Their eyes kept darting between Byron and me, as if they were afraid we might kill them all at any moment. Arbiters are frightening to the average civilian, an image we cultivate intentionally to cover up for the fact that we don’t have the authority to commit acts of violence without consequences. As we left the elevator and walked back through the busy main floor, they looked so hopeful I almost felt bad for them. They all seemed to expect some kind of rescue, perhaps by Huxley security commandos, but if it hadn’t happened yet then it was obviously never going to happen.
The Board of Huxley Industries had cut them loose, which meant it had probably already decided to use them as scapegoats. Someone at the company had given the order to sell illegal heavy weaponry to August Marcenn, and someone had to pay for it. It might as well be these three as anyone else.
Once we were in the car, with the prisoners safely stowed in the back, the car pulled out to return us to the waiting shuttle. We couldn’t see outside unless we used the screen, but Byron preferred to have an overhead tactical map displayed at all times. I watched our green dot crawl across thin blue topographic rings. I turned to him to speak, Byron seemed to know what I was going to say.
“Either spit it out or lock it up, Barrett.”
He may smile occasionally, but it looks more like a quiet grimace. It was often hard for me to tell whether what he said was rhetorical or genuine, so I’d made a habit of waiting a few beats before responding. That seemed to work most of the time.
“You’re a Junior Arbiter,” said Byron. “Emphasis on the junior. I’m the Senior Arbiter. I call the shots.”
“Don’t you think…?”
He held a hand up. “I do. That’s exactly the point, Barrett. It’s my job to think, because I’m the Senior Arbiter in this drop-team. Your job is to do. That’s a different and necessary job. You follow my lead wherever it goes, and you don’t hesitate or question it. Not out loud, not to yourself. Don’t even dream about it. Are we clear or unclear?”
“Of course, we’re clear. You should have used more tact, that’s all.”
He frowned. “More tact? I don’t know how you handled things with Gabriel Anderson, but I call the shots. The amount of tact I decide to use is up to me, and you will follow that decision to the best of your ability, and then some.”
He was coming on so strong, I decided it must be personal. He must be under the impression that I was challenging his authority, and he wasn’t about to let that go.
I held up both hands in mock surrender. “Yes, Sir. Just trying to learn the correct procedures.”
He nodded sagely. “The correct procedure is: You arrest who I tell you to arrest, shoot who I tell you to shoot, and let me worry about how much tact to use.”
“Copy that, Sir. Understood.”
I lay back in my seat and closed my eyes. The easiest way out of this conversation was to disengage and let him feel like the bigger man.
Byron snorted quietly. From his point of view, I was just another Junior Arbiter who needed guidance from a more experienced veteran like himself.
After everything I’d seen on Venus.
Until my next promotion, I might as well be a raw recruit on his first jump. If I didn’t like it, I was free to go on not liking it for all the good it would do.
2
The ongoing investigation into what had happened on Venus led us to the rarest of all combat drops. Our target was on Earth, in a secluded place far from both the Equatorial Desert and the Arctic Farm Zones. Nestled among blue-green trees, in one of the last remaining wildernesses, was the private estate of Huxley Industry’s Chief Executive, Julian Huxley. Byron and I moved through the dense forest in heavy armor, on our way to pay Julian a visit. Not surprisingly, our target’s android proxies had their own opinions about that.
Byron’s voice came through my dataspike. “On the ridge. See? They’re not factory issue.”
Full dropsuits would normally not have been authorized for a terrestrial operation, much less on Earth of all places, but Arbitration Command had made an exception. The woods around Julian Huxley’s remote estate were swarming with proxies, and according to our intel they were not any known model. The unknown is dangerous, so we’d been authorized to take action.
I zoomed in, and sure enough there did seem to be something different about the androids I saw moving along the ridge. They had the same basic shape as normal droids: vaguely human and vaguely insect-like. What was really different, the thing that made it obvious they weren’t factory issue android proxies, was the way they moved.
Androids are clumsy. Not clumsy in the sense that they’re going to trip over their own feet at any moment, but heavy and deliberate. These droids were different, slipping through the trees with a graceful fluidity that was almost beautiful to watch.
I say “almost,” because the elegant movement of these combat androids had the potential to be a problem.
“Yeah. I see it. Do you think they’re custom?”
Byron exhaled. Like most Arbiters, he didn’t really do a lot of speculation. “Could just as easily be prototypes.”
“That’s a scary thought.”
“Why?”
Gabriel would have understood exactly what I was saying here. I shook my head, a subtle gesture that would cause no visible movement on the outside of the massive dropsuit I was wearing. Every time the combat technology available for sale becomes more sophisticated, it represents a problem for Arbiters. We maintain the advantage by having the best tech available, so the people we have to deal with can’t shoot through our armor, hunt us down, or hide from us. When the tech gap narrows, more Arbiters are going to die. It’s a simple equation, even if my new partner couldn’t understand why I would describe it as “scary.”
