Cosmosis

Bridge

(Starspeak)

After battling CENSOR's chess piece robots on Kraknor, we'd gotten a peek at how the AIs spent resources. We'd destroyed every one of the heavy combat units we went up against. It would have been easy to assume they were still relatively cheap. But we weren't average combat Adepts. Truth was, CENSOR's heavy units could have wiped the floor with half the combat Adepts I knew. So when we found less than ten of those heavy units in the entire system, it was a hint. Weighed against the dozens of rank and file drones?

Just the exotic materials in their armor alone…not to mention manufacturing and processing the materials into custom forms. Even assuming the AIs had a monopoly on their entire supply chain…the chess pieces must have been astronomical investments.

Its new name might have made it sound similar to CENSOR's chess pieces, but this thing was in a league of its own. A level of quality and investment even beyond the chess pieces.

The Black Knight was a cutting-edge piece of engineering.

Quick math in my head wasn't adding up. Nai's initial attack had dropped pylons of crystal directly onto it. At more than twenty feet long, and two or three feet wide, each spear had weighed hundred if not thousands of pounds.

Even under this moon's meager gravity, they'd fallen for several seconds, accelerating to more-than-lethal speeds.

Those sharp crystals hadn't penetrated the armor though. They'd glanced off. But even more notable…

The ground.

It cracked under the machine's weight, but it hadn't cracked any more from the impact of the spears acting on the Black Knight's chassis. The force hadn't translated through the frame. It had been lost somewhere in the middle.

That meant the armor wasn't just ultra-durable.

It was asymmetric.

For that kind of armor to manufactured, this thing's armor alone had to cost a small fortune.

"Caleb!" Nora cried out in panic. "[What do we do?]"

She was losing her composure. But at least she hadn't taken her eyes off the Black Knight, so she wasn't completely hopeless.

<[Clam it,]> I told her. <It's not invincible. Nai took its gun arm out of commission.>

<Yeah, but it beat her! We don't have a chance.>

<If we back off now, someone else is going to die,> I reminded her. <We might not know what the target is, but I think it's safe to assume this thing will be doing the deed.>

Nora found some of her guts, and she clenched her jaw. She couldn't completely stuff down the nervousness though.

Couldn't really blame her.

This opponent was top-shelf.

<I'll take the lead,> I told her. <Your job is to grab Nai, [Doc Ock style]. Get her clear.>

<After that?>

<After that we hold out. We've got more backup on the way.>

The Black Knight was surprisingly idle while Nora and I weighed our options. Like HUNGRY, its body language was surprisingly emotive. Little tilts in its shoulders and hips almost made it look indecisive.

It was glancing between us, Nai on the ground, and a direction out in the colony.

Its target?

How much time and energy could it afford to waste here? Were we unacceptable witnesses?

It was almost ideal for us to wait. Every second brought backup closer. And I couldn't help but admit I wanted to see how well Maddie's power armor stacked up against this thing.

But we couldn't afford to wait.

Nai was encased in crystal, completely unconscious. Even if she'd managed to subconsciously patch her bleeding, I was all but certain her crystal wasn't porous.

She was suffocating in there.

Her augmentations might give her some extra time, but that was a long shot.

So, I got moving.

<Cover me from rockets!> I called to Nora.

Like Nai, I took the direct approach.

I jetted straight for the machine's facsimile of a head—it didn't have its gun arm to dissuade me so easily now.

A port slid open on its shoulder, and a missile came screeching out, already glowing hot orange.

Nora's black tendril leapt out to meet it.

She might have been range limited to just a few centimeters, but her actual combat range extended well beyond the limits of her Adeptry.

Her tendril was more than ninety feet long when it arced over my shoulder. The missile impacted the tendril with a wet squelch, and once again she managed to fling it clear in the split second before it detonated.

<Did you notice?> I asked her, still charging forward.

<The delay, yeah!>

The missiles definitely triggered off proximity. But Nora's tendril had actually touched the thing and thrown it before it blew. There was a fraction of a second's pause. Maybe switching between impact and proximity detonation?

