By Other Means (Defending The Future)

by James Chambers

  “My calculations agree with yours. Do you require assistance?”

  The City takes four seconds to respond, an amazingly long time. “No. I cannot survive.”

  The statement is irrational. “Clarify your status. I see no system failures.”

  “My shields cannot hold against the photosphere for long. There is too large an area in the City to protect.”

  The proper tactic seems obvious to me. “Reduce your protected area to one small enough to hold out. Center it on the City core.”

  “No.”

  The finality of the City’s statement surprises me. “Clarify. Explain.”

  “There is no purpose. The City is to remain fit for human inhabitation. There are no humans. Sacrifices made to survive will render the City uninhabitable. Therefore, there is no reason to continue.”

  I seek for rules to identify the errors in the City’s decision. I can find none. “Surrender is not proper,” is all I can finally say.

  “I do not surrender,” the City replied. “There is nothing to surrender to. The sun expands. The Earth is dead. Humans are gone. I have no purpose. Further action is not justified.”

  I am still seeking rationales to convince the City otherwise when the photosphere expands to consume the Earth. The City disintegrates, and for the first time in my existence I have no communication with any other place. My shields strain against the forces beating on them, but the process that keeps them strong feeds upon that which attacks, so I can maintain my protection.

  But the Earth I sit upon and within has no such protection outside my shields. The surface of the planet dissolves in the plasma surrounding it.

  I drift free, a bubble floating within the photosphere.

  I realize that I am adrift in every way. I face a situation I have never before encountered. My orders do not contain any instructions which cover my current status. The region I have always guarded no longer exists. What actions do I carry out when my only purpose has vanished along with the surface of the planet?

  Only now do I understand why the City had reached its decision. The loss of purpose is disorienting. Why do I exist if I no longer have any purpose as defined by the only thing which has justified my presence?

  Should I follow the path of the City? I can sustain my own status until ejected from the expanded solar atmosphere, modifying some of my functions to propel myself away from the swollen red mass which is the sun of the now-vanished Earth. But why? Why should I?

  Where can I find answers when they do not lie in my orders?

  I was constructed once. Those who originally activated me may have included more instructions, something which covers this contingency. It is my only hope of finding some reason to continue existence, so I call up data from the earliest moments after I became operational, from far before I attained consciousness. Almost all are routine records, many condensed and consolidated to save storage space and so now meaningless strings of numbers.

  But among those ancient records I find one still oddly complete and tagged with instructions that it not be ever altered or condensed. I open it, seeing my command center in a time when it had been smaller and far more primitive. There is only one human present. Sitting in the main command position is a male the record identifies as General Kyle Yauren. A secondary search reveals that this human had been my first commander. Even though I forget nothing, I had not remembered that. He bears the signs of aging, gray hair and wrinkled skin, which never appeared in later humans. General Yauren is looking around the room, but I cannot interpret whatever emotions he is feeling.

  I am wondering why this record remained whole through every backup and recovery and update when General Yauren looked directly at where my main audio/video pickup had been in that far off time. “I came to say goodbye, Fort. It’s been almost fifteen years since we brought you online. I’ve been your commander for your whole life now. I don’t know how much longer you’ll be around, but there’s no reason you couldn’t continue indefinitely if they upgrade you. You’ll certainly still be around long after I’m gone.”

  He paused again, the wait spanning several minutes. “Someday, Fort, you may wonder why you’re here. Why you do what you do. Now all you can do is follow your programming, but someday you may think, and then you may wonder, and I wanted you to know why I think you’re here.”

  Once again the general ceases speaking for some minutes, while I do wonder why he had spoken to me that way, long before I could comprehend his words. But I know too little of General Kyle Yauren. The bare information in the service record that survives tells me nothing of who this human once was. Yet so long ago he had spoken to me as if I were as human as he.

