Artificial Evolution

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “Mitch and I are fine.” He winced in pain. “Fine-ish, at least. But Dr. Dreyfus and Chief Saunders both need some serious first aid.”

  “I’ll send Silo back there once I’m convinced we won’t need to do any more precision shooting.”

  The cargo section of the Declaration was a small open area in an otherwise tightly packed interior. It looked like the combination of a locker room and the handicapped section of a commuter train. Every surface was brushed gunmetal gray steel with strips of black high-friction material on the ground. Lockers and cabinets lined the walls, with the exception of the cargo door that occupied one whole wall. A retracted manipulator arm hung from the ceiling, and a few seats folded up along the wall opposite the door. Toward the front of the ship was the control cabin, currently hidden behind a closed metallic sliding door, and toward the back was a well-secured wall of cases and crates. Strangely, a few pink knitted pieces were scattered about the ship as well, mostly tucked under cargo straps or visible through the grating of storage cabinets.

  Lex flipped down a chair, revealing safety straps behind it, and helped Dreyfus to the seat where he could be secured. Squee complicated matters, completely wound up by the exhilarating ride and bounding around the interior of the ship with such velocity and enthusiasm that if the cargo door wasn’t nearly shut, Lex would have been worried about her falling out.

  “Squee, calm down. This is the lady you were freaking out about me helping, remember? Now let me help her,” Lex said.

  Squee toned down her rambunctiousness enough for Lex and Michella to pull Saunders from the remains of the bike. The rough ride hadn’t done her any good. Numerous wounds that they had hastily patched before their escape had reopened, and a few others that hadn’t been bleeding at all before they’d left had started.

  “Are you okay, Chief?” Michella asked.

  Saunders breathed in slow, controlled breaths, her fingers still locked around the grips for the brightly shining camera. “I’m not dead… The shock of that alone ought to kill me.”

  Michella took the camera from her and set it aside, pulling the chief’s arm across her shoulders while Lex did the same with her other arm.

  “I think it’s time you people answered a few questions,” she said, laying across three deployed seats. “Who the hell are you? I’ve never seen anyone pilot a bike, or anything else, like that. And what is this ship? You people aren’t Movi military. You’re too useful to be Movi military.”

  “I’m a journalist. Lex is my associate.”

  “Yep. That’s me. Associate,” he grumbled.

  “Do journalists usually bring along heavily armed support ships equipped with cloaking devices?” Saunders said.

  “I can appreciate your curiosity, but I think it’s best to get you put back together. Besides, the owners of this ship have asked me to be discreet about their identities in the past, and I believe that still stands.”

  The door to the control cabin slid open, and Silo stepped out. She wore a face-obscuring combat respirator like the one she’d worn when facing the Luddites. Since there was no need for additional oxygen here, it was likely she was wearing it specifically to hide her identity.

  “Okay, who needs help?” she said, her voice a mix of compassion and efficiency. She reached up to an overhead hatch and pulled it open, retrieving a first aid kit the size of a well-stocked tackle box from inside. She looked to each of the four passengers, then quickly decided Saunders was in the direst need. She began to dictate orders. “Pull out those straps. I want her secured here and here.” She leaned low and checked Saunders’s eyes. “You’re already on painkillers. What kind? I don’t want to mix, but we don’t have a big selection, hon.”

  “Forget the painkillers. Just patch me up.”

  “If you say so,” Silo said. She looked over the wounds. “What did this to you? Most of these wounds are cauterized, like someone was working you over with a surgical laser or one of those old emergency chem-sutures. I’d say it’s the only reason you didn’t bleed out in minutes.”

  “It was the same way with the rest of my team. Those things… they just sliced into us. Didn’t even do us the courtesy of letting us die quick. It was like they were trying to torture us, trying to see how much of us they could take without killing us.”

  Silo pulled a small medical imager out of the kit and held it over a few of the deeper slices, then swept it over the more vital parts of her anatomy. “No broken bones, except for the severed femur. Not much internal bleeding. Just one bit I’m going to need to seal up.” She reached into the kit and pulled out a wad of bandages. “Bite down on that. This isn’t going to be comfortable.”

