by Isaac Hooke
Tahoe leaped down from the leg and scooped up the tracker.
“What now?” Rade said. “You want me to dismount, I assume?”
“No,” Adara said. “A platform is descending from the upper levels. Take it: it will return you to the chamber where you left your men. They’ll need your help. They’re under fire at this very moment, fighting for their lives.”
She turned away.
Rade stared at her, stunned. “You’re not taking any of us prisoner?”
She glanced over her shoulder. “No.”
“But the Sentience...”
She continued walking away, not answering.
He couldn’t believe she was actually letting them go. “Why are you helping us?”
Adara halted. “The Sentience made one mistake in its grand scheme of things: it absorbed too many of us. The collective consciousness is half human at this point, and there is a growing faction of us who want peace with humanity. We want to be free of the influence the Sentience wields over us, or at least, have more say in the direction of our new species. The Sentience refuses to see that it has backed itself into a corner. It will obliterate us all if it continues down this path.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you’re helping us...” Rade said.
“I remember holding you in my arms,” Adara said. “Though it wasn’t me, the memory is clear. I can’t... I can’t betray you.”
Rade studied her appraisingly, and then said: “We need to take out the command and control.”
“Don’t you understand?” Adara said. “There isn’t one. All of us are the command and control.”
“What about the interference?” Rade said. “If you can help me eliminate whatever is generating it, we can at least communicate with our ships in orbit.”
“The help I can give you has its limits,” Adara said. “Just like I can’t betray you, I also can’t betray my own race.”
“Your race...” Rade said. “You’re still human.”
“Look at me,” Adara said. “Do I look human?”
“More than ever before,” Rade said.
She lowered her gaze, pressed her lips together, then said: “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“Then come with us at least,” Rade said.
“No. I told you even we must cede to the will of the Sentience in the end. I can feel that will exerting itself. Though the collective consciousness is half human, there are not enough of us, not yet. I cannot resist for much longer.”
Rade heard a grating noise from the shaft and a metal platform arrived. Humanoid robots stood on it, armed with laser rifles. The weapons were currently lowered. What shocked Rade the most about those robots was that they all had his face. Their beards were much shorter, having grown barely past stubble, but it was him all right.
Rade assumed a defensive stance. “What the hell is this?”
“They’re you,” Adara said. “Or your clones, anyway. They will help you. Go.”
Still tense, Rade said: “We don’t need or want their help.”
“You will need them,” Adara said. “Trust me.”
“Won’t they eventually yield to the Sentience, too?” Tahoe asked. “Like you?”
“Not for some time,” Adara said. “They’re strong: they’re your LPO, after all. Now go!”
The robots stepped aside, making room for the Titan on the platform. Rade reluctantly walked his mech onto it.
“When you get back to your fleet, tell them some of us want peace,” Adara said. “Tell them to try to sue for it, before they drop their nukes again.”
“I’ll tell them.” Rade stumbled slightly as the platform ascended. Rock swallowed the view on all sides as the elevator began its long rise to the upper levels. He glanced at the overhead map. All of the clones appeared in blue. Friendlies. Adara’s blue icon was also still active, though the ping time was increasing.
“I just hope we can influence the collective consciousness before its too late,” Adara transmitted, revealing that she could utilize their main communication bands.
Does she have our private keys, too?
Probably not, considering how slowly she was moving toward the structure’s exit below, at least according to the overhead map.
“By the way,” Rade returned over the comm. “You might want to clear out of there.”
“Why?” Adara asked.
“We’ve placed a few charges.”
Now her blue indicator was hurrying toward the exit.
“How long did you set the timers?” Rade asked.
In answer, the platform rumbled as if receiving some distant shockwave.
“Not long,” Tahoe said, his voice tinged with amusement. “Don’t know how much damage it will do.”
“Not enough,” Rade said. “Maybe not any at all. But it will give them a little hint of what humanity’s answer to their message is going to be.”
Rade looked at his overhead map to see if Adara had made it out, but her signal remained frozen near the entrance. According to the ping time, he had left signal range five seconds ago.
As the platform continued to ascend, Rade considered the clones with a mixture of hatred and disgust. They were perversions of himself: robots with his face who all stared vacantly ahead with dead eyes.
Occasionally tunnels opened up in the wall beside him as the platform passed openings in the rock; the clones could have come from any of them. Always the enclosing rock returned, sealing them in, blurring as it streamed past.
He glanced at the darkness above, staring into the shaft.
I’m coming, my brothers.
thirty
Rade didn’t know what the hell was going on.
The last he remembered, he was fighting in the city of Radiance. The hammerheads had captured him and dragged him, blindfolded, through the streets. And then he must have lost consciousness, because his memory became hazy from that point.
He awoke here only a few hours ago, in this strange alien city. He still had his face, but his body was gone, replaced with robotics. When he looked at himself in a mirror, haunted eyes stared back at him. His eyes had always appeared slightly off, ever since Doctor Banye had replaced them with bioprinted variants, but not like this. He remembered Lieutenant Vicks, and a frightening possibility crossed his mind: I’ve become one of them.
