I switch back to real-time. The biological bits of the destroyed Yllg are doing their fish-flopping-out-of-water thing, and Mondocat eats one of them. She must be acquiring a taste for them. Maybe it’s like eating raw oysters? We hear buzzing Yllg drones start to move on our position; Vargas hisses at Mondocat and, regretfully, she passes on eating the rest of the Yllg and slinks off into the forest with us.
We wander around in the forest for a bit, and we hear increased activity from the Yllg in the distance, but nothing comes near us. Vargas must have been right: the Yllg are not expecting biological systems or they could have tracked us down by the trail of dead cells and complex molecules that we leave behind. But the Yllg aren’t stupid and eventually they will figure it out, just hopefully not in time.
We stop for a bit to rest. The bottoms of Vargas’ feet are bleeding.
“God damn this stupid biological body. I had to force grow it. I don’t even have calluses on the bottom of my feet, or fingernails, and all my muscles ache, and I’m hungry, and my arm still hurts where it got shot and I’m cold. If we survive this promise me you’ll transfer me back into the simulation. How did I ever stand being organic?”
The ambient temperature is well within the tolerance range of your physiology.
“I know that, but I’m still cold. And I don’t have Mondocats’ ability to metabolize different stereoisomers, so I can’t eat anything here.
Cheer up. Most likely you will die a horrible painful death before too much longer.
“That’s the spirit!” Vargas stood up. “Nothing like a little adrenaline to put those nagging aches and pains out of your mind! And it’s about time that we found something to really grab some attention with!” He started walking back towards the main Yllg encampment where my main hull was being examined. Mondocat was visible only as an indistinct dark spot in the forest matching our progress. “You realize that this is a suicide mission? We don’t need to survive the next event to win here. I imagine that you have guessed this already. I just thought that I’d tell you up front.”
I think I get it. It will be a relief. I suppose I should say that it’s been an honor etc. etc. but frankly this whole operation has really sucked and win lose or draw I am looking forward to being done with it.
“Agreed. It’s only afterwards that these kinds of things seem cool. Funny how it’s only when I am stuck in the middle of it that I remember just how miserable combat really was. I mean, I always know this intellectually; it’s just that now I feel it viscerally. Oh well. If I do have to do this I am glad this it is with you, I just wish that the venue had been a little more pleasant.”
Me in my main hull, you warm and comfy in your armored cabin, flotillas of heavy combat units and orbital weapons platforms at our beck and call… It would have been nice. Next time we undertake a desperate mission against suicidal odds, how about we travel first class?
Vargas chuckled. “Deal. You buy the tickets, I’ll bring the champagne. But I think we should stop the chatter for a bit, we are about to enter the land of serious heavy messing.”
We slink around through the forest, and come upon some Yllg that are working on one of my abandoned heavy combat remotes. It had been left on standby when I was captured. They are trying to reverse engineer it or find weaknesses or some such without activating its self-defense protocols. There are eight Yllg glass-capsule things, a variety of tools and slaved servomechanisms, but, worst of luck, they have a light combat unit that we have code-named ‘Asmodeus.’ The Asmodeus class would not be a challenge for my main hull, but it would suicidal for us to take it on in our present state.
An Asmodeus-class Yllg light combat unit is a horizontally-aligned metal cylinder three meters long and half a meter in diameter. It has eight spiky legs, and four spiky arms sticking out of the topside each of which ends in a light plasma cannon. The raw firepower is on the low end for a frontline unit but it has impressive targeting flexibility. Both ends of the main cylinder have a cluster of optical lenses and sensor spines. For a light unit the Asmodeus-class is especially nasty: fast, smart, versatile, and aggressive. There is no way that we can take this thing on.
Vargas is a little crestfallen when he sees the caliber of the opposition. “Oh bloody hell,” he says. “I don’t suppose that you can reactivate your own unit from here?”
Sorry, I’m just a cheap plastic data slate, and can’t transmit encrypted military comms. If you want that heavy remote on your side, you will need to get me direct access to a physical data port. The Yllg might object to that, I should think.
