Warstrider: Jackers

by William H. Keith, Jr.

  Katya had not been on this side of the building when she'd entered it, hours before, and she was unprepared for the horror she saw there, a nightmare that came upon her so suddenly she gasped and nearly fell.

  There'd been a slaughter here, right in the middle of the street, dozens of people cut down by the obscenely neat, random slices of repeated sempu blasts. There were so many pieces of arms and legs and torsos, so many severed heads and recognizable fragments of heads, so many unraveling tangles of internal organs and other chunks that were simply unrecognizable save as raw, blood-soaked meat that Katya could not even begin to guess how many people had been killed here. The blood had pooled in the low-lying parts of the street, ankle-deep or deeper.

  People? She checked herself. That vacant-eyed, longhaired head lying in the street a few meters away could be Sonya's identical twin. These were genies, slaughtered en masse. Hell, they must have been packed together in a group, a mob, when the sempu started flying.

  "That's what they did to us," Tharby said. "That's why we ain't goin' back. Never. Never."

  Katya opened her mouth to say something, anything… tnd the sudden hot lurch in her stomach caught her completely off guard. Turning away from her escorts, she leaned heavily against a wall, emptying her stomach in a racking succession of deep, explosive heaves.

  No mere battlefield horror had ever affected her this way. Indeed, years ago, during her recruit training, some of her official downloading had been designed specifically to harden her against the raw stuff of nightmares that was a modern battlefield, scenes exactly like this, wet with crimson gore, and she'd seen the reality plenty of times since.

  But nothing could have prepared her for the sheer, mass-murder horror that she saw in front of her now.

  "They was hidin' in that warehouse over there," Tharby said behind her. "I saw it. Lots of us did. A stilter came up outside, right over there, ordered 'em t'come out, hands up. They did. It was a full human that was givin' them the order, right? They had t'obey. They came out, an' then th' stilter started shootin' that tangled thread stuff that'll snick off a finger if'n you ain't careful. Chopped 'em to bits, then flamed the warehouse, just t'make sure they was all dead."

  "What… what kind of stilter?"

  Tharby snorted. "Don't know th' name. They's all pretty much the same, right?" He thought about it a moment. "I guess it was one o' the smaller ones, though. An' different from the ones I seen around here late, like."

  Imperial, then. But she'd known that. Confed or militia striders wouldn't turn sempu on civilians. She didn't even think they carried sempu in their military inventory.

  Katya wondered why they'd done it. Possibly the enemy striderjack had panicked at seeing such a large mob emerging from the building. Or maybe he had orders to spread terror among the area's inhabitants, or to keep large numbers of civilians from wandering around behind the Nihon lines.

  Or maybe he'd simply assumed, as so many people did, that genies were biological robots of some kind, near-mindless and of no particular worth save to their owners. Sempu was a cheap way of killing a lot of unarmored or lightly armored people all at once.

  "This," she said, her words tasting sour, "is part of what we're fighting against. The Impies've declared war against all of us, you and me. And maybe, maybe I can help you."

  "We fightin' our own wars now," Dak said, menace in his voice. "Don't need help from humies. We fight!"

  "Against warstriders? Stilters? I don't think so." She nodded toward the length of pipe another laborer held in his hands, a crude club. "Think you'd fare any better than they did, attacking a warstrider with that?"

  "Then what are we supposed to do?" a toygirl wailed. "They'll come an' kill us!"

  "You could learn to fight," Katya said softly. "And with weapons that'll give you half a chance. But you'll have to decide whose side you're on first."

  "We don't need your Con, Confudration," a ware-house loader said. "Way I hear it, th' Chinese an' the Ukies ain't even in this war. We could go there, t' Canton or Nowa-K." He looked around at the others near him, as though searching for support. "This war is between th' Nihons and th' Newamies, right?"

  "Yeah. Ain't got nothin' to do with us," a girl added.

  "It does if you expect to get out of here alive," Katya replied. "The Impies have their, their stilters everywhere. Hear them? That rumbling noise is them bombarding Jefferson, from the sound of it. You'll have to pass their lines, and I don't think they'll just let you walk through." She gestured at the pitiful scramble of blood-soaked genie body parts. "No more than they let them go."

  A discussion started among several of the genies and quickly grew to argument status. Tharby was really getting into it with another techie who looked exactly like him.

  The sight was amusing… and instructive. Katya had seen her share of poorly written ViRdramas, both narratives and interactives, which had introduced cloned genies at one point or another in the tale. It never failed to amaze her how many people thought in this day and age that clones were copies of one another in mind as well as body, robots as interchangeable as circuit blocks.

  Sheer nonsense, of course. Clones many genies might be, but that meant simply that they possessed identical DNA within the nuclei of their cells, not identical thoughts, goals, or ideas. Each was born as an infant just like a full-human child, raised in a creche, and schooled individually - though without cephlinks, of course, they couldn't receive downloads and their education was for that reason sharply limited.

  But they were individuals, with all the disagreement and confusion that entailed. The debate shaping up now was between a group urging that the genies slip out of the city and head south, for either Canton or Nowakiyev, and another group urging them to stay, to listen to what Katya had to say, even to help the Confederation against the real enemy that had slaughtered their mannies in the street. Eventually, the argument soon drifted back inside The Newamie's Down, where several genies stood guard over Katya while the rest took their debate into another room.

