-67-
HAVENBAND
Adust storm had swept through the municipality of Havenband province, a tireless tempestuous bluster of dry, hot grit that sandblasted vehicles and buildings and turned daylight into sepia. People ran around in their hoods and scarfs, taking shelter in bars and canteens and databanks from the bombardment. The shock of the recent collision in the canyons had scattered the town into swivets, and somewhere out there in the red rock, the local university detected high levels of radiation and the motion of things yet unidentified by visual confirmation. Those using quantics found their instruments suddenly unreliable, unthinkable since quantum entangled devices ensured instant qubit data transmission ubiquitously.
Androids had collected the wounded and helped them into emergency medical capsules for recovery. Not long after that a military command of androids assembled and drove out into the dust storm, never to return. Feedback from the data simply stated that the androids went off-line nearby the phenomenon, with no visual confirmation and no apparent reason. Once Adamoss confronted the problem, the android mobilised help from outside Havenband, and a new tactical unit of android military was mobilised.
Within a day the sky was swarming with V-TOL android bombers, large unmanned drone machines arching into the sky, jet streams vapored behind the blue light where their plasma-jets burned. Below ground units crawled and rolled through the town like a parade of insects defending a damaged nest. The bulky, khaki coloured crawler tanks stomped, various lenses glowing as they discerned from a multitude of visual feedback, huge hulking legs lumbering over the dry dirt, an arsenal of mounted velociter coils pointed forth, and tactical micro-nuke warheads primed for launch.
Armoured personnel carriers rolled alongside the crawlers, satellite guided auto-vehicles stacked with combat androids, short, headless machines of varying weight, size and mobility built for purpose. Like the chimeric manifastations of ephialtes these anthropomorphic versions sprung veritably forth. Of metal and alloy and polymer, grenadier androids and enforced their battalion, resembling large spiders, rocket launchers anatomically resembling headless canines that cantered beside the caterpillar track vehicles and jeeps as gracefully as war dogs. The most anatomically human were the sharp-shooters, anthropomorphic droids designed to be controlled by human hosts from a far distance via sensorium piloting.
The herd of armed warriors flew, crawled, cantered and rolled into the settling dust of the impact event and vanished in the grey clouds, Syridan infantry units following close. Hardened cyborg soldiers perched on the side of tanks as they ground quickly on through Havenband, chasing after the front line androids and expendable units. Their target stood waiting in a crater that was measured from satellite relay to be a diameter of almost six kilometres. Roasting hot rocks within the convex basin gave off waves of heat that stirred the air like a sirocco. Around the mouth of the pit and within its inner well were stood up to three thousand android avatars, drones and machines and UAV’s left burning where they’d crashed to a halt.
They were still, the technological effigies left baking in the undulating heat, their optics staring lifelessly out. Waiting. At the core of it all, in the very centre of the pit, stood the Xenotech. Its huge four quadriplegic limbs holding up an enormous radial chrome shield, almost eighty metres above ground. The alloy was roasting, searing unbreakably in undulating waves of heat and black dust. Seemingly, the Xenotech machines were off-line, as still and remote as everything else in the region. But nothing more came back from the leading android infantry once they got close, they too went into shut-down.
*
In the following thirty six hours, an infantry encroached from the South West where Ellvee lay only a few hundred miles away. Jeeps and tanks bounded over sandy hillocks and dunes, riding into the flatlands and pummelled desert surface where the ground was torn by shrapnel rocks blasted out of the initial impact. This target, the Atominii were beginning to learn, needed a human touch, or a cyborg presence at least. Target crosshairs locked onto the phenomenon and they approached the surrounding auto-tanks and drones left parked around the crater. The infantry tanks ran down the drones and combat androids where they stood, offline and frozen, a first exploration infantry unit sent in to survey the danger. They rolled on, smashing apart the unavoidable from steady figurines to fragments all spun into a clutter of oil, polymer and circuitry beneath their wheels.
‘Slow down, for fucksake!’ One of the infantry leaders neuromitted to the driver.
‘There’s no way through, sir,’ he grunted back. ‘Even if I slow down, they’re just everywhere, y’know…’
‘Just take down as few as possible,’ said the leader as the personnel carrier hopped over the crushed androids in its path.
‘Doing my best, sir,’ he shouted back, obedient and simultaneously vexed by his superior. The driver was veering the vehicle towards the mouth of the crater as it bounded and bunny-hopped on its suspension, rolling closer to the target.
The convoy snaked down the edges of the large hole, slaloming around the dormant androids standing attentively in the smoke and roasting black rocks.
‘Temperature is soaring’ said one of the infantry transentients.
‘Almost there,’ the leader neuromitted before announcing vocally; ‘Alright, pack-up, suit-up, pick-up your ghost-loads. Let’s fuck this cosmic piece of shit.’
