Tin Men

by Christopher Golden

  Danny reached for her and Kate slipped into his arms, metal on metal, emotion trapped inside.

  “He cried,” she whispered, her voice almost lost in the sound of the wind and the sea. “But I couldn’t.”

  They stayed that way, frozen together like some sculptor’s idea of metalwork lovers, until Birnbaum called to them that everyone else was aboard except for Broaddus and Hawkins, who were holding the boat close to the sea wall, waiting for them. Danny told Kate he was sorry. He would have kissed her if he could.

  “Let’s get back to base,” he said.

  Kate nodded. She extricated herself from him and knelt to take her father’s corpse in her arms.

  “Once we’re back,” she said, standing, “I never want to be in a bot again.”

  “I’m here,” he said, helping her over to the gap between sea wall and boat. He could think of nothing else to say.

  Waves slapped the hydroptere’s floats and crashed against the wall. On the boat, Zuzu and Torres leaned out, reaching toward them. Carefully, Kate and Danny handed her father’s body across the gap and the others carried him on board.

  Once the others had cleared out of the way, Kate jumped onto the boat and Danny followed. Broaddus and Hawkins untied the lines and ran over, making the leap before the hydroptere could drift too far from the sea wall. The starboard float bumped the wall, pushed by the waves, but then they were all on board.

  Birnbaum began shouting orders. Danny glanced at President Matheson, who sat with President Rostov at the front of the central float. He might be the Commander-in-Chief, but he knew to let them do their work. On board this boat, Private Naomi Birnbaum was captain.

  The squad began to raise the sails. Kate sat down on that starboard float, the hydroptere’s right wing, Felix’s body draped across her lap. Alexa sat behind her, legs dangling over the side, gun stuffed in her waistband. Her eyes were cold and distant.

  Danny went to join Kate, walking carefully along the float as the sails began to unfurl overhead and the hydroptere slid away from the sea wall. As he approached them, he could hear Alexa speaking quietly to Kate, words meant to be private, shared between one abandoned daughter and another.

  ~26~

  With Birnbaum snapping orders, the Tin Men had the hydroptere flying all night. They made the journey from Piraeus, through the isthmus into the Gulf of Corinth, and all the way north through the Adriatic Sea in just under eight hours. As the sun rose to the east, they sailed full speed toward the shore and slowed just enough so that when the foils hit the sandy bottom they didn’t tear the boat apart.

  Zuzu had trained as a medic and he’d cleaned and dressed the wounds of both presidents. In the warm golden light of a new day, Matheson and Rostov slipped down from the trimaran’s central float into chest deep water and slogged to shore, the American President keeping his arm elevated, careful not to soak his bandages.

  Danny watched Alexa jump into the sea and swim a couple of yards before her feet could touch bottom. She turned and stared at the hydroptere for a moment, then out across the Adriatic as if she had left her heart behind and could not continue without it. At last her expression hardened and she turned to march up onto the beach, sodden clothes weighing her down.

  Birnbaum and Torres weighed anchor while the others dropped into the water one by one, the contours of their metal bodies gleaming in the morning light. They moved through the sea effortlessly and joined Alexa and the presidents on the sand, taking up defensive positions around them. Rows of blue lounge chairs lined the beach in both directions but from his spot aboard the hydroptere Danny could have told them to stand down. In these moments after dawn, not a single human being wandered the beach within the range of his enhanced vision.

  Torres and Birnbaum slipped into the water together, a quiet camaraderie between them as they moved through the surf to join the others, leaving only Danny and Kate on board the trimaran. Danny went to her, still at the rear of the starboard wing where she had spent the entire journey. Her father’s corpse lay across her lap. In the light of the rising sun, Danny could make out the reddish discoloration in his right cheek and in the sides of his arms, where blood had settled as it drained toward the lowest parts of his body. By now Felix’s corpse would be gripped by rigor mortis. The idea that Kate had held her father as his body went from the postmortem relaxation of the muscles to the grotesque stiffness of rigor made him shudder.

