Space Knights- Last on the Line

by Emerson Fortier

  “Me, Aeneas Kidawa, Mason Chandler, and Turqmos Knopf.”

  “Chandler’s boy wants to join the irregulars?” In his head Charles swore. A Kidawa and a Knopf with his kid brother.Of course it was a Kidawa, Charles thought. They were everywhere, and it was perfect! There was even a Knopf. Two for the price of one. Why couldn’t his brother have uninvolved friends? And the Chandler boy? Well, that didn’t surprise him too much he supposed. There couldn’t be much for him in the valley.

  “We all want to join.” Irenaeus waited for Charles to reply. He waited A long time as Charles thought, playing the possibilities over in his mind. It was the most annoying answer to the problem. The boys face lost its frown for a moment as Charles’ own frown deepened. “Please.” Irenaeus said. He didn’t exactly clasp his hands, but he might as well have. “It’s our only chance. Who knows how long this could last, and if we don’t go now, we might never have another chance.”

  That was another thing, the timeline, the damn timeline. Charles was getting tired of this conversation. He waved his hand for Irenaeus to leave him alone. “I’ll think about it.” He said. Projections were all over the place with humans involved in the battle now. Machines were easy, machines could project what machines were capable of, it’s what made them awful against the soldiers the Kamele had brought. If the war was going to be a hundred years long the Kidawa maneuvering wouldn’t have presented as big a problem. He would have had time, but with humans involved? He’d seen projections now that had them losing in less than a month, but if the population decided maybe the Quinns weren’t worth supporting? It could split the continent, and that would mean centuries again. Messy centuries. Dragging them back into the homeworld era of geo-political conflicts.

  “But-”

  “I said I’d think about it.” Charles said. “Now go. I understand. Let me make up my mind.”

  Irenaeus face fell, and Charles remembered other times he’d told his brother no. All growing up he’d been too young, and he, Charles, too uninterested in this little brother. He felt sorry for him despite himself.

  “You can’t stop us from joining.” Irenaeus said.

  “I’m not going to.” Charles said. He could of course, he was CEO of the planet, there was nothing he couldn’t do, but he wasn’t going to. Maybe. “Just give me a day to think about where to put you.”

  “All four of us?” The boy asked, the drooping face had found a little hope.

  “All four.” Charles said with a sour face. “Tomorrow. I’ll tell you tomorrow.” He was reviewing the troops that afternoon, he could make a decision then. If he wanted he could still back out, tell them no, maybe consult his parents and let them know that Irenaeus needed something to occupy his ambition.

  Irenaeus’s face broke into a brilliant grin. “Thanks Charles!” He said. “You’ll never regret it. I promise!” Then he was gone. Charles’ regretted it already. Where to put a Kidawa and a Knopf where they could cause the least trouble? Then again, he could use it as an excuse to deny any request from Ginny Kidawa, while at the same time squeezing out her men in the ranks. She could never say he was keeping her out, at least not in public. But only if her son was well placed. That would be the key.

  He let the problem go to the back of his mind as he pulled up the manufacturing reports. He’d always found such problems had a way of solving themselves in his brain while he worked.

  The depletion of the copper mine was becoming more obvious daily, and he had dozens of reports from prospectors all over the planet who thought they had the next spot. He’d worked through hundreds of them already, eliminating any outside of the mighty river’s long chasm. Too far for serious military protection or for serious manufacturing support, but it still left a pile of possibilities each with their advantages and drawbacks, advantages and drawbacks that could affect the outcome of the war, if they all survived long enough for their copper supply to make a difference.

  Halfway through the pile of new site proposals he thought of splitting the four boys up, send the Kidawa to the front to die, maybe even the Knopf boy, or tuck them into some inventory hole they’d never see the sun from while he promoted his brother and the Chandler boy. It was good the Chandler boy was involved, he decided, the Chandlers could be trusted. They were very old dependents of the Quinn’s, with history that went back to his father’s boyhood. He would make a good friend for Irenaeus.

