Robot Wrecker

by Paul Tomlinson

  Nathan and I approached the crater and peered cautiously over the rim: the cop lay in an undignified heap, his suit dusty but undamaged. My home-baked explosive device had a little additional pulse that had temporarily knocked out his electronics. Inside the suit, he'd be shaken but unhurt, and unable to move until his diagnostics had run their course and rebooted his control software. This gave us about three seconds for Nathan to fire a Zap gun at the suit to permanently frazzle the transmitters so that Mr. Plod wouldn't be able to call for back-up anytime soon. Nathan aimed and fired, then we turned and ran. We weren't going to get close to the cop until we were sure it was safe.

  Nathan had wanted to use a high power Zap charge and fry the cop's nerves as well as the transmitter in his suit, leave him helplessly twitching like a fish out of water, but I'd vetoed this as crude and unsporting – that kind of assault can result in permanent nerve damage, maybe epilepsy, and I didn't want that on my conscience. I didn't use this argument with Nathan: I told him that Zap was a little unsubtle, and would take away the thrill of the chase. And the cop would be completely unaware of what was happening to him, which would spoil the fun. Better, I thought, to take out the suit's mechanics and have him keel over into the rubble, conscious but immobile. It would be just like bringing down the robots back home! I wanted to give our quarry a sporting chance. Not that he really needed one. He was already beginning to move his limbs as Nathan and I backed away from the crater ready for the next stage of our stalking game.

  The cop's hearing would be jacked way up, and his sight augmented with infrared and some kind of motion detection unit. Plus he had three-hundred-and-sixty degree normal vision playing back like multi-screen TV on the inside of his mirrored visor.

  These patrolmen usually have brain implants, like hyperspeed interface units, intercepting signals directed towards the man's muscles, and moving the exo-skeleton limbs almost before the flesh and blood inside responded: no delay between thought and translation into stimulus for the mechanics equals faster reaction time. A suited policeman could lift eight times his own weight without apparent effort. His armour could resist penetration by anything short of a point blank armour piercing bullet.

  "Halt!" The cop called out in an amplified cop voice. He got to his feet and scanned the area. He looked at the read-out on his forearm data pad – the flashing warnings would be telling him that he could no longer send or receive data or communications, and that his suit was effectively in limp-home mode. Cop protocol was that he should get to a communication node and jack in, call for back-up. His readout was telling him where the nearest node was – a couple of miles away. We'd picked this point carefully. If he headed for the node, he knew we'd be long gone by the time reinforcements arrived.

  Nathan leaped a pile of rubble and landed beside me, the Zap Gun buzzing as it recharged. The patrolman moved towards us. I hit the second stud on my transmitter, and the incendiaries went off up and down the block: hot-spots all over, not much help from infrared now. Nathan and I headed for the warehouse, dodging from fire to fire as if we were using them for cover, knowing he'd follow our motion traces, leading him to where our next trap was ready and waiting for him.

  There was a large fire of old timbers and pallets burning in the ruined warehouse, which would conceal us if we stood motionless behind it. Hopefully our local bobby would assume that's where we both were. We entered the warehouse only a couple of seconds ahead of him. The place was in semi-darkness, light coming from the bonfire and a hole in the roof high above. The only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the whirr of the exo-skeleton's servos as the cop came in, keeping close to the wall, scanning the shadows for us. The cop's gun was drawn. In the firelight he was a faceless metal monster.

  "This is the police. Give yourselves up and you will not be harmed."

  This probably wasn't true: most patrol cops weren't above dishing out a little grievous bodily before they took their prisoners into custody. The gun was a worry until we had control of his suit, so as I sat down with my computer behind the bonfire, I triggered a little heat flare at the far end of the warehouse. It burned very briefly, looking in infrared like someone suddenly peeping out from a hiding place.

  "Freeze, or I fire!"

  I set off another flare a few metres to the left of the first. The cop opened fire, bullets smacking into the concrete wall above the flares, spent cases a rain of tinkling bells at his feet.

