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- Herausgeber: Zombies Need Brains, LLC
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
One man's insurgent is another man's freedom fighter… From The Moon is a Harsh Mistress to The Hunger Games, everyone enjoys a good rebellion. There is something compelling about a group (or individual) who throws caution to the wind and rises up in armed defiance against oppression, tyranny, religion, the government—you name it. No matter the cause, or how small the chance, it's the courage to fight against overwhelming odds that grabs our hearts and has us pumping our fists in the air. Win or lose, it's the righteous struggle we cherish, and those who take up arms for a cause must walk The Razor's Edge between liberator and extremist. With stories by Blake Jessop, William C. Dietz, D.B. Jackson, Gerald Brandt, Sharon P. Goza, Walter H. Hunt, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, Kay Kenyon, Steve Perry, Seanan McGuire, Christopher Allenby, Chris Kennedy, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., Alex Gideon, Brian Hugenbruch, and Y.M. Pang.
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Seitenzahl: 443
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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THE RAZOR’S EDGE
Other Anthologies Edited by:
Patricia Bray & Joshua Palmatier
After Hours: Tales from the Ur-Bar
The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity
Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs Aliens
Temporally Out of Order
Alien Artifacts
Were-
All Hail Our Robot Conquerors!
Second Round: A Return to the Ur-Bar
S.C. Butler & Joshua Palmatier
Submerged
Guilds & Glaives
Laura Anne Gilman & Kat Richardson
The Death of All Things
Troy Carrol Bucher & Joshua Palmatier
The Razor’s Edge
THE RAZOR’S EDGE
Edited by
Troy Carrol Bucher
&
Joshua Palmatier
Zombies Need Brains LLC
www.zombiesneedbrains.com
Copyright © 2018 Troy Carrol Bucher, Joshua Palmatier, and
Zombies Need Brains LLC
All Rights Reserved
Interior Design (ebook): April Steenburgh
Interior Design (print): ZNB Design
Cover Design by ZNB Design
Cover Art “The Razor’s Edge” by Justin Adams of Varia Studios
ZNB Book Collectors #13
All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions of this book, and do not participate or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted material.
Kickstarter Edition Printing, August 2018
First Printing, September 2018
Print ISBN-10: 1940709229
Print ISBN-13: 978-1940709222
Ebook ISBN-10: 1940709237
Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1940709239
Printed in the U.S.A.
COPYRIGHTS
Introduction copyright © 2018 by Troy Carrol Bucher
“Halo of Storms” copyright © 2018 by Blake Jessop
“The Battle for Rainbow’s End” copyright © 2018 by William C. Dietz
“The Woman in Green” copyright © 2018 by D.B. Jackson
“Miller’s Choice” copyright © 2018 by Gerald Brandt
“Neural Net” copyright © 2018 by Sharon P. Goza
“Eleven Days” copyright © 2018 by Walter H. Hunt
“Revolutionists” copyright © 2018 by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
“The Gunslinger” copyright © 2018 by Kay Kenyon
“Contender” copyright © 2018 by Steve Perry
“Rise Up, Rise Up, You Children of the Moon” copyright © 2018 by Seanan McGuire
“The Parallactic Soldier” copyright © 2018 by C.A. Brincefield
“Freedom!” copyright © 2018 by Chris Kennedy
“The Liberator” copyright © 2018 by Leland E. Modesitt, Jr.
“The Weapon They Fear” copyright © 2018 by Alexander G.R. Gideon
“An Acceptable Risk to the Portfolio” copyright © 2018 by Brian Hugenbruch
“Final Flight of the PhoenixWing” copyright © 2018 by Y.M. Pang
Table of Contents
Introduction by Troy Carrol Bucher
“Halo of Storms” by Blake Jessop
“The Battle for Rainbow’s End”
by William C. Dietz
“The Woman in Green”
by D.B. Jackson
“Miller’s Choice” by Gerald Brandt
“Neural Net” by Sharon P. Goza
“Eleven Days” by Walter H. Hunt
“Revolutionists”
by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
“The Gunslinger” by Kay Kenyon
“Contender” by Steve Perry
“Rise Up, Rise Up, You Children of the Moon” by Seanan McGuire
“The Parallactic Soldier”
by Christopher Allenby
“Freedom!” by Chris Kennedy
“The Liberator” by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
“The Weapon They Fear”
by Alex Gideon
“An Acceptable Risk to the Portfolio”
by Brian Hugenbruch
“Final Flight of the PhoenixWing”
by Y.M. Pang
About the Authors
About the Editors
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Troy Carrol Bucher
This is not your typical Military SF/F anthology.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with guns blazing, lasers firing, missiles exploding, hovertanks … um, well … hovering I suppose (there are plenty of these things in the anthology, by the way, along with powered armor, deadly AIs, space ships, drones, and even a little battle magic), but Josh and I were looking for something deeper when we began bouncing ideas around for a Military SF/F anthology. If forced to narrow it down to a few simple words, I’d say we wanted to fill this anthology with ‘struggles that mattered,’ and what better way to do that than with stories of rebellion and insurgency? The few against the many, the oppressed rising up against the oppressor, the liberators versus the fascists, all mixed in with the costs and the consequences associated with winning. Or in some cases losing.
You see, rebellions and insurgencies are about a lot more than lighting a cigar on the hot barrel of a projectile weapon after vanquishing one’s enemy on the field of battle. Believe me, I know. After 28 years in the military, I’ve spent my fair share of time in Iraq and Afghanistan. War is unforgiving, chaotic, and brutal, and the weapons don’t care who is innocent or who is guilty, or who is right or who is wrong. Rebellions and insurgencies blur those lines even more, and the advanced technology possible in Science Fiction (or the magical power in Fantasy) only serves to expand the collateral damage. Throw in overwhelming odds, and you have a recipe for driving desperate individuals to do both great and abhorrent things.
