Cyber-Knife: Apex Predator

by Phil Wrede

  He bound the four tubes and emitters together with some flexi-mesh, which would allow the excess heat to dissipate much faster than encasing it in solid plates of metal. He opened up an access panel above his wrist on his right arm, and manipulating two switches directly under the panel opened a port in the lower portion of his palm. Threading quickly, Cyber-Knife installed the tubes into the port, running them all the way into his arm. The emitters poked out from the metal skin of his hand only slightly. He installed the plasma cells into the access panel, and set his systems to write a new set of procedures into his software. His task complete, he had only now to put some space between himself and the site of the battle.

  Cyber-Knife crouched down and put the force of both his muscles and his machine parts into a leap that carried him just below the canopy line and clear of the carnage. Countless small, sharp branches smacked him in the face and tore through his skin, but when he landed back on the ground, all the traces of battle had healed. His software had finished updating - now, the testing could begin.

  Cyber-Knife turned to a rock jutting out from the jungle and raised his open hand. A slight sucking sound was immediately followed by a whispered roar; a tightly contained blast of plasma zipped forth and split the rock into pieces, sending splinters flying in every direction. He threw up his arm to protect his face, and several particularly nasty shards stuck themselves into metal.

  A diagnostic of the new system revealed that the new blaster would require several seconds of downtime between shots, to allow the power cells adequate time to recharge. If he found himself in need of replacement cells, he figured he wouldn't suffer a drought of enemies any time soon. The enemy did have some good ideas, as it turned out; Cyber-Knife wondered if he'd start wishing for a second artificial arm.

  Taking one more moment to survey the bizarre landscape around him - the mutated jungle stretching up and then clawing back down towards the ground in a kind of weird detente with the sky, the sickly beautiful greens and reds streaking through tiny breaks in the canopy, the enemy's fortress, some kind of poisoned needle stuck into the earth - he wondered if he might live long enough to see the world start to return to its past state, like it had been before the alien robot ninjas. Generals sequestered in bunkers didn't have a monopoly on dreams, after all. Cyber-Knife pulled Excalibur from its sheath and spun the sword around in his hand; he had never heard a sound more satisfying than the ring its blade made as it cut through the air.

  A low rumbling sound, mostly the antithesis of the noises Excalibur had just made, jumbled along the ground, angrily rocking back and forth everything on the surface. Some of the smallest animals and insects reemerged from their lairs and raced away even faster than they had before.

  “Not a happy sound,” Excalibur muttered.

  Cyber-Knife turned as the rumble gave way to a roar. An enormous... thing had emerged from a nearby hole in the ground that hadn't been there a second ago. It had a round midsection, like a fat rat's, but possessed opposable thumbs on both sides of each of its four paws, with every digit ending in disgusting, fungus-covered claws that looked equally suited to digging and tearing flesh apart. It stood taller than a Class Two, and looked like it rivaled those robots in mass. Yellow drool dripped from its jaws and down its whiskers, foul-smelling enough that Cyber-Knife immediately activated the filters embedded in his nasal cavity. Its mouth extended along nearly the entire length of its snout, ending just below a pair of eyes bulging from their sockets. It wasn't covered in fur, but brownish-green scales, plates that heaved in and out as it breathed. Its lower teeth cut into the skin on its snout.

  Those eyes pointed right at Cyber-Knife as the animal mucked up the mud puddle its saliva had formed on the ground. As it inhaled sharply, Cyber-Knife felt the hairs on his head pulled forward like they might in a wind tunnel. “I want to let you know,” he said through gritted teeth, “from the deepest places in my heart and belly, that I expect to hate the experience we're about to have.”

  Before Excalibur could respond, the creature let out another roar, bounding through the jungle; birds able to take flight above the canopy did not pass up their warning to escape, and the area emptied of living things moments after the thing had opened its mouth. Whether due exclusively to the monster's bellow, or the fetid stench of its breath, Cyber-Knife did not know. They both had an intimidating presence, the likes of which he'd not seen in the natural world before.

