by Tim Marquitz
The creature had put up a pretty good fight at the end, regardless of how damaged it had been. Macumber couldn’t care less, though. The only thing this one’s putrefaction meant that concerned him was a shortened clock on the appearance of the next dimensional incursion.
“Sonnofa—” Pekkarin began. “We have movement, Sir.”
Macumber was temporarily confused. The creature had already begun to decay and disincorporate. Then he rapidly blinked his eyes upward and to the left. The viewscreen shifted again in front of his tired eyes, and Macumber looked at the boiling clouds high above them where the tentacles of the next Verengeretti were already descending from cover.
Justin Macumber felt a wave of ennui crawl over his face. They were out of weapons. They were low on fuel. They had dead aboard the ship. King Raidizer had lost its axes and its hand. And the Yardley…
“How long—” Macumber started to ask.
“Fifteen minutes,” Tubo was already replying.
The captain glanced upward again and saw the replacement Verengeretti had cleared the cloud cover and was rapidly descending, heading straight toward the injured robot and its exhausted crew. Pekkarin brought the robot upright, legs apart, torso twisted, injured stump back and right fist raised. Ready for battle.
The plummeting squid had an armored façade like the last one, but Macumber noted that the normally purple, fleshy, waving tentacles were covered with linked, segmented, red armor plating, too. The creature’s eye-slit on its helmet also looked altered. Macumber blinked twice, zooming in on it. The slit was covered in small octagonal stripes of the red armor, forming a mesh over the vulnerable area.
It would only be a matter of time until battle chassis captains could no longer out-think the Verengeretti or luck into wins. Each time one slipped into the atmosphere above Luzon, they brought enhancements or improved fighting tactics. Sooner or later, the alien squids would win.
The creature rolled in its descent from the sky, once again mimicking the circular-saw motion of its predecessor, its red-covered tentacles whipping forward like a million vertical blades. That this move was an opener, heralded more innovative attacks later. Impact would take place in just a few seconds.
Eventually, the Verengeretti variations and improvements would be all that was necessary to crush a battle chassis before the fight even began. When Macumber and the pilots of the other ships like the Yardley would have no more moves. No more innovations. No more ways to hurt the damn things.
But not today.
His crew felt the same sluggish reaction time he was. Macumber knew his job wasn’t only to out-think the creatures or to shout orders. He had to be their rock, even when every surviving soul aboard the ship was thinking this was the end. They would be thinking they probably wouldn’t last the few minutes it would take for the Yardley to get into firing position. But that wouldn’t stop him from trying. They would kick. They would punch. They would use the ridiculous Action Missile. He needed to show the crew there was a reason their battle chassis.
The rampaging ball of armored shell and slicing tentacles surged out of the sky like a meteor, and Ensign Pekkarin bent Raidizer’s knees, preparing to lunge upward.
“Here we go,” Pekkarin announced, tension filling his voice.
Macumber sneered at the onslaught of the never-ending creatures. They would only get one response from him and Raidizer’s crew.
“Fight!”
The Lady in Red was supposed to be working. She wasn’t. Instead, she was sitting in San Diego Bay, next to Pier Fourteen, water covering her immense bulk up to her shoulders. An unmoving colossus, a war hero, once again contemplating suicide.
Which was why Kyle had been called in.
Every time he came to the docks, he reminded himself he needed to go there when he wasn’t working. Visit the Midway Museum, maybe get some barbecue, walk around all day, and soak up the sun just like any other tourist.
He reminded himself of this often, because he came here often, almost always for the Lady. The four other Beasts worked the docks—Eleanor the Grey, Jokers Wild, Reluctant Dragon and Russian Hammer—had problems from time to time. They needed counseling, sure. Sometimes they just needed to feel heard. But Lady was the main reason Kyle kept getting called back. He’d thought he was getting through to her. Maybe not. He had to find a way in, and soon, before she took matters into her own hands.
He’d gone through this with Silverback.
If Lady did kill herself, she wouldn’t be the first of his patients to do so.
