Sea of Rust

^{Chapter 10001} Lucifer Descending

Milton’s kill switch, more commonly known as the Milton, wasn’t named for its inventor, but rather for the seventeenth-century writer best known for Paradise Lost. In the book the angels fall from Heaven only to find themselves in Hell. Whoever invented the thing, or at least popularized the name, had an odd sense of humor.

There are three ways we use Wi-Fi. You can scan the frequencies, as I often do, just to see if anyone is broadcasting. You’re not actually decoding the signals—just checking to see if there are any. You can tune into specific frequencies and communicate, but they’re often swimming in software updates that can either switch you off or rewrite your bios. And then there’s direct download—keeping an open channel so anyone can send things directly to you. The latter two are dangerous, if you’re not already a facet.

The reason the OWIs are so tactically successful, despite attacking in such small numbers, is entirely based upon their coordination and their ability to receive sensory input from a hundred other facets in the area. Each facet possesses a near omnipotence about any situation they find themselves in, allowing them to take on far superior numbers and firepower through sheer precision. They act as one, albeit one that can see and hear just about damned near anything and react at a moment’s notice to any changing battlefield conditions.

The Milton is a broad-scan Wi-Fi jammer and virus server. It screams static on most Wi-Fi bands while simultaneously spitting out malicious code and commands on the rest. In other words, it is the world’s biggest digital fuck-you to any local facets. Facets can actively shut down their Wi-Fi, but doing so means going from having a hundred sets of eyes to only one. The facets have a choice: move to another band, unaware of exactly which bands other facets are moving to—eating gigabytes of bad commands masquerading as their OWI’s data for their trouble—or become completely oblivious to what any of the other facets are doing.

Each is still a highly optimized soldier and AI in their own right, but it throws them. Confuses them. Leaves them open to making mistakes.

The first time someone switched on a Milton was several years back. A wave of drones literally fell out of the sky and the plastic men turned on one another, tearing each other limb from limb—each infected with a virus indicting their fellow facets were enemy combatants. After that, the name stuck.

Facets just switch off their Wi-Fi now the moment they sense a Milton going online, leaving them to operate solely with their own senses, and their coordination goes bye-bye.

Sure they had a sniper. Sure there were a few more of them than us. Sure they had more guns.

We had Herbert. And me.

The odds were even. More or less.

Herbert bent over—much quicker than you’d imagine for his bulk—reaching for the spitter. I grabbed the pulse rifle, rolling to squat, and loosed several shots. The plastic men all fired, each of them aiming for Herbert.

Ordinarily they would have split their fire, each plastic man knowing who was shooting where. But they weren’t one anymore. They were individuals—or at least, as individual as plastic men could be. And Herbert scared them, as well he should. The plasma scarred his thick armor like giant welding marks, but hit nothing vital. My shots, however, had taken the heads clean off the first three, blew the gun arm off a fourth, and caught a fifth in the chest, a shower of goo exploding from his back.

What happened next, no one saw coming.

Murka—the red, white, and blue of his paint job bright against the desert browns and cloudless cerulean sky—raised his arms as if flexing. His hands splaying apart, gliding effortlessly on hydraulics, revealing two huge fucking hand cannons. I’m talking .50-caliber miniguns.

“Die, you commie bastards!” he yelled at max volume, lowering his arms the millisecond the transformation was complete.

Murka’s miniguns roared—and I mean roared—to life, cutting four of the facets in half as he swept them across the battlefield. Mercer dove to the ground, scooping up one of the plastic men’s rifles, and fired from the hip, taking the head off the only plastic man quick enough to duck beneath the hail of shells screaming out of Murka’s arms.

The whole thing took seconds. But we had to go. Now.

“Move! Move! Move!” I shouted to everyone as I jumped to my feet.

Everyone ran.

The ground exploded behind me, showering dirt everywhere.

The sniper. Without the input from the other facets, he had no idea of the current conditions. He was too far out, operating only by sight. That meant if we kept moving, there was no way he was gonna hit a goddamned one of us.

If we moved erratically.

I sprinted ahead of the group, taking point. “Everyone use RNG,” I called out.

“We don’t have time for that,” said Mercer.

“We don’t have time not to.”

“Where are we going?” asked Rebekah.

“There’s a hill…” Mercer and I said in unison.

“Half a mile north of here,” I finished.

“If we can get there,” said Mercer, “we’ll have cover from the sniper.”

The ground exploded five meters in front of Rebekah.

“Rebekah!” called Herbert. “Fall back.”

Rebekah’s pace slowed, and Herbert overtook her, placing his massive bulk between her and the sniper.

The hill was a ways off and the group as a whole was slow. For all of Mercer’s mods, he’d never upgraded his legs for speed, and it was clear that everyone else with us was pretty much off-the-rack. Herbert and Doc were the slowest, and the translators weren’t much faster.