  The creature thudded across the ground on all fours, its mouth wide as it charged. Cyber-Knife now understood how difficult simple survival was in this jungle, and he had no interest in battling an innocent animal that merely wanted to defend its home. Rather than standing his ground, he ran off in the opposite direction of the monster. Hopefully, the largeness of its body pointed to a corresponding smallness of its brain, and maybe if he ran far enough fast enough for long enough, it’d lose interest and shuffle back into its tunnel.

  Hearing another, more irritated-sounding snarl behind him, and feeling the extended thudding of a wide turn reverberating through his legs and chest, Cyber-Knife didn’t need to employ his advanced sensors to know the creature wasn’t going to give up as easily as he’d hoped. He leapt over a particularly treacherous-looking root that cleared the ground, and spared a glance backward to see how the animal would deal with it. The wood snapped in the instant it put the full weight of its body down on its forepaws. It gnashed its teeth furiously, spraying that disgusting saliva everywhere.

  “Is this really the time to stare rabid death in the face?” Excalibur cried out.

  “I feel the reality of the threat more clearly when I visualize it,” Cyber-Knife replied.

  Cyber-Knife's feet sped across the ground, touching down just long enough to push him continually forward, never resting. He heard whole tree trunks tear and vines snap by the dozens as he ran, but no matter what he did, the creature just kept getting closer and closer. The map on his HUD proved it, for the red dot representing the creature constantly threatened to engulf the blue one which stood in for him. He could swear he felt its hot, sticky breath on his neck.

  Cyber-Knife slashed Excalibur through some nearby trees, but when the creature couldn't clamor over them, it bulled debris out of the way. He threaded himself through narrow gaps, cut sharply to the side and doubled back on himself, but the creature had his scent and wouldn't lose it. He dove into a somersault and fired his hand's plasma blaster into the ground, but not even the threat of horrible, burning death could scare off the animal.

  Cyber-Knife spared a single moment to glance at the map on his HUD, a moment it turned out he didn’t have, as he turned his focus back outward just in time to run headlong into a disgustingly sticky spider web and crash to the ground, his arms and legs all of a sudden bound together in the silk. He immediately let loose with another bolt from his palm blaster, which cut through a good chunk of the web and loosened its grip enough that he could start to saw his way out with Excalibur, but he just didn't have enough time to stage an escape. The creature had caught up to him.

  It stomped up to Cyber-Knife, shaking the earth with every tremendous step it took. Sniffing at the air, sucking in great gulps, it crouched down in front of him, expelling those half-dozen breaths in a single gale-force belch. Cyber-Knife nearly passed out from the smell, despite his advanced nasal filtration technology. The creature growled, and figuring he didn't have much to lose at this point, Cyber-Knife snarled back, bearing his teeth and opening his dark black eyes as far as they could go. As the creature roared, some of its saliva got into his mouth, and he coughed it up involuntarily, convulsing against the web as he did.

  As suddenly as it had approached, the creature began to back away, sniffing timidly this time. Cyber-Knife had no interest in looking a gift horse in the mouth, let alone counting the teeth lining the creature's jaws, so he kept cutting at the web, improving his odds by millimeters with every passing second. The monster's time, however, had run out, as it was engulfed by an enor
mous spidery shape that dropped from the canopy. The creature howled as the spider-beast's tail flipped out from the back of its absurdly oversized abdomen and stabbed it in the chest half a dozen times. The creature slumped as the spider enfolded its legs - of which there were certainly more than eight - around its body. For once, Cyber-Knife cursed his night vision as he saw the spider's jaw swing open and pull the creature's head in close. He wasn't sure how long it would take for the spider to finish its meal, but he certainly didn't want to be around to be the second course.

  It swallowed the rat-thing's head in a single gulp, and the crunching, slurping sounds the spider made as it devoured the creature were enough to make Cyber-Knife wistful for the late monster's living breath. Once it had - for reasons Cyber-Knife imagined he would never understand - consumed the creature's head, it began to wrap the rest of its carcass in its silk, while sucking it dry of all its remaining fluids. Cyber-Knife could've sworn he saw the rat-thing's body shrink before his very eyes. Fortunately, he'd about cut himself free. One last, knotted collection of silk strands were all that stood between him and escape. He'd already begun to pull his blaster-equipped arm free.

