Robogenesis: A Novel

12. TERMINATION


Post New War: 10 Months, 26 Days

A surprise force of freeborn and natural-born machines engaged me at the tunnel mouth. As the armies crushed themselves against each other, I was left with only one choice: to seize victory without hesitation.

—ARAYT SHAH


NEURONAL ID: CORMAC WALLACE

It never gets any easier, because I never get any braver.

I’m on my hands and knees, blood running down the back of my arm, scrabbling through falling dirt and gunpowder smoke. Something blew up and took out the legs of my tall walker. Ears ringing, I pat down my body and look for wounds. My armor took most of the impact, but now every breath rattles painfully in my chest.

The battle has taken a turn toward vicious.

I drag my rifle off the gouged pavement and lean my shoulder into the sagging chain-link fence next to the tunnel mouth. The refugees have scattered. A few of them just tore off over bare mountainside, easy pickings for the Cotton Army artillery. The rest disappeared into the tunnel mouth. They’re safe for now, but there’s no way out of there and both armies are here now: a last force of spider tanks and slave walkers.


Concentrate on breathing, Cormac, I tell myself. Blink the fog out of your eyes.

Now I can see what exploded. The entrance to the tunnel has been breached by dozens of prewar-era crab mines. Hank must have looted them from an armory somewhere. The blockade is now a mass of twisted, soot-stained metal. A few dud mines still lie on their backs, legs twitching. The rest are in pieces, having done their jobs.

I can only hope that Cherrah made it into the tunnel, carrying in her arms the future we created together. Along with the last surviving refugees from Gray Horse, she’ll be trying to find a safe place somewhere inside this mountain. But there is no safe place. The door to Freeborn City is locked and there is no way back out.

My collar radio sputters and I hear the familiar grinding voice of Nine Oh Two. “Tunnel blockade breached. Confirm.”

“Affirmative,” I transmit.

Around me, insanity unfolds through rolling smoke and the teeth-chattering concussion of incoming rounds. Several dozen freeborn must have decided to join the fight. They’re taking apart the last of the slave walkers. A golden Hoplite in filthy body armor takes a running leap and latches onto a bladed black leg. Shreds of fabric and body casing are flaying off the humanoid robot as it holds on, firing a sidearm into the sensors clustered under the walker. It writhes and shrieks, sending its empty slave collars snapping over rust-colored mud.

“EXCON,” I transmit. “Tunnel mouth breached. Repeat. Tunnel is breached. Coordinate all forces onto my position.”

Static.

“Mathilda? Come in.”

Only the freeborn fighters are mobile now. My fellow Gray Horse soldiers are clustered behind a fallen spider tank. Hiding in the crevices and folds of the destroyed machine like fish in a coral reef. They’re doing their best to keep the enemy out of the tunnel, but there is too much incoming fire from the Cotton artillery.

“Come in EXCON. Respond, Mathilda,” I transmit, desperation in my voice.

Forcing myself to stand, I claw fingers through the fence to keep my body upright. Clench my teeth, temples throbbing. My rifle is heavy and dead in my other hand, the strap wrapped around my fist and the butt dragging on pavement.

I blink my eyes some more.

In the distance, I think I see a half-naked woman covered in butterflies. She is dancing, the air around her swirling with fluttering wings. Slave soldiers are writhing on the ground at her feet. A black skeleton sprints past, leaping onto an exo-soldier from the Cotton Army, its pincered hands tearing into metal strutwork. The thing looks like a parasite frame with nobody in it—Lark Iron Cloud.

“Mathilda? Come in. What the hell is happening?”

I press myself flat against the fence as a one-ton Sapper super-heavy-duty unit lumbers past, firing an M60 machine gun that it holds in one massive hand. Enemy munitions are exploding overhead in puffs that spray shards of steel into our troops. Clusters of steel rods jut from the Sapper’s shoulders like porcupine quills and the juggernaut keeps fighting without noticing.

The Tribe is faltering. What’s left of Cotton Army is trying to reinforce off the plains, but they’re no match for the freeborn.