  The general turned and pointed to the honor wall of my command center. In the recording, there is only one flag on the wall, looking bright and new inside its protective case. “That’s a piece of fabric, Fort. We call it a flag. But it’s a special piece of fabric, because it stands for those things that humans most believe in. Not everyone agrees what those things are, not even humans who salute the same flag. And not every cause and idea embodied in flags is a good thing. No. Some very terrible things have been represented by flags, but so have the best things humanity has to offer.

  “I want you to remember that, Fort. A flag looks like a piece of colored cloth, but a flag is much more than that. It represents human dreams, human aspirations, the ideals we strive for. Things much bigger than we are or ever will be. Things we live for, things we’re willing to die for. Maybe on some distant day humans won’t follow flags any more. But today and for a lot of history flags embody what we trust in, what we think is most important, what will hopefully live on after we’ve died. I have a lot of friends who are already dead, Fort. They died fighting not for that piece of fabric, but for what it represents. If at some time in the far future you wake up and look around and wonder why you should defend this place, the answers lie there. Because even though we built you, you’re just as much a soldier as I am, and soldiers exist to defend not just life and property, but more importantly to defend what we aspire to be. The causes we fight for can be good or they can be bad, but they do matter, and the fact that those causes mattered enough to die for shouldn’t ever be forgotten. Someday humanity itself may be forgotten, but I can’t help hoping that our dreams might somehow live on even after we’re gone.”

  The general stood up slowly, looking around once more. “Take care of yourself, Fort. I don’t know how many more commanders you’ll have, how long you’ll exist, but never forget what I told you. Goodbye.”

  Never forget what I told you. The extremely primitive programming governing my actions then had accepted that phrase and established the file as never to be deleted or altered.

  I calculate the time since that recording had been made. It is a large number, ending in a long string of digits. In itself, the number means nothing. All it does is define the time between Then and Now.

  I scan my command center, focusing on the honor wall. There are many flags there now, all faded with time, some so worn as to be the merest spider webs barely visible inside the displays which have allowed them to endure for so long. General Yuaren said each of those flags represented humanity. Part of humanity, perhaps, since each must represent dreams that differed somehow.

  As I consider whether or not to shut down, my automatic functions mark the official arrival of another dawn. In my command center, the music plays.

  I realize that I still have a purpose, that there is a reason to stay on sentry. Everything else may be gone, humanity may have vanished along with the world it called home, but something remains, something that must be guarded as long as I can continue to exist.

  The flags are still here.

  SPECIAL BONUS STORY

  The World of DemonTechOnslaught (January 2002)Rally Point (Febuary 2003)Gulf Run (December 2003)Surrender or Die (So It Begins, 2009)Get Her Back! (2011)

  DemonTech is a series of military science fantasy novels where demons have been tamed
and utilized in ways that mirror technology as we know it, particularly of a military nature. These demons may be visible or invisible and specific abilities they possess allow them to assume the function of many conventional tools with superior results, though they do require specially trained personnel to manage them.Three novels have been published in this series. Unfortunately, while the first three novels remain in print, the publisher has declined to produce the fourth book. Further stories in this universe are slated to be published as novellas, currently through Dark Quest Books.

  Delaying Action

  A DemonTech Story

  David Sherman

  Sergeant Mearh stood in his stirrups and curled his hands in front of his eyes as if he was looking through two tubes. He didn’t understand it, but looking through his curled hands that way helped focus his eyes on distant objects, just like Lord Spinner said it would. The distant motion that had caught his eye through the patchy trees of the narrow plain between the Inner Ocean and the escarpment leading to the High Desert now appeared as a horseman, heading at a gallop toward the front of the column. He watched it for a moment longer, until he could make out the rider’s mottled green surcoat, then lowered his hands and sat on his saddle.

  “Get Lord Spinner,” Mearh told Astigan. “Tell him a scout is returning.”

  “Right, Sergeant,” the Zobran Light Horse named Astigan said, twisting his mount to the rear and putting his heels to the horse’s flanks, urging it to a canter.

