Unstable Prototypes (51 page)

"I made a brief attempt, but the device was
outside of standard communication coverage."

"I guess it was a long shot, anyway."

"I have no doubt it will serve its purpose.
We simply need to wait for the proper activation time."

"Lex, my boy! Are you done yet?" Called
Garotte.

"Finishing touches going on now," Lex
replied, applying the final layer of paint and punching a few
commands into his slidepad. "There. Looks good as new. Now we run
the diagnostic to see how she feels."

"Well get over here. The refit is complete,
with the exception of one or two toys we're still trying to work
out, and I think that this is an occasion that warrants the
attention of an aficionado such as yourself."

Lex paced over to the ship, which now had a
tarp draped across the side, and assorted black-stained stencils
were laying on the ground. Garotte was holding a small bottle of
sparkling white wine.

"Would you do the honors?"

"You're rechristening?"

"Well the ship was an Armistice. Considering
the fact it is now well-equipped enough to level a small town, the
name doesn't
quite
fit anymore," he explained, tossing the
bottle to Lex. "So, without further ado, I present to you
The
Declaration of War
."

"Declaration of War? It doesn't exactly roll
off the tongue," Silo mused.

"It was that or the
Broken Peace
,"
Garotte replied.

"That is loads better," she said.

"Well, too bad, I already painted it on. You
can name the next one. Lex, if you would?"

Lex shrugged and lobbed the bottle at the
ship. It burst in a shower of amber foam.

"Ah, the navy," Garotte declared with a
smile, "My hat is off to any institution that includes alcohol and
broken glass in their ceremonies."

"So, are we going to get down to business?"
Lex asked.

"Ugh. Later. I think a few minutes of respite
are called for, wouldn't you?" Garotte answered, settling down
beside the fire.

"I guess so. If I'd known we were going to
spend the night here, I would have rented some tents at the
registration kiosk. You want me to swing by and pick up a few?"

"Don't bother on my behalf," Silo said,
tucking her hands in her pockets and lying back. "It has been years
since I've spent a night with a sky over my head. And as skies go,
this is gorgeous."

It was an understatement. Half of the sky was
filled with the layered gold orb of the gas giant. Another quarter
was made up of a river of glittering jewels that made up the
planet's rings, and the rest was the brilliant, piercing,
unwavering starlight that is normally only witnessed by mountain
climbers.

"And I haven't had a meal cooked over a wood
fire in equally long."

"And you still haven't," Lex said, looking
over the wrapper from the logs, "Evidently these logs have as much
in common with real wood as those hotdogs have with a steak."

"Each are delightful nonetheless," the spy
decided.

"Come here, sweetie," Silo said, patting the
ground beside her.

Ma looked wearily at Lex for a moment, then
heaved a short sigh and tapped over and laid across her stomach.
She idly scratched the little creature while food was prepared, and
fed Ma broken off bits of hotdog while the others ate. When
stomachs were filled and limbs had drifted from burning fatigue to
a dull ache, Garotte spoke.

"Right. Time to lay out the plans, shall we?
As I see it, this first little mission will be a dress rehearsal
for our final operation to retrieve Karter. Our best hope is to get
in and out fast. These terrorists have been there waiting for us
every step of the way, and there is no reason to imagine that
things will be any different this time."

"Where is Zerk these days, anyway?" Silo
wondered.

"Military Storage Depot 2332," Garrote
replied.

"Storage Depot? That doesn't seem like it
would offer much in the way of security."

"Hah. That's one of the truly wonderful
things about the modern military. Bureaucracy and regulation can
lead to some
very
questionable decisions."

"But we've stolen it at least twice before.
Surely they would have moved it to a more secure facility by
now."

"Never underestimate the depths of stupidity
that can be achieved when decisions are made by committee.
Regardless of what commonsense states, paperwork determines what
gets stored where based on shoehorning things into whatever
classification suits them best."

"How do they classify Zerk?" she asked.