Byron pointed along the ridge. “They’re on a patrol, but if it follows the line of the ridge they’ll be at our location in about an hour.”
“We could go down the slope now and slip right past them. They’re leaving a huge gap in their lines by coming up here.”
“No, we can’t. They’ll overlook us when they get up here, and when they see us among the trees, they’ll be able to drop whatever they want on us.”
“Those sidearms they’re carrying will never pierce our dropsuits,” I pointed out.
“They aren’t meant to, and they won’t have to. Didn’t you see the scopes? Those aren’t just rifles, Barrett. They’re target markers. They can paint us for artillery fire.”
“Artillery fire?!”
“Yes.” He didn’t seem concerned. "Check the schematics on his house. Huxley has missile batteries as well as mid-range anti-vehicular cannons.”
I brought the schematics up and saw that he was right. Huxley had enough firepower to cause problems for a full infantry regiment, and just maybe enough to stop two Arbiters. My dropsuit could probably handle a proximity blast, but a direct hit by one of his artillery shells would almost certainly kill me. Then there were the cannons, and the added danger from falling trees once the shells started exploding.
No wonder they had authorized these dropsuits. No civilians nearby meant no risk of collateral damage and the bad publicity that went along with it, which would probably have resulted in an order to tie our hands behind our backs and go in light. Without that risk, our lives were suddenly at least a little bit of a priority.
“Well, shit,” I said.
“It’s not a big deal. You just can’t let them get you in their sights. I know you’re not used to that kind of gunfight, but it’s always that way when you’re not wearing armor.”
Not a big deal. In Byron’s world, being targeted by a precision artillery system is not a big deal. All you have to do is get out of the way.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked.
“We engage and destroy. Make contact from as close as possible, so they can’t use their artillery without blowing up their own android proxies.”
As expensive as they must be, would Huxley hesitate? After all, his esta
te was under attack. Then again, Huxley wasn’t in that much trouble. At least not yet. Our orders were to detain him, but not on criminal charges. He’d been called to appear in front of a Sol Federation Inquiry on the 2/77 Incident and he had ignored the subpoena.
A contempt of court charge is all this really was, although it could potentially lead to much bigger things. If the Inquiry proved he was behind the weapons dealing, the company could even be shut down completely. Not that it was likely any of that would happen, but Huxley didn’t seem to want to take the chance. Not when he could ignore the subpoena and hide out here in the woods with all his killer androids.
Refusing the original summons wasn’t technically illegal, but the subsequent enforcement order had made it a legal issue. Under normal circumstances, this wasn’t something that would require two Arbiters armored up like biped tanks to overcome artillery batteries before bringing the man in for the formal hearing.
When we finally grabbed Huxley, I was going to ask him why he was being such a jackass. It would have been a hell of a lot easier for everyone involved if he had just decided to comply in the first place.
“Can we even get that close to them?” I asked.
“Don’t see why not. I can move pretty quietly in this thing when I have to. Can you?”
Our scramblers were on, preventing the android proxies from scanning for our presence. Unfortunately for us, that also meant that we couldn’t scan for theirs. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of movement on the slopes below us. Had the androids flanked us?
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing down toward the trees below. Just as Byron turned to look, I saw an android aiming his weapon up at us in silence.
Then we heard a whistling.
“Artillery strike!” called Byron. “Break off now!”
I ran along the ridge, lumbering as only a man in a dropsuit could. When the shells hit, I was only aware of it because the world fell over, with the sky tumbling end over end in a crazy spinning kaleidoscope of sky and trees. I fell a few dozen meters down the hillside, smashing through a tree in the process. When I sat back up, there were shapes moving in front of me. I couldn’t see what they were, but they were rapidly closing in.
The android proxies. I couldn’t aim from where I’d fallen, but I didn’t need to. The gun in my dropsuit was practically artillery in its own right, and more than enough for a squad of androids. I opened fire, and trees between me and the inbound machines became clouds of dust and splinters. I didn’t know how many of the proxies had been closing in on me, but I did know that anything downrange from my gun was now a mangled ruin.
I still had to move, or the next artillery strike would land directly on me. Not far away, I saw rockets streaking across the sky. A section of the ridge burst into flames, and I guessed that Byron was somewhere up there. Maybe he was running, or maybe he was burning alive. I had no time to find out.
I got to my feet, but the effort took too long. By the time I was running, if that’s the right word for it, I heard the whistling sound again. The shells landed just behind me. I could almost see the blast wave as it stripped the leaves from the trees around me. I stumbled and caught myself, landing hard on both knees. Something popped up among the branches then disappeared again, and I realized an android had spotted me. I got back to my feet, fired wildly in all directions, and started running again. This time I was lucky, and the A.I. controlling the artillery misjudged my likely direction of retreat. The shells burst nearby, but the strike wasn’t nearly close enough to be any kind of threat.
I caught another glimpse of movement and aimed ahead of where it was likely to run. I had better luck than their A.I., or maybe all that nonsense about superior human intuition has a grain of truth to it. The android I hit was ripped apart, shredded into burning scrap.
