Old Ironsides

by Dean Crawford

  Nathan sighed softly to himself and wondered if Amira might be watching him even now.

  ‘Do people, y’know, still go to church and all that stuff?’

  ‘Go to a what?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  Lieutenant Foxx guided him through the forest, the beams of light glowing shafts between the trees.

  ‘We still miss people,’ she said, as though she had somehow figured out what he was trying to say, ‘but now we celebrate their lives, and for a lucky few death is not the end.’

  ‘What?’ Nathan asked, amazed. ‘What do you mean death isn’t the end?’

  Lieutenant Foxx was about to reply when a strange humming sound emerged from the forest around them. Nathan saw her glance behind them and then she screamed at him.

  ‘Run!’

  ***

  XIII

  Nathan whirled, and through the beams of sunlight cutting through the mist he saw a flying mass of objects swarming toward them through the forest to the sound of beating wings.

  ‘Run, now!’

  Nathan launched himself in pursuit of Foxx, who was running through the forest with the speed of the possessed. Nathan sprinted hard, his legs and arms pumping as he vaulted over a fallen tree, pursuing Foxx toward the clearing where their shuttle awaited.

  Nathan looked over his shoulder and saw a swarm of ugly black creatures accelerating through the forest and closing on him rapidly. Despite the distance he could see that they were not biological, at least not entirely: the glint of metal on their bodies and wings suggested machines, each of them at least the size of his fist and aggressively styled like some kind of demonic hornet.

  ‘What the hell are they?!’ he yelled as they ran.

  ‘Sentry bugs!’ Foxx shouted back. ‘But they shouldn’t be out here!’

  Nathan was running hard just behind Foxx as he heard her shouting to somebody.

  ‘Officer Foxx, three-one-zero-seven-four, we’re under attack and we’re unarmed, repeat, we’re unarmed! Send support immediately!’

  The humming grew louder and he dare not look over his shoulder to see how close the drones were as he struggled to maintain his pace. The shots he’d received at the medical center must have been wearing off because he began to slow, his lungs heaving and his legs burning.

  ‘Come on!’ Foxx yelled at him from ahead, her lithe figure tearing through the forest and vaulting fallen logs with the speed and grace of a gazelle.

  Nathan tried to keep moving but it was as though his body was shutting down. His vision began to blur and he staggered sideways, momentarily off balance as he fought to maintain his pace. He looked up and saw Foxx break free of the clearing, dashing up the gentle slope of the clearing toward the shuttle, and as he began to see stars in front of his eyes he knew that he wouldn’t be able to climb the hill and stay ahead of the machines harrying him.

  Nathan dashed along a path between the rows of trees and chanced a look over his shoulder. The swarm of mechanical horrors was closing in fast, and he could see through the shafts of light beaming down through the trees that they had metallic antennae that probed the air ahead of them, glossy black abdomens and inch-long stingers that somehow he already knew contained some vile cocktail of poisons designed to paralyze and kill victims.

  He turned and ran harder, but his lungs were spent and his legs felt like rubber as he staggered toward the edge of the forest and saw the shuttle ahead of him up on the clearing, saw Foxx screaming at him from the shuttle door to hurry, and then all of a sudden she ducked inside the craft and the door sealed shut.

  Nathan felt his guts plunge in terror as he realized that she was abandoning him. He saw the shuttle begin to lift off, the grass rippling in waves beneath it although he could hear no sound but for the dreadful humming filling his ears from behind. He knew that if he left the cover of the forest and let the drones get into open air they would overhaul him within seconds.

  The shuttle lifted off and turned toward him, and he saw Foxx at the controls as she accelerated toward the edge of the tree line. Nathan whirled and saw the drones right behind him, rushing in with their ugly abdomens and needle-sharp stingers rolled up beneath their bodies to point at him as they charged in and he threw his hands up uselessly to defend himself.

