by Julian Miles | May 7, 2013 | Story
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
“A Tamborda Eleven-Ess-Two should never be underrated. Treat each one as if it just came off the production line.”
Master Needle’s words are soft-spoken yet carry upward to all in the gallery. On the dojo floor, his whipcord frame stands in an attitude of relaxation amongst the wreckage and rubble that simulates a city street. With a teeth-grating hiss, the mechanical doom that is a Tamborda-11S2 strides into view, its hatchet profile swinging as it searches. With a low whine, it locks onto the Master and moves swiftly in a standard intimidate-and-subdue protocol, the result of which should be another dead human.
Master Needle waits until it looms over him before moving. He hooks his right leg over the extending left arm while pushing off with his left leg. The Tamborda is still selecting proximity subdual protocol when the Master’s right hand shoots forward and round to touch the base of the skull at the spinal junction. With a crackling whine, the Tamborda ceases to move. Master Needle dismounts as the juniors applaud until cuffed into silence by their mentors.
“That is the way. Decision and precision are the true weapons of a Kochola practitioner. When you possess both in such quantities as to allow you to know every joint and seam in every model the Federati send against us, then you might return from your grading. Until then, you study.”
Everyone bows to him, founder of the martial art that allowed us to survive. Where South America fell and Africa capitulated, Europe only staggered. Who would have thought that acupuncture combined with an exhaustive knowledge of the robots sent to slaughter us would mark the start of a renaissance in us, the Resistors? Master Needle took a motley crew that spent more time running and hiding than resisting and fashioned a force to save us, using dojo and biker gang principles.
As we start to turn away, his voice carries a last admonition: “Do not push the robot over to celebrate your victory. Every one taken undamaged is another warrior for free humanity the following day.”
We pause to be sure he has finished the lesson, then carry on.
“Patch-bearer Grace. You are ready.”
Those words electrify me. Without thought I leap the gallery rail and land crouched before Master Needle, head bowed. To think I had come to this day. From scavenging the wastelands of London to the grading challenge that will either prove me a Kochola adept or leave my corpse lying unmourned.
If I survive, I will go out to spread the Art That Keeps for as long as I can survive. The Federati do not like us and have taken to carpet-bombing areas where we are establishing chapters.
I take from Master Needle a leather roll of needles so fine as to be almost unseen, yet strong enough to drive through sealant and polymer, conductive enough to short-circuit delicate systems. These are mine until he comes to take them from my body. Acolytes we have plenty of. Piercing needles are more precious than flesh. I see that the roll has eighteen coloured threads wrapped through its seams. I am to take a roll with provenance.
My dread switches from passing the graduation to not adding enough coup-threads. I feel a burden lift and look up to see Master Needle smile a knowing smile.
“Save your trepidation for avoiding the robot’s masters, Grace. Now take the Art That Keeps and make sure it keeps you riding, counting coup and teaching for a very long time.”
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by Julian Miles | Apr 15, 2013 | Story
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
It's dark when my ears finally stop ringing. I lie deathly still and carefully inventory my corpse.
“Not such an unstoppable bastard now, are ya?”
Docherty is still here. That explains the pain in my jaw. He put one in my head, two in my chest, smashed my teeth, gouged out my eyes and snipped my fingertips off at the first joint. The only way to identify me will be by DNA. Which would come up blank, but he doesn’t know that.
Now to earn my keep. I click once and echomap.
“What was that?”
Ah, Samuel is here too: enhanced hearing. Oh well, nothing for it except to click again on a lower band to echolocate.
“He did it again.”
“Did what?”
“High frequency clicks.”
“It's just his cybergear winding down. He's dead, we're rich.”
My guns have been left where they fell. I push a lot of adrenalin and endorphins into my bloodstream, along with extra clotting factor. Cybergear is good; I'm better. Bioengineered to be more than these peasants with their implements grafted in, taking immuno-suppressants, psycho-stabilisers, steroids and antibiotics with breakfast for the rest of their lives. My brain resides in a keratinised tissue shell sitting in the left side of my pelvis, with my spare heart on the right. My ribs form natural maximillian plate and I can consciously use ninety percent of my muscle capacity. The improved bat sensorium in my brain and echo chambers in my cheekbones are personal refinements to the build.
I've killed enough time. Time to kill.
I click to update the echomap as I sit up like my upper torso is being pulled by strings, truncated fingers grabbing my trigger-less guns. They interface via neural pads and are live by the time I level them at my two erstwhile killers.
“What the frack?”
As last words go, they leave nothing for posterity. They're also surprisingly common from unfortunates facing me.
I lay back down and safety my guns. A subvocal mike in my throat links to the transceivers woven into my scapulae.
“Robin! Where the hell have you been?” Janet's voice is husky with genuine concern.
“Sorry, darling. I got kidnapped and assassinated again.”
“Oh, for the love of Pete! That's the second time this year. How bad?”
“Proper job this time. Going to need a cranial rebuild, phalange implants, a cardiac replacement and a left kneecap.”
“A kneecap? The bastards.”