  The creature's body dropped out of the air; it hit the ground with a hollow smack. The spider itself followed a moment later, with a far more graceful landing. It skittered across the ground almost as though it was gliding, and Cyber-Knife finally got a good look at its head, which looked almost like two big eyes - furry, too - and a quartet of barbed mandibles jammed together. Its head was covered with feelers and antennae.

  It straightened its legs, raising itself up off the ground, and unfolded its tail again; the chitin plating over it practically clanked as it extended to its full length, several times larger than Cyber-Knife's height. While he'd felt compunctions about killing the rat-thing, he couldn't frighten this animal away. As it started to creep towards him again, Cyber-Knife rolled over, tearing his arm away from its silken prison, and let loose with a long-awaited burst from his plasma blaster.

  The shot hit home, tearing up from underneath and making a hole clean through the spider's hide. Dark, sticky blood started to pour from it immediately, and it reared up on its back legs. It didn't do much to discourage the spider-beast, for it returned to encroaching upon him again after barely a moment. Its jaw swung open, quivering with hunger.

  The spider closed the distance between it and Cyber-Knife, and in almost no time at all swung its barbed tail down towards him. Cyber-Knife figured the spike could pierce him anywhere with length to spare, and even though it wouldn't inject much poison if the stinger just punched through his body, it was probably still bad. If Cyber-Knife hadn't spun out of the way as the spider's tail smashed into the ground, it would easily have crushed him.

  The added stress from his escape maneuver tore him free of the rest of the web. He swung Excalibur around; they both spoiled for a real fight. Cyber-Knife hadn't come across a frightened innocent here, but the biological equivalent of a Class Two, and it deserved exactly as much mercy from him as an alien robot spider. He couldn't imagine the arachnid had many opportunities to test its mettle in the irradiated jungle, either; he knew only one of them could walk away from this encounter. Its tail reloaded and thrust at him again, and Cyber-Knife cut into it with the enchanted sword. Or, he would have, if the spider did not have natural plating so tough as to make Excalibur bounce right off it with a disheartening clang.

  The spider didn't try to mess around with a third tail strike - the spines on its legs could easily gut him - so it repositioned itself and struck down towards him with three legs simultaneously. Cyber-Knife backflipped away from the attack, avoiding the strike with no room to spare. The hairs on the spider's leg brushed up against his arm. He dodged forward instead of away from the next attack, landing directly underneath the spider, and struck upward with the sword, cutting through the mutant arachnid's underbelly, covering himself with the spray from blood and pierced arachnid organs. It thrashed about in pain and shock; Cyber-Knife struck home with Excalibur two more times, tearing across the spider's width. The undigested brain, bone, and fur in its belly spilled out onto the ground, but Cyber-Knife managed to pull the sword free and dodge out of the way as the spider, too, fell down.

  He could've walked away and let it bleed to death, suffering in its last moments of life, but the spider's thrashing legs knocked his feet out from under him and slashed him across the face. Rage and sympathy worked in tandem as he raised his arm again and fired a blast of plasma into the spider through its belly wound. It shot through the spider's head from the inside, leaving a trail of steaming liquid behind as it cut through its remaining armor. The spider stopped struggling.

  “Well, if that wasn't utterly disgusting,” Excalibur remarked.

  Cyber-Knife didn't respond, just drew the sword's long end across the spider's tail and spilled its poison reserves. He extended a small syringe from the little finger on his right hand and drew poison into a reservoir behind his knuckles.

  “It's as though you're programmed to top yourself at every turn,” Excalibur said.

  Cyber-Knife turned away from the spider, breathing in measured breaths through his nose, then out through his mouth. “I hate the jungle,” he finally replied. “I'd say we should nuke it down to the topsoil and never come back, but that's how we got into this mess in the first place. I bet you we'd only wind up creating even worse monsters.”

