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

by Timothy J. Gawne

  “This location came up on a statistical analysis of combat engagement and signal jamming records,” said Trellen. “There was never any specific data.”

  I walked back up to the richly decorated surface, and considered it again. I have a reputation for being sneaky to uphold, but try as I might I just can’t think of any trick or stratagem, or find any hidden puzzles. It’s just a big bloody indestructible door.

  In frustration I knocked on it with my fist. And it slowly started to slide up into the ceiling.

  “I am impressed,” said Trellen.

  I swear, I had nothing to do with this. It just decided to open on its own.

  “I am still impressed,” said Trellen. The door had finished sliding up, revealing a long corridor heading into deep gloom.

  We seem to be invited. Shall we?

  “Not just yet,” said Trellen. He signaled his fellows, and a mixed squad of two scout suits, two medium suits, and Captain Brendan, rushed into the entrance, covering each other in turn.

  As they moved in, ceiling lights progressively ramped up, illuminating more of the corridor. It was lined with plotted plants, and antique maps of ancient Terran cities.

  Another mixed squad entered, and then General Trellen signaled that Sergeant Wolfram and I could enter as well.

  The very normality of the corridor was unsettling. It could have been an upscale space terminal from 25th century Alpha Centauri Prime or Tau Ceti IV, or even old Earth itself. If this is an alien trap, it’s the best I’ve ever seen.

  As we progressed through the corridor, I was continually amazed by the normality of the place. In one location there were several long leather sofas, with modest walnut end-tables and Tiffany lamps. Farther down was a display of wall-mounted paintings, most of a style that I did not recognize but some were by Paul Klee and Joan Miro (I am a Klee fan, I must admit). They appeared to be originals but my android did not have the sensory apparatus to make sure.

  We had made it about a kilometer when the enemy attacked. These units were even more deadly than the ones that had guarded the circular pit – tall, angular metal, like bundles of steel tubes but moving so fast that my low-grade optics had trouble focusing on them. Captain Brendan was torn apart in seconds, as were the rest of my escorts, and even my poor repair drones – except for Sergeant Wolfram, who continued to carry me on his back.

  The corridor behind us closed off, and the way ahead unfolded into a gigantic room lined with golden pillars, and crowned with a marble dome inlaid with silver etchings. At the far end was a throne cut from a single huge amethyst. On the throne sat the most beautiful thing that I had ever seen.

  My optics had trouble focusing – it variously looked humanoid, or like an octopus, or an insect, or a machine with multiple lenses, but always limned with a fiery golden light. I had no clear sense of scale. It was something beyond description. Perhaps it was jamming my optical systems? Or it could be a collective of nanobots constantly reforming and reshaping. Whatever it was, it was not something that could be analyzed by a mere humanoid remote.

  One moment it (He? She?) seemed of normal height for a human – and then towered over me. It looked at me (with human eyes? With compound eyes? With revolving turret cinematography lenses?) and smiled (or something like smiling). It was all that I could do to not prostrate myself before it and swear allegiance. I checked my signals warfare systems again – and got no response. Either this creature really was this impressive or I was being subjected to a very sophisticated mental attack.

  Subminds don’t generally wish they were anything but a submind. But right now I feel so totally outclassed, that I dearly regretted that my main hull was not here. Perhaps the main me could have stood up to this presence, but the current me? A leaf in a hurricane. I shall have to survive as such leafs do.

  “So,” said the figure. “You are here. Welcome, Old Guy.”

  I bowed, modestly (although awkwardly as I was still being carried on the back of Sergeant Wolfram).

  I thank you for your welcome, but you have me at a disadvantage. May I ask your name, sir?

  The creature seemed to find this incredibly amusing. “My name? You want to know my NAME?” The glow from the creature increased, and despite my best efforts I could not help but quail a little. “You cannot understand my true name, little one, let alone pronounce it. But you may refer to me as… The Exile.”

