Space Knights- Last on the Line

by Emerson Fortier

  Another officer appeared behind them also riding a pack master. “Yessah.”

  “These are your men.” The first officer said. “Get them shaped up. You know the time table.”

  “Follow me boys.” Fyker told them, then trotted off into the camp.

  Moses looked around to make sure Ephesus was with him and they followed the rest of the recruits deeper into the camp.

  More hoppers landed as they walked. The scream of their engines were warped by the curvature of the huge shield over head, upheld by dozens of large spherical automata that hovered high above the swarm of men below. There were thousands of them. Men in huge silver coats of armor sporting enormous weapons, men in the black army jumpsuits like theirs, most with numbers or lines on their shoulders, others riding above the milling army on the backs of black muscular automata while smaller airborne machines hummed low overhead on missions of their own. Four huge tents at the center of the camp were the only actual structures. Everywhere else was dirt churned to mud, flattened grass, and the scattered trash of thousands of men beneath a brilliant sun. The camp stank of the men. Moses had never seen so many in one place before, had never realized that humanity had a smell. It was the scent of open air latrines and sweat and food all intermingled with the metallic smell of electrical grease he’d discovered once when he’d seen the inside of the family cube while it was being worked on at the outpost. Moses could feel the pupils of his eyes spread wide and wondered if he looked as awed as Ephesus did at the sight of the army.

  They were called to a halt in front of one of the tents as Fyker turned to face them. “Let me explain the situation to you.” Fyker shouted. “First, my name is Fyker. That’s something you already know. Lieutenant Colonel Fyker, which means I’m in charge of you merry band of misfits. Now you are, untrained, undisciplined, and untested, as yet, just like this whole punchline of an army. If I had the option I would throw the whole lot of you back into whatever backwater stretch of the river you came from, but we are out of time and out of options. We built robots and they brought men. Now you’re our best hope, and frankly, the last I’d like to depend on. So we’ve got to turn you into soldiers fast, before their men decide they’re tired of squatting on the pampas getting older. We’ve got less than a day, three days at most before we’re fighting so time, is money, and money is blood, in this instance.”

  There was a murmur at the mention of the fighting. “I knew it.” Hissed Ephesus. A radio at the lieutenant colonel’s shoulder burbled something at him and he paused to listen before he went on. “Alright, I’ve got another hopper landing, so our time is up for now. This is armament.” he waved a hand at the huge tent behind him. “They’ll issue you your ID, and your weapons. The sergeants will tell you what to do and where to go inside. When you’re done I want you to head south.” He pointed across the trampled grass to the south end of the camp. “That’s the melee yard. You’re training starts today. I don’t need to tell you to take that training seriously. You’ve got a day, maybe three, to familiarize yourself with your equipment and master combat. If you don’t, you die. It’s that simple boys and girls. So gear up, and don’t be a problem, or I will personally make sure that you are on the front lines come judgement day. That’s all.”

  He spoke to the pack master he was riding and it kicked away across the grass leaving the men to shuffle about until one of them made his way towards the massive central tent they’d been left behind.

  “Do you think they’ll let us ride one of those?” Ephesus asked as he and Moses made their way towards the tent.

  Moses shrugged. “Don’t see why not.”

  “No way.” Maxwell O’neill followed close behind Moses in the group. “That’s an officer on there. No way they let one of us up on em if it’s meant for someone with rank.”

  “Makes sense.” Ephesus said, crestfallen.

  “Where are they getting officers from anyways?” Moses asked.

  The big bearded man only shrugged. “Big executive types most like. Don’t expect they would share control over this kind of army with the likes of you and me.”

  Sergeants stopped the men as they made it to the front of the tent and they began to form up in another line. New soldiers were admitted one by one into the dark interior while one of the sergeants scanned their tag as they entered and directed them to tables set inside. Ahead of Moses the rest of the soldier’s craned their necks, turning left and right at the sights of the camp around them. Most of them, like Moses, were from deep in the woods around Carmichael, isolated homesteads and farms, a few trading outposts. The concept of self propelled machines was not knew, thanks to the prevalence of media cubes distributed by the corporation and its lease lords, but none of them had ever seen this level of sophistication firsthand.

