by Peter Watts
But you know that story, don’t you? Improved vocabulary’s just a side effect. Just another reminder that I’m never alone in here.
What I am, and what I was, and whatever this damn armor thinks it is.
Heh.
We are legion.
To: Site Commander D. Lockhart, Manhattan Crisis Zone
From: CELL Oversight Secretariat
Date: 21/08/2023
Cc: CryNet Executive Board
Commander Lockhart,
Following this morning’s Supreme Court emergency session ruling, and pending a formal announcement by the president, US Marines are to begin deploying in the Manhattan Midtown area under Colonel Sherman Barclay. Their mission is described as humanitarian intervention, but they have been briefed for other combat eventualities as well.
The constitutional outrage of these measures notwithstanding, you are to cooperate with Colonel Barclay’s force and afford him any assistance he may require, so long as it does not conflict with your existing mandate.
Let us be clear in this; the decision to deploy US military forces on American soil is considered by the board, as by many of our friends in Congress, to be an extraordinary lapse of judgment by a president too weak to follow through on the legislative innovation of his predecessor. We fully expect this measure to be revoked within a short time.
In the meantime, we hope we have made clear the operating latitudes you are afforded, and we have the fullest confidence in your ability to manage the situation as befits a senior officer and shareholder of our company.
I’m born again into dead of night. About a dozen others are on the surface ahead of me, looking around while I’m still frenching the atmosphere. A few more pop up like Whac-A-Moles as I get my bearings. There’s oil everywhere, streams and patches of it mottling the surface.
Oil on the water, but it’s the sky that’s on fire.
New York stretches around us like a big dark tumor. Most of the skyline’s blacked out; ten dark buildings for every one or two that still have power. You can still make stuff out, though; a smudge of moonlight through the clouds, and the overcast flickers with something like orange heat lightning. If that’s reflected firelight, whole city blocks must be on fire in there. I can actually see an apartment building burning in the distance; it looks insignificant from out here, like a matchbox crawling with orange fireflies. Closer to the waterfront a whole office tower has just given up and slumped into the next building over. Black oily smoke crawls into the sky from a hundred spots we can’t begin to make out from the waterline but there’s no missing the great dark blanket they feed into, hanging over the skyline: It’s so heavy I wonder why it doesn’t crash down and flatten everything that’s still standing.
“Holy fuck,” someone says. “What happened here?”
Leavenworth. You made it out, man. You made it out.
I turn, tracking his voice, but the thing that bobs into view is not Leavenworth, not military, not alive. It barely even looks human anymore; it looks back at me with clumps of pulpy gray tumors where its eyes should be. A network of, of—veins, or tendons, or something like that runs down its cheek and roots in the shoulder, like, like—
You know those big industrial meat grinders in the supermarkets? You feed all the leftover chunks and waste cuts and bits of bone into that hopper at the top and there’s this kind of grille at the bottom where the hamburger oozes out like a twisted cable of limp red worms?
Something like that.
And I see now that the whole harbor’s dotted with these rotted floating things, that half the people I took for brothers-in-arms are dead civilians turned monstrous. So now I’m barely keeping my lunch down and I’m wondering if everyone was right, if it was a syntheviral and a nuclear strike and a coup d’état—hell, why not throw in Leavenworth’s rogue biomorphs while you’re at it? Maybe someone’s launched the mother of all out-and-out assaults, maybe it’s all of those things at once.
Man, what I wouldn’t give now, if that’s all it had been.
And just then someone cries out and I turn to that sound expecting more death and corruption but instead I see a big patch of bubbles boiling on the surface. At first I think it’s the dying breath of the Swordfish, belched up from the bottom of the Hudson; but the water keeps churning and I actually feel a flash of hope that one of the other subs has come to the rescue, that the cavalry’s breaching at our backs. I can see something dark and metallic just under the surface, red light rising from below, although some part of me says in a very small voice it doesn’t look like any conning tower I’ve ever seen.
