Chromed- Rogue

by Richard Parry

  “Don’t want to go, or don’t want to die?”

  He looked at the elevators, then back to her. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “‘Oh?’”

  “You found her.” Sadie searched his face.

  “She’s dead. Carter’s gone.”

  “I’m sorry, Mason.” Sadie looked at the elevators, nodding as if agreeing to the obvious question. “I guess that means someone needs killing, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can help.” Her voice was soft.

  “I can’t ask you to.”

  “You didn’t.” Sadie strode toward the elevators. “That’s your problem. You never ask.”

  It’s not your fight. You’ll get killed. This isn’t about you. He didn’t say any of those things. “Sadie?”

  She turned. “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  She shrugged, something mischievous in her eye. “It’s not all about you. You think I’m going to settle for just one kiss? I’ve got an interest in the outcome.”

  He laughed, joining her at the elevators. His hand found hers, and they stepped into the gleaming white core of the car when it opened.

  Together.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The dark wasn’t a problem for Harry. It felt right. Natural. In the dark, people couldn’t see who he was.

  What he was.

  He looked at Lace, cradled in the digger arm’s bucket. She was out cold. The overlay spat and chattered, telling him she was okay. That she would live.

  He’d held her close, but the blast had tossed him God knows where. Spatial tracking was down, too much change, too fast. Harry was in a different part of the Reed complex. Walls were broken all around him. Hell, the damn floor and roof had holes. Harry could be up a level. Could be down a level, too.

  Could be dead. As the thought hit him, he looked at Lace, and realized: I don’t want to be dead. Not while she’s still alive.

  He turned the floodlights on the chassis way up, pushing the dark back. Harry saw a nasty bruise forming on the side of her face.

  A sound came from ahead. Harry cycled his optics. A vaulted steel door huddled below what was left of the roof. There might have been a corridor leading to it before the shit hit the fan.

  The door opened. It only opened a crack, a man in a suit stepping through. Some Reed asshole or other. Harry switched the PA on. “Hey.”

  The Reed asshole glanced about. “What the hell, right?”

  “Yeah,” agreed Harry. “Things are a little crazy around here.”

  The Reed man nodded, looking into the room behind him. The vaulted door sighed shut. “Are we going to do this?”

  Harry laughed, the PA booming around the hard edges of the rubble. He stopped laughing at the expression on the Reed man’s face. “Wait. You’re serious. Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re just a guy.”

  The man smiled. “Maybe. I don’t think you’re in on the internal company memos here.”

  “It’s been a long day.”

  The man nodded. “Right.”

  “Let’s say we call it quits.”

  The man looked at his leather shoes, already attracting dust. He frowned. “Just walk away?”

  “Just walk away.” Harry shrugged the chassis. “I’m sure you’ve got shit to do. Memos, crap like that.”

  “I’ve got shit to do. Item one is getting the infestation of rats out of the cellar.”

  “Rats? Oh, right. I get you.”

  “Tell you what.” The Reed asshole nodded to the bucket, more grime than yellow, attached to Harry’s arm. “I know you’re here for your people. It’s not gonna happen. You walk away, and I don’t kill her.”

  The chain cannon on Harry’s arm roared a line of death through the man before Harry realized he’d fired. The man’s body was torn into red, wet pieces. The cannon whirred for a moment, then clanked to a stop. Empty. He released the clamps and the cannon fell to the ground, smoke trailing from the barrels.

  A hiss of hydraulics marked the vaulted door opening again. The Reed man stepped out of the door, looking at what was left of his body on the ground.

  “What. The. Fuck,” said Harry.

  “Ain’t it cool?” The Reed asshole wore a grin big as sunrise.

  Harry stooped low, placing Lace next to a wall. He wanted to move her hair from her face, but he wasn’t built for gentle things. The chassis swiveled back to the man.

  There were three now. Another one stepped out of the doorway, making four. They all looked the same.

  “Shit,” said Harry.

  “I can do this all day.” Four voices spoke at the same time. Like mirror images, they all pulled handguns from suit jackets.

