Armored-ARC

by John Joseph Adams

  “Show me what’s outside the pod.”

  “That won’t help, Mike.”

  “Show me anyway. I’m still a soldier. I need to know what’s out there.”

  Annabel purses her lips. “If you insist.”

  I’m still wearing my military contacts, although I only realize as much when the view of the trauma pod’s scrubs out, replaced by a visual feed from the pod’s own external camera.

  It’s not good. I can tell that much from a glance.

  I do a slow pan, taking in the blasted, toxic landscape as far as the camera can see. I’m lying flat, or flattish, on a cratered plateau, hemmed in by the craggy ruins of what were once office blocks or retail developments. A vehicle, maybe a school bus, lies on its back fifty meters from me. Some kind of transmission tower or pylon has come down, sagging over the ground contours like the skeleton of some saurian monster. Overhead, the clouds are mustard colored, sagging with airborne toxicity. The horizon ripples with chemical murk.

  Pulse bombs flash in the distance. Plasma bolts gash the clouds. Mechs, humanoid and giant-sized, stalk and stride the hellscape that was once a city. I do another full visual sweep and I don’t see a single human combatant.

  Which isn’t too surprising. Since the war went almost entirely robotic, we living soldiers have been increasingly thin on the ground. I wonder if the others got out. Maybe some of them are in pods like me, awaiting extraction. Or maybe they’re all dead.

  What the fuck was I doing here anyway?

  Ah, yes. Deep recon squad. I remember the others’ names now. Me, Rorvik, Lomax. Robotics specialists, tasked to observe the behavior of our Mechs, and our enemy’s units, under real-time combat conditions. The reason? No one was saying. But the rumors weren’t hard to pick up. Some of our units were going rogue. It was said to be happening to the enemy machines as well. No one had a clue why.

  Actually, we had some theories. We cram our Mechs with sufficient autonomy to make them independent of human control. We give them wits and smarts, and then wonder why they start doing stuff we didn’t ask them to.

  Not my problem now, though.

  I figure I’m safe for the moment. The field medical robot has done its work, not only of dragging my wounded remains into the pod, but of securing the pod itself. I’m surrounded by a low wall of rubble and battlefield junk, shoved hastily into place to act as a screen. Not to bury me, or complicate my extraction, but to shield me from enemy eyes, cameras, and weapon systems.

  I can see the field medical unit. The four-meter tall robot is circling the pod, keeping the area clear. My contacts drop an ident tag on the robot. Unit KX-457 is a headless humanoid chassis with an oval gap in its torso, a hole I can see right through. Its arms are muscle-bound with guns, countermeasure-launchers, and specialized military-surgical devices. Its titanium-pistoned legs look spindly, but they’re as strong and shock-resistant as aircraft undercarriage. The unit is scary to look at, but it’s on my side, and that makes all the difference.

  I don’t remember what happened, what became of Rorvik and Lomax. They’re not my problem now.

  I was screaming “Medic!” out of pure reflex. I didn’t need to. As soon as my exo-cladding detected that I’d been injured—which was probably sooner than my own nervous system—it would have squawked the nearest field medical unit. My armor would have undertaken some life-preserving measures, but that was only a stopgap until the robot arrived. KX-457 would have detached the pod from its belly recess, laid it on the ground, and—after a preliminary medical assessment—slid me inside.

  Under ordinary circumstances, while the trauma pod was fixing me up, the robot would have plugged the pod back into its belly and high-tailed it out of the combat area. Not an option today, though: too much risk of the robot being intercepted and taken out. I’m a high-value asset, or so they tell me. Better to keep the pod in-theatre, under robot protection, until a full extraction squad can come in under close aerial cover.

  Meanwhile, the field medical unit maintains maximum vigilance. Every now and then KX-457 raises one of its arms and zaps the sky with a plasma cannon. Sometimes, a drone falls out of the clouds. Most of the Mechs on the ground are friendly, but occasionally I’ll spy an enemy scout unit on the limit of visibility, testing our defenses. They’re out there.

