by Max Carver
“It is my real name.”
“Oh. Yikes.”
“What was that about bringing down the system?”
“We all have our parts to play,” Mohini said. “Speaking of, did you stop off at a party or something? Because you've got a very different look today.” She touched his new cashmere coat.
“I went shopping on Flooding Tunnel Drive,” Colt said. “Some good stuff there, if you're willing to risk getting your skull crushed.”
“Anything for me?” She glanced at the garment bag.
“See if you like it.” He unzipped it.
“I'm hoping for a case of plasma cells.” She tapped the pistol on her belt. “They're really in fashion this year.”
He showed her the long purple coat, and her eyes rose.
“This is really nice.” She ran her finger over the soft material, shaped like ten thousand tiny violets sewn together. She lifted it free and held it against her. It puddled on the floor at her feet, and her eyes narrowed. “Obviously not for me, though. This is for someone taller.”
“For my sister, actually,” he said. “Sorry. But you could have it if—”
“Don't need it. I've already lost enough gear on this mission. I don't need useless junk slowing me down.” She put the dress aside. “May I touch you again?”
“Go ahead,” he said, still not used to her aversion to even mild, basic communication touches, so critical to survival in the ruins.
“Let me know if it gets awkward.” She embraced him and laid her head against his chest. She was warm in his arms. Not an android, unless she was an insanely convincing one. Even the Simon unit was more like a machine, Colt thought. No matter how human the Simon might have looked on the outside, it clearly had no soul.
Mohini was warm, and he held her close, drawing his coat around her like a blanket.
“I don't know what to do,” she whispered. “Your rebels wouldn't work with us. Then Roldao died. I wasn't supposed to do all this alone.”
“You aren't alone,” he said.
“I miss him so much.” She looked up at Colt, then pulled away from him and stiffened up. “Sorry. I should not have gone emotional.”
“I've been through worse,” Colt said. “So, maybe I can help you, but I still don't know what you're here to do.”
“You understand that Carthage's military is all machines, right?” Mohini asked, moving to put more space between them. “The interstellar carriers, the starfighters, the tanks, the infantry, they're all autonomous, they all run on AI. They don't need any human presence at all.”
Colt nodded. “Everyone knows that—”
“The highest ranking machines, the ones who command the fleets and the robotic armies, are called Simon units,” Mohini said. “They can plan a war or govern a planet. When the rulers of Carthage want to take over a world, they just point to it, and their Simons take it from there—assessing the planet's politics and defenses, finding the weak points, intimidating the world into obedience. And if the world resists, the Simon unleashes death. Like they did to Earth.”
“I met one,” Colt said. “He said his name was Simon Nix. The clankers at the clinic mentioned his name, too.”
“He was probably the one providing their weapons and armor,” Mohini said. “And experimenting on them. That's what Simon Nix does with his leisure time—gruesome experiments on human beings.”
“I saw,” Colt said. “I almost became one, I think. He zapped me with these boxes full of pain. And asked me a lot of questions.”
“About what?”
“About myself and the scavengers I know. And about you. A lot about you. He had that reaper's head, the one with your cable still plugged into it.”
“Yeah, I was planning to destroy the evidence on that one, until someone told me not to burn down the clinic.”
“Sorry,” Colt said.
“What did you tell him?”
“Not much. Lucky me, I don't really know anything about you.”
“I'm here to document Simon Nix's research,” Mohini said. “To gather up evidence of all the twisted experiments he's doing. To show people what's really happening.”
“To show who? We all know Carthage is evil.”
“The general public on Carthage don't see themselves that way,” Mohini said. “We have contacts who can spread this information across the inner worlds. It could change opinions, which could change policy.”
“Like the policy of making life on Earth an endless living hell for all of us?”
“Exactly,” Mohini said.
“I think they know what they're doing to us,” Colt said. “I think they're proud of it. How could they not know?”
