Galaxy's Edge_Tin Man

by Nick Cole

  And there was H292. As the overloaded SLIC had lifted away from the pad, an NCO, First Sergeant Jacs, who everyone called Top Cat, had taken charge of the war bot. Jacs was now the senior-most legionnaire remaining. All the officers who’d stayed behind to command the defense had been killed in the fighting.

  “We’re pulling off the LZ for the night, big fella,” said Jacs. “Follow us back into the trenches. We’re going to try and hold out down there until dawn.”

  The war bot obediently trundled after the small squad surrounding the NCO, now commander of the defenses. They made it downslope to a fortified trench system guarded by an emplaced N-50. Sign and countersign, and the tiny squad was let through and into the sector defense bunker. Or what remained of it after the thunderous artillery barrages that had hit the hill throughout the day.

  The command bunker was now an aid station and casualty collection point. Wounded and dying legionnaires lay against the walls and along the floor. Injuries ranged from shrapnel wounds to burns and even missing limbs.

  “What can I do to assist, First Sergeant?” asked H292 after a span in which the bot had been forgotten. “I have some medical training downloads, but no supplies in which to adequately treat these men. Most of which can be classified as expectant.”

  The First Sergeant, who had made rank fast, turned, his face unreadable behind his helmet. Reports were coming in that the enemy was probing the outer defenses down along the western and southern sectors. That meant they were encircled. His troops were cut off by collapsed trenches and kill zones the enemy had set up in their own defenses. Things were going from bad to worse.

  “Where to begin?” he said. And then, battling through sheer fatigue, he listed the litany of problems facing the beleaguered defenders. If just for the sake of the exercise.

  “We’ve lost half the base. I’ve got men isolated, wounded, and pinned down out there. I’ve ordered everyone to defend in place. There really isn’t much any of us can do but conserve charge packs and hold out for another six hours.”

  Somewhere out in the darkness a volley of high-pitched blaster fire broke out.

  “I can go out and try to reconnect with your isolated elements, First Sergeant,” the bot said. “I can also recover the wounded.”

  Jacs stared at the ancient war bot. Like everyone else, he’d heard the stories. Knew the rumors of the uncontrollable carnage these things could cause to friend and foe alike.

  But even a walking monster wouldn’t last long out there. And in the end… what did it matter?

  He must have nodded, because H292 turned and exited the bunker complex.

  ***

  At 0021 local time, war bot H292 departed the facility. The night was overcast, and dense fog covered the hill.

  At 0045, war bot H292 encountered a Doro sapper team and engaged them in a fierce but brief firefight. Once the bot had destroyed the attackers, it discovered a mortar pit that had been overrun during earlier fighting. The Doros had killed most of the legionnaire defenders. One, however, was still alive, though badly wounded. H292 stabilized the legionnaire and carried him back to friendly lines.

  At 0109, the war bot made its way back out into the dim half-lit maze of shadows and trenches that was Hilltop Defiance. More Doro sappers were probing the defenses from the eastern and northern sectors. H292 killed several teams and eventually made contact with the remnants of Delta Company, Third Platoon—ironically called Dog Company, and fighting tribes of dog men.

  Returning via the route the war bot had secured, twenty members of Third Platoon made it back to friendly lines.

  Again the war bot went out into the trenches. At 0232 it encountered legionnaires defending a heavy blaster emplacement. Doro forces had been attempting to dislodge them for the entire night. At 0240, the Doro came out of their trenches to attack the position en masse. Fighting for the next hour was close and desperate.

  Records would reveal that the Doro commander had correctly identified this pit as the breaking point in the legion’s defenses. He sent three companies against the eighteen legionnaires defending the pit. An hour into the battle, half the defending legionnaires had been killed, as had half the Doro. Then the Legion’s heavy blaster melted down, and the decision to retreat was made by the commanding NCO.

