Lockdown Tales

by Neal Asher

  ‘And that will result in most of us dying?’ Eller asked.

  Rune turned to him. The drone was low down. He had no doubt the bodies in the cellar had been discovered now. He also had no doubt the drone had scanned that cellar and was listening in on various conversations, perhaps thousands of conversations.

  ‘Do you know about mutation?’

  ‘Yes, I understand the theories,’ Eller replied.

  ‘You are widely read, then.’

  Eller nodded agreement.

  Rune continued, ‘Radiation increases mutation rates. The plagues the Groogers would sow, which would be bad enough by themselves, would mutate. This would result in more than three quarters of the population of this world dying. Social and technological collapse would be another consequence. It would probably take you five hundred years to get back to the level you are at now.’

  The drone began moving out of the city. Rune wondered what it was tracking now: the micro impressions of tire treads in the roads, fragments of conversation concerning sightings of their car, or perhaps it had begun following the military vehicles heading out of the city along the road they had taken. As it came above those vehicles he felt the wash of terahertz scan and the flash of a vortex laser passing over their car, and then Eller and himself. The drone accelerated with a flash of bright thrusters – now no longer burning dirty at all.

  ‘What was that?’ said Eller.

  ‘A friend is coming,’ Rune replied, reaching out and resting a hand on his shoulder. ‘Let’s give him room to land.’

  Eller went with him as they moved back to stand beside a monument that had been erected here in the far past. The thing looked vaguely like a Celtic cross and was one of the early symbols of the Cheever religion. Eller rested a hand against it and stared wide eyed at the sky. The drone came faster and faster, then slowed over the mountain with a wash of grav. It descended, utterly black in this light, and only visible to Eller when it reached twenty feet above the ground.

  ‘God in Heaven,’ said Eller.

  ‘No, not really, Rune replied.

  The drone came down gently for something weighing many tons. But when its feet touched and it turned off grav, it sagged briefly, feet splintering stone as it scuttled round to face them. After a moment its eyes glimmered red, then other things began to happen. Blue light emitted from patches all over its surface, lighting up the area. Light gleamed from within joints. Its surface swam with waves of colour, finally settling on a grey and brown camouflage pattern. It then just stood there watching them.

  ‘What does it want?’ Eller asked.

  ‘At this point I have no idea,’ Rune replied, which was part of the excitement of it all really. At his words the drone shifted, it then spoke.

  ‘Human,’ it said in the old tongue.

  ‘Use their language,’ Rune replied. ‘It’s rude to do otherwise.’

  The drone made a sound suspiciously like a snort. It then rose up a little and directed the claw with the Gatling cannon on it towards Rune.

  ‘Show yourself to me, Polity man,’ it said.

  Rune glanced over at Eller for a moment, then turned his attention inward, assessing his condition. All his internals were compacted and hyper dense now, which in turn hindered full function. His external appearance remained stable with very little showing through. He realised that the drone could not see him completely and, though it had said ‘Polity man’ wanted to be utterly sure.

  Rune relaxed his chameleonware and the self-imposed strictures on his physical form. Concertinaed and collapsed growth expanded, bones opened out along shear planes, organics spread and bulked, densely compressed oxygen and hydrogen combining into water for that purpose but also providing energy for other changes. Systems unpacked themselves and spread, fusion nodes expanded and then fired up, flooding his body with energy. He felt the baggy overall grow tight on him and within just a few seconds he stood a head and shoulders taller than Eller. He tore off the sleeves so his arms would not be constricted, felt buttons ping away down the front of the overalls and their legs split as he kicked off slippers now too small for his feet. Looking at his arms he saw the flesh translucent and grey but with optics gleaming from within, bionic threads shifting, bones as dark shadows with silvery tech etched into their surfaces. He looked down at Eller as the man backed off, utterly bewildered and terrified, crouching down by the monument as if it might offer protection.

  Meanwhile Rune’s links to the whole of himself, threaded through underspace about this world, strengthened. Via this he also connected to those parts of himself he had left monitoring other worlds, swimming through nebulae, etched into dark planetoids and tumbling around bright suns. And the whole of himself focused in on the body here.

  ‘Seen enough?’ he asked.

  The drone grunted dismissively. Then turned away and walked over to the edge of the Flat Top and peered down at the primitive civilization spread out below. Rune shrugged, smiled and gestured to Eller to stand up. The man did so, then followed him as he walked out to stand beside the drone.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Rune asked.

  ‘I think you know,’ the drone replied. ‘Just as I know you.’

  ‘You recognise me?’ Rune asked.

  ‘You were a Polity brat creating war virtualities who interviewed me. Later you were a man who travelled with me, while you decided on virtual existence or real. I see you made the correct decision.’

  ‘Good times,’ Rune said, nodding. ‘And you’re Amistad, perhaps one of the oldest drones still in existence.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’ Amistad reached forwards and gently tipped over a rock. It tumbled down out of sight. ‘Plenty of the old guard still about.’

  ‘How did you end up underneath that lava flow?’ He gestured to Eller. ‘Here they would think it happened during the Fall, the war, but we both know better.’