  Nathan dropped suddenly from the rafters, abseiling like a bloated spider in his improvised body armour. He was behind the cop before his movements even registered, and slapped the transmitter on the back of the policeman's neck. Then it was up to me: if I misjudged, the cop would turn and fire, and the home-made armour would do little to protect Nathan from the point-blank bullets. If I got it right, my computer would jam the signals from the cops brain implants, and his exo-skeleton would seize up, giving me control of his mechanical muscles, and making him a virtual prisoner at my mercy. And Nathan's, because it was his idea.

  I hit the key sequence, whispered a prayer to the binary gods: I'd gambled on tonight's star prize, and Nathan's life was forfeit if I was wrong. Round and round and round she goes, where she stops...

  For a second I thought I'd blown it, and I saw the same thought in Nathan's expression: the cop started to turn, raising his gun.

  Then he froze.

  I had won a night for two with the police cyborg of my choice.

  Nathan and I loaded the now immobile cop into the back of a van we'd stolen earlier. We had our prize: but what were we going to do with him exactly? Trust Nathan to have an answer to that one.

  We drove twenty-odd miles across the county to another blitzed zone, not wanting to be in the same area as any possible police search for the kidnapped cop. As Nathan drove, I removed the policeman's homing device and tossed it out of the window onto the back of a speeding salvage truck heading in the opposite direction: with any luck it would be hours before the police finally caught up with the truck and discovered their man wasn't on it.

  Nathan had a hideout even I hadn't known about, and it was here that we unloaded our pet cop, and stood him up in pride of place in the middle of the floor.

  "Time for the great unmasking!" Nathan said. He reached up and unsnapped the releases on the policeman's helmet.

  The cop was red-faced, perspiring: I guess we'd trashed the environmental controls on the suit too. And 'he' turned out to be a she. Those bulky suits are really not very flattering. She looked hacked off and afraid in about equal measure. "You two are going to be really sorry you did this," she said.

  "Is there any way we can turn off her voice?" Nathan asked.

  "Not unless you want to cut out her tongue," I said.

  "You don't scare me for a minute," the cop said. I wasn't sure whether she was trying to convince us or herself. She was certainly paler now, but that might just have been that she was cooling down a little.

  "I'll build a fire," Nathan said. "We haven't roasted a pig in ages."

  "Don't start without me," I said. "I'm going to get rid of that van before someone spots it."

  Chapter Nine

  I was a little worried that Nathan would do something really unpleasant to the cop while I was gone, but I was more worried about what we were actually going to do with her in the long term. We weren't going to kill her, that had never been the plan. But once we had her out of the suit, how were we going to get her back to her police comrades without putting ourselves at risk of being arrested? Nathan's plan hadn't included the answer to that. We were going to have to tie her up and leave her somewhere in the outskirts, close enough to the city that she would be found by a patrol car, and where the worst that could happen to her was that a dog would pee on her. People would ignore her, they wouldn't want trouble with the cops that close to the city.

  When I got back to the hideout, Nathan had my computer and had accessed the program that allowed him to control the exo-skeleton's movements. "Simon says raise y
our left leg in the air," I heard Nathan saying, as I came back in. "Higher... oops!"

  There was a loud crash.

  "Simon didn't say fall over backwards!" Nathan giggled.

  "Haven't you got enough toys without taking mine?" I asked.

  He looked round guiltily.

  "Help me get her back on her feet," I said.

  The policewoman seemed almost pleased to see me, which was nice. It increased her confidence some.

  "So far you're guilty of kidnapping and assaulting a police officer: give yourselves up before this situation gets out of hand. If you go in voluntarily, they'll treat you more leniently than if they have to storm this place."

  "Storm the place," Nathan mocked. "Stevie, as you came in, did you notice whether the police had surrounded us with tanks, armoured personnel carriers and squads of armed officers?"

  "I can't say that I did. Do you want me to go and check, in case I missed them?" I said.