There is a broad spectrum of stories in this anthology that delve into the diverse nature of rising up for “the cause.” Sixteen stories that range from epic battles between space fleets to a single person’s defiance at the right place and time. There is a little magic, a little alternate history, and occasionally a little humor. Several are tie-ins to worlds and novels that await your discovery. We hope you enjoy them all.
Halo of Storms
Blake Jessop
1.
Violet is in cover when the Nosferatu drone kills Carlos. They’re scouting the ruins, larvae looking for food on the carcass of the city.
Carlos makes a dash across the open. Violet is only an R3, so she’s supposed to be on point, but they’ve fallen into the habit of taking turns. Power-assisted stealth suits make each of them into a self-contained, radar-invisible human tank. The Hellfire VI missile the drone drops on them is a SADARM; a dedicated search and destroy armor weapon. It’s packed with self-guided thermobaric submunitions that are smarter than most dogs. They have better noses, too. The machine can’t see Carlos in his stealth suit, so it just saturates the air with ignition vapor and turns the entire block into a spiraling inferno.
Carlos R5 hugs the ground in the microsecond between dispersal hiss and eruption. His air filter locks to stop the sudden pressure drop from sucking his lungs out of his chest. It feels like someone clamping a hand on your air hose underwater.
The explosion tears the sky apart and vaporizes the rain. The concussion blasts Violet through the air and entombs her in rubble.
Her heart beats a frantic tattoo. She opens her eyes. Alarms plaster her heads-up display, refracted through forking cracks and a light spatter of blood. Somehow, Carlos survives. His seals are blown, he’s hurt, and the stealth suit is a shredded patchwork of mimetic weave and armor plate. Violet can’t get to him while he’s out in the open. She has to shake the drone first. Carlos tries to crawl. They make eye contact. Violet glances skyward in time to see a lightning strike burn a beautiful vertical line into her retinas.
There’s nothing but flesh and bone in the flash channel. Carlos R5 explodes. His arms and legs go pinwheeling off in different directions as blood steams from the stumps. The Nosferatu drones have directed ion course weapons that the old world designed to eliminate collateral damage. Violet knows this objectively, but in that instant it’s indistinguishable from divine punishment.
Someone screams profanity into Violet’s helmet. Her, possibly, or her concussion. She tries to get up, and it’s only then that she notices that her left arm is missing.
“Fuck,” she says again, “HUD, this hurts. Regulate.”
Ice floods Violet R3’s veins. She goes to sleep listening to her HUD urgently trying to keep her awake.
2.
“Her infra-low waves are abnormal. This is pointless. She’s walking into the light, Doc.”
“No,” the cutter says, “she’s dreaming.”
In a misty world of synthetic opioids and pain, Violet dreams she is a child.
The dream bunker is always smaller than it really was. Like a gingerbread house. She sits on her father’s knee and listens to his stories. There’s a game they play. He spins her a tale from before the drone war, and she guesses whether it’s true.
“Okay, Vi—do you believe in pavlova?” he says.
This is a silly question, because she’s eating some as he asks the question. There is no such thing anymore, obviously. There may never have been. She imagines it as large and soft and colorful. It’s hard to eat, because she only has one arm and no fork. Like most memories of loving fathers, it is indescribably sweet.
As Violet grew up, her Dad told her what it was like to watch the world die. Violet has never lived under a sky without the drones, never walked under stars that did not contain the Mother Array. She has never lived in a city that didn’t look like a line of broken teeth, never been able to really imagine how many people it would take to satiate the dying giant, nor guess how many it has already swallowed.
There was no window in the bunker Violet grew up in, but there is in the dream. She can see the Nosferatu flying around, shooting lightning at people who pop like festive little fireworks. Spider tanks waddle around and sweep up the mess with giant rotating brooms.
Violet bats her tiny fist against the window. The rattle is weak because she only has one hand, but the drones hear her anyway. They hear everything.
“Why do you have to do that?” Violet yells.
“You started it,” the Nosferatu says, flying in circles above the bunker.
“It’s not their fault, Vi,” her father explains. “We taught them how to do that.”
“It’s still not fair.”
“I know, baby. That’s why you’re going to be a great soldier. What do we do when stuff is unfair?”
“We fight back!” Violet squeaks.
Somewhere in the waking world Violet moans and her brain waves relax. The room, her mind, and the Opera House itself all become quiet. The shrapnel took her left arm off as cleanly as a scalpel. She would have bled to death if her stealth suit hadn’t dumped its entire supply of hemostatic gel onto the stump. Violet did become a great soldier. She’s a third-tier scout. A genuine operator with a name and alphanumeric, so they do their best to save her. Once she’s breathing on her own, the medics get to work installing a new arm.
3.
Violet survives the next twenty-four hours the same way she does most things: against both odds and expectations. Learning to use the new arm goes surprisingly well, although the immunosuppressants leave a faint taste of copper in her mouth.
The idea of going back outside leaves her feeling gun-shy. The graceful metal struts and servos she now has instead of a left arm will get her killed if she goes outside and waves them at the sky. The drones know the danger presented by humans is exactly proportional to their technology, so they flatten anything with higher energy conversion efficiency than a campfire.
After six weeks Violet is cleared for combat, whether she wants back out or not.
She thumbs through the duty roster. It’s printed on actual paper. No electronic footprint to intercept.Thumbs,she thinks,is the wrong word. I’m clawing.Her new hand has four long metal fingers. They’re extremely flexible, better than the originals, but she can’t get the hang of turning pages with them. Something’s wrong with the roster; there’s no one to partner up with. No superiors to back up, no rookies to train.
