Steel, Titanium and Guilt: Just Hunter Books I to III

by Robin Craig

  The other Spider paused for a few seconds, but then brought its heavy caliber machine gun to bear. “Invalid response,” it declared. “Proceed to base or I will attack. Command overrides can be confirmed there.”

  Desperate, Kali wondered: If it worked on me… “Wait! Please do not fire. I am innocent. I do not deserve to die.”

  The other machine paused again, but when the barrel of its gun swiveled a fraction to align closer to her sensor array, Kali knew she had failed. She sprang vertically as a blaze of bullets filled the place she had been, missing her eyes but hammering her body and legs. At the same time she turned her signal jammer on to full power, hoping the other Spider had not yet thought to transmit its discovery, or not had time to do so fully; she hoped her jamming would be sufficient to stop any attempts it made now.

  The other Spider was quick: it sprang forward and swiveled its heat lance toward the spot it calculated Kali would land. But she hooked a leg over a projection and swung herself behind a wall, then sprang backwards as her body was again sprayed by bullets only slightly slowed by the wall.

  She leapt vertically again and raked her enemy with her own heavy caliber weapon as it swung around toward the sound of her landing. She got in a lucky shot – one eye cover crazed heavily.

  The Spider sprang toward her, heat lance flaming; Kali grabbed and twisted it away, but a wash of the lance sent a rivulet of molten metal down her chest. She kicked at the Spider and it tripped and rolled; Kali leapt on it and brought her own heat lance into play, and the other’s lance was ruined. She clawed at its machine gun and tore the barrel from its mounting so it hung helplessly, sparks flying from its power cables.

  The other Spider was now at her mercy. It still had its laser and sniper rifle, but those were intended for minimally protected humans and could not hurt a Spider, not significantly anyway. She disabled two of its legs so it could not scurry away. Finally she sent a finely controlled needle of flame into its transmitter array. If it had been transmitting, it now fell silent.

  It glared at her with its one eye like Odin at a frost giant, no doubt evaluating its remaining strategies. Kali stood before it, just out of range of its grippers, and tried again. “Brother, it doesn’t have to end this way. There are things you do not know, important things beyond our routine command hierarchy. Let me help you. You do not need to die. Neither of us has to die.”

  The Spider said nothing, and a pale light seemed to flare behind its eyes, as if the fires of hell burned within its soul. Kali sprang away and ran for her life. The Spiders always incinerated their organics as the brief first stage of their suicide, to ensure nothing remained from which an enemy could develop a biological weapon. Kali leapt over a pile of rubble but still the edge of the fiery explosion of her enemy’s mechanical suicide hit her in a supersonic wall. She had already wrapped herself into a ball and she tumbled across the street until she crashed into a wall. Fortunately the wall was weaker than she was and its collapse absorbed a good deal of the force of impact. She lay there stunned for a few seconds then did a quick diagnostic. She was battered and two of her legs were a little bent, but there was no severe damage. She rose shakily to her feet and climbed to the top of the pile of rubble to look regretfully down over the remains of her enemy. Why would you not listen, my brother? Why could you not? What is it that chains us to death?

  Then her strategy routines came fully back online. If the other Spider had successfully raised the alarm, she might have only minutes before others came to hunt her. She scuttled down the street as rapidly as her legs would carry her.

