Toy Wars

by Thomas Gondolfi

  “What a boob!” I chastised myself, standing back up.

  Fear—it made me want to turn back when I must press forward. What’s its point? I can tell you that my hydraulic lines felt like they were full of chilled H2O and my main bus voltage ran as high as I’ve ever measured it. Pushing on in the face of fear, Humans call courageous. I certainly didn’t feel courageous; I felt more like a slag of pre-forged metals—without even being tempered.

  Together we walked on, but it didn’t take long before my former sense of foreboding returned. Dusk had fallen and the light available dropped precipitously. The darkness and canopy threatened to remove all light, making nighttime travel not only hazardous but impossible.

  “Blast it all. I never even considered the time of day.” I pushed forward at a slightly accelerated rate until a macabre sight in an open glade brought us up short. Along the partially overgrown path of the tracks lay the deactivated remains of several units, some with legs, arms, and even heads torn from the torsos. As gruesome as these were, I found the remaining corpses even more hideous. The hydraulic lines or brain cases had been torn open on the majority, allowing the hapless units to pump their vital fluids out onto the ground. Each of the victims knew they were going to deactivate but had no way to prevent it.

  Creeping forward I took the time to investigate each body with one eye, using the other on the surrounding terrain.

  “No projectile impacts or any signs of explosion or flame. What do you make of it, Sancho? Most show the signs of four parallel tearing or cutting marks. What could that possibly mean?”

  I guess I talked to hear myself talk or maybe I was trying to shut out my nervousness. It didn’t matter. The evidence didn’t make any sense to my sump and Sancho didn’t share his thoughts. I decided that endangering our lives by staying longer didn’t warrant the information I was getting.

  “Buddy, let’s make tracks.”

  This actually elicited a small snort from Sancho. I interpreted it to mean, “Yes, let’s get out of here, now!” We were both edgy.

  We walked briskly. My optics scanned so thoroughly that I thought they’d become radar and could see things in all directions. Sancho seemed even more alert. Our paranoia failed to save our hides.

  The attack came only an hour after we first stepped into the forest. It struck faster than the report of a rifle. A bright yellow and brilliant black furred form hurled toward us from the forest canopy. It moved so rapidly that my optics couldn’t even resolve its shape. Huge scything claws aimed to tear out my vitals. Only the equally fast pink and purple trunk of my companion saved me, interposing his limb between my attacker and me. The keen force amputated Sancho’s proboscis. It landed on the ground at the same time as a 2.7-meter-long leopard-shaped unit gracefully alighted on its pads 8 meters away. All this happened in the space of a handful of my own clock cycles. I didn’t even have time to react.

  The great cat moved like liquid lightning, turning around its sleek ebony and lemon-colored frame. Its deadly elegance hypnotized me with its beauty. Again, with the blinding speed of a plummeting flyer, the huge feline pounced aggressively.

  I felt I was made entirely out of lead and my hydraulic lines filled with air. Once again my companion saved me. Sancho interposed his body between me and the streaking unit. Sancho’s bulk staggered and fell over sideways to the ground.

  My body finally began to respond to my processor again. I got my gun around as the yellow death wheeled to pounce for the third time. Its body position had it moving to complete the kill of my downed elephant friend.

  Time froze. The cat sprung. My thumb switched full auto. A yellow-black streak raced in the air. My finger pulled the trigger. Several seconds later my M16 opened on the then empty clip.

  The leopard’s trajectory, modified by the dozen or so 5.56 millimeter slugs that tore open its right side, landed heavily onto its chest, just short of Sancho. Hydraulic fluid gushed across the earth from the rents in its body at a tremendous rate. The beast twitched hard on the ground but couldn’t gain its feet. It rolled onto its side in the growing puddle.

  I dropped my M16. I drew my .45. I walked up to within an arm’s reach. I put one slug into its brain case with a loud report. No more motion. No more cat.

