Tin Men Read online

  Within platoons, it was different. On duty, they were in each other’s heads for eight hours at a time. It was impossible not to get to know the men and women who were covering your ass every day. Of course some he knew better than others. His platoon had added half a dozen newbies in the past two months; there were a few he hadn’t even had a conversation with yet.

  His boots thumped the metal steps as he descended from the steel catwalk to the floor of the vast staging area.

  “Private Kelso!” a voice rang out. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Sergeant Morello stood, arms crossed, in front of a block of canisters. The Remote Combat Stations were arranged in blocks of thirty-six—six by six—and each staging area had three such blocks, one per shift. While only a third of the 1st Remote Infantry Division were normally active during any shift, there were enough canisters for all of the soldiers in the division to be put into the field simultaneously, if a crisis arose. “Sorry, Sarge,” Danny said as he ran up, ignoring the amused looks he received from some of the others in his platoon, who were already situated inside their metal coffins, sitting up like corpses come back to life and grinning at his plight.

  “Every minute you waste is a minute the Cupcakes stay on duty,” Sergeant Morello said.

  The Cupcakes—Sergeant Morello’s nickname for Platoon C. The Babydolls were Platoon B. Lieutenant Trang and Sergeant Morello commanded Platoon A, which the others just called the Assholes. The sergeant wore the badge with pride.

  “They’re not going to thank you for that, Private,” Sergeant Morello went on.

  “I know, Sarge.”

  Morello glared at him, dark eyes set into olive skin, long nose above thick mustache, all combining to give him a very intimidating air, despite his height. Sergeant Morello stood five feet and four inches tall, but even out here, in the flesh and blood world, Morello could have broken him into tiny little pieces if he felt like it.

  “He knows, he says,” Sergeant Morello sniffed, rolling his eyes. Then: “Move your ass, Private Kelso!”

  Danny hustled, navigating the narrow spaces between canisters. Several of them were closed already and through the clear polymer lids he could see their faces. Hartschorn wore a relaxed expression despite the snugness of the cranial cap and eyepiece that left only his nose and mouth exposed. The guy looked like he was sleeping, even though none of them had been put under yet—thanks to Danny’s tardiness. Most of the platoon was having the headgear fitted onto them, sitting up in the canisters, the clear lids standing straight up from the base. Alaina Torres had styled her hair, as always, despite the fact that nobody would be looking at her real self all day. Most of the female soldiers in the USARIC wore their hair in tight ponytails on duty or cut it short. Making it pretty seemed illogical to Danny, but it wasn’t hurting anybody, so even Sergeant Morello never said a word to Torres about it. If you were going to spend eight hours in a metal coffin, you had to be allowed a few indulgences.

  As he approached his row, he saw Mavrides and Hawkins playing cards on top of a canister, muttering and stealing glances at Naomi Birnbaum, and he had to bite his tongue. Though she was twenty-four, the tiny Birnbaum would always look young, but with her big brown eyes and long lashes, she would always look beautiful, too. Quiet most of the time, she became wildly animated when talking about music, either performers she loved or the dozen or so instruments she herself played.

  The thuggish Hawkins had been hitting on Birnbaum since the day he joined the unit, a grinning goon who thought his skills as a soldier made him irresistible. He was a monster in the field, a soldier anyone would want to have at his side when a mission turned ugly. But in friendly territory, Hawkins was a grade-A cock with wandering hands, a big bastard whose only social skill was intimidation.

  Though it seemed backward, Danny had a feeling Birnbaum could destroy Hawkins in a fight. He’d seen her sparring once and had been shocked by her hand-to-hand skills. If Hawkins put a hand on her butt or accidentally brushed against her breasts one more time, Danny figured Naomi might tear him apart.

  Then there was the kid talking to Hawkins, the nineteen year old computer geek, Zack Mavrides. When Mavrides had joined the platoon a few months back, Danny had tried to set an example for him, but the kid had turned out to be a punk. Hawkins had taken Mavrides under his wing, helping him train, putting himself up as an example of great soldiering, and the kid was young enough to admire Hawkins’ gift for efficient violence. He’d learned all he knew about killing from video games, and Hawkins encouraged him to live out his darkest dreams if the right situation arose.

