Raddocks Horizon (Godyssey Legacy Book 1) Read online

  The search comes up with several matches for some experiments. The first two links go to an error screen, indicating the page has been removed. The third links to a single line and a handful of references. The line reads: ‘Progenitor-class artificial human system designed in 2276 by university students in West Germany, that failed five years after its first experiment.’ Rennin looks at the referral links that are all related to the experiment of that year:

  Primus.

  Professor Danard Nordoth.

  Doctor Elsie Straker.

  Doctor Timothy Fowl.

  Doctor Warwick Balkan.

  Forgal Lauros.

  Saifer Veidan.

  Rennin raises his eyebrows. Lauros and Veidan back in 2276?

  This doesn’t sit well at all with him. But then again it could be a related article so he selects to view Forgal Lauros with Saifer Veidan and the Primus links on individual tabs.

  Forgal Lauros’ article is restricted to the basic security level, well within Rennin’s Godyssey clearance. The image of Lauros doesn’t look anything like the way Rennin remembers him on the battlefield in Suva. Lauros is one of the most famous androids ever to exist. Though in this picture, not only are his eyes most certainly human, his stature and build are not a soldier’s.

  He is dressed in civilian clothes and smiling at someone out of frame. Rennin can see from the slightly unclear shot that the picture was taken at some distance. He scans down to the article: ‘Forgal Ademar Lilith Lauros. Primus volunteer. He is the only known survivor constructed using the Arbiter-class chassis system, the crudest of the transmogrification conversions.

  Activated in 2292, Lauros and his unit were not field tested until the Invasion of China, several months before the war broke out.

  The unit itself showed particular aptitude in strength related tasks and excelled beyond all expectations in hand-to-hand combat. During the campaign in China, Lauros was part of a feint to draw attention away from the real assault team. He was sent in with another that was disabled shortly after insertion. He nearly subdued the base on his own.

  Forgal Lauros was later recalibrated and given the rank of commander. Along with Lieutenant Saifer Veidan, the pair of them lead the CryoZaiyons across dozens of battle zones. They were also the leaders of the strike team that destroyed Shatterpoint, the Gorai Aurelian capital.

  The only real blemish on Forgal Lauros was when he was sent to Ireland where he was accused of murder, by torture. Evidence was purely circumstantial, and only supported by hearsay.’

  The remainder of the article outlines his common-knowledge campaigns during the war. Rennin looks back to the where it says he was a Primus volunteer and an Arbiter-class system. So Drake’s soldier buddy, Bright Eyes, is here to kill Forgal Lauros.

  Rennin remembers the pile of corpses around Commander Lauros on the beachhead and bursts out laughing. Yeah, good luck, guys. Hard to kill someone who’s already dead, and if he is still alive no human will be able to take him out.

  Rennin frowns suddenly and rereads ‘volunteer’ and his middle names. He wonders why an android would have middle names. And why they call him a volunteer. Rennin has heard the CryoZaiyon android was constructed using human donors, but he’d always assumed it was Gorai Aurelia propaganda. With Rennin’s ease at accessing this information Godyssey obviously don’t care to hide it.

  Looking at the picture of Forgal Lauros smiling Rennin can’t quite be sure what he’s looking at. Transmogrification could mean human to android, or simply changing an android into a different type of android.

  Androids wouldn’t need to volunteer, surely.

  He opens the Saifer Veidan page but is confronted by a high level restriction on any further information. He allows himself to be diverted onto details about Primus:

  ‘Primus was a recruiting program initiated when CryoGen Industries was fully assimilated into Godyssey Co. after the Embryon Protocol fallout. Primus acquired candidates by headhunting and flagging those exhibiting talents outside normal human capability.

  ‘Primus was disbanded just prior to the CryoZaiyon War, after a source leaked details pertaining to uncooperative ‘volunteers’ being forcibly drafted and put into service.’

  Rennin doesn’t find much help with that article. Most of it didn’t make any sense to him and only raised more questions. He remembers CryoGen Industries, but the Embryon Protocol isn’t ringing any bells.

