by Jacob Holo
Ryu picked his rifle off the floor and fired a three-round burst through Caesar’s face. The hologram shimmered from the interruption. Explosive rounds detonated against the ceiling, sending broken tiles and light fixtures raining down on the interrogation pods.
Caesar shook his head and sighed. “So childish.”
Kaneda raised his rifle and aimed it past Caesar. With his visor, he magnified the two staircases leading out of the level.
“Ryu, get up.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Just get up. Someone’s coming.”
“Damn it!” Ryu pushed off the floor with his good hand and stood up. His smartskin tried to reboot. Patterns danced over his body, but failed to sustain the illusion.
Kaneda stepped through Caesar’s hologram and the hole in the wall. The edges had cooled to a dull orange. Ryu followed him out.
A solid mob of people shambled down the stairs from the upper level. Another group approached from the level below.
“Some of them have grenades,” Kaneda said.
“Oh, that’s just perfect!”
Every interrogation pod on the level opened with a pneumatic hiss. The occupants slowly climbed out. Kaneda stepped away from the nearest pod. He aimed his rifle at a black man in a white jumpsuit with a shaved head and a grenade in his hand.
Kaneda fired a warning shot over his head. The man looked vacantly at Ryu.
“Let me ask you something,” Caesar said. “Have you ever killed another human being? It’s not the same as gunning down machines, is it? I wonder how long it will take before you begin murdering these helpless innocents. Not that it matters. I have more thralls than you have bullets.”
“Kaneda?”
“Back away from them. Don’t let them near us.”
“Back away to where?”
“Stay in the open. Follow me!”
Kaneda dashed between an elderly woman and a teenage boy. He ran down a row of pods and stopped near the center of the level. The crowd of thralls closed in around them. Too many of them had grenades. A young woman with half a head of auburn hair jerked her arm back like a drunken baseball pitcher.
Kaneda snapped his rifle up and fired a single shot at her wrist. The shatterback was designed to penetrate the tough armor of Caesar’s robots and deliver an anti-tank payload inside. Human flesh proved no obstacle.
The shatterback struck her wrist and exploded. Her arm and part of her shoulder ceased to exist. The impact threw her to the ground, breaking bones and traumatizing organs.
The smoking, cylindrical grenade tumbled through the air before landing in a crowd of five thralls. It bloomed into a shower of diamond needles that speared through flesh and bone, sometimes ripping whole limbs off. What was left of the five thralls dropped wetly to the ground.
Kaneda couldn’t believe the carnage in front of him. He’d never seen so much blood.
“Oh ho! Very spectacular!” Caesar said, clapping.
Ryu moved in behind Kaneda, back to back.
“You’re not going to like this,” Ryu said. “But I’m the only one they can see. I can draw them away, give you a chance to ... I don’t know. Do something.”
“Don’t you dare!”
“But—”
“You shut up right now and follow me!”
“To where?”
“The only place left! Down!”
Thralls formed a solid line at the stairs leading down. Their vacuous eyes looked past Kaneda to Ryu.
Kaneda put his shoulder down and tackled a tall, skeletal man with a medical patch over one eye. The tackle broke three of the man’s ribs, fractured his sternum, and threw him aside like a rag doll. Kaneda kept running through the crowd, pushing aside anyone in his path.
An incendiary grenade dropped to the ground and ignited behind Kaneda, turning the stairs into a funeral pyre. A dozen burning thralls opened their mouths in silent screams. The green chemical flames spread, consuming flesh and steel with indiscriminate ease.
Ryu held an arm over his face and charged through the fire. He emerged singed but unharmed.
Kaneda reached the fifth interrogation level. A girl rushed forward, arms held straight out with a grenade clutched in her tiny hands. The oily smoke choking the staircase had outlined Kaneda before his smartskin could compensate. She ran straight for him. He dove to the left.
The grenade exploded. Gore and shrapnel scythed through the air. A crimson band splattered against Kaneda’s side. The shock wave sent him flying. He tumbled across the floor, threw out his arms to stop the roll, and pushed off the ground.