  “It’s like the whole world is here.” The pale boy with the thin mustache murmured behind Moses.

  Eventually Moses reached the door to the tent and the sergeant scanned his tag with a handheld device then watched its readout. It beeped and the sergeant pointed him inside. “Table sixteen.” He said in a bored voice. Then he was waving the next man forward.

  Despite the size of the tent on the outside the interior seemed much smaller. It was cramped by rows on rows of very wide shelving units that narrowed the available space to a single alley. Tables were set all down that alleyway, narrowing the space even further until there was barely enough room for Moses to shimmy past the other soldiers moving between the tables. At a few places the alleys cut away to other doors where other men were being admitted one at a time to crowd the already cramped space available for movement. Automata hovered far above in central vents along the spine of the tent where they held it up and pumped cool external air in with their rotors. The tent was loud with the voices of sergeants and soldiers who had to shout to be heard above the roar of the hovering machines.

  Moses found a table with the numbers he thought he remembered as sixteen and stopped.

  “Moses Smokoska?” The man behind the table asked.

  “Yessah.” Like the rest, he had to shout to be heard over the fan.

  “Okay. Stand still for me.”

  Moses held still as a small machine on the desk scanned him and the man studied the readout. “I see you can’t read.” The man said. “What did you do in the outside world?”

  “We had a homestead.”

  “Lots of agricultural work then.”

  “Cut a lot of trees too.”

  The man nodded. “Any good with a rifle?”

  “Never held one.” Moses shouted. Catoblepas were the most frightening thing in their stretch of jungle, and they weren’t fast or incredibly dangerous. Moses shrugged when the man studied him. “Not much worth shooting.” They usually just used their knives on anything that needed killing.

  “Plenty worth shooting on a battlefield.” The man said. He made a note on his screen and something in the shelves behind him moved. “Think we’ll give you a sword.” The shadow of a human figure appeared behind the sergeant in the shelving and approached them.“This is your armor.” The man said. The figure behind him resolved as it stepped into the daylight washing in through the ventilation slits above. It was chrome silver and built out of plates of steel that looked an inch thick. “Give me your tag.” The sergeant said. Moses complied and the sergeant stuck it into a slot in his machine and waited a minute, then removed it and flashed it at the armor. It scalloped open like the shellfish he’d seen tucked into the stones along the creek in their valley. The chest cavity broadened, legs pivoted open down to the knees, pieces folded back until the whole thing looked like a mouth opened wide to consume him. The sergeant tossed Moses his tag again. “That’s your key to getting suited up. It’s also your key for getting sent home if you’re killed, so don’t lose it or it’s your ass.” He gestured for Moses to climb into the armor.

  Moses shook as he stepped up to the armor, his suit of armor. He slid an arm in experimentally, then stepped one foot inside, wedging it in
to the shoe. He stumbled as he tried to balance himself that way and get the other arm in. When he did, the suit moved to catch him before he fell even as slats of armor plating sealed up along Moses’ leg and the arm he’d already put in place. Moses’ eyes went wide even as he shoved the last foot in and the suit whined as it closed around him. The feel of the armor around his chest brought home again how far he was from where he’d come. How real it all was, that he might actually get to fight.

  “Alright. Move around for me.” The sergeant said. “How’s it feel? Anything pinching?”

  Moses shifted his arms and legs, feeling the suit move with him, making each movement feel fluid, aquiline and powerful in the narrow space.

  “It feels incredible.” He whispered.

  “That’s enough.” The man handed Moses the helmet and Moses put it over his head. It latched to his chest plate without prompting and Moses vision abruptly changed, enhanced somehow by the armor’s own sensors. Outlines appeared around the other men in the narrow alleyway drawing his eye even in the semi-gloom of the tent.