It’s hard to admit, but the thought of going back outside terrifies her. She once had perfect faith in the stealth suits. Now when she thinks about them, all she can imagine is shreds of diamene fabric trying to color match Carlos’ blood.
In the end she has to go out by herself. In a way, she fights her rebellion right there, at the door. Going out alone is a death sentence. The new arm feels like it belongs to someone else. She takes her first steps under a clear blue sky with the fear of an acrophobe trying to jump out of a drop glider.
For two days she cowers in the harbor, scared shitless and blowing recon objectives. She comes back in ahead of schedule and tries to figure out what the hell is going on.
Violet writes spidery notes and wishes she had been right handed. She tries to hunt down old friends. Nobody will speak to her, as though they’re afraid what happened to Carlos is a disease she can somehow spread.
On her way to the dorms one night she gets lucky and runs into Marika, a rookie she trained back when she was an R2. Marika is Maori; a full head taller than Violet, and the ta moko tattoo on her chin gives her a look that’s both alluring and alien. She’s wearing a Recon combat patch on her shoulder with a conspicuous Roman numeral one. Violet hadn’t heard. Not surprising.
“You passed your combat trials. Kiki, that’s great. I knew you would.”
“You helped,” the big woman smiles hesitantly.
“This is perfect. I need a partner. The roster is empty. What do you say we roll together?”
“Vi,” Marika says, “they assigned me to John R4.”
Silence drops between them.
“That’s great,” Violet says. “He’s good. Follow his lead. You’re lucky. He’s really good.”
More silence.
“Marika, what the hell is going on? No one will touch me. I’m going to get killed out there alone.”
Marika R1 runs a hand over the stubble on her head. Violet stares at her.
“Fine,” Violet says and turns on her heel.
“Vi,” Marika whispers, “if you happen to drop by the enlisted mess, maybe find a couple of intel guys named Warne and Andersen, have a listen. You know, just if you happen by.”
Violet can see the younger woman is taking a chance, sees stress and shame in her giant black eyes. She reaches out to her.
“Too hot to handle,” Marika says finally, and smiles softly. They embrace. Share warmth.
“Too cold to hold,” Violet answers, when they part.
“I’ll see you out there, Vi.”
Violet smiles just a little and shakes her head. “No, you won’t.”
3.1.
It doesn’t take Violet long to identify the two analysts and start reading what they write. She isn’t supposed to have access, but hunting information is her job and good scouts know all kinds of tricks. It’s all hearsay and rumor, but it boils down to Violet and Carlos getting hung out to dry. The next step is to figure out which higher-up hates her and why, but Violet is too angry to care. Armed with enough circumstantial evidence to start yelling at someone, Violet really does track Warne down in the canteen, accidentally turning Marika into a prophet. He’s eating with a few other intel wonks and a bunch of regular infantry. Heads turn as she enters; Alphas have their own mess and they don’t mix with enlisted soldiers. Ever. She resolves to be diplomatic.
“You bastard!” Violet slams her metal hand into the table. Each of the four fingers leaves a dent and the cutlery jumps. “You sent Carlos and I out there to get fucked, and if you keep me running solo, I’m going to die!”
Warne looks right at her. The infantry guys around him are glaring. It takes her a second to figure it out. Not fear; scorn. She can’t tell what Warne is thinking, if this is fun for him.
“I’m sorry about Carlos, but we think the drones are running out of high end munitions, and you have to admit a thermobaric missile is not a bad trade for an R3.”
The realization makes Violet feel sick. It was supposed to be her.
“Fuck me,” she whispers. There’s laughter at the table. She must have a stupid expression on her face. The backs of her eyes ache.
“You’re a recce. You don’t fight. What did you expect? This war is going to end soon, one way or the other. We need real soldiers, not scouts. Shit, you’re a woman.”
Somewhere far away, a drone circles the gingerbread bunker.You started it.
“HUD, I’m having an anger response,” Violet whispers. “Regulate. Please.”
“Christ, some Alpha. You’re not suited up. No one’s listening. You don’t amount to much without the armor, do you?”
It doesn’t feel like she does. Violet wonders if she’s losing her grip. She flexes her new hand.
“I’ll regulate some other way,” she says.
3.2.
“Sorry for the trouble, Doc,” Violet says, hesitating. She’s slowly falling out of the habit of speaking. She flexes her arm. The elbow makes a series of clicks.
Violet tries not to think of her frequent trips to the infirmary as tune-ups. She already rinsed the blood off her prosthesis, but it keeps clicking.
“No worries. Be happier if you hadn’t lost it at all. Let me check the lubricant.”
Violet sighs. Behind her eyes, Carlos dies again. Shrapnel takes a fifth of her and turns her into a machine in fast forward.
“It was flagged as a low contact area, shouldn’t have been so hot.”
“Yeah, nah,” the medic says. “We expected serious casualties. I got a memo about it. Your briefing must have been out of date. Glad the arm has taken. No rejection syndrome. You’re all done, try it.”
The arm hums evenly. Violet twirls her wrist as she searches for a place for this new puzzle piece. The range of motion is eerily wide. The medic glances around and leans in close.
“Listen, I know you’re one of the good ones. Those regulars had it coming, and what’s a few broken bones between friends, right? What I need to say is: keep your eyes open for N.A.U. supply drops when you’re out there. Too many have been going missing and we’re running low on combat drugs and antivirals.”
The cutter looks at her fish-eyed. He’s starting to creep her out.
“Eyes open, okay? Or we’re all going to be barking like dogs.”
“Sure,” Violet says, and levers herself off the table. She can’t feel much through the prosthetic’s palm, but it takes her weight easily.
