Artificial Evolution

by Joseph R. Lallo

  Garotte frowned. “They’re completely radio silent.”

  “Then set down at the edge of the field here. I’ll get close and see what’s got them so edgy. You get back in the air and keep an eye on their air support. I don’t want any surprises.”

  “Are you sure, my sweet? These fellows aren’t known for their good judgment. Half of them are using guns that are prone to catastrophic failure. Anything that could give them pause is worthy of a bit of consideration.”

  “Which is why I’d rather get to them before they get to it, hon. Now make it snappy.”

  “Your wish is my command, my dear.”

  He brought the ship within a few meters of the ground and reluctantly popped open the cargo door on the side of the craft. Subfreezing air rushed inside, prompting Silo to bear down and tighten her hood. Once the shock of the sudden cold had passed, she took a step back, then leaped out of the ship. To an outside viewer, her trip through the cloaking shield would have appeared as though a bundled up and heavily armed woman had emerged from a rippling disturbance in the air itself. She struck the ground with a controlled roll and flattened herself against the stubbly grass. With a practiced eye she surveyed her surroundings. The ground was gray with hints of blue. Stout tufts of gray-green grass poked up in clusters all around. She reached inside the sleeve of her parka to a small touch pad. A few quick swipes shifted the color of her parka and snow pants from pure white to slate, and finally to green-gray. A bit more manipulation added a mottled effect, and she was left with an outfit with custom camouflage matched to her surroundings.

  “Open com, Garotte,” she stated, briefly holding her finger to the earbud communicator she wore. “How’s my camo, hon?”

  “Excellent. I can barely see you, and I know where to look. How are surface conditions?”

  “Just about Earth gravity, colder than a gravedigger’s kneecaps, and stinks of manure even through the mask. Next time, you take point.”

  “You volunteered, I’ll remind you.”

  “Just give me their location.”

  “About two klicks, dead ahead. They are in a search pattern, weapons drawn. Six with energy rifles of one type or another. One looks to be holding a scanner and directing the group’s movements. All three ships are retreating to low orbit. Strange tactics, even for Neo-Luddites. They are protecting the ships by forsaking the soldiers, and acting as though a massive force could appear at any moment.”

  “Understood. I’ll stay on my toes.”

  She set off toward the squad. There was an art to moving swiftly yet silently while carrying enough weaponry to level a small building. Though stealth was not her specialty, Silo was light enough on her feet to give herself a better than average chance at escaping notice in most situations. Of course in most situations she didn’t have to contend with small herds of grazing animals scattered across the field of engagement. The relative abundance of grass on this stretch of land must have attracted creatures from kilometers around, because they became more and more numerous as she approached the cliff. She crept by, giving each gathering of yaks a wide berth. The beasts had been the only creatures on the planet for generations and had no reason to fear a human. Most just watched with vague disinterest as she hustled past. One did not. It was directly ahead of her and simply stared without blinking or moving as she approached. When she circled around to the side to avoid it, it did not turn to watch her, and when she caught a glimpse of the side of the beast she understood why.

  “Good lord…” she whispered.

  For lack of a better word, the animal had been disassembled. The hide along its left side had been cut and peeled back, revealing bones and musculature. Pieces of the animal were missing—a rib here, a strip of muscle there, and swatches of skin all over—but the cuts around the missing pieces were clean and precise. It looked like something from a high-level biology class. The rest of the beast had been left to freeze in place.

  “Open com, Garotte,” Silo whispered.

  “Voice low, my dear. If they have sonic sensors, you are in range of them,” he said.

  “Are you sure there aren’t any other people on this planet?”

  “The Declaration’s sensors don’t show anything but you, the Luddites, and the livestock. Why?”

  “Because I’ve got a yak here that looks like it had a run-in with a taxidermist with a short attention span. Cauterized cuts, the works.”

  “A curiosity for another time, Silo. They’ve made a sharp shift to your left and are moving with purpose. They may have found something.”

  “Roger that,” she said, trying to put the disturbing sight out of her mind and resuming her careful jog. “Any indication of their destination?”