But that was impossible.
Wasn’t it?
No. He knew it was true. Deny it as he might, he was a host.
He purposely avoided mirrors from that moment forward. He didn’t need to see his body like that. He didn’t need to see his eyes.
There was something else different about him. There was a “presence” in his mind. It was hard to describe. It felt like a warm bundle located somewhere behind his eyes. It was part human, that presence.
And part alien.
When he touched it with his thoughts, he was no longer simply trapped in a robot body. His mind expanded, his ganglions stretching out to cover all the extents of the alien city. He was every robot, every bioengineered creature, every converted human. And he became not just the beings present in the city, but also those in flight around the star system itself.
Touching that presence, he felt like a small part of some vast animal, or brain. It was very humbling, yet also empowering. Indeed, strength seemed to flow out of that warm bundle, and he knew he would never be alone, not really.
He quickly learned to compartmentalize that presence into a separate region of his thoughts. Because he could not function, not as an individual human being, when he dwelt within it.
Shortly after awakening he had received orders to proceed to the platform. The orders had not come verbally. Nor by any communication by Implant. He just knew. He left his assigned chambers, traveled the rock tunnels, and reached a waiting room that overlooked the alien city. The others had arrived one by one, giving him little choice but to stare at the dead eyes and robotic bodies of men whose faces were mirror images of his own.
Presumably
he still had an Implant: a HUD overlaid his vision, and all the capabilities that came with it. His Implant displayed the same labels above every clone: LPO Rage.
After assembling, he and the clones had taken the elevator down to the Sentience Chamber—how did he know it was called that? When they reached it, a mech had boarded the platform. Rade’s Implant had identified it as belonging to the Titan class. The exact same label appeared over its head: LPO Rage.
The orders had instructed him to obey that man. The occupant was probably another clone, no more real than he. Still, Tahoe had clung from the leg of that Titan, and two Marines he had never met resided in the passenger seat. Maybe it was the “real” Rade.
As the elevator ascended, the platform abruptly shook—it was as if an explosion had gone off somewhere down the shaft.
The warm bundle in his head emitted a sudden frantic emotion: alarm.
Rade ignored it. He turned his attention to the Titan instead. Though he couldn’t see the pilot, he had the strangest feeling the occupant was looking at him.
“Titan pilot, do you read?” Rade tried over the comm band.
The mech and its riders appeared as blue dots on the overhead map provided by his Implant, as did the other clones. It should work...
“We read you,” a familiar voice came back.
Was it his own voice?
He no longer knew. The HUD identified the speaker as the Titan’s pilot. LPO Rage.
“But we’re using a different main frequency band for our communications,” the LPO said. “I’m sending it now.”
Rade accepted.
“Is it wise to give them our main comm frequency?” Tahoe said.
“They could easily find it with a band scan anyway,” the LPO said. “Just like she did. They’re running exact replicas of our Implants, remember.”
“Tahoe, it’s me,” Rade said.
Other clones echoed his words.
Tahoe swept his gaze down across the ranks, the disgust evident behind his faceplate.
“Well, just don’t give them your private key,” Tahoe said. “Unless they have that, too. They are your clones, after all.”
“I changed all my keys before I received the new Implant,” the LPO said. “And again before we dropped. They don’t have it.”
The rock abruptly opened in front of them, to intense fighting in a wide cavern.
Several Titans had been backed against the wall beside the alcove by what could best be described as giant worms. Most of them were biological, but there were a few robots in the mix, of the same shape, equipped with what appeared to be electrolasers underneath their upper bodies. The seething ranks extended to the limits of the light from the many headlamps; the roiling darkness beyond hinted at even more worms waiting out of view.
The Titans held large rifle-like devices that looked like salvaged weapon mounts that had been torn from other mechs. They alternately swung them like clubs, and fired them. Crouching on the floor behind them, Marines in jumpsuits shot laser rifles and blasters into the slime-covered mandibles.
Rade recognized the names of Alpha Platoon above those Titans. Manic. Fret. Lui. Bomb...
He was among his brothers.
The dismembered body of two dead Marines lay at the feet of the Titans. As Rade watched, one of the worms thrust between the mechs and split another Marine in two with its mandibles before the Titans could kill it.
“Attack!” the LPO said. His mech stepped off the platform and into the fray. “Defend the Titans and Marines!”
Rade followed the Titan off the platform and opened fire at the worms. Others like him did the same.
“Well look who’s decided to come back,” Bender said over the comm.
“Nice to see you, boss,” Manic said.
“It appears he’s brought some friends,” Trace said.
“Aww, ain’t dat cute,” Bomb said. “Little Rades.”
“Can we trust them?” Lui said.
“To a point,” the LPO said. “They’re going to turn on us at some point. When they do, take them down.”
The robot worms released their electrolasers whenever a clear path presented itself. Those lightning bolts arced across the cavern, striking the shields of nearby mechs. The bolts were returned by lasers from the party, with several fired by the clones, and the exposed robots went down.