  Danny didn’t like the way either one of them was looking at Birnbaum right now. As he strode toward his own canister, he watched them, tracking the salacious gaze in the eyes of both men. Danny was torn between telling them off himself or just giving Birnbaum a heads-up so she could take care of them.

  “Come on, Kelso!” Sergeant Morello shouted across Staging Area 12. “Hell’s not getting any colder!”

  The entire unit—those not already laying down—turned his way. Hawkins gave Mavrides a tap on the arm and they started climbing into their canisters. Birnbaum smiled at him and shook her head, hoisting herself up and then vanishing inside the metal cylinder in an instant, the lid starting to descend before she could possibly have strapped herself in. She had it down to a science, even put on her own gear.

  A head popped up a few feet away. Private Jim Corcoran needed a shave, but he liked a little stubble to cover up the ugly scar that cut right through his pale, freckled jawline.

  “I got Kate squared away,” Corcoran said.

  Danny came to stand between his canister and Kate’s. He glanced inside and saw that she already had her headgear on, ready for deployment. It made him wish he had hurried. Their flirting earlier had gotten him thinking, and all through breakfast he had been toying with the idea of asking her out for a real dinner, just the two of them. She’d scoff, he knew, at the concept of a date. Call it high school or something. But he wondered if she might secretly like the idea.

  “Thanks for that,” Danny said, turning to Corcoran. “Sorry for the holdup.”

  “Who’s going to bitch?” Corcoran said. “The Cupcakes? Screw those guys.”

  Laughing, Danny climbed into his canister as a tech came running over to help him into his rig. Early twenties, black, lovely in the awkward, never-going-to-realize-I’m beautiful sort of way that some women had. Aimee Something, her name was, and he thanked her as she held the rig steady while he slid his arms into it. She seemed confident in her work, which would take her far. Techs didn’t have to worry about bullets on the way up the ladder.

  “Don’t worry about Sergeant Morello,” Aimee Something said quietly. “You’re late, but at least you’re here.”

  Danny lifted the headgear off from its hook on the underside of the canister’s lid and slipped it on, pressing the green pads into place at his temples and jaws. His pulse thumped in his skull.

  “Somebody didn’t show up for duty?” he asked.

  Aimee Something smiled conspiratorially and glanced around. “North,” she said. “He showed up, but with a hell of a hangover. Puked inside his canister and Sergeant Morello nearly made him lie in it for the entire shift. But Morello figured he’d be a liability and told him to hit the infirmary.”

  Danny frowned. “What happens to his bot?”

  “Corresponding soldier on the night shift’ll run it over to the embassy before the transition. Probably already done it.”

  “North. What a dumbass. He’ll be written up for sure,” Danny said as he lay down and slid his hands into the silver thin-skin gloves that were linked to the canister’s systems.

  “No doubt,” Aimee Something agreed. “I’m just glad I don’t have to clean it up.”

  He laughed as she examined the readings on the small, external touchscreen that allowed techs to view his vitals from the floor. The entire platoon would be monitored from the workstations as well, of course—bo
th by tech supervisors and by auto health programs—but Aimee wasn’t about to lock him in without making sure he was properly secured in his rig and his vitals were steady.

  “Good to go,” she said, and patted the side of the canister.

  Danny gave her a thumbs up and snapped the visor plate of his headgear into place.

  “Close lid,” he said.

  Closing. The electronic reply came from inside his head rather than through his ears, thanks to the comm-pads attached to his temples: a bland, computerized male voice the Tin Men called Uncle, short for Uncle Sam. Now joining Platoon A of Sixth Battalion, 1st Remote Infantry Division. Be safe, PFC Kelso. Eyes and ears open, mouth closed.

  “Music,” Danny said. “The Killers.”