  “There is a rift along the cliff face. It runs about a third of the way up the cliff and forms a sort of cave.”

  “I see it.”

  “If what they are looking for is hidden, and I certainly do not see anything worth finding in the open, then it is inside that cave.”

  “I’ll buy that. I’ll move to intercept.”

  “ETA is fifteen minutes. If a firefight starts before then, things could get interesting.”

  “Guns making things interesting,” she mused, pulling her sidearm from the holster and ensuring it was ready to fire. “Imagine that.”

  She moved in a crouching run, trying to minimize any visible motion. The grass offered little to no cover. The enemy was only a dozen meters away, practically at the mouth of the cavern. If they so much as turned in her direction they would see her, and there was no hope of her beating them to the cave. Thinking quickly, she snatched a stone from the ground. There was a gathering of yaks to the right of the Luddites. She hefted the stone. If she tossed it just on the near side of the yaks, she could startle them and distract the soldiers.

  Throwing with accuracy was one of the many simple things that changed dramatically with the rise if interplanetary travel. In the old days, when Earth was the only place one was likely to do any throwing, throwing reasonably well was like riding a bike—learned once and remembered forever. Once planets with subtle gravitational differences became common destinations, a game of catch became much more complicated. As was the case with all soldiers with demolition training, Silo had been taught to judge trajectories as part of her basic training. If someone might be asked to throw a live grenade, it was helpful to be confident they would be able to hit their target. It took a keen ability to estimate weight and distance. She did a bit of mental arithmetic, then gave the stone a low underhanded toss.

  Basic training had been a long time ago.

  Rather than falling short of the gathering of yaks, the stone struck one hard on the flank. The cluster of beasts went sailing right past startled and deep into panic, which was just as contagious among yaks as it would have been among humans. The air filled with maddened bellows, and the scattered herd exploded into motion. The Neo-Luddite soldiers, not the most mentally stable group to begin with, instantly plunged into disorder and confusion. They screamed orders at one another and began firing indiscriminately at the frantic animals.

  After a half second of praying that Garotte hadn’t been watching quite so intently at that particular moment, Silo took advantage of the now extremely effective diversion and hurried to the mouth of the cave. A small portion of her mind suggested that there was probably something inside that was worthy of the paranoia and caution the Neo-Luddites were displaying. The rest of her mind fixated on the fact that regardless of what was inside, if it were to fall into the hands of the Neo-Luddites it would become exponentially more dangerous. She locked her eyes on the cavern opening. Sliding once and rolling twice to avoid being trampled, she was only a few strides away when the Neo-Luddites noticed her.

  “Stop right there!” cried a female voice among the enemy soldiers.

  The squad member took aim and fired, sending a bright orange blob of energy lancing through the air. Her attack was just barely off target, hissing past Silo and biting into the clif
f beside the cave opening. Silo slid inside and sprang back to her feet to brace against the wall and ready her weapons. Before a second enemy shot could be fired, the Neo-Luddite with the scanner pushed her weapon down and barked an order at her.

  “Cease fire,” he commanded. “The target is inside that cave. If we cause a collapse, it will be difficult to retrieve.” The scanner-carrying soldier, apparently the commanding officer, addressed Silo: “I don’t know who you are, but you are in extreme danger.”

  “No fooling?” Silo replied, heavy grenade launcher in one hand and sidearm in the other.

  “You are not prepared to deal with the mechanism or mechanisms in that cave.”

  “I’ve got a full magazine of high explosives. I think I’m pretty well prepared, hon,” she assured him. With a flick of her thumb, she activated the flashlight attached to her sidearm and shifted it to shine deep into the cavern.

  At a glance, the cave appeared to be empty. There were no crates, power cables, or other obvious signs of a weapon cache or a mechanism. The gravelly floor had been disturbed in a way that suggested footsteps, but they were far too irregular to be human. Her eye caught some minor motion at the very edge of the flashlight’s reach. Whatever it was, it was partially hidden behind an outcropping of the cave wall, and from what she could see of it, it was shaggy and black like the yaks.

