by Isaac Hooke
When Eric’s turn came, he grabbed the free sections of the cord, and stepped over them so that they were between his legs. He passed the sections up over the rear of his hips, looped them over his chest, across the nape of his neck, over his right shoulder servomotor, then along the outside of his hand until he gripped the twin strands firmly between his fingers. The Dulfersitz method.
Eric rappelled down, easing the cord through his fingers, right hand functioning as the lead, left serving as the brake. He pushed off from the cliff wall with his boots as he went. The cord slid not just through his hands, but over his body as he descended: he felt no pain at all. He didn’t have to worry about friction burns of any kind, being a robot and all.
The cliff leveled out to a more manageable thirty-five degree slope, and he extricated himself from the cord. Then he approached the series of tanks and mechs that were parked at an angle on the shoulder of the mountain.
On his HUD, the calculated source of the gamma beam appeared as a digital diamond painted above the horizon. Those who had already made their way to the armored vehicles had taken cover opposite that source.
The shielded areas next to the first two tanks were fairly crowded, so Eric went behind the third and took cover beside Brontosaurus and Frogger. No one was taking cover behind the mechs, he noted: the profiles of the Ravagers weren’t really wide enough to provide much protection once the unit was on its way.
Eric waited there on bent knees as the other troops moved into position. That was another advantage of being a robot: he could squat for hours on end without developing sore thighs.
When the Cicadas and their support robots were all in place, Marlborough gave the order to begin the return trip. Eric and the others advanced at a crouch, remaining in cover behind the tanks as those treads rolled forward. The Ravager mechs led the way, following along the shoulders of the mountains as they headed in the direction of the city.
Eric gazed into the distance, at that rocky terrain coated in its “moon” dust, and he wondered if he was traveling to his doom. Perhaps they all were.
It was a small comfort that a part of him would live on. He would wake up at the main base, restored from a backup, and would be told that he had just died.
That was fine, except for the fact that he’d probably never find out what had happened to him.
14
Eric and the Bolt Eaters remained crouched behind the rolling tanks the entire way, but the journey to Urdani passed by without incident. No other gamma ray attacks occurred. No insurgents ambushed them from hiding places in the sand. No Russian drones bombed them from the sky.
It was completely and utterly quiet.
Too quiet.
Even if the gamma ray beam had reached all the way to the city, Eric and the others expected to have received at least some communications—the Mind Refurbs and support troops assigned to Urdani should have rebooted by then. But the radio band remained ominously silent.
Hyperion was crouched just in front of Eric, and he glanced over his shoulder at him during the journey.
“How are you holding up?” Hyperion asked.
“Fine,” Eric replied. “The lack of emotion helps.”
“It helps us all,” Hyperion said. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever asked you… what did you do after you left the military? Back when you were alive, I mean.”
“I was a programmer,” Eric said.
“No shit,” Hyperion said. “I got into some AI development myself after I left the army. Though I’m sure the languages we used were completely different, considering I was born a century after you.”
“Oh yeah,” Eric said. “When I downloaded the programming toolkit and the necessary mind dumps to use it, I was surprised at how different the syntaxes were. But the concepts are generally the same. Though I admit I was expecting object-oriented programming to last a lot longer than it did.”
“Modular programming is much better,” Hyperion said.
“There are pros and cons to both,” Eric allowed.
Hyperion looked out across the vast horizon, to the left and right.
“Did I ever thank you for all the times you’ve saved my life since arriving here?” Eric asked.
During the different missions, Hyperion was often assigned to provide flanking robots for Eric and Frogger when Brontosaurus was occupied elsewhere.
Hyperion nodded. “Yeah. You’ve promised Brontosaurus and me many a virtual beer when our deployment is over.”
“I think he should buy us our beers before then,” Brontosaurus said from his position behind Eric.
“I’m going to pay you both back, one of these days,” Eric said. “I’m going to save your lives.”
“No need,” Hyperion said. “Myself, I’m happy just knowing I helped out a fellow brother. I wasn’t always this heroic. Not at all. Let me tell you about this one time, when I was still in the army. Back when I was human. I was assigned to stand watch on a perimeter wall with a bunch of robots—this was back when autonomous units were allowed to open fire on targets. There was one other human with me, a man named Chris. Well one night the tangos came right up to our wall, and caught us by surprise. They set off some sort of explosive. I tell you, as soon as that explosion went off, I ran, and let the robots do the work. I left behind my friend Chris. I was a coward.
“Chris was badly wounded in the battle. Could have died because of me. I got a few demerit points, but otherwise my military career didn’t suffer for it. Chris didn’t blame me, bless his soul, nor did he testify against me… they had to rely on footage recorded by the robots for that. Afterwards, I swore I’d never abandon my brothers and sisters again. I never got a chance to make up for it: Chris was discharged because of his injuries. And no other attacks came. After that deployment, I never really saw action again. Till now.”
“You’ve more than made up for it with your actions since then,” Eric said.