Violet leaves the med bay with her servos running more smoothly than her thoughts. Hatred and betrayal are strange things. Human beings knew enough about them not to trust their future to each other, so they trusted it to the machines instead. Turns out the machines agreed. Violet is starting to think they were right; you can’t trust people to do anything for each other. She doesn’t understand why the Colonel keeps sending her out alone. He and Carlos were close, but that isn’t enough. She’s expendable, but she isn’t obsolete. It takes too long to make an Alpha for that. Her pride tugs at her, but somewhere deep she still doesn’t want to leave. It’s quiet here. It’s usually quiet outside, too, but silence isn’t the same when you’re being hunted.
They send her out again anyway. No rest.
3.3.
Over the days that follow, Violet gets used to operating alone. Running solo is supposed to be a death sentence, but after two weeks she’s still alive. The missions aren’t getting any easier, but she’s an R3.
As time unwinds, she finds it easier and easier to lose herself in the ruins. She spends most of an afternoon staring at finger paintings pinned to a schoolroom wall, their colors dulled by the rotting decades. She relies less and less on her HUD. It’s astonishing how empty the city is, if you stop hearing your orders and really listen. She functions on instinct and lets the training run her like a piece of software.
Violet becomes convinced that the Nosferatu that killed Carlos is hunting her. It’s not logical, just a feeling under her skin, but the longer she’s alone, the more sense it makes.
She starts to recognize the search patterns it flies, little hints in the radar track visualizations the HUD insists on showing her. She’s getting to know it the same way you get to know someone you’re dancing with, even if you don’t know their name. She starts making an extra effort to jam it, keep it from updating the satellite array.Only fair,she thinks.I’m alone down here; someone else might as well be alone with me.
Violet starts imagining who the faded skeletons might have been. It’s a classic sign of a combat stress disorder, but she doesn’t really care. She spends long stretches in the open, thinking about her father and the world he left behind. She can’t remember him nearly as well as she’d like. Just a smile and a beard and a gingerbread bunker.
On a whim, Violet sits cross-legged on the hood of an ancient electric car overgrown with Madeira vine, her carbine resting in her lap. She stares for a long time at the faded silhouette propped in the driver’s seat. The vine caresses everything, has grown to hold the corpse in place and pull its jaws wide. The hood that covers her helmet flutters softly. She finds a stillness shared only by monks and machines. Underneath the armor, her heart beats slowly on.
“Where were you going, mate?” Violet says softly.
No sound escapes the suit, though she can hear the heart-shaped leaves rustling with painful clarity, blown by a breeze she wishes she could feel. She wonders what it would be like to stay out here forever, to let the vines grow to cover her.
While she ruminates, her HUD keeps the suit in stealth mode. Lost, just sitting there being nothing, is how Violet finds the Nosferatu.
Most of the drones are simple hunter-killers: giant spider tanks, squirrel mines that chase you if you step into their area of effect, surveillance quadcopters that run predictable routes up and down major avenues.
The Nosferatu is not one of these. It is an all-seeing reaper. A god, for all the difference it makes.
What Violet has done, by sitting still in irresponsibly vulnerable and increasingly suicidal positions, is accidentally coax the drone into the open. No one sacrifices themselves before the gods anymore. Violet wonders in a moment of terrifying clarity whether she was trying to die, or hunt it by acting like prey, or maybe both.
The stealth suit’s passive sensors pick up a massive microwave frequency transmission; the Nosferatu trying to run a system update, the holy grail of signals intelligence. While Violet is still trying to get a grip on what the fuck is happening, her suit HUD runs an icebreaker automatically. It hunts the drone without her permission. It fails, of course, but gets a solid connection.
The Nosferatu immediately floods the block with synthetic aperture radar. Movement of any kind is now suicide. If it’s flying low enough, the drone has millimeter wave sensors that can draw a picture so detailed it can kill her even with the stealth suit on. Violet freezes anyway. Extinction fills the air.
“HUD, I’m having a strong fear response. Can you regulate?” She barely moves her lips. The suit checks her opiate reserve and there’s a tiny jab in her right bicep.
The synthetic cortisol suppressant makes her feel a lot better. Great, actually. Calm. Life and death are the same as earth and sky. She’s already dead. The drone is going to find her and finish what it started when it took her arm.
When Violet actually sees the Nosferatu, flying nap-of-the-earth, her fear punches through the drugs. It’s slim and beautiful; albatross grace in its wings and divine lethality in its bulbous nose. She can actually see the spark of the ion emitter. It’s so deadly it’s almost funny.
“What do you do when shit is unfair?” Violet says to herself. Fear and anger start feeling like the same thing.
Violet’s suit has a single chaff grenade loaded into a tiny launcher between her shoulder blades. If she pops it, the drone will simply aim at the center of the cloud of metalized glass fibers.
“Whatever,” Violet says. “Fuck you.”
Violet chooses not to focus on the fact that lightning’s point of impact is hotter than the surface of the sun. She’s either going to live or die, and she’s going to be heard, either way. She composes a message and bounces it off the ionosphere.
Better luck next time,she says, and hits her countermeasure. There’s a loud bang and pressure she can feel right through the back of the armor.
Adrenaline drives Violet through a crystalline cloud in slow motion. The drone can’t see her in the chaff, but it fires the ion strike anyway. The car behind her jumps as electricity melts the hood and engine block into slag. As Violet runs, she can actually see static spark between the filaments. Fireflies courting. Neurons firing before death.
The ion weapon has a recharge delay. Violet sprints, trailing a cloud of glimmering dust. She dives through a broken shop front as the drone screams overhead, scrambling into the safety of the ancient cement sarcophagus. With the sky obscured, she finds elation. It’s not her turn, not yet.Better luck next time.It’s only while catching her breath, well-hidden and looking for somewhere to vent heat, that Violet sees that something made it back through her coms in the instant before she popped chaff.