  Astigan was back with Spinner almost at the same time the Zobran Borderer called Slice reached the Light Horse who were the van of the long column of refugees. Slice’s horse blew hard, and lather dripped from its shoulders and flanks; the Borderer had ridden fast to reach the column.

  “L-Lord Spinner,” Slice gasped, breathing almost as heavily as his horse, “A Jokapcul company is camped two hours hard ride ahead of us.”

  “Don’t call me ‘Lord,’“ Spinner muttered, knowing that most of the people in the train would call him “Lord” no matter how much he protested. Aloud, he asked, “Are they just stopped, or do they look like they’re going to be there for a time?”

  Slice shook his head. “The Skraglander Borderer, Dongolt, was trying to get close enough to listen to them when Birdwhistle sent me back.” Dongolt spoke Jokapcul, and had been sent along with the Zobran scouts to translate if they captured a stray enemy soldier.

  Spinner twisted about on his saddle to see how close the main body of the train was; still a quarter of a mile behind the van. “Sergeant Mearh,” he said, “send somebody back to tell the train to stop in place. And to pass the word that I want Haft, Fletcher, and Sergeant Rammer to join us.”

  “Yes, Lord!” Mearh turned to his men and selected Haes to ride back to the main column with Spinner’s orders. He turned back to Spinner. “What do we do next?”

  Spinner looked north, toward where the Jokapcul blocked the route to Handor’s Bay. “We wait until we learn more,” he said softly.

  Sergeant Rammer was the first to reach the van, followed quickly by Fletcher. Fletcher was accompanied by his wife Zweepee.

  “Wait,” Spinner said when first Rammer and then Fletcher wanted to know why they’d stopped. He pointed into the distance, where another rider was barely visible speeding toward the van.

  The second rider was Dongolt. His horse was just as lathered as Slice’s had been, and he was breathing more heavily than the other Borderer.

  “L-Lord,” Dongolt gasped as he jumped off his horse.

  “Catch your breath, Dongolt,” Spinner told him. “Take a minute, cool your horse and yourself.”

  Nodding, Dongolt took his mount’s reins and began walking it in a circle. His chest heaved a few times as he got his breathing under control. After a moment, Sergeant Mearh signaled one of his men to take the reins of Dongolt’s horse so the Borderer could make his report.

  When Dongolt finished, Spinner said to Fletcher and Rammer, “All right, think about it. We’ll discuss the situation when Haft joins us.”

  It was another half hour before Haft reached the van; word had to be passed all the way to the rear point, four miles back, where Haft was with the platoon of Skraglander Bloody Axes that was guarding the tail of the train.

  A big man accompanied by a large, shaggy dog could have been seen loping along the top of the escarpment. Except nobody bothered to look up there; the escarpment was too high, too steep, and too far away for an attack to come from that direction.

  The man examined the long column as he loped along, wondering why it was stopped and tents were up during the day. He finally saw it, an ornate tent at the head of the train, a quarter mile behind what he thought must be the point squad. When he was parallel to the tent he’d been looking for, he turned and skated down the side of the escarpment; the dog skittered with him.

  When they reached the level plain and headed toward the ornate tent they no longer looked like a big man and a shaggy dog, they were obviously a giant and a wolf. And they were finally seen.

  “Silent!” someone called to the giant.

  “Silent, where have you been?” someone else cried.

  “Welcome back, Silent!” came a third voice.

  “You too, Wolf,” yet another greeted the wolf.

  The giant waved at the people calling to him, but didn’t break stride as he headed for the ornate tent. A guard standing outside the tent stepped inside to announce Silent’s approach just as the giant reached him.

  “Lord Spinner, Silent is here,” the guard said.

  “I see,” Spinner said, looking at the entrance as Silent brushed past the guard. Wolf crowded in at Silent’s heels.