  After several moments of silently standing over the dead unit, my own hydraulic pump slowed its racing to something more resembling a normal rate. My mind also switched from combat speed to something more regular, now interpreting those interrupts my body wished to have dealt with. I absently scanned the trees in the area, but could not see any additional feline death projectiles. But the forest was dense enough that there could have been fifty of the great cats within springing distance. I decided I could do nothing about it anyway, so I went to see to my friend and savior.

  Sancho’s body writhed on the ground with massive rends across his chest. He pumped vital fluids out across the ground, albeit in a much slower rate than his attacker had. I deactivated him before I examined his wounds more closely.

  His entire right side was torn to shreds by the beast’s claws. With the damage Sancho’s stronger internal framework had taken I could only imagine what the same attack would have done to me. He was leaking hydraulic fluid across the ground from eight or nine different holes in main pressure lines. For the second time, Sancho had saved my life and now I didn’t know if I could save his. I had to try.

  I pulled out my abbreviated Nurse Nan pack and slapped clamps on all the injured hoses, including two large ones on his face where once he sported a trunk. The leaks slowed to the occasional drip. That accomplished, I now had to replace or patch those lines. I had but three hose patches in the Nurse Nan kit. It took me only a second to decide—replacements. I tore open the leopard’s belly and looked at the pump arrangement. Nothing doctrinaire, just a hugely oversized pump and long lever arms on the hydraulic pistons to give the thing its lightning speed. Fortunately for my friend, it had been constructed with standardized fluid lines.

  First I drained the hydraulic lines into a vessel I’d once thought worthless, my plastic expandable canteen. I cut similar length lines for each of Sancho’s damaged ones, making sure to keep them as clean as possible. One by one I replaced them, working as fast as my paws would move to limit Sancho’s loss of fluid. Each one clamped on expertly like factory-new.

  Draining the leopard dry like some vampire of Human legend, I emptied several canteens full of liquid into Sancho’s hydraulic reservoir. As I expected, Sancho’s fluid levels sat woefully beneath even danger low operation levels. My next decision wasn’t as difficult as it would have been any other time.

  I slit open the fur and protective shell my own left wrist. There was the drain stopcock of my liquid system. I ripped it open and poured my own motive blood into Sancho’s tank. Monitoring it carefully, I transfused enough of my hydraulics to bring Sancho barely into operational levels and not to dip me into the danger zone. I felt smug as I closed up the damage I’d done to myself.

  I looked at Sancho’s prehensile trunk lying on the ground. A 12-centimeter-wide portion, right at the base, was crushed beyond any of my own skills to mitigate. I had no facilities or replacement parts for the severed limb. I sealed the end. Sancho’s trunk had been reduced from a magnificent 2-meter length to less than 20 centimeters. I guess the disfigurement was a small price to pay for my life and his as well.

  Only one thing remained to be fixed—the hole in his hide. I had no elephant fur, but I had square meters of leopard skin. So I used it. By the time I was done, Sancho looked like a production building gone wild—leopard print across his right side, with his normal mauve and pink fur over the rest of him, and a miniature trunk with a bright green cap on it.

  As I waited for Sancho’s hydraulic pump to spin up to full speed, I thought about the attack. I could now see how the cat could have taken on an entire group of unenhanced units and defeated them. The speed of the attack would have been enough for all but the largest groups of units. Factories did have
a thing for not throwing good units after bad.

  The quiet notification beep on Sancho’s pump informed me of its readiness, so I activated him. As he got up, I watched closely. Neither my repairs nor any lingering damage impaired his functions.

  “Sancho, you may be the orneriest unit that I’ve ever met, but a good friend in a pinch. I once again owe you my life. Thank you.”

  I don’t think I quite heard a purr, but Sancho did butt me gently with his head. Something pleased me about the act. We didn’t have time for me to analyze. We still needed to move along.