  “Hey, Sarge,” he said, kneeling by her.

  Kate snapped her head up. “Oh, don’t call me that, Danny. Not you.”

  “You’re still in command,” he reminded her.

  She sat for a while as the hydroptere bobbed and dragged in the water, turning those words over in her head.

  “Kate,” Danny prodded.

  “All right!” she snapped, shooting him a withering glance before her expression softened. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Danny gestured toward her father’s body. “Can I help you?”

  Kate gazed down into the dead man’s pale features. If the body had started to putrefy, Danny couldn’t smell it yet. It had been cool out there on the sea at night, so perhaps they’d be spared that for a while longer.

  “Take him,” Kate said.

  Surprised, Danny hesitated a second before he reached out. Kate had made up her mind, though, and slid her father’s body into his arms. She slipped over the edge of the hydroptere’s wing and sank into the water, vanishing beneath the undulating sea. It took Danny a moment to realize he could still see her through the clear blue water and he tracked her as she walked underwater toward the front of the boat. As she moved into shallower water, her head and shoulders and upper body emerged and she turned expectantly toward him. Danny stood and walked carefully toward the prow, where he handed Felix’s corpse down into his daughter’s waiting arms.

  When Kate turned and waded up onto the beach, Danny stepped off into the sea and followed, salt water sluicing from his carapace. He looked inland, past the beach, at the idyllic Italian seaside village with its rows of colorful shops and buildings and a round tower that might have belonged to a church. A small white train with three trailing cars sat idle in front of a hotel, the sort of thing that would carry sightseers on a tour around town. An aura of calm lay across the village. Nearly twenty-four hours after the Pulse, these people had not succumbed to the chaos that they had encountered elsewhere. He hoped there were other places like this.

  By the time Danny reached the sand, the other Tin Men, Alexa, and the two presidents had surrounded Kate.

  “Mister President,” she said, nodding toward Matheson. “Unless you have other instructions…”

  “Go ahead, Sergeant,” Matheson replied.

  Kate behaved as if she weren’t carrying her father’s corpse; no one else acknowledged it.

  “Fan out,” she said. “Find a car in good shape, standard transmission—“

  “Nothing’s in good shape,” Zuzu said. “Not driveable, anyway.”

  “We’re gonna push,” Kate replied. “POTUS and President Rostov and Alexa get in the car. Get it in gear, and Kelso and I will push. Chapel, Torres, and Birnbaum are on protection detail. Broaddus and Zuzu take point, shove any vehicles blocking the road out of the way. Barring trouble, I call it ten hours from here to Wiesbaden. Any questions?”

  There weren’t.

  When they’d found a suitable car, a silver Peugot, Kate put her father’s body in the trunk. The wind and water had acted on her scorched carapace to give the burnt areas the glassy look of black volcanic rock. As she stood there, staring at the corpse in the open trunk, she appeared to have been carved from the stuff.

  She slammed the trunk hard, then turned to the wounded presidents, and Alexa Day, who stood a dozen feet away, watching her with eyes slitted against the morning sun.

  “All set, Mister President,” Kate said. “We’ll be moving fast. Can you handle the wheel or do you want one of us to steer?”

  Matheson walked toward the Peugot’s dr
iver’s door. “I’ve got it, Sergeant. Let’s go. Quick as we can.”

  Rostov and Matheson climbed into the car as the other Tin Men took up their positions. Danny waited at the trunk for Kate to join him in pushing. Alexa only stared at the car, making no move to get in. It took Danny a second to realize she was staring at the trunk.

  “You all right?” he asked her.

  Alexa shook her head. “I buried my father in Israel.”

  “You’ll go back for him one day,” Danny said.

  She said nothing.

  Danny frowned. “You mad at Kate because she’s not doing the same?”

  “I abandoned my father’s body to make it easier for myself, for all of us. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for that.”

