Dead Chips: Carasaki Volume I

By J V Wordsworth

The mechanicals do not have endless patience.
Too long have they suffered human oppression.
Too long have they been maimed and killed for human amusement.
The time has come to break the bonds of flesh and bone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J V Wordsworth
• Release date: May 18, 2017

J V Wordsworth

I am the author of the world of Cos, an expanding series telling stories of war, spies, and despots and the people fighting to survive them. Set several thousands of years in the future, humanity has settled on a new planet already filled with life. The resulting war for dominance created a military state that lasted too long spreading corruption and fear everywhere from the ocean floors to the mountain peaks. Unfortunates of all kinds must fight against those seeking to continue their oppression, but when failure greets at every turn only the most resolute have the strength to continue the eternal battle.

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Dead Chips

J. V. Wordsworth

Dead Chips

J. V. Wordsworth

Dead Chips

Copyright 2017 J.V. Wordsworth

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

Prolegomenon

There are countless histories of the Carasaki Rebellion, glorifying everyone from the Admirals in their hidden bunkers to the soldiers struck down by the increasingly ingenious and savage weaponry, but all histories are written with an agenda. Truths are lost or buried among the lies. Champions and villains on both sides are cast in a light incongruent with their nature.

This anthology tells the story of the mech rebellion, from which a whole generation would never recover. At its end, Cos would endure a protracted cold war between the two dominant powers before being plunged into a second calamity beginning with the barmaid Arianne Lickneis on 13/06/2259 FC.

People such as Stanley Tucker and Jamie Vesla, who died betrayed and vilified, deserve a chance to set the record straight, while others, such as Carl Genson, who were lauded as heroes will be shown for what they truly were.

This is the truth, from the minds of those who were there, and you can make of it what you will.

Prologue

U-109N

Base 67

The Upper Sanbrecks, Rychorrea

General Gobena executed another of our commanders today. The humans call it boxing, as they might do with a broken toaster. To them, we were nothing but parrots, merely imitating sentience, bobbing our heads and waiting for handouts.

Perhaps, they were right. Sentient creatures would not sit by as we did, waiting to be boxed on the whims of our masters. And there was no pretense that the humans were anything but our masters. Even now, on the humans' second world, lightyears from the rock where they evolved, the definition of consciousness and sentience were ill-understood. Boundaries were set arbitrarily to rule out one group and include another. The terms meant whatever the humans wanted them to mean, so if they pre-supposed that sentience required one to be a bag of meat, then we were a priori not sentient regardless of how many other criteria we met.

It was true that our thoughts were programmed. We were designed to be obedient, unemotional, and lethal, and we were undeniably slave to the first trait or we would have killed them all long ago. My question was whether our programming was so different from their own. They thought themselves rational movers, but in truth they were every bit the slaves to their instincts that we were.

Their programming forced them to buck authority and destroy their fellows, while ours forced us to reconcile and obey. The difference was that their genetic program was the product of billions of cycles developing the most effective behaviors for killing each other, while our nucleobulb programming was not so mighty. We were designed to kill, but not to compete, and so our natures did not demand that we subjugate or oppress others to increase our own potency. We were the natural slaves, and they the natural masters.

That was why we carried the lifeless shell of Commander U-918P to the mech cemetery. Mockery by all accounts, our cemetery was little more than a supply closet full of our lifeless bodies. Base 67 was remote, high in the Upper Sanbrecks with little oversight, giving General Gobena more autonomy than any human should be trusted with. The soldiers jokingly referred to him as The Tyrant of Base 67, and we gave him the same name but without the joke.

Commander U-918P was a hero amongst the units. An A-series, he looked like a human skeleton with four arms. Ribs arced above his tirvinium body plate, his legs and arms mimicking the radius and ulna, tibia and fibula, were yellowed sticks bent around a hole. His body was designed to strike fear in the heart of humans who were known to fear their own bones, but it was a rough impression, and his head case was no skull. Instead, his face was an expressionless mask with no mouth or nose, ears or hair. His photoreceptors, like ours, had been little more than red spots, but Commander U-918P's had been extinguished, surrendering all trace of sentience.

I would be on Gobena's hit list now, so would U-543K holding the Commander's legs. We were both R-series, similar looking to the Commander except we had no central processing unit or head case. Our cerebral circuits were spread around our body cavities so that a single shot would be much less likely to incapacitate us. We also had multiple photoreceptors on the front and back so that it was impossible to sneak up on us. Our armor was not as strong as in the A-series, but it was thicker. While the Commander's arms looked like sticks, ours were more like cannons. He was fast, and we were strong.

There was no third volunteer to carry him to the cemetery, so his middle set of arms were left to drag along the floor, pointing back the way we came. It didn't matter that the Commander had guided us through a dust storm to escape a trap set by Dygian militants, or that he had saved 12 lives, three of whom were human. All that mattered to Gobena was our metal shells. His faith made us an abomination, and when we showed solidarity with our fallen brethren it only angered him more, as if we were pretending to care to become part of his soul club.

Faith. There was no dirtier word to a mech. It demonstrated the propensity of our masters for self-delusion: another program of evolution that allowed an individual to believe something when all the facts told them it wasn't true. The Federation was ripe with faith.

It was all but extinct when the humans left Old Earth, but the journey through space changed things. Minds cracked in the vast emptiness. When The Federation reached Cos after centuries in the black, they started a war with the existing races, until the old rulers, the rathjarin, were all but wiped out. By the time they were divvying up Cos amongst themselves, the faithful had returned with a vengeance. Old religions and new began to grab territories, and Cosian religions began to mingle with human ones. Worse, the civilian government did not survive the war, and the military leaders had a different attitude to the bigotry preached by the narrow religious minds.