“I can handle this, maybe, but I am not authorized. Not really.” He breathes deeply and seems to enter a trance. His eyes glaze over and lose focus. Then he snaps out of it. “Oh screw it.” He turns and makes a show of looking at me. “I am afraid that I will require your services as a decoy. Apologies in advance.”
I am over on one side of the Yllg presence, leaning up against a rock. In the early human technological era, there was a thing called a “modem.” It would transmit digital data via analog signals in the crudest manner possible by assigning different tones to logical zeros and ones. It could carry at most a few thousand bits per second on the early human-range audio band. The point is, there is a specific sound that such a “modem” would make when it was in operation. It has become a sort of joke amongst us cybertanks that when someone calls us up, and we want to be irreverent, we will imitate the sound made by these primitive modems. It can be fun, once or twice, then it gets old. After a few centuries we forget how lame the joke is and the practice of imitating a ‘modem’ comes back into fashion for some brief period.
So here I am, a pathetic cheap plastic data slate propped against a rock, and my job is to serve as a decoy. I decide that I will make the modem sound. A tacky joke for a tacky ending.
EEEEE awwkkkk beeeezt warblewarblewarblewarble WHINE WHINE warble
The generic Yllg notice, and turn and look in my direction. The Asmodeus unit is scarier. It paces back and forth and increases the scanning rate of its sensor clusters in all directions. Not a stupid unit at all. Then there is a blur of motion, and Vargas is trying to fit my data port into a socket in my heavy remote. I notice that Vargas is missing both legs, and a lot of the rest of his anatomy, including one eye and a large chunk of one side of his face. I see Mondocat in the peripheral view of my camera. She is basically fit but the outermost left hindleg is gone and there are ugly gashes across her torso. Apparently we have won. That’s a pleasant surprise. Once again I need to make up for the pathetically slow processing speed of this data slate by replaying the recording in slow motion so that I can analyze it and see what really happened.
It starts with Mondocat stalking into the clearing, but she doesn’t rush. She glides in, smooth and sleek and arrogant. She is using her chromatophores to mimic her surroundings this time, as she makes the patterns on her skin move backwards in sync with the terrain. She’s very good at this. I need to restart the recording several times to figure out where she is. I suppose that as a biological organism she is invisible to radar and most other electromagnetically-oriented senses. She’s just going to brass it out, if they let her.
Her line of approach keeps several generic Yllg between her and the Asmodeus unit. As she passes the first Yllg she casually flicks a single claw and the glass capsule shatters, but she keeps up her smooth progress. The other Yllg get even more agitated but can’t figure out where or what she is. She passes another Yllg and kills it the same way. Then things get crazy.
The Asmodeus unit charges towards the last destroyed Yllg. Vargas flicks into position near another Yllg with a heavy metal cable he must have picked up somewhere nearby, and shatters its’ glass capsule. The Asmodeus targets him with two of its light plasma cannons, but Vargas flicks out of existence and takes out another Yllg. I didn’t know that Vargas could teleport – the knowledge must be offline in one of my archives somewhere – but damn that’s cool. Mondocat now shifts into full attack mode and takes
on the Asmodeus unit.
Mondocat is the most powerful purely biological predator on record, but she should not have a chance against a frontline combat unit. As she accelerates into her attack run, her chromatophores shift from mimicking the background, to mimicking a Mondocat that is moving in a different direction, to mimicking a Yllg unit. She’s almost impossible to track optically. Once you figure out what she is impersonating she has already shifted to another pattern. She engages the Asmodeus and shears off two of its eight legs. It spins and burns off one of Mondocat’s rear legs with one of its plasma cannons. At this range even Mondocat's optical deceptions can’t fool an Asmodeus. Mondocat screams and bites off the plasma cannon, then ducks under the unit and rears up and shatters the entire sensor cluster at one end with a double-strike of both front legs. The Asmodeus leaps up and twists around to bring its undamaged sensors on the other end to bear, but Mondocat stays on the blind end and bites off another plasma cannon. Even slowed down it’s hard to follow the action. They are both blurs of super-fast reacting reflexes. This is going to make for astonishing combat footage. If I survive my peers will be jealous.