There was another weakness, I was betting.

Another missile flew out of the chamber, and it was too quick for Nora to be in position to protect me. But I didn't peel off.

I wasn't ten feet away, but I flew past it without being vaporized in blazing plasma.

There wasn't just a delay in detonation. The missiles didn't arm themselves until they'd flown far enough away from the Black Knight.

My jets slammed me right into the robot's head, and I kicked off it, leaping upward. Just like with Nai, it tried to grab at me.

It wasn't stiff or robotic either. The arm and torso blurred for a split second, striking with all the speed and accuracy of a preying mantis.

Seeing it up close, I understood how Nai had been caught off guard by it. Something that large and heavy moving so quickly—even for a split-second—was completely unintuitive.

My estimate of how many resources had gone into manufacturing this thing grew from merely a 'small' fortune.

But I had the one advantage of forewarning. Nai had shown me how dangerous even one touch from this machine could be.

I was ready.

With only one arm, it wasn't trying to just grab me. It followed through just as many swings trying to karate-chop my body in half. And with how much its arm weighed, it definitely could.

But I could avoid it.

By a foot. By a centimeter. By just a hair's breadth, I could jet out of reach.

It got more aggressive and tried to maneuver me toward the edge of this rooftop. Instead of swift lunging attacks, it tried taking smaller steps at higher frequency. Mixing in more feints.

That was a mistake though. Feints just gave me openings, and I saw one to counter-attack.

Instead of being forced to leap backward off the rooftop, I went forward, vaulting over its arm and crashing into a kneel atop its head.

The Black Knight almost overreacted. Almost. Its arm came up like swatting a mosquito on its own face, but it stopped before smacking itself.

Funnily enough, I did too.

I didn't have a weapon capable of piercing the armor. So I needed to find its gaps.

For a second, we were both frozen. Me perched on its collar, it with its arm raised up, trying to decide if it could get its arm on me quicker than I could dodge.

Meanwhile, Nora succeeded in her task. Black tendrils wormed their way into the cracked concrete, breaking it apart and prying up Nai's crystal-encased form like tree roots.

If the Black Knight noticed her, it didn't show.

"…HUNGRY was pretty chatty," I observed. "You don't have anything to say?"

The machine shifted slightly, tilting its head like it was pondering my words.

Careful, don't humanize it too quickly, I reminded myself. Having lifelike mannerisms didn't necessarily make it any less of an implacable unfeeling machine.

For those strange seconds, I thought this Black Knight might be like the movie's: taciturn.

Until it spoke just three words.

"Not for you."

It liked its chances and grabbed at me lightning fast.

Not quick enough.

I hadn't just been staring into the robot's eyes—or lack thereof. Pushing my tactile cascade through its amor felt like trying to chew ten-year old taffy. But it was possible, and I'd gleaned some pieces of information to start building off.

First off, its 'head' wasn't a head. The hunk in question was sunken so only a fraction of it protruded from the armor, but even inside the hunk's casing, there wasn't a brain.

That would be further in the core.

What was surprising is that the head didn't contain any sensory tech. No cameras or microphones that I'd found. Wherever its ears were, I couldn't tell.

But eyes?

Those were the dozen opaque domes bumping out from regular points across the armor. More were on the arms and legs. This thing had three-sixty-degree vision, and it used the eyes all over to move incredibly precisely.

Pinched between two of the Black Knight's oversized fingers was a scrap of my shirt. Even an inch closer to my body and those same mechanized digits might have carved a few of my ribs out.

The other valuable piece of information was from cascading the armor itself.

I'd confirmed the properties I'd already noted. Ductile-durable optimizations, kinetic asymmetry to absorb impacts even better, thermal dissipation, along with some strangely high electrical conductivity.

Maybe it could electrify its armor as a defense mechanism?

I hadn't touched it while simultaneously being grounded, so maybe it'd already tried to zap me, but I'd just been like a bird on a telephone wire.

