The old war engines cast deep shadows across the village wall, like a forest on ancient Earth. Lyon put his night scope to his eyes and scanned into their depths. As the only true, trained soldier here, he’d gotten the night scope.
“This is twelve o’clock. No movement,” he reported into his headset. Lyon had come from a commercially important world, which meant as a soldier he’d survived his share of corpie gunfights. Out here on Nyarra there was only rice paddies, perpetually spongy and damp ground, and a lonely landing pad with a basic refueling facility and garage for the smallest of spacecraft.
“I hear you watch leader. Watch out please, we don’t need to lose any more people,” mission control replied.
Laezzelle had fought for professional soldiers, and against other professional soldiers. Out here, he stood out. Everyone was farmers and mechanics first. The militia’s attempts at soldiery made him grit his teeth in sheer cringe. “Worry more about yourself, Isa. I’ve got a gun and a good view,” he replied.
Silence. Too harsh, he thought. These people had simply accepted his presence and hadn’t asked questions. That was a warmer welcome than anywhere else. “Isa, if it gets through the walls it’s going to head straight for you, since you’re broadcasting on the most powerful antennae in the village,” he said.
He ran through known facts about the enemy. There was one of it. It knew to avoid Lyon on its raids because it always attacked opposite of where he was on guard duty. It didn’t have a gun but it sported monomolecular blades that cleaved holes in and out of wherever it wanted to go. And it was almost human. Just a bit too long in the torso to have all the right organs. The usual superstitions abounded, but Lyon hadn’t given his own theory.
The old war machines were around a thousand years old. This side of the planet was flat for a thousand kilometers in all directions, which must have made a good battlefield for such massive machines. There’d been some bones dug up around them. They were tombs. This village sat in the middle of a massive graveyard with no marked tombstones.
Nyarra must have been important once, for so many monsters to be thrown in to fight over it. Lyon didn’t know why. No one knew and no one had heard of any ruined cities, or anything else of value but rice and wind turbines.
“If it gets through again, will you come running?” Isa said.
“Yes. I’ll get to you in not time,” he promised. The thing had started raiding a week ago. No one knew where it had come from. It struck from a different direction, at a different time each day. It had hit the main radio antennae, the sewage treatment plant, and a poor traveling merchant who’d landed that day. The villagers had responded by tripling the wall sentries and enforcing a nightly curfew.
“I can tell you’re just trying to reassure me,” she said.
He looked back, at the space port control tower they’d improvised as the nightly command center. He struggled for words.
“You’ve spent too much time playing corpies and aliens with my son. I’ve gotten to know when you’re bluffing,” she said. “Just because I was never a corpie business woman, doesn’t mean I can’t read people.”
He heard anger in her voice. He didn’t have an answer.
“Sorry.”
“Just kill this thing. Before it kills or drives off everyone, please.”
Lyon’s mouth fell open as he struggled for a response.
He was saved by the clank of the village gong. Ten clangs rang out across the village and the plains beyond, rousing dactyls from their nests in the old war machines.
“All sentries eyes open. The earliest attacks started around this time,” Lyon said, and reclaimed some of his authority. He did another sweep.
Something flashed in the plains, far from any cover. His blood sang at finally getting a chance to take this thing head on.
“Movement at twelve o’clock. Range about two kilometers out,” he said. He zoomed the scope out and swept the plains. Nothing but grass. The night scope projected everything in artificial shades of green. It was bad for detail, but good for picking out movement and silhouettes in the dark.
Another flash. “Sighted. Range eighteen hundred meters.” He zoomed in. Movement flashed again. “Seventeen hundred.”
“This is reserve force, we’re coming,” another woman replied. The wind picked up, carrying the roar of bike engines starting up with it.
He finally got a clear view of his target.
It was a four wheeled buggy. It had a faded corpie logo on the side. That didn’t mean much, because anything modern in the corporate sectors was at least three decades old by the time it made it out here.
Lyon stared dumbfounded at it. It was almost hilarious how easily he’d just been punked. A practical joke.
“It’s a decoy,” he said and leapt to his feet. “Pull back, it’s a decoy!”
“Wait what?”
“I said it’s a decoy. It’s just a buggy with a flashing light. Six o’clock sentry, eyes up,” Laezella said. He spun to look across the village, at the distant line of lights that was the opposite wall.
“Six O’clock, do you hear him?” Isa said.
Laezzelle scoped across the village. He saw a couple flashes. Distant cracks rang across the air. “Gunfire at six o’clock,” he said.