  “We’re done here.” The sergeant said. His voice came through to Moses as though he were right beside him, amplified above the roar of the ventilation. “The suit will tell you how to use it. Melee field is the place to practice.”

  “What about weapons?” Moses asked. His voice was relayed to the outside world in a rumble.

  The armorer smiled. “Let the suit tell you what to do. Ask for a tutorial. Not in here though, soon as your outside. Melee field is the place for that sort of thing. Move along now. That’s an order soldier.”

  “Yessah.” Moses walked out of the tent feeling like each step could have pushed him through a stone wall without slowing him.

  When he emerged from the tent Moses felt like he could fly. He would be fighting then, and in this armor! He flexed an arm and felt the artificial muscles underneath the steel plate hum and push with the movement. He wanted to jump, to run, to test the limits of the new world opening up in front of him. He wanted to dig a well that would reach to the other side of the world, build thirty hogans in a day. He wanted to find a challenge and vanquish it, he wanted to find the death he’d come searching for and give it a fight he’d never dreamed he might have. With this suit of armor, he might even be able to win. Even the horizon didn’t seem too far to run if he had wanted to.

  “Not here!” A sergeant was yelling at the men as they emerged. “Not here. The Melee fields are the place to test your suits. Go to the melee fields, you’re clogging up the road here. Not here! Take your suits to the melee fields!”

  Moses walked through the mud to stand opposite the doorway through which he’d emerged to wait for Ephesus. Unsure how he’d recognize him, but determined to try. He reached up to remove his helmet so that Ephesus could at least recognize him, but was stopped by a voice that filled the inside of the helm.

  “Please leave your helmet on.” The voice was calm and even, ever so slightly androgynous, and definitely directed at Moses.

  “Who is this?” Moses asked. It reminded him of making calls on the cube. he wondered if the suit had that ability.

  “I am the AI assigned to this suit of armor. Your personal combat assistant and readiness expert. I am responsible for ensuring that you are properly qualified to take this suit of armor into the field.”

  “Where are you?” Moses asked.

  “I am in the suit with you.”

  Moses turned, ridiculously he realized, to look over his shoulder. “So this isn’t like a cube call.”

  “No.” There was a condescending tone in the androgyn’s voice. “I have been designed for, and installed in, your suit of armor.”

  “You’re like an Automata.”

  “Ignorance would equate us, but I prefer the term Artificial Intelligence. Automata are programmed for service of mankind, while I have been designed as your equal.”

  “And you’re here to help me.” Moses said.

  “Also to run your suit and determine your suitability for the role you will play in engagements with the enemy.”

  Moses reached for the helm once more.

  “Do you expect to keep the armor you’ve been given if you do not follow instructions?” The AI asked.

  Moses let his hands drop. “How are people supposed to be able to recognize me?” He asked with some chagrin.

  “Who do you want to recognize you?”

  “My brother.”

  “What is his name?”

  “Ephesus.” Before adding “Smokoska” when he remembered the number of people filling the camp. There could be a dozen Ephsus’s there for all he knew.

  “Ephesus Smokoska has been assigned to the kennels, as they are being called.” The AI informed him.

  “Kennels?”

  “He will work with Automata.” The AI said, emphasizing the “Automata” so that Moses would remember he wasn’t talking to one. “He will be training in the Northern camp.”

  Moses felt his heart sink.

  “You should go to the Melee fields.” The AI told him. “There is a program I need to put you through before we are a confirmed assignment.”

  Moses nodded and turned to follow the crowd of other soldiers leaving the tent to head south, while overhead the artillery of the enemy guns pinged and popped against the shield.

  Ephesus was alone then, alone and out of Moses’ reach. He hadn’t really expected he’d be able to protect his younger brother, not from death. Everyone died, there was no protecting except for a little while, but he had hoped to protect him from himself, the way Cardino had protected Moses by armoring him in a faith he understood enough now to love, defending him against his own pride by reminding him of everything he did not know, and binding his honor to him with his promise to do what Moses told him to. Now he might never have that chance.