  Katya was tired… and hungry too, she realized now. She'd had nothing but soy crackers in the last fifteen-plus hours… and lost most of that being sick outside. She was also thirsty, longing to wash the unpleasant taste from her throat. Her captors brought her water but refused to let her forage for more food. Tharby, or someone just like him, told her to sit where she'd been sitting most of that afternoon, and they refused to let her move from the spot.

  Otherwise, they seemed to ignore her, listening instead to the conversation continuing in the next room. Genies came and went, joining in the debate, or leaving it. The only time any of them said anything to her was when, nearly two hours after the start of the conference, several toygirls appeared with some male workers in tow, leading them to clear spots on the floor on the other side of the room. One ningyo - was it Sonya? - walked up to Katya, struck a pose, and touched some hidden control at her waist. Her smoke-film holoclothing winked off, leaving her naked save for a belly chain with a small pouch holding personal belongings and the electronics that had holoprojected her clothing. The delicate triangle of her pubic hair was the same silky gold and silver that adorned her head.

  "You want to play?" the toygirl had asked, smiling down at her.

  "Uh… no. No, thank you." She turned her head away. Noisily, across the room, the other toygirls began coupling enthusiastically with the male genies, or with each other. Katya hadn't realized that male constructs enjoyed sex, those that were capable of it, as much as humans. Why had that particular set of behaviors been left in them, she wondered, when artificial methods were necessary to maintain pure genetic lines?

  "How 'bout you, Tharby?"

  "No, Glora. Not just now."

  "Later, then." She turned and walked toward the group orgy. Katya kept her eyes averted. She didn't think of herself as a prude, but she'd been raised within a relatively conservative culture on New America, one that accepted appropriate social nudity, but which strongly disapproved of public sex
. Well aware that different cultures viewed such activity in different ways, she was still shocked to encounter those differences in an unexpected setting. Shaken, her gaze met Tharby's.

  "Don't condemn 'em," the genie told her. More intelligent than most of his companions, with a better vocabulary, he seemed better versed in the way full humans thought than the others were. "It's th' way they're made. Th' way you made 'em, y'know? They need sex, like you V me need water."

  "No," she said. "I didn't know. And I had nothing to do with making them that way."

  "No?" He didn't sound convinced.

  "Anyway, I don't condemn it. I'm just not, not used to it, is all."

  "Yeah. Like we ain't used t' bein' allowed t' be havin' guns, or babies o' our own, or, or th' right t' quit 'n' go elsewhere if we don't like th' way things are, huh?"

  "I thought you genies liked your work."

  " 'Cause we was made t' like it, right? Well, there's work, an' there's work, an' th' way I heard it explained, DNA can give you an, an aptitude, like, but it can't make hell into heaven, y'know? Even a tailor-made dreamslot can be bad with th' wrong guy ridin' you. An' anyway, things's changed, ain't they? Likin' what we do don't mean we gotta like gettin' butchered like a brainless meatbeast."

  His gaze made her uncomfortable, and she decided to change the subject. "What's going to happen to me if they decide not to stay?"

  "Beats me." He shrugged philosophically. "Pro'ly kill ya, I guess, so's y'can't tell the Impies where we're goin'."

  "But… I'm full-human!"

  He looked away, shifting uncomfortably. "Maybe… maybe some of 'em think it's easier t'kill humies now. After what happened outside."

  And he would say nothing more to her throughout the rest of that long night's watch.

  * * *

  Chapter 13

  Humanity has a tendency, written into its monkey's genes, to find inferiority in difference. Family names, color of skin, religious belief, political ideology, place of origin, sex, sanitary practices, social status, language, education, intelligence, technological prowess, athletic ability, and - most damning of all, perhaps - failure to abide by the social wisdom of the dominant culture, all these and more have been used throughout history to set one group above another, to establish a pecking order of haves and have-nots, to prove what is thought at the time to be self-evident, that one tribe is superior to another.

  - Man and His Works

  Karl Gunther Fielding

  C.E. 2488

  Two hours later, the conference was still going on, rising sometimes to the pitch and intensity of all-out argument.

  Tharby left Katya after a while, his place taken by a dockworker who regarded her with sullen disapproval. She thought it might be Dak, the laborer she'd taken down earlier, but she didn't want to ask.

  This, she decided, would be her best chance to get away, while most of the genies were either coupling on the floor or arguing in the next room, with only this one to watch her. She thought that Tharby might be on her side, that he didn't want to have any part of killing her. Some glimmer of… had it been compassion?… had lurked behind those golden eyes as he'd said the words, but she was still having trouble reading what they were really thinking. Once, a thick, gravel voice had risen from the eating area. "Aw, gok! Kill 'er an' be done with it!" Was that the same one who'd said almost the same words when she'd first been captured? Or another one?

  No matter. Some of the genies, at least, were serious about killing her despite their conditioning. Seeing their fellow mannies cut down like that must have been a devastating shock.

