“There’s nothing we can do,” she admitted, hating herself in that moment. None of this had been her doing or her fault, but in that moment she felt the weight of the secret she had been charged with keeping. “They’re on their own.”
North’s eyes widened and he whipped around, staring at the walls as if he could see through them. “Nineteen satellites.”
“Yes.”
He barely seemed to hear her. “It’s not just my platoon. It’s…Jesus, it’s all of them.”
Aimee didn’t reply, but she knew her silence was confirmation enough. North ran a hand along the smooth lid of Wade’s canister, then turned and slammed his fist into Travaglini’s.
“Fuck!”
He leaned on top of Travaglini’s canister and buried his face in his hands.
“I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. “I should be with you.”
North apologized again, then again. Aimee had a feeling he would be apologizing in his heart forever. She wanted to comfort him, but knew there was nothing she could say. For the moment, deep underground, he was alive and safe and whole—but those were the very facts that were tearing him apart inside.
She left him there, moving from canister to canister, checking vitals and telling herself that there was still hope for the men and women of Platoon A.
A pair of MPs unlocked the metal door that led into the brig. One of them stayed behind while the other accompanied Danny, Kate, and Winslow to the only occupied cell. The anarchist lay on the single cot with his arms behind his head, staring at the ceiling. His upper torso had been tightly wrapped to keep his cracked ribs from moving around much; if he punctured a lung, they’d get no answers.
Danny knocked his metal knuckles against the bars. “Wake up, fuckface.”
Bruised and bloodied, the anarchist did not spare them so much as a glance. “I’m not sleeping.”
“We’re so glad,” Kate said.
As the MP unlocked the cell, the bearded man propped himself up to get a look at them. Danny kept his hand at his side, fingers twitching near the handle of his gun. A strange sensation passed through him; for a moment, he felt almost human, as if that twitch had been in his real fingers.
The anarchist’s curious expression blossomed into something that looked to Danny like real pleasure.
“Private Kelso,” the man said in his clipped accent. Afghani, Danny thought. “Corporal Wade. I’m glad they’ve sent you. Stay close, please. If the opportunity arises, I still intend to kill you.”
“Sergeant Wade,” Danny said, stepping in beside Kate, the two of them creating a kind of wall between the man and his freedom.
The MP stayed in the hall. Winslow moved inside the cell but stayed silent, just observing.
“A battlefield promotion,” the man said, sitting up on the edge of the cot, grim intellect gleaming in his eyes. “Congratulations, Kate.”
The intimacy of her first name set Danny off. He stepped forward, cocked his hand back to strike, but Kate grabbed his wrist.
The bastard’s grin widened. “If we kill a few more robots, you’ll be lieutenant by nightfall.”
Kate grabbed him by the throat, too fast for him to react, and hurled him against the wall. His head thumped concrete and he fell to the cot in a sprawl of limbs, sliding onto the floor, grunting at the pain in his ribs. The devil horns on Kate’s head glinted in the false light of the cell.
“Damn it!” Winslow snapped, pushing up past Danny. “This guy’s our best chance for real answers and you just—“
Danny gave Winslow a light shove, just hard enough to get his attention. He said nothing, letting the stare of robot eyes say everything he had to say to silence the lieutenant.
“He’ll live,” Kate said, though Danny wasn’t so sure. The bastard had hit his head pretty hard. “If he doesn’t wake up in the next ten seconds, you can piss on him to bring him around.”
“Or set him on fire,” Danny said.
The anarchist groaned. When he lolled his head to one side and blinked away his disorientation, Danny saw the murder in his eyes.
“You know a lot about us,” Danny said. “Now it’s our turn to get to know you.”
The man climbed back onto the cot and sat on the edge. He grabbed the sides of his head as if he feared it might fall apart, then searched his scalp for damage. When his fingers came away bloody, he gave a humorless laugh.
“What would you like to know?” he asked, glancing up at them. “I have no reason not to answer your questions. The trigger has been pulled. The apocalypse is here.”
