Metal Monsters

by G. D. Stark

  “The chair killed him?” Ward said.

  “Yes, it must have been the chair. But the line died first, which made me wonder if they were listening to it, if they could hear us. You know, they say the Unity are here on the planet. Their machines can get into computers, so perhaps they could do this, they could kill the knights with their demon technology!”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “And we know they’re targeting the mech pilots.”

  “How long has it been since you checked in with the other squires?” Ward asked.

  “Two hours,” Potchi admitted. “I called in after the death of my master and only came back here to the house to put my things in order before I join him.”

  “Join him?” I said.

  “I will open my veins,” Potchi said proudly. “It is my obligation as his squire to accompany him to the next life.”

  “Damn, man,” Ward said. “You sure you don’t want to just look for another job or something? You have a wife and a kid to look after!”

  The man shook his head. “Absolutely not. My son will grow up knowing that his father did his duty!”

  “Suit yourself,” I said. “But before you kick off, will you check that screen again. Maybe there’s more news.”

  The man nodded, flipped off something in the alcove, then logged in on a small console. After a moment, he gasped. “May the Gods have mercy!”

  “What?” Ward asked.

  “Four knights are dead!”

  “When?” I asked.

  “The last one took place an hour ago. Sir Forogloss.”

  “How?” Ward said.

  “He died in his shower,” Potchi said, his eyes scanning over the messages. “Another died while tending his greenhouse. Another fell dead in the People’s archive while doing research at a workstation. O gods, how have we failed you?” he cried, clutching his head in his hands. “Oh gods, why do you judge us so harshly?”

  “I think we know what we need to know,” I said to Ward. “Thank you, sir.”

  The man nodded, then grabbed my armored arm tightly. “Do not let them win, I beg you. Avenge our deaths!”

  “We intend to kill them,” I said. So long as we keep getting paid, anyhow, I thought but didn’t think he needed to hear that. “And we’re very good at that.”

  We walked out, past the kid and the man’s wife. Ward ruffled the kid’s hair as he passed. “Be tough, kid,” he said.

  We climbed back into our taxi and it took us back to base. After we were in the air I wondered if the Unity might have control of the autopilot. Visions of us hurling to the ground flashed through my head but I pushed them out. I didn’t call in, though, in case the squire was right. Maybe they would hear my call and take out the taxi, who knows? I was with the local guy on calling. Better safe than sorry.

  We made it back safely and Ward and I hunted down the captain to give him the sitrep before we turned in. It was after zero two quarter but he was sitting with Pitt in the cafeteria, nursing a mug of coffee.

  “Any reason you didn’t call in?” Yost said.

  “Pitt’s asset thinks communications may be compromised,” I replied. “Things are bad. Eight deaths, all weird accidents.”

  “Which aren’t accidents,” Ward said.

  “Not accidents?” Yost said. “Who is dead?”

  “Knights,” I replied. “Eight knights are dead under bizarre circumstances. Crashed skycars, malfunctioning furniture and razors, crazy stuff.”

  “Unity hacking,” Yost said. “Targeted kills.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “No way it was anything else. Also, Pitt, you lost your asset.”

  “Dammit, Tommy!” He slammed his fist on the table. “What did you do? Interrogate him?”

  “No, we behaved ourselves. It’s just that he’s a squire to one of the dead knights, so he’s got to off himself. It’s a matter of honor or something.”

  “You’re kidding!” Pitt shook his head. “Ah, well, that’s a damn shame.”

  “Yeah, especially for the wife and kid,” muttered Ward.

  The captain was completely uninterested in the local customs. “First, they were knocking out the supply chain, now they’re going for the knights directly. The Lord General is in over his head. The Sfodrians simply aren’t equipped to deal with this.”

  “Neither are we,” Ward said. “They’re hacking into secure lines running directly between two residences. This isn’t like a public web hack. One knight was apparently murdered through the overload of his cochlear implant. We have to assume that everything we’re doing can be monitored, and everything we’ve got can be hacked.”

  “Including our suits,” I pointed out.

  “Acknowledged,” Yost said. “All right, I have to take this to the Lord General right now. You good to go, Falkland?”

  “Now?” Ward said.

  I dialed up a stim and closed my eyes as the pick-me-up coursed through my blood. “Good to go, sir!”

  We drove back up to the Hall of Meeting and found the Lord General already there, along with ten of his knights. They seemed surprised to see us, but allowed us to talk.

  “So?” Lord General Landros asked Yost. “You have heard of the murders?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “Corporal Falkland has been to the capital and spoke directly with the squire of the late Sir Warris. We are confident that this is the work of the mercenaries from the Unity.”

  “We concur,” the Lord General said. “It would appear your original analysis was correct, Corporal,” he said, nodding at me. That was all the apology I was going to get, I could see. “Cowards! To kill a man in his sleep, or in the shower! They have no honor.”

  “Of course they don’t have honor,” Yost said. “They don’t even know what it is. They’re not human.”

  “All the knights must be protected, whether they wish it or not,” the Lord General declared. “But how shall we accomplish that, when these honorless monsters can even reach into the fortified homes of their noble ancestors?”