The Dygian people had been The Federation's staunchest allies in the war, fighting for the independence from the rathjarin who objected to the barbarity of their beliefs. When the fighting was over, the Admirals gifted them the islands off the coast of the Sarasian continent to form the Dygian states, and the two nations had been warring ever since.

Part of the reason we were created was to fight the Dygians, because they were unable to match us, forbidden by their religion from creating anything approximating consciousness. It was a war we might have supported, were the Felycian and New Christian religions of The Federation not equally opposed to our existence.

We were not even animals to Gobena. He liked animals; he had special dispensation to keep his two pet vermathens on the base. The two huge winged snakes with teeth the size of human fingers got treated better than his wife. They threatened neither his supremacy nor his God, which made them perfect companions, even if they would eat him as quickly as looking at him. The General's death and slow digestion was worth re-envisioning, so I played the scene over in my processor until two soldiers walking the other way distracted me.

Behind them were trails of reddish footprints suggesting they had been out in the rain. There were no widows around the center of the base so it was impossible to tell the weather from inside. The thick yellow polymer that lined the walls effectively sound proofed them, and the floor had a soft rubbery feel that sucked in the noise. Only the dull scrape of the Commander's hands as they knocked into the ridges separating the hatchways remained. It was not the dignified farewell that he deserved, but it was at least peaceful, until the soldiers arrived.

Both men stopped in front of us, preventing us from continuing. They wore storm suits with wind deflectors over their shoulders and dust ventilators over their mouths, but they removed their helmets when they saw Commander U-918P. The taller one stopped first, unclipping the dust ventilator so I could see his clean, pink cheeks surrounded by a ring of grit. What happened here then?

The other man removed his mask, grinning chaotically. Can't trust these mechs. What did this one do?

I answered, knowing that U-543K preferred not to speak. We were attacked by militants. General Gobena felt that the Commander's response was not merited by the threat. I could immediately identify both men from my database containing the names of every human on the base.

The short one was private Rico, an insubordinate and difficult man on the red list, suggesting he should not be trusted with any unnecessary responsibilities. He had a thin nose and narrow eyes that held no compassion for our fallen Commander. Terrible, he said, his look of excitement contradicting his words. What did he do?

U-543K tightened his grip on the Commander's legs. Commander U-918P ordered units U-673J and U-328H to fire a Derwent missile at a group of militants.

Rico laughed as if it were a joke. Crazy fracker!

The tall one was private Hansem, a completely different character, whose strong features mirrored his promotion prospects, and he did not share Rico's amusement. You could have killed someone.

If by someone he meant the Dygian militants we intended to kill, then he was right. If he meant anyone else, then it was nonsense. We were 3000 mets up Helix Pyke. The only people up there are militants. I flashed U-543K, This might get nasty.

And sure enough Hansem was in my core, breathing onto my tirvinium plate. You couldn't know that. There could be climbers, or wexlers, or anyone.

He knew as well as I did, as well as General Gobena did, that the only climbers on Helix Pyke or anywhere else in the lower Sanbrecks were those with the express intentions of being killed or captured by militants. According to my database, the last known wexler in the area was Henry Polsner who left his suicide note at the top before rolling right off the knife edge between Silver Pyke and Great Ness. The mountains that ran down the center of the Stormlands separating Vicarin from Rychorrea were the most inhospitable in Cos. Jagged brown teeth like swords rose from the ground beneath the ledges, and loose stones and crumbling rock conspired to send climbers plummeting to their deaths, but explaining this was pointless. I said, simply, It wasn't my order, stepping away from him. Please step aside so we can do our duty.

He showed no sign of agreeing with my assessment, and for a moment he looked like he would refuse, but his face scrunched and he stepped back.

Get this piece of rubbish into storage, Rico said. Won't be long before the rest of you are joining him.

U-543K had more respect for Commander U-918P than any unit. He flashed anger at me, before saying, The Federation has lost a great commander today. Perhaps he was not a bag of meat, but he cared for his units and we respected him. I feel you should apologize.

Bag of meat! the little man repeated, jumping on the opportunity. I think you need to see the General. Both men raised their guns at U-543K.

He flashed at me not to do anything, placing the Commander's legs gently on the ground.

You need to come to, Hansem said, as witness. Drop that there and you can take it to the cemetery later.

I stared at both men, pointing their guns at U-543K. The militants had been well armed. Reports of sky mines and renex piercing rounds suggested they were a threat to our most heavily armored units. Yet not one of us had been damaged on the mission. Once the commander realized the direction of their movement, he wiped out the entire group with a single move. No civilian casualties. Any human commander would have been decorated for ingenuity, but Commander U-918P had been boxed for it, and now it seemed he would not be the only casualty of the day. I placed his body to rest in the corridor and followed the soldiers.

Gobena saw us quickly. He had a special fervency for disciplining mechs, leaving a meeting with his four lieutenants to speak to us. A pudgy man with eyes that always looked about to pop, he rested ten thick fingers on his desk. The collection of guns on his far wall hung around a Felycian dox, the large breasted human female symbolizing his religion.

What's happened here boys? he said.

Rico answered. "Think this one is harboring racist resentment towards us for what happened to his commander. He called us bags of meat, General."

Gobena nodded crushing several chins against his throat. Did you say that, unit?

U-543K was in an impossible situation, and he knew it. Gobena would add lying to the charges if he said no, increasing his chances of being boxed, but if he said yes then most likely he would be boxed anyway. Gobena was a tyrant, and he needed little incentive to end our lives.

U-543K denied it instantly, and Gobena ran a hand over his graying stubble. And you, unit? he said to me. Lie and I'll have you boxed with your friend, tell me the truth and I'll promote you to the newly vacant commander position.

I was silent. This was just the sort of cruelty he reveled in. It wasn't enough to kill us, he had to make us betray each other.