“Kaneda!”
His smartsuit reported minor damage to its ballistic and impact gel layers. Crimson patterns swam over his body before the smartskin’s micromind crashed.
Every nearby thrall turned and looked straight at him.
“I’m okay,” Kaneda said.
“There’s nowhere else to go! This is the bottom level!”
Kaneda raised his rifle.
“What do we do now?” Ryu shouted.
“I need to think.”
“We don’t have time to think!”
“Then I’ll stall him.”
“You’ll what?”
“Just watch.” Kaneda deactivated his sonic cancellers. “Hey, Caesar!”
The thralls stopped advancing. Caesar’s hologram materialized in front of him.
“Oh? What do we have here? Have you decided to beg for your lives? That’s rather cliché, don’t you think? I am known for many things, but mercy is sadly not one of them.”
“I was just thinking about where your quantum core is.”
“Yes, I imagine you would be,” Caesar said. “It’s quite safe. You never stood a chance, but congratulations on making it this far. I will have to commend Matriarch on her handiwork. Before I burn Europa from orbit, that is.”
“You’re that confident we can’t find it.”
“Oh, undoubtedly,” Caesar said. “If I may be so bold, a bullet through the head is, I imagine, far less painful than evisceration by massed needle grenades. Perhaps an honorable suicide would suit the two of you? I wouldn’t mind waiting. After all, your bodies hold valuable wetware technology. I’d relish the chance to reverse engineer Matriarch’s inventions.”
“He’s like a cat playing with a mouse,” Ryu said privately over their comm-collars.
Kaneda scanned the room. The only thing different was the lack of stairs down to the next level ... the lack of stairs ... lack of stairs ... the only thing different ...
“I was just thinking,” Kaneda said.
“Please don’t strain yourself,” Caesar said. “Thinking should be left to the professionals.”
“Have you ever heard the saying ‘hunting for diamonds in the ice’?”
“Hmrph,” Caesar snorted. “Of course I have. A somewhat common figure of speech among Europans. Similar to the archaic ‘needle in a haystack’ on Earth. I imagine the saying is foremost on your mind right now.”
“It is.”
“Well, if you were looking for advice, I’d suggest burning down the haystack. Or thawing the ice. Whichever is your preferred metaphor. Of course, that doesn’t really apply to my bunker.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Kaneda said.
Some of the playfulness drained out of Caesar’s face. “What do you mean?”
“Caesar, as much as you might be a machine now, you were once human. You’re just smarter. That doesn’t make you perfect. You’re not a glorified number cruncher. You feel as much as you think, and you can be wrong. You never thought anyone would make it this far, and your every action has been a desperate attempt to delay us. Why? Because the diamond isn’t in the ice. It’s buried in the rock underneath the ice.”
Caesar frowned. The thralls started advancing again.
Kaneda activated his sonic cancellers. “Get ready to run for it!”
“Run where?”
Kaneda aimed his rifle at the section of wall where th
e stairs should have been and fired a grenade. Unlike the obvious false wall on level four, this one on level five was perfectly camouflaged, but that wasn’t enough to fool high explosives.
The grenade detonated with a flash. The wall caved in. Hot-edged ceramic tiles, concrete and steel rebar blew into the staircase beyond. Every thrall in the room threw their grenade. Kaneda and Ryu jumped through the glowing rent in the wall and tumbled down the stairs.
Dozens of staccato explosions erupted behind them, demolishing the wall and part of the floor. Concrete debris rained over Kaneda and Ryu. They rolled to a landing halfway down the stairs where it doubled back, picked themselves up and ran down to the sixth level.
“That’s got to be it!” Ryu shouted.
A black monolith sat in the center of the sterile white level. Four utility trenches converged on Caesar’s quantum core. Kaneda could see purple ultrahigh voltage cables and thick liquid nitrogen lines. The core glowed in brilliant infrared. Dry heat radiated off it.
