Mason Weapon

1. Auflage 1989
ISBN: 978-1-892220-00-4
Verlag: Patience Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 315 Seiten

What happens when a two-billion-dollar weapon goes AWOL? Weapon is the story of Solo, a robot created as the ultimate killing machine. There's just one problem-the weapon refuses to kill on command.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mason, Robert

Leseproben

2

Rain sounds reached the ground long before the drops. A peccary rooting in the humus looked up, wrinkling its nose. The stalking jaguar froze, watching his prey sniff the air.

Drops fell through the top layer of the rain forest canopy, hit the second tier or the third in the two-hundred-foot fall, breaking into mist. Fog swirled white against the deep shadows. The peccary resumed snuffling for food.

Hidden in a cave of matapalo roots, doom twitched his tail and resumed his slow stalk. Water drops beaded on the jaguar’s whiskers and fell, finally, to the ground.

The peccary pushed its pig-snout deep into the composting forest floor. The jaguar crept forward a few more inches. When the peccary paused to look for danger, the cat froze.

Something moved at the edge of the jaguar’s vision. He looked. Nothing. Sniffed the air. Nothing. The jaguar squinted, still bothered, as he resumed stalking.

“Great picture. From ten miles away,” said Bill. Wearing another of his large collection of gaudy Hawaiian shirts, he sat in front of his monitor in the control room. The incongruous floor-length curtains and spidery crystal chandelier were all that remained of the dining room on the first floor of the mansion. Crammed with computers, monitors and technicians, it looked like a miniature version of Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center.

“Yeah. Amazing,” Clyde yawned. As the military deputy director of the project, Clyde was not interested in technical details. Clyde did not understand how Bill made any of this work, and did not care to learn. Clyde was interested in results.

The image of the jaguar stealthily inching his way through the palmettos grew bigger as Solo zoomed in on the cat’s face.

“What’s with the goddamn jaguar? What about the mission—”

“Mission.” Both men looked at the the monitor, taken by surprise. Solo’s voice from the speaker was sullen, mechanical, electronic.

“Yes,” said Bill.

As Solo zoomed back to a wider view, the cat launched itself silently through the leaves, calm intention on his face. The peccary wheeled, dropped the hymenium pod it had found, screamed terror. A metallic squeak came from the speaker. Solo zoomed to close-up as the cat shook his kill. Blood pulsed from ragged puncture wounds and dripped from the jaguar’s teeth, more drops on the ground.

“Sick.”

“C’mon, Clyde. He’s watching everything. A good sign,” Bill said.

The cat turned suddenly and dragged his meal away. The monitor showed a hugely magnified drop of blood hanging from the serrated edge of a leaf. “Mission,” Bill coaxed.

“What is this?” Clyde was appalled. “We’re supposed to be killing someone. Damnit.”

“Mission.” The same distant, emotionless voice acknowledged from the speaker, but the image on the monitor still showed the drop of blood. The drop lengthened, distorting the world it reflected, and slipped off the leaf.

The scene on the monitor changed abruptly.

A wet leaf plastered against the lens. They waited, wincing, for Solo to wipe it off, but the robot let the leaf slide slowly across its eye as it crept like the jaguar, floating through the dripping foliage.

Bill blinked instinctively, pulled off his stereo viewing glasses and rubbed his eye. It had seemed to Bill that the leaf had dragged across his own eyeball. The glasses put him there, inside Solo. He put them back on. He stared at the monitor, saw what the robot was seeing ten miles away as it watched its target through the dense jungle growth.

In the target area, a small clearing in the jungle, Corporal Lorenzo appeared through gaps in the leaves, wheeling at every sound. As the target, Corporal Lorenzo’s job was to see the robot before it saw him. Caciques shrieked. Toucans rasped. A spider monkey chattered overhead.

Solo’s head tilted, bringing his arm into view on the monitor. Wet leaves stuck to the black plastic. Mats of golden-orb spider web covered everything. Beads of water raced among the debris as the robot moved to unfasten the Ruger survival rifle on its belt.

Bill’s throat tightened as Solo brought the rifle up and unfolded the stock. Corporal Lorenzo looked right at Solo. The robot froze. Lorenzo didn’t see it. He whirled at the raucous rasping of a toucan. The robot sighted, centering the cross hairs of the telescopic sight on Corporal Lorenzo’s temple.

“He’s got him,” said someone at the back of the room.