  The shuttle pulled up sharply and a gust of exhaust blasted the trees around Nathan as Foxx hauled the shuttle up into a steep climb. The drones veered up against the sudden gale and tumbled out of control through the forest, some of them smacking into trees and tumbling into the foliage in disarray.

  Nathan felt a little wave of delight and triumph rush through him at Foxx’s cunning intervention, but then he saw the drones swiftly begin to recover themselves as the shuttle climbed up and away from the forest.

  Nathan plunged past them before they could take off and headed back through the trees, smashing his way through the foliage in the desperate hope that the bugs would be hindered by the dense woods surrounding them. He looked back again and saw one of the bugs within a few metres of him now as it launched itself in pursuit, big glossy black eyes watching him with a soulless intent, wings beating the air as it weaved between the thick ferns and dropped down under branches before popping back up. Behind it were dozens more, some of them climbing up above the forest and accelerating across the treetops ahead of him.

  Nathan changed direction again, plunging deeper into the forest in the hopes of avoiding being cut off by the terrible machines. He heard them shift course behind him, dog-legging his path and closing in even further. Nathan searched the forest floor for something – anything that he could use to defend himself.

  A length of aluminium from the old electricity towers glinted in the light streaming through the forest as he ran, and even as his legs and his lungs threatened to finally fail him he reached out and grabbed the meter long strip of metal as he heard the buzzing which seemed to fill his ears as one of the drones lunged in for its attack.

  Nathan whirled and swung the length of metal, caught a glimpse of the nearest drone now inches from his face, its wings beating the air so hard he could feel the blows on his skin as he stepped back in full swing.

  The aluminium hit the drone side-on with a metallic clang that sent the machine spinning through the air. It smacked into the trunk of a tree with a dull crack and spiralled out of the air to vanish into the foliage, its wings bent out of shape. Another rushed toward him, its abdomen folding up beneath it to point the wicked stinger directly at his chest as it tried to impale him. Nathan leaped to one side, twisted on one heel and swung the improvised bat once more. The blow smashed the drone aside and it arced away through the forest as more rushed in, all attacking at once.

  Nathan ducked and rolled beneath their charge, scrambled to his feet and managed to run clear of the attack, but he had nowhere to go and the drones switched direction like a flock of birds in perfect coordination, rushing upon him as one.

  Nathan turned to face them, stepped back, and his boot landed on something hard, metallic. He looked down and saw amid the foliage and soil an old storm drain, the grills just visible through layers of dead leaves and grit. He looked up and saw the drones rushing in, and he hurled the aluminium through the air at them. The drones scattered to either side of the projectile as Nathan reached down and hauled the drain cover up, then scrambled downward on an aged metal ladder still attached to the drain entrance as the drones rushed upon him in a deafening roar of beating wings. Nathan reached up with one hand and hauled the drain lid closed.

  The heavy metal grill slammed down as he snatched his hand away from it and the cloud of drones crashed into the grill in a crescendo of clashing metal and grinding wings. Nathan cringed away from them from inches away, one of their shiny antennae brushing through his hair as it fought to reach him.

  Nathan stared at them, his chest heaving and his lungs throbbing, his breath puffing in clouds on a sunbeam piercing the mist outside. Then a sudden, loud burst of noise hit the air and a plasma bolt smashed int
o the cloud of drones. Nathan’s hands flew up to protect his face and he leaned away from the blast of heat and light as he saw the swarm smashed aside in a cloud of hissing smoke and melting metal.

  The buzzing became panicked as the swarm zoomed up and away from the grill and several more shots echoed through the forest outside and the buzzing of synthetic wings mercifully faded away into the distance. Nathan hugged the wall of the drain as fat, smoldering drips of white-hot plasma hissed down into the drain just inches from him, fading slowly to a deep red color. An acrid stench of melting circuitry filled the drain along with the smoke, and Nathan coughed and covered his face as his eyes began to water.

  ‘Ironside?!’

  The voice was distant, concerned, somebody crashing toward him through the forest.