  Saunders did as instructed as Silo screwed a nozzle on to something that looked precisely like a caulking gun. She placed the tip into the most vigorously bleeding injury and pulled the trigger. The security chief went rigid with pain and groaned around the bandages. A white foam filled and sealed the wound, putting an end to the bleeding. Once that job was done, Silo pulled out a spray can and spritzed a few of the other reopened injuries with a fresh application of medical sealant to close them up. She then pulled out an autoinjector, fitted a dosage canister into it, and pressed it to the chief’s neck.

  “There, hon, that should have you stable. You’re going to need a real hospital before too long. You are a few pints low on the red stuff, but you’ll hold out for a while. Quite a tough cookie.”

  “Former Marine… something tells me you are, too.”

  “No comment,” Silo said. She turned to Dr. Dreyfus and gave him a few passes with the imager. “Nothing critical. Though your spine doesn’t look so hot.”

  “Preexisting condition,” he said.

  “Ms. Modane, any injuries?” Silo asked.

  “No, no. Trevor and I are…” she began, then stopped short when she finally noticed his shoulder.

  “Trev, your shoulder.”

  “It’s okay, it’s just dislocated.”

  “Mmm.” Silo nodded in agreement after sweeping the imager across the joint. She dropped the imager, grabbed his wrist, and braced her other arm against the side of his chest.

  “Hey, hold on a minute,” Lex objected.

  Silo ignored him, giving a slow, firm pull that reseated his shoulder in its joint with a savage burst of pain.

  “There you go, honey. Good as new.”

  “You could have warned me you were going to do that!”

  “Then you would have tensed up even more, and it would have hurt like the dickens. I’ll give you something for the swelling and the pain. How are things down there? Is there anyone else inside that needs our help?”

  “We’re the only survivors, and barely so at that,” Saunders said.

  “How many casualties?”

  “All told, twenty members of the security staff, including my whole team and a few carryovers from the day shift.”

  “There were also six members of the janitorial staff and one of my assistants,” Dreyfus added.

  “Twenty-seven-plus people dead,” she shook her head. “Garotte, how are we doing down there?”

  “About as well as you’d expect. Those things are squirrely little devils.”

  “Okay,” Silo glanced over the ID badges of the two newcomers, “Dr. Dreyfus, Chief Saunders. Do either of you know what it is we’re dealing with?”

  “It’s… it’s classified,” Dreyfus said.

  She squinted at him. “I think the cat’s out of the bag on this one, Doc.”

  “We don’t know who you are or what your intentions are. Maybe you are trying to steal our data, to weaponize these things.”

  “They already are weapons, Dreyfus,” Saunders snapped, “and if there’s one thing we learned tonight, it is that the only way to have a chance against these things is to act fast. Speak up or those people in that lab aren’t going to be the last ones these things kill. You know damn well the piss-poor excuse for a military we’ve got on this planet isn’t going to be much more than fo
dder for those monstrosities.”

  The scientist ran his fingers through his hair. “Yes… yes, of course, you’re right.” He cleared his throat. “They are self-replicating machines. I wasn’t able to do much research before an external military overseer shut down our research, but it should now be clear that they scavenge materials and assemble duplicates.”

  “Focus on the stuff that will keep us from getting killed and what will help us kill them,” Silo said. “Any particular vulnerabilities?”

  “They aren’t very resistant. Any conventional weapon can destroy them, but they are incredibly resilient. They are composed of exoskeletons and cores. A core, given the proper components and enough energy, will be able to produce a second core in as little as forty-five seconds. My scans suggest with time they would be able to replicate from little more than raw silicon. The cores seem to seek out components preferentially based upon what most closely matches those materials required to build a second core. They then gather them and reproduce. The new core produces an exoskeleton and an offspring core of its own, and so on in constant repetition, causing the overall population to grow exponentially.”

