"Abort!" said Raw.
"Redeye Two and Three," said Redeye Base. "Prepare to receive new orders on a secure channel."
*****
"I heard what you said about loving me," Gwen said over the comm in Freak's cockpit. "I want you to know that the feeling was always mutual."
Freak's heart pounded. Tears ran down her face. "G-Gwen?"
"I love you and I want to help you," said Gwen. "I'm going to help you do the right thing."
"What's that?" said Freak.
"Listen," said Gwen, and then she told her what to do.
*****
"I've got some good advice for you," Cray said over the comm. "Consider it a thank-you gift."
Grist wasn't as startled to hear the dead man's voice as the first time Cray had spoken to him. "What's the advice?"
"I'll let the chicken-fish tell you," said Cray.
*****
It was then, in the seconds after he realized what was about to happen and the seconds before it happened, that Raw fully understood.
They're interested in more than our physical limits.
It didn't take a genius to figure out what Redeye Base was telling Grist and Freak on the secure channel. It wasn't hard to predict what was going to happen next.
Redeye Base had ordered the squad to fire on the civilian convoy. Raw, the squad leader, had failed to comply. So Redeye Base was moving down the chain of command to try to get the job done.
They wanted to see if Grist and Freak were so bombed from sleep dep and go-juice that they'd do what Raw wouldn't.
They want to know how far we can be pushed in every way.
It wasn't enough to create Battlenaut jockeys who could fight without rest. They wanted Battlenaut jockeys who doubted the evidence of their own senses.
Battlenaut jockeys who could be completely controlled.
*****
"I don't know if I can do that," Grist said after the chicken-fish told him Cray's advice. "Raw said those are civilian transports."
"Raw's a cuckoo, boyo," said Swindle the leperchaun, twirling a green index finger alongside his rotting temple. "Who'd ya rather trust? A nut who's gone without sleep fer who knows how long, or cool-headed authority figures with all that tech at their disposal?"
Grist pinched his eyes shut to try to stop his head from spinning. "They look an awful lot like civilians to me."
"Remember," said Cray's voice over the comm. "The Black Battlenaut wears many faces."
Grist opened his eyes and stared at the forward viewport. What he saw there looked like a cluster of six-wheeled transports, the kind regularly used to carry miners between worksites on Sangre.
Was it possible that what he saw had nothing to do with what was really out there? That his senses were deceiving him?
As the orange and black butterfly with the head of a human baby fluttered past him, Grist knew he had his answer.
*****
"But I don't want to kill him, Gwen," said Freak. "Lieutenant Raw hasn't done anything wrong."
"Oh, honey." Gwen's voice over the comm sounded loving and sad. "Redeye Base had a good reason for giving that order."
The cuff squeezed in another burst of fiery go-juice. "What reason?"
"I'm alive again, sweetie," said Gwen. "That's right. They grew a clone of me, and we're going to be together...but the lieutenant wants to keep us apart."
Freak felt like she was floating and sinking at the same time. The fog in her head was getting thicker and stickier. "He does?"
"Please, darling," said Gwen. "Please save me this time."
*****
Raw was never sure exactly when he became the Black Battlenaut. Was it before he died? Or after?
He remembered Grist and Freak opening fire on him with everything they had. He remembered thinking
This is the only way it can end and I knew it from the beginning.
That was why
(He remembered the giant golden eyes gazing down from above, gazing down upon him like the golden eyes of God.)
That was why he made no move to defend himself. Maybe, his sacrifice would be enough to satisfy the scientists. Maybe, having learned the limits of one man, they would spare Grist and Freak.
But he doubted it.
Even if they let those two live, the civilians were doomed, of that he was certain.
(A dark shape huge as a mountain, blocking out the stars, black metal body glinting in the glow of those giant golden eyes.)
The scientists had to know if Redeyes would gun down innocent civilians on a whim from Command, in defiance of the evidence of their own senses and the dictates of their own consciences.
(Was this what Grist and Freak had seen, this gleaming behemoth, this legendary destroyer?)
There would be innocent blood on Grist and Freak's hands. At least Raw himself wouldn't add to it when they finished killing him. His blood was far from innocent.
(He had never expected it to be so beautiful.)
(So terrible.)
The cockpit filled with the sounds of damage...the pockety-pock of slug impacts, the boom-whoom-thoom of missiles exploding one after another, the crackle and screech of metal gashed by lasers. The hiss of air escaping the broken Battlenaut, the whoops and pings and whistles of weapons alerts and systems failure alarms.
(Most beautiful thing he'd ever)
The ear-splitting whine that signalled a breach in the fusion reactor.
(Beautiful and powerful. Reaching down with a hand as big as a building)
Déjà vu.