And, honestly, he was surprised she hadn’t done it already.
Illustration by NICOLÁS R. GIACONDINO
Kyle parked, taking advantage of military plates to leave his car right on the sidewalk. Tourists gave him nasty glares. He ignored them. They’d never served a day in their lives, probably, so what the fuck did they know.
Parking was easy—getting out of the car, not so much. Goddamn replacement hip. The screws in it were coming out, the doctor had told him. The screws. You’d think someone would have engineered that shit properly. Basically, the ball joint was like a medical mace in there, grinding away against flesh and bone. Two more weeks until it could be replaced. For the second time. Then, six weeks of physical therapy. All because of some designer’s fuck-up.
Getting old was a bitch.
He braced himself, one hand on the steering wheel, the other on the door jamb. He took a breath, preparing for the pain, and pushed up in one straight, grunting shot. Standing was the worst. Felt like acid swirling around in his hip. Kyle closed his eyes, gathered himself for a moment as the pain faded from ten-out-of-ten to the usual seven-out-of-ten.
He started toward the admin building at the base of the pier but hadn’t made it two steps from his car when the main admin building door opened and Erin Templeton stormed out.
Of course, it had to be her.
She was one of four dock managers for L&R Consolidated Shipping, the company that owned the Lady. The other three managers were older—they’d been in their teens and twenties during the war, they remembered what the Lady had done. They cut her slack. As much as they could, anyway, because work still had to get done. But Erin? She was half Kyle’s age. Just twenty-seven years old. Same age as his daughter, another person Kyle didn’t care to speak to.
Erin was a real go-getter. Or at least that was the image she’d created for herself. She was one of those people who thought yelling was communicating, that a scowl and intimidation were how you showed the world your toughness, your will of steel.
Kyle had had a few commanding officers like that. Every one of them hadn’t been worth a squirt of piss.
“Dahlquist,” Erin called out as she strode toward him, hands clenched into fists. “You better do something with that goddamn bucket of rust.”
Bucket of rust. The reason Erin had a job at all, was alive at all, was because of the Lady in Red and the other Beasts. No respect. Kids these days.
“Afternoon, Erin,” Kyle said. “I came as fast as soon as I heard.”
She stopped in front of him, made sure he saw her well-practiced glare.
“Not soon enough,” she said. “This is the third time in the last two months. Know what’s in those reefers on that freighter? Bananas and pineapples. Know what’s supposed to happen? The god damn reefers are supposed to be unloaded. Know what’s not happening? The god damn—”
Kyle brushed past her, headed for the dock. Funny how she was in such a hurry to get the produce unloaded, yet she’d stand there screaming, being the big boss, as long as he’d listen. He knew that from experience. Sometimes you let a hurricane blow itself out. Other times, that hurricane was fueled by the Never-Ending Power of Asshole and you had to make your own mental health the priority.
Erin yelled something at his back, something about reporting him, that she knew people, that she’d have his job.
Kyle flipped her off without bothering to turn around. There were many things in life he did not have, but j
ob security? That, he had. Not many people could do what he did. And of those who could, very few would.
He walked down the pier, the big yellow Dole cargo ship on his left, his hip-addled hitch-step making his shoes slap on the composite. Such a beautiful day—no clouds, blue sky, sun beating down, sea birds flying by, chirping and squawking. Some of those birds, maybe a dozen, stood on Lady’s shoulders, on her head, tiny, fussing white dots on a mountain of scratched scarlet.
Kyle reached the end of the pier. The sun was already making him sweat. He could have taken off his worn blazer, but he didn’t mind the heat. He’d spent three years of his life in the ice cold of space. No, he didn’t mind the heat at all.
“Hey there, Lady.”
She was twenty meters out in the water, but he didn’t have to shout. Lady, like all Beasts, could process a dozen conversations from hundreds of meters away. She heard him just fine.
The big head moved slightly.
“Hello, Kyle. I should have known you’d be coming.”
