by Phil Wrede
CHAPTER 5
EARTH-7331, DETENTION THE PRESENT
Lady Cyber-Knife had spent her climb down what remained of the service elevator shaft arranging her thoughts, and to preparing to meet Cyber-Knife. She had plenty of practice storming through great numbers of hostiles - organic, artificial, or even some combination of the two - but had she ever needed to persuade someone with her words? In writing tactical analysis reports, she logical distilled what she observed. Until they reached Dinesh, they had been read by mostly rational men. She didn't know what kind of man Cyber-Knife was, not really. She didn't know what would persuade him, in the end, so she enlisted the Cyber-Sword to help her summon tactics.
“What about sex?” the sword asked, all of a sudden.
Lady Cyber-Knife paused in her descent. “What about it?” she said, inclining her head when she spoke. Whatever the sword had thought up, she had not considered it.
“He's a man, and you're a woman,” the Cyber-Sword went on to say. “I don't know much geography, or trigonometry, but I do suspect that, across the centuries, many women have gotten what they wanted by first giving a man something of what he wants.”
Lady Cyber-Knife stared at the Cyber-Sword for a long, uncomfortable second before resuming the climb down. “I do not understand what Major Tracy intended to accomplish by making me unlock your ability to speak.”
“Sometimes the best ideas come from wild thoughts,” the sword countered.
“Since you began speaking, nothing you have said has provided any tactical value,” Lady Cyber-Knife replied. “You serve to distract.” She squinted, and could see the end of the elevator shaft
“You've rejected every other idea,” the sword said. “Maybe you should accept that those who designed you did not intend for you to use your words. Try a new way of using your body. You're not much for looks, but he might be into the blonde war robot vibe you give off.”
Lady Cyber-Knife slid across a motion sensor embedded in the wall as they reached the prison's lowest level. A small chime, an electronic variation on the same two tones that had signaled the conclusion of every elevator ride since the technology's invention, echoed around them. As she stepped onto the ground, Lady Cyber-Knife muttered, quietly, “Stop your fucking speaking, this instant.”
“That's not very ladylike, that language,” the Cyber-Sword whispered
Lady Cyber-Knife pushed open the doors and stepped out of the vertical tube, cautiously leading with a mechanical foot. Her toes clanked down against the unfinished, dull grey rock just outside. That sound was immediately overwhelmed by a cacophony of laser rifles getting primed, the same way ancient shotguns had new shells fed into their barrels, one at a time. Energy weapons didn't fire physical projectiles; they didn't have to load bullets into their chamber with each new clip. The Complex had studied its soldiers' psychology intensively, and this careful examination had revealed that the simple act of racking a weapon increased the user's aggression by an average of twelve percent. So, all guns had a grip beneath the barrel that could be pulled back and released, whether it required it, or not.
“Come on out where we can see you, nice and slow,” an angry voice shouted.
As Lady Cyber-Knife took another step forward, the doors behind her slammed shut, locking with a sharp click. She looked around; boots scraped across the rock as guards approached her from the darkness beyond the elevator's external lights. More guards, wearing a more aggressive, dark-colored variation of the uniform she'd seen on every other soldier in the facility, stepped into the light, holding still more laser rifles against their shoulders.
“Drop the sword,” the foremost guard continued, “and put your hands above your head.”
“You probably think I should do what he says,” Lady Cyber-Knife said to the Cyber-Sword, stepping further away from the elevator doors.
“I come out ahead regardless,” the sword replied. “Either fate means for us to save the world together, or it does not. Your actions will reveal your identity.”
“Your confidence, it overwhelms me,” Lady Cyber-Knife said.
“Hands above your head!” the guard repeated. “Do it! Do it now!”
“I have thought intently since you began to speak, and I have concluded that I really do hate you,” Lady Cyber-Knife said.
“I know,” the Cyber-Sword said.
“One last chance. Drop it!” The guards didn't wait for Lady Cyber-Knife to move, and just opened fire on her.
Lady Cyber-Knife dropped her sword and reached out to catch the laser blasts frantically converging on her position. Pushing her artificial muscles past the peak of their performance, she clamped her hands around the lethal beams of light, trapping them in between her polished metal hands. Pushed back by the weapons' force, she jumped off the ground and twirled around in the air, like a murderous figure skater, and threw them back at the nearest guard. The power of their combined impact superheated the water in his tissues instantly, and he exploded, spraying chunky, steaming gore over the people standing around him.
The guards in this lowest level of the prison had been personally selected by General Dinesh because of their combat experience, and what he perceived as the strength of their minds. The things that they had seen and done, he felt, immunized them from distraction and any other weakness. If anything at all happened in the prison, they would react instantly and appropriately, in accordance with their training. He had drilled into their minds that, in order to deny an opposing force any margin for victory, they could not allow themselves any margin for error.