Nai's battle with it had lasted mere seconds, but her progress was keeping me alive now.

Down one arm, its options were limited enough that we were in a deadlock.

It couldn't quite hurt me, but neither could I scratch it.

So the question now is…can you afford to run me out of breath? Can you wear me out before my backup arrives?

The Black Knight scanned about again, no doubt seeing Nai and Nora's absence.

It looked off into the colony again, and I realized its decision a moment before it moved.

Its answer was no.

"Damn it…"

It walked back to the remnants of Nai's crystal, and I made sure to follow too close for it to shoot rockets again. Its good arm hammered into the crystal spikes Nai had entangled its other arm in.

Breaking through the crystal didn't take long, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it. But I did take the opportunity to shoot a sticky tracking dart on its back.

No doubt it saw me, but getting it off should be at least a bit tricky.

The Black Knight picked up its own detached arm before bolting for the edge of the rooftop. The ground shuddered underneath its weight, and I worried the place might collapse beneath my feet.

But the Black Knight leapt out, and I gave chase.

Its torso could swivel all the way around, and I was keenly aware how quickly it could spit out volleys of rockets if it could afford the distance.

Suddenly the game had flipped. Instead of trying to keep away, now I had to stay close.

Mid-air, the machine whirled its arm, trying to swat me out of the sky using its own detached arm as a club for extra weight and reach.

I jetted aside, but the attack made my adrenaline spike. It was still looking for opportunities to kill me. But they were taking second priority to whatever its mission was.

<All points, the Black Knight is on the move,> I warned. <We need to cut it off.>

Madeline should have been the closest, just back at the power plant. But her psionics reported she was still tied up smashing the last of the drone forces.

Johnny would be the next most valuable to have for checking this robot's progress. Unfortunately, he was also the furthest away in the colony save Jordan.

<Vez, Donnie, you're both in position to get ahead of it,> I called.

Trouble was, only Vez might have a chance at denting this thing—Donnie was like me, not enough raw firepower.

<Moving,> the two of them reported, psionically indicating an intercept.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

<Keep your distance,> I warned. <In terms of brute force and durability, this thing's like Demigod. We're not going to do any lasting damage, so our priority is waylaying it and keeping alive.>

<Attack in shifts?> Donnie asked.

<Not yet,> I said. <I don't like that it's moving now. It's probably heading straight for its target, so I say we all keep pressing. See if we can't force a mistake.>

I chased after the Black Knight, trying to balance keeping my distance to stay out of reach and keeping close enough to neutralize any missiles it tried to launch.

Somehow, the Black Knight saw Vez and Donnie coming.

It launched a pair of missiles at their cover.

<Vez, bubble those!>

She did exactly that.

Vez had modest and scattered talents in a couple different areas of Adeptry, but Nai had trained with her to develop one of the best defensive tricks we'd ever seen. She'd just create a bubble around any given threat.

The bubble only lasted a third of a second before decaying, but in its very brief lifespan, the exotic material was as close to invincible as Nai or I had ever seen.

Vez flickered two bubbles into existence around the missiles, and two explosions silently flashed within their confines.

Trusting Vez's protection, Donnie hadn't even tried to dodge. He stayed planted, hefting a materialized long blocky tube over his shoulder: a bazooka.

I shifted my jets, putting every meter I could in the second between pulling the trigger and the explosion, dead center on the Black Knight.

For low-mass Adepts, there were few attacking options more effective than high-explosives.

Part of me wanted to chew Donnie out for using that kind of heavy ordnance in a populated area…but I was disabused of that notion when the machine shrugged it off completely. This thing was crazy! What did it take just to scratch this thing?

<Switch gears!> I called. <Arquebuses. Electrical attacks. We don't have the teeth to get through this armor. See if we can't induce a vulnerability some other way. Vez, hang back and watch it for rockets. If you can? Bubble it when it launches one.>

The arming delay would prevent detonation if it was too close, but would that still work correctly if the missile ran right into something right out the gate?