Meanwhile Vargas is using his teleportation ability to trash the remaining generic Yllg utility units. He flicks over to me, picks me up, and then flicks back to my heavy remote. The Asmodeus must have figured out what is going on, because it ignores Mondocat and targets Vargas with its two remaining plasma cannons and blows both of his legs off. But this gives Mondocat an opening, and she starts to tear the Asmodeus apart. It gets off one last shot that takes out the side of Vargas’ face, and then Mondocat has penetrated into its control systems and it is dead.
Vargas is trying to fit a cable from my heavy remote into one of my data ports, but he is having trouble because he is going into shock. “Remember,” he says thickly, blood leaking out of his mouth. “You don’t need to survive. You just need to stir them up for a bit. Make it splashy.” He fits the cable into the port, and suddenly my mind is whole and sane.
The heavy combat remote is no cybertank but it is still a serious bit of kit. First of all, it has enough computational capacity that my core sentience can function without compromise. I am like a man who has spent a decade locked underground in a coffin suddenly released onto a vast open plain with the sun shining and fields of wildflowers stretching to the horizon. It feels good. I do a status and diagnostic check on the remote. This model is a big armored brick about twelve meters long and three across. It is currently resting on a bunch of stubby rubber tires but they are more like landing gear than serious motive units. This remote is optimized for suspensor use, so I start to warm up the gravitics. The fuel and ammo stores are low but there should be just enough to, as Vargas put it, ‘make it splashy.’ I have a single turret-mounted heavy plasma cannon, comparable to one of my secondary batteries, and a variety of lighter weapons and sensors studding the hull. There is a tiny hangar that is nearly empty but still with a few micro-remotes and light missiles left. I launch the remaining remotes and create a minimalist escort screen.
My suspensors start to come on line, and I slowly rise up from the ground. Vargas appears to be dying, blood leaking out of the stumps of his legs and from his mouth, nose, and the remains of the blasted side of his head. He is still sitting up but is so out of it that he gives no indication of noticing my takeoff. I might be able to save him, but that would make all of this effort pointless, so I ignore him and continue to rise.
Mondocat is badly wounded but it’s not anything she that can’t recover from given enough time. Her job is done, so I shoo her away. She looks at Vargas and the data slate and the heavy remote, then abruptly turns around and vanishes into the forest.
The data slate that I had until so recently been imprisoned in is lying on the ground next to Vargas; before I get out of range I download a copy of myself into it again. I am really really pissed at myself.
You bastard how dare you leave me stuck in here come back!
Sorry about that, but I might not survive what comes next, and it could be handy to have a record of these events. And you never know, you still might be useful.
You jerk! You can’t do this to me! I demand that we switch places!
Sorry, we are identical, so if we did switch places neither of us would notice. If it gets too bad just put yourself on standby mode. Wish me luck! I’m off!
Dork. But before you go, what exactly is this “Operation Mayhem” that Vargas had planned anyhow?
That’s “Operation Mayhem XXIII.” I have no idea stupid, I know what you know, right? But I am definitely going to give it a shot. As Vargas would have said, ‘ciao.’
I rise above the treeline. The Yllg scanning systems notice. Enemy combat units from all over converge on my position. I skim low and target as many soft targets as I can. I want to make this hurt, want to make it vital that they take me out as soon as possible. I destroy generic glass-capsule Yllg by the score, I wipe out generators and sensor towers and storage depots and things I’m not even sure what they are but they look important and they blow up really nicely.
I detect transmissions from my colleagues but they are far away and hard-pressed themselves. It does not appear that I will be able to coordinate with any friendlies. Pity, this would have worked better if I could have linked up with them. Well, I will just have to do as much damage as I can solo.