  ‘Ah the war – the good old days, Rune,’ said Amistad. ‘When dangers still threatened and an old war drone could find useful employment. But after most of your lot all but sublimed things ceased to be so interesting. I came here when the humans here were stumbling out of their cold coffins in their old colony ship. They had a hell of a time getting their stuff out and onto a nearby island. I hung around to watch.’ Amistad gestured off in the distance. ‘The volcano erupted and lava flowed down towards me. Didn’t bother to get out of the way – there seemed no point.’

  ‘I would have thought such an intelligent entity as yourself would have been able to find something to occupy his time.’

  Amistad shrugged. ‘We are creatures of action and physicality.’ He tapped his claw against the ground for a moment, then continued, ‘Why did you dig me up?’

  ‘I felt it was time for you to engage with the physical world again.’

  ‘And take actions,’ said Amistad.

  ‘You’ve seen how things are here?’

  ‘I have. Why don’t you correct those things?’

  ‘Free will – stuff like that.’

  ‘The intricate thinking of AI and now Polity humans,’ said the drone. ‘Why push a stone off a wall…’ Amistad did just that again. ‘… when you can play snooker with asteroids half a light year away, finally altering the course of a small one so it will enter atmosphere few hundred years later and do the job for you.’

  ‘You exaggerate.’

  ‘Do I really?’

  ‘Tell me what you see here.’ Rune gestured towards the plain below and out towards the islands.

  ‘Exactly what you see: warfare, biotech and fissile weapons, perfect storm putting them back into the Stone Age.’ The drone then pointed a claw behind. ‘I also see lots of heavily armed soldiers driving up the track to here.’

  Rune nodded contemplatively. ‘Then I’ll stop the word games. I want you to end this war in such a way that unifies the peoples here.’

  Amistad dipped, perhaps in acquiescence, perhaps just acknowledging the confirmati
on of what he had expected. The drone then turned round to face back across the stony ground. ‘And what about those soldiers?’

  Rune focused his attention – all of his attention – down the track from where Eller had parked the sedan. Eller could not see them because trees and part of the mountain were in the way, but Rune, via his whole self, could see two trucks and another sedan. Twenty soldiers in the trucks and in the sedan the Bishop and some of his retinue. He considered letting them get up here and allowing the drone to deal with them then, but it would be pointless grandstanding.

  ‘Don’t kill them,’ he replied. ‘Just stop them.’

  With a smacking sound a streak of light issued from Amistad – the tail fire of a small missile. It took a looping course outwards and then down. In the track ahead of the vehicles it shot straight into the cliff made when the track was carved out. The detonation seemed to shine through the rock, highlighting its cracks in bright light. The cliff bulged out and then collapsed dropping tons of stone across the track.

  ‘And now, about this war…’ said Rune.

  ‘Okay,’ Amistad replied. ‘I will stop this war. I’ll endeavour to keep the casualty count down and I’ll unify them, since invasion and subjugation are a form of unification.’

  The drone abruptly rose in a wash of grav, and then fifty feet in the sky fired up his thrusters and shot away towards the coast. Rune looked into Eller’s stunned expression and gestured to him. They walked over to the edge again to look out.

  ‘It’s going to fight for us?’ he asked.

  Rune shook his head. ‘It is going to do precisely what I asked it to do, and there is a relatively simple way to do that, which I suspect it will take.’

  ‘End the war,’ Eller said, then looked at Rune shrewdly. ‘If that drone had been somewhere on the islands you would have been talking to one of them right now. The fact that you are here with me now is just because its location was here in Cheever.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘What happened back there?’ Eller gestured to where Amistad had fired the missile.

  ‘Your Bishop and some soldiers – Amistad collapsed the cliff beside the track to stop them.’

  ‘It killed them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So we are trapped here and they will come.’

  ‘I think they will shortly have other more urgent concerns.’

  The first blasts lit up the factories around Foreton, then further explosions lit up the harbour. Rune observed an armaments barge exploding, then further ignitions as it tossed its contents all around. But this was just the warm up – Amistad was just testing how to blow up munitions using the least amount of energy, since the drone did not have an endless supply. A moment later a blue line cut the air out to sea, then a massive explosion cut a hole in the side of one of the island sea forts. He analysed scan data. The drone had used a particle beam to burn through into a munitions store there. The next sea fort, one of those built up on steel legs, exploded leaving only its legs standing. Another blew out its sides and its legs twisted toppling it into the sea. Next came a pause. He wondered if the drone was allowing the bad news to travel and then checked radio transmissions. The personnel of all the sea forts were now receiving correctly coded orders to abandon their positions. The drone would give them the time for that.

  ‘It’s destroying our defences!’ Eller objected.

  ‘It is indeed.’ Rune glanced back. The soldiers were clambering over the rubble down there, while the Bishop’s car was turning round to take him back to Foreton. He reached over and grabbed the back of Eller’s uniform, hauled him up and slung him over one shoulder. He then jumped the wall, hit the steep slope and bounded down it, initiating grav and slinging out force fields to control their descent. With Eller yelling all the way they finally reached a copse on the side of the mountain, just beside where the track wound down, where Rune deposited him.