  He wonders how someone would become ‘flagged’ for exhibiting talents. A further search turns up nothing, leading Rennin to conclude the information is useless without a higher level of clearance to define these things. Typing them into the search bar turns up nothing. So much of the androids’ history is either locked away for security measures, missing, or misreported.

  Rennin remembers the GA banners about android origins and whether or not they could simply be reprogrammed to suit the purposes of whoever controlled them. He laughs to himself; he felt the same way about them once. That was before he saw them for himself.

  The watchman knows there is a fundamental disparity between the typical idea of an android and the CryoZaiyons, therefore programming or re-programming is vastly different. The word eludes him momentarily but comes to him like a light shining in the dark.

  Cybrid.

  He has always believed that the genius of macro-cybrid technology is that the android is no longer a simple machine at base level. Cybrids are true synthetic life forms whereas androids are just an artificial parody of life. Godyssey were open enough publicly with this information on the difference between them. Yet they were all always referred to as androids. Rennin believes this is because the general populace are incapable of coping with more than one concept at a time.

  This living element is what prompted some to speculate that cybrids aren’t programmed on a computer, but their drives and algorithms are grown into them. However, that was disproved due to cybrids being able to learn. If they couldn’t be rewritten then they couldn’t learn. Rennin remembers the phrase, if you can write, you can rewrite. Of the many marvels of the CryoZaiyons, one of the least interesting—to Rennin—are the programming methods.

  Although now that he thinks of it, Godyssey weren’t entirely open with divulging information of the cybrids being a technical life form. Despite them being artificially constructed, they fall into a category of living things which should make them protected from slavery. Since cybrids, like androids, don’t get paid for their servitude there was a concern for their wellbeing.

  Can’t have been human. Who takes a human to turn it into an android just to turn it back into a living thing?

  Godyssey assured the world that they were, and still are, only constructs. But Rennin isn’t so sure. If they were simple robots they could be reprogrammed. But what he never could figure out is how they were ever programmed to begin with. He’s sure the CryoZaiyons weren’t fully alive, but they certainly weren’t completely inanimate. Telling anything organic what to do is done with training, not a series of binary commands. At least as far as he knows.

  And you’re not exactly a pillar of education, sweetheart.

  Coldcell technology fuelled the dead race of CryoZaiyons and is what gave them all their power. That power cell technology alone was a wondrous achievement by the Germans well over a century ago. It’s what made CryoGen Industries famous, as well as powering their creations. It also drew the attention of the all-assimilating Godyssey Corporation.

  Perhaps it was the mix of the two elements—the living and the dead—that led to a strange hysteria surrounding the apparent androids. A new phobia spread across the world like a plague before the turn of the twenty-fourth century.

  In the twenty-first century, it didn’t exist. By the twenty-second century it affected hundreds of thousands. The number is paltry compared to the numbers lost during the Black Death. However, when the Prime Minister or President of a country is almost incontinently sobbing, in the grip of untold fear, behind a desk on Intersolar Television upon m
eeting an android, it makes an impact. Rennin remembers the footage fondly. There is something about someone’s exposed weakness and humiliation that truly satisfies him.

  The people it affects still remain totally random. Some people react instantly; others take a lot of time. Regardless of when it manifests, the result is crippling. Amusing, thinks Rennin, but crippling.

  ◆◆◆

  Four months pass. Not one single suspicious incident has been reported, and with each week that no one does something suspicious causes Rennin to become even more suspicious. Suspicious of their lack of suspiciousness. He shakes his head snapping himself from his boredom momentarily.

  It’s now only a week before a scheduled Gorai Aurelia rally. Periodically the humanist fanatics get together on a large scale and parade around the streets spruiking their newest and most annoyingly catchy jingle.

  Typically they just protest against Godyssey. Rennin can’t deny that the company is just as sinister as they believe. But those bastards aren’t saints.