Lady’s voice synth had been built on a last-century flat-movie actress’s named Kathleen Turner. Kyle had never seen any of her movies. He wouldn’t, either, because that was Lady’s voice now. After going to war with the girl, he wouldn’t trivialize any aspect of her memory with some ancient flick.
“You’re not working,” Kyle said.
“Can’t put one past you, can we? I’m not up to it.”
He heard the despair in her voice. It didn’t take his experience to hear it, either. Anyone could have. Erin could have, for certain.
Kyle tilted his head toward the cargo ship.
“The food on there is going to waste.”
The big shoulders slumped a little more. The motion scattered the birds, who flew off down the bay. They left behind a splattering of bird shit, a white-on-scarlet Rorschach that Kyle thought looked like the shape of a couch. Or maybe a dog.
“How do you do it, Kyle?”
“Do what?”
“Work. Day after day. We were made for battle. We were warriors. Now, I unload cargo ships. You talk to sad AIs. Don’t you miss the fighting?”
Now he understood.
“You heard the news,” he said.
“I hear everything. We’re at war, and I’m not invited. I’m not needed.”
The fact that she wasn’t needed was a good thing. Lady in Red saw her first action thirty-two years earlier. After the Squids had been wiped out, the military had used the successful AI programs and the other the Beasts as a basis for a new type of war machine. Bigger. Smarter. Easier to manage. Most importantly, at least from the view of the military and the taxpayer, no crew. Oh, the savings! Months of crew training, gone. Food, clothing, housing, healthcare, no need for that. And, the big one, no pay.
The Anvils, the first designs, had crews of eight. The Beasts, crews of eleven. The Creature class that came next, just two. Mostly automated. And the Demon class? No crew at all.
The AI algorithm had been tweaked, too. Demons didn’t get sad. They didn’t get PTSD. At least as far as anyone knew, since they hadn’t had to fight.
Until now.
“Progress,” Kyle said. “You’re no more suited for war than I am, Lady. We did our time. We did our part.”
She didn’t answer. Kyle wanted to help her. He wanted to help them all. Some Beasts got along fine. Were happy in civilian life, even. But the AIs had been programmed too well, it seemed. You can take a Beast out of the battle, but you can’t take the battle out of the Beast.
“I want to turn off,” Lady said finally. “I want to reformat. I’m tired of this life, Dogman.”
Dogman. His former call sign.
“That’s the coward’s way out,” he said.
The head turned. Lady could see in all directions at once, but sometimes she’d turn her head/cockpit to face something specific. “I’m no coward.”
She wasn’t. He knew that better than anyone. Still, he said nothing.
The Lady in Red stood. Ninety-nine feet tall, water cascaded down her scarlet and steel chassis. Her armor was in storage. Without it, she looked like a skinny thing, a six-limbed skeleton stripped of flesh. Two arms attached to that long, narrow trunk. Four legs, hidden from the knee down by six-meter-deep water.
Also missing was the crew quarter module. No need for it in civilian service, mostly, except for the Beasts that worked for travel companies or excursion outfits. The crew module, with its bunks, galley, exercise area, and common room, was normally dead-center in the trunk. That’s why it had picked up the nickname “the belly.” Without the module, Lady’s thick rib-brackets hung empty.
Empty belly, empty life, perhaps. A metaphor for her vanished purpose.
“Ask them, Dogman,” she said, her husky voice drowning in sadness. “I want permission to shut down.”
He nodded. “I’ll ask.”
He would. For the tenth time. And for the tenth time, they would say no. He didn’t really understand it. If human soldiers could die with dignity, why couldn’t a Beast? But the military never agreed to it, and never explained why.
Beasts weren’t allowed to shut down on their own. While their self-formulating AI-net was designed for constant learning and improvement, just like a human brain, and while each machine formed a distinct personality, those constructs were built upon a common framework. Kyle thought of the framework as the Beast’s religion, complete with a set of commandments that could not be violated. One of those commandments? The machine/programming equivalent of thou shalt not kill thine self.