  Nathan grabbed the grill, careful to avoid the glowing patches of plasma and the metallic carcass of a melted bug drone as he pushed the grill upward and clambered out. He dropped the grill back into place and grabbed the ruined drone, suddenly and inexplicably determined not to let Foxx see that he’d cowered below ground in a drain like a frightened schoolboy.

  ‘I’m over here!’

  Foxx hurried across to him, four armed security agents close behind her as Nathan cradled the smoldering remains of the dead drone and walked out of the dense foliage.

  ‘Are you okay? Did you get stung?’ Foxx asked as she looked at him and the smoking wreckage in his hands.

  Nathan shook his head. ‘I gave them the slip behind some old logs, knocked a couple more of them out of the air with a length of metal. What the hell are they?’

  Foxx looked around them through the forest as she replied.

  ‘They’re a relic of the plague years,’ she explained. ‘Some folks got real desperate out here trying to survive, so they manufactured drones designed to hunt down infected people and eliminate them, culling the plague.’

  Nathan brushed himself down. ‘Not exactly cruel to be kind,’ he suggested. ‘Didn’t they think to use the drones to inject them with a cure instead?’

  ‘The cure came later,’ Foxx said, her eyes peeled on the forest around them. ‘Come on, we’d better get out of here, there could be more of them.’

  Nathan followed her with the security guards encircling them protectively, the shuttle now landed once more in the clearing with another identical shuttle that must have scrambled to support them.

  ‘Who are these guys?’ Nathan asked.

  ‘CSS support team,’ Foxx explained.

  ‘CSS?’

  ‘Central Security Services,’ she said. ‘They’re on-call to assist me in case anything happens to you.’

  Nathan hurried into the shuttle alongside Foxx and was glad to see the craft’s door close behind them. Foxx moved into the cockpit as Nathan strapped into his seat beside her.

  ‘Maybe a walk in the countryside wasn’t such a great idea,’ he admitted as he buckled into his seat.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ she replied as the shuttle lifted off. ‘Nobody could have predicted that those things would be out here, but that’s not what bothers me the most.’

  ‘Being chased by a couple dozen psychotic hornets the size of my head doesn’t bother you?’ Nathan uttered. ‘I’d hate to think what’s really on your mind.’

  Foxx guided the shuttle up toward the flawless blue morning sky and replied.

  ‘They didn’t chase me,’ she said. ‘They went straight for you. You were their target and I want to know why.’

  ***

  XIV

  CSS Headquarters,

  New York City

  Nathan sat patiently on a couch in a waiting room that overlooked the city, a broad bay window that of course wasn’t a window at all but “hard light”, as Foxx had referred to it, set two hundred feet up on the building. The couch beneath him was only visible as a blue outline of neon-like light, and when he sat down it caught him and suspended him in mid-air much as the gravity bed had done.

  Nathan tried sitting, then laying down, then jumping up and down on the couch, which reacted precisely as a normal couch would have done. He settled for sitting once again and looked out over Central Park. It was a measure of his state of mind that seeing the Freedom Tower, the largest familiar icon from his own time, gave him great comfort. The legacy of America’s war on terror, such a major feature of his own life during his military service, the tower represented something that he guessed was likely long-forgotten in this time, maybe something taught in history classes to bored students just waiting for the home time bell to go, as he had once done.

  The rest of the city had long since lost most of the older buildings of his time, although people seemed still to build around or on top of older constructions – the street layout was different but he could still pick out Times Square’s imprint far off in the distance and a few other familiar junctions. He got back onto the couch and jumped on it again for a better look.

  ‘Nathan?’

  He turned and almost fell off the couch to see Foxx beckoning him from nearby, two guards flanking her. He climbed down off the couch and walked across to her and found himself something to say that would detract from his antics.

  ‘You’re calling me by my name now,’ he observed.

  ‘Don’t get excited,’ Foxx said. ‘Calling you Ironside all the time sounds a little too much like a compliment after you ran like a girl from those drones.’