Twenty thralls stood between him and Caesar’s core in two neat rows. Kaneda loaded a program into his last grenade’s micromind and fired over their heads. The grenade arced through the air. Its micromind engaged small cold-gas jets to align itself with the core’s monolith.
Caesar materialized in front of them. Every thrall raised their arms, ready to throw.
“You—!” he began to say.
The grenade’s high explosive yield detonated in a shaped cone. The impact tore through the monolith and gutted its sensitive systems. Sparks showered out until emergency breakers interrupted power. A single nitrogen leak spewed vaporous clouds out the back. Caesar’s hologram froze in mid-sentence. The thralls dropped to the ground like puppets with their strings cut.
Kaneda and Ryu crouched at the base of the stairs, rifles ready.
Nothing happened. No pursuit or sounds came from the level above.
Ryu stood up and walked to Caesar’s hologram. He passed his gun barrel through it a few times. Caesar’s image remained static.
“I can’t believe we did it,” Ryu said. “We did do it, right? This isn’t some trick, is it?”
Kaneda walked to the monolith and inspected the wreckage. He pulled a twisted panel off and tossed it aside. “It certainly looks that way. See, this stack of torus accelerators feeding what’s left of the column in the center? That’s an exact match for what Matriarch told us to look for.”
“And this thing isn’t very mobile either.” Ryu kicked the side of the monolith.
“No, it isn’t.”
“So we actually did it?” Ryu said. “We killed Caesar. I can’t believe it.”
“We should probably have the wreckage inspected just to be sure,” Kaneda said. He put a hand on Ryu’s shoulder. “But yeah, we did it.”
“Those thralls surprised me,” Ryu said. “I was expecting more robots this close.”
“Like I said, he never expected anyone to make it this far. After we breached that last security door, everything was just smoke and mirrors to delay us. I don’t think we would have survived if Caesar had fortified these levels.”
“Yeah. Lucky us.”
Kaneda heard quiet sobbing behind him. He slung his rifle and walked to the rows of collapsed thralls.
“Careful,” Ryu said. “Those grenades can still go off.”
Kaneda dismissed his brother with a wave and crouched next to a young woman about his age. Tears streaked down her pale face. Unlike most of the captives, she had a full head of lush ginger hair. Perhaps she was a recent addition to Caesar’s collection.
Kaneda deactivated his sonic cancellers.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
The woman turned her head with visible effort. Her neck muscles twitched and cramped up. She parted her lips but said nothing for almost a minute.
“Is ... it over?” she finally asked.
“Yes,” Kaneda said. He placed a gentle hand under her and helped her sit up. “Caesar is dead.”
Fresh tears ran down her soft cheeks. Her eyes darted about, finally resting on his concealed face.
“Who ... who are you?”
“Kaneda.” He unlatched the seals around his neck and took his helmet off to reveal a young face with dark eyes and short black hair. He had a stern line for a mouth, and pale skin that had never known the sun.
Kaneda took a deep breath. The room smelled of ozone and human sweat.
“Kaneda Kusanagi,” he said. “And this is my brother, Ryu.”
“Hello,” Ryu said, giving the woman a short wave with his injured hand.
“What’s your name?” Kaneda asked.
“Chri ... isten ...”
“Christen,” Kaneda said. He brushed a few tangled locks out of her face. “That’s a beautiful name.”
Despite her obvious trauma, Christen smiled. It was one of the loveliest sights Kaneda had ever seen.
“You k-killed Caesar?”
“Yes.”
“But ... you’re so young.”
“We’re not that young,” Kaneda said. “I’m already sixteen. My brother will be fifteen in a few weeks.”
“Two young knights in not-very-shiny armor,” Christen said.
Kaneda looked at his blood-splattered chest. It was true enough.
“I didn’t know the F-Federacy had troops that young.”
“We’re not with the Earth Federacy. We’re from Europa.”
Christen’s smile melted into a frown. She looked away. “Another d-damn quantum mind.”
“Hey!” Ryu said. “Matriarch is a great leader. She’s nothing like Caesar.”