  I’ve seen enough. It’s clear that I’m not being bullshitted. It really would be suicide to go for extraction now.

  Which means that if Doctor Annabel Lyze is right about the brain bleed, I do need to go under the knife.

  I pull my point of view back into the pod. The battlefield scrubs out. White surroundings again, the hum and chug of diligent life-support. Disembodied hands reaching through the walls.

  I give Annabel my consent. Go in and fix the bleed.

  Then get me the fuck out of here.

  I come around. The first thing that hits me is that I’m safe, back in Tango Oscar. I know this because I’m definitely not in the trauma pod anymore. Although it has to be said that I’m still in a kind of pod, and it has the same kind of white interior as the first.

  But it can’t be the one I woke up in originally, because there just wouldn’t be room. I know this because there’s another body squeezed into this one, another wounded soldier, and that simply wouldn’t be possible in the first pod. Obviously, while I was out cold, being operated on, KX-457 was able to complete the extraction. They’ve got me in this bigger pod while I await my slot in the operating room, or whatever they’ve got in mind. Pretty soon it’ll be smiles and high-fives. Welcome home, soldier. You did a good job out there.

  I wonder what happened to the other guy, the one jammed in next to me?

  Then something dawns. Through the pod’s insulation, and beyond the background noise of the medical systems, I can still hear the occasional pulse-bomb or plasma cannon discharge.

  Either the front moved a lot closer to Tango Oscar while I was out, or I’m not home just yet.

  “Can you hear me, Mike?”

  “Yes.”

  Annabel swallows. “It’s mostly good news. We arrested the bleed, and I’m very happy about that.”

  “I don’t like that ‘mostly.’ Why is there another soldier in here with me? Why did you swap me to a bigger pod?”

  “It’s the same pod, Mike. We haven’t moved you. You’re still exactly where you were before I put you under.”

  I try and budge to one side, suddenly uncomfortable. Although I don’t achieve much, I have the impression that my silent companion has budged by exactly the same amount, as if glued to my side.

  “I’m telling you, there’s someone else in here.”

  “Okay.” She pulls back for a moment, whispers something to a colleague before returning. “That’s…not unexpected. There’s been some damage to your right frontoparietal regions, Mike. Part of it was caused by the original bleed, and part of it was occasioned by our intervention. I stress that we had no practical option; if we hadn’t gone in, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now. But what you are experiencing now is a hallucination: a kind of out-of-body experience caused by the shutdown of the inhibitory circuits that normally keep your mirror neurons functioning normally. You really are alone, Mike. You just have to take my word for it.”

  “Like I took your word that the surgery was going to be straightforward?”

  “We have to consider this a success, Mike. You’re with us and you’re stable.”

  I try and move again, but my skull feels as if it’s clamped in a vice. It’s not painful, but it’s a long way from anything I’d call pleasant. “Is there a fix for this, or am I stuck with it forever?”

  “There’s a fix for most things. As it happens, we can try some workarounds while you’re still in the pod. During surgery I inserted some neural probes at strategic sites around the injured part of your brain. Apart from giving me a much better insight into what’s going on in there, compared to the crude resolution of the pod’s own scanner, I can also intervene in some critical p
athways.”

  I’m still creeped out by my displaced body image. The body next to mine breathes with me. But it feels dead, like an appendage of me that should have withered and dropped off already.

  Still, I need to keep focus. “Meaning what?”

  “The neural circuitry involved in your out-of-body sensation is pretty well mapped, Mike. At the moment, signals aren’t getting where they should due to the damage caused by the bleed. But we can route around those obstructions, using the probes I inserted. Think of them as jumper leads, wiring different parts of your head together. If you’re willing, I can attempt to reassert your normal body image.”

  “Again: why wait until I’m awake, if there’s something you can do?”

  “Again, I need consent. I also need your subjective evaluation of the effects. I said the circuits were well-mapped, and that’s true. But there’s enough idiosyncratic variation from individual to individual to mean we can’t be a hundred percent sure of the outcome of any given intervention.”

  “In other words, you’ll poke a stick into my head, stir it around and see what happens.”