“They used a Labrador gun.”
“Oh, the poor thing. Did they shoot it afterwards?”
“No, I did. That's how they got the drop on me.”
“You really have to work on that soft spot for strays, Rob. Medtechs will be with you inside five minutes.”
“Thanks, darling. I'll stay away until my face is on properly so Tabitha doesn't have nightmares.”
“That's one of the reasons why I love you, Robin Summerson. See you soon.”
“Kiss her goodnight from me. Love you.”
“Love you too. Hurry home.”
“I will.”
With that, I relax and wait for the medical team. Now that’s a hell of a way to make a living, flying all over the place to pick up the pieces. I couldn't do their job.
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by Julian Miles | Apr 4, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Screams mingle with the hiss of blood on coals. The clatter of dropped gear and the sound of running feet. When will they learn that using small weapons against us is the same as committing suicide?
> CMNDLCK0
I jerk into wakefulness as the amber letters glow across my optic. What the frack? Tactical comms icon flashes for attention. I look and allow.
“Trooper Lillman. Are you returned from C-mode?”
“Awake and curious.” The fact I reply casually is proof. Combat mode has limited syntax and doesn’t do chat.
“Thank Elvis for that. I am Captain Morebay. I need you to do full-droid until we are in the lifter. Do you understand?”
From an observer’s standpoint, you cannot distinguish between biodroid and android unless we are loaded. Biodroids have a diversity of gear and personalisation. Androids, obviously, do not indulge in personal anything. So when things hit the fan, all of us have learned how to behave like an android. Because they have immunity, in effect. It’s called ‘progmal’ and means that the android experienced an error. You don’t court-martial faulty machinery.
“I am returning control to you but erasing recent memory.”
That’s bad. Means something triggered C-mode outside of combat.
> DELMEM90
> RETCMND0
My view returns and I’m standing across the road from my parent’s house. They’re on the lawn talking to a constable. Mum’s crying. There’s a biodroid officer standing by them. I realise that is Captain Morebay and officially she’s nowhere near me.
“Lifter is on your three at the end of the street. Go. Now.”
I pivot on my right heel and parade march to the lifter across front gardens, through fences and over vehicles. There’s a click as the Captain shares her vox with me: “As you can see, your son has had a void episode brought on by progmal. What you see is what acted earlier. Only the android. I’ll make sure he receives the best treatment, but you understand that because of this incident, he cannot legally visit here again.”
Dad’s voice is full of gratitude. “Thank you. Captain. It’s such a relief to know he’s not lost.”
With that, it all wraps up double-quick and moments later the Captain is across from me as the lifter heads for Aldershot.
“Free and easy, Lillman.”
I drop the stiff poise and relax the bits of real me in here: not many.
“What did I do, Captain?”
“Not your fault, Lillman. You went over to a neighbourhood barbeque at your parent’s request. People are curious about hybrids, as you know. While you were doing a sterling job of relationship building, one of the teenage boys pulled a zapgun and shot you in the back.”
That would do it. Zapguns were the favoured challenge weapon on Uritreya. Always followed by a vicious firefight.
“How many, Captain?”
“Twenty-six. No wounded. Gunman first. Apart from them being friendlies, it was beautiful. The police car was a work of art.”
I put my head in my hands. “Oh gawd. What a way to end.”
“You miss the point, Lillman. You were getting along famously despite being eight feet tall, covered in armour and having eyes that look like one-piece sunglasses embedded in your featureless alloy face. When the situation changed you only took out immediate threats. They didn’t realise that any movement toward you would be interpreted as aggression by C-mode. Everyone who ran away survived.”
I looked at her. “And?”
“You’re joining my mob. Executive Operations. One of us with the charisma to interact with fleshies? You’re wasted on gruntwork.”
by Julian Miles | Mar 21, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
The shades of green here are like nowhere else in the world.
“Pre-zent arms!”
With a metallic crash, fourteen biobots swing their gantry guns skyward as their right arms raise in salute. The bier passes with a soft hum, the incongruously gentle sound of suppressor fields warring with the emissions from the remains within. Captain Martina Durren is coming home.
Somewhere under the depths of the Mindanao Deep, they found an Atlantean ‘submarine’. That being the only word applicable, although the vessel relates to nuclear submarines in the way that they relate to a toy submarine in a kid’s bath.
Unfortunately this incredible discovery was not made public. Taylor Nesmith, founder of the massive Interseas Group, decided to use the secrets in his attempt to become King of the World.
The bier comes to rest over the eighteen metre deep lead-lined pit.
“Fro’ rank, fire!”
Seven beams of coherent light stab skywards. The smell of scorched leaves and burnt rain is fitting as the bier sinks from view.
The wreck had contained weapons of the kind that sank Atlantis. Nesmith released recovered evidence proving that the sinking of that fabled place occurred during a war. Then he threatened by taking out a couple of uninhabited Pacific islands. When governments responded by increasing their efforts to stop him and his international corporation turned military combine, he sank Hawaii.
