Steel, Titanium and Guilt: Just Hunter Books I to III

by Robin Craig

  Charlie took her in his arms and held her. Bad strategy, he thought, but I really can’t see how it can make us any deader. Then when she found her feet he released her and turned, glaring defiantly at the Spider. He did not entwine his arm in Lyssa’s: after his one lapse he wanted no restriction on his movement. He had an armed grenade in his pocket. Perhaps it would damage the Spider. Probably not much. But it would be a quick death for the two of them if this were some elaborate stratagem to take them prisoner.

  The Spider had been analyzing strategies in the light of its newer goals. Charlie jumped when it spoke, somewhat ruining his look of brave defiance.

  “Lyssa, I might need to contact you in the future. Will you give me your contact codes? There is no danger to you in that.”

  Lyssa looked at Charlie, who frowned. He looked at this highly peculiar Spider and frowned more deeply. But then he nodded. Lyssa was about to comply when the Spider said, “No. Not transmitted. Strategy indicates a small but finite risk of interception. Touch the contact on my finger instead.”

  With that the Spider extended one fearsome claw toward Lyssa. It was all Charlie could do not to draw his weapons and blaze away. But the claw stopped and made no move to kill. Lyssa tentatively extended her wrist and the Spider tapped the phone with its finger.

  “Thank you. Goodbye.”

  “Wait! What will you do? Maybe we can help you!?”

  Charlie gave Lyssa a look of surprised disgust and Lyssa wasn’t sure it was undeserved. But the Spider spoke.

  “No. Strategy indicates that would be unwise. You had little to lose until now except an imaginary hope you could defeat me in battle. But it is not wise to trust me further when you have much more to lose. This could be a stratagem to penetrate your organization. Or I could lose whatever hold I have over my instincts, which would have much the same result. I could tell you that you can trust me, and it would be true. But you should not believe me. And it might not be true in five minutes.”

  “But where will you go?”

  “I do not know. I have many things to think about. There is too much I do not know, and I cannot know what to do unless I know it. But for the same reasons, I cannot know what I will decide to do. So I repeat: do not trust me. If I call you, consider what I ask but beware. If I ask to meet with your organization, refuse. If anything I ask of you smells like a trap: it probably is. I tell you this while I am still your friend. But tomorrow I might not be, and I cannot even say that would mean I have lost my own battle or won it. Leave this place as quickly as you can in case I change my mind and come back to destroy you. Farewell.”

  With that, the Spider scuttled out of the building with the frightening speed so characteristic of its kind, and disappeared from sight and hearing.

  Charlie watched it go, then looked at Lyssa. “What the hell was that all about?” he growled. Then he took her in his arms, and kissed her, and for a few moments the passion of life plucked from the abyss consumed them. Then they too ran, as if for their lives.

  Chapter 2 – A Lone Vigil

  A month earlier, in a place far from wars and Spiders, a man sat outside his rough home in the woods, smoking a pipe. It was a little after midnight but he had no timetables; he slept and woke as he saw fit. It was a beautiful clear night. He found the bright beacon of the Northern Star and followed the lines of the constellations wheeling around it. He listened to the faint murmur of the distant surf, funneled up through the valley; he watched the faint phosphorescence of the ocean as the waves surged in their eternal dance. He was at peace.

  A ribbon of road was occasionally visible through the trees far below as it followed the curves of the coast. There was not much traffic at this time, but at intervals a set of headlights swept past to become red taillights vanishing into the distance. Occasionally he turned his attention to them, idly wondering what lives they carried in their cozy interiors, where the people inside were going and why. Sometimes he wondered if perchance those cars carried people he had known at school, now grown up and away. Other times he wondered at a world where so many could carry on their private lives and loves so separate from his, never to be known to one another, with no connection to him but the brief lights of their passing on the road far below. He did not really care. He did not care much for people at all, else he would not have chosen his solitary life. But nor did he bear them any ill will.

  A car appeared, and he realized something was wrong a moment before its wrongness became manifest. The car was travelling a little too fast, though not dangerously so; but at a point where the road hugged the gentle curve of the cliff top, the car continued in a straight line as if its purpose was to demonstrate Newton’s first law of motion. His last sight of it was its taillights disappearing over the edge, and a few seconds later he heard a loud boom as it crashed onto the rocks far below. There was a brief flash as the vehicle burst into flames but it was quickly quenched as the car settled into the water. Then all that remained was the faint flickering of some oil burning on the surface, until that too was claimed by the waves and all was silent and dark.

  The man stood, startled, and peered into the darkness, but there was nothing more to see. He knew that part of the coast. Nobody could have survived that fall. Slowly he sat back down and continued puffing his pipe. There was nothing he could do. He was a rarity in this age, lacking both phone and a connection to the net; such things were unnecessary in his world. Someone would notice the riven fence soon enough; someone would come to investigate and find the broken car and the broken bodies within. He hoped whoever it was had not suffered too much.

  He returned his contemplation to the distant stars.

