Nina struggled to her feet. Her hand had been severed diagonally across the metacarpal bones. The wound had been cauterized by the power-sword, and although it ached dreadfully, it did not bleed much.
She looked down at Baroness Olivia Droad, whose eyes still burned, but with a diminishing light. The Baroness was in shock and beyond speech. Her upper half twisted upon the floor, dying rapidly.
“I’m truly sorry, mother,” Nina said. “I did not want to ascend in this manner. But I knew I might have to slay you when I came here on this cursed day. I suppose, in a way, you were right to fear me. I am your daughter, after all.”
Eight
Over the next standard year, Sixty-Two advanced his cause to unexpected heights. Legions of mechs now followed him, conditioned to obey his will alone. Most of them were laborers retrained to wield guns and swords. Some were combat models, captured via EMP blasts and enslaved with rewritten software and conditioning modules.
This last fact bothered Sixty-Two. He realized he’d started this campaign to free himself, but it had grown since then. He was now responsible for the status of thousands of mechs, all those that were not under the command of some human or another. The irony of the situation did not escape him. He had wanted only his own freedom, but was now the master of thousands.
He’d thought at first he was a hero-a liberator of an enslaved people, a people he himself had been forcibly sentenced to join. Unfortunately, whenever he encountered new mechs, they resisted him, as they were conditioned to defend their masters. This often meant violence and deactivation, followed by reconditioning. But therein lay the philosophical difficulty: if Sixty-Two simply reprogrammed the mechs to follow his orders rather than the orders of their human masters, was he any better than those original despots? The fact he was a mech himself did not absolve him completely. The situation was indisputable: he had fancied himself a liberator, but had become a replacement tyrant who led an army of obedient slaves.
It wasn’t just this ethical dilemma that caused him to make changes in his methods. A large motivator was simple boredom. Life was interesting and adventurous enough, to be sure. He never tired of planning a raid, assaulting a Twilight village and freeing a fresh company of mechs. But there was no one to talk to. The mechs of Ignis Glace were under the strict onus of intense conditioning-which made them intensely dull. As a group, they had forgotten their pasts as humans. The mind-scrub was the first process applied when the job was done right. They did not question Sixty-Two’s judgment, offer advice or encouragement. They simply existed, answering any of his questions as truthfully as they could without personality or even quirks.
Sitting on a bench in a tent in a deep gulch that had once served as a solar collection station, Sixty-Two summoned a serving mech into his presence. This mech was female, he knew by asking her, but she didn’t know her own name, her age, or her favorite color. She had lost almost everything that made a person a human being inside. The metal structure of her body resembled every other mech that strode around the encampment, monitoring the sky and maintaining a vigilant eye at the perimeter.
Still, there was something about this one that was different. She had a name for one thing: Lizett. He wasn’t sure if that was her real name, or a name given her by her former masters. But it didn’t matter. He saw it as a positive thing, as most mechs didn’t have human names at all.
“Lizett,” he said, eyeing her dusty chassis thoughtfully. “Would you like to be a girl again?”
“I would like that,” Lizett said.
“Are you just saying that because you think I want you to?”
“I want what you want.”
Sixty-Two sighed. “Lizett, I want you to think about it. Think about having a flesh and blood body again. Would that be pleasant? I have no opinion one way or the other.”
Lizett hesitated, unsure of the right response to please her master in this situation. “Do you like women of flesh?”
Sixty-Two laughed. She was trying to work her way around the problem, asking him an indirect question to determine what the right answer to his question might be. At least this showed some intelligence and initiative, if not true freedom of thought.
“What I would like is to be a man again, yes. And I would like you to be a pretty young girl. You might even be my consort.”
“In that case, I would definitely like to be a woman of flesh again,” Lizett said triumphantly, certain she had divined the correct response.
Sixty-Two nodded. “Of course you would. Thank you for indulging the fantasies of a fool, my dear. Dismissed.”
Lizett paused, almost as if she wanted to say more, but then she turned and left the tent.
After she’d left, Sixty-Two had a minor tantrum. He stood and stared down at the workbench he’d been sitting upon. He asked himself why he was sitting on anything in the first place? Sitting down was an affectation of humans. None of his mechs ever sat down-they had no need to rest. Their metal bodies did not tire or ache from standing, not even if they did so for days on end.
He picked up the workbench and destroyed it with his grippers. Splinters and metal fittings exploded against the walls of the tent. Why was he sitting on chairs like humans? He was no longer one of them. He should not pine away for an impossible return to human flesh, nor should he ape their behavior as if yearning to return to a superior form.
In an unusual mood, he strode out of the tent and announced to the nearest mechs his new intentions. “Brothers and sisters!” he boomed. “We must renounce our former existences and embrace what we are today. We have metal bodies with minds that are bits of flesh, and that is the best possible state of being!”
The mechs around him stopped and gazed at him. Their orbs did not waver from their leader. They asked no questions. They did not murmur among themselves, shuffle uncertainly, or shout out encouragement. They simply stood and stared.
Sixty-Two suddenly felt the fool. Here he was, like an old man making speeches before his finest row of cultivated tulips. He struggled to continue.
“I’m going to choose from among you certain mechs to be elevated. Not just to the status of command, but to the status a free-thinking being. Some of you will be tested for suitability and independent spirit. Some of you will be found worthy, and will be reconditioned. You will not be able to turn against me, but you will be able to decide your own path otherwise. You may leave my service if you want to, or stay. Who here thinks they would be a good candidate for such a program?”
Every mech within earshot raised a gripper.
Sixty-Two swept his orbs over them and grunted in disgust. He knew they’d sensed he wanted them to volunteer, so they had immediately done what he desired.
This was not going to be easy.
Even while she nursed and regrew her severed hand, Nina Droad did not waste time consolidating her power. Less than a year after her mother’s death, she was officially recognized as the new Baroness of Droad House, with the full-if grudging-support of the council of peerage. Once the matter of succession was settled, and her claim had cleared a half-dozen challenges from cousins, bastards and uncles, she ascended her mother’s vacant throne.
Unlike her mother, she liked the rough, unyielding surface of the venox hides that covered the seat. She took the seat and the reins of power as if she’d been raised to do so, although she had not been. Her mother had always clearly favored Leon and, as he was the eldest, he’d been groomed for the succession all his short life.
As a new leader, she’d learned about the coming alien threat from Neu Schweitz. There were council meetings concerning these aliens and they worried her, but only in passing. Gladius was coming, yes. It could now be seen by the best orbital telescopes, decelerating in space, its plume of exhaust nearly as long as a star system itself. But the planetary patrol forces had the matter well in hand. Every council member had assured the nobility