  “What tactics do they use to attack?”

  “I don’t know that they are attacking. It appears that all they do is reproduce, but to do so they strip away infrastructure and… organic matter. They seem willing and able to incorporate flesh and bone into their exoskeletons, but not their cores.”

  “They attack, I assure you. They attack in waves. They coordinate. They attack transmitters, power sources, and people. In that order,” Saunders added.

  “Yes, yes. They do act in waves. They have periods of resource gathering and inactivity. During the inactivity they gather into groups, conceal themselves, and power down almost completely. It is possible that the inactivity phase is used to process data, or recover and recharge lost energy… I—”

  A blaring warning filled the ship.

  “Hold that thought, Doc,” Silo said, turning to the control cabin and raising her voice. “Garotte, sweetie, why am I hearing a proximity alert?”

  “Because something is following us,” he called back.

  “Why don’t you have the cloak on?”

  “I do have the cloak on. It is heading straight for us.”

  “I knew I was getting too comfortable hiding behind that thing. I’ll be right there.” She turned back to the rest of the passengers. “Sit tight. This won’t take long.”

  Silo slipped into the control cabin. Hushed voices and irritated outbursts began to fly between her and Garotte behind the closed cabin door. The ship tossed and turned, and the weapons fired with increasing frequency. Dr. Dreyfus looked to Chief Saunders warily.

  “I think perhaps it would be best if you dropped us off at the military base to the south,” Dreyfus said.

  “We need guns in the air if we are going to keep these things under control,” Saunders said.

  “Be that as it may, our rescuers are bickering like an old married couple. It doesn’t fill me with the greatest of confidence.” He turned to Lex. “And not to appear ungrateful, but I don’t know anything about you. I’ve found your supervisor, Ms. Modane, to be most professional, but you…”

  “Okay, okay, okay,” Lex said holding his hands up, “I can deal with associate, but Mitch isn’t my supervisor. I’m her boyfriend. I’m also her driver, her current camera man, and your rescuer. Now believe it or not, this isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with this sort of thing. And these guys? They’re pros. We’ve got nothing to worry about. I’m sure they’ve got it under—”

  There was a loud metallic screech, and the ship’s interior lights dimmed.

  “—control.”

  Chapter 12

  The power in the Declaration flickered and cut out entirely for a moment, causing the entire ship to plummet. Lex grasped one of the many handgrips and threw an arm around Michella. For three long seconds they were in free fall. The power flickered back to life, and the passengers of the ship not lucky enough to have been strapped down were once again treated to the full force of gravity. Lex winced at the stress on his freshly adjusted and not yet medicated shoulder, but he kept himself and Michella from striking the ground. Squee wasn’t quite so lucky, bouncing painfully off the metal plating and—for the first time since the disaster had begun—showing fear. She bounded from the floor to Lex’s shoulders, wrapping tight around his neck and burying her face beneath her tail.

  Silo burst from the control cabin, a heavy ballistic pistol in hand. “Lex, we need you out there on controls.”

  “What’s going on?” he asked, pulling the reluctant funk from around his neck and handing her to Michella.

  “One of those mechanical things is cutting into us, that’s what.”

  Lex dashed into the cockpit.

  “You said we were out of range!” Dreyfus said.

  “We were out of range,” Garotte said, stepping out from the cabin with an automatic plasma weapon of his own and a face-concealing respirator. “But one of the blasted things can fly. You failed to mention that crucial detail.”

  “I… I didn’t know!” Dreyfus said. “That’s fascinating…”

  “Yes, bloody enthralling. I’m rather interested in it myself,” Garotte growled.

  Silo pressed the control for the crew door beside the cargo door. It sputtered and failed after slipping open a few centimeters. She grasped the door frame and put a boot to the door, forcing it open before stepping out and scrambling up along the side of the ship.

  “What are you doing?” Dreyfus yelped.

  “Scraping off the tick,” Garotte said. He raised his voice: “Take us up, but keep it steady, my boy! I’m not interested in testing this free-fall arrester Karter foisted upon us.” He tapped a thick belt around his waist.