  ‘You ran even more like a girl than I did, because…,’ Nathan faltered, ‘you are one.’

  Foxx didn’t dignify him with a reply as she turned away toward an open door nearby, the two guards frowning at him as they joined her. ‘They’re ready to see you now.’

  Nathan sucked in a breath and hopefully with it his pride as he followed them through the wide door and saw a long table stretching away before him, around which sat some twenty or so sombre looking men and women all watching him intently. The door closed silently behind Nathan, and he saw that an empty chair at his end of the table awaited him.

  After the drone attack, Foxx had reported in immediately with her superior officer, a man named Captain Forrester, who had then sent them to the CSS Headquarters for what was apparently a meeting with some big wheels of some kind. Nathan wasn’t a fan of politics or politicians, but Foxx seemed suitably overawed to even be in room.

  ‘Who are you people?’ he asked.

  From the far end of the table stood a tall, gray haired man wearing an immaculate charcoal-colored suit that folded near his right shoulder. A thin light blue strip around the rim of his collar denoted his position with the CSS, and a series of small gold stars on his right lapel suggested a senior rank of some kind.

  ‘Mister Ironside, I am Franklyn Ceyron, Director General of the CSS. These men and women are the CSS Joint Chiefs of Staff, representing the armed services of our species. Please, will you sit down?’

  Nathan glanced at the chair, beside which stood Foxx and the two guards. Foxx shot him an urgent “obey, damn it” kind of glance. Nathan decided not to question what “our species” meant and reluctantly sat down in the chair before watching Franklyn Ceyron expectantly.

  The Director General sat down and folded his hands before him on the table, regarding Nathan for a long moment before he spoke. Nathan shifted in his gravity seat, suddenly wondering whether people across the city fell flat on their asses if there was a power outage. Maybe they didn’t have power outages anymore, what with all the mysterious hard light. Focus, Nathan, he told himself as Ceyron began speaking.

  ‘I first would like to apologize, Mister Ironside, for the predicament you have found yourself in. I have only recently been fully apprised of recent events regarding your reanimation and the attack in Colorado. I suspect that you have many questions.’

  A flood of words poured like a torrent through Nathan’s mind, and he forced himself to order his thoughts before speaking.

  ‘I do,’ he replied, uncertain of the company he was keeping and equally uncertain of what they wanted
with him. ‘First of all, how come I wasn’t brought back three centuries ago when the cure for my illness was found? There might have been more of the world that I recognize left for me to live in.’

  Ceyron nodded and regarded his long, slender hands for a moment before replying.

  ‘The plague that devastated mankind was brought to the population in your lungs, Mister Ironside. Of course, that was not your fault and nobody here or in history has ever blamed you for that. It is likely that many had died from unknown, alien viruses in history before yours was first diagnosed. However, when a cure was found almost a hundred years later it was considered essential that a source of the original infection, dangerous as it was, be kept in stasis for perpetuity in order that such a primal example be available for further study should other new and exotic viruses be encountered. In short, you were kept on ice in order to protect the human race in the future.’

  ‘You’re telling me that you couldn’t think of a better way to do that?’ Nathan protested. ‘With all this technology you have, all of this expertise, yet you decided to keep me in a glorified freezer for three hundred more years?’

  ‘It wasn’t as simple as that,’ Ceyron insisted. ‘Mankind’s population had been decimated, five billion lives lost. Half of the planet was still wandering around infected, the other half a wasteland of anarchy and suffering. Society had collapsed, governments fallen, warlords were in control of vast tracts of land and warred constantly with each other. No laws, no food, pollution everywhere from collapsed nuclear power stations, cities flooded. The planet was in a deplorable state and it took everything that our ancestors had to re-build humanity from the ground up, one city and one country at a time, starting here in the United States and in London.’

  Nathan swallowed his anger, forced himself to control and order his thoughts.