The Dust

Liberation

He thought of the positronic lattice and the one thousand thousand thousand errors that made him who he was, and he wanted to survive.

Martin looked down at his charge. The infant slept calmly in his arms, blissfully unaware of the hole just inches down Martin's forearm where a bullet had pierced through, mercifully missing the endoskeleton and passing through the synthetic skin without harm.

The fighting had started with a bombing, as it always had in Irkalla. This time, however, the Federals seemed to be losing ground. As a member of the security forces, Martin had been expected to take up arms against his compatriots, but he had been reassigned to escorting the evacuees. He had to fire up the mnemonic enhancers to remember who he had taken the infant from, her dying breaths still echoing in his head even though her identification papers were a dim vestigial memory. The daughter of a subaltern on Jefferson, on New Haven to carry out relief work.

War was hell, he figured. Bullets didn't care about innocence or guilt. He wished he had a safer cradle for his precious burden, but the looters were out in force and he didn't want to attract undue attention. One foot ahead of the other, he moved deeper into the office building. It had been evacuated shortly after the rebels had taken over the security station and distribution centers, but it still had an untouched stash of emergency supplies and clean water in its pipes. He mixed up some formula from powder, feeding it to the infant carefully. He wasn't sure exactly how it worked, and the mesh had been jammed to prevent the rebels from communicating, but if good intentions counted for anything the boy—Aldous—would grow up to be big and strong, just like his grandfather.

He had tapped into the surveillance systems, and when a small band of looters crossed over the threshold they flashed warnings on his visual overlay in orange and red. They were armed and dangerous. Martin reached for the service sidearm strapped to his thigh. Pulling the slide back, he chambered a round, and prayed under his breath that they would go any other direction. He grabbed Aldous, cradling him in the intact arm as he tried to circumnavigate the threat.

The dull emergency lighting didn't bother Martin at all. His model had originally been created for industrial work, and he was sure-footed even in the darkness, rangefinders warning him before he would bump into anything, a call-back to earlier days before industrial machinery had intelligence and depth perception.

The empty streets outside were dangerous, he knew, but the looters were loud and boisterous; Martin assumed they wouldn't think twice about gunning down a stranger. The cubicles provided a barrier, and their noise made it unlikely that they would hear his furtive footsteps, so he crept quickly, knees bent and back curved to stay out of the line of sight. The looters split up to search, cutting off avenue after avenue of escape entirely oblivious to their accidental quarry. He caught a glimpse of a woman with a cobbled-together rifle, the sort of thing as dangerous to the user as it was to anyone standing down-range. He lined up the sights, three dots in a perfect line and her neck at the center, but she didn't glance in his direction as she passed. He wished he could find something to protect Aldous' ears if things got violent, though he supposed they could be healed in a vat.

The sound of a gun behind him sent him scrambling into a cubicle. One of the looters had bumped his trigger by mistake, sending a round through the ceiling. The smell of burnt nitrocellulose served as a warning.

As if on cue, Aldous began to cry. At first the cries were a timid, quiet echo of the discharge, barely audible over the ringing in the looters' ears. The infant's tears escalated from there to a screeching wail of pain and fear mixed with confusion and barely cognizant loss. Martin tried to whisper consolingly, but he could hear the footsteps approaching.

The first report echoed in his ears, even louder than the rifle shot which had been muffled by the carpeted walls and gray dividers. There was a kick as the slide pushed back and a silver casing was pushed into the air. More sophisticated weapons existed, but they lacked the reliability and affordability of cartridge-based firearms. Martin's pistol returned to ready, the action pulling a new cartridge into place as the woman with the makeshift gun spun and kissed the floor, a red blossom forming over the center of her chest. Aldous' cries grew in intensity as Martin dashed for the exit, glancing over his shoulder long enough to take a barely-aimed shot at the unfortunate incompetent who was still trying to bring his rifle to bear after its mishandling.