Kate slapped the anarchist hard, metal fingers raising red welts.
This time, Winslow said nothing, but Danny saw the guy fidgeting. He wanted to step in, afraid that Kate would kill the bastard or give him brain damage or something. Out in the corridor, the MP watched without any reaction at all. If Danny read his body language correctly, the MP wanted Kate to hit the son of a bitch again.
“You’re going to answer my questions,” Kate instructed.
The anarchist spit blood onto the floor. He did not seem afraid of pain or death, just curious. “I said as much before you hit me.”
“Oh, that?” Kate said. “That was just to stop you smiling.”
“But if the smile comes back,” Danny added, “we can make it so that you’re incapable.”
The smile did not return. The anarchist stared at them, then wiped the blood from his mouth. He might not be afraid of pain, but he didn’t seem inclined to ask for more.
“Shall I start with my name?” the man asked. When he spoke, Danny could see blood on his teeth from the blow Kate had given him.
“We know your name,” Danny told him. “Hanif Khan. Your man Ingo shared a lot before he died.”
The stillness that came over Khan’s face with that revelation pleased Danny very much. He hadn’t expected that.
“Your questions, then?” the anarchist said.
“You know who set off the EMP?”
Khan shook his head. “I know the name of the man who gave me my instructions, and I knew the EMP would happen. Not how it was done or who was behind it. As I said, what I know will not help you. My men were only one squad of what you call Bot Killers. There are many more. Everywhere on the planet where American robots were deployed, right now there is a group of anarchists or a Jihadist sect risking their lives to destroy those robots.”
“Why?” Danny asked.
At this, Khan’s smile returned, but it was wistful. Actually amused. “Out of hatred, Private Kelso. And a desire to finish the job that the EMP began…the end of western influence in the Middle East. The end of American influence in the world.” The beaten, bloody man gave a small shrug. “The end of America.”
“This is worldwide,” Kate said.
“Oh, Ingo didn’t tell you that?” Khan mused.
“He doesn’t need to confirm it,” Danny quietly replied. “If there were any satellites still in operation, one of them would have come in range of our comms by now.”
The two of them had been hiding from the truth until that moment. Even the dimmest bulbs in Platoon A had to have realized that enough time had passed for another satellite to orbit into range, but they hadn’t had to face it until Danny said it aloud. Kate shot him a dark look. She was not happy to have the illusion shattered.
“Who could organize something like that?” she said. “Who would?”
The anarchist scowled. “To those who have spent their lives hating the corrupt, whorish American culture and the past seven years watching the Americans take control of the world—“
“We freed people!” Kate snarled.
Danny put a hand on her arm, quieting her, but he shared her fury. America had gotten tired of waiting for the global bullshit to end and found itself with the tools to do something about it. With the Tin Men, the U.S. had forced dictators to stop killing, disrupted civil wars, freed up food supplies and medicines…hell, they’d saved a thousand times more lives than they had taken. But
he knew that, to many, no good they accomplished would ever be justification enough, and a part of him understood.
“You forced your will upon the world,” Khan said quietly, his voice the hiss of a cobra. “Forced your culture and your democracy and your beliefs—“
“Your people are the Jihadists,” Danny replied.
“Some,” Khan agreed. “At least I admit it. Powerful religious sects, yes, but they aren’t your only enemies here. Government factions and militant groups and ordinary people desperate to throw off the western yoke. With the robots, your government made themselves the effective rulers of the Earth, and there were many willing to risk anything to see that come to an end.”
Kate picked him up again, slammed him into the wall and held him there, feet dangling off the ground. One of his shoes fell off and thumped to the floor.
“Follow protocol, Kate!” Danny barked.
She twisted to glare at him, still holding Khan against the wall. The little pitchfork painted on her cheek looked like a scar. For a half a second, Danny forgot that this wasn’t Kate, that she had purple eyes and smooth brown skin and had lost her legs. He wanted to comfort her but doubted they could give each other any solace while inside these bodies.