  "Nah, they probably haven't arrived yet, which means we've got time to watch our friend dance a while!" Nathan turned his attention back to the little black keyboard. "I haven't figured out how to get her to Moonwalk yet, but she has mastered the Twist." Nathan accessed a song from MusicBank – a heavy version of Twist and Shout – and fired up the exo-skeleton control program. The armoured suit's mechanics began to whine as they were put through moves they weren't designed to perform at such speed.

  "It's all a matter of balance," Nathan said.

  The cop tried to twist lower on one leg and keeled over sideways. The song ended.

  "You want a go?" Nathan asked, holding up the keyboard.

  I shook my head. I'd never thought kidnapping a police cyborg was a good idea, but seeing Nathan's face as he pulled the cop's puppet strings made me see just how bad an idea it had been. I needed to think of a way to get us out of this, preferably in some way that kept the cop alive and uninjured, and preferably without us ending up behind bars.

  "I'm hungry, let's go eat," I said. Food would distract Nathan long enough for me to figure something out.

  "What about Robotina?"

  "Where's she going to go? She'll be here when we get back."

  "Okay. Be good," he said to the cop. "And we may bring you back some fries and a Coke."

  *

  "Your friends didn't come for you while we were out?" I asked on our return.

  "They'll be here," the policewoman said.

  "You have a lot of faith in your employers. It must be nice to have faith."

  "I think I ate too much," Nathan said. "I'm going to lie down."

  It was the reaction I'd hoped for when I let Nathan win the toss which meant I'd pay for dinner. And challenged him to demolish a megaburger with spicy fries, followed by a deep-fried candy bar. Nathan's plot to capture and humiliate an armoured policeman had seemed fun when he told me the idea over a couple of drinks, but in the cold light of day, with the cop lying on our hideout floor threatening us with terrible official retribution, the whole thing seemed a lot less jolly. When I was sure Nathan was settled, I leaned close to the policewoman.

  "I'm going to get you out of here, but I'm not going to reactivate you and let you arrest me. I'm going out for a car, then I'll take you somewhere you'll be found quickly."

  "You won't get away with this; the authorities will hunt you down," she assured me.

  "Well, that's my problem, isn't it? For now, you just keep quiet and let Nathan over there sleep. I'll be back as soon as I can with the car. Okay?"

  She thought about it, obviously not keen on being left alone again with Nathan, then nodded. "Okay," she said. "When they come for you, I'll tell them you treated me better than he did."

  "Thanks." This time I took my computer with me, just in case.

  Finding a car wasn't too difficult: I borrowed one from a restaurant parking lot, intending to return it with the bound and gagged cop inside before the diners even got to ordering coffee, and certainly before the vehicle was discovered missing and reported stolen.

  I heard the hoarse scream over the sound of the engine as I drew up, and I knew it was coming from inside the hideout.

  Nathan had some of the policewoman's armour off, the pieces looking scarred and bent as if he'd prised them free with a chisel. Within the steel and polycarbonate framework of the exo-skeleton, I could see exposed flesh. Nathan had a wire running to three or four automobile batteries and was applying the bare copper wires at the end of it to the metal parts of the exo-skeleton, causing blue sparks to flash and an occasional spasmodic twitch of a servo-motor. When the wires found flesh, or a spark arced, the cop screamed: there were already several burns on her legs.

  "Nathan!" I shouted.

  He turned and there was a crazed glint in his eyes. I thought maybe he'd snapped completely. He'd been drinking, for sure. "Look!" He cried. "You don't need a computer." He poked the wire at an arm joint, and the limb twitched and jerked.

  "Nathan, stop. Put the wire down and we'll go get some more beers, okay?" I edged towards him, keeping a wary eye on the wire.

  "Don't want to, this is more fun." He turned towards the policewoman again, and I moved in quickly, grabbing his wrist with both hands and using my forward rush to knock him to the ground. "No!" He screamed. His prosthetic arm moved awkwardly, fingers flexing and then closing on my hands to try and break my grip. "Let go!" He hissed in my ear. He tried to arch his body under me, but I had a weight advantage. His robotic fingers released their hold, the hand jerked back and then closed in again, as if to gain better purchase: his metal thumb brushed the bare electrical wires. Nathan screamed and writhed.

