Driftmetal IV

by J. C. Staudt

  “I shall accompany you, Mr. Jakes,” Thomas offered.

  “When did you get so brave?” I asked.

  “Mr. Jakes,” he said, “you once told me I would never be of any use to you. You advised me to turn back and leave you to your own devices.”

  “I said that? Wow, I’m a prick.”

  “Yeah,” said Blaylocke.

  I shrugged. “Okay. So you were saying, Tom?”

  “You only gave me one compliment that day. You said you liked my perseverance. And, well, I… I suppose I’ve been sort of… holding onto that. I want to be useful, Mr. Jakes. I want to be… eh, good.”

  “You are good, Tom. Whenever you don’t like something I’m doing, you buzz around me like a gnat until I listen to you. Your perseverance is one of the things that makes you a good adviser.”

  “Yes, but… oh, never mind.”

  I studied him for a moment. “Tommy. You want to be useful? Okay. Then when we get downstairs, you’re going to be my lookout; keep your eyes peeled for anyone coming. It’s going to take me a while to harvest the parts I need. As for you, Blaylocke, go back and tell the others we’ll be there in a few minutes. If we don’t get captured… or killed, due to lack of manpower.”

  Blaylocke sighed. “Alright, fine. I’ll come downstairs with you.”

  “That’s a good Blaylocke.” I patted him on the head. He tried to knock my hand away, but I pulled back. “Ah-ah-ah. Be nice.”

  “Keep it up, Mull. I really will go back and leave you here.”

  “You’re so cute when you threaten me. Come on.”

  We started down, every stair creaking beneath our feet. At the bottom, we found ourselves in a narrow, windowless passage with bare walls and worn parquet flooring. To our left, the passage ended in an old kitchen with a brick hearth and a cast-iron oven. To our right, a dead end whose purpose was only apparent by the small door handle in the wall.

  “Why do you smell so bad?” Blaylocke asked me.

  “Must be all the law-lovers I’ve been hanging around with.”

  “No, I mean you legitimately smell like a recently used bathroom.”

  “The Civs have a way of rubbing off on even the most hardened criminals,” I said, starting down the hallway.

  Blaylocke didn’t question me further.

  I pushed the door open and found that its front side was disguised as one of the ballroom’s ornate wall panels; a footman’s entrance for serving from the kitchens during balls and parties. High arched windows along one side of the ballroom descended to become glass-paned doors, which opened onto a wide stone patio. Rain was still coming down outside. Lightning flashed across the darkened sky to illuminate the room in momentary blue.

  The robots were both still twitching and humming, disabled by the damage they’d sustained but trying not to be. I pointed to the ballroom’s main entrance and waved Thomas through the doorway. Blaylocke followed me onto the dance floor, cautious under our quarry’s inhuman gaze.

  “Crap,” I said as I knelt behind the closest robot. “I brought a whole bunch of tools with me, but I left them in my backpack with Chaz. How are we doing to get this head off, or get the back panel open?”

  Blaylocke drew his flecker sword. “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

  “That’d be great if we were cutting through synthetic muscle,” I said. “This will be like trying to split a walnut with a plastic spoon.”

  “You didn’t think about this before we came downstairs?”

  “I’m improvising here. Forgive me if I’m not familiar with the best methods for ripping a robot’s head off. Come on, help me turn this thing over.”

  We gave it our best try, but all we managed to do was budge the robot a little. Even with its gears spilled out across the floor and several pieces of its metal plating detached, it was just too heavy. We were discussing some other possible decapitation methods when Thomas darted past us toward the servants’ door. “Someone’s coming,” he said in a loud whisper.

  “Told you,” said Blaylocke.

  “Shut up,” I said, following them.

  We slipped into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind us. Retracing our steps, we made it up the creaking staircase and climbed the bedsheet rope into the attic. From there, we could see through the hole in the ballroom ceiling. Five robots—all Mark-Sevens—and a squad of Maclin operatives dressed in black tactical suits were standing around the two damaged robots.

