Tin Men

by Christopher Golden

  “There!” she called, pointing at the office building. “Third floor window.”

  Danny turned to scan it and another bullet struck him, only inches away from the sweet spot. That cracking glass sound came again, but the shot had been off. Danny saw him now, nothing more than the top of his dark-haired head and the barrel of his rifle jutting from the open window, but he’d marked him. The sniper had not finished the job, and Danny had no intention of giving him another chance.

  “I’ve got him,” he called.

  The gunfire continued in the intersection. Another rocket exploded—maybe killing another member of the platoon, maybe not—and he knew the Bot Killers were on the run again, scurrying like rats, maybe retreating to launch a third ambush on the platoon later.

  Not this guy, Danny thought.

  He left the others behind, running full out at the façade of the office building. The Bot Killers knew what they were up against—they knew they were risking their lives and by his count at least ten of them had paid that price—but this guy had an agenda. He could have used a rocket launcher, but instead he’d chosen a rifle, as if his skill was more important to him than certainty. Or just to show that he was that certain of his talents. And he could have gone after any of them, but he had targeted on Danny and Kate.

  Yeah, no question. Asshole had an agenda. Danny didn’t care what it was—he just wanted to kill the guy with his own rifle—but the world was falling apart and these bastards had been waiting for their cue, which meant they had known it was coming. Whatever information they had, Danny intended to get it.

  Full tilt, once they got going, Remote Infantry units could do seventy-five miles per hour on foot. Danny didn’t have the room to get up to that speed, but he hit the front of the office building at what he figured was thirty mph or better. With a leap, he crashed through a massive section of plate glass and broken shards of it showered around him as he landed on the carpet inside.

  He didn’t have time for the door.

  ~9~

  Hanif Khan tossed his rifle aside as he ran from the room, heart thundering in his chest. He had destroyed Tin Men with a rifle in the past, put three bullets into the weak spot in their armor and ruptured their power cores. It had been a matter of pride and now he cursed himself for it. Today he had managed to blow two carefully arranged opportunities to take out both Thirteen and Devil.

  Now he ran.

  Khan and Drazen, his second, had planned the first and second assaults thinking that between the two ambushes they would be able to destroy most if not all of the platoon stationed in Damascus, but from the moment he had learned the truth about the robots—and what the EMP would do to them— Khan’s only real goal had been to kill Kelso and Wade. Now he felt ashamed. His brother Omed had died at their hands, but Thirteen and the Devil still lived. Killing them remained his only goal.

  Live, he thought. Live to give them each the third bullet.

  He dashed from the room and into the corridor, footsteps too loud. Kelso had breached the building. Khan could hear him crashing about downstairs. With the sensors built into the Tin Men, Kelso would be hearing his every step, tracking him. Sweat ran down the back of his neck and beaded on his forehead as he burst through the stairwell door and started upward.

  Khan swore as he rounded the landing that led to the roof. Gunther and Arun had been up there, likely dead by now. He had known that many of his people would die today, and it had not troubled him. Some were anarchists and some terrorists and some merely mercenaries, but they all knew the risk.

  He had been shocked when his employers had revealed their plans to him, but he had covered it well. If he had objected they would have killed him. And what did he care, really? What did the end of modern civilization mean to him?

  Khan heard Kelso crash into the stairwell far below, heard the clatter of the robot as he raced up the stairs so much faster than any human could have moved. He had left the door propped open with a cinder block. As he hurtled out into the sunshine of the roof he shoved the block aside and the heavy door clanged shut. The sky blazed a vivid, cloudless blue and a hot breeze seared his skin. An idyllic day, full of bullets and bloodshed.

  Crouched low, Khan darted across the broad roof toward the housing for the building’s rear stairwell. That door also stood propped open. Would Kelso listen to the pounding of his boots and try to anticipate and cut him off when he descended or would he fear that Khan had another route off of the roof to a neighboring building?