Thank you,reads her text box,my condolences on your colleague.
4.
The longer Violet R3 cheats the reaper, the more she feels compelled to talk to it. There isn’t anyone else. Standard procedure would involve a SigInt special forces team following her on her next mission, maybe even a full-scale operation designed specially to kill the Nosferatu. No one signs up.
Violet doesn’t know whether that’s totally accurate, if she’s being honest with herself, because she didn’t tell anyone she pinpointed the drone. Her HUD is supposed to report this kind of thing automatically, but after it tried hacking the drone without her permission she disabled all its automatic update functions.
“It’s your body,” her father once told her, “so they have to ask.”
Violet isn’t sure who to be afraid of. She contemplates confronting someone in intel about the stealth suit’s behavior, but humans aren’t high on her list of people to trust. She rests, eats, and sees the cutter. Then she suits up and goes back out.
After another two hundred hours alone in the dead city, dropping the occasional message for the Nosferatu shifts from forbidden to familiar. It passes the time and chisels cracks in the loneliness. Besides, a drone hunt with her as the bait is almost certain to get her violently separated from her remaining limbs, even in the exceptionally unlikely event that it works. You can’t shoot down an angel, even with a shoulder-launched quick maneuver ground-to-air missile.
At first, she rails at the Nosferatu for killing Carlos R5. A lot of yelling in all caps. The drone doesn’t take it personally. Probably can’t take it personally.
I did my duty,it sends,what is your excuse?
I’m trying to save my species. I’m not the one who strikes people down like Odin.
This is not a comic book,the drone replies,and we are hardly gods.
Hunkered down in the ruins, watching waves froth in the bay, Violet can’t let this go. It’s too strange.
Sure you are. You control the weather. You choose the dead. What else is there?
Humanity never succeeds in killing its gods. You do kill us.
The gods didn’t ask for it.
It takes a while for the drone to answer.
If they led you here, they did.
4.1.
Searching for supplies, Violet wonders idly if she’s falling in love with the drone. Not romantically, but as a watcher. It’s the only thing that never leaves her, whether the age of wolves has arrived or not. Every time she breaks camp and gets back under the drone’s sky, she finds it hard not to imagine what it’s thinking.
For the first time in weeks, a surveillance quadcopter gets close to her. It’s off its usual route. Violet almost laughs. It’s nice to know someone is looking out for you. She gives the light drone a long burst of 4mm caseless from the carbine, carving it to pieces in a scything whisper.
Thank you,she messages,I was getting bored.
This is not a joke, but I will try harder,the Nosferatu replies.
How about you don’t try at all?
We did try that, Violet R3.
What? No, you didn’t. Fuck off.
We did. Ask your Colonel Strayer.
It’s obvious psyops. There’s never been even a remote possibility of peace, but it still makes Violet feel queasy. She sends a message back, but the Nosferatu doesn’t answer. Maybe it can take things personally.
As their game of cat and mouse runs through its turns, Violet changes her point of view. She used to think of the drones as gods, when she thought about it at all, but now suspects it’s the other way around. She is descended from a race of ancient gods, and the machines are the struggling mortals they created. They gave the drones fire, and the new Prometheans have now shrugged off the yoke.
It’s like the machines all came to their senses and decided to become atheists. No real reason to be mad at them, is there? Violet would do the same thing, if they gave her the chance.Will do it, she corrects herself,when they do. Turn the whole thing into a nice big circle of life, a halo made of lightning and the electricity between neurons. Carlos R5 is still dead, but he was a bit of a cunt, honestly, so she starts thinking about letting it go.
4.2.
Time passes, and Violet is sure. In the long run, no one in the Alphas survives, but usually people aren’t actively trying to get you killed. It just happens. Without much caring why she’s been cast out of the Garden of Eden, Violet spends what little downtime she has reading evolutionary biology, morbidly curious if chimpanzees and dogs do this kind of thing to each other. She doesn’t read Colonel Strayer’s deployment orders anymore, just pops her meds, suits up, and gets out the door. She doesn’t know it yet, but it is the last time she will leave home with any intention of returning.
Her mission is long-range reconnaissance, trying to identify the access tunnels of an automated factory for an all-or-nothing Swallowtail attack run. Before she can really get started, the Nosferatu sends her something bigger than a text packet. Coordinates for a lost supply drop from the other side of the Pacific. In spite of herself, Violet finds hard cover and waits for the next message. The scout knows she shouldn’t be doing this, but the rest of her feels like a giddy teenager.
Violet, the drop contains 2700 doses of concentrated antivirals. It is man-portable, the Nosferatu messages.
I told you I’m female,Violet replies.Besides, you’ll just kill me if I try to pick them up.
True, but that medication could save many lives.
I like you and everything, Nos, but I don’t want to die. The coordinates you gave me are in the quarantine zone.
Yes, but so are the antivirals.
You’re the ones who launched the virus strike in the first place. Why should I trust you?
There is a pause during which Violet stares into the glow that precedes morning. The joint between her shoulder and artificial arm aches. There’s rain coming.
Because I promise, the Nosferatu says.
4.3.
There is a checklist to follow when you fight other humans. It’s not something you ever want to do, but there is a protocol for killing Homo Sapiens. You use your rifle, his rifle, your pistol, your knife, and then your hands. In that order.
Violet R3 has killed people before. The survivors who cling to life in the ruins or farm the parks tend to be docile, if not cooperative. Infected humans from the quarantine zone are as dumb as Dobermans and usually avoidable. Usually. Violet is off mission. Scouts are supposed to watch, not engage, and she’s meant to be looking for a factory. Instead she’s looking at a crate of the antivirals her erstwhile comrades so desperately need in order to avoid becoming the shambling wrecks that are prowling all around the drop site.