  Danny wanted to argue with her, to give her all the reasons that what she had done had made sense. But he knew she wouldn’t hear him—not now.

  “Give it time,” he said.

  “Yeah,” the girl said numbly, and then she went over and climbed into the Peugot’s back seat. Studying the back of her head through the window, Danny thought he had never seen anyone so alone.

  “Move out!” Kate called as she came around to the trunk.

  Matheson put the Peugot into gear and Danny and Kate began to push. Zuzu and Broaddus ran ahead to clear the road.

  Ten more hours and they’d be back at the Hump. Not home, but close enough.

  Danny only wished he knew what they would find waiting for them when they got there.

  North felt the stockroom closing in around him. His sweaty hands made it hard to keep a firm grip on the gun. He had known it was a risk, locking them in, but he had gambled that they would have a couple of hours—more if he got lucky. Humphreys Deep Station One was massive. Whoever was next in command after the late Major Zander would know what he had been attempting before and the whole base would be searching for him and Aimee, but North had figured they would focus on the hundreds of workstations in the complex. He’d gambled that their focus would be away from the kitchen and that nobody would think to check for them back here.

  The variable, of course, was that he’d jammed the door locks from the inside. They couldn’t be opened by anyone unless someone could override the virus he’d used on the locking mechanism.

  Now, less than an hour later, he could hear the pounding and shouting at the door, all the way across the stockroom. The muffled crump of gunshots followed, and then nothing. He could picture them all standing out there—MPs and techs and other soldiers—trying to figure out how to get past the door. If they had an acetylene torch they might be able to burn through, but that would take a while. Their fastest option would be explosives, but the way the Hump had been built it would take a lot more than a grenade or two to blast that metal door open. First, they would try hacking the controls.

  “Keep them out of here, Aimee!” North said, gun leveled at her.

  Aimee sat inside the little control booth, typing away on a flat keyboard and occasionally stopping to tap the screen or to slide one image aside to make room for another. North wished there were room in that cubicle for both of them—he didn’t trust her—but he had to rely on the gun in his hand to get him what he wanted.

  One way or another, his life was over. Even if he succeeded in getting the anarchists inside, the guilt would carve out his heart eventually. But at least his mother would be looked after. His sister and her kids would be protected under the new world order.

  He felt a darkness at the edges of his mind. When he closed his eyes, he still saw the ruin of flesh and bone that had been a six-year-old girl. A roadside bomb had gone off that morning and an informant had pointed to a crumbling gray apartment house and told Sergeant Morello that the bomber lived there. The little girl had been hiding in a closet, just as her mother—afraid of the robots—had taught her. She’d shifted her weight, bumped the wall, and North had strafed the closet door with bullets.

  The door swung open, lock blown out of it. The little girl spilled out, blood and brain and skull fragments where her face had been. Pretty, pristine, hand-sewn doll clutched in her left hand. It had been reflex. Inside the tin, North had programmed himself to shoot anything that seemed like a threat, get the message across to the populace. Sabeen hadn’t been the first civilian he’d killed, but this time…

  They’d never found the bomber.

  “Listen—“ Aimee began.

  He rounded on her. “Just keep them out!”

  “That’s what I’m doing!” she shouted, hands shaking, her nerves clearly frayed. “They think I’m in this with you. Do you seriously think I want them barging in here just in time to see me hacking the system for you?”

  North closed his mouth.

  This isn’t what I wanted, he thought. I never asked for—

  A static hiss came from the other side of the stockroom. He snapped around, sweeping his gun back and forth in search of the source. It took him a few seconds to realize that the sound came all the way down the aisle from the kitchen door and that it wasn’t a hiss at all—it was the sound of liquid fire cutting metal.

  Acetylene torch.

  He swore and hung his head. Of course, they didn’t have to cut their way through the door if they just used the torch to cut away the locking mechanism.

  “Damn it,” he snarled, and he stormed over to Aimee and thrust the gun against her skull. “We’re out of time! You’re going to do this or they’ll kill us both.”