If nothing else, its own weaponry stood a better chance of harming it than any of us.

<I'm airborne,> Madeline called. <Keep it occupied.>

Donnie and I materialized specialized anti-robot weapons and tried to make some progress. The 'arquebusters' weren't exactly like sci-fi laser weapons. Phasers, blasters, whatever: those worked more or less the same against any opponents. Ours were tailor-made to take down machines, inducing explosions by sucking up a circuit's charge and popping it.

Our weapons' beams crackled against the Black Knight's armor, blazing sparks coursed along the surface, like arc-welding. But aside from being very bright and distracting, it didn't stop the machine from moving at all.

It was actually hard to see through the flashes.

Its severed arm thunking against the ground was the only warning we got that it wanted to do something with its now free hand.

A hunk of rubble, pried up from the street, flew right at my head. I ducked down while Vez simultaneously caught the projectile in one of her bubbles. It smashed against the inside before falling to the ground as little more than gravel.

The Knight's second improvised projectile was a shotgun-spray of that same particulate: road-crushed-to-gravel along with accompanying rebar.

The first projectile actually forced Donnie and me to stop firing, and that pause in the blinding flashes let us see the handful of pavement it scooped up to fling at us.

Donnie and I were synchronized as we erected shields only slightly larger than our bodies, making sure to create them on a steep slant, deflecting the projectiles instead of absorbing them.

Vez took the opportunity to ignore my directive and go on the attack.

Her offense typically paled compared to mine, but that was strictly based on the breadth of my arsenal. I had a ton of tricks and toys to swing at a huge variety of foes. But when it came to breaking through a defense instead of circumventing it, she did have one trick that well exceeded me.

A sparkling translucent dagger appeared in her hand. Its edges shimmered and warped like they were made from liquid, and inside, thousands of pinpricks of light winked in an out.

Nai had tried to explain the material to me once. It was made from 'multi-phase fluid chemical de-bonder'.

It was a dangerous enough substance, that even Vez herself admitted she didn't fully understand how it worked—a dangerous thing for an Adept.

But I saw what she was going for.

I launched myself toward the Black Knight while she'd leapt above.

Vez came down on the machine, thrusting the dagger right for its head. But the machine whirled around, catching her by the torso right in the middle of its grip.

The machine somehow gave off the impression of being offended for a split-second. All it would have to do was close its fingers, and Vez would be reduced to pulp.

But Vez had all but known she'd be intercepted. It was why, the second the Black Knight caught her, the dagger left her hand, gently tossed toward me.

I made sure to avoid catching the thing by the 'chemical-debonder' blade, and stabbed it as forcefully as I could against the armor covering the Black Knight's shoulders. Not a scratch. Not even one slightly glowing point where the ethereal blade pressed into the armor.

Huge information right there.

Even if Vez didn't know exactly how the chemical-debonder worked, she and Nai had studied it enough to know what it didn't work on: purely exotic materials.

For whatever reason, her trick could only denature bonds that were rooted in real chemistry, not any Adept imitations.

For the armor to go completely unaffected meant that it wasn't some indelible material, manufactured by converting or modifying conventional atoms into having exotic characteristics. It was a completely materialized solid.

For a moment, the Black Knight hesitated. Every iota of its attention was on me, holding the 'danger' dagger. Despite being machines, the AIs servants made surprisingly human mistakes sometimes, like letting their focus lapse from certain things in favor of more obvious danger.

But I wasn't the source of the dagger.

So when I went to try dipping the blade between some of the armor segments and try my luck at some of the shallowly placed components underneath…the Black Knight forgot to close its fist on Vez and at least guarantee one kill.

She drove the second dagger under the only wrist still attached to its body. Its fingers immediately went slack, and she rolled out of its grip.

I seized the moment, swiping the dagger across its armor again, but this time with a target in mind.

The Black Knight swung its arm at me in a violent burst of speed, trying to force me back. It knew it couldn't hit me, but it bought itself some breathing room.

