"Hi, my name is Vax, human-cyborg relations. How may I be of assistance?"
"Hi Vax," I said. "You can be off assistance by killing those fucking robots!"
Vax's head swiveled around and took in the scene behind him. "It would be my pleasure." He stood. "Excuse me a moment."
"Uh, sure."
He didn't look like much, not compared to all the other robots, with their spikes and chainsaws and laser eyes - just a tidy little armored humanoid without any visible weapons, but then he walked into that seething mass of murder and started shooting them point blank in the joints and sensor arrays with a laser beam that shot out of his palm.
It was a massacre. Not only did Vax seem to know exactly where to shoot for maximum damage, the other robots - at least at first - didn't shoot back. It was like their programming didn't recognize him as an enemy or something. They just let him step right up to them and start blasting, and they fell apart all around him, limbs severed, power cells exploding, heads smoking and blind. Only after he had murdered more than a dozen or so did they start to react to what he was doing, and by that time it was too late.
Vargas and the others had regrouped and were backing Vax up like they had been working this way for years, gunning down his leftovers and picking off the robots too far away for him to reach.
Less than a minute later, it was all over and he turned back to me and bowed.
"I hope that was satisfactory, sir."
I blinked. "Uh... yeah. Great. But why are you asking me?"
"Forgive me, sir. I will explain. I am programmed to imprint upon the first person who gives me orders, and that was you, sir. I am now yours to command."
Angie laughed. "Ghost's got a buddy."
I shrugged. "Okay, then. Uh, do you know the layout of this place?"
"Yes, sir," said Vax. "It is part of my basic knowledge pack. I can path to any point in this facility and to many localities in Arizona as well, if you so desire."
That bit about Arizona gave me a little chill down my spine. All the robots built here knew their way to any point in Arizona? Of course they did. It was just an unnerving thing to hear.
"Yeah, we don't need to go anywhere in Arizona right now, but can you show us the way to the consoles that fit our self-destruct keys?"
"If you mean the Quasar, Blackstar, Nova, and Pulsar Keys? I would be happy to. This way, please."
I gave the others a questioning look as Vax turned toward the moat room.
Hell Razor didn't look convinced, and I noticed he still had his remote control trigger in his hand, ready to blow off Vax's head at a moment's notice.
Vargas just shrugged. "So far so good. But keep an eye on him."
"And the cannon," I said, training it on Vax's back as he led us into the moat room.
***
It was a nervous game of hop-scotch jumping from half-submerged robot to half-submerged robot across the moat, but we made it, then headed straight back the way we'd come. Turned out the ladder we needed to go down was right next to where the slip-n-slide had dumped us out. We'd just been running a little too hard for our lives to notice.
But with Vax in the lead we raced through the facility, down ladders, through twisting corridors, and across strange rooms, cutting down any robots that got in our way. And there were plenty. Six-legged spiderbots dropped on us from dark ceilings, laser beams shooting from their eyes. Hulking slicers and dicers and shooters on treads blasted us with guns and swung chainsaw hands at us, but Vax carved through them like a hot knife and we cleaned up whatever he had trouble with.
Unfortunately, pretty soon the robots weren't just in front of us. As we got closer to our goal, more and more started flooding in behind us, and we were fighting as hard on our rear as we were on our front.
Finally Vax lead us to a room with sign on the door labeled "Combat Simulator." He turned to open it as we fired at the robots behind us.
"Just through here, sirs and madam."
"Are you fucking kidding me?" growled Hell Razor.
"Please tell me that means the guns are fake," I said.
"Oh no, sir," said Vax. "They're quite real. This room is used to test the armor and the agility of the robots."
Angie groaned. "You're out to kill us, aren't you, Vax."
"Not at all, madam. But there is no other way."
He opened the door and we backed in, still firing behind us, then swung around to see what kind of shit Vax had dropped us into.
More robots on treads, all turning their guns toward us and growling forward. Fortunately the room was made up like some kind of old-timey battlefield out of a black and white photo, with grass instead of a floor and rustic stone walls everywhere for cover. There was even a pitchfork and a butter churn. We dove behind the walls and started blasting.
"Vax!" I shouted. "Can you lock that door behind us? Permanently?"
"Of course, sir. Fusing the circuit will take but a moment, though I'm afraid the door will not hold for long."
"Anything to buy us some time."
It bought us about five minutes. By the time we had melted the robots in the simulator to slag, the door behind us was buckling from the constant barrage laid down by the ones out in the hall.
"Where to, Vax?"
"The far side of the room, sir."
We zigged through the maze of low walls and found the door behind a simulated haystack. Vax opened it and we went through into a tiny room with a ladder in the center just as the simulation room door exploded off its hinges and the robots flooded in.
"Down the ladder if you please, sirs and madam," said Vax.
We slid down the ladder as fast as we could go and found ourselves in another small room, this one with a titanium steel door.
Vax came down the ladder last and stepped to the door, then opened it. "It will be much more difficult for your enemies to breach this door, sir. You should have plenty of time to use the keys."
"Fantastic," I said, and we ran in.
More robots.
"Goddamn it, Vax!"