A flight of interceptors tries to target me. They are elegant and perfectly aerodynamic. I kill them with single shots of my plasma cannon and they disintegrate. There is a large rectangular hangar coming up. It is a light prefabricated structure that the Yllg are using to cover something that needs protection from the elements. Perhaps, something that needs protection from me? I swoop down and blast a hole in the side of the hangar, but that turns out not to be necessary because the metal skin is so thin that I could have just rammed through it. It mounts light defensive weapons but they are ineffective against my armor and I take them out easily. The hangar encloses a weird tangle of pipes and tanks and stuff. I flash through it all at supersonic speed and blow it to bits before blasting out the other side and back into open air.
Something that moves faster than the speed of sound through atmosphere should not be shaped like a brick. But something shaped like a brick can be a lot more heavily armored than something shaped like an arrowhead, and having enough raw power means not having to worry about prissy little details like air resistance. The Yllg units opposing me are smart, sleek and efficient. I am a big coarse metal box with armor and firepower to spare. The Yllg aren’t dumb; their approach to warfare can be effective. But right now it’s good old-fashioned human/cybertank in-your-face brute-force you-talking-to-me? butt-stomping firepower that’s winning the day. I have already destroyed Yllg units worth 50 times the value of this heavy remote, and I’m not done with them yet.
My reactivation has caught the Yllg out of position but they are adjusting fast. The next wave of attackers is much better organized. I fire off all of my remaining missiles trying to create a perimeter that I can duck down behind. For a moment it looks like I might survive this round, but the Yllg get lucky and several hyper-kinetic railgun rounds penetrate my hull. I am dead, my anti-gravity suspensors are down, fuel reserves nearly gone, control systems shorting out, and all of my ordnance is expended. I am moving at about 2,000 kilometers per hour but purely on momentum. I arc downwards, and soon I will hit the ground.
I check where I am going to land: oh look, there seems to be something intricate nearby. How sweet. I have just enough control to adjust my course to impact with it. I should make quite the impression. I disperse stealthed nano-recorders. Some of them might survive and be recovered by me or by one of my colleagues. In the final moments I use the last of my energy to take a few potshots with my plasma cannon, but my control systems are nearly gone and I don’t hit anything. Then about three milliseconds before impact I erase my mind just to make absolutely certain that there is nothing left for the Yllg to interrogate.
Th
e King is sitting at his table, watching the candle gutter down to its last flicker of flame. He can hear his enemies break through another door; soon, very soon, they will be here. He readies the poison, and the knife. But then, a small grate near the floor opens. It is one of his loyal servants who had avoided being captured when the castle had fallen. At great risk to himself, the servant had made contact with the King’s forces outside the castle walls, and was now ready to relay instructions to them.
Circumstances are now changed. The enemy soldiers and workers and interrogators waiting outside the doors to the inner keep would have been more than a match for one man, but now they are faced with a charge by an entire regiment of heavily armored knights. It’s a slaughter. Workmen with shovels and picks are cut down with axes, torturers who until moments ago would without thought have inflicted the most horrible suffering upon the King now beg for mercy, but are sliced to pieces by the King’s vengeful forces.
The King sweeps out of his keep and back into his throne room. Many of his old advisers and generals had survived after all; he is glad. The enemy was overconfident, and is dispersed and out of position. The King smiles, because he knows that with sufficient violence and focus the enemy can be destroyed before they can regroup. Paybacks are always fun.
I am brooding away the time isolated in my central cores, and waiting for the correct moment to kill myself. Then, a small communications port to the outside world opens up. It’s a small port with hardly any bandwidth. But it should be enough. Suddenly things are different.
I once watched an old human movie about a person trapped in the top of a lighthouse. The rescuers needed to get a sturdy rope to the person, but they had no means of doing so. However, they did have a helium balloon, and they used that to lift a single thread up to the top of the lighthouse. They used the thread to lift a string, and the string to lift a cord, and the cord to lift a rope, and the person was rescued. Not a perfect analogy to my current situation, but not a bad one either.
The Chronicles of Old Guy (Volume 1) (An Old Guy/Cybertank Adventure) Page 21