  “Don’t tell me I risked my life to keep them from finding a yak that decided to get out of the wind,” she muttered to herself.

  “Conventional weapons will not be enough to destroy that threat,” the soldier insisted.

  The communicator gave a low tone in Silo’s ear.

  “What is your status?” Garotte asked, his transmission somewhat distorted.

  “I’m alive and having a nice little chat with our friends while standing between them and whatever it is they think they came to get. How about you?”

  #

  “Things have taken a turn, my dear,” Garotte explained from within the Declaration. “The ground troops have spread the alert. The air support has started doing active sensor sweeps of the area. Considering the number of times we’ve foiled them with this cloaking device in the past, it’s reasonable to assume that—” He pulled hard at the controls, maneuvering the ship out of the path of an unguided missile. “Yes, I would say they’ve acquired some of those meson sensors that can detect the cloak.”

  “Well, you know the drill,” she advised over the ship’s communicator. “Just keep moving. They can’t see you and they can’t target you. They just know roughly where you are.”

  The three ships began to spread and pivot, each now turned in the same direction. They were kilometers apart, but at their present distance he could keep them all in view. Garotte turned on the reverse thrusters, easing backward. His heart pounded in his ears. One of the shortcomings of the prototype cloaking shield, aside from the fact that at least one type of sensor could indeed detect its presence, was that it took the place of a defensive shield. Because of the power necessary to run it, and the interference it caused with standard shielding, either you were invisible or you were protected, not both. The Declaration had decent armor, but one solid hit from a ship’s blaster would be enough to cause major damage, and a missile hit would reduce his vessel to a cloud of smoking debris.

  Garotte switched on the targeting computer and got a missile lock on each of the ships. Unlike him, they had their shields up already and would be able to shrug off one or two direct hits. The instant he fired, they would know precisely where he was. His eyes darted to the time indicator. Still ten minutes before the authorities arrived.

  “Well,” he said quietly, as though the enemy ships might hear him otherwise, “it is an estimated time of arrival. They could be early.”

  The enemy ships continued slowly shifting. Suddenly the stolen communicator activated.

  “Break radio silence and transmit meson strength readings. Prepare to triangulate source of cloaking field,” one Neo-Luddite ship ordered.

  “Oh, lovely. It seems we’ve found the Neo-Luddite honors class.” He activated the communication channel to Silo. “Silo, my dear, things are about to become unpleasantly exciting up here.”

  “Well, don’t get shot down, sweetie. You’re my ride home.”

  “I shall endeavor to oblige.” He flipped off the channel and sighed. “Ah well. When all else fails, start shooting.”

  Three deft commands dropped the cloak, fired a salvo of rockets, and raised the shields. There was only enough reaction time for the enemy ships to make a single decision before the rockets struck. Two chose to make evasive maneuvers and avoid a direct hit. The third chose to return fire, releasing a trio of missiles. Garotte wrestled with the Declaration, trying to get the less than nimble ship clear of the counterattack and queue up another volley of missiles. All three of his own attacks hit their targets—glancing blows for the defensive-minded ones and a direct hit for the aggressor. The ordnance ripping through the sky toward him behaved erratically, as was typically the case for Neo-Luddite weaponry. One went spiraling off and detonated harmlessly. The other two tracked his ship despite his best efforts, slamming into his shields ferociously. Their combined impact knocked him off course and collapsed his shields. Shrapnel peppered Garotte’s hull as he righted the ship’s path and surveyed the enemies. The ship that had received a direct hit was still intact, but just barely. One of the thrusters had deactivated, leaving the ship at the mercy of the other one, which was causing it to corkscrew wildly.

  “Unit 1 to Unit 5. Stabilize and return to the surface to prepare ground troops for extraction,” the secure radio squawked.

  “Silo, you’ll have a ship coming your way shortly. Not in the best of shape,” Garotte alerted. His console blared a warning of another missile lock. “I might be down shortly after, in similar condition.”