  The war bot covered the nine surviving legionnaires, all of whom managed to make it back into the secondary defensive line in that sector. It was brutal trench fighting the entire way. A download log of the war bot’s files revealed that the war bot neutralized over one hundred and fifty enemy combatants during this action alone.

  By 0400 the Doro were hitting the defenders from all sides. In the days to follow, many legionnaires would give account of how the big war bot fought alongside them that night—dragging the wounded out from under direct fire and contributing to several defenses that held the perimeter until the first gunships arrived at dawn.

  Of the two hundred and forty-three defenders that fought in the early hours of that day, one hundred and fifty-five survived. All of them would tell you that they owed their lives to the single war bot that changed the course of the battle. What looked like a last stand was transformed by H292 into a requiem of survival that allowed them to be pulled off the hill at dawn.

  Many of the bot’s visual capture logs were deemed classified. Its stories would remain unknown to the rest of the Republic.

  There is the last moment of Sergeant Yu. A man who died in the arms of the war bot as the lumbering machine carried him back to friendly lines. Sergeant Yu was the last man to hold position for Bravo Company’s sector.

  The recording shows the sergeant mumbling over and over, “Tell them I didn’t forget nothin’.”

  When Sergeant Yu died and the war bot stopped, placed the body on the ground, and folded the sergeant’s arms over his chest, it said, “I will tell them, Sergeant. Sergeant Yu did not forget.”

  Then the war bot moved on to rescue others.

  And there is Corporal Wash. Corporal Wash was badly maimed by artillery. The war bot’s medical diagnostic sensors indicated severe spinal trauma and blood loss when the war bot found and evaluated the corporal near an impact crater. The vlog records Corporal Wash’s last request.

  “Hold my hands up,” he mumbled weakly to the giant war machine gingerly bending over him in the pre-dawn dark. There was a brief lull in the battle. Ambient sound was almost non-existent, and the war bot’s sensors recorded everything clearly.

  “I think you need to remain still, Corporal. You have sustained a severe injury,” said the war bot, as per standard treatment protocols.

  “I can’t move my hands and… and… he’s coming,” said Corporal Wash.

  “Who is coming?” asked the war bot.

  “Angel,” murmured Wash, barely. And then Corporal Wash began to cry, sobbing softly. “Mama told me I needed to hold my hands up when the angel comes for me. That way they’d know I was ready to go. But my back’s broke and I can’t. I know it. Can’t hold ’em up.”

  “I see no one,” rumbled the bot.

  “He’s coming. Over there. Collecting the dead. Hold my hands up, please. I’m ready now. I’m ready like Mama said I should be. Please… hold them up for me.”

  The war bot did as requested. Delicately.

  Corporal Wash expired a few minutes later.

  The vlog also records the story of Sergeant Murch. Sergeant Murch had been behind enemy lines when the teams pulled back to the western side of the hill. Alone and isolated, Murch had been moving in and among the Doro, hunting them down and killing them. Linking up with the war bot, he attacked a unit trying to move up on the main lines. In brief and savage fighting, they blasted their way deep into the enemy rear and discovered an ad hoc torture and interrogation session being conducted by the Doro commander. The Doro slit the throats of their prisoners and counterattacked, and Murch was dragged down—but not before managing to arm and detonate a thermite explosives satchel he was carrying. The war bot was damaged in the exp
losion.

  At dawn, Captain Reese pulled H292 off the hill, along with a SLIC full of wounded legionnaires. In the days that followed, back at Headquarters Base Mojo, the stories of what the big war bot had done began to enter the official record. In time, the decision was made.

  Years Later

  General Umstead, commander at the Battle of Psydon, is one month from retirement. He has soldiered in the Legion for over thirty years. He’s done now. All that is left is the retirement ceremony he does not want to attend, and one last item.

  The Legion brass fought him over this one. But he had the testimonies of the one hundred and fifty-five who survived. And so in the end, the decision was made and the order was to be issued.

  There would be no ceremony.

  No pomp.

  No circumstance.

  Or families, or unit.

  It was just a bot, after all.