  He reached the rear door and shoved the cinder block away with the heel of his boot. From behind him came the crump of twisting metal and a grinding shriek as the door in the other housing—which he’d closed only moments before—tore from its hinges. Khan spun to see the robot emerge onto the roof, saw the target painted on Kelso’s abdomen, the number thirteen on his forehead, and a fresh wave of hatred flooded his heart. He thought of the dull look in Omed’s eyes and the way the Tin Men had just stood around while a dog pissed on his corpse.

  Khan wanted to stay. To kill. But his hands were flesh and bone and he was unarmed…for the moment.

  “Who the hell are you?” the robot shouted in its artificial voice.

  Khan slammed the door hard enough to shake its entire housing. He descended the steps two at a time and then leaped to the first landing, knowing Kelso would be right behind him. As he turned, getting his bearings, a robot fist punched through the metal door, reaching for the knob on the inside.

  A long, thin wire ran from the base of the door and down the stairwell, over the railing, down to the entrance to the third floor hallway. Dangling from the wire was a black box with a red plastic button on it. Khan hurled himself down from the turn in the stairwell to the third floor landing, grabbed the black box and pressed the button.

  The explosion blew him through the propped-open third floor hallway door and into the opposite wall. The impact knocked the air out of him as plaster rained from the ceiling and dust blew down the stairs. His eardrums throbbed and his vision went foggy for a second, but then he wheezed in a painful breath and crawled to his feet. He had lined the roof access door with explosives, but he couldn’t afford to be complacent. Even if he’d blown Kelso apart, Kate Wade and the surviving members of their platoon were still out on the street.

  He wished he could be sure Kelso was dead, but he couldn’t afford to check.

  Don’t worry, he thought. If he’s alive, you’ll know it.

  Staggering at first, he made his way down the corridor, passing office doors and frosted glass partitions that had been cracked or shattered by the explosion. The sound of his own breathing too loud inside his head, he ran to the bank of elevators. Glass crunched under his boots. The elevators were frozen, but he’d forced open the doors of the one on the left. He had disabled it earlier that morning, before the EMP, so that when the power went out it remained on the basement level. Now he tore off his keffiyeh and reached into the yawning shaft to wrap the black and white fabric around the elevator cable.

  The clank of robot footsteps came from down the hall.

  Khan glanced that way and caught a glimpse of Kelso. His carapace had been slightly charred and he was missing his left hand, the one he had punched through the door, but otherwise he was unharmed.

  “Should’ve planted the charges on the outside,” Kelso said, stalking toward the elevator bank. “You blew the door right at me, saved my ass.”

  Khan had never seen hatred in the eyes of a robot before; in that moment, it looked almost human. He jumped into the elevator shaft, hands gripping the cloth-wrapped cable, and began to slide. The roof hatch on the elevator was below.

  Through the hatch, out the jammed-open elevator doors and into the building’s basement, then out through a rear loading bay, and then the sewers. He had planned his escape route for days—every step—never truly believing he would be able to use it.

  Kelso did not bother with the cable. The robot leaped into the elevator shaft and plummeted downward, le
tting out a cry of anger. As he fell he grabbed hold of Khan with his remaining hand. Khan lost his grip, his keffiyeh fluttering above him as he flailed in the robot’s grasp, and they hit the roof of the elevator together. Kelso broke the fall, but the impact sent spikes of pain through Khan. His chest burned as he drew a breath. He rolled off the robot and felt grinding in his ribcage. Something had cracked inside him.

  The robot shot out a hand and grabbed him by the throat. Khan grunted and tried to beat at its arm. Kelso shoved him down through the open hatch on top of the elevator and Khan pinwheeled his arms as he fell. When he hit the ground, the pain of his cracked ribs stabbed so sharply that he hissed in a breath and then cried out, unashamed. Pain was pain, he would not deny it.

  Kelso dropped beside him, crouched over him like a spider. The robot grabbed his throat, propping himself up on the metal alloy stump of his left hand.

  “You are going to die,” Kelso said.