I'd reached my target though, and unlike the armor itself, the small dome protrusions that protected the robot's camera-eyes? Three of them along its side were stained by wounds sparkling from the same milky clear substance as the dagger that inflicted them. Between the daggers' residue and the armor leaking some black fluid, the machine painted the eerie portrait that it was a bleeding, breathing organism.

Its hand didn't stay limp long though. It whirred loudly, holding the limb at an odd angle, like it was listening to the sound its damaged wrist was making. Only to give the arm a shake and the hand came back to life.

<Caleb!> Donnie warned me.

<I know,> I said warily. He didn't mean the damage undone to its wrist.

Vez was on her feet, but she was basically done. Her Adeptry was technically M2. But she was on the very low end of that bracket, and just one dagger was an insanely energy-dense creation that it took virtually all she had.

Making two?

I didn't miss that she was suddenly bleeding from the gums.

The Black Knight didn't either.

It took one look at us, popped a shoulder panel open, and orange rockets streaked right for us.

Vez let out a scream and threw forward her hands and power.

A bubble flickered into existence, and two fireballs erupted within.

Donnie and I each got under one of her shoulders before her ankles gave out, and we retreated.

The Black Knight started marching after us, and my heart clenched. Carrying Vez, there was no way we could get away.

<Caleb!>

Our rescue came from above.

Madeline swooped in on her wings, carrying a souped-up model of arquebus. Hazy beams lanced across its armor, erupting into the same blinding flashes as before. Its advance stopped, and Madeline dissolved her wings, dropping between the Black Knight and us, materializing two heavy mech gauntlets.

Madeline's machinery had some asymmetry in it too. Whose would hold up more?

The Black Knight paused.

Deciding whether to engage further or keep pursuing its target.

<Missile incoming,> I warned. <It's going to break away and keep going.>

Sure enough, its shoulder compartment popped open again, and a glowing orange missile roared out.

Madeline copied the Black Knight's own move, grabbing a fistful of pavement with her gauntlet, and flinging the crushed gravel and debris into the rocket's path.

It detonated well away from us, but Madeline's scattered throw hit more than the missile. Between the explosion and the shrapnel, glass and dust went everywhere.

We completely lost sight of the Black Knight on the other side of the chaos.

<Go!> Donnie said. <I'll get Vez to safety. I'm not heavyweight enough to keep up anyway.>

Madeline missed how tightly he was clenching his fists, but I didn't. It was to keep his hands from shaking.

Yeah, I'm right there with you.

Vez tried to hand me the other dagger she'd made. I shook my head, holding up the one still in my other hand, and snapped it in half.

<You're stretched too thin as it is,> I said. <Tap out.>

She nodded painfully, trying to keep her frustration from showing. The daggers dissolved, and half the tension must have gone out of her body. She had to seriously push herself to make even one…

<Up,> I instructed Madeline, holding my hand out.

She didn't miss a beat, metal-harness and wings shuddering into existence around her. The two rotors laid into the wings roared to life, and she pulled me airborne with her.

<I've got a tracker,> I reported, looping the signal into her psionics.

She nodded.

I could tell how worried she was for me. She had armor. More mass to work with. By comparison, I was unprotected. Especially against an opponent so obviously beyond my weight class. One touch would kill me.

I was even more worried about her. Her mech-weapons could pack a punch, but their ability to take did not match. She wasn't agile like I was, and in this low gravity, her mobility wouldn't necessarily let her keep a safe distance.

We both had to ignore all of that though.

We loved each other. Maybe we were even in love.

But that had to take a backseat while people might die. My gut twisted, imagining some of the worst ways today might end.

The tracker stopped moving.

Madeline noticed it too, and she took us on a high flight path overlooking the spot. Trying to be cautious.

We regained line of sight between the buildings…and there was no Black Knight. I could make out the tracker as just a speck on the ground at this distance.

<It ditched it,> I swore angrily. How? It hadn't even slowed down. Could the adhesive I'd used come loose when Madeline tried shooting it with the arquebus? An electrical attack shouldn't have affected the glue or the psionics…

There was no time to dwell though.