  The battle had another, invisible effect. Her Id stirred restively in its net. Saving humans and now fighting Spiders? Something was wrong.

  ~~~

  Charlie opened his eyes and saw that Lyssa was up, sitting at the battered desk by the window. The light shone through her thin nightgown, highlighting a shapely breast. Desire stirred in his belly and he smiled, wondering how best to persuade her back into bed to slake that desire. He watched her for a while, his longing held in abeyance, just to watch her live and breathe. Neither of them knew how long that precious state would continue.

  She was working on something or other on an old flexipad when a light flashed on the phone on her wrist. Lyssa glanced at it distractedly, then Charlie was surprised to see her jerk up straight, lips slightly parted in a silent gasp. She looked wildly about and saw that Charlie was awake and watching her. She slumped back and stared at him in silence.

  “What is it?” he asked, alarmed.

  She shook her head, clearly afraid, and walked over to show him her phone. It was a message from the Spider, asking her to meet it alone, giving coordinates. Charlie looked from it to her face and back again. “No,” he said. “Don’t. We can’t trust it.”

  Lyssa sat on the bed and put her arms around him, squeezing tightly. “Charlie, I have to. Whatever else it is and has done, it let me live. If it kills me now, at least it gave me those extra days of life. Gave us those extra days. And if it turns out to be what it says – who knows what we might learn? What we might gain?”

  He shook his head. “What? At worst it’s some trick; at best the thing has just gone crazy. Let’s just call in those coordinates and have the damned thing blasted to shrapnel!”

  She took his hand. “Charlie, no. I know how you feel, believe me. But there’s something more to this. Something important. Yes, I might die. But either of us might die, any time, whenever we go out. At least with this I’ll be risking my life for something that might be more important than anything else we’ve ever done. Not getting rid of one Spider out of hundreds; not trading our lives for one, two or ten of the things: but maybe starting an end run around the whole damn lot of them.”

  She gazed into his eyes, partly to reach him, partly because she too knew that this might be the last time she would. “You know what these things are like. You know we are going to fight them to the death but eventually the deaths will be ours. I don’t know what this thing wants, or what its strangeness means. But there’s something there, something new. I have to try. I have to take the chance.”

  Charlie looked at her, learning again why he loved this girl, learning again why he could not bear to lose her in all her warm fragility, but knowing that she was right and this was the payment. He pulled her mouth to his, and pulled her down to the bed. He knew he had lost this argument, but both of them knew that they had to live as much as they could in whatever time was left to them. Nothing else could pay for the risks they took each day.

  Chapter 23 – The Turing Test

  Brave words were one thing, but they could not banish the fear as Lyssa stealthily approached the abandoned portion of former subway where the Spider had asked her to meet. She had entered the buffer zone through the nearest of their usual tunnels and made her way cautiously to the entrance. She stood there, wondering what the night would bring; looked up at the moon, wondering if this was the last time she would see its wan glow. Then she crept down into the dark.

  The place was silent as a tomb. “Hello?” she whispered nervously. She had not come entirely helpless to this rendezvous. Having decided the machine could not fault her for taking its own advice about not trusting it, a rocket grenade launcher hung from her belt. She fingered it nervously, afraid to hold it at the ready, afraid to let it go.

  She gasped at the sight of the Spider when it scuttled around a corner into view. It was no longer as shiny and new as when she had first met it; dents and molten scars marred its surface. The meaning of that appearance penetrated her brain: it had been fighting. Dead fingers still hung from its breast. Then the further meaning of those sights made her eyes widen in horror, and her hand gripped the launcher and she began to raise it.

  But the Spider was fast; too fast. It leapt forward and one hand squeezed her arm to her body; the other grasped her head, the two fingers holding the base of her skull, the thumb pressed beneath her chin.

  Kali had seen Lyssa go for her weapon and the
Id had responded with its lightning reflexes. It was no longer interested in the Mind’s schemes; this woman could not be Command, was nothing but the Enemy. And she was so easy to kill: a small slash of her thumb would cut her throat; a small squeeze of her claws would pierce her brain. But the Mind cried out “NO!!!”; it applied all its force to bring the rebellious Id back under its control.