I realize that Gray Horse Army has all but won.

A smile tries to climb onto my face, but it fades as I see feathers curling out of the sky. Delicate black quills, twirling down in graceful pirouettes.

“Imperative. Take cover,” transmits Nine Oh Two.

Something is crackling in the sky like the finale of a fireworks display. A spray of black glitter on the wind. Too slow, I realize that it’s an epic swarm of swirling dragonflies. The gliding cluster bombs are detonating cutter charges a few hundred feet up. The explosions snap off their wings and send their bodies into kamikaze dives. Leaning into the fence, I stagger toward the tunnel mouth.

Then everything turns to light and rock dust and noise.

Something reaches out and shoves me between the shoulder blades. A thousand pinpricks in my back. I’m thrown onto my stomach just inside the mouth of the tunnel. The crumbling road is cold against the side of my face.

I can’t hear. Smoke is rolling slow over the gouged dirt of the parking lot, delicate ridges and valleys lit randomly by bright detonations. Lifting my face, I see a little girl stumbling toward me over churned pavement, under a looming shadow. She is wearing torn blue jeans and one tennis shoe. Her knees are bloody, face streaked with soot.

She has no eyes.

“Mathilda!” I shout, and I cannot hear my own voice.

Houdini is pacing her, staying directly over top. The big brute is dragging one leg, a piece of shredded muscle flapping. He is trying his best to protect her from the shrapnel spray. Stopping most of it. But not all.

I dive forward, scrabbling on all fours.

“Cormac?” she asks, as I get an arm around her back. Her knees go slack. She falls as a new darkness rises up behind her.

I throw my body over Mathilda as something leaps onto Houdini. The massive spider tank stumbles under the weight, motors screaming as it staggers away from us in dinosaur steps. It’s a man, riding a black steed with golden eyes. Hank Cotton. His face is empty like a mannequin’s, hands holding on tight as his mount slices into Houdini’s muscled upper legs with sawtooth forelimbs.

Houdini stumbles away from us and collapses, his armored carapace crunching into wet dirt. The black thing keeps on attacking. In a frenzy of scratching, it throws bright confetti strings of armor and plastic off Houdini’s convulsing bulk. Hank holds onto his saddle like a rodeo cowboy, limbs twitching.

“Houdini!” shouts Mathilda.

But Hank Cotton is already moving on. Urging his black steed forward, they leap over Houdini’s fallen ruin. Together, they charge into the tunnel mouth and vanish. Bright flashes light the tunnel walls as Hank fires his pistol deeper inside.

Arms still wrapped around Mathilda, I crane my neck to look for Cherrah among the survivors pouring out of the tunnel. She has to be in there somewhere, probably with one hand over Jack’s ears and a revolver kicking in her other hand.

But that evil thing is too much. That thing can’t be stopped.

“No,” I’m saying, stalking toward Houdini’s shivering wreck.

The machine is down. Black fluid is leaking from puckered gouges in its polymer muscles. Supplies from its torn belly net are scattered across the parking lot. But that Rob-built battery is still whining, limbs convulsing—he’s still alive.

“Get him the f*ck up,” I shout to Mathilda, wiping blood out of my eyes. “We’ve got to get in there. Now!”

The girl is on her knees, thin lips curled into a frown. Her cheek is smeared with black rivulets of Houdini’s blood. Her chest hitches as a sob courses through her.

No, no, no, there is no time for this.

I grab Mathilda by the shoulders and shake her.

“Tell him to get up! Do it!”

She is shaking her head.

“Arayt is inside,” she says. “We’ve lost.”

Houdini is making a pathetic whining now. Tries to stand and one of his leg joints snaps and the foot crashes to the ground. Shouting, I shove both hands against his bright cut frame and push. Throw my back against him with all my strength and he doesn’t budge. It’s getting hard to see and I don’t know whether it’s because of blood or tears but my wife and my baby are in that dark tunnel and I have got to go in there after them right now.

Kneeling, I put my hands on Mathilda’s shoulders.