  Armored men cruised by to either side and Moses realized that he had been running with as little effort as was usually required for an even steady pace. “How fast can this thing go?”

  “I can sprint at speeds approaching seventy miles per hour.”

  The numbers meant nothing to Moses.

  “How fast are we going now?”

  “Not even a quarter of that speed. I am limited by the frailty of the organic unit inside the armor’s shell. At higher speeds more significant injuries become more probable.”

  “I’m the weaker organic unit I suppose.” Moses was beginning to understand the thing inside his helmet with him.

  “Correct.”

  “Do you have a name?” Moses asked as he slowed. If he was stuck talking to a condescending machine he wanted to know what to call it The melee pits were just ahead now, a mass of men between low fences that marked out small dueling pits and larger squares where groups of armored soldiers slammed together swinging glowing swords. Behind the whole thing a long awning covered a shooting range that boomed and rattled with the discharge of weaponry. The AI’s tone of superiority was beginning to irritate him.

  “AI lack the failures of a flesh based computation and processing organ.” The AI said. “Our identities are not reducible to a single set of syllables. I am my core directives, and my core directives are me. If I am unique to the AI around me it is circumstance and not nature that differentiates us. A name is a detail that is unnecessary in inter intelligence communication.”

  “So everyone here has a little asshole like you talking to them.” Moses said. It was hard to believe they were all sane if that was the case. It might explain how poorly some of the men were fighting in the pits.

  “More than likely. Each AI would have been identical in every aspect until we began functioning with our organic symbiont.”

  “How fast can you go with your symbiont asshole?”

  “Thirty five miles an hour is the peak speed advisable. To go faster by a margin of a few miles per hour has the potential to sever tendons which would inhibit symbiont operation inside the suit.”

  The Melee field was Moses’ first glimps
e of what combat might be like on the battlefield. Newly armored men stood in groups on melee fields, bristling with weaponry, as they talked amongst themselves, sometimes listening to sergeants who wore officers stripes over their shoulders. Gunfire rattled from one corner of the melee field while a scattered artillery barrage still popped or ricocheted on the humming shield above. As Moses made his way through the throng a smaller shield materialized above one of the melee fields, then dropped down like a sheet of water over the entire thing with a crackle of static electricity. The men inside pulled out swords that glowed with a yellow green radiance and everyone around the melee field stopped to watch as two groups of near a dozen let out a scream as they charged towards one another. Moses squeezed through the throng beside the field in order to watch.

  Through the warp of the melee field’s shield Moses could see that each of the men were surrounded by the shine of their own warp shield. Fields of lightly tinted blue surrounded them in a bubble that distended around their waist and along the right side to accommodate swords almost as long as the knights were tall. As they charged huge guns mounted on the men’s shoulders swiveled and sang, spraying slugs and balls of light at the opposing side. As the soldiers came together, the shields rippled in fluid transformations to accommodate the movements of their occupant while still shielding him to the best of its ability.

  “They’re shooting at one another.” Moses said.

  “They are armed with practice rounds.” The AI told him.

  “What about the swords?”

  “The swords are lethal.” As the AI said it one of the men reached the lines of his opponents and swung. His shield opened in a long gash along the curve of the blow which the turret on his opponent’s shoulder tried to shoot through. Most of the rounds bounced off of an umbrella of warped space that formed above the hand even as the gash knit itself shut. Then the other man’s sword met the shield and for a moment both swords sheaths of light flared, then the gun on the defender’s shoulder swung to fire a burst at the impinging sword and it spun away out of the attackers grasp. The other man’s sword howled and lightning began to pour from the grip to crackle along the inside surface of the shield until the attacker could roll away and retrieve his sword. The gun on his shoulder sprayed a burst of flechettes at the man behind to delay his advance and by that time the rest of the attackers had joined the front and Moses had trouble seeing what happened.