Robogenesis (45 page)

“Thanks, Houdini,” I say.

I stand up and dust off the front of my jeans. Run a diagnostic gaze over Houdini’s sprawled-out body. Black liquid leaks from his polymer musculature. But the wounds are not bad enough to completely disable the machine.

“Reboot,” I say, pushing my mind into him. Without struggling, the spider tank disables low-level safety restrictions. “Get up, buddy. That’s it.…”

A few stray bullets whine past me and I do not flinch. Houdini’s huge legs shiver and paw the air. Grumbling, he tears a furrow into the dirt as he crawls back onto all fours. The sun is eclipsed by Houdini’s solid bulk as, once again, he stands over me.

“On me,” I say.

Crunching over rubble in my dirty white tennis shoes, Houdini keeps pace over my head. A dozen tanklets appear behind us and I turn and point my left hand at them. Above me, Houdini’s turret grinds, orienting to where my arm is aimed.

I make another fist.
Boom
.

My hair shivers as a concussive thump detonates over my head. Houdini’s turret throws flame. A plume of dirt leaps out of the turf, glinting with pieces of shattered tanklets. It falls back in a slow waterfall, leaving a smear of dust on the wind. I rake my fingers across the sky and Houdini’s turret strafes a cluster of incoming dragonflies. They spiral out of the sky like burning leaves.

I am small, but my mind is big.

“EXCON online,” I transmit. “All GHA fighters, form on me.”

My footsteps boom over the road in time to Houdini’s. My fingers
vomit flame from Houdini’s turret. We are a dyad, our minds linked in battle. Wherever I point, our enemies are erased. Others join us as we maneuver up the hill, within a klick and a half of the tunnel mouth. A ragged squad of soldiers settles in on my right flank.

I see a familiar face: Cormac Wallace, hunched on top of his battered tall walker and keeping pace on my four o’clock. His wife and baby are at the tunnel, and I can see the fear of what’s coming for them on his face.

“To the tunnel mouth! Now!” he shouts, leaning in his saddle.

I break into a jog, and over my head, so does Houdini.

“Mathilda,” says Timmy. “Come in. Please come in.”

“Go ahead,” I say, trotting up the road toward the tunnel mouth.

Timmy makes a relieved sound, then sucks in a breath.

“Be advised,” he continues. “Another hostile army is incoming. It’s the Tribe.”

DATABASE ID: NINE OH TWO

Executive thought thread alert: My friends are dying.

Arayt’s armored tanks and infantry are acting together in synchronicity on the plains, moving like fingers on a hand. Cotton Army is reacting too quickly to the maneuvers of Gray Horse Army, feinting and counterattacking with brutal organization. This battle is a mathematical equation, and even with my limited forecasting abilities I can project how it will inevitably unfold.

Despite repeated attempts, the freeborn have not responded to my distress calls. Maxprob indicates this battle will end at the tunnel mouth. We will in all likelihood die together on the front doorstep of Freeborn

City.

Protecting the only road up the mountain, my human squad is falling back in measured sprints. Our mission is to stop the advancing enemy forces before they can reach the refugees of Gray Horse at the entrance to Freeborn City.

We are failing.

A shell whines past and impacts just beyond the ridge where my squad has taken cover. Soldiers around me duck and grovel as a spray of shrapnel perforates the air. My pieced-together armor is slashed, but
velocity projections do not indicate a risk of my casing being pierced. Instead of crouching, I stand alert at my full height, antenna deployed and trinocular vision homed on a target a klick away.

Houdini. The biggest spider tank. And walking underneath is Mathilda Perez. The girl appears safe, for now. But they will try to hurt her.

My human
.

What a curious observation. I devote a few cycles to saving my current state for later reflection.

Secondary thought thread: A nearby squad mate is producing grunting noises. Injury likely. Initiate visual inspection. Shrapnel has sliced open his forearm. Suffering from medical shock, he is breathing in shallow gasps and watching the blood spurt. I stride quickly to his position behind a rock outcrop, drop to a knee, and take his arm in my hands. I press the wound closed and clamp a finger over the brachial artery on the inside of his elbow. Silently, I radio for the squad medic. Like machines, people can be fixed. They can be saved.