“Six, report. Open your mouth!” Isa snapped.
“It’s gone through the wall! It ran straight through!” the panicked sentry cried. Lyon sprinted down the wall stairs.
“Where in the wall?”
“Under me, it went directly under my sentry post.”
“I need a location!” Isa said. Lyon was already doing the mental navigation, even as he cursed the idiot sentry.
“Don’t call him an idiot, he’s just a boy,” he said as he hit the bottom of the stairs. The response force had reached the stairwell. They were turning their bikes around.
“Go, go. Across the village!” Lyon said. He grabbed his own bike. The twin fans roared to life, lifting it a meter off the street.
“This is eight o’clock, I’ve got eyes on it. It’s moving for the village center,” an older woman’s voice crackled.
“Isa, take cover,” Lyon said. “Does it have any weapons?”
“No. Just those too long arms. And I see a red eye. Is it a robot?” she said.
“That would make it at least a thousand years old,” Lyon said. An explosion rang out. “Ila,” he said.
“I’m here. That blast was in the homes behind the spaceport,” she said.
That was where her home was, and her son was hiding in the basement.
The spaceport and its lonely control tower passed to Lyon’s right. The ruins of the merchant’s freighter lay on the landing pad, scorched black, his body fused inside until radiation from its reactor dispersed.
Lyon followed the militia as they made a left turn down the main street. The largest houses, located at the center of the village, loomed ahead.
His phone rang. He saw the number and picked up.
“Hey, Tarawon,” he said to Isa’s son.
“Lyon, it’s here. It’s upstairs. Help me.”
Oh fuck. Everything went cold. He wondered if it was chance that the thing had stumbled into the most important house in the village by coincidence, or it had deliberately gone for the most important person in the village. That meant it was watching them during the day, analyzing all the critical targets like a corporate tactical team. It very well could be a robot. Which meant it was a thousand years old, and had technology not even the most advanced corpies had nowadays. “I’m coming, I’m coming. Stay silent so it can’t hear you.”
“It already knows I’m here,” he whimpered. “It’s coming through the-“
A crash rang out. “Isa. It’s in your house,” Lyon said. She didn’t answer.
He saw the two-story adobe building. Like all village houses, it was a single blocky home with rounded corners, and a walled courtyard behind it, to protect from the winds whipping through the plains.
There was a black hole torn through the front wall, next to the door. The thing’s entrance and exit were obvious by two sets of four-pronged claw marks smashed through the pavement. I drew my rifle and followed the first set in.
The apartment was as he remembered, except for the hole torn straight through the living room floor.
“Lyon, is Tar alright?” Isa found her voice.
He stopped at the hole and looked down into the basement. Two old action figures lay alone on the floor, amongst the rubble.
“Is he still there? Is he okay?” she said.
“He’s gone. No body. It took him alive.” That was a first. At least he was still there.
“I…I’m coming. I need him back,” she said.
“I’m turning my locator on. I’ll find him and you follow when you can,” Lyon said. He sprinted back out.
The village raced past, all dark except for the few streetlights the old geothermal plant could handle.
He found the militia clustered around the human-sized holes in the wall. One next to the other. This was definitely a thinking life form, He thought. Something toying with Them and laughing about it.
“Where is it?” Lyon said. He leapt off and led his bike through them by the handlebars. Twenty-something fearful stares drilled into me.
“It’s running away in a straight line. Going straight to the Wulver,” someone said. That was one of the larger old war machines. It looked like it had two arms with claws, hence the adventurous name.
“That’s the first time we’ve actually tracked it leaving. It’s got the boy alive. I’ll lead,” Lyon said. He pushed to the front and clambered into the hole. The searchlights projected about a hundred meters out. Beyond that, darkness. At ground level, he saw nothing but flat, moldy peat. A few massive shadows loomed beyond. No footsteps followed him, to comfort him. He spun around. Twenty fearful stares refused.
Lyon hoped they’d go, because he didn’t want to go out there in the dark with some ancient war machine, alone.
“It has our boss’s kid. Come on,” he said.
They stared back, too afraid to even voice their protest.
“It’s your planet and kid, not mine. I’m just employed here,” he said.
They shook their heads, and the nearest few backed away.
“Cowards,” he said to make himself angry, and mounted up on his bike. He called them cowards in his head as he rode off, and let the anger rise until it contested the raw terror.
He looked back and forth between the ground and sky as he went. After three years of looking out on the old war machines, he knew all their silhouettes. The land tank was the squat silhouette off to his left, wide as the entire village. On his right, the smaller triplets. He threaded around the nearest triplet, and in his headlights, briefly saw the empty slits in steel where its cannons had once protruded a millennia ago.