As I stumbled out into a clearing, I saw them closing in on me from every direction all at once. They weren’t far away, but they all seemed to be aiming their weapons without pulling the triggers. They were calling in a strike, regardless of the fact that they were right underneath it.
Byron was wrong. Androids don’t have a self-preservation instinct; they just do whatever you program them to do. When you’re as rich as Julian Huxley, being protected from minor legal irritations is easily worth the sacrifice of any number of expensive androids.
I held the trigger down and ran straight ahead while fanning my weapon from side to side, hoping to break through their encirclement and escape the artillery strike before it hit. As I raced toward freedom, the whistle sounded again. This was it. I was about to take the full force of a direct hit from a home defense cannon. I got ready to die, but I didn’t stop running despite that fact.
And then I somehow burst through the line, pulling two androids with me as they held onto my arms and legs in an effort to hold me in place. The strike landed not far behind me, and the blast wave lifted me off my feet. I was knocked unconscious. It had to have been for only a few seconds, but I was so disoriented when I opened my eyes again I might as well have been asleep all day.
I probably had a concussion, though nothing else seemed especially damaged. I tasted iron in my mouth and felt my sinuses running, sure sign of a nosebleed. I turned and saw something nearby, but it was much too large and unwieldy to be one of the androids. I couldn’t tell what it was at first, then I heard Byron’s voice.
“Lawson’s Gambit. Not bad, Barrett.”
Lawson was an Arbiter who had escaped an ambush by tricking the enemy into firing on their own position. Byron thought I had done it intentionally, and I wasn’t going to correct him. As I stood up, I could feel blood catching in the back of my throat and spat reflexively before I could think better of it. Viscous blood stained my visor.
I unlatched my helmet, a slow and uncomfortable process made more difficult from the pounding in my head. When I finally got it off me, I could clearly see android limbs and heads scattered across the forest floor.
Byron was looking at me, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking with his helmet still on. Then he pointed behind me. “There’s a stream over there. Rinse it out and we’ll head on up.”
I walked over to the creek and rinsed out my helmet as best I could. The highly advanced technology inside was insulated well enough to protect it from the water, and I soon had it cleaned out and back on again.
Byron pointed up into the trees. “When we go up the hill, remember there could be others. And not just androids. He could have mined the grounds, or there could be booby traps inside the house. These are the kinds of things you can easily overlook, and they can kill you just as easily if you don’t watch out for them.”
I could always count on Byron to tell me things I already knew. Especially if they were depressing or anxiety-inducing. But I had another concern. “Those proxies ambushed us. They crept up without us seeing them and called in a strike.”
“Yes, the patrol on the ridge was just a decoy. It was a clever trick.”
“Don’t you see what this means? Huxley has tech that could be highly dangerous. Androids that can engage Arbiters. That can kill Arbiters.”
“We already knew that.”
He was right, of course. A heavy weapons android had killed Gabriel Anderson and had kept me pinned down for hours in Tower 7. Still, this combination of mobile proxies and static artillery was a potential game changer, and I couldn’t understand why he would not acknowledge that. A large enough force of this type could defeat an Arbiter unit, and it could only be a matter of time before the new combination became widely known and widely used.
I gazed up the slope, thinking with petty satisfaction that at least the view from Huxley’s front porch would never be the same again. Trees had been blasted apart all along the valley floor, and the ridge was still burning fitfully. By the time we were done, his property values would probably be half of what they were before.
Small-minded, I know, but the man had just tried to kill me, even if indirectly. Destroying his land
scape was a small compensation.
“I’ll take point,” I said, and Byron fell in behind me without another word. Our heavy feet marched up the slope, and I fully expected to run into another pack of androids. Fortunately for us, no second attack ever came. No landmines, no booby traps. I guess if a man can’t feel safe in his own home surrounded by android proxies, a missile battery, and a home defense cannon, then he just can’t feel safe at all.
3
Julian Huxley’s home was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, and I’d been all over the solar system. When I was a kid, I once took a trip to a science museum with a Rube Goldberg exhibit. There was a device to cook eggs that had twelve separate moving parts, and a device to paint a wall that had twenty-seven. I don’t remember who took me to the museum, but I do remember they were irritated by what we saw. They couldn’t see the point in those ridiculous machines, but I found them fascinating.
That was probably the closest thing to what we found when we finally entered Julian Huxley’s estate, except that a Rube Goldberg machine is more complicated than it has to be. The individual machines in Huxley’s house weren’t especially complicated, but those machines did everything whether it needed to be done or not.
The front door was locked, but my skeleton key got us in without any difficulty. Upon entering, the first thing I saw was an android. I almost blasted it, but the thing reached out a hand to me and said, “May I take your coat, sir?”
I still almost blasted it. I couldn’t like the droids, not after everything I’d seen them do. If you program an android to take your coat, it will take your coat. If you program an android to slaughter all humans, it will slaughter all humans. They just can’t be trusted.
Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5 Page 26