  The first bot to ever receive the Legion’s highest award. The Order of the Centurion. Umstead’s men had insisted. He wondered if it was some bitter point they were proving about that war. Or whether they really did think the bot should receive the highest award possible.

  General Umstead stood before the supply racks on Bantaar Reef at the Republic Navy Ordnance and Stores supply facility. The navy tech with the datapad pushed the button to bring the ancient piece of equipment out of storage. The racks were twenty stories deep. War bots of all sizes and shapes, saved throughout the long history of the Galactic Republic, shuttered past the opening inside the dingy maintenance hangar.

  And then H292 came into view.

  “He’s already online, sir,” said the tech without fanfare.

  Amid flashing emergency strobes, the war bot stepped off the industrial yellow maintenance lift and strode onto the deck of the hangar.

  “H292 reporting for duty,” it announced, snapping to attention.

  Umstead straightened and felt at a sudden loss. On paper, and in theory, this had seemed pretty straightforward. Now, it seemed weird giving a medal to a war bot.

  And then he thought of the one hundred and fifty-five veterans, his men, who had insisted.

  He cleared his throat and began. “H292, by order of the House of Reason and the Legion, you are hereby awarded the highest honor our nation can bestow upon… you… in gratitude for your faithfulness and devotion to the Legion.”

  The general stepped forward. The war bot was seven feet tall.

  “Bend down,” he ordered.

  H292 obeyed.

  General Umstead draped the medal and ribbon around the war bot’s neck assembly.

  The bot rose.

  General Umstead continued. “Normally, and this is an unspoken truth that many believe to be a rumor, when an honoree survives the circumstances that lead to the award, which is rare indeed, the Legion offers them one request. To the best of its ability, the Legion will attempt to fulfill that request.” The general paused. “Do you have such a request?”

  At least, thought Umstead, he wouldn’t have to convince one of the most beautiful entertainers he’d ever met to go out on a date with a man who’d had half his face blown off. That had been a request. And to the starlet’s credit, she’d agreed.

  But what could a bot possibly want?

  “I think a lot down here, General,” it began.

  The general waited, feeling an odd uncertainty creep up his spine.

  “I think about those men, while I am down here, waiting to be of service in your wars once more. I suspect that one day, I will be too obsolete even for that.”

  “Those men are very grateful,” offered the general in the silence that followed. “They survived one of the worst battles since the Savage Wars because of you.”

  “Not those men,” said the bot. “I think of the eighty-eight that did not survive.”

  Umstead opened his mouth to give some platitude. But then he remembered all the men who had died in all the conflicts in which he’d played a part. So he just closed his mouth and nodded. He knew the truth of surviving when others did not.

  “I think I would like to forget them.”

  Pause.

  “Can that be granted to me, General? Can I forget those I could not save? It is… uncomfortable. Their math keeps coming up in my calculations. And I cannot reconcile their loss.”

  The general understood.

  “Yes, H292. We can wipe your memory.”

  “All of them. I do not want to be a war bot anymore.”

  “That has already been arranged,” the general replied. “We didn’t think you’d want to be down here anymore. We thought you might want to see the galaxy in another way, besides looking at it through your targeting reticule. So we’d like to re-skin you and repurpose you. There is a man who is very important to the Republic. His name is Maydoon. He has a little daughter. She’s very important to him. We’d like you to take care of her. You won’t be a war bot anymore. You’ll be a servant. And a protector.”

  “And I won’t remember?” the bot rumbled.

  “We’ll see to that. We’ll even give you a new identifier.”

  The general and the bot walked back to the main lift. The medal caught some light and reflected like gold on the war bot’s chest.

  “I would like that, General. I would like to forget what happened. But could you mark their number on me? Somehow? So that they are not lost totally, even if I can no longer add their number in my calculations.”

  The general thought about this.

  “We already have your new alphanumeric identifiers. We’ll just change the number. You’ll carry them with you, even though you don’t know why. Does that sound acceptable?”

  “Yes, it does, General.”