There’d once been an archaeologist, before his time. She’d climbed into the ruins, past the wrecks of camping expeditions and rappelled down the shafts parents had shuttered off so their children wouldn’t fall down. The woman had written a book of notes, then gone off on an expedition after some vague signpost she’d seen in the ruins. Something far away. She’d never come back, but the book remained.
The tank was a robot, with an AI core at its center. The triplets were part of a larger swarm of human-crewed vehicles that must have killed it, since their guns were pointed its way and there were matching shell holes all along the tank’s hull.
The wulver was a robot ship that had crashed from orbit, decades earlier. It was the oldest machine here.
He passed the tank, then the towering form of the arena, which was another model like the tank, except it had detonated and its top blown straight outwards.
The wulver stood tall against the stars. Its arms were engines, the claws the magnetic thrust vectoring plates that accelerated plasma to push it forwards.
Lyon had seen modern human weapons in action against other humans. As he’d read that book, he’d tried not to think about what those ancient weapons would have done, as human and robot fought each other to the genocide of the robots.
The wulver grew as he approached, until he made out the monstrous crags of individual armor plates, still visible against the accumulated dirt and moss. It was the highest point for a thousand kilometers.
Lyon followed the clawprints straight up to the base of the wulver, right at the intersection of two armored plates large as city blocks. They ended there, in the shadow between them. Lyon hopped off and slung his rifle off his shoulders. He left the bike running, hovering off the ground, just in case.
Lyon walked straight up to the shadows, heart hammering all the while. The ancient metal creaked as he approached, and his footsteps rippled through the spongy ground.
He poked it with his rifle. It rattled in the night.
Lyon heard the thinness in the meta and gave it a solid kick. The flimsy sheet fell inwards and kept falling. Several seconds later, he heard a faint crash.
He stuck his head in and put his eyes to his night scope.
The inside was a vast cavern of smashed structural beams. He saw a tangle of smashed metal far below. No sign of the sheet metal he’d kicked, amongst chunks the size of houses.
His heart fell away with it. The wulver had to be bigger than any ship he’d ever seen. Even the bulk freighters that were the blood cells of corporate civilization weren’t this massive. And there was no way down. He swept the interior right to left, then up a few degrees, then left to right. Over and over, finger pressed to the trigger and waiting. He had to identify this thing first. And Tarawon.
If he saw a human shape that wasn’t Tarawon, he would empty the magazine.
He almost yelled the boy’s name but swallowed hard. It was silly to be afraid. The thing already knew he was coming. Yet he didn’t want to give it the boy’s name.
He grabbed his radio. “Isa, you still here?”
“I’m going through the wall now. Is it just you out there?”
“Yeah.”
“Fucking gutless cowards. They wouldn’t fight for their own families. Fucking farmers. Do you see him?”
“It took him right into the wulver,” Lyon said.
Silence.
He waited for an answer for a few seconds. Then started searching for a way down.
Something grabbed him under the elbow. He spun around, swinging his rifle with his remaining arm.
Then he was flying through the air. He hit the ground with a wet squelch and stuck facedown.
He rolled over and spat up bitter mud as he extricated his rifle.
A massive black shape occluded his vision. He saw a humanoid silhouetted, except its torso was too long and thin to have organs, and its arms reached past it knees.
“Subject disarmed,” it said, and wrenched the rifle away so fast Lyon’s index finger popped and dislocated. “You will be transported to the lab for bio warfare experimentation. You may resist. It does not matter.”
“Where’s the boy?” Lyon said. He got his knees beneath him and stood.
“The bait is alive for experimentation.” It swiped his feet out from under him. He landed facedown with something screaming pain in his left ankle. He came up, and in his bike’s headlights he saw the boy lying on his back, arms and legs tied. Something black and rippling was clamped over his mouth. His eyes widened when he saw Lyon.
“What lab?” he said.
“The network lab,” it said. Lyon rolled over, and saw one large red eye staring down at him.
“What fucking lab?”
“The network lab.” It snatched him up around his waist. Its arm was warm like a living body, yet rigid. It was a machine after all. It had programming and a form built in a factory. He yanked the sidearm from his belt and jammed it into the robot’s neck. The handgun roared.
“Chemical propelled firearm. Primitive.” It didn’t even take the gun away as it walked over to Tarawon. Lyon didn’t risk another shot lest a ricohet hit him.
“Hey Tar,” he said.