As Rade fought, a message came to him from the part of his mind that was more than himself.
Destroy the Titans.
Rade squelched that urge with difficultly: it was so very strong.
“There are too many of them,” Mauler said. “We can’t hold them off! They keep coming!”
“Can we use the platform?” the LPO said. “And escape that way?”
Rade realized the LPO was addressing him.
He glanced toward the platform behind them, but saw only an empty shaft.
“No,” Rade replied. “It’s gone!”
“It’ll probably come up again with enemy reinforcements,” Tahoe said. “Outflanking us...”
“But there’s another way,” Rade sent. “A hidden passageway. A false wall created by holographic imagers and LIDAR absorbers.”
He transmitted the location to the Titan containing the LPO.
“Send it to Tahoe, first!” the LPO said.
Rade obeyed.
“Got it,” Tahoe returned. “Are you certain this wall exists?”
“I— no,” Rade said. “I’m not sure how I knew the wall was there in the first place. It could be an alien trick.”
“Well, we don’t have much choice,” the LPO said. “Send it to the rest of us, Tahoe!” A moment later: “Okay, people, listen up. We’re going to have to cut our way toward that hidden passageway. We’ll hug the wall, and continue providing protective cover to the Marines. Keep your shields facing the enemy. Go!”
The urge to attack the Titans came again. Stronger.
“We’ll stay,” Rade said. “And provide a diversion.”
“But without us to guard you,” the LPO said. “They’ll quickly overwhelm—”
“Go!” Rade interrupted. “Something is trying to take over our minds. Hurry! We can’t resist for much longer.”
Rade fired frantically into the worms as the Titans moved away. Most of the creatures pursued the mechs, but some of them lingered to concentrate their attack on the tiny clones.
A few of the clones began to lower their weapons. Those men quickly died, felled by the worms.
Some turned their weapons toward the Titans. Those impostors also died, taken down by Rade and the other clones who hadn’t succumbed.
But redirecting their weapons like that opened them up to attack from the front: an electrolaser struck a clone directly beside Rade, ripping the body in half. Another two clones fell when a biological worm barreled into them.
Rade fired as fast as his weapon could recharge. He screamed in outrage.
“Come on, you worm fuckers! Come on!”
His firing rate diminished as the rifle overheated.
A worm plowed into him.
He had one last thought before those large mandibles split him in half.
Forgive me, Shaw.
thirty-one
Rade piloted his Titan along the cavern wall, and followed Bender as the platoon steered their mechs toward the spot the clone had marked on the map. Bender had tossed Rade the laser mount he had given up earlier, and Rade employed it like a large rifle. Marines had similarly returned the weapons of Tahoe, Luxe and Paxon.
“They’re turning on us!” Tahoe said. “Your clones!”
Keeping his shield held in place toward the enemy, Rade glanced over his shoulder toward the robots that possessed his face. He watched as their position was overwhelmed by the worms; the robot bodies were ripped apart in a mess of servomotors and polycarbonate. Heads flew into the air. It was odd, seeing his features on so many of those beheaded faces, and he felt a moment of remorse. He wondered if the clones truly retained some of his memories,
or his personality. They certainly fought like it. Battling to the bitter end.
He was brought back to the present by the clang of mandibles stabbing into his shield.
“Never mind,” Tahoe said.
Rade shoved his shield outward, forcing the latest attacker away, and then he swung the laser mount down like a club with his other hand, smashing the worm to the floor in a splatter of gore.
The mandibles of a second worm wrapped around his momentarily unshielded torso. He activated his fully-charged Lighter, electrifying the hull, and the worm was flung away squirming.
Some of the Marines had jetted back to their riding positions on the Titans: Rade had two of them in his passenger seat himself. Even so, the Lighter had no effect on them, as the external surface of the mech utilized “smart” technology to focus the charge away from any friendlies in contact with the hull.
“I’m in!” Manic said. “The passageway is real!”
“Keep going,” Rade sent, continuing to bash and laser the enemy as he kept close to Bender’s mech.
The Titans of Harlequin and Trace had assumed positions on the far side of the hidden passageway. It looked like an impassible wall lay beside them, but Rade watched as the next Titan stepped right through it and vanished.
He defended against another incoming blow and lifted his shield to shoot a worm at point blank range.
He lowered the shield just as the bolt from an electrolaser erupted from the enemy ranks; it drilled into the right edge of the metal barrier, breaking part of the shield off.
Harlequin and Trace returned fire, taking down the robot worm that had revealed itself in the organic throng.
Bender plowed through the hidden wall. Rade unleashed one final blow against the horde, then he too stepped into the wall.
He found himself in a tight tunnel. The mechs could fit only in single file.
“You okay back there?” he asked his charges.
“Living the dream,” Tahoe replied.
Luxe and Paxon echoed the sentiment.
Fret entered behind Rade’s Titan, followed by Trace and Harlequin; the latter two walked backward to keep firing at the worms as the front ranks entered the illusory wall after them. Trace had to keep adjusting his aim to avoid hitting Harlequin’s Titan on drag.