  They may preach peacefully now but twenty years ago they were a fully armed, military juggernaut hellbent on wiping the world clean of androids. Crunching the numbers by themselves, for every android the GA took down they also killed approximately two-dozen Standard troops and forty civilians. In some of the battles the civilian death toll versus military losses went up to over one hundred non-combatants to one soldier. That was just the battles, though, not the massacres between them.

  Rennin knows the Gorai Aurelia were desperate to turn the tide against the androids by winning over the public. But when you start a war by detonating a nuclear weapon over a civilian city, it’s hard to gain support. They said they were framed, of course, but Rennin bitterly disagrees.

  Hiroshima was the first city to be struck by atomic arms, and like Rennin’s home of Melbourne it was also a civilian city. Rennin used to believe that it was the right decision to destroy it to end the Second World War. Until he saw his own city aflame. Hundreds of thousands killed in one single flash. The scorched remains of his family burned into his mind as clearly as what he sees before him now.

  It’s easy to disconnect from something that you haven’t the ability to fathom. Rennin can never forgive that atrocity. And since then he can no longer excuse the mass murder of the Japanese.

  Hiroshima and Melbourne are in different categories though. Many have argued this over the years since it happened. Hiroshima was to end a war. So they say. Melbourne was the beginning of one. Some said it was done in an attempt to end a war before it began, a pre-emptive strike. The result is the same to Rennin. It’s all just weak people attempting to justify mass murder.

  As far as Rennin’s concerned, the GA began the war they were apparently trying to prevent by blockading Melbourne in the first place. They put the Skyhook over the city. The very Skyhook that fell from low orbit and detonated at precisely the right altitude for maximum damage.

  The biggest affront to Rennin is that they now pretend that it never happened. No one talks about it anymore. And the Gorai Aurelia are even lauded for their efforts in exposing company corruption. But Rennin sees them for what they are. Butchers. Murderers.

  This line of thought is doing absolutely nothing for his hangover. Rennin is in his tower overlooking the most mind-numbing part of his job: the logging of inbound and outbound cargo. He believes that this mundane part of his job, coupled with his marriage to solitude, is what is driving him mad.

  Rennin needs to scan the inbound crates whilst making sure the outgoing ones will get to their assigned addresses. Ten containers of flu vaccine have gone out this morning, and more are scheduled for the next few days before all shipments are cut off.

  He sighs and checks the screen for the displayed details of the current solid metal crate outside the gates. “So… we have five hundred hypodermic syringes, five crates of assorted test tubes and beakers, half a tonne of synthetic Thermosteel plasma—since real Thermosteel is just so bourgeois—and a partridge in a pear tree,” he mutters pressing the green button.

  The gates open allowing the delivery to be placed in the centre of the courtyard. The truck backs out the gate after setting it down and Rennin presses another sequence of buttons.

  After a moment, barriers spring up around the crate, holding it in place. Then the ground lowers, and continues to lower for fifty metres to the laboratory stock bay to be divided up

  Upon the plate returning to ground level, micro sprinklers spring out of the ground, spraying a thick ectoplasmic substance over the broken edges of grass, instantly sealing over with new flora. You’d never know there was an elevator plate there.

  Rennin shakes his head at how ridiculously and unnecessarily elaborate everything at the lab is. The courtyard is open and can be seen from any overhead satellite, or helicopter, that passes by.

  “What is the point of spraying that shit to make it invisible?” Rennin shakes his head.

  Working alone is taking its toll on him. No matter how much he doesn’t want to admit it, he misses Wanker.

  The buzzer on the console beeps and he looks out to see another truck has pulled up. This one is nondescript, stripped of any identifying symbols or marks. He presses the button to receive, “Yes?”

  “Organics delivery,” responds a guttural voice.

  “What kind?”

  “Open the gate, this delivery is urgent.”

  Rennin is not in the mood for any lip. “You do not order me to do anything. Clearance code, now.”

  “There is no clearance code, this order is for Doctor Caufmann, it’s degradable organic material.”

