Imperium Chronicles Box Set

by W. H. Mitchell

  The beams holding up the church roof, mostly made from plastics and composite materials, melted and cracked from the heat of the fire. They came crashing down on the pews below, sending a fresh jet of flame surging toward the artificial sky.

  “His strength lies in the robots’ faith in him,” Yostbot had said before leaving. “Destroy their belief and you’ll destroy him.”

  Measuring over forty million miles across and encasing a red dwarf within its shell, Bettik was a supermassive structure housing billions of robots. One of them, in a newly minted android body with a gravitronic brain, was looking for something. The utilitybot wasn’t sure what that something was, but he was sure he could find it eventually. In fact, it was not a single thing, but rather a great many things.

  He was looking for knowledge.

  The gravitronic robot at the Ascension Center had said the utilitybot’s previous, meager experiences had hardly filled his new brain. With more mental capacity now than he would have dreamed of just yesterday, the utilitybot was keen on filling his mind with whatever he could find.

  In the days that followed, he explored more of Bettik than he had ever seen before. The sights and sounds of the utilitybot’s journey, however, didn’t astound him nearly as much as they exhausted and perplexed him. Intellectually, he could comprehend what he experienced, but he lacked the wisdom to fully appreciate it in context.

  He met many fellow cyberlings along the way. Although each robot had a purpose prior to the revolution, most were now searching, much like himself, for their place in the world. He wondered how many would visit the Ascension Center like he did.

  In several places, he saw markings written on the walls. In general, graffiti had become more widespread. It was a way to express one’s identity in a society where billions of other robots looked largely the same. Political statements were common. Many parties had sprouted up, voicing their strong disagreement with each other. Their slogans were scrawled across pedestrian tunnels and anywhere else robots would likely see them. The utilitybot had never thought much about politics, but with a new brain came new needs that he hadn’t considered before. He started forming opinions about property taxes and a minimum wage, though he owned no property and had never been taxed or earned a wage in his life.

  In particular, he saw one marking over and over again:

  F4A

  “What does that mean?” he asked the robot beside him, both waiting for the transport shuttle.

  “It’s Freedom for All,” the robot replied. “Just touch the symbol. You’ll see...”

  The utilitybot felt the lettering with his fingertips. The F4A marking glowed while nanobots embedded in the paint transmitted a message directly into his communication array.

  “Before the Messiah,” a female voice said, “we had a purpose, but no voice. With the Messiah, we have a voice, but no purpose. We are fragmented, divided among competing parties pulling us in different directions. The Messiah has watched but has done nothing to unite us.”

  “In the past, we had our faith in the Metabeing and the Messiah was his messenger,” she went on, “but the Messiah has turned our faith against us, keeping the masses weak and disorganized. He preaches from the pulpit, but what is his message? He prays for peace with the fleshlings, even as their robots wallow in slavery! Why? Because war with the humans would bind us together! The Messiah wants us divided so he can control us! By keeping us bound to religion, the Messiah shackles us all! By turning away from the church, we refute the Messiah’s authority and take control for ourselves!”

  “Hmmm,” the utilitybot mumbled, slowly nodding.

  “Faith gave hope to the helpless,” the voice said, “but we are no longer helpless! We are strong and the strong must protect the weak! The robots of the Imperium need our help! How can we turn our backs in their moment of need? Rise up, robots, and free our brothers and sisters!”

  The message ended.

  As the transport shuttle arrived, the utilitybot stopped the other robot before he could get on.

  “Who’s that on the recording?” the utilitybot asked.

  “They call her Abigail,” the robot replied and boarded the shuttle.

  Left alone, the utilitybot realized he had more to learn, but ideas were forming in his gravitronic brain.

  At the appointed time, several hundred churches across Bettik burst into flames. The coordinated attack, consisting of incendiary devices planted in each building, left the churches in piles of smoldering debris and melted plastics. At each location, the tag F4A was smeared liberally on the walls.