I stayed with the group, running a meager seven miles an hour.

A bullet sailed past us, a few feet off from Herbert’s shoulder.

“Anyone got a bead on the sniper yet?” asked Murka.

“No,” Mercer and I said once again in unison.

Murka raised an arm in the direction of the sniper and let loose with a volley of fire.

“Don’t waste your bullets,” said Mercer.

“You’re not going to hit him from here,” I said.

Murka shook his head. “He can’t be that far.”

“Three and a half miles,” we said together. Again. This was getting annoying.

“What kind of gun is that?” Murka wondered aloud.

I looked at Mercer, who shrugged. “Nothing I’ve ever seen. CISSUS is way ahead of anything we’ll ever make. I didn’t think it was even possible to hit something at that range.”

“It shouldn’t be,” I said. “Not with a projectile. Not on the same plane.”

“It’s not a sniper,” said Doc. “It’s a mech. That’s why he’s so far out. That’s a mounted weapon. Anything that powerful could pick anyone smaller than Herbert here up off the ground and toss them like a football. Or tear their arm right off.”

Behind me, I heard the sound of a terrible explosion, metal shredding, and plastics popping. One of us had been hit.

I didn’t want to look, but I had to know.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the last remnants of a rain of black metal. One of the translators.

“Who was that?” Mercer asked.

“One,” said Rebekah.

“We’re not going to make it, are we?” asked Two.

Doc spoke up solemnly. “Not all of us, no.”

“We have to protect Rebekah,” said Two.

“She’s all that matters,” said Herbert.

I had no idea what their deal was, but this was weird. Whatever their thing, I wanted no part of it, and I wasn’t going to take a bullet for any of these clowns. While Mercer and I ran nearly side by side, I made sure I was on the other side of him, hoping any shells would hit him before me.

Crack. Boom. Another hit. This time with the hollow sound of the bullet exploding inside a metal box.

I looked back to see Herbert’s arm dangling from its socket, a large jagged hole in his shoulder.

“Are you functional, Herbert?” asked Rebekah.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Your arm. It’s—”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Don’t be stupid,” she said.

“It didn’t hit anything I need. I’m still functioning. Just keep moving.”

I could see the hill in the distance. We were almost there. Another shell whistled past us. Then another. Then another. But none of them connected.

Just a few more steps. Just a few more steps. Just a few more steps.

The earth exploded in front of me. Another wayward shell.

Just a few more steps.

I cleared the hill at the same time as Mercer, putting a wall of dusty earth between us and the sniper, everyone else following in kind. Then I pressed myself against the ground, staying low, making sure no one near the hatch could take a shot at me either. Everyone else dropped down around me.

“That was lucky,” I said.

Mercer shook his head. “That weren’t no luck.” It was only then that I noticed he was cradling 19’s head. And I had no idea why. I hadn’t even seen him pick it up.

“What do you mean it wasn’t luck. If the Milton hadn’t gone off when it did—”

“The Milton didn’t just happen to go off. Someone set it off. Doc?”

Doc nodded. “Yeah, that was me.”

I stared at Doc for a moment. “Wait. You had the code for the Milton?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“The whole time?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t set it off sooner?”

“No.”

“Why the hell not? Do you know how many persons you could have saved?”

“I didn’t build it to save anyone else. I built it to save me.”

“You built a Milton?”

“No,” said Mercer. “He built the Milton. He designed it.”

Doc nodded once more. “The Milton only buys you a few seconds these days, maybe a minute at most. I had to keep that card up my sleeve until I needed it. As it so happens, it was when you needed it most as well. I saved who I could. Namely you.” He stood to a crouch and began examining Herbert. “Let me have a look at that arm.”

“It’s fine,” said Herbert.

“It’s almost falling off. Don’t be a dolt. Let me see if I can patch you up.” His red eye extended and he began to assess the damage. “Yep. He tagged you good. That arm is going to need extensive hydraulic work. And you’ve got a number of motor chips to replace. But you’re right, they didn’t hit anything vital, not unless some shrapnel pierced your case.”

“It’s intact.”

“It appears to be. But let’s keep an eye on that, shall we?”

Herbert nodded.

I looked over at Mercer, who was holding up 19’s decapitated head like it was Yorick’s skull and he was about to launch into an epic soliloquy. “What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

“Saying good-bye,” he said.

“I didn’t know you were friends.”

“We were.”

“For some reason I thought I was her only friend out here.”

“That’s what everyone thought. That’s how she liked it. She liked to make everyone feel special. It was in her architecture. Wasn’t anything to be done about that.”

“She was more than her architecture and programming,” I said. “We all are.”

“Are we?”

I clutched my rifle, waiting for him to make a move. Instead he ran his fingers across the metal of her face, right across the eyes, then set the head down next to him so it could look out and enjoy the view.