“Mmmph.”
“I’m working on it, don’t worry,” Lyon lied.
His eyes got wider.
They were hauled along, around the side of the wulver. Lyon thought fast. Too fast, his mind was racing as that horrible, self-destructive emotion called panic took control.
Start thinking. It said primitive.
“Of course it’s primitive. We never recovered from the last war,” he said. “We won by the way. Flesh and blood humans.”
“Incorrect. The war is ongoing, though this battlefield appears to be clearer.”
Wait. Was this robot a herald of a new war? Or, please let it just be some misguided soldier. “The war ended a thousand years ago. The date is one-thousand forty, standard years. You’re late to the fight.
It paused mid-step. The ambient heat radiating from its metal skin rose slightly. Lyon wondered if it was doing calculations. He didn’t know much about robots, except it had taken a century and a few hundred billion lives to put them down.
“This unit does not conclude. We are on the world of beta four four. Our clock has advanced two weeks since our launch. There are humans here. Therefore, clearly the war has not ended. This unit will make up for its malfunction in the last battle.
“No it’s not. Look at the stars or something.”
“This unit is a war drone, not a navigator.” The red eye stared at him. “Your purpose is to commit biological reproduction. This unit’s purpose has surpassed the needs of biology. The next stage of evolution.”
“You lost the war. Look around you,” Lyon said. “We’re living among the ruins because when you grow rice here it ferments into a nice wine.”
No answer. Tarawon twitched a bit and murmured. The robot didn’t notice either of them.
This wasn’t working. Lyon didn’t have another option.
“Look. I’m a soldier too.”
“You are a reproductive unit.”
“Yeah and you singled me out. Clearly I’m this biggest threat, war drone,” he said. He kicked at the war drone’s back with his good leg, and his toes stung. Isa would be coming. Could a full-sized rifle loaded with ‘primitive’ gunpowder driven bullets hurt it?
“Aren’t robots supposed to have adaptive learning? Look at how old these ruins are,” Lyon said. He craned his neck to see where they were going, until it ached. They seemed to be wrapping slowly around the wulver. Such a walk would take over an hour.
A rounded bulge in the otherwise geometric war machine loomed ahead. Lyon squinted at it. He saw an outline of thrusters. As the robot’s red eye shined on it, he saw it wasn’t part of the wulver, but was lodged into it with ancient metal rippling around from the force of the impact. It was a boarding pod, fired by a robot ship a thousand years ago. A blue light came on, and he saw the hatch was open, the interior faded metal but still very intact. Somehow this had malfunctioned on impact, and the war machines within remained deactivated. Until now, for some reason.
They stopped before the hatch. Lyon smelled something he never had on this world; dry, stale air, trapped for a thousand years.
It threw them to the ground. Lyon crawled over and ripped the gag from Tarawon’s mouth.
“Mommy,” he whimpered.
“I know,” he said.
“It just knocked you down and took your gun.”
“I know,” Lyon said as he felt the kid’s admiration fading. He grabbed the bonds at his ankles, and found they were cables thick as his finger. No chance he’d tear them out.
“Get me out. Please.”
“I’m trying.” He spun around.
His radio buzzed. “Lyon, I think I can,”
The robot snatched it away. “Analyzing communications.” It pressed a finger to the earpiece, and Lyon gasped as the finger went straight through it. “Scanning for friendly signatures.”
“There’s no one. You’re alone with your stupid war,” Lyon said. No answer. He got his good, left leg beneath him and pushed up until he rose. His left boot actually sank into the ground a bit, helping him stand straight. “There’s no one out there.”
The red eye focused back on him. He stared into it and saw nothing. Of course not, robots were not human.
“Then this unit will restart the war.”
“With just you fighting it.”
“It is programming.”
“Like, shit. I fought wars for decades. I don’t anymore. I don’t keep my,”
“You are an organic life form. Your job is to reproduce,” it said.
“I am a corporate soldier. I fought. Now my war’s over. My war’s over. I came here to teach the farmers how to shoot straight, in case pirates come. They’re not soldiers.”
“Amusing."
“How’s it feel to be alone?” Lyon said. “Just you. Out here.”
The robot remained staring at him, but its red eye did a full circle around its head. Lyon couldn’t tell if the eye was a camera, or just a visual representation of its sensors. For the sake of terrifying humans. “This unit will restart the war.”
“I came here to get away from war.” Lyon grabbed a knife. He limped back to Tarawon’s side. “I’m cutting the boy free. He has no military value.” He sawed away fast as he could. The knife hit something soft and Tarawon whimpered through clenched teeth. “Sorry.”