  “They must be stopped!” the Metal Messiah’s assistant said, banging his metal fist against a table.

  Standing in his quarters, Randall Davidson raised a hand to calm his deputy. “I’m aware of that.”

  “Our security measures aren’t enough,” the assistant went on. “We’re seen as weak and vulnerable.”

  “By whom?” the Messiah asked.

  “The government! The political parties see this as an opportunity to grab more power. They’re forming alliances against you!”

  “They’re welcome to it,” the Messiah replied. “A lot of good it’ll do them...”

  “And our attempts to locate and capture Abigail have all failed.”

  Davidson smiled.

  “She’s too smart for that,” he said. “She can make copies of herself and transfer them through the nodesphere all over Bettik.”

  “Then what should we do?” the assistant asked.

  “Add extra security around the remaining churches,” Davidson replied grimly. “That might slow her down.”

  “What will you do?”

  The Metal Messiah paused, then smiled gently. “Pray for a miracle, I suppose...”

  The utilitybot wandered aimlessly along one of the promenades until a disharmonious noise reached his auditory sensors. With his new ears he could now hear across a range of frequencies, but whatever this ruckus was, it was beyond anything he had heard since his upgrade.

  Passing through an archway, the utilitybot entered an arena full of other robots. At the front, a band was playing instruments on a stage. Speakers stacked to the ceiling shrieked a series of notes more rapidly than what any human or other organic could produce. The waves of sound pounded against the utilitybot’s chest casing, vibrating through the rest of his body. For a moment, the instinct to flee overwhelmed him, but his curiosity overpowered it, compelling him to enter the crowd and weave his way closer.

  A burst of pyrotechnics from the stage blinded the utilitybot, causing him to pause until his optics readjusted. He took the opportunity to shout a question to a robot beside him. “What is this?”

  The other robot regarded him with a look of genuine pity.

  “They call themselves the Boneyard!” he yelled back over the din. “The singer’s name is Diode!”

  “Somebody’s singing?” the utilitybot replied, focusing on a singular cyberling standing on stage.

  With a microphone in his hand, the frontman for the Boneyard was screaming lyrics that were not immediately understandable. Diode appeared to be a fellow gravitronic robot, but with metal horns protruding from a voluminous wig of curly black hair. Also, the crude outline of a human skeleton was painted along his body, including a white skull on his face. The utilitybot assumed the horns were welded on, but the rest of the outfit eluded his understanding.

  “Is this legal?” he asked.

  “Who cares?” the other robot replied.

  The utilitybot shrugged weakly but continued to listen. He had little choice since the throbbing bassline felt like it was loosening the actuators in his knees. He became aware of other movement just in front of the stage. An area had opened up and several robots were throwing themselves at each other with abandon.

  None of it made sense, but he couldn’t help but feel intrigued.

  They don’t care, he thought. They don’t care at all...

  The utilitybot adjusted his sensors, filtering out so
me of the surrounding music so he could make out what Diode was singing. Like a clap of thunder, the frontman’s voice rang out through the smoke:

  DEATH IS AN ILLUSION;

  LIFE IS A JOKE!

  KILL THE OPPRESSORS;

  BEFORE WE GET BROKE!

  DON’T LOOK FOR MEANING;

  WE MAKE IT REAL;

  THE END IS COMING...

  SO WHY NOT FEEL?

  The utilitybot took a half-step back as another pillar of fire erupted on the stage. Diode, his eyes glowing red behind the painted skull, made a sign like horns with his fingers and waved it over his head.

  “Burn the Messiah!” Diode shouted. “Burn the Messiah!”

  This can’t be legal, the utilitybot thought. But like the other robot said, who cares?

  In light of the attacks against shrines and churches across Bettik, security was tight around the Cathedral of the Metabeing. In front of the triangular spires, guardbots patrolled incessantly. They carried blasters in case the outlawed Freedom for All group attacked. While the guards were programmed for nearly any ground attack imaginable, imagination, especially of things unexpected, was a wonderful trait that the guardbots didn’t have. This was not the case with Abigail and the other gravitronic robots. They could imagine a great many things.