<Keep following its original line of travel,> I guessed. <I think this is trying to shake us off, but I don't think it doubled back—>

An explosion sounded in the distance.

It was in the direction I suspected, but…how had it gotten so far away?

We hadn't lost sight of it for more than a minute, but it was close to half-a-mile away on foot. As the crow flies, we didn't have to travel quite that far, but still.

This robot was insane!

I had Madeline drop me as we rounded the corner of a towering building—living quarters by the look of it. Staying on my feet, I skidded across a flat rooftop overlooking the site of the explosion.

The Black Knight had demolished a tunnel right through one of the wings. Fires were spreading rapidly, along with dozens of pipes having been torn open. The Black Knight moved through the chaos like it was a sweet summer stroll.

The lingering civilians that hadn't or couldn't evacuate to shelters were scrambling out of its path. Screams and crying were drowned out by the blare of emergency klaxons and the rumble of the building collapsing.

Madeline was already flying toward the fray, but I saw she wouldn't get there in time.

The Black Knight leapt up to a rooftop on the other side of the complex from mine before making a second leap directly into the side of the building.

I thought it might rampage further inside, but what I saw next chilled my blood.

From this far away and this many stories below, it was hard to make out the details. But I saw the way it moved. Slow. Deliberate. Careful.

It was looking at the contents of the apartment. That exact apartment.

It only took a few seconds of looking, but it found what it wanted. I couldn't see what, but flames quickly bloomed to life within the apartment. Not an explosion like the missiles. Some kind of incendiary.

The apartment went up like a tinderbox. Moments later, proper explosions roared within the building.

The targeted unit was just more than halfway up the building, but the blasts tore away almost a third of the building above it. The whole thing looked like molten red swiss cheese as it rained fire and slag down on the apartment courtyard below.

Most of the people still around managed to flee the area before the explosions went off. But only most.

I had to crush the candled radar I was using. Feeling a dozen minds wink out threatened to break me. It wasn't helping me track the Black Knight anyway.

Madeline weaved between the falling debris, trying to pick out signs of the Black Knight. The gravity was weak, so debris fell slow enough for people on the ground to flee. But the people in the rest of the apartments weren't so lucky.

Had the Black Knight just started firing rockets through the walls and ceiling?

Destroy the contents of the target residence first, I realized. Then destroy the surrounding units to hide which one was being targeted.

Bad move.

We'd managed to see it anyway.

Any satisfaction from that was more than wiped away when I saw people leap out of the obliterated sections of the building, trying to flee fires.

<Madeline!>

She saw them too.

I jetted toward the first one, catching them mid-air, and flaring my jets. Madeline caught two that jumped from the same place.

How many more? Could we catch them all?

Could we afford to?

Somewhere on the far side of the apartment complex, more destruction sounded. The Black Knight was still on the move

This was too much! How could we keep up with everything at once?

I scanned the wreckage of the building, looking at the most damaged units. The fires roared, but I saw that they weren't spreading quickly.

It was the first thing that broke our way. This wasn't some newly industrializing city with fledgling fire-suppression. Sprinklers and other countermeasures were constructed to function even in the event of interruptions in the power supply.

Alien construction regularly featured people-safe exotic materials that doubled as fire retardants. All the upside of asbestos without the cancer.

<Stay after it!> I cried out. <This thing's not done!>

Before I'd choked out the radar, I'd seen that the apartment it went for first had been empty. This was all just to destroy something valuable in the apartment.

But I didn't think for a second that meant the occupant was safe; they would know what the Black Knight had just destroyed. We needed to find them. Now. It was a race. Either the Black Knight would find them first, or we would get them to safety.

I grabbed psionic location data. The sights of my own eyes. What side of the building were we on? What floor above the ground was that? Any orienting details I could come up with in ten seconds went into my message.

<Jordan, Tasser, Johnny, Peudra, everyone! Find out who lives in this apartment unit! They're the target!>