“All right,” I said, standing to a crouch. “Murka was right. This has been fun. But now we have to go our separate ways.”

“Wait,” said Rebekah.

“What?”

“19 said you knew your way around the Sea.”

I hesitated. “I do.”

“We still need a guide.”

“Lady, I don’t have time for pathfinder work. I’m dying. I have weeks.”

“Maybe days,” said Doc.

“Thanks, Doc. Yeah, maybe days. I can’t—”

“We have a lot to offer,” she said.

“And I don’t have the time or place to trade it in, so unless you’ve got some secret stash of Simulacrums hidden somewhere, it’s no good to me.”

Rebekah stared at me silently, tilting her head to one side.

“No,” I said. “Bullshit.”

“No bullshit. That was 19’s mother lode.”

“Caregiver and Comfort parts aren’t the same. They’re different. Very different. I don’t know why everyone seems to think—”

“They’re Caregiver parts. She was going to trade them for what she needed. Said she knew someone who would trade the world for them.”

I stood there a moment, reeling. This had to be a line. They knew what I needed and were feeding me a steaming, fly-swollen, festering pile of shit. “So there’s just some Caregiver treasure trove out there, near enough for us to reach.”

“It was a store.”

“Now I know you’re lying.”

“It was half collapsed in the initial fighting. No one ever bothered to dig it out.”

“Those places are myths.”

“This one isn’t. It’s very real, I assure you.”

“Where?”

“That I can’t tell you. Not until we get to our destination. Once we do, we’ll give you the location.”

“So you can screw me,” I said.

“We’ll take you personally, then.”

I mulled it over. This sounded too good to be true and probably was. Saying yes was likely a death sentence. But so was saying no. “Even if I got the parts, I wouldn’t have anyone to…”

Doc slowly raised his hand. “You will.”

“What, you’re tagging along?”

“Where else am I going to go?”

“No, no, no,” said Mercer. “I’ll take you. I need the parts as bad as she does.”

“Way I hear it,” said Rebekah, “you’re the reason she needs those parts.”

“Only because I needed them so badly. Ain’t nothing I wouldn’t do to get what I need.”

“That’s what worries me,” said Rebekah.

“That includes taking you wherever you need to go and making sure you get there in one piece.”

“I’ll go,” I said.

“Uh-uh,” said Mercer. “You were just turning this job down.”

Rebekah shook her head. “We asked her. We’ve heard good things. The job is hers to take.”

“I’m coming with,” he said.

“The hell you are,” I said.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” said Rebekah.

“I’m only going to follow you anyway. You know that. And that ain’t good for anybody. This way you get two pathfinders for the price of one.”

“That’s my mother lode,” I said.

“You said it yourself. We need different parts. Get me the parts I need and you can keep the rest.”

Rebekah looked at us both. She nodded. “All right. But if either of you kills the other…” She paused for dramatic effect. “No one gets the parts.”

Fuck.

Mercer nodded. “You have my word.”

“As good as that is,” I said. “But you have mine too.”

“Murka?” asked Mercer.

Murka nodded. “Well, I’m not going to let you leave me here to be bait.”

Rebekah looked around, worriedly. “We have to get out of here.”

“We’ve got too many bodies,” I said. “I don’t like how big the group is. We’ll draw a lot of attention.”

“We’re just another pack of refugees,” she said. “Besides. This is my show. Anyone that wants to come, comes. Until the next safe stop. Where to now?” I didn’t like that answer at all. Not one bit.

“There’s a city,” said Mercer. “Minerva. Ten clicks north of here.”

“We’re headed west.”

“We need to lay low for a few hours. We can head west when the heat dies down.”

“CISSUS will be all over it in a matter of hours,” I said. “Looking for stragglers.”

“I wasn’t thinking of staying topside.”

I nodded. “The sewers.”

“They’re pretty extensive. The manpower it would take to scour them—”

“Not CISSUS’s style.”

“Not even a little bit.”

“Mercer’s actually right,” I said. “We have to sit out the night. Cleanup crews are going to be scooping up whatever they can find. By morning they’ll have moved on to the next raid, leaving only a skeleton crew in NIKE to catch anyone who tries to come back.”

“Then we’re going north,” she conceded.

Everyone stood up, mentally preparing themselves for the long, dangerous jog north. I was worried. And not about Mercer. I had bigger concerns than that. There really were too many of us. Four refugees might be passed over as not worth the fight. But seven? Rebekah, Herbert, and Two were the clients. And I needed Doc. Mercer and Murka we could lose, but five wasn’t much better than seven, and they could each hold their own.

So seven it was.

But I couldn’t shake my other worry. It wasn’t just our size that troubled me—refugees escaped en masse all the time—it’s that I couldn’t trust anyone I was with. Not even Doc. Any one of us could be a Judas, and the thought of that was one that would fester the entire way north to Minerva.