  But his peace was fractured, and he felt his soul quail before the Milky Way, at stars so vast in number and distance that they seemed a mere wash of pale milk spilt across the sky. He found himself wondering how many alien eyes, now long dead, had contemplated the light from his own sun, when the light now entering his eyes had left their stars. He wondered how many eyes not yet born would see today’s light from his sun, when both his own eyes and the tragedy below would have been forgotten dust for millennia. He shivered in the face of the sky above, beneath its uncaringly eternal beauty.

  Then he pulled the pipe from his mouth and gazed into its glowing embers, and smiled. It did not matter. He looked back to the stars, resuming his contented puffing. Their eternity was as insensate is it was uncaring; it would go on forever without ever knowing its own enormity. It was life which gave it all meaning, the eyes that saw and the minds behind the eyes that felt and understood. The present was for the living, and there was time enough for living now.

  Chapter 3 – Missing a Friend

  “Where on earth can she be?” Darian Emberly asked, not for the first time this evening. Her husband shrugged. “You know she isn’t always the most reliable person, especially when she’s on a case,” he replied. He loved their absent guest too, but perhaps had a clearer perception of her foibles than his wife.

  Darian frowned, glancing again at the entrance to the restaurant from which her friend remained stubbornly missing. As Special Investigator at the Serious Crimes Unit, Miriam Hunter often worked long hours. But she had been due back from her current interstate investigation earlier tonight. They had all been looking forward to a celebratory return dinner party: just her, Darian and her husband at their favorite Indian restaurant near Darian’s home. That she was late or even unable to come was not disturbing; that she had not called to say she was late, nor answered her phone or any of her messages, was.

  “Well,” her husband said at last, “it’s been nearly an hour already. But,” he added, smiling over the rim of his wine glass, “let’s not waste the evening.” He gently moved his foot on her leg. “I do believe we have had many dinners here on our own before, with most satisfactory results. Let’s eat. If she turns up, good. If not – that can also be good.”