  He’d been thinking of his father a lot this morning. The Killers had been the old man’s favorite band way back in the day, when Ron Kelso was a single father raising two rough boys. Sometimes Danny liked to listen to them while on duty; it felt like his father might be right behind him, guarding his flank.

  Caution, PFC Kelso. Music is not prohibited, but R.I. Division studies have shown it to be a potential distraction.

  Danny had never seen any harm in having some musical accompaniment. When they were deployed, the music stayed at low volume in the background and went silent anytime his comms unit activated—either with incoming voices or when he himself spoke. The technology boggled his mind so completely that he had stopped asking questions after the first few months with the Remote Infantry Corps. He’d made the mistake of showing some curiosity to an eager tech, who had gone off on a five minute tangent about how the synthetic ganglia in the robots allowed for one-to-one mapping with their pilot’s brains, cutting the lag between thought and action down to the point where the reaction time of the Tin Men was virtually indistinguishable from that of flesh and blood people, despite the satellite transmission involved.

  Thinking about it hurt his head, so Danny just focused on the mission and let the techs do their jobs.

  “Just play it,” he said.

  With only a moment’s delay, the music started up. At the opening chord of “When You Were Young,” a needle slid into his thigh. Danny winced but did not cry out. The needle was attached to a tube that fed him fluids and nutrients while he was locked down. Once the lid was closed, he had no choice but to surrender himself. The shift change between Platoon C and Platoon A would be virtually seamless, a rolling deployment transition, soldiers being withdrawn twelve at a time while twelve more were inserted in their places. In the field, the other twenty-four would cover those in the midst of transition, but the whole process took no more than eight seconds.

  A low, tinny alarm buzzed. Danny breathed deeply of the richly oxygenated air in the canister and felt himself floating, drifting into something not unlike sleep. It felt as if he were sinking into a sea of warm, dark water, an ocean of shadow…

  Inhaling sharply, Danny opened his eyes to the bright, baking sunlight of the streets of Damascus. He blinked twice, heard the low clicks that went along with blinking, and a silent computer readout sprang to vivid life across his vision. Temperature, time, precise GPS locations for himself and every member of his unit, readout of available weapons and ammunition, and more.

  “Those assholes,” Kate snapped.

  Danny heard her voice in his head, just as he’d heard Uncle’s. He glanced around and spotted her a few feet away, standing in the jagged shadow thrown by the ruins of the Khan As’ad Pasha. Even without the markings on her dusty frame, he would have recognized the way she carried herself. He imagined that back when her flesh and blood legs had still been in working order, she’d moved in much the same way as she did now, in the robot body assigned to her by the 1st Remote Infantry Division.

  Like the rest of them, her frame had an antique sort of bone-white hue that blended well in most old Damascus neighborhoods and could color-shift to black once the sun went down. But Kate and the soldiers from the other two platoons who shared this frame with her had modified it with a pair of devil horns painted on the sides of the metal skull and a small trident pitchfork on the left cheek. Danny’s own frame had the number thirteen painted on the forehead, flaunting superstition with his personal number. The soldiers on the other two shifts who shared his frame had appreciated his desire to taunt Lady Luck.

  “Which assholes are we talking about exactly?” he asked.

  “Cupcakes,” Kate said, pointing at his chest. “Look what they did.”

  Danny glanced down and saw the target on his chest, painted in perfectly concentric circles of red, white and blue.

  “That’s not funny,” Kate said.

  He smiled, knowing that she would recognize the small variation in the expression on his robotic face.

  “Well,” Danny said slowly, “it’s kind of funny.”

  Before she could reply, Sergeant Morello started barking orders and the platoon gathered in two rows, standing at attention, awaiting orders. Lieutenant Trang stood behind Morello. Neither officer had any marking on their frames that indicated rank, but anyone watching would have picked up the command structure easily enough. Trang had an infinity symbol on his chest, while Morello’s frame was marked only with black stripes under the eyes, the sort football players painted on to cut the sun’s glare.