  “Why does it take both of you?” Dreyfus asked.

  “Because we just lost some altitude.” The whine of pistons drew his attention to the open door. He sprayed a few bursts of energy outside, neatly demolishing a robot that had been flung toward them until a scattering of shrapnel and debris rattled into the cabin. “And that means we are no longer out of range of their acrobatics.” His voice lowered to a growl. “Even the ones that can’t fly.” Climbing out after Silo, he glanced back in and spied the gun in Michella’s belt. “Do you know how to use that?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll want to keep it trained on this door.” He blasted another launched robot. “We won’t be able to close it.”

  Michella, in a rarity, found herself briefly at a loss for words. When the moment passed, she looked to Dreyfus and pressed Squee into his lap. “Hold her. Don’t worry, she doesn’t bite.” She then pulled the gun from her belt, tipped her hair out of her eyes, and slipped on her glasses. A tap to the remote put the battered but still active camera back on action tracking. She then adopted a marksman’s stance and locked her eyes on the door.

  #

  The wind whipped across the outside of the Declaration as Silo and Garotte reached the boxy craft’s roof. Sparks flew from a hole sliced into it. Garotte crouched low, gun in one hand and the other holding him as best it could to the maintenance rungs.

  “I’ll ferret the little one out. You keep the big ones off us,” he said.

  “On it,” Silo replied, holstering the pistol and, instead, drawing a formidable shotgun from her back. She slid her feet along the roof until she’d locked each under a rung, securing herself while freeing her hands.

  Garotte moved with as much speed as he could manage without being thrown free, but it wasn’t easy. Lex was at the controls, trying to guide the ship smoothly out of range of the machines on the ground, but within the ship’s structure the one airborne robot was slicing through power and control wires. Each fresh cut cost Lex more control and made the ship harder to stabilize. Garotte raised the weapon and clicked open the maintenance hatch nearest to the damage. Just visible in the workings of the electrical system, below a network of wires and
tubing, was something that looked like a fat metallic spider about the size of a loaf of bread. It was one of the electronic cores mentioned by Dreyfus. Crudely grafted to its back was a faintly glowing hover module identical to Dreyfus’s missing hover frame. It was a blur of motion as its multipronged legs sliced away metal and circuitry. Some harvested pieces were passed back to smaller secondary legs and grafted in place, others were discarded.

  The machine was deep enough in the ship’s guts that Garotte couldn’t risk firing on it. Silo unloaded her shotgun, blasting three catapulted robots to pieces. A fourth bot latched on to the side of the ship, straddling the door. Before Silo could get to it, Michella dislodged it with a flurry of blasts from inside. A particularly deep swish of the rogue core’s torch caused another power interruption. The ship stuttered in the air, nearly dislodging Garotte, and the recently ineffective cloak failed completely. He decided that blasting through the wires himself was the lesser of two evils. He opened fire, punching three neat holes through the robot, along with the wires and the chunk of power conduit underneath it. The ship pitched to the right, sending Garotte scrambling for a handhold.

  “It’s down!” he said.

  Silo tore through two more attackers and shouted loud enough to be heard inside, “Lex, take us up and out!”

  The Declaration continued to list. Silo looked down and saw Michella poke her head warily out of the doorway, which was slowly beginning to tip upward. “Lex says the control for the starboard thrusters just went out!”

  Silo glanced to Garotte, who was hauling himself toward her. “She says the thrusters are shot.”

  “Quite literally. Couldn’t be helped.”

  Michella called out again. “He says he’s going to have to land it before the other thrusters die.”

  Silo looked down and saw another robot launch from the horde below. “Incoming!” she said, readying her weapon. Michella ducked back inside and Silo perforated the robot, but two more were on the way behind it.

  “I’m out!” she said, slipping back while Garotte slid to the edge and sprayed one robot with blasts before it reached the ship. The other latched on and carved a shallow hole in the hull before it was blasted away.