  He was dumping most of the site proposals into the trash and still entertaining the idea when Ryker appeared at the door. “Is it time already?” Charles asked.

  Ryker glanced at the clock on Charles’ wall. “Just have to grab Falkye.” He replied.

  Charles nodded and he told the SEO to meet him on the landing pad, then went down to the media room to retrieve the general. When he found him he was in the middle of an involved recording of a clash between several detachments of automata in the no man’s land between the Kamele and Irregulars camps on the pampas. “Kamele automata.” Falkye said, gesturing to the screen. “Come take a look.”

  Charles turned on his implant’s manual mode and picked up the feed into Falkye’s digital universe. So the Kamele had automata after all. He couldn’t decide if he was relieved or terrified. They already knew it couldn’t be a very large force of them, but it could also mean they had a crash factory they hadn’t spotted running weaponry off of a conveyor belt to join the war. If they did Charles expected it would make less difference than it might have had the old projections held true. All the corporation’s hopes were pinned on human engagements now and their ability to recruit troops troops from the populace. Manpower was a resource they had significantly less of and which made significantly greater difference on the field than the near infinite supply of automata they’d stocked up. Even if the Kamele did sneak a few factories under their noses, they would never be able to match teh Quinn’s output of war machinery.

  “There’s only been a few skirmishes so far.” Falkye said. “We’re both testing the ground, seeing who’s automata are better.”

  “And are they?” Charles asked.

  “Are they what?”

  “Are their automata better than ours?”

  Falkye’s grin was predatory. “Not by a long shot.” He slid a file over to Charles and then deactivated the media room. “Look at it on the way. Time we were on the front.”

  “You won’t be needed here?”Charles could see the battle still going in a small corner of his war display. A nagging awareness funnelled into his mind by the computer attached to his skull. Usually Falkye liked to be involved as much as a remote commander could be involved, fine tuning the grander scale of the war and “soaking up the details” as he liked to call what looked to Charles like distracted micro management.

  Falkye tapped the side of his head to indicate his lenses. “Never far from the battles brother. Never fear.”

  Charles brought up the file as they walked out, watching it with only half a mind as he made the climb out of the media room and the quick elevator ride to the roof.

  The Kamele automata were squat stubby little things, six limbed and blocky, almost primitive. They resembled the Porqine and Catoblepas native to the planet, crabish and symmetrical, chromed out and with a single huge gun on their top. They could move fast when they wanted to, but never surpassed speeds much over fifty miles an hour at any point in the recordings Falkye had given him. Their two front limbs included grappling weapons for up close, but they mostly seemed to try fighting from a distance in small groups, packing close together where they could find cover and firing beams of coherent plasma at formations of hounds in unison. “They look like miniatures of their artillery stations.” Charles said as they reached the roof.

  “My guess,” Falkye said. “They’re designed to support their infantry. Not do solo engagements. If you look at the way they fight, they aren’t built for up close and personal, they’d be bigger. They’re small, makes for smaller targets, and sturdy, so they’re meant to stay at a distance, and their guns
are at least as powerful as our own long range models, if not somewhat more so.”

  Charles watched them dance with hounds across the landscape, scuttling into hummocks and around ridges to keep out of sight, popping out like a surprise in a box toy he’d had as a child to pour streams of plasma into the black corporate machines, then sprinting away with a ridiculous hopping motion. The hounds were faster though, and that meant the Kamele units were out maneuvered and eventually wiped out. Falkye shrugged. “It’s all just a test for now anyways.”

  At the roof a small craft, specially designed for corporate use, a model they hadn’t even made available to any of the sub-dynasties, waited for them. Sleek and brilliant yellow, it had a maximum speed of many times the speed of sound and a range that could get them anywhere on the super continent in under a half an hour. Their current destination was, of course, much closer than anything on the northern hemisphere of the planet. They spent more time rising than they would in transit. Charles and the two other occupants had enough time to register discomfort as warp fields similar to a shield but without the necessity of the rigid ion sheath, embraced and supported their internal organs, then they were there, decelerating and dropping through the camp shield while knights in shining armor milled beneath them.

