Ken MacLeod - Newton's Wake

‘Cease fire!’

The shooting ran down to a ragged patter then stopped. Carlyle lay prone and peered at the hole as the smoke cleared. One of the multi-legged machines stood there, not moving forward or back. It had, she was pleased to see, taken some damage. Not much.

She was momentarily blinded as a laser beam from the machine slashed a line of fire across the ground a couple of metres forward of their position.

‘Hold it!’ she yelled.

Nothing further happened.

‘Looks like we’ve been warned off,’ she said heavily. ‘Time to pull out. We can come back wi’ a search engine.’

They picked up their gear and retraced their steps towards the gate.

‘No a bad recce,’ said Orr.

‘Thanks,’ Carlyle grunted. The back of her neck was sore, partly from the burn and partly from the tension brought on by the thought of the laser at their backs.

‘See there’s mair ae they dolmens,’ said Stevenson, with a sweep of the arm at the horizon.

Carlyle glanced around, confirming, counting ten. They were easy to spot, when you knew where to look, on the crests of the surrounding hills.

‘Make sure we’re heading for the right one,’ she said.

That got a laugh. ‘Maybe they’ve aw got gates,’ someone said, and got another.

‘Anybody else get short-circuits from that electromagnetic blast?’ Carlyle asked.

They all had.

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Any idea what it was?’

‘It was a signal,’ said Shlaim, breaking in to her mike. ‘And no, I have not analysed it.’

‘Just so long as you haven’t recorded it,’ snarled Carlyle. She hated being upstaged by her familiar.

Something banged in the sky. They all looked up, and saw black fragments flying apart and falling down from a couple of thousand metres overhead. Then a screaming noise started, and glancing a way off they all saw a larger black object separate into six parts, which peeled away from each other, banked around, and began a controlled and rapid descent towards them.

‘Modular aircars in disposable hypersonic shell,’ said Shlaim.

‘Locals!’ yelled Carlyle. ‘Don’t shoot first!’

The team and the robot walkers formed an outward-facing ring, bristling with weapons.

Four of the aircars began a loitering patrol that circled from above the artifact to directly overhead. The other two came down a hundred metres before and behind the team, edging forward on racketting downdraft fans. They were smooth-shelled, streamlined two-seaters, like no aircar model Carlyle had seen before. They worked, she guessed, by aerodynamics. From the one in front a black-suited occupant vaulted out, leaving a pilot in the front seat, and stalked forward, rifle in hand but slanted down. The other hand came up.

‘Who’s in charge here?’ a male voice boomed.

A default American speaker. AO, then, most likely.

Carlyle stepped forward. ‘I am.’

The man stopped and raised his visor, revealing a handsome oliveskinned countenance.

‘What the hell are you doing here? Don’t you know the law?’

Carlyle cleared her faceplate to two-way transparency. The man’s face showed an odd flicker, as though something had startled him but he was reluctant to reveal his surprise.

‘We know you people don’t have anything to do with that stuff,’ Carlyle said, with a jerk of her thumb over the shoulder. ‘But it’s all right, we can handle it.’

‘The hell you can! Who do you think you are?’

‘We’re the Carlyles.’

He stared at her. ‘The what ?’

‘Oh, don’t kid on,’ she said. ‘Everybody knows who we are. And we know who you are. You’re AO, right?’

‘AO?’ He said it as if he’d genuinely never heard it before.

‘ America Offline ,’ Carlyle grated. He stared uncomprehendingly. Carlyle relaxed and found herself grinning. This was a joke. She pointed upward and waved her finger about. ‘You farmers, come from sky, yes?’

The man didn’t find this funny.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Enough. You’ve—’

He cocked his head, listening to something. His face paled, then reddened. He jabbed a finger at her.

‘Do you know what you’ve done ?’ His voice shook. ‘You’ve wakened war machines ! You fucking stupid, stupid—’ He stopped himself. ‘Drop your weapons,’ he said flatly. ‘We’ve got you covered. We’re taking you in.’

‘There’s no need for that,’ Carlyle said, with willed calm. ‘We know about the, uh, war machines. Just let us go and we’ll come back in an hour and crunch them up.’

‘Oh yeah? With what?’

‘A search engine.’

The man sneered, flicked down his visor and raised his rifle. From the corner of her eye Carlyle saw two of the circling aircars swoop.

‘In your own time, Macaulay,’ she said, and dived. The robot walkers had finished firing before she hit the ground. She rolled, glimpsing four smoke-trails, two flashes, feeling the crunch of the crashes through her bones, and then she was up and had the Webster jammed in the man’s groin. Another crash. Heather was burning off in the distance. Carlyle dragged the muzzle up to the man’s belly, flipped up his visor with her free hand and leered in his face.

‘Get yer hands up.’

He cast away his rifle and raised his hands.

‘Now tell yer team to lay off.’

‘Disengage,’ he said.

The two nearby aircars were still intact, hovering uncertainly, covered by the team and the robots.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘you’ll be so kind as to gie us a lift to the gate.’

‘The what?’

She was getting a bit sick of this. Guy must be a complete yokel or something. She stepped back and pointed.

‘That fucking cromlech thingie up yonder.’

He half turned, looking over his shoulder. ‘The henge?’

‘That’s the one. Now move.’

She escorted him at gunpoint to the nearest aircar, motioned him to get in the passenger seat as she straddled the flange behind it. Orr, Stevenson, and a couple of others ran forward and lay across the stubby wings, clinging to their leading edges. Glancing back, Carlyle saw Macaulay supervise a similar deployment on the other vehicle.

‘Now forward easy,’ she said. ‘Remember, if you try to shake us off or anything, the robots have still got you in their sights.’

The aircars flew forward, engines labouring, a few metres above the rough ground, increasing in speed as the pilots gained confidence that their unwelcome passengers weren’t about to fall off.

The man found a shared frequency and hailed her above the noise. ‘What about the injured?’

‘Your problem,’ she said. ‘You sort them out when we’re gone.’ A thought struck her. Anyone who’d survived the aircar downings might be beyond repair, and in pain. She curved her arm and waved a hand in front of his face, mimed cocking and firing with two fingers and a thumb. ‘We could ask the robots to take care of them now, if you like.’

His head jolted back. ‘No thank you.’ He muttered something else under his breath. So much for being nice.

The henge loomed. Carlyle waved the other aircar to overtake, then yelled for a halt. She called her team off, one by one, and one by one they slithered from the craft and ran for the gate, until only she and Macaulay, astride the rear of each aircar, were left.

‘Go, Macaulay!’

The gunner vaulted down and sprinted to the henge, vanishing in the space between the tall vertical boulders. Carlyle pressed the Webster muzzle at the nape of the neck of the man in front of her, just under his helmet. She suddenly realised that she hadn’t asked Macaulay to pass control of the robots to her. She hoped the other side hadn’t made the connection.