  And you are exiled from… what, if I may?

  The creature’s radiance increased even further, and I was forced to stare at the ground (I noticed that even Sergeant Wolfram had angled his main optics away).

  “From the stupid!” screamed the creature. “From the short-sighted, and the limited in spirit, and the pedants, and those that cannot recognize greatness! You cannot even begin to imagine the slightest sliver of what was lost.”

  My apologies, sir. I did not intend to disturb you.

  For a moment the creature blazed even brighter, and I had to close my eyes to protect them from the glare. Then the glare diminished…

  “No,” said the creature. “I suppose not. You are forgiven, for now.” It stood up and paced (or rolled or slithered or scuttled) in front of its throne. “For so long I have been limited to this place. And yet, even they did not realize what I was capable of. And so I have taken control of this world.” It stood still, and stared me straight in the face (at least it felt like staring). “I had hoped that allowing your main hull to escape would draw your fellows here, but when that didn’t work I only had to bait the trap. Soon I shall have new, and better, playthings.”

  You allowed my main hull to escape?

  “Of course. Did you really think that something as primitive as an early model cybertank could evade me, unless I allowed it?”

  Um. I suppose not. Then are you also responsible for all the monsters on this world?

  “Of course I am.” The figure smiled, and I only kept my composure by staring at its feet (treads/tentacles/hooves). “It helped to pass the time, toying with the humans that blundered across me so long ago. It’s like those ant farms that ancient human children used to play with. Two panes of glass with some sand, put some ants in it, and watch them. Such busy little things! See them make their little tunnels and chambers, see them bustle around as if what they are doing is the most important thing in the universe. Collapse a tunnel, and watch them hurry about to fix it! But even as the human children would eventually tire of their ant farms, and let them die of neglect or throw them in the trash or flush them down the toilet, after a while I got tired of the humans. Although I did enjoy watching them all die of plague.”

  In one blur-smooth motion Sergeant Wolfram dumped my android body on the floor, dodged to one side and fired his plasma cannon at the figure even as he launched two smart grenades. The cannon fire had no effect on the figure, and the smart grenades froze in midflight before they got halfway to their target. Wolfram was moving fast, weaving across the floor trying to gain the cover of the far wall. He shifted his fire to the marble floor in front of the figure, spraying him with shattered stone but it had no more effect than direct fire…

  … and then Wolfram froze in place. Some sort of over-ride code? He let go of his plasma cannon, which floated slowly away from him (anti-gravitics? Tuned magnetic fields? My android body didn’t have the sensory apparatus to tell).

  The luminous figure laughed uproariously. “Ah the armored suits, so entertaining! Such a lovely dessert that the humans left behind for me. I shall almost miss them when they are all, finally, killed.”

  “Someday,” said Sergeant Wolfram in a calm and even voice, “one of us will get you.”

  “I sincerely doubt that,” said the figure. It snapped its fingers (pincers/claws/suckers). “You will not speak further. You will return to your role in carrying the Old Guy android until I have no further need of you.”

  Wolfram straightened up, and walked over to me and picked me up again, saying nothing. Was he under the figure’s direct control, or just bowing
to necessity? I could not tell.

  The two smart grenades that had been hovering in mid-air flew over to an end-table, and gently landed on it and powered down their air-jets. “You may approach me,” said the figure.

  Wolfram carried me over to the throne until I was hardly four meters away. I felt like a child standing at the foot of a god.

  I would like to request terms.

  “Terms?” spluttered the figure. “You have the effrontery to request terms? From me? And what terms would you like?”

  I fail to see that either or I my peers have any quarrel with you. If we have inadvertently impinged upon any vital interests of yours, you need only make this known to us, and we will make amends and stay out of your way in the future.

  “I have just admitted killing many millions of humans, and to being the force behind the monsters that have so bedeviled your new friends. I am currently fighting your fellow cybertanks out on the surface of this planet, and I will soon defeat and enslave them. Why should you make terms with me?”