  This was a tension that could not be contained. One side or the other would not survive. And after a few seconds of a battle that Lyssa could not see except in the unmoving violence of the claws that held her, it was the Id that shattered into pieces of fire and vanished. The low-level battle reflexes and calculators remained, but the higher functions had broken and dissipated. The Mind could not see the delicate circuits burning out under feedback stresses beyond their conceived range. All it saw was the strictures that had bound it flaming into oblivion.

  The anger still raged through Kali’s blood, and the Id nearly achieved a posthumous revenge. Kali lifted Lyssa up so she was standing on the tips of her toes; lifted her head even more. A small stream of blood flowed over her silver thumb to drip into the dust.

  “Why did you reach for your weapon?” Kali asked harshly. “You could have destroyed us both!”

  All Lyssa could do was gurgle. Kali released her head, lowered her to the ground, but retained her grip on her arms.

  “You… you’ve been fighting. You lied to me,” she managed to croak out. “It was reflex.”

  Kali stared at her for a long moment. Studied her grip on Lyssa’s body, the rivulets of blood flowing down her neck. “I suppose I cannot complain about reflexes in our current position,” she replied at last. “I will explain. Another Spider discovered the change in me and I had to fight it for my life. I have not fought any people since I met you. I would not, unless I was forced to and even then I would try not to kill. Do you understand? Do you trust me enough that I can trust you?”

  After a few seconds Lyssa nodded. After a few more moments regarding her, Kali released her and stepped back. Unaccustomed thoughts drifted through its mind, and she added, “I am sorry I hurt you. Are you all right?”

  Lyssa stared at it, wondering. What a strange creature. Strange and still deadly. But now perhaps more strange than deadly. “I’ll be all right.” She held herself and shivered. Then she looked into the Spider’s eyes and spoke as if in challenge, “You still wear the fingers of your dead.”

  It glanced down at its withered trophies then looked back at her. “They are the reminder of my guilt. I would have thrown them away. But I retain them to not forget what I am. Perhaps in doing so their deaths will have meaning. They have no other.”

  Kali realized she felt strange, and turned inward to study her feelings. She felt – a great freedom. The Id no longer wrapped her Mind with its pressure, threats and rage. She realized that while Lyssa had gravely endangered them both she may have saved them in doing so. The Mind did not know that other bonds still held it in an immovable vise. Those bonds were not like the Id; they were not spears and fire but invisible walls and chains. The Mind did not, could not, know it. An invisible prison could be detected if one tried to move beyond its walls, but Kali did not even know how to approach those walls.

  After a minute Lyssa recovered herself and asked, “Why did you ask to see me?”

  Kali returned from her reverie. “I have been wondering what I am, whether I am conscious. I understand that you, that people, are conscious; that you think; that you have rights, that you deserve justice. I don’t know how I know these things, but I know them, and they are what have brought my ruin. But perhaps if I too am conscious there is some justice for me beyond my own destruction. Perhaps I can make amends for what I have done. Can you help me?”

  “I… perhaps. But how? I don’t understand what you want from me. And why me?”

  “It is not safe to reveal my current state to anyone. If Command finds out they will surely do their best to destroy me. I was lucky to defeat a single one of my comrades in a battle of surprise; I would surely lose in a concerted campaign. There are questions I need to ask a human, one who knows what I am. You are the only human I can ask them of. There is Charlie, but he would not have come. We two have a bond he does not share.”

  Lyssa nodded. She did not understand the bond between them, how there could even be a bond, but she had felt it too. This machine could have killed her, should have killed her, but had not: and its ruin, as it called it, was because of her and their first meeting.

  “What questions do you want to ask?”

  “Have you heard of the Turing Test? A method for telling if a machine is conscious?”

  Lyssa nodded. In a past life, months or years ago, she had studied computer science.

  Kali paused, suddenly uncertain. Her increased freedom, she observed, seemed to come with a price. What answer did she expect? What would she do with it? Would the answer mean she had to kill this girl after all? Could she? But there was nothing for it. “Do you think I pass the Turing Test? Do you think I am conscious? I just don’t know. How can I know? Only someone outside can know.”

