Silent Order: Axiom Hand

by Jonathan Moeller

  “Understand what?” said March.

  “What it is like to be me,” said Axiom. “Or to be one of us. Drones detached from the Final Consciousness, our bodies rewritten with cybernetics. You would understand. You would look into the machines that have replaced my eyes and not be repulsed.”

  “Then you’re lonely,” said March.

  There was a long silence.

  “Yes,” said Axiom at last, and then she laughed a little.

  “What’s funny?” said March.

  “I wished to ask you a personal question,” said Axiom, “and instead I told you more about myself than I intended.”

  “See,” said March, “that’s the danger of having a personal conversation with an intelligence operative.”

  Axiom laughed louder that time. “A danger I shall have to consider in the future.”

  March’s earpiece crackled.

  “March?” said Tolox.

  “Here,” said March.

  “We are in position,” said Tolox. “Casimir’s parked his semis in an alley near the warehouse, and the Mark VI units are unloading themselves. Helen and Dredger are ready to remotely fire the rockets. Are you ready?”

  “We are,” said March.

  “Get started placing the charges,” said Tolox. “We’ll alert you once we start the attack, and you can grab the alien device and get the hell out of there.”

  “Acknowledged,” said March as Axiom got to her feet. March stood and hefted the bag of plasma charges. “Ready?”

  “Always,” said Axiom.

  She went first through the breach since March had to wrestle the heavy bag of charges with him. The damned things clinked every time they brushed the walls. He knew that the charges were harmless until the detonators were primed and then fired, but something about banging an explosive against a stone wall still made his skin crawl. No doubt Axiom could describe the involuntary physical response to him in great detail.

  The lower basement remained deserted, and they hurried to the metal stairs. Axiom climbed up to the landing, opened the door an inch, and peered through it. Then she nodded and beckoned him through.

  The corridor beyond the door was empty, the dim lights reflecting off the metal doors of the freezer cases. March set the bag of charges down on the floor with a sigh of relief.

  “I shall do the left side,” said Axiom, pulling out her phone.

  “I’ll take the right,” said March, lifting one of the charges.

  They worked in silence, taking the cylindrical plasma charges and affixing them to specific places on the walls, the support columns, and the steel girders of the ceiling. When detonated, the charges would release a superheated explosion of plasma capable of vaporizing anything nearby. That would chew through the concrete pillars and the steel beams, and if the calculations that Casimir had provided were correct, the entire warehouse would collapse into the basement, destroying the nanobot fabricator and killing everyone still inside the building.

  By then, March hoped to be well away with Axiom and the alien device.

  “Ready,” said Axiom, affixing the last of her charges to a concrete pillar.

  March nodded, tapping his earpiece. “Tolox?”

  “Tolox here.”

  “All the charges are placed,” said March. “As soon as we have the relic, we can blow them.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Tolox. “We’re going to begin in sixty seconds. Better get into position.”

  March crossed to the metal stairs, and he climbed up to the landing, Axiom a half-step behind him. He eased open the doorway a crack and peered through, fearing that the Companion workers would have moved the stack of pallets. He was in luck. Not only was the stack of pallets still there, but two more stacks had been placed on either side of it. No one from the warehouse floor could see the basement door.

  He stepped back, closing the door.

  “Tolox?” said March. “We’re about to head into the warehouse itself. We’re going to have to go silent.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Tolox again. “We’ll keep you informed. Hang on…I’ll make sure you can hear the others.” The earpiece crackled again, and the voices of Dredger and Casimir arguing about timing came to March’s ears, at least until Helen told them to send the assault drones sixty seconds after the rocket volley. “You hear us?”

  “Loud and clear,” said March. “Good luck to you.”

  “I always like to blow shit up,” said Dredger. “Best part of this job.”

  “Is that a common occurrence in the life of a vending machine repairman?” said Helen.

  “You’d be surprised,” said Dredger. “All right. We’re going to fire off the rockets in another sixty seconds, and then Casimir is sending his robots to attack. Good luck.”