  The operatives were talking, but I couldn’t hear them. Another supporting argument for cochlear implants, I thought. One of the operatives looked up at the hole in the ceiling. We all ducked at once. For a second I thought he’d seen us, and my suspicions were quickly confirmed. The operative shouted something, and the ballroom echoed with the rush of sudden footsteps.

  I cursed. “We’re done here. Let’s go.”

  “What about the rope?” asked Blaylocke.

  “You two get moving. I’ll take care of the rope.” I hauled up the sheets while Thomas and Blaylocke took the boarded path toward the island of clutter. The robots might’ve been too dumb to navigate the attic on their own, but it might be a different story when they had operatives to guide them. Maclin’s people were highly augmented, I knew without a doubt. They’d get up here without a rope. No reason to make it easier on them, though.

  I could just hear the first footsteps at the top of the stairs by the time I turned and sprinted down the attic path. I made a wreck of the island as I wove between the piles of junk, pulling stacks of chairs and other furniture down behind me to block the way. This was another futile effort, but we had a long way to crawl, and anything that could slow them down was worth doing.

  Thomas and Blaylocke were already crawling toward the triangular opening when I reached the edge of the plywood flooring. I needed to move faster than they were, so I hopped across the first few crossbeams until the incoming slant in the roofline forced me to crouch. Behind me, I could hear the operatives’ heavy boots thudding down the path. We had a solid lead, but it wouldn’t take them long to cross the island.

  I heard one of the operatives speak a command. This was followed by the metallic thud of the robots’ feet as they thundered down the path. Then an idea came to me. An idea that hinged on the theory that this operative was controlling the robots with one of the remote control units, as opposed to using vocal commands. If he was using a remote—and if I could somehow get ahold of it—we wouldn’t need to harvest robot parts for Chaz. Chaz wouldn’t even need to build us a new remote. We’d have a working remote already.

  It was this thought alone which caused me to abandon my pursuit of Thomas and Blaylocke. I turned back toward the plywood island, searching for a place to call home for the next twenty to thirty seconds. My eyes came to rest on a dusty armoire standing along the edge, its doors ajar and facing outwards.

  I hopped across the last few beams and slipped inside, bending my knees and ducking beneath the armoire’s upper shelf. It was a tight fit, but I managed. Now it was just a matter of finding the right opportunity.

  Something large and heavy bumped into me. The whole armoire rocked forward and went up on two legs. I braced my hands against the sidewalls, expecting the whole thing to topple over onto the crossbeams and plunge to the ballroom floor. After a moment of precarious imbalance, the armoire rocked back and trembled to a halt.

  I saw the operatives rush to the edge of the island and shine a light into the recesses of the attic, searching for movement. It was then that I noticed my favorite thing ever: the operative second from the end was holding a remote control unit. Jackpot.

  When the light came to rest on Thomas’s prostrate form, its bearer alerted the others with a shout. Thomas’s eyes gleamed in reflection. He turned back and double-timed it toward the opening. Blaylocke was still shimmying along in front of him, though, not moving nearly as fast.

  I took my chance. I flung the cabinet door aside and shoved the first operative off the plywood floor. He fell acro
ss the beams and plunged his hands through the plaster, shouting in terror when he saw how far up he was. Meanwhile, I drew my revolver and put the remote-wielding operative in a chokehold with my good arm.

  “Everybody hold it right where you are,” I shouted, placing my gun to the operative’s head. “We’re gonna do this nice and slow, so we can all understand one another. First things first… toss your weapons out there.” I gestured with a tilt of my head.

  Slowly, the operatives obliged me. They couldn’t have known my revolver was only loaded with pulser rounds, which would’ve done just as much damage to my hostage as to me, since I was touching him. I acted like I was ready to take the guy’s life. Which I was, just not with the gun. The man lying across the beams, meanwhile, was trying to pull something from his pocket.