The three guards standing closest to the burst man blinked; they hadn't managed to close their eyes as his body had erupted across them like a constipated volcano. Little ribbons of steam rose off the blood and guts covering them. They all three retched in unison, a sick, gutteral noise that rose from the deepest parts of their stomach and threatened to tear apart their throats as it emerged from their mouths. They looked back and forth at one another as their necks bulged, and vomited uncontrollably, adding the almost-sweet smell of stomach acid to the stench of boiled meat and blood already hanging in the air. A few more of the guards inched back at this, their confrontation with Lady Cyber-Knife momentarily unimportant.
Lady Cyber-Knife rushed forward during this instant of distraction, not a sound emerging from her open mouth. She ignored the vomiting guards closest to her, moving all the way to the back of the group, where she immediately tore apart the throat of one guard, and gouged out the eyes of another. Their gurgles and screams broke the all-too-brief spell of astonishment that had settled over the rest, and they began shooting again. The discipline the guards had shown initially had broken down completely; all of their shots went wide, and high, burning a haphazard pattern into the ceiling.
She lifted a fallen laser gun and burned holes in the chests of two more guards. Their bodies hit the ground simultaneously, making a dead, wet sound. Lady Cyber-Knife used the rifle as a pole to vault herself into the air, and grabbed the overhead curve of the tunnel with her feet. She sprang forward before the remaining guards could get a bead on her and brought her arms crashing into the heads of two more, still, crushing them between her cybernetic limbs and the dirt below.
Lady Cyber-Knife looked up and around, her hands and feet firmly planted and ready to rush into action at a moment's notice. Only one guard remained, one who hadn't even raised his weapon during the fight. He dropped his gun, and tried to run away, but Lady Cyber-Knife shot him in the head with all five of the darts from the fingers on her right hand. She grouped her fingers close together, keeping the fine, needle-like projectiles close. They slipped right through the back of his head and out the front, directly between his eyes. Blood rushed out and down the curve of his nose, and he fell over without making a sound.
“That last bit seemed excessive, don't you think?” the Cyber-Sword asked as Lady Cyber-Knife picked it up from the ground and dusted off its blade.
“He died before even knowing what had happened,
” Lady Cyber-Knife said.
“Granted, but you could've done it with just a single dart, couldn't you have?”
Lady Cyber-Knife looked between the blade and the guard's body once before she answered. “Yes.”
“Excessive,” the sword belabored its point.
“All right,” Lady Cyber-Knife finally spat, throwing the Cyber-Sword into the ground, where its blade stuck. “You belittle me, you mock me, you dismiss me, from the moment you... reawakened. Were it not for Major Tracy's encouragement, their emphasis on returning you to the way you were, I would strip the gems from your hilt and leave you silent, once again. You contribute nothing. You offer nothing. Tell me, please, what do you do?”
“I consult,” the sword replied immediately. “I offer insight and advice, from a dispassionate perspective. It is why I was created, and why the Complex preserves me, or at least I thought it was, until they put me in your hands.”
“This is what I mean,” Lady Cyber-Knife said, her hands shaking ever so slightly as she gestured at the weapon, still wobbling in the ground. “What good does that do us, in our quest, here?”
“Puts you in your place,” the Cyber-Sword said, sounding a little less sure of itself than it had previously.
Lady Cyber-Knife shook her head. “I may not have access to the Complex's records any longer, but I did not see anywhere, in any of them, a discussion of the tactical value of smart-mouthed little pricks. I wonder if you mock me because you feel jealous. You cannot do the things that I do.”
The Cyber-Sword instantly stopped waving, and stood perfectly still. “I beg your pardon?” it asked. “You couldn't do what you do, if you didn't have me. I'm the bloody sword, in case you forgot.”
“You are a tool,” Lady Cyber-Knife said. She said nothing for a long moment, and smiled when she realized she'd made a joke. She hadn't intended to do that, and she wondered if she'd done anything like that before. “You are an instrument. You have no agency without me. If I chose not to hold you in my hand, you would see no combat. You would pierce and cut no longer.”
“If I'm a tool,” the sword said, its voice unsteady as it tried to gain the upper hand, and perhaps even wound her ego once again, “then, so are you. You went where the Complex told you to go, killed who they told you to kill.”
Lady Cyber-Knife nodded. “I knew this already. In the eyes of the Complex, we are virtually equal, and valued accordingly. I chose not to try to elevate myself by belittling you, though. I embraced our equality. I continue to attempt to do so, in spite of your behavior. I will do it no longer.” She stood up, her hands on her hips, the miniature gears in her mouth pulling her mechanical lips taut, and thin. “You can either be my partner, or I can leave you here, for someone else to find in a few thousand years, or not. Maybe, after all that time, you will know how to speak to your friends.”
“...We're not friends,” the sword said, coldly. “Tools don't have friends.”
“I suppose we will never know,” Lady Cyber-Knife said. “Good luck to you.” She began to walk away.
“Very well!” the Cyber-Sword shouted after her, not giving her much time to put distance between them. “I will... suppress my natural inclinations, as difficult as I may find that. Perhaps you will learn to comprehend my value if I express myself differently.”
