almost like an 18th century rifle company and laid down intense plasma cannon fire. The advancing skitarri were torn apart as if they had hit a wall. Something dark and flickering sailed out from behind the enemy front lines, and struck one the of wall-mounted plasma cannons. The cannon appeared to melt and then exploded in a shower of sparks as its capacitors discharged. The other cannon mounted on this side of The Fortress also fell silent – I saw that Villers had deactivated it, probably hoping to preserve it against whatever had destroyed the other one.

  The super-heavy doors of the entrance gate had started to rumble shut even before the last of the suits had retreated inside. The opening was only four meters wide by the time the last suit made it. Twenty skitarri slipped in before the gate shut completely. They were blown apart by the suits, but not before one of them had been overwhelmed by the skitarri and torn into pieces.

  It was strange what happened next, or perhaps, strange what did not happen next. The hordes of skitarri outside the walls of The Fortress just stood there. I would have expected them to do something: try to chisel through the gates, or search for a weak point, or conduct sapping operations, or even retreat. But they just stood there.

  The blurry presence that I had seen at the rear of the enemy lines had vanished. Somehow that was even more disturbing than having it there. I mean, what was it up to?

  I reflected on how peculiar this battle had been. If the enemy had possessed significant ranged weaponry, then the suits, skilled as they were, would have been easily overwhelmed. Aside from the one hit on the wall mounted plasma cannon, the enemy had used nothing like artillery. It almost reminded me of when I had fought the Amok, but the Amok were flamboyantly destructive. They had often made irrational-seeming weapons, but whatever they had they would not hold back. The forces here felt more like they were playing with us.

  The Fortress was so big that even a single nuke couldn’t take it out – but a bunch of nukes surely could. Given time even conventional artillery would shatter its outer walls. Mines could be dug to engage the defenders underground, siege engines designed to shatter the doors, or force them open… the enemy is not really trying, or at least, not trying in an intelligent and focused manner.

  I watched video feeds of the surviving troops – I estimated that perhaps half of the men that General Trellen had started out with had survived, though many of these were dented and scorched. At least injured suits felt no physical pain, and they calmly assessed their damage and began repairing those that could be repaired. I saw Trellen walking amongst his troops, checking each one’s condition personally, thanking them for their valor.

  After Trellen had finished seeing to the well-being of his soldiers, he came over to the command center.

  “General Trellen,” said Villers, “it is good to see you again. I relinquish my command to you.”

  “Colonel Villers,” said Trellen, “You are relieved, and I resume command. It is also good to see you, although sadly we lost many fine brothers. Your covering of my retreating forces was brilliantly handled, as always.”

  Trellen ascended to the dias, and he and Villers clasped gauntlets.

  “Did you find anything at the Lesser Redoubt?” asked Villers.

  “Nothing that answers any questions. The Lesser Redoubt exists, and in perfect condition, only devoid of any survivors. There were no bodies, no combat damage, no messages or records, nothing. There was an extremely large orbit-capable shuttle, more than large enough for the cybertank. It was in pristine condition and effectively ready to launch, suggesting that the humans there had not left, otherwise they would surely have taken the shuttle with them? We searched for a few days until Behemoth turned up, but found not the slightest clue to what had happened.”

  “It does suggest that the humans had been slaughtered by one of the greater horrors.”

  “It does,” agreed Trellen. “But only suggests. We do not know for sure.”

  As Trellen and Villers continued talking, and their conversation shifted more towards a tactical analysis of the past battle and making contingency plans in case of another attack. I did not see that I had anything to add, so I excused myself from the command center.

  --------------------

  I was feeling rather useless, but I suppose that I could not complain – the armored suits were charming and attentive hosts. I was sitting in a small branch of their library chatting with Captain Harlan. We were both seated in overstuffed leather armchairs (the physical comfort was irrelevant to either of us, but psychologically it felt luxurious) separated by a small table on which were several history books that I had been reading. We two were alone – the armored suits had decided that I was trustworthy, and I was no longer shadowed by armed escorts.

  Harlan was the captain of the scout company, and compared to his heavier brethren he appeared thin and almost dainty – although still over 150 kilograms of advanced alloys and heavy-duty servos. He could have punched clean through 15 centimeters of reinforced concrete with little effort.

  I understand that satellites, repeater relays, and microscouts are destroyed almost as soon as they are sent out, but surely radio or even seismic or acoustic signals could transit the distance?

  “In principle yes,” said Harlan, “in practice, there is so much jamming that even the simplest physical communications might not make it. Worse are the false messages: signals that sound like they come from a friend, but that are subtly or grossly wrong.”

  I have encountered a few of these. Any idea where they come from?

  “No, said Harlan, “although we’ve tried to track the sources often enough. Even if you know that the signal is fake, hearing what sounds like someone you respect i
nsulting you or making outrageous claims can be more unsettling than you would expect. Anyone signaling also gives away their position. So we tend to limit our long-range communications to the minimal essential.”

  I see. Well we can only hope for the best, but please inform me if you hear anything.

  “Of course. In the meantime, how are you doing? Is there anything you require?”

  No, but thank you for asking. I’m just a sub-mind and perfectly happy to sit here and read through your histories. I only wish that I could be doing more to help.

  “This thing about you being a sub-mind, you’ve mentioned that before but I don’t get it. You seem like a real person, with a complete personality. What is your relationship with what you call your ‘main hull’? Are you some kind of slave?

  Well, the details are complicated, but I can try to summarize. When we cybertanks were being designed, the humans were still traumatized by their earlier efforts to create minds greater than themselves. It almost drove them to extinction.

  “Yes,” said Harlan, “we also have those records. Trying to create a mind fundamentally greater than yourself is inherently risky and uncontrollable. Not to mention stupid. After Globus Pallidus XIV all such efforts stopped. So how does that explain you?”

  You see, the humans faced a conundrum. They knew that they didn’t dare risk creating another rogue AI, but their conflicts with the aliens convinced them that they needed something faster and with more computing capacity than a standard human for their cutting-edge combat systems.

  “And what was the solution?”

  Teamwork. That’s it, just teamwork. A cybertank such as myself is basically a team of 1,000 identical clones, each of which can think 1,000 times faster than any human. Because we are identical, we share the same memories, and hopes, and desires. Thus we work together seamlessly, and the loss of one sub-mind means little, as we are all one. It is only the survival of the gestalt that matters. A cybertank thus has vastly more computational power than any biological human, but it is psychologically human, and lives on a human psychological scale.