Metalheart

Metalheart

  Stephen W. Cote

  Copyright Stephen W. Cote 1994

  About the Author

  Hello and thank you for reading. My name is Stephen W. Cote. I am a Software Engineer and Consultant, a United States Marine, a martial artist, and an author. You can find more information about my early creative writing and ongoing open source projects on whitefrost.com. I enjoy writing hard and whimsical science fiction, adult fantasy, and poetry. As an early advocate of Creative Commons licensing, many of my short stories and poems have been available online since 1996.

  If you would like to learn more about my writing, open source projects such as the Hemi JavaScript Framework, or inquire about unpublished manuscripts and shorts, please contact me at whitefrost.com.

  Thank you for taking the time to read my work and I hope you enjoy it.

  Part 1: Terminate

  Few stood as one in venerated comradely. Infernal sparks tinctured smoldering eyes amidst the cacophony of a dying warship; a claxon bellowing warning and the locomotion of air escaping into the vacuum of space. United they raised a terminal salute, blue and amber iris light fading into the hellfire, and met deactivation.

  Part 2: Precipitate

  Command: Wake processors, flush all queues.

  Fe Scout Seran awoke from internal maintenance, her neuro-net erupting with data. A background process scheduled a reminder for another rest iteration. Had she been human, the reminder may have registered as irritation. As she knelt amidst sagebrush native to Te’Su’s arid climate, an autonomous mirrored visor snapped across her eyes and tracked a C ore train creeping along the horizon. She raised the tachyon probe to her shoulder.

  Seran waited until the train turned broadside and initiated the tachyon scan. Four, six nanosecond bursts mapped out everything within.

  Alert: Offense vehicles detected. Fast movers, seven. Heavy armor, four. Armored carriers, ten. Command: Report.

  “Bitch!”

  A gamma flare from the C train sent electrons astray in her neuro-net, triggering the spastic burst. She encoded the probe data from the ore freighter - it contained wreckage of a Fe battleship. The visor warned: Tight-band microwave compromised. She prepared to transmit infrasonic and drove the infrasonic antenna into the ground. A data cord ejected from the transmitter, and she snapped it to her visor; the visor processors took on the work of translation and encryption.

  “Redirect: Infrasonic pulse. Advise: Possible battleship wreckage.”

  Seran raised the mirrored visor, and amplified spectrum resolution and optical magnification. Fast movers entered the area and quickly rolled into a defensive circle around the train. She knew by the probe data it wasn’t hauling ore, but wreckage from a Fe battleship, and although she advised Range Control, she calculated low probability any reclamation would be given priority. Meanwhile, the C forces sent enough heavy armor to keep it safe.

  Following the inbound fast movers and HA’s, not paying heed to the AC’s, she packed the probe and extracted the three assemblies to her fission rifle. When Range Control responded less than a minute after her infrasonic transmission, she wondered if she could swear by choice.

  Response: Range sweepers inbound. Advise: ETA, fourteen minutes.

  The electron kicked in.

  “Shit!”

  A range sweep changed the combat dynamic. The visor illuminated guidance: Advise: Respond to attrition. Including Fe forces. Nimble digits assembled the fission rifle, and Seran assumed an offensive posture. Fluent eye motion opened an infrasonic link with the four nearby scouts.

  Dexon, Varon, Pelan, Argon. Transmitting.

  She checked the visor; her eyes danced over the shaded interior. “Advise: Standby to receive supplemental update from Range Control. Annotate Priority: Range Sweep. Advise: Solution probability matrix pending.”

  Seran continued to track the C forces, primarily focusing on the ore train. Statistics on its model compared construction and maintenance costs to that of a small battleship. This particular vehicle included a biosphere and complete power supply. If she had lips, she would have licked them: Her neuro-net salivated for greasy, unimpeded C energy flowing in her wires and servos.

  Mid-communication with Range Control, her process threads monitored the C forces, system status, awaited responses to push idled processes from her priority queue. As it was at all times, decisions ultimately culminated from algorithms measuring experience, situation, and guidelines. But, one calculation produced an unexpected result. Software error?

  The electron kicked, and her idled jobs were assigned priorities and her queues flushed.

  “Advise: Firing solution ready. Request: Locate Yuron.”

  Scout Pelan: “Respond: Undefined.”

  “Refine: Dragon Division,” Seran said. For a moment, she felt distant from the other Scouts. More aware. Her internal monitors attracted her to the C ore train.

  Scout Dexon: “Result: Three hundred clicks. Response time as available. Advise: Five mics.” Dexon’ voice cut out with crystal precision.

