Armored-ARC

by John Joseph Adams

  One night they played chess.

  The first game ended with his king pinned in one corner. She put him in check with her queen, and he moved to an adjacent square. She moved her queen to put him in check again, and he moved back to the first square. This was repeated several times. The game was declared a draw.

  The second game ended the same way. And the third.

  “I suppose you think this is terribly funny?” she said.

  He shrugged.

  She swept the pieces onto the floor, and stood.

  As she strode away, he called, “I’m sorry. Mira…” She ignored him.

  But when she was out in the hallway, she smiled. Her anger and frustration were feigned. Actually, things were going quite well.

  She’d discovered a weakness in his armor.

  They took vacations together—to London, New York, Tokyo. In Paris, at the top of the Eiffel Tower, as they stood looking out over the rivers and rooftops, she said, “Well, you were right, dammit. As always. I’ve grown awfully fond of you, Blair, and now the future seems like such a long time ago. So I guess you’re safe.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “Though you’ll forgive me if I don’t strip off the armor just this second.”

  She laughed. “Of course.”

  Six months later though, it was starting to become an issue.

  One night at dinner she said to him, “We need to talk.”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you ever going to take off that armor?” she said.

  He set down his utensils and studied her. He said, “When I fled into the past, I swore I would never take off this armor. Not for an instant.”

  “Because of me,” she said. “Because I’d be sent after you. But that’s all changed now.”

  “I knew there would come a time,” he said, “when I’d start feeling safe, start letting my guard down. That’s why I made the resolution then, when my sense of the danger was at its most acute.”

  After a moment, she said, “You still don’t trust me.”

  He said nothing.

  “Look at me,” she said. “Can’t you just look at me with your super-genius gaze and see that I’m telling the truth?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Then I guess you’re not as smart as you think you are,” she said. “As you pretend to be.”

  “Do you remember what you said, Mira? When we first met? ‘No matter how long it takes, no matter how safe you think you are—’”

  “I know what I said. Look, I’m sorry, all right? I was a different person then. It was a stupid thing to say. I wish I could take it back, but I can’t.”

  There was a long silence.

  Finally she said, “What are we doing here? If you’re never going to trust me, what’s even the point of this?”

  “Enjoying each other’s company? That was the point, I thought.”

  “And in five years?” she said. “Ten? Will we still just be sitting across a table from each other, with you in a suit of armor?”

  “I don’t take off the armor,” he said. “You knew that from the start.”

  “So there’s nothing I can do? To prove myself?”

  “There’s one thing,” he said, very serious. “You can hold my life in your hands and choose to spare me.”

  “But how can that ever happen?” she said. “If you won’t take off the armor?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  When he woke the next morning, she was gone. He paced the empty rooms, seeking her. “Mira?” he called, his voice echoing.

  He tried her phone, but got no response. He left message after message.

  Finally she answered. “Please stop calling me,” she said.

  “Where are you?”

  “Away,” she said. “Away from that house, away from you. There are other men, you know? Who aren’t afraid.”

  “Please come back,” he said.

  “Will you take off the armor?” she said. “Ever?”

  “You know I can’t.”

  She hung up.

  Six weeks passed without a word. Then one night his doorbell rang, and he opened the door to find her standing there.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He made her tea, and she sat in the kitchen and said, “Look, I understand why you wear the armor. It’s all tied up with who you are and why we’re here together, and I accept that. I hope someday I can prove myself to you, but even if you never take it off I don’t care. We understand each other in a way that no one else ever will.”

  “Let’s fly to Paris,” he said. “Tonight. We had good times there.”

  “Yes,” she said. “All right.”

  They hopped a private jet, and by the next morning they were in Paris. They revisited all their old haunts. On their third night there, they ate dinner at the hotel, then took a midnight walk down a cobbled street beside the Seine.

  Suddenly Mira said, “We’re being followed.”

  A hundred yards behind them lurked three men dressed in black. One carried a briefcase.

  “Are they from the future?” she said.

  “No,” Blair said. “Impossible.”

  “Then what threat could they be to us?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s not find out. Come on.”

  He began to hurry. Suddenly he halted. “Uh-oh.”

  “What?” she said.

  “I can’t move.”

  She glanced about as more men appeared from the shadows.

  “They’re special forces,” she said. “Black ops.”

  “How do you know?”

  She smiled. “Because they’re with me.”

  Eight men surrounded Blair. Several carried boxes.

  “I told you you weren’t the only man in my life,” she said.

  One of the men stepped forward. He had a heavy jaw and short gray hair and cold, hard eyes.

  “Captain.” Mira nodded.

  The man set his briefcase on the ground and bent to open it.

  “How are you doing this?” Blair said.

  She knelt over the briefcase. “We introduced a virus through the suit’s communications array.”

  “That’s impossible,” Blair said. “Equipment to interface with the suit won’t even exist for—”

  “What, you mean like this?” she said, rising, gadget in hand.

  Blair studied it, his face pale.