"You'll love this; hazardous medical waste,"
he said with a chuckle.

"Hey, can we maybe let the new guy in on what
exactly Zerk is?" Lex requested.

"I suppose since we are about to go steal it,
you should probably know what it is you are after. Now, how best to
articulate the conundrum that is Zerk... Zerk is like portable
genocide. A disaster area with an on/off switch."

"So, what? Some sort of biological
weapon?"

"Biological, yes. Weapon, yes. But not a
biological weapon. Zerk is the sort of thing you drop into a
battlefield, then a few hours later you retrieve it from amongst
the pile of dead bodies and wrecked machinery."

"Why are you being so coy about this?"

"He always gets poetic when he talks about
Zerk," Silo quipped.

"Did Karter ever give you his rundown about
how much of his body has been replaced with gadgetry?"

"Yeah. I think he said he was at thirty-nine
percent the way nature intended."

"Really? The last time I talked to him he was
up around forty-five or so. Must have been a butterfingers in the
mean time. Well, at any rate, Zerk is what happens when you get
down to around two percent."

"Wait... Zerk is a person?"

"I believe I've just gotten through saying
that Zerk
was
a person. About thirty years ago the TKUR was
trying to make a better land drone. Unmanned ships are easy as pie,
but autonomous tanks, ATVs, and the like just never did the job.
The AI wasn't up to the task. People had been doing some major
cybernetic rebuilds on human troops, and there had been success
with exoskeletons. At some point the wrong engineer and
cyberneticist must have sat down next to each other in a bar
somewhere, because someone finally asked the question, 'What if we
started enhancing and didn't stop?' In a decision that would no
doubt have made Karter himself proud, they decided to make a
prototype with
all
of the proposed enhancements at
once
.
And so 'The Berzerker' was made. Zerk, for short. They
grafted, enhanced, restructured, rebuilt, augmented, and assembled
until the man they started with went from being two hundred pounds
of flesh and blood to three hundred pounds of machinery wrapped
around a spinal cord and brain. And boy did they pick a winner when
they picked that brain. You don't get volunteers for a project like
this, and they didn't want one. Ironically, they wanted a human
mind because of its unparalleled ability to be mindless,
singularity of purpose with complete unpredictability of technique.
So they found a psychopath, a literal psychopath from a military
prison. His name is lost to history, but they subjected him to some
mental reconditioning and plopped his gray matter into a humanoid
robot. It was a staggeringly effective prototype, but they just
couldn't trap lightning in a bottle a second time. An unfortunate
shortage of suitable psychopaths, I suppose. Eventually they
mothballed the entire project when the space-based drones were
improved enough to make the land war an afterthought for most
conflicts... Except for the conflicts that created the herd of
crazies we call the Neo-Luddites, I imagine. We've managed to gain
access to it on occasion and used it to great effect. Zerk is the
ultimate set-and-forget weapon. It fights like an alcoholic drinks;
in great quantities, with endless zeal, and as a result of
addiction."

"Don't you feel bad about using another human
being like that?"

"Lex, my boy, I never feel bad about
anything. But just to be on the safe side, you'll notice that I
don't treat it or refer to it as a human being, because in every
way that matters, that thing is
not
a human being. So,
please keep in mind that this mission is not to liberate a him, it
is to steal an it. To that end, here is how I suggest it be
done..."

Garotte traced out a plan. It was not as
nuanced and refined as his prior attempts, but it was direct. Silo
weighed in where appropriate, but outside of a few crunched
numbers, Ma did not seem to be much of a factor in the plan. When
several minutes had passed with little more than Silo and Garotte
debating the finer points of what amounted to a smash and grab, Ma
got to her feet and wandered off. At a point when the moon would be
rising, if they weren't already on it, Lex decided he had to make
some sort of an addition.

"Okay, okay, fine. That's all well and good,
but what if something goes wrong? Do we have a fallback?"

"I-" Garotte began.

"He doesn't believe in Plan B."

"We'll improvise. The great thing about
improvisation, the enemy can't plan for it."

