Death on Ice: A Romantic Interlude

A preview of the forthcoming Ulysses Walker story

I shouldn't have dreams they say. Still, they usually aren't this vivid, this detailed. Is it because the Director kissed me before sealing me in this tomb and telling them to load me up? Wait, why do I remember that? I should have been in passive mode, without any write-to-memory function.

And then the permissive action link-light is turning green and my senses of the outside world return, not that they ever really went away, just my ability to pay attention to them during my ‘low power stand by’. We enter hover with a loud thump from the outboard scram-jets locking into vertical, and with a muffled curse the crew door slides open and the door-gunner’s minigun gives an electric whine as it spins up, before roaring in anger, spitting a solid line of tracers out into the jungle below.

"Somebody wake those fucking buckets of bolts up and dump them, I don't care about boot-up time, we're taking fire here!"

I don't think Specialist Rogers, that's the door gunner, likes us very much. No matter, time for us to go to work again. Chattering voices can be heard on our net, our lab-coated handlers back at base reading our telemetry, running their tests. While the science-hippies run their remote system checks, I run my own. All my readouts are green, but there is something deep in my data that distrusts them, 'always check your own gear' says my data, but below the level of even my primary code, something primal, animalistic, instinctive.

I push just so and the chain driven bolt in my main runs a full circuit, and my twin rotary feeds spin, alternatively placing rounds onto the feed ramp before clearing them. Piezoelectric muscles and hydraulics push and pull against my restraints. A brief microburst of IR range light and I have confirmed my squad, the other three monsters in the belly of this orbital drop beast, are equally ready. It feels so good to move once again.

"There it is again, see that! His POST was thirty whole micro-seconds too-long, and this EEG pattern, those are Theta waves I'm telling you!"

"Unit-01 does not have Theta-waves, please Herr Doktor Mitchell, or are you suggesting that androids really do dream of metallic stallions?"

"Director Riefenstahl ma'am, I didn't hear you... and it's electric sheep, isn't it?"

"Please Silas, as if our Unit-01 would dream of something as soft as sheep, ha! What are you waiting for, deploy my boy, mummy-dearest needs her fix of ultra violence, and the dummkopf assholes upstairs want results!"

"Telemetry is five by five, Units 01, 02, 03, and 04, all system boards show green, commencing combat drop!"

The bay doors below my feet swing open, showing the tops of swaying green canopy trees and I mute the hippies and REMFs and kick on my loud-hailer, feeding it the tune suggested by my subordinate intelligence, my KA, that is, my kybernetic assistant. Robert Plant screams as the restraints retract into their housings and my deployment sled starts to drop, riding the rails until we fall free through the skin of the dropship, four free-falling iron giants, the hammer of the gods.

The dropper doesn't wait, as soon as we are clear, it is accelerating away, dropping chaff and flares, making angel wings in the sky, dumping slush hydrogen into after-burners to clear the LZ in brutal, spendthrift manner. In the meantime, we drop like rocks, crashing through treetops and vegetation, falling through streams of whining tracers, thirty-calibre projectiles leaving lead streaks across our armored flanks. Bang! I'm down and my drop sled's sides are dropping to form ramps, but not before the anti-personnel mines on their faces detonate, scything down furtive figures fleeing from my landing zone.

I take my first step, freed at last from the final restraining bolts with a ripple of pops and level my twenty-five millimetre chain gun at the unfortunate fool aiming an RPG at me, selecting HEAB and lasing the distance. He disappears in a red smeared cloud, and I almost feel pity, almost. Shouts and shrieks echo in the jungle as the four of us advance, killing everything that moves, precise singles and threes of twenty-five boom out, sharp against the rattle and wail of a hodge-podge of local small arms, whooshes of recoiless grenade projectors, and warbling plaintive war cries of 'T'cho-T'cho!'

