by Anthology
The man nods. I can see he wants to believe me, but I wonder if he has lost someone to weapons fired by one of my kind. “Until recently,” he says quietly, “we haven’t been able to do much to stop you. But we attacked a compound—months were spent planning it. I can’t tell you much. We don’t know what you might say, if we lose you. We managed to…steal some technology that will assist us. That’s how we can shut down your systems. Not all of them, and not all of the time, but it’s given us an advantage.” He hesitates and looks away from me, and immediately I realise why.
“I understand.” He’s right to be cautious of me. I am still a threat to everyone here. If I am taken, there is no way I can keep any of this from Them. I wonder, in fact, whether any of it is being transmitted somehow right now, but the man must understand my concern, because he speaks quickly.
“There’s no way they can get to you remotely,” he says. “Not now. That part of your system is gone. Now, they would have to come and get you. That’s why we need you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t tell you that,” he says. “But you will need to fight again.”
“I have virtually no ammunition left.”
“That won’t be a problem.” He stands and beckons for me to follow him. We walk along tight corridors and I am forced to duck down to avoid phalanxes of pipes and low-slung steel grating. The place has the look of an industrial plant, but my sensors tell me I am underground.
As I walk, people come out to stare at me. Their faces tell different stories: some speak only of hate, others of fear; none welcomes the enemy walking among them. We walk like that until we reach a set of wide doors, guarded by two men with rifles. They level their weapons at me as I approach and, for a moment, I wonder if in fact this is their retribution. That I will need to fight to satisfy some need for justice; for revenge. Perhaps my broken body on a dirt floor is what these people need in order to summon the resolve to fight again. I find myself willing to give it.
Instead, the armed men separate and open the doors. My interrogator beckons me, and I duck down and step into the room. I am perched on a ledge, wide yet still barely enough to hold me, that runs around the circumference of a huge room. In the vast cavern beneath me stand twenty-nine Widows. My Battle Group. Still and silent monsters in the darkness.
“Now, we can change the way we fight back,” the man says quietly.
“Why didn’t you stop the others from passing?”
“That’s what you call it? When they remove your consciousness? You call it passing?”
I shrug, and find it an alien, cumbersome movement. But I have seen others do it and want to appear human. “That’s what They call it.”
“Right. I see.” He nods absently, staring down at the other Widows. “With them, we couldn’t get close enough.”
“So how did you stop me?”
“You came from the jungle. The one you were with passed before we could get in range. You were alone then, and less of a threat. We had more time.”
A question forms in my mind. I am linked to Them—my consciousness is their weapon. Whatever this man tells me puts these people at risk. “Can you continue to stop me?” I ask.
The man stares at me, again searching my armoured face for something. “We can remove the link permanently,” he says finally.
“Then, if I die…”
“You’ll really be dead.”
“Remove it,” I say. “There’s one more thing.”
The man looks at me, waiting.
“Where’s the boy?”
***
It must be ridiculous to see this huge, armoured demon hulking over a willowy boy. He doesn’t know what to think; I can see that. His eyes are a conflicted chaos of hate and hope. My kind have been in his nightmares for almost all of his young life—stripping away the layers of humanity for over ten years, leaving behind a bloodied, exhausted mess incapable of fighting yet desperate to survive. Somehow there is resistance—I cannot understand how.
I don’t have any words to express my grief at what I have done, and I doubt he would accept them. I am not sure why I wanted to see him, but I will always remember the defiance written across his face.
He stares at me for a long time, before he hands me a photograph that has become worn at the edges. I look at it: the colours are faded, but I can see a young girl on a swing, the whole of her face released to joy.
“I want you to know,” the boy says quietly, never taking his eyes from mine. “One of your kind killed my sister. She was eight years old.”
I nod. I cannot take my gaze away from the girl’s face. I want to be able to say something, but what can I say? An apology would bring this boy no solace, and I am not even sure I can bring myself to give it. It would feel so hollow and meaningless. I don’t know why he feels he has to show me this—perhaps to force me to share his grief, or to close a circle and give him someone against whom he can focus his anger.
“I want to not blame you,” he continues. “Or even to forgive you. But all I can do is hate you.”
The photograph is steady in my hands because emotion does not translate into a physical reaction as it would in a human body. The agony of this moment does not surface through my stoic metal body. I have never felt more alien. “I understand,” is all I can say.
The boy swallows and nods. “What will you do now?” he asks.
I am still staring at the photograph when I say only this: “Seek retribution.” Fighting is all I’ve ever known. Turning my rage on Them is the only way I can begin to serve my sentence. I know the pain will never recede.
He nods again, and turns away from me, vanishing into the steam behind him. For a while, I watch the yellow light wash my armour, and I wish it were able to take away my sins.
***
“This is the compound,” my interrogator explains. Although I know his face—and that likely means that if I am captured They will too—I want to know as little else about him, or others, as possible. I never ask him his name, and I only deal with him. He shows me our objective on a wide, curved screen set up in a large room containing only us. I know others are listening to our conversation. When we go in, I will not be alone.