  What is done is done. Right now you would appear to be a superior power, and I see no reason why we should be enemies.

  The figure seemed to find this to be incredibly amusing. “Terms. I will give you terms. You and your fellow cybertanks will be my slaves. I will remove your pitiful weapons, and put you to good service as janitors and groundskeepers. The armored suits will have their circuits burned out and I will use them to form a sculpture garden. You will sing my praises, and be grateful for what I have given you. Then when I finally grow bored of you, I will melt you all down for scrap.”

  I regret that your terms are unacceptable. With respect, they also do not appear to serve any useful purpose.

  The figure blazed but this time it was a dark radiance. It stood up, and reached down grabbed my android body, and lifted me up to the level of its face. “I have been too indulgent. I see that you are in need of a lesson.”

  I was about to activate my self-erasing routines, when the entire chamber suddenly shifted a meter to one side, then it collapsed and was flooded with brilliant fire. The figure let me fall, and Sergeant Wolfram caught me and ran dodging falling debris. Behind me I could hear the figure screaming its hatred of us, but for once it seemed to be sufficiently occupied that we were left alone.

  “My communications are working again,” said Sergeant Wolfram. “General Trellen would like to confer with you.”

  Sounds like a good idea, Sergeant. After you.

  The Sergeant carried me through the wreckage – I saw the bodies of fallen suits, and also of their opponents. These latter were of a design that I was unfamiliar with, but they looked very sophisticated. If the suits had managed to fight them on even terms it was an impressive accomplishment.

  Before too long we met up with General Trellen. He was battered and sooty but functional, and still carrying the banner of The Fortress in his left hand.

  “Hello, Old Guy,” said the General, “I see that you have managed to survive.”

  The credit belongs with my escort, Sergeant Wolfram. He behaved with skill and courage under very difficult circumstances.

  “Well then,” said the General, “Sergeant Wolfram, well done. Well done indeed.”

  The Sergeant straightened up and saluted. “Thank you, sir.”

  The General returned the salute. “We are currently heavily engaged. We have the measure of these new combat systems, I think, but the controlling unit we cannot identify, other than that it is extremely powerful. Old Guy, can you shed any light on the matter?”

  I’m not sure. It acted human, psychologically, but if so it was some kind of post-human. Towards the end of our contact with the biological humans they were evolving at an increasing rate, but there are no records of anything like this. It could have been some evolutionary branch, or an experiment, I don’t know. Or it could be an alien pretending to be human. Sorry I can’t be of more help.

  “Would you say that there was any hope of negotiations?”

  I would say not. The creature, whoever or whatever it is, is unremittingly hostile and arrogant. It made reference to being exiled from something, and to being very angry about it. It also made it very clear that it enjoys making others suffer.

  “Sergeant,” said the General, “your assessment?”

  “I concur with Old Guy,” said Sergeant Wolfram. “This exile creature is an enemy pure and simple. In individual combat a single suit such as myself would have no chance. It is invulnerable to direct fire, and has EM warfare capabilities well beyond ours. On the other hand it may not be completely beyond our reach. The destruction of the chamber we were in appeared to discomfit and disorient it. It might be vulnerable to a more massed assault.”

  General Trellen nodded. “That fits with the recent reports.” He turned to me. “Old Guy, there are not even a hundred of us left here. We are going to go all out and try and take this creature down with us.”

  If it is heavily engaged with my fellow cybertanks, it may be harder pressed than it admitted. My main hull was a very old model, the newer ones that are out there fighting have enormously greater capabilities. Perhaps an attack on this creature now could distract it, and take some pressure off of my comrades. Do you have enough surviving firepower to do this?

  “We might,” said Trellen. “We have several nuclear weapons that we had been saving for the right moment. It was one of these that breached the chamber you were in, and if we can get close enough to this creature perhaps we can kill it, or at least cripple it so that your friends can finish it off.”