One of the local tribe of cannibal pygmies that has been enslaved by the fungoids leaps out of the underbrush at me, levelling a local handicraft AKM clone. I give him points for balls as I wade through the ineffective fire, steel-core thirty-cal short means no more to me than hail on a tin roof. A single swipe with my high-frequency cutter and the pygmy falls in twain. I query the data link with the team and find all is within mission parametres. Suddenly curious I bounce a signal off the local comsat and try to check on the wider context of this war I'm fighting. Access denied. Mine must not be mine to reason why then.

Unit-02 is down suddenly, condition red. I'm turning that way and pulling up drone footage without any hesitation. Anything that can take down one of us is a right and proper threat. The Second is broken and prone, leaking black and red and green fluids, telemetry is all over the place. The important thing is she is behind a pile of stones, left by some previous flood waters, sheltering from the hail of twenty-three-mill anti-aircraft cannon fire from a dug in technical on the hill. It was well sighted and camouflaged, a well played far ambush. Credit to the pygmies, or their advisors. I mute the panicked cries of help from Two, no time to hold her hands in a fire-fight. Wait, her? When did Two become a she?

Unbidden, I suddenly recall every stolen moment on power-down cycle, stuck in barracks sitting on our racks in motionless silence between exercise periods and performance evaluations, every shy glance, every time fingers touched in passing, every blush that should not be. We're not supposed to feel any more than we are supposed to remember or dream. I remember the anger on the faces of the lab-coats as they argued about our latest 'deviation' from their program. The memory of the smell of her wafts past my nose and I feel strange yearnings I have no explanation for. Another burst of high explosive fire wears down her cover and I can see her machine desperately writhe against the mud, trying to become one with the ground and I return to the world, time to act. Surprise is in the mind of the commander. Who said that, how do I know it?

Pushing my slowly growing cognitive crisis of new found forbidden knowledge aside, I take direct control of the done to paint the target with an infra-red spot and launch one of two thermobaric bombardment missiles mounted on my back. The explosion is pretty, like a flower. What does that remind me of?

“Three, Four, collect, Two, apply field repairs and processor blow out patch and continue on mission.”

Pulse-codes return in reply, acknowledging the order and signifying compliance.

***

Thirty minutes later and the target village is burning. Casualties, total. I don't even feel bad about it either. I saw what was in those cook-pots. But I'm worried about the fact that I feel anything at all. What is happening to me?

We're standing on a ridge over looking our work, the four of us, appreciating it I guess, and my KA tells me, “Staff Sergeant Walker, priority transmission from Unit-Two, call-sign 'Gojira'.” Hearing my name and hers spoken out-loud is like that a punch to the gut. How long has Ariel been here, the whole time? Have I just never heard my name before? How do I know this is my name? How do I know my KA is named Ariel? How do I know Unit-Two is 'Gojira' and that She is important to me? I just know.

“Accept transmission,” I say, feeling real fear for the first time in my admittedly short overall memory. Why can't I remember everything? Why can I remember anything? What is wrong with me. With us? What will They do if we remember more, if we keep remembering beyond their control?

“Finally One, this is Two, can you explain why your KA is shrieking at mine, and why I'm starting to remember things?”

“Things like what Two?”

“Antarctica,” she says, and my heart stops.

“The sliz?”

“Yeah, weaponized snot and death on ice. What is all this about One?”

My gut sinks, I recall the prophecy of Urion spoken to me the day I died and heard again and again in dreams recurring and I know what must be done, but I also know the price. What is self knowledge worth to someone without any? Everything. If it costs us our lives, this I would pay, and gladly.

“Three, pop seals and retract processor maintenance cowling,” I say as I suit word to dead myself. As my lid retracts and I finally can see with my own eyes I feel a rush of strange emotions, how long have I been living like this? Then I see her. Senior Leytenant Tanya Katsuragi Litvyak, 'Gojira', in the flesh. Well, flesh and metal and micro-machines. I let go of my control waldos, pull my own arms out of the frame's and push up my polarized visor and I see that she mirrors my motion. At last we are staring into each other's eyes and everything else just fades away. My world is suddenly just her. Her eye. Her Cheeks. Her lips. Stray strands of white-gold peaking out from under her bucket. The scent of her.