And the personnel in their seats began to chant and huff as they readied themselves for war. The personnel carriers ground to a stop, pushing up wedges of stones where the carrier’s wheels skid to position. The side doors shunted open and the troops disembarked and marched into the hot air and dust, armed with heavy weapons; the long chrome cylinder shaped cannons of sonic propelled explosive launchers, large, circular dishes of acoustic resonance grenade launchers. Snap-return Assault-rifles with nano-tip rounds, shouldered tight and aimed into the baking sand, their narrow barrels smoothed and rendered with several different modification ridges for lights and gadgets like suppressors. H.V-Long-barrels were lugged out of vehicles and set up on the ground like mortar shell rails. Particle grenades dangled at their belts like dull tin hexagonal plates set into caskets, a whole arrangement of smoothly shaped maser-breakers, EMP-breakers and dazzlers as well as close combat weapons. Chaos-Eagles strapped to bandoliers and nano-edged field-charged machetes.
The early arrivals parked locally, while other convoys rolled on to intercept from a more northern situation higher on the crater’s edge.
The infantry’s heavy weapons division set up close by the vehicles, positioning snipers and sonic-grenadiers in safe zones to align their weapons on the huge Xenotech machines stood baking in the dust like the silhouetted profile of a deformed mechanical spider.
Upon the vehicles, huge maser weapons focussed their target beams onto the dark ethereal machine, satellite dishes rotated to arrange a myriad communication signals and scanner radars its way, yet no signs of activity emerged. And light infantry shifted forward, Snap-return Assault-rifles cozied to shoulders, feet marching over the crunch and scrape of dry hot stones and gravel. Trans-data coherent communication detailed their movement, communicating with the northern team as they climbed into the lower regions of the crater.
‘Watch your backs, team,’ their leaders warned, ‘that thing’s active and is putting out some faint signals.’
Their helmet visors mapped out the terrain, cartographic layering virtual mesh over the environment, coordinating geometric shapes that were materially divided. Angles were plotted for combat sequences, allowing the soldiers to make calculated shots and throws.
Further in, they passed more androids just stood around, absently occupying the space. One of the soldiers stopped to look at the lank battle droid, its skeletal bipedal body a neat and simplified composition, minimalized to only the necessary circuits hidden within its chest cavity, a shell of carbon-nano armour. The rest was shaped for balance and alacrity, making the headless machine as quick a killer as possible. The arms wer
e hinged with pincers, four arms, limbs that were attached to weapons and also extra limbs for self-repair and grabbing, lifting and using other weapons. He pushed it slightly and the counter-balance automatically repositioned, allowing the droid to rock and sway back to its place.
‘Leave it, Duke,’ someone said as they passed.
‘Don’t touch a thing,’ the leader said back to them quietly.
‘Right, sir,’ he said, ‘just wondering why the hell they off-lined.’
The only sound now was the sandy crunch and grind of their feet as they swept their rifles over potential targets, glaring down their sights.
‘Activity!’ Neuromission alerts filtered through their neuro-ligature.
‘Where...WHERE?’ the leader demanded, sweeping circular movements with their rifles.
‘Keep your eye on that Xenotech, Sergeant.’
‘We’ve got activity, we’ve got activity, I’m neuromitting coordinates to all personnel.’
Coordinates of the phenomenon quickly appeared in their visors and optics and the small three dimensional thumbnail maps showed an iconic signal emanating from the Xenotech in the middle of crater. Suddenly, their systems started to receive information, and communication channels opened.
‘What the hell is that?’ asked one of the leaders, leaning over the communication specialist in a personnel carrier as the he sat diligently organising the information over the projection screens.
‘I don’t know, sir,’ he said, ‘it seems to be a message. It’s coded – some strange symbols. I’m running a translation tool.’
‘Can you decipher it?’
‘Could take some time.’ Said the specialist.
‘All teams high alert,’ the leader then neuromitted, ‘we’re receiving communication attempts from the enemy.’
‘Sir! Contact! The Xenotech is doing something.’
At the top of the four huge limbs, where the machine’s large spherical shell was based, a strange scarlet light began to blink through the dust. Falls of dirt and rock unsettled from the shell and rained down like sand streams as the shell began to open, and radiant light emitted from within.
Mechanical units within the light were spinning, turning, rolling, like a complicated network of geometrical cogs winding together a convoluted and delicate clockwork of gyros and gimbals. Huge mechanical blisters underneath the machine bloated with pressure and fired out the long nano-strings like molten glass anchoring into the dirt and solidifying into wires.
‘-The hell is that?’
And as soon as the question was asked, the semiotic symbol for chaos appeared within their visors, the symbol’s multiple arrows aiming out of a circular point, then printed in bold across the symbol appeared the words...
Chaos Cipher
More silver nano-strings burst from the machine’s many bladders hanging beneath it, launching thousands of proboscis like the milky latex branches of ribbon worms rooting through the earth and connecting to everything upon it. Then, a tsunami of light powerful and scintillating swept over everything within the crater. Neuromissions communication stopped working, multiple units dropped out of their sensorium Nexus programs and most were declared deceased immediately after the shockwave. They heard screams out there in the dust and the ratter-tatter of rifles.