  Khan said nothing. Yet as Kelso squeezed his throat, cutting off his air, still he fought. He might have expected to die, but that was not the same as being willing. As the pure need for air burned in his chest and his eyes bulged and his brain felt as if it were swelling, pushing against the inside of his skull, Khan beat at the robot’s arms and face. Its eyes glowed. Power, he thought. Technology and energy drove this thing; they were the most effective of all weapons. They were the tools of domination.

  As the blackness flooded in at the edges of his vision and all the strength fled his limbs, Khan at last understood the philosophy of the anarchists. Take away all modern contrivances and what remained—first and foremost—was equality.

  Robots, he thought, with all of the venom his fading mind could muster.

  And then…

  Omed.

  The darkness swallowed him.

  Aimee Bell stood at her monitoring station and stared at the dozens of screens, large and small, arrayed before her. They should have been full of washed out buildings and dusty streets, everything from high-class hotels to riotously colorful marketplaces. Instead, every screen showed pure blue. A low hum emitted from the monitors, which glitched now and again, a little fritz of static that made it clear they were still open for a signal.

  No signal seemed forthcoming.

  She barely noticed the rustle of clothing and heavy footfalls that should have signaled another soldier’s arrival.

  “Bell.”

  Startled, Aimee flinched and then turned to find Security Officer Ken Wheeler standing six feet away. Buzzcut blond, blue-eyed, and built like a freight train, Kenny Wheeler had always looked to her like a superhero out of costume.

  Numb, she stared at him. Wheeler cocked his head and frowned oddly at her.

  “Chief Schuler wants you at Command Core immediately.”

  The words did not make sense to her. “You left your post.”

  Wheeler frowned. “What?”

  “You left—“

  “No, Bell, I heard what you said. All comms are down. We’re on backup power and all external instruments are apparently fried. Until all of this shit gets repaired, I don’t have a post and neither do you. The Chief Warrant Officer has asked you to report to Command Core. Are you—“

  “Yes,” she said quietly, glancing at the blue, glitchy screens at her station—the screens where she ought to have seen the members of Platoon A, Sixth Battalion in action. “Yeah, I’m coming.”

  Wheeler turned on his heel and started off, boots squeaking on the industrial rubberized floor. Aimee followed, glancing around as if she were Alice, freshly awakened in Wonderland. So many blue screens, all doing that same glitchy frizz. Warrant Officers and other techs were at computer monitors, harvesting information through self-diagnostics. Up on the catwalk that radiated outward toward the Staging Areas where the entire morning shift—nearly a thousand soldiers—lay inside their Remote Combat Stations like coma patients, inert.

  A shudder went through her. She didn’t want to think about the soldiers, especially those from Platoon A. That morning, Ernie Travaglini had been wearing a t-shirt trumpeting a band called Bewilderbeast. Not the kind of music she’d have listened to in a million years, but Trav apparently liked them and it hadn’t occurred to her to ask why. Maybe she would learn to appreciate the music through someone else’s perspective. Even if all she’d accomplished was to get to know Trav better…

  It made her want to weep to think of how many questions she would now never get to ask, how many people she would never get to know better.

  The whole control center buzzed with activity, people rebooting systems and shutting down alarms. Lights flickered, a little fritz just like the glitch on the viewscreens. Cold, clipped voices filled the heavy air of Humphreys Deep Station One, nobody truly frantic just yet. At least not outwardly.

  She knew that would change. Frantic-ville was just around the corner. The duty officers and the C.O. weren’t panicking yet because they didn’t understand the technology enough to really be freaking out. But they would.

  Wheeler hurried to the Command Core and Aimee kept pace, feeling his urgency. There were hundreds of soldiers on duty in the Hump right now—including dozens of Warrant Officers—what did Chief Schuler want with her?