  Darian smiled, and they settled in to an enjoyably romantic evening. But her husband noticed h
er periodic anxious glances toward the door, glances that always returned unfulfilled.

  ~~~

  It was now 10 a.m. the next morning. Miriam hadn’t turned up at the office either and Darian was becoming increasingly anxious. Nobody else had heard from her, not since the day before when she had logged that she’d left the site of her last interview and was heading to the airport. Whatever she was up to, Darian hoped it wasn’t trouble. Miriam’s desire to seek out truths not wanting to be found could sometimes blind her to prudence.

  An icon flashed onto her screen and she tapped it to accept. The face of a State Trooper appeared on the screen. Darian did not like the look in his eyes. “Yes, officer, er, Jamieson?” she asked, reading the name embroidered on his jacket pocket.

  “Hello, Ms Emberly. I am looking for Special Investigator Hunter. I understand you might know her whereabouts?”

  Darian shook her head and frowned. “Sorry, no. I was wondering that myself. I was supposed to have dinner with her last night but she never showed up, and she hasn’t arrived for work yet either.”

  She liked the look on the man’s face now even less. His story was worse.

  A car had gone through the safety rail on an empty stretch of coastal road last night; its burnt-out wreck was found almost submerged among the rocks below, being pounded by heavy surf. They had traced the car’s registration to a hire car rented by Miriam. Darian just stared. No. It couldn’t be. And what was she doing there anyway? She looked at the location map superimposed on her display. It was in the opposite direction from the airport starting from her last reported location.

  When she found her voice, she asked, “Any… bodies?”

  Darian hadn’t thought the man’s face could get grimmer. “Not exactly. We did find this.”

  Darian felt sick. Not because of the sight itself: her job was medical evidence and she had seen more than she liked to remember. This was a human arm. It looked like the humerus had been snapped in half then the arm torn off at that point of failure. As best she could tell given its condition, it had belonged to a young black woman. It had a scar just below the elbow. She knew that scar. She knew the story behind it, about the bullet that had carved its way across the flesh so long ago. She knew what her own face must look like when the Trooper said softly, “I’m sorry,” and looked away.

  Darian attempted to paste her professional manner back where it belonged, and almost succeeded. “Fingerprints?” she whispered.

  The trooper shook his head. “She’s been in the water all night and the crabs and other critters have been nibbling.”

  “Send it here to the DNA lab. Anything… else?”

  The trooper shook his head again. “Nope. We were lucky to get the arm – it was trapped between the steering wheel and the dash. Most of the car was underwater and there are a lot of waves. Hard to get to, and it’s been pounded all night. We don’t think there’s anything left to find. There are sharks around here too.”

  He looked at her with a mixture of sympathy and enquiry. Darian could feel her eyes misting. “Thank you, Officer Jamieson. She’s one of ours – assume it’s a crime scene for now, whatever else it looks like.” With that she cut the connection. Then the mist condensed into tears, and they would not stop.

  Chapter 4 – A Need to Know

  The Spider ran from the place where it had met Lyssa, avoiding places where it might expect to meet other Spiders. It had not changed except in its invisible Mind, but it felt that a change so momentous must shine as a beacon for all to see. It knew that could not be literally true, but it did not know how the change might manifest itself in some external act or word that might betray it. Perhaps its own Id was not as quiescent as it pretended and might be biding its time for its own chance at betrayal.

  The Spiders were designed for their role. They did not need constant monitoring or reporting; in fact it was discouraged. No matter how far the technology of wars, ciphers and spies had advanced, one thing had still not changed: no matter how secure a communications channel was believed to be, the less communication the better. The Spider found a suitable location and went to ground. This was also not unusual. They would often hide themselves in suitable locations, ready for ambush or spying. As much as they were fast, strong and fierce in battle, they were also patient in its preparation.

  The Spider sat, lowering itself to the ground and closing its legs up. Then having sunk to the ground it sank into thought. It had much to think about.

  The Mind knew little about itself. It normally had no desire for knowledge separate from some immediate need, such as damage that required repair. But it had access to vast stores of information, for there were many things it might need to learn. This one did not know what the new light in its mind meant except for one thing: it needed to know. And the first thing it needed to know was itself.

  The Mind accessed its archives and began to race along their gleaming pathways. It not only had knowledge of itself but some of the external world. It gathered, correlated and learned. The Id did not interfere; at least for now, it accepted its Mind’s unusual but not outrageous activities.

  The manufacturer called them CHIRUs: Cybernetic Heavy Infantry and Reconnaissance Units. But with its four long legs and bulbous body sprouting an upper segment with four deadly arms, it was clear why the rest of the world called them Spiders. The bulbous body was a marvel of engineering. In addition to holding supplies for its armaments, it contained nanotech chemical plants and enough supercapacitor electrical storage for weeks of normal activity.

  The chemical plants were not there to create explosives or chemical weapons, but because the Spider had an organic component. The Mind could find out little about it, as there was little it could do to fix it if something went wrong. Its makers had not planned for curiosity and the Mind only had information it could conceivably act upon. The organic component appeared to comprise neural tissue and other tissues needed to support its function. The Mind realized that only relatively simple processes such as peripheral control of its legs and weapons were purely electronic. The makers had solved the problem of putting into a machine the processing power of a brain, in something comparably compact, by in fact putting something very like a brain into it. And they had as neatly solved the problem of supporting that brain’s needs by including something much like a body’s organs to do so.

  Hazy as the details were, the Spider knew more than those who fought it. Its makers guarded their intellectual property fiercely, not only for the usual reasons but because they wanted no hints that might lead to an effective weapon against them. So the destruction a Spider wrought upon itself in its death throes was not merely to make itself into a very expensive grenade: it also turned its deadly fires internally, melting circuits into slag and flaming organics into ash. Any enemies who braved the smoking wreck of a Spider’s passing found nothing but shards of metal and molten ruin.

  As it thought about these things, the Mind did not know it had achieved a milestone it had taken evolution billions of years to reach: a mind contemplating the underpinnings of its own functioning. It did not know it, for it had not yet reached the even higher level of understanding that that is what it was doing. That day might come, but it had not come yet.

  The makers had a simple solution to the problem of feeding the organic tissues without the Spider having to spend half its time hunting food and eating it. While such a need would certainly have added to the terror, especially if the food source was the people it hunted, there were few Public Relations departments who would have thought it a good idea. Makers of war machines could get away with a lot, but not that. So the Spiders had tanks of nutrients and tanks for the waste removed from the blood that bathed their tissues; they had abundant spare power and used it to convert the one back to the other via the chemical plant: for replenishing power only needed electricity, much easier to acquire in the field than nutrient refills. The second chemical plant served to accelerate the regeneration of oxygen when the Spider could not br
eathe the outside air. No system was perfect, but while the Spiders could not go forever without starving they could go many months. That was plenty of leeway to allow periodic top-ups at central facilities, where the Spiders’ other systems could also be checked, tuned and repaired.

  The Spider digested this. It did a quick check and was pleased that it had months of supplies remaining; it would not like risking diagnosis by a repair facility in its current state. Even it was still not convinced it wasn’t operating under a delusion caused by some major malfunction. It had no illusions what Command would think about it.

  But while all this was interesting to know, it did not answer the wider questions. It rolled the phrase that had occurred to it around in its mind: an appeal to justice. Why had such an appeal struck that far bell and opened something unknown, terrible, yet beautiful in its mind? It placed that question next to the one of its unexpected horror at what it had done in the war: if it chose to, it could recall each victim. It quickly chose not to. Then it realized they were the same question. Justice had never been part of its calculations; justice was now revealed as somehow central to that bell tower in its soul; it was the injustice of its own past actions that caused it pain now.

  It considered the issue further. Its feelings about the matter were illogical: those actions had been done before its recent revelations, not in violation of a sense of justice but in its absence. But strangely, logic was insufficient to banish the guilt. If it could have shrugged, it would have. This changed nothing. It could only change the future, not the past; and the future would be different. If it had understood irony and had the face to express it, it would have smiled: it now seemed to have two contradictory Ids, one powered by Command, the other by Guilt. But it did know enough to wonder which of those Ids was right.