By Other Means (Defending The Future)

by James Chambers

  The station closest to their target location was clear, but it was on the edge of the hotspot, so they kept moving. Two stops later, they entered the 14th Street Station on its lowest level, and then tracked up the stairs behind Tanner. They went slow, with weapons ready, even though Calypso told them no one was there. On the station’s main level, they found part of the ceiling caved in by something that had left an enormous cavity filled with layers of wreckage. Faint moonlight poured through gaps in the rubble. The scale of destruction suggested a crashed vehicle or an unexploded missile. Dr. Bell walked to the edge of the debris and pushed aside a chunk of concrete. She grabbed a length of broken rebar and used it to pry away large pieces, working with the strength of her prosthetics until she exposed an edge of blue-gray metal.

  Calypso and Tanner helped her. The three of them heaved away broken concrete and chunks of shattered tile until they uncovered part of a pitted hull painted with call letters and the American flag. Beneath the flag were embossed captain’s bars and the name “McCardle.” Dr. Bell flashed her lamp around the debris then leapt halfway up the mound and scrambled on top of the pile. She forced another chunk aside, her cybernetic legs giving her the power to shift it until it tumbled away. She pushed another and another, eliciting a warning from Tanner to watch where she was throwing rocks. The debris mound was too unstable for him and Calypso to climb, and they could not jump atop it like Dr. Bell.

  “Get off there before it collapses,” Tanner said.

  Dr. Bell ignored him and continued excavating. The scales of a dead subway station tumbled off the pile. When Dr. Bell did leap down, her face was beaming.

  “It’s a Centry,” she said. “It’s hard to tell under all this wreckage, but I cleared the top of the hull, and there’s no mistaking it. The cockpit is intact.”

  Tanner moved back to the metal hull and placed his hand on the painted American flag. Then he set down his rifle and shoved more rubble away from the craft. Calypso and Dr. Bell worked with him, Moving hunks of fallen street and ceiling, rolling the pieces too big to lift, until they had cleared a recognizable section of the warcraft.

  “Sonofabitch,” Tanner said. “Exactly like the pictures.”

  “Didn’t you believe me?” Dr. Bell said.

  “That these things existed? Yes. That we’d find one intact after twenty years? Guess I figured they were all lost. Alright, let’s call in a recovery crew.”

  “Not for this one. Not yet, at least.”

  “Why not?”

  “This isn’t the contact,” Calypso said. He stared at the uncovered patches of the warcraft then placed his hand on the hull like Tanner had done. “I get no thought activity at all.”

  “Because he’s dead,” Dr. Bell said.

  Calypso nodded. “I think so.”

  “How can you know?” Tanner said.

  “He’s been down here a long time, covered in rubble, cut off from the sun. The machinery may still work, and maybe the nuclear battery is still charged. But the nanites that kept the brain alive can’t be. They were fueled by chlorophyll, and without sunlight, they wouldn’t have lasted more than a few months. The brain plugged into the cockpit would have withered and died only a few days after the nanites stopped repairing its cells and manufacturing oxygen and nutrients. I’m sorry to say Captain McCardle has been dead a long time. I’ve found seven others like this over the years. Intact but dead.”

  “The contact is stronger here,” Calypso said. “We’re not far.”

  “It has to be topside somewhere,” Dr. Bell said. “Exposed to the sky, but not in the open.”

  “Not getting out through here to look.” Tanner nodded at the rubble-choked exits.

  He jogged across the station to check the other stairways and found the southwest stairwell was passable. The trio climbed it to the street and surveyed the neighborhood. Although Calypso sensed people in the area, no one felt close enough to be an immediate threat. They spread apart, and Tanner led them, following Calypso’s directions. The city was quiet. Mingled with the sky’s brackish hue was the creamsicle glow of fires burning somewhere on the avenue. In a few hours it would be dawn, and the sun would cook off the night haze.

  The contact grew stronger. Calypso was restless and wanted to go faster. Tanner tried to hold him back, but Calypso’s excitement was contagious, and before long the trio was jogging. They crossed another block. Then ignoring Tanner’s warnings, Calypso sprinted away.

  “Down here!” he shouted.