“Public opinion on Carthage is carefully managed,” Mohini said. “That's why we need the shocking truth, to kind of break through and grab attention. Every human being in the galaxy identifies with Earth, at least a little bit. Everybody's ancestors came from there.”
“You must have missed the part where Carthage hates Earth and destroyed all of our cities,” Colt said. He pointed upward, indicating outer space and the distant planet of Carthage, not that any of it could be seen through the drop-tile ceiling. “They're monsters. All of them. They're like clankers. You can't appeal to their feelings.”
“Then what do you do?” Mohini asked.
“You kill them,” Colt said. “You kill them fast, before they can kill you. Because that's all the Carthaginians are—a different kind of clanker, humans who care more about machines than other humans. They just eat better and wear fancier clothes, but they're the same.”
“You might be right,” she said. “The people of Carthage might already be ruled by their machines, just as their machines rule other worlds. They may simply be too complacent to realize it. And we need to shock them into waking up. We need to send them a warning shot. Because if Carthage doesn't change, the machines will keep conquering until they rule every settled world, every little colony, and there are no free humans left anywhere.”
Colt shook his head. “I don't think their minds will change. But I'll help you. I saw what Simon Nix is doing in there and... that has to stop. So your plan was to get the rebels to help you break in there and collect evidence?”
“Yes, exactly,” Mohini said.
“Couldn't you take pictures through the med-bot you hacked?”
“The med-bot, right. Except I was busy getting you out of there alive, wasn't I? I had too much going on.”
“Can't you hack in again?”
“Uh, well, that specific window of opportunity has closed, and I used it to rescue you instead of completing my mission.”
“I'm glad you did. I don't know what he might have done to me in there.” He tried not to think of the people floating upright in their tanks, bodies shriveled from disuse, brains wide open to probing needles and lasers. The blood-soaked beds of the failed experiments, the dead bodies still hooked to monitors. The bodies in the morgue, piled up in overflowing mounds.
“Anyway,” Mohini said. “I'm here for more than pictures. Anyone can mock up pictures of anything. I want the hardest, most complete evidence. Every last inhuman detail. I want the head of Simon Nix.”
Colt recalled the android standing over him in a lab coat splatter-painted with layers of caked-on blood. The mad doctor, running his experiments on a warehouse full of captive humans. “His head?”
“The rest of him can corrode in acid for all I care, but I need his CPU and memory drives,” Mohini said. “A few pictures or videos won't change anything, but the complete master record of his actions will. It'll be too much evidence to deny. Years and years of it.”
“I don't know, but if the idea is to hunt down that android and remove his head, I definitely like the sound of it. Can you get us in and out again, like you did with me?”
“Not exactly,” she said. “We need to mount a physical raid. That's why we need the rebels. We need numbers, experienced fighters, weapons.”
“But there must be rea
pers guarding him,” Colt said.
“There's a barracks by the laboratory. I'd expect reapers, tanks, and drones. It's heavily protected. The whole complex used to be a research hospital before the war. Carthage has designated it Installation 34. It's become the preferred home base of Simon Nix, Carthage's appointed administrator of the Americas, though he has a number of other bases around these two continents. And other laboratories, as bad as the one you saw.”
“He rules the whole continent?” Colt found this idea shocking. “That crazed robot?”
“Two continents, technically. And I wouldn't make too much of the word 'ruled.' There are machines based in every city, following standard programming and protocols. There are satellites above. Simon is a key cog in the machine, but a Simon isn't going to bother building himself a palace or any of those self-aggrandizing human things. Simon units are like trapdoor spiders. They like to hide in the background and pull the strings.”
“You seem to know a lot about him.”
“I came a long way for him,” Mohini said. “It's important to know your target. You said you had a friend who might lead us to the rebels?”
“Diego's older brother Fernando went to join them,” Colt said. “Along with a couple of others from our camp over the years. They can't really stay in touch after they go. But I think Diego's seen his brother a couple of times. He might know how to talk to them.”