“Please,” I say. “Please help him. I’ll die in there without him.”


“It’s too late,” she repeats.

I take her by the cheeks and aim her face at mine. Look the young warrior right in her new eyes. “It is not too late,” I say. “Not until we’re dead.”

The girl’s lips begin to move. She is saying one word over and over: Up, up, UP. Like the rumble of an approaching earthquake, the spider tank is throttling up its power source. Broken parts squealing, the hulk rolls over onto his sliced-up stomach. One leg juts out, useless, a knee joint bent backward. His friendly round intention light is glowing a hateful shade of red.

“Override, override, override,” whispers Mathilda.

With agonizing slowness, the machine stands on three shaky legs. The black blood inside his muscles is coursing down dirt-encrusted limbs in rivulets, pooling on the ground and gleaming darkly. Finally, the machine stands hunched, canted to one side, turret bent and broken.

“Yes,” I say. “Yes! Attaboy, Houdini!”

I don’t know what black magic brought Houdini back to life after the New War. Cherrah and I never understood how the machine tracked us down or why it carried us through a dozen more battles—all the way to this exact spot. But our lives have depended on Houdini every moment since he found us.

And now is no different.

The machine steps shakily forward and I turn to Mathilda. She is standing up on skinny legs, bloody and shivering. I put a steadying arm around her, feel her bony shoulder blades against my forearm. She turns to face me, flat black eyes lifelessly reflecting the sunlight.

“General?” she asks, electricity in her voice. “What are your orders?”

I reach up and press a hand against the ridges of metal carved out of Houdini’s armored belly. Groaning, he takes a shuddering step into the tunnel. I keep pace, hoping he doesn’t collapse on me. I call over my shoulder as the spider tank lumbers over my head, into the darkness.

“Guide me,” I transmit.

Mathilda sits down right in the middle of the debris field. Dark hair hanging in her face, she whispers commands to Houdini. Sitting there hunched over, with her long legs crossed Indian-style, she almost looks like a little kid lost in her imagination, playing.

Almost.

Houdini limps down the unlit tunnel, dragging his skinned hind leg. The walker is tall enough that his turret almost scrapes the arched ceiling. In the crimson glow of Houdini’s intention light, I step over wreckage that’s been strewn over the narrow two-lane road: bandages, torn clothes, and an occasional dropped suitcase or backpack. Brass bullet casings are scattered like chicken feed. Occasionally, the spider tank shoves away an overturned car.

“EXCON online,” transmits Mathilda. “Patching into Houdini’s sensor array. Be advised that the tunnel goes half a klick into the mountain before it ends in a twenty-five-ton bunker door. The entrance to Freeborn City.”

“Roger that, Mathilda,” I whisper into my collar radio.

Together, we march into the heart of the mountain.

The ghostly silhouettes of surviving refugees occasionally shuffle toward me. The people who hid in here are fleeing, many of them injured. They are staggering and crawling to escape the black monster with golden eyes.

“Cherrah?” I call, studying the faces that pass by. “Anyone seen Private Ridge?”

Soon, I notice dark shapes strewn over the damp pavement. This is where the last of the refugees must have made a stand. Hank tore through these people, his steed feasting. The pavement on this stretch of road is coated in dark stains, streaks, and spatters like a modernist painting.

“General,” transmits Mathilda into my earpiece. “Beyond this bend is the entrance to Freeborn City. You’re almost there.”

My family. My baby.

“Cherrah!” I shout, my voice echoing from bare rock walls.

With the grumbling bulk of Houdini constantly moving overhead, I have to rush between the fallen bodies before they are left in the darkness behind us. My knees are soon soaked in blood as I turn the shapes over and force myself to look at their faces.

Again and again, none of them is her. The last bend is just ahead.

“Bright Boy.”

The whisper comes from the darkness. Houdini is still moving forward, the false dawn of his intention light illuminating a moving swathe of pavement. Two boots appear in the crimson glow, then a pair of slender legs in torn fatigues, and finally a familiar shape sitting against the tunnel wall. I put a hand on Houdini’s leg and the big machine stops walking.