“Maybe,” Hyperion said. “But is it really my actions? Or that of the emotionally suppressed machine inside me? Would the real me, the human me, actually have had the courage to do what was right when the time came? Instead of running? And how do I know the current me, the machine me, would be willing to pay the ultimate price for his companions? To throw myself into the path of a bullet to save a brother or sister, or to leap on a grenade? I tell myself that I would, but I don’t know. How can I, until I’m tested?”
“You’ve done it so many times during training…” Eric pressed.
“But that was training,” Hyperion said. “The real world is quite a different thing than the virtual.”
The platoon continued the journey, and finally paused when the city was visible in the distance, nestled at the base of the mountain range ahead.
Still crouched behind one of the tanks, Eric zoomed in at the walls of the forward operating base, which was located just outside the eastern perimeter of the city. It was dead out there. Nothing moved. Not a bird. Not a robot.
“Shouldn’t there at least be a couple of drones on patrol in the sky?” Braxton said.
“Maybe the gamma ray hit here, too,” Eagleeye said. “And they lost their flying machines, just like us.”
“But why aren’t they responding to our communication requests?” Hicks said.
“Maybe the Brass recalled the Laser Humpers after the gamma ray attack...” Dickson said.
“Traps, dispatch two Savages,” Marlborough said. “Send them to the FOB to scout. The rest of us will remain here.”
“Dispatching Savages,” Traps said.
Two combat robots that crouched behind the lead tank left cover, and began jogging toward the city. They approached the group of Ravager mechs that had dug in hull-down near the front of the party. Hull-down meant that the mechs had ducked behind natural crests in the rocky terrain, so that only their weapons were exposed.
The Savages passed the mechs and continued onward.
Eric sat back against the hull of the Abrams beside him, and held his
rifle out in front to survey the landscape. Brontosaurus, Frogger, and the others in cover behind that particular tank did likewise, with some aiming past the far flank of the tank. Those members of the platoon who sheltered at the front and rear of the group would be covering the forward and aft sections, respectively, so that all approaches were watched.
Now it was just a matter of waiting.
Eric watched the blue dots representing the scouts on his overhead map. When they climbed over the walls of the base, those dots froze—they’d moved out of comm range.
“The scouts are reporting in,” Traps said a few minutes later.
Eric glanced at his overhead map. The scouts had returned to comm range, and their dots were updating once more as they approached the platoon.
“What do we got?” Marlborough asked.
“The base is deserted,” Traps said. “The 3D-printed structures built out of concrete are all intact. As are the Jersey barriers. But the shipping containers, the machines, all gone. It’s like anything that had any metal or polycarbonate in it has disappeared.”
“What could do that?” Tread said. “Some kind of new acid weapon?”
“An acid weapon would leave traces of some kind,” Brontosaurus said. “Melted frames. Have a look at the footage stored aboard the Savages. There’s nothing in that city. Nothing at all.”
“Maybe the Laser Humpers dismantled everything before they departed,” Eageleeye suggested.
“Doubtful,” Dickson said. “If they were truly packing up shop, they would have disassembled the concrete structures, too.”
“Unless they were in a rush to leave,” Eagleeye pressed. “They could have called in a few transport craft, and loaded all the shipping containers and other machines inside.”
“But if they did that, why are we seeing no evidence of such craft?” Morpheus said. “No footprints, imprints of the landing gears in the dust?”
“Maybe the imprints are there, and we just can’t see them without our eyes in the sky,” Eagleeeye said.
“Okay, enough speculation,” Marlborough said. “Traps, send out another two Savages to join the first. I want them split into two teams. Have them enter the city, cross the front lines, and proceed to the Chinese and Russian bases. I want to know what’s left of either outpost. We stay here until then.”
And so two more scouts joined the first group, and all four returned to the forward base, their indicators freezing as they left comm range.
“So wait, if all machines are gone, that means so are our mind backups,” Mickey said about five minutes later. “And the bodies to go with them.”
“That’s right,” Slate said. “No dying, cuz there’s no coming back.”
“There will be backups at the main base,” Hyperion said. “And we all know there’s no coming back from death anyway. Copies of ourselves will come back, true, but not us.”
“Bro, I’m not in the mood to debate the philosophical implications of AI rebirth today,” Slate said.
The minutes ticked past.
“Too bad no Ravens or Harbingers survived the gamma blast,” Crusher said at one point. “Would sure cut down on the wait time.”
“Speed up your time sense, bro,” Slate said. “That’s what I do.”
“And be caught off guard when an attack comes?” the heavy gunner said. “No thanks. And if you had really accelerated your time sense, like you claim, your voice would sound like a tuba right now. Speaking slooooooowleeeeeee.”
“Dude, obviously I returned my time sense to normal to talk to you,” Slate said. “And I’m never caught off guard. If something attacks, I’ll be the first one to return fire. My reaction time is just that good.”
“More like you programmed your Accomp to snap your time sense back to normal if anything out of the ordinary transpires,” Crusher said.
“Okay, you got me,” Slate said. “Y’all should learn to rely on your Accomps more. They can be real life savers. I got my little bitch trained to do all the tedious tasks, like walking me along when we’re in formation, and when I have to sit my ass down with the rest of you and wait for two scouts to check out a forward operating base. Meanwhile, I’m making sweet love to two babes in my VR. Hell, I’m making sweet love to them at this very moment, in the spare cycles I have between talking to you.”