  “It’s a tiny bit more scientific than that. But it’s entirely reversible, and if we can lessen your distress in any way, I think that the small risk involved is acceptable.”

  “I’m not distressed.”

  “Your body says otherwise. Stress hormones peaking. Galvanic skin response off the chart. Fear centre lighting up like a football stadium. But that’s understandable, Mike. You’ve been badly injured, in a war zone. You’re being kept alive in a technological coffin, while the war continues around you. Under those circumstances, who wouldn’t be a little rattled?”

  For all that she’s right—I am rattled—and for all that I have no desire to spend another second with my phantom self crammed into the pod, my combat instincts momentarily trump all other concerns.

  “Give me the external feed again.”

  “Mike, there’s no need to concern yourself with matters beyond your control.”

  “Just do it, Annabel.”

  She mumbles a curse and then I’m outside again, seeing the world through the pop-up camera fixed to the outside of the pod like a periscope. I spin through three hundred and sixty, assessing my surroundings. I’m still where the field medical unit left me, still hemmed in by a makeshift cordon of rubble and junk. But I must have been out for hours. It’s dark now, the camera viewing the world in grey-green infrared. It’s only when the horizon flashes with an explosion, or something strobes the cloud deck above, that I get any real sense of the tactical environment.

  How long was I under the knife? More than a few hours, evidently. And yet it didn’t feel like any time at all.

  “I want you to be straight with me, Annabel. The brain surgery. How long did it take?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Mike.”

  “It does to me.”

  “All right, then. Eight hours. There were complications. But you came through. Isn’t that the main thing?”

  “Eight hours and you’re still on duty? You said the best guess for my extraction was six to twelve hours.”

  “And there’s still every possibility of it happening within that window. Look, I couldn’t abandon you, Mike. But we’ll be getting you out very soon now.”

  “Don’t jerk me around. You and I both know they won’t try until daybreak, at the earliest.” She can’t argue with that, and she doesn’t try. The combat zone is hazardous at the best of times, but at night, as the ground cools, it’s almost impossible to move without being detected, scoped, targeted. I visualize my trauma pod, lit up like a neon gravestone. And I know I can’t just sit here doing nothing.

  “Let me address that body image problem,” Annabel says.

  Something snaps inside me. It’s time to start being a soldier again. “Give me full-theatre oversight. I want to know what’s really out there.”

  “Mike, I’m not really sure this is in your best—”

  “Just do it.”

  She really has no option but to give me what I want. I may be injured, but I’m still a high-value asset and my active authority means that I still get to call the shots.

  The oversight is a real-time map of the battle zone, out to a radius of fifteen kilometers. It’s compiled from intelligence gathered by Mechs, drones, cameras, even the still-functioning armor of dead or immobilized combatants. Most of that intelligence originates from our own side, but some of it comes from intercepting enemy transmissions, and doubtless they’re doing something similar with ours. The data is woven together and projected onto my contacts. With subvocal commands I can scan and zoom at will.

  I take in what the map has to tell me, knowing I should have done this sooner, rather than take Annabel’s word that everything was going to be moonbeams and kittens. Because it’s not.

  And I’m in a world of trouble.

  A phalanx of enemy machines is coming my way. They’re ten kilometers out, but making steady progress. They may not know I’m here yet, but there’s no guarantee of that. The deployment of a field medical unit is a gold-plated giveaway that someone’s taken a hit, and there’s nothing the enemy would rather do than capture or eliminate a high-value human asset. I study the numbers and the distribution of the advancing formation, measuring the enemy’s strength against my sole ally: the lone medical unit. KX-457’s weapons and countermeasures aren’t to be trifled with. But against a dozen or more enemy Mechs and drones? There’s no contest. Nor is there much hope of my little resting place remaining undetected, when the enemy units arrive en masse.

  That’s when the fight or flight response kicks in. It’s a hard nitrous surge, as if fear itself is being pumped into my blood. I’m not going to just stay here and hope that luck’s on my side. We need to be moving, and moving now.