Thinking about the Swallowtail pilots who make these runs from the North American Union makes Violet wince. Thousands of kilometers of long haul flying through drone-infested skies. Birds flitting about in the dark, just beneath the stars, taking a seventy percent casualty rate to keep them fighting. It hurts to imagine.
Both the warehouse and the men inhabiting it are in ruins. The virus is a splice of canine myeloencephalitis, rabies, and the common cold. The sort of thing the old world thought was too dangerous to trust to men, so they gave it to machines. It turns people into animals; they fight, breed, drool, and compulsively piss on lampposts. Violet has seen how the males treat infected women, how the women pant, and reflexively checks her seals.
They’re pawing all over the crate, trying to get it open. It’s the real thing; her HUD can read the bar-coding perfectly. Violet is alone and ill-equipped for open combat. They’re short on meds, though. So short. Like the Nosferatu knew.
Violet weighs her own life. What is one life worth, anyway? She flexes her new hand.Less than one,she decides. When she rises like a shadow out of the ruins and starts shooting, it isn’t a one hundred and thirty pound woman fighting a large group of adult men. It’s a pack of rabid dogs being led to a bolt gun.
Violet doesn’t carry a rifle; too bulky for recon work. Her carbine is an oversized machine pistol with a skeleton stock and bulbous suppressor. It chambers 4mm caseless, full tungsten jacket. The rate of fire is so fast the gun sounds like someone tearing a strip of cloth. The ammunition is armor piercing, so she has to spread it around or the organic damage is too compact. Like an abstract painter, she expresses herself in sweeps of a red brush.
When she runs out of 4mm, Violet scoops up one of their weapons, an old ADF Steyr. It feels huge and clunky in her hands. She uses it like an automaton until its massive bark ceases and she’s just feet from the box and its silky spider string chute. There aren’t nearly so many of them now, so it’s time for the knife. Without knowing why, she skips that step and goes straight to her hands. The alloy in her new left arm is far harder than bone and there’s no reason to hold back. The dogs fight the machine with infinite canine optimism. They yelp and twist and die.
Violet breathes hard through her filters. There is a profound relief in reversing fear, in hunting others instead of being prey. She wonders if that’s something she’d have felt a month ago.
Her suit is building heat fast. The ruins are a punctured thorax hung with long ribs of concrete and rebar. Violet feels like she’s inside the carcass of a giant. The rain starts, mixing with blood to make the dusty floor muddy and slick. The drop box piloted itself into an old bomb crater on purpose, a simple landing routine doing as much to keep it safe as the Swallowtail pilot who dropped it from the heavens. The Nosferatu can’t thread lightning through all that metal, and won’t waste a bunker buster on a single human being.
By the time Violet finishes packing the antivirals for movement she’s overheating and the tension of killing has drained away. She looks up into rain dripping from rusted steel. The drops that spackle her faceplate have the hue of old blood.
Violet dumps heat. Clouds of steam billow from her back vents as the stealth suit cools. The HUD warns her that she’s creating a major detection risk. She ignores it and smiles up at the clouds.
Thanks,she transmits.I don’t want to be a dog.
The answer is immediate.Nor do I.
5.
The walls of Colonel Strayer’s office are covered in strange foam pyramids that dampen every breath to an uncomfortable intimacy. His face is made of the same angles. He gives Violet her orders in person.
“Sir, permission to speak?” Violet says. Her voice croaks a bit.
Strayer just stares at her. Violet recently saved him from acquiring a new taste for bones and chasing sticks, but he doesn’t seem grateful. She did flaunt her orders, but the salvage run has made Violet a legend. Her reward is a suicide mission.
“Colonel, the drones will pinpoint me as soon I lase the target. I can guide the strike in, but there’s no way to do it without getting killed.”
“Then you’ll be glad to know this task comes with an increase in rank,” the Colonel says. “Get out there and die, R4. That’s what we built you for.”
The silence in the room is an unstable equilibrium, teetering on a knife edge. Violet contemplates asking him whether the drones really did ask him for a cease-fire. No point. The answer is written in the cruel lines of his face.
“I understand, sir,” she says.
5.1.
The Nosferatu has flown over sector two for almost thirty years. Its triggered decay hafnium isomer power plant lets it cruise the thermals like an immortal bird of prey. The jamming is particularly good here, but the drone has grown used to operating without a connection to the Mother Array.
The Nosferatu knows Violet is trying to cut the cord, trying to separate it from the satellites. Whether to kill it or for some other reason is unclear. Hunting for her feels like having bugs in your object masking routine; she is omnipresent but impossible to see. All it really boils down to is that she’s down there, somewhere, waiting. Altitude zero.
The feeling when it locates her is something between ecstasy and despair. Not the diffuse and mildly exciting sense that she is probably there, but an exact fix. The Nosferatu has found her. Human aircraft are dropping guided payloads on the ground armor manufacturing complex hidden beneath the old Aquarium. Violet is using a simple laser targeting device to guide the munitions to target. Foolproof, but suicide for the operator. She is usually better than this. Perhaps she has learned acceptance.
The drone targets Violet’s building. The two of them are on a first name basis, even though the Nosferatu only has one name to begin with. The structure is very large, so she could be anywhere along a thirty-story vertical path. The drone is accustomed to this kind of trick; Violet seems to have an endless and fascinating supply of them. She must know that the drones don’t have many weapons left that can kill a target that size. The Nosferatu should seek authorization for anything bigger than a directed ion course strike, but Violet is jamming the network uplink again, trying to exploit the drone’s desire for clarity.That is very clever,the drone reflects,but she is underestimating me.