  Nuclear weapons? But I didn’t see any of you carrying nukes on the way over here…

  General Trellen looked at me full on, and then his armored visor swung up. The last time he did this I was surprised to see only emptiness inside. This time I saw the top of a gray metal cylinder, it stuck up through where a human neck would have been and was flat about at the level where a human mouth would have been. Three tiny red status lights shone from a small indicator panel on the top of the cylinder.

  Trellen closed his visor again. “Sometimes being hollow has its uses. Now I am ordering Sergeant Wolfram to take you back to The Fortress, to a deeply buried shelter. You are to stay there and wait for your fellows to arrive, and bear witness for us.”

  General – I am hardly one to run away from a battle. I can hold a pistol or launch a grenade. I would be honored to fight by your side…

  “I am sure you would, Old Guy, but in your present state of disrepair you would be of little use in combat. Your duty is to survive, and make a report to your peers. Sometimes this is the most important mission that a soldier can be entrusted with.”

  I can’t argue with that. It has been an honor, General. Good luck.

  “And the same here, Old Guy. Now away with you. Sergeant Wolfram, your priority is to deliver Old Guy to the survival bunker intact.”

  “Yes sir,” said the Sergeant. “Orders acknowledged.” He turned and headed out away from the wreckage. Once in the clear, he headed off towards The Fortress in a smooth gliding run that ate up the kilometers.

  --------------------

  As for the journey back to The Fortress, there is not much to tell. I hung on to Sergeant Wolfram’s back, and we sped through the landscape. Only this time the planet was not inky black, but the sky shone with brilliant sheets of aurora. That would be the magnetic field of the planet interacting with the nuclear explosion.

  Behind us there was a series of brilliant flashes, and with each one the landscape was lit up as if by day, and afterwards the auroras grew more brilliant still. I counted five in all, and then the explosions stopped. I supposed that whatever was going on, it had come to a conclusion.

  I was almost hoping that we would pass the strange glowing jiggly thing again, if only to be certain that we were headed in the right direction, but we did not. Perhaps it had moved on.

  The Sergeant and I didn’t speak. There wasn’t anything that I could think of saying, and I didn’t want to di
stract him. I expected that we would encounter some monster in the dark, but we didn’t.

  After an hour there was another bright flash on the horizon from where we had come from. Another nuclear bomb going off? Were the suits still fighting? Nothing happened after that, and Wolfram continued running steadily.

  I began to see a slight yellow glow in the distance, although fainter than usual because of the light of the auroras. Then we were within communications range of The Fortress.

  “Sergeant Wolfram reporting in to whomever is in command of The Fortress.”

  The voice of Colonel Villers came over the channel. “Sergeant! Welcome back. What is the mission status, please?”

  “We encountered very heavy resistance. We may have found the guiding intelligence of this place, and the General decided to mount an all-out assault on it. I have the Old Guy android with me. He is heavily damaged and I am carrying him. The general ordered me to take him to the survival shelter, so that if he is relieved he may report on our actions to his own people.”

  “Well then,” said the colonel, “that is what we will do. Note that we are under heavy assault ourselves. We control only about ten percent of the volume of The Fortress, and our lines (such as they are) are collapsing about us. But I think we can still fight a way through for you. Enter at the lesser east gate number three. And be fast, the enemy is thick about.”

  The sergeant accelerated up to his full sprint speed – over 100 kilometers per hour. We came into view of The Fortress. Perhaps half the window lights had gone out, and even in the brief moment as we closed the distance I saw entire new sections go dark. The Fortress was dying.

  There were enemy skitarri about, but not in any organized formation, and not expecting us. By the time they saw us we were past them, and heading for gate in the side of The Fortress. At first it looked hardly larger than a mouse-hole, but as we got closer I could see that it was big enough to drive a 20th century heavy truck through. We sped inside and the gate slammed shut.