  I rolled away from him, crawled over to the batteries and cut the current.

  "Bastard!" Nathan cried, still shaking. He was on knees, clutching his prosthesis, which hung lifelessly at his side. "Bastard!" He got to his feet, staggered.

  "Nathan, wait..."

  "Bastard. At least she's only robot on the outside – she can take it off at night." He lifted the burnt out mechanical arm and let it drop back to his side. "She gets a choice!" Nathan was crying. He turned and flung the door open.

  "Wait – "

  The door banged shut, and Nathan was gone.

  Behind me, the cop groaned. She was virtually spread-eagled, confined by the inanimate exo-skeleton. Her skin looked pale and waxy. I released the catches which held the skeleton closed and caught her as she slumped forward. She was smaller than I expected, only a little taller than me. She was half-conscious, mumbling something.

  " – didn't they come? Why – " Over and over.

  Nathan didn't return that night. I stayed there, pouring cold water over the policewoman's burns, because I remember seeing on TV that's what you're supposed to do. They were pretty superficial, raw whitish blisters, beginning to weep.

  "Looks like the suit's completely fracked."

  I woke with a start: I must have dozed off in the chair. "Eh?"

  "I said it looks like your friend wrecked my suit."

  "Yeah, I'm sorry."

  She shrugged.

  The cop seemed stronger, and her skin had lost that waxy sheen. But she was still there when I got back with milk and doughnuts for breakfast. She'd pulled on an old pair of overalls over her inner suit. She no longer looked like a cop.

  "The cavalry didn't ride over the hill to rescue me, then?" She said.

  "I guess not. I'm sorry."

  "You keep saying that."

  "It wasn't meant to end like that. It was just a game, to prove that we could do it. That we were better than the corporations and the cops." It was a stupid explanation, but it had been a stupid idea.

  The policewoman was only a couple of years older than me, twenty-six or seven at most. She told me that her name was Beth Civardi. I told her that mine was James Jones: she was still a cop, after all. She sat looking at the exo-skeleton, which was still standing like some techno-sculpture of a headless man. "I used to think that thing made me invulnerable," she said. "I guess you two pro
ved me wrong." She laughed, then took another drink from the carton of milk.

  "You really thought they'd send in the troops to rescue you?" I asked.

  "Definitely. It's the sort of macho thing they're supposed to do. All for one and one for all, and all that. When I was recruited they didn't tell me I was expendable: I was joining a highly trained team, working with the latest technology to maintain peace and order."

  "You fell for the advertised image?"

  She shrugged. "I was a big Sherlock Holmes fan as a kid. I guess I thought that after serving my time as a patrol man I could one day become a Great Detective. Besides, I didn't have that many options: I was thrown out of school because they found out I'd been flying with the StormRiders. Piloting suits was all I cared about, it was the only skill I had, so it was either join the security force or a lifetime of SweetDream and daytime TV."

  I told her that Nathan and I had been thrown out of school too. I also told her about Nathan's accident, about his arm and his parents' decision to punish him for rebelling.

  "So that's why he hates corporations and robots," she said. "But what about you, how come you ended up out here?"

  "I failed the 'unthinking loyalty' exam at eleven, and went on to become a fully fledged 'unredeemable social misfit' at sixteen," I said.

  "A rebel without a cause?"

  "I just don't like the way the companies view people as just another exploitable resource; there's more to being human than that," I said.

  "What, like running around blowing up policemen?" She grinned.

  "Yeah, and automatic bank tellers, robot hot dog vendors and those little taxis that don't have a driver!"

  "Major league stuff." There was something in her eyes which said he was only half joking. Unless I was simply projecting my own feelings.

  "What will you do now, go back to police headquarters?" I asked.

  "Probably not," she said. "I think I'd find it a bit difficult to show the kind of loyalty they expect of their employees."