"I have prepared an adequate contingency
plan," Ma stated as she tapped back into the light of the fire.

"There, you see? Set your mind at ease. Our
pet computer has us covered," Garotte said.

"Joke if you want, but I feel a lot better
with Ma on the job," Lex admitted.

"In the materials I initially had Lex procure
for his mission you will find a number of blue bandanas and a
stimulant injector with type 42c connectors."

"So
that's
what those bandana's were
for..." Silo stated with dawning realization.

"I didn't even
notice
the injectors,"
Garotte nodded. "I see where you're going."

"I don't," Lex said.

"Don't worry about it. It is a part of the
ground operations. You know something? I am incorporating your plan
B into my plan A," Garotte decided.

Lex stood and stretched some of the kinks out
of his back. "Well, it seems like things are pretty
straightforward. I do fancy flying, like always, and you guys blow
stuff up and do something mysterious with allergy medication and
hankies. I might as well turn in."

"Sleep well, pilot," Garotte said with a
sharp salute.

"Nice meeting you, Lex," Silo said, "I hope
we can get you in and out of this without getting your hands too
dirty."

"You and me both," Lex groaned. "I'm going to
camp out in the SOB. Talk to you in the morning."

Lex popped the cockpit hatch and climbed into
his ship. Thirty seconds after activating the heated massage chair
he was almost dead to the world, but a tap at the glass brought him
around. He fought one eye open to see Ma standing on the cockpit
window looking down at him. He gestured for her to back away, then
popped the cockpit.

"You need something, Ma?"

"May I come in?"

"Uh, yeah, sure."

She hopped down to his lap and tapped the
control to shut the hatch.

"This is an exchange that I would prefer take
place in private."

"Okay?" Lex remarked uncomfortably.

"There is one repair remaining to be
done."

"Oh? The diagnostic checked out."

"It is not the ship. It is me."

"I don't understand."

"The destruction of my built-in transmitter
has severely impaired my ability to contribute. I have secured the
apparatus necessary to produce a repair and improvement to that
functionality, but I can't do the repair myself."

"What needs to be done?"

"I have delivered the procedure to your
slidepad, and the necessary equipment is in your passenger
seat."

Lex turned to the seat behind him to find a
military data radio, a few cables, assorted tools, and a roll of
gauze.

"How did you get all of this in here?"

"I know your security codes. I hope that I
did not overstep my bounds."

"I guess it's okay." Lex glanced over the
instructions and quickly began to wince. "I don't... I don't think
I can do this. This isn't a repair, it's surgery."

"All ships designed for long distance flight
have got disinfection filters. This environment is adequately
sanitized. And there is only one incision."

"That's about five too many. Garotte probably
knows this stuff better than me."

"Garotte and Silo are both better suited to
the task, but I would prefer it was performed by you."

"Why?"

Ma looked to her reflection in the cockpit
glass, flicking her bandaged and bejeweled ear. She twisted her
head down and pawed the adhesive tab free, revealing the notched
ear.

"What happened?"

"I was hit in a crossfire. A crossfire that
would not have occurred if I had been able to more accurately and
effectively control the manipulator arm. This is my mission. I need
to be useful."

"That doesn't explain why you want it to be
me."

"My initial interactions with Garotte were
less than ideal, but he has come to view me as an asset, at least
with regard to my computational prowess. He treats me like a
computer. As I am a computer, this is acceptable. Silo lavishes
much adoration upon me, and is very kind. She treats me like a
companion animal. As this is an accurate description of my current
state, this too is acceptable. You are the only one who treats me
as a unique individual, a person. You are the only one who would
agree that restoring me to my full capabilities is desirable not
only from a strategic standpoint, but from the standpoint of
decency."

"Well, yeah. I mean, you got hurt because you
were trying to save my life."

"Yes. I did."

"But what if I screw this up? It's better to
have to poke around at a slidepad to talk than to be a vegetable
because I severed your spinal column."