  With his primary shield inactive, all that remained was the cloak. He switched it on and directed the Declaration lower into the atmosphere. The missiles thankfully lost their lock, and he was given a brief moment to weigh his options. It didn’t take long, because fighting would expose him to a counterattack, which would kill him, and retreating would strand Silo on the surface, which would kill her. The only acceptable choice was to play hard to get and pray the strike force on its way was on schedule.

  #

  “You boys might want to take a look overhead,” Silo called out from within the cave. “See those fireworks? My escort is punching holes in yours right now. If I were you, I’d be thinking about surrender.”

  “How heavily armed are you?” the enemy officer asked.

  “Keep pushing me and you’ll find out.”

  “You have no idea the danger you are putting us all in by taking high-powered technology into the proximity of a Gen-Mech.”

  “A Gen-Mech? Is that what we’re calling it?” Silo asked, shining the flashlight back again. The shaggy form had moved somewhat. Not enough to give her a clear view of what it was, but enough to give a clear indication that it wasn’t a yak. It had the same matted hair, but the limbs seemed too long and too thin. She couldn’t spot the creature’s head either, and the whole form seemed a good deal more vertical than a bovine ought to be. It was precisely enough information to make the fact that she had to turn her back on it profoundly unsettling. “If it’s so dangerous, it seems like I’d do the human race a big favor by collapsing this whole cavern. I’ll certainly do that if you keep fanning out for a coordinated strike.”

  “No!” the commanding officer urged. “I’ve already told you, you won’t be able to destroy it. Only we can ensure that it is captured and properly utilized.”

  “For what?”

  “For illustrating to the technologically stagnant and complacent shepherds of society that…”

  Silo grumbled to herself and quietly opened communications. “Garotte, status.”

  “Quite busy, but still breathing,” he replied, a chorus of creaks and rattles ringing out in the background. “Yourse
lf?”

  “Likewise, but that could change in a hurry. They came looking for something called a Gen-Mech. It is a weapon of some kind. And there’s something in the cave with me that definitely isn’t a yak.”

  “That doesn’t narrow it down much, my dear, and I haven’t got the mind to spare for riddles.”

  “I’m just telling you what I know. I’m going to need an extraction soon.”

  An impact shuddered the ship. “It may be wise for you to seek out your own extraction vehicle.”

  “Easy there, big boy. Where’s that famous confidence of yours?”

  “I think I feel it leaking down my leg.” Another metallic rattle and burst of warning sounds filtered through the connection. “Pardon me for a moment. This requires my full attention.”

  The connection closed. Silo peered out of the mouth of the cave and spotted the ailing but still functional ship that had been sent to extract the soldiers. “This just keeps getting better.”

  “… from the ashes and rubble of the merely sufficient, technologies that will usher us into a new era will arise!” the commanding officer continued, having never stopped his explanation of their agenda. “And in that glorious—wait.” The commander looked down to the urgently beeping scanner. “Deploy a counter measure, it is on the move!”

  Silo turned and shined the light again. The mysterious form was gone from its previous position. Then two sounds occurred in rapid succession. The first was a scrabbling noise along the high, sloping wall of the cave. She shifted her flashlight up and spotted the shaggy, gangly form crawling along the craggy wall surface with slow but sure motions. Before she could take in any more details, the second sound managed to push the sight from her mind. It was a distinctive metallic clink, the sound of a grenade striking the gravel of the cave.

  The sequence of events that followed involved no conscious thought whatsoever. Instinct and training took direct control of her body. She sprinted from the mouth of the cave, putting as much distance between herself and the grenade as she could when she passed, for fear of a proximity trigger. She continued at a full run, noting the positions of the enemy soldiers and the enemy ship, which was maneuvering for a landing. She then swept the field for something that might provide cover. An unpleasant but adequate opportunity presented itself in the form of one of the yaks that had been felled by the panic shooting. Silo dove over it and curled up in expectation of a deafening blast. None came. Instead there was a crackling pop, like the spark of a blown capacitor. When a loud noise finally did come, it was the sound of the ship suddenly dropping the last few meters and grinding slowly in a circle as all but one thruster shut down.