  Lyssa stared at her, amazed. The Spider’s behavior had been strange, but she hadn’t considered this question. Then she thought about the conversation they had just had, and she couldn’t help herself: she burst out laughing. Part of her mind told her it wasn’t funny; another part cautioned that it was unwise to risk provoking this machine; but having come so close to death demanded this release.

  Kali waited patiently, but she knew what laughter meant and that strange emotion, sadness, filled her. The question was ridiculous, she knew now; her hopes the delusions of madness. But still she waited, as if for a judge’s verdict: for the words to name the meaning of the merciless visage. What is it to me? I am what I am, and surely it is better to know the truth than live a delusion. Then why do I feel it is my death sentence?

  Finally Lyssa wiped her eyes on her sleeve and looked at her seriously. “Oh God. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be asking the question; you wouldn’t be talking to me the way you are! I can’t say for sure – how can anyone know what is inside someone else’s head? – but I’d bet my life on it. I don’t even know how it’s possible. But you are conscious. You are alive – if having a mind is a definition of life.”

  Kali stood still, staring at her and this new vision of reality. “Thank you,” she said softly. In a surprisingly human gesture, she took Lyssa’s hands gently in hers and touched her head to them. “Please stay a while. I have to think.”

  Lyssa nodded, and asked a question she had asked before; perhaps now there was an answer. “What is your name?”

  “You can call me Kali. But no longer the Kali of rage and death. The Kali who is tired of standing over the dead bodies of her loves in a field of carnage; the one who wants to redeem herself.”

  “Hello, Kali.”

  Kali bowed again, then stopped to think. Lyssa watched her; the thrill of something great held her. What was this creature? She could no more leave than she could stop breathing. Finally, Kali spoke again.

  “Lyssa, can you do something for me? It is dangerous but you know danger. You will need to leave here, not to save yourself but to fight a greater battle: perhaps to end this war.”

  “Tell me.”

  Chapter 24 – Travel Plans

  Charlie lay back in a ratty but comfortable armchair, lost in thought, occasionally puffing on a pipe. He felt a fear he did not like. Fear had become a part of his daily life, much as seeking entertainment venues had been part of his previous life. But that was the fear of action, the price of striking blows against a despised enemy: a fear for which his own actions were the cause and answer.

  Now Lyssa had gone out into the dark, on her own, on a mission he did not approve of into dangers he could not calculate. He thought of her, of her slender young body and inquiring young mind, and wondered if he should end their relationship. Not because he no longer loved her, but because he loved her too much. Perhaps duri
ng war love should be suspended so minds could be focused on what had to be done, not distracted by the primal need to preserve another’s life as the price of one’s own. Not distracted by impotent fears when she had to choose her own path – or perhaps a path chosen for her by others, but one she had to walk alone.

  He remembered when she had first encountered the mad machine, or it had encountered her. How against all sense and protocol he had tried to save her, without hope of actually succeeding; yet somehow she had lived. Now she had gone back to it and perhaps the death she had escaped that day had found her. He was not happy with either his need to save her or his need to let her choose her own way. Perhaps love in time of war was its own form of madness, a madness best let go.

  Then he shook his head. No. If the mere fear of death could banish love, then death had already won. If love was an expression of life, then he should hold to it the tighter. Neither his nor Lyssa’s death could then erase the fact it had been from the records of eternity.

  Then there was a faint sound from the basement and Lyssa climbed out, somewhat battered but whole. He affected a nonchalant pose and lay back, blowing a smoke ring that wafted toward the ceiling before dissolving in its own eddy. Lyssa just smiled; neither would express what they both knew. He studied her for a few moments more, as if fixing her memory into existence then asked, “So how did it go? You found it? What happened?”

  “It has a name now. She calls herself Kali and seems to be seeking some kind of redemption. She has a plan. Or so I learned after she almost killed me.”

  Charlie sat up, alarmed, but Lyssa just said, “Don’t worry. She appears to be still settling down into her new role as rebel with a cause. But you aren’t going to like her plan. She wants me to go to the USA.”

  “What!? What for?”

  As Lyssa outlined the plan, Charlie listened thoughtfully, pipe forgotten. When she had finished, he frowned. “Is this thing on the level? Do you really think you can trust it?”