The leader grabbed a short-barrel, pumped the uranium rounds into the chamber and stepped out of the carrier to unexpectedly face the ductile meat-grinder blades of a combat-mech. He bent over the grinding instruments salivating long streams of dark blood, glaring eyes wide in shock and terror. The android threw what was left of the quartered corpse in several directions and aimed its energy weapons into the carrier’s communication room where the operator sat screaming until the radiation particles reduced him to slag. The carrier exploded a moment later, tearing apart into a burning steel frame.
Auto-tanks came to life, stomping and crawling, their huge armoured turtlebacks shifting as they lumbered over the vehicles, crushing the infantry cars and smashing the convoys with close range blasts from their rocket cannons, throwing out blinding snaps of fire and stone and devastating shockwaves that evaporated the blood within the bodies of those too close to the carnage.
The bipeds came online, responding to the chaos cipher signal, and began hunting human and cyborg infantry troops, picking them off where they saw them.
And the infantry uphill were screaming for retreat as sonic-grenadiers used their acoustic cannons to levitate explosives over the approaching android-combatants, dropping bombs on their positions from above.
And H. V snipers fired into the putrid black smoke, their bullets shattering the elegant combat androids as they leapt and jumped gracefully from place to place, unpiecing mid-leap to scatter components and sparks across the floor. As they rolled and bounded towards them, personnel carriers from higher vantage points aimed their emerald laser beams upon the android avatars to make them quietly and spontaneously combust into flames. Even as they burned they marched on, picking off cyborg and Titan soldiers until consumed beyond function.
And in the welter of it all, radiation waves spread from the emission of the Xenotech, like diaphanous sheets of light curtaining a sinuous, moving, Calabi-Yau manifold of light around the area. Those still alive and caught within its field lost all perspective of time. As temporal symmetries spun together, they began to experience things yet to happen, paralleled with things that had already occurred and jumbled with intermittent moments of the present. Some had discovered their own corpses moments before they were themselves killed; or had seen their companions die moments before death occurred. They saw androids appear and vanished and reappeared in new locations where they would vanquish their pray quickly. And the dead would reappear to discover their own bodies again, before fading like an echo.
Since the landing of the Xenotech, the fate of the infantry was inevitable, they were dead from the very beginning.
It was all just a matter of time.
-68-
Adamoss reported that all the units had been destroyed. Some of the avatar models had been usurped by the pernicious chaos cipher coding, rendering them slaves remotely controlled by the standing Xenotech. He listened heedfully to the androids messages, whispered voices relaying information between one another in the large room as Malik could only watch in his paralysed state. He glared at them, breathing heavy, irritated by the nerve harmonics. His brother was stroking his own pointy beard and nodding as the glowing avatar android discussed with him by the large circular window. The sun was going down now behind them, falling into the clouds. Malik felt like he’d been imprisoned here for months like this, though he knew it had only been a few days. He stared at the floor, gasping and choking, his hand shaking as he desired so much to be able to write something upon it, to scratch his tag, his mark of the chaos cipher. Vance turned his head, stepping aside the android to see him.
‘Do you need something?’ his voice echoed.
Malik continued to choke.
‘Excuse me would you,’ said Vance, walking around the android to hurry down the stairway. He ordered Malik’s chair to meet him half way and the mechanical vehicle began rolling towards him.
‘Ah, Malik I do hate seeing you this way,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you now? Want some water?’
‘Puh-puh-pen!’ He stammered, salivating like a rabid dog.
‘Adamoss, get my brother a pen would you?’ he asked the android. Obediently the avatar walked away to fetch and pen, returning not a minute later with a round fat marker pen, the one confiscated from him earlier. The android opened up Malik’s fingers and rested it in his hand but the pen dropped to the floor. Vance sighed.
‘I’ll take it from here,’ he smiled to the android.
Adamoss bowed and left them alone.
‘What was your sign again?’ he asked. ‘X-marks the spot?’
Vance knelt down and marked a large black X onto the floor and Malik gasped, finally allowing himself to breathe again. He kept his eyes o
n the mark, his hand quivering, eager to feel the pen. And Vance wedged the marker back between his fingers.
‘Now let’s…see, what we can do here,’ said Vance, guiding Malik’s hand to draw his own X on a part of the wheelchair. They managed it together, a spidery wriggly X printing into place.
‘Better?’ He asked.
‘Better,’ Malik sighed.
‘I’ve some very exciting news for you Malik,’ he said, moving behind the wheelchair and carting him over to the ramp, that led up to the main observation window. ‘But first…do you know what a Spydrone is?’
They reached the top and Vance applied the brakes, leaving the chair inclined the top of the ramp. Malik looked confused.
‘No?’ he asked. ‘Well…I’ll tell you, shall I? They are excavation machines for exoplanets in different systems. We used smaller ones as maintenance machines too but, mainly these are varying models. They’re very strong, made of our best manufactured alloys forged by the most sophisticated nano-metallurgists. They are designed to explore automatically, relaying information as they come by it. They’re not made for war. But you can imagine, if they were somehow modified, they would pose a considerable threat.’
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