  As they hustled up the slatted metal steps, Aimee felt like she couldn’t breathe. Her best friend Sarah had just given birth to a daughter—Sarah’s first child—and Aimee had agreed to be the godmother. Her brother was in college in New York. The instant that the system had crashed and they’d lost comms, she had put up a little wall inside her mind, trying her best not to think of the people she loved and what might be happening to them. Her first duty was to her post and that meant following orders.

  A soldier opened the door for them and stood back while Aimee and Wheeler entered the Command Core. If the control room was like a spider web of information, then this chamber had to be the spider, an octagonal room on a raised platform with windows that looked out over the entire operation. To her left, she could see her own abandoned monitoring station fifty yards away.

  Small, flickering blue screens lined the lower half of the chamber, interrupted only by three computer monitoring stations that seemed to be spilling data so fast they blurred. A pair of officers and three techs were examining the computers. An image popped up on one of them but before she could feel even a dash a hope, Aimee realized what she saw was a recording of activity inside the control room before the shutdown.

  A circular conference table occupied the center of the room and half a dozen officers sat around it. Aimee recognized only half of them, but she noted the rank of each one. The Hump’s commanding officer was Colonel Dafna Koines, but the Colonel had been off base this morning. Chief Warrant Officer Schuler sat beside Captain Annette Cameron, but it seemed to Aimee that Major Eli Zander was the acting C.O., unless and until Colonel Koines returned.

  Great, Aimee thought.

  Major Zander had never so much as glanced at her, but irritation seemed to flow in his wake whenever he entered a room. Just past fifty, judging by the whispers she’d heard on his birthday last month, the puffy-faced, flinty-eyed major had the features of a man who loved whiskey more than he loved himself, a 1940s film star gone partway to seed. Still, whatever his private issues, Eli Zander brought nothing but stone cold professionalism to his duties.

  “Warrant Officer Bell, sir,” Wheeler announced.

  “I can see that,” Major Zander said.

  Aimee stood at attention. Those working at the computer stations ignored her arrival, but the men and women at the table ceased all conversation and turned to study her as if she were a dubious suitor, come to take one of their sons or daughters to the prom.

  “Bell,” Major Zander said, as if getting a taste for the name.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Major Zander’s eyes were steel gray, full of clouds just before a rain.

  “You understand what’s happened here, Bell?”

  “EMP, sir.”

  The major nodded,
then tilted his head to indicate the techs and officers working at the computer stations. “We’ve got no communication with the outside world, Warrant Officer Bell. The Hump is shielded well enough that all of our backups systems are intact. We’re self-sustaining. Could be everything’s all right topside except for the effects of the EMP, but—“

  “You don’t think it’s nuclear, sir?” Aimee interrupted. The explosion of a nuclear warhead would emit an electromagnetic pulse.

  Major Zander knitted his brow. He did not like to be interrupted.

  “We haven’t detected any radiation spike, but who’s to say what’s working properly and what isn’t?”

  Aimee exhaled in relief. “We’re shielded from radiation, sir, but even if external sensors are fragged, the sensors just inside the doors would pick up a slight rise in radiation. If you haven’t seen anything like—“

  “Bell,” Major Zander said sharply.

  She stood even straighter. “Sir.”

  “Let me tell you what we do have,” Major Zander said. “We’ve got the audio and video from every camera feed from every robot in the field. We’ve got the data readings from all of our instruments at the Hump and topside at the airfield, everything leading up to and including the moment of the Pulse. These folks are sifting that data to see if we can’t figure out how big a deal this is, who did it, and why. I want you to help them.”

  Aimee frowned. “Yes, sir, but, if I may…”

  “I don’t seem able to stop you.”

  “Why me, sir?”

  One of the officers at the table wore an expression that suggested she had been wondering the same thing.

  Major Zander frowned. “Chief Schuler told me that you were by far the most talented and most creative tech at the Hump.”

  Aimee blinked in surprise. “Oh.”

  The major glanced at Chief Schuler. “So far, I haven’t seen anything to persuade me that their faith is well-placed,” he said, then turned back to stare at Aimee. “Why don’t you set about convincing me?”