  “Well, then, if I may be so bold,” Excalibur added, “it seems as though that poor, decapitated, bloodsucked... thing over there made its home in tunnels before it decided to pick a fight with the surface world. With luck, maybe those tunnels run the breadth of the whole jungle.”

  “With our luck, we'll only find a hundred of those things down there, instead of a thousand,” Cyber-Knife said dismissively.

  “Maybe, but I think you've gotten over whatever soft spot humans instinctively have for disgusting fuzzy creatures.”

  Cyber-Knife looked down at the plasma blaster in his hand; the emitters steamed infinitesimally. “Yeah.”

  “Then, may I suggest we make for a more subterranean setting?”

  “Wait.” Cyber-Knife peeked through the jungle canopy and could barely make out part of the spire in the distance. He tagged it with a manual waypoint marker, so now, whatever else happened, his systems would be able to track his position relative to the spire.

  Both nature and nurture had conditioned Cyber-Knife to loathe only one thing more than inactivity, and that was to cover ground already well-tread. He hated to move backwards, but he put that distaste aside for a few minutes when Excalibur convinced him to just follow the trail of destruction the creature had left in its wake. When they found the hole it had carved in the ground, Cyber-Knife and Excalibur wasted no time diving right into it.

  They hadn't expected tunnels like the ones they found. Instead of dank, labyrinthine corridors that followed neither logical rhyme nor reason, navigable only by the creatures that had created them, the tunnel had an odd uniformity, actually maintaining a consistent height and width as far as Cyber-Knife could see. He could see a fair distance, actually, as the tunnel seemed to take only a wide, sweeping curve, instead of the bizarre twisting patterns to which he'd imagined the minds of radiologically addled giant rats prone. Strange strands of bioluminescent tubing pocked the densely packed soil around them, casting a glow just unreliable enough that Cyber-Knife felt his low-light vision settings constantly adjusting themselves.

  “Would you look at that,” Excalibur said.

  “I never would've pegged you as a connoisseur of tunnels,” Cyber-Knife replied.

  “War is a nasty, brutish proposition,” Excalibur said, “and I've spent most of my existence embroiled in one version of it or another. It has taught me to appreciate the good things when you come across them. We should appreciate the beauty of this sight, particularly when you consider how superior its aesthetics are to what we left above.”

  “We all have un
expected depths,” Cyber-Knife said.

  After a moment, Excalibur said, “I see what you did there.”

  Cyber-Knife looked up one side of the tunnel, then down the other. “We want to go this way to avoid bumping into whatever kind of nest these creatures have,” he continued, pointing down the other way of the tunnel.

  “How much travel time do you think this is going to add?”

  “I will check.” Cyber-Knife shook his head and pinged out another radar pulse from his hair, sending out a signal that bounced up and down the tunnel before returning to him. “The network ends before it gets too close to the enemy's structure. The tunnels just sort of abruptly curve away, almost as if they'd been issued an ultimatum.”

  “I hate the thought of running into some kind of alien robot ninja pest control.”

  “Still safer than moving above ground.”

  Excalibur sighed. “American optimism has led to so many deaths; I don't want mine counted among them.”

  “Hey, anything we meet down here is just as likely to hate the aliens robot ninjas as me. They'll probably just take you for a trophy. At the worst, this'll be a sign that England's one true savior has yet to arise.”

  “Don't say things like that,” Excalibur said.

  “As you wish,” Cyber-Knife replied.

  The soil didn't give under Cyber-Knife's feet as he ran, not at all. It was compacted, and felt as hard as any metal or concrete he'd crossed before. It didn't seem to him that any natural process - no matter how irradiated or mutated - could ever result in something so immediately orderly. He got the feeling that he and Excalibur had leapt into something they didn't fully understand. Over a long career, he'd learned that his survival in combat depended more on his ability to adapt than his commanders' ability to predict.

  His eyebrows rose as the sounds of his footsteps echoed down the tunnel. “Quieter than I imagined.”