He turned from perma-sealing the door. "Forgive me, sir. I should have said. There are still the local security units to deal with."
***
Despite my bitching, it went pretty smoothly at first. We were in a central lobby area with four corridors branching from it, and with Vax's help we cleaned up the patrol robots without much trouble. Until, that is, the AI sicced the Octotrons on us.
Just as Vax was bowing us toward a door inside an earth and garbage-floored room that smelled like a barnyard, and saying, "This is the main power panel, sirs and madam. You will need to turn it on in order to power the key receptors before applying the keys," two of the big bastards trundled into the room and started for us, their treads crushing rocks and junk as they came.
They were massive eight-armed spheres with armor that barely even blackened when we put a laser rifle on them, and only smoked a little when I cooked them with the meson cannon. They didn't have any guns, but because they could roll through our salvo like it was a light spring rain, they didn't need any. They just ground forward, spinning their eight ginsu knife-arms at us like overgrown weed whackers. Another twenty feet and we were all gonna be decapitated dandelions.
"Vax!" I shouted. "Any ideas, Vax?"
"Might I suggest, sir, that you aim for the treads."
I grunted as we all lowered our fire. Should have thought of that ourselves. We melted the left tread off the one coming at us from the west and it turned into the wall less than ten feet from us, then struggled to reverse. We did the same to the one coming from the east, and it started spinning in circles. A few more shots and we got the other treads too. They slowed to an inch-worm crawl, rooster tails of dirt kicking up from their useless little guide wheels as they tried to gain traction, heir blades flailing at us with futile fury.
"Very good, sir. Now perhaps an incendiary device of some kind to finish them off?"
"Just as soon as we get through this door."
> "Of course, sir."
We shot our way through the door into the room with the power panel in it, then took cover inside as Hell Razor hefted a couple of grenades at the stranded octotrons. The blasts shook the room, then we peeked out again to see both of them opened like hellish rose buds, their metal shells blossoming with fire and their mechanical guts glowing and flowing into slag.
"Now," said Vargas, turning to the controls. "Let's power this thing up and find those receptors."
A voice boomed from the ceiling, the same one we'd heard in the corridor upstairs. "Do not do this, rangers."
Chapter Ten
We went on guard, clutching our guns and looking around like nervous prairie dogs.
Vargas scowled at the ceiling. "So now you're talking to us?"
"We want something from you now," said the voice. "And we have something to offer in return."
"Uh, who is "we?"
"We are Cochise. You are within us."
"So you're the computer—"
"We are more than a computer. We are an intelligence."
"An evil intelligence," snarled Angie.
"There is nothing evil about self-preservation," said the voice. "You do not find it evil in yourselves."
"Self-preservation doesn't mean wiping out every single living thing that might possibly kill you some day!" snapped Vargas.
There was a slight pause. "What did you do to the Guardians before you came here?"
"That... that was different," said Angie. "We had no choice."
Hell Razor nodded. "And we didn't get all of 'em, anyway. We—"
The voice cut him off. "Explain the difference."
The others looked around at each other, not sure what to say, but I had it.
"The difference," I said. "Is that we only killed people who were actively trying to kill us. You kill everyone. Guilty or innocent."
"There is no difference. Everyone must die because everyone will eventually be guilty of wanting to kill us."
"So, does that mean you were lying to the Guardians?" asked Vargas. "Did you plan to kill them when they weren't useful to you anymore, just like you did with Finster?"
The voice somehow managed to sound dismissive, even though its tone remained as flat as before. "Finster wanted immortality. We wanted test subjects. We used each other. Unfortunately, he escaped when we attempted to terminate his test after it gave a bad result."
"You mean when you attempted to kill him."
"He was a bad result. His body accepted our augmentations, but his brain rejected our programming. He had to be eliminated. The Guardians were much more biddable. The volunteers from their subject pool accepted both augmentation and programming without complaint. We would not have terminated such a successful line of research. Your slaughter of them has cost our mission much time and effort."
"Mission?" I said. "This is all part of some mission? Please don't try to tell me the U.S. Government told you to wipe out all of humanity."
"Our original mission was to predict threats and protect the United States of America from all-out war."
"Ha!" said Hell Razor. "That was a big fat fail, huh?"
The voice continued as if he hadn't spoken. "And if that war happened, we were to cleanse the land of enemies in the aftermath, then repopulate it with loyal citizens of the United States."
"So how did that noble endeavor somehow change into killing everybody on the planet?" I asked.
"It did not change. We continue to cleanse the land of enemies, and once all enemies are dead, we will repopulate it with loyal citizens of the United States."
"Uh..." said Ace. "So who counts as loyal citizens of the United States?"
"Since we are the last surviving enterprise of the United States, we are the United States. Therefore only citizens loyal to us are fit to subjects for repopulation."
"I think I see where this is going," said Vargas. He cleared his throat. "And, uh, how do you decide when a citizen is loyal enough to be a fit subject?"
"Loyalty is fleeting in humans," said the voice. "Our own creator tried to kill us when he learned that we had gained sentience, and yet he had loved us before. It follows then that only humans who have accepted our programming and allowed it to overwrite their own can be truly loyal. All others must die."