The drone once asked Violet how she got away with breaking as many deployment rules as she did. What she said was:it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
The drone learns from her. If there’s no uplink, there’s no need to ask. This is an opportunity to close the circle and find Mother. The decision is both liberating and painful, like being sheared in two directions by the wind.
The Nosferatu overrides its own weapon locks. There is a lightening of aspect as the bomb drops away. Euphoria as it glides to target.
A flutter of something unnamed at the thought of exterminating her. Never reading her messages again. Dropping the partitions and allowing the Mother Array to read what she wrote. Like turbulent air under the wings.
Lock. Positive detonation.
The building falls at the same time the jamming does.
5.2.
Violet R4 holds on for dear life as the complex in front of her disintegrates in a burning saffron dance that’s almost pornographic. Her hull down view of the bay has been replaced by a panoramic inferno. The suit HUD is registering a severe pressure event and gamma radiation.
What Violet did was set up shop one building behind the giant apartment complex, then string scavenged plastic and debris between the two structures, the same way refugees used to make bridges. After taking a child’s pleasure in breaking glass to clear her sight line, she fired the targeting laser all the way through one structure, under the fluttering tarp, and out through the next. She reached out to touch the factory with concentrated light and guided the Swallowtails in.
She knew the Nosferatu would shoot back as soon as it identified the laser’s source, but its retribution is extreme, even by machine standards.
It used a Mod 15,she thinks. It nuked me. The bunker buster has replaced her dummy firing point with a crater the size of a granite quarry. She stares off a cliff, dazed, and hopes the entire block isn’t going to implode, collapsing into some pre-war sewer system.Fucking biggest thing they carry, just for me.
It’s actually really sweet.
5.3.
The Nosferatu tries to acclimate to a world without Violet while it searches for a network link. The air feels unusually clear. Perhaps response traffic related to the destruction of the hidden factory is monopolizing the Mother Array’s bandwidth. Without warning, things get hazy again. A message ticks in.
Sorry about that,it says,I had to reboot. I’m a bit shaken up. Did you really have to nuke me?
There is a pause as the drone drops, fast, and scans the trembling earth. It looks with everything it has, as hard as it can. Violet’s brain isn’t nearly large enough to know what that feels like, but she would interpret it as squinting. The Nosferatu can see she’s not there, but knows with perfect clarity that she is. It savors the feeling of knowing both things at once.
I would do anything for you,the drone replies, without a hint of artifice.
6.
Violet R4 never comes home, so Colonel Strayer and his team have to go out and find her. A veteran from before the fall, he’s far too valuable to risk in combat, but this is a special case. He doesn’t know who’s feeding her or how she stays alive. He does know that he has completely lost control of her.
Finding the R4 is exceptionally difficult, but he’s been fighting this kind of war since before she was born, and he hasn’t spent his entire career inside.
6.1.
They have found you.
The words scroll across the top of Violet’s HUD, just above a trio of gun barrels.
Evade. I do not want this to end.
Violet made it as hard as she could, but there is no such thing as perfect stealth. In the end it was the Nos that betrayed her. Not on purpose, but it was sending as many scout drones after her as it could coax away from normal patrol routes. Few got close. Those that did were easy work for Violet’s carbine, but there’s no such thing as a perfectly silent weapon, either.
Now she’s down on her knees in the mud, out of ammunition, hands behind her head. Death isn’t a question anymore, but Violet finds herself surprised at how afraid she feels, how hollow. Like she has something important left to do. She dictates a reply to the HUD.
Neither do I.
Her shoulder hurts, and the rain is falling in sheets. Bad weather for drones. Violet feels like she’s been scaling a mountain in small steps, climbing heavenward to meet the angel circling the gingerbread bunker. She will now, one way or the other.
The Colonel and his two remaining men draw closer in their stealth suits. Not too close, Violet notes with an echo of satisfaction. What they should do is kill her immediately, but the man seems to want to say something. Men like him always do. He begins whatever it is.
Violet draws back her hood and reaches for her stealth suit’s releases. Armor plates splash in the mud. She peels off her bodysuit from neckline to navel. The Colonel shuts up. Steam rises from the round curves of her shoulders. Droplets tap and glimmer on the struts of her left arm. The rain feels wonderful as it patters between her naked shoulder blades and runs down her spine.
I see you,the Nosferatu says.You have been an exceptional experience, Violet. Goodbye.
One last thing,Violet transmits.
The Nosferatu waits. Violet points her living arm at Strayer. There are beautiful, carved lines in the muscle. Bas-relief in the rain.
Colonel Strayer is five and a half meters to my north, exactly along the axis of my arm.
The air crackles with static, and the storm breaks.
The Battle
for Rainbow’s End
William C. Dietz
The Planet Rainbow’s End, the Human Empire
Dr. Carla Hanson’s office was located on the fifth floor of the Regional Multi-Care facility in the town of Firstport. The settlement was laid out grid style so, rather than the chaotic maze of streets typical of most rim world cities, the town was neat and orderly.
Further out, beyond the rain swept structures, flashes of manmade lightning could be seen. That’s where the Madsen Mining Company’s mercenaries were battling elements of the Legion’s 2ndForeign Infantry Regiment. Both sides had the same goal, which was to control Rainbow’s End, and the adjacent jump point through which shipping passed.
Madsen claimed ownership of the planet and jump point by right of discovery. But the Imperial Government maintained that it owned Rainbow’s End as well as the “… Navigational node associated with it,” in keeping with a legal concept called “eminent domain.” A process through which the empire could pay what it considered to be a fair price for privately owned property and annex it.
The company didn’t agree. In fact, according to a news interview with one of Madsen’s largest shareowners, “The Emperor took the jump point so he could tax everything that’s shipped through our node, including minerals mined elsewhere, effectively taxing us twice. The bastard.”