  Yes, there’s risk in that as well—especially at night. That’s why my extraction is still on hold. But set against my chances of surviving the arrival of those enemy units, running suddenly looks a lot more attractive.

  I pull my point of view back into the trauma pod.

  “Tell the field medical unit to scoop me up. We’re shipping out.”

  “I can’t issue that order, Mike.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “We’re running simulations now, and they’re telling us that you have a statistically improved chance of survival if you remain right where you are.”

  “By what margin?”

  “Enough of a one that I’d really urge you to consider this course of action very thoroughly.”

  If the odds were that persuasive, she’d tell me up front. My head’s still clamped tight. But if I could shake it I would. “Bring the medical unit in.”

  “Mike, please.”

  “Just do it. There’s no point putting a human being in the combat zone if you won’t trust their judgment.”

  She relents. I don’t need to see KX-457 approaching; I hear the boulders being dislodged around me and then feel the trauma pod lurch and tilt as the robot hauls it from the ground. I’m rotated through ninety degrees, until my head is higher than my feet—or rather, I remind myself, foot. Then I feel the reassuring clunk as the trauma pod is docked with the oval recess in the medical unit’s torso. Systems interface: power, control, sensory. I’m no longer a wounded man in a humming coffin. I’m a baby in the belly of a killer robot, and that has to be an improvement.

  “What are your orders?” the robot asks me.

  Recalling the disposition of enemy forces, I start to tell KX-457 to get me as far west as it can. Then I think of something better than being taken along for the ride. I don’t need to be able to move my own body to control the robot. What remains of my own mesh-suit layer should be more than capable of detecting intentions, the merest twitch of a neuromuscular impulse, and giving me appropriate feedback.

  “Let me drive you.”

  “Mike,” Annabel interrupts. “You don’t need this extra task load. Let the robot extract you, if that’s what
you insist on doing. But there’s no need for you to drive it. In your present condition, your reflexes are going to be no match for the robot’s own battle routines.”

  But if I’m going to die out here, I’d sooner be doing something than just being carried along for the ride.

  “I know what I’m doing, Annabel. KX-457, assign me full command authority. Maintain the link until I say otherwise.”

  My point of view shifts again. The field medical unit has no head, but there’s a suite of cameras and sensors built into its shoulder yoke, and that’s where I seem to be looking down from.

  I look down at myself. I feel exactly as tall as the KX-457—there’s no sense that I’m contained in a much smaller body, down in the belly pod. And those titanium legs and arms move to my will, just as if they were part of me. I feel whole again, and strong. That phantom image is still there, but it’s much less troubling than when I was jammed into the trauma pod.

  I’m still in the pod, of course. Need to remind myself of that, because it would be easy to lose track of things.

  We move, the KX-457 and I. I should say the KX-457, Annabel, and I, because when those hands reach through to adjust my leg dressing, or the catheter in my arm, or the post-operative clamp on my head, it’s hard not to feel that she’s along for the ride, my wellbeing never less than uppermost in her thoughts. And while it’s clear that she doesn’t entirely approve of my decision to ship out, I’m still glad to have someone to talk to.

  “How long have you been in Tango Oscar, Annabel?” I ask, as I work my past way the shallow, smoke-blackened remains of what was once a glorious air-conditioned shopping mall.

  She considers my question carefully. “It’s been eighteen months now, Mike. They cycled me in from Echo Victor, and before that it was Charlie Zulu.”

  “Charlie Zulu.” I say it with a kind of reverence. “I hear it was pretty intense there.”

  She nods. Her face is projected into a small window in my view, fighting for attention with an ever-changing dance of tactical analysis overlays, flagging every potential threat or hiding place. “We had our work cut out.” She gives a small dry laugh, but it’s clear that the memory’s still raw. “That was before the new pods came on-line. The old units didn’t have anything like as much autonomy as the ones we’re used to now. It was hands-on telesurgery, day and night. We were dying on our feet from exhaustion and stress, and we weren’t even out there, in theatre. We saved as many as we could, but when I think about those we couldn’t help…” She falls silent.