By Other Means Read online

  CyberMarine

  Bud Sparhawk

  I awoke to darkness, a blowtorch breathing on my face and on my scalp a raging fire roared. Acid burned both eyes. Every tooth was a source of grinding misery that demanded a cry of rage. But I had no lips to form, no tongue to shape, no lungs or breath to propel a scream. Neither could I flail an arm, lift fingers to face, or even twist a leg to display my agony.

  Was this hell and I one of the damned? There was no answer as the burning seared my being until, thankfully, darkness washed consciousness away.

  A timeless interval later I awoke. The burning had ceased but the pain was as intense.

  And everywhere.

  I was just a nexus of suffering with no history or future. I could hear no sounds, smell no odors, feel neither warmth nor cold, and had no awareness of whether I was standing or lying prone or supine. That pain existed was all.

  Only fitful sleep momentarily relieved the pain, and with the sleep, came memories.

  There were twenty marines and four cybermarines assigned to me. Ours was the usual shipboard duty, breaking up fights between the Navy rates and sometimes starting a few of our own. None of the cybers got involved of course. Nobody wanted to tangle with those zombies so I made sure they kept to themselves. I wouldn’t want any of the real marines to risk fighting one of them.

  The cybers were Command’s newest weapon, something dreamed up, I believe, by cyberghouls who had ethicotomies. Regardless of how many words and studies Command used to justify their actions or whether the choice had even been theirs to make, it still wasn’t right to use dying marines that way, not right to deny them a decent death, not right to turn them into fucking machines.

  Oh, the politicians had all the high-sounding reasons for the program—getting a return from the money invested in training, allowing the dying marines a continuation of honorable service, providing new life to the nearly departed, etc, etc, etc. It’s amazing the excuses Command can employ to rationalize their decisions. Personally, I think it was all about economics; a cybermarine was a lot cheaper than an automated tank and a lot more expendable.

  The cybers didn’t even look like marines. Rather, from a distance, they looked like everybody’s ideal soldier—seven feet tall, broad of shoulder and thick of chest, with muscular arms and legs. Up close you saw the real differences, like those faces you couldn’t look at without wanting to puke.

  The normal-sized head had no nose or mouth—just a couple of thumb-sized holes below the eyes. Yeah, eyes—six of them; a wide-set pair above the outside of the cheekbones, a tiny pair, quite close together where the bridge of the nose might have been, and another set, larger and circular, above them.

  The skull was a hairless pate from eyebrows to the nape of the neck and down past the ears on both sides. On either side of the head, where you expected to see ears, were knobs of flesh on which they could hang six-lensed combat glasses to augment their incredible vision.

  Thank God, the helmets they wore for combat usually obscured most of a zombie’s face. I wished they’d wear them, visors down, most of the time, if only to spare everybody’s sensitivities.

  “The men do not like us, Lieutenant,” the cybermarines’ squad leader said after saluting. I noticed it wore no rank. According to its tag the name was Winslow, Harold.

  “You know that how?”

  “When one of them looks at us his face becomes warmer than normal, indicating an adverse emotional reaction. We’ve also noticed how they clench their fists and tense their muscular structure as if ready for either fight or flight.” He tilted his head to the side. “By the way, sir, I note a sudden tension in your jaw muscles. Your voice also expresses stress, sir. Do you share your men’s distaste, sir?”

  “Great, just what I need—a walking lie detector.”

  “Simply infrared vision, sir. I also see into the ultraviolet spectrum and, before you ask, my binocular vision is ten times more acute than a normal person’s.”

  “You are also faster than a fucking bullet and can leap tall buildings in a single bound, I suppose.”

  “Sir, I may have an enhanced body, but I doubt I could do either of those.” I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. Last thing I wanted was a smart-ass cyberzombie.

  Then I remembered how most of its memories had been stripped away, along with whatever sense of humor Winslow, Harold might have had. “Yes, it was a joke and I am quite well acquainted with your physical capabilities. I’ve read the specs and know you will be an asset to the unit.” I tried to put as much sincerity into my voice as I could, but I knew Winslow, Harold would know the truth of how I felt.

  “By your leave, sir. What is my bunk assignment?”

  “I haven’t made arrangements yet. Certainly you can’t be staying with the men. I doubt you’d fit into a standard rack.” I was actually wondering if I could put the cybers in the cargo hold and out of sight. “I’ll talk to the captain about it. In the meantime, why don’t you boys take a seat in the mess?”

  “What about our gear, sir? Each of the squad has two hundred kilos of food, five hundred kilos of weapons and ammunition, and one hundred kilograms of personal supplies.”

  Crap, that was more stuff than my twenty men carried into deployment. “Food?”

  “We need a special diet to remain effective, sir.”

  Yes, and his weapons were probably heavier than anything even our beefiest marine could carry. “See the quartermaster. He’ll figure out where to store your kit.”

  “By your leave, sir.” With that he spun on his heel and departed.

  “You have a choice,” someone whispered softly from the depths of the conflagration that wracked my being. “We can save you as you are or...”