  “Good. Now I want all of you to turn around so you’re facing away from me. And you down there, don’t think I haven’t noticed what you’re doing. Hands over your head where I can see them.”

  Sheepishly, he slid his arms out in front of him.

  “Now, I’ve got a little job for you,” I told my hostage, who was scared but trying not to look it. “What do you call this unit?”

  “Delta.”

  He made no effort to whisper, and the robots did not respond when he spoke. Either the older models couldn’t follow voice-only commands—which I knew wasn’t true because I’d seen Cordelia Foxglove give them on Maclin—or the operative couldn’t control the robots without his remote. I doubted he was programmed in as one of the masters, so this was most likely the case.

  “I want you to press that call button and repeat after me,” I told him.

  The operative lifted the device and did as instructed.

  “Delta.” When I said the word—before the operative repeated me—I heard the familiar whirring sound of robots getting ready to receive orders. Curious, I thought. “Detain all Maclin operatives in sight.”

  The robots moved to obey without waiting for the operative to repeat my command. There was one robot for every operative, a movable prison of perfect coincidence. I let my hostage go as one of the robots dragged him into its welcoming arms, but I made sure to snag the remote first. What I didn’t think about was the operative who was lying across the beams. His robot took one step off the plywood flooring and fell through, landing on the operative and smashing a hole in the plaster. They both dropped to the ballroom floor below, operative-first. His cry was cut short by the squelching sound that echoed through the room when the robot landed on him.

  “Thanks for this,” I told the rest of them, holding up the remote. I felt a sense of power swelling inside me. Maybe that was just the medallion, rewarding me for a scheme well-played. Either way, it felt good. This remote works, I thought. This one follows my voice. “And by the way…” I added, “you’re all fighting for the wrong team.” I mashed the button and said, “Delta. Bring the Maclin operatives… over there.”

  I pointed at the far wall. The operatives began to object, but the robots were good little soldiers. They left the island’s sturdy flooring and stepped out onto unstable wood and plaster without doubt or hesitation. Beams cracked and snapped. Plaster broke away, and the matched pairs of man and robot vanished one by one, rays of dim light glowing through the holes they left.

  I picked my way over the beams amid the sounds of crashing hardware and screaming men. I had to circumvent the whole mess to find a safe path back to the opening. By the time I crawled through and came to meet Chaz and the others, time was running short.

  “Not only will the fleet be here soon,” I said. “We’re probably going to have company before that. Chaz, I found a working remote. All the parts you need should be in here, right?”

  He shook his head. “I still need transmitter pieces from the robots before we can hijack the subsignal.”

  I groaned, realizing I may have just done something too stupid for words. “Oh, no. I just had a bunch of them up here. I didn’t think you’d need them anymore.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “They, uh… moved. To the ballroom.”

  Chaz sighed. “Well, we’re back where we started then, aren’t we?”

  “I don’t understand why you can’t use this remote,” I said. “I used it to give commands.”

  Chaz’s brow furrowed. “Wait… you did?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me see that.” He opened it up and studied the new remote’s circuitry. After a moment, he smiled. “They must’ve manufactured one of these for each unit.”

  “That seems logical,” I said. “They knew an army this size would be unwieldy for any one man to command… not to mention all the different sub-signals they would’ve had to program into one remote to make it work. So they must’ve split up the second and third legions into smaller units and given command of them to their operatives. I’ll bet those jokers got a crash course, given the way they order the robots around as if they’re people.”

  “This is a stroke of luck,” said Chaz. “Your remote is already built with higher command privileges than this one. I can use the component that allows this remote to work with anyone’s voice, plus the one in your remote that lets you command the whole first legion. But I still need a way to tap into the sub-signal again, and that means replacing the transmitters and a few other parts that got damaged in here.”

  “So we still need the robots down in the ballroom,” said Blaylocke. “We got down there and Muller realized he hadn’t brought the tools to take them apart.”