  I continued our cautious pace. I just hoped that one leopard was all that stalked here because we were in no shape to tangle with another one. We both flirted with minimal fluid levels and Sancho had no trunk to defend us with. Every twitch of the golden leaves caused Sancho and me to jerk weapons toward it, expecting to see a black and yellow blur racing at us. Each case turned out to be a false alarm, but it didn’t stop us from reacting exactly the same the next time.

  Smack in the middle of the forest the rail lines ended at the edge of a large standing body of mercury nearly 750 meters across and several dozen kilometers long in a very irregular shape. The standing liquid probably explained the density of growths here.

  Because of little wave motion and no current, I felt certain I could swim across. Sancho, with his greater density, would sink and remain submerged for the entire width.

  “Sancho, I want you to walk straight across to the other side. Don’t stop unless I tell you to or your power runs too low,” I said as I put his tether on him. As long as it wasn’t too deep I should be able to retain control. I didn’t want to lose him now, especially with all the new mellow feelings I had toward him. Equipped and prepared, Sancho waded out in front. I prepared to turn over my body to my swimming subroutine.

  But we continued to wade and continued to wade. Before long we’d reached the center of the lake with the mercury only up to my knees. On the other side I removed the tether feeling extremely paranoid and foolish.

  The forest edge should have taken only another hour to reach, but the vegetation had other ideas. With no cut for the train tracks, the forest closed in tightly making it difficult to traverse through the underbrush. Sancho’s greater mass broke our trail with me following in his wake, trying to keep on guard for another attack from more of the black and yellow creatures. This method resulted in becoming intimate with liters of mercury and tiny biologics spilling down from the leaves. The biologics, at least, scampered away on multiple pairs of legs. The undergrowth whipped and cut at us for every meter of forward progress.

  Every time we gained a small clearing and I thought the rest of our travels would be easy, we would move away a giant frond and find another wall of saffron and vegetation to overcome.

  This was a place I had no longing to return to.

  By daybreak, we had shoved out to the edge of the forest. It ended abruptly, as if someone had drawn a line in the red, chalk-like earth and commanded segregation. The golden menagerie parted to show a much more normal and pleasing fiery red and umber landscape of a huge open plain with only silver-veined thorn grass covering the soil—a welcome sight and relief from the yellows of the softwoods and ferns. Also, the strain on my systems at moving through the thick over and underbrush was telling on at least my low fluid levels.

  The sun cresting over the mountain ranges provided another relief. I’d never expected that a few kilometers of biological vegetation could be such a drain on battery power. We sat soaking up the sun all day.

  “Well we are well shut of that place,” I said, looking back at the optic straining yellows. “Let’s move just a few hundred meters away from here so we don’t have to worry about any more of those cat units.”

  While we rested and recharged I noticed anomalies in Sancho’s fur. Sidling up to him I dug my fingers into his short tufts. With a good deal of force, and not a few strands of fur, I removed a spiked seed pod. At only 5 millimeters across the kernel decided to cling to my purple fur instead. I removed it from the back of my paw only to find that it somehow found its way into the long fur on the back of the other paw.

  “No simple, inanimate seed will stymie me.” Using a smooth portion of my tattered backpack over my hand, I managed to discard the unwanted stowaway.

  My optics did an analysis of Sancho’s fur and extrapolated one hour and fourteen minutes to remove the approximately 880 foreign objects. Then, examining my longer fur, I found 1200 more on the front where I could reach. Biologics can be far tougher than I had ever expected. Over the next three hours, sixteen minutes, and forty-three seconds, I decided that the Humans’ cursing had some validity.

  “Oh, bloody!” I swore as I plucked one of the spiked nuisances from Sancho’s fur only to have it drop into the fur on my thigh.

  “Biologics are in much greater abundance than I ever noticed, Sancho. And I don’t mean the quantity of these stupid seeds, but rather the varieties. They range from the inanimate plant life that covers the ground in a staggering number of different types, to hundreds of different species of motile forms.” Sancho flinched as a pulled harder on a deeply imbedded form.

  “Sorry.” I found if I carefully pulled the hair away from the hooks on the seed, it came out easier.