As I wait, ignoring the weak struggling of my wounded squad mate, I hear a series of forceful popping sounds that localize to a point nearly two kilometers away, on the southern plains. The pattern indicates coordinated firing designed to eliminate evasive routes. Impacts are already hammering into the roadside. Peeking over the rock outcrop, I spot an advance team of Cotton Army exo-soldiers sprinting, winding up the route as Mathilda is slowed by the shelling.

They’re going to trap her. And then they’re going to kill her.

“EXCON,” I radio. “Arbiter squad initiating assist at your position.”

“Negative,” responds Mathilda. “Advised to reinforce tunnel mouth.”

“Requesting permission to break from Arbiter squad and assist—”

“Negative.”

“EXCON, you are under coordinated attack. You need assistance.”

“Niner, the slave army is headed for the tunnel mouth. They’re coming right up the mountainside. They’re skipping the road. Repeat, reinforce.”

I hesitate. An observation thread indicates the medic has arrived and is preparing to patch up my soldier. Squad mates are aiming eyes at me,
awaiting instruction. Houdini is trotting now, trying to weave out of harm’s way. Failing.

Before I can radio, Mathilda speaks again.

“Let go, Niner,” she says. “Trust me.”

The tunnel that leads into Freeborn City is a black semicircle embedded in a sheer cliff face. It gapes at us from the top of a steep parking lot. In broken white letters on the rusted tunnel mouth are the words
Cheyenne Mountain Complex
. A razor-wire fence spreads out from the mouth and circles the parking lot. Thousands of refugees are clustered here, barely protected by a couple of squads. A few sergeants are shouting commands, prodding families to fall back to the tunnel mouth. The parking lot is covered in supplies: blankets, clothes, makeshift wagons, and a couple of horses wandering around.

I order my soldiers to set up a fire line fifty yards from the tunnel mouth. The experienced soldiers spread out along the edges, looking for cover. As they move out, I hook a hand under the bumper of a burned-out sedan. Drag it over and arrange it into cover. The others find more wrecks and work together to begin making a wall.

A sergeant approaches, his expression indicating appreciation.

“Local status?” I ask, voice grinding.

“Sir,” says the man. “The battle on the plains south of here is going poorly, but they’re holding them off. Problem is that we’ve got another army coming up the eastern ridge. Some new variety of spider tank with infantry attached on leashes.”

“Resources?”

“Anybody who can fire a weapon is reinforcing our troops, for what it’s worth. The ones who can’t fight are waiting at the tunnel mouth. I have advised them not to take cover inside the tunnel unless we hear from the freeborn.”

“Acknowledged. Freeborn status … unresponsive.”

“We been knocking on the door but they don’t want to come out and play.”

I turn to the tunnel mouth. On all frequencies, I transmit her designation one more time: “Adjudicator Alpha Zero. Acknowledge.”

Nothing.

“Status, Private Cherrah Ridge?” I query.

“General Wallace’s wife is at the tunnel mouth with her son. She’s barely upright, but she would not agree to be disarmed.”

“Assertion. Worst case, orders are to fall back into tunnel.”

“You got it …,” says the sergeant, trailing off.

A ghost has appeared in the tunnel mouth.

The pale form of Adjudicator Alpha Zero emerges into the light. The humans around us stop what they are doing and stare, mouths open. Marching in utter silence, the Adjudicator is followed by her super-heavy-duty Sapper guards, and then by a line of freeborn that stretches off into darkness.

“Adjudicator?” I transmit.

Without responding, she strolls across the parking lot and beyond, directly across the steep mountainside. The humanoid machines are following her, due north in single file, spaced in five-meter increments, ignoring roads that were built for human vehicles. They wear a motley collection of human clothes and body armor. On long metal poles, some carry swaying litters loaded with tools and supplies.

No member of the freeborn looks in my direction. There is no Robspeak, audible or over radio. The last of my kind are walking by me like a column of phantoms—only their flickering shadows offering proof that they exist at all. The silent parade continues past us and soon stretches off into the distance. The robots become a shining line of pearls draped over the mountainside.

This is my excommunication, as promised.