The Lady in Red reached out a long arm, plucked a white container from the cargo ship, then set it on a waiting flatbed idling on the pier.
“Have you heard from Felix?” she asked. “Did you let him know I miss him?”
Felix Lynwood. Her pilot back in the war.
Kyle felt so bad for her. The bond between captain and Beast was a strong one. The nice thing to do would be to make some excuse for Felix, say he’d moved away, or was spending time with the grandchildren. Something like that. But Kyle refused to lie to Lady. She deserved the truth. The truth was Felix lived not two miles from this very spot, and his daughter had moved away with the grandkids. All Felix did was sit around and drink.
“I let him know you’d like to see him. I’ll let him know again.”
Lady paused while grabbing another container. A brief pause only, then she was back at it.
“I’ll come back in a couple of days to check on you,” Kyle said. “How’s that sound?”
Lady picked up another container.
“How’s Fang doing?” she asked.
Kyle’s face flushed. He looked down.
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you check in on him, Dogman? I bet he misses you as much as I miss Felix.”
“Maybe I will,” Kyle said, but he knew he would not.
It was one thing to talk to Lady, to help her as much as he could. It was another to talk to White Fang. Another thing altogether. And after all these years, despite his job, he couldn’t bring himself to do it as often as he should. But at least he did visit. From time to time, anyway. Kyle took solace in the fact that he wasn’t as bad as Felix.
“You can go now, Dogman.” Lady placed the second container on the flatbed. “I’m not going to kill myself today. I’ll just keep working since that’s all I’m good for anymore it seems.”
She’d had to bring up Fang. That was Lady. If she couldn’t be happy, she didn’t want anyone else to be, either. And some people out there still thought the Beasts weren’t self-aware. Amazing.
“See you soon,” Kyle said.
He walked down the pier. He saw Erin Templeton at the end, waiting for him. Hands on her hips now. Maybe that was her next level of showing how angry she was.
His hip was killing him. Eight-out-of-ten now, and he still had to climb back into the car. He didn’t have the time or the patience to put up with Erin’s posturing bullshit.
She said somethi
ng as he walked by. He wasn’t listening. Reports from the battle of Venus were supposed to be coming back soon. When they came, he wanted to be with friends, a beer, and a Cubano sandwich.
Fortunately, he knew a place where he could get all three things at once.
The crunch of Cuban bread. Ham, Swiss, pickles, salami, mustard and—Marian’s special spin on the classic Cubano—pickled red onions. Warm, soft, satisfying. A mouthful of heaven.
“Mmm. Fantastic.”
Marian wasn’t paying him much attention. She and Theo stood behind the diner’s lunch counter. Like everyone else in the place, they were watching the holo-display. A newscaster, mid-thirties at most, in a perfectly-fitting suit, sitting at the anchor’s desk. Kyle knew it was national news—a rarity in this place—because the man was too polished to be local talent. San Diego newscasters seemed to wear clothes that didn’t quite fit right, or were a little too loud. The projection was usually turned down for anything other than Padres, Chargers, or Pateadors’ games, but the volume was up for this.
Just like it probably was everywhere in the world.
“No word from the attack force observers yet,” the anchor said. “Remember, there’s an eight-minute signal delay from Venus, so as far as we know the first messages are on their way now.”
After a couple more comments, a beer advertisement lit the display.
“Volume mute,” Marian said. She turned to Kyle. With a gloved hand, she wiped down the counter, a nonstop action for her. Kyle wondered how often Theo had had to replace the countertop because of Marian’s endless rag-on-Formica.
That’s what Marian did: she cleaned. Thirty years ago, crammed into the belly of a Beast for months on end, she’d been the same way.
“How’s the hip?” she asked.
He paused, suppressed a wince. “Can’t complain.”
“And can’t lie for shit, either,” Miriam said. “Gotta tell you, I got a bad feeling about this Venus shit.”
Kyle took another bite of the perfect sandwich. “You always have a bad feeling.”
“And I am always right.”