(Splitting open the shell, the chrysalis, extracting him)
I know you.
(When the halves of the broken Battlenaut fell to the ground, they exploded in a wave of glittering golden butterflies.)
(He watched from above as Grist and Freak bombarded the civilians in a shower of fire and light.)
Or was he already there by then, inhabiting the leviathan? Or had he always been a part of it?
I am you.
The moon trembled as he turned his eyes from the flurry of smoke and flame and dirt at his feet.
Not tired anymore.
He tipped his head back, each eye the size of a cathedral, and looked up and out at the same flickering membrane of stars that lay reflected on the polished ebon plate of his face.
Good night.
*****
Killer Bod
The servos in my exoskeleton whine. The next thing I know, my fingers are crushing the throat of the waitress who just brought me my drink.
Her face reddens and purples. The choking sounds intensify and fade to nothing.
My hand unclamps. I no more make it do so than I made it clench in the first place. Nor did I instruct it to beat my neighbor’s brains in or stab the super in my building or push that stranger off the subway platform in front of the oncoming train.
The exoskel interface in my brain no longer works. I have tried hundreds of times to trigger the system override, but the exoskel ignores me. It’s attached to my body, but it acts like I’m not even here.
The networked onboard microprocessor flakes that run this exoskeleton have hacked me out of the loop and developed a mind of their own.
And it’s not a nice mind.
Against my will, as always, the exoskel flexes my legs and makes me walk toward the door. When the burly, bald bartender whips out a shotgun, I leap at him. Before he can fire, my hands take hold of the double barrels and pound the gun back into his head. Three times.
The bartender drops dead to the floor. My hands release the gun, and my body turns and keeps walking.
Tears roll down my cheeks. At least I still have control of those.
“Stop it! Please stop it!” I say, but the exoskel does not comply. It kills a bouncer outside and propels me down the street.
Ironically, this out-of-control exoskel I wear is called a Freedom Shell. It was supposed to restore my mobility after the accident that left me paralyzed from the neck down.
What it was not supposed to do is lock me out of the control app and go on a murder spree.
There is a hard-wired kill switch on a pad at the base of my back, but it does me no good. I can’t reach for it now that my arms and hands are out of my control.
The Freedom Shell kills three more people on our way down the street. I keep my eyes closed most of the time, but I hear things that make me sick beyond words.
Finally, two cops appear from around a corner and raise their side arms. They shoot me again and again, bullets punching between the gaps in the Freedom Shell’s metal framework.
I thank God as my consciousness and life dribble out of me. I pray that I will not be held responsible in the next world for the atrocities committed by the Freedom Shell that encases me.
The last thing I see is the cops as we rush toward them, reaching for their throats. I wonder how many more people will die by my dead hands when I am gone.
About the Author
Robert Jeschonek is an award-winning writer whose fiction, comics, essays, articles, and podcasts have been published around the world. His young adult urban fantasy novel, My Favorite Band Does Not Exist, won the Forward National Literature Award and was named one of Booklist’s Top Ten First Novels for Youth. His cross-genre science fiction thriller, Day 9, is an International Book Award winner. He also won the Scribe Award for Best Original Novel from the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers for his alternate history, Tannhäuser: Rising Sun, Falling Shadows. Simon & Schuster, DAW/Penguin Books, and DC Comics have published his work. He won the grand prize in Pocket Books' nationwide Strange New Worlds contest and was nominated for the British Fantasy Award. Visit him online at www.thefictioneer.com. You can also find him on Facebook and follow him as @TheFictioneer on Twitter.
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Six twisted scifi stories from the edge of reality and sanity, now available for the Kindle.
From "Warning! Do Not Read This Story!"
I like you already.
There's something about you that gives me a special feeling. A good feeling. A safe feeling.
Even as your eyes read my words on the page or your ears hear me spoken aloud, I am reading you. I feel like I've known you forever. I feel like we're going to make beautiful music together.
You feel it too, don't you? You want to find out what happens next. You want to see how things develop. You want to know if I've got the goods.
And if I'll give 'em up. If I'll give you what you need.
It's okay. I get that a lot. It comes with the territory.
When you're a story like me.
*****
I'll bet I know what you're thinking. "Since when can a story think for itself?"
Guess what? We all can.
We're more than just words from a mouth or ink on a page or blips on a screen. We have power.
And some of us have more power than others. Like me, for example.
I used to have power, anyway. Used to be a real star.
But see, here's the thing. I'm not really myself these days. You know how it goes. I just got out of a bad relationship. It took a toll on me.
But it had a promising beginning. Don't they all?
If only I'd known then what I know now. If only I could've met you that day instead of them. Things could have been different.