Lady Cyber-Knife stopped, but did not turn around. “Not just the way you speak, but the things you say. We go no further if you refuse.”
“Very well,” the sword repeated, sounding more resigned. “If that is what you demand.”
“It is,” she replied, plucking the sword from its place in the ground, and holding it even with her face. “It should be what we all demand, fair and thoughtful treatment. I promise to continue to do the same with you.”
“You know,” the Cyber-Sword said, just before Lady Cyber-Knife returned it to its sheath, “that's one of the things I admired best about you, even when I could only listen, and not speak. You have the same directness in your speaking as you do in your action.”
“How hard was that?” Lady Cyber-Knife asked, not even trying to suppress her smile as she finally strode away from the elevator.
EARTH-58008
THE PAST (17 DAYS EARLIER)
Lady Cyber-Knife hadn't even rested for an hour when she and her team received a new mission in the darkest part of the night. A human colony, filled with researchers and families investigating a recently-discovered and mysterious parallel Earth, had fallen under attack by ARNs. General Maximilian and his forces were a dozen portal trips away, convinced that Cyber-Knife and his allies had run and hidden on the other side of existence. Dinesh had refused to spare any of the soldiers assigned to the White Zone's protection, wary of wading into an alien robot ninja trap. If these people had any hope of rescue, it fell to Lady Cyber-Knife and her Cyber-Sword.
They'd been at the fighting for hours, the hover copter gliding overhead patiently and thinning out the herd of enemies that dutifully worked to overwhelm Lady Cyber-Knife. She had persisted equally in her own efforts: shooting, stabbing, slicing, and spin-kicking anything that came near. She refused to stand still. A trail of demolished mechanical corpses followed the erratic path her fighting had taken and looked from above like an enormous, discarded snakeskin. The sun finally decided to join them. Its light inched across the one nearby hill.
She had all the information about ARN forces that humanity had accumulated over the years: the human-like Class Ones, the spidery Class Twos, the doubly dangerous Class Threes, anything she needed uploaded into her mind in the instant it took to travel between Earths. Lady Cyber-Knife tore them apart by the dozens, staying barely a step ahead of their attacks as they came at her without stopping, a hurricane of metal and superheated plasma.
Lady Cyber-Knife looked around impassively as another cone of needles raced out of the copter's gun barrels, turning six of the nearest Class Ones into a fine mist of metal shards. They weren't alive, in the sense that things made by the hands of man weren't generally considered to have souls, which were ineffable qualities possessed only by humans. To be alive was to have a soul, and to have a soul was to not have been made in a laboratory. Lady Cyber-Knife had wondered precisely once if she had a soul, and decided wondering wouldn't grant her one, if she didn't. Too, if she had one, musing on it would not take it away from her. She could feel pain, though. Could the Class Ones feel pain? Even animals could feel pain.
Lady Cyber-Knife ran across the brittle, though still, green grass beneath her, straight at the three standing Class Ones and the unsteady Class Two that remained from the ARN attacking force. She turned into a cartwheel and brought the elongated heel of her foot into a Class One's face, driving it into the ground and breaking its head in half. Semi and Anwan had discussed it once, whether the alien robot ninjas could feel pain. Anwan hoped they didn't, but Semi did. Lady Cyber-Knife felt no surprise from either of their answers.
She cut down another Class One, slicing it in half from its shoulder to its opposite hip, then drove the Cyber-Sword through the chest of the last, sending chunks of black armor and liquid plasma flying out of its back. When she withdrew the sword, and the alien robot ninja fell backwards, onto the ground, it continued. The Cyber-Sword had been enchanted, she'd heard, by irrational, magical forces utterly foreign to her. If such a thing were real, she considered, it probably demanded extraordinary energy, and some of that energy remained, to keep the Cyber-Sword sharp and unbreakable. Did that energy make it living? Were she and the Cyber-Sword more alike than different? Both living weapons, but not precisely alive?
Lady Cyber-Knife took a brief moment to give the sword a thin-lipped look. She turned her attention to the Class Two, which reared up on its four back legs and craned its chunky, triangular head backwards, bellowing a rumbling noise so bassy that it shook the earth beneath their feet. The lacquered black armor that encased its body might have helped it hide in the long shadows cast by the rising sun, but Lady Cyber-Knife could see anything if she looked
hard enough.
“Why do you behave differently?” she wondered as the mechanized monstrosity charged across the grass, tearing great divots in the dirt with every step it took, its four front limbs spun madly, leaving green trails in the air as its plasma weapons charged up.
Lady Cyber-Knife didn't even answer as she leapt into the air, planning to jump high over the Class Two's head and take it apart from behind. The ARN beast had a different idea, though, and pushed itself off the ground, wrapping its forelegs around her waist; she'd flipped completely over already, her feet pointed up, and her head facing down. It pinned her arms against her sides and trapped her against its chest as it dove back towards the ground.