  “They must all disconnect,” I told him. “From everything. Get them totally offline and keep them away from all electrics, all nets, all digitals. Even their medical implants need to be removed. Nothing is safe!”

  “We cannot take such extreme measures,” a knight said angrily. “We would render ourselves infants, helpless and vulnerable.”

  “We are helpless and vulnerable now,” a second knight pointed out, more sensibly, in my opinion.

  “Our noble ancestors relied on naught but simple weapons and the might of their arms,” another knight said. “It won’t kill us to go back in time. It will kill us if we don’t, however. I have already had my cerebral port completely deactivated by my house physician. I suggest the rest of you do the same.”

  I thought of the jack in my own head. WDI tech was robust, by human standards, but I doubted it would withstand a concentrated attack by the half-machine posthumans.

  “Let it be done, at once,” said the Lord General. “Every knight is to consider it a battle order in the service of the State. He turned to Yost. “Is there anything you can do to stop these monstrous cowards?”

  “Yes,” Yost said. “We’re going to kill them.”

  Chapter 10

  Killing embedded transhumans is easier said than done. Sure, you can nail them with a focused EMP pulse if you’re close enough, but what about the guys that are sitting in some shielded bunker somewhere, burrowing through the ’net right into some poor bastard’s neural interface? Finding those guys wasn’t going to be easy, and we knew that once they considered us to be a threat, they would certainly come after us.

  “So how do we hunt cyborgs?” I asked, after the captain gave me the go-ahead to start the brainstorm session. “Any ideas, throw them out. I don’t care how stupid they might seem.”

  I’d been able to pull ten guys together for a quick hashing out of our situation. Squid, Ace, Jock, Edgerton, Pitt, Jones, Park, Ward, Zelag, and Captain Yost. The captain only had half a kilo
sec free, so we were hoping to nail down a plan in that time period.

  “Metal detectors,” Park suggested.

  “Did you see the dead one?” Squid said, blowing smoke across the metal folding table towards Park. “He had metal in him, sure, but I’ll bet that doesn’t show up any more than a grunt in armor, hauling a rifle.”

  “Infrared,” Park said, then took a delicate sip of herbal tea he’d gotten from who knows where. “They probably have a different heat signature than a real guy.”

  “Probably,” I said. “But we don’t know.”

  “Not much range on infrared sensors,” Zelag commented.

  “We need a live one to study,” Ward said. “We killed the last one. And the one before that suicided. I think the real problem is that they’ll all suicide rather than talk.”

  “We get anything useful from the corpse?” Jones asked.

  “No,” Pitt said. “The lab guys said he was toasted inside. Not much more than half-melted wires running through jerky. Amazing he was still twitching when you boys found him.” Pitt shrugged and swigged some coffee. “Too bad, too, because I’ve got a console that keeps acting up and I could use a good IT professional.”

  We looked at him blankly and he ducked his head a little. “Just a joke. Carry on.”

  “Maybe we could combine infrared and metal detection,” Ace mused. “Our eyes could tell the difference if one of these guys wasn’t in a suit. Why not tweak some sensors so they’re looking for the little things? The distribution of metal in one of these guys might be a little different than in a regular soldier, plus we could maybe look for a little difference in temps. Maybe they run a little fever compared to an unmodified man. Or maybe they don’t, maybe they’re cold-blooded or something. We should have the lab guys here, really.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “My fault. We should have got some techs in here.”

  “Sharks,” Edgerton said.

  We all turned to look at him. “What the hell?” Jones said.

  “Sharks,” Edgerton said. “Everyone knows they have a sixth sense. They can find their prey even in pitch black conditions.”

  “Isn’t that just their sense of smell?” Ward asked. “They say they can smell just a drop of blood from a hundred kilometers away.”

  “No, of course not,” Edgerton said. “It’s electromagnetic. Every guy around this table has his own electrical field. Even bugs have their own electrical field. I think I could modify a standard sensor to detect their electromagnetospheres.”

  “How is that different from what a metal detector would see?” I asked him.

  “Metal is detected by magnetic fields, but it’s not the same. Everything is glowing with electric energy, at least on a low level. There are always lots of little discharges inside your body taking place.”

  “What kind of range?” Zelag asked.

  “Considering how much bigger their electromagnetic fields must be, they’d light up like a Christmas tree. I’d guess we’re talking kilometers.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “That’s real good!”

  “This force shield business sounds like voodoo,” Jones objected.

  “Platypi,” Zelag countered.

  “What the hell is a platter pie, Cyborg?” Squid said.

  “Something that looks funnier than you do, Squid,” Zelag said. “They’re an old Earth animal. Still some of them scattered here and there on the colonies, thanks to the re-seeders. They’re a strange little animal with webbed feet, fur and a bill like a duck, but they’re a mammal, I think.”

  “Great,” Jones said. “What’s up with the zoology lesson?”

  “That’s just it. They can sense magnetic fields with their bills,” Zelag pressed on. “Like Edgerton said about sharks.”

  “Exactly,” Edgerton said.

  “Wonderful,” Jones said. “So, we just need a big crate of platypuses or something?”