“You never thought about joining them yourself?” Mohini asked.
“Sure. Maybe. If I thought there was a chance of defeating the machines. So far, I've been pretty focused on protecting my sister and the rest of our camp.”
“It's sweet how you look after your sister. She must really look up to you.”
Colt thought about his sister, jumping on him and smacking his head for eating the last can of peas in their cache. That was mine, you uglidiot! I'm going to squeeze your face until it breaks!
“She really does,” Colt said. “Worships at my feet. I'm basically like a god to her. Do you have anything to eat?”
“I found some packs of Nuke-A-Noodle upstairs.” She took some out of her backpack. “You mix it with water—”
“Thanks!” Colt tore one open and bit into it. The sharp, salty noodles were hard on his thirsty, cracked lips, but he ate them as fast as he could manage without choking.
“You eat like a wild animal,” Mohini said.
“Starving and watching for predators?” Colt asked. “Yeah, that's just life. England sounds nicer. Maybe you can take us there with you. My sister's always wanting to get on a boat, find an island somewhere. Get away from the machines. But they have satellites and drones. They'd find us. The only safe place is here, among the ruins, in trash buried so deep and wide you can hide in it. And even here, it's not safe. Everybody dies. If the machines don't kill you, the other people will.”
“Maybe I could do that,” Mohini said, her voice even quieter than usual. “If you want to come. But right now, we need to find the rebels.”
“Okay. Let me see if there's any chance of finding some better shoes, and then we'll go.”
Then he closed his eyes, leaned back in the security center's padded office chair, and fell asleep, his body still aching with the memory of the unspeakable pain inflicted by Simon Nix.
Chapter Twelve
Carthage
Audrey stepped toward the hijacked and crazily painted androids, the two nurses and the cop that had just rolled her brother out from behind the funhouse mirror. She had no idea what they might do to her, but likely scenarios seemed to involve torture and suffering in the short term, followed by eventual death.
She wanted to hate Zola for luring her here under false pretenses, not exactly explaining that Audrey was going to be traded away for Salvius. Audrey couldn't hate her, though. Salvius looked helpless, and Zola clung to the side of his gurney, weeping over his unresponsive face, clearly pained by his condition.
As Audrey tried to give herself up, Kright's grip on her arm tightened again. She looked back at him, and he gave her a grin, his sharp blue eyes bright.
“Salvius,” Zola moaned like a mourner at a funeral and collapsed onto his gurney rather dramatically.
She didn't land on top of him, though, but on the gurney's side rail. The gurney toppled sideways, and Salvius fell off, landing on the weeping Zola. They fell to the floor together.
Audrey started toward her fallen brother, but Kright, still gripping her, slung her away from the fallen gurney, as well as the nurse and cop androids.
Audrey cried out, falling as he pushed her toward a wall covered with a grungy, long-faded mural of zebras, lions, and hippos. The animals were fat and garishly dressed, eating ice cream and popcorn while pointing at humans in cages. A reverse zoo.
Audrey grunted as she hit the concrete floor with a bruising pain in her hip.
“Hey, watch it—” she began to snap at Kright. He shrugged off his long, tattered green jacket and dropped it on top of her. The coat pressed her to the floor, covering her up to her nose. It was heavy, like maybe it had a layer of armor concealed inside. And it was sweaty and musky, like maybe Kright wore a lot less cologne than the guys she was used to.
A loud popping sound had rung out from behind Audrey as Zola and Salvius fell, as Kright had grabbed her and pulled her aside. She'd barely had time to register it, but now a second loud pop rang out, followed closely by a third.
She saw the source of it. Dinnius was firing weird, chunky objects out of the large tube he carried, and suddenly Audrey knew why the tube looked distantly familiar. It was highly modified, but it was basically the kind of cheap air cannon used to shoot prizes into the crowd at parades and sporting events. At the World Games the previous year, she'd seen a giant one shoot exploding piñatas that rained candy and confetti onto the stadium crowd. Caracala Stadium had been at its full capacity, a quarter million people, for the entire month of the games.