  “All right, I’m impressed,” he said. “Cramming that much R&D into so short a time. But it won’t matter. In a few minutes—”

  “You don’t have a few minutes,” she said.

  The men opened boxes, yanked out equipment. Blair’s eyes darted about.

  “Laser cutters?” he said. “Diamond-tipped saws? You can’t honestly believe those will even scratch this armor?”

  “No,” Mira said, nodding at the men. “But they did.” She added, “What can I say? They’re not geniuses.”

  The captain frowned. Then Mira backhanded him across the face, and his head flew a hundred feet through the air and splashed into the river.

  The men screamed and drew weapons. Two ran. Of course it did them no good. A minute later Mira was piling their bodies on the ground at Blair’s feet.

  “I admit I’m a bit nervous now,” he said.

  She grinned. “Told you I’d make you drown in blood.”

  She fiddled with her gadget, and the armor knelt stiffly, and its right hand reached out and plunged its straw deep into the chest of the nearest corpse. Blair grimaced and turned his head aside as blood bubbled from the tube inside his helmet.

  “Wow,” he said. “Paris is definitely not as much fun as I remember.”

  “Keep laughing,” she said. “While you can.”

  The straw drained corpse after corpse. Soon the blood rose above Blair’s lips and threatened to engulf his nose.

  “Any last words?” she said.

  “Mmmm-mmmm-mmmm-mmmm,” he said.

  She came and stood inches from
his visor. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that?”

  He watched her, his eyes wide.

  “Do we agree,” she said, “that there’s absolutely nothing stopping me from killing you?”

  “Mmmm-hmmm,” he said.

  “Good.” She smiled. “Then take off that stupid armor and kiss me.”

  She flipped a switch, and suddenly Blair could move again. He tore off his helmet and hurled it to the ground, then swept her up in his arms, pressing his lips to hers.

  Later, as they lay naked on a hotel bed, he murmured, “I knew about your device.”

  She stirred and said drowsily, “Hmm?”

  “I could have stopped the blood,” he said. “I was never in any danger.”

  “I know,” she said. “The armor is flawless.” After a moment, she added, “It only ever had one weakness.”

  “Me,” he said, rolling onto his side, studying her. “We understand each other perfectly, don’t we?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I think so.”

  “You still haven’t decided whether or not to kill me. Have you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “But either way you wanted me out of the armor.”

  “Yes,” she said. “And you took it off, even knowing the danger.”

  “I love you, Mira,” he said. “I couldn’t stand being separated from you another moment.”

  “Sounds like the risks outweigh the rewards,” she said.

  “I think you’re underestimating the rewards,” he said, and she chuckled.

  He added, “If your mission is that important to you, then go ahead and kill me. You might as well, if you don’t love me.”

  “I think that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she said.

  And for a long time after that they lay curled together, drifting in and out of sleep. And if they dreamed, it was of the future—not the distant future from which they’d come, a cold and sterile place of surveillance and mind control, but the immediate future, of the breakfast croissants they’d soon enjoy, and the stroll they’d take through the fresh morning air, hand in hand. And the armor stood in a nearby corner like some exotic decoration, like some improbable furniture, watching over them with its transparent visor, a silent presence, waiting there, sleek, black, polished, empty.

  David Barr Kirtley is the co-host of The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast on io9. His short fiction appears in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, Intergalactic Medicine Show, and Lightspeed, on podcasts such as Escape Pod and Pseudopod, and in anthologies such as The Living Dead, The Way of the Wizard, New Voices in Science Fiction, and Fantasy: The Best of the Year. His most recent stories are “The Ontological Factor” in Cicada and “Three Deaths” in Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom. He recently starred as the voice of a talking mouse named Benjamin in a full-cast recording of his story “Red Road,” which appeared on the Journey Into…podcast. He lives in New York.

  The Last Days of the Kelly Gang

  David D. Levine

  Old Ike awoke to the sound of heavy fists on his little shack’s door. Sighing, he dragged his creaking body from under the covers, letting in June’s winter cold as his foot sought the slipper under the bed. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he called as the pounding came again.

  No one ever visited Old Ike’s shack, especially not in the middle of the night with a winter storm threatening. Annoyed, he kindled a tallow candle and shuffled his way across boards worn smooth by twenty years of his footsteps.

  “Yes, yes, what is—”

  Ike’s voice seized in his throat at the apparition revealed in the open door. A tall man in a long duster coat, his face dominated by a huge raggy beard and capped by a battered leather hat, stood limned by a flash of lightning. A moment later came the clap of thunder, followed by a deep uncultured voice: “I’m looking for a man called Crazy Old Ike.” The man’s accent combined broad Australian vowels with the lilt and crisp consonants of the Irish.

  “I’m called Ike,” he acknowledged, deliberately broadening his vowels to conceal his own comfortable Hampshire origins. Poor Irish-Australian farmers and free-selectors had little love for the English. “And I’ll own to the Old. What business have you with me?”

  “I’m told you…make things.”

  “I’ve been known to do so.”

  “Can we come in?”