  The argument dragged on, and Katya's senses, her awareness of her surroundings, became hyperacute. The genie conditioning to obedience might have been trashed, but they still didn't know what to do with their newfound freedom. They still couldn't decide things for themselves, didn't know how to abide by a vote or to delegate authority. They might never decide anything… until one of them took matters into his own hands or a warstrider came smashing through the front wall.

  She had to get away. Now.

  Dak, if that was his name, was armed with her own PCR. Did he know how to use it? She remembered switching on the weapon's safety when she'd handed it over to Sonya. Katya doubted that any of them knew much about firearms. The idea of arming genies was repellent to most people.

  More than once in the past few centuries, geneticists and military research combines had explored an old, old idea. If you could tinker with the human genome to create hurnanoid constructs that were docile, focused on a particular job, loyal, and clever at certain tasks, wouldn't it be possible to breed a genetically tailored warrior, a creature clever with weapons and at combat craft, fearless, obedient even to suicidal orders, and ruthlessly savage in battle?

  The answer should have been yes and the thing had been tried often, but with less than total success. The greatest technical difficulty lay in what to do with the creatures during periods of extended peace. The alternatives appeared to be mass euthanasia - extremely risky when dealing with an entire army composed of tens of thousands of deliberately bred killers - or to watch them go insane from boredom. They liked to kill - that being part and parcel of their tailored genetic makeup - and no responsible government leader was prepared to suggest that they be used in paramilitary police or riot units.

  The geneticists never had been able to gene-manipulate creatures that had both a drive to survive on the battlefield, and the sense of altruistic self-sacrifice and common decency that would make them quietly suicide when the war was over. In any case, it took a minimum of twelve years to raise a genie warrior from an embryo, too long, in most cases, to be of any use in a new war. The idea had never caught on, at least so far as Katya was aware.

  But, even more than the fact that the attempts to breed DNA-manipulated warriors had so far failed, it was public reaction to the idea of such creatures that had blocked further work in the field. There were countless rumors of secret projects and conspiracies, of armies of artificial warriors kept in suspended animation, of gene-tailored spies and assassins walking in the midst of humanity unobserved. Katya had heard plenty of such stories herself. ViRdramas and documentaries showcasing warrior genies had managed to convince the public not only that gene-tailored soldiers were a bad idea, but that using any genie in the military would somehow lead to disaster.

  The idea of actually arming one was unthinkable to most people, at least to those, like Katya, who'd had few dealings with them. Whether or not it was a bad idea in itself, though, the fact remained that few genies ever had the chance to use a weapon of any kind. She'd seen a few handguns among this bunch, probably scrounged from the effects of full humans who'd fled and left their genies to fend for themselves.

  But how much had they managed to practice with them?

  She stood up. Dak stiffened, the PCR swinging to cover her. "Sit down," he told her.

  "I just want a drink of water." She nodded toward the bar. 'There's a sink back there that works."

  He eyed her uncertainly. "Tharby said fer you t'stay put."

  "He didn't mean for you to make me die of thirst!" Hands on hips, she glared down at him. Damn it, genies were bred for loyalty and obedience! Had the deaths of their comrades wiped out every trace of respect for humans? "You want to go ask him?"

  Dak stared up at her for a moment, then sagged, looking away. "Go ahead, then. No tricks."

  "Of course not!" Turning, she walked toward the bar, a course that took her right past The Newamie's Down's front door. She could feel Dak's eyes on her back, felt the muzzle of the rifle tracking her.

  Now!

  Lunging suddenly to the side, she dove headfirst out the door, landing on the walkway outside, rolling, coming to her feet already running. "Aw, kuso!" exploded from behind. "Gokin' gun don't work!"

  Running as hard as she could, Katya dashed down the street, took one turn left, then another to the right. She needed to get well clear of the area before heading that way… north, away
from the spaceport and back toward the Newamie lines. Caution quickly slowed her pace. She'd heard no sounds of pursuit, and running wild like that there was no telling what unpleasantness she might stumble into, unseeing. There were streetlights here, each with its own battery pack so some still worked, casting stark pools of illumination that deepened the shadows around. Slowing to a rapid walk, she stuck to the shadows, wishing that she had a warstrider's senses now instead of the only marginally enhanced seeing and hearing of her cephlink.

  Nevertheless, she heard them first, and before they saw her. A metallic clank from ahead brought her to an adrenaline-charged halt. Dropping to her belly, she edged her way to the end of the building at her side, then peeked around the corner.

  It was an Imperial patrol, and they were checking every building on the street ahead with the meticulous care of professionals as they moved slowly in her direction. A warstrider, a night black Mitsubishi Samurai, stood squarely in the middle of the avenue, as heavily armed and armored foot marines moved from building to building. Man-made lightning flickered to the north, followed by low thunder. By shellfire and streetlamp, Katya estimated thirty men at least, a platoon charged with rooting out those who'd remained behind when the Confederation forces had withdrawn. Farther down the street, masked by shadows, the lumbering bulk of a Zo APW waited, massive and patient. The four-legged armored personnel walker could carry fifty troops or so in its cavernous belly, verifying Katya's guess of a platoon-strength search.