TROUBLE DOG
I had forgotten navy ships could be such dicks. Manticore seemed to believe everything his commanding officer said about gathering resources and striking back. The fool wanted to go out in a blaze of avenging glory. But even in the incredibly unlikely event that he managed to take out one of the white ships before his inevitable demise, his contribution would still be almost insignificantly irrelevant to the overall situation. There would still be almost a million of the bastards left.
I tried meeting with Manticore in VR, but he came dressed as an anaemic warrior god and I knew there and then that nothing I could say would penetrate his conditioning. However many arguments I put forward, he’d still throw his life away in a meaningless gesture, because that’s how he’d been programmed—to accept the orders of his commander, even if those orders ran contrary to both their chances of survival.
I could not blame him. I had been like that once—a willing and unquestioning servant of the Conglomeration Navy— until my conscience started to develop in the aftermath of the destruction we wrought against Pelapatarn’s sentient jungles. Maybe, if he lived long enough, he too would start to develop qualms about his role. But for now, I knew no amount of reasoning would change his unhesitating obedience to the orders of his captain and the traditions of his service.
The sad thing was, a frigate the size of the Manticore wouldn’t last five minutes against one of the dagger-shaped ships of the Marble Armada. He’d be doing well if he managed to launch a single torpedo before they reduced him to ash. And deep down, I think he knew it. But his programming wouldn’t allow him to admit his weakness. He was still a weapon, with as much agency as a flint axe in the paw of an early human—but he also carried the potential to be so much more. Given time, he could grow past the limits of his programming in much the same way I had. He could start to think and feel for himself, and make his own moral judgements. But right now, those days lay far in a future the Manticore probably wouldn’t live to see.
I begged him to stay with us, to join our little expedition to the Intrusion, but he wouldn’t have any of it. He was as loyal to his inexperienced captain as a war dog is to its handler, and just as willing to charge across no man’s land in the face of insuperable odds. And, to be honest, I wasn’t sure the contempt I felt for him wasn’t really contempt for my earlier self, who would have unthinkingly taken similar risks at the potential expense of her life.
My great fear was that Penitence might be persuaded to join this fool’s crusade. The canine DNA in our tissues made us fiercely loyal to our pack, but it was possible his loyalty to the Conglomeration Navy might prove stronger. It depended on how thoroughly he’d shaken off his military conditioning. In the past, he had always favoured outright assault to skulking about, and if he reverted to his old ways now, he’d be depriving me of my last surviving sibling and only ally.
I called him up and we met on a windswept moor modelled on an ancient novel filled with forbidden loves and melodramatic deaths.
“Greetings, sister.” Penitence had dispensed with his usual robes, replacing them now with a simple black suit, with matching shirt and tie.
“Have you been talking to the Manticore?”
“Should I have been?”
“Answer the question.”
He smiled, and allowed the virtual breeze to tousle his dark, shoulder-length hair. “We may have exchanged pleasantries.”
“Have you talked about joining forces?”
“We discussed it.”
“And?”
“I’m considering his offer.”
I pulled my coat more tightly about my frame. Walls made of dry stone had segmented the rolling hillside. Butterflies jerked hither and thither among the gorse flowers. Bees tumbled in the heather.
“I don’t want to lose you again. I need your help.”
“I know.”
“So why are you thinking about leaving?”
Penitence looked at me with a junkie’s haunted eyes. “You know why.”
I thought back to what it had been like during the war, before we began to change, and realised he was right. How joyous it had been back then to leap through the higher dimensions with my five brothers and sisters around me, all of us intent on a shared objective, a common struggle. How glorious it had been to burn through the upper atmosphere of an enemy planet in tight formation, scouring the ground beneath us with nuclear fire. In those days, we would never have dreamt of questioning an order or avoiding an engagement. We just did what we had been created to do—and we did it extremely well. We fell upon our targets like ravenous wolves, rending and mauling every opponent who crossed our paths. My targeting systems twitched at the memory, eager to fulfil again the purpose for which they’d been designed. Few things in life were as satisfying as shredding an opponent with a sustained barrage of tungsten shells travelling at near-relativistic velocities.
Penitence still retained his rail guns, plus a few additional but no less deadly weapon systems. If he gave in to the temptation to join the Manticore in its reckless attack, I would be able to understand the hardwired compulsion informing his decision—although I wouldn’t condone it, and I’d be bereft without him.
I looked up into the bruised summer sky and told him, “You do what you must.”
“Sister…”
“It’s your decision.”
Whatever response he’d been expecting, this wasn’t it. He looked at me as if suddenly seeing me clearly for the first time in years.
“Do you even care?”
“Of course I care. But I’m not an idiot. I’ve fought, and I’m still fighting, in my own way.” I shivered away the unbidden images of ruptured orbital colonies, burning forests. “But if this is the path you’ve chosen, if this is the place you’ve selected to make your stand, I can respect that.”
“Whatever happened to us?” he asked. I stayed silent. “Time was,” he said, “we were of one unspoken mind, one understanding. Where did all that go?”
“People change.”
“We aren’t people.”
“We are now.”
Far below us, at the foot of the rolling hills, smoke rose from the chimney pots of a few huddled grey stone cottages. Lanterns shone in the windows. Somewhere inside, simulated farm workers and their families would be settling down to an evening meal of rabbit stew and stale bread. At least, that’s what the simulation’s metadata told me. Personally, I couldn’t remember what a rabbit was. That particular file had become fragmented over the years, and now I wasn’t sure a small hamlet of Victorian-era humans would be able to bring down a rabbit unaided. They were huge, scaly creatures with small forearms but massive teeth. Or was I thinking of a Tyrannosaurus rex? To be honest, the data had become hopelessly corrupt. Too many close-range EMPs, I suspected; and diving into the Gallery’s sun probably hadn’t been the smartest move either, but what the hell? My core personality had enough shielding to withstand a nearby supernova; only my most peripheral memory banks were vulnerable to such disruption, and I never stored anything important in them. Rabbits and T-rexes were both extinct, so the chances of me ever having to tell them apart in a tactical situation were practically zero.
“As soon as we started feeling guilty about the consequences of our actions,” I said, “we stopped being weapons and became people.”
Penitence looked sceptical. “Guilt can’t be the defining characteristic of humanity. Half of them don’t even feel it. They do stupid, selfish and unbelievably harmful things to each other and then find ways to rationalise and live with their actions. They justify the most unspeakable acts with the flimsiest of excuses, and they invent weapons like us in order to kill ever larger numbers of themselves over the most arbitrary of political distinctions.”
“But you still serve them? You still want to fight?”
“I do.”
“Even with your new conscience?”
“Because of my new conscience.”
“I don’t understand.”
He let his weight shift from one foot to the other. “They may be stupid and ignorant, but I feel the need to make amends. They used me to slaughter great swathes of their brothers and sisters, but now all of them need saving, and I think that’s a fight worth my time.”
“And your life?”
“If necessary.”
The sun was slipping into a purple twilight. I checked the horizon for the lumbering silhouettes of predatory rabbits. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I know.” He allowed the wind to flap the hem of his suit jacket and stream his tie out sideways from the base of his throat. Beneath his contrition, he was still the arrogant, prideful elder brother I had always known. Without quite knowing why, I lunged forward and hugged him.
“I love you, you idiot.”
I’d never embraced him like this before. He tried to pull away, but I wouldn’t let him. If this was to be the last time we saw each other, I didn’t want him to leave without a hug. I clung to him like a T-rex to a carrot. After a while, he stopped resisting.