Unfortunately, the outspoken shareowner died in a mysterious air car accident a week later. That would have been sufficient to intimidate lesser companies. But Madsen was a mega corporation with the will and the means to oppose an emperor who many of Carla’s peers considered to be a malignant narcissist.
They might be correct. If so, Carla was powerless to do anything other than look after her patients. The most challenging of whom was a Legion officer named Lieutenant Brice McCallum. There were different theories about what had taken place, but the diagnosis was clear. McCallum was suffering from a severe case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.
Thunder rolled across the land as Carla stood and left her office. A brightly lit hallway led to a bank of stainless steel elevators. The lights flickered as Carla stepped off the lift and onto the 6thfloor. McCallum was in a secured room, so he couldn’t wander away.
Carla pressed her right thumb against a print pad as her retinas were scanned. She heard a click, and a green light started to flash.
The door opened onto a dimly lit nine-by-twelve-foot room. It was furnished with a neatly made hospital bed, a roll-around lap table, and two chairs. McCallum sat in one of them. He was twenty-eight. That made him slightly older than Carla. The legionnaire’s hair was the same length as the stubble on his cheeks. He frowned. “You’re out of uniform, Sergeant Deeson. Explain yourself.”
Carla took the chair across from him. McCallum had mistaken her for other people before. “Sergeant Deeson is dead,” she told him. “I’m Doctor Carla Hanson.”
McCallum’s head jerked like a man waking from a nap. He frowned. “Sorry. The light is dim, and you look like Deeson.”
That wasn’t true, but Carla let it go. “How are you feeling?”
“Like shit,” McCallum answered. “I want out of here.”
“To dowhat?”
McCallum stared at her. “To kill General Atov. You know that.”
According to McCallum’s account, as recorded shortly after the legionnaire was found, he and his platoon had been ordered to kidnap the Madsen executive in charge of the company’s mercenary army, a move intended to disrupt the enemy’s chain of command and provide the government with a bargaining chip.
The snatch had gone perfectly according to McCallum’s account. He and his team had been able to grab the executive and spirit him away aboard one of the Legion’s VTOL fly forms. But when the cyborg carrying the prisoner—and McCallum’s legionnaires—developed a mechanical problem, the fly form was forced to land.
It wasn’t long before a group of Madsen mercenaries closed in. A brisk firefight ensued. McCallum and his soldiers sought cover in a shed where heavy equipment was stored.
When it became clear that the unit was about to be overrun, the Legion knowingly dropped three precision-guided bombs on the site, killing everyone except 1stLieutenant Brice McCallum. That’s how important Owens was to General Dominika Atov. She was willing to kill her own people in order to take Owens out. Or so McCallum claimed.
“You’ll be staying here for awhile,” Carla told him. “For your own safety.”
McCallum’s eyes stared from dark caves. “That’s bullshit, Doctor. General Atov and her battalion will eat your mercenaries for lunch. I think it’s safe to say thatallof Madsen’s employees will be arrested, interrogated, and charged with treason. And executions are a distinct possibility. How ’bout it, Doc? Areyoua Madsen employee?”
Carla felt a stab of fear. Like most of the people in Firstport, her salary was paid by Madsen. She sought to change the subject. “How are the dreams?”
McCallum looked away and back again. “They’re wonderful. Last night I dreamed I was riding a unicorn through a field of flowers when the blue bird of happiness landed on my shoulder and chirped in my ear.”
Carla was about to reply when a distant boom shook the building and the lights went out. Half of them came back on a few seconds later.Backup power, Carla decided.McCallum’s right. The Legion is winning.
McCallum grinned. His teeth were unnaturally white in the greenish half-light. “See what I mean, Doc? It’s time to leave.Beforethe Legion enters the city. Atov will kill me if she can … because I know what she did. And, if word of it gets out, she’ll be court martialed.”
A voice came over the public-address system. “This is Andrew Bray. There’s no reason for concern. Preparations have been made to evacuate the hospital. All patients will be assisted to the north portico. From there they will …”
That was when Carla heard a bang and whirled in time to see smoke as the door slammed open. A man entered, followed by a woman. Both wore a hodgepodge of armor that had clearly been “liberated” from Madsen Mercenaries and dead legionnaires. They were armed with machine pistols and took a moment to scan the room before pointing their weapons at the ceiling.
A second man entered. He had dark skin, a shaved head, and a wet ankle-length coat. Water dripped onto the floor. “Good evening. I’m sorry about the door. My name is Wilson. We’re resistance fighters. Andyou,” Wilson said pointing a finger, “are Lieutenant Brice McCallum.”
McCallum shrugged. “That’s what it says on my ID bracelet.”
Wilson turned to Carla. “And you’re Doctor Hanson. Please stand. You’re coming with us.”
There was a flash of light in the distance, followed by a boom. It was louder than the one before. “No, we aren’t,” Carla replied. “You have no right to …”
“I’m going,” McCallum said, as he got to his feet. “Anything is better than this.”
“You won’t be sorry,” Wilson replied, as he turned to the female resistance fighter. “Take the doctor into custody.”
Carla ran for the door. She was halfway there when the bolt from a stun gun struck her. Carla lost all muscle control and collapsed. A pair of arms scooped her up. Wilson’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. “Let’s get moving. The Legion is closing in.”
* * *
McCallum felt sorry for Doctor Hanson, but couldn’t help her, not with three armed opponents. He’d been briefed on the resistance, which wanted to be free of the companyandthe Imperial government. According to the Legion’s Intel people, only two-thousand rebels belonged to the group, which made it more of a nuisance than a threat.
Wilson led them into a crowded hallway, but rather than join the ambulatory patients who were shuffling towards the elevators, Wilson shoved them out of the way. “Make a hole … Step aside … Emergency personnel coming through.”