“Fuck protocol,” she said, but she let Khan drop to the floor. He staggered a bit before he leaned against the wall. Kate stared at Danny. “We keep him alive while we decide our next move, just in case we need him. And then we—“
“We’ll need him,” Danny said, studying Khan.
“Yeah?” Kate asked. “Why’s that?”
“We know where his people here in Damascus are, but what about all the others he mentioned?” Danny said. “He’s not just some hired gun. You can see that. Whatever this operation is, he knows more than he’s telling. If that intel can save lives down the line and we kill him now...”
Kate gave a slow nod.
She slammed a fist into the wall, stared at Winslow and the MP out in the corridor, and then turned toward the anarchist. The only lead they had to whoever had planned all of this, and what else they might have in store.
“These people you’re working for,” she said, “they just sent the whole world back to the Stone Age, and you’re okay with that?”
Khan took a shaky breath and righted himself, pushing off from the wall to stand upright. He had just taken part in the ruination of modern civilization, had contributed to the deaths of who-knew-how-many people, and he was proud of himself.
“My people lived in caves in the mountains of Afghanistan,” he said. “Some live in deserts and others in slums. Most of them exist in something like the Stone Age already. Their lives will hardly change. Humanity will return to tribes and small nation-states. Warfare will be local. Savage conquerors will be confined to their own landmasses and the reach of their ground forces. Tell me, why should any of that trouble me?”
A hard rap came on the metal bars of the cell.
“Hey,” Winslow said. “Let’s go. I need to report to the captain.”
Danny and Kate exchanged a glance and she nodded. She exited first and Danny followed, backing out of the cell. Hanif Khan watched them depart, beginning to hunch a little from the pain of the physical punishment he’d taken at the time of his capture and during this visit.
“You didn’t ask the most important question,” he said, attempting to comb the blood-matted parts of his beard with his fingers.
Danny froze. “Why you targeted the two of us, you mean?”
Khan’s eyes darkened. They were shark’s eyes, then. Black and dead, full of hunger and disdain.
“Not the question I had in mind,” Khan replied. “No, I’m just surprised you haven’t asked me why you’re still here, you Tin Men. The so-called Remote Infantry. Still inside your robots.”
“We didn’t ask because we know the answer,” Danny said. “We know.”
Kate shot him a haunted look and Danny glanced away. He couldn’t look at her right now, not when Khan had just confirmed the worst fears that had been niggling at the back of his mind.
Khan spit on the floor again, this time more in commentary than to rid his mouth of blood. “You thought another satellite would pass by, that your minds would transmit then.”
“We hoped, yes,” Kate admitted.
“And now you’re trapped inside those shells forever and you don’t have the first clue how it’s possible,” Khan said, voice full of mocking sympathy. “But that isn’t what would bother me the most, if I were you. No, what would really trouble me was that your superiors kept you in the dark all this time, that you had no idea what was really being done to you…
“But your enemies knew all along.”
~11~
Danny and Kate gathered most of the survivors of Platoon A into the shadow of the ambassador’s residence. Tin Men had cleared the building but for security purposes it was still off limits—the ambassador and his staff would be bunking with their military neighbors until further notice.
“Where’s the Lieutenant?” McKelvie asked, fear in his voice.
“Meeting with Finch,” Kate replied.
The rest of them were quiet. Danny glanced up at the wall and saw one of the sentries watching them instead of the street. He tried to imagine this picture from the sentry’s point of view—a bunch of armed killer robots gathered in a quiet corner of the courtyard, conspiring amongst themselves.
Only we aren’t conspiring, Danny thought. We’re just like the rest of you—we’re freaking the fuck out.
Kate had just finished relating their conversation with Hanif Khan to the rest of them—including what they thought had really happened to the Tin Men during the Pulse.