  One was on the digger arm, firing shots into the joint. Harry flung him off to splatter against the wall.

  A second climbed like a monkey onto his back, grabbing the top of the chassis. A pistol fired into the lenses of Harry’s optics. Harry tossed that one against the vaulted door where it fell, spine broken. Two more came out of the door.

  “Okay,” said Harry. “That’s how you want it?”

  The reactor on his back burned brighter, and he stepped forward.

  Three of them were on the chassis. Two on the digger arm tred to pull it off. Clever. Diggers weren’t built for combat. Harry fired up the energy shroud, the skin of the chassis crackling and sparking. A bolt of energy leaped from the tip of the digger arm, arcing to the vaulted door. The three men on him turned to ash in an instant.

  Four more came out of the door. This time, one of them held something big and heavy, a round hole staring like a sightless eye.

  Rocket launcher.

  The Reed man fired the rocket. Harry snatched one of the men next to him, tossing the body into the rocket’s path. The explosion was white and hot.

  Two more men came out of the door. All looked the same. Same suit. Same haircut. Same gun.

  “Tell me,” said Harry. “Who’s your tailor?”

  The door opened all the way. Harry saw a long room stretching into the distance. Chambers like coffins lay in rows, opening and disgorging their contents. All exact copies of the Reed man.

  That’s a lot of dudes.

  They covered him now, ropes and chains snaring the arms and legs of the chassis. The reactor on his back had an audible rumble as he pulled more and more power.

  “Harry,” said Lace, the link fluttering. “You need to cut the source.”

  “Don’t move. Don’t let him know you’re awake.” Harry fired the shroud again, bodies smoking as they fell from him.

  “Harry, it’s in there.” A map fell over Harry’s overlay, amber wireframes showing a box at the end of the room. She’d marked it with a little pot of gold icon. “There’s point defense in the room, but there’s a lot of shit to use as cover in there. Don’t stand still.”

  “Okay.” Harry ran, pushing off with metal feet, the chassis gouging tracks in the floor as he sped up. Harry slammed through Reed asshole replicas as he pushed the chassis harder and faster. He made it through the open vaulted door and into the chamber beyond.

  A railgun fired. The digger arm sheared off, the edges of the break glowing white-hot. Harry moved faster. He pushed the chassis harder than he ever had before. His overlay lit with alarms. Tolerances exceeded. Stresses overloaded. He cleared the errors.

  A sea of Reed assholes washed over him, the coffins spitting out constructs faster and faster. They were a mob, a flow, moving like a fluid. One was over his optics. He couldn’t see. The wireframe Lace gave him guided Harry. A railgun round tore through the left side of the chassis, and he felt cold. Actual, real cold. He almost laughed despite the pain.

  They’d punctured the core. The heart of the chassis.

  Reed men were everywhere he could see. One pushed a pistol into the breach made by the railgun. A coffin, different to the rest, lay in front of him. Harry tore the lid from it.

  The Reed men around him
stuttered, stumbling in mid-action.

  The same man lay in the coffin, blinking watery eyes against the sudden light. “Don’t—”

  Harry smashed a metal hand down. Red sprayed out from the coffin. He kept smashing until there wasn’t anything left.

  “You need to get up now.” Lace’s voice was quiet across the link.

  “I’m tired,” said Harry.

  “You still need to get up.”

  “I’m dying,” he said.

  “I’m going to die down here too if you don’t get up.” She coughed. “Stop being a selfish asshole.”

  Harry looked around, fallen Reed assholes in all directions. The chassis whined, the once-smooth action marred by the damage he’d taken. No spare parts for him. Not anymore. Still. He could probably get Lace out. One last job, before he bled out into the bubble of gel holding what was left of him inside the chassis. “Always one more thing, isn’t it?”

  “Always.” Lace’s voice held hope. “I’m thinking of having a barbecue this weekend. Just a couple friends. If you want to come, that is.”

  “I—”

  “Or a movie,” she said. “You and me. We could watch a movie.”