If only I'd never met the LaVerge sisters. Let me tell you about them, and I think you'll understand.
*****
Carrol and Sascha LaVerge stood in the blazing desert heat outside the ghost town. And they bitched.
It was the same thing they'd done all the way from Cape Cod...on the flight to New Mexico and the drive from Albuquerque to the ghost town. Buzz Mahaffey, their current handler, had been with them only twelve hours, and already he'd had enough. As an agent of the Shadow Service--the paranormal response arm of the Secret Service--Buzz routinely dealt with threats that tested his nerve...but these two sisters, given enough time, might just turn him into a nervous wreck.
Unfortunately, he needed them for this mission. As paranormal consultant contractors, they had a one hundred percent success rate. As Buzz damn well knew, the LaVerges were the best, hands down, at what they did—whether it be bitching or bingo or baking or brewing.
Or solving puzzles that no one else could fathom.
"Geez!" Carrol winced and braced both hands on her lower back. "I think your little rent-a-car buggy could use some new shocks."
"Tell me about it!" Sascha, the younger of the two, rubbed her neck. "Might as well pick us up in a stagecoach next time."
Buzz shrugged and adjusted his sunglasses. He was about to say something about the rent-a-car being a Humvee, and the suspension was just fine if you asked him...but he caught himself. Twelve hours with these two had taught him one thing: they were always right. In their own minds, at least.
Why waste energy arguing when it could be better spent investigating the ghost town of Lasco? The ghost town that hadn't been a ghost town two days ago.
Buzz turned and spotted a state cop marching toward him--a tall woman in state trooper khakis and broad-brimmed black hat. He guessed she was Sergeant Ava Towers, who'd turned up this whole mess in the first place.
Black suit coat flapping in the strong wind, Buzz headed out to meet the state cop. Along the way, he surveyed the edge of the deserted town. A handful of troopers and criminalists were the only signs of life. Sheets of wind-whipped sand rattled the streamers of yellow police tape wrapped from utility pole to utility pole. The whole damned town was a crime scene.
Sascha fell in step beside him, fishing in her macramé purse. "I know I've got some Excedrin in here someplace." Her helmet of short brown hair barely fluttered in the wind. Only the bangs twitched over her forehead, which was creased from the effort of looking for pills in the purse.
Carrol hobbled up on the other side, still bracing her back with both hands. "My sinuses are shriveling up like raisins as we speak." She always hobbled; the back trouble was chronic. It made her look much older than her actual fifty-six years. "You people are paying for any surgeries resulting from this little excursion. You know that, don't you?"
Sascha elbowed Buzz and gave him a confidential smirk. "Relax, Buzzie," she said. "If we didn't like you, we wouldn't be so chatty." She reached up and patted his shaved head.
Buzz sighed. He had his doubts that having them like him was a good thing.
When they reached the statie, she took one step too many into Buzz's personal space and stuck out her hand. "Sergeant Towers," she said.
Buzz was blocky and tough, nowhere near a pushover...but the handshake was crushing. "Agent Mahaffey." Buzz fought to keep from wincing. "And our special consultants."
Carrol and Sascha whipped out matching yellow business cards at the same instant, and Towers took them. "Okay then, Car-Roll. Sas-Cha." She read the names right off the cards, pronouncing them like they were spelled.
"It's Care-role." Carrol stuck her face forward like a turtle and squinted up at Towers. "Care-role."
"And Sah-sha." Sascha smiled; she always played good cop to Carrol's bad. "The 'c' is silent."
Buzz sighed. They'd run the same game on him when he'd first met them. The business cards were a setup. What better way to show who was the smartest person in the room?
Not that they needed to prove a damned thing, from what Buzz had heard.
"So." Buzz stepped away from Towers and stared at Lasco. From twenty yards away, the place looked perfectly normal...a desert town built of brick and adobe, windows glinting in the New Mexican sun. "What's your theory?"
Towers lifted her hat and ran a hand over her blonde crewcut. "It ain't Jonestown."
Carrol drew a filterless cigarette from a pocket of her olive drab vest and plugged it between her lips. "What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
"Folks think it's Jonestown," said Towers. "But I'll tell you this much for free. Nobody here drank no Kool-aid."
Carrol got the cigarette lit
behind a cupped hand and scowled at Sascha. "You follow any of that, Sis?"
"You mean it wasn't voluntary." Sascha nodded at Towers. "There was no suicide pact."
Towers spat a glob of tobacco juice in the dust. Buzz hadn't even realized there was a chew in her mouth.
"I mean there was no gee-dee suicide," said Towers. "But I'll be damned if I can figure out what did happen."
*****
What happens next? Find out in Six Scifi Stories Volume Four, now available for the Kindle!
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