Historians were arguing about ‘what type of war’ and ‘who with’ when descendants of Atlantis’ opponents made representation to the United Nations via Peruvian envoys.
“Sec’n rank, fire!”
The Valusians are a reptilian race, distant relations of the dinosaurs. Decimated by the event that annihilated their kin, they lived in isolated communities until the Atlanteans hunted and waged war upon them to obtain technologies the Valusians refused to disclose. We know how well that went for Atlantis, but the victory was pyrrhic. The same technologies that caused the war now underpin our biomechanica. The Valusians worked with the UK military because their only salvageable technical city lay under the Norfolk Fens. The SAS work with them because our skills and temperament matches that of their combative caste, the Sheshna.
The assault on Nesmith’s ‘capital’ deep in the Gobi Desert caught him unprepared. A hundred biobots tore his nascent global empire to shreds.
His last act was to unleash a shoal of neo-Atlantean ‘geonukes’ from what we had thought was a minor outpost in the Okhotsk Abyss. The only one that detonated did so in the seabed midway between Norwich and Rotterdam. Scientists say the subsidence effect is pretty much the same as if the sea level had risen sixty metres over a radius of a thousand kilometres.
“Port arms!”
The reason we’re not all drowning is Martina. She led the raid on the Okhotsk installation. Quickly realising that taking the base from the overwhelming opposition or stopping the shoal was impossible, she ordered her team to stall the defenders while she tore the exotically radioactive cores from the ‘geonukes’ by hand. The shoal launched just as she reached the last one, the backlash mercifully killing her.
Her last words were: “Lay me down where I can see the loch through the trees.”
We marched from Magadan, escorting her home. Every city on the way stopped as people turned out to honour her passing.
On this chilly October morning I’m looking down on Loch Aslaich, knowing my bonny lass is home at last. I’ll no be joining her for a bit, but she said she didn’t mind.
by Julian Miles | Mar 14, 2013 | Story |
Author : Julian Miles, Staff Writer
After Grandma died, Grandpa settled into being the selfish octogenarian teenager he had always been under the veneer of wisdom and mischief. When his body started to fail, he didn’t notice for a while as he played so much. Eventually we had to intervene to save him from himself. Today, he’s viewing his new home, one fully approved by Decade Eight and thankfully affordable.
“But they don’t even have a megabit network interface!”
Give me strength, Grandma. How did you not throttle him with the power lead from his vintage PS4?
“Look; the room doesn’t have a vari-pos screen and the armchair is unpowered.”
At this point, a bright and distractingly bouncy nurse in a blue-green skinjob under her transparent nurse’s suit enters the room. Grandpa’s eyes go saucer-wide, like the first time he’d seen Ellen without the modesty panels in her daysuit.
“Challene Deathblade?” He sputtered.
With a megawatt smile she crouches by him and Ellen, my wife, has to look away from the intimate view provided as Grandpa leans forward to get a better look.
The nurse in cosplay bodypaint has a dazzling smile and her cleavage is seemingly bottomless. “You’re a fan? Oh great. I’m outnumbered by the Empire players.”
Grandpa looks ready to cry. “I used to be a mercenary guild Reptiliad, but I’m useless without enhanced play.”
I know that Grandpa, you spent our inheritance on neural accelerators to compensate for your slowing reflexes. The painted but fundamentally nude nurse leans close and stage-whispers: “Why do you think this place looks so ordinary? We put all of our investment into wireless care. Everything you need is available from dropdown menus, we monitor your body state all the time and prevent more than we have to fix. Plus it gives us a multi-hundred gig bandwidth to parallel you with a fully persona’d neural assistant.”
The look of stubborn non-cooperation on Grandpa’s face vanishes like a switch has been thrown. Ellen doesn’t see because the male counterpart of bouncy nurse has entered the room. Her eyes nearly suck this red-skinned Adonis with brown tattoos clean out of his suit. I need to get her out of here before comparisons with my blatantly ungym rounded padding are made.
“When can I move in, ‘John Carter’?” Grandpa’s voice is querulous and Ellen catches my eye. The advice from the Octogenarian Gamer network had been spot on.
“I see you’re persona non-abode due to mandated residential care, so you don’t actually have to leave, sir. You can scan your flat from here and eyetag everything you want brought over. I’m Doctor Evander Morgan. It’ll be a pleasure and honour to host a veteran gamer like yourself.”
Doctor Morgan’s voice is businesslike, but his pecs flex slowly and I see Ellen’s eyes widen.
Grandpa smiles for the first time in forever. “Do it. Adam, Ellen, you can leave me here.”
Morgan looks at Ellen and smiles. I see the flush spread down the back of her neck.
“We’ll need one of your family to drop in a couple of times to finalise the details. Challene; sorry, Nurse Burton will see to getting ‘Grandpa’ bedded in and implanted.”
Ellen steps forward. “My husband’s very busy right now, but I have no problem coming in when you need me to.”
She smiles straight at Morgan’s chest and I decide that work be damned, whenever she comes to ‘see Grandpa’, I’m coming too.
