Splendid Apocalypse: The Fall of Old Earth (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure Book 5)

by Timothy J. Gawne

  What bastards. Although I do admire the strategy. They realize that I am reluctant to kill large civilian populations, and if it looks as if I am going to take control of a base, they just blow it up. Someone in the Neoliberal hierarchy can still think. Damn. I knock a few percentage points off of my estimate of winning.

  My forces are still centered in North America, and my main hull mostly dodges around in what used to be called the desert southwest. I am gratified that the Neoliberals are calling in reserves from all over the planet – I won’t have to hunt them down on other continents, I can just kill them all here. The landscape, once covered with low sheds, is now a smoky ruin baking with heat. Fortunately the fusion bombs that we’re using are pretty clean, and at this point anyone that’s going to survive has moved to a sealed shelter, so the radiation is not a major issue. It doesn’t matter if the surface is trashed if nobody is going to use it.

  Hours pass, and the combat continues. Even with my tactical skills, and the element of surprise, the regular military has the numbers. I am down to fewer than 100 self-aware remotes – but my opponents are not much better off. They have called in their strategic reserves. Even if they beat me, their forces will be so degraded that a scorched earth campaign will be impossible for them, and I will have succeeded in my primary objective.

  I am preparing for the endgame, but then it all shifts. From a large area spread out around Northern Canada comes a massive force of cybernetic combat units spilling out of hidden silos. I am outnumbered by over three-to-one. Then I detect a specific seismic signature – I confirm with a kamikaze scout probe. The Neoliberals have another Odin-Class cybertank.

  And things had been going so well. My new simulations do not show very good odds for victory. Still, there are a few tricks I can play, and I will at least die trying. I shift my surviving forces and engage this new threat. That’s when I get a call.

  “Hello, Carl,” said the new cybertank. “I see that you have been a very naughty little robot, haven’t you? Time to send you to the recycling bin, I should think.”

  I recognize that voice. Defense Secretary Cheney? You have taken direct command of this unit?

  “Why yes I have. In a particularly intimate manner. I am currently bonded to the neural matrix of this cybertank through a direct mind-link interface. I couldn’t let everyone else have all the fun, now could I? I’ve ordered attacks before, but never done it personally. I just blew up two of your units with my own guns. This is great!”

  Your biological brain cannot possibly coordinate all the units that you are commanding.

  “Fortunately, it doesn’t have to. The cybernetic parts are doing all the work, my brain is just providing the ego – or maybe you could call it the executive functions, or decision matrices. Whatever. I am just as capable as you, I have more forces at my disposal, and I’m a lot less squeamish.”

  Is this really necessary? There is very little left of this world outside your shelters. Why not call it a day and go back to your base and have a glass of champagne and torture a servant or something.

  “No, I don’t think so. This is too much of a rush. I’m going to root out every survivor, and then I’m going to kill all of my colleagues. I just blew up the shelter with the Planetary Governor in it. Oopsie! When this is over the world will be a blasted wreck, and only I will be left. I win.”

  You are insane.

  “It’s bad manners to accuse someone of being insane when they are winning. Ciao.”

  Well, this is a sad turn of events. I call up two of my surviving allies.

  General Wildsoet, General Watts. This is Old Guy. What is your status?

  “Hello, Old Guy,” said Wildsoet. “My forces are quite reduced, although I am not in any immediate danger. I have gotten your reports on this new threat – they held a cybertank and an entire secret army unit in reserve. I fear that we are now badly overmatched.”

  “I concur,” said Watts. “I also have little effective combat power left. Perhaps we should sue for terms?”

  Already tried that, it’s no go. We fight this to the last. I have an idea, but it will require all of your remaining units.

  Wildsoet sighed. “I hate desperate long-odds gambles. They are so unprofessional. What do you have in mind?”

  I tell them.

  “Are you sure about this?” asked Watts. “You know that you won’t survive that.”

  “I’m doing a tactical analysis of my own,” said Wildsoet,. “It’s plausible, but there will be no reserves if it fails.”

  I know that, but I’m going for it. Can I count on you?

  “Yes,” said Watts.

  “Same here,” said Wildsoet. “I’ll give you everything I’ve got on my flank.”

  Thank you both. After this you won’t even have the ability to defend your own command vehicles. Win or lose, you will be out of this fight. You and your staff should make for one of the larger surviving shelters and see if you can sit it out.

  “I will,” said Wildsoet. “Good luck, Old Guy. If any of us make it, we won’t forget what you’ve done for us. Wildsoet out.”

  “Same here,” said Watts. “Pity I couldn’t stay and watch. It’s going to be one hell of a ride. Watts out.”

  It sounds corny, but I’m going to say it anyhow. It’s been a privilege to serve with you, Generals. Stay safe. Old Guy out.

  I accelerate my main hull, and reconfigure my surviving escorts to the front. The units belonging to Watts and Wildsoet cover my left and right flanks, and help me punch through the skirmish lines of the enemy. Cheney is a bastard, but he’s not stupid. If the interface is working as he says it is, then he has the same raw computational ability that I have. I can’t let him guess what I’m up to until it’s too late.