  “Chaz knows what he needs,” I said. “We’ll just have to go back. And he’ll have to come with us this time.”

  “Let me just get these components in place,” he said.

  We all waited a few minutes while he did so. Sable was vapid and listless, still beset with grief at her uncle’s death. I knew there were no words to comfort her, so I didn’t try. I was there, and that was all I could be.

  The more I thought about her grief, the more I kept thinking about the operatives and the many others I’d killed. They had families too, and I’d taken them away. It was annoying, coming to grips with my own hypocrisy. People feel like their enemies deserve to die, while their friends deserve to live. But all my enemies are friends with someone else. Except maybe Kupfer. I couldn’t see how anyone would volunteer to be around that guy.

  By the time Chaz was ready to go, I was feeling as morally conflicted as ever. Either I needed to get over this, or I had to swear some solemn vow that I would never kill again. Who am I kidding? I realized. Not gonna happen. I knew myself too well to ever try something that boneheaded.

  We returned through the opening in the attic wall, the three of us plus Chaz. This time, I had to show them the way through the minefield of unstable crossbeams. By the time we reached the island, we could hear voices and movement below. It was clear we weren’t going to make it into that ballroom anytime soon without being welcomed by a number of unfriendly hosts. Then we heard heavy footsteps clunking up the stairs.

  “Follow my lead,” I said.

  I darted through the debris and ran down the plywood path to the opening in the servants’ dormitory. There, we put our backs to the wall and edged along until we reached the closest bedroom door. The floor around the hole sagged under our weight and gave a few disconcerting creaks, but it held. We slipped through the door and closed it behind us.

  Outside, we heard the operatives and their robotic unit flooding the hallway below. The operatives were mumbling about the ruined staircase and the hole in the ceiling. Before long, something thudded into the upper hallway, close outside our door. Not heavy enough to be a robot, I knew. One of the operatives, propelling himself up here with the help of some augment or other.

  We heard him walking around. Then he called down, “It’s just an attic and a bunch more rooms.”

  “Why were they up there?” someone asked from below.

  “Beats me.”

  “Alright, well… whenever Palmer wakes up,
we’ll ask him. Meantime, I want guards posted in the ballroom.”

  Not good. I heard the operative jump down and land on the floor below. The herd of footsteps descended the staircase again.

  “We’re not going to get those parts, are we?” Blaylocke asked.

  “Haven’t you been hanging around with me long enough to know better by now? Of course we’re getting those parts. Chaz, you’ve got your tools, and you know what you need?”

  He nodded.

  “How long’s it going to take you to harvest those parts and put the new remote together?”

  Chaz rolled his eyes. “You should know me well enough by now to understand that you can’t rush genius.”

  “What I know is that since we’re all about to die, I can rush anything I want. So are we going to die, or are you going to tell me how much time we need to give you?”

  “Between five and ten minutes,” he said.

  “So, fifteen minutes, then. Alright boys… this is what we’re going to do.”

  8

  In school, I was that kid who was always getting into trouble. Once I’d been pinned as the troublemaker, I started making it my duty to keep up appearances; to fill the role my authority figures had assigned me. Somewhere along the line, I guess I got stuck in that state of mind, and I’ve been there ever since. Needless to say, I’ve had plenty of practice making mischief.

  When I peered down into the vast ballroom below, there were five operatives and five automatons dispersed amid the wreckage of bodies. I guess five was the magic number the synod had used to split the robots up with the operatives. If they’d subdivided just one of their three legions, that meant there were somewhere in the neighborhood of twelve hundred independent remote control units floating around. This wasn’t a simple hive-mind operation anymore; killing the synod ‘brain’ might disrupt the body, but it wasn’t going to stop it altogether.

  I didn’t care about that anymore, though. Not as much as I cared about getting off Roathea before the CRC fleet arrived. It’ll be just like the old days, taking down a squad of Civs, I told myself, sizing up the mixed bag of operatives and automatons below me. Except with killer robots.