“Ryu, would you shut up, please?”
“What? It’s true.”
“Christen and all the others have been through enough. Just let it rest.”
“I ... all right. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just ... shit, did you hear that?”
Kaneda listened. “Yeah. Those robots finally breached the security door. They’re heading this way.”
“But Caesar’s dead!”
“They must be carrying out their final instructions,” Kaneda said.
“Find and kill us, you mean!”
“We need to get ready.”
Ryu stepped through the captives, grabbing grenades and stuffing them into his bandolier. Kaneda secured his helmet, picked Christen up, and carried her over to the wall so she was no longer between the stairs and the broken quantum core.
“What are you doing?” Ryu asked.
“Getting these people out of the line of fire.”
Kaneda ran over and picked up a man so bony he might not have been fed in weeks.
“We don’t have time, Kaneda! Those robots are on their way!”
“You can either stand around and talk, or you can help me move them,” Kaneda said. “Now which is it going to be?”
“Ah, damn it!”
Kaneda picked up a grizzled man with more shrapnel scars on his arms than interrogation scars on his scalp. Ryu muttered something impolite under his breath, bent down, and grabbed his own captive. The sound of approaching robots grew louder.
It took two minutes to finish moving all the captives.
“All right! That’s it!” Ryu said. “We need to get into cover!”
“Right.”
Kaneda ran to the utility trench next to the monolith. He lifted the grating, tossed it aside and jumped down. Ryu jumped into the trench on the opposite side of the monolith. The two trenches met behind the monolith, giving them direct line of sight to each other.
“Kaneda! Here!” Ryu tossed him three grenades, one at a time.
Kaneda caught and stuffed each grenade into his bandolier. He trained his rifle at the stairwell. The robots were so close even a natural human could hear them.
“Sounds like a lot,” Ryu said.
“Yeah. I don’t think Caesar was bluffing about his backup.”
“This is going to get messy.”
“We’ll make it. I know we will.”
“I wish I had your confidence,” Ryu said. “Here they come!”
Three gun-spiders skittered across the stairwell walls on six spindly legs each. M15 heavy railguns or M7 thermal lances swiveled atop their flat bodies. Slender, cylindrical heads twitched back and forth, seeking targets. Another two gun-spiders skittered down the steps with more on the way.
Kaneda and Ryu opened fire.
TEN YEARS LATER
FINAL YEAR OF THE THIRD SPACE AGE
Chapter 1
... establishing link ...
source: [UNKNOWN]
routing: Capitol City, Europa - TangleNet Test Hub - link_001/link_005
routing: North Pacifica, Europa - JDN Main TangleNet Hub - link_010/link_118
routing: Earth orbit - surveillance satellite JDN-SS-17 - link_001/link_002
routing: [UNKNOWN]
routing: [UNKNOWN]
routing: [UNKNOWN]
destination: [UNKNOWN]
link distance: Exact distance unknown. Estimated at 792 million kilometers.
link signal delay: 0.006 seconds
... finalizing link protocol ...
... link established ...
1: Hello, Paul.
2: Sakura. What the hell do you want?
1: I only wish to talk. There’s no need for us to get off to such a hostile start.
2: Well, we’re talking now. Get on with it. I have important business to attend to.
1: As you wish. I’m calling about the recent developments on Luna. Your actions there appear to be in violation of our long-standing arrangement.
2: Really? Would you believe me if I said I have nothing to do with the mess on Luna?
1: No, I would not.
2: You’ve grown paranoid with age, Sakura. Paranoia does not become you. You used to be so much more trusting.
1: To my detriment.
2: Ah ha ha, yes, that much is true.
1: Please, Paul. I wish to curtail the hostilities before they get out of control.
2: Very well. I’ll listen, if nothing more. What would you have me do?
1: Pull the Federacy forces off Luna.
2: Look, Sakura, I’ve told you this before and I’ll say it again. You greatly overestimate the extent of my influence. I can shape events, but this war of annexation has grown beyond my ability to control it.