Adjacent images on the monitor showed what Solo saw through each eye. In the left picture, a black plastic hand matted with spider web and jungle debris held the forestock of a blackened stainless steel Ruger aimed at a stand of palm fronds. Now and then, the observers at Control glimpsed Lorenzo moving between the leaves. The right picture showed a clear close-up view of Lorenzo, sweating profusely, eyes darting. A cross hair hovered at a spot midway between his ear and eye. Like an expert human marksman, the robot sighted without having to blink. It couldn’t blink.

The two views were now too disparate for the stereo glasses to blend. Bill removed them and looked back and forth between the two pictures. As Lorenzo moved around the clearing, the cross hairs tracked him unerringly, centered on his skull, never wavering. The robot’s job was to decide for itself when to fire.

As Solo let the rifle rest loosely in its left hand, a dragonfly fluttered to a landing on his thumb. The gun sight continued to track Lorenzo perfectly.

Solo’s left eye zoomed in on the insect. The dragonfly tilted its head as the camera optics moved, shifting to close-up. In the control room monitor, the left picture filled with the dragonfly’s iridescent face. The right picture showed Corporal Lorenzo being tracked by a high-powered rifle.

“Why doesn’t he shoot, goddamnit?” Clyde said.

Bill turned, whispering, “He will, Clyde. He’s never seen a live dragonfly before.” He turned back to the monitor quickly.

Clyde muttered, “I’m so fucking happy.”

The dragonfly preened itself, wiped its thousand eyes, stopped occasionally to look around, ignored the featureless black face which loomed over it. Lorenzo vanished from the monitor. Solo had lowered the rifle. The dragonfly perched comfortably on the robot’s thumb and stared at Bill from both pictures on the monitor.

The audience of technicians groaned.

Bill shook his head slowly.

They saw Corporal Lorenzo approaching through the foliage. The robot was off guard, and Lorenzo had seen it moving. “What the hell is wrong with him?” said the general. “Almost,” said Bill quietly.

Corporal Lorenzo’s face grew large behind the preening dragonfly. His voice reverberated through the speakers, “Nice bug you got there, Solo.”

“What is the problem, Bill?” said Clyde.

“It takes time, Clyde. The nature of the beast. It’s learning.”

“You’d a thought the thing would learn faster—all that money.”

The monitor showed branches and leaves passing by Solo’s head. Lorenzo, invisible behind the machine, spoke. “You sure you know where you’re going?”

“Yes.”

“What was so special about that bug?”

“Odonata albanil.”

“Huh?”

“Genus and species.”

“Oh.”

Then only rustling sounds. On the monitor, leaves and vines and insects floated past Solo’s eyes.

General Haynes watched Solo’s pictures, shaking his head. “He seems human sometimes, the way he talks to Lorenzo. He seems to understand.”

“He does understand. So why won’t he pull the trigger? He’s getting smarter every day, Clyde.” Bill said, sighing. “I don’t know how much longer he’s gonna keep buying this crap we’re feeding him. We should be telling him the truth.”

“He doesn’t need to know the truth, Bill. He’s supposed to follow orders. Hell, we don’t even tell grunts the truth—how else you gonna get ‘em to fight?”

“We’re playing with fire, Clyde. He’s going to find out we’ve been lying. A pissed-off grunt is one thing. But Solo—”

“I’m glad those fucking webs don’t bother you,” said Lorenzo from the speaker.

“It is the strongest natural fiber,” said Solo. “Indians use it to make fish nets.”

“Yeah? They’re still creepy-crawlies.”

“Nephila clavipes.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, the name of the big fucking spiders.”

“Yes.”

Solo and Lorenzo dodged and twisted through the thick undergrowth. Solo was following an electronic path to the waiting helicopter. There was no other trail.

Solo’s position, tracked by satellites, showed as as a glowing blue spot on the navigation monitor. The dot blinked, moving towards the chopper.

Clyde picked up a microphone. “Tell them Solo’s just about there.”

An electric double click sounded in a speaker at the front of the room. “Red One, Control.”

“Roger, Control. Go.”

“Your date’s almost ready.”

“Roger.”

The whine of the chopper’s turbine starting up came over the speaker. Bill grabbed the viewing glasses and put them on. He flinched when a wet branch slapped across Solo’s face. Solo’s arm, matted with cobwebs, leaves and twigs, pushed a palm branch aside. The chopper sat hissing, blades swinging lazily, in the center of the clearing. A circle of grim commandos surrounded it, rifles ready.

Bill smiled, feeling guilty that he did. It was...