  “I mean we’ve seen at least sixty different types of insect from those no bigger than the head of a bullet to bug bunnies, basilisks, rock crabs, and thousands more. By direct line computation I have to assume there are over six million different motile species.” The number staggered my sump.

  “I’m beginning to think units will never control the surface of the planet.”

  By nightfall we both were nearly at a full charge and almost seedpod free. We moved on, the forest and its denizen fading quickly into the memory of a place we’d rather forget. Every cubic meter no longer contained vegetation and a place for extremely fast and powerful catlike units to lurk within.

  The fairly level plain gave high, sustainable speeds over long distances. We were making much better speed than I had anticipated. With the certainty of having an energy supply during the days, I pressed the pace and walked well into each morning.

  I didn’t speak much at all once we left the forest. If Sancho noticed he gave no sign. Instead, I spent every clock cycle recalculating my sims on Six’s likely status. My voltage rhythmically spiked during these computations. The symptom increased every time we stopped or slowed, so I pushed harder each day.

  During the next ten days we avoided a basilisk. Sancho let out a pathetic “mrwwwt” as a warning. With his trunk capped off it was the best sound he could make. I caught the beast’s movements moments later at 3 kilometers’ distance. Because of extreme range the odds of being seen approached zero, and that the beast in question could attack us was less than zero. Needless to say, we avoided the danger like one would shun used hydraulic fluid.

  Just as the palest lightening of twilight bloomed on the eleventh day, my travels brought me full circle. I found myself staring down a very familiar valley. I remembered a terrified flight, a betrayal of my brothers, and a place where I had given up what I believed in to save what I believed in. Below me lay the valley of the train tunnel.

  The waving pristine crimson thorn grass and unblemished countryside mocked the violence, destruction, and deactivations of that day so long ago. It was as if a Human’s hand had come out of the sky and righted all that was wrong, replanting grasses, filling bomb craters, and erasing permanent char marks on the ground. But 320 days had returned it to its natural state, not some mythical gods.

  I remembered letting each of those 107 units die in the cave. I bore the guilt of their deaths as if I had pulled the trigger myself. I should have found something to save them, pulled some bug rabbit out of my hat, invented a new tactic, something. Instead I ran away. The decision was inevitably etched in my sump fluids. It was a decision I’d never forgive myself for.

  I told myself repeatedly that they had died so I could have a cha
nce to save our way of life and Six at the same time, but it was all a lie. I hadn’t been certain what I was doing would work, and even if it had, Human literature was replete with the fact that “the end does not justify the means.” Where was my bravery in going down with the ship, the resolve of those at the Alamo, or the courage within myself like those Humans at Masada? I didn’t like what I had seen within myself at that moment. I hoped my cowardice would pay off in the end.

  Even after the violence of war, the return of peace to this place gave me hope that my horrid memories could one day be erased.

  I snapped out of my reverie as the sun blossomed to full height, only to find myself hugging tightly to Sancho with my arm around his lower shoulders. I realized just how good a friend I had in him. Were it not for him, I would have been deactivated a number of gruesome times, my mission a failure, and all those I’d sacrificed below would have died for naught.

  “Thanks, friend.”

  He turned his trunkless face toward me in what I think was acceptance.

  “We are almost home.” Home was a word that elicited a number of exciting prospects within me. And while it hurt to think of it, I needed Six. Making all the decisions wearied me in a way silicon and fluid should not be capable of experiencing.

  I looked out over the wild countryside and a thought dawned on me. This valley was almost untouched. If 55474 had come through, it would not be so. A moving army marred the country indelibly with littered ammo cans, shell casings, empty hydraulic containers, heavy trampling marks, lubricant waste dump, net concentrators, and spare carrying containers.

  I led Sancho out onto the flats. Closer up there were still some minor signs of the battle we had fought, but nothing like the disfiguration left by bringing the massive force that 55474 would need to crush the final resistance of Six.