As he listened to Toll Seven, Blackstone silently agreed with Fromm. The big cyborg was frighteningly brilliant.
Yet Blackstone currently wondered about something else. Why was this cyborg so different from the long-limbed ones that made metallic purring sounds when they moved? Those cyborgs never spoke. Those cyborgs radiated menace and they managed to emanate a terrible sadness.
Who would ever volunteer to become a cyborg?
Blackstone shuddered. The idea was mind-numbing. He noticed as Toll Seven talked that Commissar Kursk never looked at the cyborg. She stared fixedly at the holographic map. She never agreed with anything Toll Seven said and she never spoke up in praise of Social Unity. That was unlike her and odd.
“Further, if we modify the attack vector…” Toll Seven said in his alien way.
With his twitching features, stout General Fromm avidly noted each new detail of Toll Seven’s refinements. The man kept muttering in amazement. “Yes, yes, that’s masterful.” Fromm frowned later, absorbed, his nods quick little twitches. “That’s diabolically clever. The Rebels will never notice.”
“The probability that they will notice is five point sixty-two percent,” Toll Seven murmured.
Commodore Blackstone wondered how the cyborg could make such a precise, mathematical judgment. The variables needed to be cataloged, correctly analyzed and then weighted against other elements… it was too daunting to think the cyborg had given the right percentage.
Blackstone tore his gaze from the holograph. Did the cyborg hypnotize them with his words? He studied Toll Seven. The silver eyes moved like machine parts. The steel-colored teeth seemed as if they should have shredded the cyborg’s plastic lips. Were those lips truly plastic or were they some weird synthetic flesh? Who had ever conceived the need to build Toll Seven? And why had Social Unity done so in the Neptune System? Surely, it would have made more sense to make the cyborgs on Earth or on the Sun-Works Factory.
Blackstone’s head twitched as what the cyborg suggested sank in. The Commodore became alarmed. “No,” he said. “I don’t agree with that.”
General Fromm looked up in wonder. With his fleshy neck and his bulging eyes, he seemed like a frog, and he seemed dazed. “What possible objection could you have, sir?”
Blackstone shook his head. “I object for several reasons. Firstly, command and control must always remain under my authority. Secondly—”
“No, no,” General Fromm said. “That’s not the issue here at all. This is a stunning example of Sun Tzu’s dictum of pretending to be weak where you are strong. It’s—”
Blackstone cleared his throat and glanced sharply at Commissar Kursk.
She raised haunted eyes from the holographic map and only briefly met the Commodore’s gaze. She shivered, and the muscles hinging her jaws tightened. “You will agree with the Commodore,” she whispered.
Fromm frowned at her. “I fail to see—”
Kursk’s head whipped about as she snarled, “You will agree or face the agonizer, General!”
There was silence on the bridge. No officer pressed a button. No one coughed, moved so his or her chair squeaked, or said anything. Then an alerting beep from someone’s comm unit broke the silence, and the officers around them began to whisper.
Fromm’s fleshy features had sagged. Now he nodded.
Blackstone noticed that Toll Seven had watched the interplay with computer-like detachment. Now the cyborg resumed talking.
Blackstone had the terrible feeling that the cyborg had cataloged everything and given an insane number of variables precise mathematical weights. Maybe later, while he was alone in his command pod, Toll Seven would plug himself into a cyber-computer. The two machines would then analyze this new data. The small argument would enter the data-stream of the program for whatever the cyborgs ultimately wanted. What did this alien really want? The longer Blackstone spent with Toll Seven, the more he concluded that the cyborgs’ ultimate objective, by definition, must be harmful for humanity.
With a sharp tug, OD12 detached the last plug from her head and rose from the crèche in the battle pod. Other cyborgs rose from their womblike, electronic crèches. A dim, green glow bathed their skeletal bodies. They moved jerkily these first few seconds, advancing in a line toward a cylindrical chamber.
The chamber rotated, revealing an opening to the first cyborg in line. Purring motors sounded as the former commander of Ice Hauler 49 stepped into the chamber. It rotated so the entrance and the cyborg disappeared. Harsh chemicals immediately sprayed into the unseen chamber.
OD12 heard the spray and she heard the cyborg in the chamber thrash and utter metallic groans. It was an odd sound. It triggered a distant memory in OD12.
She alone of all the cyborgs awaiting their turn for the obviously painful chemical shower showed a different pose. OD12 cocked her elongated head. She cocked her head and her mask-like face betrayed little of the horror the memory slammed home into her controlled thoughts.
She remembered laying on a conveyor. A hellish shock had awoken her, and she had torn a muscle causing horrendous pain. A chemical mist had drifted onto her face and she’d heard harsh klaxons shrieking. Despite extreme lethargy, she’d moved her head to the side and had screamed as she’d stared at the dead face of the commander of IH-49. Others had lain beyond the commander, others on the moving conveyer and sprayed with the fine, orange mist.
Cyborg OD12 remembered the moment. It had burned into her because her worst fear had been played out. Life was rigged against her. The extreme paranoia that had told her she could never win was one hundred percent accurate. She’d tried to move off the conveyor. A long, mechanical arm with a needle attached to the end had descended toward her. It had been descending doom. She’d tried to thrash away from it. Instead, the hypo had touched her flesh and hissed, pumping something into her. She’d fought to keep her eyes open and had horribly failed as her eyelids drooped.
As she stood in line with the other cyborgs, OD12’s head cocked a bit more. She recalled many years of combat training. She had been to a hundred planets in a thousand varied situations. At least, the combat simulations inside the Web-Mind had seemed like real years.
Her nearly lifeless eyes tightened—that tightening was close to being an anomaly. It triggered the programming in her internal computer.
Warning, OD12!
The computer warning caused her to blink. Her self-awareness might have curled and died the death of inertia and terror. This deep part was the “I” of OD12… of Osadar Di, her true name.
Warning! Your emotions have increased adrenal secretions. Emotive responses above the accepted norms will result in an immediate shutdown and a possible personality scrub.
Osadar Di understood perfectly. She was screwed. She’d never had a chance, really. It wasn’t fair. But then life was a crapshoot where all the odds were stacked against you. It was the norm for her. She’d always known it. Look at her. She was a monster, a mechanical thing with a slave driver to control not only her actions, but also her thoughts. If that wasn’t the ultimate screw-job, she didn’t know what was.
Emergency procedure twenty-seven: select from tempo, highdrox and nullity-4.
Osadar was faintly aware she heard more from her computer than she should. It was choosing from certain drugs to inject into her bloodstream. Yes, as the drugs began to work, the grim horror gripping her began to fade. Unfortunately, the memory also began to recede with the lessening terror.
Osadar—no, she was OD12. She belonged to the Web-Mind. She was a component of the grand scheme of Solar System conquest. This was part of Step Nine, whatever that meant.