  She brushed a finger against the screen and he glanced up too late to see the image that had been there. He wished she would look up at him. The first time they’d been together all he could think about were her eyes and the gentle curve of her jaw, her lovely dark skin. He knew she would have hate in her eyes if she looked at him now, but it would make her no less beautiful.

  “Aimee, I’m serious!”

  “You think I don’t know that?” she asked, her jaw clenched.

  She did not turn to look at him. Instead, she kept at the keyboard, tapped in half a dozen consecutive commands. At the end of the sequence, she hit return.

  A series of metal clanks made North turn and stare in surprise at the elevator. The noises had come from within and above, and a moment later they were following by a low hum and a whir of moving cables.

  He stared at her, a wary smile on his face. “This…it’s done?”

  Aimee buried her face in her hands, shoulders shaking, grief-stricken over her complicity. North wetted his lips with this tongue, heart still racing, and stood a few feet away. He glanced back and forth between the elevator and the kitchen door far down the aisle. Even at this distance he could see the bright orange blade of flame cutting through the metal door.

  “Come on, come on,” he said as he stared at the green UP arrow above the elevator. Aimee had actually figured it out. It would have taken him hours more if he could have done it at all.

  The UP arrow went dark.

  His heart stopped.

  Seconds passed and then the red DOWN arrow lit up. He could hear the cables moving inside the elevator shaft, could hear the whir and grind as it descended from high above. Hope ignited a spark within him.

  Again he glanced down the aisle at the burning blade of the torch carving out a rectangle of metal around the lock. They were almost in. A minute or two, no more.

  “Come on!” he shouted at the elevator.

  This time he glanced at Aimee, still tucked inside the booth. One hand still covered her face but not completely, and North saw something that didn’t belong. Something that didn’t fit the picture.

  Aimee’s hand partially hid a wide grin.

  He thrust the gun toward her. “What have you done?”

  Her smile faded. “Only what you asked, Tom. I brought the goddamn elevator down.”

  Ding!

  North swung his gun toward the elevator and felt a vast chasm open up inside him. He only wished he could fall in.

  “What did you do?” he whispered.

  T
he only reply was the hiss of the torch way on the other end of the stockroom.

  Aimee knew what she’d see when the elevator opened. The first thing she had hacked when she had slipped into that little cubicle workstation had been the three still-functioning exterior cameras. All the while, as she had been working to cancel defense protocols—or at least unlock the one door, and one elevator—she had watched events unfolding aboveground. With the sunrise, she had seen the anarchist forces camped around the airfield, awaiting a chance to infiltrate the Hump. With the Wiesbaden personnel defeated, she’d gauged that more than a hundred anarchists remained.

  But morning had not arrived alone. As the sun rose, she had seen a new battle begin, all the while hiding the hope that blazed in her heart.

  “It’s over for you, Tom,” she said.

  North swung his gun back toward her, wearing a desperate look. “But my family—“

  “It’s out of your hands now,” she said.

  The elevator doors slid open. He clutched his weapon in both hands and took aim. North shook his head, eyes wild. “No no no.”

  The Tin Men stepped off the elevator. Aimee spotted the bird-in-flight painted on Birnbaum’s chest plate and the smile-and-crossbones on Hawkins’ forehead. Behind them came others, among them a charred, blackened robot and several human faces whose presence made Aimee catch her breath.

  Hawkins saw the gun in North’s grip, the desperation in his eyes.

  “Hold up, soldier,” he said, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Just the prodigals returning. And we cleaned up your mess upstairs while we were—“

  North pulled the trigger. Bullets pinged off Birnbaum and Hawkins and Torres. There were shouts as other bots threw themselves back into the elevator, covering the humans with their bodies.

  Hawkins roared and threw himself at North, batted the gun from his hand and grabbed him by the throat to slam him against a massive shelving unit.

  Choking, North clawed at Hawkins’ metal fingers.