  Eventually, Charles reflected, that kind of transit would become dangerous. The Kamele dominance in space gave them a theoretical command of movement through the atmosphere, but for now, the big ships seemed content to leave the planet’s infrastructure intact. If they changed their mind, Charles was ready, he just hoped they wouldn’t change their minds while he was mid transit. This would be one of the last flights he made.

  “It’s seems so much… smaller… in person.” Falkye said as he watched the descent out the window.

  “I was about to say just the opposite.” Ryker replied.

  Beneath them the camp was a disorganized sprawl of men in reflective armored suits, most of them faceless and dangerous beneath their helmets, but a few unmasked, aesthetic aberations that reminded them of the humanity who dwelled inside the heart of this machine they’d assembled on this treeless pampas. Here and there huge tents dominated the camp as the only real structures looking like stones amidst a frothing sea of men, sitting in the grass as they ate, battling in the melee pits, and trudging back and forth amongst the tents. Along the mountain range to the North they could see a second camp bubble where the automated division of the army was encamped. The “kennels” his brother said they were called, for the hounds.

  As the craft dropped into the dirt, soldiers cleared out of the way only to gawp as the doors opened and Charles and the other execs climbed out. For a moment Charles wasn’t sure what to do, confronted by so many visored faceless men, then Ryker called and waved to another man pushing his way through the ranks of astonished soldiers.

  “Laus!” Ryker called. “Laus, how are you?” He stepped forward to the short balding man in a grey greatcoat who emerged from the soldiers.

  “Nathaniel. It is good to see you sir. Very well, very well.” The two embraced and Ryker turned to the other two.

  “Laus, this is Charles and Falkye Quinn, the CEO and the commander general.”

  “Sir.” The old man saluted then bowed, and reached for the general’s hand. “Sir, if you’ll pardon the informality. We’ve only just got this outfit together, haven’t had much time to drill on etiquette and whatnot.” He shook Falkye’s hand, then Charles’, giving Charles’ a firm grip and a close examination of the eyes over a small smile.

  Laus was an unknown element in the political scuffling of the dynasties. He’d been born into a family of city managers, and what little Charles knew of him came from his reports. Up close and personal Charles got the impression of a wise man but not a shrewd one, one who made his assessment and worked from them without too much consideration for whether they were true or not. Charles wasn’t sure if that would be a good quality in an officer, but the man seemed unconnected to any of the dynasties,, as well as Charles and his agents could ascertain.

  “The name is Stanislaus Kaczmarek. Stanis to most, Laus to some, and Kaczmarek to the men I serve, or who serve me if you prefer. Call me what you want and we’ll get along fine so long as it’s not late to bed or breakfast. If you’ll follow me gentlemen we’ve got some mounts you can use for the inspection tour. I expect you’ve all ridden before.”

  The small crowd of onlookers were clearing away as Stanislaus led the party from the parked flyer, presumably at an implant signal from the short officer. Behind the dissipating crowd Charles spotted four of the pack master automata they’d designed in the bedlam that followed the Kamele incursion to serve the humans that would be filling out the army of irregulars. He stopped before mounting to give it a critical examination.

  The rough edges were obvious, a loose muscle band here, internal skeleton jutting out at the shoulders there, armor along the sensor cluster’s neck showing its welds, the cables visible underneath the black bands, places where parts that shouldn’t wear against one another were, all marks of a production design intended for speed over quality or efficiency. He swung himself on and tested the seat the way he would one of the pleasure bikes he’d grown up riding in the valley. He tried to imagine how the men recruited for the job would approach the machine, what experiences they would bring. Probably nothing like it. Maybe a boat.

  “Have you had any problems with these models?” He asked.