Dinnius wasn't shooting out commemorative toys or advertising-laden shirts, though.
His air cannon fired three times as he swept it across the corridor. He wasn't doing much aiming, or even pulling the trigger after the first time; the targets must have been programmed into the device before he'd started shooting. Maybe that involved facial recognition software, because his projectiles were slamming right into the androids' faces.
The projectiles looked like metallic bugs, their long legs ending in sharp, drill-headed tips. One landed on each android.
Audrey watched the one on the pink-haired nurse's face. Its legs drilled in deep, and then electricity crackled along the legs, fed by a battery cell in the bug's body, maybe inside its bulbous thorax.
The nurse jerked and lurched crazily. It kicked out one leg and pirouetted against the wall, smashing and breaking its leg. Then it twisted the other way, and began randomly bending over, forward and backward in ways that would snap the spine of a live person.
“Time to take your medicine, sir,” she said, her head nodding crazily. “Time to take your medicine. Time to take your—”
A barrage of quick blue laser blasts struck the nurse from below. The nurse spun around crazily, her eye socket a smoking hole, her pink hair smoldering. More holes penetrated her throat and chest. Then she stopped moving, frozen like a victim of Medusa, turned to a statue.
The Officer Joe jerked too, but not as much, probably built with more insulation and defenses than the Nurse Nancys. The cop-bot balled up a fist and smashed the bug on its face, then ripped it free and hurled it against the wall.
The hackers, the Blood Clowns, might have bashed and vandalized the cop-bot, but they hadn't taken its weapons away.
The Officer Joe removed the long steel truncheon from its belt. The device telescoped, doubling in length almost instantly, extending toward Dinnius. A ring of metal studs extended around the tip of the truncheon, and electricity arced between the studs. Officer Joe was going into crowd-control mode, though the remote hacker controlling the robot could easily beat someone to
death with that truncheon if he chose.
Dinnius scrambled backward as the Officer Joe approached, looking ready to cave in the side of Dinnius's skull.
Kright pointed his plasma rifle and squeezed off two quick blazing-white bolts at the Officer Joe.
The first bolt skimmed the non-duct-taped side of the Officer Joe's head, melting the artificial skin there into flesh-colored goo that drooled from the metal structure beneath. Its big police hat—painted black, with a red pentagram jauntily scribbled over the badge—burned and crumpled in the heat of the plasma.
Most of that bolt continued on and hit the wall, spreading along the concrete in a flood of flame, searing the dancing-bear mural on that side solid black, flash-frying years of dust and spiderwebs into a thin wave of smoke.
The second bolt struck the Officer Joe solidly in the shoulder, melting the arm on that side down to the black steel skeleton underneath. The arm lost power as its actuators burned.
In a blur of motion, the Officer Joe spun toward Kright, clearly deciding the lanky rifleman was more of a threat than the dwarf who kept backing away from him.
The cop-bot drew what looked like a comically large police revolver from its hip holster. The hackers had painted a red pentagram on the butt of it.
Audrey gasped. She'd never seen an Officer Joe actually pull its revolver on a suspect outside of news reports and crime movies. She knew the oversized revolver fired oversized rounds that could crater a car or turn a person into burning mush. And Kright had dropped his long armor-lined jacket onto Audrey for this fight, leaving himself completely exposed. His old T-shirt wasn't going to provide him much protection.
“You went back on us! You have no honor!” the green-haired nurse screeched and staggered toward the overturned gurney. Zola remained behind it with Salvius's unconscious form. The nurse had managed to remove the electrical bug from her face, but she was still weakened.
“What? There's no honor in kidnapping!” Zola shot Nurse Green with the laser gun, filling the android's torso with holes. She raised her gun and struck the nurse in the jaw.