  Dr. Bell and Tanner raced after him.

  “This way,” Calypso said.

  Tanner hollered for him to slow down and wait, but Calypso kept running. He vanished through the broken front doors of a high-rise office building.

  Wait! We can’t see you now, Dr. Bell thought at him.

  Calypso thought back, Okay, okay, but it’s here, in this building, right on top of us. It’s here! So let’s go, slowpoke.

  Dr. Bell edged past Tanner, who yelled at her to slow down. Tanner tried to keep up, but Dr. Bell’s prosthetic legs outpaced him. Running was one of the few times she felt grateful for her machine limbs, and Calypso was right. Now was the time to act. She was thirty yards from the building entrance when something like an invisible wasp buzzed by her head. Another came right after it. Time seemed to grind to a crawl, and Calypso’s voice exploded through her mind.

  Get down! Get down!

  All around Dr. Bell the pavement spit up asphalt dust like a deep puddle splattering under a sudden rain. The air filled with humming, zipping sounds, and as Dr. Bell crouched and then leapt toward the building’s broken entrance, hot stings drilled through her upper body. She cleared the distance on the power of her artificial legs and tumbled into the shelter of the pitch-black building lobby. In an instant Calypso was at her side, his thoughts a wild jumble of apologies for being distracted, for not sensing the sniper, for not warning her sooner. The raw emotion pouring out of him was overwhelming. For all his courage, in that moment, Calypso was only a boy convinced the woman who was like a mother to him was about to die. Dr. Bell gripped his hand and tried to soothe him.

  Not your fault, she thought. He was too far away for you to know he was dangerous. Don’t blame yourself. Please. Not your fault.

  She thought it over and over, coaxing Calypso back from the edge of panic. And when she had helped him regain his focus, she asked him about Sergeant Tanner.

  Calypso edged to the open doorways. He’s pinned down behind a dumpster. But I don’t think he’s hurt, he thought.

  How many enemy? Dr. Bell asked.

  Only the sniper.

  Then you have to take him. I know you don’t want to, but you have to. Or Tanner might die.

  She felt how fragile Calypso’s spirit was now, and she hated the burden she was placing on him, but there was no other way. Calypso withdrew into the darkness.

  You need my help, he thought.

  Help Tanner first. You have to. Please.

  Dr. Bell was grateful for the darkness. She was afraid of how Calypso might react if he saw her torn up and bloodied, and she needed him to act. She could not leave him alone out here. If her wounds were as bad as they felt, Sergeant Tanner might be the only one left to get him home.

  Please, she thought. Trust me. You do trust me, right?

  Of course, I do. You’ve done everything for me. I trust you more than anyone else.

  Then do what I say. I know what I’m asking, and I know you can handle it. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t the only way.

  Dr. Bell felt Calypso’s thoughts churning in the blackness between them. Then he extricated himself from Dr. Bell’s mind to protect her from what he was about to do. The abrupt break startled her. Calypso crept back to the entrance, becoming a shadowy scarecrow. The gunfire had died down, but a fresh shot came every few seconds—the sniper letting Tanner know he was still there. Calypso planted his feet, and then what happened next happened in stillness and without a sound. A gunshot plinked off the dumpster. A few s
econds passed. Another round shattered the glass off a lamppost behind Tanner. A few more seconds passed. The next bullet gouged concrete far from its target, and the next struck a window in a building on the next corner. Seconds passed. No other shot came.

  It’s done, thought Calypso. Then speaking over the comm link, he said, “All clear, Sergeant Tanner. Come in now. I’m sorry I didn’t warn us. I won’t let down my guard again. Please hurry. Dr. Bell is wounded.”

  His voice was laden with sadness. Dr. Bell knew the dying thoughts of the sniper were echoing through Calypso’s mind. They would always be there. To think someone dead, as Calypso had done, required staying connected with the target’s psyche until the very last moment, rewiring brain patterns for a suicide circuit, and the dying impressions were too powerful to ever forget. But she believed Calypso was strong enough to live with what he had been forced to do. When Tanner entered the lobby, he guided him to Dr. Bell.

  “How bad is it?” Calypso asked.

  Tanner flashed his lamp over Bell’s body. “Pretty damn bad. Time to evac.”