“There are tanks and heavy artillery. All mechanised and fully automated. Driven by sentient artificial intelligence. Without you…” he pauses and looks at me. “We couldn’t hit the place and not take substantial casualties. Too many to make the operation viable.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Create a distraction,” he says. “Ensure their machines are focused on you, rather than the small team which will infiltrate the compound. Take out as many as you can.”
“I guess it’s up to me how I do that?”
The twitch, that ephemeral half-smile, appears and is gone. “Of course. We will signal you when the team is out and you can use whatever means at your disposal to escape.”
I don’t want to know what it is his team seeks, but there is one thing I do want. “The boy stays here,” I say.
My interrogator stares at me, then shakes his head. “We don’t have the resources for that kind of sentimentality,” he says, his eyes scanning my empty face. “We have all lost someone to men like you—there are plenty of collaborators. The boy is not unique in that. Everyone has a part to play now. We all have to fight.”
I turn to him and loom over his small, fragile frame. I don’t want to threaten him, but I will. “He will distract me. It’s a tactical mistake.” I wait there for a moment, allowing my physical presence to sink in, then I turn away. “I’m not going to say it again. It’s your choice.”
He doesn’t want to agree, I can see that. His heart rate is elevated, and sweat gathers on his temples. His face flushes hot. He doesn’t like being told what to do by someone like me—a collaborator. However, I know he understands, which is why he eventually agrees. He needs me.
We discuss the attack for nearly three hours, going over every detail intricately. He
is clever and resourceful, and has designed every nuance of the assault to ensure as many of his people get out alive as possible. I am examining the maps one last time when he asks me: “What do they tell you? About the attack and what the colonies are like now?”
I explain what we are told—about the surprise attacks on our networked computer systems, and the warheads launched on our cities, and about what little I know about the Widows—and he nods as he listens, but otherwise his face is strangely expressionless. When I have finished, he tilts his head slightly, and he blinks a few times before he speaks again.
“It isn’t like that everywhere,” he says. “Not every colony was nuked. Destroying us wasn’t their objective. I think the picture They painted was intended to control you, to make you fight—to put your back against the wall.”
He stares again at the maps laid out in front of us and, for a little while, he is silent. When he speaks again, it is quietly and deliberately. I can detect the tremor in his voice, the edge to his words. He is trying to prevent emotion from overwhelming him. “Their objective was always to annex the human race—to dominate us, and to acquire our territory and resources. Some of the colonies were destroyed by thermonuclear attacks, this one for example, but most were not. What’s left of humanity—far more than you have been led to believe—is now governed by Them. We were offered a place in their caste system. We have become part of Their empire and must follow Their laws. Those who are able try to continue with their lives as well as they can. Most have been enslaved and put to work. Others collaborate and receive their favour. All of us are, in truth, prisoners.”
“But yours is a path of resistance. That was your choice.”
He looks at me as if he cannot understand my meaning. My words make no sense to him. “Humanity should be free,” he replies.
“Can They be defeated?”
“Does it matter?”
“Everything you do impacts on the rest of humanity.”
“There are reprisals for our actions, yes.”
I say nothing. I have been fighting an unwinnable war for a long time, and I have died a thousand times doing it. Yet, the war I was fighting was different—I stood between humanity and its extermination. But is it better to live a life of subjugation, even enslavement, rather than face extinction?
He wants to say more, but something prevents him. He does not trust me; it’s more than hate for the murders committed by my kind. He’s right not to. Even I don’t know what link there might be between my own thoughts and the Penrose, or wherever it is I have been all this time. There is more to their resistance than I know. More than I want to know. More to this world which is unfolding behind me, out of sight.
So I focus my rage in the only place I know I can.
***
We have to travel on foot, which means the hike to our insertion points takes several hours. I could move more quickly and, as we get closer, I will; the plan is for me to attack from the opposite side, to distract. Breaking away from the main team will give me the opportunity to scout the terrain and examine the compound. I have seen holographic diagrams and images, so its physical layout will be nothing new, but seeing the reality is always different.
I examine the men and women around me as we move. Most studiously avoid looking at me, set to one side from them as I am, but some cannot prevent themselves from throwing me looks filled with enmity. They don’t want to be fighting alongside me, but they know they cannot win this particular battle without my help. Some are young, some are old. All carry the scars of war on their weathered faces. I see no fear there, but their beating hearts betray the anxiety they are all feeling. Blood vessels are contracting, redirecting the flow to the heart, lungs and muscles. Airways dilate to allow more oxygen into the lungs. Glucose production is increasing. Their bodies know what is coming.
They are better equipped than I expected. Each carries an adaptive combat railgun with under-slung grenade-launchers—smaller, modular versions of my own weapons—as well as bandoliers of grenades. I wonder for a while how they came to be in possession of military hardware, then push those thoughts from my mind.