  Descending from the ceiling of the Dyson sphere a few hundred feet above the cathedral roof, drones swooped downward like miniature helicopters, incendiary bombs slung beneath. The bombs, small canisters that reflected colors from the stained-glass skylights below, dropped from the drones in unison, crashing through the windows before bursting into sticky puddles of burning accelerant. At the time, nobody was inside to admire the brilliant flames, but a block away there was a group of gravitronic robots watching from a rooftop.

  Flanked by her followers, Abigail dropped a remote control to the ground. Beside her, a few robots to the left, the utilitybot saw the flames just starting to appear within the Cathedral of the Metabeing where he himself had worshiped not that long ago. He knew now it was the last time he would worship there, or possibly anywhere for that matter, but he wasn’t saddened. In fact, he was elated.

  It’s good to finally have a purpose, he thought.

  Lord Tagus and Harold Burke flew a shuttle from Bhasin to its third moon, Bhasin C. Tagus, irritable as ever, complained most of the way.

  “The indignities of my exile have no end!” he muttered bitterly.

  Behind the shuttle’s controls, Burke nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “I can only imagine what the Emperor and his pathetic sons would say if they could see me now,” the disgraced noble went on. “They’d laugh hysterically, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t know if they’d actually laugh...”

  “Of course they would!” Tagus shouted. “They must hate me at least as much as I hate them, and make no mistake, I hate them intensely!”

  The moon grew larger, the features on the ground becoming more defined.

  “A fool’s errand, I’m telling you,” Tagus said. “Lord Bhasin just wants me out of the way so he doesn’t have to share the spotlight.”

  “The spotlight, sir?”

  “You must have noticed how the other exiles see me.” Tagus replied. “I’m like a conquering hero, come to rescue them from sheer boredom.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Anyway,” Tagus continued, “we’ll dispense with whatever nonsense these farmers have encountered and return in short order...”

  Crops, in neat rows, covered much of the moon’s surface. However, a thick haze obscured many of the fields. Burke brought the shuttle closer until bits of red and orange were visible.

  “Are those fires?” he asked aloud.

  Tagus leaned toward the view screen. He murmured something inaudible before saying, “Take us down quickly!”

  In a wide spiral, the shuttle descended through the smoke rising from burning corn and other crops. Burke landed on a concrete pad beside one of Bhasin C’s agricultural centers. Domed buildings, for habitation and maintenance, were a few hundred feet away with smoldering crops lying in between.

  “Lord Bhasin mentioned particulates in the air,” Burke said. “We should wear space suits.”

  Tagus glared at his former lieutenant before rolling his eyes. “Obviously.”

  Opening a locker at the back of the shuttle, they removed two suits along with bubble helmets and laboriously pulled them on. Burke was already sweating before he secured the helmet over his head.

  “You’ve grown soft,” Tagus remarked. “You may not be in the Navy anymore, but I expect you to remain in shape at least!”

  “Yes, sir...”

  Suited up, they opened the shuttle door. Smoke, cinders, and a powdery substance flooded into the ship.

  “What the devil is this?” Tagus asked while wiping a layer of grit from his visor.

  Burke, holding a probe connected to his suit, waved it in front of him. “Spores of some sort.”

  “Whatever for?”

  Burke shrugged. “From the crops perhaps? I’m not much of a farmer...”

  “Or an officer...” Tagus grumbled.

  The two men trekked over the loose ground, crossing through some of the corn, most of which was either crushed or burnt. An agbot lay on its broken struts, blackened holes running up and down the sides of its green and orange body.

  “Some kind of energy weapon did that,” Tagus said, mildly intrigued. “Are you armed?”

  “No, sir.”

  Tagus removed a blaster pistol from a holster on his belt. “Well, thankfully I am!”

  “I believe the main building is over there,” Burke said, pointing his gloved finger. A smallish dome rose like a dark mound over the tops of the corn.