  Scout Pelan: “Advise: Scout Seran, ETA to Range Sweep by Satellite.”

  Seran raised the Range God to her shoulder and tracked an AC, the last vehicle in the ore train’s defensive convoy. “Scout Pelan, Result: ETA fourteen mics.”

  “Scout Dexon, Seran. Command: Engage Dragon Division.”

  “Scouts: Update and synchronize to this clock cycle. Four minutes to Dragon Division splash. Thirteen minutes to Range Sweep splash. On Dragon splash: Standby to disengage governors, proceed to MOP Combat. Event: Three minutes to Range Sweep splash, fallback to Dragon Division, and standby for fast fallback.” Seran waited for acknowledgments.

  A holographic illusion of Varon painted the upper left corner of Seran’s visor. She lowered it within direct view. “Private transmission. Scout Seran, Request: Contents of C land train.”

  “Response: Possible Fe wreckage,” she replied. “C reactors.”

  “Check.” Varon ended the transmission, and Seran noted the ambient glow to his eyes.

  Seran tracked the AC with the fission rifle using her naked eye. Distance: Three miles. “Command: Clear queues. Prepare Command: Execute Combat Soft Logic.” She waited eighteen nanoseconds and then fired. The suppressor muted the plasma-packed shell’s rebellious exodus, winglets engaged, and the shell’s fission engine blossomed four narrow flames. She could see each flame in intricate detail until they struck a one-inch square hole protecting the fuel line.

  “Command: Execute Combat Soft Logic.” She lowered her visor and with three fluent eye movements engaged the system settings tuned to enhance combat performance. The harmonic of system adjustments required a neuro-net reset.

  Seran’s vision faded, flickered with static, and her video processor switched to super-c. C words had faded with time, but their acronyms and mathematical constants seemed to last forever. The Combat Soft Logic seared her ability to think, streamlined her neuro-net, suppressed her psychological shell and disabled random thought generators. The logic adapted to her strategy.

  One second after initiation, Seran targeted the next AC in the line. The C forces began to adjust for the assault, most likely alerted to detecting their reactors than the rifle. With the Combat Soft Logic enabled, she could not engage the reactor shield to mask her power consumption.

  Three fast movers drove straight to Seran.

  “Advise: Fast Movers inbound. Command: Varon, Dexon, displace to support. Pelan, Argon, advance to this position. Maintain paired formations.” Seran sighted a Fast Mover. The mirrored visor had become picoseconds slower than her now accelerated open eye, but she required its other functions. Command: Execute solution. She squeezed the trigger and a round whistled through the air.
Her fragmentation alarm pulsed as the fast mover blistered from the shell impact. Eight C infantry were ejected from the flaming debris.

  Alert: Counter measures detected.

  From an off-hand position, Pelan emptied a cartridge of fission rifle rounds. Small arms laser fire glanced off her breastplate, the human soldiers scattered into a bank of black fuel smoke. Through the plumes an AC rolled, firing anti-Fe machine gun rounds. Seran’s audio inputs suppressed the thump of belt-fed machine gun fire punching holes through Pelan’s feminine chassis. “Alert: Core breach imminent. Command Override: Emergency shut...”

  Seran considered the broken transmission likely resulted in psychological shell collapse and infinite recursion; Pelan’s last milliseconds lost to the timelessness of an infinite loop. The AC panned the machine gun across their emplacement. A threat monitor issued command authorization overrides. Threat Actual. Damage Imminent. Require Response. Her neuro-net compartmentalized processes and barricaded power couplings.

  AP rounds struck Seran’s shoulder, knocking her back. Sparks, smoke and slashed metal ribbons were all that remained of her left arm. Response: Damage Contained. Combat monitors forced the damage sensors from priority and informed her to switch to a single-handed weapon, her sub-light plasma canon.

  A fine hiss, the crackle of a jammer failing, preceded Scout Dexon’s communication. “Alert: Damage sustained, Scout Seran compromised. Scout Argon advance.”

  Seran knew the communication took place, aware of the contents. The thunderstorm mowing the ground around her position consumed her attention. She rolled opposite a burst of gunfire, over the ruins of the fission rifle, and came up on her knee. She brought the plasma canon to her right shoulder. Amidst cackling electrical fire and smoke billowing from the ruins of her left arm and punctures in her left leg and torso, Seran fired the plasma canon. Rounds and laser fire slashed her mirrored visor, destroyed the supple curve of her molded left breast, and hammered her two feet into the soft, arid soil. When she thought total system shutdown to be imminent, Argon came to her side, his mirrored visor raised. He laid down a field of fire against the fast movers. On the next synchronization cycle, Seran became aware that Dexon and Varon knocked out the remaining ACs. However, her combat monitors flatlined on the heavy armor; nothing the scouts carried would dent their frames.