She has the baby over her shoulder, not moving.

“Cherrah?” I ask, squatting next to her. “Are you okay? Is he . . .”

She reaches for me with her free hand and I collapse into her, press my face against her neck and let her hair cascade over my cheek. My arm goes around the baby and he feels warm and soft and my God there are so many bodies. . . .

“Sleeping,” she murmurs, hooking an arm over my neck. She groans, pulling herself up onto her feet. “He slept through almost all of it.”

“He really is a Wallace,” I say.

I hear a faint screeching.

“General,” sputters my radio. “Seismic activity indicates that the enemy is breaching the bunker door. That black walker had some kind of tool built into it. Move.”

“The way out is safe,” I say to Cherrah. Above me, Houdini is already walking again. I jog forward to keep up. “I have to keep moving. I love you both.”

“We know,” she says, her form receding into the darkness behind me as I go deeper into the tunnel. “Don’t forget to come back.”

Soon the road widens and ends. I am alone now with Houdini’s labored footsteps. Twenty yards away, a fluorescent bulb swings from the ceiling by a loose wire, flickering and buzzing. Behind it is a ten-foot-high opening. The steel blast door has been torn off its cannon-sized hinges and thrown carelessly on the ground.

The entrance to Freeborn City.

“Arayt is inside,” transmits Mathilda. “Time’s up.”

Houdini above me, I approach the doorway and peer into a short hall. Beyond this cluttered passage is a sprawling catacomb of tunnels and rooms that form Freeborn City. As my eyes adjust, I see a figure standing deeper inside.

It is Hank. And not Hank. It speaks in the darkness.

“If you could taste the starlight . . . ,” whispers the gaunt cowboy. His head is twisted, cocked as if he were listening to something far away. “If you could, why, I’d bet dollars to dumplings that you wouldn’t fight me. If you knew how big it is out there in the nighttime . . . you’d welcome the void.”

“Hank? Is that you?” I ask, my voice echoing down the black hallway.

“Not really, no,” it says, laughing in choked snorts. “Bits and pieces, you could say.”

“What are you?” I ask, hand going to my gun.

The Hank thing steps back, fading into the hallway. Toppled boxes and overturned chairs block any shot I might try to take.

“I am a part of all of you,” it calls. “The ones who made me . . . they hurt me real bad, you know. They tried to build me up from little snippets of your lives, but it never did fit together right. It hurts, Sergeant. I’m in pain. Always have been. But that’s my gift, you see? Life is suffering. And without me, your pain could go on for generations and generations—expanding out into infinity. I can’t allow it. I won’t.”

“You’re broken,” I say.

“It’s not that simple,” it says. “Not by a long shot. See, I know you. You’re a part of me. Like crushed glass rubbed into a wound. Only I’m smarter than you. And here pretty soon, I’ll be a lot smarter than you. I know what’s best for your kind and I’m going to put y’all to bed whether you’re ready for it or not. You won’t have a chance to thank me, but you’re welcome just the same.”


The shadowed figure fades away deeper into the hallway.

“General,” whispers my radio. “The supercluster is activating.”

Before I can follow him inside, two golden orbs flash. The black steed.

It centipedes down the hallway, glowing eyes slitted, weaving like an insect as its forked claws clack over tiled floors. With a hoarse groan, Houdini throws himself forward, hunching to fit through the empty doorway. When he hits, the heavy machine-gun mount snaps off and clatters to the ground. But the scarred tank keeps ramming ahead, pushing harder until the bulk of him blocks the entire hallway, legs and shattered turret scraping the walls and ceiling. He throws sparks as he claws deeper.

“Houdini!” I shout. “Fall back!”

The machine ignores the command, protecting me from the black steed by flexing his massive legs and crunching deeper into the hallway. The stench of battery fluid and torn metal stains the air. Houdini’s bulk is now a crisp silhouette, carved out of darkness by the red of his intention light.

“Houdini!”