  March nodded and looked at Axiom, starting the countdown in his head. “Ready?”

  “As always,” said Axiom, her calm unperturbed.

  March opened the door, slipped through, and stepped behind the stacks of pallets, his gun ready in his right hand. Axiom followed and closed the door in silence. March stepped behind the stack of pallets on the left and peered around the edge, looking into the cavernous space of the warehouse. He spotted a dozen Companions standing guard, holding plasma rifles in their hands, their damaged heads giving them a grotesque appearance. More Companions labored near the massive metal bulk of the nanobot fabricator, altering the canisters of Sugar and repacking the pallets. A dozen ghost drones patrolled the walls, their metal legs clanging against the concrete floors

  The lights were on in the office on the far wall of the warehouse. At the top of the stairs leading to the office, March spotted the gaunt figure of Deveraux standing next to the bulkier shape of Simon Lorre. Both men were talking, perhaps planning what to do about Casimir. March considered taking a shot at Lorre. If he had been carrying a better weapon, and if the situation had not been so dire, he might have done it. But a shot with a handgun across such a distance was chancy at best. More likely than not he would miss.

  Besides, in another thirty-six seconds, Lorre and Deveraux were about to have all kinds of problems

  “Rockets firing,” said Helen in his earpiece.

  For about five seconds nothing happened.

  March heard the faint whoosh. Deveraux kept talking, but Lorre just started to turn his head to look at the truck doors, a frown appearing on his face.

  The rockets hit.

  The aim hadn’t been great. The rockets had been designed to work with the Mark VI drones’ targeting computers, the robots’ pseudointelligences providing real-time targeting and maneuvering information. The weapons had not been intended to be fired without any aiming mechanisms. Nonetheless, they did better than March thought, and had a higher yield than he would have expected.

  The warehouse shook like a giant concrete bell, the roar of explosions echoing. An explosion blasted a breach six meters wide in the wall, chunks of broken concrete and twisted rebar clattering to the floor. Two more gaps of similar size appeared on the roof, and the boom of the explosions roared even louder. Deveraux almost fell off the balcony in surprise, grabbing at the railing to keep his footing. Lorre reacted with greater calm, yanking a plasma pistol from a holster beneath his jacket.

  Even with the echoes of the explosions, March heard Deveraux’s furious cry.

  “What the hell?” he said. “What the hell?”

  Lorre beckoned with his pistol, and both men ran into the office.

  “Rockets away,” said Helen with obvious satisfaction. “Hope you two enjoyed the fireworks display.”

  “I would have preferred to enjoy it from a greater distance,” murmured March. With the echoes and the distraction from the damage, he doubted the Companions or the ghost drones would hear him.

  “Here comes the second wave,” said Casimir. “Mark VI assault drones moving in. You two are hard-coded into their control program as off-limits, but otherwise, they’re going to shoot everything they see.”

  Even as h
e spoke, March heard the familiar stuttering howl of plasma fire from outside the building. As one, every armed Companion and ghost drone looked towards the warehouse doors. The walls began to shake as stray plasma bolts struck them, and some dust fell from the ceiling. There was another explosion from outside, followed by two more, and then the chattering roar of the defense drones’ machine guns firing at Casimir’s robots.

  They had just started a battle in the warehouse district of Rykov City.

  March wondered how long they had until the Securitate responded. No matter how much Deveraux had paid the Securitate’s senior officers, no matter how pro-Machinist they were, there was no way the Securitate could let a battle unfold in Rykov City without intervention.

  Would Lorre flee without a fight? He might – he had abandoned his allies to their fate without mercy on both Rustbelt Station and Monastery Station. Lorre would think nothing of leaving Maurice Deveraux to die. But would he take the relic of the Great Elder Ones with him when he fled? Almost certainly he would.

  Or would he stand and fight?