  Ike glared at the man, who’d roused him from a sound sleep, but there was a storm coming. Perhaps, at the age of seventy-four, he was finally mellowing. “Oh, very well. Wipe your feet.” He lit a lantern from the candle as they entered.

  The stranger wasn’t alone. There were four of them all told, lean filthy young men with beards the size of shovel blades, all spurs and leather and the stink of horse-sweat. The pistol handles that protruded from each duster pocket were decidedly worrisome, but Ike tried to reassure himself that out here in the bush such implements were not necessarily a sign of bad intent. “I’m Ned Kelly,” said the first man, removing his hat. “This here’s my brother Dan, and them’s Joe Byrne and Steve Hart.” A small grin crept onto his weathered face. “You may have heard of us.”

  Ike’s old heart hammered, but he tried to keep his voice level. “Indeed I have.”

  The Kelly Gang were the most notorious bushrangers, horse thieves, and bank robbers in the entire colony of Victoria and there was an eight thousand pound reward on their heads. But they were also beloved of the small farmers and free-selectors; it was said that when they robbed banks they burned all the mortgages they found, and afterwards distributed the cash to their relatives and sympathizers. With the help of the populace of the area—what was known as “Kelly country”—they’d been at large for months.

  “I…I keep myself to myself up here,” Ike continued. “I try to stay clear of all affairs of government. You’ve nothing to fear from me.”

  “That’s good.” Ned’s eyes flicked around the room, taking in the forge, the lathe and bending brake, the taps and dies, the drive belts that ran every which way. Apart from the bed and a small cook-stove, the place was more workshop than home. “And you do appear to be a clever dick.” He pursed his lips and nodded slowly. “I think you might be just the man for the job.”

  “And what job might that be?”

  “I want you to build us four suits of armour.” He handed Ike a scrap of paper with some crude sketches on it.

  The paper showed a cylindrical helmet, front and rear plastrons on the torso, curved flaps over the shoulders, and an apron-like panel protecting the groin area. It would be uncomfortable, encumbering, and—most offensive of all to his engineering sensibilities—ineffective. Ike snorted and tossed the paper back. “It won’t work.”

  “It will!” Joe insisted. “It’s just a matter of hammering them ploughshares we stole into shape, cutting a few slots in ’em, and fitting ’em with straps. Surely a bright spark like you can do that.”

  “I didn’t say it couldn’t be built,” Ike countered. “I said it wouldn’t work. The legs and arms are completely unprotected—one well-placed bullet could kill you right off. And if you added armour to those areas without changing the design you’d lose too much mobility.”

  Joe started to protest, but Ned cut him off with a gesture. “You said ‘without changing the design.’ You got a better?”

  Ignorant this ruffian might be, but he wasn’t unobservant. “Not immediately, no. But given time I suppose I could think one up.”

  Ned leaned forward, the eyes above the ratty beard fiercely intense. “Then you’d best think fast, cobber, as we’ve a train to catch. On June twenty-seventh.” Less than three weeks away.

  “I’m terribly sorry if I gave the impression I would do the work for you, sir. I was merely offering a critique of your design.” Ike straightened, bringing himself to his full five-foot-four. “It’s been over twenty years since I did any work on contract for any other man.”

  “Well then, you have a bit of a choice to make.” With
a movement swift and sure as a piston stroke, Ned brought the revolver from his pocket and levelled it at Ike’s head. Despite the bushranger’s filth and stink, the gun was well-oiled and the hammer gave a precise click as it was drawn back. “You can build us the armour, or you can learn how to do without that big brain of yours.”

  Trembling, Ike stood his ground. “So that’s how it’s to be.”

  He regretted having pointed out the flaws in the gang’s design. This wasn’t the first time his intellect had gotten him into trouble by outrunning his common sense. But still…armour was only defensive, after all, and the Kellys did have some support from the population; they couldn’t be all bad. He’d build them what they wanted and they’d go on their way.

  Besides, it would be an intriguing engineering challenge.

  He licked his lips. “Let’s see that paper again.”

  Ike lay his weary head down on his drafting table, just for a moment. The gang had settled in for the duration outside his shack, snug in their bedrolls around a pungent mallee-wood fire. But they slept in shifts, one or more of them keeping watch on him at all times, constantly demanding progress.

  He’d responded with a series of increasingly detailed sketches, then paper models—knee and ankle joints, helmets, the insanely difficult shoulder joint. The gang members had scoffed at his “playing with paper dolls,” but Ned, who comprehended Ike’s design drawings despite being unable to read or write, had cuffed Joe across the ear. “Let the brainbox work,” he’d said. “He knows how many beans make five. Unlike you lot!”

  At the moment Ike was working on a model of the leg assembly, stiff vellum curved and held into place with pins. He flexed the leg and sighed. The design was sound—fully covering the limb without unduly restricting movement—but if built from the heavy mould-boards and other cast-iron scraps the gang’s supporters were still delivering by wagon, it would be far too cumbersome to walk in. Yet no lighter material was available that could stop a single bullet, let alone the full police onslaught the gang said they expected to face.