  Harry pushing himself upright, arm complaining. “I’d like that.”

  “There’s one small detail.”

  “What’s that?” Harry clanked toward the open vault door.

  Her voice was tiny, the words coming in a rush. “You have to promise not to die before the weekend.”

  Harry held a hand out in front of his optics. He turned the metal around in the light from the chassis. Best money can buy. “It’s a deal.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Mason eyed Gairovald. The head of Apsel Federate sat behind a desk so black it looked like the absence of color. He felt a lot more comfortable since looting a weapons locker on the way up. Every little bit helps. Sadie stood at Mason’s back, holding a rifle. The rifle was trained on Gairovald. Mason held his Tenko-Senshin, not sure where the next ten minutes would take him.

  No guards had stopped them. Not a soul stood between Mason, Sadie, and Gairovald Apsel. Either Carter had killed all the people, or they’d left of their own free will. Gairovald’s office was as expansive and lush as Mason remembered. Gairovald himself waited for them, signature flower pinned to his suit.

  Gairovald didn’t look angry or sad. He looked carved from stone. Mason’s optics switched to thermal, noting the brilliant fire of a reactor and dark blue of bionics. Rumors said Old Man Gairovald was hundreds of years old. Old enough to know a dead city named Richland.

  Mason smiled. “You’re probably wondering how your day turned out this way.”

  Gairovald steepled his fingers. “The question has crossed my mind.”

  “Here it is. You killed one of my friends, and—”

  “It was a machine.” Gairovald raised an eyebrow. “A computer.”

  “And you’re going to burn for it.”

  Sadie stepped forward, standing shoulder to shoulder with Mason. “What was a machine?”

  Gairovald raised an eyebrow. Mason thought the movement looked like he’d learned it from a book on how people act. “You haven’t told her?”

  “It’s not important what your friends are made of.” Mason glanced at Sadie. She was focused on Gairovald, the same way you’d look at a bomb about to blow.

  “Do you want to know how it started?” Gairovald stood, looking out the window. He clasped his hands behind his back, looking for all the world like a man in control.

  “Not really,” admitted Mason.

  “Hear me out,” suggested Gairovald. “Be a professional.”

  “You’re playing that card?” Mason thought about it. It might be nice to have a few answers. “Sure, okay.”

  “Entertainment. We own the energy market. We make good enough weapons. A few strong patents in medical keep things interesting. But our entertainment division can’t bear its own weight.”

  “The fat man.” Mason nodded. “Synthetic Entertainment. What’s your point?”

  Gairovald spared Mason a glance. “The point is people want to be excited. They want to be entertained. Whether it’s bread and butter intercourse or the more diverse pleasures of Mr. Aster—”

  “Aster doesn’t have pleasures anymore.”

  Gairovald took in Mason’s black armor as if for the first time. Mason could see Gairovald focus on the blood spatters before facing the window. “It hardly matters. The trick is to give people what they want.”

  “And this relates to Carter how?”

  “She was the start,” said Gairovald. “We wanted to make an AI that—”

  “Wait,” said Sadie. “Carter’s an AI?”

  Mason nodded. “She was.”

  “Sure, okay.” Sadie frowned.

  “Quite,” said Gairovald. “It’s because—”

  “You’re saying,” Sadie talked over the top of Gairovald, “you made an actual person?”

  “It wasn’t a person,” said Gairovald. “It was made to be all things to all people. We made it to know humans and entertain them.”

  “Huh.” Sadie looked at her rifle. “Seems you made her to be human.”

  “It.”

  “Her,” corrected Sadie. “I spoke to Carter. I spoke to her. I knew her.”

  “You were speaking to a machine,” said Gairovald. “Nothing more than a collection of if-then statements, a construct that matched patterns.”

  Sadie gripped her rifle like she would tear it in half. Like she wanted to use it to erase a mistake but hadn’t worked up a good enough reason. “I knew a good person.”

  Gairovald laughed. “Mr. Floyd, where did you find this delightful woman? So naïve.”

  Sadie pulled the trigger. The rifle clicked, the magazine falling out. She looked down. “Shit.”