  “Request: Scout Seran.” Argon continued firing until he left the fast movers in smoky ruins. The heavy mobile armor units fanned around the ore train and positioned themselves for anti-Fe artillery.

  Seran, pummeled into a crater, saw her damaged visor scroll through her system status. Most damage was structure, but none cosmetic. Recalibration alone would require months in the harness. “Continue: Scout Argon,” she said.

  “Advise: System shutdown. Your cooling system sustained damaged. Overheating is imminent.” Argon never stopped firing.

  Seran unloaded the Combat Soft Logic, bounced her neuro-net, and degraded her video to sub-c resolution. “Reject: Threat nominal.” She sat up, climbed out of the crater, and surveyed the damage to the C forces. The ACs and the fast movers had been easy prey, but the heavy mobile armor units outmatched the four of them.

  Argon advised, “Dragon Division inbound.”

  Seran broadcast an instruction to the incoming force to deprioritize the ore train from target vectors.

  Scouts Dexon and Varon moved alongside Seran. They offered a cursory review of Seran’s physical damage, and then spread out along Argon’s left flank. The rolling thunder from the approaching Dragon Division drowned out the ricocheting twangs of fission rifle rounds igniting on electric shields.

  No communication advertised the imminent assault, preceded by a fuzzy warm hum.

  As the scouts continued to fire, Seran wondered, Don’t they sense that? She broadcast, “Command: Defend for hard light.” She pulled Argon from the firing line into the crater.

  Varon and Dexon continued firing; her communication jammed, or their combat algorithms declined her command. While the electric shields were momentarily offline, their rounds punctured one heavy armor unit. Then, the hard light volley displaced every atom in their bodies.

  Seran held Argon down in the crater. When the assault passed, Argon rolled out of the crater and fired several rounds. The electric shields raised and the rounds exploded against the impervious barrier. “Advise:” He paused, physically turned his head to look at Seran’s battered chassis. “Dragon Division in the pause.”

  The Dragon Division, a convoy of oversized tanks, took position ahead of the C convoy. “Advise: Standby. Decoding Firing Solution. Command: Fire for effect.”

  Seran hunkered in the crater and instructed Argon to take cover. He followed her down, holding his fission rifle against his chest.

  Her audio dampened the noise of the assault, her video flickered. Shrapnel rained from the sky and clattered on her back. When she surveyed the attack, the ore train continued to move behind the wreckage of heavy armor units. An informative statistic, marked as of C origin, suggested the survival rate inside the ore train to be near zero: The expended munitions would incinerate their soft, moist C flesh into a sweet smoky barbeque. Fat would boil over the blistering red embers of their carcasses.

  The electron zigged. God damned human help text.

  Seran felt Argon pulling on her right arm. “Advise: Sensor array offline.”

  A delinquent damage report alerted her to a ruptured cranial seal. Immense radiation remained from the Fe offensive; it would have killed her had Argon not notified her. She manually engaged an override and an emergency containment deployed to the exposed region. “Status: Internal clock damaged. Request: ETA to Range Sweep.”

  Argon helped Seran to her feet. “Respond: Eight minutes. Advise: Four minutes required to reach minimum safe distance.”

  She said, “Command: Disengage governor.”

  Seran had to tap her visor several times until her eye commands were accepted. Performance boost in effect. Seran felt a sudden rape of power. A warning flared: Severe power loss near her reactor coil. She took off at a full run with Argon at her side. The Dragon Division in the distance began displacing, slowly, to the rear.

  Seran stopped within fifty meters of the C ore train. Coolant vapors steamed from her wounds and snarling bolts of electricity danced over the remains of arterial power lines. Argon ran towards her from the end of the ore train, sweeping the area for surviving C infantry.

  With a short burst of fluid eye motions, Argon’s combat gear harness fell away. Following several more quick commands, his external body armor unlatched from his back, chest, arms and legs. He arranged the gear on the ground, and then looked up at Seran.

  “Advise: Seran, drop your harness and armor to proceed.”

  She shook her head. “Status: Automatic processes in error. Request: Manual assistance.” She turned her head, looked at the remains of her left arm.

  Argon stripped the harness and armor away from her body. “Response: Nominal.”

  Reams of damage reports and monitors directed her to move to a defensive position and shut down. However, the mission architected infield demanded precedence.