And then it rises above the waterline, and it keeps on rising until there’s no water holding it up anymore and it’s still rising, big as a fucking house, it’s got its own personal storm front underneath where the water’s streaming back off its sides. I can’t make out jack shit except for two glowing orange hoops the size of merry-go-rounds and a black shape between them. But it’s pretty obvious that whatever this is, it’s not from anywhere around here.
And even that doesn’t get as much time to sink in as I’d like, because in the next second it clicks on its high beams and starts shooting.
My reflexes kick in. All it takes is the sight of that little line of splashes stitching across the water toward me. You can hear them below the surface, too, rapid-fire thwip-thwip-thwips getting louder, fading away, coming back the moment you break the surface to grab a breath and a gamble. You can’t get a bearing, of course. No time for that. You breach and breathe and catch the quickest glimpse of those lethal little tracers streaking down from somewhere overhead. Maybe you hear someone scream as they lose their own particular throw of the dice but then you’re back under again, hoping you don’t roll snake-eyes before you make shore—because, sure, you’ll be exposed on land but at least you’ve got solid ground under you, right? At least you can run for cover instead of floundering like wounded bait waiting for the sharks.
You let your brain stem take over, let your muscles decide for themselves when to zig and when to zag. Don’t think about what it is, that’s too big and there’s no time; think about what it’s doing. It’s using ballistics. Not phasers, not death rays. No infallible super-targeting computers, or you’d be dead already. It’s shooting projectiles. It’s spitting out lines of bullets, like it ordered its ammo from Ordnance “R” Us. Conventional weapons.
Of course, conventional weapons do just fine when your target is unarmed hamburger flailing around in open water. I hear the screams between the bullets and the bubbles. I can hear that airborne motherfucker mowing us down like dogs. But I keep rolling the dice, man, I keep breathing and diving and zigging and zagging, and they don’t get me. I make it all the way to the shore. I nearly kill myself on the debris slope, I’m stroking so hard I don’t see the rocks coming and a piece of half-buried driftwood just under the surface nearly takes out my eye but suddenly my feet are on the bottom, the rocks are slimy but they’re solid, and I’m scrambling uphill and I run smack into a sheer concrete seawall. In one split second I realize there’s no way I can scale it without grapplers or gecko gloves, and in the next I’m slipping on the slime and I go over backward as a line of divots explodes across the concrete right about where my head used to be.
I’m back in the water and those lights in the sky, those glowing eyes are sweeping off across the water in search of other targets. Someone’s yelling off to my left and it’s Leavenworth, man, you just can’t keep him down, we’ve obviously found us a niche where being a paranoid conspiracy freak actually pays off. And Leavenworth is waving and gesturing, something’s blown a hole in the seawall just a few meters along and he’s already diving into that breach and I’m right there behind him. We crawl through a little canyon of smashed concrete and tangled rebar that tries to gut you like a fish every time you move. There’s this stink in the air, not just the oil and the bodies and the shit in the harbor, something else, something—acrid. That’s the word. Like ammonia.
We
come out in the middle of something that used to be a road, hunker down under a slab of upended asphalt like kids camping in a lean-to. But the Eyes in the Sky are swinging around for another pass, and they’ve got a clear shot at us from their current angle of approach. Leavenworth breaks cover and starts running for the only other piece of cover in sight, old wreck of a building past fifty meters of parking lot. I’m right behind him, got my eyes on the ground but it doesn’t help, I still see Leavenworth blow apart like a water balloon right in front of me. The ballistics are a fucking hailstorm now and we’ve just been massacred and suddenly there’s this stupid giddy voice in my head that won’t shut up, keeps saying Well at least Leavenworth died happy—vindicated at last, blown up by space aliens … and—
—And then there’s this, this kind of a thump, a tugging sensation, and I’m not running anywhere anymore. I can’t feel my legs. I’m facedown in gravel and there’s blood everywhere, it’s got to be mine because I can feel myself bleeding out, but—
But it doesn’t hurt. I don’t know if it’s shock or a severed spinal cord or if the pain just hasn’t crawled upstream yet but that’s it, man, I’m dying, I know I’m dying. And it doesn’t hurt at all.