“I somehow doubt your power cell would last very long if you used it like that, sweetie,” Crusher said.
“That’s because you don’t have as many power cells as I do, tucked inside my abdomen,” Slate said. “Do I sense the jealousy in your tone? The envy? You poor little fembot.”
“Don’t call me a fembot,” Crusher said.
“Hey, just saying...” Slate told her.
“You remember when Bambi kicked you in the nards earlier?”
“Yeah, that was pretty funny,” Slate said.
“I kick a lot harder,” Crusher said.
“Oh ho!” Slate said. “I wonder what Marlborough would have to say about that? Well, Sarge? Would you be pleased with fembot here busting up some million credit machinery?”
“I actually wouldn’t mind if she did,” Marlborough said. “That way, I don’t have to do it.”
“What?” Slate said. “But Sarge! You can’t be busting up my ass! Y’all need me!”
“At ease, Soldier,” Marlborough said. “No one’s busting up anyone’s ass for the time being. But I’m going to ask you all to stay focused. This isn’t fun and games anymore—the entire region has gone to hell, and it’s taken us with it. We’re in some serious shit.”
The group remained quiet after that.
15
To pass the time while waiting for the scouts to return, Eric devoted half of his cycles to probing the Containment Code in the sandbox environment.
An hour later the units finally returned to comm range.
“Okay, scouts are reporting in,” Traps said.
Upon hearing the news, Eric diverted all of his cycles back to processing the present moment.
“The Russian and Chinese bases are just as empty as our own,” Traps continued. “No robots or metal containers of any kind exist. But 3D-printed structures of concrete remain.”
“What about the city proper?” Marlborough said.
“The city is just as dead as everything else,” Trap said. “The fire brick buildings are all intact, but there’s no metal of any kind. And I mean, no metal. I’ve got footage of an apartment building, made in the newer style, that we encountered previously while still assigned to the city—the structure had partially collapsed, with rebar poking up from its exposed bones, and a couple of land vehicles had also been caught in the collapse, with their hoods exposed. The footage returned by the scouts reveals that all the rebar has been stripped clean, leaving behind only the concrete. And the land vehicles? Only rubber tires remain. And the flies that were so prevalent in our previous treks through the city? All gone. Not to mention, there are no insurgent bodies. Usually there are always a few lying about before the clean-up crews can arrive, especially those bodies lodged inexorably within rubble, bodies that can’t be easily extracted. But there were none.”
“What the hell is going on?” Mickey said. “Are we dealing with aliens or something?”
“No, can’t be aliens,” Manticore said. “We would have had some advance warning.” The heavy gunner paused. “Wouldn’t we? The Extra-Solar Scanning Array would have detected them after they passed through the Oort cloud.”
“If aliens were coming in from deep space, then yes,” Braxton said. “But if they somehow jumped right to our planet, then no.”
“Or it could be that they have stealth technology far superior to anything we’ve ever seen,” Morpheus said.
“Okay, please refrain from speculation for the time being,” Marlborough said. “Because think about it, what would aliens care for some city and robots located in the middle of nowhere?”
“But Sarge, you’re assuming that whatever happened here was limited to Urdani a
nd the outlying region,” Mickey said. “What if that gamma ray hit the whole planet?”
“Again, all of this is speculation,” Marlborough said. “We have no idea what’s going on here, and we won’t until we can gather more data. It’s time to make a visit to the city. We’re going to make a more thorough search this time.”
The mechs led the way to the base, followed by the tanks. The Savages and Breachers advanced with the Cicadas, all of them staying crouched firmly behind the advancing tanks.
When they reached the base, Marlborough ordered: “Armor operators, have the Abrams assume defensive positions outside the base. Tread, I want two mechs on the walkways keeping watch.”
The Abrams and designated Ravagers dispersed, leaving the remaining mechs, Cicadas, and support robots to pass through the gaping hole in the concrete walls of the forward base on their own. That hole had once held the main chain-link gate. There was no sign of it now, of course. On top of the six feet tall Alaska barriers that bordered the entrance, the usual razor wire was also gone.
The team members kept stealth mode active, so that their LEDs continued to blend them in with the background. They were all still readily visible to one another thanks to the blue outlines provided by their HUD overlays, of course.
Morpheus walked toward one of the concrete walls.
“Look at these scorch marks,” the armor operator said, pointing at the dark bore holes in the concrete caused by laser blasts. “The Laser Humpers definitely put up a fight.” She paused. “The blast pattern almost looks random. Like the defenders were facing targets that attacked from multiple directions at the same time.” Morpheus held a composite finger to one of the holes. “The bore depth and size is indicative of a full intensity beam. Which means the laser strikes hit nothing before impacting the wall.” She stepped back to survey more of the bore holes. “They’re all like this. Every shot missed. What are the chances of Cicadas or support robots missing?”
“Not very high,” Manticore chimed in. “But it’s also possible that they did hit their targets, and that whatever enemy units they faced had very thin skin.”