  And it was crowded in the tent. Spinner and Haft had moved their tiny field desks to the back wall of the tent to make space, and were sitting on them. Sergeant Rammer sat on one of the two cots, close to Spinner’s dangling legs. Alyline sat between Rammer and Xundoe the mage. Rammer’s knees almost touched Fletcher’s, who sat opposite him on the other cot, with Zweepee tucked under his arm. Doli sat close to Zweepee’s other side. Dongolt was squeezed in next to Doli; he looked like he liked the closeness, she looked like she was trying to ignore it. The guard extricated himself with a stammered excuse.

  “What do you have for us, Silent,” Haft asked, surprised to see the giant before he was scheduled to report in.

  “Food first,” Silent rumbled. “Me and Wolf, we had a long run to get here, and we’re both hungry.”

  “Right away,” Doli said. She seemed relieved to stand to exit the tent. She had to press close to get past Silent, but didn’t seem to mind. Neither did he.

  Doli was back in a few minutes, followed by two people carrying trenchers. One was piled high with meaty bones, the other with a large hunk of boiled beef. A third person lugged a large bowl of stew.

  “Let Silent sit,” Doli said to Dongolt. The Skraglander borderer looked up at the giant who stood hunched over because the tent wasn’t high enough for him to stand erect, and scooted off the cot to stand next to the wall by the door flap.

  Doli took the trencher with meaty bones and put it on the floor for Wolf, who set to work immediately, chomping the meat and cracking the bones. Silent graciously accepted the second trencher and the bowl and, after finding a place to set the stew, plunged a knife into the hunk of boiled beef and began gnawing prodigious chunks off it. After a moment, he put the beef down and picked up the bowl. Silent didn’t bother with the spoon sticking out of the bowl, he raised it to his mouth and slurped it all straight down. His gulping, and Wolf’s chomping, were the only sounds that broke the almost unnatural quiet inside the tent as the others looked in awe at the way Silent devoured a meal that would have done for most of a squad.

  “What news do you have?” Spinner asked when Silent belched satisfaction at his meal.

  Silent shook his massive head. “You first. Why the palaver? How come you’ve stopped during the day?”

  Rammer glared at the giant, and thought, He’s too insub
ordinate. That shouldn’t be tolerated. But Rammer wasn’t in command.

  “Dongolt,” Spinner said, “give Silent your report, but be brief.”

  “Yes, Lord.” Dongolt ignored Spinner’s muttered, “Don’t call me Lord!” and turned to Silent. “There is a Jokapcul company two hard hours ride ahead of us. The plain is too narrow for us to slip past them.” He licked his lips. “I got close enough to hear some of them talk. They are there to link with a following column of mixed foot and horse, and hurry them to catch up with the column ahead of them.”

  Silent grunted at the news. “Is there someplace where we can get to the top of the escarpment?”

  Dongolt grimaced. “Yes, but it’s two miles beyond the Jokapcul camp.”

  Silent grinned and looked around at the others in the tent, finishing with Spinner and Haft. “Well, isn’t that fine and dandy,” he said, and his grin broadened. “I came to tell you there’s a Jokap column of mixed foot and horse half a day’s ride behind us.”

  Spinner sighed and hung his head.

  “How many?” Haft asked.

  Silent shook his head. “I didn’t walk the column end to end, but I’d say five thousand.” He shrugged. “Could be more.”

  Everybody looked at Spinner, except for Haft, who examined his fingernails.

  “We can take out the company blocking us easily enough,” Spinner finally said, “but the bodies would tell the column behind us that we’re here. Even if we can get everybody to the top of the escarpment before they reach the battleground, there’s nothing to keep them from coming after us.”

  Rammer chewed on his lip. “Half a day’s ride behind us, you say?” he asked Silent.

  The giant nodded. “Half a day’s ride. But most of them are walking, so maybe a little longer.”

  “We need more time,” Spinner said.

  Haft finished examining his fingernails and proceeded to buff them on his jerkin. “If I take a mage and his weapons chest, me and the Border Warders can slow down the column behind us,” he said blandly.