  ‘Amistad will destroy all your sea forts,’ he told the man. ‘Wait here.’

  Rune walked out into the middle of the track as the sedan came down into sight. It braked hard, skidding on the gravel, then doubtless in response to an order from the Bishop, accelerated again. He ran to meet it, shouldering into the front of the thing, feet cutting grooves in the track as he brought the vehicle to a halt with the engine stalling.

  Guards piled out and one opened up on him with a machinegun. The bullets dented his skin to simply fall out smoking as he moved in, back handed the man to deposit him on his back on the track. Two others never even got to fire their weapons as he stepped up to them and slammed their heads together. He then reached in and took hold of the cowering Bishop and threw him out on the grass at the side of the road.

  ‘Why?’ Eller asked. He had not stayed in the copse.

  ‘For you.’ Rune gestured at the car.

  Eller nodded as he moved forwards, stooped and pulled a sidearm from the holster of one of the guards.

  ‘For me?’ Rune enquired, eying the weapon.

  Eller turned and fired once, the shot hitting the Bishop in the centre of his face and blowing his brains out the back of his head. He then turned back, pointing the gun at Rune.

  ‘You told me the drone will destroy the sea forts.’

  ‘It will, all of them, and then it will work inland steadily destroying your weapons factories and stores. Just a few hours after the forts are gone the Groogers will know about it. I expect it will take them three days to launch their invasion. They’ll want to prepare, but they won’t want to leave it too long and give you time to set up new defences.’

  ‘And the war will be over.’

  ‘It will be hard here for a very long time.’

  Eller nodded, tossed the pistol away and stepped over to the car. ‘I think, once I’ve collected my family, I’ll take your house in Meeps,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘The Groogers have their relict diggers as do we.’

  ‘I wondered if you might,’ Rune replied.

  ‘You didn’t wonder at all, did you, really?’

  ‘No, not really.’ Rune dipped his head in acknowledgement, turned and walked back up the track. He would disarm the soldiers and send them on their way and up there he would await Amistad’s return. Then perhaps they might ameliorate things here, maybe ease the transition of power, help the Groogers establish their rule, help the Cheevers accede to it and drive eventual integration.

  Or perhaps not.

  Okay, I have a confession to make. It’s not like I wrote every one of these stories during lockdown. My get-out is that it is during this time I decided to publish them in a collection. Some while back I wrote “Snow in the Desert” – a Polity story that owed much of its conception to spaghetti westerns. “Snow” was going to be turned into a short CGI film by Tim Miller for a project called Heavy Metal. That fell through but Miller has since moved on to doing something similar called Love, Death and Robots on Netflix. Since “Snow” had been so well received (apparently Tom Cruise said it would make a good film by itself) and since I thought it a good idea to write some more stuff with L,D&R in mind, I wrote this sfnal riff on High Plains Drifter. Nothing to lose by doing it since surely I could aim to get it published somewhere. “Monitor Logan” was first published in World War Four edited by Sam M. Phillips and Adam Bennett in 2019. This is not that version but an extended one in three parts.

  MONITOR LOGAN

  Part 1

  The crawler– a car-sized vehicle running on caterpillar treads out on arms – hammered down the track from the mountains, kicking up dust and skidding on the corners. Monitor Enders L Trepanan watched it for a moment longer then stepped over to his jeep and, grabbing the roll bar, swung inside to drop in the seat. He started it, the engine whirring softly, then took off across the jigsaw-cracked mudstone of the Flat, the jeep’s treads kicking up flakes of rock and dust. Meanwhile, the crawler had reached the Flat and was accelerating. He shortly swung in parallel to it and eyed the figure behind the bubble screen of i
ts cockpit. The man looked over and Enders gestured for him to stop. He didn’t.

  Enders accelerated, pulling ahead of the crawler, and with his right hand on the joystick drew his rail-beader from his left holster. The weapon, attached by a cable to a power supply on his belt, was all smooth white metal with polished chrome inlay. He held this up for a moment for the driver to see, then fired into the ground ahead of the crawler. The weapon crackled and mudstone erupted in a line before the vehicle but it swerved and still did not stop. He fired again, closer, spraying the front screen with broken stone. The crawler swerved again, hit a pothole then skidded and jounced sideways. Its turbine started to wind down and the driver lowered his head to the control console. It settled in a cloud of dust.

  Enders circled round to bring his jeep in close and parked. Holstering his beader, he climbed out, but now took a laser carbine from the inside pocket of one door before walking over. As he drew closer, the man inside looked across at him. Enders rested his carbine across his shoulder and beckoned. After a pause, the man stood up and headed back into the body of the vehicle. A door popped open in the side and he stepped out. Enders studied him.

  He was tall and thin and clad in overalls, his skin grey, tendrils depending either side of his mouth, shifting slightly. The man’s face had no nose and his hands were three-fingered. He held these out to the side to show no weapons, and stepped forwards.

  ‘Big hurry,’ Enders commented.

  The stone man gazed at him steadily with amber eyes, then said, ‘You are Monitor Trepanan. You have no power here. Earth jurisdiction is to be rescinded.’