“No offense, Sergeant,” Hawkins sneered, “but that shit is impossible.”
“Look,” Travaglini said, “I’m no god of biomechanics—“
“We’re still here, Hawkins,” Danny interrupted.
“Kelso—“ Hawkins began.
“No, listen!” Danny snapped, scanning the gathered members of his platoon. Kate and Torres. Trav and Hawkins. Birnbaum, Hartschorn, Lahiri, Prosky, McKelvie. Mavrides, who was quiet for once.
“The EMP fragged all transmissions,” Danny said. “I’m talking global. Deep down I think we all knew it. Thinking our piloting relay was on a separate satellite? That comms would come back if we waited long enough? That’s a fairy tale.”
“We’re shielded,” Prosky whined, as if that was the answer to everything.
Kate held up a hand. “Yes, our hardware has shielding that would protect onboard ops and power cores from a pulse like that, but if we were really piloting the bots remotely, we wouldn’t still be here.” She looked around, meeting the eyes of each soldier. “You understand what I’m saying? Our minds are in the bots.”
“That’s impossible,” Hawkins sneered. “You can’t transmit a human mind via fucking satellite.”
“You sure about that?” Danny asked.
“It might be possible,” Hartschorn said. “There’ve been experiments with synthetic brain modification—like adding data storage. If science can do that, it means your consciousness can spread from organic to synthetic neurological materials. From there to transmission...it’s not out of the question.”
He and Birnbaum were both techs, but Hartschorn was their resident science geek. They all glared at him, hating him for not telling them it couldn’t be true.
“No way,” Hawkins said. “I’m lying in my big fucking can back in Germany waiting for some tech to pop the top and unplug me. So EMPs blew the shit out of everything, so what? There are so many satellites in distant orbit…you’re telling me whatever this EMP was, it fried every damn one of them?”
“Near enough,” Danny replied.
“Your body,” Kate said.
Hawkins stared at her, looking more hurt than angry. He didn’t want to know. “What?”
“Your body is lying in that can, Hawkins,” Kate said. “Your mind is here. Somehow it’s always been here. Not jus
t this time—every time.”
“Uncle Sam lied,” Danny said. “It wasn’t our mental impulses they were routing through those satellites, it was us. Our minds.”
“That’s just…” Hawkins started again, but faltered.
“Oh no,” Birnbaum said quietly. “The Sarge. Kasturi and Jones. Corcoron.”
“Eliopoulos,” Torres said. “He invited me to his wedding.”
“Oh no,” Birnbaum said again. She put her hands over her curved metal abdomen and her legs went out from under her, just as if she were human. She slid to the ground and sat there among them. Hawkins knelt beside her, put a hand on her shoulder, and for a few seconds they all just stood and listened.
None of them had ever heard a robot weep before. There were no tears, of course. The Tin Men were incapable of shedding tears. But Birnbaum’s soft moan of sorrow was enough to break all of their absent hearts.
“If you’re right,” Torres said, “if comms are down and their minds were trapped when the bots were destroyed, what happens now? Their bodies are still there, back at the Hump. That place is massively shielded. Hell, our bodies are still there. So is that it for those guys? Just…brain dead, back in Germany?”
For the first time, Danny looked at Travaglini’s rocket-riding-blond and Hawkins’ smiley-with-crossbones and they weren’t amusing anymore. So many of the Remote Infantry Corps had grown up on video games and looked at deployment as just leveling up. Danny had never been quite that cavalier, but now, more than ever, it wasn’t a game. This time there would be no bonus lives.
“That’s what made the Bot Killers so determined,” Danny said. “They knew this time they were killing us for real.”
Ever since he had first signed on for the Remote Infantry Corps—the first time he’d slid into a canister in Germany and opened his eyes to peer out from inside a robot shell—Danny had been having a recurring dream in which he was a ghost in the midst of a war. He often felt that way while piloting his robot, uprooted, as if he had truly left the physical world behind. And now it seemed that he had.
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