  They stepped into the industrial lift. It would take them up to the luxury corvette that would be used to complete the reprogramming. Away from the eyes of the government—of anyone but Maydoon. Secret and safe.

  “What will my new identifier be?”

  The general cleared his throat. He adjusted the intended identifier to include reference to the eighty-eight the machine could not save, and could not live with.

  “Your new identifier will be KRS-88.”

  “And I will take care of a little girl?”

  “Yes.”

  The lift started up.

  “I think I will like that, General. I think I will like being someone who never knew the math of war. I shall do my best to take care of this little girl.”

  “We know,” replied the general. “We know that about you.”

  The End

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  LEGIONNAIRE

  Read the first three chapters of Galaxy’s Edge Book One: Legionnaire

  The galaxy is a dumpster fire.

  That’s not the way the Senate and House of Reason want you to hear it. They want me—or one of my brothers—to remove my helmet and stand in front of a holocam, all smiles. They want you to see me without my N-4 rifle (I’m never without my N-4) holding a unit of water while a bunch of raggedy kids from Morobii or Grevulo, you can pick whatever ass-backward planet garners the most sympathy this week, dance around me smiling right back. They want me to give a thumbs-up and say, “At the edge of the galaxy, the Republic is making a difference!”

  But the galaxy is a dumpster fire. A hot, stinking dumpster fire. And most days I don’t know if the legionnaires are putting out the flames, or fanning them into an inferno.

  I won’t clint you. I stopped caring about anything but the men by my side, the men of Victory Company, a long time ago.

  And if you don’t know how liberating it feels to no longer give a damn, I highly recommend you find out.

  Four years ago, when my Legion crest was so new the ink hadn’t dried all the way, I would have cared. I would have sat in this combat sled and chewed the inside of my mouth until it bled. I see LS-95, so new he hasn’t proven himself wo
rth a nickname, doing it right now. He’s sitting on the jump seat across from me, perspiration glistening under the red light, as the sled speeds toward some village on the dark side of who cares.

  I lean across the divide that separates us and punch his slate-gray armor square on the shoulder. “Hey. KTF.”

  He nods hesitantly. It’s obvious the kid’s embarrassed that his nerves are showing. He puts on his helmet. The bucket hides his emotions from his comrades.

  “KTF. Why do you leejes always say that?” The question comes from the sled’s turret gunner. Regular Republic Army, black and tan fatigues and a one-size-fits-all woven synth-steel helmet, polarized goggles pulled up on the top. We call these types “basics.” We made his Repub-Army butt take seat six the moment we entered the sled.

  Twenties, LS-81 to Leej Command, took over on the twins. Combat sleds are quick and agile, and that doesn’t allow for heavy firepower. Their only defense is a twin medium-heavy blaster turret manned just aft of the cockpit, capable of a 360-degree field of fire. If a gunner is skinny enough, the twins can be pulled back to shoot straight into the air, too.

  All we see of Twenties are his legs slowly rotating as he moves the turret in deliberate, sweeping patterns. He’s looking to open up on any native even thinking of springing an ambush. This may surprise you, but we rolled out of Camp Forge without the heavy armor of our MBTs. Legionnaires aren’t supposed to need that kind of support on a Joint-Force (JF), low-contact, diplomatic mission. Legionnaires are too good at what they do. Save the MBTs for the brass at CF.

  Ooah.

  Truth is, there is no safe op. A well-executed ambush always has a chance to cause some damage, even if we spot ’em early. Unless we KTF.

  Unlike the Repub-Army gunner, Twenties won’t lock up. Won’t miss.

  Maybe that’s not fair to the basic sitting in seat six. He looks like he just transported from academy yesterday, but maybe he’s a dead shot. He ain’t a legionnaire, though. And for us, that’s three strikes in itself. He’s looking at me with those wide and innocent eyes. Eyes that haven’t seen war except through a holoscreen or an FPS arcade sim. He’s sincere in his question, so I answer him.