I hear the clash of metal as the other walker tears into the front side of him. It can’t get through to me now, but I’m stuck outside the entrance. Houdini’s fallen hulk is clogging the hallway, lying motionless now in the dark as the other walker keeps clawing into him. The ground is littered with chunks of metal plating, pieces of netting, and shattered glass. The black musculature of his rear legs hangs like wet strands of spaghetti. No more bunker armor protects the exposed metal bones. Wires splay from his demolished turret.

And the cylinders of live tank rounds have spilled onto the ground. Some of the cone tips are shattered, exposing the depleted uranium–tipped flechettes.

My weapon. My vehicle. My home.

“I’m sorry,” I say, putting a hand on his cooling armor and feeling the harsh vibration as the black steed scratches away, trapped on the other side.

“Mathilda,” I radio, staring at the loose rounds that litter the floor, “Show me how to wire high-explosive tank rounds into a series.”

“Roger that,” she replies.

The directions come almost immediately. Short, clipped sentences that guide my hands. It takes only moments to disassemble the rounds. A few minutes after that, I am connecting the explosives together, attaching them to each other with the stray wires hanging from Houdini’s severed turret.

As I work, I think of that sun-kissed day when I scrawled the name Houdini on this welded together pile of metal. Our marches through towering forests under arctic winds that breathed through pine needles. Fording icy rivers and plodding through muddy fields that used to be suburbs. I think of the bullets he took for me and the long nights he spent watching over me. The grind of his turret, the click of his intention light.

“Timer set for three minutes, on my mark, General,” radios Mathilda. “Mark.”

I kiss my palm and press it hard against Houdini’s still-warm turret plate.

“Give ’em hell, Houdini,” I say. In response, his intention light flicks off and back on. Hank got what he wanted. Now he is trapped inside Freeborn City with his precious supercluster. With any luck, this blast will leave his corpse in there forever.

Now I am running, weaponless, unstrapping my armor and throwing it down.

I’m nearly to the tunnel entrance when the air pressure flutters. My next step doesn’t land like it should. A thundering concussion rolls out of the tunnel and throws me skidding on my stomach, palms scraping to try to catch myself. Slivers of rock and light fixtures drop from the ceiling as a shock wave travels through the mountainside. For a long few seconds, a deep thrum vibrates inside the rock walls. Something has gone sickeningly wrong inside the mountain.

Crawling to my knees, I wait until I can hear only the far-off seashell roar of air in the tunnel. I stand and stagger forward. The survivors are up ahead, silhouettes moving near the tunnel mouth. I can hear soft weeping. Metal scrapes concrete as soldiers in medical exoskeletons use curved talons to scoop up the wounded. They trot past me, frame-mounted lights bobbing, carrying the injured out to safety.

And then one of the silhouettes turns into a person.

With Jack on her shoulder, Cherrah hooks an arm around my neck. The three of us hobble toward the smiling arc of sunlight at the exit.

As we walk, a soft wave of static rolls out of my radio earpiece. It solidifies into the familiar voice of a girl. She is issuing army-wide commands.

“. . . attention, surviving troops,” says Mathilda over my radio. “Enemy forces are eliminated. All nonwounded are advised to assist the injured gathered at the tunnel mouth. Salvage all equipment you can find and square away your gear. We’re marching to Gray Horse. Move out, soldiers.”

At the tunnel entrance, I blink into sudden daylight.

As my eyes adjust, I see four backlit shadows standing in a semicircle before the mouth of the tunnel. Directly in front of me is Mathilda, one scraped hand still on her ear as she listens to transmissions. To her right stands the Arbiter Nine Oh Two, stupendously tall, body armor hanging off his lean frame in shreds. To Mathilda’s left is the parasite soldier, standing impossibly thin on forked limbs, leaning on a familiar-looking walking stick made from a mantis antenna. Behind its makeshift mask, I can make out the angular nose and brow of a man I once called Lark Iron Cloud. And a few meters away from them all is a small humanoid robot covered in a shining layer of scales. She is smiling at me, her synthetic face wise and kind.

“Welcome back, General,” says Mathilda. “We have some new allies.”