  “Platoon C reported zero hostile activity during the past eight hours,” the sergeant said. “That might make you lazy assholes feel all cozy and safe, but it ought to make you paranoid as hell. No news is good news, that’s what they say, right? I say ‘bullshit.’ No news means somebody’s trying hard to come up with a new way to kill you today. So I want you all extra sharp. You see anything that looks wrong or just feels wrong, you sound off. Got me?”

  “Yes, sergeant!” Platoon A chorused.

  He didn’t ask them to repeat it.

  “Just don’t be stupid,” Morello said. “Move out!”

  Platoon A began to spread out along the broad street in front of the wreckage of what had once been among the most beautiful buildings in the world. The domes of the Khan As’ad Pasha had drawn tourists from around the world. The shadowed beauty of its interior, the gentle interdependence of its architecture…like almost everything else the Syrian people held dear, it had been obliterated in a civil war. Danny had heard the expression ‘never shit where you eat,’ and thought it a crude but effective wisdom. The Syrians might hate America now, but they’d been their own worst enemies.

  The Tin Men moved out into the streets and soukhs, weapons held at the ready with hydraulic muscles that would never tire. Danny knew that none of them would take Sergeant Morello’s warning to heart. Some jihadist prick could nuke Damascus, incinerate their robot frames, and the worst the Tin Men would suffer was psychological trauma. Compared to the old way of soldiering, it was a sweet gig. They could wage war without any casualties on the American side.

  They had to stay alert in order to do their jobs properly, to keep the peace and maintain order in a city where they were considered intruders, devils second only to Shaitan. They needed to stay frosty— a single substantial screwup might cause an international incident, and the U.S. Army’s remote infantry was controversial enough already—but at the end of the shift, every one of them was going to wake up safe and sound in their own bodies, back at the Hump.

  Danny hadn’t been lying. He did think the target on his chest was a little bit funny. But he hadn’t told the entire truth, either. When he’d glanced down and seen that target, he’d shivered—and not only his flesh and blood body, back in Germany. His whole robot frame had shuddered just a little.

  Snipers and martyrs were always taking shots at the Tin Men, but he had never felt like a target until today.

  ~2~

  Corporal Kate Wade didn’t mind being deployed in Damascus. The anti-American atmosphere could be toxic, but there were a lot of places in the world where that was true. And Damascus was a damn sight better spot than the edges of the nuclear wasteland left behind after the
meltdown of the Narora reactor in northeastern India. So long, Nepal. Nice knowing you.

  Even better, she thought, you could be in Bangladesh. Her cousin Alonso had been deployed there ever since the food riots a couple of years back. Last time she’d spoken to Alonso he’d told her it had gotten worse, serving there, that as ugly as it had been to watch people kill each other over food, watching them starve was worse.

  Then there was Korea.

  Tin Men had been deployed in a dozen locations around the globe where border disputes or religious hatreds had erupted into bloody warfare with no end in sight. In each case, the USARIC had shut down the conflict, forcing both sides into détente. Except in Korea, where the North Koreans and South Koreans continued to try to destroy one another while also expending huge portions of their arsenals attempting to expel the American interlopers.

  But the US Army could afford to be patient. They were losing hardware, not humans. As long as they were measuring the cost of keeping the world safe in dollars instead of in lives, the American people wouldn’t bitch too loudly. Bringing order to the globe had been just about the only thing that kept the U.S. economy from suffering the same ugliness as the rest of the world. Some of the strands of the web of interdependence that held the global economy together had frayed, a few had broken. Old trade alliances were tenuous, new ones untested. Many nations had turned inward, but the time had long passed when they could rely solely upon themselves for survival.

  America, though…America had robots. Built by American hands. Programmed by American minds. Monitored by American eyes. That meant the U.S. had enemies that hated her more than ever, and allies who loved—or at least needed—her more as well. The whole thing made Kate uneasy as hell, but she was a good soldier. She followed orders. And at night when she closed her eyes she thanked whatever gods hadn’t turned their backs on humanity that the next morning would bring just another boring day running a robot around Damascus.