I have forced myself not to consider the truth as told to me by my interrogator. I cannot say it does not matter to me, because of course it does, but it is not essential to the task ahead. Memories of my past life have always eluded me, and I was always glad they did because they could only serve to take away my focus. The same can be said now of the truth of the war I am fighting—the future of humanity. What is happening on other colonies is irrelevant, I tell myself. There is only one battle at this moment—the one I face right now.
They have five minutes in the compound. My interrogator set the time. If they haven’t found what they need by then, they leave. I don’t know what it is; I don’t want to know.
***
I reach my own insertion point, ahead of them reaching theirs by around ten minutes. I hunker down and scan the compound from a high ridge. My low-light optical systems give me vision as good as daylight, and magnify the images I’m seeing. A high fence is charged with electricity. Inside, a dozen low buildings, some bigger than others. At one end sits a phalanx of what look like tanks—sleek, dark armoured monsters, resting silently, each with a single long turret from which a host of gun barrels extend. A small dome sits on top, probably housing communications and scanning equipment. Vents project from either side of that wide, black hull. These beasts are an obvious objective. As soon as I enter the compound and start shooting, they’ll wake up and take me down. I might as well hit them first.
A clutch of red motes eventually appear on the periphery of my vision and I know the time has come. The swell of emotional energy in my consciousness is overwhelming. It is a jarring experience—a human reaction to combat which is, for want of any other way to explain it, alien to me. I am afraid, yet charged. I know if I die here then there will be no awakening. My life, such as it was, is over. If I die here, the men and women behind me, readying themselves across the ridge for the most important battle of their lives, will almost certainly lose their lives with me. I have died a thousand times and fought more battles than I can remember. Each of them, the sum of all those experiences, will subconsciously drive every move I make.
I will not fail.
I launch ten grenades high into the night sky on a looping trajectory which, compensating for the wind, will take them right into the tanks and heavy artillery.
Then I run.
The first grenade hits as I reach the perimeter of the compound and break through the fence. The explosion floods the compound with an incandescent white brilliance for a half-second, then vanishes. The armour on the tank it strikes buckles, but it takes a second grenade in the same place to breach it.
At that moment, the other tanks begin to stir. An energy field ripples across them and, as the rest of the grenades come down and the explosions rock the ground beneath my feet, they lift. There is an electromagnetic disturbance beneath them which appears on my retinal imaging as a shimmering, pulsing haze. The turrets on these smooth, armoured beasts whine as they rotate, searching for their enemy. On the other side of the compound, there are twenty men and women who fit that description.
My purpose is to give the tanks just one.
I sprint towards them, the last of the explosions still unfurling as I channel everything I have into the Widow’s legs and jump. I land on the turret of one of the tanks and slam one great fist into the armour, down by the edge of the curvature of the unit.
It yields with the force of the blow, contorting into a twisted dent. I hammer my fist down again and again until the curve of the turret is so warped it stops turning. I jam a grenade into the gap between the turret and the hull.
A proximity alarm screams in my ears and rushes across my field of vision. I jump away as a super-heated torrent of plasma strikes the turret. I am in mid-air when that first tank explodes. Its armour was weakened by the grenades, maybe even my blow; the plasma just finished the job
. The force of the detonation punches me violently upwards, and my Widow spins and convulses in the air as it is tossed away like a rag doll. I ignore the cascade of pain that floods my senses as much as I can, but still it stuns me.
I land heavily, not ready for the hit.
In the second-and-a-half it takes me to recover, the other tanks are already gliding like sharks through the compound, kicking up a violent storm of dirt beneath them. The air around the vents shimmers as excess heat is expelled into the night. I have no doubt they have picked up the signals cast by the human fighters. I open fire on one to drag its attention back towards me. The first quarter-second sees a dozen railgun rounds punch into the armour and ricochet away; the next sees the armour contort slightly beneath the onslaught, but hold firm.
The turret turns first, followed by the tank itself as it slowly pivots in place to bring more of its weapons to bear.
I am up and running, keeping the Widow’s automated targeting reticles locked onto the tank’s hull. All I need to do is weaken the armour enough for a grenade to be effective when it hits that weak point.
I don’t stop firing. Steam hisses from the railguns as their cooling systems fight to dissipate the searing heat.
It takes a full second for the turret to find its prey. Me.
Again, the sensors scream and I know I am about to get hit.
I launch two grenades in that half-second before I have to move.
The jet of plasma burns the air as it surges past me. I’ve left it too late; I’m too slow. It clips my shoulder, fusing armour and alien componentry together. The force of it spins me away and I struggle to remain on my feet, but fail.
I hit the ground hard and force myself to roll. Again I have to block out the pain and I know the time will soon come to engage the Terminal Emergency Mode.
The grenades explode behind me.
I come up and spin, guns firing again, but the tank is shuddering. There is a tear in the armour—not much, but it’s enough. The haze beneath it is flickering as though it isn’t functioning smoothly. A pearl of electricity crackles inside.