  The armed Companions turned, responding to a silent signal, and ran towards the truck doors as two of them slid open. Before the doors had even opened the Companions started shooting, sending volleys of plasma bolts into the yard. March saw a mass of Mark VI assault drones rolling back and forth, exchanging fire with the spidery defense drones. The Companions’ plasma bolts ripped into the drones, and several of them exploded as their power cells overloaded. The Mark VI drones turned to meet the new threat, and a Companion went down, plasma bolts punching through the android’s body without slowing. Several plasma bolts slammed into the nanobot fabricator, blasting through metal tanks and bundles of wires, and the machine started to give off both a groaning noise and a blaring alarm.

  March looked at the office window. Lorre and Deveraux still stood there, watching the battle. There was no way the Companions and the ghost drones could win against Casimir’s force. Even if the Companions started to turn the tide, Casimir would remotely overload all the drones at once, and March could trigger the plasma charges. But Lorre didn’t know that, not yet. Any minute now he would figure it out and retreat, and he would likely take the alien device with him.

  “We have to move now,” said March. Axiom nodded, and March tapped his ear. “Tolox, Casimir, we’re going after the device. If you don’t hear from us in ten minutes, trigger the plasma charges.”

  “Acknowledged,” said Tolox. “Get moving.”

  March took a deep breath and stepped around the pallets, in full view from anyone in the office and the warehouse floor.

  But no one noticed. The Companions and ghost drones focused on the assault drones, and Lorre and Deveraux watched the battle. No one noticed March and Axiom as they hurried alongside the nanotech fabricator, heading for the cradle that housed the alien device.

  Twice plasma bolts flashed in front of them and drilled into the metal tanks of the fabricator, which let out increasingly loud groaning noises as it broke down. Another plasma bolt struck one of the pallets of unaltered Sugar, and March discovered something that he hadn’t known about Sugar.

  It was flammable.

  The pallet exploded with a shock wave and a roar, and March threw himself to the concrete floor. Shards of hot metal rained around him, and several of them clanged off his left arm, which he had raised to shield his head. At last, the roar faded, and March got to one knee and looked around. A fireball roiled and hissed where the Sugar had exploded, no doubt releasing a plume of narcotic black smoke. The shock wave had been enough to knock out the windows of the office, and March saw no sign of Deveraux or Lorre. Maybe they had been killed by shrapnel.

  Axiom got to her feet, a little shakily.

  “Are you all right?” said March.

  “Fine,” said Axiom. “Keep going.” March nodded and started to turn. “Wait! Get down!”

  He looked up, and saw Lorre appear on the balcony by the office door, a plasma pistol in both hands and swinging in March’s direction…

  He ducked again, and the bolt that would have vaporized his skull instead shot past his shoulder to blast glowing chips from the concrete floor. Lorre fired twice more as March slammed against the side of the fabricator, taking cover behind one of the tanks. Axiom raised her pistol and squeezed off two shots. Lorre had already taken cover, ducking behind the doorframe, and the bullets bounced off the wall.

  March eased forward, ready to open fire if Lorre showed himself. The Machinist agent must have spotted them when the damned pallet of Sugar had exploded. But they had Lorre pinned in the office now, and March knew there wasn’t any other exit from it. All he had to do was get the alien device, escape the warehouse, and trigger the plasma charges, and that would be the end of both Simon Lorre and the ghost drones.

  “To the right!” said Axiom, shifting around and opening fire, her pistol flashing.

  March turned his head and saw two Companions running towards them, plasma rifles in hand. Axiom’s bullets slammed into the androids, but to no effect. Conventional bullets could penetrate the artificial flesh coverings of the Companions without difficulty, but the metal skeletons proved harder to damage. Unless Axiom managed to hit a vital component, the Companions would simply shrug off small-arms gunfire.

  A plasma rifle swung in March’s direction, and he ducked. The bolt burned past him and struck the fabricator, punching another hole in one of the tanks. March grabbed one of the metal struts holding the tank in place with his left hand and yanked with all his strength.

  The bar ripped free, and March found himself holding a four-foot length of steel.