  “No,” Dr. Bell said. “We’re too close. The contact’s here. Pack my wounds. I can make it.”

  Tanner was already pressing field dressings over Dr. Bell’s wounds. “Out of your mind if you think I’ll let you go anywhere other than home,” he said.

  Dr. Bell pushed herself onto her knees.

  “Shit. Don’t move. You’re hurt.” Tanner tried to ease her back down.

  With her cybernetic arm, Bell jolted Tanner aside and then forced herself to stand. Her breathing was shallow, and her heart was racing, but she was steady.

  “We have to hurry,” she said. “We might not find it again.”

  “You need a medic,” Tanner said.

  “Or what? I’ll die. Like how many millions of others in this war. We don’t have a lot of true choices in our lives, Sergeant. You’re not taking this one away from me. I swear to you if this contact turns out to be a Centry, this all will have been worth it. And if I die then so be it. I’ve outlived too many people to care about that now. So, please, follow Calypso’s directions.”

  Dr. Bell thought Tanner might face her down, but then he nodded and let Calypso lead them to a staircase at the back of the lobby. They climbed it. Dr. Bell, weak from blood loss, set her legs to automatic and let them carry her behind Calypso and Tanner.

  They passed the fourth floor, then the fifth, and kept going. Dr. Bell expected they would have to climb to the roof. It was the only place that made sense for the contact to be. It took them about an hour to reach the roof access. Tanner broke the lock, and then they were back in the moonlight with a view of the dark city in every direction. The fires on the avenue were burning bright.

  “Where?” Dr. Bell asked Calypso.

  Spikes of pain drove through her chest, and her vision grayed for a moment. It was getting harder to breathe. She suspected she was bleeding into her lungs. Calypso looked frightened, and she knew she must look awful, covered in blood.

  It’s okay, she thought to him. Believe in me. Where?

  At the center of the roof was a bulky ventilation unit. On the other side was the Centry, covered in thick dust. It looked peaceful, like it was sleeping. Dr. Bell, Tanner, and Calypso approached it.

  “Incredible,” Tanner whispered.

  Calypso brushed dust from the hull to expose the call letters, American flag, and the name “Bowman” painted over captain’s bars. Dr. Bell swallowed a sob. She had not realized that seeing him would resurrect so much of her grief. She realized then that even after all the years she had searched, she did not know if she had ever really expected to find him. She circled the craft, which aside from scrapes and dents looked undamaged. She opened a panel near the cockpit and accessed the diagnostic interface. Running off the nuclear battery, it was still lit and working. Dr. Bell checked the cockpit environment. The numbers for oxygen, nitrogen, temperature, and protein count all came up good. She cycled through the next batch of data then initiated a full system check. Two minutes later the display reported all systems, except the satellite link, running but they had not been activated outside of drill mode since the Centry program crashed.

  “You’re alive,” she said. “Why won’t you work?”

  The machine did not answer.

  “Calypso,” she said. “It’s time to use your training.”

  “It’s not safe,” he said. “I sense others in the building. They’re coming up, hunting us.”

  “How many?” Tanner said.

  “Half a dozen.”

  “Sniper must’ve alerted them,” Tanner said. He checked his weapon and jogged toward the roof door. “Only one access point. I can hold them off, but not forever.”

  “We’ll be quick. We have to be. If they find the Centry they’ll destroy it,” Dr. Bell said. “Now, like we practiced, Calypso, okay?”

  Calypso nodded and then sat down in the shadow of the machine and closed his eyes.

  Tanner watched. “What’s he doing?”

  “Entering the Centry’s brain. He’s going to link me to it, so I can see what went wrong.”

  Dr. Bell sat beside Calypso and held his hand. His mind touched hers and then guided her toward the Centry, and once she was in, he backed off, leaving her connected to Captain Bowman’s brain. It amazed Dr. Bell how easy the connection was, and she wished she had known about telepaths when she was helping to build the Centries. The soldier’s mind was stripped down, full of combat information, and packed with Centry programming. There were memories of battles and an intense, fiery vision that was the fight that had put Captain Bowman on the Centry roster. He had come in at the end, one of the last units to go online, and Dr. Bell remembered how it had crushed her to see his broken body in the operating room. She had not even known then that she was carrying his child.