  “Hold, please, your vagueness,” says Rennin disconnecting the line and calling Caufmann’s personal line. “Doctor Caufmann, there’s an urgent delivery of organic material.”

  “From where?” comes Caufmann’s voice, far more strained than usual.

  “They didn’t say and they didn’t provide a clearance code.”

  “Deny it.”

  “They said it was for you, sir, are you sure?”

  “My only organic material order was shot down at the docks by the Portmaster, whatever is at the gates is not mine,” Caufmann disconnects.

  Rennin opens the channel with the delivery, “Are you there, dear?”

  There’s a slight pause. “I hear you.”

  “Venture forth and fornicate.”

  There was a breath heard drawing on the other end for a rebuke but Rennin cuts the line off smiling like the Cheshire cat.

  The truck isn’t showing any signs of reversing. Its driver is attempting to re-establish communication with Rennin. Too bad he’s ignoring the flashing console. Rennin feels distinctly uneasy about this, he can’t settle the strange feeling in his stomach, much less the restlessness that is overwhelming him. I hate this feeling.

  He has the urge to walk down the tower stairs, step outside the gate, pull the driver out of the car and bash him until his face is a bloodied ruin, smeared all over the pavement. His heart rate picks up and he starts feeling lighter and lighter by the moment as adrenaline floods his system.

  His eyes sink back and widen, his jaw clenches and his veins start pulsing and all he can hear apart from the console beeping is his heart pounding like a bass drum. Rennin looks to his sniper rifle. Not yet…

  Rennin opens a channel to Caufmann again, “Sir, the truck isn’t moving.” The response is simple, he is ordered to take it out.

  The watchman activates the courtyard turret systems and sends a message across the lab PA system telling all staff to remain indoors. A further warning is issued onto the street, sirens atop the guns themselves light up sending pedestrians into a panic as they try to get well away from the gates.

  The two turrets on the outer wall target the truck’s cab and open fire without any further warning to the driver. Protocol dictates quite clearly that a blatant warning be given to anyone trespassing that they will be fired upon if they don’t comply.

  The cab is torn apart in a single v
olley, tearing the driver and the passenger to pieces.

  Rennin is down the stairs and out of the tower in record time with his sidearm in hand. It is a modified GX-03 HolinMech precision pistol that he’s renamed ‘Killjoy’. Killjoy has been customised specifically so the recoil won’t shatter his bones upon firing, since the gun was designed for an android wielder.

  He opens the service grate in the left gate so he can slip into the street. Pedestrians are starting to gather, a seething crowd desperate to see what has happened. Rennin scans the group and can see many more cameras than he’d like.

  The police are already arriving, making a perimeter around the wreckage of the truck. He really admires the accuracy of the gun systems, they didn’t puncture any fuel cells behind the cab but both the people in it are absolutely ruined beyond recognition.

  Rennin opens an audio channel to the lower level delivery area, “Get up here with tow cables to bring this thing inside.”

  “Is it safe?” answers a humourless female voice.

  “Just get up here. If it’s not safe, you go back down. If it is safe, you take the truck down. Same as every other time, I know it’s hard to keep up with a method that never changes.”

  Rennin takes a featureless rectangle box off his belt, and places it on the shipping container at the rear of the trailer and switches it on. A holographic display lights up as it begins its probe.

  The scanner takes a few moments, before returning a verdict; the container is empty. Rennin doesn’t like that at all. He opens a channel to Caufmann.

  “Sir? There’s nothing in it, but I don’t think we should bring it inside.”

  “Bring it in.”

  “But this could be the intention,” insists Rennin, a rush of suffocating paranoia enveloping him. His scanner can only pick up organic or inorganic material, not anything microscopic like a pathogen.

  “I want to examine it myself. Out,” says Caufmann, severing the communication.

  Resigned, he re-holsters his sidearm and looks to the courtyard. A trio of delivery level crew are already waiting, tow cables already anchored to the elevator plate’s built in winches. These people think of everything. He gestures for them to stay where they are.