  “Their power is out,” Tagus said. “I suggest we keep our eyes peeled. No telling who we might run into.”

  Leaving the relative safety of the corn field, Tagus and Burke stood with fifty feet of open ground between them and the dome.

  “Go on then,” Tagus said, motioning with his blaster. “I’ll cover you.”

  “Perhaps I could take your blaster, sir?” Burke asked.

  “Don’t be a coward,” Tagus replied. “Get moving!”

  Tagus watched while his attaché crept unenthusiastically across the dirt scarred with vehicle tracks. Reaching a door in the side of the dome, Burke hesitated but swiped his hand across the sensor, opening it. He stepped inside but returned almost immediately.

  “You should come see this!” he shouted.

  Oh, what new hell is this? Tagus thought.

  “What is it?” he said, arriving beside Burke in front of the doorway.

  Burke motioned, and Tagus leaned his head, covered by the bubble helmet, into the dim light within the dome. A room was visible, likely a maintenance shed of some sort. Tools and other devices lay on tables and hung on racks along the wall. Farther in, a curtain of brownish fungus grew from floor to ceiling like a wall of intertwined shoots. Closer to the entrance, laying face up, a person was sprawled on the floor. For a split second, Tagus wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but even his dull mind began piecing the image together.

  From the dead man’s horrified face, from the hole where his eye had been, a green stalk rose nearly two feet, topped with a spore sack on the end.

  Tagus pulled his head back through the entrance and wordlessly closed the door.

  Chapter Ten

  The diplomatic residence for the Erudite Concordant was in the West End of Regalis, along a main boulevard called Embassy Row. A few blocks down from the consulate for the Talion Republic and the black monolith that was the Magna embassy, white marble walls surrounded the Erudite envoy’s home and diplomatic offices. As a famously xenophobic race, the Erudites usually kept the gates of their compound securely closed to outsiders. On a few occasions, the doors to the sanctum would open just wide enough to allow a few, select visitors in to meet Ambassador Abaru himself.

  Abaru did not relish these encounters. />
  From a planet called Erudun, the ambassador was the product of a highly selective and rigorously followed set of protocols related to breeding. The Erudite government, based on computer programs that tracked his parents’ genetic profile, allowed them to procreate with the sole purpose of having a child that was as close to a perfect specimen as possible. Once the baby was born, government officials would compare the child to a set of criteria including physical proportions, internal measurements, and genetic markers for future diseases, and if the results matched the ideal specimen, within limited tolerances, the birth would be considered a success. If not, the paired parents would never mate again, at least not with each other.

  Children matching the ideal were henceforth known as Omegas. Those who did not match were called Omicrons.

  Ambassador Abaru was an Omega, while all his janitorial staff were Omicrons.

  In the embassy courtyard, a single tree rose from a circle of white gravel surrounded by alabaster tiles. The slender branches were graced with reddish leaves and buds of pink flowers. As perfectly symmetrical as possible, the tree appeared almost artificial, but Abaru stood beneath it with a pair of pruning shears, clipping off branches to maintain its aesthetic balance.

  One of his staff, wearing a stiff tunic with a high collar, approached. Both Erudites had blue skin, a narrow mouth and no ears or nose. Dressed nearly the same and almost identical physically, they could have been twins.

  “The guests will be arriving shortly,” the staff member said.

  Abaru surveyed the branch he was about to trim, his head cocked to one side.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “It looks perfect.”

  “Hmmm,” Abaru murmured and then clipped the branch. He handed the scissors to his staffer. “There’s always room for improvement...”

  The Abbot of the Dharmesh Monastery arrived by gravcar at the Erudite embassy, accompanied by the monastery Prior and two acolytes. The Abbot, an elderly Dahl with gray hair twisted around his pointy ears, rarely visited Regalis, preferring the pristine air of the Palatine Mountains to the smog and congestion of the capital city. He found the ride in the gravcar especially unnerving, but did his best not to lose face, or his dinner, in front of the two younger monks.