Turning, I see long-legged shapes advancing up the road toward the parking lot. Slave walkers. A surge of refugees pushes past our fire line and to the mouth of the tunnel. I hear the sergeant shouting commands with sudden urgency. The parking lot empties out, save for the salvaged automobiles we have gathered as cover. In seconds, guns bristle over hoods and through the windows of open doors.

Faintly, I detect the
tink
sound of claws on pavement. “Imperative,” I transmit to the sergeant. “Check the door to Freeborn City.”

“Roger that,” he radios back.

Clustered behind a truck, my soldiers are checking their ammunition and weapon states, long fingers fluttering over deadly tools. Other guns belong to untrained humans. Old fathers and mothers who have never fought but who are ready to protect their genetic legacy. Their movements are slower and less sure. They have a significantly lower survival probability.

“Dig in!” shouts the sergeant. “Shit storm’s coming.”

Something winks in my peripheral vision.

I stand up and walk out of cover to investigate, craning my neck and pushing my vision to maximum zoom on the mountain ridge. Maxprob indicates that what I saw was a false positive generated by noise. Maxprob rejected.

I keep watching.

Nearby, a female civilian drags a large-caliber weapon out of the front seat of a car. Flips out a bipod and dimples it onto the hood of the truck. She argues quietly with a male about how to load the rounds into it.

“Hold off until they’re in range,” says the sergeant.

In the distance, I identify a slave walker climbing the steep road.

“Sir?” asks one of my soldiers. “You’re exposed, sir.”

I put up a finger. Hold. Something is happening on the ridge.

Gunfire erupts around us. My soldiers are on their knees, light machine guns peeking around the edges of this rusty white truck. Bullets are chattering. And now I hear the droning whistle of incoming plugger rounds.

“Pluggers!” someone shouts.

I feel a tug on my body armor.

“Sir, you’re gonna want to get
the fuck down
!”

The glint shines again. And this time I capture it.

Unit identified: Lark Iron Cloud.

The black frame of his parasite has been layered in scavenged armor.
He has mud wiped over his exposed casing to reduce infrared and visible identifiers. A spot has dried and cracked off, revealing a gleaming spot of black metal. Maxprob indicates that a recon squad is embedded at the top of the ridge, overseeing the freeborn withdrawal. Mass Adjudicator Alpha Zero is not willing to stay and fight, but she wants to know the outcome.

Damn her
.

I finally drop into a crouch behind the truck as plugger rounds whiz past. More are thunking into the other side of the vehicle, bouncing away and gyrating on the pavement, broken drills whining.

“Lark Iron Cloud, acknowledge,” I transmit to the ridge.

Machine-gun fire booms, punctuated by the light tinkle of empty shells hitting the ground. “Conserve your ammo!” shouts the sergeant. “They’re not coming that thick yet!”

“Repeat. Iron Cloud, you are positively identified. I am seeking assistance. Confirm?”

Another volley of pluggers slams against the wrecked vehicles and shatter into stinging swarms of shrapnel.

“Confirm?” I transmit.

“Negative, Arbiter Nine Oh Two,” he finally responds. “My orders are to observe and cover the freeborn retreat.”

I turn to assess the current battlefield situation.

A tidal wave is coming. The walkers are approaching slowly in staggered formation. An advance party composed of four-legged robots churns across the parking lot. Arayt has collected these machines, captured their weak minds in a wide net. Between the legs of loping quadrupeds, slower, mobile explosives scuttle like crabs. Cat-sized tanklets leap over their slower brothers, pincers up and ready. Over top, shrapnel bolts are zipping through the air. Some of them burst out of sleeves on timers, spraying metal fragments. Others are like confetti, Styrofoam peanuts that flutter down over our heads before detonation.

Another incoming volley.

I transmit again. “We are Gray Horse Army. Allies. Requesting assistance. Imperative.”

At the car beside us, the female begins to shout as a plugger variety skips over the hood and buries itself in her chest just below the collarbone. The male who is with her struggles to remove her armored vest. From the wet gurgle behind each of her cries we can both tell that her life span has been abbreviated. Between the crackle of gunfire, I hear the male screaming a sound over and over again.