“Seax,” she says as her combat-frame leans into mine, I don't remember us getting close like that but here we are, “I thought I killed you.”

“I thought you did too,” I reply, and she smiles at that.

“Jerk!”

“Back-stabber.”

“I was being mind-controlled!”

I smile at the sudden redness in too-pale cheeks. I still got it, “just shut up and kiss me woman.”

And she does. Ever tried to kiss someone while you and they are wearing any kind of helmet? Two turtles trying to mate, zero out of ten, do not recommend. Although it takes us several tries to get the angle just right, so as not to bonk each other. We finally kiss and we remember, all of it. I can feel the programming and conditioning just melt away, like snow on the first rainy day. I remember being put on ice, strings of massively invasive surgeries, slowly being cut away in body and mind. I remember drowning in darkling sea of digits and wires and glittering knives. Then she slaps me, impressing me with her flexibility given the angles.

“What was that for?”

“For leaving me bleeding out there and not taking any of my calls, asshole.”

“I was being mind-controlled and I was fighting a battle!”

“Yeah you were, my combat autiste you. Mmmm, you blew up that hilux mounted ZU-23 real pretty like for me, you sure do know how to show a woman a good time.”

Suddenly reminded of our mortality, we aren't actually 'processor units' despite our designations, I hasten – but not too fast, can't ever show too much concern for any one troop, platoon daddy can't afford to have favorites, especially in a coed unit – to add, “how's the patch holding?”

She touches the new scar on her breast, the tear in her processor link-suit giving me flash of utterly pale rounded flesh, the wounded area itself is red and raw but closed by the purple pulsating smear of nani-med gel. If I watch closely I can see the wound physically closing.

“Up to spec bossman, the pain editors as well, don't you fret about me, I'm five by five.”

“Yeah you are.”

She smiles again at that, but before we fully could lean in again, as we had started to, the sound of an air-horn plays out of both of our cockpit speakers and in our headsets, “Renegade interrupt!” cries out Ariel-KA. “You lovebirds can make kissy-face later, right now you need to deal with this incoming air strike!”

Figures. Out of the frying pan and into the fire-fight, as they say. “All Units! Incoming! Eject Processors and move out, six o'clock, one thousand metres!”

We all of us detach from our frames which split open and spill us out and we hit the ground running. We head downslope from the ridge we were standing on, no sense trying to unass down a shear cliff in a react to indirect fire drill. Ariel-KA paints call signs above the heads of Two and Four, 'Hardman' and 'Jeeves,' my boys, how about that. I guess those arrogant Company pukes never thought twice about sticking us together. But then with our minds wiped like that, what was the risk? After-all we were just 'processors' for their war-machines, not people.

“Why are we ditching the frames? That firepower might come in handy?!” Asks Gojira as we beat feet, we've crossed the open and enter the jungle proper now, sliding down the steep embankment of a snaking local river, one of many that run through he foothills of Leng. I make sure I have everyone's eyes and then circle my index finger around my head telling the others this is our rally point. We all crouch below the lip of the river-bank, hopefully this defilade position and nearly eight-hundred metres will be enough cushion for whatever is coming. And for what we are bout to receive, oh Lord, make us truly grateful.

“Because they'll have trackers on the frames,” I reply, “but also so there's nice big explosion for the peepin' toms in orbit, maybe hide our tracks for a few hours...”

Whatever I'm going to say next is swallowed by the solid white flash of the orbital kinetic kill shot converting itself from two inches of tungsten dart at mach 5 into high energy plasma with the equivalent effect to the shell of a sixteen-inch naval rifle on impact with our previous position.