I can still move my arms, though. And someone’s still screaming somewhere so I’m not completely alone, not yet, not yet. I heave over onto my back—vision’s shaky now, eyes swarming with floaters and there’s a red mist over everything, but if this is it then I want to at least go out looking my enemy in the eye, you know? And there it is, big as death, Armageddon in an airfoil and I still can’t see anything but a black shape behind blinding light but in my mind’s eye it’s got a hundred muzzles twitching and tracking, locking on, the fucker’s looking right at me and in the next instant a sonic boom goes off in my head.
And the Eyes stagger in midair, like something just kicked them in the face.
For a second I think That’s the weirdest recoil I’ve ever seen, but then I realize it’s the gunship that’s been hit. And whatever that ship uses for a pilot has just realized the same thing, it’s forgotten all about me and it’s spinning in midair, looking for whatever arrogant motherfucker had the audacity to fight back.
And there it is, pinned in the spotlight like a rock star.
It’s some kind of battlefield robot. It’s a cyclops with no face, no room for a face because that big bloody eye wraps halfway around its head. It’s like someone flayed one of those big Greek statues down to the muscles—because that’s all you can see, man, these bunched cords of muscle, gunmetal gray, almost oily in the searchlight, wrapped around a gleaming skeleton that pokes through here and there. You can see a spine. Something like a skull. There are knuckles and elbows and kneecaps and they gleam like chrome but you just know they have to be a thousand times stronger.
I swear in that moment it’s ten meters tall. It comes striding across the wreckage like a great fucking golem, holding a cannon in one hand like it weighs a hundred grams, like it weighs nothing at all. The muscles flex and slide across one another with every step; they seem almost organic, but I’ve never seen anything live move quite like that.
It looks like it can take down that ship with a single shot.
It doesn’t, though. The gunship gets its licks in, fires back, hits the golem dead in the chest and not a word of a lie I swear that fucker stays standing. He staggers, rocks back on his heels, almost goes over. But he doesn’t. He keeps his footing, and he brings up that cannon again—I can see now it’s some kind of tricked-out miligun, way too big for mere mortals. He must’ve swiped it off a Taranis or something but he’s throwing it around like it’s a paperweight and the sound it makes, that beautiful sound, gotta be three thousand rounds a minute and the ammo belt’s flapping and slithering through that gun like .30-caliber tickertape.
I’m laughing like the Joker, I’m cheering him on so hard I almost forget I’m dying. He’s my guardian angel, he’s Gabriel blowing his horn against the heavens and that hellship is dipping and weaving and looking for an opening but it’s on fire now, it’s shitting smoke and listing to starboard and it can’t even seem to get a target lock anymore, all that devastating firepower just spraying in these wild arcs through the whole 360, hitting nothing but sea and sky.
Doesn’t blow up a moment too soon, though, because two seconds after it goes down my savior’s cannon is spinning on empty.
I’m kind of laughed out by now. Actually, I’m having a hard time even breathing. Blood pools at the back of my throat. I can barely cough it back up. But Gabriel hears me, even over the roaring of the flames. He sees me, and he comes to me through the smoke and the wreckage with that miligun still spinning in his hand, nothing to chew on anymore but sheer inertia. He seems to notice that after a second, throws the gun away without a second glance, kneels down at my side and stares at me.
I stare back. Dark coppery visor, shiny and opaque; stubby metal snout underneath, some kind of integrated gasmask-respirator thingy. More of that corded gray muscle-armor across the cheeks, held anchored by metal strips running along the edge of the jaw; they meet up like mandibles where the mouth should be.
It’s like being face-to-face with a praying mantis.
He doesn’t say a damn thing for the longest time. I try to—thank you, or nice shooting, or even what the fuck—but those parts don’t seem to work anymore. Finally I hear an electrical hum and a voice comes out.
“Let me guess. You’re my ride out of here.”
Golem. Angel. Cyclops. Robot. Still not sure what he is. It’s surreal. I think maybe I’m hallucinating. I think I’m having a near-death experience.
Looking back, that’s exactly what it was.