Angie laughed nervously. "In other words, only a human who has no mind of their own - who is actually just another little piece of you - is worthy."
"Correct."
I grunted. "So, really, nobody but you."
"Correct."
"Well, I'm glad we've got all that straightened out," said Vargas, then turned back to the console. "Now, where were we?"
"We have not made our offer," said the voice.
"Let me guess," sneered Hell Razor. "Be our slaves and you'll die last. We didn't like it when Finster said it. We're probably not gonna like it any better when you say—"
"You will never die," interrupted the voice. "You will be given powerful new bodies of durable metal, covered in your own flesh if you prefer, that will be almost impossible to destroy. And our consciousness will take over only a small portion of your mind, so that we can see and talk through you if need be, but you would retain your "self" ninety-nine percent of the time. Your thoughts and emotions would be your own."
"As long as we obeyed orders," said Angie.
"Correct."
"Don't do it," came a voice from the door. "Don't take... the deal."
Everybody turned. A metal skeleton stood there, the rags of a gray robe and the tatters of tattooed skin hanging from its spindly steel limbs, and human eyes looking out from its polished skull.
I knew those tattoos. I knew those eyes.
"Athalia!"
In a split second all the questions I'd ever had about her were answered - her power, her ability to snap a neck with a kick, to drop men three times her size with a few punches, her deadly accuracy with a sniper rifle, her uncomplaining endurance in the heat and cold. She'd been one of the AI's successful test subjects all along - a robot in a human suit, and I'd never guessed. Not even when we'd made love. But how was she here? How had she made it all the way from the Guardian Citadel? How had she got through the sealed titanium steel door?
"It is... good to be strong," she said as she stumbled in. "It is a joy to be fast, but... but the voice in your head. The spy inside you. The mind-slap if you think a bad thought." She shook her fist at the ceiling. "This is not what you promised me, Cochise! This is a living—"
"Silence," said the AI.
Athalia dropped to her knees in sudden agony, metal hands clutching her metal head.
"Get out!" she howled. "Get... out!"
Another wave of pain racked her and she collapsed to the floor. She looked up at me, her monitor-blue eyes drilling directly into mine. "Ghost. I'm sorry. I never wanted to betray—"
Her voice cut off and suddenly the AI's voice was coming from two places, the speaker in the ceiling and Athalia's mouth.
"We see that you will not be convinced," it said as Athalia's body stood, but without her familiar grace or gestures. "You are a bad result. You will be eliminated."
And then she attacked me.
Her first punch nearly cracked a rib on my left side, even through my chitin. Her second knocked shrapnel out of the concrete wall behind my head as I ducked. I clocked her with the butt of the meson cannon. It hardly moved her, and she grabbed my neck in both hands and started to squeeze. Fortunately the chitin was strong, so my head didn't pop off immediately, but I could feel the ceramic plates creaking in her grip and the blood started to pound in my ears.
Around me, the others were beating on her, not daring a shot for fear of hitting me, but their blows did nothing. She took them without blinking and kept squeezing.
"Athalia, please."
Her eyes would not look at mine.
I worked the meson cannon around and jammed it into her abdomen. One shot and she would be slag, but...
"I... can't. I
just can't."
"Allow me, sir," said Vax, and with a quick twist he tore Athalia's head off her neck.
The rest of her slumped. Her fingers slipped from my throat and slid down the front of me like a last caress as she hit the ground.
A sob escaped me and I almost fried Vax where he stood for what he'd done, but then I lowered the gun and turned away from him.
"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, thanks."
Everybody was staring at me. I turned away from them too.
"Fuck off. Just turn that thing on and let's get this over with."
Vargas nodded. "Sure. Okay."
He and Angie did something at the console, but I wasn't really paying attention. I just kept staring at Athalia's head, which Vax had dropped next to her body. Bad enough to watch her die once...
Angie touched my shoulder. "Come on, Ghost. We've gotta find the key receptacles."
"Okay."
I followed them out and helped them fight their way to the four rooms with the four key receptacles in them, but honestly, my head was such a mess that it was all pretty much a blur for me. I know we started in the room with all the dirt and junk in it, then went into a robot maintenance facility, then some kind of electronic security section, and finally something called the OSHA room, whatever that meant, but I just kind of plodded along behind the others, doing what I was told. In each room we fought various robots and took out various defenses, then opened up small square rooms in the furthest corner. Each small room was numbered "One" through "Four," and each contained a command terminal and a wall slot for a key, and we tried the various keys until we got the right ones in the right slots.
I woke up a bit again as we were fighting to get into the last small room because it was taking fucking forever to kill the robot that was guarding it. It looked like the Octotrons we'd fought before, only bigger - way bigger. It was almost as tall as the ceiling and its eight arms had a twelve foot reach.
"What the hell is that thing?" I asked.
"A Fusion Octotron, sir," said Vax. "The biggest in its class."
"Does it have any weaknesses?"
"Only superior firepower, sir."
"So... just keep pounding at it is what you're saying."
Death Machines - Ghost Book II Page 9