  I knew the choice. It was standard option to the oath of office and drilled into us. “I don’t know,” I replied, but whether words escaped or not, I could not hear. The pain was so intense that I knew that I had to be near death’s door.

  “It’s life—of a sort,” came the whispered promise. “We don’t want to lose your knowledge and skills.”

  Which meant, I realized through agonizing waves of pain, that I could put an end to the suffering by simply saying I wanted to die.

  Death wasn’t appealing, but surviving as a pathetic remnant of my former self, horribly disfigured, covered with scars and missing eyes, ears, arms, and legs. They could probably restore some functions, but I’d sooner die than become some disgusting, crippled veteran.

  The alternative to dying was to survive, albeit briefly given the sorts of engagements where cybers were used. I remembered what Winslow, Harold had looked like and wondered if death might not be the better choice.

  “We need your rage,” the whisper continued.

  The choice was less than living and more than dying. All they offered was a promise that I could continue to serve and, in serving, release my raging anger.

  “Machines, that’s all they are, damned machines,” the quartermaster grumbled as the cybers lined up at the hatch.

  “They’re marines, sailor,” I barked in reply, a trifle loudly because all the cybers glanced my way. “I expect the cargo hold to be fixed up to accommodate them comfortably.”

  “Don’t look like they need anything but a packing crate,” he answered under his breath, just softly enough that I wasn’t sure I heard correctly.

  “Packing crates would be fine, sir,” Winslow, Harold shouted from across the compartment as the quartermaster’s ears turned bright red.

  The cybers couldn’t use the seats in the mess even if they wanted to sit with the rest of the marines. Sitting with the sailors was even less of an option, given that they were equally as hostile to my marines as the cybers. Instead they ate whatever suited their weird metabolism in the privacy of the hold. It was probably better, their being all among their own kind.

  “By your leave, sir.” I looked up to see Winslow, Harold’s hulking presence at the door to the compartment I shared with the first sergeant. Seei
ng his overwhelming form in such close quarters made him appear all the more menacing.

  “We were wondering when we would train with the rest of the troops.”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I replied. I’d kept my men separate from the cybers mostly out of concern for their safety. With their power the cybers could easily and unintentionally harm someone, not that there weren’t a few who might want to try. Best, I thought, to keep their training exercises separate. That wouldn’t make a difference in combat, seeing as how the cybers always operated as an autonomous element of the force.

  No burning pain touched me on my next awakening. I was blissfully aware of floating. Just the absence of pain was enough.

  Then, without warning, I became aware of my body. Sounds assaulted my ears, far too loud to make any sense of them. Bright formless light nearly blinded me. My body was tingling with a thousand tiny bites, each demanding to be scratched. I flexed my arm to scratch the bothersome itch at my hip and somebody screamed: “Holy shit, watch out for the...”

  Darkness ensued.

  I could make no sense of the vague dark forms that swam before my eyes. Caricatures they were, rude representations of the human form, huge and threatening. I could make out no details save that one was somewhat larger than the rest—closer, I wondered and tried to blink away the fogginess. That’s when I realized I had no eyelids, nor even the sensation of them.

  Sound assailed my ears. An intermittent, dull, and loud rattle that echoed in my skull like a dentist’s burr drill. On and on it went, repeating endlessly. No, I noted that it was slightly different each time, varying in volume and intensity.

  I felt something brush my cheek; a woman’s caress judging by the silky smoothness of it. I recalled how my mother’s hand had stroked me like that so many years ago as she sent me off to school. Where was she now? “Mother,” I tried to cry, but still had no voice or breath; no way to cry.

  Mother was gone now, I recalled. Lost like father and brother over the years and billions of miles, so far away that the news of her passing had not reached me until long after the services, long after the immolation, long after my last and only remaining family connection had died.

  I recalled the farm, my prize calf, and the family of silly cats in the barns who thought they owned the cattle. I remembered my many dogs, short-lived all, and the kitchen garden I planted with its even shorter-lived crops. Gone, all gone.

  The sound gradually changed to become a harsh voice that formed words. “David? Ah, good. We got a reaction that time. Set the [something, mumble, mumble] down.”

  Our squadron happened upon the Shardie ships off Roger-5, Farthing Sector, just as we emerged. The automatics from all four ships fired before anyone had recovered from the quantum probability drive’s blink syndrome.

  There had been four alien ships; small ones or we wouldn’t have survived. The first two were atomized when our ballistic rounds struck, shattering them into a million glass fragments that sparkled as new constellations. The third ship dodged one round successfully but moved directly into the path of our second salvo.

  The last ship somehow avoided our barrage and accelerated away from the scattering fragments of its companions. The failure of a Shardie ship to immediately attack was so unexpected that we lost precious milliseconds as each ship’s autonomous battle controls spun them as the main drives kicked in to follow the escaping ship.

  The Shardie was boosting five gees and accelerating a lot faster than Falcon, our fastest ship, could possibly match. There was no chance of catching up if the alien continued its straight-line flight. Unlike the Shardie crew, we frail humans couldn’t survive such high acceleration for long.