  He leaped to his feet as the Companion lined up for another shot and flung the bar. The length of metal slammed into the Companion’s forehead, knocking its head back. That couldn’t hurt the android, but it did knock its optical sensors out of line, which meant its next shot missed March by six inches.

  The Companion lowered its head and shifted its aim, but by then it was too late. March reached the android and punched his left hand into the center of its chest. Punching something that looked like an impossibly proportioned naked woman was a disturbing feeling, but the blow worked. The impact knocked the android backward, and the Companion’s programming took over, both arms shooting down to catch its balance.

  March seized the plasma rifle, took aim, and sent a bolt through the Companion’s skull. The plasma vaporized the metal skull and turned the android’s CPU to slag, and the Companion went limp. March wheeled, leveled the rifle, and snapped off another shot at the Companion attacking Axiom. His aim was off, and the blast vaporized its neck. But with the spinal column destroyed, the CPU could no longer control the body, and the android collapsed in a limp heap.

  “Get that rifle,” said March, shoving his printed pistol into its holster.

  Axiom nodded and seized the plasma rifle from the disabled Companion, her hands moving with reflexive motions as she checked the weapon. March turned, scanning the warehouse, the rifle raised and ready to fire. The battle raged outside, but he didn’t see any more Companions or ghost drones. Lorre might have summoned them to fight, but perhaps they had been unable to disengage from battle with the Mark VI drones.

  “Let’s move,” said March.

  “We only have seven minutes and thirty-seven seconds remaining until detonation,” said Axiom, calm. “We…”

  A flicker of motion from the edge of the fabricator caught March’s attention.

  He raised the rifle just as a Companion leaped around the fabricator, firing. Plasma bolts shot past March, and he had no choice but to dodge as Axiom took cover alongside the fabricator. March fell to one knee and pulled the trigger, and his bolt tore a chunk from the concrete floor. Axiom fired, and her aim was better. The bolt drilled through the Companion’s skull and sent it tumbling to the floor.

  March got to his feet and took one step closer, and then dark blurs burst from around the edge of the fabricator.

  Simon Lorre and Mauric
e Deveraux approached, both men holding plasma pistols. Deveraux covered Axiom, both hands grasping the butt of his pistol, his face shiny with sweat and his expression tight with strain. Lorre looked far more relaxed, even amused, but the pistol in his right hand remained rock-steady as it pointed at March’s chest. In his left hand, he held a grenade, his finger holding the detonation switch in place. A dead man’s switch? No, Lorre wouldn’t risk his life like that. Likely the grenade had been set to explode a few seconds after he released the switch.

  They stared at each other, the noise of the battle outside echoing through the warehouse. Lorre and Deveraux were ten meters away, and Deveraux was standing right next to the cradle holding the alien device.

  “Well, God damn it all,” said Lorre. “Captain Jack March. I should have known. If I can misquote St. Paul, you are the thorn in my flesh.”

  “Who?” said Deveraux.

  “It seems our little operation was more successful than we thought, Maurice,” said Lorre. “I bet one of the ghost drones we sent out drew official attention earlier than we thought. Who’s your girlfriend, Jack?” He didn’t look at Axiom. “Former Iron Eye, by the look of her. Hey, remind me, did you ever sleep with Roanna Vindex? Before or after you shot her brother, that is.”

  The taunt bolstered March’s confidence. He hadn’t shot Roanna’s brother, Roanna herself had done that. Lorre didn’t know everything. The very fact that March stood with a plasma rifle pointed at Lorre’s chest proved that.

  “Goddamn it, Richard, that doesn’t answer the question,” said Deveraux, more sweat trickling into the collar of his suit.

  “He’s an Alpha Operative of the Silent Order,” said Lorre. “Sent to stop us, I would guess, and to steal the device powering the nanobot fabricator. The little light show outside is also his work, I would guess.”

  “It’s not too late to surrender,” said March. “Or do you want to die here together?”