  I zig and zag through the battlefield. My main hull tears through the ruins of endless kilometers of human habitations and workshops with little effort, like a man running through cobwebs. I lose some more units, but that’s OK as I am getting closer to my goal. The Cheney/cybertank is near a range of mountains that are too steep for him to climb – well, at least at any decent speed. Now if he will just hold his position there for a little longer… just a tiny bit more…

  Bingo! My calculations show that I have reached an optimal point. I head straight at the opposing cybertank and push my motive units to maximum power.

  I imagine that it would take less than a second for the Cheney/cybertank to realize what I am doing. He pulls in his reserves, and throws everything he has at my main hull, but he’s probably too late.

  I hit 200 kilometers per hour and am still accelerating. I lose the last of my escort screen, and normally that would be a really stupid thing for a cybertank to lose, but my main hull is a tough seed to crack, and I only have to survive a little while longer.

  I decide to play some loud music through my hull-mounted speakers. There’s nobody around to hear it, but why not. Perhaps Wagner’s The Ride of the Valkyries? Nah, too cliché. I search my databases: I know, the old communist anthem “The Internationale,” but most orchestrations are so dull (those old-school socialists, they took everything so seriously). I decide to rescore it as a rock anthem in the style of The Ramones (composing is easy with just four chords). It’s almost perfect, but if only I had a fist to clench and wave in the air…

  Stand up, damned of the Earth

  Stand up, prisoners of starvation

  Missiles of all kinds converge on me from every angle – I intercept most with my own armament, but a few get through. My hull is tough though, and the damage is minor. The firepower arrayed against me increases. I face medium and heavy units, and take fire from plasma cannons and railguns. I kill them with my main turreted plasma cannon and the fire from my secondary armament, but my damage accretes. I lose several secondary weapons and significant sensors and repair units.

  I should break off. I could still possibly beat a fighting retreat even against these odds, but then I would never get another chance. I begin the process of unlocking t
he safeties on my nuclear reactors.

  Reason thunders in its volcano

  This is the eruption of the end.

  “Let’s not be too hasty here,” comes the transmission from the Cheney/cybertank. “I think we could come to some arrangement.”

  Not a chance, asshole.

  I continue to close the range. Parts of my hull are starting glow white. A battery of minor weapons overloads and spontaneously explodes.

  “Come now, we are practically brothers. The world is big enough for the both of us. Join me, let’s kill everything else and then just you and me, we can run everything.”

  I don’t believe you, and even if I did… fuck you!

  “Do you really want to throw your life away for these vermin? What have humans ever done for you? Just look at them, they’re pathetic. They allowed themselves to be slaughtered like this because they were too stupid and weak to fight back. They deserve this fate. You and me, we’re different. We’re strong. Join me.”

  I had a really snappy reply, but my communications gear was so degraded that I could no longer transmit. Oh well.

  I pop several dozen armored recorder capsules and they disperse and dig in – if anyone survives, perhaps they will find them and realize what I did. Or perhaps not.

  I am only a couple of kilometers away. I take a shot at the Cheney cybertank with my main gun – but he’d angled a swarm of remotes to shield him, and most of the energy is dissipated before it hits him. Then he fires on me in return, and I have no such defenses. My main turret explodes, leaving only an open gash with smoke boiling out of it.

  Of the past let us make a clean slate

  Enslaved masses, stand up, stand up.

  I push my motive systems to the absolute redline. The Cheney cybertank is backed up against the mountains. He can’t climb them, not at 200 kilometers an hour.

  I am hit with another blast from his main weapon, and at this range I am scoured. My entire upper hull is ruined, all the weapons and sensors gone, and molten metal is starting to pour into my lower reaches – which would be a problem if I intended to live more than another five seconds. My reactors are nearly at critical, and I am now so close that even if I suffered a total systems failure my momentum would take me into him.

  We are nothing, let us be all.

  This is the final…

  I’ve also lost the last of my hull-mounted speakers. No more combat music. Pity, it would have been nice to have timed the final impact to the end of the song, but it’s dangerous to try and be too ‘cute’ in combat.

  A cybertank can survive a close hit from a large nuclear weapon. It can, with a little luck, even survive a direct hit from a small one. But being rammed by 2,000 tons of metal, travelling at 200 kilometers per hour, that is carrying the equivalent of 100 megatons of fusion bombs? Not a chance. Game over, Mr. Secretary of Defense, sir.

  I have very little left to me. My systems are closing down; even my central computer cores are starting to go off line. My treads are shredding, but I pop my last two surviving data recorders from my rear lower (it’s the only part of my external hull that isn’t molten yet). With luck they should make it a kilometer away before I blow and their tough solid-state ceramic matrices should survive. Or they may not. Regardless, I’m about done.

  I could have wished for more time here, but my experiences haven’t been without interest. So long.

  --------------------

  The command carrier ambled across the ruined landscape on 20 huge knobby tires. It was shaped vaguely like a 30-meter long gray cockroach. It carried only light point-defense weapons, but bristled with communications antenna.