  Falcon fired high-velocity ballistic rounds continuously. The Shardie ship dodged as if it knew where she would place them. It didn’t matter if Falcon hit it or not. Every avoiding movement the Shardie made took time away from its straight-line course. That gave the squadron a chance to keep up.

  In five minutes we had two ships within fifty klicks of the enemy and still the Shardie hadn’t fired back or turned to run at full speed into whatever target it could find. That had become a common tactic earlier in the war, turning their ships into ballistic missiles.

  But this one hadn’t, which was strange.

  What was different about this ship, I wondered as we closed on the target? By the standards of all previous encounters our squadron should have come out of the engagement down one ship at best.

  The escaping Shardie’s actions were so far from the norms of their behavior that I momentarily wondered if we were dealing with the same race. No, that couldn’t be true. The identifying characteristics were within 99.9999% of the Shardie profile. There was no mistake. This ship was definitely one of theirs.

  Maybe it was carrying something so valuable that escape was preferable. If so, we were within moments of overtaking a functional Shardie ship and, hopefully, their crew. For the first time in this war we’d find out what our alien enemies looked like and perhaps discover what motivated them.

  There were still a few back home that hoped we could learn how to communicate with them. Implicit in that hope was that communications might lead to some sort of accommodation, some way of averting the path of this war away from total annihilation. Any step forward would be an improvement over the Shardie’s current negotiation strategy of immediately attacking.

  The rest of us would be satisfied only by their complete obliteration. Call it genocide if you want. I call it retribution.

  “Armed and ready,” Guns reported automatically when we were within twenty klicks, a range where a miss was improbable and a kill a certainty. Guns was a good man.

  “Stand down. Go manual,” the captain ordered. He didn’t want some automatic defense logic to screw up our chance of capturing this ship. “Chief, use the small gun to disable if we can’t overtake.”

  Guns looked at him and hesitated. “Where you want me to aim, Cap’t? I don’t know where their frigging drives might be.”

  No opportunity like this had come up before. It pissed me off that nobody in the freaking Navy knew how to disable a Shardie ship other than destroying it. The captain decided to throw the rulebook away. “Hit them in the ass then, Guns!”

  “Closing at two kps,” Navigation reported. “Range five kilometers. Contact in ninety seconds.” Great, a little over a minute to add a chapter to the Fleet’s tactical protocols. Would our entry be notable or simply another footnote of failure?

  Guns tried to disable the fleeing ship by firing on her stern, but that had no effect. Heron tried to seize it but the magnetic grapples slipped off the smooth surface.

  “Pull ahead.” The command was clear. If ordnance didn’t work maybe baking it with our main engines would. “Falcon, Grayson, and Heron, close on three sides to bracket the bastard. Keep him on a single heading.”

  I watched Falcon spin clockwise and dart to catch the ship as Heron and Grayson performed similar maneuvers. There was a beauty in the economy of how those three massive ships managed to pirouette and spin like ballet dancers. Command would probably have flayed the captain’s hide for ordering such a move in those close quarters. But not now, not while we took pride at their handling skills.

  The little Shardie ship tried to turn as Falcon came abreast but was blocked by Heron. A second evasive move was blocked by Grayson.

  “Wheels, give us a boost. I want to place our engines directly ahead of it.” I watched the screens over the captain’s shoulder as we moved into position. Thus far the alien had maintained a steady velocity. If it accelerated suddenly...I cut that thought off as soon as it started.

  “Engines, fire at one quarter full and slowly bring our speed down.” The forward steering engines fired intermittently, each blast decreasing our velocity by fifty kilometers per second. I had faith in the crew that they could balance the forward braking against the thrust of the mains.

  There was a plume of burning violet plasma reaching a quar
ter kilometer behind us, its white-hot tip threatening the alien. Nothing could withstand that much heat. Even ceramics would be consumed in such a flame. The Shardie had to either halt or be melted into submission.

  I held my breath as the tip of our flame touched the bow of the alien ship. “She’s slowed,” Grayson reported. “Adjusting to maintain position.” Heron and Falcon moved accordingly.

  “Close the bracket,” the captain ordered. “Tight as you can.”

  “I can push it against Heron,” Falcon reported.

  “Careful,” he warned. “We don’t know what tricks this bastard might have up its sleeve.”

  “Engines, cut our plume slowly so he doesn’t get any ideas as we close. I want to put our mains tight against the bow of that thing. One hint of trouble and I want them immediately on full to incinerate him.”

  A second later the call for all hands to secure themselves rang through the ship. If we fired the mains on full we’d pull seven gees at least.

  “Get your marines ready to board,” the captain instructed.

  I could sense something exercising my body when I emerged from the dream state. I could see mountains in the distance and, before them, a broad lake. The water rippled slowly, as if a slight breeze was playing across its surface. Somewhere a bird sang a cheery song. There should have been pine scent or the earthy smell of loam, but I detected none of that. There was no smell whatsoever.