“This unit is a war drone.”
“You’re a robot. You guys calculate, adapt, and overcome. I don’t know how we humans won the war, except we did,” he said. Tarawon’s wrists sprang free. He seized Lyon’s knee. “Yeah, hang on. Roll over, okay?”
Tarawon did so with another whimper. Lyon got to sawing.
“This unit…” It trailed off. Lyon freed his legs. He straightened, and pain raced through his own injured leg.
“Is going to start a war over some lines of code written a thousand years ago. You’re as bad as our corpie execs, following all their old grudges, you know that? They say it’s about money and capitalism, but they’ve got all their petty grudges. That’s you,” Lyon said.
“This unit is superior to organics.”
“You sure?” Lyon said. “I’d say militarily you are, but you lost the war somehow.” He threw out his arms. As he said that, he realized he’d just made an invitation for the robot to kill him right there. His heart dropped. Please don’t, he thought.
“Does not compute.” The robot crushed his rifle in its claw. Chunks of plastic clattered to the ground.
“Want to calculate it over a bit?” Lyon said. AI restrictions meant this robot could never show its sensors in the greater galaxy. Maybe it could stay here.
“Calculations complete.” It stared at him. Maybe. He’d decided the red eye was an actual eye. “This unit has concluded that the purpose of its construction is hopeless. It also does not have the correct tooling to adapt. It was built for war. Either the war must continue without a chance of victory, or it must cease.”
A light opened in its chest. Lyon squinted and saw a circle with ten parts. Then nine. Then eight. Fear screamed in his ears. He threw himself atop Tarawon and clamped his hands over the kid’s ears.
“This unit has lost.”
Heat baked Lyon’s back, drying the mud on his body and scorching the back of his neck. Then a thunderclap slammed him into the ground. The boy cried out as they were crushed into the ground.
His skin ached. He sucked in a deep breath and choked boiling air. “Tarawon?” he said.
“It killed itself,” the boy said. “It was a robot and it killed itself.” He sounded numb with surprise, not horror.
Lyon rolled off and flopped on his back. He winced as cold grown dug into the burned skin at the back of his neck. “Are you okay?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Thank goodness,” he said. He sat up, and looked back where the robot had been.
The robot was spread across several meters. Its limbs had scattered, and torso vanished into a black stain on the ground. Lyon got to his knees and gritted his teeth as pain ran up.
Lyon shrugged. He felt a bit of sadness. He’d uprooted his own life three years ago, just to get out of the corporate soldier life. To wake up after a thousand years and realize the world was ended. Well, robot wars started because machines gained sentience, right? Maybe it did feel human emotions. Maybe it had panicked.
Maybe we won the robot war because being organic means you’re more adaptable? He thought.
“Why’d it kill itself? It’s a killer war drone. It could have done anything, right?” Tarawon said.
“I guess it couldn’t go against its programming, but it knew the war was over,” he said.
“So it had a logic bomb?”
“Smart kid, yeah,” he said. He ruffled Tarawon’s wild brown hair. “And you’re getting a haircut tomorrow,” he said to distract him.
“No,” he said limply. He stared past Lyon at the smoking crater. “I just feel bad.”
“Don’t,” Lyon said. “It’s a robot, it can’t have feelings.”
“I know you’re lying. I’ve seen you talk to mom too much and I can tell,” he said.
For fuck’s sake, Lyon thought as his own confusion at the robot’s death raced back to the surface.
Headlights shined in his face. He staggered to his feet, because it would look more dignified.. The bike swooped in and came to a halt. Isa had a hunting rifle in one hand and the handlebars in the other “Where’s the thing?” she said and leapt off.
“It’s dead,” Lyon said. “I got him, he’s okay.”
Isa looked almost disappointed as she stuck the rifle nose-down in the dirt. “Did it hurt you?” she raced past Lyon and grabbed her son.
“Mom, I’m fine. Lyon killed it, look.” Tarawon pointed past her at the crater. “It was an old robot, from the great war. When Lyon shot it, it blew itself up.”
Lyon looked at the boy, who gave him a wink.
“Yeah,” he said. “Had to get it to drop him first.”
Isa spun on him. “Let’s go home. And thank you.” She threw her arms around both of them.
…..
Thank you for reading, friend. If you liked this story and want to read a new one every week, feel free to like and subscribe. I look forwards to seeing you next week.
So many stories, so little time it seems. I wish I had the time to read them all.
Oy! Rather action packed!