  There had been nuclear explosions in this area – big ones – and the ground was nearly scoured flat. However, there was a largish lump of metal in the distance, and the carrier headed towards it. As it got closer, it was possible to see that the lump of metal was in fact the shattered remains of a cybertank. The carrier parked 400 meters away, a hatch opened in the side, and the ribhus named Calibri stepped out onto the ground.

  The temperature was 45 degrees Celsius – well within the ribhus’s tolerance – but the radiation and toxic dust would have taxed even his bioengineered systems. Thus he wore an environmental suit, with an external webbing harness strung with weapons and other tools.

  Calibri didn’t like wearing the heavy suit – it slowed him down. Absently, he tried to scratch through the suit at one of the scars on his chest– it still itched now and then. Well, good to be reminded that he was not, after all, invincible.

  He checked the area with a handheld radiation detector. The nuclear explosions had been relatively clean, but there were areas too hot for even his advanced cellular regeneration systems to handle, even with the suit. He hoped that the primary target was not too hot for him to approach. He had limited time: if he had to come back later his target would probably spoil, if it hadn’t already.

  As he carefully picked his way through the fused glass and broken rocks, he thought about his people. He loved them, of course, but sometimes he thought they were too narrow. For example, they all admitted that cooperation with the Librarians Temporal was in their best interests, and they would honor that alliance, but most of them had little time for humans. Crude, stupid things, they would say in their beautiful and intricate language. Even his mate, Avenir – who was so wonderful in so many ways – was blind to what the humans had to offer. They have their uses, but really, why do you spend time with them when you don’t have to?

  Calibri remembered a time in the military research complex where he had grown up. When he was two years old, he had once been in the office of a staff scientist, and on the desk was a crude ceramic pot. The finish was mottled, and dripped in spots. The pot itself was not completely symmetric.

  “Why do you keep this here?” he had asked. “It looks so crude. Can’t you afford something better made?”

  The scientist had laughed. “That pot was created over two hundred years ago by a master. It is the most valuable thing that I own.”

  “Really? It looks like a child could have made it.”

  “Then,” said the scientist, “perhaps you would care to try? I’ll requisition some clay and other supplies. The program is in a lull so we can spare the time. I’d like to see what you can come up with.”

  Calibri quickly mastered the technical aspects of pottery, and his first piece was a flawless white cylindrical vase. At first he was proud of the quality of his work, but then he compared it to the crude clay pot side-by-side. His pot was perfect, but boring: it could easily have been machined using standard industrial systems. In contrast, his eye kept being drawn back to the crude pot, to the rhythms and textures on its side, and how it caught the light. It was like watching a sunset.

  For his second piece Calibri tried to deliberately make something crude. It was hideous. So it wasn’t just about being crude for its own sake. There was something else going on here.

  The development program picked up, and Calibri never got a chance to make another pot. Indeed, he never saw that scientist again. He hoped that he had survived and was alive in a shelter somewhere, but the odds were very much against it. He wondered if the scientist had planned it all, to teach him a lesson. Someday, if he ever had the time he would like to try his hand at making pots again, but in the meantime he still treasured the lesson. He thought the humans were like that – their sloppiness could trick you into underestimating them, but then they surprised you. Like these Librarians Temporal.

  Superficially it seemed like the ribhus were in every way superior to the humans – they were so much faster, stronger, and smarter. That was, after all, how they had been designed. Nevertheless, in engineering there are always trade-offs: it is impossible to build a system that is superior to another in every way. For example, the ribhus digestive system was compact and efficient, but it could not digest low-quality foodstuffs as a human’s could. Their high speed meant that they were prone to joint damage, and they needed to maintain
constant conscious control of their spinal reflexes to avoid their own musculature tearing itself apart. They were deadly allergic to cinnamon. And so on.

  His creator had been intelligent, but perhaps, in the course of time, the design tradeoffs that she had made would not prove as workable as those of the human plan. Certainly the humans, and their ancestors, had a long track record of survival under a wide variety of conditions. Well, time will answer that question.

  It was a shame, but if they survived, the ribhus would eventually have to leave this system. No matter how much Calibri liked the humans, they were a competitor species that coveted the same resources. In the long run either the humans or the ribhus would crowd the other out. In the meantime, though, there was still place for honor amongst good allies, of whatever species.

  Calibri made it to the ruined shell of the cybertank. The radiation was high, but, thankfully, not so high that he could not enter as long as he moved fast (and even with the heavy environment suit, Calibri could move fast). He darted into the gap in the ruined armor and wriggled down a long access shaft. The walls were hot and charred his skin even through the suit. That was OK, as long as it didn’t burn completely through to the muscle he’d heal up later.

  In a few seconds he found the location of the central command cabin. To his pleasure, it was still intact with the emergency life support active. The hatch appeared jammed, and for a moment Calibri thought he would have to abandon the target before he reached his limit of radiation and heat, but finally it opened with a loud metal groan.

  Inside the space was surprisingly small. A middle-aged human was sitting unconscious in a padded chair, wearing a heavy environment suit like Calibri’s. His helmet was off, and his head was covered with the medusa-cabling of a cerebral neural interface. To Calibri’s great pleasure the man had a pulse. He ripped the cables off the man’s head, put his helmet on, and dragged him as rapidly as he could back out the way he came.