  She dug through scattered recollections and impressions. The Centry process struck a fine balance between removing enough memories to make a century of mechanized existence bearable while leaving enough to preserve the soldier’s humanity. The latter were the memories Dr. Bell wanted.

  Everything flickered. Calypso was straining to keep the connection open. Dr. Bell pushed deeper, moving her awareness past banks of codes and concepts that she had helped create. She forced her way down to the central core of Bowman’s mind, and there she located the memory she wanted.

  It was herself.

  She was smiling, and there was sun in her hair.

  She felt the softness of her skin the way Bowman had felt it the last time they had been together. His mind was trapped in that moment, cycling it like a loop. It had been designed that way to keep the Centries sedated when they were offline for repairs. A programming error had set the clocks running wrong, making it seem that a century had already passed when only little more than a year had gone by. The Centries had defaulted to maintenance mode, but because the glitch was only in one part of the programming, they could not complete the routine and return to their bases. Instead they had simply shut down, wherever they were, trapped in pleasant memories designated to sustain them through a prolonged state of inactivity. The simplicity of it made Dr. Bell furious. Someone’s carelessness had allowed the war to go on long after it should have ended. Dr. Bell sharpened her focus. She felt the strain, in her body and her mind. Drawing on Calypso’s help, she scanned Bowman’s cybernetics programming until she located the error. She noted the code and the proper fix and thought them to Calypso, so that Bowman could be repaired when he was recovered.

  I can do that now, thought Calypso.

  What do you mean? Dr. Bell thought.

  I can fix him. So much of the coding is embedded in his mind, it’s like an open book to me. Calypso paused, and then thought, I wish you had told me about him and you. I consider you my mother. Perhaps I could think of him as my father.

  Yes, think of him that way, and remember, not everything is meant to be shared between parent and child.

  I understand, Calypso thoug
ht.

  If you can fix him, please do.

  I already did.

  Dr. Bell felt the change flow through Bowman’s mind as Calypso drew her out of it. She did not want to lose the connection. It had been so long since she had felt so close to anyone. The attack that wounded her and killed her unborn child had come only six months after the Centry program launched. She had been alone since then.Before she could protest, she was out of Bowman’s psyche and back in her own.

  Gunfire rattled the air.

  Calypso was dragging her around the Centry for cover.

  “They’re at the door,” he said.

  Dr. Bell crawled to the diagnostic panel and checked the readings. They had switched from drill mode to duty mode, and even more amazing, the satellite link was back online. Bowman was fully functional again, and he was plugged into every other surviving Centry.

  Can you do what you did to him for the others? Dr. Bell thought to Calypso. Go through his mind like I went through yours, via the satellite link? All at once?

  Calypso did not answer right away.

  Captain Bowman began to vibrate, and then he lifted off the ground, raising a blast of stale air.

  He knows you’re here and what you did, and he’s grateful, Calypso thought. He misses you, and he’s…happy…to meet me.

  Stay with him as long as you can, thought Dr. Bell.

  And, yes, Calypso thought, I think I can do what you’re asking.

  Then do it, please do it, don’t wait, and don’t worry about me, and don’t miss me too much, Dr. Bell thought. Only you truly understand what we’ve done here, and it’s up to you to see it through, to win this war, for me, for us, for our family.

  The enemy broke through the door then, forcing Tanner to fall back, and then Dr. Bell saw Captain Bowman’s shadow as he rose higher into the air. Her thoughts fell back inside her mind, and she was only herself, shivering from a cold wave spreading outward from her chest. She imagined the other Centries, the ones left alive all around the country, rising like Captain Bowman, the awakening of a ghost army, and then Bowman opened fire, cutting down the enemy soldiers in seconds. The roar and flash of gunfire filled Dr. Bell’s senses. Calypso would be safe; he would be protected for what he could do as she had so long protected him. She was pleased to leave him with the prospect of victory and freedom and a better world than she had ever known. The echo of gunfire faded. Bowman’s shadow darkened Dr. Bell’s sight as he set down beside her. After that, she knew nothing more.