  Mason put a hand on her rifle, pointing it to the floor. “I’ve been wondering. All these gates.”

  Gairovald straightened his cuffs, ignoring the minor issue of Sadie trying to shoot him. Wouldn’t be polite or professional to comment. “What of them?”

  “Apsel’s not big into energy, is it? It’s big into gates.” Mason pointed the Tenko-Senshin at the window and the world outside. “We don’t make safe fusion. We make gates to pipe energy around.”

  Gairovald’s face crinkled into a genuine smile. “You worked it out. I’m very impressed. There’s still a place for you here, if you want it.”

  “I think we’re past lies.” Mason pointed the Tenko-Senshin at Gairovald. The little weapon hummed.

  “I suppose we are. Wait.”

  Mason tilted his weapon to the side. “Let me guess. A last request?”

  “Don’t you want to know where the gates go?”

  Mason frowned. “Is it important?”

  “It could be the most important thing.” Gairovald smiled, all teeth. “If you know the secret, you might not want to kill me so quickly. Because if the gates fall out of control, if the balance is lost—”

  “Fuck’s sake,” said Mason. “It’s like putting up with another mandatory company memo. Where do the gates go?”

  “They are powered by fusion.” Gairovald pointed outside, the dawn touching the sky. “They’re the tiniest, smallest gap into the heart of our closest star.”

  Silence settled. Sadie looked at the sun. “You’re mad.”

  Gairovald stared. “That’s not the reaction I expected.”

  “What happens if one of those gates opens too much?” Her voice carried the same incredulity Mason felt, but reached the punchline faster.

  “Then we all burn.” Gairovald pointed at Mason’s chest, where his reactor lay. “All the energy you could ever need, locked in the heart of a star. You wouldn’t want the man who knows how all that works to die, would you?”

  “Carter knew.” Mason felt the truth of it.

  “Maybe.” Gairovald shrugged. “It worked a lot of things out. Doesn’t matter anymore. It’s gone.”

  “I’m in here, gu
n in hand. I’ve noticed you don’t seem worried by it.” Mason looked at Gairovald over the Tenko-Senshin. “I’m pretty sure we can work the gate thing out without you. If there was a lot of risk you’d have squared that away by now. Marginalized it to protect the investment. So, why aren’t you worried about me?” Mason would have missed the subtle movement of Gairovald’s eyes if the lattice hadn’t seen it. Gairovald’s involuntary glance darted to the wood-paneled wall at the back of the room. “Ah. You think you’ve got a way out.”

  Gairovald moved, no transition between standing still to building up speed. He vaulted the black desk, grabbing the edge of it and tossing it at Mason before sprinting to the back of the room.

  Mil-spec. Nothing but the best for the boss.

  Mason hardly noticed the table, his eyes drawn to the wood paneling opening on silent hinges. He nudged the lattice and it pushed Sadie to the side, away from the path of the desk. Mason took two steps, swinging the sword, then stopped.

  The desk splintered against the wall. Gairovald coughed, a wet sound, before his torso parted in a diagonal line from shoulder to waist. Red and white fluids bubbled through the wound. He coughed again. “But…”

  Gairovald Apsel died.

  Behind the panel stood a gate. Mason had seen one at The Hole. Not as finely constructed as this one, but Gairovald’s personal gate was a finished product, not the prototype. Crystals nestled in a ring under the gate mechanism. They held the promise of light but lay dormant.

  “What is it?” Sadie reached to the control panel on the front of the machine.

  Mason put a hand on her arm. “Let’s not touch that just yet. It’s a gate.”

  “A gate?” She took a step back.

  “A gate.” Mason looked across the city to the Reed tower. Clouds boiled against it. Laia was there, and Mason felt they were running out of time. “I’m pretty sure we don’t need to get to the roof for an aircraft. We can use the gate.”

  “Do you know how it works?”

  “No clue. Let’s see.” Mason approached the control panel, trying to remember how Haraway turned the other one on. He pressed the largest button he could see.