He saves me. I don’t know how long it takes. I’m not there for most of it.
I remember movement; I remember being lifted up to Heaven, slung over my hero’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I remember the feel of great bundled cables ratcheting back and forth, biting into my gut. I remember it hurting, at long last. I’m in agony now, I’m flayed nerves and broken bones and guts fed through a wood chipper. I faint from the pain, and the pain shocks me back awake, and then I faint again.
But I’m almost relieved, you know? Almost happy. I’m not dead yet, not yet. I’m still in the world. I can still hurt.
Still can’t scream, though. Can’t make a sound.
I hear him talking. Through the helmet. A voice, filtered through some kind of vocoder; there’s an electronic buzz to it, a machine quality, but it sounds like there’s a real man inside trying to get out. He raises his voice. He rants. He falls silent now and then, like he’s listening. I listen, too, but I never hear anyone answer.
“This is what it was for, then. This is your Master Plan. You always have one, don’t you?
“Yeah, right. Not the clay’s place to question the potter. Except your feet are made out of the stuff just as much as mine, aren’t they? Aren’t they?
“You’re not above it, you fucker. You’re no higher than I am. You may be in me, but you’re not above me.
“Goddamn you. You monster, you parasite. Goddamn you.”
I don’t know if he’s swearing or praying.
Something’s screaming the next time I come to. It’s still not me; I try, believe me. I can barely manage a gurgle. But something’s screaming, and that sound bounces off walls and ceilings and hits me from all sides, tinged with metal.
My hope and my salvation. He’s brought me indoors.
I open my eyes, try to focus, can’t. But the flames are still with us; giant flickering shadows writhe on a wall, and the backlight is orange—except just off to my right, where it’s—wrong, somehow. Artificial. I turn my head just far enough to see the golem playing with a tiny blue sun dancing in his hand. Laser, I realize, and pass out again.
“Wake up.”
Not dead yet. Still not dead.
“Wake up, soldier. Now.”
Same place, different time. Bright dirty sunlight pools on the floor from barred windo
ws high overhead.
I actually feel a bit better now. The pain’s more—distant. That’s good; it means all those nerves sending back reports from my broken fucked-up body have finally cashed it in. It means that maybe I can die in peace.
“Wake the fuck UP!”
Something big and dark and flaccid hangs in front of me. I force my eyes to squint, force my brain to interpret: a skinned carcass, a flayed—
—golem—
Instant focus.
My savior’s been gutted like a fish. It hangs deflated from an overhead beam, split down the middle and scooped clean of its insides. All those high-tech gunmetal muscles dangle limp and unmoving; the interior glistens red as raw meat. Are my eyes fucking up again, or is that butchered carcass bleeding?
“Down here.”
Big black dude. Shaved head, some kind of skintight black body stocking pimped out with white veins. Like a wet suit with a circulatory system. Dirt and blood smeared across his face and for one crazy surreal second I think he has gills, but no; it’s just a bloody gash, still oozing, along the line of his jaw. I concentrate on his shoulder flash until it stops jumping around: AIRBORNE.
He’s got some kind of hypo in one hand. I can feel the tingle, now; he’s just emptied it into my arm.
“Don’t try to talk,” he says. (I almost laugh, but the pain surges back when I try.) “Just let it take hold. You’re gonna make it. You’re gonna make it.”
It sounds like an apology.
He’s not doing so well himself, you know. There’s a trickle of blood threading out of his nose, he’s swaying on his feet, his face is as gray as that wall behind you. One of his eyes is bloodshot, like every capillary ruptured at once. His hands are shaking. His eyes dart around like a bird’s, like there aren’t enough shadows in this place to hold all the monsters he sees—and there are still a lot of shadows here, that dirty daylight doesn’t kill the darkness so much as just … throw it into high contrast. He doesn’t seem to be seriously injured, physically—no bones broken that I can see, no major wounds—but it’s obvious he’s way past your garden-variety thousand-yard stare. I’ve seen some pretty horrific shit over the past couple of hours, and I’m looking my own death in the face, and even so I can tell he’s far farther into hell than I am.