  “They’re good enough. Do their job. We’ll see how they perform in battle.” Laus mounted his own and waved for them to follow him. “A quick tour. I expect you’ll want to see the whole operation. If there is anything in particular you’d like to look at only let me know and I’ll make sure it’s made available for you.”

  Despite the roughshod design work that had gone into making the pack masters the machines moved like liquid over the trampled ground. Malleable legs of black artificial muscle snaked across the ground without the standard thumping that Charles had grown used to taking with each bump on the bike. The back moved up and down with the smoothness of a wave, and despite the exposed steel of the skeletal structure in the shoulders of the machine it did not seem to suffer any serious handicaps when it had to maneuver. Charles was satisfied, and turned his attention to the ranks of men around him instead.

  “How many battalions have you put together so far?” Ryker asked Laus as they rode.

  “We’ve got almost ten thousand troops here at the moment, ten battalions, and there are an additional six battalions being trained to the north along the western range as a safeguard against an assault there. It’s not a stupendous force but it does put a stop to the invaders roaming around as they please across the pampas, and they certainly won’t be thinking about dropping in through the mountains towards the Mighty River any time soon. Not without coming to grips with us first.”

  “Ten thousand men. In one place.” Ryker said. “It’s bigger than any of our cities.”

  “Most of them come from the cities.” Laus replied. “Only the first through the fourth battalions are wild. Southron battalions, homesteaders and farmers. Fifth through the eighth are city folk, from Quinn city and Quolhost, Oostburg, Avakoff, Dumpings. Four thousand all told, and the ninth and tenth were collected from the pampas, mostly at their market towns, I couldn’t tell you their names. I think Vermillion is the name of the big one out there, Vermillion and one other one. All the little towns ride in from wherever to join.”

  “What about the six battalions to the north?” Ryker asked.

  “They come from the north. Neckwater, Spills, and A shanty town I don’t believe has a name, though I could be wrong. The prospector there only said that they catch fish and he wouldn’t mind dumping some criminals and vagabonds into the ranks as well as anyone else who wanted to join. That’s Zarha’s command while I’ve taken this one.” Zarha was one of the Kidawa clowns that troubled Charles’ thoughts and it drew his mind.

  “You negotiated with the city prospectors?
” Charles asked Laus suddenly. Charles turned to study Ryker. As the Settlement Executive that should have been his task.

  “I am a city prospector myself.” Stanislaus said. “Or was in a previous life. I was the Oostburg prospector, well vested too. My family maintains the estate we established for running the place while I chase this infestation off planet. Nathaniel Ryker was kind enough to offer me an executorship, a sponsorship I will not forget, I can assure you. I am most grateful.”

  “And we’ll be grateful if you chase these invaders off.” Charles said. “At a minimum cost in human lives.” Humanity had become a valuable commodity, one with a limited reserve supply that Quinn did not want to think about. Not on top of the mines and the factories and the redesigns. He needed this army to work. He needed good news.

  “War is a terrible thing. A terrible thing.” Stanislaus was saying. “Shouldn’t be like this, fought with men. When wars are fought by machines, now that’s a humane type of war I say, only the corporations involved, only their automata dying by the hundreds. Only money shed. None of this bloody suffering. But they brought the men, they set the field. We’ll respond in kind, not just for the corporation’s sake, beggin your pardon mister Quinn sir, but for the people of Marain. They’ve put their life blood into this place. I’ve put my life blood in this place, particularly into Oostburg, and my father did before me. Not right some invader from another world should be allowed to come and take all that for his own folk. And I’ll hear no talk of their settling peaceably out on the pampas as I’ve heard from some in my old society. I’ll believe that tale when I see it. Those men will need food, I’ll bet they don’t plan to survive on the rations they brought themselves for long. They’ll make a move to start plundering, and soon if I’m not mistaken.”

  Charles could see the flash of lightning and smell the ozone from plasma fire now as they approached the fighting pits. “These are the dueling pits.” Laus said, waving his hand over the truly huge stretch of space fenced into squares, some of them measuring in acres. “This is where we are training your army.”