  “Can these platter pussies be taught to shoot Feempers?” Ace said.

  “Enough, boys!” Captain Yost shut them up. “Let’s get back on track. Falkland, continue.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Forget the platypus, men. We don’t care about whatever the hell they are. But we do care about finding these Unity mercs and if there’s some way of seeing their energy field or something we can use, great. Edgerton and Zelag, you talk to the techs about it.”

  “We should mount the sensors on our aerial drones,” Ace said.

  “Obviously,” I said. “More importantly, we’ll want to get the sensors to the knights as soon as we know they work. If the knights cut their coms and stay high, they can act as both scouts and artillery.”

  “Big-ass drones, basically,” Ward remarked.

  “This sounds promising,” the captain declared said. “I need to get back to work, but let me know whatever you boys need and Pitt will get it for you. Edgerton, you’re point on this. Drop whatever else you’re doing and get this electro-whatever sensor working!”

  “Big-ass scout drones with rockets and plasma cannons,” Jones said dreamily.

  “Off the chain!” Park said.

  “Check it out, Falkland,” Edgerton said, pointing to a drone with a duct-taped sensor assembly on the front. “Shark sensors.”

  “Shiny,” I said, not really knowing what I was looking at. Sergeant Edgerton caressed the drone with his fingers. “It can correctly ID bioelectric fields at a kilometer away. Here, check this out.”

  He made a couple of adjustments to the drone and the drone started humming. It was one of those rounded, lightly armored super-light surveillance jobs that run on antigrav. They’re cheap as dirt and you can launch them all day over enemy positions without caring if they get shot down. They’re about the size of a big bird, but with more wingspan.

  “Now it’s scanning,” Edgerton said. “Here, look at my tablet.” He handed me a small display and I watched as the room was resolved into gray and white. “That’s you and me,” he said, pointing to a tall softly glowing figure next to a thinner and slightly shorter one one.

  “What’s up with my head?” I asked, looking at the screen.

  “Where it’s glowing white?” Edgerton said. “Probably a jack. You have a brainjack, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking closer. “And my elbow—there’s a darker spot there. Wait—that’s gotta be shrapnel, maybe?”

  “Right,” Edgerton said. “It’s not radiating like the rest of your cells.”

  “Nice,” I said.

  “We could see the wires and all that stuff running through the cyborgs,” Edgerton said. “Cool, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “This is cool.”

  “I’ve dubbed it the Sharknose model 1A,” Edgerton said.

  “Great work, Sarge,” I said sincerely. “Now let’s see how it works in the field!”

  “Platterpussy away!” Jones said as our drone took to the air.

  He, Ward, Zelag and I were out near a known Axiosi position, hoping to spot ourselves a Unity merc. Edgerton, Park, Jock and Morrel were on another patrol forty kilometers north of our position, doing the same thing. We’d hauled our drone with us in a pack, disassembled for easy carrying. They can be broken down into three parts for portability and they weigh almost nothing. If we saw an enemy patrol with the drone’s cameras, we’d send it closer and flip on the electromagnetic thing and see if anything that looked like a cyborg appeared on the sensors. If it didn’t, we’d just dodge the patrol and keep hunting; we weren’t interested in the enemy regulars.

  We’d hiked for an hour through some scrubby woods after being dropped off until we hit a good clear space of rocky ground. It was early morning and the sun was just coming up in the purple sky above. Man, my eyes were really starting to get tired of purple.

  “Get it more altitude,” I said to Ward as he drove the drone higher.

  “It’s getting up there,” he said, monitoring the craft’s climbing spiral on the warm air rising from the ground. The antigrav on these drones wasn’t
all that powerful. It was more like floating a helium balloon than the kind of elevator thrust you got from a serious antigrav engine. The drones weren’t fast but they could stay in the air for days without draining their batteries. They rarely lasted all that long, though, as the enemy made a habit of using them for target practice.

  “Okay, we’re up,” Ward said, putting the drone’s small control interface back in its rucksack. I could just see the drone up above, a small dark speck in the purple sky. “It’s on a standard search pattern grid now. We can just watch and wait. The AI will let us know when it spots anything that isn’t us.”

  “Let’s get back in the shade,” Jones said. “I’m ready for breakfast.”

  We found a shadier spot and squeezed protein paste and artificial cheese into our mouths while we waited for our drone to spot something. I wondered what Sfodrian girls were like. I hadn’t seen a single one in the militia or support teams. That squire guy’s wife wasn’t bad at all. Maybe they kept them in cages or something. Or maybe they were so hot they didn’t trust the men around them. Yeah, that was probably the case. All of them 5'7" with blonde hair and pierced bellybuttons, pressing grapes with their long legs and bare feet, just waiting for a mercenary with a heart of gold to sweep them off into space for a life of adventure and lots of-”

  “Got something,” Ward said, interrupting my thoughts. “Looks like a small patrol, five klicks to the west. They were holed up under the trees, got some anti-scanner tech—still surprised we hadn’t seen them yet. Still blurry as hell on the camera.” He fished out the drone controls and took back manual control.